smile, even if he aimed it solely at her and was still avoiding any eye contact with Cooper. “Sure. Deputy Marshal Ridley has a severe concussion. We have him on a drip right now for the nausea and the pain, and he’s resting. He should be fine with a little time to heal, but even after he’s stabilized, we’d like to hold him for a while to make sure he’s not developing post-concussion syndrome. Do you know what that is?”
She did. “That’s where the headaches and the confusion hang around for a few weeks, right?”
“That’s the one. It’s not typical, but it happens about twenty percent of the time, and with a head injury like his, we like to keep an eye out for it. Unless...” He glanced surreptitiously at Cooper. “Unless there’s some urgent reason for Mr. Ridley to get back on the road as soon as possible?”
“No,” Gretchen said firmly. Even if she’d been traveling with a prisoner who did ring the alarm bells in her head, she still wouldn’t have used that fear to justify endangering Keith’s health. She felt bad enough about him getting hurt in the first place. “My chief is on his way here, and we’ll work out what to do next. If you don’t mind us staying camped out here a little while longer...”
The answer to that came with a little bit of hemming and hawing, but the gist of it seemed to be that the hospital didn’t care what they did, as long as they, to quote Gretchen’s Nana Miller, didn’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses. Or in the halls and frighten the patients. The nurse zipped off then to attend to other matters.
Like clockwork, Cooper straightened up again, some of the tension easing out of his face.
He must spend so much time on guard against other people’s perceptions of him—and so much time twisting himself into knots to try to put them at ease.
She was glad he didn’t do that with her. But he didn’t have to. She had never been afraid of him, and she never would be afraid of him.
Because he’s innocent. I know it.
She couldn’t explain that belief yet, not even to herself. And she had no clue what to do about it.
Well, that made this problem fit in with all the other problems she’d had today, at least.
“This is all my fault,” she said.
Cooper gave her a crooked, charming half-smile. “Huh. You managed to drive that car and ours at the same time? You rear-ended us and then started shooting?”
That drew a soft laugh out of her. “Okay, maybe it’s not all my fault. But some of it is.”
He was just looking at her then, waiting to hear what she meant; his cool, clear eyes completely attentive.
Almost transfixed. Captured.
Gretchen had been loved her whole life, by her family and her friends, but she didn’t know that anyone had ever looked at her like that before, like she wasn’t just the center of their attention but the center of their whole world.
It was almost too much for her to stand.
But the little voice—the one that she had, until today, thought she’d lost for good—said incredulously, Too much for you to stand? This is what we were meant for! Screw moderation! Let’s have some excess here. Let’s go to the extremes we’ve been hiding from our whole life.
Cooper would definitely be an extreme. And he would be a very, very risky indulgence, even if she only indulged in the privacy of her own thoughts. She couldn’t afford that. With an inner sigh of reluctance, she twisted down some invisible volume knob, silencing the voice once more.
“The black car,” she said. Talking about professional matters. Because she was a professional.
Cooper nodded. “You said the car you saw at the gas station was the same one that rear-ended us. I believe you.”
“Even though the color was different?”
“If I saw a chameleon in two places, its colors would be different too,” Cooper pointed out. “And if I didn’t know how chameleons worked, I’d think it was impossible for it to be the same thing. And actually, I don’t know how chameleons work, I just trust all the biologists who figured it out. And I trust you more than a lot of biologists I’ve never met.”
It was the sweetest, strangest declaration of trust she’d ever heard, and she loved it.
It seemed like it was a lot easier for him to trust her than it was for her to trust