Izzie wasn’t afraid of Allen. Nor was she going doofy over him anytime soon. On any level. She’d figured him out pretty early on—the man he’d been three years ago when she’d first started working at FCGH stuck out in her mind. He’d been one of the elite, the entitled, the men who thought they were better than all the little people—especially the nurses, assistants, and others who were just entering the medical fields—and arrogant.
Oh, he had walked around, thinking he was the king back then. Izzie had seen that from the very beginning.
Allen and his best buddy, Logan, had been beyond arrogant. They had never called anyone by name. Just, “Nurse, do this or that.”
She and Annie and Jillian had laughed about that so many times in those early years on second and third shift together. Even though they had all known that Allen certainly remembered Jillian’s name after about a year.
Izzie had thought it was a matter of time before they’d hooked up.
He sure didn’t look like he had back then, though. Not now. In the jeans and long-sleeve shirt, he looked stronger, harder—she’d heard through the Nikkie Jean grapevine that he’d taken to studying martial arts of some sort and lifting weights after Logan Lanning’s death. She could see where that exercise had made him even harder and toned. Whatever skills he’d picked up in martial arts had certainly paid off tonight.
Apparently, he’d kicked ass just fine. Otherwise, she’d not be sitting there right now.
He was hard as a rock. Big. Strong.
Physically, there was no way she would ever be able to win against him—especially with both arms in casts and a knee that burned every time she shifted her weight.
She considered it. She wouldn’t deny that she considered it for a long moment.
He watched her out of those eyes of his—and waited.
It was probably better to not even try. Tonight. He could pick her up and put her wherever he wanted her.
That would lead to things Izzie was not going to think about.
Like the two of them wrestling around on gray silk or something.
She’d thought about nothing else since they’d started driving through the long, rainy night. Until she’d drifted off, thoughts of him and her and that bed twisting her dreams like crazy.
She’d slept the last several hours, too. While he’d driven. She’d not wakened until he’d pulled into where here actually was.
Through the night. Through the storm. After being in a fight with three attackers.
Hell, he probably was tired. Not to mention that he was doing this to protect her. Nikkie Jean had asked him to. He hadn’t had to agree. Hadn’t had to upend his entire life—for her.
Hard to get past that.
Izzie didn’t have much of a choice. If she kept fighting him, wouldn’t that make her an evil, ungrateful bitch?
That was the last thing she wanted to be.
For some reason, Allen somehow brought out the worst in her. With the way they’d been twisted together in her dreams earlier, she was starting to suspect why.
Maybe she was as bad as the doofy first-shifters who did nothing but drool over the hottest doctors in the building. There was even a secret Top Ten of FCGH going around in text messages.
She’d been sent it fourteen times already.
Izzie hated social media.
Allen had been ranked #2—right after Rafe.
She can so see that. Although, honestly, she thought Allen was more traditionally handsome than the chief of medicine. She wasn’t ever going to tell him that.
“Fine, but you stay on top of the blankets. Your hands stay in your own bubble.” Yeah, Dr. Magic-Hands likely knew exactly how to use those hands of his in all the right ways. There was a reason those doofy nurses were so…doofy…over him. The man had a reputation after all.
“Don’t worry. I don’t like thorns. Or stingers.” He handed her a small clear travel bag. A tiny tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush were visible. “Good hygiene, please, if we’re going to be all crammed up against each other. Courtesy of Nikkie Jean. There’s deodorant in there, too.”
She grabbed the bag instead of kicking him like she wanted.
She wanted to kick him—but she wanted that toothbrush even more.
His laughter followed her around the sardine can they were stuck in as she closed the small accordion door to the wet bath to block him out.
After a few minutes, she felt at least a little normal again, even if it was the most plastic bathroom she’d ever seen. There were luxury washcloths in a tiny cabinet next to a plastic toilet.
She’d never been in an RV this small—or this expensive. She felt extremely out of place. Izzie stepped out of the wet bath and there he was. Big, strong, broody.
Half naked.
Shirt off and in sweatpants now. The man was built like a god.
She gawked again—ok, she hadn’t imagined him looking like that without the starched button-downs he usually wore at FCGH.
