Madeline pushed open the door to Ash’s room and stopped, surprised. Ash rested on the edge of the bed, dressed casually in a T-shirt and sweats. An Ace bandage encased his knee. A pair of crutches leaned against the bed.
Warmth flashed in her while Tick’s questions rolled through her head. She clutched the door handle, a tentative smile curving her lips. “Hey.”
He grinned, despite the lines of pain bracketing his mouth. “Hey.”
“What are you doing?” She cringed at the inanity of the inquiry. “You’re up.”
“Yeah. I’m damn glad too.”
“How do you feel?”
Did you mean it when you said you loved me?
“Pretty good.” One corner of his mouth quirked up. “I convinced Mackey to let me out of here today.”
“Oh, that’s great.” Her voice emerged breathy and a little tremulous. “How are you getting home?”
“Well, I was going to call Stan, but now that you’re here…” His fabulous grin flashed. “Want to give me a ride?”
Tick’s suggestion that Ash would need someone to take care of him insinuated itself into her brain. The scary thing was she wanted to take care of him. Nurturing had never been part of her makeup, so it had to be him. Could she add “wants to take care of him” to Tick’s definition of being in love?
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Of course I’ll take you.”
If anything, his grin widened. “So get over here and kiss me.”
Her stomach lifted and turned over in a nervous little roll. Releasing the door, she crossed to stand before him, in the vee of his legs, injured one canted to the side. He rested his hands at her hips. She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned in to cover his mouth with her own. Beneath hers, his lips were warm and pliable, and his fingers flexed at her hips. Aware of his stitches, she kept the kiss light and teasing, gentle and loving. Curling closer, she laid a hand along his jaw, a hint of stubble abrading her palm. The sheer volume of emotion coursing through her, the absolute rightness of being with him, all swirled within her, coalescing into a solid core of emotion.
She pulled back, framing his face with hands that shook wildly. “I don’t want to love you. It scares me to even think about it.”
“Then don’t think about it. We’re not in a rush. We’re just together.” He rubbed his lips over her temple. “Take me home, Mad.”
“All right.” She managed to firm her lips enough to produce a tremulous smile. “Let’s spring you, Hardison.”
From the passenger seat, Ash studied Madeline while she drove. He was thrilled to be out of that hospital bed and on his way home. He was even more thrilled to have Madeline with him.
I don’t want to love you.
Her shaky statement trickled through his consciousness. She hadn’t said she
didn’t
love him. She’d said she didn’t
want
to love him—as in maybe she did.
It was enough to give him hope.
Relief washed through him when she turned into his driveway. Damn, he was glad to be home. Glad to have this woman with him at his side.
After she parked next to his truck, as close to the porch as she could get, she came around to open the door and assist him in extricating himself from the car. Once he was on his feet with the crutches keeping him steady, she didn’t move away, the constant warmth of her palm on his back burning all the way through him.
She used his keys to open the front door. “You should go to bed and rest.”
He canted an eyebrow at her. “I’ve been in bed long enough. I might sit my ass on the couch, but no way am I going straight to bed.”
He hobbled into the foyer. In the dim light, the spare key gleamed on the hall table, tangible evidence that she’d planned to leave him because of Allison’s stunt. He ignored the piece of metal and swung into the living room. She followed, hovering at the doorway.
“Are you hungry?” She fiddled with the hem of her jacket. “Should I get you something to drink?”
“All I want right now is you.” A smile quirked his mouth. “Get over here so I can hold you for a while.”
“Don’t think I’m following orders,” she said, crossing the room to settle beside him on the couch. He curved an arm around her shoulders and tucked her into his side. Contentment suffused him.
“Hmm, that feels good.” He rested his cheek on her hair and drank in the way she relaxed into him. “I’ve missed this. Missed you.”
She laughed. “I haven’t been anywhere, Ash. Most days, I’ve been with you, remember?”
“But not like this.” He smiled against the silk of her hair. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes.
