A dull pain below his knee and an insistent beep-beep-beep pulled Matt from a restless afternoon nap. Opening his eyes, he squinted for a moment into the bright overhead fluorescent light before turning – carefully, to avoid jarring his injured leg – onto his side to glare at the IV pump, which was empty. And beeping. Again.

Sighing, he punched the call button on his bedside remote and glanced at the clock on the far wall. Four-thirty. He had been in the hospital now for roughly thirty-two hours, and while it was definitely an improvement over being threatened, punched, and shot, he had to admit it was also more than a little boring.

It didn't help matters that he hadn't yet been allowed access to a computer. Thirty-two hours and counting since he had been online, when it was, after all, in large part thanks to him, Matt Farrell, that "online" even still existed. Apparently whatever "word" McClane had promised to put in for him with the FBI's cyberterrorism division had not persuaded them that Matt's role in Thomas Gabriel's firesale was absolutely, incontrovertibly innocent, or else he would have been permitted a computer.

Beep-beep-beep. Matt glared at the IV pump and considered shutting it off. He didn't really need the morphine anymore. The doctors said the bullet had exited cleanly through his calf muscle without much damage to the bone; apparently, the sideways-downward angle of Gabriel's bullet had spared Matt's kneecap, although Matt was sure that had been entirely unintentional on Gabriel's part. In fact, once he finished his next round of IV antibiotics to prevent infection, Matt was planning to go home.

Perhaps a bit of a problem, considering "home" had been blown to bits, but hey.

The door to his hospital room creaked open. Expecting the nurse, Matt immediately launched into a litany of complaints: "Listen, this IV thing is out again, and it's really like ridiculously cold in here, and is there any way I could get something besides pudding – "

"You're not a fan of hospital pudding?" The pretty, slender girl with long, reddish-brown hair placed a hand on her hip and grinned mischievously at Matt from the doorway. "And here I had you figured for a Jell-O kind of guy."

"Lucy." Matt's mouth had gone inexplicably dry. He pushed himself up straighter in the bed and used the remote to raise the head so he was in a sitting position. As she came into the room, looking impossibly pretty in a yellow strapless sundress, he self-consciously tugged the blankets up higher around his waist; the thin pajama bottoms the hospital had provided didn't leave much to the imagination.

With her typical self-assurance, Lucy came right over and perched on the edge of Matt's bed, settling easily in consideration of his injured leg. "Dad said you're going to be okay?"

"Uh, yeah." Hearing McClane referred to as "dad" sounded odd to Matt's ears. "Sir" or "detective" or "hard ass" were so much more fitting. "Yeah, the doctors said it wasn't bad, for a gunshot wound. I just have to stay off my leg for like two weeks and then see some kind of therapist. For my leg," he added quickly, lest Lucy think he was some kind of weakling who needed psychiatric help over their ordeal.

Not that he wasn't going to seek out some serious counseling. He would probably require massive amounts of Prozac to ever function normally again in society. But Lucy didn't need to know that.

"That's good. I'm glad." Lucy lifted her hair to one side, proudly displaying a round bruise on her cheekbone. "That's my big war wound. Not as glamorous as a gunshot wound, huh?"

Remembering those awful minutes when one of Gabriel's henchman had pressed a gun to Lucy's head, Matt barely suppressed a shudder. "I think your dad got the worst of it," he said, aiming for glib and falling a little short.

"Yeah, well, it's not the first time. You should hear some of the stories my mom tells. It's like Vietnam with my dad as the whole army."

They grinned at one another. Matt looked away first, feeling shy under her gaze. He didn't spend a lot of time around girls – okay, he didn't spend any time around girls, unless they happened to be hackers, and then they were generally so much tougher than he was that he didn't think of them as "girls." He certainly hadn't been the object of attention for a girl as beautiful and confident and charming as Lucy Gennero-McClane, and it made him feel like a tongue-tied sophomore.

Say something cool! She came to visit you. She thinks you're a hero. Be witty!

