Hero at Large

  “This is a first for me. I’ve never been able to make a woman blush. I didn’t think modern women did that sort of thing.” He wound his finger around an orange curl and tugged lightly. “It’s nice.” His voice was soft and low. It reminded Chris of fine brandy that had the unusual ability to simultaneously soothe and stimulate. “What’s your name?”

  “Chris Nelson.”

  “That’s a very no-nonsense name for a slightly crazy lady. You look more like a Tootsie or a Fanny…or maybe a Lucy.”

  “Lucy is my daughter’s name.”

  “You have a daughter?” There was a moment of pregnant silence while he digested the fact of her motherhood. “How old is she?”

  “Seven.”

  “And her father?”

  “Gone.”

  “Poor man. Life must always seem dull after living with you.”

  She gave him a sidewise glance and saw a smile threatening to emerge at the corners of his mouth. Damn him. He was laughing at her again. How dare he enjoy himself when she was so uncomfortable. And he didn’t even have the good grace to be obnoxious—the rat was downright adorable.

  He shifted his broken arm, trying to find a more comfortable position. “Is it much farther?”

  “The hospital turnoff is just ahead. Does your arm hurt?”

  “It’s down to a dull throb.”

  Chris had an insane urge to kiss his arm and make it better. Maternal instincts, she assured herself. Nothing more than a hormone imbalance left over from childbirth. The fact that he was incredibly handsome had nothing to do with it.

  They were traveling down a four-lane highway with a safety island running down the middle. Chris pulled into the left-turn lane, stopped at the intersection, and watched the oncoming traffic. Rain pelted the windshield, making it difficult to see openings in the morning rush of commuters.

  “Here we are,” Chris announced, finally able to complete the turn. She pulled the truck into the brightly lit parking lot and rolled to a stop in a space near the emergency entrance.

  Ken Callahan gave an audible sigh of relief. The Rottweiler looked around expectantly and thumped his tail against the upholstery.

  For some reason Chris suddenly felt annoyed that everyone was so happy to have arrived at their destination. It was as if they were overjoyed at the prospect of quitting her company. Not very complimentary, especially since she was unaccountably depressed at the thought of leaving Ken Callahan. “Hmmph,” she snapped.

  “Hmmph?”

  “You and your dog are obviously ecstatic to see my driving come to an end.”

  “You drive like a maniac. And besides, you’ve been fondling me for fifteen minutes. How much do you think a man can take?”

  “Fondling you?” she squeaked. “Of all the…I never…you…”

  “Oh, man, now I’ve got you all upset. Listen, I know this is a small truck, and you probably didn’t mean to fondle me, but…”

  “I don’t drive like a maniac. I’ve never driven a truck before.” She shook her finger at him. “You haven’t made it any easier—you and your dumb dog—and let me assure you that if I fondled you it was purely accidental.”

  “Yeah, and it was accidental that you broke my arm,” he teased.

  “You didn’t move fast enough!”

  He grinned sheepishly. “You’re right. I’m not at my best this morning. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” He leaned toward her and nuzzled her hair. “It wasn’t entirely my fault, you know. I was distracted. You looked downright wanton…leaning over the engine at me.”

  Wanton? Of all the nerve, she huffed to herself. She might have been ogling a little, but she definitely hadn’t been wanton—had she? “I wasn’t feeling wanton. I was concerned about my car.”

  “Your voice was husky.” His lips brushed against her neck as he spoke. His warm breath whispered along tingling skin.

  Chris felt her stomach lurch. “My voice is always husky in the morning,” she lied. “I wasn’t awake, yet. I didn’t have time for coffee.”

  He kissed the nape of her neck, sending a shiver rocketing along her spine. He leaned against her and placed a nibbling sort of kiss just below her earlobe while rain drummed on the roof of the truck, wrapping them in cozy isolation. Chris wondered why she was sitting there, waiting to be kissed again. She had dated sporadically since her divorce, mostly to appease well-meaning friends, and she’d always found herself counting the minutes before she could issue the perfunctory good-night kiss and get home to her daughter. Why on earth am I feeling so attracted to this man? I don’t even know him. I literally picked him up at the side of the road. She felt a little hysterical.

