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My brows go up. “As in?”
“I mentioned that I wanted a big plant terrarium and guess what... He got everything to set one up for me.”
I look at her for a few seconds. “He did?”
She grins.
Declan comes and goes again, bringing another box inside.
I say, “He must have found the box with the toys. He knows what kind of freak you are, and he’s going to bribe you with the plants.”
She shrieks and tries to smack me, just as Declan walks in. The blue of his eyes sparks, his grin is sly. “Aye, I think it might be time for her to buy stock in Eveready.”
Ariel runs from the room and slams the bathroom door. Inside, I can hear her laughing so hard she’s crying.
“Did you... um?” I ask with a double shrug.
“I dropped a box and a bunch of battery-operated husbands, in damn near every color in the rainbow, fell out on my carpet. Thank fuck none of the guys were over having a beer. I’d never fucking live that one down.”
“I can hear you!” Ariel yells from the bathroom.
“She’s shy...”
Declan laughs as he returns to the hallway to get another box. When he comes back in the room, he says, “Ariel Walsh doesn’t have a shy bone in her body.”
“How would you know?” yells Ariel through the wall.
He’s laughing as he walks down the small hallway and leans a hand against the barrier to the bathroom. “I’ve heard the things you talk about, I’ve also seen you shaking that fine ass of yours as you dance around in the kitchen. And I’ve seen the kind of lingerie you’ve got.”
“Oh. God,” Ariel groans loud enough to shake the walls.
She jerks the door open. “Looking in my boxes. I swear, Declan, you’ve stooped to a new low.”
He leans in. “Or a new high.” His big hand wraps in Ariel’s nearly onyx-colored ponytail and he crashes his lips against hers for a kiss so hot I wonder how we don’t all turn to cinder.
I promptly turn on my heel and sprint out the door. I need to find Kieran fast. And not because I want to tell him the news.
CHAPTERFORTY-ONE
I fucking hate hospitals. The smell. The sounds. The morbid gray walls and stupid gowns that ruin any dignity you’ve got left.
But there’s no way out of this visit. One of the last few times I’ll see Coghlan. I’m counting the hours until I never have to talk to the slimy bastard again.
Outside the door to Room four seventeen Declan stands guard on one side. O’Malley on the other. They both tip their heads at me. I’m glad to see them. Declan, of course, is solid, and he’s paid off the other man handsomely to corroborate the story that Coghlan bought hook, line, and sinker. Course it helps when the paramedics’ reports are perfectly aligned.
Declan’s a wily bastard. I like him more every day.
As I push open the door and step into the room, the smells snarl in my nose. An ugly soup of old man cologne, dried blood, and the stench of evil that surrounds men like Carra's father. You could pickle him in bleach and that would never go away.
Lying in the bed, head the size of a pumpkin, Coghlan peers at me from a face that looks like it met the wrong side of a bulldozer. Jaw wired shut, his face is the color of a cast-iron pan.
Regretfully, he isn’t the color of dead.
Fuckin-A. Declan did that with one punch. Admirable.
I widen my legs, cross my arms, taking residence at the end of the bed to stare at the fetid piece of shite. “Rotten luck, a tree limb fell on you.”
Through cracked, swollen lips the man mutters, “yoddammmm right. I'm firrrin the yawan are eople.” Talking with your mouth wired is a bitch it seems. But I get the point, he’s firing the lawncare people.