A rather awkward silence descended. Matt cast around desperately for something, anything, to say, and nearly jumped out of his skin when the IV pump beeped again.

"Do I need to get a nurse?" Lucy frowned in concern at the tube snaking into Matt's arm.

"No. I mean, I called them already. They're kind of slow." Matt reached over and flicked the pump off, thankful Lucy didn't seem to have noticed how jumpy he was. "So, are you, uh, still here in the hospital?"

Lucy shook her head. "They didn't even admit me. I came to see Dad. And then I wanted to come say thank you, to you, for saving my life."

Matt felt himself blush fiercely. Dropping his chin, he studied the weaved pattern on his blankets as if it were the most interesting thing he'd ever seen. "It was no big deal. Anybody would've done – "

"Matt?"

"Yeah?" He looked up expectantly and was startled to find Lucy staring rather pointedly – and, he had to admit, suggestively – at his mouth.

"I haven't thanked you yet."

"Oh." He wasn't sure if his blush had deepened or his blood pressure had suddenly dropped, but Matt felt a strange tingling sensation in the top his head as Lucy shifted toward him. He couldn't believe this: The most beautiful girl he'd ever seen in real life was actually going to kiss him, really kiss him from the look in her eyes…

He didn't have much time to ponder the situation, however, before her lips settled ever so softly against his. Her nose brushed his cheek; her skin was soft, smelling faintly of coconuts – maybe suntan lotion? or baby oil? – and her lips warm, full, gentle. It took him a moment to recover from the shock to return the kiss, his own lips hesitant, unsure of whether she intended this to be a real Kiss or a thank-you kiss, maybe even a pity kiss because he was so obviously a nerd who didn't have a chance with a girl like her. But at the slightest invitation, Lucy pressed harder, dispelling all Matt's doubts about what she intended.

Head spinning, Matt slipped his hands into Lucy's baby-soft hair, tugging her closer. Her palms splayed across the front of his chest; he knew she could feel his heart hammering, only he found it difficult to care with the sweet scent and taste of her filling his senses. He felt like he was drowning in her, and it was a wonderful, intoxicating sensation, a euphoria even beyond surviving the near-death experiences of the past two days.

"Mr. Farrell."

Matt and Lucy jumped guiltily apart. For one awful moment, Matt thought he was going to find John McClane standing at the foot of his bed with a gun pointed at his head. Then he remembered that McClane was on the same floor, in a different hospital bed, recovering from his own wounds. Instead, a bemused male nurse stood grinning at the couple, a new IV bag in hand.

"Sorry to interrupt," the nurse continued, looking anything but. Lucy smiled at Matt and rested her forehead against his cheek while the nurse deftly changed the IV. "This is the last round of antibiotics. Then we'll be getting your discharge paperwork together. Mmkay?"

Wishing he could wipe the smart-ass grin off the nurse's face, Matt responded with a curt, "Great. And great timing too, asshole," he muttered as the door closed behind the man.

Lucy laughed. Matt found himself strangely unable to look her directly in the eye; she didn't seem to notice. Settling back into her original position on the edge of the bed, she asked, "Where're you going to go when they discharge you?"

"Um, well, the way some of those FBI guys were acting, I think federal prison isn't out of the question."

"No way." Lucy shook her head vehemently. "Dad says they know you didn't have anything to do with Gabriel's plan. You were tricked, just like everyone else."

Matt didn't say anything. In the strictest sense, what Lucy said was true: He hadn't known he was working for terrorists, certainly not on a plot as big as what Gabriel had in mind, and he would have refused if he had known the truth. Still, in a larger sense, Matt had suspected what he was being asked to do wasn't entirely legal. Something about the code he had been asked to write had unsettled him; although the facts of what his supposed employer told him had been true, the deal had felt wrong. He hadn't even been that surprised when McClane showed up at his door that first night – Christ, had it really been less than four days ago? – because he couldn't shake the feeling that something was off.

"Matt? You never answered my question." Lucy was regarding him curiously. "Dad said they blew up your apartment. Do you have family coming or something?"

