Page 84 of Sniper's Pride

But he didn’t.

“Sure,” he said, as if the single word cost him more than she could possibly imagine. “I can stay. Until you sleep.”

He lowered himself into the chair beside her bed likeit might bite him. Mariah rolled over to her side so she could look at him.

She wanted to look at him forever.

But her eyelids were heavy, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever been so tired in all her life.

Just as she wasn’t sure her heart was still in one piece or at all functional when he leaned forward, reached out, and pulled her hand between his.

He didn’t say another word.

But his hands were so warm. His steady, intense gaze made her feel safe. And even though she fought to stay awake, to hold on to him as long as she could, as soon as the heat of his palms soaked into hers, she fell asleep.

•••

The next time she woke up, it was morning and her IV was disconnected.

She expected Griffin to be gone, and actually caught her breath when she saw that he was still there. He’d left the chair and was standing by the window, his hands clasped behind his back in a way that struck her as profoundly military.

And even more lonely than last night.

“They’re releasing you today,” he told her without turning around. And Mariah had been around the Alaska Force team long enough now to know better than to ask how he’d known she was awake. “You can put on real clothes if you want. They should have your discharge papers soon.”

“Shouldn’t they have woken me up to discuss this?” It hurt to talk. It hurt to blink, for that matter. Mariah took a moment to catalog all the different and surprising ways she hurt, particularly when she heaved herself into asitting position. She would have grimaced—if she wasn’t sure that would hurt even more. “I’m pretty sure there’s a whole law.”

Griffin turned slightly from the window and raised a brow at her. “I’m very charming.”

“More charming than federal law?”

“The nurse said I had to be your husband. So I told her I was.”

Mariah didn’t have a handy quip for that. She should have thrown something back at him, made it funny.

But instead they stared at each other for much too long. Until it got too hot and intense.

Mariah was the one who looked away first, as if the stiff hospital blankets were suddenly deeply fascinating.

“You’re going to have to make a police statement. And the FBI want to talk to you, too. I could put them off another day.”

“There’s no need to delay anything,” she said, sounding hushed. As if they were in a church instead of an antiseptic hospital room. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, Mariah. You’re beat-up. Battered. If I could—”

“For God’s sake, Mariah!”

The voice from the doorway made Mariah jump. She was aware of Griffin moving, blocking her from whatever was coming.

But she didn’t need to see the person at the door to recognize him.

“David?” she asked, stunned.

Her ex-husband looked the roughest she’d ever seen him when he moved into her line of sight. Which was to say, he looked as if he’d had an excellent night’s sleep followed by a visit from his masseuse and a consultationwith his tailor. Only the faintest hint of puffiness around his eyes and the fact that he’d left his jaw unshaven suggested that he had any more pressing affairs to attend to today than counting the family money.

“I can’t believe any of this,” David said, scowling at her as he advanced. “I can’t believe that you would stoop so low as—”

He stopped. Abruptly. Because he ran right into Griffin’s outstretched hand.

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