Bad Boy Romance: Nick (Romantic Suspense Alpha Male Romance) (New Adult Rock Star Contemporary Short Stories) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 2) (66 page)

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Chelsea was still coming back to
herself, basking in the hazy glow of pleasure, when she felt Johan’s body tense
underneath her. “What?” she asked, something about his tension triggering an
internal alarm.

“You need to get out of bed
quickly,” Johan said, his voice little more than a murmur. “And you need to get
dressed. Now.”

“What’s going on?” Chelsea
pulled herself up to look down at Johan. He lifted her off of him in a quick,
deft movement, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed and standing up
seemingly all at once, with a grace that Chelsea envied.

“I hear people outside,” Johan
told her. He picked up his clothes. “Quickly, Chelsea,” he said, giving her a
firm look to underscore the urgency. She scrambled out of the bed, ignoring the
twinge of pain from her bruised buttocks, and darted into the living room area
of the suite, quickly retrieving her panties, her bra, her skirt. She pulled
and tugged to get them on; in the living room, she could hear the sound of
movement in the hallway.

Johan came into the room behind
her, the keys to the car in his hand. “Take these,” he said. “If it’s them,
you’re better off making a getaway in the car on your own.”

“Where the hell am I supposed to
go?” Chelsea asked him, though she took the key chain instinctively.

“There’s money in the glove
compartment,” Johan told her. He moved, and suddenly there was a gun in his
hand. He shifted again, his hand going down to a subtle bulge along his hip,
and produced a knife. “There’s also a spare phone in there. The only number in
it will connect to my phone.”

There was a loud, shuddering
boom at the door and Chelsea jumped back, yelping in surprise and alarm. Johan
put the knife into her hand, bringing both hands around the butt of his pistol.
“Get yourself out of here, get into the car, and drive like hell,” Johan said
sharply. “I’ll take care of everything else.” Four men poured through the door
into the room, and Chelsea staggered backward, gripping the hilt of the knife
tightly.

“Found you, Princess,” one of
the men said, sneering. The four were all dressed in nondescript clothes:
jeans, tee shirts, and work boots. Chelsea thought wildly that they must have
gotten into the hotel by pretending to be workers, part of the staff. Their
hair and faces looked greasy, and Chelsea thought fleetingly that the men had
obviously not had the benefit of luxury hotels in their pursuit.

Everything became a blur, and
Chelsea went almost deaf at the air-ripping report of the first shot Johan
fired. She glanced at him quickly and then rushed forward, even as
reinforcements came in behind the first four men. Pivoting on her heel, she
looked around frantically for an alternative exit; there was a balcony attached
to the suite, but the thought of the long drop down made her stop. “Go,
Chelsea!” She darted towards the door to the suite, ears ringing as another
shot from the pistol echoed through the room. One of the men went down. Chelsea
darted through the opening the hired man’s fall created, slashing with the
knife to attempt to fend off the grabs his comrades made for her. She made it
through the door, but one of the men was hot on her heels.

Before she could get down the
hallway, she felt a heavy weight collide with her back and she was falling
forward, holding her arm out to the side instinctively to avoid stabbing
herself as she hit the floor, covered by the heavy man. Chelsea screamed,
struggling and squirming, and stabbed blindly with the knife Johan had given her.
There was a sharp jolt of pain across her back, another against her shoulders,
and she could hear—dimly—shouts and shots coming from the room behind her,
thuds and thunder of the struggle. Chelsea thought wildly that they had
certainly racked up a huge bill for themselves. She shouted incoherently, heart
pounding in her chest, blood roaring in her ears, and stabbed down at the lump
of black, pink, and blue; once, twice, three times, until he went still,
groaning. She got to her feet and staggered towards the elevator, trying to
ignore the misgivings she felt at leaving Johan behind.

In minutes that felt like an
hour, Chelsea found herself in the parking lot, the blood-reddened knife still
in one hand, the keys to the car in the other. She ached all over—sharper aches
that told her she was injured indeed, though the adrenaline of the fight made
them seem like a minor consideration. She limped to the car, shivering and
shaking, and unlocked the door. She could only hope that she would be able to
get to wherever she needed to be, and be able to get in touch with Johan when
she did.

