The Complete Mackenzies Collection

Mackenzie’s Mountain

Mackenzie’s Mission

Mackenzie’s Pleasure

A Game of Chance

Mackenzie’s Magic

Contents

Mackenzie’s Mountain

By Linda Howard

Mackenzie’s Mission

By Linda Howard

Mackenzie’s Pleasure

By Linda Howard

A Game of Chance

By Linda Howard

Mackenzie’s Magic

By Linda Howard

Mackenzie’s Mountain

By Linda Howard

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Chapter One

He needed a woman. Bad.

Wolf Mackenzie spent a restless night, with the bright full moon throwing its silver light on the empty pillow beside him. His body ached with need, the sexual need of a healthy man, and the passing hours only intensified his frustration. Finally he got out of bed and walked naked to the window, his big body moving with fluid power. The wooden floor was icy beneath his bare feet but he welcomed the discomfort, for it cooled the undirected desire that heated his blood.

The colorless moonlight starkly etched the angles and planes of his face, living testimony to his heritage. Even more than the thick black hair worn long to touch his shoulders, even more than the heavy-lidded black eyes, his face proclaimed him Indian. It was in his high, prominent cheekbones and broad forehead, his thin lips and high-bridged nose. Less obvious, but just as fierce, was the Celtic heritage from his father, only one generation removed from the Scottish Highlands. It had refined the Indian features inherited from his mother into a face like a blade, as clean and sharply cut as it was strong. In his veins ran the blood of two of the most warlike peoples in the history of the world, Comanche and Celt. He had been a natural warrior, a fact soon discovered by the military when he had enlisted.

He was also a sensualist. He knew his own nature well, and though he controlled it, there were times when he needed a woman. He usually visited Julie Oakes at those times. She was a divorced woman, several years older, who lived in a small town fifty miles distant. Their arrangement had lasted five years; neither Wolf nor Julie was interested in marriage, but both had needs, and they liked each other. Wolf tried not to visit Julie too often, and he took care that he was never seen entering her house; he accepted the fact, unemotionally, that her neighbors would be outraged if they knew she slept with an Indian. And not just any Indian; a rape charge stuck to a man forever.

The next day was a Saturday. There would be the normal chores, and he had to pick up a load of fencing materials in Ruth, the small town just at the base of his mountain, but Saturday nights were traditionally for howling. He wouldn’t howl, but he’d visit Julie and burn off his sexual tension in her bed.

The night was turning colder, and low heavy clouds were moving in. He watched until they obscured the moon, knowing they meant new snow. He didn’t want to return to his empty bed. His face was impassive, but his loins ached. He needed a woman.

Mary Elizabeth Potter had numerous small chores to occupy her time that Saturday morning, but her conscience wouldn’t let her rest until she had talked to Joe Mackenzie. The boy had dropped out of school two months before, a month before she had arrived to take the place of a teacher who had abruptly quit. No one had mentioned the boy to Mary, but she’d run across his school record, and curiosity had led her to read it. In the small town of Ruth, Wyoming, there weren’t that many students in school, and she had thought she’d met them all. In fact, there were less than sixty students, but the graduation rate was almost one hundred percent, so any dropout was unusual. When she had read Joe Mackenzie’s record, she’d been stunned. The boy had been at the top of his class, with straight A’s in all subjects. Students who did poorly would get discouraged and drop out, but every teaching instinct she had was outraged that such an outstanding student would just quit. She had to talk to him, try to make him understand how important it was to his future that he continue his education. Sixteen was so young to make a mistake that would haunt him the rest of his life. She wouldn’t be able to sleep at night until she had done her best to talk him into returning.

It had snowed again during the night and had turned bitterly cold. The cat meowed plaintively as it wound around her ankles, as if complaining about the weather. “I know, Woodrow,” she consoled the animal. “The floor must be cold to your feet.” She could sympathize. She didn’t think her feet had been warm since she had moved to Wyoming.

Before another winter came, she promised herself, she would own a pair of warm, sturdy boots, fur-lined and waterproof, and she would stomp about in the snow as if she’d been doing it all her life, like a native. Actually she needed the boots now, but the expenses of moving had wiped out her cash reserves, and the teachings of her thrifty aunt prevented her from buying the boots on credit.

Woodrow meowed again as she put on the warmest, most sensible shoes she owned, the ones she privately called her. “old maid schoolteacher shoes.” Mary paused to scratch behind his ears, and his back arched in ecstasy. She had inherited him with the house, which the school board had arranged for her to live in; the cat, like the house, wasn’t much. She had no idea how old Woodrow was, but both he and the house looked a little run-down. Mary had always resisted owning a cat—it seemed the crowning touch to an old maid’s life—but finally her fate had caught up with her. She was an old maid. Now she owned a cat. And wore old maid shoes. The picture was complete.

“Water seeks its own level,” she told the cat, who looked back at her with his unconcerned Egyptian gaze. “But what do you care? It doesn’t hurt you that my personal water level seems to stop at sensible shoes and cats.”

But as she looked in the mirror to make certain her hair was tidy, she sighed. Sensible shoes and cats were just her style, along with being pale, slight and nondescript. “Mousy” was a good word. Mary Elizabeth Potter had been born to be an old maid.

She was dressed as warmly as she could manage, unless she put on socks to wear with her sensible shoes, but she drew the line at that. Dainty white anklets with long ruffled skirts were one thing, but knee socks with a wool dress were something else entirely. She was willing to be dowdy for the sake of warmth; she was not willing to be tacky.

Well, there was no point in putting it off; it wasn’t going to get any warmer until spring. Mary braced herself for the shock of cold air on a system that still expected the warmth of Savannah. She had left her tidy little nest in Georgia for the challenge of a tiny school in Wyoming, for the excitement of a different way of life; she even admitted to a small yearning for adventure, though of course she never allowed it to surface. But somehow, she hadn’t taken the weather into account. She had been prepared for the snow, but not the bitter temperatures. No wonder there were so few students, she thought as she opened the door and gasped as the wind whipped at her. It was too cold for the adults to undress enough to do anything that might result in children!

She got snow in her sensible shoes when she walked to her car, a sensible two-door, midsize Chevrolet sedan, on which she had sensibly put a new set of snow tires when she had moved to Wyoming. According to the weather report on the radio that morning, the high would be seven degrees below zero. Mary sighed again for the weather she had left behind in Savannah; it was March now, and spring would be in full swing, with flowers blooming in a riot of colors.

But Wyoming was beautiful, in a wild, majestic way. The soaring mountains dwarfed the puny man-made dwellings, and she had been told that, come spring, the meadows would be carpeted in wildflowers, and the crystal-clear creeks would sing their own special song. Wyoming was a different world from Savannah, and she was just a transplanted magnolia who was having trouble getting acclimated.

She had gotten instructions on how to get to the Mackenzie residence, though the information had been reluctantly given. It puzzled her that no one seemed interested in the boy, because the people in the little town had been friendly and helpful to her. The most direct comment she had gotten had been from Mr. Hearst, the grocery-store owner, who had muttered that “the Mackenzies aren’t worth your trouble.” But Mary considered any child worth her trouble. She was a teacher, and she meant to teach.

As she got into her sensible car, she could see the mountain called Mackenzie’s Mountain, as well as the narrow road that wound up its side like a ribbon, and she quailed inside. New snow tires notwithstanding, she wasn’t a confident driver in this strange environment. Snow was…well, snow was alien, not that she’d let it stop her from doing what she had set her mind on doing.

She was already shivering so hard that she could barely fit the key into the ignition. It was so cold! It actually hurt her nose and lungs to inhale. Perhaps she should wait for better weather before attempting the drive. She looked at the mountain again. Maybe in June all of the snow would have melted…but Joe Mackenzie had already been out of school for two months. Maybe in June the gap would seem insurmountable to him, and he wouldn’t make the effort. It might already be too late. She had to try, and she didn’t dare let even another week go by.

It was her habit to give herself pep talks whenever she was pushing herself to do something she found difficult, so she muttered under her breath as she began the drive. “It won’t seem so steep once I’m actually on the road. All uphill roads look vertical from a distance. It’s a perfectly negotiable road, otherwise the Mackenzies wouldn’t be able to get up and down, and if they can do it, I can do it.” Well, perhaps she could do it. Driving on snow was an acquired skill, one she hadn’t as yet mastered.

Determination kept her going. When she finally reached the mountain and the road tilted upward, her hands clenched on the steering wheel as she deliberately refrained from looking over the side at the increasing distance to the valley floor. Knowing how far it was possible for her to fall if she drove off the edge wouldn’t help her at all; in Mary’s opinion, that would be in the category of useless knowledge, of which she already had quite enough.

“I won’t slide,” she muttered. “I won’t go fast enough to lose control. This is like the Ferris wheel. I was certain I was going to fall out, but I didn’t.” She had ridden the Ferris wheel once, when she’d been nine years old, and no one had ever been able to talk her into trying it again. Carousels were more her style.

“The Mackenzies won’t mind if I talk to Joe,” she reassured herself in an attempt to get her mind off the drive. “Maybe he had trouble with a girlfriend, and that’s why he doesn’t want to go to school. At his age, it’s probably all blown over by now.”

Actually the drive wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. She began to breathe a little easier. The incline was more gradual than it had appeared, and she didn’t think she had too much farther to go. The mountain wasn’t as enormous as it had looked from the valley.

She was so intent on her driving that she didn’t notice the red light appear on the dash. She had no warning of overheating until steam suddenly erupted from beneath the hood, the frigid air instantly converting the mist into ice crystals on the windshield. Mary instinctively hit the brakes, then uttered a discreet oath when the wheels began sliding. Quickly she lifted her foot from the brake pedal, and the tires found traction again, but she couldn’t see. Closing her eyes, she prayed that she was still going in the right direction and let the car’s weight slow it to a stop.

The engine was hissing and bellowing like a dragon. Shaking in reaction, she turned off the ignition and got out of the car, gasping as the wind lashed her like an icy whip. The hood release mechanism was stiff from the bitter cold, but finally yielded, and she raised the hood to see what had happened, on the grounds that it would be nice to know what was wrong with the car even if she couldn’t fix it. It didn’t take a mechanic to see the problem: one of the water hoses had split, and hot water was spitting fitfully from the break.

Instantly she recognized the precariousness of her position. She couldn’t stay in the car, because she couldn’t let the motor run to keep her warm. The road was a private one, and the Mackenzies might not leave their ranch at all that day, or that entire weekend. It was too far, and too cold, for her to walk back to her own house. Her only option was to walk to the Mackenzie ranch and pray it wasn’t very far. Her feet were already numb.

She didn’t let herself dwell on the thought that she might not make it to the Mackenzie ranch, either. Instead she began to walk steadily up the road and tried to ignore the snow that got inside her shoes with each step.

She rounded a curve and lost sight of her car, but when she looked ahead there was still no sign of a house, or even a barn. She felt alone, as if she had been dropped into the middle of a wilderness. There was only the mountain and the snow, the vast sky and herself. The silence was absolute. It hurt to walk, and she found that she was sliding her feet instead of picking them up. She had gone fewer than two hundred yards.

Her lips trembled as she hugged herself in an effort to retain her body’s heat. Painful or not, she would just have to keep walking.

Then she heard the low growl of a powerful engine, and she stopped, relief welling in her so painfully that tears burned her eyes. She had a horror of crying in public and blinked them back. There was no sense in crying; she had been walking less than fifteen minutes and hadn’t been in any real danger at all. It was just her overactive imagination, as usual. She shuffled through the snow to the side of the road, to get out of the way, and waited for the approaching vehicle.

It came into view, a big black pickup with enormous tires. She could feel the driver’s eyes lock on her, and in spite of herself she ducked her head in embarrassment. Old maid schoolteachers weren’t accustomed to being the center of attention, and on top of that she felt a perfect fool. It must look as if she had gone for a stroll in the snow.

The truck slowed to a stop opposite her, and a man got out. He was big, and she instinctively disliked that. She disliked the way big men looked down at her, and she disliked being forced by sheer physical size to look up at them. Well, big or not, he was her rescuer. She wound her gloved fingers together and wondered what she should say. How did a person ask to be rescued? She had never hitched a ride before; it didn’t seem proper for a settled, respectable schoolteacher.

Wolf stared at the woman, astounded that anyone would be out in the cold while dressed so stupidly. What in hell was she doing on his mountain, anyway? How had she gotten here?

Suddenly he knew who she was; he’d overheard talk in the feed store about the new schoolteacher from someplace down South. He’d never seen anyone who looked more like a schoolteacher than this woman, and she was definitely dressed wrong for a Wyoming winter. Her blue dress and brown coat were so frumpy that she was almost a cliché; he could see wisps of light brown hair straggling out from under her scarf, and oversize horn-rimmed glasses dwarfed her small face. No makeup, not even lip gloss to protect her lips.

And no boots. Snow was caked almost to her knees.

He had surveyed her completely in two seconds and didn’t wait to hear what explanation she had for being on his mountain, if she intended to say anything at all. So far she hadn’t uttered a word, but continued to stare at him with a faintly outraged look on her face. He wondered if she considered it beneath her to speak to an Indian, even to ask for help. Mentally he shrugged. What the hell, he couldn’t leave her out here.

Since she hadn’t spoken, he didn’t, either. He simply bent down and passed one arm behind her knees and the other behind her back, and lifted her as he would a child, ignoring her gasp. As he carried her to the truck, he reflected that she didn’t weigh much more than a child. He saw a flash of startled blue eyes behind the lenses of her glasses; then her arm passed around his neck and she was holding him in a convulsive grip, as if she were afraid he’d drop her.

He shifted her weight so he could open the passenger door and deposited her on the seat, then briskly wiped the snow from her feet and legs as well as he could. He heard her gasp again, but didn’t look up. When he had finished, he dusted the snow from his gloves and went around to climb behind the wheel.

“How long have you been walking?” he muttered reluctantly.

Mary started. She hadn’t expected his voice to be so deep that it almost reverberated. Her glasses had fogged from the truck’s heat, and she snatched them off, feeling her cold cheeks prickle as blood rushed to them. “I…not long,” she stammered. “About fifteen minutes. I blew a water hose. That is, my car did.”

Wolf glanced at her in time to see her hastily lower her eyes again and noticed her pinkened cheeks. Good, she was getting warm. She was flustered; he could see it in the way she kept twisting her fingers together. Did she think he was going to throw her down on the seat and rape her? After all, he was a renegade Indian, and capable of anything. Then again, the way she looked, maybe this was the most excitement she’d ever had.

They hadn’t been far from the ranch house and reached it in a few minutes. Wolf parked close to the kitchen door and got out; he circled the truck and reached the passenger door just as she opened it and began to slid down. “Forget it,” he said, and lifted her again. Her sliding motion had made her skirt ride halfway up her thighs. She hastily pushed the fabric down, but not before his black eyes had examined her slim legs, and the color deepened in her cheeks.

The warmth of the house enfolded her, and she inhaled with relief, hardly noticing as he turned a wooden chair away from the table and placed her on it. Without speaking he turned on the hot water tap and let it run, then filled a dishpan, frequently checking the water and adjusting the temperature.

Well, she had reached her destination, and though she hadn’t accomplished her arrival in quite the manner she had intended, she might as well get to the purpose of her visit. “I’m Mary Potter, the new schoolteacher.”

“I know,” he said briefly.

Her eyes widened as she stared at his broad back. “You know?”

“Not many strangers around.”

She realized that he hadn’t introduced himself and was suddenly unsure. Was she even at the right place? “Are…are you Mr. Mackenzie?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her, and she noticed that his eyes were as black as night. “I’m Wolf Mackenzie.”

She was instantly diverted. “I suppose you know your name is uncommon. It’s Old English—”

“No,” he said, turning around with the dishpan in his hands. He placed it on the floor beside her feet. “It’s Indian.”

She blinked. “Indian?” She felt incredibly stupid. She should have guessed, given the blackness of his hair and eyes, and the bronze of his skin, but she hadn’t. Most of the men in Ruth had weathered skin, and she had simply thought him darker than the others. Then she frowned at him and said in a positive tone, “Mackenzie isn’t an Indian name.”

He frowned back at her. “Scottish.”

“Oh. Are you a half-breed?”

She asked the question with the same unconsciousness as if she had been asking directions, silky brows lifted inquiringly over her blue eyes. It set his teeth on edge. “Yeah,” he grunted. There was something so irritating about the primness of her expression that he wanted to shock her out of her prissiness. Then he noticed the shivers shaking her body, and he pushed his irritation aside, at least until he could get her warm. The clumsy way she had been walking when he’d first seen her had told him that she was in the first stages of hypothermia. He shrugged out of his heavy coat and tossed it a side, then put on a pot of coffee.

Mary sat silently as he made coffee; he wasn’t a very talkative person, though that wasn’t going to make her give up. She was truly cold; she would wait until she had a cup of that coffee, then begin again. She looked up at him as he turned back to her, but his expression was unreadable. Without a word he took the scarf from her head and began unbuttoning her coat. Startled, she said, “I can do that,” but her fingers were so cold that any movement was agony. He stepped back and let her try for a moment, then brushed her hands aside and finished the job himself.

“Why are you taking my coat off when I’m so cold?” she asked in bewilderment as he peeled the coat down her arms.

“So I can rub your arms and legs.” Then he proceeded to remove her shoes.

The idea was as alien to her as snow. She wasn’t accustomed to anyone touching her, and didn’t intend to become accustomed. She started to tell him so, but the words vanished unsaid when he abruptly thrust his hands under her skirt, all the way to her waist. Mary gave a startled shriek and jerked back, almost oversetting the chair. He glared at her, his eyes like black ice.

“You don’t have to worry,” he snapped. “This is Saturday. I only rape on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” He thought about throwing her back out into the snow, but he couldn’t let a woman freeze to death, not even a white woman who obviously thought his touch would contaminate her.

Mary’s eyes grew so wide they eclipsed the rest of her face. “What’s wrong with Saturdays?” she blurted, then realized that she had almost issued him an invitation, for pity’s sake! She clapped her gloved hands to her face as a tide of red surged to her cheeks. Her brain must have frozen; it was the only possible explanation.

Wolf jerked his head up, not believing she had actually said that. Wide, horrified blue eyes stared at him from over black leather gloves, which covered the rest of her face but couldn’t quite hide the hot color. It had been so long since he’d seen anyone blush that it took him a minute to realize she was acutely embarrassed. Why, she was a prude! It was the final cliché to add to the dowdy, old maid schoolteacher image she presented. Amusement softened his irritation. This was probably the highlight of her life. “I’m going to pull your panty hose off so you can put your feet in the water,” he explained in a gruff voice.

“Oh.” The word was muffled because her hands were still over her mouth.

His arms were still under her skirt, his hands clasped on her hips. Almost unconsciously he felt the narrowness of her, and the softness. Dowdy or not, she still had the softness of a woman, the sweet scent of a woman, and his heartbeat increased as his body began to respond to her nearness. Damn, he needed a woman worse than he’d thought if this frumpy little schoolteacher could turn him on.

Mary sat very still as one powerful arm closed around her and lifted her so he could strip the panty hose down her hips and legs; the position put his head close to her breasts and stomach, and she stared down at his thick, shiny black hair. He had only to turn his head and his mouth would brush against her breasts. She had read in books that a man took a woman’s nipples into his mouth and sucked them as a nursing infant would, and she had always wondered why. Now the thought made her feel breathless, and her nipples tingled. His roughly callused hands brushed against her bare legs; how would they feel on her breasts? She began to feel oddly warm, and a little dizzy.

Wolf didn’t glance at her as he tossed the insubstantial panty hose to the floor. He lifted her feet onto his thigh and slid the dishpan into place, then slowly lowered her feet into the water. He had made certain the water was only warm, but he knew her feet were so cold even that would be painful. She sucked in her breath but didn’t protest, though he saw the gleam of tears in her eyes when he looked up at her.

“It won’t hurt for long,” he murmured reassuringly, moving so that his legs were on each side of hers, clasping them warmly. Then he carefully removed her gloves, struck by the delicacy of her white, cold hands. He held them between his warm palms for a moment, then made a decision and unbuttoned his shirt as he crowded closer to her.

“This will get them warm,” he said, and tucked her hands into the hollows of his armpits.

Mary was dumbstruck. She couldn’t believe that her hands were nestled in his armpits like birds. His warmth seared her cold fingers. She wasn’t actually touching skin; he wore a T-shirt, but it was still the most intimate she had ever been with another person. Armpits…well, everyone had them, but she certainly wasn’t accustomed to touching them. She had never before been this surrounded by anyone, least of all a man. His hard legs were on each side of hers, clasping them; she was bent forward a little, her hands neatly tucked beneath his arms, while he briskly rubbed his hands over her arms and shoulders, then down to her thighs. She made a little sound of surprise; she simply couldn’t believe this was happening, not to Mary Elizabeth Potter, old maid schoolteacher ordinaire.

Wolf had been concentrating on his task but he looked up at the sound she made, into her wide blue eyes. They were an odd blue, he thought, not cornflower or that pure dark blue. There was just a hint of gray in the shade. Slate blue, that was it. Distantly he noticed that her hair was straggling down from the ungodly knot she’d twisted it into, framing her face in silky, pale brown wisps. She was very close, her face just inches from his. She had the most delicate skin he’d ever seen, as fine-grained as an infant’s, so pale and translucent he could see the fragile tracery of blue veins at her temples. Only the very young should have skin like that. As he watched, another blush began to stain her cheeks, and unwillingly he felt himself become entranced by the sight. He wondered if her skin was that silky and delicate all over—her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, between her legs. The thought was like an electrical jolt to his system, overloading his nerves. Damn, she smelled sweet! And she would probably jump straight out of that chair if he lifted her skirt the way he wanted to and buried his face against her silky thighs.

Mary licked her lips, oblivious to the way his eyes followed the movement. She had to say something, but she didn’t know what. His physical nearness seemed to have paralyzed her thought processes. My goodness, he was warm! And close. She should remember why she had come here in the first place, instead of acting like a ninny because a very good-looking, in a rough sort of way, very masculine person was too close to her. She licked her lips again, cleared her throat, and said, “Ah…I came to speak to Joe, if I may.”

His expression changed very little, yet she had the impression that he was instantly aloof. “Joe isn’t here. He’s doing chores.”

“I see. When will he be back?”

“In an hour, maybe two.”

She looked at him a little disbelievingly. “Are you Joe’s father?”

“Yes.”

“His mother is…?”

“Dead.”

The flat, solitary word jarred her, yet at the same time she was aware of a faint, shocking sense of relief. She looked away from him again. “How did you feel about Joe quitting school?”

“It was his decision.”

“But he’s only sixteen! He’s just a boy—”

“He’s Indian,” Wolf interrupted. “He’s a man.”

Indignation mingled with exasperation to act as a spur. She jerked her hands from his armpits and planted them on her hips. “What does that have to do with anything? He’s sixteen years old and he needs to get an education!”

“He can read, write and do math. He also knows everything there is to know about training horses and running a ranch. He chose to quit school and work here full-time. This is my ranch, and my mountain. One day it will be his. He decided what to do with his life, and it’s train horses.” He didn’t like explaining his and Joe’s personal business to anyone, but there was something about this huffy, dowdy little teacher that made him answer. She didn’t seem to realize he was Indian; intellectually she knew it, but she obviously had no idea what it meant to be Indian, and to be Wolf Mackenzie in particular, to have people turn aside to avoid speaking to him.

“I’d like to talk to him anyway,” Mary said stubbornly.

“That’s up to him. He may not want to talk to you.”

“You won’t try to influence him at all?”

“No.”

“Why not? You should at least have tried to keep him in school!”

Wolf leaned very close, so close that his nose was almost touching hers. She stared into his black eyes, her own eyes widening. “He’s Indian, lady. Maybe you don’t know what that means. Hell, how could you? You’re an Anglo. Indians aren’t welcome. What education he has, he got on his own, without any help from the Anglo teachers. When he wasn’t being ignored, he was being insulted. Why would he want to go back?”

She swallowed, alarmed by his aggression. She wasn’t accustomed to men getting right in her face and swearing at her. Truthfully, Mary admitted that she wasn’t accustomed to men at all. When she had been young, the boys had ignored the mousy, bookish girl, and when she had gotten older the men had done the same. She paled a little, but she felt so strongly about the benefits of a good education that she refused to let him intimidate her. Big people often did that to smaller people, probably without even thinking about it, but she wasn’t going to give in simply because he was bigger than she. “He was at the head of his class,” she said briskly. “If he managed that on his own, think of what he could accomplish with help!”

He straightened to his full height, towering over her. “Like I said, it’s up to him.” The coffee had long since finished brewing, so he turned to pour a cup and hand it to her. Silence fell between them. He leaned against the cabinets and watched her sip daintily, like a cat. Dainty, yeah, that was a good word for her. She wasn’t tiny, maybe five three, but she was slightly built. His eyes dropped to her breasts beneath that dowdy blue dress; they weren’t big, but they looked nice and round. He wondered if her nipples would be a delicate shell pink, or rosy beige. He wondered if she would be able to take him comfortably, if she would be so tight he’d go wild—

Sharply he brought his erotic thoughts to a halt. Damn it, that particular lesson should have been etched into his soul! Anglo women might flirt with him and twitch themselves around him, but few of them really wanted to get down and dirty with an Indian. This prissy little frump wasn’t even flirting, so why was he getting so turned on? Maybe it was because she was a frump. He kept imagining how the dainty body beneath that awful dress would look, stripped bare and stretched out on the sheets.

Mary set the cup aside. “I’m much warmer now. Thank you, the coffee did the trick.” That, and the way he’d run his hands all over her, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. She looked up at him and hesitated, suddenly uncertain when she saw the look in his black eyes. She didn’t know what it was, but there was something about him that made her pulse rate increase, made her feel faintly uneasy. Was he actually looking at her breasts?

“I think some of Joe’s old clothes will fit you,” he said, face and voice expressionless.

“Oh, I don’t need any clothes. I mean, what I have on is perfectly—”

“Idiotic,” he interrupted. “This is Wyoming, lady, not New Orleans, or wherever you’re from.”

“Savannah,” she supplied.

He grunted, which seemed to be one of his basic means of communication, and took a towel from a drawer. Going down on one knee, he lifted her feet from the water and wrapped them in a towel, rubbing them dry with a touch so gentle it was at odds with the thinly veiled hostility of his manner. Then, standing, he said, “Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the bedroom.”

Mary stopped, blinking at him, and a bitter smile twisted his mouth. “Don’t worry,” he said harshly. “I’ll control my savage appetites, and after you get dressed, you can get the hell off my mountain.”

Chapter Two

Mary drew herself up to her full height and lifted her chin, her mouth setting itself in a prim line. “It isn’t necessary to make fun of me, Mr. Mackenzie,” she said calmly, but her even tone was hard won. She knew she fell short in the come-hither department; she didn’t need sarcasm to remind her. Usually she wasn’t disturbed by her mousiness, having accepted it as an unchangeable fact, much like having the sun rise in the east. But Mr. Mackenzie made her feel strangely vulnerable, and it was oddly painful that he should have pointed out how unappealing she was.

Wolf’s straight black brows drew together over his high-bridged nose. “I wasn’t making fun of you,” he snapped. “I was dead serious, lady. I want you off of my mountain.”

“Then I’ll leave, of course,” she replied steadily. “But it was still unnecessary to make fun of me.”

He put his hands on his hips. “Make fun of you? How?”

A flush tinged her exquisite skin, but her gray-blue eyes never wavered. “I know I’m not an attractive woman, certainly not the type to stir a man’s—er, savage appetites.”

She was serious. Ten minutes ago he’d have agreed with her that she was plain, and God knew she was no fashion plate, but what astounded him was that she honestly didn’t seem to realize what it meant that he was Indian, or what he’d meant by his sarcasm, or even that he had been strongly aroused by her closeness. A lingering throbbing in his loins reminded him that his reaction hadn’t completely subsided. He gave a harsh laugh, the sound devoid of amusement. Why not put a little more excitement in her life? When she heard the flat truth, she wouldn’t be able to get off his mountain fast enough.

“I wasn’t joking or making fun,” he said. His black eyes glittered at her. “Touching you like that, being so close to you that I could smell the sweetness, turned me on.”

Astonished, she stared at him. “Turned you on?” she asked blankly.

“Yeah.” She still stared at him as if he were speaking a different language, and impatiently he added, “Got me hot, however you want to describe it.”

She pushed at a silky strand that had escaped from her hairpins. “You’re making fun of me again,” she accused. It was impossible. She had never made a man…aroused a man in her life.

He was already irritated, already aroused. He had learned to use iron control when dealing with Anglos, but something about this prim little woman got under his skin. Frustration filled him until he thought he might explode. He hadn’t intended to touch her, but suddenly he had his hands on her waist, pulling her toward him. “Maybe you need a demonstration,” he said in a rough undertone, and bent to cover her mouth with his.

Mary trembled in profound shock, her eyes enormous as he moved his lips over hers. His eyes were closed. She could see the individual lashes, and for a moment marveled at how thick they were. Then his hands, still clasped on her waist, drew her into firm contact with his muscled body, and she gasped. He took instant advantage of her opened mouth, probing inside with his tongue. She quivered again, and her eyes slowly closed as a strange heat began to warm her inside. The pleasure was unfamiliar, and so intense that it frightened her. A host of new sensations assailed her, making her dizzy. There was the firmness of his lips, his heady taste, the startling intimacy of his tongue stroking hers as if enticing it to play. She felt the heat of his body, smelled the warm muskiness of hiss kin. Her soft breasts were pressed against the muscular planes of his chest, and her nipples began to tingle in that strange, embarrassing way again.

Suddenly he lifted his mouth from hers, and sharp disappointment made her eyes fly open. His black gaze burned her. “Kiss me back,” he muttered.

“I don’t know how,” Mary blurted, still unable to believe this was happening.

His voice was almost guttural. “Like this.” He took her mouth again, and this time she parted her lips immediately, eager to accept his tongue and feel that odd, surging pleasure once more. He moved his mouth over hers, molding her lips with fierce pleasure, teaching her how to return the pressure. His tongue touched hers again, and this time she responded shyly in kind, welcoming his small invasion with gentle touches of her own. She was too inexperienced to realize the symbolism of her acceptance, but he began to breathe harder and faster, and his kiss deepened, demanding even more of her.

A frightening excitement exploded through her body, going beyond mere pleasure and becoming a hungry need. She was no longer cold at all, but burning inside as her heartbeat increased until her heart was banging against her ribs. So this was what he meant when he’d said she got him hot. He got her hot, too, and it stunned her to think he had felt this same restless yearning, this incredible wanting. She made a soft, unconscious sound and moved closer to him, not knowing how to control the sensations his experienced kisses had aroused.

His hands tightened painfully on her waist, and a low, rough sound rumbled in his throat. Then he lifted her, pulled her closer, adjusted her hips against his and graphically demonstrated his response to her.

She hadn’t known it could be like that. She hadn’t known that desire could burn so hot, could make her forget Aunt Ardith’s warnings about men and the nasty things they liked to do to women. Mary had quite sensibly decided that those things couldn’t be too nasty, or women wouldn’t put up with them, but at the same time she had never flirted or tried to attract a boyfriend. The men she had met at college and on the job had seemed normal, not slavering sex fiends; she was comfortable with men, and even considered some to be friends. It was just that she wasn’t sexy herself; no man had ever beaten down doors to go out with her, or even managed to accomplish the dialing of her telephone number, so her exposure to men hadn’t prepared her for the tightness of Wolf Mackenzie’s arms, the hunger of his kisses, or the hardness of his manhood pushing against the juncture of her thighs. Nor had she known that she could want more.

Unconsciously she locked her arms around his neck and squirmed against him, tormented by increasing frustration. Her body was on fire, empty and aching and wanting all at once, and she didn’t have the experience to control it. The new sensations were a tidal wave, swamping her mind beneath the overload from her nerve endings.

Wolf jerked his head back, his teeth locked as he relentlessly brought himself back under control. Black fire burned in his eyes as he looked down at her. His kisses had made her soft lips red and pouty, and delicate pink colored her translucent porcelain skin. Her eyes were heavy-lidded as she opened them and slowly met his gaze. Her pale brown hair had slipped completely out of its knot and tumbled silkily around her face and over her shoulders. Desire was on her face; she already looked tousled, as if he had done more than kiss her, and in his mind he had. She was light and delicate in his arms, but she had twisted against him with a hunger that matched his own.

He could take her to bed now; she was that far gone, and he knew it. But when he did, it would be because she had consciously made the decision, not because she was so hot she didn’t know what she was doing. Her inexperience was obvious; he’d even had to teach her how to kiss—the thought stopped as abruptly as if he’d hit a mental wall, as he realized the full extent of her inexperience. Damn it, she was a virgin!

The thought staggered him. She was looking at him now with those grayish blue eyes both innocent and questioning, languid with desire, as she waited for him to make the next move. She didn’t know what to do. Her arms were locked around his neck, her body pressed tightly to his, her legs opened slightly to allow him to nestle against her, and she was waiting for him because she didn’t have a clue how to proceed. She hadn’t even been kissed before. No man had touched those soft breasts, or taken her nipples in his mouth. No man had loved her at all before.

He swallowed the lump that threatened to choke him, his eyes still locked with hers. “God Almighty, lady, that nearly got out of hand.”

She blinked. “Did it?” Her tone was prim, the words clear, but the dazed, sleepy look was still in her eyes.

Slowly, because he didn’t want to let her go, and gently, because he knew he had to, he let her body slip down his until she was standing on her feet again. She was innocent of the ramifications, but he wasn’t. He was Wolf Mackenzie, half-breed, and she was the schoolteacher. The good citizens of Ruth wouldn’t want her associating with him; she was in charge of their young people, with untold influence on their forming morals. No parents would want their impressionable daughter being taught by a woman who was having a wild fling with an Indian ex-con. Why, she might even entice their sons! His prison record could be accepted, but his Indian blood would never go away.

So he had to let her go, no matter how much he wanted to take her to his bedroom and teach her all the things that went on between a man and a woman.

Her arms were still around his neck, her fingers buried in the hair at his nape. She seemed incapable of movement. He reached up to take her wrists and draw her hands away from him.

“I think I’ll come back later.”

A new voice intruded in Mary’s dreamworld of newly discovered sensuality, and she jerked away, color burning her cheeks as she whirled to face the newcomer. A tall, dark-haired boy stood just inside the kitchen door, his hat in his hand. “Sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to barge in.”

Wolf stepped away from her. “Stay. She came to see you, anyway.”

The boy looked at her quizzically. “You could have fooled me.”

Wolf merely shrugged. “This is Miss Mary Potter, the new schoolteacher. Miss Potter, my son, Joe.”

Even through her embarrassment, Mary was jolted that he would call her “Miss Potter” after the intimacy they had just shared. But he seemed so calm and controlled, as if it hadn’t affected him at all, while every nerve in her body was still jangling. She wanted to fling herself against him and give herself up to that encompassing fire.

Instead she stood there, her arms stiffly at her sides while her face burned, and forced herself to look at Joe Mackenzie. He was the reason she was here, and she wouldn’t allow herself to forget it again. As her embarrassment faded, she saw that he was very like his father. Though he was only sixteen, he was already six feet tall and would likely match his father’s height, just as his broad young shoulders showed the promise of being as powerful. His face was a younger version of Wolf’s, as strong-boned and proud, the features precisely chiseled. He was calm and controlled, far too controlled for a sixteen-year-old, and his eyes, oddly, were pale, glittering blue. Those eyes held something in them, something untamed, as well as a sort of bitter acceptance and knowledge that made him old beyond his years. He was his father’s son.

There was no way she could give up on him.

She held out her hand to him. “I’d really like to talk to you, Joe.”

His expression remained aloof, but he crossed the kitchen to shake her hand. “I don’t know why.”

“You dropped out of school.”

The statement hardly needed verification, but he nodded. Mary drew a deep breath. “May I ask why?”

“There was nothing for me there.”

She felt frustrated by the calm, flat statement, because she couldn’t sense any uncertainty in this unusual boy. As Wolf had said, Joe had made up his own mind and didn’t intend to change it. She tried to think of another way to approach him, but Wolf’s quiet, deep voice interrupted.

“Miss Potter, you can finish talking after you get into some sensible clothes. Joe, don’t you have some old jeans that might be small enough to fit her?”

To her astonishment, the boy looked her over with an experienced eye. “I think so. Maybe the ones I wore when I was ten.” For a moment amusement sparkled in his blue-diamond eyes, and Mary primmed her mouth. What did these Mackenzie men get out of needlessly pointing out her lack of attractiveness?

“Socks, shirt, boots and coat,” Wolf added to the list. “The boots will be too big, but two pairs of socks will hold them on.”

“Mr. Mackenzie, I really don’t need extra clothes. What I have on will do until I get home.”

“No, it won’t. The high temperature today is about ten below zero. You aren’t walking out of this house with bare legs and those stupid shoes.”

Her sensible shoes were suddenly stupid? She felt like flying to their defense, but suddenly remembered the snow that had gotten inside them and frozen her toes. What was sensible in Savannah was woefully inadequate in a Wyoming winter.

“Very well,” she assented, but only because it was, after all, the sensible thing to do. She still felt uncomfortable about taking Joe’s clothes, even temporarily. She had never worn anyone else’s clothes before, never swapped sweaters or blouses with chums as an adolescent. Aunt Ardith had thought such familiarity ill-bred.

“I’ll see about your car while you change.” Without even glancing at her again, he put on his coat and hat and walked out the door.

“This way,” Joe said, indicating that she should follow him. She did so, and he looked over his shoulder. “What happened to your car?”

“A water hose blew.”

“Where is it?”

She stopped. “It’s on the road. Didn’t you see it when you drove up?” An awful thought struck her. Had her car somehow slid off the mountain?

“I came up the front side of the mountain. It’s not as steep.” He looked amused again. “You actually tried driving up the back road in a car, when you’re not used to driving in snow?”

“I didn’t know that was the back road. I thought it was the only road. Couldn’t I have made it? I have snow tires.”

“Maybe.”

She noticed that he didn’t sound very confident in her ability, but she didn’t protest, because she wasn’t very confident herself. He led the way through a rustic but comfortable living room and down a short hallway to an open door. “My old clothes are boxed up in the storage room, but it won’t take long for me to dig them out. You can change in here. It’s my bedroom.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, stepping inside the room. Like the living room, it was rustic, with exposed beams and thick wooden walls. There was nothing in it to indicate it was inhabited by a teenage boy: no sports apparatus of any kind, no clothes on the floor. The full-size bed was neatly made, a homemade quilt smoothed on top. A straight chair stood in one corner. Next to his bed, bookshelves stretched from floor to ceiling; the shelves were obviously handmade, but weren’t crude. They had been finished, sanded and varnished. They were crammed with books, and curiosity led her to examine the titles.

It took her a moment to realize that every book had to do with flight, from da Vinci’s experiments through Kitty Hawk and space exploration. There were books on bombers, fighters, helicopters, radar planes, jets and prop planes, books on air battles fought in each war since pilots first shot at each other with pistols in World War I. There were books on experimental aircraft, on fighter tactics, on wing design and engine capability.

“Here are the clothes.” Joe had entered silently and placed the clothes on the bed. Mary looked at him, but his face was impassive.

“You like planes,” she said, then winced at her own banality.

“I like planes,” he admitted without inflection.

“Have you thought about taking flying lessons?”

“Yes.” He didn’t add anything to that stark answer, however; he merely left the room and closed the door behind him.

She was thoughtful as she slowly removed her dress and pulled on the things Joe had brought. The collection of books indicated not merely an interest in flying, but an obsession. Obsessions were funny things; unhealthy ones could ruin lives, but some obsessions lifted people to higher planes of life, made them shine with a brighter light, burn with a hotter fire, and if those obsessions weren’t fed, then the person withered, a life blighted by starvation of the soul. If she were right, she had a way to reach Joe and get him back in school.

The jeans fit. Disgusted at this further proof that she had the figure of a ten-year-old boy, she pulled on the too-big flannel shirt and buttoned it, then rolled the sleeves up over her hands. As Wolf had predicted, the worn boots were too big, but the two pairs of thick socks padded her feet enough that the boots didn’t slip up and down on her heels too much. The warmth was heavenly, and she decided she would pinch pennies any way she could until she could afford a pair of boots.

Joe was adding wood to the fire in the enormous rock fireplace when she entered, and a little grin tugged at his mouth when he saw her. “You sure don’t look like Mrs. Langdale, or any other teacher I’ve ever seen.”

She folded her hands. “Looks have nothing to do with ability. I’m a very good teacher—even if I do look like a ten-year-old boy.”

“Twelve. I wore those jeans when I was twelve.”

“What a consolation.”

He laughed aloud, and she felt pleased, because she had the feeling neither he nor his father laughed much.

“Why did you quit school?”

She had learned that if you kept asking the same question, you would often get different answers, and eventually the evasions would cease and the real answer would emerge. But Joe looked at her steadily and gave the same answer as before. “There was nothing for me there.”

“Nothing more for you to learn?”

“I’m Indian, Miss Potter. A mixed-breed. What I learned, I learned on my own.”

Mary paused. “Mrs. Langdale didn’t—” She stopped, unsure of how to phrase her question.

“I was invisible.” His young voice was harsh. “From the time I started school. No one took the time to explain anything to me, ask me questions, or include me in anything. I’m surprised my papers were even graded.”

“But you were number one in your class.”

He shrugged. “I like books.”

“Don’t you miss school, miss learning?”

“I can read without going to school, and I can help Dad a lot more if I’m here all day. I know horses, ma’am, maybe better than anyone else around here except for Dad, and I didn’t learn about them in school. This ranch will be mine someday. This is my life. Why should I waste time in school?”

Mary took a deep breath and played her ace. “To learn how to fly.”

He couldn’t prevent the avid gleam that shone briefly in his eyes, but it was quickly extinguished. “I can’t learn how to fly in Ruth High School. Maybe someday I’ll take lessons.”

“I wasn’t talking about flying lessons. I was talking about the Air Force Academy.”

His bronze skin whitened. This time she didn’t see a gleam of eagerness, but a deep, anguished need so powerful it shook her, as if he’d been shown a glimpse of heaven. Then he turned his head, and abruptly he looked older. “Don’t try to make a fool of me. There’s no way.”

“Why isn’t there a way? From what I saw in your school records, your grade average will be high enough.”

“I dropped out.”

“You can go back.”

“As far behind as I am? I’d have to repeat this grade, and I won’t sit still while those jerks call me a stupid Indian.”

“You aren’t that far behind. I could tutor you, bring you up fast enough that you could start your senior year in the fall. I’m a licensed teacher, Joe, and for your information, my credentials are very good. I’m qualified to tutor you in the classes you need.”

He took a poker and jabbed at a log, sending a shower of sparks flying. “What if I do it?” he muttered. “The Academy isn’t a college where you take an entrance exam, pay your money and walk in.”

“No. The usual way is to be recommended by your congressman.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think my congressman is going to recommend an Indian. We’re way down on the list of people it’s fashionable to help. Dead last, as a matter of fact.”

“I think you’re making too much of your heritage,” Mary said calmly. “You can keep blaming everything on being Indian, or you can get on with your life. You can’t do anything about other people’s reactions to you, but you can do something about your own. You don’t know what your congressman will do, so why give up when you haven’t even tried yet? Are you a quitter?”

He straightened, his pale eyes fierce. “I don’t reckon.”

“Then it’s time to find out, isn’t it? Do you want to fly bad enough that you’ll fight for the privilege? Or do you want to die without ever knowing what it’s like to sit in the cockpit of a jet doing Mach 1?”

“You hit hard, lady,” he whispered.

“Sometimes it takes a knock on the head to get someone’s attention. Do you have the guts to try?”

“What about you? The folks in Ruth won’t like it if you spend so much time with me. It would be bad enough if I were alone, but with Dad, it’s twice as bad.”

“If anyone objects to my tutoring you, I’ll certainly set him straight,” she said firmly. “It’s an honor to be accepted into the Academy, and that’s our goal. If you’ll agree to being tutored, I’ll write to your congressman immediately. I think this time your heritage will work in your favor.”

It was amazing how proud that strong young face could be. “I don’t want it if they give it to me just because I’m Indian.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed. “Of course you won’t be accepted into the Academy just because you’re half Indian. But if that fact catches the congressman’s interest, I say, good. It would only make him remember your name. It’ll be up to you to make the grade.”

He raked his hand through his black hair, then restlessly walked to the window to look out at the white landscape. “Do you really think it’s possible?”

“Of course it’s possible. It isn’t guaranteed, but it’s possible. Can you live with yourself if you don’t try? If we don’t try?” She didn’t know how to go about bringing someone to a congressman’s attention for consideration for recommendation to the Academy, but she was certainly willing to write to every senator and representative Wyoming had seated in Congress, a letter a week, until she found out.

