Free Obsession (Southern Comfort) by Lisa Clark O'Neill Page B

that way.  Almost like a uniform.  But he very rarely wore them outside the hospital.  If she had to guess, it was because he was uncomfortable with the attention they drew from a certain segment of the female population.  Not that he wasn’t gorgeous enough to draw women like flies, anyway. But some women saw the MD as more important than the actual man.
    “You lost?”
    “What? Oh.  No.” He shook his head when he realized she was indicating his clothes. He shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. “I’m on my way to Murphy’s, actually, if you wouldn’t mind dropping me off.  I’m meeting my brother for dinner.”
    “One of your bro thers is in town?” Kathleen asked with interest.  She’d met his three older brothers at her cousin Tate’s wedding a couple years ago.  Tate’s husband, Clay, was a close family friend of the Wellington’s.  The older brothers all had families, so she knew they sometimes visited in the summer to bring their kids to the beach, but this was the off season.  Way off, she mused, as the wind rattled the windows of her car. 
    “I hope everything is okay.”
    “Yeah, it’s fine,” he said. “Well, mostly fine.  James dropped out of law school.  And it appears he’s moved in.”
    “What?”  Kathleen had to laugh.  She’d never met the youngest Wellington, but she knew after nearly three years of friendship with Justin that he liked his personal space. Having also grown up in a large, boisterous family, it was a sentiment with which she could sympathize. “So you have a housemate?”
    “Temporarily.”  Justin shifted his gaze her way.  “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I was afraid it would feel like babysitting. Of course, it’s only been a few days, and James is on his best behavior.  But he’s matured.  It’s making it easier to remember that he’s not a little kid anymore.”
    “I know what you mean,” she said as she cut down the back street which essentially dead-ended at Murphy’s. “Declan is only two years younger than me, but up until recently, it felt like ten.  But now my annoying kid brother is a married man and an expectant father.  It boggles the mind.  So where’s your truck?”
    “What?”
    “Your truck,” Kathleen repeated as she turned onto the cobblestones of Murphy’s lot. “I know you’re a health nut and all, but you don’t usually walk here from the hospital.”
    Justin avoided her gaze.  “It’s in the shop.”
    Spotting a compact parking space toward the back – Murphy’s was almost always crowded – Kathleen whipped her car in.
    She shifted into park, but left the engine running.  Then laying her arm across the steering wheel, turned to look at Justin.
    “Why?”  Justin usually did all the work on his truck himself.  He’d rebuilt the thing from a veritable shell back in his college days, the manual labor being cathartic with the side benefit of helping him focus better, or so he’d explained.  It was the same reason he did most of the work on his house himself now.  If the truck was in the shop, that meant something major must have happened.
    “Because I don’t have time right now to… fix… what needed to be fixed.”
    Which was an evasion if she’d ever heard one.  That he felt the need for evasion piqued her interest.
    “What needs to be fixed?” she persisted.
    He thought about not answering.  This was one time that his mental roadmap was not only apparent, but lit with neon signs.  His jaw was set as he stared out the windshield.
    “The lock.  I’m having it rekeyed.”
    Kathleen studied his profile.  He was often serious, but rarely bad-tempered.  Now he looked irritable, to say the least.  “Which indicates that you’ve suffered a break-in and the lock was damaged. Or that you have reason to believe that someone whom you don’t wish to have access to your vehicle is in possession of your keys.”
    “It’s pretty damn annoying to have you play detective