to be, Wes reported vaguely, and due to circumstances out of their control, they’d been discovered. Men with assault weapons started shooting, and Bobby had stepped in front of Wes, taking some bullets and saving his scrawny hide.
“Be nice to him,” Wes had written to Colleen. “He nearly died. He almost got his butt shot off, and his shoulder’s still giving him pain. Treat him kindly. I’ll call as soon as I’m back in the States.”
“If he can say all that in an e-mail,” Colleen told Bobby sternly, “you could have told me at least a little about what happened. You could have told me you were shot instead of letting me think you’d hurt yourself in some normal way—like pulling a muscle playing basketball.”
He handed her the piece of paper. “I didn’t think it was useful information,” he admitted. “I mean, what good is telling you that a bunch of bad guys with guns tried to kill your brother a few weeks ago? Does knowing that really help you in any way?”
“Yes, because not knowing hurts. You don’t need to protect me from the truth,” Colleen told him fiercely. “I’m not a little girl anymore.” She rolled her eyes. “I thought we cleared that up last night.”
Last night. When some extremely passionate kisses had nearly led to getting it on right out in the open, in an alley not far from Harvard Square.
“I got coffee and muffins,” Bobby said, deftly changing the subject. “Do you have time to sit and talk?”
Colleen watched as he lowered himself back onto the grass. Gingerly. Why hadn’t she noticed that last night? She was so self-absorbed. “Yes. Great. Let’s talk. You can start by telling me how many times you were shot and exactly where.”
He glanced at her as she sat down beside him, amusement in his dark eyes. “Trust Wes to be melodramatic. I took a round in the upper leg that bled kind of heavily. It’s fine now—no problem.” He pulled up the baggy leg of his shorts to reveal a deeply tanned, enormously muscular thigh. There was a fresh pink scar up high on his leg. Where it would really hurt a whole lot to be shot. Where there were major veins—or were they arteries?—which, if opened, could easily cause a man to bleed to death very quickly.
Wes hadn’t been melodramatic at all. Colleen couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stop staring at that scar. Bobby could have died.
“It’s my shoulder that’s giving me the trouble,” Bobby continued, pulling his shorts leg back down. “I was lucky I didn’t break a bone, but it’s still pretty sore. I’ve got limited mobility right now—which is frustrating. I can’t lift my arm much higher than this.”
He demonstrated, and Colleen realized that his ponytail wasn’t a fashion statement after all. He was wearing his hair like that because he wasn’t physically able to put it back in his usual neat braid.
“I’m supposed to take it easy,” he told her. “You know, not push it for another week.”
He handed her a cup of coffee and held open a bag that contained about a half a dozen enormous muffins. She shook her head. Her appetite was gone.
“Can you do me a favor?” she asked. “Next time you or Wes get hurt, even if it’s just something really little, will you call me and let me know? Please? Otherwise I’m just going to worry about you all the time.”
Bobby shook his head. “Colleen…”
“Don’t Colleen me,” she countered. “Just promise.”
He looked at her. Sighed. “I promise. But—”
“No buts.”
He started to say something, then stopped, shaking his head instead. No doubt he’d spent enough time around Skellys to know arguing was useless. Instead he took a sip of his coffee and gazed out at the river.
“How many times have you saved Wes’s life?” she asked him, suddenly needing to know.
“I don’t know. I think I lost count somewhere between two and three million.” The laughter lines around his eyes crinkled as he smiled.
“Very funny.”
“It’s just not that big a deal,” he said.
“It is to me,” she returned. “And I’m betting it’s a pretty big deal to my brother, too.”
“It’s really only a big deal to him because I’m winning,” Bobby admitted.
At first his words didn’t make sense. And then they made too much sense. “You guys keep score?” she asked in disbelief. “You have some kind of contest going…?”
Amusement danced in his eyes. “Twelve to five and a half. My favor.”
“Five and a half?” she echoed.
“He got a half point for getting me back to the boat in one piece this last time,” he explained. “He couldn’t get a full point because it was partially his fault I needed his help in the first place.”
He was laughing at her. Oh, he wasn’t actually laughing aloud, but Colleen knew that, inside, he was silently chortling away.
“You know,” she said with a completely straight face, “it seems only fair that if you save someone’s life that many times, you ought to be able to have wild sex with that person’s sister, guilt free.”
Bobby choked on his coffee. Served him right.
“So what are you doing tonight?” Colleen asked, still in that same innocent voice.
He coughed even harder, trying to get the liquid out of his lungs.
‘“Be nice to him,’” she read aloud from Wes’s e-mail. She held it out for him to see. “See, it says it right there.”
“That’s not what Wes meant,” Bobby managed to gasp.
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“Are you okay?” she asked.
His eyes were tearing, and he still seemed to have trouble breathing. “You’re killing me.”
“Good. I’ve got to go, so—” She started to stand up.
“Wait.” He coughed again, tugging her back down beside him. “Please.” He drew in a breath, and although he managed not to cough, he had to clear his throat several times. “I really need to talk to you about what happened last night.”
“Don’t you mean what didn’t happen?” She pretended to be fascinated with her coffee cup, with folding up the little flap on the plastic lid so that she could take a sip without it bumping into her nose.
What had happened last night was that she had found out—the hard way—that Bobby Taylor didn’t want her. At least not enough to take what she’d offered. At least not as much as she wanted him. It was possible he’d only used his fear of Wes’s disapproval as an excuse to keep from going home with her. After all, it had worked, hadn’t it? It had worked very well.
This
