This was crazy. She’d basically been abducted by Allen Jacobson.
Her friends had been in on it.
Izzie hated that she had missed such an important conversation that pertained to her life here. “What did Jake say?”
“After we wheeled you into Rafe’s office through the back way—Rafe did that with Nikkie Jean by his side—you settled on Rafe’s couch and fell asleep. A great stream of drool was left on the leather, by the way. The rest of us discussed what happened, why it happened, and how to deal with it. Especially Marshall and Rafe.”
“What were you doing? Where was Jake?”
“No one could reach him, Izzie. Believe me: they tried. Even Marshall. As for me, I was keeping Nikkie Jean from calling the governor and requesting the national guard be assigned to follow your every move for the rest of your life. That, or the FBI had been mentioned as a possible resource. Or sending you to a shipping-container fortress somewhere in St. Louis, complete with a dozen armed guards.”
Well, ok, she could almost see that being necessary. Nikkie Jean being involved with Rafe’s twin meant that her calling the governor—who was married to Rafe’s sister—was a distinct possibility. Nikkie Jean didn’t panic often, but when she did, it was chaos. When Nikkie Jean was afraid, it was so much worse. Panicked and afraid—catastrophe. “But why you?”
“Because Marshall insisted that I stay close. Trying to limit who knew I was out there with you.”
“Why?”
“No one saw us out there together. Nikkie Jean and Rafe were already on their way outside. He was walking her back to the hospital to get her things and was going to take her back to his and Jillian’s place to meet up with his uncle and the children, who were visiting. If they hadn’t already been in the hall at W4HAV, they wouldn’t have heard me yelling in time to chase off the attackers. Marshall wants to use that to the TSP’s advantage right now.”
“How is that going to work? Don’t you have—oh, I don’t know—twenty-something surgeries scheduled for the next few weeks? A life to get back to? A girlfriend? A wife? Sixteen kids and a dog somewhere?” She was most definitely grumbling at him. The fear was gone from the big, dark pixie eyes.
She’d been so afraid when she’d first looked at him. Terrified. No wonder. She’d wakened in a place she definitely hadn’t fallen asleep in, with a man she didn’t really know all that well.
Something about her fear punched him right in the gut. Brought out every protective instinct he had. “Nikkie Jean has decided to put it around that Rafe asked me to take his place. Virat is going to run my department temporarily while I take this opportunity. Basically, I’m your cover. As for you, Nikkie Jean and Marshall concocted a nice little story of you being in a car accident because of the storm. You’re off on medical leave. Again.”
“Good thing I only used half my leave last time. This is getting insane.”
Allen stood there, pointing toward the passenger seat. Waiting. She’d have more to say.
He had a feeling Izzie would have definite opinions on just about everything.
He almost couldn’t wait. When she practically growled at him, Allen smiled.
He hadn’t felt this alive and actually useful for in a long time.
“I’m sorry they pulled you into this. They shouldn’t have.” Izzie wavered between anger and embarrassment. “I’d have been ok tucked into the hospital somewhere for a day or two while I slept off the effects of the concussion.”
Those effects had her fighting off a yawn. Yawning would weaken her position and she knew it.
“I don’t think you’d have been able to hide that long. Not at FCGH. Far too easy to find you out there.”
She was going to clobber Nikkie Jean—this whole thing had the earmarks of her best friend’s machinations. Not able to call out the governor like she’d wanted, of course Nikkie Jean would manage to find a way to whisk Izzie as far out of danger as she possibly could. With one of the few people on the planet Nikkie Jean actually trusted.
What Izzie didn’t understand was what he was going to get out of it.
“What else did Nikkie Jean say?”
“She wasn’t saying much at all,” he said in that same unhurriedly maddening tone. He kept dragging her toward the shiny silver van that probably cost more than Nikkie Jean—a pediatric surgeon—made in a year. The tires alone probably cost more than Izzie made in a month. “She was too scared. She loves you.”
That reminder had her going along with him. Nikkie Jean had had enough trouble lately. She didn’t need to be worrying about Izzie at the moment. Nikkie Jean still felt guilty for Izzie getting shot. She still blamed herself for not recognizing Wallace Henedy as her mother’s lover from Nikkie Jean’s childhood.
Guilt and pregnancy hormones had convinced Nikkie Jean she was responsible for Izzie. Completely.
If Izzie didn’t know where Nikkie Jean was coming from, it would have driven her crazy. Nikkie Jean was acting out of love. Izzie totally understood. She would have probably done the same thing for Nikkie Jean. “What did she do? Blackmail you into taking custody of me?”
