In His Keeping (Slow Burn #2)

And then Beau was opening the door, and this time, she didn’t utter a single protest when he protectively cradled her in his arms and swiftly took her into one of the side entrances marked “Employees Only.”


Apparently the rules didn’t apply to men like Beau. Her smile was rueful even as she shivered at the chill present in the medical clinic. She hated the smell. The sterile antiseptic odor and even the subtle smell of sickness and illness, death and desolation. This was a place of complete opposing factors. People who came here either got good news, or they received life-changing bad news. She couldn’t help but feel sorrow for those who fell in the realm of the bad.

Beau carried her into a room where a CT scanner was centered in the middle, and she looked at it in panic, because it was for all practical purposes a tube, an enclosed tube into which they slid you in and where walls closed tightly around you.

Her respiration ratcheted up and she held her hand to her nose just in case her sudden bout of stress initiated another bleed. Beau was already freaked out enough over her. There was no reason to give him even more reason to be unreasonable.

The doctor directed Beau to lay Ari down on the table and position her just so. Then he kindly patted her on the arm.

“Would you prefer for Beau to stay with you? Some of my patients fear enclosed spaces and avoid claustrophobic situations. I can put a protective garment over him that will prevent any harm coming to him. Our first priority is ensuring your comfort and more importantly we need you to relax and obey our directives as we give them. Can you handle that?”

“No. Yes. I mean I’ll be fine,” Ari said quickly although she wanted nothing more than for Beau to remain. But she refused to put Beau at further risk because of her. He’d already been shot at—twice. Wrecked and forced off the freeway in an overturned vehicle. Enough was enough and it was time to put her big-girl panties on and act like the independent woman she’d worked so hard to become since graduating college and going out on her own in the workforce, not that her father was at all happy with her choices. But it had been her mother’s gentle but steady hand that had caused her father to back down and allow Ari freedoms she hadn’t been granted until the last few years.

“I can handle this. I’m okay. Really. I don’t want to put Beau at any further risk. He’s risked enough for me to day.”

“And you’re terrified of enclosed spaces,” Beau said tersely. “I’m staying.”

She looked at him astonishment. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Honey, you didn’t see your absolute look of terror and utter discomfort the minute you laid eyes on the scanner. I’m not leaving you alone to endure it when it will be hell for you. So don’t even try to argue. Because this is one argument you will not win.”

“Fine,” she grumbled. “But if you get radiation poisoning or whatever it is you get from these X-ray machines, it’s your own damn fault and I refuse to feel guilty if you get cancer and die.”

Beau’s lips quirked into a smile. “Why, Ari, you’re beginning to make me think you care,” he teased.

Her expression went utterly solemn. “I do care, Beau. I care too much. I wish I could be selfish and do whatever it took to get my parents back no matter the cost to others’ lives or the injuries they could sustain, but that’s not who I am. It’s not the kind of person I’ve ever been and it’s not who I want to become.”

It was becoming an increasing habit for him to press his lips anywhere but her mouth, almost as if he were guarding against the possibility of creating too much intimacy between him and a client, but in Ari’s mind, those tender moments meant far more to her than if he had kissed her on the mouth.

She closed her eyes as he briefly feathered a kiss over her furrowed forehead.

“Now, we’ve wasted too much time on senseless arguing and we need to get you suited up and me as well, because as I said, I’m going to be here every step of the way. If you get scared just say my name. I’ll be right here.”

“Thank you, Beau. You know and I know you’ve gone above and beyond what you’d normally do for a client. So thank you. It means a lot to have your support, your promise to find my parents and your promise to protect me from the people who are after me.”

“You’ve already thanked me and it was more than enough,” he said softly. “Now let’s get you checked out so Doctor Carey can ease my concerns over your condition.”





FIFTEEN

BEAU shouldered his way into the house, carrying Ari’s limp body firmly against his chest. As requested, Caleb and Ramie were still there, lounging in the living room, though Ramie looked to be asleep, nestled in the crook of Caleb’s shoulder, her hair partially obscuring her face.