Minutes were precious, but she wasted no more than necessary as she changed her shoes. Her clothes she could bear, but the sand in her wet sneakers was rubbing her feet raw.
Anxiety for the man in her bed gave way to relief as she saw the new red pickup pulling off the road and into her driveway.
“It’s Justin. Thank God,” she muttered, and ran out the door to meet him.
“You won’t believe what I did last night,” she said, waving her arms above her head and talking with every step. “And I need to borrow your truck.”
“I came to see how you weathered the storm,” he said. “And I don’t mind if you borrow my truck, but what’s wrong with yours?”
Before she had time to answer, Toni saw the smile slide off of her brother’s face.
Justin looked over his baby sister’s shoulder to the porch beyond. He grabbed Toni by the arm and yanked her around to face him, his eyes blazing. “Antonette Hatfield, just what the hell did you do last night?”
His question coincided with the discovery of the handcuff that was still locked around her wrist. If she hadn’t been in such a panic, she might have considered getting nervous.
Toni groaned beneath her breath as her brother yanked her about. She didn’t have to ask what had sparked his fury, she could see for herself. Her “fish” was standing on the front porch, and except for the “brief” cotton briefs and the matching half of her handcuff, he was as bare as God had made him.
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” she said, and spun out of his hands. “Stay with him. For God’s sake, put that bandage back on his leg before he bleeds to death. My phone is out, so I'm going into Chaney for an ambulance.”
Toni grabbed the pickup keys from Justin’s hand and, moments later, was on her way to the neighboring town, leaving Justin to deal with the stranger she’d left behind.
Then anger slid out of Justin Hatfield as quickly as it had come, as he took a longer look at the big man on the porch. He saw beyond the obvious to the bruises and the horrible cuts that had started to weep a steady stream of red.
“Hey, buddy.” Justin caught Lane just before he staggered off the porch. “Let’s get you back inside. Then you can explain why you're naked as a jaybird in front of Antonette.”
Everything was confusion inside Lane’s head, but one thing had connected. Now he had a name to go with that muleheaded woman and her big dark eyes. Her name was Antonette.
“My head hurts,” he muttered, vaguely remembering being put to bed. He didn’t remember getting out of it, but when he found himself in the hallway of a strange house, trying to find a door, instinct had led him toward the sounds of voices. “I was a...I need to...to make a call.”
Justin grunted with effort as he tried to navigate the staggering man back through the doorway. “Come on, big fellow. As soon as I get you back in bed, you can call everyone in town.”
Lane shuddered as darkness began to envelop him. He never even felt the softness of the mattress at his back, or the gentle way in which Justin Hatfield replaced the bandages that he’d mindlessly removed. Blessedly, he was out for the count.
* * *
Toni sat in the hallway near the emergency room of Chaney Clinic and listened to the low rumble of voices beyond the curtains. She would give ten good acres of land to know what they were saying, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She was a woman. It didn’t matter that he was her piece of Chaney Creek flotsam, or that she’d fished him out of the flood with great danger to herself. All of a sudden, she didn’t belong.
“So, what else is new,” Toni muttered to herself. She’d spent her entire life knowing that she didn’t quite fit in.
Loose hair tickled the back of her neck, and she remembered that she had yet to brush it. Grooming would have to wait, but she could redo the clasp holding it away from her face. With that thought in mind, she lifted her hands toward the back of her neck, and in doing so, caught the dangling edge of the handcuff chain in her hair.
“Good grief.”
When she tried to free herself, she succeeded only in tangling it more. From the way that it felt, she would have to pull the spot bald to get herself loose.
“Damn,” she muttered, and wondered how long she could fake holding her head without looking ridiculous.
“Here now, Toni girl. Let me do that.”
Sheriff Dan Holley’s voice was familiar, but she hadn’t been expecting him. Then she remembered the stranger’s claim about being a lawman and wondered if he might have been telling the truth.
“Don’t fidget, girl, just be still, and I'll have you loose in a jiffy.”
Toni gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. It would seem that she was doomed to experience humiliation upon humiliation.
To her great relief, the sheriff easily freed the chain from her tangles, then unlocked the cuff that encircled her wrist.
“Thank you, Dan,” she said, and was equally grateful that he hadn’t bothered to ask her how she’d come to have it on there in the first place.
When the handcuff fell loose in her lap, the emotion that swamped her should have been relief, but that wasn’t what she felt as her last link to the man behind the curtain had been severed. It was loss.
