by Lori Avocato
I fingered the locket.
He grabbed my hand and yanked it off, breaking the clasp. “You can’t be trusted with that thing. Thank God you don’t carry a gun. I still want to know what the hell you are up to!” He shoved off his jeans and stood there in his boxers.
I stood my ground instead of giving into the flight-or-fight response that my adrenaline was pumping out. Actually, my first choice was the flight one. Okay, the very first one had something to do with seeing him in his boxers. “I need to know. Are you involved in the fraud at TLC?”
He hesitated. My mouth went dry.
“How do you know about that?” he asked, very seriously.
“It…doesn’t matter. Are you?” My nurse’s nature made me want to gently wipe the water from his eyes and face. He looked so miserable-and I had caused it. But I held back, remembering Jagger’s words. “And don’t go nursing the criminals,” he’d once said to me.
But I couldn’t believe I was standing here with a criminal.
It seemed like hours that I stood in the kitchen grilling ER Dano, sans clothes and now only with a towel wrapped around his waist, until he finally started to recover from the pepper spray. I knew if he’d meant to harm me, he could have done so a long time ago.
Had to be a good sign.
Actually, he became very cooperative about the questioning and made sense a few times, but right when I thought I’d figured him out, he’d get back on the “What the hell are you up to?” line of questioning.
“Make me some tea to ease this feeling in my throat,” he said. It really wasn’t a gruff order, but then again he didn’t say please either.
When I went to put a tea bag in a mug and pour tap water into it, he said from behind, “Don’t you know how to make proper tea? Boil it.”
Shades of Stella Sokol.
I boiled his and nuked mine and in a few minutes we were sitting at the table. His face looked much better, although still a bit pinkish.
And there I sat, not sure if I should feel badly or not.
Dano took a sip of tea and looked me in the eye. “Who do you work for, Pauline?”
Yikes. He’d used my first name as Jagger always did with his no-nonsense voice. As I sat there contemplating a lie, I realized there wasn’t a scared bone in my body.
ER Dano had to be clean. I just felt it.
“The more important question, Dan, is why do you have all that evidence of fraud at TLC?”
He didn’t even look surprised, which surprised the hell out of me-and maybe did scare me a bit. Then again, a con man usually could play a poker face like a gambling Vegas billionaire.
I sipped and swallowed and sipped then swallowed and sipped a few more times. When I looked him in the eyes, I said, “It shouldn’t take so long to answer truthfully.”
Dano chuckled, and then started to laugh. “You are one hell of a woman, Nightingale.”
Now I’ve faced murderers before, several times, as a matter of fact, and even had them make attempts on my life, and with my limited knowledge of psych, I could sense the nefarious personalities of these folk when it came right down to it.
And I didn’t sense it now.
Dano’s laughter wasn’t eerie or scary or nefarious. It seemed to come from deep within him and from humor.
“What is so funny?” I had to ask.
“It just dawned on me. You think I’m involved in the fraud and the stabbings.”
“And that is funny because?”
“Because, granted, I’m a burned-out paramedic, suffer nightmares from the job, don’t put up with any crap from anyone. Anyone. And have little patience for the newbies, although I always get assigned them, but I am not a killer or a thief.”
He has me convinced was my first thought; however, logically, I knew I couldn’t just believe his words. Probably I wanted to believe them and that was confusing me. But I looked him directly in the eyes and said, “Prove it. I need proof.”
Dano glared at me for a few moments.
I swallowed several times and fidgeted with my tea mug, feeling like a bug under a microscope. I also fidgeted in my chair. Finally I said, “Stop that! Tell me the truth now.”
He calmly got up and went to the cabinet that I’d been snooping in. When he pulled out the rest of the papers, he shuffled through them and handed me several. “Read.”
I read all right and had to push my jaw back up off my chest several times. Slowly I set them down.
“Then who killed Payne and stabbed Pansy?” the stupid question came out before I could think, since I was so delighted (and, yes, relieved) that Dano was not guilty of anything other than gathering inside information for one Global Carrier Insurance Company-the biggest one that Fabio dealt with in his agency.
