Thief of Hearts (3 page)

She smiled. “Hardly. I’ll be close. Good night.”

“Wait!” But the window closed firmly and when he darted to it to look out, it was so dark he couldn’t see her anymore.

* * * * *

Ten hours later, he let himself into his apartment. A long shift, but a busy and rewarding one…only one death and that one a DNR, an eighty-seven year old woman who had been praying for death for the better part of a year, according to her calmly tearful daughter. Tough, but it could have been so much worse. Was so much worse, frequently.

He often wondered how he had ended up where he was—a physician, someone who dealt with death every day. In school he’d been an amiable goof-off, the class clown, never taking anything or anyone seriously. Strange that he had been drawn to a career that was, at times, absolutely the furthest thing from humorous.

It wasn’t that he’d lost someone close to him, had been marked forever by the death of a parent or close friend. Hell, he’d never had so much as a pet die on him. But in college he’d taken an EMT course and as part of the training he had to volunteer at a busy metro hospital.

Looking at the suffering around him, he watched the doctors and nurses ease that suffering, pull off miracle cures, reunite families. He remembered thinking,
That looks a helluva lot more satisfying than
working in an office or going out to L.A. to do stand-up. Making people laugh is one thing. Giving
them their lives back is another.
He had gone home that night and applied to five pre-med programs.

His father, seeing his slack-ass son filling out college applications instead of watching
Friends
re-runs, had nearly wept with relief.

He was walking past the couch, intent on the kitchen and a sandwich, when he saw Kara was deeply asleep on his couch, curled under a yellow fleece throw. He nearly walked into the end table.

He turned around, tiptoed back to his front door and examined the lock. Absolutely no signs of tampering. Then he walked to the windows, which were all locked on the inside. The woman was a marvel, a ghost, a—a rich woman if she ever decided to use her powers to aid the forces of evil.

He went to stand over her again, wanting to talk to her, but also wanting to let her sleep. If she had stayed close, as she said she would—and he didn’t think she would lie to him—she’d had a long day, most of it probably spent huddled on ledges. She hadn’t heard him come in through the door and he hadn’t been taking particular care to be quiet. Clearly she was exhausted. He would let her sleep.

Except…

Except her hair, in the faint gleam from the streetlight, was muted gold, the color of nuggets brought up from the river, gleaming dully and worth thousands. It was the first time he’d seen it down and he itched to touch, caress…

He reached out a trembling hand and stroked her hair where it curved along her skull, realizing with happy dismay that he was falling in love with a woman he knew nothing about, not even her last name.

It was his last happy thought for a while. She came awake like a cat in the dark: one minute dead to the world, the next utterly alert. Her hand came up, seized his wrist in a grip slightly less breakable than handcuffs and pulled. Hard. He rocketed toward her and somehow—he didn’t think this was possible to do from a prone position—she flipped him over the end of the couch. She didn’t let go of his wrist and a split-second later he was on his butt in the dust and she was looking down at him from the back of the couch, still holding his wrist, which started to throb from the pressure.

“For heaven’s sake,” she complained, letting go. “Don’t scare me like that.”

He could feel his eyes bulge. “Don’t scare
you
?” he croaked, climbing slowly to his feet. “You’re the one who broke in, dammit! Jesus Christ, I come into my apartment—
my
apartment—and here you are, dead to the world, a—a breaker and enterer—”

“I didn’t break,” she said reasonably. “Just entered.”

“—then you wake up and kick my ass. Who scared who?” He finished standing and was pleasantly surprised to find his legs were supporting him. His heart rate felt quite high—like about six hundred.

“Some bodyguard!”

She snorted, then the snort turned into a laugh. She choked off the sound almost at once and looked at him, stone-faced. “I apologize for startling you. Something woke me up—”

He coughed, knowing his pawing her hair had been what awakened her and unwilling to impart this information at the moment.

“—and then I saw a large man—”

“A large, incredibly handsome, virile man,” he interrupted.

“—leaning over me and I acted instinctively. How’s the wrist? Good thing I didn’t break it on the way down,” she added thoughtfully.

