How long he lay there, he didn’t know. When he became aware of everything around him, the cold tile against his jaw and hip, the soft purr of the computer across the room, Jake realized pain no longer crippled him.
He uncurled his fists and pushed himself up into a sitting position. Every joint protested. He shook his head to clear it. He’d thought his attacks couldn’t get much worse, but he’d been wrong. Dead wrong. With this one, his mind had ceased to function. Any coherent thought had been beyond his grasp. It scared the hell out of him.
Grasping the corner of a table, Jake rose to his feet. His legs shook from his weight. He had to get to Margot. If he was too late—
No. He wouldn’t think it. Drawing in a fortifying breath, he fumbled his way to the lab’s door. He grasped the knob and flung the door wide. Strength was returning to his limbs, but not half as fast as he wanted. He trudged through the snow-covered yard. The going was too slow. Slick snow and patches of ice impeded his way up the slope to the house. Plus his damn legs. They weren’t working!
Jake fell once and had to grab a brittle branch from an aspen tree, which cracked and nearly snapped beneath his weight as he heaved himself up. His arms and legs wouldn’t respond to his brain’s signals. They were too damned sluggish and uncoordinated. Everything about his recovery seemed slower, so much slower than all the other attacks. Jake knew it was a bad sign, but he didn’t dare think about that now. He needed to focus on Margot.
He glanced up. The sun had almost dipped over the horizon. But still enough light illuminated the way to the house and the empty space beside Margot’s 4X4. Malcolm was gone.
Jake pushed himself harder, racing up the remaining snow-covered hill, then pounding up the stairs to the veranda. She lay on her back, twisted at the waist, her arms flung to her sides. Choking back a cry, he dropped down beside her, his knees skidding across the icy wood deck.
“Margot...”
She was still unconscious. But for how long? A few minutes, an hour, or longer? He didn’t think it was too long, but he hadn’t been paying attention to the time when he’d first seen her from the lab. Quickly, he checked her pulse and found it strong beneath his fingers. With gentle hands, he explored her scalp and found a large lump on the side of her head. The skin was unbroken, but that didn’t discount the severity of the blow to her head.
He brushed a gloved knuckle across her cheekbone.
“Margot.”
A soft groan parted her lips as she stirred, shifting and moving both legs. That was all he needed. He hauled her up into his arms and carried her into the house. He closed the door with a heel. Still weak from the attack in the lab, he strained beneath her weight as he carried her down the hall. She was much heavier than he’d expected. Grunting, he hefted her higher against his chest.
Margot’s head fell back, limply cradled against the crook of his arm, exposing the smooth, long column of her throat. Her hair fell away from her face, affording him a clear glimpse of her clean, delicate features. She was beautiful. The blue-black hair, milky complexion, red, pouty lips were so like his childhood visions of what Snow White would look like if she’d appeared in his make believe world of dragons and wicked wizards.
He found the sofa in her den and carefully placed her across the cushions. After flipping on her desk lamp, he hurried back and sank down on the floor beside her. Taking both of her frigid hands in his he began rubbing them to get some warmth into them, but froze at the feel of them against his fingers.
“Damn it!”
Even with the muted lighting from the room’s lamp, Jake saw it all. Blood. Glass. Tiny slivers cut the insides of Margot’s hands, while streaks of blood clung to the creases of her palms, her cuticles and beneath her nails. Her hands were a mess. Jake didn’t know how, and he was almost afraid to find out. He hadn’t seen any evidence of broken glass, but then again he hadn’t been looking for it.
He needed a flashlight, tweezers, hot water, antiseptic and a cloth. It took him a while to find everything, but he needn’t have worried. She hadn’t yet stirred.
Jake wedged the flashlight into the crease between the cushions of the couch and worked it till the beam shown down on her hands, but faced away from him. The last thing she needed was to get a real good look at him. Then she’d have a bigger scare than any Malcolm could ever give her.
