Page 43

CHAPTER 42

“W hat?” the rather delicious male specimen said, adding to his sex appeal with an Irish brogue that nearly distracted her from her purpose here.

Almost.

Ashlyn ran her eyes over his rather impressive body, lingering here and there before finally looking up and meeting intense green eyes. “People are starting to stare,” Ashlyn said, shrugging it off as she reached past him and grabbed a folded white sheet off a cart and shook it open. “Not that I can blame them,” Ashlyn added with a wink as she laid the sheet over his lap.

Gasping for air like he just ran a marathon, his brows curled up in confusion as he looked around the busy waiting room. “Ye can see me?” he asked, making her sigh in disappointment.

Minus ten points for insanity.

“Yes,” Ashlyn said, wondering if she should help him to the emergency room or up to the lockdown unit upstairs.

“Ye shouldn’t be able to see me.”

Locked unit it was, then. Decision made, Ashlyn stood up and looked around the busy waiting room until she spotted what she needed by some frat boy pressing a bloodied towel against his face. She made her way over to the wheelchair, ignoring the way the frat boy leered at her ass and rolled it over to the poor, incredibly hot, mentally unstable man currently trying to stand up.

“Have a seat,” Ashleyn said, gesturing to the wheelchair.

“I can walk,” he ground out, leveling a glare on her as he moved to prove just that, but he didn’t make it very far before his legs gave out on him and he almost fell back on his ass.

Biting back a sigh, Ashlyn wrapped her arm around his waist and helped him to the chair. She really didn’t have time for this good Samaritan crap today, but what choice did she have? He couldn’t exactly take care of himself and the only hospital staff manning the ER waiting room was the triage nurse too busy arguing with some jackass in an expensive suit, who was demanding that he be seen immediately, to help. That left it up to her to drop him off at the psych ward.

“I could have walked,” he grumbled as she pushed him down the hallway towards the elevators.

“Yes, I’m sure that you could,” Ashley said dryly.

“Sarcasm?” he growled, earning two points because that voice of his was sigh-worthy and if she didn’t need to be somewhere soon, she’d probably push him down to the gift shop and buy a romance novel. She’d sucker him into reading all the really naughty scenes to her, but alas, she didn’t have that kind of time.

“Me? Sarcastic? Never,” Ashleyn said distractedly as she studied the hospital directory.

“What are ye looking for?” he asked, sounding suspicious.

“The lockdown unit,” she murmured, wondering if it was labeled under a codename because she couldn’t for the life of her find it listed on the hospital directory.

“I’m not crazy, lass,” he bit out.

“Of course not.”

“I’m not!”

“It’s perfectly normal to stroll around the emergency room naked because you think you’re invisible.”

“I’m not crazy!” he snapped, moving to climb out of the wheelchair, but one well-placed shove from her had him sitting back down like a good boy, a good boy who grumbled and bitched, but that was fine with her as long as he behaved himself.

“Doesn’t matter anyways because it looks like it’s the emergency room for you,” she said, moving to turn the wheelchair around and take him back to the ER.

“I’m not hurt, lass,” he said, moving to get up and this time when she tried to keep him in the chair, he shrugged off her touch and climbed out of the chair, a bit stiffly, but this time, he managed to stand on his own two feet.

Ashlyn shrugged as she pushed the wheelchair away and pressed the call button for the elevator. “Then, you’re on your own, cupcake. I have someone that I need to talk to.”

“I don’t need help,” he bit out as he looked around and when he saw a cart filled with folded blue scrubs, he dropped the sheet, giving her a beautiful memory.

It really was a shame that he was insane, Ashlyn thought with a sigh as she watched him pull on a pair of scrub bottoms that were a little too short and a bit snug around one of the best asses that she’d ever seen. Glaring at her like this was somehow her fault, he grabbed a white tee-shirt and pulled it on. The shirt was tight, encasing perfectly sculptured muscles and making a girl wish that she could forget that he was insane.

That problem was solved when he grabbed some poor guy who’d made the mistake of walking by at that moment by his shirt and raised him off the ground. “Give me yer shoes, lad.”

