The Pediatrician's Personal Protector Read online

  He blinked. He couldn’t quite read Dagewood. The man’s gun hand was trembling, he swayed on his feet and his florid cheeks and neck were losing color at an alarming rate.

  “I’m going to tell Christy and Glo to get up off the couch now, okay?”

  The detective’s fingers tightened around the grip of the gun.

  Reilly held up a hand, signaling Christy and Glo to stay still for the moment. “What do you say?”

  “I’m a detective,” Dagewood repeated.

  Reilly saw the man’s fingertips turn white. He took a step toward him. “That’s right, Detective—” he said softly. “Everything’s going to work out—”

  In a deliberate, unhurried motion, Dagewood pressed the tip of the barrel against his head.

  “No!” Reilly screamed and sprang forward with all the strength he had left in him, but his voice was drowned out by the gun blast.

  Through a red-spotted haze he saw Christy and Glo’s mouths open, but if they were screaming, he couldn’t tell. Then the room was swarming with black-garbed officers in body armor and helmets and guns.

  The last thing he heard was Ace’s solemn, regretful voice in his ear. “We were damn unlucky this time.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Before the echo of the gunshot had faded, before Christy had fully processed what had happened, the shabby room in the ramshackle house was overrun with men in black uniforms with helmets, shields and guns.

  Dazed and in shock from the awful sight of Detective Dagewood shooting himself, she hardly remembered what had happened next. She vaguely remembered being guided out of the house to a waiting ambulance, which sped off to the St. Tammany Parish hospital while EMTs cleaned the blood and brain matter off her and checked to be sure she was uninjured.

  She asked everyone she saw, EMTs, physicians, nurses, clerical staff, about Reilly, but she didn’t get an answer until Detective Ryker Delancey came into the emergency room cubicle where the ER nursing supervisor had deposited her and told her to stay put.

  “Detective Delancey,” she said, recognizing him immediately as Reilly’s brother. How she’d ever thought the two of them looked alike, she didn’t know. Reilly was much more handsome, and less somber. His eyes were bluer too, she was sure.

  “How is Reilly?” she asked. “Please tell me he’s okay.”

  “They’ve got him in surgery to remove the bullet from his shoulder. It nicked the bone, so the surgery may take a while. But they tell me he’s doing fine.”

  “What about the other shot. That—Dagewood shot him in the chest. I thought Reilly was dead!”

  Ryker nodded. “His body armor stopped the bullet. He’s going to have a monstrous bruise, and they think the impact may have broken a rib, but he was lucky.”

  She nodded, feeling very close to tears. “It was my fault. If I hadn’t gone down there to talk to Glo, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Blaming yourself isn’t going to solve anything,” Ryker said in his direct, pragmatic way. “It would have all come to a head eventually. Reilly knew the danger.”

  She cleared her throat and tried to swallow the knot that had lodged there. “I can’t stop thinking about him, bleeding and hurt. Yet he still tried—to stop Dagewood from shooting himself.”

  Ryker nodded. “The ER has released you. I’m going to take you out to the waiting room. My fiancée Nicole is there. She’s going to drive you back to Reilly’s place so you can get some sleep. I’ll stay here until he’s out of surgery.”

  Christy started to protest that she wanted to stay too, but the visions in her head stopped her. Visions of Detective Dagewood shooting Reilly—a fellow police officer. The house swarming with SWAT officers dressed like—like ninjas or special ops soldiers or something.

  And Reilly, hurt and bleeding, because of her. Because she’d refused to trust him enough to tell him the whole truth.

  She just needed to get away—from the police, from the hospital, from everything. At least for a little while. Guilt washed over her as she thought about her father, lying upstairs in the cardiac care unit, critically ill. But no matter how selfish it was, she didn’t even want to see him right now. She needed some time alone.

  Ryker led her out to the waiting room and introduced her to Nicole Beckham, his fiancée. Nicole was a pixielike young woman with a personality as pert as her appearance. When she saw Christy though, she gave one searching look into her eyes and said, “Come on. Let’s get you home. You look like you need some alone time.”

