The Next Best Thing (Gideon's Cove #2)(50)

“I was twenty-four, and Jimmy was twenty-seven. We’d only been married a little while. Not even a year.”

“So sad.” Those little blue eyes seem wet. I’m not sure if this makes me like or dislike Corbin.

“It really is,” I say, nodding. It sure is. It’s sad. But there’s something wrong with me, like I can’t really compute or something. I look at my hands. The fingers seem very, very long. “Do my hands look big to you, Corbin?” I flex my fingers. They look so odd. Like flippers. Like that Olympic kid who won all those medals—Michael Phelps? Yes, that’s it! Like his feet. He has flipper feet or something, right? And my hands look just like that. Freaky. I look at Corbin to see if he shares my concern.

But Corbin is not looking. No, Corbin has one hand over his eyes. Corbin seems to be crying.

“You okay?” I ask. “Corbin Dallas?”

He’s crying, all right. He puts the napkin down and bridges his hands over his nose. “I’m sorry,” he says, the tears dripping down his face. “It’s just…oh, Lucy, I didn’t realize…I’m so sorry.” He takes a shuddering breath, tries to smile, fails. Lenny gives us an odd look, and heads at the bar are starting to turn. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this…See, my dog…I have a dog. Biffy. And he was recently…well, he needs surgery. For a cyst over his eye. And I’m worried, I guess, and when you said your husband fell asleep at the wheel, it just brought up all this…emotion. You know, if you love someone, the level of worry is the same. Biffy is so…”

His voice goes on. Surely he is not comparing his dog’s cyst to my husband’s death. But yes, he is. Wow. I’d react, but my fingers seem to be growing. Whoa. I think I should probably call Anne. Pronto. But my fingers seem too big to fit into my pocketbook. Are they? I fumble with my purse, unable to get the snap undone. Maybe my cold eyes are screwing up my depth perception. I have no idea, really. Meanwhile, Corbin is working up quite a tear-storm.

“Everything okay over here?”

I look up, and there’s Ethan. “Are my fingers growing?” I ask, waving them around. I turn my hands over to see if they look weird from that side. They do. “They’re so big!”

Ethan looks down at Corbin, a slow fury filling his features. He looks…damn. Kind of hot, really, all scowly and protective. I do love that neat little beard on Ethan. Smokes him right up. Mmm-hmm. Too bad Doral-Anne has just joined our little group. I close one cold eye so I don’t have to see her and just drink in the sight of Angry Ethan.

“What did you do?” he growls, reaching out to grab Corbin’s shirt. “What did you give her?”

My date’s eyes are wide and wet. Ethan yanks him out of the booth, tipping the table a little. My seltzer water sloshes. “Oh, no, the pretty bubbles!” I exclaim.

“What did you do to her?” Ethan yells, shaking Corbin like a rag. The bar is so quiet. It’s like I can feel the silence. Like the silence is blue and warm. I wish I could wrap the silence around my cold eyes and—“Answer me!” Silent except for Ethan, that is.

“Don’t hit me! I didn’t do anything! Lucy, tell him!” Corbin squeaks.

“Call the police,” Ethan barks over his shoulder. “He slipped her something.” He grabs Corbin around the throat. “You’d better tell me exactly what you gave her, or I’m going to rip you apart right here.”

Oops. I should probably speak up. “Oh, Ethan. Hi, there, pal. Listen, what’s-his-name here, he didn’t give me anything. It’s Anne. My cousin the lesbian doctor? She gave me some medicine.”

Ethan looks down at me. “What medicine?”

I blink. My hands are still weird. “A drug kind of medicine? Um…gosh, I can’t remember the name. Something that rhymes with magazine? Listerine? I can’t remember. It’s for panic attacks.” Ethan’s eyebrows lift in surprise. “I think I’m having a bad reaction,” I continue. “Do my fingers look big to you? Like I can swim really fast?”

Ethan releases Corbin Dallas in absolute disgust. “She’s tripping, and you didn’t even notice? Jesus Christ.” Corbin huddles on his side of the booth, pale and shaken. “Come on, Lucy,” Ethan says. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“Aunt Boggy woke up from the dead today,” I tell him as he takes my arm and helps me stand. My legs buckle, and the next thing I know, Ethan’s got me, holding me in his arms without so much as a grunt. His lovely smell, that warm, spicy man-smell, envelops me like a blanket. “This is nice,” I tell him, my face against the smooth skin of his neck. “Except I think I might throw up.”

“Call 911,” he says to someone.

“Idiot,” Doral-Anne mutters. She flips open her phone and does what she’s told.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“ARE YOU MAD AT ME?”

“I’m not mad at you,” Ethan says wearily. It’s one o’clock in the morning, and we’re waiting for me to be discharged from the Emergency Room.

The good news is, I’m fine. Also, I’ve seen the inside of an ambulance, which was a learning experience. The bad news…I’ve also puked on the inside of an ambulance. And on Ethan. And on Mikey Devers, whom I once babysat and had to tie to a chair so he wouldn’t bite me. He’s a paramedic now. Oh, and half the town has now seen me on some bad, acidlike trip as I chatted merrily about my Phelps fingers and asked people to take off my shoes so I could see if my feet were webbed.