“I’m sure you will.” I said, shifting the basket under my arm. “If you’ve seen Pops, you must know Mr. Sewell too?”
The ladies on either side of Miss Lenny exchanged a look, and something about it had my hackles rising.
“Ah, yes, Beck,” the lady on the left said. “He is quite the, ah… character.”
“Explains some things, perhaps,” the one on the right muttered.
Miss Lenny looked moderately displeased as her gaze narrowed on her friends. “Be candid, girls. If you have something to say, speak plainly.”
Her friends exchanged a loaded look again before the one on the right spoke. “I know the girl takes good care of your animals during your trips, Lenora, but we’ve just observed that she is a bit… off. One of the girls I play bridge with joined her senior ballet class last month and said she never looks anything but angry.”
“Hardly ever smiles,” the crony on the left added.
I sure wasn’t smiling right now either, the placid expression I’d been wearing having evaporated during this nonsense.
“There is nothingoffabout Ireland Sewell.” It’d comeout with more bite than I’d meant, but oh well. I didn’t regret it.
“Oh, no, young man.” The biddy on the left gasped. “We didn’t mean anything by it, I assure you.”
People never did when they opened their mouths.
I met Miss Lenny’s gaze, and she gave me a soft, warm smile. “Good boy.”
They rushed through their goodbyes then, and I offered them a terse “Take care” that ended up sounding more like a threat than anything.
Once they were gone and I’d heaved the baskets inside and unpacked what needed to go in the fridge, I went straight to my bedroom and closed the door softly behind me.
Lordy,what a day.
18
IRELAND
Iwoke in utter, undiluted terror.
The ringing in my ears became dissonant as the birdsong outside the window drifted in, the tritone effect making the inside of my skull feel like an alarm was blaring.
But there was no alarm, and that was the biggest red flag—even bigger than not knowing exactly where I was.
My eyes didn’t fly open. There was no dramatic gasp as I sat up in bed and looked around, my face somehow still perfectly contoured and my hair in sexy, messy waves.
The large, comfortable bed cradled me like he wanted me to sink into the delusion that everything was fine.
But then a sudden, startled scream of pain butchered that delusion.
Dad.
I’d been woken from a dead sleep many times over the past year, and my body propelled me into action before my mind co-signed the movement. The feel of the smooth, cool floor beneath my feet barely registered as I followed the sound and yanked open the nearest door.
This was the dramatic awakening my bitch of a brain had yearned for.
I gasped, brain scrambling as I came to a halt in front of the open shower door.
At the dripping wet and extremely naked man standing there with his hand braced up high on the shower wall, intently rubbing his eyes with his other hand.
The showerhead of doom was shooting its laser of water at the opposite wall, drowning the room in steady white noise. Adair’s biceps bulged and the musclesall overhis body flexed as he stood half in and half out of the shower.
My mouth dropped open.
