“He’s a polite one, isn’t he, Alvin?” She returned with supplies in her arms. “You’d mind because you’d be getting frustrated, trying to make a call.” She deposited bandages and gauze pads on the table. “Phone’s been dead since this storm started.” She crossed her arms before her ample chest. “Happens a lot out here. Don’t get much regular service every time Mother Nature throws a fit. But we don’t mind.” She shrugged carelessly, looking toward her husband. “Don’t have anyone to call anyway.”
He had to get in touch with the prime minister, or at least his own people, who could then get in contact with Hill. “How far away is the nearest town?”
This time, it was Alvin who fielded the question. He avoided looking at his wife as he answered, “Far enough to make the trip interesting. Close enough to get to if we need anything. Why?”
There was no harm in being truthful—up to a point. “I really need to make that call.”
Alvin nodded as his wife stepped out of the room again. “Then your best bet is to keep on going. Service isn’t all that good at Spurn Head. Better to go on to the next town. It’s about twenty kilometers from here.” Just as he said it, the lights began to give up the ghost. It was clear that there was a power failure in the making. “They don’t lose their electricity when the storms come.”
“Alvin, get some more candles for these nice people,” Elizabeth instructed as she began lighting the various candles that had already been placed around the room. They looked like so many mushrooms randomly sprouting after the rain. “We keep these out,” she explained to Pru. “Never know when you might need them. Now—” she placed her hands on her ample hips “—what else did you say you needed?”
Pru pressed her lips together. She wasn’t looking forward to what she had to do, but if she didn’t do something, there was no telling what could happen to Lazlo’s leg. “A needle, thread, a sharp knife and some peroxide.”
Elizabeth nodded at the mention of the first three, but she shook it at the last item. “Don’t have any of that. But I’ve got alcohol. The rubbing kind,” she emphasized. “I don’t abide any of the other being around,” she confessed. “Makes a man’s head fuzzy and Alvin’s is fuzzy enough as it is. On the inside,” she added with a chuckle when Pru glanced in the old man’s direction and looked at his tufts of white hair.
Even as she spoke, Elizabeth was busy gathering the items together, fetching the knife from a drawer in the kitchen, the needle and thread from another closet, then stepping back into the bathroom. Alvin, meanwhile, was spreading more candles around the kitchen.
Pru looked at Joshua. He was still sitting on the chair where Alvin had deposited him, looking a little pale, even with only the light from the candles illuminating the room.
“Too bad about the alcohol,” Pru said to Joshua, lowering her voice. “I have a feeling you might need some.”
Joshua looked down at his thigh. It was throbbing like a son of a gun and despite the makeshift bandage, it was still oozing blood. “All depends on how good you are.”
Elizabeth handed her a large bottle of rubbing alcohol. “Well, we’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?” Pru said, bracing herself. Her tongue felt as if it was sticking to the roof of her mouth.
Time to get busy, she told herself, placing the bottle of alcohol on the table and picking up the knife. She carefully pierced the leg of Joshua’s pants, then quickly ran the blade through it, slitting the material down to the cuff.
Startled, Joshua stared at her. “What are you doing?”
She would have thought that was obvious. “I have to cut away the material to get at the wound.”
Joshua leaned into her so that neither of the two other people in the room could hear him. “First I sacrifice my shirt, now this? I usually know a woman more than a few hours before I get naked in front of her.”
“First time for everything,” Pru whispered back glibly. She tried not to let the image he’d just painted in her mind distract her. It was bad enough that the man had a chest you could bounce coins on, she didn’t want her thoughts getting carried away about the rest of him.
Out of the corner of her eye, Pru saw Elizabeth leave the room. Probably couldn’t stomach the sight of blood, she guessed. Not that she could blame the woman. She wasn’t exactly all that keen on this herself, but the alternative wasn’t very promising and whether she’d asked him to or not, Lazlo had come to her aid. The way she saw it, even though she wouldn’t have said anything to him about it, she owed him.
