“I can read to you,” Vincent offered.
“And I can, too,” Lace concurred.
“Really? That’d be awesome.” Inez bounced up and down in her excitement.
At that moment Lace shared a look with Vincent that said she was all in.
Vince hadn’t expected this turn of events, but he liked it a lot.
To give him time to get his roller-coaster of emotions under control, he removed a deck of cards from his pocket and began shuffling them
He cleared his throat. “So, Inez, do you know all your numbers?”
She giggled a little as she watched him shuffle. “Uh, huh. I know all the numbersandall the…thingies,” she told him proudly.
Vince took that to mean, suits.
She stuck up a hand and enumerated on her fingers. “There’s A through King in hearts, diamonds…” she hesitated, thinking hard before coming out with, “…clovers, and shovels.”
Vincent beamed.Close enough.
“That’s right. Which means I can do some magic tricks for you.”
Lace got up from the seat she’d taken. “And while he does that, I’m going to go have a chat with some of the nurses.”
Damn.Lace didn’t miss a beat.
She’d have Inez’s entire bio before they left the ward.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It hadn’t been hard for Lace to find out all about Inez. It seemed the nurses were not only sympathetic, but angry with the way the girl was so carelessly dropped off and handed over to them without any support.
With Lace hooked up to her own weekly vein-venom, they’d also figured, and rightly so, that she was a knowledgeable and sympathetic ear.
It hadn’t hurt that the nurses were also all speculating about what Fluffo looked like without his caftan and face paint on, so Lace had used that, and dangled it in front of their noses as a bargaining chip.
She’d give them info regardingVincent, in return for the scoop on Inez.
It had worked like a charm.
As soon as they’d all agreed on a surreptitious information swap, Lace had outed Vincent’s real name to them, then gone onto social media to find pictures of Diver Downeast’s staff to pass around. Vincent wasn’t in any of the media stills, but Lace didn’t hesitate to assure the RNs that Spencer, Buck, Trask, and Julian all had a familial resemblance to the Vince who was obscured beneath his make-up.
Naturally, they’d all swooned, and now—Lace chuckled to herself—Inez was not only going to get a lot of extra “care” and attention from this team, but every time the little girl was here, they’d personally escort Lace to Inez’s side.Evenfor the treatments of which Vincent hadn’t yet been apprised.
Right.Lace thoughtshehad it bad, but what she’d been told regarding Inez, nearly had her weeping. She knew that the additional step Inez was undergoing was all for the little girl’s good, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
It also doubled down on the anger inside Lace. How could anyone, foster parent or social worker, be allowed to treat a six-year-old—or anyone for that matter—so callously?
Lace was just happy she’d been given permission to hold the little girl’s hand through the worst of it. She’d wanted to be involved somehow, just like Vincent was by being his clown-self, and now she felt as if she was doing a small part.
As Lace walked back to where the man in question was still entertaining an ever-growing group of children, she watched as he interacted and didn’t let even the slightest inkling show of how difficult he must find it to keep a happy face.
That made Lace realize that she needed to slow her expectations. Not end them.Nope. Vincent had made it clear he wanted to hang with her. But Lace also knew that Vince was a good guy with a big heart who stepped up when he felt there were things confronting him that he could “fix”.
That’s most likely what he was doing with her, and she didn’t want to be fixed.
She wanted himchoosingto be with her.