“If I agreed, it would have to be at night. I have chores around here that have to be done.”

“Night is fine with me. Midnight would be fine with me, if it would get you back in school.”

He gave her a quick look. “You really mean it, don’t you? You actually care that I dropped out of school.”

“Of course I care.”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. I told you, no other teacher cared if I showed up in class. They probably wished I hadn’t.”

“Well,” she said in her briskest voice, “I care. Teaching is what I do, so if I can’t teach and feel I’m doing some good, then I lose part of myself. Isn’t that how you feel about flying? That you have to, or you’ll die?”

“I want it so bad it hurts,” he admitted, his voice raw.

“I read somewhere that flying is like throwing your soul into the heavens and racing to catch it as it falls.”

“I don’t think mine would ever fall,” he murmured, looking at the clear cold sky. He stared, entranced, as if paradise beckoned, as if he could see forever. He was probably imagining himself up there, free and wild, with a powerful machine screaming beneath him and taking him higher. Then he shook himself, visibly fighting off the dream, and turned to her. “Okay, Miss Teacher, when do we start?”

“Tonight. You’ve already wasted enough time.”

“How long will it take for me to catch up?”

She gave him a withering look. “Catch up? You’re going to leave them in the dust. How long it takes depends on how much work you can do.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, grinning a little.

She thought that already he looked younger, more like a boy, than he had before. He was, in all ways, far more mature than the other boys his age in her classes, but he looked as if a burden had been lifted from him. If flying meant that much to him, how had it felt to set himself a course that would deny him what he wanted most?

“Can you be at my house at six? Or would you rather I come here?” She thought of that drive, in the dark and snow, and wondered if she’d make it if he wanted her to come here.

“I’ll come to your house, since you aren’t used to driving in snow. Where do you live?”

“Go down the back road and take a left. It’s the first house on the left.” She thought a minute. “I believe it’s the first house, period.”

“It is. There isn’t another house for five miles. That’s the old Witcher house.”

“So I’ve been told. It was kind of the school board to arrange living quarters for me.”

Joe looked dubious. “More like it was the only way they had of getting another teacher in the middle of the year.”

“Well, I appreciated it anyway,” she said firmly. She looked out the window. “Shouldn’t your father be back by now?”

“Depends on what he found. If it was something he could fix right then, he’d do it. Look, here he comes now.”

The black pickup roared to a stop in front of the house, and Wolf got out. Coming up on the porch, he stomped his feet to rid his boots of the snow caked on them and opened the door. His cool black gaze flickered over his son, then to Mary. His eyes widened fractionally as he examined every slim curve exhibited by Joe’s old jeans, but he didn’t comment.

“Get your things together,” he instructed. “I have a spare hose that will fit your car. We’ll put it on, then take you home.”

“I can drive,” she replied. “But thank you for your trouble. How much is the hose? I’ll pay you for that.”

“Consider it neighborly assistance to a greenhorn. And we’ll still take you home. I’d rather you practiced driving in the snow somewhere other than on this mountain.”

His dark face was expressionless, as usual, but she sensed that he’d made up his mind and wouldn’t budge. She got her dress from Joe’s room and the rest of her things from the kitchen. When she returned to the living room, Wolf held a thick coat for her to wear. She slipped into it; since it reached almost to her knees and the sleeves totally obscured her hands, she knew it had to be his.

Joe had on his coat and hat again. “Ready.”

Wolf looked at his son. “Have you two had your talk?”

The boy nodded. “Yes.” He met his father’s eyes squarely. “She’s going to tutor me. I’m going to try to get into the Air Force Academy.”

“It’s your decision. Just make sure you know what you’re getting into.”

“I have to try.”

Wolf nodded once, and that was the end of the discussion. With her sandwiched between them, they left the warmth of the house, and once again Mary was struck by the bitter, merciless cold. She scrambled gratefully into the truck, which had been left running, and the blast of hot air from the heater vents felt like heaven.

Wolf got behind the wheel, and Joe got in beside her, trapping her between their two much bigger bodies. She sat with her hands primly folded and her booted feet placed neatly side-by-side as they drove down to an enormous barn with long stables extending off each side of it like arms. Wolf got out and entered the barn, then returned thirty seconds later with a length of thick black hose.

When they reached her car, both Mackenzies got out and poked their heads under the raised hood, but Wolf told her, in that tone of voice she already recognized as meaning business, to stay in the truck. He was certainly autocratic, but she liked his relationship with Joe. There was a strong sense of respect between them.

She wondered if the townspeople were truly so hostile simply because the Mackenzies were half Indian. Something Joe had said tugged at her memory, something about it would be bad enough if it were just him involved, but it would be twice as bad because of Wolf. What about Wolf? He’d rescued her from an unpleasant, even dangerous, situation, he’d seen to her comfort, and now he was repairing her car.

He’d also kissed her silly.

She could feel her cheeks heat as she remembered those fierce kisses. No, the kisses, and remembering them, begot a different kind of heat. Her cheeks were hot because her own behavior was so appalling she could barely bring herself to think about it. She had never—never!—been so forward with a man. It was totally out of character for her.

Aunt Ardith would have had a conniption fit at the thought of her mousy, sedate niece letting a strange man put his tongue in her mouth. It had to be unsanitary, though it was also, to be honest, exciting in a primitive way.

Her face still felt hot when Wolf got back into the truck, but he didn’t even look at her. “It’s fixed. Joe will follow us.”

“But doesn’t it need more water and antifreeze?”

He cast her a disbelieving look. “I had a can of antifreeze in the back of the truck. Weren’t you paying attention when I got it out?”

She blushed again. She hadn’t been paying attention; she’d been lost in reliving those kisses he’d given her, her heart thundering and her blood racing. It was an extraordinary reaction, and she wasn’t certain how to handle it. Ignoring it seemed the wisest course, but was it possible to ignore something like that?

His powerful leg moved against hers as he shifted gears, and abruptly she realized she was still sitting in the middle of the seat. “I’ll get out of your way,” she said hastily, and slid over by the window.

Wolf had liked the feel of her sitting next to him, so close that his arm and leg brushed her whenever he changed gears, but he didn’t tell her that. Things had gotten way out of hand at the house, but he didn’t have to let them go any further. This deal with Joe worried him, and Joe was more important to him than the way a soft woman felt in his arms.

“I don’t want Joe hurt because your do-gooder instincts won’t leave well enough alone.” He spoke in a low, silky tone that made her jump, and he knew she sensed the menace in it. “The Air Force Academy! That’s climbing high for an Indian kid, with a lot of people waiting to step on his fingers.”

If he’d thought to intimidate her, he’d failed. She turned toward him with fire sparking in her eyes, her chin up. “Mr. Mackenzie, I didn’t promise Joe he would be accepted into the Academy. He understands that. His grades were high enough to qualify him for recommendation, but he dropped out of school. He has no chance at all unless he gets back into school and gets the credits he needs. That’s what I offered him: a chance.”

“And if he doesn’t make it?”

“He wants to try. Even if he isn’t accepted, at least he’ll know he tried, and at least he’ll have a diploma.”

“So he can do exactly what he would have done without the diploma.”

“Perhaps. But I’m going to begin checking into the procedure and qualifications on Monday, and writing to people. The competition to get into the Academy is really fierce.”

“The people in town won’t like you tutoring him.”

“That’s what Joe said.” Her face took on that prim, obstinate look. “But I’ll have something to say to anyone who kicks up about it. Just let me handle them, Mr. Mackenzie.”

They were already down the mountain that had taken her so long to drive up. Wolf was silent for the rest of the drive, so Mary was, too. But when he pulled up to the old house where she was living, he rested his gloved hands on the steering wheel and said, “It isn’t just Joe. For your sake, don’t let on that you’re doing it. It’s better for you if no one knows you’ve ever even spoken to me.”

“Why ever not?”

His smile was wintry. “I’m an ex-con. I did time for rape.”

Chapter Three

Afterward, Mary kicked herself for simply getting out of the truck without saying a word in response to his bald statement, but at the time she had been shocked to the core and incapable of a response. Rape! The crime was repulsive. It was unbelievable. She had actually kissed him! She’d been so stunned that she’d merely nodded goodbye to him and told Joe that she’d see him that night, then gone in the house without thanking them for all their help and trouble.

Now reality set in. Standing alone in the old-fashioned kitchen, she watched Woodrow hungrily lapping milk from his saucer while she considered the man and his statement. She abruptly snorted. “Hogwash! If that man’s a rapist, I’ll boil you for supper, Woodrow.”

Woodrow looked remarkably unconcerned, which to Mary indicated that the cat agreed with her judgment, and she had a high opinion of Woodrow’s ability to know what was best for himself.

After all, Wolf hadn’t said that he’d committed rape. He’d said that he had served time in prison for rape. When Mary thought of the way both Mackenzies automatically and bitterly accepted that they would be shunned because of their Indian blood, she wondered if perhaps the fact that Wolf was part Indian figured in his conviction. But he hadn’t done it. She knew that as well as she knew her own face. The man who had helped her out of a bad situation, warmed her cold hands against his own body and kissed her with burning male hunger, simply wasn’t the type of man who could hurt a woman like that. He was the one who had halted before those kisses had gone too far; she had already been putty in his hands.

It was ridiculous. There was no way he was a rapist.

Oh, perhaps it hadn’t been any great hardship for him to stop kissing her; after all, she was mousy and inexperienced and would never be voluptuous, but…Her thoughts trailed off as remembered sensations intruded. She was inexperienced, but she wasn’t stupid. He had been—well, hard. She had distinctly felt it. Perhaps he hadn’t had an outlet for his physical appetites lately and she had been handy, but still he hadn’t taken advantage of her. He hadn’t treated her with a sailor’s attitude that any port in a storm would suffice. What was that awful term she had heard one of her students use once? Oh, yes—horny. She could accept that Wolf Mackenzie had been in that condition and she had accidentally stirred his fire in some way that still remained a mystery to her, but the bottom line was that he hadn’t pushed his advantage.

What if he had?

Her heart started a strong, heavy beat, and heat crept through her, while an achy, restless feeling settled low inside. Her breasts tightened and began throbbing, and automatically she pressed her palms over them before she realized what she was doing and jerked her hands down. But what if he had touched them? What if he had put his mouth on her? She felt as if she would melt now, just thinking about him. Fantasizing. She pressed her thighs together, trying to ease the hollow ache, and a whimper escaped her lips. The sound was low, but seemed inordinately loud in the silent house, and the cat looked up from his saucer, gave a questioning meow, then returned to the milk.

Would she have been able to stop him? Would she even have tried to stop him? Or would she now be standing here remembering making love instead of trying to imagine how it would be? Her body tingled, but from barely awakened instincts and needs rather than true knowledge.

She had never before known passion, other than the passion for knowledge and teaching. To find her body capable of such strong sensations was frightening, because she had thought she knew herself well. Suddenly her own flesh was alien to her, and her thoughts and emotions were abruptly unruly. It was almost like a betrayal.

Why, this was lust! She, Mary Elizabeth Potter, actually lusted after a man! Not just any man, either. Wolf Mackenzie.

It was both amazing and embarrassing.

Joe proved a quick, able student, as Mary had known he would be. He was prompt, arriving right on time, and thankfully alone. After stewing over the morning’s events for the entire afternoon, she didn’t think she could ever face Wolf Mackenzie again. What must he think of her? To her mind, she had practically attacked the man.

But Joe was alone, and in the three hours that followed, Mary found herself liking him more and more. He was hungry for knowledge and absorbed it like a dry sponge. While he worked on the assignments she had set out for him, she prepared a set of records in which to keep the time he spent on each subject, the matter covered and his test scores. The goal they had set for themselves was much higher than just a high school diploma. Though she hadn’t promised it, she knew she wouldn’t be satisfied unless Joe was accepted into the Air Force Academy. There had been something in his eyes that told her he would never be complete unless he could fly; he was like a grounded eagle, his soul yearning for the sky.

At nine o’clock she called a halt and noted the time in her records. Joe yawned as he rocked the chair onto its back legs. “How often do we do this?”

“Every night, if you can,” she replied. “At least until you catch up with the rest of your class.”

His pale, blue-diamond eyes glittered at her, and again she was struck by how old those eyes were. “Do I have to go back to regular classrooms next year?”

“It would help if you did. You’d be able to get much more work done, and we could do your advanced studies here.”

“I’ll think about it. I don’t want to leave Dad in the lurch. We’re expanding the ranch now, and it means a lot more work. We have more horses now than we’ve ever had before.”

“Do you raise horses?”

“Quarter horses. Good ranch horses, trained to handle cattle. We not only breed them, but people bring their own horses to the ranch for Dad to train. He’s not just good, he’s the best. Folks don’t mind that he’s an Indian when it comes to training their horses.”

Again the bitterness was apparent. Mary propped her elbows on the table and leaned her chin on her upraised, folded hands. “And you?”

“I’m Indian, too, Miss Potter. Half Indian, and that’s more than enough for most people. It wasn’t as bad when I was younger, but an Indian kid isn’t much of a threat to anyone. It’s when that kid grows up and starts looking at the white Anglo daughters that all hell breaks loose.”

So a girl had been part of the reason Joe had quit school. Mary raised her eyebrows at him. “I imagine the white Anglo daughters looked back, too,” she said mildly. “You’re very good-looking.”

He almost grinned at her. “Yeah. That and two bits will get me a cup of coffee.”

“So they looked back?”

“And flirted. One acted like she really cared something about me. But when I asked her to a dance, the door was slammed in my face right quick. I guess it’s okay to flirt with me, sort of like waving a red flag at a bull from a safe distance, but there was no way she was actually going to go out with an Indian.”

“I’m sorry.” Without thinking, Mary reached out and covered his strong young hand with her own. “Is that when you quit school?”

“There didn’t seem to be any point ingoing. Don’t think I was serious about her, or anything like that, because it hadn’t gotten that far. I was just interested in her. But the whole thing made it plain that I was never going to fit in, that none of those girls would ever go out with me.”

“So what did you plan on doing? Working on the ranch for the rest of your life and never dating, never getting married?”

“I’m sure not thinking of getting married!” he said strongly. “As for the rest of it, there are other towns, bigger towns. The ranch is doing pretty good now, and we have a little extra money.” He didn’t add that he’d lost his virginity two years before, on a trip to one of those bigger towns. He didn’t want to shock her, and he was certain she would be shocked if she had any idea of his experience. The new teacher wasn’t just prim, she was innocent. It made him feel oddly protective. That, and the fact that she was different from the other teachers he’d known. When she looked at him she saw him, Joe Mackenzie, not the bronzed skin and black hair of a half-breed. She had looked into his eyes and seen the dream, the obsession he’d always had with planes and flying.

After Joe had left, Mary locked the house and got ready for bed. It had been a tumultuous day for her, but it was a long time before she slept, and then she overslept the next morning. She deliberately kept herself busy that day, not giving herself time to moon over Wolf Mackenzie, or fantasize about things that hadn’t happened. She mopped and waxed until the old house was shiny, then dragged out the boxes of books she had brought from Savannah. Books always gave a house a lived-in look. To her frustration, however, there was no place to put them. What she needed was some of that portable shelving; if all it required for assembly was a screwdriver, she should be able to put it up herself. With her customary decisiveness, she made plans to check at the general store the next afternoon. If they didn’t have what she needed, she would buy some lumber and hire someone to build some shelves.

At lunch on Monday she made a call to the state board of education to find out what she had to do to make certain Joe’s studies would be accepted toward his diploma. She knew she had the qualifications, but there was also a good deal of paperwork to be done before he could earn the necessary credits by private tutoring. She made the call on the pay phone in the tiny teacher’s lounge, which was never used because there were only three teachers, each teaching four grades, and there was never any time for a break. Nevertheless it had three chairs and a table, a tiny, dented refrigerator, an automatic coffee maker and the pay phone. It was so unusual for any of the teachers to use the lounge that Mary was surprised when the door opened and Sharon Wycliffe, who taught grades one through four, poked her head in.

“Mary, are you feeling sick or anything?”

“No, I’m fine.” Mary stood and dusted off her hands. The receiver had carried a gray coating, evidence of how often it was used. “I was making a call.”

“Oh. I just wondered. You’d been in here a long time, and I thought you might not be feeling well. Who were you calling?”

The question was asked without any hesitancy. Sharon had been born in Ruth, had gone to school here, had married a local boy. Everyone in Ruth knew every one of the other one hundred and eighty inhabitants; they all knew each other’s business and saw nothing unusual about it. Small towns were merely large extended families. Mary wasn’t taken aback by Sharon’s open curiosity, having already experienced it.

“The state board. I needed some information on teaching requirements.”

Sharon looked alarmed. “Do you think you aren’t properly certified? If there’s any trouble, the school board will likely commit mass suicide. You don’t know how hard it is to find a teacher with the proper qualifications willing to come to a town as small as Ruth. They were almost at the panic stage when you were located. The kids were going to have to start going to school over sixty miles away.”

“No, it isn’t that. I thought I might begin private tutoring, if any of the kids need it.” She didn’t mention Joe Mackenzie, because she couldn’t forget the warnings both he and his father had given her.

“Thank goodness it isn’t bad news,” Sharon exclaimed. “I’d better get back to the kids before they get into trouble.” With a wave and a smile she withdrew her head, her curiosity satisfied.

Mary hoped Sharon didn’t mention it to Dottie Lancaster, the teacher who taught grades five through eight, but she knew it was a futile hope. Eventually, everything in Ruth became common knowledge. Sharon was warm and full of good humor with her young charges, and Mary’s teaching style was rather relaxed, too, but Dottie was strict and abrupt with the students. It made Mary uncomfortable, because she sensed Dottie regarded her job as merely a job, something that was necessary but not enjoyed. She had even heard that Dottie, who was fifty-five, was thinking about an early retirement. For all Dottie’s shortcomings, that would certainly upset the local school board, because as Sharon had pointed out, it was almost impossible to get a teacher to relocate to Ruth. The town was just too small and too far away from everything.

As she taught the last classes of the day, Mary found herself studying the young girls and wondering which one had daringly flirted with Joe Mackenzie, then retreated when he had actually asked her out. Several of the girls were very attractive and flirtatious, and though they had the shallowness typical of teenagers, they all seemed likable. But which one would have attracted Joe, who wasn’t shallow, whose eyes were far too old for a sixteen-year-old boy? Natalie Ulrich, who was tall and graceful? Pamela Hearst, who had the sort of blond good looks that belonged on a California beach? Or maybe it was Jackie Baugh, with her dark, sultry eyes. It could be any of the eight girls in her classes, she realized. They were used to being pursued, having had the stupendous good luck to be outnumbered, nine to eight, by the boys. They were all flirts. So which one was it?

She wondered why it mattered, but it did. One of these girls, though she hadn’t broken Joe’s heart, had nevertheless dealt him what could have been a life-destroying blow. Joe had taken it as the final proof that he’d never have a place in the white man’s world, and he’d withdrawn. He still might never re-enter this school, but at least he’d agreed to be tutored. If only he didn’t lose hope.

When school was out, she swiftly gathered all the materials she would need that night, as well as the papers she had to grade, and hurried to her car. It was only a short drive to Hearst’s General Store, and when she asked, Mr. Hearst kindly directed her to the stacks of shelving in a corner.

A few minutes later the door opened to admit another customer. Mary saw Wolf as soon as he entered the store; she had been examining the shelving, but it was as if her skin was an alarm system, signaling his nearness. Her nerves tingled, the hair at the nape of her neck bristled, she looked up, and there he was. Instantly she shivered, and her nipples tightened. Distress at that uncontrollable response sent blood rushing to her face.

With her peripheral vision she saw Mr. Hearst stiffen, and for the first time she truly believed the things Wolf had told her about the way he was regarded in town. He hadn’t done anything, hadn’t said anything, but it was obvious Mr. Hearst wasn’t happy to have him in the store.

Quickly she turned back to the shelving. She couldn’t look him in the eye. Her face heated even more when she thought of the way she’d acted, throwing herself at him like a sex-starved old maid. It didn’t help her feelings that he probably thought she was a sex-starved old maid; she couldn’t argue with the old maid part, but she had never paid much attention to the other until Wolf had taken her in his arms. When she thought of the things she had done…

Her face was on fire. Her body was on fire. There was no way she could talk to him. What must he think of her? With fierce concentration, she read the instructions on the box of shelving and pretended she hadn’t seen him enter the store.

She had read the instructions three times before she realized she was acting just like the people he had described: too good to speak to him, disdaining to acknowledge knowing him. Mary was normally even-tempered, but suddenly rage filled her, and it was rage at herself. What sort of person was she?

She jerked the box of shelving toward her and nearly staggered under the unexpected weight. Just as she turned, Wolf laid a box of nails on the checkout counter and reached in his pocket for his wallet.

Mr. Hearst glanced briefly at Wolf; then his eyes cut to where Mary was struggling with the box. “Here, Miss Potter, let me get that,” he said, rushing from behind the counter to grab the box. He grunted as he hefted it in his arms. “Can’t have you wrestling with something this heavy. Why, you might hurt yourself.”

Mary wondered how he thought she would get it from her car into her house if she didn’t handle it herself, but refrained from pointing that out. She followed him back to the counter, squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, looked up at Wolf and said clearly, “Hello, Mr. Mackenzie. How are you?”

His night-dark eyes glittered, perhaps in warning. “Miss Potter,” he said in brief acknowledgment, touching the brim of his hat with his fingers, but he refused to respond to her polite inquiry.

Mr. Hearst looked sharply at Mary. “You know him, Miss Potter?”

“Indeed I do. He rescued me Saturday when my car broke down and I was stranded in the snow.” She kept her voice clear and strong.

Mr. Hearst darted a suspicious look at Wolf. “Hmmph,” he said, then reached for the box of shelving to ring it up.

“Excuse me,” Mary said. “Mr. Mackenzie was here first.”

She heard Wolf mutter a curse under his breath, or at least she thought it was a curse. Mr. Hearst turned red.

“I don’t mind waiting,” Wolf said tightly.

“I wouldn’t dream of cutting in front of you.” She folded her hands at her waist and pursed her lips. “I couldn’t be that rude.”

“Ladies first,” Mr. Hearst said, trying for a smile.

Mary gave him a stern look. “Ladies shouldn’t take advantage of their gender, Mr. Hearst. This is an age of equal treatment and fairness. Mr. Mackenzie was here first, and he should be waited on first.”

Wolf shook his head and gave her a disbelieving look. “Are you one of those women’s libbers?”

Mr. Hearst glared at him. “Don’t take that tone with her, Indian.”

“Now, just a minute.” Controlling her outrage, she shook her finger at him. “That was rude and entirely uncalled for. Why, your mother would be ashamed of you, Mr. Hearst. Didn’t she teach you better than that?”

He turned even redder. “She taught me just fine,” he mumbled, staring at her finger.

There was something about a schoolteacher’s finger; it had an amazing, mystical power. It made grown men quail before it. She had noticed the effect before and decided that a schoolteacher’s finger was an extension of Mother’s finger, and as such it wielded unknown authority. Women grew out of the feeling of guilt and helplessness brought on by that accusing finger, perhaps because most of them became mothers and developed their own powerful finger, but men never did. Mr. Hearst was no exception. He looked as if he wanted to crawl under his own counter.

“Then I’m certain you’ll want to make her proud of you,” she said in her most austere voice. “After you, Mr. Mackenzie.”

Wolf made a sound that was almost a growl, but Mary stared at him until he jerked the money from his wallet and threw it on the counter. Without another word, Mr. Hearst rang up the nails and made change. Equally silent, Wolf grabbed the box of nails, spun on his heel and left the store.

“Thank you,” Mary said, finally relenting and bestowing a forgiving smile on Mr. Hearst. “I knew you would understand how important it is to me that I be treated fairly. I don’t wish to take advantage of my position as a teacher here.” She made it sound as if being a teacher was at least as important as being queen, but Mr. Hearst only nodded, too relieved to pursue the matter. He took her money and dutifully carried the box of shelving out to her car, where he stored it in the trunk for her.

“Thank you,” she said again. “By the way, Pamela—she is your daughter, isn’t she?”

Mr. Hearst looked worried. “Yes, she is.” Pam was his youngest, and the apple of his eye.

“She’s a lovely girl and a good student. I just wanted you to know that she’s doing well in school.”

His face was wreathed in smiles as she drove away.

Wolf pulled over at the corner and watched his rearview mirror, waiting for Mary to exit the store. He was so angry he wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled, and that made him even angrier, because he knew he wouldn’t do it.

Damn her! He’d warned her, but she hadn’t listened. Not only had she made it plain they were acquainted, she had outlined the circumstances of their meeting and then championed him in a way that wouldn’t go unnoticed.

Hadn’t she understood when he’d told her he was an ex-con, and why? Did she think he’d been joking?

His hands clenched around the steering wheel. She’d had her hair twisted up in a knot again, and those big glasses perched on her nose, hiding the soft slate-blue of her eyes, but he remembered how she had looked with her hair down, wearing Joe’s old jeans that had clung tightly to her slender legs and hips. He remembered the way passion had glazed her eyes when he’d kissed her. He remembered the softness of her lips, though she had had them pressed together in a ridiculously prim expression.

If he had any sense he’d just drive away. If he stayed completely away from her, there wouldn’t be anything for people to talk about other than the fact that she was tutoring Joe, and that would be bad enough in their eyes.

But how would she get that box out of the car and into the house when she got home? It probably weighed as much as she did. He would just carry the box in for her, and at the same time peel a strip off her hide for not listening to him.

Oh, hell, who was he fooling? He’d had a taste of her, and he wanted more. She was a frumpy old maid, but her skin was as pale and translucent as a baby’s, and her slender body would be soft, gently curving under his hands. He wanted to touch her. After kissing her, holding her, he hadn’t gone to see Julie Oakes because he hadn’t been able to get the feel of Miss Mary Potter out of his mind, off of his body. He still ached. His physical frustration was painful, and it was going to get worse, because if he’d ever known anything, it was that Miss Mary Potter wasn’t for him.

Her car pulled out from in front of the store and passed him. Smothering another curse, he put the truck in gear and slowly followed her. She maintained a sedate pace, following the two-lane highway out of town, then turning off on the narrow secondary road that led to her house. She had to see his truck behind her, but she didn’t give any indication that she knew she was being followed. Instead she drove straight to her house, carefully turned in at the snow-packed driveway and guided the car around to her customary parking spot behind the house.

Wolf shook his head as he pulled in behind her and got out of the truck. She was already out of her car, and she smiled at him as she fished the house key out of her purse. Didn’t she remember what he’d told her? He couldn’t believe that he’d told her he’d served time for rape and still she greeted him as calmly as if he were a priest, though they were the only two people for miles around.

“Damn it all, lady!” he barked at her, his long legs carrying him to her in a few strides. “Didn’t you listen to anything I said Saturday?”

“Yes, of course I listened. That doesn’t mean I agreed.” She unlocked the trunk and smiled at him. “While you’re here, would you please carry this box in for me? I’d really appreciate it.”

“That’s why I stopped,” he snapped. “I knew you couldn’t handle it.”

His ill temper didn’t seem to faze her. She merely smiled at him again as he lifted the box onto his shoulder, then led the way to the back door and opened it.

The first thing he noticed was that the house had a fresh, sweet smell to it, instead of the musty smell of an old house that had stood empty for a long time. His head lifted, and against his will he inhaled the faint scent. “What’s that smell?”

She stopped and sniffed delicately. “What smell?”

“That sweet smell. Like flowers.”

“Flowers? Oh, that must be the lilac sachet I put in all the drawers to freshen them. So many of the sachets are overpowering, but the lilacs are just right, don’t you think?”

He didn’t know anything about sachets, whatever they were, but if she put them in all the drawers, then her underwear must smell like lilacs, too. Her sheets would smell like lilacs and the warm scent of her body. His body responded strongly to the thought, and he cursed, then set the box down with a thud. Though the house was chilly, he felt sweat break out on his forehead.

“Let me turn up the heat,” she said, ignoring his cursing. “The furnace is old and noisy, but I don’t have any wood for the fireplace, so it’ll have to do.” As she talked, she left the kitchen and turned down a hallway, her voice growing fainter. Then she was back, and she smiled at him again. “It’ll be warm in just a minute. Would you like a cup of tea?” After giving him a measuring look she said, “Make that coffee. You don’t look like a tea-drinking man.”

He was already warm. He was burning up. He pulled off his gloves and tossed them on the kitchen table. “Don’t you know everybody in that town will be talking about you now? Lady, I’m Indian, and I’m an ex-con—”

“Mary,” she interrupted briskly.

“What?”

“My name is Mary, not ‘lady.’ Mary Elizabeth.” She added the second name out of habit because Aunt Ardith had always called her by both names. “Are you certain you don’t want coffee? I need something to warm up my insides.”

His hat joined the gloves, and he raked an impatient hand through his hair. “All right. Coffee.”

Mary turned to run the water and measure the coffee, using the activity to hide the sudden color in her face. His hair. She felt stupid, but she’d hardly noticed his hair before. Maybe she’d been too upset, then too bemused, or maybe it was just that his midnight-black eyes had taken her attention, but she hadn’t noticed before how long his hair was. It was thick and black and shiny, and touched his broad shoulders. He looked magnificently pagan; she had immediately pictured him with his powerful chest and legs bare, his body covered only by a breechclout or loincloth, and her pulse rate had gone wild.

He didn’t sit down, but propped his long body against the cabinet beside her. Mary kept her head down, hoping her blush would subside. What was it about the man that the mere sight of him triggered erotic fantasies? She had certainly never had any fantasies before, erotic or otherwise. She had never before looked at a man and wondered what he looked like nude, but the thought of Wolf nude made her ache inside, made her hands itch to touch him.

“What the hell are you doing letting me even come in your house, let alone inviting me to have coffee?” he asked in a low, rough voice.

She blinked at him, her expression startled. “Why shouldn’t I?”

He thought he might explode with frustration. “Lady—”

“Mary.”

His big fists clenched. “Mary. Don’t you have any better sense than to let an ex-con into your house?”

“Oh, that.” She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “It would be wise to follow your advice if you were truly a criminal, but since you didn’t do it, I don’t think that applies in this instance. Besides, if you were a criminal, you wouldn’t give me that advice.”

He couldn’t believe the casual way she disregarded any possibility of his guilt. “How do you know I didn’t do it?”

“You just didn’t.”

“Do you have any reason for your deduction, Sherlock, or are you going on good old feminine intuition?”

She jerked around and glared at him. “I don’t believe a rapist would have handled a woman as tenderly as you—as you handled me,” she said, her voice tapering off into a whisper, and the color surged back into her face. Mortified by the stupid way she continued to blush, she slapped her palms to her face in an effort to hide the betraying color.

Wolf clenched his teeth, partly because she was white and therefore not for him, partly because she was so damned innocent, and partly because he wanted so fiercely to touch her that his entire body ached. “Don’t build any dreams because I kissed you Saturday,” he said harshly. “I’ve been too long without a woman, and I’m—”

“Horny?” she supplied.

He was staggered by the incongruity of that word coming from her prim mouth. “What?”

“Horny,” she said again. “I’ve heard some of my students say it. It means—”

“I know what it means!”

“Oh. Well, is that what you were? Still are, for all I know.”

He wanted to laugh. The urge almost overpowered him, but he changed the sound into a cough. “Yeah, I still am.”

She looked sympathetic. “I understand that can be quite a problem.”

“It’s hard on a guy.”

It took a moment, but then her eyes widened, and before she could stop herself, her gaze had slid down his body. Instantly she jerked her head back up. “Oh. I see. I mean—I understand.”

The need to touch her was suddenly so strong that he had to give into it, had to touch her in even the smallest way. He put his hands on her shoulders, savoring her softness, the delicacy of her joints under his palms. “I don’t think you do understand. You can’t associate with me and still work in this town. At best, you’d be treated like a leper, or a slut. You would probably lose your job.”

At that, she pressed her lips together, and a militant light came into her eyes. “I’d like to see someone try to fire me for associating with a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen. I refuse to pretend I don’t know you.”

“There’s knowing, and there’s knowing. It would be bad enough for you to be friends with me. Sleeping with me would make your life here impossible.”

He felt her stiffen under his hands. “I don’t believe I’ve asked to sleep with you,” she said, but the color rose in her face again. She hadn’t actually said the words, but he knew she certainly had thought about what it would be like.

“You asked, all right, but you’re so damned innocent you didn’t realize what you were doing,” he muttered. “I could crawl on top of you right now, sweetheart, and I’d do it if you had any real idea of what you’re asking for. But the last thing I want is to have some prissy little Anglo screaming ‘rape’ at me. Believe me, an Indian doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt.”

“I wouldn’t do anything like that!”

He smiled grimly. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. I’m probably the only man who has ever kissed you, and you think you’d like more, don’t you? But sex isn’t pretty and romantic, it’s hot and sweaty, and you probably wouldn’t like the first time at all. So do me a favor and find some other guinea pig. I have enough troubles without adding you to the list.”

Mary jerked away from him, pressing her lips firmly together and blinking her eyes as fast as she could to keep the tears from falling. Not for anything would she let him make her cry.

“I’m sorry I gave you that impression,” she said, her voice stifled but even. “It’s true I’ve never been kissed before, but I’m sure you aren’t surprised by that. I’m obviously not Miss America material. If my—my response was out of line, I apologize. It won’t happen again.” She turned briskly to the cabinet. “The coffee is ready. How do you take yours?”

A muscle jerked in his jaw, and he grabbed his hat. “Forget the coffee,” he muttered as he jammed the hat on his head and reached for his gloves.

She didn’t look at him. “Very well. Goodbye, Mr. Mackenzie.”

Wolf slammed out the door, and Mary stood there with an empty coffee cup in her hand. If it really was goodbye, she didn’t know how she would be able to stand it.

Chapter Four

Mary wasn’t weak-willed, and she refused to give into the desolation that filled her every time she thought of that horrible day. During the days she prodded, cajoled and enticed her students toward knowledge; at night she watched Joe devour the facts she spread before him. His thirst for knowledge was insatiable, and he not only caught up with the students in her regular classes, he passed them.

She had written her letters to the Wyoming members of Congress, and had also written to a friend for all the information she could find on the Air Force Academy. When the package came, she gave it to Joe and watched his eyes take on that fiercely intent, enthralled look he got whenever he thought of flying. Working with Joe was a joy; her only problem was that he reminded her so strongly of his father.

It wasn’t that she missed Wolf; how could she miss someone she had seen only twice? He hadn’t imbedded himself in her daily routine so that her life seemed empty without him. But while she had been with him, she had felt more vividly alive than she ever had before. With Wolf, she hadn’t been Mary Potter, old maid, she had been Mary Potter, woman. His intense masculinity had reached parts of her that she hadn’t known existed, bringing to life dormant yearnings and emotions. She argued with herself that what she felt was plain old garden-variety lust, but that didn’t stop the ache she felt whenever she thought of him. Even worse was her humiliation because her inexperience had been so obvious, and now she knew he thought of her as a sex-starved old maid.

It was April before the inevitable happened and word got out that Joe Mackenzie was spending a lot of time at the new teacher’s house. At first Mary wasn’t aware of the rumor flying through the town, though the kids in her classes had been watching her strangely, and there had been a lot of whispering. Sharon Wycliffe and Dottie Lancaster, the other two teachers, also took to giving her odd looks and whispering to each other. It didn’t take Mary long to decide that the secret was no longer secret, but she went about her business with a serene smile. She had already received a favorable letter from a senator, signaling his interest in Joe, and despite her own arguments for caution, her spirits were high.

The school board’s regular meeting was scheduled for the third week in April. The afternoon of the meeting, Sharon, with elaborate casualness, asked Mary if she planned to attend. Mary looked at her in surprise. “Of course. I thought all of us were expected to attend on a regular basis.”

“Well, yes. It’s just that—I thought—”

“You thought I would avoid the meeting now that everyone knows I’ve been teaching Joe Mackenzie?” Mary asked directly.

Sharon’s mouth fell open. “What?” Her voice was weak.

“You didn’t know? Well, it isn’t an earth-shattering secret.” She shrugged. “Joe thought people would be upset if I tutored him, so I haven’t said anything. From the way everyone has been acting, I thought the cat was out of the bag.”

“I think it was the wrong cat,” Sharon admitted sheepishly. “His truck was seen at your house at night and people—um—got the wrong idea.”

Mary felt blank. “What wrong idea?”

“Well, he’s big for his age and all.”

Still Mary didn’t understand, until Sharon blushed hotly. Then comprehension burst on her brain like a flash, and horror filled her, followed swiftly by anger. “They think I’m having an affair with a sixteen-year-old boy?” Her voice rose with each word.

“It was late at night when his truck was seen,” Sharon added, looking miserable.

“Joe leaves promptly at nine o’clock. Someone’s idea of ‘late’ differs from mine.” Mary stood and began shoving papers into her tote, her nostrils flaring, her cheeks white. The awful thing was that she had to simmer until seven o’clock that night, but she didn’t think waiting would cool her temper. If anything, pressure would build. She felt savage, not only because her reputation had been impugned, but because Joe had also been attacked. He was trying desperately to make his dreams come true, and people were trying to tear him down. She wasn’t a hen fussing with one chick; she was a tigress with one cub, and that cub had been threatened. It didn’t matter that the cub was seven inches taller than she and outweighed her by almost eighty pounds; Joe, for all his unusual maturity, was still young and vulnerable. The father had disdained her protection, but there was no power on earth that could stop her from defending the son.

Evidently word had spread, because the school board meeting was unusually crowded that night. There were six members of the board: Mr. Hearst, who owned the general store; Francie Beecham, an eighty-one-year-old former teacher; Walton Is by, the bank president; Harlon Keschel, who owned the combination drugstore/hamburger joint; Eli Baugh, a local rancher whose daughter, Jackie, was in Mary’s class; and Cicely Karr, who owned the service station. All of the board members were solid members of the small community, all of them property owners, and all of them except Francie Beecham had stony faces.

The board meeting was held in Dottie’s classroom, and extra desks were brought from Mary’s classroom so there would be enough seats for everyone, an indication of how many people felt it necessary to attend. Mary was certain that at least one parent of each of her students was present. As she entered the room, every eye turned toward her. The women looked indignant; the men looked both hostile and speculative, and that made Mary even angrier. What right did they have to look down on her for her supposed sins, while at the same time they were wondering about the details?

Leaning against the wall was a tall man in a khaki deputy sheriff’s uniform, watching her with narrowed eyes, and she wondered if they meant to have her arrested for sexual misconduct. It was ridiculous! If she had looked anything other than exactly what she was, a slight, mousy old maid, their suspicions would at least have made more sense. She poked an errant strand of hair back into the knot at the back of her head, sat down and folded her arms, intending to let them make the first move.

Walton Is by cleared his throat and called the meeting to order, no doubt feeling the importance of his position with so many people present to watch the proceedings. Mary drummed her fingers on her arm. The board went through the routine of its normal business, and suddenly she decided she wasn’t going to wait. The best defense, she’d read, was an attack.

When the normal business was finished, Mr. Is by cleared his throat again, and Mary took it as a signal that they were about to get down to the real purpose of the meeting. She rose to her feet and said clearly, “Mr. Is by, before you continue, I have an announcement to make.”

He looked startled, and his florid face turned even redder. “This is—uh, well, irregular, Miss Potter.”

“It’s also important.” She kept her voice at the level she used when lecturing and turned so she could see the entire room. The deputy straightened from his position against the wall as everyone’s attention locked on her like a magnet to a steel bar. “I’m certified to tutor pupils privately, and the credits they earn in private lessons are as legitimate as those earned in a public classroom. For the past month, I’ve been tutoring Joe Mackenzie in my home—”

“I’ll just bet you have,” someone muttered, and Mary’s eyes flashed.

“Who said that?” she demanded crisply. “It was incredibly vulgar.”

The room fell silent.

“When I saw Joe Mackenzie’s school records, I was outraged that a student of his intelligence had quit school. Perhaps none of you know it, but he was at the top of his class. I contacted him and persuaded him to take lessons to catch up to his classmates, and in one month he has not only caught them, he has surpassed them. I have also been in contact with Senator Allard, who has expressed an interest in Joe. Joe’s strong academic standing has made him a candidate for recommendation to the Air Force Academy. He’s an honor to the community, and I know all of you will give him your support.”

She was gratified to see the stunned looks in the room and sat down with the cool poise Aunt Ardith had tirelessly drummed into her. Only rabble got into brawls, Aunt Ardith had said; a lady could make her point in other ways.

Whispers rustled through the room as people put their heads together, and Mr. Is by shuffled the three sheets of paper in front of him as he searched for something to say. The other members of the board put their heads together, too.

She looked around the room, and a shadow in the hall beyond the open door caught her attention. It was only a slight movement; if she hadn’t looked at precisely that second, she would have missed it. As it was, it took her a moment to make out the outline of a tall man, and her skin tingled. Wolf. He was out in the hall, listening. It was the first time she had seen him since the day he’d come to her house, and even though all she could see was a darker outline against the shadows, her heart began to pound.

Mr. Is by cleared his throat, and the murmuring in the room settled down. “That is good news, Miss Potter,” he began. “However, we don’t think you’ve given the best appearance as an example to our young people—”

“Speak for yourself, Walton,” Francie Beecham said testily, her voice cracking with old age.

Mary stood again. “In precisely what way have I given the wrong appearance?”

“It doesn’t look right to have that boy in your house all hours of the night!” Mr. Hearst snapped.

“Joe leaves my home at exactly nine o’clock, after three hours of lessons. What is your definition of ‘all hours of the night’? However, if the board doesn’t approve of the location, I take it all are agreed that the schoolhouse will be used for night classes? I have no objection to moving the lessons here.”

Mr. Is by, who was at heart a good-natured soul, looked harassed. The board members put their heads together again.

After a minute of heated consultation, they looked up again. Harlon Keschel wiped his perspiring face with a handkerchief. Francie Beecham looked outraged. This time it was Cicely Karr who spoke. “Miss Potter, this is a difficult situation. The odds against Joe Mackenzie being accepted into the Air Force Academy are high, I’m sure you’ll admit, and the truth is that we don’t approve of your spending so much time alone with him.”

Mary’s chin lifted. “Why is that?”

“Because you’re a newcomer to this area, I’m sure you don’t understand the way things are around here. The Mackenzies have a bad reputation, and we fear for your safety if you continue to associate with the boy.”

“Mrs. Karr, that’s hogwash,” Mary replied with inelegant candor. Aunt Ardith wouldn’t have approved. She thought of Wolf standing out in the hallway listening to these people slandering both him and his son, and she could almost feel the heat of his temper. He wouldn’t let it hurt him, but it hurt her to know he was hearing it.

“Wolf Mackenzie helped me out of a dangerous situation when my car broke down and I was stranded in the snow. He was kind and considerate, and refused payment for repairing my car. Joe Mackenzie is an outstanding student who works hard on their ranch, doesn’t drink or carouse—” she hoped that was true “—and has never been anything but respectful. I consider both of them my friends.”

In the hallway, the man standing in the shadows knotted his fists. Damn the little fool, didn’t she know this would probably cost her her job? He knew that if he stepped into that room all the hostility would instantly be focused on him, and he started to move, to draw their attention away from her, when he heard her speaking again. Didn’t she know when to shut up?

“I would be as concerned if any of your children dropped out of school. I can’t bear to see a young person give up on the future. Ladies and gentlemen, I was hired to teach. I intend to do that to the best of my ability. All of you are good people. Would any of you want me to give up if it were your child?”

Several people looked away and cleared their throats. Cicely Karr merely raised her chin. “You’re sidestepping the point, Miss Potter. This isn’t one of our children. This is Joe Mackenzie. He’s…he’s—”

“Half Indian?” Mary supplied, lifting her brow in question.

“Well, yes. That’s part of it. The other part is his father—”

“What about his father?”

Wolf had to stifle a curse, and he started to step forward again when Mary asked scornfully, “Are you concerned because of his prison sentence?”

“That’s cause enough, I should think!”

“Should you? Why?”

“Cicely, sit down and hush,” Francie Beecham snapped. “The girl has a point, and I agree. If you start trying to think at this stage of your life, it could bring on hot flashes.”

Just for a moment there was stunned silence in the room; then it exploded in thunderous laughter. Rough ranchers and their hard-working wives held their stomachs as they bent double, tears running down their faces. Mr. Is by turned so red his face was almost purple; then he burst into a great whooping laugh that sounded like a hysterical crane laying eggs, or so Cicely Karr told him. Her face was red, too, from anger. Big Eli Baugh actually rolled out of his chair, he was laughing so hard. Cicely grabbed his hat from the back of his chair and hit him over the head with it. He continued to howl with laughter as he protected his head with his arms.

