by Maia Dylan
“Yeah”—Brendan grinned—“he told her they wanted to court her! Ha! He gives me shit for using the wordy hinky, and in one of the most important moments of his life he comes out with something straight out of the 1800s!”
Cody grinned. “Yeah, that maybe true, but it happens to be exactly what we need to do. We have to convince this woman to take a chance on us. I will have to be my most charming self, and you? Well, once she’s in love with me, I’ll try to get her to give you a chance.”
Brendan shot him the middle finger and a fuck-you grin. Cody was sure that he would have come back with some smack talk of his own, but right at that moment, a nurse wheeled their mate into the room. They both jumped up to get out of the way as they secured the bed in place and connected the monitors that came in with her. Once the nurses had her comfortable, they left the men alone with their mate.
Brendan moved to one side of the bed and Cody took the other. Their mate was in pain. They could feel that coming down the bond. Her face was scrunched up a little and her brow furrowed. Cody’s wolf whined and tried to push forward, desperately trying to get to their mate to ease her pain. He reached out at the same time as Brendan, and they each laid a hand on her. As soon as they touched her, her face relaxed. The white lines around her mouth eased and the pinched look disappeared.
“She feels better when we touch her,” Brendan whispered.
“Yeah, must be our bond.” Cody spoke softly, too, not wanting to break the spell, or wake their mate. “Hell, if I had my way, I wouldn’t ever take my hand from her.” The two pulled up a couple of chairs and settled in to wait for their mate to wake up.
* * * *
Lucy woke up slowly, knowing that she was getting closer to consciousness as her pain level increased exponentially. As she neared the surface, she heard people talking around her.
“She came through the surgery just fine.”
Surgery! Holy smokes she must have really been hurt. Judging by the pain and tightness in both her abdomen and her ribs, the surgery must have been in one of those areas.
“That’s fantastic, Chris. Once she’s awake we have a lot of questions we need to ask her.”
Hmmm, that voice was raspy, and well, it made her want to wake up fully just to see what he looked like.
“We need to know what happened to her. How long is she going to be asleep, Chris? There’s a list of questions as long as my arm, and we need to get to the bottom of this. We don’t know anything about her, what brought her here, what kind of trouble she’s in, or if that trouble is going to turn up here with a fucking UZI! If trouble is coming to Grey River, then I need to know about it now. So, she needs to wake the hell up!”
This voice was, well, grumpy. And impatient. His voice seemed to compel her to wake up. Not in the nice tingly what-does-he-look-like kind of way the yummy voice did, but in a more of a do-it-now-or-I’ll-get-rip-your-arm-off kind of way.
“Ty, stop with the growling and the threatening would you. The poor girl can probably hear you, and if so then you are scaring her with all your alpha grumping.”
That was a woman’s voice. Lucy could hear the tenderness in her tone even as she reprimanded Mr. Grumpy.
“You think she can hear us? Really?”
Hope echoed through another man’s voice. And this one was a nice tingly one instead of angry. Gosh, two men with voices that made her want to open her eyes just for a look. But with her luck, they will either not live up to the voice or, more likely, probably be gay and into each other.
Pushing the pain aside, she struggled to open her eyes. She took it as a win that she was able to crack them open slightly. Well, her left eye opened. Her right one felt heavy. The blinding light caused her skull to fall open she was sure, and wrenched a moan from her. When she was finally able to process beyond the pain and breathed away the need to throw up, she opened her eyes again and blinked to bring things into focus.
When her vision cleared she saw a friendly smiling face peering down at her. It was a man with brown hair, smiling brown eyes and a dimple on his cheek. He was cute.
“Well, hello there! It’s great to finally see you awake. I’m Dr. Chris Carson, and I’ll be your physician this evening.”
He winked and gave her a grin, which made her want to smile back. She winced instead when the move caused her split lip to throb.
