by RJ Blain
I was out long enough for search and rescue to arrive, although they hadn’t quite managed to excavate me from Kennedy’s grip. Blinking, I walked my way through how I’d gone from conscious to slumped against her, my head pillowed against a rather soft and pleasant place my head had no business being.
A helpful paramedic ruined my enjoyment of my situation, flashing a bright light in my eyes. Someone must have taught all doctor types the same post-collapse script, as the questions the guy shot at me seemed awfully similar to the ones in Indiana. I even managed to answer most of them, although I derailed at the questions regarding where I was.
‘Kennedy’s breasts’ wasn’t the answer the paramedic or my ex wanted. Somehow, I survived through the next few minutes of my life, although my right ear would never be the same again.
“I think he’s fine,” Kennedy grumbled, her fingers still locked on my earlobe. She leaned towards me and hissed, “If I find out you did that on purpose to get near my breasts, you will live to regret it. I will haunt your doorstep for years and ensure you suffer.”
Was that a threat, a promise, or both? If it was a threat, I wondered how effective it would be. She hadn’t even been able to find my house. With some careful planning, I could become a hermit, emerging only when I needed some groceries. If it was a promise, I couldn’t imagine what the hell she thought she was doing.
Then again, I had a serious case of mixed signals. My head wanted to make an immediate escape to safety, preferably somewhere quiet, dark, and devoid of women for the rest of eternity. My body wanted somewhere private with a woman, a rather specific one I shouldn’t have any involvement with whatsoever, and spend the rest of eternity discovering if physical therapy might do me a great deal of good.
I was even willing to bet it wouldn’t take me long to remember what she liked.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” I mumbled, tilting my head to ease the pressure on my ear. “I’m sorry.”
Kennedy sighed. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I didn’t check the weather before the flight, then it was my stupid idea to have a look around. I didn’t think we’d actually find any bodies.”
“If you can walk, Mr. Matthews, the ambulance is over there.” The paramedic pointed. “If you’re otherwise uninjured, take yourself to it.”
“I’m fine.” I probably lied. I never was fine after a collapse. I wobbled, and I often wobbled my way right back to the floor unless I took a lot of care. At least I’d dodged a secondary attack—assuming I avoided another look at any bodies. To prove I wasn’t a complete liar, I lurched to my feet. Kennedy helped, and I sighed my relief she stopped torturing my ear in the progress. “An ambulance—”
“Is necessary,” Kennedy snapped.
“You’ve gotten bossy,” I muttered. While she’d always been a bit prickly, especially when it came to certain things, the years had sharpened her edge.
Underneath the dread, the fear, and the resentment I’d harbored was a masochist, as I had no other explanation as to why I hadn’t run for the hills, pleaded for mercy, or responded with the flight instinct sane men displayed when in the presence of a woman too much to handle.
“Shut up and walk, Reed. Watch your feet, and for fuck’s sake, don’t look to your left. I should have known that would be a problem. My stupid fault.”
“To be fair, I had no idea that would happen either.” If she couldn’t handle my inability to handle certain things—including her presence—she’d have a lot more trouble in the future if she stuck around. “At least this time I didn’t go straight into the next one. That’s improvement.”
Two years ago, it had been a guarantee. The realization gave me something most of my therapy appointments didn’t: hope.
In a strange way, I had Kennedy to thank for that. If I could handle the onslaught of emotions being near her caused, from the highs of inappropriate desire to the lows of loathing and regret, I could recover from the rest, too. Just like my doctors wanted, I could be me again.
That thought alone consumed me all the way to the ambulance, Kennedy at my side every step of the way.
I protested the necessity of going back to yet another damned hospital my insurance company refused to pay for. Apparently, Kennedy had retrieved my card from the trash, which resulted in a brief but volatile argument. She won.
The card ended up back in my wallet, I lost three thousand dollars to the ambulance, another two to the ER, and ended up with a serious case of grumpy. Instead of taking out my irritation on the nearest trash can, I tested the effectiveness of breathing exercises on my rage. It didn’t help all that much.
“You may have been correct on the usefulness of your card outside of Indiana,” Kennedy conceded.
“I’m going home and becoming a hermit. No one is invited except for Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds.”
“I still can’t believe you named your kitten that.”
“That’s what cats do. They plan to take over the world, and once they have done so, they destroy it for it’s no longer interesting for them.”
“I’m concerned for your kitten’s safety.”
“You’re joking, right? That little demon is going to cost me at least eighty bucks a month to feed. No one told me kittens cost a fortune when I rescued her off my car. By the end of the weekend, she made it perfectly clear who owned my house. Hint: it’s not me.” I sighed, shoved my wallet in my pocket, and gritted my teeth through the remainder of the paperwork. “An angel better be able to take care of a kitten.”
“Or what?”
“I’m going to pluck Luna’s feathers.” I indulged in some serious pen clicking. “All right, Miss FBI or CDC Agent, or whatever the heck you are. Why the hell would someone grab me from a car accident, stitch me up, cart me to Mississippi, and dump me in an abandoned farmhouse plagued with such incidents? Although from my understanding, the other ‘guests’ were at least from the same state. Until me. Aren’t I lucky?”
