“You going to get up?”
She opened her eyes and grinned at me.
“Do I have to?” she questioned.
“No,” I admitted. “But you probably should anyway. Not that I have any problem with you staying exactly like that all day long, but you did say that you had something to do today.”
She sighed. “You’re right.”
I smacked her butt lightly, loving the way it sort of jiggled, and left her there.
After getting my cup of coffee going, I reluctantly started to go through the mail that was stacked high on the counter.
Luckily all of my bills were on auto-pay, so really there was nothing too important.
Other than I knew if I didn’t go through it, my new wife would, and she’d already said that she would make sure to open each bill and pay a few of them.
Not wanting her to do that, because there was no way in hell she was ever paying for anything ever again, I made a point to start throwing most of it away.
I kept the gun magazines and a few of the bills.
When it was only down to a small pile, I grabbed my cup of coffee and took a long sip before opening a nondescript letter that was the only thing left. Sensing it was likely from the land company that’d been trying to buy my house for the last couple of months, I was almost interested to see what they were offering me for it this time.
What I read chilled me to my bones.
“Jonah?”
My belly rolled as I looked at the letter that I’d gotten in the mail this morning.
Remembering another one that was similar to it, I walked to the letter that had been in my mailbox yesterday morning, too. Once it was in my hand, I opened it and stared at the letter with anger.
“What’s wrong?”
I looked over to the table where Piper had arrived at some point in the letter-opening process. She was watching me with worry etched all over her beautiful face.
“I got another letter from the land guy asking to buy my property, but he just offered an outrageous amount for it, and it’s making me worried. I have a bad feeling about it.”
She stood up and walked to me, her eyes going to the letter I’d left lying on the counter.
Her eyes bugged out at the number of zeros that were tacked on at the end.
“That’s a lot of money,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
She gestured to the clock on the wall.
“You need to go.”
I did.
I most certainly didn’t want to go, though.
What I wanted to do was take the woman I loved back to bed.
What I did instead was give her a hard kiss on the mouth, drain the rest of my coffee, and say, “I’m meeting you at your dad’s later, right?”
She nodded.
“You’re going over there before?” I wondered.
She shook her head. “No, I’m going to wait for you to tell me you’re off. If I go over there before, they’ll get it all out of me.”
I grinned. “Okay, baby. I’ll see you this afternoon.”
She smiled wickedly. “In case you can make it home for your lunch break…”
I laughed my way out of my house, hoping that I did, indeed, have time for a lunch break.
Sadly, that didn’t happen.
Even more sadly, the reason that I wasn’t was because I was in the hospital.
***
At first, I hadn’t thought to call Piper at all.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t wanted her there but because my head was hurting too badly to think about it.
Luckily, yesterday I’d changed all of my contact information at the PD. So, instead of my brother and sister being alerted that something had happened, Piper was instead.
My eyes were closed when I heard her worried voice break through the nausea that was rolling through my stomach.
“Room four, ma’am,” I heard a nurse reply to Piper’s frantic question.
Then I was opening my eyes in time to see Piper charging into the room like she owned the place and a worried expression that bordered on terrified pasted onto her beautiful face.
It didn’t suit her.
She shouldn’t be terrified.
Sadly, I’d just had an accident very similar to her father.
Another hit and run, actually.
Lucky for me, I’d skated by with a pounding headache, two stitches on my cheek thanks to some gravel being tossed up into my face, and what I thought might be road rash on my calf. Though, since my boots were singed and burned, they weren’t quite sure if it was a burn or what.
So I was going with road rash.
“Jonah!” she cried out. “Oh my God.”
I smiled at hearing her beautiful voice.
“I’m okay,” I promised. “I’m sorry I forgot to call you.”
She pressed a soft kiss to my hand that was now in both of hers.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You unfortunately had other things on your mind. But I can tell you that having a police officer come to our door when I was expecting you for lunch is definitely not something I want to repeat again.”