Free Leave Me Breathless by Helenkay Dimon Page B

clarity, she knew who sat at the other end of the line dialing like a madman. Which meant she was in a shitload of trouble.
    “Ben, wait—”
    “What?” Ben asked the question into the phone, not to her.
    When his eyebrows snapped together, she knew the flipping around in her stomach was there for a reason. “Give it to me.”
    Ben shifted away from her, blocking her hand with his shoulder before she could reach the receiver. “When?”
    When what? Yeah, this was bad. “Let me—” She tried another grab, but he used his body as a shield.
    “How is he?” Ben asked.
    So, not Emma. Callie wondered what “he” other than the “he” next to her was in trouble now. “He who?”
    Ben shushed her. Actually sat naked on her bed and made an annoying hissing sound to get her to be quiet. She had no intention of obeying his command. It was her damn house, after all. “Who is it?”
    “We’ll be right there,” Ben said to the person on the other end of the line.
    When he handed the phone to her a second later, all she got was a dial tone. “Unless you plan on paying the mortgage, I answer the phone from now on.”
    “Is this really the time to argue about something so dumb?”
    “Would you prefer we make time later?” Instead of answering, Ben flipped back the covers and crawled out of bed. Not being a fan of the sex-and-run type, she grabbed his arm. “Where are you going off to without your pants, Your Honor?”
    “There’s been an accident.”
    His serious tone wiped the snootiness right out of her. “What?”
    “We have to go.”
    An hour later, Callie stood in an elevator and adjusted her gun for the third time. During the ride to the fourth floor of the hospital, Ben stood next to her with his fingers wrapped around the handrail behind him. They wore the same clothes from the day before and waited for the bell to ding and doors to open. Neither of them talked. But there wasn’t all that much to say. Not until they knew the particulars of what happened.
    One thing was clear, someone had attacked Keith. Since the man weighed two-forty, and that was only when he forgot to eat, the danger level for all of them shot up. Even Ben had stopped whining about his protection detail. She would have celebrated his newfound brilliance, but she was too busy trying to figure out how hard Mark would kick her ass when he saw her.
    She had spent hours on her back instead of on the job, or at least that’s the way Mark would see it. Not answering her phone had been a mistake. Making Mark track her down could spell the end of her freelance career.
    “Ignore whatever my brother says when he sees you,” Ben said without bothering to look at her. He was too busy staring at the floor buttons as if they held the secret to life’s most intriguing questions.
    “I can handle Mark.” And by that she meant she would stand there quietly while Mark yelled his head off.
    “He’s not stupid.”
    “I never said he was.”
    “He’s going to know we slept together. He’ll have an opinion, and it won’t be good.” Ben exhaled loud enough to drown out the soft rock version of some dance song playing in the background. “So, like I said, let me deal with him.”
    She carried a gun and proved her stamina during the naked slap-and-tickle games of the past few hours, yet Ben refused to concede that she could take care of herself. His Captain Save a ’Ho complex just never stopped. If a female walked in front of him, he felt the need to rescue her.
    Fuck that.
    “I’ve been shot at and lived through three days of your bossiness. Mark’s yelling doesn’t scare me.” It did a little, but admitting that would only give Ben an “in” and then she’d never get him out again.
    “You’re not as smart as I thought.”
    But she was. She knew Mark would crawl right up her ass about this. When he hired her, he had made a point of mentioning her past. Seemed Mark admired her for turning down her old boss’s advances and sticking up