He shrugged. Shrugged! “It’s just a scratch. Wait here.”
I blinked as he turned around, flung open the door, and went right back out into the parking garage.
Wait here?
“Hey!” I called to the shut door.
What was he doing? Why would he go back out where those men were? And he’d been shot! It was my fault. The men were after me, and he’d been hurt. Now he was out there doing God only knew what. Did he want to get shot twice?
“Oh my God. Oh my God.” I paced back and forth along the stairwell landing, my voice echoing off the cinder block walls.
I jumped when he returned, the door slamming one last time behind him.
“Why did you go back out there? Are they gone?”
My gaze raked over his body. His large, muscly, gorgeous body. He looked like he had just come from a cover shoot for a wilderness magazine. He needed an axe and a mountain vista behind him.
“They’re gone.” His voice was grim. He was eyeing me with just as much intensity as I did him. I took a deep breath, let it out. They’d left, maybe driving off after they’d shot at us.
Thank God. He never should have gone back out there. That was crazy!
“That scratch you have is bleeding a lot. We need to get you to a hospital.”
He shook his head, his long hair sliding over his sweaty, strong brow. His forehead pinched. “We’re not going back out there. Hell, we need to get out of this stairwell.” He glanced up the stairs.
“Why?” My gaze followed his, and my panic returned. I gripped his uninjured arm and stepped close to him. “I thought you said they were gone?”
He nodded and put an arm around me, so his hand settled on my back. The heat of him seeped through my clothes. “They are but who knows if there are others. We need to get you somewhere safe.”
My heart rate ratcheted even higher as it fully hit me that the men would still be after me. I knew now they wouldn’t stop until they had me. Or I was dead.
Thanks to my boss, I was tangled up with some kind of mobster now. This gorgeous man had saved me not once but twice. And he’d been shot because of me.
Shit!
“We’ll go to the lobby and call an ambulance,” I said.
He shook his head. “Not happening. We need to get you hidden. Back to my room. It’s the closest, and we know they’ve already checked it. They won’t look there again.”
He meant the knock on the door earlier.
“But…” My brain scrambled to keep up.
His jaw clenched. “They won’t bother us again,” he repeated.
I blinked at him, still trying to process the entire crazy situation. Men with guns. My boss caught up with mobsters. What this meant for my job. All of it. “But, you’ve been shot and–”
“Don’t worry about me,” he replied, cutting me off. “It’s nothing. Let’s get you safe.”
Nothing? Blood had seeped down his arm, and the gray plaid flannel was stained from upper arm to wrist.
We were in a cinderblock stairwell. There was nowhere to go but up or down to a lower level of the parking lot. If he was wrong and they came after us with guns, it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. Or innocent people in a stairwell. He nudged me toward the steps leading up. I climbed two steps, then turned around to face him. We were now at eye level; he was that big. “Can you make it? Do you need my help?”
He smiled, and wow–it lit up his entire face. Two dimples creased his stubbled cheeks. It made him less rugged. More handsome. “Sugar, all I need from you is your name.”
Sugar? I blinked at him. “Brooke Van Drusen.”
“Brooke. I’m Roy.”