Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

Go away! she wanted to scream, but her throat hurt too much to shout.

“Good God, Temple, what happened to you?” he demanded in the hushed, awestruck tones reserved for funerals and hospital rooms.

The words, the shock, did what she had feared. They released the logjam in her emotions, rejoined her physical and mental selves, forced her stability meter off the scale.

She opened her right hand, where the keys she’d clutched had impressed their cryptic profiles into her flesh, across her lifeline and headline and heartline. The severed heel lay there, too, a greater cipher to anyone but her.

She felt the tide coming, sensed the flash flood behind her eyes, heard the flux thickening her voice. “They... they broke it. They broke the heel off my shoe,” she managed to explain, heartbroken as a child with a shattered toy, before she began sobbing.

17

Official Abuse

“I hate this,”Temple muttered, tears and a blood taste mingling on her lips.

She leaned against the welcome support of the faded chartreuse wall outside her condominium. Matt had set the tote at their feet and was frowning at her key ring in the dimly lit entryway.

He had reacted to her breakdown with swift, masculine action. He had taken the tote bag in one hand, then scooped her up and carried her in, up in the elevator, and to the door of her unit.

Not long ago she would have adored being swooped away in Matt Devine’s strong, lightly tanned arms. Of course in her imagination she would have been perfectly coiffed, gowned and made up and they would have been heading for a devoutly mutual rendezvous somewhere high above the city. She had not yet decided where.

But now the ease with which he had swept her off her feet, however gallant and practical the intention, only reminded her how easily the two thugs had overcome her free will by the same expedient. Besides, now she felt like a child who’d been in a scrape at school—dirty, humiliated and in the wrong, somehow, for being hurt at all.

The right key finally clicked and Matt picked up her bag and took her elbow to guide her inside. Her right elbow. She cringed away, sucking in her breath.

His hand dropped as if he had touched a hot burner. Temple tottered in on her own power, through the hallway and into the living room, where she sat on the white-muslin-upholstered sofa.

Matt gingerly set the tote bag down on the cocktail table in front of her. “Can I get you anything?”

“Water.”

He vanished, and Temple looked around cautiously, toting up her possessions, marking their unchanged presence, becoming thankful for that.

He returned with a lowball glass full. Apparently he hadn’t found the twelve-ounce tumblers in the next cabinet. She found it hard to swallow, and the liquid didn’t help her stomach.

Matt sat on the edge of the cocktail table, a sturdy wood-framed square of thick glass, facing her. He laid the keys on the table, and the broken heel, then bent to gently pull her shoes off, the damaged one first, then the other.

Temple curled her toes into the white faux goat-hair area rug under the cocktail table. At least they didn’t hurt.

“Can you tell me now?” he asked.

“I must look awful.”

He nodded gravely, and she almost rose to consult a mirror, but his fanned hand stopped her.

“How do you feel?” he asked in a kindly tone as impersonal as a doctor’s.

The question, and the distance, set her at ease. “Awful,” she admitted. She shrugged. “I suppose my clothes are ruined.”

“Maybe not. Can you talk about it.”

Temple sighed, sorry immediately afterward. The small inhalation hurt her shoulder. “Two men accosted me in the Goliath parking ramp. They got pretty physical.”

“Robbers?” he asked incredulously. “Did you resist that much?”

“I couldn’t resist at all, except kick a little. Until a couple of drivers had a near-brush and got into a loud argument. Then the men... melted away.”

“What did they get?”

“Nothing.”

Matt frowned again, which only emphasized his warm brown eyes under slanted sun-bleached brows. “What did they do to you?”

Her left hand lifted to pat her right shoulder. “Twisted my arm halfway around.” The hand touched her cheek. “Slapped me for not keeping quiet. Everything happened so fast... so fierce. I hardly knew what hit me, or how I was hit—” Saying it was reliving it. She stopped, her teeth clattering together as uncontrollable shivers battered her aching frame. “It’s like I’ve got a fever and chills.”

“Shock.” Matt confirmed her earlier instinct. He rose and went into the kitchen, ran some water, put something in the microwave. She could hear the high-pitched wheeze of the machine as it zapped whatever was inside. His face appeared around the kitchen wall. “Got a blanket somewhere?”

“Not out in summer,” she murmured. “Left bedroom, in the bathroom linen closet.”

He returned with a thick rose-colored wool blanket she’d forgotten about, and wrapped her in it. The microwave tinged and he vanished into the kitchen again. Cupboards banged. Matt returned with a hot cup of black coffee and a box of soda crackers.

“Coffee will help. And eat some crackers.”

She sipped the bitter, steaming liquid, tried to gum down the cracker. Her jaws hurt. Her teeth hurt. The cracker paste oozed down her esophagus like rubber cement, but a little clarity was seeping into her foggy brain.

Matt came to sit beside her on the couch, to hold the cup between sips because she was still shaking. “Could you identify these guys?”

“I don’t know. Can you identify a hurricane? Maybe.”

“Did they say anything, have any reason for accosting you?”

Temple was silent. Matt took her reserve for weakness and brought the coffee cup to her lips. She sipped the strong brew gratefully. The heat was reaching a place inside her that had become very cold and indifferent.

The excuse for not speaking allowed her to consider her answer. To tell the truth meant mentioning Max, whom she couldn’t explain to herself, much less to Matt Devine. And the more people who knew about Max, perhaps the more danger they were in.

She finally looked at him and shook her head, trying to indicate that it was no use asking or answering such questions. He took the gesture for a no, and she let him. “Let me see.” He reached for her face.

She winced but held still.

“You cut the inside of your cheek on your teeth. Bleeds a lot, but not serious. Looks like some swelling near the left eye. May swell more later.”

The calm cataloging of her injuries made them seem remote, removed. Her chills were subsiding, but the pain was deepening.

“Why are you holding your arms like that?” Matt was asking.

“Like what?” She looked down where her hands clutched the blanket’s satin-bound edges. She was sitting huddled over herself, as if cold, her arms crossed over her midriff, the left one cradling the right.

“They”—just mentioning it revived the shock of the blows—“punched me.”

He gently lifted her right arm, supported the wrist. “Wrist isn’t broken, or you’d be screaming.” He pulled until her elbow straightened, and she hissed through her teeth. “A bad wrench, I’d guess. It could be sore for a while.”

He shot her an apologetic glance for hurting her, then rotated the arm. The pain wasn’t as intense as when she tried to do something with it. Matt was watching her arm and her face with that same distant consideration, like a doctor, or a personal trainer. Of course. He practiced the martial arts. He’d know about... combat injuries.