He’d bet she was asleep. The woman hadn’t made it through years with the NYPD without being tough.
“Have a seat,” Laurel said, pulling off her sandals and plopping down on the end of the bed. “It’s hurting my neck to look up at you.”
He sat down on a wooden bench at the end of the bed.
Laurel took a deep, almost dramatic breath. “Okay,” she said, folding her hands and dropping them in her lap. With her makeup long gone, her hair wind-tossed and shoved behind both ears, she looked about sixteen and ready to give him a speech he was going to disagree with.
Scott braced himself.
“First, the other night... You threw a lot of shocking stuff at me all at once....”
“I’m sorry.”
She looked up from her feet long enough to glare at him. “You have no reason to be sorry, and it would best if you’d just let me get through this—the first part, at least.”
Thankful to be relieved of any responsibility in the conversation, Scott nodded.
“Okay, as I was saying, you threw a lot of things at me. There was no way I had a chance to grasp it all—to have any idea what to think until I’d had time to sift through it.”
She was going to give him the lashing he deserved. He couldn’t blame her.
“So now that I’ve had time to think, there are a few things I have to say....”
She paused and looked up, her brow raised in question.
It couldn’t be anything he hadn’t already told himself, though coming from her it could turn out to be more painful.
He nodded for her to continue.
She was nervous. He could have done without the tenderness that welled up inside him.
“The seat belt thing.” She was looking straight at him. Scott would have preferred her to continue studying her feet. The top of her head was easier to take. “You were planning to drive that car.”
He said “Yeah” only when she made it obvious she wasn’t going to continue without a response.
“Paul didn’t take any risks you weren’t already taking yourself.”
“Laurel...” he started to argue.
“Because you didn’t consider it a risk at all,” she continued.
“I knew about the recall notice, he didn’t.”
“But you also believed the risk was nonexistent. I know you, Scott. If you’d thought there was any danger, you wouldn’t have let Paul drive that car no matter how drunk you were.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Not that it absolved him of the responsibility.
“And just as we learned from Cecilia’s decision to give up Leslie—it’s the motivation that counts.”
She’d caught him between the eyes and he hadn’t seen it coming. “But...”
“No buts this time, Scott. I’m right and I’m not letting you talk me into anything else. You are not to blame for the fact that Paul was thrown from that car. Period.”
He couldn’t let go that easily. But she had an interesting point about motivation.
She was quiet, as though waiting to see if Scott was going to argue, and then continued.
“Second, Paul driving.”