The Party Girl

by Tamara Morgan

  He attempted a feeble shrug. “It’s not a big deal. Just a bar fight.”

  Nothing was ever just a bar fight with Lincoln. Even though he was technically a police officer, upholding the law and protecting the good citizens of Lakewood County, he had to be one of the most corrupt people she’d ever known, always on the lookout for a shortcut or a good deal. He bought and sold cars at police auctions before they went up on the block. Made clandestine arrangements with people she’d have been afraid to meet in the full light of day.

  As far as she could tell, he never actually broke any laws. But he sure did bend the hell out of them.

  “So, is this where you tell me I should see what happened to the other guy?” she joked, allowing none of those concerns to show.

  This time, she was rewarded with a slight smile that did much to improve his appearance. Lincoln was an attractive man in the most straightforward way possible—by which she meant that all the pieces were in place, exactly where they should be. Clip any random man out of any random magazine, and there you had Lincoln, right down to the spiked hair, carefully maintained abs and perfectly white teeth.

  The problem was, he had nowhere to go from there but down. Once you’d already appreciated said abs—which she had—and been the recipient of those blinding smiles—which she was—Lincoln sort of lost his appeal.

  “I didn’t stick around to see whether or not the guy went down.” Lincoln held up his fist, which, in addition to his own blood, bore the unmistakable signs of having recently landed on someone’s face. “He had big friends. Oh, you want to go right here.”

  Kendra stopped the car but didn’t turn the wheel. “Really? That’s your saving grace?”

  In this part of upstate Pennsylvania, the countryside was dotted with upscale neighborhoods, which swelled from the rolling green hills in awe of their own importance, often appearing as if out of nowhere. This was clearly not one of those places. The road Lincoln indicated was not only dark and deserted, it wasn’t even paved. People around here liked the rustic look, sure, but not enough to damage their paint jobs. This place had back-alley vet written all over it.

  She cast him an anxious look and made one final plea. “And you’re one hundred percent sure the hospital is out of the question?”

  “Don’t worry. My friend is very good. His house is about two miles that way. Be sure to tell him...”

  “Be sure to tell him what?” she asked. But whatever ominous warning Lincoln intended to impart was lost—along with his consciousness. With a leap of her heart and a heavy foot on the gas, she whipped down the dirt road, pausing only to reach a hand out and check for his pulse.

  “I knew I should have called an ambulance,” she muttered, more grateful to feel the movement of blood through his veins than she cared to admit. “If you die over this, I’m never speaking to you again.”

  She continued down the unlit road with nothing but trees to guide her way, contemplating a quick turnaround at every bend. She was about to give up and do just that when she broke into a clearing that bore signs of human use. There was no vehicle or driveway—not even a house in the strictest sense of the word—but warm yellow lights emitted from a door that seemed embedded into the hillside.

  Okay, so it wasn’t as seedy as she’d anticipated, but it also wasn’t the bright, sterile office she’d hoped was awaiting at the end of the rainbow. After checking to make sure Lincoln was still breathing, Kendra ran to the door and pounded.

  Dressed in a slinky robe, soaked in blood that wasn’t her own and standing on a stranger’s doorstep—she wished she could say this was the most bizarre moment of her life, but that would have been a lie. It was definitely one of the top five, though. Top three if you didn’t count that time she and Whitney had done spring break in Cancún.

  “Hello?” she called, pounding harder. Let there be someone home. Let there be a well-trained paramedic who understands the unfortunate plight of an acquaintance with Lincoln Fuller.

  So concentrated was she on that chant in her head, she barely had time to register her shock at seeing the backwoodsman who eventually answered the door. Used to people—especially male people—towering over her, it wasn’t his size so much as the fact that he looked like he’d stepped into the present straight from the American Frontier that alarmed her. Reddish-gold beard trimmed to scuff neatly along his jawline, work-faded jeans, the crinkly-eyed look of a man who squinted in the sun—all he was missing was a rifle and leather chaps to make the picture complete.

