The Love He Craves (The Love She Craves: Selling Her Soul to Declan Book 2) (8 page)

Chapter 8

Even with all the excitement of having Lotus and Reina there, Cody couldn’t stay awake for more than half an hour at a time. While he slept, the girls sat on the floor making use of their new art supplies.

Nyxie found a seat in Declan’s lap, but her attention kept drifting to her nieces.

“Thank you, sir,” she whispered into Declan’s ear. “Thank you for giving me my kids back.”

She pressed her lips to his in a long lingering kiss that ended when Lotus noticed them making out.

“Gross,” she said, drawing out the word, her voice going down in tone.

Nyxie pulled away laughing. “Darn, I was hoping you’d be too busy coloring to notice.”

“That’s what happens when you don’t get a honeymoon,” Declan said. “Where do you think we should go?”

“We can’t go on honeymoon. Who would watch the kids?”

“I’ve already been doing a little research. There’s an agency here in town, or we could call the university to see if they can hook us up with a student majoring in Human and Child Development.”

Nyxie gave him a small smile that he was becoming aware was not genuine pleasure or happiness, but more politeness. “I don’t need a honeymoon. It’s not as if—”

“Don’t you dare say it. I’m sick to death of you trying to downplay our marriage. I love you and you love me. We stood in front of the judge with your girls and my lawyer witnessing our vows. It wasn’t make-believe, Onyx. I don’t know why you can’t accept it.”

Nyxie took a deep sigh and leaned into him. She marveled at how something that felt as foreign to her as physical contact, now seemed almost natural. “I do love you.”

“Why do I detect a
but
coming?”

He fisted his hand in her hair, making her smile. “I’m too happy to argue. If Cody has a full recovery, my life will be perfect.”

As Nyxie watched the girls diligently working on more get-well cards, she noticed Reina’s teddy bear was absent. She smiled, assuming that Reina must have gotten over her objection to Nyxie having a man in her life, if she left her teddy bear at home. She thought such a monumental accomplishment deserved praise to reinforce how proud she was of the girl.

“Reina, where’s Bear-Bear?”

The girl turned toward her, and like a switch being thrown, Reina’s whole face contorted and she began to bawl, her yowls so loud they woke Cody.

In an instant, Nyxie was off Declan’s lap and onto her knees with Reina in her arms. “What’s wrong, Reina?”

“I want Bear-Bear,” she moaned, after gasping for breath.

“Good job, Nyxie,” Lotus said. “Someone stole it two days ago.”

Declan’s head snapped to Lotus. “You will not talk to your aunt like that. She didn’t know. If you could have given her a heads up when I took Reina out, this could have all been avoided.”

Declan looked at the crying girl and wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into. Her tears had an almost opposite effect as a sub’s. He just wanted to push her out of the room until she stopped.

“I’ll buy you a new bear,” he said, trying to figure out how to appease her.

She only cried harder.

Declan wondered if he could be released from the residents’ program if he found himself in trouble for bringing a child that was under the age of allowed visitors, into the hospital. For a moment he considered putting his hand over her mouth, but just as quickly dismissed the idea. His eyes kept darting to the door, wondering when a nurse or security guard might be coming in.

“It wouldn’t be the same, would it, Reina?” Nyxie said, wiping the wetness from the girl’s cheeks.

“She can have Sugar,” Cody said, holding out the blue stuffed dog.

“I want Bear-Bear.”

When Nyxie looked up at Declan, her face showed her complete empathy for everything the girl was experiencing. He couldn’t take anymore. He rose from the chair. “If you’ll stop crying, I’ll take you back to the foster care place and we’ll try to find him.”

Reina sniffled. “We already looked everywhere.”

“Well, maybe now that you’ve moved out, whoever took it will remove it from wherever it’s hidden.”

