“Busy. But great.” She smiles at her boss.
He nods. “I’ve heard you’ve been doing some great work. The patients are already talking about you.” He gestures to the door. “You wanna grab a bite to eat?”
She hesitates, and then says, “Sure.”
“It’s the only time I have to catch up with you. I hate it when we get so busy that I barely have time to break a new employee in. You drove here?”
“Yeah.” She can’t help noticing how the fluorescent lights catch the shimmers in his glorious hair.
“You can hop into my car and I can drop you back here later. Or would you rather go in yours and follow me? How well do you know the area?”
“Fairly well. It isn’t that big a town, though I hardly have time to explore it.”
He laughs. “It must be my fault then. Come on. You can tag after my car. It’s the big Tahoe upfront. The place I have in mind isn’t far from here.”
Yes, she knows it’s his car. Everyone knows it’s his car because it is parked in his reserved spot.
She drives the Toyota after his Tahoe. Night has fallen already, and the final shoal of sunset is a glimmer over the forested horizon. The ocean is a dark presence to the west. It is chilly out tonight, and she makes sure her jacket is nicely buttoned down her front.
The place he has in mind is a Chinese restaurant called Wing Lee’s a short distance away. They both park together in the half-empty parking lot, side by side.
Once inside, Kirk takes a seat by the window so that he can look out into the distant forest and the hills. He does not draw her chair for her as this is not a date.
The waiter comes over to give them their menus.
“Do you like Chinese food?” he asks.
“I honestly haven’t had that much of it.”
His green eyes flash. “Do you trust me to order?”
She smiles. “Sure, go ahead.”
He orders a variety of dishes foreign to her, and then they settle back in their chairs over a pot of Chinese tea, which the waiter pours into two small porcelain cups.
“So what brings you to Dolphin’s Bay? This isn’t exactly the mecca of holistic medicine,” he says.
She wonders what version of her story to give him. He seems to intuit this.
“I know,” he says. “You have the condensed storyline to tell Patty and the rest of the small town gossips. And then you have the real version. It’s OK. You can tell me the real version.”
She hesitates, looking into his beautiful eyes. She can drown into those eyes, and the moment she feels her cheeks burning, she looks away. God, but he is so beautiful. Different from Lucien, but just as beautiful.
He mistakes this for reticence.
“It’s OK,” he says with empathy, “you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But I thought you could use a friend here who understands what you can do.”
“No, it’s OK. I want to tell you.” She needs to tell someone about what happened to her to get it off her chest. “I’m from a small town in Arizona called Tupelo.”
“Go on.”
He nods, his entire attention focused on her.
The soft pink walls of the Chinese restaurant melt away around them as she remembers.
TUPELO
“You can’t leave,” says the bodyguard she has come to know as Damon.
“What do you mean I can’t leave?” she demands.
She is extremely frightened.
“Senora Conchita needs you.”
Shannon tries to temper her anxiety by making her voice calm. “And I will be here again tomorrow.”
Her trembling hands are betraying her. The walls of the mansion around her are rose pink. The pink of a hacienda glowing in sunset.
“But she needs you tonight to be with her,” Damon insists, blocking her path.
“I have to go home. My brother is expecting me.”
“Call him and tell him you have to work tonight.” Damon is joined by two more cartel henchmen behind him. Together, the three of them form a solid wall at the archway leading to the hall, where the main doors are.
Her heart sinks. How the hell did she get mixed up in cartel business? Oh yes, because they offered her a sum of money she couldn’t refuse. That money would have allowed her and Jared to take a few years off working if it does come to that.
So far, they have been paying her in installments, but they are holding back the final sum until Conchita – the matriarch of the household – gets better.
But Shannon knows she won’t get better. The pancreatic cancer which is eating her alive is terminal. And worse, the cancer is sapping Shannon’s strength and ability to heal. She has kept Conchita at bay now for six months, but the cancer is winning. Each time Shannon thinks she has managed to melt a bone lesion away, another one would appear in Conchita’s brain.