CHAPTER 3
He blinked at the vision in front of him.
She had short, wispy brown hair, blue eyes the color of mountain columbines behind small wire-rimmed glasses, and a figure that could make a man’s mouth water.
“Oh! You’re here!” the delectable vision standing in his living room exclaimed. “I’m so sorry. I was busy cleaning up in the kitchen and didn’t hear you arrive.”
Gage was vaguely aware of Lovell and Cale sharing a look before his partner stepped forward with his hand outstretched, a charming smile playing around his mouth.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m Cale Davis and this is Thompson Lovell. You must be a friend of McKinnon’s.”
She gave him a hesitant smile and shook his hand, then reached behind her to untie the strings of her apron. Gage was vaguely aware he was holding his breath, then he let it out on a disappointed sigh. She had shorts on underneath, he was rather disheartened to discover. Navy-blue shorts that skimmed the top of long, shapely legs.
“We’re not really friends,” she answered Cale. “We’ve only met once, just for a moment.”
Through the pain beginning to pound through his legs like tribal drums beating out a message, Gage forced himself to look at her more closely. Now he recognized her. If he hadn’t been half-dazed from pain and fatigue, he would have figured it out much earlier. “You’re the lady from next door with the two dark-haired little girls.”
She nodded with a wary look.
He must have been blind or crazy not to have noticed those high cheekbones and her full, delectable lips when he spoke with her before. No, when he had gone to her house to talk to her, he had only been focused on her daughters’ safety, just as he should have been.
“Yes. I’m Lisa C-Connors. You met my daughters Gaby and Anna.”
“The flower pickers. Where are they?”
“Playing in your backyard. Your fenced backyard.”
Fences wouldn’t mean diddly to someone who wanted to take two cute little girls. He was going to say something along those lines but pain again reached up with a mighty fist and yanked the words out of his head. He grimaced instead, suddenly light-headed.
Damn, he hated this.
“You must be exhausted. Let’s get you into bed, Mr. McKinnon.”
A quick, sensual image flashed through his mind, momentarily taking the edge off his discomfort. Bed. Not a bad idea. It had been way too long since he’d slid his fingers over soft, female skin—filled his hands with willing flesh—and he suddenly wanted desperately for that willing flesh to belong to the woman standing in front of him.
But then, he probably wouldn’t be good for much with two bum legs, and he definitely didn’t need Lovell and Cale looking on.
“A very attractive offer, believe me,” he murmured through the soft haze in his head. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline. Maybe another time, sweetheart.”
Color flared high along her cheekbones. “Not funny, Mr. McKinnon.”
“Sorry. You’re right.” He drew in a breath, feeling like both a jerk and a major-league wuss. He never thought he could be this wiped out by a couple of war wounds.
“How long ago did you take your last pain pill?”
He raised an eyebrow, wishing the simple movement didn’t make his head feel quite so woozy. “Remind me again why any of this is your business. What are you doing here? This is still my house, isn’t it?”
She frowned. “Ruth didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“She hired me to help you out while you recuperate.”
“She told me she hired someone. I never thought to ask details.”
Another wave of pain washed over him and he gripped the armrests of the wheelchair. Okay, at this point he was willing to forget about soft, willing flesh, as long as he could get horizontal for a few moments.
Lisa Connors stepped forward. “You need to be in bed. Let’s get you settled.”
He didn’t have any energy left to argue so he let her wheel him into his bedroom, where he discovered the little elves had also been busy. His comfortably roomy king bed was gone, replaced by some steel hospital contraption just like the one he had just left.
“Where’s my bed?” he asked, uncomfortably aware he sounded like a grumpy toddler in need of a nap.
“Ruth and I took it down and stored it in the shed behind the house. The home health-care provider sent this one over instead since the doctors said you’ll need to keep your legs elevated a great deal of the time and this way we can raise the foot of your bed to facilitate that. With that big bed you had, there wasn’t much room in here to move a wheelchair around and we thought this one will be much easier for you to transfer in and out of since it can be lowered to wheelchair level.”
He liked his bed. He was a big man who needed space to sprawl around in, and these dinky hospital beds just didn’t cut it. He didn’t want to sound any more whiny than he already did, though, so he opted to keep his mouth shut.
He was distracted, anyway, when his neighbor lady took charge and helped Cale and Lovell move him from the wheelchair to the bed. He was relieved to discover the pain of the transfer was only agonizing instead of excruciating.
By the time he was settled, he was thinking he owed the doctors a huge apology. They were right, he was crazy to disregard their advice and insist on going home so early.
