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“I’ve already spoken to that woman you work for to get you a bonus,” Sophia said, eyeing the plant as though she expected it to get up and walk over to strangle her. “You don’t need to angle for more.”
“I…well, thank you, I didn’t know that,” I said, taken by surprise. “For the record, if I wanted a bonus, I would have just talked to Rhonda about it, not you. And if I did want money from you, which I don’t, I would say it to your face.”
Sophia grunted, leaning back against her pillows. “I can hardly think when you would find the time to speak to me. If I’m not working, I’m sleeping. I haven’t slept this much since I was in swaddling clothes.”
“Rest is precisely what your body needs,” I told her, setting the tablet down.
She glared at me. “If I hear that statement one more time, I may find myself giving in to the temptation to commit a felony.”
I laughed, pulling out what I needed to give her another dose. “I know the feeling. Years ago, I caught a bad case of meningitis, and it unsurprisingly laid me out for a while. It drove me nuts how much I was sleeping and how much I was eating. I barely ate while hospitalized, so after I got out and was on the mend, all I did was eat and sleep. I couldn’t comment on it without someone throwing that line at me, and I was ready to beat someone over the head if I heard it one more time.”
“Fascinating,” she said, shifting on the bed to give me easier access to her. “And from the sound of your unnecessarily long anecdote, you should realize you don’t need to repeat past mistakes.”
“I will stop reminding you of what you need to do to keep your strength,” I promised. I barely managed to keep myself from laughing when she gave me a sharp look at my flippancy.
She was finally right. Maybe I was spending too much time around Shane.
“Have you seen Shane today?” she asked.
I looked up after making sure everything was working and shrugged. “Saw him on the phone earlier, walking around outside his house.”
“And what were you doing that you could see him from that angle?”
Well, I had been standing there with the cleaner in my typical love of hanging around a smoker, but I wasn’t going to tell her that, I wasn’t a snitch. “I like wintertime. So if I have a spare minute, I like to stand around and enjoy the fresh air.”
Sophia grunted softly. “There is a certain cleanness to the winter air that can be appreciated. I imagine Shane was trying to use the air to sober himself up for his phone call. Otherwise, you wouldn’t catch him dead in the cold.”
I had noticed Shane tended to dress incredibly warm when he was outside, and I wondered why he’d never moved to a warmer climate. “Not often I hear you call him by his name.”
Her eyes might have heavy bags under them, but they were as sharp as ever as she glanced at me. “While calling someone by their given name can be a sign of disrespect, it can also be a show of respect, depending upon the context.”
“Or intimacy,” I said, thinking how delighted Shane had been the first time I’d called him by his name. “What’s he done that’s garnered this newfound respect from you?”
“Not that it’s any of your concern, but he’s finally learning to grow up and take on a little responsibility,” Sophia said and then scowled. “That man has brains galore, and he’s wasted them on what? Frivolity, that’s what.”
“I don’t know. From what I’ve heard, he does pretty good at entertaining. I don’t know much about…well, how things work in your world, but I’ve picked up enough to know it’s a good skill to have.”
“My world,” she repeated dryly. “And yes, for the Merediths of the world, it’s a wonderful skill to have.”
“Ah, so it’s about having standards,” I said, fighting the urge to roll my eyes. It wasn’t a wonder someone as willful and spirited as Shane wasn’t on good terms with his mother. The woman really was a snob sometimes.
“It’s about purpose. It’s about doing something beyond your own interests, about leaving a stamp on the world. If being a jester were all he was good for, then all the power to him. My son has always had more potential than any of my children, and he has wasted it acting out against me,” she spat.
I didn’t want to interrupt her, but her little speech had taken me aback. It was eerily like the same explanation Shane had given me weeks ago about his own dissatisfaction with his life and how in many ways, he envied people like me. It seemed like no matter how long I listened to the two of them, I was going to keep finding veins of similarity between them.
“So, you think he has it now?” I asked curiously. “With whatever he’s doing?”
“I do,” she said and then stiffened. “Now, if you’re done prying into business that isn’t yours, I would like to rest. Apparently, I need plenty of it.”
Her sharp tone glanced off me as I removed the line and worked to discard everything. I did a quick check of her vitals before recording them and storing everything away once more. Sophia had remained quiet throughout the rest of my time in her room, which I had long since learned was what she did when she was thinking intensely about something.
“As per usual,” I said while leaving the room. “Ring me for anything.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll let you know if I see Death creeping through the window,” she told me dryly. “Perhaps he’ll come for that plant of yours. Lord knows how I’m going to remember to care for it.”
I shook my head but said nothing as I stepped out of the room, closing the door behind me. Descending the stairs into the main hall, I took two steps toward the kitchen before a hand closed around my wrist. A grunt of surprise left me as I was jerked back a couple of steps before being pressed against the doorway.
I didn’t need to see who it was as the faint smell, reminding me of leather and warm beaches, surrounded me, followed by familiar lips pressing against my own. Just for a moment, I forgot where we were and reached up to twine my fingers in Shane’s hair to draw him down into the kiss with a surge of pleasure and desire.
