LITMIR.BIZ

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house, bleeding and hurt. He had no right to make her start worrying about him again. She opened her mouth to say so, but his head lolled to one side and his body slumped.

      “Oh, God.” She stared at her ex-husband, passed out on the floor. She kneeled down and pushed his silky hair out of the way to feel his forehead. “Cody, wake up! What do I do?”

      He opened his eyes and looked a little to the left of her head. “Whoa,” he whispered. “There’s two of you, Dana. Wow, twice as much to love.”

      Something deep inside her ached with loss and sorrow. No. Please don’t use the word love. I can’t stand it. She concentrated on helping him.

      “Where are you hurt? What happened?” She stood up and pulled on his unbloodied arm, trying vainly to master the queasy fear that was stealing her breath. Cody was hurt. Again. “Can you stand up?”

      He looked at his left hand, covered in blood. “Look. I’m bleeding on your floor. I’m sorry, Dana, I know how much you hate a mess.” His voice was faintly slurred. He wiped his fingers on his jeans, streaking the dusty fabric with thick black blood and shearing what was left of Dana’s breath from her lungs.

      Her gaze followed the path of his hand. Blood. Cody’s blood. “Cody, shut up. Talk to me.”

      Cody laughed weakly. “Pick one, chère.”

      “How bad are you hurt? Should I call a doctor?”

      “No!” He pulled himself upright with a huge effort. “Please, Dana. No doctor. It’s not that bad. Just a flesh wound. Damn,” he whispered, leaning back against the wall, his face turning paler, if that was possible. His forehead furrowed and more lines appeared on his face. He looked as though he was in agony.

      Dana’s heart pounded so loudly the echoes seemed to reverberate around her. Cody was in trouble. It was the same old story, the same old Cody, and Dana felt the same old terror squeezing her chest.

      Not again. I can’t do it again.

      Because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she grabbed his good arm and draped it around her shoulders. “Damn it, Cody, when are you going to figure out you’re not immortal? When are you going to realize that those bullets are real? This isn’t cops and robbers. That’s not make-believe blood.” She stopped herself with an effort. Her voice was beginning to sound hysterical.

      “When are you going to…remember my name is not ‘Damn it, Cody.”’

      She sniffed in exasperation. “Come on. We’ve got to stop that bleeding.”

      “I know. Messing up your floor.” Cody was mumbling and leaning heavily on her. He was almost out again.

      She glanced at the tiny bathroom, then dismissed it as too small. Instead, she turned him toward the bedroom. “Wait a minute. Can you stand, just for a second?” She peeled his arm from around her shoulder and jerked her new Battenberg lace bedspread off the bed.

      Cody made a short, derisive sound and Dana’s face burned. “It’s brand new….” She stopped, embarrassed. He was bleeding to death and she was worried about a bedspread.

      “Don’t worry, chère, I understand. Hard to get that blood out…wouldn’t want a stain. Wouldn’t want a mess.” His voice was fading, but she heard him.

      She started to respond but Cody was losing his fight to stay upright. She caught him around the waist as he swayed.

      “You still smell like roses,” he said, his voice rumbling against her shoulder and his breath warm on her ear. “Al…always like roses.”

      And you smell like danger, and trouble, and everything I lost. “Can you stand up long enough to get the jacket off?”

      “Maybe,” he said. But just as she reached for the collar to pull it off his shoulders, his knees buckled again and he crumpled onto the bed. “Then again…maybe not.”

      “Damn it, Cody, how can you joke at a time like this? You’re bleeding and in trouble. Try to take it seriously, please. Turn over. I’ve got to get that jacket off.” She pulled at the sleeve, and when it slid off, she saw where the blood was coming from. Her stomach turned upside down and she had to swallow against the queasy lump that began to form.

      “Oh, God,” she breathed as her stomach pitched. “Cody, you’ve been shot.”

      “You got that right,” he whispered, then groaned as she tugged on the torn sleeve of his sweatshirt. It was soaked with blood and stuck to his skin. There was an ugly black hole in the upper arm.

      She looked at his back. Another hole marred the shoulder. “Is—is this the same b-bullet? How many times were you shot?”

      “Just once,” he gasped. “It went clean through. I heard it hit the wall behind me.”

      Dana moaned at the picture his words evoked. “It went through,” she repeated doggedly. “That’s good, I think. We need to get you to the emergency room.”

      “No.” Cody shook his head against the pillow and grabbed her wrist with his good hand. “Just wrap it up, please.”

      She pulled away. “God, Cody. You’re the most stubborn man I’ve ever known. You need stitches, and probably a tetanus shot, and a blood transfusion for all I know.”

      “No, I don’t. Got a tetanus shot, last year, when I—never mind. All they’d do is…wrap it up. Please, Dana?”

      “Fine,” she grumbled, grabbing a pair of scissors from the sewing box under her dressing table. “What do I care, anyway? It’s none of my business. I don’t know why you even came here.”

      Her fingers shook and her mouth filled with acrid saliva as she cut the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Nausea burned in her throat. She swallowed hard, while a shudder ran up her spine.

      It was just like before. Like all the times before. “You haven’t changed a bit. It’s just like the last time, and the time before that. How many times were you shot in the two years we were married? Three times? Four?”

      Dana hadn’t seen much blood in her life, and most of it was Cody’s.

      Chapter Two

      Dana licked dry lips as she peeled fabric away from Cody’s skin. It didn’t matter if he’d been shot three times or thirty. It was too many. The last time had been a head wound. Then the blood had streaked his forehead and his cheek and had run down his neck to soak the collar of his shirt.

      “And how many times did you go to the doctor? Once. And that wasn’t even your idea. You were unconscious, for God’s sake!”

      She hadn’t ever wanted to see his blood again. That was why she’d left him. It was the reason that, no matter how much she loved him, no matter how much it had hurt her, she’d had to leave. His job had always come first. Always had and always would.

      “Dana, could you shut up and get on with it, please?”

      She pushed the memories to the back of her mind and concentrated on getting the sweatshirt off without tearing open his wound. “Oh, Cody,” she moaned.

      His beautiful golden skin was torn and bloody. The holes in the sweatshirt matched the holes in his arm, right through the meaty part of his bicep. Blood oozed out of both wounds.

      Dana stared in fascination as the present and the past rushed toward each other like runaway trains. She had to concentrate to keep them from colliding in her brain.

      Cody. Wonderful, dangerous Cody. The only man she’d ever loved. Once she hadn’t been able to imagine life without him.

      Then, as she began to realize just what being the wife of a cop meant, the possibility of life without Cody became all too real. She’d already had more experience than she ever wanted of waiting at home for someone who never came back. She couldn’t face that

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