The Proposition (The Plus One Chronicles) Read online

“I rarely lose a battle of wills.” He lowered his head slightly. “But in this case, I propose a compromise.”

  He was so close, she caught that scent again—soap and male. He didn’t just look at her, instead he penetrated, invaded, pushing deep enough to learn all her secrets. The intensity was too much. Kat shifted her line of sight to over his shoulder. Clutched the purse tighter. “You’re relentless, aren’t you?” He wasn’t like other men, treating her as if she might break.

  Or already had.

  He didn’t move, didn’t back down an inch. “If you agree to see a doctor, I’ll get you an update on Kellen immediately.”

  Now he had her attention. She forgot about keeping her distance. “You can do that?”

  He pulled his phone out, scrolled and hit send, all while leaning over her with his hand on the wall. His eyes shifted colors beneath the hospital lights, taking on a coppery bronze.

  Putting the phone to his ear, he said, “There is a Kellen…”

  He lifted an eyebrow in silent question.

  Kat leapt at the chance to get information. “Reynolds. Twenty-six years old.”

  He repeated that. “Stab wound in chest. Probable collapsed lung. Need an update. I’ll hold while you get it.”

  Kat flinched at collapsed lung though she’d heard that in the ambulance. Please God, she prayed. Kellen had suffered enough, just let him be okay.

  Time spun out as she stood there beneath his potent regard, his arm stretched over her head. Seconds. A minute. Two. Three.

  “I see.”

  What was being said? Kat made herself stand still and wait, but her impatience twisted her neck and shoulder muscles.

  “Got it.” He nodded once to Kat and continued his conversation. “I’ll need a doctor to check out a friend of mine, as well. Appears to be minor injuries, but I want her examined right away.” He ended the call.

  Her heart pounded. “Kellen?”

  He slid his phone into his pocket. “Agree to see the doctor first.”

  She’d agree to anything. “Yeah, fine. Tell me, damn it.”

  The hard expression softened as his light brown irises took on amber specks. “Small puncture in his lung. It appears to be sealing. Strong vitals, he’s young and in good shape. They’re hopeful he won’t need surgery and think he’ll pull through this. The next few hours are the most critical.”

  Her throat thickened with utter relief. She sagged against the wall. He would live. Recover. She could tell him how damned sorry she was for freezing.

  For letting him get stabbed.

  Later. Right now, she said, “Thank you.”

  “Doctor will be here in a minute.”

  Time to establish her boundaries. “Sloane?”

  He looked down at her. “Yeah?”

  “Thank you. I’ll see the doctor.” She was grateful. Truly.

  He nodded.

  Then she added, “Now move your arm and get out of my space.”

  ***

  Hours later, Kat was stiff and sore as she sat at Kellen’s bedside. A little after midnight the doctor had declared Kellen out of danger and moved him to a private room. She glanced at Diego on her right, Dr. Diego Sanchez, a pediatrician who resembled a teddy bear. Shaggy brown hair, soft eyes, powerful body and a gentle spirit. Normally he had an easy grin, but tonight his face was stamped with tight worry.

  A soft snore from the bed drew her attention back to Kellen. She was grateful that he slept. His color was good, his breathing getting progressively easier. Rest was exactly what he needed.

  But every tick of the clock on the wall amped up her need to move, to do something more to help. She finally spit out, “Do you want some coffee? A soda? Something to eat?”

  Diego just shook his head.

  Her guilt spilled out. “I froze. I couldn’t even scream.” The image played over in her head. “I saw the knife. If I had just warned him, he could have jumped back.”

  Diego settled his somber gaze on her. “You’ve been through enough tonight without adding useless guilt.”

  Right. And expecting him to absolve her was selfish when he was wrecked over Kellen’s injury. Jesus, when had she become so pathetic? So weak? She pulled herself together and thought of another way to be useful. “I’ll run home and gather up some things for Kellen. I can go by your place too, pick up whatever you need.”

  Diego took her hand. “We’re good for the night. But you need to go home and sleep. Take a pain pill.”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine. That doctor Sloane bullied into checking me out said so.” She really didn’t want to go home. Alone. Afraid. Living in her own head.

