“Hey Devlin.” The other man dressed in black that didn’t hide his intricate neck tattoos jogged up to hand my savior a smartphone. He was one of the guys who’d come into the courthouse the day before.
I blinked to keep conscious. Yep. I could feel the blood just draining out of me.
Aiden straightened and slid the phone into his back pocket. “The bullet burned you, Angel. A Band-Aid will suffice.” He partially turned toward the other man. “Get a first aid kit.”
I glanced down at a bad scrape. Oh. Just a scratch. No artery or spurting blood. Hmm. So much for worrying about my Last Will and Testament.
A spring breeze scattered pine needles across my shoes. I shivered in my light blue camisole, heat rising in my face when I remembered I hadn’t worn a bra. I mean, why would I since I’d kept the jacket on all day? “Ah, er…” My nipples pebbled against the silk.
Aiden grinned, shifting his weight to block me from the arriving police and bystanders gathering on the sidewalk. “Seriously. I’ve wondered. How are you?”
“You could’ve written. Emailed. Called.” I tried to hold back another shiver as well as the hurt I had no business feeling. “I mean, if you really wanted to know.”
“I had to leave, sweetheart. You know that.” His gaze ran over my skirt, somehow heating my legs.
“You could’ve called.” I sounded sad, and I didn’t want that. He’d left when he had turned eighteen. His grandma had died, and he’d been a person of interest in a felony car-stealing ring. So he’d just left. “I missed you.”
He sighed. “I was told you needed to move on without me.”
I blinked. I’d only been twelve years old when he’d left, and I’d thought he’d created the moon. He was sweet and kind and he’d saved my life. He was my friend, and I’d followed him around like a lost puppy for two years. He’d treated me like a kid sister, and I’d liked it. “Who told you to leave me alone?” My voice shook, I was so angry.
“Your shrink.” He lifted one very broad shoulder. “Dr. Petrolche said you were too attached and needed to heal on your own after…everything.”
That stupid shrink. He was crazier than I’d ever been. “They arrested him for having an affair with an underage patient.” I had known he wasn’t a very good psychologist, even as a kid.
Aidan’s dark eyebrows rose. “I hadn’t expected that.”
Randy coughed several times. “You were in therapy? Are you crazy? You can’t prosecute me if you’re nuts.”
“Shut up,” Aiden said mildly, looking at my legs again.
The other man jogged back up and handed Aiden a red box. Aiden grabbed Bactine out of the box to spray my shoulder before placing a wide bandage just above my bicep. For such a giant, he had a gentle touch.
I blinked, concentrating on his warm fingers and not the fact that I’d been shot.
“You’ll be okay.” He gently tugged my arms back through my jacket sleeves. Or rather, Donna’s jacket sleeves. The intimacy in his helping me re-dress made my thighs tingle and my heart thump. I wasn’t feeling like his little sister any longer. The six-year age difference didn’t seem that much now. “We’ll just put this back on before you talk to the police,” he said.
“Police?” Randy took a step back. “I think I’ll—”
His voice squawked at the end when Aiden grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. “You’ll give a report.”
A much gentler hand grasped my good arm and tugged me to my feet. The shield Aiden provided made me feel special in a way I wouldn’t want to describe, considering I needed to be a tough lawyer and not some fragile woman from the fifties.
Aiden nodded to a swiftly moving man emerging from the dusty door of the police station. “That’s Detective Pierce. He’s a total dick, but you need to make a statement too, Aingeal.”
Although the sweet nickname warmed me throughout, when I tried to settle my stance, I swayed. Shock, fear, I don’t know. I was such a wimp.
Aiden pushed me back down to sit on the stone ledge and gestured toward the detective. “Pierce can come to you, Anna.”
“How do you know his name?” I asked, the day taking on a surreal haze.
“Long story.”
Aiden seemed to have a few of those. The detective strode over, hawk-like gaze belying the casual gait. “I thought you were in jail.”
“I got out. That happens for the good guys, Detective Pierce. This is