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  The boy’s face lit. “Do you mean it?”

  The creases around Matt’s eyes deepened, but he didn’t smile. “Yeah. Take him to Clare’s, put him in the shed, and make sure he’s got water.” Richie gathered the leash up eagerly. “And Richie?”

  “Yessir?”

  “Don’t get lost on the way home this time.”

  Don’t get lost? It was only two blocks to her house. He couldn’t possibly lose his way.

  But Richie nodded. “I won’t.”

  In his solemn response, Clare recognized the man’s implicit trust and the boy’s underlying promise.

  Apparently satisfied, Matt rounded the hood of the truck.

  Limping, she noticed. He grunted climbing in.

  She left off messing with her seat belt to stare at him. “What did you do to your leg?”

  Matt started the engine. “I’m fine.”

  Clare frowned. He didn’t look fine. His eyes appeared sunken under those formidable brows and, in spite of working in the sun all day, his color was lousy.

  She bolted upright at a sudden, horrible thought. Everything had happened so fast. “You weren’t hit, were you?”

  “Do you see any blood?”

  Somewhat reassured by his wry tone, she settled back against the hard blue seat. “Lots, actually.”

  He glanced down at his chest before turning the pickup onto a major road. “Not mine.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot. Bullets bounce right off you.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Supercop.”

  He winced slightly. “Yeah.”

  She didn’t buy it for an instant. Polite demurrals worked well enough in her parents’ world. Paul’s soothing evasions had satisfied her for years. But if Matt thought he could hide his hurt or push her away, he didn’t know how determined she was prepared to be.

  “I think when we get to the hospital you should let someone look at your leg.”

  “They’ve seen it.”

  The hospital intersection came up on the left. An ancient Dodge in the right hand lane lunged in front of Matt’s pickup and then braked for the yellow light. The Chevy jerked to a stop. Automatically, Clare braced her hands on the dashboard.

  “Sorry,” Matt muttered.

  It sounded like a curse. Clare glanced at him, gauging the level of his tolerance, noting the fatigue lines around his mouth and eyes, the faint sheen of sweat on his upper lip. “It’s okay.”

  As the light turned green, she watched as he let up on the clutch and saw his right thigh strain as he wrestled his foot from the brake to the accelerator. He hit the gas too hard, and the pickup lurched and stalled in the middle of the intersection. Clare pressed her lips together. He was hurting, dammit.

  She waited until he’d restarted the truck and turned into visitor parking before she said, “Well, maybe they should check it again.”

  Muscling into a narrow space, he cut the engine and shot her an unfriendly look.

  “Please, Matt. We both hit the ground pretty hard. I don’t like thinking you got hurt protecting me.”

  His fingers drummed the steering wheel. “You are one pushy woman, you know that?”

  “Yes,” she answered promptly.

  One corner of his mouth pulled up. Getting out, he slammed the door, speaking as he came around the cab of the truck. “Okay, fine. I’ll get it looked at after we check in. Satisfied?”

  Hope and relief made her incautious. She smiled back, knowing her heart showed in her eyes and not caring. “For now.”

  She thought he might grin at her silly innuendo. Instead, he stopped on the sidewalk and just looked at her. The laughter drained from his face, leaving it tired and a little sad. His lips parted. Afraid of what he might say, she half lifted her hand to his mouth.

  And then the wide steel-and-glass doors swished open, and an orderly wheeled out a young woman, balloons jerking and bobbing in their wake. Closing his mouth, Matt pivoted on his good leg and strode ahead. Clare followed, stepping from dirty rubberized carpet onto immaculate gray linoleum. Fluorescent lights and the sharp, remembered scents of alcohol and disinfectant assaulted her.

  She hugged her elbows, suddenly cold.

  Matt approached the long veneer counter to confer with a gray-haired volunteer in a pink cardigan.

  “They’ve already moved the reverend up to the OR,” he said, returning. “Alma’s in the waiting room on the second floor. Do you want to go up?”

  The cold spread. Of course she didn’t want to go up. She just couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t.

