niece. “And she’s refusing to stay here.”
Rafe slid his fingers back, allowing Cami to turn her gaze from his, thankfully. She swore she was staring death in the eye. There was such latent violence swirling in his gaze that she had to suppress a shiver.
“I’ll be fine, Aunt Ella,” she assured her.
“You’re not going home by yourself,” Cami’s uncle protested, though this time he had that tone normally reserved for his son.
“I’ll be fine.” She had no other place to run to, and she wasn’t going to her aunt and uncle’s. Cami loved them, but the thought of living with them terrified her.
“I’ll take care of her.” Rafe’s tone brooked no refusal, and as she slid him a quick look beneath her lashes she realized she was hesitating to argue back as well.
The tension that rose in the room was unmistakable.
“I said I’ll be fine—,” she began to protest again.
“Like you were this time?” Rafe growled. “Because you were too damned stubborn and ashamed to let anyone know what was going on.”
“Ashamed? Me?” She stared back at him in surprise. “I’m not ashamed, Rafe. I’m practical. Something you don’t seem to be. And I did tell you.”
“Really? You didn’t adequately explain” he argued sardonically as he crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at her with irritating arrogance. “Practical is hiding the fact you’re getting threatening phone calls until someone actually tried to rape and murder you in your own home. Right?”
She winced before glancing quickly at her aunt and uncle. Cami swore Eddy paled before he swallowed tightly to regain his equilibrium.
“That was uncalled for.”
“It was the truth. Now, you can stay here, in this nice, sterile little room, or you can stop arguing with me and I’ll take you home. Those are your choices. Now pick one before I pick it for you.”
She so did not like being ordered around like this. If it weren’t for the headache, as well as the exhaustion, she would have argued with him.
“I want to sleep in my own bed.”
There was no way she was going to be able to sleep in a hospital bed. She loved her aunt Ella, but each time Cami had dozed off Ella had been there for blood or some other nursing reason.
Rafe gave a sharp nod of his head.
“She shouldn’t be leaving, Rafe,” Ella spoke up then. “The doctor wants her to remain until tomorrow morning for observation. A concussion is nothing to mess with, and he suspects she may have some cranial bruising.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Cami told him mutinously. “She gets paranoid.”
Ella rolled her eyes before turning back to Rafe. “Are you paying attention to me, Rafer Callahan?”
Rafe’s brows arched as Cami glanced at him, though he seemed more amused than angry.
“Yes, ma’am, I am,” he assured her. “In this case, you may have to settle for a Marine medic, though.”
Ella propped one hand on her lush hip and stared back at him, suspicious. “You’re a medic?”
“No, ma’am, but I have one.” He grinned back at her. He had no intentions of telling them who the medic was or that Logan had had training that could have gotten him a job in any hospital as a physician’s assistant.
“You two just are not going to listen to reason, are you?” Ella finally griped.
“Maybe it’s a good thing, Ella,” Eddy spoke up. “I just want her safe. And this is a public hospital. If her attacker’s determined, he’ll not have too hard a time getting to her.”
Cami could see what he wasn’t saying, though. What if they were wrong and Rafe and his cousins had been the ones to have killed Jaymi and, as many believed, framed Thomas Jones?
It was in Ella’s and Eddy’s eyes and in their voices each time they spoke and in their gazes as they shared one of those speaking looks that only true soul mates shared.
Eddy was rough talking, loud, and confrontational whenever his petite wife wasn’t around. But once she was there, he went from growling lion to tame little house cat.
“Are you ready to go?” Rafe asked then. “Logan and Crowe are waiting in the hall for us.”
Cami lifted her gaze to her aunt.
“Callahan, I wanna talk to you first. You and I can walk out in the hall while Ella helps her finish getting ready and gets her signed out.” Her uncle wasn’t growling, but he wasn’t exactly the tame pussycat either.
Rafe stared across Cami’s head at the older man, seeing more than simply the command in his gaze. Eddy Flannigan was pissed off, but he wasn’t pissed off with Cami or even with Rafe this time.
Rafe gave a sharp nod before bending his head, his lips pressing the top of Cami’s head. “Be good,” he warned her. “Don’t try to run on me.”
“Rafe, if I had to run for my life right now then I think I’d probably have to just go ahead and die.”
He doubted that. According to the doctor Rafe had talked to, she had put up one hell of a fight.
“I’ll be right outside then.” He let his fingertips caress down her back before he moved away and returned to the hall, the normally verbally abusive, smart-assed Eddy following behind him.
As the door closed behind them, Eddy held up his hand quickly as both Logan and Crowe straightened from their positions on each side of the door and glared at him fiercely.
“I’m not interested in fighting you boys, yet,” he warned them.
Rafer crossed his arms over his chest and stared back at him curiously. “Then what do you want?”
“Did she tell you about the phone calls she was getting?”
Eddy’s shoulders sagged a little as he rubbed at the back of his neck in irritation. “Likely he heard it from the same place I did: Jack Townsend?”
Rafe nodded.
Eddy shook his head at the response or whatever thought Rafe could see darkening his gaze.
“Her aunt just got off the phone with her father,” Eddy told them then. “Normally, this ain’t no business but Flannigans’, but I saw her face, and her daddy did nothing to keep his voice low enough that it didn’t carry on the phone.” He quickly went through the conversation, ending with the final insult to Cami when Mark had called her Callahan trash.
Rafe could feel the anger building inside him now.
“What the hell happened to him?” he sighed. “Mark Flannigan was a good man once.”
Eddy snorted at that. “No, my brother, unlike me, likes to hide his faults and appear perfect in public. Me, now this is what you have.” He held his arms out to his sides as anger filled his voice. “You’re stuck with me exactly how I am. Mark, he likes to have all those pretty words said about him; he always did. And don’t get me wrong; he loved Jaymi something fierce. Her death killed a part of him, I think. But Mark was never loving with Cami, Rafe. He was never a father to her. He resented her birth and he resented every time he had to balance buying for her with buying for Jaymi. Every time Jaymi had to share something, or couldn’t have something, he blamed Cami’s birth. The day of Jaymi’s funeral he stated it was unfair that his Jaymi was gone, that she had suffered. If one of them had to die like that—” Eddy seemed to shudder as he blinked back a sudden moisture in his eyes. “He said it should have been Cami.” Eddy lifted his gaze as Rafe fought to hide the horror that a father could ever say or do anything so atrocious. “And she overheard him.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Like I said, this should stay Flannigan business.” He glared at Rafe as though it were his fault the story was coming out. “But that girl has enough on her shoulders right now; hearing her daddy call her trash wasn’t something she needed. One of these days, she’s going to accept to her soul that she doesn’t have a daddy, and when she does, if you’re there—” He broke off as though uncomfortable.
“There’s no if about it,” Rafe assured him. “I’ll be there, and I’ll take care of her.”
Eddy nodded sharply.
“Tell me something, Eddy. All these years you’ve poked and prodded and sliced at us with that smart-assed mouth of yours, and not even for a minute did you believe we hurt Jaymi. Why did you do it?”
“Who says I didn’t?” Eddy frowned, his gaze fierce and confrontational as he stared back at them.
“Because you would have never told me any of that if you thought for a moment one of us hurt her sister,” Rafe snarled back at, Eddy, his voice low but the fury raging in it loud and clear.