With the pant leg sufficiently out of the way, picking up the alcohol Pru walked over to the sink and disinfected the knife before crossing back to Joshua. She poised the tip of the knife over the wound.
“Ready?”
Maybe a little alcohol might have been welcome right about now, Joshua thought. Braced, he nodded. “Ready. Get it over with.”
Pru ran the tip of her tongue along her lower lip, worried. If Lazlo jerked involuntarily, or moved, she might accidentally cut him deeper than she intended. She looked at Alvin. “Maybe you’d better put your hands on his shoulders, hold him down for me if you don’t mind.”
Alvin nodded nervously. But as the old man was about to do as she asked, Joshua waved him back and looked into her eyes. She saw the agent’s steely resolve. “No need,” he told her. “Just do it.”
Pru took a deep breath and willed her hand to remain steady. Then she cut into the wound as quickly as possible. After what seemed like an interminable amount of probing, she was rewarded with the faint sound of metal on metal. She’d located the bullet with the tip of the filleting knife that Elizabeth had given her. Now all she had to do was dig it out.
All.
Throughout the short procedure, she kept glancing up at Joshua to see how he was holding up. To her surprise, he neither flinched nor moved a muscle. If it weren’t for the feel of his flesh, she would have said she was cutting into a stone statue.
And then the bullet was out. “There’s the little bugger,” she announced with triumph, putting it on the table in front of Joshua. She took the knife and put it in the sink, then washed her hands again.
“So,” Alvin said thoughtfully, looking from one to the other. It was obvious that, for the time being, he’d decided to let this pass. “Always was an ornery animal,” he commented.
She’d forgotten about the “goat.” She pressed her lips together. “Armed to the teeth, he was,” she quipped.
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Part two,” Pru announced, returning to Joshua. Threading the needle, she disinfected both it and the thread. She got down on her knees and then carefully pierced Joshua’s skin as she began stitching up the wound.
It took only five stitches. Pru held her breath as she took each stitch and pulled it through. The only audible sound was Alvin, breathing. There seemed to be nothing coming from Lazlo, not even one cleanly drawn breath.
The man was a robot, she thought, amazed and a little unnerved.
Finished, Pru put down the needle and thread, feeling considerably more shaken inside than she judged Joshua was. She dropped into the chair opposite him. She didn’t bother hiding her amazement. “You take pain like a warrior.”
He raised a shoulder and let it drop, dismissing the praise. “Didn’t see the point in yelling in your ear and if I moved, who knows what you would have cut or stitched.”
She laughed at that, getting a clear image of just what part he was referring to. And then she noticed that Lazlo was just now uncurling his fingers from either side of the chair. Looked like he’d been holding on to it the entire time she’d worked on him. She couldn’t help wondering—if she flipped the chair over, would there be a deep impression of his fingerprints?
“Very true,” she agreed.
Elizabeth popped her head in the doorway. “Surgery over?” she wanted to know.
“All done,” Pru told her. Rising, she turned toward the sink to wash her hands for a third time. As she moved she felt stiff. Was that due to
her own nerves, or the less-than-gentle way she’d been handled these last two days? In either case, she felt sore.
“Then you could stand to use these.” Elizabeth placed a folded shirt and pair of pants on the table in front of Joshua. “Keep you from running around the countryside, looking like some half-naked Tarzan character. They belonged to our boy, Nathan,” she explained, patting the small pile. “He was about your height and size when he was taken from us. We’ve still got a bunch of his clothes.”
Pru stopped drying her hands and crossed over to the other woman. She put her arms around her, feeling genuine sympathy. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Yes.” Elizabeth sighed heavily. “So am I.” She glanced at Alvin. “We,” she amended. “But these things happen, I suppose.” And then she added with a hopeful smile, “Maybe someday he’ll come back.”
Pru exchanged glances with Joshua. That wasn’t exactly possible. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Elizabeth pursed her lips, shaking her head. “Neither do we. Why he’d run off with that two-bit tart is simply beyond me. Raised him up to be God-fearing and decent and the minute he turned twenty-one, he ran off with the first little tart who smiled at him.” She stopped when she saw the puzzled looks on their faces. “What’s the matter?”
