Read Online Stepping Up To Love (Lakeside Porches 1) by Katie O'Boyle - Free Book Online Page B

safe . I don’t know what to do now.
    The ride to Urgent Care with Tony was frightening. Manda could not hold on tight enough to keep her shoulder from bleeding, and she felt nauseated. She did not remember being carried into an examining room, but the sting of anesthetic brought her fully awake. She tolerated a shot of Procaine and felt a tugging on the shoulder. She turned her head to watch someone’s hands draw three stitches through her skin and carefully tie them off. Next came Steri-Strips on the more shallow sections of the cut.
    After the young physician applied a bandage over his handiwork, he gave her two Tylenol and told her to go home and rest.
    Tony accepted a sheet of wound care instructions on her behalf.
    “Can you walk?” Tony asked her.
    Manda shook her head. “Too dizzy.”
    Tony scooped her up, deposited her in the truck, and slammed the door. He headed the truck back to her campus apartment and lectured her, “You cannot—I repeat cannot—operate without a cell phone programmed with campus security, my number, and Joel’s. Do you hear me?”
    “I do. I will take care of that first thing tomorrow,” she said meekly.
    “And how will you pay for it?”
    Manda confessed, “I don’t get paid until next week.”
    “So how are you going to do this tomorrow?”
    “I don’t know, Tony. What do you recommend?”
    “Good answer. I recommend I pick you up at your door—not the outside door; your apartment door—and we go shopping together. I can convince Joel to run a tab for you, but you and I first have to determine everything you need to save your butt until you are no longer the responsibility of this campus and its security force. Be ready with a list at eight o’clock sharp. And be ready with a repayment plan to your boss.”
    He helped her up the stairs, double-checked the locks on the apartment door and her bedroom door, and asked her, “Quick quiz: when am I picking you up?”
    “Eight tomorrow morning.”
    “Where?”
    “Here at my apartment door, not outside.”
    Tony gave her a gentle hug without putting pressure on her wounded shoulder. “You sleep with your creeper beeper next to your pillow and take it into the shower with you. Promise?”
    “I promise. Thank you, Tony.”
    “And don’t forget to tape plastic over the bandage when you shower.”
    “I will. I promise.”
    “Get some sleep.”
    “Joel, she is not playing with a full deck,” Tony ranted into his cell phone on the way home from campus. He had just explained the situation, including Manda’s visit to Urgent Care and Kristof’s arrest.
    Joel pretended to be calm and rational. “She’s less than a month sober, and she’s doing well in some areas of her life. She’s got a lot of clearing up to do.”
    “She is not protecting herself,” Tony complained. “She was at a table in the least populated part of the library at midnight.”
    “In full view of the main desk, with her beeper, which she had ready.”
    “How did you know that?”
    He knew because he and Manda had strategized a few days ago. “I have spies.”
    “Do you want me to be her bodyguard or don’t you?” Tony yelled.
    Now that his heart rate had returned to normal, Joel could tune into Tony’s anxiety. He realized Tony felt solely and personally responsible for Manda’s safety.
    “No one’s asking you to be her solo bodyguard, man. This is a team effort. And you went above and beyond tonight. Thank you for all that you did. I owe you.”
    Tony grumbled, “No problemo. I’m taking her shopping in the morning unless you want to.”
    “Shopping? For what?”
    “A cell phone.”
    Joel groaned in disbelief.
    “See what I mean, she’s not playing with a full deck. What girl is without a cell phone in this world? She’s got a stalker who has beaten her in the past and has now sliced her shoulder. She claims he was going for her face. And she’s got no cell phone.”
    Joel hadn’t heard about the attack on her face. He tried to