by M. S. Parker
Twelve
Aline
I handed the driver a bill and told her to keep the change without even looking to see how much that tip would be. The fact that she yelled a thank you meant I’d given her a good one, and I waved a hand at her in what I hoped was a polite manner. I doubted she’d be offended by my being preoccupied, especially as she’d been sympathetic when I’d told her I needed to go to the hospital because my boyfriend had been in a car accident.
My pulse was racing, and I had the now-too-familiar taste of fear on the back of my tongue, but I forced myself to walk calmly into the ER. No good would come of me panicking. If anything, it would delay me getting to Eoin, and that was the goal, getting to him. I needed to see for myself that he was okay.
I was halfway to the front desk when I spotted someone I recognized, and I veered off to speak to him instead. I wasn’t Eoin’s family, so I didn’t know if I’d be able to get information about him, but Bruce had been with Eoin at the time of the accident.
“Bruce!” I called.
He spotted me when I was only a few steps away and smiled, but it wasn’t the same brilliant smile that I’d seen at the bar where I’d last seen him. That alone was enough to tell me that it hadn’t been some little fender bender.
“Cain said you’d be here,” Bruce said. “He’ll be back in a couple minutes and will let you know if you’ll be able to see Eoin.”
I didn’t like having to wait, but I understood that Eoin’s health had to come first. If he needed to rest, then I would stay here until I could see him. Fortunately, Bruce could do something to distract me for a few minutes.
“What happened?”
“It was crazy.” Bruce shook his head. “All five of us were in the SUV, heading out for a job when this moving van came out of nowhere and just slammed into us. Cain was driving, and he did some fancy shit that kept us from wrecking into anyone else, but the SUV flipped.”
My hands curled into fists, every nerve in my body taut. Logically, I knew that what Bruce was talking about was in the past, but I still felt like it was part of the present, something that was still happening.
“Dez and I were able to get to the van and get the driver out.” Bruce rubbed the back of his neck, winced, and then continued, “He woke up in the ambulance on his way here, and the medics were able to figure out what happened. Apparently, he’s diabetic, and he hadn’t realized his blood sugar was so low. He passed out at the wheel.”
I hadn’t realized I’d been angry until Bruce finished explaining the situation. Cain had said they’d been hit, and while I supposed Cain could have been at fault, I hadn’t really considered it. I didn’t know much about Cain, but he’d struck me as the sort of capable man who always had the most competent person doing a task. I knew how well Eoin drove, which meant Cain was even better since he’d been behind the wheel.
No, I’d been furious at the other driver, at whatever had distracted them to the point of causing an accident. But now, I knew it hadn’t been something completely preventable. Sure, the man might’ve taken better care of himself to ensure he wouldn’t pass out, but this was a far cry from texting while driving or intentionally running a red light.
“Aline, Bruce.”
I turned as Cain approached, and something tight inside me eased. While he didn’t look happy, he didn’t look like someone who had to deliver bad news either.
“I pulled some strings so I can take you back to see him,” Cain said to me before looking at Bruce. “Can you wait for Fever and Dez? Let them know that I’m going to call the client and figure out what our next step is.”
Bruce tapped his fingers to his forehead in a little salute. “Will do, boss.”
I followed Cain past the front desk and into the main ER. We passed three curtained sections before Cain pulled aside one of the curtains and motioned for me to step through.
The first thing I saw was blood, but then our eyes met, and Eoin’s entire face lit up.
“Hey.” He held out his hand, and I took it. He pulled me closer. “I’d kiss you, but I’m a bit of a mess.”
“I don’t care.” My chaotic emotions made my voice uneven, but I didn’t care about that either. I brushed my lips across his, contenting myself with a chaste kiss while we were in public. He was alive and didn’t seem to have any life-threatening issues. I could inspect every inch of him for myself later.
“Mr. McCrae.” It was only then that I realized a doctor was here too, and she appeared to be torn between amusement and annoyance at my presence. “I need to discuss results with you.”
Cain stepped away. “That’s my cue. I need to handle things with our client, and I’ll touch base with you when I have things squared away.”
As Cain left, I turned to follow, but Eoin’s grip on my hand tightened. “Stay.”
“Mr. McCrae.”
“You can talk in front of her,” he said to the doctor.
“All right.” The doctor ignored me and went straight to the facts. “The initial x-rays didn’t show any fractures, but I’m still waiting for the results of the CT scan.”
“If nothing’s broken, I can go, right?” Eoin asked. “I mean, the CT is just an extra precaution.”
“No,” the doctor said, looking annoyed enough that I wondered if Eoin had been giving her a hard time. “It is not just a precaution. You broke a window with your head, and while I don’t doubt you have a very hard head, bone versus glass isn’t a competition you want to risk losing.”
“You did what with your head?” It was my turn to hold his hand tighter.
He shrugged. “I’ll have a headache and probably a bruise, but it’s far from the worst thing that’s happened to me.”
I studied him for a moment. “This can go one of two ways. You can stay and wait for the results, or I can call someone in your family and have them tell you to not be an idiot. I have plenty of people to choose from.”