  Dazedly, Christy reflected that she’d probably love to have Nicole as a friend, later, when and if she was able to crawl out of this numbing mental fog.

  She waited until she and Nicole were alone in Nicole’s car to tell her she didn’t want to stay at Reilly’s. She preferred to go to a hotel.

  HER FATHER WAS DEAD. Christy had gotten the call in the middle of her meeting with the chief of staff at Children’s Hospital in Boston. With permission from the St. Tammany Parish sheriff’s office, she’d flown back there to make arrangements for a leave of absence to care for her dad. But he’d gone into cardiac arrest less than forty-eight hours after she’d boarded the plane.

  Now she stood under the canopy at the Shady Lawn Cemetery in Covington, as a slow, cold rain fell. It soaked into her shoes and seeped through her coat and into her very bones. There was nothing more miserable than a cold rain in Louisiana.

  She watched the cemetery workers operate the mechanical device that lowered her dad’s coffin into the ground between her mother and sister. The funeral director had tried to get her to leave, but she wasn’t ready. She wanted some time by herself, to say goodbye to her family.

  Getting that time alone hadn’t been easy. To her surprise, there had been reporters and curious onlookers at the funeral and at the grave site. She’d been escorted through the crowd by the funeral director, who had shielded her under a huge black umbrella. Then the hired pallbearers had clustered around her, hiding her from the rubberneckers and the TV cameras, while two policemen politely but firmly refused to allow anyone to get close to the grave site.

  She should have expected the attention. Her dad was a famous serial killer, after all.

  Finally, one by one, they gave up and left, and Christy had a little time alone. The funeral director stood respectfully at the far corner of the canopy with his back to her.

  “Christy?”

  The voice was little more than a whisper and yet she jumped.

  “Sorry.” Reilly stepped up beside her, dripping wet. He was in a dark raincoat, for all the good it did, since the left sleeve was draped over his bandaged arm. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She was surprised to see him. She hadn’t talked to him since that awful day over a week ago when the EMTs had whisked her off to the emergency room. Reilly had still been in surgery when Ryker’s fiancée Nicole had picked her up at the hospital and driven her by Reilly’s condo to get her clothes, and then to a hotel.

  The next day, she’d gone by Reilly’s hospital room, but he’d been asleep.

  She hadn’t tried to wake him up—hadn’t wanted to. She’d just stood at the door and watched him for a while.

  His face had been so pale, even against the white hospital sheets. Every so often, he’d winced and his brow had wrinkled. It had hurt her to see him so helpless, so vulnerable, so—human.

  But not as much as when Dagewood’s bullet had torn into the flesh of his shoulder. The blast, the impact, the blood spatter. The bullet that had ripped into his flesh, had ripped her heart into pieces.

  After standing beside her in silence for a few minutes, Reilly spoke. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

  “Are you?” she asked.

  She felt Reilly withdraw slightly, and immediately she regretted her words. There was no reason to be mean to him. He’d almost died protecting her.

  But at the moment, she had very little control over not only her words, but her thoughts and even her feelings. She’d thought she was ready for
her father’s death. She’d even thought it would be a relief, and maybe, in a way, it was.

  But her dad’s death was also the end of her family. Mother, sister, now father. There was no one left but her. As if to emphasize that fact, the creak of the lever that was lowering her father’s coffin into the grave stopped and a metallic thud echoed from the hole. It had hit bottom. She cringed.

  “Why don’t we go,” Reilly said as the echo faded.

  She nodded, still not taking her eyes off the grave. She stepped forward and looked down at the coffin. “Goodbye Daddy,” she whispered. “I hope you can rest easy now.”

  She didn’t allow herself to think about angels and devils, or heaven and hell. She chose to believe that he was in a place of peace, with her mother and Autumn, and was no longer suffering, either physically or mentally.

