“Was someone else injured in your accident?”

Gage gave a rough laugh. “A dozen other FBI agents and local cops were there. None was lucky enough to receive the same special attention. Why do you ask?”

Lisa shrugged. “While you were sleeping, I thought I heard you call out for someone named Charlie. I thought it might have been another agent who’d been hurt along with you.”

His expression went instantly cold, so cold she shivered, regretting whatever crazy impulse had led her to bring up the subject. “I must have been having a nightmare.”

She knew she should let it drop, but something made her push. “Is Charlie a friend?”

“Charlie was short for Charlotte.”

He went on, his face without expression, his eyes focused on the curtains fluttering in the night breeze. “Charlotte was my kid sister. She was kidnapped from our front yard when she was three years old. We never saw her again.”

Nowhere to Hide
RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RAEANNE THAYNE

lives in a graceful old Victorian nestled in the rugged mountains of northern Utah, along with her husband and two young children. Her books have won numerous honors, including several Readers’ Choice Awards from Romantic Times and a RITA® Award nomination by the Romance Writers of America. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers. She can be reached through her Web site at www.raeannethayne.com or at P.O. Box 6682, North Logan, UT 84341.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

He had trespassers.

Two of them.

Dressed for jogging in shorts and a T-shirt, Special Agent Gage McKinnon eased open his front door just a crack and peered out into the small front garden of the house he rented.

What were they up to? He could hear them out there, laughing and whispering together, but he couldn’t make out the words in the crisp high mountain air of the Park City summer morning.

He didn’t think they were dangerous, but if he’d learned anything in his thirty-five years, he’d learned not to underestimate the female of the species. These two looked to be about three or four. One was slightly smaller than the other by a few inches and a little more round but besides that, they could have been twins. Same dark, curly hair, same flashing brown eyes, same little ski slopes for noses.

Where did they come from? And what were they up to?

He put his plans for a run up the mountainside temporarily on hold and watched them for a few moments longer. Ah, now he figured it out. Each of the girls had her pink nightie hitched up into a sort of basket, revealing small olive legs and matching Barbie panties. Into their makeshift carriers, they were both piling what looked like just about every single flower in his yard, roots and all.

Daisies, geraniums, purple lavender. They plucked some of each.

He didn’t care about the flowers. They could have the whole garden, as far as he was concerned. But he had a feeling his landlady wouldn’t see things the same way. In the month he’d lived here, she had been by at least three times a week to baby these and the even bigger garden in the back. He figured this wanton pilfering would not make her happy.

Gage opened the door wider and walked out onto the porch. The sun had barely crept over the horizon of the surrounding mountains with their wide ski runs, bare of snow now but still a pale contrast to the dark evergreens covering the slopes.

The early-morning air was cool. He hadn’t spent much time in Utah since his childhood but it hadn’t taken him long to remember that temperatures in these high mountain valleys could often dip below freezing at night, even in June.

These girls weren’t exactly dressed for cool weather.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

Two dark heads whipped around as his voice sliced through the still morning. The smaller girl looked suddenly terrified, her eyes and her little mouth both open wide. She clutched her nightie with one hand and what looked like a stuffed monkey with the other as she edged slightly behind the other girl, who gave him a winsome smile that had most likely been her ticket out of far worse trouble than some plucked flowers.

“Hi, mister. We’re picking flowers for our mama. Today is her birthday. She’s old.”

He bit his cheek at that piece of frank information and summoned a scowl. “These are my flowers. You should have asked me first.”

The older girl frowned. “Mrs. Jensen said they were her flowers. She said we could pick a few for Mama’s birthday.”

Mrs. Jensen was his dour, taciturn landlady, who had yet to unbend enough to smile at him since he moved in.

She owned the house next door, too, he remembered, a virtual match to his small, wood-sided cottage on this row of old dwellings that traced their existence back to the days when Park City was a rough and rugged mining camp, not a high-society resort town.

He had found it odd that Ruth Jensen had surrounded his cottage with this lush, fairy-tale garden while leaving its twin to sit squarely in a bare yard of crab grass and empty flowerbeds but she explained that she’d only recently purchased the house next door and hadn’t had time for landscaping yet.

In the last few days, he’d noticed the first signs of life over there—lights on at night, an older model Honda parked out front, a few toys in the yard. Looks like he was meeting some of his new neighbors.

“You’re sure Mrs. Jensen said you could pick the flowers?” He had a tough time picturing her giving these little urchins free rein to romp through her beloved garden, but the older girl nodded vigorously.

“She said it would be all right just this once since today is Mama’s birthday.”

“Where is your mother?”

“She’s still asleep. We’re gonna s’prise her.”

Their mother ought to be a little more aware of what her two girls were up to. She ought to at least put better locks on the door or something so they couldn’t go wandering around town on their own.

“What about your dad?”

The older girl sent him a sad look. “Our daddy’s in heaven. We miss him a lot.”

Now what was he supposed to say to that? At a loss, Gage glanced up and down the street. The three of them were the only thing moving through the early morning except for a few songbirds flitting through the trees and a plump striped cat skulking across a yard.

This was a quiet neighborhood, but he knew that wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to a child predator looking for prey. Quiet neighborhoods in small towns were often more attractive hunting grounds than those that bustled with people. Parents could more easily be lulled into a false sense of security, thinking nothing could touch them here, that their children faced no threat more serious than the occasional skinned knee from crashing on their bikes.

But no place was truly safe. He knew that far better than most.

“My name’s Gaby and my sister’s name is Anna,” the little girl confided into the silence. “I’m five years old but Anna’s only three. She doesn’t talk very much, but Mama says I talk enough for both of us so that’s okay. My real name’s Gabriella but Mama calls me Gaby because she says that’s what I am. What’s your name, mister?”

Their mother needed to have a serious talk with them about stranger danger. This little chatterbox had just handed him all the information anyone needed to earn their trust.

“McKinnon.”

“You’re nice, Mr. McKinnon.”

“Uh, thanks.” Not too many people said that about him. He wasn’t sure he liked it. “You two ought to go on inside now. I think you’ve got enough flowers, don’t you? And pretty soon your mother will wake up and start looking for you.”

“Okay. Anna’s feet are cold. This grass is wet and icky.”

“That’s what shoes are for,” he pointed out.

Gabriella just giggled and even Anna gave him a shy smile, then they raced across the yard to the house next door. The older girl paused on the porch and waved at him, then they both slipped inside.

He watched to make sure they closed the door tightly behind them, then took off down the street toward the trailhead he’d discovered a few weeks before.

He ought to definitely have a talk with the mother, warn her about letting two cute little girls roam free where any kind of sick bastard could get to them.

He could tell her stories that would give the lady nightmares for the rest of her life. After ten years in the FBI’s CAC division—Crimes Against Children—he had plenty of them to share. Hell, he didn’t even have to dig into any of the cases he had worked over the years to scare her senseless. All he had to do was tell her about Charlotte.

He reached the trailhead and ran up the steep dirt trail faster than his usual pace, grateful for the physical exertion to take his mind off the sudden, searing memory of his little sister’s cherubic face.

If he bumped into the girls’ mother, he would warn her to be a little more careful with her daughters’ safety, but he probably wouldn’t go into details about either his cases at the FBI or about Charlotte, Gage thought, pushing himself even harder up the trail.

He wouldn’t wish his kind of nightmares on anyone, even a woman who would let her daughters wander around at all hours of the morning.

On her twenty-eighth birthday, Alicia Connelly DeBarillas awoke to two horrifying realizations—she had slept through her alarm again and her daughters were standing by her bed holding two gigantic armloads of what had to be stolen flowers.

Allie groaned and propped herself up against the pillows, wishing she could hang on to the lingering remnants of yet another dream where the heartrending events of the past two years—particularly the last six months—had never happened. But like all her other dreams, this one fluttered away like dandelion puffs on the breeze.

“Hey, ladybugs.” She paused and cleared morning gruffness from her throat. “Where did you get those?”

“From the pretty flower house,” Gabriella answered with her sweetest smile. “Mrs. Jensen said we could pick some for your birthday.”

She supposed she shouldn’t find that so surprising. Mrs. Jensen might look cold and forbidding on the surface but she had treated Allie and her girls with nothing but kindness since the day Allie had met her the week before at the garage Ruth’s son owned.

She had become their guardian angel of sorts, the best of Samaritans. Allie had been desperate and frightened and so tired when she showed up at that garage just before closing with her car that suddenly wouldn’t drive any faster than thirty miles an hour.

She had been trying to figure out whether she dared dip into her dwindling nest egg to fix the Honda—and to pay for a hotel room in this exclusive resort town—when Ruth had arrived to drop something off for her son. The older woman had taken one look at Allie trying to keep the girls entertained in that oil-stained mechanic’s office through her exhaustion and fear and had for some unaccountable reason decided to take them all under her considerable wing.

