Mastered (The Enforcers 1)

His expression softened and then he shook his head before picking his phone up. To Evangeline’s dismay, he seemed to have not been moved by her entreaty.

“Yeah, Zander here. I need you to come get me and Evangeline and have Drake’s doctor on standby. I’m taking her to get checked out.”

There was a long pause.

“No. She doesn’t want Drake to know. She just took a fall. Her knee hurts but I can’t exactly examine it in the middle of a fucking public sidewalk. Just get here.”

After Zander gave whoever he was talking to his and Evangeline’s location, Zander ended the call and then gathered the bags he’d dropped when Evangeline fell. Then he curled his huge tattooed arm around her waist.

“Lean on me and try not to put much weight on your hurt leg,” he said. “We need to get somewhere you don’t get knocked over by some asshole pedestrian in a hurry. Preferably somewhere you can sit so you aren’t putting any strain on that knee.”

He all but carried her and the bags a short distance away under the awning of a restaurant and settled her into a bench intended for waiting customers. When the woman manning the door would have protested them sitting, Zander sent her a ferocious glare that promptly had her shutting her mouth and retreating hastily to her post.

“Who did you call?” Evangeline asked.

“Justice. He’s not far or he would have called someone who was closer than he was to come get you.”

“Is a visit to the doctor really necessary?” Evangeline asked with a frown. “We should just go home. I can doctor it myself. It’s not serious. It doesn’t even hurt that much anymore.”

“We are going home,” Zander said calmly. “Drake’s personal physician has a clinic on the second level of Drake’s building. He has a practice, but his primary job is to see to Drake and Drake’s employees’ needs. And believe me, we’re a full-time job,” he added with a grin.

But Evangeline didn’t return his smile. Her brow furrowed in thought over what Zander had told her. Drake required a personal physician? As in one who looked after the needs of him and his men? Were their jobs that dangerous? For that matter, she had yet to figure out precisely what Drake and his men did for a living. Surely owning a nightclub didn’t command the kind of wealth Drake and his men possessed and certainly wouldn’t be cause to have a personal doctor to patch someone up on a regular basis.

She felt faintly ill, wondering just what she had gotten herself into and if she was already in way over her head.

“How bad are you hurting?” Zander asked bluntly.

She looked up at him, squinting when her gaze met the sun beyond Zander’s broad shoulders. He frowned and dug out the other pair of sunglasses and promptly perched them atop Evangeline’s nose.

“It just stings a bit. You’re completely overreacting,” she muttered. “One would think I got shot.”

Zander wasn’t amused, and it was the fact that his expression became as grim as it did that made her wonder if being shot was a possibility. Was her coming to harm why Drake was so overzealous when it came to her having protection any time she left the apartment?

If she thought for a minute she’d actually get an answer, she’d ask Zander just that question, but she knew he’d bite off his tongue before ever telling her anything. So she sighed and resigned herself to a visit to the doctor.

She was surprised when only five minutes later, a sleek car she didn’t recognize the insignia for pulled up, and to her further surprise, not only did Justice step from the car but so did Silas.

And it would appear Silas’s presence came as a surprise to Zander as well, judging by his reaction.

Justice shrugged as they neared where Evangeline still sat on the bench.

“Silas was with me and when he heard what went down, he said he was coming.”

Unspoken was that no one ever likely refused Silas anything.

“I just hope to hell he doesn’t scare the shit out of her,” Zander muttered so only Justice could hear.

Evangeline immediately bristled and shot upward, wincing as her knee protested the sudden and unexpected movement. She pointed her finger at Zander. “To date, you are the only one who has frightened me. Not to mention how rude you were. And you dare to suggest that a man who has impeccable manners and who made considerable effort to ease my embarrassment after I dumped a cupcake all over his pants—which was your fault, by the way—would somehow frighten me? Quite frankly, I’m better off with him.”

Silas stood staring at Evangeline as though she were an alien, surprise written clearly on his features. And then he simply walked to where she was shakily standing and put one arm around her.