Just A Little Bit Married?. Eileen Wilks

shyness couldn’t be reasoned away. She was barely able to stammer, “I’ll, uh—my towel. It’s—if you’d just—”

      The wrong man figured out what her fractured request meant. The one she thought of as Eddie MacReady turned and grabbed her towel from the webbed chair where she’d left it. He crouched near the edge of the pool.

      “Here.” He smiled as he held out the towel.

      This was awful. He was so close, and looking right at her. Sara shut her eyes and heaved herself up and out. She sat on the edge of the pool and twisted to take the towel from him, eager to get it wrapped safely around herself. Her fingers trembled slightly when they brushed his.

      Heat. Quick. Purifying. It zipped through her in a sudden rush. Just that fast, her shakes and sick nerves were gone, washed out by something stronger. Her hand clenched the towel. She stared at him, astonished.

      His eyes were wide and startled and, for a split second, completely unguarded.

      “Do you want to go in?” Lieutenant Rasmussin said.

      His voice brought Sara back to reality. Partway back, at least, enough to realize she still sat there in her skin-hugging swimsuit. She blushed and hastily wrapped the thick terry towel around her. “Yes,” she said, and pushed to her feet. “I’ll fix coffee.”

      Now, of course, he would see what had been hidden by the water. But while Sara was painfully self-conscious about some things, she had her pride. She was proud of the fact that she walked at all, and damned if she would be ashamed of the scars.

      Her back was straight even if her gait couldn’t be when she limped to the chair where she’d left her cane. She started for her cottage then, and she didn’t look back.

      Two

      “Why didn’t you tell me?” Raz demanded in a low voice. The sound of the shower his subject was taking traveled clearly through the wall to where he and his brother stood in the kitchen of her dollhouse-sized cottage.

      Sara Grace lived on Highpoint Avenue—typical doctor territory, expensive and exclusive. She rented from a doctor, in fact—the chief of surgery at her hospital. But Sara’s home was a tiny “mottter-in-law” house built behind the mansion by a previous owner. Her kitchen was a narrow, unfussy room with several plants hung in front of the long window in lieu of curtains. Like the rest of the house, it had wooden floors. A basket in the center of the table held a miniature holly bush covered with red berries and tiny red bows. Beneath it was a red place mat with a holiday border.

      Christmas. Now that Raz had noticed the holiday, he saw it everywhere.

      The coffeemaker that sat at one end of the green-and-whitetiled counter gave a last burp and gurgle. Tom set his hat on the counter and reached for the pot. “Tell you what?”

      “That she was injured when Javiero went gunning for his rival at the emergency room.” Damn, he felt edgy. Automatically he patted his pocket, then pulled his hand away when he remembered. No cigarettes.

      “She wasn’t. I don’t know why she limps, but it’s not from the shooting. Want a cup?”

      “Yeah.” He moved restlessly around her small kitchen, trying to get a handle on the woman he was supposed to keep alive. Dr. Sara Grace—physician, trauma specialist, witness ... and a pretty, frightened mouse with a bad leg.

      Seeing her limp had bothered Raz. He didn’t know why. It didn’t seem to be a severe handicap. She’d walked almost normally once she had the cane to help. Maybe it was the contrast. She’d been so at home in the pool, a sleek water creature, small and strong and sure.

      He thought of his reaction to her once she left that water. Amusement, dark and supple, twisted in him.

      “Care to share the joke?” his brother asked, handing him a steaming mug.

      “Not really.” Raz sipped. The coffee was one of those fancy gourmet brands, the first evidence of extravagance he’d seen in Sara Grace’s life-style. “I’ve got some questions to ask before she rejoins us,” Raz said.

      “Go ahead.”

      “What kind of back-up have I got?”

      “I can have someone here eight hours out of twenty-four.”

      “Wait a minute.” He frowned. “You said ‘here.’ Don’t you have a safe house lined up for her?”

      “She won’t go.”

      “Won’t go?” Raz’s eyebrow went up. “She didn’t strike me as stupid.”

      “Feel free to try and talk her out of staying here.”

      He would. Not only was this cottage of hers unsafe from a professional standpoint, it was small. He’d be bumping into her every time either of them turned around, and he did not need the distraction. Not when he’d already experienced the most extraordinary burst of lust for her trim little body.

      Lusting after his subject was certainly not a complication he’d expected to have to deal with. Never mind whether he deserved that particular frustration or not. Life had little to do with people getting what they deserved. “You’ve pointed out to her that if she recognized Javiero, he must have seen her, too?”

      Tom shrugged and sipped his coffee. His mug was white with a cartoon reindeer on the front. “Most people don’t have her memory for faces. She’s gambling that he didn’t remember her.”

      “Funny. She doesn’t look like a gambler.” But Raz had to admit that he hadn’t recognized her, either, and he was trained to remember faces. Of course, he’d been halfway drunk the night she stitched up his arm. “I thought you said she was scared stiff.”

      A faint sound made him turn.

      Sara Grace stood in the doorway, her pointy chin lifted, her eyes a soft, serious, blue-gray. “I am scared, but I’m not running away.”

      Dry, she looked more mouselike than ever. She was so little. Her hair was cut very short and framed her face in a dark, feathery fringe. Her olive-toned skin probably should have made him think of the Mediterranean, but instead he was reminded of the tawny color of the field mice he’d kept in a shoe box in his closet when he was ten ... until they had babies and his mother found out.

      He smiled. “That’s an admirable attitude, but not very sensible under the circumstances.”

      “I’m always sensible.” Her voice was Southern-belle soft, but her accent was pure, clipped Yankee. It was a strangely appealing combination.

      “Then you’ll go to a safe house.”

      “No. I have a job to do.”

      He shook his head. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember her. He was used to relying on his memory for people. But she didn’t look like a doctor, much less one who specialized in the bloody drama of a hospital emergency room. Her eyes were too big and innocent. Her clothes were just too big.

      “No one is indispensable,” he told her. Her pants were baggy khakis. Her white shirt was so loose it hid the existence of her breasts entirely, but he’d seen her in a swimsuit. He remembered their shape, small and firm, nicely molded in powder-blue Lycra right down to the hard little nipples. “No one is indispensable. The hospital can do without you for a few days while Tom gets this straightened out.”

      “It might be more than a few days, though, mightn’t it? And you’re wrong. In the ER, the presence or absence of key personnel can be the difference between life and death.”

      “Your presence will make a big difference, all right, if Javiero comes after you while you’re at work.”

      “He wouldn’t—”

      “He did once, didn’t he? That’s how this all started. He’d already tangled with his rival once that night, and when the man came to your emergency room to get his ribs taped up, Javiero