  And Kendra would know. That was her favorite kind of picture. She had twelve of them posted above her desk, one for every month of the year.

  She shook herself off. Now was not the time to get swoony over a mountain man in the woods. Of more immediate importance was whether or not he could repair bodily harm wrought at the hands of barroom thugs. “Do you know Lincoln? Lincoln Fuller?”

  “Is something wrong?” Although surprise at the sight of her lifted a pair of heavy brows above frank, appraising brown eyes, he looked past her to the car. Whether by recognizing the make and model, or by understanding Kendra’s feeble hand gestures, he picked up on the situation and moved quickly to the passenger side door. “Gunshot?”

  She trotted after him, not noticing until she was by his side that he stood barefoot, somehow impervious to the pointed edges of the gravel and the layer of dust coating everything around them. Oh, man. She really hoped his woodsy shack was clean enough for this. “Knife wound. I have no idea how long ago. I wanted to take him to a hospital, but...”

  There should have been no but in there—and she was definitely regretting its existence. Kendra wasn’t normally a woman given to indecision. She liked making hard choices, enjoyed cutting through emotional drama and ambiguity to reach the meaty center. That was what people counted on her for—an integral part of the personality so many people, in their less-than-complimentary moments, termed controlling.

  This momentary lapse had to be Lincoln’s fault. She didn’t know how he did it, but he always seemed to slip past her defenses, weaseling his way in with the kind of persistence normally reserved for the IRS. She’d swear that nine-tenths of his dates were acquired by dint of that persistence. Probably most of his sexual conquests too. She shuddered to think what else had been given up at the altar of Lincoln, simply to keep him from asking one more time.

  “He insisted I bring him here,” she finished lamely.

  “Yeah. He would.”

  No further explanation was required. Without saying anything more than keys, arm and door, the man managed to get Lincoln out of the car and into his house, Kendra little more than a witness to the strength required to carry all hundred and eighty pounds of spray-tanned folly to safety.

  “What can I do?” she asked as she closed the door behind her.

  Now that she was inside, she realized she was facing quite a bit of square footage. What looked like a floating door was actually the entrance to some kind of half-underground hobbit house. There was no other way to describe it. The house literally extended back into the hillside, a long wooden cabin trapped on three sides by earth, the peaty smell of dirt and pine whispering at her nostrils.

  “Medical kit under the sink,” the man said, and slapped Lincoln firmly on the cheek to rouse him to consciousness. It wasn’t exactly the kind of technique they employed at their medical spa, New Leaf—and it definitely wasn’t the kind of treatment Lincoln would have received at the hands of an ER doctor—but it worked. Lincoln grunted, his eyelids fluttering.

  “The kit should be to the right,” the man added when she didn’t move right away.

  “Unfair.” Kendra went to search under the sink—a big farmhouse-style cistern with the pipes showing. Sure enough, a serviceable metal box sat neatly aligned under one side. “Next time one of the options involves hitting Lincoln, I pick that one.”

 
Falling into a laugh, the man cast a look over his shoulder. “Are you the one who stabbed him?”

  “No,” she said. “But I’d be lying if I said I’ve never been tempted before. You?”

  “Once or twice,” he admitted. “But I managed to restrain myself.”

  There was something so capable and soothing about the mountain man that she felt immediately at ease. The shaky anxiety that had taken over during the car ride began to ebb away, leaving mostly curiosity in its place. Where exactly were they? And who was this guy with a military-grade medical kit under his sink?

  Lincoln groaned again, now alert enough to help as the man urged him to lay himself out on the roughly hewn table taking up most of the kitchen. “I’m glad you both find this so amusing. I could be dying.”

  “You’re not.” With those incredibly welcome words, the man took the first-aid kit from Kendra, opened it and pulled out a pair of scissors. He placed a large hand flat on Lincoln’s chest and held him down as he cut away the shirt, which, even covered in blood, Kendra could tell was made of cashmere.

