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“Well, go be mad at me at home. I don’t want you getting sick, too.” I gave her a warm look. “How else are you going to be able to nurse me back to health?”
“Nurse?”
“I was thinking we could get you one of those cute little outfits,” I said, leaning back as I warmed to my subject. “For my sponge baths and feedings.”
“You think I am going to feed and bathe you?” she asked, cocking one hip.
“Yes, I do, woman,” I said smugly. “And you’ll do it with a smile.”
“You’re probably right.” She sighed, looking deflated. “But I’m not dressing up in some porno outfit.”
“No porno,” I agreed, suddenly feeling like a horse’s ass, even though I’d been mostly joking. Mostly.
“And I’m not leaving until I hear what the doctor has to say,” she insisted, giving me a dirty look. “Plus, I need to help all of your brothers find places to stay. You didn’t tell me you had such a big family.”
“Big . . . what?”
The door opened and I bit back a grin.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” I teased. Though Lord knows, I was glad to see them.
Hunter and Vice were smirking at me from the doorway.
“Cain wanted to come here in person, but only so he could laugh at your ass.”
“Aww, you shouldn’t have,” I said. “Did you bring me flowers?”
“We came to help with your missing person and neighborhood problems. The fact that your gnarly old ass got shot just sped up our timeline.”
“He’s lucky Mac didn’t shoot him,” I heard in a slow drawl. “He would have aimed a little lower.”
Hunter and Vice ambled into the room and I saw the pretty Devil’s Rider boys from even further down the coast were standing behind them. Nick leaned against the door jamb, looking relaxed, as always. Drake stood straight, his military training obvious despite his torn jeans, leather, and ink. Nick’s hair was prettier than most girls’, and Drake was a heavily tattooed badass with muscles and nerves of steel he’d gotten in the Marines.
“What are you sad sacks doing here?” I grumbled, even though I was smiling. It was my job to give the young ones a hard time. Hell, I gave everybody I cared about a hard time.
“Kaylee wants your sorry ass home for Christmas,” Drake offered. “For some reason, all the girls do.”
Cynthia looked a little jealous at that.
“All the girls? Do tell, Preacher.”
“They are all like little sisters to me,” I announced loudly. And they were. Just because I stole a few kisses and pinched a few bottoms, well, those days were behind me, anyway. I was a one-woman man now.
“You are a lucky sonofabitch, you know that, Preach?”
“Yeah. I’m lucky the bullet didn’t hit anything.”
“No, I mean your woman,” Nick said with a feral looking grin. He might be even calmer than Mac, and slow to anger, but Nick was no slouch with the ladies. In fact, he might even put Callaway to shame with the number of women after him at any given moment, though I doubted he’d ever had a five-way before. Come to think of it, Drake was beating them off with a stick, too.
“Don’t even think about it, you bastard.”
He just grinned and winked at me.
“I’ll perform the ceremony for you. If you want.”
“Fuck that,” Hunter growled. “I’m doing it.”
“You told them?” Cynthia asked with a worried look. “I thought it wasn’t official until you actually asked me.”
“I didn’t tell anyone, sweetheart. I think they can just tell I’ve been hooked.”
She scowled at me, crossing her arms and tossing her hair.
“Hmmph. That had better be what they meant.”
That cracked the guys up. They laughed their damned asses off. Meanwhile, I just lay there, wishing I could get down on one knee right fucking now. But I couldn’t.
Not yet.
But when I got better, that was the first thing I was going to do.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Cynthia
“Damned fool, getting himself shot,” I muttered to myself as I cleaned. No one was here to hear me anyway, so I let loose. I’d been cleaning and ranting on and off for a few hours now. I was pissed. I was tired and pissed and scared. How were we supposed to build a life here when Preacher threw himself on bullets? “Stupid man thinks he’s invincible.”
I was helping get the parsonage ready for guests. Paul’s bed and the other beds upstairs were clean, but I needed to air them out. Preacher never even went up there, apparently, other than to use the shower.
Except the few times I’d slept over, and then we’d used the guest room beds, shoving the two twins together and falling into the crack more than once.
Preacher was pretty much either on the couch, in the kitchen, or in my bed.
The man had also been spending a lot of time in his office, walking the neighborhood, and talking to people. Frequenting the local restaurants, usually with me. But not now. Now, thanks to some punk kid with an attitude, he was flat on his back, recovering.
