Something To Talk About

She lowered the naturally dark lashes with their enticing curl at the ends, shielding her eyes from his gaze. “You’ll get used to them,” she said in an offhand manner. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

A groan forced its way between his clenched lips as he put weight on his throbbing knee. The run, then the sudden stop and his full weight coming down on the rebuilt bone and the synthetic replacement kneecap had probably undone a month’s worth of healing. He cursed silently, the sensual hunger at last beaten into submission by the pain of movement.

A cynical wisdom murmured that her guilt over his pain might be the best way into the apartment over the garage. He stumbled a bit as they struggled up the short set of stairs and wasn’t sure if it was deliberate or due to the weakness in his leg. She tightened her grip and cast him a worried glance as they eased into the house.

“There,” the widow said, lowering her arms to let him settle on a comfortable maple kitchen chair.

He didn’t let his arm trail across her back or hips as they disengaged, but he had a sudden, surprising sensation about how it might feel. Clenching his teeth, he tried to overcome the thoughts that stabbed at him as relentlessly as the hot needles in his leg.

“Would you like a glass of tea?” she asked.

“You have anything stronger?”

“Bourbon.”

“A double.” He wiped water and the sweat of painful effort off his face with a hand that shook. “Nothing like being as weak as a baby in front of a woman.”

He tried to smile in order to wipe the concern out of her eyes. Pity was the one thing he didn’t need and wouldn’t accept from anyone.

“That’s okay. Shall I fix an ice bag for your knee?”

“No, it’ll be okay.” He laid his gun on a pink-and-green-striped place mat on the table and leaned back with a bone-weary sigh against a cushion tied to the chair.

A chintz-and-china type, he decided, glancing around the spotless kitchen with its bright floral touches. Down-to-earth, too. She had the soft Western drawl he’d noticed in the female police detective. It was pleasant—

“Dad?”

Jess jerked around with a frown. Jeremy stood with his nose an inch from the screen door, gazing in at them.

“I thought I told you to stay in the truck,” he said, the sharp edge of his anger and pain boiling over.

The widow gave him a puzzled frown, then turned a dazzling smile toward the door. “Hi, come on in. It’s open.”

Jeremy stood on the step, his bony kid’s face set in a mulish scowl, and stared at him through the screen. Jess tamped down his temper. “You heard the lady. Come in.”

The boy slid inside and stood a foot from the door like a wild creature staying near his escape hole.

Jess felt the regret rise all at once, bitter with his own resentment in acknowledgment of lost opportunities with this person who was a carbon copy of his younger, once idealistic self. Pain hit him again, this time in his heart. No one had ever told him regret was so hard to live with.

His gaze collided with the woman’s. Her incredible eyes filled with pity. The cold shield of past humiliations snapped shut around him. He might be a has-been cop, but at least he wasn’t a falling-down drunk the way his own father had been. Saturday-night brawls had been the order of life in his youth. His son had never had to face that. The boy had had it easy compared to the neighborhood where he’d grown up.

He shook off the memories of the past and concentrated on the pain of the present. He struggled to pull the jeans leg up, but it was hopeless. The material was too tight, his knee too swollen.

“I’ll help, Dad. You’d better get some ice on that. Remember what the doctor said.”

Jess was surprised at his son’s concern, then doubly so when Jeremy dropped to his haunches in front of him and tried to help. “It’s okay, son. I’ll take care of it later.”

He glanced up to find his hostess observing him with a slight frown line between her eyes. A sense of her uneasiness came to him. “You’ll need an ice pack,” she said, and set to work with an unnecessary show of industry.

He hesitated, then retrieved a knife from his pocket and proceeded to split the jeans along the seam. The scar tissue, when exposed, was an angry red welt along the top and side of his knee. The flesh puffed out like an adder about to strike. So much for taking it easy for three months.

“Damn,” he said softly.

She turned to face him and dropped the container of ice she’d removed from the freezer. Ice cubes hit and skittered across the shining green-and-white kitchen floor.

“Oh, shoot,” she said in aggrieved tones, not looking his way. She scooped some cubes into a plastic bag, added some water and zipped it closed. Her face was pale.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He was puzzled at the tremor in her hand when she handed the bag to him. He saw her glance at his knee, then away. It was the scars that bothered her. Funny, but he wouldn’t have taken her for the squeamish sort.

While he placed the ice pack on his leg, she swept the icy debris out the back door. None of the wary humor he’d noticed earlier was visible. What was it with a woman who could face down a stranger with a gun but was profoundly disturbed at the sight of a few scars?

A woman who had been terribly frightened by something in her past, the cop in him answered. He hated it when women and children were hurt, often by the very men who were supposed to look after and protect them. Which was why he’d become a cop, he supposed.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said in the same soothing tone he used with victims of domestic violence, the same tone she’d used with him while facing his weapon.

“Of course not. I never thought you would.” She replaced the broom in the closet. Her eyes met his for a second.

The sparkle was back, and he breathed deeply as the tension in his stomach uncoiled. “The ice is helping. The swelling seems to have stopped, and the pain is easing up.”

“Good.” She poured a double shot of bourbon and set the glass on the place mat near the gun. “Would you excuse me? I need to change clothes.”

“Sure. We’ll be here.” He wasn’t going anywhere fast on that knee.

She smiled and nodded, then hurried out. He heard her footsteps on the stairs a second later.

Kate locked her bedroom door and dashed to the bedside phone. She called the number that went straight to Shannon’s line at the police department.

“Bannock, here.”

“Shannon—”

“Hi, Kate. No, I have not forgotten your birthday luncheon tomorrow. I even got you a card.”

“I’m expecting homemade cookies, too. Lots of ’em.”

“Oh, all right,” Shannon replied with pretend grumpiness.

“Shannon, did you send a policeman out to my place? A guy by the name of…” She couldn’t remember.

“Jess Fargo. Yeah. He needs a place to recuperate from an injury, wants to fish and relax in the country with his son, he said. I take it they arrived safely?”

Kate thought of the hose and the gun. “Well, yes. I just wanted to follow up on his credentials. I hadn’t planned on renting the apartment now that Valerie has married and moved out. I thought I’d have the summer to myself.”

Val, a local elementary school teacher, had snagged the only eligible doctor in town, much to several other citiziens’ chagrin. She and the doctor were on their honeymoon.