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“Pffft.”
“See you Saturday, Riley. You’re on the floor.” Whip hung up laughing. Riley hated working the floor. The girl would rather be stuck scrubbing pots than waiting tables.
Lying back on the bed, Riley stared at the ceiling. The single lightbulb hanging from the extension cord swayed slightly, casting dancing shadows on the wall. “I hate working the damn floor,” she said out loud. Closing her eyes, she thought about Preacher. She reached up, toying with the dog tags that laid against her damp skin. Glancing down at the black rubber-trimmed silver plates, Riley sat up. Holding out the dog tags, she read the name and realized they were Preacher’s. She’d forgotten to give them to his brother. Hers were hanging behind the bar at Muther’s.
ChapterSixteen
No one ever said he had a good disposition when it came to being sick. Preacher was tired of everyone telling him to just rest like he had some semblance of a choice in the matter. The doctors had initially said three to five days in the hospital. It’d been ten days, and he was over nurses coming in every few hours to check his vitals. He couldn’t get any real rest because when they came in, they turned a light on. Bones said he was being bitchy, but Preacher didn’t care. He was done lying in a hospital bed.
“I can hear you complaining from way over here.” Wrench laughed, walking into Preacher’s room.
“I didn’t say anything,” he snapped.
“No, but your thoughts were loud enough to hear.” Wrench understood where Preacher was coming from. He hated being in a hospital, not to mention when he had been a patient, he was a bad one. Just sitting in the room made him twitchy.
Stretching his legs out in front of the chair, Wrench settled in for the next few hours. Preacher tolerated him hanging out because he didn’t force the brother to talk about his feelings. Picking up a piece of paper from the floor, Wrench read over it and coughed when he read the words ‘erectile disfunction’.Holy fuck.
Glancing around, Wrench saw pages scattered all over the floor between the bed and the window. Shoving out of the chair, he started picking them up. As he did, he scanned each page. No wonder Preacher was in a pissed-off mood. Everything on the pages was depressing—no sex drive,chance of the inability to perform,chance of hernias up to a year after surgery, chance of infections. Damn, this was gonna take some navigating if Preacher was going to get through it all.
Reading farther along, Wrench shook his head at the list of stuff that could happen to his brother-in-arms. Folding the pages in half, he set them on the windowsill ledge. “Listen, Preacher.” He saw the look and ignored it. “This crap,” he pointed to the paper, “it’s just that, crap. All you need to do is get through the next twenty-four hours without running a fever and you get discharged.”
“Wrench, I hate being here, and yes, I know I sound like a damn whiny little bitch.”
“I’m glad you recognize that simple fact, brother.” Wrench heard footsteps outside the door and stopped talking. He was halfway across the room when a soft knock halted him. He saw Riley poke her head in as she opened the door.
“Come on in.” Wrench smiled, looking back at Preacher, who just stared at the girl. “Preacher, I don’t think you’ve met your savior.”
“What?” Preacher choked out.
Wrench pointed toward the woman who was sauntering into the room. “This is Riley James, the girl who saved your life.”
Riley watched Preacher struggle to sit up in the bed and moved across the room faster than Wrench could keep up with her. “Don’t push up like that,” she told Preacher. “Use the button to lift the bed.” Riley dug around in the covers, searching for the remote so she could adjust the bed.
She heard snickering from across the room and looked back at Wrench, who was trying hard not to bust out laughing. “What’s so damn funny? He could hurt himself.”
Wrench pointed to Preacher, who was beet red. The girl had no idea how close her hands were to knowing the brother in a much more intimate way. “You might want to stop patting that area.”
Riley looked down and saw her right hand was resting on Preacher’s pelvic area. Snatching her hand back, she stammered, trying to apologize. “I’m . . . I mean . . . shit.”
“It’s fine. The remote fell on the floor earlier. It’s under the bed, I think,” Preacher told Riley as he tried to think about anything but how sexy she was. Her looks weren’t sultry. No, they were sassy and sweet. Her eyes were the color of a light blue sky. Watching as she disappeared, he turned his attention to Wrench, trying to wave him out of the room.
Wrench just shook his head. He wasn’t going anywhere. It was too much fun watching Preacher try to play it cool, knowing his ass was hanging out the hospital gown and his dick was probably twitching. Screw Jack Landry—she couldn’t hold a candle to Riley James. He just hoped Preacher recognized a good woman when he saw one this go-around.
“Riley, what brings you to the hospital?” Wrench asked as he bent over, looking for her.
Riley stayed under the bed a minute longer than it took to find the remote. She remembered how handsome Preacher had been, but damn, she hadn’t really looked at him with anything but concern. His hair was brighter than dirty blonde, with streaks of pale white pieces running through it. His eyes were a clear blue that gave her pause. “I came to return Preacher’s dog tags,” she said, finally climbing from under the bed. “Found the remote,” she added, holding the blasted thing up.
“My dog tags?” Preacher asked in a groggy voice.
“Yeah. Sorry. When the nurses gave me your things that night, I slipped them on, not wanting to lose them.” Riley used the remote to raise the head of the bed. When it was in a decent position, she set the remote within Preacher’s reach.
“In all the confusion, and the fact I was tired as shit, I thought they were mine until I looked at them a few days ago and realized they weren’t.” She wasn’t going to tell Preacher and Wrench that she had realized the mix-up when she was lying in bed thinking about the man. That was too much information.
Reaching over, she helped Preacher lean forward and adjusted his pillows. “Now, hi, Preacher, I’m Riley James. I was the crazy girl who saved your life.”
“Why do you think you were crazy for saving my life?”
“I did have to scare off four attackers. I mean, look at me.” She turned in a circle. “I’m not a big person.” She saw Preacher trying not to laugh and smiled.
