A faint line marred Hannah Parker’s brow and as Ginny watched, her mouth parted.
She reached for the call light, but then stopped. Every single day, Chief Marshall had been in speak with the nurses who’d been assigned to care for Hannah—and there were a set four who’d been given the task. His orders had been specific.
Perhaps the man was being overly cautious, but then again, perhaps not.
“Officer Billings,” she said quietly.
When he looked back at her, she gestured to him. “Would you step in here please?”
Brannon was tired.
He was sore.
His head hurt and he figured he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since…well, hell. The night he’d been with Hannah. He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get another decent night’s sleep for a good long time. Maybe never.
He was existing on caffeine and donuts and anything he could get from the vending machine at the hospital and that stuff was pure crap, as evidenced by the fact that his jeans were too damn loose. It was only a week and he had already lost weight.
Since his place was farther out, he’d been crashing at McKay’s Ferry, the sprawling estate where he’d lived for the first eighteen years of his life. In many ways, Ferry was still home.
Try as he might, he hadn’t been able to slip past Ella Sue, the woman who had taken over the job of raising him and his sisters after his parents’ unexpected death twenty years earlier.
Brannon didn’t know why he’d even tried. There was no slipping past Ella Sue.
If Santa Claus had been real, he would have been like Ella Sue—she saw when a person was sleeping, awake, in the damn bathroom taking a piss and everything else.
He’d no sooner taken a step out of his bedroom than he heard her smooth, rich voice drifting up the stairs. “Brannon, honey…is that you, boy? Get on down here and have some breakfast with me before you disappear.”
And there was no such thing as telling the woman you weren’t hungry. You might as well try to tell her there was no sun in the sky, or no stars at night.
So he’d eaten.
She hadn’t even had the decency to fry him up something fattening that would have turned his stomach.
No, she’d had oatmeal, creamy scrambled eggs and toast and if he could have just had a little bit of sleep, he might have felt like a new man. Not that he deserved to feel like any kind of man.
Mentally kicking his own ass was getting old, but Brannon had no problem falling into a rut if that was where he felt like he belonged and he was pretty sure he belonged in this one. As he made the drive to the hospital, he dug the rut a little deeper and worried himself sick all over again.
When are you going to wake up, baby?
What happened out there? What did you see?
Come back to me…
Hannah had gotten hurt only hours after he’d left her at her houseboat.
He’d hurt her.
He knew he had.
And she was pregnant with his baby.
Right now, it was a closely guarded secret, one known only by him, her cousin and a few needed medical personnel. Oh, and of course, Gideon. The cop who’d taken the time to interrogate Brannon.
She was pregnant.
Guilt choked him.
He’d hurt her. Then, during the hours when he’d left her and when Joey had stumbled toward him, something awful had happened. Had she seen something? Was she running? Had somebody tried to hurt her?
He didn’t know. All he knew was that she lay helpless in a coma, his baby inside her.
The elevator dinged and he stepped out, caught up in the familiar misery for a moment. So caught up, it took a moment for the low hum of voices to penetrate.
Coming to a stop, he looked up.
The voices came to an abrupt halt at about the same time he did.
He looked from the nurses gathered around the station to the two cops gathered outside Hannah’s door.
Something that might have been hope tried to grow, but he locked it down tight.
Ginny, a familiar face at the hospital, was still here. She’d been working here as a nurse back when he’d had his appendix out. He couldn’t think of another nurse he’d rather have taking care of Hannah. He caught her eye and arched a brow. “You’re usually long gone by now, Miss Ginny.”
“It was a busy night.” The smile on her face made that hope he’d hidden expand.
He didn’t remember crossing the rest of the hall, didn’t remember rushing into the room, but he must have because he was suddenly being shoved back by an irate nurse. “Do you mind, Mr. McKay!” She smacked a hand against his chest as she shoved him back and he was so stunned, he let her.
Dazed, he wobbled and he would have collapsed if it hadn’t been for the solid, sturdy form of Officer Billings. A hand that was almost the size of a dinner plate patted him on the shoulder. “Let them finish up in there, Brannon,” Billings said, giving him a steadying smile. “Then you can go in and…uh…maybe finish up that book.”
Brannon found himself looking down at the book he held clutched in his hands.
“Yeah. Um.” He nodded. “Yeah.”
She was awake.
Hannah had been half-sitting, half-lying on the bed, her gown hanging off one shoulder as the doctor listened to her back. Her hair hung in a tangle around her face. And she had stared blankly ahead toward the door, her eyes open and fogged.
Awake.
Hannah was awake.
She was awake.
That fact had been pointed out to her in grand detail several times in the past few minutes.
If she heard one more comment along the lines of…Welcome back to the land of the living! or Decided you’d had enough rest, sleeping beauty? she thought she just might scream.
As the doctor shone the bright light in her eyes once more, she winced and tried to push it away.
“I know it’s not pleasant,” he said, an understanding smile on his face.
