Love Story(39)
Author: Jennifer Echols

There was no way around it now. “I was afraid your stories in Gabe’s class were real,” I muttered.

Hunter’s eyebrows shot up. “That I was having sex with a bar waitress? And you followed me to find out? For somebody who hates me, you sure are interested in my sex life.”

“I don’t hate you, Hunter.” I felt my eyes filling with tears yet again. I was in pain of various degrees and types, but what brought me to tears was a hurt from six years before and eight hundred miles away.

His fingers touched mine. At first I thought he would tug at my gown again. Then his fingers slipped past my palm and intertwined with my fingers. I had known his hands would be calloused from farmwork even now, an adaptation to an old life that took a while to wear off. Even so, I was surprised by the rough feel of his skin against mine.

His hand moved up to stroke my hair. It felt so good, and the tingles racing down my arms were so delicious, that I fought the urge to close my eyes and purr. It was weird, but now that I knew he wasn’t having the sexy adventures I’d suspected him of, he seemed sexier. We had arrived at some adult place where people had actual relationships with each other and they worked out, if we were very lucky.

At a sudden thought I jerked awake. “What about the blonde?”

“What blonde?” he asked, surprised. His rough fingers moved across my hairline.

“You act like I’m so silly to think your stories were real, but you were with the blonde in the bathroom.”

“Oh! Right. I forget her name. I haven’t seen her since then. I told her I wanted to make you mad and asked her to let me paw her for a few minutes.”

I found it difficult to be angry with him when his fingers were in my hair, stroking lightly. I did my best. “Then you acted shocked that I was mad.”

“I was shocked that you were mad. Before then, I’d thought you didn’t like me very much.”

“Even after the stable-boy story?”

“You said it was fiction.” He sighed and put his chin in his hand, setting his elbow on the gurney close to me, stroking my hair with the other hand. “Everything you do surprises me. That’s how you keep my attention.”

I looked up at him, stared deep into his blue eyes that reflected the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. I kept his attention. I licked my dry lips and took a breath to ask him what that meant.

Before I could speak he said, “I’m supposed to take you to X-ray in a few minutes.”

“Wrong.” I shook my head, and my hair hissed back and forth on the gurney’s paper covering. “I’m going to refuse it, and I’d appreciate some help in speeding that up.”

His hand stopped in my hair. He said darkly, “You can’t refuse it.”

“It’s my right, and I have to. My grandmother kicked me off her health insurance. I’m on the university’s cheapo student insurance, which means I get emergency care but I have to go to student health first or they might not pay. I can’t afford an X-ray and my dorm room, too.”

“What if your hip’s broken?”

“We agreed it probably isn’t. Anyway, I’ll find out tomorrow morning when the student health office opens.” I didn’t look forward to spending the rest of the night in this much pain and afraid to put my foot down, but there was no other way.

“You are not leaving,” he ordered me. A nurse swished by outside the curtain. Hunter looked over his shoulder at her, then sidled closer to me and lowered his voice, but his tone was as intense as before. “I will not let you leave until you see the doctor.”

“You can’t stop me.” I met his gaze and tried to look as determined as he did, which was difficult with my hip aching in a new way. Some of my muscles had been so surprised by the hit that they forgot to hurt at first. Slowly, they were remembering.

Suddenly he sat up, face clear and friendly. “I’ll fix it. Back in a sec.” He kicked off from the bed, propelling the rolling stool all the way through the opening in the curtain.

I turned my head to one side and closed my eyes against the white light, trying to get comfortable, melding my body with the hard gurney. I was so sleepy. It was after midnight. I could not imagine Hunter staying awake and alert here night after night.

“Hey,” he coaxed in a low voice.

I opened my eyes, squinting against the light. His hand was in my hair again, and he leaned over me.

“I’ll help you up,” he said. “We’re going to X-ray. I took care of it for you.”

“What do you mean, you took care of it?” I slurred. I didn’t want to go, but his arms were underneath me, easing me toward the edge of the gurney and a waiting wheelchair padded with pillows. I was afraid any resistance would result in another game of hospital gown peekaboo.

He settled me so gently in the soft wheelchair that my hip and my back hardly hurt. Pushing me past the curtain and into the bustling emergency room, he leaned close, over me, to say, “I fixed it. They’re going to lose the records of your visit, so you’ll never get billed. But you’re my girlfriend.”

“What do you mean, I’m your girlfriend?” What delicious blackmail was this? And was it worth the price? Perhaps I could stand it.

“I had to make them think I have a vested interest in you,” he whispered. “They never would have agreed to lose your records if I told them you were my friend at twelve years old but not so much at eighteen and I had pretty much walked in and stolen the birthright to your family farm. See? Shhh. Hey, Brody.” He slapped hands with another man in scrubs wheeling an empty gurney in the opposite direction. The man eyed me, waggled his eyebrows at Hunter, and kept going.

“Couldn’t you have said we’re friends and left it at that?” I needed to keep up the facade that I did not like the idea at all. At the same time, I was a little afraid Hunter would call the charade off.

“I have a lot of friends,” he explained, wheeling me into a waiting room marked X-RAY. He rounded the wheelchair and knelt in front of me. Behind him, a door stood ajar. A contraption I assumed to be an X-ray machine was visible through the crack. He glanced over his shoulder at the door, then turned back to me. “Sorry about this,” he murmured as he slid both hands into my hair and kissed me.

All I could do at first was feel. His lips were on mine. His hands held me steady, so I couldn’t have shrugged away if I’d tried, but I would not try. Bright tingles spread from my lips across my face and down my neck to my chest. I longed to pull him closer for more. I reminded myself that we were faking this for a reason. I didn’t want to make the kiss deeper than necessary in case it turned him off.

Hunter deepened it. His tongue pressed past my teeth and swept inside my mouth. One of his hands released my hair and caressed my shoulder, traveling down. The farther his hand went, the higher I felt. My hip hardly hurt and my back pain was gone. I wondered how low his hand would go.