“Mr. Harman, you have a phone call.” He thanked Margaret, and she headed back to the kitchen. Picking up the phone, he decided today wasn’t a good day to get bitchy about someone else’s habits when he came to phone edict. Knowing who it was helped a great deal, too. When she started talking to him, like she’d had a head start on this conversation just a few seconds ago instead of two hours, he smiled when she cursed, a great deal, as a matter of fact, about people. Humans, he thought. But since she was fully human, too, he wasn’t quite sure how that was going to work.

“I’m thinking that I need to hire meself a chemist and have them make a drug that will make ye people smarter. I’m thinking too that you and me, we’re the only ones that seem to have the right idea.” He asked her what had happened now. “I don’t know, but Katie is in a terrible mood again.”

He didn’t ask if that was any different from any other day of the week but kept his mouth closed. The two of them had butted heads several times in the last couple of days, and he didn’t have it in him to get into it with her again.

They talked about the upcoming holidays and what they were going to do. This will be the first time that Carrie and her brother could celebrate the holidays together as they didn’t live all that close in Wales. It was doable, but for him, it was too much with children.

“I’m leaving just after Thanksgiving. I was going to stay until the new year, but my momma and sisters want us to come back before that. It’s only because I buy the best gifts ever.” He thought she might be right on that. He’d been shopping with Carrie and Katie, and Carrie bought gifts from the heart. Katie did as well but it was difficult for him to get close to the other woman as she was forever snipping and biting at him. It was almost too much to hang out with Carrie when Katie was around.

Carrie had been telling him for a couple of days that he should just tell her to shut her trap. His mom would ring his neck if he did that, and he was kinda happy where his neck was at the moment. After telling Carrie that he was going to have dinner with her grannie, she asked him if he was sweet on her.

“I am, as a matter of fact. She’s been so nice to me since I was able to get her some good oats. And she tells me that her constitution is a good deal better, too. I love the woman.” She laughed and said that the only person she was on the warpath with at the moment was Katie. “What’s happened there? Yesterday, you told me that Katie was in her good grace and that you were out again.”

“Aye, I was. But she’s got a burr up her butt about us leaving soon. Said we’ve got us nothing there that we can’t have here for us.” Harman told her that was sad. “It ‘tis, it ‘tis. She’s all alone now when we all go back home. Katie will head home the same day that Joey and I leave. She lives close but not close enough for her to just pop in when she needs her. I don’t know why Katie won’t stay…Might be because she’s out of work right now. Her boss, Jimmy Barnhart, the bastard, he’s been calling her daily and showing up at the nursing home since you had him tossed out on his behind.”

“I don’t think I ever heard what it was that she did for a living. I know that you and Joey run a flower business, but not her.” She told him what Katie did, and he was impressed. “So she’s that good at being an attorney? Did all his clients leave as she told him that they would?”

Harman looked up when he saw a movement at the door. It was Katie. And she had blood on her face and a nasty bruise on the side of her head that was getting bigger by the second, had him telling Carrie to come over now. It wasn’t until then that he noticed that her clothing was all dirty and that there was snow in her hair. Harman called for Margeret.

“Call an ambulance.” Katie told him that she’d be fine, but he told Margret that he wanted one now. “Now let me see what damage you did to my front lawn when you fell. Or did you ram your head into the steps? Either way, you’re paying for the damages.”

“I didn’t know where I was when I woke up.” Harman didn’t think that was a good thing. “I was wandering around outside when I thought this was your brother’s house. If I’m disturbing you, I can go there. Just point me in the right direction. No north or south crap, I don’t know my right hand until I pick—” She looked up at him, and he could see that her eyes were glazed over in pain. “I’m sorry if I hurt your sidewalk.”

“I think I’ll manage.” He picked her up from the floor and carried her to the couch. When he got her there, Margaret brought him an ice pack. “Put this on your cheek, and I’m going to inspect your head. I’m going to see if you cut yourself. What happened, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“I don’t know, not really. I was talking to Jimmy, my boss, and telling him not to bother me anymore or I would make his life like he had mine. I remember thinking that there must have been an echo around me when all of a sudden, I felt this incredible pain in my face and then my head.” Harman asked what she meant by echo. “Oh, you know when you talk on the phone with someone and it’s an echo of what they’re saying to you back. That’s what I got towards the end of the call. I wonder now if it was that I was in between houses or something like that.”

