by Julie Miller
I just don’t want you to be disappointed in me.
Julia’s last words crept into his mind despite his best efforts to block the memory of that totally unexpected kiss. She was right. His original intent had been to comfort her, to make amends for dredging up that horrible story about Ray Wozniak.
But something had gotten out of hand.
Maybe it was her fresh, cleansing scent that filled his brain and made him see sunshine and hope. Maybe it was the discovery of that sweet, luscious mouth of hers—or the short, curly hair that caught and sprung around his fingers like a dozen silky caresses. Maybe it was finally getting the chance to explore those voluptuous, womanly curves. Rounded hips. Heavy breasts. A real woman’s figure. A fantasy figure.
And with all that velvety soft skin stretched out across all those curves—his fingertips tingled and his breathing went shallow just remembering the divine feel of her.
I don’t want to disappoint you.
That statement bothered him more than anything.
He couldn’t stop replaying that conversation in his mind. He couldn’t stop trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. Had he somehow made her think he wasn’t incredibly turned on by her? Maybe if he’d said something, done something more, she wouldn’t have been so eager to get away from him.
True, he wasn’t the playboy of the family. His youngest brother Josh enjoyed that title. His older brother Brett had been the consummate flirt before meeting his wife. Even Gideon, the so-called quiet one of the family, had maintained a serious relationship with a woman for nearly two years. The fact that the two had split up suddenly still remained a mystery—women usually fell all over themselves for that solid, dependable type. And Cole, well, he had that whole dark, brooding thing going for him—an intriguing turnaround from the all-American kid he’d been growing up.
But Mac?
Studious. Logical. Workaholic. Scarred. Blind.
None of those words leaped to mind when it came to charming women.
He had no business kissing Julia like that, no business wanting to do more than kiss her. Maybe he had somehow reminded her of that Wozniak bastard who had tried to use her to promote his own status.
He thought he had shown her how wrong that high-school jock had been about her. He remembered seeing the promise in her then, even at age fifteen, of the woman she would become. The braces would go. The angular muscles would turn into softer curves. The freckles would keep her eternally young.
And her eyes had been so expressive, revealing her fear, her strength, her intelligence. And ultimately, her tears and laughter. They’d been such a unique shade of…
“Damn.”
“Sir?” Detective Banning interrupted the pointless wandering of Mac’s thoughts. “I’ve got a profile on Mrs. Ringlein started, but I need to get outside and relieve Officer Osterman. Is there anything else you want me to check in the meantime?”
Frustrated by his inability to ferret out any kind of truth, Mac slipped his thumb and middle finger up beneath his glasses and began to rub at the itchy new skin. But the thought of Julia’s stern reprimand, the thought of ruining his chances of ever being a normal, sighted man again, had him curling his fingers into a fist and pressing it to the bridge of his nose.
“No.” Mac didn’t even try to locate Merle’s position. “Don’t let me keep you from doing your job.”
“Yes, sir.”
A surprisingly warm breeze swept over Mac as the front door opened and closed. Maybe he should get outside and enjoy the sunny day. He should take a walk. Some fresh air and exercise might clear his clogged-up brain.
Of course, he might get lost just going down the front walk to his mailbox. Lost in his own front yard. Oh yeah, that’d be the way to show the world he was still a man in control of his own space, his own destiny.
Mac’s wry laugh echoed in the empty house. Some man.
His reputation could be destroyed by the Internal Affairs investigation. Hell. He could end up in prison if Niederhaus and Masterson made their case against him. Would one of them sink so low as to set him up? Or were they simply jumping on the easy trail arranged by someone else?
If he wanted to find out who’d been blackmailing Jeff, he’d have to do it himself.
Fat chance.
And what about Julia?
“Hell.”
There she was again, sidetracking his thoughts when she had no business being there. She was the nurse. He was the patient. Nothing more. He should tell her the debt with Wozniak had been paid and send her on her way.
Then he wouldn’t have to bother with being polite. He wouldn’t need to work to make himself presentable. He wouldn’t keep obsessing about that soft waver in her voice when she worried about disappointing him.
Mac oriented himself in the living room and stalked down the hallway toward his bedroom. He’d leave the fresh air to someone who could handle it.
“Dammit, Detective! I’m fine.”
Mac halted at Wade Osterman’s loud voice. Even through the closed door, he could hear the uniformed officer arguing with Merle Banning. “It’s time for you to go home, Osterman.”
“Hey, hey, hey, guys. I’m not used to grown men fighting over me.” That was Jules, making a joke, trying to defuse the tension. “Can’t we work something out?”
Before he could question the futility of his resolution to ignore her, Mac spun around and hurried to the front door, arms outstretched to save himself from damage as he traversed the living room in record time.
Merle Banning lifted his voice a notch to do battle with Osterman. “I’m not pulling rank, I’m following orders.”
“I’m following orders.”
Mac swung the door open.
“C’mon, Wade. You’ve been here nearly twenty-four hours straight.” Jules. She’d grown up in a lot of ways. Maybe she didn’t need rescuing anymore. Certainly not by him. “That’s your fifth cup of coffee today. You can use the break.”
