Guarding His Witness

Chapter 5

“I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone,” Anita Cruz remarked as she rubbed her shoulder against Rosie’s as they stood together at the nurses’ station.

Despite her reluctance, Rosie had had to claim that Clint was her boyfriend in order to get him moved to the top of the long waiting list in the ER. Her coworkers often pulled favors like that, but she never had.

Until now.

Until Clint Quarters.

So it was only natural that everyone would be curious about him. About them.

But after getting shot at, she was a little paranoid. Maybe that was why she thought Anita sounded more suspicious than surprised. Anita, who was a little older than her, often called in favors for friends who Rosie suspected worked for Luther Mills—because their wounds were even more questionable-looking than Clint’s.

She forced a smile. “It’s pretty new,” she said. “That’s why I haven’t mentioned it to anyone.” Even if she had been seeing someone, she probably wouldn’t have mentioned it to anyone, though.

She liked keeping work and her personal life separate. Not that she’d ever had much of a personal life.

Anita nodded. “Or do you just want to keep him all to yourself? He’s pretty damn hot.”

He was—especially as he sat, shirtless, on the stretcher just feet away from them in the emergency room. Golden hair covered some of the golden skin of his heavily muscled chest. His arms were heavy with muscles, too—his biceps bulging even though they weren’t flexed.

Yes, he was pretty damn hot. That was the problem. Clint Quarters was too damn good-looking.

“So how’d he get hurt?” Anita persisted.

And goose bumps rose on Rosie’s skin as a chill passed through her. Had Luther put out the word? Was he looking for her after she and Clint had escaped his gunmen? Was he that determined to finish the job?

The trial wasn’t set to begin for a few weeks yet. But he’d been in a jail for a while already. Maybe he was getting impatient to get out. And if the eyewitness was dead, the district attorney’s office might be forced to drop the charges against him.

Of course Jocelyn Gerber seemed so determined to nail him that she might persist in trying him even without Rosie. She hoped the prosecutor did, just in case Rosie didn’t survive the next attempt Luther made on her life.

And she knew he would try again.

That was why she hadn’t fought Parker Payne as hard as she should have to replace Clint as her bodyguard—because she hadn’t been able to argue with his results. He had saved her life once already.

She had to trust that he would again. But trusting Clint Quarters...

She shivered.

“Was it that bad?” Anita asked. “I only got a quick glance at his shoulder.” Before she’d come out of the exam area to interrogate Rosie.

Clint was still visible from the nurse’s station, though, since he’d pulled back the curtain the young resident had tried to pull around him. He hadn’t done it so that she could see him, though. He’d done it so that he could see her. Even though he hadn’t been a bodyguard very long, he obviously took his new job very seriously.

Rosie shook her head. “He—uh—wiped out on his motorcycle.”

Anita peered across at Clint. “Doesn’t look like road rash.”

“Oh, he didn’t fall,” Rosie said.

No. He had jumped—and taken her along with him. But she’d escaped unscathed, thanks to him.

She continued, “He banged into something.” Like a dumpster...or whatever had been inside it.

“Were you with him?” Anita asked with what sounded like genuine concern.

Guilt flashed through Rosie that she’d doubted the woman. She also regretted having to lie to her. “No. He was alone. Driving too fast.”

“He doesn’t seem like the careless type,” Anita said. “He seems really intense.” And now she shivered.

He wasn’t just watching Rosie; he was staring at her coworker as well. Anita’s curiosity must have made him suspicious, too.

Rosie lifted her hand and waved at him while forcing a smile. She wanted him to know he was overreacting. Anita was just nosy.

He lifted his hand, waving her over to him.

Anita released a lustful sigh. “I wish he was waving me over to him. That is one fine-looking man, Rosie. You done good, girl.”

But Rosie hesitated before stepping away from the nurses’ station. She felt safe there; she didn’t feel safe with Clint, and it wasn’t because of Luther Mills’s threat.

Anita bumped her shoulder again. “Don’t keep him waiting, honey. Someone else might scoop him up.”

Did he have a girlfriend?

Javier had told her that he didn’t, but how much had her brother really known about his idol? Obviously not that he would get him killed someday.

Or had he known?

Even before he’d been shot, Javier had said some things to her—things that had made her think he might have been concerned. But more about her than himself...

Her brother had been such a sweetheart.