PART
THREE

Chelsea pulled into an empty
parking spot at a rest stop in what seemed—to her—like the middle of nowhere,
exhausted. She hadn’t seen Johan in twenty-four hours; the only sleep she had
gotten was a brief nap at a hospital. An hour into her panicked flight away
from the hotel, the adrenaline had begun to ebb out of her system, and Chelsea
had slowly realized that she was bleeding in a few places, with pain throbbing in
many more. Thoughts of Johan—worries about whether or not he was still alive,
concerns about where he was, if he
was
alive, and how she would get in
contact with him once more—distracted her enough to keep going until she saw a
sign on the highway with the H indicating there was a hospital nearby.

She had decided that two hours
away was far enough, if Johan had indeed taken out their assailants. Chelsea
had finally checked the glove compartment to find the phone and the money;
much, much more of it than she would have guessed that Johan would have felt
comfortable just leaving in the car. Her fingers had trembled as she attempted
to count the contents of the envelope, but there was at least a thousand
dollars in it. Chelsea had stuffed the envelope into her purse, slipped the
phone in her pocket, and limped into the hospital.

After waiting for what seemed
like an eternity—but was, she found out later, only an hour and a half—Chelsea
had been called back. In addition to the cash, she’d found a note in the card
to submit any bills to a particular agent, and had provided that person’s
contact information to the hospital; they must have called and confirmed it,
because they were more than happy to x-ray seemingly every inch of her body,
run a full panel of blood tests, and examine each injury in minute detail.
Chelsea had a badly sprained ankle, a partially torn ligament in her knee, a
bullet graze on the back of her shoulder, and bruised ribs, all of which she
had struggled to explain with as little detail as possible.

Against medical advice, she had
simply let them put an air cast on her sprained ankle, a brace on her injured
knee, and a bandage on her bullet graze. There was not much they could do about
the bruised ribs, but the hospital had prescribed her pain medication, which
the on-site pharmacy had filled. Chelsea had stuffed that into her purse and
went on her way, in spite of the encouragement of the attending doctor to stay
for a few hours of observation, and warnings that she might injure herself more
if she was too active.

She had managed to stay on the
road in spite of the gnawing pains that seemed to come from all over her body,
stopping every so often to get coffee. Chelsea hadn’t even wanted to find a
hotel to stay at; she had no idea where Johan was, had no idea where she should
be going, no idea if the people after her were on her trail once more. She also
knew that if she stayed alone in a hotel, she wouldn’t be able to get decent
sleep anyway. She would toss and turn, likely sending twinges of pain through
her legs and torso every time she moved, worrying about the lack of contact
with Johan, wondering what she would do with herself if she found out that
Johan was dead.

Chelsea had called as many times
as she had dared, using the odd phone with its singular number in the address
book. Each time, for the first twelve hours of her flight from the hotel, she
received a message that the person she was attempting to call was unavailable;
that they had not established a voice mail, and she should call back later.
Chelsea reasoned to herself that if Johan had been killed, most likely the
people who’d attacked them would have gotten the phone; they would have tried
to convince her to meet them somewhere. She refused to think that it was just
as likely that Johan was dead, the phone left behind, nothing for her to do and
no one for her to reach. Eventually, Johan would call her back.

After they had been separated
for almost twenty hours, Chelsea had begun to lose hope. She made one final
call to Johan as a Hail Mary, and was shocked enough to nearly trip over the
hose to the gas pump as she walked back and forth as the call connected. “Where
are you?” Johan had asked immediately.

“I have no idea,” Chelsea had
said wryly. “I’ve been driving steadily for…I don’t even really know how long
anymore. Ten hours at least.” She heard Johan sigh.

“You didn’t even stop to sleep?”

“Coffee and fear, they do a
pretty good job of keeping a person awake.” Chelsea wanted—almost needed—to ask
Johan how he was, if he was injured, if he had slept.

“The longer you go without sleep
the more likely you are to do those assholes’ work for them by crashing into a
pylon,” Johan said sharply. “Are you at a gas station or something?” Chelsea
started to ask how he had guessed, but realized it was one of the few sensible
places for her to be, if she was sticking to the road; she wouldn’t be calling
him if she was driving on the highway at the maximum legal speed. She admitted
she was. “Is anyone there with you?” Chelsea had glanced around. There was one
other person, two pumps down. “Ask them what city you’re in.”