He scowled, but there wasn’t any real animosity in his expression. “All right. I’ll stay, but if the CT’s clear, I want to leave.”
“Fine.” With that, the doctor left the two of us alone, the expression on her face clearly saying that she was glad he would be my problem soon.
“I have to ask,” Eoin said, “how did you know I was here? I’m glad you are, don’t get me wrong, but I was surprised to see you come in with Cain. Did he call you?”
“I called him,” I explained. “Just logical.”
“Why was it logical?” A strange expression crossed his face.
“Well, you’d said you would be gone on a job for a while, and I heard male voices in the background during our call, so I figured you were together.”
Now he just looked confused, and a warning bell went off in my head. Something was off.
“Eoin, you texted me about having a job. We were talking on the phone.”
“I did? We were?”
I could barely ask the question. “Are-are you…are you having memory issues?”
He sighed. “I don’t remember the accident…or some before that.”
My stomach twisted. “How much is missing?”
“The last thing I remember is talking to you last night.”
Which meant he didn’t remember me calling to tell him I was probably pregnant.
Shit.
Thirteen
Eoin
“The last thing I remember is talking to you last night.” I shook my head. “It’s weird. I didn’t even realize something was wrong with my memory right away. I mean, it was daylight, and I was sitting on a sidewalk, but my brain didn’t even register that my most recent memory had been at night and in my hotel room.”
“What did the doctor say?”
Aline’s voice sounded strange, but when I looked at her, she seemed fine. Maybe it was just the shock of first finding out I’d been in an accident and then learning that I’d lost some time. It wasn’t like this was a normal, everyday occurrence. Then again, considering how we’d met, normal didn’t really apply to us.
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“That’d be another reason she wanted a CT scan,” I admitted. “I have a concussion so–”
“Yes, I imagine that would be inevitable when two hard objects collide at a high rate of speed,” Aline said dryly.
I lifted a shoulder. “At least it was the window that broke.”
“Well, clearly, your brain didn’t come out entirely unscathed.” Aline’s mouth turned down in a frown that tugged at my heart.
“I’m okay,” I said, lifting our hands so I could kiss the back of hers. “You’ll see.”
She nodded but didn’t stop frowning.
“What were we talking about?” I asked after nearly a minute of silence.
She blinked, clearly startled by my question. “What?”
“You said that I’d texted you about the job, but then that we were talking on the phone when the accident happened. Was something wrong?”
Before she could answer, the doctor returned. “The CT scan is clear. No bleeding. But you do have a concussion, and I’d like to keep you overnight for observation.”
That wasn’t about to happen, but I said it more politely since she was just doing her job. “I’d rather not be admitted. I…don’t like hospitals.”
The doctor’s gaze flicked up to my scar, and then she met my eyes again. “All right, let’s make a deal. If you have someone to stay with you for at least the next twelve hours, I’ll release you.”
I looked over at Aline. “I’d like for you to stay with me, but I can get one of the guys or someone from my family to do it.”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll do it.”
“I’ll get started on the paperwork then.” The doctor was gone as quickly as she had appeared.
When Aline didn’t bring the conversation back to my recent question, I considered asking it again, but thought better of it. I didn’t know when the doctor would be back, and I didn’t want us to be interrupted again if something actually had been wrong.
I really hoped I hadn’t done something stupid again.
Besides, there were a couple other things I needed to take care of now that I had an official medical report.
“Apparently, my phone is broken,” I said. “Could I use yours to call my parents? I don’t know how much attention the crash is getting in the news or if any of our names are out there. The last thing Da and Mom need is to see something on the news about me being in an accident. Especially after everything else I’ve put them through.”
“Of course.” Aline fished her phone out of her purse and held it out to me. “Do you know their numbers?”
That was an odd question. “Um, yes? Why wouldn’t I?”
Aline’s light green eyes sparkled with humor. “You do realize that most people anymore don’t actually know phone numbers because we use a contact list rather than putting in the numbers from memory.”
“Yes, I do know that.” I laughed. “But my parents insisted that all of us kids had at least a couple phone numbers memorized so that if we didn’t have service or the battery died or whatever, we could use any other phone to make a call home. And ‘insisted’ meant we didn’t get a cell phone until we could recite both of our parents’ cell numbers and at least two of our siblings’ numbers.”
“Smart,” she said. “I’d probably be in trouble. The only number I have memorized is the landline my parents kept ‘just in case.’”
“‘Just in case’ of what?” I asked.
Aline shrugged. “EMP. Zombie apocalypse. They never really specified.”
I chuckled as I dialed Da’s number, glad for the humor before making this call. Me sounding positive would go a long way to convincing them that I was okay. Aside from the memory glitch, I was.
Yeah, I was going to have some pretty nasty bruises, but I’d gotten worse doing stupid shit growing up. If all I had to deal with asking a couple people to fill in what’d happened between late last night and when Cain had woken me up in the SUV after the accident, I’d consider it a good day.
