“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled and gave her a two-fingered salute. “Aren’t you eating, too?”
Leah shook her head. “I ate earlier,” she lied. Truth was, she was far too nervous and her emotions in too much chaos to eat, even if she wanted to.
Before Leah had finished even half her juice, Hunter had polished off every bite of food on his plate.
“That was the best meal I’ve had in a long time,” he told her. “From the bottom of my heart and my stomach, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she responded with a smile. “When was the last time you ate?”
“That obvious, huh?” But instead of answering her question, Hunter shoved the plate aside and wrapped his hands around his coffee cup. “Please understand that I’m just trying to figure things out, trying to understand what happened to me and why.”
Leah nodded and in spite of her earlier apprehension, sympathy welled up inside her. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
For several seconds he stared at her, then, as if he’d come to some kind of decision, he began. “When I came out of the coma, I was placed in rehab. My right leg had been badly broken in the accident, and it was almost six weeks before I could walk again without assistance.”
He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Once I could walk,” he continued, “I was placed in a private room. I was still pretty weak, and at first, I didn’t think about it too much. I mean a John Doe, a charity case, being placed in a private room,” he clarified. “I was just grateful that I didn’t have to share the room with anyone else.” He frowned. “Later, I realized that I was never allowed to go anywhere outside of my room without an orderly accompanying me.
“Anyway—” He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “As I felt stronger, I began to feel antsy. I was ready to get out of there so I could find out who I was—find out about my life. But each time I asked the doctor about being discharged, he always came up with an excuse as to why I wasn’t ready. Well, I got enough of that real fast and decided to simply leave.
“Since all I had to wear was a hospital gown, I talked an orderly into getting me some scrubs, and—” Hunter shook his head. “A lot of good that did me. I only got as far as the hospital exit door before they caught me. Before I knew what hit me, one of the nurses popped me with a shot and the lights went out. When I woke up, I was back in my bed with restraints on my wrists and ankles. The scrubs were gone, and I was in a hospital gown again.”
Unbidden outrage and anger at the treatment that he’d received welled within Leah. “Didn’t anyone bother trying to explain?”
Hunter shook his head. “No matter how many times I asked, no one would tell me what was going on, and each time I raised hell, they drugged me. It didn’t take me long to figure out that if I ever hoped to leave that place, I was going to have to play along. I’d have to pretend that I was cooperating. After about a week, they finally removed the restraints and began giving me the sedatives by mouth.”
Restraints…sedatives… Leah frowned, not liking what she was hearing. Until she knew more though, she figured that humoring him would be the best thing to do for now. “So, just how did you escape?” she asked.
“The last couple of nights I was there, I pretended to swallow my pill, and as soon as the nurse left, I spit it out. As long as they thought I was drugged they didn’t watch me as close.”
Hunter paused. He’d seen the fear in her eyes earlier, and since the last thing he wanted was to scare her again, he decided against telling her about the guard outside his door. He’d caught the man half-asleep, and before the guard had realized what hit him, he’d knocked the man unconscious and dragged him into the bathroom out of sight. He’d debated on whether to take the guard’s uniform, but one look at the short skinny man and he’d known that there was no way he could squeeze into the clothes.
“I found some clean scrubs on an unattended utility cart down the hall from my room,” he continued. “With the scrubs on—” He shrugged. “No one paid me any attention. The only door that wasn’t locked was at the emergency-room entrance. Once I found that, I walked right out.”
When Leah shifted in her chair, he could tell she was unsure of how to react to what he’d told her, and he wondered if she would catch his discrepancy about the clothes, specifically the shoes, the one thing he’d glossed over.
As Leah stared into her glass of juice, she tried to digest everything that Hunter had just told her. Everything he’d said, the restraints, the sedatives, all of it only served to confirm her suspicions about him being held in the hospital mental ward. There were also huge discrepancies in his story about escaping. Mental wards had locked doors, and patients didn’t just wander around at will. He wasn’t telling her everything, and every instinct within cried foul. Something just didn’t add up.
“You’re right about one thing,” she finally said, looking up at him. “We do need to find out more about what happened to you and why.” And I need a little time to do some checking around, she added silently. If she could determine exactly which hospital in Orlando had treated him, then maybe she could get some answers. But first she had to figure out how to do so without Hunter knowing that she was checking up on his story.
When Hunter reached up to cover a yawn, Leah figured she’d been handed the perfect opportunity.
“For right now though,” she told him as she stood, “in my professional opinion, I think what you need even more is rest.” She picked up his plate and juice glass. “If you’d like, you can take a nap on that bed in the first bedroom down the hall. Then, when you’ve rested some, we can figure out where to go from here.”
Hunter yawned again. She was right about him needing rest, and the fact that she’d said “we” was certainly encouraging. Did he dare hope that she believed him?
“I am tired,” he admitted. Tired didn’t begin to explain how drained and exhausted he felt, and since he had no money, nowhere else to go and no one else he could trust for the time being… “Maybe just a short nap—if you’re sure that’s okay?”
Leah nodded. “That’s more than okay with me.” She walked over to the cabinet, where she paused. “Tell you what though,” she said. “Why don’t you nap in the bedroom at the end of the hall, instead of the front bedroom? It’s a lot quieter back there. Less street noise.”
There would also be less chance of him overhearing any phone conversations she had. She placed the dirty dishes in the sink, then motioned toward the hall door. “We’ll talk more after you’ve rested.”
Once Hunter had disappeared around the hall doorway, at the last minute, Leah remembered that she hadn’t yet made up her bed that morning. Too bad, she finally decided. As he’d said, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Leah frowned as she wiped off the table. But Hunter wasn’t a beggar, not by a long shot. She transferred the dishes in the sink to the dishwasher. He was her husband, and from the looks of him, he wouldn’t care if there were clean sheets on the bed.
Glancing around the kitchen, Leah began what she’d always called busywork. Wiping the stovetop, the counter, and cleaning the glass front of the oven and microwave. She wanted to give him plenty of time to get to sleep before she began making phone calls.
When Hunter entered the bedroom at the end of the hallway, he immediately realized that it belonged to Leah. For one thing, the bed was unmade.
As he stood, staring at the sheets, just the thought of climbing into the bed that she’d slept in did funny things to his libido. Surely he wouldn’t be feeling this way unless there was a good reason, which, in turn, made him more certain than ever that she hadn’t been exactly truthful about their so-called friendship.
Then, another thought occurred to him. If she’d been untruthful about their relationship, she could be lying about other things as well. What if she