Dano shook his head. “I thought you cared about me.”
Oops. “I did…do.” I set the papers down, got up and went to place my arms around his neck. “You have to believe me that I never wanted you to be involved.”
And his kiss said more, a hell of a lot more than any words could.
He started to nuzzle my neck. “If I knew who hurt Pansy and killed Payne, don’t you think I’d tell the cops?”
Preoccupied by his hands running over my body in oh-so delicious places, I barely remembered what he was talking about. In a few seconds I leaned back, looked him in the eyes and said, “Yes, I do.”
“Then sex isn’t out of the question, once I recover from your attack?”
Thank goodness he was smiling his dynamite ER Dano, sexy, girls-can’t-keep-their-hands-off-me smile.
I ran my fingers down his chest to grab onto the towel. “Not at all.”
His lips covered mine, and despite his earlier “discomforts” he lifted me up and carried me into the living room, where soon my clothing lay in a pile on the floor-right after I’d yanked off Dano’s damp towel.
It didn’t take me long to forget my concerns about Dano. As he ran his hands across my breasts so very gently in the afterglow of our lovemaking, it seemed like a dream. Well, this very moment seemed like a sexy, unbelievable dream, but any thoughts that he was a criminal seemed like ages ago and not very real.
I turned toward him, taking his now very pale pink cheeks in my hands and kissing his lips with purpose. “I am so sorry.”
He kissed me back, running his tongue inside my mouth until I thought we could do…it…again. “Fagetaboutit. You’ve worn me out.” He playfully pinched my nipple.
“I really do want to forget it all but need to make it clear. The job stuff. Not the sex. I’m sure you’re wondering who I am.”
He wrapped his leg across mine. “Nope. I know you rather intimately now.”
I smacked his hard chest. “Ouch. Well, I need to make it all clear.” And I really did. I couldn’t start a relationship on a lie, so I told ER Dano who I really was and who I worked for, leaving out Jagger’s identity-or what little I knew about it.
Dano leaned back, looked at me and smiled. “I was wondering when you’d get around to all that.”
I felt my eyes widen a hundred times larger. “You…were wondering?” I wrinkled my forehead. “I’m not following.” But my investigative abilities were sending out signals that said, He knew. He knew. He knew all along!
He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “We’re straight now, Nightingale. Straight.”
When he held me closer, I wanted to go on and on asking questions, but this felt so right that I shut my mouth. But in my mind I screamed, Jagger!
Jagger had to have already told him.
Of course, Jagger always managed to finagle us into getting jobs in the companies that we were investigating, and it made sense that one of the employees would have to know who we were.
While Dano kissed me deeply, sensually and well, damn hotly-the last thought on my mind was I’m going to kill Jagger.
Twenty-Three
Dano and I were dressed and heading out the door when my cell phone rang. I opened it and brought it to my ear.
“Pa
nsy’s awake. Meet me there.” Then Jagger hung up before I could scream at him about the Dano situation. In my mind though, I knew Jagger always had my back. He never would have let me come here tonight alone if he didn’t really know who ER Dano was.
But did Jagger really know what Dano and I had done?
Yikes. I hoped to hell he couldn’t tell about my “glow” like perceptive Lilla could. Naw. Guys were not perceptive.
“We need to get to the hospital. Pansy woke up.” Pansy woke up. Perfect.
Dano turned to look at me. “That Jagger?”
Oh, yeah. Jagger had known. I’d kill him for sure and not with a cell phone but a real knife!
“Yep,” I said as Dano threw his keys at me.
“You drive. I’m indisposed as far as night vision. My truck will get us there faster than your yuppie Volvo.”
I wanted to argue that it was not yuppie, but that’d be a losing battle since my car, in fact, was. Hey, I bought it secondhand from a financial advisor in suburban Glastonbury, CT. Couldn’t get any more yuppie than that.
