Текст книги "Rule of Three"

Автор книги: Kelly Jamieson

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Chapter Ten

Kassidy was just coming out of a meeting Friday afternoon, laughing at a joke her boss had made, when Chris appeared in the hall. It was unusual for him to be on her floor; they usually didn’t see each other during the day.

“Hi,” she said with a smile, walking toward him, her steps slowing at the expression on his face. “What’s wrong?” Her heart gave a jump in her chest. “Dag…?”

“No. It’s your mom.”

Kassidy frowned and Chris took hold of her upper arms.

“She had an accident. A car accident.”

“Oh my god. Is she okay?” Her legs started to shake.

“She’s in the hospital. I’m going to take you there.”

“But…I have a meeting…”

“Come on. We’ll tell Paul.” Kassidy’s boss, Paul, had just disappeared into his office.

“Chris…she’s alive, isn’t she?” Fear held her in a tight grip, made it hard to breathe.

“Yes.” His grim mouth didn’t reassure her, though, and she stumbled along after him down the carpeted hall and into Paul’s office.

Chris told him what had happened.

“Go,” Paul said immediately. “Call me later.”

Kassidy nodded, unable to put thoughts together. “Tell Julie…the project folder’s on my desk…my purse…” She turned to Chris and he took her hand, his warm and strong.

“We’ll get it. Come on.” He led her next to her own cubicle, found her purse and the suit jacket she’d draped over the back of her chair.

“What hospital is she at? What happened?”

“I don’t know much,” he replied as they rode down the elevator to the underground parking garage. “Your dad called me. He sounded…upset.”

“Oh god. He’s not good at stuff like this.” Kassidy pressed a hand to her stomach. Please, please, her mom had to be okay. She wiped her mouth and stared into space. The elevator stopped on the eleventh floor, then the ninth floor, the fifth, the fourth… God! Didn’t these people know they were in a hurry!

Her skin crawled with impatience and nerves tightened her stomach. She licked her lips and glanced at Chris.

“It’ll be okay,” he said, rubbing his hand up and down her back.

She nodded tightly. Finally they were in the garage and she wanted to run to their car, her high heels clicking and echoing in the concrete structure.

Traffic got in their way, even though it wasn’t rush hour yet. “Dammit, move!” Kassidy shouted futilely at a car driving slowly in front of them. Chris reached out and took her hand again.

“Sssh. It’s okay, Kass. We’re just a few minutes away.”

She squeezed his fingers, closed her eyes and tried to focus on breathing. What if her mom died? She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t die. But she could be paralyzed or brain damaged or…

“I’ll let you out here,” Chris said, pulling up in front of the emergency entrance. “I’ll find somewhere to park and come right in.”

“O-okay.” She wanted him with her, but she stepped out of the car and hurried into the building. The unmistakable odor of hospital antiseptic stung her nostrils and turned her stomach as she ran up to the desk.

“I’m looking for Hope Langdon.”

The woman clicked through some screens on a computer. “Are you family?” She looked at Kassidy over her black-framed glasses.

“Yes,” she said in a rush. “She’s my mother.”

The woman glanced over her shoulder. “Tess, can you take this woman back to exam room three? It’s the daughter.”

The daughter. The daughter. Kassidy followed the nurse. There were two daughters. Where was Hailey? Her dad probably hadn’t even called her. But what if Mom…

Stop. It was going to be okay.

The nurse held the door open and Kassidy walked in, her heart fluttering, afraid of what she was going to see. Her dad stood there beside the hospital bed while a nurse checked some monitors or something.

“Dad. I’m here.” She rushed over to her father.

“Kassidy.” He turned to her, his face pale and anxious.

“Is she okay? What happened, Dad?”

“I’m okay.” Her mother spoke, her words a whisper, and relief poured through Kassidy, weakening her knees. She leaned on the bed, trying to stay upright.

“Mom. Oh, thank god.”

Her mom looked worse than her dad, her face so pale the blue veins in her temples looked like bruises. And she did have bruises…and cuts, a gash across her nose, scrapes on her cheekbones, and Kassidy could see an angry red mark on her left collarbone. She reached for her Mom’s hand lying on the bed.

