Dangerous to Love

by Sally Tyler Hayes

  “Still unconscious?” She hoped that was the extent of it.

  “Yes.” The doctor held up a hand to silence her. “No need to worry over that yet.”

  Of course not, Jamie thought. They had so many other things to worry about. The fact that he hadn’t awakened yet was several points down on the list. But she couldn’t wait in the hall any longer. “I need to be in there, doctor.”

  “There’s no point,” he said. “Your friend’s unconscious—”

  “He’s not just my friend,” she cut in. “He’s my responsibility.”

  Jamie had already shown the doctor her government ID, designed to look much like the ones the FBI used. It came in handy when working for an agency that didn’t officially exist. Now she lifted one side of her jacket and showed him her weapon as well. “I’m here for his protection,” she added.

  It was the truth, even if it wasn’t her primary motivation in wanting to be inside his room. There was no telling who had come after the government scientists, but they’d been skilled and organized enough to get past three federal agents, and no one was willing to take any chances at this point. If Geri or Dan recognized the shooters, or if they could give the agency some clue as to their whereabouts, someone might be coming after them. So from this point on, they would be under armed military guard.

  The doctor sighed. He looked as tired as Jamie felt and not nearly as determined. “All right,” he said. “Sit there with him. It can’t hurt.”

  Bracing herself, Jamie pushed open the door and went inside.

  Her feelings for this man were hopelessly complicated, but at the moment her desire to see him, to touch him, stemmed from one thing and one thing only—her need to reassure herself that he was truly alive. It hadn’t been enough to hear the doctor say it. She had to see him for herself.

  Jamie found a chair pushed against the far wall and dragged it to his bedside. Various monitors clustered around him were giving off all sorts of blips and beeps, but she wasn’t at all reassured by the sounds. Instead she kept imagining what she would do if they stopped.

  It was only when she was sitting down that she risked a glance at the man in the bed. She saw the impression of his toes against the thin sheet, the outline of his legs, one of his hands lying on top of the sheet.

  Jamie reached out and touched him, her fingertips meeting his, then let out a shaky breath, relief flooding through her. She sat with her fingers laced through his cold ones, their palms pressed together as she listened to him breathe, the rhythm not as steady as she would have liked. It brought home to her once again that there were no guarantees in life, often no fairness or justice to the things that happened to people on this Earth.

  She’d lost people she loved before, had grown up with a father who put his life on the line day after day in service to his country. He’d been wounded three times in his years with the military, and three times he’d survived. And she truly hadn’t been afraid to see her brothers follow in his footsteps, hadn’t feared for her own life either. She’d been a cadet at the U.S. Naval Academy during the Gulf War. Her father had been over there. So had her brother, Richard, who never made it back home.

  Jamie closed her eyes, unable to think of Rich, even now, without crying, unable to think of the way the world simply continued on around them after he was gone, leaving an awful void in their lives, a hole that couldn’t be filled. She’d wanted to make the world stop and take notice. Her beloved brother was gone, and she didn’t understand how it could have happened—he was too important to her and to her entire family. They needed him, couldn’t be expected to go on without him. But, of course, they did somehow.

  Seeing Dan like this brought back those memories of her brother. Of losing him. Of feeling shaken to the core. Of wishing she could go back and have just one more day with him, one more hour.

  They’d left so many things unsaid.

  Her heart told her things simply weren’t the same between her and Dan. She’d loved her brother without reservation, had admired him, had cherished him. She admired Dan as well. But she hadn’t let herself fall in love with him. How could she? They’d never even been out on a date together. They didn’t talk, hadn’t gotten to know each other at all outside of work. She couldn’t possibly love him.

  The potential was there, the connection, the awareness, at least on her part. But they’d never taken the first steps toward each other. Until that kiss.

  One kiss, she told herself. She and the man lying so frighteningly still in the hospital bed had shared one kiss. So why did she feel as if she’d nearly lost everything? As if she still could?

