A Younger Woman Read online

  Left alone Margo had taken a deep breath and knocked on Ry’s back door. When he didn’t answer, desperation had forced her to try the door. Relief had rushed through her veins on finding it unlocked, and she’d crept inside like Goldilocks, all wide-eyed and cautious. And then surprised and impressed shortly thereafter—Ry’s home was any woman’s dream come true.

  “Why the hell didn’t you say you’d been shot?”

  Margo expected a reaction of some kind. She hadn’t been so foolish as to think she could pass a gunshot wound off for anything else but what it was. “That’s very good detective work, Ry. You certainly know your job.”

  Her sarcasm wasn’t appreciated. He swore, offered her a black look, then turned his attention back to her arm. She felt him probe the wound, and she sucked in her breath and held it. She wouldn’t moan, she promised herself, and she wouldn’t cry out, either.

  “You’re lucky,” he sighed a moment later. “The bullet missed the bone. The excessive bleeding is caused by a flap of skin that needs to be stitched.”

  Margo had already gotten a damage report from Brodie. She would have let him patch her up before she got to Ry’s, only, for a big, tough fisherman, Brodie had as weak a stomach as she did when it came to blood.

  Ry leaned closer, eyeing the scratch on her cheek. To Margo’s surprise she realized he still used the same unpretentious cologne she had associated with him years ago. Everything was familiar. He still wore his hair short and carefree for ease’s sake. Even his day-old scruffy jaw was typical. She remembered how he used to complain about how much time it took to scrape off his healthy growth of whiskers.

  She should hate him, and most days that’s what kept her going—the outrage and the humiliation and the determination to rise above it. Ry had not only crushed her spirit and scarred her heart, but he’d done it in such a manner that she had looked like a naive little fool. Of course he hadn’t wanted a permanent relationship. What had she expected two years ago, marriage? He was older than her by twelve years. What man at age thirty-one would want to marry a nineteen-year-old, starry-eyed girl?

  Oh, she hadn’t wanted to believe that she’d been used, or that she’d been that much of a fool. But it was the truth—Ryland Archard had enjoyed the chase and the victory prize in the end, but he had had no intentions of sticking around for anything more—least of all a permanent relationship. She should have recognized the type—after all he was now thirty-three and still single.

  Margo wanted to tell him he looked old and haggard. She would like to make a snide comment in reference to a soft belly or a sudden receding hair-line. Only there were no visible signs that he had aged. In fact, Ry Archard, much to Margo’s annoyance, had improved over the past two years much like a superior bottle of Chardonnay.

  Then, too, she supposed needling him right now wouldn’t be very smart. She was in his home, asking for his help. If she’d learned anything in her twenty-one years it was when to run, when to stand and fight, and, most important, when to keep her private thoughts private and her mouth shut. Tonight, the third applied without question.

  “Come on, I’ll help you up.”

  “Up? Why would I want to get up?”

  “Because I’m taking you to Charity Hospital.”

  Margo’s eyes widened. She had no intention of going to the hospital. Gunshot wounds had to be reported. There would be a dozen questions to answer; a report would be filed. And what if the men chasing Blu were checking out the hospitals?

  “No doctor. I won’t go!”

  The quicksilver change in his eyes told Margo her hasty words had triggered his suspicion. “Why no doctor, Margo?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Come on, baby. Why no doctor?”

  Margo cleared her throat, and this time she was careful with her tone, as well as her choice of words. “I hate men in white coats, that’s why. They smell too clean and smile too much when there’s nothing to smile about. I don’t feel like playing twenty questions, either. The man who shot me is long gone by now.”

  “Tell me about him.” It wasn’t a request, but a solid demand.

  Margo raised her chin. “I didn’t get a good look at him. He wore an oversize hat that hid his face. I shouldn’t have fought with him. I know that now, but when I saw the gun I just reacted. I’ve been walking home every night since I started working at the Toucan. I guess a year without a confrontation made me careless.”