She shifted several times as Jake wiped the blood gently away with a damp cloth, careful not to pull at the pieces of glass. When he used the tweezers to pull out a fragment, she finally woke up.
“Ouch!” She jerked her hand from his grasp. “What are you doing? Trying to kill me?”
###
Margot squinted at Jake but couldn’t see clearly because some stupid light shone right in her face. But she did glance down and got a good look at her hands. She winced. “Did I do that?”
“Did you?” Jake reached over, grabbed the flashlight and quickly shut it off. “Or was it Malcolm?”
“Malcolm?” she asked. Margot was having a devil of a time remembering. “I—I—”
“I swear he’ll regret the day he touched you.”
“Touched?” she croaked. God. Stupid questions, but she couldn’t seem to get her brain working right. Jake oozing such fury didn’t help things either. Those sunglasses of his didn’t hide his clenched jaw or ridged posture. He looked ready to jump up, go after her ex-husband and use his flashlight on Malcolm.
“No... It didn’t happen like that.” Her encounter with Malcolm came back to her with far too much clarity.
Using her elbows, Margot twisted around and tried to sit up, and then wished she hadn’t. Her head felt about ready to explode from the rest of her body.
“Here, let me.”
Before she had a chance to protest, Jake set down the flashlight, gently grasped her beneath her arms and eased her gently up against the armrest. He sat back on his heels and frowned. “How’s your head?”
Margot lifted a hand to touch the back of her skull and stopped in mid-air when she saw and remembered the condition of her hands. The last thing she wanted to do was get her hair tangled in them. “It feels like someone took a baseball bat to it. That or a battle ax.”
“You probably have a concussion.”
She laughed somewhat self-consciously. “I guess I’m more of a klutz than I thought.”
“I saw you struggle with Malcolm.”
“Yes, well. He was provoked. I hit him with a milk carton. He didn’t take too kindly to that.”
“Hmmm.”
Jake didn’t sound convinced...if she could go by that growl of his. In fact, he sounded angrier than before.
“Here, let me see your hands.” He snapped on the flashlight and shoved it back between the sofa’s cushions to shine on her hands. “I need to get this glass out.”
Margot offered both her palms. “Yes, well. He didn’t hurt me. He might have wanted to, but then again maybe he didn’t. I’ll never know now. Anyway, before he had a chance to touch me, I slipped and fell.” God, she was rambling. But she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to. “I might have grabbed him for balance. Maybe that’s the struggle you saw. So, I’m the one that banged up my head, not Malcolm.”
She hadn’t a clue way she was protecting Malcolm. Goodness knew, he didn’t deserve it. Then it dawned on Margot—she wasn’t protecting Malcolm. She was protecting Jake. She didn’t want him going after Malcolm and getting hurt.
“Hmmm.”
That sounded a little less angry, Margot decided in some relief as she watched Jake’s bent head in silence. He might be upset, but his hands, encased in black leather, were gentle. How he worked so easily with those gloves was beyond her.
Only last night he’d used those same hands on her. Then they’d been naked, supple and so very knowledgeable as to how to please her. But it was so much more than just his touch that had left her shattered. It was the way he’d touched her, the emotions behind his caresses and just as importantly—how they’d made her feel.
She’d touch
ed him back, entwined her hands with his and felt their strength and their power. His hands had been nothing like she’d imagined—somehow flawed or disfigured. “Why do you wear gloves?”
Jake’s touch on her stilled, but he didn’t look up. “Why do you ask? Is it important to you—that they’re scarred?”
The questions were casually asked, but Margot sensed a motive behind them. “No,” she returned softly and in all honesty.
He cleared his throat. “Good.”
And then he returned to administrating her hands in silence. It was a new, awkward silence, one filled with tension. And it all had to do with that one question. Were his hands that badly disfigured that he didn’t even want to talk about it? His ten digits were all intact and in working order. She knew that. All she had to do was remember last night.
“Are you self conscious about them? Is that it?”
