Phoebe: Book One of Broken Girls Series

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  Ryker was surprised. How had Max known to look at insurance coverage for his employees? Growing up, his small family depended on Colorado’s state-funded assistance for their healthcare. Which was the kind that often found his mom assessing a wound or an illness and doing her homecare thing before giving up and taking one or another of them to the hospital.

  Since the insurance shit seemed to be the bulk of the pack, Cruz half-stood and added it to the small stack in front of Ryker’s plate. Before shifting his ass back to his chair, he reached into his trouser pocket and produced a circular key-ring, its silver tab engraved with ‘BI3’ in black. It only held one key on a black fob. “This is for the Escalade. Max says you can use it until you get a decent ride of your own.”

  Before Ryker could open his mouth to assure his brother that once his hand was better, when he could sport a band-aid instead of the dressing and ace bandage, he’d be using his hog to get to work, Cruz gave him a look. One of those looks only an older brother can give a younger one to make him shut right the fuck up before any words rolled out of his mouth.

  Once Ryker’s lips were closed, or more accurately, pressed together until they hurt, Cruz explained. “Like the bike, Ry. It suits you and know you’re proud of it. But we’ll be taking you to meet clients, or you’ll be traveling to see ‘em solo. A bike won’t work for those occasions.” Sliding his eyes to the doorway of the kitchen, which bled into a formal dining room complete with eight chairs, a massive table and a huge sideboard filled with the ‘good’ china, that led into his mom’s overstuffed living room and was aligned with the front door, Cruz’s gaze went even further. To the curb and the huge, black SUV they could view through the massive front room window.

  “It’s more for show than anything,” he murmured, his eyes remaining on the vehicle. “You drive it, decide you like it, then part of the payment will come outta your pay. But BI will pick up the car insurance and a portion of the gas.”

  For the first time since he entered the kitchen, Ryker finally had something to say. Or, rather, to ask. “A portion?”

  Swinging his face to his younger brother, it was Cruz’s turn to nod. “Yeah. You gotta keep track of your mileage when you’re out and about on a job and report it each month. Put all your gas on the company card and you’ll get reimbursed for the company stuff.”

  “On my bi-monthly paychecks?”

  Cruz’s slow grin was his only answer as Cruz flicked his hand to straighten the remaining papers in his hand. “Here’s the signature sheet for the company credit card. Give it a week before signing your full name on a slip if it’s required—otherwise, just sign it ‘R. Santiago-Adams’.” Another paper fluttered to the stack on Ryker’s side of the table.

  “And here’s the PIN number for the card. You have a $500 per day limit until your signature is on file.”

  “What’s the limit on the card?”

  Cruz’s fingers stilled on the next sheet as he shot his eyes across the table and blinked. “No limit.”

  What the fuck? Seriously?

  Ryker’s shock must’ve shown on his face or because his hands stilled as he wiped the remaining portion of his breakfast off his mouth since Cruz’s half grin went to a full smile as he muttered, “Believe it, hombre. Max learned to negotiate while you were learning how to make license plates. And, dude? Our big bro’ is fucking good at it.”

  Swallowing hard, Ryker shoved his plate to the side and reached for the stack of papers.

  “Only a couple of more to go, then we’re outta here,” Cruz advised, eyeing the next sheet in his hand.

  Half-listening, his mind still trying to understand how Max of all people was able to get a no-limit credit card in place for an ex-felon who never had a FICO score to begin with, Ryker repeated, “Outta here?”

  “To get your new threads.”

  Oh fuck! Somehow in the whole of the paperwork, Ryker had forgotten about the clothes.

  At Ryker’s carefully crafted blank look, Cruz sighed. “Bro’, I can’t go back to the office without all this shit signed and dated. Otherwise, I’ll get Max’s idea of an ass-chewing of the boss variety. And you can’t damn-well come to work on Monday without sporting suitable clothes. Or you’ll get the same. Believe you me, neither of us needs that kind of shit at any time. But especially not on a fucking Monday.”

  The youngest member of the Santiago-Adams family squeezed his eyes shut and scratched at his forehead in frustration knowing he couldn’t get out of it and trying to accept the idea one of his brother’s was gonna ‘help’ him pick out clothes for the first time in more than ten years.