“You can buy your motor oil from some other place from now on!” Cicely roared at Mr. Baugh, continuing to bash him with his hat. “And your gas! Don’t you or any of your hands set foot on my property again!”

“Now, Cicely,” Eli choked as he tried to dodge his hat.

“Folks, let’s have some order in here,” Harlon Keschel pleaded, though he looked as if he were enjoying the spectacle of Cicely bashing Eli with his own hat. Certainly everyone else in the room was. Almost everyone, Mary thought, as she spotted Dottie Lancaster’s cold face. Suddenly she realized that the other teacher would have been glad to see her fired, and she wondered why. She’d always tried to be friendly with Dottie, but the older woman had rebuffed all overtures. Had Dottie seen Joe’s truck at Mary’s house and started the gossip? Would Dottie have been out driving around at night? There were no other houses on Mary’s road, so no one would have been driving past to visit a neighbor.

The uproar had died down, though there was still an occasional chuckle heard around the room. Mrs. Karr continued to glare at Eli Baugh, having for some reason made him the focal point of her embarrassed anger rather than turning it on Francie Beecham, who had started it all.

Even Mr. Is by was still grinning as he raised his voice. “Let’s see if we can get back to business here, folks.”

Francie Beecham piped up again. “I think we’ve handled enough business for the night. Miss Potter is giving the Mackenzie boy private school lessons so he can go to the Air Force Academy, and that’s that. I’d do the same thing if I were still teaching.”

Mr. Hearst said, “It still don’t look right—”

“Then she can use the classroom. Everyone agreed?” Francie looked at the other board members, her wrinkled face triumphant. She winked at Mary.

“It’s okay by me,” Eli Baugh said as he tried to reshape his hat. “The Air Force Academy—well, that’s something. I don’t reckon anyone from this county has ever been to any of the academies.”

Mr. Hearst and Mrs. Karr disagreed, but Mr. Is by and Harlon Keschel sided with Francie and Eli. Mary stared hard at the shadowed hallway, but couldn’t see anything now. Had he left? The deputy turned his head to see what she was looking at, but he didn’t see anything, either, because he gave a slight shrug and looked back at her, then winked. Mary was startled. More people had winked at her that night than in the rest of her life total. What was the proper way to handle a wink? Were they ignored? Should she wink back? Aunt Ardith’s lectures on proper behavior hadn’t covered winking.

The meeting broke up with a good deal of teasing and laughter, and more than a few of the parents took a moment to shake Mary’s hand and tell her she was doing a good job. It was half an hour before she was able to get her coat and make it to the door, and when she did, she found the deputy waiting for her.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said in an easy tone. “I’m Clay Armstrong, the local deputy.”

“How do you do? Mary Potter,” she replied, holding out her hand.

He took it, and her small hand disappeared in his big one. He set his hat on top of dark brown curly hair, but his blue eyes still twinkled, even in the shadow of the brim. She liked him on sight. He was one of those strong, quiet men who were rock steady, but who had a good sense of humor. He’d been delighted by the uproar.

“Everyone in town knows who you are. We don’t often have a stranger move in, especially a young single woman from the South. The first day you were here, the whole county heard about your accent. Haven’t you noticed that all the girls in school are trying to drawl?”

“Are they?” she asked in surprise.

“They sure are.” He slowed his walk to keep pace with her as they walked to her car. The cold air rushed at her, chilling her legs, but the night sky was crystal clear, and a thousand stars winked overhead in compensation.

They reached her car. “Would you tell me something, Mr. Armstrong?”

“Anything. And call me Clay.”

“Why did Mrs. Karr get so angry at Mr. Baugh, instead of at Miss Beecham? It was Miss Beecham who started the whole thing.”

“Cicely and Eli are first cousins. Cicely’s folks died when she was young, and Eli’s parents took her to raise. Well, Cicely and Eli are the same age, so they grew up together and fought like wildcats the whole time. Still do, I guess, but some families are like that. They’re still pretty close.”

That kind of family was strange to Mary, but it sounded warm and secure, too, to be able to fight with someone and know he still loved you.

“So she hit him for laughing at her?”

“And because he was convenient. No one is going to get too angry with Miss Beecham. She taught all the adults in this county, and we all still think a lot of that old lady.”

“That sounds so nice,” Mary said, smiling. “I hope I’m still here when I’m that old.”

“Are you planning to raise cain at school board meetings, too?”

“I hope so,” she repeated.

He leaned down to open the car door for her. “I hope so, too. Be careful driving home.” After she got in, he closed the door and touched his fingers to his hat brim, then strode away.

He was a nice man. Most of the people in Ruth were nice. They were blind where Wolf Mackenzie was concerned, but basically they weren’t vicious people.

Wolf. Where had he gone?

She hoped Joe wouldn’t decide to stop his lessons because of this. Though she knew it was foolish to count her chickens prematurely, she felt a growing certainty that he would be accepted into the Academy and was inordinately proud that she could be part of getting him there. Aunt Ardith would have said that pride goeth before a fall, but Mary had often thought that a person would never fall if he didn’t first try to stand. On more than one occasion she had countered Aunt Ardith’s cliché of choice with her own “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” It had always made Aunt Ardith huffy when her favorite weapon was turned against her. Mary sighed. She missed her acerbic aunt so much. Her supply of clichés might wither from lack of use without Aunt Ardith to sharpen her wits against.

When she turned into her driveway, she was tired, hungry and anxious, afraid that Joe would try to be noble and stop his lessons so she wouldn’t have any more trouble because of him. “I’ll teach him,” she muttered aloud as she stepped out of the car, “if I have to follow him around on horseback.”

“Who are you following around?” Wolf demanded irritably, and she jumped so violently that she banged her knee against the car door.

“Where did you come from?” she demanded just as irritably. “Darn it, you scared me!”

“Probably not enough. I parked in the barn, out of sight.”

She stared up at him, drinking in the sight of his proud, chiseled face and closed expression. The starlight was colorless, revealing his features in stark angles and shadows, but it was enough for her. She hadn’t realized how starved she had been for the sight of him, the heart-pounding nearness of him. She couldn’t even feel the cold now, the way blood was racing through her veins. This was probably what “being in heat” meant. It was breathtaking and a little scary, but she decided she liked it.

“Let’s go in,” he said when she made no effort to move, and Mary silently led the way to the back door. She’d left it unlocked so she wouldn’t have to fumble with a key in the dark, and Wolf’s black brows drew together when she turned the knob and pushed the door open.

They entered, and Mary closed the door behind them, then turned on the light. Wolf stared down at her, at the silky brown hair escaping from its knot, and he had to clench his fists to keep from grabbing her. “Don’t leave your door unlocked again,” he ordered.

“I don’t think I’ll be burgled,” she countered, then admitted honestly, “I don’t have anything a self-respecting burglar would want.”

He’d sworn he wouldn’t touch her, but even though he’d known it would be difficult to keep his hands to himself, he hadn’t realized quite how difficult. He wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her, but he knew if he touched her in any way at all, he wouldn’t want to stop. Her female scent teased his nostrils, beckoning him closer; she smelled warm and delicately fragrant, so feminine it made his entire body ache with longing. He moved away from her, knowing it was safer for them both if he put some distance between them.

“I wasn’t thinking about a burglar.”

“No?” She considered that, then realized what he’d meant and what she’d said in response. She cleared her throat and marched to the stove, hoping he wouldn’t see her red face. “If I make a pot of coffee, will you drink a cup this time or storm out like you did before as soon as it’s made?”

The tart reproach in her voice amused him, and he wondered how he had ever thought her mousy. Her clothes were dowdy, but her personality was anything but timid. She said exactly what she thought and didn’t hesitate to take someone to task. Less than an hour before she had taken on the entire county on his behalf. The memory of it sobered him.

“I’ll drink the coffee if you insist on making it, but I’d rather you just sat down and listened to me.”

Turning, Mary slid into a chair and primly folded her hands on the table. “I’m listening.”

He pulled the chair next to her away from the table and turned it to the side, facing her, before he sat down. She turned an unsmiling gaze on him. “I saw you in the hall tonight.”

He looked grim. “Damn. Did anyone else notice me?” He wondered how she had seen him, because he’d been very careful, and he was good at not being seen when he didn’t want to be.

“I don’t think so.” She paused. “I’m sorry they said those things.”

“I’m not worried about what the good people of Ruth think about me,” he said in a hard tone. “I can handle them, and so can Joe. We don’t depend on them for our living, but you do. Don’t go to bat for us again, unless you don’t like your job very much and you’re trying to lose it, because that’s damn sure what will happen if you keep on.”

“I won’t lose my job for teaching Joe.”

“Maybe not. Maybe they’ll have some tolerance for Joe, especially since you threw the Academy at them, but I’m another story.”

“Nor will I lose my job for being friendly with you. I have a contract,” she explained serenely. “An ironclad contract. It isn’t easy to get a teacher in a place as small and isolated as Ruth, especially in the middle of winter. I can lose my job only if I’m judged incompetent, or break the law, and I defy anyone to prove me incompetent.”

He wondered if that meant she didn’t rule out breaking the law, but didn’t ask her. The kitchen light was shining directly down on her head, turning her hair to a silvery halo and distracting him with its glitter. He knew her hair was brown, but it was such a pale, ash brown that it had no red tones, and when light struck it the strands actually looked silver. She looked like an angel, with her soft blue eyes and translucent skin, and her silky hair slipping from its confining knot to curl around her face. His insides knotted painfully. He wanted to touch her. He wanted her naked beneath him. He wanted to be inside her, to gently ride her until she was all soft and wet, and her nails were clawing at his back—

Mary reached out and put her slim hand on his much larger one, and just that small touch burned him. “Tell me what happened,” she invited softly. “Why were you sent to prison? I know you didn’t do it.”

Wolf was a hard man, by nature as well as necessity, but her simple, unquestioning faith in him shook him to the bone. He had always stood alone, isolated by his Indian blood from Anglos and by his Anglo blood from Indians. Not even his parents had been close to him, though they had loved him and he had loved them in return. They had simply never truly known him, never been admitted into his private thoughts. Nor had he been close to his wife, Joe’s mother. They had slept together, he’d been fond of her, but she, too, had been kept at a distance. Only with Joe had his reserve been breached, and Joe knew him as no other person on earth did. They were part of each other, and he fiercely loved the boy. Only the thought of Joe had gotten him through the years in prison alive.

It was more than alarming that this slight Anglo woman had a knack for touching nerves he’d thought completely insulated; he didn’t want her close to him, not in any emotional way. He wanted to have sex with her, but he didn’t want her to matter to him. Angrily he realized that she already mattered to him, and he didn’t like it at all.

He stared at her fragile hand on his, her touch light and soft. She didn’t shrink from touching him, as if he were dirty; nor was she grasping at him as some women did, rapaciously, wanting to use him, to see if the savage could satisfy their shallow, greedy appetites. She had simply reached out to touch him because she cared.

Ever so slowly he watched his hand turn and engulf hers, enfolding the pale, slim fingers within his callused palm as if to protect them.

“It was nine years ago.” His voice was low, harsh; she had to lean forward to hear him. “No—almost ten years. Ten years this June. Joe and I had just moved here. I was working for the Half Moon Ranch. A girl from the next county was raped and killed, and her body dumped just within the far boundary of Half Moon. I was picked up and questioned, but hell, I’d been expecting it from the minute I heard about the girl. I was new to the area, and Indian. But there was no evidence against me, so they had to let me go.

“Three weeks later, another girl was raped. This one was from the Rocking L Ranch, just to the west of town. She was stabbed, like the other girl, but she lived. She’d seen the rapist.” He paused for a minute, the expression in his black eyes shuttered as he looked back at those long-ago years. “She said he looked like an Indian. He was dark, with black hair, and he was tall. Not many tall Indians around. I was picked up again before I even knew another girl had been raped. They put me in a line up with six dark-haired Anglos. The girl identified me, and I was charged. Joe and I lived on Half Moon, but somehow no one remembered seeing me at home the night that girl was raped, except Joe, and a six-year-old Indian kid’s word didn’t carry much weight.”

Her chest hurt when she thought of how it had been for him, and for Joe, who had been only a small child. How much worse had it been for Wolf because of Joe, worrying what would happen to his son? She didn’t know of anything she could say now to lessen that ten-year-old outrage, so she didn’t try; she just tightened her fingers around his, letting him know he wasn’t alone.

“I was put on trial and found guilty. I’m lucky they weren’t able to tie me to the first rape, the girl who’d been murdered, or I’d have been lynched. As it was, everyone thought I’d done it.”

“You went to prison.” It was so hard to believe, even though she knew it was true. “What happened to Joe?”

“He was made a ward of the state. I survived prison. It wasn’t easy. A rapist is considered fair game. I had to be the roughest son of a bitch in there just to live from one night to the next.”

She had heard tales about what happened to men in prison, and her pain increased. He had been locked up, away from the sun and the mountains, the clear fresh air, and she knew it had been like caging a wild animal. He was innocent, but his freedom and his son had been taken from him, and he’d been thrown in with the dregs of humanity. Had he slept soundly even once the entire time he’d been in prison, or had he merely dozed, his senses attuned to attack?

Her throat was tight and dry. All she could manage was a whisper. “How long were you in?”

“Two years.” His face was hard, his eyes full of menace as he stared at her, but she knew the menace was directed inward, at his bitter memories. “Then a series of rapes and murders from Casper to Cheyenne were tied together and the guy was caught. He confessed, seemed proud of his accomplishments, but a little put out that they hadn’t given him complete credit. He admitted to the two rapes in this area, and gave them details no one but the rapist could have known.”

“Was he Indian?”

His smile was flinty. “Italian. Olive-skinned, curly haired.”

“So you were released?”

“Yeah. My name was cleared, and they said ‘Sorry about that,’ and turned me loose. I’d lost my son, my job, everything I’d owned. I found out where they’d put Joe and hitched there to get him. Then I rodeoed for a while to get some money and lucked out. I did pretty well. I won enough to come back here with something in my pocket. The old guy who had owned Half Moon had died with no heirs, and the land was about to be sold for taxes. It wiped me out, but I bought the land. Joe and I settled here, and I began training horses and building up the ranch.”

“Why did you come back?” She couldn’t understand it. Why return to the place where he’d been so mistreated?

“Because I was tired of always moving on, never having a place of my own. Damn tired of being looked down on as a trashy, shiftless Indian. Tired of my son not having a home. And because there was no way in hell I was going to let the bastards get the best of me.”

The aching in her intensified. She wished she could ease the anger and bitterness in him, wished she dared take him in her arms and soothe him, wished he could become a part of the community instead of a thorn in its side.

“They’re not all illegitimate,” she said, and wondered why his mouth suddenly twitched as if he might smile. “Any more than all Indians are trashy or shiftless. People are just people, good and bad.”

“You need a keeper,” he replied. “That Pollyanna attitude is going to get you in trouble. Teach Joe, do what you can for him, but stay the hell away from me, for your own sake. These people didn’t change their minds about me just because I was released.”

“You haven’t tried to change their minds. You’ve just kept rubbing their noses in their guilt,” she pointed out, her tone acerbic.

“Am I supposed to forget what they did?” he asked just as sharply. “Forget that their ‘justice’ consisted of putting me in a lineup with six Anglos and telling that girl to ‘pick out the Indian’? I spent two years in hell. Is till don’t know what happened to Joe, but it was almost three months after I got him back before he spoke a word. Forget that? Like hell.”

“So, they won’t change their minds, you won’t change your mind, and I won’t change mine. I believe we have a stalemate.”

His dark eyes burned with frustration as he glared at her, and suddenly he seemed to realize he was still holding her hand. He released her abruptly and stood. “Look, you can’t be my friend. We can’t befriends.”

Now that her hand was free, Mary felt abandoned and cold. She clasped her hands in her lap and looked up at him. “Why? Of course, if you simply don’t like me…” Her voice trailed off, and she bent her head to examine her hands as if she’d never seen them before.

Not like her? He couldn’t sleep, his temper was frayed, he got hard whenever he thought about her, and he thought about her too damn much. He was so physically frustrated that he thought he might go mad, but he couldn’t even ease himself with Julie Oakes or any other woman now, because all he could think about was baby-fine brown hair, slate-blue eyes and skin like translucent rose petals. It was all he could do to keep from taking her, and only the knowledge of how the good townspeople of Ruth would turn on her if he made her his woman kept him from grabbing her. Her stubborn principles hadn’t prepared her for the pain and trouble she would face.

Suddenly his frustration boiled over, and he was filled with rage at having to walk away from the one woman he wanted to the point of madness. Before he could stop himself, he reached down and grasped her wrists, hauling her to her feet. “No, damn it, we can’t befriends! Do you want to know why? Because I can’t be around you without thinking of stripping you naked and taking you, wherever we happen to be. Hell, I don’t know if I’d take the time to strip you! I want your breasts in my hands, your nipples in my mouth. I want your legs around my waist, or your ankles on my shoulders, or any position at all if I can just get inside you.” He’d pulled her so close that his warm breath brushed her cheeks as he rasped the low, harsh words at her. “So, sweetheart, there’s no way we can be friends.”

Mary shivered as her body responded to his words. Though they’d been spoken in anger, they told her that he felt the same way she did, and described actions she could only half imagine. She was too inexperienced and honest to hide her feelings from him, so she didn’t even try. Her eyes were filled with painful longing. “Wolf?”

Just that, but the way she said his name, with an aching little inflection at the end, made his grip on her wrists tighten. “No.”

“I—I want you.”

Her whispered, trembly confession left her completely vulnerable to him, and he knew it. He groaned inwardly. Damn it, didn’t she have any sense of self-protection at all? Didn’t she know what it did to a man to have the woman he wanted offer herself like that, with no qualifications or holding back? His control was stretched hair-thin, but he grimly held on to it because the hard truth was that she truly didn’t know. She was a virgin. She was old-fashioned, strictly raised, and had only the vaguest idea of what she was inviting.

“Don’t say that,” he finally muttered. “I’ve told you before—”

“I know,” she interrupted. “I’m too inexperienced to be interesting, and you…you don’t want to be used as a guinea pig. I remember.” She seldom cried, but she felt the salty wetness burning her eyes, and he winced at the hurt he saw there.

“I lied. God, how I lied.”

Then his control broke. He had to hold her, feel her in his arms just for a little while, have her taste on his mouth again. He drew her wrists up and placed her hands around his neck, then bent his head even as he locked his arms around her and drew her up tight against him. His mouth covered hers, and her eager response seared him. She knew what to do now; her lips parted, allowing his tongue entrance, where she met him with soft, welcoming touches from her own tongue. He had taught her that, just as he’d taught her to melt against him, and the knowledge drove him almost as crazy as the feel of her soft breasts flattening against his chest.

Mary drowned in the sheer ecstasy of being in his arms again, and the tears that she’d held back spilled past her lashes. This was too painful, and too wonderful, to be mere lust. If this was love, she didn’t know if she could bear it.

His mouth was hungry and hard, taking long, deep kisses that left her clinging to him mindlessly. His hand moved surely up her stomach and closed over her breast, and all she could do was make a soft sound of pleasure low in her throat. Her nipples burned and throbbed; his touch both assuaged the pain and intensified it, making her want more. She wanted it the way he had described it, with his mouth on her breasts, and she twisted feverishly against him. She was empty and needed to be filled. She needed to be his woman.

He jerked his head up and pressed her face against his shoulder. “I have to stop. Now.” He groaned the words. He was shaking, as hot as any teenage stud in the back seat of his daddy’s car.

Mary briefly weighed all of Aunt Ardith’s strictures against the way she felt and accepted that she was in love, because this mingled glory and torment could be nothing else. “I don’t want to stop,” she said raggedly. “I want you to love me.”

“No. I’m Indian. You’re white. The people in this town would destroy you. Tonight was just a taste of what you’d have to go through.”

“I’m willing to risk it!” she cried desperately.

“I’m not. I can take it, but you—you hang on to your Pollyanna principles, sweetheart. I can’t offer you anything in return.” If he’d thought there was even a fifty-fifty chance of living here in peace, Wolf would have taken the risk, but he knew there wasn’t, not the way things were. Other than Joe, she was the only human being in the world he’d ever wanted to protect, and it was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

Mary lifted her head from his shoulder, revealing her wet cheeks. “All I want is you.”

“I’m the one thing you can’t have. They’d tear you apart.” Very gently he pulled her arms down and turned to leave.

Her voice came behind him, low and strained as she fought against tears. “I’ll risk it.”

He stopped, his hand on the doorknob. “I won’t.”

For the second time she watched him walk away, and this time was far worse than the first.

Chapter Five

Joe was unusually distracted; he was normally the most attentive of students, applying himself to the subject at hand with almost phenomenal concentration, but tonight he had something else on his mind. He’d accepted without comment their move to the school for lessons and never even hinted that he’d learned the subject of the school board meeting that had resulted in the change of locations. As it was the beginning of May, and the day had been unseasonably warm, Mary was half inclined to put his restlessness down to spring fever. It had been a long winter, and she was restless herself.

Finally she closed the book before her. “Why don’t we go home early tonight?” she suggested. “We’re not getting much done.”

Joe closed his own book and pushed his fingers through his thick black hair, identical to his father’s. Mary had to look away. “Sorry,” he said on a long exhalation. It was typical that he didn’t offer an explanation. Joe didn’t often feel the need to justify himself.

But in the weeks she’d been tutoring him, they had had a lot of personal conversations between the prepared lessons, and Mary never hesitated when she thought one of her students might be troubled. If it were only spring fever gnawing at him, then she wanted him to say so. “Is something bothering you?”

He gave her a wry smile, one that was too adult to belong to a sixteen-year-old boy. “You could say that.”

“Ah.” That smile relieved her, because now she thought she knew the cause of his restlessness. It was indeed spring fever, after a fashion. As Aunt Ardith had often lectured her niece, “When a young man’s sap rises, a girl should look out. I declare, they seem to run mad.” Evidently Joe’s sap was rising. Mary wondered if women had sap, too.

He picked up his pen and fiddled with it for a moment before tossing it a side as he made up his mind to say more. “Pam Hearst asked me to take her to a movie.”

“Pam?” This was a surprise, and possible trouble. Ralph Hearst was one of the townspeople most adamantly opposed to the Mackenzies.

Joe’s ice-blue eyes were hooded as he glanced at her. “Pam is the girl I told you about before.”

So, it was Pam Hearst. She was pretty and bright, and her slim young body had a form guaranteed to affect a young man’s sap. Mary wondered if Pam’s father knew she had been flirting with Joe and that was one reason for his hostility.

“Are you going to go?”

“No,” he said flatly, surprising her.

“Why?”

“There aren’t any movie houses in Ruth.”

“So?”

“That’s the whole point. We’d have to go to another town. No one we know would be likely to see us. She wanted me to pick her up behind the school, after it got dark.” He leaned back in his chair and looped his hands behind his head. “She was too ashamed to go to the dance with me, but I’m good enough for her to sneak around and see. Maybe she thought that even if we were seen, the idea that I might go to the Academy would keep her from getting in too much trouble. Folks seem taken with the idea.” His tone was ironic. “I guess it makes a difference when the Indian wears a uniform.”

Suddenly her impulsive announcement at the school board meeting didn’t seem like such a good idea. “Do you wish I hadn’t told them?”

“You had to, considering,” he replied, and by that she knew he was aware of the subject of that meeting. “It puts extra pressure on me to get into the Academy, because if I don’t they’ll all say that the Indian just couldn’t cut it, but that’s not a bad thing. If it will push me to do more, then I’m that much closer to getting in.”

Privately, Mary didn’t think Joe needed any added incentive; he wanted it so badly now that the need burned in him. She returned the conversation to Pam. “Does it bother you, that she asked now?”

“It made me mad. And it really made me mad having to turn her down, because I sure would like to get my hands on her.” He stopped abruptly and gave Mary another of those too-adult looks before a little grin tugged at his lips. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get too personal. Let’s just say that I’m attracted to her physically, but that’s all it is, and I can’t afford to fool with that kind of situation. Pam’s a nice girl, but she doesn’t figure in my plans.”

Mary understood what he meant. No woman figured in his plans, other than to provide physical release, for a long time, if ever. There was something solitary about him, as there was about Wolf, and in addition, Joe was so possessed by the specter of flight that part of him was already gone. Pam Hearst would marry some local boy, settle down in Ruth or nearby, and raise her own family in the same calm setting where she’d grown up; she wasn’t meant for the brief attention Joe Mackenzie could give her before he moved on.

“Do you have any idea who started the gossip?” Joe asked, his pale eyes hard. He didn’t like the idea of anyone hurting this woman.

“No. I haven’t tried to find out. It could have been anyone who drove by and saw your truck at my house. But most people seemed to have forgotten about it now, except for—” She stopped, her eyes troubled.

“Who?” Joe demanded flatly.

“I don’t mean that I think she started the gossip,” Mary said hastily. “I just feel uneasy around her. She dislikes me, and I don’t know why. Maybe she’s this way with everyone. Has Dottie Lancaster—”

“Dottie Lancaster!” He gave a harsh laugh. “Now there’s a thought. Yeah, she could have started the gossip. She’s had a rough life, and I kind of feel sorry for her, but she did her best to make my life hell when I was in her classes.”

“Rough? How?”

“Her husband was a truck driver, and he was killed years ago when her son was just a baby. He was on a run in Colorado, and a drunk driver ran him off the side of a cliff. The drunk was an Indian. She never got over it and blames all Indians, I guess.”

“That’s irrational.”

He shrugged, as if to say a lot of things were irrational. “Anyway, she was left alone with her kid, and she had a hard time. Not much money. She started teaching, but she had to pay someone to take care of the kid, and he needed special training when he was old enough to start school, which took even more money.”

“I didn’t know Dottie had any children,” Mary said, surprised.

“Just Robert—Bobby. He’s about twenty-three or four, I guess. He still lives with Mrs. Lancaster, but he doesn’t go around other people much.”

“What’s wrong with him? Does he have Down’s syndrome, or a learning disability?”

“He’s not retarded. Bobby’s just different. He likes people, but not in groups. A lot of people together make him nervous, so he pretty much stays to himself. He reads a lot, and listens to music. But once he had a summer job at the building supply store, and Mr. Watkins told Bobby to fill a wheelbarrow full of sand. Instead of pushing the wheelbarrow to the sandpile and shoveling the sand in, Bobby would get a shovelful of sand and carry it back to the wheelbarrow. It’s things like that. He’d have trouble getting dressed, because he’d put his shoes on first, and then he couldn’t get his jeans on.”

Mary had seen people like Bobby, who had trouble with practical problem-solving. It was a learning disability, and took a lot of patient, specialized training to handle. She felt sorry for him, and for Dottie, who couldn’t have had a happy life.

Joe pushed his chair back and stood up, stretching his cramped muscles. “Do you ride?” he asked suddenly.

“No. I’ve never even been on a horse.” Mary chuckled. “Will that get me thrown out of Wyoming?”

His tone was grave. “It could. Why don’t you come up on the mountain some Saturday and I’ll give you riding lessons? School will be out for the summer soon, and you’ll have a lot of time to practice.”

He couldn’t know how appealing the idea was, not only to ride but to see Wolf again. The only thing was, it would hurt just as much to see him as it did not to see him, because he was still out of her reach. “I’ll think about it,” she promised, but she doubted she would ever take him up on the offer.

Joe didn’t push it, but he didn’t intend to let it drop, either. He’d get Mary up on the mountain one way or another. He figured Wolf had about reached the limits of his restraint. Parading her right under his nose would be like leading a mare in heat in front of a stallion. His pretty, tart-tongued little teacher would be lucky if his dad didn’t have her flat on her back before she had the hello out of her mouth. Joe had to hide his smile. He’d never seen anyone get to Wolf the way Miss Mary Elizabeth Potter had. She had Wolf so tied in knots he was as dangerous as a wounded cougar.

He mentally hummed a few bars of “Matchmaker.”

When Mary got home the next Friday afternoon, there was a letter in the mailbox from Senator Allard, and her fingers trembled as she tore it open. If it was bad news for Joe, if Senator Allard had declined to recommend him to the Academy, she didn’t know what she would do. Senator Allard wasn’t their only possibility, but he had seemed the most receptive, and a turndown from him would really be discouraging.

The senator’s letter to her was brief, thanking her for her efforts in bringing Joe to his attention. He had decided to recommend Joe for admittance to the Academy, for the freshman class beginning after Joe’s graduation from high school. From there on, it would be up to Joe to pass the rigorous academic and physical examinations.

Enclosed was a private letter of congratulations to Joe.

Mary hugged the letters to her breast, and tears welled in her eyes. They had done it, and it hadn’t even been that difficult! She had been prepared to petition every congressman every week until Joe was given his chance, but it hadn’t been necessary. Joe’s grades and credits had done it for him.

It was news too good to wait, so she got back into her car and drove up Mackenzie’s Mountain. The drive was much different now; the snow had melted, and wildflowers bloomed beside the road. After the harsh winter cold, the spring warmth felt like a blessing on her skin, though it still wasn’t nearly as warm as the springs she had known in Savannah. She was so excited and happy that she didn’t even notice the steep drop on the side of the road as it wound higher, but she did notice the wild grandeur of the mountains, stretching magnificently toward the dark blue heavens. She drew a deep breath and realized that the spring did make up for the winter. It felt like home, a new home, a place dear and familiar.

The tires threw out a spray of gravel as she slid to a stop at the kitchen door of Wolf’s one-story frame house, and before the vehicle had rocked back on its springs she was bounding up the steps to pound on the door. “Wolf! Joe!” She knew she was yelling in a very unladylike manner, but she was too happy to care. Some situations just called for yelling.

“Mary!”

The call came from behind her, and she whirled. Wolf was coming from the barn at a dead run, his powerful body surging fluidly. Mary yelped in excitement and launched herself from the steps, her skirt flying up as she bolted down the graveled drive toward the barn. “He got it!” she screamed, waving the letters. “He got it!”

Wolf skidded to a halt and watched the sedate teacher literally skipping and leaping toward him, her skirt kicking up around her thighs with each step. He just had time to realize there was nothing wrong, that she was laughing, when, three steps away, she went airborne. He braced himself and caught her weight against his chest, his brawny arms wrapping around her.

“He got it!” she shrieked again, and threw her arms around his neck.

Wolf could think of only one thing, and it made his mouth go dry. “He got it?”

She waved the letters under his nose. “He got it! Senator Allard—the letter was in my mailbox—I couldn’t wait—where’s Joe?” She knew she was almost incoherent and made an effort to compose herself, but she just couldn’t stop grinning.

“He’s in town picking up a load of fencing. Damn it, are you sure that’s what it says? He still has a year of school—”

“Not a year, not at the rate he’s going. But he’ll have to be seventeen, anyway. The senator has recommended him for the freshman class starting after he graduates. Less than a year and a half!”

Fierce pride filled Wolf’s face, the warrior’s pride he’d inherited from both Comanche and Celt. His eyes glittered with black fire, and exultantly he lifted her high, his hands under her armpits, and twirled around with her. She threw back her head, shrieking with laughter, and suddenly Wolf felt his entire body clench with desire. It was as powerful as a blow to the gut, knocking the wind out of him. She was soft and warm in his arms, her laughter was as fresh as the spring, and he wanted her out of the prim little shirtwaist she wore.

Slowly his face changed to a harder, more primitive cast. She was still laughing as he lowered her, her hands braced on his shoulders, but he stopped when her breasts were level with his face. The laughter died in Mary’s throat as he deliberately brought her closer to him and buried his face between her breasts. His grip shifted, one arm locking around her buttocks and the other around her back, and his hot mouth searched for her nipple. He found it, his mouth clamping down on it through the barriers of her dress and bra, but the sensation was still so exquisite that her breath caught on a moan and her back arched, pushing her breast against him.

It wasn’t enough. She burrowed her fingers through his hair, digging into his skull to push him harder against her, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted him with sudden, fierce desperation. The layers of cloth that kept him from her drove her mad, and she squirmed against him, low whimpers coming from her throat. “Please,” she begged. “Wolf—”

He lifted his head, his eyes savage with need. His blood was thundering through his veins, and he was breathing hard. “Do you want more?” The words were guttural, a normal tone beyond him.

She squirmed against him again, her hands clutching desperately. “Yes.”

Very gently he let her slide down his body, deliberately rubbing her over the hardened bulge in his jeans, and both of them shuddered. Wolf was beyond thinking of all his reasons for not becoming involved with her, beyond anything but the urge to mate. To hell with what anyone thought.

He looked around, gauging the distance to both house and barn. The barn was closer. Clamping his hand around her wrist, he strode toward the big open double doors that revealed the dim interior.

Mary could barely get her breath as she was all but dragged in his wake. Her senses bewildered by the sudden cessation of pleasure, she was confused by his actions and wanted to ask what he was doing, but she didn’t have enough oxygen in her lungs to form the question. Then they were inside the barn, and she was swamped by the perceptions of dim light, animal warmth and the earthy smells of dust, hay, leather and horses. She heard soft nickers and the muffled stamping of hooves on straw. Wolf led her into an empty stall and dragged her down onto the fresh hay. She sprawled on her back, and he came down on top of her, his muscled weight pressing her even deeper into the hay.

“Kiss me,” she whispered, reaching up to thrust her fingers into his long hair and pull him down to her.

“I’ll kiss you all over before I’m through with you,” he muttered, and bent his head. Her mouth opened under the force of his, and his tongue moved into her in a deep rhythm that she instinctively recognized and accepted, responded to eagerly. He was heavy, but it was so natural that she bear his weight that she rejoiced in the pressure of his body. She wrapped her arms around his thickly muscled shoulders and hugged him even tighter to her; she wanted to be as close as she could to him, and to that end her hips undulated slightly, adjusting to the carnal pressure of his loins.

The slow movements of her hips beneath him made him feel as if his head would explode from the rush of blood through his body. He made a low, rough sound in his throat and reached for the zipper at the back of her dress. He thought he would die if he didn’t feel her silky skin under his hands, if he didn’t sheathe his throbbing flesh inside her.

It was startlingly new to her, bringing a delicate flush to her cheeks, but it was still so right that she didn’t even think of protesting. She didn’t want to protest. She wanted Wolf. She was female to his male, warm and sexual, intensely aware of being a woman and offering herself to the man she loved. She wanted to be naked for him, so she helped him by pulling her arms free of the sleeves as he tugged the dress from her shoulders and let it fall to her waist. She had felt racy, daring to buy a bra with a single front clasp, but as he looked down at her breasts, barely covered by the thin, flesh-colored material, she was so glad she had done it. He deftly opened the clasp with one hand, a trick she hadn’t learned yet, and watched the edges pull back to bare her soft curves, stopping before her nipples were revealed.

He made that rough sound again, almost like a growl, and bent to nuzzle the bra aside. His mouth, warm and wet, slid across her breast and clamped on the tightly beaded nipple. She jumped, her entire body reacting to a pleasure so intense it bordered on pain, as he sucked strongly at her. Mary’s eyes closed, and she moaned. She couldn’t bear it; it felt too good, a hot river of pleasure-pain impulses running from breast to loin, where an empty ache made her press her legs together and arch beneath him, silently begging for the release her body had never known, but sensed with ancient wisdom.

Wolf felt her move beneath him again, and the last shred of control he’d retained, vanished. Roughly he jerked her skirt to her waist and kneed her thighs apart, settling himself between the vulnerable V of her legs. She opened her eyes, a little shocked by what she could feel down there, but eager to know more. “Take off your clothes,” she whispered frantically, and tore at the buttons on his shirt.

He reared back on his knees and tore his shirt open, then off. His naked skin glistened with a fine patina of sweat; in the dim light, filled with floating dust motes, the overlay of sleek bronze skin on powerful muscles gave him the look of live art sculpted by a master’s hand. Mary’s gaze moved hungrily, feverishly, over him. He was perfect, strong and male, the scent of his body hot and faintly musky. She reached out for him, her hands sliding over his broad chest, lightly haired in a diamond pattern stretching from nipple to nipple. She touched those tight little buds, and he froze, a massive shiver of pleasure rippling through his muscles.

He groaned aloud and dropped his hands to his belt. He unbuckled the wide band of leather, then unsnapped his jeans and jerked the zipper down, the hissing of the metal teeth blending with their harsh breathing. With some last desperate fragment of willpower, he kept himself from lowering his pants. She was a virgin; he couldn’t allow himself to forget that, even in his urgency. Damn it, he had to regain some control, or he’d both scare and hurt her, and he would die before he turned her first time into a nightmare.

Mary’s slim fingers curled in the hair on his chest and tugged lightly. “Wolf,” she said. Just his name, just that one word, but her voice was warm and low and drugged sounding, and it beckoned him more powerfully than anything he’d known before.

“Yes,” he said in response. “Now.” He leaned forward to cover her again, then froze as a distant sound came to his ears.

He swore quietly and sank back on his heels, battling desperately to control his body and his frustration.

“Wolf?” Now her tone was hesitant, consternation and self-consciousness creeping into it. That inflection made him feel murderous, because she hadn’t been self-conscious before. She had been warm and loving, willing to give herself without reserve.

“Joe will be here in a few minutes,” he said flatly. “I can hear his truck coming up the mountain.”

She was still so far out of it that she merely looked confused. “Joe?”

“Yes, Joe. Remember him? My son, the reason you’re up here in the first place.”

Her cheeks flooded with color, and she jerked into an upright position, as far as she could, because her thighs were still draped over his. “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God. I’m naked. You’re naked. Oh my God.”

“We’re not naked,” Wolf muttered, wiping his sweaty face. “Damn it.”

“Almost!”

“Not enough.” Even her breasts were rosy with embarrassment now. He looked at them with regret, remembering her sweet taste and the way her velvety little nipple had bloomed in his mouth. But the sound of the truck was much closer now, and with a low, obscene comment on his son’s rotten timing, he got to his feet and effortlessly lifted Mary to hers.

Tears blurred her vision as she turned her back to fumble with that blasted space-age clasp on her bra. What ever had possessed her to buy such a contraption? Aunt Ardith would have been outraged. Aunt Ardith would have fallen on the ground in a hissy fit if she’d even thought of her niece rolling naked in the hay with a man. And, darn it, she hadn’t even been able to finish her rolling!

“Here, I’ll do it,” Wolf said in a far gentler tone than she’d ever before heard from him. He turned her around and deftly handled the diabolical clasp. Mary kept her head down, unable to look him in the eye, but the contrast of his sun-bronzed hands against her pale breasts made her feel hot again. She swallowed and looked at his belt buckle. He’d zipped his jeans back up and buckled his belt, but the visible swell of his loins told her he wasn’t completely unaffected by this interruption. That made her feel better, and she blinked the tears from her eyes as he helped her back into her dress and turned her around to zip it.

“You have hay in your hair,” he teased, and picked the straw from the tangled tresses, then brushed it from her dress.

Mary put up both hands to discern the state of her hair and found it had come completely down. “Leave it,” Wolf said. “I like it down. It looks like silk.”

Nervously she combed her fingers through the strands and watched as he leaned down to pick up his shirt from the hay. “What will Joe think?” she blurted as the truck pulled to a stop outside the barn.

“That he’s lucky he’s my son, or I’d have killed him,” Wolf muttered grimly, and Mary wasn’t certain he was teasing. He put his shirt on but didn’t bother buttoning it before stepping into the open door. Taking a deep breath, Mary braced herself to get through the embarrassment and followed him.

Joe had just gotten out of the truck, and now he stood beside the door, his ice-blue eyes moving from his father to Mary and back, taking in Wolf’s stone face and open shirt, and Mary’s tousled hair. “Damn it!” he swore and slammed the door shut. “If it had just taken me fifteen minutes longer—”

“My feelings exactly,” Wolf concurred.

“Hey, I’ll leave—”

Wolf sighed. “No. She came to see you anyway.”

“That’s what you said the first time.” Joe grinned hugely.

“And I just said it again.” He turned to Mary, and some of the enjoyment of her stunning news returned to his eyes. “Tell him.”

She couldn’t think. “Tell him?”’

“Yeah. Tell him.”

Slowly her dazed mind registered what he was saying. She looked in bewilderment at her empty hands. What had happened to the letters? Had they lost them in the hay? How mortifying it would be to have to search through the hay for them! Not knowing what else to do, she spread her hands and said simply, “You’re in. I got the letter today.”

Blood drained from Joe’s face as he stared at her, and he reached out blindly to rest his hand on the truck as if to steady himself. “I got in? The Academy? I got into the Academy?” he asked hoarsely.

“You got the recommendation. It’s up to you to pass the exams.”

He threw back his head and screamed, an exultant, spine-chilling sound like that of a hunting panther, then leaped at Wolf. The two of them pounded each other’s backs, laughing and yelling, then finally just hugging each other in a way two weaker men couldn’t have done. Mary folded her hands and watched them, smiling, so happy her heart swelled to the point of pain. Then suddenly an arm reached out and snagged her, and she found herself sandwiched between the two Mackenzies, almost smashed flat by their celebration.

“You’re smothering me!” she protested in a gasping voice, wedging her hands against two broad chests and pushing. One of those chests was bare, exposed by an unbuttoned shirt, and the touch of his warm skin made her go weak in the knees. Both of them laughed at her protest, but both of them immediately gentled their embrace.

Mary patted her hair down and smoothed her dress. “The letters are here somewhere. I must have dropped them.”

Wolf gave her a wicked look. “You must have.”

His teasing made her happy deep inside, and she smiled at him. It was a quietly intimate smile, the sort that a woman gives the man she loves after she has been in his arms, and it warmed him. To cover his reaction, he turned to look for the dropped letters and spotted one on the drive, while the other had fallen close to the barn door. He retrieved both of them, and gave Joe the one addressed to him.

The boy’s hands shook as he read the letter, even though he already knew the contents. He couldn’t believe it. It had happened so fast. A dream come true should have been harder to attain; he should have had to sweat blood to get it. Oh, he wasn’t driving one of those twenty-million dollar babies yet, but he would. He had to, because he would be only half alive without wings.

Mary was watching him with proud indulgence when she felt Wolf stiffen beside her. She looked at him inquiringly. His head was lifted as if he scented danger, and his face was suddenly as impassive as stone. Then she heard the sound of an engine and turned as a deputy sheriff’s car rolled to a stop behind Joe’s truck.

Joe turned, and his face took on the same stony look as Wolf’s as Clay Armstrong got out of the county car.

“Ma’am.” Clay spoke to her first, tipping his hat.

“Deputy Armstrong.” Two hundred years of strict training on social behavior were in her voice. Aunt Ardith would have been proud. But she sensed some threat to Wolf, and it was all she could do not to put herself between him and the deputy. Only the knowledge that he wouldn’t appreciate the action kept her standing at his side.

Clay’s friendly blue eyes weren’t friendly at all now. “Why are you up here, Miss Potter?”

“Why are you asking?” she shot back, putting her hands on her hips.

“Just skip to the good part, Armstrong,” Wolf snapped.

“Fine,” Clay snapped back. “You’re wanted for questioning. You can come with me now, the easy way, or I can get a warrant for your arrest.”

Joe stood frozen, fury and hell in his eyes. This had happened before, and he’d lost his father for two nightmarish years. It seemed even more terrible this time, because just moments before they had been celebrating, and he’d been on top of the world.

Wolf began buttoning his shirt. In a voice like gravel he asked, “What happened this time?”

“We’ll talk about that at the sheriff’s office.”

“We’ll talk about it now.”

Black eyes met blue, and abruptly Clay realized this man wouldn’t move a foot unless he had some answers. “A girl was raped this morning.”

Sulfuric rage burned in those night-dark eyes. “So naturally you thought of the Indian.” He spat the words like bullets from between clenched teeth. God, this couldn’t be happening again. Not twice in one lifetime. The first time had almost killed him, and he knew he’d never go back to that hellhole, no matter what he had to do.

“We’re just questioning some people. If you have an alibi, there’s no problem. You’ll be free to go.”

“I suppose you picked up every rancher in this area? Do you have Eli Baugh at the sheriff’s office answering questions?”

Clay’s face darkened with anger. “No.”

“Just the Indian, huh?”

“You have priors.” But Clay looked uncomfortable.

“I don’t have…one…single…prior conviction,” Wolf snarled. “I was cleared.”

“Damn it, man, I know that!” Clay suddenly yelled. “I was told to pick you up, and I’m going to do my job.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so? I wouldn’t want to stop a man from doing his job.” After that sarcastic jab, Wolf strode to his truck. “I’ll follow you.”

“You can ride in the car. I’ll bring you back.”

“No, thanks. I’d rather have my own wheels, just in case the sheriff decides a walk would do me good.”

Swearing under his breath, Clay went to the car and got in. Dust and gravel flew from his tires as he headed back down the mountain, with Wolf behind him slinging even more dust and gravel.

