Zeke Dugan was a whole different beast. Everything about him was bold and powerful. Even the way he walked commanded attention. For a doc, he was pretty dressed down, his faded Levi’s molding lean hips and grip-worthy backside. His pale blue T-shirt was simple too, but stretched across his torso in a way that promised lean, defined muscles underneath. Everything about him exuded confidence. A man comfortable taking control even in unfamiliar surroundings.
Without his powerful scrutiny bearing down on her, her thoughts boomeranged back to Zeke’s comment and the shitty committee that inevitably piped up with any unknown or stressful situation stomped up to their pulpit.
You don’t know this man.
Unknown equals unsafe.
Too many people, all of them looking at you.
Judging you.
She tried to ignore the surging chorus and muttered to Danny, “Who’re Axel and Jace? I don’t want them in Mrs. Wallaby’s house.”
“They’re friends.” Danny kept his easy stride. “Good people. If Mrs. Wallaby was here, she’d have Axel set up with chocolate cake inside of five minutes, so let it go.”
Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one her neighbor had entrusted with her house, and she couldn’t afford to let one of the few people she could actually talk to down. For years, Mrs. Wallaby had been the closest thing to a mother she’d had.
Instead of taking a left to Danny’s room, Zeke stepped into hers, flipped on her light, and stood to one side of the door. He motioned her toward the bed. “You want to sit or stand?”
“Stand,” she said. Then tucked on an awkward, “please.” Yep. No way was she getting anywhere near a bed with this guy. She couldn’t even manage decent manners, let alone conversation, and he wasn’t even in touch distance yet. And was that a foreign accent? At first she’d thought he sounded like someone from the East Coast, but for a second there, his words had an almost Latin lilt to them.
“Not a problem.” He shut the door like he was in a physician’s exam room instead of surrounded by her very private haven. “Danny, can you get the blinds?”
He’s only here as a favor to your brother.
No man like this guy would ever be interested in you anyway.
If you let him look too close, he’ll see the real you.
Before she could panic and bolt, he was in front of her, the expression on his face all business. His long strong fingers cupped the sides of her face along her jawline and guided her head side to side, then front to back as if checking mobility. “Danny said you fell?”
She tried to mute the negative thoughts in her head and nodded, though his firm grip didn’t allow for much. “Whoever it was pushed me over.”
“You landed on the floor?”
“No, on the coffee table.”
“That thing?” Danny said. “I’ve seen cinder blocks with more give.”
The quip drew a grin from Zeke and the lightheadedness Gabe had struggled with grew a whole lot more pronounced. “Pretty sturdy stuff, huh?” He checked her eyes. “Did you hit your head?”
“I don’t think so.”
“No loss of consciousness?”
“No.”
“Dizziness?”
“Does not being able to breathe count?”
It came out huskier than she’d intended, and she blanked her face to try and cover it.
Instead of garnering distance with her disaffected expression as she had when she’d used it in high school, Zeke nailed her with a blisteringly hot smile. Her heart jolted hard enough to give her shrieking ribs a run for their money. “Yeah, that counts.”
“Okay, then dizzy.” See? Not so bad. She’d answered his questions and only came across as a borderline bitch. Not too bad considering the circumstances. Until he reached for the unbuttoned edges of her flannel shirt and edged it off her shoulders.
Gabe jerked away and gasped at the sudden movement, tightening her arm around her chest.
Zeke froze, but kept his hold on her shirt. His voice was low and calm. Professional and soothing. “I need to see, gatinha. Danny’s here. You’re safe.”
God, she was an idiot. Of course, it wasn’t personal. He was a doctor and did this kind of crap every day. Heck, she’d probably never see him again after tonight anyway. She nodded and focused on the far wall. Colors from her latest art projects tucked into her many photo boards blurred together. Soft pink flowers, bold blue skies, and sage-green grass. “It’s Gabe, not gatinha.”
“I know what your name is.” Even without looking, she could hear the smile in his voice.