“Yes, that
is
a good thing, I retract my whining, instead I’ll count my blessings. You could have broken my arm, caved in my skull, reached into my chest and pulled out my still-beating heart and showed it to me.”

She looked away. “Err…I’m not quite that bad. You have…” She eyed him as he hustled toward the kitchen, remembering he hadn’t eaten in seven hours. “…admirable equilibrium.”

“That’s what all my bodyguards say,” he replied affably over his shoulder. “How about some breakfast?”

“That would be lovely,” she admitted, carefully folding the blanket she had been using. She placed it gently at the end of the couch and followed him into the kitchen. “I hope you don’t mind my coming here.

I didn’t hurt your lock—”

“I don’t mind,” he assured her. “You can come over anytime. Do you want a key?”

“It’s not necessary,” she said with a straight face.

“I
know
that. But maybe it’ll be a little faster than picking my lock every…no?” he said as she shook her head. “Ho, boy. That’s some childhood you must have had.”

She changed the subject…but later, when he thought about the conversation, he realized she hadn’t changed it at all. “How is the little boy?”

He looked up from removing ingredients from the refrigerator. “Little boy?”

She perched on a stool beside the counter. “He came in the E.R. with multiple stab wounds. Dark hair, about seven years old?”

“Ah. He was stable when I left. Amazingly, the bastard who did the cutting managed to miss virtually every major organ and blood vessel. His mother’s boyfriend,” Jared added, whipping eggs in a stainless steel bowl. “Carved the kid up when Mama left him. In Cleopatra’s time, they used strangulation as the death penalty. Kind of makes you long for the good old days, huh?”

She nodded seriously, though he had—he thought he had—been joking. Dark humor, the kind he took refuge in when terrible things happened to little kids. To anyone. “Someone
should
kill the boyfriend,” she said matter-of-factly. “That kind never stops.” She drummed her fingers on the counter, thinking.

“Now wait a minute,” he protested. “I can see you trying to fit killing the boyfriend into your busy schedule—between bodyguarding me and grocery shopping and single-handedly cracking every safe on the block—and you’ve got to forget it. If you killed everybody you thought deserved it, you’d never be done.”

“Don’t you think someone who stabs a little boy five times deserves to be removed from the planet?”

“I think it’s not our call.”

She snorted, such an incongruous sound with her delicate exterior that he nearly laughed out loud.

“Spoken like a true sheep.”

He grated cheese irritably. “What, because I don’t go around like Vince the Vigilante, I’m a sheep?”

“No,” she said patiently, “you’re a sheep because you don’t right wrongs.”

He slammed the bowl on the counter and leaned across it, until his face was two inches from hers. “I had that child’s blood up to my elbows,” he said evenly. “Don’t tell me I don’t right wrongs.” He leaned back, forcing his temper down. “And how’d you know about the kid, anyway? I didn’t see you in the E.R. all night.”

“I apologize.”

“Don’t be sorry, just use the
door
once in a while so I can see you coming and going.”

She didn’t smile, just looked at him with serious eyes. “You know what I meant.”

“Yes,” he said, whittling away at a shallot until it was a delicate pile of white and green shavings. “I know and I accept with thanks. For the record, I run into plenty of people whose lungs I’d like to remove without benefit of anesthesia. But if I concentrated on that, I couldn’t do my job. Saving lives is more important to me than avenging them.”

She shifted on her stool, causing the white t-shirt she wore to mold to her breasts for a moment. He looked away before he accidentally cut off his thumb. “That sounds nice. You’re great at your job, I could tell. The nurses,” she added dryly, “seem especially impressed with your…hands.”

He waved the knife at her. “Go on,” he said modestly.

“It’s true.”

“I said go on. Do they talk about how tall I am, how handsome, how smart, how I’m the most fascinating man they’ve ever known, the finest doctor, the best volleyball player?”

“They talk about how it’s been a while since you were caught in the meds closet with one of the orthopedic surgeons.”

He winced. “One time! It was only one time. I was young.”

“It was last year.”

“I’ve grown decades since then in wisdom. What else do you want in your omelet?”

“Whatever you’re having. Don’t change the subject. Are you still seeing her?”