Then quit doing it! She managed not to say it, but the words leaped to the tip of her tongue and it was a struggle to bite them back.
“Think you can sit up for a few minutes?”
Instead of telling him she didn’t want to, she sighed and wrapped her hand around the bed railing. She already knew she was ridiculously weak. Things had explained to her and she was trying to wrap her head around everything. She’d been in a wreck. She’d hit her head. She’d been in a comatose state for seven days and sometime during the night, she’d started showing signs of reviving. She’d been awake for…how long? She didn’t know.
She wanted to get up.
She wanted to walk.
She wanted something more than the ice chips they’d given her, but any time she asked for water, they said they needed to finish the assessment first. If she heard that A word one more time, she had an A word for them…as in kiss my A-S-S.
She sat up—or tried—and her body protested the movement. The nurse, a kind, older woman came to help steady her until she had her balance. Once she was mostly upright, the doctor studied her for a moment and then nodded, pleased. “Your motor skills are coming along nicely, almost like you napped for the week.”
“It feels like longer,” she rasped.
“You’ll get your strength back.”
She wanted to ask if everything else would come back. But she was afraid.
“Let’s finish up here so you can—”
“Hey!”
She lifted her head up at the sharp sound of the nurse’s voice. Her heart started to pound at the sight of the man in the door. Tall and broad, his face brushed with stubble and a mouth that fell slightly open at the sight of her. That was fine, because she seemed to have trouble closing hers just then.
He was…wow.
He had a powerful face, framed by vivid red hair. That hair was disheveled, making her wonder if he knew what the idea of a comb was. But even as she thought it, she had the image of him driving a big, long-fingered hand through
that hair.
Green eyes. Such brilliant green eyes. He stared at her and she felt the punch of his gaze like he’d reached out and touched her. Images swam through her head.
Then the nurse was standing between them.
“Do you mind, Mr. McKay!” she snapped, shoving him back out into the hall and slamming the door. “That boy, I swear. Ms. Parker, I’m so sorry.”
“Brannon,” she said softly.
The doctor’s head whipped up to hers and the stethoscope he’d had on her back fell away. “You remember him?”
Hannah swayed on the edge of the bed and the doctor had to steady her.
“His name.” She laughed weakly. “I don’t remember mine, but I remember his. Can you explain that to me?”
The Trouble With Temptation
Also be on the lookout for
Never As It Seems
Three years ago, he walked away. Danger brings him back.
Read more
Look for other titles by Shiloh
The McKays
Headed For Trouble
The Trouble With Temptation
The Barnes Brothers
Wrecked
Razed
Busted
Contemporary Standalone Titles
Beg Me
Tempt Me
Beautiful Scars
A Forever Kind of Love
Playing for Keeps
No Longer Mine
The Ash Trilogy
If You Hear Her
If You See Her
If You Know Her
The Secrets & Shadows Series
Burn For Me
Break For Me
Long For Me
Deeper Than Need
Sweeter Than Sin
Darker Than Desire
The FBI Psychics
The Missing
The Departed
The Reunited
The Protected
The Unwanted
The Innocent
And more
About
Shiloh Walker has been writing since she was a kid. She fell in love with vampires with the book Bunnicula and has worked her way up to the more…ah…serious works of fiction. Once upon a time she worked as a nurse, but now she writes full time and lives with her family in the Midwest. She writes romantic suspense and contemporary romance, and urban fantasy under her penname, J.C. Daniels. You can find her at Twitter or Facebook. Read more about her work at her website. Sign up for her newsletter and have a chance to win a monthly giveaway.
BONUS STORY
Freak of Nature
Chapter One
Micah Cochran was dead meat.
Zoë came up out of her work-induced fugue with only that thought on her brain as a fist pounded on her door again.
It was Micah.
She knew it in her gut—Zoë wanted to scream with rage, while at the same time she wanted to throw herself into his arms.
It had been more than five years, not since—
She cut the thought off.
She wasn’t going there. Not now.
She didn’t want him around—not after he’d left her without a word.
Tearing down the steps, her eyes wild, she jerked the door open.
“GO AWAY!”
But he only stood there, as all the force of her gift battered at him. She saw a slight tightening around his eyes from the pain he was no doubt in as she mentally shoved at him.
Guilt came and went.
All the government jackasses who had come to her door lately, and she had kept to physical violence with them, even though they made it obvious they knew what she was. Even though she had been tempted to do more damage, she’d only hit two of them…and with her fist. Much less painful than what she had wanted to do.
But with Micah, she didn’t hold back. She shoved with all the power of her mind.
But he didn’t move.
Swallowing, she focused and drew the raw power back inside her, watching as he relaxed slightly. Quieter now, she said, “Go away, Micah.”
Shaking his head, he said quietly, “I can’t.”
“I can make you,” she countered, arching a brow at him.
He nodded, a slow, thoughtful nod, as he agreed. “You could. But then they will do something you won’t like. You have to help them, otherwise you’re going to be hurt.”
Her face fellas his words sank in.
