CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The next time she woke up, she was in the hospital. There was an IV hooked
up to her right arm and her foot was propped up high on a pillow. She
felt...doped and heavy. She looked around the room and saw Mrs. Libby Sugar
sitting asleep in one of the chairs in the room. About that time, a nurse came
sailing into the room and woke her.
“Oh, Miss Becky, you’re awake. Good. Are you hungry? The doctor said you
could have something light if you wanted it. There’s also something for pain if
you need it.”
“Doctor? I’m not...could I please have my things? I’d like to go, please.” She
started to sit up, but noticed that she was catheterized. She looked up at the
nurse who had begun backing toward the door.
“I’ll just call the doctor. He said to inform him when you woke up.” She
bolted so fast that Morgan didn’t get a chance to stop her.
“I want to leave here. I really need to leave here. I don’t have a doctor. Do
you know how to remove this thingy?” She was frantic. She could hear it in
Libby’s voice.
“Morgan, just calm down. No one is going to hurt you. You’ve lost a lot of
blood. When you woke up screaming the other night, we didn’t know what to
think. We brought you here and they contacted your doctor. Micky wasn’t happy
about it, but he let him treat you. They had to give you blood, you’d lost so
much.”
“How long have I been here? You said the other night. How long have I been
here?” She was afraid. If they contacted her doctor, the only one she’d seen...
“Hello, Morgan, how are you feeling?” Damon Grant. Well, fuck.
“I want to leave. Right now. I want you to take this thing out of me so I can
leave please.” She was crying. Again. What if...no, she wasn’t going to think
about him coming in.
“He doesn’t know you’re here. Just me, and, well, my mom, but Nick doesn’t
know.”
She and Damon watched Mrs. Sugar leave the room and he sat down in her
chair.
“The hospital called me on Friday morning to say that a patient of mine had
been admitted. I almost didn’t take the call. You see, we had an emergency of our
own at home. A guest had come up missing and there was blood all over the
house. We didn’t know what to think until Nick got up. He said that you two
had had a fight and that he’d sent you to another room. He didn’t know that
you’d left. Is that what happened, Morgan? Did you two have a fight?”
“He told me to be gone when he came out of the bathroom.” She stopped.
She wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with his family. That’s what he’d
said. “I’d like to go now, Dr. Grant. I don’t want you to be my doctor anymore
either. You’re very nice and I’m sure you...I don’t think...I’m not supposed to
have you as my doctor, please. I’d like to leave right now.” She looked out the
window and tried to ignore the tears welling up in her eyes.
“I want you to stay a few days more. You’ve gotten the wound very dirty
and I’ve had to clean it out. I’ve given you a tetanus shot, but I’d like to keep you
at least two more days.”
She couldn’t look at him; she hurt so much.
“Morgan, you can talk to me. I won’t tell Nick anything you say to me.”
“Please.” After a few more minutes, she heard him get up and leave the
room. She didn’t know what he was going to do. She could only hope that what
he’d said was true and no one knew where she was.
A nurse came in a few minutes later and removed the catheter and handed
her her bag without saying a word. Her crutches were brought in and another
nurse brought in her discharge papers. After explaining that she’d need to set up
an appointment with her own physician, she was free to go.
Go where, she didn’t know. Mr. Sugar solved the issue by telling her that he
had an apartment over the bar she could have cheap when he came in to take her
there. It wasn’t much, so neither was the rent, and when she was better, she’d
come back to the bar to work. He also told her that Dr. Damon had gotten her
things, including her money taped under the drawer, and he’d already taken it
all to the apartment. He also wanted to know if she knew how to keep books, as
he’d pay her for doing that while she was laid up.
Morgan had straightened out the bar’s books in about three days of constant
work. She knew she was overdoing it, but it was either work hard and fall in bed
exhausted, or run screaming from the room. Today, she was working on a
website for the bar. Not that he needed one, but she was bored and lonely.