“Well, truth be told, I’ll be your physician for a few more days at least, I expect.” He took her hand in his and raised it, fingers pressed to her wrist. The room filled with snarling noises, like a dog, a big dog, one that wasn’t too happy about something. The doctor’s grin grew wider and there was an exasperated feminine tsk-tsk sound and a bark of smug male laughter.
“Ha! It’s a totally different story when the shoes on the other possessive foot now, isn’t it?”
Mr. Grumpy had obviously not left and was giving someone grief.
“Shut the fuck up, Ty,” the first Mr. Yummy said, but there was no small amount of chagrin in his voice.
Boy, his voice did interesting things to her. She felt a tingling sensation down there and her nipples kind of throbbed. Her heart raced a little and her eyes flew to the doctor when he gave a little chuckle. His smile knowing, he winked at her again, bringing a flood of color to her face.
“Now, you are in Grey River hospital. The Anderson boys here”— he indicated with a nod of his head for her to look at the other side of her bed—“found you in the bathroom at Molly’s yesterday afternoon.”
With effort she turned to look and felt her heart just stop before it gave a hard kick start. It truly must have stopped for a brief moment because the doctor drew in a shocked breath and moved closer, which triggered a chain of events that lead to the two reasons that had caused her momentary heart failure to shift closer to the bed and reach out to lay a hand on her arm. Okay, talk about tingles! She looked at the two men and tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry. Never had she seen two better looking men in her life.
Both were tall and muscular. To be fair, most of the population seemed tall to her at five foot five, but these two must be at least a foot taller. One was blond and the other had brown hair with flecks of gold, but they were most definitely family. There was no getting past that as soon as you looked into their startling green eyes, which she found herself doing with the first one and then the other, then back again, a few times.
“Hey, beautiful, how are you feeling?” the blond one asked, and oh dear Lord, his voice was sinful.
“It’s so good to see you awake.” The other one said this, and his voice was just as intoxicating.
Lucy had never really thought she had a libido. What, with her childhood being what it was and the fact that the one and only man she had ever willingly had sex with, and yes that would be the huge bag-o-douche Seth, the act had physically hurt her each of the four disastrous times she had actually allowed him to touch her. Arousal wasn’t something she had ever thought to feel.
That was until she looked into two pairs of startling emerald green eyes. They were a piercing green that she almost never saw, but she was quite certain she would never forget them. Add to that their voices and most unbelievably their very scent and she had an extremely volatile concoction that sent her senses into overdrive.
“Um, o–okay, I g–guess. Thanks,” Lucy managed to stutter out, or more appropriately rasp out. Her tongue felt way too large for her very dry mouth. She looked away as she tried to remember the sequence of events that had brought her here. She remembered standing in the bathroom of that truck stop diner, and almost screaming at how she looked. Her face had looked terrible, just basically one big bruise and her lip had been split. She had been lifting her shirt to check on the damage that had been done there, but the cloth had stuck to her skin. She must have passed out—Ewww onto the bathroom floor. That wouldn’t have been overly hygienic.
The moment she came back to paying attention to her surroundings she found the room silent, and the atmosphere in the room�
�amused? She looked around and all six people in the room were looking at her, and most had an expectant smile on their faces. Ah! She had missed something.
“Sorry about that. I sometimes get lost inside my head and forget that I might actually be having a conversation at the time. Sorry.” Lucy lowered her gaze to the sheets of the bed that she was currently mangling with her fingers. She purposefully loosened her grip and was smoothing the sheets straight when a hand came out and covered her own. The bolt of electricity that shot through her at the connection made her gasp and her eyes shot to the blond Adonis who had touched her.
“Hey now, not to worry. You’ve been through a lot. Sometimes you have the best conversations in your head without anyone there to hear you.”
“Yeah, don’t you think anything of it,” the brown-haired guy said. He had a water glass with a bendy straw in his hand, which he held out toward her straw first. Taking the hint, she leaned up a little and drew on the straw, her throat singing a hallelujah chorus at the relief. When she had taken about three sips she heard a rumbling growl in the room again. This one wasn’t threatening in nature, and she would think about how she could differentiate between them later.
