Instead, before that thought could catch hold, Corinne came out, calling, “I’m dressed. I’m good. Let’s get her to the hospital.”
Shaw’s hand got firm in mine in preparation to pull me up as he suggested, “You might wanna lower the icepack to get down the stairs.”
I lowered it then and looked into his dad’s eyes in Shaw’s own version of a handsome face, murmuring, “Good call.”
But his face was tight as it took in mine.
I didn’t take that as a good sign.
Hixon’s kids helped me out, Corinne locked the apartment, and they put me in the passenger seat of the silver car, the girls in the back, Shaw in the driver’s seat, doing the manly-man-arm-behind-the-passenger-seat thing when he reversed out of the spot.
He had a girlfriend.
She probably thought that move was amazing since it kind of was.
Shaw drove swiftly but carefully to the hospital.
And it wouldn’t be until the nurse’s eyes grew huge when they walked me through the doors of the emergency room at McCook County Hospital that I would realize I was bleeding profusely from the nose, it was all down my chest, the front of my dress, with drips and smears on the awesome, lightweight, champagne-gold swing coat I always wore over my cocktail dresses when it was nippy in the spring and fall.
“Well, anyone catch any good movies last summer?” I asked in a nasally voice (because my nostrils were packed with gauze), sitting on the end of an exam bed in the emergency room with a nose I could actually feel swelling since it was goddamned broken.
Hix’s kids were standing around me as we waited for Hix, who had called Shaw and told him we were not to move until he came to get us.
Shaw grinned at me.
Mamie noted while staring at the big bandage of gauze and tape that covered my nose, “It’s good they don’t have big nose casts. That wouldn’t be too fun.”
“I hope when I grow up I still look pretty even after someone broke my nose,” Corinne muttered like she wished she didn’t have to but the laws that made me pretty enough for that to withstand having a broken nose forced her to do so.
Still, it was sweet.
I thought this until Shaw growled out, “No one is ever gonna break your nose, Cor.”
She cut a glare to her brother. “I’m just sayin’, in the unlikely event I get one, I hope I get through it lookin’ pretty.”
“In the unlikely event you get one, you’ll have other things on your mind like hopin’ your dad and brother don’t get jail time for handing the man who did it his ass.”
Oh boy.
Mamie looked to me.
Corinne looked to me.
“I’m quite certain your father will not hand the man who did this to me his ass seein’ as he’s the sheriff and all,” I assured.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Shaw muttered.
“Shaw!” Corinne cried. “Dad can’t go to jail!”
“Daddy’s going to jail?” Mamie asked, confused.
I opened my mouth to reassure her but her father’s deep voice came, doing it for me, and my eyes shot up to see him round the curtain to my bay.
“I’m not goin’ to jail, baby. It’s all cool.”
She ran to him, throwing her arms around his middle, and his long body jolted slightly as he slid his arm around her shoulders.
But his eyes were locked to me.
“Did you get ’im?” Shaw asked.
“Hal and Larry are processing him,” Hix answered his son, his focus still on me.
But at his words my shoulders slumped in relief, my head dropped and I looked to my knees.
“Good,” Shaw muttered.
“Just a second, baby,” I heard Hix say gently and then I felt an equally gentle fist under my chin tipping my head back and I saw Hix disengaged from his girl bent in front of me. “What we got?”
And yep, that was also gentle.
And sweet.
“Broken nose. No concussion,” Shaw answered for me authoritatively.
I was okay with that.
But it was not good he carried on.
“Other than slammin’ her face in her kitchen island twice, he didn’t hurt her.”
I watched from close, and I’ll admit I did it with a fascination that was mildly grim and not as mildly titillated, as Hixon’s eyes ignited with wrath.
“She can speak for herself, Shaw,” Corinne pointed out.
Before his son could answer, Hixon took his fist from my chin, straightened and ordered, “Time to go home.”
Oh no.
Nonono.
I wasn’t going home.
A man attacked me in my kitchen.
Until I burned some sage, drank a ton of gin and had about four hundred hours of therapy, I was never going back there.
“Can I use your phone to call Lou?” I asked Hixon.
He looked down at me.
But it was Corinne who asked, “Why would you call Miss Lou at this hour?”
My eyes slid to her.
“Um . . .” I mumbled, partly because I was confused she had to ask that question and partly because I was getting a little panicky because I always just hit Lou’s contact in my phone and I didn’t have her number memorized.
“You’re just gonna freak her out,” Corinne informed me.
“Well—” I started.
“Cor,” Hixon growled.
“Well, she is,” Corinne told her dad then returned her attention to me. “You can call her tomorrow.”
“I kinda don’t wanna go home tonight, darlin’,” I explained softly.
She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Well, of course not. You’re stayin’ with us.” As my mouth fell open, her attention shifted to her brother and she asked, “Can I drive home?”
“No,” both Shaw and Hix answered at the same time.
“Dad,” she turned to her father, “I need to learn night driving.”
“Not at four in the morning,” he replied. “And you got a learner’s permit, honey, but Shaw is still a minor and you need an official adult in the car with you.”
She threw up her hands in an unexpected teenage-girl fit (the only kind there probably was, I didn’t know, I hadn’t had any teenage years even when I was in my teenage years). “I’m never gonna learn night driving!”
“Cor, we’ve hit October. Soon it’s gonna be night more than day every day,” Shaw pointed out.
She was screwing up for a retort but Hix had experience with this which he demonstrated immediately.
He did this by ordering by way of request, “Can you two discuss this in the car so we can all get home?”
Mamie moved to her father and grabbed his hand.
I watched as his fingers automatically curled around and held tight.
And if blue roses and him leaping down stairs didn’t mean I was totally unblocking him (and I was), seeing that did.
“Can I ride with you, Dad?” she asked.
“Sure,” he answered.
“Is Greta riding with us?” she asked.
Hix looked at me.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Cool,” she said, turning to me and grinning. “And guess what?” she said to me.
“What, sweetie?” I asked.
“It’s not real nice you got your nose broke tonight but now you got a killer Halloween costume,” she declared, her gaze dipping down to the front of my dress before it came back to my face.
I stared at Hix’s little girl who had blue eyes and dark hair and his frame and didn’t look a thing like Hope but looked like he’d created her himself from sheer will, flying in the face of the laws of nature.
She was gorgeous.