  “Second floor waiting room,” she confirmed. “See you later?”

  “Yeah.” He hesitated, his dark gaze intent on her face. “You want me to take you?”

  She squeezed out a smile, pretending for both their sakes that nothing was wrong. “Don’t be silly. I can find it.”

  “Right.” He didn’t move.

  Wiping her damp palms on her jeans, she forced herself to the elevator. For three years, she’d avoided this hospital. Now she wished some small emergency—a stitch or a sprain—had pushed her here sooner.

  Dead on arrival... dead on arrival...

  The automated doors whispered it. The lift machinery hummed. Muffled voices from the corridor blended into the remembered chorus. Paul had died before either one of them ever reached the hospital, before the policewoman came to tell her he’d been shot, even before the ambulance arrived, wailing, to rescue his body from the street.

  She’d stood by a steel bed rail in this very building, pressing her husband’s cold, slender hand, waiting for him to open his eyes so they could laugh together over someone’s stupid mistake. And he never had. They explained it to her, over and over.

  Dead on arrival. There was nothing they could do.

  Stop it, Clare commanded herself, getting off the elevator. The situations weren’t the same. She wasn’t the same. After the shooting this afternoon, Matt had been there to staunch the blood and radio for help. He’d been there, strong and supportive and knowing in a crisis. Raymond Carter was not dead. And Ray’s wife needed Clare’s strength and reassurances, not morbid memories of tragedy.

  A rectangle of flecked commercial carpet defined the waiting room area, a windowless alcove on the right of a wide, well-lit hall. Black-and-white portraits of prominent dead doctors hung on the walls. The square, upholstered chairs were nearly empty. Later, Clare knew, the room would fill with supporters as Grace Church mustered to care for one of its own. But Matt’s truck had outstripped the family cars and the infrequent city buses. For now, Alma kept vigil alone.

  Her arms folded protectively over her stomach, the minister’s wife stood sentry in the middle of the room. Dirt marked the knees of her ironed jeans. Her usually immaculate hair tumbled on her shoulders.

  “Alma? How is he? Is there anything I can do?”

  “Hey, Clare.” Alma smiled, but the courtesy faded before it reached her eyes. “He’s in surgery now. They said they’d tell me as soon as...Well.”

  “That’s good,” Clare said, and hoped Alma couldn’t hear the false cheer in her voice. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No. No, I’m fine.”

  Another one, Clare thought. We’re all fine this afternoon.

  “How about the children? Do you want me to call anyone?”

  “No. My sister Gloria’s going over. She’ll bring the girls this evening, maybe. I don’t want to call James at school until...” She bit her lip, her dark eyes filling with tears.

  “Until you know,” Clare concluded for her.

  An awkward silence fell.

  Under the flat gaze of some long gone medical department head, Alma straightened, pushing a loop of dark hair behind her ear. “He’s a sophomore this year.”

  “James?” Clare ventured. She’d met the Carter’s oldest son over the Christmas holiday, a tall, well-spoken youth with his mother’s pride and his father’s smile. If Alma needed the comfort of distraction of discussing the boy, Clare w
as happy to oblige.

  She cleared her throat. “Has he chosen a major yet?”

  “Computer science.”

  “Lots of job opportunities there.”

  “Oh, yes. Though his father says...” Alma faltered.

  Clare squeezed her hand. “What does his father say?”

  “Ray says James will do well at whatever he wants, as long as he loves whatever he does.”

  Clare flinched. She thought of Paul, whose keen mind and sense of justice had led him to the law, and Matt, whose uncompromising courage and unexpected compassion made him a cop. What if doing what you loved put you in the way of some lunatic with a gun?

  It wasn’t a thought she could share with the preacher’s wife. Shaking it off, Clare led Alma over to the row of chairs. “We should sit down. I’m sure we’ll be here awhile.”

  An hour passed, measured by the ping of the elevator doors and the quick steps of soft-soled shoes in the hall. The smells of fear and hope, of sweat and antiseptic, saturated the carpet and permeated the air. Leaning her head back against the cinder block wall, Clare closed her eyes to shut out the room and her memories.

