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“Okay,” Aggie agreed hesitantly, clearly unwilling to be left alone after the ordeal she’d suffered tonight. “You don’t have to stay,” she said uncertainly. “You’ve done enough for me. You saved my life, you came with me to the hospital in the ambulance even though you didn’t have to. I'm sure you want to go home, you probably have someone waiting for you.”
“There’s no one waiting for me,” he informed her, thinking her rambling was quite adorable.
“Oh?” she said again, this time the merest hint of pink stained her cheeks, or rather her one undamaged cheek, finally adding a little color to her face.
She really was very sweet, but the open adoration in her face was making him uncomfortable. He didn’t deserve it. Not one little bit. He wasn't the kind of guy that was worthy of someone like Aggie. She deserved someone who was honest, trustworthy, reliable, honorable, who had integrity, and he was none of those things.
“Really, you can go if you want,” Aggie repeated nervously when he didn’t say anything.
“Cops want to talk to me,” he replied.
Disappointment seemed to wash over her. “Right. Well, you can wait out there then, and thank you again for saving my life.”
“Hey.” He leaned in close and practically felt her sharp intake of breath. Hooking a finger under her chin, Nick tilted her face so she was looking him square in the eye. “I'm not going anywhere. I don’twantto go anywhere. Understand?”
Aggie gave a shaky nod, but her eyes grew watery. She looked so scared, so vulnerable, so fragile that for a moment his resolve weakened.
“I’ll be right outside, yell if you need me. She’s all yours, doc.” Nick released Aggie and turned to the middle-aged woman who had been attempting to remain inconspicuous while he and Aggie talked.
Once out in the hall, he yanked his phone from his pocket and stalked to a quiet corner. Punching in a name, as soon as he answered Nick growled, “She wasn't supposed to get hurt.”
“Hey, it wasn't my fault,” his partner’s surly voice snapped. “And I got hurt too.”
“You're not the one in a hospital bed right now,” Nick reminded Miller.
“You hit me,” Miller barked. His partner sounded furious.
“I had no choice, you were on top of her,” he returned fire just as angrily. “You were just supposed to scare her with the knife, pretend like it was a mugging, so what happened? Why does she have bruises on her neck, a broken wrist, and a messed-up face?”
“What, she’s not pretty enough for you now?” Miller mocked.
Rage sliced through him along with a heavy dose of unwanted physical attraction. Even with her scraped cheek he still thought Agape Candella was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. “What happened?” he repeated tightly.
“I couldn’t help it, I wasn't expecting her to have such good self-defense skills. She blocked the knife when I came at her, got me in the groin, she was going to get away. I had to do something, unless you’d prefer I just let her run?”
“You know I wouldn’t,” Nick raged quietly, careful to make sure he wasn’t overheard.
“She fell, that’s how she got hurt. Then I thought I better improvise so I acted like I was going to kill her. I don’t know what you're so worked up about,” Miller grumbled. “You got what you wanted, she thinks you saved her. You’ll be able to gain her trust pretty easily now. From what I saw before the cops turned up you’ve already gained it. She was looking pretty cozy in your arms.”
While that was true, right now it wasn't making him feel a whole lot better. Neither was the fact that he’d liked the way Aggie had felt curled up on his lap. “I didn’t want her hurt,” he said softly.
“Hey, don’t go getting soft now. This is only the beginning, things are only going to get worse from here, so man up and do what you're supposed to do.”
Seeing the doctor leave Aggie’s room, Nick quickly finished his phone call. “I have to go. You know what to do next. How is she?” he asked as he approached the doctor.
“She’s doing all right. I've cleaned the graze on her face, and I’ll be back to put a cast on her arm shortly. She’s suffering some mild shock, I’d like her to spend the night just so we can observe her, but she wants to go home. You better go back in, she was asking after you,” the doctor informed him.
Swallowing his guilt, he returned to Aggie’s room. Miller was right. Thiswasonly the beginning and things reallywouldget a lot worse. Setting up Aggie’s attack had been his idea, he’d started this and now he had to see it through. Forcing his lips to curve into a bright smile, he pushed the curtain aside. “Hey, how're you doing?”
Aggie offered him a small smile in return, then her face crumpled and she burst into a fit of noisy tears. Staying in character as the sympathetic and caring savior, Nick went to her, sat on the bed beside her, and folded her into his arms. She clung to him as sobs wracked her small body. “I'm sorry,” she cried, hiccupping as she tried to stifle her weeping. “It … it just hit me. I … I almost died. If you hadn’t … if you hadn’t … he was going to stab me.”
“Shh,” he soothed. “You're okay now. I did turn up and he didn’t stab you. You're okay.” Nick decided he had to be the scum of the earth for deliberately inflicting this on an innocent woman. Yet he wouldn’t have taken it back even if he could.
She pressed her face against his chest. “I'm sorry. I shouldn’t be crying over you. You saved my life. How will I ever thank you?”
“Trust me, you don’t have to thank me, honest,” he added, which was probably the only honest thing he’d said to her all night.
“Excuse me, Ms. Candella? I'm Detective Dion,” a voice behind them announced. “I need to ask you some questions about what happened tonight, if you're up to it.”
