“Sweetheart, come back to me.” He delicately touched her face.

As Regan stirred on the bed, Zach noticed all the buttons on her blouse were torn off. He felt violently ill, and his knees went weak. God, she’d been raped.

He tried to be calm, tried to be strong for her, but the sounds of the ER retreated and he couldn’t see. Curtis eased him to the floor and made him put his head between his knees.

“Are you all right?”

“What happened to her?” he demanded, his skin cold and clammy.

“We’re going to check her out. I’m taking her to a room.” Curtis motioned to a nurse. “You take care of him. We’ll be in six.” After he gave her the room number, he pushed Regan’s bed out of the ER.

It took an hour to have her examined. He hadn’t gotten word on her condition, but he had received a phone call from his security force letting him know that Roger Byers had been arrested. The news gave him a grim satisfaction.

When the phone rang again and it was John Forrester, he couldn’t control the fear in his voice as he had with his security guard.

“John, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. What the hell happened? What did he do to her?” John’s voice trembled as much as Zach’s had.

“He attacked her in my office. I don’t know much more. She’s beaten and barely conscious. Damn it, every button on her shirt was ripped off.”

“No.” The quake in John’s voice made Zach sick. “That son of a bitch ! I could kill him.”

“I know how you feel.” He looked up to see the nurse headed toward him. “I’ll call you when I know more.” He hung up the phone and the nurse finally led him to Regan’s room. She was sleeping, and Curtis paced the floor.

“This took too long. I’ve made a dozen calls to get someone she’d be more comfortable with to examine her, and I’m still fucking waiting.”

As worried as Zach had been that Curtis would assume the worst when he saw Zach carry her in, he was glad that at least she was beyond the lobby and Curtis was taking care of her. “Is she okay?” Zach’s voice still cracked.

Curtis shot him a fierce glance. “Does she look okay to you?”

Zach looked at her. She was almost unrecognizable now that the swelling had begun. His stomach clenched.

“No.” No, she looked horrible, and seeing the marks on her legs and her torn shirt on the chair next to him, he wondered just how bad things were. What had Roger Byers done to the woman he loved? Had he taken her against her will?

Regan stirred, and Curtis hissed out a breath.

“I feel lousy,” she said hoarsely.

Curtis moved to her, blocking out Zach. Who’d blame him? Zach wasn’t her family, and by the look Curtis had given him when he’d seen him walk through the door, he blamed Zach for what happened to his sister. Curtis touched her face and then kissed her forehead. “I gave you something to calm you. You’re fine. This was a lousy way to end my shift.”

She lifted her head and looked around the room. “Where’s Zach?”

“I’m here.” He moved from behind Curtis and ventured closer to her bed. The bruises on her face were surfacing, and it wrenched his gut to think that because of him Roger Byers had used his fists on her.

She reached her hand out for him. “I’m sorry, Zach.”

“Oh, sweetheart, no.” He moved closer to her, tears stinging his eyes. “This isn’t your fault.” The sinking feeling in his chest was that it was completely his fault.

“What happened to him?”

“They have him. The police have him.” He wiped at his eyes, knowing he needed to be strong for her and not to fall apart.

“John—is he all right?”

“Yes, John is fine. Byers came after you,” he said. He had spoken to the arresting officer again only moments earlier. “He was making his point to John and me by hurting you. God, Regan, how bad did he hurt you?”

“I just got knocked around,” she said. “I stabbed him with your letter opener.” He nodded and a weak, yet proud, smile settled on his lips. They had told him Byers was injured.

Curtis stepped up to the bed. “Reg, they didn’t find anything that would indicate he raped you. But did he?”

Regan crossed her arms over her chest and let out a sigh. “No. He never got the chance.”

Zach saw the barely contained anger in her brother’s eyes—directed at him. Curtis scrubbed his hands over his face. “Damn it, Regan. I didn’t want to see you like this again. How is it I keep finding you lying in hospital rooms battered and beaten? Is this a way of life for you?”

Her eyes held fire in them as she rose in her bed. She winced. “Curtis, shut up. This is not the place or time for this.”

“When is? When I have to identify you in the morgue?”

That socked the wind out of Zach, and he turned toward Curtis. “She protected herself. I don’t think upsetting her is helping her.”

“Let me tell you what’s going to upset her and the rest of us.” He pushed out his chest and met Zach’s eye. “When we find her dead because of some asshole who thought he could use her for a punching bag.”

“That isn’t going to happen. And Zach didn’t do this. It had nothing to do with him.”

“Like hell, Reg. That man was trying to get to him by hurting you. A few more minutes and you would have been raped. A moment after that you’d be dead.”

“I’m neither,” she argued.

“No, but you can’t go through this again. Think about last time. Look at what you almost lost. Then we almost lost you. It wasn’t worth it.”

Regan shifted a look from her brother to Zach. The fear was back in her eyes, and Zach felt like an outsider, confused at their anger and their conversation.

Regan pushed down her sheet and pointed a stern finger at her brother. “One more word, Curtis Keller, and I walk out of this hospital.”

He threw his arms in the air and stormed out of the room. Zach knew he blamed him for what had happened to her. He blamed himself. But they’d been fighting about more than this attack by Roger Byers.

Zach sat quietly by her side. He stroked her hand, the traces of blood on her skin accusing him. “I’m sure they’ll let you go in a few hours. We’ll head out to my parents’ house, and I’ll take care of you. It’ll be a good place for you to rest. You need rest, Regan. In fact, I think you should take off next week. We’ve been working really hard. I’ve probably worked you harder than I ever worked Mary Ellen. I’ll make arrangements for a replacement for the week and then—”