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his fist on the wheel. Fuck them all.
    He’d just keep driving. He’d head south and he wouldn’t stop until he was damn good and ready. He had plenty of money, what he didn’t have was any fucking peace.
    He wouldn’t stop until he could breathe again, until he found a goddamn liquor store that was open on a goddamn Sunday.
    He glanced down, stared at the fist that was ramming over and over into the steering wheel. The fist that was bloody and torn and seemed to belong to someone else. Someone that scared the hell out of him.
    Oh God, oh God. He was in trouble. With his hands trembling, he jerked the car to the curb, and leaving the engine running, rested his head on the wheel and prayed for help.
    The quick knuckle rap on the window had him jolting up and staring through the glass at Annie’s face. Head cocked, she made a circling motion with her finger, telling him to roll down the window. It wasn’t until he saw her that he realized he’d headed for her house.
    “What are you doing, Andrew?”
    “Just sitting here.”
    She shifted the small bag she carried and studied his face. It was a mess, she noted, bruised, sick in color, worn out. “You piss somebody off?”
    “My sister.”
    Her eyebrows rose high. “Miranda punched you in the eye?”
    “What? No. No.” Embarrassed, he probed around the ache with his fingertips. “I slipped on the stairs.”
    “Really?” Her eyes were narrowed now, focused on the fresh cuts and seeping blood on his knuckles. “Did you punch the stairs?”
    “I . . .” He held up his hand, his mouth going dry as he stared at it. He hadn’t even felt the pain. What was a man capable of when he stopped feeling pain? “Can I come in? I haven’t been drinking,” he said quickly, when he saw the rejection in her eyes. “I want to, but I haven’t been.”
    “You won’t get a drink in my place.”
    “I know.” He kept his gaze steady. “That’s why I want to come up.”
    She studied him another moment, then nodded. “Okay.”
    She unlocked her door and walked in to set her bag on a table covered with papers and forms and files, some of which were anchored with an adding machine.
    “I’m doing my taxes,” she explained. “That’s why I went out to get this.” She took an economy-sized bottle of extra-strength Excedrin out of the bag. “You got a Schedule C, you got a headache.”
    “I’ve already got the headache.”
    “Figured. Let’s do some drugs.” With a half-smile, she turned to pour two glasses of water. She opened the bottle and shook out two tablets for each of them. Solemnly, they swallowed.
    She moved back, took a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer. “Put that on your hand for now. We’ll clean it up in a bit.”
    “Thanks.” He might not have felt the pain when he’d pounded the steering wheel, but he was feeling it now. From wrist to fingertip his hand was one obscene scream. But he bit back the wince as he laid the cold bag over it. He’d done enough to damage both ego and manhood in front of Annie McLean.
    “Now, what did you do to piss off your sister?”
    He very nearly lied, made up some idiotic sibling spat. Ego and manhood aside, he couldn’t manage to lie to those quiet, assessing eyes. “It might have been getting stinking drunk and humiliating her in front of her new boyfriend.”
    “Miranda’s got a guy?”
    “Yeah, sort of sudden. Nice enough. I entertained him by falling down the stairs, then throwing up part of my stomach lining.”
    Sympathy fluttered in her stomach, but she only cocked her head. “You’ve been a busy boy, Andrew.”
    “Oh yeah.” He tossed the bag of peas into the sink so he could pace. He had jitters tangled around his jitters. Couldn’t keep still. His fingers patted at his thighs, at his face, at each other as he prowled. “Then this morning, I decided to round things out by jumping all over her about work, family problems, her sex life.” He traced his fingers over his cheek, remembering the jolt of shock when she’d slapped him.
    Because she caught herself taking a step toward him, Annie turned and rooted out antiseptic from a cabinet behind her. “It was probably the sex life crack that did it. Women don’t like their brothers poking into that area.”
    “Yeah, maybe you’re right. But we’ve got a lot of trouble at the Institute. I’m under a lot of stress right now.”
    She pursed her lips, glanced down at the piles of papers and forms, the envelopes of receipts, the