Mary began shaking. At first it was just a tremor, but it swiftly escalated into shudders that rattled her entire body. Joe was standing as if turned to stone, his fists clenched. Suddenly he whirled and slammed his fist into the hood of his truck. “By God, they won’t do it to him again,” he whispered. “Not again.”

“No, they certainly won’t.” She was still shaking, but she squared her shoulders. “If I have to get every judge and court in this country involved, I will. I’ll call newspapers, I’ll call television networks, I’ll call—oh, they don’t have any idea of who all I can call.” The network of Old Family contacts she had left behind in Savannah was still there, and more favors would be called in than the sheriff of this county could count. She’d hang him out to dry!

“Why don’t you go home?” Joe suggested in a flat tone.

“I want to stay.”

He’d expected her to quietly walk to her car, but at her words he looked at her for the first time. Deep inside, part of him had thought she wouldn’t be able to leave fast enough, that he and Wolf would be alone again, as they had always been. They were used to being alone. But Mary stood her ground as if she had no intention of budging off this mountain, her slate-blue eyes full of fire and her fragile chin lifted in the way that he’d learned meant others could just get out of her path.

The boy, forced by circumstance to grow up hard and fast, put his strong arms around the woman and held her, desperately absorbing some of her strength, because he was deathly afraid he’d need it. And Mary held him. He was Wolf’s son, and she’d protect him with every ounce of fight she had.

Chapter Six

It was after nine when they heard Wolf’s truck, and both of them froze with mingled tension and relief: tension because they dreaded to hear what had happened, and relief because he was home instead of locked in jail. Mary couldn’t imagine Wolf in jail, even though he’d spent two years in prison. He was too wild, like a lobo that could never be tamed. Imprisoning him had been an act so cruel as to be obscene.

He came in the back door and stood there staring at her, his dark face expressionless. She and Joe sat at the kitchen table, nursing cups of coffee. “Why are you still here? Go home.”

She ignored the flatness of his tone. He was so angry she could almost feel the heat from across the room, but she knew it wasn’t directed against her. Getting up, she dumped her lukewarm coffee into the sink and got another cup from the cabinet, then poured fresh coffee into both cups. “Sit down, drink your coffee and tell us what happened,” she said in her best schoolteacher voice.

He did reach for the coffee, but he didn’t sit down. He was too angry to sit. The rage boiled in him, robbing his movements of their usual fluidity. It was starting all over again, and he’d be damned if he’d go to prison again for something he hadn’t done. He’d fight any way he could and with any weapon he could, but he’d die before he’d go back to prison.

“They let you go,” Joe said.

“They had to. The girl was raped around noon. At noon I was delivering two horses to the Bar W R. Wally Rasco verified it, and the sheriff couldn’t figure out a way I could have been in two different places, sixty miles apart, at the same time, so he had to let me go.”

“Where did it happen?”

Wolf rubbed his forehead, then pinched his nose between his eyes as if he had a headache, or maybe he was just tired. “She was grabbed from behind when she got in her car, parked in her own driveway. He made her drive almost an hour before telling her to pull off on the side of the road. She never saw his face. He wore a ski mask. But she could tell he was tall, and that was enough of a description for the sheriff.”

“The side of the road?” Mary blurted. “That’s…weird. It doesn’t make sense. I know there’s not much traffic, but still, someone could have come by at any time.”

“Yeah. Not to mention that he was waiting for her in her driveway. The whole thing is strange.”

Joe drummed his fingers on the table. “It could have been someone passing through.”

“How many people ‘pass through’ Ruth?” Wolf asked dryly. “Would a drifter have known whose car it was, or when she was likely to come out of the house? What if the car belonged to a man? That’s a big chance to take, especially when rape seems to have been the only thing on his mind, because he didn’t rob her, even though she had money.”

“Are they keeping her identity secret?” Mary asked.

He looked at her. “It won’t stay a secret, because her father was in the sheriff’s office waving a rifle and threatening to blow my guts out. He attracted a lot of attention, and people talk.”

His face was still expressionless, but Mary sensed the bitter rage that filled him. His fierce pride had been dragged in the dust—again. How had he endured being forced to sit there and listen to insults and threats? Because she knew he’d been insulted, by vile words describing his mixed heritage as well as by the very fact he’d been picked up for questioning. He was holding it all in, controlling it, but the rage was there.

“What happened?”

“Armstrong stopped it. Then Wally Rasco got there and cleared me, and the sheriff let me go with a friendly warning.”

“A warning?” Mary jumped to her feet, her eyes flashing. “For what?”

He pinched her chin and gave her a coldly ferocious smile. “He warned me to stay away from white women, sweetcake. And that’s just what I’m going to do. So you go on home now, and stay there. I don’t want you on my mountain again.”

“You didn’t feel that way in the barn,” she shot back, then darted a look at Joe and blushed. Joe just quirked an eyebrow and looked strangely self-satisfied. She decided to ignore him and turned back to Wolf. “I can’t believe you’re letting that mush-brain sheriff tell you who you can see.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Maybe it hasn’t dawned on you yet, but it’s all starting again. It doesn’t matter that Wally Rasco cleared me. Everyone is going to remember what happened ten years ago, and the way they felt.”

“You were cleared of that, too, or doesn’t that count?”

“With some people,” he finally admitted. “Not with most. They’re already afraid of me, already distrust and dislike me. Until this bastard is caught, I probably won’t be able to buy anything in that town, not groceries, gas or feed. And any white woman who has anything to do with me could be in real danger of being tarred and feathered.”

So that was it. He was still trying to protect her. She stared at him in exasperation. “Wolf, I refuse to live my life according to someone else’s prejudices. I appreciate that you’re trying to protect me—”

She could hear an audible click as his teeth snapped together. “Do you?” he asked with heavy sarcasm. “Then go home. Stay home, and I’ll stay here.”

“For how long?”

Instead of answering her question, he made an oblique statement. “I’ll always be a half-breed.”

“And I’ll always be what I am, too. I haven’t asked you to change,” she pointed out, pain creeping into her voice. She looked at him with longing plain in her eyes, as no woman had ever looked at him before, and the rage in him intensified because he couldn’t simply reach out and take her in his arms, proclaim to the world that she was his woman. The sheriff’s warning had been clear enough, and Wolf knew well that the hostility toward him would rapidly swell to explosive proportions. It could easily spill over onto Mary, and now he wasn’t just worried that she would lose her job. A job was nothing compared to the physical danger she could suffer. She could be terrorized in her own home, her property vandalized; she could be cursed and spat upon; she could be physically attacked. For all her sheer determination, she was still just a rather slight woman, and she would be helpless against anyone who wanted to hurt her.

“I know,” he finally said, and despite himself, he reached out to touch her hair. “Go home, Mary. When this is over—” He stopped, because he didn’t want to make promises he might not be able to keep, but what he’d said was enough to put a glowing light in her eyes.

“All right,” she murmured, putting her hand on his. “By the way, I want you to get a haircut.”

He looked startled. “A haircut?”

“Yes. You want me to wear my hair down, and I want you to get a haircut.”

“Why?”

She gave him a shrewd look. “You don’t wear it long because you’re Indian. You wear it long just to upset people, so they’ll never forget your Indian blood. So get it cut.”

“Short hair won’t make me less Indian.”

“Long hair won’t make you more Indian.”

She looked as if she would stand there until doomsday unless he agreed to get a haircut. He gave in abruptly, muttering, “All right, I’ll get a haircut.”

“Good.” She smiled at him and went on tiptoe to kiss the corner of his mouth. “Good night. Good night, Joe.”

“Goodnight, Mary.”

When she was gone, Wolf wearily ran his hand through his hair, then frowned as he realized he’d just agreed to cut it off. He looked up to find Joe watching him steadily.

“What are we going to do?” the boy asked.

“Whatever we have to,” Wolf replied, his expression flinty.

When Mary bought groceries the next morning, she found everyone in the store huddling together in small groups of two or three and whispering about the rape. The girl’s identity was quickly revealed; it was Cathy Teele, whose younger sister, Christa, was in Mary’s class. The entire Teele family was devastated, according to the whispers Mary heard as she gathered her groceries.

Next to the flour and cornmeal, she encountered Dottie Lancaster, who was flanked by a young man Mary assumed was Dottie’s son. “Hello, Dottie.” Mary greeted the woman pleasantly, even though it was possible Dottie had started the rumor about her and Joe.

“Hello.” Dottie wore a distressed expression, rather than her habitual sour one. “Have you heard about that poor Teele girl?”

“I haven’t heard anything else since I entered the store.”

“They arrested that Indian, but the sheriff had to let him go. I hope now you’ll be more careful about the company you keep.”

“Wolf wasn’t arrested.” Mary managed to keep her voice calm. “He was questioned, but he was at Wally Rasco’s ranch when the attack occurred, and Mr. Rasco backed him up. Wolf Mackenzie isn’t a rapist.”

“A court of law said he was and sentenced him to prison.”

“He was also cleared when the true rapist was caught and confessed to the crime for which Wolf had been convicted.”

Dottie drew back, her face livid. “That’s what that Indian said, but as far as we know, he just got out on parole. It’s easy to see whose side you’re on, but then, you’ve been running with those Indians since the day you came to Ruth. Well, miss, there’s an old saying that if you sleep with dogs, you’re bound to get fleas. The Mackenzies are dirty Indian trash—”

“Don’t you say another word,” Mary interrupted, color high in her cheeks as she took a step toward Dottie. She was furious; her hand itched to slap the woman’s self-righteous face. Aunt Ardith had said that a lady never brawled, but Mary was ready to forever relinquish any claim she had to the title. “Wolf is a decent, hard-working man, and I won’t let you or anyone else say he isn’t.”

Dottie’s color was mottled, but something in Mary’s eyes made her refrain from saying anything else about Wolf. Instead she leaned closer and hissed, “You’d better watch yourself, Miss Goody-Goody, or you’ll find yourself in a lot of trouble.”

Mary leaned closer, too, her jaw set. “Are you threatening me?” she demanded fiercely.

“Mama, please,” the young man behind her whispered in a frantic tone, and tugged at Dottie’s arm.

Dottie looked around at him, and her face changed. She drew back, but told Mary contemptuously, “You just mark my words,” and stalked away.

Her son, Bobby, was so distressed he was wringing his hands as he hurried after Dottie. Immediately, Mary was sorry she had let the horrid little scene develop; from what Joe had told her, Bobby had a hard enough time handling everyday problems without adding more.

She took a few deep breaths to regain her composure, but almost lost it again when she turned and found several people standing in the aisle, staring at her. They had all obviously heard every word, and looked both shocked and avid. She had no doubt the tale would be all over town within the hour: two of the schoolteachers brawling over Wolf Mackenzie. She groaned inwardly as she picked up a bag of flour. Another scandal was just what Wolf needed.

In the next aisle, she met Cicely Karr. Remembering the woman’s comments during the school board meeting, Mary couldn’t stop herself from saying, “I’ve received a letter from Senator Allard, Mrs. Karr. He’s recommending Joe Mackenzie for admission to the Academy.” She sounded challenging even to her own ears.

To her surprise, Mrs. Karr looked excited. “He is? Why, I never would’ve believed it. Until Eli explained it to me, I didn’t quite realize what an honor it is.” Then she sobered. “But now this terrible thing has happened. It’s awful. I—I couldn’t help overhearing you and Dottie Lancaster. Miss Potter, you can’t imagine what it was like ten years ago. People were frightened and angry, and now the same nightmare has started again.”

“It’s a nightmare for Wolf Mackenzie, too,” Mary said hotly. “He was sent to prison for a rape he didn’t commit. His record was cleared, but still he was the first person the sheriff picked up for questioning. How do you think he feels? He’ll never get back the two years he spent in prison, and now it looks as if everyone is trying to send him there again.”

Mrs. Karr looked troubled. “We were all wrong before. The justice system was wrong, too. But even though Mackenzie proved he didn’t rape Cathy Teele, don’t you see why the sheriff wanted to question him?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Because Mackenzie had reason to want revenge.”

Mary was aghast. “So you thought he’d take revenge by attacking a young woman who was just a child when he was sent to prison? What sort of man do you think he is?” She was horrified by both the idea and the feeling that everyone in Ruth would agree with Mrs. Karr.

“I think he’s a man who hates,” Mrs. Karr said firmly. Yes, she believed Wolf capable of such horrible, obscene revenge; it was in her eyes.

Mary felt sick; she began shaking her head. “No,” she said. “No. Wolf is bitter about the way he was treated, but he doesn’t hate. And he would never hurt a woman like that.” If she knew anything in this world, she knew that. She had felt urgency in his touch, but never brutality.

But Mrs. Karr was shaking her head, too. “Don’t tell me he doesn’t hate! It’s in those black-as-hell eyes every time he looks at us, any of us. The sheriff found out he’d been in Vietnam, in some special assassination group, or something. God only knows how it warped him! Maybe he didn’t rape Cathy Teele, but this would be a perfect opportunity for him to get revenge and have it blamed on whoever did rape her!”

“If Wolf wanted revenge, he wouldn’t sneak around to get it,” Mary said scornfully. “You don’t know anything about the kind of man he is, do you? He’s lived here for years, and none of you know him.”

“And I suppose you do?” Mrs. Karr was getting red in the face. “Maybe we’re talking about a different kind of ‘knowing.’ Maybe that rumor about you carrying on with Joe Mackenzie was half right, after all. You’ve been carrying on with Wolf Mackenzie, haven’t you?”

The scorn in the woman’s voice enraged Mary. “Yes!” she half shouted, and honesty impelled her to add, “But not as much as I’d like.”

A chorus of gasps made her look around, and she stared into the faces of the townspeople who had stopped in the aisle to listen. Well, she’d really done it now; Wolf had wanted her to distance herself from him, and instead she’d all but shouted from the rooftops that she’d been “carrying on” with him. But she couldn’t feel even the tiniest bit of shame. She felt proud. With Wolf Mackenzie she was a woman, not a dowdy, old maid schoolteacher who even owned a cat, for heaven’s sake. She didn’t feel dowdy when she was with Wolf; she felt warm, wanted. If she had any regrets, it was that Joe hadn’t been fifteen minutes later returning the day before, or even five minutes, because more than anything she wanted to be Wolf’s woman in every way, to lie beneath his thrusting body, eagerly accepting the force of his passion and giving him her own. If for that, for loving him, she was ostracized, then she counted society well lost.

Mrs. Karr said icily, “I believe we’ll have to have another school board meeting.”

“When you do, consider that I have an ironclad contract,” Mary shot back, and turned on her heel. She hadn’t gathered all of the groceries she needed, but she was too angry to continue. When she plunked the items down on the counter, the clerk looked as if she wanted to refuse to ring them up, but she changed her mind under Mary’s glare.

She stormed home and was gratified when the weather seemed to agree with her, if the gray clouds forming overhead were any indication. After storing her groceries, she checked on the cat, who had been acting strange lately. A horrid thought intruded: surely no one would have poisoned the cat? But Woodrow was sunning himself peacefully on the rug, so she dismissed the idea with relief.

When this is over…

The phrase echoed in her memory, tantalizing her and stirring an ache deep inside. She longed for him so intensely that she felt as if she were somehow incomplete. She loved him, and though she understood why he thought it better for her to stay away from him right now, she didn’t agree. After what had happened that morning with Dottie Lancaster and Cicely Karr, there was no point in allowing this exile. She might as well have stood in the middle of the street and shouted it: she was Wolf Mackenzie’s woman.

Whatever he wanted from her, she was willing to give. Aunt Ardith had raised her to believe that intimacy belonged only in marriage, if a woman for some reason felt she simply couldn’t live without a man, though Aunt Ardith had made it plain she couldn’t imagine what such a reason would be. While Mary had accepted that people obviously were intimate outside of marriage, she had never been tempted to it herself—until she’d met Wolf. If he wanted her for only a short time, she counted that as better than nothing. Even one day with him would be a bright and shining memory to treasure during the long, dreary years without him, a small bit of warmth to comfort her. Her dream was to spend a lifetime with him, but she didn’t allow herself to expect it. He was too bitter, too wary; it was unlikely he would permit an Anglo to get that close to him. He would give her his body, perhaps even his affection, but not his heart or his commitment.

Because she loved him, she knew she wouldn’t demand more. She didn’t want anger or guilt between them. For as long as she could, in whatever way, she wanted to make Wolf happy.

He had asked her to wear her hair down, and the silky weight of it lay around her shoulders. She had been surprised, looking in the mirror that morning, how the relaxed hairstyle softened her face. Her eyes had glowed, because leaving her hair down was something she could do for him. She looked feminine, the way he made her feel.

There was no point in trying to make people think her neutral now, not after those arguments she’d gotten into. When she told him what had happened, he’d see the uselessness of trying to maintain the sham. She even felt relieved, because her heart hadn’t been in it.

She had started to change into one of her shapeless housedresses when she caught sight of herself in the mirror and paused. In her mind she relived that moment the day she’d first met Wolf, when he’d seen her in Joe’s old jeans and his eyes had momentarily widened with a look so hot and male it had the power, even now, to make her shake. She wanted him to look at her like that again, but he wasn’t likely to as long as she kept wearing these—these feed sacks!

Suddenly she was dissatisfied with all her clothing. Her dresses were, without exception, sturdy and modest, but they were also too drab and loose-fitting. Her slight build would be better displayed in delicate cottons and light, cheerful colors, or even hip-hugging jeans. She turned and looked at her bottom in the mirror; it was slim and curvy. She could see no reason why she should be ashamed of it. It was a very nice bottom, as bottoms went.

Muttering to herself, she zipped herself back into her serviceable “good” dress and grabbed her purse. Ruth wouldn’t offer much in the way of new clothes, but she could certainly buy some jeans and sassy little tops, as well as some neat skirts and blouses that, above all, actually fit her.

And she never wanted to see another “sensible” shoe in her life.

The gray clouds lived up to their promise, and it began to rain as she made the drive into town. It was a steady rain, just the sort ranchers and farmers everywhere loved, rather than a downpour that simply ran off instead of soaking into the ground. Aunt Ardith wouldn’t have set foot out of the house during a rain, but Mary ignored it. She stopped first at the one store in Ruth that dealt exclusively in women’s clothing, though by necessity the clothes weren’t hot from a fashion show in Paris. She bought three pairs of jeans, size six, two lightweight cotton sweaters, and a blue chambray shirt that made her feel like a pioneer. A snazzy denim skirt, paired with a ruby-red sweater, flattered her so much she spun on her heel in delight, just like a child. She also chose a brown skirt, which fit so well she couldn’t turn it down despite the color, and teamed a crisp pink blouse with it. Her final choice was a pale lavender cotton skirt and matching top, which sported a delicate lace collar. Still in a fit of defiance and delight, she picked out a pair of dressy white sandals as well as a pair of track shoes. When the saleswoman rang them up and called out the total, Mary didn’t even blink an eye. This had been too long in coming.

Nor was she finished. She locked her packages in the car and dashed through the rain to Hearst’s general store, where everyone bought boots. Since Mary planned to be spending most of her time on Wolf’s mountain, she figured she’d need a pair.

Mr. Hearst was almost rude to her, but she stared him down and briefly thought of shaking her schoolteacher’s finger at him. She discarded the idea because the finger lost its power if used too often, and she might really need it sometime in the future. So she ignored him and tried on boots until she finally found a pair that felt comfortable on her feet.

She couldn’t wait to get home and put on her jeans and chambray shirt; she might even wear her boots around the house to get them broken in, she thought. Woodrow wouldn’t know her. She thought of that look in Wolf’s eyes and began to shiver.

Her car was parked up the street, a block away, and it was raining hard enough now that she made a disgusted noise at herself for not driving from the clothing store to Hearst’s. Ruth didn’t have sidewalks, and already huge puddles were standing on the pavement. Well, she had on her sensible shoes; let them earn their keep!

Putting her head down and holding the box containing her boots up in an effort to ward off part of the rain, she darted from the sheltering overhang of the roof and immediately got wet to the ankles when she stepped into a puddle. She was still grumbling to herself about that when she passed the small alley that ran between the general store and the next building, which had formerly been a barbershop but now stood empty.

She didn’t hear anything or see a flurry of movement; she had no warning at all. A big hand, wet with rain, clamped over her mouth, and an arm wrapped around the front of her body, effectively holding her arms down as her attacker began hauling her down the alley, away from the street. Mary fought instinctively, wriggling and kicking while she made muffled sounds behind the man’s palm. His hand was so tight on her face that his fingers dug painfully into her cheek.

The tall, wet weeds in the alley stung her legs, and the pounding rain stung her eyes. Terrified, she kicked harder. This couldn’t be happening! He couldn’t just carry her off in broad daylight! But he could; he had done it to Cathy Teele.

She got one arm free and reached back, clawing for his face. Her desperate fingers found only wet, woolly cloth. He cursed, his voice low and raspy, and hit her on the side of the head with his fist.

Her senses blurred as her head was rocked with pain, and her struggles grew aimless. Vaguely she was aware when they reached the end of the alley and he dragged her behind the abandoned building.

His breathing was fast and harsh in her ear as he forced her down on her stomach in the gravel and mud. She managed to get her arm free again and put her hand out to break her fall; the gravel scraped her palm, but she barely felt it. His hand was still over her mouth, suffocating her; he ground her face into the wet dirt and held her down with his heavy weight on her back.

He scrabbled with his other hand for her skirt, pulling it up. Wildly she clawed at his hand, trying to pull it free so she could scream, and he hit her again. She was terrified and kept clawing. Cursing, he forced her legs apart and thrust himself against her. She could feel him through his pants and her undergarments, pushing at her, and began gagging. God, no!

She heard her clothing tear, and overpowering revulsion gave her strength. She bit savagely at his hand and reached back for his eyes, her nails digging for flesh.

There was a roaring in her ears, but she heard a shout. The man on top of her stiffened, then braced his hand beside her head and used it to balance himself as he leaped to his feet. Her vision blurred by rain and mud, she saw only a blue sleeve and a pale, freckled hand before he was gone. From above and behind her came a loud boom, and vaguely she wondered if now she would be struck by lightning. No, lightning came before the thunder.

Running footsteps pounded the ground, going past her. Mary lay still, her body limp and her eyes closed.

She heard low cursing, and the footsteps returned. “Mary,” a commanding voice said. “Are you all right?”

She managed to open her eyes and looked up at Clay Armstrong. He was soaked to the skin, his blue eyes furious, but his hands were gentle as he turned her onto her back and lifted her in his arms.

“Are you all right?” The words were sharper now.

The rain stung her face. “Yes,” she managed, and turned her head into his shoulder.

“I’ll get him,” Clay promised. “I swear to you, I’ll get the bastard.”

There was no doctor in town, but Bessie Pylant was a registered nurse, and Clay carried Mary to Bessie’s house. Bessie called the private practitioner for whom she worked and got him to drive over from the next town. In the meantime she carefully cleaned Mary’s scrapes and put ice on the bruises, and began pouring hot, too-sweet tea down her.

Clay had disappeared. Bessie’s house was suddenly full of women; Sharon Wycliffe came and assured Mary that she and Dottie could handle things on Monday if Mary didn’t feel like working; Francie Beecham told tales of her own teaching days, her purpose obvious, and the other women took their cues from her. Mary sat quietly, clutching so tightly at the blanket Bessie had wrapped around her that her knuckles were white. She knew the women were trying to divert her, and was grateful to them; with rigid control she concentrated on their commonplace chatter. Even Cicely Karr came and patted Mary’s hand, despite the argument they’d had only a few hours before.

Then the doctor arrived, and Bessie led Mary into a bedroom for privacy while the doctor examined her. She answered his questions in a subdued voice, though she winced when he probed the sore place on the side of her head where the man had struck her with his fist. He checked her pupil response and her blood pressure, and gave her a mild sedative.

“You’ll be all right,” he finally said, patting her knee. “There’s no concussion, so your headache should go away soon. A good night’s sleep will do more for you than anything I can prescribe.”

“Thank you for driving out here,” Mary said politely.

Desperation was growing in her. Everyone had been wonderful, but she could feel a fine wire inside her being coiled tighter and tighter. She felt dirty and exposed. She needed privacy and a shower, and more than anything she needed Wolf.

She left the bedroom and found that Clay had returned. He came to her immediately and took her hand. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m all right.” If she had to say that one more time, she thought she would scream.

“I need a statement from you, if you think you can do it now.”

“Yes, all right.” The sedative was taking effect; she could feel the spreading sensation of remoteness as the drug numbed her emotions. She let Clay lead her to a chair and pulled the blanket tight around her once more. She felt chilled.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Clay soothed. “He’s been picked up. He’s in custody now.”

That aroused her interest, and she stared at him. “Picked up? You know who it is?”

“I saw him.” The iron was back in Clay’s voice.

“But he was wearing a ski mask.” She remembered that, remembered feeling the woolly fabric under her fingers.

“Yeah, but his hair was hanging out from under the mask in back.”

Mary stared up at him, the numbness in her changing into a kind of horror. His hair was long enough to hang out from under the mask? Surely Clay didn’t think—surely not! She felt sick. “Wolf?” she whispered.

“Don’t worry. I told you he’s in custody.”

She clenched her fists so tightly that her nails dug crescents in her palms. “Then let him go.”

Clay looked stunned, then angry. “Let him go! Damn, Mary, can’t you get it through your head that he attacked you?”

Slowly she shook her head, her face white. “No, he didn’t.”

“I saw him,” Clay said, spacing out each word. “He was tall and had long black hair. Damn it, who else could it have been?”

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t Wolf.”

The women were silent, sitting frozen as they listened to the argument. Cicely Karr spoke up. “We did try to warn you, Mary.”

“Then you warned me about the wrong man!” Her eyes burning, Mary stared around the room, then turned her gaze back to Clay. “I saw his hands! He was a white man, an Anglo. He had freckled hands. It wasn’t Wolf Mackenzie!”

Clay’s brow creased in a frown. “Are you certain about that?”

“Positive. He put his hand on the ground right in front of my eyes.” She reached out and grabbed his sleeve. “Get Wolf out of jail, right now. Right now, do you hear me! And he’d better not have a bruise on him!”

Clay got up and went to the telephone, and once again Mary looked at the women in the room. They were all pale and worried. Mary could guess why. As long as they had suspected Wolf, they had had a safe target for their fear and anger. Now they had to look at themselves, at someone who was one of them. A lot of men in the area had freckled hands, but Wolf didn’t. His hands were lean and dark, bronzed by the sun, callused from years of hard manual work and riding. She had felt them on her bare skin. She wanted to shout that Wolf had no reason to attack her, because he could have her any time he wanted, but she didn’t. The numbness was returning. She just wanted to wait for Wolf, if he came at all.

An hour later he walked into Bessie’s house as if he owned it, without knocking. An audible gasp rose when he appeared in the doorway, his broad shoulders reaching almost from beam to beam. He didn’t even glance at the other people in the room. His eyes were on Mary, huddled in her blanket, her face colorless.

His boots rang on the floor as he crossed to her and hunkered down. His black eyes raked her from head to toe; then he touched her chin, turning her head toward the light so he could see the scrape on her cheek and the bruises where hard fingers had bitten into her soft flesh. He lifted her hands and examined her raw palms. His jaw was like granite.

Mary wanted to cry, but instead she managed a wobbly smile. “You got a haircut,” she said softly, and linked her fingers together to keep from running them through the thick, silky strands that lay perfectly against his well-shaped head.

“First thing this morning,” he murmured. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. He—he didn’t manage to…you know.”

“I know.” He stood. “I’ll be back later. I’m going to get him. I promise you, I’ll get him.”

Clay said sharply, “That’s a matter for the law.”

Wolf’s eyes were cold black fire. “The law isn’t doing a very good job.” He walked out without another word, and Mary felt chilled again. While he had been there, life had begun tingling in her numb body, but now it was gone. He had said he would be back, but she thought she should go home. Everyone was very kind, too kind; she felt as if she would scream. She couldn’t handle any more.

Chapter Seven

Though he was stunned by Wolf’s changed appearance, it took Clay only a moment to follow him. As he had suspected, Wolf stopped his truck at the alley where Mary had been attacked. By the time Clay parked the county car and entered the alley, Wolf was down on one knee, examining the muddy ground. He didn’t even glance up when Clay approached. Instead he continued his concentrated examination of every weed and bit of gravel, every scuff mark, every indentation.

Clay said, “When did you get a haircut?”

“This morning. At the barbershop in Harpston.”

“Why?”

“Because Mary asked me to,” Wolf said flatly, and returned his attention to the ground.

Slowly he moved down the alley and to the back of the buildings, pausing at the spot where Mary’s attacker had thrust her to the ground. Then he moved on, following exactly the path the attacker had taken, and it was in the next alley that he gave a grunt of satisfaction and knelt beside a blurred footprint.

Clay had been over the ground himself, and so had many other people. He said as much to Wolf. “That print could belong to anyone.”

“No. It’s made by a soft-soled shoe, not a boot.” After examining the print awhile longer, he said, “He toes in slightly when he walks. I’d guess he weighs about one seventy-five, maybe one eighty. He isn’t in very good shape. He was already tired when he got this far.”

Clay felt uneasy. Some people would have simply passed off that kind of tracking ability as part of Wolf’s Indian heritage, but they would have been wrong. There were excellent trackers of wildlife who could follow a man’s footsteps in the wilderness as easily as if he had wet paint on the bottoms of his boots, but the details Wolf had discerned would have been noted only by someone who had been trained to hunt other men. Nor did he doubt what Wolf had told him, because he had seen other men, though not many, who could track like that.

“You were in Nam.” He already knew that, but suddenly it seemed far more significant.

Wolf was still examining the footprint. “Yes. You?”

“Twenty-first Infantry. What outfit were you with?”

Wolf looked up, and a very slight, unholy smile touched his lips. “I was a LRRP.”

Clay’s uneasy feeling became a chill. The LRRPs, pronounced “lurp,” were men on long-range reconnaissance patrol. Unlike the regular grunts, the LRRPs spent weeks in the jungles and hill country, living off the land, hunting and being hunted. They survived only by their wits and ability to fight, or to fade away into the shadows, whichever the situation demanded. Clay had seen them come in from the bush, lean and filthy, smelling like the wild animals they essentially were, with death in their eyes and their nerves so raw, so wary, that it was dangerous to touch them unexpectedly, or walk up to their backs. Sometimes they hadn’t been able to bear the touch of another human being until their nerves settled down. A smart man walked lightly around a LRRP fresh in from the field.

What was in Wolf’s eyes now was cold and deadly, an anger so great Clay could only guess at its force, though he understood it. Wolf smiled again, and in the calmest tone imaginable, one almost gentle, he said, “He made a mistake.”

“What was that?”

“He hurt my woman.”

“It’s not your place to hunt him. It’s a matter for the law.”

“Then the law had better stay close to my heels,” Wolf said, and walked away.

Clay stared after him, not even surprised by the blunt words claiming Mary as his woman. The chill ran down his back again and he shivered. The town of Ruth had made a mistake in judging this man, but the rapist had made an even bigger one, one that might prove fatal.

Mary stoically ignored all the protests and pleas when she announced her intention of driving home. They meant well, and she appreciated their concern, but she couldn’t stay another moment. She was physically unharmed, and the doctor had said her headache would fade in the next few hours. She simply had to go home.

So she drove alone in the misting rain, her movements automatic. Afterward, she could never recall a moment of the drive. All she was aware of when she let herself into the creaky old house was a feeling of intense relief, and it so frightened her that she pushed it away. She couldn’t afford to let herself relax, not now. Maybe later. Right now she had to hold herself together very tightly.

Woodrow looped around her ankles several times, meowing plaintively. Mary stirred herself to feed him, though he was as fat as a butterball already, then found herself exhausted by that brief effort. She sat down at the table and folded her hands in her lap, holding herself motionless.

That was how Wolf found her half an hour later, just as the gray daylight began to fade. “Why didn’t you wait for me?” he asked from the doorway, his tone a low, gentle growl.

“I had to come home,” Mary explained.

“I would have brought you.”

“I know.”

He sat down at the table beside her and took her cold, tightly clasped hands in his. She looked at him steadily, and his heart clenched like a fist in his chest.

He would have given anything never to have seen that look in her eyes.

She had always been so indomitable, with her “damn the torpedoes” spirit. She was slight and delicately made, but in her own eyes she had been invincible. Because the very idea of defeat was foreign to her, she had blithely moved through life arranging it to suit herself and accepted it as only natural that shopkeepers quaked before her wagging finger. That attitude had sometimes irritated, but more often entranced, him. The kitten thought herself a tiger, and because she acted like a tiger, other people had given way.

She was no longer indomitable. A horrible vulnerability was in her eyes, and he knew she would never forget the moments when she had been helpless. That scum had hurt her, humiliated her, literally ground her into the dirt.

“Do you know what really horrified me?” she asked after a long silence.

“What?”

“That I wanted the first time to be with you, and he was going to—” She stopped abruptly, unable to finish.

“But he didn’t.”

“No. He pulled up my skirt and pushed against me, and he was tearing my clothes when Clay—I think Clay shouted. He might have fired a shot. I remember hearing a roaring sound, but I thought it was thunder.”

Her flat little monotone bothered him, and he realized she was still in shock. “I won’t let him get near you again. I give you my word.”

She nodded, then closed her eyes.

“You’re going to take a shower,” Wolf said, urging her to her feet. “A long, warm shower, and while you’re taking it, I’ll fix something for you to eat. What would you like?”

She tried to think of something, but even the thought of food was repugnant. “Just tea.”

He walked upstairs with her; she was steady, but the steadiness seemed fragile, as if she were barely holding herself under control. He wished that she would cry, or yell, anything that would break the tension encasing her.

“I’ll just get my nightgown. You don’t mind if I get my nightgown, do you?” She looked anxious, as if afraid she was being too troublesome.

“No.” He started to reach out and touch her, to slide his arm around her waist, but dropped his hand before contact was made. She might not want anyone to touch her. A sick feeling grew in him as he realized she might find his, and any other man’s, touch disgusting now.

Mary got her nightgown and stood docilely in the old-fashioned bathroom while Wolf adjusted the water. “I’ll be downstairs,” he said as he straightened and stepped back. “Leave the door unlocked.”

“Why?” Her eyes were big and solemn.

“In case you faint, or need me.”

“I won’t faint.”

He smiled a little. No, Miss Mary Elizabeth Potter wouldn’t faint; she wouldn’t allow herself to be so weak. Maybe it wasn’t tension holding her so straight; it might be the iron in her backbone.

He knew he wouldn’t be able to coax her to eat much, if anything, but he heated a can of soup anyway. His timing was perfect; the soup had just boiled and the tea finished steeping when Mary entered the kitchen.

She hadn’t thought to put on a robe; she wore only the nightgown, a plain white cotton eyelet garment. Wolf felt himself begin to sweat, because as demure as the nightgown was, he could still see the darkness of her nipples through the fabric. He swore silently as she sat down at the table like an obedient child; now wasn’t the time for lust. But telling himself that didn’t stop it; he wanted her, under any circumstances.

She ate the soup mechanically, without protest, and drank the tea, then thanked him for making it. Wolf cleared the table and washed up the few dishes; when he turned, Mary was still sitting at the table, her hands folded and her eyes staring at nothing. He froze briefly and muttered a curse. He couldn’t bear it another minute. Swiftly he lifted her out of the chair and sat down in it, then settled her on his lap.

She was stiff in his arms for a moment; then a sigh filtered between her lips as she relaxed against his chest. “I was so frightened,” she whispered.

“I know, honey.”

“How can you know? You’re a man.” She sounded faintly truculent.

“Yeah, but I was in prison, remember?” He wondered if she would know what he was talking about, and he saw her brow furrow as she thought.

Then she said, “Oh.” She began scowling fiercely. “If anyone hurt you—” she began.

“Hold it! No, I wasn’t attacked. I’m good at fighting, and everyone knew it.” He didn’t tell her how he’d established a reputation for himself. “But it happened to other prisoners, and I knew it could happen to me, so I was always on guard.” He’d slept only in light naps, with a knife made from a sharpened spoon always in his hand; his cell had hidden a variety of weapons, a lot of which the guards had seen and not recognized for what they were. It would have taken another LRRP to have seen some of the things he’d done and the weapons he’d carried. Yeah, he’d been on guard.

“I’m glad,” she said, then suddenly bent her head against his throat and began to cry. Wolf held her tightly, his fingers laced through her hair to press against her skull and hold her to him. Her soft, slender body shook with sobs as she wound her arms around his neck. She didn’t say anything else, and neither did he, but they didn’t need words.

He cradled her until finally she sniffed and observed dazedly, “I need to blow my nose.”

He stretched to reach the napkin holder and plucked a napkin from it to place in her hands. Mary blew her nose in a very ladylike manner, then sat still, searching in her depths for the best way to handle what had happened. She knew it could have been much worse, but it had been bad enough. Only one thought surfaced: she didn’t want to be alone tonight. She hadn’t been able to tolerate the women fussing around her, but if Wolf would just stay with her, she’d be all right.

She looked up at him. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

Every muscle in his big body tensed, but there was no way he could deny her. “You know I will. I’ll sleep on the—”

“No. I mean—if you could sleep with me tonight, and hold me so I won’t be alone, just for tonight, I think I’ll be all right tomorrow.”

He hoped it would be that easy for her, but he doubted it. The memories would linger on, springing out from dark corners to catch her when she least expected it. Until the day she died, she would never entirely forget, and for that he wanted to catch her assailant and break the guy’s neck. Literally.

“I’ll call Joe and let him know where I am,” he said, and lifted her from his lap.

It was still early, but her eyelids were drooping, and after he called Joe he decided there was no point in putting it off. She needed to be in bed.

He turned out the lights and put his arm around her as they climbed the narrow stairs together. Her flesh was warm and resilient beneath the thin cotton, and the feel of her made his heart begin a slow, heavy beat. His jaw clenched as blood throbbed through his body, pooling in his groin. He was in for a miserable night, and he knew it.

Her bedroom was so old-fashioned it looked turn-of-the-century, but he hadn’t expected anything else. The delicate lilac smell he associated with Mary was stronger up here. The ache in his loins intensified.

“I hope the bed is big enough for you,” she said, worrying as she eyed the double bed.

“It’ll do.” It wasn’t big enough, but it would do. He’d have to spend the night curled around her. Her bottom would be nestled against him, and he would quietly go insane. Suddenly he didn’t know if he could do it, if he could lie with her all night and not take her. No matter what his mind said, his body knew exactly what it wanted; he was already so hard it was all he could do to keep from groaning.

“Which side do you want?”

What did it matter? Torment was torment, no matter what side he was on. “The left.”

Mary nodded and turned back the covers. Wolf wanted to look away as she climbed into bed, but his eyes wouldn’t obey. He saw the curve of her buttocks as the nightgown was momentarily pulled tight. He saw her pale, slim legs and immediately pictured them clasped around his waist. He saw the outline of her pretty breasts with their rosy nipples, and he remembered the feel of her breasts in his hands, her nipples in his mouth, her smell and taste.

Abruptly he bent down and pulled the sheet up over her. “I have to take a shower.”

He saw the brief dart of fear at being alone in her eyes, but then she conquered it and said, “The towels are in the closet next to the bathroom door.”

He was swearing savagely to himself as he stood in the bathroom, jerking his clothes off. A cold shower wouldn’t help; he’d had a lot of them lately, and the effect was remarkably short-lived. He needed Mary—naked, beneath him, sheathing his swollen and throbbing flesh. She would be so tight that he wouldn’t last a minute—

Damn. He couldn’t leave her, not tonight. No matter what it cost him.

His entire body was aching as he stood under the warm, beating water. He couldn’t crawl into bed with her like this. The last thing she needed right now was to have him poking at her all night. She needed comfort, not lust. Not only that, he wasn’t entirely certain of his control. He’d been too long without a woman, had wanted her for too long.

He couldn’t leave her, but he couldn’t go to her like this. He knew what he had to do, and his soapy hand slid down his body. At least this would give him some modicum of control, because he would rather slit his own throat than see that fear and vulnerability in Mary’s eyes again.

She was lying very still when he rejoined her, and she didn’t move as he turned out the light. It wasn’t until his weight depressed the mattress that she shifted to lie on her side. He positioned himself on his side, too, and hooked an arm around her waist to pull her firmly back into the cradle of his body. She sighed, and he felt the tension slowly ebb from her body as she relaxed against him.

“This is nice,” she whispered.

“You aren’t afraid?”

“Of you? No. Never of you.” Her tone was liquid with tenderness. She lifted her hand to reach back and cup his jaw in her palm. “I’ll be all right in the morning, wait and see. I’m just too tired right now to deal with it. Will you hold me all night?”

“If you want me to.”

“Please.”

He brushed her hair to one side and pressed a kiss into the nape of her neck, delighting in the delicate little shiver that rippled through her body when he did so. “My pleasure,” he said gently. “Good night, sweetheart.”

It was the storm that woke her. It was barely dawn, the light still dim, though the black clouds contributed to the grayness. The storm was fierce, reminding her of the ferocious thunderstorms in the South. Lightning ripped the dark sky apart, and the booming thunder made the very air vibrate. She lazily counted the seconds between the lightning flashes and the thunder to see how far away the storm was: seven miles. But it was pouring rain, the sound loud on the old tin roof. It was wonderful.

She felt both acutely alive and deeply calm, as if she were waiting for something. Yesterday was, by its very definition, in the past. It could no longer hurt her. Today was the present, and the present was Wolf.

He wasn’t in the bed, but she knew he had been there during the night. Even in sleep she had sensed him, felt his strong arms holding her. Sleeping together was a joy so deep she couldn’t express it, as if it had been meant to be. Perhaps it had been. She couldn’t stop herself from hoping.

Where was he? She thought she smelled coffee and got out of bed. She visited the bathroom, brushed her hair and teeth, and returned to the bedroom to dress. Oddly she felt suddenly constrained by the bra she put on and discarded it. A subtle pulsating sensation had enveloped her entire body, and the sense of waiting increased. Even underpants were too much. She simply pulled on a loose cotton house-dress over her nude body and went downstairs in her bare feet.

He wasn’t in the parlor, or the kitchen, though the empty coffeepot and the cup in the sink explained the lingering scent. The kitchen door was open, the screen door no barrier to the cool damp air, and the fresh smell of rain mingled with that of the coffee. His truck was still parked at the back porch steps.

It took only a few minutes to boil water and steep a tea bag, and she drank the tea while sitting at the kitchen table, watching the rain sheet down the window. It was cool enough that she should have been chilled, wearing only the thin dress, but she wasn’t, even though she could feel how her nipples had tightened. Once that would have embarrassed her. Now she thought only of Wolf.

She was halfway between the table and the sink, empty cup in hand, when suddenly he was there, standing on the other side of the screen door, watching her through the wire mesh. His clothing was plastered to hiss kin, rainwater dripping off of his face. Mary froze, her head turned to stare at him.

He looked wild, primitive, his eyes narrow and glittering, his feet braced apart. She could see every breath that swelled his chest, see the pulse that throbbed at the base of his throat. Though he was very still, she could feel his entire body pulsating with tension. In that moment she knew he was going to take her, and she knew that was why she had waited.

“I’ll always be a half-breed,” he said in a low, harsh voice, barely audible over the drumming rain. “There will always be people who look down on me because of it. Think long and hard before you agree to be my woman, because there’s no going back.”

Softly, clearly, she said, “I don’t want to go back.”

He opened the screen door and entered the kitchen, his movements slow and deliberate. Mary’s hand shook as she reached out to place her cup on the cabinet; then she turned to face him.

He put his hands on her waist and gently drew her up against him; his clothes were wet, and immediately the front of her dress absorbed the moisture until the damp fabric was molded to her body. Mary slid her hands up his shoulders to join at the back of his neck and lifted her mouth to his. His kiss was slow and deep, making her toes curl as hot excitement began to dart through her. She knew how to kiss now and welcomed his tongue while she teased him with her own. His chest lifted with a deep, sharp intake of breath, and his grip on her tightened. Suddenly the kiss was no longer slow, but hungry and urgent, and the pressure of his mouth was almost painful.

She felt him gathering her skirt in his hand to lift it; then his callused palm was sliding up her thigh. He reached her hip and paused, shuddering with violent arousal as he realized she was naked under the dress; then his hand moved to her bare buttocks and caressed them. It was surprisingly pleasurable, and she moved her bottom against his hand. He had opened up an entire new world for her, the world of sensual pleasure, and he was constantly expanding the limits.

He couldn’t wait much longer, and he lifted her in his arms. His face was hard and intent as he looked down at her. “Unless the house catches on fire, I won’t stop this time,” he said quietly. “I don’t care if the phone rings, or if anyone drives up, or even knocks on the bedroom door. This time, we finish it.”

