Shut Up and Kiss Me (9 page)

“At first I felt paralyzed, but then I got mad.”

He chuckled. “Gunshots do that to me, too.”

“That’s when I went for the knife,” she said. Tension thickened her voice, and she gripped her hands together. The white washcloth wrapped around her palm turned red.

It could have been a lot worse, Sky reminded himself. If his dogs hadn’t taken a disliking to the intruder, the woman beside him could have…He made a promise to himself that he’d catch the asshole and make him pay.

Knowing he needed to keep his emotions in check to do his job, he focused on the case and not his need for revenge. Shala continued. “He must have dropped the gun on the porch when the dogs attacked him. He couldn’t get to it, so he ran to his car. And then—”

“Wait!” He pulled into the hospital parking lot and hit the brakes. “He left the gun on my porch?”

“Your dogs—or I should say wolves—chased him away.”

“Only
part
wolves,” he muttered, and asked his question again. “Are you saying—?”

“Aren’t they dangerous?”

Sky frowned. “When you left, was the gun still on the porch?” He pulled his cell phone out to call Lucas. It was after midnight, but before he’d gotten sober the man had hauled Sky’s butt out of bed numerous times to drive his drunken ass home from the Funky Chicken. Paybacks were hell.

“No, I put it on top of the refrigerator. I was afraid the dogs might somehow shoot themselves.”

“That’s good.” Although he hoped like hell she hadn’t messed up any prints. Also, he worried the perp might go back looking for it.

Dialing Lucas’s number, he explained briefly to his neighbor about his needs, the attempted break-in, and the gun, and he told Lucas to watch his back. Not that Sky worried too much about the man. “Call me once you get there.”

He hung up the phone, parked, and cut the truck engine. Half-turning to Shala, he asked, “You ready?”

Her gaze shifted toward the hospital, her blue eyes rounded with fear.

“Have you never had stitches before?”

Her frightened gaze flipped back to him. “Of course I have.” Her face paled, making her blue eyes even bluer.

“They numb you before they stitch.” Funny, after all she’d endured tonight, this was the most fear he’d seen from her.

“I know that.” But she didn’t move to get out.

“Let’s get this over with. Come on.” He reached over her to open her door. Unintentionally brushing his chest against hers was a thrill. Pushing the door open, he leaned back and tried not to enjoy it too much. “Let’s go.”

She got down and took baby steps around his truck. When she finally met up with him on the other side, she looked up with huge, doelike eyes. Given the right situation, those eyes could bring a man to his knees.

Staring at her hand, she said, “I’m just not sure I need stitches. Honestly, if we bought some of those butterfly bandages, I’ll bet—”

Sky chuckled, put his hand on her back and nudged Shala forward. “I’ll give you a bullet to bite on. Seriously, it doesn’t hurt that much.”

She didn’t move. “I’m not afraid of stitches.”

“Right.” This time he latched his arm around her shoulders before pushing forward. “For real, I’ll hold your hand. And you can squeeze it as tight as you want. I promise not to call you a scaredy-cat.
Meow
,” he teased.

She came to sudden stop. Her tennis shoes scraped against the pavement. “I—I don’t like hospitals,” she admitted.

“Because they give stitches?” He chuckled. “Or is it the needles?”

“It’s not because—”

“Come on, I’ll make sure you get a sucker when you’re done.” He forced her onward.

“I don’t like hospitals, because when I was eight, I watched my parents die in one.”

Her voice was tight, from anger or angst he didn’t
know. Sky’s footsteps faltered, his chest grew heavy, and he felt like an insensitive jerk. The look on her face was one of alienation and pain. He’d known those feelings since the day his father killed his mother and then turned the gun on himself. Life had changed when he went to live with Estella and Redfoot, but the loneliness never completely went away.

He tightened his arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I thought—”

“I know what you thought.” She moved out of his reach and walked through the hospital doors.

Jose Darkwater blinked, forced his eyes open, and wished he’d grabbed another cup of coffee at the service station a few miles back.

