by Peggy Jaeger
She turned and leveled a piercing stare at Rick. “I didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“It’s not.”
Turning back to her sister, she said, “You’re not allowed to go to work tomorrow.”
“No way that’s gonna happen. I’ve got clients booked.”
“Reschedule.”
Abby pouted at her.
“I mean it. As your doctor, I’m ordering you to lie low for at least a day to make sure that rock-hard head of yours is stable.”
Before Abby could protest, Eleanor shoved a stack of papers at her. “These are your discharge papers and”—she turned to address Rick again—“a list of things to watch out for during the next forty-eight hours. Headache is normal. Throbbing, pounding migraine is not. Double vision, nausea, projectile vomiting, slurred speech. Any of those pop up and you get her to the ER immediately. Even if she’s arguing against it.”
“Will do.”
“Hello? I’m right here. You do realize I can hear you, right?”
Eleanor kissed her sister’s cheek and said, “Do as you’re told for once in your life, Abby. I mean it.” With that said, she skittered out again.
“Who died and made her the boss of me?”
With a grin, Rick helped her stand. “She’s just doing her job.”
The memory of him saying the same thing to her sister a few minutes ago darted back.
“Where are my shoes?”
He reached under the gurney and found them. “One of the heels is broken.”
“What?” Abby winced at the pitch of her whine. She took the shoes from him and examined the missing heel on the left one. The heel had snapped clear off the red underside. “These are my favorites.”
“Don’t tell that to the other hundred and fifty pair. They’ll get jealous.”
She slanted him a squinty glare.
“Get the heel glued back on. That’ll fix it.”
“I don’t think you can glue these heels back on.”
“Then we’ll buy you a new pair. They’re just shoes, Abigail.”
Heartened by his use of we, Abby stopped complaining and searched the patient bag until she found her phone.
After logging on, she told him, “I’ve got a dozen texts from the rest of my sisters, and I missed three calls from my mother.”
“Word travels fast.”
“Telephone, telegram, tell a—”
“Laine. I know. Come on. You can call everyone when we’re on the way back to the club. My car is still there, and I don’t want it to get towed.”
“How am I supposed to walk like this?” The unbroken shoe pushed her height up four inches. When she slipped into the broken one, she stood lopsided.
“You are kinda wonky. I’ll see if Eleanor can get you a pair of hospital slippers.”
“Those are fuggly.”
“Stop complaining.” He took her arm.
Abby sighed. “This girls’ night out is a total bust.”
Chapter Nineteen
After procuring a pair of the unfashionable slippers, Rick called for a cab while Abby answered all her messages, opting to text her mother back.
“She’ll never let me off the phone if I call,” she explained.
His car was in the same spot he’d parked it in hours ago, and within seconds they were heading back uptown.
Abby leaned back in the comfortable seat, crossed her arms over her chest, and closed her eyes.
“Don’t pass out on me, Abigail. Your sister will have me in a box if you do.”
“I’m closing my eyes until we get back. I won’t fall asleep. Promise. And don’t call me Abigail.”
When had her productive, normal, boring life turned into such a chaotic whirlwind?
If Rick hadn’t been with her and Ellie, she was fairly certain Peter Edwards would have killed her. He might not even have stopped with her but gone for her sister as well. Ellie would have jumped right to Abby’s rescue without thinking of the danger to herself. That thought alone was enough to keep her up nights for the next millennium.
Rick’s injury, play it down though he would, was another thing that would run on repeat in her mind for the foreseeable future. He’d been stabbed—okay, slashed, but, really, was there a difference? The end result was the same. He’d been wounded while protecting her.
She opened her eyes and snaked Rick a side glance.
“I can hear your brain spinning from here,” he told her. “What are you thinking about?”
“Something Ellie said to you when she was stitching your arm.”
“Care to share? ’Cuz your sister said a boatload while we were waiting for you to wake up.”
He guided the car into her underground garage and held her hand all the way to the elevator.
“She thanked you for protecting me.”
Rick took her keys and opened her door.
Moonlight was waiting for them inside the doorway. The moment she spied Abby, she started mewing, the noise echoing in the empty hallway.
“Shhh, baby. It’s okay. We’re home now.” Abby lifted and cuddled her to her chest. “You’re not used to Mommy being away so late, are you? Poor thing. Let’s get you something to eat.”
The cat glared at Rick over Abby’s shoulder. “Don’t look at me, cat. I wasn’t the one who kept her out to all hours.”
Moonlight squinted at him.
“Ignore him, baby. He had a hard night.”
While the cat ate, Abby slid down next to her, back against one of the cabinets, legs splayed out in front of her.
Rick settled down across from them and lifted Abby’s legs into his lap. He removed the ugly hospital booties and began massaging her feet, one toe at a time.
“Oh, dear Lord.” Abby’s eyes slammed shut. “That feels…” She couldn’t conjure a description perfect enough.
“How you can stand in those ice picks all day long is beyond me.”
“They’re so pretty,” she said on a sigh. Well, if she was being honest, her voice came back sounding more like Moonlight purring. Only softer.
