Jack’s expression hardened; his voice went stone cold. “I wish I could. Pete’s dead.”
Courtney winced. Only now did she recall an earlier comment by “J.D.” that the cabin had once belonged to a friend, who had died. “I know he meant a lot to you, Jack. I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
“How did it happen?”
“Drop it. Please.”
Chastened, Courtney returned her attention to the first-aid kit.
“The arm needs stitches,” Jack said.
“I can see that.”
“You up to it?”
“Of course.” She said the words, even as her stomach turned over. She wasn’t about to let the insufferable bastard know just how queasy she was at the prospect of sewing up human flesh.
“Maybe you’re too up to it,” he groused.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not sure I should give you free rein on my body with a sharp object. You might enjoy yourself a little too much.”
Muttering under her breath, Courtney grabbed Jack’s left hand and turned his arm in such a way as to give herself the best view of the wound. Not for a second did she allow herself to dwell on how warm his flesh felt, how unsettling it was to hold his hand even for a heartbeat. “It...it looks a bit infected. You shouldn’t have let it go this long.”
“I dumped some antiseptic on it. It was the best I could do. I believe I was fairly busy caring for your injuries at the time.”
His reminder of what he’d done for her was deliberate, she knew. She ignored him. “Here.” She picked up a packet of foil-wrapped pills. “It’s something called ciprofloxacin, generic.” The description on the attached pharmaceutical printout called it a quinoline broad-spectrum antibiotic for skin, soft tissue and upper-respiratory infection. “Are you allergic to anything?”
He gave her a rueful look as though to say “Besides you?” then shook his head.
She gave him the pills, then took up the needle and thread. Despite her best efforts, her hand trembled.
“It’s okay,” he said, this time gently. “I trust you.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
He sighed. “I guess I deserved that.”
“Let’s not get into what you deserve, Sullivan.”
He chuckled. “You’re sure a helluva lot more feisty than I remember.”
“As if either one of us can say we ever knew each other. But, yes, as a matter of fact, I have changed. A lot.”
“You’ve certainly acquired some interesting skills for a...”
“Spoiled rich bitch?”
“For a Hamilton,” he said smoothly. “Barbering, sewing up human beings.”
“I’m afraid it comes with the territory. Not that I’ve ever actually sewn anyone up before.” She took a deep breath, pinched both sides of the ragged cut together, then poked the needle through his skin.
Jack didn’t move.
Courtney was certain she was going to throw up. Breathing through her mouth, she eased the needle through the wound’s opposite side and drew up the thread, then repeated the process. “I’ve seen it done. Too many times.” The image of a towheaded little boy, tight-lipped and very brave as he lay on a hospital gurney rose unbidden in her mind’s eye.
Jack’s brows furrowed. “Where?”
She told him about her job.
His blue eyes glinted with a new respect. “Those women have a real champion in you.”
Courtney blushed, flustered by the unexpected warmth in that husky voice. Her next prick of the needle went too deep and he yelped, jerking his arm back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She grabbed up a piece of gauze and dabbed at a spot of fresh blood. “Damn, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Her voice shook.
“Courtney, it’s okay. You didn’t hurt me. You just kind of surprised me a little, that’s all.”
Her eyes burned with unshed tears.
“Courtney, please...it’s okay.” He caught her hand in his much larger one, the needle and thread dangling to one side.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I...” She let out a shaky breath. “Yes, I do. All of this just suddenly reminded me of something, someone.”
“Who?”
“A little boy named Danny.”
“Danny had stitches?”
She knew what Jack was doing. He was trying to take her mind off of the fact that she’d nearly skewered him with the needle, but she didn’t know if she could talk about Danny. “He was five. With bright green eyes and a cherub’s smile. And he loved to play with toy trains.” She paused.
“Tell me more.”
Courtney took a deep breath. “His mother’s name was Addie. She came to the shelter the first time when Danny was three. She had a black eye and a broken heart. It was the fourth time her husband had beat her up. Each time he swore he’d never do it again.”
Courtney resumed her needlework.
“Addie and Danny came three more times,” she went on. “Each time we tried to counsel her, advise her, help her find a way out, but each time Derek would draw her back with his pleading and his promises. ‘I’ll never hit you again, Addie.’ ‘I’ll get help this time I swear, Addie.’ ‘You know I love you, Addie.’
“The last time was four months ago. This time he hadn’t just beaten Addie. When Danny tried to intervene, to help his mom, Derek tossed him down the basement steps. Danny had sixty-three stitches in his scalp. Sixty-three. They had to shave off his beautiful blond curls.”
“Courtney, you don’t have to—”
“He told me that now he was a Mohawk Indian. And would I help him set up his trains?
“Addie got a restraining order. When Derek came to beg for another chance, she called us. We stood by her, while she had Derek arrested. The judge gave him six months. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Except one day they gave him a pass to go to the dentist. A pass. Like he’s in high school, instead of jail.”
