Informed Consent by Melissa F Miller

shrugged.
    She wasn’t worried. He was worried. They would likely arrive early enough to take one of the three regularly scheduled ferries to the island, but all three ferries stopped running before six p.m. That would leave him very little time to actually meet with Wynn. So he’d called around and arranged for a private water taxi to transport them to the island, wait for them, and then bring them back. The captain had been amenable, but he was loud and clear about his personal belief that making such a trip, after dark, in late October, was foolish. When Leo mentioned the babies, the captain amended his opinion to ‘damned foolish.’ Leo privately agreed.
    He felt her eyes on his face and glanced at her. “What?”
    “I know what you’re thinking, Connelly.”
    “Tell me—what am I thinking?”
    “You’re thinking that you’d really like to drop me and the twins at the rental house and go to the island alone.”
    “That’s a great idea. I’m glad you’ve finally come—”
    “No. Listen to me. You aren’t doing this alone.”
    “Sasha.”
    “They’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
    He shook his head. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
    She was silent for a long moment. Then she sighed and spread her hands wide in a gesture of appeasement. “We’ll hang out at the cafe that Annabeth told me about, okay? We won’t tag along to Mr. Wynn’s house.”
    He kept his eyes on the road ahead and hoped he was successful in hiding his surprise. He could count on the fingers of no hands the times his wife had suggested a compromise with him. Okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit. She was wildly independent and accustomed to being right—two traits that didn’t lend themselves to easy negotiation.
    “Really?” he asked, almost afraid to believe she meant it.
    “Really.”
    The tension he’d been holding in his neck and shoulders drained away. “That would be a great idea. What made you change your mind?”
    “I wanted to come with you to be a support, Connelly, not a weight. It doesn’t take a genius to see that you’re extra uptight—even for you. You’re not dumping us on the mainland; I want to be close enough to help if you need me. But if you want to go alone to meet your mystery man, we’ll keep our distance.” Her voice turned into a whisper that he had to strain to hear. “Just make sure you take your cell phone. And your gun.”
    “Thank you.” He reached over and covered her hand with his.
    She traced a circle on his thumb with the pad of her pointer finger. “You’re welcome.” Then she eased her hand free and rifled through the backpack at her feet. “Speaking of cell phones,” she said, more to herself than to him, “I need to charge mine so I can tackle my emails after lunch. My battery died right before Finn lost his breakfast.”
    She plugged the device into the charger, leaned her head back against the headrest, and covered a yawn with the palm of her hand.
    “You should take a nap,” he suggested. “That stupid phone isn’t the only thing that needs to recharge, you know.”
    She smiled sleepily and closed her eyes. “Maybe I will. You know what they say—sleep while the babies are sleeping. Or eating their feet.”

16
    A l Kayser hurried down the hallway and caught his receptionist’s eyes as he passed by the waiting room, half filled with patients. She gave her head a discrete shake, wordlessly answering his unasked question. No calls.
    He frowned. It wasn’t like Sasha to ignore her emails. In fact, he’d emailed her precisely because he thought it would result in a quicker response. But several hours had passed since he’d hit ‘send’ and she hadn’t called. He wanted to get her input before he returned Dr. Allstrom’s call, but he couldn’t wait much longer. He was likely to run into her in person in a few hours when he visited his patients at Golden Village, and he knew she’d use the opportunity to press him for an