Darker Than Midnight

He lifted his head, and those eyes pinned her to the spot.

“Here,” she said, handing him a dry towel. “Wipe down and then put these on.”

He took the towel from her, seeming wary. She set the clothes on the mantel, then turned her back to him, removing the towel from her head and using it to wipe up the spots of water they’d left on the floor.

When the floor was dry, she took the comforter and spread it there, tossed the pillows on top and set the blanket nearby. Then she moved the fireplace screen aside and added more logs to the fire.

By the time she had replaced the screen, he was dressed. The sweatpants were comically short on his long legs, but the hooded sweatshirt was roomy enough. He’d pulled on the thick socks and rubbed his wet, dark hair with a towel so that it stuck up like the feathers of a wet hen, and he stood there, looking uncomfortable.

She picked up her wet jeans, hung them over the fireplace screen, then reached for his discarded clothes to do the same. But as she began hanging them, he took them from her rather hastily.

She stood there, blinking at him as he clutched the wet garments in his hands. “What are you afraid of?” she asked softly.

He averted his eyes, draping the items over the screen himself, with great care. “I’ll go as soon as they’re dry.”

“You’re on the run,” she said. “You’re in hiding.”

He said nothing, just bent to pick up the shoes, and placed them on the hearthstone, nearer the heat.

“Listen, you just saved my life, okay? Stay here until morning. If you don’t want me to ask any questions, I won’t. I owe you that much.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “I…can’t…no one can know I’ve been here.”

“No? Why not?”

He lowered his head tiredly.

“I’m sorry. I said I wouldn’t ask questions, didn’t I?”

He drew a breath, shivered a little.

Jax lay down on the comforter and pulled the blanket over her shoulders. “It’s up to you,” she said. “Stay or go.”

He stared at her for a long moment. Finally, he said, “If you tell anyone…I’m here…I’m as good as dead.”

She opened her eyes, met his. She thought he might be a cop. She knew he was in trouble, on the run, from what she didn’t know. But he had saved her life, risked his own to do so. And she wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. “I sure as hell won’t be telling anyone tonight,” she said. “No phones hooked up yet. Cell doesn’t get reception in this spot, either. You have to drive up the road a mile.”

He hesitated a moment longer, then he crawled into her makeshift nest on the floor, curling under the covers beside her.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said, “you’ll feel more like talking. Maybe I can help you with…with whatever it is that’s wrong.”

“No one can help me,” he said. And his voice sounded utterly hopeless. It clutched at her heart. Then he went on. “Why do you carry a gun?”

Something told her not to tell him she was a cop. Hell, he’d find out soon enough if he was in this town long. Everyone here knew she was a cop. But she had a feeling if she told him tonight, he would bolt. Not that she was sure he was a criminal, exactly. But he was definitely running from something.

“Protection,” she told him. “A woman, living all alone.”

“You’re not afraid of living alone.”

She lifted her brows and rolled onto her side to face him. “And how do you know that?”

“You’re not afraid of me,” he told her.

“Should I be?”

He closed his eyes as if the question brought great pain. They didn’t open again.

“Should I be afraid of you?” she asked again.

“I don’t know.” His lashes were wet. Not from the water, but from tears squeezing out from his deep brown eyes. “Maybe. Probably.”

Her heart contracted in her chest. His words might be a warning, or a sign of the confusion she’d sensed in him when she’d found him sleeping in her bed. “Maybe I should sleep upstairs,” she whispered.

He said nothing, so she started to sit up. And then she gasped as the man’s arms came around her. His head lay against her chest, and she thought he might be crying. “Please stay,” he said.

Frowning hard, utterly confused and wishing the hell she’d kept her gun with her, she found herself touching his still-damp hair, gently moving her fingers through it. “All right,” she said. “All right.”

She relaxed against the pillows and held the troubled man, soothing his quaking shoulders, until he went still, and she knew he was deeply asleep.

And then, even though the warmth of the fire was seeping into her, chasing the chill from deep in her bones, soothing her muscles, making her feel sleepy, and even though she hadn’t had a hot-looking man—even a skinny one like this—in her arms in what seemed like an eternity, she eased herself away from him, out from under the covers, and got up to her feet. She stood there a moment, staring down at him as he slept.

A fellow cop, in deep trouble, either real or imagined, had just saved her life. She owed the man. Owed him enough to let him stay the night, let him get warm. Maybe even enough not to turn him in for breaking and entering, or mention his presence here until she had figured out who he was and what was going on with him. She did not, however, owe him so much that she needed to become a naive idiot in order to repay him. She went up to her bedroom and spent the next half hour patiently cleaning and drying her weapon. When she put it back together, she loaded it with a fresh, dry clip. She took the bullets out of the other clip, dried it thoroughly and set it aside. She’d toss the bullets. They might fire, but they might not, and she didn’t ever want to be in a predicament where she couldn’t be sure her gun would work. She’d buy some more ammo tomorrow.

She went back downstairs, took her pillow from the comforter and her coat from the hook by the door. She wrapped the coat around herself, rested the pillow against the wall and leaned against it, near the fire, in a spot where she could have a full view of her houseguest.

It wasn’t a very exciting show. He slept like the dead.

Ethan had turned off his pager after work at his wife’s request. They were having dinner with her parents that evening. It was important, she said, and that thing going off in the middle of a conversation was just rude.

He’d indulged her. He always indulged Victoria. And there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for her parents. They thought the world of him.

So he’d spent the evening at the Richardsons’ endless and elegant dining room table beneath a crystal chandelier. Their newest pretty maid, Lorraine, served them in her crisp black-and-white uniform. It was nice, the life Randall and Jennifer Richardson shared. A life into which they’d welcomed him with open arms.

They treated him far better than his own father ever had.

So the least he could do was turn off the damn pager.

Of course, it turned out to be the one night he shouldn’t have done so.

By the time he and Victoria returned home, the hospital had left six messages on his voice mail. He saw the light blinking even as he helped Victoria out of her coat, the fur soft against his palms. It was rabbit. She’d wanted mink. Maybe next year.

“Oh, honey, must you?” she asked, pursing her lips when she saw his eyes on the telephone. “It’s been such a beautiful evening. I was hoping we could end it together.”

He slid his hand around her nape, his fingers tickled by the touch of her short brown hair, and kissed her forehead. “There’s nothing I’d like more,” he told her. “But I’d better at least check, okay?”

Sighing, she nodded, hugged him close, then turned and hurried through the house, lifting her shapely calves in between steps to tug off her stiletto heels. “I’m going to run a bath, love.”

“I’ll be right up.” He watched her go toward the stairs as he punched the button for messages.