Secret Agent, Secret Father

“Trust me, if I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have saved your butt last night.” She rubbed her wrist.

Jacob resisted nodding, not wanting to set off another wave of dizziness. But he tightened his grip on his pistol. “What am I doing here?” His voice was no more than a croak.

She poured him a glass of water from a pitcher on the bedside stand and offered it to him. “Recovering.”

When he didn’t sit up, she lifted the glass to his lips. The cool water hit the back of his throat, immediately soothing the raw, burning heat. After he finished, she placed it back on the nightstand.

“What happened?” he murmured, resting his head back against the pillow. The room tilted a little. That and the water made him queasy.

“You have a gunshot wound in your right shoulder, a forehead laceration and a concussion. You were lucky the bullet only caused minimal damage. We’ve stitched your wounds, but only rest will help the concussion,” she explained, her voice softening once again with concern on the last few words.

First he digested her reaction, then her explanation. A bullet hole meant he’d lost a lot of blood. A hindrance, but not debilitating. “Who is we?”

“My father.” She hesitated over the words, enough to obstruct any natural warmth in them. “He’ll be back in a moment.”

“How did I get shot?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

The sunlight grew brighter, casting beams across the bed. When he grimaced, she crossed the room and pulled the curtains shut.

“And you are?”

She stopped midmotion, her eyes narrowing as they pinned him to the bed. “If you’re trying to be funny, I suggest you work on your timing. Because whatever sense of humor I might have had, you destroyed it about five months ago.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? “Trust me, the only joke here is on me.” His laugh was no more than a savage burst of air. “So why don’t you tell me who you are and we’ll go from there.”

“Grace. Grace Renne.”

Grace. He took in the serene features, the refined curves of her face that sloped into a slightly upturned nose, a dimpled chin and a mouth too wide to be considered movie-star perfect. But full enough to tempt a man, even a half-dead one like himself, to taste.

“You don’t recognize me?” she asked. Disbelief—no, he corrected, distrust—lay under her question.

So she didn’t trust him? Seemed fair enough, since he didn’t trust her.

“Should I?” Vague images flickered, their edges too slippery to grasp. He focused beyond the disorientation, the fear that slithered from the dark void.

Again, he found nothing.

“Yes.” She turned back to the curtain, took a moment to tuck the edges together until the sun disappeared. “We were friends. Once.”

Her voice trailed in a husky murmur. A familiar bite caught him at the back of the spine. He swore under his breath.

“Once. We’re not friends now?” He wasn’t in the mood for cryptic answers or a prod from his libido. Obviously, his body needed no memories to react to its baser needs.

Sledgehammers beat at his temples, splitting his skull from ear to ear. He used the pain to block out her appeal.

“I’d like to think so,” she responded. “What do you remember?”

“Not sure.” Admitting he remembered nothing was out of the question. Clumsily, he shoved the thick, plaid comforter off him. Immediately the cool air took the heat and itch from his skin. She’d stripped him to his boxer briefs, he realized. Bruises tattooed most of his chest and stomach in dark hues of purple and brown.

He tried again, searching his mind until the headache drove him back to the woman for answers. “A bullet didn’t do all this damage,” he remarked even as the void bore down on him with a suffocating darkness. He took a deep breath to clear his head, paid for it with a sharp slice of pain through his ribs.

“Feels like I’ve been hit by a train.” Anger antagonized the helplessness, but something deeper, more innate, forced a whisper of caution through his mind.

“Someone tried to kill you last night.” She spoke the words quickly, as if simple speed would blur the ugliness of them. “They almost succeeded.”

Frustrated, he swung his legs over to the side of the bed before she could stop him. He fought through the vertigo and nausea. But the effort left him shaking.

“Where are my pants?” If he needed to move quickly, he didn’t want to be naked doing it.

“You don’t need them right now. You have a concussion.” She glanced toward the door. “You need bed rest.”

“What I need is my pants.” He glanced up at her, saw the anxiety that tightened her lips, knit her brow. But once again, it was the fear dimming the light brown of her eyes that bothered him. He hardened himself against it.

The woman was definitely on edge. He tried a different tack. “Now,” he ordered. For a moment, he was tempted to raise the gun, point it at her, but something inside stopped him.

As if she read his mind, she glanced from the weapon to his face, then surprised him by shaking her head. “You won’t shoot me over a pair of pants.”

“Don’t bet on it,” he growled. Right now, for two cents, he’d put a bullet through his own forehead just to relieve the pounding behind it.

“Then go ahead,” she said before she swung around, leaving her back exposed. The movement cost her, he could see it in the rigid spine, the set of her shoulders. He’d scared the hell out of her but she didn’t give an inch.

“Damn it.” She had guts for calling his bluff, he gave her that. “All right, it seems I’m more civilized than I thought.”

When she faced him, she didn’t gloat.

She had smarts, too, he thought sarcastically.

He placed the gun on the nightstand beside him and ran his free hand over his face, ignoring the whiskers that scraped at his palm. “Look, for the time being, I’ll accept the fact that you and I are…friends. But whoever did do this to me is still out there somewhere. And I assume they’ll try again. Agreed?”

“Yes,” she replied, if somewhat reluctantly.

“If I have to face them with no memory and very little strength, I’d at least like to have my pants on when I do it.”

“Your pants and shirt were covered in blood. I burned them in the fireplace.”

When he raised an eyebrow, she let out an exasperated breath. “Fine. There is a change of clothes for you in my closet.”

She waved a hand toward the double doors beside a connecting bathroom. Another good idea, considering the state of his bladder.

But he’d be damned if he’d ask for help. He’d wait a moment for his legs to stop shaking. “Do I usually keep clothes in your closet?” he asked, knowing the answer would explain the pinch of desire he felt moments ago.

“You forgot them here,” Grace explained and glanced toward the open bedroom door.

“And here is?”

“Annapolis.” She paused for a moment, the small knit on her brow deepened. But when she brushed a stray hair from her cheek, the slight tremble of her fingers gave away her nervousness. She tucked her hands in her pockets. “You really don’t remember, do you?”