But she knew that this one was possessive and wanting. Wanting what she wasn’t sure of until her gaze lifted and she was caught by the intense look of the two men who had shuffled closer to her and were completely focused on her. At her pursed lips around the straw to be precise. And for some reason their eyes flickered blue. Shocked she sat back and was about to ask what in the dickens was going on when a female giggle came from the end of her bed.
“That possessive thing runs in all y’all huh” the woman was beautiful and obviously enjoying a private joke with the men beside her. Either she had a concussion and was seeing double or these two were identical twins. Her face must have shown a little of her shock because the woman pointed at the two and said, “Yeah, spitting images right? Its crazy scary how similar these two are huh? But once you get to know them you can tell them apart quite easily. But, as I seem to be the only one here who won’t snarl at you, let me make the introductions.”
“My name is Faith Jamieson, and these two are with me. This is Trent”—she placed a hand on the arm of the man to the left of her first—“and Ty Jamieson”—then placed a hand on the one to her right. “Welcome to Grey River.”
Her smile was wide and genuine and Lucy immediately liked her.
“And don’t worry about the whole going-inside-your-head-for-a-while thing. I hear all the cool kids are doing it.”
Even though Faith jested, Lucy heard a thread of embarrassment in her tone. There was definitely a story there. Both Ty and Trent stepped into her as if to offer solace. Lucy recognized that both men leaned into Faith, not just one of them. Interesting.
“I’m Brendan,” the brown-haired yummy said, “and this is my twin brother, Cody.” He thumped blond-haired yummy in the chest.
“Hi.”
There was a pause there as if all in the room were waiting for her to say something more. Oh right! Her name! “Sorry. My name is Luc—” Oh, sugar honey ice tea! She couldn’t tell them her real name. If Mani was still looking for her, and he would be, then she needed to stay off the radar. “Ah, Lucille. Lucille Hall.”
Oh dear Lord, she had never been a fast thinker, but that was pathetic even for her! Face flaming, and hoping it wasn’t too evident under the bruising, she looked around the room, not at all surprised to see the amusement, frustration and all the arched eyebrows of disbelief.
“Really?” the one called Ty asked, disbelief positively dripping from his words. “Lucille Hall? And I suppose I should start my interrogation with ‘You got some ’xplanin’ to do, Lucy’?” The last part was said with a more than decent Hispanic accent.
“Well, yeah that’s my name. You can’t imagine the grief I got as a child.” That’s it, girl, own it and fake it till you make it. “There was this running joke about—wait, what? You want to start interrogating me?” Her voice rose at the end as it clicked for her that the man also wore the uniform of a state sheriff. Shiitake mushrooms! Interrogations never lead anywhere nice. They usually led to a jail cell on NYPD Blue, so Lucy was fairly certain she was in trouble here.
“Settle down, Lucille. Ty just wants to ask you a few questions.” Cody glared at Ty and the hand that had been on resting on her arm was now rubbing up and down in a calming motion.
It didn’t so much calm her as raise goose bumps on her skin as well as potentially her blood pressure if her sudden light-headedness was anything to go by. Taking a deep calming breath she looked back at the officer who now had the two men beside her, the woman, and the doctor glaring at him. The other man who looked so much like the officer had his hands on his hips and was looking to the heavens in exasperation.
“For Christ’s sake, Ty.” Trent grumbled. “Way to scare the woman even further!”
“What?” Ty sounded defensive. “We do need to ask her some questions, and I’m not the only one who thinks that perhaps there is more going on here than meets the eye.”
The room fell silent then, and the three at the end of the bed remained silent. Lucy didn’t know how, but she was sure that a silent communication was going on between them all. The doctor squeezed her shoulder and she turned her attention back to him.
“Lucille, you’ve been here for just over a day and you’ll be here for at least another five days. Is there anyone I can contact for you? A husband, or boyfriend perhaps?”
