by Vonnie Davis
Gina set her on the floor and handed her the vase. “Put them in the perfect spot for Daddy while I whisper in his ear and tell him we’re here.” Out of the corner of her eye, her daughter moved the vase four times. Gina leaned and whispered in Reece’s ear. “Your family is here, Tool Belt. I love you. I need you. I’m sorry I was so mean. Don’t leave me, sweetheart. I need you.”
His eyes shifted under closed eyelids.
“Do you hear me? I love you. I need you to get well. You have no idea how much I’m going to pamper you.” She opened her tote bag and withdrew something. Lifting his stump, she slid what she’d bought him earlier today at McGrath’s Lumber Supply Store under it, careful not to bother the large bandage over his lung.
“Piper, come talk to Daddy before our time is up.”
Her daughter stood there, her eyes wide, and her foot twisting from side to side. “I can’t. It’s my fault he’s hurt real bad. What if he dies?” Tears tumbled.
“Piper, sometimes in life, bad things happen to good people. When it does, that’s when we really need to show them our love.”
She slowly crept to the side of the hospital bed. “Hold me, so I can touch his face.” Gina picked her up and Piper rested her small hand on his cheek. “Daddy, I’m sorry I didn’t stay with the rest of the kids, but there was this cute baby giraffe I wanted to watch. I got you shot and I’m so, so sorry because this is all my fault.” She sobbed. “I love you. I’ve waited my whole life for you. You have to get better. You just have to!” She wiped tears from her face and leaned to kiss his face several times. “Whirlwind told me to tell you he misses you, too. I know it’s kind of scary being alone in the hospital, so I brought Miss Morgan to take care of you. She’s good to talk to and snuggle up with.” She kissed the stuffed rabbit and ordered it to help make her daddy better.
“I’m going to lay Miss Morgan against your neck so you can lean your head against her.”
Oh, this child would break her heart with her sweet tenderness. Gina helped her position the rabbit in the right spot.
“I love you, Daddy. You’re the best daddy a girl could have.” His eyes moved under his long-lashed eyelids.
She set Piper down again and bent to kiss the taped corner of his mouth, his cheek, his eyes. “I love you. No other man will ever measure up to you, Reece Browning. Get better, sweetheart.”
The door to his room opened and the nurse whispered that their time was up. Hand in hand the two walked out.
Chapter 28
Reece’s eyelids screeched open like a rusty gate. For a few minutes he was disoriented. The taped tubes inserted in his nose and mouth and the hushed beeps of machinery told him he was in a hospital. The wooziness and weightlessness of his body meant he was on some good drugs. Hell, they were so fucking good he even smelled Gina’s peach fragrance and sensed something warm and fuzzy against his neck. By the room’s pale gray light, it must be…
Someone jostling him woke Reece the next time. A technician peeled the tape from his mouth and removed the tube going down his throat. He was relieved to get rid of that damn thing. The technician left his room and a nurse stepped to his bedside.
“Good morning. It’s nice to see those pretty eyes of yours. May I have your name and date of birth, please?”
God, he hated this part of being in the hospital. “Reece…Reece Browning. August eighth, nineteen eighty-eight. Water, please.” Someone had jammed cotton down his throat.
The nurse held a straw to his mouth and he took a few long sips, taking in the name on her badge—Dora Templeton. His gaze took in the room’s yellow walls, the strength of the sunlight shining through the slats of the window blinds, and the vase of purple tulips. His heart warmed. Piper. His little girl had been here. She must be okay. He breathed a sigh of relief. Pain he could handle. Something happening to her, he couldn’t.
“On a scale of one to ten, one being the lowest and ten the highest, what is your level of pain right now?”
“Forty-two. I hurt like a motherfucker.”
“Ohhh-kay, looks like we need to bump up your morphine levels.” She fiddled with something and wrapped a gray cord around his bed railing before sticking it in his grasp. “Here’s your morphine drip. Press the button once when you need some pain relief.”
He pressed it twice.
Dora cleared her throat. “I can see we’re going to have a time with you, Reece Browning. You don’t want to mess with me. I can be a tough nurse.”
