“God, I hope so. I worry enough as it is that we’re going to do something awkwardly geekish to scare or push Carol away.”
The GPS pinged, letting them know they were within a quarter mile of their destination. Grant slowed the vehicle, and Ed used the radio to contact State Police Dispatch.
“Dispatch, this is EMS Lusty. We’re approaching the scene. Has a state trooper arrived yet?”
“One moment, EMS Lusty.” The pause lasted barely ten seconds. “Trooper Daniels is approaching from the west, he should be there in five.”
“Roger, dispatch.”
“I don’t see anything,” Grant said. “Are we sure of the coordinates?”
Ed asked for the location again, checked it against the data he’d input into the GPS. “This is it.”
“What’s that, over there?” Grant pointed ahead, at something that looked to be twisted metal against a tree in the ditch.
“That could be it.”
“Doesn’t look like a motorcycle.”
“You ever seen one mangled?” Ed would never forget how badly that one crotch rocket had been destroyed.
“No, I never have.” Grant pulled to a stop at the side of the road. Ed didn’t waste any time. He jumped out and headed toward the site, his bag in hand. Grant would bring whatever other equipment was needed, once Ed made a quick assessment. His eyes scanned the ground, left and right, looking for the rider. In the distance, the sound of a police siren told him the state trooper would be there very shortly.
He fixed his attention on the bit of metal they’d spotted from the van, hoping the rider wasn’t somehow caught up in that mess.
The sound of a pop and the puff of dirt flying in the air by his feet didn’t mean anything to him at first. The second pop, and the burning sting registered slowly—about the same time that Grant tackled him, bringing him to the ground. He struggled, his instincts cutting in. His cousin’s words froze him.
“Stay still,” Grant said. “Someone’s shooting at us.”
* * * *
Carol swallowed her fear as she ran.
Chloe had pulled her aside and told her that Edward was fine, but that he was over at the clinic having one of his doctor cousins tend to a minor injury.
The reality of the words took a few moments to sink in. When they did, she realized that for the woman to say anything to her at all must mean that his injury was more than minor. A minor injury he’d have seen to then come over and told her about it himself.
Chloe told her to go, and so she did. As she was leaving the spa, she heard her boss tell her to take the rest of the day.
As she approached the clinic, she didn’t even slow down, but hit the door, banging it open. Warren stepped right in front of her, and she just went into his arms. His grip grounded her.
“There you are.” Warren sighed, and ran his hands up and down her back in a soothing caress. “He’s fine, sweetheart. I was just out here waiting for you. We can go into the exam room and be with him, if you want.”
“Of course I want. What happened?”
“I don’t know. I was on my way back from Waco with our trainees when I got word that Grant was bringing Ed here. I just arrived myself. Come on, let’s go see what he’s done to himself.”
She desperately wanted to be with Edward, but was worried the doctors or nurses or whoever was on staff here would prevent it—she wasn’t kin, after all.
Instead, the Doctors Jessop—Chloe’s future brothers-in-law—smiled at her when she entered the room. Robert Jessop seemed to know she was nervous. He nodded and smiled, letting her know it was all right to enter.
Her gaze zeroed in on Edward, who was sitting on the exam table, bare chested, with a large swath of gauze covering his left shoulder and part of his left arm.
She knew she made a sound when she saw him like that. She couldn’t help it. He’d been hurt.
“I’m fine, beautiful. The bullet just grazed me.”
“Bullet? You’ve been shot?”
“Only a little.”
Something inside her snapped. He had a smirk on his face, and she felt like she wanted to cry. So instead of crying, she scolded. She put her hands on her hips and her voice came out higher pitched and a whole lot faster than usual. “You can’t be a little shot. It’s like being pregnant. You can’t be a little pregnant, either, you either are or you’re not!”
“I promise you, love, I’m not pregnant. Now, come here.”
