His second-best girl. She glanced to her aunt, dressed in her nursing scrubs, her expression somber but her gaze loving as she watched her husband. Ella was his best girl, he always said, and bemoaned often the fact that she hadn’t been able to conceive the daughter he wanted. A baby girl who looked just like his best girl.
Cami swallowed tightly. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to end up crying. No, she wouldn’t just cry, she would be sobbing, and she couldn’t afford to sob. She hated crying. It pissed her off and made her eyes sore. And her head was sore enough. She felt overwhelmed by Eddy and Ella’s anger at Mark, and the way they glanced at her, their sorrow for her aching inside them. She couldn’t seem to make them understand that it really didn’t matter anymore. She was used to her father’s disregard, as well as his judgmental hatred where her past with Rafer was concerned.
She had actually needed him when she had lost her child. Him and her mother, but that had been years before. She had learned a long time ago not to let it hurt, not to let it bother her. That was just the way it was.
“It’s okay, Uncle Eddy,” she assured him, trying to smile, but her head just hurt too bad to attempt it.
At least her face wasn’t too bruised. Thankfully, the bastard hadn’t managed to hit her but once in the face. He’d split her lip, turned one side of her face a lovely shade of blue and red. No, the majority of the damage had been the bruises caused by those heavy fists at the side of the head and the concussion the doctor had diagnosed.
Her temple was so tender that any tug at the skin there sent pulses of pain radiating through her head.
“It’s not okay.” He shook his head. “But there’s no changing him anyway.”
“Has he ever been a father to you?” Ella asked knowing he hadn’t been, as she turned away to secure the blood she had taken earlier in the small tote she carried.
Cami really didn’t want to talk about this now, and she definitely didn’t want to deal with it. She just shrugged.
“Cami knows he never was.”
Cami’s head jerked up, a whimper almost escaping as the movement sent a lance of agony twisting through her skull.
Rafe moved around her uncle, his leanly muscled, long-legged stride covering the distance until he was standing beside her, his fingers beneath her chin to lift her face.
She didn’t fight him. She didn’t have the strength. She just stared up at him, miserably aware of what he was seeing.
Her makeup was smeared, the right side of her head swollen, her face darkened with the bruise, and her lip split. She looked like she boxed for a living.
“School board contacted Archer as we drove into the hospital parking lot,” Rafe told her. “Until this is resolved, and your attacker caught, you’re on a medical leave of absence.”
In other words, they didn’t want the gossip or the small chance of danger that came with her attack.
She understood the concern, somewhat. But she hadn’t been attacked at school. She knew her students, though; they were curious and full of questions at even the busiest time of the school day. Right now, she didn’t need the questions or the knowledge that the answers would be spread among the general public.
It was the right decision for her, at this time. It just sucked to have the decision made for her.
“She needs to rest,” her aunt Ella spoke up then, her tone confrontational as she glared from Rafe to her niece. “And she’s refusing to stay here.”
Rafe slid his fingers back, allowing Cami to turn her gaze from his, thankfully. She swore she was staring death in the eye. There was such latent violence swirling in his gaze that she had to suppress a shiver.
“I’ll be fine, Aunt Ella,” she assured her.
“You’re not going home by yourself,” Cami’s uncle protested, though this time he had that tone normally reserved for his son.
“I’ll be fine.” She had no other place to run to, and she wasn’t going to her aunt and uncle’s. Cami loved them, but the thought of living with them terrified her.
“I’ll take care of her.” Rafe’s tone brooked no refusal, and as she slid him a quick look beneath her lashes she realized she was hesitating to argue back as well.
The tension that rose in the room was unmistakable.
“I said I’ll be fine—,” she began to protest again.
“Like you were this time?” Rafe growled. “Because you were too damned stubborn and ashamed to let anyone know what was going on.”
“Ashamed? Me?” She stared back at him in surprise. “I’m not ashamed, Rafe. I’m practical. Something you don’t seem to be. And I did tell you.”
“Really? You didn’t adequately explain” he argued sardonically as he crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at her with irritating arrogance. “Practical is hiding the fact you’re getting threatening phone calls until someone actually tried to rape and murder you in your own home. Right?”
She winced before glancing quickly at her aunt and uncle. Cami swore Eddy paled before he swallowed tightly to regain his equilibrium.
“That was uncalled for.”
“It was the truth. Now, you can stay here, in this nice, sterile little room, or you can stop arguing with me and I’ll take you home. Those are your choices. Now pick one before I pick it for you.”
She so did not like being ordered around like this. If it weren’t for the headache, as well as the exhaustion, she would have argued with him.
“I want to sleep in my own bed.”
There was no way she was going to be able to sleep in a hospital bed. She loved her aunt Ella, but each time Cami had dozed off Ella had been there for blood or some other nursing reason.
Rafe gave a sharp nod of his head.
“She shouldn’t be leaving, Rafe,” Ella spoke up then. “The doctor wants her to remain until tomorrow morning for observation. A concussion is nothing to mess with, and he suspects she may have some cranial bruising.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Cami told him mutinously. “She gets paranoid.”
Ella rolled her eyes before turning back to Rafe. “Are you paying attention to me, Rafer Callahan?”
Rafe’s brows arched as Cami glanced at him, though he seemed more amused than angry.
“Yes, ma’am, I am,” he assured her. “In this case, you may have to settle for a Marine medic, though.”
Ella propped one hand on her lush hip and stared back at him, suspicious. “You’re a medic?”
“No, ma’am, but I have one.” He grinned back at her. He had no intentions of telling them who the medic was or that Logan had had training that could have gotten him a job in any hospital as a physician’s assistant.
“You two just are not going to listen to reason, are you?” Ella finally griped.
“Maybe it’s a good thing, Ella,” Eddy spoke up. “I just want her safe. And this is a public hospital. If her attacker’s determined, he’ll not have too hard a time getting to her.”
Cami could see what he wasn’t saying, though. What if they were wrong and Rafe and his cousins had been the ones to have killed Jaymi and, as many believed, framed Thomas Jones?
It was in Ella’s and Eddy’s eyes and in their voices each time they spoke and in their gazes as they shared one of those speaking looks that only true soul mates shared.
Eddy was rough talking, loud, and confrontational whenever his petite wife wasn’t around. But once she was there, he went from growling lion to tame little house cat.
“Are you ready to go?” Rafe asked then. “Logan and Crowe are waiting in the hall for us.”