Page 30 of Vermilion Desire

“No.” The lawyer shakes his head. “Mr. Berkshire had signed an oath that has been approved by the court that he is to not interfere with the criminal proceeding of his son’s case, and he would be free to hire you as his rare disease researcher, and I would only have contact with Mr. Braxton with his lawyer present.”

“I don’t trust you,” Scarletta states. “And I will not help Mr. Berkshire.”

“Your Hippocratic Oath for scientists would suggest otherwise.”

Scarletta smiles, humorless and perceptive. I reach under the table and take her hand; she’s cold with icy fingers and soft skin. Her hand promptly warms with my heat as she appreciatively curls her small fingers around mine.

“I became a rare disease researcher, not for the sake of saving others, but it is to satisfy my curiosity, and Mr. Berkshire’s family history of inbreeding has not sparked my interest.”

The lawyer falls into silence before she continues. “On the other hand, I am fascinated by the same symptoms that Junior is experiencing now as it was the same for Senior when he was young.”

“Mr. Berkshire will be expecting you and you gentlemen tomorrow morning.” The lawyer stands up and nods his head goodbye.

He leaves just as quiet as he came in. Cal goes to the door and locks it, watching from the small opening to see the car driving away with a breath being released from his chest.

I turn to Scarletta, gauging her thoughts through her expressive face. She’s interested and somewhat excited for tomorrow even though we had the talk about staying away from the Berkshire family.

“You’re not thinking of going, are you?” Cal asks.

Her big amber eyes are staring innocently at him. “He needs my help.”

“You just want to know what the hell is wrong with that family,” Cal grumbles, dropping down at the chair with a heavy sigh.

“How do you know what the father and son have is the same thing?” I can’t help but ask.

She shrugs. “It took a while since he does hide it well from the public.”

Scarletta stands to fetch herself a glass of water. “At the grocery store, he was so angry, and he wanted to come after us.”

“But he didn’t,” I remind her. That day is still clear in my head, and it was the first time I had seen him having anything on his face other than smugness.

“That’s because he can’t,” she says. “And when at the coffee shop where he and I had met…”

I sink my nails into my palm, and she removes that pain by linking our fingers together when she sits back down on the chair. From the corner of my eyes, I see Cal roll his eyes and grunt something about young love birds.

“When I left, I saw that he had chamomile tea with Nepeta cataria —basically catnip.”

Cal snorts loudly, hands folding into his elbows. “Why do you care what the hell he drinks?”

“Those are natural ingredients that relieve muscle rigidity. After that day, I had gone to the research facility to look for information on that. If he had just presented chamomile, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but he had catnip in it too.” She grins, and I give her a cautionary squeeze on her hand to knock it off.

Clearing her throat, she drones on. “It’s a very distinctive minty smell. I wonder why he had that mixture, and then I found out about the natural muscle relaxants, and I began to look into his family history a bit more and saw that Berkshire Senior had an incident where he completely lost control of his left side in a speech he was giving.”

I see. Everything is starting to make sense now, especially what she had done in the courtroom. She was trying to test out her theory to see if what she had thought was true; she’s a researcher at heart and a human girl second.

That’s dangerous. I don’t want her to take that risk for research purposes.

“And the court thing with the restraining order was so I can see how Berkshire reacts when he’s angry.”

Cal impatiently huffs. “Well? You get your answer?”

“He can’t move his left side when he’s angry.”

This is news to Cal and me, but that would explain his unusual behavior. Anyone who is angry would be the first one to initiate action; that’s human behavior, and it had been studied by researchers who are in that field.

“Where are you going with this?” I asked, cupping her soft cheek with my hand.

She leans in, giggling as I brush her cheek. The softness under my thumb is addictive, and I want to kiss her plump pink lips.

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