Gun Shy

by Diane Saxon

  “Kate?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Did you want something?”

  Yes. Yes, she did.

  “Kate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is someone there with you? Are you talking to someone else?” Amusement laced his voice.

  She glanced around the empty room. “Yes. Sorry.” What had she said? She had no idea what had just come out of her mouth. “I’m at the hospital. One of the nurses just asked me to sign something.”

  “Okay.”

  Professionalism kicked back in with a nasty jolt. They’d had their two minutes of fun. She needed to get back to the real world.

  “Jack, I need you here.”

  The change in her tone must have alerted him. The flirtation stopped. “What’s up?”

  “I have a woman here. Susan Bankside.”

  “Buddy’s wife.”

  The sick curl of anger slithered through her stomach. She should have taken the opportunity to castrate the man instead of tending to him. “I didn’t know, but yes. She’s asking for you. Only you.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  »»•««

  She waited for him to arrive with a cup of coffee ready to hand to him as he walked through the door with Bill in tow. Surprised to see he’d brought someone else, she handed her own drink over to Bill.

  She’d brought herself under control so she could explain everything to them, all the injuries, old and new. The baby. The damage to the mother.

  The ice in her veins disguised her pain. The anger in her soul churned to be released.

  “Why doesn’t she want me there?” asked Bill.

  “She didn’t say specifically you, Bill, just that she only wanted Jack to know.”

  “I went to school with her. We’ve known each other since we were six years old.”

  “She’s ashamed, Bill, and I think she just needs to be comfortable at the moment. Perhaps when she feels a little stronger,” Kate pacified.

  “The girl needs someone now, Kate. She needs someone who cares. Someone who knows her and can support her. She needs someone who’ll tell her to leave the bastard and press charges against him, otherwise he’s going to get away with it. Next time he does it, he’s going to kill her. Our hands are tied unless she tells us to press charges. She doesn’t have anyone else who gives a shit. She shouldn’t be ashamed, it’s not her fault.”

  Jack simply leaned forward and placed his hand on Bill’s, brought his face in close to hers so Kate could do nothing but admire their intimacy.

  “I’ll go in first with Kate. We’ll see what Susan wants. She will need you, but right now, she needs you to calm down. We’ll do the right thing, Bill, I promise.”

  “You’d better, Jack, or I sure as shit will!”

  Cheeks darkened with fury and eyes blazing, Bill stalked away to stare out of the window at the rising sun.

  “Will she do anything stupid?” Kate asked as they approached the private room Susan had been taken to.

  “I don’t believe so, although if she gets a chance, she might just smack him upside the head when no one’s looking. She’s never liked him, and she’s tried to get Susan to leave him and press charges before.” He stopped just outside the door with his fingers on the handle.

  “Don’t get your hopes up she’ll do anything, Kate. It breaks your heart, but sometimes they just won’t do anything to help themselves.”

  “I know.” She nodded. She understood far more than she could ever explain. “But sometimes they save themselves.”

  »»•««

  It didn’t take Jack long to take a statement from Susan. She’d already made up her mind by the time he walked into her hospital room. Something had changed. She’d toughened up, her resolution had hardened from the beaten woman Kate had tended to during the night. The dawn had brought a change in her. It appeared she wasn’t willing to risk her baby for the sake of a man who couldn’t control his drinking, his temper, and his fists.

  The whole time Jack leaned forward in his chair to listen with rapt interest to what she had to say without interruption. His face was set, his gaze unreadable, while Kate held the woman’s delicate, icy hand in her own. Motionless, barely able to breathe for the pain in her heart, the fear in her soul.

  Just when she thought it was over, he took Susan through it again, made her repeat herself, and asked her questions to verify her answers. All the time Susan never moved a muscle except to chew on her bruised and battered bottom lip, her fragile body tiny under the pristine white sheet.

