What the hell was that?
I stared at the closed hallway door, heat still humming under my skin.
This was ridiculous.
I’d come here for answers about my sister’s death, not to fixate on some stranger with bruised knuckles and a dangerous stare. Normal people didn’t sit in clinics plotting how to chase down injured men they’d exchanged a few sentences with.
I blew out a slow breath, leaning back in the hard plastic chair.
He’d just walk out. Get stitched up, leave, and disappear into Paris. I’d never see him again. He’d become one of those strange travel moments you told friends about later—Oh, I met this insanely hot guy in a clinic once—and that would be the end of it.
Except the thought of that ending felt wrong.
Too final.
I tried to reason with myself.You don’t even know him. He could be married. A criminal. Completely insane.
My brain supplied an image of his calm expression as the receptionist snapped at him, the way tension seemed to coil under his stillness, like violence lived just beneath the surface.
Okay. Possibly insane.
And yet.
I’d spent years making sensible choices. Hank had been sensible. My career decisions had been sensible. My entire life back in New York was built on being reasonable.
Rose had come here and chosen something else.
Maybe this—this reckless spark of interest—was part of what she’d found.
Maybe, just this once, I didn’t have to be cautious.
Decision settled into place before I fully acknowledged making it.
If he walked back through that door, I wasn’t going to let him vanish without at least trying.
At minimum, I could ask his first name.
At minimum.
And if fate had dropped a dangerously attractive Brooklyn military stranger into my path at the exact moment my life cracked open?—
Well.
It felt stupid not to see where that led.
10
KANE
The treatment room was small and sterile, smelling like antiseptic and stale air.
The woman who entered wore scrubs and an expression that suggested she'd seen everything twice and wasn't impressed either time. Middle-aged. Competent hands. Cold eyes.
She gestured for me to sit.
I sat.
She peeled back the makeshift bandage, studying the wound with clinical detachment.
