The Best Goodbye (Rosemary Beach, #13)(54)

I wasn’t sure what to say to him or even how to look at him. He had kissed me goodbye and said he’d call me soon. That was it. Then he’d just gotten out of here as fast as possible.

Franny’s constant talk about how much fun she’d had when he took her to school that morning didn’t help. When she finally stopped talking about him and started on her homework, I was relieved.

I focused on making dinner, even though I didn’t have an appetite. I hadn’t had one all day. There was no room in my stomach for anything but that knot he’d left there.

When Franny’s bedtime finally rolled around and I hadn’t even gotten a text from Captain, I was devastated. Smiling and tucking her in like my heart wasn’t slowly breaking open was hard, but I’d managed it.

It wasn’t until I knew she’d fallen asleep that I curled up on the sofa with my phone in my hand and let the first tear slowly fall. I knew he was busy, and I knew what his work was like, but I also knew that if he’d wanted to, he would have found a moment to at least text me something, anything. Anything at all would have been nice.

A knock at the door startled me, and I jumped up and wiped my eyes. Maybe it was Captain, and he’d come to see me and explain why he hadn’t called all day. I hurried over to the door and opened it, expecting Captain, but froze when an extremely tall and terrifying man, with the widest shoulders I’d ever seen, locked his cold, steel-blue eyes on me.

I gripped my phone tightly in my hand. I had no idea who this man was, but I had a feeling that I’d need the phone to dial 911. I wondered if I could do it fast enough.

“Stop hatching an escape plan. I’m not here to hurt you. Get your neighbor over there to watch your kid, and come with me. Captain needs you.”

What? I stared up at the man, wondering how he could be that attractive and scary as hell all at once. And how he knew about my neighbor and my kid.

“We need to go. Get your girl taken care of, and let’s move,” he said with authority.

“Excuse me, but who are you?” I asked, taking a step back, with my hand on the doorknob.

He sighed as if I was exhausting him. “Knew I should have sent Alexa,” he grumbled. Then, with an irritated glance, he pointed to the bedroom where Franny was sleeping. “Your daughter needs your neighbor to stay with her. I need to take you to the f*cking hospital, because Captain had some bad shit go down tonight. When he wakes his ass up, he’s gonna want to see his woman. Now, would you please do as I tell you, and stop asking me a million damn questions?”

Two things I never wanted to hear in my life were “Captain” and “hospital” together in one sentence. Maybe it was stupidity, or maybe it was fear for Captain . . . or maybe I just couldn’t imagine that someone who wanted to harm me would talk to me like a disobedient child, but I pulled out my phone, keeping my eyes on the large man the whole time, and dialed Mrs. Baylor’s number.

“Better be your neighbor you’re calling,” he muttered.

Diana answered on the second ring. “Rose, you OK?”

“Yes, Mrs. Baylor, I’m fine. But I need to visit a friend who has been put in the hospital. Could you please come stay here with Franny? She’s already sleeping.”

I could see the relief on the man’s face as he nodded and walked back into the darkness to a black truck that I almost couldn’t see, even in the moonlight.

“Oh, my goodness. I hope everything is OK. I’ll be right there.”

“Thank you,” I replied before hanging up. I walked out onto the porch. “How do you know Captain?” I asked the man.

“Worked together.”

I couldn’t picture this man working in a restaurant of any kind, but then, Captain didn’t really fit into the industry himself, either. “At the restaurant here?” I asked, knowing that if he said yes, he was lying.

What sounded like a muffled chuckle came first. “Fuck no” was the only response I got before he climbed back into his truck.

Mrs. Baylor hurried across the yard and patted my back when she got up the porch steps. “I got her. You go see about your friend.”

I thanked her again with a hug and hurried down the steps to the truck—and a stranger I was choosing to trust completely.

? ? ?

Once I was in the truck, I buckled and turned to study the man already pulling out onto the road.

“Just because she looks harmless, that doesn’t mean she’s not a smart woman. Don’t think she didn’t take in the make and model of this truck and look at your license plate before we drove off. If I don’t come back, she’ll report you to the police.”

A very small, almost elusive smirk touched the corner of his mouth. “Good” was his only reply, before his face went back to complete neutrality. As odd as he was, that response was comforting.

“Could you tell me your name, please?” I asked.

He scowled. “Cope.”

Cope? Was that a name? “Cope like Copeland?” I asked.

“Cope like Cope” was his reply.

Well, OK, then. “Nice to meet you, Cope. I’m—”

“Addison Turner. You lived in River Kipling’s home as a foster child for four years. His mother was batshit crazy and abused you. I know everything about you, so save it.”

My mouth dropped open as I listened to this man sum up my whole past with River in four sentences. How did he know this? Was he really that close to River? “So Captain is really in the hospital? This is true?”