Chapter 7
Heaven help me, I was actually looking forward to the day.
That hadn’t happened much in the last year and a half. Come to think of it…it hadn’t happened at all.
The thought gave me pause as I waited in the hallway for the door to open. For all its weirdness, I’d actually enjoyed last Tuesday.
Well, at least a little.
Cleaning such a massive apartment on my own should have been a monumental task, but the client was either one hell of a neat freak or barely used the place.
Nearly every room looked like it hadn’t been touched since the week before. Only the kitchen, his bedroom, and his bath showed signs of use—and even in those, the work was light. If I’d wanted to, I could have cut corners and finished the whole job in just a couple of hours.
But as it turned out, I didn’t want to.
Instead, I’d taken my time, enjoyed the music he’d played, and relished a few rare moments of peace. Hell, I even took a break at one point—something I’d never imagined doing on this job.
With any luck, I’d be able to repeat that today.
A few seconds later, the door opened, but just a crack.
“Mary.”
I would have thought that three weeks in, I would have grown used to the effect that deep, gravelly voice had on me, but just like every time before, it left a trail of heat behind as it rumbled through me.
“Good morning, sir.” Even though it went against almost a year and a half of habit, I did my best to keep my head up as I spoke, remembering his instructions. Still, the way he kept himself hidden behind the half-closed door made me wonder if I’d done something wrong. “Did I come at a bad time? I can come back later.”
I was nearly fifteen minutes early, after all. Maybe I should have waited down in the lobby until ten on the dot. What if he still had company in there from the night before, and I’d interrupted their goodbyes?
The thought made my stomach sink for reasons I didn’t fully understand.
Sure, the client might be sexy as hell, but was still just the client. Two weeks’ worth of secret late-night fantasies over the magnificence of his naked body didn’t change that.
He waited a beat before giving his head a single shake. Then he opened the door wider for me to enter. “No. Come in.”
It might have only been my third time in the man’s house, but I would have sworn that he was holding himself stiffer and tenser than usual as I walked past him. It was so noticeable that I was almost tempted to ask if anything was wrong.
But questions like that led to answers. And, when it came to this particular client, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the less I knew, the better.
“I’ll start in the kitchen again,” I said, more out of nerves than politeness.
“Fine,” he said curtly, shutting the door behind me.
Unlike the week before, it felt like he was going out of his way to avoid eye contact. If I had done something to upset him, I couldn’t imagine what it was.
It’s not your business, I reminded myself. Just because he was friendly last week doesn’t mean he’s your friend.
I was about to turn and get to work when something caught my eye—something small…a drop of liquid falling from the client’s waist. I didn’t realize what it was until it splashed, thick and red, against the hardwood floors.
Blood.
I sucked in a breath at the sight. My fingers twitched as years of practice and training came rushing back to me in a flash.
“You’re bleeding.” The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them.
The client froze. He was still facing the door, but I didn’t need to see his expression to feel the electric tension crackling all around him. “It’s nothing.”
Just then, a second drop of blood joined the first on the floor…then a third, proving him a liar.
“Are you sure, sir, because?—“
“I’m fine,” he cut me off, his voice sharp. Any reasonable person would have heard the dangerous edge in his voice and let it go.
But not me.
Especially not when he turned and started striding away from me, leaving a trail of blood splatter in his wake.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself before quickly chasing after him.
I grabbed his arm just before he could disappear inside his bedroom. The look in his eyes as he spun around to face me could have frozen the Atlantic Ocean.
“Mary,” he said the name like a warning, and in any other circumstance, I would have been paralyzed by the deadly threat it held…but not now.
Now, I held up my hand to silence him.
“Sir, you are bleeding…badly,” I said, the calm yet authoritative voice I’d practiced on my patients during my internship instantly coming back to me. “You need to let me look at your wound.”
He stared down at me, his expression guarded, but at least some of the ice that had frosted over his eyes a moment ago had started to thaw.
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because I can help. I’m a doctor.”
I held my breath as his blue eyes zeroed in on my face. For one painfully tense moment, he didn’t move or say a word. My only insight into his thoughts were the tics and strains of the muscles lining his jaw and throat.
After what felt like an eternity, he gave a single tight nod. “Okay.”