“I’ve had tougher.” Blondie with her brown eyes and sparkling diamond in her nose came to mind. God, he could use some of her incessant chatter right about now. Too bad she wanted him out of her life.
“You had some visitors last night. You must be loved very much,” Dora Templeton stated. “Your fiancée left explicit instructions your things weren’t to be disturbed.”
“My things?” He pressed the morphine drip again. How many times had he been shot? And where? He hurt all over.
She snapped on blue latex gloves, pulled back the sheet, and began the process of changing a large bandage. “You know, I get the stuffed rabbit curled against your neck. A present from your little girl. Right?”
He shifted his head and stared at Miss Morgan. I will be damned. “Yeah, right.”
“What’s been bugging the staff, though, is the tool belt with the red lace thong sticking out of one of the pockets.” She arched a brown eyebrow at him in question.
“A what?” He looked around the room. He didn’t see any freaking tool belt. He did smell Gina. Not just her peach fragrance, but…he pinched his eyes shut…God help him, her feminine essence. He turned his head in the direction opposite Miss Morgan and found the tool belt under his stump. Peeking out was a red lacy thong. One she’d evidently worn. Damn, the woman would drive him insane.
“Don’t leave the staff in the dark. Besides, I’d love to be the one to waltz out there with the deets on the tool belt.” She winked at him.
Holy hell. “It’s my fiancée’s private nickname for me. She says I look sexy in a tool belt. And I’m going to smack her ass for this.”
The brunette leaned her head back and laughed. “I’m betting she might like that. Thanks for the info. The nurses will love it.”
Kee-ryst almighty! He pressed the morphine drip twice and allowed the medicine to pull him under again.
Warm lips against his woke him. He pulled back.
“I can only stay for five minutes. The nurse Nazis are timing me. How are you feeling, sweetheart?”
He studied Gina for a few beats, anger churning in his gut. “Damned confused, if you want the damned truth. I mean, you fill my voicemail with messages so cold I got icicles on my heart. You were scared about Piper, I fucking get that. But, dammit, I’m the guy you’re supposed to marry. Don’t I get any consideration? Do I only get treated well when things are okay with Piper? How is she, by the way? She wasn’t hurt, was she?”
Her fingers stroked his hair and he refused to admit how much he yearned for her touch. “She’s fine. Although she’s really worried about you. She has a few scrapes from falling at the zoo, but nothing that won’t mend.”
“Good.”
“As for your outburst, I deserved it. You’re right, Reece. My behavior the day before was pretty bad. And I’m very sorry. I was wrong for leaving you messages like that. My only excuse is I freaked. I totally lost it. Even so, I was wrong to act the way I did.”
“Fucking A, you were wrong. I’m not the bad guy here.”
She cupped his face. “No, you’re not. You’re the man who risked his life to save our daughter. I didn’t think I could love you any more than I did, but I do. So you can bitch and growl at me all you want, but I’m not giving up on us. You didn’t chase me off when we first met and you won’t chase me off now.” She pressed her forehead against his and stared into his eyes. “Your daughter says hi and she loves you.”
“You fight fucking dirty.” He scowled at her.
Her breath fanned his fa
ce. “Oh, sweetheart, you have no idea…” She tugged a red sheer bra from her tote bag and trailed it across his cheeks and nose before tucking it into another pocket of his tool belt.
—
Gina sashayed off the elevator. “I’m here,” she announced. All the nurses swiveled in her direction, their faces expectant. She’d been coming during her lunch break every day for the last four days.
“Well, what did you bring Tool Belt today?” Dora leaned across the counter, a pen in her hand. The rest of the nurses stood to see.
Gina pulled a black garter belt from her tote bag and swung it around her head. Two male orderlies stopped dead in their tracks and the nurses hooted.
“Girl, every time you bring him something like that his mood gets darker and darker.”
She stepped closer to the desk. “It’s called being horny.” She curled her fingers and stared at her manicure. “And if you’d give me more than ten minutes with him, I could take care of his nasty mood.” She figured a nice slow blow job was just the thing he needed to take the edge off his nasty mood.
