He left Bubba looking forlorn but resigned and started back up the slope to the hospital. He was feeling a mite put-upon, if the truth were told. And to make matters worse, feeling guilty for that. He hadn’t been raised to keep score when it came to helping people out, but on the other hand, he didn’t much care for being treated like a handy crutch, either, something without either thoughts or feelings that could be easily ignored when it wasn’t needed.

But as soon as he spotted Charly pacing up and down on the walkway in front of the emergency entrance, he felt a familiar hitch in his breathing and a knot of desire forming in his belly. And he thought that actually, having to haul a dog around with him for a few days wasn’t that big an inconvenience.

She’d taken off the suit jacket. The silky black thing she’d been wearing under it-which, if you asked him, looked too much like a slip to be called a blouse-left most of her chest and shoulders and every inch of her arms bare. Except for the dusky place where the seat belt had bruised her, her skin looked flawless. And unfashionably pale, especially in contrast with her hair, which was coming loose from the slicked-back hairdo to slash across her neck and cheekbones like black-ink commas. It surprised him some that he found that so attractive, considering he’d been raised in a sun-belt culture where anybody without a tan was considered to be either too poor to afford one, or sickly. He thought maybe it was Mirabella who’d started him thinking otherwise, with her redhead’s coloring and skin you could almost see through. Funny, he thought, how a person’s tastes and opinions could change almost overnight.

She’d managed to find herself another cigarette. She glared at him as he approached, daring him to say something about the fact that she was smoking. She looked wired and tense, like a caged cat, he thought, with her ears laid back and her tail twitching, just waiting for someone to lash out at.

Not wanting to disappoint her, he folded his arms across his chest and tsk-tsked in mild reproach. “How in the world did you manage to find one of those things here? This is a hospital.”

She tipped back her head and blew smoke with an audible hiss, then quipped sardonically, “Ah have had to depend on the kindness of strangers.” And immediately she took another drag, her narrowed eyes a warning.

So he just shook his head and moved up beside her, resisting a strong desire to put a comforting arm around her shoulders. He wanted to touch that silky skin so badly he knew he’d better not. Instead he asked casually, “Had any news?”

She threw down what was left of the cigarette and stepped on it. “Still nothing.”

He suddenly realized that she was trembling. He could feel it, even though they weren’t touching, could almost hear it, like the humming of high-voltage power lines. His jaws clenched. He let out a breath and said softly, “Waiting’s tough.” But the same vibration had begun deep down inside him, as if it were a contagion he’d caught from her.

He wondered how much more of this he was going to be able to take. He was a patient man, but right now he wanted to grab her and shake her, slap her, scream at her, anything to bust loose whatever it was she was insisting on keeping bottled up inside. He’d never seen anybody wound so tight.

He was trying his best to be reasonable. All right, so her father had just had a heart attack. So they obviously had some unresolved issues, which he could see might make it that much harder. So she had plenty of reasons to be upset, and maybe he was being selfish to expect her to share her personal problems with him, a stranger. But last night she hadn’t treated him like a stranger. And she’d had reasons enough then to be upset, surely-lady gets off a plane from L.A., drives to Alabama, loses her purse, crashes her car, gets arrested and thrown in jail-who wouldn’t be at the end of her rope? And she’d turned to him for comfort the only way she’d known how, instinct driving her to seek the nearest warm body. Even now, in the cold light of day, it was something he understood.

But he’d had the feeling then that there was more to it than the obvious stuff, the accident and getting arrested and all. That there were things going on with her she wasn’t letting him in on. He felt that more than ever now. This wasn’t about her father having a heart attack. This was about whatever it was that had happened all those years ago to drive a young girl out of this town and away from her home and family, something she was ashamed of to this day. Something it still gave her nightmares and chills to think about.

Dammit, why couldn’t she see that he was there to help? And he didn’t mean just driving her around and picking up her meal tab. He understood things like nightmares and cold sweats all too well. Why wouldn’t she trust him?

And why did it bother him so much that she didn’t?

“Hey,” he said, disappointment filling his throat like gravel, “how ‘bout gettin’ something to eat?”

“I’m not hungry,” she muttered, shaking her head, behaving, in his opinion, like an obstinate child.

