Page 120 of Misguided
He matches my stare with a frown. “Yeah. Why not?”
“I’ve never met her.” If I thought my tight jeans and slashed tank made me uncomfortable when I first got back to the club, then they sure as hell make me feel inadequate now. “What will she think if you turn up with me? She’ll probably think we’re there to bully her into something.”
“Hardly.” He shakes his head. “She’s laid up in the hospital at the moment, so I doubt she’d think we’d try anythin’ tricky with her.”
Sure enough, less than an hour later I find myself walking through the entrance of St. Elizabeth, praying above all else that this goes well. We’ve got less than thirty minutes before visiting hours are over, and we’d have to come back after lunch taking a gamble that Dog’s brother didn’t show.
“I feel really uncomfortable about this. Maybe I’ll just wait out front.” I stop walking, ready to run back, but Dog grabs me by the wrist and yanks me along.
“Don’t start pullin’ that self-doubt shit now, woman. I need you there.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise I’d rethink this whole idea and just get the asshole locked away for a while to teach him a lesson.”
Damn it.“Fine, but we have to be quick.”
“I know.”
He talks to a lady at the reception desk, who directs us to the correct ward, and after the same conversation with the woman at the ward desk, we end up outside a private room at the far end of the corridor.
“Last chance,” I whisper, hoping he’ll reconsider this and just do what he feels is right.
Then again … that didn’t seem all that great of an option.
“Come meet one of the wealthiest women in the state,” he mutters before pushing the door open and literally dragging me in behind him.
I hang back as best I can considering his hand is still tightly around my wrist, using Dog’s shoulder as a kind of blockade from the petite woman in the bed. She’s stunning in her simplicity.
Blonde hair fans around her head on the pillow, her eyes lacking emotion as she turns her head our way.
“Koen.” She seems genuinely surprised, as though he’s the last person she expected to see.
“Lorelle.” Dog drops my wrist, moving to stand at the end of the bed.
She shuffles up using her elbows, righting the sheet so it sits across her chest, tucked under her arms. “Why are you here?”
“Had a friendly request from the lawyer to speak with them about Derek.”
Her face falls, her head turning toward the window as her gaze drifts to the surrounding grounds. “Oh, that.”
“Yeah.”
I find a vacant seat in the far corner and move across to it. Lorelle spots me as I cross the room, as though seeing me for the first time.
“Who’s that?” She lifts a slim arm and points my way.
“My girlfriend, Mel,” Dog answers.
I cling on to the fuzzies being introduced as his girlfriend gives me, and offer a small wave. “Hi.”
“Rollan thinks I’ll throw Derek under the bus,” Dog continues, making the most of our short time here. “I want to know what you think I should say when they ask me if I think he could be capable of fraud.”
“Say what you like,” Lorelle murmurs. “I don’t care.”
I can’t help but frown as I watch this woman visibly shut herself off from the people in the room with her. She sinks into her pillows, eyes on the trees outside as she blatantly ignores Dog.
He appears to pick up on the shift also. “You realize he’ll get jail time. His reputation will be destroyed.”