“Not yet.” Yarborough forced Cullen into meeting his gaze. “Take off your shirt.”
“You aren’t my type, Ricky.”
Yarborough didn’t even blink. “I would usually simply charge some extraordinary penalty for someone who missed three appointments, but given your bank account, I’m going to resort to more underhanded measures. Take off your shirt and get on the exam table, or I’ll leave a copy of your X-rays with Liam, Eli, Kyan, Ms. Reynolds over there, and Catherine.”
Cullen had been right. Yarborough was not in the ER by chance.
“I’m going to fucking fire Michelle,” Cullen muttered, pulling his shirt off in a smooth motion, his only further protest limited to refusing to wince when Yarborough palpated the shoulder and the shrapnel embedded in it.
“The longer you put this off, the more difficult the surgery is going to be,” Yarborough said. “And yes, I said it is, not may. I know the notion scares you shitless, but—”
“It doesn’t bother me much, Ricky,” Cullen said. “The shoulder. It really isn’t much trouble.”
“No shooting pains?” the doc prodded. “No numbness or tingling? No stiffness or achy joints?”
“I didn’t say I have no pain, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. I need to stay on task at the Rescue. It’s important work.”
“Which is all the more reason to take care of this.” Yarborough sighed, his tone softening as he handed Cullen’s shirt back. “How are the nightmares?”
His jaw tightened. They were going over all the fun things tonight. “Rare.”
“How rare is rare?”
“Every other night.” Cullen sighed. “And I had a flashback a couple of weeks back.”
“The field hospital?” Yarborough asked.
“In full color.”
Yarborough nodded, unsurprised. “Are you still taking your prazosin?”
“Yes, Doc. Every day.”
“All right. You’re free for now. But listen to me—you can’t keep ignoring the shrapnel. You’ve been lucky that it hasn’t migrated too drastically, but luck isn’t what I want to rely on, especially not with how physical you get.”
The sound of a bed being wheeled across the floor echoed from the hallway. Sky being taken to CT? “I hear you,” Cullen said, his attention on the door.
“Do you?” The doctor’s tone dropped low and harsh, snapping Cullen’s attention right back to him. Yarborough was in the med corps and had a way of putting any SEAL in his place.
“Yes, sir,” he answered, this time with more fidelity, and tried not to look like he was escaping as Yarborough bladed his body to let Cullen out of the room.
Returning to Sky’s bed, Cullen was relieved to find her still there and looking as comfortable as someone could in the ER. Pulling up a chair, he heard Yarborough’s words echo in his mind. Ricky was wrong, though—Cullen cared about Sky because she worked at the Rescue. The reduction decision was a risk benefit analysis, not a judgment impaired by emotion. It wasn’t.
“Why did you go to that house alone?” Cullen asked Sky, more harshly than he’d intended. “I told you not to.”
Her brilliant blue eyes zeroed back in on his. “I’m not going to dignify the latter part with a response. As for the former, I was given an assignment. As you very well know.”
“You have to be smarter than that. Frank doesn’t give a damn about you. He’d send you into a burning building if he thought he could get more newspaper subscribers out of it.” In deference to their location, Cullen kept his voice low, but his aggravation twisted his words into a rough growl. “Hell, you dying would just make that issue sell even faster.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“Could’ve fooled me today.”
Eyes flashing, Sky grabbed Cullen’s shirt with her good hand. “You might be my boss when I’m at Trident Rescue, Cullen Hunt, but what I do as a professional journalist is not up to you. Are we clear on that?”
Cullen’s breath caught as a zap of energy shot from Skylar’s tight grip right to his cock, her fire-filled eyes heating his blood, her sweet floral scent grabbing his chest. For a heartbeat, he could do nothing but scrutinize that mouth of hers, the way it hung open just a little in her indignation, her lips soft and supple and goddamn kissable.
“My job is to get the story. The end,” Skylar went on, chest heaving.
Cullen’s chest was heaving too, though fury at Sky’s stubbornness was only half responsible. The rest had to do with how the top of her gown exposed a lacy white bra. Lace that was, for all intents and purposes, transparent.
“And only I get to decide for myself how much risk I’m going to take,” Sky finished, scowling as she let go of his shirt. Her voice softened. “Besides, I hadn’t actually meant to get so close to the house. But once I saw Zack…” She shook her head, her face changing to a distant pain-filled look. “They hurt a child. I couldn’t leave him. And no matter how much you growl, I’m willing to bet you wouldn’t have left him either.”
“No, I wouldn’t have,” he agreed quietly. “But you aren’t me. And I promise you, that’s a very good thing.”
16
Sky
I meet Cullen’s gaze. His face is inches away from mine, his breathing accelerated. His eyes—typically a gorgeous mossy green—have darkened to near blackness, and I can feel the heat pouring off him. His firm lips are so tight that they’ve basically disappeared, and the smooth expanse of his wide forehead is creased. I want to slap that perfectly formed face of his for insulting me, and I want to pound my fist into the bastard’s massive, muscular chest. And damn it, I want to crush my lips to his mouth all at the same time.
I fight against the magnetic force drawing my face closer to Cullen’s. Everything about the man, including the pull he has on me, is wrong. Insane. Unwanted. And yet the distance between us still closes, our mouths millimeters apart. I can feel Cullen’s breath mixing with mine, tickling my skin—when there’s an expulsion of breath from someone else.
Cullen and I freeze.
“Excuse me.” The woman who appears in my peripheral vision clears her throat nervously. “I’m here to take Ms. Reynolds for some scans.”
I peer over my shoulder to find a tech with a white lab coat and turquoise hair hovering by the door.
“I’ll have her back to you as soon as I can, Mr. Hunt,” she promises, her face coloring as Cullen swings his gaze to her. I get the feeling that she’d ask him for an autograph if she could.
“Of course, Summer. Thank you,” Cullen says politely, and I swear the tech’s blush deepens another two shades. What is it with these people treating Cullen like a celebrity?
What is it with me that I care?
After I’ve endured X-rays and a scan in a big donut-shaped machine, Summer of the turquoise hair returns me to my alcove. We’re almost there when I hear Cullen’s voice mixing with several others. Eli’s, Liam’s, and Kyan’s deep masculine tones I recognize immediately, but the fifth—a bubbly musical soprano—is something new.