  His eyes went from teddy-bear kind to grizzly protective. “I know you went down on your bad leg when that asshole pulled you out of the car. You’re hurting. Go home and take the damned pain pill. Sleep. Bring Kel’s things tomorrow.”

  She made a face at him and stalled. “Pediatricians shouldn’t swear.”

  “Fuck that, Kit Kat. Go home.”

  Feeling a moment of respite at their normal routine, she gave him a soft smile. Diego swore like a sailor, but she had to assume he didn’t do it at work with the kids. Getting up, she leaned down and hugged him.

  Then she went to the bed and kissed Kellen’s cheek. He barely stirred. She resisted the impulse to fuss with his covers or brush his hair back. Rest was what Kellen needed so his body could do the hard work of healing. Blinking against the sting of tears, she went back to her chair and scooped up her purse hanging off the back. Glancing at Diego, she said, “I can swing by your place in the morning if you need anything. Just text me.” She reached inside her bag for her car keys when she remembered a tiny detail.

  “Crap, I don’t have my car.” The police had it. Sloane had told her that. Her mind wandered back to him, to the man who had shown up, rescued her and continued to help. Once Kat saw the doctor and Kellen’s condition kept improving, Sloane had finally left.

  “Take mine.”

  “What?” She tried to drag her mind back to the conversation with Diego.

  “I said you can drive my car home.” Diego studied her. “Are you that tired, or distracted?”

  She’d been caught daydreaming. About a man. She must be tired. “Not distracted enough to forget that I can’t drive a stick shift. Which your car is,” she pointed out.

  “That’s a problem.” He let go of her hand and rubbed the space between his eyes. “I don’t want Kel to wake up alone or I’d drive you home. Let me think.”

  She didn’t want him waking up alone either. She could call her dad to come get her, but her parents would freak out if they knew what had happened tonight. They’d convince themselves that the carjacking was more proof she wasn’t smart or competent enough to take care of herself. She couldn’t deal with their doubts about her right now.

  But she could deal with this.

  “I’ll call a twenty-four-hour cab service.” They were safe. People used them all the time. She could do it. It was time she started doing these things.

  Diego dropped his hand. “I don’t know, Kat.”

  She glanced at Kellen, thought about how she’d frozen when she had needed to do something, anything, to try and keep him from being stabbed. She didn’t want to be that woman anymore. Didn’t want to be that broken. Shifting to Diego, she said, “It’ll be fine. I’ll text you once I’m home.”

  She could do it.

  ***

  Sloane stared out the window into the darkness. In the hospital bed behind him, Drake Vaugh’s breathing was ragged, that of a much older man than his fifty-some years. Sloane had flown in specialists from around the country, and they all said the same thing.

  Three to six months.

  His mentor was losing the biggest fight of his life.

  All Sloane’s wealth and power were worthless. Bringing his hand up, he rubbed the old ache where his nose had been broken a few times.

  “It’s nearly two a.m. You’ve been standing there for an hour.”


  He turned, dropped his hand and looked at the shrunken man in the bed. Drake had kicked off the sheets, leaving him clad in only a hospital gown, revealing thighs that had once rivaled tree trunks had withered to twigs. “Better question is why you’re awake.” He’d kept vigil in this room a half dozen times and Drake hadn’t woken.

  “Working up the energy to get out of this bed and put you on your ass as many times as it takes to get you to spill what’s troubling you.”

  Sloane walked over and dropped into a chair. Stretching out his legs, he laced his fingers behind his head. “Ready when you are, old man.” Nostalgia crept up on him, slipping into his chest and making it fucking hurt.

  Not the kind of pain Sloane could deal with, the kind where he worked his body until his muscles screamed. Yeah, that pain he could handle.

  This pain? Not happening. He would not go morose over this. He’d just find more doctors, had to be one out there somewhere who had an answer. People beat cancer all the time.

  “Totally would,” Drake said. “But they got me hooked up to all these wires.”