“And they make your legs looks amazing, I get that. Makes a man want to lift you up and wrap those yards of leg around him.”
Abby opened her eyes.
“But they can’t be good for your back and hips.”
“Conundrum of the ages,” she said. “Comfort or beauty? Which is the bigger desire?”
“I guess we know the answer for you. Your shoe closet is a foot fetishist’s wet dream.”
Because it was true, she simply smiled.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Not really.” She dragged her fingers along Moonlight’s back.
“Dizzy? Nauseous?”
“No. I don’t even have a headache, which when you think about it, is kind of weird.”
“Talk to me, sweetheart.”
“When I woke up in the emergency room and realized what had happened…well, it hit me. Hit me hard.”
“What?”
“I could have been killed. Maybe Ellie, too. If you hadn’t been there…”
“I was. And you’re both safe.”
“I know that, here”—she pointed to her head—“but I’m having a hard time feeling it here.” Her hand drifted down to her chest.
“Give it a day or two.”
She waved her hand in the air. “This has been a lot to take in. All of it. Marty. Lila Genocardi. I was thinking when we were in the car I don’t know when or how my normal, boring life got so crazy. I want it to go back to the way it was before all this started.”
“It will. Pecorrini will find Genocardi, and I’ll be sure you’re safe again. You can go back to normal and boring. You and your noisy fluff ball.”
She desperately wanted to tell him she didn’t want to go back to normal and boring if it meant he was going to slip out of her life. The statement he made in the hospital screamed back at her. She was about to ask him about it when he pressed into the ball of her foot with his thumb.
“Dear God, man. You should do this for a living. You’d be a bazillionaire.”
At Abby’s gasp, Moonlight lifted her head from her bowl, her throaty rasps quieting as she looked up. When she was satisfied Abby was fine, she went back to eating and rumbling again.
“Abby?”
“Hmmm?”
“Open your eyes.”
Reluctantly, she did.
Her tummy did that flipping thing it always did when she wanted an ice-cream reward after a busy day when his gaze narrowed onto her face.
“Focus, sweetheart. What were you going to ask me before? About Ellie?”
Moonlight finished eating, then plopped down on her hindquarters next to them and started cleaning her face and paws.
“She thanked you for protecting me, and you told her you were doing your job.”
Slowly, his gaze staying locked with hers, he nodded.
Abby licked her dry lips. “Ellie thinks I mean more to you than just a job.”
Again, he nodded, never letting go of her foot.
“You never answered her.”
“I know.”
A few moments shot by with the only Moonlight’s purrs audible in the room.
“Please don’t go all silent and guarded on me again, Rick. Not after…everything.”
He let go of her foot, then placed his hand down to rest over her calf. “What do you want me to tell you, Abby?”
That you love me? That you’re never going to leave me? That I mean something to you?
“The truth.”
****
A simple concept. But what was the truth?
He’d put his life on the line for her safety no matter what? You could take that one to the bank.
He’d stand with her, for her, and next to her, come what may? A sure bet.
He cared about her more than any woman he’d ever known? Maybe even loved her? Hell, yeah. Okay, no maybe about the loved part because he knew he did. But what would come of telling her?
The two words she’d said to him before falling asleep had played over and over in his mind like a mantra.
You will.
It wasn’t so much she’d assumed he’d walk away from her when all this ridiculousness was over, it was more the declaration she’d unknowingly made. Without saying the specific words, she’d told him she loved him.
Loved him.
Him.
And she thought he’d leave her just like her father had.
She wasn’t wrong. It was how he’d lived his life.
But now? Well, now he couldn’t imagine walking away from her. Couldn’t think of a moment she wasn’t with him, next to him, making him smile and laugh and challenging his patience with her blunt words and probing questions. The very notion of walking out of her life was terrifying.
But staying in it was just as difficult a thought.
What did he have to offer her? He worked at a job requiring him to put his life on the line at times protecting a client, as he’d done with her, tonight.
He’d fashioned a lifestyle for himself that allowed him to live in the here and now and never worry about the future, knowing the only thing promised was today.
What kind of woman would want such a man?
“The truth?” he asked, absently caressing her leg with one hand, scratching the cat behind her ear with the other.
“It’s not an alien concept.”
One corner of his mouth inched upward. “No. It’s not.”
“So?”
Rick stared at her for a beat and then blew out a breath. “You’re not simply a protection job to me, Abby.”
Something moved across her eyes. “Oh?”
“You never were.”
“What am I, then?”
Words weren’t his forte, he’d told her that before. He pulled his legs in and slid over to sit right in front of her. One hand rested on her thigh and squeezed. The other wound around her neck. Abby tilted her head and leaned into the caress.
“I think I’ve mentioned I prefer showing over telling.”
Abby placed a kiss to his palm. “Then show me.”
He rubbed his thumb across her lips. Abby sucked it into her mouth and gently bit down.
“Abby—”
“Show me, Rick, what I mean to you. Please?”
She almost undid him with that simple plea. “I will. But not now.”
