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understand it.
    He didn’t intend to explain.
    Let her think that it was because he had been a witness to such an awful accident, or because he could have died when the car blew up.
    “Good morning,” she said gravely, handing him a glass and a couple of aspirin.
    He looked at her, arching a brow.
    “Trust me,” she said. “They work for a hangover.” She shrugged. “And no, I don’t spend my life fighting hangovers. A lot of people thought I’d wind up on drugs or alcohol after the kidnapping, and this was a tip my doctor gave me.”
    “Thanks,” he said briefly, swallowing the pills with the glass of water she’d provided.
    He didn’t really want to look at Gen. He felt too much like the dregs of humanity to want to face her.
    There wasn’t anything not to like about her, of course. Genetics had made her beautiful—Eileen, at forty-plus could still turn heads. Gen had the same perfect features, perfect skin and more-than-perfect build. She had rich auburn hair that looked more lustrous than silk and more wicked than sin. And her eyes…
    Just saying they were blue didn’t do them justice. They were the blue of the infinite sky, the blue of the deepest sea. Blue that could hint at darkness, blue that spoke of wisdom, even though she was only twenty-odd years old.
    They were eyes that had seen a lot. The child of privilege, she had wanted to help those who hadn’t been born with silver spoons in their mouths. She hadn’t jetted around the globe, hobnobbing with the rich and useless. She had gone to school, gotten a degree and gone into social work.
    She had survived for weeks in the underground lair of a psychotic killer.
    She was strong. She was…
    She was alive because Leslie had taken the bullet meant for her.
    He pushed that thought from his mind. Genevieve sure as hell hadn’t wanted that to happen, and he knew it. And Leslie had been gone nearly a year now. He liked to think that she was back with Matt, at last, but he didn’t really believe it. He could have sworn that he had once seen them together on a little rise in the cemetery where they were both buried.
    Again, Freud would have helped him out.
    He had seen them there because he wanted to see them there.
    “You should feel better soon,” Gen told him, breaking into his morose thoughts.
    Better than he deserved, she might have said.
    But of course, she didn’t.
    He leaned back, studying her. She was already up and showered, smelling both fresh and subtly exotic, rich tendrils of her amazing hair curling over the casual black sweater she was wearing over jeans. He noticed her hands—delicate, refined, manicured, but not fussily so; she kept her nails filed and polished, but at a reasonable length. And she wasn’t encrusted with jewels; she wore a simple claddagh ring on her left middle finger, gold studs in her ears and a plain cross around her neck.
    She could easily have covered herself in furs and diamonds. Instead, she didn’t even buy designer sunglasses; he knew because she had laughingly told him once that she seemed to lose a pair a week, so it made sense to buy them off the street vendors.
    And in fact, she knew the streets.
    Once upon a time she hadn’t been regularly recognized. Despite her family’s wealth, she’d kept far from the public eye and worked for a pittance helping to get prostitutes off the streets.
    What the hell was not to like about her? he asked himself silently, wondering why the question left him feeling so irritable.
    “I’m all right,” he said gruffly.
    She grinned, looking away. “Right. Real men don’t get loaded on too much beer.”
    He groaned aloud and started to rise.
    “Hey, I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Look, I know that what you saw must have been really terrible. I can’t even imagine,” she assured him.
    Couldn’t she? he wondered.
    Dead was dead.
    Did it matter if death came with gallons of blood, mangled steel and mangled flesh? Or a neat little bullet hole that left a