Page 2 of Midnight Secrets

Isabel seemed to be alone in the world, which baffled him. She was so beautiful his jaw had dropped the first time he saw her, talking to the moving guys. Good thing she wasn’t looking his way otherwise he’d have scared her off. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

She’d been sick, that was easy to see. She’d clearly lost a lot of weight recently. Joe knew all about that. He’d dropped from his fighting weight of 210 to 150 by the time he was released from the hospital. When he’d walked with two crutches outside the rehab unit’s doors, the skin seemed to drop off him. If they’d put him in old smelly clothes with a hat and a guitar on a sidewalk people would have been lining up to drop coins in the hat out of sheer mercy.

He’d worked hard and was back to 180, and it was all muscle. He’d get all the way back to 210, most of it thanks to Isabel’s cooking.

That first day had started it. The moving guys had been total shitheads. They clearly had another delivery before the day’s end and had simply dumped her stuff as fast as they could and left. Some things they’d even left on her front lawn.

He’d never forget that sight of her, lost and lonely in the middle of boxes and a few pieces of good furniture shoved up against the wall. He’d knocked on her open front door and she’d turned to look at him andpow!He was lost.

“Hey,” he’d said gently, “I’m your next-door neighbor. Joe Harris. Need a hand?”

Bones, his orthopedic surgeon had given him strict instructions to use the cane until the end of the month. Bones had also said that with anyone else, he’d order the use of two crutches for the next two months. But Bones knew Joe was a former SEAL and he knew it was pointless trying to stop Joe from pushing forward with his rehab.

However, Bones had been really strict on using at least the cane for the next four weeks and had given Joe a long, boring lecture on load-bearing coefficients and fusion time and yada yada. It had all made sense at the time and Joe had been following doctor’s orders like a good little patient.

But seeing that beautiful woman trying to tug a couch toward the wall…well, he couldn’t do it. Just couldn’t sit by and watch. He tossed the cane and spent the afternoon helping her unpack. His bones had ached that night, but what the hell. Though he was just back on his feet, he was still stronger than she was. So he’d carried in boxes from the lawn, set up some furniture, unpacked her books and when he saw that she couldn’t take it anymore, he’d gone back to his place and stared at the wall for an hour, seeing that face.

The next morning he found freshly baked cinnamon buns and a pan of banana bread outside his front door.

That first week became a pattern. He helped her set up her stuff and he’d find amazing things to eat outside his door.

She didn’t talk much and he didn’t press her. Something crappy had happened to her—he recognized the thousand-yard stare of someone who’d seen bad shit. The bad shit had gone down fairly recently, too. Once, the sleeve of her sweater rode up and he saw a big scar where something had sliced her. He knew scars. That couldn’t have been more than six months old.

Also—it looked a lot like a knife scar and he’d stopped what he was doing as a fit of rage overtook him.

Someone had knifed her?

Some fuckhead had taken a knife andslicedher? He knew knives, was good with knives. Knew what knives could do to the human body. In many ways, a knife could be more devastating than a bullet.

Isabel had caught his look, quietly pulled her sweater down over her forearm and turned away. It couldn’t have been more plain if she had shouted the words.I don’t want to talk about it.

She was clearly traumatized. She couldn’t talk about it? Fine. He knew all he really needed to know about her, anyway. Amazingly beautiful, really sad, incredible cook.

Messed with his head and his gonads.

The rest would come later, whenever she felt like talking.

And if someone had done this to her and he found out who that fuckhead was? The fucker was a dead man walking.

So Joe had resigned himself to waiting it out until she felt comfortable enough with him to talk about it.

God knew he had time on his hands. He wasn’t going anywhere. The doctors wouldn’t let him go to work for another month, though he was itching to.

His rehab was hard but he was on the mend and it was a steadily upward trajectory. Metal wouldn’t let it be anything else. Often Jacko showed up, too, at the gym, to spot him. Metal knew everything there was to know about physiology and Jacko was a world-class gym rat so between the two of them he was putting himself back together again in record time.

He had friends, he had the full support of his company, ASI.

Who did she have?

Nobody. Except him.

She wasn’t looking well at all today. The ground had frozen overnight and there were unexpected pockets of ice.

Joe had good balance but Isabel didn’t.

Isabel might need him.

Joe headed out.

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