He glowered.
“I think we can safely assume you got some sleep last night and are feeling better today. And did you have some of that gluey hospital oatmeal and dry toast for breakfast? You did? Wonderful! See how well we’re getting along now? We’re like old friends already!”
His lips curled. “I’m beginning to wish I’d let you snatch the coffee and take off.”
“Alas, you missed your chance. You’ll think twice about that the next time, won’t you?”
“So why aren’t you at church with your family today?”
“Oh, I’m a heathen from way back, and my mother and sister are in Lansing now. Your color is really good, by the way.”
“I should hope so. They gave me almost a gallon of blood.”
“How’s the pain?”
“Manageable.”
“You’re not being stoic, are you?”
“Eh. I don’t want to go too hard on the morphine drip. For obvious reasons,” he added wryly.
“You’ve had enough drugs in your life, you mean?”
Something dark flickered across his face. “Next topic.”
“Fine.” Jayne sighed. “When do they release you?”
He checked his watch. “Any time the doctor shows up to sign me out.”
Jayne’s lower jaw clanged to the floor. “What? They can’t do that! This time yesterday, you were walking toward the light! You’re barely alive!”
“True, but it takes more than that to get a couple nights at a hospital these days.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I came, then. I brought you these.”
She reached for her purse, pulled out a bag from Target and passed it to him.
He accepted it with a couple of blinks and a confused look. “What’s this?”
“Shorts and a T-shirt. So you don’t have to go home in that gown with your ass hanging out the back. Unless you want your ass hanging out the back, in which case you’re on your own.”
Another blink. Then he did a slow-motion reach into the bag and produced a pair of black shorts and a blue T-shirt that said, Sarcastic comment loading…please wait.
Disbelieving stare.
“What?” She felt unaccountably irritable. “You wanted the Batman logo instead?”
“You brought me clothes,” he said.
“Brilliant deductive work, Sherlock.”
“Why did you bring me clothes?”
“Probably because your clothes were drenched in blood, and probably cut off your body when you got to the hospital.”
Something came over him, hardening his features and closing off his expression. He shook his head and used great care to re-fold the T-shirt, put both items back in the bag and offer it to her.
“Thanks, but I can’t take them,” he said coldly.
A wave of surliness rolled over her, causing her to cross her arms. “Why not?”
“I told you. I don’t need your charity.”
“Okay. Then you owe me”—she reached into her pocket and consulted the receipt—“sixteen eighty-three. Oh, and let’s add in an even ten for the gas. So. Twenty-six eighty-three.”
“Return them,” he said, giving the bag an insistent shake.
“Absolutely not, Randolph,” she said, her stubborn gene kicking in. “I saved your life yesterday. The least I can do is make sure your ass is properly covered when you go home.”
“I didn’t ask for you to save my life,” he snapped. “I didn’t ask for these clothes.”
“Maybe not,” she said quietly. “But I did it anyway. So put your pride on lockdown for three seconds and accept that.”
That got him.
He lowered the bag and slumped back, regarding her with absolute bafflement. It was the kind of expression she’d expect if she’d announced plans to jump the Grand Canyon on a Big Wheel. What had gone on in this man’s life to bring him to this? When was the last time someone did something nice, with no strings attached, for him? She knew he wanted her to dial back her sympathy level, but come on. He sure didn’t make it easy for her.
“It’s not a Tom Ford suit, Randolph,” she muttered.
“I know.” He hesitated and ducked his head, looking sheepish. “Feels like one, though.”
Ah. So there it was. A tiny crack in his armor.
“You’re welcome, Kerry,” she said, mollified.
He looked up. Smiled. It was a starter smile with training wheels on it, one that didn’t show any of his teeth, but it was enough to light up his eyes and bring her heartbeat to a screeching stop.
She watched him, arrested.
“Thanks, Jayne.”
