Just Good Friends (Cheap Thrills Series Book 5)

by Mary B. Moore

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, my voice sounding like I’d itched where my tonsils once were with a toilet brush or like I’d been gargling acid.

  It was enough to have noises of sympathy coming out of them and to make me wince, which ended up with me groaning at the pain in my shoulder and chest, then groaning again at the pain in my side from where my muscles had tensed when I’d done it. That made more noises come out of me, and I tried to move my arm to hold the area again… It was a painful, hellish, agonizing circle.

  “Stop moving,” she squeaked, lurching forward to stop my arm moving just as I lifted it.

  “She’s right, Mr. Evans. Until we’ve put the bindings on to immobilize your arm so that your collarbone can heal, moving that arm is a no. You also have a bullet wound in it that we operated on only hours ago. You were a very lucky man that it didn’t hit anything major, so let’s not tempt fate and open it up, hmm?”

  Glancing at him, I asked, “What?”

  Looking away from the machine he’d been watching, he frowned. “Well, tearing it opens it up to infection. It also means we’d need to repair the damage that does to it. You might also bleed heavily, and after—”

  “I know what opening up a wound does, Doc,” I snapped, shifting to sit up and deciding immediately not to. “What I want to know is why I have one to begin with.”

  The increase in the beeps showing my heart rate on the machine indicated what effect the sounds of crying coming from Tamsin now had on me, and also made my head jerk to the side to look at her. This time I ignored the pain as much as possible, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the machine burst into flames with how fast my heart rate was.

  “Your blood pressure’s a bit too high, Mr. Evans,” the doctor warned. “Take some deep breaths and try to relax, or I’ll have to ask Miss Waite to leave the room.”

  The fact he used her real name didn’t register, but not taking my eyes off her, I growled, “You even try to do that, and I’ll shove that machine up your ass. No offense, Doc, but my girl crying will always be a priority.” Then, turning my hand over so that the palm was facing the ceiling, I moved it all of two inches across the bed, indicating that I wanted hers.

  Looking from it to the doctor, she reached over and gently laid her hand on top of mine. “Don’t be mean to him, honey. He’s only looking out for you.”

  “I’ll apologize to him in a minute. What’s wrong, pretty girl?”

  I’d never seen anyone look more tormented than she did at that moment, as steady rivers of tears fell down her cheeks. “It’s all my fault,” she croaked, sobbing silently. “He shot you because he was trying to get to me.”

  Flashes of images struck me hearing those words, but not one of them made sense. The skeleton of the house, the land we’d bought, I was saying something to her on my knees and watching her eyes change color with the sun.

  It was pretty damn romantic and idyllic, so how did it go to shit?

  Then I remembered a bang and being hit in the shoulder by something.

  Needing a moment alone with her to make sure she was okay, I tightened my grip on her hand and turned toward him. “I’m sorry for threatening your ass hole, Doc. Can you do what needs to be done so that I can have some time with Tamsin? I hate seeing her cry and her blaming herself for this when my job isn’t exactly risk-free…” I trailed off, watching as understanding filled his face.

  “Of course, of course. My girlfriend’s the same. The second something happens, and we get hurt, they want to blame themselves for not stopping it while smothering you with attention. Some say it’s down to women having a maternal instinct, you know,” he said, getting out a foam strip and laying stuff out on a table he wheeled over from the side of the room.

  “I’m not sure if that’s true, but they’re remarkably good at it. Then again, we have a lot of male nurses who are outstanding at looking after their patients, so who knows why. I say just go with it,” he advised me, half of his mouth tilting in a small smile. “They hate us being hurt, and if this is what it takes to help them through it—and what you’ve just gone through is by no means a small thing, so it’s understandable that Miss Waite is feeling this way—then it’s worth it. We’re equally as bad when the situations are reversed. Can you imagine if she was lying here instead of you?”

  The machine started making some sort of rave music again, the beat and pitch incredibly obnoxious in the otherwise silent room. “I don’t even want to consider that ever being a possibility, Doc. She’s my world.”

