course it had to be his already injured arm. Two weeks ago he’d had surgery on his shoulder for a bad rotator cuff, an injury he’d had for years but left unrepaired for lack of funds. Working construction these past two years for Alex Sarno had finally given him enough to check himself into a hospital for the procedure.
But how would he pay for a gunshot wound?
The Spencer money perhaps? And not because he’d taken a bullet on their property. According to the guy who’d shown up in his hospital room after the surgery, their money was also his money.
All these years he had an inheritance to claim and never knew.
Thirty years ago, a car was pushed over the side of a mountain. The crash left two very rich parents dead and their three children orphans. Except when the smoke cleared and the blaze was extinguished, only two children were accounted for. Little eighteen-month-old Luke Spencer’s body had never been recovered.
Instead, he grew up across the country in a cabin in the Washington mountains, playing the unwanted son to Phil and Cecilia Stone.
Ian bit hard as he ripped off his green T-shirt, the words Sarno Construction scrawled across the front. His wound seeped blood, but not at an alarming rate. He would live to collect his inheritance and soon the T-shirts would read Sarno and Stone. Alex had already offered him a partnership. The idea of being a business owner was more than a dream come true. Things like this didn’t happen to Ian Stone, or Ian the Idiot as his father called him too many times to count.
But he wasn’t Ian Stone, if he believed the guy in his hospital room. He was the missing sibling, Luke Spencer.
Judging by the poor welcome home, however, his brother and sister didn’t want to share the wealth. But would they take another shot at him to see they didn’t have to?
Ian bounded around the sofa bed and pulled the blinds closed just in case. With his teeth he ripped the package of cleansing wipes open.
A bang on his door jerked him alert.
“Now’s not a good time!” he shouted. He hoped it was just the landlady, Mrs. Wilson or Wilton, or whatever. A busybody was what she was. So many questions. Where are you from, Mr. Stone? Do you have family in Norcastle, Mr. Stone? Perhaps I know them. What are their names?
“But at least she didn’t shoot me,” he muttered, then seethed when the alcohol splashed over his wound.
The door knocked again, harder.
“Go away!” he yelled, biting through the pain.
“Ian Stone, this is Police Chief Sylvie Laurent. I need you to open this door.”
The cop from the track? The one with the eyes. Great. “I did nothing wrong. Leave me alone!”
“Sir, I didn’t say you did anything wrong. But you were shot right in front of me. It’s my job to make sure you live. Open this door, or I will call for backup and do this the hard way.”
Backup? That’s all he needed, people in uniform taking sides. They’d probably arrest him for extortion. Ian figured he could play the victim to the little slip of a woman they called chief. The fact that she was the chief stumped him.
She shouldn’t be too hard to get rid of.
Ian opened the door ajar. “I’m fine, Officer, really. I can take care—”
The door banged in on him with a force that sent him backward. She jammed a thumb over her shoulder as she pushed past him. Dark blotches of blood drops lay stark against the snow behind her. “You’re dripping. You are not fine. Now take a seat,” she commanded, pointing to the stool at the breakfast bar.
The cop washed her hands, ignoring the fact that Ian remained standing. She removed a pair of latex gloves from a compartment on her belt. “Sit,” she said and slapped them on.
He obeyed and she quickly cleaned his wound and prodded around for the bullet.
Her ministrations killed, but Ian wasn’t about to let on in the presence of this small, but tough, woman. While on the stool, their eye levels matched.
Green.
He smiled.
“I’m sorry I’m hurting you,” she said without glancing up from his wound.
“Hurting? Nah, not at all. I could stay here all day.” He leaned closer to her face, zeroing in on her almond-shaped eyes. “They’ve got to be jade.”
“What does?” she asked absently.
“Your eyes. They’re the inspiration of epic poems. Marlowe, Yeats, Ovid. I’m not sure any of the greats would do them justice. When I saw you at the track, I thought it was a trick of the sun, but it wasn’t. Has anyone ever told you how beautiful they are?”
A startled look from under long curved lashes came his way. Her eyes narrowed. “Has anyone ever told you, you are a glutton for pain?” She pushed her finger through his wound.
Ian yelled out and bit down under her digging. He moaned and gagged and stopped breathing as she continued, succumbing under her thumb to being a puddle of feebleness.
Her gloved fingers removed the bullet and she held it up to him with a brilliant smile of victory. “Got it.”
The slug blurred in front of him and he gagged again. “I think I’m going to pass out.” He’d still yet to breathe.
“It’s possible. You also need stitches to stop the bleeding.” She put the bullet in a small plastic bag she took from another belt compartment and reached for the bandages. “I need to take you to the hospital.”
“No.” Ian straightened, swallowing the bile rising in his throat. “You obviously know what you’re doing. Just do what you have to do and stitch me up.”
She applied butterfly bandages to pull the holes closed, but shook her head. “Sir, these won’t hold. You need to let me take you.”
“You gonna pay for it?”
She stilled her hand. “You don’t want help because of finances?”
“More like lack of them.”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
“You obviously never had to enter a hospital without a way to pay for your visit.”
The chief frowned.
He’d upset her. The idea of hurting her made him feel like a creep. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“We all have our stories, but I can tell you the hospital will not turn you away, no matter what yours is. Trust me. Let me bring you. It’s only about a thirty-minute ride.”
“Thanks, but you can save the gas.”
“I have to go there anyway. That crash at the track? My son was in it. He’s probably already flipping out that I’m not there.”
Ian studied the officer’s
