Master of Honor (Merlin's Legacy #5) - Angela Knight Page 0,1

a hip on the counter and watched her dial. When the dispatcher came on, she told him what had happened in a few clipped, crisp sentences, then gave the store’s address.

Damn, she was pretty. She wore her dark hair quite short on the sides, but long enough on top to curl down over big hazel eyes. Her face was delicately boned, with an angular jaw and a long, narrow nose. That soft mouth looked so deliciously full and pink, he instantly wanted a taste.

Her loose black T-shirt was tucked into tight jeans, cinched by a wide, chunky belt. The jeans’ rolled cuffs displayed high-top black sneakers. Dozens of bracelets clicked on her narrow wrists, some leather, others metal.

Hanging up the phone, she caught him staring. Her return gaze was justifiably wary, given that he towered over her. “Thanks for charging to the rescue.” Her voice was low and pleasantly sexy.

“You’re welcome, though you obviously didn’t need saving. I’m impressed.” Ulf nodded at the bruiser, who groaned, stirring. “He must outweigh you by seventy pounds.”

“Yeah, but he’s also drunk and stupid.”

Dixon stirred and opened his eyes. “Heeeyyyy,” he slurred. “Hey, wha’ happen’d?”

“He’s a football player for some college, which he evidently thinks should impress me. Told me what position, but I wasn’t paying attention.” She extended a hand to Ulf. “Cheryl Parker.”

“My head hurts,” Dixon moaned.

“Good.” Ulf returned the shake, suppressing the urge to kiss her hand instead. Mortals didn’t do that anymore. Her palm felt small and warm in his. “Paul Rogers,” he said, giving the name on his false identification for this trip.

“Ooow! My balls! What did you do to my balls?”

“You had it coming,” Ulf told him, releasing her regretfully without looking away from those entrancing hazel eyes. “And you’re lucky she got to you first.”

“Somebody call the amb’lance. I think I got a concussion. And my balls are swelling.”

Ulf’s gaze fell on a paperback lying open facedown on the counter. Diverted, he lifted his brows. “The Return of the King?”

“I love Tolkien. I was just thinking before I was so rudely interrupted” -- she aimed a pretty sneer at Dixon --”that Samwise is the real hero of the book.”

Ulf had read The Lord of the Rings trilogy back in the 1950s, but he remembered it vividly. “Well, he did keep Frodo in one piece.” Since Ulf had the same kind of relationship with Arthur Pendragon, he’d always approved of Sam.

“Exactly!” Cheryl met his eyes and smiled. The bright joy of it pierced his cynical depression like a shaft of sunlight.

That was when Sir Baldulf, vampire Knight of the Round Table, started falling for the mortal girl who didn’t need saving.

“Hey. Hey? Anybody got a bag of frozen peas?”

Chapter One

Charlotte, NC, Present Day

Brandon Sanders was five years old. The odds were high he’d never see six.

Cheryl Parker stood at the foot of his hospital bed, watching the machines tracking his heartbeat, respiration, and blood oxygen. Eyelashes as thick and black as crow feathers stood out against his bloodless cheeks beneath the thick bandaging encircling his head. The tube of a ventilator distorted his mouth, the machine hissing as it breathed for him. She wondered whether his eyes were his mom’s soft brown or the blue-gray of his dad’s.

Jenny Sanders had said her son had played Hulk to his brother’s Iron Man all morning, running around the house, laughing and giggling. Until he’d raced out the front door into the yard, his brother hot on his heels…

Right into the path of his father’s practice tee shot. The golf ball slammed into Brandon’s temple in precisely the wrong spot, fracturing the thin bone and embedding fragments in his brain.

One frantic ambulance trip to Mecklenburg Memorial later, a neurosurgeon had removed a chunk of the boy’s skull to allow room for the swelling that would otherwise damage his brain. The doctor had tucked the square of bone beneath the skin of Brandon’s abdomen until it could be reattached once the danger was past. He’d cleaned out the skull fragments and closed, and the prayers had begun.

So far, they’d gone unanswered.

The ventricles of the child’s brain were filling with blood, a sign of encroaching brain death. More surgery was needed to repair the bleed, but it was too deep in the brain. Dr. Deepak Anand feared he couldn’t even get to the blood vessel without killing the child. Anand had spent all afternoon calling hospitals around the country, trying to find a neurosurgeon with the skill to risk operating. After one look