Free Kill Me Again by MAGGIE SHAYNE

there. If this man were anyone else— anyone else besides Aaron Westhaven—she would tell him to take a hike, and then she would deal with her own problems on her own terms. But this was Aaron Westhaven. And she wanted to trust him. “I don’t know,” she said softly.
    â€œI just saved your life,” he reminded her. “Remember?”
    She pressed her lips tight and sighed.
    â€œGo pack a bag, okay?”
    â€œOkay,” she said, conceding. She started to get up, then hesitated. “Aaron?”
    â€œYeah?” He was petting the dog again, watching his face, maybe counting his breaths. As if he really cared.And that, all by itself, was telling her just about all she needed to know about the man. When Freddy lifted a paw weakly and then placed it on top of Aaron’s knee, it told her even more.
    But Aaron was looking at her, awaiting her question. So she asked it. “How do you suppose you learned how to fight like that? Or…how to handle that gun the way you did? I mean, you took it apart as if you really knew what you were doing.”
    He nodded. “I know. I’ve been wondering about that myself. It sure doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a reclusive writer would be all that good at, does it?”
    â€œNo,” she said softly. “No, it really doesn’t.”
    Â 
    Aaron knew a handful of things as he watched her head into the bedroom to pack her bag. He knew that he had come to this town to see her. He had no doubt about that. That knowledge had become more and more fixed in his mind, and he considered the fact that he’d had her business card proof positive of it.
    He knew another thing, too—though this one with far less certainty. He damn well didn’t think he was this reclusive writer she seemed so convinced he was. He wasn’t gentle or sensitive or lonely or any of those things she thought about him. And if he had created a character who was all those things, he sure as hell wouldn’t have named him Harvey Trudeau.
    He was pretty sure he had killed. He knew someone had tried to kill him. Maybe deservedly so. Maybe not.But he felt with everything in him that this woman—this mild-mannered, dog-loving, unknowingly gorgeous, buttoned-up, wary-as-hell English professor—was the key to his past.
    He had to stay close to her until he figured the rest out. So he would help her with her little problem on the way to helping himself with his own.
    And if it took letting her believe he was an eccentric bestselling author, then he would let her believe it. He wasn’t even altogether sure she was wrong, but it sure felt like a lie.
    Another thing was bugging him while she packed a little overnight bag, too. He was attracted to her. In a big way. It had surprised him to acknowledge that, because he hadn’t thought that a man in his condition would have much hope of focusing on anything else besides his own dire straits. And yet he’d felt the attraction growing in him since she’d walked into his hospital room.
    But his instinct—that tiny voice he somehow knew he had to trust—told him that beginning even a mild flirtation with her would be a huge mistake. He would need to keep that in mind and himself in check.
    He sat back, and finally relaxed his mind. A part of him wondered how he could trust any of the conclusions he’d been reaching. None of them were based on knowledge, because everything he knew was hidden from him. He was basing everything on gut feelings. On instinct. On intuition.
    It was a scary way to deal with a life-and-death situation.
    And yet it was all he had.

5
    O livia packed her only two pairs of jeans into an overnight bag, along with a few other essentials, all the while telling herself it was insane to take off in the dead of night with a stranger.
    But it wasn’t insane. It might have been for anyone else. But not for her. For sixteen years she’d been living with the