The Trouble with Temptation Read online

  He couldn’t even finish it.

  He couldn’t say the fear that had taken root inside him when he’d seen her in the car, all that golden hair spilled around her, her face so still. And the blood …

  All of his fears, all of them, had happened in one day.

  Neve.

  Moira.

  Hannah.

  Raggedly, he said it again, “You have to let me see her.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Seven days had passed.

  Seven days.

  Brannon almost had the art of telling time down to a science, all by the annoying little beep beep beep that came from the monitor in Hannah’s room.

  He had all but moved into this hospital room.

  Hannah lay still on the bed. Her hair gleamed—he’d spent twenty minutes brushing it that morning, and before he left, he’d do it again.

  Unwittingly, he reached out and laid a hand on her belly.

  She was …

  Clearing his throat, he withdrew his hand. Gideon had been the one to deliver that news, his voice calm and efficient. He’d also been the one to catch Brannon’s arm when he staggered under the news, and he’d been the one to force him to sit and listen.

  Hannah was pregnant. But did it even matter?

  The doctors had all been pretty clear.

  They’d been optimistic the first day, even the second.

  But the more time that passed, the less likely it was that she’d wake up. The swelling on the brain that had caused the coma was gone, but she still wasn’t waking up. It wasn’t good.

  Did the baby growing inside her have a chance?

  “Brannon.”

  He lifted his head, but didn’t bother to look at the doorway.

  Neve came in and sat down next to him.

  “Why don’t you go get something to eat?” she said softly.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “But you need to eat.” She leaned over and nudged her shoulder against his. “You’re not going to help her any if you fall over the minute she wakes up. You’ve already lost weight.”

  He started to argue, but decided it would be easier to grab a sandwich and bring it up here.

  Neve was turning out to be like their mother—unmovable once she set her course. “Okay. I’ll be back soon.”

  A smile flitted across her face. “Wouldn’t expect it any other way.”

  He leaned over the bed and pressed a kiss to Hannah’s brow. “Wake up.” He held still there a moment. “Come back to me.”

  In his head, he relived those last few moments on her houseboat.

  I’m not looking for any sort of relationship. Sex is all well and good, but I don’t want anything else … I get the feeling casual sex isn’t really your speed.

  She just gazed at him. Calm, steady. I’ve been in love with you since high school.

  It had floored him, scared him, scarred him … or so he’d thought. What he hadn’t realized until it was too late was that her love, something she would have so easily given, could have very well saved him.

  What had he done? Thrown it away. Walked away.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I was so fucking wrong. Hannah, for fuck’s sake. Come back to me.”

  It was all he could say at that moment. There were a thousand other things he needed to say, but he couldn’t voice even the first word until she was able to open her eyes and look at him.

  He tugged on Neve’s hair and then headed out, blinking at the overly bright lights in the hallway. He’d kept the lights off for Hannah—when she woke up, they’d seem too bright. But that meant everything was too bright for him.

  Wake up, Hannah. Come back to me. I’m sorry.…

  * * *

  Wake up.

  Come back to me.

  Those words were the only thing that felt real.

  Other people would talk, but nobody seemed to talk to her.

  Wake up.

  Come back to me.

  She was almost there.

  Groaning in frustration—or trying to—she listened for him again.

  But his voice was gone.

  Wake up … wake up.…

  * * *

  “Visiting hours are over, Mr. McKay.”

  He didn’t look up from the book he was reading.

  It was a romance Hannah had been reading—he’d gotten it from her apartment and it had been on her nightstand, so he figured she must be enjoying it. He felt stupid as hell reading it out loud to her, but Brannon had done some serious cramming on coma victims and the general consensus was that it didn’t hurt to read to a person in a coma. He took that to mean it helped. And if it helped, he’d read every damned book he could find.

  If he’d found War and Peace in her room, he would have read that boring tome—and he’d lost a bet in college over that damn book. Somebody had said he’d never be able to finish it and he’d put down five hundred saying he would. He’d coughed up the cash just to keep from having to finish it. But if he’d found that book in her place, he would have read it, and happily.

  “Mr. McKay.” The nurse’s voice was louder now, and firmer.

  He put in the piece of paper he was using for the bookmark and looked up.

  “As much as we’re enjoying the escapades of that young couple out here at the nurse’s station, it’s time for you to go home.” She arched her eyebrows. “And…” She glanced at the uniformed cop standing just outside the door. “I’m sorry to say this, but I think you’re embarrassing Officer Billings.”

  “Officer Billings has two grown kids,” Brannon said sourly. “He has to know what sex is.”

  The nurse, Ginny, just laughed. “I’m sure he does. He’s just never had to listen to a boy like yourself read about it.” Her voice softened and she came in. “Come on, Bran. Go home. Rest. Be back bright and early … and shock the day shift with your reading material, if you must.”

  After a minute, he just nodded. “Fine.”

  Then, as Ginny gave him a minute, he bent over Hannah’s quiet form.

  “Wake up, Hannah. Please come back to me. I’m sorry…”

  * * *

  Wake up.