She didn’t reply, but gave him a slow, sweet smile that made him burn to take her right there. His arms tightened as he carried her up the narrow, creaky stairs and into her bedroom, where he carefully placed her on the bed.

He stood looking down at her for a moment, then walked to the window and raised it. “Let’s let the storm in,” he said, and then it was with them, filling the half-dark room with sound and vibration. The rain-chilled air washed over her, cool and fresh on her heated skin. She sighed, the small sound drowned out by the din of thunder and rain.

There by the window, with the dim gray light outlining the bulge and plane of powerful muscle, Wolf removed his wet clothing. Mary lay quietly on the bed, her head turned to watch him. The shirt went first, revealing his sleek, heavy shoulders and washboard stomach. She knew from touching him that he was unbelievably hard, with no give beneath his smooth skin. He bent down to tug off his boots and socks, then straightened and unbuckled his belt. The noise of the storm made his movements a pantomime, but she imagined the small pop as he unsnapped his jeans, then the hissing of the zipper as metal teeth pulled apart. Without hesitation he pushed down his jeans and underwear and stepped free of them.

He was naked. Her heart jerked painfully in her chest as she stared at him, for the first time feeling remarkably small and helpless beside him. He was big, he was strong, and he was undeniably male. She couldn’t look away from his hard manhood. She was going to take him inside her, accept his heavy weight as they joined in the act of mating, and she was a little frightened.

He saw it in her eyes as he eased down beside her. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered, brushing her hair away from her face. His hands were gentle as he reached under her and unzipped her dress.

“I know what’s going to happen,” she murmured, turning her face against his shoulder. “The mechanics of it, anyway. But I just don’t see how it’s possible.”

“It is. I’ll take it slow and easy.”

“All right.” She whispered her acquiescence and let him lift her so he could pull the dress off of her shoulders. Her breasts were bare, and she could feel them tightening, swelling, her nipples puckering. He bent to kiss both nipples, wetting them with his tongue, and her back arched as heat spread through her. He quickly stripped the dress down her hips and legs, the need to have her bare under his hands too urgent for him to ignore it any longer.

Mary quivered, then lay still. It was the first time since babyhood that anyone but herself had seen her completely nude; her cheeks heated, and she closed her eyes as she struggled with the sensations of embarrassment and painful exposure. He touched her breasts, gently squeezing them; then his rough palm slowly moved down her stomach until his fingers touched her silky triangle of curls. She made a small sound, and her eyes flew open to find him watching her with such a fierce, heated expression that she forgot her embarrassment. She was suddenly proud that he wanted her so intensely, that her body aroused him. Her legs relaxed, and one finger delved between her soft folds, lightly stroking the ultra-sensitive flesh he found. Mary’s entire body tensed again, and she moaned. She hadn’t known anything could feel like that, but she sensed there was more, and she didn’t know if she could survive it. This was pleasure too intense to be borne.

“Do you like that?” Wolf murmured.

She gasped, her slender body beginning to writhe slowly on the sheets in a rhythm as old as the ages. He opened her legs farther with his hand, then returned to his sensual exploration, and at the same time bent to hungrily cover her mouth with his own. Mary’s head spun, and her nails dug into his shoulders as she clung to him. She couldn’t believe how he was touching her, how it made her feel, but she never wanted it to stop. He was causing a fever inside her, one that spread and intensified until she was aware of nothing but her own body and his. His stroking fingers raised her to delirium while his mouth muffled the small moans she made.

She tore her mouth away from his. “Wolf, please,” she begged, frantic with need.

“Just a minute longer, sweetheart. Look at me. Let me see your face when I—ahh.”

She whimpered. He was touching her even more intimately, finding her damp and swollen. His black gaze was locked with hers as he slowly slid his finger inside her, and they both shuddered convulsively.

Wolf knew he couldn’t wait any longer. His entire body was throbbing. She was soft and wet and incredibly tight, and she was writhing on the verge of ecstasy. Her pale, translucent skin intoxicated him, enthralled him; just touching her made him wild. The textures of her body excited him more than anything he’d ever known before. Everything about her was soft and silky. Her hair was baby-fine, her skin delicate and satiny; even the curls between her legs were soft, rather than springy. He wanted her more than he wanted his next breath.

He moved between her legs, spreading them to make room for his hips to nestle against her. She inhaled sharply as she felt him, hard and burning. Their eyes met again as he reached down between their bodies and guided himself into position, then began entering her.

The storm was right over them now. The lightning cracked, and the almost simultaneous thunder boomed, rattling the old house. The sharply gusting wind blew the curtains straight out into the room, spattering rain on the floor in front of the open window and carrying a fine mist over their bodies. Mary cried, her tears mingling with the mist on her face, as she accepted his slow penetration.

He was braced over her on his forearms, his face just an inch from hers. He licked the tears away, then kissed her mouth, and she tasted salt. She could feel burning pain as her body stretched to admit him, and enormous pressure. More tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. He deepened the kiss as his buttocks flexed, exerting more pressure, and suddenly her body’s barrier gave way. He pushed deep into her, burying himself to the hilt with a deep, almost tortured groan of pleasure.

There was pain, but there was also a lot more. He’d told her that making love was hot and sweaty, and that she probably wouldn’t like it, and he was both right and wrong. It was hot and sweaty, and raw, and primitive. It was so powerful that it swept her along with its rhythms. Despite the pain, she felt exalted by his possession. She could feel the tension and savage excitement in his powerful body as she cradled him with her legs and arms, her soft depths filled with him. She loved him, and he needed her. She had never really lived before, until this moment when she gave herself to the man she loved.

She couldn’t keep it back, not that it mattered. He had to know already. Mary had never worn an emotional mask. Her hands moved over his sleek, wet shoulders and into his thick hair. “I love you,” she said, her soft voice barely audible over another booming roll of thunder.

If he replied, she didn’t hear him. He reached down between their bodies again, but this time his hand was on her, and he began moving. Heat shimmered through her again, making the discomfort fade; her body arched, hips lifting in an effort to take him even deeper, and she told him again that she loved him. Sweat beaded his taut face as he tried to control his thrusts, but the storm was in the room, in their bodies. Her hips undulated, rolling, driving him mad. They strained together, their movements punctuated by the thunder, by the thudding of the headboard against the wall, and by the creaking of the bedsprings beneath them. Low groans and soft cries; wet flesh and trembling muscles; hands clutching frantically; harsh, rapid breathing and urgent thrusts—she knew all of that, felt it, heard it, and felt herself being consumed by the fever.

“Wolf?” Her questioning cry was thin, frantic. Her nails dug into the flexing muscles of his back.

“Don’t fight it, baby. Let it go.” He was groaning, feeling his own completion approaching, and he had no more control left. He removed his hand from between them and gripped her hips, lifting them, fitting himself more solidly to her and rocking against her loins.

Mary felt the tension and fever increase to unbearable levels, and then her senses exploded. She cried out, her entire body shuddering and clenching. It was the sweetest madness imaginable, a pleasure beyond description, and it continued until she thought she might die of it. He held her until she quietened, then began thrusting hard and fast. His guttural cries blended with the thunder as he crushed her against the mattress, his body convulsing as the powerful jetting of completion emptied him.

They were silent afterward, as if words would be an intrusion between them. Their mating had been so compelling and urgent that nothing else had existed. Even the storm, as violent as it was, had been only an accompaniment. Slowly, reluctantly, Mary felt reality return, but she was content to lie beneath him and do nothing more than stroke his hair.

Their breathing had long since steadied and the storm moved away when he disengaged their bodies and shifted onto his side. He cradled her for a time, but now that their skin had cooled, the mist-dampened bed was distinctly uncomfortable. When she began to shiver, he got out of bed and crossed to the window to close it. She watched as his muscles alternately bunched and relaxed with each movement of his nude body. Then he turned, and she was instantly, helplessly, fascinated. She wished for the nerve to run her hands all over him, especially his loins. She wanted to inspect him, like an exploration, going over uncharted territory.

“Like what you see?” His voice was low and filled with amusement.

Things had gone too far between them for her to be embarrassed now. She looked up at him and smiled. “Very much. I imagined you once in a loincloth, but this is much better.”

He reached down and plucked her from the bed as easily as if she were a feather. “We’d better get dressed before you get cold, and before I forget my good intentions.”

“What good intentions?”

“Not to keep at you until you’re so sore you can’t walk.”

She looked gravely at him. “You made it wonderful for me. Thank you.”

“It was pretty damn wonderful for me, too.” One side of his mouth quirked upward, and he slid his hands into her silvery brown hair. “No bad moments?”

She understood what he meant and leaned her head against his chest. “No. That was an entirely different thing.”

But she hadn’t forgotten, either, and he knew it. She was still shaky and vulnerable inside, though she kept her chin proudly lifted. He intended for someone to pay for the damage done to her indomitable spirit.

He’d spent years living quietly on the fringes, maintaining the sort of armed truce that had existed between him and the citizens of Ruth, but no more. For Mary, he would find the creep who had attacked her, and if the townspeople didn’t like it, that was just too bad.

Chapter Eight

She threw Wolf’s wet clothes into the dryer, then prepared a late breakfast. Neither of them talked much. Despite her determination to overcome her shock, she couldn’t quite forget those horrifying moments when she had been helpless at the hands of a madman, for he certainly was mad. No matter what she was doing or thinking, a lightning flash of memory would catapult her back to the attack, just for a minute, until she could regain control and put it from her again.

Wolf watched her, knowing what she was experiencing by the way her slight body would tense, then slowly relax. He’d lived through flashbacks, of Vietnam, of prison, and he knew how they worked, as well as the toll they took. He wanted to take her to bed again, to keep the shadows at bay for her, but knew from the occasional gingerness of her movements that she was too new to lovemaking for another bout right now to be anything other than abusive. When she was used to him…A very slight smile curved his lips as he thought of the hours of pleasure and all the different ways he would take her.

But first he had to find the man who had attacked her.

When his clothes were dry, he dressed and pulled Mary out to the back porch with him. The rain had diminished to a drizzle, so he figured they wouldn’t get too wet. “Come out to the barn with me,” he said, taking her hand.

“Why?”

“I want to show you something.”

“I’ve been in the barn. There’s nothing interesting in there.”

“There is today. You’ll like it.”

“All right.” They hurried through the drizzle to the old barn, which was dark and musty, without the warmth and rich, animal smells of his barn. Dust tickled her nose. “It’s too dark to see anything.”

“There’s enough light. Come on.” Still holding her hand, he led her into a stall where a couple of boards were missing from the wall, letting in the dreary light. After the darkness of the inner barn, she could see fairly well.

“What is it?”

“Look under the feed trough.”

She bent down and looked. Curled up, in a nest of dusty straw and an old towel she recognized, was Woodrow. Curled against Woodrow’s belly were four little rat-looking things.

She straightened abruptly. “Woodrow’s a father!”

“Nope. Woodrow’s a mother.”

“A mother!” She stared at the cat, who stared back at her enigmatically before beginning to lick the kittens. “I was specifically told that Woodrow is male.”

“Well, Woodrow is female. Didn’t you look?”

Mary gave him a severe look. “I don’t make a habit of looking at an animal’s private parts.”

“Just mine, right?”

She blushed, but couldn’t deny the charge. “Right.”

He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her close for a slow, warm kiss. She sighed and softened against him, reaching up to clasp the back of his neck as his mouth moved over hers. The strength of his big body reassured her, made her feel safe. When his hard arms were around her, nothing could harm her.

“I have to go home,” he murmured when he lifted his mouth from hers. “Joe will do as much as he can, but it takes both of us to get everything done.”

She had thought she could handle it, but panic seized her at the thought of being alone. Quickly she controlled herself and let her arms drop from around his neck. “Okay.” She started to ask if she’d see him later, but kept the words unsaid. Oddly, now that their relationship was so intimate, she felt far less sure of herself than she had before. Letting him get that close, letting him enter her body, had exposed a vulnerability she hadn’t known was there. That kind of intimacy was a little scary.

“Get a jacket,” he said as they left the barn.

“I already have a jacket.”

“I meant, get one now. You’re going with me.”

She gave him a quick look, then dropped her gaze away from the awareness in his. “I have to be alone sometime,” she said quietly.

“But not today. Go on, get that jacket.”

She got the jacket and climbed up into his truck, feeling as if she had been reprieved from execution. Maybe by the time night came she would have her fears under control.

Joe came out of the barn as they drove up and walked to the passenger side of the truck. When Mary opened the door, he reached in and lifted her from the truck, then hugged her tightly. “Are you all right?” His young voice was gruff.

She hugged him in return. “He didn’t hurt me. I was just scared.”

Over her head Joe looked at his father and saw the cold, controlled rage in those black eyes as they lingered on the slight woman in his son’s arms. Someone had dared to hurt her, and whoever it was would pay. Joe felt a deep primitive anger, and knew it was only a fraction of what Wolf felt. Their eyes met, and Wolf gave a slight shake of his head, indicating that he didn’t want Joe to pursue the subject. Mary was here to relax, not relive the attack.

Wolf approached and looped his arm over her shoulder, using the pressure to turn her toward the stable. “Feel up to helping with the chores?”

Her eyes lit. “Of course. I’ve always wanted to see how a ranch works.”

He automatically shortened his long stride to match hers as the three of them walked toward the stable. “This isn’t a ranch, exactly. I run a small herd, but more for training and our personal beef than any other reason.”

“What sort of training?”

“Training the horses to work a herd. That’s what I do. I break and train horses. Quarter horses mostly, for ranchers, but sometimes I handle the odd show horse or Thoroughbred, or a fractious pleasure mount.”

“Don’t Thoroughbred owners have their own trainers?”

He shrugged. “Some horses are harder to train than others. An expensive horse isn’t worth a damn if no one can get near him.” He didn’t elaborate, but Mary knew that he got the horses no one else was able to handle.

The long stable jutted out to the right of the barn. When they entered, Mary inhaled the rich earth scents of horses, leather, manure, grain and hay. Long satiny necks poked over the stall doors, and inquisitive whickers filled the air. She had never been around horses much, but she wasn’t afraid of them. She moved down the line, patting and stroking, murmuring to the animals. “Are these all quarter horses?”

“No. That one in the next stall is a Canadian cutting horse—that’s a type, not a breed. He belongs to a rancher in the next county north. Down in the last stall is a saddle-bred, for some big rancher’s wife in Montana. He’s going to give her the horse for her birthday in July. The rest of them are quarter horses.”

They were all young horses, and as playful as children. Wolf treated them as such, talking to them in a low, crooning tone, gentling them like overgrown babies. Mary spent the entire afternoon in the stables with Wolf and Joe, watching them attend to the endless chores of cleaning and feeding, checking shoes, grooming. The drizzle finally stopped in the late afternoon, and Wolf worked with a couple of the young quarter horses in the pen behind the stable, slowly and gently getting them accustomed to bits and saddles. He didn’t rush them, or lose his patience when a fractious young horse shied away from him whenever Wolf tried to lift a saddle onto his back. He just soothed the colt and reassured him before trying again. Before the afternoon was over, the colt was ambling around the pen as if he’d been wearing a saddle for years.

Mary was enthralled, partly by his low, velvety voice, and partly by the way his strong hands moved over the young animals, teaching and soothing all at once. He had done that with her, but his hands had also excited her. She shivered as memories washed over her, and her breasts tightened.

“I’ve never seen anyone like him,” Joe said beside her, keeping his tone low. “I’m good, but not near as good as he is. I’ve never seen a horse he couldn’t settle down. We had a stallion brought to us a couple of years ago. He’d been put out to stud, but he was so damn vicious the handlers couldn’t control him. Dad just put him in a stall and left him alone, but every so often he’d leave sugar cubes, apples or carrots on the top of the stall door and stand there until the stallion got a good look at him. Then he’d walk off, and the stallion would get whatever he’d left on the door.

“The stallion started watching for him and snorting at him if Dad was taking his time about getting the food over there. Then Dad stopped moving away, and the stallion, Ringer, had to come up to the door while Dad was there if he wanted the food. The first few times, he tried to tear the stall apart, but finally he gave in and got the food. Next he had to eat out of Dad’s hand if he wanted his treat. Dad switched completely to carrots then, to make sure he didn’t lose any fingers. Finally Ringer was hanging his head over the stall, and he’d nuzzle Dad’s shirt like a kid hunting candy. Dad petted him and groomed him—Ringer loved being brushed—and gradually broke him to the saddle and started riding him. I worked with him, too, after Dad had him settled down, and I guess he finally decided he didn’t have to fight all the time.

“We had a mare come in heat, and Dad called Ringer’s owner to ask if he wanted us to try Ringer on our mare. The guy gave his okay, Ringer performed like a real gentleman, and everybody was happy. The owner got his expensive stud civilized, and we got a hefty fee, as well as a hell of a colt out of the mare Ringer covered.”

Mary blinked at all this talk of being “in heat” and “covered,” and cleared her throat. “He’s wonderful,” she agreed, and cleared her throat again. Her skin felt hot and sensitive. She couldn’t take her eyes off Wolf, tall and lean and broad-shouldered, the weak sunlight glinting off his black hair.

“When we get through here, maybe we could do a few lessons tonight, since I missed Friday night,” Joe said, interrupting her thoughts.

She didn’t like thinking about why he had missed Friday night, about the long hours spent waiting to hear if Wolf had been jailed. This afternoon had been a small oasis of calm, with the semblance of normality, but it would be a long time before things were back to normal in the county. A young girl had been raped, and Mary had been attacked the very next day. People would be enraged and wary, looking at their neighbors and wondering. God help any stranger who happened to wander through, at least until the man was caught.

Tires crunched on the gravel, and Joe left his post to see who had ventured up on Mackenzie’s Mountain. He was back in a moment, with Clay Armstrong behind him. It was a replay of Friday afternoon, and Mary felt her heart lurch; surely Clay wasn’t going to arrest Wolf now?

“Mary.” Clay nodded at her and touched the brim of his hat. “You doing okay?”

“Yes.” She said it firmly.

“I thought I’d find you up here. Do you feel like going over it again with me?”

Wolf pulled off his gloves as he approached. His eyes were flinty. “She went over it with you yesterday.”

“Sometimes people remember little things after the shock has passed.”

Because she sensed Wolf was about to throw Clay off his property, she turned and put her hand on his arm. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

She was lying, and he knew it, but her mouth had taken on that stubborn set that meant she wouldn’t back down. He felt a tinge of amusement; his kitten was getting back some of her confidence, after all. But no way was he going to let Clay question her alone. He looked at Joe. “Put the horse up. I’m going with Mary.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Clay said.

“It is to me.”

Mary felt dwarfed between the two big men as they walked up to the house; she thought she might soon find such protectiveness smothering. A smile touched her lips. Clay probably felt he had to protect her from Wolf as well as from another attack, while Wolf was determined to protect her, period. She wondered what Clay would think if he knew that she didn’t want to be protected from Wolf. Aunt Ardith would say Wolf had taken advantage of her, and Mary earnestly hoped he would do so again. Soon.

Wolf caught her sidelong glance and stiffened as he felt her interest and warmth. Damn it, didn’t she know how he’d react, and that it could get embarrassing? Already he could feel the tension in his loins. But, no, she didn’t know. Despite their early morning lovemaking, she was still too innocent about sex in general, and the effect she had on him in particular, to know what that look did to him. He hurried his step. He needed to sit down.

When they entered the kitchen, Mary moved around making coffee as naturally as she would have in her own house, emphasizing to Clay that she and Wolf were a couple. Folks in the county were just going to have to get used to it.

“Let’s go through it from the beginning,” Clay said.

Mary paused fractionally, then resumed her steady movements as she measured coffee into the percolator. “I’d just bought new boots at Hearst’s store and was walking back to my car—my boots! I dropped them! Did you see them? Did anyone pick them up?”

“I saw them, but I don’t know what happened to them. I’ll ask around.”

“He must have been standing against the side of Hearst’s store, because I’d have seen him if he had been on the other side of the alley. He just grabbed me and put his hand over my mouth. He held my head arched back, so I couldn’t move it at all, and started dragging me down the alley. I got one hand free and reached back, trying to scratch his face, but he had on a ski mask. He hit me in the head with his fist and I—I really don’t remember much after that until he pushed me down. I kept scratching him, and I think I clawed his hand, because he hit me again. Then I bit him on the hand, but I don’t know if I drew blood.

“Someone yelled, and he got up and ran. He put his hand on the ground right in front of my face when he got up. His sleeve was blue, and he had freckles on his hand. A lot of freckles. Then…you were there.”

She fell silent and moved to look out the kitchen window, her back to the men sitting at the table, so she didn’t see the murderous look in Wolf’s eyes, or the way his big fists clenched, but Clay did, and it worried him.

“I was the one who yelled. I saw the package lying on the ground and went over to see what it was, and then I heard scuffling from the back of the building. When I saw him, I yelled and pulled my revolver, and fired over his head to try to stop him.”

Wolf looked savage. “You should have shot the son of a bitch. That would have stopped him.”

In retrospect Clay wished he’d shot the guy, too. At least then they wouldn’t be racking their brains trying to put an ID to him, and the townspeople wouldn’t be so jittery. Women were carrying an assortment of weapons with them wherever they went, even outside to hang the wash to dry. The mood people were in, it would be dangerous for a stranger to stop in the county.

That was what bothered him, and he said as much. “It looks like someone would have noticed a stranger. Ruth is a small town, and people pretty well know everyone in the county. A stranger would have been noticed right off, especially one with long black hair.”

Wolf gave a wintry smile. “Everyone would have thought it was me.”

At the window, Mary stiffened. She had been trying not to listen, trying to push away the memories that had been called up by her recounting of what had happened. She didn’t turn around, but suddenly all her attention was focused on the conversation behind her. What Wolf had said was true. On seeing her attacker’s long black hair, Clay had immediately had Wolf arrested.

But that long black hair, so distinctive, didn’t fit with the wealth of rust-colored freckles she’d seen on the man’s hand. And hiss kin had been pale. Fair people freckled. The black hair didn’t fit.

Unless it was a disguise. Unless the object had been to frame Wolf.

Her spine prickled, and she felt both hot and cold. Whoever had done it hadn’t known that Wolf had had his hair cut. But the choice of victim was puzzling; it didn’t make sense. Why attack her? Surely no one would think Wolf would attack the one person in town who’d championed him, and she’d made it plain how she felt. Unless she had been a random choice, it just didn’t make sense. After all, there was no link between herself and Cathy Teele, no common ground. It could all be chance.

Still without turning around, she asked, “Wolf, do you know Cathy Teele? Have you ever spoken to her?”

“I know her by sight. I don’t speak to little Anglo girls.” His tone was ironic. “Their parents wouldn’t like it.”

“You’re right about that,” Clay said wearily. “A few months back Cathy told her mother you were the best-looking man around, and that she wouldn’t mind dating Joe if he weren’t younger than she was. The whole town heard about it. Mrs. Teele pitched a fit.”

That chill ran down Mary’s spine again. There was a link, after all: Wolf. Nor could she dismiss it as coincidence, though something about the whole thing was skewed.

She twisted her hands together, and turned to face them. “What if someone is deliberately trying to frame Wolf?”

Wolf’s face went hard and blank, but Clay looked startled. “Damn,” he muttered. “Why did you think of that?”

“The long black hair. It could have been a wig. The man had freckles on his hand, a lot of freckles, and hiss kin was pale.”

Wolf got to his feet, and though Mary knew she never had anything to fear from him, she fell back a step at the expression in his eyes. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to. She had seen him angry before, but this was different. He was enraged, but it was an icy rage, and he was in perfect control of himself. Perhaps that was what alarmed her.

Then Clay said, “Sorry, but I don’t think it’ll wash. Once we had all thought about it, it didn’t make sense that Wolf would have attacked you, of all people. You’ve stood up for him right from the beginning, when the rest of the people in town—”

“Wouldn’t spit on me if I were on fire,” Wolf finished.

Clay couldn’t deny it. “Exactly.”

The coffee had finished brewing, and Mary poured three cups. They were silent and thoughtful as they sipped, all of them turning things around in their minds, trying to make the pieces fit. The truth was that no matter how things were arranged, something was always off, unless they went with the idea that a criminal had chosen Mary and Cathy at random, and had perhaps used a long black wig for disguise by pure coincidence.

Everything in Mary rejected the idea of coincidence. So that meant someone was deliberately trying to implicate Wolf. But why choose her as a victim?

To punish Wolf by hurting the people who had championed him?

It was all supposition, without a shred of evidence. Wolf had lived here for years without anything like this happening, even though his presence was like salt on the wound of the town’s conscience. They didn’t like him, and he didn’t let them forget. Still, they had all existed under a silent truce.

So what had triggered the violence?

She rubbed her temples as a sudden twinge of pain threatened to become a full-scale headache. Since she seldom had headaches, she supposed the tension was getting to her, and determined not to let it. She’d never been a Nervous Nellie and didn’t intend to start now.

Clay sighed and pushed his empty cup back. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll get the report finished tomorrow. I’ll bring the papers by the school for you to sign—uh, are you planning to go to work, or stay home?”

“Why, work, of course.”

“Of course,” Wolf muttered, and scowled at her. Mary lifted her chin at him. She saw no reason why she should suddenly become an invalid.

Clay left soon afterward, and Joe came up from the stables to join in the dinner preparations. It felt right, the three of them together, working together as comfortably as if they had done so for years. Joe winked at her once, and she blushed, because it was fairly easy to read the expression in his young-old eyes. Awareness, amusement and approval were all there. Was he simply assuming she and Wolf had become intimate because Wolf had spent the night at her house, which she supposed was the commonsense thing to assume, or was there something different about her? What if everyone in town could just look at her and know?

Wolf curved his hand around her waist. She had been standing motionless for several minutes, the pan in her hand forgotten, as she both frowned and blushed. The blush told him what she was thinking, and the familiar tension in his body made his fingers tighten until they dug into her ribs. She looked up at him, her gray-blue eyes wide and startled; then awareness shot into them, and her eyelids dropped to half veil the desire she couldn’t disguise.

Joe reached to take the pan from her nerveless fingers. “I think I’ll go see a movie somewhere,” he announced.

Mary jerked her head around, tearing herself from the sensual spell Wolf spun about her so easily. “No! Your lessons, remember?”

“Another night won’t hurt.”

“Another night will hurt,” she insisted. “The Academy isn’t something you can take for granted just because Senator Allard is going to recommend you. You can’t afford to let up for a minute.”

Wolf released her. “She’s right, son. You can’t let your grades slip.” He could wait. Barely.

It was after nine when Mary closed the books she and Joe had been using and stretched her arms over her head. “Could you take me home now?” she asked Wolf, barely suppressing a yawn. It had been an eventful day.

His face was impassive. “Why don’t you stay here.” It was more of a command than a suggestion.

“I can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“It isn’t proper.”

“I stayed with you last night.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“I was upset.”

“Your bed’s too small. Mine’s bigger.”

“I’m getting out of here,” Joe said, and suited the action to the words.

Mary got huffy. “Did you have to say that in front of him?”

“He knew anyway. Remember what I said about no going back?”

She stilled and said, “Yes.” That warm look entered her eyes again. “I don’t want to go back. But I can’t stay here tonight. I have to go to work in the morning.”

“No one would think any less of you if you didn’t.”

“I would.” She had that look again, the stubborn, determined expression of a fierce will.

Wolf got to his feet. “All right. I’ll take you home.” He went into his bedroom and several minutes later reappeared with a small shaving kit in his hand and a change of clothes slung over his shoulder. He knocked briefly on Joe’s door as he passed it. “I’ll be home in the morning.”

The door opened. Joe was barefoot and shirtless, having been preparing to take a shower. “Okay. Are you going to take her to school, or do you want me to?”

“I don’t need anyone to take me to work,” Mary interrupted.

“That’s tough.” Wolf turned back to his son. “Baugh is bringing a couple of horses up in the morning, so I’ll have to be here. You take her to school, and I’ll get her in the afternoon.”

“I’m driving my own car, and you can’t stop me!”

“That’s okay. You’ll just have an escort.” Wolf crossed the floor to her and took her arm. “Ready?”

Realizing that he’d made up his mind and there wasn’t anything she could do about it, Mary walked with him out to the truck. The night air was growing cold, but his big body radiated heat, and she moved closer to him. As soon as they were in the truck, he roughly took her in his arms and bent his head to hers. She opened her mouth beneath his onslaught and thrust her fingers into his thick hair. The warm taste of his mouth filled her; the pressure of his arms around her rib cage, of his hard-muscled chest on her breasts, drugged her more surely than any sedative. If he had pulled her down onto the seat and taken her right then, she wouldn’t have objected.

As it was, when he put her from him, her entire body was throbbing. She sat silently on the drive down the mountain, thinking of their lovemaking that morning, aching for it to be repeated. A thought echoed in her mind: so this was what it meant to be a woman.

Woodrow was waiting patiently on the back doorstep. Mary fed him—her!—while Wolf showered and shaved. He didn’t have a heavy beard, but two days’ growth had darkened his jaw, and her face burned a little from contact with his when they had kissed. She felt that deep, almost painful sense of waiting again as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom.

He silently entered and stood for a moment watching her before she sensed his presence and turned. “The shower’s yours.”

He was naked, and slightly damp from the humidity in the bathroom. His black hair glistened under the light, and glittering droplets of water were caught in the dark curls of hair on his chest. He was already aroused. The throbbing in her body became acute.

She showered, and afterward, for the first time, sprayed perfume on her pulse points. She had never bought perfume in her life, but luckily one of her students in Savannah had given her the bottle for Christmas. The scent was sweetly exotic.

She opened the bathroom door, then gasped and fell back. Wolf was waiting for her in the doorway, his eyes narrow and fierce as they raked her. She had boldly left off her nightgown, and under his perusal the deep throbbing intensified. He put his big hands on her breasts and lifted them slightly so that they were plumped in his palms. Her nipples tightened even before he began rubbing them with his thumbs. Mary stood very still, her breath quick and shallow, her eyes half closed as she tried to deal with the pleasure his hands brought.

Wolf’s own eyes were narrow black slits. “I wanted to do this the day I found you on the road,” he murmured. “Such a pretty little body inside that ugly dress. I wanted to take it off of you and see you naked.”

The heat in his eyes, in his voice, made her shiver and sway toward him. He pulled her out of the doorway and into the dark hall, then put his hands on her waist and lifted her. She remembered when he had done that before and moaned even before his mouth closed over her nipple. He sucked it so strongly that her back arched, and she cried out as her legs parted and wrapped around his hips for balance. He groaned, unable to wait a minute longer. He had to get inside her or go mad. He shifted her, guided himself and entered her.

Mary shuddered, then went very still as he slowly pushed into her. It was even better than before. Her inner muscles gently clasped and relaxed as she accommodated him, sending waves of pleasure radiating out through her body. She clung to him, gasping. Desire worked its magic on her body, tightening some muscles, loosening others, so that she was both taut and pliable as she lifted herself, then sank back down. The effect of that small movement had both of them gasping, and Wolf shifted to brace his back against the wall. She did it again, then again. He put his hands on her buttocks to take control of the motion and began driving into her. Her skin felt on fire. She radiated heat, making her skin feel tight and smooth and so extraordinarily sensitive that she could feel each of his fingers on her bottom, the rasp of his chest hair on her breasts, the tiny nubs of his nipples, the muscled wall of his belly, the coarse hair at his groin. She could feel him deep inside her.

Her back arched, and her nerves convulsed. Wolf fought his own response, not wanting it to end so quickly, and held her until she quietened. Then he carried her into the bedroom, her legs still locked around him, and eased her down on the bed.

She swallowed and relaxed her hold on him. “You haven’t—?”

“Not yet,” he murmured, and began moving strongly into her.

She didn’t want it to end. She took his thrusts, cradled him when a harsh groan tore from his throat and the powerful shudders of completion shook him, and afterward held him as he rested on her body. She didn’t want him to withdraw, to leave her empty again. She had existed in a sort of genteel limbo all her life until she had met him and begun to live. In just a few short months he had so completely taken over the focus of her life that the years before were hazy.

He gathered himself and tried to move off her. Mary tightened her legs around him, and he grunted.

“Let me up, sweetheart. I’m too heavy for you.”

“No you aren’t,” she whispered, and kissed his throat.

“I weigh twice what you do. Do you even weigh a hundred pounds?”

“Yes,” she said indignantly. She weighed a hundred and five.

“Not much more than that. I weigh two hundred, and I’m a foot taller than you. If I go to sleep on you, you’ll smother.”

He did sound drowsy. She ran her hand down the muscled ridges of his side. “I want to stay like this.”

He thrust gently against her. “Like this?”

“Yes.” She breathed the word.

He settled onto her, but shifted part of his weight to the side. “Is this okay?”

It was wonderful. She could breathe, but he was still close to her, still inside her. He quickly dozed off, as content as she with the position, and Mary smiled in the darkness as she held him.

The dark thoughts slowly intruded. Someone had deliberately tried to frame him, to put him back in prison. The thought of Wolf without his freedom was obscene and scary, because she knew enough about him to know he would never let himself be sent to prison again.

She wanted to keep him safe, to shield him in her arms, putting her own body between him and danger. Dear God, what had started it all? Things had been so quiet! What had been the trigger?

Then she knew, and horror almost stopped her breath. She had been the trigger.

While Wolf and Joe had been outcasts, punished for their heritage and Wolf’s past, everything had been calm. Then she had come to town, an Anglo woman, but instead of aligning herself with the townspeople, she had championed the Mackenzies. With her help, Joe had achieved an honor offered to very few. Other people had begun saying what a nice thing it was that the Mackenzie boy was going to the Academy. Cathy Teele had said that Wolf was the best-looking man in the county. The boundaries between the town and the Mackenzies had begun blurring. Someone, with a maggot of hate festering deep inside, had been unable to stand it.

And she had been the cause of it all. If anything happened to Wolf, it would be her fault.

Chapter Nine

She didn’t know what to do. The thought that she was the cause of all that had happened tormented her, disturbing her sleep. She moved restlessly, waking Wolf, and he sensed her distress though he attributed it to the wrong cause. He soothed her with whispers and pulled her more completely beneath him. She felt him harden inside her. His lovemaking was gentle this time, and when it was over she slept as effortlessly as a child until he awoke her again in the total darkness before dawn. She turned to him without question.

Joe drove up just as she and Wolf were preparing breakfast, and without a word Wolf broke more eggs into a bowl to be scrambled. Mary smiled at him, even though she was placing more bacon in the frying pan. “How do you know he’s hungry?”

“He’s awake, isn’t he? My kid eats like a horse.”

Joe came in the back door and headed for the coffee, which had already finished brewing. “Morning.”

“Good morning. Breakfast will be ready in about ten minutes.”

He grinned at her, and Mary smiled back. Wolf watched her, his gaze sharp. She looked frail this morning, her skin pale and even more translucent than usual, with faint mauve shadows under her eyes. She smiled readily, but he wondered what had made her look so delicate. Had he tired her with his lovemaking, or were memories of the attack disturbing her? He thought it must be the latter, because she had responded eagerly every time he’d reached for her. Knowing that she was still frightened made him even more determined to find whoever had attacked her. After Eli Baugh had delivered the horses and left, Wolf planned to do some tracking.

Joe was right behind Mary’s car on the way to the school, and he didn’t leave immediately, as she had expected. It was still too early for the students to begin arriving, so he walked with her into the empty building and even inspected the rooms. Then he leaned against the door-jamb and waited.

Mary sighed. “I’m perfectly safe here.”

“I’ll just wait until some other people show up.”

“Did Wolf tell you to do this?”

“Nope. He knew he didn’t have to.”

How did they communicate? By telepathy? Each seemed to know what the other was thinking. It was disconcerting. She just hoped they couldn’t read her thoughts, because she’d had some decidedly erotic ones lately.

What would everyone think of Joe’s presence? He was so obviously a watchdog. She wondered if it would trigger another act of violence, and she felt sick, because she knew it might. Instinct, sharpened by her fierce protectiveness for both Mackenzies, told her that her theory was correct. Just the possibility that they could become accepted had driven someone over the edge. It revealed so much hate that she shivered.

Sharon and Dottie entered the building and halted briefly when Joe turned his head and looked at them as they passed the open door. “Mrs. Wycliffe. Mrs. Lancaster,” he said in acknowledgment as he touched his fingertips to the brim of his hat in a brief salute.

“Joe,” Sharon murmured. “How are you?”

Dottie gave him a brief, almost frightened look and hurried to her classroom. Joe shrugged. “I’ve been doing a bit of studying,” he allowed.

“Just a bit?” Sharon asked wryly. She stepped past him to greet Mary, then said, “If you don’t feel like working today, Dottie and I can handle your classes. I never dreamed you’d be here today, anyway.”

“I was merely frightened,” Mary said firmly. “Clay prevented anything else from happening. Cathy is the one who needs sympathy, not I.”

“The whole town is in an uproar. Anyone who has freckles on his hands is getting the third degree.”

Mary didn’t want to talk about it. The image of that freckled hand made her feel nauseated, and she swallowed convulsively. Joe frowned and stepped forward. Mary put up her hand to keep him from throwing Sharon out of the classroom, but at that moment several students entered, and their chatter distracted everyone. The kids said, “Hi, Joe, howya been?” as they clustered around him. They all wanted to know about his plans for the Academy and how he’d gotten interested.

Sharon left to attend to her own classes, and Mary watched Joe with the kids. He was only sixteen, but he seemed older than even the seniors. Joe was young, but he wasn’t a kid, and that was the difference. She noticed that Pam Hearst was in the group. She wasn’t saying much, but she never took her eyes off Joe, looking at him with both longing and pain, though she tried to hide it. Several times Joe gave the girl a long look that made her fidget uncomfortably.

Then he checked his watch and left his former classmates to say to Mary, “Dad will be here to follow you home. Don’t go anywhere alone.”

She started to protest, then thought of the man out there who hated them enough to do what he’d done. She wasn’t the only one at risk. She reached out and caught his arm. “You and Wolf be careful. You could be the next targets.”

He frowned, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. The attacker was a rapist, so men wouldn’t consider themselves in danger. She wouldn’t have thought of it, either, if she hadn’t been convinced that the whole thing was intended to punish the Mackenzies. What greater punishment could there be than to kill them? At some point the madman might decide to take a rifle and dispense his own twisted brand of justice.

Clay showed up at lunch with the papers for her to read and sign. Aware of the kids watching them with acute interest, she walked with him out to the car. “I’m worried,” she admitted.

He propped his arm on top of the open door. “You’d be foolish if you weren’t worried.”

“Not for myself. I think Wolf and Joe are the real targets.”

He gave her a quick, sharp look. “How do you figure that?”

Heartened that he hadn’t immediately dismissed the idea, but was watching her with a troubled expression in his eyes, Mary told him her theory. “I think Cathy and I were specifically chosen as targets to punish Wolf. Don’t you see the link? She said she thought Wolf was handsome, and that she’d like to date Joe. Everyone knows I’ve been friends with them from the first. So we were chosen.”

“And you think he’ll attack again?”

“I’m certain he will, but I’m afraid he’ll go after one of them this time. I doubt he’d try to manhandle either of them, but what chance would they have against a bullet? How many men in this county have a rifle?”

“Every last mother’s son,” Clay replied grimly. “But what set this guy off?”

She paused, her face miserable. “I did.”

“What?”

“I did. Before I came here, Wolf was an outcast. Everyone was comfortable with that. Then I made friends with him and worked with Joe to get him into the Academy. A lot of people were a little proud of that and were friendlier. It was a crack in the wall, and whoever is doing this just couldn’t stand it.”

“You’re talking about a lot of hate, and it’s hard for me to see. People around here don’t get along with Wolf, but a lot of it is fear instead of hate. Fear and guilt. The people in this county sent him to prison for something he didn’t do, and his presence constantly reminds them of it. He isn’t a very forgiving person, is he?”

“Something like that would be a little hard to forgive,” Mary pointed out.

He had to agree with that and sighed wearily. “Still, I can’t think of anyone who seems to hate him to the point of attacking two women just because they were friendly to him. Hell, Cathy wasn’t even friendly. She just made a chance remark.”

“So you agree with me? That all of this is because of Wolf?”

“I don’t like it, but I guess I do. Nothing else makes sense, because there may be a few coincidences in life, but none in crime. Everything has a motive.”

“So what can we do?”

“We won’t do anything,” he said pointedly. “I will talk to the sheriff about it, but the fact is we can’t arrest anyone without evidence, and all we have is a theory. We don’t even have a suspect.”

Her jaw set in firm lines. “Then you’re passing up a marvelous chance.”

He looked suspicious. “To do what?”

“Set a trap, of course.”

“I don’t like this. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I don’t like it.”

“It’s common sense. He failed in his—er, objective with me. Perhaps I could—”

“No. And before you get on your high horse, just think of what Wolf would say if you told him you were setting yourself up as bait. You might—might—be allowed out of his house by Christmas.”

That was true enough, but she saw a way around it. “Then I just won’t tell him.”

“There’s no way to keep it from him, unless it didn’t work. If it did work—I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be around when he found out, and something like that couldn’t be kept quiet.”

Mary considered all of Wolf’s possible reactions and didn’t like any of them. On the other hand, she was terrified that something might happen to him. “I’ll take the chance,” she said, making her decision.

“Not with my help, you won’t.”

Her chin lifted. “Then I’ll do it without your help.”

“If you get in the way of our investigations, I’ll put you in the pokey so fast your head will spin,” he threatened. When she didn’t appear impressed, he swore under his breath. “Hell, I’ll just tell Wolf and let him ride herd on you.”

She frowned and considered shaking her schoolteacher’s finger in his face. “You listen to me, Clay Armstrong. I’m the best chance you have of luring this guy out into the open. You don’t have any suspects now. What are you going to do, wait until he attacks some other woman and maybe kills her? Is that how you want to work it?”

“No, that isn’t how I want to work it! I want you and every other woman to stay alert and not go anywhere alone. I don’t want to risk you or anyone else. Have you thought that sometimes traps don’t work, that the animal gets the bait and still gets away? Do you really want to face the possibility of that?”

The thought made her sick to her stomach, and she swallowed to control the sudden rise of nausea. “No, but I’d do it anyway,” she said steadily.

“For the last time, no. I understand that you want to help, but I don’t like the idea. This guy is too unstable. He grabbed Cathy in her own driveway, and took you off of the town’s main street. The chances he took are crazy, and he probably is, too.”

With a sigh, Mary decided that Clay was simply too protective for him to be able to agree to use a woman as bait; it was totally against his basic nature. That didn’t mean, however, that she needed his agreement. All she needed was someone who could act as a guard. She hadn’t thought of any real plan yet, but obviously there had to be two people to make even the simplest trap work: the bait, and the one who kept the bait from being harmed.

Clay got in the car and closed the door, then leaned out the open window. “I don’t want to hear any more about it,” he warned.

“You won’t,” she promised. Not talking to him about it wasn’t the same as not doing it.

He gave her a suspicious look, but started the car and drove away. Mary returned to her classroom, her thoughts darting around as she tried to think of a solid plan for luring a rapist with a minimum of danger to herself.

Wolf arrived at the school ten minutes before classes were over. He propped his shoulder against the wall just outside her classroom door and listened to her clear voice instructing her students on how geography and history had combined to produce the current state of Middle East politics. He was certain that wasn’t in any of the textbooks, but Mary had a knack for giving her students a way of relating the present to their studies. It made the subjects both more interesting and more understandable. He had heard her doing the same thing with Joe, not that Joe needed encouragement to read. Her students responded easily to her; in such a small class, there was very little formality. They called her “Miss Potter,” but weren’t shy about asking questions, offering answers, even teasing.

Then she looked at her watch and released them, just as the doors to the other two classrooms opened. Wolf straightened from the wall and walked into her room, aware of how the kids’ chatter halted abruptly when they became aware of his presence. Mary looked up and smiled, a private smile meant only for him, and it made his pulse accelerate that she was so open about how she felt.

He removed his hat and shoved his fingers through his hair. “Your escort service has arrived, ma’am,” he said.

One of the girls giggled nervously, and Wolf slowly turned his head to look at the motionless teenagers. “Are you girls going home in pairs? Any of you boys making sure they get home all right?”

Christa Teele, Cathy’s younger sister, murmured that she and Pam Hearst were walking together. The other four girls said nothing. Wolf looked at the seven boys. “Go with them.” It was an order, one that the boys obeyed instantly. The kids left the room, automatically separating so that each girl had at least one male escort.

Mary nodded. “Very nicely done.”

“You’ll notice that they all had enough sense not to argue that they didn’t need an escort.”

She frowned at him, because she felt it hadn’t been necessary for him to make that point. “Wolf, really, I’m perfectly safe on the drive from my house to here. How could anything happen to me if I don’t stop?”

