“Please.” The word carried weight, heavy with something that made me look up sharply. “Indulge me.”
I studied him, noting the tension rolling across his shoulders, the way his muscles coiled like he was preparing for a fight.
“Well, I woke up, had breakfast?—”
“What did you eat?”
“Pancakes. Extra syrup.”
His eyes rolled skyward, and for a moment, a ghost of a smile played at his lips. “Of course you did.”
The familiar banter tried to make me smile, but my pain kept it at bay.
“Then I had my morning tea and those supplements you gave me while making calls from the office. The office you created for me,” I added.
“Did you touch anything new? Cologne? A cleaner? New body soap?”
“No.”
His mouth fixed into a line. “Keep going.”
“And then I left to run to a florist. That’s when I started feeling sick.”
His expression darkened. “Did you touch anything at the flower shop?”
I thought back. “No.”
“Did you make any stops before the florist?”
“I … yes. I stopped at my place for business cards. It was literally five seconds. If breathing in mold got you sick after five seconds, then sleeping there for the last year and a half would’ve killed me.”
“Did you see him?” Blake’s voice dropped dangerously low.
“Who?”
“Your creeper.”
“My neighbor,” I corrected, though something cold slithered down my spine at his choice of words.
“Was he waiting for you again?”
I swallowed hard. “He was on his porch.”
Something shifted in Blake’s expression. Something that made me glad I wasn’t the focus of that barely contained fury. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I was distracted, angry about the florist situation. I grabbed my cards, and when I was closing the door …” I faltered, remembering. “He came up behind me, put his hand on my shoulder.”
“He touched you.” The words came out like ice cracking.
“Asked how I was feeling.”
Blake’s hand clenched into a fist. “When did the symptoms start?”
My breath caught as realization began to dawn. “Maybe … fifteen minutes later.”
He moved closer until his face was inches from mine, eyes fierce with protective intensity.
“These symptoms aren’t random,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “After all our tests, I think someone’s hurting you deliberately.”
