She couldn’t tell that to Ruth so she quickly searched for a believable explanation. “I don’t think Mr. McKinnon and I would suit,” she finally said, unable to keep the regret from her voice. “We met last week shortly after I moved in and, um, had a few words.”
Ruth blinked at that piece of information. After a few moments she nodded. “Your choice, I suppose. Too bad. You’d have been perfect, especially since you’ve been around hurt folks before. I’ll try to find someone else, I guess. Shouldn’t be too hard. One of my other housekeepers would probably do it in a heartbeat. It’s pretty easy money. Much easier than cleaning toilets and making beds all day.”
Now that was a matter of opinion.
Allie thought of Gage McKinnon, all long limbs and lean power. Even if she hadn’t been worried the sharp-eyed FBI agent would find out she was a fugitive, she wasn’t sure she could work so closely with him, not when she couldn’t manage to think straight around the man.
“I’m sorry, Ruth. I do appreciate you thinking of me, but I believe I’ll stick to cleaning toilets and making beds. Speaking of that, are you sure you don’t mind if I take the girls along with me today?”
Ruth shrugged. “Don’t see why not. As long as you’re working on empty vacation rentals it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll see if I can arrange your schedule this week so you work only vacant units.”
What would she have done without Ruth and her kindness? She couldn’t even bear to think about it. “Thank you.”
Ruth, as usual, shrugged off her gratitude. “So what’s going on with Dora?”
“Nothing, really. The girls can just be particular about what they like. They’ve decided they and Dora don’t suit.”
“I’ll try to think of someone else. Still, it seems to me the solution is right there in front of your nose. McKinnon needs help, you need a different situation for the girls. What better place for them than being with their mama all day while she works?”
Allie opened her mouth to reply, but Ruth cut her off with a shake of her no-nonsense graying head. “Don’t say no. Think about it. He doesn’t come home from the hospital until day after tomorrow. You might change your mind before then.”
She wouldn’t change her mind, Allie thought. She couldn’t afford to, as much as part of her might want to. The stakes were simply too high.
Gage shifted in the back seat of an FBI Suburban, trying to find the impossible—a comfortable position. Just how the hell was he supposed to get comfortable when he had two thigh-length casts on his legs?
It was only a half hour drive from the University of Utah hospital up Parley’s Canyon to his house in Park City. He could survive for that long. He had to if he wanted to make it back to his place.
No way was he going to recuperate in some rehab facility like the doctors at the university medical center wanted him to do. If he had to be cooped up somewhere for weeks at a time, he wanted it to be in his own space, surrounded by his own stuff. Not in some nursing home that smelled of stale urine and hopelessness.
“Everything okay back there?” Cale Davis, his partner of little more than a month, asked with concern from behind the wheel.
“Yeah.” Gage tried not to wince as the Suburban hit a pothole, sending fiery pain shooting through his legs like twin comets.
“You sure? I can pull over if you need a breather.”
“No. Just keep driving. I’m fine.”
Neither Cale nor the other man in the front seat—Davis’s temporary partner Thompson Lovell—looked convinced by his words but they didn’t argue with him.
“Potter called while we were at the hospital,” Cale said after a moment, referring to their boss William Potter, the special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City office. “Juber was arraigned this morning on attempted-murder charges, assaulting a federal officer and using his vehicle as a deadly weapon. Not to mention all the charges associated with his Internet child porn ring. There’s talk about a guilty plea, at least to the charges involving you. Since a dozen Feds and local cops watched him pin you against that wall, I don’t see what choice he has.”
Gage groaned inwardly—and not only because the Suburban hit another bump in the road. He had no one to blame for his injuries but himself. He had been an idiot and now he was paying for it.
If he hadn’t been distracted, he never would have made the greenie mistake of taking the shortcut between Lyle Juber’s pickup and a cement retaining wall on his way to yank the man out of his vehicle and make the arrest.
His only excuse was that he’d been caught up in the excitement of finally nailing the bastard. The case had been a long and ugly one, begun during his previous assignment in the Bay Area. He had trailed Juber here to Salt Lake City and continued building the case against him. Finally higher-ups determined there was enough evidence to make an arrest.
They’d found him in his hulking old pickup on his way to the grocery store. The guy had reacted like the cornered rat that he was. To the surprise of everyone on the team, he had resisted arrest with a vengeance.
Instead of calmly walking out of his truck with his hands up as he’d been ordered, he shoved the heavy truck into gear, crushing Gage against the wall, then backed into the other officers standing around with guns drawn.
Everybody but Gage had been able to dive out of the way. Because of the way he’d been positioned, Gage had ended up with one femur shattered in four places just above the knee and the other femur had sustained a clean simple fracture.
Juber hadn’t gotten far before the tires of his truck had been blown out and he’d been taken into custody. That was small consolation to Gage, facing several weeks of sick leave and more of rehab.
Not to mention the humiliation of knowing he had screwed up.
He would have plenty of time to obsess over every moment of his mistake. But at least he would be doing it at home, not in some damn gray-walled hospital room.