A knock at the door broke the spell between them. Jayne gladly seized the diversion as a chance to get her pulse and breathing rates back into the normal zone. She looked around, feeling scalded and raw.
Kerry cleared his throat. “Come in.”
Something thudded against the closed door but didn’t budge it. Jayne leapt up and hurried to open it, thinking that a nurse had his or her hands full with a cart or some such. So it was with surprise that she was greeted with Brady’s back.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, one sardonic brow raised high.
“Well, hello, Jayne,” he said dryly. “What a surprise to see you here.”
15
“What a surprise to see you here,” Jayne said, resisting the urge to smack Brady upside the back of his smug head. “And Kira, too.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d be up for visitors, Randolph,” Brady said, backing into the room and bringing Kira with him. “Looks like I had nothing to worry about, since Jayne’s here.”
Jayne glared daggers at him and saw him smother a laugh that the others, luckily, couldn’t see. Then she opened the door wide and stepped out of the way, glancing at Kerry as she did.
He’d gone still and alert, as watchful as an eight-pronged buck at the edge of a tree line.
“Hey,” he said, his gaze shifting between Brady and Kira.
“Hey,” Kira said brightly.
She was in a wheelchair, her swollen and surgically repaired ankle propped up on a cushion and rigged with pins. It looked gruesome and painful, and Kira had a couple of nasty bruises on her face, yet Jayne had never seen her smile that wide and hard. She glowed with happiness. Almost levitated right out of the chair with it.
Since Jayne had always thought of Kira as Kareem Gregory’s ice princess of a trophy wife, this was yet another shock in a weekend full of them.
“Should you be up and about with that whole”—Jayne’s wave encompassed Kira’s entire leg situation—“contraption going on?”
“No,” Brady said darkly, frowning down at Kira’s head as he turned the wheelchair, steered her over to where Kerry sat and engaged the brake. “She should not. She just got discharged and should be home resting, but she insisted on coming up here to make sure Kerry was okay.”
“Oh,” Jayne said.
Something unpleasant twanged inside Jayne as she let the door swing closed, and it twanged harder when she turned and saw Kerry and Kira lean forward in their respective chairs and give each other a fervent hug and kiss on the cheek. A quick glance at Brady and the way his jaw tightened as he watched this greeting told her he wasn’t exactly a fan of the proceedings either.
Huh, Jayne thought sourly, mentally holding two in one hand and two in the other hand, and trying to figure out how to add them without coming up with the number four.
Until yesterday, she’d never thought of Kerry as an actual human being with a life beyond his criminal activities. She’d thought of Kira even less, and thought less of her, having slotted her early on as Kareem’s complicit and doe-eyed wife. And, if she was honest, she’d had a catty additional dislike for Kira based on her roll-out-of-bed beautiful looks and willowy body that had never and probably would never need to count points.
Kira Gregory, unlike Jayne, was the kind of woman who made men fall, and fall hard. Kareem and Brady had both fallen for her.
Maybe…
Something tightened in Jayne’s throat.
Maybe Kerry Randolph had also fallen for her.
Jayne tried that on for size and discovered she didn’t much care for the idea.
It occurred to her that the polite thing to do would be to excuse herself and let these folks have some privacy.
It also occurred to her that, absent a lasso, a Taser and, possibly, a cattle prod and Border collie, she wasn’t going anywhere.
“So listen, Randolph,” Brady said gruffly as Kira and Kerry separated and settled back in their seats and Kira wiped her eyes. “I know I haven’t been your biggest fan…”
Kerry snorted and his brows drifted higher, threatening to disappear into his hairline as he looked up at Brady.
“But I want to thank you. For…you know.” Brady shifted restlessly. “For tipping us off about Kareem and warning Kira that he was still alive when you could have been calling 911 to save yourself. You were right. He tried to kill her. Almost did kill her. She wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t sounded the alarm. And I, uh…” Brady swiped the back of his hand under his nose, and his face tightened up with the kind of discomfort that suggested he would soon need to borrow Kerry’s morphine drip. “I’m glad you’re okay. So…if you ever need anything…”
With that, he stuck out a hand.
