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“Cody told me once that your husband was a tad old-school. I said he’s a dinosaur.”
Mandy moved toward the bed. “You’re right, he is a dinosaur. But he’s my dinosaur.” A glitter of silver sparkled in her eyes, and she blinked several times to hold back the tears. “And I...I just had to thank you for saving his life.”
Keira started to shrug, but the stabbing pain in her chest radiated to her right shoulder, stopping her. “It was my job,” she said quietly.
Mandy surveyed her for a moment. “No, you don’t want gratitude, do you? Not mine, not Ryan’s. All you want is respect.” At Keira’s sharply indrawn breath, Mandy added, “For what it’s worth, you have it. After Ryan told me what happened, he said, ‘In my whole life no one’s ever taken a bullet for me.’ It shocked him, I think. Not just that someone would do it, and not just that a woman would. But that you would.”
Something in Mandy’s voice told Keira everything she needed to know about her. “You would have done it, too,” she said. “You would have taken that bullet for him.”
Mandy nodded slowly. “And he knows it. But I love him. You don’t. That’s the difference between us. I would do it for Ryan and my children in a heartbeat. But I don’t know if I could have done what you did for someone I didn’t love. I don’t think I could. But Ryan could. Cody, too. They’re protectors...just like you.”
Keira couldn’t help the way her pulse kicked up a notch at the mention of Cody’s name, but the respect in Mandy’s eyes warmed her to the core. “Thanks,” she said gruffly.
Mandy edged backward toward the door. “That’s all I really came to say. I didn’t want to intrude, but I just had to—”
The door to Keira’s room opened again, and Cody walked in. Keira didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to—she knew everything she was feeling was written on her face.
“Time’s up,” he told Mandy, but he smiled to soften the order.
Mandy smiled in return, then leaned up and brushed a kiss against his cheek. “Thanks for letting me go first,” she said. She cast one more glowing smile in Keira’s direction, then went out quickly.
* * *
Cody stood with his back to the door, watching the warm color come and go in Keira’s face, loving it. Loving everything about her. She looked a thousand times better than the last time he’d seen her, still in intensive care, but safely out of danger.
“Miss me?” he asked as lightly as he could, his heart racing at the terrible memories he would never be able to blot out. Not completely. He crossed the room to the left side of the bed before she realized he’d even moved. Then he was cupping her face in his hands, turning it up to his for an endless kiss. When his lips finally left hers, all he could manage was a husky, “Yeah. You missed me. Almost as much as I missed you.”
“Where were you? I—” She chopped off the rest of her sentence, as if she didn’t want to betray to him just how abandoned she’d felt, even though he knew she’d had visitors—the twenty-four hour guard on her door had kept a detailed list. Her mom had been there every day—she’d flown up from Denver as soon as she’d heard the news—and a few close friends, including some ex-marine buddies, had driven up to see her. And all four of her brothers had called several times to check up on her. Cody had kept a close enough tab on Keira to know about every visitor, every caller.
But he knew it wasn’t enough. Not for an agent. He’d been in a hospital bed just like this one for more days than he cared to remember while the world moved on without him, and the not knowing had driven him crazy. “We still had things to wrap up,” he told her. “I couldn’t just leave it to Callahan, McKinnon and Holmes to pick up all the pieces by themselves, especially after Danvers finally talked.”
“Oh,” she said. “I wondered. But there wasn’t anyone I could ask.”
“After the night you were shot, after his brothers were killed, I think Danvers was more afraid of us than he was of Vishenko. He gave us enough to go on. And it turns out the FBI had a little something up their sleeves, too, where Vishenko was concerned.” He smiled ruefully. “You were right about that. We are on the same side. Once Holmes and I had a heart-to-heart talk...we were able to put a lot of things together.”