  Reilly’s right hand slipped into her left, and he tugged gently. She let him guide her away from the grave site and onto the path that led to the road. He gave a nod to the funeral director as he led her to a waiting taxi.

  The driver opened the rear door for her. She climbed in and Reilly climbed in beside her. The driver got in the driver’s seat and pulled out into the road.

  Christy sat there with Reilly’s right arm against her left. His lean, strong bulk beside her was at once comforting and disturbing. Neither one was necessarily a bad thing.

  “Sorry,” Reilly said gently. “I’m soaking wet.”

  “So am I,” she said, and allowed herself to lean slightly into him. She could feel his warmth even through the wet clothes. Dear God, how was she going to live without him?

  She closed her eyes, willing herself not to think like that. She’d known from the beginning that any relationship they might have was doomed. He was a cop. Hadn’t she had enough trouble with cops in her life? If ever there were two people who could never be together, it was she and Reilly.

  “I see you got your pink cast cut off.”

  She looked down at the wrist guard on her right wrist. “Yes, I did.” She flexed her fingers. “It’s not completely healed yet, but it will be soon.”

  Reilly nodded without speaking.

  After a moment, Christy looked out the car window. “Where are we going?”

  “To my parents’ house. They’re having an anniversary party. The whole family gets together.”

  “No, please. I can’t. Just take me to my hotel,” she said. “Then you can go.”

  Reilly shook his head. “No. You have to go with me. My mother sent me after you.”

  She couldn’t. She just couldn’t deal with meeting strangers. Not today of all days.

  Reilly turned toward her and she heard a barely audible gasp. “Oh, Reilly. I didn’t ask how you are. You’re hurting.”

  “A little. But I’m fine. I’ll be out for a few weeks, until this damn shoulder heals, and it feels like somebody launched a cannon into the middle of my chest, but I’m fine.” He paused. “I wanted to check on you, but by the time I could, you were gone.”

  She nodded. “I had to go back to Boston to arrange for leave. I thought—” She swallowed. “I went to ask for more time to care for Daddy.”

  Reilly’s hand covered hers. She pulled it away. “Reilly, please take me to my hotel. I appreciate your mother’s invitation, but I don’t feel like talking to strangers.”

  “They’re not strangers. They’re family.”

  “Right. To you. They’re your family. Not mine.” She winced at the harsh tone of her voice and resisted the urge to put her hand against her throat. She’d sounded so—mean.

  “They could be.”

  Christy was sure she’d heard him wrong. “What?”

  “They could be,” he repeated.

  She turned to look at him. Those intense, ridiculously blue eyes were on her, but for the first time since she’d known him, they weren’t sparkling with confidence. They were wide and full of something she couldn’t quite put a name to. Doubt? Apprehension? Fear?

  “I don’t—” she said, not even sure what she was protesting. “I can’t—”

  “Can’t what?” His eyes changed then. Not that the apprehension was gone exactly. But something darker, something dangerous broke through. The brilliant, clear blue of his irises seemed to turn a deep navy and his brows lowered.

  “Can’t what, Christy?” he demanded.

  She swallowed. “You’re—you’re a cop.”

  “Yeah? So what?”

  She moved away from him—not far, as the backseat of the taxi wasn’t that big. He grasped her hand again, not allowing her to break contact.

  “So what?”

  “I can’t—I don’t—”

  “You can’t trust a cop. Is that it?” Now his eyes were blazing. “After all that’s happened to your family, there’s no way, right?”

  She opened her mouth but nothing came out. His vehemence was scaring her. She’d only seen him like this once before, but then, his anger hadn’t been directed at her. Now it was. Distractedly, she noticed that the taxi had taken a turn then come to a stop.

  “If that’s what you really think, then fine. I’ll send you on your way back to your hotel. But first, I want you to think about something.” He stopped and closed his eyes for a few seconds.

  She couldn’t help but study his face. The skin over his cheekbones and temples was drawn and his lips were tight at the corners. He was exhausted and in pain. And it was her fault. “Reilly, don’t—”

  “Shut up, please,” he said quietly without opening his eyes. “I need you to listen to me for just a minute.”