  A new scent cut through the hospital smell. Hot, bitter coffee. Her lids opened reflexively.

  Matt stood before her, a paper cup in each large hand. Big and solid, reassuring and blessedly alive, he filled her senses, filled the waiting room.

  “I brought you some really bad coffee.” Handing it off, a cup to her and one to Alma, he fished in the pockets of his borrowed windbreaker for little paper packets. “Sugar?”

  As his dark eyes met Clare’s, she felt a heat and sweetness flow through her that had nothing to do with the coffee. “No, thanks. Just the ‘powdered nondairy crap.’”

  He grinned. “You remembered.”

  She looked cautiously down at the tan, chalky surface of her coffee. He’d already added creamer to her cup. “So did you.”

  He took a seat beside her, leaning across her knees to speak to Alma. “I talked to the ER doc. He said your husband was looking good when they brought him upstairs.”

  Alma’s grateful expression thanked him. “Did they catch him yet? The man who shot Ray?”

  “No, ma’am. Not yet.” He hesitated, as if wondering how much to tell her, before he offered, “They’re investigating the possibility that the shooting was gang related.”

  “But why would the reverend be a target?” Clare asked. “Community leaders are always at risk,” Matt replied. Alma’s mouth twisted. “I liked it better when the most we worried about was gossip.”

  Clare’s vigil with the preacher’s wife continued, relieved now by Matt’s strength and energy. He chatted with Alma about her preschool. He made forays, despite his limp to the vending machines and rustled up a morning paper. Supporters from the church drifted in, a teacher from the school and a pair of elderly sisters who hugged Alma tight.

  But the surgeon didn’t come, and the worry couldn’t be held at bay forever. Two hours later, strain lined Alma’s face, and Clare’s stomach churned with anxiety and bad coffee.

  She turned in relief at the sound of new arrivals coming down the hall. She recognized the preacher’s two daughters skipping ahead. The woman with them must be Alma’s sister. And the tall boy in the red jacket, surely that was...

  “James!” his mother cried, and fell on her son.

  Clare felt a catch in her throat. Matt’s hand rubbed a circle on the back of her neck. “Did you know he was coming?”

  “Yeah.”

  She turned her head. “You sent for him.”

  “I talked to the aunt. She sent for him.”

  “Because you knew his mother needed him.”

  His hand fell away to scrape at his jaw. “I knew he needed to be here.”

  Not only a cop, she remembered suddenly, but a cop’s son.

  It explained so much. His understanding, his kindness, brought tears to her eyes. “Was your dad ever...?”

  “Shot? Yeah. Twice.” He shrugged away from her sympathetic touch. “He’s still with us. Ornery old bastard.”

  His tough guy routine couldn’t fool her any longer. She heard the depth of love in his voice. “You take after him, then.”

  His acknowledging grin sizzled clear down to her toes. The man had no business looking at her like that in a room full of people.

  Before she could tell him so, the doctor emerged, tired in pale green scrubs, and Clare felt cold again.

  “Mrs. Carter?”

  Alma’s hand tightened on her son’s arm. “Yes?”

  The news was good. The bullet had missed the lung, missed the aorta. Reverend Ray was resting in recovery and could see her in a while.

  Clare turned her head into Matt’s broad chest and let relief take her.

  Chapter 11

  “You need to eat.”

  They were in the elevator, going down. Matt braced his weight on the handrail, chafing at his bum leg, furious with his failure to take better care of his beat, of the reverend, of Clare. Standing beside him, she swayed with exhaustion. Her freckles stood out starkly against her white face.

  She rallied, as he’d known she would, at his attempt to help her. “I’m not hungry.”

  “I am. You going to make me eat alone?”

  “Well, I... Well, no.”

  He pressed his advantage. “Besides, I can’t drive the truck.”

  “Oh, Matt.” Her eyes rounded in dismay. “I didn’t even ask. What did they say about your leg downstairs?”

