Oops.
Chelsea's gaze was rueful as her godfather sat next to her on the chaise. Edgar Coolidge was in his early seventies but moved like he was twenty years younger. And since he also looked very much like Dustin Hoffman, Chelsea could see how his presence was attracting a lot of attention from other women.
"I'm sorry, I didn't want to cause you additional trouble."
"So you decided to give me a heart attack instead?"
Chelsea winced. "Is it really that bad an idea, coming here on my own?"
Edgar simply looked at her, and all she could do was smile sheepishly. His silence said everything. He had warned her repeatedly that coming here on her own was a bad idea. But...she was willing to take the risk, and Edgar had already done so much for her.
"I'm sorry, Edgar. I guess...I'm still a little impatient."
Edgar's gaze bored through hers. "A little?"
Chelsea could only laugh. "Okay, fine. It's the one thing I've never been able to outgrow. But surely you see why I'm doing this? I can't live the rest of my life until I know for sure—-"
The sound of Edgar's phone ringing cut her off.
"You can take it," Chelsea said. "I'm suddenly feeling thirsty." She pointed to the vendo machine near the elevators. "Do you want me to get anything?"
"I think they have black tea here."
"How very fancy," she teased, but Edgar only rolled his eyes. As she walked away, she heard him answer the call in an unusually somber voice. Hmm. She had never heard him speak like that, and he was already retired. Could it be about work? Or someone he knew personally?
Chelsea found herself absently thinking about these things as she ordered her can of coffee from the vendo. The machine was one of those sleek, touchscreen kinds that offered about forty different beverages with names that sounded more like incantations than drinks. She spent longer than she should have trying to find a simple black tea, and when she finally located it (under "Heritage Infusions," honestly), she tapped her card and waited.
She was still trying to figure out if she should've ordered English Breakfast or Earl Grey (Edgar had opinions about these things, but she could never remember which way they went) when she tapped her card to order the second drink and—-
One moment the lobby was its usual orchestrated self, and the next a woman with a press badge was cutting through the crowd with the focused velocity of someone who had been waiting for a specific elevator to open, recorder already extended, and Chelsea, who had just straightened up—-
Aaah!
The journalist came out of nowhere, carelessly shoving Chelsea out of the way because she had her eyes on the prize and nowhere else. Caught off guard, Chelsea didn't have the time, the strength, or the presence of mind to figure out how to make her injured leg maintain its precarious balance—-
Oh no!
She could only brace herself for impact, just waiting for the inevitable to do its damage.
But instead...
Huh?
Someone had caught her, an arm going around her waist as she was pulled back and upright in a single movement. In a blink, Chelsea found herself standing, steadied, her back against something solid while the lobby erupted around her and then, just as quickly, resolved itself—-security appearing, the journalist being redirected, voices and then no voices.
The arm stayed.
Not loosening. Not tightening. Just...there. Around her waist, holding her against what she now realized was someone's chest, and that chest was doing what chests generally did, which was rise and fall with breathing, except this particular rise and fall had a slowness to it that made Chelsea suddenly very aware of her own breathing, which was the opposite of slow and getting less so by the second.
Warm.
That was the thought that arrived first, before any of the useful ones likewho is thisorwhy is his arm still around meorshould I say something.
This arm...
It belonged to someone whose touch was...warm.
The kind of warm that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the fact that for three years, the only people who had touched her were wearing medical gloves and asking her to rate her pain on a scale of one to ten.