“He was more than likely following you, and that when you turned him down again, he hit you. Nothing that man does here lately surprises me anymore.” He found a small hole-like cut on the back of her head and was holding another towel over it when the medics arrived. As soon as he was able to back away from Katie, he went to the door again to let in Carrie and her brother, Joey. Her other brother, Shawn, was there, too. He explained what had happened and told them that he was going to call the police too. “I think he’s been following her around for the last few days. When he isn’t harassing you, Carrie, he’s beating up women.”

His brother showed up as well. Edwin came with the police as he’d been at the office talking about the upcoming holidays and how the department was taking donations for the kids’ drive. One of the medics showed Edwin the cuts on Katie’s head, and Edwin shivered.

“So he’s now trying to beat you into submission? This guy isn’t very bright if you ask me. This morning, the station was called to the hotel where he’s staying. He was demanding someone tell him where you were living.” They were lying Katie down on the couch about then, and she said that she had left the hotel to go to the bed and breakfast. Edwin nodded and said that it was probably a better place, but he more than likely saw her leaving the hotel. “If you were trying to keep your move a secret, then I’d suggest that you stay here. No one will get by me as I run a lot of security devices here that I bought. I wrote a book on how to secure your home as a DIY project.”

Edwin stared at him and Harman only shrugged at him. “Is Katie your mate? Or Carrie? Either one of them would be amazing to be related to. Which is it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. How would I test that out?” Edwin asked him if she smelled good to him. “I haven’t any idea. I’ve not been able to smell anything since I was born. I told you that.” He looked at his brother and could see the confusion on his face. “I know that you know. I told everyone at the dinner table one night when we were just kids.”

“Christ, I never remembered that until just now.” While Edwin was thinking, or whatever he was doing, with that odd look on his face, Harman watched Katie being worked on. He got a lot of information about her while she spoke to the medics, but could she be his mate? Could Carrie? It was something that he was going to give a lot of thought to when he got home after the emergency room trip that he was going to surely go on. “Dad wants to know if you can dress and undress yourself.” He looked at Edwin before telling him that he could do that since he was about two. “No. I mean—Christ. I mean, when you shift, are you naked when you shift back or not?”

“I don’t know. I’ll try that later. Right now, I’m trying to figure out if I have enough material for a book or two. If there are enough sales then I can pay off the car that I want to buy. Having a mate never entered my mind.” Harman reached for Katie’s hand when she reached for him. He knew that she had to be afraid. He was for her as well.

There was a monster, anyone who beat up defenseless women was a monster, in his opinion, out there gunning for her over a simple job. And that’s all it was. Just a job that he’d fired her from in the first place.

As she was put on the gurney, she asked him to bring her sister to the hospital so that she’d not drive. Her brother, as well.

“Sure. I don’t know that I’d want to be driving either if my brother had been beaten to shit. I’ll bring them back home too if you would just give me a call.”

Nodding, she thanked him for helping them out, and she was put in the back of the ambulance. Just as they were pulling out, he and her family loaded up in his truck and made their slippery way to the hospital. He had not noticed that there had been a heavy snowfall, and it was piling up on the roads and lawns.

It took him less time than he had thought before he was pulling into the parking lot of the ED. As soon as they entered the lobby, he was asked if he was carrying a gun, and he was asked to take it to his car.

“No.” He handed them his right to carry as well as his license to say that he worked for the government. He also said that he had to be armed because of his association with the government. “I need to be able to protect myself and those around me. That would include you.”

After making a phone call, which was all it took for him to be verified as a government employee and that he’d not been lying about his association with the president, Harman was allowed to not only keep his gun but the knife in his boot pocket as well as the sixteen inches of wire that was wrapped around his wrist in the event he had to up close and personal with someone trying to harm him.

Katie was being prepped for surgery. Like him the second time, they wanted to make sure that they got out any dirt and debris that might have been imbedded into her head from whatever had been used to harm her. When she was wheeled away to the surgical floor, he decided that he was going to go into a bathroom and figure out if he was either of the women’s mate. After talking to his brother, his curiosity got the better of him.

He didn’t go back with her when she’d been brought up to the unit. Allowing only two visitors, he thought she’d feel better with her family there other than a stranger. But after a few minutes, it was Joey that came out to get him.

Source: www.seynovel.com