Her Hands on His Skin

Damen came fully awake as she spoke, his attention moving to Marco and then back to her.

"What exactly did Evan tell you?"

"That he was finally working for someone who understood loyalty. That was usually what he called it when somebody agreed with him."

Marco waited while she remembered the evening: Evan coming home late, smelling of whiskey, dropping a new watch beside his keys. A contract with the Halden Club had become, in his telling, an introduction to men who could fix anything.

"He said if I kept embarrassing him, I would find out who his friends were," she added.

Damen's expression changed. "When did he say that?"

"Before I changed the locks. I thought he was trying to frighten me."

"He was," Damen said. "I am going to find out how much authority he actually has."

After Marco left, she folded the blanket because her hands needed something to do.

"You know Falcone."

"We have business arrangements. They are not friendships."

"Will helping me cause trouble with him?"

Damen glanced at the blanket she was smoothing for the third time. "Hannah, look at me."

She did.

"You have not caused this. Cole chose to threaten you. I chose to intervene."

"That does not answer my question."

"It may create a disagreement. I can handle a disagreement."

She knew he was giving her the smallest version of the truth. For the moment, she did not have enough strength to pull the rest from him.

The following days acquired a strange, fragile routine. She made a report about the apartment and forwarded Evan's messages. A carpenter repaired the door, but she was not ready to sleep behind it. Damen never asked when she planned to return.

She went back to the clinic after her scheduled days off, with a driver who waited outside rather than following her between examination rooms. Each night she came back to the house expecting to feel like an intruder. Each night there was a place for her at the kitchen island.

On the fourth evening, she found Damen frowning at his phone while his dinner cooled.

She took the phone from beside his plate and placed it out of reach.

He looked up very slowly.

"You invited me to eat properly," she said. "It seemed discourteous to let you die of hypocrisy across the counter."

For a moment she regretted it. Then he put down the document in his other hand and picked up his fork.

"Is this how you speak to your patients?"

"Only the difficult ones."

From the doorway, Marco developed a sudden interest in the ceiling.

Hannah began to notice the things nobody else remarked on. Damen drank coffee after midnight and then rubbed his temple while claiming he was not tired. He had a habit of turning his watch inward before a difficult phone call. When she came home late, he looked up before she spoke.

One evening he asked whether she had eaten. She said yes, then admitted she had only had crackers. He made toast while she sat on the counter and told him about her day. When butter caught on his thumb, she had to stop herself from reaching for his hand.

The attraction was becoming difficult to hide from herself. She could still be startled by the silence that fell when he entered a room full of men. Alone with her, he would bend his head to hear a story about a broken thermometer, and she wanted to touch the place where his hair met his collar.

A week after she arrived, he did not come home for dinner.

At eleven, she heard the front door and went into the hall. Damen stood beside Marco, one hand pressed against his side. Blood darkened the white of his shirt beneath his open jacket.

For a moment the hallway narrowed around her.

"What happened?"

"A meeting became unpleasant," he said.

"That is an unreasonable description of a shirt full of blood."

Marco answered before Damen could. "The doctor is on his way. He is conscious, walking, and being profoundly irritating."

"I can hear you," Damen said.

"I am relying on that."

Hannah stayed out of the physician's way while he examined and treated a shallow knife wound along Damen's side. Only when the doctor had finished, given instructions, and left did she allow herself to breathe normally.

Damen was sitting on the edge of his bed when she returned with water and the medication the doctor had left. His shirt lay discarded beside him. The bandage interrupted a body that was otherwise warm skin, hard muscle, and old pale scars.

She concentrated on the glass.

"You should take this with something in your stomach. Mrs. Alvarez left food downstairs."

"You should be asleep."

"And you should have had a less unpleasant meeting. We are both disappointed."

He took the glass. She could feel his eyes on her as she checked the edge of the dressing without disturbing it.

"Does this involve Falcone?" she asked.

"It involves a man who thought Falcone's name would make me overlook stolen money."

Her fingers paused.

"Was it because of me?"

"The theft predates the evening we met."

It was a precise answer. She recognized the careful shape of it and looked up.

"One day, you are going to have to stop deciding which parts I can bear."

He studied her face. "I know."

That admission surprised her more than reassurance would have. She looked down again, suddenly conscious of how close she stood between his knees.

He was warm beneath her fingertips. The muscles of his abdomen moved with his breath. There was a small nick near his collarbone that nobody had bothered to clean because the other wound had mattered more.

She dampened a piece of gauze and touched it to the nick.

"You missed one," she murmured.

"It was not a priority."

"It is now."

His hand came to rest beside her hip on the mattress. He did not touch her, but the movement drew her closer to the space his body occupied.

"You are staring," she said, keeping her attention on the gauze.

"I know."

"Do you make all your nurses this nervous?"

"I have not wanted any of them to stay after they finished."

Her hand stopped.

He looked almost rueful, as though the truth had escaped him before he could improve it. The sight was more intimate than his bare skin.

Hannah set the gauze aside. "I was going to stay anyway. The doctor said somebody should check on you."

"Is that the only reason?"

She could feel the answer in her throat, in the ache of wanting to move closer. "No. It is not."

He lifted his hand and touched her fingers. His thumb rested lightly against her knuckles, giving her time to draw away.

She thought of all the times she had measured a man's mood before deciding where to stand. Damen was watching her with an intensity that should have frightened her, but his hand remained open beneath hers.

She stepped between his knees and bent toward him.

"Be careful of your side," she whispered.

Then she kissed him.