Rush - Blue Devils MC Book 2 (Book 1 Included FREE for a short time only!) (2 page)

“Hi to you, too,” he said, grinning. He realized that this seemed to be a perpetual state of being for him around her. Her eyes began to drift closed again. “Hold on, Blue, before you go back to sleep,” her eyes popped back open and she struggled to focus on him again, “you have to tell me where your bedroom is.”

“Oh! Right!” She craned her head around as if realizing for the first time where they were. “Up the back stairs over there,” she said, pointing to his right, “and then I’m the first door on the left.”

He focused on keeping his breath even as he mounted the stairs because it wasn’t sexy if he struggled to carry her, right? But she missed it all, falling back to sleep long before he reached her bedroom. Goddammit, it was hard to impress a girl who was asleep!

He gently laid her down onto the bed, a small snore passing her lips as he maneuvered her into position - her head on the pillow, her feet going in generally the right direction. He pulled her flats off, placing them on the floor next to the bed, and then stepped back to admire her. She was gorgeous, her dark brown curls spilling over the pillow, framing her face in the moonlight.

He would be back tomorrow, and the day after that, and God willing, the day after that. Hannah Blue Wright was the most beautiful girl he’d ever laid eyes on, and he didn’t plan on taking his eyes off her any time soon.

***

“Ms. Wright, what can you tell us about the hijacking of the bus?”

She fought to keep her eyes open, the nice man in blue swimming in and out of focus. She saw the gold glint on his shoulder.
Right, the nice
police
man in blue. There’s a policeman here. Why are they talking to me? Oh, he asked me a question. Did he ask me something?

“Ms. Wright, I need you to stay with me. I need you to tell me everything you can remember about the hijacking. Any small detail will help.”

She licked her dry lips, wishing for a sip of cold water. As if the nurse could hear her silent plea, she was holding a straw to Hannah’s lips and Hannah sucked the water down gratefully.

“There were motorcycles,” she said hesitantly, her voice cracking. “Big, shiny ones. The girls were so excited to see them. They’d been so bored for so long, and then, there were these bikes and they were loud and the girls waved at them.”

Hannah fought down the panic she’d felt when she realized that the gang was surrounding the bus. The bus driver, Miguel, had flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror and back to the men on bikes, on edge, anxious. Maestra Martinez had whispered, “This doesn’t feel right,” and Hannah could only agree.

“And then the bus was slowing down, and I knew it wasn’t good. I knew we were in trouble.” She’d tried to hide Isabel, had tried to protect her. Protect all of her students. She’d stood up, wanting to draw attention to herself, away from the girls. Maybe if she’d got them to look at her, she could’ve saved the girls. She could’ve saved her Isabel. Maestra Martinez stood up too and for a brief moment, Hannah had been surprised. Martinez had never been especially demonstrative towards the students, but in that moment, there was an unspoken agreement between them. They had to save the girls.

“Then he was waving his rifle around and yelling at us and the girls…everyone was crying. He’d hit Miguel on the head and he was on the floor and I knew I wasn’t going to live.

“And then he shot Maestra Martinez, and he shot me. Did Martinez live?” Her voice was shaky, broken, and she knew before she asked the question that she hadn’t. She didn’t know why she’d asked, only that she had to ask. Had to know for sure.

“No, I’m sorry,” the kindly blue man said. No, not blue
man
, blue
uniform
. He swam in and out of focus and Hannah wet her lips again with her tongue.
So thirsty…

“You have to leave,” her father said, the darkness covering over her, swallowing her down. “We can’t…”

And then she was gone again.

Chapter Two

Rush

As he pulled into the parking lot, Rush looked in disgust at the zoo surrounding the hospital. There were TV station vans parked haphazardly throughout the parking lot, and reporters milling around everywhere. A dark blue car was inching its way through the crowd, trying to get out onto the street, and the reporters were chasing the car down, beating on the windows, asking for a comment. He was fairly sure that someone related to Blue had to be in that car. Her father? Grandparents?

Boyfriend?

A spark of doubt shot through him. What if Blue didn’t want him? What if Blue didn’t need him?

But whoever was in that car right now was leaving. Leaving her here, unprotected. Whether she had them in her life or not, she still needed
him
. And where were the goddamn police? He didn’t see any police vehicles in the parking lot or out on the street. They should be guarding her. A
Chupa
could come waltzing through here and no one would blink an eyelash.

He stalked into the hospital and right up to the front counter, where a harried admitting nurse sat, answering the phone while she shoved papers at three reporters standing in front of her. He opened up his mouth to chew her out - take on the world for daring to leave Blue unprotected - when he stopped short.
Goddammit!
As good as it would feel to take his anger out on this nurse, it wasn’t likely to do much good, but would probably do a hell of a lot of harm.

