Heating up the Holidays Read online

The wounded man was bleeding fast and furious, and going very pale. “No.”

  “Say you’re sorry!”

  “No!”

  “You have another shoulder, you know. And I’ll shoot you in it-Hey!” The shooter turned his head toward Dustin, who’d shifted closer to the victim. “Stay right where you are until I tell you to move!”

  Ignoring him, Dustin went down on his knees to look at the wound. The bullet couldn’t have hit any major arteries or the manager would probably already have bled out completely-one thing in the guy’s favor.

  Dustin lifted the torn and bloody material away from the entry wound.

  The manager hissed out a pained breath. “I’m going to die, aren’t I? How long before I die?”

  Cristina went to move closer to help but crazy-gun-guy protested. “Stay where you are!”

  Her hands fisted but she stayed. “He needs helps.”

  “Let me repeat. Move and I’ll shoot.”

  “Okay, let’s all just try to relax,” Dustin said quickly, still crouched by the injured man. “You let us in here, right? So I know you don’t want anyone to die.” He went to open his bag, until the gun ended up in his face.

  “No funny business!”

  “No funny business.” Slowly, Dustin pulled out gauze and pressed it to the wound. “He needs a hospital.”

  “Not until I get my apology.”

  “For what?”

  “He said I was a worthless loser.”

  “You hit him,” Dustin pointed out. “And then you shot him. I think you’re even.”

  “Mom said he has to apologize, that I shouldn’t give in until he apologizes.”

  “Mom?” Dustin divided a look between the two guys as sirens sounded in the distance. “You’re brothers?”

  “Only temporarily,” the brother holding the gun said. “Because I’m going to shoot him dead if he doesn’t apologize, and then I’ll be an only child.”

  The manager groaned and lay back. “Jesus. You’re crazy.”

  “Say you’re sorry!”

  “Just say it,” Dustin grated out, trying to stop the bleeding and having little luck.

  “No way in hell!”

  The armed brother waved his weapon, looking quite pissed off at the world. When it ended up in the vicinity of the terrified clerk, she let out a low cry and started to back away.

  “Don’t move!” The manager, gray from blood loss and pain, yelled from his position on the concrete floor. “God, Tess, don’t get shot for me!”

  The gun was in her face now. “Yes, Tess,” the manager’s brother said. “Don’t get shot for him.”

  “Okay, let’s just all stay very calm,” Dustin slowly rose, holding up his hands. “You don’t need the clerk anymore, right? You can let her go. Let both women go.”

  “They can identify me.”

  That didn’t sound promising. For any of them. The police were probably outside by now, maybe even making their way in somehow, or so he hoped, so he figured stalling was key. “Look, why don’t you tell me what it is you want, and I’ll try to negotiate it for you.”

  “I want an apology, or he dies.” Emphasizing this, he pointed the gun at his brother.

  Tess screamed and scrambled backward, turning to race recklessly toward the door.

  “Stop!”

  Knowing it was all going to go bad, Dustin grabbed Cristina and shoved her behind him, dropping them both down as the guy waved his gun around like a mad man over their heads.

  Well, shit, he thought. He should have quit yesterday.

  8

  F ROM BEHIND Dustin, where he’d shoved her, Cristina couldn’t see, but what she heard stopped her heart.

  “Stop!” crazy-gun-dude yelled. “Stop or I’ll shoot you!”

  “Don’t shoot her!” his brother cried.

  Cristina lifted her head.

  Tess wasn’t stopping. Heart in her throat, Cristina tried to get free from Dustin’s grip but then he was surging forward, throwing himself at the gunman.

  In Cristina’s life, she’d been afraid many times, but never like this, never such a gut-wrenching horror. “Dustin!” She reached for him, grabbing, but catching only his belt, and the holster for his scissors.

  Dustin landed on the gunman and they rolled around on the floor, each grappling to be on top.

