Protection Detail

by Julie Miller

  Although her rigid professionalism and terse, almost-awkward personal skills had earned her the teasing, never-to-her-face nickname, Thomas had spent enough time with Jane over the past several months to have a slightly different take on the resident battle-ax. No one could question her devotion to her duty, a fact that all of them, as a three-generation family of cops, could understand and respect. As for the I’m-not-interested-in-making-friends vibe she put off? He wished he wasn’t so intrigued by a challenge like that.

  Thomas Watson solved mysteries. He’d done it so well for so long that he taught other cops how to solve them. And Jane Boyle was the biggest mystery to cross his path in a long while.

  The nurse’s honey-brown ponytail hung in a straight line down to the high collar of the pink mock turtleneck she wore. She stood with her arms crossed in front of her, her stance emphasizing feminine curves beneath the shapeless blue scrubs. About the only time she wasn’t wearing boxy scrubs and a jacket of one pastel hue or another was in the mornings when she went for a run before breakfast. Or late at night, when she roamed the upstairs hallway between the guest room and the shower in a sweetly sensible pair of pajamas that usually consisted of a T-shirt and cotton pants that never quite met at the waist, exposing a thin strip of bare skin that he’d glimpsed more than once as she hurried into one room or the other and closed the door.

  Really? He was a grown man, crawling on the floor of a major metropolitan hospital, cleaning up after his eighty-year-old father’s tantrum and picturing the woman who worked for him in her pj’s?

  Man, he needed to stop noticing details like that. It wasn’t like he could do anything about that little hum of awareness that seemed to excite his blood every time he cataloged another observation about Jane. After six months living under his roof, sharing meals and a few family evenings together, he couldn’t seem to help himself from noting the sleek arch of her hips, the flawless skin hugging the angles of her oval face, the soft pink mouth that rarely smiled. She worked for him. He needed her to focus on his father’s recovery. He needed to focus on his father’s recovery, too.

  He might have a few gray hairs at the temples of his dark brown hair, but he wasn’t dead. Yet he needed to act as if all the male parts of his body were too old to care about the pretty in a woman in order to maintain the professional relationship between them.

  Thomas set the cards on the table and pushed to his feet, ignoring the inevitable protest in his left leg. “Dad, you can’t talk to people that way. Stephanie was doing her job. She was trying to help you.”

  Seamus’s blue eyes stared straight ahead, ignoring both Jane’s thinning mouth and his own voice of reason. He’d seen his dad bleeding and unconscious; still and pale in a hospital bed after surgery; unable to speak or use his legs and right arm; fighting to stand and pick up his feet and relearn how to hold a fork; working his lips and teeth and tongue so hard to form a coherent word that a lesser man would have given up months ago. It felt wrong to be wishing for even one moment that the old man couldn’t talk.

  “I’m not doing da tupid eckertise again.” Seamus’s slurred words were articulate enough to make his frustration and fatigue clear.

  Jane sat her hip on the edge of the table, facing Seamus. “Yesterday in our therapy session at home, you handled the tongue rolls and language exercises just fine.”

  “I’m too tlow. Tink faster dan I talk. Make mi-takes.”

  Although her words were a little less peppered than Seamus’s tirade had been, Jane’s tone seemed as reprimanding as his father had been with the intern. “Speed doesn’t matter. How many times have I told you that getting back to the man you were before the shooting isn’t going to happen overnight? You’re giving up.”

  Whoa. That was going a step too far. “He’s tired. He’s been testing for two hours.”

  Jane tilted her chin toward Thomas, her hazel eyes glittering with angry specks of gold that he shouldn’t have noticed, either. “Don’t you defend him. He was rude and he knows it.” She looked back to Seamus. “You have worked your butt off all month to improve your performance on this evaluation. Now, are you being lazy, or do you just enjoy making women cry?”

