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He flopped his arms out and wiggled his legs. “Nope. Not one little bit.”
Relief pummeled me, and I murmured, “That’s good, that’s good.”
I carefully scooped him into my arms and carried him into the kitchen where, one-handed, I filled a zippy bag with ice, wrapped it in a hand towel, and pressed it to his mouth since Otto had gone into the guest bathroom to get a rag and was currently wiping up blood from the floor.
“You hold that right there, yeah?” I told Nolan.
“I got it, Daddy-O. Don’t you worry one bit,” he mumbled around the cloth, now the one consoling me.
“Going to get him checked out just in case. Lock up, would you?” I called to Otto.
He gave me a salute. “Sure thing, boss. Text me and give me an update.”
“Yup,” I told him, then I was storming down the hallway and out the garage door and buckling Nolan into the backseat of my SUV.
“Where we goin’, Dad?” he asked, the tears already melted away.
“Think we should have the doc take a look at that.”
EIGHT
CHARLEIGH
I pushedout the door to the lobby, my head downturned and my focus on the chart in my hand as I called for my next patient, a five-year-old little boy named Nolan Tayte.
My heart clenched in a rush of sorrow. A thousand regrets andwhat might have beenspassed in that blink of a second, and the ink hidden on my inner arm burned like a brand, though I somehow felt comforted by it.
I had it controlled by the time the child’s name rolled off my lips, though I swore the air shifted when I began to lift my gaze. Something dense and dark pounded through the atmosphere and hammered into me in a stark awareness.
In an instant, my throat closed off.
Still, I was blinking and trying to make sense of the sight in front of me as the man sitting on the far side of the lobby slowly rose from a chair.
A shockwave of intensity cut across the room.
A battering of energy that whipped and lashed.
I felt stuck.
Speared.
Staring at that vicious beauty that I hadn’t been able to get off mymind in more than a week, like maybe he’d been inscribed in my being after I’d let him mark me, just like I’d worried he might.
Even from across the lobby, I could see the way his strong, carved jaw clenched and those stormy eyes toiled with unfound, violent things.
Attraction and greed spun like a tornado through the space.
Making me lose ground.
But it was the little boy in his arms that felt like I’d been delivered a sucker punch straight into my gut.
What knocked the air from my lungs.
Oxygen lost.
My knees wobbled, but somehow, I managed to get myself together enough to put on a form of professionalism. My reaction was absurd. I had no right to jealousy. No right to surprise. No right toanything.
But the last thing I’d expected was to see the man who’d been plaguing my thoughts and dreams holding the most adorable little boy that I’d ever seen in his massive arms.