He woke, not coming through layers of sleep, but jerking into a heart-pounding awareness, the way he sometimes did when he dreamed of Iraq. He stared at the ceiling, swallowing against the metallic taste of drug residue, fighting off a sudden wave of nausea. The angle of late-evening sunlight slanting in from the western-facing windows told him several hours had passed. He was alone, stretched out on the couch, his injured leg propped on two pillows from his bed.
“Hungry?” Madeline’s soft voice drew his dulled attention to the kitchen doorway.
“You can’t cook.” The inane words popped free, and he grimaced. His brain was on the fritz.
She laughed. “No, but I make a mean sandwich, and I do know how to microwave soup.”
“Sounds good.” Maybe food would settle his stomach, kick-start his fuzzy thought processes. First though, he needed to take care of another, more pressing biological need. He pushed himself to a seated position and swung his legs to the floor.
Agony shot through him. Holy fuck, the drugs had worn off. Sweat beaded on his upper lip, and he breathed through the waves of nausea gripping his gut.
“Ash?” Concern filled her shaking voice and gentle hands smoothed his hair and over his nape. “What do you need? Let me—”
“Got to take a leak.” Eyes clenched shut, he dragged in a couple more deep breaths. “Hand me my crutches, would you, babe?”
“When you are well, we’re having one serious discussion about that endearment.”
Aluminum clanked, and he opened his eyes to find her holding the crutches before him. Dreading the movement, he took hold of them and lurched to his feet, grateful for her steadying hands. “Thanks.”
“Do you need me to—”
“No.” He still had some pride. “I think I can manage.”
She nodded, hazel gaze calling him a liar. She motioned over her shoulder. “I’m going to fix you something to eat and get you a couple of those painkillers. Holler if you need help.”
It was slow going, taking him long minutes, but he made it down the hallway to the bathroom and back under his own power.
In the living room, she waited, the coffee table laid out with plates and bowls for two. Steam wafted lazily from tomato soup and what looked like thick Reuben sandwiches waited alongside. His mouth watered. Damn, he was hungrier than he’d thought.
She came forward to assist him on his way to the couch, one palm pressed to his chest, the other to his back.
“See?” The teasing note in her voice didn’t quite cover a strain that set the hair at his nape on end. “I’m not completely useless in the kitchen.”
“Looks great.” He let her help him settle on the couch. She handed him a glass and two white tablets. He tossed them off and hoped they were fast-acting. Hell, Mackey had said the surgery would make his knee feel better, not worse. Right now, it hurt like a son of a bitch.
She folded her legs to sit on the floor across from him. They ate in silence, although he didn’t miss the inscrutable looks she kept darting in his direction. Foreboding settled over him. Was she getting ready to run again? Talking herself out of loving him before they’d even begun?
Finally, when he’d devoured everything on his plate, and she’d pushed half her sandwich in his direction, she stopped fiddling with her napkin and looked up to focus her shuttered gaze on his.
“If I did love you…I don’t know how to do that, Ash. I mean, I don’t even know what that entails, what I’m supposed to do. I’ve never loved a man before.”
He caught his breath, staring at her, trying to get his damn brain in the right gear so he didn’t screw this to hell.
“You don’t have to do anything.” He cleared his throat because, damn, his voice wanted to come out as a shaky whisper. “You just have to be you and be with me.”
She puffed out an exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes. “You make it sound so simple. It can’t be like that. There have to be rules, things you’d expect—”
“No.” He shook his head, afraid even to take his eyes off her. “You’re already more than I ever expected to find.”
Tears washed her eyes with a crystalline sheen. “You can’t say that. I’m not—”
“You’re everything I want, just as you are.” He swallowed against the lump that had taken up residence in the back of his throat and went for broke. “I love you, Madeline. I know it’s too damn soon, I know you don’t know what to do with that, but God help me, I do.”
She brushed at the tears spilling off her lashes. “I’m scared, Ash.”
“I know, baby. So am I.”
Her face crumpled, tears falling harder. “I can’t love you and then fuck this up, and I always do that.”