  She waited.

  He finally opened his eyes. “You do trust me, Christy. You may not realize it, but you’ve trusted me ever since you first spoke to me at the courthouse. And not once have I betrayed your trust. Not once.”

  Christy frowned at him.

  He watched her carefully, then leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes again. “Just think about it.”

  “Reilly?” she said, but he didn’t answer. She put her hand on his forehead. He was hot, and his skin was damp with sweat. The flesh beneath his eyes looked faintly bruised.

  He was wrong about her trusting him. Wasn’t he? Hadn’t she been wary of him ever since she’d found out he was Detective Ryker Delancey’s twin brother?

  After all, Ryker had arrested her father and put him in jail, where he’d had a heart attack. How could she trust him or his identical twin brother?

  But Reilly had been there for her every single time she’d needed him. From her attack at the Oak Grove Inn to the moment she’d been taken hostage by Jazzy and Detective Dagewood.

  He’d declared himself her knight in shining armor, and that’s exactly what he was. Tears welled in her eyes and slipped past her lids to slide down her cheeks.

  “You’re right, Reilly,” she whispered brokenly. Her fingers still stroked his forehead. “You’ve kept me safe from the very first moment we met. I owe my life to you.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” he muttered without moving. “That’s not what this is about.”

  She swallowed. Mama, Daddy, Autumn—help me. “My mother was killed by a policeman. My sister was killed by a detective. My father—” Her voice broke, so she stopped. With each word she said, Reilly’s face grew more grim, his lips tighter.

  After a moment she continued, “But for what it’s worth, and whether my family…approves or not, I’m in love with a cop. A cop who’s been my knight in shining armor from the moment I first laid eyes on him.”

  To her surprise, Reilly’s pinched lips relaxed and spread in a little smile. He caught her hand in his and brought it to his lips. When he opened his eyes, Christy gasped at the impact of his gaze. “I’ve loved you since I watched you walk across the marble floor of the courthouse, Doc. I’ve just been waiting for you to realize you love me.”

  “You could have just told me,” she said and laughed, even though tears were still streaming down her face.

  Reill
y shook his head and then pulled her to him and kissed her. “No,” he murmured against her lips. “You had to figure it out yourself.”

  Somewhere in the middle of a longer, deeper kiss, Christy heard the taxi driver clear his throat.

  Reilly pulled away. “Okay,” he said. “Are you ready to meet your family?”

  The words tumbled from his lips without effort. But to Christy they sounded alien. “My family,” she said hesitantly, testing the words.

  Reilly nodded. “They can be, if you let them.”

  She looked out the hazy windows of the taxi. They were parked in a long driveway that curved in front of a huge brick mansion. White columns spanning three stories and at least four balconies ran along the front and around to the sides of the huge house. There were more than a dozen cars parked in the driveway.

  “How—” Christy swallowed. “How big is your family?” she managed.

  “Not as big as I want it to be,” he said. “I want babies.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “You do?”

  “Sure. Why do you think I’m asking a pediatrician to marry me? I figure if anybody’s good with kids—”

  Her breath caught. “Oh, Reilly!”

  “Okay, wait. Before you get all mushy, I need to tell you the real reason I want you to marry me. I’d really like to beat Ryker at one thing. He’s planning on getting married in June. How about we have a Christmas wedding?”

  “You want to marry me so you can beat your twin brother?” she asked, unable to keep a smile off her face.

  Reilly shrugged, then winced. “Well, among other reasons,” he said. “Do you think you’d be willing to marry a cop?”

  “As long as it’s the right cop,” she answered, leaning over to kiss him.

  The taxi driver cleared his throat again, but the knight in shining armor and his damsel, no longer in distress, didn’t hear him.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7512-0

  THE PEDIATRICIAN’S PERSONAL PROTECTOR

  Copyright © 2010 by Rickey R. Mallory