He moved closer and held the elevator door open with his shoulder while he fit his fingers around her wrist. They matched the bruise exactly. “I am so sorry,” he said. She saw him swallow hard. “I didn’t realize...” He reached for her other wrist and pushed the sleeve back before she could stop him, exposing an even uglier bruise. His face contracted as if the sight hurt him.
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “I bruise easily. You did what you had to do to save me. I don’t blame you. I...” He was brushing his fingers lightly over the bruise, back and forth, as if he could erase it that way, and the touch of his fingers was somehow erotic. She drew her hand away and pulled down the sleeve. “I’d far rather have the bruises than what else might have happened to me.” Her chin tilted up.
There was just a second when she saw something in his eyes—a look of admiration tinged with frank, male appreciation—but it was gone so quickly she thought she must have imagined it.
“Besides,” she added, pointing to the faint scratch marks on his left cheek. “I hurt you, too.”
His hand rose involuntarily, as if he’d forgotten all about the marks she’d left on him. But then she could see him remembering what he’d done to her to make her scratch him so violently, and remorse filled his face.
“Don’t think about that,” Keira said swiftly, and repeated, “You did what you had to do, and—” she made each of her next words a separate sentence for emphasis “—I. Don’t. Blame. You.”
“I didn’t mean to be so...brutal.”
“What you did was nothing compared to what they had in mind,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but...”
“But nothing,” she said firmly. “Forget about it. I have,” she lied.
He didn’t say anything, just looked at her in a way that reminded her of the moment when he’d told her to tie up her shirt that first night, and she felt her cheeks grow warm. That was the worst thing about having the pale skin that accompanied her red hair; any change in coloration was noticeable.
Two people approached the elevator, glancing curiously at Cody and Keira talking so intently. Keira brushed past the other two agents, and Cody followed her out. The elevator doors slid closed behind them.
“Wait,” he said. “We’re not quite finished.”
She turned around, darting a quick look around to see if anyone was watching them, then asked, “What is it?”
“I started to say it’s nothing against you personally why O’Ne—I mean Callahan probably won’t want to include you.” He punched the elevator button again. “It’s a long story, and maybe I’ll tell you sometime, but I’ve got a bullet hole in me because Callahan didn’t even trust the woman he eventually married with the truth.”
Keira shook her head in puzzlement. “I don’t get it. If he didn’t trust her, why did he marry her?”
Cody chuckled. “Good question. Seriously, though, by the time he married her, he did trust her. But it wasn’t easy for him.” The elevator doors swooshed open, and he stepped inside, holding the door for a minute while he finished. “Callahan doesn’t trust many people, and I’d say Mandy’s probably the only woman he does trust.”
The elevator doors closed, and Keira stood there for a moment, staring blankly at the brushed metal, her sixth sense humming. There was something in the way Cody had said Mandy’s name. Most people probably wouldn’t have noticed. But then most people didn’t work for the agency, either. It was just the slightest softening when he spoke her name. A certain inflection. And Keira knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mandy, whoever she was, had once meant something special to Cody. Maybe still did.
She turned and walked down the hall toward her office. Without realizing it, her right hand touched her left wrist and felt the bruise there. She looked down at both wrists, thinking absently about the other bruises on her body hidden beneath her clothes that no one but she—and her doctor—had seen. Including the imprint of four fingers and a thumb on one still-tender breast.