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After she shut the door, I quietly got out of bed and crept to my dresser, where she’d placed the flowers. It was a magnificent bouquet of my favorite mixed blooms, including wildflowers and lots of mint, sage, and lavender. The flowers didn’t really last that long growing from the soil, so I didn’t feel so bad about them being cut.
I wondered if Flynn Safadi had questioned my family about my preferences. Then I remembered he had been badly injured in the crash. How was he sending me flowers already?
I hadn’t had my laptop open in almost twenty-four hours. Grabbing it off my dresser, I got back into bed with it to Google Flynn Safadi. The headlines were all over the place.
Celebrity Doc’s Life Saved by Car Wash Attendant. That one made me bark out a laugh.
Son of Famous Michigan Family in Near-Fatal Accident
Son of Mr. Christmas Escapes Death
The photos the different news organizations had dug up from their archives fascinated me, from Flynn Safadi’s privileged childhood summers spent at the family lake house in Traverse City, to the trips abroad to purchase Christmas ornaments for import.
He had detoured from the family business when a career in medicine whispered his name. Graduating at the top of his class had opened doors for him, and he had chosen reconstructive facial surgery.
Settling back against the headboard, I wondered how he’d gotten the reputation of being a bad boy, and why he was referred to as a plastic surgeon; although that was a noble, helping profession, it implied he went around doing facelifts and breast augmentation for privileged women instead of helping the less fortunate.
There were photos of him in tuxedos with gorgeous women in beautiful evening gowns all over the country, or in swimming trunks, angling an enormous fish off the coast of Cuba, or parasailing in San Diego.
Another article highlighted his private collection of the works of up-and-coming artists. I remembered that Klimt notecard and reached for it to read again.Thank you from the bottom of my heart for saving my life.
The most recent article said that he had been knocked unconscious in an automobile accident that could have been devastating, but thanks to the quick actions of a car wash attendant, his life had been saved and he’d sustained minor injuries.
Relief washed over me. So he wasn’t badly injured.
The neighbor’s dog barked again, and I got up to look out the window. A TV satellite truck had pulled up across the street.
I ran out into the hall again. “Dale! Did you see what’s outside?”
She was coming down to my room with a tray. “Yes! I closed the curtains. Here’s your coffee, so get back into bed. Neither of us are leaving this house today.”
“All because of the actions of a lowly car wash attendant,” I said.
“I’ve got half a mind to go out there and set them straight.”
“Don’t do that. It’s fine. It’s the truth.”
“No, it’s not, Bella. You were the smartest student in our class.”
“Well, we don’t want the news community psychoanalyzing my failures, do we? It is what it is.”
“How long are you going to hole up here?”
“I guess until I get the okay from that doctor to go back to work.”
“I want to take an LOA so I can stay with you,” Dale said.
“You don’t need to do that,” I said. “It would be nice, but we have to be realistic about this. You have to go back to work.”
“Brian called and said I’m scheduled for the weekend, so I’ll go tomorrow, but the others will be here. Maybe we can arrange our shifts so you’re not alone.”
“It’s okay, Dale. I can’t hide forever. I’m actually conflicted because I want to go back to work. But I want it so I can hide in the kiosk.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s going to be possible until this whole thing dies down.”
“Thankfully, the guy lived. Can you imagine? Or what if his neck had been broken, and I moved him and paralyzed him?”
“He’s fine, though. Nothing like that happened.”
