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“What in the hell are lentils?”
“Oh my God, you child,” he said sitting down hard next to me. He poked my finger holding the spoon. “Eat it.”
I swirled the spoon around the soup, not the least hungry and definitely not interested inlentil soup. “You like to cook healthy stuff, huh?”
Lachlan had one knee up on the bed and watched me with overbearing expectancy. He leaned his elbow on his knee and his face on his hand. “Yes.”
“I think the last soup I ate was Campb—”
“Don’t say it,” he said, wiping his eyes with his thumb and fingers like it was too painful to hear. “Please don’t tell me that you still eat canned chicken noodle soup when you’re sick.”
“Chicken and star soup,” I corrected.
He inhaled and then groaned, like I’d told him I sacrificed kittens under a full moon for funsies. “Alright,” he said, resigned. He took the bowl from my hands and padded back out of the darkened room. When he returned, he had oatmeal with a giant lump of brown sugar in the middle. “That’s the best I can do. Take it or… well, take it. You’re eating this.”
I swirled the brown sugar into the oatmeal, and my eyes flicked to his. I tried to bite down a happy smile. This was really sweet. My previous assessment that Dr. Cade was a melt-in-your-mouth, walking cinnamon roll had not been at all wrong.
He sat down on the side of the bed again, and this time he reached over and untucked my lip from my teeth. “You’re really freaking cute, you know that?”
I didn’t. But it took my breath away to hear it.
Lachlan gave my chin a little shake before releasing me. “Eat that, and then I’ll take one more round of vitals. If you pass, I’ll take your IV out.”
That sounded promising. Mostly because I knew he’d be touching me again, and I was starting to think that I was getting addicted to the dopamine release his touches gave me.
Suddenly, the doorbell rang.
Lachlan got a perplexed look on his face but stood with another stretch. He pointed to me before leaving. “Eat that. All of it.” Then he was gone.
I picked at the oatmeal, listening to Lachlan speak with what sounded like two different people at the door. Wait, were those flashing lights? A feeling like I’d missed a step and was about to tumble down a staircase dropped from my heart to my gut. I started to rise, but then realized I was still attached to the stupid IV bag.
There were definitely lights out there. Blue, red, blue, red, mixing in a violet haze that filled me with ice-cold dread.
With a shaking hand, I looked down at the IV tube in my arm. Pain was okay. Pain would ground me. I peeled away the tape, and then with one trembling yank, pulled out the tube. It was longer than I had expected, and felt like pulling a hair out of the back of my throat. I gagged, but rushed to the window wall with the bowl clutched to my stomach like it could anchor me to my rational thoughts.
Yes, those were police cars. From my vantage point, I had a clear view of the front door to the right. Lachlan stood talking with the police officers. They looked angry. He had his arms folded. Their voices drifted through the cavernous house in a jumbled murmur, but I caught a word.
“Mr. Forsmythe.”
The bowl of oatmeal crashed to the ground.
Seven
Lachlan
Irarely, if ever, got visitors outside my brother and his family. I knew they were busy getting ready for spring break and their trip to San Diego, so we’d already agreed we could meet up for dinner when they got back. The only reason they would come to my house tonight is if something dire had happened.
It would be in line with the wacky day, but I seriously hoped it was a lost Jehovah’s Witness or something.
Blue and red lights flashed outside the stained glass of my front door. My dread intensified. Fearing the worst, I opened the door to find two local cops standing on the wood and iron front steps. I recognized one of them from the—several—speeding tickets I had racked up after getting my new SUV. Whatever it was, we weren’t starting off on a great foot.
The officer I hadn’t run into before, tall and soft-bodied with a large nose, glanced down at a paper in his hands. “Good evening. Is this 233 Pineview Way? Home of Lachlan Cade?”
I held out a hand, “Dr. Cade,” I smiled.
That had the desired effect on the tall officer. Recognition lightened his features. “Oh, Dr. Cade. That’s right.”
The other officer, shorter, older, and ten times crankier, glowered at me beneath a pair of dark gray eyebrows. He was like an angrier, wrinklier Mario. “Is Miss Laurel Brook in your home, sir?”
