LITMIR.BIZ

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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.”

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