Page 9 of Vanessa’s Bravery

“Yes. I’d like that. But you should call me directly. I’m happy to come to your place.” Because she didn’t want to cheapen their next rendezvous by it taking place in a brothel. And she couldn’t take him to her home, where her parents and her brother might hear them.

“You don’t want to go through Vera’s?”

“No.”

“That’s fine by me. I can pay you in cash, if you prefer that.”

She sighed. She should tell him right now that she wasn’t a sex worker, but maybe it would be best to discuss this the next time they met and find out why he didn’t want a girlfriend or wife. Maybe there was a simple reason, and she could alleviate his concerns when she knew more about him. But for now, she had to continue to pretend she was a sex worker.

“Let’s not talk about money.”

Vanessa leaned in and kissed him, pulling him closer so her breasts touched his chest. Another flame of desire shot through her, but the knowledge that she would see Cole again helped her tamp down her need for now.

“Let me give you my number,” she murmured.

He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and unlocked it. She watched him as he scrolled to his address book and handed it to her. “Here, program it in.”

She typed in her cell number and handed him the phone back.

He tapped on the number, and her cell phone rang from inside the closet where she’d put her own clothes.

“Now you have my number too,” he said with a smile.

“Aren’t you worried that I could stalk you?”

He grinned, and it made him look younger and carefree. “I should be so lucky.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and rose.

She watched him take his jacket and leave the room. Vanessa dropped back into the sheets, and stared up at the ceiling. What had just happened? Had she dreamed all this in her feverish state? Because men who came to a brothel to pleasure a woman they thought to be a sex worker without fucking her didn’t exist. Nor did they give out their cell phone numbers willingly. What was Cole’s game? And more importantly: was she willing to play along?

An hour later, the Scanguards-owned ambulance drove into the parking garage at Scanguards HQ, and stopped in front of the elevators.

“Thanks, Nicholas,” Vanessa said to the driver, and opened up the double doors in the back.

“I’ll help you,” Nicholas offered and killed the engine.

Vanessa jumped out of the back, and with Nicholas’s help she lifted the gurney with Ginger out of it. Nicholas closed the ambulance doors, while Vanessa rolled the gurney toward the elevator. The doors opened before she could press the button and Maya, her mother, dressed in a white doctor’s coat appeared. There was blood all over her scrubs.

“Hey, Nessie, how is she doing?” Maya looked at Ginger, checking her pupils and her pulse while Vanessa rolled her into the elevator.

“She’s getting stronger. I gave her as much blood as I could,” Vanessa replied.

Nicholas approached, ready to join them.

“Nicholas?” Maya said, lifting her hand.

“Yeah?”

“We just had another emergency call come in. You’ll have to head out again right away,” Maya said.

A ping came from Nicholas’s pocket.

“That’ll be the location,” Maya said, before she pressed the button of the medical floor, and Nicholas turned on his heel and headed back to the ambulance.

There was a moment of silence, when the elevator doors closed. Vanessa gestured to the blood on her mother’s clothes. “What happened?”

“The attack on Ginger wasn’t the only one tonight. We got another human downstairs, a tourist. She was attacked near the baseball stadium. Sebastian and Adam brought her in.”

“Damn it! I shouldn’t have let him get away.” Guilt surged through her.