High-Risk Affair

by RaeAnne Thayne

  While he was still reeling from that blow, Cale brought his weapon down hard against his temple and Shumway crumpled to the ground, instantly unconscious.

  Cale slid down, fought back nausea and pain, then drew in a ragged breath and yanked out his Flex-Cufs. Shumway didn't stir while he cuffed his arms and legs.

  By the time he was done, he could feel the world turning gray. Damn it. He couldn't lose it, not now.

  He dragged himself to Megan's car, terrified of what he might find there as his mind flashed grim images of that cabin in the mountains and those tiny bloody bodies he had found inside.

  Megan and the kids had to be safe. They had to be. He couldn't bear any-other alternative. He yanked open the door and felt his knees go weak when he found her in the backseat with a scared, sobbing child in each arm.

  They were safe. They were safe.

  "It's okay," he murmured, from what sounded like a thousand miles away. "Everybody's okay."

  It was the last thing he remembered.

  Megan watched in horror as one moment Cale offered them a reassuring grin through the shattered window, the next he tumbled to the concrete of her driveway.

  For an instant she couldn't move, stunned and not quite sure what was happening. Her children still trembled in her arms, but she shifted Hailey to Cameron's arms.

  "What's wrong with Agent Davis?" Cam asked.

  "I'm not sure," she said grimly. "The sheriff will be here in a moment, though. Everything will be fine."

  She opened the door and slid out and the moment she had a clear view of him, she knew exactly why he had passed out. She couldn't exactly miss the bullet hole in his leg.

  Oh, dear heavens. He'd been shot!

  Even in the hazy twilight, she could see blood everywhere, soaking the thigh of his left pant leg and already pooling on the concrete.

  So much blood. She hadn't seen it, hadn't even guessed that he'd been injured. It had all happened so fast—she had been focused on the madman trying to break into her car when suddenly Shumway had whirled and fired.

  It must have been in that moment. She had turned in time to see Caleb drop to the porch but she assumed he was just ducking out of the way of the gunfire.

  That was at least six or seven minutes ago. During the shootout, he must have been fighting incredible pain. How in heaven's name had he managed to subdue and restrain Wayne, all with this terrible gaping hole in his leg?

  She didn't take time to figure it out, knowing that with every passing moment, more of his precious life-blood dripped away. With some vague idea of stopping the bleeding, she whipped off her jacket and folded it up to apply pressure to his wound just as the first flashing lights appeared at the edge of her driveway.

  The police vehicle was immediately joined by three or four more screaming rescue vehicles. She sobbed with relief as Daniel Galvez rushed to her with his gun drawn, looking hard and dangerous.

  "Where's Shumway?" he demanded.

  She pointed to the crumpled form in the shadows of the garage. When Daniel realized Wayne was unconscious and restrained, he hurried to her side, ordering his deputies to call for an ambulance.

  "Don't let him die," Megan begged as others came to offer first aid. "Please don't let him die."

  She didn't realize she was crying until a hand reached up to wipe at her tears. She looked down and found polar-blue eyes looking up at her, despite the haze of pain in them.

  "Don't cry, Megan. Not for me."

  She leaned into his hand and covered his fingers with hers, holding them against her cheek for only a moment before she turned back to applying pressure on his injury.

  She drew in a breath, fighting hard for control. "How many times are you going to risk your life for us, Caleb?"

  He gave her a half-smile that seemed to stab straight to her heart.

  "As many as it takes, I guess," he murmured, then closed his eyes and left her with the devastating realization that she deeply, completely, irrevocably loved this man.

  "I'm sorry I've caused so much trouble."

  Megan dropped a stitch at the small voice. She looked up from her knitting to find Cameron in his pajamas standing just outside the pool of light in the small alcove on the landing.

  The last emergency worker had left an hour ago. Though she wanted desperately to rush after Cale, she knew she couldn't drag her traumatized children through more stress. They needed sleep and they needed the stability of their own beds, not to sit in a waiting room all night long.

