Porter (Dick Dynasty #1) (27 page)

Okay… So too much coffee
can
make aerobics instructors snap. Good to know.

I froze and put my hands in front of me.

“Woah,” I placated, “Vanessa, what are you doing? This is
crazy
!”

“It’s not fucking crazy!” she screeched frantically, “You need this, Ryder! We had a life!
You
had a life! Then
this
bitch came along and tore it all apart! You’re blinded by her, Ryder! You can’t see what she’s done to you! We had
everything
!”

“Vanessa,” I pleaded, “what the hell are you talking about?”

“Before you met this
whore
,” she spat the last word like venom, “you were the leader of an
empire
, Ryder. The world was yours. We were happy together! We made love! I invited you into my home, into my bed, and you made me believe I was your queen! She took that away from us, Ryder!”

The gun in her hand trembled with fury. I needed to get her away from Holly before she could do anything stupid. I took a single, careful step forward.

Vanessa pressed the barrel of the pistol into Holly’s temple, causing her head to loll to one side under the pressure. A quiet whimper escaped through the gag in her mouth and I knew then that I would do
anything
to save her.

“Vanessa, come on, baby,” my brain was going a million miles an hour trying to figure out how I’d get us both out of this alive, “We can still have that! You know me. Nothing can stop me from getting what I want. I can make it happen for us, V. Put the gun down. Let’s talk about this.”

“Don’t fucking placate me!” she shrieked, slamming the butt of the pistol down on Holly’s forearm, “I saw the press release today, Ryder! You’re retiring! You’re throwing your life away for this little home-wrecking slut! I can’t let her take your life away from you! I won’t! The only way I can stop her and break whatever hold her cunt has over you is to end her and we both know that! I wanted you to be here for it! I want to see you realize what she had done to you! I want to see your face when you realize that what we had is exactly what you need. You need someone who will support you and encourage you and love you for who you are, Ryder! Not someone who strips away your dreams and forces you to give up the life you’ve worked so hard to build for yourself!”

“Vanessa! For fuck’s sake! She didn’t force me to give up anything! I still have everything I want! I’ve wanted to get out of the porn industry
almost
since the first day I got into it! It was a stepping-stone for me the whole time! I never meant to make it a life-long career! Do you understand that? I don’t want to be a glorified prostitute for the rest of my life! It’s
always
been my plan to retire early and chase my dreams in another direction! You want to be a part of that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” the fury in her face gave way to something more gentle, but equally psychotic, “but
she
took that away from me.”

“Vanessa,” I reached a hand out toward her, “Put the gun down and come with me. Let’s get out of here. Thanks to you, I can see what she did to my life. You broke her spell on my and saved us. She’s powerless now. Leave her. Let’s go.”

The bitch had
clearly
snapped and my only hope was to play into her delusion and make her believe that she had already won. If I could get her close enough that I could get the gun away from her, I could knock her out or break her wrist or give in to the urge to rip her throat out with my bare hands.

I choked down the terror that threatened to burst out of me like water from a broken damn and managed to hold my outreached hand steady.

She stared at the limb like it was her salvation, a gentle smile softening the madness into an almost-pathetic sense of longing.

“I can’t,” the hardness returned to her face as she snapped back to the present, “We can’t leave her here to be found alive. It’s too risky, Ryder. She could find us again and ruin everything. I can’t live like that. I can’t live with the constant fear that she might take it all away from me again. She has to die.”

A single shot rang out in the darkness.

Time froze right along with the beating of my heart.

The sound of dozens of heavy footsteps was the only thing that told me I wasn’t dead. I was physically and emotionally numb and barely felt the cool brush of sharpened steel against my flesh as my arms were cut free.

Someone jerked the blindfold off my head and the harsh, overhead light blinded me. Everything was fuzzy as half a dozen black figures moved around me in slow motion. The world slowly rocked back and forth making me feel seasick.

I tried to make out Porter’s voice in the rumble of the crowd, but someone flipped a light switch somewhere in the distance and flooded the entire world with a brilliant, burning glow. The pain shot into my skull like a hot poker just before everyone vanished and everything went black.

When I finally came to my brain was foggy once more, but the lights were low and it didn’t hurt to open my eyes. There were strange, quiet noises and the room was unfamiliar, but when my eyes fell on Porter, none of it mattered anymore.

“Hey,” I tried to say. It came out as more of a croak, but it was enough to get his attention.

He jumped to his feet and took the two steps from his chair to my side, tenderly brushing his hand over my forehead. “Hey,” he crooned, “How you feeling?”

“Thirsty,” I rasped.

“The doctor said you might be,” he gently slid a spoonful of ice chips into my mouth, “He thinks you were chloroformed and one of the side effects is severe dry mouth.”

I sucked on the frozen water and relished the soothing, hydrating sensation as it melted and slid down my throat.

“What happened?” I asked when the ice had finally moistened my throat enough that I could talk without feeling like I was breathing sandpaper.