If Lucy had thought the room fell silent before, now it was as if all noise had been sucked out of the room. Pin drop, anyone? “Um, no Dr. Carson, there’s no one,” Lucy said softly, knowing that she sounded quite pathetic. I mean, who lived to be twenty-two years old and have no one who cared if they were in hospital or not. “I, ah, I have no one to call.”
“Well, okay then. You just rest for a while and we will take good care of you. Just press the nurse call button if you need anything.”
With an encouraging smile the doctor left the room, Trent and Faith following him with a wave and a smile. Then the grumpy twin, Ty, moved up beside her to stand where the doctor had been. Well, she guessed the interrogation portion of her day was about to start. Bracing herself she looked him in the eye and waited.
“Ty, can’t this wait until tomorrow?” Cody asked before Ty could start. “Lucille has only just come out of surgery.”
“No, Cody, it can’t.”
Ty never took his eyes of her, and Lucy had the very real feeling that he was forming an opinion of her in that moment.
“Now, I’m sorry, Lucille, but there are just a couple of questions that I need to ask you right now. There may be more later on, but I’ll try to be quick, okay?”
Lucy nodded. Might as well rip the Band-Aid off it all now.
“Who beat the shit out of you?”
Wow. He just jumped right in huh? And there was the growling again, low and in warning and coming from the yummy twins. Lucy needed to keep her wits about her to get through the next hour or so, so filed that with things to think about later.
“I don’t know. I was mugged. Outside the diner.” Lucy kept her answers small and precise. Because she had been on her own since she was sixteen, she knew that a convoluted story could trip up even the fastest of thinkers.
“How did you get to the diner?”
“Hitched a ride in a truck.” Lucy kept as close to the truth as possible. She paused when Brendan’s hand flinched on her shoulder. Heck, she had become so used to them having a hand on her she hadn’t realized it had been there until he moved. She looked up and cringed inwardly at the anger in his face, and, yep, there went his eyes flashing blue again. What on earth?
“Damn it to hell, Luce,” Brendan spoke, clearly frustrated. “What were you thinking? A young, beautiful woman hitchhiking? Don’t you watch the damn news?” Lucy froze at the possessiveness in his voice.
“Brendan, I don’t remember asking for your approval and I�
�m fairly sure I don’t answer to you, for anything that I do.” Lucy spoke quietly, but the intensity in her voice meant she might as well have been screaming. “And, yes, I do watch the news, but I have been making my own way and getting to where I need to go since I was sixteen. What does it have to do with you anyway?”
Brendan leaned in toward her, his green eyes no longer flashing blue but filled with a heat that did curious things to her equilibrium. She had the very real feeling that her world just rocked on its axis a little.
“I am hoping that you will realize very quickly, that it has everything to do with me, Lucille.”
“Brendan? Why don’t we let Ty finish asking his questions, huh?”
Cody grabbed Brendan’s shoulder and pulled him back a bit, which Lucy was thankful for because she was able to get back her sense of balance. She watched as they looked at each other a moment, and she sensed that they came to some sort of agreed consensus.
“So, Lucille,” Ty said, stressing her name, which had her narrowing her eyes. Okay, so she knew he didn’t believe that was her name, but hey, rude much! “You hitched a ride to the diner on a truck, where you were mugged by someone you didn’t know and then ended up in the bathroom where you passed out. Did I miss anything so far?”
Boy, who knew that sarcasm could actually cut the air in a room. “Nope, that about sums it up.” Bravado had her pushing her chin out and meeting his gaze.
Ty sighed and ran frustrated fingers through his hair. “You know, Lucille, I’m not the bad guy here. All I want to do—hell, all we want to do—is help you.” He stepped forward and placed a card on the bedside table beside her. “My numbers are on that card. Call me when you are up to talking more.” His voice softened as he gave her shoulder a slight squeeze. “I know that someone hurt you, and in all probability, you are running from some very serious trouble—and running hard. Just know that you are safe here, we protect our own. And from the looks of things, you are ours to protect. I just want to make sure that I know who all the players are in this. That way we can work out how to protect you, and do it to the best of our ability.”