Free Dangerous Passion by Lisa Marie Rice Page A

by pace, watching him carefully.
    Damn it, she needed medical attention. “Go!” he said harshly.
    She merely shook her head, tightening her arm around his waist.
    Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He needed her there as fast as possible, so Ben could start taking care of her. He gritted his teeth and tried to speed up, but tripped over his own damned feet.
    “Here.” Her voice was low, soft. She positioned her shoulder under his arm. “Put your arm around me.”
    Drake was close enough to smell her. He was intensely sensitive to smells. Once he’d thwarted an assassination attempt because he smelled smoke on the man’s clothes in his hotel room. He’d turned down a number of women because of what he could smell underneath the perfume and lotions. He was absolutely convinced that emotions smelled.
    He knew the smell of fear, of danger, of hatred. Grace’s smell was utterly different. She had the smell of woman. A woman in springtime. Clean, through and through.
    He stumbled. Grace held him, but barely. She was shaking with the strain and breathing heavily, the sound loud in the corridor.
    Drake forced himself upright again and concentrated like a laser beam on the clinic’s door ten feet away. He could do this. He’d done harder things and he could do this. A minute later, he was sitting on a hospital bed breathing hard, and Ben, scrubbed and gloved, was bent over him. Surgical instruments lay gleaming on a tray and Ben held a big pair of sharp scissors to cut Drake’s shirt off.
    “Okay, buddy. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got here. I’ve got the X-ray machine up and running if we need it.” The scissors came closer and Drake batted them away.
    “Check the woman first.”
    Ben froze and looked at Grace, whose face was a mask of astonishment.
    “What?”
    “You heard me. And it’s not like you to need information twice. You’re wasting time and that’s not good for a trauma surgeon. You’re not touching me until she is stitched up.”
    Ben took in a deep breath. “Okay, this is how it goes. This is what I got all those med school debts you paid off for me for. In school they teach you something called triage. That’s French for selection, the idea being that you select out cases on the basis of the severity of the wounds and treat the most severe cases first. And that, my dear Drake, is you.”
    Drake sat back, tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “No. Her first.”
    Ben made a strangled sound of frustration. But he knew better than to argue. “Okay. Have it your way.” Drake opened his eyes to watch Ben settle Grace into a chair. “Damn man,” he grumbled to her. “Okay, okay, let’s see what we have here.”
    Grace tilted her head up to look Ben in the eyes. “He’s been bleeding badly,” she said, whispering. She was trying to talk to Ben without him catching on. “He has a gunshot wound. I’ve just got cuts and scrapes. Please attend to him first.”
    “No.” Drake put the last of his energy into his voice.
    Ben’s sigh was loud. “Head like a rock,” he told Grace, raising his voice to make sure Drake could hear him. “What can I say? He’s the one pays the bills. So, tell me where it hurts.” He was swiftly gathering together the instruments he’d need for her on a tray, the clatter of steel on steel bright in the room.
    She smiled at that. “More or less everywhere. Mainly here—” she pointed to her head, “here and here.” She indicated her neck and elbow. “I hate this. I hate being treated while he’s over there bleeding.” Grace’s eyes slid to his. Drake simply stared at her and she looked away.
    “Well, my dear…What’s your name, by the way? If I’m going to clean you up, I should know your name. I’m Ben, by the way.” Ben was gently cleaning the scrapes on her hands. Grace hissed in a breath at the sting of the antiseptic.
    Drake couldn’t help it. He jerked as if he’d been buzzed by a cattle prod. “Ben…” he growled.
    “Sorry.” Both Ben