  Come back.

  I’m sorry …

  She wanted to shout at him. Don’t! Don’t be sorry! Be here!

  He was leaving.

  He had to be. He only said the words when he was leaving and once he was gone …

  Frustration flooded her, filled her until she wanted to shout with fury. The faint light that seemed to edge in was suddenly gone. No!

  * * *

  “Huh.”

  Ginny Rollings pursed her lips and pushed her glasses up her nose as she leaned in to study the monitor. The readings had changed.

  “Everything okay in here?”

  She looked over her shoulder to smile at Officer Billings. With the dim light it was hard to stay if his color had gone back to normal, but if it had, she’d be sure to take a moment to tease him. Just to get him going again.

  She enjoyed seeing the man flustered. It was always fun to let his wife know how easy it was to get that big, gruff man of hers to blush.

  “Oh, fine,” she said, looking down at her patient.

  “Well…” She bent closer. I’ll be damned.

  A faint line marred Hannah Parker’s brow and as Ginny watched, her mouth parted.

  She reached for the call light, but then stopped. Every single day, Chief Marshall had been in to speak with the nurses who’d been assigned to care for Hannah—there were a set four who’d been given the task. His orders had been specific.

  Perhaps the man was being overly cautious, but then again, perhaps not.

  “Officer Billings,” she said quietly.

  When he looked back at her, she gestured to him. “Would you step in here please?”

  * * *

  Brannon was tired.

  He was sore.

  His head hurt and he figured he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since … well, hell. The night
he’d been with Hannah. He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get another decent night’s sleep for a good long time. Maybe never.

  He was existing on caffeine and donuts and anything he could get from the vending machine at the hospital, and that stuff was pure crap, as evidenced by the fact that his jeans were too damn loose. It was only a week and he had already lost weight.

  Since his place was farther out, he’d been crashing at McKay’s Ferry, the sprawling estate where he’d lived for the first eighteen years of his life. In many ways, Ferry was still home.

  Try as he might, he hadn’t been able to slip past Ella Sue, the woman who had taken over the job of raising him and his sisters after his parents’ unexpected death twenty years earlier.

  Brannon didn’t know why he’d even tried. There was no slipping past Ella Sue.

  If Santa Claus had been real, he would have been like Ella Sue—she saw when a person was sleeping, awake, in the damn bathroom taking a piss, and everything else.

  He’d no sooner taken a step out of his bedroom than he heard her smooth, rich voice drifting up the stairs. “Brannon, honey … is that you, boy? Get on down here and have some breakfast with me before you disappear.”

  And there was no such thing as telling the woman you weren’t hungry. You might as well try to tell her there was no sun in the sky, or no stars at night.

  So he’d eaten.

  She hadn’t even had the decency to fry him up something fattening that would have turned his stomach.

  No, she’d had oatmeal, creamy scrambled eggs, and toast and if he could have just had a little bit of sleep, he might have felt like a new man. Not that he deserved to feel like any kind of man.

  Mentally kicking his own ass was getting old, but Brannon had no problem falling into a rut if that was where he felt like he belonged, and he was pretty sure he belonged in this one. As he made the drive to the hospital, he dug the rut a little deeper and worried himself sick all over again.

  When are you going to wake up, baby?

  What happened out there? What did you see?

  Come back to me.…

  Hannah had gotten hurt only hours after he’d left her at her houseboat.

  He had hurt her—not physically, never that. But emotionally, yeah. He’d put scars on her soul. He knew that well enough.

  And she was pregnant with his baby.

  Right now, it was a closely guarded secret, one known only by him, her cousin, and a few needed medical personnel. Oh, and of course, Gideon. The cop who’d taken the time to interrogate Brannon.

  She was pregnant.

  Guilt choked him.

  He’d hurt her. Then, during the hours when he’d left her and when Joe had stumbled toward him, something awful had happened. Had she seen something? Was she running? Had somebody tried to hurt her? Joe?

  Hell, the guy was a stupid piece of shit, but he was more of a nuisance than anything else. Could he have hurt … But Brannon pushed the idea out of his head. It didn’t make sense. None at all.

  Nothing made sense. He didn’t know what to think about any of this.

  The one thing he did know was that Hannah lay helpless in a coma, his baby inside her.

  The elevator dinged and he stepped out, caught up in the familiar misery for a moment. So caught up, it took a moment for the low hum of voices to penetrate.

  Coming to a stop, he looked up.

  The voices came to an abrupt halt at about the same time he did.

  He looked from the nurses gathered around the station to the two cops standing vigil outside Hannah’s door.

  Something that might have been hope tried to grow, but he locked it down tight.

  Ginny, a familiar face at the hospital, was still here. She’d been working here as a nurse back when he’d had his appendix out. He couldn’t think of another nurse he’d rather have taking care of Hannah. He caught her eye and arched a brow. “You’re usually long gone by now, Miss Ginny.”

  “It was a busy night.” The smile on her face made that hope he’d hidden expand.

