Unleash the Night (Dark-Hunter 8)

"Never mind," the blonde said as she turned away with the bag in her hand. "I'll make sure he gets this."

It was Marguerite's turn to stop the waitress as concern welled up inside her. Surely Wren wasn't hurt.

She would have known had he been shot last night.

"What were you talking about?" she asked the waitress. "Wren didn't get shot last night. The bullet missed him... didn't it?"

The look on the blonde's face confirmed Marguerite's fear. The bullet hadn't missed.

"What happened to him?" Aimee asked.

Marguerite swallowed as guilt consumed her. "I was being mugged and he came out of nowhere to chase them off. One of the guys had a gun that he fired, but Wren told me that he wasn't hurt. I didn't see a wound on him." Surely she would have seen a gunshot wound, wouldn't she?

If he'd been badly wounded, he would have said something. After all, no man took a bullet without complaint-

"Wren saved you?" The waitress asked the question as if she couldn't believe he would have ever done such a thing.

Marguerite nodded. "The bullet just grazed him, right?"

"No," the waitress said firmly. "Wren almost died last night."

Marguerite felt sick at the news. This couldn't be real. Surely the waitress was just playing with her. "What hospital is he in?"

She could see the debate in the woman's expression about whether or not to answer her, and she couldn't blame her. Good grief, she'd gotten Wren insulted, assaulted, and shot-all in less than an hour. That poor man most likely never wanted to see her face again as long as he lived.

Aimee narrowed her eyes at Marguerite before she took a step back. "You're the one who sent him all those flowers today, aren't you?"

"Yes. Had I known he was hurt, I would have sent even more."

That seemed to amuse her. "Hang on." Aimee handed the bag back to Marguerite before she took her to stand by a door behind the bar. "You wait right here and I'll be back in a few minutes."

Marguerite nodded as she noticed the hostile looks the bartenders were giving her. They were dressed in T-shirts and jeans, and though they were handsome, there was an air of lethalness about them. They appeared to resent her presence there in the bar area, but she couldn't imagine why...

Unless they knew about Wren and they blamed her for it.

Nervous and unsure, Marguerite turned to see the man with long black hair from last night. Justin. That had been his name. Like the others, he was staring angrily at her. He didn't say anything while he put away clean glasses.

It seemed to take forever before Aimee came back to beckon her through the doorway. "Follow me."

Marguerite let out a relieved breath as the woman led her into the large commercial kitchen. There were five cooks buzzing around pots and ovens while two men washed dishes in a large sink. None of the workers paid any attention to either of them.

At least not until they reached another door at the end of the long steel tables. A tall blond man was standing in front of it, and he appeared less than pleased that Aimee wanted to take Marguerite through it. He looked just like the man who had thrown them out of the bar last night, except he didn't seem to remember her at all.

"What are you doing, Aimee?" he asked in a growling tone.

"Move, Remi."

"Bullshit."

Aimee put her hands on her hips. "Move, Brother, or you'll limp."

He narrowed his eyes. "You don't scare me, swan. I could tear your head off and not flinch."

"And I could hurt you in a much more permanent way." Her gaze dropped to his groin. "Now move it or lose it."

Curling his lip, he reluctantly complied.

"Ignore the scowl," Aimee said as she opened the door. "It's his natural countenance. Believe it or not, it's far more becoming than his smile. That just looks creepy."

Marguerite didn't know what to think as Aimee led her into a posh old-fashioned parlor. The house was absolutely beautiful. Weirdly enough, it looked as if it were in some kind of time warp or something. There was nothing on this side that looked modern at all. Nothing.

Her eyes fell to the door that held five Stanley dead bolts and an alarm system that would rival NASA's.

Okay, not entirely antique. But other than those telltale items, it was like walking onto an old-fashioned movie set.

Aimee led Marguerite up an intricate hand-carved stairway to the second floor, which was lined with mahogany doors. The waitress didn't pause until they were halfway down the corridor. She knocked on the door, then cracked it open.

"You decent?" she asked, keeping her body so that Marguerite couldn't look into the room.

There was no answer.

"Yeah, well, you have a visitor. So you need to be human for a while, okay?" After a brief hesitation, Aimee stood back and opened the door wider. "I'll wait out here until the two of you are finished. Just call out if you need anything." Then under her breath she added, "Like a priest, cop, or lion tamer."

Marguerite frowned. What an odd thing to say, but then, she was quickly learning that everyone here was a bit strange.

She stepped past Aimee, into the room, and froze as she caught sight of Wren lying on a large sleigh bed under a black comforter that matched the black curtains covering the windows. His skin was ghostly pale. The flowers she'd sent earlier were lined up on his dresser and before it, but other than that, there was absolutely nothing personal in the room to mark it as his. It looked as if he were nothing more than a visitor just staying a night or two.

Her heart hammered as she went to him. His breathing was labored and a large Ace bandage was wrapped around his shoulder and upper chest. With the black comforter draped over his lower half, he was bare from the waist up, showing her a remarkably toned chest and arms. The man was incredibly well built, with a full six-pack of abs. The only hair on his chest was a small trail of dark blond hair that ran from his navel down to disappear under the covers.

But what held her attention most was the amount of obvious pain he was in.

Marguerite knelt beside the bed as guilt tore through her. This was all her fault. All of it...

"Why didn't you tell me about this?"

He didn't answer. Instead he reached out and brushed a strand of hair back from her face. "You shouldn't have come back here, Maggie."

His hand was rough and callused. Unlike the guys she knew, his hands were used to hard work, not oiled manicures. "I wanted to give you a small token to say thank you for last night."

Wren glanced at the flowers in his room. The bears and other Were-Hunters had been harassing him unmercifully about them. Not that he cared. To him those flowers were unbelievably precious.

No one else had ever given him a present before. No one.

He started to push himself up, only to have Maggie stop him.

"You shouldn't move."

The concern on her face tore at him. "It's okay."

"No." She gestured to the bandage, where a red spot was forming again. "See, you're bleeding. Should I call someone?"

He shook his head. "I'll heal."

Her beautiful brown eyes castigated and doubted him. "I can't believe you didn't tell me you were shot last night. What if you had died?"

He snorted at that. "I've been shot enough to know when it's not fatal."

Marguerite gave him a stunned look. Was he serious? With him she was never quite sure. He tossed things out at her in passing conversations that would be horrifying if they were true, and the bland way he spoke of them led her to believe that they just might be.

"Shot by whom?"

He didn't respond to her question as he propped himself up in the bed. His dreads fell back into his eyes, obscuring his face from her view. She was beginning to suspect that he did that on purpose so that he could watch the world while no one could watch him.

Even so, she saw a small bead of sweat fall down the side of his face from the strain of being awake. "I won't stay long," she said, handing him the bag in her hands.

He stared at it as if it were an alien being. It was actually rather comical. One would think the man had never been given a gift before.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Open it."