The breath left my lungs all at once in relief, but the moment of ease didn’t last long. In the next breath, I was right back in the moment.
“Tell me what happened,” I said, leading him through the doorway and toward his bed.
Instantly, the ice was back, freezing over his eyes as he shot me a look that made it clear he wasn’t about to answer that.
“I don’t need details,” I assured him as he sat on the foot of the bed. “I just need to know what I’ll be dealing with when we cut that shirt off you.”
Another jaw tic, then one reluctant word. “Knife.”
“Stab or slash?”
“Slash.”
“All right,” I nodded. “Next thing I’m going to need is some supplies. Do you have a first aid kit? Needle and thread? Antiseptic?”
He tilted his head toward the bathroom. “You’ll find everything you need in the gray box in the cupboard.”
I shot up, raced into the bathroom, and threw open the cupboard doors. There on the middle shelf, next to a pile of perfectly folded white towels and washcloths, was a gray tackle box. I grabbed it, along with a handful of linens.
I couldn’t have been in there for more than a few seconds, but by the time I returned, he’d already managed to peel his shirt off. Underneath it was what looked to be a blood-soaked dishtowel held in place by several strips of duct tape wrapped around his waist.
Suddenly, I was grateful that I’d already seen him fully naked since the last thing I needed now was to be distracted by the sight of his near-perfect body. Especially given what I had to ask next.
“You’ll need to remove your pants as well,” I told him.
He didn’t hesitate and immediately started unhooking his leather belt. “Boxers, too?”
I shook my head and started spreading the towels out behind him on the bed. “They should be fine. Just tug them down a little before you lie down.”
While he did what I asked, I opened the tackle box.
Damn.
I blinked, taking in the contents. The thing was better stocked than the Emergency Room I’d interned in. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised, given the sheer amount of scars on his body. Clearly, this kit had seen a lot of use over the years.
“This is a pretty impressive impromptu pressure bandage,” I said, attempting to break the tense silence hanging over the room. “I’m guessing this isn’t your first attempt at one.”
He didn’t reply as I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and took out the bandage scissors. Honestly, I didn’t expect him to.
Not that I’d expected any of this.
I tried not to think of how quickly my day had turned into a strange one. One second, I’d been all ready to scrub kitchen tiles, and the next, I was snipping duct tape off a man’s rock-hard abs and peeling back a blood-soaked rag.
Just like old times, I thought to myself.
It was nice to know all the skills I’d honed working twelve-hour shifts in emergency medicine hadn’t gone anywhere—especially now that I was able to get a good look at the four-inch laceration running across his lower abdomen.
“All right,” I said. “The good news is the wound looks superficial, but I’m going to have to clean it before I can be sure.” I looked up from the cut and into his eyes. “What’s your pain level right now?”
“I’m fine,” he said, repeating what he’d told me right after I’d walked in.
I wasn’t sure I believed him—especially since he’d also described a gaping abdominal laceration as “nothing”—but I’d have to take his word for it.
“Okay, unfortunately, that might change. This next part is going to sting,” I told him honestly, pulling saline solution out of the box.
He surprised me by giving a bitter little laugh. “I know.”
Right. This was far from his first rodeo. “I’ll be as quick as possible,” I promised.
His belly tensed, and he sucked in a quick breath as I irrigated the cut. Blood-tinged water ran over taut, beige skin and onto the towels underneath him on the bed. Fortunately, I was good to my word, and it took less than a minute to clean the area.
“Done! Now I can give you something for the pain before I stitch you up,” I told him as I filled one of the syringes with anesthetic. “You know, most people don’t have bottles of lidocaine in their first aid kits.”
“I’m not most people.”
“Yeah, that’s quickly becoming very clear,” I said.
“Neither are you.”
Now, it was my turn not to acknowledge his words. It didn’t matter how desperately I wanted to know what he meant by that. There was no way in hell I was going to ask.
Instead, I let the awkwardness hang in between us as I delivered four small injections, numbing the area around the wound. Then, I plucked a C-shaped needle and suture pack from the kit.
“Okay, I’m going to start closing this up,” I finally said. “You might feel some pressure and tugging, but if you feel any pain, let me know.”
Another laugh. This one even darker. “And you’ll make it go away?”
