My eyebrows raised. “Why haven’t you mentioned him before?”
“You weren’t ready,” he said. He opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a business card. He reached across the desk and handed it to me. “Give Dr. Franks a call and tell him I sent you.”
I looked down at the card, expecting to see an alphabet soup of letters after the doctor’s name. There wasn’t. There was just a word in italics off to the side but it still hit me like a slap across the face. I glanced up at Dr. Henry. “A psychiatrist?”
“It’s the only remaining avenue of help I can offer you,” he said.
* * *
When we got home, I couldn’t stomach the thought of food. I excused myself and disappeared into my room. I sulked in there for a couple of hours, contemplating what I should do. I was not going to a head doctor. No way. No how. Forget about it. There was nothing wrong with my mind. It was my body that was damaged. Dr. Henry had just run out of ideas. Clearly, I needed to get a second opinion and possibly a third. There had to be someone out there who understood why I had become a prisoner in my own body.
Alone, I pushed myself up to my feet. My leg felt fine at the moment, which was a relief but it was always shadowed by the anxiety of wondering when it would go out again, which caused me to spiral into a swamp of fear that I had to claw my way out of. It was exhausting.
Jackson and I had been working hard on my legs. I was convinced that if I could get them to be as strong as my arms, then I wouldn’t have to worry about the left one randomly collapsing. I took a few steps toward the window. My leg held. I reached the wall and leaned against it, feeling relieved that if my leg did give out, I could catch myself or slide right down the wall. Undignified sure, but better than concussing myself on the furniture or the floor with an abrupt fall. It had happened before.
I thought about Lexi’s appearance here a few nights ago. I wondered how long she had waited to get access to the inside of the estate. Even though Lexi had refused to come across with a description or a name, I knew who had let her onto the property. Annabelle Martin, my exasperating tenant. Even when she wasn’t flagrantly breaking the rules, she was causing me grief. I was going to have to make sure she was more careful with her comings and goings.
The whole scene with Lexi could have been avoided if Annabelle had been paying attention and closed the gate after herself without letting anyone in. If Lexi had snuck in behind Annabelle, then a mugger, burglar, or rapist certainly could have.
The thought of my tenant being harmed while residing in my guest house made my blood run cold. Not because I cared about her, I assured myself. I’d never even met the woman, not really. No, it was just the thought of something bad happening on my property that upset me. It would be more grief that I had no desire to deal with.
I pushed aside the heavy drapes and peered down across the backyard. It was aglow from the blue lights in the pool and the violet in the hot tub. Both were vacant. At least my tenant had respected my request to stop using the hot tub. I glanced past the lemon and lime trees at the little house set amid the olive trees. The lights were on. Unlike me, Annabelle never closed her drapes. I hated to admit it, but it had unlocked a voyeuristic tendency in me, which, up until now, I’d been completely unaware of. I told myself I was just checking up on her every now and then to be certain she wasn’t burning the place down, but that was a lie.
The pretty brunette was becoming a minor obsession. I looked for her in the morning, when she drank her coffee on the patio, and I looked for her again at night. She flitted around her kitchen as if listening to music and I frequently saw her working late at the desk in her bedroom. I told myself I was just keeping tabs on a single woman living alone in the city. I was looking out for her, really. That was another lie. The truth was she fascinated me, from the way she moved to the smile I saw on her lips when she sat in the sun. And truthfully, I enjoyed her sassy notes, and her pencil sketches showed remarkable talent. Jackson was right. She really was a goddess. I shook my head. Man, I needed to get out more.
Knowing all this, I also knew that the right thing to do, of course, would be to close the drapes and walk away. I knew that. Just because my tenant left her curtains open, it was not an invitation for me to look in at her. Like right now, I could see her nestled in her chair in her living room, reading a book by the fire, and it looked so damned cozy and inviting that I—
I blinked. Once. Twice. I did not just see that. Damn it! Yes, I did. I squinted. Maybe I was wrong. I wasn’t wrong. As I watched, a black-and-white feline sauntered from the patio outside, through the open French door, to hop up onto the red throw on the sofa of the guest house. My tenant looked up from her book and smiled as if greeting a friend. I had to be seeing things. Nope. As I watched, it lifted its hind leg and licked its butt.
There were no two ways about it. Despite my detailed list of rules, which clearly stated no pets, my tenant had acquired a cat. A cat!
Annabelle
13
Shockingly, things did not improve between me and Carson after the altercation at the elevator. Okay, it wasn’t really an altercation, not even a tiff or a squabble, still every time I saw him that week, my shoulders ratcheted up around my ears. I hated conflict just like I hated tension, and Carson West was causing me to feel both. It was also why I’d been stalling talking to Sophie about Miguel’s relationship with Carson. I loathed feeling uncomfortable and did not want to make anyone else feel that way either. The whole situation was exhausting, and I was so far out of my league in dealing with this sort of nonsense that I just wanted to curl up in a ball on my couch and down an entire bottle of wine.
Instead, at the end of each day, I walked home, enjoying the crisp evening air and the knowledge that I had an entire evening ahead of me that was mine all mine and I wasn’t about to let Carson West take that away from me. As I walked home on Thursday night, I debated the possibilities. An online yoga class? Or I could sprawl in the chair by the fireplace and read a mystery or maybe another rom-com. I supposed I should be more productive and go to the art supply store and buy some paint and canvases. I wanted to do all these things all at the same time. Dilemma. But first dinner.
I dropped my bag as soon as I entered my house. I poured myself a glass of wine and considered the contents of my refrigerator and pantry. It looked like tonight was a fettuccine Alfredo night. This is my fallback single gal meal. All I needed to make the sauce was butter, heavy cream, a crushed garlic clove, and a cup and a half of shredded parmesan. These were ingredients that I made certain to always have on hand.
As had become my habit, I opened one of the French doors to the yard while I started cooking to allow some fresh air into the house. My fettuccine was boiling and my sauce was thickening when who should saunter in through the door as if he owned the joint? My new sleepover pal who’d been showing up every night right around suppertime. Little sir sat in the doorway, licking his chest as if making himself presentable for dinner.