  “So you were attacked? Mugged?”

  “Yes.” Margo slipped into the lie easily. As often as Blu had schooled her in the art of swimming and fishing, he had lectured her on the value of a failsafe lie. That didn’t mean she enjoyed lying, or that she did it on a regular basis. But she was confident that, in the right situation, she could keep her eyes from blinking and her voice rock steady while she attempted to cheat the truth. “He wanted my purse. Ah…my money.”

  “Where did this happen?”

  “Near my apartment.”

  “One block? Two?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He raised his thick brows. “You worked tonight, right?”

  Margo hesitated. Ry hung out at the Toucan on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. This was Wednesday. Feeling confident, she said, “Yes, I just said so, didn’t I?”

  He stared at her a long minute. “So this happened walking home from work around ten?”

  “Are you losing your hearing? I just told you that.”

  He ignored her smart remark. “So it was ten o’clock when you left work?”

  Margo glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Quickly calculating the hours, she said, “I guess so.”

  “And you were shot within fifteen minutes of leaving the Toucan? Or was it more like twenty-five? Could it have been forty minutes? Fifty?”

  Annoyed by his relentless questions, Margo said, “I didn’t get up, look at my watch and say, oh my, I’ve been mugged at 10:20.”

  “Was it 10:20?”

  Margo rolled her eyes. “No, I think it was 10:23.”

  “Dammit, Margo, this is important!”

  “I don’t know the time, all right!” Margo’s voice wasn’t as loud as his, but just as angry.

  “Well, then, what the hell do you know?”

  “That I’m going to have a headache if you keep badgering me like I’m the criminal here.”

  He stood and buried his hands deep in the hip pockets of his jeans. He appeared almost telepathic, Margo thought, as he stared down at her. Did he know something she didn’t? As quickly as she asked herself the question, she reminded herself to stick with her story. Ry couldn’t disprove a word she’d said, not unless he knew for a fact that she’d asked for the night off. And he wouldn’t know that unless he’d questioned Tony, which she was pretty certain he wouldn’t do—Ry was no gentleman, but he had kept their brief affair quiet. The only people who knew about it were her own family members and a few close friends.

  “Why didn’t you call Blu? Or Hewitt?”

  “Brodie?”

  “Come on, Margo. I know you’ve been seeing him.”

  Margo didn’t disagree. Let him think whatever he wanted to. She said, “I couldn’t get a hold of either of them.”

  “But you tried?”

  “Yes, I tried.”

  “You really need to move out of that damn neighborhood. It makes no sense you living in that dump and surrounding yourself with those kind of people.”

  It made perfect sense to Margo, and because it did, she felt like arguing. “It’s close to work, and ‘those kind’ of people are my kind of people.”

  “That’s crap. You have a job, take a bath regularly and don’t sleep with a bottle. I hardly think they’re your kind of people. What you mean is, they’re Blu’s kind of people.”

  “The rent’s cheap.” Margo refused to let him win a single round. He had won far too much from her already.

  “So the rumors are true, then. You’re giving half of every dime you make to Blu so he can throw it a
way on that worthless fishing fleet your father left him.”

  “The fleet isn’t worthless. How dare you call it that!” Furious, Margo fisted the bed with her good hand, then gritted her teeth as a sharp pain shot into her injured arm. Gasping for air, she said, “The fleet was my daddy’s whole life. And Blu wants it to be his. One day it’ll be back to being the best fleet on the Gulf. It was once, it can be again.”

  “Take it easy. You’re going to start bleeding again.”

  Margo leaned back and rested her head on the headboard and closed her eyes.

  “You should be more concerned with your own life. Your own future, not Blu’s.”

  “My life’s perfect.”

  “This is perfect?”

  Margo opened her eyes. “This could have happened to anyone, anywhere in this city. Where have you been? The crime rate here is double to anywhere else, maybe triple. Now, are you going to sew me up or not?”

