Can't Help Loving You

by Nika Rhone

  Her eyes bugged out a tiny bit. “That was you?”

  “Yup. You thought you were so clever, didn’t you? Calling in those false complaints, getting the health department to shut down the caterer. All at the last minute. It should have been too late to find anyone to take their place, right?”

  “Yesss.” It came out like an angry hiss.

  “Bet you were pissed as hell when you saw that everything was going fine, despite all your efforts.” He jerked his thumb at himself. “Thanks to me.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Better than fine, actually. The night was a huge success. Better than Felix could have ever imagined. I really saved the day. And you? Well, you just faded into the background. Like always.”

  “You. Ruined. Everything!”

  Rafe tensed at the shrieked words, finger resting on the trigger, waiting for an attack that never came. Instead, just when it seemed like she was about to shove Lillian aside and make a rush at him, she curled her arm even tighter around her hostage and gave him a snarling smile. For the first time, he noticed the smear of blood on Bernice’s lips and chin.

  “No. I’m not that stupid. Besides, I know what will really make you hurt.” She jerked Lillian, who grimaced as another thin red line appeared on her neck. “Making you watch me kill your slutty little girlfriend. That way I get to pay you both back.”

  “Rafe.” Lillian’s eyes found his. Her gaze flicked to where the gun was still hidden at his side before locking onto his eyes again with grim intensity. “I don’t love her.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Bernice demanded.

  Lillian didn’t answer her, but Rafe knew. She was telling him to take the shot he’d once been begged not to. “Are you sure?”

  She tried to nod, then stopped when the blade reminded her to stay still. “I trust you.”

  Yeah, no pressure there. He wet his suddenly dry lips. “Love you.”

  “Stop ignoring me, dammit!”

  Lillian smiled. “Love you too.”

  “I can shut you up!” Bernice’s arm tensed, the knife shaking as she prepared to follow through on her threat.

  “Don’t.” The gun came up and leveled on her. “Last chance, Bernice. Drop the knife.”

  She gave a slightly crazed laugh. “What are you going to do? Shoot m—”

  The gunshot was still echoing in his ears when he grabbed Lillian into his arms and pulled her away from the screaming woman on the ground. Blood spilled down Lillian’s neck in a red tide. Frantic to stem the flow, he yanked off his shirt and wadded it against where it seemed to come from. “Hold this! Tight!”

  He hated to leave her for even a second, but he needed to open the door to the police who were about to break it down, no doubt with Peter leading the charge. He didn’t need them, but he did need the paramedics who would be with them. He kicked the knife farther away from Bernice as he stepped over her writhing form, undid the last lock, and yelled before opening it, “Officer Delgado. We’re clear. Hold your fire. Suspect is down and disarmed. We need medical in here. Now!”

  He was back at Lillian’s side before the first officer got through the door. “Hang on, querida. Help is coming.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t think most of this is mine.” Her legs wobbled. Rafe caught her before she fell and eased her to a sitting position. “Or maybe it is,” she added in a weak voice.

  “Jesus, Lil!” Peter knelt beside them, his face a mask of worry and disbelief. He glared at Rafe, who was applying more pressure to the makeshift bandage. “What the fuck happened?”

  “Bernice must have cut her with the knife when I shot her. Dammit! Where’s the fucking medic?”

  “Right here. If you’ll move so I can take a look at the patient…”

  With great reluctance, Rafe relinquished his spot at Lillian’s side to let the paramedic take over. Wiping his bloody hands on his jeans didn’t do much, but he wasn’t going even as far as the kitchen to get himself a towel to clean up. Instead, he stood vigil watching every move the paramedic made. Lillian had been hurt on his watch. He wasn’t trusting anyone else with her safety. Not until he stopped freaking the fuck out about how close she’d been to the bullet that had taken Bernice in the shoulder, or how much blood she was losing, or how his entire life would be nothing but a pile of smoldering shit if she didn’t recover.

  “What the fuck happened?” Peter demanded again.

