Page 99 of Breached

Eve immediately sat up straight. “I know, why don’t we all say what we liked best about him or how we felt about Doc Roberts? Catalina, I’ll give you a minute. Ivy why don’t you start?”

Ivy pushed her peas around the plate, and Ty gave her a little hug. Doc was her uncle-slash-father and had brought her here to help counsel us. The same way he’d brought in Dr. Bash and Eve and Ollie. It was especially hard for her.

“We all know Doc was special,” Savannah tried, then gave up.

“All right,” Eve nodded and tried again, “well, does anyone have a story you could share about Doctor Roberts?”

Sloane snorted and put a hand over her mouth, and her eyes flew to Nicole. The glance they exchanged didn’t go unnoticed.

Mark tilted his head and pointed at them. “What was that?” He waved his finger back and forth between the two women.

“Nothing,” Nicole answered too quickly, sparking his interest further.

“Bullshit, you’ve got something on my Doc. Tell me.”

Ivy raised a brow and smirked. “He’s my uncle, and not to quote Mike, but I thought he was your stepdaddy.”

“Eww, don’t!” Keith barked and put his hands over his ears as Mike tossed his head back and howled. It sparked the rest of the table to bust into laughter. Nicole and Sloane jumped up and had a huddle session and I heard the words… ‘client privilege is over.’ The tension began to drain from the room.

This was what I lived for, the chaos of our house.

“Enough out of you.” Mark glared at Ivy and pointed his fork at her. “This is about the reporter of the house, who apparently knows something and hasn’t shared it.” A helpless string bean dangled at the end of his fork. “You might be engaged to one of my best friends—but there are two things you don’t get between, and that’s food and secrets.”

Nicole tried to hold back her laughter. “Why am I getting singled out here? What about Sloane? She knows it, too.”

“Ah-ha! So, you do know something.” Mark waved at Sloane. “She takes too long to break—she’s got that whole JAG thing going on.”

Sloane sat back down, hiccupping with suppressed laughter. Interesting.

I did love to see Mark get all riled up, so I swung a glance at Cole and thought I should get in on this.

“You know, Mark, I think the bigger question is what does Cole know?” I added heat to the fire as I leaned back in my chair and ran my arm along the back of Nicole’s chair as she took her seat again.

Mark’s eyes grew wild as he turned to look at his brother, who shook his head at me, knowing exactly what I’d just done. “I swear on Lucifer's jock strap, Cole, if you know what this is and I don’t, I will tie you down and shove that dirty thing down your throat and make you swallow!”

“And I’m done with chicken parm.” John gagged and pushed his plate back as Catalina giggled.

I leaned into Nicole’s shoulder. “Tell me you got something?”

“Royal flush, all the same suit,” she whispered excitedly. “Just want to torture him a bit longer.”

I signaled Cole discreetly to play along.

“I think it’s best if Nicole shares this one.” Cole, to my delight, stirred the pot.

“Well, I see how this is. You guys all know what stress does to me,” Mark stood, “and I’ve had a lot of it lately, and what happens when I’m stressed? I eat. And when I eat too much, I overindulge in something, and I get very overwhelmed.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Mia rolled her eyes and tossed her napkin on her plate, “now look what you’ve gone and done.”

“Welcome to the house, Eve and Ollie, I give you another week,” Keith grunted to the doctors. “Good fucking luck with that one.”

“I don’t know, I think he just needs me to bake something special for him.” Eve looked sympathetically at Mark, who looked hopeful.

Keith shook his head. “That’s his lure.”

“All right!” Nicole couldn’t take it anymore. Her face was red from laughing at Mark’s dramatic meltdown. “So, Doc did tell Sloane and me a story when we were down in the saferoom.” She paused. “Remember, we were scared, the RPGs had hit, the radios were busy, and Sloane asked Doc to distract us with something about Abigail. We chatted a bit, then I asked about why he wanted so much to stay until the fifteenth.” Nicole looked over at Mark and slowly licked her lips. “Sloane, do you want to take it from here?”

Sloane pretended to think about it. “Damn it, Nicole, just tell me.” Mark looked pained.