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“A glass of water would be great.”

“Okay, you’ve got it.” He got her a glass of water, then he gently set her foot on a pillow on the coffee table to elevate it before he started dinner.

She smiled. “Thanks. I will leave a review for you on your clinic website saying you’re an excellent doctor.”

He laughed. “I will need all the reviews I can get once I open the clinic, but I suspect I’ll have a ton from pack members, since I’ve been seeing their animals after I moved intothe manor house with Edeen and Lachlan. Now we have to decide what we want to eat. Red meat? Fish? Or chicken?”

“Haddock appeals, if you’ve got some.”

“Coming right up. Chips?”

“Aye! So I want to tell you that I was so impressed with your swordsmanship. You were great. Now you’re going to have to give me some tips instead of the other way around.”

“It’s been so long since I even held a sword that I didn’t think I would be able to do well at it at all.”

“I guess it’s like riding a bike. Except of course when you got distracted on the battlefield.”

“Uh, yeah,” he said, as he prepared the haddock to cook. “Veronica and I danced at Christmastime up at the castle. We haven’t done anything together since then. She is constantly taking off for England to see friends, and I suspect she has a male wolf friend there, but that’s just speculation. Anyway, we really had a great time, but neither of us have really reached out to see each other further.”

Light dawning, Maisie said, “You were afraid she was going to tell me that you’d dated her and worried how I would react.”

He smiled at Maisie. “I should have told you about it, though there’s not much to say. I also spent an evening dancing with Lana Cameron, Heather’s baker. When we have lunch at Heather’s shop tomorrow, Lana might say something about it. But again, that was just dancing at a party one night and nothing after that.”

Maisie laughed. “Okay, I’m forewarned. Veronica didn’t say you two dated. She just said she was the onecommissioned to frame the photos I’ll take for your clinic. Oh, that reminds me, tomorrow before our date, I need to get those marine life pictures ready to send for the magazine. I found a few that will be suitable, but I need to check out the rest of them to give them a variety.”

“At least you can do that even if your ankle is still bothering you,” Robert said, hoping that Maisie wasn’t concerned about him socializing with Veronica or Lana.

“Yeah. So have you been dating any other wolves while you’ve been here?” she asked, sounding like a curious wolf.

He served up glasses of sauvignon blanc. “No. I danced with Lana and Veronica only. I didn’t have a date with them per se. I just showed up, and they weren’t with anyone either. We were single, so we danced.”

“Oh, okay.” She sounded a little relieved, probably because Veronica lived here and worked with the pack, so Maisie would be seeing her from time to time.

“What about you?” he asked.

“I’ve been on only one date since we’ve been here. Gus Anderson, a lone gray wolf, was staying at the inn, and he took me out to Heather’s pie shop.”

“Gus, the guy who had lost his driver’s license in your garden.”

“Aye. I think he asked me out because we’re both from Glasgow, but I never met him there. He was nice enough but kept glancing at the clock like he had an appointment, and it kind of annoyed me. I finally just had had it and I told him if he had an important meeting to go to, he should drop me off at the inn. He seemed affronted and said he was meetingwith someone, but that he had to eat, and he hated eating alone. He said he was enjoying my company, but if I felt that way about it, he would take me home. I felt a little guilty about bringing it up. He told me he was sorry, that he was just making sure he didn’t miss meeting the…person.

“In that instant, I felt something was really off. He didn’t say who he was meeting, and when he hesitated, he switched from looking at his steak pie to looking at me, as if he had nearly made a slip and he hoped I hadn’t caught it. He looked…guilty, the tips of his ears turning a little red. I thought maybe he was seeing another woman. After dinner, he took me back to the inn, and I figured he retired to his room. I don’t know if he ever met with anyone else afterward or what that was all about. When I told Anne, she said he’d been terribly rude. He checked out early the next morning, and I never heard from him again. So I guess it was like your time spent with Veronica and Lana—nothing came of it, not that I expected anything to since he was living in Glasgow.”

“That sounds like an odd situation he had put you in.” Robert served up the meal and seemed glad to hear that she wasn’t interested in Gus.

***

Maisie dug into her delightful haddock, feeling pleased that they had discussed past relationships with each other. “This is so good.” She took another bite of the haddock, which had been breaded and cooked to perfection. “You can cook this for me anytime!”

“Thanks. You made my day. Edeen and I would take turns trying to outdo each other cooking dinner. She taught me how to cook. I would like to have both you and Anne over for dinner some night before I open the clinic to thank you for dinner last night.”

“That would be great. You’ll have to fix this again. She’ll love it. If my ankle wasn’t still bothering me, I would have loved going for a wolf run with you.”

“As soon as it’s all better, let’s make a plan of it.”

“You’re on.”

After they finished dinner, Robert took Maisie home, carrying her inside and setting her on the couch. “I’ll grab the crutches and be right back.” When he returned, he set them next to the couch and leaned over and kissed her. “See you tomorrow. Bye, Anne.”