“What if you had a flat? What if a radiator hose blew again?”

It was obvious there was no way she could set her trap if Wolf or Joe was hovering over her every second. It was also obvious from the narrow look Wolf was giving her that he had no intention of changing his mind. Not that it mattered at the moment, as she hadn’t come up with a plan yet. But when she did, she would also have to come up with some scheme for slipping away from her watchdogs.

Wolf draped her sweater over her shoulders and picked up her purse and keys, then ushered her out the door. Dottie looked up from where she was locking her own classroom door and stood transfixed while Wolf locked Mary’s door, rattled the knob to make certain the lock held, then put his arm around her waist. He saw Dottie and touched the brim of his hat. “Mrs. Lancaster.”

Dottie ducked her head and pretended to be having trouble with her key. Her face was flushed. It was the first time Wolf Mackenzie had ever spoken to her, and her hands shook as she dropped the key into her purse. Almost uncontrollable fear made her break out in a sweat. She didn’t know what she was going to do.

Wolf’s arm was solid around Mary’s waist as they walked to her car. Its weight made her heartbeat quicken. All he had to do was put his hands on her and her body began to ready itself for him. An exquisite shudder began deep inside, spreading outward in a warm tide.

He felt the sudden tension in her slender body as he opened the car door. She was breathing faster, too. He looked down at her, and his entire body tightened, because she was watching him with desire plain in her soft, slate-blue eyes. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips parted.

He stepped back. “I’ll be right behind you.” The words were guttural.

She drove sedately home, though her blood was thundering through her veins and pounding in her ears. Never had the isolated, bedraggled old house looked better. Woodrow was sunning on the steps, and Mary stepped over her to unlock the back door. Wolf was out of his truck and right behind her, just as he had promised, by the time she had the door open.

Without a word she took off her sweater, deposited her purse on a chair and walked up the stairs, acutely aware of the heavy tread of Wolf’s boots as he followed. They stepped into her bedroom.

He had her naked before she could gather her wits, though she wouldn’t have wanted to protest even if he’d given her time. He bore her down on the bed, his big body overwhelming her, his brawny arms cradling her. The hair on his chest rasped her sensitive nipples into hardened peaks, and with a low moan of excitement she rubbed her breasts against him to increase the sensation. He opened her thighs and settled himself between them. His voice was low and rough as he murmured in her ear an explicit explanation of what he was going to do.

Mary drew back a little, her blue eyes slightly shocked, feeling slightly excited, and also slightly embarrassed because she was excited. How was it possible to feel both scandalized and excited?“ Wolf Mackenzie!” she said, her eyes going even larger. “You said…that word!”

His hard face looked both tender and amused. “So I did.”

She swallowed. “I’ve never heard anyone say it before. I mean, not in real life. In movies—but of course that isn’t real life, and in movies it almost never means what it really means. They use it as an adjective instead of a verb.” She looked perplexed at such an inexplicable grammatical oversight.

He was smiling as he entered her, his black eyes shining. “This,” he said, “is the verb.”

He loved the way she looked when he made love to her, her eyes languorous, her cheeks flushed. She sucked in her breath and moved beneath him, taking him completely into her and enveloping him in her sweet heat. Her hands moved up to the back of his neck. “Yes,” she agreed seriously. “This is the verb.”

If their first lovemaking had been fierce, since then he had been teaching her how sweet it was when the pleasure was protracted, when the caresses and kisses lingered while tension slowly coiled within until it was so hot and powerful that it exploded out of control. His hunger for her was so strong that he tried to put off his climax for as long as possible, so he could stay inside her and feed that hunger. It wasn’t a hunger for sex, per se, though it had a strong sexual base. He didn’t simply want to make love, he wanted—needed—to make love to her specifically, to Mary Elizabeth Potter. He had to feel her silky, fragile skin under his hands, feel her soft body sheathing him, smell her unique scent of womanhood, forge ancient bonds with each slow thrust and acceptance of their bodies. He was a half-breed; his spirit was strong and uncomplicated, his instincts close to those of his ancestors of both races. With other women, he had had sex; with Mary, he mated.

He wrapped his arms around her and rolled onto his back. Startled, Mary sat up, accidently assuming the exact position he’d wanted her in. She gasped as the motion forced him deep inside her. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he murmured, reaching up to place his hands over her breasts. “I’m letting you do the doing.”

He watched her face as she considered the situation and was aware of the exact second that her excitement and arousal overcame her discomfort with the unfamiliar position. Her eyelids dropped again, and she bit her lower lip as she moved gently on him. “Like this?”

He almost groaned aloud. That slow movement was exquisite torture, and she quickly got into the rhythm of it. He had thought to prolong their lovemaking by changing positions, but now he was afraid he’d outsmarted himself. As old-fashioned as she was, she was also astonishingly sensuous. After a few minutes he desperately rolled again and put her under him.

Mary linked her arms behind his neck. “I was having fun.”

“So was I.” He kissed her briefly, then again, their lips lingering together. “Too much.”

She smiled, that secret, womanly little smile she used only with him, and the sight of it made him burn. He forgot about control, forgot about everything but the pleasure that awaited them. Afterward, sated and exhausted, they both dozed.

At the sound of a vehicle, Wolf rolled out of bed, instantly alert. Mary stirred sleepily. “What is it?”

“You have company.”

“Company?” She sat up and pushed her hair out of her face. “What time is it?”

“Almost six. We must have gone to sleep.”

“Six! It’s time for Joe’s lesson!”

Wolf swore as he began jerking on his clothes. “This situation’s getting out of hand. Damn it, every time I make love to you my own son interrupts us. Once was bad enough, but he’s making a habit of it.”

Mary was scrambling into her own clothes, wishing that the circumstances weren’t so embarrassing. It was hard to face Joe when it was so obvious that she and his father had just been in bed together. Aunt Ardith would have disowned her for so forgetting her morals and sense of proper behavior. Then she looked at Wolf as he stamped his feet into his boots, and her heart felt as if it had expanded until it filled her entire chest. She loved him, and there was nothing more moral than love. As for proper behavior—she shrugged, mentally kissing propriety goodbye. One couldn’t have everything.

Joe had deposited his books on the table and was making a pot of coffee when they entered the kitchen. He looked up and frowned. “Look, Dad, this situation is getting out of hand. You’re cutting into my lesson time.” Only the twinkle in his ice-blue eyes kept Wolf from getting angry; after a moment, he tousled his son’s hair.

“Son, I’ve said it before, but you’ve got lousy timing.”

Joe’s lesson time was even more limited because they had to take time to eat. They were all starving, so they decided on sandwiches, which were quick, and had just finished when another car drove up.

“My goodness, this house is getting popular,” Mary muttered as she got up to open the door.

Clay took his hat off as he entered. He paused and sniffed. “Is that coffee fresh?”

“Yep.” Wolf stretched to reach the pot while Mary got a cup from the cabinet for Clay.

He sprawled in one of the chairs and gave a weary sigh, which turned to one of appreciation as he inhaled the fragrant steam rising from the coffee as Wolf poured it. “Thanks. I thought I’d find you two here.”

“Has anything come up?” Wolf drawled.

“Nothing except a few complaints. You made some people a little nervous.”

“Doing what?” Mary interjected.

“Just looking around,” Wolf said in a casual tone that didn’t fool her at all, nor did it fool Clay.

“Leave it alone. You’re not a one-man vigilante committee. I’m warning you for the last time.”

“I don’t reckon I’ve done anything illegal, just walking around and looking. I haven’t interfered with any law officers, I haven’t questioned anyone, I haven’t destroyed or hidden any evidence. All I’ve done is look.” Wolf’s eyes gleamed. “If you’re smart, you’ll use me. I’m the best tracker you’re going to find.”

“And if you’re smart, you’ll spend your time looking out after what’s yours.” Clay looked at Mary, and she primmed her mouth. Darn him, he was going to tell!

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“Maybe not as well as you think. Mary told me about a plan she’s got to use herself as bait to bring this guy out in the open.”

Wolf’s head snapped around, and his brows lowered over narrowed black eyes as he pinned her with a gaze so furious it was all she could do to keep her own gaze steady. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly, and it was an expression of determination rather than surprise.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. I heard you and Joe are escorting her to and from the school, but what about the time in between? And school will be out in a couple of weeks. What about then?”

Mary drew her slender shoulders up. “I won’t be talked around as if I’m invisible. This is my house, and let me remind all of you that I’m well over twenty-one. I’ll go where I want, when I want.” Let them make of that what they would! She hadn’t lived with Aunt Ardith for nothing; Aunt Ardith would have died, just on principle, before she would have let a man tell her what to do.

Wolf’s eyes hadn’t wavered from her. “You’ll do what you’re damn well told.”

“If I were you,” Clay suggested, “I’d take her up on the mountain and keep her there. Like I said, school will be out in a couple of weeks, and this old house is pretty isolated. No one has to know where she is. It’ll be safer that way.”

Enraged, Mary reached out and whisked the cup of coffee away from Clay, then dumped the contents in the sink. “You’re not drinking my coffee, you tattletale!”

He looked astounded. “I’m just trying to protect you!”

“And I’m just trying to protect him!” she shouted.

“Protect who?” Wolf snapped.

“You!”

“Why do I need protecting?”

“Because whoever is doing this is trying to harm you! First by trying to frame you for the attacks, and second by attacking people who don’t hate you as he does!”

Wolf froze. When Mary had first advanced the beginnings of her theory the night before, he and Clay hadn’t believed it because it simply hadn’t made sense that anyone trying to frame Wolf would try to make anyone believe he would attack Mary. But when Mary put it the way she just had, that the attacks were a sort of twisted punishment, it began to make horrible sense. A rapist was warped, so his logic would be warped.

Mary had been attacked because of him. Because he had been so attracted to her that he hadn’t been able to control it, some madman had attacked her, terrified and humiliated her, tried to rape her. His lust had brought attention to her.

His expression was cold and blank as he looked at Clay, who shrugged. “I have to buy it,” Clay said. “It’s the only thing that even halfway makes sense. When she made friends with you and got Joe into the Academy, folks began to look at you differently. Someone couldn’t stand it.”

Mary twisted her hands. “Since it’s my fault, the least I can do is—”

“No!” Wolf roared, surging to his feet and turning over his chair with a clatter. He lowered his voice with a visible effort. “Go upstairs and get your clothes. You’re going with us.”

Joe slapped his hand on the table. “About damn time.” He got up and began clearing the table. “I’ll do this while you pack.”

Mary pursed her lips. She was torn between wanting the freedom to put her plan into action—when she thought of it—and the powerful temptation of living with Wolf. It wasn’t proper. It was a terrible example to her students. The townspeople would be outraged. He’d watch her like a hawk! On the other hand, she loved him to distraction and wasn’t the least ashamed of their relationship. Embarrassed, sometimes, because she wasn’t accustomed to such intimacy and didn’t know how to handle it, but never ashamed.

Also on the other hand, if she dug in her heels and remained here, Wolf would simply stay here with her, where they would be far more visible and far more likely to outrage the town’s sensibilities. That was what decided her, because she didn’t want even more animosity directed at Wolf because of her. That could be all that was needed to goad the rapist into attacking him directly, or going after Joe.

He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a little push. “Go,” he said gently, and she went.

When she was safely upstairs and out of hearing, Clay looked at Wolf with a troubled, angry expression. “For what it’s worth, she thinks you and Joe are in danger, that this maniac may just start shooting at you. I kind of agree with her, damn it.”

“Let him try,” Wolf said, his face and voice expressionless. “She’s most vulnerable on the way to and from school, and I don’t think this guy is going to wait patiently. He hit two days in a row, but he got scared when you nearly got him. It’ll take a while for him to settle down, then he’ll be looking for another hit to make. In the meantime, I’ll be looking for him.”

Clay didn’t want to ask, but the question was burning his tongue. “Did you find anything today?”

“I eliminated some people from my list.”

“Scared some of them, too.”

Wolf shrugged. “Folks had better get used to seeing me around. If they don’t like it, tough.”

“I also heard that you made the boys escort the girls home from school. The girls’ parents were mighty relieved and grateful.”

“They should have taken care of it themselves.”

“It’s a quiet little town. They aren’t used to things like this.”

“That’s no excuse for being stupid.” And it had been stupid to overlook their daughters’ safety. If he’d been that careless in Nam, he would have been dead.

Clay grunted. “Is till want to make my point. I agree with Mary that you and Joe are the primary targets. You may be good, but nobody’s better than a bullet, and the same goes for Joe. You don’t just have to look after Mary, you have to look after yourselves, too. I’d like it if you could keep her from even finishing out the year at school, so the three of you could stay up on your mountain until we catch this guy.”

It went against Wolf’s grain to hide from anyone, and that was in the look he gave Clay. Wolf had been trained to hunt; more than that, it was in his nature, in the genes passed down from Comanche and Highland warriors that had mingled in his body, in the formation of his character.

“We’ll keep Mary safe,” was all he said, and Clay knew he’d failed to convince Wolf to stay out of it.

Joe was leaning against the cabinets, listening. “The people in town are going to raise hell if they find out Mary’s staying with us,” he put in.

“Yeah, they will.” Clay stood up and positioned his hat on his head.

“Let them.” Wolf’s voice was flat. He’d given Mary the chance to play it safe, but she hadn’t taken it. She was his now, by God. Let them squawk.

Clay sauntered to the door. “If anyone asks me, I’ve arranged for her to live in a safer place until this is over. Don’t reckon it’s anyone’s business where that place is, do you? Though of course, knowing Mary, she’ll probably tell everyone right out, just like she did Saturday in Hearst’s store.”

Wolf groaned. “Hell! What did she do? I haven’t heard about it.”

“Didn’t reckon you would have, what with all that happened that afternoon. Seems she got into it with both Dottie Lancaster and Mrs. Karr, and all but told both of them she was yours for the taking.” A slow grin shaped Clay’s mouth. “From what I heard, she laced into them good.”

When Clay had left, Wolf and Joe looked at each other. “It could get interesting around here.”

“It could,” Joe agreed.

“Keep an eye out, son. If Mary and Armstrong are right, we’re the ones this bastard is really after. Don’t go anywhere without your rifle, and stay alert.”

Joe nodded. Wolf wasn’t worried about hand-to-hand fighting, not even if the other guy was armed with a knife, because he’d taught Joe how to fight the way he’d learned in the military. Not karate, kung fu, tae kwon do, or even judo, but a mixture of many, including good old street fighting. The object of a fight wasn’t fairness, but winning, in any way possible, with any weapon handy. It was what had kept him alive and relatively unscathed in prison. A rifle was something else, though. They would have to be doubly alert.

Mary returned and plunked two suitcases on the floor. “I have to have my books, too,” she announced. “And someone has to get Woodrow and her kittens.”

Chapter Ten

Mary tried to tell herself that she couldn’t sleep because she was in a strange bed, because she was too excited, because she was too worried, because—she ran out of excuses and couldn’t think of anything else. Though she was pleasantly tired from Wolf’s lovemaking, she felt too uneasy to sleep and finally knew why. She turned in his arms and put her hand on his jaw, loving the feel of his facial structure and the slight rasp of his beard beneath her fingers. “Are you awake?” she whispered.

“I wasn’t,” he said in a low rumble. “But I am now.”

She apologized and lay very still. After a moment he squeezed her and pushed her hair away from her face. “Can’t you sleep?”

“No. I just feel—strange, I think.”

“In what way?”

“Your wife—Joe’s mother. I was thinking of her in this bed.”

His arms tightened. “She was never in this bed.”

“I know. But Joe’s in the other room, and I thought this was how it must have been when he was little, before she died.”

“Not usually. We were apart a lot, and she died when Joe was two. That was when I got out of the military.”

“Tell me about it,” she invited, still in a whisper. She needed to know more about this man she loved. “You must have been very young.”

“I was seventeen when I enlisted. Even though I knew I’d probably have to do a tour in Vietnam, it was my only way out. My folks were dead, and my grandfather, Mother’s father, never really accepted me because I was half Anglo. All I knew was that I had to get off the reservation. It was almost as bad as prison. It is prison, in a different way. There was nothing to do, nothing to hope for.

“I met Billie when I was eighteen. She was a Crow half-breed, and I guess she married me because she knew I’d never go back to the reservation. She wanted more. She wanted bright lights and city life. Maybe she thought a soldier had it good, transferring from base to base, partying when he was off duty. But she didn’t look down on me because I was a half-breed, and we decided to get married. A month later I was in Nam. I got her a ticket to Hawaii when I had R and R, and she went back pregnant. Joe was born when I was nineteen, but I was home from my first tour and got to see him being born. God, I was so excited. He was screaming his head off. Then they put him in my hands, and it was like taking a heart punch. I loved him so much I would have died for him.”

He was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he gave a low laugh. “So there I was, with a newborn son and a wife who didn’t think she’d gotten such a good deal, and my enlistment was almost up. I had no prospects of a job, no way of supporting my baby. So I re-upped, and things got so bad between Billie and me that I volunteered for another tour. She died right before my third tour ended. I got out and came home to take care of Joe.”

“What did you do?”

“Worked ranches. Rodeoed. It was all I knew. Except for the time I spent in service, I can’t remember not working with horses. I was horse crazy when I was a kid, and I guess I still am. Joe and I drifted around until it was time for him to start school, and we landed in Ruth. You know the rest of it.”

She lay quietly in his arms, thinking of his life. He hadn’t had it easy. But the life he’d led had shaped him into the man he was, a man of strength and iron determination. He had endured war and hell and come out even stronger than before. The thought that someone would want to harm him made her so angry she could barely contain it. Somehow she had to find some way to protect him.

He escorted her to school the next morning, and again Mary was aware of how everyone stared at him. But it wasn’t fear or hatred she saw in the kids’ eyes; rather, they watched him with intense curiosity, and even awe. After years of tales, he was a larger-than-life figure to them, someone glimpsed only briefly. Their fathers had dealt with him, the boys had watched him at work, and his expertise with horses only added to tales about him. It was said that he could “whisper” a horse, that even the wildest one would respond to a special crooning tone in his voice.

Now he was hunting the rapist. The story was all over the county.

Dottie wouldn’t even talk to Mary that day; she walked away whenever she approached and even ate lunch by herself. Sharon sighed and shrugged. “Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s always had a burr under her blanket about the Mackenzies.”

Mary shrugged, too. There didn’t seem to be any way she could reach Dottie.

Joe drove into town that afternoon to follow her home. As they walked out to their respective vehicles, she told him, “I need to stop at Hearst’s for a few things.”

“I’ll be right behind you.”

He was on her heels when she entered the store, and everyone turned to look at them. Joe gave them a smile that could have come straight from his father, and several people hastily looked away. Sighing, Mary led her six-foot watchdog down the aisle.

Joe paused fractionally when his gaze met that of Pam Hearst. She was standing as if rooted, staring at him. He tipped his hat and followed Mary.

A moment later he felt a light touch on his arm and turned to see Pam standing behind him. “Could I talk to you?” she asked in a low voice. “I—it’s important. Please?”

Mary had moved on. Joe shifted his position so he could keep her insight and said, “Well?”

Pam drew a deep breath. “I thought…maybe…would you go with me to the town dance this Saturday night?” she finished in a rush.

Joe’s head jerked. “What?”

“I said—will you go with me to the dance?”

He thumbed his hat back and gave a low whistle under his breath. “You know you’re asking for trouble, don’t you? Your dad just might lock you in the cellar for a year.”

“We don’t have a cellar.” She gave him a small smile, one that had an immediate reaction on his sixteen-year-old hormones. “And I don’t care, anyway. He’s wrong, wrong about you and your dad. I’ve felt horrible about how I acted before. I—I like you, Joe, and I want to go out with you.”

He was cynical enough to say, “Yeah. A lot of people started liking me when they found out I had a shot at the Academy. Sure funny how that worked out, isn’t it?”

Hot spots of color appeared on her cheeks. “That’s not why I’m asking you out!”

“Are you sure? It seems I wasn’t good enough to be seen in public with you before. You didn’t want people to say Pam Hearst was going out with a ’b reed. It’s different when they can say you’re going out with a candidate for the Air Force Academy.”

“That’s not true!” Pam was truly angry now, and her voice rose. Several people glanced their way.

“It looks that way to me.”

“Well, you’re wrong! You’re just as wrong as my dad is!”

As if he’d been cued, Mr. Hearst, alerted by Pam’s raised voice, started down the aisle toward them. “What’s going on back here? Pam, is this br—boy bothering you?”

Joe noticed how quickly “breed” had been changed to “boy” and lifted his eyebrows at Pam. She flushed even redder and whirled to face her father.

“No, he isn’t bothering me! Wait. Yes. Yes, he is! He’s bothering me because I asked him to go out with me and he refused!”

Everyone in the store heard her. Joe sighed. The fat was in the fire now.

Ralph Hearst turned purplish red, and he halted in his tracks as abruptly as if he’d hit a wall. “What did you say?” he gasped, evidently not believing his ears.

Pam didn’t back down, even though her father looked apoplectic. “I said he refused to go out with me! I asked him to the Saturday night dance.”

Mr. Hearst’s eyes were bulging out of their sockets. “You get on to the house. We’ll talk about this later!”

“I don’t want to talk about it later, I want to talk about it right now!”

“I said get on to the house!” Hearst roared. He turned his infuriated gaze on Joe. “And you stay away from my daughter, you—”

“He’s been staying away from me!” Pam yelled. “It’s the other way around! I won’t stay away from him! This isn’t the first time I’ve asked him out. You and everyone else in this town are wrong for the way you’ve treated the Mackenzies, and I’m tired of it. Miss Potter is the only one of us who’s had the guts to stand up for what she thinks is right!”

“This is all her fault, that do-gooding—”

“Stop right there.” Joe spoke for the first time, but there was something in his cool voice, in his pale blue eyes, that stopped the man. Joe was only sixteen, but he was tall and muscular, and there was a sudden alertness to his stance that made the older man pause.

Pam jumped in. She was bright and cheery-natured, but as headstrong as her father. “Don’t start on Miss Potter,” she warned. “She’s the best teacher we’ve ever had here in Ruth, and if you do anything to get rid of her, I swear I’ll drop out of school.”

“You’ll do no such thing!”

“I swear I will! I love you, Dad, but you’re wrong! All of us talked about it at school today, about how we’d seen the teachers treat Joe over the years, and how wrong it was, because he’s obviously the smartest of us all! And we talked about how Wolf Mackenzie was the one who made sure all of us girls got home all right yesterday. No one else thought of it! Or don’t you care?”

“Of course he cares,” Mary said briskly, having walked up without anyone except Joe noticing. “It’s just that Wolf, with his military experience, knew what to do.” She’d made that up, but it sounded good. She put her hand on Mr. Hearst’s arm. “Why don’t you take care of your customers and just let them fight it out? You know how teenagers are.”

Somehow Ralph Hearst found himself at the front of the store again before he realized it. He stopped and looked down at Mary. “I don’t want my girl dating a half-breed!” he said fiercely.

“She’ll be safer with that half-breed than with any other boy around,” Mary replied. “For one thing, he’s steady as a rock. He won’t drink or drive fast, and for another, he has no intention of getting involved with any girl around here. He’ll be going away, and he knows it.”

“I don’t want my daughter dating an Indian!”

“Are you saying that character doesn’t mean anything? That you’d rather have Pam go out with a drunk Anglo, who might get her killed in a car accident, than with a sober Indian, who would protect her with his life?”

He looked stricken and rubbed his head in agitation. “No, damn it, that isn’t what I mean,” he muttered.

Mary sighed. “My Aunt Ardith remembered every old chestnut she ever heard, and one of the ones she brought out most often was ‘pretty is as pretty does.’ You go by how people act, don’t you, Mr. Hearst. You’ve voted according to how the candidates have stood on issues in the past, haven’t you?”

“Of course.” He looked uncomfortable.

“And?” she prompted.

“All right, all right! It’s just—some things are hard to forget, you know? Not things that Joe has done, but just…things. And that father of his is—”

“As proud as you are,” she cut in. “All he ever wanted was a place to raise his motherless son.” She was laying it on so thick she expected to hear violins in the background any moment now, but it was about time these people realized some things about Wolf. Maybe he was more controlled than civilized, but his control was very good, and they would never know the difference.

Deciding it was time to give him some breathing room, she said, “Why not talk it over with your wife?”

He looked relieved at the suggestion. “I’ll do that.”

Joe was walking up the aisle; Pam, who had turned her back, was busily neatening a stack of paint thinner in an obvious effort to act casual. Mary paid for the items she’d gathered, and Joe lifted the sack. Silently they walked out together.

“Well?” she asked as soon as they were outside.

“Well, what?”

“Are you taking her to the dance?”

“It looks like it. She won’t take no for an answer, like someone else I know.”

She gave him a prim look and didn’t respond to his teasing. Then, as he opened the car door for her, a thought struck, and she looked at him in horror. “Oh, no,” she said softly. “Joe, that man is attacking women who are friendly to you and Wolf.”

His whole body jerked, and his mouth tightened. “Damn,” he swore. He thought a minute, then shook his head. “I’ll tell her tomorrow that I can’t go.”

“That won’t do any good. How many people heard her say what she did? It will be all over the county by tomorrow, whether you take her to the dance or not.”

He didn’t reply, merely closed the door after she’d gotten into the car. He looked grim, far too grim for a boy his age.

Joe felt grim, too, but an idea was taking form. He’d watch out for Pam and warn her so she’d be on guard, but maybe this would draw the rapist out. He’d use Mary’s plan, but with different bait: himself. He’d make certain Pam was safe, but leave himself open at times when he was alone. Maybe, when the guy realized he couldn’t get at a helpless woman, he’d get so frustrated he’d go after one of his real targets. Joe knew the chance he was taking, but unless Wolf could find the track he was looking for, he didn’t see any other option.

Mary looked around for Wolf when they got home, but she couldn’t find him. She changed into jeans and walked outside. She found Joe in the barn, grooming a horse. “Is Wolf out here?”

He shook his head and continued brushing the horse’s gleaming hide. “His horse is gone. He’s probably checking fences.” Or hunting for a certain track, but he didn’t say that to Mary.

She got him to show her how to brush the horse and took over for him until her arm began to hurt. The horse snorted when she stopped, so she went back to brushing. “This is harder than it looks,” she panted.

Joe grinned at her over the back of another horse. “It’ll give you a few muscles. But you’ve finished with him, so don’t spoil him. He’ll stand there all day if someone will keep brushing him.”

She stopped and stepped back. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” He put the horse in his stall, and Mary walked back to the house. She had almost reached the porch when she heard the rhythmic thudding of a horse’s hooves and turned to see Wolf riding up. She caught her breath. Even though she was ignorant about horses, she knew that not many people looked the way he did on a horse. There was no bouncing or jiggling; he sat so easily in the saddle, and moved so fluidly with the animal, that he looked motionless. The Comanche had arguably been the world’s best horsemen, better even than the Berber or Bedouin, and Wolf had learned well from his mother’s people. His powerful legs controlled the big bay stallion he was riding, so that the reins were lightly held and no harm done to the horse’s tender mouth.

He slowed the horse to a walk as he approached her. “Any trouble today?”

She decided not to tell him about Pam Hearst. That was Joe’s business, if he wanted it known. She knew he’d tell Wolf, but in his own time. “No. We didn’t see anyone suspicious, and no one followed us.”

He reined in and leaned down to brace his forearm on the saddle horn. His dark eyes drifted over her slim figure. “Do you know how to ride?”

“No. I’ve never been on a horse.”

“Well, that situation is about to be remedied.” He kicked his boot free of the stirrup and held his hand out to her. “Put your left foot in the stirrup and lift yourself as I swing you up.”

She was willing. She tried. But the horse was too tall, and she couldn’t reach the stirrup with her foot. She was staring at the bay with an aggravated expression when Wolf laughed and shifted back in the saddle. “Here, I’ll pick you up.”

He leaned out of the saddle and caught her under the arms. Mary gasped and grabbed at his biceps as she felt her feet leave the ground; then he straightened and set her firmly on the saddle in front of him. She grabbed the saddle horn as he lifted the reins, and the horse moved forward.

“This is a long way up,” she said, bouncing so hard her teeth rattled.

He chuckled and wrapped his left arm around her, pulling her back against him. “Relax and let yourself go with the horse’s rhythm. Feel how I’m moving and move with me.”

She did a she said and felt the rhythm as soon as she relaxed. Her body automatically seemed to sink deeper into the saddle, and her torso moved with Wolf’s. The bouncing stopped. Unfortunately by that time they had reached the barn and her first ride was over. Wolf lifted her down and dismounted.

“I liked that,” she announced.

“You did? Good. We’ll start you on riding lessons tomorrow.”

Joe’s voice came to them from a stall farther down. “I started her on grooming lessons today.”

“You’ll be as comfortable with horses as if you’d been around them all of your life,” Wolf said, and leaned down to kiss her. She went on tiptoe, her lips parting. It was a long moment before he lifted his head, and when he did, his breathing was faster. His eyes were hooded and narrow. Damn, she got to him so fast he reacted like a teenager when he was around her.

When Mary had gone back to the house, Joe came out of the stall and looked at his father. “Find anything today?”

Wolf began unsaddling the bay. “No. I’ve had a good look around the ranches, but none of the prints match. It has to be someone from town.”

Joe frowned. “That makes sense. Both of the attacks were in town. But I can’t think of anyone it could be. I guess I’ve never noticed before if someone has freckled hands.”

“I’m not looking for freckles, I’m looking for that print. I know how he walks, toeing in a little and putting his weight on the outside of his feet.”

“What if you find him? Do you think the sheriff will arrest him just because he has freckles on his hands and walks a certain way?”

Wolf smiled, a movement of his lips that was totally without mirth. His eyes were cold. “When I find him,” he said softly, “if he’s smart, he’ll confess. I’ll give the law a chance, but there’s no way he’ll walk free. He’ll be a lot safer in jail than out on the streets, and I’ll make certain he knows it.”

It was an hour before they finished with the horses. Joe lingered to look over his tack, and Wolf walked up to the house alone. Mary was absorbed in cooking, humming as she stirred the big pot of beef stew, and she didn’t hear him come in the back door. He walked up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder.

Blind terror shot through her. She screamed and threw herself sideways, to press her back against the wall. She held the dripping spoon in her hand like a knife. Her face was utterly white as she stared at him.

His face was hard. In silence they stared at each other, time stretching out between them. Then she dropped the spoon on the floor with a clatter. “Oh God, I’m sorry,” she said in a thin voice, and covered her face with her hands.

He drew her to him, his hand in her hair, holding her head to his chest. “You thought it was him again, didn’t you?”

She clung to him, trying to drive away the terror. It had come out of nowhere, taking her by surprise and shattering the control she’d managed to gain over her memory and emotions. When Wolf’s hand had touched her shoulder, for a brief, horrifying moment it had been happening all over again. She felt cold; she wanted to sink into his warmth, to let the reality of his touch overcome the hideous memory of another touch.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” he murmured into her hair. “You’re safe here.” But he knew her memory was still there, that a touch from behind meant a nightmare to her. Somehow he had to take away that fear, so she could be free of it.

She regained control and eased herself away from him, and he let her, because he knew it was important to her. She appeared almost normal through dinner and Joe’s lesson; the only sign of strain was an occasional haunted expression in her eyes, as if she hadn’t completely succeeded in pushing the memory away.

But when they went to bed and her silky body was under his hands, she turned to him as eagerly as ever. Wolf’s lovemaking left her no room for anything else, no lingering memories or vestiges of terror. Her entire body and mind were occupied with him. Afterward she curled against him and slept undisturbed, at least until the graying dawn, when he woke her and pulled her beneath him again.

Mary was fully aware of the tenuousness of both her relationship with Wolf and her presence in his house. He often told her explicitly how much he wanted her, but in terms of lust, not love. He never spoke a word about loving, not even during lovemaking, when she was unable to keep from telling him over and over that she loved him. When the fever of lust passed, he might well cut her out of his life, and she tried to prepare herself for that possibility even while she absorbed the maximum pleasure from the present situation.

She knew that living with him was for her protection, and only temporary. She also knew that it was nothing short of scandalous for a small-town schoolteacher to shack up with the local black sheep, and that was exactly how the townspeople would view the situation if they knew about it. She knew the risk she was taking with her career, and decided that the days and nights with Wolf were worth it. If she lost her job, there were other jobs, but she knew there would be no other loves for her. She was twenty-nine and had never even felt a twinge of interest or excitement over any other man. Some people loved only once, and it appeared she was one of them.

The only time she allowed herself to worry over the future was on the drives to and from school, when she was alone in the car. When she was with Wolf she didn’t want to waste even a single second on regrets. With him, she was totally alive, totally female.

She worried about Wolf and Joe, too. She knew Wolf was actively hunting the man who had attacked her, and she was terrified he would be hurt. She couldn’t let herself even think that he might be killed. And Joe was up to something; she knew it. He was too much like Wolf for her not to recognize the signs. He was preoccupied, and far too sober, as if faced with making a choice when neither of the alternatives was very attractive. But she couldn’t get him to open up to her, and that alone frightened her, for Joe had talked to her from the beginning.

Joe was on edge. He’d told Pam to be more cautious than usual, and he tried to make certain she never walked home alone, but there was always a chance she’d be careless. He’d also made a point of letting himself be seen alone, and evidently unaware of the need for caution, but nothing happened. The town was quiet, if edgy. He was forced to the same awareness that Wolf already had, that with so few clues, all they could do was stay alert and wait until the man made a mistake.

When Joe told his father that he was going to the dance with Pam, Wolf looked piercingly at the boy. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“I hope so.”

“Watch your back.”

The terse advice brought a thin smile to Joe’s mouth. He knew he could be making a big mistake by going to that dance, that the scene could turn ugly, but he’d told Pam he’d take her, and that was that. He’d have to be doubly alert, but damn, he wanted to hold her in his arms while they shuffled slowly across the sawdust floor. Even though he knew he was going away and they’d never have anything permanent between them, he was strongly attracted to her. He couldn’t explain it and knew it wouldn’t last, but he felt it now, and it was now that he had to deal with it.

Pam was edgy, too, when he picked her up. She tried to hide it by talking too fast and too brightly, until he put his hand over her mouth. “I know,” he muttered. “It worries me, too.”

She tossed her head, freeing her mouth. “I’m not worried. It’ll be all right, you’ll see. I told you, all of us have talked about it.”

“Then why are you so nervous?”

She looked away from him and cleared her throat. “Well, this is the first time I’ve been out with you. I just felt—I don’t know—nervous and scared and excited all at once.”

He thought about that for a few minutes, and silence filled the cab of the truck. Then he said, “I guess I can understand being nervous and excited, but why scared?”

Now it was Pam’s turn to be silent, and she flushed a little when she finally said, “Because you’re not like the rest of us.”

That grim look settled around Joe’s mouth. “Yeah, I know. I’m a ’breed.”

“It isn’t that,” she snapped. “It’s—you’re older than the rest of us, somehow. I know we’re the same age, but inside you’re all grown up. We’re ordinary people. We’ll stay right here and ranch the way our folks have. We’ll marry people from the same background and stay in the county, or move to another county just like it, and have kids and be content. But you’re not like that. You’re going to the Academy, and you won’t be back, at least not to stay. You may come back for a visit, but that’s all it’ll be.”

It surprised him that she had it so neatly pegged. He did feel old inside, and always had, especially in comparison to other kids his age. And he knew he wouldn’t be back here to ranch. He belonged in the sky doing Mach 2, marking his place in the universe with a vapor trail.

They were quiet the rest of the way to the dance. When Joe parked his truck with the collection of other trucks and a few cars, he braced himself for whatever could happen.

He was prepared for almost anything, but not for what actually took place. When he and Pam walked into the run-down old building used for the dances, for a moment there was a certain stillness, a strange silence; then in the next heartbeat the noise picked back up and everyone returned to his own conversation. Pam put her hand in his and squeezed it.

A few minutes later the live band started up, and couples drifted onto the sawdust-covered planks of the dance floor. Pam led him to the middle of the floor and smiled at him.

He smiled back, wryly admitting and admiring her courage. Then he took her in his arms to enter the slow rhythm of the dance.

They didn’t talk. After wanting for so long just to touch her, he was content to hold her and move with her. He could smell her perfume, feel the softness of her hair, the resilient mounds of her breasts, the movement of her legs against his. As young people have done from the beginning of time, they swayed together in their own private world, reality suspended.

Reality intruded, however, when he heard an angry mutter of “dirty Indian” and automatically stiffened as he looked around for the speaker.

Pam said, “Please,” and drew him back into the dance.

When the song ended, a boy stood on his chair and yelled, “Hey, Joe! Pam! Over here!”

They looked in the direction of the yell, and Joe couldn’t help grinning. Every student in the three classes Mary taught was grouped at the table, with two empty chairs waiting for him and Pam. They were waving and calling.

The kids saved the evening. They enveloped him and Pam in a circle of laughter and dancing. Joe danced with every girl in the group; the boys talked horses, cattle, ranching and rodeoing, and between them made certain none of the girls had a chance to sit down much. The kids also talked to the other people at the dance, and soon everyone knew that the half-breed was going to the Air Force Academy. Ranchers are generally hard-working, conservative and firmly patriotic, and before too long, anyone who had a hard word to say about the half-breed found himself hushed and told to mind his manners.

Joe and Pam left before the dance was over, because he didn’t want to keep her out too late. As they walked to his truck, he shook his head. “I never would have believed it,” he said softly. “Did you know they would all be here?”

Pam denied it. “But they knew I’d asked you. I guess the whole town knew I’d asked you. It was fun, wasn’t it?”

“It was fun,” he agreed. “But it could have gotten rough. You know that, don’t you? If it hadn’t been for the guys—”

“And girls!” she interrupted.

“Them, too. If it hadn’t been for them, I’d have been thrown out.”

“It didn’t happen. And next time it will be even better.”

“Is there going to be a next time?”

She looked suddenly unsure of herself. “You—you can still come to the dances, even if you don’t want to come with me.”

Joe laughed as he opened the truck door. He turned and put his hands on her waist, then lifted her onto the seat. “I like being with you.”

About halfway back to Ruth, Pam put her hand on his arm. “Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to—uh, that is, do you know any place to stop?” She faltered on the words.

He knew he should resist the temptation, but he couldn’t. He turned off on the next side road they came to, then left the road to bounce across a meadow for about a mile before he parked beneath a stand of trees.

The mild May night wrapped around them. The moonlight couldn’t penetrate the shelter of the trees, and the dark cab of the truck was a warm, safe cave. Pam was a pale, indistinct figure as he reached for her.

She was pliant and eager, yielding to his hands, pressing against him to take more of his kisses. Her firm young body made him feel as if he would explode. Barely aware of what he was doing, Joe shifted and twisted until they were lying on the seat with Pam half beneath him. Soon her breasts were bare, and he heard her strangled intake of breath as he took a nipple into his mouth. Then her nails were digging into his shoulders, and her hips arched.

It was quickly getting out of control. Clothing was opened and pushed aside. Bare skin touched bare skin. Somehow, Pam’s jeans were off. But when he slid his hands inside her panties, she whispered, “I’ve never done this before. Will it hurt?”

Joe groaned aloud, but forced himself to stillness. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed, but he stopped his hands. His body throbbed painfully, and he savagely controlled it. After a long minute he sat up and pulled Pam to a sitting position astride his lap.

“Joe?”

He leaned his forehead against hers. “We can’t do it,” he murmured regretfully.

“But why?” She moved against him, her body still empty and aching with a need she didn’t understand.

“Because it would be your first time.”

“But I want you!”

“I want you, too.” He managed a wry grin. “I guess it’s pretty obvious. But your first time—baby, it should be with someone you love. And you don’t love me.”

“I could,” she whispered. “Oh, Joe, I truly could.”

He was so frustrated that he could barely control his voice enough to speak, but he managed. “I hope you don’t. I’m leaving. I have a chance waiting for me that I’d die before I’d give up.”

“And no girl is going to change your mind?”

Joe knew the truth inside him, and he knew Pam wouldn’t like it, but he had to be honest with her. “No girl could change my mind. I want to go to the Academy so much that nothing can keep me here.”

She caught his hands and shyly brought them up to her breasts. “We could still, you know, do it. No one would know.”

“You’d know. And when you fall in love with some guy, you’d regret that your first time wasn’t with him. God, Pam, don’t make this so hard for me! Slap my face or something.” The way her firm young breasts filled his hands made him wonder if he wasn’t crazy for passing this up.

She leaned forward and rested her head on his shoulder. He felt the way her body shook as she began to cry, and he folded his arms around her.

“You’ve always been special to me,” she said in a stifled tone. “Do you have to be so darn conscientious?”

“Do you want to take a chance on getting pregnant at sixteen?”

That stopped her tears. She sat up. “Oh. I thought you’d have a—don’t all boys carry them?”

“I guess not. And it wouldn’t matter if I did have one. I don’t want to get involved—not this kind of involved—with you or anyone else, because no matter what, I’m going to the Academy. Besides, you’re too young.”

She couldn’t stop the giggle that burst out. “I’m as old as you are.”

“Then we’re too young.”

“You’re not.” She sobered and cupped his face in her hands. “You’re not young at all, and I guess that’s why you stopped. Every other boy I know would have had his jeans off so fast he’d have fabric burns on his legs. But let’s make a bargain, okay?”

“What kind of bargain?”

“We’ll still be friends, won’t we?”

“You know it.”

“Then we’ll go around together and keep things light. No more messing around like this, because it hurts too much when you stop. You go away to Colorado like you’ve planned, and I’ll take things as they come. I may get married. But if I don’t, you come on back here one summer and we’ll both be old enough then. Will you be my first lover?”

“It won’t keep me in Ruth,” he said steadily.

“I don’t expect it to. But is it a bargain?”

He accepted that the years could make a difference, and he knew she’d most likely be married. If not—maybe.

“If you still want to then, yeah, it’s a bargain.”

She held out her hand, and they solemnly shook to seal the deal. Then she kissed him and began putting on her clothes.

Mary was waiting up for him when he got home, an anxious look in her eyes. She got to her feet and tightened the belt of her robe. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Did anything happen?”

“I’m fine. Everything went okay.”

Then he saw that the anxious look was really fear. She touched his arm. “You didn’t see anyone who—” She stopped, then started again. “No one shot at your truck, or tried to run you off the road?”

“No, it was quiet.” They looked at each other for a moment, and Joe realized that Mary had feared the same thing that had occurred to him. More than that, she knew he had decided to take the chance in an effort to draw the rapist out.

He cleared his throat. “Is Dad in bed?”

“No,” Wolf said quietly from the doorway. He wore only a pair of jeans. His black eyes were steady. “I wanted to make certain you were okay. This was like watching Daniel walk into the lion’s den.”

“Well, Daniel made it out okay, didn’t he? So did I. It was even fun. The whole class was there.”

Mary smiled, the dread lifting from her mind. She knew now what had happened. Knowing that the situation could get ugly if Joe had gone to the dance without backup, the kids had taken it on themselves to make him a part of their group and let everyone at the dance know he was accepted.

Wolf held out his hand, and Mary went to him. She could sleep now. They were safe for another night, these two men whom she loved.

Chapter Eleven

School was out. Mary was intensely proud of her students. The seniors had all graduated, and all of the undergraduates had passed. All of them intended to finish high school, and a couple of them wanted to go to college. It was a record to thrill any teacher’s heart.

Joe didn’t get a respite. Mary decided he needed more advanced classes in math than she was qualified to teach and began a search for a teacher who was qualified. She found one in a town seventy miles distant, and three times a week Joe made the trip for a two-hour accelerated course. She continued to teach him at night.

The days passed in a haze of happiness for Mary. She seldom left the mountain, seldom saw anyone except Wolf and Joe. Even when they were both gone, she felt safe. It had been only a little over two weeks since the attack, but it seemed as if it had happened a long time ago. Whenever a sliver of memory surfaced to unsettle her emotions, she scolded herself for letting it bother her. Nothing had happened, except she had been terrified. If anyone needed care and consideration, it was Cathy Teele. So Mary pushed the memories away and concentrated on the present. The present, inevitably, was Wolf.

He dominated her life, waking and sleeping. He began teaching her how to ride and how to help him with the horses, and she suspected he used the same method with her that he used with the young colts and fillies that were brought to him. He was firm and demanding, but utterly clear in his instructions and what he wanted out of both her and the horses. When they obeyed, he rewarded them with approval and affection. In fact, Mary mused, he was easier on the horses than he was on her! When they disobeyed, he was unfailingly patient. When she didn’t do something exactly as he’d told her, he let her know about it in unmistakable terms.

