His smile turned tender. “That’s my Yardley. Prickly as a cactus and still as intoxicating as tequila shots.” He sucked in a long breath. “You were looking for me. Why?”
Yardley stood up, began straightening the things arranged for him on her bedside table. Anything was better than sitting next to him feeling as she did. “I needed closure. When we parted at the airport, you could have just told me then that you were going away and not to expect to see or hear from you again.” She paused to look at him, her gaze direct. “I’m an adult. I would have handled it.”
“That’s not what I wanted to say to you.”
“Then what?”
“I love you.” He laughed at her expression, a coarse hollow sound cut off almost instantly by a grunt of pain as he clutched his side.
She moved quickly back to him. “David, what’s wrong?”
He hissed in a breath between clenched teeth. “Your bodyguard wasn’t as thorough as I would have been. He missed diagnosing my bruised ribs.”
Yardley nodded slowly and brushed the hair back from his forehead, trying desperately not to let her feelings get in the way of what she was hearing and needed so badly to understand. He was hurt more badly than he’d told her. “What can I do?”
“Love me?” He said the words carefully this time, a grin forming.
She smiled back but shook her head. “I think that’s the painkillers talking, David.”
“No.” The word was harsh. “You were right about the last time we were together. I intended to break up with you.” He took another shallow breath, but the blue of his eyes blazed a path right through her. “I knew it wouldn’t be safe.” He swallowed, his lids fluttering. “But that was before.”
“Before what?”
Once more he seemed to rouse himself and she realized he was fighting the medications she’d given him as well his pain. He gripped her hand. “You aren’t safe. That’s why I’m here. You aren’t safe, Yardley.”
*
Headphones on, Kye had had two hours to do some soul searching while the doctor and Yardley were locked behind her bedroom door. At the end of the first hour, he’d used up all the reasons why he wanted to drop-kick the good doctor from here into the middle of next week. Reality began to reassert itself shortly thereafter. The upshot was, he was being a douche.
The reasons why the doctor disappeared, had gone silent, and then miraculously reappeared were none of his business. Even who’d shot him and why. Only Yardley’s business. He had no right to an opinion, or to try to influence hers. He knew coming here that what Yardley wanted was to find the man who’d gone missing from her life.
Now the doc had turned up. It didn’t matter what his story was. How weak-assed or un-fuckin’-believable his story was. He’d seen the look on Yard’s face when they’d lowered David Gunnar onto her bed. She was totally absorbed with the man. Those where the facts. For everything else he’d have to work around them.
As for anything else that had been going on in his own mind since dawn, that was strictly his problem. Sure they’d slept together. How could he blame her for seeking a little solace after the night she’d had? Damn. She’d fought Stokes thinking that he’d abandoned her. The realization made him feel a little sick each time he remembered it. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he hadn’t shown up in time.
Kye glanced at that closed door, trying like everything not to imagine what could be going on behind it, and failing miserably. He knew what would be going on if he were in Gunnar’s place. He was jealous.
No. He pushed away any wording in his thoughts that made it her fault. She’d come to him for security reasons the night before. She’d needed to feel safe. And she’d come to the only available safe place. If she’d decided that his protection included participating in the life-affirming need to merge bodies then, hell, he was one lucky sumbitch. But that didn’t give him any rights or sense of ownership over Yardley Summers. He’d lost the opportunity to build on the perfect union of bodies. For a few precious hours she’d been his again. And it was her idea. Her way.
“Fuck.” He hurled the magazine he’d been half reading for two hours across the room. This was not good. He was feeling things he shouldn’t be feeling about a woman that he could in no way lay claim to. Because, much as he didn’t want to feel this way, he could feel it eating away inside him. He was jealous as hell of David Gunnar.