“Alrighty then,” Ashlyn said, turning her attention to the elevator doors sliding open and pointedly ignoring the insane man as he committed robbery and made some poor guy piss his pants. “You have a nice life now and don’t forget to be a good boy and take your Prozac.”

She stepped onto the elevator, pressed the button for the fifth floor and admittedly hadn’t expected the large mental patient to follow her. Then again, with her luck, she really should have. She mentally berated herself as she calmly reached into her bag and palmed her gun. Then, she thought better of it and reached for her stun gun.

“This can’t be happening,” he murmured in that sexy brogue of his as he raised his hands in front of his face and moved them, wiggling his fingers as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

“Just keep telling yourself that,” Ashlyn said, keeping an eye on him even as she watched the lights climb up to the fifth floor.

“Ye do realize that I’d take ye down before ye even had a chance to pull that out of yer bag, don’t ye, lass?” he asked conversationally as he dropped his arms, admittedly shocking her and grudgingly impressing her at the same time.

“Get tasered a lot, do you?”

He took her off guard when he chuckled. It was deep and sexy as hell.

Mental. Patient, Ashlyn reminded herself before she did something stupid like drool over him.

The well-timed ding of the elevator was truly appreciated as it gave her the excuse that she needed to get away from this man and get her mind back on her work. When the elevator doors opened, she sighed heavily. Looked like she’d found the psych ward, after all.

“Hold her down!” a nurse ordered just as her new BFF stormed past her.

“Get yer fucking hands off her!” he roared, noticeably startling the orderlies charged with holding the pretty brunette down while a nurse struggled to shove a very large needle in the woman’s arm.

The two large EMTs and the police officer with pepper hair helping to hold down the woman looked up as he headed for them. It was more than obvious that her new BFF’s presence wasn’t a welcome sight and as she followed behind him, once again holding her stun gun, she contemplated the benefits of taking him down for them.

“Mind your business!” the officer snapped, securing his hold around the struggling woman that honestly was hard to listen to without feeling her heart break. The woman’s pain was almost palpable and Ashlyn would have given anything at that moment to turn around and walk out of here, but the man she’d been trying to talk to for the past week was here and this couldn’t wait any longer.

“Get yer fucking hands off her!” he snapped, grabbing the two orderlies holding the woman’s legs down by the backs of their necks and tossing them away from her like they didn’t weigh anything. That alone had Ashlyn pulling her stun gun out of her bag and setting the voltage to high, because really, there was just no way that the two EMTs, a cop, and a nurse were going to be able to overpower this man.

Without a word, he reached down and plucked the needle out of the nurse’s hand and tossed it aside, his gaze locked on the sobbing woman. When the younger EMT moved to grab him, her new BFF simply shoved him away, knocking him clear across the room.

“Denny?” an older woman that she hadn’t noticed until then said, sounding calm which was probably a good thing right now since the last thing that this situation needed was a hysterical woman.

“Macha?” her new BFF said soothingly only to frown a few seconds later when the woman didn’t respond. Then, with a sigh and a self-deprecating shake of his head, he said, “Marty? Lass? He’s fine.”

The older EMT released his hold on the woman and looked like he was going to take his chances wrestling with the psych patient when the sobbing woman suddenly opened her eyes.

“Are you sure?” Marty asked, looking up at the psych patient with such hope that Ashlyn seriously considered tasering the bastard on principle alone for screwing with this poor woman’s head.

He smiled fondly down at her. “Aye, he’s fine, still an asshole, but he’s fine.”

The woman’s expression crumbled as her expression turned from heartbroken to relieved. She reached for the psych patient and wrapped her arms around him. He simply held her as she sobbed quietly against his shoulder and Ashlyn took that as her cue to move on. This wasn’t her drama, so she really didn’t need to be here, Ashley decided as she moved to turn around only to realize there was no one manning the nurse’s station. With a shrug, she faced the very confused-looking group. She decided to ignore the ones that were unconscious since they probably wouldn’t be much help anyway and focused on the ones watching her new BFF warily.

