Return to Me (10 page)

    
"You slept through all that?" He indicated the bandage with one eyebrow lifted.

    
"I wish, but I guess I dozed after my stitches were finished. Erik must be in the cafeteria or at the nurses’ station filling out paperwork. He wouldn’t have left the hospital." Of that much she was certain.

    
"You're lucky he was with you last night. Damn lucky." He sighed.

    
"Did you come all this way to point out the obvious?" She said nastily. The mild discomfort was beginning to work itself into a dull throb and she was in no mood to deal with Guy's sarcasm or his holier-than-thou attitude this morning. In fact, she wasn’t even glad to see him. There was no doubt in her mind that he was here in an official capacity; after all, he was decked out in his uniform and badge. For some reason, the fact greatly annoyed her.

    
"Do you wear that gun everywhere?" She snapped, turning her scathing glare loose on him.

    
"Yes."

    
"Too bad I don’t have a gun." She muttered.

     "Is that a threat?" H
is lips twitched.

     "Take it any way you want." S
he retorted. "Officer."

    
"Does it surprise you? That I’m a cop?" He asked, his expression thawing by several degrees. Paige was temporarily mesmerized by the sudden change and she took a moment to gather her thoughts before meeting his eyes and answering truthfully.

    
"Yes a little."

    
"Only a little?" He smiled.

    
"Okay," She admitted. "A lot. If you want the truth, then here it is. I was downright shocked."

    
"I could tell.” He nodded. “I’m sorry our first meeting was official business. It’s...good to see you Paige."

    
Huh? She frowned, regarding him skeptically. He was sorry? After practically cramming his 'official business' down her throat the previous day, he was 'sorry'? "Why I’m surprised Guy." She teased. "You remembered my name today."

    
"Yes," He answered slowly, "I remembered it yesterday too. You’re Paige. Did you hit your head last night?" He looked genuinely concerned.

    
"You mean I'm not Ms. Frey anymore?" She countered, disregarding his head wound question.

    
"Ah," He looked down, "Now I get it. Let’s put it this way-you gave me quite the shock yesterday too. I didn’t know you were back. Bottom line is, I’m sorry if I acted like a jerk Paige. You didn’t deserve it."

    
"Uh huh." She nodded without taking her eyes off of him. “That depends upon who you ask, don’t you think?” Her tone was deceptively light.

    
“Hailey tends to get emotional.” He shrugged.

    
“So I’ve noticed.”

    
"I'm sorry about Denmari.” Guy quickly redirected the conversation into safer waters. “I heard he passed away last month."

    
"Don’t be. I'm not."

    
"Oh, well..Ah..." He coughed, suddenly interested in the diamond pattern of the wallpaper above her bed.

    
"Thank you for you condolences." Paige sighed, knowing the polite acknowledgement was what 'normal' people were supposed to say in such a situation. "I know you must be very busy today. So we can go ahead with the report now; I’m fine to answer questions, although I'm not sure how much help I’ll be. I don’t have much information that you all probably haven’t already surmised on your own."

    
"I'm not here to take your statement." He quickly recovered his composure.

     "You're not?" H
er mind went black, not daring to hope, not anymore.

    
"No. I came out here to see how you’re feeling."

     "Uh. My leg hurts." S
he uttered, sitting up straight against the mountain of pillows someone, probably Erik, had tucked behind her back at some point during the night or early morning.

    
“I’ll bet.” Gentle fingers probed her bandage, making her gasp. “That hurts?
He raised worried eyes to her white face.

     “Yes, a little.” She told him.

     “It’s swelling.”

     “What?!” S
he jerked away from him, eyes wide.

    
“Your leg.” He frowned, reclaiming his seat. “There's a little swelling but not too much I don’t think. Does it hurt a lot?”

     “Bad enough
.” She lifted one shoulder and reached for the ice water on the bedside table, pressed it to her forehead and hoping he would take the hint.

     
She didn’t need anyone fussing and fretting over her, and she damn sure didn’t need anyone feeling sorry for her, especially not Guy. The whining and crying could wait until Erik returned, she resolutely decided. For reasons that remained a mystery to her, she would have cried in front of Guy only if a limb were hanging off.

    
Maybe it was because she had done enough crying over him. Hell, she had done her fair share of crying in front of him too, not to mention on him. No, she reaffirmed with her head held high, she would not let him see how much discomfort she was in. She had her pride, after all. Late as it may have been in coming.

    
“You got lucky.” He repeated, “So has anyone said when they plan on letting you out of here?”

    
“Nope, you’re the first person I’ve spoken to since I’ve been laid up here, but the doctor will probably sign the discharge order later today. I can’t see any reason why they would want to keep me here. All in all I seem to be pretty well fixed up and not much the worse for wear. Then again who knows? Doctors are habitually either slow or late. It takes three hours just to get checked out of a hospital.”

    
“Erik’s taking you home?”

    
“Oh look at that you know his name today too.”

    
“Paige…”

    
“Yes, he is.” She chose not to heckle him for the moment. “So you’re not taking my statement?”

    
“No, they should be sending someone out this morning to do that.”

    
“Really? Why can’t you do it?” She regretted the words almost as soon as they had left her mouth. She didn’t really want him to take down her statement. But since he was already right here…

    
“Conflict of interest.”

    
“You told your boss that we…that we…”

    
“Used to have a personal relationship?” He helpfully supplied. “Yes.”

