Justine Davis - Deadly Temptation

When he’d whispered to her to stay down, that he was a cop and he was going to try for the suspect, she’d turned those big blue eyes on him with a level gaze that had surprised him.

“Would a distraction help?” she’d asked.

He’d tried to keep her from doing it, but she wasn’t having any of that. The suspect had fired again, this time wounding a teller, and he’d known he had no choice. He quickly edged to the corner of the counter, then nodded at her. A split second later she’d scrambled forward to shove a heavy office chair out into the suspect’s path, drawing his attention and his fire; the back of the chair was shredded by high-velocity rounds. In that instant Logan had stood and taken his one chance to down the shooter in the bulletproof vest, a shot to the head.

“You were the only one there who had the nerve to do something. They should have given you that medal.”

“I stayed mostly behind the counter,” she said, her tone pointed. “You’re the one who stood up and gave him a shot at you to get him before he killed anybody else.”

“And if I’d done it better, I wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital for three weeks.”

“That’s not what your lieutenant said,” she retorted. “He said your shot was perfect. It was just bad luck that the robber was able to keep firing as he went down.”

Logan winced inwardly even now, eight years later, remembering the wild spray of bullets from the automatic weapon as the killer collapsed on the bank floor. He hadn’t even realized he’d been hit until Liana had reacted, going pale and leaping toward him. He’d been startled when she’d touched him, only understanding when she shouted at someone to call for paramedics and he saw blood flowing over her fingers. His own blood.

“I thought you were dying,” she said softly, as if her thoughts had followed the same track as his. Maybe they had; you didn’t go through something like that without having the events seared deep into your memory.

“If you hadn’t slowed down the bleeding, I might have,” he said, voicing the gut-level knowledge he’d carried since that day.

“I wish I could have done more.”

“You did more than anyone.” It flashed through his mind then, the moments after he’d realized he was going down, the moments when he had thought just what she had, that he was dying. He remembered her holding him, whispering encouragement, telling him help was coming as his blood soaked her summer dress. “You stayed with me.”

Her expression changed, as if she was surprised he found that even worth remarking on. As if there had been nothing else she could possibly have done. For her, perhaps there hadn’t been.

“I remember you talking to me,” he said. “When everything started fading away, I could still hear you.”

He regretted the too-telling admission the moment the words were out. But then she gave him a soft smile that warmed him ridiculously and made him forget everything else.

“I didn’t even know your name. That was the strangest thing, all I could think of was that I didn’t even know your name.”

He heard the catch in her voice, as if she were feeling an echo of the emotions of that long-ago day. Another memory sliced through his mind then, of looking up at her as he lay on the bank’s cold tile floor, feeling everything slipping away. She’d been crying. For him, a stranger, tears had been streaming from those blue eyes.

He tried to shake off the image, but it clung stubbornly. The effort made his voice gruff again.

“We never got around to that.”

“No, we didn’t.”

They had chatted, though, in the surface way two people in line did when things were moving slowly. He remembered thinking that he’d always preferred blondes, like Lisa—the name barely stung anymore now—but a redhead like this would make any man look twice. She wasn’t flashy, or blatant, but had the quiet kind of beauty that lasted.

It had only been afterward, when he’d been flat on his back in the hospital wondering why he was still alive, that they had really talked.

“How’s your father?” she asked.

Startled, he said more bluntly than he should have, “Dead.”

She paled, then pink color rose in her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” he said quickly, “I am. I didn’t mean to say it like that. You just caught me off guard.”

As quickly as that she accepted the apology with a nod. “What happened?”

“Cancer. Pancreatic. Five years ago. He was diagnosed and then gone in six weeks.”

“Logan, I am so sorry. He seemed like a nice man, when I met him at the hospital.”

Nice wasn’t a word he’d have used often about his old man—they’d butted heads too often—but he knew Charles Beck could be charming when he chose to be. And he’d apparently chosen to be to Liana Kiley.

“He…liked you, too,” he said after a moment.

And that, he thought, was the understatement of the century. He’d never forget his father coming into his hospital room after meeting her and saying, “Now there’s a woman!” And he’d continued with comments like that, suggesting any man who didn’t snap up a woman like Liana was a fool, until Logan had finally told him to shut up about it, and her.

He’d written it off to his father’s dislike of Lisa—he’d said from the beginning that she was all show and no staying power, and had, maddeningly, been proven right—and been even more determined to make his relationship with Lisa work. For all the good it had done him.

“It’s just as well,” he muttered. “At least he’s not here to see his only son go down in flames.”

“He wouldn’t believe it, either,” she said firmly. “He was so proud of you.”

He smothered a snort of disbelief. “Proud? Not hardly. He gave up on that the day I told him I was going to be a cop instead of stick around and run the family construction business.”

“Logan, he was proud of you. He told me so.”

He blinked. “What?”

“He told me that he’d been horribly disappointed at the time, but that he had to admire you for standing up to him and going after what you wanted.”

“He…told you that?”

“He did.” She reached out then, put a hand gently on his arm. “And that he’d come to be very, very proud of you. He was afraid you were going to die before he had a chance to tell you.” She frowned then. “In fact, he did tell you. I heard him talking to you as I left the room.”

“I don’t remember.”

“It was only the third day. You were pretty out of it.”

And you were still there, he thought, while my supposed fiancée couldn’t be bothered. Not once did she set foot in that hospital room.

He quashed the thought; Lisa’s desertion was old news. She’d passed it off, the few times she’d called him, as a pathological hatred of hospitals. He’d let it go, telling himself he understood. But he’d seen the looks in the eyes of his fellow cops, when they realized the woman he’d been living with and was set to marry hadn’t even visited him when his survival was in doubt.

“How’s your mother?” he asked hastily, feeling a bit ridiculous talking about such things but needing to get his mind out of the old rut. “And your little brother?”

“Not so little anymore,” she said with a smile. “He’s a freshman in college now.”

He remembered the antsy boy at the awards ceremony. He’d guessed he was about ten or eleven, and apparently he’d been right. He’d commented then on the age gap between them, and Liana had laughed and called him their parents’ excuse for teasing her unmercifully; it had taken them fifteen years to recover from her enough to try again, they’d always told her.