Scythe & Sparrow (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #3)(18)
“He might not have seen me,” Rose says, pulling me back to the present, “but how many women show up randomly in a small town with a busted-up leg? It won’t take him long to find me, if he wants to. I really do appreciate your offer to bring me here, but I probably shouldn’t have accepted. I really don’t want you to be in harm’s way. You’ve done so much for me already. We haven’t even talked about the break-in or the mess I made at your clinic.”
Rose’s expression is sheepish but there’s something mischievous about it too, as though she might enjoy leaving a little chaos in her wake.
“To be honest, I was relieved it wasn’t the raccoon again. Do you know how hard it is to get a codeine-addicted raccoon out of a ventilation system? Fucking hard.”
Rose’s expression brightens. “I kind of wouldn’t mind watching Dr. McSpicy rolling up his sleeves and getting into fisticuffs with a crazed trash panda.”
“Fisticuffs.” I snort. “Well, chances are you will. It happens more often than it should.” The light that seems to linger in Rose’s eyes starts to dim. When she glances toward the door, I lay my hand on hers despite the voice in my head that tells me not to. “Listen. Cranwell lives outside the next town over.” So what? It’s fifteen minutes away. And you’ve already told her this. “He hardly comes here.” It’s not like you keep tabs on him, dumbass. “Doesn’t have many friends.” No fucking idea how many friends he has. Could be friends with the whole fucking county for all I know. I take a deep breath that fills every crevice in my lungs. “Please just stay. I promise I’ll bring you to the clinic so you can watch me get my ass handed to me the next time the trash panda infiltrates the fortress. I’ll be worried about you with the corn children if you go back.”
Rose says nothing, just keeps her eyes locked on mine as she leans forward and wraps her lips around the straw. For a brief moment, fantasies about those plush lips flash through my mind, but they’re cut short when she takes her first sip of the smoothie, and her expression transforms to one of thinly veiled disgust.
“And I’ll maybe stay away from the green smoothies,” I say with a grin as she slides the glass in my direction. I could tease her for the abashed look she gives me, but instead I take the glass to the kitchen and return to offer her my hand. “Come on, I’ll show you your room.”
She looks at my palm as though trying to work out a mystery, and it takes her a long moment to slide her hand onto mine, watching it as she does, as though this small action is a revelation. When she stands, I help take her weight until she’s balanced and ready for her crutches, and then she follows me down the hallway.
“I figured this one would be better,” I say as we stop outside the second of two guest rooms and I push the door open. “The other one has an en suite but it’s narrow. This way, you can have the main bathroom to yourself and this tub is a little lower so will be easier for you to manage. I’ll be right across the hall if you need anything. Is that okay?”
Rose swings her way into the bedroom. Her gaze pans across the details, everything bland and in monochrome. Everything except the new floral bedspread in shades of coral pink and cornflower blue, two deep yellow pillows leaning against the wrought-iron headboard. Her gaze lingers on the bed. Maybe she sees the fold lines still pressed into the fabric from when I bought it just this morning. Maybe she realizes I bought it just for her, in the hopes she might agree to stay.
Rose turns her smile toward me. The warmth of it hits me like a dart to the chest.
“Yeah,” she finally says. “I think that’s okay.”
SHADOWS
Fionn
“What are you doing with this information, Dr. Kane?”
I rest an elbow on my desk at the clinic and rub my forehead. Lachlan is not a man to be fucked with. Especially not when you’re his youngest brother. “It’s not that big of a deal. Cranwell is a piece of shit and he’s been up to no good. I want to know how big of a piece of shit he really is.”
“Christ Jesus,” he groans on the other end of the line. “This isn’t about a woman, is it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I sigh.
“Maybe it should be,” he continues, his voice gruff yet teasing. “Get you out of your Hallmark Sad Man Cinderwhatever era.”
“Whether it has anything to do with a woman or not, you wouldn’t be happy either way, you broody asshat. Why bother meddling in the first place?” A dark smile of triumph tugs at my lips when Lachlan grunts on the other end of the line. “How’s your love life going, since you’re so invested in mine? Still fucking your way through Boston with abandon, or have you finally run out of women who will put up with your ornery attitude?”
“Shut up, ya feckin’ gobshite,” he hisses. “I have not been ‘fucking my way through Boston,’ I’ll have you know. Ever since that Halloween party where you spent the night drinking away your feckin’ sorrows only to throw them up again in my feckin’ sink the next morning, I’ve decided to remove myself from the dating scene in the hopes I don’t wind up as much of a dumbass as you.” He tsks, though I can tell he’s enjoying every minute of forcing me to relive my fall from grace that weekend. “Couldn’t even make it the extra two feet to hurl in the toilet like a normal adult man. You had to clog my feckin’ sink.”