Kerry frowned down at the hand, clearly puzzling over its various uses. Then he frowned across at Kira, who nodded encouragingly, and up at Brady, who looked patient and earnest, prepared to wait forever if need be.
Then Kerry slowly reached out and shook Brady’s hand.
In between the space when Jayne looked to Kira to see her reaction (she was grinning with her hands clasped under her chin like she was about to break into applause) and when she returned her attention to the menfolk, Brady leaned down and the men hugged around the shoulders and slapped each other on the back.
The display of affection didn’t last long, though, and the men pulled apart just as quickly as they’d come together.
“I know you’ll take good care of her,” Kerry said quietly as Brady straightened again.
“You better believe it,” Brady said.
Kerry nodded, unsmiling.
Jayne felt as though her head had been clanged between an oversized pair of cymbals.
Kira took Brady’s hand and gazed up at him with the kind of naked adoration that would have made Nancy Reagan squirm. “Can I talk to Kerry alone for a couple minutes?”
Brady blinked.
Hesitated.
Worked up a cheery “Sure,” even though he would clearly rather march down the hall to the nearest operating room and submit to a procedure sans anesthesia than leave Kira alone with Kerry, even incapacitated as they both were. “Jayne and I can wait outside.”
“Oh, Jayne!” Kira said, twisting at the waist to look back at her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your visit—”
Now was the time for an Academy Award-winning performance if ever there was one. So Jayne dredged up a smile and stuck it on her face as she hurried forward to grab her bag.
“Don’t even worry about it,” she said brightly, determined not to look any of them in the eye if she could help it. “I was done anyway—”
“Jayne,” Kerry said, “you don’t have to take off.”
“It’s fine,” Jayne said hastily, her cheeks beginning to hurt with the effort of being indifferent and carefree when really she felt sick to her stomach. “And you need your rest—”
“Stick around,” Kerry said, and it wasn’t a question, but there was a pleading note in his voice that caught her attention. She met his gaze, intrigued by the way he leaned forward so he could see past Kira to Jayne as he waited for Jayne’s answer. “We won’t be long.”
“Well…okay,” Jayne said, trying not to feel as though he’d just handed her the keys to an apartment on the Left Bank in Paris.
“Good,” he said with another fleeting half-smile that whet her appetite to see the full deal.
She and Brady met up at the door, which he swung open for her. She’d taken the first step through it when she realized that he was giving her a particularly pointed look that was devolving into glare territory.
What? she mouthed.
He jerked his head in Kira’s direction.
Unfortunately, Jayne caught on.
She stifled most of her aggrieved sigh, but there was nothing she could do about her eyes, which were already rolling as she went back to Kira’s wheelchair and waited for the goddess to look up at her.
Kira’s uh-oh, what now? expression made Jayne feel guilty and a little ashamed.
Because, really, she didn’t know a damn thing about Kira or what she’d gone through as Kareem Gregory’s wife. Maybe she’d known about Kareem’s illegal activities from the beginning of her marriage (that had always been Jayne’s presumption), but then again, maybe she hadn’t. Either way, like Kerry, Kira had suffered and been afraid in her efforts to break free and build a new life. One look at her battered face and body were proof of that.
Yet Jayne had judged Kira when she saw her on a date with Brady the other day. Condemned her.
And there’d been more to Jayne’s harsh feelings for Kira than that. Jayne smoothed her hair and cleared her throat while she tried to get a grip on the high school girl cattiness she saw so clearly now. Kira was the anti-Jayne, slim from birth, with the kind of big eyes, perfect skin and good hair that would always put her in the number one or two spot when it came time to vote on the most beautiful people in the room.
Jayne was just Jayne. Still way too tall, with her dermatologist and hair stylist on speed dial, and trying to lose the same thirty pounds that had stubbornly clung to her breasts, hips and ass for years.
