CHAPTER THIRTY
Bright lights seared his retinas as Winters blinked awake. He blinked again. This wasn’t the same view as when he went to sleep. He closed his eyes and tried to remember. He felt starched sheets that itched. An antiseptic smell registered as hospital-like. He blinked again. Definitely in a hospital.
His tongue felt furry and dry. When he opened and closed his mouth, it made a spit-less sound. He surveyed the blankets tucked tight around the length of his body except where his left arm stuck out, an IV inserted and secured with tape. The dirt and blood that he remembered was gone. He stretched his hand and worked his fist. Even his fingernails were clean.
Winters scanned the empty room. The private suite, vitals monitor, IV bag, and furniture were decidedly not Colombian. The television played the nighttime news in silence. Muted and American. A whiteboard on the wall said his doctor’s name was Tuska, his nurse’s name was Sandy, and his tech’s name was Jeremy. He had no idea how it happened, but he was back on US soil.
A white remote with blue buttons lay next to his blanket-covered mid-section. He grabbed it and gave it a once over. Basic and in English. Television controls. Bed controls. A nurse call button. He pushed a button and rose to a sit. His mouth was still disgustingly dry. He blinked several times more to clear the cobwebs and focused on the television.
If that date and time in the corner of the news program were correct, he’d missed several days. Somehow, he left a shanty shack in South America and made it back to somewhere in the United States.
Winters pushed the call button for the nurse. He tried to swallow again and ran his tongue over his teeth. A nasty, gritty film said it’d been too many days since a toothbrush had been anywhere near his mouth. He pulled his other arm from the blanket and brushed his hands over his face, finding a beard.
A nurse walked in, chipper and bubbling to talk. He wasn’t in the mood for either.
“Mr. Winters, it’s so wonderful to see you awake. We’ve been waiting on you. How are you—”
“Where am I?” A rough, unused edge in his throat made him cough.
She handed him a large container of water with a straw. “Thought you might be thirsty. You’re at the hospital—”
“Where? What hospital? Am I in the United States?”
Her eyes widened. She took a step back. He needed to ease up his method of interrogation, or he’d have to find another nurse.
“Uh, um, yes. You’re outside Washington, DC. Do you know—”
“Who brought me here?” His mind and his mouth hadn’t agreed yet to the terms of easing up the line of questioning.
“You’re in a private suite. Jared Westin of The Titan Group made arrangements for you. We’re to call him as soon as you’re awake. I’m surprised no one’s here. They’ve had someone with you twenty-four hours a day.”
Shit. He’d never live this down. And Mia. What about Mia? Please let her be back in her normal life and not chasing after a man who’d asked her to run into danger.
“Were there only men here?” And did he have to sound so desperate and scared?
“No. Mia’s been here most of the time, whether the other men were here or not. She was on the Titan approved list.” The nurse tinkered with a beeping machine. “She’s wonderful.”
His head dropped against the plump, plastic pillow, and his eyes rolled to the ceiling. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. His squeezed his eyes. Why didn’t Mia run from him? She should be long gone.
“Don’t let her in to see me. Don’t let her know I’m awake.”
“What?” She shook her head, then cocked it in confusion. After a pause, she did a once-over of his IV bag and monitor, evidently concerned that he neared a PTSD freak out.
“Do not let her in here.” He was a fucking bastard. “I’m serious. She’s no longer Titan approved, or whatever you said.”
The sound of heavy-booted footsteps stole his attention away from the nurse. Cash, in his best cowboy-mosey, ambled up behind the nurse. His hat was tugged low over his shaggy hair, and he towered over the woman with a half-assed, one-sided grin. Clearly, they’d been acquainted. Damn Cash. Was there any woman who didn’t drop drawers for him? Cash whispered in her ear, she blushed and sidestepped around him toward the hallway.
“Well, well. Get enough beauty sleep, sunshine?”
“Cash, man, you have to get me out of here.”
“Yeah, well, first we had to keep you from dying. But, all right. We’ll get you out of here as soon as Doc T gives you a go. Jared will be here soon. Mia just walked down the hall to stretch her legs. She’ll be back in a sec. Want me to call her?”
Winters pinched his eyes. Her name made him schoolboy twitchy. Bits and pieces of Colombia filtered back. But the one blaring memory burning up his brain was when he limped into that shack. It was empty, and the woman he loved was gone. He wanted to tear every beam from the wall, to ram through the Titan guys for no other reason than he needed an outlet. And when he saw her, safe, coming toward the shack, it was the most satisfying and gut-wrenching moment of his life. She was alive, within eyeshot, and he was the worst thing that could have ever happen to her.
