Page 26 of Rogue

Then he releases her hand and follows me out the door.

“I think you might’ve missed your calling after all,” I tell him once we’re in the hall.

He grins. “That would make one of you. But I do what I can. That poor lady just needed a little comfort.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I don’t think I would’ve been able to calm her down without meds.”

“You can make it up to me by saying you’ll have dinner with me again tonight,” he says.

“Tonight I will need to sleep,” I tell him.

“Come on, Rockheart, just say yes,” he says and grins wider. “You know you want to.”

“What did you call me?” I say and laugh.

“I don’t like the way we left it,” he says. “So, I want a do over. I think you do too.”

I do want to see him again, but I don’t know if that’s a good idea. But I do know that everything is pleasant and warm when he’s here, and kind of turbulent and cold when he leaves.

I might change my mind again later, but what I say is, “I’m on until seven tonight.”

“And you’ll see me then,” he says and just keeps looking at me, that hot forest fire raging over the cool mountain lake in his eyes. It’s impossible to look away from them.

“I should get back to my patient,” I say. But I still can’t look away.

“Probably a good idea,” he says and seems to be having the same issue.

But I’m a grown woman and a doctor with a patient waiting. I finally get up the common sense to look away first and go back into the trauma room.

But I really don’t want to.

If I was ten years younger, or even just five, I could spend days just looking into his eyes. Or thinking about doing it.

Which is what I’ll be doing for the rest of the day. Good idea or not.

11

Rogue

My only two priorities as I returned to the clubhouse were breakfast and bed. I know there’s enough food, because Lotus insisted on stopping at the supermarket on the way home from the ER so we could buy all the stuff she was on her way to buy when she was attacked. I ended up carrying about a ton of groceries from the car to the kitchen before I could go meet Melody. Making me late. But Lotus was traumatized enough. I didn’t want to compound it by having her worry about what we’re all gonna eat. She’s been doing the housekeeping since she joined us six years ago and she can get a little fanatical about it.

The barroom is empty as I expected it to be this early in the morning. All the tables are neatly cleaned and the even bar counter is polished to a gleam. We don’t even party like we used to these days. The room smells faintly of lavender and wood polish. Meaning Lotus was already in here cleaning up. Probably couldn’t sleep because of the pain and the PTSD.

The huge kitchen smells of coffee and pastries, but only Skye is in there, sitting at the kitchen island and munching on granola by the sound of it.

“Good morning,” I say and as I pass her on my way to the fridge.

“Not really,” she says and continues munching.

I glance at her over my shoulder then go back to deciding what kind of sandwich I want for breakfast.

“Why’s that?” I ask and grab as many ingredients as I can carry since a sandwich with everything sounds about right.

“I’ve been up all night trying to find something on Hydra Unlimited,” she says and munches some more, making it sound like she’s breaking rocks with her teeth. “The whole team’s been at it actually. I only just sent them up to get some sleep.”

Skye is our chief intel officer, but she has a team of six other talented hackers and computer whizzes working with her. Together they’ve never yet failed to track down a target for us.

Well, except Ghost.

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