“She’s got a broken pelvis,” Dad said. “They did an x-ray and they’re still going to do a CT scan. She might have internal injuries. And she might need surgery. Depending on what type of fracture.” His mouth trembled. Kassidy hated seeing her dad, always big and strong and dependable, so shaken like this.

The nurse spoke up. “If it’s a type A, she won’t need surgery,” she said. “She’ll just need bed rest. Type B or C are more serious.”

Kassidy nodded and swallowed through a dry throat. “Okay. When will she have the CT scan?”

“Should only be a few minutes and we’ll take her in.”

“Okay.” Kassidy looked back at her mom and smiled. “Does it hurt, Mom?”

“Like hell,” her mom said with an attempt at a smile. “They’ve given me some drugs, though.”

“That’s good.” She squeezed her hand then looked up as Chris came charging in, eyes flashing. He seemed to take up a lot of space in the exam room, his presence solid and reassuring. Kassidy held out her other hand to him. He strode over, laying one hand on Dad’s shoulder and taking Kassidy’s with his other.

“Dave,” Chris said. “How’s Hope?”

Kassidy’s parents loved Chris and he liked them too, which made life much easier than for friends Kassidy knew who hated their in-laws.

“She’s okay, we think,” Dad said, straightening his shoulders in the presence of another man. He repeated what Kassidy had just learned.

“Well, apart from a few bruises and scrapes, you look as gorgeous as ever,” Chris told Hope, earning another wisp of a smile from Mom.

Kassidy went warm inside and squeezed Chris’s fingers. Thank god he was there. Now she felt like everything really might be okay.

The CT scan confirmed no internal injuries, and as the fracture was a type A, there wasn’t much they could do about it, so they sent Mom home with crutches, instructions to rest and a couple of different medications including blood thinners to prevent clots from forming in her legs, which was somewhat alarming.

“We’ll follow you home,” Kassidy told her parents, shooting a look at Chris, who nodded.

At her parents’ home, Kassidy buzzed around, making Mom comfortable. Thankfully they had a den on the main floor with a sofa bed in it where Mom could sleep because stairs were out of the question. Also luckily they had a main-floor bathroom.

She made up the bed, with a quick heated memory flash of doing that with her own sofa bed with Dag just a week ago, got her mom settled in the sofa bed, brought water, magazines, the remote control for the television.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I’ll make some dinner.”

“No.” Mom sank into the pillows, eyes closed, still white as the sheets she rested on. “I’m not hungry.”

“Okay.” Kassidy bit her lip. “You rest. Sleep if you need to. I’ll go see if Dad wants something to eat.”

She hurried out into the living room with one last look at her mom. Pain had tightened her face, despite the narcotics she’d had. Kassidy hurt just to see her like that.

Chris was checking messages or emails on his BlackBerry. “Gotta call Dag,” he said. “We were going to meet for dinner.”

“Oh. Damn. That’s right.”

“Go,” Dad said. “You don’t have to hang around here all evening. I can look after your mother.”

Yeah, but who was going to look after him? “Are you hungry, Dad?” Her father had never really been much of a cook. Give him a steak to grill and he’d be happy, but he wouldn’t have a clue how to prepare the steak or anything to go with it besides a beer.

“Well…”

Kassidy smiled. “I’ll make some dinner.”

“But you have plans,” he said. “Don’t—”

“It’s okay, Dad.” She patted his shoulder before going into the kitchen. “It’s no big deal. We see Dag all the time.”

“Isn’t that your friend from San Francisco?” Dad asked Chris as she moved away. She heard them talking as she opened the door of the refrigerator. What could she make?

She studied the contents. Well, it didn’t have to be gourmet. She found some ham and eggs. Surely Mom had an onion. She slid open the crisper drawer. Yup. Denver sandwiches. Perfect.

She kicked off her high-heeled pumps and busied herself chopping onions, whisking eggs, toasting bread, keeping her hands busy so the adrenaline rush of energy had somewhere to go. Otherwise she might have just collapsed into a heap of overwrought emotions on the kitchen floor.

Her mother’s kitchen was as familiar to her as her own—no, probably more familiar, given she’d only moved into the condo two weeks ago. She easily found utensils, a skillet, plates to serve the sandwiches on. As she was assembling bread and omelets, Chris appeared.

“You okay, sweetheart?” He curved his hand around the nape of her neck and kissed her.

“I think so.” Then tears puddled in her eyes and she set down the knife and turned into Chris’s arms. “I was so scared.”