  Nodding, he went back to what he was doing, carefully raising the head of the bed, watching me for increased pain and stopping when it became clear I needed time to adjust. It took him longer than it should have to get me to a slightly higher position, but he was patient and watchful.

  With every indication that I was hurting, Tamsin’s hand would shake, and at one point, she whimpered when I had to clench my eyes shut. I fucking hated it.

  I hated that I was hurt, I hated that I couldn’t remember any of it, I hated that I was in pain. But I hated that she was crying and suffering at all even more.

  Lowering the sheet so that it was pooled in my lap, he checked my side and nodded like what he saw was good.

  “Amazingly enough, there’s very little bleeding coming from the wound here, much less than I would’ve expected,” he informed me, just as the door opened and a big breasted blonde came in wearing a scrub top that was a size too small for her. Seeing the new arrival, Tamsin growled, and her hand spasmed slightly. “Ah, Nurse O’T. Thank you for joining us.”

  Not recognizing the name, I asked, “Oh tea?”

  Facing me straight on, I understood the growl from Tamsin. She had trouble written all over her.

  For one, that scrub top—I knew from things that Rose had told me that their scrubs were best worn loose so that that they could move and be more comfortable. Granted, they couldn’t be too baggy, but this woman had bought ones that were skin-tight, meaning that her deep cleavage was visible in the V of the neck of the top. The pants weren’t that much better, and I figured that if she had to squat down for anything, she’d burst the seams.

  She also had thick makeup on, with a goldy pink color surrounding her eyes dramatically, and bright red lipstick. Her big hair was puffed up at the top and done in layers that flipped out at the bottom. Basically, she’d give men a naughty nurse porn feeling, and from how she was biting down on her lip as she looked between the Doc and me, that could well have been what she was going for.

  “No, silly,” she giggled, and it took everything in me not to curl my upper lip. “O. T., as in—”

  O’Tits?

  “—O’Tally. My family is Irish.” This was punctuated by what I think she wanted to be a sexy look, but it kind of made her look like she had issues. I’d seen crazy eyes on some people in my past, and hers screamed fucking tonto.

  Dropping her head back, Tamsin growled, “And there was me worrying it was going to be Missy. Why can’t this hell just end?”

  Squeezing her hand, I watched Nurse O’Tally walk around to the other side of the bed and pick my wrist up to take my pulse.

  Over her shoulder, the doctor rolled his eyes at me. “I think we’re good on the pulse, but if you just keep an eye on the room and check in on him from time to time, we’ll be great.”

  Pouting at him, she argued, “But it’s my job.”

  Tamsin looked like her head was going to explode, but she managed to hold it in. “Would you guys mind giving me just five minutes with my fiancé, please?”—fiancé?—“He’s just been shot while he was proposing, and all I want to do is make sure he’s okay.”

  Hell, even I would have left the room if I was them after hearing that. The doctor was already walking over to the door, but the nurse seemed like she was there to stay.

  She was just about to say something when the door opened, and DB popped his head around it, smiling when he saw that I was awake.

  “Ah, good, you survived the surgery.”
His head disappeared, and I heard him hissing at someone, then he walked into the room with my brother trailing behind him, carrying the mass that was Clyde in his arms. “We brought someone to see you. He’s been sniffing your shit in the department and howling like he was fucking mourning, so we brought him in to shut him up.”

  “What in the fuck are you feeding this beast?” Raoul snapped, gratefully sitting down when Tamsin pushed the chair toward him.

  The second he was settled, Clyde lost it and wriggled off him, whining as he walked up to Tamsin and stuck his head in her crotch.

  “Ranger does that to me, too,” Raoul commented. “Does anyone know why? It makes me feel slightly violated.”

  “I heard that it’s because they can smell other dogs on you,” Nurse O’T breathed, staring at DB and Raoul wide-eyed.

  DB took a step away from her, and Raoul leaned slightly to the side so that he had Tamsin as a shield between them. “I’m not entirely certain that animal protection organizations like people like that.”

