Turning Point (The Kathleen Turner Series)

by Snow, Tiffany

  “I’m sorry, Kathleen… for earlier.”

  I shook my head, dropping my gaze to the floor. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  And I didn’t. I was tired, physically and emotionally, and couldn’t handle another heart-to-heart conversation—or argument.

  Blane moved toward me, not stopping until we were mere inches apart. He studied the locket resting against my skin before looking me in the eyes.

  “Take care of Kade.”

  His lips pressed against my forehead and I squeezed my eyes shut.

  Then he was gone.

  I couldn’t think about all that had been left unsaid between us, didn’t want to dwell on it. I didn’t know what I should think or feel, but it didn’t matter right now anyway. I had a patient to nurse back to health. Kade needed me.

  That thought spurred me to action, and I went to the kitchen, filling a glass with ice water and carrying it into the bedroom. Kade was still asleep. I set the glass on the bedside table, then curled up cross-legged on the bed, watching him.

  His jaw was roughened and I could tell he hadn’t shaved in a few days. While the doctor had removed his shirt, he still wore his jeans. That seemed uncomfortable to me, but I wasn’t about to try and pull them off.

  Kade moved restlessly, and the blanket covering him fell away. His chest lightly rose and fell with his breathing, which comforted me. He was going to be okay.

  It was chilly in the room, and Kade’s bare skin bothered me. I reached over to drag the blanket back up.

  A hand shot out to grasp my wrist, and I found myself flipped onto my back, with Kade’s arm pressed against my throat.

  “Jesus, Kathleen,” Kade snarled, his face contorted in pain.

  He released me, collapsing back against the mattress. “You’ve got to learn not to sneak up on people when they’re sleeping.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking,” I groused, sitting back up. “I was trying to help.”

  “What happened?” He touched the bandage on his side. “Did you do this?”

  “No, and don’t touch it,” I admonished. “A friend of Blane’s is a doctor. He dug out the bullet and stitched you up.”

  I grabbed the pill bottles off the table, dumping one of each into my palm. “Here,” I said, holding them out to him with one hand, the glass of water in the other. “You’re supposed to take these.”

  “What are they?” He made no move to take them from me.

  “One’s for pain, one’s for infection.”

  “Just give me the one for infection,” he said.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” I snapped. “Take the damn pain pill. I’ve had a shitty couple of days and I’m not going to deal with your macho crap.”

  Kade’s eyes met mine and I held his stare for a long moment. Finally, he reached out and took the pills and water. I watched as he swallowed both of them.

  “If you’re going to check that I swallowed them, I’ve got a great idea for that.”

  I couldn’t muster the energy to smile at his wisecrack. Instead I turned and lay down on the bed, fixing my attention on the ceiling. Kade settled back as well and we rested silently for a while, watching the room slowly brighten with the morning sun.

  Kade broke the silence. “So why have you had a shitty couple of days?”

  I thought about not telling him, since talking to either Blane or Kade about the other seemed vaguely tacky to me, but gave a mental shrug. “Blane and I had a couple of fights,” I explained.

  “About what?” He adjusted his position on the bed, carefully turning onto his uninjured side to look at me.

  “About this case he’s working. How he wouldn’t tell me why he’s defending that asshole. Then he gets this bright idea that the best way to protect me is to—”

  I stopped, realizing I may have said too much.

  “To what?” Kade prompted.

  “To marry me,” I muttered.

  Kade said nothing. He merely reached down to grasp my left hand. Holding it up, he said, “I don’t see a ring here. I’m guessing your answer wasn’t what he had expected?”

  “There was no question to answer,” I said. “He didn’t even ask, just suggested we go down to the courthouse.”

  “Ouch.” Kade lowered my hand back to the mattress but didn’t let go. “For a suave kind of guy, I’d have expected better.”

  I gave a small huff of laughter despite myself. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  There was a pause.

  “So if he had asked, would you have said yes?”

  The feel of his hand enveloping mine pressed against my senses. While it should have seemed weird to have Kade, of all people, lying next to me in my bed, it didn’t.

