SEIZED, A Romantic Suspense Novella Read Free Page A

the Emergency Room when she was a senior nursing student.
     
    The sliding doors to the ambulance bay opened and two patrolmen escorted an injured prisoner in to be examined. The young man, with blood caked on the side of his face and soaked through his right arm, had been driving under the influence when he left the road, flipped his car and crashed into the guardrail on the opposite side of the highway.
    The older officer jerked the suspect into the room assigned by the charge nurse, making a point of shackling him to the bed. “Don’t even think about giving us any trouble, kid.”
    The teenager, barely more than a boy, looked red-rimmed eyes out the door as the paramedics rolled a stretcher toward another room in the ER, a blanket covering the body from head-to-toe. “Aaron? Is…that Aaron?”
    “Yeah, kid. That’s your friend. The one you killed,” the older officer said, getting right in the poor boy’s face.
    “Hey, lay off, Sean,” the younger, dark-haired officer said, maneuvering between his partner and the crying suspect.
    “What, Dave? You want me to coddle this kid? Tell him it wasn’t his fault he got drunk and stole a car? That he wasn’t the one who decided to drive like Mario Andretti on 71?”
    “No. But it was his friend who died.”
    “Yeah and he killed him. Some friend he turned out to be,” Sean spat out the words just as Judy approached to get admission information, part of her job as the ER secretary.
    “Look, he isn’t the boy that caused your son’s accident. Why don’t you go get some coffee while I wait for the doc to see the kid?” Dave gently pushed his partner away from the gurney where their prisoner now huddled on his side.
    “Yeah. Maybe I’ll call home, too.”
    Judy, clutching her clipboard to her chest, stepped back, barely getting out of the angry officer’s path as he stalked out. She stepped into the cubicle to see the younger man pulling a blanket around the shivering, crying teen’s shoulders.
    “Once we get the docs to look at your head and arm, you can call your folks, okay?” He said, squeezing the suspect’s uninjured shoulder.
    “Excuse me?” she said then froze on the spot when Officer Dave looked at her with eyes the color of warm honey and a question on his face. Wow. Dark hair, dark eyebrows and a slight shadow along his jawline had her heart throwing off an extra beat or two.
    “Yes?” he asked, the curve of his lips turning up in the start of a smile. The kind of smile that made her get all tingly inside and want to see if the rest of him was as sexy as his lips.
    “Um,” she blinked to clear the carnal thoughts running through her mind. “I…uh…I need to get information from…” she glanced at the boy huddled under the blanket.
    “Jason Watts,” Dave said, the smile deepening.
    “I need Jason’s information to get him admitted.”
    Dave stepped back, giving her just enough room to pass by, but not so much that she couldn’t feel his body heat and smell the sandalwood soap lingering around him.
    For the rest of the evening, until Dave and his partner took Jason to jail, she’d surreptitiously watched how Dave stood guard over his prisoner. He’d gotten him a soda once the docs said he could have one then sat close by, but never getting aggressive towards the boy.
    He’d returned at the end of his shift to see if she’d like to go out for a late night meal. Since she had clinical early that morning she’d had to turn him down, but agreed to go out with him that weekend. It was while they shared a pizza and beer that she learned he’d not only been kind to Jason, but given his parents the name of a good defense lawyer they could afford.
    When she asked him why, he said, “The kid reminded me of my youngest brother, Luke. He’s taking a long time to grow up. I could see him doing something stupid like this and knew he’d beat himself up with guilt. Just thought I could help.”
    And that’s when she fell in