The Wedding Rescue, Book Four(11)

Steven wasn’t at the hospital. He couldn’t be watching me. But logic wasn’t getting through at that moment. I was scared, in pain, and only just registering how much worse things could have been with Steven. Flashes of the bloody knife and the way he’d touched me played across the insides of my closed eyelids. I felt myself begin to tremble. I tried to stop it, but it was as if my body was no longer under my own control.

Shaking, tears warm on my cheeks, I burrowed into Dylan. I’d always thought I was a strong woman. Most of the time I was. With everything that had happened that night, my inner strength had deserted me.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked in a low, soothing voice. “Why do I need to leave you?”

I drew in a ragged breath. I needed to tell him. He needed to know why it was dangerous to be near me.

“Steven took a video of us.” Another ragged, tear filled breath. “In the hall. The other night. It’s -” I cut off, unable to go on. I’d brought this down on Dylan. Me. It was my fault this was happening. “You can see everything.”

“Okay,” he said, voice still gentle. “We can deal with that. That doesn’t explain your face. And your arm.”

He rubbed his hand up and down my back as if I was a child woken from a nightmare.

“He said if I didn’t meet him at my house he’d release it everywhere. It’s bad. You can see our faces. I was afraid -” I stopped and dragged in a breath. “Your board. Stockholders. It was bad, Dylan.”

I felt him sigh against me. His hand on my back continued its rhythmic, soothing strokes. The worst out in the open, I relaxed into him. Now he knew. Everything he’d worked for was at risk because of me. Fresh tears spilled over my cheeks. I was so tired. Cold, aching, and tired.

“Why didn’t you wake me? Why did you just leave, sweetheart?”

“Not enough time,” I whispered. “He said I had to meet him at my house in twenty minutes or he’d send the video out. There wasn’t enough time. And he said if I saw you again, he’d send it out.”

Footsteps sounded beside the bed. “The ex,” Axel said in a low voice. “He took off with her car.”

“It was Steven?” Dylan asked, tucking a stray hair behind my ear. “He’s the one who did this to you?”

“You can’t go after him, Dylan. He’ll use the video. Please.”

“I can take care of the video, Leigha.”

I forced myself to pull out of his embrace and sit up. Meeting his eyes was harder. When he’d come in, he’d been glaring. Now his eyes were soft. Concerned. Not angry.

“What if you can’t? What if he sends it out to YouTube and all the other sites. You’ll never be able to get it back. And your company - the board. They could -”

He cut me off with a finger to my lips. Before I could think of something else to say, he looked over his shoulder at Axel, who was talking into his phone in a clear violation of hospital’s no cell phone policy. Seeing the grave expression on his face, I didn’t think Axel cared about hospital policy. Gone was the serious but relaxed guy I’d met earlier that evening. This man was all deadly focus as he gave quiet orders into the phone and hung up. His eyes met Dylan’s in a promise.

“I’m on it,” he said.

“You heard all that?”

Axel nodded. “We’ll pick him up. Get the car back. Don’t worry about the video. I’m out. I’ll have your people send a car.”

He disappeared to the other side of the curtain. Dylan reached for me, and I leaned back.

“Dylan, this is too dangerous. What if -”

“Do you trust me?” he asked, eyes on mine.

I wanted to look away. I couldn’t. It felt like he was asking for more than just trust, like he was asking me for everything. I couldn’t lie to him. I was scared. For him. For myself. My head spun, I hurt all over, and I desperately wanted to lie down and sleep. I’m not sure I could have lied to him under normal circumstances. But sitting on that hospital bed, exhausted and my emotions a mess, I was helpless to resist the force of his will.

“Do you trust me?” he repeated.

I told him the truth.

“I do.”

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

Dylan pulled me into his chest and resumed his gentle strokes on my back. I must have drifted to sleep, because the next thing I knew, a nurse came in and Dylan was gently sitting me up so she could give me my discharge papers. She said something about my not having my insurance.

Dylan pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to her, saying, “Have billing call my office on Monday, we’ll take care of it.”