by Elle Kennedy
His brief sentences contained so much startling information she didn’t even know which tidbit to focus on first. She finally chose the one that made her heart soar like a hot air balloon.
“Marrying?” she teased. “Who says I’m marrying you?”
He exuded a surprising glimmer of arrogance. “Our kid can’t be born out of wedlock, sweetheart.”
“Oh, so now you’re Mr. Traditional?”
“Hell, yes.” His lips dropped to her mouth in a quick little kiss. “Are you rejecting my proposal?”
She pretended to mull it over. “I guess not.”
“That’s what I thought.”
He bent his head again, and this time, when he kissed her, neither one of them came up for air for a very, very long time.
EPILOGUE
As much as it pained him to admit it, Jim had never seen his little sister look happier. Her cheeks were a rosy pink as she beamed up at the tall, muscular man at her side, whose hand she hadn’t let go of since the second they’d entered the waiting room. It also pained him to notice the stark emotion and overwhelming love on Deacon Holt’s face. The man loved his sister. There was no denying that.
Jim couldn’t help but glance at his sister’s stomach, still floored by the notion that there was a baby inside there. Lana was going to be a mother. Christ. And marrying Deacon Holt, to boot.
Despite his reservations, particularly since his future brother-in-law had played a part in Lana’s abduction, Jim found himself unable to voice any disapproval. No one else in the room had the heart to do it, either. Lana looked so incredibly contented. Seemed as if there was nothing else to do but offer congratulations to the happy couple.
“Jimmy,” came his uncle’s low voice. “We need to talk.”
With a nod, Jim followed Donald out of the room. The two men stood in the hall, where the fluorescent lighting emphasized the glint of resolve in Donald’s eyes.
“What’s this about?” Jim asked, though he knew full well.
“Justice.” His uncle’s lips tightened. “I assume you’ll be on board?”
“You know I will.”
“Good.”
Both men glanced in the direction of the waiting room, growing quiet for a moment to listen to the happy chatter drifting from the doorway.
“I won’t let these people go unpunished,” Donald hissed out. “We need to find the people who hired those men to kidnap our girl. The bastards who nearly killed my brother, your father. This damn secret society that seems determined to destroy this family.”
Jim had nothing to add. He was in wholehearted agreement. “I’ll find them,” he vowed.
“Good,” Donald said again. “And I also assume we’re on the same page about what to do when we find these sons of bitches?”
Lethal fury clawed up Jim’s spine. “Oh, yes. When we find them, we’re going to take each and every one of them down. I won’t rest until every last one of those bastards is behind bars.” The grin that sprang to his mouth lacked any semblance of humor. “These people are going to regret the day they decided to mess with the Kelleys.”
* * * * *
Paramedic Remo DeLuca finds Celia Poller on the side of the road after a car accident. Severely injured, Celia has short-term memory loss and the only thing she’s sure of is that she has a son—and that someone is threatening both their lives!
Read on for a sneak preview of
Melinda Di Lorenzo’s next thrilling romance,
First Responder on Call!
CHAPTER 1
The buzz came first. A hundred—no, a thousand—bees, circling her head and making it vibrate with an indescribable pain. Next came the stinging. Over and over, the sharp points hitting her face, each one worse than the last.
If she could’ve made a noise, it would’ve been a whimper.
She tried to turn her head, to steer it away from the angry swarm. But she was clamped down. Something viselike held her in place, stopping her from even the slightest movement. All she could do was blink, and even that yielded little more than a blurred picture overhead. She wasn’t even sure what it was she could see above her. The night sky, maybe? A dark swirl of clouds, blocking out every star and barely letting through the moonlight?
Typical Vancouver.
The thought temporarily overrode the pain, probably because it was something concrete. Something that grounded her. Yes, the muted gray tone definitely embodied the city’s weather. Even in mid-July, a rainstorm like this one could be expected. It was usually a small sacrifice to make in exchange for being wedged between the Pacific Ocean and a half a dozen mountain ranges. But right now, it gave her a chill.
The rain…
It’s what beat down on her face, the source of the sting. She blinked again. A string of wires—power lines, she thought—came into focus.
The buzz…
The vicious drops were hitting the wires, as well, and the zap of water on live electricity filled the air.
The accident…
A flood of memory came rushing to the forefront of her mind. It was disjointed, like the pieces of a puzzle that had been scattered across a table. But it was memory nonetheless.
The storm, rushing in from nowhere.
The road, slick beneath her tires.
The slam of…something.
Then the horrible sound of metal on metal.
And blackness.
The buzz and the sting were muted now, taking a backseat to the struggle to remember anything else. What kind of car had she been driving? What was the source of the anxious pressure in her chest? And most importantly…what was her name?
Oh, God.
She didn’t know. She couldn’t recall it, even though when she dropped her lids closed, she could picture her own face. She could see the swirl of her ash-blond hair and the overwhelming number of freckles that dotted her complexion. Her gray eyes and fair lashes were there, too, well above the surface of whatever blocked the rest.
Please let me remember. And please…someone help me.
