LITMIR.BIZ

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“Come here.”

      Wariness flashed across her features. “Why?”

      Ignoring the question, Jack thrust the phone at her. “Tell him to meet you here. Tell him you’ve got a mutual friend who needs clothes and money. Don’t mention my name in case there’s a tap. He’ll know it’s me. Tell him it’s an emergency. Make sure he drives up here now.”

      Protest registered in her eyes, but Chandler must have answered, because she turned her attention to the phone. Jack watched her shift into lawyer mode, listened as the cool, detached professionalism slipped into her voice. Quickly and without emotion she informed Chandler of the situation. If Jack hadn’t been watching her, he wouldn’t have known her hands were trembling. Or that the pulse point just above the mole on her throat was thrumming.

      Hanging up the phone, she turned to him. “He’ll be here in a couple of hours.”

      “That’ll give me time to eat and shower.”

      “You realize Aaron’s going to insist you turn yourself in, don’t you?” she asked.

      “He can insist all he wants. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”

      “As an attorney—”

      “Cut the lawyer crap. Nothing personal, but I’m not too keen on lawyers these days.”

      “Maybe you should have gone somewhere else.”

      Jack bit back an angry retort. He was cold and hungry and ached all the way to his fingernails. The last thing he wanted to do was argue with Landis. “It’s been a rough couple of days.” Argument leaped into her eyes, but he raised a hand to silence her. “I’ve got a bullet wound in my left shoulder.”

      Her mouth opened slightly and her gaze flicked to the bloodstained shirt. But she didn’t speak. She didn’t offer help. Maybe she wasn’t as compassionate as he’d thought. “You need to go to the hospital,” she said.

      “That’s not going to happen.”

      “I’m a lawyer, Jack. I don’t do bullet wounds.”

      “Yeah, well, you’re going to make an exception tonight.” Never taking his eyes from hers, he began unbuttoning his shirt.

      Landis stared at him as if he’d slashed her with a machete. Her gaze flicked from his eyes to his hands as he worked the buttons. At least that cool, detached mask was gone he mused, vaguely satisfied.

      Easing one side of the shirt off his shoulder, he stole a look at the wound. His stomach flip-flopped as his eyes took in the mass of jagged flesh. The skin was the color of eggplant, swollen and hot to the touch. No wonder it hurt like hell.

      Landis gasped and covered her mouth with an unsteady hand. “My God, Jack, I had no idea you were… You need to go to the hospital. A doctor. Stitches…” She stepped back, as if distancing herself would make him go away.

      He knew she wasn’t necessarily worried about his well-being, but it was good to know she was concerned. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had worried about him. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time someone had cared whether he lived or died.

      The feeling was bitterly familiar. Orphaned at the age of eight, Jack had grown up in a series of foster homes, some good, some not so good. He’d been moved around so often, the constant shuffling from home to home had become a way of life. He’d dealt with it by convincing himself he didn’t care. If that didn’t work, he went looking for trouble—something he’d always had a knack for finding.

      He thought about the man who’d helped him turn his life around and wondered how Mike Morgan would feel about what was happening now. The prospect of Mike’s disappointment left a bitter taste at the back of his throat.

      “Why don’t you let me drive you over to the clinic in Provo?” Landis said.

      Taking in her wide eyes and pale skin, he almost smiled, realizing that even after everything that had happened between them, he was still hungry for her attention. Hungry for a hell of a lot more than her attention if he wanted to be honest about it. God, he was a fool…

      “Because by law all bullet wounds are reported to the police,” he snapped.

      “I’m not equipped to treat a wound like that, Jack.”

      “It’s only a graze. You can handle a bandage.” He looked down at his muddy clothes. “Right now I’d like a shower and some dry clothes. I need something to eat. Some aspirin and a bed. I need to have a clear head when Aaron gets here.”

      He gazed through the French door, gauging the snow. Not exactly a snowstorm, but it was coming down again. In another hour the roads would be treacherous. Hopefully, Chandler kept a set of tire chains in the trunk of his Mercedes.

      Surprising him, Landis stepped closer, until she was standing a mere foot away. He knew it was a tactic she’d learned at some point in her education. Some nonsense about invading personal space. Too bad she hadn’t yet learned the tactic didn’t work on him.

      “All right, Jack. You can take a shower. I’ll fix you something to eat. I’ll even do my best to get your shoulder taken care of. But the moment Chandler gets here, you become his property, and he’ll damn well take you with him when he leaves.”

      Jack tried to be amused, but his sense of humor had all but vanished in the last hours. “And if he doesn’t?”

      Narrowing her eyes the way a cat might an instant before it pounced on an unsuspecting mouse, she moved even closer. “Then you can add another twenty years to your sentence for holding me hostage.”

      Chapter 3

      Landis’s every sense was honed on the man standing at the hearth as she made her way toward the linen closet for a towel and an extra bar of soap. She told herself the only reason she was helping him was because she wanted him gone. The sight of him shivering with cold and pain had nothing to do with it. Damn it, it didn’t. She was immune to his suffering. She might have cared for Jack once, but those days were over for good—for too many reasons to count.

      As long as she kept her interaction with him to a minimum, she would get through this. Of course, maintaining a safe distance was going to be difficult considering the size of her cabin. For the first time since owning the place, she wished she’d gone for square footage instead of privacy.

      She looked down at the bar of soap in her hand and willed her hand to stop shaking. The last thing she wanted to think about was Jack taking a shower in her bathroom. The image of him lathering that large male body with her perfumed soap disturbed her more than she wanted to admit. Maybe because she remembered every detail of that body with startling clarity. A wide, muscular chest that tapered to a washboard belly. Narrow hips that connected to long, powerful legs. She remembered running her fingers through the dusting of black hair on his chest and thinking she’d found heaven in his arms. She remembered kisses hot enough to melt steel. Lovemaking so intense it had left coolheaded Landis in tears…

      With those disturbing memories came the darker memories of their last terrible night together. The night Evan died, it had been Jack who broke the news. It was a night of disbelief, of rage, of wrenching grief. But even as her heart had cried out with the pain of losing her brother, she’d reached out to Jack. He was Evan’s best friend, and it had seemed so right that he would be the one to share her anguish. A man and a woman, lovers bound by sorrow, seeking comfort in each other’s arms. Landis had slept with him one final, earth-shattering time before the investigation and trial tore them apart.

      But she’d never been able to erase the memory of his words of solace, the tormenting sight of his tears or the outrage burning in his eyes. Nor had she been able to forget his gentle kisses, his steady, elegant hands, or the way his eyes glittered with passion when he was inside her.

      Shaken by the memory, appalled by the thoughts streaking through her traitorous brain, she opened the closet door and yanked a towel from the shelf, vowing not to let the past

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