Nash

“I’m gonna go check on him and see if we managed to get him awake so that you can see him. Nash … you should consider quitting smoking.”

The last of her words trailed away as I was steamrolled by a punk-rock pixie and engulfed in a hug I needed like no one’s business. I let Cora do her magic and try and make me feel better. I also let the quiet strength and steady assuredness of the guy I considered my older brother try and ground me. Rome Archer was a rock and I needed that kind of stability as my world was shaking around me.

I was pulling it together, getting the emotions that were churning and rolling in check, getting my head around what was going on when they showed up. It was bad enough that my mom was there, but that she had the nerve to bring that asshole she married with her was just pushing the limits of my already tattered control.

She just had to go and call me Nashville … no one called me Nashville and lived to tell the tale … well, no one but Cora. I think it was hearing my real name spoken from my mom’s lips that had all the questions rolling and the pieces tumbling into place. I went from hovering on the brink of calm to a volatile molten core of fury that was ready to take this ER down in flood of hate and wrath.

Why was she here?

Phil made her his next of kin, his power of attorney … like she was somehow more important to him than I was.

Why?

She didn’t answer.

Did she know he was sick and for how long?

She did. Phil didn’t want me to worry.

She tried to convince me it was all in my best interest and my top was about to blow with each biting question I fired at her, when my best friend, Rule, showed up with his fiancée. I had a moment of clarity and was starting to see through the haze of dread, anger, resentment, and everything else fueling my blood when Saint’s copper-colored head popped back around the corner. Her words had already changed my life once tonight.

I had no idea that she wasn’t even close to being done.

She cocked her head to the side, blinked those gray eyes at me like she wasn’t just going to break apart the foundation of everything I thought I knew, and said, “He’s awake and asking for you.”

“He is?”

“Yeah, he said he wants to talk to his son … that has to be you, right? You guys look identical.”

The world fell away. I stopped breathing, stopped feeling, and stopped living. I was just rooted on the spot, stuck in a moment where my beloved uncle Phil had somehow just morphed into my father. The lies, the secrets, the wasted time, the hollow feeling I had always carried around from being unwanted not only by a superficial and uncaring mother, but also by a faceless, nameless father turned around and around, and I felt like I was going to pass out from the dizziness it caused.

“Holy shit!” Typical Rule, he brought me back to the white room with a clatter and blood rushing into my face and ears. I was going to lose it, but like she knew it, Cora was suddenly there, right in my face, always the voice of reason. Always taking care of her boys.

“Nash.” Cora’s tone was stern and no-nonsense. “Now isn’t the time. We can work out all the details later. They don’t matter. You have to appreciate that he’s still here and focus on the now.” Her bright eyes danced over to her man and then slid back to mine. “Plus you can’t hit her and get away with it. I can.” Her spiky blond head tilted in the direction where my mom was cowering next to her husband. I wouldn’t put it past her to actually take a swing at my mom. It was why I loved her so much.

Cora moved to the side as Saint walked up to my side and put her hand on the crook of my elbow in a silent gesture to follow her.

“I got you, Nash.” Her eyes were a thundercloud I wanted to stare at forever. That was a storm I would never complain about getting caught in.

“Do you?” I hoped against hope she was the only one who could hear my voice crack and that Cora really did lay my lying, conniving mother out on the ER waiting room floor.

“I do.” She almost whispered it and I wanted to ask how long she had me for. Was she going to be there while I coped with putting my role model, the only person who’d given me their time, their love, who turned me into a man I was proud to be, in the ground? How about while I dealt with the fact that same man had lied to me my entire fucking life? I had no clue who Phil Donovan was, and as a result I was starting to wonder if I had a clue who Nash Donovan was. I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t know her. Barely remembered her from before, and really had no clue what kind of person she was beyond her personable and professional bedside manner, but I wanted her to be there, felt like I needed her to be there … it was too bad she fucking hated me.

It may have been Thanksgiving, but I was having a really hard time finding one single thing to be thankful for.

