Not a surprise. From everything she’d read about him and that award he’d won, it sounded as if he worked all the time and only caught a few hours of sleep at his desk each night. But she didn’t get the impression he believed he’d gone too far. That’s what scared her. “You didn’t?”

“I knew from my doctor the bigger issue was my heart.”

She dropped the noodle she’d stolen for a taste test. “What?”

“Apparently when you plunge your brain into nonstop stress, work twenty hours a day, don’t sleep, lock yourself away, and rarely venture out in the sunlight, you get high blood pressure and your body starts to break down.” He grabbed two bowls from the cabinet. “Who knew?”

“Everyone?”

The joking tone didn’t fool her. He’d pushed his body right to the edge. She’d bet the doctor gave him an ultimatum. She also doubted that Connor realized that work frenzy kept him from mourning.

“You’re not wrong . . . sort of. What you said before. I did cope with Alexis’s death by overdoing. Being the best son. Best businessman. Being at work all the time.”

She feared the self-destructive behavior went deeper than that. A sort of post-traumatic reaction he still hadn’t dealt with . . . not really. “I’d argue with the word cope because I don’t think you have, but talking about this is progress.” When he shot her an are-you-done frown, she tried to clean up what she said so he would keep talking. “Sorry. Go on.”

“I saw the worry on my parents’ faces. Got yelled at for weeks straight by Hansen when he came back and realized I’d taken on a workload that was usually handled by a group of three—”

“Connor.”

He held up a hand as if he understood her concern and got it. “I gave in to their request that I take time off—extended time—because I didn’t want them to worry.”

So Evan’s comment about a forced sabbatical of sorts wasn’t wrong. His ability to track down information, things he should not know, made her twitchy.

“But they don’t know you screwed up your body. Right?” She wanted to call Hansen, make him fly here, then shake him a bit for letting his brother go through this.

“My body is on the mend.”

“It’s fantastic, but that’s not my point.” She retrieved the dropped noodle from the counter and popped it in her mouth. “Good grief, that’s good. A little sweet mixed in with the soy.”

She stopped talking long enough to take another noodle and a piece of the beef. She might never eat fast food again.

“It’s easy to make. Takes fresh ingredients and some cutting, but not much else.” He served a portion into each of their bowls.