  She had to content herself with the phone call she had made fifteen minutes earlier to the clinic. Lauren hadn't been able to tell her anything because of privacy laws but she had handed the phone to Gage McKinnon, who had told her Cale was stable, alert, and already trying to escape his hospital bed.

  Megan set aside her knitting and her worries for Cale to focus on her son. "Honey, this isn't your fault," she assured him, pulling him into a comforting embrace.

  "If I hadn't gone inside that mine, none of this would have happened. Agent Davis wouldn't have been shot."

  She closed her eyes, her stomach clenching again at the memory of all that blood. Instead of dwelling on that, she pressed her cheek against Cameron's, marveling that he was here in her arms, thanks to a man who now lay in a hospital bed.

  "Don't blame yourself, sweetheart. You know you made a mistake going into the mine. We've already talked about that and we don't need to go over it again and again. But whatever your wrong decisions, you certainly didn't make Wayne Shumway shoot Agent Davis. He did that all on his own to cover up the terrible thing he did inside the mine."

  "Agent Davis saved us, didn't he?" Cameron said, and she winced at the new note of hero worship in his voice. "He protected us, just like he said he would."

  She kissed the top of Cam's blond head, her heart aching. "Aren't we lucky he was here?"

  Not for long though. Soon he would be returning to Salt Lake and his job and the life he had there. Because of her base and miserable cowardice, she had ensured he would have no reason to stay.

  "You need to get some rest," she told her son. "Come on. I'll tuck you back into bed."

  She took his hand and led him to his room, where she settled him under his comforter and kissed his cheek.

  "Will you leave the closet light on again?" he asked in a small voice. She wondered how long he would need that reassurance that he wasn't trapped in the dark.

  "Of course," she murmured. She switched it on. As she turned to go, she caught sight of Rick's image gazing back at her from the shrine above Cameron's bed, his mouth military-solemn but those eyes she had loved dancing with so much life.

  The crushing pain wasn't there anymore when she looked at his handsome features. She would always grieve for him and what they had lost. But as she gazed at that picture, she was conscious of a slow, healing peace seeping into her heart.

  The loss of him had nearly killed her. But she had survived. In that moment, standing in her son's bedroom, she knew she wouldn't have traded the years of joy with Rick for anything, even if she had known about the pain in store for her from the beginning.

  She shifted her gaze to Cameron, already snuggling into his pillows. That was why. Without Rick, she wouldn't have this wonderful, courageous boy, or his little sister sprawled out on her bed in the other room.

  Her life would have been dry, colorless. An empty, withered wasteland.

  She hadn't a tenth of her son's courage. She thought she wanted to hide away from life, from anything that threatened the safe world she had carved out for herself and her children—a safe world that had turned out to be only a chimera with no substance whatsoever.

  By continuing to push Caleb away, she was ensuring that—in theory, at least—she wouldn't hurt any worse than she did right now.

  In the years to come, she might be lonely and she might yearn for his arms, his smile, his strength. But she wouldn't know the gut-wrenching pain of having loved and been loved in return and then losing it all. />
  She thought that was what she wanted, what she needed to survive. But as she stood in her son's darkened bedroom, her hand on the light switch to his closet, she realized that by closing the door to her heart so firmly against Cale, she was cutting off the possibility of further pain. She would be safe there, huddled in the dark alone.

  But she would also deprive herself of all the joy and happiness to be found in taking the risk, by stepping into the light and grabbing the chance life had offered her.

  "Night, Mom," Cameron murmured from the bed, no doubt wondering why she didn't get on with it and let him sleep.

  "Good night, sweetheart," she replied, her voice raw and unsteady with emotion.

  After she left the room she stood in the hallway, her heart hammering hard as the truth settled over her. She couldn't let him walk away. She loved him. It washed through her heart, soothing and healing all the aching hollows, the battered edges.