Her whole body was trembling now. “No one called Addie. No one warned her. Derek went to her house. Danny was sitting in the living room playing with his trains.” Her voice broke. She had long since stopped stitching Jack’s arm. “I know he was playing with his trains, because that’s where I found him. Derek had blown Addie away with a shotgun, then Danny, then himself. After—” she swallowed “—after the police were finished, I washed the blood off his trains. I made sure they buried him with the little engine. He loved that little engine.”
Jack didn’t say a word. He just pulled her into his arms and held her. For a long, long time, he just held her.
At last, reluctantly, Courtney drew back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to burden you with all that.”
He trailed the back of his fingers down one cheek, brushing away a stray tear. “You’re a helluva woman, Courtney Hamilton.”
“Yes, well, I’m proving to be a rather lousy nurse. I’d best finish up this arm before I’m dealing with scar tissue.” She was babbling now, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. “I really don’t know what got into me. I never discuss a case with anyone. It must be the trauma of being kidnapped, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, that must be it.” They fell silent then. For long minutes Courtney worked on his arm and neither one of them said a word. But there was an awareness between them that hadn’t been there before. Courtney knew she didn’t dare look at his eyes. If she did, she would be lost.
Finally it was Jack who broke the silence. “I didn’t sleep with her.”
She tied off the thread, then snipped away the excess. “What?”
“Christal. The woman who came to my house that night. I never slept with her.”
“I really don’t—”
“I want you to know.”
“It was a one-night stand, Jack. It doesn’t need any more postmortem than that.”
“She was Pete Wilson’s daughter. After I got a call that night...from th
e friend who wanted to go out for a beer, I called Christal, told her I needed a favor. She was a good friend, but there was never anything romantic between us. I spun her a line about how much of a pain in the butt you were. That I’d been trying to get rid of you for months. Christal came over, did her bit, then when she saw your face, she almost lost it. After you’d gone, she let me have it with both barrels. Called me every name I’m sure you wish you would’ve called me.”
“Why would you do such a thing?”
“Why?” He looked her square in the eye. “Because I was ashamed. Ashamed of my mother’s house, of my bank balance, of being drunk, of being a Sullivan. Ashamed of everything and anything. I held myself up to the Hamiltons and lost on every count.” He raked a hand through his shaggy hair.
“It was a whole lot later before I got it right. Before I was ashamed of being ashamed. But I wanted you to know about Christal.”
“Thank you.” She said the words, but she wasn’t at all sure just how grateful she really was. She’d been having a hard enough time sorting out her feelings for this man. Even though, for ten years she had believed he’d taken another woman to his bed five minutes after she’d left it. Now...now...to find that the whole performance had apparently been put on because of his damnable pride... She honestly didn’t know what to think. “It’s still a few hours ’til dawn,” she managed. “We’d best get some more sleep.”
She needed to put whatever distance she could between them, no matter how minimal it might be. She was feeling terribly vulnerable just now. Climbing back into bed, she made certain to lie down facing away from Jack, who had remained sitting at the table.
Courtney closed her eyes. But she didn’t sleep. She couldn’t. Her thoughts were too filled with Jack. Something still wasn’t right here. She didn’t know what it was. But it was real and terrifying. Just as her feelings for Jack were real. And terrifying.
In her life she had learned that to trust any man was a gamble. But Jack Sullivan? He’d already broken her heart once. Dare she tempt fate a second time? Or were these battered instincts of hers screaming a warning because some part of her knew that this time the stakes were high enough to destroy her?
* * *
Courtney woke to the aroma of bacon and eggs frying. Her cholesterol level went up a notch just savoring the smell. She opened her eyes. Jack was hard at work at the stove. “I could get used to this,” she murmured.
“Breakfast in bed? Or a personal chef?”
“Both.” Or maybe the chef in bed. She started. She hadn’t said that out loud, had she? Jack’s lack of reaction assured her that she had not.
“The eggs are powdered. Hope you don’t mind.”
She didn’t. Taking extra care to keep her mouth shut, Courtney pushed herself to a sitting position. She couldn’t believe she’d actually fallen asleep. The way she’d tossed and turned after her stint as Florence Nightingale, she’d resigned herself to passing the remainder of the night by counting the number of times she called herself a fool for even thinking about trusting Jack Sullivan again.
At a million twenty she hesitated.
At a million twenty-one she gave in. Heaven help her, she decided to trust him.
Up to a point, she amended quickly. Then grimaced. She was not going to start counting again.
“It’ll be just a few more minutes,” he told her.
“Fine.” Courtney studied him covertly. The man seemed almost cheerful. But she wondered if his mood wasn’t at least partially defensive. A reaction to too many shared intimacies last night—his nightmare, her telling him about a boy named Danny, those long minutes she’d spent in the sheltering cocoon of his arms.
She could understand the awkwardness. In fact, she was surprised she didn’t feel more of it herself. But then a lot of her feelings these past few days surprised her. It was almost as if she were waking up from a long sleep.
Still, she needed to be careful. The man was hurting. Or at least that was the spin she’d chosen to put on the shadowed edges of her newly reborn trust. He hadn’t imprisoned himself on this mountain because he liked the view. No matter what he said. Perhaps her next step should be to get him to trust her.
