Right now the thought of food wasn’t appealing, though. My mind and body were clearly at a disconnect. Perhaps it was why my body wouldn’t let me rest.
The light from the hallway shone in the door, which was only pulled around halfway. I recalled the fancy coffee vending machine at the end of the hall and wondered if perhaps it also had some hot chocolate. Maybe something warm and comforting would make it easier to sleep.
And shut up my complaining stomach.
Slowly, I slid from the bed, taking pains not to jostle or wake Liam. After digging for some cash in my bag on the other side of the room, I slipped out the door and headed down the hall.
The hospital was much quieter at this time of night. There were no visitors walking around, and most of the patients were in their rooms asleep. The staff was still working, but it was a smaller crew than during the day.
Blinking against the too-bright overhead light, I passed the nurses station, which was empty, and headed toward the end of the hall. The vending machine was against the wall near the bank of elevators.
Perusing the options on the front, I noted it did indeed have hot chocolate. I pulled a couple dollars out of my pocket and smoothed them out on the leg of my jeans, hoping the machine would take it in one try.
Just as I was about to feed in the first dollar, a nurse walked by. “Oh, honey, that machine is out of order.”
I pulled the money down as it continued to try and latch onto it. “It is?”
She nodded. “They were supposed to put a sign on it earlier, but clearly no one did. Guess I’ll have to do it.”
I frowned at the money in my hands, disappointed.
The nurse patted my shoulder. “There’s another machine just like this one on the next floor down.”
“Does it work?” I muttered.
“Sure does!” she sang, and off she went in her scrubs and Crocs.
I glanced back down the hall toward Liam’s room, debating. My stomach grumbled again, and with it came a sense of nausea.
I hit the button for the elevator and then waited for it to ding open. The second it did, I stepped in, hit the button for the next floor down, then turned.
Something familiar moved toward the end of the hall. The nightmare-haunting tattoo drew my startled gaze.
A spider.
A black, long-legged spider. Right on the back of a bald man’s neck.
“No!” I exclaimed and started forward.
The doors were closing. The gap showing the view of the man who wanted me dead became smaller.
Spidey pivoted when he heard me yell. His body stopped right outside Liam’s door.
“No!” I yelled again. “Liam!”
In the narrowing space between the doors, I watched Spidey lift his hand, smile, and then wave.
Even though I was stunned, nearly in shock at the glimpse of the man who tried to shoot me then disappeared after the avalanche, my body knew what to do.
“Help!” I screamed and banged on the thick metal doors. I tried to pry them apart from the center, straining, feeling a twinge of warning in my shoulder and trying still.
The elevator practically laughed at my ineptitude and dropped to the lower floor. I sagged back, breathing hard when the doors opened. I rushed out into the hall, glancing wildly up and down the corridor, hoping to see a staff member or even security to have them call the police.
The hall was empty, this floor even quieter than the one Liam was on.
Liam!
I spun back around with a cry and rushed toward the elevator just as the doors closed completely. I banged on them with the side of my fist, then shoved off and lunged for the stairwell nearby. The door was heavy and made a squeaking sound when I shoved through. I was halfway up the steps when it banged shut behind me.
My vision tilted as I took the stairs two at a time. My stomach rolled, but I kept going and nearly collided with the door that led out into the hall where Liam was. I threw my body against it, totally expecting it to give way beneath my body, but it didn’t.
I shuddered against the impact and bounced back. Without pause, I grabbed the door and pulled, opening it only enough for me to slip through.
“Liam!” I screamed his name so loud I probably woke the entire floor. My feet, which were only covered in socks, pounded over the sterile tile floor.
A nurse came out of the nurse’s station, heading toward me with concern on her face. “Ms. Lane?”
“Liam!” I gasped. “He needs help!” As I ran, my sock-covered foot hit the polished floor at exactly the right angle, and I slid. Unable to catch myself, I landed in a heap on the floor.
The nurse reached my side, trying to help me up.
“No!” I shoved her hands. “Not me. Liam!”
“Bellamy!” Liam roared.
His voice sounded so strong, so alive… so ready to kick some ass that I stopped trying to scramble off the floor and actually sank onto it in a puddle of relief.
“Miss, what is going on—” the nurse was saying, but I ignored her.
Liam charged out of his room looking more like a linebacker than a snowboarder. The edges of the hospital gown flapped around behind him, sort of making it look like he was wearing a cape.
His gray eyes flared when they found me, and a broken sound ripped out of me. “Oh my God, are you okay?”
He stalked across the space between us and, without any effort at all, inserted himself between me and the nurse. His large, warm palms wrapped around my upper arms and lifted. Back on my feet, my knees were so shaky I knew I might end up back on the floor if he let go.
But I didn’t think about that. Instead, I grabbed fistfuls of the front of his gown. “What did he do to you?” I pleaded. “Are you hurt?”
“Mr. Mattison, what is going on here?” the nurse asked. I noted there was much more movement at my peripheral vision, which meant I’d drawn a crowd… But I didn’t look at them. I could only look at Liam.
“Give us a minute,” Liam said flippantly to someone behind me.