  “I don’t know.”

  The words fell out without my consciously having decided to speak them, and I realized it was true. I loved Blane, but the last few days had shown me that rather than growing more trusting of me as we’d been dating, Blane had instead gotten even more protective, more determined to not let anything harm me, no matter the cost.

  Kade pressed my hand open until our fingers were threaded together, palms touching. I turned my head to look at him, but his eyes were shut. I pulled the blanket up and over us, and with a deep sigh, I closed my eyes as well.

  A clap of thunder woke me. My eyes fluttered open and I saw that the bedroom was now dark. The sound of rain on the window confirmed that a storm had moved in.

  Kade was still sleeping. He hadn’t moved from his position and I hoped the pain medicine would help him stay asleep.

  The pain medicine.

  I grimaced. Some nurse I was. The doctor had told me to give it to him with food. Crap.

  Untangling my hand from Kade’s, I eased out of the bed. Closing the bedroom door behind me, I rummaged in my kitchen cabinets for something I could make him to eat.

  “This’ll have to do,” I muttered to myself, holding a box of blueberry muffin mix.

  Grabbing the ingredients, a bowl, and muffin pan, I mixed everything together and put them in the oven. I had about fifteen minutes while they cooked, so I got in the shower. It wasn’t until I was pouring the thick conditioner into the palm of my hand that I realized I’d forgotten to put oil in the mix.

  “Shit, shit, shit!”

  I hurriedly turned off the water and reached for a towel. Only there wasn’t one. I’d given them all to Dr. Sanchez.

  If I didn’t hurry to add the oil, the damn muffins would turn out hard as rocks.

  Cursing under my breath, I scurried into the kitchen, naked and dripping. I took the muffins out of the oven and, thankfully, they were still sort of liquidy in the middle. The recipe called for a quarter cup of oil. Okay, dividing that evenly among twelve muffins was…

  Math wasn’t my strong suit, so I eyeballed it, dumping a little oil in each one and giving a stir with a toothpick. When I was done, I looked them over critically. I had no clue how they were going to turn out, but it was worth a try.

  Grabbing the pan with a pot holder, I slid it back onto the oven rack, heaving a sigh. Gourmet cook, I was not.

  “I’ve heard of barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, but I think I like this better.”

  Startled, I jumped, bumping my fingers against the side of the four-hundred-degree oven. I cried out, jerking back my hand. Spinning around, I saw Kade striding toward me.

  For a moment, the absolute embarrassment of the situation rendered me immobile. Then Kade was next to me, grabbing the hand I had cradled against my body.

  “What happened?” he asked, examining the livid skin. “Don’t you know the purpose of an oven mitt?” Reaching over, he turned on the cold water, putting my hand in the steady stream. I hissed.

  “If you hadn’t scared me, I wouldn’t have burned myself,” I gritted out. Groping behind myself with my other hand, I found the roll of paper towels. Jerking a handful free, I tried to cover myself.

  “Seriously?” Kade deadpanned with a quirk of an eyebrow.

  My cheeks heated. I was
too cheap to buy the nice, thick paper towels, and the no-name brand was soaking up the water on my skin and becoming instantly transparent goo. I cursed my own frugality and stubbornly clutched the soggy mess to my body anyway, trying to use my arm to cover my breasts.

  “How does your hand feel?” Kade asked.

  The water coursing over my skin had eased the pain and I gave a curt nod. Kade shut the water off.

  His body blocked mine where I stood. Tipping my head back, I looked up at him. His eyes burned a path down my body.

  “Fuck bullets,” he rasped. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

  I swallowed. “You’re supposed to be sleeping,” I said as calmly as my racing pulse would allow. I was all too aware of how close he was, and how very naked I was. “What are you doing up?”

  “You’re demanding I get back in your bed?” he asked, all innocence.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I woke up, saw you weren’t there, and came looking for you.” His lips twisted. Leaning forward, he whispered in my ear, “Has anyone told you how magnificent you look in wet paper towels? I bet those peacock-blue stilettos would go great with that outfit.”

