Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Or so she had been told …
It didn’t matter.
That was the only damn thing that had changed.
“I don’t want you to make that report,” Delaney said, so that it would be clear where she stood, “because it’s my mother, and not because she’s a member of the Truth and Grace Tabernacle.”
Delaney didn’t have to like her mother to care about her. Amanda didn’t have to know Delaney still loved her, either, because the only way she could continue to feel that way about her mother was from afar.
At a safe distance.
“You’re better than me,” Madison admitted, “because I couldn’t say the same if it was mine.”
Yeah, well …
Delaney just shrugged.
It was what it was.
“I’ll get you into the room, and someone will be around shortly to draw your blood, okay?” Madison asked, standing from the chair. “Is there someone you wanted to call to wait with you, or did you just come in alone?”
Delaney followed behind Madison, exiting around the private triage corner, as the phone in her purse beeped. “I have someone outside, but I’m good to wait alone,” she replied as she dug into her bag to find the phone, expecting a missed call from Gracen as she’d silenced the ringer before coming inside.
Madison gestured to another nurse behind the desk. A willowy blonde with light pink scrubs and a bright, white smile who nodded back and pointed at a private room off to the side of the nurse’s station.
“Right there,” Madison told Delaney. “The doctor will probably stop by to confirm what I put on your intake, but it shouldn’t be long. We’re not very busy today, thankfully.”
She briefly looked at the room, and the number alongside it, muttering, “Sure, thanks.”
Delaney had a bigger problem.
The text on her phone from Lucas, actually.
You’re at the hospital?
That was all he asked.
How did he know?
Chapter 38
“Hey, what’s going on?” Lucas asked the second he picked up Delaney’s call. “Are you in the hospital?”
“I’m at the ER in town. It’s not serious,” Delaney replied.
Lucas wished that helped the painful tightening in his chest, except it still felt like someone had taken a hammer to his breastbone all the same. His soaring panic came out in the form of rushed words he rapid fired out of his mouth. “Well, what’s happening? We talked this morning and you seemed fine. Are—”
“Lucas, it’s okay,” Delaney said quietly.
At the same time a voice called out behind him, “Lucas, we’re being seated, if you’re ready.”
Under the alcove entrance of the downtown restaurant that served some of the best steak dishes in the city, Lucas turned to catch the eye of his lawyer up the steps nearer to the podium. He lifted a hand for Lawrence to see that he had, in fact, heard the man.
“Could you stall them for me?” he asked. “Five minutes, max.”
Lawrence agreed with a nod before turning back to the woman waiting behind the podium. Lucas put his attention back on his phone call.
“I’m sorry,” he told Delaney, knowing damn well he’d missed part of her explanation for being at the hospital as he made the request of Lawrence. “Tell me again why Malachi drove you to the hospital at seven at night?”
“Malachi called you.”
The clipped tone from Delaney had Lucas cringing at his reflection in the entry glass facing the quiet, slushy street outside.
“Hey,” Lucas said, offering the word like an olive branch meant to relax Delaney without saying as much. “Remember how I asked why you and Gracen go whispering in other rooms together, and you told me some things can’t be changed?”
Delaney cleared her throat on the other end of the line, and something like paper shuffled in the background of the call. “I guess,” she said blandly. “What about it? Ugh, I hate these paper sheets they put on these stupid hospital beds.”
His heart squeezed painfully.
“Seriously, why are you at the damn hospital?” he asked. “Did something happen? You weren’t messing around in their shop with the machines or something, ri—”
“Lucas, calm down,” Delaney interjected, her voice rising over his own inside his head. “I’m already sitting here trying to figure out whether I want to cry or scream. Listening to you panic on a phone call isn’t really helping that much.”
Cry or scream—what?
“And now I’m going to have to tell my friend to put her husband in his damn place,” Delaney added after a moment.
Lucas barked out a low laugh. “No, that’s what I meant about the Gracen thing. Us guys have our lines, too. Mine is you. His is her. If something happened or was wrong with that woman and I knew about it, you bet your ass I would send him a text to say as much. You don’t want to apologize or explain your whispering in different rooms—well, same.”
Silence answered his unapologetic declaration.
Lucas tacked on for politeness, so he didn’t sound like a total asshole, “Basically, anyway.”