Allen Jacobson was in prime physical shape. Complete with a six-pack. He might even be more well-defined than Caine and Rafe—two of the most beautiful men in the world that she’d seen without shirts, anyway—when they’d been helping Annie move recently.
Wow.
Izzie wasn’t blind. She liked the look of a beautiful man when she saw one—that didn’t mean she had to act on it.
She turned away and almost scurried to the rear of the van.
She had to climb to get onto the mattress. It wasn’t super-long. She suspected the jerk’s feet were going to hang off the end. Good. He deserved it for thinking he was the one in charge here. All bossy and arrogant, and “you’ll do what you’re told, woman” all of a sudden.
She never had taken direction well. Especially from arrogant men who thought they were in charge. Even if they did it in an entirely too hot kind of way.
That pissed her off even more. Jake, she could deal with him making decisions for her when she was incapable of making them for herself—and unfortunately that situation had happened to her before. Annie and Nikkie Jean, too. Even Lacy and Jillian and Cherise to some extent. But Allen Jacobson?
He had no right.
In that moment, Izzie didn’t think she had much choice.
She jerked back the duvet awkwardly with her least-injured right hand—the duvet was pure silk, she’d bet her next paycheck on it—and hurried beneath it.
It felt like snuggling into a cloud, and her aching body thanked her for it. Yes, this was exactly where she wanted to be right now—physically.
Her mind wasn’t quite on board, though.
She deliberately faced away from him, feeling like a pouting child.
He laughed as he slipped into the wet bath and closed the door. She hoped he drowned in the tiny plastic toilet. The man deserved it.
If he did, she’d be honor-bound to give him mouth-to-mouth.
Izzie barely fought the urge to growl.
She needed to think.
Izzie needed to quit using her battle with Allen as a way to avoid dealing with what had really almost happened tonight.
She had almost died tonight. Again.
Someone had tried to either abduct or kill her tonight. That was the big thing right there. That she was relatively safe—even with Allen—was a minor miracle.
One she owed directly to him.
She supposed being stuck with Allen wasn’t as bad as it could have been. She could be seriously injured or dead. Or stuck with someone she couldn’t stand at all.
She’d get through the next day or two, call Jake or Nikkie Jean, and then find out when she could go home.
This definitely couldn’t last for too long.
He finally came out of the wet bath a few minutes later. Izzie flipped over. She was going to watch him, make sure he was keeping to his side of the deal. She didn’t trust him. They both knew that.
She’d probably never trust him on a male-female level. She wasn’t interested in being one of a crowd. His weight caused the bed to shift. He pulled the covers tightly. “You have enough room?”
He’d practically purred it.
Izzie resisted the urge to yelp and scurry away.
She had more backbone than that. “I’m good, but are you even going to fit?”
“It’ll be tight, but I’ll fit.”
Only after he’d sent her a wicked grin did she realize what she’d said.
Heat hit her cheeks. “Great. I’m stuck with a pervert. Why does that not surprise me? Your reputation and all.”
“My reputation, Nurse Izzie, is greatly exaggerated.”
“Uh-huh. I saw you on the roof once, Jacobson. So don’t lie.” He’d been wrapped up around that evil pharmacy tech of his. “Most women don’t like to be one of the crowd, you know.”
He hadn’t even known Izzie was there. But Jess had. She’d shot Izzie a hateful smirk over Jacobson’s shoulder. Then tracked Izzie down to remind her to keep her mouth shut about what she’d seen. She’d dug her nails into Izzie’s arm hard enough to draw blood.
Izzie had grabbed those fingers and bent them back in a move her uncle had taught her years ago. Jake had spent years teaching self-defense classes to women. Especially Izzie and Annie.
Not that it had done much good for her tonight.
What Jess and Allen had been doing on that roof hadn’t been Izzie’s business. She wasn’t a gossip. Izzie had made it clear to Jess to stay out of her face or she would spill her guts. On everything she’d ever seen Jess do.
She and Jess had circled each other a lot after that. It hadn’t degenerated into a hair-pulling catfight between them, but it had been close.