Before Allie realized what happened, she had a job offer cleaning houses and a place to live in this small cottage.

She owed Ruth Jensen so much. The woman didn’t know it but she had rescued them, given Allie the time and space she needed so desperately to figure out where to go from here.

Now it looked as if she owed Ruth for her lovely mish-mashed birthday bouquet.

Anna smiled and held out her colorful armload to Allie. “Happy birthday, Mama,” she whispered.

Allie’s heart swelled at the rare words from her quiet daughter. She pulled the girls to her, flowers and all.

“Thank you! These are so beautiful.”

“We don’t have any money to buy you another present,” Gaby said sadly. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

She probably should have taken them shopping, Allie thought with a guilty pang. Just another one of the hazards of being a single mother. Until her daughters could handle money on their own, Allie had yet to figure out a way to deal with the whole present-buying experience when she was the recipient. It was a little hard for them to surprise her with a gift when she was the one paying for it.

“This is perfect, sweetheart. Absolutely perfect—exactly what I wanted. Let’s go put them in water so we can enjoy them for a long time. After I shower does anybody want some super-duper birthday pancakes with chocolate sprinkles?”

Both girls nodded vigorously, their dark eyes wide with excitement. Allie smiled and quickly picked up the robe she had tossed over the old carved oak chair next to her bed, then led the girls out of her room to the kitchen.

After Gaby found a couple of canning jars under the sink for the flowers and they had arranged the bouquets to everyone’s satisfaction, Allie sent them into the living room to watch cartoons while she checked her blood glucose.

It was exactly where it should be, but Allie was almost afraid to hope that things might be settling down. The last few months had been the best her levels had been in a long time. After Jaime’s death the stress and fatigue of finding herself alone with two young children had taken a heavy toll on her. No matter what she did, her insulin levels had fluctuated wildly, culminating in that terrible day she had ended up in the hospital.

As she showered, she thought about the year that had passed since her last birthday. Twelve months ago she never would have guessed she would find herself fleeing from everything safe and secure in her life—her job, their house, her friends. She never would have been able to even contemplate her desperate fight to keep her daughters.

She closed her eyes and let the water sluice over her. She had made the right choice. The only choice. What else could she have done? Jaime’s parents had been ruthlessly determined. Once they had been awarded joint custody, Allie realized it was only a matter of time before they found a way to take the girls back with them to Venezuela. They had the money and the resources to ensure she would never see them again.

She could hardly believe the warm, funny man she married and loved so fiercely could come from such cold resolve.

This was her second birthday without him.

One of those unexpected waves of loss washed over her and she clutched at her stomach. They didn’t come with the frequency they had the first year, when she had barely been able to function, when just surviving each day—wading painfully through the ocean of grief encircling her—had been a monumental struggle of sheer will.

Jaime had been killed in a car accident just a month after her twenty-sixth birthday, a few days shy of their fourth wedding anniversary. Gaby had been three, Anna just over a year.

Where would she be now if not for that drunk driver on that rainy Pennsylvania road? Comfortable and secure and happy in the lovely life she and Jaime were building together. Certainly not facing this uncertain future, on the run with two young girls who deserved far more.

Allie scrubbed her tears away, then turned off the shower and wrapped in a towel. She gazed at her reflection in the mirror over the sink, at the woman staring back at her with big eyes and a choppy brown dye job.

She wasn’t going to second-guess the choices she had made. This was her birthday, a day of celebration. She had her girls with her and that was all that mattered, the most wonderful gift she could ever need.

She still mourned her husband and always would, but over the past months the fierceness of it had faded from a raw, sucking chest wound to a slow ache in her heart.

She suddenly heard a knock at the bathroom door. “Mama,” Gaby chirped. “The nice man from the flower house came to see you.”

Ack! Allie gazed frantically around the bathroom. The only thing she had to wear in here was a worn, threadbare robe. Since visitors at the front door of the small cottage had a perfect view of the hallway and bathroom, there was no way to slip into her bedroom for something else to put on without the man seeing her.

Left with no choice, she threw on the robe and ran a comb through her hair, hoping the nice man from the flower house was a kind, elderly gentleman who wouldn’t notice her state of undress.

She hoped he wasn’t angry at the girls for picking the flowers. But technically the house and its lush flower beds belonged to Ruth and she had apparently given the girls permission to raid them. Allie wasn’t about to let some renter give them a hard time about it.

Prepared to defend her daughters, she tightened the sash on the robe and walked out of the bathroom.

Shock hit her hard in the stomach at the sight of the man standing by the front door.

Oh, mercy.

This was no kind, elderly gentleman.

The other nurses she used to work with would have said the man from the flower house looked very nice indeed, Allie had to admit. He looked to be in his midthirties, dressed in a smoke-colored suit, a crisp white dress shirt and a discreet navy tie. Beneath the suit, broad shoulders rippled with power and unyielding strength.

He was tall, well over six feet, with cool gray eyes and short-cropped dark hair that still looked damp, as if he had just stepped out of his own shower. A part of her mind registered that he smelled divine. Like soap and aftershave and just-washed male.

His strong, masculine features looked freshly shaved, and Allie was stunned by the sudden desire to run her fingers along the skin of that hard, tanned jawline.

Allie swallowed hard, disconcerted and a little frightened by the unwelcome tug of awareness. She didn’t want to notice this man. She wanted to stay frozen forever in her grief for Jaime.

“Yes?” she said, uncomfortably aware her voice sounded cold, rude. It wasn’t his fault her unruly hormones suddenly decided to wake up after two years of suspended animation.

If her neighbor was surprised by her unwelcome tone, he quickly concealed it. “Hello. I live next door. Gage McKinnon.”

He waited for her to introduce herself and Allie scrambled for a moment to remember what she was supposed to say.

“Lisa Connors.” She finally supplied the alias she had practiced, derivations of both her first name and her maiden name. “I believe you’ve met my daughters. Gabriella and Anna.”

Since she hadn’t been able to figure out a convincing way to persuade the girls they all had to use pretend names for a while, she had made the difficult decision to stick with their real names while they were on the run, risky though it might be.

“Yes. They were in my yard earlier. Actually, that’s why I stopped by.”

“Oh?” she said coolly. If he was going to yell at her daughters, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

A muscle flexed in that strong jaw and he met her hostile gaze without a flinch. “I just wanted to give you a friendly warning to be a little more careful with them.”

“Excuse me?” She stared at him.

“Your girls were outside alone in the neighborhood when it was barely daylight and not another soul was around.”

“You were, apparently.”

“Right. I was a complete stranger, but they had no problem striking up a conversation with me and telling me all kinds of details about their life. Their names, their ages, the fact that today is your birthday. That their father is dead. I know practically their life story.”

Oh, no. Allie fought the urge to press a hand to her suddenly queasy stomach. Gaby could talk the bark off a tree. Her sweet, openhearted daughter simply didn’t understand the meaning of discretion and Allie didn’t know how to teach her.

If she didn’t figure out a way, though, Gaby was going to someday let slip too much information to the wrong person, details that would identify her mother as a fugitive.

The girls thought they were simply off on a new adventure. Allie didn’t want to frighten them by telling them this was all so deadly serious.

She turned back to the neighbor to whom Gaby had revealed so much. “All fascinating information, I’m sure.”

He glanced over at the girls, engrossed in Sesame Street, then lowered his voice. “If I were some kind of child predator it would be very fascinating information. Once I had their names, it wouldn’t take me long to completely win their trust. You should have a talk with them. Warn them to be a little more careful. In my opinion, girls that young shouldn’t be wandering the neighborhood by themselves. You should never have let them outside without supervision.”

“I was asleep!” she exclaimed.

“All the more reason to be concerned. Anything could have happened and you would have awakened to find your daughters gone.”

“I can take care of my daughters, Mr. McKinnon.”

“I never said you couldn’t. I’m just bringing it to your attention. A mother who cares about her children’s safety can’t be too careful.”

If you go into insulin shock again, anything could happen to those girls. A fragment of testimony from the custody battle slithered through her mind in a nasty whisper. Look what happened last time. You were behind the wheel and nearly killed them all.

If you love our granddaughters at all, you must see that your condition makes you incapable of caring for them on your own.

Oh, how those words had hurt. Irena and Joaquin had gouged at her mercilessly, again and again until even she had almost been convinced she was an unfit mother.

She had taken it from them in that courtroom—she’d had no choice—but she was not about to listen to the same kind of accusations from a stranger, even one who looked like sin and smelled like heaven.

She lifted her chin. “My children’s safety is my own concern, Mr. McKinnon. I’ll thank you to mind your own business.”

His mouth tightened into a hard line. “This is my business.”

He reached inside his breast pocket and pulled out a flat black leather case. He opened it and thrust it at her and Allie’s anger changed instantly to a terrible, icy dread at the sight of the shimmering gold badge pinned inside.