Reina actually smiled then. Her arm came up to her face and Declan grabbed her arm before she could wipe her nose on it. He pulled her along with him as he looked for anything she could use to blow her nose and ended up at the sink. He handed her a paper towel he pulled from the dispenser on the wall before letting her go. When she finished, he pointed at the trash can for her to throw it away.

“Reina, there’s no guarantee,” Nyxie said.

“I’m glad to see I’m not the only one whose expectations you try to manage. Are you coming with us?”

Nyxie looked up at him as he reached out his hand to help her up. “No, I think I’m just going to stay here with Lotus and Cody. I’m no good at confrontations. I usually end up apologizing, and not accomplishing anything.”

“Order us up some pizza while I’m gone—at least two larges and drinks. I don’t like pepperoni, so make sure one of them doesn’t have it.”

~*~

Fifteen minutes later, Declan and Reina arrived at cottage number seven. As they stood on the porch waiting for Mrs. Forrester to answer the door, Reina reached up and took a hold of Declan’s hand.

“We’re here for the teddy bear,” he said when the woman opened the door. “Reina, go turn that room upside down. Look under every bed and in every drawer,” he said, pulling his hand free, and giving Reina a little push through the open portal. Reina ran past the woman and disappeared inside.

“You can’t just come in here like this.”

Declan had his hand and foot against the door to prevent her from shutting it. “She arrived with that bear and I’ll be damned if she’s leaving here without it.”

“This is trespassing,” she said. “You’re not allowed to just come here like this. I can and will call the cops.”

Declan’s gaze narrowed at the woman as he tried to decide if she really would.

“Feel free. But I should tell you if you do, I’ll make sure you lose your job over it. I’ll go to the media and tell them how you kept a traumatized eight-year-old from retrieving her personal property—a ratty teddy bear that you should have located two days ago when it was lost or stolen. Maybe I’ll even put forth the theory that
you
took the bear as punishment for repeatedly wetting the bed.”

The woman eyed Declan, her bravado seeming to vanish at the possibility of losing her job. “I don’t know where it is. But I’ll give you some money, and you can go buy her a new one.”

“I already offered to buy her a replacement. She doesn’t want a new one.”

“Ms. Forrester,” said a little girl wearing thick glasses, interrupting from behind her. “Reina is in our room messing up all our stuff.”

“Dammit,” she said under her breath. “Tell Reina to stop. I know where it is.” She pulled open the door and led Declan through the kitchen into a laundry room. “I wasn’t punishing her. I would never do that. She’s far from being the only kid who ever wet the bed. Some kids just regress like that. I wasn’t mad. She peed on the bear—it stunk. I put it in the wash with the wet bedding.”

She reached into an overhead cabinet and pulled out the stuffed animal just as Reina stepped into the room.

Reina squealed with happiness, which turned into a scream, when she saw its arm dangling by a one-inch strip of fur.

“I was protecting her from this.”

Declan took the bear, scooped up the little hysterical girl, and carried her out to the car, his shoulder getting wet from her tears, and hopefully not her snot. He put her in the backseat, buckling her in, and wondered if she should be in a booster seat.

In a moment of inspiration, Declan retrieved a towel out of his overnight bag, wrapped it around the teddy bear, and handed it to her.

“You have to stay calm, Princess, or he’s going to be scared. We’re going to take him to the hospital, and I’m going to patch him up just like Cody.”

She looked up at him with big baleful eyes and nodded. She hiccupped air as she tried to stop crying.

“Hold him close to your body so he stays warm. It’ll help him from going into shock.”

Why not
? he thought. Might as well give her a little lesson in first aid while he was at it. Christ, he hoped this never got out. He’d never live it down.

Declan picked up his phone and called Emily Saunders. He figured if she hadn’t said anything about Nyxie, maybe she could be trusted to get him supplies. Since she was more or less female, perhaps she would sympathize with a little girl.

“Hey, Saunders, how’s it hanging?”

“What do you want, Stryker? Need me to tell you where to put it when you get your nerve up to take your girlfriend’s cherry?”