  Surely she could show at least as much courage as her son. Cameron had survived hours alone in the dark.

  All she had to do was reach for the light.

  Chapter 17

  He made a lousy patient. He was surly and miserable and just wanted to be home sitting on his recliner with a beer.

  Instead, he was propped up in a bed, his leg wrapped to the hilt, wearing a damn hospital gown and trying to talk his way out of another ambulance ride.

  "You need surgery to take the bullet out," Lauren said as patiently as if he were some kind of three-year-old learning to use scissors for the first time. "My clinic is simply not equipped for that kind of thing. The trauma center at the University of Utah will take good care of you, I promise."

  "Who knows? Your same room from last time might still be available. They might even offer some kind of frequent-flier discount," Gage piped up from the corner and Cale glared at him, not at all in the mood for humor.

  The jokes at his expense had only begun, he knew. Somebody had probably already hung a big shooting range target above his desk at the Bureau.

  He didn't care, he told himself. He would do it all over again, endure everything, as long as he could keep Megan and the children safe.

  "We don't have any choice here, Cale," Lauren said.

  "I don't have a problem going to University Hospital," he said. "I really don't. I just don't want to go through the whole ambulance thing."

  He hated being fussed over, and nobody fussed like a couple of paramedics on an hour-long ambulance transfer.

  "Gage can drive me to the city since he seemed to think he had to rush right here from Park City. He owes me, since I seem to recall doing the same for him a few years back when he had two broken legs."

  "And you're never going to let me forget that, are you? At least I never had two bullet holes in me at the same time."

  Lauren broke in before he could form a heated reply. "I'm not sure transportation in a private vehicle is the wisest idea for you right now, Cale. I'm quite certain you would be far more comfortable stretched out in an ambulance than cramped in some backseat."

  "I'll be fine," he started to insist, then he forgot why he even cared when he heard a subtle noise at the door. He shifted his gaze and, incredibly, found Megan standing in the doorway.

  She looked slight and fragile and so heartbreakingly beautiful, he forgot about everything else. The pain, the fuzzy feeling from the drugs, the overwhelming fatigue. Everything faded away.

  He couldn't speak for a moment. When he did, his voice sounded rough, ragged.

  "Megan! What are you doing here? Where are the kids?"

  A hint of color dusted her cheekbones. He wondered why but didn't have a chance to ask. "I called my sister to stay with them for a while. I.. .I had to check on you."

  He flashed back to that moment on the hard concrete of her driveway when he had blinked back to consciousness to find her crying over him and trying to staunch the bleeding from his wound.

  Suddenly all the discomfort and the inconvenience and the sheer misery of finding himself in a damn hospital bed again so soon seemed inconsequential.

  She was here and she was safe, and that was the only thing he cared about.

  He couldn't stop staring at her as wild yearning thrummed inside him. He wanted her in his arms at that moment worse than he had ever craved anything in his life.

  She stared back at him, her eyes wide and full of some emotion he couldn't identify. It was corny, but for a moment it felt as if they were the only two people in the room. Gage and Lauren and the IV in his arm and the clinical surroundings—everything else seemed to disappear, leaving just the two of them.

  "How are you?" she asked softly.

  "Fine," he answered, not trusting himself to say more, not when they had an interested audience. Right now, wonderful. He wanted to think it was the drugs in his system but he was pretty certain it was only Megan.

  McKinnon could be a pain in the neck sometimes and seemed to think Cale needed a constant babysitter, but he occasionally showed moments of rare perception. Cale decided he owed him big-time when he rose and headed for the door.

  "Uh, Doc, let's go take a look at my SUV and see if we can figure out how to lit a stubborn idiot with a hole in his leg into it. Maybe if I take him to the trauma center, I can make sure he doesn't get shot at again on the way."

  A moment later, they were gone. Cale could have kissed his partner when he closed the door behind him with one last amused look at the two of them.

  Okay, he didn't really want to kiss Gage. He wanted to kiss Megan.