After he’d gotten off the phone with Sky, he’d called the airline back and learned they had a late flight going to Houston. He could fly there, rent a car, and drive into Precious. What Jose had forgotten was that he’d been pulling a week of late nights at the office, and driving while exhausted was inadvisable for one’s health. When he spotted the Precious sign proclaiming the population to be 893, he almost pulled over to close his eyes.

Eight ninety-three? He’d bet it was less. They probably hadn’t counted the two or three deaths of the old-timers he’d been informed of by his father. Jose just hoped like hell the number didn’t drop again. With his ass-backward ways and beliefs, Redfoot drove Jose crazy, but in every way it counted, Jose could never have had a better
father. Problem was, he wasn’t sure Redfoot was similarly proud of him.

No doubt about it, he’d disappointed his ol’ man. To remedy that, he’d have to change everything he wanted in life and become a carbon copy of Sky. And while he respected his foster brother, he also knew he could never become him. In fact, he resented the hell out of him—resented the relationship Sky had found with his father. At the same time, he was thrilled Redfoot had someone close by. If not for Sky and Maria, he would never have been able to leave. Being stuck living in Precious was about as pleasant as stepping in a bed of fire ants.

Jose looked at his speedometer. Seventy. He glanced at his watch. He’d made good time. But at almost one in the morning, he wondered if he should go straight to the hospital or to his dad’s place to get some sleep. He’d called the hospital after landing, and a nurse had said his dad seemed okay. Maybe a nap and a shower were the better option.

His thoughts shot to Maria. She’d avoided him on his last several visits, so he hadn’t seen her in two years. That hurt, but he’d also been relieved. Jose’s mind created a snapshot of Maria. As always, thinking about her brought a mix of lust, love, and something akin to shame. God knew she wasn’t blood, so being attracted to her wasn’t a cardinal sin, but his mother hadn’t seen it that way. And the very last conversation he’d had with his mother had been about Maria.

No doubt his mom had noticed the way he and Maria looked at each other.
She’s family, son. And you’re older than her. Promise me that you won’t do something to cause a ruckus.

Jose had promised, never realizing it would be the last promise he’d ever make to her. And he’d kept that promise to his mother until two years ago when, somehow, he’d convinced himself that they were older now and all bets were off. But they weren’t. And it sure as hell had caused a ruckus.

He’d gotten the call about the job in New York only a month after throwing caution to the wind with Maria, and the day she found him packing and he’d told her about it had made two things crystal clear. The first was that he loved Maria, loved everything about her: her smile, her positive outlook, her sweet nature—and damn him if he didn’t love her hot little body. But loving Maria was like stepping in concrete, tying him to Precious the rest of his life. To Maria, the town was home.

He suspected she would have come to New York if he’d insisted, but she would have hated it for all the reasons he loved it. So Jose had done the right thing. Well, it had
felt
like the right thing. After two years of comparing every woman he dated to Maria and having them all fall miserably short, he sometimes wondered if he’d been wrong.

A loud popping filled the darkness—a front tire, possibly. His car swerved. Fishtailed. He jerked the steering wheel to the right and he thought he had it under control, but when he looked up, all he saw was a tree coming right at him. He slammed on his brakes.

Too late. He prepared himself for the impact.

Shala, heart pounding, walked to the front of the emergency room.

The semitransparent glass window opened. “Can I help you?” a middle-aged woman asked.

It took Shala a second to be able to talk. “Yes, I…I need a doctor.”

The woman’s brow wrinkled. “Are you hurt? Sick?”

Shala didn’t appear in any distress, which meant she had missed an opportunity in life: she should have been an actress. Because frankly, she was a millimeter from a full-fledged, fall-to-the-floor, cry-your-eyes-out panic attack. She raised her hand, pulled off the bloody washcloth, and held out her palm. Several steady drips of red oozed onto the counter.

The woman shot backward in her seat as if she’d never seen blood. “Oh, my! You walk around back and we’ll get that taken care of.”

Shala felt someone beside her. Sky. She didn’t say a word but moved toward the door.

He dogged her footsteps, so she turned around. He looked serious and apologetic. A lump the size of a small frog took up residence in her throat, but she managed to say, “I can handle it from here. Thank you.”