  I abruptly remembered what he’d said about those shoes once before: And the next time I see you wearing those shoes, they’ll be the only thing you’re wearing.

  I felt my breath catch. “I need to get dressed.”

  “By all means,” he readily agreed. Kade took a big step back, and I abruptly realized he could see more of me now, with space between us, than he had been able to before.

  “Cover your eyes,” I insisted as I fought a losing battle with my bargain-basement quicker-picker-uppers.

  “Not a chance in hell.”

  Cheeks burning, but with as much dignity as I could muster, I turned literal tail and hurried into the bedroom, shutting the door behind me. I felt his eyes on me the whole way.

  I put on clothes that covered me from neck to ankle—a turtleneck and jeans. Running a brush through my hair, I decided to let it dry on its own. I hadn’t forgotten that Kade still needed food with his medication, so in a matter of moments, I was back in the kitchen.

  Kade had taken up residence at my kitchen table, making the room seem smaller with him in it. The smirk he gave when he saw what I was wearing told me I hadn’t fooled him, he knew I was donning armor.

  The timer beeped and I took the muffins out of the oven. I could tell at once that my attempt to save them had been in vain. The outsides were hard as a rock, while the middles were still too squishy and undercooked to eat. Dismayed, I just stood looking at them. Tears pricked my eyes.

  Damn it, I couldn’t even cook a box of muffins.

  When I sniffed, Kade moved to stand next to me. “Hey, what’s the matter?” he asked gently.

  His question just made the waterworks start. “These stupid things,” I blubbered. “They only had like three ingredients, and I still screwed it up.”

  He laughed lightly, pulling me into his arms and hugging me. “So you can’t cook. I can live with that.”

  Kade’s sweetness only made me bawl harder.

  “Come on now,” he said nervously, reaching behind me for more of the paper towels I now despised. “It’s really okay. Please stop crying, all right? We’ll just order in. No big deal.”

  I swiped the rough cloth across my eyes and nodded. The only thing I could cook was potato soup, which I’d made for Blane, but it wasn’t like we could eat it every night. He’d quickly realized my lack of culinary skills and we’d gotten in the habit of either going out to dinner, ordering take-out, or having his housekeeper, Mona, drop things by.

  The thought of Blane made my stomach hurt. Tears welled up again, but I assiduously blinked them back. Now wasn’t the time to start mooning over Blane.

  Flipping through my stack of take-out menus, we decided on Chinese, then sat on the couch to watch TV while we waited. Kade wanted to take a shower, and after I scrounged up a beach towel (I certainly didn’t need him waltzing out naked) and admonished him to not get his bandage wet, he disappeared into the bathroom.

  “So who shot you?” I asked when he was out of the shower and we were finishing off our plates of kung pao.

  “A bad guy.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Really? Come on. Tell me. Did you find out who’s after you?”

  Kade ignored me for a moment, setting his empty plate on the coffee table before settling back against the couch. I’d managed to rummage up a T-shirt that would fit him, and thank God he’d put it on. Bending his leg, he pulled his bare foot up onto the couch, resting his arm across his denim-clad knee as he looked at me. The casualness of his posture only seemed to accentuate his maleness. Kade oozed raw sexuality.

  I took a nervous sip of Pepsi and tried to unobtrusively edge farther onto my side of the couch.

  “These people like to make sure there are no loose ends,” he finally said.

  “How are you a loose end?”

  “Because I got close enough to know that Ryan Sheffield had orders from some very powerful people.”

  I frowned. “Who?”

  “David Summers.”

  My eyes widened in surprise. “Matt Summers’s uncle? The guy in charge of that group, that political group?” The name escaped me, even though I’d heard it on the news a few nights ago.

  “IAN,” Kade said. “Improving America Now.”

  “Yeah, that one. But why would he have anything to do with Ryan Sheffield?”

  “David Summers has a lot of money, and a lot of power,” Kade explained. “Politicians fall all over themselves to get in his good graces. He’s very antimilitary and, ironically enough, anticapitalism, though that’s how he made his fortune.”

