A Million Guilty Pleasures (Million Dollar Duet 2)

Scarlet Lotus was as good as mine.

2: Two-for-One Special

Lanie

Why were hospital rooms always so cold? It was like death’s cruel hand had reached in and stolen all the warmth out of the place. No matter how warm and inviting the hospital attempted to make the room that was likely going to be the last your loved one would ever see, the realization that someone you cared about was in their last days, hours, or even minutes made the décor irrelevant. And then there was the smell: chemicals mixed with bodily fluids, sickness, and death. It made it too real, and I wanted to run away as fast as I could, find Noah, and just not deal with the very real possibility that I was going to lose my mother. But I couldn’t. For one, I would never forgive myself if these were in fact her final hours and I wasn’t there, and second, Noah had rejected me. Besides, it would be like running away from one problem only to have to face another that might have been every bit as hopeless. I was where I needed to be.

As much a part of my family as I was, Dez was right by my side, as was Polly. Thank goodness she had thought to bring me something warmer than the little red slut attire I’d had on before. My father would have probably keeled over with a heart attack and ended up in a hospital bed next to my mother if he’d seen me in that getup. So there I stood, looking out the window, dressed in a little black sweater dress and black boots. Nothing elaborate, nothing sexy. In fact, it was sort of depressing, but it matched the way I felt on the inside. My heart, vacant and hollow, was still mourning the loss of Noah, but my soul was worried that the bleak blackness covering my body was actually an omen of something even more morbid to come, like the loss of my mother. As devastating as it was to lose the only man I would probably ever love, losing my mother would make it incredibly hard to find the will to live.

The cold spot I felt in the cavern of my chest amplified tenfold with that thought, like the cold of the room had somehow seeped its way into my heart. My mother was my best friend. Always had been. Not the same kind of friend as Dez, or even the same kind of friend Polly had become. My mother was something more. She knew me better than anyone else because I was a living extension of her. That woman could tell what I was thinking or feeling without me having to say a word. And with more experience under her belt, she knew what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it, and made me listen even if I didn’t want to. Most children hated to admit it, but my mom was right nearly a hundred percent of the time. So to never see her warm smile again, never hear her infectious laughter, never feel the warm comfort of her embrace, never smell her white musk scent … I couldn’t even fathom the thought.

“Lanie? You want some coffee?” my father asked, pulling me away from my thoughts.

I turned and gave him a halfhearted smile. That was Mack’s way. His wife was dying and he couldn’t do anything to stop the inevitable, so he found something or someone else to take care of instead. I accepted his offering, noting the thinness of his face. His eyes had dark rings under them, and judging from the almost full beard he was sporting, he obviously hadn’t shaved in quite some time. I knew lecturing him about taking better care of himself wouldn’t do any good, so I let it go.

Looking down at her sleeping form, I clutched the paper cup to my chest in hopes that it might warm the chill in my heart. Realistically, the only thing that would make me feel better would be my mother’s full recovery, although the cocoon of Noah’s arms around me while his reassuring voice promised everything was going to be okay probably would have helped. I missed him, and I desperately wished he was here with me, but fate had apparently had other plans for us. Funny how things had worked out. Noah had released me from our contract just in time for me to watch my mother die and be able to stay home and take care of my dad for what would surely be a miserable existence without his wife at his side. I wondered if the life of sin I had partaken in with Noah had actually caused karma to swing back around to give me a swift kick in the ass.

“Mr. Talbot?” a familiar voice called from the doorway. I looked up to see a tall brown-haired doctor retrieve a pen from the pocket of his white lab coat and begin to scribble on the clipboard he’d had tucked under his arm. “Hello, I’m Dr. Daniel Crawford, and I’ll be conducting the surgery and taking over as the attending physician for your wife. If it’s okay with you, that is?”

Daniel Crawford. Noah’s hunky uncle. My heart might have sighed a bit at the sight of him. From relief, not longing. There was only one Crawford man I longed for, and he wasn’t present. Another fact that made my heart sigh for a second time.

Daniel looked at my father and then glanced at me with a warm, knowing smile before looking back to Mack again.

Under normal circumstances, my mother would have been the one to make the decision about her health care, but she had been heavily sedated since her arrival. Her regular doctor had assured us that the sedation made her more comfortable and decreased the likelihood that she would get too excited, thereby overexerting her already weakened heart. So that left Mack to make all of her medical decisions. I think the doctors and nurses on staff were relieved that it wasn’t me. I might have been a bit in their face when we first arrived, demanding results, demanding they get off their asses and do their job, demanding they save my mother’s life. Dez and Polly had done their best to get me to calm down, but ultimately, it was the threat by the rent-a-cop security staff that they would remove me from the premises that finally got me to back off.

“Taking over? What about Dr. Johnson?” my father asked Daniel.

“Dr. Johnson is incompetent,” I said. Seeing the disapproving scowl from my father, I added, “What? He is.”

I heard a faint chuckle from Daniel as he checked my mother’s vitals.

“See? Dr. Crawford agrees.”

Mack rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at my mother. “I don’t know about changing her doctor at this stage in the game.”

“This isn’t a game, Dad,” I said out loud, which was totally unfair of me. I knew he didn’t think of it that way, but I was frustrated, not that it excused my inappropriate comment. My father didn’t hold it against me, though, because he was feeling the same way.

“I assure you, I am very qualified,” Daniel broke in, slipping his pen back into his breast pocket. “I run the cardiac department here and have performed numerous heart transplants—”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted his list of accomplishments, all of them very great, I was sure. He was a Crawford and greatness probably ran in their bloodline, but there was one teeny-tiny detail—which was actually mega-important—from his earlier introduction that had just hit me. “What surgery?”