“But I—”

“I’m fine.” She pushed away through the door.

The desk clerk stood at the end of the hall, putting on rubber gloves as if afraid she might get blood on her just by showing a patient to the examining room. Shala walked toward her, listening to see if Sky had followed. He hadn’t. Relief whispered through her. She wasn’t angry with him. She really wasn’t. Unfortunately, with an emotional storm threatening to engulf her sanity, she didn’t have the capability to deal with him. Not when she had to deal with the past.

Oh, God, the smell. That antiseptic scent, with a hint of Lysol—it threatened to take her back. She drew in a deep gulp of air that suddenly felt thicker. Forcing herself to keep moving, to put one foot in front of the other, she kept her gaze on the woman’s face. Just her face. Because if she dared look around, Shala knew what she’d find. The details would be same. This small-town emergency room would look just like the one she’d found herself in at eight years old.

“Right this way,” the receptionist said.

Shala followed the woman into a curtained-off space just like the one she’d been in at eight, alone. Just like the one her dying parents had occupied a few curtains down.

“I’m going to get our insurance person to take your information here. We wouldn’t want to get her office bloody.”

Shala nodded.

The woman motioned toward the bed. “The nurse and Kelly from insurance will be right in.” She looked at Shala’s hand. “That’s a nasty cut. What happened?”

“A knife.”

“Cooking?”

“Sort of,” Shala answered, not wanting to explain.

“Okay, deary. We’ll have you fixed up lickety-split.” She walked off, her footsteps tapping against the tile floor, and left Shala alone. Alone. Just like before.

Shala stared at the bed and tried not to see the curtain. Tried not to remember getting off the bed and moving two sections down, pulling the curtain back. Tried not to remember seeing her mama’s and daddy’s bloody bodies lurching off the tables as doctors filled them with electricity. Shala’s heart thumped against her chest bone. Feeling the fuzziness of panic, she had one of those good old-fashioned come-to-Jesus talks with herself, the kind Nana had been famous for dishing out whenever necessary. Damn, but she missed Nana. Blinking, she swallowed the lump in her throat and continued talking herself down.

She told herself it had happened a long time ago. That it was time she moved past everything. Get over it! Yeah, her parents had died, and yeah, she’d seen something an eight-year-old shouldn’t, but she wasn’t eight anymore. Breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, she moved to the bed, sat down, and stared at the bloody cloth around her palm.

Footsteps sounded. They stopped at her curtain. Looking up, she expected the nurse. Sky Gomez stood there, arms crossed, posture hard. He stared sternly down at her as if daring her to tell him to go.

The hospital cot was about as comfortable as camping out. Maria hated camping out.

After an hour of tossing and turning, she fell into a semisleep. The sound of the hospital door swishing open
pulled her back. The nurses came in and out, though, checking on Redfoot, their footsteps soft and their voices feminine. She didn’t have to acknowledge them, she told herself. The sweet darkness of sleep lured her back. But as she rolled toward the wall and almost drifted back into slumber, something tickled her awareness.

A hand brushed over her shoulder. A warm comforting hand. “Maria?” A masculine voice whispered in her ear. “I came back. I had to make sure you were okay.”

He’d come back? An image of Jose filled her sleep-hazed mind. He’d left her. Hurt her. She’d lost his baby and maybe her ability to ever have a child. Now he wanted to know if she was okay? Wasn’t it too late for that?

“You awake?”

The soft baritone and the comforting touch weren’t Jose’s, she realized. Rolling over, she threw her arms around Matt.

He smelled the way he always did. His soap always left a hint of something like rosemary and the earthier scent of fresh-cut hay. She pressed her face into his shoulder. For the first time that night, she felt everything would be okay. It felt so good when he held her. Like home felt after you’d been away too long. Then she recalled having thought he was Jose, and guilt flashed through her.

She sat up. Matt sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. “You’re okay,” he whispered. “Thank God, you’re okay.”

She brushed hair from her face. “I tried to call you.”