“Then who’s gatinha?” The soft flannel skimmed over her shoulders and down her arms, leaving tiny goose bumps in its wake. The fabric swooshed in an airy heap to the bed behind her.
“Not a who. A what. You see if you can figure it out while I check your ribs.” He urged her to drop the arm she still had wrapped around her middle and lifted the hem of her tank. The cotton tickled her bare flesh on the way up, and his breath drifted light and teasing across her belly as he crouched beside her.
She tried to block him out, to imagine she was someplace else, but his scent was all around her. Not overpowering cologne like some men favored, but a barely there hint of something summery and warm. Like a really high-priced body wash with a seriously powerful, yet sensual undercurrent.
He pressed in one particular spot on her side, and she hissed. “This where you made impact?”
Despite the painful contact, her cheeks burned as though someone had taken a blow torch to them and her heart fluttered in an out-of-control beat. “I think so.”
“You’ll have some pretty bruises for sure.” He straightened and stood perpendicular to her injured side, placing one hand over her sternum and the other directly opposite on her spine. “I’m going to push my hands together, and I want you to show me where it hurts, okay?”
She nodded, almost eager for something to take her mind off all the other sensations battering through her. In all of a second, she changed her mind, the slow pressure between his hands sending a brutal stab through her chest. She pointed to where it hurt. “Here.”
Instantly, he let go and stepped back, reaching for the high-end messenger bag he’d brought with him. The stethoscope he pulled free sent a wave of relief through her. This routine she was familiar with. With the ear tips in place, he stepped in close and placed the flat disc above her heart. “Just breathe normal.”
Yeah, like anything in her life had been normal for the last hour. Breathing had been a crapshoot since she’d landed on the coffee table. Next to him, it was twice as hard.
He shifted and slid the disc under the back of her tank. “Take a deep breath.”
She shook her head. “It hurts.”
His hand at her shoulder squeezed in a comforting grip. “Just do your best.”
Her best wasn’t much and sent a fresh wave of discomfort coursing through her torso.
Stepping back, he dropped the stethoscope around his neck, trailed his gaze along her shoulders and arms, and frowned. “You cold?”
More like strung out on sensory overload and in desperate need of a beer. “A little.”
He snatched her flannel off the bed and held it out so she could slide it on without too much torque on her ribs. When he’d helped guide the edges up and over her shoulders, he turned her to face the end of the bed, sat on the edge so he was on eye level with her, and loosely clasped his hands between his wide legs. “I’m about ninety-nine percent sure you’ve got two, maybe three, cracked ribs. If that’s the case, treatment is minimal and easy for you to handle on your own. The problem is, I’m worried about your breathing. Broken ribs on their own aren’t a huge issue, but if they puncture a lung it can cause problems fast.”
Danny edged in closer to her and smoothed his hand down her back. “How do we know if that’s a problem?”
“I need an X-r
ay.”
“No hospitals.” She scowled up at Danny beside her. “I just got my bills paid off, and I’m not racking up more if I can take care of it on my own.”
“I said you could take care of the ribs on your own,” Zeke said. “Lungs are a whole different matter. We’re talking the difference between you having a few weeks of rough sleep, versus you not waking up.” He zeroed in on Danny. “She needs an X-ray.”
Danny stepped back and motioned to the door. “Okay, let’s go.”
“No.”
“Gabe, don’t be a dumb ass,” Danny said. “It’s an X-ray, not a fucking transplant.”
“Yeah, well, the last time we walked into a hospital, Dad never came back out.” She clamped her lips up tight and averted her face. Great. Now she was a loon and a wimp.
Warmth and the delicious pressure of Zeke’s fingers encircled her wrist. “What if I told you there’s a place I can take you and it won’t cost you a dime? A standalone place without a ton of people.”
“Like an urgent care?”
“Sort of, but without all the crowds. We’ll take X-rays, see what the damage is, and go from there. But trust me, lungs are not something you want to mess with. Better to play it safe.”