Porter slid another scoop of ice between my lips before he pulled the recliner over to my bedside and gently took my left hand in his, “You were kidnapped and held in a warehouse for a few hours. Your car was still parked outside your office, so they think she grabbed you on your way out.” His eyes misted and I could hear the tears strangling his voice, “I’m so sorry, Holly. I never meant for this to happen.”

“Not your fault,” talking was still difficult and there was a dull pain creeping into my right arm, “Who?”

“It
was
my fault though. The woman who took you was a crazy fan and someone I’d met a few times. She taught Jazzercise at my gym. If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t have even known who you were. When she saw the press release announcing my retirement, she snapped. Apparently, she’d been following us for weeks. The police say it was her who threw the rock through your window. They found a stack of magazines with letters cut out of them in her car and photos of us all over her apartment. She’d been obsessing about it since our second date. I’m so,
so
sorry, Holly.”

I cringed as a new wave of pain washed through my arm.

“She broke all the fingers on your right hand and fractured your ulna,” he pressed the button to call the nurse, “It’s probably about time for another dose of pain killers.”

I squeezed his hand with what strength I had and tried to smile at him. I could see the worry and the guilt etched on his face as clear as day. He was beating himself up over it and looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

“How long?” I asked.

He blew out a heavy breath as the first tears spilled over his eyelashes and traced wet trails down his cheeks, “She had you for just over three hours. You’ve been in the hospital now for two days. After they put everything back where it belongs, they kept you pretty heavily sedated. You’ve been barely conscious for the last forty-eight hours.”

Two days? How was that even possible?

“Becks?”

“I called her and Mitch when you didn’t come home that night. They met us here after everything went down and the three of us have been taking shifts at your bedside. They’re down in the cafeteria getting coffee and food right now.” His tears were flowing in full force at that point, “It’s all my fault that this happened to you. I’m so sorry.”

He bent his head to my hand and pressed his lips to my fingers, sprinkling me with the warm tears still falling from his eyes.

“You rescued me, Porter,” I freed my hand and placed it on his cheek, “You saved my life.”

“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have needed rescuing in the first place.”

“Porter,” frustration had strengthened my voice, “I love you. I would do it all again for you in a heartbeat. It took the prospect of not being able to tell you for me to accept it, but it’s true. I love you.”

His mouth hung open and he stared at me like I had just done some kind of magic trick.

The nurse chose that moment to come through the door and smiled at me warmly when she realized I was lucid.

“Is that arm bothering you?” she asked as she checked the bags near my head and adjusted a few unseen knobs.

“A little bit but it’s tolerable.”

“Well, that’s the joy of modern medicine. You don’t even need to tolerate pain anymore,” she flipped through the chart at the foot of my bed and made a quick note, “I’ve gone ahead and given you another dose of painkillers. Give it a couple of minutes to kick in and just give us a call when you’re ready to eat.”

“Thanks,” I said with a half-assed smile.

She nodded curtly and smiled before leaving the room to continue her rounds.

The delicate brush of Porter’s thumb over my hand drew my attention back to him.

“I love you, too, Holly. I’m sorry it took almost losing you for me to tell you. Even Parker and Preston tried to tell me, but I just couldn’t see it. It wasn’t until I saw you in that warehouse, bound and broken, that I knew I would do
anything
to keep you safe. Never in my life have I ever considered myself capable of killing someone but, given the chance, I would have snapped her neck, Holly. I would kill for you. I’d die for you, Holly Nash. Do you understand that?”

I smiled at him as my head began to swim from the drugs pumping into my veins through the IV in my arm.

“I do, Porter. I really do.” I had to fight to keep my eyes open, “Don’t leave me. I think I’m falling asleep.”

“You’re stuck with me, Holly. I’m not going anywhere.”

I felt the soft press of his lips to the back of my hand once more.

The last thing I heard before I gave into the pull of the medication was a whispered promise; “I’ll keep you safe as long as there’s breath in my body.”

After two more days in the hospital, Holly was finally allowed to go home. Becks and Mitch had packed up all of her stuff and all the get-well flowers and cards that had covered every inch of every flat surface in her room. They were walking behind us, chattering on as usual while I pushed Holly down the hall in the wheelchair the hospital insisted we use.

I leaned down and kissed the top of her head, “You excited to be out of here?”

“You have no idea,” she replied dryly, “Mostly, I just want to take a bath and eat a cheeseburger. Being trapped in that bed for four days was almost worse than the four hours in the warehouse.”

I laughed quietly and sped up just a touch. She’d feel better with some sunshine on her skin and some fresh air. Being stuck inside had made her surly.

My phone rang in my pocket as I helped Mitch and Becks load the last of the flowers into the back of my Land Rover. It was my mom’s ring tone, so I let it go to voicemail. I’d call her back after I got Holly home and settled in.

It started ringing again almost as soon as it had stopped.

“Sorry, guys. I gotta take this. It’s my mom.”

“I think the gay boy can manage to get some flowers into the backseat, Porter,” Mitch joked.

“And I’ll get Holly settled into the front seat,” Becks assured me, “as long as that means I get to be the first to sign her cast when we get home!”

I nodded my thanks to both of them as I brought the phone to my ear.