by Mallory Kane
Dana forced her thoughts away from how her ex-husband looked. She reminded herself that he was here because he’d broken into her apartment. “I have a perfectly good doorbell. Would you please tell me why you felt you had to break in?”
“I thought you were still gone,” he said. “How many times have I told you not to put that kind of information on your…answering machine? The whole city of New Orleans doesn’t…need to know you’ll be out of town until Friday. You might as well take out an ad—’I’m gone. Please…steal me blind.”’
She ignored the strain in his voice. “Oh, I see. You only broke in because you thought I was gone? You’ve turned to burglary now, I guess. The police force isn’t dangerous enough for you.” She switched on the lamp and pulled her robe tighter around her.
Her fingers touched something sticky on the terry cloth. She looked down. Dark red streaked the front of her robe, where she’d brushed by Cody, and stained her fingers. Blood. It was blood. Slowly, reluctantly, her brain wrapped itself around the thought. Her throat closed. She looked at Cody, a sickening dread overriding her anger.
His left arm hung uselessly at his side, and in the lamplight, she saw what she hadn’t noticed before. Blood dripped slowly onto the floor.
“Oh, Cody, you’re bleeding. What have you done now?” she moaned, mesmerized and horrified by the dark drops that trickled down his motionless fingers to fall onto the polished wood.
He shrugged and tried to grin, but a grimace of pain crossed his face. His eyes closed and his legs buckled and he slid down the wall.
Through lips white with pain, he muttered, “Dana, don’t be mad. I’ll leave.”
Déjà vu surrounded her in shades of slowly dripping red, spinning her head crazily. “You obviously can’t leave. You can’t even—” her voice caught on a sob “—stand up.” She hated her accusing, bitter tone, but she couldn’t help it. She’d been here, done this, and she didn’t want the T-shirt.
“Look at you. Damn it, Cody….” He hadn’t changed—although that was no surprise. He’d never changed and he never would. He would always step right into danger’s path. He would always be the same cocky, brash kid she’d fallen in love with at first sight.
They’d only dated a few weeks before Cody had talked her into getting married. She’d been in law school, and he’d just joined the New Orleans Police Department. But that was a long time ago. Now their marriage was over, and he had no right to come into her house, bleeding and hurt. He had no right to make her start worrying about him again. She opened her mouth to say so, but his head lolled to one side and his body slumped.
“Oh, God.” She stared at her ex-husband, passed out on the floor. She kneeled down and pushed his silky hair out of the way to feel his forehead. “Cody, wake up! What do I do?”
He opened his eyes and looked a little to the left of her head. “Whoa,” he whispered. “There’s two of you, Dana. Wow, twice as much to love.”
Something deep inside her ached with loss and sorrow. No. Please don’t use the word love. I can’t stand it. She concentrated on helping him.
“Where are you hurt? What happened?” She stood up and pulled on his unbloodied arm, trying vainly to master the queasy fear that was stealing her breath. Cody was hurt. Again. “Can you stand up?”
He looked at his left hand, covered in blood. “Look. I’m bleeding on your floor. I’m sorry, Dana, I know how much you hate a mess.” His voice was faintly slurred. He wiped his fingers on his jeans, streaking the dusty fabric with thick black blood and shearing what was left of Dana’s breath from her lungs.
Her gaze followed the path of his hand. Blood. Cody’s blood. “Cody, shut up. Talk to me.”
Cody laughed weakly. “Pick one, chère.”
“How bad are you hurt? Should I call a doctor?”
“No!” He pulled himself upright with a huge effort. “Please, Dana. No doctor. It’s not that bad. Just a flesh wound. Damn,” he whispered, leaning back against the wall, his face turning paler, if that was possible. His forehead furrowed and more lines appeared on his face. He looked as though he was in agony.
Dana’s heart pounded so loudly the echoes seemed to reverberate around her. Cody was in trouble. It was the same old story, the same old Cody, and Dana felt the same old terror squeezing her chest.
