Nowhere to Hide

Estelle snorted. “Then you should have stayed in the hospital where you belong, at least for a few more days.”

Since he couldn’t come up with any response to that, he opted to keep his mouth shut.

Into the silence Lisa Connors spoke again. “Once you can get along a little better on your own, we won’t need to keep the monitor turned on. I have to admit, I feel more comfortable knowing I can keep tabs on you. What if you fell while you were trying to transfer to the wheelchair for a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom? I wouldn’t have any way of knowing you needed me until the morning.”

“That would be my problem, wouldn’t it?”

“No. It would be my problem. I was hired to take care of you and I intend to do that. It’s either the baby monitor or my girls and I can sleep in your spare bedroom for the next few nights. Which would you prefer?”

Definitely not the spare bedroom idea. The whole reason he fought so hard to come home was for privacy. He had lived alone since he moved out of his dad’s place in Las Vegas for college. He was a solitary man, and that’s just the way he liked things.

Besides, pain pills or not, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep a bit knowing this woman, with her violet scent and her big blue eyes, was just in the next room.

When he didn’t answer, Lisa Connors smiled. “Not in the mood for a sleepover? I’ll confess, I prefer my own bed, too. So the baby monitor can stay?”

“I guess,” he muttered. He hated the idea but this was another battle he couldn’t quite summon the energy to fight.

“Good,” Estelle said briskly. “Now I’m gonna leave my pager number. Lisa, you check those vitals every four hours or so. You notice any bleeding or anything that might indicate circulation trouble, one of you needs to give me a buzz right away. Doesn’t matter which one. Otherwise I’ll check in with you tomorrow, cowboy. Don’t you go out dancing, now, you hear me?”

“Ha-ha,” he muttered. “You’re a real barrel of laughs.”

Estelle’s raspy chuckle hung in the air behind her for several moments after she left, leaving him alone with Lisa Connors.

“Are you hungry?” she asked after a moment. “You didn’t eat lunch. I can heat up some soup for you or make a sandwich if you feel up to some solids.”

Nothing sounded appealing to him but he knew one of the reasons that single pain pill had knocked him for a loop was his lack of appetite. He needed to keep food in his stomach, whether it sounded good to him or not.

“A sandwich would work.”

“Ham and cheese okay?”

He nodded.

“It will just take me a minute to throw something together. If you’d like to watch TV, I’ve hooked the remote to a cord tethered to the side of the bed there so you can always find it and there are some magazines here, too. I wasn’t sure of your interests but I picked up several that my…my husband used to enjoy reading.”

He only looked at her, but suddenly she colored up like a sugar maple leaf in October. Odd for such a dark-haired woman to show color so clearly. He hadn’t met too many women in his lifetime who could actually blush but the few he had met had been blond.

What had her so edgy? Maybe she didn’t like this situation any better than he did. It was an interesting thought. He knew if he were in her shoes, he sure wouldn’t enjoy baby-sitting a grumpy stranger for a few weeks.

For some reason the thought that she might actually be as uncomfortable with this as he was made him feel a little better about the whole thing.

After a quick peek into the living room to check on the girls, still engrossed in one of their favorite videos, Allie hurried to the kitchen. She closed the door and blew out the breath she’d been holding, then pressed a hand to her fluttering stomach.

What was it about Gage McKinnon that sent her hormones into a tailspin? The man was lethal. Even stiff and bad-tempered from the pain, he had a raw, masculine appeal.

A wounded, grumpy soldier. He was obviously miserable and in considerable pain but he was standing firm on not taking the narcotics his doctors prescribed. She had a feeling despite Estelle Montgomery’s predictions to the contrary, he wasn’t going to bend on his objections to the drugs. He seemed mulish and hardheaded enough to stick with his convictions.

She couldn’t really blame him for that, Allie thought as she buttered bread for his sandwich. A few times in her life she’d had to take pain medication and she had despised that out-of-control feeling.

He wasn’t going to be an easy patient. Despite the sudden conviction, she had to admit that all her nurturing instincts kicked in whenever she saw him lying so dark and masculine on that bed. She wanted to take care of him. To smooth down that lock of hair mussed by sleep and adjust his pillows and distract him from the pain.

Something in his eyes called to her. He seemed lonely, somehow. Lost. As if he’d been wandering alone for a long time and needed somewhere safe and warm to rest for a while….

