Nickolas-1 (8 page)

“relationship needs” uttered out of his mouth before.

“You mean she wanted long term and you wanted sex. Yes, I can see where that would be an issue for you. Come on, we’re supposed to meet Damon at his office at six and I’m starving.”

Both men got up to leave, but Nick hesitated for just a few minutes more. He didn’t want to get into it with Morgan again. He just couldn’t seem stop picking at her. He knew that’s what he was doing, but it didn’t stop him from doing it.

“She’s gone.”

Nick looked sharply at his brother. He felt his face heat up. Damn it, how’d he figure it out?

“I...what are you talking...what do you mean she’s gone? It’s not even six yet.

She’s supposed to stay until...well, I don’t even know when she normally leaves, but it’s never before me.” He was unreasonably pissed now. Damn it, he was leaving. Why shouldn’t she be able to?

“She was leaving when I came in an hour ago. Said she had some things she had to do before she had to go out again. Don’t know, didn’t ask, and didn’t care.

Why do you? I mean, it’s not like she doesn’t work like sixty hours a week anyway. Back off, give her some air. You know, Nicky, if you hate the girl so much, why don’t you just get rid of her?” Nick was glad that Byron was in front of him, because the thought of getting rid of Morgan startled him for a few seconds.

“Because we have a contract, and besides, she does a good job. At least she hasn’t fucked up that I know of. Good secretaries are very hard to find.” They were going down in the elevator to the first floor as they talked. Besides, he thought, his mom would probably shoot him if he did. For some reason, the two of them got along great.

The doctor’s office was beginning to be decorated for Christmas as it was closed from now until the Monday after Thanksgiving. The staff was also having a little celebration as they worked. Nick wondered if he should have Morgan put up a tree and then dismissed the idea. No one came to their offices and he didn’t know what her plans were anyway.

“Hello, Nicky, long time no see. I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately.” Marsha Bentley always made him feel like he was a slab of meat on a hook. She looked at him like that too.

She was pretty enough, he supposed, with her bottle dark hair and full lips, but she wasn’t...he didn’t want to think about what she wasn’t. But she wasn’t, not at all. He’d been thinking about redheads a lot lately. Not that Morgan had anything to do with it. He’d always liked red heads, with their creamy skin, and her freckles across...their freckles, not hers. Freckles across the nose were a natural on redheads, not just on Morgan. Damned woman, it was all her fault he couldn’t get laid.

“I’m fine.” He realized he’d barked at her when she looked at him with raised eyebrows. Byron was giving him the same look. He turned to find Damon.

People were reading too much into everything he’d done lately.

“Damon, you about ready to go?” He started to rub his chest again and stopped short. He’d been told if he didn’t have any more flare ups, he could have a regular dinner tomorrow. He was not ruining that now.

“Dr. Grant there’s a woman on the...oh, hello, Dr. Grant. Happy Thanksgiving! Hummm... there’s a woman on the phone, says she has a piece of glass in her foot and can’t get it out. Want me to transfer it in here?” Tansy Bell was the oldest woman working for Damon, and the most dedicated too.

“A piece of glass? Tell her how to get it out and then to glue it shut if it’s bigger than half an inch long,” Damon told Tansy without bothering to look up from what he was doing.

Nick sat across from his brother’s desk when Tansy shut the office door.

Damon was still filling out charts and said he’d only be a few more minutes.

“Glue it shut? That’s a new one. Just use regular old Elmer’s?” Nicky leaned up and took a cigar out of the box on his desk as he spoke. He didn’t light it up, really didn’t like to smoke them, but the smell ... ahhhh, that was ambrosia to him.

“No, super glue. It works pretty well on smaller cuts. It cleans the wound, too, with the eucalyptus in it. They’ve been using it at the hospital for years. Get your feet off my desk, you heathen.” They both turned to the door when Tansy popped back in.

“I’m sorry, sir, but it’s Ms. Becky. She said that she doesn’t have any tweezers and she doesn’t think that will work anyway. She has the glue, but she just can’t get it out. Want me to go up and help her? She’s such a nice little thing.” She already had her coat on and they could hear the others leaving as well. Nick looked at Damon and sighed.

