that unless he’d questioned Tony, which she was pretty certain he wouldn’t do—Ry was no gentleman, but he had kept their brief affair quiet. The only people who knew about it were her own family members and a few close friends.
“Why didn’t you call Blu? Or Hewitt?”
“Brodie?”
“Come on, Margo. I know you’ve been seeing him.”
Margo didn’t disagree. Let him think whatever he wanted to. She said, “I couldn’t get a hold of either of them.”
“But you tried?”
“Yes, I tried.”
“You really need to move out of that damn neighborhood. It makes no sense you living in that dump and surrounding yourself with those kind of people.”
It made perfect sense to Margo, and because it did, she felt like arguing. “It’s close to work, and ‘those kind’ of people are my kind of people.”
“That’s crap. You have a job, take a bath regularly and don’t sleep with a bottle. I hardly think they’re your kind of people. What you mean is, they’re Blu’s kind of people.”
“The rent’s cheap.” Margo refused to let him win a single round. He had won far too much from her already.
“So the rumors are true, then. You’re giving half of every dime you make to Blu so he can throw it away on that worthless fishing fleet your father left him.”
“The fleet isn’t worthless. How dare you call it that!” Furious, Margo fisted the bed with her good hand, then gritted her teeth as a sharp pain shot into her injured arm. Gasping for air, she said, “The fleet was my daddy’s whole life. And Blu wants it to be his. One day it’ll be back to being the best fleet on the Gulf. It was once, it can be again.”
“Take it easy. You’re going to start bleeding again.”
Margo leaned back and rested her head on the headboard and closed her eyes.
“You should be more concerned with your own life. Your own future, not Blu’s.”
“My life’s perfect.”
“This is perfect?”
Margo opened her eyes. “This could have happened to anyone, anywhere in this city. Where have you been? The crime rate here is double to anywhere else, maybe triple. Now, are you going to sew me up or not?”
He made a rude snort, then crossed his arms over his bare chest. “That’s the favor? Stitch you up?”
“I haven’t asked anything of you. Nothing since…” The words lodged in Margo’s throat. She tried again. “This isn’t a whole lot worse than the time I got that fishhook in my leg. You cut the hook out and sewed me up, remember? Good as new, is what Mama said when she inspected the job you’d done. Don’t pretend you can’t sew me back together because I know different.”
A long minute ticked by.
Margo jerked her chin up a notch higher. “Fix my arm good as new, old man. You owe me that much. And by most standards, I’d say you’re getting off cheap.”
He flinched at her none-too-subtle reference to the past, then promptly got mad. “This isn’t some damn fishhook accident. Hell, you’ve been shot! Damn lucky to be alive by the looks of it! Another inch or two and—”
“When did you take up shouting?”
“What?”
“I thought you hated irrational behavior. Doesn’t shouting and ranting fall into that category?”
“I never rant!”
“Never say never,” Margo taunted. “Tonight I had to eat that word.”
“You could have died!”
“If that’s true, and you care even a smidgen, I’d think you would be willing to help me out.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“No,” Margo argued, “the point is, you owe me and I’m here to collect. Now are you going to be a bastard and deny me, or sew me up so I don’t bleed all over this expensive comforter?”
He didn’t move.
Loath to be reduced to pleading, Margo forced herself. “Ry, please. I don’t have anywhere else to go. If I go to Mama’s, she’ll fly into a panic and start crying and praying both at the same time. She has high blood pressure now, and…” She could see he was weakening. “I suppose I could pay to have it stitched up on the street. I never thought about that, and I know this guy on the waterfront who—”
“The hell you will!” He raked both hands through his hair.
Margo curiously watched him start to pace back and forth at the foot of the massive bed. She had always admired Ry’s ability to remain calm even in a crisis. Now she wondered what could have happened in the past two years to have changed that. This was not the same overconfident, almost cocky cop she’d known two years ago. No, this new up-tight version appeared to be more human, even a bit vulnerable. And damn him, more likeable than the old version—that is, if she didn’t hate him so much.
She held her breath, watched him wear out the thick rug. Suddenly he stopped pacing and faced her. “It’s going to hurt like a son of a—”
“Forewarned is—”
“Not worth a damn if it doesn’t change the fact. In this case, it won’t. You need a local anesthetic.”
“I won’t whine and call you names, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Margo promised.
“If I do this, I’m going to expect a detailed account of what really happened.” His eyes drilled her. “What really happened, Margo? Not some damn story about a mugger in a hat bigger than his head.”
“It’s the truth,” she insisted.
He strode to the door, then turned back. “Do I look stupid?”
No, he didn’t look stupid. He looked big and strong, and dammit, as handsome as ever. Margo hated to admit that one very disturbing fact, but he was Texas tough and remarkably well built, and…
Margo’s gaze slid down his impressive bare chest. Further. Never one to mince words, she said, “No, Ry, you don’t look stupid. You look painfully uncomfortable. Do I still affect you, then?”
Her blunt assessment of his aroused condition was met with a frustrated, crude one-liner. Then he was gone.
Feeling a little better, now that she’d definitely won round one, Margo slumped against the headboard. Moments later she heard cupboard doors banging across the hall, followed by several colorful adjectives. He was angry, there was no question about that, but not so much so that he wouldn’t help her, and that’s all that mattered at the moment.
As his tirade faded, Margo sighed then closed her eyes.
