Page 44 of Clinically Delicious
I stood in the dining room, suddenly aware of how this looked. The fancy table. The candlelight. The home-cooked meal that had taken actual skill and effort.
This was fine. This was a normal thing for a nanny to do. Cooking dinner was literally part of childcare. The fact that I’d made it restaurant-quality was just... professionalism. Attention to detail. Definitely not me trying to impress my absurdly attractive boss.
I heard the front door open. Heard Megan’s excited voice: “Dad! Cate made dinner! Real dinner! With fancy chicken!”
Heard Dr. Lyon’s deeper voice, surprised: “She did?”
And then footsteps, coming toward the dining room.
I smoothed down my shirt, tried to look casual, and prepared to explain why I’d turned his Monday night dinner into what looked suspiciously like a date.
This was fine.
Everything was fine.
I was a professional nanny who’d made a professional apology dinner with professional candlelight.
Nothing weird about that at all.
The footsteps stopped in the doorway.
I looked up.
Dr. Lyon stood there in his work clothes, looking tired and rumpled and unfairly attractive. His eyes moved from the set table to the candles to me, and something flickered across his face that I couldn’t quite read.
“Hi,” I said, my voice coming out slightly higher than normal. “I made dinner. As an apology. For the arm thing. Not that dinner fixes a broken arm, obviously, but I thought—I mean, I wanted to—”
Stop talking, Cate.
“It smells incredible,” he said, and was that surprise in his voice? Or something else?
“It’s chicken piccata. And fresh pasta. Nothing fancy. Well, kind of fancy. But not too fancy. Just regular fancy. Normal fancy.” Oh God, I was doing it again. “Megan helped.”
“I zested the lemon!” Megan announced proudly.
Dr. Lyon’s expression softened as he looked at his daughter. Then his gaze returned to me, and I felt that familiar flutter in my stomach. The one that had nothing to do with anxiety and everything to do with the way he was looking at me right now.
Like I’d surprised him.
Like maybe I wasn’t what he’d expected.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he said quietly.
“I know. I wanted to.” I gestured toward the table, trying to look professional and not at all like someone who’d spent the last hour overthinking every detail. “You should eat before it gets cold. I need to head home anyway. Sorry about the arm thing again.”
He nodded slowly, still watching me with that unreadable expression as I gathered my things, only for Megan to cry out, “Stay.”
I blinked a few times. “What?”
Megan’s eyes were wide and hopeful as she looked from her father to me, her fingers gripping the back of her chair. I hesitated, torn between the urge to flee and the warmth radiating from the little family gathered in front of me. The table was set for three, not two, and the extra plate gleamed expectantly in the candlelight.
Dr. Lyon gave a small, encouraging nod, the corners of his mouth twitching into something almost like a smile. It was impossible not to feel drawn in by the moment, by the possibility of belonging—just for tonight. I slowly slipped my bag from my shoulder, setting it quietly on the floor, letting myself be a part of their world for a little while longer.
“You cooked this fabulous meal. You should stay and eat it.”
And as I moved toward the table—Megan chattering excitedly, Dr. Lyon pulling out chairs, the candles casting soft light across the room—I realized that maybe, just maybe, I’d made a terrible mistake.
Because this didn’t feel like an apology dinner.
This felt like something else entirely.
And judging by the way Dr. Lyon’s eyes kept finding mine across the table, he noticed too.
