Chapter 7 #2
“Oh, I’m coming back,” he assured her. “Count on it.”
Lace stopped again just as they were about to enter the pediatric unit.
“Can I ask why?”
Clearly, that had been on her mind.
Vincent let out a gust of air. “Like I said before, I’m…not sure. If we’re not mincing words here, I’ll say there’s something about you that draws me in.”
He could swear that a tinge of color suffused her pale cheeks.
Vince continued. “If I’d met you in a bar, I would have asked you out. If I’d met you at the docks, in full storm gear, I would have offered my help with whatever task you were performing. If my mother had introduced us… No. Scratch that. If she’d introduced us, she’d have us married by now.”
Lace sucked in a shocked breath, and Vincent liked it as he went on.
“Since this is where I ran into you, however? The best I can do is be supportive.”
“That’s all good to hear,” she choked out.
Lace straightened her spine. It was clearly her turn to be bold. “Vincent, are we talking supportive here, or…interested?”
There she was again, taking the direct approach, which suited Vince just fine.
“Interested,” he admitted on a relieved exhale. “Definitely interested.”
She smiled then, the first uninhibited, toothy one she’d given him, and his pulse stuttered. Her entire face was transformed.
Lace had been ethereal and slightly mythical-looking before, which had been uniquely attractive. But now? The woman was stunning.
She shook her head as if she couldn’t quite believe he was for real. “I hope you know what you’re getting into,” she warned.
“Nope. I haven’t got a clue,” he informed her adroitly with a huge-ass grin on his face. “But hell if I’m not looking forward to it.”
She laughed. A really husky chuckle. “I see. So, you’re a leap before you look type,” she posited, moving again to head them toward the room that was their destination.
“Not exactly that. But in my previous job, I often had to make snap decisions that meant the difference between life or death, and I was never one to shy away.”
Now she blinked her big brown eyes at him. “That sounds…menacing. I know you were in the service like a lot of your brothers, but what the hell was your job?”
“I was a Navy SEAL,” he told her without hesitation.
When her mouth gaped open, he knew she was winding up to ask a slew more questions, but a voice from inside the infusion suite that Vincent instantly recognized, put a hold on that.
“Fluffo! You came back.”
Little Inez was sitting up tall with a smile that stretched from ear to ear.
“Of course I did, Inez,” he said as they walked in. He wanted to reach out and pat her cheek, but he didn’t know her that well.
Yet.
Instead, he opted to pull a colorful scarf “magically” out of his sleeve, which he flourished in her direction. She grabbed it up.
“I’ve also brought a friend,” he told her. “Her name is Lace.”
Inez wrapped the pretty silk material around her bald head and looked up at Lace, calculatedly.
“You have cancer, too,” she determined. “Do you have any hair?”
Out of the mouths of babes.
Vincent had been wondering how to bring that up, but Inez had taken the initiative first, and now it was out of his hands.
“Nope. No hair,” Lace said, and in a show of solidarity, she whipped off the scrubs cap that hid her pate.
She was back to looking like a mythical goddess.
“I had long, straight blonde hair all my life,” she continued, “but as soon as it started coming out in handfuls, I shaved it off.”
“Me, too,” Inez readily collaborated. “Except I didn’t do it. The people I live with did. They didn’t like all my hair in the tub, so they got rid of it.”
Inez didn’t look butt-hurt at all, but Vincent was instantly pissed. It sounded like there’d been no discussion about her shearing. No soft-soaping. Just…hack it off.
He had to swallow down his anger as Inez shot Lace a huge smile. “The nurses told me it will all grow back.”
“Mine, too,” Lace agreed. “What color was yours?” She sat down in the nearest chair and easily engaged.
Vincent stood and marveled.
His back had definitely gone up when Inez had mentioned the way she’d been shorn, but Lace had simply moved on.
“Dark. Like Snow White.” Inez told her with a grin, pointing to a dog-eared book of fairy tales that rested on the table beside her.
“Oh. You like fairy tales?” Lace’s face lit up.
Inez nodded excitedly. “They’re my favorite. Not the ones with the bad endings,” she amended, “but all the others.”
“I love those, too,” Lace agreed. “Are you able to read them by yourself?”
Inez’s little face dropped a bit. “I can’t do all the words, but I can sound out a lot of them. In a house I lived in before, one of my foster sisters would read to me, so I’ve got a lot of stuff memorized.”
“I can read to you,” Vincent offered.
“And I can, too,” Lace concurred.
“Really? That’d be awesome.” Inez bounced up and down in her excitement.
At that moment Lace shared a look with Vincent that said she was all in.
Vince hadn’t expected this turn of events, but he liked it a lot.
To give him time to get his roller-coaster of emotions under control, he removed a deck of cards from his pocket and began shuffling them
He cleared his throat. “So, Inez, do you know all your numbers?”
She giggled a little as she watched him shuffle. “Uh, huh. I know all the numbers and all the…thingies,” she told him proudly.
Vince took that to mean, suits.
She stuck up a hand and enumerated on her fingers. “There’s A through King in hearts, diamonds…” she hesitated, thinking hard before coming out with, “…clovers, and shovels.”
Vincent beamed. Close enough.
“That’s right. Which means I can do some magic tricks for you.”
Lace got up from the seat she’d taken. “And while he does that, I’m going to go have a chat with some of the nurses.”
Damn. Lace didn’t miss a beat.
She’d have Inez’s entire bio before they left the ward.