Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Today, she was in my arms, officially a registered nurse with a bachelor’s degree.
“Now what?” she asked breathlessly the moment she jumped into my arms.
“Now we get married,” I declared, pushing her back from me so I could get off my bike.
Her eyes widened.
“What?” she gasped, her hands going to her mouth.
I pulled out the ring as I dropped down to a knee in front of her.
“I asked your dad’s permission, and he said yes,” I smiled.
She held out her shaking hand, her fingertips barely grazing the top of the ring before she pulled back.
When she looked up at me next, her eyes were brimming with tears.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Woo!”
I turned to find the men of my club at my back. Everyone was there but Aaron, who was busy working to protect our sleepy little town.
A sleepy, nosy town…some of which were out on their front porches watching the spectacle.
“Are you going to say yes?”
That was said over a bullhorn, and I started to laugh.
Ok, so Aaron hadn’t missed it after all.
He was just in his police cruiser at the end of the street…blocking traffic.
“Jesus Christ,” I laughed, turning my face back to her. “Put these boys out of their misery…answer yes or no already.”
She opened her mouth to answer, but a deafening crash had everyone looking toward the top of the road where Aaron’s cruiser had been sitting only moments before.
Now it was tossed carelessly to the side, scrunched in where the other car had hit it when it barreled straight through him without stopping after they’d hit a police officer.
The car that’d hit Aaron was barreling straight toward a tree, which it hit not a second later with a loud boom.
The car hit the tree with such force that the tree shook.
It was one of those humongous pines that grew to be a couple hundred feet tall, and the impact had rocked it.
Luckily, it didn’t fall.
“What the fuck?” Sean growled, taking off down the road at a run. “Call 911.”
My heart started to hammer as I reached for my phone before remembered I didn’t have it.
I didn’t need it. I could already see half the neighbors on their phones.
I dropped Tally’s hand and got to my feet, tucking the velvet box into her grasp before I ordered her to go back into the store and lock the doors.
“Go inside,” I ordered. “Don’t come out until me or one of the boys come for you.”
Something was wrong.
There wasn’t that much traffic on this road.
Someone wouldn’t need to hit a police officer to get in here. If they’d actually wanted in, Aaron would’ve moved. A police vehicle with its lights on, clearly blocking the road—even if it had been for something like a proposal—was so obvious that there was no way the driver could have missed it, so this couldn’t have been an accident.
“Okay,” she murmured, walking backwards toward the store. “Hurry.”
I did, not stopping to see if she made it inside, which was almost my undoing.
***
Four minutes later, I was waving the ambulance in.
“You’re going to the hospital,” I ordered. “Even if it’s just to get checked. Don’t argue.”
Aaron lifted his lip into a silent snarl. “Fuck you, and fuck off.”
Grinning, I jogged back to the convenience store, stopping to pick my phone up from my bike’s cup holder before I headed to the store’s side door, which happened to be closer to my bike.
What saved me was that I knew the code to get in.
Seeing Tally use it once had seared it into my brain.
Had I knocked, I would’ve announced my arrival, and I wouldn’t have gotten there in time.
As it was, I pushed the door open just in time to see Hadley’s finger tightening on the trigger of a shotgun. A shotgun that was aimed straight at Tally’s beautiful face.
I didn’t think. Didn’t do anything but react.
I tackled her like a linebacker, taking her down to the ground and immediately turning and straddling her back.
The gun clunked loudly to the floor, and Tally gasped, lurching forward to grab it from where it’d fallen, backing away until she was behind the counter where she could reach the phone.
“Are you fucking crazy?” I bellowed at Hadley, pushing the woman harder into the ground.
Being a doctor had given me plenty of experience restraining combative patients.
I’d never, not once, wanted to beat the hell out of a woman…but, apparently, there was a first for everything.
“Stay still.” I snapped, pushing harder to control her frantic movements.
She had to be on drugs or something. Her pupils were dilated, and pairing that with the strength of combativeness, there was no way she wasn’t.
“She’s the one who caused the wreck up there,” Tally said just as the front door opened and Sean, Aaron—who obviously wasn’t in the ambulance on his way to the hospital to get checked out like I told him to do—Big Papa, Ghost, and Truth walked through the door. “Saw her running but she disappeared into the woods. I recognized the clothes and that hair, though.”