Carol had never had a shrewish moment in her life before. She chalked it up to the shock of seeing her beautiful Edward injured. His insouciance didn’t help. He lifted his right arm, and she went to him. Carol wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, not even worrying about the other people who were present. When Warren stepped closer and stroked her back, she felt everything inside her settle. She sighed, and then nuzzled her head on Edward’s good shoulder. Okay, he really is all right. I can relax now.
“What the hell happened?” Warren’s voice sounded tight, and she didn’t blame him one bit. It occurred to Carol that two brothers who would look to share a woman between them would have to be incredibly close to each other.
“We still don’t know.” That was Grant’s voice.
Carol stepped back. Edward cupped her face with one hand and wiped a tear off her cheek with his thumb.
“I’m really all right, sweetheart. It hurts a little, but it was just a graze.”
She turned and looked at Warren. His recent question raised one of her own. “You weren’t with him?” She thought he might have already told her that. She guessed her mind wasn’t working very well at the moment.
Warren didn’t seem the least impatient with her repeated question. He simply shook his head. “No, I was on a run to the ER in Waco, where we restock our supplies from. That’s more or less our base hospital, although we use whichever ER is close, when we’re on a call. I was showing Brad and Amanda the procedures, introducing them to the staff.”
“A call came in while Warren was gone,” Edward said. “Grant is qualified to ride with me, so he did. We don’t go out alone. It’s a safety issue.”
“Okay. I get it so far. So then what happened?”
“That’s where it gets weird,” Edward said.
“Weird isn’t the adjective I would use.” Sheriff Adam Kendall stepped into the exam room. It occurred to Carol that there were a lot of people in a room that usually—in most clinics—would be restricted to medical staff and patient, and maybe one next of kin.
She looked around at the people crowded in. Doctors Robert and David Jessop, and their wife Jillian—who was a trained aide—she’d expect to see. But Grant and Andrew, who stood off over in the corner, looking very angry, with his arms folded in front of his chest were both there, as well as herself and Warren and now Adam.
Robert Jessop noticed her expression. “This is Lusty,” he said. “We’re used to our exam rooms being somewhat crowded.”
“Actually,” David Jessop said, “having all these dramas playing out right here in front of us, is a major source of entertainment for us. We never know what kind of a circus is going to appear.” He grinned at her, and she couldn’t help but grin back.
Adam Kendall shot an annoyed look at David.
“So what adjective would you use, Adam, if not ‘weird’?” she asked.
“Criminal.”
Carol felt her heart trip.
He nodded. “I just got off the phone with the state police. Further investigation reveals the information the dispatcher took down from the man who called in the motorcycle accident, proved to be bogus. Added to that the fact that the piece of metal you saw and thought was a mangled motorcycle was simply a discarded and twisted truck bumper. Forensics is giving it a good going-over—checking for prints, among other things.”
“Well, fuck,” Grant said. “What the hell do we do with this?”
The men all looked very serious, but Carol wasn’t following the conversation all that well.
“Could someone explain to me what exactly all that means?”
It was Edward who came to her aid. “What Adam is saying is that we were lured out to that scene, so that someone could take a shot at us.”
“Not us, cousin,” Grant said. “You. That first shot came before I had even left the back of the truck. The gunman likely didn’t have a bead on me. If he’d wanted both of us, he would have waited until we were both in his sights.”
Shock rippled through Carol. Someone had lured Edward to a place and then tried to kill him?
“That’s crazy.” Edward ran a hand through his hair. “Who the hell would want to kill me?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Warren said, agreeing with his brother. “Not any sense at all.”
Carol thought it telling that she and Warren had both moved closer to Edward. If anyone in the room thought that posturing was unusual, they didn’t say, or give any indication that they even noticed.
“Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense,” Adam said. “Remember that case, last December, up in New York State? A man lured firefighters to a place with a blaze he’d set, and then began shooting at them when they arrived.”
“Well…crap.” Edward met her gaze, and then turned his attention back to the sheriff. “So you think it might have been a random kind of thing? Someone just wanting to kill…who? First responders? Paramedics? Or do you think it was an attack directed toward me, personally?”