Jake shifted. “It’s not that.”
“You needn’t be self-conscious.”
“Well, I am! They’re ugly. Can you drop the subject?”
“Sure.”
Jake sighed and paused long enough to say, “I didn’t mean to snap, but it’s a sore subject. Maybe in time—”
“It doesn’t matter.” She shrugged to show she wasn’t bothered. “It’s none of my business.”
After opening a tube of anti-bacterial ointment, he dabbed a dot onto her palm and spread a light coating over each cut.
“I’m almost done,” he said.
Jake glanced up at Margot again and looked at her through those stupid, black glasses of his. She couldn’t see anything behind either lens. That was something else she wanted to ask him about. Other than the flashlight hooked up to shine on her hands, the room was in deep shadow, which didn’t explain why he wore his glasses now. But she didn’t think asking him about it was a good idea right this minute. He hadn’t wanted to talk about his hands, so she had a good idea getting into this new territory would only end up in more silence.
Plus, hadn’t she just said that it was none of her business anyway? And she most assuredly didn’t want to wonder why it bothered her so much that it was none of her business. She’d made a point of keeping out of other people’s lives when she’d moved back. That way, they’d stay out of hers. Margot should be happy about that. After all, that’s what she’d always wanted, wasn’t it?
No—Yes. Of course it was.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No. Not at all.” She hadn’t realized she was muttering aloud. “You’re very gentle. Now I know what they mean by ‘doctor’s hands’.”
“I’m not that kind of doctor.”
His words were clipped and impersonal. He’d turned cold on her.
“You really should have seen Malcolm’s face,” she said, interjecting a lightness to her voice. Anything to erase the strain between them. “He didn’t look too attractive with a pint of milk dripping from him.”
“I can imagine it wasn’t pretty.”
Margot might not be able to see behind those glasses of his, but she saw a definite twitch of his lips.
She nodded. “And the shock on his face. He looked like an albino fish, his mouth opening and closing, spouting all that milk.”
“Now that would be something I’d have liked to see.”
Ah. Now she definitely heard some humor there. “I think it was the first time I’ve ever seen him so shocked.”
Margot laughed at the memory of Malcolm’s reaction, then immediately winced.
“Your head?” Jake’s voice deepened and warmed with sympathy.
At the pain, she blinked back tears, afraid to nod and worsen the sudden throbbing in her head. “I forgot for a moment.”
“Well, let me have a look. You might have broken the skin after all.” He recapped the tube of ointment and set it down with the towel and tweezers. He rolled the glass fragments in another thick towel and placed it alongside the other items. Quietly, he rose from his place on the floor and moved around the sofa.
Margot felt him right behind her. The soft sigh of his breath, warm and scented with cinnamon, touched the curve of her shoulder and whispered by her cheek. His fingers, the merest of touches, probed the back of her skull, parted her hair, then slid deftly through the strands and sent little shivers across her neck. But even so, when he touched the spot right behind her left ear, she flinched.
“Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” Her voice sounded a little too breathless, a little too unsure. “How bad does it look?”
“I don’t think it looks too bad, but it’s hard to say with all this hair.” A small pause. “You have beautiful hair. So thick. And silky. I love how the light turns it to silver in places.”
She closed her eyes. He glided his fingers through her hair once again, but this time she knew he did it because he found pleasure in touching her. She sat rooted to the cushion and struggled not to remember last night.
“Can you give me that flashlight?” he asked.
“Ah. Sure.”
She handed it to him over her shoulder and waited impatiently. He was far too close. Margot could actually feel the heat radiating from him as he stood behind her.
“The skin’s not broken, but you’ll definitely have a contusion.”
“I’m not surprised with the way it hurts.”
“He hasn’t hit you before, has he?”
Margot didn’t have to ask who ‘he’ was. Not with the way Jake’s voice had lowered to that dark, dangerous, almost savage pitch. She shivered. Jake might appear the mild-mannered man at times, but there were other times like now, where she wondered just how dangerous he was. God knew, he was dangerous to her peace of mind. He had her completely confused, even dumbfounded as to what she wanted from life.