Suppressing the embarrassing
feeling that she would definitely come across as a complete idiot, Chelsea
followed the instruction. The woman at the other pump told her that she was in
a town called Green Tree. When Chelsea passed that information to Johan, she
heard him cluck his tongue against his teeth, considering. “Hold on,” he said,
and Chelsea heard the sound of something rustling, movement on the other end of
the line. A few moments later, Johan spoke again. “You’re about two hours west
of me, unless you’ve really made good time and are in a totally different Green
Tree,” she could hear him smiling. “Turn around, come east, we’ll meet at a
rest stop and I’ll get you to a hotel.”

“What rest stop?” Chelsea
thought longingly of the pain pills in her purse; but while she had to drive,
she couldn’t let herself take the risk of having one, or even half of one.
Johan gave her a highway exit number and told Chelsea to call him when she
arrived; he would probably already be there, but he wanted her to confirm it
before she got out of the car.

Now, finally arrived, Chelsea
picked the phone up from the passenger seat, unlocked the screen, and found the
only number in the contact list. She yawned as she held the phone to her ear,
listening to it ring once, twice, and then stop—the call connecting. “Are you
here?” Chelsea nodded before realizing that obviously Johan couldn’t see her
over the phone.

“Yeah, I’m here. I think. Exit
96B, right?”

“I’ll come to the car.”

Chelsea tilted her head back
against the headrest, letting the phone slip from her fingers. She couldn’t
remember ever being so exhausted in her life. Her ankle, her knee, her ribs,
almost her whole body, it seemed, throbbed with pain. Chelsea wanted nothing
more than to soak in a hot bath for about an hour and sleep for ten hours
following that. Preferably under the influence of hospital-grade opiates.

She almost fell into a doze, and
jumped when she heard the soft tapping at the window. Looking out, Chelsea saw
Johan—unmistakably it was him—standing at the driver’s side door, peering in
with the faintest trace of a smile curving his lips. She summoned up the
strength to unlock the door and Johan opened it, quickly reaching across her to
unbuckle her seatbelt before pulling her out of the seat with only a small show
of effort. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her eagerly on the lips, his
hands tightening on her. As he brushed against her bruised rib, Chelsea yelped,
clenching her teeth as she broke the kiss. “How badly are you hurt?” Johan
asked her, concern in his bright eyes.

“Bruised rib, torn ACL, sprained
ankle. There’s a bullet graze somewhere that they bandaged up for me, and I
accidentally cut myself while I was stabbing one of those guys to death—at
least I hope he’s dead.” Chelsea sighed, smiling wryly. “What about you?” Johan
shrugged.

“Bullet graze on my shoulder, a
few bruises here and there, one of them got me with a knife across the leg, but
it’s stitched so it’ll heal.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. “I take it you
stopped at a hospital somewhere?” Chelsea nodded slowly.

“I gave them the contact for the
billing, so they subjected me to every test they could justify,” she said with
a sigh. Johan laughed.

“Yeah, I’d expect that.” He
hugged her gently. “Come on, get everything you want out of this car. We’re
abandoning it.” Chelsea was too tired to question it; with Johan’s help she got
her purse and the few possessions she still had in the car with her when she’d
fled the hotel. “I got your luggage out of the hotel in one piece,” Johan
informed her as he led her towards yet another anonymous—yet subtly
luxurious-looking—car.

“Oh, that’s great,” Chelsea
said, only then realizing how much she had left behind. “Probably a huge bill.”
Johan shrugged, wincing slightly.

“It’s paid for.” Chelsea nodded
again, too tired and in too much pain to argue or even press the question that
had been plaguing her from the beginning of their flight from her home town.
“Do you want me to carry you?” Johan looked at Chelsea as she limped.

“You’re injured too,” she
pointed out tartly. “I’m hurting, I’m not half-dead.”

“I hope they gave you good pain
pills.”

“They did. The best. I think.”
Chelsea shook her head slightly to clear it. “I haven’t been able to take them
because I’ve been driving, but I want to say it’s Vicodin. I’m really
thrilled.” Johan chuckled.

“I’ve got a hotel for us. In
about thirty minutes you’ll be able to take one of those magical pills and
drift away for a while.” Chelsea nodded, too exhausted to speak. Johan opened
the passenger side door and collected everything but her purse from her,
stowing it in the back seat as Chelsea gingerly climbed in and fastened her
seat belt. Within a few minutes, they were driving out of the rest stop and
towards their destination.