Page 56 of The Voices are Back

I woke up to a note on the coffee table next to my fully charged phone that said:Went on a run down the path at the back of my property. It’s about a four-mile trail run, and I left at 0700. Text me if you need me. Left the burner phone on the counter charging.

I looked at my own phone, tapping the screen to wake it up with a lazy flick, and saw that it was only a quarter past seven. He’d been gone for fifteen minutes or so, giving me plenty of time to get a shower and call Folsom.

What it wouldn’t do was give me enough time to call Folsom to come get me and get out of Aodhan’s place.

Not that she would.

She was a staunch believer in letting a person find their own way in life, meaning that she would be allowing whatever it was going on between Aodhan and me to play out. However, it may play out.

I loved her for her determination, but I knew it wouldn’t be working in my favor.

Hefting my body off of the most comfortable couch in the world—last night after I sat in it, I’d all but sunk into it and never wanted to leave—I headed to the bathroom to relieve myself, and finally gave in to my curiosity and looked around.

As I was using the restroom, I went through his cabinets in front of me.

There was nothing there but linens, bath towels, toilet paper and a first aid kit.

After finishing and washing my hands, I found a spare toothbrush in the left drawer under the sink, brushed my teeth with it, and then went through the rest of the cabinets.

None of them looked as if anyone lived here.

The only interesting thing in the cabinets was a full bottle of sleeping pills—I counted the quantity and compared it to the label, okay?—and a bottle of ibuprofen.

After stripping my clothes off, I turned on the shower and then cursed when I remembered my bag.

That was when I ran out into the kitchen to find it, and ran smack into Aodhan.

He caught me before I could hit the ground, his large, burly arms wrapping around me so protectively that I sighed.

Then I stiffened.

A, my body remembered everything about how it felt to have him wrapped around me when I was practically naked.

B, my heart started to kick up a thousand miles an hour, and I could feel the excitement start to pour through my veins.

“Oh, shit.” I closed my eyes. “You have a chair I can sit in in the shower?”

Because there was no way I was risking taking a shower while standing up, after just having run into him practically naked.

“Of course,” he said. “Um, a kitchen one.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “I can sit on the floor if the showerhead will reach.”

He squeezed me a little tighter, then I was up in his arms, and he was carrying me to his bathroom, not the one I’d just come out of.

His bathroom was a whole lot more interesting.

There was stuff everywhere, and I couldn’t wait to go through it all.

But the best thing in the entire bathroom was the shower that he deposited me right in front of.

Not only was it big, and amazing, and luxurious, but it had a shower seat.

Why did it have a shower seat?

“Why does it have a shower seat?” I asked him aloud when my silent question didn’t have a forthcoming answer.

“The lady that owned this place before me,” he explained. “She had a father that had an amputation. I think it might’ve been the guy’s lower leg or something. She bought this place, and then renovated the master bath for him, so that he could get in and out of it if he ever came over to stay. She wanted him to feel welcome.”

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