“Does anyone know where I can find Detective Black? I was told that he was here.”

* * *

“How did this happen?” Liam demanded as he paced the waiting room. He stormed forward, disappeared only to reappear on the other side of the room, doing that over and over again.

“The curse,” Finn said as Shayne carefully shifted Marty in his arms while she slept.

The poor thing had pretty much collapsed into exhaustion once the surgeon came out and explained that it had been touch and go, but that Tristan had pulled through and was being transported to the ICU. Shayne had tried to transport them both to Tristan’s room but he’d discovered that his ability to move around by jumping from place to place was gone.

He was once again human and he had no idea how in the hell that happened. The only thing that he’d been able to come up with was the curse, which seemed to still affect him. He still saw ghosts. They saw him and irritated the shit out of him. The only thing that changed was that he was human, all of his memories were intact and the woman sitting across from him, texting like a woman possessed, seriously pissed him off. There was good reason for that, Shayne thought bitterly as he narrowed his eyes on her and glared.

She was his fucking soulmate.

After all these years, here she was pissing him off and reminding him why he hated being human. If he’d still been in his true form, he could have given her the swat on the ass that she rightly deserved and popped out of the room, never giving her another thought. That’s not how this was going to work out apparently.

The curse had plans and they involved the two of them now. How did he know this? Well, that was really quite simple. He was the only dumb bastard out of his brothers who’d been turned back to human. His brothers were still in their true forms, Tristan was still alive, hooked up to machines, but still very much alive and hopefully out of the curse’s reach.

He ran his eyes over her, wondering how exactly he’d been paired with this woman when she clearly wasn’t his type. He liked long, beautiful blonde hair, soft brown eyes, pouty lips and a slender body. What he got instead was a woman with a very short haircut, shorter than his, about a half-dozen piercings in her ears, tattoos on her neck and arms and God only knew where else and a body with an athletic build. Her style also grated, nothing truly feminine about her clothes. She wore a black tee-shirt that showed off, of all things, a pierced belly button, jeans that rode a little too low and a pair of black combat boots.

Fate was truly a fucked-up son of a bitch.

“Keep staring,” she said flatly without looking up from her phone. “I love it, really.”

Yup, truly fucked up.

“You want to hand her over?” Denny asked, stopping in front of him and tossing the ice pack that he’d been pressing against his face aside so that he could glare down at Shayne.

“No.”

“You want to tell me who you are since you’re holding my daughter?” Hank demanded. He would have simply taken Marty away from Shayne an hour ago, except that when he’d tried, Marty started crying again, leaving him with no choice but to hand her back over to Shayne.

“No, not really.”

Declean chuckled as he walked through Denny and sat down next to him. “Ye might want to tell them something, lad.”

That probably would be for the best, Shayne decided as he looked at his brothers for suggestions, but the useless bastards only shrugged. Very helpful, he thought, sighing heavily with annoyance. Looked like he was on his own again.

“I’m her brother-in-law,” Shayne said, deciding to go with the truth. At least, the truth as far as he saw it.

Denny chuckled darkly. “Nice try, asshole, but I’m her brother-in-law.”

“Aye,” Shayne readily agreed, “but you’re her brother-in-law by adoption. I’m her brother-in-law by blood. Tristan’s my little brother.”

“Wow, it’s like daytime television come to life,” his annoying soulmate mumbled, destroying the stunned silence that he had to admit was a bit off-putting. The glares weren’t exactly comforting either, Shayne decided. The words of encouragement from his brothers definitely weren’t helping either.

“Ye stupid son of a bitch,” Declean groaned.

“Real smooth, asshole,” Finn added with a sigh.

“I knew we were gonna pay for Ma dropping ye on yer head,” Liam said, shaking his head in disgust as he disappeared, probably to go pace in Tristan’s room.

“Well, as much fun as this has been, and it’s been loads,” the annoying woman said, cutting through the silence as she got to her feet. “I have to go, but I really need to speak with Detective Black when he wakes up,” she said, handing a business card over to Denny, who couldn’t seem to stop glaring at him.

Yup, it was really fucking great to be human.