  Cristina held the scissors like a weapon, planning on stabbing gun guy, but the two men kept moving, rolling, bizarrely in tune to the clerk screaming her head off. Then the man with the gun shoved free of Dustin, whose face was bleeding. He’d lost his glasses and squinted, as crazy-gun-guy leapt to his feet and aimed at the clerk’s back.

  “No!” all of them yelled. Dustin lunged to his feet, the sudden motion causing the gunman to whirl on him just as the manager, still on the floor, yanked on his brother’s leg hard, causing him to lose his balance.

  The gun went off.

  Time stopped and so did Cristina’s heart as she watched Dustin jerk. She dove for him as the deranged brother fell, and they all hit the floor in unison.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she gasped, grabbing Dustin as he doubled over and grabbed his leg, his face a mask of agony.

  The room was suddenly filled with police and everything was a blur.

  Except Dustin, still in her arms, eyes closed, his precious blood pumping out of a hole in his thigh. “Dustin.”

  James was suddenly there, as were two paramedics from station #33, all getting in her way, pulling Dustin out of her arms.

  “He’s going to be fine,” she told them, stepping back out of the way so they could get him on a gurney.

  Blake was there. He hugged her hard, and into his chest she said it again. “He’s going to be fine.”

  “I’ll take you to the hospital,” he said, far too solemnly.

  Which was odd because Dustin was going to be fine. Fine.

  B LAKE GOT Cristina to the hospital right behind the ambulance. As they rushed into the E.R. alongside Dustin, Cristina never took her eyes off his pale, pale face. A nurse cut away his pants while a doctor barked orders over his head.

  Cristina tried to get a good look but another nurse eased her back out of the way. But she stayed in the room. “Look at that, Dustin. I’m getting you out of your pants without even trying.”

  Dustin’s mouth quirked, but his eyes stayed closed. “Be gentle.”

  There was a lump in her throat the size of a football. “Hey, I’m always gentle with the lightweights, ace.”

  “I’ll have you know I’m no lightweight. I know what I’m doing…”

  Cristina choked out a laugh. He did. He did know what he was doing, always. “Dustin-”

  “Yeah…” His voice was fading away, which terrorized her. But it was just the drugs, she told herself.

  He was fine.

  Out of the speakers came some soft, elevator Christmas music, reminding her that tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Someone had the small TV at the nurses’ station on CNN, muted, and ticker after ticker spelled doom and gloom for their economy. “You know, it’s really not a good time to be selling a house,” she whispered.

  Blake reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Cristina-”

  “Seriously. He should just forget about selling his damn house.”

  “I think I can get this bullet out without sending him to surgery,” one of the doctors said.

  “Do it.” Dustin sounded as if he was breathing through gritted teeth.

  “Give him more pain meds,” Christina demanded. Why weren’t they giving him more? “Blake-”

  Blake held her back, whispering in her ear. “They know what they’re doing. You know they know what they’re doing.”

  “Do you feel this?” the doctor asked, poking at Dustin’s bare foot.

  “Feel what?”

  Oh, God. “He’s going to be fine…” She stared at Dustin’s too-pale face. “You hear me, Dustin Mauer?”

  The doctor gave Blake a look that had the firefighter holding on to Christina very tigh
tly, but she was very aware that no one was making any promises. “He’s going to be fine,” she repeated for herself.

  “Yes,” Blake said, sounding a little tense. “He is.”

  The alternative was far too painful to contemplate. A world without Dustin? Without those eyes, that smile, that gentle, giving, sweet nature that he could turn just a little rough and edgy when he had to? No way. She couldn’t imagine not having him in her life. “Goddammit, we have a picnic to go to.”

  Dustin didn’t respond to that and she tried to move closer to the gurney, but Blake caught her. “We have to stay back or they’ll make us leave.”

  “He practically jumped in front of that gunman!” she cried. “To protect that girl. To protect me!” She did the saving, dammit. No one needed to save her.