Please, no. Somehow he had found her and now she would lose everything. She waited for him to break out handcuffs, but he only reached for the doorknob.

“I work for the FBI’s Salt Lake City field office, Mrs. Connors,” he said, his voice distant and cool. “I see hideous things done to children on a daily basis. You have two beautiful little girls. I would hate to see anything happen to them.”

With that, he opened the door and walked out into the summer morning, leaving Allie staring after him with bewildered fear still pulsing through her in steady, unrelenting waves.

Chapter 2

“Mama, I don’t want to go to Mrs. Cochran’s house. I don’t like her.”

Allie paused in the middle of buckling Anna into her booster seat and gazed over at Gaby as unease coursed through her. “What do you mean, you don’t like her? Since when? Last week you said you thought she was nice. She pushed you on the swing and let you have Popsicles and played Chutes and Ladders with you.”

Gaby shrugged. “She’s nice sometimes. Not all the time.”

Oh, she did not need this. Everything had been going so well. Her insulin level was more stable than it had been for a long time. Her job cleaning houses, though a far cry from her work as a triage nurse at a busy innercity emergency room back in Philadelphia, gave her a steady income and more importantly, health insurance.

And she’d detected absolutely no sign that anyone had followed her.

The only fly in her particular ointment was her next-door neighbor. She had to admit, she’d suffered more than a few bad moments after learning she’d had the bad luck to move in next to an FBI agent.

After much angst, though, she decided she could risk living here for a few more weeks, just until she could pay off the car repair bill to Ruth’s son. She would just do her best to stay out of his way and pray he would have no reason to connect the drab Lisa Connors to Alicia DeBarillas.

Avoiding the man hadn’t been tough at all since he never seemed to be around.

Other than that stress of living next to Gage McKinnon, things had been going so well. She thought she had found the perfect caregiver for the girls while she was working, someone matronly and loving. Ruth Jensen had suggested an older, widowed neighbor of hers who took in children to earn a little extra money. Dora Cochran had come with other glowing recommendations and the arrangement had been working well, or so Allie had thought.

“What does she do that’s not nice?” she asked carefully.

Gaby’s little brow furrowed as she thought it over. “Yesterday she said I talk too much and told me to shut up. And she told Anna to stop acting like a baby on account of she started to cry after Mrs. Thompson turned off Blue’s Clues so she could watch Oprah.”

The woman wasn’t exactly beating them but she didn’t sound particularly loving either. Allie gave a mental groan. What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t dump her children off at a place where they weren’t comfortable, but she had nowhere else to send them. She hated this. Absolutely hated it.

She had to work; she had no choice. Much of her and Jaime’s savings had gone toward her medical bills and legal fees in the last six months. Though she had received life insurance benefits after his accident, it had all been tied up in the custody battle.

Before she left, Allie had pulled everything liquid out of their accounts, figuring that if she was careful, she and the girls could survive for five or six months on her small nest egg, especially if she could find a job with health insurance to pay for her insulin. But she couldn’t tap into that now. If they had to move on quickly for any reason, she would need that nest egg to fall back on.

She needed her job, but Allie knew she wouldn’t be able to work a moment if she was constantly worrying about her daughters.

“Okay, honey. If you don’t want to go back to Mrs. Cochran’s, you don’t have to. I’ll figure something out.”

Her mind scrambled to come up with some solution. Today she was scheduled to clean four vacation rental properties whose occupants had already checked out. Since they were vacant, she was sure Ruth wouldn’t mind if the girls went along with her, just until she could find someone else to watch them. She would give her a call just to make sure, but she didn’t think the other woman would have a problem with it. She had been more than accommodating so far and had treated her and the girls with a kindness that often brought tears to Allie’s eyes.

“You might be able to come with me today,” she told the girls. “I’ll just need to check with Mrs. Jensen and get some videos and some toys and crayons from inside so you have something to do.”

“Yippee!” Gaby cheered.

“’Ippee!” Anna echoed.

Allie headed back up the steps, then paused and looked over the hedge separating her rental house from its cheerful twin next door. Her neighbor would probably have something to say about a mother who would leave her daughters in the car while she ran back inside her house, even when it was only for a moment.

With a heavy sigh, she jogged back down the steps, opened the car door then unhooked the girls from their boosters. “Come on. You can wait inside while I gather some things.”

She shouldn’t care what some broodingly handsome, interfering FBI agent thought. Besides, the man seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Probably undercover somewhere, she thought, sticking his nose into some other poor woman’s business.

She had seen no signs of him over there since her birthday the week before when he had come knocking at her door, accusing her of being an unfit mother.

He hadn’t really, she reminded herself. She had reacted far out of proportion to what had no doubt been well-intentioned advice. When she’d had time to cool down—and time for her terror to fade—she appreciated his warning and the reminder to be more careful with her daughters.

Later that evening over birthday cake and pizza she had reminded both girls about their family’s safety rules. Don’t ever talk to strangers; don’t ever give your name to a stranger; don’t ever take rides from strangers; report any strangers to an adult. She had to walk the same fine line every parent confronted, between scaring the girls to death and instilling a necessary sense of self-preservation in them.

They seemed to have gotten the message without destroying their natural gregariousness. The night before, Gaby had even started to strike up a conversation with a woman in the grocery line then stopped in midsentence and asked her mother if she knew the other woman or if she was a stranger, and if she was a stranger, could Allie please find out her name so Gaby could finish telling her about the baby kittens she’d seen outside the store?

She supposed she owed Gage McKinnon an apology for reacting so strongly to his advice, even though her own sense of self-preservation warned her she should stay as far away as possible from such a dangerous man.

But how could she apologize to him if he was never home? His late-model SUV hadn’t been parked in the driveway since that morning a week earlier and his windows were tightly closed, even though a warm spell had hit Utah in the last few days. Not only had the windows not been opened but the curtains hadn’t so much as twitched an inch in seven days.

She didn’t want to be curious about his whereabouts but she had to admit she found herself watching out for his tall, muscular frame wherever they went. She didn’t know if that funny flutter in her stomach at the idea of seeing him again stemmed from fear or anticipation.

She wrenched her mind from her dratted neighbor and focused on the girls. “Find a few things to take with us today while I call Ruth, all right?”

She watched them go, Gaby chattering with excitement about all the things she was going to take and Anna trailing dutifully along behind, as usual.

Love for these two sweet children crept up on her and completely took her breath away, as it sometimes did. She would have died if she lost them, literally would have shriveled up and faded away into nothing. They were her heart, her soul, her life. Everything.

She wanted to hate Jaime’s parents for what they had tried to do. At first when she had awakened in the hospital and been served with the paperwork petitioning for custody of the girls because of her condition, she had been both livid and terrified. For a long time her emotions had seesawed between fury and fear as the case had worked its way through the courts.

But now she couldn’t manage to summon much emotion toward them but pity. Joaquin and Irena DeBarillas had failed miserably with their only son, had lost him long before he decided to come to the States to study medicine and had met and married her when he was a resident at the hospital where she worked.

Did they really think they could regain through their granddaughters what they had destroyed with Jaime?

Over her dead body.

She pitied them, knew they were lonely. But she would still be damned before she let them get their hands on her little girls.

Allie dialed Ruth’s office number and waited through eight rings before hanging up. The answering machine must be busted again. She’d learned Ruth had little patience with gadgetry and didn’t check her messages often anyway. She also didn’t carry a cell phone, so now what was Allie supposed to do?

She had to drop by the office on her way to the first property anyway to pick up the master key. If Ruth wasn’t there, she could always leave her a note, she supposed.

She went to prod Gaby and Anna along just as she heard the doorbell. For one crazy instant, she thought it might be her neighbor and her heart began a low, urgent drumming.

It wasn’t Gage McKinnon, she saw as soon as she opened the door, but her employer who stood on the porch, thin and brisk and competent.

“Ruth! I just tried to call you. I’m so glad you stopped by!”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” Suddenly she felt nervy presuming on her employer’s kindness this way. But she also couldn’t bear the thought of sending Anna and Gaby to a place they didn’t feel comfortable, not when their life was in such tumult anyway.

“Um, I’m afraid Dora Cochran is not working out. Would you object if I took the girls with me to the houses I’m cleaning today since they’re all empty? They can be very well behaved and won’t get in my way or slow me down, I promise.”

Ruth looked thoughtful. “I don’t see why not. Actually, that’s one of the reasons I stopped. I wanted to ask if you’re interested in another job, one where you might not need day care for the girls.”

“What kind of job?” she asked warily. She didn’t necessarily enjoy cleaning houses but it paid the rent with a little left over, and Ruth hadn’t asked any questions about her background.

“You told me you’ve had some medical training.”

“Yes.” She would love to find a nursing job but she would have to be licensed to legally work and she didn’t know how to go about that while living under a false name.

