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“You need a hospital.”
Now that she could not deny. When she was eight years old, she’d broken her ankle climbing on some mountain boulders during a school field trip. The pain was the same.
Colton opened the door and climbed behind the wheel. When he set her purse on the console, she stared at it in shock.
“I dropped that back at the truck. I told my captor to go get it and I’d pay what my father owed. He told me he sent someone… What did you do?” She fixed her stare on Hunter.
“We did what had to be done.” He looked to Colton. “You good, brother?” Hunter’s question and Colton’s expression both filled Ivy with a sick dread. What these men had done for her—for her family—went above the call of duty.
Even if that duty was love?
She reached for her purse, and he stopped her.
“I’m going to check my phone. Meadow was bringing Daddy home today.”
He fished around in the depths of her purse and pulled out her phone. When she saw she’d missed eight calls from her sister, her stomach sank.
“I’m going to call her. She must think I’m ignoring her!”
“No.” His hard tone stopped her. “Colton will talk to Meadow after he gets us to the hospital.”
As they drove to the hospital in the larger town outside of Eden, they passed only a few cars. The town seemed to be eerily deserted, as if all the residents knew that some criminal activity had gone down and they were hiding in their homes.
She squeezed her eyes closed against the pain in her wrist and tried not to think about all the terrible things that could have happened to her. A broken bone and a backhand to the face were small compared to what might have befallen her. One of her worst fears could have been realized today.
She didn’t ever want to think about leaving Meadow and their father more broken than they already were.
The sky was a haze of white clouds, making it hard to determine the time of day without glancing at the clock on the dashboard.
Sudden panic struck her. She turned wide eyes on Hunter. “Livia!”
He smoothed a gentle hand down her back. “She’s fine, baby.”
“You’re sure?” Her voice rose a notch.
“I made her kick out her customers, lock herself in the restaurant and call the cops.”
Ivy relaxed as much as she could when her life and everyone around her was so entangled with these bad people her father had gotten involved with. Only feeling Hunter’s strong, protective arms around her allowed her to draw a full breath of air.
Minutes later, Colton pulled up to the front door of the hospital.
Hunter glanced his way.
“Call when you’re finished and I’ll send someone for you if I don’t come myself.”
With a nod, Hunter opened the door. When she started to slide off his lap, he banded an arm around her middle, holding her in place.
“I can walk,” Ivy told him.
“Let me take care of you.”
A different type of shiver ran through her. This one heated her insides and made her almost forget about the pain in her wrist.
He insisted on carrying her into the emergency room in case she fainted. The clerk checked her in and told them to sit in the waiting room. Hunter insisted that she remain in his arms and refused to let her sit next to him.
Now that a bit of time had passed, her body seemed to be waking up to what could have happened to her. She cradled her puffy wrist in her other palm. Drawing meditative breaths helped distract her a little, as did Hunter’s masculine scent mingled with the disinfectant the hospital used.
With her head tucked beneath his chin, she cuddled close. Tenderly, he brushed his lips across her brow.
