Out of Practice. Penny Parkes

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СКАЧАТЬ too busy amassing his fortune to be anything other than an absentee husband and father. The jet-setter with a woman in every major city in the world.

      But what, she wondered frantically, fighting to overcome the fuzziness of her thoughts, was he doing standing by her bed? And where was she anyway? Because this was no dream. The dull, thudding pain in her shoulder and the sharp needles of agony behind her eyes were all too real. So was he, of course. His thick black hair now had threads of gray over the ears, she noticed in confusion. But his eyes were still that chameleon shade between blue and gray, and his jawline was as arrogant as ever.

      “Where—” she croaked.

      “I’ve called the nurse,” he said in the deep baritone that she now realized she’d never forgotten. “Just lie still, she’ll be here in a minute.”

      “But what are you—”

      The door swung open and on soft rubber heels a nurse came in the room. She went straight to the bed, smiling at Lise. “So you’re awake—good. And not feeling so great by the look of you. I’ll give you another shot, that’ll help the pain in your shoulder.” With calm efficiency, she checked Lise’s pulse and temperature, asked a few questions and gave her the requisite painkiller. “It’ll take a few moments to take effect,” she said briskly, and glanced up at Judd. “Perhaps you could stay until she’s asleep again?”

      “Certainly,” Judd said.

      With a last smile at Lise, the nurse left the room. Judd said evenly, “You’re the Lise I met years ago, aren’t you? Angeline’s cousin? Do you remember me? Judd Harwood.”

      Oh, yes, she remembered him. Lise said, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

      She’d planned for this to come out crisply and decisively, edged with all the contempt she harbored for him. But her tongue felt like a sponge in her mouth, and her words were scarcely audible even to herself. In huge frustration, she tried again, struggling to marshal her thoughts in a brain stuffed with cotton wool. “I have nothing to say to you,” she whispered, then let exhaustion flatten her to the pillow.

      “Lise…” Judd bent closer, so close she could see the cleanly sculpted curve of his mouth and the small dent in his chin. A wave of panic washed over her. She turned her head away, squeezing her eyes shut. “Go away,” she mumbled.

      He said tightly, “I’ll come back tomorrow morning. But I want you to know how grateful—oh hell, what kind of a word is that? You saved my daughter’s life, Lise, at the risk of your own. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

      Her eyes flew open. She gaped up at him, trying to take in what he was saying, remembering the nightmare search from room to room, the dash up the attic stairs and the child huddled at bay in the corner. “You mean the fire was at your house?” she gasped. He nodded. In growing agitation she said, “All I heard was that the owner was away and there was a baby-sitter and a little girl. No names.”

      “My daughter. Emmy.”

      “Angeline’s daughter—she’s Angeline’s just as much as yours!”

      “Angeline left when Emmy was three,” Judd said in a hard voice.

      “You refused her custody.”

      “She didn’t want it.”

      “That’s not what she told me.”

      “Look,” Judd said flatly, “this is no time for an autopsy on my divorce. You saved Emmy’s life. You showed enormous courage.” Briefly he rested his hand over hers. “Thank you. That’s all I wanted to say.”

      His fingers were warm, with a latent strength that seemed to race through Lise’s body as flame could race along an exposed wire. “Do you really think I need your gratitude?” she cried, hating his nearness, despising herself for being so achingly aware of it. She was damned if she was going to respond to him like the lovesick adolescent she’d been; she was twenty-eight years old, she’d been around. And he was nothing to her. Nothing. She tried to pull her hand away from his, felt agony lance from her elbow to her shoulder, and gave an inarticulate yelp of pain.

      Judd said tautly, “For God’s sake, lie still. You’re acting as though you hate me.”

      With faint surprise that he could be so obtuse, she said, “Why wouldn’t I hate you?”

      To her infinite relief, he straightened, his hand falling to his side. An emotion she couldn’t possibly have defined flickered across his face. In a neutral voice he said, “You grew up with Angeline.”

      “I adored her,” Lise announced defiantly. “She was everything I always wanted to be, and she was kind to me at a time when I badly needed it.” Kind in a rather distant, amused fashion, and kind only when it didn’t inconvenience Angeline; as an adult, Lise had come to see these distinctions. Nevertheless, during a period in her life when she’d been horribly lonely, her cousin had taken the trouble to teach her how to dance, and given her advice on her complexion and how to talk to boys. Had paid attention to her. Which was more than Marthe, Angeline’s mother, had done.

      “Adoration isn’t the most clear-eyed of emotions,” Judd said.

      “What would you know about emotions?”

      “Just what do you mean by that?”

      “Figure it out, Judd,” Lise said wearily. The drugs were starting to take effect, the throbbing in her shoulder lessening; her eyes felt heavy, her body full of lassitude, and all she wanted was for him to go away. Then the door swung smoothly on its hinges again, and with a flood of relief she saw Dave’s familiar face.

      Dave McDowell was her co-worker, almost always on the same shifts as she. She liked him enormously for his calmness under pressure, and for his rock-solid dependability. He was still wearing the navy-blue coveralls that went under their outer gear; he looked worn-out. She said warmly, “Dave…good thing you were on that ladder.”

      “Yeah,” he said. “You were really pushing it, Lise.”

      “The little girl wasn’t in her room. For some reason she’d slept in the attic. So it took me a while to find her.”

      Judd made a small sound in his throat. Emmy slept in the attic when she was lonely, she’d told him that once. And he’d been away for four days. So if she’d died in the fire because she couldn’t be found, the blame could have been laid squarely on his own shoulders.

      Unable to face his own thoughts, Judd turned to Dave. “My name’s Judd Harwood—it’s my daughter Lise rescued. If you were the man on the ladder—then I owe you a debt of thanks, too.”

      “Dave McDowell,” Dave said with a friendly grin that lit up his brown eyes. “We make a good team, Lise and I. Except she doesn’t always go by the manual.”

      “Rules are made to be bent,” Lise muttered.

      “One of these days, you’ll bend them too often,” Dave said with a touch of grimness.

      “Dave, I weigh less than the guys and I can go places they can’t. And I got her out, didn’t I?”

      “You scare the tar out of me sometimes, that’s all.”

      Lise СКАЧАТЬ