How to Score (11 page)

Sammi watched in horror as the pegboard wall crashed down, trapping Chase beneath it. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Chase!” She rushed toward him on quaking legs, stumbling over hubcaps as she went.

“What in tarnation… ” the man in the next booth exclaimed.

Oh, dear Lord, she’d done it again. She’d hurt Chase—and this time it looked serious. “I need help!” she called, tugging at the pegboard that lay across his chest.

The customer with the buzz cut rushed forward, and Bubba lumbered over as fast as his fat legs would carry him. The two men pulled the pegboard wall off Chase. Sammi crouched down beside him, her heart thumping hard. He lay slumped on the ground in an unconscious heap, blood pooling on the ground from his head.

“Is he dead?” Bubba asked. He pronounced the word like “day-id,” and it took Sammi a moment to comprehend the question. When she did, she felt faint.

“Do you know CPR?” Bubba asked.

“Y-yes,” Sammi said. She’d taken a first-aid course a couple of years ago, but she’d never had cause to use it.

“Yes, he’s day-id, or yes, you know CPR?”

“Yes CPR. Someone call 911!” she shouted. Struggling to tamp down her panic, she tried to recall her training.

Pulse and breathing first. She checked Chase’s neck and was relieved to feel a pulse strongly beating under her finger. She wasn’t sure about his breathing. Better to be safe than sorry. She tilted back his head, pinched his nose, and put her mouth on his.

“Ugh,” he muttered, moving beneath her.

“Oh, thank God!” She pulled back and placed a hand on each side of his face. “Chase! Chase, can you hear me?”

His eyelids fluttered. So did her heart in her chest. Chase reached for his head and groaned. His hand came away covered in blood. He stared at it as if it were an alien object. “Wh-what happened?”

“A hubcap hit you,” Sammi said, sitting back on her heels. “Lie still.”

A crowd was forming around them.

He raised his head and winced. “How long was I out?”

“A couple of minutes. An ambulance is on the way.”

“I don’t need an ambulance.” Chase struggled to sit up.

Sammi pushed him back down. “Yes, you do. You’ve got a pretty big cut in your head and you probably need stitches.” She looked around. “Anyone got a first-aid kit?”

“I do,” Bubba said. He waddled over to his front table, scavenged around under it, then waddled back, red-and-white case in hand.

Sammi’s fingers trembled as she opened it and pulled out a wad of gauze. She leaned down and placed it on his head.

Chase jerked away. “Ow!”

“Hold still. I need to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.”

“I’ll be fine. Let me stand up.”

A siren keened through the air in the distance.

“Not until the medics get here,” Sammi said in her firmest voice.

To her relief, he didn’t argue. She held the gauze to his forehead as the ambulance pulled into view, the siren shrieking. It stopped in the parking lot, and two attendants bounded out of the back double doors.

“Over here!” Bubba called, waving his arm like a NASCAR flagman.

The attendants hurried over. They looked at Chase’s head, asked questions, and peered into his eyes. “We need to take you in,” the shorter medic said.

“No,” Chase said, struggling to sit up. “I’m all right.”

“You need stitches.”

“Well, then, I’ll drive myself to one of those doc-in-the-box places.”

“You’re not driving anywhere,” said the medic with the gray mustache. “Your pupils are uneven, which means you have a concussion. You’re gonna need a CT scan.”

“But I can’t just go off and leave all of this stuff.”

“I’ll watch your booth for the rest of the day,” Chloe offered.

“I’ll help,” Bubba chimed in. “An’ I can pack it up and haul it off and store it with my stuff. Don’cha worry about all this. Just get yourself patched up.”

“My-my car,” Chase mumbled. “I don’t want to leave it way out here.”

“I can drive it to the hospital behind the ambulance,” Sammi volunteered.

Chase shook his head, then winced. “No. That’s okay. I’ll come get it later.”