Morgan didn’t understand most of what was on the TV, and less of the
music on the radio. She usually preferred the quiet over the constant noise, but
just lately she found herself craving someone, anyone, to talk to. So here she was,
doing something totally useless. Well, not totally. She was getting some practice.
Morgan had found some old pictures of the bar in one of the hundreds of
little cubbyholes she’d found in one of the two bedrooms. He’d told her to throw
it all out, but she couldn’t, not without seeing what it was. Some of the pictures
were when the bar first opened about thirty years ago. It was fun to see the
progression of time in the still lives. She began by scanning them with the printer
and placing them in file folders by date and year. That had taken the better part
of six hours. She was making a list of other things she found when her email
signaled she had a message.
It was the same email address she’d had in prison, so she thought it was
from someone there, and was surprised when it was from the woman she’d
designed the site for who owned an interior design firm.
Ms. Becky,
I have a client that is in need of your services. He is quite the artist and has decided
to expand his art to the online sales. I told him how you had worked miracles with my
business, and he would like to meet you. I was hoping that we could meet for lunch this
Thursday at Charlie’s on Seventh Street at one o’clock. Please let me know if this is a
good time for you?
Cyndi Penshaw
She could do that from here, she thought. Especially at night when the bar
closed down at two o’clock. She could, at the very least, do this until she was
able to get around on her foot without crutches. She wouldn’t have to go out into
public unless she wanted to.
The following Thursday she was making her way into the little bistro on her
crutches. She’d been on them for six days now, and she thought she was getting
really good on them.
Morgan saw Ms. Penshaw first, with her steel gray hair wound tightly
around her head and her sparkles around her neck and wrist. Morgan had never
seen anyone wear so much shiny, noisy things on her person. She was grinning
until she saw who her luncheon date was. Byron Grant.
Morgan tried to turn around and go back out, but he must have seen her
trying to leave. He was in front of her in a flash.
“Please don’t leave, Morgan. I want to talk to you. No one knows you’re
here, I swear. Not even my mother. And Cyndi doesn’t know anything other
than I want to hire you to do some web work for me. Please stay?”
“Am I here for a job, or are you gathering intel to tell your arrogant asshole
brother?” She hadn’t moved to the door or the table yet.
“Yes, I need you to set me up a site, and no, I won’t do intel for him. I don’t
care for him much right now either.” She didn’t move for a few moments then
turned and made her way to his table. Cyndi was talking on the phone when
they arrived.
“I’m sorry, I have to go. My son is sick at daycare and they won’t keep him
with a temperature. I need to go get him. Oh, Morgan, it is so nice to see you
again. And I’m so glad you were acquitted of the horrible crime. Byron, call me
next week and we’ll nail down a time to fix up that shop apartment of yours.”
Then, she was gone.
“If you set this up like this, I’ll brain you with my crutch.” Morgan pulled
out Cyndi’s chair and propped her injured foot onto the seat.
“I swear I didn’t. It worked out nicely, though, didn’t it?” He had the most
charming grin. She wondered if he knew that. Then she glanced around the room
at the women practically drooling at him and realized, yeah, he knew it. And the
effect he had on those poor, unsuspecting women too.
“I bet. I find out you set me up, there won’t be a hole deep enough for you to
hide in, nor a place far enough away. I know people who know people.” She
picked up her menu and started to read it. She was startled when he laughed
loud enough that several patrons of the restaurant turned to look at them.
“Ah ,Morgan, you are a card. I think I’ll enjoy this merry-go-round you seem
to be running around my brother. Yes, I believe I will.”
Morgan didn’t know what he was talking about so she chose to ignore him.
For the time being anyway. After they ordered their food, she pulled out a
notebook and wrote his name across the top sheet.
“May I ask you about this bag? It is, by far, the ugliest thing I’ve ever had the
misfortune of seeing,” he asked her.