“What are you doing here?” Toni asked.
“Got a fax this morning. You know, those things are a real wonder, and that’s a fact. You get hooked up to a phone just right, and you can get everything over them things, even pictures.”
Toni sighed. It took Dan Holley forever to get to the point.
“What does that have to do with why you're here?”
“Oh, that. Well, it seems a U.S. marshal’s plane went down somewhere over the Smokies.”
“What was it carrying?” Toni held her breath, waiting for the answer.
“Two marshals, three prisoners and two pilots.” Dan Holley slid a finger beneath his hat and scratched, then settled the hat back in place without mussing his hair. “Don’t suppose that fellow you brought in had any ID on him?”
Toni shook her head.
Dan Holley grinned. “Didn’t think so. Heard he didn’t have on much of anything when the ambulance got to your house.” He glanced down at the handcuff, then back up at her. He’d made his point.
Toni flushed and then glared. It was hell living in the same town in which you’d been born. Everyone knew everyone else’s business.
“He’s been hurt pretty bad,” she said, ignoring his teasing. “He has lots of bad cuts and bruises. Something could even be broken. It’s all he can do just to stand up.”
“Heard he’s big. Real big,” the sheriff said.
Toni rolled her eyes. “You aren’t telling me anything new. I didn’t think I would ever get him out of the water, let alone myself.”
Holley frowned. He picked up Toni’s hands and turned them palms up, then whistled slowly at the raw, chafed areas across the center.
“What do you mean you pulled him out of the water? What in blazes were you doing in there to begin with? Chaney Creek is still in flood stage.”
Toni shrugged. “I went in after him.”
Dan Holley’s mouth dropped. Before he had time to respond, the curtain parted and the attending physician in charge came out.
Toni caught a glimpse of bare leg, bare torso, a curve of stubborn chin, and then the curtain fell back in place. She shuddered. There had been an awful lot of gauze and bandage on what little of him that she’d seen.
“How’s he doing, Doc?” Holley asked.
Dr. Bennett saw the handcuff lying in Toni’s lap. “If you don’t mind, Sheriff, I would appreciate your removing the other half of that thing from my patient.”
The sheriff slipped through the curtain with the key in hand. Because of his occupation, he’d often used his voice authoritatively. It carried well. Toni listened intently, hoping to finally hear something important regarding her stranger’s condition, but she heard nothing beyond a soft chuckle and the sound of metal falling onto tiled floor.
Moments later, Dan Holley came out and dropped the other half into her lap. He grinned. “Want a souvenir?”
“I want some answers,” Toni grumbled. “Was he able to tell you his name?”
“He didn’t have to,” Holley said. “Along with that fax, we got pictures of all who were aboard. There were two men of nearly equal size on that plane. One was Emmit Rice, a criminal bound for the federal correctional facility in Lexington, Kentucky. The other was U.S. Marshal Lane Monday. You got lucky, girl.”
Toni felt herself going limp. “Are you saying he’s the marshal?”
Dan Holley nodded. “Got himself quite a reputation as a hard-nose, too. But I guess that’s what it takes to get his kind of job done.”
“Oh, my.” It was all Toni could think to say. But her thoughts were another thing altogether. His name is Lane. Lane Monday.
Then the curtain parted, and Toni stood. The air stilled around her. Voices and people faded until she forgot that they were there. She forgot everything, and everyone, except the man lying on the bed. His eyes were closed, his face in repose. She started toward him, and when she did, his eyes popped open as if he sensed the approach of someone new, and Toni found herself staring down into pain-filled eyes that were so blue they looked translucent.
“How are you feeling?”
Lane started to nod, and then reconsidered the movement when pain rocked the back of his neck. He licked his lips and decided that it would hurt less to talk.
“Better.”
Sheriff Holley gave Toni’s shoulder a companionable thump as Justin moved to the foot of the bed.
“You've got Toni to thank for pulling you out of that flood,” Dan said. “I still don’t know how it was accomplished. You're a big ol' boy, and that’s a plain fact.”
Justin’s laugh was short. “Shoot, nothing’s too big for Toni. She can take care of herself and anything else that comes along. She’s as strong as an ox.”
Lane blinked. She? He was getting confused. And when the woman he knew as Antonette paled and turned away, he knew that somehow the words had hurt her. Maybe this Tony fellow meant something to her.
Toni’s voice was a couple of octaves below shrill. “Thank you for reminding me, Justin. You really know how to make a woman feel special.”
