Jules (Golden Streak Series Book 5) (3 page)

“Sit her here
, please.” Lenny pointed to her right thigh. Bronwyn hadn’t seen her body from the waist down because she wouldn’t allow it, but she’d bet anything that she was no less scarred there. When she sat Gabby on her thigh, Lenny winced but didn’t ask to have her moved. Bronwyn sat close enough to get her if need be.

“My friend had two little girls.
One was eight; the other was twelve. He loved them very much.” Lenny touched Gabby’s dark hair. “He couldn’t stand to see little kids hurt.”

“The paper said you
claimed to have been on a call that had—” Bronwyn closed her mouth when Lenny shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“He was with me in the house.
He…he died.” Lenny let Gabby pull on her hair, and when she started to crawl closer, Bronwyn had to take her, as Lenny looked to be in a great deal of pain. “I’m not well enough for her energy yet.”

Nicee
and Bronwyn finished up the room and left Lenny where she was. She’d fallen back to sleep and they both thought she needed it. When they were sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea, Nicee looked at her.

“She’s hurt badly
, isn’t she?” Bronwyn nodded. “I thought so. When I went to the door to help you, I heard her say that she didn’t want me to see. I could…I was going to say that I could handle it, but I don’t think I can. I thank you for what you did today, but I should get a nurse. Lenny may let her help more.”

“Should she be home yet?”
Nicee shook her head. “I didn’t think so. She looks like she needs more care than either of us can give her. I know a nurse. She’s very dedicated and is looking for work right now. She works for us part time, but she’s just bought a house and needs to have a little more income.”

None of which was true
, but she liked this woman and the one in the other room. There was something very…special about them.

Nicee
stood up and refreshed their tea. “I don’t have a great deal of money. I know that Lenny has insurance, but they will only cover so much. That’s why I thought that I could do it, save us both some money.” Nicee wiped at her cheeks, and Bronwyn’s heart went out to her. “How much do you think she’d charge? I know when I looked into a service, they wanted well over what I get in Social Security every month. And Lenny’s insurance only pays eighty dollars a day. Can you ask her for me?”

“I will.”
Bronwyn looked around the room as she sipped her tea. The room was spotless, but the place had a very worn…used looked to it. She’d had Neal look into the finances of the two of them, and neither of them lived above their means.

Lenny had gone to college by waiting tables and taking on odd jobs at the university
that helped round out her grants…and had graduated in the top one percent of her class. Nicee had some money saved, but very little, and her pension was barely enough to keep her in food, much less meds, if her granddaughter needed anything more than she was currently taking for pain, which had been covered.

“When Lenny was seventeen
, she wanted to go to a grand college. I didn’t have the funding for that sort of thing, and I’d…I had lied to her about her parents. When she asked me if there was any way to contact them to help her, I had to tell her where they were. She didn’t take it well.” Bronwyn knew they’d been in prison but said nothing as Nicee continued. “She didn’t take it well is an understatement, I guess. She left here and never returned. Not in all these years, but she sent me money every month. I couldn’t have…I would have been homeless had she not helped me.”

“She’s a detective in Washington.”
Nicee shook her head, and Bronwyn tried to remember what Neal had told her. “I’m sorry, I thought I’d heard that—”

“She can’t ever work again.
They said she’d had a heart attack. That’s what they told me anyway. I didn’t believe it, of course, not the way they had her all bandaged up like they did. They told me that she’d fallen. Bullshit. She was hurt, but….” Nicee took a deep breath. “They lied to me. Something happened to her and now they want to blame her. When I went to get her on that fancy plane they sent me there to get her in, that man said that she was not to leave my house without their permission. If she had fallen like they said, what does her being tied to my house have to do with a simple fall?”

Bronwyn didn’t know
, but she planned to get to the bottom of it. When Neal, then Keith, had done a search, they both had said there was something off about the articles in the paper, but had told her that they were going to dig. Later, Keith told her that Lenny had been injured on the job, but he’d never told her how and she’d not inquired. Now she would.

On her way home she called Keith first. He told her that he’d been blocked out of the records
, but if she would promise to help him out of jail if it went that far, he’d look. She promised him that she’d make sure he was never caught. Then she called Peter.