“Bellamy.”
“Are you okay?” I repeated as fat, salty tears spilled from my eyes and rolled down my face.
“Look at me.” Liam encouraged softly. “I’m fine. All good. Everything is fine.”
A sob was my only reply.
“Okay now, sweetheart,” he said, gathering me against him. The center of my stomach turned over because being in his arms was just that good. “You’re okay.”
“I don’t care about me!” I insisted. It sounded pretty pathetic because I said it between sobs.
Liam didn’t laugh. Instead, he picked me up in his arms, cradling me against his chest.
“Your knee!” Someone cautioned him.
“I don’t give a damn about my knee,” he barked.
I sniffled, burrowed into him, and said, “Put me down, Liam.”
“No.”
“Sir, I really would advise against that kind of weight.” The nurse continued, following him as he carried me back to the room.
“I’m not fat,” I wailed. Clearly, I was having a brain hemorrhage of some kind.
Liam chuckled. “No, sweetheart, you aren’t.” But then his body went taut, and I felt him glance behind him. “You telling my girl she’s fat?”
“This is ridiculous,” the nurse replied, curt.
His smell surrounded me. Even in this hospital, Liam smelled like freshly fallen snow with a hint of pine. I inhaled deep and let the timbre of his voice wash over the worst of my frazzled ends. The hasty beating of my heart began to slow, and my brain finally caught on that the man I was so scared for was here and safe.
Liam carried me straight into the room and put me on the bed. The sling that should have been holding his knee was swaying slightly.
I gasped. “You’re out of bed!”
Concern darkened his features. “You were screaming, Bells. I wasn’t about to lie here.”
I sat up, looking around the room, searching every corner. “He’s here!”
“Who?”
“Spidey!” I scrambled off the bed. Liam tried to snatch me close, but I evaded and went rushing into the bathroom to flick on the light and check in the shower. “He’s here, Liam! I saw him.”
“I believe you,” Liam replied, his voice calm and reasonable. How could he be calm and reasonable at a time like this?
“Could we have a moment?” Liam asked the nurse who was standing inside the door.
“Should I call the police?”
“Just a minute,” he replied, barely holding on to his patience.
She left the room, and he shut the door, swinging to me. “Tell me what happened.”
I leaned into the doorframe, gazing up and down his body as he stood in front of me. “You’re really okay.”
“I’m really okay,” he echoed.
“I was so scared, Liam,” I whispered, my voice wobbly.
“Hey now,” he crooned, gathering me against him. I pressed close, rubbing my cheek against his chest. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
I pulled back forcefully. “I don’t care about me. He was coming for you!”
Liam said nothing, just picked me up and put me on the bed. My feet dangled off the side, and that creeped-out feeling you get when you lie in bed and let one foot hang out of the covers drifted over me. I shivered, and Liam braced his palms on either side of my hips on the bed and leaned down.
“You should sit down.” I worried.
“Just tell me,” he snapped, his temper clearly thin.
“I couldn’t sleep. So I went down the hall to get a hot chocolate out of the machine.” I glanced up at him.
His eyes softened. “You like your hot chocolate.”
“The machine was broken, but the nurse said there was another machine on the next floor down. I was only going to be a minute…”
Liam bent a little farther so he could catch my eyes with his. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Bells.”
“I left you alone.”
“I’m a grown-ass man.”
“You’re my grown-ass man.”
He laughed low. “Yes, I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m not capable of taking care of myself while you get a cup of hot chocolate.”
“When I got on the elevator, I looked back down the hall.” I glanced up at him, swallowing. “He was here.”
“Spidey?”
I nodded sagely, fear tingling my limbs. The sight of his tattoo flashed into my mind, and my teeth sank into my lower lip.
“Bellamy.” Liam gripped my chin with one hand. “Look at me.”
I did, his gray, thunderous eyes bringing me back to the present. “He was standing in the hallway in front of your room. He waved at me.”
A low, aggressive sound rumbled out of Liam. “Then what?”
I scooted up on the bed a little more, trying to get comfortable. This bed was not at all. It was hard, and now it felt lumpy.
“I tried to get off the elevator, but the damn doors shut and I couldn’t pry them open.” I flexed my fingers, realizing my hands ached from the effort.
He made a sound, wrapping my hands in one of his. Both mine fit. In one of his. I stared down at the sight, unable to look away.
“So when the doors opened, I took the stairs and ran up here.”
“And I heard you screaming.”
Yanking my hands from beneath his, I grabbed his shoulders. “Did you see him? Did you scare him off?”
Liam pushed away from the bed and straightened. “He wasn’t in here.”
“What?” I exclaimed.
“When I woke up, the room was empty. I called out for you, but you didn’t answer… Then I heard you scream.”
“He was here, Liam! I saw him!” I jumped up from the bed and nearly slipped because this floor was freaking slippery when you were just wearing socks. I made a sound and fell back, throwing out my arm to steady myself on the bed.
Liam was there, grabbing my other arm, making certain I didn’t fall. “You need to calm down, Bells. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“How am I supposed to calm down?” I questioned. “He was here, and it wasn’t me he was after this time!”
