Page 331 of Under Her Skin
I have no idea if that will work, but I don’t know what else to do. Then my cell phone vibrates in my pocket, and I pull it out to find it’s Blaine. As I answer the call, I have no time to say a word as he says excitedly, “My mom is withme!”
“I’m not even going to ask you why you think that, even though that would be the most rational thing to say right now. I’m just going to tell you to speak out loud and tell your mother that Meagan needs her right now. She just quit breathing a few minutes ago, and I had to resuscitate her. She sat up in the bed and asked me to gether.”
“I’ll do that. Is Meagan going to be okay?” he asks with a fearfulvoice.
“I have no idea, Blaine. This isn’t in any of ourhands.”
Nothing is in our hands, itseems!
Chapter3
BLAINE
“Okay, I feel kind of stupid doing this,” I say out loud and hope my staff doesn’t hear me. “Mom, Meagan needs you. You have to hurry to her. Please help her,Mom.”
I wait and listen, as if I might hear the slamming of a door as she leaves, which is insane, but I listen for some kind of sound anyway. After five minutes of hearing nothing, I stop. I didn’t ever hear anything before, so I don’t know why I thought I would thistime.
Roxy comes into the room, where we’ve set up a Christmas tree, with a platter of beautiful Christmas cookies she places on the table, then stands back to admire them. “They turned out nice, don’t you think, Mr.Vanderbilt?”
“I do think they look very nice. And how do they taste?” I ask as I go to pick one of them up. I pick up a reindeer and bite its head off. “Yummy!”
She laughs as she leaves the room. “I’ll be bringing in a few platters of little, yummy things for you and Miss Richards to enjoy while you spend this evening together, then I’ll get out of your way so you two can bealone.”
With a smile, I finish wrapping the last box that’s holding Delaney’s ring in it. She will never think there’s a ring in this hugebox!
Even though I know things are going tough at the hospital right now, I can’t stop thinking about how good it’s going to be to have Delaney be a real part of meforever.
If she accepts, I want to be married before the new year begins. I want everything to start out new and fresh. All of it. Then I think about her parents. I seem to have totally forgotten aboutthem.
Going to the bedroom, I find the paper I had her fill out so I could contact them about the meeting that I ended up blowing off. But now I think I might just go with that ideaagain.
Dialing up the number on the paper, I find a woman answering the phone. “Richards’residence.”
“Mrs. Richards, my name is Blaine Vanderbilt, andI…”
She interrupts me, “Wait? Who did you say youare?”
“Blaine Vanderbilt. Your daughter andI…”
“TheBlaine Vanderbilt? The man who owns the Bargain Bin store chain? That man?” she asks, sounding more than a bitconfused.
Then I hear a roaring sound in my ear. “Blaine Vanderbilt?” a man shouts. “Let me talk to that son of abitch!”
“Ma’am, please let me explain,” I say, but hear the phone being shuffledaround.
A booming voice makes me hold the phone away from my ear. “What the hell do you want, you son of abitch?”
“I don’t know if what I was going to ask you would be a smart thing right now. You see, sir, your daughter and Iare…”
“My daughter? Delaney? How do you know her? What have you done with her?” heasks.
“I haven’t done anything with her. I don’t know what you’re implying. Hasn’t she told you about us?” I ask and wait, listening to the sound of deadair.
Finally, he says, “Us?”
Shit!She has not told them a thing aboutme!
“Yes, sir. You see, I met your daughter around Thanksgiving. She and I dated, then moved intogether.”
