Bridging the Gap Page 6

  “I’m Doctor Kinney. I presume you’re the fiancé, Carter?”

  What the shit? Fiancé? He shook hands with the doctor’s outstretched one.

  “Yes I am.” He might be surprised as hell, but he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t family. Carter was going to owe Tom some huge favors. If he hadn’t told Dr. Kinney that he and Ryan were engaged, then the most likely scenario would have been the doc giving Carter the brush-off based on privacy laws.

  “I talked to her father a few minutes ago. He said you’d likely be here until Ryan went home.” Kinney laid her chart at the foot of her bed and moved to the side. “So here’s the deal. While I’m sure, based on what the paramedics and Tom all said, that Ryan had a seizure, I’m not convinced it had anything to do with her epilepsy.”

  “What?”

  “Yep.” Kinney grabbed Ryan’s wrist and checked her pulse, then whipped out a penlight and searched her eyes. “I suspect something other than the epilepsy caused her to have a seizure.”

  “What?” This time Carter shouted. Ryan never stirred. He scooped up her hand and held it tight. The fucking thing with Eric had nothing to do with Eric but was instead someone after the foreman. Apparently it didn’t matter to their asshole suspect who he hurt, male or female. Carter yanked his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open, thumb poised to contact Max and give him the heads up.

  “She came in with a low body temperature. Epilepsy does not cause a drop in temp. Her breathing was labored, thus the oxygen, again not a sign she’s ever shown before. Her belly was tender, something she couldn’t tell us while unconscious, but her body could. And she vomited twice in the ER. While vomiting can occur with some patients, again, that’s not a symptom typical to Ryan. So unless her epilepsy has changed over the last couple of years and is manifesting itself differently, I’d have to say something else was at fault.”

  Carter was sick to his stomach. Had someone deliberately drugged Ryan in order to cause her to have a seizure? “I have security on the site right now. I’ll have him look into it.” He lifted the phone and punched the speed dial for Max, who was discussing the harness situation with the police who’d stayed at the site after Ryan collapsed.

  “You do that. In the meantime, her vitals have stabilized for now and it should only be a matter of time before she wakes up. I know it sometimes takes hours for her to rouse after a normal seizure. There’s no way to tell how long it’ll be if this was drug induced.”

  “Yeah, Max, hang a sec, would you?” Carter took the phone from his ear. “Can’t you find whatever it is in her blood?”

  Kinney shook his head. “Sadly, no. There are any number of things out there that might cause a seizure, including something as simple as flashing lights. Regardless, the labs aren’t always equipped to pick up trace amounts of a foreign substance. If she’d taken in a large amount, then maybe, but we didn’t find anything in her blood workup today.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few other patients to see. I’ll be back in to check on her later.”

  “Okay. Thank you for letting me know.”

  “You’ll pass it along to Tom and Carol? They’ll be worried.”

  “Yes.”

  The door clicked shut behind the doctor, leaving Carter alone in the room. He stroked Ryan’s arm then heard Max saying, “Hello?”

  “Max, I’m here.”

  “They think she was drugged?”

  “He does. I’m guessing I don’t even need to tell you what to do.”

  “Hell no. I’m on it. See if you can get anything from her when she wakes up and give me a call. Did she see anything suspicious, talk to anyone she didn’t know, drink something someone else gave her?”

  “She was at work, Max, not a bar.”

  “Doesn’t matter, people bring coffee and sweets to all kinds of jobs. Someone might have brought something in for her this morning. And I drank the same coffee and I didn’t get… Son of a bitch.”

  Carter’s heart thumped against his rib cage and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. “What?”

  There was a rustling on the other end of the phone suggesting that Max was on the move. “I was going to say I drank the same coffee this morning that she did, but I didn’t. She wouldn’t let me have any.”

  “Wouldn’t let you?” Ryan didn’t seem to Carter like the hard-ass type who didn’t share.

  “No. She said, my decaf, me no share. She gave me the regular from a different pot and slurped down the fake crap. So either she drank regular when she thought it was decaf or someone could have tampered with it. I’ll let you know what I find.”