  When she’d finished, Jack leaned back and studied her. “You’ve done well, Susan. You should be proud of yourself. You’re taking a stand and it’s all you can do. Leave the rest to us now, honey, and we’ll make sure he gets locked away.”

  She nodded, eyes filled with shame, and turned her head away to stare through the window.

  “Bill’s outside waiting, if you want to see her.” His gentle voice cruised over Kate’s shredded nerves, calming her. She could only hope he had the same effect on Susan.

  In the long silence, Kate was aware of only her own breathing before Susan replied. “Yeah.” She slumped in her bed and raised her hands to her battered face, but the tears squeezed through her fingers. “Yeah, send her in.”

  No words were necessary as Bill waited to slip inside the room, big brown eyes flashing with uncertainty.

  The bustle of early morning shift change filled the corridor with nursing staff, making it difficult to speak.

  Emotions numbed with what she’d witnessed, Kate placed one foot in front of the other in the hope that her knees didn’t crumble and humiliate her in front of everyone.

  Too close to her own sister’s story, it gripped Kate’s heart and squeezed until she could barely draw in a breath.

  The warmth of Jack’s hand seeped through her arm as she allowed him to guide her into a side office. Choked with emotion, she whipped her head around at the sharp click of the door closing. She yanked her arm away from Jack and took a backward step away from him. She held one hand tight against her mouth and the other out straight to stop his approach. Her chest ached so much it might explode. She could barely get her breath as tears thickened her throat and threatened to drown her.

  His image blurred before her eyes but not before the curl of sympathy filled his. She couldn’t allow it. Couldn’t endure his closeness, his compassion. It was too much.

  “Jack, please don’t. I can’t. I can’t bear it.”

  He simply pulled her into his arms, engulfing her with his sheer size. “Hush now, Kate. Let it be. Let me hold you. Just hold on to me.”

  Tears flooded hot and fast while she burrowed her face against the soft cotton of his shirt, aware she soaked it. She wrapped her arms around his waist, held on to him as though he were her lifeline, and let go of loud sobs as they jerked her body while he cradled her.

  He must think she was an idiot. A feeble, pathetic individual with no backbone. Crying over a patient. She should be hardened to the pain. But some pain you never became accustomed to.

  She didn’t care. She needed him. She curled her fingers into his shirt and hung on.

  As the storm passed, she turned her cheek so she rested against him, weak and sapped, her ear pressed against his heart. The steady rhythm of it gave a gentle comfort. Savoring the moment, she simply held on, let him stroke her hair while his breath whispered across her forehead as he murmured senseless reassurances. She couldn’t have said how long they stood, wrapped in each other’s arms, but when she pulled back to gaze up at him, the sympathy and understanding in his expression melted her heart.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  She turned her head away but stayed in the circle of his arms. The heat of his hand seeped through the ice as he rubbed a soothing circle on her back and waited, silent and patient for her reply.

  She took a step back, a step away to give herself room to breathe. She paced to the other side of the office and turned her back
on him to stare out of the window at the bright rays of sun pouring in.

  “When I was at university, my younger sister was a little wild.” She shot him a look over her shoulder. “She’s a brilliant poet and song writer. She was seventeen when she left home and married a drummer in a band. A well-known band.” She wrapped her arms around herself and glanced at him again. He stood in the same place, his dark gaze calm. A reassurance in the sanitized room.

  “They ran wild for a couple of years, but she turned up on my doorstep one day saying he’d taken some sort of drug and beaten her. It wasn’t the first time, but this time she was black and blue, not unlike Susan. She’d experimented a little with drugs herself, but wasn’t interested. She didn’t like the loss of control when she took anything, but her husband seemed to get deeper and deeper, trying harder drugs, injecting. He wanted her to try them, but she wouldn’t.”

  She shuddered with the memory of her little sister unable to stand upright in her living room. Fragile and bedraggled, beaten almost to death.

  “She was pregnant at the time, so Susan’s case isn’t a million miles from what happened to my own sister.”

  “What did your sister do?”

  “She left him. She has three-year-old twins now.”