    
“But you took the call yesterday.” She pointed out.

    
“True but this is an open investigation.”

    
“It is?”

    
“Someone tried to kill you.” He looked as though he were on the verge of asking yet again if she’d hit her head.

    
“It was just a stupid prank.” She argued, her skin becoming too hot, too tight.

    
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t find a shark in a pool the least bit amusing.”

   
“Well obviously I don’t find it amusing either.” Exasperated, Paige gestured to her injured leg. “It was probably the most terrifying experience I’ve ever had.” She paused to consider this. “It’s definitely in the top ten, at least. I’ve never heard of a shark, an actual shark, swimming in someone’s backyard pool. When I felt the nudging I thought it was Erik, trying to tell me it was time to come up for air.”

    
“Wait, back up. You mean to tell me neither you nor Erik saw the animal before or as you jumped in?”

    
“No, the pool has a retractable hard cover; we hit the switch that brings it back and opens up the pool while we were eating, and dove in straight after our meal. And if we had seen the thing before we leaped in, don’t you think we would have, I don’t know, not jumped?”

    
“I meant did you see it an instant before getting into the pool.” Ignoring her sarcasm, he delivered the explanation with a calm that Paige found downright enviable. She didn’t think she would ever manage to exude his particular brand of quiet confidence. She was either calm, or confident. To her knowledge, she had never managed to pull of both simultaneously.

    
“Anyway, I was lying flat against the bottom of the pool,” She forged ahead, “but something felt…off.” She frowned, taking herself back to the underwater nightmare. “I opened my eyes and twisted around, like I said, I was expecting to see Erik beside me, only it wasn’t him, it was the-“ She shuddered, “shark. I saw it from the side and his mouth was by my leg.”

    
“What happened next?” He prompted when she fell silent.

    
“I’m not proud of this but I screamed. Underwater. Not the most intelligent move to make, I know.”

    
“Seems like a pretty natural reaction to me. I can imagine the shock at not only finding a Tiger shark in your swimming pool, but coming face to face with it.”

    
“Yeah, no kidding, that’s something you don’t hear about every day.”

    
“Try never.”

    
“Seriously?”

    
“Well, I’m sure it’s happened before, somewhere…but not that I’ve ever heard of.”

    
“Huh.” She mulled that over.

    
“Let’s put it this way, Erik gave the county dispatcher the shock of the century when he called for an ambulance and reported a shark attack at a private residence.” He shook his head. “No, that doesn’t happen every day. The entire department-and most of the city of Helena-is talking about it; the only people who aren’t talking haven’t heard about it yet.”

    
“I don’t do interviews.” She teased.

    
“Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure this thing will die down in a reasonable amount of time. And of course the department won’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”

    
“Thanks.” For all her jesting, she really didn’t relish the thought of reporters camping out on her front lawn. “So-it was a Tiger shark?” She asked, remembering his earlier comment.

    
“A young one. A baby, from the look of it. That’s probably why it didn’t try to follow you to the surface, and that’s definitely why you didn’t sustain a more serious injury.” His gaze dropped once more the swath of gauzy bandage that encased her leg.

     “Yeah,” S
he murmured, flexing her leg and then wincing when she felt her skin tug at the sutures she couldn’t see. “I think the worst of it was shock and swallowing so much water.”

    
“The fact that it was dying helped a lot.”

    
“Why was it dying? Was it sick?” Not that she really cared. As far as she was concerned, it deserved anything it got after taking a bite out of her, test nibble or not.

    
“Tiger sharks-any shark really-can’t survive in the chlorinated water. The cold temperature of the pool was also working against it.” He explained. “They can survive in fresh water for several months, but a frigid chemically treated pool just won’t do.”

    
“Oh,” She smiled. “That makes sense.”

    
“You’ve had medication this morning?”

    
“They must have given me a little something. Is it that obvious?” To her way of thinking, they hadn’t given her nearly enough for the pain, but it wasn’t getting much worse, so she once again shoved the discomfort from her mind, focusing instead on the man who was seated beside her. Her ex-lover, her sort of friend...her childhood bad boy turned upstanding citizen. A cop.

    
“No,” He lied. “I can’t tell that you’ve had any medicine at all.”

    
“Uh-huh.” She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Well in my defense, I know next to nothing about marine life. So it’s dead then? The shark?”

     
“It’s dead.” Guy confirmed. “Now the question is how did it end up in your backyard in the first place?”

    
“I told you it was probably a prank.” She wished he would quit harping on it, that he would just let it go. At the very least, she would have preferred he discussed that aspect of her night from hell with someone else but her-anyone else but her. The why and how of the incident was both disturbing and unnerving and she didn’t feel ready to examine any of it too closely just yet.

     “G
um in your shoes is a prank; hang up calls are a prank,” he gave her a withering look, “Hell, itching powder in your underwear is a prank. A shark in your pool is not a prank. That’s in a category all its own. Someone wanted to hurt you, Paige.”

    
“Okay, you’re probably right.” She sighed. It was a possibility that she’d spent all night fervently trying to deny, though she was certain Erik had suspected much the same theory as Guy. Parts of the night were still a horrific blur, but she knew she’d never forget the murderous look her friends face as he’d growled instructions to the dispatcher at the other end of the phone line.    He had looked as though he’d like to hurt someone, or smash something-a rare occurrence with happy go lucky Erik, even though he was frequently intense by nature.