Not again. I can’t do it again.
Because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she grabbed his good arm and draped it around her shoulders. “Damn it, Cody, when are you going to figure out you’re not immortal? When are you going to realize that those bullets are real? This isn’t cops and robbers. That’s not make-believe blood.” She stopped herself with an effort. Her voice was beginning to sound hysterical.
“When are you going to…remember my name is not ‘Damn it, Cody.”’
She sniffed in exasperation. “Come on. We’ve got to stop that bleeding.”
“I know. Messing up your floor.” Cody was mumbling and leaning heavily on her. He was almost out again.
She glanced at the tiny bathroom, then dismissed it as too small. Instead, she turned him toward the bedroom. “Wait a minute. Can you stand, just for a second?” She peeled his arm from around her shoulder and jerked her new Battenberg lace bedspread off the bed.
Cody made a short, derisive sound and Dana’s face burned. “It’s brand new….” She stopped, embarrassed. He was bleeding to death and she was worried about a bedspread.
“Don’t worry, chère, I understand. Hard to get that blood out…wouldn’t want a stain. Wouldn’t want a mess.” His voice was fading, but she heard him.
She started to respond but Cody was losing his fight to stay upright. She caught him around the waist as he swayed.
“You still smell like roses,” he said, his voice rumbling against her shoulder and his breath warm on her ear. “Al…always like roses.”
And you smell like danger, and trouble, and everything I lost. “Can you stand up long enough to get the jacket off?”
“Maybe,” he said. But just as she reached for the collar to pull it off his shoulders, his knees buckled again and he crumpled onto the bed. “Then again…maybe not.”
“Damn it, Cody, how can you joke at a time like this? You’re bleeding and in trouble. Try to take it seriously, please. Turn over. I’ve got to get that jacket off.” She pulled at the sleeve, and when it slid off, she saw where the blood was coming from. Her stomach turned upside down and she had to swallow against the queasy lump that began to form.
“Oh, God,” she breathed as her stomach pitched. “Cody, you’ve been shot.”
“You got that right,” he whispered, then groaned as she tugged on the torn sleeve of his sweatshirt. It was soaked with blood and stuck to his skin. There was an ugly black hole in the upper arm.
She looked at his back. Another hole marred the shoulder. “Is—is this the same b-bullet? How many times were you shot?”
“Just once,” he gasped. “It went clean through. I heard it hit the wall behind me.”
Dana moaned at the picture his words evoked. “It went through,” she repeated doggedly. “That’s good, I think. We need to get you to the emergency room.”
“No.” Cody shook his head against the pillow and grabbed her wrist with his good hand. “Just wrap it up, please.”
She pulled away. “God, Cody. You’re the most stubborn man I’ve ever known. You need stitches, and probably a tetanus shot, and a blood transfusion for all I know.”
“No, I don’t. Got a tetanus shot, last year, when I—never mind. All they’d do is…wrap it up. Please, Dana?”
“Fine,” she grumbled, grabbing a pair of scissors from the sewing box under her dressing table. “What do I care, anyway? It’s none of my business. I don’t know why you even came here.”
Her fingers shook and her mouth filled with acrid saliva as she cut the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Nausea burned in her throat. She swallowed hard, while a shudder ran up her spine.
It was just like before. L
ike all the times before. “You haven’t changed a bit. It’s just like the last time, and the time before that. How many times were you shot in the two years we were married? Three times? Four?”
Dana hadn’t seen much blood in her life, and most of it was Cody’s.
Chapter Two
Dana licked dry lips as she peeled fabric away from Cody’s skin. It didn’t matter if he’d been shot three times or thirty. It was too many. The last time had been a head wound. Then the blood had streaked his forehead and his cheek and had run down his neck to soak the collar of his shirt.
“And how many times did you go to the doctor? Once. And that wasn’t even your idea. You were unconscious, for God’s sake!”
