Chapter 3
brOOKE
I screamed, then screamed again as I was grabbed around the waist and lifted off my feet to be carried back into the stairwell. I was jostled about, but with the man’s thick arms wrapped around me, I felt protected. A strange thing to think of in the midst of chaos.
My ears rang from the sound of the gunshots. The heavy door slammed shut behind us. I was put down, then he spun me around.
The guy leaned down, so we were eye to eye, his hands resting on my shoulders.
His hair was dark, pulled back in a stubby ponytail.
Some tendrils had come free that hung to his chin.
I’d never thought a guy with longer hair was hot or manly, but I’d been wrong.
So very, very wrong. This man checked all of my boxes.
Gorgeous. Big. Big enough to press me into a mattress and feel safe and feminine.
Rough and rugged, completely opposite of the pale, stuffed shirts I worked with in the accounting office.
Daring. Bold. And right now, my protector. His eyes blazed bright green. When I’d checked him out in his hotel room, they’d been a deep brown. Chocolate. Now… so different. My mind was so frazzled I was probably crazy. No, almost dying did that.
Holy shit, someone shot at us! The men were definitely after me if they’d been waiting at my car.
“Are you okay?” His voice was a deep growl. Lower than earlier although maybe he was freaking out, too. His gaze raked over me. He was breathing hard, his lips parted. Full lips I suddenly wanted to kiss. Was it adrenaline? Was it my dry spell with men? Or was it him?
I nodded, my mouth too dry for words to come out. Then I saw it: the way the flannel clung to his right arm. The growing dark stain.
“Oh my God, you were shot!” My panic, already at full throttle, went hotter.
He shrugged. Shrugged! “It’s just a scratch. Wait here.”
I blinked as he turned around, flung open the door, and went right back out into the parking garage.
Wait here?
“Hey!” I called to the shut door.
What was he doing? Why would he go back out where those men were? And he’d been shot! It was my fault. The men were after me, and he’d been hurt. Now he was out there doing God only knew what. Did he want to get shot twice?
“Oh my God. Oh my God.” I paced back and forth along the stairwell landing, my voice echoing off the cinder block walls.
I jumped when he returned, the door slamming one last time behind him.
“Why did you go back out there? Are they gone?”
My gaze raked over his body. His large, muscly, gorgeous body. He looked like he had just come from a cover shoot for a wilderness magazine. He needed an axe and a mountain vista behind him.
“They’re gone.” His voice was grim. He was eyeing me with just as much intensity as I did him. I took a deep breath, let it out. They’d left, maybe driving off after they’d shot at us.
Thank God. He never should have gone back out there. That was crazy!
“That scratch you have is bleeding a lot. We need to get you to a hospital.”
He shook his head, his long hair sliding over his sweaty, strong brow. His forehead pinched. “We’re not going back out there. Hell, we need to get out of this stairwell.” He glanced up the stairs.
“Why?” My gaze followed his, and my panic returned. I gripped his uninjured arm and stepped close to him. “I thought you said they were gone?”
He nodded and put an arm around me, so his hand settled on my back. The heat of him seeped through my clothes. “They are but who knows if there are others. We need to get you somewhere safe.”
My heart rate ratcheted even higher as it fully hit me that the men would still be after me. I knew now they wouldn’t stop until they had me. Or I was dead.
Thanks to my boss, I was tangled up with some kind of mobster now. This gorgeous man had saved me not once but twice. And he’d been shot because of me.
Shit!
“We’ll go to the lobby and call an ambulance,” I said.
He shook his head. “Not happening. We need to get you hidden. Back to my room. It’s the closest, and we know they’ve already checked it. They won’t look there again.”
He meant the knock on the door earlier.
“But…” My brain scrambled to keep up.
His jaw clenched. “They won’t bother us again,” he repeated.
I blinked at him, still trying to process the entire crazy situation. Men with guns. My boss caught up with mobsters. What this meant for my job. All of it. “But, you’ve been shot and–”
“Don’t worry about me,” he replied, cutting me off. “It’s nothing. Let’s get you safe.”
Nothing? Blood had seeped down his arm, and the gray plaid flannel was stained from upper arm to wrist.
We were in a cinderblock stairwell. There was nowhere to go but up or down to a lower level of the parking lot.
If he was wrong and they came after us with guns, it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Or innocent people in a stairwell. He nudged me toward the steps leading up.
I climbed two steps, then turned around to face him.
We were now at eye level; he was that big. “Can you make it? Do you need my help?”
