Gwen twisted off the top to the salt shaker and refilled it without a thought to the task. Her mind was consumed with the fight last week between Jonathan and Kane. It wasn’t really a fight, more like an altercation. One minute she was so mad at them both she could spit nails, and the next she understood how it must have looked to Jonathan when she gave Kane the insulin shot.

Dealing drugs. No way in hell would she ever participate in or condone such actions. She’d taken an oath to save lives. Even though she was no longer actively nursing, she was able to give a friend a shot when he needed it. He’d entrusted her with the medicine he needed to stay alive and she’d do anything she could to help Kane.

He’d come to the diner in bad shape that night. Some kid on a skateboard had mistaken his insulin pump for a pager and yanked it away from him while he was checking his levels. The VA hospital had been too far away. The stupid man had walked over three miles to get to her. And she’d taken care of him.

After she closed that night, she’d taken Kane to the Veteran’s hospital in downtown Dallas, almost twenty miles away. They’d kept him overnight to stabilize and reset his Basal rates, establishing a baseline for the constant feed into his body. He was an old hand at the Bolus doses used to cover the carbohydrates consumed during meals. Type 1 diabetes was a bitch, especially for man living on the streets.

Kane was such a good man. He’d just been handed one bad piece of luck after another for over a year. She’d first met the SEAL in Afghanistan when his whole team had been brought into the secret USSOCOM base, seriously ill with some unknown disease. Sick as a dog, he’d been a true gentleman and a really good patient, not like some who passed through her emergency room. Men could be such needy babies.

Gwen moved on to the pepper shakers, needing to keep her hands busy. She only wished she could keep her mind off Jonathan. He’d seen the notes she was transcribing from the Middle Eastern boys’ conversations. They’d shown up several times a week, almost claiming the small diner as their place to get away from their parents and families. Although she’d proudly worn the uniform of this country, she worried about telling anyone what she’d overheard. Would they believe her? Or think she was a kook?

Then there was the question of who to tell. She hadn’t seen the police chief since the day Bitsy showed her ass, verbally attacking Jonathan and Quin. She hoped that terrible display of bad judgement hadn’t put the chief off eating there ever again. Maybe she could go to police headquarters and meet with him. If she showed him her translations…but what if she was wrong. It’d been months since she was over there, and although she considered her Arabic good, she’d be the first to admit it wasn’t great.

Who knew? Maybe it was simply teenage boys boasting to make themselves bigger and more important the others.

Deep in her heart, though, she knew someone was planning something big and it could—no would—hurt or even worse, kill, dozens of people. Maybe more. She might be able to stop it. But how?

Maybe she should just call the local FBI office, she considered as she topped off the last pepper shaker and screwed on the cap. She glanced around the table for the large sugar container. It must still be on the shelf.

Two minutes later, while searching deep in the closet-sized room for the sugar, a deep voice sliced through her.

“Evening, Jacki.” Jonathan’s baritone had snaked its way into her very being.

“Good evening, Mr. O’Neil.” Gwen could hear the smile in her waitress’s voice and the sound of a coffee cup hitting the counter. “Is this breakfast for you?”

“Yup.”

When he chuckled, Gwen almost fell over. It was the sexiest sound she’d heard in days. No months. Okay, years. She mentally shook her head. Since when did a chuckle sound sexy? Since Jonathan O’Neil did it. Well, damn it.

“Guess I’m becoming a regular.” True. The man had shown up at least every other evening. And she’d hidden in her office, out of sight, each time. Acting like a silly teenager. She was no better than the girls from the Catholic school that sat at the big round table in the corner and stole glances at the boys a few tables away.

Enough.

She was an adult and he was just a man. One who made her insides quiver and her brain wonder what that impressively muscled body would look like hovering over hers seconds before he pushed into her slick heat. More than once she’d wondered what kind of lover he’d be. Would he be a quick bang and go? Or take it slow and gentle? It didn’t really matter. It had been so long since she’d shared her body with a man, she’d probably explode the minute his fingertips found her clit.

With the thought of an orgasm screaming through her brain, Gwen stood up straight, pulled her shoulders back, and headed out to face Jonathan.

Oh, shit.

She did an about face and scanned the shelves once more for the sugar. It’d been right there in front of her the whole time. She grabbed the heavy plastic jug and determinedly walked to the seat at the counter where she’d been refilling condiments.

Damn, he looked good. She hadn’t been raised in Texas but cowboys had been a fantasy of hers since puberty. His black Stetson with the gray band sat on the counter at his elbow as he sipped coffee. She loved the way the gray Guardian polo shirt hugged his biceps and stretched over large pecs. Gwen knew there would be at least six, well-defined ab muscles under the shirt that tucked into black cargo pants at his small waist. He wore his gun comfortably on the right side, secured in a hard plastic holster.

