Callan conceded on that point. “Bleeding isn’t fine,” he said, humoring her. “But I’m going to be fine. I probably just need a few stitches and some antibiotics.”
There was a long groan, and Adrianne and I remembered Ryan at the same time. We rushed to check on him. He had a gash on his forehead from where he’d been struck by the gun. “Ryan?” Adrianne called to him. “Ryan, can you hear me?”
He moaned again. “Stop screaming at me,” he muttered, and his eyes cracked open. Then, they opened the rest of the way. “Was I brave? Were you impressed?”
If he was joking, he wasn’t going to die... but a hospital check-up was in his future to make sure his head was okay and to close up the still-bleeding wound. When he tried to sit up, Adrianne pressed him back to the floor.
“Don’t get up!” He winced at her sharp tone, and she softened her voice a little. “You were very brave. I was very impressed,” she said. “Never be that brave again.”
“Count on it,” he said, and his voice was beginning to slur. “I’m sleepy.”
Adrianne turned to us with wide, panicked eyes. “He’s got a nasty concussion,” I said, looking at Ethan. “He needs a hospital, and Cal needs stitches.”
The sirens were getting louder now. Within a few moments, the place was flooded with cops and paramedics. The police led people out—and put Ethan and me in handcuffs, for now, which wasn’t wholly unexpected, but Adrianne freaked out—and the paramedics loaded up Callan, Steven, and Ryan into different rigs.
“Don’t arrest them,” Adrianne pleaded. “They were protecting me.” There was an echo from the few people they hadn’t managed to lead outside.
The lead investigator pulled out a notepad. “Why don’t you give me your statement, Ms.—”
“Montoya,” she said. “Adrianne Montoya.”
He wrote the name and then looked up, and I could see “starstruck” all over his face. “You’re going to be in the new Falconi movie, right?”
She tried not to wince and failed. “Yes,” she said.
“My kids are such big fans,” he said in a voice that made me think that his kids could care less, buthewas the biggest fan ever. “Could I have you sign a napkin or something for me? They’re not going to believe who I met.”
Surreal didn’t begin to cover it. I was never going to get used to working with the Hollywood elite... or being in love with one of them. Their world was a lot different from the one the rest of us lived in. “Sure,” she said. “I can do that, I guess.” He handed her a few napkins, and she scrawled her name and a greeting across them.
“Thank you!” he said, tucking the napkins into his vest pocket. He seemed to remember himself and looked around. “Now, what happened here?”
Adrianne told them about her stalker and the creepy gifts that drove her to hiring us as her security team. She told them about the phone calls and the brick that was thrown through her window. She told them about the letter and picture. “What was the picture of?” the investigator asked.
“Me sharing a private moment with someone I care about,” she said, keeping it purposefully vague.Good girl, I thought. “He wanted me to quit the movie because I’d ‘debased’ myself and made a mockery of the character. He saw me here having coffee with a friend. He pulled out a gun, and my security team did what I paid them to do, protect me.” She gestured to where Ethan and I were handcuffed. “Can you please release them?”
The investigator sheepishly ordered us released, and he nearly swooned when Adrianne smiled at him. “Everything sounds in order,” he said. “I will need to get a few statements from your team, but you can bring them down to the station after you collect your friend from the hospital.”
He meant Ryan, but we all were thinking about Callan. “Thank you so much,” Adrianne said.
We were released, and she checked our wrists herself to see if the cuffs had been placed on too tightly. “We’re fine,” Ethan told her. “Let’s go check on Callan, yeah?”
She nodded, and we left the cafe behind us. Luckily, Ethan was able to call the car, and the ride to the hospital was relatively short. When we came through the emergency department’s entrance, we could hear Callan hollering all the way from the waiting room. “I’m fine. Just give me some damn stitches and call it a day!”
We followed the sounds of his major bitching to a small room just off the nurses’ station. Callan was lying on the bed, shirt off, and a nurse was attempting to close his wound with glue. “Glue takes forever to heal, and I don’t want it,” Callan said snarkily. “Just sew me up.Please.”
“Glue will be less scarring,” she said, and Callan laughed.
“Seriously?” He gestured to all of the other scars that littered his torso. “Why would you think a scar would bother me?”
Her eyes mapped his abdomen, and I heard Adrianne take in a short, agitated breath from beside me. “Jealous, Princess?” I murmured in her ear.
She tossed her hair. “Obviously not,” she sniffed.
“Good,” I said. “Because we don’t have eyes for anyone but you. Haven’t from the second you came into our lives.”
She looked up at me with soft eyes, and although it wasn’t the time for it, I really wanted to kiss her. From the expression on her face, she agreed with me.
The nurse finally broke and went to get a suture tray, muttering all the while to herself about ‘what a waste’ stitches would be. Once we were alone, Adrianne quickly crossed the room and kissed Callan hard on the mouth.