He loved her, and she’d never know.
A feminine snip of exasperation echoed in the hallway and dragged him back to his conversation with Cash.
“Sounds like your girl is here. Wonder what has her in a fuss.” Cash chuckled and pivoted for the door.
Winters dropped his head down. The beard whiskers tickled his neck and scratched his chin, and it was all he wanted to think about instead of ponying up the truth.
“I told the nurse to not let her back in here.” He winced. It sounded even worse out loud than in his head. And it was horrible in his head.
“You did what?” Cash pivoted one-eighty back on his heels, dumbstruck.
“I asked the nurse to send her away.” Winters glanced out the window instead of at Cash. But that didn’t ease the guilt and overwhelming sense of loss.
“You, my friend, have a death wish. Colombian cartels are child’s play compared to a woman on the warpath. That woman in particular. She pushes Jared around like he’s a bratty toddler. Hell, she pokes him in the chest on the regular when he’s not listening.”
Winters sawed his teeth back and forth, and turned from the window to watch Cash take a backward step to catch the showdown in the hallway. Someone must have seen him, and he threw his hands up in innocence.
“Aw, shit. Here she comes.” Cash made a move to duck-and-cover. “Mia, one. Nurse, zilch. And you’re in trouble, sunshine. Adios.”
Before Cash made it through the threshold, Mia roared around the corner, knocking him out of her way, and back into the room. “What is your problem, Colby Winters?”
She was red-faced, bug-eyed mad. This wasn’t working out the way he planned.
“I think this might be my cue to leave. Mia, nice to see you. Winters, glad you’re alive, buddy. Best of luck.”
She flashed daggers at Cash, who again threw his hands up. She stepped to him and pushed him out with one outstretched finger. Then she turned toward the hospital bed. The delicate veins in her neck popped. Her narrowed eyes zeroed in on him like a predator sighting its kill.
Cash was bull’s eye right. Winters was a dead man. Who knew a petite one like her could scare him clean out of his skin? Funny thing was, he should have known how well she’d do fury.
“You mind telling me what the hell is your problem?” Her hand flew to her hip. What she lacked in height and weight, she more than made up for with attitude. He felt smaller and smaller in his bed with her reading him the riot act. But he deserved it. It was a pansy-assed move to have the nurse do his dirty work.
The nurse rushed in behind her. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Winters.”
Christ, could this get any worse? Someone needed to save Sandy, or whatever the nurse’s name was, before Mia killed an innocent woman.
The air conditioning kicked on, chilling the room even more, wisping up the already sterile hospital smell. He hated it. The stench was stuck in his nose. Mia was yelling at him. Nurse Sandy left, no doubt calling for security. And he was trapped in the bed, tied down by wires and hooked up to monitors. Mia’s warpath left no escape. He was stuck and had to think of something to say. But nothing intelligent surfaced.
“I’m sorry. I just need… some space. Or something.” Not intelligent. Bumbling, stumbling idiot might’ve been a better description. He needed to tell her the honest truth and be done with it. This was for her. And despite whatever crazy, emotion-fueled insanity he continued to drown in right now, he should, at the very least, man up, and give her some sort of explanation.
“You needed space? You’re a freakin’ liar.”
“Mia, look…” He pulled at his shaggy beard, wanting to tear it out and replace the pain in his chest with a different, more physical pain. “My life is dangerous. Nothing’s safe, obviously. You met me, and look how your life’s been turned upside down. Hell, your pretty little cheek is still bruised.”
“Don’t talk to me about my pretty little cheek. You don’t have any right to wake up and pull this stunt.” Her voice broke, and it hurt down to his soul. “You don’t know what you’ve put me through.”
“See, the thing is, I do. You never should’ve dealt with any of it.”
“Colby, that doesn’t matter. You and me. That’s what matters.” Her words were painful enough to last until his last breaths.
“Damn it, Mia. Don’t you see? I’m doing this because of you. Because you matter to me. You’re the only thing I can think of. I wake up wanting to see you after I dreamed of you.” Admitting it only made the hurt worse. His stomach tightened. His throat constricted. He was dying to embrace her and could barely string together the words. “Mia, I… Look, I feel for you. I—”
“Excuse me? You feel for me? Grow a set already, Winters. Don’t stand behind the lie of protecting me. When you figure out what you’re so scared of, you find me. Otherwise, don’t worry your heart. And you won’t have to concern your nurse with keeping me away from you. I’m gone.”
