Taking a deep breath, she turned and gave Trey a small smile as she held up the T-shirt. “I think I’m going to get this.”
When they got to the counter, Trey pulled out his wallet, and while she attempted to argue, he waved her off. “Your loss. You could have had a ceramic chicken.”
They browsed around the other shops, laughing over the unusual and sometimes silly stuff they found. Trey picked up a few things, telling her it was never too early to buy Christmas gifts for his teammates. She swore for a second he almost tripped up and said pack mates but caught himself at the last second.
In between shopping and listening to the band, they stopped for food whenever something struck their fancy, from a French silk chocolate pie with pretzel crust at a bakery that smelled like absolute heaven, to half a pound of fudge at the fancy chocolatier shop at the far end of the district. Samantha thought they’d take the fudge with them, but it tasted so good, they ended up eating it all as they walked. She didn’t even bother feeling guilty about it, either. The way she looked at it, all the walking would burn off the calories as soon as they ate them. That was her story, and she was sticking to it. Besides, Trey ate most of it.
“You mentioned that your dad’s a cardiac surgeon and that your sister works in a lab, so making a career in medicine sounds like it’s a family affair,” Trey said as he held open the door to a rather eclectic-looking bookshop/café. “Did you always want to be a medical examiner?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve wanted to work with dead people since I was a child,” she said casually, perusing the mismatched books on the shelves across from the long wooden bar. Truly, she’d never been in a bookstore with a bar before. It was a match made in heaven as far as she was concerned. “So it was either an ME or a mortician.”
She was disappointed when Trey didn’t even bat an eye at her joke. “That must have been a tough choice. How did you decide?”
“Sorry for the gallows humor.” She gave him a wry smile. “But you have no idea how many times I get asked that question. Dad still asks me at least once a year and he already knows the answer.”
“I didn’t mean to stick my nose somewhere it doesn’t belong,” Trey said. “If it’s something you’d rather not talk about, I get it.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. In my experience, doctors become medical examiners for one of two reasons. It’s either because they lack the empathy and compassion to interact with patients, or they possess too much empathy and compassion and can’t maintain the required emotional distance from their patients. It my case, it was the latter. I became close with an elderly patient in one of my practicums and when the woman died, it really did a number on me.”
“Ah,” he said with a nod. “Based on my experience as a combat medic and then as a paramedic, I’m thinking that probably happens a lot.”
“Yeah, I know,” Samantha admitted. “But there was no way I could ever put myself through that again. I talked to my advisers and at the end of that semester I transferred to a pathology program. It added another year onto my student loan debt, but I never looked back.”
She turned, expecting to see some level of condemnation or pity on Trey’s face. Her dad had certainly thrown enough of the first her way, while the friends she’d made during her pre-med program had provided the second. But Trey was regarding her with approval.
“This is going to sound selfish, but I’m personally glad you went the ME route.” Settling his hands on her hips, he tugged her closer. “If you hadn’t, we might never have met. And I think that would definitely have been my loss.”
Samantha decided that had to be the cheesiest line she’d ever heard. But for some incredibly silly reason, she loved hearing it all the same.
“So,” she said softy, leaning into him just enough to press her breasts against the hard planes of his chest. “What else is on the agenda for the evening? Beyond helping me reaffirm my career choice, I mean.”
Trey tilted his head down, and for a moment, Samantha was sure he was going to kiss her right there in the middle of the bookstore. But instead, he inhaled deeply through his nose—like he was breathing in her scent—then flashed her one of those knee-weakening smiles.
“I figure there are at least a dozen more shops for us to check out as part of your retail-therapy session. Then we could go to the pizza place at the end of the block to grab a few slices before the movie, if you want. Maybe even stop by one more time to look at that ceramic chicken you had your eye on earlier before heading back to your place.”
Samantha wasn’t so sure about the ceramic chicken part of the plan, but the rest of it—especially the part about going back to her apartment—sounded excellent.
***
“You feel like some coffee?” Samantha asked as she opened the door to her apartment. “Or maybe something a little stronger.”
“Coffee would be good.”
Trey set down all the bags he’d been carrying for her on the floor near the couch. She might have said retail therapy was all about the looking and not the buying, but it was still nice to buy stuff, too. And yeah, she’d finally gotten that damn ceramic chicken even though she had no idea what she was going to do with it. Maybe give it to Louis for National Boss’s Day.
But while they’d done their fair share of shopping, mostly they’d spent the evening talking about her grandparents and the place in Homer; her sister, Loralei; and even a bit more about that brief moment in her life when she thought she was going to be a real doctor. Or at least the kind of doctor who helped living patients. She hadn’t planned to be that open with Trey, but there was something about him that made him easy to talk to. She felt more connected to him than she ever had anyone else.
After she got coffee brewing, Samantha walked around the peninsula separating the kitchen from the living room, expecting to find Trey relaxing on the couch. Panic surged through her when she didn’t. What if he’d found his way into her guest bedroom, where all her SWAT stalker stuff was set up? She practically hyperventilated at the thought of him seeing all the photos she had tacked up to her walls and various spreadsheets full of all the strange events that had occurred in Dallas over the past few years, as well as the colored yarn connecting those events to different members of his team.
But when she got to the hallway leading to the bedrooms, she found Trey gazing at the photographs hanging on the walls. His expression was intense as he took in every detail of the pictures that pretty much laid out her whole life in front of him.
“Are these your grandparents?” he asked, motioning to the largest framed photo in the center of the wall of an older couple sitting on the steps of a rustic stone-and-log home, smile lines crinkling the corners of their eyes as they held each other close. It was one of her most cherished memories of them, taken on her last visit before they passed away.