Nash (Marked Men #4)(15)

“You’ve planned this all out without bothering to ask either of us how we feel about it?” I couldn’t keep some of the simmering anger I was feeling from bursting through.

“Nash …” Phil’s voice dipped down an octave. “I don’t have enough time left to argue. I want my family taken care of, I want what I worked so hard to build to live on. This is the way to achieve both those things. Trust me.”

I used to trust him without question … recent events made that a little bit harder to do.

“Where are we supposed to find a new shop manager? And how do you expect either of us to vet an entirely new staff of artists? Rule and I don’t have any idea how to do that.” I sounded a little bit petulant even to my own ears.

“You’ll figure it out. I have a few calls in to some people, some contacts I’ve made over the years. I’m not going to leave you high and dry.”

Both of us had a million and one questions to ask, but Phil broke off in a fit of coughing that didn’t seem to have an ending point. He was obviously uncomfortable and in an immeasurable amount of pain. Rule went and found a nurse, who gave Phil something that soon had his eyes drooping closed and his chest moving up and down in a steady rhythm. He faded out and Rule jerked his head toward the door, so I followed him into the hallway.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, that about covers it.” I took my hat off my head and then slammed it back on. “What the f**k are we going to do?”

“Figure it out, I guess. That’s what we always do.”

“This is insane, all of it.”

“No doubt, but we’ll just take it one step at a time. We got your back, Nash. Remember that next time you want to play ostrich and bury your head in a bottle of tequila for a week.”

I did know it. “Thanks, Rule. Hey, give me just a minute. I wanna try and track down Saint and apologize.”

“Apologize for what?”

“At this point I feel like I need to apologize to her for simply existing. Thanks for dragging me out of my stupor.”

“Anytime. I’ll meet you at the truck. I need to call Shaw. She still hasn’t told her parents about the wedding. I don’t care one way or the other if they’re going to come or not, but I know Casper well enough to know she’ll feel guilty if she doesn’t at least give them the opportunity to prove they aren’t horrible, even though we all know they are.”

I snorted because he wasn’t kidding and because it still made me laugh when he used his nickname for Shaw. Her super white-blond hair lent itself to the endearment. His words were also a harsh reminder that I wasn’t the only one that had seriously screwed family dynamics. The building blocks that made me who I was as a person were changing, being rearranged and placed in different places. I wasn’t scared of change, one look at my body and anyone could see that … what I was terrified of was having to look back and see that my mom giving me up … letting me go, had nothing to do with a broken heart left from a deadbeat dad, but everything to do with me and the fact I wasn’t what she wanted. It had to do with the fact that I just wasn’t good enough, and even though I had long since made peace with never meeting her standards, it still left a mark.

CHAPTER 4

Saint

The little boy I was working on was just too cute. He was probably only five or six and the gash he had on his head was pretty nasty, but he seemed to be taking it in stride. The mom was a hysterical wreck, like they all tended to be when their babies got hurt, but a couple of stitches later and the advice to get some Tylenol and have the child wear a helmet when he was riding his bike and they were on their way. Of course I had to scrounge up a sucker to give the young patient. I couldn’t stand seeing him leave without some kind of smile. Working on little kids was hard, but it always made my insides happy when I could fix them up and send them on their way with their tears dried up.

I snapped off my surgical gloves and nodded at the attending ER doctor as he moved on to the patient in the next room. It was flu season, so we were running at a pretty steady pace, not to mention the colder weather had the homeless population in and out dealing with a variety of weather-related injuries and symptoms. I always had to be on my toes, never knowing what was around the corner, which made my days move quickly and kept my job challenging and interesting. However, when I came around the corner and saw a familiar tall, dark figure leaning against the intake desk, I had to pause and decide if I wanted to turn around and run the other way before he caught sight of me. Nash wasn’t a challenge I particularly felt up to dealing with today.

I was irritated at him for acting so selfish while someone close to him was suffering, but more than that, I was furious with myself for giving in and getting involved when I knew better. I was also peeved that even though he rubbed me all kinds of the wrong way, the kiss he had forced on me had had me tossing and turning in bed at night, and if I concentrated hard enough, I could still taste the imprint he had left on my mouth. Ugh … why did he have to be so memorable in every possible way?

I narrowed my eyes and straightened my shoulders as I headed toward him. The nurse behind the desk was gazing up at him with a look I could only describe as awed. She was probably a decade older than me, had four kids, and her husband was a cop, but that didn’t stop her from falling into the charismatic snare that Nash seemed to so effortlessly weave around the opposite sex.