“You’re rather sarcastic when you’re pissy.”
I clicked the pen some more. It didn’t help. “I have several thousand reasons to be pissy.”
“I’ll look over your policy in Indiana and see what loopholes are present. That’s one benefit of working with the CDC. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to get reimbursed for most if not all of it. Government mandated hospital visits are usually covered, they just try to worm their way out of it with a bogus clause. Give me ten minutes, a few forms, and your policy. I should be able to sort it out.”
I risked a glance in her direction, but she was focused on her phone. “I’m going to take you up on that. I’m still not showing you where I live, though. If you want to know, you’ll have to figure it out on your own.”
“You’re a person of interest now, Reed. You’re going to end up with a babysitter until we figure out who wants you—and why.”
“Luna knows something. Go demand answers from her.”
“You try bossing an angel around. Let me know how that works for you.”
“There’s a trio of them who enjoy bothering me at work. It’s very frustrating.” I shrugged, signed the last of the papers, and stood so I could hunt down a nurse and finalize my escape. “I refuse to fly, so if you’re booking something on that phone of yours, it better not involve a plane. I may not look like much, but I can still run a fast mile, and unlike you, I have shoes.”
Kennedy stretched out her legs and wiggled her toes, which were still dirty. She’d made a point of wiping her soles so she wouldn’t track foot prints all over the hospital, but she hadn’t bothered with the rest of her feet, her ankles, or anywhere else for that matter, including her face.
I pointed at her. “You have mud streaked across your nose.”
“That’s nice. Is it a good color on me?”
“It’s mud.”
“Look into a mirror sometime soon before you talk too much about my face, Reed.”
Heading for the door, I waved the clipboard in dismissal. “And here I thought you would
have been happy to discover I don’t need to preen in front of a mirror to know I’m pretty. Even when muddy.” The crash must have rattled my brain in my skull, since my mouth decided it no longer cared to be restrained by common sense. If I was going to flirt with death, at least I’d earn my beating. “But you always did like your pretty men dirty.”
“Damn it, Reed!”
I chuckled and hunted down a nurse.
Chapter Ten
Ten minutes after leaving the hospital, I discovered what Kennedy had been up to on her phone. I scowled at the posh hotel, the exact sort of place I never would have dreamed of visiting while covered in mud and blood. Crossing my arms over my chest, I regarded the glass-fronted building with marble lobby with narrowed eyes.
“The room has a super fancy jet tub with built in heaters and everything, so we can soak all we want without the water getting cold. It also has a really large shower. Don’t be a wuss. I warned the hotel we were involved in a plane crash and there would be mud. My boss sent clothes for us, too. That’s the nice thing about being a liaison. They take clothes seriously. It looks really bad for both organizations if I look like I just finished attending my own murder.”
“Or mine,” I muttered.
“March, Reed. I’d rather not have to drag you in there by your ear. If you delay me from taking a shower, I will.”
“My wallet doesn’t thank you for this.”
“My boss is reimbursing me for the entire bill, including room service. Of course, that’s on the condition you share a room with me, but I thought you’d prefer that to paying the nightly rate here.” Without waiting to see if I followed, Kennedy headed for the doors.
Once upon a time, I had lived with Kennedy, upgrading from an on-campus dorm room to an apartment in our last year of school. Sharing a hotel room made sense. It kept costs down and coordination simple. Everything else about the situation, however, spelled trouble.
It took me until she reached the front doors to force my feet into motion. I’d survived a plane crash and a tornado with her. A hotel room was nothing compared to that. I’d take one bed, she’d take the other, and I would spend a sleepless night pretending beds didn’t exist so I wouldn’t splash in the gutter designated for perverts and think too hard about a lot of things better off forgotten.
There would be no fraternizing with my ex in a posh hotel room.
I kept on telling myself that while Kennedy handled checking in. The hotel employees didn’t even flinch at our appearance, which impressed me a lot since I sure as hell grimaced when I caught my reflection in the polished marble. We both needed a shower. Within ten minutes, we were on our way up to the fourth floor, shedding dirt every step of the way.
In the elevator, I did my best to avoid touching anything to limit the amount of cleaning the staff would need to do. “Hey, Kennedy?”
“What?”
“If you need a model for domestic violence, I’m probably a good candidate right now. How’s the camera on that phone of yours? You could make a decent dime to the right buyer.”
She snorted. “No, Reed. While accurate, I’m not photographing you while you look like you were run through the wringer.”
“But you wouldn’t have to use makeup. You know how much I hate makeup.”
“And the camera, lights, posturing, and everything else to do with someone taking your picture.”
“Well, yes. The cameras are terrible to me. They add at least ten pounds, straight to my hips.” I averted my gaze in time to avoid meeting her glare, although I caught a glimpse of her scowl in the elevator’s mirrors. “What? Are women the only ones allowed to complain about the extra camera pounds?”
“Everyone I spoke to has pretty much agreed you completely lack an ego, are unaware you’re model material, and do very little to draw attention to yourself. You get an attitude when someone screws up your perfect little work world, but otherwise, you’re quiet and reclusive.”