  He only hoped Cruz didn’t make him wear shit of the pimp-sort or make him look like a pussy wanna-be.

  Although he knew both were a distinct possibility.

  *.*.*.*.*

  I was just coming out of the ladies room after a much needed potty break, when I heard my named paged over the intercom system. “Nurse Marquette to ER reception.” I’d never had a page over the hospital-wide speakers before even though I’d responded to alerts for crash carts and other patient emergencies as they applied to whatever modality I was assigned to at the time. But I’d never received one specifically mentioning my name asking me to return to the intake desk in ER.

  Rounding the corner, I opened my mouth to ask Rhonda what was what when my eyes caught on Ryker, casually leaning against the gleaming counter. Since he’d just been in the day before and I didn’t find him bleeding this time, I wondered why he was back. In my experience, there’d be no reason to return unless his wound was infected. “Hey, Phoebe.”

  Coming to where he stood, I propped an elbow on the counter and did a head-to-toe scan. He looked healthy enough and, as always, good enough to eat. Today his t-shirt was khaki green and emblazoned with a sailboat and a jauntily-drawn picture of a drunk sea captain, the words ‘4 Sheets to the Wind’ silkscreened on the sleeve. Though I’d never been, it was reputed to be a dive bar on the seedier side of Grantham where the clientele were eighty percent hard-drinking men. From his selection of shirts, I guessed my dream guy enjoyed the nightlife in the south part of town, on the other side of the tracks.

  “Hi, Ryker,” I greeted, trying to make my trembling lips into a smile. In all truth, the man got to me in too many ways to count and by doing abso-freaking-lutely nothing. “Back so soon?”

  He straightened and nodded while throwing a quick glance Rhonda’s way before his eyes settled on mine. “I wanted to return the shirt I borrowed.”

  Seriously? We routinely lent out scrubs but very rarely received them back. Glancing at the precisely folded maroon top resting on the desk between his arms, I saw it had even been ironed. Neat freak though I was, even I never ironed my scrubs.

  “Erm…thanks. But you didn’t have to wash it first.” I don’t know why I felt the need to talk about a damn top that meant nothing in the whole scheme of things. “The hospital has a laundry service who takes care of stuff like that.”

  His mouth moved from a half-canted grin to a full-fledged smile at my words. I guess he was amused by my verbal diarrhea that I found cringe worthy. In order not to allow anymore dorky communiqués to exit my lips, I reached for the shirt only to have the warm fingers of his uninjured hand grip my forearm.

  I stopped and looked up at him in question.

  “I also brought you a present but my gift comes at a price.” A present? Did he just say he brought me a present?

  “Oh Lawd,” Rhonda breathed just loud enough to be heard but when I glanced her way, she had her head down and was flipping through papers.

  I looked back to Ryker and my tummy tumbled at both his panty-dropping smile and his dancing eyes. “What kind of a present?”

  Ryker used his good right hand to reach beyond his left arm to snag a small, white paper bag I hadn’t noticed before. Sliding it down the counter towards me he mumbled, “I wanted to say thanks for all you did yesterday.”

  I again glanced up at him before cautiously unrolling the top
of the sack. Pulling it closer to me, I dropped my gaze only to find three golden brown bagels nestled inside, the smell of their chewy goodness hitting my nose and making my mouth water.

  “I asked them to slice ‘em for you. Didn’t want any more accidents due to bagel slippage, you know?” His growly, sexy-as-chocolate voice held a note of teasing and I felt a blush creep up my neck. He’d remembered my goofy words from yesterday but the way he repeated them didn’t sound goofy at all. In fact he made it sound more like a private joke, which kind of made it…well, cool.

  Embarrassed and yet completely pleased by both his gift and his words, I didn’t know what to do or say. “What’s the other part?”

  “The other part?”

  “Yeah, you said your present came with a price.” Actually I was just talking to move my lips because at that particular moment I wanted to engage them in other activities. The first of which was to press them against Ryker’s in a flaming, no-holds-barred kiss.