“I need you to do
something for me.” He told her anything she needed. “A friend of mine has a granddaughter that has been injured on the job. The place where she worked told her grandmother that she’d had a heart attack and fell down a flight of stairs. But today when I spoke to the girl, she said her friend had been bitten by a vampire, and the marks on her body do not look like they came from a fall.”

“Len
ore is here? She was supposed to be in the hospital for another month. Will that child ever do anything on a time table I can follow?” Bronwyn knew the exact moment that Peter realized he’d said too much. “Is she going to be okay? Did you read her mind?”

“
No. I thought of it, but…I was afraid. I’m sure that whatever happened to her was horrific, and I just didn’t want to know today. As for her being all right? I don’t know. She’s been hurt badly, there’s no money for help, and she’s being blamed for whatever happened to her and her friend. I’m assuming you know what happened to her, the real reason she looks like someone clawed her belly open.” He told her he did. “And the reason you know this is why?”

“I was…
.” He took a deep breath. “I will pay for her care, but her grandmother, as well as Lenore, is very prideful, so if you could pave the way for me I’d—”

“I’m going to see if Sindy can care for her.
She can get good care and I’ll pay the difference. You want any information on the girl, you’ll tell me what happened to her and why you know her.”

“I can only tell you so much.
But she was injured by the rogues that Brock and Em are helping the Realm with. She’s…the rogue knew that she was important to me and wanted to kill her.”

She pulled into her drive and looked at her daughter while she slept as she spoke to Peter.
“Who is she to us? I know you well enough to know that you never do anything without a reason, so who is she to us?”

“She is Jules
’s mate.”

Chapter 3

Jules watched the clay form.
He loved this part of what he did, when he took a ball of fresh clay and put it onto the wheel and let it speak to him. Nothing in this whole process made him more pleased with what he did than this part. Second was taking the finished piece out of the kiln and seeing all the hard work come down to the finished product. He didn’t look up when he felt someone come into his workshop, but let the piece continue. He knew it was his brother Ryland, but didn’t care to speak to him just now, if ever again.

“Are you still pissed at me?”
Jules took his hands off the piece as he let the anger toward Ryland move away. “I’m not leaving until we fix this.”

“I’m trying to work. You want to talk
, come back later. Right now I have eight more pieces to throw, and if you keep digging at me, I’ll never get them done.” He heard his brother mumble something about artists and their temperament, and had to take several deep breaths before he could put his hands on the piece. It took him several minutes of simply letting the piece turn on the wheel before he touched it again.

Lost in the work
, he let the music of it roll over him. The workshop was silent now that everyone had gone for the day, but Jules had been listening to the clay for so long that he thought of it as music. When the first three pieces of the ten he would throw were sitting on the rack, he backed from his wheel and went to the sink. He’d hoped that Ryland had gotten tired of waiting and left, but that would just be too much to hope for. He was sitting at Jules’s front desk playing on the computer when he walked in.

“Are you apo
logizing to me? If not, then get the fuck out of here.” Ryland stood up and looked ready to do battle. “I’m dead serious, Ryland, say you’re sorry or get out.”

“The house was not what you—
” Jules walked away. “Damn it, Jules. The house was not worth what they were asking for it. If I had paid what they were demanding, you would never have gotten your investment back even if you owned it for the next nine hundred years.”

“
I don’t fucking care, you pigheaded louse. You knew I wanted that house. I’ve been telling you that for fifteen years. I said to you ‘if the house comes on the market, buy it, and I’ll pay you back.’ How many times did I say that to you? A thousand, a million times in all these years?”

“He wanted just under a million dollars.”
That stopped Jules and he turned to his brother. “He had heard that we wanted it and he wouldn’t budge on the price. The house appraised at less than half that just last year, and I couldn’t get him to come down. The man who bought it said that he was going to resell it when he got it fixed up. There would be no amount of fixing that house that would give anyone a good return.”

Jules started to ask if he
’d told the new owner, but he knew Ryland better than that. He would do what it took to get something as cheaply as he could to make a profit. There was no way there would be any profit in that house, not for a million dollars.

“Who bought it?”
He told him the name of the man who had less sense than he did money. “Do you think he’ll tear it down?”

