by Julie Miller
He should be relaxing in a hot shower and washing off the paint from the trim work he’d tackled after his shift downtown had ended. Instead, he was playing a reluctant Sir Galahad to a woman he didn’t know—a woman whose sympathetic squint when she’d gotten a good look at him in the light had given him a truer reading of her first impression of him than her startled scream had. All the more reason to drive her to the hospital himself and leave her someplace safe. Someplace where he wouldn’t feel as though it was his personal duty to take care of her. He had no room for personal in his life. Not anymore.
He’d do his job by Freckles over there—nobody had better question his skills or professionalism on that count ever again. But he’d answered enough false alarms with Sheila last summer. He’d paid dearly for caring—for answering the call of duty with more than his badge. He wouldn’t be duped by a pretty face again.
Not even if the blood on that face was real.
Kevin slowed his speed before reaching across the seat. He squeezed Beth’s shoulder through the thick wool of her chocolate-brown coat. “Come on, lady. Wake up.”
The dark lashes fluttered. Hell. He gave her a slight shake. “No passing out on me, remember?”
Peachy, unadorned lips moved as she squirmed out of his grasp. “I’m awake.”
“I need to see your eyes, okay?”
The muted blue eyes blinked open, focused for a moment on his ugly mug, then closed again. “You’re bossy. And you’re speeding.”
Kevin resolutely stiffened the muscles that wanted to grin and put both hands back on the wheel. Good. A smart mouth required thinking. Thinking required her head to be in fairly good working order. Even though he was no medic, he’d had enough first-aid training to know that the two-inch gash at her temple needed stitches. But it was the fainting spell and possible concussion that had him worried the most.
“Come on, Sleeping Beauty. I can’t watch you and the road at the same time. I need you to talk to me.”
Her weary sigh whispered across his eardrums. “Like I said, bossy. What do you want to talk about?”
“Tell me everything you remember about the break-in.”
“Haven’t we already had that conversation?”
“You’re thinking more clearly now. Maybe I’ll get some coherent answers out of you.”
The gray-blue eyes opened to half mast and seemed to fix somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulder. “I was in my garage, juggling groceries and stuff from work, heading into the kitchen when the door opened. The man was already in the house. He threw me out of his way and the lights went out. Next thing I knew, I was booking it over to your place.”
“He threw you? You mean he physically picked you up and tossed you aside?”
She seemed to be reliving the memory, staring down at the fingers twisting in her lap, before she nodded. “Yeah. I flew halfway across my garage.”
Although he’d carried her into his living room easily enough, Beth Rogers was no featherweight. It would take someone with considerable strength to propel a grown woman through the air.
When her gaze darted across the seat to him, he knew she was thinking the same thing. He’d be strong enough to do something like that.
Well, hell. Kevin tightened his grip on the steering wheel, fighting the urge to argue that he would never—that he had never, despite one vengeful woman’s claim to the contrary—use his superior strength against an innocent lady. Be a cop, he reminded his emotions. Don’t get angry. Don’t be defensive. Don’t care. If Beth Rogers was frightened away from any kind of neighborly acquaintance beyond tonight’s emergency because of his appearance and attitude, so much the better for his privacy and peace of mind.
“So you never went inside?” the cop in him asked.
“Nope.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No, he just…”
If her skin could get any paler, it just did. She wasn’t passing out on him again, was she? “He just what?”
“He started to undress me.” Her fingers stopped their frenetic wrangling and squeezed into fists. “Maybe I wasn’t unconscious for as long as I thought. Coming to must have scared him away from doing anything…horrible…to me.”
Ah, hell. Double hell. “That didn’t happen,” he insisted. Kevin reached across the seat and covered both of her hands with his. Her startled gasp matched his own surprise at how unplanned, how presumptuous the move had been.
In the time it took for the lingering chill of her soft skin to register, he was pulling away, firmly wrapping his fingers back around the wheel and silently cursing his inability to focus on the job he was supposed to do.
