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“I don’t care.”
“Well, okay. Have it your way,” the doctor finally agreed, instructing the nurse that Kaylie was to spend the night.
She spent the night in a chair, alternately dozing and waking with a start, her muscles cramping. The small room was never dark. Light from the parking lot street lamps filtered through the blinds, and illumination from the hall made the shapes in the room visible.
In her fitful hours of sleep, she relived, over and over again, the horrible moments in the garage. The knife. The blade plunging into Zane’s shoulder. Blood pooling on the floor. Johnston, dead-blue eyes staring at her, laughing maniacally as she threw herself on Zane’s unmoving body. Tears choked her throat. She couldn’t lose him… she couldn’t….
“Zane! No! Please, no!” She woke to find herself in the hospital room, Zane sleeping on the bed, the worst over.
Relief brought tears to her eyes.
* * *
Zane blinked twice, shifted and felt a brutal pain rip through his shoulder. He sucked in a swift breath. Shadowy images flitted through the mists in his mind—terrifying visions of the madman and his knife. Kaylie—where was she? His eyes blinked against an intense light.
“Zane?”
Kaylie’s voice was like a balm to the pain. Thank God she was alive! Relief flooded through him. Those last frightening minutes in the inky garage, the maniac with his weapon…
Through the fog of his memory, Zane recalled leaping into the dark garage, flying at Johnston and struggling for the knife.
Now he focused with difficulty and discovered Kaylie standing on the other side of the bars of his bed, her hands white as she gripped the rails, her eyes clouded with worry. Her hair was tangled and mussed, her makeup long washed away, her clothes, the same as she’d been wearing the night before, wrinkled and smudged with blood—his blood. Her eyes were red-rimmed and cloudy green and her eyebrows pulled together with worry.
And she was gorgeous. He managed a smile. “You look like I feel.”
Letting out her breath, she blinked against a sudden bout of tears. “So you’re going to rejoin the living after all?”
“The jury’s still out on that one,” he grumbled, realizing he was in a hospital bed, bandaged and swathed, an IV dripping fluid into his wrist. Wincing, he attempted to sit up, but Kaylie’s hands, cool and soft, restrained him.
“Slow down, cowboy,” she said, and he noticed the tremor in her voice and saw the tracks of recent tears on her cheeks. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”
“Do we?” he asked, his gaze locking with hers.
She sniffed loudly. “The rest of our lives.”
“Why, Ms. Melville,” he drawled, suddenly feeling no pain, “is this a proposal?”
She laughed, though her eyes were wet. Sniffing loudly, she brushed her tears aside with the back of her hand. “You bet it is. And I don’t expect to end up a widow before I’m a bride, so you just take care of yourself.”
“So now you’re giving orders.”
“And you’re taking them,” she announced firmly, though she swallowed hard. “After all, someone’s got to protect you.”
He laughed at that. “So what’re you? My personal bodyguard?”
“No, Zane. Just your wife.”
He reached up, and pain seared through his shoulder. Emotions clogged his throat. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you say those words,” he admitted, then with his free hand, playfully grabbed her. “I wish I had a tape recorder, because, no matter what, I’m holding you to it.”
Her fingers linked through his. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Breakfast time.” A nurse, pushing a rattling tray, shoved open the door. “But first I need to take your temperature and pulse and…”
Zane groaned, and the nurse winked at Kaylie. “Looks like he’s out of the woods. Why don’t you run down to the cafeteria and get yourself something to eat and a cup of coffee.”
“Sounds like heaven,” Kaylie admitted.
While the nurse tended to Zane, Kaylie made her way to the ladies’ room where she washed her face as best she could, repaired her makeup and ran a comb through her wild hair. Glancing in the mirror, she snorted. “Not exactly the glamorous talk-show hostess today, Melville.”
