Thorne Princess(70)

“I don’t give a crap about what you want to say.” I jammed my feet into my slippers, sauntering to the closet. “Only reason your ass is not sacked and you’re not on an economy flight back to Los Angeles right now is because we’re overworked and understaffed. You are not to touch the ward again, Maxwell.”

“I know, I know.” His voice reeked of desperation. I wondered how high on the psychopath scale I’d score. I did not even feel remotely hypocritical for this transgression. “I never meant for the lines to blur this way. I was just…I mean, she was just…”

“A bag of issues and pert tits.” I flung the closet open, choosing dark gray slacks and a pale blue dress shirt. “Even if she wasn’t hot, it still wouldn’t be okay to fondle her.”

“Absolutely. You have my word. Never again.” There was a pause. “I understand if you want to reassign me.”

Reassigning him would be the right thing to do. But that would show Hallie that I gave a shit, that I was jealous, and that was false advertising.

“You’ll take the day shift with her today,” I announced, knowing damn well that Brat was going to be devastated to see Max on her case after last night. This would be the ultimate rejection. “I have business to attend to.”

“In Dallas?” He sounded surprised. “Okay. You can trust me, boss. I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t.” I slipped a cufflink through the inside of the cuff. “Because I’ll kill you if you do.”

As soon as Max showed up at the suite, I slipped outside. Hallie was still asleep. I took the Bugatti and drove out to Plano, a sleepy Dallas suburb where people traded their souls for kidney-shaped pools.

The Bugatti was a spur-of-the-moment rental. A reminder that Hallie Thorne hadn’t dug deep into my skin. All of her environmental work and mumbo-jumbo about global warming did my head in. I needed to remind myself that I liked fast cars, meat, and private jets.

I parked in front of a gray-stoned McMansion overlooking a golf course and a lake. Carefully trimmed shrubs and a white picket fence surrounded the property, and baby toys littered the front lawn. The whole damn nine yards.

“You son of a gun, Law.” I shook my head, rounding the Bugatti and knocking on the door. A young woman with bloodshot eyes flung the door open, holding a mostly naked baby with rolls where his elbows and knees should be.

“You Ransom?” she asked, then yawned.

“To my dismay, yes.”

She shoved the baby into my hands. “Lawrence is upstairs, finishing a call. You can come in. I need to jump in the shower. This little nugget just threw up all over me.”

She turned around and left. I frowned at the baby, who frowned back at me. His expression said, don’t ask me. You guys are the adults here.

“Your mother is a nutcase,” I said, unsurprised. Lawrence had always had pedestrian taste when it came to the fairer sex.

I treaded inside, taking in the full bourgeois-conversion to which my good friend had succumbed.

Even though Law didn’t want for himself the same lifestyle chosen by Tom and me, we remained close. He was our big brother, in all the ways that mattered, and it never occurred to me to miss out on seeing him during my time in Texas.

I crouched down to place the tiny human onto a play mat shaped like a cloud when I heard a gruff voice emerging from the marbled stairway.

“You should get one of those.”

I straightened my spine. “The play mat or the baby?”

“Baby.”

“Not into pets.” I patted my hands clean, turning around to eyeball my friend. Lawrence was a six foot four behemoth of a man, with a bushy black beard and raven eyes to match.

He clapped my shoulder. “I see you’ve met Stassia and Emmanuel.”

“Up close and personal.” I sauntered into his trendy white kitchen, popping the fridge open. I was met with mountains of puree pouches and prepacked meals.

This was a mistake. I couldn’t ask this guy for advice. He was too far gone into Family Land.

“Don’t look so horrified. Beer’s in the garage cooler.” Lawrence closed the fridge’s door in my face. “Stassia should be down any minute. We can sit there. More private.”

We waited for Stassia to emerge from the quickest shower ever recorded. Once excused, we retired to the garage, where we popped beers and sat in front of a huge flat screen TV, tuning in to a baseball game.

“What brings you here?” Lawrence took a pull of his beer. “And please spare me the you-missed-me bullshit. We see each other exactly two times a year—both when I’m in Chicago for business.”

Law was a sports agent and did very well for himself.

“I’ve got a job in your neck of the woods.” I scratched my stubble.

“You travel all around the US and never made it to suburbia.” Law chuckled. “Whenever you show up, it’s because you wanna talk.”

Other than Lawrence, I never talked to anyone about anything. Tom was great, too, but he was too geographically close to me.

Looking around, I shrugged. “Your place is depressing.”

“Spill it out, then, sonny boy, and get outta here.”

No point in postponing why I’d come here. I needed to get my ass kicked.

“I made a boo-boo.”