Heartbreak Brings Mr. Right novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Chair

I walked into the kitchen with the earring in my fist.

Hedwig sat at the island with a cup of tea, and Rafferty stood at the stove with a spatula and a pan of eggs.

They both looked up.

I held out my hand and opened it.

The little silver moon lay on my palm, and nobody said anything.

"I believe I left my reading glasses in the car," she said. "I'll be an hour."

She took her cane and left, and she did not once look back.

The front door clicked shut.

I kept my eyes on the man at the stove.

"It's yours," I said. "Or rather it's mine, and you've had it for nine days."

Rafferty turned off the burner.

He put the spatula down and wiped his hands on a dishtowel, slowly.

"Yes," he said.

"You were at the Aldine."

"Yes."

"You were the man at the bar."

"I was."

I pulled out a stool and sat.

"Tell me," I said. "All of it. Start with what happened in that room."

"Nothing happened."

"Thora, nothing happened." He crossed to the island and stopped on the other side of it, with both hands flat on the marble. "You came into the bar at ten past nine and couldn't stand. You told me your head hurt, and then you slid off the stool."

"And you took me upstairs."

"I carried you to my suite because the bar had no staff who'd call a doctor. A doctor came. She checked your pupils and took a blood sample, and said you'd been given a sedative." His jaw worked. "She told me to keep you on your side, and I did, all night."

"All night."

"I sat in the armchair. You asked me once, around two, not to go. I said I wouldn't."

My throat closed.

"I woke up in your shirt," I said.

"You were cold. I put a shirt on you over the blanket, in the dark, with my eyes shut." One corner of his mouth moved, not quite a smile. "It was the most awkward thing I've done in thirty-three years."

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