Free Reluctantly in Love by Niecey Roy Page B

don’t have to worry. I know where the ramp is.”
    I turned to look back, but the boat wobbled. I faced forward again. “I didn’t realize you and Matt were both from this town.”
    “Yeah, that’s why we can’t get rid of each other.” He laughed. “We’ve been friends since grade school. Got into a lot of trouble, that guy and I.”
    “I know how that goes.” I smiled, thinking of my friendship with Gen and Lexie.
    “How do you like living in Lincoln?” I asked. Talking kept my mind off of what might be swimming under the canoe.
    “I don’t mind it, actually. Better than Omaha. I never did get used to that city—too busy for me. I’m a small town kind of guy. If there was need for another doctor in Cedar Ridge, I might move back.”
    “There’s a doctor in this town?”
    He laughed. “You sound surprised.”
    It couldn’t have taken but ten minutes to make it from one end of Cedar Ridge to the other.
    “It’s a really small town. Some of the streets are gravel.” Then I worried he'd be insulted, and said, “But it’s charming.”
    “Small towns aren’t for everyone,” he said with a chuckle.
    “And not big enough for two doctors?”
    “There are already two doctors in town, actually. But I’m sure they’d have me if I showed up with my bags. The town doc is my dad. My older sister joined the practice a few years ago. They get patients from all over the county.”
    “A family business thing; that’s nice,” I said, thinking of my dad. He hadn’t made secret his disappointment in my pursuing a writing career. He wanted me to join the culinary empire—his dream, not mine. A dream he’d chased without me after he divorced my mother. Even though I told myself his approval didn’t matter, it did. When I was thirteen, I found it easy to blame myself for his leaving. Coming to the realization that it wasn’t my fault had taken too long.
    “I have a younger brother who designs houses and a younger sister who’s a photographer. They thought three doctors in the family was enough.”
    “Where do they live?” I had a pattern now—paddle twice on the right, once on the left, once on the right, twice on the left.
    “All my family lives here in Cedar Ridge. I’m the rebel.”
    I could hear the laughter in his voice, and wondered if it was something his family joked about at the dinner table. Gen and Lexie’s family joked like that. Sitting at their parents’ dinner table was always loud, full of bickering, and oozing love. I was my parents’ only child. I had a younger half-sister from my dad’s second marriage, but since that marriage hadn’t lasted either, I’d only seen her a few times. I hoped he was a better father to her than he was to me.
    “Your family sounds nice,” I said.
    “They are. I think I’ll keep them around.”
    I could hear the shrug in his voice, and laughed.
    We paddled on in silence until the canoe wobbled and I looked back to see why he was moving around. He was leaned forward with a hand in the cooler.
    Catching my eye, he asked, “Pink thing? Blue thing?” He held up a pink wine cooler. “You must have packed this cooler.”
    “I didn’t know what kind of mood I’d be in. I’ll take the pink one.” I turned just a tad sideways in my seat and he handed it to me. “There’s beer somewhere in there too. I don’t drink beer usually unless there’s orange juice in it.”
    He grimaced. “Orange juice? Why would you do that?”
    I screwed my nose up and faced forward in my seat. “Because beer isn’t my first choice in drink. I mean, it’s good sometimes.”
    “I get it. You’re a foo-foo drink girl”
    “You bet your ass.” I untwisted the cap off the wine cooler and took a drink. The sun was even hotter out here on the water, if that were even possible. “Whose idea was it to canoe in one hundred degree weather?”
    “That’d be Matt.”
    The bottle sweated in my hand. I needed that koozie thing Matt gave me, but I forgot it on the river