Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,115

said, his voice hitching.

“This isn’t my fault,” I told him, getting up.

“Let me help you,” he rasped, sounding like he was going to pass out.

I leaned, and he slipped his arm around my waist and clutched at me, inhaling deeply. “Do you know how to drive?”

“Yes, I know how to drive,” he growled.

“Loc,” Gwen called. “Come in and let me look at you before you go all the way to the hospital.”

I forgot for a moment that Gwen was a registered nurse. “Yes, please,” I almost whined, going with Nick to the house.

“You’ll need to come down to the station to make a statement,” the deputy said.

“He’ll do no such thing,” Gwen told him, and then turned her focus back to the phone. “Bill, I need you to come on up here and take Locryn’s statement. I don’t want him or Nick drivin’ tonight.” She listened for a moment, nodding. “We’ll see ya then.”

“Now, Mrs. Shelton, ya can’t just call the sheriff and go over my head.”

“Get your prisoners on over to the jail, Gary. I’ve got to see to Loc.”

I heard him growl behind me, and smiled but stopped because it hurt.

Inside, she had me stretch out on the couch with my head back and packed my nasal canal, gave me a big dose of ibuprofen, eight hundred milligrams, and then put ice packs on my face.

Nick stayed right there, hovering, touching my hair, asking Gwen what she was doing every few minutes, and basically made a pain of himself until she had him sit on the coffee table and hold my hand.

“I should do something,” he told her. “I have a private physician I could—”

“It’s not necessary,” she assured him once the bleeding stopped. “It’s not broken, and I don’t think the cut will scar, but I’m going to—”

“I don’t care if it scars,” I told her, sounding nasally. “Scars are hot.”

“Everything’s hot on you,” Nick assured me.

I scoffed, and Gwen sighed and cleaned the cut on my face. Easy to see that she simply adored Nick, and it had been that way even before he paid off her farm.

The sheriff was at the house a half hour later, and he explained that the three guys they had in custody all worked for Nick’s father, and conspiracy to commit kidnapping would now be added to the hate crime charges, fraud, and animal cruelty.

“That’s a whole new can of worms,” Bill said flatly.

“Yessir,” Nick agreed, “it certainly is that.”

“I don’t suspect you’ll be hearin’ from your father again, son.”

“Thank you, sir. I hope not.”

“You give me a call if you hear from your sisters or those husbands of theirs, ya hear? I’ll take care of it.”

And when Bill stood up, Nick did as well. The handshake the sheriff gave him, along with the squeeze on the shoulder, was comforting.

“I guess we’re done with the get-together, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yessir,” he said with a sigh, “I certainly would.”

Nick went out and shook hands and posed for pictures, and I was supposed to stay on the couch, but I wanted a shower, so I went upstairs and did that and then lay down in bed with my head propped up, trying to stay awake.

I rolled over on my side and heard the door open a few minutes later. When my eyes fluttered open, though, Dez was in the room instead of Nick.

“Oh God,” he said, sucking in a breath as he came around the bed. “I heard you got hurt, so I came back to check on you.”

“Well, that’s very nice, but do me a favor,” I said, exhausted, realizing I had nothing on under the top sheet and lightweight quilt. “Could you open the door and stand there?”

“But,” he muttered, reaching for my face, “I should––”

“Just please,” I replied, moving my head away from him. “And tell me about Eugene and Dani. What’s happening there?”

He did as I asked, opened the door and leaned against the frame as he told me that the two people who he’d been cheating with were taking some time to figure out what everything meant for their marriage.

“It’s possible they can work it out.”

“Or maybe they’ll ask you to move in,” I suggested. “Stranger things have happened, and polyamorous relationships can work really well.” I was going to add, and you’re already a friend of the family, but that was a bit too snide and he was a nice guy. Clueless, yes. Bad, not at all.

“Oh yeah? Would that work for you?”

I shrugged. “I’m way too