Family. Matt forced his most nonchalant expression. "Oh, my parents died a really long time ago, so, it's pretty much just me."

"That's…horrible." Lucy tucked her hair behind her ear. She looked so pretty Matt felt light-headed again. "I'm so sorry." She hesitated. "What about friends? Or your girlfriend?"

"Well, I feel like a big loser admitting this to you, but pretty much everybody I could call my 'friends' I know by screennames. I wouldn't recognize them if they walked through that door. So I doubt any of them are going to offer up their couches. And I don't have a girlfriend," he added, returning her smile. "It's no big deal. I'll go to a hotel or something. Hey, maybe the FBI will put me up in a safe house."

Lucy shook her head. "No way. No hotels, and no safe houses. You'll come stay with us."

"Us?" Matt's mouth had gone dry again. "As in like 'you' us, or your grandparents us, or…?"

"My mom. And me," Lucy explained. She was suddenly no-nonsense, the take-no-prisoners, don't-except-no-for-an-answer Lucy he had first encountered at Woodlawn. "Dad's being released tomorrow or the next day, and Mom says he has to come stay with us for a while until he recovers, and she said you should come, too, if you didn't have other plans."

Stay with John McClane and family. And Lucy. Matt had a brief, hilarious vision of himself and McClane playing checkers and sipping iced tea on the back porch of a big suburban home, his leg swaddled in bandages and McClane's arm in a sling. Somehow, he couldn't quite picture McClane as an invalid, even for a few days' time.

"How does your dad feel about this?" he asked.

Already moving to the closet where Matt's clothes – neatly laundered by the hospital staff – were folded, Lucy said over her shoulder, "Fine. He really likes you, you know."

You tell me, kid. You're the criminal. Matt winced at the remembrance of McClane's words, which weren't that far from the truth. He had been a criminal, at one time. Not a dangerous one; a stupid one. A stupid, bored eighteen-year-old with nobody to correct him (an endless string of ever-changing foster parents did not constitute a corrective force in Matt's experience) and way too much intelligence and computational aptitude. He had fallen into the hacker lifestyle with the same ease some kids turned to drugs or guns or gangs. A particularly splendid hack on a nationwide bank's online customer bill-pay system had earned him two years' probation, got him tossed out of state college, and landed him on the FBI's cyberterrorist list. Six years had made a lot of difference in his life: Matt's freelance computer work was lucrative but legal, yet somehow, he couldn't escape the nagging fear that underneath it all, he remained a criminal who simply didn't need to commit crimes at the moment.

"So you'll be ready to go in, what, a couple of hours?" Lucy had stowed Matt's clothes inside his battered black messenger bag – the one that had held his computer, before the FBI seized it as evidence. Matt doubted he would ever see that piece of hardware again; they would probably burn it, along with every other scrap of evidence connecting the government to Thomas Gabriel. "I'll come back and pick you up. It'll be great."

Matt couldn't help feeling overwhelmed. He had lived the majority of his life alone or at least fending for himself; now here was a gorgeous girl with a father he would have proudly called his own (and he could imagine how McClane would loooove that) offering him a place of warmth and comfort in what he could only imagine was her amazing life. He ran his hands through his hair, stalling. "You're sure this is okay with your dad?"

"You look really sexy when you do that."

Matt blushed instantly. "Sexy" was not how he was used to being described. "Really? Well, these are pretty stylish PJs," he joked, plucking the paper-thin white tee-shirt away from his chest. "And then there's the whole body-odor issue. All I've had is like a sponge bath in three days. I'm sure I smell wonderful."

Dropping his bag in a chair, Lucy crossed the room, leaned over, and kissed him so firmly on the mouth Matt lost his breath. Before he could respond, she pulled away and said softly, "I don't care what you're wearing or how badly you need a shower. You're my hero. Got it?"

He managed to nod mutely.

"Good." Lucy turned on her heel and snatched up his bag again. "And yes, it is perfectly okay with Daddy for you to stay with us, but if you don't believe me, he's in Room 221, just across the hall. Go ask him."