  Rafe struggled to pull his attention away from Lillian long enough to answer. “Bernice fucking happened.”

  Peter’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “Who?”

  “Exactly.” Rafe gestured to her, where another medic was applying a pressure bandage to her wound. Her screams had subsided to whimpers. “The receptionist from the gallery. She’s the nutjob who’s been targeting your sister. She used my brother”—he glanced to the sofa to reassure himself that Cris was getting medical attention—“to get into the building, then somehow set the fire in Lillian’s apartment.”

  “She drugged him,” Lillian said. She hissed when the medic peeled back the makeshift bandage to check her wound. “Xanax, or so she said.”

  The medic taking Cris’s vitals nodded to show he’d heard.

  “Christ.” Peter dragged his hand through his short hair, rumpled and molded into a severe case of bed-head. “The fire’s out, by the way.”

  “Thank God.”

  “It’s prelim, but the fire chief says it looked like some kind of accelerant was squirted under the apartment door.”

  “Paint thinner.” Rolling her eyes at the twin looks of disbelief she got, she said, “I smelled it on her hands when she was…”

  When she was threatening to slice her throat open like a peach. A surge of fury erupted in Rafe’s gut at the reminder of how close things had come. Not that they were out of the woods yet.

  “How bad is it?” he asked the medic, who was putting a series of butterfly bandages on the seam that had been opened on Lillian’s tender throat. There was a lot of blood all over the place, but nothing seemed to be gushing or spurting, so he took that as a good sign.

  “She’ll need some stitches, but she was lucky. A little deeper…” He left the rest unsaid as he wrapped gauze to help stem the oozing going on from the other two shallower cuts Bernice had inflicted. To Lillian he said, “You might want to see about getting a plastic surgeon to do the work. They can probably make the scar next to invisible. Like it never happened.”

  “But it did.”

  Her haunted words hit Rafe like a punch in the gut. Dammit to hell, he was supposed to protect her. To keep her safe. And instead she’d nearly gotten killed, not once, but twice in one night on his watch. How could she ever forgive something like that?

  How could he?

  He wanted to go to her, touch her, hold onto her and never let her go. But he got shuffled aside as the gurney was brought in and Lillian was loaded on, so he went and checked Cris instead. He was still way out of it, but the medic said that his vitals were stable and he didn’t show any signs of being overdosed.

  “So much for liking your women a little bit ah,” he whispered as he gave his brother a side-hug. Cris showed no hint of understanding, just gave him a sleepy grin. The constriction on Rafe’s heart eased a little. At least when he called his parents, it wouldn’t be to tell them that he’d gotten his baby brother killed.

  As the medics wheeled Lillian out of the apartment, she threw him a panicked look. “Rafe?”

  “Right here, sweetheart.” But as he tried to get to her side, he found his way blocked by her brother.

  “You have a statement to give and a shitload of questions to answer before you go anywhere, Officer Delgado.”

  Fuck me sideways.

  He hated it, but Peter was right. He’d shot a suspect. In his own apartment. In a building that had been set on fire. There would be a lot of people wanting a piece of him before the night was over, not the least of which would be IAB. The head of Internal Affairs already
had half a hard-on for him after last year’s clusterfuck. Tonight just might be the icing on his dismissal cake.

  And yet, as important as his career had always been, the possibility of being fired paled compared to not being able to go with Lillian to the hospital and hold her hand and reassure her everything was going to be okay now. Fuck the job. He wanted his woman.

  Funny how imminent death could rearrange your priorities in less than a heartbeat.

  Short of punching her brother in the head, though, Rafe wouldn’t get past him in time to go with her now. “I’ll see you at the hospital in a little while, querida.”

  “Promise?”

  He hated how small and scared her voice sounded. “I promise. Nothing could keep me from your side.”

  “Get her out of here,” Peter said to the medics.

  They wheeled her out, Rafe’s heart clenching as her pale, blood- and tear-streaked face disappeared from sight. His body actually took an involuntary step after her. Peter’s hand to his chest stopped him.

