Protector (Copper Mesa Eagles Book 3) (17 page)

“Down, girl,” she muttered.

Ellie stuck her tongue out, and then the music kicked up again.

At the end of the aisle, standing next to an older man, was Katrina, wearing a long, strapless white dress and
beaming
.

* * *

After dinner, Ellie wandered outside to clear her head. She’d been dancing for an hour, not to mention the couple of drinks she’d gotten at the open bar.

Okay, and a couple more.

That’s what weddings are for
, she thought, taking in a deep breath of the cool night air.

Inside, the DJ had moved from a fast dance song to something much slower. She didn’t recognize it, but she could hear the bass thumping through the glass doors that led out to the patio. Jules sat at the table, talking animatedly to Katrina’s sister, while Seth spun Violet around and around and around on the dance floor.

That kid’s gotta be battery-powered or something
, Ellie thought.
She’s been cutting a rug nonstop
.

The patio doors opened, and Garrett stepped through.

“There you are,” he said.

“Just taking a quick break,” Ellie said.

“Me too,” he said. “I had to escape before Violet demanded another dance.”

Ellie laughed, and he slid his arms around her neck.

“I’m sweaty,” she warned.

“I’m sweaty too,” he said. His sleeves were rolled up, his suit jacket and vest left behind at their table.

“You and Violet are the cutest,” Ellie told him. “I about died when she high-fived you at the ceremony.”

Garrett chuckled, and she could feel the vibration through her back.

“That kid is a live wire,” he said.

They stood like that for a long time, looking out at the night. The song inside ended, and the DJ announced something. Ellie glanced back, past, Garrett.

“I think they’re cutting the cake,” she said. “We should go in.”

She turned around and leaned against the railing, facing him.

“What’s the rush?” he asked, taking her hands.

“No rush,” Ellie said. “But we should be there.”

Garrett flipped her hands over and moved his fingers up her forearm, seeking out the surgery scar where she’d had pins put in her broken arm. It had faded from purple to pink to white months ago, but it was still sensitive when he touched it.

“You know what today is?” he asked.

“What?” Ellie said.

“It’s the first anniversary of when I found your name in the yellow pages,” he said.

“I can’t believe you made a fortune from a tech company and you used the yellow pages,” she said.

Garrett bent down and kissed her, still holding her hands, the kiss slow, sensual, and unhurried.

“Happy anniversary,” he murmured.

“I wasn’t even there,” Ellie murmured back.

They kissed again, and Ellie felt the
tingles
start. Garrett’s hand moved to the hollow of her lower back.

“Keep it up and this could get inappropriate,” Ellie said.

In the dark, Garrett grinned.

“How inappropriate?” he asked.

“Unfit for children,” Ellie said.

“Nobody’s watching,” Garrett said.

They kissed once more, for a long time, and Ellie felt like the world melted away.

Inside, a cheer went up. Garrett broke the kiss and rested his forehead on hers.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” Ellie said. “Come on, let’s go back to your brother’s wedding.”

Hand in hand, they walked into the celebration.

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GRIZZLIES & GLACIERS

North Star Shifters #1

Chapter One

Delilah

1989

Delilah drove carefully down Main Street. On the passenger seat of her little Toyota was a street map of Fjords, Alaska, and her grocery list. She’d bought the map the day before, when she’d gotten into town after nearly fifty hours of driving, but she hadn’t needed it yet — it turned out that almost nothing had changed in the town since she’d moved away nearly eight years ago.

Even the Carrs grocery store was standing exactly where it had been while she was in high school, the biggest store in a shopping center that also had a 7-11 and a Payless Shoe Source. The stores around it had changed,
 
but she was surprised that no new roads had been built, no new bridges from their peninsula to the Alaska mainland. When she had left for college in California, there had even been talk of building a regional airport in Fjords, but that had never happened.

Sitting at a red light, looking at a Thai restaurant, Delilah heard the crash without seeing it. Her head whipped around and, in shock, she saw a mass of steaming, crumpled metal. For one second, there was an eerie silence as everyone stopped and stared.

Then
she realized that the mass was two cars, right in the middle of the intersection. Some kind of big SUV
 
had t-boned a tiny car, practically driving right over it, leaving it crumpled right in the middle of the intersection in front of her.

Delilah gaped for a few seconds — the SUV had obviously run the red light, was the driver drunk? In the middle of the day like this? — but then her training kicked in and she ran toward the wreck.

Already, two other people were standing there, staring at the two cars now smashed almost completely together, moving their hands around uselessly as though that would help.

“I’m a doctor!” Delilah shouted as she jogged the last few feet, approaching the two cars. The word still sounded weird coming from her mouth, but it was finally true. She
was
a doctor.
 

Either steam or smoke poured forth from one of the cars, and for half a second, she wondered whether the cars would explode, like in the movies.

All at once, her head cleared, and she knew she had to take control of the situation.

