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Lastly, he got out her pills. Couldn’t he have given her those first?
Why didn’t she think to ask for them?
r /> He opened the bottles, shook out one tablet from each. “Open up.” His eyebrow rose. “Don’t give me that look.” He rattled the two pills in his cupped hand. “So you mean to tell me that your ribs don’t hurt like a bitch?”
They did.
Everything hurt, dammit. She huffed out a breath and opened her mouth.
“Good girl.” He pulled out a straw from the bag and tucked it into the water. She closed her lips over it and took a long drink. His nostrils flared and a muscle in his jaw flexed as she kept swallowing.
She finally sat back and let the straw go. The seatbelt made a sharp zipping sound as he buckled her up.
“I’m going to take Fiona for a quick walk.” He cursed under his breath. “I didn’t ask if you needed to use the restroom.”
She shook her head.
“All right.” He stepped back and slammed her door.
She flinched. She’d really ticked him off. Well good, maybe he wouldn’t talk to her the rest of the trip.
Nineteen
Logan opened the door for Fiona. She stared at him expectantly. One more female that wouldn’t talk to him.
“Need to do your business?”
She tilted her head and thumped her tail once. Jesus, she was a big fucker. She took up over three quarters of the seat. He unearthed her leash from the pocket behind his seat and clipped it to her collar.
Instantly she was up and out of the car.
Guess the leash was her signal.
He looked over at Isabella. He knew she was grieving and he had to get some patience shored up again. But the fact that she wouldn’t talk to him made him insane. He knew she could—she just chose to lock him out.
As if he didn’t carry a freightliner’s worth of guilt already.
He slammed the door and let Fiona tell him where she wanted do her thing. She was pretty much going to sniff everything in sight, so after ten minutes, he led her over to a small copse of trees. She did her doggie spin thing and finally finished.
He loaded her back into the truck only to find Izzy had moved to the backseat. Fiona thought this was an awesome turn of events and crawled into her lap, vibrating with happiness. Logan couldn’t even hold onto his mad with the soft smile that spread across Izzy’s face as the dog loved all over her.
She pushed Fiona off her and settled back. The dog curled onto her side and put her head in Izzy’s lap with a groaning sigh of bliss. Yeah, Fiona had found her person. Isabella absently rubbed under her chin to her chest and back in a soothing gesture as she looked out the window.
He’d been effectively ignored once more.
Logan got back behind the wheel and pulled out of the gas station. While he waited to take a left out and get back on the main road, he opened a soda. He was bone-tired, but he had another hour to go and he needed to be sharp.
The roads were winding and narrow this far up into the coastal area. Aidan Roth had found them a cabin that was out of the way, but close enough to a hospital if Isabella needed something.
Needing to occupy his mind beyond his own fucked up thoughts, he plugged his iPhone into the auxiliary port and found the playlist he used for his workouts. Def Leppard, Metallica, and a little Journey got him through the last leg of the drive. It was too dark to see much more than shadowy trees, but the scent of the lake went a long way to easing his tattered nerves.
By the time he found the main lodge, Izzy was asleep with the dog in the back again. He reached into the console for his baseball cap and decided against waking them. He locked the doors as he went in for the keys.
An older man shuffled out from a small office. “Hello there.”
“Are you Richard?”
“That I am, son. That must make you…” He flipped through papers on a clipboard on the counter and put on a pair of glasses. “Madigan, John C.” Dressed in plaid and denim, he pulled the glasses off and dropped them on top of the pages.
