Here And Now (American Valor 2) Read Online Free Page A

his fault. But it’d just be her luck to get fired the first night on the job.
    “I’m a tech.”
    Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s it?”
    “Wow. Don’t hold back from saying what you really think.” He grabbed the freshly opened gauze pad from her hand. “Since I’m the lowly technician who’d normally handle this type of stuff, I’ll just take care of it myself.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve been over this.” She snatched the gauze four-by-four back from him, doused it with antiseptic, and pressed it to his scrape at the widest point.
    “Goddammit,” he said through gritted teeth.
    She maybe could have used a more gentle hand, but what was done was done. “Who knew a Green Beret would be such a baby about a little scrape.”
    “Ranger. Not the same.” He took hold of her wrist, pulling her hand from his arm. “I promise you, I can handle this from here.”
    “Fine. If you say so.”
    She stripped off her gloves and dropped them along with the gauze in the hazardous-waste bin and marched out of the room, thankful she didn’t have to spend one more minute taking care of the man.
    A FTER A HELLISH night at work, all Lucky wanted to do was go home, pull his blackout curtains closed, and turn off his phone. It ended up that wrecking his bike was just the beginning of his bad night. He was pissed on, vomited on, and then there was the unfortunate patient who needed assistance removing his penis ring. For four days the poor guy had tried to remove it on his own and only came in when the swelling reached the point he couldn’t pee anymore. It definitely gave a whole new meaning to blue balls and he and Chad couldn’t help but wince in sympathy when they got a look at the mess.
    So when the sun came up and his shift was over, Lucky was more than ready to get the hell out of there. His hip ached, his knee ached, and his elbow was wrecked enough he had to change the bandage more than once through the night. Then there was the little problem of his transportation home. Any other day, he’d heft the bike over his shoulder and haul it the two and a half miles home on foot. But today, he’d had enough. He was tapping out because he could.
    Not even two full months out of regiment and already he was going soft.
    For the next few minutes he chastised himself enough to feel sufficiently guilty for being so damn lazy. Was even on the verge of calling his dad back and telling him to forget about the ride when his old man pulled up to the hospital’s front entrance. Lucky gave himself a pass this time, taking a silent vow this would be the one and only time he’d do this. Next time, he’d suck it up and haul himself home on his own two feet, no matter what kind of day he’d had.
    “So much for the saying ‘Just like riding a bike,’ ” Duke James said with a laugh when he got a look at Lucky’s road bike. “It definitely looks like somebody forgot how.”
    “I didn’t forget how to ride a damn bike,” Lucky countered as he lifted the wrecked bike into the bed of the truck, then climbed into the passenger’s side. But his mood brightened almost instantly as he was greeted with the heavenly scent of cinnamon and sugar. His stomach rumbled right on cue. “Cinnamon rolls?”
    Duke answered with a smile and handed over a Tupperware container filled to the brim with sticky, gooey goodness.
    God bless Brenda.
    It didn’t matter that he’d be home in a few minutes, he wasn’t going to waste any time popping the lid off and sinking his fingers into the sweet, doughy goodness. He lifted one roll to his nose, inhaled its sweet scent so as to savor the moment much like a wine aficionado would do with a full-bodied red. Then he opened his mouth wide and shoved it in, his eyes drifting shut in pure ecstasy. There might have been inappropriate noisemaking as well. No regrets.
    “Good stuff, isn’t it?” his father asked.
    Before Lucky had even finished the first, he was grabbing a second roll