If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

room.”
    “No.” Lena eased her hand from his and stepped forward, the collapsible cane in her hand going from side to side as she moved forward. When she reached the bed, she patted it with her hand, moving forward until she was at Roz’s side. Then she sat down. “Hey, sweetie.”
    From his position in the doorway, Ezra could see Roz close her eyes.
    Lena laid a hand on her arm and started to stroke. “I’m here. You know that.” She patted along the bed until she found Roz’s hand, then she squeezed it. “I’m right here.”
    And quietly, Roz started to sob. Lena curled her body around Roz, hugging her close. “There you go, sweetie. You go ahead and cry.”
    “Don’t you look sexy.”
    Law, groggy from the pain meds, punchy from exhaustion, forced his lids to open, forced his eyes to focus. Nia stood in the doorway.
    A wry smile twisted his lips. “I look like shit,” he muttered. “You, on the other hand … you still look like an Amazon.”
    “An Amazon?” She snorted. “Whatever.”
    His lids drifted down, but he forced them open again. He didn’t know how much longer he could stay awake, though. The drugs were too damn strong to fight. “Yeah. That was what I thought the first time I saw you. You were an Amazon. Strong. Sexy. Beautiful.”
    She came inside, limping a little. He saw the brace on her foot and fury, so useless, so fiery hot, burned inside. “Your leg?”
    “It’s my ankle,” she said, shrugging. “Twisted it when I fell. All in all, I got off pretty light, seeing as how he came there solely to kill me.”
    “Fuck, don’t say that right before I pass out,” he muttered. “Don’t need more nightmares.”
    “Sorry.” She winced and put her hand in his.
    He squeezed lightly. “You should be. Now you have to stay while I sleep. Keep the nightmares away. Will you?”
    “Sure.” A hand stroked his brow. “You sleep, Reilly. I’ll keep the nightmares away.”
*   *   *
    Nia stroked his hair back from his brow, watched him as he drifted off to sleep. Yeah. She could stay while he slept. She owed him a few hours at least. Actually, she probably owed all of them her life, and not just for saving it a few hours ago.
    But now maybe she could move
on
with her life. Once she let herself grieve for Joely, maybe she could actually have a life. Something she hadn’t let herself think about in far too long. Getting back to her life.
    Yeah.
    She thought about leaving Ash, Kentucky, leaving behind the ugliness of the past day, the awful memories and the knowledge of what had happened to Joely here. She could do it now.
    And although it hurt to think about, she thought about leaving Law.
    She’d left her life back in Virginia, after all, right?
    Silent, she stayed with him, watching him through the night.
    As dawn broke, she made a decision.
    She’d done what she came for.
    It was time to go.
    Law woke to pain, brutal and ugly, and the cold hands of a nurse as she wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm. Groggy, he muttered, “What the—”
    “Good morning, Mr. Reilly,” she said, her voice cool and flat. “Just checking your blood pressure and your temperature and I’ll be out of your hair.”
    “Wow, nice bedside manner you’ve got there,” Nia said from across the bed.
    Forgetting about the nurse, he turned his head, stared at Nia. “You stayed.”
    She gave him a vague smile. “You asked me to.” Then she looked at the nurse. “You come in here at six in themorning without bothering to knock. I’m pretty sure that violates hospital protocol, by the way. You don’t bother with an introduction, you jerk the blankets off an injured patient and start messing with him, without any regard to the fact that you’d just woken him up. You didn’t give your name, you didn’t knock, you didn’t bother to draw the curtain for privacy
or
shut the door.”
    “Nia—”
    The nurse sniffed. “I knocked. Neither of you were awake.”
    “Nice try.” Nia bared her teeth. “I’ve been awake for the past three hours, ever since you came in to check his IV. You might have knocked then. You didn’t knock this time.” She peered at the nurse’s name tag and then smirked. “Now why am I not surprised to see your last name is Jennings?”
    The older woman clenched her jaw. She started to jerk the blood pressure cuff off Law’s arm, but Nia’s narrowed eyes must have spoken volumes. With exaggerated care, the nurse removed it. “Naturally, I always