“Yes, I know, but I need it.” She looked at him and saw the blatant curiosity
in his eyes. “No, I guess I needed it. It was your mother’s idea, actually, to make
this thing.”
“Mom’s? Oh no, she wouldn’t have been caught dead with that color paisley.
I know. When I was in first grade, I made her this bracelet thing out of those
brightly colored beads they have. It was so pink, it defied reason. She told me it
was very lovely, but pink, especially Barbie pink, was not her thing. I took it back
to school the next day and made the art teacher let me make her one that was all
black. Mom wore it for years.”
Morgan smiled at the memory. “No, she didn’t give it to me; she tricked me
into making it. My hand had been...I had to crush my hand between the top of
the bed Randall had me cuffed to and the concrete walls to escape from him.
He’d gone up to the main part of his house to get his gun to kill me, he’d said.
“I’d been raped, you see. Not just by him, but several of his friends too. He’d
kidnapped me and kept me tied in his basement as entertainment for him and his
buddies. I didn’t care...I didn’t care if I died, but there was no way he was living.
So I got away and killed him
“Physical therapy hadn’t been started soon enough, so I needed to have my
hand broken again to have the bones set correctly. I refused to do the exercises.
“Your mom was one of the regular people who came in and gave those silly
pep talks and whatever. She once told us how we could make a better life for
ourselves. If we just applied as much energy into getting up off our collective
asses and getting reformed as we did trying to hustle people, we’d be
millionaires. She wasn’t a popular speaker.
“She told me that if I made this bag and made it well enough that it didn’t
fall apart the first time I used it, she’d never pick at me again to do crafts with
her. Anything would be worth not having to do crafts. She used enough glitter
and glue on stuff it looked like Tinker Bell threw up on us.
“It took me nine months to cut the material out perfectly. I had to read up on
how to use a pattern first, you see. Then it took me another six months to make
my hand wrap around the scissor handles. It was only nine pieces of material,
and I had to cut some of the pieces out four times before it was right. The sewing
machine posed another problem. I had to gently guide the material through the
foot and not screw up the thread too. I’d never worked on anything so hard in
my life. And true to her word, I never did another craft with her. She also got me
another trial. Once the DA looked my sheet over, they decided it was a
miscarriage of justice and I got out.” She looked down at her plate, just realizing
that she hadn’t spoken that much in five years.
“Poor Morgan. It can be bad enough to be stuck in a whole house with Mom,
but at least I can step outside. Being stuck inside a prison without the ability to
escape must have been like a nightmare.” She laughed with him. She liked this
Grant. He was fun and smart.
By the time lunch was over and he paid the bill, she was going to meet him
at his studio a week from Friday.
Tune in next week for CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Buy Links:
The grant brothers series in reading order
Now Available
Luke Emerson Wolves Series
Jack fainted, her vision blurring and her body spent she thought of the man she’d just had the most incredible sex she’d ever had with. Christ, she didn’t even ask him for a condom.
Luke was afraid to move. He really wasn’t even sure he could. Lifting his head he looked down at Jacklyn. She was even more beautiful now that she was all mussed and swollen from him. He kissed her lip gently where a drop of blood was and knew that it was his. She’d bitten him. Not only had she bitten him she’d claimed him as well. Luke felt as if he’d been given the best gift in the world. Now all he had to do was tell her what she’d done by making love with him.
Sneak Peek At Luke
The grant brothers series in reading order
Now Available
Luke Emerson Wolves Series
Luke Emerson Wolves Series
Jack fainted, her vision blurring and her body spent she thought of the man she’d just had the most incredible sex she’d ever had with. Christ, she didn’t even ask him for a condom.
Luke was afraid to move. He really wasn’t even sure he could. Lifting his head he looked down at Jacklyn. She was even more beautiful now that she was all mussed and swollen from him. He kissed her lip gently where a drop of blood was and knew that it was his. She’d bitten him. Not only had she bitten him she’d claimed him as well. Luke felt as if he’d been given the best gift in the world. Now all he had to do was tell her what she’d done by making love with him.
