Chapter 7

The washing machine rumbled in the background along with thunder as they ate a meal of marinated pork chops, salad and seasoned brown rice.

They had been quiet ever since Hank had told her his story, and Kelly felt awkward. He’d made it sound so straightforward, but she hadn’t missed the part about losing the woman he wanted to marry and his best friend at the same time. And, equally bad, their act of bravery, the losses, had all turned out to be unnecessary.

She couldn’t imagine living with that. But maybe he couldn’t imagine living with a killer on his heels. If she hadn’t fought her attacker off, it never would have been real for her. She might have died without ever believing that Dean was capable of such a thing.

But her entire worldview had changed in the wee hours of one morning when she stood in the muck and the reeds, dizzy from a blow to the head, fighting like a maniac for survival. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Hank must feel like that. The shock of what had happened must still be rippling through his life. It was probably the reason he kept insisting that he was just a cowboy. Because he didn’t want to be constantly reminded.

As if his limp and what appeared to be unending pain didn’t remind him every time he moved.

How did you live with that?

She wanted to ask, but again hesitated. He’d opened up, but maybe he’d said all he could on the subject. Much as she wanted to know how he coped, she didn’t want to wound him by asking.

For the first time in months, Kelly found herself worrying about someone besides herself. It was a momentous internal shift, and she looked down at her plate, feeling ashamed of how self-absorbed she had become.

It was understandable enough since she was attacked, but before that? She’d been drowning in self-pity and anger when she was facing nothing that hundreds of thousands of other women didn’t face: a marriage gone bad. Oh, and the loss of so-called friends, most of whom probably felt threatened because she, alone among them, had decided to step out of her gilded cage.

Yes, she’d been feeling pretty sorry for herself, and, thinking about it now, she squirmed a bit in her chair. “Something wrong?”

Hank’s calm, deep voice drew her back to the present.

“Not really. I was just thinking how much I’ve been feeling sorry for myself.”

“You have cause.”

“Do I really? Yes, I had a marriage that didn’t work. Whatever the reasons for it, that’s not exactly noteworthy. I decided to leave because he had started to hit me. A lot of women don’t get that choice, or if they do they can’t make it because they have kids to worry about, or no way to support themselves, or maybe they’re too terrified to leave. I left. That put me ahead of the game, not behind. But I was oh-so-sorry for myself. And then I felt even sorrier for myself when my friends told me I was being stupid and pretty much stopped talking to me.”

“They did that?”

“Yes. Some friends.”

“Exactly.” He put his knife and fork down and gave her his full attention. “Small loss, apparently.”

“Apparently. But that didn’t keep me from feeling wronged and deserted. So I stumbled along for most of a year holding a royal pity party, at least when I wasn’t so angry at Dean that I wanted my lawyer to make him hurt where it counts—in his wallet. It was ugly, Hank. I was ugly.”

“I think you were probably just reacting normally.” He reached across the table and covered her fisted hand with his big one. Calluses, rough skin, warmth. She liked the way his hand felt. “Divorce can’t be easy, no matter why it happens.”

“It’s not,” she agreed. “The first thing that hit me was I felt like such a failure because I couldn’t make it work. I mean, I’m one of those types who actually thinks marriage is forever.”

“I am, too,” he said. “Unfortunately, it isn’t always. You didn’t know what kind of man Dean would turn out to be.”

“No, I didn’t. But I still felt like a failure. The only reason I didn’t leave the first time he hit me was because I was sure I must have done something to deserve it, sure he wouldn’t do it again, and positive that if I just tried harder, things would get better.”

“I’d think that’s pretty normal.”

“Maybe. And I didn’t want my marriage to fail. I mean, that’s what divorce is—a failure. Maybe you’ve done everything you can, maybe you haven’t, but something gets broken, and it’s a failure.”

“That’s a pretty strong word.”

“What else would you call it?” She sighed, realizing that her chest was growing tight with a whole welter of emotions she could barely sort out. “One of us failed or both of us failed—what difference does it make? It meant admitting I’d been wrong about a lot of things. Facing the fact that I’d made a poor judgment. That for better or for worse wasn’t a touchstone I could live by.”

“Hey,” he said quietly, squeezing her hand. “I don’t think that phrase was meant to apply to abuse.”

“In the past it was.”

He sighed, squeezed her hand again and let go, leaning back in his chair. “That was then. We’ve since come to the conclusion that no one should have to endure being beaten by a spouse. That it’s as much a crime as if a stranger did it. We do occasionally evolve.”

