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I roll my eyes skyward. Whenever a good-looking doctor, or Trent or Liam hit the floor, every single nurse on the unit goes googly-eyed and can’t seem to make a coherent sentence until they’re gone. And now, they’re all eyeing Nick up like he’s their next meal as he passes out donuts.
“It’s been a hell of a night. You ladies take turns catching a break. I’ll go make sure no one needs anything else.” I head down the hall where two physicians an one of my nurses are still teamed up helping a patient.
I feel the heat of Nick’s gaze following me all the way down the long corridor. I glance in the mirror above me, intended to ensure we don’t run into each other rounding the corners of the hospital. He’s still standing where I left him and watching me walk away.
Guilt kicks in like it always does whenever I avoid him. Damn. I should have at least thanked him for being so thoughtful. It’s not his fault that he’s so fricking hot, and single, and bound to attract ladies' attention. He’s no doubt surrounded by drop-dead gorgeous women in every city he travels to when on assignment. He’s probably a hound, a playboy of the worst type, and I would do well to remember that little fact.
There’s not one sign of the guys, the doctors, or nurses when I return to the nursing station. They’ve all scattered around to rooms, are documenting care notes, or have left to go home after an extremely long night. I head into the break room and grab a mug from the overhead cabinet, and groan as barely a drizzle comes out of the container’s spout. That’ll teach me to leave those nurses alone with a ginormous container of flavored coffee. Gone, every last bit of it.
“You looking for this?”
I start, turning quickly at the sound of the gravelly voice behind me. Nick holds up a sizeable disposable cup of coffee from the same place down the street and a small white bag. “We sorely underestimated your nurses' appetites. I think the danishes were gone less than five minutes after the guys put them on the table and the donuts and coffee shortly after that,” Nick states, grinning as he places the cup on the table in front of me.
“Oh my God, come to Mamma!” I grasp the liquid gold in my hands and inhale the aroma through the traveling lid. “It smells amazing. Thank you for bringing breakfast for the nurses and me too. I should have told you that before. It was such a nice thing to do.”
He smiles wide, and I can’t help but admire the nice white set of teeth and strong jawline. “You’re welcome. Let’s see what else we have for sustenance in this bag,” Nick remarks, pulling out an old-fashioned apple fritter half wrapped in waxed paper before handing it to me.
My eyes narrow. “And just how is it that you know my favorite flavor of coffee and my secret love of apple fritters? Only one person, maybe two in the entire world know that about me. I smell a rat, Nick Montgomery!”
Nick’s bright blue eyes light up. He grins as he takes a chocolate éclair from the bag. “Guilty as charged. That’s how I knew you’d want caffeine even if you were on your way home to sleep. Don’t worry, though, your secret’s safe with me,” he responds, taking a bite.
“Lexie has a big mouth, but right now I’m really glad she does.” I pull out one of the plastic chairs at the table and gesture for him to sit too. “I didn’t thank you last night for getting me here in one piece. It was a tough night, and it’s going to be a long road to recovery for a couple of them, but everyone made it. They’ll all eventually get to go home to their families. I don’t always get to say that in this line of work, and that may not have been the case if you didn’t get me here as quickly as you did. The first thirty minutes was touch and go, and we were pretty short-staffed, so every hand mattered.”
“I’m glad I could help, and that Chase had the helicopter parked at the airport. Want another fritter?” Nick asks since I’ve unashamedly devoured more than half of the first. He pulls another from the bag and waves it in the air.
“No, this monstrosity alone is enough to fuel my entire run today,” I tell him, savoring another bite and opening the lid of my coffee.
“Are you finished with everything you need here, or do you have more to do?”
“The ladies are going to page me when they see the neurosurgeon. I need to get a few things documented once we talk. Then I’ll be able to get out of here. It was very nice of you to hang around and bring breakfast, but I can make it home on my own if you want to get the helicopter back to the airport.”
“Jay, one of our partners, took it back for me. He got into the city a little later than the rest of us last night and drove back with Liam and Trent when they dropped my vehicle off. They went home to get some rest after that since the backup team was still on campus. I’ll wait for you and take you home.”
“I meant to talk to Sheldon about this whole security set up last night, but then I got called away. I appreciate that he put an entire team around me, but like I tried to tell Liam and Trent last night, the guy stalking Lexie is out of the picture. There’s no reason for Sheldon to have me guarded like this. I put up with it while Lexie was gone because it seemed like a good idea. Especially after everything that went down at the apartment, but it’s been a month. It’s time to have the guys do something more than babysit me. I’m seriously going to talk to Sheldon about it later today.”
He crosses his foot over his leg, drawing my eyes to his muscular thigh. “I was going to tell you after you got a little sleep, but given your aversion to security, you need to know now. The intel division for our team just learned the organization Darwin was working for is still snatching women. It’s not a good idea for either you or Lexie to be without security right now.”
I swallow hard, digesting the full implication of what he’s said. “Lexie could have died the last time. I thought your team killed his accomplices too?”
Nick nods. “They did, but these organizations are like ant colonies. Where you find one, you find an entire army, and it’s going to take a while to stamp them all out. We’re going to have to go after the queen, but first, we need to find the nest.”
I take a sip of my coffee, trying my hardest not to show my worry. “It took me a while to get used to Trent and Liam, but I can probably live with them hanging out with me for a little while longer. Especially given all that you just told me.”
“Good, because if I need backup, they’ll be the ones running the perimeter and the ones that I call.”
“Come again?” I say, popping the last sugary piece of deliciousness in my mouth.
“I’ll be running point on your security from now on, Allie.”
Chapter Four
Nick
The reaction isn’tdifferent than what I envisioned when making the decision to have one of my teammates take over the assignment in Italy so that I could come back to the States and guard her myself. Allie’s dark green eyes widen and then turn to slits. “Tell me you aren’t serious?”
She won’t get lies from me, but I’m not about to tell her everything. Especially that every night I’ve been out of the country I’ve kept tabs on her through Trent and Liam and fallen asleep dreaming about those mesmerizing deep green eyes. “You and Lexie both still need protection, and right now, you’re stuck with me until we can get to the bottom of this. I was going to tell you last night, but then you got the page and we were focused on getting to the hospital.”
There’s a long period of quiet. I assume she needs time to process. I give her the time to do that, allowing her to contemplate what I’ve said and the implications it has for her safety and her current security situation. “Trent and Liam have done a wonderful job. There’s really no need to change things, right?”