  Sloane snorted. “Excuses.”

  Drake moved his hand around until he found the remote, clicked a button and the light behind his bed snapped on. He raised his bed. “Spill it, Michaels.”

  He knew Drake was a sick man by the gauntness ravaging his face, the shadows chasing the vitality of his eyes. Yet sometimes with the right turn of his head, Sloane caught a glimpse of the man who fourteen years ago had lifted a six-and-a-half foot Sloane off the ground and heaved him into a wall. Then he’d dragged him onto a workout mat and forced Sloane to vent the violent rage boiling inside him.

  When Drake had pinned Sloane in a pool of his own sweat and blood, the man had gotten right in his face and said, “Either you control violence or it controls you. Choose.”

  Sloane had lived by those words ever since.

  But right now he needed to appease the man waiting for him to spill his guts. Unwilling to talk about Kat just yet, Sloane chose a topic that was close to Drake’s heart. “It’s Isaac from our Fighters to Mentors program. One of the other kids in the program came by the gym and told me Isaac’s skipping school, searching for ways to make money.” Drake had been mentoring Isaac, but since he’d gotten too sick, Sloane had filled in, bringing the boy along with the two kids Sloane currently mentored. Isaac wasn’t dealing with the change well.

  Drake’s face darkened. “What happened? Is he hurt?”

  “No,” Sloane assured him, even as he felt himself dragged back through time. He’d been younger than Isaac’s thirteen years when he’d begun finding ways to make money. To keep them going until his mom found her next Prince Fucking Charming. He ignored the ball of rage lodged in his solar plexus. Anger was not productive, action was. Pulling himself back, he said, “Kid’s okay so far. But it turns out that Isaac and his grandmother are in the process of being evicted.”

  “Fix it.”

  “On it. Already had one of my assistants pull the records. We’ll pay up their rent through the end of the year. But damn it,” he nearly growled. “I’m not reaching the kid. He, or his grandmother, should have contacted me.”

  “Pull your head out of your ass. These boys, all they know is rejection, constant fear and desperation. They don’t believe words. Only actions.” Drake ground his jaw then added, “By getting sick, I abandoned him too. Just like everyone else.”

  The ugly reality in his mentor’s words twisted with his own helplessness chomping at his guts. “Look, I’ll bring the kid by tomorrow. You talk to him. Keep his ass in school and off the streets.” Sloane knew the streets too well, knew the degradation and hunger that stripped a boy of his soul. It’s part of what drove him to work relentlessly. He was never going to be that powerless again.

  Drake nodded. “I need to keep in contact with the kid.” His gaze sharpened. “Now tell me the real reason you’re haunting my room when I should be dreaming of hot nurses and sponge baths.”

  Notching his chin down, Sloane scowled. “Dude, I don’t need to know what kind of sick shit you dream about.”

  The other man flashed a merciless smile. “If you don’t start talking, I’ll describe the dreams. In boner-inducing detail.”

  Sloane grimaced, then sighed. He was cornered and he knew it. “A woman and her friend were attacked by two carjackers earlier tonight. One of them had a knife.”

  Drake reached over to his bedside table, latched on to a puke-colored pitcher and poured some water in a plastic cup. “Not seeing the problem yet. Two thugs, one knife. That’s not even a workout for you.” He took a sip of water.

  “The woman. I recognized her earlier in the night but couldn’t figure out from where until she told me her name. I saw her once a dozen years ago when I was a dishwasher at the country club. It was her sweet-sixteen birthday party.”

  Slowly, Drake lowered the cup until it rested on a thigh. Said nothing.

  Sloane drew in a breath. “She had it all. Rich parents who adored her. Huge party. I hated her.” He knew it had been irrational. But he could still remember watching her from the kitchen. He didn’t recall her dress or any of that shit, but he remembered her eyes—such a clear green blue, huge in her face, and completely guileless. “I hated her for being alive and having a perfect life.”

  “When Sara was dead,” Drake filled in.

