CHAPTER 3
Dante sat at the kitchen table, watching the lithe, blonde woman with more than a little fascination as she moved around his kitchen with fluid, efficient movements. He hadn’t had the heart to make her help him shower, even though he wouldn’t have minded if she had joined him, since he hadn’t gotten laid in a while. Instead, he’d had her wait in the bedroom until he was finished, and then let her look at his wounds with his dick completely covered. He smirked as he wondered if she’d noticed the tent under the towel, especially when she’d touched near the wound on his thigh. Hell, even her scent made him hard. She smelled like fresh rain and vanilla, a scent that suddenly made him feel fucking intoxicated.
“So are you really a doctor? Twenty-seven is awfully young to be a physician.” Even fresh out of med school, she was too young.
But she’s awfully bossy. She’d taken over his kitchen without even asking, letting him know she was making them both something to eat when she had discovered he hadn’t had a meal that day.
“I am a doctor. I was a college freshman at the age of twelve. I finished two college majors, one in biology and another in music, by the time I was sixteen. I graduated med school when I was twenty-one, and I completed a residency in internal medicine in Chicago when I was twenty-four. I practiced for over a year in Chicago before I moved here, and I’ve been in Amesport for almost a year. I just turned twenty-seven last week.”
“A child prodigy,” Dante concluded, watching Sarah as she put the finishing touches on two sandwiches.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I hate that term. I just had accelerated studies.”
Accelerated studies, my ass. She’s a damn genius.
He’d pretty much already figured that out by listening to her speak, but he wasn’t exactly concentrating on her superior brain right at the moment.
Dante’s eyes scanned her perfectly rounded ass and her long legs, picturing them wrapped tightly around his waist as he buried his cock inside her wet heat. Beautiful and gifted would be a more appropriate description of Sarah Baxter, but he didn’t tell her that. He’d made the mistake of mentioning her stunning eyes a few minutes ago, the irises appearing to be a violet shade. He’d then gotten almost a dissertation on how they were actually dark blue, and that violet eyes didn’t exist on the Martin-something-or-other scale of eye color except in cases of albinism. She went on to talk about wearing certain colors, and the level of light making eyes look like a different color. He’d missed most of the details because he’d still been staring into those incredible eyes as she spoke, wondering exactly what color they’d be when they were glazed with desire as she came apart for him. Rather than being off-putting, her intelligence turned him on. She was unlike any other woman he’d ever met. Nothing seemed to really surprise or anger her—except for his moment of stupidity in the basement—so he’d given up trying to piss her off for now and started asking questions.
“Genius IQ?” he guessed, noticing that her hair was dry, and it was a lighter blonde than it had been when it was damp, the ends turning up in fat curls.
“One seventy the last time I was tested. That was a while ago,” she admitted, sounding disgruntled.
“Einstein level,” he commented casually.
Sarah set a ham sandwich in front of him and motioned for him to eat. “Actually, Einstein never took an IQ test. There’s only a rough estimate that his IQ was between one sixty and one eighty. No one really knows for certain.”
“Einstein level,” he confirmed, amused by the data that just seemed to fly out of her mouth. Did she ever have a normal conversation? Dante picked up his sandwich and started to eat, surprised that he was actually feeling hungry for the first time since he’d been shot. Unfortunately, he lost his appetite as soon as she brought over his pain pills and a glass of juice a few minutes later. “I’m not taking the pills. I just took them a while ago.” He figured it was easier to just let her think he’d already taken them. The last thing he wanted was another fucking lecture from someone about those stupid pills.
“No, you didn’t.” Sarah set the pills and juice next to his plate, brought her own sandwich and milk to the table, and sat down in the chair across from him.
Dante scowled as he looked at Sarah’s unhappy expression. No, he hadn’t taken the pills, but he was usually pretty good at bullshitting. He’d developed that talent pretty well in his job. “How do you know?”
