The Harder They Fall (29 page)

She took a deep breath, her eyes still shut against what she knew would be agonizing light. “Your name is Paige Hart. You’re thirty-two years old. Single, thank God. Your parents are William and Lila Hart, currently of Macon. You have six brothers, two sisters, and way too many aunts, uncles and cousins.”

At the thought of her huge extended family, she groaned. Because that reminded her of more things about herself. Like the fact that she was an attorney, and from the moment she’d passed the Georgia Bar Exam eight years ago, one after another of those relatives had paraded through her office with a variety of legal problems they wanted Paige to handle.

It didn’t matter that she was a tax attorney. That didn’t prevent Aunt Lulu from marching Paige’s cousin Duane into her office after he was picked up for vandalizing a bridge by spray painting “Jump here” on the side of it. Nor did it matter to her second cousin Bonnie that Paige wasn’t trained to handle sexual harassment suits. And it didn’t stop the majority of her next-of-and not-so-next-of-kin from naming her the executor of their various wills.

The most bizarre case had been when Jerry, her first cousin once removed, wanted to hire Paige to help him contest the will of his mother, her great aunt Twila. Luckily, Paige had had to decline, as she’d been named executor of Aunt Twila’s will, and was able to claim a conflict of interest. So Aunt Twila’s estate—all of it—ended up in the hands of an organization called People for a Snake-Free America. Aunt Twila had possessed a real aversion to snakes.

Speaking of snakes, the name Ross Bennett popped into her throbbing head. Why, she didn’t have a clue. She was fairly certain she didn’t have a relative by that name, but with her family she couldn’t rule it out. No doubt, though, the name certainly left a bad taste in her mouth.

“Think, Paige,” she murmured. “What was the last thing you remember doing?”

She gasped as memory tumbled back into her head like an avalanche of bowling balls. Of course! She’d been walking down the hallway of the Fulton County Courthouse, arguing the details of her cousin Jasmine’s divorce from Jasmine’s husband, Carl Peyton. Arguing those details with Carl Peyton’s attorney—the snake, Ross Bennett.

She vaguely remembered being thrown against Ross, something exploding at the side of her head, and brilliant stars bursting behind her eyes before the world went black.

Okay, so that’s why she was here. She’d gotten knocked for a loop. But other than a certain tenderness on her right thigh—probably a bruise—she didn’t think she’d suffered more than a slight blow to the head.

Well, maybe not all that slight.

Dizzily she wondered what had happened to Ross. The man was a snake, to be sure, but that didn’t mean she wished him harm. Maybe she wouldn’t mind him having his jaw broken and wired shut, but nothing more serious than that.

And she wouldn’t want his wired jaw disfigured permanently. Because it sure was a nice jaw. It sat squarely below some very sexy lips, a great nose, and a pair of hazel eyes that could probably melt glaciers. Yes indeed, Ross Bennett was one extremely handsome snake.

Of course, good looks couldn’t make up for the fact that he made his living from the deaths of marriages. Divorce attorneys were only one very tiny step above ambulance chasers in Paige’s estimation. Especially divorce attorneys who were hell-bent on not giving Paige’s relative even a fraction of what she deserved. And most especially divorce attorneys like the one she’d had to deal with in college, who’d done everything in her power to ruin Paige’s life.

Divorce attorneys sucked. Ross Bennett was a divorce attorney. Ergo, he was a snake, albeit a handsome one. And, unfortunately, a smart one.

Paige prided herself on her zippy retorts, her ability to cut any opponent to the quick. The truly irritating thing about Bennett was his equal ability to snap right back.

He’d caught her off guard that first meeting by matching her cutting remark for cutting remark. And instead of withering before her eyes, like normal people did, he’d seemed to get more and more amused as the slashing continued. Although she’d held her own, by the time she’d left his office, she’d felt a strange concoction of emotions: anger, grudging admiration, and something that felt oddly like a tingling exhilaration, but which she’d decided to interpret as an allergic reaction.

Paige shook off thoughts of Ross Bennett, and turned her attention to opening her eyes, surveying her surroundings, and getting released from this place as soon as humanly possible. She was not a great lover of hospitals.

She cracked one eye open. Just enough to see that there were no visitors in her room, nor any hospital personnel. That was odd. When any member of the extended Hart clan was admitted to a hospital for whatever reason, the rest rushed to their sides and smothered them until the patient had to either recover or croak.

Maybe they hadn’t been notified of the explosion yet.

A loud groan to her left had her swinging her head, which she immediately regretted. Pain lanced through her temples and for a moment the room wobbled drunkenly.

She pressed fingers to her temples, trying to keep her brains from spilling out. When the room stopped swimming, she noticed a beige curtain bisecting one side of the room and, obviously, hiding a second occupant.

Another moan came from behind the curtain. Paige wasn’t quite sure, but she thought the hospital personnel ought to have been a little more watchful of the two of them. Then again, maybe it was a good sign they didn’t need constant monitoring. But she could certainly use some aspirin.

Turning her head gingerly, she surveyed the room. It looked large enough to hold four beds, but the other side of the room was devoid of anything save two bedside tables. There was a door on the far left and two armoires on the right. The door to the hallway was centered to her left, on the other occupant’s side of the room.

