“Isn’t there something they can give you for the nausea?” he managed.
Lace twisted her mouth into what she hoped look like a grin. Because what else could she do?
“Yeah. There is. And they’ve tried just about everything, actually. Unfortunately, I’ve had reactions to it all,” she informed him as he followed her back to the infusion area, enumerating deets he may or may not want to hear. “First, the meds made memorelikely to lose my lunch, not less, andsecond,they ended up giving me uncontrollable muscle spasms. Go figure. I’m just one of the lucky ones, I guess,” Lace ended sarcastically.
Vincent watched her settle in her chair, then pulled one up opposite to hers, continuing to offer his ear as he sat. “I’m no expert, Lace. Not at all. But what about…? Uh, isn’t marijuana supposed to help?”
She shook her head, regretfully. “I’ve tried the standard ones they normally prescribe; Dronabinol, Nabilone. But they causedizziness and cognitive impairment, which doesn’t mix well with my job.”
Vincent seemed to give up that line of questioning, to settle in with a different tack. “What do you do for a living?”
“Besides this? Oh.” Sarcasm dripped from her words. “You meantfora living, not ‘in order to live’.”
It was a poor cancer joke, but if you couldn’t poke fun at it all, you might as well hang it up.
“I work for NOAA,” she offered. “But you probably already knew that.”
“I did. I do,” he admitted. “Buck told me. But that’s the extent of my intel,” he revealed. “I informed everyone in my nosy-ass family that I wanted to get to know youwithouttheir input. So you’re nearly a blank slate for me.”
Lace let that settle, and she felt pretty good about it.
“How about you?” he continued. “Have you, uh, asked any questions about me?”
“Nope,” she was able to say honestly. “All I know is that you’re one of the renowned Sothards, and that your brother Buck likes to give you shit.”
Vincent laughed. “That, he does. I guess he probably mentioned the bet he and my brothers all made on whether or not I’d dare to do the clown thing, and how he lost.”
“He did.” Lace returned. “But he was laughing so hard when he said it, I can almost imagine hestillhasn’t come down off the high he got from knowing you took the bait.”
Vincent snorted. “Don’t worry about him. Bobbie will make sure he doesn’t spend too long patting his own back.”
“Bobbie’s the bomb,” she said.
“She sure is,” Vincent agreed.
There were a few beats of silence that actually felt comfortable.
“So…” Lace decided to press. “What are you doing here? With me, I mean.”
Now Vincent’s painted face contorted into something she couldn’t quite recognize under all the make-up.
“Honestly?” he asked.
“Always,” she nodded.
“I’m not exactly sure.” He fluttered his hands around in the air, ineffectually, which was pretty funny considering his outfit. She expected him to produce a rabbit from thin air.
Huh.Is that how it worked?Rabbits conjured from nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide?
But he was still speaking.
“To tell you the truth, between you and Inez…” He trailed off and paused.
Inez?
Lace blinked. She hadn’t been hearing things. He’d said, Inez.
Wow.Was Vincent seeing another woman at the hospital while he was…what? Flirting? Hitting on her? Was he hedging his bets between the two? It seemed out of character for who Lace knew the Sothards to be, but what did she actually know about this particular guy?