  “Was he imprisoned?”

  “No. She dealt with him herself.” She gave him a wintry smile. “He didn’t bother her again.”

  Jack made a move as though he intended to pull her into his arms again, but she backed away from him until her shoulder came up against the cold window. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to resist his offer of comfort, or if he was capable of just giving comfort.

  “Look.” She smoothed back her hair, tried to find her composure. A meltdown wasn’t something he needed to witness. She should never have let herself go. “I’m way over my time here and I have to be back on shift in another few hours, I’m going to head over to my place and grab some shut-eye.” She didn’t want to meet the confusion in his eyes or see the small pull of regret to his firm lips. “Let me know what happens won’t you?” She sidled her way around the room to avoid contact with him, but he never made any further attempt to touch her. “Susan will still probably be here when I get back, but I would like to know when you arrest him.”

  She opened the door and slipped out, leaving Jack alone.

  She scrubbed at her tear-streaked face as she headed for the locker room. She must look a state. She had to get out of there before anyone else saw her.

  Kate couldn’t believe she’d told Jack. She hadn’t ever told anyone what had happened to her sister, except for under oath in court. And when the newspapers wanted to know Lydia’s story and reporters had camped on their doorsteps, Kate had kept a stoic silence, returning to university where no one associated her with some famous drummer and his song-writer wife.

  She hadn’t been entirely honest with Jack. She hadn’t told him the whole story, but then, she’d told him so much more than she’d ever told anyone else. She had no idea why he invoked such a response in her. Such trust. It wasn’t as though he’d tried to convince her he was one of the good guys—quite the opposite. But there was a good guy in him, and the simple matter was she did trust him.

  ∙•∙

  What was he thinking? Why couldn’t he just leave the woman alone? What was it about her that made him continue to follow her around like a lost dog? He knew when he looked at her she was hurting, and he was only thankful it hadn’t been her who had suffered at the hands of some maniac. He’d had a sick churning in his stomach when he realized she’d had personal experience of domestic abuse.

  It was bad enough she’d dealt with her sister going through that kind of shit, but her agony, her misery was palpable while Susan told her painful story.

  Kate confused him. He knew she’d been comforted by him, and he only wanted to hold her a little longer, but she’d rabbited on him as though she thought he was going to pounce on her and strip her naked right there and then. She’d been pressed so close against him, she must have felt the hardness of him against her. He couldn’t help it, he always had an erection around her. It didn’t mean he was going to act on it. It meant he desired her.

  He was supposed to have asked her out, but still he hesitated. She was high maintenance, and not because of the way she acted, but because of his response to her. He’d have crawled through hot coals just to stop her pain. Women’s tears had never affected him. He’d seen too many of them in his line of work, but Kate’s had crippled him.

  Chapter Nine

  He had no idea why he was there. He could do something a sight healthier than sitting on his own while he brooded into his Jack Daniels on a Saturday night.

  He needed the time. Time to himself to think. He could have gone home to hammer a few more nails in his house, but he would have been alone and his brooding would have taken a direction he didn’t want it to take. He didn’t want Kate in his head at all tonight. At least this way he could think about work and watch the clientele while they ebbed and flowed around him.

  He leaned back in his seat and took his first warming sip of whiskey, enjoying the slide of heat into his stomach. He rested his eyes for a moment, and the one person he’d tried his best to avoid thinking of filled his mind and swirled through his consciousness.

  It wasn’t his overpowering physical response to her he feared. He understood physical attraction. It was the goddamned evocative smell of an English rose winding its way through his senses. It was only his imagination, but when he touched her skin, it was as soft as a rose petal warmed by the summer sun. When he leaned into her space—he loved to lean into her space—her gaze darkened with awareness to a deep fathomless blue, her lips parted in readiness for their next kiss. Every time she came close he wanted to find the nearest semi-private place and have sex with her. Wild, passionate sex. Sex would resolve the little issue of her consuming his every waking moment. Sex was the answer to his physical need.