  Ken slipped his hand inside the red vest, his fingers curled around Chris’s rib cage. “Chris Nelson,” he whispered silkily, “you’re a very dangerous lady.” His thick black lashes lowered as his gaze dropped to her lips.

  Chris felt her body turn toward him, desire creeping through her like heated honey. His lips grazed hers in a kiss that was featherlight and lingering.

  “Mmmmm…” she purred—and then wondered who’d just made that incredibly contented sound. Surely, it wasn’t Chris Nelson. Chris Nelson was a dedicated professional, an intrepid mother. Up to now, the only thing capable of evoking that sort of response in Chris Nelson was her mother’s New York cheesecake. She sat up with a jolt, surprising both man and dog. The Rottweiler stopped panting momentarily and eyed her suspiciously.

  Ken Callahan drew his eyebrows together in a small frown. “Now what?” he asked warily.

  “You’re trying to seduce me in a hospital parking lot.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  What’s wrong with it is that it’s working, she thought. “I don’t even know you. And it’s inappropriate. And…” She was babbling. Grasping at straws. “And your dog is watching.”

  A look of disbelief registered on Ken Callahan’s face. It changed to a smile. He tipped his head back and laughed triumphantly. “I’m really getting to you, huh?”

  She pressed her lips together in annoyance. “Doesn’t your arm hurt anymore?”

  “Not nearly as much as my heart,” he confessed playfully.

  She opened the truck door and jumped out into the rain, ran the short distance to the emergency entrance, and stood just inside the lobby, shaking out her wet hair and stomping the water off her sneakered feet. She pointed toward the desk. “Why don’t you go and register. I need to make a call. I’m late for work.”

  “It’s five-thirty in the morning. What sort of job do you have? Delivering newspapers? Making doughnuts? Hit man for the mob on the early-morning shift?”

  “I’m a skate coach. The rink opens at five-twenty so the kids can practice before school starts.”

  He studied her slim, compact body and nodded. “It’s easy to imagine you on the ice. I’m afraid I’m not very knowledgeable about ice skating—are you famous?”

  Chris paused to look at him. His eyes were guileless and filled with genuine curiosity. “I suppose I was several years ago, but I’m not any longer. I might have a certain amount of recognition among other skaters, but my name is hardly a household word these days.” She realized she’d left her purse in the athletic bag in the truck and started a fruitless search through the pockets of her vest.

  Ken placed his cell phone in the palm of her hand. “I assume this is what you’re looking for.” He grabbed her elbow as she turned away. “Get back to me as fast as you can,” he pleaded, “I hate hospitals.”

  When Chris returned, she found Ken Callahan slouched in a chair, his long legs stretched in front of him. His arm had been put in a sling, and he looked up at her anxiously over a cup of coffee. “You’ve been gone for hours—what took you so long?”

  “I’ve been gone for five minutes.”

  He smiled boyishly, slightly embarrassed. “Well, it seemed like hours. They’ve already taken X-rays.” He pointed to a Styrofoam cup on the table beside him. “I got you some coffee.”

/>   Chris removed the lid and added a container of cream, then studied him as she sipped at the coffee. He had high cheekbones, a perfectly straight nose, and a few flecks of gray in the unruly profusion of wavy black hair. He had a wide mouth, which she could easily imagine set in ruthless determination, but right now he stared moodily into his coffee, the corners of his mouth turned down, and Chris wondered why he was looking so grim. “Is something wrong?”

  “To tell you the truth…I’m scared to death. I’ve never been in a hospital before. And I’ve never broken anything that was mine. Will it hurt?”

  Chris gaped in astonishment. He was serious. He really was scared. She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think it will hurt.”

  “Have you ever broken anything?”

  “When I was a little girl we lived on a farm in Colorado—not a working farm, we just called it a farm because it was eleven acres, and it had a barn. When my parents bought the farm it came complete with a big old black horse named Looney. He was a great horse, but every now and then he liked to see me go over a fence solo. He’d run right up to a fence, plant his feet, and I’d go soaring off into the air. One time I crashed into a split rail and broke my nose.”