  Max disconnected before Carter could speak. He stared at the phone, his temper rising to the boiling point. If Max found one shred of evidence that Ryan’s drink had been tampered with, Carter would hunt the bastard down who’d done it and not stop until the asshole was drawn and quartered.

  ~ * ~

  There was cotton in her mouth and some weird shit blowing in her nose and tickling it. She felt hung over—or what she imagined hung over would feel like since she didn’t ever drink. Random thoughts filtered through the fog along with whispered voices.

  Ryan struggled to turn in the direction of the sound. Her head had to have been weighed down with lead for all the good it did her. Even her hands seemed tied down.

  Was that her mother talking? What in the hell? And Tom and…Carter? Shit. Had she flaked out at Sunday brunch? Taken a nap? Where the heck was she?

  She opened her eyes to a cloud of blur. Blinking them helped relieve the problem but left her facing a white ceiling.

  “Mom?” Her voice croaked and she wasn’t sure if anything had come out at all or if she only imagined speaking aloud.

  “Oh, right here, honey.” Her mother’s face came into view. Then Tom’s and Carter’s. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  “What happened?” She hoped one of them would fill her in because the strain of wondering was giving her a headache.

  “You had a seizure.” Her mother was crying. Damn. Ryan hated making her mother cry. Someone touched her leg, soothing her rapidly fraying nerves.

  She’d been drinking coffee with…Max, right, super-spy-PI-guy Max. Then what? They’d gone outside so she could show him around. Tom and Carter had been there, watching the construction. Odd. She didn’t normally remember shit about her episodes. But this wasn’t a normal episode.

  “Not a seizure.” She yawned as the pressure of whatever had happened tried to drag her under again. Ryan caught her stepfather and Carter eyeing each other. They knew something.

  “What do you mean, sweetheart?”

  Ryan smiled. She loved when Carter called her sweetheart. No one else ever had.

  “Wasn’t the same. No aura. No warning,” she murmured, letting the sleepiness invade.

  “But it’s been a long time since you had one. Perhaps they’re changing?” Tom sounded sympathetic, which perked her up.

  “No.” No, she was certain whatever had occurred was not her epilepsy. “Not the same.” She did her best to be adamant but had a feeling she came out more unsure than anything. “Knees were shaky, sick…lightheaded.”

  “Okay, okay, sweetheart.” Carter’s murmur calmed her a bit. “Just rest. Go back to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up. I promise.”

  She wanted to cry. She remembered now. Remembered worrying about him seeing her in the throes of a seizure and having him disappear on her. That when she finally woke up, he’d be gone instead of having his fingers laced with hers, comforting and not letting go.

  Carter’s frustration mounted. Ryan was too out of it to tell them anything more, like who might have wanted to drug her.

  Tom laid a hand on Carter’s shoulder. “We’re going to go down to the cafeteria. You should come too.”

  “No. I want to be here when she wakes up again. I promised her I would be.”

  “Bless you. You’re a good man.” Tears pooled in Carol’s eyes. She hugged him close, squeezing the br
eath out of him. “You’ll be good for my daughter.”

  Yeah, if she’d keep him around long enough for him to show her how good he could be. Her epilepsy had made her gun shy, he knew, and he couldn’t begin to think about how many times she might have been hurt in the past. Perhaps she’d never even tried for something permanent.

  Carter had news for her. He wasn’t going to go away so easily. She was stuck with him whether she wanted to be or not.

  His phone rang. Carter glanced at the number before flipping it open and answering it. Jesus, he’d completely forgotten about Morgan and Ridge.

  “Good news, I hope.” He sure as hell needed some.

  “It’s a boy. Seven pounds four ounces, looks like his momma.”

  Carter sorta doubted that since from his recollection newborns tended to look more like shriveled-up pink raisins, but whatever. He was glad the baby was healthy. “Congratulations, man. How is momma?”