He wrapped her up in his arms and she let the tears soak the shoulder of his dress shirt. He was still dressed in work clothes, as was she. “Did you talk to Dag?” she asked with a sniffle.

“Yeah. I told him what happened. He asked if there’s anything he can do, and said to give you a hug from him.”

“Aw. Thanks. I feel bad deserting him.”

“I told him to hang out at our place if he wants and we’ll be home later.”

She lifted her head and peered up at him. “Chris…this is weird. Isn’t it?”

“What? You mean Dag and…us?”

“Yes.”

Chris pressed his lips together and lifted his hands to frame her face. “Some might think so. Does it feel wrong to you?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Me either.” He pressed her face to his chest again. “I don’t know why. I don’t really want to analyze it. Let’s just enjoy it. While he’s here.”

“He’s not going to stay. Is he?”

“I don’t know.”

She wanted to talk about it, but clearly Chris didn’t, and anyway, this was not the time. Stepping out of his arms, she turned back to the counter, and in a moment had sandwiches on plates, which they carried into the living room. They ate, sitting on the couch, her dad looking a little more like himself.

“I just checked on your mom,” he said. “She’s sleeping.”

“That’s good.” She took a bite of her sandwich, chewed and swallowed, not really tasting it. “It’s good that it’s the weekend and you’ll be here to help her.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “This is a good sandwich, Kassie.”

She smiled at his old nickname for her. “Thanks.”

“I don’t know what I’ll do Monday.” He frowned. “I have an out-of-town trip next week.”

“Can you cancel it?”

Her dad was corporate counsel for Palladium Bank.

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, then, I’ll come stay with Mom.”

“You need to work.”

“We have family sick days we can use. I’ve never used any.” Except they had this big new project they were working on, and already she felt guilty at running out today and leaving everyone in the lurch. If she had to take a few days off, that would screw things up for the whole team.

“That would be great, honey.”

She smiled reassuringly at her dad. Of course she’d be there to help them. “And I’ll call Hailey. Maybe she can take a turn.”

As if. She’d have to tell Hailey what had happened. Hailey wasn’t exactly the nurturing type, but maybe she’d come through in a pinch. Maybe she’d look after Mom during the day, since her bartending job was at night, and Kassidy could come in the evenings. That would be fair.

“I’ll text her,” she said. “She needs to know what happened.” She didn’t question her dad about why he hadn’t called Hailey, but instead had called Chris. She quickly thumbed in a message then tossed her phone back in her purse.

She did the dishes, tidied up the kitchen and spent a few minutes with her mom, a bit groggy from all the meds. “Sure you’re okay, Dad?” she asked before she and Chris left. “Call if you need anything, okay?”

“We’ll be fine,” he said. He hugged her and she breathed in his familiar aftershave, the same kind she and Hailey used to buy him for Father’s Day years ago.

“I’ll come by tomorrow,” she promised.

He shook his head, smiling. “You don’t need to, but I know I can’t stop you.”

She smiled too. “Nope.”

Chapter Eleven

“Some idiot apparently went through a red light.”

Dag sat on the brown leather couch in Kassidy and Chris’s living room. They’d just gotten back from Kassidy’s parents’ home after getting her mom home from the hospital.

“She’s okay, though?” Dag asked. Kassidy flopped down into a chair across from him, dressed in a narrow white skirt and silky pink-and-mauve-flowered blouse.

“She’s in a lot of pain,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “But it could be worse.” With sigh, she pulled her telephone out of her purse, flipped it open to check it, snapped it shut. “I thought Hailey might have texted back. I guess she’s working.”

“She doesn’t know?”

Kassidy shook her head. “My dad just called Chris, and he came and got me.” She gave him a tight little smile. “Hailey and my parents don’t get along that well, so I guess she wasn’t the first person he thought of.”

Huh. He knew Kassidy and Hailey were different, but this was pretty serious. Ah well. Families. He knew only too well how screwed up they could be.

“You look exhausted,” Dag said, studying her.

“Thanks.” Her wry smile tugged at something inside him.

Chris appeared in the living room, having headed straight to the bedroom to change out of his suit and tie. Now he wore a pair of loose knee-length gym shorts and a baggy T-shirt.