“Sorry, you just startled…” Her fingers fluttered after his, as though she wanted to reclaim his hand. But it must have been a trick of his imagination because she tucked them just as quickly back into her lap. “Why would he do that?”
“Do you have any enemies?” Kevin asked. “A jealous boyfriend? Any dangerous habits, like drugs or gambling?”
Kevin felt her eyes open wide. He glanced across the seat to find her gaze staring straight into his.
“No.” The frown on her lips indicated that his questions had offended her. Or frightened her. Or struck a nerve. “I’ve lived in Kansas City only a few months. I work at GlennCo Pharmaceuticals from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. or later on most days—not counting the commute. When I’m off, I’m fixing up my house—or, this time of year, working on Christmas projects or shopping. There’s no time for a boyfriend and no budget for any dangerous habits.”
“You come home this late by yourself every night?” The clock on the dashboard read well past midnight. “A woman alone? A familiar routine? The perverts of the world don’t need any better setup than that to commit a crime.”
Beth hugged her arms around her middle and turned her focus straight forward through the windshield. “Please tell me this was just a burglary that I interrupted.”
“I can’t say.”
“You can’t say?”
He wouldn’t give her words he didn’t know to be true. “I won’t confirm any suspicions until I’ve done a little more investigating.”
“That’s annoyingly mysterious. How about, ‘I’m looking into it. Don’t worry. It’ll be okay’?”
“I won’t promise something I don’t know for a fact.” He killed the siren and tapped on the brake to slow the SUV as the bright lights of the Truman Medical Center parking lot came into view. “We’re here.”
She sat up straighter in her seat, gingerly pushing the edges of the knit cap and dish towel from her eyes. “What kind of cop are you, anyway? Besides the bossy, pessimistic kind.”
“I’m a master detective with the major case squad at KCPD.” Kevin pulled into a parking spot just beyond the emergency room’s circular drive. He turned off the engine and got out.
By the time he’d circled around the hood and opened the passenger door to help her out, Beth had unbuckled and twisted to face him. She clasped her coat together beneath her chin and blinked against the spit of frozen moisture in the air. “Major case means you solve murders and kidnappings and other really serious crimes, right?”
He hooked a hand beneath her elbow and steadied her as she climbed down. “Yeah.”
“I guess my little bump on the head is beneath you.”
Kevin kept a grip on her elbow and shortened his stride so that she could walk through the sliding emergency-room doors beside him.
“A cop is a cop.” He guided her straight over to the check-in desk and got in line behind a woman holding a wailing, red-faced toddler. “It’s not what I had planned for the night. But it’s no waste of time if a real crime has been committed.”
With an unexpected burst of temper, Freckles tugged her arm from his grip. “If? You think I’m making this up? That I did this to myself?”
“Don’t twist my words around, lady.” A sharp look from the woman in front of them toned down his response to a glare and a whisper. “You needed help—I
helped. I’ll get your report to the right department at KCPD. I wasn’t insinuating anything.”
“Could have fooled me. You’ve made me feel like a nuisance all night long.” Pressing a hand to the wound on her head, Freckles tipped her head back and returned the glare full force. “And I have a name, Detective. You can call me Elisabeth, or Beth or even Miss Rogers. But don’t keep referring to me as ‘lady.’ In fact, you don’t have to refer to me at all. Thank you for the ride. Sorry I ruined your plans, upset your dog and forced you to leave home. I absolve you of all responsibility for me. Good night.”
“You didn’t force me to…”
Kevin bit his tongue as a nurse came up to the woman and child to lead them down the hallway. Before he could finish the argument, Beth Rogers scooted in front of him and handed her insurance card over the counter to the young male clerk behind the desk. Her stiff shoulders and full back made her aversion to his continued brutish, bossy, pessimistic presence crystal clear.