  Now, she wasn’t against cashmere T-shirts on principle. She might have even owned one or two herself. But seeing the two men next to one another, one prostrate and bleeding in his expensive fabrics, the other looking as though he might enjoy wrestling alligators in the delicious, oiled-down nude, she couldn’t help but feel that some goat prancing through the Tibetan Plateaus had been sheared in waste.

  The man looked up, vision obscured by a lock a few shades darker than his facial hair. “I’m Noah, by the way.”

  Solid. Capable. Bearded. Built an ark with his own two hands.

  That seemed about right.

  “There’s a bathroom through the back,” he added. “In case you want to, uh, clean up.”

  She looked down and did her best not to cringe at the picture she presented. All her lady lumps were still covered, but her right side was splotched with patches of crimson, and the flimsy material seemed unsuitable in this man palace of hardwoods. Glistening woodwork shone pretty much everywhere—floor, ceiling, walls, the frames for most of the furniture—all of it the same burnished gold of Noah’s beard. Illumination was provided by recessed fixtures that were almost hidden from the naked eye, everything else efficiently sparse and neat.

  Except, you know, her. And her bloody lingerie.

  “Thanks, but I didn’t have time to pack a spare outfit.” She made light of the situation with a grin and a shrug. “Lincoln’s timing leaves something to be desired.”

  Noah’s brows—by far the most expressive part of him—rose at the clear implication of her words, but he didn’t comment. He was either unfailingly polite or shocked. Probably shocked. Kendra had that effect on men sometimes—it accounted for her failed ten percent.

  “This is a nice place, by the way.”

  “Thank you,” he said simply, his eyes meeting hers. Warm and rich, they too glittered with a hidden glow. What was it about this place? Despite the fact that they were all burrowed underground like moles, she felt almost as though she’d walked into the sun.

  “If you two are done making small talk and sharing recipes, can we please get on with this?” Lincoln made a feeble gesture over his midsection.

  Chastened, Noah resumed his attention to Lincoln’s wound, focusing on getting the blood flow to stop. He wasn’t accustomed to having an audience while he worked on any sort of project, but the beautiful, half-naked woman stood aside, not asking questions or interfering in the process other than to take Lincoln’s hand and squeeze it tightly.

  Either she was familiar enough with Lincoln’s antics to know that a midnight stab wound was par for the course, or she was accustomed to the sight of blood. Noah suspected the former. Everything about her appearance gave her away as one of Lincoln’s friends—the fluttering robe, which seemed to showcase flashes of her body only to cover them back up again, a pierced nose with a glittering diamond stud, the sparkly boots, the heavily made-up eyes set against gorgeous dusky skin.

  And the goddamn robe. Did he mention the robe?

  If her state of undress was anything to go by, this woman had literally tumbled out of bed to come to Lincoln’s rescue. Whether she made it a habit to lounge alone in this kind of getup—or if she’d left some poor guy panting between the sheets—didn’t seem to matter one bit to Noah’s concentration. All he knew was that he harbored a deep, highly inappropriate curiosity about what, if anything, she had on underneath.

  He felt like even more of a jerk when she proved adept at keeping his patient occupied while he set to work, diverting Lincoln’s attention with a long, involved story about a friend of hers and a misunderstanding at a petting zoo. Noah listened with only half an ear, much more focused on the flow of blood than the conversation. About an inch long and located along the outer portion of his lower abdomen, the wound looked nasty but didn’t appear to have touched anything vital. Noah’s first aid training didn’t go much beyond the basics, but there wasn’t nearly enough swelling or discomfort to alarm him. What Lincoln needed was to be cleaned, stitched up and bandaged—all things he could do fairly easily.

  Lincoln also desperately needed someone to stop him from continuing this path of self-destruction. Which, unfortunately, wasn’t quite as simple.

