Love's Cruel Redemption (The Ghost Bird #12)(16)

“None,” Luke said. “Kota dropped us off. We were followed for a bit, so he went back to see if he could find him.”

Gabriel made a face, exposing his teeth. “There’s no car here for us to take. So I guess we’re stuck unless we walk down to the hospital.”

“It’d be a bit of a walk,” Luke said. “And we probably shouldn’t take Dr. Green’s car right now. Not unless it’s an emergency.”

“What’s Mr. Blackbourne doing?” I asked.

“Mr. Blackbourne things,” Gabriel said. “We really need more cars.”

“What happened to your bike?” Luke asked.

“It’s too damn cold to drive that thing right now,” he said.

Luke walked away from me and toward the bathroom. “Then let’s do something fun since we may be here for a bit. Think up something. I’ll be right out.” He closed the door behind himself.

I went over the piano and sat on the bench. Gabriel jumped up and joined me, sitting next to me, placing his phone on top of the piano.

We toyed with the piano, figuring out Marry Had a Little Lamb, and then testing every key.

“Should we be messing with it?” I asked him.

He tapped at the black keys, making his fingers look like little legs jumping from one to the other. “It’s a piano. You’re supposed to mess with it.”

His phone buzzed, and he scooped it up off the top of the piano, checking the message.

“Is it them?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s Victor. But it looks like it is just us up here for a while.” He moved the piano key cover over until it closed. “So we...probably shouldn’t mess with this.”

“So we don’t make noise while Victor isn’t here? So no one hears us?”

“No,” he said sheepishly and then grinned. “He just knows I like playing with it when he isn’t here, and he just said to stop. He just had it retuned after the last time.”

“What did you do to it last time?”

“Nothing!” he said, a little too quickly. He looked around. “But there’s nothing else to play with. I’m not allowed on his computer, and that’s boring. It’s all dumb code stuff.”

“We could...watch TV?”

“Mmm...” He shrugged.

I glanced around the room, at the black and white décor, and then the closet. “Should we sort the closet?”

“That’s what I was doing before you got here,” he said. He tapped his fingers like he was playing the piano over the cover. He swung his legs around until he was sitting facing the other way on the bench, and then leaned back against the piano with his elbows propped up. He slid over a little, crossing in front of me, until his face was near mine. “You know what I’m thinking?”

He was close, and his breath was warm. Part of me was terrified at the crazy possibilities he was feasibly coming up with. “I don’t want to cut my hair right now.”

He chuckled.

“Gabriel!” Luke said from the bathroom, his tone light and playful. “Sang! Come see.”

We scrambled off the bench. Gabriel got to the door first and held a hand out to me. “Hang on,” he said. “Let me make sure he didn’t leave a weird shaped doodie and now he’s wanting to brag.”

I wrenched my mouth open to make an “o” shape.

“I was twelve when I did that!” Luke shouted from the bathroom. “And that’s not...I didn’t poop! Just come see.”

Gabriel opened the door. I braced myself to avoid looking toward the toilet, just in case. Luke was tricky.

Luke was on the floor, peering under the sink, and surrounding him were several gift baskets. Each one cellophane wrapped and full of bath oils, bath bombs, salts and a wide range of similar concoctions.

Gabriel picked up one and examined the contents. “Are these new? I didn’t notice these before.”

“Yeah, they’re new,” Luke said. He chuckled and his eyes caught my attention. “I’m pretty sure these are meant for you.”

“Shouldn’t we put them back?” I said. “I mean, what if those are for him? Or a gift for...like a cousin or something?”

“He wouldn’t buy his cousin bath bombs,” Luke said. He brought around his phone, poked at it with a forefinger to type in a message. He spoke as he typed. “Can...we...play...with...gift...baskets...under...sink?” He sent the message and waited. When the phone buzzed, he read, “Leave a few for Sang.”

“Well, she’s here,” Gabriel said. “That means we get to open all of them?”

“Man, Sang...you get all the good stuff,” Luke said. He placed three of the smaller baskets back into the cabinet. There were still a few in there he hadn’t pulled out. “We’ll save those for Victor. Or next time.”

There were four left out for us. We placed the biggest one in the middle and we each took one of the other baskets.

It felt a little weird to open it without Victor here, since he was nice enough to get them. “Maybe I should wait,” I said. “Did he mean these to be a gift for me?”

“I’m sure it was because of last week, when we said you liked the bath bomb,” Gabriel said. “And he just said we could play with them.” He stabbed a couple of fingers into the cellophane of his basket and widened the hole. He pulled out an item, a box of three various soaps. He put the box to his nose and sniffed. “The box says Korean Night, but I don’t know what Korea smells like. Is it really?” He sniffed again. “Wow, actually smells spicy.”