He was afraid she’d wreck it, Sammi thought with dismay. Well, who could blame him? A boulder formed in her throat. “If you don’t trust me to drive it, Chloe can and I’ll stay here.”

He looked at her—or rather beside her; his eyes didn’t seem to quite focus—and gave her a crooked smile. “I trust you.” With an effort, he reached into his side pocket, withdrew his keys, and held them out. “It’s the blue Ford Explorer parked on the left side of the lot.”

The weight on her chest lightened a bit, but her throat felt strangely tight. She nodded. “I’ll see you at the hospital.”

The emergency-room doctor opened the door to the treatment room an hour and a half later, his white coat flapping. Chase’s vision was so blurred that it looked like there were two of him, merging together, separating, then converging again. The doctors—correction—doctor was a tall man in his midthirties with a thin face and a congenial smile. He aimed it at Sammi, who was sitting in a chair against the wall.

Chase pulled the ice pack off his throbbing head and tried to focus. Sammi had been with him since he’d first arrived, and the truth was, he was glad she was there.

Although only God knew why. The woman was worse than the seven plagues of Egypt.

“What’s the verdict?” Chase asked.

The doctor settled onto the backless wheeled stool beside the examination table, and turned toward Chase, his two faces smiling. “No sign of a fracture, but you’ve definitely got a concussion.”

Great. Just great. Chase put the ice pack back on his head.

“You’ll need to take it easy for a few days. Do you have someone to stay with you for the next twenty-four hours?”

“I don’t need anyone. I’ll be fine,” Chase said.

The doctor frowned. “You have to be observed overnight. If you don’t have someone who can watch you at home, then I’ll need to admit you to the hospital.”

Hell. It was a good thing he’d kept the double-vision problem to himself.

“I’ll stay with him,” Sammi piped up.

“Excellent.” The doctor nodded approvingly and turned toward her. “You’ll need to wake him every three hours during the night to make sure he can wake normally, but other than that, it’s pretty much a matter of just keeping an eye on him. You’ll need to make sure he doesn’t fall unconscious again, isn’t nauseous, or doesn’t start having vision problems.”

“Okay. I can handle it.”

He smiled at Chase. “Looks like you’re in good hands.”

Yeah,
Chase thought morosely.
The hands of the grim reaper.

The stool creaked as the doctor rose. “I’ll have the nurse bring you the instructions and discharge papers. We’ll forward your records to your personal physician, and you’ll need to make an appointment to see him in a week to get your stitches removed.”

The doctor exited the room, his coat flapping like stork wings.

Sammi rose and stepped toward him. As she drew nearer, he saw two of her. “Thanks for bailing me out,” he said.

“No problem. I can stay with you the whole weekend, if you like.”

Oh, God—that would be the end of him. “No. Just get me home, and I can take it from there.”

“You heard the doctor. I intend to see to it that you follow his orders.” Her two foreheads suddenly puckered. “Is there someone else you want me to call—your mom, maybe, or a girlfriend?”

“No.”

Both Sammis stood still, their four hands clasped together. “Well, if you don’t want me to stay, I’ll hire a private nurse.”

Oh, hell. She thought he didn’t want her around because she was so accident-prone. This was not the way to help her over her phobia. “No. No private nurses.”

“Okay, then. I’ll take you home and stay with you as long as you need me.”

His head hurt too much to argue, and he’d need a ride home, anyway. They could continue this discussion later.

A middle-aged nurse with a handful of papers came into the room, looking as if she were being shadowed by a blurry Siamese twin. She handed the papers to him. “I need your signature on the release form.”

It took several attempts to figure out which line was real. He finally aimed between the two and scrawled his name. His signature magically reproduced itself.

The nurse turned to Sammi and handed her the other papers, addressing her as if she were his mother or—God help him!—his wife. “You can give him Tylenol every four hours. And during the night, you’ll need to wake him every three hours to make sure he can become conscious normally.”