She heard her own thoughts and rolled her eyes. Right. The man was a tough, hardened FBI agent. Maybe she was projecting her own problems onto him.

What was the matter with her? She had a job to do here and it didn’t include mooning over her patient. This was a good opportunity to make a little extra cash to add to her precious escape fund and she couldn’t blow it just because Gage McKinnon left her all soft and tingly.

She would do her job and do it well, Allie chided herself sternly. She would make the poor man as comfortable as possible given the circumstances. That didn’t include letting him unsettle her.

Keeping a tight rein on her thoughts, she finished fixing the sandwich and arranged it on a plate along with some carrot sticks and potato chips. After she added a glass of milk and one of the low-sugar oatmeal cookies she had made earlier in the day, she carried the tray down the hall to his bedroom.

She paused in the doorway when she spied her daughters standing by Gage McKinnon’s bed, Gaby in the lead and Anna hovering just behind her sister.

“Hey, mister, we colored you a picture,” Gaby was saying, holding out a page ripped from a coloring book like it was a sacred pictograph. “It’s Big Bird and a rainbow. I did Big Bird and Anna did the rainbow. She doesn’t stay inside the lines very well but she’s only three. Hey, mister, what happened to your legs?”

Without bothering to wait for any kind of response, in typical Gaby fashion, her oldest chattered on. “Do they hurt? I bet they do. My friend Gina at my old house broke her arm falling off the swings, and she had to wear a cast. She said it hurt a lot. She still used it to whack her little brother, Nicky. He was a brat. My mama called him a little pill. That’s funny, huh? Hey, mister, where do you want us to put our picture? I bet my mama could find some tape.”

Something about the hard set of his expression warned Allie he didn’t appreciate the company.

She stepped forward quickly, hoping to head off the abrupt answer she sensed brewing. “Girls, it’s very nice of you to try making Mr. McKinnon feel better with a picture. I think the best thing for him right now is to rest. Why don’t you go color a little more? I’m almost finished here and then we’ll be going back to our house for the evening.”

Faced with her no-arguments tone, the girls didn’t quibble. Gaby skipped out of the room, followed by her Anna shadow.

When she and Gage were alone, she set the tray down on the rolling bedside table Ruth had procured and pulled it toward him.

“Sorry about that,” she finally said to break the suddenly awkward silence. “Gabriella can be a little overwhelming sometimes. She means well but I’m afraid she hasn’t learned when to turn it off.”

A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Don’t you have anywhere else for them to go? A sitter or something?”

The sudden attack took her completely by surprise and for a few moments she could only blink at him. “I…no. Not really,” she finally said. “I’m sort of between care providers at the moment. They’re both usually very well-behaved. I…Mrs. Jensen and I didn’t think you would mind them being here.”

“You were both wrong.”

She stiffened at his blunt tone. Well, that was plain enough. He disliked her daughters. How could anybody not adore her daughters? They were sweet and kind. Funny. Completely adorable!

Any warm feelings she might have been crazy enough to entertain for Gage McKinnon fluttered out the window on the breeze. The man wasn’t a wounded soldier. He was grumpy and stubborn and mean tempered.

“I’m sorry,” she said tersely. “I didn’t realize you would object to the girls. I’ll do my best to keep them out of your way.”

“You do that, Ms. Connors.”

She swallowed her sharp retort and nodded. He had a right to his solitude. A couple of preschoolers underfoot probably weren’t the best medicine for someone recovering from a traumatic injury.

She would just have to do her best to keep them quietly occupied for the next few weeks. She could do that. Just as she could control her own unwilling attraction for her cranky patient.

Chapter 5

“Do you think you might need anything else before I leave for the evening? How about more ice water?”

Annoyance threaded through Lisa Connor’s voice like a muddy irrigation canal making its torpid way through a field of alfalfa, and tension stiffened her shoulders and that stubborn little jaw.

He hated to admit it but he was sorry to see the soft compassion in those pretty blue eyes give way to cool, distant politeness behind her glasses.

He should have known she would take his comments personally. She probably thought he had something against her kids. They weren’t really the problem. The little squirts seemed to be fine, although the older one certainly had a motormouth on her.

The truth was, he just had trouble with all kids.