“I’ll try,” I answered honestly.
“But what if I deserve the pain? What if I deserve a hell of a lot worse than this?”
I shook my head as I made the first stitch. “I’m a doctor. Judgment isn’t my business. All I care about is the patient in front of me and the oath I made to do no harm.”
“And where in the Hippocratic Oath does it talk about spending your days cleaning the homes of dangerous felons?”
I froze mid-stitch. It was the first time I’d heard anyone admit that Jane’s clientele were criminals out loud. Sure, everyone knew, but no one said it. Not just because we wanted plausible deniability but because we wanted to keep our heads attached to our bodies.
I searched for a diplomatic answer. “Maybe now isn’t the best time for either of us to be asking personal questions.”
“I disagree.” I looked up to find his unforgiving blue eyes fixed on me. “Now is the perfect time for me to figure out exactly who I allowed into my home.”
“I’m not a cop if that’s what you’re asking,” I assured him. “And there’s no way in hell I’d ever go to them, trust me.”
“I’d like to trust you, Mary,” he said. “But you’re going to need to give me a reason.”
“Listen, we both have our secrets,” I told him, shaking my head sadly. “Can’t we go back to keeping them to ourselves?”
“If that’s what you wanted, then you should have ignored the blood and started cleaning the kitchen,” he said before shooting me a deadly look. “Besides, I wasn’t asking.”
No, he was demanding. His stony tone of voice left no doubt about that.
I gulped past the lump that was suddenly blocking my throat. I closed my eyes and took in a steadying breath. Threat or no threat, the last thing either of us needed was for me to have shaky hands.
“One thing I can say is my real name isn’t Mary,” I admitted.
“I figured as much. What is it?”
“I can’t tell you.” Not even when his glower turned frighteningly hard. “No one in New York knows it. Not even Jane. Believe me, you’re better off not knowing.”
For some reason, he seemed to find that amusing. A slight smile curved the corners of his lips. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re dangerous?”
I shook my head. “No, but the people after me are.”
His smile disappeared in an instant, replaced by a stony coldness that was downright bone-chilling. “Who is after you?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, quickly getting back to work.
He reached down and clasped my wrist, stilling it with the needle still threaded through his skin. “Tell me.”
When I didn’t answer right away, he started to sit up.
“No, don’t!” I shouted, worried he would tear the stitches that were only half done. “Fine. It’s just my brother-in-law. He’s the one after me.”
The client’s brows pulled together in confusion, but at least he relaxed enough to lie back down again. “You said people were after you. Dangerous people.”
“Yeah…well, my brother-in-law is an FBI agent, so I’m not lying.”
“You’re wanted by the feds? You?” Again, he sounded strangely amused by the thought. “For what?”
For a second, I considered lying, but what would be the point?
“My sister’s murder,” I said.
Even eighteen months later, those words still made my heart sink.
For a long moment, he didn’t say a word. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him studying me as I worked. Finally, he shook his head before resting it back down on the bed.
“Not possible,” he said with absolute certainty. “You’re no murderer.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I know what it takes to kill,” he said. “You just risked your life and livelihood to patch up a man you barely know. You’re worried about my pain. You’re no killer.”
Of course, he was right. I wasn’t. But that didn’t change the fact that there was a warrant out for my arrest.
“I could have used someone like you in my corner back when it happened,” I said, half joking, as I got back to work. “You might be the only person in the whole world who believes I’m innocent.”
“What happened?”
I let out a long breath, realizing I’d never actually talked about it—not to anyone. There wasn’t any point. Every statement, report, and news story had immediately painted me as guilty. I couldn’t defend myself if no one was listening. I could only disappear.
But now, someone was listening.
Still, the words stuck in my throat—until I got back to focusing on the stitches. For some reason, focusing on something else, something familiar, and working with my hands eased the block inside me.
“My sister, Deena, and I were never very close,” I started. “We didn’t hate each other or anything. We were just very different people with different values. All I ever wanted was to help people, while all she wanted was a white picket fence. Still, we never fought until Gran died.”
“What did you fight over?”