As though her silent plea willed it into existence, a new noise caught her attention. Boots on pavement, approaching slowly, like their wearer was trying to disguise his steps. But whoever he was, his feet were too heavy for subtlety. And the gait had an odd, shuffling cadence, too. One that struck a familiar cord. She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter.
Not good.
The two-word thought was hardly strong enough to match the abrupt increase in her heartbeat, which thrummed so hard against her rib cage that she was surprised it didn’t drown out the rain, the buzz and the footsteps. But maybe the man attached to the boots—she wasn’t sure why she was so certain about what he wore, but she was—did hear her heart. Because his movement stopped. And a gruff question, spoken from a few feet away, carried to her ears.
“Where is he?”
Both the query and the voice itself sent a thick slap of fear across her whole body. She couldn’t answer. She didn’t want to answer.
The man repeated himself, a little louder, biting off the words. “Where. Is. He.”
She tried to shake her head, but of course met with the same resistance she had before. The boots hit the ground once again. She still refused to look. She knew he was close enough to be leaning over her, because his body blocked out some of the rain. It should’ve been a relief. It wasn’t. Nor was the rush of air that came as he reached down and lifted off whatever it was that held her down. Because she still couldn’t move. And now she was exposed.
“I know you’re awake,” he said. “You might think I don’t remember what you look like when you’re sleeping, but you’re wrong. I remember everything.”
It struck her as unfair that he could claim perfect recall, while she had nothing but bits and pieces.
But maybe listening to him will help you. Maybe it will give you a clue. Maybe he’ll even say your name.
She forced her attention to his chilling ramble.
“The way you smell,” he was
saying. “The way you always thought you could hide. How you believed you could get away with it. With him.”
Finally, she did move, albeit without conscious effort. She shivered. And he saw it. She knew because he laughed, a low, dark chuckle that was harsher than the weather. He followed the eerie sound with touch. Just a small one—fingers to shoulder. But it was enough to send her mind reeling. She could feel the man’s hands on her everywhere. Sometimes balled into fists, sometimes stroking her with a tenderness that made her skin crawl.
Why would the accident leave me with those memories, but take away my identity? Her stomach swirled into a tight ball of nausea.
“If you don’t tell me where he is, baby, things are going to be much worse for both of you,” the man warned.
Baby. It was the endearment that brought another name—not her own, and not the man’s, either—to the surface. Xavier.
She clamped her lips tightly to keep from crying it aloud. Somehow, she was sure that even if she could say nothing else, the name would come out.
“You’re awake,” said the man above her. “And now you’re thinking about him. Tell me. You want to. You hate lying and you hate secrets.”
The cajoling tone was just as frightening as the threatening one. It made her want to cry. She suspected that once upon a time, she might’ve given in to the tactic. And she hated the thought that she could be manipulated so easily. Especially by the man who had his hand on her now.
As if he could sense her internal suffering and wanted to make the outside match, he began to squeeze. Or maybe he just wanted to hurt her, plain and simple. His fingers tightened, and his thumb drove into her collarbone. If she could’ve gasped, she would’ve. Instead, silent, unshed tears built up behind her sealed eyelids, then stayed there, burning with an inability to fall freely.
If I tell him what he wants to know, he’s going to kill me, she thought. And maybe even if I don’t.
But then it stopped. Just like that. His hand was gone. He cursed under his breath, and his footfalls hit the ground hard and fast—fading away at not quite a run. It took only a moment to figure out why. Tires squealed on pavement. A door slammed. And a second set of feet hit the ground.
Thank you.
She didn’t care who they belonged to. All that mattered was that whoever it was had driven away the angry man with the rough hands.
“Holy hell.”
In spite of the fact that the voice was gruff, and the two words a curse, relief washed over her. Something in her gut told her this man harbored her no ill will. The feeling increased as he dropped to the ground and placed a hand directly on the spot that the first man had squeezed so relentlessly. His touch was warm and gentle and imbued with concern.
“Miss, are you with me? Blink if you can hear me.”
She fluttered her lids. A set of dark-lashed, bright blue eyes stared down at her from behind a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. His gaze filled with relief.
“Thank God.” He ran a hand over his damp jaw and breathed out.
From under her lashes, she watched as he leaned back on his heels and yanked a phone from his pocket. He dialed without looking, then spoke in a low voice. Was he doing it for her benefit? Maybe to keep her from worrying? She thought maybe he was.
After a few moments, he dropped the phone from his mouth and said to her, “Sit tight for one second, okay? I’m not going anywhere.”
He stood up and strode away. Panic threatened, but she fought it. She could still hear his feet sloshing over the wet ground, and only a heartbeat passed before he came back into view, dangling a white, mostly-shredded purse from his fingers. He spoke into the phone again, this time loudly enough for her to hear.
“She’s got a bag here. Just gonna make sure she knows I’m opening it.” He held out the purse, and she blinked her assent.
“Okay,” he said. “No medical card and no driver’s license. But I’ve got a Port Moody Public Library card. Name on the card is Celia Poller. That’ll have to do. Okay. Yeah. I have to. See you as soon as you can get here.”
He hung up, then crouched down beside her again, his dark hair plastered to his forehead. “Miss Poller? Celia?”