"Okay. I believe you," Matt conceded, although he wasn't entirely sure he did. It seemed within Lucy's character for her to insist that he stay with them, and in McClane's for him not to be able to say no to his daughter. "But, uh, maybe we shouldn't spring this whole I'm your hero thing on him right now. Or the kissing thing."

"Don't worry. I'm pretty sure he already knows."

"You are? He does?" Matt suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable. Where was he supposed to go if McClane came charging into the room with guns blazing? The guy had taken out a helicopter with a car, for fuck's sake – what was a scrawny kid with a crush on his daughter compared to that?

From the doorway, Lucy blew him a kiss. "See you soon. It's going to be great."

Just over four hours later, as the sun was sinking in a blazing July sky, Lucy helped Matt out of the car in front of her mother's house. Matt had to admit he was impressed by the Gennero homestead: Whatever Holly did, it had to pay better than being a New York cop, because she lived in a gorgeous three-storey, white-columned home inside a gated community.

An attractive red-haired woman he took to be Holly hurried out the front door to meet them. The doctors had provided Matt with a cane; he was supposed to put as little weight on his injured leg as possible, and to walk only so much as it took to get from the bed to the bathroom and back. Mounting the four steps to the Genneros' front door seemed like an insurmountable challenge, although Matt refused to complain in front of Lucy and lose his new-found hero status, but without waiting for him to ask Holly seized his arm in a surprisingly firm grip and steered him up the steps.

"Guess you're used to guys coming home shot up," Matt commented.

Holly grinned. "You have no idea." To Lucy, she instructed, "Put his things in the guest room downstairs and get us some iced tea, sweetheart."

By the time Matt collapsed into a chair in the Genneros' well-appointed living room, he was exhausted. Lucy brought them all tall glasses of iced tea on a wooden tray; Matt was almost surprised that Holly didn't employ a maid, until he remembered that she had been married to McClane, who certainly wasn't the servant-employing type.

"So Matt," Holly, seated beside Lucy on the couch across from him, began, "Lucy tells me I have you to thank for saving her life. And John's."

Matt blushed again. He studied the thick-pile blue carpet intently. "Yeah, well, it was, you know, I just reacted. Like I'd never fired a gun before. Your hus- I mean, McClane did most of the saving."

"He tends to do that."

"And Lucy was pretty terrific herself," Matt added quickly, anxious to turn the subject away from his perceived heroics. The truth was, when he had grabbed that gun, he hadn't even been certain he could bring himself to pull the trigger. A sudden surge of adrenaline – the fear that if he didn't, Lucy and McClane would both be dead because of his cowardice – had given him the feeling of an out-of-body experience; he wasn't entirely clear on the details of how the gun had gotten into his hand, or how he had known to aim for the exposed parts of his enemy, or how he had managed not to shoot anybody else as he squeezed off what seemed like a dozen rounds. Not exactly hero stuff, in Matt's opinion.

Holly patted her daughter's leg affectionately. "Both of my children inherited their father's penchant for survival. That's very comforting."

Lucy rolled her eyes at Matt. "Mom's so modest. Do you know she survived two terrorist plots – one in this big sky-scraper, and one on an airplane?"

"Wow." Matt was duly impressed. "So this is like a family tradition, huh? Getting captured and shot at?"

"Well, life with John is nothing if not exciting," Holly remarked, with such obvious affection for her ex-husband that Matt wasn't sure how to respond. In his experience, divorced couples did not speak of one another lovingly – or offer to take care of one another after injuries, for that matter. He had a sneaking suspicion Holly and McClane's relationship was a lot more complicated than a divorce judgment would imply.

The telephone rang, and Holly moved off to the kitchen to answer it. Lucy came over and perched on the edge of Matt's chair, looking down at him with tender concern. "You look so tired," she observed, placing her hand over his. "Do you want to go lie down?"

More than anything. Show me the bed.

