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  Evan’s chest tightened and it had nothing to do with the surgery. He had to tell her. “It’s gone, Rowen.”

  She looked confused at first, but then her eyes rounded in disbelief. She looked up at the lights. “They don’t hurt your eyes.” Not a question…she’d just made the connection.

  “Not at all.”

  “Your hearing is…normal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my, God!” She bent down and kissed him right on the mouth. She drew back just far enough to look into his eyes again. “I swear, Hunter, I don’t care what I said a minute ago. If you leave me again, I’ll kill you.”

  He laughed, the tenderness in his chest made him regret it. “Let me recover from this injury before you go threatening me, Detective.”

  She shoved her hair behind her ears, her fingers smoothing the silky strands, making him wish he could do the same. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying. This has been…” She moistened her lips, searched for the right words.

  “A long, long nightmare,” he finished for her.

  She nodded. “Too long.”

  He turned his palm up and waited for her to take his hand. He didn’t have the strength to reach out to her the way he wanted to, but he needed a connection. “I didn’t want to drag you into hell with me,” he confessed. “That’s why I didn’t come back. I lied to you before.”

  She stared at their joined hands for a time. “You know Koppel or McGill, whoever the hell he is, probably had something to do with what happened to your team—to get the last of the Gateway investigators out of the way.”

  “Probably.”

  She shrugged, exhaustion sagging her delicate shoulders. “Maybe he’ll fess up to save his hide and then we’ll know what really happened.” A sigh whispered out of her. “I keep thinking about all those people he was keeping on that island and all the others he sold into slavery.”

  “Getting to the bottom of all he’s done is the Bureau’s job,” Evan assured her. “They’ll find a way to track down his client list.”

  Rowen nodded. She fidgeted with the sheet a moment. “Agent Braham is already on it. He stopped in to check on you a few hours ago. So getting back to us, does this confession of yours mean that since you appear to be well, there’s room for an us in your future?”

  He squeezed her hand as best he could. “If you’ll have me.”

  “You saved my life—it’s the least I can do,” she teased. And then she leaned down and brushed her lips across his. The sweet sensation trembled through him the way it was meant to. God, how he’d missed her.

  “As soon as I’m out of here,” he said between her soft kisses, “we’ll have to make sure the rest of me is still in working order.”

  She smiled. “What kind of detective would I be if I didn’t follow up on your case to the fullest extent possible? The investigation might even require house arrest…and I know just the place.”

  Listening to her voice and watching her expressions with no barriers between them and without pain was more than he could have hoped for. Fate had given him a second chance, or perhaps it was a miracle. Whatever it was, he would not waste it, not a single second.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7179-5

  URBAN SENSATION

  Copyright © 2005 by Debra Webb

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