Her eyes pierced him with a look that struck him straight in the gut, a look that said she knew he was lying, and she was disappointed. She took a bite of her sandwich, chewing thoughtfully before answering. “Evidence and reasoning, Detective Sinclair. You should understand that better than anyone. You were prescribed sixty pills, and there are still sixty pills in the bottle. I made the obvious conclusion. You haven’t taken a single one of them.”
Shit. Busted! Maybe I really don’t like the fact that she’s so damn smart! She actually counted every single pill. What doctor does that shit?
She took a sip of her milk before continuing. “You’re breathing short and shallow. I’m sure your other doctor told you how important it is right now to be deep breathing and coughing to prevent pneumonia because of your broken ribs. You need to take the pain meds for a while so you can manage the pain of coughing and taking deep breaths. All of your other wounds are healing well.”
“I want to feel the pain,” Dante admitted testily.
“Why?”
Dante watched Sarah’s eyes. She wasn’t judging him right now, nor was she trying to pacify him like the department psychologist. She was simply . . . curious. What he was doing didn’t make sense in her logical mind.
“Patrick’s dead. I’m alive. He had a wife and son who adored him.” Shit. How could he explain how he felt to Sarah when he didn’t even get it himself? All he knew was that it should have been him. What did he have? His siblings cared about him. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that. But it wasn’t the same as having the life that Patrick had been living with Karen and Ben. They’d been a family. Patrick had been a father. His son was now fatherless, and his wife was a widow.
Dante had never been that close to a woman. Sure, he got laid as often as possible, but mostly by women who wanted things as casual as he did. Being a detective in homicide was a job that pretty much existed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for him. He was the job. He ate, breathed, and slept the job. And he liked it that way.
“I understand that you lost your best friend and your partner, but what does that have to do with you taking care of yourself? How is it going to change anything if you just take your medication?” Sarah asked, confused.
“It should have been me who took that bullet. I wouldn’t have left a fatherless son and grieving wife behind. Patrick had too much to live for. Hell, I knew the risks of my job when I took it, and I was okay with the fact that I could die on any given day trying to get murderers off the street.”
“And you think Patrick didn’t know that, too?”
He died doing exactly what he wanted to do. He loved being a detective, and your partner. This isn’t your fault. Both of us knew the risks. I accepted them when I married him.
Dante’s big body shuddered as Karen’s words floated through his head. “He might have known intellectually, but I don’t think he accepted that it could really happen to him,” he finally answered grudgingly.
“People deal with risky jobs in different ways. I’m sure he knew, but he didn’t dwell on it,” Sarah answered reasonably. “And judging by the amount of phone messages I’ve had to listen to because of people’s concern for you, I’d say you’d be leaving just as many grieving people behind. Take the pills, Detective Sinclair. And consider yourself lucky that so many people give a damn.” Sarah gave him a pointed stare as she rose and carried her empty plate to the sink.
In a sudden surge of frustration, Dante swiped his hand across the left side of the table in an effort to make the pills fly off the surface. His palm missed the narcotics and slammed into the glass of juice, sending it flying in Sarah’s direction. The glass shattered near the sink, right next to where she was standing. Stepping back in reaction to the noise, her bare foot came down right on top of the sharp glass fragments.
“Ouch!” She backed up in confusion, her other foot coming down on another piece of glass. This time she was less careful with her words. “Shit!” Stopping suddenly, she assessed the situation, her eyes scanning the floor before she backed out of the glass-and-juice mess, grabbing a handful of paper towels as she went. She sat back down in her chair and shot Dante an accusing look. “Were you actually trying to hit me? If you were, you have a lousy aim.”
Horrified, Dante watched as the blood pooled and smeared on the floor where she’d stepped. As quickly as he could, he moved around the table and dropped to his knees, oblivious to any pain it caused him. He could have told her that he was an expert marksman, one of the best on the entire force, and if he was aiming at something, he didn’t miss. “Fuck! I wasn’t trying to hit you. It was an accident.” He watched as she picked tiny pieces of glass from her feet, putting them carefully into a paper towel on the table, and tried to stem the flow of blood from her right foot, obviously the worst of the two, since it was the foot that was oozing blood. “What can I do? I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“No!” Sarah exclaimed a little too forcefully. “I’m a doctor. It’s superficial. I can deal with it myself.” She pointed toward the kitchen entrance. “I need some of the bandages I used on your arm and leg.”
