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 to change.” Especially if Tania decided to send in the cavalry no matter what she’d said to the contrary. “Besides, you’re here, so technically—” she smiled up at him disarmingly “—I’m not alone.”
Her answer earned her a scowl.
The stranger sat up and then swung his long legs off the sofa without any warning. Marja had to jump to her feet to avoid getting knocked off.
He glared at her. “Don’t you have the sense you were born with?”
She drew herself up, squaring her shoulders with a touch of indignation. It was bad enough that her parents and sisters took turns lecturing her. She didn’t need this from a stranger, especially one she was trying to help.
“I believe that the appropriate thing for you to say here is ‘Thank you,’” she told him hotly, “not try to ascertain whether or not I’m a candidate for MENSA.”
“MENSA?” he echoed with a dismissive snort. “You’re more of a candidate for the morgue.” He looked at her as if she only had a tenth of her brain functioning. “Don’t you know better than to bring a man you don’t know anything about into your apartment?”
If she hadn’t, he might have bled to death on that side street before anyone found him. Where the hell did he get off, shouting at her? “Only the ones who’re bleeding when they faint—sorry, pass out—” she corrected sarcastically “—at my feet.”
He continued glaring at her. This was New York City, people who lived here were supposed to be cautious. Murders were currently down but the overall stats on that were still high. Young, attractive women were supposed to know better than to invite trouble into their homes. “I could have been a murderer.”
“Are you?” she asked in a deceptively mild voice that hid her jumping nerves. It was in response not to what he was saying, but to the way he was looking at her, almost through her. Making her feel as if she were completely naked and vulnerable.
Maybe, despite her gut feeling, bringing him here was a mistake.
He’d killed people, but only in self-defense. By definition, that wasn’t a murderer, so his conscience allowed him to answer. “No, I’m not.” His eyes narrowed. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I could have been and you took a hell of a chance on bringing me into your home.” Still sitting on the sofa, he gingerly slipped his shirt back into place, pulling down his T-shirt over the dressing.
This was going to hurt like a son of a bitch by morning, he judged. It didn’t exactly feel like a blissful walk in the park now.
Finished, he glanced in her direction. “You said I passed out in the car.”
Slowly, she nodded her head. “You did.”
Kane still couldn’t fathom how someone who seemed to be reasonably intelligent could actually do something so foolhardy. “Then why didn’t you just take me to the hospital? If I was unconscious, I sure as hell wasn’t in any shape to give you any trouble.”
Marja lifted her chin defensively. “Because you asked me not to.”
“And that’s enough?” he asked incredulously.
Either this woman was very, very good, he thought, or she was just plain stupid. But she didn’t look stupid to him. Naive, maybe, but not stupid. And, his eyes slid over her, he had a feeling that if she was very, very good at something, sainthood had little to do with the matter. Even in his present state, Kane wasn’t so far gone as to not notice the woman was drop-dead gorgeous.
Marja nodded in response to his question. “I felt responsible for you,” she told him. “So, yes, that was enough for me.”
“How old are you?” He wanted to know.
She had no idea why he’d want to know, but she wasn’t about to blurt out a number like a suspect being interrogated.
“Older than I look,” she informed him.
She was a doctor, but she didn’t look as if she was even thirty. There was a freshness to her, despite the smart mouth. He would have hated to see something happen to her because of her