The Paediatrician's Personal Protector. Mallory Kane

years.” She reached up with her right hand to push a strand of hair out of her eyes and winced when the cast got in her way.

      “Six years. And did you say you hadn’t been home?”

      “No. That’s not what I said,” she answered firmly, although Reilly thought he saw a flicker in her eyes that indicated that she wasn’t telling the whole truth. As a sniper and sometimes leader of the hostage negotiation team for the St. Tammany Parish SWAT team, he’d made it a practice to study kinesiology—facial expressions, body language, all indicators of stress.

      “I believe I said I hadn’t known how badly my father was taking Autumn’s death. Of course I’ve been home in the past six years.”

      “How many times?”

      Christy lifted her chin. “Is all this on the record, Officer?”

      He shook his head.

      “Then I’d rather wait and give my statement once only, at the police station.”

      “No problem,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock, out front.”

      Her eyes went wide. “What?”

      He smiled and nodded toward her right hand. “You can’t very well drive with that cast on.”

      “Certainly I can,” she shot back, but her right fingers twitched.

      “Yeah? Touch each of your fingers to your thumb.”

      She set her mouth and lifted her hand. But the cast was too restrictive. She couldn’t make her fingers and thumb touch. “I told the EMTs not to immobilize my thumb,” she complained.

      “Eight o’clock,” he repeated. He thought he heard a feminine growl. “And in the meantime, you call me if you need me.”

      “There’s no reason for you to appoint yourself my chauffeur. I’ll take a taxi.”

      Reilly lay his hand on the cast where it covered her knuckles. “There is a reason. You asked me to help you.”

      She looked at his hand, then up at him. One day, he promised himself, he was going to explore that vulnerability she kept locked behind her snapping green eyes.

      “I thought you were your brother at the time.”

      “Still,” Reilly said with a grin. “You did ask. And you called me when you were attacked. I figure that makes it my responsibility to keep you safe. I have no intention of letting that guy get within a hundred yards of you. Consider me your knight in shining armor, until I’m sure you’re no longer in danger.”

      “I don’t need a knight—”

      “Don’t start with me, damsel,” he said teasingly, touching her lips with his forefinger. “Whether you think you need me or not, you’ve got me.”

      CHRISTY WAS FUMING by the time Reilly Delancey left. She prided herself on being able to handle any situation. As a pediatrician specializing in trauma, her working life was all about emergencies.

      Involving kids. Not herself. She glared at the cast on her wrist. How careless of her to break her wrist. Still, it shouldn’t hinder her too much. As if to mock her, a throbbing ache began beneath the cast.

      Reilly Delancey was a bully. Somehow, and she wasn’t sure how, he’d gotten her to agree to ride with him. She sniffed. It was ridiculous. She could drive. A simple wrist cast wouldn’t be that big a problem.

      She wriggled the fingers of her right hand. A shooting pain made her gasp. Well, she amended, she could drive if she had to.

      She was disgusted with herself. She should have been more careful. She’d seen dozens of children with wrist fractures because they instinctively reached out to break their fall. Tucking arms into the body and rolling was much safer. If one had time to react.

      To be fair, she’d had no time. But now she had to live with a pink cast for several weeks.

      She held up her hand and grimaced. Pink. Her colleagues in Boston would give her hell about that. Almost any color would have been better than pink. But the EMT had sworn the only colors of paste he had were pink or fluorescent green.

      Now that she thought about it, wasn’t the color added after the paste was mixed? And wasn’t the default color of the paste white? At the time she hadn’t felt like protesting. So she had a pink cast and there was nothing she could do about it tonight.

      She glanced at her watch. After ten o’clock. Reilly Delancey had told her he’d pick her up at eight in the morning. She needed to get some sleep.

      Stepping into the bathroom, she reached up with her left hand to loosen her hair as she looked in the mirror. And stopped cold.

      The EMT had applied a pink strip bandage with ladybugs on it. Ladybugs. She frowned at her image. Reilly Delancey was behind this. She was sure of it. He was nothing but trouble, and she didn’t need any more trouble than she already had.

      She quickly undressed, dropping the skirt and the shredded stockings into the trash can in the bathroom. Digging into her suitcase, she unearthed her pink satin pajamas.

      Staring at them, her face flamed, even though she was alone. Damn those EMTs and Reilly Delancey. How had he known—?

      She stopped that thought right there. He couldn’t have known that she loved wearing pretty, feminine lingerie under her utilitarian work clothes. Although—his blue eyes were awfully sharp, and it looked as if he never missed a trick.

      After a painful few minutes spent getting the pajamas on, she turned back the covers awkwardly and climbed into bed. But when she tried to relax and clear her mind, she couldn’t stop her thoughts from racing.

       —where you came from or you’re as dead as your sister.

       —Mr. Moser, do you understand that by pleading guilty, you are giving up your right to a trial?

       —I did it. I killed those girls.

       Your father has had a heart attack—

      Christy turned over and squeezed her eyes shut. But closed eyes couldn’t block the mental image of the emergency room technician loading all the heart monitors and IVs onto her father’s gurney and wheeling him onto the elevator to take him up to the cardiac care unit.

      Christy hadn’t been able to take her eyes off her dad. Against the white sheets he looked small, frail, vulnerable. He looked nothing like the man who’d reared her and her sister.

      Her eyes stung and hot tears squeezed out between her closed lids. Sniffling and telling herself that tears never solved a problem, she turned over again and tried to find a comfortable position for her wrist.

      But despite her resolve, the tears kept on coming. They slid over the bridge of her nose and down her cheek to the pillow. When had her family fallen apart? When had her dad changed from a big, strong parent, raising two daughters on his own, into a deranged killer?

      WHEN REILLY GOT TO THE Oak Grove Inn the next morning, Christy was waiting in the foyer.

      “Morning,” he said with a smile, which faded as he took in her injuries. “Wow, they weren’t kidding about that bruise. Did you put ice on your forehead?”

      “Of course. Otherwise I would have a black eye. You’re late.”

      Reilly nodded. “Miss Ella caught me as I was leaving last night. She told me to wait until eight-thirty so you could eat breakfast. French toast day today, right?” He reached out and wiped a speck of powdered sugar off her chin. “Hard to eat with a cast on, isn’t it? Think how tough it would be to drive.”

      Christy swiped at her chin with two fingers. “Are you ready to go? “

      “Yep.” He opened the front door and stepped aside to let her precede him out the door.