decisions weighing heavily on her shoulders. She chanced a glance up to his face and through the dim light coming from a crack in the curtains saw his eyes were closed, yet he continued to stroke her hair and her neck, to run his hand down her arm in a soft, gentle motion that was so at odds with the way he’d treated her over the past few hours, it confused her. Way more than thinking he wanted to use sex to punish her.
She finally couldn’t stand it anymore. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“Momentary lapse in judgment,” he mumbled.
There was humor in his voice, and dammit, it made her smile.
“Besides,” he went on, “I figure if you don’t get to sleep, then I don’t get to sleep, and it’ll be bad news all around if we’re both bleary-eyed in the morning.”
What he didn’t say, and what tugged on her heart, was that this was how she’d often fallen asleep with him in Cairo. Snuggled up tight and warm. Usually after making love, but not always. When she’d been stressed or antsy about her job, when things hadn’t been going well between them, being in his arms had always calmed her. And he remembered.
Kat looked down at his bare skin. Watched the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. Thought about the events of the day. There was no reason for him to come back for her in the park, but he had. He could have walked away after they lost their tail in the city, but he hadn’t. He didn’t have to be holding her now, but he was.
And then out of nowhere, she remembered the flowers. Big bouquets of lilies and roses and spears of white freesia. And him.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“ ‘s okay,” he mumbled in that sleepy, sexy voice. “Long as you stop tossing. I’m good.”
She smiled in the dark. “No. Not for that. Though thank you for that, too.” She sobered. “I meant thank you for the flowers.”
His hand stilled in her hair, and his chest rose and fell a few more times. She knew he was dozing off, but that was okay.
“Flowers?” he asked in a slur out of nowhere, as if his brain had finally caught up with the conversation and didn’t want to give up to sleep yet. “What flowers?”
“The ones you sent to my mother’s funeral.”
Silence. Then, “You were there?”
A pang of regret snaked through her, and she closed her eyes. Her adoptive mother had been a nurse for over thirty years and healthy as an ox. Kat had never thought someone as strong as Jane Meyer could fall to something as ordinary as a heart attack. Or as fast.
She should have been with her mother the day she’d collapsed, not hiding in upstate New York like a scared rat. Maybe she would have gotten Jane to the hospital in time. Maybe the doctors would have been able to revive her. Maybe she’d still be here now.
Tears stung Kat’s eyes, but she forced them back. Regrets. Yeah. She had them. She had enough to last a lifetime and then some.
“No. Not for the service,” she managed. “But I was there before. At the funeral home when no one was around. I saw them then. They were beautiful.”
Silence hung between them like a steel barrier, and then he said softly, “I didn’t see you.”
Her heart bumped. He’d been there?
“It was a nice service. You…you would have liked it.”
Kat’s chest squeezed tight, and her throat grew thick. In the quiet she didn’t know what to say. And she was thankful when he went on and she didn’t have to say anything.
“There were a lot of people. Standing room only. Your mother had a lot of friends. I think the whole staff of the hospital was there. Big gray-haired guy—Dr. Carter?—spoke about the first time she brought you in with her on one of her shifts. Scrawny ten-year-old with a heap of attitude, that was what he remembered about you. He thought for sure she was making a mistake by adopting a kid who’d been through so many foster homes and in and out of that orphanage. And when she made you sit at the nurses’ station all night with a history book to read while she worked, he told her that was cruel and unusual punishment, even for her, and that you’d turn out to be the worst kid ever.”
Kat smiled as she listened. Remembered back. At the time she’d