“A renter of mine was in an accident last week. He’s coming home from the hospital in a wheelchair the day after tomorrow but won’t be able to get around on his own for a while. He asked me if I knew anybody who could cook and clean for him, run him around to physical therapy, that sort of thing. I thought of you.”

“I’m not a licensed nurse in Utah, Ruth.”

“I know that. A home care nurse will stop by to check on him, so you would only have to be around to help if he needs it. Pay’s a few dollars more an hour than you get now and you could keep the girls with you.”

Excitement pulsed through her. If she were making a few dollars more an hour and didn’t have to pay for day care, she could add even more to her small security cushion. And it would be so wonderful to spend all day with Gaby and Anna.

She was almost afraid to hope things could work out so well and felt a pang of guilt for benefiting from some other person’s misfortune.

“What happened to the poor man?” she asked.

“Job-related injury. He was hit by a truck. Crushed against a concrete wall, really, by a man he was trying to arrest.”

A terrible suspicion slithered to life, and Allie glanced over the hedge again at the cottage next door. “He’s a police officer?” she asked with sudden dread.

“FBI agent,” Ruth said, confirming her worst fears. “You might have met him, since he just lives next door. Gage McKinnon. Tall, dark, good-looking.”

All her spiraling hopes crashed to the ground like a balloon shot by a BB gun. So she hadn’t solved her child-care dilemma after all. She was right back where she started, without a good place for the girls to stay while she worked.

She wanted to weep from the crushing weight of her disappointment. “I’m sorry, Ruth, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass on the job offer, though I truly appreciate you thinking of me. I just don’t think it would work for me after all.”

Her landlady frowned. “Pass? Why, that’s just plain crazy. It’s the perfect situation all the way around. If you wanted, you could even hire a teenager to watch the girls over here at your place and check on them through the day since you’d just be next door. I can give you some names.”

Maybe it would be the perfect situation, if the job involved caring for just an average person. But Gage McKinnon was an FBI agent. She hadn’t worked this hard to keep her children with her—sacrificed everything for them—only to lose them in the end to Jaime’s parents because of an interfering, inquisitive federal agent.

She couldn’t tell that to Ruth so she quickly searched for a believable explanation. “I don’t think Mr. McKinnon and I would suit,” she finally said, unable to keep the regret from her voice. “We met last week shortly after I moved in and, um, had a few words.”

Ruth blinked at that piece of information. After a few moments she nodded. “Your choice, I suppose. Too bad. You’d have been perfect, especially since you’ve been around hurt folks before. I’ll try to find someone else, I guess. Shouldn’t be too hard. One of my other housekeepers would probably do it in a heartbeat. It’s pretty easy money. Much easier than cleaning toilets and making beds all day.”

Now that was a matter of opinion.

Allie thought of Gage McKinnon, all long limbs and lean power. Even if she hadn’t been worried the sharp-eyed FBI agent would find out she was a fugitive, she wasn’t sure she could work so closely with him, not when she couldn’t manage to think straight around the man.

“I’m sorry, Ruth. I do appreciate you thinking of me, but I believe I’ll stick to cleaning toilets and making beds. Speaking of that, are you sure you don’t mind if I take the girls along with me today?”

Ruth shrugged. “Don’t see why not. As long as you’re working on empty vacation rentals it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll see if I can arrange your schedule this week so you work only vacant units.”

What would she have done without Ruth and her kindness? She couldn’t even bear to think about it. “Thank you.”

Ruth, as usual, shrugged off her gratitude. “So what’s going on with Dora?”

“Nothing, really. The girls can just be particular about what they like. They’ve decided they and Dora don’t suit.”

“I’ll try to think of someone else. Still, it seems to me the solution is right there in front of your nose. McKinnon needs help, you need a different situation for the girls. What better place for them than being with their mama all day while she works?”

Allie opened her mouth to reply, but Ruth cut her off with a shake of her no-nonsense graying head. “Don’t say no. Think about it. He doesn’t come home from the hospital until day after tomorrow. You might change your mind before then.”

She wouldn’t change her mind, Allie thought. She couldn’t afford to, as much as part of her might want to. The stakes were simply too high.

Gage shifted in the back seat of an FBI Suburban, trying to find the impossible—a comfortable position. Just how the hell was he supposed to get comfortable when he had two thigh-length casts on his legs?

It was only a half hour drive from the University of Utah hospital up Parley’s Canyon to his house in Park City. He could survive for that long. He had to if he wanted to make it back to his place.

No way was he going to recuperate in some rehab facility like the doctors at the university medical center wanted him to do. If he had to be cooped up somewhere for weeks at a time, he wanted it to be in his own space, surrounded by his own stuff. Not in some nursing home that smelled of stale urine and hopelessness.

“Everything okay back there?” Cale Davis, his partner of little more than a month, asked with concern from behind the wheel.

“Yeah.” Gage tried not to wince as the Suburban hit a pothole, sending fiery pain shooting through his legs like twin comets.

“You sure? I can pull over if you need a breather.”

“No. Just keep driving. I’m fine.”

Neither Cale nor the other man in the front seat—Davis’s temporary partner Thompson Lovell—looked convinced by his words but they didn’t argue with him.

“Potter called while we were at the hospital,” Cale said after a moment, referring to their boss William Potter, the special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City office. “Juber was arraigned this morning on attempted-murder charges, assaulting a federal officer and using his vehicle as a deadly weapon. Not to mention all the charges associated with his Internet child porn ring. There’s talk about a guilty plea, at least to the charges involving you. Since a dozen Feds and local cops watched him pin you against that wall, I don’t see what choice he has.”

Gage groaned inwardly—and not only because the Suburban hit another bump in the road. He had no one to blame for his injuries but himself. He had been an idiot and now he was paying for it.

If he hadn’t been distracted, he never would have made the greenie mistake of taking the shortcut between Lyle Juber’s pickup and a cement retaining wall on his way to yank the man out of his vehicle and make the arrest.

His only excuse was that he’d been caught up in the excitement of finally nailing the bastard. The case had been a long and ugly one, begun during his previous assignment in the Bay Area. He had trailed Juber here to Salt Lake City and continued building the case against him. Finally higher-ups determined there was enough evidence to make an arrest.

They’d found him in his hulking old pickup on his way to the grocery store. The guy had reacted like the cornered rat that he was. To the surprise of everyone on the team, he had resisted arrest with a vengeance.

Instead of calmly walking out of his truck with his hands up as he’d been ordered, he shoved the heavy truck into gear, crushing Gage against the wall, then backed into the other officers standing around with guns drawn.

Everybody but Gage had been able to dive out of the way. Because of the way he’d been positioned, Gage had ended up with one femur shattered in four places just above the knee and the other femur had sustained a clean simple fracture.

Juber hadn’t gotten far before the tires of his truck had been blown out and he’d been taken into custody. That was small consolation to Gage, facing several weeks of sick leave and more of rehab.

Not to mention the humiliation of knowing he had screwed up.

He would have plenty of time to obsess over every moment of his mistake. But at least he would be doing it at home, not in some damn gray-walled hospital room.

The doctors thought he needed another week in the hospital but Gage knew he’d be a raving lunatic by then. He hated the nurses waking him every time he managed to drift off to sleep, hated the lack of privacy, hated the pills they shoved down his throat at every opportunity.

He could handle this, he thought as Cale at last pulled in front of his rental unit. He had a home-care nurse coming to check on him and his saint of a landlady said she’d hired someone to help him get around throughout the day.

On the other hand, maybe he’d been a little too optimistic about his own abilities. By the time Thom and Cale helped him out of the Suburban and into the blasted wheelchair he was going to have to use for the next several weeks—until he could bear weight on his less-injured leg and start using crutches—his head was spinning and his gut churned as if he’d just climbed off a killer roller coaster.

He needed a painkiller but he hated the damn things. He closed his eyes in a vain effort to regain his equilibrium while Cale pushed up a temporary ramp that his landlady must have juryrigged into the cottage. He made a mental note to add a little extra to the rent check for all her work on his behalf since he had contacted her about his injuries.

“Do you have the key?” Lovell asked.

Gage thought about it and realized his key ring was probably still at his desk in Salt Lake City. He made a face.

“Guess not.” The agent pulled out a credit card, ready to pick the lock, then tried the knob. It turned easily, putting Gage instantly on alert. Why was the door open?

Lovell opened the door and Davis wheeled him inside the living room. Gage gazed around, disoriented. He had been in the hospital for over a week. Had he maybe forgotten where he lived, given the guys the wrong address somehow?

No, this was his cottage. He recognized his furniture—the leather sofa and recliner he’d brought along from his previous assignment in San Francisco, the oak coffee table he’d made with his own hands the last time he’d visited his father’s cabinet shop in Nevada, the big-screen TV he hardly had time to watch.

This was his cottage but what the hell had happened to it? He wasn’t particularly messy but neither was he obsessive about housework. This place sparkled, without any dust or that closed-up feeling he might have expected after it had sat empty for a week.