CHAPTER 2

Saint

One week later …

I argued with myself the entire way on the short trip from the hospital to his apartment. I knew better. I hadn’t been a practicing nurse for very long, only three years, but I had been immersed in the medical field long enough to know that it was stupid to get involved, to make patients and what they were dealing with a personal matter. There should be no forming personal attachments, no taking one case more seriously than another, no treating any one person affected by a family member’s illness or accident any differently than the next … but none of that logic or professional training mattered against the need to find out why Nash hadn’t stopped by the hospital once since Thanksgiving to see his dad.

Phil Donovan had been moved almost immediately from the ER to the upper levels of the hospital where the oncology unit was located, so he wasn’t even my patient anymore. That hadn’t stopped me from stopping by at the end of my shift to check on him and see how he was doing. The older man that was the spitting image of his son was taking his prognosis surprisingly well, and I always enjoyed his easy demeanor. It didn’t look good, he didn’t look good. But I had noticed that he was never alone. There was always someone in the room with him when I stuck my head in. He seemed to have an endless parade of tattooed and pierced men and women who pushed aside the discomfort of visiting and spending time with someone so sick in order to keep him company and offer him support. Only it was glaringly obvious that his own flesh and blood hadn’t been among them. It wasn’t my place to question why his own kid hadn’t made an appearance any of those times, and I wouldn’t have been driven to do something so out of character had Phil not sounded so disappointed when he mentioned Nash’s disappearing act.

It wasn’t like I was overly anxious for another run-in with the brooding, tattooed hottie anyway, but tonight, when I popped my head in, Cora had been arguing with the older man. I knew her to be loud and up front from the time her boyfriend had been shot and nearly died in my ER. She was currently being very vocal in her opinion about Nash’s current behavior. Phil was telling her to leave Nash alone, that he would work through things in his own time and that he didn’t blame his son for not being by once since the holiday. She was all kinds of worked up, shouting that it wasn’t right, that Nash was acting like a big baby and that he was going to regret wasting any of this time they had together considering Phil’s prognosis wasn’t good. She might look a little crazy and sound kind of abrasive, but I had to agree that she had a point.

I felt bad for eavesdropping and was going to duck out of the room and head home when her next statement sent a rebellious chill down my spine.

“He won’t even talk to Rule. He won’t answer the phone. He’s missed work all week. Rome went to the apartment and knocked on the door until a neighbor came out and threatened to call the cops. I told him he should’ve just broken it down. I think he was tempted because he never got any kind of response. The idea of Nash sitting alone in that apartment hurting, trying to process this all on his own, is breaking my heart, Phil. I don’t know what else to do.”

Phil murmured an answer that was too soft for me to hear and I jumped as another nurse came around the corner. I saw her give me an odd look because this was totally not my floor, I rarely went anywhere in the hospital outside of the ER. Before I could talk myself out of it, I went back to my own floor, snuck a quick peek at the file we had on Phil Donovan that listed Nash’s info as his emergency contact after some woman named Ruby Loften, and headed out on a mission to do I don’t know what. I wasn’t sure why I was so worked up, so invested in either of the Donovan men, especially considering the bitter taste my history with Nash left in my mouth.

I loved my job. I’d wanted to be a nurse since forever. Fixing all my dolls’ “owies” and making my big sister let me cover her in bandages and gauze when I was little had always been my favorite game, and I had worked hard and busted my tail off to be the best nurse and caregiver I could be. At twenty-five I was a certified ER nurse and I was thinking about going back to school and studying to get my master’s in nursing so I could look at being a nurse practitioner. I graduated at the top of my class from California State University in L.A. and I chose emergency nursing for the challenge, the fast pace, and because I knew I wanted to help people when they needed me most. It was a different environment, different set of patients and problems every single day. I was extremely skilled at it, completely invested in giving it my all each and every day. So I knew that whatever weird pull this case and these people involved had on me wasn’t something I had ever experienced with a patient or their loved ones before.

