“I will.” She lifted a homemade potato chip from her plate. “Did you undertake any heart surgeries today, Dr. Grant?”

“Only one.”

“I’ve been reading up on pediatric cardiac surgery since we talked last week.”

“Have you?”

“I have.”

Surgery disgusted most people. The rest were bored by technical details. Acquaintances usually asked him a few surface questions about his career and left it at that.

“What type of surgery did you perform today?” she asked.

“A biventricular repair.”

“To address which condition?”

“A double-outlet right ventricle.”

“Does that mean that both the aorta and the pulmonary artery were rising out of the right ventricle?”

He schooled his face so Ben wouldn’t catch him smiling at her like he was impressed. “Yes.”

“So the right ventricle was pumping blood through both outlets?”

“Correct. The left ventricle had no outlets, so it was shooting blood through a hole into the right ventricle.”

“And you fixed it by . . . ?”

“Creating two functioning ventricles.”

“Did your patient come through it well?”

“She came through it very well.”

“So far today, I’ve slept late, hiked, cleaned my house, and forced my brother to go to summer school. So . . . your day wins.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “That depends on how challenging it was to force your brother to go to summer school.”

Her bluish-gray eyes glittered, which gave him a sharp stab of satisfaction. Her nearness was ripping away the space suit he was trapped in, the one that dulled everything. She enabled him to feel things.

“What motivated you to become a doctor?” she asked.

“The white jackets, terrible hours, and the pay.” He spoke the lie smoothly. “In that order.”

The tips of her hair slipped against the sides of her delicate neck. Her bottom lip was fuller than her upper lip. Light caught in her little gold hoop earrings.

Pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans, he made himself take a step back and dropped his attention to her appetizers. Raw vegetables, chips, and melon wrapped in prosciutto, pierced by a toothpick.

“I feel self-conscious eating in front of you,” she announced. “Aren’t you hungry?”

I am. For so many things. He shook his head.

“My melon’s cut in such a way that it forms an almost perfect rhomboid. You have the self-control to pass up rhomboid melon?”

“I do.”

“I do not.” She took a bite and he groaned inwardly. “Did you grow up in Misty River?”

“I was born in Chicago. My mom brought me to Georgia when I was five.”

“Was your dad in the picture?”

“No.”

“Not ever?”

“No.”

“What was your mom’s name?”

“Denise.”

“Why did Denise move you from Chicago to Georgia?”