But he was always affectionate. Actually, she decided, “lusty” was a better description. He made love to her every night, sometimes twice. He made love to her in the empty stall where Joe had interrupted them. He made love to her in the shower. She knew she wasn’t even close to voluptuous, but he seemed enthralled with her body. When they lay in bed at night he would turn on the lamp and lean on his elbow, watching as he stroked his hand over her from shoulders to knees, seemingly fascinated by the difference between her pale, delicate skin and his dark, powerful, work-callused hand.

Wyoming weather in the summer was generally cool and dry, at least compared to Savannah, but the summer vacation from school had scarcely begun when a heat wave sent the temperatures into the nineties, even edging into the low hundreds by late afternoon. For the first time in her life, Mary wished she had some shorts to wear, but Aunt Ardith had never allowed them. She did find, however, that her plain cotton skirts were cooler than the new jeans she was so proud of, allowing for the circulation of whatever breeze happened to wander by. Not that Aunt Ardith would have approved of Mary’s attire even then, for Mary declined to wear a slip or hosiery. Aunt Ardith had donned both articles of clothing every day of her life and would have considered anyone who dared to go without a slip an out-and-out hussy.

One morning just after Joe had left to drive to his class, Mary walked out to the barn and reflected on her state of hussiness. All in all, she was satisfied with it. Being a hussy had its advantages.

She could hear some horses snorting and stamping around in the small corral behind the barn, though Wolf usually used the larger one adjacent to the stables for training. The sound of activity, however, told her where she could find him, and that was all she wanted to know.

But when she rounded the corner of the barn, she stopped in her tracks. Wolf’s big bay stallion was mounting the mare she had been riding during her lessons. The mare’s front hooves were hobbled, and protective boots covered her rear hooves. The stallion was snorting and grunting, and the mare squealed as he entered her. Wolf moved to her head to steady her, and then she stood quietly. “There, sweetheart,” he crooned. “You can handle this big old guy, can’t you?”

The mare shivered under the impact of the stallion’s thrusts, but she stood still for the service and it was over in only a couple of minutes. The stallion snorted and dropped off her, his head down low as he snuffled and blew.

Wolf continued talking in that low, soothing voice to the mare as he bent down to remove the hobble. As he started to remove the boots, Mary stepped forward and caught his attention. “You—you tied her!” she said accusingly.

He grinned as he finished unbuckling the protective boots. Miss Mary Elizabeth Potter stood before him in full form, her back ramrod-straight, chin lifted. “I didn’t tie her,” he said with amused patience. “I hobbled her.”

“So she couldn’t get away from him!”

“She didn’t want to get away from him.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she would have kicked him if she hadn’t been ready for him to cover her,” he explained as he led the mare back into the barn. Mary followed, her face still filled with indignation.

“A lot of good it would have done if she’d kicked him—you put those boots on her so she wouldn’t hurt him!”

“Well, I didn’t want my stallion damaged. On the other hand, if she had resisted service, I would have gotten her out of there. When a mare resists, it means I’ve misjudged the time, or something is wrong with her. But she took him nicely, didn’t you girl?” he finished, patting the mare’s neck.

Mary watched, fidgeting, as he washed the mare. She still didn’t like the idea of the mare being unable to run away from the stallion, even though this particular mare was now standing as placidly as if nothing had happened a few minutes ago. It disturbed her on a deep emotional level that didn’t respond to logic, and she felt uneasy.

Wolf led the mare to her stall, fed her and gave her fresh water. Then he squatted in front of the faucet to wash his hands and arms. When he looked up, Mary was still standing there, a troubled, almost frightened look in her eyes. He straightened. “What’s wrong?”

Desperately she tried to shrug her uneasiness aside, but it didn’t work. It was plain in her face and voice. “It looked—it looked….” Her voice trailed off, but suddenly he understood.

He moved slowly toward her and wasn’t surprised when she backed up a step. “Horses aren’t people,” he said gently. “They’re big, and they snort and squeal. It looks rough, but that’s just how horses mate. It would be even rougher if they were allowed to run free, because they’d kick and bite.”

She looked at the mare. “I know. It’s just—” She stopped, because she really couldn’t say what was bothering her.

Wolf reached her and put his hands on her waist, holding her lightly so she wouldn’t be alarmed and wouldn’t know that she couldn’t break free unless he let her. “It’s just that the roughness reminded you of being attacked?” he finished for her.

She gave him a quick, disturbed look, then just as quickly looked away.

“I know the memory is still there, baby.” He slowly tightened his hands, bringing her close against him and just holding her. After a moment she began to relax, and her silky head rested against his chest. Only then did he put his arms around her, because he didn’t want her to feel restrained.

“I want to kiss you,” he murmured.

She lifted her head and smiled at him. “That’s why I came out here: to tempt you into a kiss. I’ve become a shameless hussy. Aunt Ardith would have disowned me.”

“Aunt Ardith sounds like a pain in the—”

“She was wonderful,” Mary said firmly. “It’s just that she was very old-fashioned and had strict notions of what was proper and what wasn’t. For instance, only shameless hussies would wear a skirt without a proper petticoat underneath.” She lifted her skirt a little to show him.

“Then let’s hear it for shameless hussies.” He bent his head and kissed her, and felt the familiar hot excitement begin building in his body. Ruthlessly he controlled it, because control was critical right now. He had to show Mary something, and he couldn’t do it if his libido overcame his common sense. He had to do something to banish that ever-present fear from the back of her mind.

He raised his head and hugged her for a minute before letting his arms drop. Instead he took her hands and held them, and the expression on his face made the smile leave her eyes. He said slowly, “Are you willing to try something that might get you over being frightened?”

She looked cautious. “Such as?”

“We could reenact parts of the attack.”

Mary stared at him. She was curious, but also wary. Part of her didn’t want to do anything that would remind her of that day, but on the other hand, she didn’t like being afraid. She said, “Which parts?”

“I could chase you.”

“He didn’t chase me. He grabbed me from behind.”

“So will I, when I catch you.”

She considered it. “It won’t work. I’ll know it’s you.”

“We could try.”

She stared at him for a long time, then stiffened as a thought came to her. “He threw me facedown on the ground,” she whispered. “He was on top of me, rubbing himself against me.”

Wolf’s face was strained. “Do you want me to do that, too?”

She shuddered. “Want you to? No. But I think you’re going to have to. I don’t want to be afraid any longer. Make love to me like that—please.”

“What if you get really scared?”

“Don’t—” She swallowed. “Don’t stop.”

He looked at her for a long minute, as if measuring her resolve; then his mouth began to quirk up on one side. “All right. Run.”

She didn’t. She stared at him. “What?”

“Run. I can’t chase you if you don’t run.”

All of a sudden she felt silly at the thought of running about the yard like a child. “Just like that?”

“Yeah, just like that. Think of it this way: when I catch you, I’m going to pull your clothes off and make love to you, so why are you waiting?”

He removed his hat to hook it on a post. Mary took a step backward, then, despite her dignity, whirled and ran. She heard the thudding of his boots as he came after her, and laughed with excitement despite herself. She knew she didn’t have a prayer of reaching the house; his legs were much longer than hers. Instead she relied on agility and dodged around his truck, then a tree.

“I’m going to get you,” he growled, his voice right behind her, and his hand closed briefly on her shoulder before she sprinted away from him.

She sought refuge behind his truck again, with him on the other side. They feinted, but neither gained an advantage. Panting, her face alight with both excitement and triumph, Mary taunted him, “Can’t catch me, can’t catch me.”

A slow, unholy smile touched his mouth as he looked at her. She was almost glowing with her success, her silky brown hair tumbling around her face, and he wanted her so much it hurt. He wanted to take her in his arms and make love to her, and he swore to himself because he couldn’t, not right now. First he had to play this through, and, despite her brave words, he hoped she could bear it.

They had been staring at each other, and suddenly it struck her how savage he looked. He was aroused. She knew that look on his face as well as she knew her own, and her breath caught. He wasn’t playing; he was deadly earnest. For the first time, fear began to creep in on her. She tried to tamp it down, because she knew Wolf would never hurt her. It was just—oh, damn, something about it did remind her of the attack, no matter how she tried to push the thought away. The playfulness drained out of her, and an unreasonable panic took its place. “Wolf? Let’s stop now.”

His chest rose and fell with his breathing, and a bleak look entered his eyes, but his voice was guttural. “No. I’m going to catch you.”

She ran blindly, leaving the dubious safety of the truck. His running steps behind her sounded like thunder, obscuring every other sound, even that of her rasping breath. It was like being in that alley again, even though a part of her clung to the knowledge that this was Wolf, and she wanted him to do this. She hadn’t had a chance to run from her attacker, but he had been behind her; she had heard his breathing just as she now heard Wolf’s. She screamed, a high, terrified sound, just before Wolf caught her and bore her down, on her stomach, to the ground, his heavy weight coming down on top of her.

He supported himself on his arms to keep from crushing her, and nuzzled her ear. “Ha, I caught you.” He forced himself to say the words lightly, but his chest was tight with pain at what she was going through. He could feel the terror that held her in its grip, and he began trying to loosen its bonds, speaking softly to her, reminding her of the heated, sensuous pleasures they had shared. Tears stung his eyes at the sounds she made, those of a trapped and terrified animal. God, he didn’t know if he could do it. The lust had died in him at her first scream.

At first she struggled like a wild thing, kicking and bucking, trying to free her arms, but he held them clamped down. She was maddened with fear, so much so that despite the difference in their sizes and strength, she might have hurt him if not for his training. As it was, all he could do was hold her and try to break through the black mist of fear that enveloped her.

“Calm down, sweetheart, calm down. You know I won’t hurt you, and I won’t let anyone else hurt you. You know who I am.” He repeated it over and over, until exhaustion claimed her, and her struggles became weak and aimless. Only then could she begin to listen; only then could his crooning words penetrate the barrier of fear. Suddenly she collapsed on the ground with her face buried in the hot, sweet grass and began to cry.

Wolf lay on top of her with his arms still locked securely around her and soothed her while she cried. He petted her and kissed her hair, her shoulder, her delicate nape, until at last she lay limply on the grass, both tears and energy exhausted. The endless caresses affected him, too, now that she was calmer; he felt a return of the desire that was never far away from him since he’d met her.

He nuzzled her neck again. “Are you still frightened?” he murmured.

Bruised, swollen eyelids were closed over her eyes. “No,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I keep putting you through this. I love you.”

“I know, sweetheart. Hold on to that thought.” Then he lifted himself back on his knees and pushed her skirt to her waist.

Mary’s eyes flared open when she felt him pulling down her underpants, and her voice was sharp. “Wolf! No!”

He stripped the garment down her legs, and Mary trembled in reaction. It was so much like before, in the alley. She was on her stomach on the ground, with a man’s weight on top of her, and she couldn’t bear it. She tried to scramble forward, but he locked one arm around her waist and held her while he unfastened his jeans with the other hand. He kneed her thighs farther apart and eased himself against her, then let his weight down on her again.

“This reminds you of it, doesn’t it?” he asked in a low, gentle voice. “Being on the ground, on your stomach, with me behind you. But you know I won’t hurt you, that you don’t have to be afraid, don’t you?”

“I don’t care. I don’t like this! Let me up, I want up!”

“I know, baby. Come on now, relax. Think of how many times I’ve made love to you and how much you’ve enjoyed it. Trust me.”

The smell of the hot earth was in her nostrils. “I don’t want you to make love to me now,” she managed to say, albeit raggedly. “Not like this.”

“Then I won’t. Don’t be afraid, baby. I won’t go any further unless you want me to. Just relax, and let’s feel each other. I don’t want you to be afraid when I come up behind you. I admit, your pretty little rear end turns me on. I like to look at it and touch it, and when you cuddle it against me in bed it drives me crazy. I guess you’ve noticed, though, haven’t you?”

Dazedly, she tried to gather her scattered senses. He’d never hurt her before, and now that the haze of fear was fading, she knew he never would. This was Wolf, the man she loved, not her attacker. She was in his strong arms, where she was safe.

She relaxed, her tired muscles going limp. Yes, he was definitely aroused. She could feel him, nestled between her spread legs, but true to his word he was making no move to enter her.

He stroked her sides and kissed her neck. “Are you all right now?”

She sighed, a barely audible release of breath. “Yes,” she whispered.

He shifted to his knees again and sat back on his heels. Before she could guess what he was about, his steely hands lifted her up and back, so she was sitting astride his thighs, but facing away from him. Their naked loins were pressed together, but still he didn’t enter her.

The first twinge of excitement sang along her nerves. The moment was doubly erotic because they were out in the open, crouched on the grass with the hot, bright sun blazing down on them. If anyone happened to drive up, they would be caught. The sudden sense of danger sharply heightened her arousal. Actually, from the front they were covered, because her skirt was draped over his thighs.

Then that protective cover was whisked away as he pulled her skirt up and to the side. He held her to him with one hand on her stomach, and the other hand slid down between her legs. The intimate contact brought a sharp little cry to her lips.

“Do you like that?” he murmured against her ear and gently nipped the lobe.

Mary made some incoherent answer. His rough fingertips were rasping over her most sensitive flesh, creating and building such pleasure that she could barely speak. He knew exactly how to touch her, how to build her to readiness and take her to ecstasy. Mindlessly she arched back against him; the movement brought his manhood more solidly against her, and she groaned aloud.

“Wolf—please!”

He groaned, too, from between clenched teeth. “I’ll please you any way you want, baby. Just tell me how.”

She could barely speak for the powerful coil of sensation tightening inside her. “I want you.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Like this?”

She moved against him and this time had to choke back a cry. “Yes!”

He eased her forward until she was on her stomach again and covered her. His entry was slow and gentle, and fever enveloped her. Eagerly she met the impact of his thrusts, her body on fire, all thoughts suspended before such all consuming need. This wasn’t a nightmare; this was another part of the sensual delights he’d been teaching her. She writhed against him and felt the coil tighten unbearably. Then it sprang free, and she convulsed in his arms. He clamped his hands on her hips and loosed his own responses, driving into her hard and fast until his pulsing release freed him.

They lay together on the grass for a long time, half-dozing, too exhausted to move. Only when Mary felt her legs begin to tingle from too much sun did she find the strength to push her skirt down. Wolf murmured a protest and slid his hand up her thigh.

She opened her eyes. The sky was bright blue, cloudless, and the sweet scent of fresh grass filled her lungs, radiated through her body. The earth was hot beneath her, the man she loved dozed beside her, and every inch of her still held the remnants of sensation from their lovemaking. The memory of it, so fresh and powerful, began to warm her body to desire again, and suddenly she realized that his plan had worked. He had recreated the scenario that had so terrified her, but substituted himself for the attacker. Instead of fear, pain and humiliation, he had given her desire and, ultimately, an ecstasy so strong it had taken her out of herself. He had replaced a terrible memory with a wonderful one.

His hand was lying low on her abdomen now, and the simple intimacy of his touch stunned her. She could be carrying his child. She had been aware of the probable consequences of making love without protection, but it was what she wanted, and he had made no mention of birth control. Even if their relationship didn’t last, she wanted his baby, a child with his strength and fire. If it could be a duplicate of him, nothing would make her happier.

She stirred, and the pressure of his hand on her abdomen increased. “The sun is too hot,” she murmured. “I’m getting burned.”

He groaned, but fastened his jeans and sat up. Then he picked up her underpants, put them in his pocket and lifted her in his arms in the same motion he used to get to his feet.

“I can walk,” she informed him, though she wound her arms around his neck.

“I know.” He grinned down at her. “It’s just that it’s more romantic to carry you into the house to make love.”

“But we just made love.”

There was fire in his black eyes. “So?”

Wolf was just about to enter the feed store when a tingle touched the back of his neck like a cool wind. He didn’t stop, which would have signaled an alarm to anyone watching, but, using his peripheral vision, he took a quick look around. The sense of danger was like a touch. Someone was watching him. His sixth sense was highly developed from hard training and years of application, and further enhanced by the strong mysticism of his heritage.

It wasn’t just that he was being watched; he could feel the hatred directed toward him. He strode into the feed store and immediately stepped to the side, flattening himself against the wall as he looked out the door. Conversation in the store halted as if the words had hit a stone wall, but he ignored the thick silence. Adrenaline pumped through his body; he didn’t notice that his gloved hand automatically slid over his chest to touch the knife that had been securely attached to the webbing he’d worn sixteen years before, in a steamy, hauntingly beautiful little country that reeked of blood and death. Only when his hand encountered nothing but his shirt did he realize that old habits had come to the fore.

Suddenly he realized that it was the man he’d been hunting, standing somewhere out there and staring at him with hatred, and rage surged through him. He didn’t need a knife. Without a word he removed his hat and boots, the hat because it increased his silhouette, the boots because they were too noisy. In his sock feet he ran lightly past the stunned and silent little knot of men who had been standing around chewing the fat. Only one voiced a hesitant, “What’s going on?”

Wolf didn’t take time to answer, but slipped out the back door of the feed store. His movements were silent, deliberate, as he used every available bit of cover while moving from building to building, working his way around so he would come out behind where he had estimated the man to be. It was hard to pinpoint his position, but Wolf had automatically picked out the best locations for concealment. If he kept looking long enough, he’d find another of the tracks he’d been searching for; the guy would get careless, and Wolf would get him.

He slid around the back of the drugstore, feeling the heat of the sun-warmed boards against his back. He was more cautious than before, not wanting the wood to rasp against his shirt. It was gravelly here, too, and he placed his feet with care to keep the little rocks from making a telltale grinding.

He heard the heavy, thudding sound of someone running, as if he had bolted in panic. Wolf ran around the front of the building and knelt briefly to inspect a faint print in the dust, only a part of a print, but his blood surged. It was the same print, same shoe, same toeing-in stride. He sprinted like the big timber wolf he’d been named for, no longer caring about noise, racing up the street, looking left and right for anyone in the street.

Nothing. No one. The street was empty. He stopped to listen. He heard birds, the rustle of a fitful breeze in the trees, the far-off sound of an engine climbing the slight rise on the north side of the town. Nothing else. No fast breathing, no running footsteps.

Wolf swore to himself. The guy was worse than an amateur, he was clumsy and made stupid moves, as well as being out of shape. If he’d been anywhere close by, Wolf would have been able to hear his labored breathing. Damn it, somehow his quarry had slipped away.

Wolf looked at the quiet houses nestled under the trees. Ruth didn’t have residential and commercial zoning; it was too small. The result was that the houses and few businesses were mixed together without order. The man could have gone into any of the houses; the way he’d disappeared so suddenly left no other possibility. It verified Wolf’s conviction that the rapist lived in Ruth; after all, both attacks had happened right in town.

He noted who lived in the houses on the street and tried to think of who inside them matched Mary’s description of a heavily freckled man. No one came to mind. But someone would. By God, Wolf vowed, someone would. He was slowly eliminating men from his mental list. Eventually, there would be only one left.

From inside a house, a curtain moved fractionally. The sound of his own raspy breathing as he sucked air into his laboring lungs filled the man’s ears. Through the tiny crack he’d made, he could see the Indian still standing in the street, staring at first one house, then another. Murderous black eyes moved across the window where the man stood, and he automatically stepped back out of sight.

His own fear sickened and enraged him. He didn’t want to be afraid of the Indian, but he was.

“Damn filthy Indian!” He whispered the words, then echoed them in his head. He liked doing that, saying things out loud the first time, then saying them to himself for his private understanding and enjoyment.

The Indian was a murderer. They said he knew more ways of killing people than normal folks could even imagine. The man believed it, because he knew firsthand how Indians could kill.

He’d like to kill the Indian, and that boy of his with the strange, pale eyes that looked through him. But he was afraid, because he didn’t know how to kill, and he knew he’d wind up getting killed himself. He was too afraid of getting that close to the Indian to even try it.

He’d thought about it, but he couldn’t come up with a plan. He’d like to shoot the Indian, because he wouldn’t have to get close to do that, but he didn’t have a gun, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by buying one.

But he liked what he’d done to get back at the Indian. It gave him savage satisfaction to know he was punishing the Indian by hurting those stupid women who had taken up for him. Why couldn’t they see him for the filthy, murdering trash he was? That stupid Cathy had said the Indian was good-looking! She’d even said she’d go out with the boy, and he knew that meant she’d let the boy touch her, and kiss her. She’d been willing to let the filthy Mackenzies kiss her, but she’d fought and screamed and gagged when he’d touched her.

It didn’t make sense, but he didn’t care. He’d wanted to punish her and punish the Indian for—for being there, for letting stupid Cathy look at him and think he was good-looking.

And the schoolteacher. He hated her almost as much as he hated the Mackenzies, maybe more. She was so goody-goody, making people think the boy was something special, trying to talk people around so they’d be friendly to the half-breeds. Preaching in the general store!

He’d wanted to spit on her. He’d wanted to hurt her, bad. He’d been so excited he almost hadn’t been able to stand it when he’d dragged her down that alley and felt her squirming beneath him. If that stupid deputy hadn’t shown up, he’d have done to her what he’d done to Cathy, and he knew he’d have liked it more. He’d wanted to hit her with his fists while he did it to her. That would have shown her. She would never have stuck up for the half-breeds again.

He still wanted to get her, to teach her a lesson, but school was out now, and he’d heard people say that the deputy had made her move to some safe place, and no one knew where she was. He didn’t want to wait until school started again, but he thought he might have to.

And that stupid Pam Hearst. She needed a lesson, too. He’d heard that she had gone to a dance with the half-breed boy. He knew what that meant. He’d had his hands on her, and she’d probably let him kiss her and maybe do a lot more, because everyone knew what the Mackenzies were like. As far as he was concerned, that made Pam a slut. She deserved to be taught a lesson just like Cathy, and just like the lesson the schoolteacher still had coming.

He peeked outside again. The Indian was gone. He immediately felt safe, and he began to plan.

When Wolf walked back into the feed store, the same group of men were still there. “We don’t much like you tracking folks around like we’re criminals,” one man snapped.

Wolf grunted and sat down to pull on his boots. He didn’t care if they liked it or not.

“Did you hear what I said?”

He looked up. “I heard.”

“And?”

“And nothing.”

“Now look here, damn it!”

“I’m looking.”

The men fidgeted under his cold black stare. Another spoke up. “You’re making the women nervous.”

“They should be nervous. It might keep them on guard, keep them from getting raped.”

“It was some drifter trash who blew in and blew out! Likely the sheriff won’t ever find who did it.”

“It’s trash, all right, but he’s still here. I just found his track.”

The men fell silent and looked at each other. Stu Kilgore, the foreman on Eli Baugh’s spread, cleared his throat. “We’re supposed to believe you can tell it was made by the same man?”

“I can tell.” Wolf gave them a smile that was closer to a snarl. “Uncle Sam made sure I got the best training available. It’s the same man. He lives here. He slipped into one of the houses.”

“That’s hard to believe. We’ve lived here all our lives. The only stranger around is the schoolteacher. Why would someone just up and start attacking women?”

“Someone did. That’s all I care about, that and catching him.”

He left the men murmuring among themselves while he loaded his feed.

Pam was bored. Since the two attacks, she hadn’t even stepped outside the house by herself; she’d been pretty scared at first, but the days had passed without any more attacks, and the shock had worn off. Women were beginning to venture out again, even by themselves.

She was going to another dance with Joe, and she wanted a new dress. She knew he was going away, knew she couldn’t hold him, but there was still something about him that made her heart race. She refused to let herself love him, even though she knew any other boyfriend would have a hard time replacing Joe. Hard, but not impossible. She wasn’t going to mope after he’d left; she’d get on with her life—but right now he was still here, and she savored every moment with him.

She really wanted a new dress, but she’d promised Joe she wouldn’t go anywhere alone, and she didn’t intend to break her promise. When her mother returned from shopping with a neighbor, she’d ask her about going with her to get a new dress. Not in Ruth, of course; she wanted to go to a real town, with a real dress shop.

Finally she picked up a book and walked out onto the back porch, away from the sun. There were neighbors on both sides, and she felt safe. She read for a while, then became sleepy and lay down on the porch swing, arranging her long legs over the back of the swing. She dozed immediately.

The abrupt jolting of the swing awakened her some time later. She opened her eyes and stared at a ski mask, with narrowed, hate-filled eyes glittering through the slits. He was already on her when she screamed.

He hit her with his fist, but she jerked her head back so that the blow landed on her shoulder. She screamed again and tried to kick him, and the unsteady swing toppled them to the porch. She kicked again, catching him in the stomach, and he grunted, sounding oddly surprised.

She couldn’t stop screaming, even as she scrabbled away from him. She was more terrified than she’d ever been before in her life, but also oddly detached, watching the scene from some safe distance. The wooden slats of the porch scraped her hands and arms, but she kept moving backward. He suddenly sprang, and she kicked at him again, but he caught her ankle. She didn’t stop. She just kicked, using both legs, trying to catch him in the head or the groin, and she screamed.

Someone next door yelled. The man jerked his head up and dropped her ankle. Blood had seeped through the multicolored ski mask; she’d managed to kick him in the mouth. He said “Indian’s dirty whore” in a hate-thickened voice, and jumped from the porch, already running.

Pam lay on the porch, sobbing in dry, painful gasps. The neighbor yelled again, and somehow she garnered enough strength to scream “Help me!” before the terror made her curl into a ball and whimper like a child.

Chapter Twelve

Wolf wasn’t surprised when the deputy’s car pulled up and Clay got out. He’d had a tight feeling in his gut since he’d found that footprint in town. Clay’s tired face told the story.

Mary saw who their visitor was and automatically got a cup for coffee; Clay always wanted coffee. He took off his hat and sat down, heaving a sigh as he did so.

“Who was it this time?” Wolf asked, his deep voice so rough it was almost a growl.

“Pam Hearst.”

Joe’s head jerked up, and all the color washed out of his face. He was on his feet before Clay’s next words came.

“She fought him off. She isn’t hurt, but she’s scared. He jumped her on the Hearsts’ back porch, for God’s sake. Mrs. Winston heard her screaming, and the guy ran. Pam said she kicked him in the mouth. She saw blood on the ski mask he was wearing.”

“He lives in town,” Wolf said. “I found another print, but it’s hard to track in town, with people walking around destroying what few prints there are. I think he ducked into one of the houses along Bay Road, but he might not live there.”

“Bay Road.” Clay frowned as he mentally reviewed the people living on Bay Road; most of the townspeople lived along it, in close little clusters. There was also another cluster of houses on Broad Street, where the Hearsts lived. “We might have him this time. Any man who has a swollen lip will have to have an airtight alibi.”

“If it just split his lip, you won’t be able to tell. The swelling will be minimal. She would have to have really done some damage for it to be visible more than a day or so.” Wolf had had more than his share of split lips, and delivered his share, too. The mouth healed swiftly. Now if Pam had knocked some teeth out, that would be a different story.

“Any blood on the porch?”

“No.”

“Then she didn’t do any real damage.” There would have been blood sprayed all over the porch if she’d kicked out his teeth.

Clay shoved his hand through his hair. “I don’t like to think of the uproar it would cause, but I’m going to talk to the sheriff about making a house-to-house search along Bay Road. Damn it, I just can’t think of anyone it could be.”

Joe abruptly left the room, and Wolf stared after his son. He knew Joe wanted to go to Pam, and knew that he wouldn’t. Some of the barriers had come down, but most of them were still intact.

Clay had watched Joe leave, and he sighed again. “The bastard called Pam an ‘Indian’s dirty whore.”’ His gaze shifted to Mary, who had stood silently the whole time. “You were right.”

She didn’t reply, because she’d known all along that she was right. It made her sick to hear the name Pam had been called, because it so starkly revealed the hatred behind the attack.

“I suppose all the tracks at Pam’s house have been ruined.” Wolf said it as a statement, not a question.

“Afraid so.” Clay was regretful, but practically everyone in town had been at the Hearsts’ house before he’d gotten there, standing around the back porch and tromping around the area.

Wolf muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath about damn idiots. “Do you think the sheriff will go along with a house-to-house search?”

“Depends. You know some folks are going to kick up about it no matter what the reason. They’ll take it personally. This is an election year,” he said, and they took his point.

Mary listened to them talking, but she didn’t join in. Now Pam had been hurt; who was next? Would the man work up enough courage to attack Wolf or Joe? That was her real terror, because she didn’t know if she could bear it. She loved them with all the fierceness of her soul. She would gladly put herself between them and danger.

Which was exactly what she would have to do.

It made her sick to even think of that man’s hands on her again, but she knew in that moment that she was going to give him the opportunity. Somehow, she was going to lure him out. She wouldn’t allow herself the luxury of hiding out on Mackenzie’s Mountain any longer.

She would begin driving into town by herself. The only problem would be in getting away from Wolf; she knew he’d never agree if he had any idea what she was doing. Not only that, he was capable of preventing her from leaving at all, either by disabling her car or even locking her in the bedroom. She didn’t underestimate him.

Since he had moved her up on the mountain with him, he’d been delivering and picking up horses, rather than letting the owners come up to the ranch, where they might see her. Her whereabouts were a well-kept secret, known only to Wolf, Joe and Clay. But that meant she was left alone several times a week while Wolf and Joe ran errands and delivered horses. Joe also left for his math lessons, and they had to ride fences and work the small herd of cattle, just as every rancher did. She really had a lot of opportunities for slipping away, at least the first time. It would be infinitely more difficult to get away after that, because Wolf would be on his guard.

She quietly excused herself and went in search of Joe. She peeked into his bedroom, but he wasn’t there, so she went out on the front porch. He was leaning against one of the posts, his thumbs hooked in his front pockets.

“It isn’t your fault.”

He didn’t move. “I knew it could happen.”

“You aren’t responsible for someone else’s hate.”

“No, but I am responsible for Pam. I knew it could happen, and I should have stayed away from her.”

Mary made an unladylike sound. “I seem to remember it was the other way around. Pam made her choice when she made that scene in her father’s store.”

“All she wanted was to go to a dance. She didn’t ask for this.”

“Of course not, but it still isn’t your fault, any more than it would have been your fault if she’d been in a car accident. You can say you could have delayed her so she’d have been a minute later getting to that particular section of road, or hurried her up so she’d have been earlier, but that’s ridiculous, and you know it.”

He couldn’t prevent a faint smile at the starchiness of her tone. She should be in Congress, cracking her whip and haranguing those senators and representatives into some sort of fiscal responsibility. Instead she’d taken on Ruth, Wyoming, and none of them had been the same since she’d set foot in town.

“All right, so I’m taking too much on myself,” he finally said. “But I knew it wasn’t smart to go out with her in the first place. It isn’t fair. I’ll be leaving here when I finish school, and I won’t be back. Pam should be dating someone who’s going to be around when she needs him.”

“You’re still taking too much on yourself. Let Pam make her own decisions about who she wants to date. Do you plan to isolate yourself from women forever?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he drawled, and in that moment he sounded so much like his father that it startled her. “But I don’t intend to get involved with anyone.”

“It doesn’t always work out the way you want. You were involved with Pam even before I came here.”

That was true, as far as it went. He sighed and leaned his head against the post. “I don’t love her.”

“Of course not. I never thought you did.”

“I like her; I care for her. But not enough to stay, not enough to give up the Academy.” He looked at the Wyoming night, the almost painful clarity of the sky, the brightly winking stars, and thought of jockeying an F-15 over these mountains, with the dark earth below and the glittering stars above. No, he couldn’t give that up.

“Did you tell her that?”

“Yes.”

“Then it was her decision.”

They stood in silence, watching the stars. A few minutes later Clay left, and neither of them thought it strange that he hadn’t said goodbye. Wolf came out on the porch and automatically slid his arm around Mary’s waist, hugging her to his side even as he put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “You okay?”

“Okay enough, I suppose.” But he understood now the total rage he’d seen in Wolf’s eyes when Mary had been attacked, the same rage that still burned in a rigidly controlled fire inside his father. God help the man if Wolf Mackenzie ever got his hands on him.

Wolf tightened his arm around Mary and led her inside, knowing it was best to leave Joe alone now. His son was tough; he’d handle it.

The next morning Mary listened as they discussed their day. There were no horses to deliver or pick up, but Joe had a math lesson that afternoon, and they intended to use the morning inoculating cattle. She had no idea how long it would take to treat the whole herd, but imagined they would both be tied up the entire morning. They would be riding a couple of the young quarter horses, to teach them how to cut cattle.

Joe had changed overnight; it was a subtle change, but one that made Mary ache inside. In repose, his young face held a grimness that saddened her, as if the last faint vestiges of boyhood had been driven from his soul. He’d always looked older than his age, but now, despite the smoothness of hiss kin, he no longer looked young.

She was a grown woman, almost thirty years old, and the attack had left scars she hadn’t been able to handle alone. Cathy and Pam were just kids, and Cathy had to handle a nightmare that was far worse than what Mary and Pam had undergone. Joe had lost his youth. No matter what, that man had to be stopped before he damaged anyone else.

When Wolf and Joe left the house, Mary gave them plenty of time to get far enough away so they wouldn’t hear her car start, then hurried out of the house. She didn’t know what she was going to do, other than parade through Ruth on the off chance that her presence might trigger another attack. And then what? She didn’t know. Somehow she had to be prepared; she had to get someone to keep watch so the man could be caught. It should have been easy to catch him; he’d been so careless, attacking out in the open and in broad daylight, making stupid moves, as if he attacked on impulse and without a plan. He hadn’t even taken the simplest precautions against getting caught. The whole thing was strange. It didn’t make sense.

Her hands were shaking as she drove into town; she was acutely aware that this was the first time since the day she’d been attacked that she was without protection. She felt exposed, as if her clothing had been stripped away.

She had to get someone to watch her, someone she trusted. Who? Sharon? The young teacher was her friend, but Sharon wasn’t aggressive, and she thought the situation called for aggressiveness. Francie Beecham was too old; Cicely Karr would be too cautious. She discounted the men, because they would get all protective and refuse to help. Men were such victims to their own hormones. Machismo had killed a lot more people than PMS.

Pam Hearst sprang to mind. Pam would be extremely interested in catching the man, and she’d been aggressive enough to kick him in the mouth, to fight him off. She was young, but she had courage. She’d had the courage to go against her father and date a half-breed.

Conversation ceased when she walked into Hearst’s store; it was the first time she’d been seen since the end of school. She ignored the thick silence, for she had what she suspected was a highly accurate guess as to the subject of the conversation she’d interrupted, and approached the checkout counter where Mr. Hearst stood.

“Is Pam at home?” she asked quietly, not wanting her question to be heard by the entire store.

He looked as if he’d aged ten years overnight, but there was no animosity in his face.

He nodded. The same thing had happened to Miss Potter, he thought. If she could talk to Pam, maybe she could take that haunted look out of his baby girl’s eyes. Miss Potter had a lot of backbone for such a little thing; maybe he didn’t always agree with her, but he’d damn sure learned to respect her. And Pam thought the world of her.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d talk to her,” he said.

There was an odd, almost militant expression in her soft bluish eyes. “I’ll do that,” she promised, and turned to leave. She almost bumped into Dottie and was startled into a gasp; the woman had been right behind her.

“Good morning,” Mary said pleasantly. Aunt Ardith had drilled the importance of good manners into her.

Strangely, Dottie seemed to have aged, too. Her face was haggard. “How are you doing, Mary?”

Mary hesitated, but she could detect none of the hostility she was accustomed to from Dottie. Had the entire town changed? Had this nightmare brought them to their senses about the Mackenzies? “I’m fine. Are you enjoying the vacation?”

Dottie smiled, but it was merely a movement of her facial muscles, not a response of pleasure. “It’s been a relief.”

She certainly didn’t look relieved; she looked worried to a frazzle. Of course, everyone should be worried.

“How is your son?” Mary couldn’t remember the boy’s name, and she felt faintly embarrassed. It wasn’t like her to forget names.

To her surprise, Dottie went white. Even her lips were bloodless. “W—why do you ask?” she stammered.

“He seemed upset the last time I saw him,” Mary replied. She could hardly say that only good manners had prompted the question. Southerners always asked after family.

“Oh. He—he’s all right. He hardly ever leaves the house. He doesn’t like going out.” Dottie looked around, then blurted “Excuse me,” and left the store before Mary could say anything else.

She looked at Mr. Hearst, and he shrugged. He thought Dottie had acted a bit strange, too.

“I’ll go see Pam now,” she said.

She started to walk to the Hearst house, but the memory of what had happened the last time she’d walked through town made chills run up her spine, and she went to her car. She checked the back seat and floorboard before opening the door. As she started the engine, she saw Dottie walking swiftly up the street, her head down as if she didn’t want anyone to speak to her. She hadn’t bought anything, Mary realized. Why had she been in Hearst’s store, if not to make a purchase? It couldn’t be browsing, because everyone knew what every store in town carried. Why had she left so suddenly?

Dottie turned left down the small street where she lived, and abruptly Mary wondered what Dottie was doing walking around alone. Every woman in town should know better. Surely she had enough sense to be cautious.

Mary drove slowly up the street. She craned her neck when she reached the street where Dottie had turned and saw the woman hurrying up the steps of her house. Her eyes fell on the faded sign: Bay Road.

Bay Road was where Wolf thought the rapist had dodged into a house. It made sense that he wouldn’t have entered a house that wasn’t his home, unless he was a close friend who came and went just like a family member. That was possible, but even a very close friend would give a yell before just walking into someone else’s house, and Wolf would have heard that.

Dottie was certainly acting odd. She’d looked as if she’d been stung by a bee when Mary had asked about her son…. Bobby, that was his name. Mary was pleased that she’d remembered.

Bobby. Bobby wasn’t “right.” He did things in a skewed way. He was unable to apply logic to the simplest of chores, unable to plan a practical course of action.

Mary broke out in a sweat and had to stop the car. She’d only seen him once, but she could picture him in her mind: big, a little soft-looking, with sandy hair and a fair complexion. A fair, freckled complexion.

Was it Bobby? The one person in town who wasn’t totally responsible for himself? The one person no one would ever suspect?

Except his mother.

She had to tell Wolf.

As soon as the thought formed, she dismissed it. She couldn’t tell Wolf, not yet, because she didn’t want to put that burden on him. His instincts would tell him to go after Bobby; his conscience would argue that Bobby wasn’t a responsible person. Mary knew him well enough to know that, no matter which decision he made, he would always have regrets. Better for the responsibility to be hers than to push Wolf into such a position.

She’d call Clay. It was his job, after all. He’d be better able to deal with the situation.

Only a few seconds passed as her thoughts rushed through her mind. She was still sitting there staring at Dottie’s house when Bobby came out on the porch. It took him a moment, but suddenly he noticed her car and looked straight at her. A distance of less than seventy-five yards separated them, still too far for her to read his expression, but she didn’t need a close-up for sheer terror to spurt through her. She stomped on the gas pedal and the car shot forward, slinging gravel, the tires squealing.

It was only a short distance to the Hearst house. Mary ran to the front door and banged her fist on it. Her heart felt as if it would explode. That brief moment when she had been face-to-face with him was almost more than she could stand. God, she had to call Clay.

Mrs. Hearst opened the door a crack, then recognized Mary and swung it all the way open. “Miss Potter! Is something wrong?”

Mary realized that she must look wild. “Could I use your phone? It’s an emergency.”

“Why—of course.” She stepped back, allowing Mary inside.

Pam appeared in the hallway. “Miss Potter?” She looked young and scared.

“The phone’s in the kitchen.”

Mary followed Mrs. Hearst and grabbed the receiver. “What’s the number of the sheriff’s department?”

Pam got a small telephone book from the countertop and began flipping through the pages. Too agitated to wait, Mary dialed the number for Information.

“Sheriff’s department, please.”

“What city?” the disembodied voice asked.

She drew a blank. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember the name of the town.

“Here it is,” Pam said.

Mary disconnected the call to Information, then dialed as Pam recited the number. The various computer clicks as the connection was made seemed to take forever.

“Sheriff’s office.”

“Deputy Armstrong, please. Clay Armstrong.”

“One moment.”

It was longer than one moment. Pam and her mother stood tensely, not knowing what was going on but reacting to her urgency. Both of them had dark circles under their eyes. It had been a bad night for the Hearst family.

“Sheriff’s office,” a different voice said.

“Clay?”

“You looking for Armstrong?”

“Yes. It’s an emergency!” she insisted.

“Well, I don’t know where he is right now. You want to tell me what the trouble is—hey, Armstrong! Some lady wants you in a hurry.” To Mary, he said, “He’ll be right here.”

A few seconds later Clay’s voice said, “Armstrong.”

“It’s Mary. I’m in town.”

“What the hell are you doing there?”

Her teeth were chattering. “It’s Bobby. Bobby Lancaster. I saw him—”

“Hang up the phone!”

It was a scream, and she jumped, dropping the receiver, which dangled from the end of its cord. She flattened against the wall, for Bobby stood there, inside the kitchen, with a huge butcher knife in his hand. His face was twisted with both hate and fear.

“You told!” He sounded like an outraged child.

“Told—told what?”

“You told him! I heard you!”

Mrs. Hearst had shrunk back against the cabinets, her hand at her throat. Pam stood as if rooted in the middle of the floor, her face colorless, her eyes locked on the young man she’d known all her life. She could see the slight swelling of his lower lip.

Bobby shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as if he didn’t know what to do next. His face was red, and he looked almost tearful.

Mary strove to steady her voice. “That’s right, I told him. He’s on his way now. You’d better run.” Maybe that wasn’t the best suggestion in the world, but more than anything she wanted to get him out of the Hearsts’ house before he hurt someone. She desperately wanted him to run.

“It’s all your fault!” He looked hunted, as if he didn’t know what to do except cast blame. “You—you came here and changed things. Mama said you’re a dirty Indian-lover.”

“I beg your pardon. I prefer clean people.”

He blinked, confused. Then he shook his head and said again, “It’s your fault.”

“Clay will be here in a few minutes. You’d better go.”

His hand tightened on the knife, and suddenly he reached out and grabbed her arm. He was big and soft, but he was faster than he looked. Mary cried out as he twisted her arm up behind her back, nearly wrenching her shoulder joint loose.

“You’ll be my hostage, just like on television,” he said and pushed her out the back door.

Mrs. Hearst was motionless, frozen in shock. Pam leaped for the phone, heard the buzzing that signaled a broken connection and held the button down for a new line. When she got a dial tone, she dialed the Mackenzies’ number. It rang endlessly, and she cursed, using words her mother had no idea she knew. All the while she leaned to the side, trying to see where Bobby was taking Mary.

She was just about to hang up when the receiver was picked up and a deep, angry voice roared, “Mary?”

She was so startled that she almost dropped the phone. “No,” she choked. “It’s Pam. He has Mary. It’s Bobby Lancaster, and he just dragged her out of the house—”

“I’ll be right there.”

Pam shivered at the deadly intent in Wolf Mackenzie’s voice.

Mary stumbled over a large rock hidden by the tall grass and gagged as the sudden intense pain made nausea twist her stomach.

“Stand up!” Bobby yelled, jerking at her.

“I twisted my ankle!” It was a lie, but it would give her an excuse to slow him down.

He’d dragged her across the small meadow behind the Hearsts’, through a thick line of trees, over a stream, and now they were climbing a small rise. At least it had looked small, but now she knew it was deceptively large. It was a big open area, not the smartest place for Bobby to head, but he didn’t plan well. That was what had thrown everyone off from the beginning, what had never seemed quite right. There had been no logic to his actions; Bobby reacted rather than planned.

He didn’t know what to do for a twisted ankle, so he didn’t worry about it, just pushed her along at the same speed. She stumbled again, but somehow managed to retain her balance. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if she fell on her stomach and he came down on top of her again.

“Why did you have to tell?” he groaned.

“You hurt Cathy.”

“She deserved it!”

“How? How did she deserve it?”

“She liked him—the Indian.”

Mary was panting. She estimated they’d gone over a mile. Not a great distance, but the gradual uphill climb was telling on her. It didn’t help that her arm was twisted up between her shoulder blades. How long had it been? When could she expect Clay to arrive? It had been at least twenty minutes.

Wolf made it off his mountain in record time. His eyes were like flint as he leaped from the truck before it had rocked to a complete stop. He and Joe both carried rifles, but Wolf’s was a sniper rifle, a Remington with a powerful scope. He’d never had occasion to try a thousand-yard shot with it, but he’d never missed his target at closer range.

People milled around the back of the house. He and Joe shouldered their way through the crowd. “Everybody freeze, before you destroy any more tracks!” Wolf roared, and everyone stopped dead.

Pam darted to them. Her face was streaked with tears. “He took her into the trees. There,” she said and pointed.

A siren announced Clay’s arrival, but Wolf didn’t wait for him. The trail across the meadow was as plain to him as a neon sign would have been, and he set off at a lope, with Joe on his heels.

