Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
The cell phone vibrated on the counter as Natalie waited not so patiently for the leftovers in the microwave that would be her and Liam’s dinner to finish heating.
Glancing down, she read Harper’s text.
Harper
Old Lady Trout is FINALLY awake!!
“Wow. That took a long time.” Natalie turned to Liam, seated at the table. “Margaret Trout just woke up.”
She delivered that news after editing out the colorful nickname, which is exactly what Harper should be doing since the people she had the most creative names for were the ones who were dying… or in this case almost dead.
Liam lifted his dark head and shifted his focus away from the article he’d been reading on his tablet and instead up to Natalie where she stood manning her post next to the microwave. “Really?”
“Yeah. Finally. Is it weird she took so long to wake up after her heart stopped?” Natalie asked him. “I mean, I woke up pretty much right away.”
Liam leveled a glare on her. “You were very lucky. But as far as Margaret, the doctors probably put her in a medically induced coma. Standard protocol would call for about twenty-four hours to give the brain a chance to heal from the oxygen deprivation.”
She smiled. “You’re so sexy when you go into lecture mode.”
He rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t lecturing. You asked me a question.”
“And you answered it. It’s handy having my own hot doc on call. Saves me a lot of time googling stuff like this,” she teased, knowing he absolutely hated when she turned to the internet to search for medical information. Especially for the occasional, okay more like frequent, self-diagnosis.
He shook his head and let out a less than patient sounding breath. “Anyway… now that Margaret is awake we should go see her.”
Natalie’s brows shot high. “You. Want to visit Margaret Trout. In the hospital.”
“With you, of course. I mean, it seems like the right thing to do. She is one of your customers.”
“Except she’s really not,” Natalie countered.
Margaret would come in occasionally, grumble about books being too expensive when they were free at the library, check out the sale wine table, then she’d leave. Usually without buying a single thing.
But there was obviously more going on here with Liam than his concern over Natalie’s customer relations. In fact, she had a pretty strong suspicion about what Liam’s real motivation was.
“You just want to ask her if she can see ghosts now,” she accused.
He had the decency to look embarrassed at being called out. “Well, don’t you?”
Good question.
For so long she’d bemoaned being able to see the ghosts and how it had changed her life in so many ways. But it had been her gift slash curse slash ability and hers alone.
Sharing it, with Old Lady Trout of all people… that was a lot to swallow.
“I guess,” she finally answered. “But we’ll find that out eventually. No?”
“No,” he countered. “Not if she keeps it a secret like you did. For years I was the only one who knew about you. We need to ask her. Straight out.”
Natalie thought need was a pretty strong, and wrong, word for Liam to use in this case. She shook her head. “So we just bust in there to question her? In the hospital. Where she’s just woken up. That seems kind of rude. It’s not like we’re friends.”
“You could also ask her what she saw right before her heart stopped. Clear Harper of causing Margaret emotional distress before they use it as evidence as a pattern of behavior in Doug’s widow’s lawsuit.” Liam lifted a brow as he dangled that tease of an idea in front of her.
And damn him. It worked.
With an annoyed burst of a sigh, Natalie agreed, “Fine. I’ll find out when she can have visitors.”
As the microwave dinged, just before she turned away to get the food, she didn’t miss Liam’s smile of victory.
Infuriating man. He was just lucky he was so sexy.