Hot Sauce (Suncoast Society #26)(52)

As she stared at her phone, she knew what she needed to do.

She called Reed.

He was off today, had been trading sexy, teasing texts with her all afternoon. She was supposed to go over to their place tonight for dinner, her and Carlo both.

Reed answer. “Hey, baby girl. What’s up?”

She tried to talk and dissolved into tears.

“Honey? Nessie? What’s wrong? Talk to me.”

She must have finally gotten enough intelligible words out for him to understand what was going on.

“Where are you? Are you still at work?”

She got that information out, too. Somehow.

“Okay,” he firmly said in a tone that sounded both completely unlike him and comfortingly firm. “Stay there. We’ll be right there. Do not leave. Just sit there and wait on us.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Even that felt right.

She laid her head back against the seat, struggling against feeling weak and helpless, worthless.

What had happened to her? The woman who could take care of herself?

Or had she ever really taken care of herself? She felt lost and adrift now. Was she really falling for the hunks, or were they a convenient replacement for her brother as the true anchor of her life?

She didn’t know anymore.

But when Lyle’s car raced into the parking lot fifteen minutes later, with both men inside, she shoved aside her thoughts of feeling guilty and instead let herself feel relief over their arrival.

The men parked next to her, both of them getting out and walking around to her driver’s door. She got out, and they enveloped her in their arms, holding her as she cried.

“We’ll go with you,” Lyle said. “Do you want to go home first and change clothes?”

She shook her head. Once she got home tonight, she wanted to stay there and maybe revisit the getting drunk plan again.

Hell, Stu wanted her to take extra days off. She could call in tomorrow.

Reed drove her in her car while Lyle followed. On either side of her, holding her hands, they walked with her inside the mortuary, to the office. Michael Parker led them to a smaller side office and had them wait while he went to get…Tony.

Him.

She didn’t feel right thinking “it,” even though the spirit and soul of who he was had been reduced to a few pounds of ashes inside of a cobalt blue urn. She’d picked it because it’d been his favorite color.

The thought of casting him onto the Gulf to drift away forever wasn’t something she could bear. She needed him there, with her, what little she could keep of him.

When Parker returned a few minutes later, he spoke to her, but she didn’t absorb a word he said. He’d handed her the urn and she clutched it to her, eyes closed and tears spilling down her face.

Finally, she heard Reed and Lyle speaking with the man, apparently getting whatever information it was from him, while one of them gently dabbed at her cheeks with a tissue when she wouldn’t take what they tried to press into her hand.

Tony.

She supposed part of her still thought—hoped—as stupid and childish that it was, that her brother would pop through the doorway, grinning ear to ear and claiming it was the world’s best prank ever in an attempt to get her to live her life, to force her out of her bubble.

As the cool urn slowly began to warm to her flesh, she realized Michael Parker had left them alone again.

Reed touched her arm. “Baby girl,” he softly said, “let’s get you home and we’ll take care of you tonight. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“He’s really gone,” she whispered. “He’s not coming back, is he?”

“No, sweetheart,” Lyle said. “He’s not. I’m sorry.”





Lyle truly worried for her. He definitely didn’t want her driving like this. He absolutely did not want her left alone in this condition. In his mind, their plans for a sexy night had vanished upon getting the call from Reed, replaced by knowing they had to help her through this.

Although she was far worse than he’d thought she would be.

She softly keened, sobbing, curled over and around the urn as if trying to become one with it.

It shattered his heart, his soul, her pain and the fact that the only thing he could do was stand there beside her and walk with her through it. He couldn’t fix it. He couldn’t make it better. He couldn’t even tell her things would be okay when, in her mind at that moment, she felt her world had ended.

And he had no adequate reply to that truth. It might be a temporary truth that would eventually be replaced by a new one as she processed her pain, but he knew for now it was her truth. Cold and black emptiness she couldn’t fathom, had never before dreamed of.

Eventually, they got her up and moving. He carried the large envelope with the death certificates and other paperwork the man handed over. It took him and Reed to get her seatbelt buckled around her, because she wouldn’t let go of the urn to make it easier and they didn’t have the heart to try to take it from her.

At home, Reed went to walk Carlo while Lyle got her settled on the couch, the urn still clutched in her arms. He laid the paperwork on the counter and returned to her side, an arm around her shoulders as she pressed her face against him.

Two hours later, she finally let them help her up, set the urn on the counter, and take her to her bedroom to help her change clothes. They got her into a long T-shirt and then back out to the kitchen.