“Something like that.” He unlocked the passenger door, and before Izzie could evade him, he wrapped strong hands around her waist and lifted her into the seat. Ok, so he was just as strong as he looked. Nothing wimpy about him. Ripcord lean and strong. His hands practically scorched her through the bulky sweatshirt she was engulfed in. “Stay, lady.”
“You need a dog, Allen. Something you can train to follow your every command.” But she stayed. She wasn’t afraid of him—not really—and she still hadn’t shaken off the sedative.
Maybe. She was getting a clearer head by the minute. Headache of doom was there—but she was starting to be able to think again.
No thought she had right now was a good one.
Allen, her new abductor, had taken charge and there was no denying that.
She was too loopy right now to fight him. When the sedative wore off, she’d be in too much pain to care what was going on or where she was. Or who she was with.
Izzie had had enough pain to last a lifetime.
Sobering thought.
She fingered the new cast on her left arm. She had an air splint on the right. Her right leg burned and ached every time she moved.
She couldn’t even drive herself anywhere right now. Even with the sedative, she still felt the pain. Enough to remind her that it was about to get a whole lot worse.
Just how completely dependent on him she was at that moment struck her.
He was her only hope in the real world for the foreseeable future.
All alone and stuck with Dr. Allen Jacobson. She wondered what the doofy first-shift nurses would have to say about that.
“What did you and Nikkie Jean give me, anyway?” It had to be the sedative clouding her head or something.
He named the sedative, and she tried to remember the side effects. Could cause drowsiness—she remembered that part, at least. No kidding. “Head still groggy?”
“Yes.”
“Probably will be for another hour or two. It was one of the safest sedatives, barely a step up from a local.”
“I know.”
“Are you in pain?”
In pain? That was a mild description. She’d had enough broken bones recently to know what it felt like. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry. The break was relatively mild at least. Colles fracture, and not too bad of one. Easily reduced. Rafe and the ortho tech handled that and decided conservative treatment was all that was needed. No surgery. You’ll need to do X-rays in about a month, if we can manage that. You got lucky. Those bastards slammed you to the concrete pretty hard. Hard enough I heard you hit—over the storm. I actually expected more damage than what you have.”
“I know.” She winced when she remembered what had happened. There was one indisputable fact. If he hadn’t been there, she’d be dead right now. Or in such serious trouble she couldn’t even begin to contemplate it at the moment. “Thank you, by the way. For getting me inside, for…fighting them off.” For saving her life again. They could have killed him. Taken her. It put things into clearer perspective. “It’s starting to become a habit with you, isn’t it? Tornado, active shooter, crazy abductors in the rain.”
“Something like that.” He reached over her and pulled the seat belt across her lap. His arm brushed her breasts. Awareness shot through her. She fought a shiver.
Well, hell. That was unexpected.
She should club herself with the still-wet cast and put herself out of her stupidity before she let herself even think something…well…stupid with him.
Both of them paused. Izzie just looked at him.
Really looked at him.
Allen Jacobson was male perfection. Kind of hard to deny that.
He had that whole hot All-American successful doctor thing going on that so many women at FCGH fawned all over. Practically had a harem with the doofy nurse brigade from first shift.
She was starting to understand why.
Now, he had a broken poet look in his eyes most of the time. A look many of the women at FCGH found even more irresistible.
Not her. She’d always rolled her eyes when the man’s name had come up in the sighing, stupid conversations. She’d tried to ignore the whole idea of him as a sexy male creature.
Now, though, that wasn’t exactly going to be easy.
Even in her head, Izzie came up short at a brick wall where her thoughts were going.
No, no, no. She was not going to see him as a man. Not going to happen. It seemed like she couldn’t work a single shift without rubbing up against him the wrong way.
That brought the wrong images to mind. The completely wrong images.
She wasn’t about to do any rubbing up against Allen Jacobson. Ever.
Izzie blamed the sedative.
It was the only answer for these sudden thoughts. Why she had let him swoop her off her feet and take control of her like a hero in a terribly cheesy romance novel.
Well.
Izzie never had gone for the take-charge, overly masculine kind of man. This wasn’t any different. Once her head cleared, she’d let the man know that in no uncertain terms.
She sat there like an idiot while he rounded the van and unlocked the driver’s side. Once he was inside and fastened in, she finally took a look in the back.
Horror filled her. No way. Oh, just no way.
Talk about a shaggin’ wagon. Right there in the back.
It was like a honeymoon suite on wheels. All it needed was rose petals strewn over the gray silk. Gray the exact color of Allen’s eyes.
“Oh no. No way.”