“I think the only way you could mess this up now is by walking away, going back to that life you don’t live. I want you to live with me, Mad. Live with me and be my love.”
She laughed through her tears and swiped the back of her wrist across her nose. “You’re quoting poetry at me.”
“Marlowe.” His own eyes burned, nothing to do with his pain, everything to do with hers. “But that’s all I want you to do, Madeline, all I expect from you. ‘Come live with me and be my love’.”
She blinked hard, looked away, then turned wet, fierce eyes in his direction. She bit her lip and Ash’s stomach plummeted.
“I don’t know if I can.” A tremor hovered in the words, enough to give him hope.
He moistened dry lips and pushed out a single syllable.
“Try.”
With the quilt tossed aside, he rose and padded into the keeping room. The kitchen light cast soft illumination over the area, and he found Lee asleep in the portable crib and Caitlin in the armchair, laptop open, a legal pad balanced next to it.
“What are you doing up?” he whispered.
“I nursed Lee and couldn’t go back to sleep. I’ve been doing some research.”
“It’s not even four and it’s cold.” He dropped a kiss on the side of her neck. “Come back to bed.”
She rubbed a palm down his bare arm. “Look at this.”
His cheek close to hers, he blinked still-bleary eyes and focused on the laptop screen. An earnest young man grinned at him, a driver’s license shot, faintly familiar. “Who’s that?”
“Jamie Turner, Allison Barnett’s first husband.”
“Really.” He frowned and took a closer look. “He seems familiar.”
Caitlin turned her head and graced him with her I-don’t-believe-this look. “He looks like you.”
“No, he doesn’t.” The scoffing words trailed away. Yeah, the long-dead young man had dark hair and eyes like his own, but… “You think?”
“I think. This”—she opened a new tab and a prison-intake photo popped onto the screen—“is the second husband, Mike Brinson.”
“Mr. Southern Brotherhood.” Tick squinted at the photo. No resemblance here, except maybe another set of brown eyes. Brinson, bald and brawny, stared into the lenses with a coldness Tick had seen more than once on any number of suspects.
“That would be him.”
Tick rested his hand on her shoulder and rubbed the edges of her hair between his fingers. “Why, exactly, are you researching Allison’s former husbands in the middle of the night?”
“Probably the same reason you’ve been having trouble sleeping for the past week.” She lifted her shoulder to capture his hand against her cheek. “Because it looks like she’s going to get away with the part she played in Kelly Coker’s death and it makes me crazy.”
“I’ve looked at this thing six ways to Sunday and nothing I can come up with is enough to charge her yet.” He moved to sit on the ottoman before her. “You think she killed him?”
“I’d lay money on it.” She closed the laptop and set it aside. “Only a few problems with that. One, as you pointed out, it’s a closed case with a natural-causes death.”
“Two, the FBI doesn’t investigate murder, and FBI profilers on maternity leave don’t do lone gunman investigations.” He reached for her legal pad.
“And three, it’s not in your jurisdiction, either.” Caitlin wiggled deeper into the chair.
He tapped his finger against her notes. “You think she’s a sociopath?”
“Narcissistic at the least. Just long-distance diagnosing based on what I know.”
He flapped the pad against his leg. “Why kill him?”
“Money. Maybe to get him out of the way if she was already involved with Brinson. You could even theorize, if that resemblance between you and Turner isn’t a coincidence, that in killing him, she was exorcising you, although that’s really stretching it, I think.” She rested her chin on her hand. “Maybe just to get out of the marriage because she was tired of it.”
Nodding, he traced his thumb over the dark question mark she’d written behind the word “sociopath”. “You know, I went to high school with the investigator over at Cressley. I could talk to him… What could it hurt?”
She smiled and nudged his thigh with her toe. “Is there anyone you didn’t go to high school with?”
“It’s southwest Georgia. Not too many people around here I don’t know, precious.” He caught her ankle and tugged her toward him, leaning in to kiss her. Pulling back, he sobered. “But if she did kill him and someone can make that case, then maybe that’s another way to get justice for Kelly.”