Full Throttle (10 page)

Chapter
Eleven

Sammy sat up in her bed and stared at the television,
not really listening. She was too immersed in her own thoughts and nagging
pain. Rachel had visited, which meant that she had fussed like a ninny for an
hour and a half and then left in a flap. Sammy loved her, but today, she could
have done without the frantic energy her friend brought with her. All Sammy
really wanted to do was curl onto her side,
another
impossibility
because of the damn splint, and sleep.

Josh had left early this morning, saying he was
going for a shower and that he would come back. He hadn’t, which wasn’t a
surprise considering she’d told him not to. Sammy turned and looked out the big
square window and watched as birds flew past, and clouds floated by. The sky
shone a bright blue, but all she could think about
was,
why the heck she told him not to come back?
Why did I act coy and uncaring, when his presence is all I want right now?
Because I didn’t want to look desperate.

The nurse breezed in and began her routine checks.
Sammy tried to sit up higher and cringed as her ribs and bruises surged in pain.
She was relieved when the nurse helped her. “Are you sure I only broke my leg?”
Sammy asked.

The nurse smiled warmly and plumped Sammy’s
cushions, being careful not to knock her leg. “We will send you down for some
more x-rays today,” she said as she wrote on Sammy’s chart.

“What? Why?” Sammy asked, frowning. She didn’t feel
like anything else was broken, though she had said it. Sammy was sure it was
just bruising and sore muscles that made her so stiff.

The nurse looked up and smiled, “Because this is
just a temporary splint we put on yesterday. We had to keep an eye on you and
that head injury before we did anything else. But now we know you’re out of the
woods, we can get your leg sorted out. It’s nothing to worry about—ok?”

“Oh,” Sammy nodded and winced at the pounding of her
everlasting headache. The nurse wrote on her notes for a moment.

“I will send someone with extra pain meds, okay?”

Sammy smiled in relief.

“Let’s just hope that sexy man of yours comes by to
make you feel better soon, eh?”

Pain stabbed at Sammy’s chest and her throat went
tight. “I—I don’t think that he will,” she replied sadly, wondering just why it
affected her so strongly that a man she had only known for a few hours might
not visit her ever again.

Oh, God,
Sammy. You’re such a desperate case. No parents. No siblings.
No one.

****

Sammy laid back on the gurney as the nurse wheeled
her back to her room, feeling lighter and freer than she had twenty minutes
before. She breathed a sigh of relief and felt some tension fall from her
shoulders.

Not
so bad.

“But, where
is
she?” A deep, gruff voice echoed up the long corridor, and her heart stuttered.
Sammy lifted her head to see Josh standing in front of the nurse’s station,
snapping and frowning at the staff as they all looked up with awe and heat in
their eyes. Sammy bristled a little and then stopped when he swung his gaze her
way.

Dark, brooding, and sexy.
He moved
toward her without a second glance at the now smiling nurses. Wearing a white
t-shirt that gripped his arms like a desperate lover, he looked wonderful. His
bulky, leather jacket hung in one hand, making the muscles in his arms bulge
enticingly, and showing his dark patterned tattoo off to perfection. His hair
looked sexily mussed, as if he’d just climbed out of bed, and heck, that was a
powerful image for a girl as unused to thinking like that as Sammy was.

He moved closer, his unsettling gaze skimming over
her sheet-covered body until it jerked back to her face, and more precisely, her
eyes. Sammy looked away and gripped the top of her sheets with suddenly
trembling hands. If she thought that she’d lost some of her tenseness, she was
wrong. It returned ten times. How did this man affect her so strongly?

“Where has she been?” He snapped at the orderly behind
her. Sammy lifted her stare and frowned up at him. Why was he so angry? Sure,
he’d always been a little gruff, but, now he seemed wired.

“I have been to x-ray.”

He looked down and frowned.

“Why? What happened?” he lifted his hand to her
face, and to Sammy’s breathless shock, he ran the back of his fingers gently
across her cheek and the bruise she knew to be there. Embarrassment warmed her
cheeks. She dropped her gaze, but Josh tucked his forefinger under her chin and
raised her head. And, oh, that one move had her almost turning to jelly on the
gurney.

He waited for an answer to his question, and Sammy shook
herself mentally, to remember what he asked past the thrill of having his hand
on her. She was so easy… With him so close—touching, it was hard to do little
else, but revel in the exciting burn that rippled over her skin.

Why?
Uh…?
X-ray—right.

“Uh, they wanted to check my leg.” She said on a
breathy voice.

He frowned, and then flicked a tense look at her leg.
His jaw bulged and Sammy smiled. Oh, he was gruff and surly and freaking hot. “It’s
ok. Actually, I got a small cast. I only broke the lower tip of my leg, not the
top.” She tugged at the sheet covering her leg and flashed him her new
half-the-size cast. Sammy had been so relieved to see that only the bottom half
of her leg was going to be put in a cast. With her knee free to move, she could
be mobile a lot sooner.

The orderly pushed her back to her room. Josh stepped
back and Sammy wondered why her news about the cast only made him look more
annoyed. She’d been so relieved to find out that the full cast could go, so
happy to learn that she could go back to work sooner. She would have gone nuts
in that full-leg cast for eight weeks.

Oh, she could have kissed the x-ray technician.

****

Only
broken her lower leg?
Only?

She seemed so pleased, even gifting him with a
direct look to tell him. Sammy had smiled as if it were a great thing to have
only
broken her lower leg. Jesus! He
didn’t know if it was because she was in the better lights of the corridor, or
if it was because he’d got some sleep, but her bruises looked worse today,
angrier. The sight of the black mar on her soft, pale cheek made his blood boil
and his temper surge.

