“Ummm.” I didn’t know what to say. “Help?”
Ford laughed and pulled his mother off of me, slinging his arm around her shoulder.
That was when Banner hit me.
I gave the younger guy a manly slap on the back, finding that I liked him. I could really see the Spurlock resemblance now after seeing the mother.
I looked over at the man at my back who had to be Ford’s dad, waiting for him to get in on the action next, and he laughed.
The scary looking bastard laughed.
“Let’s go in and meet my girl. She’s probably wondering what we’re all doing out here without her,” Trance ordered.
Moments later, we entered the room, and I found out that he was right. Oakley’s eyes were on the door, waiting and watching.
The moment our eyes met, I felt what could only be described as a jolt straight to my heart.
I started to sweat, and swear to God, I felt like my knees went weak.
Her pale blonde hair was braided into two braids that went down either side of her shoulders. Her eyes still looked tired, and she was still pale.
But she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Then my girl smiled.
***
Oakley
I frowned and looked around the room, wondering where everyone had gone.
My mother had been standing next to the door, talking to Ford who was on the phone with my electric company complaining about the fact that nobody had been home in a month and my bill was astronomical.
My mother was texting back and forth with a few of my clients—I was an assistant for multiple authors—making sure they knew that I was about to be out of the office for at least a week. And then she’d disappeared in a flash, a cry leaving her when she did.
That was when I started to stare at the door, wondering what in the hell had happened.
I was on the verge of getting up to investigate—even though I was weak as a baby kitten—when he came in.
At first, it was the click-click of metal on tile that had my eyes going down to the floor.
Then, it was the package that drew my attention next.
Followed shortly by my eyes traveling up a well-defined chest, and finally stopping on the most beautiful, manly, sexy face I’d ever seen.
He had hazel eyes, a well-groomed beard, and tattoos. Lots and lots of tattoos.
So many, in fact, that I couldn’t pick just one to look at.
The man was sexy.
In fact, even my vagina—which hadn’t been all that interested lately—gave a pulse of life upon seeing the man.
I smiled at him then.
“Hello,” I said softly.
“Baby,” my mother said. “This is the man that’s going to give you his kidney.”
My breath hitched.
This beautiful man was going to give me a kidney?
But…why?
“Pace. Pascha Vineyard.” Pace held his hand out to me.
“Don’t call him Pascha, though,” Ford suggested. “He gets all prickly when you do that. I don’t know if you remember him, but he was the one that was in the unit with me when I had that concussion a few years ago.”
The one that had almost died. The one that had had both of his legs blown apart so badly that they’d had to amputate both of them below the knee.
Pace snorted. “It’s not my favorite.”
I wanted to know why.
I wanted to know a lot about him, actually.
I looked over to my parents. “Can y’all give us a minute?”
My mother made eye contact with my father, and then she nodded once. “Yeah. We’ll go grab dinner. Do you want anything?”
No.
I never wanted anything.
My appetite was barely there, almost non-existent. At this point, it was a minor miracle if I got anything solid down at all.
The moment that they were all gone, I looked over at my savior, the man that was going to put his life on the line and give me a part of him, and asked him the first thing that came to mind.
“Why?” I asked. “Why are you doing this?”
Hadn’t the man suffered enough?
I mean, he’d gone through a war. He’d had both of his legs amputated. He’d had years of recovery, according to Ford.
And now he was willing to give me a kidney?
Pace grabbed a chair and pulled it up next to my bed.
I repositioned myself until I was sitting cross-legged but facing him.
He watched me get comfortable and then returned his eyes to me.
The smirk that lit his mouth made me want to bite the lip that was kicked up.
Then kiss it.
“You probably don’t know this,” he said softly. “But the first time I saw your picture on your brother’s phone, my whole world changed.”
I felt something in my chest kick at that news.
“Saw your brother’s lock screen. It was that picture of you and him when y’all were at his boot camp.”
I blinked, knowing exactly which one he was talking about.