Dora stared at her and tapped the pen on the counter. “I don’t have time to watch the clock today.” She turned. “Do the rest of you have the time to watch the clock?” They all shook their heads. “Go on with your bad self, then. Oh”—Dora leaned toward her as she hurried by—“I forgot. There’s a physical therapist in with him right now.”
Her footsteps faltered. “A physical therapist? A woman?”
Dora nodded.
“Oh, not with my man.” Gina stormed back to Reece’s room. When she opened the door, a young slender figure with dark, straight hair was all over him. Well, maybe not like that, but she was pretty hands-on with a man who’d just had major surgery.
“What the hell is going on?”
The physical therapist jumped and straightened. “Okay, like, hi. I’m Bambi.”
“Of course you are. And just what are you doing to my fiancé?” Gina crossed her arms.
“Okay, I’m, like, his physical therapist. Today, just like yesterday and the day before, I’m giving him massages to keep his awesome muscles toned and stuff.”
Reece had the nerve to grin.
Was he attracted to this young woman? Gina’s heart sank. What if all her efforts to win him back, to make him feel loved and needed for himself, were too little too late? Had she screwed things up so badly between them he was searching for feminine attention elsewhere?
“Well, my name is Gina. I’m his physical therapist, Bambi, and have been for months. I’ll provide anything he needs. You’re dismissed.” Gina held the door open with all good intentions of slamming the skinny young thing on her backside on her way out. Massage his awesome muscles, my ass.
“Okay, well…ah…see, I work for the hospital, not you. So you’re not the boss of me.” Bambi Bitch had the nerve to turn her back on Gina. “Okay, Reece, I’m just going to take this tool belt full of smelly”—her black sparkly fingernails wiggled in the air—“my God, what are these things? Dirty underwear? Oh, we just can’t have this.” She jerked it from under his stump and threw it in the wastepaper can as if it were toxic waste.
A moan of pain clawed its way up Gina’s throat and escaped. She was still his fiancée. Still wore his engagement ring. Bambi had no right to throw away Gina’s intimate gifts to him.
Reece, always so in tune with her emotions, narrowed his gaze on her as if he was trying to read her mind.
The exhaustion of the last week hit Gina like a runaway freight train. Between living the ordeal of the zoo incident, dealing with Piper’s guilt over causing Reece’s injuries, and driving a total of four hours a day to see Reece early in the afternoon and again at night, she was physically and emotionally drained.
Meanwhile, a younger, more energetic, and much thinner woman smirked at her while stroking Reece’s hair. Stroking, dammit! Gina’s hand opened and closed. Christ, she wanted to rip out the smug twit’s long hair. So this is what jealousy feels like.
And didn’t Gina feel like the fool standing there with a garter belt in one hand and her heart in the other? Reece watched her with a piercing gaze as if waiting for her next step. “Is this what you want, Reece? Another woman’s hands on you?” God, she thought she’d never have to ask this question.
“What do you want?”
“Haven’t I been showing you?” Was the man this damn dense?
“Tell me what the fuck you want, Gina. I deserve to hear the words.” His jaw was set with resolve, yet there was uncertainty in his expression.
The truth slapped her between the eyes; her man was still hurting. Frankly, after all the nasty messages she’d left on his voicemail the day he’d been shot, she could understand his lack of confidence where she was concerned.
They hadn’t had the chance to really air things out. How could you in five-minute-visit increments? By the time you broached the painful subject, one of the nurses was at the door pointing at her watch.
She’d been hoping her coming here twice a day, full of cheer and brandishing her lingerie to fill his tool belt, would get the message across. But it didn’t. If the situation were reversed, it wouldn’t be enough for her, either. She’d need to hear the words, too. She’d need signs and reassurances that he was truly sorry. She’d have to know, in no uncertain terms, how important she was to him. This man…this man she loved and respected deserved no less.
“Words, sweetheart? You want words? Okay, I’ve got words for you you can’t even imagine.” She tossed her purse and garter belt onto the chair and moved forward. If she was going to state what she wanted, she’d start with the obvious. She pointed to Bambi. “I want her skinny ass out of here.”