“No. He borrowed the money to buy it and they
won’t let him. The good news is that he may have to sell it in a few years when the cost of repairing it outweighs what he has in it. You might be able to get it then.” Ryland handed him a file. “The plumbing is shot to hell, the slate roof needs to be replaced, and most of the support-and load-bearing walls need to be either replaced or reinforced before you can do anything to the walls. The furnace is as old as I am, and there—” Jules cut him off. “It was going to be a bad investment no matter what you paid for it. I’m sorry.”

“You could have told me this first thing yesterday.”
Ryland only smiled. “But then you wouldn’t get to fight with me. You are the most pigheaded man I know. But I think I will have to let you slide on this one. For now.”

“Not all bad
, I suppose. You’re pretty strong for someone that plays in the dirt all day.” Ryland laughed. “Did I throw you off so badly that you can’t do that thing for Bronwyn tomorrow?”

He’d forgotten about whatever it was he was doing.
He had an alarm on his phone for it and something on his calendars at his apartment, but he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do. He looked at Ryland for help.

“You’re taking that friend of hers to the doctor’s office.
Her relative can’t help her in and out of their car very well.”

He remembered now. Something about her being banged up pretty badly.
“I’ll be there. I have to be there at seven for an eight o’clock appointment, and I’m taking Bronwyn’s car. She said it would be easier on her. I heard that Sindy is going to work for the girl, too.” He hadn’t heard what had happened to the child, only that she had been hurt pretty badly.

After Ryland left
, he sat at his wheel again. The last of the pieces were easy after he and his brother had talked. He was still upset about the house but not with Ryland. Who would pay that much for a house that wasn’t worth it? When he cleaned up his area and covered the wet pieces, he locked the door and went to his car.

There were four messages on his phone. One from Bronwyn reminding him to pick up Lenny
tomorrow—for some reason Jules had thought the kid was a girl, and made a mental note to remember that tomorrow— and the last three were from his publicist. She needed an updated picture of him, a bio for the new catalog, as well as the piece he was going to put on the cover. He fixed a can of soup and ignored the messages. After his dinner he went to his computer and found the same messages, in email form, there as well. Closing it down, he went to the living room and sat in front of the television until he’d fallen asleep a half dozen times, then went to bed. Tomorrow was going to be a big day and he decided that when he was finished with this thing with the kid, he was going to go to the grocery store, then get to work. Things were not going to get done on their own.

At six
forty-five he was at the house. He fell in love with it immediately and walked around the yard to get a better view from all angles twice before going to the door. Christ, this was just what he was looking for, and he wondered if the woman that owned it would think of selling. When an older woman answered, he was at a loss for words for several seconds. She had blood all over her shirt.

“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, but she was upset. “Where is the kid? Tell me where he is.”

“I was helping with…Lenny is so much heavier than I thought
, and when….” He put his hands on her shoulders to calm her down. “She’s in there. But be careful. We dropped a glass and a tray of food.”

He nodded and wondered who the
“she” was and where the boy was. The room, when he entered, looked like a hospital room, complete with the bed and IV poles hanging from it. There was no one in the room, and he started to turn when he heard something. Going to the other side of the bed, he found a woman on the floor who was bleeding pretty heavily.

“I’m al
l right, Grandma. I just…just let me lay here until the pain meds kick in and I’ll get up.” She looked at him and Jules felt his world rock when he looked at the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Jules Golden. I’m here to take someone to the doctor’s office. I’m assuming that would be you.”
He walked to the bleeding woman and started to reach for her. “How should I pick you up?”

“You fucking touch me and I’ll kill you.”
He took a step back. Christ, she was pissed. “I’m sorry, but if you touch me it’s only going to hurt more. And at the moment all I want to do is slip away on the nice drugs. Just let me lay here.”

The blood had saturated her blouse
, and he could see where her leg was bleeding, too. He thought she needed an ambulance, but before he could say anything he heard a siren. He looked at the doorway when who he now assumed was Mrs. MacFinley walked in.

“
I’ve called them, honey.” She was crying and he wanted to comfort the older woman. “I’m so sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to drop you.”

“I’m fine
, Grandma. It’s only a few stitches and I’ll be as good as new once these guys put them back.” Jules didn’t think that was all it was going to take, but said nothing. The girl looked like she’d kick his ass even as hurt as she was if he dared to say a word. He smiled at her instead.

