Yeah. Cozy.
Except what he’d had with Mallory had been just about the opposite of cozy. It’d been hot. Bewildering.
Staggering.
And what the hell pic was up on Facebook?
He dropped Ryan off, then went home and worked on the Jimmy for Matt until late. He showered, then eyed his blinking phone. He glanced at the missed calls, getting a little rush at the thought that maybe Mallory had called him. The last time she’d been stuck. Maybe this time she just wanted to hear his voice. He sure as hell could use the sound of her voice right about now.
But the message wasn’t from Mallory. It was from Josh. Ty was expected at the radiology department at seven for scans, and then at a doctor’s appointment at eight.
Ty tried to read the tone of Josh’s voice to ascertain whether the news was going to be good or bad, but Josh was as good as Ty at not giving anything away.
The next morning, Ty was led to Josh’s office and told to wait. He’d perfected the art of hurrying up and waiting in the military, so when Josh strode in carrying a thick file that Ty knew contained his medical history, he didn’t react.
Josh was in full doctor mode today. Dark blue scrubs, a white doctor coat, a stethoscope around his neck, and his hospital ID clipped to his hip pocket. Hair rumpled, eyes tired, he dropped Ty’s file on his desk, sprawled out into his chair, and put his feet up. “Christ.”
“Long day already?”
“Is it still day?” Josh scrubbed his hands over his face. “Heard from Frances today. Or yesterday. Persistent, isn’t she?”
“Among other things. What did you tell her?”
“That your prognosis was none of her goddamned business and to stop calling me.”
This got a genuine smile out of Ty. “And she thanked you politely and went quietly into the night.”
“Yeah,” Josh said, heavy on the irony. “Or told me what she was going to do with my balls if she had to come out here to get news on you herself.”
“Sounds about right.” Ty looked at his closed file. “Verdict?”
“Scans show marked improvement. With another month of continued P.T., you could be back in the same lean, mean fighting shape you were. For now, I’d say you were probably up to where us normal humans are.”
Another month off would f**king kill him. “So I’m good to go then.”
Josh gave him a look. “Depends on your idea of go. You’re not up to leaping out second-story windows.”
“Yeah, but that hardly ever happens.”
Josh put his feet down and leaned forward, studying Ty for a long, serious moment. “You’re really going back.”
“I was always going back.”
“But you want to go back now.”
“Hell, yeah,” Ty said. “I wanted to go back the day I got here. Especially in the past few weeks, since I’ve been swimming and running again.”
“So why didn’t you? Go back?”
“I want to work,” Ty said, gesturing to the file. “Need clearance.”
“Yes, and that’s going to come soon, but my point is that you haven’t been exactly handcuffed to Lucky Harbor. You could have left.”
A flash of Mallory’s face came to Ty. Looking up at him while lying snuggled against him in her bed, wearing only a soft, sated smile and a slant of moonlight across her face.
It was no mystery what had kept him here.
“Mal know that you’re just about out of here?” Josh asked quietly.
“This has nothing to do with her,” Ty said flatly. “Sign the papers.”
“You’d have to be on light duty.”
“Fine. I’ll push f**king papers around on a desk if I have to. Just clear me.”
Josh shook his head, looking baffled. “You’d leave here for a desk job? Man, you’re not a desk-job kind of guy and we both know it.”
He’d deal. He needed to get close to the action, to get back to his world. He needed the adrenaline. He was wasting away here in Lucky Harbor.
“You know,” Josh said with that infuriatingly calm voice, leaning on the desk, his elbows on the release papers. “Maybe we should get back to the real reason you’re still here.”
“Sign the papers, Josh.”
Josh stared at him.
Ty stared back, holding the other man’s gaze evenly. Steadily.
With a shake of his head, Josh signed the papers.
Ty spent two days not making any plans to get back to his life. First, he told himself he needed to finish up the Jimmy. Then he told himself he had to finish up the Charger for Lucille’s neighbor, and the other two cars he’d taken on as well. And people kept calling him with new car issues. He couldn’t just ignore them. Plus he needed to finish the Shelby, just for himself, but the truth there was that she was running like a dream.
After that, he ran out of excuses and decided he’d give himself a day off from thinking about it.
Which turned into yet another day…
Then he woke up to a message from Josh to stop by his office at ten. Ty got up and swam. He ran, hard. He played WWE with Matt at the gym for an hour until they fell apart gasping, sweating, and equally worked over. Then Ty dragged himself to the shower and drove to Josh’s office.
Josh was in dress clothes today, a white doctor’s coat over his clothing, the ever-present stethoscope acting as a tie. He looked up from the mountain of paperwork on his desk and scowled at Ty. “You call The Queen yet about being cleared?”
“No.”
Josh gave him a long look, then stood and shut his office door. Back in his chair, he steepled his fingers, studying Ty like a bug on a slide. “Problem?”
“No. I’ve just got a little pain is all.” He straightened his leg and winced.
“No doubt,” Josh said dryly. “I was at the gym this morning; you never even noticed me. You were too busy wiping the floor with Matt. Who, by the way, is the best street fighter I’ve ever met. And you kicked his ass. How much pain can you be in?”
“I pulled something.”
Josh’s smile faded. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Josh was quiet a moment. “Then maybe you should give it another week,” he finally said.
Ty nodded his agreement and left. He left the back way, which meant he stood in the bright sunshine in the hospital parking lot staring at Mallory’s POS car. He wondered what the hell was wrong with him, but since that was probably way too big a problem to solve in this decade, he went home. He fiddled on the Shelby until he realized it’d gotten dark. He was just getting out of his second shower of the day when he heard the knock at his door.
