LITMIR.BIZ

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jaw jump, then set. “Don’t,” he said, his voice cold now. “Don’t even try.”

      Liana stared at him. What had happened to the hero she remembered, the man who had shown a courage she’d only seen once before in her life? How had he ended up so beaten, so broken? She hoped his wife—what had his fiancée’s name been?—was keeping a close eye on him.

      “It’s my decision,” she said.

      He stared at her. She saw something flicker in his eyes for the first time, some tiny glimmer of light. Hope? she wondered.

      For the first time since the startling realization that Redstone truly meant to help him, Liana was certain he needed that help.

      Chapter 4

      “Who’d have thought it?” Logan murmured almost under his breath.

      “Thought what?” Liana asked, finally coming out from behind the desk. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a light green sweater that hugged her curves without being blatant, just as he would have expected. Part of that girl-next-door thing, he thought, along with the sweet smile and the big blue eyes.

      “I should have known,” he said hastily, veering off a path he didn’t want to travel. “The woman who did what you did that day in the bank isn’t one to shy away from a losing fight.”

      She frowned. “You’re the one who took that crazy guy out.”

      “I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t put yourself in his line of fire and rolled that chair at him.”

      He knew he’d never forget that moment. They’d been huddled in a corner, him pulling his off-duty weapon from its ankle holster, assessing the situation and looking for a way out, her exhibiting an odd combination of fear and anger. One bank customer was already dead, and he’d known there would be more bodies if he didn’t do something. The thought that one of them might be this beautiful, innocent, girl-next-door type was more than he could take.

      When he’d whispered to her to stay down, that he was a cop and he was going to try for the suspect, she’d turned those big blue eyes on him with a level gaze that had surprised him.

      “Would a distraction help?” she’d asked.

      He’d tried to keep her from doing it, but she wasn’t having any of that. The suspect had fired again, this time wounding a teller, and he’d known he had no choice. He quickly edged to the corner of the counter, then nodded at her. A split second later she’d scrambled forward to shove a heavy office chair out into the suspect’s path, drawing his attention and his fire; the back of the chair was shredded by high-velocity rounds. In that instant Logan had stood and taken his one chance to down the shooter in the bulletproof vest, a shot to the head.

      “You were the only one there who had the nerve to do something. They should have given you that medal.”

      “I stayed mostly behind the counter,” she said, her tone pointed. “You’re the one who stood up and gave him a shot at you to get him before he killed anybody else.”

      “And if I’d done it better, I wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital for three weeks.”

      “That’s not what your lieutenant said,” she retorted. “He said your shot was perfect. It was just bad luck that the robber was able to keep firing as he went down.”

      Logan winced inwardly even now, eight years later, remembering the wild spray of bullets from the automatic weapon as the killer collapsed on the bank floor. He hadn’t even realized he’d been hit until Liana had reacted, going pale and leaping toward him. He’d been startled when she’d touched him, only understanding when she shouted at someone to call for paramedics and he saw blood flowing over her fingers. His own blood.

      “I thought you were dying,” she said softly, as if her thoughts had followed the same track as his. Maybe they had; you didn’t go through something like that without having the events seared deep into your memory.

      “If you hadn’t slowed down the bleeding, I might have,” he said, voicing the gut-level knowledge he’d carried since that day.

      “I wish I could have done more.”

      “You did more than anyone.” It flashed through his mind then, the moments after he’d realized he was going down, the moments when he had thought just what she had, that he was dying. He remembered her holding him, whispering encouragement, telling him help was coming as his blood soaked her summer dress. “You stayed with me.”

      Her expression changed, as if she was surprised he found that even worth remarking on. As if there had been nothing else she could possibly have done. For her, perhaps there hadn’t been.

      “I remember you talking to me,” he said. “When everything started fading away, I could still hear you.”

      He regretted the too-telling admission the moment the words were out. But then she gave him a soft smile that warmed him ridiculously and made him forget everything else.

      “I didn’t even know your name. That was the strangest thing, all I could think of was that I didn’t even know your name.”

      He heard the catch in her voice, as if she were feeling an echo of the emotions of that long-ago day. Another memory sliced through his mind then, of looking up at her as he lay on the bank’s cold tile floor, feeling everything slipping away. She’d been crying. For him, a stranger, tears had been streaming from those blue eyes.

      He tried to shake off the image, but it clung stubbornly. The effort made his voice gruff again.

      “We never got around to that.”

      “No, we didn’t.”

      They had chatted, though, in the surface way two people in line did when things were moving slowly. He remembered thinking that he’d always preferred blondes, like Lisa—the name barely stung anymore now—but a redhead like this would make any man look twice. She wasn’t flashy, or blatant, but had the quiet kind of beauty that lasted.

      It had only been afterward, when he’d been flat on his back in the hospital wondering why he was still alive, that they had really talked.

      “How’s your father?” she asked.

      Startled, he said more bluntly than he should have, “Dead.”

      She paled, then pink color rose in her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

      “No,” he said quickly, “I am. I didn’t mean to say it like that. You just caught me off guard.”

      As quickly as that she accepted the apology with a nod. “What happened?”

      “Cancer. Pancreatic. Five years ago. He was diagnosed and then gone in six weeks.”

      “Logan, I am so sorry. He seemed like a nice man, when I met him at the hospital.”

      Nice wasn’t a word he’d have used often about his old man—they’d butted heads too often—but he knew Charles Beck could be charming when he chose to be. And he’d apparently chosen to be to Liana Kiley.

      “He…liked you, too,” he said after a moment.

      And that, he thought, was the understatement of the century. He’d never forget his father coming into his hospital room after meeting her and saying, “Now there’s a woman!” And he’d continued with comments like that, suggesting any man who didn’t snap up a woman like Liana was a fool, until Logan had finally told him to shut up about it, and her.

      He’d written it off to his father’s dislike of Lisa—he’d said from the beginning that she was all show and no staying power, and had, maddeningly, been proven right—and been even more determined to make his relationship with Lisa work. For all the good it had done him.

      “It’s just as well,” he muttered. “At least he’s not here to see his only son go down in flames.”

      “He wouldn’t believe

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