Disgusted with herself for letting them know that the words had hurt, she hunched her shoulders against the humiliation she felt, and stalked away from the bed and out into the hallway while blinking back tears.
Why did her brothers see fit to remind her on at least a weekly basis that, as a woman, she was too tall, too strong and altogether too capable for a man to feel needed? She sighed, then leaned against the wall and contemplated her shoes. If that was what people who loved her really thought, then it was no wonder she was close to being an old maid. To a stranger, she must be just shy of a geek.
“What the hell did I say?” Justin asked as he watched Toni’s angry flight, and ran a hand through his hair.
Sheriff Holley shrugged. “You sort of belittled her part in saving this man’s life, that’s what you did,” Holley growled. “Damn it, Justin, she didn’t just throw some rope around him and haul him out of the water as if she were landing a damned fish. She told me that she went into the flood after him. Hell’s bells, you fool, your sister could have drowned trying to save this man.”
Justin paled, but it was nothing to the shot of adrenaline that raced through Lane’s system. Before the sheriff could think to move, Lane had him by the wrist.
“I thought you told me someone named Tony pulled me out of the water.”
The sheriff nodded. “I did. That’s Toni with an i, not a y.“ He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “Antonette Hatfield might be on her birth certificate, but she’s been Toni as long as I've known her.”
“My sweet Lord.” Lane couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Unaware of the sheet he was wadding in both hands, he stared out the doorway through which the woman had disappeared. “That little bitty thing pulled me out of a flood?”
Justin grinned. “Oh, Lord, you really did get a lump on your head. You've got to be seeing things to think Toni is little.”
Lane almost glared at the smirk on the man’s face. “Mister, I don’t remember your name, but I do remember who and what I am. I'm six inches over six feet tall. The last time I weighed myself, the scales only went up to two-fifty, and the needle went off the mark. You add that to deadweight and the force of a flood, and I don’t know how the hell she did it. From where I stand, when I'm standing, she doesn’t look that big to me.”
In the hallway, Toni gasped. She’d left the room, but she hadn’t gone so far as to be unable to hear what was being said. If she hadn’t overheard it with her own ears, she wouldn’t have believed it was true.
Lane Monday had stood up for her. He’d even chastised Justin for making fun of her size. No one had ever done that for her. Suddenly the experience became too much to bear. She hid her face in her hands and bolted for the ladies' room. There was no way on earth she wanted anyone to see her cry.
Minutes later, while drying her hands and face, she heard Justin’s voice outside the ladies' room door.
“Toni, Toni, are you in there?”
She yanked open the door and gave him what she hoped was a cool, disdainful stare, noting with some satisfaction that he seemed worried.
“What do you want?”
“I'm sorry, honey.”
Toni refused to relent. “For what?” she asked. “For thinking I’d spent a wild night in handcuffs with a naked man, or for calling me a moose in front of God and everyone, then laughing about it? Exactly which thing are you apologizing for?”
“Well, hell. I damn sure didn’t call you a moose.”
Toni rolled her eyes. “Your apologies stink, Justin. I hope you're better at telling your wife you're sorry than you are at telling me.”
Before he could answer, Toni stalked away, her head held high, her shoulders straight.
“Damn woman,” he muttered dryly.
Toni returned to the emergency room just as the doctor was issuing orders that Lane Monday didn’t seem to like.
“Look, Mr. Monday, I know, as you just reminded me, that nothing is broken and that your concussion is mild, but you have numerous stitches in several places. They have to be tended. And you strained ligaments in your knee. At this point, you cannot take care of yourself without help. You really should be admitted to a hospital, at least for a few days. I recommend the one in Knoxville. It’s closest and will give your leg time to heal.”
Lane’s chin jutted mutinously. “I lost a good friend in that crash, as well as two, maybe three, prisoners who’d been given over to our care. Until I know that Emmit Rice is dead, I won’t rest. I'm praying that the S.O.B. burned with the plane, or is floating facedown somewhere in a river, but we have no way of knowing that until the bodies at the crash site are identified. I'm not lying flat on my back while people do my job for me, and that’s a damned fact.”
“He can stay with me.”
It was hard to say who was most shocked, Toni for saying it, Justin for hearing it, or Lane for considering the offer.
“Now see here, Toni—”
“Shut up, Justin. You've already said enough to me and about me for one day. Look at him, for God’s sake. He’s flat on his back and in pain. And look at me! I'm the moose who can take care of herself, remember? Exactly when do you expect him to jump my bones, while he’s crawling from his bed to mine, bleeding all the way?”