“I’ll go up and take care of her. You go on home, Tansy, and you”—he pointed at Damon—“had better be ready when I get back.” Nick took the stairs two at a time and was looking forward to blasting the perfect Ms. Becky. How she could not get a sliver of glass out of her foot was beyond him. He stopped suddenly, unless she was trying to make her move toward Damon. Nah, Damon wasn’t her type. She’d be more...well, his type if he was looking for a woman, which he wasn’t.

By the time he got to her door, he had worked himself up into quite a snit.

He had her moving in with Damon and having Devin’s love child and raising Meggie, Spencer’s little girl, all at the same time. When he found the door partly open, he threw it back against the wall with enough force to knock a picture off the opposite wall. He knew the moment the sound reverberated in the room that he shouldn’t have done it. Everything about her screamed for him to protect her, but all he could seem to do was push her away.

“Morgan Becky, where the hell are you, and why is your door open for just any one to walk in?” When she came through the door from the kitchen, he nearly swallowed his tongue. Christ, where the hell did she think she was going dressed like that?

“Where’s your brother, the doctor? The real doctor. I want him to come up and fix this.” He stalked toward her and noticed that she’d been crying.

“He’s busy, and he’s not your type anyway. Let me see this piece of glass so that he and I can get going.”

“No. I want you to leave. I...you won’t be nice, and I hurt too much to hold my mouth closed. Please, you leave. I’ll...I don’t know what I’ll do, but I want you to leave.” He noticed she was leaning against the doorjamb and her foot was up behind her.

“Damon is busy. I’m going to take the glass out, glue it closed, and you’re going to tell me where you think you’re going dressed like a street walker on a Wednesday night.”

She turned around and hopped back into the kitchen, of course not answering him. She did that a lot; he thought—didn’t answer when he asked her something. Well, damn it, she wasn’t walking away now.

Nick walked into the room and nearly hit the floor. He looked down and was startled by the amount of blood on it. He looked up at Morgan, who was trying to climb up onto the sink, when he noticed that the blood was pouring from her foot, her shoed foot. And sticking right out of the top and bottom was a hunk of glass glossy with her blood. His heart went into overdrive seeing her hurt. The need to cradle her in his arms and to keep her safe, paramount.

“Mother fuck! What did you do?” He picked her up at once and settled her on the counter with her foot in the sink. He ignored her protests about being touched and gently lifted her foot up to get a closer look.

The glass was approximately three inches long, about an inch wide, and about four inches high. He looked at her and nearly crumbled with shame. She had been crying, and she still was.

“It hurts. Can you take it out? I have the glue Ms. Tansy said to glue it with.

If you could get it out, I can do the rest so you can go to your mom’s.” Nick hated himself more in that moment than he had ever hated himself before. He pulled out his cell phone and called Damon.

“I need you up here
right now
! And bring your bag of tricks. She’s hurt badly and I think she might have lost a great deal too much blood.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Come on, darling, lean back. I need to numb this area before I can remove this. Lean back against Nicky for me.” Damon was talking to her softly and gently. Nick, however, couldn’t speak at all.

They’d wanted to carry her down to the offices once Damon had seen the wound, but she screamed as soon as he lifted her again. Her eyes were glazed with pain and he couldn’t make her scream again. The sound ripped through his heart. The glass had gone straight though her shoe, as he had first seen and it was still bleeding. She had told him when he’d gotten his heart out of his throat that she’d dropped a glass last night and had thought she’d gotten it all cleaned up. Then when she’d been rushing around today, she’d stepped onto it and it was in her foot before she knew it.

“I do not want to lean back against Nicky, nor are you going to numb my foot. If you do that, then I won’t be able to walk, and I have to be to work in an hour. Just rip the fucking thing out so I can glue it shut and we can all be on our merry way.” She was crying again. Nick wasn’t sure why, but he wanted to punch someone for it.

“There isn’t any work you can’t put off until Monday, if then. I don’t want you in the offices, now shut up and let him numb you.” Nick reached out to pull her against his chest to steady her, and she slapped his hands away.

