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I had expected my jab to wound his masculinity, but he wasn’t at all phased by my snark. I sighed. “I’m serious. You can’t just… None of this is your problem, Lach.” The shortened version of his name had tripped out of my mouth before I could think too hard about it.
A smile wavered on his lips. “Shit, that was adorable.” I bit my lip. He adjusted our position so he sat beside me, but his foot braced on the floor in front of mine, like he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t get up again. “It is my problem now,” he said, “because that charming asshole—Jason, was it?—sent the cops to my house.”
The snarling beast of my dark shadows reached out a claw to grip my heart. I held my breath.Why?I thought.Why would he do that? “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”
“They said he reported his car as stolen and gave the police my address for a ‘welfare check’ on you.” The tension around his mouth told me everything I needed to know about how he felt about the situation.
My brain started to whir. “He said I stole his car?” Lachlan nodded once. I frowned. “But it’s my car.”
“Is it?” he challenged.
He knew something. He understood something I didn’t, and it was starting to make me feel stupid and furious. “Yes, it’s my car. I pay for it every month.”
“Whose name is on the lease?” he asked.
My confidence crashed against a realization like waves against a cliff. “Jason’s name is on the lease.”
“And who is it registered to?”
I brought a hand to cover my eyes. “Jason.”
“Laurel,” he said consternation. “Are you serious? You divorced him, but he owns your car?”
I let out a disgusted sound and let my head fall to my knees. Maybe if I folded myself in half, I could keep myself from falling apart completely. “Yes,” I said, my voice muffled.
He rubbed my back, his palm flat and smooth and gratifyingly slow. “Laurel, why do you let this person stick his fingers in your life like this? Does he have some kind of hold over you? You’re not over the relationship?”
“No,” I said quickly, sitting up. “No, I’m well over it. Him. It’s just… Our divorce was done without a lawyer. And when I did it, I trusted him still.”
He closed his eyes with exasperation. “How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad.”
Lachlan gave a little nod. “Okay. I want to know more about that, but we’ve got an oatmeal situation. I’ll take your vitals and then maybe we can get you a bath. Sound good?”
“Yeah,” I said weakly. I felt like the dumbest person alive. “Wait,” I said, suddenly, stopping him before he could stand. “What did you tell the police?”
“I told them the car isn’t here, so I didn’t see how you could have stolen it,” he said with a quirk of a smile. “And then I showed them my text to your mother and told them they could contact her to corroborate my story. Although, I suspect they already had because they knew exactly where you were and whom you were with.”
“Uh, wow,” I couldn’t help but let my gratitude show on my face.
“Adult,” he said with a pointed flare of his eyes before bending down to grab supplies off the table.
I narrowed my gaze. “You know what, you keep saying that, but if you hadany idea—”
He popped a tongue depressor in my mouth. “Shut up. I’m taking your vitals.”
I glowered.
He wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my right arm, and then with those strong hands of his—the ones I couldn’t stop looking at—he pumped the bulb until it constricted my blood flow painfully. Then, he settled his stethoscope into his ears and pressed the cold bell against the inside of my elbow.
I sucked in a breath and pulled the stick out of my mouth. “Why do you all do that so effing tight?”
“Shush,” he murmured. The pressure released, and he stared at the needle on the gauge of the pressure cuff.
My heart rate ticked up in pace as I watched him. He breathed deep and even, his eyes focused on the gauge as he listened. My lungs did a funny hitch, and I felt like I was going to start vibrating with pent up energy. I literally couldn’t think of anything in this whole world I’d rather look at than this man doing his job.
He loosened the valve so the cuff deflated rapidly, and the blood returned to my hand. He wrote something down on the table to his right, and then he clamped an oximeter on my finger that glowed with a blue light and immediately started blinking with readings.
