Protection Detail. Julie Miller
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of yours.”
“None of my what?”
“None of your business,” she groaned and touched her hair again, this time actually pulling a few strands loose. “I was trying to be clever and shut you up.” She glared at the caramel-colored hair falling over her cheek and shoved it back behind her ear. “Never mind.”
Thomas heard the words coming out of his mouth before he rationally evaluated the impact of saying them. “I know the signs of someone in trouble. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No.” Her response was a little too vehement for him to accept that something wasn’t bothering her. Jane inhaled a deep breath and spoke in a softer tone. “I’ll be fine. Thank you, Detective.”
“Technically, it’s Detective Lieutenant. Or Lieutenant. Or just Thomas.” Thomas propped his hands at his belt and dropped his chin so he wouldn’t tower over her quite so much. “We’ve talked about this. You’ve been working for me and living at the house since the first of March. I think we can call each other by our names.”
“Thank you for your concern, Thomas. But I’m fine.”
“Is it an ex who’s giving you trouble?”
“There’s no trouble.” She could see he wasn’t buying her answers. She glanced out the window one more time before tilting her gaze, which was more green than gold now, to his. “Not that it’s any of your business, but if you must know—I’m a widow. I have been for three years, before I ever moved to Kansas City. There’s been no boyfriend since my late husband, so there’s no ex, either. Now let it go. Please. And I’ll do my best not to let this situation interfere with my work performance.”
She’d lost the man she loved? Although her loss was more recent than the years he’d been without Mary, he remembered the gutted feeling that had stayed with him for a long time, the way he’d buried most of his emotions so he could get through the demands of the day, that habit of second-guessing and overanalyzing every decision because the teammate who’d always been his sounding board and ally was no longer there to back him up. Maybe her husband had phoned or texted her often, and each time she received a message, it reminded her of the love she’d lost. That could explain the secretive behavior and testy reaction to his prying.
Thomas didn’t want to have something so visceral and private in common with Jane. Lumped on top of the intellectual curiosity and sexual awareness that had been buzzing through his system from the moment she’d moved into the spare bedroom of his house, he did not need to feel this emotional empathy. It felt as though they belonged to an exclusive club, and exclusive was an entirely inappropriate connection to feel about someone who worked for him. But it was the most personal information she’d ever revealed to him, and he felt himself worrying about her well-being, anyway. He laid his hand over her fingers, which were still resting on the windowsill. “I’m sorry about your husband. But you said situation. If there’s some other issue that we need to deal with—”
“We do not need to deal with anything.” He felt her hand tremble beneath his, as if she was fighting some sort of internal battle—maybe whether or not to slap his face for overstepping the bounds of employer-employee concern? She surprised him by turning her palm into his and lacing their fingers together, accepting the strength, comfort and understanding he offered. Her hand felt small in his, but her grip was strong. “I’ll be fine.”
Thomas tightened his hold around hers. “Jane—”
The door swung open across the hall and Stephanie came out smiling, hurrying around the slow-moving Seamus with his walker. “He passed with flying colors.”
Seamus’s face was wan with fatigue, but he was smiling, too. “On to de next s-tage of terapy.”
Jane pulled away from Thomas’s touch, wiping her fingers against her pant leg as if erasing the heat he could still feel in his own hand. Although the effort seemed to cost her, Jane returned her patient’s grin. “That’s my guy.”
She kissed Seamus on the cheek and patted his arm, studiously ignoring Thomas and the unexpected moment of human connection that had passed between them.
Why had she reached for Thomas’s hand?
Jane scooted the au gratin potatoes around in their dish, wondering if she could stomach another bite to justify ordering the special side with her barbecue brisket. At least she’d had the good sense to pass on the dessert that everyone else at the table had ordered.
She’d turned her hand into Thomas’s this afternoon because she was a frightened fool who’d dealt with the past three years on her own for so long that clinging to the strength and compassion he’d offered had given her a rare respite, and the first taste of normal relations with a man she’d known since her life had been turned so completely upside down that it wasn’t her own anymore.
But normal wasn’t truly an option for her since she’d been put into WITSEC and transferred to Kansas City. Until the man who’d murdered her federal agent husband—and believed he’d murdered her, too—could be captured and she could finally testify against what she’d witnessed that horrible night her home had been invaded and Freddie had been taken from her, she needed to remain unattached, alert, able to stand on her own two feet. She had to be strong enough to stand alone.
Most of the time, she was. Her training as a critical-care nurse required her to be able to make quick decisions and handle problems that arose on her own. She no longer worked in a hospital setting as she had back in DC, but her new career as a private nurse demanded she function independently—that she rely on her own experience and skill set to deal with whatever her patient needed. She kept contact with coworkers to a minimum, and with friends even less. She wasn’t going to risk the man who carved up her husband finding her through even a casual conversation or picture that could end up posted online. She was already on emotional thin ice by developing a bond with Seamus. He reminded her so much of her own grandfather that she knew she hadn’t kept herself as professionally distant as she should, and that gave her a weakness, leverage that sociopath wouldn’t hesitate to use against her if he ever found her. It would be far too easy to lean against a man like Thomas and surrender to his strength and authority. Once she did that, however, she’d be completely vulnerable. Easy prey for the stalking skills her husband’s killer possessed.
She couldn’t drop her guard like that again. Ever. No matter how the fear and loneliness wore her down.
She’d have to be more careful. Jane slipped a glance over at the tall, powerfully built man sitting across the table from her, forcing herself to take another bite of the cold potatoes when she saw him watching her, his eyes narrowed with an unspoken question. Thomas Watson seemed gentle and unassuming at first, a mature man at ease in his own skin—a police officer, former military man and single father used to command, used to taking action and fixing problems, even if they weren’t his own.
That man had eyes in the back of his head. Or ESP. Or the training to read people and know when something was off, just as her late husband had when he’d worked with the violent crimes unit at the FBI. She curled her fingers into her palm beneath the table, remembering how the simple touch of his hand had grounded her, calmed her for a few precious seconds. Thomas generated the kind of heat she hadn’t felt since that last morning she and Fred had embraced and each had gone off to their respective jobs in Washington, DC. She missed that kind of contact—a hug, holding hands, a kiss. But she couldn’t give in to that kind of need anymore. She had to stay strong. She had to survive. She owed Freddie that much.
Even as Thomas ordered four decaf coffees from the waitress, his moss-colored eyes managed to make contact with hers, silently asking for the umpteenth time if anything was wrong. Jane gave up the pretense of having any appetite and set down her fork.
Fortunately, they had the buffer of Millie’s chatting and Seamus’s determined responses to keep