“You need a pair of damn sunglasses,” Zander muttered.
She shot him a strange look and then shook her head. But as they headed down the sidewalk, Zander stopped at a name-brand boutique and dragged her inside, where he proceeded to make her pick out a pair of outrageously expensive designer sunglasses that horrified her once she saw the price tag.
She mutinously shook her head, refusing to even consider buying such an extravagance. He merely ignored her and since she wouldn’t make a choice, he chose the two he thought looked the best on her and just gave her a look she was becoming well acquainted with since it was one Drake and all his men wore like a second skin. The one that said,You won’t change my mind.
After he paid for them, he plucked a pair and slid them on Evangeline’s nose, adjusting them to his liking before they stepped from the shop. He seemed rather pleased with himself and Evangeline didn’t have the heart to put a damper on his mood, so she kept her thoughts of the ridiculousness of paying hundreds of dollars for a pair of sunglasses to herself. A five-dollar pair from a grocery store or pharmacy would have certainly sufficed.
But what she wore was a reflection on Drake, and she doubted he would be pleased to see her wearing anything but what he considered the best.
And it was because of her exasperation and her inattention to her surroundings that she tripped as they headed down the sidewalk and went sprawling before Zander could catch her. The impact of hitting the concrete took her breath away as Zander’s colorful curses filled the air.
“Jesus Christ, Evangeline, are you all right?”
His concerned face filled her vision as he gently turned her to look at her. She reached up, worried she’d broken her sunglasses and when, in fact, they came away in two pieces, she nearly burst into tears.
“I broke them,” she said tearfully.
“Fuck the sunglasses,” he said, fury lacing his words. “I’m more concerned whether you broke anything on you. Can you get up? Do you hurt anywhere?”
She let him help her up, wincing when she stretched her leg to its full length.
“Just my knee,” she said. “I think I just scraped it. God, I’m so sorry. I’m so clumsy.”
Zander bent right there in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing her to hold on to his shoulder for support as he examined the tear in her jeans and moved the material right and left so he could assess the damage.
“You’re bleeding,” he said grimly. “I can’t fucking see well enough to know how deep the laceration is or if you’ll need stitches. I need to call Drake.”
“No!” she burst out. “For God’s sake, Zander. I scraped my knee. The world isn’t ending. Drake does not need to be disturbed at work because I’m an idiot who fell and scraped her knee. He has a very busy day and said he had several meetings and that he’d be late arriving home. I don’t want to disrupt his schedule over something so insignificant.”
Zander frowned, having no liking for her response. He knew Drake well enough to know that if Evangeline was involved and especially if she was hurt, he wouldn’t give a fuck about some goddamn meeting. But she looked like she was on the verge of a complete meltdown, and given that she’d already been on the receiving end of a pissed-off Drake this morning, he could well imagine why she wouldn’t want to risk provoking his anger again even though Zander knew damn well Drake would be anything but pissed.
“Zander, please,” she begged. “This is embarrassing enough without involving Drake.”
His expression softened and then he shook his head before picking his phone up. To Evangeline’s dismay, he seemed to have not been moved by her entreaty.
“Yeah, Zander here. I need you to come get me and Evangeline and have Drake’s doctor on standby. I’m taking her to get checked out.”
There was a long pause.
“No. She doesn’t want Drake to know. She just took a fall. Her knee hurts but I can’t exactly examine it in the middle of a fucking public sidewalk. Just get here.”
After Zander gave whoever he was talking to his and Evangeline’s location, Zander ended the call and then gathered the bags he’d dropped when Evangeline fell. Then he curled his huge tattooed arm around her waist.
“Lean on me and try not to put much weight on your hurt leg,” he said. “We need to get somewhere you don’t get knocked over by some asshole pedestrian in a hurry. Preferably somewhere you can sit so you aren’t putting any strain on that knee.”
He all but carried her and the bags a short distance away under the awning of a restaurant and settled her into a bench intended for waiting customers. When the woman manning the door would have protested them sitting, Zander sent her a ferocious glare that promptly had her shutting her mouth and retreating hastily to her post.
“Who did you call?” Evangeline asked.
“Justice. He’s not far or he would have called someone who was closer than he was to come get you.”
“Is a visit to the doctor really necessary?” Evangeline asked with a frown. “We should just go home. I can doctor it myself. It’s not serious. It doesn’t even hurt that much anymore.”
“Wearegoing home,” Zander said calmly. “Drake’s personal physician has a clinic on the second level of Drake’s building. He has a practice, but his primary job is to see to Drake and Drake’s employees’ needs. And believe me, we’re a full-time job,” he added with a grin.
But Evangeline didn’t return his smile. Her brow furrowed in thought over what Zander had told her. Drake required a personal physician?As in one who looked after the needs of him and his men? Were their jobs that dangerous? For that matter, she had yet to figure out precisely what Drake and his men did for a living. Surely owning a nightclub didn’t command the kind of wealth Drake and his men possessed and certainly wouldn’t be cause to have a personal doctor to patch someone up on a regular basis.
She felt faintly ill, wondering just what she had gotten herself into and if she was already in way over her head.