There were fresh flowers in a canning jar on the coffee table and the whole place smelled of clean laundry and chicken noodle soup.

He was still trying to figure what dimension Cale and Lovell had wheeled him into when a beautiful woman stepped out of his kitchen like something out of his deepest fantasies.

She was lithe and curvy and wore nothing but an apron.

Chapter 3

He blinked at the vision in front of him.

She had short, wispy brown hair, blue eyes the color of mountain columbines behind small wire-rimmed glasses, and a figure that could make a man’s mouth water.

“Oh! You’re here!” the delectable vision standing in his living room exclaimed. “I’m so sorry. I was busy cleaning up in the kitchen and didn’t hear you arrive.”

Gage was vaguely aware of Lovell and Cale sharing a look before his partner stepped forward with his hand outstretched, a charming smile playing around his mouth.

“Hello, ma’am. I’m Cale Davis and this is Thompson Lovell. You must be a friend of McKinnon’s.”

She gave him a hesitant smile and shook his hand, then reached behind her to untie the strings of her apron. Gage was vaguely aware he was holding his breath, then he let it out on a disappointed sigh. She had shorts on underneath, he was rather disheartened to discover. Navy-blue shorts that skimmed the top of long, shapely legs.

“We’re not really friends,” she answered Cale. “We’ve only met once, just for a moment.”

Through the pain beginning to pound through his legs like tribal drums beating out a message, Gage forced himself to look at her more closely. Now he recognized her. If he hadn’t been half-dazed from pain and fatigue, he would have figured it out much earlier. “You’re the lady from next door with the two dark-haired little girls.”

She nodded with a wary look.

He must have been blind or crazy not to have noticed those high cheekbones and her full, delectable lips when he spoke with her before. No, when he had gone to her house to talk to her, he had only been focused on her daughters’ safety, just as he should have been.

“Yes. I’m Lisa C-Connors. You met my daughters Gaby and Anna.”

“The flower pickers. Where are they?”

“Playing in your backyard. Your fenced backyard.”

Fences wouldn’t mean diddly to someone who wanted to take two cute little girls. He was going to say something along those lines but pain again reached up with a mighty fist and yanked the words out of his head. He grimaced instead, suddenly light-headed.

Damn, he hated this.

“You must be exhausted. Let’s get you into bed, Mr. McKinnon.”

A quick, sensual image flashed through his mind, momentarily taking the edge off his discomfort. Bed. Not a bad idea. It had been way too long since he’d slid his fingers over soft, female skin—filled his hands with willing flesh—and he suddenly wanted desperately for that willing flesh to belong to the woman standing in front of him.

But then, he probably wouldn’t be good for much with two bum legs, and he definitely didn’t need Lovell and Cale looking on.

“A very attractive offer, believe me,” he murmured through the soft haze in his head. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline. Maybe another time, sweetheart.”

Color flared high along her cheekbones. “Not funny, Mr. McKinnon.”

“Sorry. You’re right.” He drew in a breath, feeling like both a jerk and a major-league wuss. He never thought he could be this wiped out by a couple of war wounds.

“How long ago did you take your last pain pill?”

He raised an eyebrow, wishing the simple movement didn’t make his head feel quite so woozy. “Remind me again why any of this is your business. What are you doing here? This is still my house, isn’t it?”

She frowned. “Ruth didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“She hired me to help you out while you recuperate.”

“She told me she hired someone. I never thought to ask details.”

Another wave of pain washed over him and he gripped the armrests of the wheelchair. Okay, at this point he was willing to forget about soft, willing flesh, as long as he could get horizontal for a few moments.

Lisa Connors stepped forward. “You need to be in bed. Let’s get you settled.”

He didn’t have any energy left to argue so he let her wheel him into his bedroom, where he discovered the little elves had also been busy. His comfortably roomy king bed was gone, replaced by some steel hospital contraption just like the one he had just left.

“Where’s my bed?” he asked, uncomfortably aware he sounded like a grumpy toddler in need of a nap.

“Ruth and I took it down and stored it in the shed behind the house. The home health-care provider sent this one over instead since the doctors said you’ll need to keep your legs elevated a great deal of the time and this way we can raise the foot of your bed to facilitate that. With that big bed you had, there wasn’t much room in here to move a wheelchair around and we thought this one will be much easier for you to transfer in and out of since it can be lowered to wheelchair level.”

He liked his bed. He was a big man who needed space to sprawl around in, and these dinky hospital beds just didn’t cut it. He didn’t want to sound any more whiny than he already did, though, so he opted to keep his mouth shut.

He was distracted, anyway, when his neighbor lady took charge and helped Cale and Lovell move him from the wheelchair to the bed. He was relieved to discover the pain of the transfer was only agonizing instead of excruciating.

By the time he was settled, he was thinking he owed the doctors a huge apology. They were right, he was crazy to disregard their advice and insist on going home so early.

“You’re a lucky man, McKinnon,” Cale murmured to him after Lisa left the room to grab his pain pills and a glass of water. “I wouldn’t mind being laid up for a couple weeks if I had such a sweet young thing attending to my every need.”

A sweet young thing with two little girls and a chip the size of Montana on her shoulder, Gage reminded himself.

If he could hang on to any of the thoughts racketing around his head like a pinball in the middle of a record-breaking game, he could probably come up with at least a couple of reasons why it wasn’t such a great idea to have her here caring for him.

Since he couldn’t think right now beyond sinking into this bed and not waking up for a week, he decided he could always worry about it later.

She returned with the water and his prescription and handed him two of those annoying little white pills. “Here you go. Are you hungry? I made some chicken noodle soup. My grandma’s recipe, with real homemade noodles. It might help settle your stomach from the pills.”

Soup sounded delicious but he was afraid his stomach just wouldn’t handle it.

“I’m fine,” he said, taking only one of the pills and returning the other to the bottle. He hated this loopy feeling and the medicine only made it worse. A few more days and he’d be ready to chuck the whole damn bottle into the toilet.

“I think it would be best if we let him rest now,” she told the other two agents as she bustled around him tucking in blankets, fluffing pillows, taking the glass of water from him to set on the bedside table.

She smelled delicious, he thought as she leaned over him to adjust the pillows once more. Like violets and sunshine.

“Sure. We were just leaving,” Cale said with a smirk. Lucky, lucky man, he mouthed to Gage on the way out the door.

He didn’t like bossy women, Gage thought as he watched them go. Even when their subtle spring scent made his mouth water. He closed his eyes as the pill did its magic and took the edge off his pain. No, he didn’t like bossy women at all. That was only one of many reasons why having her here just wouldn’t work out.

He made a mental note to tell her that as soon as he woke up.

Taking this job had been a mistake.

A huge mistake.

Her nerves jumping, Allie finished throwing together peanut butter and honey sandwiches for the girls in the FBI agent’s kitchen. She didn’t belong here. She should be staying as far away as possible from this man who could completely destroy her family.

If he recognized her as a fugitive, everything would be ruined.

She didn’t know if Joaquin and Irena had reported them missing. Maybe they hadn’t even realized she was gone yet since relations between them hadn’t exactly been friendly since the beginning of the custody battle.

But eventually they would try to visit the girls and would find her empty house. Would they go to the police or hire a private investigator on their own?

Even now she could be a wanted fugitive with her name and description broadcast to every law enforcement officer across the country. Taking the girls out of Philadelphia without notifying them was probably in violation of a court order, no matter how confident Twila Langston was that the judge’s ruling awarding joint custody to the DeBarillas because of her diabetes would be overturned.

Patient advocate groups were already rallying behind her cause, and she had been allowed to retain sole custody pending appeal. But she was fairly certain that custody arrangement didn’t include the freedom to flee across the country without leaving a trace.

Maybe all this was for nothing, but she didn’t dare take that chance. Not after she had learned from the girls that Irena had taken them to get passport pictures taken.

Even if Jaime’s parents could only win court-ordered visitation, they could still take the girls to Venezuela during one of those visits. Once in their own country, Allie knew they had the power and wealth to keep her from the girls forever.

Allie blew out a breath. If Joaquin and Irena had gone to the authorities, her name and description could be circulating among law enforcement officials even now. Her patient could have even seen it before he was injured.

She had been stupid to change her mind and agree to take this position. It was just too risky.

Fear settled cold and hard in her stomach, but she forced a smile for the girls and handed them the sandwiches, along with carrot sticks and a couple of cheese slices. “Here’s your lunch. There’s that nice table on the patio. Why don’t you take your lunch outside and have a picnic so we don’t wake Mr. McKinnon?”

Gaby and Anna grinned at the idea of eating outside. “Can we have juice boxes?” Gaby asked.

“Yes, I brought a few over from our house and put them in the fridge. Pick the kind you want.”

She helped them carry their bounty out to the table in the fenced backyard then set it out for them.