I should have known the instant those unmistakable purple eyes locked on to me, trying to place where they knew me from on the Fourth of July all those months ago, that Nash Donovan was once again going to set my well-ordered world on its side. Even after all the time that had passed, and even with the ages-old resentment and dislike I harbored for the darkly handsome young man—who, let’s be honest, had only improved with age—there was still something about him that got to me. With just a look he made my blood heat and I had that long-repressed feeling of longing and want whispering at me to remember. It seemed like I was always going to be stuck in a turbulent cycle of lust and hate where Nash was concerned and I didn’t like how extreme and out of control either of those things made me feel. In just a matter of a few short weeks those feelings and the man that inspired them had me doing something totally out of character and against not only my professional rule book, but also against my own sense of self-preservation.

The traffic cutting across downtown was terrible. There wasn’t any snow on the ground yet, but it was cold out and the hustle and bustle of Denver getting ready for Christmas was causing a nasty gridlock. Not to mention it was a Saturday night, so the rush of all the weekend-warriors to get out and enjoy their freedom made a three-mile drive take almost half an hour.

Being around someone from my past, someone who remembered the former me, just brought all those insecurities I still struggled with to a lesser degree now right to the forefront of my mind. Especially when that someone was the adult version of the out-of-my-league teenage boy I’d had a painfully intense, supersecret crush on.

It had never been easy getting made fun of and hearing mean things said about me. It hurt and tore down my already frayed self-esteem. I knew high school was fleeting and that in a few years none of those people would matter to me anymore, that Nash could be chalked up to a phase, but the way he made me feel when he ignored me and the even worse way it hurt me when I heard him saying awful things about me had taught me a valuable lesson, one I still held close today. People could only hurt you and disappoint you if you let them. They only had the power to hurt you if you thought they were special and above that. I didn’t let anyone close enough, didn’t let anyone touch my heart or emotions enough to risk that happening again … ever. I think that made dealing with my cheating boyfriend in college and handling the knowledge that my own father was a philanderer easier. Across the board, men in my life had disappointed me, and Nash was just the first in a long line.

Which made this need, this urgency to check on him, my nemesis, and my teenage nightmare even harder to process. Still, even though I was full of apprehension and doubt, I wheeled my new Jetta into a spot on the street in front of the Victorian that had obviously been converted into some apartments and got out. I gazed at the building for a second, trying to convince myself to mind my own business and just go home. I was still in scrubs, had my ugly work shoes on and my hair coiled into a tight, fire-colored braid that reached the middle of my back. I only had the barest hint of makeup left after a ten-hour shift and I didn’t know why I thought he would answer the door for me if he was ignoring his friends and the people closest to him.

I shivered because I hadn’t grabbed a coat and decided I either needed to go home or just go in. My gaze slid over a sweet Charger that was parked in front of the building and I sighed. I dealt with death and horrific injury on a daily basis. I could handle a brief encounter with a ghost from my memories and survive the encounter. I was made of stronger stuff now. Besides, seeing Phil so sick and sad and the traumatic way Nash had responded to the news on Thanksgiving had me concerned for both of them. And despite knowing better, I knew that my concern wasn’t going away.

I entered the lovely old building and looked around for the numbers on the door. It looked like the bottom floor had two apartments and Nash’s was on the left. I was just getting ready to knock when the opposite door across the hall swung open and a girl stuck her head out. Her gaze skittered over me and then landed on my startled face.

“You his girlfriend?”

Her tone was friendly, almost overly so, and she looked like she should be on the cover of a Sports Illustrated magazine. I wasn’t overweight anymore, now I was just normal, healthy, but this girl had abs for days and boobs that deserved an award. Hell, if I was her I would be walking around in yoga pants and a sports bra in the freezing December weather, too.

“Uh … no.”

