Page 75 of Sinful Seduction
“This is what it is to have a family, I guess.” I pull her in and say nothing when she smacks face-first against my chest. She could have turned. She could have leaned in for a proper hug. But she chose to smoosh her nose and smother herself for a moment. “What if I told you it’s gonna work out? What if I promise to help make arrangements, and I won’t step aside or attend any weddings until I feel the situation is under control?”
“I can take care of myself,” Steve murmurs. “You actually don’t have to worry about me.”
Vibrating with rage, Minka inches to the side and glares. “Shut up, Steven. Nobody asked you.”
I choke on my bubbling laughter and pull her back again. “It’s going to be fine.”
She drops her lips into a sad little pout. “You promise?”
“I already did, didn’t I?” I slide my thumb beneath her chin and tilt her head back, all so I can taste those pouty lips with ease. “We’ve got this. Besides, I have an idea for who to hire, and I have connections that might make it easier to tempt her away from her current place of employment.”
“You do?”
“It’ll mean calling in a favor.Slipping.” I brush the tip of her nose with mine. “But it’ll be worth it. In the meantime,” I glance across just in time to catch Steve’s droopy eyes close and a long yawn take control of his body. “You sleep. We’re leaving. Mayet needs dinner and meds and another one of those eight-hour downtime kinda nights.”
“We can’t just leave him here,” she grumbles. “He’s a dying man.”
“He’s not dying!” I chuckle. “In fact, he’s healthy enough that the best-ranked cardiothoracic surgeon on this side of the country deemed him dischargeable. Night, Steve.”
He waves, already halfway unconscious. “Night.”
“We’re going home.” I snag Minka’s hand and tug her toward the door, across the threshold, and when I find Doctor Fielder still within thumping distance, I take us the long way down the hall and find adifferentset of elevators to use. “I feel you’re a little over-enthusiastic in your rage, Chief.”
“Why? Because I’m holding a medical professional accountable to the patient she swore an oath to?” She punches the button for the ground floor. “She’s making the wrong choice.”
“She’s making anuncomfortablechoice.” I rest against the wall for our short ride down, and when we arrive, I push off again, take her hand, and lead her through a busy ER and onto the sidewalk outside. The lack of sunlight surprises me, the slight reprieve from the boiling heat, bringing it down to stifling instead, a welcome change. “It’s okay to feel a certain way about her decisions, especially when you’re not accustomed to giving a shit about many people. But this is her specialty, Minnnka. Not all doctors are created the same, and if she came to the George Stanley, throwing orders around and calling you out for things she disagreed with, you wouldn’t lie down and take it.”
“No shit, I wouldn’t. I’d kick her ass all the way to the second floor and lock her in a fridge.”
I massage the back of her neck and steer her toward home. “So maybe we trust you to take care of the already dead-people stuff, and Fielder can take care of the alive-people stuff. She says he’s ready, so instead of writing him off as rotting on his couch, why not trust her professional opinion and trust his ability to survive? He has a hundred percent success rate at it so far.”
“Thanks to Cato. That old jerk wouldn’t be so smiley if it weren’t for Cato’s quick thinking. We can’t put that on him again.” Licking her lips, she meets my eyes and gives herself away. Nervous. Scared. Anxious. “He’s just a kid, Archer, and God knows, he already carries so much in his head. Making him responsible for a ticking time bomb is a recipe for disaster.”
“And by disaster, you mean added trauma.” I pull her in and drop a kiss on top of her head. “It’s kinda nice seeing you being sweeter toward him. He’s not here to witness it,” I clarify with a grin. “But I’m here. It must be exhausting, huh?”
She lowers her gaze, rolling her eyes. “I know you’re about to say something that’ll annoy me.”
“To care so deeply, but outwardly, to show absolutely no emotion except, perhaps, rage.”
“There it is.”
“Your refusal to show public gooeyness is a defense mechanism. But beneath those walls you put up, all to keep the weak out, is a heart that beats for a hell of a lot more people than you’d ever admit to.”
“Still annoying.”
“I’m just saying, that’s all. Sometimes I worry I’ll wake up and find you smothering Cato with his own pillow. I’m stressed, thinking that at some point, you’re going to snap and demand that he leave. And I don’t mean how you constantly tell him to get out. I mean, the kind of demand where you actually mean it. He’s fearless, picking at you like it’s a fun new hobby he can’t get enough of, and you feed into it, giving him every scrap of attention he’s looking for.”
“Are you done pointing out my flaws yet?” She steps off the curb a single beat ahead of me, extending our arms until I quicken my pace and catch up. Then we cross the street and step up on the other side as one. “Cato and I already fixed all this, didn’t we? He said sorry. I said sorry. I even recall a hug that felt kinda nice and smooshy and, best of all, hardly public.”
I sling my arm over her shoulders and drag her back, because in a minute, we’ll be inside our apartment building and I’ll have to share her with my brother. He’ll watch her, and I’ll know he loves her. He’ll bicker with her, and I’ll know it’s because he just wants her to bite back.
She’s mine for just a minute, maybe two.
“I won’t lie, Minnnka. That smooshy hug had me feeling a certain way.”
“Yeah?”
“Jealous, mostly. He’s a boy, I know. But he’s a man, too. It would do us well not to forget that.”
