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I could see her narrowed eyes through the receptionist’s window and knew that Trick’s cavalier attitude toward her pissed her off.
I should’ve told him he was barking up the wrong tree when I’d seen them together.
Should have, but I knew that this way would be much more amusing… for me, not for him.
Ignacia was prime cut, grade-A crazy.
All the men in the town loved her… until they didn’t anymore.
In fact, I’d helped two men now get restraining orders against her.
She was that crazy.
She became obsessive and smothered the men that she tried to date, and in the process made it to where the men had to get tough with her.
Though, her cutting someone up was new to me.
“We don’t have any more rooms, sir. They’re all full,” the receptionist said as she pulled him back. “You can wait here until one opens…”
I was up and hopping toward the door.
“Put him in here, Pam!” I called out. “I’m almost done, and he won’t mind.”
Trick’s eyes snapped up to meet mine.
His eyes narrowed, and a worried look passed over his face, but then was wiped completely clean as he looked over at Pam.
“I don’t mind,” he admitted.
I didn’t ‘mind’ either.
In fact, I wanted him there.
I’d wanted to talk to him for weeks now, but couldn’t quite work up the courage to force myself to talk to him.
I’d already said all the words that I could.
He’d heard my apologies. He’d said he accepted them.
But still…
The nurse moved him into the room with me, and I hopped backward out of the way while he came through, dripping blood.
I grimaced and went to the opposite side of the table and returned to my seat.
“What happened?” I asked when he sat down with a grimace.
“Fuckin’ Ignacia cut me with a broken beer bottle,” he grumbled, lifting what I now realized was Ignacia’s sweater up and showing me the wound.
I gasped at the raw looking cut on the top of his forearm. “How the hell?”
“I was walking over toward your place to see if you needed help with the big box that was delivered onto your front porch. When I came around the corner, she just popped out like a fuckin’ whack-a-mole and was there. I didn’t think anything of it until she was pulling her arm down at an arc and slicing me open.” He shook his head. “I’m not quite sure exactly how she didn’t see it was me, though. Or why she felt it necessary to arm herself with a beer bottle. But seriously, I was the one coming into the alley. She was the one hiding in the shadows. She should’ve been aware that I was there, not the other way around.”
“Ignacia got the drop on you?” I snickered, then sobered a bit. “I’m just going to tell you this now, Ignacia is a crazy bitch.”
His eyes shifted toward me as he tossed the sweater to the garbage can and reached for a wad of paper towels.
He pressed them down against his arm, and I grimaced again at the look of that cut.
“That’s gonna be a shit ton of stitches,” I admitted.
He grunted in derision. “I know.” His eyes turning to me. “Why do you say she’s crazy?”
“Other than the fact that she is?” I lifted my foot up to rest between us, and his eyes went to the purpling throb of a bruise. “I had her served with two restraining orders last year. Both from men.” I paused. “She seems to latch onto them and obsess over them. It’s only when the law gets involved that she backs off enough to allow them room to breathe.”
He sighed, long and loud. “I don’t understand how I always manage to do this.”
“Do what?” I asked curiously.
“Attract the ones that are trouble.” His eyes met mine.
My face heated. “I wasn’t trying to be trouble!”
His lips quirked. “I know you weren’t. Doesn’t change the facts, though.”
No, it sure didn’t.
“All right, dear.” The nurse came in with a walking boot in her hands and my paperwork in the other. “This needs to be worn at all times until your next appointment in three weeks. No running. The doctor made me reiterate that to you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Is it broken?” Trick asked as he looked at the nurse fitting me into the boot.
“Actually, yes,” the nurse replied. “Quite spectacularly, too. I’m not sure how she managed to walk around on it for three days. But she did. I would’ve been howling in pain.”
Trick’s eyes twinkled, and I flipped him off.
“Fuck you,” I mouthed.
He grinned wider.
“You’re all set,” the nurse said.
“I’m staying to take this one home,” I said, gesturing with my thumb toward the hulking man who was still bleeding beside me. “We’re neighbors.”
“Uh, huh,” the nurse said as she looked at Trick’s bleeding arm. “Let me go grab the doctor. That looks bad.”
