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“Okay, I can type up her statement and I’ll send it to you tomorrow. Thanks, I owe you one.” He paused again as Azura said something. “Okay,” he replied wryly, “yes, alright, I owe youtwofavors. How did that go, by the way?” Another beat of silence. “Good. That guy was an asshole…don’tgive me grief, Az, yes, I said asshole. You got this? Okay. Thank you. Goodbye.”
I gritted my teeth as I shuffled across the room toward him. “Amos,” I growled. “Whatever you just did, undo it.”
He leaned into the room, and then his dark, slashing brows came together. “Cupcake, sit your butt down.”
“I’m not a cupcake,” I countered, “I’m a crème brulée and every inch of me is on fire. It’s making me cranky, and if you don’t call off whatever you just did, I’m going to—”
“You’ll what?” he drawled, taking lazy, long-legged strides to me and standing like an iron wall to halt my progress. “Hit me with your best threat.”
I tilted my head back, back, back, and realized without my shoes on, he was absolutely massive when he stood that close to me. I gave him my best perturbed glare anyway. “Forget pig Latin. I’m going to change all your patient names to Elvish.”
“That’s not a real language,” he said dismissively, and putting his hands on my waist, pushed me back toward the bed.
“Yes, it is,” I argued. “There’s an app for it and everything.”
“If you learn Elvish just to spite me, I don’t think I’ll have any choice but to be impressed,” he said with amusement lilting through his words. “Come on, June. Back to bed.”
I didn’t feel like arguing with the bed part, but I wasn’t done with our conversation. As I slid back under the blankets, I said, “Amos, I don’t care about justice or whatever. I really don’t. You fixed me, and I don’t even have, like… a medical bill I’d want to sue them over. They’re creepy. I’m over it.”
“I know you feel that way now,” he said, and sat on the edge of the bed next to me, hitching me against Mount Pillow with his hands on my waist, “but I’m not letting them move on with their lives from this. Besides, what about the next girl?”
That was a sobering thought. Not only the next girl, but what about the girls before me? Archer and Meg clearly hadn’t been caught or prosecuted because they were still doing it. “I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Well, the beauty of this arrangement,” he said, tucking the blanket around me and leaning over my body so his nose nearly touched mine, “is that you don’t have to know. I know. And I’ll handle it.”
“What if I don’t want you to handle it?” I countered, my voice barely above a whisper.
He kissed the tip of my nose. “Too bad.”
“Brady,” I glowered.
Amos got an obsidian glint in his eyes. “Not all good things are born of integrity, June. ‘Do no harm’ does not apply to the people who hurt what’s mine.” He leaned in close so his lips briefly caressed mine. Dipping his voice down low he said, “And you are mine.”
My heart nearly exploded. I stared at his face, at the angles that were so hard and straight, and then at the heat in his gaze. I never would have dreamed I would see warmth like that in Dr. Amos Brady’s stern features. He had admitted that he was in love with me, but I couldn’t make myself believe it. I leaned into him, and my left arm smoothed over his shoulder and around his neck. I pulled myself against his firm torso to kiss him again. Suddenly, I was a starved woman, and Dr. Brady was milk and honey.
Amos chuckled, kissing me with smiling lips, but he unlatched my arm from his neck and pressed me down into the pillows. “Down, Tiger.”
I growled, and it did sound suspiciously like an angry kitten. “That’s the second time you’ve left me hanging.”
He lifted my palm and kissed the center of it, sending tingles down my skin and straight to my heart. “Baby, if I could destroy that body of yours in unspeakably filthy ways, I would. But it’s not happening.”
I let my head fall back with an anguished sigh. “Fine.” As he stood, I asked, “Okay, but what are you planning on doing? You said so yourself on the phone, it’s hearsay. They could easily claim I fell on my own, and if I press charges, they’ll sue me for ruining their carpet. It wasnicecarpet, Amos. I can’t afford that.”
“Oh, it wasnicecarpet,” he conceded, like I’d given him a devastating revelation. “In that case,” he paused, sliding his hands into the pockets of his black joggers and letting his expression darken dangerously, “I’m still going to fuck him up.”
Stunned, I stared at him in the semi-darkness. “What?” I breathed, drawing out the word.
Amos’ phone buzzed in his pocket, and he fished it out, pointing to me before answering. “Go back to sleep. Hey Az, what did you find?” He left the room, and as he did, I heard the evil satisfaction in his voice as he asked, “Oh, did she?”
A bizarre mixture of apprehension and relief tap-danced in my chest as I tried to calm my mind and find sleep again. Whatever Amos was planning, I didn’t think Archer would see it coming.
* * *
.
Friday went by in a blur of pain. I woke up feeling like I’d been fed through a shredder and spit back out in bandages. My legs were so sore, I could barely get to the toilet. My brain smacked against my eyes with every heartbeat, and my entire torso was so stiff, the pain actually went down my left arm and to my fingers. Brady wanted me to go to the hospital for X-rays, but I told him in my firmest tone that the only place I would be going was his liquor cabinet for relief. He’d offered me acetaminophen instead. And then he’d reminded me that he had suggested the hospital in the first place.
Amos had tried to reschedule as many of his surgeries as he could, but he’d had to go to a nasty tumor resection that afternoon, and I’d assured him that his patients at the center needed him a lot more than I did. Fortunately, he had a TV in his bedroom, and he’d fired up the cell phone model he’d used before his latest one so I could download my data onto it and put my SIM card in it. Then, I ate snacks and watched garbage TV until he got home.
