Secret Agent Affair

“Why?”

She shrugged carelessly. “I like knowing the names of people I take bullets out of.” He eyed her sharply. “I’m funny that way.”

Did he have something to worry about, after all? “So you can report this?”

If she’d wanted to report this, she would have driven him to the hospital. “I thought we’d gotten past that.”

Kane paused a moment. She had a point, he thought. And in a few minutes he was going to walk out the door and, most likely, he’d never see her again. He supposed there was no harm in giving her his first name. “Kane.”

The moment he shared that small piece of information with her, Marja’s eyes lit up. It made her more sensual, he noted. Damn, he’d been so wound up in laying the groundwork for this case, he’d neglected a very basic need. He’d been too long without a woman. The oversight had to be the reason he was reacting to her. Otherwise, he didn’t understand where this pull, this attraction, was coming from.

“As in Cain and Abel?” she asked. “Or as in candy?”

“Neither.” He saw that the woman was waiting for something more. “If you’re asking me how to spell it, it’s K-A-N-E.”

“Well, K-A-N-E, do you have a last name?”

He was a suspicious person by nature, having learned early on to volunteer nothing because you never knew when something could come back to bite you on the butt. And she was asking too many questions.

“Yes.”

Obviously nothing came easy with this man. It really did make her wonder exactly what his story was. And who had wounded him, not physically but emotionally. Because, assuming he wasn’t hiding a criminal past, he was far too reticent not to have a reason for his attitude.

“Is it a state secret?” she prodded.

“No.” The doctor with the all-intrusive bedside manner waited for the rest. He blew out a short breath and gave her the rest of it. “It’s Dolan.” At least, for the time being, he added silently.

Irish. Maybe that was where the green eyes had come from. Marja nodded. “Well, Kane Dolan, it’s nice to meet you.”

That was a hell of a strange thing to say, considering the way they’d met. With a grille and iron between them. “Why?”

Didn’t he accept anything at face value? She decided it had to be tiring, being Kane Dolan. “Is everything a challenge to you?”

“Pretty much,” Kane heard himself saying.

He’d meant it as a flippant retort, uttered to make her back off. But in reality, his answer was pretty dead-on. Since the day he’d come home from second grade to find that his heroin-addicted father had shot and killed his cocaine-inebriated mother and then turned the gun on himself, leaving their tiny, dirty kitchen hopelessly splattered with blood, everything about his life had turned into a challenge. He took nothing on faith, expected nothing to be what it seemed. Because it usually wasn’t.

Kane came to a stop by the front door. He needed to get going before she had someone show up and start asking awkward questions.

“Thanks for patching me up,” he muttered, reaching for the doorknob.

She felt as if she was releasing a wounded bird, not yet fully healed. “When was the last time you ate?” Marja asked suddenly.

He’d just expected her to say goodbye, to be relieved that he was on his way. The question, coming out of nowhere, caught him off guard and he turned to her. Maybe he hadn’t heard right.

“What?”

“When was the last time you ate?” Marja repeated, enunciating each word slowly, as if she was talking to someone who was submerged in a tank of water and had trouble hearing.

“Today,” was the best he could do. “I don’t look at my watch when I eat.” He tacked the latter on dismissively. Maybe that was uncalled for, he thought. She seemed to be an irrepressible do-gooder. The woman was in for some major disappointments in her life. He tried to set her straight, at least about the person he was supposed to be. “Look, I’m not homeless and I’m sure as hell not your personal crusade—”

She had her doubts about the first part. He wasn’t dirty and his face wasn’t leathery and worn from the elements, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t down on his luck. There was plenty of that going around these days, she thought.

“You said the mugger had nothing to mug,” she reminded him.

So that was it. She thought he had no money, no place to stay. No regular meals. “That’s because I left my wallet at home. I find that if you don’t carry it, they can’t steal it,” he told her very simply.

“You’ve been mugged before,” she guessed.

“Yeah.” In reality, there was no “before.” This was the first time. And it would be the last, he silently promised himself. No one was going to get the drop on him, ever.

Again, Kane reached for the doorknob and this time he actually managed to take hold of it and pull the door open before the doctor said anything else.

“What kind of work are you out of?”

More questions. But it was a small world and you never knew how things ultimately played out or whose path you were going to cross in the near future. So he sighed and faced her and her endless barrage of questions. He knew he could just walk out, but the bottom line was that she had helped him when she was under no obligation to do so. Maybe he owed her a little courtesy—as long as she didn’t push it.

Hooking his thumbs in his belt, he gave her a long, penetrating look. “You planning on writing a bio on me, Doc?”

If he thought he could intimidate her—and with that look she was sure that was what he was thinking—he’d failed.

“I just thought I might know someone who could give you a job.” She was thinking of her father’s security company. Kady’s husband, Byron, a former bodyguard and ex-cop, worked there along with a number of other people. Not to mention that Kane’s demeanor reminded her of Tony, Sasha’s husband. Tony was a homicide detective. On the job, they didn’t come grimmer than him.

Both men—Tony and Kane, had the same tight-lipped temperament, the same slow, probing nature. Maybe Kane could find a career in some aspect of security work. If she could get him to answer questions without putting up a fight.

“What is it that you do?” she asked.

He moved his shoulders in a vague shrug, stifling a wince as his left side issued a protest. “This and that,” he told her.

“Well, that sounds flexible enough.” Even if the man didn’t, she added silently. He seemed forbidding. And she had a feeling it wasn’t just a facade. “I could call—”

He cut her off. The last thing he wanted was for her to find him a job. That was being taken care of even as he stood here with her.

“I said we were even,” he insisted. “You don’t owe me anything.”

It wasn’t tit for tat in her book. She believed in free form. “I don’t work that way,” she told him, noticing a puzzled expression on his face. “With checks and balances. You need a job, I might know of somewhere to place you, that’s all I’m saying.”

He had to continue being blunt. She wasn’t the type to retreat if he took her feelings into account.

“I take care of myself,” he informed her in no uncertain terms.

Her eyes lowered to the wound she had just finished stitching and dressing. Maybe he could have done it on his own, but most people don’t like to sew their own flesh back into place.

“I’m sure you can.”

The tone wasn’t exactly sarcastic, but close, he thought. Turning the knob, Kane pulled the door open. Only then did he nod at her.

“See you around, Doc.”