“It’s not normal for anyone to become conscious every three hours during the night,” Chase grumbled.

Sammi shot him a look. “It would be abnormal to continue sleeping when I’m trying to wake you up.”

That was certainly a fact. His gaze locked on her long, smooth, all-the-way-to-New-York-and-back legs. Even though she appeared to have four of them, he was sure she’d have no trouble keeping him awake all night.

“For the next few days, you shouldn’t make any important decisions or sign any legally binding papers. Any questions?” The nurse looked briskly from Sammi to Chase.

“Does he have any physical restrictions?” Sammi asked.

You read my mind, babe.

“He’s supposed to rest. That means staying in bed today and taking it easy tomorrow and the day after. He should probably give it about a week before he resumes strenuous physical activity.” The nurse headed for the door. “I’ll go get a wheelchair.”

Chase pulled the ice pack from his head and started to ease himself off the table. “I can walk just fine.”

“Maybe so, but you’re doing as little of it as possible today. And you’re taking a wheelchair to the exit, or else you’re not going anywhere.”

What the hell; he’d do whatever was necessary to get out of here. He’d play along until Sammi got him to his apartment, and then he’d figure out a way to send her home.

C
hase pulled out the keys to his apartment as Sammi stood beside him, her arm looped around his waist. She’d insisted on helping him from the car to his apartment door, even though he protested that he could make it just fine on his own. She was probably more of a hazard than a help, but she felt great, pressed up against him, her breasts warm and soft against his ribs. That blow to his head had done nothing to dampen her appeal.

Which might be a problem, since it seemed to have double-dosed his libido. He straightened and pulled away at his door. “Thanks for the ride. I can make it on my own just fine from here.”

“Oh, no. You’re going to follow the doctor’s orders.”

“It’s not necessary. Really. You’ve done more than enough. I can manage on my own.”

“I thought we settled this at the hospital.” Her two sets of eyes fixed him with a determined glare. His double vision was improving, but he still saw two of everything at really close range. “I’m not leaving you alone. If you don’t want me here, I’ll get someone else, but you’re going to have someone with you for the next twenty-four hours.”

Hell. She was like a bulldog. Or maybe a boxer with a wallet. He might as well suck it up and accept the inevitable. He sighed. “I hate to put you out.”

“Yeah, well, I hate that I knocked you out.”

He tried to insert the key, but he couldn’t figure out which of the two keyholes was real.

“Here.” Taking the key from him, she unlocked the door.

“Come on in,” he said unnecessarily as Sammi turned the doorknob and helped him inside.

She paused inside the doorway and looked around. “Did you just move in?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Because it looks like no one lives here. There’s nothing on your walls or your coffee table or even your kitchen counters.”

Except for the brown expandable file folder. Oh, God—even with his blurred vision, Chase could read her name on the first folder. In fact, he could read it twice. It seemed to be flashing in neon lights.

Normal. Act normal.
He needed to keep his cool, assess the situation, and figure out a plan of action. Which was pretty obvious, really; he needed to get over there and snatch it up before she saw it.

In the meantime, he needed to divert her, and that meant carrying on a normal conversation. “I, uh, like to keep things neat. And I don’t spend a lot of time here. And if I want to look at something, there’s a great view off my balcony. Want to go see?” He turned in that direction, making her turn, too.

“I’ll take a look after I get you settled. Is the bedroom in the back?”

Turning toward the bedroom meant turning toward the folder. He squeezed his arm around her and grinned down, his face scant inches from hers. “Wow. I’ve never known a woman so eager to get me in bed.”

She did that funny blush thing. It was almost cruel, how easily he could make her face color. “You wish.”

“Yeah, I do.” Now, why had he said that? Sexual tension was already snaking around them like a cobra, and admitting his attraction just made it coil tighter.

He edged backward toward the kitchen counter. Sammi tightened her grip on him, apparently thinking he was woozy and weaving off course.