“I’m sorry. You scared the shit out of me when you hung up without explaining what was happening. I got in my car and left right away. I was an hour out of Dallas before I realized I’d left my phone. I pulled over at the pay phone and tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.”

“I didn’t know that was you. I didn’t take the call.”

He brushed a hand over her cheek. “I was so worried. All you told me was that the lights went out. And then
right before you hung up, you screamed something about someone breaking in. I didn’t know what the hell was happening.”

“I’m fine. Someone broke into the lodge. Redfoot caught the intruder in the act and was hurt. He made it back to the house, but he fell against the wall and hit the light switch. I panicked. I’m sorry I didn’t explain better…” She leaned against him and was enjoying every moment until she remembered the talk she’d had with Redfoot. Hadn’t she warned herself to stop feeling so much and start thinking? Maybe even ask some questions about Matt’s business trips to Dallas?

But he was here. He’d driven all the way home just to make sure she was okay. That meant something, didn’t it?

“How is the old coot?” Matt asked.

“The old coot is fine!” Redfoot called gruffly from his bed, and Maria had to put a hand over her mouth to stop from giggling. “Which is why you, Maria, should go home, now.”

“Sorry. Did we wake you?” Maria went and stood by the bed.

“Actually, the squeaking of that cot keeps waking me up. I know you want to stay for me, but if you’d go home I’d be better off.”

Maria frowned. “But—”

“Don’t ‘but’ me! Go home.”

Maria sighed. “Let me check with the nurses, and if they think you’re fine I’ll consider it.” Looking back at Matt, she motioned for him to follow her out.

“No,” Redfoot said. “He stays behind so I can have a word with him.”

Matt’s eyes widened.

Maria shook her head. “Now isn’t the time, Redfoot.”

“Feels right to me.”

Matt stood up and winked. “It’s fine, Maria. You go talk to the nurses, and I’ll be out in a minute.”

Maria admired Matt’s courage. Redfoot had a way of
instilling fear in people. She just hoped Matt knew Redfoot’s bark was always worse than his bite. Of course, the people who got bit never stuck around to compare.

Then again, if she and Matt were really going to make it, Matt would have to learn to deal with Redfoot. Difficult and stubborn though he was, her foster father was family. And family was sacred.

The lump in Shala’s throat returned, but she would not cry.

“I apologized,” he said, and stepped into the room.

“I know.” The stinging in her sinuses increased. After a few deep breaths, she added, “I’m not mad.”

“Good.” He slipped into the room.

For some crazy reason, she got the impression he didn’t apologize often. Maybe he didn’t have to. She recalled rummaging through his house, assessing him as perfect. Well,
near
perfect, with the exception of having athlete’s foot. Her gaze slid to his feet, and that’s when she remembered what else she’d found—that newspaper clipping. She continued to stare at Sky’s feet while a wash of empathy cascaded through her.

At last she felt brave enough to glance up, and the emotions in his eyes seemed to mirror her own. Her gaze shifted to his chest, which looked ideal to lean against. She imagined him wrapping his arms around her, offering comfort as she did the same in return. Realizing she stared, she shot her gaze back to his feet.

“Something wrong with my shoes?” he asked.

“Nope. Just safer to look at.” Oh, hell. Had she really said that out loud?

“Safer?”

His cell phone rang. From the ensuing conversation, she assumed it was the man Sky had asked to go to his place and retrieve the gun. “Great,” he said into the phone. “I’ll pick it up in the morning. Thanks.”

He hung up and eyed Shala without speaking. After a
moment, the silence felt intimate. Luckily, a woman came in to get her insurance information.

Instead of talking to Shala, though, her attention found Sky. “How’s your foster dad doing?” Foster father? Even feeling half out of it, Shala was able to file away that information.

When the woman asked for Shala’s insurance card, Sky pointed to her injured hand and then her purse, lifting an eyebrow. She nodded. While she answered questions, she noticed Sky flipping through her wallet, looking for her insurance card, but paying particular attention to the pictures. Oddly, she didn’t mind, yet it felt odd having him peek into her personal world. Then, as she recalled her search of the man’s home tonight, turnabout seemed fair play.