Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
It just plain surprised me that Matt Holyfield was such a fucking asshole.
“I’ll give you a ride, but only to the hospital. Understand?”
She grinned at me, then bounced slightly on her toes as she clapped her hands.
“You won’t regret this!” she breathed.
That was a lie.
I was already regretting it.
Having her this near to me, that smile aimed my way, was doing things to my heart.
I didn’t want to feel like this about her.
I didn’t want to deal with another woman with a shit ton of problems.
And I wasn’t saying that Winnie was a problem, just that she had a lot of baggage that I wasn’t sure that I could take on.
Not at this point in my life, anyway.
I was well past the age that I should be thinking with my dick.
I would not, under any circumstances, touch one single hair on Winnie’s pretty little head. No matter how much I may want to.
All I had to do to cement that fact was think about my exes. Tracy. Lizzibeth. Lila. Terrel. Kay.
All of them I’d given tiny pieces of my heart and every last one of them had broken what little I’d trusted them with.
I had a feeling that if Winnie got anything from me, she would likely hold onto it and never let go.
And I’d have to break it off because I wasn’t willing to let her get too close. Not to mention it was highly unlikely she’d want an old man like me for the rest of her life. She’d want things that I just couldn’t give her.
Not with what I had on my plate.
Something that I would have to deal with when I got home.
But, the farther and farther we drove together, the more I realized that it might already be too late.
She was under my skin, and I didn’t know what to do about it.
Chapter 9
Sorry I didn’t answer your call. I don’t really use my cell phone for that.
-Winnie to Steel
Winnie
After checking once more on my children, I put my phone in my pocket and walked into the hospital with my name badge clipped to my scrub pants and Steel at my back.
He was directly behind me mostly because the halls of the hospital were jam packed with people. The halls had been turned into makeshift hospital wards. People were literally in every single inch of available space.
Some guy flew out from behind one of the hastily put together paper partitions and nearly knocked me over.
Steel had me before I so much as stumbled when the man nearly took me out.
“Sorry, sorry,” the man, obviously a harried nurse, apologized.
Then he saw my name badge and grinned. “Hi! My name is Tex!”
I blinked. “Hi, Tex.”
“Who are you?”
His eyes went from mine to Steel’s, and then back again. “Yum.”
I started to grin as I said, “I’m here to meet up with the hospital staffer who is doing the emergency staff orientations. Do you happen to know where I should be going?”
Tex snapped his fingers.
“Oh!” Tex said. “That’s me! That’s so me! I’m here intercepting people to point them in the right direction.” He leveled me with a look. “This is a fucking nightmare, by the way. Oh, I’m also not supposed to curse, so we’ll just fucking overlook that, okay?”
My lips twitched, and I felt Steel’s hand tighten on my hip.
I looked at him over my shoulder.
His beard was dotted with raindrops, and I wanted to lick them off.
I turned back around and sighed.
“So, what do you want me to do, and where can I put my stuff?”
Tex’s smile was wide.
“You can put it in the breakroom, but honestly, we really don’t have anywhere for you to put anything. Just remember what hours you work and write them down. Send them in when you leave to the email address that we sent out to all the volunteers. Make sure you specify what you do. Now, where I want you is more of a tough question. You’re a paramedic?”
He eyed my name badge. “Yes, sir.”
Tex’s grin was wide. “Not sir. I prefer just Tex. I’m a California guy. We don’t say sir and ma’am there. Now, you have your own escort?”
I looked over my shoulder at Steel again.
“Well,” I turned back around, trying to ignore the way Tex wouldn’t take his eyes off of Steel. “He’s a cop and is here because he’s helping with search and rescue…”
“What would help tremendously is for a person to be out in the field triaging these patients, directing them to where they need to be.” He looked at the man at my back. Steel didn’t say a word. “Could you take her? You’re going to be in the rescue epi-center anyway. It would work. You could tell the responders whether any of the patients actually need to go to the hospital. And if they don’t, then you can direct them to a shelter where they can be checked out there. Would that be okay?”