  All at once, exhaustion swamped Rafe as his adrenaline high crashed down right on top of him. He pushed Peter’s hand aside and met his angry gaze with one of his own. “Let’s get this over with. I don’t want to keep her waiting a single second longer than I have to.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Nothing could keep me from your side.

  That promise, and the resolute certainty it had been spoken with, were the only things that kept Lillian from freaking out on the short ambulance ride to the hospital. Well, that, and the constant stream of silly chatter from the medic riding with her.

  He’d introduced himself as Orlando, and kept her distracted with a running monologue on his family. It seemed he, his brother and sister, had recently come to the conclusion they’d all been named for the cities in which they’d been conceived, based on their parents’ vacation photos. Which, he went on, had left them wondering what might have happened if they’d been born the years their folks had visited Nashville, Chicago, and Seattle.

  True or not, the absurdity of the one-sided conversation helped. It wasn’t until she’d been left in a curtained-off cubicle in the emergency room in the hands of a tired looking nurse in purple scrubs who was hooking her up to a bunch of equally tired looking equipment the reality of everything that had happened sank in.

  Holy. Hell.

  The shakes started then. She tried to control them, but her body seemed determined to rattle her teeth loose from her head. Not even the blanket the nurse produced helped. No, what she needed was to be held by the one man who made her feel safer than anyone or anything in this world. But he wasn’t there, so she had to suffer alone.

  Not fair, Lil. Not when he didn’t have a choice in the matter. The same thing had happened when Thea’s then-boyfriend/bodyguard Doyle had shot her stalker and she had to go to the hospital without him while he answered a million questions from the police and Secret Service. But logic didn’t do anything to quell the shudders that wracked her body as she huddled under the thin blanket, praying for Rafe to hurry up and get there like he promised.

  Then she heard the next best thing.

  “My daughter was just brought in by ambulance. Can you tell me where she is?”

  Her heart thumped. “Daddy?”

  The curtain was yanked aside. “Lillian, sweetheart.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, Daddy.” She held out her arms and he hurried to her, wrapping her gently in the strong arms that had rocked her to sleep hundreds of times as a child and never once failed to make her feel safe and loved.

  It wasn’t as good as having Rafe hold her, but it was close.

  Pulling back, her father looked her over with a frantic light in his eyes. “Sweetheart, what happened? Are you okay? I got the call from the alarm company that there was a fire at the building, and when I was almost there your brother called to say you’d been taken away in an ambulance.”

  “I’m okay. Really.”

  “They don’t take you to the hospital for okay.” He touched the bandages on her neck, his expression darkening. “Tell me everything.”

  “I’m afraid that has to wait.” Shouldering aside the curtain, a young man in worn jeans and a white lab jacket with a stethoscope slung around his neck stepped up to the opposite side of the hospital bed, his eyes on the chart in his hands. “I’m Doctor Antonoff. I’ll be taking care of you tonight. Well, I guess that’s actually this morning, isn’t it?”

  This was her doctor? He looked like he wasn’t much older than her. Until he directed his smiling gaze at her and Lillian saw the fine lines framing his deep blue eyes. He might look like a twenty-something surfer dude with his thick blond hair and 3 a.m. scruff, but there was some mileage on that good-looking face. He just wore it well.

  Her father, however, wasn’t looking that closely. He shook his head. “What are you, all of about two minutes out of med school? No, I want the senior doctor handling my daughter’s treatment. You get him down here, right now.”

  “Dad!” Horrified, Lillian gave the doctor an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. He’s upset. He didn’t mean that.”

  “Of course, I meant it,” Rupert growled. “You’re my little girl. Do you think I want some wet-behind-the-ears intern touching you?”

  “Well, then, I’m sorry, sir, but I am the senior doctor on staff at the moment. And I can assure you, my ears haven’t been wet for quite a few years now.”

  Eyes narrowing, Rupert said, “Then I’ll call in my personal physician.”