Bambi gasped. “Reece, tell her she can’t talk to me like that.”
“You’re a physical therapist on staff here at the hospital. Nothing more. Now be quiet while my fiancée speaks. This conversation is long overdue.”
“I want you back.” Gina took a step toward his bed. “I want things the way they were before I went all apeshit on you. I was totally wrong for treating you as if you meant nothing to me. So, so wrong. I mean, like bitch-on-wheels wrong.”
She made another stride and unbuttoned her blouse. “I want our family together again.” By now she was beside him and his eyes were on her as she pushed aside her blouse to reveal a tattoo over her heart. “I want my macho man in my life again and the security of being held in his arms every night after we make love.”
His gaze dropped to her new heart tattoo, barely three days old, with “Reece” written in blue cursive and “Piper” in purple within a pretty lacy red heart outline. “If you tell me you don’t want any of that, then I’ll always have your name over my heart, because you own it, Reece. You own my heart…and always will.”
There, she’d laid her emotions bare. It was time for him to do the same—for good or bad.
“What do you want, Reece?”
“I want a woman crazy enough to get my name tattooed over her heart.” He stopped and cleared the emotion from his throat. “I want us, baby. I want a life together where we love and fight and make up. I want to adopt Piper so she bears my last name. I want a puppy, dammit, and not a froufrou breed, either. A German shepherd. I want to make love to you in every room of the house. Hell, I’ll add on rooms just so we can have a wider choice. I’ll even add a second floor full of fuck-me rooms. And I want to be healed before our wedding so I can carry you across the threshold, as corny and old-fashioned as that may sound.”
Reece kept his gaze locked on hers. “Bambi, you can leave. But first, you better get my tool belt out of the trash and put it where the hell it belongs. Under my stump. I don’t give a rat’s ass who you work for, you’re through working with me. Blondie is my physical therapist. My fiancée. My world. Now find another patient. I’ve got the world’s most perfect woman right here to love—forever.”
He raised his arm to embrace Gina. “Come here, Blondie.” His slow sexy-as-hell smile spread. “L
et’s talk about getting matching tool-belt tattoos. Mine will have a pair of red thongs dangling from a pocket and yours will have a pair of handcuffs hanging out of one of yours.”
Gina slipped beneath his arm, rested her head against his neck, and kissed it. “You don’t think you’re going to run this marriage, do you?”
He kissed her long and hard. Her heart swelled with happiness and the sweet assurance of a forever love.
He laughed and his hand clasped her ass. “Fucking A, baby.”
THREE WEEKS LATER
A “mission accomplished” Texan barbeque was in full swing when Gina eased her SUV into an empty space among vehicles at Eagle Ridge Ranch. During Reece’s time in the hospital, the rest of Black Eagle Ops had found the two sixteen-wheelers hauling the abducted little girls. One was for the operation in Texas and the other for Florida’s part of the sex-trafficking trade.
It was no wonder the blue vans had been so hard to find after a girl had been snatched. The long truck assigned to each kidnapping team was hidden on a deserted road not far from where the planned abduction was to take place. The van quickly drove to the rendezvous site and with metal lifts drove into the back of the sixteen-wheeler. The newly kidnapped girl was removed from the van and dragged through a wooden partition to where the rest of the “human goods” were hidden.
The terrified girls were transported farther and farther away from the safety of their families in tractor-trailers police allowed to pass by without a second glance, their focus on the alert for blue vans.
While none of the little girls were sexually assaulted, they were traumatized. Thankfully, they were all reunited with their parents and provided counseling so healing could begin.
As for the captured members of the Morozov Circle, they didn’t fare so well. After ten hours of interrogation with members of the elite team, it seemed they welcomed the safety of their jail cells. In the dark of night, Black Eagle Ops boarded the Russian cargo vessel Tirpitz, moored at a dock in New Orleans, to take control until the Coast Guard arrived.
ZQ’s handler at the CIA had deemed the mission a success. Today was a celebration. Although, Reece jokingly informed Gina, the team routinely looked for any reason to party. They’d packed overnight bags because no one would be in any condition to drive home tonight.