  Making sure his badge was clear, DB used his Sheriff's voice. “Do you think you could give us some time with our man here, please?”

  The effect was instant as she moved straight to the door. “Absolutely. Call me if you need anything. My name’s Nurse O’T—”

  “O-Tits?” Raoul whispered around Tamsin to me.

  “That’s what I thought,” I snickered, stopping more from the look on Tamsin’s face than the pain it caused in my shoulder.

  When she was gone, they all turned around to look at me.

  “Okay, hit me with it. Well, unless it’s another bullet or you’re aiming for my good shoulder.”

  Crossing his arms in front of him, DB looked pissed. “How much do you remember?”

  Leaning my back against the raised bed and giving it all of my weight, I breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought maybe I’d gotten drunk and hurt myself, but I remember now being out at the house to show Tamsin. She didn’t kill me for ordering the kit without her, by the way, because she’s perfect for me,” I smiled smugly at them, knowing full well that’s what they’d placed bets on happening.

  “Well shit, Logan fucking won,” Raoul groused. “Rose would’ve killed me if I’d done that.”

  “Tabby would’ve, too,” DB agreed, narrowing his eyes at Tamsin. “What kind of mutant are you?”

  “An awesome one,” she smiled smugly.

  “Anyway, I’d just asked her to marry me—she said yes even though I don’t have a ring yet. Oh, and she said it in the ambulance. There was a bang, pain and Clyde went running into the trees. I remember you guys arriving, but I’m not getting much after that because I was so focused on keeping Tamsin safe.”

  Nodding, DB rubbed his jaw. “Cevdet Gjorka was spotted by Hurst in town about an hour before all of this went down. He pulled over to the side of the road and called us but lost where the asshole went. We told him to stand down, but then he put two and two together and decided to do a little hunting.

  “Just as I was hanging up to call you, I got notified that the FBI and CIA were now involved in Gjorka’s case, and he has a whole list of shit they want to talk to him about,” he snickered, shaking his head. “What a dumb fuck. They also froze his accounts and assets, leaving him with just the clothes on his back and the money in his pocket. His associates did what good little rats do and ran when for safety when they heard about his situation. They don’t want the eyes of the Feds on them for any reason, and they also like getting paid for the job they’re doing.”

  Holding a hand up, Tamsin said, “I thought he just did that hedge fund thingy.”

  “Oh, he does,” DB nodded, “but not for ethical reasons. He’s importing illegal weapons into the US and funding it with the money from the hedge fund, as well as paying gangs to sell them for him. The DEA and Homeland Security will also be involved in discussions with him after they found out exactly how far his web was woven.”

  This was too much for my brain right now.

  “So, basically, he’s a bad guy?” Tamsin drawled, and I wanted to kiss her with gratitude for being the one to say it.

  “He’s up shit creek,” DB agreed. “He’s involved in so much that everyone wants a word with him, including the British intelligence service.”

  “Damn,” I whistled. “Why was he so set on Tamsin?”

  “He genuinely loved his daughter,” DB shrugged. “Rather than accept he held any responsibility for her death, he deflected the blame onto everyone he could. Your parents haven’t had an easy time of it, but he seemed more set on an eye-for-an-eye by targeting you.”

  Tamsin looked relieved by the news, but she also looked saddened by it. “Are my parents okay?”

  A wicked grin appeared on DB’s face as he winked at me. “You’ll get to ask them yourself soon because they’re on their way here to see you. There’s a Jawesomesauce Crusaders not far from here that Wilton—otherwise known as Will, by the way—Waite has wanted to meet for a while. They even have their own boat!” The tone he used to say the last bit was false excitement, but he was way too happy about this visit for my liking.

  “Why are you so happy about this?” I asked suspiciously, glancing at Raoul and seeing him wearing a shit-eating grin, too.

  “Because you’re about to meet the in-laws, and they’re fucking whacked,” he replied bluntly. “Then again, Rose’s aren’t exactly normal.” I swear he was blushing as he said that.

