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Laughing, Tony swept her into a hug. “No, I think you get into trouble because you won’t accept help. How much food have you been able to keep down today?”
“Enough. Mamá wants to force feed me. She’s seen me puke, but she’s convinced if she wills me to eat, it’ll stay down. She’s wrong.”
“She aggravates me, too,” he said, calming her with a hand on her shoulder. “But she loves us. You know that.”
Eloisa heaved a sigh. “I know. Tonight I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t realize she’d call the cops.”
Tony grinned. “If not for her cataracts, she’d have come herself.”
She frowned at him, her gaze taking in his weapon. “You were still working? This late?”
“No, I was having dinner with a woman I met recently. Didn’t have time to go home and change before I went to her place.”
“A-ha!” Eloisa’s pixie face lit with delight. “Now you have to tell me all about her.”
“So you can tell everybody?”
She returned his grin. “Of course.”
This was why he didn’t tell anyone in his family about the women he saw. There would be demands to meet her. He’d once made the mistake of taking a casual girlfriend to Sunday dinner at his mother’s, but never again. Not everyone in the family had liked her. Others did and wanted to know why he didn’t bring her again. When he’d been driven to admit he wasn’t seeing her anymore, they wanted to know why. If he gave them so much as a peek into his personal life, his family would drive him crazy.
Crazier than they already did.
He’d worried that Tia Paloma would have spread the word about the woman he had taken to lunch. Not only taken to lunch but brought to her restaurant. He felt certain that everyone in the family would like Beth, and she’d like them. That he could see it happening alarmed him. She’d fit right in. They’d have him married off before he knew it.
It alarmed him that he couldn’t think of any good arguments against an ending that had never struck him as happy. But why think about anything like that, anyway? He hadn’t even known her a week.
While his mind wandered, his sister had poured him the coffee he didn’t want but now couldn’t refuse. He had started to thank her when his phone rang. Beth was the only person he’d like to hear from—
The number, although local, wasn’t hers.
“Navarro.”
“Detective? This is Officer Scott Kelly. I responded to a call that I’m told will concern you. A woman named Bethany Marshall was assaulted behind her townhouse.”
What the—“Beth?”
“That’s what a neighbor called her.”
His body rigid, he said sharply, “Tell me what happened.”
A man who may have worn a mask had stepped from behind a parked car and swung a baseball bat she thought was aimed at her head. She’d somehow dodged that swing, but he’d connected with a second that broke her arm. She’d suffered additional, minor injuries from falling. Yes, she was currently at the ER.
Had she been attacked right after he drove away? Tony couldn’t think of any other reason she’d have been out back, unless she’d decided to go somewhere.
Heart thudding, he said, “I’m on my way. Keep me informed.”
He poured the coffee down the sink, kissed his sister and said, “Next time, answer the damn phone, at least when I’m calling,” and jogged out to his pickup.
Five minutes later, he walked into the ER.
* * *
BETH KEPT NODDING OFF, but she opened her eyes when she heard the sound of the sliding door that separated her cubicle from the corridor and the nurse’s station. The doctor had promised to let her go once he issued a prescription.
But it was Tony who walked in, his gaze locking on her as he came straight to her side, ignoring Matt as if he wasn’t there. Then he assessed her, from the gauze wrapping her palms to the cast enclosing her left arm.
“You look out of it.”
She worked her tongue around in her mouth before she tried to speak. “They gave me something.”
“Damn.” The hand he lifted to stroke her cheek had a tremor. “If I hadn’t left…”