  Blake kept a good hold of her, probably afraid she was going to jump the line of nurses and start yelling at Dustin again. She gripped the front of Blake’s shirt, giving him a shake when it was herself that needed one. “I’m not done with that man!”

  Very gently, Blake pulled her in for a hug. “I know.”

  “I have things to tell him.” She wasn’t exactly sure what they were yet, but she’d figure that part out. She tried to look at Dustin through the throng of people now working on him. “Do you hear me, Dustin Mauer? I have things to tell you!”

  “Cristina, come on now,” Blake begged her. “The drugs have just knocked him out. Stay back. You’ll get your second chance. Everyone gets a second chance.”

  If anyone should know, it was Blake, who’d come back from the dead, literally.

  But suddenly everyone in scrubs was on the move, with Dustin between them, far too still and quiet on the gurney.

  “Going into X-ray,” the doctor called back. “Checking bullet and bone placement. Is his family here?”

  “Not yet,” she managed, her gut tight.

  “We’ll be back.”

  It didn’t escape her that he moved off without having ever given anything away.

  In the movies that never boded well. As Dustin’s gurney moved past her, she reached out and touched his foot. It was all she could reach. “You’re going to be fine,” she whispered after he was long gone behind the double swinging white doors. “You are.”

  9

  D USTIN LAY in the hospital bed, wriggling his toes. He was never going to get tired of wriggling his toes, not ever again. That was the good news.

  The bad news? He hadn’t quit his job soon enough.

  “You feeling sorry for yourself?”

  Dustin craned his neck and eyed Jason, sitting by his bed. “Hey. What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for your pansy ass to wake up. So…does getting shot hurt as bad as everyone says?”

  “Nah.” He sat up and grimaced at the pain. “Piece of cake.”

  Jason’s smile faded. “You scared the shit out of us. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Believe me, I don’t intend to. They got the bullet out.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I’m okay.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the other guy who got shot?”

  “Also okay.”

  “So do you have the getaway car?”

  “You’re not clear to go yet. And Cristina and Blake had to go to the police station to give statements, but they were going to come back to see you.”

  “I need out of here.”

  “But-”

  Dustin struggled to toss off the covers. He was wearing a hospital gown. Great. “Either drive me or call me a damn cab. And where are some damn pants?”

  “Jeez, those drugs you’re on are supposed to make you happy.”

  “I’ll be happy. Out of here.”

  B Y THE TIME Cristina got back to the hospital, she was seriously losing it.

  Dustin was recovering.

  She knew this because she’d called every ten minutes. “I need to see him,” she said to Blake, who was sitting in the passenger seat.

  “He’s probably sleeping.”

  “Okay, but I still need to see him. I think I might…have feelings for him. Real feelings, you know?”

  Blake laughed softly. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Well, I didn’t!”

  “That’s because you’re a little slow on the uptake. But we love you anyway.”

  She stared at him for a beat. “You do?”

  “All of us, Cristina. Every last one.”

  She struggled with this concept, wanting to believe that could actually even be possible, but not sure, even now, if she could. “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Maybe it’s your sweet, sensitive nature.”

  “No, really. Why?”

  He took in her tense features, and softened. “We love you because you’re the best of the best, Cristina, and because you’re fierce and intense and amazing. You’d lay your life down for any single one of us. Hell, you’d do it for a stranger. Now you have a guy, also one of the best of the best, who feels the same way about you, and you’re sitting at a green light looking at me.”

  “Oh!” She hit the gas and didn’t let up until she’d pulled back into the hospital. She rushed past the E.R. cubicle where only a few hours before Dustin had lain bleeding, not able to feel his toes, to the information desk, where she was directed to Dustin’s room.

  And found an empty bed.

  An aide was cleaning up the sheets. “Where is he?” she demanded hoarsely.

  “Who?”

  “Dustin Mauer. The patient who was here. Where is he?”

  “He’s gone.”

  F OR THE FIRST TIME in her entire life, Cristina left the job in the middle of a shift. Abandoning Blake at the hospital, she drove to Dustin’s house and banged on his door, opening it herself when she couldn’t wait. “Dustin-Oh.”