  Refusing to shy away from the truth, Sloane said, “Yeah.” He was a cold man. A hard man. He didn’t know how to be any other way, nor did he want to be. Tonight, Kat had tripped something inside him, but what? And why now? “She’s different.”

  “A dozen years will do that. So will life.”

  That woman he saw tonight was light years away from the girl he remembered. He’d hated that girl, but the woman?

  Intrigued him. Roused something in him. Made him need to know more about her.

  He tried to explain. “Back then, I’d been the dishwasher no one even noticed. And she’d been the princess, the star. And tonight…” He let it hang, still trying to get his head around it.

  “You dominated the room as you always do. And she?”

  “Brought the cake. Stood against a wall partially hidden by a pillar. Observing. Maybe hiding. Then she vanished to the kitchen.” What had happened to change her?

  “Hiding?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “She’s a contradiction. Hiding,” Sloane confirmed. “Yet she has these pink streaks in her brown hair.” He’d liked that. Hell he’d fucking loved it. Had wanted to pull off the band that held her hair back in a ponytail and run all the strands through his fingers. Find every streak in there. The urge had been strong. Visceral.

  She gave off conflicting messages. Timid women did not put streaks in their hair. Nor did they tell him to get out of their space. Yet she kept her purse in front of her like it could protect her from him. She’d done the same thing in the ballroom with the decorating kit.

  He added the obvious. “Trouble, she’ll be trouble for me. Right now, when I need to focus.”

  “A distraction is exactly what you need.”

  Sloane unlaced his hands from behind his head and sat forward. “Foster will be out in a few days. I’ve waited fourteen years. I won’t be sidetracked.” Not even by stormy blue-green eyes and pink-streaked hair. And those curves…yeah he needed to stay far away from that. She was way too tempting.

  Drake held his stare. “There’s a price for taking a life, Sloane.”

  His thoughts iced to pure vengeance. “Damn right. It’s time Lee Foster paid it.”

  “Look around you, son. This is how it’s going to end for me. Alone.”

  Sloane surged up out of his chair. “I’m not letting you die.” He’d said the five words with the same cold determination that had won him championship fights and built his company.

  “Death doesn’t need your permission. And you’re missing the point. Do you see any woman shedding tears? Anyone who gives a rat’s ass?”

  Sloane crossed his
arms over his chest. “Dude, you’re a man whore. No woman could trust you.” He wasn’t doing this little pity-fest thing. It bored him. Okay, it pissed him off.

  Drake shook his head and reached over to set down his water cup. “I’ve had time to look back over what I did with my life, and the view sucks. I made a choice, I killed a man. And that single act poisoned every goddamned thing from that moment on.” Slapping his hand down on his thin thighs, he said, “It’ll poison you too.”

  Sloane didn’t flinch. “It’s not murder if he steps in the ring with me voluntarily.” He’d made sure Lee Foster would do exactly that.

  Drake gripped the material of the hospital gown in his fists. “You once stopped a fight, sacrificing the win because you refused to seriously hurt your opponent.”

  Sloane shrugged. “I know a concussion when I see one. The ref was sleeping on the job.”

  “You’re not planning on stopping this fight. It’s murder. Doesn’t matter how you stage it, it’s still murder.”

  Sara’s death was murder. Foster’s death would be justice. “That day you stopped me from killing Foster, you told me that if I was going to get vengeance, do it right. That’s who I am.”

  The older man sighed. “That’s on me. I tried to give you a reason to live. Instead, I gave you a reason to kill.”

  Chapter Four

  Drake’s words echoed in Sloane’s head as he exited the hospital through the emergency room since the front doors were locked at this hour of the night. Or early morning, actually. He strode out the doors into the cool air scented with the tang of the ocean and stopped.

  He recognized Kat from her long ponytail streaked with pink. Her shoulders were tense, and she stood with her hand on the open back door of a cab. From the angle of her head, she was staring inside.

  Utterly frozen.

  Sloane took two steps closer. Her fingers on the edge of the door were white-knuckled. Her breathing was tight. And she had her other arm holding her purse against her stomach.

  Walk away from her, he told himself. Whatever her deal was, just walk away.