  During the past twenty-four hours, she’d berated herself a dozen times for all the days they’d wasted, all the times she could have simply gone to him and told him how she felt—it would have been the simplest and the quickest way of finding out how he felt about her. Then she could have moved on with her life somehow, or she could have spent these past years with him. And she would never have found herself in this awful limbo. As it was, she slipped back and forth between a terrible grief over the thought of losing him and the knowledge that he’d never been hers to lose. That her sorrow couldn’t possibly be this deep, this overwhelming, for a relationship that had never been.

  But she couldn’t help the way she felt, couldn’t deny that her emotions were raw and exposed, as if someone had taken a knife and cut down to her heart, leaving it bare and totally unprotected against anything that might happen. She needed this man so desperately. Needed him to open his eyes, to give her one of those cynical, sexy smiles of his, and tell her she hadn’t been imagining things the night before, when she’d stood in her apartment waiting for him to come to her, waiting for the best part of her life to begin.

  It was silly, she told herself, but it was how she felt—the best part of her life would be gone if she lost him.

  Jamie had no idea how long she sat there before she saw the expression on his face change, saw his jaw tighten, his mouth stretch into a grimace of pain. “Dan,” she said, in case he could hear her now. “It’s Jamie. Be still for me, all right?”

  Worried that he’d wake abruptly, that training could kick in and he’d perceive her presence as a threat, she sat perfectly still, talking in a low, soothing voice, telling him over and over again who she was and that he shouldn’t try to move.

  Slowly, his head turned toward hers, his face etched with pain. As his eyes blinked open, she watched him struggle to focus. “Jamie.”

  “Right here.” Forcing a weak smile, she let her hand close over his.

  She had to lean close to hear him mumble something that sounded like, “Breakfast?”

  Jamie felt hot tears stinging her eyes again and decided he must be half-asleep and dreaming. “You’re hungry?”

  “No. You and me. Breakfast.”

  “You stood me up.” She nearly choked on the words, forced out in a light tone. The last thing he needed was to see how scared she was.

  “Rain check?” he mumbled.

  “Name the day,” she whispered. “I’ll be here.”

  Dan glanced around the room, saw that they were alone, then looked up at her, waiting. She didn’t make him ask, didn’t want him to have to expend the energy.

  “You’re at Bethesda. It’s early Monday morning.” Which meant he’d lost more than twenty-four hours. She waited and let the news sink in. “Do you remember what happened?”

  “Bits and pieces,” he mumbled.

  “You were shot. In your right side.” She’d carried the bullet to the lab herself. “It happened in the district. In an alley near a bunch of rundown buildings on Burns Avenue. We have a safe house there. It was dark and raining and cold. Remember?”

  She didn’t think he did, thought he’d drifted off again. But his eyes slid open again. “Geri?” he said urgently.

  Jamie put her hand on his shoulder and let it rest there, told herself it was none of her business what was between the two of them, then answered his question. “She s
hould be in the room next door in an hour or so. She took a bullet in her right shoulder. A couple of specialists have been working to repair nerve damage to her shoulder and her arm.”

  Looking relieved, he waited, considered, then said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know how this happened. Or why,” she admitted. “I was hoping you could tell me. Tanner said you and Geri were found side by side, about twenty-five feet inside one of the alleys.” Deliberately, she left it there, waited to see what he remembered.

  Once the sun rose, it was obvious they hadn’t been together when the shots were fired. Geri had been shot closer to the street, had apparently crawled to where Dan was found. And there was speculation they’d been shot with their own guns. The agency had been issued special prototypes of weapons that were being considered for use by the FBI, the CIA and some branches of the military. So far, the weapons had performed admirably, with deadly accuracy and force. The bullets they fired were prototypes as well, distinctive and powerful enough to cut through the protective vests agents wore. None of those weapons had been found at the scene, or among the agents’ personal possessions.

  Despite what the evidence said, Jamie couldn’t imagine a suspect getting Dan’s own gun away from him. “Why were you in the alley?” she asked him.