Justin flushed.
Dan Holley reentered the room and walked unwittingly into the argument. “I just got off the phone with your superiors,” he told Lane. “They said to tell you they're real sorry about Bob Tell, and very glad that you're all right, and not to worry about anything except getting better. They're sending people to go over the crash site. They'll coordinate with the FAA, and we'll have this wrapped up in no time.”
“I may be missing a prisoner,” Lane warned. “He was the only one I didn’t see before I got out of the wreckage. Emmit Rice is dangerous. If you find him alive, don’t assume he'll go quietly. He'll die before he’s recaptured, and he'll take someone with him when he goes.”
Holley frowned. “His rap sheet is on my desk. I know the type.”
“You don’t know Emmit Rice. He doesn’t take hostages, and he leaves his victims in pieces.”
“Oh, my God.” Toni felt the room beginning to spin.
“Grab her,” Justin shouted. “She’s going to faint.”
The help came from an unexpected source. Lane rose onto his elbow and caught Toni as she staggered.
“Hey, lady, don’t go out on me now,” he said gently.
With the low rumble of his voice, the room settled, along with Toni’s stomach. His hand was warm, his grip firm. She stared first at it, then at him, then swallowed twice before she could speak.
“I don’t faint.”
He smiled, and Toni’s heart fell all the way to her toes.
“I imagine I knew that,” Lane said.
Toni took a deep breath. “Well, are you going to take me up on my offer, or do you want to recuperate here?”
“I think that if you're willing to take me and all this on, then I would rather be with you.” When he realized how that sounded, he felt obliged to add, “It would put me closer to the on-site investigation.”
Toni nodded. She’d known what he meant. At this point in her life, there was no way she would assume a man could possibly have a romantic interest in her. Besides, she reminded herself, she wasn’t looking for romance, not anymore. What she wanted was a family. It took a man to get a baby, and there was a lot of man on the bed.
She gave him a long look. Now that she knew he was a socially acceptable person and not the missing prisoner, he might be the answer to her prayers. That is, if he had no personal attachments....
Then she heard herself asking, “Do you want us to notify your wife, or significant other?”
Toni’s question was simple, and not entirely unexpected. Yet somehow, Lane sensed a desperation in the polite request. Answering her question hurt. Saying aloud a truth that he had spent five years trying to accept wasn’t easy. He lay back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. If he didn’t have to see their faces, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to say.
“I don’t have a wife. Not anymore. And there are no others, significant or otherwise.”
It took all she had not to smile. Her relief was so overwhelming that she missed the grimness around his mouth as he spoke.
“Well, then that’s that.” She gave the doctor a straightforward look. “You'll have to give me instructions for his care. What I can’t do, Justin can.”
Justin didn’t waver under her look. “Sure thing,” he said. “Always ready to help a good man out.”
With this act, Antonette Hatfield’s fate was set in motion.
* * *
By the morning of the next day, the Hatfield farm was crawling with police, FAA investigators, men with bloodhounds and several local hunters who were familiar with every nook and cranny of the Smoky Mountains surrounding Toni’s home.
She went about her chores as if there were no one there. But when she went inside her home, there was no way to ignore the man whose presence permeated every inch of space.
She came in the back door and winced as it slammed behind her, hoping that Lane hadn’t been asleep. If he had, he probably wasn’t now. The sound was still echoing through the house.
“Shoot,” she muttered as she went to the kitchen sink to wash her face and hands. “Only four months since Daddy died, and I've already lost all of my manners. Momma would have had my hide for slamming doors.”
The water ran swift and cool beneath her fingers as it sluiced her heated skin. For early May it was very hot and the day was so humid that her clothing had become stuck to her body in the first five minutes she’d been outside. Unaware of how revealing the damp clothes were against her skin, she washed, then dried her hands, while absently considering what she might fix Lane to eat.
The crutches thumped with every swing of his arms, but Lane’s socks-clad feet made no sound as he moved from the bedroom where he’d been resting, in search of Toni. She didn’t seem like a stranger, and he wondered if it was because of the life-and-death situation in which they’d become entwined. Then he knew that was a foolish thought, because he had little to no memory of anything except waking up in the wreckage and then crawling off the edge of a cliff. What he did remember vividly was waking up handcuffed to a mad-as-hell woman.
He still wondered how that had happened, and stifled a smile. Man alive, but his Toni could work up a snit faster than anyone he’d ever known. When he realized he’d just thought of her as his, he staggered into a wall and bumped everything that hurt.
