Page 17 of Rescuing Our Bride

He can’t seem to sit still. If he’s not fidgeting in his chair, he’s pacing by the large window or coming in and out of the room. He hasn’t asked to speak to me privately or discuss my kidnapping in front of Mom, even though I know he doesn’t believe she can hear us.

Nursing assistants come to check Mom’s vitals, an orderly comes in to collect the trash, and the nurse comes in to add meds to the IV. I know the routine. It’s unwelcome but familiar. We’ve been through this with her before.

And just like last time, I’m at her side, holding her hand. I’m right where I am supposed to be.

“Anna.”

I turn to my father, expecting it to be him calling my name, but he’s standing with his back to me, staring out the window as if there’s something more important than my mom waiting out there for him. And then the lighting in the room shifts, and I see his reflection in the window.

My fiancé.

“Darling, you’re back.” Patrick’s icy tone raises goosebumps across my skin. He crosses the room, stopping when he reaches my side. When I refuse to look at him or acknowledge his presence, he grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks my head back, forcing me to meet his steely gaze. “I’m so relieved to see you. I’ve been worried sick about you, my love.”

There’s no love for me in his voice. Or his heart.

Patrick wraps my hair around his fist tighter, threatening to pull the strands, root and all, from my scalp. He leans in and mashes his lips against mine. The kiss is rough, bruising, and demanding. His teeth clash against my lip, biting down until I gasp from the pain and offer an opportunity for him to slip his tongue into my mouth. He tastes like alcohol and stale cigarettes, with a coppery tang of blood from the bite on my lip.

“Wait until I get you home, you little bitch.” He grumbles the threat under his breath before untangling his fingers from my hair, pulling away, and straightening to his full height. The threat was for me. The cool but respectable man standing beside me now is for the public. “You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. I think it’s time we get you home so you can rest. You can come back and visit your mother another time, dear.”

“No.” I scoot the chair closer to my mother’s bed and further from my husband-to-be. “I want to stay with my mom. What if she wakes up and I’m not here?”

“Anna, either you leave this hospital room or your mother does. It’s entirely up to you. I don’t care either way.” Except he does. The glacial tone of his voice gives him away.

Oh, I hold no illusion that my fiancé cares about me. Or my mother. But if there’s one thing Patrick Calhoun cares about besides money and power, it’s winning. He hates to lose. When Mark and Jax stole me right out from under him, they made him look like a fool. He’s pissed and looking for someone to blame.

I should have known that person would be me.

Patrick Calhoun isn’t a man who wastes time with idle threats. If he says he’ll have my mother’s treatments stopped and her tossed out of her hospital room, he’ll do it, without a second thought. And I’ll still end up in his mansion, trapped behind the wrought-iron gate and Fort Knox-worthy security system. It will be better if I go along with him and play the agreeable fiancé.

After all, that’s what I came home to do. Isn’t it?

When Jax and Mark dropped me off, I gave each of them a kiss goodbye before I climbed out of the van and left them like curbside-to-go on the parking lot. And it was goodbye—at least for me. They had to have known and felt all the things I was too scared to say in that kiss. I meant what I said back at the farmhouse. I am marrying Patrick. I was so sure I could go through with it.

And now? Oh, I’m still going to go through with it. I’m just not sure I’ll survive it.

Part of me hopes Jax and Mark are still in the van waiting for me to come back outside, to come up with a new plan to save my mom and stay together. That same stupid, naïve part of my brain hopes they’ll save me from myself and come to my rescue a second time.

Another part of me hopes they’re long gone, that as soon as the hospital doors closed behind me, they shifted into reverse and left me in the rearview. I can’t trust them to fix this. No, that’s not quite right. I can’t risk it. I’m not willing to take the risk. Not where my mother is concerned. But that’s just semantics. Trust. Risk. If I did trust them, it wouldn’t be a risk, would it?

My heart, on the other hand, just wants to stop aching. To forget about Jax and Mark and pretend they never stormed into my life, cracked open my shell, and let all these emotions leak out. Attraction, affection. Lust, infatuation. I feel everything for them and it’s too much, too soon. I know that. I know how insane my feelings are for them, but I can’t help it. They make me feel alive, wanted, and seen.

Except, right now, I don’t want them to see me.

I don’t want them to see this walk of shame I’m taking with my head down, gaze fixed on the toes of my shoes, and Patrick’s bruising grip on my arm. I don’t want Patrick to find out who they are and try to retaliate. I don’t want them to get hurt. I can’t bear it.

It’s ironic, considering my marriage to Patrick will hurt them.

It will hurt me too. But a hell of a lot less than losing my mom, or losing them if—no, not if, when—Patrick came after them.

Patrick pulls his cell from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and calls his driver, ordering him to bring the car around. We’re out the main doors of the hospital, and I am being shoved into the back seat of a black Lincoln Towncar before I have a chance to scan the parking lot in search of Mark and Jax’s old beat-up, white and gray primer panel van.

They’re gone, I tell myself. It’s for the best. It becomes my mantra during the car ride. I silently repeat this over and over in my head until we pull through the ten-foot-high wrought iron gate and fencing that surrounds Patrick’s mansion.

“Bring her inside,” Patrick barks the order to his driver and opens his door before the car comes to a full stop. He’s out of the car, determination in his stride as he storms into the house without a backward glance.

A hulk of a man with a thick scar marring the right side of his face from his temple slides out from the driver’s seat and stalks over to the open rear passenger door. He’s a mass of bulging veins and muscles that strain beneath the fabric of his black suit. It’s expensive but not tailor-made and clings to his body like it’s two sizes too small. “You can do this the easy way or the hard way, Mrs. Calhoun.”

Something tells me this man will enjoy the hard way.

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