A Berry Baffling Businessman by A. R. Winters

Author:A. R. Winters [Winters, A. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-20T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

I leaned in and whispered. “Lara, what did you do?”

She groaned and her legs aimlessly worked in the bed. It was like she was trying to escape the truth that wanted to tear itself free from her.

“I told him everything. He loved me anyway. You didn’t have to. Why? Oh God, Ollie. Ollie… Come back. Don’t leave me.” Her words became garbled, and the only lament that rang clear every time was the call of Ollie’s name.

My heart broke, and a tear slipped free from my eye. Her cries were pitiful.

I squeezed Lara’s lifeless fingers and leaned in, hoping to pull her focus back to me. “Lara,” I whispered. There was something I desperately needed to ask her. “Lara!”

“What do you think you’re doing in here?” A booming voice cut through me. I whirled around to find a dark-skinned nurse standing in the doorway. Her body was stout, powerful, and I was pretty sure she could pick me up over her head and slam me to the ground.

“I was just—”

“I don’t care what you were ‘just,’” she said. “This woman is under this facility’s care and protection. Unless you want the next person you deal with to be wearing a badge, I suggest you leave right now.”

I let Lara’s chilly fingers slip from mine and hightailed it out of the room. It took everything in me not to break into a run, and my back muscles twitched in fear that I was about to be jabbed with a cattle prod or shanked with a sharp knife. The nurse was right on my heels the whole way. Watching her stop behind the ICU’s double doors as they closed was like watching the Terminator cease its chase.

“You got inside? Did you talk to Lara?” Zoey asked.

The nurse was glaring at us through the door’s long, narrow windows.

I grabbed Zoey’s arm and started us walking. “There’s a killer in Camden Falls,” I hissed.

“Yeah…”

“It’s not Lara!”

I filled Zoey in on the way back to the café. She parked in back and we headed inside through the rear entrance. True to his word, Chef John had left the café spotless and ready for my use. On the island counter was a folded, hand-written note saying, “Thanks for lending me your world. Let me know when I can return the favor! Would love to have you as a guest chef at my restaurant sometime.”

I laughed because I knew the offer couldn’t be sincere, but it had me smiling from ear to ear anyway.

Zoey took the note from my hand, read it, then looked at me with an arched brow. “He’s invited you to cook at his Michelin-starred restaurant? Has he seen your cooking? Really. He wouldn’t even need to taste it. He could just look at it.”

I snatched the note back from her, primly folded it, and tucked it away under the corner of a pan. I didn’t care what Zoey thought. I was going to frame that note and hang it in my apartment.

“Could be interesting, though,” Zoey went on.

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