“Great book.”
“But a sadly flawed movie.”
“Which one?” He slanted a look at her.
“Any of them.”
That did it. He was in geek love.
“I guess I need to call Mr. Quinn and let him know I’ll be late coming in tomorrow morning.” She looked at her watch, frowning. “It’s after ten.”
“Quinn never sleeps. I think he’s a vampire.”
Her startled laughter sounded like music.
Oh, God, he had to stop thinking like that.
“I can call him for you,” he offered. “We’re tight.”
“Oh, is that why he put you on administrative leave?” she asked tartly.
Uh-oh, she had a sassy side. He was in trouble now. “Yeah, he loves me. All these days off with pay. I’m a lucky guy.”
“There’s an internal investigation, right?” She gave him another side-eyed look. “Something about information leaks?”
There was an odd tone to her voice that once again tugged at his curiosity. But before he could answer, the door to the waiting room opened, and every eye in the place focused on the man in the green scrubs who walked through the opening.
“Ms. Coltrane?”
As the others in the waiting room slumped back into miserable anticipation, Ginny stood up, her spine straight and her head high as the doctor approached her. Only the clenching and unclenching of her hands gave any indication of her stress.
“I’m Ginny Coltrane.” Her voice was clear. Strong. Anson marveled at her composure, because his own gut was twisting into knots of anxiety as he waited for the doctor to speak.
“I’m Dr. Emerson. I’m the attending physician for your brother, Daniel. Your brother suffered a single penetrating stab wound to the upper-right abdomen. The good news is that the blade missed any major blood vessels and the lungs. But he does have a liver laceration that has us worried, especially given his blood-alcohol level. Does he have a history of liver disease?”
Ginny glanced at Anson before she spoke. “He— Not that I know of. But he is a heavy drinker.”
The doctor nodded. “He’s young and relatively healthy, and the liver injury should heal on its own without further intervention, but we’ll want to keep him here a few days for observation.”
Anson could tell from the doctor’s tone that a big part of the “observation” would be to make sure Danny Coltrane didn’t try to filter any more liquor through his injured liver before it had a little time to heal.
Ginny knew it, too. He could see the misery in her eyes as she nodded. “I think that’s a good idea.”
“We can’t force him to stay if he decides to disregard our medical advice,” Dr. Emerson warned. “You may need to speak to him about the importance of letting us do our jobs.”
“I know. I’ll speak to him.” She smiled at the doctor, but there was no relief in her expression, only a miserable fragility that elicited a deep ache in the center of Anson’s chest.
“Right now, he’s sleeping, but if you want to go see him before we transfer him to a room—”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
Dr. Emerson looked at Anson. “If you wish, your friend can go with you. There are a couple of chairs in the exam room.”
Anson started to demur, but Ginny looked at him with those misery-filled baby blues and he was ready to follow her into a raging fire if she needed him to.
What the hell was wrong with him?
“Thank you,” she told Dr. Emerson, still looking at Anson.
He rose and stood beside her, tall and gangly to her small and composed, and he felt the sudden, uncomfortable sense that he had been sucked into something entirely outside his realm of experience.
And since he considered himself something of a Renaissance man, the sensation was discomfiting indeed.
After the doctor left, the frozen mask of composure on Ginny’s face slipped, just a bit, revealing her raw anxiety. “You don’t have to come with me. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
The look of grateful relief on her face elicited another throbbing ache in the center of his breastbone. “He can be hard to deal with at the best of times.”
“He’s your younger brother?”
She shook her head, her voice bleak. “Older. But he’s my responsibility anyway.”
“Why?”
She shot him a frowning look, as if confused by the question. “Because he’s family.”
Of course, Anson thought. Family.
He should have known.
Except he’d never really had one.
* * *
DANNY LOOKED SO PALE. So small, somehow, even though he was a big guy, a little on the lean side due to drinking too much and eating too little, but at twenty-eight, the liquor hadn’t really started taking a toll on his health yet.
But it was coming. Ginny had seen it in the doctor’s eyes when he told her about Danny’s condition.
He was sleeping peacefully enough, so she didn’t try to wake him. They could talk when he was in his own room and sober enough to hear what she had to say.
She stepped away from the gurney where Danny lay and turned to look at Anson Daughtry. He looked entirely too large for the small metal chair onto which he’d folded his lanky frame, all arms and legs and broad shoulders. He looked up at her with such a soft expression that she felt the absurd urge to throw her arms around his waist and cry against his chest.
He’d wrap those long arms around her and say nice, comforting things to her, and maybe, just maybe, the world wouldn’t seem such a damn scary place all the time.
She forced herself to look away. There was nobody who could make her life better but herself. She’d figure it out, somehow.
“His vitals look good.” Anson nodded at the monitor next to the gurney. The smile that followed his words looked a little forced, as if he was trying a bit too hard to be a friend to her.
She shouldn’t have dragged the poor man back here with her. He didn’t really know her or Danny from Adam’s house cat. “You don’t have to stay with me, Mr. Daughtry.”
“Anson’s fine.”
“Danny’s
