He’d guess Leah’s nerdiness had been obvious when she was younger. These days, only a shadow of it remained. He’d seen it in the candid, old-fashioned way she spoke. The way she tipped her chin up, just a little, when thinking. The way she moved her hands.

She might be a professor at heart, but she resembled a pin-up girl on the outside.

He’d been frozen in place by her striking eyes. Her hair looked like she’d ridden in a convertible with the top down, then combed her fingers through it—a style so casual that it contrasted with her very tidy clothing. There hadn’t been a single wrinkle in her shirt or skirt, and both had been modest . . . so much so they were almost fussy. Yet, strangely, he found her clothes just as sexy as her hair.

After they’d left Donna McKelvey’s office, they’d stopped at a different area of the hospital so that Leah could fill out record request forms and receive a waiver to forward to her mother.

When she’d informed him that she planned to contact an attorney in Misty River about pursuing a court order, his body had bristled. No way could he stand to the side and watch an attorney gouge Leah’s bank account. Especially because he didn’t feel he’d repaid his debt to her in full.

He’d said that his attorney friend Jenna owed him a favor. The technically true part of that was that he had an attorney named Jenna. He’d told Leah that Jenna would reach out to her soon and asked Leah to include him when she returned to the hospital. As good as Jenna was, he was the only one of the three of them who had experience with hospital administrators.

The microwave finished, and he peeled back the container’s packaging. Italian meatballs and marinara sauce over zucchini noodles. He carried the steaming food to his living room and filled his big screen with a replay of the Manchester United versus Liverpool soccer match from last season. Leaning back, he crossed his feet on the coffee table.

His apartment looked and felt like the sort of place that would go for top dollar on Airbnb. He’d hired a friend of a friend of a friend to design it for him, and she’d done a good job. The modern pieces of furniture worked fine. The building was new. He had a sixth-floor view of downtown and could walk to the hospital from here.

Even so, he didn’t like the apartment much. Nothing about it was personal.

He only felt at home in two places. Ben’s family’s house and his own house in Misty River.

Ben.