“Maybe I want to hang around for more of your home-cooking.” Mac bristled at the flirtatious inflection in the big man’s voice.
“Flattery will—”
Merle interrupted Julia’s response. “That won’t be happening, ma’am. Officer Osterman is already over the limit for his overtime hours.”
“I need the money.”
“You need to quit calling your bookie.”
He heard the crunch of gravel on concrete beneath crepe-soled shoes. Instinct pushed Mac forward a moment before the tell-tale thump and string of curses told him that Osterman had shoved the younger man.
“Hey!” That was Jules. Great. She didn’t need to get caught in the middle of this.
A thud of muscle hitting muscle and the shuffling of feet on concrete and grass told him Merle had shoved back.
“Stop it, guys!”
With arms out, Mac lurched down the sidewalk. He smacked into someone’s back, reached out to catch his unfortunate target so they wouldn’t fall. Solid. Soft. Julia.
“You’re a snot-nosed punk who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Wade’s good-natured persona had been replaced by this defensive bully.
The instant Mac made the recognition, Julia pulled away.
“Wade, it’s not that big a deal,” she pleaded. “Just go.”
But Mac wouldn’t let her escape entirely. He hooked his hand through her elbow and shifted to her side. She strained against even this most impersonal contact, but he tugged her closer, refusing to be cast aside.
In the next breath her muscles relaxed as she accepted the request for her help. Ironic. She never refused him medical or therapeutic help. Just the personal stuff. Maybe it was for the best.
With the two officers trading words and physical threats, this was certainly not the time to work through their differences.
“Back off. Back off!” Tell him, kid, Mac cheered Banning’s decisive voice. “It’s common knowledge around the precinct that you’re losing money betting on the games again. I know
you got busted down from sergeant and that you need to keep your nose squeaky clean or you’ll lose your badge entirely.”
“That’s my business, not yours, you son of a—”
“You’re relieved of duty, Osterman.” Mac issued the command in a stern voice that sounded cold and foreign on his rusty vocal cords.
In the sudden silence, Mac heard the heavy breaths from Wade’s chest, and felt the big man’s glare boring down on him. The warmth of the afternoon, the man’s exertion, and the round-the-clock duty made Osterman’s pores open up and ooze the scent of sweat and nerves.
But that didn’t stop his bravado. “You’re not really a cop, anymore, Taylor.”
“I’ll be back on the force before you know it.” The vow came from some determined place deep inside Mac, speaking aloud the wish before he could censor the foolishness of it. “And believe me. I never forget a face. Or a voice. Or a smell. I won’t forget yours.”
Now the big man shifted on his feet, deciding whether to keep playing it tough or back away. The tremor in his bass voice told Mac he had chosen somewhere in between. “Like that’s a real threat coming from you. I hear you screwed up, and now Arnie Sanchez is gonna walk.”
Bad news traveled fast. Did anyone not know that evidence from the Sanchez case had turned up at his house?
One advantage to a lanky build was that Mac could make his six-three height seem even taller when he sucked it in and steeled his spine against unjust accusations. An absence of emotion aided the intimidation factor. “Leave now, or you’re on report.”
Osterman’s defiant curse rumbled deep in his chest. But, fortunately, dirty looks had no effect on a blind man. Mac imagined Wade was using up his meager brainpower debating the wisdom of striking out at a superior officer.
In the end, ice won out over the big man’s fiery temper.
“I’m outta here.” Mac imagined him tipping his hat to Julia. “Ma’am.”
“Bye, Wade.”
He didn’t feel the tension in her relax until a car door slammed and the powerful hum of the police cruiser’s engine started.
Mac dipped his head to ask if she was all right when his sensitive ears picked up the sound of Wade’s voice. He must have rolled down the car window. “…called in his own man…” He missed the next few words as the tires ground against asphalt and he pulled into traffic. “…you still gotta pay me…”
And then Osterman was gone.
“Everybody okay?” Mac asked.
“Sorry about that, sir.”
“You handled him fine.” Osterman had been a little too weird for Mac’s taste. He was just glad to have him gone. “You know what set him off?”
Julia answered. “Wade and I were having some coffee, and I was listening to him talk about his ex-wife, how he was going to win her back when he got on his financial feet again.”
“Which is never going to happen unless he gets help with his gambling problem,” added Merle.
Julia turned within Mac’s grip, but didn’t pull away. “When Detective Banning came out, Wade jumped to attention and asked what the two of you had been talking about inside. He said he needed to be kept apprised since he was involved with the case.”
Merle finished the report. “I told him what Captain Taylor said to me, that no one, unless it was directly approved by him, was to work with you.”
“Mitch suspects something’s going on in his department. He doesn’t know who to trust.” But his cousin’s hands were tied by Internal Affairs. “You sure you want to be a part of this, Banning? It might get uglier before we find out the truth.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Julia, her concerned voice hushed but steady.
Hell. Should he be reassuring her instead of letting her hear the truth? He decided it was already too late to amend his words.
“If I take the fall for whoever blackmailed Jeff, anyone associated with me might come under suspicion as well.”
If his other senses hadn’t fine-tuned themselves to compensate for his blindness, Mac might not have felt the subtle bunching of muscles in Julia’s forearm. Now if his brain could just interpret what her reaction meant.