Dante moved like his ass was on fire, even with his injuries, feeling helpless and more than a little guilty. He had the bags of bandages back to Sarah in moments. By the time he knelt in front of her again, she was examining the other foot.
“Superficial scratch,” she murmured as she peered at her left foot, her blonde locks veiling her face as she lowered her head to look closely. She quickly slapped a large gauze bandage over the cut and switched to the right foot again.
Dante’s breath seized as he saw the blood exiting the wound. Shit! He was a stupid bastard, and his heart sank as he realized his careless actions had caused Sarah injury. “Maybe it needs stitches.” He might not be a doctor, but he was trained in basic emergency aid.
Sarah never looked at him as she answered. “It needs to be thoroughly cleaned. I’ll take care of it.” She wrapped a bandage around her foot after applying several layers of gauze directly to the cut.
Dante gaped as she stood and carefully started mopping up blood from the floor and picking up the large pieces of glass. “Leave it!” he ordered in a low, dangerous voice. He got up, wrapped his arm around her waist, and lifted her feet off the floor, unable to stop a low groan of pain from leaving his lips as he took her weight and her body collided against his chest when he swung her away from the glass. He was panting as he lowered her feet back to the ground, but he didn’t loosen his hold around her waist. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Sarah. I only wanted to get rid of the pills. I didn’t mean to hit the glass. I didn’t mean for it to break.” Shit. He was babbling like an idiot, but for some reason it was important to him that she understood that hurting her wasn’t intentional.
She moved away from him as she muttered, “I’m sure you didn’t.” But she didn’t sound completely convinced.
Dante followed her as she grabbed her purse from the living room and slipped her bandaged feet into her sandals at the door. After pulling the door open, she looked back at him. “Look, I understand that you lost your partner, and I’m sorry for that. But think about Patrick, Detective Sinclair. Would he want you to be doing this to yourself, acting this way? If you had been the one who died, would you want him to behave the way you’re behaving now? You’re not helping your partner right now.”
“I didn’t mean for you to cut yourself,” Dante grumbled, still concerned about the blood he’d seen on her foot.
Sarah shot him a stubborn look. “If you’re really sorry, take the damn pills.” Without another word, she left, pulling the door closed behind her.
Incredulous that Sarah had just walked out on her injured foot, Dante moved forward and yanked the door back open just in time to see her get into her car and head back down the driveway.
“Damn stubborn woman,” Dante muttered irritably, unable to shake off the guilt of what he’d unintentionally done to her.
Would Patrick want him to act like an idiot? Hell no, he wouldn’t. His partner would have chewed his ass about getting his temper under control and made him stop doing stupid shit that was self-destructive. In their early days as partners, Patrick had jerked Dante forcibly back more than once from acting on emotion, and Dante had learned the lesson quickly enough back then. Over the years, Dante had learned to keep a lid on his anger, knowing one stupid action could jeopardize an investigation.
Back in the kitchen, he slowly cleaned up the mess on the kitchen floor, cringing as he removed every droplet of blood from the tiles. He was panting by the time he finished.
You’re breathing short and shallow.
Annoyed that Sarah Baxter’s words kept haunting him, he took a deep breath and coughed hard, grabbing on to the edge of the cupboard to keep his balance as a pain so sharp and excruciating that he almost lost consciousness lanced through his chest. He was definitely seeing stars.
I’m an asshole. If I really wanted to torture myself, all I had to do was cough!
He could have saved himself the effort of going downstairs to the basement and lifting weights just by taking a deep breath or coughing. It sure as hell hurt just as badly—probably worse. Dante wasn’t certain what the hell he’d been thinking when he’d done that. Truth was, he hadn’t really been thinking. He’d been reacting. Maybe he’d been hoping the pain would keep him numb, stop him from thinking, reliving every moment of Patrick’s death.
