“Hey.” Josie’s voice was clipped and edgy. “You two blew it, and if she lets you back in, let me make one thing perfectly clear.” Dylan’s temper rose somewhere in his throat, floating like bile.
One long fingernail pointed at their crotches, one by one. “The warlock waitress will be wearing very real balls if you mindfuck her again. And that baby, too.”
Holy shit. “You really have some nerve,” he nearly shouted, letting his voice rise, feeling it like an old friend. The nurse, Diana, looked at them from behind a large desk, eyeing them warily.
“Me? I’m not the one who—oh, fuck this. I’m done trying to help you two.”#p#分页标题#e#
“Offering to chop off our balls isn’t my idea of help,” Mike added, his voice flat and dry.
“It’s 7:30 a.m. My best friend and her baby nearly died in a fire. Now I have to help her not feel guilty after I’ve spent the past three months trying to convince her to tell you two assholes.”
She what?
“You two lied badly enough—twice—to crush my best friend’s heart. The best friend I’ve been with now through the first half of a pregnancy.” Her voice rose. “Were you there when she cried her eyes out over you two? When she started to get morning sickness? How about when I went out to get the tests and we went through them, one by one, and they all read positive— where were you?”
“We didn’t know—”
“I know you didn’t know, Dylan. Why do you think you didn’t know?” Nostrils flaring, hands on hips, she looked like a miniature Joan Jett doing a SpongeBob imitation, all yellow fury. “Because she thought you didn’t tell her about your money because you didn’t trust her. She was fucking overwhelmed and confused. And by the way—use a damn rubber sometimes, you two!”
OK, she had him there. He should have. Mike didn’t? A side glance at Mike, who imperceptibly shook his head. So it really could be either of them.
“Forgive me,” she said bitterly, as if asking for anything but forgiveness, “if I seem overly protective. Someone has to be, though, because the greatest threat to Laura—and her baby—so far has been fire, and you.”
Wham. As if struck between the eyes by a hot ball of lead, Dylan nearly sank to the floor. Fuck all. He resented the hell out of what Josie was saying but he had to admit she was right. The wince on Mike’s face said she’d struck his target, too. Bullseye.
Double bullseye. She walked off, fast and efficient, just like a nurse. Except they weren’t her patients. Quite the opposite. They were her wounded, her words meant to hurt, to get the point driven home.
And she had succeeded.
Shoulders slumped, he sighed. Ah, man, he had to get back to the station to do reports and go through debriefings. Mike looked at him and pointed to the hallway toward the parking garage. A slow walk to the elevators was rote enough that he just kept moving forward, brain turned to mush.
“What now?” Mike asked as they waited for the elevator.
“You’ll drive me back to my place?” They’d left Dylan’s car in the apartment garage and come in the Jeep.
“I’ll drive us back to our place.” Dylan closed his eyes and leaned against Mike, nodding.
Sometimes it didn’t have to be so complicated.
Thank God.
Chapter Nine
Mike held the smartphone’s camera up and surveyed the soot-covered room slowly. Laura’s apartment building had just been opened for him and Dylan to come down, the fire investigation completed enough that they permitted residents to remove vital items. The conclusion: an electrical fire that started in the breaker box in the basement, directly under Laura’s place.
She was damn lucky. A few more minutes and...well, he wouldn’t be holding a camera streaming live video to her on her smart phone, her sweet face asking questions and giving directions as she rested under a down throw on his couch, looking relaxed and healing nicely.
His couch. At the cabin. When the fire investigators told her she wouldn’t be able to go back to her apartment for weeks, if not months, the structural damage too great for people to live there, the news had seemed to crush her. Quick to offer help, he and Dylan had both tried to get her to move in. Cabin vs. apartment?
She’d chosen the cabin. Who knew why, and he didn’t care. Josie was with her, helping to acclimate her, and now he and Dylan were on a mission to bring back whatever she wanted. Life as he knew it was over. Not just the past four painful, grueling months, but the time before that as well. He and Dylan would never be the same again. It was less about hiding the truth from Laura (twice) and more about what seemed to be a strange role reversal, with Dylan calmer, more reserved, more mature and Mike more emotive, charismatic, and, well—