Her Secret Wish (3 page)

Dean laughed with her, trying to encourage the lightheartedness, in spite of the situation. “If it’s important they’ll call back.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, her eyes closing. “Maybe you can find it for me if I get out of here.”

“
When
you get out of here, not if,” he corrected.

But she didn’t respond. “Rachel?”

Things began to move fast then. After he checked her vitals the paramedic working on her managed to fit a cervical collar around her neck and began bandaging her arm. The firemen arrived and it was quickly decided to use hydraulic extraction tools to get her out of the car. Dean told one of the guys what she’d said about her leg and he nodded, stepping up on top of the hood with the huge Jaws of Life machine.

Dean relinquished his hold on her arm to the paramedic and stepped away from the car to give the firemen room to work. But he watched Rachel through the mangled passenger door.

Nathan Killian, another DPD patrol cop and his best buddy, stopped beside him. “Did you see this happen, West?”

Dean nodded and quickly scanned the area. “Unfortunately. Where’s the truck?”

Killian shook his head, shrugging his shoulders. “It totally disappeared. We’ve got several units canvassing the area. If it was decked out like you said, he may not have even sustained any damage.”

Dean nodded, fuming. It was bad enough the woman got hit but the second vehicle leaving the scene of the crime was criminal, literally. “Let me know if you find him, would you? I’m going to stick with her for a while. I’ll tape a statement for you tomorrow morning when I’m back on duty.”

Killian nodded and returned to diagramming the scene.

Dean made sure to stay out of the way of the first-responders. He knew from experience that there was nothing more aggravating than trying to do your job around rubber-necking civilians. But when they finally pulled her from the car a half hour later, he waded over to the gurney heading to the ambulance. She had regained consciousness, her eyes fluttering in the sunlight. Leaning over her he blocked out the sun so that she could focus on him. “See, you made it out.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, eyes drooping closed.

Dean let them load her up, watching closely as they locked the gurney into the back of the vehicle, closed the rear doors and took off.

‡

S
tunning aquamarine eyes
with mile-long lashes plagued her dreams and as soon as she woke, she wished she could go right back to sleep. Doctors and nurses were poking and prodding her. Somebody walked into the room holding blue x-ray films and the group paused to huddle around it.

“What did I break?” she asked.

One of the young men in the circle turned to look at her. He grinned, looking a little clownish with big glasses perched on his skinny-ass nose.

“Ms. Searles, glad to see you awake. We’re just looking at your scans. Looks like you’ve been through some trauma before.”

She sighed, wishing she could turn the overhead lights off. She couldn’t even turn her head away from the light because of the cervical collar. “Yes. A bit,” she told him, totally tongue-in-cheek.

He turned back to the scan and even she could see the long metal rods in her spine, as well as the half a dozen fixators and twelve screws, showing white on the dark blue background. “Mid-back fracture, T4, 5 and 6 several years ago. Helicopter crash in Afghanistan,” She explained.

Her Doogie Howser doctor turned to look at her, eyes bugging behind his glasses. “Well, luckily for you there doesn’t seem to be any damage to the prior repairs, although I’ll forward these to an orthopedic surgeon to make sure.”

The ball of tension in her stomach eased but she wondered if she should even listen to the kid. He looked like he’d just graduated high school.

A second, more mature man stepped to the side of her bed, reaching to remove the collar. “I don’t think you need this anymore. I’m Dr. Carter. Can you tell us what happened?”

Fighting impatience, Rachel went through the series of events as she remembered them.

“Excellent. And what day is it?”

“Saturday.”

“That is correct.” He pulled a penlight from his pocket to shine into her eyes, then away. “You have a concussion from your head striking the doorframe of the car. While it’s not too bad, I don’t think I want to release you just yet. Head trauma can be unpredictable. You’ve got severe contusions on your left calf but again, no breaks. We had to put a dozen stitches in your arm, but those can come out in a week to ten days. I think you were very lucky this time, Ms. Searles. The airbags protected you from the worst of it.”

Rachel wasn’t ever going to bitch about spending so much money on that car, then. The airbags alone had probably saved her from extensive injuries to her already compromised body. She could spend the night in the hospital. It was so much less than she’d expected.

Several hours later she was ready to bitch. Though they were only doing their job, the damned nurses would not leave her alone. As soon as she drifted off to sleep, which she needed desperately, they slipped in to check her pupil response and other neurological markers. After she’d been woken up four times in the course of the evening, she snapped at the pretty brunette twig with the perma-smile. “If you people don’t leave me alone for the next six hours to get some real sleep, I will walk out of here AMA. Do you get me?”

Her shiny perma-smile wilted. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Then you better check with whoever is in charge because even though this bed is one of the softest hospital beds I’ve ever felt, I will walk out of here without hesitation.”

They gave her four hours. Barely.

As Rachel cracked her lids open to look at the woman pushing a wheeled cart into the room, her eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. Four hours would be all she would get today. Although, if she went home she could sleep all she wanted.

With that thought in mind, she demanded to be released as soon as the doctor came for rounds. And though he hemmed and hawed, he eventually gave in in the face of her implacable stubbornness. The doctor gave her a handful of prescriptions and demanded that she follow up with her general practitioner. Rachel promised she would because it was only sensible. She didn’t want to have any more medical issues than she had already.

As they wheeled her down the long hallway to the front of the hospital, she wondered who she could call to come get her. Maybe if there was a valet they could call her a cab. Shit, she didn’t have any money. She was just wondering if it was still possible to make collect calls when the orderly wheeled her outside the doors.