“I just moved in. There’s been someone pounding on that door every five minutes for the last week. It’s driving me nuts. I saw the guy that lives there. He’s a total babe. I keep waiting for a girl to show up and claim him. I thought it might be you. I’m Royal, by the way.”

I nodded at her and cocked my head to the side. All single men should find themselves so lucky in the new-neighbor department. I bet Nash would just love her … well, once he got out of his funk.

“I’m just a friend. I thought I would check on him. I’m Saint.”

She laughed a little and shook her head, sending her dark auburn hair sliding across her shoulder like only models in shampoo commercials did.

“Our parents were obviously smoking the same thing when they picked our names out.” She inclined her head toward the closed door and her dark brown eyes flashed in amusement while I struggled to try and act like this scene didn’t totally intimidate me. Really pretty girls like her always made it harder for me to act normal and unaffected. “Seems to be the theme of the week checking on the sexy guy next door. That and superhot men. I swear all his friends are gorgeous. I wouldn’t toss a single one of them I’ve seen out of bed. Even the really big guy with all the attitude and the scar. He was scary as hell but dead sexy.”

I was getting uncomfortable. I did great with strangers when they were bleeding and needed my help, but this kind of interaction was out of my wheelhouse even if I did agree with her on the hotness levels of Nash’s crew of friends.

The guy with the scar was Nash’s old roommate, Rome Archer. He was dead sexy in a warrior, take-care-of-business kind of way. I knew firsthand because he had been a patient of mine not too long ago. At the hospital the other night I caught a glimpse of Rule Archer, he was Nash’s best friend and he was still gorgeous and dangerous-looking in his own unique way. Later on in the night Jet Keller had shown up with a blond guy who looked like he had escaped from the 1950s and another guy that was so undeniably handsome that it was necessary to look twice at him just to make sure your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you. All three, hot and oozing sex appeal and trouble in different ways. I just didn’t know this woman well enough to divulge any of those insights to her, not that I would be comfortable doing that even if she wasn’t a stranger.

I knocked on the door more out of desperation to get away from her and her curious gaze than to see if Nash would answer.

Of course he didn’t and I felt like an idiot. I shifted uneasily from foot to foot and tried to knock again.

“Good luck. He hasn’t opened it for anyone else.” She sounded amused and I flushed bright red. I would never get over feeling like I was always the butt of someone’s joke. It made me feel kind of sick to my stomach, more so because she looked the way she did.

I was lifting my hand to knock one last time when the door suddenly yanked open and I was face to chest with a mostly naked, furiously scowling, obviously inebriated Nash Donovan. Those amazing eyes that were trapped somewhere between purple and blue blinked sluggishly at me and I let out a startled gasp as he grasped the hand I still had lifted up to knock and pulled me toward him.

“You must have the lucky touch, Red. Good for you.” The neighbor’s laughing voice followed me into the apartment as Nash stumbled unsteadily backward, taking me with him.

He slammed the door closed behind me with a thud and tried to focus on me out of bloodshot eyes. He smelled like booze, cigarette smoke, and I couldn’t help but wrinkle my nose up in distaste. I could physically handle myself. It was a job requirement in the ER, but at the moment he looked kind of feral and I had to admit his glowering, grumbling presence was slightly menacing.

He was taller than average, but so was I, meaning he wasn’t really looming so much as he was threatening, because he was so unfamiliar and unhinged in his current state. It would be a flat-out lie if I tried to pretend like I didn’t notice that even in his disheveled and drunken state he was in good shape. He obviously took pretty good care of himself aside from pickling his liver and that awful habit of smoking. He had always been a darkly handsome guy, his dark brows slashing and dramatic on a face that was full of character holding a hint of unknown ethnicity behind it. Those purplish eyes of his were out of this world and unforgettable. They were really too pretty and delicate-looking to be on such a masculine face.

