by Rhyll Biest
***
Luka blinked.
He wanted to keep his eyes open but it felt like something heavy pushed them closed again. The same something that pinned him down in the darkness, encouraged him to go back to sleep. To float.
But he wanted to let Kat know he was okay.
He struggled, swam upwards, but he couldn’t pull free of the lethargy, didn’t have the strength.
Strange.
A hand squeezed his. Just like he knew the exact speed limit of every stretch of road in town, the number of registered sex offenders in the district and their addresses, and how to read someone their rights, he knew it was Kat’s hand.
With an effort he squeezed back.
***
Galenka raised her head, sniffed the antiseptic air. Don’t like hospital.
Shhh.
It was just a twitch of his hand but she felt it. Kat’s eyes stung.
He was in there.
Lying unconscious in a white hospital gown in a white hospital bed. Smaller. Diminished.
But hanging in there.
That he was in hospital at all pissed her off. Royally. And when she got pissed off, people knew about it.
Kat didn’t have gifts like Sharon’s—knitting skills, fashion sense, motherly instincts. Her gifts were explosive and deadly and smelled like nitro-glycerine.
For a long time she’d been afraid of those gifts, afraid that she would use them against someone she loved, that if she let them out of the bag they’d never slither back in, would instead take over, so that her life mirrored the carnival of her parents’ marriage. And then there’d be no safety net for her, no happy family, no happy ending. Probably just prison. Or a coffin. But now she saw the truth. She could also use her gifts for someone she loved. Put a bow tie on the art of wreckage.
A sick, fizzing energy filled her veins.
We start, Galenka whispered, by setting fire to rival biker gang’s bar and leaving clue pointing to Grinder.
Luka would never approve of such behaviour.
Then we arrange meeting with Grinder and invite rival gang. Bring a plate of explosives, nice bottle of flammable wine.
Luka would definitely not approve. If he were conscious.
But under all her bubbling rage, and Galenka’s wit and venom, a prick of guilt worried her. What if Luka were only in hospital because of her? She’d never thought about what might blow back on him when she’d been busy pouring sugar into motorbike petrol tanks or setting them on fire. No, she’d been such a happy little greyhound-avenging warrior that she hadn’t thought things through.
Hadn’t thought about how while she wasn’t even a blip on Grinder’s radar, the police were always on his mind and his case, in particular the one who had questioned and fined him for the fire hazard outside the tattoo parlour. She hadn’t thought about how the cop friend of Mark Fairly might be the first person Grinder blamed for his harassment. Hadn’t thought about how a cop in a dunking booth presented an irresistible target.
She hadn’t thought at all.
And she’d been careless with his life.
Not even going out a month and already he was seriously injured. If they got engaged, he could be dead within a week.
Perhaps the right thing to do if she cared about Luka was not to escalate things with the bikers but to back off.
De-escalate.
Galenka curled her lip.
Kat ignored her. Continuing to attack Grinder and his crew was the easy option. The harder one was staying with Luka, helping him while he recovered, and not being afraid to admit that despite all her fucked-up fears she cared for him.
Luka’s chest slowly rose and fell with each breath, telling Kat that she had to make a choice between hard and easy.
Chapter 20
‘Snap!’ Luka slapped his hand over the pink RSPCA playing cards with a little more force than was necessary. He leaned forward to breathe in his opponent. ‘You’re driving me crazy.’
Kat’s eyes widened.
Hell, he hadn’t meant to say it like that.
She had a spoonful of yoghurt in her mouth so couldn’t reply, but she gave him a wounded look that rivalled even Stumpy’s, who was master of the wounded look. The pup lolled on the kitchen floor, not a metre away, chewing on a Kong goodie bone with rope.
Luka pointed a finger at Kat’s chest. ‘Every time you lean forward your t-shirt gapes and all I can think about is what we’re not allowed to do.’