The way he said it eased some of the tightness in her chest. “I guess.” She drew a deep breath, trying to let go of the strangling feelings. They eased, but only a bit. “I bounced back and forth a lot about it. Sometimes I hated myself. Sometimes I hated him. I guess some part of me will always wonder if I could have done something different and changed things.”

“I know that feeling.”

His tone yanked her out of her self-absorption. His face had once again tightened, and she wanted to kick herself for the inadvertent reminder of what he’d been through. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not? It’s true. I’ve been second-guessing myself for two years now. You know what? It doesn’t change a damn thing. Because no matter how much I question myself I always get the same answer. Believing there was a woman trapped in that building, I would still go into it.”

She nodded, and now she reached for his hand, to cover it with hers and hold on tightly. “You would have. I can tell. Unless you had some way of knowing something different, you wouldn’t change your decision.”

“Well, the same goes for you,” he said a trifle harshly. “You were young and in love. The information you had at the time didn’t warn you, did it?”

She hesitated, bit her lip and shook her head. “No.”

“Then stop it. Stop wondering if you could have changed anything. If there’s one thing I know for sure, that’s the path to insanity.”

He rose from the table without another word, and limped quickly from the kitchen.

Kelly felt about two inches tall. Her problems seemed so petty next to what had happened to him. Well, the ones she had been talking about, anyway. The idea that Dean wanted her dead still loomed pretty large on any scale, but the rest of it?

Damn! She tossed her napkin on the table and rose, not at all sure what she was going to do, or if she could do anything. By falling back into self-pity mode, she’d opened a can of worms for Hank. She wished she could bite her tongue off.

But it was too late now.

Hank stood at the front bay window, watching the trees toss in the storm, listening to the rattle of large raindrops against the windowpane and the increasingly loud booms of thunder.

His hips were screaming at him, his back was hammering a painful tattoo and even his knees seemed angry at him. A bitter thought drifted to the foreground, bitterness about his current condition. He’d just promised a woman he would protect her, but if he were to be honest, he couldn’t be sure he was physically capable of doing that anymore. The guy who had run into fires to save lives could no longer run across his own lawn with any confidence.

Some hero. She was looking to him as if he were a lifesaver, sharing things with him she had shared with no one else, trusting him to keep her safe.

Two years ago he could have been reasonably certain he could do that. Today he had no right to invite anyone to rely on his protection because, dammit, his body was no longer the reliable machine it had once been. He hated that. He hated that almost as much as he hated having lost Fran and Allan.

And second-guessing. Hell, he’d done enough of that himself. He supposed he should have been more understanding of what Kelly was saying, but he knew that road she was walking and it didn’t do a damn bit of good.

Once he had made peace with the fact that he would have gone into that building all over again under the same circumstances, he’d had to make peace with the rest of it. She needed to do the same.

“Hank? I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” He heard her come up beside him, but he wasn’t ready to look at her. Not yet. Not when he felt like such a sham himself.

But then he felt her arm steal around his waist and give him a hug. He almost held his breath, hoping she didn’t pull away, as a huge rush of warmth ran through him.

She didn’t pull away. He closed his eyes a moment, amazed at the trust she was showing him after all she’d been through. Maybe she’d moved on better than she realized.

“You’re right about second-guessing,” she said after a few minutes. “Absolutely right.”

“We do it anyway.”

“But after a certain point, it’s a waste of time and energy, isn’t it? Because once you’ve learned what there is to learn, you should let it go.”

Feeling oddly awkward, he slipped his own arm around her shoulders. It had been way too long since he’d embraced a woman this way, with a feeling of companionship. And it felt so damn good. The idea that he had no right to her trust seemed to be slipping away on a tide of need.

“Letting go isn’t always easy,” he admitted. “And I had plenty of psychological help afterward. Unfortunately, we can’t go back and change our decisions. Sometimes if we’re honest with ourselves about what we knew when we made them, we know we’d do it all over again.”

“Yeah.”

Was he mistaken, or did she edge a tiny bit closer? His heart tripped. God, he didn’t want to take advantage of her, but he knew his own growing weakness: He wanted her. A whole helluva lot.

“I guess,” she said after a moment, “that that’s the hard part. Accepting that we can’t change it, because later it all looks so…so…”

“Inconceivable?” he suggested. “Because I’m not going to say stupid. I fought that battle once already, and there’s no point in your fighting it. If I’ve managed to learn one thing out of the mess I went through, it’s that you have to cut yourself some slack. Nobody’s perfect, nobody’s omniscient and we’re all just muddling through the best we can.”

A short laugh escaped her. “Dean never muddles.”

“No?”

