The Rogue (The Moorehouse Legacy #4)(50)

Oh…God, how she had to feel knowing what he’d done. The similarities with what had happened to her mother were no doubt nauseating, but the secret he’d kept made the situation untenable. He should never have been with her, never have made love to her.

And she was never going to let him explain. The omission cut her too deep and why wouldn’t it.

Spike fired up the Harley and tooled on out. As he headed back toward the Adirondacks, he was aware that he was cracking wide open on the inside. The fact that he had hurt her was…the worse part of the torture.

As soon as he got back home, he was going to call Sean and find out what the hell the guy had been thinking.

Although that was incidental. The true fault was Spike’s own. Completely.





Chapter Twelve




“God damn it!”

Six weeks later, Spike burned his wrist so badly he went momentarily blind. With a lurch he tossed the saucepan away and dimly heard it clatter across the industrial stove as he went right for the sink. Cranking on the cold water, he shoved his forearm under the spray and kept right on cursing. He was so loud that the sounds of the White Caps kitchen drowned only some of the words out.

Nate Walker looked over from the grill he was manning, flames roaring in front of him. “How bad is it?”

Spike took his wrist out from the water. “Ah, hell…it’s blistering up good.”

A third-degree burn. And all because he hadn’t been paying attention and had splashed hot oil on himself. Idiot. Stupid idiot.

But that was the way things had been going for the last month and a half. Ever since he’d come back to Saranac Lake on Memorial Day, he’d been a mess, all stuck in his head, making careless mistakes. Hell, he’d nearly sliced off his pinkie the day before.

With a grunt, Spike cut off his curses because he figured no one else needed the air show. Reaching for the burn cream they kept over the sink, he buttered up his wrist and wrapped the thing with gauze. Then he headed back over to the stove.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Nate barked. “You need to get that looked at now. Reynolds, take over for Spike on sauté. Frankie! I need hands on salad.”

Tom Reynolds, the line cook, turned away from the small plates of leaves he was working on and went for the stove. Meanwhile, Nate’s wife, Frankie, put down the napkins she was folding and went over to the salad station.

“Two filets for pickup!” Nate called out as he tossed another sirloin on the grill. A mighty hiss was released as the steak landed. “Moriarty, you hit the road right now.”

Spike shucked his white apron and headed for the door, feeling pretty damn replaceable. When he remembered he’d come on the Harley, he turned to ask Nate if he could borrow the guy’s truck. With the pain as it was now, operating that bike was more than he could handle.

His partner was already tossing the keys to his F-150 across the kitchen. “Doc John will see you as a walk-in. Just knock on the back door. And don’t bring my wheels back until tomorrow.”

When Spike went out to the truck, he was about as mean as a snake.

And as he took the Lake Road into town, his mood only got worse. There was a lot of summer traffic, but it was of the lovey-dovey pedestrian variety. Couples strolled at the side of the road, holding hands or walking arm-in-arm while they looked out at Saranac Lake. It was the same when he got to the town square. Couples. Always couples. Since when had the world become full of people in love and looking at each other with doe eyes?

It was enough to make a guy sick.

Doc John’s office was just off the town square and housed in the old Victorian ark the guy lived in. Spike went to the back door as ordered and Saranac Lake’s only physician got up from a meal with his family to take a look at the burn.

As they walked down the hall to the clinic, Doc John said, “So, I guess you did yourself a good one if you’re coming to see me. Usually you cook types wait until something is falling off before you’ll show up here.”

“It was a stupid mistake.”

“They usually are.”

The two of them went into one of the treatment rooms. With Doc John’s brawny build and beard, the guy looked more like a woodsman than a physician, but somehow, this just made Spike trust the man more.

While the doctor washed his hands and snapped on gloves, Spike hopped up onto the exam table.

Doc John came over and reached out to remove the gauze. “So how’s business at White Caps? I’ve heard busy.”

“Yup—Good God,” Spike hissed as the man started to unwrap the burn. Just the act of taking off the dressing was enough to make a guy put cracks in his molars.

“I’ll go slower,” Doc John said.

“No, just do your thing. I deserve it for being such a jerk around the stove.”

When the doctor got a gander at the wrist, he shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t put that salve all over the burn. It’s not what I want on there right now and I’m going to have to clean it off.”

“Do whatever, Doc.”

“I’ll be right back.”

A couple minutes later, Spike’s whole forearm was in some kind of solution and the two of them were staring at it, watching it soak.

“Doc, can I ask you something?”

The guy reached out and pushed Spike’s hand down so it, too, was covered by the liquid. “Anything.”