She looked at him, suddenly in command of herself again. “I’m sorry, this was stupid. What am I thinking? You’d think I’d have learned how to rescue myself by now, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe not from this,” he said quietly then eyed her directly, hard. “But is that what you’re here looking for, Maddie? A knight-in-shining?”
Maddie laughed without humor. “Wouldn’t that be a kick if I were. Why? You looking to joust windmills again, Russ?”
Russ shrugged. “We all need a little rescuing once in a while.”
“Even you?”
“Not by you, Maddie.” The comment was terse, accompanied by an unconscious, half-reflexive glance that skimmed the room and brought his gaze to rest for half a second on Janina.
She stopped dead in her tracks. He needed to be rescued, but not by Maddie. Not by Maddie! And he’d looked at her—her, Janina!—when he said it. So he did notice her—maybe. If she was reading correctly the signals he might not even be aware he was sending.
A frisson of—Janina wasn’t sure what—shimmied down her spine. Fear and anticipation, caution and recklessness, pure unadulterated and exhilarating hope.
In less than a heartbeat, hope changed the “I don’t give a damn” swing of her hips into a “come-hither” sway-and-roll, turned her step into a glide, sparkled her eyes, instinctively curved her mouth into its most welcoming and flirtatious “hey-how-you-doin’” smile, and focused her entire attention on Russ.
In just longer than that same heartbeat, and seemingly from out of nowhere, a large, booted foot shot out and tripped her, sent her sliding and sprawling across an empty table that tipped and dumped her, the burning-hot coffee, the mugs and the chair she smashed into, crashing to the floor.
Somewhere off to the right the air filled with raucous, full-bellied, hatefully familiar, cruelly delighted laughter surrounded by shocked silence.
Half-stunned, Janina lay in the middle of the mess, feeling the bruises gather and the coffee scald its way through her skimpy pink uniform. She couldn’t quite find her right wrist, and the left fingers that had carried the coffee mugs felt pinched and a trifle slick.
The spiteful laughter lasted for less than a moment longer before Russ jerked Buddy Carmichael out of his seat by the throat, slammed him backward into the wall, tripped him face-first onto the floor beside his ex-wife and handcuffed his beefy wrists behind him.
Oblivious of her expensive white designer sheath, Maddie knelt amid the debris beside Janina and gently began to feel for broken bones. Tobi arrived at Janina’s other side almost simultaneously to do the same.
Not far from Janina’s face, Russ gripped a hank of Buddy’s hair and lifted his head, forcing him to look at Janina. “This what you think’s funny, man?” Fury tightened Russ’s voice to a whip crack. “Seriously, man, you find this funny?”
Apparently unaware of who had him pinned, Buddy sneered, unrepentant. “Yeah.”
Russ dragged Buddy up farther, hard, by the hair. “What?”
Buddy’s smirk wavered hardly at all. “Yeah—sir.”
The chains on Russ’s temper seemed to snap. Even as the rolling whoop of sirens filled the air outside the diner, he dropped Buddy’s face onto the floor and hauled him up for another go.
Suddenly, Buddy was neither cocky nor smirking. He also no longer found what he’d done to Janina funny, and croaked that to Russ through bruised and bleeding lips. Hardly satisfied, but knowing it was the best he’d get, Russ removed his knee from between Buddy’s shoulder blades, released the man’s hair, jerked a nod in his brother Jonah’s direction as he came into the café and moved to squat beside Janina.
Casting a wry look at his oldest—and tallest—brother, young officer Levoie went to collect Russ’s prisoner.
Gently, Russ touched Janina’s cheek. “How you doin’?”
She tried a wobbly smile on for size. The man had reduced her ex to pulp for her, for her, the least she could do was smile at him and say thank-you. Because no one had ever done that for her before, had ever even tried to rescue her.
Janina blinked. Her eyes watered and tears spilled. Russ stroked her cheek and she’d never known a man’s hand to feel so gentle, so calm, when less than two minutes ago he’d been Buddy’s terror from hell. Why had she never asked him for help when she’d been married and needed it? He’d have given it. But she hadn’t asked because she hadn’t wanted Russ Levoie, of all people, to know how stupid she’d been over a man who wasn’t him.
“Hey,” Russ whispered, spotting her tears. He pulled a clean hankie out of his back pocket and blotted her cheeks awkwardly. “It’s okay. You’re okay now. We’ve got you, Janie. You’ll be okay. It’s only friends here now.”
It’s only friends here now.
The problem exactly. Because of all the people in the world with whom Janina didn’t want to be “only friends,” Russ Levoie was at the top of the list and had been for the better part of a baker’s dozen years now.
Unable to contain her multihued emotions, Janina let the sobs loose. Without thought, Russ sat down on the floor, carefully gathered her into his arms and held her close while the EMTs checked her over and Janina cried into his chest.
Chapter 2
July 18
Janina stood in front of her closet and surveyed herself in the full-length mirror.
“Very attractive,” she muttered, taking in the fuzzy, yellow Woodstock-the-bird slippers on her feet, the overly warm plaid flannel magenta pajama bottoms, the Remember 9/11-2001 emblazoned in navy and white on red alongside the U.S. flag on her ragged-edged, oft-worn, long-sleeved gray T-shirt, the bright turquoise Ace-wrap peeking out from the pushed-up sleeve on her right wrist and forearm that protected the slight sprain to her wrist, and the green tape wrapping the stitched-up fingers on her left hand. “Absolutely blasted ducky brilliant.”
She studied her face, the small, relatively minor bruising below the eye on her right cheek and beside it the butterfly bandage where she hadn’t needed stitches to close a laceration. Then she examined the lumpiness on her upper lip where it had taken a plastic surgeon a surprising number of stitches to close the small but deep cut inside. “You look stinking beautiful. No wonder he had to leave. Sheesh.”
Or rather, sheesh and damn. Because the reason Russ had given for leaving after he’d brought Janina home from the hospital three hours ago was so he could see Maddie home.
Maddie, who’d refused to leave Janina’s—or Russ’s—side and tagged along to the hospital with Tobi while Russ rode the back of the ambulance with Janina.
Maddie, with whom Russ had been in love since he’d been, oh, six. And twelve. And sixteen. And forever.
Maddie, who lived in Phoenix, which was in the neighborhood of one hundred and eighty miles away.
Seeing her home. Yeah, right. His trailer home maybe. Where he didn’t take anybody.
Which she knew because Jonah had told her.
Janina fumed.
Then she eyed herself in the mirror again, stuck out her tongue at her reflection and decided to act. Because by the time Russ had brought Janina back to the apartment she shared with Tobi, Jonah had turned up to see Maddie off to wherever. Right?
Right. So Russ had gone home by himself after all.
Groggy or not at the time, Janina had made a clear note of that smidgen of information. Which meant that whatever