AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s not the same to me—” I start but Rory interrupts me.
“Jason is in the hospital with his brother. I’ll let him know you’re expecting his call, Miss O’Malley. In the meantime, I have to agree with Stone. We have a job to do right now, and you need to let us get to work.”
“I drove three hours to get here!” she protests.
“Leave us your number,” Rory says. “And we’ll get back to you as soon as we have something.”
She sighs and reaches in her purse for a business card. She hands it to Rory and spins on her heel. Before she stalks away, she pauses and turns to me. “I’m sorry about your friend,” she says. Her tone is completely different now, sincere.
Then she leaves.
Admittedly, her last comment relieves a lot of my anger. Also admittedly, my worry for Reggie and my frustration with Kellie don’t prevent me from looking at her ass as she walks away.
When she gets in her car and drives off, I turn back to Rory. He regards me with a look of surprised admiration. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that pissed off, Stone. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were a bear shifter like me.”
I would chuckle if I wasn’t so stressed. Instead, I shrug and say, “I’m just worried about Reggie, man. I’m not ready for some bean counter to start looking for reasons to make this his fault.”
“I get that,” he says. “Hey, I’m not any happier than you are. I’m just used to dealing with insurance people.”
“Yeah,” I say.
I fall silent a moment, then voice the thought that’s been bugging me ever since I learned of it. “Why the hell did Jason call the insurance company now?”
“It’s better to start that process right away,” Rory says. “The longer you wait, the harder it is to figure out what actually happened.”
“Yeah, but the insurance guys don’t actually figure out what happened. We figure out what happened. Why wouldn’t he wait for our report to submit the claim?”
“Stone, you know as well as I do that these investigations can take weeks, maybe months. By the time we know for sure what happened, the window to submit a claim could have passed already.”
“Yeah, but right this fucking second? While his brother’s on a goddamn ventilator with burns covering a third of his body?”
“He’s probably worried about him,” Rory says. “You know this place is Reggie’s life.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “At least the stables aren’t damaged.”
“Yeah,” Rory agrees. “That would probably have killed Reggie.” He looks at me and says, “Sorry, poor word choice.”
“No worries,” I say. “He’s alive. That’s what counts.”
“Yeah,” Rory agrees again. “Hey Stone, why don’t you take the rest of the night off? You’ve done enough for now. Go home and get some rest.”
“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I leave but not for home. I’m too wound up to rest. I would visit Reggie but visiting hours are over until the next morning, so instead, I head to a local bar. The bar is on the ground floor of the nicest hotel in town and is a favorite place for us shifters to gather when we want to whet our whistle and not have to worry about being on guard with our conversations.
I’m certainly not interested in keeping my guard up any longer. Unfortunately, I don’t get a chance to relax the way I want because who should be sitting at the bar but the queen of insurance herself.
The only open seat is right next to her, so instead of doing the smart thing and finding somewhere else to drink, I sidle up and sit at the bar.
She looks at me and rolls her eyes. “Of course,” she mutters.
“Yeah, you’re in my home, so maybe keep the brattiness to yourself,” I say.
“Glad to see you’re in a better mood,” she says.
“Yeah, same to you,” I retort.
