Forbidden by Jacquelyn Frank

door, as well as one in her bedside table, both gifts from her paranoid brother. Well …
    Okay, sorry, Jackson. Maybe you weren’t being paranoid after all,
she thought with a wince.
    “I’ll go with you,” she said at last, the words falling from her in a resigned sigh. “But we better make it quick. My brother will be back soon. I don’t want anyone else hurt.”
    “I appreciate your candor,” Ram said, slowly turning her to face him. He reached for her jacket and unzipped her out of it. He dropped it back off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. There was a peculiar sense of intimacy to the action, as if he were undressing her of something far closer to her body than just a jacket. The feel of his fingers and the way he stood with such strong surety before her made a knot clutch at the middle of her throat and made unsure heat burn over her skin. It was a painful idea, the thought that something that looked so gorgeous could possibly hurt her in the worst of ways. She had to put her faith, she realized, in the fact that he had saved her from one danger and did not mean to become yet another.
    Then, as he pulled her toward the rear door of the house, she looked back at the old puffy coat and realized that it was streaked brightly with his blood and that he had most likely removed it so as not to draw any attention to them as they went out in public.

CHAPTER FOUR

    Jackson plucked up a loaf of bread and a bag of powdered doughnuts, his sister’s favorites— the doughnuts, not the bread— and tore around the corner and into the next aisle. He had not liked leaving Docia alone. It went against his grain, and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to get back to her fast. But it would be fifteen minutes until the Chinese food he had ordered would be ready, and she was completely out of food back at the house. Since she’d been hospitalized only a short while, that meant her fridge had already been in the sad state he had found it in, not to mention her pantry. He grumbled to himself under his breath at the complete lack of nutrition in her habits … and wondered if he should be promoting a continuation of that with the stupid doughnuts. But … she was all sad and fragile looking, and he simply did not have the heart to show up without the powdery confection that always seemed to make her smile, crackles of white sugar on her lips.
    “Jack!”
    Jackson tripped, mainly because someone stuck a foot in the path of his determined feet, almost nailing his chin on the bar of the shopping cart. He recoveredand came to a stop so he could punch out the jackass on the other end of that foot.
    “Whoa!” Leo Alvarez shot up a strong hand and caught Jackson’s fist just millimeters from his left cheekbone.
    “What the hell is wrong with you?” Jackson demanded, reaching with his opposite hand and shoving at Leo’s shoulder. They both knew Jackson would not have punched him. He was far too coolheaded for that. Well, usually, anyway.
    “Just keeping you on your toes.” Leo smirked at him, dodging a second shove by moving out of Jackson’s immediate reach. “What are you doing? You look like you’re shopping on speed.” Leo picked up a box of cereal from the nearby shelf, examined it briefly as he spoke. “I haven’t heard a peep out of you for nearly a week. If I was the sensitive type, my feelings would be hurt.” Leo put the kid’s cereal full of colorful marshmallows in Jackson’s cart as Jackson pushed forward and tried to continue his shopping. He frowned at Leo, a wash of annoyance warring inside him with a nagging sensation of guilt.
    “Docia was hurt,” Jackson said a bit sheepishly, knowing that of all the people in the world outside of his blood family and police friends and colleagues he
should
have called and told about the horrible incident, Leo ought to have been first on the list. That understanding crystallized as Leo suddenly stilled in the act of putting a box of granola