“Oh, damn,” he groaned, and propped himself up with the crutches until the stars dancing beneath his eyelids stopped spinning.
Toni heard him coming up the hallway, followed by the groan and the curse. She was out of the kitchen before he could think to hide his pain.
“What do you think you're doing? You already broke my table and now you're aiming at my walls.” She slipped an arm beneath his shoulder and let him rest upon her instead of on the awkward crutch.
When Lane was able to talk, he looked down to speak, but got lost instead in the study of her face. Apart, not one of her features was particularly unique. But the accumulation of them upon her face, coupled with her statuesque body and fiery temperament, made her unforgettable.
Her eyes were so dark that he had to strain to discern the pupils from the irises. Her nose was not too long and not too short, a perfectly straight nose for a straightforward woman. But there were freckles scattered across the bridge that he suspected she would not like to be reminded of. Her eyebrows and lashes were dark, a perfect match to the thick, almost chocolate-colored hair, and her mouth was full, just shy of voluptuous. Just like her body. At that thought, he shuddered. There was quite a lot of woman in his arms.
“I'm sorry,” he said, unable to think of anything else to say.
“You know that you shouldn’t be up,” she reminded him.
“You've been up since daybreak,” he countered.
“That’s different. I wasn’t in a plane crash. I didn’t try to drown myself in Chaney Creek. I didn’t—”
Lane put a finger across her lips, shocking himself as much as her by his action. “Oh, but, lady, I think you did just that,” he said softly. “You saved my life, at great risk to your own, I might add. How do you think that makes me feel?”
Toni could only shake her head. She had no idea how he felt. But at that moment, she could have given lessons on lust. Everywhere she touched, she felt muscle. Everywhere she looked, she saw a brown, firm expanse of skin. And beyond the obvious attraction of so much man and so little time, Toni felt a sense of loss. She wished those clear blue eyes were darkening with passion for her, and not his own pain.
“I think you probably feel like hell,” Toni said.
“I think you're right,” Lane replied, then sighed.
“Do you want to lie back down?”
“No. In fact, hell, no,” Lane growled. “What were you about to do?”
“Fix us some lunch.”
“Can I watch? You can tell me what’s going on outside. It makes me crazy knowing that everyone is involved in my business except me.”
For a long moment, they stood arm in arm within the confines of the cool, dark hallway, assessing the possibilities that lay between them. But when it came down to fact, there was nothing between them. Not really. Two days ago, neither of them had known the other existed. Today, one of them had the other to thank for a life.
“Come with me,” Toni said. “You can sit in Daddy’s chair. He used to watch me work before he got so sick he couldn’t sit up anymore.”
As she helped him down the hall and into the kitchen, Lane silently absorbed the textures of her sadness, and wondered how long she’d been alone here on her farm.
Pillowed by the old recliner in the corner of the kitchen, he was forced to let her help him. It disgusted him greatly that he couldn’t even lift his own leg onto the extended footrest.
As she cradled his foot, the muscles in her bare arms corded, and for the first time he was forced to consider her strength. She wasn’t bulky like a man would be, but when she moved, the muscles rippled delicately beneath her skin like ribbons upon water. He liked how it made her look. He liked how she made him feel. If only they had met under different circumstances—when he was strong on two feet and not flat on his back—he might like to test the waters between them in other ways.
But he lived in Florida, and she was here in Tennessee. The city in which he lived was hectic, and his job was often a reflection of the uglier side of humanity. On the farm, her life was simple, almost sedate. Fate had thrown two people from two different worlds together. There was no way a relationship between them would ever work, and he had no will to even attempt one. He thought of Sharla, and the image of her petite features and short, flyaway blond hair came and went within his mind’s eye. He thought of his wife’s smile—and then of the pain that she had endured before she died.
Forget it all, he told himself. Toni has no place in my life.
With that thought firmly settled in his mind, Lane looked out the window at the circus of vehicles and people beyond the walls of her house.
“Is this making you nuts?” He meant the mess outside, but she’d taken it another way.
Toni turned. “What? Having you here? Of course not. I'm glad for the company.”
The moment she’d said it, she wished that she hadn’t. It made her sound pitiful, and she wasn’t a pitiful sort of person. She was resourceful. She should know; she’d been told so by her family all of her life.
“How long since your father died?”
Toni’s hand stilled on the potatoes that she’d been peeling. Her emotions were well in hand by the time she turned to answer.