She wasn’t glad Jess was dead, but she was glad the truth about that woman had come out.
It had hurt him, though. Everyone had seen that. That and the way Logan Lanning had died. Allen hadn’t deserved that. Compassion had her softening toward him. A little.
Izzie handed him a pillow. “Stick to your side. Hopefully, we’ll be going home tomorrow, and I’ll never have to sleep with you again.”
“Sorry, Izadora, we’re not heading back to Finley Creek anytime soon. You’re not going to be sleeping alone for a long, long time. So snuggle up, buttercup.”
He hadn’t put a shirt on. Damn him. He’d grabbed a spare blanket out of the overhead cabinet, but it was nowhere near big enough for a man his size.
He laced his fingers behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. He took up a lot of room—that was for sure.
She hadn’t realized he was so…big…before.
She could smell him, all warm woodsy and masculine. Izzie’s nose twitched. His heat was threatening to scorch her, and there were a good six inches between them. And the silk blanket.
“The roof rises on this thing,” he said, completely throwing off her train of thought. Which was good. She was starting to think hot man instead of irritant for a minute there.
“What do you mean?”
“It rises. Gives more headroom, and some ventilation. When we get to where we’re going, we can check it out and extend both the slides and the top. All we’ll need to make it a happy home are Izadora the Second and Allen Junior. Plus, a little dog. I’ll happily help make the kids. Tell me when you’re ready to start.”
“Gee, that will take us some time to arrange. How long am I going to be your hostage?” Time to get down to details. Izzie needed details. Details gave a person more control. She flipped over to face her nemesis.
Nemesis? That was such a Nikkie Jean word. It was a good one.
Hell, she was even starting to think like Nikkie Jean. “What exactly did Chief Marshall and Rafe and Nikkie Jean say?”
“They wanted to keep you safe.” His voice softened, and he flipped to look at her. Even closer. One hand came toward her face. Izzie barely resisted flinching away.
She wasn’t afraid of him. Not really. When he touched her, she had a hard time remembering that she didn’t like the man all that much.
Well, she didn’t like the man he’d been. She wasn’t so certain about the man he was now.
His fingers brushed through her hair near her hairline.
She thought about bitching about personal space, but it didn’t feel like the right thing to say. So she didn’t. As close as they were, physical space didn’t exactly exist.
“You have a nasty bruise right here.” He brushed a finger along her cheek. She fought a shiver. No, no, no. This was not going to happen.
“Yes. I know. I can feel it.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t stop the attack sooner.”
“Hey, you were there. You stopped them. Long enough for help to come. I think that’s all that matters.” She shivered again as it sank in. Those men had been there to take her. To most likely kill her.
They would have. Except for him.
She’d repaid him by being totally bitchy in return. Well, she knew why. He scared her. Maybe it was leftovers from what Lanning had done to her, or maybe it was him specifically. He scared her, which was stupid—on her part.
She wasn’t a coward. She wasn’t going to let herself be. “Thank you. By the way. For…saving my life. Again.”
“Anytime.” His fingers slipped. His hand cupped her cheek. “You have another abrasion on your cheek. I wish I had done a better job protecting you.”
“I saw it in the mirror, too. I don’t know what more you could have done. They were just…there.”
“Nikkie Jean was beside herself. She loves you very much.”
“She panicked, didn’t she?”
“A little. Rafe was able to calm her down. We’ll get through this.” He smiled again, a quiet, soft look that had her stomach clenching in a way she did not want to think about. “Then we’ll head back to Finley Creek. Go back to avoiding each other in the halls as much as we possibly can—for whatever reasons we did originally.”
She nodded. “That sounds like a plan.”
Yet would she be able to? Izzie didn’t have a clue.
He pulled away, dragging his blanket up to his broad shoulders. His overly large man-feet stuck out at the bottom. That struck her.
It was so dorky normal. Not how she’d describe him. But it had some of the nerves receding, at least. No matter what, he was only a man. She could deal.
“So where exactly are we going, boss?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s probably best if we keep moving. Less likely that whoever tried to take you is able to track us.”
“You think they’ll be able to?” She had to come to grips with the fact that someone had it out for her.
