The first time he appeared truly awake was morning. Pale light leaked through the blinds. Activity was increasing out in the hall. Cait heard a far-off rumble and clank she thought might be the arrival of breakfast trays on the tall carts.
Blinking sleep out of her own eyes, she realized he was watching her.
“Good morning,” he murmured.
“Good morning.” She straightened in the chair and rolled her shoulders to loosen kinks. “I’d kiss you, but I probably have yucky breath.”
He laughed, winced, then said, “Don’t make me do that. It hurts.”
“How do you feel?”
“Crappy,” he admitted. “Not surprising considering someone was digging around in me yesterday.”
“After you were shot.”
“Yeah, not one of those things I ever expected to happen.”
“I thought he’d killed you.” She felt raw. “I thought…” Her voice failed.
“Hey.” He reached for her hand, which must have slipped from his when she fell into a deeper sleep. “I’m here. Full recovery, remember?”
“Yes.” She made herself breathe. Full recovery. Nobody really needs a spleen.
“I came back to tell you that business about you ‘letting’ Ralston hurt you is bull.”
“It happened.”
“It happened because that’s how you were taught to respond.” He kept talking, saying things that echoed what she’d begun to realize herself about her parents and the way she’d tried so hard to go unnoticed. Somehow the explanation was more convincing coming from him. She’d been afraid she was trying to justify the unjustifiable.
His very blue eyes held hers. “It’s hard to unlearn childhood lessons. I’ve been a loner because I was so sure…” Finally he hesitated.
“That no one could love you,” Cait finished softly.
His eyes searched hers. “Yeah,” he said at last, sounding gruff. “I guess that’s it.”
She studied him, a face that by any standards should be homely and yet…wasn’t. Cheekbones that were too broad and blunt, nose that was too large, furrowed forehead, jaw subtly off center—and none of it mattered compared to the intelligence in those blue eyes or the sweetness or humor or rakishness of his smiles.
“You were wrong,” she whispered.
A nerve in his cheek pulsed. He stared at her for the longest time. “I love you,” he said then in a gravelly voice. “Maybe you won’t want to hear it, but you need to know I wasn’t being chivalrous.” His mouth twitched into a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “That was your word, wasn’t it? You walked into my office that first day and I felt the ground shake. I told myself I shouldn’t hire you. If I’d wanted to keep my life the way it was, I shouldn’t have.”
Hope and joy filled Cait like the water in a reservoir, rising, rising, until it had to spill out somehow.
But she had to ask. “Are you sorry?”
“Never,” he said roughly. “Never.”
“I fell in love with you so fast.” She laughed a little. “And I was off men, remember?”
“Will you come and sit here?” he asked, patting the bed beside him.
She was trembling when she did, bending over to kiss him again. “Who cares if we have morning breath?”
He laughed, then groaned. “Not me.” And he finally let go of her hand so he could wrap his around her nape and draw her down again. “Not me.”
* * *
THREE DAYS LATER, Noah plodded down the hospital corridor clutching his IV pole, his determination to regain his strength so he could get the hell out of there the only thing that kept him going.
Cait had gone by his house and brought him a robe his mother had sent for Christmas one year that he’d never worn and a pair of slippers that he did wear. They wouldn’t let him wear his own pajama bottoms, but at least with the robe his ass wasn’t bared when he got out of bed.
The positive? Cait was beside him, wearing royal blue jeans that fit her like a second skin and a bright yellow scoop-neck T-shirt as cheerful as that suit of hers that had inspired idiotic flights of fancy in him.