Love Redesigned (Lakefront Billionaires #1) by Lauren Asher

While I can’t receive any confirmation from the other person, I know they’ll figure it out or call someone who will.

I refuse to believe otherwise.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Julian


I didn’t think when I ran out of my office.

Or when I broke five different road rules in my panic to make it back to the Founder’s house.

In fact, my body is running on pure adrenaline and a single brain cell as I rush into the house, shouting Dahlia’s name while searching for the attic.

She cries out from one side of the house, and I rush to the stairs. My shoes slap against the wood, matching the staccato beat of my heart as I hurry up the steps.

The sight of Dahlia cradling her left arm to her chest nearly brings me to my knees.

This is all your fault.

“What happened?” I do my best to tamp down the edge in my voice.

“Oh, thank God you came alone. I don’t think I could deal with my mom or sister hyperventilating and praying the pain away right now.” Dahlia’s voice cracks, betraying the calm mask she’s fighting to keep.

My gaze bounces between her, the ladder, and the rolls of paper a few feet away. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Can you help me first, lecture me later? I’m pretty sure I broke my arm.” She points at her limp limb.

“I’m going to call for an ambulance.” I kneel beside her and fumble for my phone.

“No!”

“Why not?”

“No need for that whole production.”

I check out her arm again. “We could make everything worse by moving you.”

“The thought of being in an ambulance…” Her voice shakes.

Shit. In my panic, I nearly forgot about how Dahlia had a front-row seat to her dad dying in the back of an ambulance from a stroke.

“Will you drive? Please.” She attempts to sit up.

I hold her down by pressing her shoulders while assessing the situation. “I’m going to have to carry you.”

“I can walk! Watch. But help me stand up first.” She attempts to sit up with a hiss.

“Stop moving or I’m calling an ambulance.”

“Wait! Can you get my phone first? It’s on the windowsill.”

“Fine.” I grab her phone and tuck it into my back pocket.

I kneel and slide my arms beneath her. Her eyes water as I hold her against my chest and rise, doing my best to avoid aggravating her injury.

My hands tighten around her. “You good?”

“Never been better.” Her overly cheery voice grates on my frayed nerves.

When she answered the phone, my mind jumped to the worst conclusion based on Dahlia’s muffled, panicked voice. I couldn’t stop the graphic images from playing in my head after years spent working in construction.

Cracked skull.

Broken spine.

Paralysis.

You’ve seen it all, yet you never reacted like this before.

I shake the thought away, only to have it return with a vengeance as Dahlia hides her face against my shirt, dampening the material with her tears.

You still care about her.

Mierda.

I’m not given more than a second to process the thought before Dahlia speaks up again.

She sniffles. “This is all so stupid.”

I stalk toward the exit. “What is?”

“Breaking my arm like this.”

“How did it happen?” I walk toward the stairwell while doing my best to keep her steady.

“I had a run-in with a spider.”

“A spider?”

“I know what you’re thinking. But that beast was the size of a tarantula and had a set of fangs like a snake.” She trembles against me when I take the first step down the stairs.

You should have been here.

I knew leaving Dahlia behind to finish what we started wasn’t polite, but I had a phone call I needed to take and a meeting I couldn’t miss.

Couldn’t or wouldn’t?

The best part of my day was doing the walk-through with her—an anomaly in itself—and the last thing I wanted to do was head back to the office.

The artery in my neck pulses with each annoying thump of my heart.

I missed a part of Dahlia’s ramblings, but it’s easy to catch on as she continues. “The creature was a thing of nightmares. I’m lucky to be alive right now to tell the tale.”

Dahlia only talks to me like this when she is anxious or in pain. So to keep her occupied, I entertain her with conversation while walking through the mansion.

“Should I contact pest control?’’ I ask.

“Pest control? No way. You need the Department of Natural Resources to come out here and drop fumigation bombs because I have a feeling that creature was one of many.”

“You think there are more?”

“Of course. Perhaps hundreds.” She glances toward the ceiling. “Actually, no. Thousands. Make sure the DNR knows all of this when you give them a call tomorrow. When it comes to the government, you need to exaggerate matters to get anyone’s attention.”

“But by the time they get around to the case, the property will be overrun with spiders the size of people.”

She tucks her face against my chest in a poor attempt to hide her smile, only to pull back after a sniffle. “What happened to your cologne?”