His ego jumped a mile high when disappointment clouded her tired eyes.
“We’re both tired, and you need to rest, like your doctor ordered.”
“She’s really not my doctor, you know. She’s my baby sister. And she’s bossy.”
How was he ever going to resist that pout?
He grinned and pushed up to stand, taking her with him. Upright, he pulled her into his arms. “She’s the one with the medical degree between the two of you, so if she says you need to rest, you’re going to rest.”
She slipped her hands around his waist and rubbed up against him.
“Abigail.”
She giggled at the warning in his voice.
“Come on. Let’s get you and the noisy one to bed.” He bent and lifted Moonlight. With the cat nestled in the crook of his arm, he slipped his other over her shoulder.
Teeth brushed and pajamas on, Abby slipped into bed, Moonlight immediately snuggling along Abby’s spine.
“Why aren’t you in here with me?” she asked, pouting again after he kissed her.
“I will be. I need to do something first.”
Abby reached out and grabbed his hand.
“I’ll be right in, don’t worry.”
He lost his breath when a tear washed down her cheek.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong.”
She sniffed, then swiped her forearm under her nose. “Nothing’s wrong. Just…thank you. For everything.”
Rick brought her hand to his lips. “You never have to thank me, Abby. Now get some rest. I’ll be back a few minutes.”
“ ’K.”
He shut the bedside light but left the door open. When he turned back, her eyes were closed.
Chapter Twenty
“Abby?”
“Hmmm?”
“Babe, wake up. I need to make sure you’re okay.”
“I am now and was the other nine thousand times you woke me up.”
Rick’s deep chuckle resounded against her ear. Tucked under his arm, she cuddled closer and nuzzled his pec hair.
“Mmmm. You’re so warm.”
He gathered her in. The way his fingers ran up and down her arm in a lazy line did a lot toward waking up all her necessary parts fully. She nudged her knee a little higher on his leg, the bottom edge of his boxers grazing her skin.
She shifted and stared up at his chin. His eyes were closed, those gorgeous inky eyelashes sitting perfectly across the tops of his cheeks.
“Having fun?” He never even opened his eyes.
“Do you have x-ray vision? Should I start calling you Clark instead of…Fred?”
“That’s Kal-El to you, Lois.” He opened his eyes and nailed her with a heated glare that had her insides jiggling like jelly and her girlie parts doing a samba. She giggled at the thought.
“What’s so funny, Miss Laine—hey! Lois Laine. Get it?” In one move, he rolled her to her back and wormed her knees apart, making a comfy space for himself between her thighs.
“You’re too funny for words, Clark. I was laughing because I remembered something Ellie said last night about how we looked when we were dancing.”
He nuzzled the spot between her shoulder and her ear, the scratch of his morning scruff across her neck sending little lusty flares all along her nerve endings.
“What?” He sucked her earlobe into his mouth and gently bit down.
“Oh, sweet baby Jesus.”
“Eleanor said that? Sounds strange. Maybe she’s overworked.”
Abby slapped his shoulder with the flat of her hand. It was like hitting concrete. “That’s not
what she said, Fred.”
Rick bit down harder.
“Okay, okay. I get it. No more name calling, as long as you promise to stop calling me Abigail.”
“Done.” He sealed the deal with a quick buss on her mouth. “Now. What did Ellie say that has you giggling like a three-year-old?”
“That’s not very flattering, you know.”
He lifted his shoulders and went back to nuzzling her neck.
Abby swallowed. Who knew the neck was such an erogenous zone?
“She said we looked we like we were doing a sex-amba on the dance floor.”
He stopped and lifted his head. “Is that even a real…thing?”
She giggled again at his comical expression. “To my sister it is.” She explained Eleanor’s description of them dancing.
“Yeah, I can see how she’d think that,” Rick said. “You kept rubbing up against me like a vamp.”
Abby hooted. “A vamp? What century do you live in, Bannerman?”
He silenced her laughter with a kiss.
In the time it took for her shoulders to stop their mirthful shaking, the rest of her body began quivering.
His rolled to his side taking her with him, their legs twining intimately, their mouths never separating from one another. He slid a hand under her T-shirt and took a slow, languid journey down her body while he made love to her mouth.
She couldn’t remember a time in her life she’d been kissed so thoroughly, so passionately, so completely. With one hand cupping her neck, he brushed her cheek with his thumb in the most tender of caresses.
For all his bulk and brawn, Rick Bannerman’s touch was as soft as a whisper, as smooth as a sigh. He took his time seducing, stroking, and stoking the fire blazing within her.
A simple hip move and he rolled to his back, Abby straddling him. The long, throbbing length of him pulsed beneath her. She arched back and shed her shirt over her head with one hard yank. The heat in his eyes as they gazed over her naked breasts was enough to singe. The throbbing beneath her quickened.
Rick’s hands danced up from her waist to the underside of each breast and clutched each mound with enough pressure to make her eyes slam shut. When he pinched her nipples, then replaced his fingers with his mouth, her thighs tightened around him.