His fangs punched out, and he gave me a fervent gaze. Damn if it didn’t make me hot.
“You’re a wicked woman, Raven. You don’t deserve me. No, I don’t deserve you. How’s that go?”
“Stay. And put your fangs away.”
I walked swiftly toward the front area and scanned the spacious lobby. At this hour, it wasn’t busy. Just a few hospital workers coming and going. I approached the front counter. “Have you seen an older man without a shirt?”
The two men exchanged a bemused glance.
“If you see him, tell him his daughter’s looking for him.”
I hustled to the other side, knocking on bathroom doors. Crush had a head injury. What if he’d collapsed somewhere? I ran past a row of upholstered chairs. Inside the empty waiting room, a muted TV on the wall played an advertisement for a local car dealership.
Then to my left, I heard a phrase I’d heard many times during my childhood.
“Call security.”
“Crush?” I entered a private staff room with tables and a fridge.
Two women in scrubs were in a heated yelling match with my father, whose goatee had pink frosting on it. The yelling was one-sided on their part.
“Dad, what are you doing in here? Let’s go.”
One lady turned sharply toward me. “Do you know this man?”
“He’s my father. He has a head injury.” I neared them and noticed donuts on the floor. The lady talking to me had chocolate glaze smeared on her forearm, and a half-empty box lay by the opposite door.
“You can’t just walk in here and help yourself,” she chided. “This is for the workers. The vending machines are in the waiting room.”
Crush stood with his shoulders hunched and cheeks red. “They were just sitting there. You can’t put donuts out and expect people won’t eat ’em.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Did you read the sign on the door? Staff room. That’s what it says. Are you staff? Do you work here?”
I grabbed Crush’s arm and ushered him to the door. “We’re sorry about that.”
“Yeah, you better be sorry,” she snapped back. “I got work to do, and now I’ve got a mess to clean up on an empty stomach.”
As we left the room, I made a mental note to have an obscene amount of donuts ordered for the entire staff in this facility. Once in the hall, I brushed my hand through his candy-sprinkled beard. “They have vending machines, you know.”
He looked down and brushed the icing off his chest. “I don’t have any cash on me. I didn’t eat dinner last night, so my stomach is about to eat itself. They were just lying there, nobody around. I thought someone put them out because they didn’t want them.”
“I found him,” I said to the front desk clerks as we paraded before them. I patted Crush’s back, knowing he’d been through enough. “You’re coming home with me. You’ll stay in my room, and if I have to leave, Wyatt will check in on you.”
“What about Harley?”
“We’ll go pick him up now.Andyour truck. Shit. Never mind.”
“Why never mind?”
When I reached the wheelchairs, Christian was gone. “Because neither of you are fit to drive.” I strolled through the spacious room with its abstract art and glass staircase until we reached the other side. The sky outside was lightening through the colossal windows that framed the atrium.
Large balls hung from the second-floor ceiling at staggered heights, and Christian was swinging back and forth on one like a man riding to his demise on a wrecking ball.
“How the hell…?” I looked at the upstairs balcony and realized he must have jumped over from the upstairs railing and slid down the rope.
There was the love of my life, swinging on a giant metal ball in his underwear.
Crush tipped his head to the side. “And you want my approval to marry that peckerhead?”
