Never Been Kissed Read Online Free Page A

her any more pain. She had enough on her plate.
    But her fingers, the nails broken and jagged and dirty and, Brody was pleased to note, rimmed with blood—hopefully Yeri’s—twisted into the sleeve of his gray T-shirt.
    “Brody?” He barely caught her whisper over the sound of the plane, but he nodded.
    “It’s me, Ashley,” he said, wiping the tears and blood from her face, while her eyes slowly shut and she slid back into sleep. “I got you.”

Chapter 3
     
    The Nairobi Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya
    10 hours later
    August 5, 2:00 A.M.
     
    Exhausted, Brody stood in the doorway and watched Ashley sleeping on the small single bed of her private room in the Nairobi Hospital.
Thank God for money,
Brody thought, taking a sip of the super-sweet chai from the cafeteria. Montgomery money had greased a lot of wheels in the last forty-eight hours.
    He rubbed his eyes, too wired to sleep, too exhausted to be of much use. His knee throbbed, and he reached down to rub the ache. It had been a long time since the old wound had bothered him, but it had also been a long time since he’d crouched for three hours in the back of a plane.
    “Hey!” Harrison stood from his chair on the other side of the bed near the lamp where the light was better for him to work. “Sit down, man. I … forgot about your leg. The doctor won’t clear her to fly for another,” Harrison checked his watch, “twenty-one hours, you should sleep while you can.”
    “I could say the same about you,” Brody said, waving him back down. There were chairs in the hallway for him.
    Reluctant, Harrison sat. The guy had been working non-stop, greasing those wheels. As a logistics man, Brody had to admit, Harrison was good.
    “There’s still a lot of work to do,” Harrison said,looking down at his phone. “She doesn’t have any ID. Keys. Phone. I just want to make things as smooth as possible for her when we get back to New York.”
    Brody nodded, though Harrison wasn’t watching. In the hallway someone dropped a metal tray and a man yelled in Swahili.
    Ashley on the bed flinched, rattling her IV tubes. She’d been severely dehydrated when they arrived. That combined with the concussion had made the young Kenyan doctor insist she not travel for at least twenty-four hours. That was three hours ago. “What … ?” Brody stopped, it wasn’t any of his business. He even shook his head to remind himself of that. Took a sip of tea.
    “Did you say something?” Harrison asked.
    Fuck it. He was tired and he was involved. And there were twenty-one hours that needed to be filled with something other than staring at a wall and going out of his mind.
    Hospitals were not his favorite places.
    “What was she doing over there?” Brody asked.
    “She spent most of the last year in Kenya. An aid worker in a Dadaab refugee camp.”
    “A year?”
    “We’ve—the family—we’ve been trying to convince her to stay home. That with our money and connections she could do more good from the States than passing out rice in the camps.”
    Somehow he imagined her doing more than passing out rice, but he kept his mouth shut.
    “She didn’t agree?”
    Harrison’s smile was fond but weary. “You remember her well, I guess.”
    Blue swimsuit straps slipping down pale shoulders.
    Yes. He remembered her.
    On the bed, Ashley began to stir, saving him from his memories.
    She’d been cleaned up, her dress exchanged for a pale yellow hospital gown. But blood and dirt were still smeared along her hairline. Against her pale skin the black stitches were thick and ugly.
    “Kate,” she murmured, kicking off the blankets like she was about to get up.
    Harrison stood, his exhausted face creased with worry. Ashley had regained consciousness briefly when they arrived, but had been mostly confused, which the doctor had said was due to the concussion.
    Her good eye popped open, startling both of them. “Where’s Kate?” she said in a strong, clear voice, seemingly ready to charge