  “The bagels for your phone number.”

  Wait, what? Did he just say he wanted my number?

  “Oh Lawd,” Rhonda repeated again, before I heard the crinkle of papers from her side of the desk.

  “You want my number?” I asked incredulously, just to verify I’d actually heard him right. I mean, I kinda, maybe or sort’ve fantasized about a lot of doings with Ryker but I’d never thought he’d ever ask a mouse like me for my phone number!

  At his nod, I repeated myself but it didn’t sound like a question the second time. “You, Ryker Adams, want me, Phoebe Marquette, to give you my number.”

  “Definitely.” And as if to show me how sincere he was, he pulled out an old-fashioned flip-phone from his front pocket. He opened it and I heard a series of beeps. “Yeah. I can’t call you if I don’t have your number.”

  His cheeks took on a coppery hue while he kept his eyes to his phone, which I could only count as a blush. “If that’s okay.”

  “Close your mouth, girl,” Rhonda advised in a whispered undertone. “Then put the man outta his misery.”

  Holy shit! He was serious.

  Stammering, I gave him my info as my mind reeled. Since he wanted my number, did that mean he really was going to call me? Why would he want to? Was he one of those guys who collected girls phone numbers as some sort of male-bragging thing? Did he need it so he could scrawl it on a bathroom wall, accompanied by the words, ‘for a good time, call’?

  “I’m in the middle of changing jobs, so I don’t know when I’ll get to see you again.” He tucked his phone away, leaned towards me as he dropped his voice and touched my fingers. “And I really want to see you again.”

  He did? I let my eyes drift around the room, trying to settle my racing heart and reeling mind, half-expecting Ashton Kutcher to announce I’d been pranked but Ryker seemed serious. Maybe even a little nervous although I had no idea why.

  “You do?” I could only manage a stutter as I tucked my shaking hands in the pockets of my scrubs.

  “When’s your next day off?” Oh my god! He was asking me out—or rather asking when I was available which every girl knew meant the guy was gearing up to ask a girl out. Inside I was a blithering idiot, squeeing and dancing and twirling until I was dizzy but I was trying to project a blasé, this-happens-to-me-on-a-daily-basis, vibe.

  Probably because I hadn’t jumped at the chance to answer, Rhonda again butted in. “Sunday. Pheebs’s next day off is Sunday.”

  “I’ll give you a call and we’ll set something up, if you want.”

  Did I want? Of course I did! And was even revved up enough to offer a body part in order to do so.

  “That’d be good, Ryker.” I was too overjoyed and still in the idiot portion of my head to let him see my enthusiasm, but even I thought my response was a bit lackluster. And the way his smile slowly slid from brilliant to nothing more than a grin, he thought so too. I gave it another shot. “I’d really enjoy that.”

  My ears again caught on Rhonda’s voice in the background. “Noreen? Girl, you gonna have to find someone else to take your Sunday shift. Yeah. No, Phoebe’s had something come up. You might try asking Sara Davidson. Heard tell, she’s been looking for some extra hours.”

  I turned back to Ryker and studiously tried to ignore Rhonda re-scheduling my life.

  He let out his breath on a relieved sigh and as he did, there was a commotion at the entrance to the ER that took my attention off him and onto whatever emergency was in play. “I’ll let you get back to it.”

  My eyes slid to him as I took a chance and dared to rest my hand on his bicep. “Thank you for the bagels and the return of the shirt.”

  “I’ll call you about Sunday,” he murmured before turning and stepping away.

  And it was then, right at that exact moment as my admiring eyes followed him out of the building, I realized I’d not once in the whole of our conversation thought about my checklist or the master-plan I’d created for my life.

  I’d obviously talked about it so often even Rhonda knew it by heart as evidenced by her adding her two cents as soon as he was far enough away. “Bet you didn’t account for that hunka-hunk of burning love on your damn spreadsheet.”

  “I’m sorry…what?” I’d decided playing dumb was going to get me farther in steering the conversation in a different direction.

  Flicking her hand towards the doors he’d gone out of, Rhonda didn’t let me off the hook. “Honey, if you ain’t put that hot man on your grand-plan of how-Phoebe’s-gonna-succeed, then I will!”