Not wanting to seem rude (or worse, weak), Matt shrugged. "In a minute, maybe." He glanced toward the kitchen where Holly had disappeared and could be heard talking quietly. "Your mom seems really cool."

"She is. She's an executive with an ad agency, and she makes an obscene amount of money." Lucy pointed to a series of glass and gilded plagues lining the far wall. "She's won all of these awards for creativity and management and stuff. I think it was when she started getting so successful that she and Dad really got into trouble."

Matt hated to pry, but curiosity got the better of him. "Have they been divorced long?"

"Yeah, since I was a kid. We – I mean, me and Mom and my brother – lived in LA for a long time, then we moved back here to New York when I was in high school. I didn't see Dad a lot growing up, actually. We talked on the phone a lot."

Carefully, not wanting to offend or bring up painful subjects, Matt pressed, "It seems like they get along okay."

"Oh, they're still crazy about one another." Lucy said this as if it were the most natural thing in the world for divorced parents to still have feelings for each other. "Mom said she just couldn't take not knowing if Dad was going to come home or not – he's always been like this, like he is now, always the guy who 'gets involved.' And Dad was so uncomfortable around Mom's executive friends. They used to fight about him going with her to parties and all that. So they decided to get divorced. But they love one another, you can tell."

"So did your mom give you her last name after the divorce?"

Lucy blushed. "No, my name has always been McClane. I was mad at my dad for a long time. You know, like until a couple of days ago?" Matt smiled with her. "I don't know. It's complicated. Dad is so…Dad, and he doesn't always respect my privacy, and I really missed him while we were in LA but he always seemed too involved with other people to come see us – "

Lucy stopped abruptly as Holly entered the room, smiling. "That was Jack," she announced. "I told him you and your father are fine. He's going to call the hospital to talk to John."

"Jack's my brother," Lucy explained to Matt. She nodded toward a series of family photos lined up on a beautiful oak cabinet across the room. Several showed a handsome young man with a strong resemblance to McClane wearing a Marine uniform and looking incredibly tough. "He joined up right out of high school. Dad threw a fit, but it's what Jack wanted, so they got over it. He's overseas now, in Afghanistan."

Matt couldn't help feeling inadequate next to the all-American hero that appeared to be Jack McClane. No wonder McClane had blanched at the idea of Matt having a crush on Lucy. The guy's son was a veritable GI Joe, and what was Matt? Some scrawny, wheezy little computer nerd who whined a lot. With a criminal record to boot.

And why does it bother me so much what McClane thinks of me? He's not my dad.

"Lucy, I think you should show Matt into his room and help him get settled," Holly was saying. "I've got this press party tonight I can't miss, but you kids'll be safe here. The alarm is set and John always makes sure the police do extra patrols," Holly remarked to Matt, who could well imagine the security measures McClane took for his ex-wife's house. "If you need anything, call me on my cell, okay, Luce?"

"You got it, Mom. Have fun." Lucy kissed her mom's cheek.

Holly helped Matt to his feet, discreetly steadying him when he swayed a bit from a wave of pain shooting through his injured leg. She hugged him quickly, whispering into his ear as she did so, "Stop being a tough guy and rest. Got it?"

Matt nodded. He couldn't help liking Holly: She was pretty and confident and no-nonsense, a lot like her daughter, but also really loving underneath, he could tell. He found himself basking in the glow of her maternal concern much the way he had basked in McClane's assertion that he was "that guy."

Fortunately, the downstairs guest room was not far from the living room, although it proved to be less of a "room" and more of a small apartment with an enormous bed, a television, a walk-in closet, a mini-fridge, and a huge bathroom with a Jacuzzi. Matt slowly hobbled his way inside and gratefully sank onto the soft mattress. He couldn't believe how tired he was, like he'd been out running a marathon instead of sitting on his butt for two days.

"You should take some pain medicine," Lucy instructed, opening the prescription of Demerol the doctor had sent home with them. She put two pills in Matt's hand and his iced tea on the bedside table. "Oh, Mom and I got you some new clothes," she went on, walking over and opening the closet. "Nothing big, just some jeans and stuff, since your apartment got trashed."