“Not to hear him tell it, anyway.”

“Well, he seems to have muddled with you a bit.”

“How so?”

The wind kicked up outside, and Hank didn’t speak for a few moments as he watched a tree bend, waiting for it to crack or get uprooted. It didn’t. And then the drum of rain on the roof became almost deafening.

He turned from the window, his arm still around Kelly’s shoulders. “He muddled,” he said firmly. “He didn’t realize what a prize he had in you.”

“I’m no prize.”

“But you were. Young, beautiful, devoted, bright and so very much in love with him. He should have cherished you, not trampled on you.”

He watched her blink in surprise, saw the astonishment in her blue eyes, on her face. “I don’t think…”

“No, don’t argue. You gave him one of life’s most precious gifts—the true, pure, first love of a young woman.”

He watched color rise in her cheeks, visible even though the day had darkened almost to smudge. “I mean that,” he said.

He could see her thinking about that. “You know, you sound almost medieval.”

“What do you mean?”

One corner of her mouth lifted. “You’re a knight errant. You believe in romantic love. Chivalry.”

For an instant the blackness almost seized him again, that acute awareness of his physical shortcomings. Knight errant? Not likely. But the gloom that tried to creep in lost out to the ridiculous image of himself in armor and carrying a lance. In spite of himself, he grinned. “No, my lady, that’s a pedestal too high for me. I’m just a cowboy. A crippled one at that.”

But even as she grinned back at him, he saw another thought occur to her, and her smile faded. “Hank?”

“Yes?”

“Are you saying what I have to offer now isn’t as good?”

Oh, man. The question pierced him and he gripped her by the shoulders. He shook his head, irritated with himself. “All I meant was that Dean was a fool for not realizing what a prize you were. Not that you aren’t still a prize.”

At that, some of the doubt left her and she smiled almost shyly. “Keep talking, cowboy. My ego could use a boost.”

“I suppose it could.” Given what she’d been through, a huge boost might be in order. The problem was that he had no idea how to provide it, or even if he could.

All he could think to do, however, was pull her close for a hug as the storm raged outside. Inside, however, it was as if the storm went away. Inside, he felt things he hadn’t felt in a long time—how good it was to hold a woman close. Just how damn good a hug felt. So good.

He tipped his head a bit, pressing his face into her hair, and inhaling deeply. He could smell the faint aroma of a perfumed shampoo, mixed with the scents of woman, of a woman who had worked hard that day. He felt intoxicated by it.

“With Fran,” he said huskily, “it was different,” he said simply. For some reason, he needed her to know that. He didn’t know what it was yet—it might be nothing at all—but it was just different. And that was good.

“Good,” she said, almost as if she read his mind. She lifted her other arm so that she hugged him back with both. “It’s different for me, too.”

“Good.”

She snuggled closer, and the warmth grew in him, like a morning sun rising, burning off the chill of a long, cold night. Such feelings were dangerous, but just then he didn’t care. It had been so long since he’d felt that kind of internal warmth, that kind of easing of every tension and bad memory. Peace, that’s what it was, as if all the burdens had been lifted.

And by something as simple as a hug.

Without thinking, he kissed her on the head. But at that moment his hip chose to stab him with a pain so sharp he stumbled.

“Hank? Hank, are you all right?”

The pang was so severe he couldn’t even answer. He dragged himself over to the couch and flopped, coming down mostly on his back, grabbing his knee and trying to stretch out the hip joint.

Kelly flew to his side, kneeling beside him. “What can I do?” she asked desperately.

“Wait.” It was all he could squeeze out. It would pass, the worst of it. It always did. But damn, he hated when it came out of the blue like this, without even a warning so he could get ready. And he thought he was going to protect her?

She continued to kneel beside him, and every time he opened his eyes, he saw her worry. “It’ll pass,” he managed. “It’ll pass.”

And finally it began to ease, as if the daggers that had been thrust into him were being removed one by one. Slowly, cautiously, he stretched his leg out.

“Damn!” He swore quietly but emphatically.

“Are you okay?” she asked. Her face pinched with concern.

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine. Just don’t ever let anyone tell you that being crushed under a three-story building can be fully repaired.”

Her lips pursed. Then a crooked smile appeared. “You get around pretty well, for a lame cowboy.”

He drew a couple of deep breaths, trying to summon an answering smile for her. “Yeah, reckon I do.”

Her brow knit. “How bad was it?”

“Bad,” he admitted. He tried to sit up, but his hip voiced an opinion about that, so he let himself fall back.

“What? A hip? More than that?”

