Now I’m feeling like a real ass. Of course, they couldn’t all come to wait around for me. I’ll survive. I’m not a fuckin’ baby.
There’s a gentle knock on the door, which Saint had closed when he’d entered. Without waiting for a response, it opens, and the last person I expected to see appears. Saint shoots a sideways warning glance at me.
Bronwyn, Doc’s timid daughter, hesitates before taking more than one step into the room. Now she is one person I’m always happy to see, but I didn’t expect a visit from her.
“What you doing here, darlin’?” My voice takes on a softer tone than I’d used during my conversations with my VP.
“Working,” she states, then gestures to the scrubs she’s wearing, which I should have spotted immediately.
“Working?” I repeat as a question, before belatedly remembering she’s a trainee nurse.
She straightens slightly, a visible sign of pride, not so much the cowed woman who she is around her father. “I’m in the third year of getting my registration. At the moment, I’m on a surgical rotation. I was in the theatre when you had your operation.” She swallows and seems to shrink into herself. “I hoped you wouldn’t mind me popping in to see how you’re doing.”
“Of course, I don’t mind, sweetheart,” I reply fast, not missing Saint clearing his throat. When I look at him, I see the caution he’s trying to convey in his expression.
Pulling something out of the pocket of her scrubs, she holds it out for me to see. “I thought you’d like to have this, maybe keep it.” What she’s offering is an empty tobacco packet.
Completely bewildered why she’s giving something so strange to me, I chuckle softly. “Even if I could smoke, which the doc has just forbidden me to, there doesn’t seem to be much in there I could use.”
Her lips curve into a smile. “This empty packet saved your life. One of your brothers taped it over the hole in your chest. If he hadn’t done that, you probably wouldn’t have survived.”
“That was Paint,” Saint informs me. Then, seeing my eyes open wide, he adds quickly, “I was on the phone telling him what to do.” He chuckles, “But if you’re missing hairs on your chest, it’s because he used duct tape.”
Bronwyn smiles as well as she adds, “That was a bit of a devil to get off.”
I hold out my hand. “Give it to me.” As she passes it over, I examine the plastic I’m now holding. Such a simple thing, but apparently the reason I’m now able to breathe. “Thank you,” I tell her.
She seems to deflate now that her reason for being here is gone. Her hands flutter, then she says, “I’m glad you’re going to be okay.” She nods at Saint, then backs out of the room.
“You owe Paint a replacement,” Saint tells me, after watching her leave. “He was pissed he had to throw away almost a whole pouch of tobacco to save your life.” Shrugging, he smirks. “Took him a full minute to decide whether it was worth making the sacrifice.”
“Glad he thought my life was worth more than a roll-up.” My attention isn’t on my VP. My eyes are drawn back to the door through which Bronwyn had left.
Saint notices everything and growls, “You know you can’t go there, Brother.”
“So you’ve already said,” I snap, then relent. “I hear you, VP. That slip of a girl is not for a man like me.”
We’ve had this conversation before. Bronwyn is twelve years my junior, she’s barely over five feet in height, and probably one hundred pounds soaking wet. While I’m six foot seven, and the scale tells me I top out at two fifty. Physically, we don’t make sense. Not only that, she’s an obvious virgin, clearly untouched, nervous around men, and under the thumb of her father, who just so happens to be the no-questions-asked doctor we have on speed dial. A bullet wound? Well, he’ll dig it out and fix you up. In fact, I’m the first example of anything he couldn’t make right by himself.
Not that he’s a hero. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. The man we only ever refer to as Doc has been struck off themedical register for being over-handsy with his female patients. Though no official charges stuck, the medical community was satisfied they had enough evidence to never let him practise again. We pay him a handsome retainer for being at our beck and call. Until Pippa, Saint’s old lady, came along, we’d had no firsthand experience of his roving hands. But even that we had to turn a blind eye to. Though he might have acted inappropriately, his value to the club topped all our misgivings and dislikes.
It was when he was saving Pippa’s life that I’d first seen Doc treating his daughter like an unpaid skivvy, barking his orders, and making her carry his heavy bags. I’d seen her struggling and eased her of her burden, taking them out to her car. Saint mistook that to mean I’d developed the wrong kind of interest in her.
He’d gotten it wrong. I’d be the worst type of man she could have in her corner.