Sammy was not a woman who should ever have bruising on
her body, especially her face. She was beautiful and gentle and so very good,
and Josh hated—hated—seeing her damaged. And he fucking loathed that he had something
to do with it.

It
was a freak accident.
His brother’s words from the phone call
last night came back to him as he followed her gurney back to her room. Yeah,
it might have been a freak accident, a crap car driver who didn’t look, but if she
hadn’t been going so fast, following him, then she might have been able to swerve
out the way.

“Mr., uh...” A nurse called out from the desk.

Josh turned and scowled at her, until he realized
she was talking to him, so he walked to her.

“Mr. Grieve. Josh.” he said.

She smiled and pulled out a few forms.

“Miss Briars is going to be allowed to leave
sometime this afternoon, and I can only let her go if she has someone who can
supervise her for forty eight hours or so.”

“I can do that.”

Josh turned at the sound of a blunt female voice cutting
rudely over what the nurse said, and found
himself
face-to-face with Sammy’s furiously protective friend, Rachel. She wasn’t
taller than him. Few were, but still she peered at him down her nose, her
expression one of distaste and disapproval. Josh had seen this expression
before. He was a large, tattooed biker. But for some reason, it irked that
Sammy’s friend was clearly of a low opinion of him.

“No, I don’t mind.” He cut over her words, feeling a
sense of urgency to take that particular role.
The role of
caretaker to Sammy.

Rachel frowned, pushed past Josh and pinned the
nurse with a look that clearly brokered no argument. “I—” She stressed
the I
with a tight growl, “will take her home and look after
her. Now, what do I have to do?”

Josh raised an eyebrow and suddenly felt very sorry
for the man that married this Rachel. She was pretty scary. He looked back at
the nurse and watched the young woman struggle with what she should do. Josh knew
that he should step back and allow Rachel to take Sammy home and look after
her, but he just couldn’t seem to make his legs move away from the nurse
station, no matter how hard he tried to work out what the big deal was.

So what if Sammy went home and was looked after by
her good friend? So what if Sammy rejected his offer of help?

But something told him that as soon as she left this
hospital with Rachel, he might not see Sammy again. And that thought was … uncomfortable.

“
He
is no
one,
I am as good as a sister to Sammy. I will take her,”
Rachel added, giving the nurse a flash of determined aggression. The nurse stumbled
on her words, looked at the computer screen and twisted her lips in thought for
a moment before she stood tall and walked around the desk.

“I think we are best to ask Miss Briars herself, so
we can stop this discussion.” She glanced at both Josh and Rachel with a look
that said “crazy.” “Follow me.”

Rachel grinned, nodded enthusiastically, and trotted
behind the nurse, while Josh walked slowly behind realizing he just lost. There
was no way timid Sammy would choose him.

And why the fuck did he care? He was a single
bachelor with a new company he was trying to get off the ground. He didn’t need
to be playing nurse to a woman he just met. But, as he followed a grinning
Rachel, he realized that he did want to care for her.

Man, the guilt for making her crash was doing funny
things to his brain, clearly.

As they entered the room, Sammy looked up from a
magazine she had on her lap. Her green eyes passed from Rachel to the nurse and
finally, to him, causing a pink blush to stain her cheeks. Josh smiled and walked
to the end of the bed and watched as Rachel snatched up Sammy’s bags and
started packing her things in it even before the discussion.

“What’s going on?” Sammy
asked,
her eyes full of confusion as she watched Rachel flap around.

“
He
thinks
he’s going to take you home!” Rachel said as she bent to pick up one of Sammy’s
shoes.

“What?” Sammy asked, clearly not following her friend’s
meaning.

“He.”
Rachel pointed at Josh with the shoe she just picked up.
“Told
the nurse that he would take you home to care for you.”

“Oh,” was Sammy’s reply, but she continued to frown.
“Why?”

Josh saw her raise her hand to her forehead, as if
thinking still hurt her recently bashed brain.

Josh moved to her side, he poured her a glass of
water and fought the need to pull Sammy onto his lap. She looked so frail and
tired sitting up in the hospital bed. The nasty bruise stood out in stark
contrast to her pale skin, and Josh almost couldn’t stand to look at the
reminder of his foolish actions.

What had he been thinking, encouraging a new rider
to chase him?
Stupid.
But as he watched Rachel flap
and Sammy try to keep up with her, Josh decided to step in.

“I think, what Rachel is trying to say—” Josh started,
but looked at Rachel as she scoffed loudly. “Is that the hospital is happy for
you to go home as long as you have someone who is willing to stay with you for
forty eight hours. Just in case, you know? Concussion symptoms can take a while
to show up.”

Sammy looked at Rachel and then to him. “And you
offered?” She asked him, her green eyes searching his face with a strange
curiosity.

Josh shrugged one shoulder and nodded. “Yeah, I
don’t mind at all.” In fact, while she stared at him with such open curiosity,
he couldn’t imagine wanting anything more than to see her eyes for a little
while longer. The image of her tears inside her helmet smacked into his
thoughts, and he sucked in a breath to ride the sudden wave of annoyance that
came with it. He reached out and took her cool hand, and Sammy looked down to their
entwined fingers.

“Oh purlease!”
Rachel snapped rudely, bringing both his and Sammy’s gaze her way. “He just
feels guilty for making you crash. He doesn’t want to care for you.”

Shocked that Rachel had recognized his guilt, Josh let
go of Sammy’s hand and swallowed past the ball of uncomfortable anger that
whipped into his gut. But before he could think of a defense other than—yeah, I
feel fucking guilty—Sammy snapped at Rachel.

“He did not make me crash!”

Josh stared at timid, shy Sammy and watched her face
crumple into anger, her green eyes glitter, and her shoulders go stiff.