Clint Quarters was not. He waved at her again, beckoning her to come to him. He probably would have come to her if he’d been able, but it looked as though the resident was stitching up his shoulder.

“He must want you to hold his hand,” Anita remarked with a lustful grin. “I’m surprised you weren’t by his side this whole time.”

He had wanted her there, but Rosie had insisted he should have his privacy and she’d assured him that she wouldn’t go far from him. He’d looked at her with even more suspicion than when he’d been staring at Anita. And she had no doubt that if she’d walked any farther away than the nurse’s station, he would have come after her. Had he thought she’d convinced him to come here so that she could give him the slip?

Sure, she would rather not have him as her bodyguard. But after the shooting, she knew she needed one. Probably more than one. Maybe she shouldn’t have had him lose the Payne Protection SUV that had been following them.

Before Clint could beckon for her again, she walked over to the stretcher on which he was sitting. The resident glanced over at her. “Where’d you find this guy, Rosie?”

“What—why?” she stammered. She hadn’t found him; he had found her. Well, first he’d found Javier. While he’d taken her out of danger, he’d put her brother in it.

And no matter how damn good-looking he was, she couldn’t forget or forgive that.

“He’s some kind of superman,” the young doctor remarked in awe. “He refused to take any kind of painkiller, just a local anesthetic. There’s no way his shoulder is even numb yet, but he insisted I start stitching him up because he’s in a hurry to get out of here.”

“Can’t you see why?” Clint asked him as he grinned at Rosie.

And her traitorous heart skipped a beat as her pulse began to race. Damn him for being so good-looking...

The resident’s face flushed, and he stammered now. “Uh, yeah.”

“So that looks good enough, Doc,” Clint said, even though the resident was still suturing.

“You need a few more to close up the wound completely,” the resident insisted.

But Clint was already pulling away.

“Let him finish,” she told him through the smile she forced herself to hang on to.

“But sweetheart,” Clint said, “we have plans, and we don’t want to keep our friends waiting.”

“Friends...” Who the hell was he talking about?

He was looking beyond her now. Had those other bodyguards followed them after all? She glanced behind her and noticed a couple of teenagers. They were definitely not Payne Protection bodyguards.

Why was Clint staring at them? Did he think they were some of Luther’s crew?

He must have, because he used his free hand to tug her into the space with him. Then he told her, “Pull that curtain, honey.”

The resident glanced nervously from one to the other of them. “Really, Mr. Quarters—”

“Clint.” He corrected him as if he’d done it before. “And really, this is good enough.” But he didn’t wait for the young doctor to finish. Using his right hand, he grabbed the scissors from the suture tray and clipped off the thread and needle himself.

“And I don’t suppose you want a prescription for painkillers?” the resident asked.

“No thanks,” Clint told him.

The young doctor sighed and murmured. “Badass.”

Why was it that Clint Quarters inspired such hero worship in young men? What was it about him? That he was tough? That he was fearless?

But he wasn’t really. She’d seen fear on his face right before she’d walked into that room with Parker Payne and the chief of police.

And she saw it now as he reached for his shirt. “We need to get out of here.”

“Have fun,” the resident said as he slipped away.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Those guys out there...”

“The teenagers?”

“They work for Luther.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Or are you just being paranoid?” Like she’d been when Anita had questioned her.

“I’m being realistic,” Clint said. “And it’s time that you were, too. Did you really think Luther Mills would let you live to testify against him when he has never let anyone else?”

That was why he’d killed Javier—because her brother had been going to testify that Luther Mills was a major drug dealer.

Clint shook his head. “I’m surprised it took him this long to go after you.”

She knew Luther had always had a thing for her, since they were kids in elementary school. Maybe that was why no one had ever hassled her growing up. But that had all changed now that he’d ordered the hit on her.

She glanced around the edge of the curtain. Neither of those teenagers looked hurt. They had no reason for being in the ER—except that they were probably looking for her.

“We need to get out of here,” Clint said.

And this time she didn’t argue with him. She knew she was in danger. And because of her, they had no backup.

* * *

Clint was glad he’d finally gotten through to Rosie. She took him the back way out of the ER, through the employees’ locker room. Once inside the stark white-tiled room, he riffled in some of the open lockers, taking only the things that would aid in their escape.

“You can’t do that!” she cried out in protest of his petty thefts as she glanced nervously at the door.

