Page 73 of Her Sensual Protector

“Honey, let me help you.”

She smiled gratefully up at him. When he bent down, she noticed the blood on his ripped jeans and the blood on his calf. “Leo, you’ve been shot!”

Once again she scrambled to get up on her own power, even though she felt a couple of significant bruises starting to form. Leo practically lifted her onto her feet.

“Don’t do that. We need to get you to the aid station! How bad is it?”

“On a scale of one to ten of gunshot wounds, it’s a two.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Wasn’t meant to be.” He put his arm around her waist and walked slowly toward the aid station. She thought he must be really hurt if he was walking this slowly.

“Lean on me, Daisy. I know I hit you pretty hard to get you on the ground. How are you feeling on a scale of one to ten?”

“I haven’t been shot!” Up ahead she saw Effie rushing toward her, along with the two cameramen. She tried to pull away from Leo to get to her friend, then almost stumbled. Her hip was really bruised.

“Daisy!” Effie called out. Daisy waited for her to get closer, then the woman enveloped her in a big hug. “I just heard you were shot at. Why?”

“It’s a long story. We have to get Leo into the aid station. He’s bleeding—he was shot.”

Effie looked from Daisy to Leo, then back to Daisy. “I don’t know, girl, you look like the one who could use the first aid station. He’s the one walking upright, not you.”

Leo put his arm around her waist again and continued to guide her toward the first aid tent. She tried to shrug him off. “I’m all right, it’s you I’m worried about.”

“Every time you push at me, my leg hurts more.”

She stopped short and looked up at him. “Oh, Leo, I’m so sorry.” Then she saw the twinkle in his eyes. “You are such a…such a…a man!”

His lips twitched. “I’ll buy that.” He hugged her closer and continued to the aid tent. Her mind was swirling with the idea that she was the reason somebody had almost killed Abia today. Yeah, people had been angry with W.A.N.T. before. They even had a security firm on retainer, and they handled the letters that came in from the crazies, but to be shot at?

She hadn’t even noticed they’d arrived until they hit the stifling heat and medicinal smells of the enclosed tent.

“He’s been shot,” Effie told one of the aid workers.

Before the nurse was allowed to look at Leo’s leg, he insisted that Daisy be looked at. “Wait a minute, what about Abia? She should be here,” she protested.

“You protected her fall, and if she needs care, her mother will bring her here,” Leo soothed. Soon she was behind a very tiny screen, pulling down her pants and showing them what was already the start of a massive bruise on her hip. They got out a one-time instant use cold pack and placed it on her bruise, taping it in place.

“Any place else that’s hurting?” the nurse asked.

Daisy hesitated.

“Answer the question,” Leo said from the other side of the screen.

“My shoulder hurts. I wrenched it in the fall.”

When the nurse tried to lift it above her head, or to the right, she groaned in pain. “You’re going to need to wear a sling for a few days so the movement is limited and it has time to heal.”

“Now can you look at the man with the gunshot wound?” she said sarcastically.

The nurse chuckled. “I think he’ll allow it now.”

23

Leo left Doug’s room, pissed off. He’d had no idea that Daisy had received death threats before as the Executive Director of W.A.N.T. Why in the hell was she gallivanting across Yemen without a security detail? Oh yeah, because according to Doug, she refused to allow the expense.

He banged on her hotel door. “Let me in.”