A firm, but polite knock sounded on the door. Danny opened it but kept one hand on the knob, only leaving a two-foot gap between the edge and the jamb. Her brother’s Goliath frame blocked whoever was on the other side. “Hey, Jace.”
A deep rumbling voice issued from the hallway. “Everyone’s pulling out. Beckett’s got a crew coming by to do their own check of Wallaby’s house.”
“Who’s Beckett?” She shifted closer to Danny so she could put a face with the voice.
Danny stepped away at the same time, revealing yet another seriously hot guy with one hand propped on the door frame. So this was Jace. She’d heard Danny mention the name a time or two, but never imagined he’d look like this. He wasn’t GQ hot like Zeke. More like old-school rock-star hot, complete with shoulder-length dark hair and a full beard/mustache combination. She’d bet he had at least one custom Harley lined up in his garage to go with his faded jeans and well-worn leather jacket. He even had the dirty growling voice and the wicked, all too assessing stare to go with the image. “How you holdin’ up, sugar?”
Gabe ducked her head, her sturdy boots the visual equivalent of a lifeline.
“Best guess is two or three cracked ribs,” Zeke answered for her, “but I need X-rays to rule out pneumothorax.”
Quiet stretched in the tiny room. Even without looking up, she had a good feeling there was a lot of silent macho man eyeballing going on.
Zeke broke it with a firm, “I want to take her to Sanctuary.”
That got her attention. She looked up in time to see Jace’s grin flatline.
Jace studied her, considered Danny for another second, then focused on Zeke. “You sure?”
“What’s Sanctuary?” she asked.
Zeke stayed focused on Jace. “Not safe to let it go without checking and she’s not comfortable in a public place.”
Funny how he’d zeroed in on the real stickler instead of the cost aspect of her not wanting medical treatment. The care and concern probably should have been a comfort, but the fact that he’d figured out what a freak she was only made her feel two more shades of stupid. “I’m fine.”
Jace pulled a toothpick from his pocket, tucked it under his tongue, and scanned Gabe head to toe. “Sugar, if my brother’s willing to put his ass out there and take you to Sanctuary, then I doubt the word fine is anywhere in his diagnosis.” He dipped his head toward Zeke, an unspoken and indefinable meaning behind the look so intense it sent a shiver dancing down her spine. He turned and sauntered down the hallway. “Let’s huddle with Axel, and we’ll head out.”
Chapter 3
Only an industrial grade exterior light marked Sanctuary’s heavily secured, yet nondescript entrance, but Zeke could have navigated his way there in his sleep. From the outside, it was little more than a standalone warehouse nestled alongside a whole string of storage buildings. The inside was a whole different ballgame, one he and his brothers leveraged for a variety of favors when the right opportunities presented themselves.
He parked his hot rod just outside the main door, and Danny swung Gabe’s truck in right beside him. Thankfully, Jace and Axel had agreed to let him handle the thing with Gabe solo. Neither of them were too thrilled with the fact he’d mentioned Sanctuary in front of Gabe, but once he’d reminded them how close Danny was to being family, they’d dropped their argument and headed back to work. It didn’t hurt that Zeke had come up with the idea of playing the mini emergency facility off as a private medical care operation to cover what really went down inside.
Punching the automated locks Danny had added to the car, Zeke ambled to Gabe’s truck and held the passenger door wide while Danny helped Gabe out of the raised cab. “The ride hurt too bad on the way over?”
Gabe didn’t look at him, but shook her head. Understandable considering the night she’d had and the pain she wrestled.
“We’ll get this over with as quick as we can, then Danny can pick you up some pain killers on the way home.” He flipped the locks on the building’s front door and deactivated the high-end security system inside the entrance. When Beck had insisted on the fingerprint scanner on top of the standard key code, Zeke had argued they were going overboard on precautions. Then Beck had pointed out the total cost of the assets hidden inside, and Zeke had conceded overkill might not be a bad deterrent. Especially considering the type of people he treated here.