  “She’s good. Not sure she’ll ever do this again, but she’s holding him right now and happy as hell to have him out. We named him Brandon Michael. She’s in room eight forty-two.”

  “I’ll have to run up and see him in a few.” Whenever Ryan woke up and he was sure she was fine.

  “Run up?”

  Oops. Figured his partner would catch on to the slip. “Uh, yeah. I’m here with Ryan.”

  “Who’s Ryan?”

  “Ryan Dixon to you, Ryan Cooper to me.”

  “I am so confused.”

  Carter smiled. “I’ve heard giving birth can do that to you.”

  “Malone.”

  “Ryan Dixon is the foreman you sent me to see today. Only he’s not Ryan Dixon, she’s Ryan Cooper, the woman I’ve been seeing. She works for her father. The previous foreman’s accident wasn’t an accident, we discovered, so I had Max come out to do some digging. But then Ryan had a seizure which had nothing to do with her epilepsy which I wasn’t aware of her having, and now we’re here in room six twelve while she recovers from a possible poisoning.” How was that for a sixty-second rundown?

  “What in the shit? I leave you to do one thing and all that happened?”

  “Pretty much. It’s really Morgan’s fault, I think, because she’s the one who normally keeps us altogether and sane.”

  “I’ll tell her you said that.” Ridge’s voice was dry.

  “You don’t need to. I tell her every day.” The phone beeped in his ear indicating another call. Max. “I gotta go, that’s Max on the other line.” He disconnected before Ridge could speak.

  “Tell me you found something, Max,” Carter said as his greeting.

  “I did. You aren’t going to like it though.”

  Carter’s insides twisted. “Tell me.”

  “When I suspected the coffee, I returned to the trailer. Thought maybe I could send the pot of coffee off to the lab for testing. But when I got there someone else was already there throwing away the evidence.”

  “Who?” Carter gritted his teeth so hard he was sure they would crack. He wanted to punch someone. Ryan was laying here in bed, unable to defend herself, and the asshole who’d done this to her was wiping away his traces.

  “Tad Dixon.”

  Carter exploded. “That son of a bitch.”

  “He denies having anything to do with either of the circumstances, but his answers were a little too smarmy for me so I let the police take over.”

  “Good.” Here’s to hoping the dick spent a great deal of time rotting in jail. “Let me know how it goes. I’ll talk to Tom.” He flipped the phone off and pocketed it.

  Ryan twisted in her sleep with a moan, oblivious to the fact her cousin may have been the one to cause her grief. He grabbed her hand and sat next to the bed again.

  Carter hadn’t once suspected there was anything the least bit off about her cousin. Had anything Tad said earlier been a clue to his true feelings? He tried to recall. Tad had seemed quite the charmer to Carter at first. Easy to do, he guessed, while trying to hide the fact that you’d almost killed one man and were about to try and bring down your cousin. Christ, he’d been protective of her even, standing up for her during their conversation about the epilepsy.

  Perhaps the only thing that might have been a clue was his stance on Eric. The job was dangerous, he’d said, “I don’t think this is the best place for her either. Look what happened to Eric. Tom has other ideas though.”

  “Shit.” Was that what this was all about? His need to be the foreman? Had Tad tried to knock off Eric, thinking he would replace him? Then gotten pissed enough to take out Ryan when she got the job instead of him?

  Now he had to tell Tom his nephew was being questioned by the police for what would probably amount to attempted murder.

  He punched in the number of Tom’s cell and told the older man everything he’d learned and what he suspected. Tom was just as shocked as Carter had been. Not to mention hurt and angry as hell.

  Chapter Seven

  Ryan sank back in Carter’s oversized tub and luxuriated in the feel of the warm bubbles swirling around her skin. She’d been released that morning from the hospital a day after her seizure, and no amount of talking had gotten Carter to let her out of his sight. Instead he’d brought her to his house and asked someone to go to hers and pick up a few things. She’d barely gotten him to leave her alone so she could chill out for a few minutes without him hovering.