  Why had they left their post in the shelter of the enclosed doorway for the vast open spaces of the street? If someone was trying to get inside the building, Dan and Geri would have gone inside and fought off the intruders from there.

  Restless, Dan tried to shift his weight to the right just a bit. Jamie saw a quick stab of pain flicker across his face. An eerie stillness came over him.

  “Jamie? Where did they find the bullet?”

  Her eyes filled with tears. She squeezed his hand. This was going to be so hard on him. “Near your spine.”

  When she dared to look at him again, he was watching her, watching the tears roll down her cheeks, and she was the one who had to look away.

  He was alive, she told herself. For hours she’d offered up hurried, desperate prayers for him. Please, just let him live. She hadn’t asked for anything else, hadn’t let herself think beyond his survival.

  Jamie felt movement on the bed, heard a grunt of pain. Turning, she saw that he’d lifted his head off the mattress to stare down at his body. She put her hands against his shoulders and pushed him back down again.

  “You had surgery,” she said sharply. “You have stitches, and you’re going to tear them loose if you try anything like that again.”

  He ignored her, gave his own orders instead. “Grab my toes.”

  Jamie froze This was what she feared most, once she let herself believe he would live. “Dan, please.”

  “Move the sheet out of the way and put your hand on my toes.”

  “Listen to me. It’s too soon to know anything for certain. The bullet hit one of the vertebrae in your lower back. It didn’t sever the spinal cord, but it did chip the bone, and some of the bone fragments ended up in the cord. The surgeon said there’s a lot of swelling in the area, and until the swelling goes down, there’s no way to know whether you’ll have any permanent damage.”

  “My toes. If you don’t do it, I will.”

  He used the voice she’d come to hate when he was her instructor, the one she’d obeyed without question and had later been grateful to hear in her head when things got intense and instinct alone could save her. Sometimes it seemed as if he was her instincts, that the things he’d taught her were so deeply ingrained he might easily be beside her, guiding her through the worst of it.

  He needed her now. If she’d wakened in this bed unable to feel her legs, she’d want someone to do this for her. She’d want him beside her, want him to be honest with her, as well. Jamie went to the foot of his bed. Pulling back the sheet, she found his right foot and clasped her fingers tightly around it.

  “Got it?” he said tightly.

  “Yes.”

  “Squeeze.”

  She did.

  He showed no response.

  “Dan, I would never lie to you. The doctor said just because you don’t feel anything now doesn’t mean—”

  “Higher,” he insisted. “Move your hand higher. My leg. My knee.”

  Sighing, her fingers trembling, she did.

  “Higher,” he insisted again.

  Her hand slid to his thigh, tracing muscles she knew to be rock-solid and so very strong. He’d always moved faster than anyone she knew. He climbed higher, kept going when men ten years younger had given out. What would he do if he couldn’t run or jump or walk anymore?

  “Keep going,” he ordered.

  She pulled back the sheet carefully, because she suspected he wasn’t wearing anything, found a strip of bare skin along the side of his hip and his abdomen, slid her hand along his side. In all the times she’d imagined touching him, it had never been like this.

  “There,” he said grimly, when her palm was pressed against his smooth, flat stomach. She let it rest there while she forced herself to look him in the eye once again. His features could easily have been set in stone.

  “Nothing?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Give it twenty-four hours. Maybe forty-eight. There’s no way to know for sure until that much time has passed,” she insisted, battling her own emotions now.

  “Jamie? Your hand?”

  “What?”

  “You can take your hand away now.”

  She looked down at her fingers, pale against his sunbrowned skin, and felt again that this must be a bad dream. If she could only wake up, everything would be fine.

  A day and a half ago, he’d held her body pressed against his, had kissed her as if he’d never get enough of her. He was going to come to her in the morning. Anything could have happened in the morning.

