“And your address?” the woman asked.
When he hesitated again, Olivia had enough. “Can’t you see he needs medical attention? He’s lost a lot of blood and is obviously lightheaded and having trouble concentrating.”
The woman was not impressed. She held her ground and repeated her question.
Olivia sighed loudly. “It’s the same as mine. We live together.”
Draping his arm over her shoulder, she ignored her own exhaustion and rose from the stool. She was going to walk Asher out of here, and these AIU agents were going to let her.
The woman reluctantly stepped out of the way.
“Come on, honey,” Olivia said, smiling up into Asher’s face. “Let’s go find you a doctor.”
Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance by Jennifer Ashley, Alyssa Day, Felicity Heaton, Erin Kellison, Laurie London, Erin Quinn, Bonnie Vanak and Caris Roane
CHAPTER 5
“Okay, I’m fine now,” Asher said as they made their way slowly down the sidewalk. He tried to shrug her arm away but she was having none of it.
“Like hell you are,” Olivia replied.
The further they got from the explosion site, the more the chaos and noise faded behind them. The walk to his car was taking longer than Asher would’ve liked, but his ribs and collarbone still hurt every time he took a step. He tried whistling for Conry, but because he was using his opposite hand, it came out more like a forceful exhale.
“Here. Let me try.” Olivia made a C with her thumb and ring finger and lifted it to her mouth. The sharp burst rang through his head like a gunshot.
“Bloody hell, woman,” he said, giving her an are-you-kidding-me glare. He would never have guessed she could whistle like that.
She looked pleased and a little mischievous. “What?”
“On top of all my other injuries, now have to deal with pierced eardrums, too? ”
She groaned. “Such a baby.”
It hadn’t been his idea that Olivia come with him, though he hadn’t protested too much when she insisted on helping him find Conry, but he’d refused to let her fix the rest of his injuries. The healing she’d done for him in addition to healing Monique had taken a lot out of her already. He was good enough. He’d heal the rest of the way on his own.
“I can’t get my car out of the garage now, anyway,” had been her argument. “So you’re going to drive me home. Besides, we’re living together, right? Shouldn’t we at least make it look like we’re going to the same place in case anyone’s watching?”
“Thanks for what you did back there. Not only for the healing, but for telling them we lived together.” He’d been trying to give them the information on his false identification papers, but with the added pressure of needing to keep Olivia’s secret hidden as well, everything kept getting mixed up in his head. It was pathetic, really, given how many times he’d had to produce it before. It should’ve been easy.
“Under the circumstances, being your fake girlfriend was the least I could do.”
They walked along in silence for a few minutes, pausing only to call for Conry. Olivia had a smudge on her cheek, bloodstains on her dress, and her hair was tangled and messy, and yet he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so completely captivated by a woman.#p#分页标题#e#
“Why do you hide your ability to heal?” he asked. Could she be afraid to use them? And then it occurred to him. “Or is it them you’re afraid of?”
Her breath hitched and she turned to face him. With the light reflecting in her eyes like this, he noticed for the first time that they were mismatched. One a greenish hazel and the other brown. It wasn’t very noticeable, but with the light just right, you could tell they were different colors.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” she asked.
So she’d guessed he was Cascadian. Telling her a lie would make sense right now, but he owed her the truth. Or at least as much of it as he could share. “Not really.”
“But you didn’t have anything to do with the bomb.”
“No,” he said simply, treating her statement as a question.
“I didn’t think so.”
He debated telling her more about himself, like who he was and why he was here. Part of him craved a deeper connection with her. It felt good—really good—to have shared secrets with her already. Back at the explosion site, it had been the two of them against the world and he liked it. They’d made a good team, playing off each other so easily. But another part of him didn’t see a good reason for taking this any further than he already had. He couldn’t afford to build any relationships here. At least, not the romantic kind.