I think it was the fact that all he had on was a pair of black boxer shorts revealing there wasn’t an exposed part of his olive-toned skin that didn’t have some kind of design inked on it that was making me a little bit overwhelmed. I liked tattoos, had a couple myself, but Nash’s dedication to decorating his body was on an entirely different level. I mean I wasn’t surprised at the amount of artwork he was sporting considering he had those brilliant flames tattooed on his head and a curved ring in the center of his nose. That was all designed to make a statement, to proclaim that he didn’t have to live by anyone’s rules but his own, which I guess was fine and worked for him, but it was a lot to take in for me when I already considered him a danger and kind of a douche bag.

I refused to admit I was openly checking him out. I couldn’t help it. He was missing clothes, built and gorgeous, even if all that was under miles of ink.

“I ordered pizza.”

I looked up at him and asked like a moron:

“What?”

“I thought you were the pizza guy, but you’re not.”

He stumbled back a few steps, grabbed the back of the couch, and sort of just slithered down until he was sitting on the floor across from me. He stuck his long legs out in front of him and rubbed his watery eyes with the knuckles of his hands. What in the hell was happening right now? It was like he had just folded in on himself right in front of my eyes. He was disappearing inside of himself.

“Are you okay, Nash? A lot of people are worried about you.”

He gave a laugh that sounded so broken, so jagged, I felt it scrape across my skin, leaving goose bumps in its wake.

“No.”

I wasn’t following his slurred or broken side of the conversation, maybe because I was totally distracted by his naked torso. I had seen a few good-looking guys in their underwear in my time, some at work, some not. None of them in memory held a candle to Nash. Someone should tell him what he did for a pair of black boxers should be considered a lethal weapon to a woman’s sanity.

“No, what?” I had to make a real effort to try and follow his scattered additions to our choppy conversation.

He tilted his head back so that he could look up at me. The flames over his ears were attached to more tattooed flames that curled up over his massive shoulders and onto the front of his chest. I guiltily wanted to see what they attached to on the backside of him. He also had what appeared to be some kind of intricately inked wings that draped all the way across his rib cage, down both sides of his corrugated abs, and disappeared into the front of his boxers on either side of his belly button. I couldn’t even imagine how bad something like that had to hurt, but the tattoo work was impressive in its enormity and detail and so was the rock-hard body that it lived on.

“No, I’m not okay.”

I blew out a breath and crouched down so that I was more on his level. His gaze followed me as I lowered myself to my haunches. People told me all the time how pretty my eyes were and it made me blush and stammer. They were all right, gray and clear, and my patients seemed to find them soothing. But I thought, as I gazed somberly into the sad depths of his, that clearly no one who thought I had pretty eyes had ever looked into Nash’s. I had never seen a more striking or unique color than the columbine blue of his. Sitting under those raven-black eyebrows, they were just magnetic.

“You need to talk to someone, family, your friends, or maybe a girlfriend. This isn’t a good situation for anyone, Nash, and drinking and smoking a carton a day isn’t going to make it any better. You need to be strong for your dad, but you also need to be strong for you. It seems like you have a lot of people you can lean on, they’ve been in and out of that hospital room all week. Trust me, this is not a fight you want to battle on your own.”

He threw his head back until it thumped on the dark leather of the couch. He squeezed his eyes shut. He pulled his long legs up and clenched fists up on the top of each knee. He even had scrolling artwork inked on his skin from beneath the hem of his boxer shorts to his knee on one leg and to the top of his foot on the other. There was simply too much of it for me to pick apart all the separate images and designs, all I knew was that it was all bold, dynamic, and full of color and had obviously been put on him by someone with an incredible amount of skill.

“Until a few days ago I thought my father walked out on me when I was just a baby. My mom told me he was a deadbeat, that he didn’t have any interest in being a husband or a father, so every time that asshole Loften talked shit to me, told me I was garbage, tried to put me under his thumb, I told myself it was cool because my mom deserved nice things, a guy to take care of her since my dad was an asshole. Only Loften is a judgmental, superficial prick and basically forced her to pick me or him. She picked him even though my dad was in the same fucking state all along and never walked out on anyone.”