“You sure?” he asked, cajoling her like one. “It’s been a long time since breakfast.”

She aimed a frown past him, edgy and restless. “No. You go ahead.”

The need to touch her was a greater hunger than the one gnawing at his belly. To contain it, he tucked his hands against his ribs and clamped down hard on them with his biceps. “Hey,” he said, forcing a lightness he was a long way from feeling, “you need to eat. Trust me-I know.”

Her eyes flicked at him, full of controlled fury. “What are you, my mother?”

Patience, he thought. And he found that, in spite of all his efforts, his hand had found its way to her elbow. Her skin felt like cream on his fingers. “Come on, I’m buyin’.”

“Damn right you are,” she snapped, “since in case you hadn’t noticed, I still haven’t got a purse.”

“Don’t worry, I’m runnin’ a tab. Hospital’s got a cafeteria, I noticed. That okay with you?”

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “God, no. Look, if you’re going to make me eat, it’s going to have to be worth it. A burger and fries, or no deal.”

He shook his head and muttered about her father lying in ICU with a coronary and her stuffing herself with french fries, but the truth was, the idea sounded damn good to him, too. “Okay,” he said, “it’s a deal. Do you need to tell anybody where you’re going? What was her name, your dad’s housekeeper-?”

“Dobrina.” She gave her head a quick, hard shake that was almost like a shudder. “No. Let’s just go.”

He dug in his pocket for his keys, and they started down the hill, Troy automatically shortening his stride to accommodate those high-heeled shoes she was wearing. Though she seemed to get around in the infernal things pretty well, he had to admit. Which probably had to do with her being a big-city lawyer, he reminded himself, and on her feet in shoes like that all day. For some reason it was hard to think of her that way, even dressed for it like she was now. His mind kept wanting to put her back in his boxers, or better yet, in nothing but those spangly drops of water, fresh from the shower…

Bubba was bouncing around at the end of his leash like a paddle ball, tickled to death to see them back so soon.

“How come he’s not howling?” Charly asked, giving the dog a wide berth and a wary look.

“I don’t know,” said Troy, “I think maybe he’s gettin’ used to it.”

He had to leave poor old Bubba squirming and whining, though, scared he was going to get left again, while he went to start up the car and get the air-conditioning going. And the next thing he knew, there was Charly untying the dog’s leash herself, and bringing him around to the back of the Cherokee. And cussing up a storm while she was doing it, too, trying her best, in her elegant suit and high-heeled shoes, to keep from being trampled on by a great big clumsy and overly enthusiastic pup. It was a sight guaranteed to melt the heart of any red-blooded Southern man.

The look on her face was a clear warning to him not to give voice to what he was feeling just then, so he hid his grin and limited himself to a brisk “Where to?” as he climbed in behind the wheel. “Your friend Kelly’s okay?”

She gave another one of those funny little shudders. “God, no, anyplace but there.”

He threw her a look of curiosity. “Why not? She doesn’t serve hamburgers?”

“Oh, I’m sure she does.” She put her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, laughing softly. And the warm feeling inside him congealed. Once again he felt shut out, excluded, barred.

After a moment she sat up and began pulling pins out of her hair, combing through it with her fingers. She gave it a final shake that seemed to magically put all the pieces back in their original places and dropped the pins into the console cup holder.

“It’s just that I’d rather not run into anybody I know right now,” she said tightly, “if you don’t mind.” She let out a breath and looked away, out the window. “Hell, when this news gets out-about the judge’s heart attack-I imagine the people in this town are gonna be lookin’ to lynch me.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You think I’m kidding.” She gave him a brief, hard look, then turned away again. “They will blame me. Trust me, I know.”

“Come on, how could they? You just got here.”

She gave her patented snort of laughter. “Oh, please. Judge’s wayward, runaway daughter shows up in town, judge has a coronary-who are they gonna blame? Besides-” she snatched a breath and finished sardonically “-it wouldn’t be the first time I killed off one of this town’s leading citizens.”

He waited a minute to be sure he’d heard her right. Then he whooshed out air in a startled laugh. “Whoa, I think you’re gonna have to explain that one.”