Page 20 of The Chance

Guthrie’s hand moved to her shoulder, an instinctive attempt to comfort her. He could feel her tension, her fear. “Is he still saying Chad attacked him first?”

And when his brothers erupted in anger again once they learned Hodges had been harassing Genny for a few weeks—Gene pacing, Grady demanding answers—Guthrie didn’t miss how both Aubrey and Ayla flinched, how they shrank back. Aubrey and Ayla were afraid. Not just nervous—truly afraid. It hurt him to see them so afraid.

Without a second thought, he pulled Aubrey into his arms and whispered into her ear. “It’s okay now. You are safe now. All of you. I promise.”

She let out a shaky breath, her body relaxing against his. Guthrie held her, feeling her tremble slightly. His hand moved to the back of her head, guiding her to rest against his shoulder.

He kissed her forehead, his heart tightening. Hadn’t she been through enough?

Guthrie just held her.

18

Justin leanedback against the counter in the breakroom, his arms crossed. He didn’t want to be dealing with Dale now. He just didn’t.

The guy gave him a sick feeling in his stomach every time he looked at him now. Justin used to admire this man when he’d been younger. Now… the guy just disgusted him.

“That bitch doesn’t know when to leave things alone,” Dale said. He’d been going on and on about Aubrey for days. Something about the audits everyone was talking about had Dale running scared.

Justin thought he knew why.

He kept his tone even. “She’s doing her job. And as far as I know, she’s following the protocol set by the Carringtons. Either she does it, or someone else will.”

Dale just snarled. He had a problem with women. A big one. And a beautiful woman in charge was just too much for Dale to handle.

Justin was sick of all of it. All of the bullshit. HeknewDale was up to his eyeballs in stuff he shouldn’t be. Justin didn’t have time for that shit.

Didn’t they have enough to be worried about? He had more patients than he really had time to see, and the audits Aubrey was heading were really going to hit his department hard. He thought he’d cleaned everything up from the guy before him, but it was possible he had missed something.

Justin couldn’t make it to where he wanted to be if everything was screwed up at his first hospital. He wanted more from his career than that.

Dale was going to screw it all up for him.

Justin didn’t know exactly what he was supposed to do now.

Dale spent the next half hour—all of Justin’s damned break between patients—bitching and growing angrier and angrier over those fucking audits.

What was the big deal? Audits happened all the damned time.

Unless Dale had something to hide with the audits, too.

He was still thinking about what Dale’s problems were when Mandy found him on his way back to his department. He was the only ortho on staff at BCGH. He took patients every afternoon, and sometimes later into the night.

“Well, here you are. I’ve been sending you messages for ten minutes.”

He always turned his phone down when he was in with patients. She knew that. Mandy was a nurse practitioner, working under a pair of family practitioners, including Dale.

She was the one who told him about the problems with Dale in the first place. She was the one who had gotten all of this started.

“I was with a patient.” And now he was tired. It had been a damned long day. And he… had found something. Dale was seriously messed up in some shit. And he was trying to drag Justin down with him.

“You look… tired.” She actually stopped moving long enough to look at him, with concern in her eyes.

“It was a rough afternoon. What can I do for you, Nurse Kirby?” He didn’t really feel up to the games tonight. He just didn’t.

“How about we do dinner? Mamaw’s Place? I hear they’re hiring live music on weekends now.” She ran her fingers over his chest.

“Are you asking me on a date?” They had only ever been a few places together. She was almost reluctant to be seen with him at times. Justin had never understood that.

---