She turned the name over in her head. Was it familiar? She honestly wasn’t sure, but she had a feeling she should lay claim to it. She blinked again.
“Okay, Celia. If you had to get into a car accident right here, right now, then I’d call you about as lucky as can be under the circumstance. My name is Remo DeLuca, and I’m a paramedic with BC Ambulance Services.” He paused and met her eyes before he went on. “What I’d like to do is keep you very still. Unfortunately, I can’t do that right now. There’s a downed power line just over there, and with the way the puddles are growing, we’re right in range for a solid electrocution. So Celia…I need your consent to go outside of normal protocol.”
As if to punctuate his statement, a flash of lightning and an accompanying boom ruptured the air.
And she blinked as hard as she could.
* * *
Ten minutes earlier, Remo would’ve said the storm overhead suited his mood perfectly. A twelve-hour shift on a Friday night was pretty much his least favorite thing. He didn’t know if he’d ever been so thoroughly glad to have a workday over with. A recent new article in the Vancity Gazette claimed that EMT service wasn’t what it should be. As a result, rowdy drunk calls and calls about broken washing machines and calls about heart attacks all got an equal amount of attention. The former two both got in the way of the latter—the ones for people who actually needed his help.
Now, though, his sour thoughts had pushed themselves to the far corners of his mind. The immobile woman on the side of the road commanded his full attention. He could tell she was near shock. Unaware of her surroundings and oblivious to the danger that skirted the edge of her body. Adding to the problem was the part he hadn’t told her about. The other local EMTs were tied up at a house fire, and he was going to have to wait at least fifteen minutes for the backups to arrive. Her slate-gray eyes were fixed on him and him alone, full of both hope and fear. He didn’t want to let her down.
“Another quick second, all right?”
He gave her shoulder a quick squeeze, then pushed to his feet. His eyes flew over the scene, filtering out the things he already knew were there—the devastated car with its crushed front end, the cracked pole and the downed wires—in search of something he could use as a stretcher. As easy as it would be to scoop up the pretty blonde and carry her out of harm’s way, he knew better. He couldn’t see any external afflictions, and he suspected—based on instinct, mostly—that distress was what kept her from moving rather than an injury, but experience and training had taught him not to rely on gut alone. Some of the most heinous injuries were invisible to the naked eye. So what he needed to do was keep her as still and straight as possible.
Then he spotted it. The car’s windshield, sitting on a patch of grass a few feet away. It was miraculously intact, and he suspected that somehow, the impact had dislodged it and sent it flying. It might even have been the thing that saved the woman’s life. With the windshield missing, she’d had a clear path out the vehicle. He could almost picture the sequence of events.
Incredible.
Remo glanced down at her. Did she have any clue just how lucky she’d been? He doubted it. Not at the moment, anyway.
With a disbelieving head shake, he slipped off his glasses, wiped them with his T-shirt, then stuck them back on his face and headed up the road. There, he positioned himself in front of the glass. He bent down, closed his hands on the slippery edges and lifted. It came up with surprising ease, and it took him only a second to get it stable enough to cart it back over to Celia. Careful to keep it from hitting the ground with any kind of force, he eased it down beside her. Then he took a breath, pushed his knees as flat as they would go, stiffened his arms and positioned the windshield against her body.
“Okay, Celia. Here we go.”
Moving as slowly
as he could and being extra cautious in keeping her head and neck stable, he inched the glass underneath her. In spite of the rain, he could feel sweat beading along his forehead and his upper lip. He ignored it. By the time he got her into position, he couldn’t see a damned thing. He was dripping, his glasses were completely fogged up, and the sky had darkened even more. Breathing heavily, he dragged the windshield and its passenger out of range of the sizzling power lines, then knelt down beside the makeshift gurney.
“You still with me, Celia?”
She blinked, then inclined her head. He was relieved to see that she was no longer frozen, but he still didn’t want to take any chances.
“Try not to move around,” he cautioned with a smile. “Hard to say if anything’s broken, and I’d like to retain the role of hero for a little longer.”
One corner or her mouth tipped up and she breathed out. His relief was short-lived. As quickly as her little show of amusement came, it left. Her whole face drooped and her eyes dropped shut.
Damn, damn, damn.
Remo dragged his hands up and clasped Celia’s face. She was cold.
Because it is cold out here, he told himself.
He clasped her wrist and pressed his head to her chest. Her pulse was strong and steady, and her breathing was slow and even, and that was something.
“Did you faint on me, Celia?” he murmured, brushing her hair back from her face.
He leaned back and studied her for a second. Her skin had a hint of a tan, but mostly it was a connect-the-dots palate of freckles.
More than pretty.
She had that clean-faced, granola-girl feel that made it easy to picture her hiking up the side of the Grouse Grind. Remo liked it. Which made him sigh and question his sanity.
“Obviously even more tired than I thought,” he said.
Checking out a girl—a patient…sort of—was very low on his list of priorities. Right below the washing machine emergencies. Remo gritted his teeth and told himself to stop before he even got started. Except as soon as the self-directed order made its way into his mind, her hand lifted and found its way into his palm, and a shot of heat cut through the chill.