are you?” she murmured under her breath. Curiosity had her glancing at his left hand. No ring. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a wife somewhere, beside herself with worry.
“He’s a patient, not a man,” she reminded herself. But a torso like that was difficult to ignore.
Taking several cotton swabs, she soaked them in alcohol, then started to clean the area around his wound. The moment she touched the swab to his skin, she saw his muscles contract. The next second he grabbed her wrist. Hard.
It took Marja a full minute to push her pounding heart back out of her throat. Her eyes shifted to his face. He was most definitely awake. And scowling like dark storm clouds over the prairie.
“Welcome back.” Marja did her best to sound flippant.
Taking a breath, trying to get his bearings, Kane released the woman’s wrist. His eyes moved quickly around the area. It wasn’t familiar in the slightest. Where the hell was he?
His eyes shifted back to the woman sitting on the edge of the sofa. There was something white and wet in her hand. “What happened?”
Setting the swab aside, Marja looked at him. She almost wished he was still unconscious. This next part was going to be a lot more painful for him awake. “You fainted.”
Kane sneered at the mere suggestion. “Men don’t faint.”
Oh God, he was one of those. Macho with an extra doze of testosterone. She should have known the second she caught a glimpse of his abdominal muscles. “You passed out,” she rephrased, then waited. “Better?”
He shrugged. The movement caused him more than a small amount of discomfort. He felt as if he’d gotten hit by a truck. No, wait, a Mustang. Her Mustang.
“Better,” he rasped. And then he saw the array of things on the table. He honed in on the scalpel. “You planning on using those on me?”
“Unless I can get you to change your mind about going to the hospital, yes.” Maybe if she was lucky, he’d pass out again.
Kane shook his head. The room tilted slightly, then righted itself. “No hospital.”
She didn’t think so. Though she knew nothing about him, she had a feeling he was as stubborn as hell. But then, most men thought they knew best—even when they usually didn’t.
Going over to the liquor cabinet, she found a partially empty bottle of whiskey. Tony had brought it over the other week to celebrate something. At the moment, she couldn’t recall what. Crossing back to the sofa, she offered the bottle to him. “This is going to hurt,” she said simply.
But Kane declined the drink. As far as he was concerned, he was still on duty, still needed a clear head. Alcohol made people stupid. It had certainly evaporated his uncle’s brain.
“Go ahead,” he ordered.
Well, he wasn’t a coward, she thought. Faced with having a bullet dug out sans anesthetic, most men would have grabbed the whiskey with both hands.
Picking up the scalpel, Marja inserted it into the wound. She kept one eye on her patient as she began to slowly probe the wound, listening for the sound of metal on metal. His face reddened. She looked for something to distract him.
Coming up empty, she finally asked, “Why don’t you want me to take you to a hospital?”
Kane took in slow, small breaths, struggling not to tense up. Trying to focus on her question, he gave her an excuse he thought she’d believe.
“I’m between jobs. How easy do you think it’ll be—” sweat was oozing down his brow as she probed deeper “—to get one if they look into my background and see that I was shot? I—” he took a deeper breath, as if that could somehow stand between him and the fiery pain “—don’t want to have to deal with a lot of suspicious, annoying questions.”
She raised her eyes to his for a second, pausing. “Like why were you shot?”
“Yes, like that.”
And then she heard it. That slight noise that told her she’d found her quarry. Metal against metal. Very carefully she went deeper, digging beneath the bullet until she managed to draw it out of the hole it had made. The stranger hadn’t made a single sound. What the hell was he made of?
She realized she was holding her breath and let it go as she deposited the bullet onto the cotton swab on the table. “Why were you shot?”
Pain undulated through him like a marauding snake. Kane took in a deep, shaky breath before answering her.
“Unsuccessful mugging,” he finally managed to say. “I didn’t have anything to mug. Guy got mad. I pushed him and ran. And he shot me. I kept on running. Until you stopped me with your car.” It had gone down differently, all except the last part. But for his purpose and her curiosity, he felt it would do. He looked at the bullet on the table. The bullet she’d removed. He raised his eyes to hers. “I’d say we’re even.”
Chapter 3
His eyes met hers, held her captive, so that she couldn’t look away.
Before Marja could respond to his comment, strains of a popular song came out of nowhere, filling the air.
Her cell phone was ringing.
An alert expression instantly came into the stranger’s eyes. But he didn’t tell her not to answer, or try to stop her when she took the phone out of her pocket and flipped it open.
Marja had a feeling she knew who was calling even before she glanced at the L.E.D. screen to read the number.
Tania. True to her word, it was approximately fifteen minutes since she’d left. Marja placed the phone to her ear.
“This is Marja,” she announced. And then she smiled patiently. She glanced toward the other occupant in the room. “Yes, I’m still alive. And yes, he’s still here.” She paused, listening and then nodded even though Tania wasn’t there to see. “Fine, you do that. Bye.”
With one finger against the lid, Marja snapped the phone closed again, aware that the stranger had been watching her closely the entire time. His gaze seemed to delve beneath her skin, as if taking inventory of all her veins and capillaries. It made her feel as if she owed him some sort of explanation, even though she knew she didn’t.
“She’s just checking to see if you killed me yet,” she told him, and saw his eyebrows rise with a silent question. Marja realized that she was getting ahead of herself again. There were pieces missing out of her narrative. “My sister,” she explained. “Tania. She helped me bring you up here. You were out, so I couldn’t really manage—”
“Are you alone here?” he cut in gruffly, stemming the flow of more words.
She didn’t answer immediately, torn between lying to him in the interest of possible self-preservation or telling him the truth, which, if he was a homicidal maniac, could prove dangerous.
Marja decided to settle for something in between.
“At the moment, yes. But that’s subject