If running with Allen was her only way to escape that, then she’d better get herself in gear and just keep running. It could be so much worse. It could be a nasty old van they were in. Complete with bedbugs. This was the Hilton on wheels—bedbugs wouldn’t dare to climb in here.
This was the most comfortable bed she’d ever been in.
“First, they’d have to figure out that I’m the one who took you out of the hospital.”
“Could they? Who knew?”
“Rafe, Elliot, Donna from ortho, and Nikkie Jean. Nikkie Jean helped you change into the scrubs and sweatshirt. She had one of Caine’s son’s baseball caps in the car. As far as anyone at a distance saw, you were a teenage boy being pushed in a wheelchair by a surgeon. Rafe plans to tell anyone who asks that you were his teenage brother visiting from St. Louis who fell playing basketball. People have seen that kid—from a distance. It explains why he and Nikkie Jean were hovering over you. You’ll pass. We were careful.”
“Someone would have seen something, though. The hospital…people see everything. We both know that.”
“It’s not about keeping you from not being seen. It’s about buying time for Marshall and the rest to find out who’s responsible. Plus, we loaded you into my car in the back garage.”
“It’s not open yet.” The parking garage was one of the last places on the list that was being rebuilt after the tornado. It was still roped off.
“I know. Rafe moved my SUV into the first level. You climbed in of your own free will—though I think Nikkie Jean told you that you were going home with her.”
“I owe her one for that, then.” She vaguely remembered climbing right in.
“No kidding. Aiding and abetting an abduction is a serious crime. I’ll make certain the chief of the TSP is aware of it. If that doesn’t work, I’ll tell the mayor and then the governor.”
“Ha-ha.”
“They don’t know you are with me. No one knows I was even in the building.”
“Why?”
“I was long gone for the day; I came back to grab a file and talk to Cage and handle something in one of the surgical offices, but I had to track Cage down. I thought he was in our office and was headed that way when I saw you, dancing in the rain.”
“I wasn’t dancing—” Izzie cut herself off. She was not going to be lying in bed getting all chatty and comfortable with this man. No way. “So where are we, and where are we going in the morning?”
“We’re somewhere in central Texas. I’m not sure where we’re headed in the morning. Take a left, take a right, we’ll decide later. Figured you’d flip a coin, take control of at least that much.”
Well, he was starting to figure her out, apparently.
“Where are we parked now?” She could hear traffic going by, an interstate possibly. Light peeked in around the window—the artificial-light type.
“We’re in a parking lot of a grocery store complex. There are a few truckers parked nearby, engines running. They do that at night when they rest. I figured this is a good place to hide. We’re between the two trucks.”
“Hidden from the road.” A clever plan, actually. He would be a clever strategist—he was one of the top trauma surgeons in the country. He was probably brilliant, or something.
He’d eventually find a brilliant woman of his own, marry, and make little Surgeon Juniors who were equally as brilliant and perfect. She thought about poking him to see if he was real, but thought better of it.
Best to keep her hands to herself.
“Exactly. In the morning, I’ll go inside the store and get some groceries and anything else we need. I don’t want you being seen on any security camera anywhere.”
“I don’t think they have clothes in there, do they? Did anyone pack me anything to wear?”
He hesitated. “Well…we have a few things. I grabbed what I thought would fit from the Lannings’ closet. Linda was a lot heavier than you and a lot taller. I don’t think her things will fit you. We’ll have to fix the clothing issue later.”
“How long do you think this will last?” She both wanted to know the answer to that—and didn’t. She was terrified he was about to tell her it was forever.
It would be her luck to be stuck with this man literally forever. Like in a really bad dystopian movie or something. Stuck in a van with him forever. She’d bet he was difficult to handle, even in the best of times. Eventually, he’d want to work on Izadora the Second and Allen Junior.
For that matter, she suspected she would, too.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Marshall said they’ve been working on this case since before the storm. Long before. It could be a while. We need to be prepared for that. We’re stuck with each other.”
“And if it drags on? Are you going to keep me hostage with you the whole time? You have a life to go back to. Why would you do this for me?”