Read Online Done [Running to Love 4] (Siren Publishing Classic) by Allyson Young - Free Book Online

knew she had won. The doctor’s next words corrected her presumption. She must be losing her touch along with everything else, although it was more likely that Greg had gotten to him.
    “You lost a great deal of blood, Lacey, and I’m not happy with your count. It’s coming back up, but you definitely need more rest and a proper diet. We transfused you, and you hemorrhaged again when we did the D and C. You needed more blood then. I heard you’ve been up and around twice, which amazes me, and I’m not pleased that you were allowed up last night at all.”
    “Please,” Lacey tried. Men sometimes gave into tears and pleading, and she no longer had any shame about manipulating the situation. “I don’t want to stay here. I can recover at home.”
    “But the woman who brought you in said you live alone. You need someone to care for you, or at least be available should you need it.”
    “I have a wonderful landlady, and there’s another tenant on the floor above me.”
    Dr. Atkinson smiled at her, and Lacey braced herself. He didn’t disappoint. “I spoke with your gentleman friend in the hall. He told me you would want to be independent. He has offered to have you stay with him until you have completely recovered. I understand that there has been some difficulty in the past, but that he would like to make amends. He is a police detective, and I know how attentive he has been with his partner. There are few secrets in a hospital, after all! She is no longer in need of his support, and so I am quite inclined to discharge you into his care.”
    Lacey wanted to scream and throw something if only she didn’t feel so drained. So KarLynn had died. Great. Now Greg would mourn her and blame himself some more while he “took care” of Lacey. The man was a freaking saint. Good for him. No, make that a martyr. She’d write the Pope on his behalf.
    “I’m afraid it’s out of the question.” Dr. Atkinson’s face tightened at her flat response, then smoothed out.
    “He has also lost the child, Lacey,” he said quietly. “You need to pull together.”
    Lacey snapped. Oh, not in a way that she would have liked to, not by screaming at the pompous, self-appointed judge who wasn’t a shrink, who looked at her so kindly, so self-righteously, and who didn’t possess ovaries or a vagina. Not by throwing and breaking things, preferably his face. She didn’t have the strength, but the tear reservoir seemed bottomless, and she knew all the words, even if she would modify them in deference to his god-like doctor status.
    “Screw you, Dr. Know It All,” she managed, as the salt flood poured down her cheeks. “Screw men everywhere. You know squat. Get out of my sight, and if you let that man near me, I’ll sue you and the hospital. You’re supposed to heal me, not gut me.”
    Dr. Atkinson’s stunned and outraged visage turned her tears into hysterical laughter, and Lacey choked. She could hear her sobbing mirth reverberate inside the walls of her head, and the room spun. Then she felt a heavy hand on her hip followed by a sharp poke and knew no more.

Chapter Eight
     
    When she next awoke, Lacey’s head throbbed and vied with the continuing ache in her abdomen. A large bouquet of her favorite spring flowers graced the bedside table and once the implication of who had sent them penetrated, she turned her head away. And there was the sender, large-as-life, handsome face etched with worry and what she suspected despair looked like. Funny he should be feeling the same thing that she was. Well, she was used up. The son of a bitch of a doctor must have stuck her with a sedative or something, because she really didn’t care. He had obviously written off her dead-serious threats to sue as the reaction of the weaker sex, the chauvinistic prick, if Greg’s presence was any indication. Lacey accepted that her heart still belonged to Greg, no matter what had transpired over the past months, and gave up for the moment. He reached