by Marie Force
When she groaned as she lifted her arm, he did the job for her. Then he just stood in front of her, staring.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, fearing that she might be turning green or already bleeding through the bandage.
His frown deepened, and she swore she saw a blush.
“My patients usually don’t wear bras,” he said, “or look so hairless.”
She glanced down at the lacy underwear that hid little. “I’m not your patient, remember. I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’ve seen a woman in her underwear.”
“It’s been a long while,” he confessed with a shy smile.
She pushed off the desk and wavered as she stood.
Without a word, he picked her up and carried her across the foyer to his apartment. He set her down in front of what had to be the bathroom door. “If you think you’re strong enough to wash up, I’ll get you one of my shirts to wear. I’d like you to stay a while to make sure you’re all right.”
Nodding her head as if it were missing a few screws, she disappeared into the bathroom. Just like the main room they’d passed, the bathroom was decorated totally in brown and cream. Cream walls and fixtures, brown towels. She’d seen truck-stop restrooms with more colorful décor. After washing her face and making sure she was no longer bleeding, she felt much better.
Slowly she walked down the hallway to the living area they’d passed on the way in. He offered her a seat on his brown leather couch. When she sat, he handed her a tan blanket and soup in a big mug.
Lizzie smiled. “My granny used to always give me soup late at night.”
“I figured it was the least I could do when a friend dropped by to ask questions.”
She saw his reasoning and fell easily into the lie. “Thanks for answering my questions.” She didn’t mention that he’d forgotten the shirt he’d offered to lend her. Since his patients usually didn’t wear clothes, maybe having her without a top didn’t seem so strange. In truth, she’d never been modest. When she was a kid, living with just her grandmother, Lizzie had once declared that she would eat breakfast only in the nude. Her grandmother hadn’t argued; she’d just waited a week for a cold spell to blow in, then opened all the windows at dawn.
Lizzie gave up breakfast in the nude. She smiled into her cup of soup as the doc fussed over her like Granny used to do.
“No problem,” he said as if needing to talk. “Glad I could loan you a few supplies.” He looked down as she leaned back against the couch. For a moment, he just studied her bra, or maybe what he could see through it, and then he jumped into action. “The shirt, I forgot the shirt.”
As he ran out of the room, she giggled. He’d finally noticed her breasts. She almost wished she’d stripped the bra off earlier along with that terrible black dress, but then the doc might have fainted if he saw what she always thought was her best feature.
He came back with a flannel shirt. His eyes never left hers as he handed it over and disappeared into the kitchen. A few moments later he returned with his own cup of soup and a bag of Oreos. With the dogs taking up all the space in the middle of the couch, Lizzie ate in comfortable silence. She wasn’t surprised when he ate only the center of one Oreo and fed the outer cookies to the dogs.
“Isn’t chocolate bad for dogs?” she asked between spoonfuls of soup.
He nodded. “Both my houseguests are over a hundred in human years and still healthy. I figure they should live a little now and then. Half an Oreo won’t hurt them.”
She decided she liked the doc. He didn’t ask questions, and he didn’t look at her like she might be from another planet. In her book, that made him her best friend.
“Anything else you need?” he said as he stood holding an empty glass of milk. “We’ve got popcorn for the movie.”
She shook her head, fighting down the urge to laugh.
The dogs jumped off the couch, planning to follow him to the kitchen for any leftovers. His words were almost lost in the tapping of their feet on the wooden floor. “You’re welcome to stay a while,” he said as he disappeared into the kitchen. “The boys and I never have company.”
Lizzie knew she was stepping out of the socially acceptable behavior her granny always claimed she’d never learned. But she didn’t care. Between the drinking and the fright and the pain, she simply didn’t care.
When he returned with a bowl of popcorn and two bottled Cokes, she looked into his kind brown eyes and said exactly what was on her mind. “Would you hold me for a while, Doc? I’ve had quite a night.”
Without a word he set down the popcorn and drinks. The room was growing darker and the Western was starting, but no one noticed. He lowered next to her on the old couch that smelled a little like wet dog hair and lifted her legs across his, then pulled her into a gentle hug.
When she rested her head on his shoulder, it felt so right, so safe, so warm.
She fell asleep as his hands brushed over her, almost as if he were petting her. Between reality and dreams, she thought she heard him whisper against her ear, “I’ll hold you as long as you like, Elizabeth.”
THREE
AFTER RICK MATHESON let Lizzie out at her place, he went straight to his office on the third floor of the courthouse. He knew the sheriff, Alex Matheson, a relative by marriage, would still be at the family dinner. Rick decided reporting the shooting could wait an hour. He’d feel like a fool for calling to report a shot when it could have been a firecracker left over from the Fourth or a car backfiring. Surely if it had been real gunfire, people would have reported it already.
Besides, if someone was trying to kill him, they couldn’t have had a better shot at him than when he stood in the middle of the bridge. He took little comfort in knowing, if he’d really been a target, the hired gun was pitiful at his chosen profession.
Rick decided he was being paranoid. A few years ago he’d thought someone was trying to kill him, and his relatives had talked a federal marshal into watching over him. She’d been great at her job, saved his life more than once, but she’d stolen his heart.
