The Marine Makes His Match by Victoria Pade

Author:Victoria Pade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

“Oh, Declan, I hope you feel better than you look,” Kinsey said around a lump in her throat, blinking back tears that had come the instant she’d seen her brother.

Conor had arranged a video chat on Friday morning, this time including the injured Declan from his hospital bed in Germany.

As a nurse Kinsey had seen people in bad shape. But those people had not been her brother. And Declan was in some of the worst shape she’d ever seen.

Even logy and weak, one eye swollen shut, the other lid too heavy to lift all the way up, he said in a thick, sluggish, exhausted voice, “Don’t sweat it, twerp, I’m fine. A little rest and I’ll be back to my unit. Don’t think I should even have to come stateside—”

“You do have to spend some time stateside,” Conor put in from off-screen.

Declan made a derogatory noise but he fell asleep halfway through it.

Conor turned the laptop around so that Kinsey was seeing him now rather than their battered brother.

“That’s as good as it’s gonna get, twerp,” Conor said, using Declan’s nickname for her, something he’d begun calling her when he was a teenager and she was an annoying preteen. “He’s on so many meds that he sleeps most of the time.”

“But he’s doing okay?”

“He is. The leg looks all right—circulation’s good, response and movement of his toes are all normal. He’s just pretty banged up.”

“And he still doesn’t want to come home,” Kinsey said sadly, more to herself than to Conor.

“He’s out of it, Kins—he doesn’t know what he’s saying and he won’t even remember he talked to you when he wakes up next. Orders are in to get him to Bethesda as soon as he can make the trip, though. And my leave to go along has come through, too, so we’ll both be there before you know it.”

They’d be there and then they’d be gone again.

But Kinsey didn’t say that, she only nodded.

“How are you holding up?” she asked Conor instead. “You have bags under your eyes. Are you sleeping at all? Eating?”

“I’ve just been sleeping in the chair in Declan’s room. Wanted to be close by. But I think he’s finally stable enough for me to hit a call room tonight and sack out. Food is hospital food—what can I say? You’ll have to cook me something good when I get there.”

No time soon. But Kinsey knew he was trying to give her something to look forward to, so she didn’t call him on it.

“How about you? You doing okay?” he asked.

“Sure. Just working. My patient is a retired marine colonel—Geraldine Knightlinger. I don’t know if you’ve ever run across her or heard of her.”

“I have!” Conor said. “I operated on a master gunnery sergeant who she got off some charges in Japan when he was a private. Talkative older man. I guess it was looking bad for him until she got there. He said I was the second person to save his life, that she was the first,” he finished with a laugh.

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