Isabela, she remembered. Was she the reason he was going to Seattle? Was she of shifter blood?
“He is seriously injured.” Burke pulled Heidi away from her thoughts. “Fridrik and I haven’t had time to question him, yet. But we will. For now, let him be,” he said, adding a stern look at both Kelan and Reidar. Then her dad’s mood changed. “Will dinner be ready on time?”
Heidi sighed with relief and sagged against the door. “Yes, Daddy. Of course.” She gave Burke a kiss on the cheek and headed down the hall toward the kitchen.
Kelan said to Beth, You are in trouble, woman.
Her sister-in-law could handle the boys, and her brothers would never harm their mate, but Heidi was glad she wasn’t in Beth’s shoes. Keeping secrets from brothers was one thing. Keeping them from your mates was quite another.
More than half an hour passed before Beth came into the kitchen just as Heidi was putting the pork chops under the broiler. “What do you need me to do?”
Her sister-in-law’s face glowed, and Heidi didn’t need three tries to guess what had kept her occupied. “Hope they weren’t too hard on you.”
Beth waggled her eyebrows. “Just hard enough.” Then she burst out laughing before she leaned over the counter and stage whispered, “They’re such pussycats.”
“Pussycats?”
Beth batted her eyes. “‘You mean you’re upset I didn’t tell you about Heidi’s patient? But...what does that have to do with us?’” Heidi rolled her eyes. “And they fell for that?”
Beth just gave her a toothy grin and changed the subject. “Now tell me what you were about to tell me before the boys got home. What happened with him?”
Heidi shrugged and acted as innocent as Beth had. “Nothing. I wonder about him, but he’s not doing much talking.”
Beth stared at her a long time with a look that plainly said she didn’t believe her.
But Heidi wasn’t ready to talk about a kiss that might have been nothing but a man in the throes of a drug-induced dream. “Turn those chops, would you?”
Beth went to the oven, and Heidi smashed the hell out of the potatoes. She couldn’t read anything into that kiss. Nothing at all. No matter how it affected her.
Javier’s heart thudded with anticipation of his homecoming. He’d been on military maneuvers for a week and couldn’t drive fast enough through the city traffic to reach his destination. His mate, his Isabela, promised to be waiting for him. He’d tried calling as soon as he’d left the base, but there’d been no answer. He grinned as he pictured her naked on the bed, posed in her sign of submission to him.
He hadn’t wanted to go on this last mission, the first time in his entire military career he wanted to stay home with his family. Isabela’s baby bump grew daily, and they’d felt their tiny babies move for the first time the day before he’d shipped out. Triplets, the doctor said.
Thank God for Juan, or Javier would have begged his superiors to let him stay. Isabela was healthy, seemed ecstatically happy, but she was so small. Growing three children in her belly wasn’t going to be easy. He couldn’t stand the thought of her being left alone for even a moment. She called him a crazy, overbearing gatito, her kitten.
He chuckled as he pulled into the driveway of the small house that Isabel had quickly and easily turned into a home. Leaving everything but the keys in the car, he ran up the walkway, slipped the key into the lock...and froze when the scent of death hit him hard.
His stomach churned, and cold sweat popped out on his sides.
He turned the key in the lock, ready to shift if needed, and nudged the door open with the toe of his boot.
Javier jerked awake, panting, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, lying in an unfamiliar bed, surrounded by scents that confused him.
As he cleared the nightmare from his mind, he found his bearings and realized he was in Heidi Falke’s bedroom, in her family home. A home of shifters.
The angle of the sun streaming through the picture window showed the hour to be late morning. The scent of fried meat drew his attention to the nightstand. Two plate-sized ham steaks and three biscuits.
A tall glass of orange juice and four of those pills she’d given him the night before. Across the room, the food he’d thrown in a fit of anguished fury after the kiss had been cleaned up and taken away.
He’d tried to get up, to clean up the mess he’d made when shame sank in, but he hadn’t had the strength to do more than sit up on the edge of the bed. The pills Heidi had given him made his muscles nearly as weak as his mind.
Now he threw back the covers and, using his hands, lifted his right leg and swung it to the side so he could sit up. Pain shot from his thigh down to his foot and up into his hip. He’d seen his x-rays—this break was much worse than any he’d previously sustained, and it was taking longer to heal. But he didn’t have time to lie around, no matter how comfortable the bed might be. He needed to get out of this shifter home, away from the shifter female that made his dick hard, and get on with finding and killing Durchenko.
He spotted his duffle bag on the chair next to the bed. They must have found his car, he surmised.
He reached over, grabbed the handle and dragged it onto the bed next to him. As soon as he opened the bag, he could smell the Falke men on his belongings. They’d gone through it. His clothes, which had been neatly folded, now filled the bag in disorder. He dug until he found his wallet. His cash, credit cards and driver’s license were still there. So was his passport.
The Falkes didn’t appear to be thieves, but neither did they seem to worry about revealing their invasion of his privacy. Of course if the tables were turned, he would’ve done the same, so he didn’t fault them for their curiosity.
He tossed his wallet back into the duffle and pulled out his shaving kit, a pair of shorts, underwear and a clean T-shirt.
The bathroom was through a door just across the room, and he’d made it there and back once during the night when he couldn’t hold in nature’s call any longer. Now, he reached for the crutches leaned against the wall on the other side of the nightstand and somehow found the energy to get up and into the bathroom.
After a sponge bath, shampoo using the hand-held showerhead, a shave and changing into his own clothes, Javier felt almost back to normal, though his muscles seemed to be made of gelatin. He stumbled his way back to bed on the crutches and scarfed down the breakfast, but what he really needed was caffeine, not orange juice, to clear his head. He wondered where his nurse—doctor—Heidi was.
He hadn’t seen her since his explosive reaction to her unwanted question. He’d heard the scuffle that ensued outside the door of the room the evening before, and her vehement efforts to protect him.
He’d pushed himself up in bed, ready to defend himself any way he could if she hadn’t managed to keep her brothers out.
He’d also heard the dire warning in the father’s tone, and Javier had no doubt the older shifter meant what he’d said about ripping Javier’s heart out. Instead of the threats angering him, he respected the elder shifters for their fierce protection of their family, of their females especially. He could even understand the younger men’s reaction to his presence in what they obviously perceived as their territory.
Javier pushed up from the bed again, using the crutches, and headed in search of a cup of freshly brewed coffee. He hadn’t been told to stay within the confines of the bedroom, so unless he was, he needed to exercise his muscles and try to regain enough strength to get the hell out of there. Damn that his leg kept him from driving. If only he’d been shot in the shoulder instead.
Or the heart, a soft voice whispered in the back of his head.