“You said he was taken from you,” Joshua reminded her.
“Well, he was,” Elizabeth insisted. “By her.” The single word sounded damning. She huffed, shaking her head, obviously pushing away the unpleasant memory. “It’s getting late and you two must be tired after your big adventure.” She tittered slightly. “With the goat.” And then her expression softened into an inviting smile. “You can stay the night if you like. Have our boy’s old room. Bed’s kinda small, but it’s better than sleeping in a truck I’d wager.”
“You’re being very kind,” Joshua told her, taking out his wallet.
But as he began to take out a few bills, the woman pushed his hand aside. There was almost indignation in her eyes.
“Put that away, I didn’t ask you for money now, did I?” She eyed the wallet until Joshua finally slipped it back into what was left of his pants. “That’s what’s wrong with the world these days, people have completely forgotten about common hospitality.”
“Well, you obviously haven’t,” Pru told her, giving the woman a warm, heartfelt hug. She felt empathy stirring inside her, enough to bring tears to her eyes. With effort, Pru willed them back, blinking to keep them from spilling. “Thank you.”
“Go on with you.” Clearing her throat, Elizabeth waved the two of them off. “Alvin will show you to Nathan’s room. Might be a mite dusty,” she apologized as they turned to go. “I haven’t been in there since he left.”
Pru gave the woman’s hand a squeeze, letting her know that she understood. Turning, she offered her shoulder to Joshua for him to lean on.
The corners of his mouth curved slightly. “This is getting to be a habit,” he commented.
“Well, just don’t get used to it,” she warned him, threading her arm around his waist. Silently, she gave herself the same warning.
Mercifully, Nathan’s room was on the first floor, which meant that Joshua didn’t have to climb any stairs.
When Alvin brought them to it, the older man paused in the doorway as they walked into the room. “Will you be needing anything else?”
Joshua hesitated for a second. Asking felt like an imposition, but he wasn’t thinking of himself. This was for the woman the agency was being paid handsomely to have him retrieve and protect. So he asked.
“Could you spare a bite to eat? P—” Joshua stopped himself just in time. He was about to use her name, which was not the one she’d given the older couple. He couldn’t remember what she’d called herself, so he used a neutral term. “My wife hasn’t had anything to eat today and I know she’s starving.”
Alvin nodded his head vigorously. “Got lots of shepherd’s pie left from dinner. Elizabeth always makes too much.” He looked apologetic. “But you’ll have to have it cold, what with the stove out because of the electricity and all.”
“Right now,” Pru confessed, “I wouldn’t care if it was frozen.”
Alvin looked as if he believed her. Which prompted him to hurry. “Be back in a second,” he promised, shuffling away as quickly as he could.
Pru turned away from the doorway and looked at Joshua. He was standing behind her. The room felt rather small. “That was very thoughtful of you.”
Joshua shrugged. “I have my moments.”
Her mouth curved. Maybe she’d been too hasty to judge him. Her life had always been filled with people whose allegiance was strictly to her father and to his position, whatever it was at the time. She had to admit she liked being placed first for a change.
“Apparently.”
Joshua tried to take a step. It wasn’t easy but he was determined. He glanced down at the freshly bandaged thigh. “You know, when you told that woman you were a nurse, I thought you were kidding.”
“I was,” she countered. Digging out the bullet and then closing up the wound was something she’d learned while working in the various poverty-infested countries while serving with the Red Cross. “But telling her that saved time,” she explained. “Elizabeth would have wanted to hear details about how I learned to do what I did otherwise.” She smiled up at him, thinking that he really did have beautiful eyes for a secret agent. “Besides, I have a feeling you’d feel better if I didn’t go around telling people who I really was.”
She was right and he was relieved that she understood that without his having to tell her. It would have come across as too much of a lecture, something, he had a hunch, she would have highly resented.
“Intuitive, handy and beautiful.” His appreciative smile deepened. “Quite a combination.”
