B00NRQWAJI Read Free

more than a hot date.
    I had a houseguest.
    And I couldn’t get home to him fast enough.
    Granted, by Washington, D.C., standards, the route from Reagan National Airport to my place in the heart of Old Town Alexandria was a quick trip. In fact, the expedition was hardly long enough for my phone call to Hudson Paul. But to me, the journey still lasted an eternity.
    Sooner rather than later, however, I eased my glossy green Jaguar XJ8 into the alley that ran behind my rehabbed 1803 townhouse. I punched my complicated PIN into the keypad that opened my garage and drove inside. Once the door was down, I got out of my car.
    Upstairs, in the kitchen on the house’s main level, I found the private nurse I’d hired. She had roses in her cheeks and silver in her hair, and her deep purple surgical scrubs had been ironed to within an inch of their life. She was drying my big stoneware mixing bowl with an Irish linen dishtowel when I greeted her, and behind her, cooling on the range-top, rested a pan of freshly baked lasagna. The savory scent of oregano wafted all the way across the room to me.

    “How’s the patient?” I asked her.
    She smiled ruefully, draped the dishtowel over the lip of my farmhouse sink to dry. “He’s a little cranky, but he’s trying not to show it. He sure is ready to get that cast off his leg.”
    Of that, I had no doubt.
    In the spring, I’d met Mrs. Montgomery’s patient. He was a soldier with a moral compass that pointed true, a soft spot for stray dogs, and a smile that put sunlight to shame. And this fall, he’d had my back when I’d tangled with a mercenary on a secret military installation. As a result, he’d ended up getting hurt. With a leg broken in three places.
    Facing surgery and rounds of checkups at the D.C. area’s new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he would’ve had to endure the discomfort of a long stay in the military’s temporary housing, the expense of a shabby motel room near the hospital compound, or the trial of travel to and from his own New Jersey digs.
    So I’d invited him to stay with me.
    And Lieutenant Colonel Adam Barrett had accepted.
    Now, after six long weeks of pain and pills and staying put, Barrett’s cast would come off in the morning. He couldn’t wait. And neither could I.
    I couldn’t wait to see him, either, so I wished Mrs. Montgomery a pleasant evening and left her to make her own way to the front door. I dumped my overcoat and suit jacket on an obliging chair and hurried down the hall. I stuck to the Savonnerie runner streaking down the middle of the floor and let its deep pile swallow any clicks my handmade high-heeled shoes might’ve made on the hardwood. At the open door to the guest room, I paused. And while my heart did somersaults, I peeped around the jamb.

    There, on this side of the crewelwork coverlet, Adam Barrett reclined like some kind of recuperating Celtic hero. The hulking cast that encased his leg from toes to hip had been propped on enough pillows to furnish a high-end hotel. And Mrs. Montgomery had heaped plenty more against the mahogany headboard.
    Barrett’s blond head lolled across them, his hair a little shaggy according to army standards. Abandoned books were stacked beside him on the mahogany nightstand. And well within reach, his aluminum crutches gleamed against the wall.
    While I watched, Barrett tucked a muscled arm behind the nape of his neck. The TV’s remote control lay listlessly in his other hand. He flipped from one channel to another, too late in the season to find a baseball game and too alone to complain about it.
    I said, “Hello, soldier. What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?”
    The frown Barrett had been sporting vanished instantly. He shoved himself a little higher on the cushions. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
    “Us private eyes aren’t called gumshoes for nothing.”
    “Well, you look great, shoes and all.”
    “When the doc cuts you loose tomorrow, you