She pointed at an older woman with dyed-red hair who was simply standing there, gawking. “You,” she said. The woman looked up, aimlessly. “What’s your name?”

“Karen.”

“Karen, I need you to go find a pay phone and call 911. Can you do that?”

“But—” said Karen, waving her hands at the wreckage.

“These people need an ambulance,” Delilah said firmly, far more firmly than she felt. “Go call 911.”

Karen nodded and then ran off to the row of shops along the street, entering one and jabbering loudly to the guy behind the desk.

Breathing deeply, Delilah approached the two intertwined cars. An instinct told her that exploding was just a myth, and she needed to see whether the drivers were still alive.

First she approached the SUV. Inside was a thirty-something man, blood running down his face from the broken windshield, pawing at the door handle ineffectively.

“Oh shit,” he was saying, over and over again, tonelessly.

“Sir,” Delilah said, rushing toward him. “Sir, please just stay where you are. An ambulance is on its way.”

“I gotta get out,” he said in that same strange, toneless voice. Delilah knew it was shock — she’d met plenty of people like this during her emergency rotation. “It’s — there’s an accident — I gotta get out.”

“You need to stay right where you are,” she said. “You could have serious injuries and you shouldn’t move.”

Delilah went up to the car and looked inside, down at him. He was at least wearing a seatbelt. She inhaled deeply, smelling hard for alcohol on his breath, her extra-sharp senses kicking in.

There it was. Bud light, it smelled like, or maybe Coors — some cheap beer. Delilah ground her teeth together and did her best not to get angry. The police would test his blood alcohol level, and he’d get what he deserved.

For his part, he just looked at her, blankly.

“Stay there,” she said, hands up, trying to sound soothing.

Since the guy in the SUV was talking and moving, she wasn’t too concerned about him. Besides — and she knew this was un-doctorly — he’d been drinking, and whatever he got, he deserved.

As she was checking over the guy in the SUV, there were alarmed shouts from the little Hyundai, and Delilah looked up.

“Stay there!” she shouted to the guy in the SUV, pointing at him, and running around the little silver car that he’d smashed into.

From the other side, it was worse than it had looked at first: the nose of the SUV had come almost completely through the passenger side of the car, and now the woman who’d been driving — who had been completely, utterly in the right of way — was trapped underneath.

Worse, she was unconscious and covered in blood.

The onlookers scattered when Delilah approached, and she heard mutters of
doctor
, not that she paid too much attention. Right away she could see that the blood was from a huge gash in her right leg, where a piece of metal had gouged her, but that wasn’t even her worst problem: the worse problem was that the SUV was practically on top of her, crushing her.

The woman wasn’t breathing.

Fuck fuck fuck shit fuck damn
, thought Delilah, her thoughts little more than a stream of curse words.

She took a deep breath.

“Someone needs to lift the SUV off of the car,” she called through the broken windshield. “It’s crushing her.”

There was no way the woman would make it until the ambulances got there. The three men that had gathered around jogged to the front of the SUV and started a count:
one, two, three, lift!

The SUV didn’t budge. Delilah cursed.

“Try it again,” she said. She tried to tamp down the panic that was rising in her chest. The men counted down again, but again the other vehicle didn’t move, not even a little. Desperately, Delilah tried to think — if only they could get this woman free, she could staunch the bleeding from her femoral artery, and there was a decent chance she’d make it out of this alive.

If not, though. The woman had another minute, maybe. Delilah didn’t even hear the sirens yet.

“Come on!” she shouted at the men. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thought
hasn’t the adrenaline kicked in yet?

“Hold up!” she heard a voice shout.
 

She
knew
that voice. She couldn’t think about it now, though.

“Scoot over and let me get the bumper,” the voice said. The men reshuffled themselves, the new guy at the very front, and Delilah heard them start counting again.

Please
, she thought.
Please, please, please
.

Then, on three, the SUV started lifting, moving backward away from the tiny Hyundai. Relief flooded through Delilah, and as soon as she could, she pressed her jacket to the wound in the woman’s leg.

Take a breath,
she thought, leaning as hard as she could against the bleeding wound, praying to stop it, just a little.
Come on, breathe, breathe
.

There was a crunching sound and a jolt as the men lowered the SUV back onto the pavement.

Delilah looked up for just a moment, making sure that everything outside of the Hyundai was still all right, that the drunk guy was still in his seat where she’d told him to stay.

Peering in through the broken passenger side window was a very, very familiar face.
 

For a split second, Delilah forgot to breathe.

The woman in the Hyundai suddenly gasped for air, taking in a long ragged breath and then coughing so hard Delilah was afraid she’d rupture something. Delilah tried to keep her as still as she could — the woman was out cold — while keeping pressure on her gaping leg wound.

“You need anything else, doc?” asked
that
voice, and Delilah looked up into Miles’s face. She’d known he was there from the first word he said. There was no mistaking that low, lazy, gravelly sound.