“We have no way of knowing right at this point in time,” Adam said. “The investigation is too new. The state forensics people are combing the area where we think the gunman hid, looking for clues. Hopefully they’ll find something. They’ve also taken that planted fender into their lab. They didn’t find anything in their preliminary investigation on site, so now they need to run more sophisticated tests. But these things take time. It’s not like you see on television.”
“So what do we do in the interim?” Warren shoved his hands in his pockets. Carol thought he was really upset, but handling well. “Do we assume Ed is a target until we hear otherwise?”
“If you think you’re going to lock me up somewhere, brother mine, you can just forget it.”
Warren turned on his brother and poked him in the chest with his forefinger. “I’ll do whatever the hell I have to do in order to keep you safe. Deal with it.”
“Good Lord, Warren, when the hell did you develop Dom qualities?” Robert asked.
Carol wasn’t completely sure what the doctor meant by that.
Warren shrugged. “I’ve always been this way.”
“I don’t think you need to go to any extreme lengths to keep Edward safe,” Adam said. “Just be aware. When you go out on calls, be aware. If the evidence indicates that someone has some sort of a grudge against you, Ed, then we’ll reconsider things. Because like your brother, I’m not willing to risk you at all, either.”
Carol was with Warren—and Adam. She wouldn’t let Edward be in danger if she could in any way prevent it. Maybe, she could handcuff him to the bed to keep him safe.
That thought must have shown to her men. Edward’s eyes went smoky, and Warren’s mouth turned up in a tiny little half grin.
He nodded to her then looked at Robert. “Is he good to go?”
“Yeah. Dad’s going to be disappointed there isn’t even a butt shot to give, but Edward just had his tetanus booster last month.”
“I’m right here, you know.”
“Yes, we know,” Warren said. He looked around at the assembled family. Then he focused on Grant. “We’re calling it a day.”
“Go.”
They helped Edward down from the exam table, and he scowled the whole time. Warren, instead of helping him into it, simply handed him his shirt. Carol wanted to help him with it, but held back, too. The two brothers glared at each other for a long moment. Finally, Edward sighed, and nodded.
With a look, Warren let her know she could help now. Funny how I can read him so well after such a short time.
Since the shirt was a button-front one, she did up some, but not all of the buttons. He let her do that much then took her left hand in his right, and brought it up to his lips. “Let’s go,” he said, and led her from the exam room.
As they stepped out of the room, Robert Jessop said, “Warren acting like a Dom? Now that’s just downright freaky, that’s what that is.” Carol had no idea what he meant, and she didn’t care. She just wanted to go home with these two men.
Chapter 10
It was really hard not to fuss over him.
Growing up on a farm, there’d been many times when her father or one of her two older brothers had needed some kind of bandaging. Once or twice, the doctor had come out to stitch someone up, and one time one of her brothers had to spend the night in the local hospital.
What Carol had gleaned from those early years was that men were of two basic types. They either wanted extreme pampering when they were sick or injured—or they wanted no pampering at all. She had been pretty certain that was true for most men, and that she, therefore, had a handle on the concept of how to take care of an injured or ill man.
Edward Jessop, of course, had to challenge all her preconceived notions. He seemed more concerned with her well-being than his own injury.
As she worked with Warren in the kitchen, making an early dinner of fried chicken, she kept tossing side glances at Edward. He’d insisted he didn’t need to go to bed, and would just keep them company in the kitchen while they worked, instead. When he didn’t realize she was looking, then the pain showed, just a little, around the edges of his mouth.
She much preferred that real, genuine expression to that phony smile he was trying to give her when he saw her looking.
The pharmacy had delivered a prescription of pain pills. Edward had refused to take them. Carol had a plan, and so had offered him simple aspirin instead. Those he took, claiming that was all he really needed. She reckoned that before turning out the lights tonight—she was staying over, of course—she would give him a couple of those prescription meds and by then he would be tired enough of the pain to take them.