Her gaze went to her neckline and she swallowed her yoghurt. ‘There’s really not that much to see so I don’t know why you’re letting it get you all hot and bothered.’ She gave her spoon a defiant lick that sent all his blood rushing south.
‘It’s quality not quantity I’m interested in.’ He hooked a finger over the neck of her t-shirt and tugged it lower. Ah, that was better.
She pushed his hand aside. ‘Dial it back, Casanova. You heard the doc, no alcohol and no hanky-panky until your symptoms go away.’
His damn symptoms. As if fatigue and confusion were symptoms. With his insomnia, they’d become a way of life. ‘What would she know? She’s just a doctor.’
She sighed, laid her pink RSPCA playing cards down. ‘Yeah, right, and I won’t feel guilty at all if you go into convulsions while we get freaky on the kitchen floor.’
That again? He’d had one—just one—fit, right after being conked on the head. He was not unwell. ‘I planned on ‘getting freaky’ in the bedroom but now you’ve ruined the mood.’
She rested her spoon in the yoghurt container, crossed her arms and gave him a smile hard as a foot stomp—the one he imagined she’d used when busting backpackers with bananas in their bags.
‘Why so cranky, your lordship?’ Her eyes gleamed. ‘Is there something you lack? Is it feed time? Nap time? Bath time?’
‘Sexy time.’ Yeah, he was being annoying, but anything to alleviate the boredom of being housebound. The headache he felt chewing at the edges of his consciousness had nothing to do with concussion and everything to do with sexual frustration. He was one hundred percent sure.
‘Sorry, no can do, how about some yummy yoghurt instead?’ She raised a spoonful of yoghurt to his lips and he took a resentful bite. The look he gave her as he swallowed promised she’d pay later.
She returned the spoon to the container and patted his hand. ‘Poor sugar doodle, just one more day and you can go back to umpiring violent domestic disagreements, thwarting armed robberies and all the other things you love most.’
‘What did you just call me?’
She stopped patting his hand to instead trace the subway map of veins on his forearm, a frown forming. ‘How come guys get these and chicks don’t?’
Her soft touch and the knowledge he couldn’t touch her back—well, not in a way that would lead to things that violated doctor’s orders—made him shiver. ‘Muscle pushes veins closer to the skin and a lack of subcutaneous fat makes them more obvious. Women generally have less muscle and more fat than men.’
She took her hand away. ‘Hmmm, here I was worried about Sharon wanting to knit with you when it’s blood banks and phlebotomists I need to keep an eye out for.’
He blinked. What? She played it so cool he hadn’t even realised she knew the word ‘jealousy’. ‘You think I’m interested in Sharon?’
Her green eyes held his. ‘Didn’t you have dinner with her the other night?’
Where the hell did she get that idea from? ‘No. Did she tell you that? It’s not true.’
She looked away. ‘She’s not a fan of mine. I suspect she’d like to bury one of her knitting needles in my neck.’
Poor thing. And interesting how she’d dodged the question of who had told her the lie. He let it go because he knew what she was really asking. Can I trust you? Are you on my side?
‘Ms Daily, I can assure you that I am a one-woman-at-a-time man. In fact, on the advice of my doctor, I’m currently not even sleeping with one woman at a time—even though I very much want
to.’
‘Good.’ Her eyes narrowed as she attacked her yoghurt once more. But he could read her now, could tell from the flush of her cheeks that she was quietly pleased. And, oh, the fierce stab of pleasure he felt at having partially figured out this complex woman.
‘You want to finish the game?’ She nodded at the cards.
‘Not really. How about you come sit on my knee instead?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You want to watch me eat yoghurt while I sit on your knee? Kinky.’
‘True, but not prohibited by the doctor, right?’
His mood brightened as she stood. He turned sideways in his chair to offer his knees as a seat.
‘That’s kind of following the letter of the law rather than the spirit, but I suppose it’s cruel to say no to an invalid.’ She brought her toned legs, world class arse and her yoghurt over to his side of the table and perched on his knee.