This was what he wanted, right? Scare away any relationship that might turn remotely personal, that might get him into trouble again? Sheila had triggered his protective instincts at her first late-night phone call that spring, claiming she had a stalker outside her apartment door. Kevin had broken speed records getting across town to rescue her. By the end of summer, she’d proven him a sap of the worst order. What he’d called love, she’d called a working partnership. An attorney, she’d used him to get information that her law firm had used to help a client walk on a case KCPD had built against him. What Kevin had defended as a relationship betrayed, Sheila claimed was sexual harassment—that he’d forced her into something more personal.
And even though he’d been cleared of the accusation, the stigma stuck. Kevin Grove was a fool when it came to women. A big, ugly-ass fool who had no business playing hero to any woman. Not Sheila Mercer. And not Beth Rogers.
He should be relieved that his next-door neighbor had had enough of his company. There’d be no chance that he’d make the same mistake twice.
Dismissing her with a scowl, he turned toward the exit doors. “Good night.”
KEVIN SAT IN THE PARKING lot—in the night, in the cold—for thirty minutes, waging a war between his conscience and self-preservation. He’d done right by Miss Elisabeth Rogers—gotten her to the hospital, called in the break-in, listened to her report. As a cop, he was square with her.
As a man…? His self-deprecating sigh clouded the air inside the SUV. Her freckled, alabaster skin—that could blush with temper or go pale with pain and fear—had gotten beneath his own tough hide somehow. He couldn’t just drive off and leave her alone, even though she was in safe hands now, could he? That lecturing, accusatory tongue indicated she could take care of herself. But a woman who was frightened enough, desperate enough to want to hold on to him—however briefly—was either a nut case…or in serious need of an ally right about now.
And he’d hate to think a face that was so all-American pretty could be hiding a crazy lady inside.
Still, it took an ambulance pulling up and the attendants wheeling out a fragile, white-haired old woman hooked up to an IV and an oxygen mask before his conscience finally won out over his damned pride and wounded heart. If he didn’t stand up for the underdogs of this world, protect those who’d been preyed upon, then what was the point of being such a big, bad bruiser of a man, anyway?
His Grandma Miriam had always said there was a purpose for him in this world. She’d given him love and had raised him when no one else wanted the job. No bigger than a minute, she was the one person in this world who could make him give a damn about things when he didn’t want to. Thoughts of Miriam, and the frail patient who reminded him of her, pushed Kevin back out into the cold night.
He hadn’t done right by the half-dressed, terrified woman on his doorstep tonight, after all. Not yet.
Inhaling a lungful of bracing air, he walked back inside the hospital. He flashed his badge at the young man behind the check-in counter. “Where’s the lady I brought in here a little while ago? Elisabeth Rogers?”
The clerk checked a chart on his desk. “Trauma Room 3. Dr. Rodriguez-Grant is working on her…sir?”
But Kevin was already striding down the hallway. The woman could damn well be an imposition on his solitude, a threat to his hormones. But he wasn’t going to have Grandma Miriam’s voice stuck in his head, telling him how disappointed she was that he couldn’t set aside his own pain and distrust to help a woman when she needed him most.
He burst through the swinging door with a number 3 on it. Oh, yeah. He’d have been toast the next time he visited Miriam if he hadn’t seen this job all the way through to the end.
He was toast.
Beth Rogers’s gray-blue gaze widened with surprise and locked onto his.
There were no tricks of shadows or frosty air to mask the injuries of the woman sitting up on the hospital bed. In the bright light of the treatment room, a purplish-red swelling stood out in startling contrast against her pale cheek. Matching bruises in the pattern of thumb and fingerprints—the span of a man’s hand—dappled her bare shoulder where the white hospital gown she wore draped loosely. A woman doctor with a long, dark ponytail was taping a gauze bandage over the row of neat stitches at Beth’s left temple.
An angry bubble of emotion stuck in Kevin’s throat. And he’d been beastly enough to worry about protecting himself? He had to swallow hard before he could speak. “You all right?”