“You’re a lucky man, McKinnon,” Cale murmured to him after Lisa left the room to grab his pain pills and a glass of water. “I wouldn’t mind being laid up for a couple weeks if I had such a sweet young thing attending to my every need.”
A sweet young thing with two little girls and a chip the size of Montana on her shoulder, Gage reminded himself.
If he could hang on to any of the thoughts racketing around his head like a pinball in the middle of a record-breaking game, he could probably come up with at least a couple of reasons why it wasn’t such a great idea to have her here caring for him.
Since he couldn’t think right now beyond sinking into this bed and not waking up for a week, he decided he could always worry about it later.
She returned with the water and his prescription and handed him two of those annoying little white pills. “Here you go. Are you hungry? I made some chicken noodle soup. My grandma’s recipe, with real homemade noodles. It might help settle your stomach from the pills.”
Soup sounded delicious but he was afraid his stomach just wouldn’t handle it.
“I’m fine,” he said, taking only one of the pills and returning the other to the bottle. He hated this loopy feeling and the medicine only made it worse. A few more days and he’d be ready to chuck the whole damn bottle into the toilet.
“I think it would be best if we let him rest now,” she told the other two agents as she bustled around him tucking in blankets, fluffing pillows, taking the glass of water from him to set on the bedside table.
She smelled delicious, he thought as she leaned over him to adjust the pillows once more. Like violets and sunshine.
“Sure. We were just leaving,” Cale said with a smirk. Lucky, lucky man, he mouthed to Gage on the way out the door.
He didn’t like bossy women, Gage thought as he watched them go. Even when their subtle spring scent made his mouth water. He closed his eyes as the pill did its magic and took the edge off his pain. No, he didn’t like bossy women at all. That was only one of many reasons why having her here just wouldn’t work out.
He made a mental note to tell her that as soon as he woke up.
* * *
Taking this job had been a mistake.
A huge mistake.
Her nerves jumping, Allie finished throwing together peanut butter and honey sandwiches for the girls in the FBI agent’s kitchen. She didn’t belong here. She should be staying as far away as possible from this man who could completely destroy her family.
If he recognized her as a fugitive, everything would be ruined.
She didn’t know if Joaquin and Irena had reported them missing. Maybe they hadn’t even realized she was gone yet since relations between them hadn’t exactly been friendly since the beginning of the custody battle.
But eventually they would try to visit the girls and would find her empty house. Would they go to the police or hire a private investigator on their own?
Even now she could be a wanted fugitive with her name and description broadcast to every law enforcement officer across the country. Taking the girls out of Philadelphia without notifying them was probably in violation of a court order, no matter how confident Twila Langston was that the judge’s ruling awarding joint custody to the DeBarillas because of her diabetes would be overturned.
Patient advocate groups were already rallying behind her cause, and she had been allowed to retain sole custody pending appeal. But she was fairly certain that custody arrangement didn’t include the freedom to flee across the country without leaving a trace.
Maybe all this was for nothing, but she didn’t dare take that chance. Not after she had learned from the girls that Irena had taken them to get passport pictures taken.
Even if Jaime’s parents could only win court-ordered visitation, they could still take the girls to Venezuela during one of those visits. Once in their own country, Allie knew they had the power and wealth to keep her from the girls forever.
Allie blew out a breath. If Joaquin and Irena had gone to the authorities, her name and description could be circulating among law enforcement officials even now. Her patient could have even seen it before he was injured.
She had been stupid to change her mind and agree to take this position. It was just too risky.
Fear settled cold and hard in her stomach, but she forced a smile for the girls and handed them the sandwiches, along with carrot sticks and a couple of cheese slices. “Here’s your lunch. There’s that nice table on the patio. Why don’t you take your lunch outside and have a picnic so we don’t wake Mr. McKinnon?”
Gaby and Anna grinned at the idea of eating outside. “Can we have juice boxes?” Gaby asked.
“Yes, I brought a few over from our house and put them in the fridge. Pick the kind you want.”
She helped them carry their bounty out to the table in the fenced backyard then set it out for them.
“Mommy, can you have a picnic with us, too?”
She hesitated. Her patient might need her. But judging by the exhausted pain lines on his face when he first showed up with his friends, he would probably be sleeping for hours. Anyway, she should be able to hear him through the screen door if he called out for help.
“Let me go check on Mr. McKinnon, then I’ll come back out and have lunch with you.”
She walked back through the small house with its floor plan similar to hers—two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a good-size living area, a small dining room and a comfortable, efficient kitchen. At McKinnon’s bedroom door she drew in a steadying breath and pushed it open.