  He didn’t remember crossing the rest of the hall, didn’t remember rushing into the room, but he must have because he was suddenly being shoved back by an irate nurse. “Do you mind, Mr. McKay!” She smacked a hand against his chest as she shoved him back, and he was so stunned, he let her.

  Dazed, he wobbled and he would have collapsed if it hadn’t been for the solid, sturdy form of Officer Billings. A hand that was almost the size of a dinner plate patted him on the shoulder. “Let them finish up in there, Brannon,” Billings said, giving him a steadying smile. “Then you can go in and … uh … maybe finish up that book.”

  Brannon found himself looking down at the book he clutched in his hands.

  “Yeah. Um.” He nodded. “Yeah.”

  She was awake.

  Hannah had been half-sitting, half-lying on the bed, her gown hanging off one shoulder as the doctor listened to her back. Her hair hung in a tangle around her face. And she had stared blankly ahead toward the door, her eyes open and fogged.

  Awake.

  Hannah was awake.

  * * *

  She was awake.

  That fact had been pointed out to her in grand detail several times in the past few minutes.

  If she heard one more comment along the lines of … Welcome back to the land of the living! or Decided you’d had enough rest, Sleeping Beauty? she thought she just might scream.

  As the doctor shone the bright light in her eyes once more, she winced and tried to push it away.

  “I know it’s not pleasant,” he said, an understanding smile on his face.

  Then quit doing it! She managed not to say it, but the words leaped to the tip of her tongue and it was a struggle to bite them back.

  “Think you can sit up for a few minutes?”

  Instead of telling him she didn’t want to, she sighed and wrapped her hand around the bed railing. She already knew she was ridiculously weak. Things had been explained to her and she was trying to wrap her head around everything. She’d been in a wreck. She’d hit her head. She’d been in a comatose state for seven days and sometime during the night, she’d started showing signs of reviving. She’d been awake for … how long? She didn’t know.

  She wanted to get up.

  She wanted to walk.

  She wanted something more than the ice chips they’d given her, but anytime she asked for water, they said they needed to finish their assessment first. If she heard that A word one more time, she had an A word for them … as in kiss my A-S-S.

  She sat up—or tried—and her body protested the movement. The nurse, a kind, older woman came to help steady her until she had her balance. Once she was mostly upright, the doctor studied her for a moment and then nodded, pleased. “Your motor skills are coming along nicely, almost like you napped for the week.”

  “It feels like longer,” she rasped.

  “You’ll get your strength back.”

  She wanted to ask if everything else would come back. But she was afraid.

  “Let’s finish up here so you can—”

  “Hey!”

  She lifted her head up at the sharp sound of the nurse’s voice. Her heart started to pound at the sight of the man in the door. Tall and broad, his face brushed with stubble and a mouth that fell slightly open at the sight of her. That was fine, because she also seemed to have trouble closing hers just then.

  He was … wow.

  He had a powerful face, framed by vivid red hair. That hair was disheveled, making her wonder if he knew what the idea of a comb was. But even as she thought it, she had the image of him driving a big, long-fingered hand through that hair.

  Green eyes. Such brilliant green eyes. He stared at her and she felt the punch of his gaze, like he’d reached out and touched her. Images swam through her head.

  Then the nurse was standing between them.

  “Do you mind, Mr. McKay!” she snapped, shoving him back out into the hall and slamming the door.
“That boy, I swear. Ms. Parker, I’m so sorry.”

  “Brannon,” she said softly.

  The doctor’s head whipped up to hers and the stethoscope he’d had on her back fell away. “You remember him?”

  Hannah swayed on the edge of the bed and the doctor had to steady her.

  “His name.” She laughed weakly. “I don’t remember mine, but I remember his. Can you explain that to me?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The fine, outstanding officers of McKay’s Treasure Police Department thought there might be something besides the car that connected Hannah Parker’s accident and Shayla Hardee’s murder.

  It could have something to do with the fact that Hannah had been driving Shayla’s car. Shayla, now deceased.

  Never let it be said that the local law enforcement goons were complete idiots. Nobody came outright and said anything about the two incidents, but then again, it wasn’t necessary.

  He was no fool. Reading between the lines was rather easy, considering the fact that a day didn’t go by without a cop standing guard at Hannah’s door.

  Word of it ripped through the little town like wildfire and people talked about it with near-savage glee. The death of Shayla was almost offhand news compared to what people had to say about Hannah.

  Why do think they’ve got cops sitting with her?

  What do you think is going on?

  Speculation gave way to rumor, but there was little concrete information.

  It was odd, because more often than not, there was always something.

  But very little was being said about Hannah Parker and her odd accident.

  It was a problem—a big one. He couldn’t visit her without raising concerns. Rumor had it that the only people allowed in to visit her as she lay in the coma were those who’d been already screened and approved by the police, namely the McKay family.

  Brannon McKay, the bastard, had rarely left her side.

  It made a big problem even more complicated.

  Nothing had gone as it should lately.

  Of course, if things had gone as they should, he wouldn’t be here now, would he?

  Grimacing, he turned away from the river to stare up toward the town.