On the way to the hospital, I kept apologizing to Dano about the pepper spray until he made me pull over and said, “Stop that. You did the right thing. I wouldn’t have expected any less out of you, Nightingale. You’ve got guts and chutzpah. That, my dear, is why you make a fantastic nurse, investigator, and…sex-”
“I get it. Thanks.” Phew. I really didn’t want him going into that-even if it sounded like a good compliment coming on. There was that Catholic-school-induced-conscience thing, and once you heard something out loud, it became all too real.
Premarital sex. Or pre no-plans-for-marriage sex. Yikes.
We drove off and soon were pulling into the parking lot of Saint Greg’s.
“There’s Jagger’s SUV,” Dano said, pointing to the left side of the parking lot.
At first it surprised me that Dano would recognize Jagger’s SUV, but working with Jagger, I’d learned not to be bowled over by Jagger-induced shockers any longer, and that obviously pertained to Dano-induced shockers too. “Let’s see if he waited for us in it.”
I opened my own door since even after having sex with ER Dano I wasn’t expecting any changes. Truthfully, I didn’t want any. He was hot and perfect the way he was and there was enough chemistry between us to blow up a small building. Nope. I liked ER “as is” and no amount of wishing and hoping could produce that amount of chemistry-and apparently, I liked it.
And, hey, since he was still talking to me after pepper spraying him-he had to feel something close to it too.
Jagger got out and walked toward us.
I could swear he looked at me as if he knew about…you know. But then I told myself that was my stupid conscience acting up again. No way could he tell-but when we got closer, he stepped next to me and touched my arm. “Let’s go inside,” he said.
Wow.
Was that a possessive kind of touch?
I decided to concentrate on the case at hand and not try to figure out my romantic involvements/non-involvements. Besides, a thirty-something who up until now hadn’t had a date or sex in X (truthfully I didn’t want to know the real number because it’d be too embarrassing) number of months was in no position to figure anything out.
Walking between these two, though, proved more difficult than I thought-especially when they both went to put their arms around my shoulders-at the same time!
We made it up to Pansy’s floor without any more physical contact on anyone’s part, and not a word of explanation either.
I, however, smiled to myself all the way up on the elevator.
We stopped at the desk, and ER Dano explained that we were all employees who had come to visit their boss.
The stern-looking nurse glared at me.
Geez! At first I worried that she might have recognized me as a past employee from there. But she didn’t look familiar. I let my hair slip forward to partially cover my face and took a step backward.
As if he read my mind, Jagger leaned forward until I was nearly hidden from Nurse Ratched’s view. She did have a similar-looking expression to the nasty nurse in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
“Visiting hours are over.” She stepped back and folded her arms across her chest.
I started to turn around, but both Jagger and Dano pulled out the charm-nonstop-and before I knew it-and in quite a whirlwind of confusion-we were walking down the hallway to where the guard sat.
I could only shake my head in amazement at these two hunks.
Not only could these two hunks sweet-talk their way into a patient’s room after visiting hours, but also they could talk an armed guard into letting us get by.
I figured he knew who Jagger was anyway, so this time I didn’t let myself get too impressed.
“Lieutenant Shatley’s in there,” the guard said, mostly to Jagger, who nodded.
“Maybe we should wait?” I suggested.
But they were both putting on their isolation outfits and damn, but they both looked so tasty in Johnny coats (unfortunately over their clothes) and masks.
Couldn’t decide whose eyes were sexier.
Then I concluded-both were.
“Okay. Okay.” I dressed up and followed them into the room, certain they didn’t want any discussion out in the hallway and in front of Barney Fife.
When Jagger stepped aside and Dano walked toward the bed, I got a glimpse of Pansy. Yikes. She looked awful. Then again she had been stabbed, suffered quite a blood loss, survived surgery and a whopper of an infection and a temperature, not to mention the trauma her body had endured.
What struck me most was the glassy look in her eyes. For some reason, Pansy didn’t look back to normal. Normal for her, that is. She and her brother were pips and often had the most unusual looks on their faces. Ones that no one got except them. I chalked it up to “twin telepathy.”