There was a white Denver PD cruiser waiting at the curb, with an aquamarine-eyed savior in uniform leaning against the fender. For a moment, Rachel just had to stare. She’d known the man had to have been real, but she’d never expected to see him again. And she certainly didn’t remember him being so gorgeous. Or so
built
. Those muscles had taken many long, long hours in a gym to achieve, but he wasn’t muscle-bound. Those incredible biceps strained the sleeves of his shirt but weren’t
too
much.

As the orderly pushed her wheelchair to the turn-around, the hunk in the black uniform pushed away from the car, lips spread in a blinding smile.

“Were you in uniform before?” she asked, confused.

The officer shook his head. “No, ma’am. Yesterday was my day off.”

“Yet you still ended up working.”

He shrugged his incredibly broad shoulders, giving her a sheepish look. “It was worth it to help rescue a beautiful woman.”

Rachel barked out a laugh, truly amused. “If you think a blood-covered face is beautiful, you may need to seek help.”

Dean laughed with her, head tipped back and strong column of his neck moving. Though he wore a bullet-proof vest beneath his uniform, Rachel could tell he moved like a trained warrior. She was stunned to find herself so drawn to him. Though she worked with gorgeous, confident men every day, it was work. The fact that Dean had shown up here, appearing to want to give her a ride and check up on her, made her think this was more personal. Maybe she should clarify. “Do I have a statement I need to fill out or something?”

Dean blinked those glorious eyes. “Well, that’s up to your investigating officer. I signed out to give you a quick ride home. A buddy’s wife works here so she called me when it looked like you were getting out. She said you were a bit of a pain last night.”

His gaze did a quick head to toe, taking her measure, then his smile broadened.

Rachel was a little stunned. Men weren’t generally drawn to her. It had been pounded into her head that she was too strong, a little too butch, to appeal to men. After being in the military for so many years, and especially in the exclusive group she’d been in, it had not benefitted her to be feminine, so she’d tried to block that part of herself away.

“I…thank you for the offer of a ride, but I can call a cab.”

Dean shook his head and moved forward, holding a broad hand out to help her from the chair. Rachel took the offered hand without thinking, letting him lift her up. At any other time she’d have brushed his offer of aid away and just shoved up out of the chair herself.

Something
about Dean West had knocked her world a little off kilter.

His strong hand gripped her own and tugged but she swayed. She took a step to steady herself and ended up chest to chest with her rescuer.

Rachel stepped back, flustered, and angry with herself that she felt that way. What the hell was going on with her? Maybe she could blame being so out of balance on the pain meds they’d given her.

Dean still had that ornery grin on his face, but it seemed to be tinged with awareness now. Surely that couldn’t be right… no man in their right mind would go for her, not looking the way she was right now. The nurse had apologized when she’d handed over Rachel’s bag of dingy, blood-streaked clothes. There was a monster bandage on her temple, where she’d had to get a few stitches in one of the lacerations. Her hair hadn’t even been brushed in a solid day, let alone clean.

Rachel didn’t have family in the area so there was no way she could have fresh clothes dropped off. She could call one of the guys from LNF, but she didn’t want anybody to know what had happened if she could avoid it. Although in the interest of full disclosure, she should probably let Duncan know what had happened.

“Let me drop you off somewhere. As long as you don’t mind riding in the cruiser, I can save you some cab fare.”

Rachel gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Do I have to ride in the back?”

Dean chuckled deep in his chest. “Not today. I’ll let you ride in front like a big girl.”

His humor was pretty contagious. And she didn’t live far from the hospital. She wouldn’t put him too far out of his way. “Fine. Lead the way, Officer West.”

Without another word he took her elbow in his hand and walked her carefully to the car. He jumped forward enough to swing the door open for her, then grabbed a couple of things off the seat and threw them through the hole in the glass partition to the back seat. It was incredibly sweet but a little off-putting too. That back seat had probably seen a lot of fucked up things.

Rachel settled into the car seat and reached for the seatbelt, but he’d already stretched it out and was leaning in to reach around her hips to snap it shut. Blood suffused her face—she could feel it. Even as tan as she was, he had to see her embarrassment. “Thank you,” she choked out.

Rachel didn’t know if it was because she was so embarrassed or what, but it seemed like he withdrew
very
slowly, giving her an incredible amount of time to look at the dark blond stubble growing in on his square jaw. When he finally pulled out of the car and carefully shut her door, she heaved a breath.
Holy hell, what the fuck had that been?

Officer West circled the front of the car, giving her a chance to catch her breath and give herself a stern talking to. Yet as he settled behind the wheel, his broad shoulders reaching beyond the width of his seat, she had to wonder why he was taking the time to be with her.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she murmured.

That broad smile turned her way. “I know. But I wanted to. I wanted to check and make sure you really were recovering.”

Okay, that time she didn’t imagine it. Dean West had held eye contact with her way too long. Blinking out of her own daze, she watched his strong, broad hand twist the key in the ignition and shift the car into drive. Rachel took a moment to look at the interior of the car. Dash mounted pc, cursor blinking. Miscellaneous papers stuffed into the sun visor above his head. A spare set of cuffs hanging from the spotlight at the left of the dash. Typical patrol car; although spotlessly clean.

“How long have you been a cop, Mr. West?”

His blond head turned, one brow raised. “About seven years. I graduated police academy a year after I graduated college. Been on the job ever since. I moved out here from California about six months ago to be closer to family.”

He was still unbearably enthusiastic about his job. Rachel sighed, feeling older than her actual years. It had been a long time since she’d been that eager about anything.