“Mommy, can you have a picnic with us, too?”

She hesitated. Her patient might need her. But judging by the exhausted pain lines on his face when he first showed up with his friends, he would probably be sleeping for hours. Anyway, she should be able to hear him through the screen door if he called out for help.

“Let me go check on Mr. McKinnon, then I’ll come back out and have lunch with you.”

She walked back through the small house with its floor plan similar to hers—two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a good-size living area, a small dining room and a comfortable, efficient kitchen. At McKinnon’s bedroom door she drew in a steadying breath and pushed it open.

His chest rose and fell evenly as he slept, with the blanket she had tucked in so carefully earlier riding down nearly to his narrow waist now. The network of pain lines around his mouth were more faint now, she noticed, and he seemed as comfortable as possible given the two thigh-high casts on his long legs.

As she watched him, the fear in her stomach gave way to something far more treacherous. He was so gorgeous. Lean and dark, with sculpted features and that dangerous-looking stubble on his cheeks.

She shivered, hating this attraction stirring around inside her. She didn’t want to notice how his lashes looked so long and spiky there against his skin, how his shoulders spanned nearly the width of the hospital bed, how his big hands on top of the blanket looked strong and blunt-fingered, capable of all kinds of delicious things.

She shouldn’t be noticing any of those things, shouldn’t be feeling this low sizzle of awareness. Not for any man, and especially not for this one, who could so easily destroy her.

Jaime had been gone only two years. Building lurid fantasies around another man’s hands somehow seemed grossly disloyal to her late husband. How could she even think about having this man she didn’t even know—and didn’t particularly like all that much—touch her the way only Jaime ever had?

She had loved her husband fiercely. He had been her first and only lover, and their physical relationship had been rich and rewarding, filled with laughter and tenderness and passion. Maybe that’s why she missed it so much, because it had been such an important part of their life together.

Still, missing the intimacy she shared with her husband didn’t explain how she could have such an instantaneous response to this man she didn’t know at all.

It was there, though, simmering under her skin with a steady, bubbling heat. His attraction wasn’t diminished at all by the fact that he was lying in a hospital bed with two painful-looking casts on his legs. If anything, just that hint of vulnerability made him even more appealing.

She couldn’t do this job. She absolutely couldn’t—not only because he posed such a risk to her freedom and the girls’ future but because of this, the low heat seething through her.

She would just have to tell Ruth she had made a mistake to take the job in the first place and hope her landlady would let her return to cleaning houses. If she started now, she could probably find a new caregiver for the girls by the end of the week.

She returned to the patio and found Gaby and Anna had abandoned their half-eaten lunches. One of the neighbors’ cats had made the mistake of wandering into the yard to find a snack and he was far more exciting than peanut butter sandwiches.

The girls were chasing the bewildered animal around the yard, laughing with joy every time they came close enough to touch the cat, which wasn’t very often.

“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” Anna chanted, her chubby legs working hard to keep up with her older sister.

Just when Allie was about to open her mouth and tell them to stop tormenting the poor thing, the cat finally clued in that any morsels he might chance upon in this backyard simply weren’t worth the trouble.

He sprang to the top of the redwood fence and sat watching with an amused feline look while the girls hopped and jumped and squealed, trying in vain to reach him.

After a moment the cat tired of the entertainment and pounced down the other side into what was undoubtedly safer territory.

Unfazed by losing their prey, the girls flopped down onto their stomachs in the grass. Sunlight flashed off their dark curls as they laughed together.

“Mama, there are two ladybugs in the grass,” Gaby called. “Come and see!”

She joined them and bent at the waist for a closer look. “I see four ladybugs.”

Anna frowned. “No. Only two.”

“Let’s count them.” She pointed to the bugs with a grin. “One and two.” Then she pointed to her daughters. “Three and four.”

Gaby giggled. “We’re not really ladybugs. We can’t fly and we don’t have black spots.”

“But you’re my ladybugs,” Allie said, tickling them both until they were shrieking with glee.

She had loved these last two days with her daughters, having them close while she and Ruth readied the FBI agent’s house for his return. It had made her realize what precious little time she’d been able to spend with them since Jaime’s death. She had been so busy sorting through his affairs, working twelve-hour shifts at the hospital, fighting the custody battle, struggling with her own health.

They were growing up so fast, right in front of her nose. Gaby should be starting kindergarten in the fall, which was just another thing to add to her worry list. How would they be able to stay in one place long enough for her daughter to complete the school year?

They couldn’t stay here. She had acknowledged that days ago. Without the FBI agent’s presence in the neighborhood she might have been able to stay in Park City all summer, maybe even all year. But it was just too risky having him living next door.

That was one of the reasons she’d taken the job, so she could save a little extra to tide them over wherever they moved. That reason still held, she reminded herself. She could take a few weeks to work for Gage McKinnon while she made arrangements to leave. Surely she deserved a few weeks to simply enjoy her girls.

Besides, McKinnon wasn’t working because of his injuries. If the authorities were looking for her, how would he possibly know? If he had seen her picture and recognized her, what difference would it make whether she worked for him or simply lived next door?

As to the attraction part, she could handle that, too. She just had to remember all the reasons why giving in to that attraction would be wholly, unequivocally disastrous.

Chapter 4

Geez, couldn’t a guy get any sleep around here?

Through the thick fist of nausea and pain that had him in a chokehold, Gage blinked awake to the sound of girlish giggles carried through the window screen on the warm breeze.

They sounded like a couple of miniature laughing hyenas out there. Charlotte must have one of her obnoxious little friends over again. Did they have to titter and cackle right outside his window?

He was sick. Really sick. He couldn’t remember when he’d ever felt so lousy. Was he dying? He figured he had to be pretty badly off or he wouldn’t be stretched out here in bed in the middle of the day with pain racking his whole body.

Mom really ought to put her foot down and make the little brats play on the other side of the house so he could go back to sleep. He opened his mouth to call to her but couldn’t manage to force the words through the sandpaper lining his throat.

Man, his legs hurt. He tried to remember what had happened to them. Did he crash on his bike or something? Maybe Wyatt tackled him when they were playing football in the backyard earlier. Why did everything seem so hazy and weird? You’d think a guy could remember why his legs felt like they’d been run over by the family station wagon.

He blinked as some fragment of memory came to him, but he couldn’t move fast enough to pin it down. Before he could try to puzzle it out, Charlotte and her friend giggled again. A soft voice that didn’t sound like his mother warned them to be quiet so they didn’t wake Mr. McKinnon.

Mr. McKinnon. That was him. Weird. No. It wouldn’t be Charlotte out there. He tried to clear the fuzz out of his brain. Couldn’t be her. Charley was gone, had been gone for years.

Everybody was gone. Mom, Wyatt. Everybody.

So who was playing outside his window?

He’d have to figure that out another time, when he wasn’t so damn tired.

The next time he awoke it was to a cool, dim room and the musical murmur of women speaking softly.

“I gave him a pain pill as soon as he arrived, about four hours ago. I offered him two but he only took one.”

The voice was low, sexy, and he thought he could lie here in this dreamlike state and listen to it forever. He recognized it in some dim corner of his mind, but he was too hazy from the pain pill she was talking about to do anything about pulling the memory out.

“He’s been sleeping since then,” she went on. “I think he might have surfaced a few times but never all the way and never for very long.”

“You ask me, the man’s a damn fool to leave the hospital four days after breaking both legs.”

The second voice wasn’t nearly as sexy as the first. This one was honey-coated barb wire. “What’s he trying to prove? I mean, come on. It’s always the macho, good-lookin’ ones, honey. They make the worst patients and the worst husbands. Believe me, I’m married to one and have nursed more than my share of the other.”

The first woman laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind, Estelle.”

“You do that. You do that.”

Still not sure he wanted to let these women, whoever they were, know he was conscious, he peeked under his lashes and saw that Estelle was a sturdy woman who looked about fifty. She had skin the color of warm caramel and dozens of rainbow-colored beads in her swinging cornrows.

He wondered who she might be and what she was doing in his bedroom, until he saw the bright pattern of her nursing scrubs and the stethoscope around her neck. Ah. The nurse from the home health company. Who was she talking to?

The other woman stood just out of the range of his vision unless he twisted around, something he wasn’t sure he could do, even if he wanted to. Again, he thought he recognized the voice but couldn’t quite place it.

“I really hate to do this,” Estelle went on, “but I’m gonna need to check his vitals. That’s why they pay me the big bucks, to take care of stubborn cusses like this one who belong in the hospital but are too pigheaded to stay put.”

“I’ve been doing visual checks about every half hour while he sleeps. I’ve recorded all that for you.”

He managed to turn his head just enough to finally figure out who else was in the room—his very attractive next-door neighbor. Why had she been watching him while he slept? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, or that he wanted to delve too deeply into why that idea made him forget all about the ache in his legs.