“I can guarantee that Luther sent more than a couple of teenagers out to look for you,” he said. “We need to disguise ourselves in case more of his crew is waiting outside the hospital for you.”

She opened her mouth, as if to argue some more. But he unbuttoned his jeans and dropped them.

And all she did was gasp.

It wasn’t like he’d stripped down entirely in front of her. He wore boxers beneath his jeans. He stepped into the scrub pants and pulled them up, tying them low on his waist. They were too loose for him to tuck his weapon into the back of them, like he usually did with his jeans.

But he hadn’t smuggled his Glock into the hospital that way. He’d carried it in a pocket of his leather bomber jacket. But in case any of the shooters from her apartment were here, he needed to change his look. He needed to ditch his torn jacket. He grabbed a white doctor’s coat from another open locker and dropped his gun into the deep pocket of that before pulling it over the scrub shirt he already wore. A nurse, not Rosie, had had to cut off his torn and bloodied T-shirt.

“You can’t—” she began again in protest.

“I have to,” he interrupted.

Then he found her a parka with a fur-trimmed hood. Before they opened the back door that led out to the parking lot, he pulled the hood over her head. While he kept one hand in the deep pocket of that white jacket, wrapped around his weapon, he slid his other arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side.

She tensed against him and whispered, “What the hell are you doing?”

“My job,” he said. But he might have been enjoying her closeness a little too much. She smelled good—like vanilla and some other spice.

“What?” she asked, her voice cracking with fear as she peered around them. “Do you see someone out here?”

The employee parking lot was dimly lit, so Clint couldn’t see much. “No,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not out here, watching us.”

She looked up into his face, and her dark eyes were narrowed.

“If they’re looking for you,” he said, and he sincerely believed that they had been, “they’re going to be checking out the employee parking lot.”

She tried to wriggle out from beneath his arm. “But until we see someone, we don’t need to act like...”

“Like lovers,” he finished for her.

And she shuddered, probably in revulsion.

He would have laughed at her overreaction if it hadn’t depressed him. No matter how much he tried, he would never be able to get her to stop hating him.

“Nobody working for Luther will think it’s us walking through the lot if we’re acting like lovers,” he explained to her. “Everybody knows how much you hate me.”

Most of all him.

Maybe she’d taken that as a challenge, because she suddenly slid her arm around his waist and snuggled against his side. He tensed now, but not with revulsion. He tensed because his body was reacting to the closeness of hers.

She lifted her face to his and fluttered her lashes. “You’re right,” she said. “Everybody knows how much I hate you. They would never believe I’d be doing this...” Then she reached out and ran her fingertips along his jaw as she leaned even closer to him.

Now she was challenging him. And Clint had never turned away from a challenge before. He leaned down and brushed his mouth across hers.

She gasped in reaction.

And he deepened the kiss, pressing his lips against her silky soft ones. He nipped and nibbled at the fullness before sliding his tongue inside her mouth. She tasted so damn sweet, like that vanilla he smelled on her, and she was so hot.

His body tensed even more as desire gripped him. He wanted her, but the only thing he should want was to protect her. With passion overwhelming him, he was too distracted—too unaware of what and who might be around them.

His brilliant plan to elude Luther’s crew had backfired. Instead of putting her in less danger, he’d put her and himself in more.

And not just in danger of being attacked.

He was in danger of wanting what he could never have: Rosie Mendez.

Parker cursed and barked into the phone. “How the hell did you lose him?”

“I didn’t know he was going to try to shake us,” the other man replied. “I thought he was probably taking a different route to the safe house.”

“But he’s not there,” Parker surmised.

“He hasn’t shown up yet.”

Where the hell could he have gone? He’d refused to go to the ER. And there was no way in hell he would have taken the witness back to her place, not after the two of them had nearly been killed at her apartment.

It must have been that close call and Clint saving her from getting shot that had had Ms. Mendez changing her mind about his being her bodyguard. And Parker had thought he’d gotten through to her as well. But maybe he hadn’t...

Maybe she had only agreed to have Clint as her bodyguard because she’d intended to ditch him and the security detail altogether the minute she had the chance.

Had she escaped Clint?

“Damn it,” Parker murmured.

He couldn’t have failed already in the assignment his stepfather had asked him to do. He couldn’t have lost the eyewitness who would have finally put Luther Mills behind bars for the rest of his miserable life.

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