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Who did that?
“Which means that you know my brothers.” Now his gaze drifted from the dunes to hers and there was something in the hazel depths that had her stomach muscles flexing.
A physiological response to his pain.
Shit.
She was in trouble.
Then again, she’d known that from the first time she’d watched him work, before he’d even introduced himself to her. She’d come in to sign her final job paperwork, to get her keycard, and had been sitting in an empty patient room, familiarizing herself with the computer system when she heard him working on a little girl next door.
With bruises on her arms and legs and spine.
With hurt in her eyes, in her words.
With cigarette burns on her thighs.
Connor had been soft and sweet with her, so damned kind and funny, even getting her to giggle, her voice to warm up, hope to enter her little frame.
Raven had watched that go down through an opening in the curtains.
She shouldn’t have.
She hadn’t been on shift, wasn’t the patient’s doctor.
But…shewas that little girl—or had been anyway—and seeing how Connor handled that little girl with such care, with so such sweetness had been the first moment she’d fallen for him.
Then he’d walked by the opening of the room she was in, and she’d seen the fury hidden beneath that mask of soft and sweet.
The rage in every inch of his body.
She’d followed on silent feet, hanging around the corner, listening to that rage emerge in hissed-out words to his charge nurse.
Thatwas the second moment she’d fallen.
And, God, there were so many other times—not just at work, but being kind and gentle to her friends, never able to back down from a challenge with his siblings, but always able to turn that challenge into something that had everyone laughing.
Looking out for Kim.
Pulling his weight in the ER, being thorough and compassionate.
Sweet with Cole.
Nice toher—until she’d been a bitch enough times to him to ensure he saved that niceness for someone else.
“Iknowyour brothers, Connor,” she said again, prompting him.
He laughed and it didn’t sound very happy. It was tinged with…hurt? “So you know I’m not like that—not like them.”
She opened her mouth to protest.
But he kept talking, so she didn’t get the chance. “I’m anurse. They’re former military and a private investigator and worked for the FBI. They’re tough as shit.”
“Caleb is an architect,” she pointed out. “That’s not exactly the manliest job out there.”
“It’s not a job for awomaneither.”
She sucked in a breath. “Connor.”