Instead, he veered towards the gift shop. Daisies were Blue’s favorite flowers. If he came bearing a bouquet of them, the nurses were more likely to believe that he wasn’t some undercover reporter - he snorted in disgust at the thought - and Blue was more likely to let him in to see her. It’d been 13 years since they’d last seen each other, and Rush knew, in some distant part of his mind, that barging in like this could lead to a
what the hell are you doing here?
sort of moment, but on the other hand…

He couldn’t make himself care about that. He couldn’t make himself walk away. Not yet. Not until he was sure she was okay.

Walking out of the gift shop bearing a ridiculously expensive bouquet of daisies, he saw an older nurse standing off to the side, flipping through charts. She seemed more…approachable than the admitting nurse, who looked like she’d been fighting off more than her fair share of reporters that day.

He walked over to the older nurse, carrying the flowers prominently in front of him -
Look! I have flowers! You should totally trust me and let me in to see Blue! -
and asked her, “Could you tell me what room Hannah Wright is in?”

Without looking up, she said, “Visiting hours are over, sir,” and pointed to the sign on the wall, hung conveniently beneath a clock.

Visiting Hours are Between 8 am and 8 pm. No Exceptions.

The clock read 8:04.

Ffffffuuuuucccckkkkkk
.

“Listen, I just heard about this and rode here as fast as I could. I didn’t even take time to change!” He gestured down at his cut, t-shirt, and leather chaps, hoping she’d think he’d been on some long-distance motorcycle ride and thus had just heard the news. Which, although Copper Lode to Tucson was two hours, he wouldn’t exactly call that long-distance.

The nurse looked up for the first time since they started talking, took in his clothing choices, and said dismissively, “Family only.” She began to gather up the charts to walk away when Rush blurted out the only thing that he could think to say, “I’m her fiancé!”

Ho.

Ly.

Fuck.

Where did that come from?

Even back in high school, even when they were in love and inseparable and he thought he would marry her someday, he hadn’t actually proposed. Blue and he had
never
been engaged, not even secretly.

It’d just…come out.

Fucking too late now!

She looked back at him, surprise written on her face. The Wright family was one of the prominent families in Copper Lode and were worth millions. No doubt she took one look at his leather cut and thought he was just some biker trash. He didn’t have a way of proving that his family, the Blackburns, were worth just as much - they didn’t exactly hand out membership cards to “All of the Rich and Prominent Families in Copper Lode” like a fucking Rotary Club membership, so he decided to switch tactics.

He took a gamble because…he had no other choice, really.

“Is Bob Wright here? He could vouch for me.”

Or call me a liar and call security on me. You know, one or the other.

She hesitated.

“Is he staying in a hotel here in Tucson? Or is he driving back and forth each night to Copper Lode? That’s a long drive to make,” he said, sounding sympathetic.

“Weellllll…” the nurse said, drawing the word out, looking around furtively. “I’m not supposed to let anyone in this late, and especially not to
Hannah’s
room…”

Thank fucking God
some
one is thinking and put a restriction in place!

“How is she doing? Physically, I mean,” Rush said, wanting to interrupt the train of thought that seemed to be leading to No Station. “I saw her on TV and she hadn’t woken up yet.”

“She woke a couple of hours ago for a little bit but has been drifting in and out of consciousness ever since. The trauma isn’t as bad as we’d expected - the brain scans we’ve been running have been showing functional brain waves throughout. The bullet actually only grazed the left side of her temple. We’ll continue to monitor her to see if any problem surfaces, but so far, the prognosis is good.”

“Oh, thank God!” And that response, at least, wasn’t faked at all. “So is Bob here?” Rush asked casually. Probably too casually, if the nurse actually knew him, but the older woman naïvely took his question at face value.

“No, he went home at eight o’ clock - you just missed him. Well, to the hotel. He’s staying here in Tucson while Hannah is recuperating.”

Rush tried to control the relief that washed over him at her words. Getting hauled off in handcuffs wasn’t really how he wanted to end the evening. Then he remembered the dark blue sedan leaving when he’d come in. That must’ve been her dad after all.
Hallelujah…

“When will Hannah be released?”

“Tomorrow afternoon at the earliest; probably the day after though. We’re just wanting to keep her under observation and run tests periodically to make sure that nothing surfaces that we weren’t aware of before.”

Rush felt the band of panic that had tightened around his chest hours before loosen. Just a little. If they were already talking about letting her go, she had to be okay. More okay than she’d looked like on TV, anyway.

