Hard(69)

Gretchen’s eyebrow rose. I met her gaze.

“I mean the best,” I said. “Find out who he or she is. I’ll pay for their airfare, for their lodging, and for whatever they’d charge to do this surgery.”

“Shay, it doesn’t work this way.”

She wasn’t the first person to underestimate my bank account. “For me it does. Price is no option. I want Zach healed, better than he was before. Can you help me?”

Gretchen smiled. “You really do love him, don’t you?”

“I’m not going to miss my chance to tell him.”





Most men didn’t survive getting their heads nearly blown off. I wasn’t most men.

I once considered myself fortunate for surviving the IED. After waking up in the hospital the second time, I decided I was the luckiest son of a bitch still barely breathing.

The miracles kept on coming. My eyes focused on the chair next to my bed. Shay curled in the cushions, softly sleeping.

I had enough opiates pumping through me to clear out a whole poppy field in Afghanistan, but I trusted my blurry vision.

Shay was the most beautiful woman on the planet. A woman I almost let slip through my fingers. Someone challenging and courageous and so damn vulnerable it hurt my own heart.

She had to be mine. I wasn’t giving her up.

That was a shit-ton to take in while a half dozen tubes pricked me in a variety of uncomfortable locations. I smelled antiseptic. I tasted dry chemicals. I was pretty sure my head cracked open again.

But there she was. Sleeping by my side in a hospital room.

Like she cared.

Like she loved me.

And it only took a brush with death to get her to admit it.

I shifted. I couldn’t remember a damn thing besides getting upset. I yelled at her. I threatened to leave for some bullshit reason. I might have given her my half of the estate.

But she trumped me. Had I not crashed against the ground, her revelation would have laid me out flat.

She was pregnant.

My heart monitor beeped too fast. It woke her. Shay’s gasp warned me, but I didn’t have time to adjust the tubes pouring every type of liquid from me. She collapsed at my side.

I welcomed the soft brush of her lips against mine, the herald to her chastisement.

“Don’t you ever scare me like that again, Zach Harden. You had me pacing for five hours while they knocked out your skull and put it back together.”

“Sorry about that.” The words rasped. I managed a smile instead. “I’ll be more considerate next time.”

“Hell no. There is no next time. This is it, Zach. You’re done. No more scrambling inside your brain, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Glad we have that straight.”

Shay brushed my cheek. If I weren’t so hopped up on pain-killers, I might have felt it. But having her close was just as good.

“What the fuck am I doing here?” I asked.

She smirked, but I saw through it. She took my hand.

“Your head tried to explode,” she said.

“That the technical term?”

“You had an un-ruptured aneurysm. Something that formed after the trauma from your injury. It was…bad.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

I wiggled my toes, fingers, and flexed the most important part of me. All in working condition.

“How am I alive?”

Shay looked damn proud of herself. “I pulled some strings.”

“What kind of strings?”

“I flew in the best neurosurgeon in the country. Private plane even. Got him from Pittsburgh within two hours. He was more than happy to help once I offered my checkbook.”

“Wow.” I snorted. “Look at you. Using that trust fund.”

“I’d have spent every last cent if it kept you…” She looked away. “If it healed you.”

It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but I was glad that fear left her. I squeezed her hand.

“Gretchen?”

“She knows. She was here. She went to her office this morning, but she’s stopping in to check on you. She helped get the neurosurgeon. I dropped her name, said that you were a war vet, and I added an extra zero to his cost estimate. He came running.”

I shifted. The drugs, surgery, and bed held me damn firm, but I extended my arm. Shay helped to place my hand on her belly. She smiled—a hopeful, gentle smile.

So I had to be an ass.

I tugged on the shirt. “You’re wearing my shirt again.”

“Oh, stop it.”

I pressed against her. She was warm, but I couldn’t tell anything else. No bump. No swell. No indication anywhere that she had a little baby inside of her.

I thought we were being careful? Apparently, I was a damn miracle machine. My first injury, a baby even with contraception, and now an aneurysm? I used up my nine lives and created more.