  “If you know he was behind Sheffield, why can’t he be arrested?” I asked. “Sheffield nearly killed me.”

  “It would do nothing,” Kade replied. “He’d be out in the blink of an eye. The best thing to do—what Blane and I are doing—is find out what his endgame is, if there’s anyone else besides him pulling the strings.”

  “Blane and you?”

  “Yeah, that’s the part he probably didn’t tell you.”

  I just looked at him.

  Kade shrugged. “Summers is a ruthless guy. If he’s responsible for even half of what we suspect, he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Kade smirked. “When I know, I’ll tell you.” He eyed my frown for a moment. “Don’t get all bent out of shape. I don’t want you drawing attention from Summers either.”

  “I met Matt Summers the other day,” I told him, “in the lobby at the firm. Blane got a little freaked out.”

  “No shit,” Kade retorted. “Matt is bad news. His uncle’s money has shielded him for years.”

  “And he’s using that as leverage to make Blane be that shield now,” I said.

  Kade looked straight into my eyes. “Sure.”

  His answer made me frown, but as I was thinking about pursuing it, I glanced at the clock.

  “Hey, I need to change your bandage before I go.” Jumping up, I hurried into my bedroom to get the supplies Dr. Sanchez had left.

  “Going where?” Kade asked when I returned.

  “I’m looking into this place where Matt’s victim worked. Derrick’s also working a case where a girl disappeared, and she worked there, too.”

  Settling next to him on the couch, I ripped open a new bandage. “By the way,” I said, “Blane took the bullet the doctor got out of you. He was pretty upset that you’d been shot.”

  I reached to pull up his shirt, but his hand grabbed my wrist, stopping me.

  “Tell me you didn’t call Blane.”

  “Of course I did. He’s your brother.” The “duh” was in my tone, but I was smart enough to not say it aloud.

  Kade cursed and he scrubbed a hand across his face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Why shouldn’t I have told him?”

&nbs
p; He looked me straight in the eyes. “You of all people should know,” he said. “If you look up ‘overprotective’ in the dictionary, there’s a picture of Blane’s face.”

  Okay, he had a point there.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter now, because it’s done. Now let me go, I need to do your bandage.”

  Kade released my hand and I gave him a gentle shove so he was reclined enough for me to get to the wound. Unfortunately, that meant I was also now positioned squarely between his legs.

  I cleared my throat, reconsidering. “You know, it might be easier if you did it.” It wasn’t like the wound was on his back.

  “You ruined the muffins,” he reminded me. “The least you can do is put a bandage on me.” His aggrieved tone was a stark contrast to the mischief dancing in his eyes.

  “Fine,” I huffed. “Be good.” I poked him in the chest with my fingernail, emphasizing my words.

  “Cross my heart.”

  I frowned at his flippancy, not trusting him, but the clock was ticking and I had no time to argue. Leaning over him, I tried to ignore the closeness of our bodies as I took off the bloody bandage, cleaned the wound, and pressed a new bandage in place. I’d been balanced precariously so I wouldn’t touch him any more than necessary, and I gave a sigh of relief once I was finished.

  “There,” I said with satisfaction. “That should—”

  My words were abruptly cut off when Kade shifted, upsetting my balance. I landed on top of him, and his leg wrapped over mine, trapping me. Our faces were inches apart as I stared, wide-eyed, into the sapphire depths of his eyes.

  “You said you’d be good,” I reminded him, my words more breathless than I liked.

  “I lie.”

  The silence was thick between us, and I barely breathed.

  Kade reached out, his fingers running slowly through my loose hair. Dry now, it was wavy and soft, and he brought a long lock to his nose and inhaled deeply. His gaze was still fixed on mine, and I couldn’t look away.

  “You make me want things,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Impossible things.”

  His gaze dropped to my mouth, which was suddenly dry as dust. My tongue darted out nervously to wet my lips, and I felt the surge of his response against my abdomen. Time seemed to stand still, my senses cataloguing the smell of his skin, the rise and fall of his chest underneath my palms, the patter of the rain still falling outside.