“Hey, sweetie,” he said. “How’re you doing?” He sat on the padded arm of the chair she sat in and stroked a hand over her hair.

“I’m okay.” She sent him a tired smile then pushed herself up out of the chair. “I should go change too.” As she walked out, she asked over her shoulder, “Did you eat, Dag?”

“Yeah. I picked up a sandwich.”

Chris took Kassidy’s place in the chair. “Holy shit. That was scary.”

“Yeah. Sorry, man. I don’t know Kassidy’s mom, but that’s really shitty.”

“She’s a nice lady,” Chris said. “Seeing her like that…” He shook his head. “I need a beer. You?”

“Sure.”

They sat and drank beer together, Chris filling him on more details of the accident until Kassidy returned dressed in a pair of sweatpants rolled up to her knees and a gray T-shirt. Her breasts jiggled softly without a bra beneath the thin cotton, momentarily distracting Dag from the fatigue evident on her face.

Dag found himself strangely disturbed by seeing her so distracted and upset. He wanted to do something about that, something to help, but he felt…helpless.

She was Chris’s girlfriend, so he hesitated to butt in. But they were friends too. She stood there, staring into space, rubbing the back of her neck.

“C’mere,” he said softly, holding a hand out to her. She looked at him and blinked but moved toward him. He took her hand and pulled her down, then pressed her shoulders so she sat on the floor at his feet. He started massaging her shoulders, the muscles tight over her fine bones.

“Oh,” she said on a whoosh of breath. “That feels good.”

“I’m told I’m pretty good at this,” Dag said, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth as he worked at her shoulders.

Her head nodded forward and he pressed with fingers and thumbs, finding all the taut bands and knots, eliciting soft moans of pleasure from her. Warmth spread through his chest.

He glanced up at Chris, who watched, and their eyes met. Chris gave a crooked smile, eyes warm, and Dag returned it and continued massaging, working his way down between her shoulder blades then back up. She was so little.

When his hands started to tire, he slid them through her hair, dragging it back into a low tail, letting it slide out and then gathering it again, over and over.

“So nice,” she slurred. Much more relaxed now.

“Good,” he said. He bent his head and kissed her shoulder just where the loose neckline of her T-shirt bared it. He didn’t intend for it to be any more than that—a shoulder rub and a quick friendly kiss—but she tipped her head back between his knees to look at him with gratitude shining in her eyes, and her mouth was so close he couldn’t resist the invitation, and he leaned over a little farther and kissed her mouth.

She responded, opening to him, kissing him back, a soft lingering kiss that had his cock stirring in his jeans. Damn. Here they went again.

They didn’t make it to the bedroom, hell, they didn’t even bother trying. Chris sat down on the floor beside Kassidy and started removing her clothes, kissing her. Dag helped get the T-shirt over her head and then tossed a fleecy throw blanket to the floor. The two of them laid Kassidy out on it, stripped out of their own clothes then worshiped her pretty body on their hands and knees, sucking her tight little nipples, licking her between her legs, taking turns moving up and down her body until she came in hard, panting shudders.

Then, with the two men standing on either side of her, Kassidy rose to her knees, holding a cock in each hand, sucking first one, then the other. Her tugging fingers pulled them closer, closer to her eager mouth, closer to each other, so close their cocks almost touched. Dag watched with heated, heavy eyes as his cock and Chris’s met at Kassidy’s mouth. Heat boiled in his balls, his body tightened with anticipation, every nerve ending tingling.

She looked up at them, her mouth wet, eyes wide. “I want to suck you both,” she whispered, and Dag felt her breath on the sensitive head of his cock. “At the same time.”

Jesus. He wanted to shout, yes! But he swallowed the words through a tight throat, glanced at Chris. Chris’s jaw was locked, a pulse ticcing there, his eyes narrowed, one hand resting on Kassidy’s head. When Dag’s eyes met Chris’s, the torment there almost knocked him back. Did Chris want that? Did he not want that? Confusion swirled inside Dag as he waited for Chris’s response, his cock and balls aching.

“Please,” Kassidy whispered, focusing her attention on Chris. “I want to so bad.”

Chris’s eyes fell closed and he gave a jerky nod. “You can try, baby. You won’t be able to get both of us in very far.”

Heat flooded Dag’s body, weakening his knees, and he took one step closer, planted his feet firmly on the floor as his dick slid along the length of Chris’s.

