Protecting What's Mine(120)

Linc patted down his body. Nothing felt holey. “She must have hit the wall or the window frame,” he guessed. “You got gloves?”

“I can get a pair.”

“I’ve got a weapon in my pants,” Linc said.

“I’m not falling for that one again,” Ty said.

The laugh felt good and loosened some of the fear that still had his heart in a death grip.

Once Ty fished the gun out of Linc’s pants and into an evidence envelope, Linc went for his first girl.

Sunshine watched him from a blanket where one of his firefighters and an EMT were keeping her company. Her tail thumped, the mask over her nose fogged as his sweet girl breathed.

He lay down on the cold ground next to her. “Hey, pretty girl.”

Her tail thumped a little harder, and she wriggled closer to him. Linc stroked his hand from head to tail. She nudged him There was a commotion behind him.

Everyone seemed to be talking at once.

“Got a pulse!” Mackenzie said. She’d shrugged out of his coat, out of the blanket someone had given her.

“Got blood,” Khalil yelled, but he wasn’t looking at Wendy.

People were converging around them, but not before Linc spotted the red stain spreading on the white of Mackenzie’s tank.

Then he was running again.

“What is everyone’s problem?” she demanded as a paramedic tried to shove her down on a stretcher. “Get off of me!”

Linc slid to a stop at her side. “Mackenzie, why the hell are you bleeding?”

She pulled up her tank and looked down at the small hole in her abdomen. “Oh, shit.”

“Jesus, Dreamy, you got shot.”

“Huh,” she said, looking bewildered. “Sunshine lunged at her when you broke the window. I tried to get in the way. Guess it worked.”

Her hair was a snarled mess. Her face streaked with soot and dirt, and she was fighting with the EMT who was trying to cut her tank open. She slapped her hands away. “You’re not showing my boobs to my coworkers! Not when I have cornbread to make in four hours for Thanksgiving! Oh, shit! Linc, can you go to the store? All the ingredients were in there.” She pointed toward the smoking inferno.

Her home was burning to the ground. Firefighters had hacked through the garden gate with hatchets to get to the backyard. Her sister had tried to murder them both. And she was worrying about Thanksgiving.

“Dreamy?” Linc cupped her face in his hands. He could feel the steam of sweat evaporating from his head and neck rising into the ether.

“Yeah?” She winced as someone put pressure on the fucking bullet hole her sister had put in her.

He was going to marry this woman. And he was going to tell their kids every Thanksgiving just how lucky they were to have a hero for a mom. He needed to seal the deal now. Not another second wasted on separate lives or separate houses.

“Don’t you dare do it, Lincoln Reed,” Mackenzie snapped, pointing a finger in his face.

“Do what?”

“You have that proposal look on your face. If you propose to me right now with no ring while this very insistent lady is trying to flash my tits to all the first responders of Benevolence, I will say no, and I will mean it.”

“You riding with us, chief?” Khalil asked as they started to wheel Mack toward the smashed gate and one of the waiting ambulances.

“You’re damn right I am.”

“You guys are overreacting. It’s a freaking flesh wound. Jeez, I could patch myself up,” she complained.

“You better get yourself a ring,” Brody said, slapping a hand on Linc’s shoulder.

Linc pulled him in for a hard hug. “Thanks for having my back, bro. You’ll take Sunshine?”

“Already called the wife. She’s making your baby girl a steak as we speak.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Happy Thanksgiving!”

Linc climbed into the back of the ambulance and leaned over Mackenzie. They’d slipped an oxygen mask over her face and given her something for the pain. She’d hate that, he thought with a grin.

“Dreamy, if you ever again have a single doubt about what kind of person you are, I’m slapping you upside the head and reminding you that you saved the life of the woman who tried to kill you.”

“All in a day’s work,” Mack sighed sleepily.

“You’re my hero, Dreamy.”

“You’re mine, Hotshot.”





60





The hospital was a zoo. It felt like half the damn town, including Mack’s foster parents and their daughter, showed up just to make sure she was okay. By the time they were all reassured that Mack was alive and she was finally discharged, it was nine in the morning, and she and Linc were exhausted and starving.

To Mack, it felt like a lot of fuss for a bullet wound that hadn’t hit anything vital.

Skyler and Zane had dropped off Linc’s truck at the hospital and thoughtfully included a change of clothes for them both. They changed into their matching BFD sweats, and then Linc carted Mack out of the hospital like she was precious cargo.

She yawned mightily from the passenger seat. “This is not the Thanksgiving I imagined,” she sighed.

“Dreamy, any day with you is a gift,” he said, interlacing his fingers with hers. “A bullet-riddled, arson-fueled gift during which all of my coworkers caught a glimpse of my girlfriend’s perfect breasts.”