“A few people keep telling me things like that.”
The elevator dinged and the door slid open. Kennedy stepped out, planted her hands on her hips, and frowned at me over her shoulder. “Those would be your therapists, of which you have several, not that they’ve been able to make much progress with you, as you’re incredibly stubborn. We had a lovely discussion regarding your stubborn streak, Mr. Matthews.”
I needed to find whomever had thought it a good idea to send my ex poking her nose into my personal business. Once I found them, I would begin with subjecting them to Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds. I’d make up the rest as I went, but I would get satisfaction somehow. “How lovely. The insights your presence must have given them will haunt me for years, I’m sure.”
“They were intrigued to learn about some of the details you hadn’t bothered telling them, yes. They’re confident your sessions will be more productive in the future. One even asked if I would attend a few. I may have agreed dependent on your willingness and authorization from the CDC. Unfortunately for you, they already have authorization from the CDC. They’ll discuss the matter with you soon, I’m sure.”
The thought of Kennedy attending one of my therapy sessions stopped me dead in my tracks, halfway out the elevator. As though sensing I was either incapable or unwilling to take the next step, she turned, grabbed the front of my shirt, and pulled me forward. I squawked at the collar digging into my throat and strangling me. “Do your deer in the headlights impression in our room. It’s more convenient to deal with if I can just drag your ass into the shower and blast you with cold water to get you to snap out of it.”
Instead of waiting for an answer, she hauled me down the hall to our room, pausing long enough to unlock the door. To keep her from relocating me through force, I stepped inside, flicking the glowing switch to turn on the lights.
The spacious room contained a king-sized bed.
It was going to be very, very difficult for me to forget beds existed, especially if Kennedy still had the habit of stealing heat from those sharing sleeping space with her. Once she locked onto a living furnace, she fought to keep her heat source close at hand.
It was going to be a long night.
Kennedy squeezed by me, closing the door behind her. “I had the choice between two rooms, no jet tub, or a big bed and jet tub. I thought you’d be able to live with a big bed and a nice tub. Go shower. I have to take care of some work first.”
A cold shower might save me from myself and my overactive imagination, one quite eager and willing to provide suggestions on the things I could do with a woman on a bed that nice. That the woman happened to be Kennedy threw me for a loop so intense I stood frozen, eyes wide while I held my breath.
Not only would I have a cold shower, I would take the time to remind myself why any interest in Kennedy in any fashion was a terrible idea. I closed the bathroom door behind me, exhaled, and stripped, tossing my wallet on the vanity and stuffing the rest in the garbage. With so much blood and tears, I wouldn’t even make the attempt to salvage my clothes.
Clothes could be replaced. I’d just have to hope Kennedy had actually made arrangements like she’d said, else I’d be running around wearing a towel, which would make things even more awkward. Unless things had changed, I’d have to keep a close eye on her, as she’d help my towel have an accident so she could admire the scenery.
Unless something had changed, Kennedy enjoyed a good look at a pretty man as much as I liked admiring a beautiful woman, although I had never ‘tripped’ so I could pull off her towel. It’d become a game—me trying to keep my towel where it belonged while she did her best to steal it. When I lost I won, and when I won I lost, so it was always in my interest to lose whenever possible.
It took a lot more work than I liked to rid myself of the mud and dried blood, and the effort left me exhausted. I contemplated the tub, my aching muscles begging for relief. The rest of me just wanted to flop somewhere, close my eyes, and forget about life for a while.
Maybe I could manage both. The sloped side of t
he tub made a perfect spot to lounge and nap without drowning. With a little bit of soap, I wouldn’t have anything to worry about if Kennedy decided to invade and take her shower. If I took too long, she would.
That she hadn’t already impressed me.
Screw it. I’d take the risk. After everything that happened, I needed a chance to relax.
The blare of an alarm ruined my nap, and once I got my hands on Kennedy’s phone, I was seriously tempted to smash the damned thing. Cracking open an eye, I glared in the direction of the noise.
Kennedy sat on the edge of the tub, and she wasn’t wearing a thing. “I had time to shower, confirm the tub is big enough for two, and that the water does stay heated. You slept through it. I could have done whatever I wanted to you, and you wouldn’t have noticed a thing. Not that I would, but you get my point.”
I did. She also reminded me that women were tricky. I wiped my hand over my face, mumbling a curse over how much she unsettled me.
She never failed to steal my breath, and not even the circumstances of our separation could undermine those memories.
“That alarm is awful,” I grumbled, stretching out and letting the jets work their magic on me. “Please turn it off.”
“Hasn’t anyone told you it’s not wise to sleep in a tub? You could’ve drowned.” Kennedy shot a stern glance at me but turned the alarm off, rising and setting her phone on the vanity, safely out of the way. When her back was turned to me, I admired her.
Years ago, she’d been slender enough, but she had refined herself to the smooth curves of a fit woman combined with the hint of muscle warning me not to underestimate her. I’d stayed slim, but I’d abandoned traditional workouts, doing chores to stay somewhat fit.