She hadn’t ever wanted to see his blood again. That was why she’d left him. It was the reason that, no matter how much she loved him, no matter how much it had hurt her, she’d had to leave. His job had always come first. Always had and always would.
“Dana, could you shut up and get on with it, please?”
She pushed the memories to the back of her mind and concentrated on getting the sweatshirt off without tearing open his wound. “Oh, Cody,” she moaned.
His beautiful golden skin was torn and bloody. The holes in the sweatshirt matched the holes in his arm, right through the meaty part of his bicep. Blood oozed out of both wounds.
Dana stared in fascination as the present and the past rushed toward each other like runaway trains. She had to concentrate to keep them from colliding in her brain.
Cody. Wonderful, dangerous Cody. The only man she’d ever loved. Once she hadn’t been able to imagine life without him.
Then, as she began to realize just what being the wife of a cop meant, the possibility of life without Cody became all too real. She’d already had more experience than she ever wanted of waiting at home for someone who never came back. She couldn’t face that again, not even for Cody.
So she’d divorced him. He wasn’t her problem anymore, hadn’t been for four years.
She kept on talking, more in an effort to ground herself in the present than because she actually had anything to say. “How many times can it happen, Cody? How are you always in the middle of the danger? Why does it always have to be you?”
He didn’t answer, just lay there, his sweat staining her new pillowcases, his eyes squeezed shut and a grimace of pain marring his even features.
She pressed her lips together and stood, holding out her bloodstained hands like a surgeon as she backed out of the room. “I think I still have some gauze pads and peroxide from the last time,” she muttered as she walked into the bathroom, reached for the faucets and ran cold, clean water over her hands, watching in bitter fascination as Cody’s blood ran down the drain.
She dug around in the bathroom cabinet until she found the supplies, and brought them and a wet washcloth back into the bedroom.
Even in the middle of this latest crisis with Cody, the sight of him lying on her bed caught her off guard. She stopped dead still in the doorway. For a split second, the years vanished, and she and Cody were together and in love. Dana was shocked at the spear of desire that streaked through her. She winced and shut her eyes briefly.
Cody opened his eyes to a slit and gazed suspiciously at the bottle of peroxide. “You brought that stuff with you when you moved out? That means it’s four years old? You sure it’s still good?”
Dana straightened. His words reminded her of why he was here. “I’m sure it’s okay. I’ve kept it capped. Remember, the hospital gave it to me when I brought you home.”
“I remember.”
The bitterness in his voice surprised her. She glanced at his face, but he’d closed his eyes and his breathing was ragged. She sat down beside him on the bed.
“We were married two years and you were shot two times. It’s like you’re some kind of a bullet magnet.”
Cody lay on his side, his mouth set, his jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out. There were lines around his eyes, deep lines, lines that hadn’t been there four years ago. Her fingers twitched to smooth them out. A strange regret raised a lump in her throat.
He licked his lips. “I’ll tell them to quit picking on me, okay? To shoot somebody else for a change,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll tell them you said so. But could you shut up for a minute and give me some water and maybe an aspirin?” Beads of sweat gathered on his forehead and ran down his face. “I’m hurting a little.”
The lump in her throat swelled and tears stung her eyes. Damn it, Cody. Don’t make me feel sorry for you. I will not cry for you!
She tried to steel herself against his pain. It had always scared her to death how vulnerable, how fragile he looked when he was hurt. Usually he was so strong, so competent, so capable. He’d always been bigger than life to her. His tall, lean body had always seemed invulnerable.
She’d trusted him, admired him, loved him with all her heart. She’d always loved to watch him move. He moved so fast, so gracefully for a tall man, handling himself like a dancer or a predatory cat, his energy and strength barely constrained inside his golden skin. But when he was hurt, like now, he looked smaller, human, breakable.
Dana forced herself to stop thinking and just act. She inspected his wounds and saw that blood still oozed down onto the remains of the sweatshirt. She poured peroxide onto the raw flesh. The liquid foamed and sizzled and Cody sucked in a long, hissing breath.