“I wouldn’t blame either one of you if you wanted to leave.”
Merle answered quickly. “I’m just doing my job.”
“Me, too.”
From the angle of her voice, Mac could tell Julia was looking right up into his face. Would he see resignation stamped there? Professional concern?
He took mixed comfort in Julia’s promise to stay with him. He breathed in deeply, feeling inexplicably calmed and more confident with her at his side. She might not be staying for the reasons he wanted, but at least she was staying.
His thank you was drowned out by the screeching sound of rubber spinning on asphalt and the monstrous roar of an engine picking up speed.
Tugging Julia along with him, Mac instinctively retreated from the sound.
“Mac?”
“Get down!”
A volley of gunshots thundered through the quiet neighborhood as Merle shouted the command.
Mac threw his arms around Julia and dove for the ground as a chip of the sidewalk flew up and nipped him in the leg. They landed with a thud in the dirt. He kept moving, crawling toward cover—he hoped—with Julia in tow.
The sounds came too fast and too full of purpose for Mac to clearly map the nightmare crashing down all around them.
Two guns, he thought. Two shooters? Or was Banning returning fire? Seven? Eight shots? Some muffled in the dirt or swallowed by the house. Others hitting metal and ricocheting. Others…
The car screeched to life on the pavement again, kicking up dirt and gravel, clipping the corner of a parked vehicle, finding traction and speeding away.
Then all was still.
Chapter Eight
“Are you hurt?”
Mac growled the harsh question right in Julia’s ear.
“No.” Suffocated between the Mac’s hard weight and the even harder ground, Julia was already checking his face, his shoulders, running her hands down his arms—anything she could reach. “Are you?”
“I think my leg’s cut. Nothing serious.”
In her emergency-room experience, a man’s idea of “nothing serious” could mean a severed artery. She wedged her elbows between them and pushed, shoving him off her. She drank in reviving air and filed away her fears as he rolled away.
“Let me look.”
She knelt beside him and pushed aside the neat tear in his jeans that was turning dark red with blood. “It looks clean.” The short, wide gash in his calf was the wrong shape to be a bullet hole or graze. He’d been hit by debris. “You’ll need a couple of stitches.” She pushed herself up. “I’ll get the first-aid supplies.”
“No.” Mac grabbed her arm and pulled her back to her knees before she ever reached her feet. “He might come back.”
“Dammit, Mac. This is what I do. Let me go.” She jerked her arm from his grip and shot to her feet. And froze. “Oh my God.”
“What is it?”
“Merle!” Mac stumbled after her as she dashed to the man lying on the front sidewalk, curled up in a spreading pool of blood.
His eyes were open. Alert. He darted a glance her way before squeezing them shut and grimacing as he tried to speak.
“Shh.” Julia talked to him in a soothing voice while she spread open the front of his jacket and shirt. She found the neat little entry hole where a bullet had struck the upper right side of his chest. She circled behind him and checked him gently. She kept the bad news to herself as she laid him flat on the ground.
No exit wound.
A bullet had struck a bone in his leg as well, but, thankfully, had missed the femoral artery. It might be the more painful wound, but the unknown damage inside his chest was what worried her.
She took the weight of Mac’s hand on her shoulder as he knelt beside her. “Banning?”
She shushed the young man as his lips formed an “O”
and he tried to speak. Julia turned her head and whispered to Mac. “He’s got a bullet in his chest. I think it’s lodged in the soft tissue, but there’s no way to tell if it hit anything else inside.”
Mac shifted his grip to Merle’s shoulder. “Hang in there, kid.”
Julia stripped off her big over-shirt and packed it against Merle’s wound to staunch the flow of blood. She wrapped her belt around his thigh to control the bleeding there. She tuned out the sounds of people coming out of their houses, the curious mumble of questions being asked, a vehicle crashing into a solid object. She even tuned out the terminal blare of a horn that indicated the solid object had refused to budge.
“He may have hit the shooter. Banning, did you get a look at him?”
She was only marginally aware of Mac’s observations about the crime. Though Merle nodded his head, she didn’t relay the message to Mac. Right now, her patient was her entire world.
Julia grabbed Mac’s hand and slid it beneath the weight of her own on Merle’s chest. “Can you feel how hard I’m pressing down?” Mac nodded. “I need you to maintain the same pressure. No more, no less. I don’t want him to lose any more blood.”
“Got it.” Mac scooted over to take her place as she moved away. “Where are you going?”
She was already running toward the house. “To get more compresses and a phone.”
Since she had no trauma cart and nothing resembling sterilization, she improvised. She tore through the house grabbing anything that looked useful, including the afghan off the back of the couch, clean towels from the laundry basket and a handful of ties from Mac’s closet. She snatched her phone from her bag on the way back out and punched in a number. She prayed this delay was the right choice to make.
“Hello?”
“Mom.” Later, she’d think of a way to apologize for scaring her mother so. “Call Mitch Taylor. Tell him Merle Banning’s been shot.”
“Who?”
“No one else, Mom. Only Mitch. He’ll understand.”
“Julia. What—?”