  Ken slowly ran the tip of his finger along the bridge of her nose. “It’s a pretty little nose. Straight until the very end, where it tips up just a bit. Elegant without being boring.”

  She felt her heart flop at his touch, and an unaccountable tingle ran down her spine. “Mmmm,” she answered, waiting for her mind to clear. “And then when I was eight I was dancing in my room with a laundry basket on my head…and I tripped over a roller skate and broke my arm.”

  “I find that surprisingly easy to believe.”

  “And when I was twelve, I broke my finger playing softball.”

  “Never been hurt skating?”

  “Bruises. Lots of bruises. Nothing serious.”

  “Did you ever compete?”

  “For years and years. I was National Novice champion at sixteen, Junior champion when I was eighteen, and National Senior bronze and silver medalist. And then I quit.”

  He watched her quietly. Their mutual silence grew uncomfortable, the inevitable question hanging ominously suspended in the air between them.

  Chris sighed. “Don’t you want to know why I quit? Everyone always does.”

  “I thought it might be sensitive.”

  She smiled at him, pleasantly surprised at his perception. “It was a long time ago. As a young athlete I’d led a very narrow life. Up at five in the morning. In bed by nine at night. I was the world’s latest bloomer. I’d never had any sort of relationship with a boy until I was twenty-one. And that relationship resulted in my daughter, Lucy.”

  He drained his cup of coffee and returned it to the table. His hand found hers and traced a line along her ring finger. “Want to tell me about the father?”

  “Steven Black.”

  He whistled softly. “The actor?”

  “The classic whirlwind courtship. He wined and dined me for two weeks. I thought I was madly in love.” She shrugged with her hand. “We were married in a thirty-second service in Las Vegas. Four weeks later I discovered I was pregnant, and my adoring husband divorced me while I was still in my first trimester.”

  He raised his eyebrows in astonishment. “Why did he do that?”

  “Steven wanted a glamorous wife. If I’d stayed with skating I would have been on the Olympic team. Eight years ago Steven was still struggling for recognition, and I suppose he thought he could use the media coverage. When I refused to have an abortion and told him I was giving up competing, he divorced me.”

  Ken slid his hand along hers and gripped her wrist. Little prickles of pleasure ran up her arm at his possessive touch. His hand was large—a working man’s hand, she decided. Strong. Permanently tan. It was a hand that could be gentle and protective and still manipulate with confident authority. In a sudden flash of insight Chris knew what it would be like to share a bed with Ken Callahan. A burst of unexpected heat rushed through her at the thought, and a scarlet scald crept from her shirt collar.

  Ken regarded her with serious curiosity. “It must have been difficult for you to give up competing.”

  Chris smiled. “It was easy. I loved to skate, but I hated to compete. I threw up before every competition. And as soon as I became pregnant my whole body oozed contentment.” She sat forward in her seat, warming to her subject. “Having a baby is a miracle.” Her face glowed with satisfaction and pride. “They have fat little hands and tiny fingernails, and they love you…just because you’re there, and you’re Mommy. Babies don’t care if you’re famous or rich.”

  She felt his hand tighten on hers and knew she had allowed some of the hurt of rejection to surface. She hadn’t meant to show that to him. She hadn’t even known herself that it still existed. She hurried to cover the slip. “My favorite part of the day is when Lucy and I read bedtime stories. The book I like best is about this little bear. He gets a bicycle, and his father is going to teach him how to ride it, but the father does everything wrong! And then there’s another Little Bear book where Little Bear and his dad go hiking with the bear scouts—” Chris stopped suddenly and closed her eyes with a groan. “I don’t believe I’m telling you about Little Bear.”

  His voice was mockingly serious, but his dark eyes danced with amusement. “Little Bear is undoubtedly an important part of your life.”

  “Are you laughing at me again?”

  He put his hand to her cheek. “No. I think it’s very nice.”

  A white-coated intern appeared before them. “Mr. Callahan? I have the results of your X-rays. You have a simple fracture. It’s not terribly serious, but it’ll require a cast. You can go to an orthopedist of your choice, or I can have a staff doctor paged for you. I believe Dr. Wiley is on the floor somewhere.”

