Nowhere To Hide

Estelle snorted. “Then you should have stayed in the hospital where you belong, at least for a few more days.”

Since he couldn’t come up with any response to that, he opted to keep his mouth shut.

Into the silence Lisa Connors spoke again. “Once you can get along a little better on your own, we won’t need to keep the monitor turned on. I have to admit, I feel more comfortable knowing I can keep tabs on you. What if you fell while you were trying to transfer to the wheelchair for a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom? I wouldn’t have any way of knowing you needed me until the morning.”

“That would be my problem, wouldn’t it?”

“No. It would be my problem. I was hired to take care of you and I intend to do that. It’s either the baby monitor or my girls and I can sleep in your spare bedroom for the next few nights. Which would you prefer?”

Definitely not the spare bedroom idea. The whole reason he fought so hard to come home was for privacy. He had lived alone since he moved out of his dad’s place in Las Vegas for college. He was a solitary man, and that’s just the way he liked things.

Besides, pain pills or not, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep a bit knowing this woman, with her violet scent and her big blue eyes, was just in the next room.

When he didn’t answer, Lisa Connors smiled. “Not in the mood for a sleepover? I’ll confess, I prefer my own bed, too. So the baby monitor can stay?”

“I guess,” he muttered. He hated the idea but this was another battle he couldn’t quite summon the energy to fight.

“Good,” Estelle said briskly. “Now I’m gonna leave my pager number. Lisa, you check those vitals every four hours or so. You notice any bleeding or anything that might indicate circulation trouble, one of you needs to give me a buzz right away. Doesn’t matter which one. Otherwise I’ll check in with you tomorrow, cowboy. Don’t you go out dancing, now, you hear me?”

“Ha-ha,” he muttered. “You’re a real barrel of laughs.”

Estelle’s raspy chuckle hung in the air behind her for several moments after she left, leaving him alone with Lisa Connors.

“Are you hungry?” she asked after a moment. “You didn’t eat lunch. I can heat up some soup for you or make a sandwich if you feel up to some solids.”

Nothing sounded appealing to him but he knew one of the reasons that single pain pill had knocked him for a loop was his lack of appetite. He needed to keep food in his stomach, whether it sounded good to him or not.

“A sandwich would work.”

“Ham and cheese okay?”

He nodded.

“It will just take me a minute to throw something together. If you’d like to watch TV, I’ve hooked the remote to a cord tethered to the side of the bed there so you can always find it and there are some magazines here, too. I wasn’t sure of your interests but I picked up several that my…my husband used to enjoy reading.”

He only looked at her, but suddenly she colored up like a sugar maple leaf in October. Odd for such a dark-haired woman to show color so clearly. He hadn’t met too many women in his lifetime who could actually blush but the few he had met had been blond.

What had her so edgy? Maybe she didn’t like this situation any better than he did. It was an interesting thought. He knew if he were in her shoes, he sure wouldn’t enjoy baby-sitting a grumpy stranger for a few weeks.

For some reason the thought that she might actually be as uncomfortable with this as he was made him feel a little better about the whole thing.

After a quick peek into the living room to check on the girls, still engrossed in one of their favorite videos, Allie hurried to the kitchen. She closed the door and blew out the breath she’d been holding, then pressed a hand to her fluttering stomach.

What was it about Gage McKinnon that sent her hormones into a tailspin? The man was lethal. Even stiff and bad-tempered from the pain, he had a raw, masculine appeal.

A wounded, grumpy soldier. He was obviously miserable and in considerable pain but he was standing firm on not taking the narcotics his doctors prescribed. She had a feeling despite Estelle Montgomery’s predictions to the contrary, he wasn’t going to bend on his objections to the drugs. He seemed mulish and hardheaded enough to stick with his convictions.

She couldn’t really blame him for that, Allie thought as she buttered bread for his sandwich. A few times in her life she’d had to take pain medication and she had despised that out-of-control feeling.