  He made a rude snort, then crossed his arms over his bare chest. “That’s the favor? Stitch you up?”

  “I haven’t asked anything of you. Nothing since…” The words lodged in Margo’s throat. She tried again. “This isn’t a whole lot worse than the time I got that fishhook in my leg. You cut the hook out and sewed me up, remember? Good as new, is what Mama said when she inspected the job you’d done. Don’t pretend you can’t sew me back together because I know different.”

  A long minute ticked by.

  Margo jerked her chin up a notch higher. “Fix my arm good as new, old man. You owe me that much. And by most standards, I’d say you’re getting off cheap.”

  He flinched at her none-too-subtle reference to the past, then promptly got mad. “This isn’t some damn fishhook accident. Hell, you’ve been shot! Damn lucky to be alive by the looks of it! Another inch or two and—”

  “When did you take up shouting?”

  “What?”

  “I thought you hated irrational behavior. Doesn’t shouting and ranting fall into that category?”

  “I never rant!”

  “Never say never,” Margo taunted. “Tonight I had to eat that word.”

  “You could have died!”

  “If that’s true, and you care even a smidgen, I’d think you would be willing to help me out.”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  “No,” Margo argued, “the point is, you owe me and I’m here to collect. Now are you going to be a bastard and deny me, or sew me up so I don’t bleed all over this expensive comforter?”

  He didn’t move.

  Loath to be reduced to pleading, Margo forced herself. “Ry, please. I don’t have anywhere else to go. If I go to Mama’s, she’ll fly into a panic and start crying and praying both at the same time. She has high blood pressure now, and…” She could see he was weakening. “I suppose I could pay to have it stitched up on the street. I never thought about that, and I know this guy on the waterfront who—”

  “The hell you will!” He raked both hands through his hair.

  Margo curiously watched him start to pace back and forth at the foot of the massive bed. She had always admired Ry’s ability to remain calm even in a crisis. Now she wondered what could have happened in the past two years to have changed that. This was not the same overconfident, almost cocky cop she’d known two years ago. No, this new up-tight version appeared to be more human, even a bit vulnerable. And damn him, more likeable than the old version—that is, if she didn’t hate him so much.

  She held her breath, watched him wear out the thick rug. Suddenly he stopped pacing and faced her. “It’s going to hurt like a son of a—”

  “Forewarned is—”

  “Not worth a damn if it doesn’t change the fact. In this case, it won’t. You need a local anesthetic.”

  “I won’t whine and call you names, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Margo promised.

  “If I do this, I’m going to expect a detailed account of what really happened.” His eyes drilled her. “What really happened, Margo? Not some damn story about a mugger in a hat bigger than his head.”

  “It’s the truth,” she insisted.

  He strode to the door, then turned back. “Do I look stupid?”

  No, he didn’t look stupid. He looked big and strong, and dammit, as handsome as ever. Margo hated to admit that one very disturbing fact, but he was Texas tough and remarkably well built, and…

  Margo’s gaze slid down his impressive bare chest. Further. Never one to mince words, she said, “No, Ry, you don’t look stupid. You look painfully uncomfortable. Do I still affect you, then?”

  Her blunt assessment of his aroused condition was met with a frustrated, crude one-liner. Then he was gone.

  Feeling a little better, now that she’d definitely won round one, Margo slumped against the headboard. Moments later she heard cupboard doors banging across the hall, followed by several colorful adjectives. He was angry, there was no question about that, but not so much so that he wouldn’t help her, and that’s all that mattered at the moment.

  As his tirade faded, Margo sighed then closed her eyes. The soft patter of rain outside the second-story window became too obvious to ignore, and she soon began to listen to its hypnotic rhythm. Unlike her neighborhood, Ry’s was incredibly quiet. The tall hedge outside reminded her of a live castle wall with the power to shield and protect. There was no street noise, no glaring lights. Only an enormous amount of peace and quite.