“The same thing everyone does—money,” I said. “She wanted to use all of it to build a nursery addition to her house so she and her husband, Hollis, could start a family. I just wanted half to help pay off my med school loans. The day before she died, we got into a screaming match at a backyard barbecue she was throwing. Unfortunately, it was in front of a ton of witnesses—all her friends and neighbors.”
“That’s bad luck.”
“You have no idea. I went over the next day to apologize for losing my temper. The second I walked in, there was a deafening bang. She was already gone by the time I ran into the living room. Hollis was standing over with the gun still in his hand.”
“Her fed husband killed her?”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Damn. Even after all this time, that truth was still hard to hear.
“Turns out he’d been having an affair with some informant from work and wanted out of the marriage.” The memory of Hollis’ unrepentant explanation played in my head as I finished up the last few stitches. With how often the scene replayed in my mind, I thought it would have lost some of its punch, but apparently not. I could feel tears welling up and stinging my eyes. “But my sister thought a baby would save their marriage and threatened to take everything if he tried to divorce her.”
“So he shot her,” the client said with more disgust than I would have expected from someone who was clearly a criminal himself.
“Apparently, our fight the day before gave him the perfect opportunity,” I said. “He could get rid of my sister and pin it on me. After our argument the day before, everyone would believe it. That way, he could keep everything—the house, the money, his girlfriend. There was only one problem.”
“You knew the truth, and you were still alive.”
“Right.” I nodded. Apparently, he really did know how killers thought. “Though Hollis did his best to fix that problem. He took a couple of shots at me as I ran. One bullet passed straight through my shoulder; the other grazed my ear.” I pushed back my hair to show that a chunk of the top lobe was missing. “After that, I knew that if the cops ever found me, Hollis would make sure I was never taken alive.”
“What did you do?”
“The only thing I could do—disappear.” Thank God I was finally at the end of the line of stitches. I could barely see through the tears. They’d built up so high they’d started spilling over and running down my cheeks. “I changed my name, came to New York, and started working for Jane. End of story.”
I tied off the suture, picked up the scissors, and cut the end of the thread with a sharp snip. After adhering a bandage over the cut, I pulled off my gloves and stood up.
The client propped himself up on his elbows and looked me in the eye. His expression bordered on empathetic. “I’m s?—“
No.
Absolutely not.
I didn’t want sympathy. Hell, I didn’t want to tell the story in the first place.
The only way I’d managed to soldier through since my sister’s murder was through sheer determination. I took each day as it came, pushing back troublesome feelings and avoiding any soft emotions that might tempt me to crumble. All it took was the possibility of an “I’m sorry,” and I could already feel the cracks starting to form.
“Hopefully, that proves that you don’t have to worry about me running off to talk to the cops,” I said, cutting him off abruptly as I quickly wiped at my cheeks.
He nodded once as he silently rose from the bed, keeping eye contact with me the entire time. I couldn’t help but shift back and forth of my feet, uncomfortable under his scrutiny.
“I trust you,” he said finally, but I didn’t feel much relief. There was something about that stare of his that made me feel like I could collapse at any second.
And he would catch me.
No.
No softness. No hope. Just one foot in front of the other. Get through this day…then the next…then the next. That’s all there was.
“That bandage is waterproof,” I said, already feeling myself starting to break down. I started inching backward toward the door. “So, you can take a shower if you like. You’ll be sore after the lidocaine wears off, so I advise against any strenuous activity today, but otherwise, you should be fine.”
“Thank you, M—“ He stopped himself. “I can’t call you Mary anymore. What’s your real name?”
I shook my head. “I can’t tell you.”
“Yes, you can.” He was so tall and his legs so long that it only took him a couple of steps to close the distance between us. Suddenly, I had to crane my head back to keep looking him in the eye. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know,” I said, and strangely, I meant it. I couldn’t explain it, but somehow, I knew it was true. “But it’s not just me I’m worried about. Knowing who I am could put you in danger. Hollis will cut through anyone to get to me. He’s cold-blooded and powerful.”
Icy blue eyes burned into mine. The muscle running along his jaw jumped and tightened. For the longest time, he didn’t say anything. Not until he finally raised his hand and ran the back of his fingers down my cheek.
“So am I.”
Then, all the air rushed out of my lungs when he wrapped his arms around me. One hand curled around my waist, the other reached up to cradle the back of my head.
And then he kissed me.