Trading Secrets. Christine Flynn

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      “I haven’t had a chance to have the electricity turned on.” Utility companies tended to want their customers to have jobs. And even if she did get work at the diner, it would be a while before she could afford a phone. “I just got here this afternoon. And I’m not renting or buying,” she explained, trying not to feel defeated by what she’d been reduced to doing. “This house belongs to my family. My name’s Jenny. Jenny Baker.”

      He’d wiped the spare towel over his head, leaving his hair ruffled as it probably was after he’d dried from his shower. His focus never left her face as he set the towel on the counter and raked his fingers through his hair.

      Without the pain clouding his eyes, his level gaze seemed harder to hold. From the way he watched her, she couldn’t tell if he believed her or not.

      She’d had to prove herself entirely too often lately.

      “This place has been vacant since Grandma died three years ago.” A squatter wouldn’t know that. “The real estate market has been so bad since the quarry had all those layoffs that Mom hasn’t been able to sell it. She was barely able to sell the house I grew up in after dad died last year.”

      With no other relatives in Maple Mountain, her mom had moved to Maine to live with Jenny’s sister, Michelle, and Michelle’s growing family. Jenny might have mentioned that, too, had Greg not been frowning at her.

      “What?” she asked, thinking he could at least have the decency to believe her after causing her to break her bowl.

      Greg rose from the stool. With his arm supported by the makeshift sling, he took a step toward her. The light from the oil lamps cast everything in a pale-golden glow. That soft light also had a certain concealing effect. Not only did it take the worst of the dinginess from the derelict-looking room, it helped mask the faint bruising that bloomed along her jaw and the raw scrape beneath her thick bangs.

      It was the glimpse of the scrape that had caught his attention when she spoke. Until then, he’d only noticed the discoloration along her jaw when she’d turned her head.

      She’d winced when he’d grabbed her arm a while ago.

      “I hurt you.” He spoke the conclusion quietly as he glanced at the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Wondering if there were more bruises he couldn’t see, his physician’s training and experience kicked in. “When I grabbed your arm,” he explained, since she suddenly looked puzzled, “I hurt you, didn’t I?”

      “No. No,” she quickly repeated. The discomfort had been nothing compared to his. “You didn’t do anything.”

      “Let me see your arm.”

      “That’s not necessary.”

      She’d suspected he was stubborn. She knew it for a fact when he reached over and tugged up her loose sleeve himself.

      Three long bruises slashed her forearm.

      Jenny stared down at them. “Oh,” she murmured. A few hours ago, they were merely stripes of pale pink.

      “Bad relationship?” he asked.

      “Bad luck,” she returned, pulling down her sleeve. “I’m not camping out in an abandoned house to escape an abusive boyfriend, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She didn’t care to mention that a relationship was responsible for that bad luck to begin with. If she’d never met Brent, she wouldn’t have lost everything and been forced to move. “I was mugged this morning.”

      Greg was clearly an intelligent man. He was also, apparently, a hard sell.

      “It’s true!” she insisted, seeing his doubt, hating the awful helpless feeling that came with not being believed. “I moved from Boston this morning. This guy was hiding behind the bushes near my apartment while I was loading up my car. When I crossed from my stoop to my car with my last box, he shoved me down and tried to grab my purse. I’d had a really bad week. A really bad month, actually,” she qualified, her hands now on her hips, “and I wasn’t about to let some greasy little jerk in a hooded sweatshirt take what little cash I have, my credit cards and my car keys.”

      “So you hung on to your purse,” he concluded flatly.

      “You bet I did. That’s when he grabbed my arm to make me let go. But that wasn’t going to happen,” she assured him. “When he started dragging me, I wrapped myself around a parking meter and kicked him in his crotch. The last I saw of him, he was limping down the hill holding himself.”

      Greg lifted his chin, slowly nodded. Hitting a sidewalk would explain the scrape on her forehead. The force of being grabbed explained the fingerprints on her arm. The bruising on her jaw could have been caused by colliding with the metal pole of the parking meter, the ground or even the guy’s hand.

      His glance moved from her boyishly short, sassy hair to her running shoes. He figured she was somewhere around five feet four inches, 120 pounds, tops. Considering that there didn’t appear to be a whole lot to her curvy little body musclewise, he didn’t know whether to admire her gutsy tenacity or think her utterly foolish. He’d known gang-types to maim or kill for pocket change. Having worked his residency in an inner-city hospital, he’d treated their victims often enough.

      “Did the police catch the guy?”

      Her glance shied from his. “I didn’t want to deal with the police.”

      “You didn’t file a report? Give them a description?”

      “Of what? An average-size, twenty-something Hispanic, Puerto Rican, black, Haitian, Mediterranean or very tanned white male in baggy black pants and a gray sweatshirt with the hood tied so all that showed was eyes?”

      “What color were they?”

      “Brown.”

      “There had to be something distinguishing about him.”

      “If there was, I was too busy hanging on to my purse to notice it. I’ve had enough of detectives to last me a lifetime. The last thing I wanted to do was put myself in the position of having to answer to them again.”

      Sudden discomfort had her glancing down at a broken nail. “So that’s what happened to my arm,” she concluded, looking back up. “How’s yours? You’re bruised up way worse than I am. Do you want me to drive you over to the hospital in St. Johnsbury or should I take you home?”

      It was as clear as the blue of her eyes that she had said more than she’d intended when she’d mentioned detectives. It was also apparent that she felt a little uneasy with him now that she had.

      His shoulder throbbed. His arm ached like the devil. The discomfort alone should have been enough to distract him. But it was the thought of how he’d felt when she’d held him, those few moments of odd and compelling peace, that made him decide to make it easy on them both.

      He could use an X-ray, but the drive to St. Johnsbury was miserable on a rainy night, and Bess would be available eventually. His house was only a couple miles away.

      He opted for home, and watched her give him a relieved little nod before she walked over to blow out one of the lamps and, now that dusk had given way to dark, carry the other with them to the front door before she blew out that one, too.

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