The nurse looked around again, biting her lip indecisively.

“C’mon, let’s go to her room,” she said in a near whisper, and turned and hurried down the hallway. Like a goddamned miracle, she believed him. Never mind that Bob wouldn’t spit on him if he were on fire; the nurse believed him. That’s all that mattered.

He had to see Blue for himself. Had to make sure she was okay.

Had to, so he could breathe again.

They stopped in front of Blue’s room, and the nurse put a finger up to her lips. “She may be sleeping,” she whispered, and then pushed the door open.

And there was Blue. Even in a drab green hospital gown and her hair a mess and no makeup and a giant bandage wrapped around her head and 13 years older than the last time he’d laid eyes on her and IV tubes running everywhere, she was gorgeous.

Fucking stupidly amazingly gorgeous.

And then she opened up her eyes and looked sleepily towards them.

“Hannah, here is your fiancé!” the nurse happily announced. She dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her smock. Rush walked, as if in a dream, over to Blue’s hospital bed, and picked up her hand. Kissed the back of it and stared down at her. Her eyes opened wider as she finally realized who was in the room with her.

“I just love happy endings!” the nurse gushed, and then turned to leave. “I’ll keep my eye out and make sure that you two have privacy,” she said conspiratorially, and then closed the door softly behind her, leaving them alone.

For the first time in too many years, Rush was finally alone with Blue. He laid the daisies on the side table and whispered to her in a husky voice, “Hey Miss Blue, how are you?”

His silly rhyming question, uttered hundreds of times during their high school senior year together, finally pulled Blue out of her trance.

“Rush?”

***

Hannah opened up her eyes when the door opened to reveal her nurse and some tall guy, backlit by the hallway lights. She squinted a little.

And then they got closer and the nurse was prattling on and Hannah was staring. Just staring up at him.

How? How was he here? She had to be dreaming.

The nurse left and then he gave her the greeting he always gave her, “Hey Miss Blue, how are you?” and she knew that this was the most realistic dream she’d ever had.

“Rush?” she said, bewildered, and then closed her eyes. She opened them up again. He was still there.

She did it again.

He was still there.

Close eyes, count to five, then open up again.

Still there.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said drily, finally breaking the silence.

She stared at him, trying to decide if this really, truly was real. People with head wounds did have hallucinations, right?

“Rush? What…what are you doing here? How did you know what happened?” The questions spilled out of her as she stared at him.
Rush fucking Blackburn, back from the dead. Or, high school. Same difference.

“It’s all over the news! Goddamn fools. The fucking reporters are signing your death warrant but they don’t care. They just want their ratings.”

Hannah jerked up in surprise but then sank back down into her pillows, pain throbbing through her head. “What do you mean, signing…signing my death warrant?” She felt like someone was playing a trick on her. First, she’d been shot, then she’d been flown to the US via Life Flight, then Rush showed up, and then he tells her that her life is in danger.

Well, all over again. Obviously being shot at meant that her life was in danger back then, too.

Arrrgggghhh
…

She felt thick. And stupid. And rambling. And Rush was here. In her hospital room. And that just wasn’t happening.

“Was it
Chupas
who boarded the bus and shot at you?” Rush asked urgently.

“Yeah,” she said, surprised. “Did the police tell you that?”

“No, there’s no police here
to
tell me that. Which is my point! The
Chupas
want you dead. They’ve wanted you dead for days now. And there’s no one,” he squeezed her hand hard - painfully hard, “here to protect you.” He took a deep breath. “Except for me.”

“You? You're just going to waltz in here and…and watch over me? Like my own guardian angel? Except mine is an old high school flame who comes dressed in a leather vest and chaps??” Her voice got higher and more hysterical as the ridiculousness of the situation hit her.

He ignored her rising panic. “With half the journalists in the free world crawling the front lawn of this hospital, they’ve broadcasted to the world - and the
Chupacabras
- that you are most definitely alive. They’re going to come back and finish the job.”

“But the police—”

He cut her off ruthlessly.

“Do you see any men in blue in here? They’re too stupid to realize that you could be in trouble. Too stupid to spot this problem.”

She blinked at him, her mind starting to go fuzzy around the edges.
Men in blue…blue men…blue men with gold shiny badges…blue and gold men…no, Rush isn’t blue…Why is Rush here? Why does my head hurt so much?

“Why are you here?” she asked, her voice coming out funny, even to her own ears.

Wait. Rush already told me why he was here. Why the men in blue are here, too. No.
She shook her head, trying to clear it.
Men in blue
aren’t
here. That’s a bad thing.

Rush is a good thing. He was always a good…

And then she was gone again.