The local crazy guy had tried to make Rick’s life miserable because he thought Rick was after his longtime secret love. When Marshal Trace Adams came in to protect him, Rick fell hard for her. After a few days, the guy causing trouble was caught, and Trace said she had to leave. Rick had gone to Chicago twice looking for her. He’d tried calling, e-mailing, even writing to her in care of the marshal’s office. Nothing. She’d simply disappeared out of his life.
Trace Adams had vanished, leaving everything he thought they had between them unsettled. She hadn’t broken his heart; she’d taken it with her, leaving him bitter.
He still played the role of the happy, easygoing guy he’d always been, but he no longer felt it. The only drug he’d found that kept his mind off of her was work. He’d made good money the past few years. Bought a new car, a town house in a nice part of Harmony, even owned half a dozen suits, but none of it mattered. If she’d left his broken heart, it might have mended. But she hadn’t, and wherever she was tonight, his heart was still there with her.
Rick swore over the sorry case of his love life as he unlocked his office door. He made a pot of coffee and sat down at his desk. If no one called, he could get a good four hours of work in before midnight.
As he opened his e-mail, he decided to send Trace a note. Now and then he did that, knowing the address he had for her was probably dead. But somehow it gave him the feeling that a thread still stretched between them.
Got shot at tonight. Thought of you. R
Before he thought better of it, he pushed Send, then flipped over to his files and began piecing together details that might help a lawyer in Dallas with his federal case. The bad guy they were looking into, Max Dewy, was a real piece of work. Not only was he laundering money for arms dealers, he also ran an investment scheme on some of the locals in Harmony and worked for some lowlifes moving drugs. One fed had told Rick that every time they turned over a criminal rock in West Texas,
Max Dewy’s picture was under it. The question wasn’t “if” he was going to prison but “for what.”
Rick liked the idea of helping put a real scumbag behind bars. Most of his cases were small-time. Divorces, wills, drunk drivers, and shoplifters. Every case he won seemed to end with someone yelling a threat at him. He wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a website for people who hated him.
An hour later he was deep into the search when an e-mail popped up on the corner of his screen.
Are you all right? T
Rick stared at it for a moment. He didn’t recognize the mix of numbers and letters that made up the e-mail address, but he knew who it was from. Trace.
Angry that she could care about him, keep up with him, answer him, and he had no idea where she was, he typed:
If you want to know, come to Harmony. I dare you.
He leaned back in his chair. The work was forgotten. The night was lost to all but memories of her. He closed his eyes and let the thoughts pound him like hail in a spring storm. No matter how badly it hurt, he had to watch, had to feel, had to remember.
She’d been the wildest, sexiest woman he’d ever seen. He’d been hurt from a fall that had been no accident. She’d watched over him, fought with him, guarded him, and made a kind of wild love with him that even his dreams couldn’t have imagined.
There had been women before her. Easy, gentle, loving women he’d had short affairs with or fun-loving one-night stands. But there was no one after Trace. He told himself the passion they’d shared would fade, and he’d barely remember her one day.
But that never happened.
After a while he’d tried to convince himself he would forget her. She’d told him from the first that she didn’t want ties. Only every other woman he tried to go out with couldn’t measure up to Trace.
Rick realized that if a shot had hit him dead center in the chest tonight, it wouldn’t have killed him. The bullet would have simply passed through the empty hole she’d left.
He closed up his office and turned out the lights a little after midnight. As he walked to the elevator, he tried to picture her somewhere in an empty office or apartment, maybe thinking of him. She’d broken the silence between them tonight. That was a good thing, but he held out no hope that it would lead anywhere. She was a big-city marshal who fought crime, and he was nothing but a small-town lawyer. He didn’t think he could live in her world, and she didn’t want to live in his.
No match. No future. No heart. Three strikes, you’re out, he thought.
When he reached the parking lot, rain had started falling as it had the midnight before. The whole town seemed to sleep under a foggy blanket. Lights all blinked yellow as he drove the dark streets. Rick wondered if there was another soul on earth who was as lonely as he was tonight. He’d lived with the condition for so long, the cure would probably kill him. If he had any sense, he would have moved on, found another, gotten on with his life.
Laughing, he decided maybe Lizzie wasn’t the only nut to fall off the family tree. If everyone knew his story, they would think he was just as mixed up. She lived with her flaws on the outside, her seams and scars showing as if she’d put her clothes on inside out. All his flaws were on the inside, buried so no one could see, but he was just as broken.
As he pulled into the underground parking beneath his condo, he decided Lizzie must see clearer than he did. That’s why she thought they were alike. Maybe they should be friends. Taking his offbeat cousin out to dinner made more sense than trying to date someone. At least with Lizzie, they could laugh about their relatives. Besides, Lizzie would probably insist on buying every other meal. Her grandmother had left her comfortable, much to the other grandchildren’s distress.