Beside it was a large window with its sickly yellow blinds raised. Oddly enough, the hallway on the other side of the glass was so dimly lit she couldn’t really make out anything beyond. It gave her a funny feeling of total isolation, but the sound of rustling sheets from the other occupant guaranteed she wasn’t totally alone.

Then her eyes lit on a large trash type bin directly to the left of the door to the dark hallway, and the words on it gave her pause:
BIOHAZARD.
And right below that,
Medical Waste
with that strange tarantula-like symbol. Other than the occasional visit to sick relatives, she didn’t have much experience with hospitals. But she never remembered a hazmat bin the size of a small truck in any hospital room she’d ever been in.

Directly above it was a steel box anchored to the wall. What its purpose was, she didn’t have a clue.

Glancing to her right, she noticed two more windows, affording her a view of the outdoors. Not much to see from this vantage point though. Just a view of the Atlanta skyline, the Banks of America Plaza standing out like a beacon.

She checked her bedside table, and found a pitcher of water and a plastic cup beside a telephone. Water sounded wonderful; her throat was scratchy and dry. She sat up slowly and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She was barefoot, she realized, and that reminded her she had to have clothes around here somewhere.

Her hand trembled as
she reached for the pitcher and for the first time she realized there was a bandage on it. At some point someone must have stuck a needle of sorts into her. As she went to pick up the pitcher she realized just how weak she was from the blast. She needed both hands to pour.

As she sipped, she thought about calling her brother Nick, the only sibling she had in Atlanta, but decided she ought to hear from a medical professional first so she could reassure him she’d be out of here within an hour.

Of course, the place conspicuously lacked medical professionals at the moment. She glanced at the head of her bed. Sure enough there was a call button there. She jabbed it twice for good measure and was grateful it didn’t ring in the room.

The other patient had gone quiet, so she resisted the urge to call, “Yoo hoo!”

Testing her legs, she slid from the bed and got to her feet. A bit of vertigo overtook her and she grasped the bedside table to steady herself. Nausea roiled in her tummy, so she took deep breaths and prayed she wouldn’t toss her cookies right there.

Her legs felt as rubbery as banquet chicken, so she just stood for a while before attempting to move. Man, she needed aspirin! Where was a nurse? For that matter where was her purse, her briefcase—her
clothes
for crying out loud?

Considering the cool rush of air on her tush, she didn’t have to reach around to know that this was one of those hospital gowns that left little to the imagination. Which meant she wasn’t
about
to march down that spooky, dark hallway and demand attention.

She turned back toward the door and armoires on the other side of the room. Maybe one contained her clothes, purse and briefcase. With luck, the door led to a bathroom and she could relieve another pressing problem.

Right now that side of the room looked to be miles away and she wasn’t certain whether her shaky legs would carry her the entire way. But what the heck. Her bladder was insisting that if she couldn’t walk, she should crawl.

Paige took a few shaky steps, relying on the bed for some support. Actually, with each passing second, she felt strength returning, although her headache wasn’t receding in the slightest. Okay. Bathroom, clothes-change, medical personnel
 . . .

Medical personnel. She’d buzzed twice and still no one had arrived. What kind of health-care facility was this? Now that she thought about it,
which
health-care facility was this? The closest one to the courthouse was Saint Catherine’s, so most likely that’s where she was. Either that, or the one just on the other side of the Twilight Zone, she thought, glancing at the almost black void beyond the window to the hallway.

Desperation to relieve her bladder drove her forward. She was shuffling more than striding, but she was making progress. Mentally patting herself on the back while simultaneously berating the hospital staff, she was halfway to the door on the right when a horrible, awful, despicably familiar snake voice stopped her in her tracks.

“Nice ass, Hart.”

Talk about waking up
from your average nightmare to a better-than-average fantasy.

Ross hadn’t been exaggerating. Paige Hart had one terrific ass. It wasn’t a real surprise considering she filled out a business suit better than any lawyer he knew. The first time he’d set eyes on her—the day she’d marched into his office like an angry, avenging angel—his jaw had nearly dropped to his desk. He’d had to consciously stop himself from whistling appreciatively.

Her honey-blond hair had been pulled back in a tight bun and her green cat eyes had been narrowed and shooting flames his way. But even with the evidence of her determined stride and angry countenance, he’d taken a moment to appreciate her female curves, her female chest.

But the moment she’d opened her mouth he’d temporarily forgotten about her pretty face and killer body. “Mr. Bennett, prepare to be taken to the cleaners.”

And he’d had to try to ignore that face and body ever since, because within ten minutes of meeting with her—if you could call that sparring session a meeting—he’d learned another important thing about her: She had one of the sharpest legal minds he’d ever encountered. Besides his own, of course.

Which made her dangerous.

Ross didn’t like losing. But obviously neither did Paige Hart. And she’d been haggling his client out of more and more assets with each subsequent meeting. If Ross didn’t watch it, Carl Peyton would find himself merely a multimillionaire by the time the divorce was settled.

“You!” Paige breathed, and her tone and horrified expression told him right off that she wasn’t real happy to see him.