He’d been off the job for more than six months, and still the instinct to grab his gun before answering was second nature. But this was Lucky Harbor. The only real danger was being killed by kindness.
And nosy-ass gossip.
Shaking his head, he grabbed his Levi’s up off the floor and pulled them on, then opened the door to…Mallory.
She gave him a small smile, a sweet smile. Clearly she hadn’t yet heard through the cafeteria grapevine that he was single-handedly ruining her life. “Hey,” he said. A chronic idiot. That was him.
“Hey yourself.” Her gaze ran over his bare torso. Something went hot in her eyes as she took in the fact that all he wore were Levi’s, which he hadn’t yet buttoned up all the way. He did that now while she watched, and the temperature around them shot up even more.
She stepped over the threshold, and since he hadn’t moved she bumped into him. He thought it was an accidental touch but then her hands came up and brushed over his chest and abs. No accident.
Nor was the fact that she was wearing a halter top, low-riding jeans and a pair of really hot heels that brought her up four point five inches and perfectly aligned their bodies. Her pulse was beating like a drum at the little dip in the base of her throat. Lifting a hand, he ran a finger over the beat, watching her pulse leap even more.
Her hand came up to join with his. “In the name of full disclosure,” she murmured, “you should know that I talked to Ryan this afternoon.”
Ty lifted his gaze.
“He landed in the ER,” she said.
“What happened? Is he all right?”
“Someone on the highway caught sight of him wandering around and brought him in. He had a bottle of Jack and some dope he’d scored off some kids.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.” She kept her hand on his, squeezing his fingers reassuringly. “He’s fine. He’s currently sleeping it off, but before that…he was talking.”
“Was he?”
“You took him to NA.”
That was a statement of fact so he let it sit between them.
“You…went into the meeting,” she said. “You stayed.”
Another statement of fact.
“Was he…unsteady?” she asked. “Did he need the assistance?”
Ah, and now he got it. She was on a fishing expedition. “He wasn’t that bad off, no.”
She nodded, and he waited for her expression to change but it didn’t. There was no leaping to conclusions, no trial and jury, no pity, nothing.
Hell, he didn’t know why that surprised him. She never did the expected. She was the warmest, most compassionate, understanding woman he’d ever met.
“Did you need something there?” she asked.
And she was also one of the most curious.
“Why don’t you just ask me what you really want to know, Mallory?”
“Okay.” She drew a deep breath. “Are you an addict, too?”
Unable to resist, he again stroked his thumb over that spot at the base of her neck before slipping his hand into his pocket to finger the ever-present Vicodin bottle. It was a light weight. Empty. And both those things reassured him. He’d f**ked up plenty, but at least not with that. “Damn close,” he said.
“Oh,” she breathed, and nodded. “I see.”
No, she didn’t. But that was his fault. “After the plane crash, I wasn’t exactly the best of patients. I was on heavy meds. A wreck, basically.”
“You’d just lost your team,” she said softly.
Something warm unfurled in him at that. She was defending him. To himself. “When I went back to work, I gave up the meds.” He paused, remembering. “It sucked. Christ, it sucked bad. I liked the oblivion, too damn much.”
Her eyes were on his, absorbing his words, taking it all in without judgment. So he gave her the rest. “Six months ago, I got hurt again. In the ER they got me all nice and drugged up before I could refuse the meds.”
Something flickered in her eyes, and he knew she was remembering how he’d refused drugs the night of the storm.
“Then I was released,” he said. “With a ‘take as needed’ prescription. I found myself doing exactly that and living for the clock, for the minute I could take more. That’s when I stopped refilling.”
“You went cold turkey?”
“I never understood that saying, cold turkey,” he said with a grim smile. “It’s more like hot hell, but yeah.” He blew out a breath. “And I still crave it.”
She was quiet a moment. “I think the craving part is normal. We all have our cravings. I gave up chocolate once. The cravings sucked.”
He choked out a laugh. Christ, he liked her. A whole hell of a lot. What was he supposed to do with that? “I don’t think it’s exactly the same.”
“True. I mean, I can’t be arrested for hoarding chocolate cake,” she said. “But it ruins my life. Costs money. And it makes my scrubs tight. You know how bad that is, when your drawstring pants are too tight? Pretty damn bad, Ty.”
He was smiling now. He rocked back on his heels and studied her. “You’re looking pretty damn good from where I’m standing.”
“Because I only let myself have it once a week. Or whenever Amy calls. She’s a very bad influence.”
“Still crave, huh?” he asked with genuine sympathy.
“I’d give up my next breath for a piece of cake right now,” she said with deep feeling. She sighed, as if with fond memories. “I think it helps to keep busy. Distracted. I know that much.”
“I’ve been distracted plenty,” he said, and her cheeks flamed. He loved that she could initiate sex in a storage room above about five hundred of her closest friends and family and still blush.
“Were you working on a car?” she asked. “I heard you’re the new go-to mechanic guy.”
“I was working before I showered.”
“Show me?”
“The shower? Sure. I might have used all the hot water though.”
She gave him a little laugh and a shove that took him back a step. He could have stood his ground but he liked the way she was letting her hands linger on his chest. He took one of those hands and guided her through to the kitchen and out the back door to the garage.
She looked around, taking in the cars and the slew of tools scattered across the work table. “What were you doing?”
“Brake line work on my Shelby.”
“Show me,” she said again.
“You want to learn how to put in new stainless steel brake lines,” he said, heavy on the disbelief. “Mallory, those shoes aren’t meant for working on a car.”
“What are they meant for?”
“Messing with a man’s head.”
She smiled. “Are they working?”
“More than you can possibly imagine. Listen, this car shit, it’s messy.”