  To his great disappointment, she didn't come any closer, though, and he was stuck in this damn hospital bed, hungry to touch her.

  "You're leaving," she murmured.

  He made a face. "Yeah. Apparently I need surgery and Lauren can't do it here. She's sending me on to the University of Utah trauma center."

  "Oh." Her eyes were a dark, distressed green. "I'm so sorry you were hurt again, Cale."

  "You and the kids are safe. That's the important thing. And Wayne Shumway is behind bars. He's confessed everything to the sheriff. The meth lab, the Simon murder. All of it. Once they throw in a charge of shooting an FBI officer, he won't be going anywhere for a long, long time."

  Her shoulders trembled once, then twice, and he couldn't stand it anymore.

  "Come here," he ordered softly.

  She paused for only an instant and then she rushed to his side, throwing her arms tightly around him. He buried his face in her sweet-smelling neck and decided if he had to take a bullet, this was not a bad side benefit. Not bad at all.

  She sniffed once or twice, and he shifted so he could see her face. "I thought I told you not to cry over me," he said hoarsely.

  "I can't help it. If you would learn to stay out of trouble, I wouldn't have to blubber all over you."

  He laughed a little in response to her tart tone, feeling better than he had since the moment he walked out onto her porch two hours earlier.

  Her eyes grew haunted. "I was so frightened. When the shooting started, all I could think was that you were out there right in the middle of it, completely unprotected. The children were crying and I couldn't even think straight enough to call 911 until it was almost over."

  She looked so distressed, so utterly devastated, he couldn't help himself. He stopped her words with the only method available to him. He tilted his head and captured her mouth with his and kissed her, thoroughly and effectively.

  She froze for just an instant, and then she kissed him back with an enthusiasm that made him completely forget about the bullet still lodged in his thigh.

  He couldn't believe she was here in his arms again. When she sent him away that morning and told him she wouldn't let herself care about him because of her past, he had tried to tell himself he wouldn't push her. He understood her feelings—she had endured great pain when her husband died and she was in no hurry to go through that again.

  He had made up his mind he would be noble and self-sacrificing and respect her dec
ision, even if it meant he would ache for her the rest of his life.

  To hell with that.

  Right now, with her in his arms, he knew he couldn't do it. He couldn't walk away from her and Cameron and Hailey. He needed them in his life, like he needed air and water and sunlight.

  He would just have to do everything he could to convince her to take a chance on the two of them.

  The alternative was just too miserable to contemplate.

  She pulled away after a moment, looking rumpled and sexy, and he was gratified to see she was breathing raggedly. Good, since he felt as if he had just climbed Denali.

  "I don't think Lauren will be very happy with you for agitating her patient," he murmured.

  She blinked. "I.. .I'm sorry."

  He had to laugh. "I'm not. You're better medicine than anything the good doctor can shoot into my veins."

  Her flushed features turned even rosier and to his great disappointment, she slid away from him to stand just out of reach.

  "Where will you go when you get out of the hospital?" she asked after a moment.

  "I don't know," he answered, baffled by the question and frustrated at the barriers he was afraid she was putting up between them again. "I haven't given it much thought. Back to my house in the Avenues, I guess."

  "Alone? You can't possibly!"

  "Right now I'm just trying to figure out how I can wiggle out of another ambulance ride and get through a day or two in the hospital. I'm sure I'll-come up with something when they let me out."

  She took in a deep breath. "Will you.. .can I persuade you to let me bring you back to Moose Springs after your surgery so the children and I can care for you while you're recuperating?"

  She went on without giving him a chance to respond past his initial shock at the offer.

  "It will be noisy and chaotic and probably not at all restful. Cameron will probably talk your ear off and Hailey will no doubt want you to play with her Barbies. Or her rat, which is worse. You'll probably be bored out of your mind and sick of us after five minutes. But it would mean a great deal to me—to me and the children—if you would let us help you."