F-Bomb (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 9)

I felt my lips quirk up at the corners.

“So how did you spend your night?” I asked curiously.

He grunted out a reply of, “Spent from six to about ten in the evening sleeping. Got a call at about ten-fifteen saying that someone—that Tara chick that was popped in the head—had broken into Liner’s house and shot him in the arm. He’s the one you came in and peeked at really quick when you first got on the floor.”

She frowned. “Were you in the room?”

Slate shrugged. “Mostly. I was leaning against the vending machine right outside the door to his room. I was hidden by the machine because the baby cop protecting Tara kept looking at me like I was going to haul off and murder each of the staff. I think that’s really why he was at the nurses’ station instead of where he was supposed to be.”

I rolled my eyes. “If he couldn’t tell that Tara was the more dangerous one in the room—at least at that moment in time—then he shouldn’t be a cop.”

His eyes looked down at me as he said, “You ready to go?”

I felt like there was something else there, something that I was missing, but I didn’t say anything to that.

“I have to go up to X-ray and get my bag and stuff,” I muttered. “Do you want to wait here for me?” I paused. “Though I do have my own car. I can drive it and meet you there.”

He shook his head. “Your dad let your brother take it. It’s at the restaurant.”

I rolled my eyes. “Why does that not surprise me?”

He shrugged. “In answer, though, I’ll just go with you. I’m parked out front, anyway. We can just take the elevator to the first floor instead of ground and go out that way.”

“Why are you parked out front when your buddy went into the ER?” I questioned as we began walking.

I noticed idly how the doctors, nurses, and visitors were the ones to get out of his way and not the other way around.

I looked way up at the man that was so much taller than me and could see the reason why.

Not only was he dressed in head to toe black other than his jeans—which were also so dark that they could’ve passed for black in dimmer light—but he was wearing a scowl the size of Kilgore on his face, and his arms were fisted at his sides. The veins in his arms were bulging, and even me not being a nurse, I still looked at them and thought they were rather large and juicy.

I wanted to run my finger down one particular vein that started at his pinky finger and traveled all the way up his arm to disappear into his t-shirt.

My face was nearly eye-level with a tattoo, and I tried to surreptitiously look at it without drawing attention to the fact that I was.

It was a skull, of course, but it also had scriptwriting underneath in a different language. One that I’d never learned, obviously, because I couldn’t figure out what it meant.

I’d have to Google it later when I got home.

Another woman quickly pulled her son, who was busy facing the iPad he had in his hand and not paying attention to where he was walking, out of the way and onto the correct side of the hallway.

She almost looked scared when she did, causing me to look up at Slate’s face and chuckle.

“You know,” I said with a slight laugh. “I could use you when I’m running from floor to floor. Most of the time I’m on a time crunch, but nobody ever sees me. When they do, they’re not really in that much of a hurry to move out of the way.”

His face turned down and he looked at me questioningly.

“Your scowl,” I said. “It’s intimidating.”

He shrugged. “Can’t help my face.”

He was right.

He couldn’t.

Not that he needed to or anything.

Really, he just looked like someone that should be taken seriously.

I had a feeling that when he was a cop, he was likely even more intimidating.

I’ll bet he’d look good in a uniform.

“I didn’t say anything was wrong with it,” I told him as we stopped at the bank of elevators. “All I’m saying is that you’re scowling. You don’t have to scowl. Not that I care if you scowl. You can scowl all you want.”

His lips twitched right when the elevator door opened.

That’s when I saw a group of people in there, all of which looked to be laughing about missing their stop on the first floor seeing as none of them got off and they were all laughing about their mistake.

They also looked kind of drunk.

What the hell?

“Oh, there’s room!” one man said as he scooched back. “Sorry, we missed our floor. Come on.”

I stepped on, or rather, started to step on, but Slate grabbed my hand and said, “We’ll wait. Thanks, though.”