Would he want you to be doing this, acting this way?
Sarah’s parting words were taunting him as Dante pulled a beer from the refrigerator, removed the cap, and sat down at the kitchen table. He and Patrick had had each other’s backs for the last five years. When they were working on a hot case, they sometimes spent twelve to fifteen hours a day in each other’s company. There wasn’t much that Dante hadn’t known about Patrick. They’d spent a lot of time giving each other shit, but he knew exactly how his partner would have reacted to Dante’s behavior.
“You would have kicked my ass, buddy,” Dante said quietly to himself before he took a swig of his beer and set it on the table. Scrubbing his hands over his face, he was careful not to irritate the healing laceration on his cheek. The way he was acting right now wasn’t for Patrick, it was for himself. His partner would have wanted Dante to watch out for his family, make sure Ben and Karen were okay. He’d made sure they’d never have financial problems, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to call Karen or Ben since they’d visited him in the hospital. Just seeing them reminded him of Patrick, and the fact that he was alive when Patrick was gone. Karen and Ben had a lot of family in California, but it didn’t matter. His wife and son had been the most important people in Patrick’s life, and he would have counted on Dante to make sure that they were doing all right emotionally as well as physically.
Karen and Ben don’t blame me. They cared enough to come to the hospital. I’m being a total asshole. I cut myself off from them because I felt guilty. Me. Me. Me. This has all been about me and not them.
Dante stood, grimacing as he reached for the pain pills, which were still on the table.
“Pity party time is over, Sinclair,” Dante said in a disgusted whisper, using an expression that Patrick had used on him whenever Dante needed a kick in the ass.
He’d been acting like a jackass from the minute he woke up from surgery and realized Patrick was dead. He’d been distant with his siblings, even though every one of them had come running when he’d been injured, Evan flying in from across the damn world. And he hadn’t even bothered to check in on Karen and Ben since he’d been in the hospital.
And he’d hurt Sarah Baxter, a woman who had only been there to help him, doing her own damn job.
All because I’m mourning my own loss. Sarah was right. What he was doing wasn’t going to help his partner now.
Dante knew he needed to pull his head out of his ass. That’s what Patrick would have wanted. He’d been numb after hearing about his best friend’s death, burying his emotional agony deep inside himself, wanting to feel the physical pain because it was better than the guilt of knowing that he was still alive while Patrick was dead. Maybe he’d actually been numb because he was in denial. Strangely, as he finally stared grief directly in the face, the physical pain of his injuries came roaring to life without him even trying.
He grabbed the beer from the table, limped across the kitchen, and poured it down the sink. No more of that shit until I’m healed. Reaching into the cupboard, he grabbed a glass and filled it with water.
Christ! Even lifting his arm hurt. Every one of his injuries felt like it was on fire, the pain in his chest and ribs the worst.
If you’re really sorry, you’ll take the damn pills.
A small, genuine smile formed on Dante’s lips. Sarah Baxter was probably one of the bluntest and most peculiar women he’d ever met, but he actually liked that about her. Honestly, she was a mystery, and the cop in him stood up and took notice—along with another part of his anatomy that he couldn’t seem to control when he looked at her.
Dammit! He was sorry he hurt her. He was a cop, and his first instincts were always to protect. The police officer in him hated himself for failing to protect Sarah. In fact, he’d caused her injury, which made him even more pissed off at himself. He wouldn’t deny that he wanted to fuck her, and those urges had roared through his body the moment he’d seen her. That was really saying something, considering he wasn’t exactly in any kind of physical shape to even think about wanting to get laid. Yet he was thinking about it, about her. And there was something about Sarah Baxter that fascinated him on more than a physical level. Her mind seemed to process everything to find the logical answer, yet she still seemed to radiate innocence and compassion. It was an odd and intriguing combination.
Tossing his head back, he took the “damn pills” and swallowed them with the water in his hand, draining the glass before putting it in the sink.
Dante left the kitchen with a mission. He made several phone calls, the first and longest one to Karen and Ben.