Sneak Peek At Luke
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Next New Release Reed The Bowen Boys
Blurb for Reed:
Kerry Stephens is beyond excited. The job promotion with the cable company came through taking her out of the office in into the field. She needs this job and didn’t know how much more she could stomach her current boss. Anything has to be better than working for him, right? So much for wishful thinking.
The Bowen family is buying the floundering cable company and want Kerry to help clean house. The problem? Kerry doesn’t want to talk. She may not be happy there under the current conditions, but she isn’t going to be responsible for anyone losing their job. She doesn’t need any more problems than she already has.
The last thing Reed expected is to find his mate so soon after coming back home. His new house is understaffed and the only furniture that’s arrived so far is the bedroom set. He knows she’s his mate, and his cat does too. He’s ready to settle down and is ecstatic to find her, and doesn’t understand why Kerry isn’t.
Kerry’s entire life she has never had anyone to love her and trust doesn’t come easy for her. Daily threats from her step-sister’s boyfriend don’t help.
When things get heated will Reed be able to intervene? And when push comes to shove can the family stay together, or will a devastating blow drive the family apart forever? Find out in the final installment of the Bowen Boys―Reed
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Smash Words https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/486745
B&N : Coming Soon
Paperback http://www.amazon.com/Luke-Emerson-Kathi-S-Barton/dp/1629891681/ref=sr_1_2_twi_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1415216782&sr=8-2&keywords=Kathi+s+barton
Next New Release Reed The Bowen Boys
Blurb for Reed:
Kerry Stephens is beyond excited. The job promotion with the cable company came through taking her out of the office in into the field. She needs this job and didn’t know how much more she could stomach her current boss. Anything has to be better than working for him, right? So much for wishful thinking.
The Bowen family is buying the floundering cable company and want Kerry to help clean house. The problem? Kerry doesn’t want to talk. She may not be happy there under the current conditions, but she isn’t going to be responsible for anyone losing their job. She doesn’t need any more problems than she already has.
The last thing Reed expected is to find his mate so soon after coming back home. His new house is understaffed and the only furniture that’s arrived so far is the bedroom set. He knows she’s his mate, and his cat does too. He’s ready to settle down and is ecstatic to find her, and doesn’t understand why Kerry isn’t.
Kerry’s entire life she has never had anyone to love her and trust doesn’t come easy for her. Daily threats from her step-sister’s boyfriend don’t help.
When things get heated will Reed be able to intervene? And when push comes to shove can the family stay together, or will a devastating blow drive the family apart forever? Find out in the final installment of the Bowen Boys―Reed
Kerry Stephens is beyond excited. The job promotion with the cable company came through taking her out of the office in into the field. She needs this job and didn’t know how much more she could stomach her current boss. Anything has to be better than working for him, right? So much for wishful thinking.
The Bowen family is buying the floundering cable company and want Kerry to help clean house. The problem? Kerry doesn’t want to talk. She may not be happy there under the current conditions, but she isn’t going to be responsible for anyone losing their job. She doesn’t need any more problems than she already has.
The last thing Reed expected is to find his mate so soon after coming back home. His new house is understaffed and the only furniture that’s arrived so far is the bedroom set. He knows she’s his mate, and his cat does too. He’s ready to settle down and is ecstatic to find her, and doesn’t understand why Kerry isn’t.
Kerry’s entire life she has never had anyone to love her and trust doesn’t come easy for her. Daily threats from her step-sister’s boyfriend don’t help.
When things get heated will Reed be able to intervene? And when push comes to shove can the family stay together, or will a devastating blow drive the family apart forever? Find out in the final installment of the Bowen Boys―Reed
REED"S up for Pre Order
Book Trailer
Please Feel Free to join Reeds Event Party !!!!!!!!!! Stop on By I love to see you there
Happy Reading
Kathi S Barton
Kathi S Barton
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