“Eat your Jell-O, dude.” Kyle gave him a shit-eating grin. Getting shot and going through surgery had done odd things for his mood. The normally taciturn guy had been positively cheery since they’d wheeled them into this room for a couple of days recovery.
Grace sent her son a frown and brought a second bag over to Hutch’s bed. “Of course we brought you some lunch. And a slice of chocolate cake.”
His stomach rumbled.
“Should you be eating that?” Kyle asked. “I got a lung shot, but you got hit twice in the abdomen.”
“It missed my stomach.” He’d been lucky. A couple of days here and he could recover at his place, where Noelle and her stepmom had already been working to make the house more comfortable. They’d been shopping in between Noelle taking meetings with Drew Lawless.
That had been his idea. Even with Jessica Layne dead, there were legal difficulties involving all the research that had been done at Genedyne and who owned it. Drew Lawless had been happy to pick it all up for a multimillion dollar song, and Noelle was going to take the lead when it came to the research portion of the new company.
“You both deserve good food,” Grace said with a smile as she put the bag on his tray. “After what you two went through, you should both take a nice long rest. I’m happy to hear that Noelle’s parents are staying with you for a while.”
“Lila’s going to stay for a week. She wants to make sure I recover all right.” Noelle’s stepmom was a force of nature who’d had everyone in the hospital hopping. “Her dad is taking her brothers back to Louisiana tomorrow. They’re afraid I might be too fragile to be around the boys. They like to destroy things.”
Her brothers were awesome and sweet. Armie LaVigne was on the scary side, but once Noelle had explained how he’d taken that second bullet for her, he’d warmed considerably.
“They seem like lovely people,” Grace said. “And your Noelle is so smart.”
She was smart and kind and so gorgeous it hurt to look at her. He already missed her.
“Hey, did they figure out who the other agent was?” Sean Taggart had been filled in on the entire op.
“MaeBe and Noelle both gave us descriptions and we had a police artist sketch the suspect, but she’s a ghost,” Kyle admitted. “I don’t think we have to worry about her again. She did her job and she’ll move on to the next one.”
“Now that we found the material Madison Wallace hid in Noelle’s locker, there’s no reason for anyone to come after Noelle for anything but to curry favor with the new boss.” It had felt good to be able to make that happen for her. Genedyne would be what it was supposed to be. It would be a place where scientists tried to change the world.
“I can’t believe you just put it out there,” Grace said with a shake of her head. “That was an amazingly generous thing to do. The company could have kept it.”
“Noelle wanted to do it, and she convinced Lawless.” His future wife had a huge heart. “Madison’s research is promising, but it’s in its infancy. Now there will be a race to see who can make it work first. And that means we might cure cancer. There are things no one should put a price tag on.”
Grace looked down at him. “Do you know how proud your mother would be of you?”
His mom. She’d been caught in such a bad place, and sometimes he only remembered her crying and wanting to hide. But there had been times when she’d snuck in late at night and crawled into bed with him and held him when he’d been sick. When she’d told him she loved him.
“I hope so.” He often wondered what would have happened if his mother had lived. She would have loved Noelle.
“I know so,” Grace promised.
And then the door opened and Carys and Luke were back with the drinks they’d gone to get, and MaeBe walked in with a smile, though her face was still healing. Grace had a huge hug for MaeBe, and Kyle seemed to have lost interest in his food because all his attention was focused on her.
It wasn’t a minute before Noelle walked in and brought all of the sunshine in the world with her.
“Hey,” she said, moving to his bedside. “Lila and I bought dishes and all new