Eye of the Storm

They ignored her, as she obviously expected them to, but she opened a case of her own wares at any rate and pulled out a tube of concealer. “At least prepare for patients. You can’t have them thinking someone died on the table this morning.”

Kirstie sighed. Perhaps insulating Lynley from so many of life’s trials when she was a child had hindered her emotional growth; she could still be easily wounded, at least by her mother’s sarcasm. She’d always been tenderhearted. With no siblings to be supportive of her—or to teach her how to better integrate—she had needed the extra attention, especially since she had a father who preferred reinforcing his delusions of manhood with as many women as he could unearth, rob from the cradle or lure away from other men.

Right now, Lynley was still too fragile after her divorce from Barry’s clone. Girls really did marry their daddies.

“Megan should be here any second. I hope she at least had time to put her face on,” Carmen said. “And it’s possible you’ll have the chance to convince Megan to give us another opinion. She’s a good diagnostician.”

“And as she’s said,” Kirstie reminded her friend, “she’s too close to the case herself. Of course, if she were to diagnose me with Alzheimer’s also, then maybe Lynley would give up and let me be placed in a lock-down unit and stop wasting her nights chasing after me.” Kirstie’s feet hurt, and this hard wooden floor didn’t help matters.

Lynley glanced at Carmen and then glared at Kirstie. “There’s that word again. Wasting? Really. You’re my mother.”

“You can’t watch me every second. You’ll ruin your own future.”

“It usually happens at night. We could set up an alarm—”

“No!” Kirstie took a slow breath. “What kind of mother would I be if I allowed you to give up your life for mine?”

“It’s not over yet. We’ll figure something out. And don’t even think about getting Megan to help you gang up on me again. She tried to this morning, you know. No nursing facility. Period.”

Carmen waved an arm between the two of them. “Excuse me? Would you two postpone this boxing match until I’m out of hearing range? And speaking of our doctor…” She gestured toward the parking lot, where Megan pulled in with her bright, eye-hurting Neo, followed closely by a red mini SUV. With a man inside.

Kirstie smiled. Wow. Was she finally going to meet, face-to-face, the unacknowledged man in her darling Megan’s life? He was some man. Not Megan’s type at all. Megan had always been attracted to the soft-spoken intellectual. This time, however, she might need to bend a little.

Megan jerked her car to a stop, had the door open less than a second later, and was hot-footing it toward the front door as she shoved her keys into her oversize purse.

She didn’t spare a glance for her stalker. She wasn’t wearing her usual scrubs and lab coat.

“That must be him,” Kirstie murmured.

“Who?” Carmen’s green eyes widened as the man got out of his car and stood up. “Wow.”

Kirstie smiled. The sun appeared to dazzle his face—but that could have been because his face was so close to the sun.

Kirstie reached for a tissue and blew her nose. “And here I am looking and smelling like a bed of dried fish eggs. Oh my goodness, he’s a hunk. Would you look at him?”

“Who is he?” Oh yeah, Carmen could be smitten. Six years was too much time to grieve even the best of men, and though Gil had been a better man than Barry, his idea of a romantic gesture had been taking out the trash every couple of weeks. Lack of exercise was why he’d succumbed early in life to a premature heart attack.

“Careful, Carmen,” Kirstie said. “He’s too young for either of us. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure he’s Megan’s boss.”

“Alec Thompson is Megan’s boss,” Lynley said.

“I mean her boss in Corpus Christi.”

Carmen leaned closer to the window for a better look, and a bemused smile tipped her curvy pink lips. “That guy she couldn’t shut up about the day she flew up here for Lynley’s divorce party?”

“It wasn’t a party,” Lynley said. “It was commiseration.”

For Kirstie, it had been a party. “He fits her description, doesn’t he?”

“He still runs the rescue mission?” Carmen asked.

“He also matches the hunky photo his sister took for his online profile.”

Lynley cleared her throat as if to remind them she was still in the room. “Would you please stop talking about hunky men in front of your only child?”