“Something tells me you’re no stranger to a sickroom,” Estelle said. “You seem to know your way around pretty well.”

If he hadn’t been watching her so closely, he would have missed the way his neighbor’s face froze for a moment—a funny, almost frightened look flashing through her eyes before those delicate features became a blank mask. “I’ve had a little experience.”

“Good. I think you’re gonna need it with this one. He’s gonna keep you hopping. Hate to do it but to check his temp and blood pressure I’ll have to wake him up. You want to do the honors?”

After a moment’s hesitation, his neighbor nodded and stepped forward, her arm outstretched as if to shake him.

“I’m awake,” he growled. He didn’t want either of them poking at him or prodding him, not when he had suddenly discovered a much bigger problem than a couple of women who talked about him when he was supposed to be sleeping.

He needed to use the bathroom.

Severely.

Somehow he would have to figure out a way to heft himself into that wheelchair and maneuver through that narrow doorway while preserving whatever shreds of his dignity might be left to a man as helpless as a blasted kitten.

No way on God’s green earth was he going to ask these two for help.

He sat up, ignoring the way the room whirled and spun. That’s it, he decided fiercely. No more pain pills for him.

Right now he would have given just about anything he owned for a few moments alone in a room with that bastard Lyle Juber. Gritting his teeth, he managed to find the control to the bed and lowered it so he was on the same level as the wheelchair. He pulled himself to a sitting position then inhaled sharply as several dozen knives sliced at him.

“Hold on there, cowboy,” Estelle said briskly. “Where do you think you’re going in such a hurry.”

“Bathroom,” he growled. “You got a problem with that?”

The nurse laughed. “Only if you fall and break your arms to go with that matched set of casts on your legs. Let me give you a hand, there.”

She quickly showed him the transfer board tucked next to the bed and instructed him on the easiest way to get from the bed to the chair.

“Lucky you’ve got all these muscles in your arms here,” she said. “You’re gonna need ’em the next few weeks while you can’t use your legs.”

He made some noncommittal sound, then wheeled into the bathroom. Once more he found himself grateful to his landlady for installing grab bars that hadn’t been there a week ago. She’d thought of everything, he thought. Or maybe she’d had help from his neighbor.

“We’ll leave the door open in case you need any help in there,” the nurse called out.

“The hell you will,” he snapped, slamming it shut behind him and driving the bolt home.

Everything took about three times as long from a wheelchair, he was discovering. By the time he finished what he needed to do and managed to maneuver close enough to the sink and could run some water to wash his hands and splash on his face, he felt a little more human. He was weak as a baby, though, both from the pills and from his injuries. Just that small amount of effort tired him out.

When he unlocked the bathroom and wheeled back into the bedroom, both women were waiting just where he left them. The nurse wore an I-told-you-so expression on her face but Lisa Connors just looked worried about him. He didn’t want to analyze why that soft concern in her eyes warmed him far more than it should.

He wanted to protest when the two women both stepped forward to help him transfer back from the wheelchair to the bed but he decided it wasn’t worth the headache. To his chagrin, he was too relieved to be back in bed to work up much of a fuss.

While the nurse checked his vital signs, he couldn’t keep his gaze from straying to Lisa Connors. She stood silently, taking notes as the nurse recited numbers to her. She looked cool and lovely, her eyes huge behind those wire-rim glasses. He couldn’t quite place a finger on what it was about her that attracted him so much. Really, with that choppy short brown hair, most people would probably consider her on the plain side. But there was a delicateness, a fragility, about her that appealed to some deep place inside of him.

“Everything looks normal so far.” The nurse set down the blood pressure cuff. “But you’re gonna have to do a better job of staying on top of the pain. Take my advice and don’t let it get out of control. You need to swallow two pills every four hours.”

“No. No more pills.”

Estelle stepped back and placed her hands on her ample hips. “Oh, you are just gonna be a joy to work with, aren’t you?”

“Look, lady, I’m not a junkie. I don’t like being out of it and I don’t want any more pills. I can tough it out with aspirin.”

Estelle and his pretty neighbor shared a look, then the home-care nurse shrugged. “You want to be in misery, knock yourself out, sugar. We’ll see how big and tough you feel in the morning after the pain has kept you up all night.”

“What do you need me to do?” Lisa Connors asked.

“Just make sure you stick close enough to pick up the pieces. You sleeping over?”

“Oh, no!”

Did she have to protest so vehemently? he wondered, annoyed for some strange reason.

“I live in the house just next door,” she went on. “His landlady and I rigged up a system so I can hear what’s happening over here even when I’m at home. It’s just a baby monitor, really, but our houses are so close that it works just fine. All he has to do is call out and I can be here in a second.”

“A baby monitor?” He couldn’t keep his disgust out of his voice. As if he needed something else to make him feel helpless and infantile.

She gave him a lopsided smile. “Sorry. It was the best we could come up with on short notice, without installing a whole intercom system.”

“It’s a little invasive, don’t you think? What if I don’t want you spying on me twenty-four hours a day?”

Estelle snorted. “Then you should have stayed in the hospital where you belong, at least for a few more days.”

Since he couldn’t come up with any response to that, he opted to keep his mouth shut.

Into the silence Lisa Connors spoke again. “Once you can get along a little better on your own, we won’t need to keep the monitor turned on. I have to admit, I feel more comfortable knowing I can keep tabs on you. What if you fell while you were trying to transfer to the wheelchair for a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom? I wouldn’t have any way of knowing you needed me until the morning.”

“That would be my problem, wouldn’t it?”

“No. It would be my problem. I was hired to take care of you and I intend to do that. It’s either the baby monitor or my girls and I can sleep in your spare bedroom for the next few nights. Which would you prefer?”

Definitely not the spare bedroom idea. The whole reason he fought so hard to come home was for privacy. He had lived alone since he moved out of his dad’s place in Las Vegas for college. He was a solitary man, and that’s just the way he liked things.

Besides, pain pills or not, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep a bit knowing this woman, with her violet scent and her big blue eyes, was just in the next room.

When he didn’t answer, Lisa Connors smiled. “Not in the mood for a sleepover? I’ll confess, I prefer my own bed, too. So the baby monitor can stay?”

“I guess,” he muttered. He hated the idea but this was another battle he couldn’t quite summon the energy to fight.

“Good,” Estelle said briskly. “Now I’m gonna leave my pager number. Lisa, you check those vitals every four hours or so. You notice any bleeding or anything that might indicate circulation trouble, one of you needs to give me a buzz right away. Doesn’t matter which one. Otherwise I’ll check in with you tomorrow, cowboy. Don’t you go out dancing, now, you hear me?”

“Ha-ha,” he muttered. “You’re a real barrel of laughs.”

Estelle’s raspy chuckle hung in the air behind her for several moments after she left, leaving him alone with Lisa Connors.

“Are you hungry?” she asked after a moment. “You didn’t eat lunch. I can heat up some soup for you or make a sandwich if you feel up to some solids.”

Nothing sounded appealing to him but he knew one of the reasons that single pain pill had knocked him for a loop was his lack of appetite. He needed to keep food in his stomach, whether it sounded good to him or not.

“A sandwich would work.”

“Ham and cheese okay?”

He nodded.

“It will just take me a minute to throw something together. If you’d like to watch TV, I’ve hooked the remote to a cord tethered to the side of the bed there so you can always find it and there are some magazines here, too. I wasn’t sure of your interests but I picked up several that my…my husband used to enjoy reading.”

He only looked at her, but suddenly she colored up like a sugar maple leaf in October. Odd for such a dark-haired woman to show color so clearly. He hadn’t met too many women in his lifetime who could actually blush but the few he had met had been blond.

What had her so edgy? Maybe she didn’t like this situation any better than he did. It was an interesting thought. He knew if he were in her shoes, he sure wouldn’t enjoy baby-sitting a grumpy stranger for a few weeks.

For some reason the thought that she might actually be as uncomfortable with this as he was made him feel a little better about the whole thing.

After a quick peek into the living room to check on the girls, still engrossed in one of their favorite videos, Allie hurried to the kitchen. She closed the door and blew out the breath she’d been holding, then pressed a hand to her fluttering stomach.

What was it about Gage McKinnon that sent her hormones into a tailspin? The man was lethal. Even stiff and bad-tempered from the pain, he had a raw, masculine appeal.

A wounded, grumpy soldier. He was obviously miserable and in considerable pain but he was standing firm on not taking the narcotics his doctors prescribed. She had a feeling despite Estelle Montgomery’s predictions to the contrary, he wasn’t going to bend on his objections to the drugs. He seemed mulish and hardheaded enough to stick with his convictions.

She couldn’t really blame him for that, Allie thought as she buttered bread for his sandwich. A few times in her life she’d had to take pain medication and she had despised that out-of-control feeling.