  Aw geez, here we go, I thought with an eye-roll.

  “Don’t you go rolling those baby-blues at me, missy. You can slip him in between becoming a nurse practitioner and gaining trauma experience.”

  Luckily, I saw one of the regular EMT guys waving my way which was the perfect excuse to turn away from Rhonda.

  And from her ideas of adding another line to my plan. A line that would only contain one word.

  Ryker.

  Chapter Five

  “…so there I am, trying to translate biker-speak into something resembling the formal English Dr. Singh uses, all the while using the entire weight of my body to hold this massive, scary-looking, bald biker flat on the table…” Phoebe was regaling him with stories of her time in ER, which was directly after he’d shared a couple of tales of her neighbors and the work he’d done around the complex. But his weren’t half as funny or as interesting as the ones she related.

  They were twenty minutes outside of Grantham’s city limits, just beginning to climb the foothills above the town and, in Ryker’s opinion, everything was going great. He’d been on time after he’d spent more than a few minutes trying to decide which mode of transport would be better: the Escalade or his motorcycle. Since the whole goal of this date, the first of what he hoped was many, was to get to know one another, he’d chosen the Black Ice vehicle.

  Numero uno, he didn’t have an extra helmet for her to wear if they used the hog, and dos, because they wouldn’t be able to talk and laugh together on his bike. And Ryker discovered pretty damn quick Phoebe both liked to get her giggle on and seemed to make a point of getting him to laugh too.

  He glanced her way, admiring her profile of flushed cheeks and her beautiful lips pulled into a huge smile as she bounced in the seat when concluding her story. Madre Dios, she was beautiful. A stunner from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, and all the curves in between.

  From the moment she’d opened the door and he’d seen her dressed in a fitted, button-downed shirt and jeans tight enough to skim her curvy thighs, he’d been hard-pressed to even say ‘hi’. He took a moment instead to warn his twitching cock not to get any ideas about tenting his jeans. But his heart had been hammering too, which meant his mouth went dry making it even harder to speak. As she’d gazed up at him, her beautiful eyes so big and blue, her full lips pulled into welcoming grin, Ryker found himself lost.

  Lost in the beauty of just…her.

  “I know this is kind of a w
eird question,” she began, pulling his thoughts from the way she looked at her apartment and back into the there and then. “But how old are you?”

  “Twenty-five. How about you?”

  “Just turned twenty-four, two months ago.” She turned to look his way and pointed to a faraway vista they were able to see for just a second before the encroaching tree-line obscured their view. “Did you grow up in Grantham?”

  “Born and bred.”

  “Hmm,” she mumbled, turning back to the road in front of them. “I don’t remember you from school even though you would’ve been…what? A year ahead of me?

  Okay, now they were getting into a tricky area. The part where his past could come up and shut down whatever it was they were building in such a way there’d be no way to get it back. So he chose his words carefully. “I didn’t graduate but got my GED instead.”

  She seemed to chew on that for a about a second, before replying. “Too anxious for all the fan-fare of graduation, huh?”

  Ryker’s fingers relaxed on the steering wheel. “You could say that.”

  He maneuvered a couple of the road’s switchbacks, still getting the feel of ‘his’ new car as he wondered about her past and how she’d grown up. “I wanna know about you. What about your family?”

  “What about them?” Was it his imagination or did the happy-vibe in the car suddenly shift?

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?”

  “Nope,” she replied, her answer short and given quickly. And done so abruptly, he was confused. “Do you?”

  “Yeah. Two older brothers, Max and Cruz.” He gave it a moment, aware she’d turned her face to the passenger window although nothing could be seen through the branches of the evergreens on her side of the road. “What does your dad do?”

  She was silent for a while, so long Ryker wondered if she would even answer before she finally responded in a tight, quiet voice. “My parents died when I was six.”

  Holy shit! Of all the conversational, getting-to-know-you questions to ask, he’d gone the wrong direction. He struggled to find the right words to say to get back on track; back to the good. Reaching out, he snagged the hand she had propped on her thigh and squeezed it lightly. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Phoebe.”