‘Happy now?’ She gave him a prim look then ruined it by licking her spoon in the most lascivious manner.
Heat detonated deep in his belly.
She traced the bruised lump on his forehead, avoiding his stitches. ‘It’s gone green. Who’s my sexy little leprechaun?’
With her hand raised, the faint scar on the inside of her arm that she so often rubbed was right before his eyes. He ran a finger along it. ‘How did you break your arm?’
Quick as a bag snatch her good mood vanished.
Inwardly he grimaced. Intuition told him it had been abuse. Intuition and the way she sometimes frowned at children, or looked through them, as if not seeing them—or not wanting to see them.
Only someone who associated childhood with vulnerability and overwhelming pain found it difficult to be around the young.
But he wanted her to trust him enough to be able to tell him.
‘I fell off my bike.’
‘Kat.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Really? You want to hear just how shitty my childhood was? How my mother broke my arm after my dad took her purse away to keep her from leaving? That will make you happy?’
He could have told her that it hurt, more than a rock to the head, but that would have made her feel bad and she wasn’t really asking a question, anyway, but trying to work out if he was insensitive enough to want to know everything that ever happened to her. He wasn’t. Let that shit stay buried where it belonged. ‘As if that would make me happy.’ He stroked her hair. ‘I don’t want details, but don’t lie to me, either.’
He didn’t need details because the picture was clear enough. He’d seen it on the job too much. In the war between her parents she’d been territory, and both had subscribed to a scorched-earth policy. But she wasn’t trapped by their fucked-up drama any more, though she seemed to have trouble recognising that. ‘You are stronger for it, you know. You face your fears head on and nobody puts one over you.’
‘Yeah, because I’m suspicious of everyone.’
‘You’re just looking for the worst in others so that you can’t be taken unawares by it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.’ Not from a cop’s point of view, anyway.
She stabbed at the bottom of her container of yoghurt. ‘It was confusing, you know. My mother might have broken my arm but she also used to spend hours with me teaching me stuff, and telling me that the reason the other girls at school teased me was because I was a Russian princess while they were only peasants. I used to ask her what my tiara—left behind in Russia when we fled—looked like. I even started pasting pictures of tiaras into my scrapbook, for when it was time to get a new one.’
At the thought of her as a little girl in a plaster cast with tiara envy, his chest tightened like he was in a bad neighbourhood. He rubbed her back. ‘I understand. My mother let my dad pick on me for years but she also helped me to write letters to my dog after he got run over.’
It was almost imperceptible, the way her fingers tightened around her spoon. Strange the way people got at one another the way they did when they cared. He veered away from the thought and its dirty little assault on his emotions.
‘When did you leave home?’ he asked.
‘At fifteen.’
‘What did you do?’ He hoped to hell she hadn’t been forced to live on the street.
‘I found a share house with a group of other Goth girls and I worked at Woolworths as a check-out chick five days a week. On weekends I volunteered at the local animal shelter.’
‘Ah, so it started young.’ He caught a strand of her coppery hair and twirled it around his finger.
‘It?’
‘Your defence of the small, furry and innocent.’
She tugged her hair free and it sprang into a ringlet. ‘Hey, I defend large, scaly and naughty creatures too, thanks very much.’
‘And then you joined the quarantine service.’ He rested a hand on her thigh, stroked it.
‘Yup. No one was going to smuggle a pineapple up their arse into the country on my watch.’
‘Very patriotic.’ He loved her sense of humour at the same time knowing that she used it like a riot shield and baton.
‘Thanks.’ About to say more, she hesitated.
‘What?’ In his experience, it was the things that people thought twice about saying that usually mattered.
‘Every day was a battle in our house and now I wonder if I go looking for them. They certainly seem to find me.’
Ah. His girl was self-aware. ‘Does it matter?’
She blinked. ‘Pardon?’
‘Does it matter? If you’re helping animals and people, which you are, does it matter what your motivations are?’