He flipped the light switches and the rows of commercial fluorescents overhead hummed their eager greeting. Two emergency gurneys were centered on the industrial tile floor with focal lights mounted above them. Racks stocked with all the basic emergency gear he could ask for lined both side walls, while huge monitors and Knox’s state-of-the-art computers were mounted along the front.
Danny paced to the center of the room and gaped at all the equipment. “Man, this is cool.”
“Where are we?” Gabe didn’t seem nearly as impressed, holding her spot by the door just as tightly as she kept that arm of hers coiled around her waist.
Zeke shrugged and fired up the main computers. “It’s not as big of a deal as it looks. Just self-insurance taken to the extreme.”
“Self-insurance.” The way Gabe said it made it more of an openly skeptic statement of disbelief than a question.
“Yep. Some people would rather fork over insurance premiums for their own setup and guarantee privacy. Not to mention, there’s no wait time.”
“And you know people like this?”
“I know a few.” Most of them were men with a dirty background and zero interest in getting anywhere near a public facility with records and a friendliness for cops. Not to mention, they were usually plugged up with bullet holes or knife wounds when they came through Sanctuary’s doors.
He motioned to the dark, isolated room off to one side. “Danny, do me a favor. Turn on the light in there and help Gabe have a seat.”
The two shuffled off in the direction indicated while he dug through the cabinets in search of a hospital gown. He could have sworn he’d ordered some when they first tricked out the facility, but damned if he could find them now. Then again, modesty wasn’t something he normally had to deal with behind these walls.
To hell with it. He gave up looking and headed in with Danny and Gabe. If her color was any indication, she needed pain relief and quiet a whole lot more than she needed standard protocol. One look at her, tense and obviously shaken as she perched on the edge of a metal chair, and the same protective impulse he’d battled when he’d touched her back at her house roared full bore. “Okay, gatinha. I’m just going to snap some pictures, take a look at what’s going on, and we’ll see if we can’t get you home. But first, we’ve got a tacti
cal hurdle to leap.”
She frowned at him then glanced at Danny. “What kind of hurdle?”
He nodded in the general direction of her torso. “My machine doesn’t play nice with metal. I might not be a woman, but even I know pretzling into or out of a bra is a trick even without a broken rib. With one, it’s going to be impossible. So who do you want to help you out of it? Danny, or me?”
In all of two seconds, her cheeks flamed a bold red and her already shallow breaths turned even threadier. “I can do it.”
Zeke lifted a brow. “You willing to risk hurting yourself more in the process?”
Unlike Danny, who had an unbelievable poker face when he chose to use it, every thought and emotion Gabe processed burned bright and beautiful across her face. Embarrassment. Fear. Confusion and acceptance. It kind of made him want to see a whole lot of other expressions on her face. Like the fleeting glimpse of pleasure he’d caught when his fingertips first touched her skin.
“You won’t look?” she said.
He fudged as much as he could. “I promise I’ll give you all the privacy I can, but you’ve got to remember, this is an everyday thing for me.”
She bit her lip and stared down at the floor. “Then I’d rather have you.”
“Thank God,” Danny said, twisting for the door and fiddling with his skully like he always did when he was antsy.
Zeke held out his hand and pulled Gabe to her feet. “Danny, why don’t you wait in my office across the hall? It shouldn’t take us more than five minutes once we get her situated.”
Seemingly happy to have dodged an awkward moment with his little sister, Danny hightailed it out of the room and shut the door behind him.
Zeke stood behind Gabe and edged her flannel shirt off her shoulders with as much indifference as possible. It was a hell of a lot harder the second time knowing what was hidden underneath. Unlike her brother, Gabe’s skin was closer to cream, only a hint of golden goodness taking the edge of what could have made her seem pale. And it was soft. Soft, taut, and stretched over easy, lithe curves that made him want to touch her in ways that would make Danny want to shoot him on sight.
Rough & Tumble (The Haven Brotherhood) Page 35