Hot Winter Nights (Heartbreaker Bay #6)(24)

Joe was quiet for a beat. “It’s a long story,” he finally said. “And it’s not my story to tell. But I can say that her getting hurt . . . that shit was all on me. She used to run track. Wanted to be an Olympian. That was her dream, it was her way out. And none of it happened. So yeah, I go a little crazy when I think she could get hurt again. I know that.”

Not an apology, but Lucas didn’t need one. He understood guilt. And he understood the gut-clenching, heart-stopping fear of someone he loved getting hurt. “I’ve got her back,” he said gruffly. “You know I do. I’ll watch over her.”

And he would, or die trying. But if Joe knew the truth, that Lucas had had his mouth on Molly’s, and also his hands, there was every chance that his partner and good friend would kill him dead where he stood with absolutely zero remorse, and Lucas would expect no less.





Chapter 9





#JingleAllTheWay



Molly watched Lucas end his call and slide behind the wheel.

“What’s your plan?” he asked, clearly having no intention of talking about his phone call. The call that had agitated him, even though he was still looking his usual calm, implacable self.

A reminder that while they appeared to have added kissing to their repertoire, they weren’t exactly friends.

Or lovers.

Got it.

“My plan,” she said. “is to go look around the Christmas Village, but first I want to check out Bad Santa’s home address. Stealthily, of course. I just want to get a feel for him. Something’s weird to me.” She gave him the addy and he started driving.

She looked resolutely out the window and not at him because that was the only way to get through this, not looking into his face. She didn’t know how to go back to before the kiss, didn’t know how to un-want him.

When he spoke a few minutes into the silence, he startled her. “I’ve got a question,” he said.

She hesitated, feeling more than a little wary. “Okay.”

“Your leg seems to bother you more on the cold days.”

She looked over him in the dark, ambient lighting of the interior of the car, surprised. People who’d known her for years hadn’t caught onto that. “Yes. It does.”

“What happened? What can be done so you don’t have to be in pain?”

“That’s more than one question,” she said, turning back to the window.

He snorted and the sound made her want to smile, but she held it because she didn’t want to talk about this with him. Or anyone. Ever.

“I’d like to know,” he said quietly, the amusement gone from his voice. “Because I’d like to know more about you.”

“I tried to let you know more about me and was shut down.”

“No fair,” he said softly.

Okay, he might be right on that one. She shrugged. “Hey, if you want to play a game of questions, I’m all for it. But I get to go first.”

“Fine. Hit me,” he said.

“You said you’d let down those you’ve loved. How?”

He glanced over at her and then turned his attention back to the road. “I started out as a medic but I hated that, so I went into the DEA. I did a lot of undercover and was gone all the time, and when I wasn’t, I still wasn’t good about being there for the people in my life.”

“So that’s how you let them down? By being a workaholic?”

He gave a short nod.

“Being a workaholic isn’t the worst thing,” she said.

“It is if you love one,” he said. “My turn. Tell me what happened to you.”

The injury had actually been her back, not her leg. She’d broken her back in three places falling out of the window making her great escape all those years ago. She’d had multiple spine surgeries but the nerves in her right leg still hadn’t come back. While the stabbing, burning, constant nerve pain had thankfully faded, left in its placed was . . . a nothingness. Her right leg from knee to hip was entirely numb. Like gone-to-the-dentist-and-been-doped-up-with-Novocain numb.

It drove her crazy. But it was better than the constant pain. The only time she felt that was when she was stupid and vain enough to wear a set of her beloved heels, or if she sat too long. Or stood too long. Or forgot to stretch daily. Or moved wrong.

In other words, lived.

It was just a way of life for her now. One she kept mostly to herself about. There wasn’t anything anyone could do about it and she also hated when people felt sorry for her. She had a very serious thing about that. Her first boyfriend had freaked out when she twisted her leg on his stairs and then couldn’t walk for a week. They’d gotten past that only to have him freak out again their first time in bed, when he’d seen her surgical scars. And he hadn’t even known that there were more surgeries in her future, which weren’t guaranteed to help what was now a degenerative condition and would likely continue to worsen.

Her second boyfriend had bailed even faster.

It’d left her leery of revealing too much of herself, naked or otherwise. The funny thing was, in spite of everything, she still felt whole. Or mostly, anyway. But while she was okay with her body just how it was, she couldn’t expect anyone else to be. “It’s residual nerve damage from an old injury when I was fourteen.”