  A Dustin look-alike was on the other side of the door. He was tall, leanly muscled, and so much like Dustin she had to blink.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, I-” She looked behind her, back outside, to make sure she’d driven up to the right house.

  “Oh, you’re at the right place,” he told her. “You’re the heartbreaker, right? Cristina.”

  “Jason.” Dustin said this from his perch on the couch, his voice low and raspy and so familiar it nearly brought her to her knees. “Let her in.”

  “She’s already in.” But Jason stood back and gave her room.

  “My brother, Jason, the watchdog,” Dustin said. “Jason, this is Cristina.”

  Cristina managed a small smile and then moved past Jason to stand in front of Dustin, so relieved to see him she could scarcely breathe. He looked like shit, like death warmed over really, but he was breathing, so that was good. Still, she wanted to wrap him up in her arms and never let go. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “So we’re even.”

  “I scared you? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Why are you here?” he asked instead of answering her.

  She shoved her hands into her pockets. Probably she should have figured out exactly what to say to him. “Isn’t it customary to visit someone who’s been shot? Even idiots who check themselves out of hospital against doctors’ advice?”

  His eyes gave nothing away behind his glasses. “So this is a friendly visit then? A how-are-you-doing visit? Well, I’m pissed off and in pain. There. Now you know. Thanks for coming.”

  As if on cue, Jason opened the door in a not-so-subtle invitation for her to walk back out again.

  “Wait.” She let out a breath and shoved her fingers in her hair. “Just wait a damn minute.”

  Dustin waited with a patience that stretched hers thin for no reason that she could put her finger on. “I just wanted to see you. Is that so weird? We-we’re-”

  Completely unhelpful, he lifted a brow.

  “I mean, I thought we-”

  He still just looked at her.

  Goddammit.

  “Okay, let me help you,” he s
aid.

  Well, finally!

  “We’ve been friends,” he murmured. “Close friends.”

  She’d never been good with the word close, but it was hard to dispute the truth. “Yes.”

  “We’ve been sleeping together.”

  She shot a quick glance at his brother. “Well, not regularly or anything. At least until this week,” she muttered.

  Jason pursed his lips. “Sounds like you kids have some talking to do. I’ll be eavesdropping from the kitchen.”

  He left, and a heavy silence filled the room.

  “Here’s the thing,” Dustin said.

  Good. The thing. She was so glad he was about to define the thing.

  “I’m tired.”

  “Well, of course you’re tired. You were shot!”

  “No, I mean, I’m tired of this. I’m tired of the yo-yo. I’m tired of making all the moves.”

  A burning panic began to rumble low in her belly. “What are you talking about?”

  “If I don’t push you, then we stand still. But I’m tired of pressuring you into each and every single tiny step forward we take. It’s why I came to your place the other night to say goodbye. Which didn’t stick, obviously. So if you want to make the first move today, then make it already. If not, I’d like to be alone.”

  Hurt, stunned and more hurt, she just stood there.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Sounding extremely tired, he lay back and closed his eyes. “Lock the door behind you.”

  Well, wasn’t that subtle? She’d just lock the door then. Asshole. She let herself out and not only locked the damn door, but slammed it first.

  And drove herself home to think.

  And think some more.

  And in the thinking, found her mad. How dare he go along with whatever the hell it was they’d been doing all this time, and then suddenly decide that wasn’t working for him?

  It wasn’t like it was working for her, either. Not even close. She spent a very long night stewing, and when she woke up, she stormed back to his house.

  Only to find it empty.

  It was her day off, but she drove to the station and sought out Zach, who was doing pull-ups on a bar in the hallway, shirtless. Once upon a time she’d harbored a secret crush on Zach. They were friends, and twice they’d been friends with benefits, but it had been a long time ago, and, while he was one of the most gorgeous men she’d ever met, he was a better friend than most.