“A lot more. One hip had to be replaced. And given the trouble I have with the one they repaired, sometimes I think about having it replaced, too. Fractured pelvis. Broken ribs, broken legs…aw, hell, Kelly, I was basically raspberry gelatin in a skin pouch.”

She winced and grimaced. “My God.”

“Well, that’s how the doc described it. Although I don’t think it was quite that bad.”

“And burns? Did you get burned, too?”

“Some, but not a whole lot. Most of it was on my back. Medically induced comas are wonderful things.”

“I can imagine.”

“No damage to my spine, although the muscles got pretty insulted by the impact with my breathing tank. So, see, I was lucky.”

She sat back on her heels, just looking at him. “Lucky. I’m starting to hate that word.”

“I’ve felt that way myself, from time to time.”

“You must have been in the hospital forever.”

“Actually, only a couple of months. Then I was in rehab, because I had to learn to walk with all the new parts. But I get around pretty well now.”

“You sure do. But you hurt all the time, don’t you?”

“Well, some. Most of the time I can ignore it. Sometimes, like just now, not so much.”

So there, he’d told her he was a busted-up husk of a man, and by rights she should be looking for someone else to watch over her, because at this moment he doubted he’d be much help if the bad guys showed up. Of course, that was this moment.

But she amazed him. Instead of getting all distressed because he’d helped draw a killer her way, and then had offered protection he might well not be capable of providing, she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. Her lips were warm, the touch like fire. It zinged through his body, making things ache in a totally different way.

“You’re a hero, Hank Jackson.”

“Aw, hell, don’t say that!” She couldn’t have chosen better words to make him angry. And anger was enough to make it possible for him to sit up.

“Why not?”

“I’m no hero. Because I went back into that building, two of the people I loved most in the world followed me. They wouldn’t let me go alone. And they died. They’re the heroes.”

She had sat back on her heels again, and her face expressed distress, and maybe even a little anger of her own. “Maybe you don’t think so,” she said quietly.

“Not only don’t I think so, I never want to hear that freaking word again! God, I wish they hadn’t followed me. I made the decision, I should be the one taking a dirt nap. Instead, my best friends are dead.”

Thunder boomed so loudly the house shook, but neither of them moved. Hank was panting with anger and pain, and Kelly was looking up at him with wide blue eyes that revealed nothing.

“I think,” she said, “that you misunderstood me. I meant you’re a hero now. A lot of people couldn’t live with the kind of pain you’re experiencing.”

“A lot of people do,” he grumped. But his anger began to ease.

“How much pain medication do you take?”

The question caught him unawares. “Why? Just some aspirin.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think you looked like you take something like oxycontin.”

“I did for a while.”

“I’m sure. But I’ve seen plenty of Dean’s patients, none of whom went through anything like what you go through every day, begging for more pain relief. Dean used to talk about it. Women who should have been far enough past surgery to settle for aspirin or a little codeine whined that they couldn’t stand the pain.”

“Did he give them what they wanted?”

She shrugged. “Probably. Dean wanted happy patients.”

“Some people don’t handle pain very well.”

“Trust me, they never suffered what you suffered. And they’d be back for more in a couple of years, so it couldn’t have been that bad. But you, you’d be justified in being on something stronger, at least some of the time, and you settle for aspirin. In my book, that makes you a hero.”

And for once the word didn’t tighten his stomach into an iron knot. But he still dismissed it. “I’m no hero. We all do what we have to in life. That doesn’t make us heroes.”

“Maybe not.”

He was grateful that she didn’t argue further, but he had to admit that she had just put a new spin on the word hero for him. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. The world was full of heroes of the type she was talking about. He’d met more than a handful in rehab, or those times when the department would visit the children’s cancer ward.

The worst of the pain in his hip eased, and he leaned back, ignoring the sensation of grinding glass. Kelly stood, shaking out her legs, and came to sit beside him. The room was even darker now, as evening added to the storm’s blackness.

Another boom of thunder shook the house, and lightning flashed blindingly.

Hank reached out, felt for her hand and took it. He had avoided the contact of touch for a long time now, until Kelly in fact. And only in the last couple of days, since she had come into his life, did he realize how much he had missed it.

Gratitude filled him as she turned her hand over and clasped his. “This is some storm,” she remarked. “Like the ones we get in Miami. Maybe worse, except for tropical storms and hurricanes.”

“They can get pretty strong here,” he agreed. “At least we don’t get a lot of tornadoes.”

Lightning flared again, blinding him, followed by another boom that shook the house.

“The mountains,” he volunteered, “usually block the worst weather from getting to us. It has to come up from the south, this kind of weather.”

