Don't Mess With Texas (6 page)

Nikki, hand still placed over her roiling stomach, watched the detective leave then refocused on the blue-eyed private investigator. “Did someone poison me?”

T
ONY COULDN’T FRIGGIN’
believe his brother would start this shit with him. Frustrated, he dialed Clark’s number. Cell phone pressed to his ear, Tony walked down the hall until he got to the nurse’s station. Clark answered.

“Hey, it’s me again,” Tony said. “Just get CSU there. Make sure…”

Damn!
His phone started fading out again. Looking up at the glaring nurse, he snapped his phone shut and focused on her. “You need to run a tox screen on Ms. Hunt. There’s a chance she might have been given something against her will.”

“The other cop, the one with manners, already told me,” the nurse said crisply.

Tony frowned. What had he done to piss
her
off? He recalled getting pushy to get the blonde brought back in the ER right away. Hell, she’d already puked all over his brother, and Tony hadn’t wanted to be her next victim.

Staring at the nurse, he realized the nicer cop she alluded to had to be Dallas. Tony didn’t bother correcting her. Instead, he started down the hall to find a place
where he could call Clark back. He went the way he thought would have an exit, but didn’t find it. He looked at his phone, found it had all the bars, then he spotted the visitor’s room. He had one foot inside when he heard a familiar sound.

He stopped, thinking he’d imagined it. But the lighthearted, warm-the-soul kind of laugh sounded again.
LeAnn
.

Swinging around, he spotted his wife standing at the nurses’ station, her back to him. He hadn’t known she’d switched hospitals. His chest grew heavy and light at the same time. Damn, he’d missed her. He ran a hand through his hair, and took a step toward her.

Her hair hung longer. The soft brown strands bounced against her shoulders, and Tony’s hands itched to touch them. He’d loved her hair long and begged her not to cut it. But she’d insisted that short hair would be less time consuming.

Had it really been nine months since he’d seen her? Not that he hadn’t tried. He left messages on her phone once a week, telling her the same thing. He wanted to talk. He could understand why she was mad. But he was so damn sorry.

She had yet to call him back. He kept telling himself she would eventually give in—that the time away was his punishment for walking away from her when she’d needed him the most. Funny how back then he’d thought time away would help things. Now, he saw it for the mistake it was. He’d fucked up but, damn it, didn’t he deserve a chance to fix it?

He almost got to the nurses’ station when he realized she wasn’t alone. A man, a doctor-looking sort, stood
beside her. He stood too damn close, too. And the way he looked at LeAnn left little doubt of his intentions. Tony held himself in check. Or he did until the white-coated man touched his wife’s cheek.

Tightening his fist, Tony hurried his last steps. Thankfully, LeAnn stepped back and the man dropped his hand.

Obviously hearing his footsteps, LeAnn turned. “Can I help…” Her bright green eyes widened. “Tony.”

“LeAnn.” He forced himself to unclench his fist and smile. Though he wasn’t sure the smile came off real. At best it was probably rusty. He hadn’t had a lot of reasons to smile lately.

The doctor said something under his breath. Tony met his eyes briefly and hoped like hell the man could read his mind.
Stay the fuck away from her
. As if he had picked up on Tony’s thoughts—or maybe it was the murder in his eyes—the man left.

“Is everything okay?” LeAnn asked.

“It is now,” he said, pushing his frustration back and hoping to make the most of this unexpected gift. “You look… fantastic.” When she didn’t reply, he continued. “When did you start working here?”

“Yesterday. I… I needed a change.”

He nodded and, damn it, but he wanted to touch her so bad he had to stuff his hands in his pockets to fight temptation. “Dallas said you had car trouble last week.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

“No. I’m here on a case.”

“I thought you worked homicide now.”

So she’d cared enough to be curious about what he was doing. Did she also know he lived and breathed for the moment they could get back together? “I am. I have a
possible suspect, but she’s sick. We found her ex-husband dead in her trunk.”

“That’s terrible,” she said, though Tony wasn’t sure if she was really interested or just needed something to say. “Do you think she killed him?”

“I don’t know yet.” He studied his wife and opened his mouth to say something about the case. Instead the words, “I miss you so damn much,” came out.

She looked away, but not before he saw frustration hit her eyes.

Damn it, he’d screwed up by moving too fast. Then he decided to go for broke. “I call and leave messages and you never call me back.”

She continued to stare down at the desk. “I know.” Opening one of the files, she studied it. “I’m not ready to deal with this yet, Tony.”

“It’s been nine months.”

She raised her gaze and when he saw her eyes wet with emotion, pain ripped at his chest.

“You promised you wouldn’t pressure me,” she said.

“And you promised me if I moved out we’d see a marriage counselor.”

“Why do we need go through this? Can’t we just let it go?”

“Not if it means letting go of us!” he said. “That’s the only reason I agreed to this separation, LeAnn, because you promised we would talk. I know I screwed up. When I took the job, I wasn’t thinking. It wasn’t supposed to last but a week, I thought a few days apart would—”

“Stop.” She held out a hand. “I don’t blame you for taking the job, okay? I could hardly stand being with myself.”

Her words hit like an eighteen-wheeler without brakes. “Damn it, LeAnn, I didn’t leave because of you. I left because…” Two more nurses walked up to the station.

“Later, okay?” There was a pleading in her eyes.

He leaned across the counter and said in lower voice, “When?”

“Soon,” she said under her breath.

Unable to resist, and realizing the nurses had their backs to them, he reached across the counter and ran the back of his hand across her cheek. “I’m off Sunday,” he whispered. “I’ll be over around ten a.m.”

