Her Forever Hero (Unexpected Heroes) (32 page)

He dropped behind her, and she ran forward as Cam fell to his knees. Footsteps signaled that people were running toward them, but she didn’t pay any attention. All she cared about was getting to Cam.

She sank down in front of him and tried to reach out, tried to hold him, but her hands were still tied behind her back. A cry of frustration tore through her, and she didn’t even recognize the sound.

Then she felt someone tugging on her hands, and she struggled against the person, fury spurring her on. She was going to rip Jimmy apart herself.

But suddenly Bryson was there before her, laying Cam back and putting pressure on the wound in his stomach. The ringing in her ears lessened as she finally realized someone was speaking.

“Stop fighting me, Grace. I almost have these ties undone.”

She turned to find Axel behind her. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t thank him, couldn’t even move as she focused on Cam. His eyes had rolled back in his head.

“Hang on, buddy, we’re going to get you to the hospital,” Bryson said as Axel freed Grace’s hands and she was finally able to reach forward.

“Get here now!” she heard Axel say, and within minutes she heard the blades of a helicopter as it descended onto the field, right next to them.

“Jimmy is dead. Send the cops here. We need to get Cam and Grace to the hospital now!” Bryson yelled at the pilot, who ran out to assist them.

Bryson grabbed Cam, lifted him up gently, and placed him in the chopper, and then Grace felt herself being hauled through the air as Axel picked her up. She found herself sitting next to Cam, begging him to be okay.

Two gurneys were waiting when they landed on the hospital helipad. Grace was placed on one gurney, and she could do nothing when Cam was rushed away from her on the other.

She screamed, “I need to be with him! Let me off this. I’m fine. I need to be with him!” But no one was listening.

Suddenly, she became sleepy and had to fight to keep her eyes open, as something was dragging her down. “No. Please don’t drug me, please,” she sobbed. But it was too late.

Maybe minutes or hours passed. Grace didn’t know. But she woke up crying Cam’s name.

“It’s okay, Grace. Everything is okay.”

Trying to focus, Grace turned her head and found Sage beside her, and her best friend’s eyes were red and swollen, her expression solemn.

“Cam? Where’s Cam? Please tell me he’s okay, Sage.”

“He’s fine, Grace. He woke up an hour ago and demanded to see you right away. The doctor gave him a sedative, but I’m afraid that if we don’t get you in there, all hell will break loose,” she said with a wobbly smile.

“Then take me to him.”

Grace was still weak from the sedative, so Sage helped her into a wheelchair and began pushing her.

“The bullet hit Cam in the abdomen,” Sage told her, “but it missed all vital organs. He’s going to make a full recovery, but a sore one, and I have a feeling he’s going to be a bear to be around while he’s on bed rest.”

The two of them approached a room that was almost rattling.

“I said to get her in here now or I will rip every one of these tubes out of me!”

“I guess he’s okay,” Grace said, a tiny smile flitting across her lips.

“Yep. That’s pretty much what the entire hospital has been hearing for the past hour,” Sage said.

And then she heard nothing else as she entered the doorway and her eyes met Cam’s. He was flushed, his eyes sparking, and he was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen in her life.

Sage wheeled her to the bed and she didn’t even feel the tears rolling down her cheeks.

“You really scared me today, Camden Whitman.”

He took her hand in his strong grasp, and his expression changed from anger to love in a heartbeat.

“That’s my line,” he told her, making a whole new set of tears fall.

“I’ve decided I’m not ever going to let you go again, Cam. I love you so much. When I thought I might lose you today, when I saw that blood . . .” She shuddered when she thought about it. And then she couldn’t speak past the quiet sobs strangling her throat.

“You’re taking my lines again, Grace,” Cam said, lifting his hand to her cheek and wiping away her tears. “I thought for a brief moment that I might lose you forever, and I can’t . . . no! I
won’t
live in a world without you in it. Please, Grace, please, never again put me through the agony of not being with you. You complete me. You make me a better man. Through good and bad, through thick and thin, I want to be with you forever.”