The doctors thought he needed another week in the hospital but Gage knew he’d be a raving lunatic by then. He hated the nurses waking him every time he managed to drift off to sleep, hated the lack of privacy, hated the pills they shoved down his throat at every opportunity.
He could handle this, he thought as Cale at last pulled in front of his rental unit. He had a home-care nurse coming to check on him and his saint of a landlady said she’d hired someone to help him get around throughout the day.
On the other hand, maybe he’d been a little too optimistic about his own abilities. By the time Thom and Cale helped him out of the Suburban and into the blasted wheelchair he was going to have to use for the next several weeks—until he could bear weight on his less-injured leg and start using crutches—his head was spinning and his gut churned as if he’d just climbed off a killer roller coaster.
He needed a painkiller but he hated the damn things. He closed his eyes in a vain effort to regain his equilibrium while Cale pushed up a temporary ramp that his landlady must have juryrigged into the cottage. He made a mental note to add a little extra to the rent check for all her work on his behalf since he had contacted her about his injuries.
“Do you have the key?” Lovell asked.
Gage thought about it and realized his key ring was probably still at his desk in Salt Lake City. He made a face.
“Guess not.” The agent pulled out a credit card, ready to pick the lock, then tried the knob. It turned easily, putting Gage instantly on alert. Why was the door open?
Lovell opened the door and Davis wheeled him inside the living room. Gage gazed around, disoriented. He had been in the hospital for over a week. Had he maybe forgotten where he lived, given the guys the wrong address somehow?
No, this was his cottage. He recognized his furniture—the leather sofa and recliner he’d brought along from his previous assignment in San Francisco, the oak coffee table he’d made with his own hands the last time he’d visited his father’s cabinet shop in Nevada, the big-screen TV he hardly had time to watch.
This was his cotta
ge but what the hell had happened to it? He wasn’t particularly messy but neither was he obsessive about housework. This place sparkled, without any dust or that closed-up feeling he might have expected after it had sat empty for a week.
There were fresh flowers in a canning jar on the coffee table and the whole place smelled of clean laundry and chicken noodle soup.
He was still trying to figure what dimension Cale and Lovell had wheeled him into when a beautiful woman stepped out of his kitchen like something out of his deepest fantasies.
She was lithe and curvy and wore nothing but an apron.
Chapter 3
He blinked at the vision in front of him.
She had short, wispy brown hair, blue eyes the color of mountain columbines behind small wire-rimmed glasses, and a figure that could make a man’s mouth water.
“Oh! You’re here!” the delectable vision standing in his living room exclaimed. “I’m so sorry. I was busy cleaning up in the kitchen and didn’t hear you arrive.”
Gage was vaguely aware of Lovell and Cale sharing a look before his partner stepped forward with his hand outstretched, a charming smile playing around his mouth.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m Cale Davis and this is Thompson Lovell. You must be a friend of McKinnon’s.”
She gave him a hesitant smile and shook his hand, then reached behind her to untie the strings of her apron. Gage was vaguely aware he was holding his breath, then he let it out on a disappointed sigh. She had shorts on underneath, he was rather disheartened to discover. Navy-blue shorts that skimmed the top of long, shapely legs.
“We’re not really friends,” she answered Cale. “We’ve only met once, just for a moment.”
Through the pain beginning to pound through his legs like tribal drums beating out a message, Gage forced himself to look at her more closely. Now he recognized her. If he hadn’t been half-dazed from pain and fatigue, he would have figured it out much earlier. “You’re the lady from next door with the two dark-haired little girls.”
She nodded with a wary look.
He must have been blind or crazy not to have noticed those high cheekbones and her full, delectable lips when he spoke with her before. No, when he had gone to her house to talk to her, he had only been focused on her daughters’ safety, just as he should have been.
“Yes. I’m Lisa C-Connors. You met my daughters Gaby and Anna.”
“The flower pickers. Where are they?”
“Playing in your backyard. Your fenced backyard.”
Fences wouldn’t mean diddly to someone who wanted to take two cute little girls. He was going to say something along those lines but pain again reached up with a mighty fist and yanked the words out of his head. He grimaced instead, suddenly light-headed.
Damn, he hated this.
“You must be exhausted. Let’s get you into bed, Mr. McKinnon.”
A quick, sensual image flashed through his mind, momentarily taking the edge off his discomfort. Bed. Not a bad idea. It had been way too long since he’d slid his fingers over soft, female skin—filled his hands with willing flesh—and he suddenly wanted desperately for that willing flesh to belong to the woman standing in front of him.
But then, he probably wouldn’t be good for much with two bum legs, and he definitely didn’t need Lovell and Cale looking on.
“A very attractive offer, believe me,” he murmured through the soft haze in his head. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline. Maybe another time, sweetheart.”
Color flared high along her cheekbones. “Not funny, Mr. McKinnon.”
“Sorry. You’re right.” He drew in a breath, feeling like both a jerk and a major-league wuss. He never thought he could be this wiped out by a couple of war wounds.
“How long ago did you take your last pain pill?”