He was here because of them, her unwelcome guests over the past week. She’d hoped after two days had passed without one of the government suits showing up at her door, they would just leave her alone.
As if.
They’d just chosen a different messenger.
Morosely, she wished that she had just listened to the federal agents that had first come to her door. If she had, maybe Cochran wouldn’t be here.
Woodenly, she asked, “Why you? Did they think you’d have a better chance? I don’t owe you a damn thing.”
Micah nodded slowly. “That’s true. You don’t owe me anything. But I know you,
Zoë. I know how to get past the walls you put up. As to why they sent me, I guess they thought our history would make you more likely to listen to me.”
Zoë laughed, the sound cold and hard in the silence of the cabin. “History? Did we have a history? We worked together…briefly…slept together a few times. And when the case was over, you walked away without a backward glance.”
His soft voice had her stiffening. “I looked back. Almost every damned day for five years. That doesn’t change what I did—or make it right. But I did look back.”
Casting him a cold glance, she said, “You’re right. It doesn’t change what you did. Not that it really matters. It’s been five years, after all. Long time to mourn somebody just because he was a good lover.”
“That’s not how it was,” he said tightly.
“Isn’t it?” she asked archly. “Was there more to it than sex? More than just the job? If it was, you wouldn’t have just walked away, now would you? You used whatever means you could to get close to me, to get me to help you. And if it ended up with you in my bed, so what? And when it was over, you…you just left.” The careless attitude he’d adopted wavered a little as a knot formed in her throat. It didn’t matter what she told him—it did matter. Him leaving her had destroyed her. Turning away, she blinked back the tears suddenly stinging her eyes. “That’s not history, Micah. It’s sex. Sex and business. That’s all I ever was to you, anyway.”
His mind was opaque to her. But his emotions weren’t. The blast of guilt and anger that flowed from him was ugly and black. “No,” he finally muttered. “But I never pretended with you. You were—”
Cutting her eyes to him, she said sharply, “Save the bullshit. Say what you want and go.”
“Not that easy, baby,” Micah murmured as he followed her into the living room and lowering himself to sit on the edge of a chair, watching her.
“So what do you want with me? Got a circus where I’d make a good sideshow freak? The Amazing Zoë…telekinetic, telepathic freak of nature! She knows your every thought, she can bend spoons in midair without touching them, right before your very eyes!” she called out, using a theatrical, overloud voice.
“You’re not a freak,” he said levelly.
She slid him a narrow look and said, “I’m not normal, either.”
He grinned. “But aren’t you the one who says normalcy is boring?”
Zoë met his level stare with a bright, cheerful smile. “So, if it’s not the circus, or the FBI equivalent of, what do you want with me?”
“Kyle Morraine.”
The blood drained out of her face and terror started to pool hotly in her belly.
“Morraine is dead,” she rasped, tears stinging her eyes.
He shook his head. “No, baby. He’s not.”
“No!” she shouted at him, scrambling out of the couch, moving around it so that it stood between her and him. “Damn it, he died! They told me he was dead. I
watched him fall.”
“He lived through it,” Micah said gently. “They caught up with him in Mexico.
Something happened in the fall that apparently weakened him. He wasn’t able to free himself the way he always had before. They caught him, and for the past five years, he’s been living in an isolated prison, with the population of one. You were done with it, so they didn’t feel the need to tell you the truth.”
Her mouth trembled. “The need? Damn it, you know what he did to me?” she shouted, her hands digging into the soft padded top of the couch. “I have to live with that filth he shoved inside my mind—it damned near drove me insane!”
“Yes. Yes,” he said quietly, rising off the couch. He moved toward her slowly, as she stared at him with abject terror in her eyes. “I was there, remember?”
Tears spilled over. “Hell, yes, I remember. He was the only reason you stayed as long as you did. When he was gone, you left.”
“He wasn’t the only reason,” Micah said flatly. “He wasn’t even the most important. But at the time, he was the most dangerous. But he sure as hell wasn’t the only reason I stayed so close to you. Damnit, I stayed that close because I couldn’t stand not being with you.”
Glaring at him, she snapped, “Yeah, like I’m going to believe that. When it was over, you left. Don’t you get that? If I meant a damned thing to you, you wouldn’t have left.”
Micah fell silent as he stared at her with turbulent eyes. She couldn’t see inside his mind—that was as true now as it was five years ago. The only time his thoughts were clear to her was when he was touching her. All she could sense from him now was just turmoil, guilt…anger. “I couldn’t handle what I felt for you, Zoë. You scared the hell out of me.”
She turned away, wrapping around her arms around herself. She felt so damned cold. “Leave me alone, Micah.”
His voice was closer and she shivered as she felt the heat from his body reaching out to warm hers. Against the nape of her neck, she could feel the soft brush of his breath on her skin as he murmured, “I can’t. Not now.”
“I won’t do this again, Micah. I won’t be used again, not by the agency, not by you.”
“I didn’t use you,” he growled.
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