  “You’re staying here tonight,” he said as he finished the last stitch. The topical anesthetic he’d applied had long since worn off, and Lincoln’s upper body glistened with a sheen of sweat Noah attributed mostly to his trying not to pass out in front of his lady friend. “I want to be able to keep an eye on you.”

  He tied off the knot and clipped the dark thread, satisfied with his handiwork, as he always was with any activity he’d learned and perfected on his own. His stitches would leave a nasty mark, no doubt about it, but Lincoln took perverse pleasure in that sort of thing. Scar tissue was his own version of teardrop tattoos—misguided and grotesque and unfortunately permanent.

  “Nah. I’m fine. I think I’ll just head home.” As if to demonstrate his improved state of health, Lincoln swung his legs from the table and hopped down. Only by the woman’s quick thinking—and firm shoulder propping him up—did he manage to stay standing.

  “You won’t do anything of the sort.” With widened eyes, she tilted her head toward Noah’s living area, where a serviceable futon functioned as both a couch and his guest bed.

  Noah shook his head and thumbed over his shoulder toward the back of his house. The place wasn’t grand by any stretch of the imagination, but he did have a separate bedroom. Some luxuries a man refused to do without—and as Noah was in the habit of sleeping naked, he’d discovered early on that a little privacy went a long way when the rare guest came to call.

  “In fact, unless you follow Noah’s orders, I’m going to pick up the phone and tell Matt exactly what happened tonight.” Understanding Noah’s gesture, she began leading Lincoln toward the back, their movements hobbled and slow. “I’m kind of pissed off right now, and you know how I get when my temper spins out of control. There’s no telling what I might say to him. Tonight’s stabbing. The black eye two months ago. The one time you asked me to hold that mysterious packa—”

  “Fine.” Lincoln muttered something more, but the sound was absorbed as the pair of them passed into the bedroom. Noah assumed she could figure the rest of it out and busied himself cleaning up the mess left on his makeshift operating table. As he was in the habit of efficiency, the task didn’t take long to complete, so he put a kettle on the wood stove and took a seat, waiting for the woman to return from the bedroom.

  She emerged about ten minutes later, shutting the door behind her with a soft click. Her gently tiptoeing movements indicated that she’d not only tucked Lincoln in, but also ensured he’d fallen asleep. Noah felt a swelling gratitude for the woman’s careful ministrations where Lincoln was concerned.

  Yeah. Gratitu
de. That was what was swelling.

  “He’s out cold,” she said, indicating the door.

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “I gave him some ibuprofen to help with the pain.”

  “Probably wise.”

  An anxious furrow marred her otherwise flawless brow. “And you think he’ll be okay?”

  “He’ll live,” Noah amended. Okay, in this situation, was an entirely different question—one he unfortunately didn’t have the power to control.

  She nodded once, and he got the impression that despite his reticence, she’d picked up on both sides of his answer. It felt good, sharing this burden with someone else. Hell—who was he kidding? It felt good sharing anything with a woman like this one.

  He’d been out of the world a long time, but not so long he’d forgotten what attraction felt like. If anything, isolation had sharpened his senses, made him keenly aware of the interest he felt and what kind of damage it could cause. In his experience, women in sparkling shoes spelled trouble. Women in sparkling shoes who also moved in Lincoln’s circles?

  He didn’t even want to think about it.

  “Thank you for taking care of him so quickly,” she said. “For a while there, I thought he might be in real trouble.”

  Knowing Lincoln, he still was. But Noah just inclined his head in what he hoped was an acknowledgment of her thanks.

  It must have worked, because she smiled softly and changed the subject. “By the way, is that a real tree in there making the frame for your bed? I’ve never seen anything like that outside of a magazine before.”

  Noah stood and pulled out a chair for her, waiting until she seated herself before answering. “It’s not a living tree anymore, but it’s real enough. If you go up to the roof, you can see what remains of the stump. I was going to pull the roots out to clear the room, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It seemed like such a waste of natural wood.”