There was something about that smile that pulled a woman in, Pru thought, trying to be analytical rather than affected. She turned her face up to his. “Are you coming on to me, Secret Agent Man?”
Another time, another place…he couldn’t help thinking. But out loud, he told her, “It’s against the rules.”
She didn’t move back, didn’t draw away. “And you always follow rules.”
Damn, but for two cents, he’d like to see what it felt like kissing that sarcastic mouth. “Yes.”
Pru drew closer to him, so close that he could feel each word along his skin the second she uttered it. “Always?” she repeated.
He should be putting some space between them. There really were rules to follow and none of them allowed for what he was thinking now.
“Always.”
Pru raised herself up on the toes of her sneakers, never taking her eyes off him. Her lips were less than a fraction away from his. As she spoke, her mouth came within a hairbreadth of touching his.
“Really?”
There was amusement dripping from every letter. And then, to test his resolve and her theory, that he was the kind who easily bent rules if it suited him, Pru brought her mouth to his.
Because he was confident that he wasn’t about to lose his head just because Pru the Shrew had also turned out to be a tease, Joshua didn’t move his head back and try to avoid what he knew was about to happen. Instead, he decided to teach her a lesson. That there were consequences for playing with fire. He not only didn’t move his head, he kissed her back.
Taking firm hold of her shoulders, he immediately deepened the kiss.
And then deepened it some more.
The next thing Joshua knew, he was framing her face with his hands and there was this wild, heady pumping of blood going on in his veins. So wild and so loud that it blocked out everything.
Everything but the heat from her mouth and the heat from his own body. Especially since it was now pressed urgently against hers. He was absorbing every point of contact. Whether this latest twist was of his doing or hers he couldn’t swear to with certainty, but all he knew for a fact was that there wasn’t enough space between them fo
r a moonbeam to squeeze through.
And he was enjoying it.
One second she was teasing him, having a little fun at his expense, the next, the electrical storm they had previously been subjected to had now moved into the four walls of this tiny, drab bedroom.
Not only into the bedroom, but into her veins as well.
Pru could hardly breathe, much less think. But she could react. Oh, Lord, could she ever react.
And she did.
Almost involuntarily, Pru had brought her body to his, sealing herself to him as closely as her mouth was sealed to his lips.
And then there was this noise, this uncomfortable, embarrassed noise. Focusing, Pru realized that someone was clearing his throat.
Alvin.
Pru jerked her head back, away from Joshua, and turned toward the doorway. Good as his word, Elizabeth’s husband had returned. He was holding a small tray in his hands.
More like clutching it, actually. On the tray were two plates of what looked like mashed potatoes with bits of meat and several peas peering out from beneath it.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” he apologized, tending the apology to the slates on the wooden floor.
“You weren’t interrupting,” Pru told him. She tried to keep her tone matter-of-fact as she took the tray from him, then set it down on the small bureau. “This is more than generous,” she told him, offering him a wide smile. “Thank you.”
Alvin nodded, then looked at Joshua. He seemed to be more comfortable talking to his own gender. “Brought you something else.” As he spoke, he looked over his shoulder. There was no one there, and he offered the “something else” to Joshua. “But from the looks of it, you might not need this to take the edge off.” He chuckled to himself as he handed over a half-consumed pint of whiskey.
Joshua refrained from taking the bottle. “I thought your wife said she doesn’t keep spirits in the house.”
“She doesn’t. Doesn’t mean that I can’t.” Alvin winked broadly at both of them.
Joshua shook his head. “I can’t take this from you,” he protested.
But Alvin took the bottle and placed it in his guest’s hand. “Sure you can. Not like there’s not more hidden about, here and there. Like I said—” again he glanced over his shoulder “—it takes the edge off.” Stepping back, he put his hand on the doorknob. “You two have a good night of it. Need anything else, just yell out.” His eyes went from one to the other. “Though I don’t think you’ll be yelling for me if you do.” Again, Alvin winked broadly, an impish smile on his lips. “Ah, to be young just one more time,” he murmured as he left. “And free.”
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