He wasn’t going to be an easy patient. Despite the sudden conviction, she had to admit that all her nurturing instincts kicked in whenever she saw him lying so dark and masculine on that bed. She wanted to take care of him. To smooth down that lock of hair mussed by sleep and adjust his pillows and distract him from the pain.

Something in his eyes called to her. He seemed lonely, somehow. Lost. As if he’d been wandering alone for a long time and needed somewhere safe and warm to rest for a while….

She heard her own thoughts and rolled her eyes. Right. The man was a tough, hardened FBI agent. Maybe she was projecting her own problems onto him.

What was the matter with her? She had a job to do here and it didn’t include mooning over her patient. This was a good opportunity to make a little extra cash to add to her precious escape fund and she couldn’t blow it just because Gage McKinnon left her all soft and tingly.

She would do her job and do it well, Allie chided herself sternly. She would make the poor man as comfortable as possible given the circumstances. That didn’t include letting him unsettle her.

Keeping a tight rein on her thoughts, she finished fixing the sandwich and arranged it on a plate along with some carrot sticks and potato chips. After she added a glass of milk and one of the low-sugar oatmeal cookies she had made earlier in the day, she carried the tray down the hall to his bedroom.

She paused in the doorway when she spied her daughters standing by Gage McKinnon’s bed, Gaby in the lead and Anna hovering just behind her sister.

“Hey, mister, we colored you a picture,” Gaby was saying, holding out a page ripped from a coloring book like it was a sacred pictograph. “It’s Big Bird and a rainbow. I did Big Bird and Anna did the rainbow. She doesn’t stay inside the lines very well but she’s only three. Hey, mister, what happened to your legs?”

Without bothering to wait for any kind of response, in typical Gaby fashion, her oldest chattered on. “Do they hurt? I bet they do. My friend Gina at my old house broke her arm falling off the swings, and she had to wear a cast. She said it hurt a lot. She still used it to whack her little brother, Nicky. He was a brat. My mama called him a little pill. That’s funny, huh? Hey, mister, where do you want us to put our picture? I bet my mama could find some tape.”

Something about the hard set of his expression warned Allie he didn’t appreciate the company.

She stepped forward quickly, hoping to head off the abrupt answer she sensed brewing. “Girls, it’s very nice of you to try making Mr. McKinnon feel better with a picture. I think the best thing for him right now is to rest. Why don’t you go color a little more? I’m almost finished here and then we’ll be going back to our house for the evening.”

Faced with her no-arguments tone, the girls didn’t quibble. Gaby skipped out of the room, followed by her Anna shadow.

When she and Gage were alone, she set the tray down on the rolling bedside table Ruth had procured and pulled it toward him.

“Sorry about that,” she finally said to break the suddenly awkward silence. “Gabriella can be a little overwhelming sometimes. She means well but I’m afraid she hasn’t learned when to turn it off.”

A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Don’t you have anywhere else for them to go? A sitter or something?”

The sudden attack took her completely by surprise and for a few moments she could only blink at him. “I…no. Not really,” she finally said. “I’m sort of between care providers at the moment. They’re both usually very well-behaved. I…Mrs. Jensen and I didn’t think you would mind them being here.”

“You were both wrong.”

She stiffened at his blunt tone. Well, that was plain enough. He disliked her daughters. How could anybody not adore her daughters? They were sweet and kind. Funny. Completely adorable!

Any warm feelings she might have been crazy enough to entertain for Gage McKinnon fluttered out the window on the breeze. The man wasn’t a wounded soldier. He was grumpy and stubborn and mean tempered.

“I’m sorry,” she said tersely. “I didn’t realize you would object to the girls. I’ll do my best to keep them out of your way.”

“You do that, Ms. Connors.”

She swallowed her sharp retort and nodded. He had a right to his solitude. A couple of preschoolers underfoot probably weren’t the best medicine for someone recovering from a traumatic injury.

She would just have to do her best to keep them quietly occupied for the next few weeks. She could do that. Just as she could control her own unwilling attraction for her cranky patient.

Chapter 5

“Do you think you might need anything else before I leave for the evening? How about more ice water?”

Annoyance threaded through Lisa Connor’s voice like a muddy irrigation canal making its torpid way through a field of alfalfa, and tension stiffened her shoulders and that stubborn little jaw.

He hated to admit it but he was sorry to see the soft compassion in those pretty blue eyes give way to cool, distant politeness behind her glasses.

He should have known she would take his comments personally. She probably thought he had something against her kids. They weren’t really the problem. The little squirts seemed to be fine, although the older one certainly had a motormouth on her.

The truth was, he just had trouble with all kids.

Not that he disliked kids. He didn’t. But he didn’t have much experience with normal kids, the ones who were happy and well adjusted. In his line of work, most of the children he saw were battered and bruised, both emotionally and physically. Or worse, the ones who would never have the chance to grow up.

He had witnessed so many terrible things in his career with the Bureau. Child abuse, sexual molestations, kidnappings. Any possible way an adult could snatch away the innocence of a child. The agents who worked cases involving crimes against children had to maintain a mental toughness, a self-imposed distance, that others in the FBI didn’t always understand.

Over the years Gage thought his skin had grown as thick as an elephant’s hide. He wasn’t good at letting anybody inside, especially not a couple of little girls who would hopefully never be touched by the ugliness he dealt with on a daily basis.

“Ice water would be good,” he finally answered her question with wariness. He had a feeling she would just as soon grab that pitcher and dump the contents over his head. She didn’t, though. Lisa merely picked up the pitcher with that same polite expression on her face and walked out the door.

The room fell silent after she left, and Gage tried to eat a little of the supper she had fixed. He still didn’t have much of an appetite but he forced himself to chew and swallow several bites of the sandwich. It was good, he had to admit. Much better than the pablum they passed off as food in the hospital.

She was trying to make him as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. Maybe he shouldn’t have come down so hard on her about her daughters hanging around.

He pictured the two little dark-haired girls. Anna and Gabriella. What were they? Three? Four? Whatever, they seemed to be fairly close in age to his little sister when she disappeared.

Maybe that was why he was edgy and uncomfortable around them—they reminded him too forcefully of Charlotte the last time he had seen her. No wonder he didn’t like having them around. He didn’t need more reminders of his little sister shoved in his face every minute. Especially when he had nothing else to do all day but lie in this damn bed and think about the past and the guilt that was as much a part of him as his bones and his blood.

“Oh. You’re finished.”

He glanced up to find Lisa standing in the doorway holding the pitcher of water. He’d been so engrossed in his thoughts he hadn’t even registered that he had eaten the entire sandwich without tasting most of it.

“I should have realized one sandwich might not be enough. I’m sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve fixed meals for a…for a man with a healthy appetite. Would you like another one? It would only take me a moment to fix it.”

The spasm of grief that flashed across her face made him curious once more about her late husband. She obviously still mourned the man. “No, thanks. I’m good,” he replied. “I’m afraid I’m still a few days away from a healthy appetite.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind in a few days, then, and adjust your portions accordingly.” She managed a smile—a peace offering?—and poured him a glass of water from the pitcher.

“It’s almost six. If you don’t think you’ll need anything else this evening, I’ll take Gaby and Anna next door and fix their supper and settle them into bed. I checked the monitor earlier and it appears to be working. If you need me, just call out and I can be here in seconds. Also, I’ve made sure the phone is right here attached to the side of the bed. My phone number is programmed into it and so is Ruth Jensen’s, just in case the monitor doesn’t work for some reason.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Behind the lenses of her glasses, her eyes narrowed as she studied him, and he hoped nothing in his expression betrayed the throbbing pain that had suddenly returned to his legs with a vengeance.

“Don’t be a hero, Mr. McKinnon. If you need anything, please tell me. I know how hard it can be to accept help—believe me, I know—but you’ve hired me to do just that until you can manage better on your own.”

“I didn’t hire you,” he muttered, wishing she would just go away and leave him alone to tackle the pain.

“You’re right,” she said after a moment. “If you want to be technical about it, Ruth actually hired me. But she did so on your orders. We both know that right now I’m the only thing standing between you and that hospital room you just left. Please ask if you need something.”

“Fine. I need something.”

Her face lit up with an eagerness to help he would have found laughable if it didn’t shine a warm light on a cold, empty place inside him. “Anything. What can I get for you?”

She was probably imagining he would ask for another pillow or even those blasted pills he hated so much. He almost enjoyed popping her devoted-nurse fantasy.

“My sidearm. It should be in a holster in the personal effects I brought home from the hospital. I want it close enough where I can reach it.”

After a moment of shocked silence, she raised an eyebrow. “Planning on doing a little target shooting at the TV, are we?”

He shouldn’t have to explain anything to her. It wasn’t any of her business that he had acquired his fair share of enemies after more than a decade at the Bureau. She would call him paranoid if he tried to tell her that certain parties would be thrilled if word happened to trickle out that he was lying here helpless, unable to defend himself.

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