She stormed out, the privacy curtain trailing after her in a harsh breeze.
Shit.
That went all wrong. Nothing like he envisioned. He had to get out of this bed. He needed to chase her down and explain everything. She needed to understand he shouldn’t love her. She deserved so much more than that burden.
Winters ripped the blanket off of him only to see electrical compression wraps on his calves and a collection bag for his catheter. Fucking fantastic. He grabbed the remote hanging by his bed and pressed the nurse call button once, twice, and then again.
Where the hell was she?
He tried to lean forward to release his legs and groaned. His body hurt. Every muscle was sore, weak, and pathetic. Just like him in the love life department. It might take weeks of physical therapy and training to get back to where he needed to be physically, but he was done for when it came to Mia. Some wounds never healed.
He leaned over again, undid the Velcro on one leg wrap, then moved the other. His lungs burned, and his pulse raced. He paused for a breath. How was he so out of breath? His plan to run after Mia might need to be downgraded to a speedy walk. God, he hated being sidelined.
The nurse shuffled into his room. Her concerned glance morphed into alarm as she saw him batting at the wires holding him back and working to undo his second leg wrap.
“Mr. Winters.”
“Get these wires off me.” He motioned to the catheter. “Take this fucking thing out.”
“You’ve only been awake for minutes after days recovering from serious injuries.”
“I’ve got places to go.”
“I’ll get Dr. Tuska in here. You can talk to him.”
Winters struggled against his pain, unhooking wire after wire on his chest. Alarms beeped. He studied the pole holding his IV bag. “Does this thing move, or do you need to unhook it?”
“Sir. Calm down.” She pulled a phone from her pocket and paged the doctor or security. Who knew?
“Sit your ass back in that bed,” a familiar male voice yelled, and the nurse jumped straight into the air.
Jared’s steely face was pissed. He sped past the nurse, who had one hand over her mouth and the other pressed against her chest.
“Whatever the fuck you’re doing… Why ever the hell you’re trying to break out of here like it’s the clink, you stop. Right now. You got me?”
The wide-eyed nurse pressed herself against the wall and sidestepped toward the door. With her exit, the loud click of the large door closing echoed through the room.
“Give me a break, Jared. I got stir crazy. Needed to get up and stretch my legs.”
“And I’m sure that had nothing to do with little Mia Kensington tearing out of here like she planned to kill somebody. And she probably could, so I’d watch my ass if I were you.”
Winters grabbed the remote and turned the volume up on the television in a desperate attempt to ignore his boss. The news host’s all-American enunciation didn’t drown out Jared.
“If you want out of here, you have to earn it. I’m not going to have you almost die just to have you kill yourself.”
“I didn’t almost die. Stop with the dramatics.”
“Oh, hell. You are that stupid. Miss Thang you just sent scuttling out of this hospital? She’s the reason you’re still kickin’. I would’ve let you sleep on that mangy-assed cot until you died. But nope, not her. She was all tending to you and shit. She noticed your fever. She noticed your piss-poor responses. I didn’t. The guys didn’t. Your ass got choppered out of Colombia, and medevacced all the way back to the States. So if you think you didn’t tease the widow-maker, think again. ’Cause you’re a dead man who was hooked up by Lady Luck. Or in this case, Mia Save-Your-Ass Kensington.”
Winters threw the remote, hoping to hit the wall across the room, but it didn’t go far. Attached to a cord next to his hospital bed, it swung back at him, and clattered against the bed rail, finally dangling inches above the floor.
“What the fuck do you want me to do?” Winters yelled, bunching his fist in the blanket.
“Get your head back in the game, and figure your shit out.”
Just like Mia, Jared spun and stormed out in a fashion far more dramatic than Winters was used to seeing in his jerk of a boss. He relaxed his death grip from the blanket and ran his hands over his face, trying to clear his mind.
Mia. Mia. Mia.
Nope. It wasn’t working. A hollow despair spread in his blood, pumped into every crevice of his body. Through his aching heart, to the soles of his feet, Winters mourned what could have been.
He threw himself back against the pillow and tossed his head to the side. His gaze landed on a cot, a pile of used blankets, and several unopened boxes of Dots.
Damn it. She was perfect in every way, and he couldn’t have her.