“You studied meteorology?”

He shook his head, smiling faintly. “No, just some stuff I picked up along the way.” Then he asked a question. “The way you were talking about Dean’s patients, it sounds like you don’t exactly approve of plastic surgery.”

A few seconds passed before she answered. “I don’t disapprove. I understand that some people’s self-image and prospects are totally tied up with how they look. And plastic surgeons work miracles for people with all kinds of burns and other serious defects.”

“But the way you talked about those women…” He let the thought dangle.

“Well,” she said frankly, “I think some of them would do better to spend their money on a therapist. Every surgery is dangerous. Things can go wrong. Infections happen. It’s not something to do lightly. But some of them did it just that way.”

“I see.”

Another flare of lightning allowed him to see her shake her head as she continued speaking. “And some of them couldn’t understand, no matter how often Dean explained, that there’s a limit to the number of face-lifts you can have without looking like a wax doll. Just so much he can tighten skin, and just so often. So eventually, age takes its toll. There’s no permanent escape. All you can do is delay it.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s true. It always amazed me how young some of our patients were, too. They’d start pushing twenty-five and they’d already be looking for botox or other procedures.”

She turned a little on the couch so that she was looking at him. As dark as it was, he doubted that she could see much, and he wondered if he should turn on a light. But she didn’t ask, and he was enjoying the darkness.

She continued speaking. “I think that’s sick, even if I did win the looks lottery. Besides, what good did it do me to be beautiful? I wasted eight years of my life with a man who would never have noticed me if my nose were too big.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Let me tell you something. Truth.” He held his hand up as if taking an oath. “I’m a man like any other, but I generally don’t think about how people look. Most look pretty good actually, especially when they’re feeling good and they smile. Fran used to complain that her shoulders were too broad, that her face was too round, that she had an overlapping tooth she wished she could have fixed. I never noticed those things. I thought she was perfect.”

“I’m sure she was.” Kelly sighed, then surprised him by touching his cheek briefly. “I’m sorry about Fran.”

“Me, too. She was a great friend, a great partner. I’ll always miss her.” With effort he shook off the mood that was in danger of descending on him. “But I can’t change it. I took up a lot of therapy time with that one.”

“I can imagine. I’d probably do the same, but with a lot less reason.”

“Don’t minimize what you went through. That doesn’t help anything. We both lost love, just in different ways.”

She surprised him then by curling into his side and resting her head on his shoulder. “Is this okay?”

It was more than okay. He liked it. Moving gingerly, he put his arm around her. “It’s fine.”

“I’m starting to doubt myself again,” she said quietly.

“About what?”

“About whether that guy who attacked me was sent by Dean. Maybe it was just a random attack.”

“A rather strange one. I guess if he’s after you, we’re going to find out. If not, well, I’ll go with you to Miami for your court date.”

She sighed and snuggled a little closer. “You’ve managed to make me feel better than I have in a long time. Thanks, Hank.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“But you have. You’ve given me your company, and I’ve been alone for a long time. Forever, it sometimes feels like.”

“I know that feeling.”

“I’m sure you do. And then you’ve offered to keep an eye on me. Maybe I’ll actually be able to sleep tonight.”

“You haven’t been sleeping well?”

“Not at all, not since the attack. It’s like part of me is always on the alert.”

He figured he could understand that, too. And he could only think of one thing to do about it.

“Come on,” he said. He pushed himself up off the couch, ignoring the way his body screeched at him. It never liked moving after it had been still for a while.

He reached out a hand and she took it, rising to face him.

Without a word, he led her down the hall to the spare room. “Crawl into bed,” he said. “Sleep. I’ll be right here to keep watch.”

She shook her head, looking into his eyes as lightning flared again. “That’s not fair to you.”

“You can shut down your ears if another pair is doing your listening. No reason to think he’d look for you here, anyway.”

No reason at all. Or so he told himself.

But since Kelly had entered his life, he’d been shaken out of the numb sense of disconnection he’d fostered. He cared again.

And while he said there was no reason for anyone to look for her at his house, he wished he was as sure of that as he sounded.

When she had finished changing into nightclothes and had climbed into the bed, she called to him.

He went to stand in the bedroom door and saw her pat the bed beside her. “Keep me company,” she said. “I don’t want to be alone. Just lie here with me?”

He wished he believed it would be as simple as that. He could have refused, but her unwillingness to be alone was something he was all too familiar with himself. The solitude of night could be the worst time.

Slowly, sure he was making a huge mistake, he walked over to the bed. This was going to be a trial by fire.