How to Keep a Secret

He released her instantly and she searched blindly for her purse. Where was it? Why wasn’t her brain working?

As she hunted for it, as she dragged on her shirt, her fingers were shaky and useless. She pulled on her jeans next, disoriented. She couldn’t see properly through the tangle of her hair and she swept it away from her face, wondering what had happened to the clip.

By the time she found her phone, it had stopped ringing but it started again immediately, shrill and urgent.

She pulled it out of her bag. “It’s my mother.”

If there was one thing guaranteed to kill sexual attraction it was a call from your mother.

She answered, relieved it wasn’t a video call. Her mother would have seen her flushed cheeks and that would have required an explanation she wasn’t able to give. “Is everything all right?”

It took only a brief conversation for her to realize everything was far from all right.

“How bad? How bad is it?”

She ended the conversation and hunted wildly for her shoes.

“Here—” Scott held them out to her. “What’s happened? Is it Mack?” His voice was sharp with anxiety and Lauren shook her head.

“Jenna had a car accident. She’s in the hospital.”

Her mind conjured up hideous images of Jenna being cut out of a car wreck. Her mother hadn’t been able to tell her how bad it was.

The phone slid from her fingers and bounced across the floor. Her sister. Her sister was injured.

She thought about the way Jenna had stayed glued to her side through all the adventures Lauren had dragged her on. Jenna, watching over her as she’d jumped off the Jaws bridge. Jenna tugging her away from the window of the Sail Loft. Flying to London after Ed died. “I have to go to her.”

Scott slipped the phone into her purse. “That was Greg?”

“My mother.” And only now did Lauren pause to wonder why it had been Nancy who had called her and not Greg. Presumably Greg was pacing the corridors while Jenna was in surgery. “I have to go.” She tried again to button her shirt, but her fingers fumbled and slipped. “Dammit—I lost a button.”

Scott helped her. “Tuck your shirt into your jeans and it won’t show.”

She tried to smooth her hair. “I look a mess.”

“You’ve been decorating. You look fine.”

She was pretty sure she looked like she’d been having crazy sex.

“I’d never wear my hair down for decorating.”

Jenna would take one look at her and know.

Except Jenna was in surgery.

Scott turned his attention to his own shirt, and reached for his jacket and his keys. “I’ll drive you. You’re upset, and one car accident in the family is enough for one night.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’m driving you.”

She was shaking. She knew she wasn’t safe to drive the car. The last few months had stripped away all her reserves of strength. She’d handled everything life had thrown at her up until this point, but she couldn’t handle losing her sister.

The room spun around her and she felt Scott’s hands on her shoulders.

“Breathe,” he said and she closed her eyes.

“If she—”