I Love You Read Online Free PDF Page B

her car remained free from bullet holes.
    She bent down and checked for a pulse. It was weak and sporadic, but at least it was there. Out of habit, she reached for her pocket to get her phone, and then remembered it was dead in her backpack, across the street in the bar. She realized the biker’s phone lay smashed into pieces on the ground by his heavy boots. No help there.
    For the second time that night—albeit moving much more quickly—Dace ran across the deserted street toward Shooters. She burst through the front door, hitting it with so much force it banged against the wall.
    “A man’s been shot. Call 911. Now!”

Chapter Eight
    Tate vaulted over the bar and raced out of the door, his long legs eating up the distance between him and Dace. By the time he reached her, she was squatting down, bent over the body of a man sprawled on the ground.
    Tate recognized him as one of the prospects left outside to watch over the motorcycles for Whip’s crew. For the second time that night, he dug his phone out of his jeans pocket and made the call to 911.
    After he hung up, he crouched next to Dace. She had moved the man flat and was monitoring his pulse with her fingers on his neck. Carefully, she pulled up his torso to assess the bullet wound. “Dammit, it’s a through-and-through,” she muttered to herself. “Go get some bar towels or something clean; I’ve got to get the bleeding slowed down or he will go into shock.” She snapped her instructions at Tate without looking away from the bleeding man. When he didn’t move, she looked up at him. “Go! Now! What the hell are you waiting for?”
    Tate ran back to Shooters, pushed through the gawking bar patrons now standing on the sidewalk, and grabbed up a stack of clean bar towels and an unopened package of paper towels. As he raced back outside lugging his load, he heard the ambulance siren faintly in the distance. No music had ever sounded sweeter to his ears.
    “Here.” Dace was still in full command mode. “Help me lift him up so I can pack the exit wound. I need to get pressure on that wound, stat, so we can slow down the blood loss.”
    Tate shoved the towels at her. Dace’s capable, no-nonsense hands—the ones Tate had admired a few hours ago—were now frantically wadding up towels and stuffing them under the unconscious prospect’s shoulder.
    The ambulance siren grew louder and shriller, finally cutting off as it bumped over the curb and stopped a few feet away. The onlookers from inside the bar had moved across the street and were now standing in a wide circle around the downed man, watching Dace tend to him.
    As he moved aside to let the EMTs wheel the gurney through the group of people, Tate was stunned to hear one of the EMTs say, “Hey Doc, surprised to see you on scene. What have we got?”
    “Male, early twenties, GSW through-and-through, right upper torso…”
    As her voice droned on, giving the info to the EMT on the prospect’s condition, Tate took a deep breath. Dace was a doctor? Sure, he saw the scrubs; and, like the sexist chauvinistic bastard he was, he immediately thought “nurse” or “technician”.
    Instead—surprise, surprise, his Dace was a doctor, and a damn competent one, if her instructions and patient assessment to the EMTs was any indication.
    Wait a minute… His Dace? When in this long, eventful night had she become his Dace? He didn’t commit, he didn’t do relationships, and he liked his life. Most important, he didn’t have time for a girlfriend; not even one with benefits. Yet suddenly, in his mind she was HIS. He couldn’t explain what he felt…he just knew he felt it.
    He watched as the EMTs loaded the wounded man on a gurney, strapping him down for transport. Dace climbed up into the rig, still talking to the EMTs, and started wiping down the prospect’s arm with disinfectant, preparing to insert an IV line.
    Tate followed her into the rear of the ambulance without a second thought, and slid next to her on