Fuck! His eyes were heavy, but he wanted to watch, wanted to see as Kassidy pumped them together and opened even wider. She could barely take them both in, just the heads, her tongue scalding hot as she licked over his flesh, Chris’s cock just as hot and hard against him.

Unable to stop himself, he reached out a hand, for support, for balance, for…pleasure…and rested it on Chris’s chest. They both held Kassidy’s head with one hand. Chris’s other hand hung at his side, fingers clenched. Dag didn’t look at Chris, couldn’t look at him, stared at Chris’s hand. Until finally Chris lifted it and slowly, slowly touched Dag’s chest.

Fire streaked through Dag’s body, his cock jerked against Kassidy’s mouth. Chris slid his hand higher, flattened his palm, his heat scorching Dag’s skin. Dag moved his hand too, up to Chris’s shoulder, to the back of his neck. Their faces were only about a foot apart, close enough to hear each other breathing in harsh, ragged breaths.

Slick, wet sounds filled the air as Kassidy licked and sucked and played with the thick shafts and murmured her enjoyment. Dag let out a long groan when she rubbed their cocks together. She looked up at them almost apprehensively, her long lashes like starbursts around her eyes. And, making another noise of helpless pleasure, Dag leaned his head against Chris’s and tightened his fingers around Chris’s nape as he exploded in long, hard spurts.

Chris was quiet, for one who usually talked during sex—Dag knew this—and then he came too, with a muffled groan, and Kassidy took their come into her mouth, on her mouth, on her face, splattered into her dark hair.

“Thank you,” she said long moments later as the three of them collapsed together on the couch. “For letting me…”

Dag didn’t say a word, and neither did Chris.

Kassidy finally heard back from Hailey Saturday afternoon, when she was on her way over to her parents’ house. “Are you going to come see Mom?” she asked into her cell phone, turning onto the street where her parents lived.

“I can’t today,” Hailey said. “She’s okay, isn’t she?”

“She’s got a fractured pelvis. She’s pretty much bedridden for a while.”

“Well, that’s good,” Hailey said, and Kassidy drew the phone away from her ear to stare at it in disbelief.

“That’s good?” she repeated, voice rising. “That is not good!”

“She’s alive,” Hailey said. “I had a late night last night, I’m beat, and I have to work tonight.”

“But…well, okay. But next week Dad has to go out of town.” Kassidy pulled into the wide driveway in front of the double-car garage. “I thought maybe you could check on Mom during the day when I’m at work, and I’ll come by in the evenings.”

“I can’t,” Hailey said. Kassidy gritted her teeth. “I’m really busy all next week.”

“Doing what?” Kassidy sat in her parked car, staring at the doors of the garage painted the same taupe color as the house.

“I’m just busy,” Hailey said, an edge in her voice.

Kassidy felt like flinging the phone against the garage. “Fine,” she said tightly, getting out of the car and slamming the door shut. “Whatever.” She snapped her phone shut and stalked into the house.

Inside the foyer, she took a deep breath before facing her mom and dad. Her hands trembled and she tried to control them as she dropped her phone into her purse then moved into the house.

“Hello!” she called. “It’s me, Kassidy.”

She walked into the den and found her dad sitting in a chair beside the bed, both of them watching television. Her mom looked a little better but still bashed up and pale.

“Kassidy,” Mom said with a faint smile. “Hi.”

“Hi, Mom.” Kassidy approached the bed with a smile and smoothed her mom’s hair back. “How are you doing?”

She visited with her mom for a while then threw in a load of laundry for her dad. He could do laundry, but he didn’t like to, and he needed clothes for his business trip. Kassidy took inventory in the kitchen for easy meals her dad could make, but didn’t find much, so she made a list and then went to the grocery store. She unloaded groceries, made two big pans of lasagna and slid them into the oven to bake. She’d take home one of them for Dag and Chris and her.

“You’re such a good girl,” her mom said later, her voice blurry from pain meds. “Thank you, Kassie.”

She was the good girl. Always the good girl. Except for the naughty threesome she had going on in her bedroom with two men. Her stomach clenched at the thought. What would her mom think if she knew about that? About how bad Kassidy was really being. Kassidy sucked her bottom lip in briefly.