“Has he?” Jake asked again, obviously not about to drop the subject, as he placed the flashlight on the floor by her side.
“No.”
It was the truth, she told herself as Jake clasped her shoulders with his hands. He pressed his thumbs into the muscles below her neck and made strong circular movements. After a few minutes, the throbbing in her head eased and she closed her eyes and sighed in pleasure. Beneath the steady massage of his hands, she found herself relaxing and melting into the cushions. But that all changed with his next question.
“He did something to you, though. Didn’t he?”
She bit her lip, opened her eyes. “Don’t ask me questions when you yourself aren’t willing to answer any.”
His fingers stilled on her shoulder. “Touché.”
They were back to where they were just five minutes ago. “Yes, well, if the shoe fits...”
He slipped his hands from her shoulders and walked around to her side. “I saw what happened on the porch. He went after you.”
He wouldn’t leave Malcolm alone. She shrugged. “He was a little upset.”
“Come off it, Margot. Malcolm doesn’t get a ‘little’ upset. His temper can get pretty scary—even for me.”
“Okay,” she admitted in a disgruntled tone. “He was a lot upset.”
Jake hunched down beside her. “Why?”
She laughed a hollow, somewhat bitter laugh. She couldn’t look at him. “The disk, of course. He wants it. And I just happened to tell him something he didn’t want to hear. This disk sure is becoming quite popular. I’m beginning to wonder just how much it’s worth. Probably enough to retire. Right?”
“And then some.”
“Well, so far Malcolm’s not getting any closer to retiring. He’s starting to sound pretty desperate.”
“Which makes him a hell of a lot more dangerous. Today, he came too damn close to seriously hurting you. I’m not going to give him another chance to hurt you or anyone else. I should have done something long ago. My mistake. But not anymore.”
Margot grunted. “That’s easier said than done. There’s no proof tying him to Johnny’s death. I can’t think of anything to put him behind bars. At least anything legal.”
“Why
does it have to be legal?” In one fluid motion Jake grabbed the flashlight on the floor and rose to his full height. He tapped the light against his thigh.
Jake’s words sent her nerves jangling. “What do you plan on doing?”
He laughed harshly. “Don’t look so horrified. I’m not going to kill the guy.”
She didn’t relax. “Then what are you going to do?”
Bending down, he picked up the tweezers and other items from the floor. “I better clean this up before someone steps on it.”
“Fine. Ignore my question.” She lifted her hands to rub at her face in frustration, then saw the cuts and dropped them back down into her lap. “But you’re not doing anything without me.”
“I need you to stay out of this.”
“That’s not going to happen. It’s payback time. I’m not going to sit back and watch you squash Malcolm without having my hand in on it. He’s ruined everything I’ve held dear. My self-respect, too many lost years—more importantly—my brother!”
Swinging off the sofa, she stood up too fast. Pain pounded against her skull.
“I need a drink.”
“You don’t need a drink,” he growled. “You need to sit back down and rest.”
She glared at him. “I want a drink.”
“No. You’re not going to get one.”
Headache momentarily forgotten, Margot dodged around him, slipped under his outstretched hand, but didn’t get far—not by any means. He caught her belt loop from behind and yanked her back. At the unexpectedness of his move, she lost her footing and stumbled against him.
Her bottom pressed up against his hips right where it counted. Jake let her go immediately, but not before sexual awareness smacked her all over. Margot turned around and knew immediately that he felt the same tension. It scared her. This hunger, this clawing need.
“Fine.” She backed down, taking a blind step away from him. “I’ll have one later.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“God, you can be so stubborn!” Margot swallowed and clamped a tight fist down on her anger, frustration and hunger. “I’m going to—” bed. She’d caught herself just in time. “We can talk about this tomorrow. I’m tired. Goodnight.”
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