  How was he supposed to deal with the rest? It was the emotional part that caused him a problem. It was the emotional part that had him drinking Jack Daniels.

  Not since Charlotte had he allowed someone to get under his skin.

  He rubbed his chest and took another sip of liquid warmed from the heat of his hand.

  He didn’t even have a relationship with Kate, but he’d never felt more involved.

  When she’d stood in the circle of his arms that morning as great gasping sobs had wracked her delicate frame until he’d thought she would shake herself apart with the weight of her feelings, she’d left him powerless. Weakened his knees and given his heart a nasty jolt.

  No, the attraction wasn’t just physical. He admired her, respected her, hell she commanded respect. Until that morning, he’d not appreciated she had a weak side, but the cracks had shown and her soft squishy center had oozed out. All over his shirt.

  There was no doubt she wasn’t a weak woman though. He smiled a little to himself as he remembered her wielding her scalpel. He guessed it was supposed to have frightened him a little, given him a jolt at least. Well it had. His powerful little warrior had given him a thunderbolt right between the legs. To the extent where he’d ended up promising her a date. A date he hadn’t yet brought himself to ask her on.

  One thing he knew for sure, one night wasn’t going to be enough.

  He heaved out a sigh, and when he opened his eyes, she was there.

  With her back to the bar, a glass of white wine in her hand, her electric blue eyes gazed right back at him. If he could have slithered out of there without her noticing, he would have. It was called self-preservation. But the woman had him pinned from across the room. As she started toward him, he caught himself as his right hand came up to rub at the left side of his chest again. It was a nasty habit she’d inspired. Perhaps he should have her check his heart.

  He kept his gaze level as she approached. The slight sway of her hips, the swing of her hair. Hair down to her goddamned ass. He’d never seen it
loose before. When she didn’t have it tethered back, it appeared paler, a swathe of wheat, glowing in the electric lights. Eyes as blue as the sea.

  Doomed, he took a larger gulp of his drink in the hope the heat sliding through his veins would release his muscles to enable him to run.

  “Jack?” Her eyebrow quirked up and a half smile played on her lips. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure, take me home.”

  “I beg your pardon? Have you been drinking?” It was a simple question, not a judgment, but he loved her loftiness, the true English in her voice.

  He glanced at the glass in his hand. He’d taken three sips.

  “Yeah.” He placed it back on the table with a click.

  She leaned forward to take his arm as he stood, steadied him just in case he needed help. He didn’t, but he took the offer, unable to rip his gaze from her. Not prepared to let his advantage slip, he slung his arm around her shoulders and bent down to place an affectionate kiss on the top of her ear.

  “Take me home, Kate,” he repeated. “Your home.” He nuzzled at her and then let her pull back to study him for a moment.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I suspect you haven’t had as much to drink as I thought.” But she never withdrew.

  “Nope.” He forced a confident smile, one that didn’t make it to the tremor in the heart he was so concerned about. “This isn’t a drunken pass, Katie. Take me home.” He threw down the challenge. Waited for her to pick up the gauntlet.

  She scanned the room. He suspected the group she’d come with weren’t really going to miss her. She placed her full drink on the small table, next to his glass.

  “Come on then.” She tossed her hair back as she walked across the room, glanced over her shoulder at him with a sweet seductive smile, and headed for the exit.

  Jack took a moment, a split second before he strode after her.

  »»•««

  What the hell was she thinking?

  She inserted the key in the lock and then removed her hand to rest it against the door. So close behind her, he warmed her chilled shoulders with the heat from his body. They’d barely said a word on the short journey, but he’d turned the volume up on the car radio while he drove, as he reassured her he’d not had more than a couple of sips of alcohol. The haunting strains of a country song had filled the cab of his truck. He’d reached over and uncurled her tense fingers to tangle them with his. The weight of his hand resting against her thigh sent heated pulse waves to warm her insides and stoke her desire.