Page 25 of Last Chance Love

“Ha!” Mona surprised me with a bark of laughter. “Good luck on any of those fronts. That man fears anything vegetable-related as if he were a four-year-old.”

“Now, Mona, we agreed not to put each other down in front of the folk here,” Mr. Isaiah protested, but the quiver of his bushy mustache told me he was trying not to smile.

“Reed is a professional, and he’ll keep quiet,” she said without even glancing at me with a warning in her eyes. I had to suppose it was probably a point in my favor that she didn’t feel the need to confirm I would keep my mouth shut. Even though I was a felon, working off his time, she trusted that my professional ethics were still in place, which, as one of the three people on this ranch to know why I ended up in prison, was an interesting tactic for a normally cautious woman.

“I promise to keep your bickering to myself,” I said with a chuckle, tucking everything away. “And as far as your health is concerned, it seems like your blood pressure medicine is doing the trick, but we still need to keep an eye on that. And you’re going to have to come down to the clinic or see your GP to get your cholesterol levels checked, among other things. You need blood work done, and avoiding your doctor isn’t going to make any potential health problems go away.”

“Sure,” he said, flipping through the report. “Down?”

“Down,” Mona repeated, her eyes flitting to me.

“Are you or someone else in charge of his appointments?” I asked her, knowing I was being dismissed, not as a member of the program from the head of it, but from a man who didn’t want to deal with a fussy doctor.

“I take care of them for the most part,” she said with a slow upward curve of her lips.

“Good, then I would advise you get him an appointment as soon as possible. There’s a lot of things missing in his folder that should be up to date,” I said, glancing at Mr. Isaiah. “You aren’t getting any younger.”

“I feel as good as I ever did,” he said crossly, probably the first time I’d seen something like anger or annoyance from the man.

I snorted. “I bet you do. Or should I say, I bet you’re saying that. But that doesn’t change the fact that you need to keep an eye out for any potential problems. The body wears down as time goes on, even if we don’t notice.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Mona said, looking smug. “I’ve been telling him the same thing for a while now. He’s quite good at putting me off.”

“So what? You needed someone to back you up?”

“Something like that.”

I chuckled, closing the bag. “Not the first time that happened to me.”

I was still curious about being called here when Dr. Greenway was on shift. She certainly had more experience in this sort of thing than I did. It wasn’t done without a reason, that much I knew. Mona wasn’t a woman to do something just for the hell of it. She was capable of the same analysis of others that I was but seemed to have the same intuitive understanding of people that Leon did. Combined with a razor wit and a nose for business, she was not the sort of person you wanted to cross carelessly.

“Are you in need of a check-up as well?” I asked her as I clasped the bag, already knowing the answer.

“No, just had a check-up a couple of weeks ago,” she said, looking up from her phone. “Does that mean you’re done here?”

“I am,” I said, wondering if this was the next step to whatever plan she had in her head.

“Good, then I’ll walk you out,” she said, tucking her phone back into her pocket.

“Sure,” I said because what else would I say?

We walked out of the office and into the hallway, heading toward the large foyer at the end. I hadn’t grown up what one would call poor, but the Big House was on an entirely different level. It wasn’t ostentatious, but it certainly wasn’t lacking.

It seemed almost simple, with its soft-colored rugs over plain wooden floors. There were paintings, but none struck me as terribly expensive. I would bet the wood was the best, and the paintings, tapestries, and animal heads cost more than I could guess. As far as I could see, it was less about making a show and more about sticking to a theme.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when, instead of going into the foyer to take the stairs down, she motioned for me to follow her through a random door near the end. The room proved to be another office. This one decorated a little differently than the rest of the house. The bare bones were there, but the thick wooden desk was covered with marble with a faint pink tint. The large leather chair looked comfortable and was a rich purple.

The paintings in the room had been replaced with photographs from all over the world. After a cursory glance, seeing parts of the world I had never seen before, I realized the pictures were well done but none that I’d seen before.

“Where are these from?” I asked, taking what I thought was an informed guess that this was her office.

“That one? Peru,” she said as I looked over the lush greenery, overseeing an even bigger swathe of greenery cut through by a river like a scar. “The one next to it? Japan.”

“These seem like such random spots.”

“Maybe. But each of them struck a chord when I saw them, so that’s why I took them.”

“Took them? Wait, you took these pictures?”

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