But what the hell did that have to do with anything?
Kira was a nurse now, which made her a strong career woman just trying to figure it out and find happiness in life.
Jayne was a strong career woman just trying to figure it out and find happiness in life.
Hell, they were practically sisters.
Jayne took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I was so rude to you the other day at the climbing center, Kira.”
Kira brightened immediately. “It’s okay,” she said, waving it aside as Brady came up behind her, rested a supportive hand on her shoulder and shot Jayne a tiny wink of thanks. “I’d have done the same thing.”
“No, it’s not okay,” Jayne said. “I had no right to be so judgmental. I don’t know what you’ve been through. But I’m guessing it hasn’t been a Hallmark Channel movie.”
Kira barked out a surprised laugh. “You’re right about that.”
“Well…I’m glad you’re free now. I hope your ankle recovers quickly.” Jayne hesitated, wanting to get this right. “I hope you and Brady are happy together. Really.”
Kira looked over her shoulder at Brady, and the two of them gave each other the kind of lingering and intimate smile that was never meant to be seen by the general public. Jayne dropped her gaze to the speckled linoleum floor, but her peripheral vision could still see Brady lean down for a tender kiss on Kira’s lips.
“But you’d better be good to Brady,” Jayne said loudly, deciding the lovebirds needed a reminder that she and Kerry were still there. “I was going to threaten to kick your ass if you break his heart, but I thought better of it. If you took Kareem out, I don’t want to know what you could do to me.”
Kira and Brady both laughed.
“Well,” Jayne said, putting her hands on her hips, surveying the room and nodding with satisfaction, “our long national nightmare is over, friends.”
More laughter from Kira and Brady.
Jayne risked a glance at Kerry, who’d been very quiet for the last several minutes, and was startled to discover him watching her closely, an unidentifiable glimmer of something in his eyes.
When Jayne felt yet another violent blush streaking up her neck and heading for her cheeks, she quickly turned
to Brady and tipped her head toward the door.
“Come on, Brady,” she said. “Let’s give these two a minute.”
After a quick kiss to Kira’s cheek, Brady followed Jayne out the door and a couple steps down the hallway. They eyeballed each other, all joking aside.
“Thanks for that,” Brady said.
Jayne shrugged, her thoughts reverting to Kerry and Kira and what they could possibly be discussing. She was dying to ask Brady, but didn’t want to step too far over the nosy line.
Brady hesitated, also clearly struggling with some weighty issue, then forged ahead.
“I see you’ve already forgotten what we talked about yesterday,” he said.
With the floodgates thus opened, Jayne decided the sky was the limit in terms of nosiness.
“You want to tell me what’s going on with those two?” she demanded, jerking her thumb at Kerry’s door.
Brady scowled.
“No,” he said darkly. “I don’t. C’mon. Let’s get some coffee.”
16
Kerry was starting to get tired, and the pain was eating its way through his medication shield. The morphine drip was available, but he pushed that temptation far away. He’d spent way too much of the last six months tethered to a bottle of liquor and trying to distance himself from the realities of his life. Those days—and that life—were over now.
Besides. A little pain—and compared to what he’d endured the night before last, it was only a little pain—wouldn’t kill him.
Kira took a couple of deep, shuddering breaths.
He gave her time. Words seemed unnecessary. Some ordeals couldn’t be explained or quantified. God knew that they were the only two people on earth capable of understanding what the other had gone through in the last thirty-six hours.
Their worst nightmare: Kareem, alive and vengeful. They’d both fought him alone. They’d both lived to tell the story, and now they were alive and Kareem was dead.
It was overwhelming and incomprehensible.
Kira’s features contracted with a constellation of emotions. Fear. Relief. Despair. Hope.
Kerry watched her from inside a cushion of numbness. Tried to focus on her from the other side of his interior monologue:
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