  Dr. Antonoff cocked his head. “Of course, that’s your right, sir. But wouldn’t you rather have the doctor who’s already here treating your daughter’s injuries now rather than have her sit there, bleeding, while you wait for your doctor to get here?”

  “Daddy.” Lillian placed her hand on her father’s arm. “It’s fine. I have total confidence in Dr. Antonoff’s abilities. Please, just let him do his job so I can get out of here.”

  “But—”

  “Is Mom here?”

  Successfully diverted, he nodded. “Of course. But they wouldn’t let us both come in to see you. She’s in the waiting room, losing her mind with worry.” He shot the doctor a look like that was his fault too.

  “Then you should go and tell her I’m fine.” Lillian was impressed by the doctor’s ability to withstand the withering glare that usually reduced lesser mortals to sweaty, twitching wrecks. “Then can you send her in here, please?” The little wobble in her voice wasn’t planned, but it was enough to deflate her father’s over-protective bulldog mode.

  “Of course, sweetheart. If you’re sure.” He gave the doctor, who pretended he wasn’t there as he read the charts, another doubtful look.

  “I’m sure.” She turned her cheek up for him to kiss, concentrating on not wincing as the motion pulled at the wounds. The second he was out of earshot, she gave the doctor an embarrassed look. “I am so sorry. My father can be…”

  “Concerned about his little girl,” he finished with a smile. “Don’t even worry about it. If I had a daughter, I’d want to make sure she was getting the best possible care too. I don’t take it personally.”

  “Thank you for understanding. But he still shouldn’t have been so rude.”

  The doctor laughed as he reached for the gauze on her neck. “Compared to some of the things I’ve had said to me, your father was a pussycat. Now, let’s get a look at you and see what we’re dealing with.”

  “Okay.”

  Her mother came into the cubicle as the last of the gauze came off. Other than a quick gasp, she didn’t say anything, for which Lillian was grateful. She went right to Lillian’s side, took her hand, and held it throughout the exam. Lillian was a little nauseated by the time the butterfly bandages were peeled off and the doctor had examined and cleaned the three wounds.

  “What’s the verdict?” she asked as the doctor made a few notes on her chart.

  “I’ll be honest, those are some of the neatest cuts I’ve ever seen out
side of an operating room. Whatever caused them must have been precision sharp.”

  “Is that good or bad?” her mother asked.

  “Definitely good. We’ve got some nice, clean edges to work with. Two of the cuts aren’t deep enough to require stitches, but the third is.” He looked at Lillian. “I can do them, but you may want to call in a plastic surgeon, considering the highly visible location.”

  He was the second person to make that suggestion. Just how horrible did her neck look, anyway?

  Deciding against asking for a mirror, given her already queasy state, she asked, “In your opinion, would there be that much of a difference in the end result?”

  A look of competitive eagerness lit Dr. Antonoff’s eyes. “I think I can give him a run for his money.”

  Her mother touched her arm to get her attention. “Lillian, sweetheart. Your father can arrange for the top plastic surgeon in the state with one phone call. He’ll send his plane for him and have him here in next to no time.”

  That made the doctor pause. Lillian could practically see him reevaluating just who his patient was and what kind of resources were at her disposal. “I can certainly make you comfortable until he gets here.”

  “No, I want you to do it.” Because she didn’t want to sit there in her blood-soaked clothes a second longer than necessary.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  He studied her for a long second before he gave a slow nod, the gleam back in his eyes. “Okay, then. Let me go get a suture setup and we’ll get you stitched and on your way.”

  As he left the cubicle, Lillian caught a glimpse of a tall, dark-haired man standing outside. Her heart jumped, but she realized as the curtain fell back into place and blocked her view that it wasn’t Rafe. She looked up at her mother. “Is Rafe out there?”

  Stroking her daughter’s hair like she had when Lillian was a small child, Patricia shook her head. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, no. At least, he wasn’t when I was there.”

  “Oh.” She bit her lip. How long did giving a statement take, anyway? “Could you check and see if he’s there now? Please?”