Mastering the Devil (Rush Series Book 4) (20 page)

~M~

After not receiving any new news about Devon, Ensley made her way with sure steps through the quiet halls of the hospital, easily bypassing unaccompanied gurneys, and patients sitting out in their wheelchairs wanting to see something other than the same four walls of their rooms.

She walked into Cash Devlin’s
room just in time to see him throw his plastic water glass at the television mounted on the wall adjacent to his bed where a soccer game was currently being played.

She folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the door jamb. With one eyebrow arched, she said, “Well, it’s good to see you’re feeling better, Mr. Devlin.”

His sultry eyes darted quickly to her, pleasure glowing in their depths. “Doctor Feelgood, I presume,” he said with a grin.

“Been saving that up, have you?” she asked with mirth.

He laid a hand over his chest in mock horror. “How can you offend me like that? These things just naturally slip off my very talented tongue.”

She
pursed her lips in disbelief. “Talented, uhh?”

He gave her a heart-stopping devilish grin. “
Baby, you have no idea.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “And I’d like to remain clueless, if that’s okay with you.”

He tsked at her as he slowly shook his head in disappointment. “The loss is truly yours.”

Straightening, she moved a little closer into the room until she reached the foot of his bed. Her lips twitched in humor. “I’ll learn to live
with it.”

His
deep chocolate eyes crinkled as he smiled hugely at her, flashing his teeth, startling white against the tanned skin of his face. Folding his hands together and laying them in his lap in a sign of being a good boy, he asked. “So what’s up, Doc?”

This time she groaned. “Wow… that was just bad – and so overused. You need to work on your material
.”

He just grinned at her.

Shaking her head at him, she said, “I just wanted to come find out how you were, and to let you know it’s against the law to harass the nurses and that you shouldn’t do it.”

His grin broadened. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“You are indeed impossible, Mr. Devlin. Seriously, how are you?”

He lifted a hand and brushed his too-long brown hair away from his face, revealing the diamond stud in his ear. “I’ve been better, I must say,” he replied, before immediately following it up with, “but I could probably still manage to assist you out of that white coat.”

“Not after I broke both your hands,” she said.

He gave her a disbelieving look. “Why Doctor! Aren’t you sworn by your oath to only touch with healing in your hands?”

“Every situation is different, and like you, I’ve been trained to react accordingly.” She grinned at him one last time before leaning forward to unclip his chart from the wall next to his bed. “Since I can’t get a straight answer out of you, Smart Guy, I’ll just have a look for myself.”

He sat quietly while she read over his file
, once again folding his hands together in the pose of innocence. She frowned as she ran through the extensive list of his injuries. It was indeed amazing to see him sitting up and appearing in such good spirits. Her lips thinned as she once again witnessed man’s inhumanity to man.

Placing the chart back on the wall, she said, “Would mind if I look at your injuries?”

He gave her another shocked expression, one that she was beginning to become familiar with. “Why Doctor, are you offering to exam me? I knew it wouldn’t be long before you couldn’t keep your hands off me. You’ve put up a good fight, but like the many before you, you were destined to succumb.”

Rolling her eyes, which she found she did a lot in his presence, she said. “Good Lord!”

“You can call me that if you wish… Lord, Master, My Liege… whatever you’re most comfortable with.” He gave her another grin, but laid back and pushed the sheet aside, thankfully revealing his body covered in a hospital gown. “Please be gentle with me, I’m very fragile, you know.”

Ignoring him in favor of discovering his injuries for herself, she pulled the sheet back up to his waist before pulling his gown up. She chided herself for staring at his very toned, muscular stomach and chest. Mentally, shaking her head at herself, she gently removed the large gauze square taped to his side. With gentle fingers she pressed against the edges of the small incision, happy to discover no infection. While he didn’t utter a sound, he couldn’t keep his muscles from jerking away from her touch.

Putting the bandage back in place, she said, “Can you sit up? Or it is it too painful?”

“For you, I’d try anything once… twice, if properly motivated.”

“For now, just try sitting up, but if it hurts, please stop,” she said, as she provide her forearm to assist him up.

Slowly, he rose up into a sitting position and grimaced against the pain
.

“Can you hold it for just a little bit?” she asked him.

Through clenched teeth, he grunted, “Yes.”

She parted his gown and gasped at the reddened and blistered skin of his back and shoulders.
There were stripes and gashes torn into his skin that reminded her of someone who’d been beat repeatedly with a whip. Tears sprang unexpectedly into her eyes. “How have you been able to stand this? This is bad… very, very bad,” she said in a voice that quivered with emotion.

He hissed against the pain as she helped him down. Through clenched teeth, he said on an exhaled breath, “Drugs… really good drugs.”

Reaching up a hand he brushed against a tear running down her cheek. “Hey, Cupcake, it’s not as bad as all that. I’ve had worse, I promise you. I’ll be fit as a fiddle before you know it.”

She lilted her head and gave him a watery smile. “I know, you mor
on, only the good die young, and we both know you’re far from good!” she proclaimed in a voice that was overly bright.

He gave a huff and smirked at her. “Oh, I promise you, I’m very, very good. If you stick around long enough, maybe I’ll prove it to you.”

She once again rolled her eyes at him. In a more serious tone, she asked, “Have they told you when you’ll be released?”

“In a couple days,” he replied.

“Do you have someone to help you?”

“Why? Are you offering?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively at her. When she shook her
head emphatically, he said, “My partner, Devon, will be staying with me for awhile I think.” Scrunching his eyebrows together, he asked, “Have you seen her?"

She blinked rapidly
, at first hating to lie, but then figured that really she wasn’t. “No, I haven’t seen her. But I’ll tell her you’re looking for her if I do.”