  “I’m fine, he said hastily. He wanted her to feel cooperative, not guilty. “I’m supposed to rest it some, that’s all. And the pain pills they gave me make me loopy.”

  Her gaze turned speculative. “Is that a fact?”

  He hid his grin at her implicit challenge. “I haven’t taken any yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t take them on an empty stomach,” he said craftily, counting on her overdeveloped sense of compassion to kick in.

  She capitulated, running her hand through her hair. “All right, we’ll go get something to eat. Do you want to stop for a burger?”

  “I’ve had a burger.” And he’d gladly eat another one, but he didn’t think that was what she wanted. She needed something to restore the color to her lips and cheeks. Maybe that rabbit food she was so fond of? “Why don’t we go out for Italian?”

  The elevator doors swished open, and they stepped into the lobby. “Not if you need to rest up and take your pill. Besides—” Just for a moment, her smile glinted, and his insides ached. “We’re not exactly dressed for dining. Come home with me. I’ll make you something.”

  “I don’t want you to cook.”

  “Come off it. My cooking’s not that bad.”

  She looked almost hurt. He gritted his teeth. How could a woman so competent have such unexpected insecurities? He was trying to take care of her, dammit.

  He waited for her to precede him out of the building into the damp twilight before he said, “Sugar, there’s not a damn thing wrong with your cooking. Your cooking is fine. Your cooking is great. I don’t want you putting yourself out, that s all.”

  She blinked at him. “You are loopy. Are you sure you didn’t take one of those pills?”

  “Sure. And I’ll do the cooking.”

  Her smile spread. He wanted to cup his hands around its warmth and coax it into full life with his breath and mouth.

  “We could do it together.”

  He could think of dozens of things he’d like to do with her, on her, to her. Preparing dinner was miles down on the list.

  But there was no way he was acting on his impulses tonight. He was still pumped from the attack on the reverend. With his adrenaline already high and his control already stretched, he wouldn’t last five minutes with this woman.

  He leashed his tension, smiling at her. “You mean, cook?”

  “You’ve got a dirty mind, cowboy.”

  She didn’t guess the half of it. “I knew there was
something about me you had to like.”

  Clare sniffed. When they reached his truck she held out her hand for his keys. Will had always let him drive. It was something else Matt had to get used to, being driven by another person. By Clare, he corrected himself. He eased in beside her, and she reached under the seat to adjust it. As the bench slid forward, he bent his leg sharply to avoid banging his knee on the dashboard, sucking in a groan.

  The parking lot lights sparkled through the windshield, lighting Clare’s pale, concerned face. “Are you all right?”

  Sweat broke out on his upper lip. “Yeah.”

  Her look said she didn’t believe him, but she didn’t press. He appreciated her restraint.

  The streetlights glowed in misty orange moons. The wiper blades beat an intermittent rhythm as Clare drove carefully along quiet, empty streets. She’d left her porch light on, Matt noted with approval. He really wasn’t up to beating burglars out of the bushes tonight.

  He limped up the slick walk behind her, listening to Trigger challenge their approach from inside the closed shed. Good dog. Opening the door, Clare led the way to the back of the house, flipping on lights as she went. Thin shafts of damp, cool air slid under the old windowsills as easily as a jimmy blade. But at the heart of the house, the kitchen glowed with ferns in pots and ripening fruit in baskets. The brightly colored dishes and vegetable faced clock masked the dingy walls and old countertops. The short row of plants on the windowsill scented the air with aromas he recognized from his mother’s cooking, basil, sage and rosemary.

  He felt like the Big Bad Wolf calling on Red Riding Hood.

  “Omelets and a salad?” Clare suggested, turning from the refrigerator.

  Remembering the red and green concoction she called a salad, Matt opted for something that fell within his area of expertise. “Fine. I’ll do the eggs.”

  She pulled out bowls and opened drawers while he grated cheese and beat eggs with a fork. He circled around her as she splashed water in the stainless steel sink, drawn by her competent hands, her delicate wrists, her intense concentration as she measured oil and vinegar into a bottle. He imagined those hands on his body. He pictured her face as he moved strongly inside her.