The word “no” formed on her lips. He didn’t give her a chance to say it. Swinging around, he left. His heart pounded in his chest. He looked at his watch, counting the days, and hours until Sunday. He knew he’d been pushy and yet, damn, he’d been patient for nine months. He wanted his wife back and maybe it was time for him to stop being patient and go get her.

He was almost back to the ER when his phone rang. Frowning, he stopped to see who was calling. It was Juan Bata. What did Juan want?

Tony answered the call. “What’s up, Juan?” If the guy had just called to gab, he didn’t have time.

“Something strange is going on,” Juan said. “I think it’s connected.”

“What’s connected?”

“Remember the barfer?” He chuckled.

“What about her?”

“Well… her place…” Static followed.

“Her place… what? Juan? You’re breaking up. I’ll call you right back.” Tony ran off to find a place where he could get reception.

Nikki stared at the PI and waited for him to answer her question. “Was I poisoned?”

“It’s a possibility,” he said. “Did you two share any of the same food?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “He didn’t even eat. Wait—the gumbo. But I only had a bite.”

“You’re small.” His gaze slid down her front as if measuring her. “It wouldn’t take much.”

Nikki instantly became aware of the thinness of the gown, of how little she had on beneath the cotton. Little as in nothing. Her stomach cramped and she remembered she might have been poisoned. She started looking around for a nurse’s call button.

“You need something?” he asked.

“A nurse or a doctor,” she said. “I think they should know that I might have been poisoned.”

“I already mentioned it to one of the nurses.”

“Oh.” She settled back. He kept studying her and she kept checking to make sure the gown hadn’t slipped off her shoulder. He made her nervous, jumpy, and aware of how terrible she looked. She ran a hand through her hair. Not that her appearance should be high on her list of concerns. Face it, puking on a man didn’t tend to leave a great impression. And with her official barf bucket still in her lap, she doubted her second impression was much better. “I… I should apologize for throwing up on you.”

He grinned. “I’ll admit it’s not the reaction I usually get from women.”

She stared at his smile, at the way his mouth tilted a bit higher on the right than the left. She could guess what kind of reaction he normally got from women. The man
oozed charm. The kind of charm that got a girl in trouble.
The kind of charm Jack has
.

Had
.

Jack is dead
.

She pushed that thought aside to deal with later. Right now, she needed to find out why the PI was here. Then again, it could only be one thing: money. He wanted her to hire him. Good luck with that. She was probably going to have to lay off her best friend, Ellen, from the gallery, and hiring someone else was out of the question. A pity he’d gotten barfed on for no good reason.

“So you’re a PI?” she asked.

“Yup.”

“What do you do, chase cops around to get cases?”

He grinned. “Actually, I was having dinner with the detective when the call came in. We were at the restaurant next door.”

“So you know each other.”

“Yeah, I’d say that.”

The room became quiet again. Her stomach fluttered. Not the nausea kind of flutter, but the kind she’d been almost hoping to feel when she saw Jack. The kind fueled by either hormones or emotion, the kind that stemmed from either love or lust.

Since she didn’t know diddly-squat about this blue-eyed devil, love wasn’t in the picture.

That left lust.
Oh hell
.

The flutter hit again and her heart did a little dance to the theme song from
Jaws
. Sure, she’d known that sooner or later her ability to feel something for the opposite sex would return. And in another year or so, Nikki might even have been able to open herself to the possibility.

But today?
Was the universe screwing with her on purpose?

Didn’t she have enough on her plate being accused of killing her ex-husband and possibly being poisoned, not to mention the guilt of telling Nana her cable would be nixed and informing Ellen her part-time job was over?

“Shit,” she muttered.

“What?” he asked.

“What, what?” She looked up at him, and fought the need to cry.

“You said ‘shit.’ I wondered what’s wrong.”

“I said that aloud?” She bit down on her lip as a morsel of panic stirred. Surely, she hadn’t mentioned anything about lust or sex… had she? “That’s all I said, right?”

He looked confused, but grinned. “What else did you think you said?”

“Nothing.” She sat up straighter then, realizing “eventually” had finally come and the nausea had passed. She placed the pink tub on the bedside table. “Here’s the deal. I appreciate what you’ve done. But…”

“Appreciate what?” His lips didn’t show it, but his eyes smiled. “Are we talking about my retainer again?”

Her cheeks warmed. “I was thinking more along the lines of standing up for me to the cop.”

“Oh. Yeah, it’s nice to have someone in your corner, isn’t it?”

Something about the sincerity in his eyes, said he’d been there, done that, and wore the T-shirt. “Yeah. It sucks.”

He casually crossed his arms and leaned against the one real wall in the three-sided curtained cubical. And dang blast it, if he didn’t have leaning down to an art
form. He looked really good leaning—the pose made his shoulders appear like a solid lean-on-me wall of strength, the blue shirt pulled a bit tighter across his chest and hard torso, and, in the slightly slanted position, his biceps appeared flexed.

Her fingers itched for a pad and paper to sketch him. He’d make a great painting. Lots of body language that said, “bad boy” but at the same time whispered, “hero.” While his features were completely different, his presence reminded her of the old images of James Dean, a movie star her grandmother swore had been the best-looking man alive.

Realizing she was staring, she spoke up. “Like I said, I appreciate it, but… I don’t need a PI. I’m innocent.”

He pushed away from the wall and tucked one hand into his jeans pocket—causing more flexing in his right forearm. For some totally illogical reason, she wondered what it would feel like to be held in those arms. In the last twelve months, she’d nursed her broken heart and damaged self-esteem. Plus, she’d managed to fall out of love and lust with a man who at one time she thought hung the moon and—truth be told—she hadn’t missed sex a whole heck of lot. What she’d missed was having someone, a male someone, hold her. Dallas looked down at her. “Sometimes being innocent doesn’t mean a hill of beans.”