Matt swallowed the pills and leaned back on the fluffy pillows. "You guys didn't have to do that. I'll pay you back."

"Mom can afford it. And don't worry, I let her buy the embarrassing stuff like your underwear."

Matt laughed. "Good to know. I hope she figured me for a boxer guy."

Lucy opened the top dresser drawer and produced a pair of soft-looking black cotton pants and a plain white tee-shirt. "Pajamas," she explained, crossing to the bed, where Matt could already feel himself starting to drift. Apparently, Demerol was as wonderful as morphine at killing pain – and conscious thought. "Not as sexy as the hospital PJs, but they'll do."

"I'm so tired," he confessed. Each word seemed to take a long time to pronounce. "I think I'll just…sleep…in my clothes."

"I'll help you change." Without waiting for him to protest (which he wasn't sure he would have), Lucy pushed Matt's short-sleeved button-down off his shoulders, then seized the bottom of his long-sleeved tee-shirt and tugged. "Just lift your arms, okay?"

"Mmkay." Sleepily, Matt lifted his arms – which felt like lead weights – over his head. They dropped back to the bed as soon as the shirt was free.

"Oh, your arm," Lucy murmured, lifting his left wrist and inspecting the bruised site where his IV had been. "That looks sore."

Matt shrugged. "Not really feeling it at the moment."

"Light weight," Lucy teased good-naturedly. She skated her fingertips across his stomach; Matt felt himself wake up considerably. "You know," her voice took on a husky note that penetrated sharply through his medicinal stupor, "if I was a different kind of girl, I could take advantage of you in your weakened state."

"Boy, that would suck," he rejoined sarcastically, trying not to sound as breathless as he felt with her fingers working at the button and zipper of his jeans.

Lucy giggled. "Relax, your virtue is safe with me." She slid the jeans over his hips and off his feet. Matt noted that she looked a little embarrassed herself; he was glad he wasn't alone in feeling awkward at being undressed by a beautiful girl he hardly knew. She hastily helped him into the cotton pants, carefully sliding them over the bandages on his leg.

"Now the shirt," she instructed, and pulled the tee-shirt down over his head. "Okay, all done."

"Thank you. You're an angel." Matt's voice was slurring, but he fought sleep. He didn't want Lucy to go; having her so near, her hands resting lightly on his chest, was too nice. With narcotics coursing through his system, he found the courage to say, "God you're pretty."

Now it was Lucy's turn to blush deeply. She looked even prettier when she did.

"That's what I thought when I saw you," he went on, struggling to keep his speech clear. "I thought, 'She's too pretty to be real.'"

"I think you're doped up." Lucy nuzzled Matt's neck with her nose. His breath caught. "But that's really sweet," she said against his throat.

Matt shivered. "What, uh, what did you think? When you saw me?" It had to be the Demerol, he decided, because he would never have had the guts to ask such a question otherwise.

Tracing the line of his jaw with her nose, Lucy answered slowly, "I thought…I thought, 'I hope they don't kill him. He's cute.'" She giggled; Matt couldn't help laughing as well. "Oh, and, 'I hope he's got a gun.'"

"Sorry to disappoint," Matt managed, as Lucy began dropping soft kisses down the side of his neck. He could feel nerve endings coming to life underneath her lips, despite the medicinal haze rolling in over his brain.

"You came through in the end," she said against his cheek. Her mouth descended lightly onto his. Matt kissed her back with all of the strength he could muster in his current state, but even as he did so, he knew he was fading fast. Lucy seemed to sense this, because after a long, tender moment, she pulled away.

"Sleep, baby." She brushed the hair from Matt's forehead. "You need to sleep."

No longer able to keep his eyes open, Matt nodded. He caught her hand and tugged her down toward him, nestling her head into his shoulder as she stretched out on the bed alongside him. "You too," he said sleepily. "You should sleep."

"Okay." Lucy snuggled closer. "I'll stay right here."