“Hey…” he groaned raggedly.
“I’ve got to clean it.” Her voice sounded harsher than she’d intended, but she had to do something to stop the memories. She didn’t want to be here doing this for this man who lived his life so close to death it had almost driven her insane. It had driven her away. Why couldn’t you love me enough to stay safe?
Cody opened his eyes and looked at her. “I know. Sorry,” he said, and smiled.
Oh, Cody. His smile stole her breath. It was still as angelic as it had always been. Her heart hurt to see him so pale and gaunt, smiling at her and apologizing.
The intervening years hadn’t really made that much difference in him physically. He’d gotten harder, if that was possible, maybe leaner. Where before he’d been a handsome, cocky young man, now he was more mature, more solidly male, and even more handsome. The lines in his face added character.
His hair, damp and matted, was still honey-brown and soft as a baby’s. His face was streaked with sweat, the skin drawn tight over the bones, but his eyes were the same electric blue, with thick brown lashes that were obscene on a man. Right now, the blue eyes seemed filled with pain and regret and something else she couldn’t identify.
His gaze slid downward, and she felt it, like fingers, touching her neck, her collarbone, the hastily pulled-together edges of her bathrobe.
“Sorry I interrupted your bath,” he whispered. “You always hated that.”
“Ha,” she sniffed. “I never got to finish a bath the whole time we were married.” As soon as she said the words, she regretted them.
His eyes lit with amusement, and Dana knew with the intimate knowledge of two years of marriage what he was thinking. The same thing she was. They both remembered how many of her baths had ended with damp, tangled sheets and shared laughter. Dana felt the liquid heat that had always burned through her at his touch. She saw the spark of it in his eyes.
Embarrassed by her thoughts and the knowledge that he was reading them, she mangled a strip of tape as she applied it, then impatiently ripped it off. He jerked and grimaced. “Ouch. What are you trying to do, kill me?”
“I don’t have to. You’re doing a fine job of it by yourself,” she retorted. “Now, shut up.” Her mouth tight, she finished taping up his wounds. She cut the ruined sweatshirt off and slid his jacket out from under him, working doggedly, trying to ignore his labored breaths and the occasional quiet grunts when she hurt him.
“How did you get shot this time?” she asked in spite of herself. If she could take back the question, she would have. She didn’t want to k
now. She didn’t want to own the knowledge of this latest proof of Cody’s mortality.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said softly, his words slurring.
She breathed a sigh of relief, ignoring the tiny inner voice that speculated on how bad the answer must be if he didn’t want her to know. She didn’t need another life-size image for her mental scrapbook—Cody being shot, Cody falling, Cody lying still and pale on the ground.
She finally finished dressing his wounds, thankful when his torn flesh was covered. It scared her to realize how fragile he was, merely human under his skin, no matter how invulnerable he appeared. Biting her lower lip, she pushed the thoughts out of her head. It wasn’t her problem anymore if he got himself shot once a year or once a month.
“Dana?” he whispered.
“What, Cody?” she asked curtly as she gathered up the towels and washcloths and his jacket. She turned back toward the bed. “Well?”
“Thanks.”
The word cut through her like a knife. Her suddenly nerveless fingers almost lost their grip on his clothes. “Don’t thank me. Don’t try to play on my sympathy. Why did you come here? Why would you think I’d want to help you? Damn it, Cody, why?”
His eyes opened and he looked up at her, a small smile quirking his mouth. “I told you. I didn’t think you were here. My apartment wasn’t—safe. Besides, you’re the one person I know I can trust, no matter what.”
“No!” she shouted, throwing the clothes toward the bathroom. “Don’t say that, Cody. Don’t try to make me responsible. You’ve got the entire New Orleans Police Department to watch out for you. You didn’t have to come running to me. I am not going to patch you up and send you back out there. I can’t do it. I’m where I want to be. I’m finally over…everything, and I won’t let you turn my life all upside down again.”
