Black Heart (46 page)

“Hey, buddy, you might want to put some clothes on.”

Chapter
40

“W-what?” the rather delicious male specimen said, adding to his sex appeal with an Irish

brogue that nearly distracted her from her purpose here, almost.

She allowed her eyes to run down his rather impressive body, lingering here and there

before finally looking up and meeting killer green eyes. “People are starting to stare,” she

said with a shrug as she reached past him and grabbed a folded white sheet off a cart and

shook it open. “Not that I can blame them,” she added with a wink as she laid the sheet over

his lap.

Gasping for air like he’d just run a marathon, his brows curled up in confusion as he

looked around the busy waiting room. “Ye can see me?” he asked, making her sigh in

disappointment.

Minus ten points for insanity.

“Yes,” she said, wondering if she should help him to the emergency room or up to the

lockdown unit upstairs for the mentally challenged.

“Ye shouldn’t be able to see me.”

Locked unit it was then. Decision made, she stood up and looked around the busy

waiting room until she spotted what she needed by some frat boy pressing a bloodied towel

to his face. She made her way over to the wheelchair, ignoring the way the frat boy leered

at her ass and rolled it over to the poor, hot nut job currently trying to stand up.

“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the wheelchair.

“I can walk,” he ground out, leveling a glare on her as he moved to prove just that, but

he didn’t make it very far before his legs gave out on him and he almost fell back on his

very fine ass.

With a sigh, she wrapped her arm around his waist and helped him to the chair. She

really didn’t have time for this good Samaritan crap today, but what choice did she have?

He was too screwed up in the head to take care of himself and the only hospital staff

manning the ER waiting room was the triage nurse too busy arguing with some jackass in an

expensive suit who was demanding that he be seen immediately, to help. That left it up to

little old her to drop this insane hunk off at the psych ward.

“I could have walked,” he grumbled irritably as she pushed him down the hall towards

the elevators.

“Yes, I’m sure that you could have,” she said dryly.

“Sarcasm?” he growled out, earning two points, because really that voice of his was

really delicious and if she didn’t need to be somewhere, soon, she’d probably push him

down to the gift shop and buy a romance novel. She’d sucker him into reading all the really

naughty scenes to her, but alas she didn’t have that kind of time.

“Me? Sarcastic? Never,” she said distractedly as she studied the hospital directory.

“What are ye looking for?” he asked, sounding suspicious.

“The lockdown unit,” she murmured, wondering if it was labeled under a codename

because she couldn’t for the life of her find it listed on the hospital directory.

“I’m not insane,” he bit out.

“Uh huh.”

“I’m not!”

“No, no of course you’re not. It’s perfectly normal to stroll around the emergency room

buck naked and thinking that you’re invisible.”

“I am not insane!” he snapped, moving to climb out of the wheelchair, but one well

placed shove from her had him sitting back down like a good boy, a good boy who

grumbled and bitched, but that was fine with her as long as he behaved himself.

“Uh huh, doesn’t matter anyways, because it looks like it’s the emergency room for

you,” she said, moving to turn the wheelchair around and take him back to the ER.

“I’m not hurt, lass,” he said, moving to get up and this time when she tried to keep him in

the chair, he shrugged off her touch and climbed out of the chair, a bit stiffly, but this time

he managed to stand on his own two feet.

She shrugged as she pushed the wheelchair away and pressed the up button for the

elevator. “Then you’re on your own, cupcake. I have someone that I need to talk to.”

“I don’t need help,” he grated out as he looked around and when he saw a cart filled with

folded blue scrubs, he dropped the sheet, giving her a beautiful memory.

It really was a shame that he was insane, she thought with a sigh as she watched him pull

on a pair of scrub bottoms that were a little too short and a bit snug around one of the best

asses that she’d ever seen. Glaring at her like this was somehow her fault, he grabbed a

white tee shirt and pulled it on. The shirt was tight, encasing perfectly sculptured muscles

and making a girl wish that she could forget that he was insane.

That problem was solved when he grabbed some poor guy who’d made the mistake of

walking by at that moment by his shirt and raised him off the ground. “Give me yer shoes,

lad.”

“All righty then,” she said, turning her attention to the elevator doors sliding open and

pointedly ignoring the insane man as he committed robbery and made some poor guy piss

his pants. “You have a nice life now and don’t forget to be a good boy and take your

Prozac.”

She stepped onto the elevator, pressed the button for the fifth floor and admittedly hadn’t

expected the large mental patient to follow her. Then again, with her luck she really should

have, she mentally berated herself as she calmly reached into her bag and palmed her gun.

Then she thought better of it and reached for her stun gun.

‘This can’t be happening,” he murmured in that sexy brogue of his as he raised his hands

in front of his face and moved them, wiggling his fingers as if he couldn’t quite believe what

he was seeing.

“Just keep telling yourself that,” she said, keeping an eye on him even as she watched the

lights climb up to the fifth floor.

“Ye do realize that I’d take ye down before ye even had a chance to pull that out of yer

purse, don’t ye, lass?” he asked conversationally as he dropped his arms, admittedly

shocking her and grudgingly impressing her at the same time.

“Get tasered a lot, do you?”

He took her off guard when he chuckled. It was deep, and sexy as hell.

Mental. Patient, she reminded herself before she did something stupid like drool over

him.

