Need You Now (Love in Unknown) - By Taylor M. Lunsford Page 0,98
do that?”
She hesitated for a second. “You have to promise that you won’t leave me again. Keep her on the side if you have to. I don’t care if you have a whole harem on the side. You just have to marry me. I was born to marry a man like you.”
Over her hysterical orders, he heard a car pull up outside. Gage. Thank God. “Okay. I got it. Now, give me the gun and we’ll get out of here. Mel won’t say anything to anyone, will you, sunshine?”
“No. Of course I won’t. Ms. Brewer’s just having a bad day.” The steel in Mel’s words reassured him. She knew what he was doing.
“Give me the gun, Portia.” Caine moved forward, fingers wrapping around the cool metal and her boney hand. He thought his heart might burst when her grip loosened enough for him to take the gun. Flipping on the safety, he sat it on the counter. “Let’s go.”
With a hand on the small of her back, he turned Portia around and guided her out of the open door. He made a motion to tell Mel to stay behind. The last thing he needed was for Portia to have a change of heart and attack Mel as they went downstairs. He remained alert, hoping Portia hadn’t heard Gage entering the house the same way Caine had. All he had to do was get her to the ground floor, away from Mel, and they’d be all clear.
Halfway down the stairs, Portia stopped. “What was that? Somebody else is here.”
“Probably just the wind. This old place is really creaky at night.” Get downstairs. Get downstairs.
Portia shook her head. “No. Someone’s here. You called somebody, didn’t you? That policeman brother of yours, right? You bastard.”
Before he could stop her, Portia reached down into the knee-high boots she wore. In the pale light from the open exam room door, he saw the glint. A knife. He reached up to try and catch hold of her wrist and get it away from her, but she was too fast. Twisting, he felt the blade slice through his shoulder, a blinding pain ripping through the left side of his torso.
“Police! Drop the knife!” Gage barked the order from the foot of the stairs. Through his haze of pain, Caine saw his brother shine a flashlight at Portia with one hand and use the other hand to keep his gun trained on her.
Portia didn’t drop the knife. Instead, blinking from the glare of the flashlight, she stomped her feet like a two-year-old in a tantrum. “You bastards! You idiotic, stupid small town hicks! You’ve ruined everything! Everything!”
She tried to stab at Caine again, but a gunshot rang out through the house. A screech of pain followed and he saw her cradling her shoulder. Gage didn’t waste any time, climbing the stairs two at a time. “Mel! Get your ass down here. Caine’s hurt!”
#
The next few hours were a blur for Mel. A really painful, awful, nightmarish blur. She’d known she wanted to be a doctor at age nine. Never in the twenty years since then had she imagined she would have to use her medical training on the man she loved. Blind panic threatened to take over the second Caine left the exam room with Portia. All she’d wanted to do was curl up in the corner and sob through the fear. Then she heard Portia losing it with Caine. Every cell in her body screamed for her to run to him, but she knew it would make things worse.
If she lived two lifetimes, she’d never forget the utter terror she felt when she heard that gunshot. All she could see in her head was Gage or Caine with a gaping wound, dying on the stairs. Gage’s shout pulled her back to reality.
Blood stained Caine’s crisp blue shirt. Kicking into doctor mode, she went to him, examining his shoulder and side. The slash was deep and about five inches long, but Portia had missed any major organs. As she worked, she was vaguely aware of Gage checking on Portia. She learned later that Gage shot the bitch right through the hand.
Mel rode with Caine to the hospital in the ambulance, not letting the EMTs touch him. When they got into the emergency room, the doctor on duty, Dr. Jameson, refused to let her work on him anymore. “You know the rules, Dr. Carr,” he admonished. “No treating loved ones. Go sit in the waiting room and I’ll come