“No card?” I took them from her and did a thorough check of the flowers and the vase. “These are stunning.”
“Nope. But I saw that pink and purple garbage Amber brought up. Whoever these are from clearly knows you better.” She grinned. “They even got the right shade of blue for the roses. Those are your favourite team’s colours, are they not?”
They were. But I didn’t talk about that with anyone outside of this hospital—not even the people I worked with from 56thand 65th. Rivermount didn’t have a hockey team but there were more Jets fans than Leafs fans because it was easier to get to Winnipegthan to Toronto. And for that reason, I kept my love for the Leafs lowkey. Hockey fans wereintenseabout their teams.
“They must be from someone here then.”
“A secret and a not-so-secret admirer. How do I sign up for your life?”
“You want to deal with all these crazy villains, you be my guest.” As if on cue, my villain phone rang. “Here, take it.” I held it out to her.
“I’m good, thanks, though!” She was out the door a second later.
I shook my head and answered. “Hello?”
“Hey.” Avalanche greeted.
For a second I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t heard from him in three days and even that had just been a quickhi, bye. I shouldn’t be so bothered by it, especially because I had just done this to him. I was a hypocrite, so what?
“What’s up?”Lame, so lame.
“What? No dramatic sigh with a ‘what do you want, Avalanche’? I’m almost disappointed.”
My lips curved in a smile but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d made me laugh. Instead, I sighed.
“What do you want, Avalanche?”
“Perfect. I would like to know how your day is going.”
“Pretty good. I’ve received three different bouquets of flowers, isn’t that nice? Well, one bouquet ended up in the garbage, but the other two are nice.”
“Three? All from different people? You’re a popular woman. Was one from Officer Doofus?”
“Two were fromOfficer O’Neill. One was anonymous.”
“Tell me one of his bouquets ended up in the garbage?”
I laughed. Damn him.
“Green isn’t your colour, Blondie.”
He gasped. “I’ll have you know that every colour is my colour and any insinuation to the contrary will not be tolerated.”
“That was quite the word salad. You have an extensive vocabulary, but do you actually know what all those words mean? Or did you just hear smart people use them and think you could pull it off too?”
“I was top of my class in university. I would have graduated post grad at the top as well, ifthe incidenthappened a year later.”
I had questions but I was sure he wouldn’t answer them so I left it at a joke instead.
“That explains the size of your ego.”
“The size of my ego has nothing to do with my brain and everything to do with the fact that I eat pussy like a god.”
“I beg your finest pardon. What did you just say to me?”
I didn’t know you could hear a person smirking through the phone but he definitely was. I could practically see it.
“I’m quite sure you heard me. I’ve never had a dissatisfied visitor.”