“God, I’m glad I didn’t put you on my hands-free. I’m on my way to the hospital with one of Nyxie’s nieces. Can you get a suture kit, and take it to Nyxie’s brother’s room? You can charge it out to Nyxie. I’m paying her bills so the statement will come to me.”

He could hear the sounds of her opening and closing cabinets. “How far out are you?” she asked in her no-nonsense tone.

“Ten minutes, but it’s hardly an emergency. If you can just drop it off…. I’ll owe you one.”

“What about a local?”

Declan put the phone against his chest as he spoke to Reina. “Princess, do you think he needs a shot?” He met the girl’s horrified eyes in the mirror, and put the phone back up to his ear. “I think we’re good, but I’m going to need some cotton batting.”

“You know Onyx is supposed to bleed when you break through her hymen. She doesn’t need stitches.”

Declan went through every smart-aleck comment running through his mind, trying to come up with something he could say in front of an eight-year-old. “Just drop the stuff off, please. And don’t scare Nyxie by telling her what it is.”

“How bad is it? Maybe you should take her to the emergency department.”

He sighed. “It’s a near amputation of the right arm, just below the glenohumeral joint.”

“Ha, ha, smart-ass. If you don’t want to tell me, say so.”

Declan laughed. “Hey, you’re welcome to perform the procedure if you want. I’m sure you can use the practice.”

“No way, I’m not going to be the mean doctor poking an already painful wound. You got the kid hurt. You deal with it,” she said. “I didn’t even know she’d gotten them back. When did that happen?”

“They dropped them off this afternoon.”

“Jeez, Declan, and you’ve already injured one? What were you doing, playing tackle football?”

“Not hardly,” he said with a chuckle. “This one isn’t on me. I’m about a mile away. Do you have me covered or not?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be ready for you.”

He rattled off the room number, and hung up before she could say anything else. Declan knew instinctively that Emily planned to wait to see for herself what was going on, but he decided it was better to see the truth than to let her believe he had hurt a child—accidentally or not.

~*~

Nyxie saw Cody press a button on his pain pump moments before his eyes shut and he drifted to sleep.

“C’mere, Lolo,” Nyxie said quietly.

The girl abandoned her crayons and moved to stand in front of Nyxie.

“Are you too big to sit on my lap?” she asked opening her arms in invitation. “I just wanted to sit here, and hold you to make sure you’re really home.”

The girl tsked her tongue and rolled her eyes before climbing onto her lap.

Nyxie smiled as she pulled the girl into an embrace and held her. She knew Lotus tended to put up a tough exterior to hide how vulnerable she felt inside. “I’m so proud of you, Lotus.”

“Me? What did I do?”

Nyxie pulled back and craned her neck to see Lotus’s face. “What did you do? You did everything. You’re ten years old, and when Cody had his accident, you called me, and after CPS took y’all, you took care of Reina.” She rested her head against the girl’s ear. “Reina always draws all the attention, and sometimes you get ignored, but I don’t love her more than I love you.”

Lotus pushed away from Nyxie. “Why are you being so weird?”

“Because losing you kids has taught me how important you are to me. And in case anything ever happens to us again, I want to make sure you know how much I love you.”

“Jeez, Aunt Nyxie, want to make me barf?”

There was a knock on the door and Lotus scrambled to her feet. “Pizza already? Come in,” she said, assuming it was the food they’d order right after Declan and Reina left.

The door opened slightly, and Emily poked her head in. “Hello, Onyx. Is it a bad time?”

“Dr. Saunders, come in. Lotus pick up your crayons before anyone steps on them.”

Emily carried in something that Nyxie thought might be a couple of pairs of neatly folded scrubs or perhaps sheets of the same color. She set them down without comment on the counter next to the sink.

“Declan said they moved your brother out of the SICU a few days ago, so I thought I’d pop in to see how he’s doing.”