He smiled, and wow–it lit up his entire face. Two dimples creased his stubbled cheeks. It made him less rugged. More handsome. “Sugar, all I need from you is your name.”
Sugar? I blinked at him. “Brooke Van Drusen.”
“Brooke. I’m Roy.”
Roy, my hot hero.
My legs shook as I headed back up the stairs, the adrenaline that flooded my system reaching every extremity.
Roy stayed at my back, getting the full view of my swaying ass as I navigated the stairs in my heels. I’d never been one to play damsel in distress, but something about his protectiveness, the calmness he projected while his entire focus was on me, made me warm and tingly.
He was dripping blood right now and didn’t seem concerned. His only worry seemed to be for me.
Once we reached his penthouse suite, he used the keycard to let us in.
“Sit and let me look at that arm,” I ordered. I rushed to grab some towels from the bathroom.
“Yes, ma’am,” he called. He grinned and dropped onto the couch when I returned. I sat on the coffee table in front of him, setting the towels beside me.
Damn, this guy was sexy.
Sliding forward, my fingers shook as I reached out and tried to unbutton his cuff to get the blood-soaked shirt off. I couldn’t get the little button to do what I wanted.
He covered my hand in his, squeezing my trembling fingers. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.” I exhaled, trying to calm down, but his touch didn’t soothe me.
It revved me up. Those big hands swallowing mine, the rough callouses brushing over my skin. The heat of his palms.
I looked up. Met his dark gaze. Got caught in it. He smelled good. Like soap and pine and rugged man.
It was crazy, but the jitters were morphing into something else.
Attraction. Turn-on. I squirmed on the coffee table when he didn’t let go.
“Here, let me.” Roy’s voice was deep and resonant. A perfect gruff, cowboy vibe.
He had to let go of me to undo the cuffs, then the buttons down the front of the flannel.
It was like my own personal strip tease. I licked my lips watching the show. Inch by inch, a broad chest appeared. Flat nipples peeked out from a smattering of dark hair.
I eased his shirt off, my fingertips brushing against solid muscle. He was hot to the touch everywhere.
Damn. Roy was built. Total Magic Mike material–with a wide-shouldered, sculpted chest and washboard abs. Those soft curls that I wanted to rake my nails through.
Heat pooled between my legs. My nipples tightened in my bra. When his gaze lowered to the front of my shirt, I knew without looking down that he could see their outline.
He discarded his shirt on the floor. The right sleeve was crimson with blood.
I took hold of his arm to examine the wound. Touching him felt easy. Natural.
It must have been the sense of shared trauma from what just happened that made this stranger feel so familiar.
So safe.
So attractive.
He’d saved me. Not once, but twice. I felt protected. Like nothing could hurt me with him around. That in itself wasn’t something I’d felt before with a man, but it was heady. It was really, really attractive. A knight and a fair maiden. A Highlander rescuing a fair lass from an English soldier.
Okay, I read too many romances, but still. This guy, Roy, was like my own lumberjack to the rescue. And I didn’t seem to mind being the damsel in distress, minus the bad guys and getting shot at part.
I sucked in my breath when I saw the wound. “Oh, God. I can see the hole. It’s… do you think the bullet’s still in there? Don’t you think we should call an ambulance or something?”
Roy peered at the back of his arm as best he could. It had to hurt like hell, but he didn’t show any signs of pain. Maybe he still had adrenaline flowing and would probably feel it later. “Arm wounds bleed a lot. I promise I’m okay.”
“I thought that was head wounds,” I countered, holding a washcloth against the wound to stop the bleeding although it had already stopped. Maybe he was right.
“It’s both,” he countered. “I’m fine–trust me. I’m a retired Marine. I know my wounds, and this one is nothing. It was a through-and-through.”
Of course, he was a Marine. That was why he didn’t side-step helping a woman in danger. He was willing to put others’ lives before his. Just like he had for me. I wasn’t sure if I should hug him, cry, or jump him.
“I’ll get a wet washcloth to clean you up. Maybe there’s a first aid kit in the bathroom.”
The penthouse suite was as big as the one Mr. Burke had been in. Two bedrooms, two mega-bathrooms plus a powder room. Living room, dining area. Full kitchen. I prayed that in the midst of all this luxury there was a first aid kit.
In the bathroom, I searched through the vanity’s drawers. Extra toilet paper, toothbrushes in their packages. Yes! I found one! It wasn’t much, but it had some gauze. Tape. Bandaids. Antibacterial ointment.