Page 19 of Her Passionate Hero

She sang another couple of Czech lullabies and her mother fell asleep.

Shorinda wasn’t working that night, so she said goodnight to the night nurse on duty. She stopped by Trader Joe’s on the way home. It was the first time she’d gotten groceries since she’d been attacked. She waited to get out of her car until one of her neighbors, Lester Nuñez, pulled into the parking lot and gave a sigh of relief. Okay, now she could go to her house.

Instead of focusing on the fact that she’d waited in her car for eighteen minutes for someone to show up, she decided to focus on the good. She’d gotten to talk to her mom. She swung her Trader Joe’s shopping bags out of the trunk and thought about Ernie and Lottie. They were quite the pair. Sparks had flown from the second they had sat across from one another at the restaurant.

Fumbling with her lock, she dropped one of her grocery bags. The tomatoes rolled out and she dumped the other bag and started after her fruit when she was catapulted into the air. A dragon roared fire over her head and then something hit her back. Fire. What? Black.

“Can you hear me?”

Leave me alone. Why wouldn’t he leave her alone? She tried to slap his hands away.

Oww. Don’t pull on my eyelids. Hurts. Light hurts.

“Stop that.” Where was her crisp vice principal voice?

“She’s conscious.”

“Course am,” she slurred.

“Pupils look good.”

“That door saved her.”

Tired. “Sleep now,” she said.

Everything went black again.

***

Aliana woke up to the sound of a different Czech lullaby. She couldn’t stop the tears. She was in pain and remembered enough of the conversations around her last night to know her townhome had blown up.

“Mama?” she asked in Czech.

“It’s me, your grandmother, Love,” Her grandmother answered in the same language.

Aliana recognized her voice. She should have from the song.

“Aliana, my darling girl. How are you feeling?” Aliana opened her eyes and saw her grandmother. She looked like a dowager queen in her long black dress, white lace collar, and perfect posture.

She looked around and realized she was in a private hospital room. Sakra. Okay, this deserved worse. Fuck. She ground her teeth and felt pain, a lot, and moaned.

Her grandmother rose from her chair, bent over the bed, and cupped her cheek. “What can I do to make this better for you?”

Aliana placed her hand over her grandmother’s fragile hand. “Just having you here helps.”

“If that is true, why am I not your emergency contact?” Her grandmother arched an eyebrow.

Fuck. Sakra. She was so busted.

“How did you find out I was here?” Lottie had so lost her best friend status.

“Your home blew up. Don’t you think I would have heard about it?” came the spry reply.

“But from who?” Aliana persisted.

“Ultimately, it was Mrs. Lasson who told me, but that was three hours after it happened. Why didn’t the police inform me immediately? Tell me why I’m not your emergency contact. You’re mine.”

“Ah, grandmother, I just never want to worry you,” she said softly. She hated thinking of her wonderful grandmother getting a call in the middle of the night if something happened to her. Better if Lottie contacted her.