Opening the freezer, I shove it behind frozen peas and Ben & Jerry’s. “Chill out. Literally.”
I spin around, my hair thwacking my face. I peel strands away.
Now, the man. I can’t leave him loose. What if he’s a serial killer?
“Restraints,” I mutter. I grab heavy-duty green zip ties from my work bag of floral supplies. Then, a blanket from the closet because I don’t want him staining my white, fluffy IKEA rug.
“Sorry, hot stuff,” I grunt, rolling him onto the blanket and dragging him to the velvet couch. I zip his wrist to the sofa leg.
He is secured.
“Okay. Now the nurse part.”
I roll up my sleeves and grab my medical kit from the bathroom—a tackle box packed with everything from sutures to saline.
I kneel beside him, scissors in hand. “Sorry. This shirt’s a casualty.” I cut through the expensive, soaked fabric. I peel it back, and my breath catches. A tremor runs through me.
His chest is a map of ink and violence. Celtic knots twist around old, jagged scars. A harp on his bicep. A skull on his ribs. It screams Irish hitman. Or gang. Or mafia.
Perfect. I drag a man off the street, and he turns out to be some Irish outlaw at the top of the FBI’s Most Wanted list. I have an entire shelf dedicated to fictional men with ink like this. I’ve pined for them. But now that one is actually unconscious on my rug?
Turns out I prefer them when they don’t point guns at me. Typical. The universe finally sends me a book boyfriend, and in real life, the morally gray guy is more likely to murder me.
“You definitely did something very naughty.” I tug my gloves on. “Good grief. I’m probably going to have to take a sick day tomorrow just to babysit your stupid ass. Why do I do this? What the hell am I doing?”
I clean the stab wound in his side. Not deep enough to hit an organ, thank God, but it’ll need stitches.
“Hold still,” I tell the unconscious man as I thread the needle. He doesn’t flinch.
I work quickly, the familiar motions steadying me. Clean. Stitch. Bandage. I check his ribs—definitely bruised, maybe cracked. I wrap his torso with Ace bandages.
When I’m done, I sit back on my heels and wipe the sweat from my forehead. He lies there, chest rising and falling in an even rhythm, bare and bandaged, looking like a fallen angel who got into a bar fight.
I gather the bloody gauze and peel off my gloves. My gaze drifts to his pants.
“Nope.” I shake my head. “I am so not giving you a sponge bath. You can sleep in your wet pants.”
I grab a throw blanket and toss it over him.
“Don’t kill me in my sleep, okay?”
CHAPTER 2
Liam
I’m not asleep.
I’ve been wide awake since she started hauling me out of that lift like a sack of spuds.
The pain’s throbbing in my side like a right nuisance, but we’re old acquaintances. I’ve had worse. Hell, I had worse than this only last week.
But I keep pretending I’m unconscious. Why? Curiosity, I suppose. And I’ve no interest in doin’ her any harm. Opposite, in fact.
Maybe it’s because being dragged around by a woman who smells like vanilla and soft rain, muttering to herself like a wee bird, is the most interesting thing that’s happened to me in months.
She didn’t check my pockets proper. Amateur hour, so it is. She missed the GPS tracker in my inner jacket pocket. I switched the feckin’ thing off the second I got into her car. The last thing I need is my lads storming the place and frightening the life out of the girl. Not yet, anyway.
I crack one eye open.