  “Jane...” Rising to her feet, she put a hand on the middle of Thomas’s chest and stiff-armed him away from intervening between her and Seamus. Not that he couldn’t have easily overpowered her claim of authority over his own family if he wanted to seize her wrist or push against her hand. But the moment of ire quickly gave way to an ill-timed rush of awareness that heated the spot where she touched him, and Thomas retreated a step from the contact.

  Nope. Definitely not dead.

  “Seamus?” Jane pressed his father for a reply with the stern tone of a mother dealing with a child. “I know you can do this.”

  After a few silent moments, Seamus nodded. “I chould ’pologize.”

  “Yes, you should.” Although it burned in his gullet to let someone else take charge of his father, to take charge of the entire room, Thomas retreated another step as Jane turned to the silver-haired woman still clutching her hands and keeping her distance on the opposite side of the table. “Millie, would you see if you can get Stephanie to come back? Tell her Seamus is feeling more cooperative now.”

  The older woman seemed relieved to have a task to perform. “Of course.”

  Once the office door at the end of the room had closed behind the Watsons’ longtime housekeeper, Jane moved behind Seamus’s chair, squaring it in front of the table. She squeezed his shoulder before moving around him to straighten the therapy items on the table. “You should apologize to Millie, too, for using language like that. And your son. And me. I thought you were this infamous Irish charmer who had a way with the ladies. Did you think you were working the streets again? That Stephanie was some perp avoiding arrest you had to yell at?” Thomas propped his hands at his waist, letting his fingers settle near the gun and badge he’d worn on the belt of his jeans every day since his family had been attacked at Olivia’s wedding, even on days like this when he wasn’t teaching a seminar at the police academy or assisting with an investigation at precinct headquarters. He shook his head as Jane worked her magic on his father. She was tough, almost abrasive at times. But he had to give the woman props for earning his dad’s—and his—respect. She understood the way a family of law enforcement professionals worked, the sense of duty that ran through their veins, and often used Seamus’s career with KCPD as a motivator. “I’m not happy to have all my hard work be for nothing when we come to see Dr. Koelus.” She softened her tone as she slipped into the chair on the opposite side of the table. “I bet you’re not happy, either.”

  “I walked,” Seamus reminded her. “Koelus ted I could get rid of de walker and use my cane. I did de finger eckertises. I’m better.”

  “Yes, you are. And those are wonderful accomplishments you should be proud of. But if you want that peach cobbler at the restaurant for dessert, then you’re either going to have to do another half mile on the treadmill with me when we get home, or you’re going to have to apologize to Stephanie and repeat the vocal exercises one more time.”

  Seamus pointed a bony finger at her. “Dat’s bwackmail.”

  “Yes, it is.” Jane waited a couple of beats before smiling. “Is it working?”

  The undamaged corner of Seamus’s mouth crooked up in an answering smile.

  Thomas hid his own grin. That woman had his father’s number. She might challenge his own authority and rub him the wrong way at times, but she certainly knew the right mix of tough love, teasing and unflinching faith in her patient that Seamus had been responding to for months now.

  A moment later, Millie returned with the speech therapist. The young woman’s eyes and nose were red from crying, but she smiled to the woman who was old enough to be her grandmother. “Thank you.”

  Millie had probably given her a pep talk. The o
lder woman’s smile faded when she chided Seamus. “Now you be nice to her.”

  Millie tried to back away from the table, but Seamus snagged her hand. “I’m torry, my ol’ friend. It been long time tince you heard lang-ege like dat.” He struggled to spit the words out, even growling with frustration, just as he had a moment before losing his temper. With a glance at Jane, as if seeking her approval, he folded his weaker hand around Millie’s fingers, too. “I raise my boy and grand-tons to be gentlemen. I chould be, too.”

  Twin dots of pink colored Millie’s cheeks and her smile reappeared. “It’s all right, Seamus. They weren’t any words I hadn’t heard before.”

  “I chouldn’t have taid to you. You lady.” He released her hand and tapped his chest. “Better man dan dat.”

