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She woke up in a hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana with no memory of how she got there. Or even, at first, where she was. Until she looked over and saw Gramps sitting in her hospital room. Because Gramps refused to leave Bridell, she assumed she was more than likely still in Indiana. “Gramps.”

Gramps smiled a smile that reassured Joy. “Hey Baby Girl.”

Then she saw Tess and Cory seated in her hospital room too. They waved and smiled and spoke to her.

But when she saw Bobby and Max in her hospital room, it became a little less clear. Bobby she could see coming to check on her. They’d become friends as well as colleagues. But Maximus Bluff coming to see about her? That would only happen if he was ordered to do so by William. Which meant . . .

Her heart became anxious at just the thought of William, and that was when she looked across the room and saw him. He was standing, leaned against the side wall, in that small room too.

As soon as she laid eyes on him, it all came flooding back. Every hour of it. Every minute of it. Even every second of it. Including that video. Including him admitting that he had cheated on his first wife. Including that date stamp that he didn’t want her to believe.

But also including the way William flung her behind him, so that the gunman’s bullets would hit him instead of her. He protected her. He put his life on the line for her.

If that wasn’t love, what could love be?

But he looked nothing like himself to her. Always so well put together no matter what he was going through, his hair looked wild and disheveled, as if he had been running his hands through it constantly. His always pristine suit looked well-worn and wrinkled, as if he’d had it on for days. His deep blue eyes looked weary and seemingly still in a state of disbelief, as if that shooting incident left him as traumatized as it left Joy. And his face looked so anguished that it anguished her. “Are you okay?” she asked him urgently, unable to shield her concern.

He pushed away from the wall when she spoke to him, and attempted to make his way up to her bed.

But Gramps stood up and hurried toward the bed. “You stay away from her and I ain’t playing with you!” he said angrily to William.

William stopped his movement when Gramps stood up, but Max, who was William’s chief of security but he always became, by default whenever he was with the boss, William’s bodyguard. And he stood up too and got between Gramps and the boss. “Sit back down, sir,” he ordered Gramps.

But nobody ordered Gramps. “You don’t tell me what to do. Who you think you are? He’s the reason she’s here. He’s the reason all of us here. I ain’t gonna act like this ain’t all his doing because it is! She wouldn’t have even been in no Bridell if he had acted right. If he had treated my baby right. Don’t you dare tell me to sit down. Better tell his ass to sit down!”

Gramps continued toward the bed, but Max placed his hand on Gramps chest. “Whether your concerns are right or wrong is irrelevant. Nobody talks to Mr. Skeffington that way. Nobody approaches Mr. Skeffington that way.”

“Boy if you don’t get your hand off of me!” Gramps flung Max’s hand away from his chest.

“It’s okay, Max,” William said before Max could retaliate. “He’s not saying anything to me that I haven’t said to myself.” Then William looked over at Joy, his primary concern. “I’m okay, Joynetta.” He placed his hands in his pockets and stared at her from his distance. “My concern is you. How are you?”

“That depends,” Joy said. “Did I get shot?”

Tess and Cory couldn’t help it. They bust out laughing. Because that response was so Joy! She was fine if she didn’t get shot. She was in agony if she did. That was Joy.

William knew it too. And he found a way to smile. She was back! “No, sweetheart,” he answered her, “you were not wounded.”

Then she looked even more worried. “Were you?”

He moved toward the bed, but stopped and looked at Gramps. He would never disrespect the man that took care of Joy in her childhood.

Although Gramps was pissed with William, he still held a special place in Gramps’ heart. It was heartbreaking for Gramps when William hurt Netta because of his player ways. He had been so hopeful that William was the one for her. That Gramps could die tomorrow and go to heaven knowing that his baby girl would be taken care of right. And he didn’t mean money right. He meant treatment right. He had so wanted to believe that William would take great care of her heart.

Although an asshole when it came to his overactive libido, William loved Netta. Gramps truly believed that. When Gramps heard all of that gunfire, and ran out of Maylene’s worried that his baby girl was caught up in it, he saw William shielding her, with his own body, from that assassin’s bullet. He was ready to take a bullet for her. Had his security people not shown up as timely as they did, he would have taken several bullets for her. That said something to Gramps. No scoundrel alive would risk his life for a woman he didn’t love to the depths of his soul. Not a one, in Gramps view.

That was why he backed off, went back to his chair, and sat back down. Besides, he thought, it was Netta who had to live with the joker. And if she wasn’t objecting to him being in that room, why should he?

Inwardly relieved that he and Gramps would not have to get into a confrontation, and anxious to be close to Joynetta, William made his way to her and sat on the side of her bed. He wanted to place her hand in his hand, and he wanted to hold her so badly, but he wasn’t at all sure if she was ready for that. He’d hurt her to her core. That was the only reason why she felt a need to run away from him and travel all the way to Bridell. He had no illusions whatsoever about that.

He, instead, placed his arm all the way across her small body to the opposite side, with his hand brushed against her hip as if he was effectively hugging her without fully touching her. Then he folded his legs.

But up close, William looked even more alarming to Joy. As if he was running on fumes. As if his gas tank was on empty. “You sure you’re okay?” she asked him with that look of pure care and concern in her eyes.

It was so pronounced that he considered her. What warmed his heart was that she seemed more concerned about his state of being than about herself despite what he’d put her through. But that was so Joy too. “I’m absolutely fine,” he said to her. “I wasn’t harmed at all. The clandestine security detail I had on you, who followed you to Bridell, took the gunman out before he could unload on me.”

“After you grabbed me and slung me behind you, I remember that there was a lot of shots fired. I remember hearing so many shots being fired.”

“Those shots came from my security detail firing on the gunman. He didn’t stand a chance once they got out of the shadows and handled the situation.”