The well-timed ding of the elevator was truly appreciated as it gave her the excuse that

she needed to get away from this man and get her mind back on her work. When the

elevator doors opened, she sighed heavily. Looked like she’d found the psych ward after all.

“Hold her down!” a nurse ordered just as her large insane friend stormed past her.

“Get yer fucking hands off her!” he roared, noticeably startling the orderlies charged with

holding the pretty brunette down while a nurse struggled to shove a very large needle in the

woman’s arm.

The two large EMTs and the police officer with pepper hair helping to hold down the

woman looked up as the raging insane man headed for them. It was more than obvious that

her insane friend’s presence wasn’t a welcome sight and as she followed behind him, once

again holding her stun gun, she contemplated the benefits of taking him down for them.

“Mind your business!” the officer snapped, securing his hold around the struggling,

screaming woman, that honestly was hard to listen to without feeling her heart break. The

woman’s pain was almost palpable and she would have given anything at that moment to

turn around and walk out of here, but the man she’d been trying to talk to for the past week

was here and this couldn’t wait a minute longer.

“Get yer fucking hands off her!” he snapped, grabbing the two orderlies holding the

woman’s legs down by the backs of their necks and tossing them away from the woman like

they didn’t weigh anything. That alone had her pulling her stun gun out of her pocketbook

and setting the voltage to high, because really, there was just no way that the two EMTs,

cop and nurse were going to be able to overpower this man.

Without a word, he reached down and plucked the needle out of the nurse’s hand and

tossed it aside, his gaze locked on the sobbing woman. When the younger EMT moved to

grab him, her insane friend simply shoved him away, knocking him clear across the room.

“Denny?” an older woman that she hadn’t noticed until then said, sounding calm which

was probably a good thing right now since the last thing that this situation needed was a

hysterical woman.

“Macha?” her insane buddy said soothingly only to frown a few seconds later when the

woman didn’t respond. Then with a sigh and a self-deprecating shake of his head, he said,

“Marty? Lass? It’s fine. He’s alright.”

The older EMT released his hold on the woman and looked like he was going to take his

chances wrestling with the psych patient when the sobbing woman suddenly opened her

eyes.

“A-are you sure?” she asked, looking up at the psych patient with such hope that Ashlyn

seriously considered tasering the bastard on principle alone for screwing with this poor

woman’s head.

He smiled fondly down at the woman. “Aye, he’s fine, still an asshole, but he’s fine.”

The woman’s expression crumpled as her expression turned from heartbroken to

relieved. She reached for the psych patient and wrapped her arms around his neck. He

simply held onto her as she sobbed quietly against his shoulder and Ashlyn took that as her

cue to move on. This wasn’t her drama so she really didn’t need to be here, she decided as

she moved to take a step forward, but realized that there was no one manning the nurse’s

station. So with a shrug, she faced the very confused looking group of people. She decided

to ignore the ones that were unconscious, because they probably wouldn’t be much help

and focused on the ones watching her insane friend.

“Does anyone know where I can find Detective Black? I was told that he was here.”

-
-
-

“How did this happen?” Liam demanded as he paced the long room. He stormed

forward, disappeared only to reappear on the other side of the room, doing that over and

over again.

“The curse,” he mumbled, carefully shifting Marty in his arms as she slept.

The poor thing had pretty much collapsed into exhaustion once the surgeon came out

and explained that it had been touch and go, but that Tristan had pulled through and was

being transported to ICU. Shayne had tried to transport them both to his room, but had

discovered that his ability to move around by jumping from place to place was gone.

He was once again human and he had no idea how in the hell that happened. The only

thing that he’d been able to come up with was the curse, which seemed to still affect him.

He still saw ghosts. They saw him and irritated the shit out of him. The only thing that

changed was that he was human, all of his memories were intact and the woman sitting

across from him, texting like a woman possessed, seriously pissed him off. There was good

reason for that, he thought bitterly as he narrowed his eyes on her and glared.

She was his fucking soul mate.

After all these years, here she was pissing him off and reminding him why he hated being

human. If he’d still been in his true form he could have given her the swat on the ass that

she rightly deserved and popped out of the room, never giving her another thought. That’s

not how this was going to work out apparently.

The curse had plans and they involved the two of them now. How did he know this?

Well, that was really quite simple. He was the only dumb bastard out of his brothers who

had been turned back to human. His brothers were still in their true forms, Tristan was still

alive, hooked up to machines, but still very much alive and hopefully out of the curse’s

reach.

He ran his eyes over her, wondering how exactly he’d been paired with this woman

when she clearly wasn’t his type. He liked long beautiful hair, soft eyes, pouty lips and a

slender body. What he got instead was a woman with a very short haircut, shorter than his,

about a half dozen piercings in her ears, tattoos on her neck and arms and God only knew

where else and a body with an athletic build. Her style also grated, nothing truly feminine

about her clothes. She wore a black tee shirt that showed off, of all things, a pierced belly

button, jeans that rode a little too low and a pair of black combat boots.

Fate was truly a fucked up son of a bitch.

“Keep staring,” she said flatly without looking up from her phone. “I love it, really.”

Yup, truly fucked up.

“You want to hand her over?” Denny asked, stopping in front of him and tossing the ice

pack that he’d been pressing against his face aside so that he could glare down at Shayne.