Right now she was glaring at…me!
I moved to the side behind the lieutenant. “Hey,” I said.
He nodded and turned toward Jagger, who was next to me. “Not much useful stuff yet. She’s hopped up on meds, is my guess.”
Or hiding something, was mine. But I didn’t want to say anything that was accusatory, as I really didn’t have any evidence. I looked around the room of masked professionals and decided I’d need ironclad proof for this gang.
Jagger stepped forward. “Hey, Pansy. Jagger here. Remember me?”
She nodded, but I don’t think she meant it, and I’m sure Jagger realized that. “Jagger.”
“Yeah, I’m a new paramedic, Pansy. I’m still on orientation.” He touched her hand, which was holding onto the side rail.
Actually, I wondered what she was thinking with this group in here. Pansy probably was frightened. Yeah, that made sense, when I looked at her face.
I walked next to Jagger. “Hi, Pansy,” I said in my softest, friendliest voice. I’d reverted back to my old nursing tricks and before long, I seemed to have her trusting me. At least she held my hand instead of the railing. I let her, thinking she wasn’t going to have a baby right now like Angie, so I was safe as far as a broken hand went.
Jagger started to talk more about work, trying to get her mind into focus, I assumed.
Every time she answered, she looked at me.
I caught Lieutenant Shatley looking at me and winking. He wanted me to get her into my confidence. Okay. I could do that. I’d worked psych before. And I’d worked neuro, so between the two, I should be able to get Pansy’s mind off the gang in the room and get her to tell us something.
Dano made a kind of groaning sound as if irritated, or more like it, impatient. I looked to see him edge his way toward the bed, kinda pushing Jagger out of the way.
Oh…my…God.
They looked at each other and remained calm, although I felt the tension.
“Hey, Pansy. It’s me, Dano. ER Dano.”
Suddenly I felt as if Pansy had just returned from Oz and the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and Lion Ja
gger were all re-introducing themselves to gain her confidence. Only thing was, in Oz Pansy would’ve only had to worry about a “non-waterproof” witch, where in Hope Valley, there was a potential killer on the loose.
She kept looking at me as she spoke, and I had to admit, she got a hundred percent of the answers-wrong. Didn’t know who the president was. Said the year was 1951, and although the guy was an enigma, she really didn’t know who ER Dano was, despite the longevity of his employment with TLC.
I looked at the men in the room and we collectively frowned. A few of them cursed.
“Pansy, do you know where you are?” I asked, hoping my femaleness might give me an upper hand over the guys.
She made a coughing noise. I checked her monitor and her heart rate and respirations were okay, although a little fast, which I chalked up to stress. Who wouldn’t be stressed with this gang in their room interrogating them right after they’d woken up from a few days of a deep sleep?
I waited until she calmed down and said, “That’s all right. How do you feel?”
She looked at me. “I’m fine, Pauline.”
My eyes widened at that lucid statement! Everyone in the room looked hopeful, so I continued on with my line of questioning. “Do you remember what happened to you?”
“Of course. What the hell are you all doing in those stupid outfits? Is it Halloween?” She started to chuckle and it turned into a cackle.
The hairs on my neck stood on end.
I gulped and felt myself being nudged from behind. Jagger. Natch. He’d had my back all right, but was pushing me forward as if the woman in the bed was some sweet young thing who’d just awakened like a harmless Sleeping Beauty.
I think the only time Jagger touched my back was to push me into something or someone.
I looked at Pansy, and her face contorted into a shape that made me remember the witch with the poison apple in Snow White.
Jagger nudged.
I turned around and said, “Stop that!” Again, Stella Sokol’s tone.
He didn’t look as if he were smiling under the mask. “Ask her.”
Oh, great. He wanted me to ask her who had stabbed her, which was the same as asking who had killed her precious clone of a brother. Yeah, right. My luck would be that Pansy would drift off into a self-induced coma in fear of her life.