  “I know you are.” To Thomas’s surprise, Millie leaned down and kissed his cheek. Seamus’s face was as rosy as hers as Millie picked up her purse from a nearby chair and bustled off to the hallway. “I’m going to find the ladies’ room. Excuse me.”

  The hallway door was swinging shut before the blush left Seamus’s cheeks. He turned to the intern, raising a snowy white eyebrow in a shrug of apology. “Tefanie? Forgive a fwustwated ol’ man. I have college degree and worked long time with public. Front dek at KT...KCPD. But I tound like baby now. Embarashes me.” Jane winked encouragement as she gave up the chair and moved toward Thomas. “I twy again.”

  Stephanie sat and picked up flash cards again. “Thank you for saying that. You were so sweet with me last time—I guess it surprised me when you got so upset. I will say that you articulated each and every one of those cuss words very clearly.” Seamus grinned at her teasing and shook his head. “I’m sorry I ran out on you. I can’t be anywhere near as tired as you must be. We’ll skip the tongue exercises this time and just do the reading so I have a score to report to Dr. Koelus.”

  Thomas heard the buzz of the cell phone vibrating in Jane’s pocket. Again? That was the fourth text she’d gotten since they’d arrived at the hospital, and she’d ducked out of the evaluation sessions with Dr. Koelus and the physical therapists marking the monthly progress in Seamus’s recovery each time. Jane pulled her phone from the pocket of her scrub jacket and read the message. Her forehead knit deeply enough to make a dimple between her brows before she straightened and headed for the door. “Excuse me.”

  Thomas made sure his dad would be on his best behavior before he caught the swinging door and followed Jane into the hallway to find her furiously typing away on her cell. “You can’t let your boyfriend wait for a few more minutes until we’re done here?”

  “My boyfriend?” Jane stopped with her thumb hovering over the screen. “I haven’t been with anyone since my...” When Thomas moved around her to clear the hallway for a doctor and his assistant walking past with some diagnostic equipment, she punched a button and cleared the screen, hiding both the message and her reply from him. “It’s none of your business. This is personal.”

  “Not when you’re on the clock with Dad and me.”

  Her mouth opened with a retort, but snapped shut just as quickly when she saw the custodian with his mop and cart stepping off the elevator at the end of the hall, along with a family walking out with a teenager who was on crutches. She crossed the tile floor to look out the bank of windows overlooking the parking lot below them, avoiding him. Or... Hell. Was she scanning the lot? Looking for a particular vehicle or person? And now he realized she’d scoped out the face of every person who’d gotten off that elevator.

  He knew the woman was a runner. From her job application, he knew Jane was thirty-eight, but she worked out and kept in shape like a woman half her age. She probably had to in order to keep up with headstrong patients like his father. He couldn’t be the only man in Kansas City noticing her. She didn’t wear a ring. So if there wasn’t a current boyfriend, there had to be an ex.

  A gut-check transformed his irritation into concern. Maybe that was the explanation—the calls, the texts, the dimpled brow. Maybe this was some type of harassment campaign. Could be the messages were more than a distraction from her job—maybe she was in some kind of trouble that could explain being so upset one moment, defensive the next, and guarded as she watched the people below in the parking lot. Thomas crossed the hallway. Since the woman didn’t talk about herself much beyond family recipes she shared with Millie and her medical training, he had to ask. “Did you two have a fight?”

  Jane startled at the sound of his voice at her shoulder. “No.”

  Thomas stepped up beside her and looked into the parking lot, scanning for anything that looked out of place. “So he is your boyfriend.”

  Her ponytail bounced as she whipped her face up to his. “Don’t play your interrogation games on me, Detective. I work for you. I’m too old to be your daughter and I’m sure not your wife. You don’t have to know about my personal life.”

  “I do when it interferes with your job.”