The room was silent. Cam’s visitors sitting there did not even dare to breathe for fear they’d be noticed and kicked out of the room. And then they’d miss this stirring scene.

“I love you so much, Cam. Yes, I want to be with you always. Can you forgive me for the mistakes I’ve made?”

His eyes rounded as he looked at her in shock. “We’ve both made decisions in life that have shaped us, taught us, and made us stronger. They aren’t mistakes. They’re all a part of who we are today. There’s nothing to forgive, Grace. You’re my reason for waking up each day, my reason to smile. I love you and I want to marry you and begin our family and our futures as one.”

Carefully, Grace rose from the wheelchair and climbed in beside Cam, careful not to hit any of his IVs or put any pressure on his stomach. Settling her head in the crook of his arm, she had never felt so much peace and happiness.

“How soon can you get me to the judge?”

“Dad!” Cam said, a huge smile lighting up his face.

“As much as I want this wedding to happen, we aren’t doing it from a hospital bed,” Martin said with a laugh, his color already beginning to improve as he sat there in his wheelchair with Eileen right by his side.

“I guess I can give it a day or two,” Grace said.

“Oh, you’re going to give it more than that. We have so much planning to do,” Alyssa said, beaming from her place on Jackson’s lap.

“Our family is almost complete,” Martin said with a huge grin directed at his son Michael.

Suddenly, all eyes turned on him. When he realized what was going on, he shot up from his chair. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not even close to being ready to get married,” he said, backing away. “Hell, I’m not even thirty yet!”

“The harder they fight, the quicker they fall,” Martin said.

Michael made a quick exit from the room, and Grace beamed at her future husband. “Hmm, us girls will have to see who we can set Michael up with.”

“You go ahead and do anything you want.”

Grace leaned forward and got lost in Cam’s kiss. Her life was only just beginning.

EPILOGUE

Michael Whitman ran his knuckles against his eyes as he tried to wipe the sleep from them. What had woken him? Then he heard pounding on his front door and he sat up in bed and flicked on his lamp, the soft light still too much after pitch blackness.

He hadn’t gotten enough sleep lately, and it appeared as if tonight wasn’t going to be the night he caught up. Dammit!

Opening his bedside drawer, he pulled his Colt .45 out before sliding on a pair of jeans and securing the gun in the waistband. Then he made his way to the front of his house. Before opening the door, he stopped and listened.

What he heard made his blood run cold. There was no way that could be what he thought it was. He waited a moment longer, but the sound didn’t disappear.

So, pulling the gun from his pants, he undid the locks. “I have a gun, so if you’re planning anything funny, I will shoot first and then ask questions,” he warned.

Then he pushed open the door and quickly scanned the area. No one was out there. Well, it appeared for a moment as if no one was out there. That was until he looked down.

The color drained from his face, and he took a step back as the gun dropped to his side. His hands shaking, he set the gun aside on the entryway table and then dropped to his knees as he picked up a note that was attached to a baby carrier with a very tiny and very irate infant sitting in it.

Michael,

I’m so sorry to leave her with you like this, but I have no choice. Her mother died giving birth and she needs her father. That’s you, in case you were wondering. Please, please take care of her. She was wanted and she was and is loved. Her name is Lucy. She’s two weeks old. In the envelope is all the information I can give you right now. Please forgive me for doing this to you, but know that my heart is breaking as I leave her.

There was no signature, no contact information, nothing apart from the note. And Lucy was an unhappy baby. Not having the slightest clue what to do, Michael grasped the car seat and brought the infant into the house, where he then struggled to get her out of the straps and awkwardly pick her up.

She didn’t stop crying. Reaching for this phone, he dialed his father.

“I need you now!” He hung up, knowing his dad would come, right after calling his brothers. What in the world was he going to do?

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MELODY ANNE
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the Unexpected Heroes series—a spin-off of her wildly popular Billionaire Bachelors novels featuring the handsome Anderson men—as well as the Baby for the Billionaire series and the Surrender series. She lives in the Pacific Northwest. Visit
MelodyAnne.com
for more information.