He looked up, saw her looking at him, and smiled. She guessed he realized the gig was up when she didn’t smile back, and didn’t look away, either.
He shrugged. “It’s there but I can deal with it, sweetheart.”
“I think you’re likely a terrible patient.”
“I’m not.”
“Do ya think?”
The brothers’ simultaneous responses make her chuckle.
I needed that laugh. I’m feeling stressed.
Who could blame her? The idea that someone wanted to hurt one of the two men she was coming to love shook her very badly.
The other thing that Edward was ticked about was the fact that he was off work for a couple of days. Most people would be happy to have some time off work, but not Edward. He had already grumbled about that.
Warren reminded him that it was department policy that he couldn’t return to work after an injury until he’d received a medical discharge.
“Damn cousins won’t give me one until they’re good and ready,” Edward said. Carol nearly grinned thinking about that moment. She’d half expected him to stomp his foot for emphasis.
She looked back at Warren, who’d also had his attention fixed on his brother. She read sympathy in his expression. One of the first things she’d learned about these particular brothers Jessop was that they took their positions as paramedics very seriously. It wasn’t a job to either one of them. They referred to it as “their calling.”
“I was thinking.” Warren finished dredging the chicken through the flour, eggs, and crumbs with spices mixture he’d put together so easily. Oil was heating in a deep skillet on the stove.
“Should I be worried about this thinking?” Edward asked.
“Not at all. I was thinking that since Carol has tomorrow off as her usual day off, and I have a ton of vacation time banked—we could take tomorrow and spend the tim
e together. I thought it would be nice if we drove up to Abilene. We could meet Carol’s family.” Warren turned his attention on her. “I know for a fact you haven’t visited home since you moved into that little house in March. That’s nearly half a year.”
“That would be a great idea,” Edward said. He actually brightened at the suggestion. He turned to her. “I’d love to meet your family, sweetheart.” Then he frowned. “You don’t talk about them much. Do you have brothers and sisters, or were you an only child?
Carol was nearly too stunned to answer his question. They wanted to meet her family? In the next heartbeat she answered her own rhetorical question. Of course they would want to meet her family. Family was important to them. It was an integral part of Lusty.
They continued to stare at her so she said, “Yes, I have siblings, two of each, all older than I. I was a late-in-life surprise for my parents.” She looked from one man to the other. They both returned her looks with interest. Maybe giving them a few more facts would satisfy their curiosity. Maybe it would be enough information so that they wouldn’t feel the need to waste their time driving all the way north to Abilene to visit a place she had no earthly desire to go.
“My brother Lawrence is the oldest of us. He’s fifty, and he works the farm with Dad. They built him and his wife Loretta a house several years ago, because Larry’s going to take over when Daddy’s gone.”
Did both men seem to sense something off? She tried to figure out what it could be, but really, she was just filling in an information gap, wasn’t she? Now where was I? Ah yes, Larry and Loretta. Maybe it was the way she’d said about them taking over. “Daddy’s seventy-five, so it’s something they’ve discussed and the family all knows about. Anyway, Larry and Loretta have three children, Lois, Lucinda and Logan, aged thirty, twenty-nine and twenty-eight, respectively.” They were still looking at her, with a look in their eyes she couldn’t quite read. She licked her lips and swallowed, and pushed on. “Next in birth order is my sister, Mary. She’s forty-nine. She’s a teacher, and she married a farmer and they live on the same road as my parents, but on the other side of it, and about a mile to the west. My sister Jane is forty-eight, and she’s a nurse. She’s divorced—twice—and lives in Abilene. Then my youngest sibling is Calvin. He’s not as steady as Larry, as he’s been divorced twice, too. He’s forty-seven, and also he works the farm with our dad. Daddy’s made provisions in his will for him to stay working on the farm for as long as he wants to. Personally, I don’t think that will be all that long, as he and Larry can’t really abide each other.”
Love Under Two Responders [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 10