He wasn’t going to be an easy patient. Despite the sudden conviction, she had to admit that all her nurturing instincts kicked in whenever she saw him lying so dark and masculine on that bed. She wanted to take care of him. To smooth down that lock of hair mussed by sleep and adjust his pillows and distract him from the pain.

Something in his eyes called to her. He seemed lonely, somehow. Lost. As if he’d been wandering alone for a long time and needed somewhere safe and warm to rest for a while….

She heard her own thoughts and rolled her eyes. Right. The man was a tough, hardened FBI agent. Maybe she was projecting her own problems onto him.

What was the matter with her? She had a job to do here and it didn’t include mooning over her patient. This was a good opportunity to make a little extra cash to add to her precious escape fund and she couldn’t blow it just because Gage McKinnon left her all soft and tingly.

She would do her job and do it well, Allie chided herself sternly. She would make the poor man as comfortable as possible given the circumstances. That didn’t include letting him unsettle her.

Keeping a tight rein on her thoughts, she finished fixing the sandwich and arranged it on a plate along with some carrot sticks and potato chips. After she added a glass of milk and one of the low-sugar oatmeal cookies she had made earlier in the day, she carried the tray down the hall to his bedroom.

She paused in the doorway when she spied her daughters standing by Gage McKinnon’s bed, Gaby in the lead and Anna hovering just behind her sister.

“Hey, mister, we colored you a picture,” Gaby was saying, holding out a page ripped from a coloring book like it was a sacred pictograph. “It’s Big Bird and a rainbow. I did Big Bird and Anna did the rainbow. She doesn’t stay inside the lines very well but she’s only three. Hey, mister, what happened to your legs?”

Without bothering to wait for any kind of response, in typical Gaby fashion, her oldest chattered on. “Do they hurt? I bet they do. My friend Gina at my old house broke her arm falling off the swings, and she had to wear a cast. She said it hurt a lot. She still used it to whack her little brother, Nicky. He was a brat. My mama called him a little pill. That’s funny, huh? Hey, mister, where do you want us to put our picture? I bet my mama could find some tape.”

Something about the hard set of his expression warned Allie he didn’t appreciate the company.

She stepped forward quickly, hoping to head off the abrupt answer she sensed brewing. “Girls, it’s very nice of you to try making Mr. McKinnon feel better with a picture. I think the best thing for him right now is to rest. Why don’t you go color a little more? I’m almost finished here and then we’ll be going back to our house for the evening.”

Faced with her no-arguments tone, the girls didn’t quibble. Gaby skipped out of the room, followed by her Anna shadow.

When she and Gage were alone, she set the tray down on the rolling bedside table Ruth had procured and pulled it toward him.

“Sorry about that,” she finally said to break the suddenly awkward silence. “Gabriella can be a little overwhelming sometimes. She means well but I’m afraid she hasn’t learned when to turn it off.”

A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Don’t you have anywhere else for them to go? A sitter or something?”

The sudden attack took her completely by surprise and for a few moments she could only blink at him. “I…no. Not really,” she finally said. “I’m sort of between care providers at the moment. They’re both usually very well-behaved. I…Mrs. Jensen and I didn’t think you would mind them being here.”

“You were both wrong.”

She stiffened at his blunt tone. Well, that was plain enough. He disliked her daughters. How could anybody not adore her daughters? They were sweet and kind. Funny. Completely adorable!

Any warm feelings she might have been crazy enough to entertain for Gage McKinnon fluttered out the window on the breeze. The man wasn’t a wounded soldier. He was grumpy and stubborn and mean tempered.

“I’m sorry,” she said tersely. “I didn’t realize you would object to the girls. I’ll do my best to keep them out of your way.”

“You do that, Ms. Connors.”

She swallowed her sharp retort and nodded. He had a right to his solitude. A couple of preschoolers underfoot probably weren’t the best medicine for someone recovering from a traumatic injury.

She would just have to do her best to keep them quietly occupied for the next few weeks. She could do that. Just as she could control her own unwilling attraction for her cranky patient.

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