  Another knock on the door had everyone’s heads turning to look toward it, as Jarrod stuck his head around it. “Yo, got room for more?”

  I was starting to wish I’d stayed asleep as he held the door open for his brothers, Katy, his parents, and hers.

  “We just thought we’d stop by to see how you are and check if you needed anything?” Katy’s mom, Katherine, asked, smiling softly at Tamsin. “Sorry you had to go through that, honey, but your man’s a hero no matter what profession he’s in, it seems.”

  Jarrod’s mom opened her mouth to say something, but he put his hand over it. “No, Mom, you can’t ask to see the bullet. We discussed this on the way here.”

  He might be the tallest guy I’d ever met, but she could still level him with the glare she shot him.

  “Anyway,” Bond clapped his hands. “We came to check on y’all, see if Tamsin was ready to leave you for a real man yet, and to say congrats on surviving a bullet. I think that’s it?” he looked at Canon for confirmation.

  It was a fleeting visit, but those two minutes exhausted me more than the rundown from DB had. By the time they waved goodbye, my eyes were starting to droop, and I was in agony with my shoulder.

  “Might wanna call in Nurse O’Tits out there to give you some pain medication, man,” Raoul frowned. Then, not waiting for me to say yes or no, he hit the call button and smiled widely at me. “Oops.”

  Yes, they stuck around to watch her talk me through the morphine pump that was attached to me already, something no one had thought to mention before then. After I’d been pressured into pressing the button, I lay back and waited for sleep to hit, with Tamsin sitting on the edge of the bed stroking my hair.

  As the feeling of some sort of haze taking over my body, making it feel as light as a cloud, happened, I started laughing. See, everything had disappeared, and I was left on a cloud with a killer whale.

  Snuggling up against it, I took the healing hug of the whale with pride. “Riding on a cloud, hugging my killer whale,” I sang happily, then started laughing. “I can’t call you a killer whale, you’re a big wetty panda.”

  And with that, I passed out.

  What I didn’t see was Tamsin’s horrified expression as I hugged her ass, calling it a big wetty panda.

  Epilogue

  Garrett

  There were times when my shoulder ached still, but the doctor had warned me that it’d probably be like that for life.

  Four years later, and I could conclude, yup, he was right. Moving it this morning was like trying to get an engine running
after a hundred years. I was also exhausted from being up all night working on a case with Alex, so that wasn’t helping.

  After the shooting, I’d given in to the pressure from DB and my brother to take my Basic Criminal Investigation course so that I could perform both patrol and investigative functions for P.V.P.D. With what I’d done in the USAF, my brain was just wired to do that kind of job, so I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy with the new duties.

  Tamsin had eventually forgiven me for calling her a big wetty panda, especially after her parents arrived and her dad busted a gut when he heard the story. The man reminded me of Hurst mentally but looked scarily like Eric Roberts, Julia Roberts's brother. The resemblance was uncanny, and her mom looked like Blythe Danner. It was strange but awesome when people saw them taking part in one of the reenactments and went nuts!

  Apparently, Tamsin’s coloring came from her maternal grandfather, who had Italian heritage. Seeing them all together and how close they were, it was hard to fathom how they’d managed to spend two years apart with zero contact, but it was like it never happened with how chilled the family was. They just picked up where they left off, and that was it.

  Her dad had explained it a couple of days after I was released when I’d mentioned it to him.

  “Son, seen a whole lot of shit in my time.”—Being an NYPD detective, I had zero doubts he had—“And I’m going to tell you this, and I want you to take it onboard. Life is way too fucking short to regret yesterday. You need to hold onto tomorrow so that you can make it to the day after. Fucking right we’ve been through some shit because of that dickwad, but if we hold onto what we didn’t have, we’re not going to see what we do have. Am I right?”

  He was fucking right, and those words would be my mantra for the rest of my life.

  My dad had been with us when Will had said it, and he’d nodded furiously beside him. Then, he just couldn’t help himself. “Personally, his mom and I are just shocked he’s got a woman, Will.”

  “Really? I’ve just been shot, Dad, and you’re saying that?”