“Just over four months. Sometimes it seems like only yesterday, other times...” She shrugged. “Other times it seems like I've been by myself forever.”
“I know there must be times when you're lonely, but don’t you ever feel afraid?”
The smile on her face was too wide, the glitter in her eyes too bright. “Of what? In case you haven’t noticed, I'm a very big girl. I can take care of myself.”
Lane frowned. This wasn’t the first time that he’d heard her put herself down. He sighed. Hell, from what he’d heard out of her brother Justin, her family had probably been doing it to her for years. She was simply echoing what she’d heard all of her life.
“You may be taller than some, but I don’t know where you get off thinking that makes you less of a woman, lady. From where I sit, it only makes you more.”
Toni’s eyes widened and her mouth went slack. A faint flush slid across her cheeks and up into her hairline. She could feel the heat of her blush under her skin, as surely as the man on the other side of the room who was already under it. Then she eyed his bandages and the gray pallor on his face and knew that he was way too hurt and sick for what she was thinking.
“It’s time for your medicine.”
The minute she said it, Toni knew how inane she must have sounded. He’d paid her a dazzling compliment, and all she wanted to do was knock him out with pain pills. She needed more than her head examined.
Lane grinned. “Doping me up won’t change a thing, Antonette.”
She glared. “If it will shut you up for a while, it’s worth it.” She ignored his smirk and turned with relief as Justin entered the kitchen with a bang.
“I just talked to Dan Holley,” he said.
“Who?” Lane asked, certain that the name was one he should remember, yet unable to think where he’d heard it.
“The sheriff,” Toni said. “He took the handcuff off of you in the hospital, remember?”
Lane nodded, then hid a grin when he saw Toni’s blush. He would give a lot to know exactly how that had occurred, and what exactly had happened afterward.
Justin frowned and got back to the story that he’d been about to tell. “Sheriff Holley says that old Sam Sumter left home again. I swear, that sorry excuse for a man leaves every time his wife has another baby. Their latest can’t be more than a month or two old. If he doesn’t like to feed them, why in hell do they keep having them?”
Toni frowned. It wasn’t right. People like Livvie Sumter had babies they didn’t want, and she wanted one she couldn’t have. The world was not a fair place.
“Where does he go?” Lane asked.
Toni shrugged. “Who knows? The pitiful thing is that he always comes back, and Livvie Sumter keeps having babies.”
Justin snorted. “Right. But while he’s gone, every farmer within ten miles of the Sumter place will come up short on anything that isn’t tied down.”
Lane frowned. “Why?”
“Because Samuel Sumter has eleven, maybe twelve, children and they're hungry,” Toni said. “Sometimes, they take something they can sell for money to buy food. Other times, they steal the food outright. About a year before Daddy died, we lost a cow. Never did find it. We figured that the Sumter boys took it for the milk. I didn’t have the heart to send Dan Holley out to check.”
Outside, a car horn honked as a man shouted. Justin frowned. “I haven’t seen such a mess outside since the day of Momma’s funeral,” he grumbled.
Toni sniffed, then turned back to her potatoes. “It’s not on your front porch, so I don’t see why you're squawking.”
Justin glared. “Even if you hated it, you wouldn’t tell me so because then you wouldn’t be able to argue about it.”
Lane grinned. Although brother and sister seemed in constant disagreement, it was obvious that they were close. It was especially obvious to Lane when Justin gave him a long, assessing look.
“So, feeling any better?” he asked. “I see you're able to get about.”
“A couple of other marshals will be spending the night here for a while, Justin,” Toni stated. “They've already been here with their luggage, so you can wipe that look off of your face. God forbid that I might spend the night alone with a man.”
“Well, hell, Toni, I don’t remember hearing myself say anything about where you spend your nights, or who with.”
She turned away from the conversation and dumped the potatoes into the sink, then washed and cut them up before dropping them into a pan to boil. While both men tried not to look at her, or at each other, Toni got Lane’s medicine.
She didn’t speak as she dropped the pills into his hand, then shoved a glass of water beneath his nose.
“What’s that?” Justin asked as the lawman made a face.
“Knockout pills. She’s trying to shut me up,” Lane said, and stifled a grin by tossing the pills to the back of his throat and chasing them with the drink of water.
“I hate both of you,” Toni said mildly, and walked out of the kitchen before she said anything else that she would later regret.
Justin looked miffed. Lane grinned. It was an odd ending to a hell of a day.