“She was supposed to be meeting up with Masters, have you seen him?”

Evasively, she said, “I’ve seen him a few times at the hotel.”

He nodded in thoughtful silence, the very first time she’d ever seen him serious. “I hope she’s okay,” he said almost to himself.

“Well, I have other rounds to make. I just wanted to check on you. I hope you get better soon,” she said.

Without looking at her, still obviously lost in thought, he said absently, “I will, I will.”

She studied him for a half-second longer, wondering what his feelings were for his partner, the dark-haired beauty. Without another word, she turned and walked silently out of the room, leaving him with his thoughts.

When Ensley came back to the waiting room, she wasn’t surprised to find Alex asleep, a side-effect of the medication she’d given him. He desperately needed the rest, but she’d known he’d never get it. She sat down beside him to wait for news about Devon and pondered once again the triangle relationship between Alex
, Devon, and Cash.

She’d fallen asleep herself when two hours later, the resident PA, a young South African man she considered one of her true friends within the hospital, came to the find her in the waiting room.

“Ensley?” he said, in his softly accented voice.

Out of years of habit, she woke instantly. “Nigel? What’s the word?”

He handed her a cup of bitter hospital coffee. “She finally woke. We ran a batter of test and we think she’ll be okay. She’ll probably have trouble with her kidneys in the future, but for now, she’s okay. We’ve put her in a regular room. I expect by now she’s back asleep. But I think she’ll be okay,” the doctor said, taking long pulls from his own caffeinated cup.

“Oh, thank God!” she said. “I’m going to take Alex, here, down to her room. Will that be alright?”

“As long as he lets her sleep, it’ll be fine. You might consider going and getting some sleep of your own,” he admonished.

“I will as soon as I get Alex situated,” she promised.

Nodding his head in Alex’s direction, he smiled, “Are you sweet on the young American?”

She shook her head. “No, we’re just friends.”

He nodded again. “Get some rest, dear Ensley,” he reiterated once more. “That’s an order,” he added with a grin.

She gave him a jaunty salute and said, “Yes, Sir!”

Once Nigel departed, she shook Alex gently. It took him several long moments to wade through the medicated fog he’d been in. Once he realized where he was and why, he sat up quickly. “What’s happened?” he asked anxiously.

She placed a gentling hand on his arm. “Everything’s good,” she said, then she continued to tell all Nigel had told her.

“Can I see her?” he asked.

“Of course. The doctor said she’d probably be already asleep and as long as you didn’t wake her, it’d be alright.”

Alex scrubbed both hands over his tired features. “Man, I didn’t realize how tired I was,” he said. “Did you see Cash?”

She nodded
and she grimaced as she remembered all she’d read in his chart.

“How is he?” Alex prompted.

“He’s… not good. I mean, he will be, but right now, he’s a mess. He had to have surgery to repair a puncture in his liver. His back and shoulders received third degree burns and he was cut up pretty bad from the explosion.”

“Did you tell him about Devon?”

She shook her head. “No, he asked, but I hedged him. He was really worried about her. He said he sent her to find you.”

Alex blinked thoughtfully. “For protection,” he said almost to himself.

She shrugged.

He rubbed a hand against his grainy-feeling eyes. “I did such a good job of that, didn’t I?” Giving a rough shake of his head that reminded him of his near miss with the bullet, he rose slowly to his feet. “If you’ll show me to her room, I’d appreciate it.”

Chapter 10

Devon woke to a severe burning in her throat and pain everywhere else.
She struggled to open her eyes, but her lids felt as if they’d been sewn shut. After blinking for several minutes, she was finally able to glance around. While she wasn’t surprised to find herself in a hospital room, somehow, she felt as if something was off. She struggled to get her brain to focus, but it was like crawling through quicksand.

She swallowed and immediately regretted it as
it felt like barbed-wire was being ripped through her throat. She moaned and turned her head looking for the nurse’s call button, hoping for water. She blinked rapidly when she saw Alex sitting in the chair next to her bed. His blonde head was resting heavily against the back of the chair, and his eyes were closed. His chest rose and fell evenly.

A momentary thrill at the sight of him was soon chased away by the horror of recent past events. Like the ViewMaster toy, she’d had as a child, scenes flashed before her
, beginning from leaving Cash, to going to
Alex’s room, and then finally to her coup de gras, swallowing the pills with rainwater. Her chest burned as much as her throat had.

Her family was gone
, she was disillusioned by the career she’d placed in front of all else, and she’d lost Alex. She wondered what he knew about what she’d attempted to do. Shame laid on her like a cold stone. Why, oh why, had she’d been saved. If left alone, she’d already be in a much better place – some place far, far from here. She turned her head away as tears slid silently down her cheeks. She didn’t want him here. She didn’t want to look into those sea-green eyes of his and see the condemnation she was sure to find there.

With every muscle protesting, she curled away from him and rolled herself up into a tight ball, burying her head in her arms in a flimsy attempt to protect herself.
Her dislocated shoulder screamed at the effort, but she ignored it. But no matter what she did, the pain ripping through her insides, was harder to ignore. Already being weak, it wasn’t long, before she fell into blissful oblivion, as exhaustion overcame her.

~M~

Alex sat absently rubbing a finger against his bottom lip, his green-eyed stare pensive, as he contemplated Devon’s tightly clutched body held so firmly away from him. Saving her body will have been easy compared to helping her wade through whatever murky depths had brought her to this place. She’d been his warrior princess. He’d seen her pick up a weapon for a mission without hesitation. She’d always been so strong and confident, knowing her way, and not letting anyone – him included – stand in her way.