His chest rose and fell evenly as he slept, with the blanket she had tucked in so carefully earlier riding down nearly to his narrow waist now. The network of pain lines around his mouth were more faint now, she noticed, and he seemed as comfortable as possible given the two thigh-high casts on his long legs.
As she watched him, the fear in her stomach gave way to something far more treacherous. He was so gorgeous. Lean and dark, with sculpted features and that dangerous-looking stubble on his cheeks.
She shivered, hating this attraction stirring around inside her. She didn’t want to notice how his lashes looked so long and spiky there against his skin, how his shoulders spanned nearly the width of the hospital bed, how his big hands on top of the blanket looked strong and blunt-fingered, capable of all kinds of delicious things.
She shouldn’t be noticing any of those things, shouldn’t be feeling this low sizzle of awareness. Not for any man, and especially not for this one, who could so easily destroy her.
Jaime had been gone only two years. Building lurid fantasies around another man’s hands somehow seemed grossly disloyal to her late husband. How could she even think about having this man she didn’t even know—and didn’t particularly like all that much—touch her the way only Jaime ever had?
She had loved her husband fiercely. He had been her first and only lover, and their physical relationship had been rich and rewarding, filled with laughter and tenderness and passion. Maybe that’s why she missed it so much, because it had been such an important part of their life together.
Still, missing the intimacy she shared with her husband didn’t explain how she could have such an instantaneous response to this man she didn’t know at all.
It was there, though, simmering under her skin with a steady, bubbling heat. His attraction wasn’t diminished at all by the fact that he was lying in a hospital bed with two painful-looking casts on his legs. If anything, just that hint of vulnerability made him even more appealing.
She couldn’t do this job. She absolutely couldn’t—not only because he posed such a risk to her freedom and the girls’ future but because of this, the low heat seething through her.
She would just have to tell Ruth she had made a mistake to take the job in the first place and hope her landlady would let her return to cleaning houses. If she started now, she could probably find a new caregiver for the girls by the end of the week.
She returned to the patio and found Gaby and Anna had abandoned their half-eaten lunches. One of the neighbors’ cats had made the mistake of wandering into the yard to find a snack and he was far more exciting than peanut butter sandwiches.
The girls were chasing the bewildered animal around the yard, laughing with joy every time they came close enough to touch the cat, which wasn’t very often.
“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” Anna chanted, her chubby legs working hard to keep up with her older sister.
Just when Allie was about to open her mouth and tell them to stop tormenting the poor thing, the cat finally clued in that any morsels he might chance upon in this backyard simply weren’t worth the trouble.
He sprang to the top of the redwood fence and sat watching with an amused feline look while the girls hopped and jumped and squealed, trying in vain to reach him.
After a moment the cat tired of the entertainment and pounced down the other side into what was undoubtedly safer territory.
Unfazed by losing their prey, the girls flopped down onto their stomachs in the grass. Sunlight flashed off their dark curls as they laughed together.
“Mama, there are two ladybugs in the grass,” Gaby called. “Come and see!”
She joined them and bent at the waist for a closer look. “I see four ladybugs.”
Anna frowned. “No. Only two.”
“Let’s count them.” She pointed to the bugs with a grin. “One and two.” Then she pointed to her daughters. “Three and four.”
Gaby giggled. “We’re not really ladybugs. We can’t fly and we don’t have black spots.”
“But you’re my ladybugs,” Allie said, tickling them both until they were shrieking with glee.
She had loved these last two days with her daughters, having them close while she and Ruth readied the FBI agent’s house for his return. It had made her realize what precious little time she’d been able to spend with them since Jaime’s death. She had been so busy sorting through his affairs, working twelve-hour shifts at the hospital, fighting the custody battle, struggling with her own health.
They were growing up so fast, right in front of her nose. Gaby should be starting kindergarten in the fall, which was just another thing to add to her worry list. How would they be able to stay in one place long enough for her daughter to complete the school year?
They couldn’t stay here. She had acknowledged that days ago. Without the FBI agent’s presence in the neighborhood she might have been able to stay in Park City all summer, maybe even all year. But it was just too risky having him living next door.
That was one of the reasons she’d taken the job, so she could save a little extra to tide them over wherever they moved. That reason still held, she reminded herself. She could take a few weeks to work for Gage McKinnon while she made arrangements to leave. Surely she deserved a few weeks to simply enjoy her girls.
Besides, McKinnon wasn’t working because of his injuries. If the authorities were looking for her, how would he possibly know? If he had seen her picture and recognized her, what difference would it make whether she worked for him or simply lived next door?
As to the attraction part, she could handle that, too. She just had to remember all the reasons why giving in to that attraction would be wholly, unequivocally disastrous.