Charity For Nothing: The Virtues Book III by A.J. Downey Page B

when I saw Nothing standing at the bottom, sunglasses perched on his head, a fresh bruise on his cheek up near his eye. The bottom of my heart dropped out and I felt a swirl of guilt which I tried valiantly to beat back down with my quickly evaporating anger.
    I had a problem staying angry at someone when they were hurt. All I wanted to do when I saw hurt was fix it, so that it didn’t hurt anymore. I’m sure some psychologist would have a field day with me and my fucked up family issues and drawing inference on just why I became a nurse in the first place, but I didn’t have time for all of that.
    “Anyone know where Charity is?” Nothing asked, and my heart gave a leap for a totally different reason. I swallowed hard, and licked suddenly dry lips even as Cutter raised his eyebrows at me.
    “Right here,” I forced out and hated how soft and fragile it sounded. I felt like a rabbit that’d been caught by human arms; its little heart going a mile a minute, trapped in place when all it wanted to do was run.
    He turned, those solemn gray eyes taking me in from my feet, all the way to the top of my head as I forced my feet to move down the last couple of steps to stand on the final, cream carpeted riser, before I met him even on the golden hardwood.
    He turned and approached me, going down on his knees and looking up; I think my heart froze solid in my chest, skipping a beat, when his eyes met mine. Then he started to speak:
    “I apologize, I was an ass and there’s no excuse for it. I’m sorry I scared you, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, and I’m sorry that I made you cry.” He swallowed and added almost as an afterthought, “That’s not me, that’s never been me, and I don’t know what my fucking problem is.”
    I let out the breath I’d been holding and the part of me that wished to remain angry with him snapped that this was all well and good, but it was obvious his club made him apologize… still, the softer, more forgiving side of me chimed in with, yes, but the words were all his.
    I touched the side of his face gently, and he let me, palpitating around the bruise and swelling with the pad of my thumb. He winced, and flinched and I sighed.
    “Come into the kitchen with me, we’d best get some ice on this before it swells much worse,” I murmured. If he read between the lines, then he would know I’d just accepted his apology, but the part of me that was entirely Hope’s little sister couldn’t let him slide through completely unscathed. Let’s see how he liked having his head fooled with on something important.
    He did something entirely unexpected then. He palmed my hand that I’d been about to take back and turned his face, planting gentle lips against my fingertips. Well damn, guess he knew he’d been forgiven and I was a little bit perturbed with myself that I’d let him get away with it that easy.
    “Sure, ladies first,” he said and got up onto his booted feet, moving aside for me to go past him. He trailed me into the kitchen and sat down at the large, glass, dining room table. I went to the refrigerator which was still working. Cutter, in addition to state of the art storm shutters, had backup generators to run the house when the power went down.
    I put ice into a kitchen towel and brought it to him, he accepted it with a grateful nod, and put it against his face. While he did that, I captured the hand I’d done this for only hours ago and looked at the knuckle. He’d lost a gash of skin and it was bruised, but the swelling had gone down considerably.
    “You’ll live,” I said, releasing his hand and he looked up at me, palming my hip and giving it a squeeze, a strangely casual touch given all that’d occurred in such a short amount of time.
    “Thanks,” he said.
    “You’re welcome,” I murmured and moved away from him and back out to the foyer. Cutter and Marlin looked at me quizzically and I nodded carefully.
    “I’d like, very much, to just forget it if we