Page 76 of Calculated in Death

She’d been hurt worse, she reminded herself. A hell of a lot worse. Despite that dubious qualifier, she felt as if every muscle, bone, and tendon in her body had been pulled, knocked, and strained. The blocker would help, for now, but it wouldn’t help the aches and stiffness tomorrow, and they’d be a distraction, an annoyance. They’d just be in her way.

So she’d deal with them.

When she stepped out into the bedroom, heard the elevator door whisk closed behind her, she allowed herself a long, heartfelt, moaning sigh.

And that was enough self-indulgence.

She eased out of her coat, blessing it for its stun-proof lining. But at the moment it felt impossibly heavy. She started to pull off her jacket, realized when her shoulder pinged that sometime during the dash, leap, twist, catch, and fall, she’d wrenched it good and proper, and it had barely healed from a much nastier injury during a life-and-death struggle with Isaac McQueen a few weeks before.

She fumbled with her weapon harness, carefully slipped it off.

And Roarke walked into the room.

He studied her carefully, nodded. “Nice catch,” he said.

SHE’D EXPECTED WORRY, CONCERN, STROKING and soothing, so his matter-of-fact comment threw her off balance.

Probably his devious plan, she decided, to trick her into going to a health center.

“Thanks. It was an unexpected play.”

“At the least. How bad is it?”

“Not very. I took a blocker.”

“So I heard. Well, let’s have a look.”

Now she smiled. “You just want to get me naked.”

“My life’s work,” he said as he walked to her. He could see in her eyes it was more than “not very.” “As it is, I’ll tend to that myself.” He started to draw her sweater up and off, heard her hiss of pain.

“Okay, ouch. Just a second.” She pressed her hand on her shoulder, trying to re-angle, decrease the twinge.

She saw the change in his eyes, that flash of ice blue heat, and knew he thought—as she did—of McQueen.

“The same shoulder?” he said gently.

“It figures, doesn’t it? It’s—okay, it’s ouch, but mostly just sore.”

“I’ll cut the sweater off.”

“The hell you will. This is that cashmere stuff. And I like this sweater.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, that’s so. I can like a sweater. It’s soft, and it’s warm, and we’re not hacking it up. We’ll just go easy, okay?”

“All right then.” Keeping his eyes trained on her face, he brushed the back of his hand over her cheek. “Relax now, loosen up and relax, and let me do it.”

She breathed, shut her eyes, let him carefully lift the wool. Not bad, not bad—shit, shit—okay, better.

“See? No hacking, and—” She followed the direction of his gaze, looked down at herself and found herself mildly stunned by the bruising blooming across her chest above her tank.

“Wow, colorful. I think the kid’s head plowed into me. He came at me like a mortar. Pow! Skull meets tits. Tits lose.”

“Have a seat, let me get your boots off.”

She did, watched him. His cool tone told her he was very, very angry, and much too worried. She could pin his response on her previous injuries. Not enough time between bouts, she decided. The only way she knew to offset his reaction was playing it light, playing it easy.