As long as she kept in mind the fact that it wasn’t her job to fix him. She’d learned the folly of that mind-set over six years of a progressively abusive marriage. A caring therapist and the nonjudgmental love of her best friend, Maggie Blake, at Angels’ Wings, had helped Courtney accept that there was only one person in the world she could ever truly “fix”—and that was herself. With a lot of hard work, she’d come a long way toward doing just that.
But her therapist hadn’t quite covered everything, Courtney mused wryly, allowing herself another quick glance at Jack, who was still vigorously attacking his panful of scrambled eggs. Like how did one handle a chance reunion with a man who’d once broken her heart, and who seemed, despite her best efforts, to be making new inroads into that carefully reconstructed organ?
What do you think, Maggie? she reflected inwardly, knowing her friend’s response would be appropriately raunchy. Do I take a chance here?
Depends. Courtney could see actually Maggie, her hazel eyes twinkling with mischief. How good was he in the sack?
Courtney blushed, remembering all too well.
Grab him! Maggie chirped. Grab him. Lock yourself in a room with him and throw away the key!
Courtney shoved back her bedcovers. It was suddenly much too warm in the tiny cabin.
But wait, Maggie said, her voice growing suddenly serious. There’s another question, Courtney. And you know exactly what it is. Can you trust him?
Courtney hesitated, despite her overnight debate.
Maggie’s voice came back crystal clear and nonnegotiable. Dump him. Dump him and run.
“Are you okay?”
Courtney looked up to see Jack beside the bed with a heaping plateful of bacon and eggs, and a steaming cup of black coffee.
“I’m fine,” she croaked out. Except for a lengthy schizophrenic conversation and the fact you look entirely too sexy with those bedroom eyes, clean-shaven jaw and that blasted lopsided smile. “Just daydreaming. How’s your arm?”
“It’s good. Don’t quit the day job. But it’s good.”
Courtney settled the plate on her lap, while Jack set the coffee on the table next to the bed. “It smells heavenly,” she said and meant it. “It’s been a long time since I’ve indulged myself like this.”
“He-man food,” he grunted, thumping his chest. “Put hair on your chest.”
“You sure you want it to do that?” She glanced at her flannel-covered bosom, then blushed at her audacity.
Their gazes met. She did not misinterpret the raw want she saw there. “Maybe not,” he murmured, then seemed to shake himself. “I’ll, uh, I’ll let you eat. I’ve already had mine.” Abruptly he turned and headed for the small workroom at the back of the cabin.
You’re treading on dangerous ground here, Courtney. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?
Of course not! But she wasn’t about to let that stop her. A window had opened. Somehow, some way they had both, for the moment, let down their guard. She sensed it, felt it. She wasn’t about to let such an opportunity go to waste.
Quickly she finished what she wanted of her artery-clogging breakfast, then gathered up her crutch, her coffee and her courage and headed toward the workroom. She found Jack sitting on the hip-high stool, holding the wolf carving that had so affected her yesterday, the one in which the animal had its leg caught fast by a steel-jawed trap.
“I wish you could set him free,” she said quietly, taking up a position at the workbench that was at a right angle to where he sat. Resting her elbows on the tabletop, her hands were less than five inches from Jack’s.
“So do I. But I don’t know how.” Using a tiny carving tool, he eased away a sliver of wood from the wolf’s left flank. “This is just the way the piece came to me.”
“It’s remarkable.” She
took a sip of her coffee. “But then, you always were good with your hands.”
He gave her a close look, apparently wondering if he should read anything salacious into that remark, as well. But she had meant it as a sincere compliment. Only now—with that look—was she reminded of another set of skills residing in those masterful hands.
In a voice both shy and bold, she whispered, “There’s something happening between us, isn’t there, Jack?”
“Yeah.” His voice was hoarse. Their gazes locked. “Courtney, there’s something I need to tell—”
Somewhere to the north, a wolf howled.
Jack closed his eyes, and Courtney could almost feel him change his mind, decide against telling her whatever he’d been about to say.
Disappointed, she glanced at his injured arm, where the bandage hid his tattoo. The wolf howled again. “A relative?”
His mouth twisted.
The tension between them eased a little. “I didn’t know there were wolves in Montana.”
“A pair down from Canada. I’ve seen ‘em maybe a half-dozen times in the last eight months. A big silver male and a black female.”
“I love to hear them. So wild, so free.” She picked up one of his other carvings and trailed her fingers along a gamboling pup. “I was in Alaska three years ago. A half-dozen of us intrepid hikers and one grizzled old guide.” She smiled. “Maybe he was Yancy’s brother. Anyway, I thought a lot about your wolf story then. We got to see a pack, maybe fourteen animals strong, trailing after an elk herd. It was the most incredible thing to actually see them in the wild.” She put the pup down and rubbed her arm. “You’ll notice, however, that I drew the line at getting a tattoo.”
He grinned. “I don’t know. It might have been kind of sexy. Depending, of course, on where you put it.”
They were back to that dangerous ground again. Dangerous, because Courtney had no idea where it would lead. Or even if it should lead anywhere at all.
“It won’t work, you know,” Jack said quietly.
She blinked, misunderstanding.
“The wolves. They’ll never survive here.”
Montana Rogue Page 11