“Bells.”
I glanced around, sharp. “Tell me you believe me.”
“I believe you.”
Just like that. He said it just like that without a hint of anything but seriousness in his tone. “Y-you do?”
“I will always believe you, no matter what. If you say he was here, then he damn well was.”
How did I live without this kind of love for so long? How?
I started to turn completely, to go to him, but an odd sensation stopped me. “What…?” I whispered and turned back toward the bed.
It was dark in here, but there was definitely something there.
Definitely.
Reaching around me, I pushed at Liam. “Turn on the light.”
“What?”
“The light, Liam! Turn it on!”
He flipped it on seconds later.
I gasped.
“Bellamy?”
With shaking hands and a heavily beating heart, I reached for the object I’d found on the bed. The reason it probably felt lumpy when I’d been sitting there. After slight hesitation, I scooped up the object and spun.
“He left us something.” My voice was shaky.
Liam stared down at my hand cupped around the spine-tingling “gift.” I didn’t need it because Liam believed me, but if he didn’t, I now had proof.
He reached out and grasped my hand, pulling it down from where I was holding it. “Let me see.”
Extending my hand between us, I opened my fingers, exposing the black rubbery object filling my palm.
“What the fuck?” Liam wondered, staring down.
It was a spider. One of those real-looking toys with eight long black legs, an egg-shaped body, small head, and a red patch on its back.
A black widow.
One of the deadliest spiders out there.
Our eyes collided at the same moment. “He’s playing with us,” I whispered.
“Like a spider with a fly…” Liam murmured, his voice trailing away.
A spider is chaos to a fly.
Liam
Bells was turning me on.
There was nothing quite like watching your woman in her element, seeing flames of passion ignite in her eyes and an air of assurance mold around her body as she worked.
I was also mildly jealous.
Maybe more than mildly.
Pushing away from the island, I went into the kitchen where she was standing at the counter, working. She barely noticed me move up behind her. The girl was so involved with what she was doing with her hands.
Hands that were not on me.
Grasping her hips, I stepped into her, thrusting against her ass. “You’re giving me a boner,” I whispered against her ear.
She laughed and wiggled her fine ass against me, but didn’t stop what she was doing.
With a growl, I picked her up and turned in a circle before planting her on the counter in front of me.
“Hey!” she exclaimed. “I’m cooking!”
“You laughed at my boner, sweetheart,” I told her, serious.
She laughed again. “First of all, you called it a boner.”
“Twice.” I confirmed.
“Second, I think someone is jealous.”
I made a rude sound. “I can’t help it if you look all hot standing over here in the kitchen.”
She groaned. “You are totally one of those types that like their women barefoot and pregnant… and in the kitchen.”
A fizzle of desire spiked in me. My eyes must have betrayed me because she smiled knowingly. “So old school,” she sang.
“I’ll take you any way I can get you,” I rumbled and pulled her into me.
My lips silenced her giggle and turned it to a sigh as my tongue stroked over her lips. I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that the thought of
her pregnant with my baby didn’t satisfy me on a purely instinctual level.
I didn’t admit it, though. Not out loud anyway. I was too busy kissing her.
A moment later, Bells broke the kiss. “I’m finally cooking you dinner, and you’re totally trying to distract me.”
“You have flour on your nose,” I said, brushing it off with my thumb.
“Leave that poor girl alone, Liam!” my mother said, coming into her kitchen like she owned the place.
She did, but I didn’t appreciate the assertion.
“Mom…”
“Don’t you mom me. The smells coming from this kitchen are divine, and I won’t let even you get in the way of her finishing this family meal.”
I glanced back at Bells, widening my eyes.
Bellamy nodded once. “She told you.” Then she patted me on the chest and hopped off the counter beside me.
“The women in my life have let me down,” I announced, woeful.
Mom laughed as she poured herself a glass of wine, and a large wooden spoon appeared before my face.
“Bells, now is not the time for spankings. My mother is in the room!”
Bellamy rolled her eyes. “Taste this.”
I opened up so she could slip a taste of the sauce across my tongue. The second she was done, she pulled back and watched me carefully. As if she was nervous.
I might be a little nervous, too. I really hoped this stuff—
“Holy shit.” I groaned and grabbed her wrist to pull the spoon back to my mouth to lick it dry.
“You like it?”
I didn’t even pause even though the spoon was clean. “This is the best alfredo I’ve ever had.”
“Really?”
“Well, I could have told you that just from the smell,” Holly put in.
I dipped the spoon back toward the pot on the stove, but Bellamy smacked my hand away. “It’s not done!”
“Tastes done to me.”
“Get out of my kitchen!” Bellamy pointed to the door.
I raised an eyebrow defiantly. “It’s my mother’s kitchen.”
“Out!” Mom backed her up.
I spun around and gave her a look. “I thought I was your favorite child.”
She smiled and patted me on the cheek. “Oh, honey. You are my favorite son.” I glanced over at Bells, but Mom pulled my chin around. “But Bellamy is my favorite daughter. So out you go.” She made a shooing sound.
Blizzard (BearPaw Resort #2) Page 14