“I’m not working for you tonight, you jackass. I have to go to Mick’s and work. And I am going; I need the money. Surely one of you three men can pull that out, can’t you? Please just do it.” Damon looked at him with a frown. He didn’t know who Mick was either and started to say something.

“You work at Big Mick’s? Cool, are you a stripper? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, if you are then...” Nick only took a step toward Byron. Just one, and he shut up.

“You are not a stripper! I won’t have it. And why do you need the money?

Am I not paying you enough? I would think that the way you live, rent free, you’d have more than...”

“
Yeah, you would think that, wouldn’t you
?” she screamed at him. “I can’t cash those checks. I have to work to eat. Here.” She reached behind her and grabbed the clipped bundle of envelopes from the front of the refrigerator and tossed them at him. They all had Grant Corporation stamped in the upper left hand corner. And all but one of them was still sealed. “I have to have a credit history to open a checking account, but I can’t get a credit history because I don’t have a flipping account. Without the history, I can’t cash those stupid checks, and so on.

I asked that dick head in accounting to give me cash and she laughed at me.

Stupid bitch.”

“I don’t understand. You need a credit check to open a checking account.

That’s ridiculous. I gave you a credit card. Why didn’t you just use that? Or better yet, one of those check cashing places I see ads for on the television? That would have given you cash at least.”

Nick was still looking at the six pay checks. Why hadn’t she said...but she had, he remembered, weeks ago. He’d told her to go to accounting to get it taken care of. He hadn’t even bothered to see if she’d gotten it resolved.

“Oh yeah, that. It’s in Mr. Grant’s freezer. I was informed by your lovely bitch of an account that I need to have approval every time I spend over fifteen dollars and she was not going to let me spend your money willy nilly. Yes, willy nilly spender, that’s me. And have you seen how much they charge to cash a check at one of those places? It would take me years to ever catch up. I knew a girl on my row in prison who was into them for thousands of …
Take. The.

Fucking. Glass out now
!”

Nick looked at Byron with a raised brow and he backed up. “I don’t have it.

I’ve...she’s never been to my place.”

“No, that freezer. Just open it up; it’s right there. Might as well take it. I can’t use it either.”

Nick looked back at Damon and saw that he’d pulled a syringe out and had filled it while she was talking. He nodded at him and he suddenly knew that he was going to knock her out. If they didn’t, she’d be walking to the bar glass or no glass.

“Morgan, honey. You need to relax all right? Let me hold you while Damon removes the glass.” She slapped at his hands again, but they weren’t as hard as before. He didn’t know whether it was because she was resigned to the fact that he was going to touch her, or she was getting weaker from blood loss.

“Stay away from me, I mean it. I told you before that I—
ouch
! What the hell was that?” When she tried to pull her thigh away from Damon, he held tighter.

Nick knew she was going to have a bruise, but she’d left them no choice. Damon didn’t look up at her as he finished the injection.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I can’t work with you moving around like that.

You’re going to go to sleep now and when you wake up, the glass will be gone and I’ll have you all stitched up. You’re not going to be walking on that foot for awhile, but we’ll take care of you.” Damon pulled out the syringe and began rubbing the area while Nick held her hands away. He could feel when the drugs started to kick in; she was fighting less and relaxing more.

“I hate you, both of you. And I quit. I won’t work...you tricked me...I want to go back to prison. Please take me back...there has to be a way for me...I hate you...” Nick pulled her close to his chest and just held her.

The next twenty minutes were tense while Damon worked to get the glass out. It was right up against the bone and had to be worked loose before he could remove it completely. Even as out as she was, she whimpered a few times. Nick whispered nonsense in her ear and continued to hold her tight and tired not to think about her telling him she hated him. He watched Damon put in every one of the fifty-six stitches on the bottom of her foot, then the twenty-three on the top; he felt every pull of the thread, every stick of the needle.

“Now what do we do with her? Because I got a feeling if we don’t do something with her, she’ll be on her way to Mick’s as soon as she wakes up.” Byron had a point.

“We take her with us. Mom wanted her there anyway. This way, we can keep an eye on the swelling and she won’t be able to go to work. She’ll have a happy Thanksgiving with us.”