  Although she had to admit his form of hovering was much different than her family’s version had been growing up. They tended to wrap her in a plastic bubble. She much preferred Carter’s method of distraction—showering her with naughty kisses, and teasing the crap out of her until she was good and horny. There was definitely something to be said about horny. A girl could indubitably get used to it. And since she was spending the night…

  God help Carter if he decided to go easy on her. The doctor had said she was fine after her run-in with Visine-laced coffee. The effects could have been worse. Much worse. Dead kind of worse. But she’d only had about a mug’s worth of coffee the entire morning, what with Carter making her spill her first cup and Max disrupting the second in order to investigate. Those things combined prevented her from finishing her normal three-cup routine.

  She really needed to shake the coffee anyway. It wasn’t like the decaf was doing a damn thing for her.

  Ryan still couldn’t believe Tad had conspired to take out the foreman so he could have the job. When she’d finally woken up yesterday and Tom had been standing there so grief-stricken, she’d thought for a crazy moment they were going to tell her she had some incurable brain tumor or something.

  What had come out of his mouth was the last thing she’d expected. Tad had been furious with Ryan’s appointment to the job. Just when he’d thought he’d secured it by causing Eric to break his leg, Tom gave it to a girl. Naturally, her epilepsy had played right into his hands.

  One small Google search later and Tad stupidly thought he could get rid of her by causing her to have a seizure. He was sure no one would allow her to stay if she was susceptible to her condition. The thought had never crossed his mind he might actually cause her death with eye drops. Apparently his Google search gave him only the bare minimum of facts.

  She wondered if he liked men, since he was about to spend a few years surrounded by them. Even if she could forgive him for his lack in morality, Eric could not. He was ready to prosecute to the full extent of the law.

  All because Tad felt with his dad’s passing, he should have, by rights, been the foreman.

  “Are you a prune yet?”

  Ryan looked up at Carter’s smiling face and smiled back. “Nope. I’m just getting nice and toasty.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  She was hungry, but not for food. “What are you having?”

  “That’s a loaded question.”

  “So give me a loaded answer.”

  His eyes narrowed. “That would require me joining you.”

  “Then by all means…”

&nbs
p; “Are you sure?”

  Oh jeez, here it goes. The one thing she’d hoped wouldn’t happen, for him to go all soft on her. “Either get in here or get out.”

  Carter leaned back in shock.

  “I’m not going to break, Carter. I’m fine. Remember, the doctor said no restrictions? I’m sure sex is included in those directions.”

  “All right. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

  “If I were wearing any, that might be a problem, but since I’m not…”

  She watched as he stripped to the skin, loving the play and ripple of tan skin over muscle. Scooting forward, she allowed him to sit behind her, his cock beautifully erect and ready for action. She’d never done it in the tub before. There was a time for everything, right? His fingers caressed her back, gently massaging the kinks. Perhaps she had been in the tub a bit too long.

  Ryan relaxed into his chest and dropped her head on his shoulder. “God that feels good.”

  “I was worried about you,” he admitted softly in her ear.

  She sighed. “I know. I tend to have that effect on people. Everyone feels sorry for me.”

  “I didn’t say I felt sorry for you.” His arms came around her midsection, wrapping her in his own heat that had nothing to do with the warmth of the water. “You make it hard to feel sorry for you. What I said was, I was worried about you. There’s a difference, see?”

  She drew away and looked over her shoulder at him. “Do you think Tad’s okay?”

  “The man could have killed you. Why do you care?”

  Ryan shrugged. “He had a moment of insanity. I’m not ready to forgive him for what he did, but he is still my cousin. I grew up with him. It’s really hard to see what he’s become.”

  Carter cupped her breasts in his palms and thumbed her nipples, causing her to suck in a breath. “I know. I’m sure he’s fine. He did make his bed after all.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I’m always right.” She heard the grin in his words.

  “Oh yeah?” With his cock nestled at the small of her back it was getting hard to remember what they were talking about. All she knew was her need for him. She turned in his hold. “A little less talk?”