  It still could, Jamie told herself, as long as she didn’t let him push her away. She had always fought her feelings for him, instead of fighting to make him hers. She wouldn’t give up so easily now. Jamie let her hand slide over his rib cage, dodging the pads and wires of the cardiac monitors attached to his chest, until her hand was right over his heart.

  “Please,” she said. “Don’t shut me out now.”

  Dan swore softly and viciously.

  “Sunday morning...” she began.

  “Forget about Sunday morning,” he said, catching her hand with surprising strength and shoving it away from him.

  “I can’t forget.” She would never forget, wouldn’t let him, either.

  “It never happened, Jamie,” he said harshly. “It doesn’t matter, because it never happened.”

  “Which means what? That it never will? That whatever you were going to say was nothing more than some reckless impulse? That because you didn’t get the chance to say it then, it’s of no importance now? I don’t believe that.”

  “I can’t help what you believe.”

  She flinched, unable to help herself, because it hurt. Even knowing what he was doing and why, his words still cut into her.

  “Jamie, get the doctor.” His tone was softer now, weariness creeping in.

  “I will, but...”

  He shook his head, the look in his eyes as bleak and as determined as any she’d ever seen. Too weary to fight him any longer, too upset to hold herself together any longer, she turned and left.

  Dan held himself rigidly under control until he forced her from his room.

  Turning his head, he looked through the open door. He saw Josh standing in the hallway, opening his arms, saw Jamie go to him, saw the other man’s arms close around her. Her shoulders started to shake, and Dan could hear the hushed sounds of her sobbing. He watched as Josh pushed her head down to his shoulder, as his fingers stroked through her pretty, dark hair. Dan watched until the door slid into place, mercifully blocking his view.

  They looked good together, he decided. They seemed comfortable with each other, seemed to care for each other, as well.

  He couldn’t h
elp but wonder if Josh ever kissed her like a madman and scared her half to death. If Josh had, Dan wondered how she’d responded. If her body could possibly have been as soft and yielding as it had been in his arms. If she tasted as intoxicatingly sweet and made those sexy little sounds of pleasure deep in her throat for Josh. As murderously angry as Dan felt at the thought of her and Josh together, he’d forget about her if he could, even if it meant pushing her right into Josh’s arms. She would be better off with him, the pretty boy, closer to her age, who so readily made women laugh and charmed them with easy words. There was nothing bitter about Josh, nothing cynical, nothing inside him that was remotely old or worn down, and Jamie, who was so young and so beautiful, still untouched by the harsher realities of the life they’d chosen, deserved someone like that. Dan had felt that way long before he was shot, long before he ever contemplated the possibility that he might have to go through the rest of his life unable to stand on his own two feet.

  He believed her when she told him there was nothing between her and Josh but friendship. But that didn’t mean the relationship couldn’t change into something more. That scene in the hallway had him wondering if it already had, at least on Josh’s part.

  For her sake, Dan would forget what might have happened between them if he’d made it to her apartment Sunday morning.

  He felt a whish of air, saw that a man he suspected was his doctor had entered the room. Dan ignored him, his gaze moving unerringly to Jamie. She was staring right back at him, even as she stood there pressed against Josh’s side. From the look on her face, he knew he’d hurt her. But no matter how much he wanted her by his side now, he wouldn’t allow her to feel any misplaced sense of obligation toward him. After all, nothing had happened between them.

  Tired, Dan turned his attention to the doctor. It was difficult to concentrate, to follow all the technical terms the doctor used, but Dan caught the gist of it He had something called spinal shock. The force of the bullet had driven slivers of the chipped vertebra into his spine, bone chips the doctors had successfully removed. But the spinal cord had been nicked. It was irritated and swollen. There was a possibility that nerves had been damaged, a chance he would be able to feel his legs but not move them, a chance he could move them but not feel them. A chance that the swelling would go down and he would be fine. A chance that even with months of physical therapy his body would never again work the way it once had. And as Jamie had said earlier, there was nothing to do but wait to see what he could and couldn’t do.