  “Dr. Wiley will be fine.”

  A bank of steel-gray clouds hung low in the early-morning sky, diffusing the sunlight and adding a chill to the air. Ken Callahan brandished his flourescent green, spanking-new cast, like a flag—holding it high to prevent his arm from swelling.

  “Keep it above your heart for a few days,” Dr. Wiley had advised.

  “Above my heart,” Ken mumbled, heading for his truck in long, angry strides. “Damned inconvenience.” He stopped and looked down at his plaster-clad arm. The cast stretched from his elbow to the middle of his hand, wrapping around his thumb, and making it impossible to grasp anything with his left hand. He wiggled his fingers pathetically. “Just look at this,” he ranted. “How can I drive? How can I work? How can I tie my damned shoes?”

  Chris trotted beside him. She unlocked the doors to the truck and bit her lip to keep from laughing. Ken Callahan had ceased to frighten her. He wasn’t as disreputable as she’d originally assumed. He was well-spoken and easy to talk to. A little over-sexed, perhaps, but not weird or dangerous. And she knew from the past two hours that his anger was short-lived. He was not a man that held a grudge or nursed a wound—and the memory of him locking her hand in a death grip while his cast was being applied sent spasms of laughter choking in her throat. Her hilarity ceased when she opened the door and came face-to-snout with the Rottweiler. There was a tug at Chris’s vest collar and warm breath skimmed along her neck.

  “I can hardly wait for fourth gear,” Ken murmured into her ear.

  “You weren’t so crazy about fourth gear when we pulled in here.”

  “I was worried about being driven to the police station.”

  “And you’re not worried anymore?”

  “I’ve decided to take my chances.”

  Chris wrinkled her nose at him. “Well you needn’t be concerned. It’s light out. I can see what I’m doing, now. Your honor is perfectly safe.” He was a nice man, but she was going to be extra careful about first gear. She didn’t have the time or desire to complicate her life with a man. She slid behind the wheel and, after Ken was settled, turned to him. “I suppose I shoul
d drive you somewhere. Home? Or to work? Where were you going this morning?”

  “I was starting a new job. I wanted to get in early and take a look around before anyone else showed up.”

  “Oh, no,” she groaned, “first day on the job, and I broke your arm.” She looked at the jeans and scuffed boots. He had removed his sweatshirt in deference to the cast, leaving him in a yellow short-sleeved T-shirt, which said CONSTRUCTION WORKERS USE THEIR TOOLS. The shirt clung to a flat stomach and broad, muscled chest, the sleeves spanning well-defined biceps. His forearm was corded, the back covered with a silk mat of black hair. There was no doubt in Chris’ mind that he could crack a walnut as easily as an egg. Her eyes glazed over in silent admiration.

  “Earth to Chris.”

  “Uh, I was just wondering about your shirt. You do construction work?”

  “Yeah.”

  Not a laborer, she decided. He didn’t seem the sort to take orders. A project manager or a supervisor, maybe. Certainly someone who worked in the field. He didn’t get all those muscles sitting behind a desk. “Should I take you to work?”

  He looked at the cast. “I think I’ll pass on work today.”

  “Won’t someone be upset if you don’t show up?”

  “Relieved would probably be a better word.”

  The truck idled at a standstill in the parking lot. “That’s a strange thing to say. Are you insecure?” she joked.

  He shook his head. “No. I’m ruthless.”

  An inadvertent shiver ran down her spine at the bitter tone in his voice.

  “And I’m disreputable,” he teased, trying to lighten the conversation.

  “It’s the stubble.”

  He rubbed his hand across his whiskered chin. “Twenty-eight of my last forty-eight hours have been spent on a plane. And only three of the remaining twenty hours were spent sleeping. I was afraid to take a razor to my face at four-thirty this morning.”

  “Where did you fly in from?”

  “Everywhere.”

  She felt him slump in the seat next to her. He passed a hand through his hair and sighed. “I’ve been to three countries and seven cities in the last forty-eight hours. Six job sites. This would have been number seven. Maybe I’m glad you broke my arm. I think I’m running on empty.”