Less than forty minutes later, Aline and I walked into the hotel lobby. I’d spent most of the ride from the hospital to the hotel on the phone with Cain, discussing what was going on with the job I didn’t remember us taking. He’d filled me in on what I’d forgotten, and then said that he’d spoken to Edwin Moss – our client – and explained about the accident, including the aftermath.
The biggest two points of which were that the SUV was totaled and that all of our weapons had been confiscated by the police until we were able to prove ownership and permits. Cain had felt that it’d be best if the client hired another company.
Moss had been understanding and had taken the referral Cain had given him, so I could spend tomorrow and the rest of the weekend recovering. I hated being sidelined, but Cain hadn’t budged on that.
“Has your brother found a place for you?” Aline asked as we rode the elevator to my floor. “I meant to ask you last night.”
“I didn’t tell you when we talked this morning?” I scratched the stubble on my chin., hoping to steer the conversation back to my unanswered question.
She shook her head. “Does that mean you’ve heard back from Rome?”
“I did.” I reached for her hand. “I’ll probably be signing for a condo on Monday.” A thought occurred to me. “I’ll need to call Rome and find out if I’d rescheduled my appointment after Cain scheduled a job. I’m sure Rome will make time to fit me in. I just don’t know when.”
“A condo?” she asked as we walked down the hallway. “Not an apartment?”
I shook my head. “That’s what I’d asked him to look for – an apartment, I mean – but he said when he saw this place, he thought it’d be perfect for me. And it is.”
She smiled. “What’s it like?”
“It’s pretty big, but when I saw it, I realized I liked the idea of having space, especially since it’s the first place I’ve ever been able to choose like this. Before, I had to be ready to leave it all behind, so I’d never seen the point of putting any effort into having anything but just the bare necessities.”
“That makes sense,” she said. “I’ve never had a place of my own either. Though I am younger than you.” She winked at me, a small smirk on her lips.
Damn, that was hot.
“Are you accusing me of robbing the cradle?” I teased her back as I unlocked the door and reached inside to turn on the light.
“Well, you are, what, forty?” She laughed even as she said it.
“Twenty-eight, thank you.” I glared at her, but it was all in jest.
“Practically ancient.”
As the door clicked closed, she turned toward me and reached up to put her hand on my cheek. Her smile softened, and the light mood shifted, not into something heavy or dark, but different.
“I was so scared when that phone went de…” Her voice shook. “Quiet. I thought…”
I put my hand over hers. “I’m okay.” I leaned down and brushed my lips across hers. “I’m pretty hard to kill.”
If she hadn’t known me as well as she did, she might’ve thought it was me simply trying to reassure her, but she understood both the truth of the words as well as why they had a bitter edge to them.
“Will you hate me if I say I’m glad of it?”
The vulnerability in her eyes both surprised me and reached something deep inside me, prompting me to say the truth in response. “Nothing could make me hate you, sweetheart.”
Her entire face shone, and a bolt of desire hit me square in the stomach and immediately traveled south. I was banged up and bruised with a massive headache in my near future when the ER drugs wore off, but my cock didn’t care.
“I need to clean up,” I said. “Join me?”
Heat flared in her eyes, and she nodded.
Neither of us spoke as we undressed, as the bathroom filled with steam. The only sound was the shower, and it created white noise, making it feel as if nothing else existed. The world could’ve disappeared, and we never would have known.
I stepped under the spray first, hissing in pain as the hot water hit the bruised and scraped skin on my back. Then Aline joined me, and all my attention focused on her. Slender, delicate body with small, perfect breasts tipped with pale peach-colored nipples. Fair skin that probably burned with the slightest hint of sunlight.
Her blonde hair was so light that even water couldn’t darken it to brown. But her beauty wasn’t just physical, no matter how quickly or how intensely my body responded to hers. She was smart and tough and put others before herself.
How the hell did I get this lucky?
Without a word, she picked up my shampoo, squirted some of it in her palm, and then gestured for me to bend over so she could reach my hair. I closed my eyes and just let myself enjoy the feel of her fingers massaging my scalp, picking out what I assumed was glass and bits of debris. Once she finished with that, she began to wash the blood and the dirt off, moving carefully but not like she didn’t want to touch me.
She waited until she was done with everything else before finally, finally touching my cock. A shudder ran through my entire body as she moved the washcloth over the head and down the shaft. Every place on my body that she’d touched was humming, burning in a pleasurable way, overriding the pain from my injuries. After a few strokes, the washcloth was replaced by her hand, and I groaned.
When I felt her move, I opened my eyes to find her down on her knees, her lips parting to take the tip into her mouth. She slowly worked her hand and lips around and over, finding the perfect balance of enough but not too much. Her other hand moved to my balls, tugging on them, rolling them. Each sensation built on the next, and pleasure traveled through me, filling every cell with that white-hot pleasure that promised to completely eliminate any and all thoughts.
“Aline,” I growled out the warning, but she didn’t let up. Instead, she took me deeper, sucked harder, and I exploded in her mouth. She swallowed each drop, looking up at me through my lashes as she did it, which only made it that much hotter.