Paula Graves - Blue Ridge Ricochet

“Sorry,” she murmured, wincing in sympathy. There’d been a time when she had considered a career in medicine. Well, of sorts. She’d been a licensed first responder when she was living in Nashville a few years back. But she’d found herself ill-suited for the job. Other people’s pain bothered her too much, making it hard to stay objective and focused.

Even now, acutely aware that the battered man sitting before her might be a very bad man indeed, she couldn’t help but feel twinges of empathetic pain as she cleaned the abrasions that marred the skin of his back.

“You seem to know what you’re doing.” He turned his head toward her, peering at her through one narrowed eye. “You a nurse?”

She shook her head. “Used to be an EMT, though.”

“Used to be?”

“I gave it up for a career in the hospitality business.” She smiled at his arched eyebrow. “I’m a fry cook at a place called Dugan’s in town.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t. Nobody ever does.” She probed gently at his rib cage, feeling for any sign of a fracture.

He sucked in another sharp breath. “Couldn’t stand the sight of blood?”

“Too many whiny patients,” she said lightly. “Gave me headaches.”

“And restaurant customers are a step up?”

“Fry cook, not waitress. I only deal with whiny servers.” She blotted the oozing scrape over his kidney. “Any idea what made this wound?”

He didn’t answer, and her imagination supplied a few answers she would have given anything not to visualize. But she’d already seen some of the brutality members of the Blue Ridge Infantry could mete out. Some of them enjoyed inflicting pain a little too much, as a matter of fact.

“You must’ve really pissed somebody off,” she murmured as she covered the raw scrape with sterile pads and taped them into place.

His back arched in pain as she pressed another sterile pad into place. “I have a bad habit of doing that.”

“What are you, a tax collector?” she joked.

Before he could respond, she heard the trill of the telephone coming down the hall. For a moment, she considered just letting it ring, but it might be the call she’d been waiting for.

“Wait right here,” she said and headed to the bedroom.

It was Trevor Colley on the phone. He was the manager at Dugan’s. “Can you work the morning shift?” he asked. “Bella’s stuck over in Abingdon looking in on her mama because of the snow.”

She paused, torn. Normally, she jumped at working as many hours at the diner as she could, both for the money and for the opportunity to rub elbows with the militia members and their wives and girlfriends who frequented the diner on a regular basis. She’d made friends with some of the women already, and an incident a few weeks ago had even earned her the respect of a couple of the men.

“Del McClintock is here.”

She straightened. “Yeah?”

“He asked if you were coming in.” Trevor kept his voice light, but she heard a hint of disapproval in his voice. The militia men might be good-paying customers, but the manager had never seemed particularly happy about their patronage. He took their money, of course. He’d be a fool not to, given that in this impoverished part of the county, paying customers could be hard to come by.

But he wasn’t exactly happy about his best fry cook befriending members of the Blue Ridge Infantry.

Nicki did her best to straddle the line between her manager’s feelings and her own need to make inroads into the BRI’s inner circle. It could be a delicate dance at the best of times.

But even Trevor, as much as he disliked the hard-eyed men who ate daily at the diner, wasn’t above using her interest in them to get his way. “Should I tell him you’re coming in?”

She pressed her lips together as she considered her options. Del McClintock’s sexual interest in her presented a very tempting opportunity to get a little closer to her target.

But what was she going to do with Dallas Cole while she was working a shift at the diner? The last thing she wanted to do was leave him here on his own while she worked a few hours at the diner.

No telling what kind of trouble he could get into.

* * *

THE MURMUR OF Nicki’s voice drifting down the hall was like a lure dangling in front of a hungry bass. Dallas couldn’t have resisted the temptation to hear what she was saying any more than he’d have turned down a juicy steak after three weeks of near starvation.

Urging his aching body into motion, he moved as quietly as he could down the hallway until he could hear Nicki’s end of the conversation.

“And Davey can’t come in?” There was a brief silence, then she sighed. “No, I get it. Everybody else has family to see after, except me. I’ll be there in a few.”

She must be talking to someone at the diner where she worked, he realized. He eased away from the door and turned to go back to the kitchen. But his foot caught in the carpet runner in the hall, tripping him up. He landed against the wall with a thud, the impact eliciting a grunt.

Before he could tamp down the pain in his bruised ribs enough to breathe again, Nicki emerged from the bedroom, her blue eyes flashing.

“What the hell are you doing?” she challenged. “Eavesdropping?”

His pain-fogged brain tried sluggishly to catch up. “Bathroom.”

Her dark eyebrows arched. “You passed it to get here.”

Damn.

“What did you expect to overhear?” she asked.

Ah, hell. Maybe he should just tell her the truth. “How about why you left the cabin for an hour last night in the middle of a snowstorm?”

Her eyes narrowing, she took a step away from him until her back flattened against the wall. “What are you talking about?”

“You left the cabin shortly before midnight and disappeared into the woods for over an hour. Then you snuck back in here, real quiet, and settled down for the night. Want to tell me where you went?”

“You were asleep at midnight. I checked on you.”

“You thought I was asleep. I wasn’t.”

A scowl creased her forehead. “You were spying on me?”

“You woke me when you started to leave. I got curious. You’re not the only one who spent the night with a stranger, you know.”

“You’re still alive, so I guess I’m not a serial killer.” She folded her arms across her chest, angling her chin at him. In her defiance, she seemed to glow like a jewel, all glittering blue eyes and ruby-stained cheeks.

A flush of desire spread heat through his body, making his knees tremble. He flattened his back against the opposite wall of the hallway and struggled to stay upright beneath the electric intensity of her gaze.

She was dangerous to him, he realized.

In all sorts of unexpected ways.

He pushed himself upright, willing his legs to hold his weight. “You know, I think I should call someone.”

Her suspicious gaze was as sharp as a blow. “Who’re you going to call?”

“You’ve got a sheriff’s department around here, right?”

Her scowl deepened. “They’re probably a little busy today. With the snow and all.”

“Not like it was a blizzard.” His legs were starting to ache, from his hips to his toes. He fought the urge to slide down the wall to the floor.

“No, but in this part of the state, people aren’t used to driving in snow.”

“But you’re going to, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re going in to work aren’t you?” He nodded toward her bedroom. “That’s who you were talking to on the phone.”

“So you were eavesdropping.”

No point in denying it. “You can drive me into town with you. I’ll take it from there.”

Alarm darkened her eyes. “No. I can’t do that.”