He raised an eyebrow, wishing the simple movement didn’t make his head feel quite so woozy. “Remind me again why any of this is your business. What are you doing here? This is still my house, isn’t it?”
She frowned. “Ruth didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“She hired me to help you out while you recuperate.”
“She told me she hired someone. I never thought to ask details.”
Another wave of pain washed over him and he gripped the armrests of the wheelchair. Okay, at this point he was willing to forget about soft, willing flesh, as long as he could get horizontal for a few moments.
Lisa Connors stepped forward. “You need to be in bed. Let’s get you settled.”
He didn’t have any energy left to argue so he let her wheel him into his bedroom, where he discovered the little elves had also been busy. His comfortably roomy king bed was gone, replaced by some steel hospital contraption just like the one he had just left.
“Where’s my bed?” he asked, uncomfortably aware he sounded like a grumpy toddler in need of a nap.
“Ruth and I took it down and stored it in the shed behind the house. The home health-care provider sent this one over instead since the doctors said you’ll need to keep your legs elevated a great deal of the time and this way we can raise the foot of your bed to facilitate that. With that big bed you had, there wasn’t much room in here to move a wheelchair around and we thought this one will be much easier for you to transfer in and out of since it can be lowered to wheelchair level.”
He liked his bed. He was a big man who needed space to sprawl around in, and these dinky hospital beds just didn’t cut it. He didn’t want to sound any more whiny than he already did, though, so he opted to keep his mouth shut.
He was distracted, anyway, when his neighbor lady took charge and helped Cale and Lovell move him from the wheelchair to the bed. He was relieved to discover the pain of the transfer was only agonizing instead of excruciating.
By the time he was settled, he was thinking he owed the doctors a huge apology. They were right, he was crazy to disregard their advice and insist on going home so early.
“You’re a lucky man, McKinnon,” Cale murmured to him after Lisa left the room to grab his pain pills and a glass of water. “I wouldn’t mind being laid up for a couple weeks if I had such a sweet young thing attending to my every need.”
A sweet young thing with two little girls and a chip the size of Montana on her shoulder, Gage reminded himself.
If he could hang on to any of the thoughts racketing around his head like a pinball in the middle of a record-breaking game, he could probably come up with at least a couple of reasons why it wasn’t such a great idea to have her here caring for him.
Since he couldn’t think right now beyond sinking into this bed and not waking up for a week, he decided he could always worry about it later.
She returned with the water and his prescription and handed him two of those annoying little white pills. “Here you go. Are you hungry? I made some chicken noodle soup. My grandma’s recipe, with real homemade noodles. It might help settle your stomach from the pills.”
Soup sounded delicious but he was afraid his stomach just wouldn’t handle it.
“I’m fine,” he said, taking only one of the pills and returning the other to the bottle. He hated this loopy feeling and the medicine only made it worse. A few more days and he’d be ready to chuck the whole damn bottle into the toilet.
“I think it would be best if we let him rest now,” she told the other two agents as she bustled around him tucking in blankets, fluffing pillows, taking the glass of water from him to set on the bedside table.
She smelled delicious, he thought as she leaned over him to adjust the pillows once more. Like violets and sunshine.
“Sure. We were just leaving,” Cale said with a smirk. Lucky, lucky man, he mouthed to Gage on the way out the door.
He didn’t like bossy women, Gage thought as he watched them go. Even when their subtle spring scent made his mouth water. He closed his eyes as the pill did its magic and took the edge off his pain. No, he didn’t like bossy women at all. That was only one of
many reasons why having her here just wouldn’t work out.
He made a mental note to tell her that as soon as he woke up.
Taking this job had been a mistake.
A huge mistake.
Her nerves jumping, Allie finished throwing together peanut butter and honey sandwiches for the girls in the FBI agent’s kitchen. She didn’t belong here. She should be staying as far away as possible from this man who could completely destroy her family.
If he recognized her as a fugitive, everything would be ruined.
She didn’t know if Joaquin and Irena had reported them missing. Maybe they hadn’t even realized she was gone yet since relations between them hadn’t exactly been friendly since the beginning of the custody battle.
But eventually they would try to visit the girls and would find her empty house. Would they go to the police or hire a private investigator on their own?
Even now she could be a wanted fugitive with her name and description broadcast to every law enforcement officer across the country. Taking the girls out of Philadelphia without notifying them was probably in violation of a court order, no matter how confident Twila Langston was that the judge’s ruling awarding joint custody to the DeBarillas because of her diabetes would be overturned.
Patient advocate groups were already rallying behind her cause, and she had been allowed to retain sole custody pending appeal. But she was fairly certain that custody arrangement didn’t include the freedom to flee across the country without leaving a trace.
Maybe all this was for nothing, but she didn’t dare take that chance. Not after she had learned from the girls that Irena had taken them to get passport pictures taken.
Even if Jaime’s parents could only win court-ordered visitation, they could still take the girls to Venezuela during one of those visits. Once in their own country, Allie knew they had the power and wealth to keep her from the girls forever.
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