For a fleeting moment, she missed carrying her weapon. Overseas, she wouldn’t leave her tent without it secured to her duty belt. Once home, it had taken months for her to feel safe without her .45 at her side. That might be why she liked Texas so much. Many who ate at her restaurant were armed, not just because it was a favorite of first responders, but so many people openly carried. Guns were sexy.

Her brain was focused on sex, so she found everything sexy. Especially the man in the third seat from the end at the counter.

Gwen dialed back her excited smile and managed to say, “Jonathan, nice to see you again.” She sat down and resumed her duties.

“You’re not going to run and hide from me, again, are you?” His intense gaze bore through her defenses.

She turned her head to look at him. “No.” She fought a smile. “Running away is the last thing I want to do.” She wanted to jump out of her seat and dive into his arms, kiss him until she forgot where she was. Then, she’d drag that perfect tight ass of his up to her third floor apartment and strip off his shirt so she could count those ab muscles.

He nodded and she almost leaped off the stool before she forgot. He might not be having the same fantasy. From the look in his eyes, sex wasn’t his priority at the moment. Damn it.

“Look, Gwen, I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions with that Kane guy the other night.” He ran his hand over his face. “From my perspective, it looked like a drug deal going down. But he recovered way too fast for that and didn’t act high afterward. What’s his deal?”

Gwen concentrated on opening the sugar jars as she debated telling Jonathan about Kane. But maybe he could help convince her friend to take advantage of some of VA programs available to get Kane back on his feet. She finally explained, “He’s a type 1 diabetic and needs insulin at least five times a day. Kane can’t risk carrying needles on the street. Besides, the insulin needs to be refrigerated. He usually wears a pump but some punk kid stole his.”

At Jonathan’s raised eyebrows, she added, “It’s about the size of a pager.”

Realization dawned. “Can he get another one? Will he be okay until then?”

Wow. His genuine concern for Kane flabbergasted Gwen…and made her like him even more. He was not only sexy as hell, he was nice.

“How did you meet him?” Jonathan sipped and set the mug down, focusing all his attention on her.

Meticulously, Gwen picked up the next container and began to fill it. She had nothing to hide from this man, except the name of the covert special operations base where she’d met Kane. “I was an Army nurse, three tours in theater. His team was really sick when they were brought in. All of them had high fevers, dehydration, delirium, vom—” She glanced at the plate Jacki had just set in front of him and corrected her word choice. “Sick to their stomachs. The doctors determined that they had contracted a virus while in the northern regions.”

She dropped her hands to the countertop. “There are diseases out there that we have no idea how to treat, say nothing about curing.”

Jonathan nodded in agreement, too much a gentleman to speak with his mouthful.

So she continued. “When we’d prepared them to be shipped to Germany, per protocol, the World Health Organization stepped in and advised they be treated in country fearing it might spread into an epidemic.”

“None of the hospitals I saw over there were prepared to handle anything like quarantine,” Jonathan said, and bit into toast slathered with their homemade jam.

“We weren’t either. But we did it.” Gwen tightened the lid and moved on to the next sugar jar. She sighed. The next part was sad, especially for Kane. “The virus hit them all hard, but it attacked Kane’s pancreas. We eventually shipped him to Germany, but he ended up at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for over a month while they figured out the problem. They medically discharged him.” And he came home to Dallas where his life went further down the drain, but that wasn’t her story to tell.

“That sucks.” Jonathan shook his head and slid his empty plate away. He spun on the stool to face her. “Look, I owe you an apology.” He took the large sugar container out of her hand and set it down before taking both her hands in his and turning her to face him. Their knees bumped before he spread his apart, capturing hers in between. The position was so intimate, heat raised from her chest up her neck. “Let me take you out to supper. I’m sure you’d like to try some other restaurants.”

“I…I…” She couldn’t put together the sentence she wanted to say. This was exactly what she wanted, but when he gently squeezed her hands, she lost all conscious thought.

“I’m new here,” he started to explain, “and you’re the first woman with a brain I’ve met other than clients, and Guardian has a policy against dating them.”

He thought she was smart? Well, yes she was. Her brain had just disengaged for a minute, or three.

“Gwen, it’s just a meal.” His smile wasn’t helping her word formation one bit.

She forced her glance away long enough to say, “Yes.” She’d regained enough composure to complete the sentence, so she looked into the depths of his brown eyes and said, “I’d like to go out with you.”

“I’m off tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up at seven.” Jonathan stood.

“Next door down.” She pointed. “I live upstairs.”