Rick didn’t know Lizzie’s two older first cousins on her mother’s side. Apparently Lizzie’s mother and Granny’s older daughter never got along. When Lizzie’s mother and father died, the big sister refused to take Lizzie in, leaving Granny the burden. Lizzie’s aunt Alice thought her sister’s only child should go to a children’s home or into the welfare system. When Granny didn’t see it her way, Alice swore she’d never come home again and she didn’t, not even when Granny grew ill and Lizzie quit high school to take care of her. Two years later, when Granny died, Alice still didn’t return to Harmony or offer to help Lizzie.
At twenty, after passing her GED, Lizzie sold the house she’d inherited and left for college. She’d also inherited all of Granny’s small savings and oil rights to the land her grandparents bought after World War II but had never got around to farming. Oil lease checks had evidently been deposited in an account for Lizzie for years.
Word was Aunt Alice called every lawyer for a hundred miles around to try to fight the will, but none would take her case. Granny had been in her right mind when she signed the papers, and Lizzie was an adult when she inherited. Rick never heard whether Alice had tried to contact Lizzie directly, but he doubted she would have taken her aunt’s call.
Rick almost laughed aloud as he grabbed his jacket from the backseat of his car and took the stairs two at a time to his place. He and Lizzie could keep each other company. They were both alone and probably always would be.
He didn’t bother to turn on the lights as he walked through his apartment to the bedroom. If he had flipped the switch, it would only depress him. In the year he’d lived here, he hadn’t hung a picture or bought any furniture for the living room. His kitchen looked like the recycling center for fast-food containers. Dropping the jacket in an already full basket of dirty clothes, he thought maybe tomorrow he’d make a list of all the things, other than work, that he needed to do. Laundry, buy food, invite his cousin to lunch.
In the dark, he stripped off his clothes and climbed into bed. His sheets felt cold against the damp night. He was so tired, he barely noticed the open window that faced the lights of downtown.
Stretching out, he tried to calm his breathing and think of anything except Trace. If she was on his mind when he fell asleep, he’d dream of her, and come morning he’d miss her even more than usual. Sometimes, deep down, he hated her for not stopping him from loving her. She had known she wasn’t going to stay around.
A shadow moved across the window. The fuzzy yellow lights outside blinked as if turning off and on.
Rick opened his eyes wider. The feeling that someone was in the room hit him as fact. “Trace,” he whispered, as if wishing for someone could make them appear.
“Yes,” she answered calmly, as though she’d only been a room away all these months.
Rick’s body came full awake. She was here. She was in his room. She had to be. Either that or he’d finally gone mad.
“Come over here,” he ordered, wondering if dreams followed directions.
A shadow moved closer. Her lean athletic form was outlined for a moment, and he could almost feel his hand sliding over her. He could smell leather. She’d ridden in on her motorcycle just as she had once before.
“Trace,” he whispered again as he shoved the covers aside and put his feet on the floor. Before he could stand, she moved in front of him, her leg touching his knee.
“Let me see where you’re hurt.”
Rick stood, closing the distance between them, daring her to back down.
He wasn’t surprised when she didn’t. Digging his hand into her damp hair, he pulled her toward him for a kiss.
She jerked away so suddenly, he didn’t have time to react. “I said where are you shot, Matheson?”
“I’m not hurt.” He caught her wrist as she reached for the lamp beside the bed.
“Don’t lie to me, Rick. I saw the blood all over the inside of the coat you dropped coming in.”
He released her hand and reached for his pants. “I was shot at, but not hit.” Facts flooded his memory as he pieced the scene on the bridge together. “My cousin Lizzie had been wearing my coat. She must be hurt. She must have been too drunk to realize it.”
Trace flipped on the light.
H
e could almost feel her gaze examining him as he pulled on his jeans and shirt. “I gave her a ride home. She borrowed my coat. Oh, God, she’s shot.”
With his back to Trace he watched her through the mirror’s reflection. Her whole body seemed to relax. No matter how angry she sounded or how mad she was at him, one fact was clear: She still cared about him.
Rick told himself he didn’t care. He couldn’t love a woman who could walk out on him so easily or come back looking so angry. If he had been shot and bled to death, she’d probably yell at his lifeless body.
“I’ve got to go check on her,” he said as he shoved his feet into loafers. “You coming?”
When she didn’t answer, he turned and walked out without looking back. If she followed, he’d deal with it. If she didn’t, he’d handle that as well. Nothing Trace Adams did was under his control.
He walked down the stairs. No footsteps followed, but he wasn’t surprised she sat waiting in his car when he got to the underground parking. She’d probably used the same window to leave that she used to enter. He had no idea how she got into the secure underground parking area, and she probably wouldn’t tell him if he asked.
Backing out of his spot, he glanced at her profile. She was as beautiful as ever and just as deadly. A federal marshal who could easily kill him in a dozen ways right now. Maybe that was what fascinated him so. Trace didn’t need him. Hell, half the time she didn’t even act like she liked him.
“What brings you back to Harmony, Trace? And don’t bother to say me.”
She was silent for so long he decided she didn’t plan to answer. Then, her words sounded tired, almost washed away in the rainy night. “I was following a lead on another case that went dead. I was on my way back home when I got your e-mail and decided Harmony wasn’t that far out of my way.”
He read what she didn’t say. “You were going to check on me tonight and then leave.” A chill seeped deep into him. “You hadn’t planned on my being awake.”
