Page 83 of Rescue Me (Tempting SEALs 6.10)

Both Elena and Dan grinned. Lisa too, although she was already on her way out the door to do Seth’s bidding.

“You had us worried,” Dan said, moving back into Seth’s line of sight.

Seth squinted up at Dan. “What the hell … you doing here? And where … is here, anyway?”

“Flagstaff. You’re in the hospital. You were shot, remember?”

It took a moment but Elena saw the second that recognition dawned.

“Elena,” Seth said, becoming agitated. He struggled to sit up.

“I’m right here.” She moved in quickly, took his hand in hers to settle him. “I’m fine. I’m fine,” she repeated when he collapsed with a groan of pain and relief.

He turned his gaze to hers. His features softened through a haze of medication and fatigue. “Fine,” he repeated weakly and his eyes drifted shut again.

SETH LOOKED LIKE HIS father, Elena realized the next day when both Bill and Wanda King arrived to make certain their son was truly alive and going to make it.

Nice people, she thought, watching from the door of Seth’s hospital room. Very nice.

But not her people. Not her life. Just like Seth could never be her life. A bubble, she reminded herself as she left the hospital. What had happened, what they had shared—it was just a bubble in time. Now life went on. As it had before.

He was a cop with an attitude.

She was the assistant DA thorn in his side.

Fate had pitted them together. A life or death struggle had remolded their perimeters. Shifted everything out of focus, thrown everything out of place.

Temporarily.

Well. Soon everything would be back to status quo. As much as it hurt to think it, as much as it pained her to accept it, the truth was, business as usual would pit them against each other in court again. Then the reality that they would often be shoring up opposite sides of the fence would take a toll.

Oil and water.

Fire and ice.

Miles apart and passionate about the differences.

So no. Elena would be a fool to think anything had truly changed between them.

They would never again be enemies. But in the long haul, it was not in the cards for them to be friends.

Or lovers, she thought sadly and turned and walked away.

The next day, she put in for a month’s leave. She had more than that coming. And it was time.

She went home. Where her mom cooked for her and told her she was too thin and her dad told her she should get married and give him more grandbabies.

Home. Where she could forget about Seth King’s kisses and start the process of life as she had once known it without him in it.

TWELVE

2 months later.

“DAMMIT, ELENA, YOU KNOW that’s a pile of crap!”

“Order in the court!” The rap of a gavel rang like buckshot through the crowded courtroom.

Elena cringed as Seth, in full uniform, shot to his feet on the witness stand and glared between her and Judge Harrison. It was Seth’s third outburst in as many weeks before the same judge. Harrison was at the end of his rope in the patience department.

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