  Margo opened her eyes and glanced around the room. The dark navy color complemented the lemon-yellow in a way she hadn’t expected. Blending a feminine elegance with a masculine touch was perfect for a master bedroom.

  It was nothing like what she’d grown up with. Her life had been all about secondhand clothes and cramped space. Glancing at the door, making sure there was no one to witness her weakness, Margo ran her hand slowly over the richness of the expensive, fat navy-blue comforter.

  Again she closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of the supersoft fabric. Guilt followed quickly, and, feeling a bit ridiculous for enjoying the finer things in life, especially at a time like this, she quickly turned her thoughts to Blu. Eyes still closed, she whispered, “Where are you? Did Brodie find you? Will you come for me tonight or in the morning?”

  The dark pier flashed in her mind’s eye. Margo heard the gunfire, and suddenly she could no longer hold back the tears. A man had died tonight. Blu was wounded and missing. She worried that his thigh injury was more serious than he’d led her to believe, that the gunfire that had followed them into the water had hit its mark once more. Blu had abandoned her so quickly once they’d plunged into the water that she hadn’t had a chance to say anything to him. She’d heard a huge splash after he’d pointed her in the direction of the Nightwing, then more rapid gunfire.

  It was almost as if he had purposely attracted the gunman’s attention to give her time to get away. God, if that was true, what had it cost him?

  Margo had just finished wiping the evidence of her tears from her cheeks when Ry stepped back into the room carrying a bowl of steaming water, with a towel tossed over his bare shoulder. A threaded needle rode between his straight, white teeth. She glanced at the bottle of whiskey tucked under his arm and promptly asked, “Are you going to get me drunk?”

  He placed the bowl of water next to the amber lamp on the nightstand, then set the bottle of whiskey and threaded needle next to it. “You drunk and my fingers oiled.” He eased his weight down on the bed beside her. “We’re going to have to get your shirt off. How do you want to do it?”

  Their intimate past made a mockery of his question. Yet the thought of losing her shirt, exposing herself to a man who had made a fool out of her two years ago, made Margo feel insecure in both her body and her intelligence.

  “Margo? Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you, Ry, and I imagine one arm at a time makes the best sense. That is, unless you want to show me some new trick you’ve learned with your boot knife.”

  “That smart mou
th of yours is wearing thin, baby. It wouldn’t take much to change my mind and make a phone call to Charity Hospital. Don’t push me.”

  The hospital threat was sobering. Margo realized Ry was wearing his mood about as close to the cuff as she was. She clamped her mouth shut and reached for the first button on her ruined denim shirt. The movement cost her. A sharp pain shot down her injured arm, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. She forced the first button through its hole, but the second one, much to her disgust, turned stubborn. After the third try, Ry brushed her hand aside. “I’ll do it.”

  He unbuttoned the last three buttons quickly, his blunt-tipped fingers grazing her bare skin only briefly as he eased the fabric off her shoulder and down her injured arm. With gentle care he slid his free arm around her waist and drew her away from the headboard. As she rested against his solid chest, he whispered, “Easy, now. Let’s take this real slow.”

  His warm breath teased Margo’s ear, and suddenly all the pain and humiliation from the past came rushing back, along with an overwhelming amount of longing. She sucked in her breath at the same time a surge of poignant heat spread swiftly throughout her body. She knew it was normal to have some kind of reaction. After all, Ry had made her a woman, he’d been her teacher, her mentor—the man she had let strip her bare in body and soul.

  But she’d also expected her anger would sustain her, that her pride would protect her. Now she realized it was too soon. Coming here, being this close to him, was the worst thing she could have done. It had been the mother of all dreadful mistakes, she realized, because as much as she wanted to deny it, the sudden desire she felt for this man was clearly branding her twice the fool. The feelings she’d desperately prayed would die were very much alive—a little tarnished and bruised, but still alive.

  The rotten, disgusting truth was she was still vulnerable—vulnerable to his good looks, his voice, the musky scent of his skin. Every damn thing she had tried so hard to hate.