A second later, Zach climbed into the ambulance. His face was pale and drawn, his hair standing up in tufts where he’d obviously dragged his hands through it. Constable Robbins followed close behind.
It was crowded with everyone squeezed in amongst all the equipment, and Zach squashed himself onto the stretcher next to Kay to take her hand. “I was so worried about you! I saw all the police and the ambulances. Damn, Kayleigh, I know I promised not to give you a hard time about your safety, but this….”
She leaned against him tiredly. When her friends started calling her Kayleigh, she knew they were genuinely upset. “Sorry… it just, got out of control. But I’m fine.” She held up her bandaged arm. “Well, mostly fine. I just have to pop into the hospital for some stitches and then we can go home.”
She turned to Constable Robbins. “Did you get them?”
“No. They disappeared as if they hadn’t existed. If we didn’t have multiple phone videos showing you kicking their arses, we would wonder if they were real.”
Kay wrinkled her nose. “I would’ve liked to know more about them.”
The constable gave her a stern look. “My sergeant says to impress upon you the seriousness of all of this. To remind you that your only job is to call the police if you see something suspicious, not to tackle dangerous suspects yourself.”
Kay gave a tired nod, hoping it was enough. It wasn’t as if she could explain that she was a Guardian. “There wasn’t any time. I would have called if I could, but the bus was about to arrive and if they got on it, who knows? I couldn’t just walk away.”
“What can I say? Next time, please leave it to the authorities.” The constable grinned at Kay. “But also, thank you; it’s not every day someone kicks arse and saves a baby. Let’s do the statement, and then you can head up to the hospital.”
Kay wiped her hand down her face and sighed. The men had escaped. The dark Shadows still felt as if they were crawling all over her. Elizabeth’s visions were turning out to be even more worrying than they’d imagined. And she’d discovered a new Healer and been insanely drawn to him only to discover he had issues a mile wide.
It didn’t feel like she’d kicked any arse at all.
ChapterFive
Ethan satin the back of the ambulance drinking coffee as the morning light spread around him, and tried to force his thoughts out of the relentless gloomy rumination that had plagued him all night.
Dan had eventually had enough of his bad mood and told him to sort himself out. Which was fair enough. It wasn’t like him to be so snippy and impatient with his partner, although thankfully he’d managed to stay polite when he was dealing with patients. But even that had been exhausting, and he had spent the entire night lurching from one disaster to the next.
It was something about that woman. Kayleigh Stewart. She had distracted him. Unsettled him. Made him feel… something.
Somehow, in the space of a mere twenty minutes, she had slashed her way into his nice orderly life, invited herself out on a date, insisted that she had known about the healing thing he had convinced himself was simply part of being an experienced paramedic, turned out to be a cheat, and then dared to be offended when he called her on it.
He took a long sip from his thermos, enjoying the warm bitterness, and then stretched his neck from side to side, trying to ease the kinks.
This was exactly why he wanted nothing to do with relationships. Even the simplest interaction could become horribly derailed, and then where were you? Confused. Pissed off. Working out the shift from hell. And, possibly, also feeling increasingly guilty.
He leaned back against the door and grimaced as the caffeine did its work and his head cleared.
And now he was definitely feeling guilty… because he was definitely in the wrong. He’d known, as soon as he’d seen her sitting with Zach, that he’d accused her unfairly. They knew each other well, sure, but they weren’t together. He had massively overreacted and behaved like a dick.
He had known Kayleigh for exactly ten minutes, and yet something about the swirling maelstrom of emotions she stirred up had managed to loosen his usually legendary control.
Ethan’s mouth twitched as he thought about how she refused to be compared to Superwoman. He’d seen the footage, already on the internet, of her battling those two bastards in the bus shelter. Twobigbastards. With knives.
It was a long time since his school Taekwondo, but he appreciated her superb level of skill. Despite her delicate beauty, those fine bones, soft hair the color of dark chocolate loose on her shoulders, and smooth olive skin, she was no helpless princess looking to be saved.
He could have watched her fight all day. Even with the tiny, grainy picture, he could see the graceful way she moved, how toned and strong she was. And the way she came back after being punched and cut, shaking herself off and launching straight back into the fight. It was impressive. And fucking sexy.
And none of that compared to the electric current that had sizzled along his spine when he touched her. He had never felt anything remotely like it. It was like the energy he felt when he was climbing—ramped up to a billion.
He could have sworn that he felt part of himself swirling out through the air and meeting her in an intoxicating caress, his whole body coming alive when his skin met hers. It was so powerful that he would have thought he’d imagined it if she hadn’t had such a stunned look on her face. A look that told him she had felt exactly the same thing.
It was dangerous.Shewas dangerous. And his first reaction was to stay the hell away. A woman like her could make him feel things, things that he knew, deep in his gut, could tear his world apart. But there was a niggling thought at the back of his mind that he couldn’t ignore. What if she really could tell him more about the feelings he sometimes had? What if they hadn’t been delusions? What if he really had seen those auras all those years before?
Kayleigh had appeared utterly certain that she could feel what he was doing and that she knew exactly what it meant. More than that, she was genuinely shocked that he hadn’t known what she was talking about.
Could he risk seeing her one more time, purely to find out more about this strange ability they seemed to share? After that, he could run as fast as he could in the opposite direction. If she would see him at all, that was.
“Hey, Ethan, we’ve got a call.” Dan’s voice broke into his thoughts. He quickly swallowed the last of his coffee and jumped down to jog round to the front of the ambulance.