“God, no.” He poured two large glasses of milk. “She used me to get even with her fiancé. A ten minute grope in the closet and she was off to confess her infidelity and demand he start paying attention to her—uh—needs.”

“Ouch.”

“Tell me,” he said gloomily, sliding the raw egg mixture into the pan. “And somehow I ended up with this ridiculous stud reputation. Most of the women who come on to me are looking for a no-commitment-quickie and the ones I’d like to get to know think I’m a pig and won’t have anything to do with me.”

“That’s too bad,” she said and he jerked his head up at her tone. She hadn’t sounded sympathetic.

She’d sounded almost…pleased?

“It’s what I deserve,” he sighed, “for giving in to her womanly wiles.”

“What about your wiles? More milk, please,” she added when he opened the fridge to put the carton away.

“I am wile-less. And you never answered my question—how’d you know about the boy? And the orthopedic surgeon, for that matter,” he added under his breath.

“It’s an inner-city emergency room,” she pointed out, looking on with interest as he slid a perfect omelet onto her plate. “I could walk in on my hands and the only one to notice would be the triage nurse and the only thing
she’d
want to know was my insurance number.”

“Can you?” he asked, beginning to cook his own omelet.

“What?” she asked with her mouth full.

“Walk on your hands?”

She swallowed, dabbed her lips (full and pouty, his mind reported uselessly), grinned at him, then arched backward on her stool. In a moment her head and torso had disappeared and he could see her legs receding as she carefully walked away from him on her hands.

He applauded. She came back to her feet, slightly flushed and looking pleased and took her seat, rubbing her hands on her thighs. “You’re amazing,” he said admiringly. “You can do everything.”

“You wouldn’t like me if you really knew me,” she said, then pressed her lips together so hard they went white. He had the feeling she wasn’t in the habit of making candid comments to near-strangers.

“What’s not to like?” he said, trying to sound casual, to cover up the bald truth in his question.

She shook her head at him and finished her omelet in silence. “Wonderful,” she said, pushing the empty plate away. “The best breakfast I ever had. Where did you learn to cook?”

“My dad was a chef.”

“Was?”

“He and my mom retired and moved to North Carolina. Now they golf and wear ugly clothes and make fun of the tourists. It’s a shameful thing, I’ve been searching for a cure for them. Where are your folks?”

He rinsed the plates in silence, sure she wouldn’t answer him.

“Dead,” she said finally. “They died when I was just a kid. I went to a foster family the week after they died and when my foster mother broke my arm I ran away.”

“Jesus,” he said softly. He crossed the room, wanting to take her into his arms, not sure how to bridge the sudden gulf between them. “That’s terrible.”

“It’s no big deal,” she said quickly. “It’s not like I remember my parents. You don’t miss what you never had.”

“Wrong, gorgeous. That’s the stuff you miss most of all.” And carefully, so carefully, he put his arms around her and drew her close.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, staring at his mouth.

“Want to bet?”

Her mouth was a dream, the nicest dream he’d ever had, all sweet lips and lush softness. She pressed against him and he felt her breasts flatten slightly against his chest, felt her arms come around him, felt her mouth bloom beneath his. She sighed into his mouth and he shuddered, balling his hands into fists so he wouldn’t tear off her clothes and take her on the kitchen tile, which hadn’t been mopped since he was a med student. He heard her make a sound, some sound, a cross between a growl and a whimper and heard himself groan in response. Then she came to herself—or perhaps came away from herself, back to the cool exterior she liked to show the world—and stiffened and took her arms away and pushed him back.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not very, but not interested in gaining a black eye either, “but you’re so beautiful and—and good, I can’t resist you.”

She looked startled, then sad. “I’m not good. I’m bad. You should keep it in mind, Jared.” She touched her mouth, then looked at him with something like wonder.

“Anybody who has Carlotti for an enemy—who would protect a stranger from her enemy—isn’t bad.”

“I’ve done…terrible things. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me,” he urged softly. He took a step toward her and she skittered back, nearly tripping over the stool to keep away from him. He was struck once again by the combination of power and vulnerability.