What she was doing with Dag and Chris wasn’t hurting anyone. It wasn’t as if she were doing something deliberately bad to someone else—breaking a law or harming anyone.

Although a glimmer of concern did hover in the back of her mind about where this was all going and the fact that, hell yeah, someone could definitely get hurt by what they were doing. She just wasn’t sure who it was going to be.

She pasted on another smile for her mom. “Dad says you’ll be okay tomorrow, so I’ll come back Monday when he’s gone.”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“We have some family days we can use for things like this.”

The small knot in her stomach tightened at the thought of the project at work she needed to work on, but she had a plan—she’d stop by in the morning, make sure Mom had everything she needed, get to work, do a few things and gather up some work she could do at home, then come back and stay with her mom for the rest of the day. It would only be a few days and then Dad would be back, and Mom would be able to get up and around on her crutches a bit more, hopefully.

So that’s what she did, but Tuesday night she’d done all she could do on the project away from the office and she was stressing about how she was going to get her tasks done by deadline and still look after her mom.

“God, I wish I could help,” Chris said, shoving a hand through his hair. “But I’m swamped myself.”

“It’s those layoffs, isn’t it?”

The company was moving forward with outsourcing. Working in Human Resources she knew all about it, but she didn’t like it—cutting staff was never a good thing—and she knew Chris didn’t either, but didn’t have much choice.

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Fuck. I’m in meetings all day and I might even have to fly to Seattle this week.”

“Oh no.” She stared at him in dismay. “Not now.”

“I hope not. I’ll try to avoid it.”

“I’ll go check on your mom,” Dag spoke up, and both Kassidy and Chris turned to him in surprise. One corner of his mouth tilted up. “What? So she doesn’t know me. I feel like a useless piece of shit sitting here while you two run yourselves ragged.”

“I’m okay,” Kassidy said automatically. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to, I want to,” he replied evenly. “Come with me in the morning to introduce me and I’ll stay with her for a while and you can go to work.”

“Don’t you have meetings tomorrow?” Dag had been busy all week too, with seemingly back-to-back meetings and constant phone calls and emails on his BlackBerry. He’d worked most evenings, too, and Kassidy had come to realize that contrary to her impression about him having everything dropped into his lap with no effort, Dag was as much as a workaholic as Chris was. Maybe more. He seemed driven to turn this idea he had into reality.

“Not until four o’clock. You can come after work and that should cover things pretty well.”

“Yeah. She can be alone for a couple of hours.” She nibbled her bottom lip and regarded him. “Thank you, Dag.”

“Thanks, man.” Chris laid a hand on Dag’s shoulder. Dag looked up at Chris, and Kassidy saw a flash of something in Dag’s eyes, something…disturbing. Dag looked at Chris as if he wanted to eat him.

She swallowed and blinked, but the hunger was gone and Dag just smiled easily. “No sweat, man,” he said. “Anytime.”

So the next morning Kassidy led Dag into her parents’ home and introduced him to her mom. Predictably, her mom protested that she didn’t need someone with her all day and she certainly couldn’t impose on someone she didn’t even know.

“It’s no trouble, Mrs. Langdon,” Dag said, with his devilish charming smile, and Kassidy watched her mom soften at his irresistible appeal.

“Call me Hope,” she said. “I feel terrible about this. I’m sure you’re a busy young man…”

“I may have to take a few calls,” Dag said, smiling. “And I’ve got my computer to keep me busy with some work, but otherwise I’m yours for the rest of the day. I’m looking forward to knowing all about Kassidy’s childhood. I want to hear all the stories about what kind of bratty kid she was.”

Hope laughed. “Sorry, there aren’t any stories like that. Kassidy was a perfect angel.”

“There must be something.” His dimples deepened and Kassidy shook her head.

“Don’t tell him, Mom,” she said, smiling. “He’ll hold it against me.”

Her eyes and Dag’s met above the bed and heat sizzled for a few seconds.

“I wouldn’t hold that against you,” he said softly, and she knew exactly where his mind was and what he would hold against her. And her insides softened and warmed.

“I better go,” she said hastily, picking up her purse. “Thank you again, Dag, and just call my cell phone if you need anything.”

What would her mother tell him? God. Once again, she didn’t want Dag to think she was a boring goody-two-shoes, although at this point he had to have a fairly good idea that she was definitely no angel.