Naughty Stranger (Dangerous Love 1)

She tightened her fingers twined with his, hoping that comforted him. “You couldn’t forgive your wife?” Peyton took a guess.

Boone nodded as his answer. His gaze fell to their held hands, and for once, Peyton felt like she wasn’t the person clinging, she was comforting. “I don’t like talking about this part of my past. It took me a long time to find my way back from the hellish place I’d gone after I left New York City. I’d lost everything just like that.” He snapped his fingers and then sighed. “Nothing made sense anymore.”

“Now that I totally understand.”

He looked at her then, softness in his eyes. “I’m sure you do.”

She watched him closely, thinking to herself that now Boone made a lot more sense.

He gave a chuckle that never reached his eyes. “You’re looking at me like I’m a science project that’s gone all wrong.”

“Actually, if anything, it’s that you’ve gone perfectly right,” she countered, tucking her legs under her. “I guess I just understand you more now.”

He arched an eyebrow.

She set to explaining. “I mean that it makes sense you haven’t been the relationship type since Chelsea. That’s quite the doozy and would make anyone not too excited about jumping into anything serious.”

He searched her eyes a moment, then inclined his head. “I can’t trust my instincts where love is involved. It’s a feeling that I don’t like.” He hesitated, a dark shadow of pain crossing his expression. “My instincts failed with Chelsea. I didn’t see the person she’d become. I only saw the person I wanted her to be—the woman I had fallen in love with.”

Peyton watched him inhale and exhale deeply. She had become an expert at breathing techniques that got you through tough conversations. Like funeral arrangements, insurance claims, death certificates. Though it also occurred to her that the timing of this conversation wasn’t coincidental. “Are you telling me this because you wanted to…or for another reason?”

“I’m telling you this because fair is fair.” He placed his empty glass on the table, then turned to face her. “I know you are reluctant to share your past, and I want you to know that I understand why. But, I’m afraid I need to hear about your life in Seattle.”

She put two and two together real quick. “Are you thinking that all of this has to do with my past?” The thought hadn’t even occurred to her.

“It’s in the realm of possibilities.”

She couldn’t make sense out of any of this and adamantly shook her head. “I trust you, Boone, I do, but you are way off base here. My life in Seattle was totally normal.”

His brow arched again. “You’ve had a lot of death around you.”

“I know it seems like that,” she retorted, suddenly chilled to the bone again. “But I come from a good home.” She raised one finger. “First, I’m still having trouble even considering this has to be about me at all. But I know for sure it’s gotta be about something here in Stoney Creek, not something from my past.”

“It very well could be,” Boone countered gently. “But the Francis case has hit a dead end, which tells us we’re looking in the wrong spot. Now with the accident earlier, the abandoned SUV…we need to look at all angles here, including your past.”

He was right—she knew that. She paused, then took a couple of long sips of wine to ease her dry throat. “This wasn’t what I wanted,” she admitted, staring down into the wine rippling against the glass. She pulled her hand away from his, placing both around the glass, steadying herself. “When I left Seattle, I wanted to start over. I didn’t want anyone to know about Adam, about what I lost, or about my old life. I wanted to reinvent myself.”

Boone dropped a hand on her thigh, his voice softened. “I know.”

Reeling on the coattails of his sharing, she shut her eyes, allowing herself to go back to a moment when everything looked different—when she was different. “Adam and I had this life I dreamed of growing up,” she began. “We had that romantic tale, where you meet, and things happened so instantly. I knew I’d marry Adam a week after meeting him, and we got married a month after I graduated. We were happy.” She opened her eyes, finding Boone’s gaze warm and open, his fingers tight on her thigh.

She took another long sip of her wine, tasting the citrusy hints, and continued, “Adam loved me in ways I never would have believed a man could love a woman.” She searched for anything that showed this conversation bothered Boone. Either he hid his displeasure, or the topic didn’t bother him in the least. “As you already know, I was a nurse. My mom was a nurse. My grandmother too. I guess taking care of people was ingrained into me. Nursing was my passion, until…” Her mind began to float away from her, her thundering heartbeat in her ears faded away, changing to a constant beep, beep, beep.

“Clear,” Dr. Williams said, seconds before he placed the paddles against the chest slicked with blood.

The man’s torso lifted off the hospital bed and fell a moment later.

“Clear,” Dr. Williams said again.

Peyton watched the heart rate monitor. Nothing. No change.

Dr. Williams shook his head in obvious frustration and glanced at the circular clock on the light blue stone wall. “Time of death 0304.”

Heavy silence filled the room. The kind of silence that reminds you that no matter how much training someone has, not everyone can be saved. While Peyton knew this, the entire team always felt the sting when they lost a life. No one could pretend this was only a job. Yes, during the years she’d worked as an emergency room nurse, she’d learned how to cut herself off emotionally. She could feel disappointed, but that’s all she could let herself feel. When death came knocking, sometimes she couldn’t stand in the way. And for this poor man on the bed, no one could save him.

When the team began to disperse, Dr. Williams turned, his scrubs dragging against the arm of the victim. The world began to fade away in a heartbeat. Peyton’s focus narrowed on the dark ink on that arm. It’d been so covered in blood. His whole body had been covered in blood. She’d been focused on doing her job. Thinking of what she needed to do next to assist the doctor in saving this man’s life. His face was mangled from the car accident. Swollen beyond any recognition. Bones broken. Blood covered him from head to toe.

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