narrowed his eyes and glanced across at her face. Was she up to something? Did she intend to shake off his protection at the hospital?
She wouldn’t lose him as easily as Clint had lost those shooters, as easily as he could lose the Marines if he chose to. “Why can’t they come along?” he asked with a jerk of his head toward the SUV following them.
“Because I don’t want everyone at the hospital to know that I’m in danger,” she said.
“Don’t they know about the trial?” he asked. “That you’re going to testify against your brother’s killer?”
“No,” she said. “I haven’t told anyone.”
That had probably been a damn good idea, given that anyone could be affiliated with Luther and his crew. Rosie hadn’t survived growing up in her neighborhood by luck. She was street-smart.
But as smart as she’d been to keep everything to herself, it must have been lonely as well. Had she had no one to support her through the loss of her brother?
“You didn’t tell anyone?” he asked. “Not a friend? Or a boyfriend?”
She snorted. “With the hours I work I barely have time to sleep, let alone have a relationship of any kind.”
So she needed the people she worked with to be her friends, like Clint felt the people he worked with were his. But unlike him, she felt like she couldn’t trust her coworkers.
Clint glanced into his rearview mirror, at the lights shining in it. Parker would give him hell if he purposely lost his backup.
But Rosie was right. If she walked in with an entourage, everyone would know that something was wrong, that she was in danger. But even if she walked in with him...
“How are you going to explain me?” he asked.
Her eyes widened as she stared at him. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Guess you’ll have to claim I’m your boyfriend,” he told her.
A gasp slipped through her lips, and he didn’t think it was because he suddenly jerked the wheel to the right. The tires squealed at the sharp turn.
And Rosie’s dark eyes widened even more. But she didn’t protest claiming him as hers.
Clint glanced away from her to study the rearview mirror. The lights were gone. The driver of the Payne agency SUV that had been following them hadn’t expected Clint’s sharp and sudden turn, so he missed it.
Clint made a few more hairpin turns in the circuitous route he traveled to the hospital. He hadn’t tried really hard to lose his tail, though—just to make it look as though he had to Rosie.
For some reason she hadn’t forced Parker to remove him from this assignment. And for that reason, he didn’t want to piss her off. So he would go along with what she wanted.
He just hoped like hell that complying with her wishes wouldn’t get them both killed.
* * *
Luther stared down at the cell phone in his hand, willing it to ring. Where the hell was she? She couldn’t have just disappeared, and his crew had looked all around her building for her body.
For hers and Clint Quarters’s.
They were both gone.
Damn Quarters!
The former vice cop hadn’t killed her when he’d tossed her out that window. He’d saved her. How the hell was that man so damn lucky?
How could they have fallen three stories and not been hurt? They had to be at the hospital. At least that was what Luther was counting on...
“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
