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CHAPTER 18

An older version of Houston was smiling back at her. He was just as tall as his son, and he had kind eyes. Brooke didn’t exactly have great memories of hospitals, not after what had happened to her years ago, and the death of her mother when she’d been twelve. But she remembered doctors with kind eyes.

It had her immediately relaxing a little. “Houston’s hand, I think he broke it.”

“In the storm?” His dad asked, immediately turning toward Houston. “What happened?”

“Against an ass—a jerk’s—face, Dad. It can wait.” He better introduced Brooke, then told his father a very condensed version of what had happened with Dwight Hoby. He ended with a watered down description of how his hand had gotten hurt.

Houston Evers’s dad…liked to fuss over his son. That was evident from the onset. Brooke was half in love with him within fifteen minutes.

Houston’s dad, not Houston.

She had to wonder if Houston would be just like his father with someone he loved.

Her father loved her like that.

For the first time in a long time Brooke let herself wonder what it would be like to be loved by a man like that. To love a man in return just like that.

Maybe...someday. With a man she knew she could trust completely.

“Get checked in at the desk. I’m here for several more hours, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get your mother to leave any earlier than that. Then again…maybe you can convince her it’s time for her to go home. Back to her little chicks.”

Little chicks? Brooke had seen two of Houston’s brothers once, when they came to the radio station to get him one day to go to a baseball game at the college campus. They had been extra tall, extra strong, extra broad shouldered, and extra gorgeous.

They weren’t exactly little chicks. Still, it had her smiling. Just a little.

He sounded like such a dad.

Worry for her own father was a constant cloud in the back of her head. As soon as they were done at the hospital, she was going to find a way home. Somehow.

Her dad was out there, and he was looking for her. Brooke just knew it.

Houston checked in with the registration desk and they were given a bracelet for him to wear with a yellow mark on it. He told her it was the hospital’s coding system. And that yellow was a lower priority. They were going to be there for a long time. He led her to two hard plastic seats in the corner, near the television. The college station was running updates on the storm. The mayor was on the screen now. His normally handsome face was scratched and battered. They’d reported on the radio hours ago that even the mayor and City Hall had been threatened by the storm. City Hall had been…obliterated. The mayor and an unnamed woman had been trapped inside.

No one was unscathed.

Brooke settled in the chair, shifting her chair closer to Houston’s and away from the middle-aged man in the chair on the other side of her.

When Houston slipped his uninjured arm around her, she let him pull her closer. She… liked it when he touched her. She didn’t want to pull away or avoid his touch.

It took her a moment to process why.

On a deep level, so intrinsic it was almost like breathing…she trusted the man next to her not to physically hurt her.

She couldn’t explain it yet. But…she wanted to see what happened next.

More than anything.

“Once we’re done here, I’ll make sure you get home to your dad,” he said, leaning closer to her. “I promise.”

“You always keep your promises?”

He didn’t even hesitate. “Yes. I do my best.”

And she believed him.