“What?”
“We are not sharing this thing. Not together. It’s not going to happen.”
There was only one bed. A thick mattress with what looked like a silk duvet in silver gray and very expensive pillows encased in silk a shade lighter.
All it needed was red roses and expensive chocolates and wine to be a mobile bordello. Perfect for a doctor on the make.
It looked barely big enough for him, let alone oceans wide like she’d need for her to ever consider climbing in next to her sworn enemy.
He’d literally just become her sworn-enemy number one.
The only other place possible for someone to sleep in was the seat in which she sat. With how she felt right now—that was not an option.
A massive part of her wanted to climb into that bed and sleep for a month. Let him drive her anywhere. She literally didn’t care at the moment.
The idea of giving him that kind of control was all that had her not doing that. “This van is so not going to work. Not even for one night.”
“We’ll have to make it work. It’s not registered in my name, it’s private, and it can go about anywhere a regular van can go. Relax. It’s a luxury RV, even if it is in a van. There are two slide-out walls. It’ll expand to give us much more room once we get to where we’ll park. Look at this like a vacation, and I’m the bus driver. We can go just about anywhere this side of the Mexican border.”
“Where are you going to sleep, Jacobson? I have a concussion; I’m supposed to sleep and take it easy for a few days, remember? How long am I going to be your hostage? You’re going to have to let me go sometime.”
The look he shot her was clear exasperation as he hit buttons on a remote that had the garage door opening and the engine starting on the RV. It purred like a contented—but caged—tiger.
She was in the belly of the beast. Either that—or about to become a certain beast’s dinner.
The vibration went straight up her spine.
Izzie took a better look around.
It really was fancy. Her apartment that she shared with Jake wasn’t anywhere near as high-end as this…van with a bed. “Where did you get this again?”
“Logan Lanning.”
Her stomach clenched at the name. It shouldn’t. He’d been dead for a while now.
“Great. Logan Lanning’s Shaggin’ Wagon. Am I still asleep? Drugged and in room 403 with the Cursed Nurse possessing me?”
“It was actually his parents’, Izzie. He inherited it from them, but never used it because of what happened with Lacy. When he was hurt, he had decided to sell everything that had belonged to his parents. When he died, it went as part of his estate. To my sister. He left me all of his bank accounts and my sister all of his worldly possessions, including his parents’ house and his condo. She lives there now. He didn’t have anyone else, besides his parents. They were going to travel the country in their retirement, but unfortunately, they didn’t live long enough to enjoy it. He died a year before Logan, and she was four months before her son. She didn’t feel like going on after she lost her husband. They were good people. Always made me feel welcome. Shelby was particularly close to his mother.”
“I see. I didn’t realize you actually knew his family.” She winced at how rude she had been. There had been grief, real grief in his words. So he’d lost his girlfriend, his best friend, another close friend, and Lanning’s parents—all within a few years’ time. She’d heard from his sister herself that they’d lost their parents ten years ago, too.
He seemed really alone. That…had to hurt him still. That kind of loss, it would change a person’s soul.
“I did. I had known them for years. They were unofficial godparents to my sister once I had her.”
“I’m so sorry, then. For your loss.”
“They were some of my closest friends. They helped me give Shelby some semblance of normalcy after our parents died. I’ll always respect them for that, be indebted for Shelby’s sake. I’m glad they weren’t here to see what Logan did. Maybe…losing them had something to do with his mental state at the time. The way he was the year before he died.”
“Let’s not talk about Logan Lanning. Ever.” Those were memories she was just too vulnerable to deal with right now. There was still pain in his voice over the loss of the Lanning family.
No wonder, too. Just to hear about it was sobering.
An entire family, gone. In the space of a year and a half. That idea saddened her more than she wanted to think about. She might not have liked Dr. Lanning, but she wouldn’t have wished that on anyone. “Where exactly are you abducting me to?”
“I’m not abducting you to anywhere. I’m whisking you away in a daring rescue. It’s all in how you look at things. Perspective, Nurse Izadora.”
“I still don’t know why you. You’re not exactly my Galahad, or anything like that.” Well. Technically he’d rescued her like Caine had rescued Nikkie Jean and the mayor had rescued Annie.
A few times now. A few really huge times now.
It wasn’t something romantic like it had been with Turner and Caine. It had mostly been circumstances. Rotten luck. Karma getting back at Izzie for some small slight she didn’t even remember. Maybe for something Izzie had done in a past life or something.
There was no way Izzie wanted romantic with the man next to her. The very idea had the habitual hives she’d had all her life flaring again.
No. This was not happening now.