  “How does this...?” She held up the phone and used it to gesture back to the physical and occupational therapy room. “Seamus doesn’t need me right now. I can take two seconds to answer a stupid text.”

  Thomas had years of experience keeping his tone calm in the face of uncooperative witnesses or panicked rookies facing a dangerous or difficult call. “A text that clearly upsets you. Like the other texts and calls that you’ve been receiving these past few weeks? You’ve skipped out of meals, left in the middle of conversations. You’re about to jump out of your skin right now.” He pointed to the cell phone now clasped to her chest like some kind of lifeline. “Every decision you make seems to be centered around whatever is happening on that phone.”

  “It doesn’t... It’s some business I need to take care of.” With a brush of her fingers over the neat simplicity of her hair, Jane’s cool facade returned. She pocketed her phone and resumed the clinically professional tone he was used to hearing. “I’m sorry if you think the calls are affecting my work. After dinner, once I get Seamus settled in his room and I’m off the clock, I’ll deal with them.”

  “It’ll be after dark by then. What kind of business do you take care of at night?”

  “None of yours.”

  “None of my what?”

  “None of your business,” she groaned and touched her hair again, this time actually pulling a few strands loose. “I was trying to be clever and shut you up.” She glared at the caramel-colored hair falling over her cheek and shoved it back behind her ear. “Never mind.”

  Thomas heard the words coming out of his mouth before he rationally evaluated the impact of saying them. “I know the signs of someone in trouble. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “No.” Her response was a little too vehement for him to accept that something wasn’t bothering her. Jane inhaled a deep breath and spoke in a softer tone. “I’ll be fine. Thank you, Detective.”

  “Technically, it’s Detective Lieutenant. Or Lieutenant. Or just Thomas.” Thomas propped his hands at his belt and dropped his chin so he wouldn’t tower over her quite so much. “We’ve talked about this. You’ve been working for me and living at the house since the first of March. I think we can call each other by our names.”

  “Thank you for your concern, Thomas. But I’m fine.”

  “Is it an ex who’s giving you trouble?”

  “There’s no trouble.” She could see he wasn’t buying her answers. She glanced out the window one more time before tilting her gaze, which was more green than gold now, to his. “Not that it’s any of your business, but if you must know—I’m a widow. I have been for three years, before I ever moved to Kansas City. There’s been no boyfriend since my late husband, so there’s no ex, either. Now let it go. Please. And I’ll do my best not to let this situation interfere with my work performance.”

  She’d lost the man she loved? Although her loss was more recent than the years he
’d been without Mary, he remembered the gutted feeling that had stayed with him for a long time, the way he’d buried most of his emotions so he could get through the demands of the day, that habit of second-guessing and overanalyzing every decision because the teammate who’d always been his sounding board and ally was no longer there to back him up. Maybe her husband had phoned or texted her often, and each time she received a message, it reminded her of the love she’d lost. That could explain the secretive behavior and testy reaction to his prying.

  Thomas didn’t want to have something so visceral and private in common with Jane. Lumped on top of the intellectual curiosity and sexual awareness that had been buzzing through his system from the moment she’d moved into the spare bedroom of his house, he did not need to feel this emotional empathy. It felt as though they belonged to an exclusive club, and exclusive was an entirely inappropriate connection to feel about someone who worked for him. But it was the most personal information she’d ever revealed to him, and he felt himself worrying about her well-being, anyway. He laid his hand over her fingers, which were still resting on the windowsill. “I’m sorry about your husband. But you said situation. If there’s some other issue that we need to deal with—”

  “We do not need to deal with anything.” He felt her hand tremble beneath his, as if she was fighting some sort of internal battle—maybe whether or not to slap his face for overstepping the bounds of employer-employee concern? She surprised him by turning her palm into his and lacing their fingers together, accepting the strength, comfort and understanding he offered. Her hand felt small in his, but her grip was strong. “I’ll be fine.”

  Thomas tightened his hold around hers. “Jane—”