Free Up by Five by Erin Nicholas Page B

she wanted to be after she graduated,” Lance said.
    Gabby chewed on her bottom lip. She wasn’t sure how she felt about her family spilling her secrets—even if they weren’t embarrassing secrets.
    “Gabs said she wanted to go into medicine,” Lance went on. “So Linda said, ‘Oh, you mean like a nurse or something’. Gabby got this look her face and said, ‘I want to be an ER doctor’.”
    Gabby felt Conner’s eyes on her but she refused to meet his gaze.
    “Linda laughed and said, ‘Oh, you should do something nicer. Be a baby doctor or something’.” Lance looked at Conner. “You have to know Linda. Everything is supposed to be ‘nice’ or ‘sweet’, especially for Gabby, since she’s the only girl.”
    “The only girl?” Conner interrupted. “In her family?”
    “In the whole family,” Lance said. “There are sixteen of us grandkids on this side. Gabs is the only girl.”
    Again, she felt Conner’s gaze on her, but she slugged Lance in the arm. “That’s not the only reason I did the paramedic thing.”
    “She’s been saving up to go to med school,” Grant said. “And getting experience.”
    In her peripheral vision she saw Conner nod. “She’s definitely getting a lot of that. She’ll be great in the ER.”
    Her gaze flickered to him at that unexpected compliment.
    He raised his eyebrows. “What? It’s surely not a surprise that I think you’re great at what you do.”
    For some stupid reason, her body flushed with heat at that and all she could think for a moment was I’ll show you just how great I am at what I do .
    And that couldn’t happen with her family here. For god’s sake. She was thinking dirty thoughts about Conner with her uncles right here?
    But yeah. She sure was.
    “Thanks,” she finally managed. “That’s nice to hear.”
    “If you want to go into emergency medicine, you’ll be awesome,” he said. “You planning to come back to St. A’s?”
    She would love to do her residency and then work at St. Anthony’s. She smiled. “From what I hear, their paramedics make the doctors’ work a lot easier around there.”
    Conner grinned. “Damned right.”
    And there was that feeling of camaraderie she loved so much.
    “Yeah, yeah, Gabby’s awesome, Conner’s great. Can we play poker now?” Lance asked, picking up a deck of cards and shuffling.
    She looked at Conner. Only if it was okay with him.
    He gave her a little smile. “Love poker.”
    “We should warn you,” Jeff said. “Gabby’s great at poker too.”
    “Yeah?” Conner didn’t look concerned. “She’s full of surprises.”
    “And you haven’t even had her dip yet,” Lance added.
     
    Gabby told the men that she needed twenty minutes before she’d be ready to play. They’d groaned and griped, but no one had outright argued.
    Conner couldn’t help it—he found this whole scenario fascinating. She clearly held some authority over the men in her family, even the ones older than she was.
    He’d been thinking about her all day. Her and her tiny-assed sleepwear. When he’d heard the pounding on his front door an hour and a half ago, he’d hoped it was his buddies. He needed a diversion, badly.
    Well, it had been a diversion, that was for sure. The five men had come in like they were old friends. They introduced themselves, explained that it was their weekly game night and told him he was welcome to join in.
    Nice of them, considering it was his apartment.
    But Conner hadn’t minded. The talkative, loud, jovial group seemed like the perfect thing to keep his mind off of the fact he was living with a woman who had blindsided him.
    Gabrielle Evans was a surprise from her long, dark hair to her bright-pink toes.
    He’d been working next to her for two years without a clue that he did, in fact, like small, perky breasts.
    Which was very much for the best. If he’d felt this pull, this—okay, heat —before this, they would have never been able to work together. And he could face