Smoky Ridge Curse

“Why weren’t you surprised?” He sounded weaker than he expected, his voice thready and strained.

“By you showing up in the woods behind my mama’s house?”

He nodded.

“I’ve been waiting for you to show up here in Bitterwood ever since I heard you went AWOL.”

“How’d you know I’d come here?”

“The last case you were working started here. Where else would you go?” She shrugged as if the answer was too obvious to require explanation. “I am a little curious about why you went to my mama’s house, though.”

“That was the number the receptionist at Cooper Security gave me. She said you didn’t have a home phone yet, but you’d given them that number if anyone needed to contact you. I got the address through the phone number.”

“I see.” A fleeting emotion glimmered in her eyes.

“You knew I’d call looking for you. Didn’t you?”

She looked down at the bucket. “I’d better go get this cleaned up. You still hungry?”

The thought of food made him queasy. “I’m good for now. But you didn’t get to eat, so you go ahead.”

She disappeared from the living room for a few minutes, returning with a blanket and a pillow. “I have just the one bedroom, so it’s up to you. You want to stay here on the sofa or try getting up and going to the bedroom?”

He was tempted to come back with a little teasing innuendo but quelled the urge. “I’m good here. Not in the mood for moving around at the moment.”

“You didn’t get a look at the person who shot you?”

“Blind ambush. I was too busy running for my life.”

“So it might not have been this Cortland person.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t do his own dirty work. That’s not his style.”

She sat on the coffee table and leaned toward him, her elbows resting on her knees. She wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup, and she smelled like soapy water and disinfectant, but if he hadn’t been laid up with a gunshot wound, he’d have done his damnedest to get back into her bed. Because she was still the most beautiful, exciting, interesting woman he knew.

Time apart hadn’t done a damned thing to change that fact.

“Where did the shooting happen?” she asked.

“In Virginia. I’d stopped for coffee at a doughnut shop in Bristol. I came out of the shop heading for my car and got hit out of nowhere.”

“You were in a car? Where is it now?”

“Parked it in a junkyard near Maryville. I’ve been on foot ever since.”

She winced. “That’s a long walk for an injured man.”

“Tell me about it.” Grimacing, he shifted on the sofa, trying to find a less painful position. She reached across and helped him fluff up the pillow under his head, her cool hand brushing across his face.

“You need antibiotics. We should get you to a real doctor.”

“You know I can’t go to a doctor.”

“You were running around the woods with an open wound—”

“Guess we have to hope you cleaned it out sufficiently.”

She fell silent for a moment. Then her gaze rose to meet his, her dark eyes troubled. “Why does the FBI think you’re a traitor?”

“Because they have all sorts of damning evidence that suggests I am.”

“Are you?”

Her flatly stated question felt like a punch in the gut. “I thought you said you already knew the answer to that question.”

“Eight years is a long time. I’m not the same person. Maybe you’re not, either.”

He sat up to face her, ignoring the fire in his side. He caught her face between his palms, finding fierce satisfaction in the way her eyes dilated and her lips trembled apart. “You know me, Delilah. Better than anyone else in the world. That hasn’t changed. It never will.”

Her eyes fluttered closed, as if she couldn’t bear what she saw in his gaze. He let her go, slumping back against the sofa cushions.

She stood and picked up the blanket she’d laid on the coffee table beside her. “Why don’t you get some sleep? That’ll do more to help you heal than anything.”

He stretched out on his good side, watching her unfold the blanket with quick, efficient hands. “I’m sorry.”

She shot him an exasperated look.

“I didn’t know who else to come to.”

Placing the blanket over him, she shook her head. “I needed a spot of trouble in my life again,” she murmured. “Things were threatening to get a little too tame around here, and you know how I hate that.”

He closed his fingers over her wrist, holding her in place as she started to straighten. “I’m sorry about more than landing on your doorstep.”

Her eyes darkened. “Yeah, me, too.”

He let her go, and she gave the blanket a tug at the bottom, covering his feet.

“Hey, Brand?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“You could really use a bath and some deodorant.”

He grinned at her as she started out of the room. “Duly noted.”

She stopped in the doorway, turning back to face him. “Do you think Cortland knows where you are now?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “There’s a lot I don’t know.”