Not that he disliked kids. He didn’t. But he didn’t have much experience with normal kids, the ones who were happy and well adjusted. In his line of work, most of the children he saw were battered and bruised, both emotionally and physically. Or worse, the ones who would never have the chance to grow up.

He had witnessed so many terrible things in his career with the Bureau. Child abuse, sexual molestations, kidnappings. Any possible way an adult could snatch away the innocence of a child. The agents who worked cases involving crimes against children had to maintain a mental toughness, a self-imposed distance, that others in the FBI didn’t always understand.

Over the years Gage thought his skin had grown as thick as an elephant’s hide. He wasn’t good at letting anybody inside, especially not a couple of little girls who would hopefully never be touched by the ugliness he dealt with on a daily basis.

“Ice water would be good,” he finally answered her question with wariness. He had a feeling she would just as soon grab that pitcher and dump the contents over his head. She didn’t, though. Lisa merely picked up the pitcher with that same polite expression on her face and walked out the door.

The room fell silent after she left, and Gage tried to eat a little of the supper she had fixed. He still didn’t have much of an appetite but he forced himself to chew and swallow several bites of the sandwich. It was good, he had to admit. Much better than the pablum they passed off as food in the hospital.

She was trying to make him as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. Maybe he shouldn’t have come down so hard on her about her daughters hanging around.

He pictured the two little dark-haired girls. Anna and Gabriella. What were they? Three? Four? Whatever, they seemed to be fairly close in age to his little sister when she disappeared.

Maybe that was why he was edgy and uncomfortable around them—they reminded him too forcefully of Charlotte the last time he had seen her. No wonder he didn’t like having them around. He didn’t need more reminders of his little sister shoved in his face every minute. Especially when he had nothing else to do all day but lie in this damn bed and think about the past and the guilt that was as much a part of him as his bones and his blood.

“Oh. You’re finished.”

He glanced up to find Lisa standing in the doorway holding the pitcher of water. He’d been so engrossed in his thoughts he hadn’t even registered that he had eaten the entire sandwich without tasting most of it.

“I should have realized one sandwich might not be enough. I’m sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve fixed meals for a…for a man with a healthy appetite. Would you like another one? It would only take me a moment to fix it.”

The spasm of grief that flashed across her face made him curious once more about her late husband. She obviously still mourned the man. “No, thanks. I’m good,” he replied. “I’m afraid I’m still a few days away from a healthy appetite.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind in a few days, then, and adjust your portions accordingly.” She managed a smile—a peace offering?—and poured him a glass of water from the pitcher.

“It’s almost six. If you don’t think you’ll need anything else this evening, I’ll take Gaby and Anna next door and fix their supper and settle them into bed. I checked the monitor earlier and it appears to be working. If you need me, just call out and I can be here in seconds. Also, I’ve made sure the phone is right here attached to the side of the bed. My phone number is programmed into it and so is Ruth Jensen’s, just in case the monitor doesn’t work for some reason.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Behind the lenses of her glasses, her eyes narrowed as she studied him, and he hoped nothing in his expression betrayed the throbbing pain that had suddenly returned to his legs with a vengeance.

“Don’t be a hero, Mr. McKinnon. If you need anything, please tell me. I know how hard it can be to accept help—believe me, I know—but you’ve hired me to do just that until you can manage better on your own.”

“I didn’t hire you,” he muttered, wishing she would just go away and leave him alone to tackle the pain.

“You’re right,” she said after a moment. “If you want to be technical about it, Ruth actually hired me. But she did so on your orders. We both know that right now I’m the only thing standing between you and that hospital room you just left. Please ask if you need something.”

“Fine. I need something.”

Her face lit up with an eagerness to help he would have found laughable if it didn’t shine a warm light on a cold, empty place inside him. “Anything. What can I get for you?”

She was probably imagining he would ask for another pillow or even those blasted pills he hated so much. He almost enjoyed popping her devoted-nurse fantasy.

“My sidearm. It should be in a holster in the personal effects I brought home from the hospital. I want it close enough where I can reach it.”

After a moment of shocked silence, she raised an eyebrow. “Planning on doing a little target shooting at the TV, are we?”

He shouldn’t have to explain anything to her. It wasn’t any of her business that he had acquired his fair share of enemies after more than a decade at the Bureau. She would call him paranoid if he tried to tell her that certain parties would be thrilled if word happened to trickle out that he was lying here helpless, unable to defend himself.

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