“Brock,” she called, her hand landing on mine when I didn’t answer her. “Why do you look so upset?”
To that, I sighed. “I just… I didn’t ever want you to see me get dark like that.”
“You were defending me,” she said, brows drawing together. “I think anyone would get a little dark when they are defending someone who is… special to them. I mean, not that I’m, you know, special to you. I just—“
“Sweetheart,” I cut her off, saving her from even another second more of uncertainty, insecurity. “You are absolutely very special to me.”
I wasn’t quite ready to say the words I was really feeling. And I didn’t think she wanted to hear them while in a hospital bed after having been attacked.
But there would be plenty of time for that.
“Okay, Miss Coulter,” a voice said a while later, after the doctor came in and told her that her scans were okay, saying they would get the discharge papers ready. “Let’s get your statement prepared,” he said as he moved in.
“Who are you?” she asked, brows furrowing.
“Quinton Baird,” I told her. “He’s a fixer. Crisis manager,” I clarified. “I wasn’t expecting the boss himself,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand.
“With a client as big as Miranda Coulter, you get me. Until we can find someone who specializes in this sort of shit,” he clarified.
So then he pulled up a seat and they worked out a statement that he would deliver for her to the press as we snuck out through a side door.
“What?” I asked as I felt Miranda’s gaze on my profile as we rode in the back of a cab with Cam in the front, all three of us on our way back to her penthouse.
“Your town is… intriguing,” she said. “Private investigators and ‘fixers’ and the mafia who owns restaurants…”
“Baby, that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” I told her. “But there is plenty of time to fill you in on that later.”
“Over Chinese,” Cam called back to us. “Which should be arriving at the building in under thirty minutes.”
I wondered then if Miranda had ever considered the possibility of having Cam take a more direct role in her company.
He already did so much. So much, in fact, that he managed to step into her shoes when she was away for a few days at the psych ward.
She’d probably been so wrapped up in having him be there to help her manage her life, that she never really stopped to think that he was more than capable of handling her work, so that she could live and manage her own life.
Maybe that was a suggestion I could make to her while we spent some time at my house.
We all walked up to the elevator in silence, ignoring the worried look of the doorman, Frank, whose daughter probably filled him in on the drama. I would find some time to sneak away to talk to him later. But my main focus at the moment was getting Miranda settled.
My arm went around her, and her hand went out to grab Cam’s, all of us just offering silent support after one hell of a day.
“How about you two curl up on the couch and I’ll grab the wine and get the food when it comes?” I suggested. “After you get changed,” I added, looking at Miranda’s bloody clothes. “Cam, I can lend you some lounge around clothes too.”
But then the elevator doors were sliding open, and there we were in the upper hallway. That had a shitton of packages there.
“I ordered some clothes. For both of us,” Cam said, giving Miranda a smile. “Comfy stuff for couch curling and Chinese eating,” he explained. “You too,” he added, giving me a tired-looking, sad smile.
Everyone filed in, grabbing bags as we went, then Cam went through them, dividing them up.
The two of them shuffled off for a wardrobe change, but more so than that, a couple of private moments alone.
So I organized some of the shit on the dining room table, since I figured we were eating on the couch, then got the wine, went down for the food, and set out the plates.
When no one had emerged yet, I made my way down the hall and into Miranda’s room to find her sitting off the side of the bed.
Not crying, but lost in her own head.
Moving forward, I dropped down in front of her, placing my hands on her thighs.