‘I guess not.’ She pulled her ponytail tighter. ‘Though I could probably squeeze an appearance on Oprah out of it.’
‘Dr Phil might be better.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘What? My trauma isn’t good enough for Oprah?’
‘Keep your options open. Don’t put all your eggs in one talk show basket.’
‘Such wisdom from one so young.’ She fed him a mouthful of yoghurt. It tasted like berries. He’d bet her mouth did too. Those sweet, pink lips …
She poked him in the chest. ‘You’re not going to lecture me again about being careful while on the job?’
‘Nope. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. Plus, you’re getting so good at self-defence that now I feel sorry for anyone stupid enough to take you on.’
‘Yesss.’ She raised her palm and he high-fived her.
‘Just don’t get overconfident.’
‘What counts as overconfident?’ She studied him, forest-green eyes bright with curiosity.
‘Starting shit with bikers.’ He kissed her shoulder. ‘I think you like scrapping a little too much.’ He ignored her glare. ‘But you wouldn’t have become an RSPCA inspector without a bit of spine, so at least all those animals out there are benefiting from it.’
‘Thanks, Dr Phil.’
‘Dr Phil doesn’t pack heat like this.’ He rested her hand on his lap.
‘Jesus.’ She frowned. ‘Talking about my difficult childhood has given you a boner?’
‘Well—’ he eyed her nipples, ‘—you’re not wearing a bra and your breasts were also talking.’
‘Really? What did they say?’
‘They kept saying ‘help us, Luka, help us, we want to have sex’.’
‘Is that so? I thought their tastes ran to more intellectual pursuits. Chess, architecture, genealogy. Well, there you go, apparently I didn’t know them at all.’
‘Maybe I can help the three of you … reconnect.’ He cupped the subjects in question and his clothes grew too tight in the pants region.
‘Why? Are you the breast whisperer?’
A wistful smile played on his lips. ‘Don’t tease me, woman, I’m too old to change careers.’
‘Old?’
‘Old and yet exceedingly virile.’
‘In your dreams, invalid, in your dreams.’ She slid off his lap. ‘And since playing poker isn
’t doing it for you, you can help me make dinner instead.’
***
He woke around two, as he did every other night, with a start and a muffled shout. Kat wrapped her arms around him, tight enough that her muscles ached, and tried not to think about how he might have seen her die in his latest nightmare.
It was just a nightmare.
Shit happened.
Anything could become mundane, be normalised, if one applied oneself to the task.
She rubbed his back and gradually his breathing slowed. How odd that she was providing comfort to him. She saw herself as a bringer of nightmares rather than the reassuring type.
Belovuk was changing her.
The notion both appalled and intrigued her.
Why did he, and not all the other people she’d encountered over the years, possess that power? Divine right? Coincidence? Psychology? Chemistry? All of the above?
And why did she allow it?
Because she thought he understood her just a bit? Or because she couldn’t help herself?
God, those shoulders. If he thought the ban on sex was hard on him… It was tough to be so close and yet unable to do all the things she wanted to do. She was like a nun with her nose pressed against a male stripper’s banana sling.
So why exactly was she torturing herself by sleeping in the same bed? Probably for the same reason she’d taken leave without pay to keep him under post-concussion observation. Because his concussion was her fault. She owed him, simple as that. It had nothing to do with playing house and enjoying the company—though it was shocking how well they got along, considering the circumstances. Him unable to drive or work, having to play invalid. Her unable to mess with Grinder.
Neither able to jump one another’s bones.
They’d played cards, cooked, watched movies and talked. During one conversation, she couldn’t remember which, he’d revealed that his father—a violent asshole—had made his mother’s life a misery before returning to his home country. So it didn’t take a whole lot of brain power on her part to work out why he’d entered the profession he had. He was just like her, hated cruelty and needed to do something about it just to neutralise the memories of helplessness that rose up in him.
