Page 73 of Secret Pleasure (Bound Hearts 13)

“What were Khalid’s bodyguards doing following her?” Shane snapped. “Not that I’m bitching, mind you.”

Chase only snorted at the latter comment.

He wasn’t bitching, Shane thought with a surge of complete thankfulness. It had been the bodyguards and the weapons they drew that had saved both him and Alyssa from being struck when the SUV turned and came for her again.

“He said his neck was itching,” Chase sighed. “He sent them out behind her when she left the restaurant. Marty followed them. She told Khalid she was taking the limo home.”

There was no amusement in Chase’s voice.

Any response Shane would have had was forgotten as Alyssa’s eyes came open slowly, her gaze connecting immediately with Shane’s.

She frowned, her gray eyes dark, resigned.

“I should have guessed,” she sighed. “You and ’Bastian are chaos,” she whispered miserably. “Complete chaos, Shane.”

“I know, baby.” Brushing her hair back gently, he kept his gaze trained on her, watching her closely. “Just lie still, honey; the ambulance will be here soon.”

He saw the alarm that filled her eyes, her expression.

“No.” Struggling to sit up, she slapped at his hands and pushed at Chase’s as they tried to convince her to lie still. “Take me home. Now. Call Dad and take me home.”

“Alyssa—”

“Chase.” She turned her eyes to the investigator. “Get me out of here. You have to. Get me out of here.”

“Ms. Hampstead—”

“Do it.” Ian stepped up to them, his voice hard as Shane felt a snarl rising to his lips.

“Call Dr. Brennan, Chase; he’ll meet us there. I just got off the phone with the senator myself. It’s imperative we get her the hell out of here. My car just pulled up. Let’s go.”

Imperative.

Lifting her quickly, gently, into his arms, Shane moved to the limo and ducked inside, aware that only Ian and Courtney followed. As the vehicle pulled from the curve Shane focused on Ian, anger, fear, racing through him.

“If anything happens to her because of this, Sinclair, I won’t be a forgiving man,” he promised Ian.

“Shush,” Alyssa mumbled, her head resting on his shoulder, shudders of reaction beginning to cause her to tremble in his arms. “Hospital is a last resort only.”

“Why?” Frustration ate at him. He could sense too many things she was keeping from him, holding back. Even as he had slept with her slight body shielded between him and Sebastian, both of them had sensed the fact that she was fighting to hold her emotions as far from them as possible.

She didn’t answer and he wasn’t about to harass her. Yet.

Once he knew she was safe, once he knew her injuries weren’t serious, then he’d demand the answers. And by God, he’d get them too.

17

Sebastian, Landra, and her son, Jeb, were standing outside Alyssa’s suite after Dr. Brennan, his wife, and a fearsome old bat of a nurse ran Shane out. Once he’d placed her on the couch, it seemed they were finished with him.

He wasn’t finished, though.

Stepping outside the suite into her office, he faced the others. Ian, Courtney, Khalid, Marty, and Chase were there as well as Jeb and Landra. Al

yssa’s office, which once seemed rather roomy, was filling up fast.

As Shane stepped from the office to the private, sheltered patio, it was all he could do not to step around the hedges where the scent of tobacco drifted and bum a cigarette from the security guard taking his break.

“Don’t even think about it,” Sebastian growled as he joined him. “I didn’t think you’d ever stop that nasty habit.”