But the dark-haired woman had no trouble with words. She set her scissors on a tray and faced him. “This is a private room, sir. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
It took a second for Kevin to tear his gaze from Beth, read Dr. Emilia Rodriguez-Grant’s name tag and remember to pull his badge from beneath his coat. “Kevin Grove, KCPD. I brought the patient in.”
The doctor glanced over her shoulder at Beth, sized up Kevin one more time then spoke to her patient again. “Are you okay with him being here?”
There was no way to miss the implication of the doctor’s light touch against the bruises on Beth’s shoulder, no way to miss the direct look into Beth’s eyes. Dr. Rodriguez-Grant suspected abuse. She suspected him.
Well, hell. His anger, however misinterpreted, already filled the room. How was he supposed to defend himself without coming across like the bullying SOB she suspected him to be? Kevin scraped his palm over his stubbly jaw, wishing he could mold a kinder, gentler expression onto his features, but knowing he’d have to rely on a mixture of logic and calm instead to convince the doctor of his innocence.
He needn’t have bothered.
“He didn’t do this to me.” With a strength of tone that belied her battered body, Beth Rogers thrust out her hand. She reached for him, summoned him to cross the sterile room to stand beside her. “Detective Grove is a…neighbor.” When he didn’t go so far as to take the offered hand, she pulled his hand from his side. Her fingers tapped against his palm before lightly closing around his, revealing that she was a little more hesitant to defend the big beast than her outward attitude might claim. “He was kind enough to help me out tonight. He drove me into town.”
“So you reported the assault?” Dr. Rodriguez-Grant asked, making no bones about visually evaluating her patient’s comfort level with Kevin hovering so close by.
“Yes,” Beth answered. “To him.”
Kevin’s response was more certain. “I’ll need a copy of Miss Rogers’s medical report to put with the file I’m setting up at KCPD.” Already discomfited by how easy it was to keep hold of her hand, he wisely let go so he could pull a business card from his wallet and hand it to the doctor. “You can send it to me here.”
“I know the address. My brother and husband are both cops.”
Kevin grinned as she tucked the card into the pocket of her lab coat. Dr. Rodriguez-Grant wasn’t completely sold on him yet. He had no doubt she’d be checking up on him. “Yeah? You know A. J. Rodriguez?”
She nodded. “Tha
t’d be big brother.”
Kevin knew the name, knew the reputation. If thoroughness was a family trait, then Beth had been well taken care of. “I’ve worked with A.J. on a few cases.”
Her dark eyes softened just a bit before she moved her tray to a side counter and placed a syringe in the safe disposal unit on the wall above it. “I’m married to Justin Grant—a bomb-squad specialist. Elisabeth, I’ll run up and check your film for a fracture or any other abnormalities, although your responses indicate there’s nothing to worry about. Better safe than sorry, though. Detective.”
He nodded as she left the room. “Doc.” He followed her to the door, making sure the doctor was out of earshot before he turned to face Beth. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Your attack-dog approach to meeting new people gives a lousy first impression. She thought you were the one who hurt me.”
“I know.”
“Doesn’t it make you mad that someone assumes that about you?”
“You think I can’t take care of myself?”
With a huffy sigh, she pulled her gown back into place and drew her knees up to hug her arms around them. “I thought we were done trying to be friends, that I’d taxed the limits of your ability to be civil. Why did you come back?”
“My grandmother.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t ask.” Pulling back the front edges of his tan wool coat, Kevin propped his hands at the waist of his jeans. “Do you have any family I can call for you so you’re not here by yourself?”
“Guilty conscience?”
“Just answer the question.”
She tucked a wisp of mink-colored hair behind her ear. “They live two and a half hours away in Fulton. Dr. Rodriguez-Grant says it’s just a mild concussion—no internal bleeding. I don’t want to worry Mom and Dad. They’re stressed enough about me being on my own in the big city.”
“You’re a grown woman, aren’t you?”
Her lips crooked with a wry smile. “They still worry. My younger brother lives with them, the older on the farm next door. So far, I’m the only one adventurous enough to leave home.”