The medics came in and pulled her shirt up. It took them three
tries to get Lenny to let it go, but when she did, his breath caught. Christ, she’d been more than banged up. The medic that was leaning over her froze when he cut away her pants.

“Get him out of here.” He shook his head at her.
“I said to leave. I don’t need a fucking audience in here. Just go…away.”

He didn’t move
, not even when the medic told him to. He did pull out his cell phone and call Bronwyn, after they’d given Lenny something else for the pain and she was out. They were loading her onto a gurney when Bronwyn answered. He was just telling them to take her to the Clinic, a medical facility that his family owned and operated.

“She’s fallen.”
He heard her cuss. “And no, I didn’t do it. She told the medics that she was getting up to go to the bathroom with her grandma’s help and tripped up over something. Apparently her grandma had tried to hold her weight but they both tumbled. I think she took the brunt of the fall.”

“I heard you tell them to take them to the Clinic. Good. Are you riding in with her or bringing her grandma?”
He hadn’t planned on either but thought it was a good idea. There was something about the girl—woman, he guessed—that made him think she needed protection, though he doubted he could take care of her any better than she could. She looked like she was as tough as nails, as his mom said.

“I’ll be there
, but I don’t know which way yet. Are you going to meet us there?” She told him she would. “What the hell happened to her, Bronwyn? She’s been sliced open all over her body.”

“I don’t know.
Alistair is looking into some things for me, but all I can find out from anyone is that she’d fallen down a flight of stairs after suffering a heart attack.” He snorted. “How much of her wounds did you see?”

“She’s been clawed by a big animal
, and he did a great deal of damage to her. Her belly, as well as her chest, is riddled with open wounds, and her legs are just as bad front and back. There is a mark on her chest that looks like someone tried to dig her heart out. And as for a heart attack? There is no way she got hurt like this from a fall, no matter what they say happened to her heart. Something or someone pierced her chest, and I’d bet my next check it was the same kind of claws that cut her up.”

He
told her they were on their way and he ended up following the ambulance with Nicee, as she’d asked him to call her, riding with him. She looked so distraught that he was worried for her as well. When he asked her what happened, she told the same story as Lenny had told the medics, but not quite the same.

“She needed to use the bathroom and I was helping her. But I had a little spell. I get all weak at times and I
couldn’t hold her. When she reached for the bed, it was too far away and the tray for her breakfast hit the floor and she tripped up in the tea. It was entirely my fault.” When she burst into tears, Jules felt helpless. He handed her a box of tissues that were in the console and let her try to compose herself. When they pulled into the clinic, Lenny was already inside and the ambulance was parked in one of the reserved spaces. He pulled in right next to it.

~~~

Lenny was in so much pain it was all she could do not to scream every time someone touched her. And they touched her a lot. The nurse who had met her at the front doors had taken one look at her, rushed inside, and come back out with about a dozen people. Lenny was also getting sick. The pain medication didn’t agree with her.

“Sick,” she said to one of the nurses as he flew by her with some sort of
instrument. And he gave her a little half-moon of a pan. “I need big.”

When he only shoved it at her again
, she knew it wasn’t going to cut it, but it was too late now. As soon as she put it to her mouth, she screamed out her vomit. The pain was nearly unbearable and she was only getting sicker from it. Then the man from the house was standing there, barking at someone to help her.

Warmth ran
along her arm where the medics had put in the IV, and she looked to see that someone was putting something in it. Before she could ask them what it was, she felt her head lull back and her neck get very soft. The man pulled her head around to look at him and she heard him saying something, but she couldn’t hear it over her screams. She tried to close her mouth over them but the shakes started up, and she was fading fast.

“I hurt.” He nodded and she felt a warmed blanket
being put over her. “Hurt so bad. Should die.”

“I don’t think so.
You’ll have to live so I can claim you.” That made no sense to her, so she closed her eyes. When he said her name, she looked up at him. “Who hurt you?”

“A vampire.
I wish I had just died.” The blackness came up to slap the shit out of her, and she let it. As she tumbled down the dark hole, she felt the pain recede and then felt herself smile. This was the good stuff she’d gotten in the hospital, not the generic stuff she could afford.