“Oh, okay.”
“So, you still want to leave even though I would rather you not?” she asks.
“Yes. Please.”
“Okay, fine. I think one of the guys brought you some clothes yesterday,” Joanna says, going over to a pile of things on a chair in the corner of the room and coming away with a pair of gray sweatpants and a ratty old tee shirt with so many holes it looks like Swiss cheese. “Are these yours?” she asks.
“Yeah, they’re mine,” I mutter, hating to claim them, but I don’t think I can leave in just my boxer briefs.
Joanna, the saint that she is, helps pull the shirt gently over my head and even helps get my arms through the sleeve holes. Then she kneels down at my feet and helps get the sweatpants up to the top of my thighs. That’s when her position and the fact that my dick is semi-hard and so close to her face makes things awkward.
“Your boots are still here,” Joanna says before she gets up and retrieves them.
Imagining how ridiculous I’ll look in my steel-toe boots and jogging pants distracts me while Joanna puts them on me with no socks, and then we’re ready to go.
“Do you need help getting down the steps?” she asks when we get to her porch.
“No, I’ve got it,” I say, gritting my teeth to force my leg to bend and move down them instead of asking for her to help support me.
When I finally sit down in the passenger side of her car, I feel like I’ve just run a marathon.
“So, where am I taking you that’s so important?” I give her the address but nothing else. The less she knows about my fucked-up life, the better.
“Is this it?” Joanna asks when we pull up a few minutes later in front of a small, one-bedroom house with the paint chipping.
“This is it. I’ll be right back,” I tell her.
“Do you need me to…”
“Nope,” I interrupt her offer to help me get up the three steps that look like they were made for giants. How come I never noticed that before now?
I make it up them, barely. Then ring the doorbell.
The woman who answers the door with her strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a long ponytail is still as tall and thin as always wearing nothing but a pair of tight workout shorts and a sports bra. She probably just went for a run or came back from one and will get a shower before she goes to pick up Sierra from preschool.
“Hey, Giselle,” I say. “Can I come in so we can talk?”
“What the hell happened to you?” she asks, probably not because she’s worried about me but because I missed Sunday, the worst possible thing I could’ve done.
“I got shot Friday night.”
“Shot?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, come in and explain,” she says with a heavy sigh, which is a huge relief.
Chapter Five
Joanna
What Phillip said would take five or ten minutes turns into almost thirty. I consider going to knock on the door to make sure he’s okay several times but figure the woman would come out and say something if he passed out.
When Phillip finally does come out of the house, he turns and hugs the tall, beautiful modelesque woman before he starts down the steps. I should get out and go help him, but then the woman comes out and grabs his arm to guide him slowly down the three steps.
At the bottom, he gives her a quick kiss on the lips, the two of them nearly the same height, and then she jogs back up the steps, and he slowly, gently, comes over and lowers himself into the passenger seat of my car.
He smells strongly of women’s perfume or body lotion, making me wonder what he was doing in there for nearly half an hour. He wasn’t…they weren’t…were they? Hunt was injured but that didn’t slow his dick down.
“You’re too sick to have sex,” I blurt out, which comes out sounding more jealous than I expected.
“Oh, well, that’s too bad,” Phillip says, but doesn’t make any other comments about it.
He just gives me the direction to the next address, an apartment complex that’s not but a mile or two away from the last house. “Are you visiting another woman here too?” I can’t help but ask after I put the car in park.
“Yeah.”
“Should we have stopped and bought her flowers?” I remark sarcastically.
“Flowers? Why would I get her flowers?”
“Because that’s what you do when you like a woman.”
“Trust me, no amount of flowers will make this woman or the last like me,” he says seriously. “I’m just trying to convince them not to hate me for missing Sunday.”
Frowning in confusion, I ask, “Were you supposed to see them on Sunday?”
“Yeah.”
“Both of them?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do they know about each other?” I question him.
“Well, yeah, of course. The three of us get together every Sunday at two. I’ve never missed a single one before this past one.”
Jesus. He has not one but two girlfriends?
“So, you’re…never mind,” I say with a shake of my head since it’s none of my business.
Phillip climbs out of the car, making a few grunting sounds like it hurts and then shuts the door behind him.
I shouldn’t care that he’s seeing two women, or that he sees them at the same time. He’s an outlaw biker who got shot. Did I expect him to actually be capable of having a normal relationship with a woman or even want someone like me?
What the hell was I thinking?
Phillip is my patient and nothing else. I need to start remembering that.
Chapter Six
Fiasco
“Wake the fuck up! It’s homecoming day, motherfucker!” Devlin exclaims as he and the other four members of the Dirty Aces MC barge into the bedroom at Joanna’s house one morning.
I’m not sure why I’m surprised. Last night Joanna finally made the call, telling Nash that I’ve been fever free
