Protecting What's Mine(110)

He hung up.

“What are you doing?” Mack asked.

He turned around and found her in the kitchen doorway. Sleepy and sexy. She was wearing his discarded t-shirt from the night before. Even with the bloodstains on the cotton, the bruises on her face, she was breathtaking.

“Taking out the trash,” he said innocently.

“You yelled at my mother. You threatened her.”

“Yep. And now I’m figuring out how to block her number from your phone. You’re done with her. Forever, Mackenzie. She’s no longer a concern of yours.”

“Did you mean what you said?” she asked.

“The part about you being an orphan?”

“The part about you convincing me to marry you,” she said.

Oops. She had been there a while.

Linc dropped her phone on the counter and casually started pawing through her refrigerator. “Maybe,” he said.

“Because if you did mean it, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.”

He poked his head over the fridge door.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I’m saying if we’re both in this, then why not? I wouldn’t mind a nice barn wedding.”

He crossed the room in two swift steps and lifted her up.

“Just so you know, I’m not officially asking yet. I wouldn’t do that without a ring, and I want to meet your parents. Your real parents,” he said. “When they come here for Thanksgiving.”

Her eyes went watery. “And I’m not officially saying yes yet.”

“But it’s on the table?” he clarified, almost afraid to breathe in case this delicate truce would shatter or pop like a bubble.

She nodded. “It’s on the table.”

“So we’re staying here, or we’re moving away when you’re done at the clinic?” he asked, cocking his head, holding his breath.

“We’re staying here.”

He kissed her and swung her around until they both groaned.

“That Garrison can throw a punch,” Linc muttered.

Mack reached for the ibuprofen. “We are quite the pair. What’s Georgia Rae going to say when she gets a load of our faces?”

“One of a kind, Dreamy. You and me.”

“Thank you for standing up for me even though I didn’t need you to.”

“Thanks for letting me take a few hits for you.”

“I love you, Linc.”

He took the caplets she handed him and leaned in close.

“Love you, too, Dreamy. You’re never gonna be alone again,” he promised.

“It’s going to take some getting used to. I’ll probably screw up again once or twice.”

“I won’t,” he joked. “By the way, Andrea said the police were there looking for your sister.”

She sighed. “It’s time she was the one to pay.”





54





“Oh! You got your boot off! But daaaaaamn, girl. What happened to your face?” Ellen looked both fascinated and horrified when she opened the door to her split-level house. There were balloons on the mailbox like it was signaling the destination for a kid’s birthday party and a dozen cars parked in the driveway and on the street.

“Uh, hey. Did I get the date wrong?” Mack asked.

Raucous laughter exploded behind Ellen.

“No! You’re right on time,” she said, grabbing Mack’s arm and towing her inside.

The house looked like it had been designed in the late seventies and haphazardly updated over the ensuing decades. The carpet on the stairs was pea soup green, and there was a birdhouse-themed wallpaper border-peeling from beneath the popcorn ceiling in the foyer.

“Barry, say hello to Dr. Mack.”

A hairy arm shot up from the big brown leather sectional visible through the white metal spindles of the railing that cordoned off the second-floor living room.

“’Lo!”

“Keep the kids out of the basement, you know?” she yelled, then turned back to Mack. “Come on downstairs,” Ellen said gleefully. “We’re all hanging out in the family room.”

“All?”

But her question was drowned out by another round of laughter.

“Ladies, look who’s here!” Ellen made a grand ta-da gesture in Mack’s direction.

There was spontaneous applause that cut off abruptly as guest after guest noticed the bruising on Mack’s face.

She should have been much more generous with her makeup application, Mack realized.

“What happened to you?”

“You didn’t have another run-in with the Kershes, did you?”

“I’d hate to see what the other guy looks like after Linc got done with him.”

“Come on, Dr. Mack probably fights her own fights.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” Mack insisted. “It was nothing.”

“She’s so modest. I heard the last ‘nothing’ involved her being thrown down a twenty-foot ravine on an accident call. She climbed back up, gave the guy a poke in some secret pain point, and now his peep don’t work.”

Small damn towns.

“You really should start taking better care of yourself, walking around all banged up all the time,” Mariana Brewster suggested.