Zach was loaded into an ambulance and gone by the time Shauna made it out the front door strapped to a backboard of her own. She didn’t feel like she’d needed it, but Ronan had pinned her down when she tried to get up, barking that Zach would have his head if he let her move and she damaged something by doing so.

She closed her eyes and let herself float while she was put into her own ambulance and tried not to think about the blood that had soaked her shirt by the time they took Zach off her. Head wounds bleed a lot.

Her head knew that. The only problem was, her heart and her head weren’t in agreement. Her heart wanted to panic.

She felt wooden as she let the EMTs tend to her, answering their questions by rote. When she got to the hospital, she started asking her own questions, but wasn’t getting any answers. One nurse told her she thought he was being brought into surgery, and that kicked Shauna’s anxiety up into overdrive.

“Shaun!” Her mother’s voice was echoed quickly by her father and her brothers.

Shauna looked over to see her family squishing into the small room she’d been stuck in for the better part of an hour. She had already put her clothes back on and was sitting on top of the bed.

“I’m okay,” she said, her throat still scratchy.

“They said you were drugged and a house collapsed on you.” Her mother sat by her side, flanked by her father and brothers, all scowling at her like they might be able to look at her hard enough to get a prognosis to pop out of her at will.

“Whoever they is, they exaggerated,” she said.

Hutch walked in behind her family. “I heard it was two houses.”

Shauna snorted at that, then winced in pain. Her head was splitting. “It’s true I was drugged. A suspect gave me Rohypnol then shot me full of Ketamine twice, when I was too loopy to fight her off.” The Ketamine was what had caused the severe pain in her stomach when she’d first come to in the chimney room.

Her mother blanched and Shauna realized she shouldn’t be giving them details. The doctors had done a scan on her head and she was cleared to leave as soon as they finished her paperwork. She wanted out of the bed so she could find Zach.

“Hutch, they won’t tell me anything about Zach. Can you see if you can find out what’s going on with him.”

Zach’s deep voice answered her from the doorway. “You ready to get out of bed, woman? You’ve been laying around for over an hour.”

If he thought he was funny, he probably didn’t for long. Five O’Rourkes, four of them large angry men, slowly turned to face Zach.

The idiot grinned at them and moved through the crowd to reach her bed.

“Hey,” he said, taking her hand.

Shauna forgot the others were in the room. She took in the shaved spot at the back of his head where he had a neat row of stitches and would likely have a pretty crazy cowlick as a result.

“You’re not in surgery,” she said.

“I’m not,” he said, and she could hear the humor in his voice, as though he was surprised she thought he would be. “Was I supposed to be?”

“No one would tell me anything, but one nurse finally said she thought you were in surgery.”

Shauna looked over to see her partner, Hutch, and her whole family watching her with the attention they might usually pay a football game. She raised a brow.

Not a damned one of them moved.

She tried another tact. “Ma? Maybe you could clear the room?”

That did it. Her brothers were groaning before her mother so much as spoke. They knew they couldn’t fight their mother.

Hutch remained.

“Really, Hutch?” She asked.

“Hey, she’s not my mother.”

Shauna’s mother stuck her head back in the room. “Get out here Jackson Peter Hutchison.”

Zach laughed as Hutch threw him a look but did as Shauna’s mother told him to.

“They let you go? Shouldn’t you be staying for observation? Is your leg okay? There was a really big piece of that fireplace on your leg,” Shauna had too many questions to let him answer any of them.

He just grinned at her while she threw them all out there, then spoke when she paused. “Checked out AMA. No way am I missing this interrogation. Leg is fine. Bruised and going to be sore as hell for a while.” He held up his palms to her, showing her the scrapes and cuts. “I have some booboos you need to kiss later, though.”

He was confident and cocksure and so damned good-looking sitting there, she wanted to wrap herself—arms and legs—around him and hold tight.

He must have seen it in her eyes, because he grew serious. He took her hands and leaned in. “Please tell me you’re going to give me another chance after this. That you’ll let me show you I’m not the ass I used to be, because I gotta tell you, Shaun, I fell for you hard this time. And not in the sweaty, hot sex way from before. I mean, yeah the sex is going to be hot. Don’t get me wrong. It’s going to be epic.”

Shauna had to bite down on her cheeks to keep from laughing. Or maybe crying. She wouldn’t cry.

He went on. “This time, I want more. I want to prove to you that I can give you more. Because you’re worth it Shauna. You’re so damned worth it.”

“I know,” she said, not at all bashful about the fact she was confident in her worth.

He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Do I get another chance?”

“We’ll see,” was all she said. “Now get me out of here. We need to get a confession.”