Dottie Lancaster was terrified, and nearly hysterical. Bobby was her son, and she loved him desperately no matter what he’d done. She’d been sick when she’d realized he was the one who had attacked Cathy Teele and Mary; she’d almost worried herself into an early grave as she wrestled with her conscience and the sure knowledge that she’d lose her son if she turned him in. But that was nothing compared to the horror she’d felt when she discovered he’d slipped from the house. She’d followed the sounds of a disturbance and found all of her nightmares coming true: he’d taken Mary, and he had a knife. Now the Mackenzies were after him, and she knew they would kill him.

She grabbed Clay’s arm as he surged past her. “Stop them,” she sobbed. “Don’t let them kill my boy.”

Clay barely glanced at her. He shook her loose and ran after them. Distraught, Dottie ran, too.

By then some of the other men had gotten their rifles and were joining the hunt. They’d always felt sorry for Bobby Lancaster, but he’d hurt their women, and there was no excuse for it.

Wolf’s heartbeat settled down, and he pushed the panic away. His senses heightened, as they always did when he was on the hunt. Every sound was magnified in his ears, instantly recognizable. He saw every blade of grass, every broken twig and overturned rock. He could smell every scent nature had left, and the faint acrid, coppery tang of fear. His body was a machine, moving smoothly, silently.

He could read every sign. Here Mary had stumbled, and his muscles tightened. She had to be terrified. If he hurt her—she was so slight, no match at all for a man. The bastard had a knife. Wolf thought of a blade touching her delicate, translucent skin, and rage consumed him. He had to push it away because he couldn’t afford the mistakes rage could cause.

He broke out of the tree line and suddenly saw them, high on the side of the rise. Bobby was dragging Mary along, but at least she was still alive.

Wolf examined the terrain. He didn’t have a good angle. He moved east, along the base of the rise.

“Stop!”

It was Bobby’s voice, only faintly heard at that distance. They had halted, and Bobby was holding Mary in front of him. “Stop or I’ll kill her!”

Slowly, Wolf went down on one knee and raised the rifle to his shoulder. He sighted through the scope, not for a shot, but to see how he should set it up. The powerful scope plainly revealed the desperation on Bobby’s face and the knife at Mary’s throat.

“Bobbeee!” Dottie had reached them, and she screamed his name.

“Mama?”

“Bobby, let her go!”

“I can’t! She told!”

The men had clustered around. Several of them measured the distance by eye and shook their heads. They couldn’t make the shot, not at that range. They were as likely to hit Mary as Bobby, if they hit anything at all.

Clay looked down at Wolf. “Can you make the shot?”

Wolf smiled, and Clay felt that chill run up his spine again at the look in Wolf’s eyes. They were cold and murderous. “Yeah.”

“No!” Dottie sobbed the word. “Bobby!” she screamed. “Please, come down!”

“I can’t! I’ve got to kill her! She likes him, and he’s a dirty Indian! He killed my father!”

Dottie gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. “No,” she moaned, then screamed again. “No! He didn’t!” Pure hell was living in her eyes.

“He did! You said—an Indian—” Bobby broke off and began dragging Mary backward.

“Do it,” Clay said quietly.

Wolf braced the barrel of the rifle in the notch of a sapling. It was small but sturdy enough to be steady. Without a word he sighted in the cross hairs of the scope.

“Wait,” Dottie cried, anguish in her voice.

Wolf looked at her.

“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t kill him. He’s all I have.”

His black eyes were flat. “I’ll try.”

He concentrated on the shot, shutting everything out as he always had. It was maybe three hundred yards, but the air was still. The image in the scope was huge and clear and flattened, the depth perception distorted. Mary’s face was plain. She looked angry, and she was tugging at the arm around her shoulder, the one that held the knife to her throat.

God, when he got her back safe and sound, he was going to throttle her.

Because she was so small, he had a larger target than would normally have been presented. His instincts were to go for a head shot, to take Bobby Lancaster completely out of life, but he’d promised. Damn, it was going to be a bitch of a shot. They were moving, and he’d limited his own target area by promising not to go for a kill.

The cross hairs settled, and his hands became rock steady. He drew in a breath, let out half of it and gently squeezed the trigger. Almost simultaneously with the sharp thunder in his ear he saw the red stain blossom on Bobby’s shoulder and the knife drop from his suddenly useless hand even as he was thrown back by the bullet’s impact. Mary staggered to the side and fell, but was instantly on her feet again.

Dottie sagged to her knees, sobbing, her hands over her face.

The men surged up the hill. Mary ran down it and met Wolf halfway. He still had the rifle in his hand, but he caught her up in his arms and held her locked to him, his eyes closed as he absorbed the miracle of her, warm and alive against him, her silky hair against his face, her sweet scent in his lungs. He didn’t care who saw them, or what anyone thought. She was his, and he’d just lived through the worst half hour of his existence knowing that at any moment her life could be ended.

Now that it was over, she was crying.

She’d been dragged up the hill, and now Wolf dragged her down it. He was swearing steadily under his breath, ignoring her gasping protests until she stumbled. Then he snatched her up under his arm like a sack and continued down. People stared after them in astonishment, but no one moved to stop him. After today, they all viewed Wolf Mackenzie differently.

Wolf ignored her car and thrust her into his truck. Mary pushed her hair out of her face and decided not to mention the car; they would pick it up later. Wolf was in a rage, his face set and hard.

They had almost reached the road that wound up his mountain before he spoke. “What in hell were you doing in town?” The even tone didn’t fool her. The wolf was dangerously angered.

Perhaps she wasn’t as cautious as she should have been, but she still wasn’t afraid of him, not of the man she loved. She respected his temper, but she didn’t fear him. So she said, just as calmly, “I thought seeing me might trigger him into doing something stupid, so we could identify him.”

“You triggered him, all right. What he did wasn’t nearly as stupid as what you did. What did you do, parade up and down the streets until he grabbed you?”

She let the insult pass. “Actually it never came to that. I intended to talk to Pam first. I stopped at the store to ask Mr. Hearst if she was home and bumped into Dottie. She acted so strange and looked so worried that it made me wonder. She almost ran out of the store. Then, when I saw her turn onto Bay Road, I remembered Bobby, what he looked like. He came out on the porch and looked at me, and I knew he was the one.”

“So you made a citizen’s arrest?” he asked sarcastically.

Mary got huffy. “No. I’m not stupid, and you’d better not make another smart remark, Wolf Mackenzie. I did what I thought I had to do. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but there it is. Enough was enough. I couldn’t take the chance someone else could be hurt, or that he might start taking shots at you or Joe.

“I drove to Pam’s house and called Clay. I had no intention of confronting Bobby, but it didn’t work out that way. He followed me to Pam’s and heard me talking on the phone. So he grabbed me. You know what happened then.”

She was so matter-of-fact about it that he tightened his hands on the steering wheel to keep from shaking her. If she hadn’t been crying just a few minutes ago, he might have lost his tenuous control on his temper.

“Do you know what might have happened if I hadn’t come back to the barn for something and noticed your car was missing? It was just chance I was there when Pam called to tell me Bobby had grabbed you!”

“Yes,” she said patiently. “I know what could have happened.”

“It doesn’t bother you that he came close to cutting your throat?”

“Close doesn’t count except in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

He slammed on the brakes, so enraged he could barely see. He wasn’t aware of shutting off the motor, only of closing his hands on her slender shoulders. He was so close to pulling her across his knees that he was shaking, but she didn’t seem to realize that she should be frightened. With a faint sound she dived into his arms, clinging to him with surprising strength.

Wolf held her and felt her trembling. The red haze left his vision, and he realized that she was frightened, but not of him. With her normal damn-the-torpedoes attitude, she’d done what she’d thought was right and was probably trying to put up a calm front so he wouldn’t be alarmed.

As if anything could ever alarm him more than seeing an unbalanced rapist hold a knife to her throat.

Frantically he started the truck. It wasn’t far to his house, but he didn’t know if he could make it. He had to make love to her, soon, even if it was in the middle of the road. Only then would the fear of losing her begin to fade, when he felt her beneath him once more and she welcomed him into her delicate body.

Mary brooded. It had been four days since Wolf had shot Bobby; the first two days had been filled with statements and police procedures, as well as newspaper interviews and even a request from a television station, which Wolf had refused. The sheriff, not being a fool, had hailed Wolf as a hero and praised the shot he’d made. Wolf’s military service record was dug up, and a lot was written about the “much-decorated Vietnam veteran” who had saved a schoolteacher and captured a rapist.

Bobby was recuperating in a hospital in Casper; the bullet had punctured his right lung, but he was lucky to be alive under the circumstances. He was bewildered by everything that had happened and kept asking to go home. Dottie had resigned. She’d have to live the rest of her life knowing that her hatred had taken seed in her son’s mind and caused the entire nightmare. She knew Bobby would be taken away from her, at least for a time, and that they would never be able to live in Ruth again, even if he was ever a free man. But wherever Bobby was sent, she intended to be close by. As she’d told Wolf, he was all she had.

It was over, and Mary knew that Wolf would never be treated as an outcast again. The threat was past, and the town was safe. Just knowing who it was and that he’d been caught made a lot of difference in Cathy Teele’s recovery, though what had happened would always mark her life.

So there was no reason why Mary couldn’t return to her own house.

That was why she was brooding. In those four days, Wolf hadn’t said a word about her remaining with him. He’d never said a word of love, not even during their wild lovemaking after he’d snatched her to safety. He hadn’t said anything at all about their personal situation.

It was time to go home. She couldn’t stay with him forever, not when there was no fear for her safety now. She knew their affair would probably continue, at least for a while, but still the thought of leaving his house depressed her. She’d loved every minute of her time on Mackenzie’s Mountain, loved sharing the little commonplace things with him. Life consisted of the small things, with only scattered moments of intensity.

She calmly packed and refused to let herself cry. She was going to be under control and not make a scene. She loaded her suitcases into her car, then waited for Wolf to return to the house. It would be childish to sneak off, and she wouldn’t do it; she’d tell him she was returning to her home, thank him for his protection and leave. It would be immensely civilized.

As it happened, it was late afternoon when Wolf got back. He was sweaty and coated with dust, and limping a little, because a cow had stepped on his foot. He wasn’t in a good mood.

Mary smiled at him. “I’ve decided to get out of your hair, since there’s no reason to be afraid of staying by myself now. I’ve already packed and loaded everything in the car, but I wanted to stay until you got home to thank you for everything you’ve done.”

Wolf paused in the act of gulping cool, fresh water down his parched throat. Joe froze on the step, not wanting them to see him. He couldn’t believe Wolf would let her leave.

Slowly, Wolf turned his head to look at her. There was a savage expression in his eyes, but she was concentrating too hard on maintaining control to see it. She gave him another smile, but this one was harder, because he hadn’t said a word, not even, “I’ll call you.”

“Well,” she said brightly, “I’ll see you around. Tell Joe not to forget his lessons.”

She marched out the front door and down the steps. She’d gotten halfway to her car when a hard hand clamped down on her shoulder and spun her around.

“I’ll be damned if you’re setting foot off this mountain,” he said in a harsh tone.

He towered over her. For the first time Mary felt it was a disadvantage that she only reached his shoulder. She had to tilt her head back to talk to him, he was so close. The heat from his body enveloped her like steam. “I can’t stay here forever,” she replied reasonably, but now she could see the look in his eyes and she shivered. “I’m a small-town schoolteacher. I can’t just cohabit with you—”

“Shut up,” he said.

“Now see here—”

“I said shut up. You aren’t going anywhere, and you’re damn well going to cohabit with me for the rest of your life. It’s too late today, but first thing in the morning we’re going into town for our blood tests and license. We’re going to be married within a week, so get your little butt back in that house and stay there. I’ll bring your suitcases in.”

His expression would have made most men back up a few steps, but Mary crossed her arms. “I’m not marrying someone who doesn’t love me.”

“Hellfire!” he roared and jerked her up against him. “Not love you? Damn, woman, you’ve been wrapping me around your little finger since the first time I set eyes on you! I’d have killed Bobby Lancaster in a heartbeat for you, so don’t you ever say I don’t love you!”

As a declaration of love cum marriage proposal, it wasn’t exactly romantic, but it was certainly exciting. Mary smiled up at him and went on tiptoe to loop her arms around his neck. “I love you, too.”

He glared down at her, but noticed how pretty she looked with her soft pink sweater bringing out the delicate roses in her cheeks, and her slate-blue eyes twinkling at him. A breeze flirted with her silky, silvery-brown hair, and suddenly he buried his face in the baby-fine strands at her temple.

“God, I love you,” he whispered. He’d never thought he would love any woman, least of all an Anglo, but that was before this slight, delicate creature had bulldozed her way into his life and completely changed it. He could no more live without her now than he could live without air.

“I want children,” she stated.

He smiled against her temple. “I’m willing.”

She thought about it some more. “I think I’d like four.”

A slight frown creased his brow as he held her tighter. “We’ll see.” She was too small and delicate for that many pregnancies; two would be better. He lifted her in his arms and started for the house, where she belonged.

Joe watched from the window and turned away with a grin as his father lifted Mary against his chest.

Epilogue

Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Joe opened the letter from Mary and began grinning as he read. His roommate looked at him with interest. “Good news from home?”

“Yeah,” Joe said without looking up. “My stepmother is pregnant again.”

“I thought she just had a baby.”

“Two years ago. This is their third.”

His roommate, Bill Stolsky, watched Joe finish the letter. Privately he was a little awed by the calm, remote half-breed. Even when they’d been doolies, first-year cadets, and normally regarded as lower than the low, there had been something about Joe Mackenzie that had kept the upper-classmen from dealing him too much misery. He’d been at the top of his class from the beginning, and it was already known that he was moving on to flight training after graduation. Mackenzie was on the fast track to the top, and even his instructors knew it.

“How old is your stepmother?” Stolsky asked in curiosity. He knew Mackenzie was twenty-one, a year younger than himself, though they were both seniors in the Academy.

Joe shrugged and reached for a picture he kept in his locker. “Young enough. My dad’s pretty young, too. He was just a kid when I was born.”

Stolsky took the picture and looked at the four people in it. It wasn’t a posed photograph, which made it more intimate. Three adults were playing with a baby. The woman was small and delicate, and was looking up from the baby in her lap to smile at a big, dark, eagle-featured man. The man was one tough-looking dude. Stolsky wouldn’t want to meet him in an alley, dark or otherwise. He glanced quickly at Joe and saw the strong resemblance.

But the baby was clinging to the big man’s finger with a dimpled fist and laughing while Joe tickled his neck. It was a revealing and strangely disturbing look into Mackenzie’s private life, into his tightly knit family.

Stolsky cleared his throat. “Is that the newest baby?”

“No, that picture was made when I was a senior in high school. That’s Michael. He’s four years old now, and Joshua is two.” Joe couldn’t help grinning and feeling worried at the same time when he thought of Mary’s letter. Both his little brothers had been delivered by cesarean, because Mary was simply too slender to have them. After Joshua’s birth, Wolf had said there would be no more babies, because Mary had had such a hard time carrying Josh. But Mary had won, as usual. He’d have to make a point of getting off on leave when this baby was due.

“Your stepmother isn’t—uh—”

“Indian? No.”

“Do you like her?”

Joe smiled. “I love her. I wouldn’t be here without her.” He stood and walked to the window. Six years of hard work, and he was on the verge of getting what he’d lived for: fighter jets. First there was flight training, then Fighter Training School. More years of hard work loomed before him, but he was eager for them. Only a small percentage made it to fighters, but he was going to be one of them.

The cadets in his class who were going on to flight training had already been thinking of fighter call signs, picking theirs out even though they knew some of them would wash out of flight training, and an even greater number would never make it to fighters. But they never thought it would be them; it was always the other guy who washed out, the other guy who didn’t have the stuff.

They’d had a lot of fun thinking up those signs, and Joe had sat quietly, a little apart as he always was. Then Richards had pointed at him and said, “You’ll be Chief.”

Joe had looked up, his face calm and remote. “I’m not a chief.” His tone had been even, but Richards had felt a chill.

“All right,” he’d agreed. “What do you want to be called?”

Joe had shrugged. “Call me ‘Breed.’ It’s what I am.”

Already, though they hadn’t even graduated yet, people were calling him Breed Mackenzie. The name would be painted on his helmet, and a lot of people would forget his real name.

Mary had given him this. She’d pushed and prodded, fought for him, taught him. She’d given him his life, up in the blue.

Mary turned into Wolf’s arms. She was nude, and his big hand kept stroking down her pale body as if searching out signs of her as-yet-invisible pregnancy. She knew he was worried, but she felt wonderful and tried to reassure him. “I’ve never felt better. Face it, pregnancy agrees with me.”

He chuckled and stroked her breasts, lifting each one in turn in his palm. They were fuller now, and more sensitive. He could almost bring her to satisfaction just with his mouth on her nipples.

“But this is the last one,” he said.

“What if it’s another boy? Wouldn’t you like to try for a girl just once more?”

He groaned, because that was the argument she’d used to talk him into getting her pregnant this time. She was determined to have her four children.

“Let’s make a deal. If this one is a girl, there won’t be any more. If it’s a boy, we’ll have one more baby, but that’s the limit, regardless of its sex.”

“It’s a deal,” she agreed. She paused. “Have you thought that it’s possible you could father a hundred children and they’d all be boys? You may not have any female sperm. Look at your track record, three boys in a row—”

He put his hand on her mouth. “No more. Four is the absolute limit.”

She laughed at him and arched her slender body against him. His response was immediate, even after five years of marriage. Later, when he slept, Mary smiled into the darkness and stroked his strong back. This baby was a boy, too, she felt. But the next one—ah, the next one would be the daughter he craved. She was certain of it.

Mackenzie’s Mission

By Linda Howard

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Prologue

“Man must be trained for war, and woman for the relaxation of the warriors; all else is folly.”

—Friedrich Nietsche

“Hogwash.”

—Linda Howard

He was a legend even before he graduated from the Academy, at least among his own classmates and the underclassmen. As first in his graduating class he had his pick of assignments, and to no one’s surprise, he chose fighter jets. The politically savvy all knew that the fastest way to promotion in the Air Force was as an aviator, and fighter wings, with their inherent glamour, had always been the most visible. But those who knew Joe Mackenzie, newly commissioned officer in the United States Air Force, knew he didn’t give a damn about promotion, only about flying.

His superiors had doubts about his suitability for fighters, but that was the training he had chosen, and they decided to give him the opportunity. He was six foot three, almost too tall for a fighter jockey. He’d be okay as a bomber pilot, but the dimensions of the cockpit in a fighter meant it would be a tight fit for him, and the physical demands of G forces were generally better met by men who were less than six feet tall, and of stockier build. Of course, there were exceptions to every rule, and the statistics for the physical build of the best fighter pilots were general profiles, not hard-and-fast rules. So Joe Mackenzie was given his chance at fighter training.

His training instructors found that, despite his height, he was better than competent: he was superb. He was that once-in-a-lifetime jet jockey, the one who set the standards for everyone who came after him. He was peculiarly suited, both physically and mentally, for the job he had chosen. His eyesight was better than twenty-twenty, his reflexes were phenomenal and his cardio-vascular condition was so good that he was able to withstand greater G forces than his shorter fellow trainees. He remained at the top in his classes on physics and aerodynamics. He had a light touch with the controls and was willing to spend extra hours in the flight simulator perfecting his skills. Most of all, he had the unteachable quality of “situation awareness,” the ability to be aware of everything going on around him in a fluid situation and adjust his actions accordingly. All aviators had to have it to some degree, but only in the best of them was it highly developed. He had an amazing degree of it. By the time Joe Mackenzie earned his wings, he was already known as a “hot stick,” one of those with the magic touch.

As a very young captain in the first Gulf War, he downed three enemy aircraft in one day, an achievement that, to his relief, wasn’t publicized. The reasons for it were political: to ensure better public relations with their allies, the United States Air Force was willing to let pilots from the other countries get the glory. Captain Mackenzie was more than willing to go along with policy. It had been mere chance, on the second day of the war, that had put him in the middle of the toughest resistance the enemy put up during the short length of the hostilities. He hadn’t been impressed with the enemy pilots’ skills. Nevertheless, for about three minutes it had been a real fur ball, when he and his wingman had been jumped by six enemy fighters.

The end result was an almost indecently fast promotion to Major, and Joe Mackenzie, tactical call sign “Breed,” was recognized as the fastest of the fast trackers, a fast-burner on his way to a general’s star.

During the second Gulf War, Major Mackenzie scored two more official kills in air-to-air combat and was designated an ace. This time there was no way to keep his achievements out of the media, not that the Pentagon wanted to; it recognized that it had a public-relations gold mine in the handsome half-breed American Indian, who exemplified all of the qualities they most wanted to project. He was given the choice assignments and made lieutenant colonel at the age of thirty-two. It was generally recognized that for Breed Mackenzie, there was nowhere to go but up.

Chapter 1

She was the most beautiful bitch he’d ever seen, fast and sleek and deadly. Just looking at her made his heart beat faster. Even parked in the hangar, her engines cold and wheels chocked, she gave the impression of pure speed.

Colonel Joe Mackenzie reached out and touched the fuselage, his long fingers caressing her with the light touch of a lover. The dark metallic skin of her airframe had a slick feel to it that was different from every other fighter he’d flown, and the difference entranced him. He knew it was because her airframe was a revolutionary new composite of thermoplastics, graphite and industrial spider silk, which was far stronger and more flexible than steel, meaning she could withstand far greater force without breaking apart than any aircraft ever before built. Intellectually he knew that, but emotionally he felt that it was because she was so alive. She didn’t feel quite like metal; maybe it was the spider silk, but she wasn’t as cold to the touch as any other airplane.

Developmental programs were usually given code names that didn’t reflect the program’s nature, which was why the earlier SR-71 Blackbird had been code named “Oxcart.” This particular bird, a second-generation advanced tactical fighter, bore the unusually descriptive code name of Night Wing, and when it went into production it would receive some suitably macho designation like the F-15 Eagle or the F-16 Fighting Falcon, but to Colonel Mackenzie she was “Baby.” There were actually five prototypes, and he called them all Baby. The test pilots assigned to the program under his command complained that she—whichever “she” it was—always acted up with them because he had spoiled her for other pilots. Colonel Mackenzie had given them his legendary ice-blue stare and replied, “That’s what all my women say.” His face had remained perfectly expressionless, leaving his men uncertain if that was the truth or a joke. They suspected it to be the truth.

Joe Mackenzie had flown a lot of hot planes, but Baby was special, not just in her construction and power, but her weapons system. She was truly revolutionary, and she was his; as program manager, it was his responsibility to get the kinks worked out of her so she could go into full production. That was assuming Congress came through with the funding, but General Ramey was confident that there wouldn’t be any problem there. For one thing, the manufacturer had brought her in on budget, unlike the overrun fiasco that had killed the A-12 in the last decade.

For a long time stealth technology had detracted from a fighter plane’s agility and power, until the advent of supercruise had alleviated some of the power problems. Baby was both stealthy and agile, with vectored thrust that let her turn tighter than any fighter had ever turned before, and at higher speeds. She super-cruised at Mach 2, and broke Mach 3 in afterburner. And her weapons system used adjustable laser firing, ALF, a mild little acronym for what would someday revolutionize warfare. Mackenzie knew he was involved in the making of history. Lasers had been used for targeting for some time, the beam guiding missiles to the selected location, but for the first time lasers were being used as the weapons themselves. Scientists had finally solved the difficulty of a manageable energy source for X-ray lasers and teamed it with sophisticated optics. Sensors in the pilot’s helmet allowed him to spot a missile, target or enemy plane in any direction, and the adjustable targeting system followed the direction of the sensors in the helmet. No matter how an enemy plane turned and juked it couldn’t escape; a target would have to go faster than the speed of light to escape the laser beam, something not likely to happen.

Baby was so complex that only the best of the best had been assigned to this phase of her development, and the security surrounding her was so tight that an ant would have had a hard time getting into the hangar without proper clearance.

“Anything you need, sir?”

Joe turned, shifting his attention to Staff Sergeant Dennis Whiteside, known as “Whitey,” who possessed fiery red hair, a multitude of freckles and a mechanical genius that bordered on miraculous where airplanes were concerned. Whitey considered Baby his plane and suffered the pilots touching her only because he couldn’t figure out a way to prevent it.

“Just checking her over before I turn in,” Joe replied. “Weren’t you supposed to go off duty hours ago?”

Whitey took a rag from his back pocket and gently polished the spot where Joe’s fingers had touched the plane. “There were some things I wanted to make sure were done right,” he replied. “You’re taking her up in the morning, aren’t you, sir?”

“Yes.”

Whitey grunted. “At least you don’t jerk her around the way some of those guys do,” he said grouchily.

“If you notice any of my guys treating any of the birds rough, let me know.”

“Well, it ain’t rough, exactly. It’s just that they don’t have your touch.”

“All the same, I mean what I said.”

“Yes, sir.”

Joe clapped Whitey on the shoulder and headed for his quarters. The sergeant stared after him for a long minute. He had no doubt that the colonel would indeed make any pilot pray he would die and go to hell just to escape his wrath if any of them were caught being careless or stupid with any of the Night Wing prototypes. Colonel Mackenzie was notorious for accepting nothing less than perfection from his pilots, but at the same time they all knew that he valued his men’s lives above all else, and maintenance on the birds had to be top-notch, which was why Whitey was still in the hangar long after he should have been off duty. Mackenzie demanded the best from everyone in this program, with no exceptions. A mistake in maintenance on the ground could lead to the loss of one of these eighty-million-dollar aircraft, or even the death of a pilot. It wasn’t a job for anyone with a casual attitude.

As Joe walked through the desert night he saw a light on in one of the offices and turned his steps toward the metal building. He didn’t object to people working late, but he wanted everyone to be awake and alert the next day, too. There were some workaholics assigned to the Night Wing project who would work eighteen hours a day if he didn’t ride herd on them.

His steps were silent, not because he was trying to sneak up on anyone but because that was how he’d been taught to walk from the time he’d taken his first step. Not that anyone in the offices would have heard him approaching anyway; the air conditioners were humming, trying to offset the late July heat and never quite succeeding. The metal Quonset huts seemed to absorb the blistering sun.

The building was dark except for the light in a cubicle on the left. It was one of the offices used by the civilian laser-targeting team, working on-site to troubleshoot the glitches that inevitably showed up when a new system was put into operation. Joe remembered that a new technician had been scheduled to arrive that day, to replace one of the original team who had had a slight heart attack a week before. The guy who’d had the attack was doing okay, but his doctor didn’t want him working in the hundred-degree-plus heat, so the company had flown in a replacement.

Joe was curious about the replacement, a woman named Caroline Evans. He’d heard the other three members of the team grousing about her, calling her “the Beauty Queen,” and their tone hadn’t been admiring. The team might be civilian, but he couldn’t allow friction within the group to affect their work. If everyone couldn’t get along, he would have to tell the laser-systems people to replace their replacement. He wanted to talk to whichever of the team was working late, find out if Ms. Evans had arrived without incident and exactly what the problem was that they didn’t want to work with her.

He walked silently up to the open doorway and stood in it for a minute, watching. The woman in the office had to be the Beauty Queen herself, because she sure as hell wasn’t anyone he’d ever met before. He would have remembered if he had.

It wasn’t any hardship to watch her, that was for certain. His erect posture slowly stiffened as every muscle in his body surged to alert status. He’d been tired, but suddenly adrenaline was humming through his system and all of his senses became acute, just the way they did when he kicked in the afterburners and went ballistic.

She wore a straight red skirt that ended well above her knees. Her shoes were off, and she was leaning back in her chair, her bare feet propped on the desk. Joe leaned his shoulder against the door frame, lei-surely surveying the smooth, curved legs that had been exposed. No stockings; the heat made them impractical. Nice legs. Better than nice. Verging on stupendous.

A sheaf of computer printouts were on her lap, and she was checking each item, referring occasionally to a textbook beside her. A cup of pale green tea was gently steaming within easy reach of her often blindly reaching hand. Her hair was a pale, bell-shaped curve, combed straight back from her face in the classic style and just long enough to bounce on her shoulders. He could see only part of her face, enough to note her high cheekbones and full lips.

Suddenly he wanted her to face him. He wanted to see her eyes, hear her voice.

“Time to shut it down for the night,” he said.

She shot up from the chair with a stifled shriek, tea spilling in one direction and the computer printout in another, long legs flying as she brought them down to the floor, the chair sent spinning across the room to crash into the filing cabinets. She whirled to face him, one hand pressed to her breast as if she could physically calm her heartbeat. A very shapely breast, he noticed, for her hand had pulled the fabric of her cotton blouse tight across her flesh.

Anger flashed like lightning across her face, then was just as suddenly gone as her eyes widened. “Oh my God,” she said in a hushed tone. “It’s G. I. Joe.”

He caught the subtle undertone of sarcasm, and his black eyebrows lifted. “Colonel G. I. Joe.”

“So I see,” she said admiringly. “A full bird colonel. An daring-knocker,” she added, pointing to his academy ring and using the less than complimentary term for an academy graduate. “Either you mugged a colonel and stole his insignia, had a fantastic face-lift and dyed your hair black, or you have a sponsor with some heavy-duty juice who’s rushing you through the grades.”

He kept his expression bland. “Maybe I’m damn good at what I do.”

“Promotion on merit?” she asked, as if it were a concept so impossible it was beyond consideration. “Naahh.”

He was accustomed to women reacting to him in varying ways, ranging from fascination to a certain intimidation that bordered on fear, always based on a very physical awareness of him. He was also used to commanding respect, if not liking. None of that was in Caroline Evans’ expression. She hadn’t taken her eyes off him for a second, her gaze as steady and piercing as a gunslinger’s. Yeah, that was it; she was facing him like an adversary.

He straightened away from the door frame and held out his hand, abruptly deciding to put the situation on a professional standing and let her know who she was dealing with. “Colonel Joe Mackenzie, project manager.” Service protocol stated that shaking hands was a woman’s choice, that a male officer should never extend his hand to a woman first, but he wanted to feel her hand in his and sensed that if he gave her the option, even that touch wouldn’t be allowed.

She didn’t hesitate but firmly clasped his hand. “Caroline Evans, replacement for Boyce Walton on the laser team.” Two quick up and down pumps, then she withdrew her hand.

Since she was barefoot, he could accurately estimate her height as around five-four; the top of her head was even with his collarbone. The difference in their sizes didn’t intimidate her, even though she had to look up to meet his gaze. Her eyes were a dark green, he saw, framed by dark lashes and brows that suggested the gold of her hair was chemically achieved.

He nodded toward the printout on the floor. “Why are you working so late, especially on your first day on the job? Is anything wrong that I need to know about?”

“Not that I know of,” she replied, stooping down to pick up the accordion of paper. “I was just double-checking some items.”

“Why? What made you think of it?”

She gave him an impatient look. “I’m a chronic double-checker. I always double-check that the oven is off, the iron unplugged, the door locked. I look both ways twice before I cross a road.”

“You haven’t found anything wrong?”

“No, of course not. I’ve already said so.”

He relaxed once he was assured that nothing was wrong with the targeting system and resumed his leisurely and enjoyable survey of Caroline Evans as she took a roll of paper towels from a desk drawer and used a couple of sheets to blot up the spilled tea. She bent and twisted with a fluid ease that struck him as sexy. Everything she had done so far, even the barely veiled challenge of her gaze, had struck him as sexy. His loins tightened in response.

She tossed the wet paper towels in the trash and slipped her feet into her shoes. “Nice meeting you, Colonel,” she said without looking at him. “See you tomorrow.”

“I’ll walk you to your quarters.”

“No thanks.”

The immediate, casual dismissal of his offer irritated him. “It’s late, and you’re alone. I’m walking you to your quarters.”

She did look at him then, turning to face him and putting her hands on her hips. “I appreciate the offer, Colonel, but I don’t need those kinds of favors.”

“Those kinds of favors? What kind are we talking about?”

“The kind that do more harm than good. Look, you’re the head honcho. If anyone sees you walking me to my quarters, within two days I’ll be hearing snide comments about how I wouldn’t be on the team if I wasn’t playing footsie with you. It’s a hassle I can do without.”

“Ah,” he said as understanding dawned. “You’ve run into this before, haven’t you? No one thinks you can look like that and have a brain, too.”

She stared at him belligerently. “What do you mean, ‘look like that’? Just how do I look?”

She had the temperament of a hedgehog, but Joe had to fight the urge to put his arms around her and tell her that he would fight her battles for her from now on. She wouldn’t appreciate the gesture, and he wasn’t certain why he wanted to make it, since she appeared more than capable of waging her own wars. If he were smart, he would play it safe, make some noncommittal comment to keep from treading on her toes any further, but he hadn’t become a fighter pilot because he wanted to play it safe. “Fetching,” he replied, and his eyes were hard and bright and hungry.

She blinked, as if startled. She took a step back and said, “Oh,” in a soft, befuddled tone.

“You have to know you’re attractive,” he pointed out.

She blinked again. “Looks shouldn’t enter into it. You look like a walking recruiting poster, but it hasn’t hurt your career, has it?”

“I’m not defending discrimination,” he said. “You asked the question, and I answered it. You look fetching.”

“Oh.” She was watching him warily now as she sidled past.

He put his hand on her arm, stopping her. The feel of her smooth, warm flesh under his palm tempted him to explore, but he resisted. “If anyone here hassles you, Caroline, come to me.”

She darted an alarmed look at his hand on her arm. “Uh—yeah, sure.”

“Even if it’s a member of your own team. You’re civilians, but this is my project. I can have anyone replaced if he causes trouble.”

His touch was making her visibly jittery, and he studied her for a long minute, his brows drawing together in a slight frown, before he let her go. “I mean it,” he said in a gentler tone. “Come to me if you have any trouble. I know you don’t want me to walk you to your quarters, but I’m going in that direction anyway, since I’m turning in, too. I’ll give you a thirty-second head start, so we won’t be walking together. Is that okay?”

“Thirty seconds isn’t very long.”

He shrugged. “It’ll put about thirty yards between us. Take it or leave it.” He checked his watch. “Starting now.”

She immediately turned and fled. That was the only word for it. She all but hiked up that tight skirt and ran. Joe’s eyebrows climbed in silent question. When the thirty seconds were up, he left the building and caught sight of her slim figure, barely visible in the darkness and still moving at a fast clip. All the way to his own quarters, he pondered on what had turned an Amazon into a skittish filly.

Caroline slammed and locked the door to her Spartan quarters and leaned against the wood as she released her breath in a big whoosh. She felt as if she’d just had a narrow escape from a wild animal. What was the Air Force thinking, letting that man run loose? He should be locked up somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon, where they could use him for their posters but keep the susceptible women of America safe.

Maybe it was his eyes, as pale blue and piercing as the lasers she worked on. Maybe it was the way he towered over her, or the graceful power of his muscular body. Maybe it was his deep voice, the particular note in it when he said she was “fetching,” or the heat of his lean, callused hand when he’d touched her. Maybe it was all of that, but what had all but panicked her had been the hungry, predatory gleam in those eyes when he’d looked at her.

She’d been doing well up until then. She had definitely been at her off-putting best, both arrogant and dismissive, which had never before failed to keep men at a safe distance. It was a trade-off; it kept her from being friends with her co-workers, but it also stopped any sexual advances before they started. She had battled her way out of so many clinches during college and graduate school and her early days on the job, that she had learned to go on the offensive from the beginning. With all of that experience, she should have been able to keep her composure, but one look from Colonel “Laser-Eye” Mackenzie, one slightly admiring comment, and she had lost both her composure and her common sense. She had been ignominiously routed.

Well, that was what happened when you had Ph. D.s for parents. They had seen the signs of superior intelligence in their only offspring and taken immediate steps to give her the schooling she deserved. All through elementary and high school she had been the youngest in her class, due to her accelerated progress. She hadn’t had one date in high school; she had been too weird, too gangly and awkward as she went through puberty two or three years after her classmates. It hadn’t been any better in college. She had started her freshman year right after her sixteenth birthday, and what college man in his right mind would go out with a girl who was legally still jailbait, when there were so many legal lovelies both willing and available?

Isolated and lonely, Caroline had devoted herself to her studies and found herself finishing her senior courses during her eighteenth year. At about the same time the guys in her classes had realized that the Evans girl might be an egghead, but she was easy on the eyes. This time, there was no issue of age to protect her. Having never learned dating skills with anyone her own age, she was totally at a loss on how to handle these…these octopuses who suddenly couldn’t seem to keep their hands off her. Disconcerted, alarmed, she had withdrawn further into her studies and begun developing a prickly shield for protection.

Her transformation as she reached maturity wasn’t drastic enough to equal that of an ugly duckling into a swan; she had simply grown from a gangly adolescent into a woman. Her menses had been late in coming, as if her body had to balance nature by dawdling along while her mind raced ahead. It was all a matter of bad timing. When her classmates were going through puberty, she was still literally playing with dolls. When she went through puberty, they were already settled into the dating game. She never matched them in terms of physical or emotional maturity. When she was ready to begin dating, she found herself being groped by boys accustomed to a much more sophisticated level of intimacy.

In the end, it was just easier to drive them all away.

So here she was, twenty-eight years old, genius IQ, a bona fide specialist in light amplification and optic targeting, possessed of a Ph.D. in physics, reduced to idiocy and panic because a man had said she was “fetching.”

It was disgusting.

It was also a bit frightening, because she sensed Colonel Mackenzie hadn’t been alienated as she had intended; instead, he’d looked like a man who enjoyed a challenge.

She hit herself on the forehead. How could she have been such an idiot? The colonel was a jet jockey, for heaven’s sake. He was a member of a different breed, a man who positively thrived on challenge. The way to keep from attracting his attention was to appear meek and mild, with maybe a little simpering thrown in. Problem was, she didn’t know how to simper. She should have gone to a finishing school rather than graduate school. She would have taken Simpering 101 over and over until she had it nailed.

Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe she could act sweet and helpless enough to fool him. No—that would invite attention from the men who did like that sort of behavior in a woman. She was caught—damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.

The only thing left to do was put up a good fight.

When Joe reached his quarters he stripped out of his uniform, then stood under a cool shower until he began to feel human again. The desert in July was a real bitch, sucking the moisture from his body until even his eyeballs felt dry, but Baby required tight security, and Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada supplied that, in spades. Despite the discomfort and spartan conditions, he was grateful for the security and didn’t look forward to taking the wraps off Baby, as would happen when Congress voted on funding. The media would see her then, not that her revolutionary nature was evident in her appearance; her design wasn’t radically different from that of the F-22, which was what made it possible for them to do the test flights at Nellis instead of Edwards in California, where test flights were traditionally made. Snoops looked for something different at Edwards, but here at Nellis, with so many different types of aircraft taking part in the war games they conducted, she wasn’t so obvious.

The other pilots based here had to notice that they were doing test flights with an aircraft that wasn’t exactly like the F-22, but no one who wasn’t working on the program was allowed a close look at the Night Wing prototypes, and security was a way of life here anyway. Baby’s differences were in her skin and in the electronics suite, her weapons system; when she was unveiled, she would galvanize every hostile espionage agency in the world, and security would have to be even tighter, though he didn’t see how it could.

He’d been thinking of Baby, but suddenly the image of Caroline Evans filled his mind and he grinned, wondering what it would take to tame the little hedgehog. Hiss kin suddenly felt hot and tight, despite the cool water, so he shut off the shower and stepped out of the cubicle. It he could get her in the shower with him, they would probably turn the water to steam.

He stood in front of the air conditioner, letting the cold air blow over his wet, naked body and enjoying the shivers that rippled over him, but it didn’t do much to ease the sense of fullness in his loins. Grimly he pushed thoughts of Ms. Evans out of his mind. When he was dry enough not to drip, he went, still naked, into the tiny kitchen area and slapped a sandwich together. The freedom from clothes let something inside him relax. He had spent almost half his life in the military, surrounded by regulations and wearing uniforms, and he felt comfortable with it at home, but at the same time there was still a primitive part of him that sometimes said, “That’s enough,” and he had to strip.

He had grown up on a horse ranch in Wyoming and he returned there every chance he got; spending a week or two riding the roughest broncs on the ranch satisfied the same wild restlessness in him, but he was tied up with the Night Wing project and couldn’t get any free time, so the clothes had to go. The only garment he ever regretted having to remove was his flight suit; if he could just spend all his time in the air, he’d be all right.

Damn it, the higher he was promoted, the less he flew. Responsibilities and paperwork took up more and more of his time. He had accepted the position of project manager on Night Wing only because he’d been guaranteed he would be able to fly the babies. The Air Force had wanted its best in the cockpits of the new planes, and the pilots assigned were all top-notch, but more than that, it had wanted the hands-on opinion of the best of the best, and Colonel Joe Mackenzie still stood head and shoulders above all the others.

Joe wasn’t vain about his skill with a fighter, because he’d worked too damn hard to attain it. He’d been born with the intellect, eyesight and lightning-fast reflexes, but the rest was the result of countless hours of study, of practice, of drilling himself in the flight simulator until every reaction was automatic and instantaneous. Even at the age of thirty-five his reaction time was still faster than that of the young Turks coming out of flight school, and his eyesight was still better than twenty-twenty. He had a lot of flying time left, if the military would let him have it. He’d shot up through the ranks so fast that he would probably get his first star in another year, and then he’d be lucky if he could wrangle enough flying time to remain qualified.

The alternative was to resign his commission to take a job with an aircraft manufacturer as a test pilot, throwing away his years in the military. He liked the Air Force, didn’t want to leave it, but the idea of being grounded was unbearable. Life would be flat without the challenge of mastering both nature and machine, and knowing his life hung in the balance if he didn’t do it right.

Caroline slid into his mind again, a challenge of a different sort plain in her gunslinger’s eyes. He could plainly picture the color of those eyes, dark green mostly, mingled with a bit of blue, and gold flecks lighting the depths. The thought of those eyes looking up at him as he moved over her in bed made his heart begin pounding hard and fast, just the way he would take her.

He wanted to make the little hedgehog purr like a kitten.

Chapter 2

Caroline had stringent comfort requirements, which meant it sometimes took her a while to get dressed. If something didn’t feel right on a particular day, she took it off and put on something else. Before she left for work each morning she sat, stretched, twisted, moved her arms back and forth, then lifted them over her head to see if her clothes were going to irritate her during the day. She couldn’t bear being distracted by an uncomfortable seam or an aggravating fit.

Women’s fashions were a sore point with her. Why were most designers men? She thought it should be against the law for a man to design women’s clothes. She had decided while still in adolescence that men had no idea how uncomfortable women’s fashions usually were and really didn’t care, since they themselves weren’t called upon to spend hours standing in tendon-shortening high heels, encased in sweltering hosiery, bound either by bras or dresses tight enough to take over the job of lifting and separating, or pushing together to create cleavage, according to the dictates of the occasion.

And why were women’s fashions made out of flimsy material, while the temperatures in most offices and restaurants was always set low, so the men in their suits would be comfortable? She found this stupid on two counts: one, why were men required to wear jackets anyway—and was there anything more ridiculous than that remnant of the breastplate, the necktie, that they knotted around their throats like a hangman’s noose, interfering with a few basic things like breathing and swallowing—and why weren’t women allowed to wear coats, too, if the men felt unable to give theirs up? Fashion, in her mind, consisted of equal parts stupidity and lunacy. In a logical world, people would wear functional clothing, like jeans and loafers and sweat-shirts.

She couldn’t change the world, but she could control her own small part of it by insisting on her own comfort. Today she chose a full, gathered white skirt that came to midcalf, with an elastic waistband. She topped it with an oversize white T-shirt and twisted two scarves, one melon and one aqua, together to be tied around her waist as a belt. Her shoes were white flats. She was cool, coordinated and comfortable, just the way she wanted to be.

During the night she had tried to analyze just what it was about Colonel Mackenzie that had so discomfited her; other men had come on to her like gangbusters and she’d managed to handle it, so why had his rather mild remark, coupled with a look that wasn’t mild at all, sent her into such panic? It was definitely the look that had done it. She’d never seen eyes like those before, pale blue diamonds glittering in a bronzed face, so piercing it felt as if they were cutting right into her flesh, and she’d sensed that the man behind them wasn’t like any man she’d met before, either.

There were several possible reasons, but none that she could pin down as the primary cause of her reaction. She would just have to handle herself as well as possible, keep her guard up and try to make certain there were always other people around whenever she had dealings with the colonel. Why couldn’t he have come around earlier the day before, when the rest of the team had still been working? If he had, she would have slept better last night.

She glanced around, making certain that everything was switched off, then patted her skirt pockets to assure herself that her keys were in there. Pockets were required; every outfit she wore had to have pockets, because handbags were another of her pet peeves. Why were women condemned to lug them around their entire lives? Why couldn’t women have pockets like men? Because fashion said that it ruined the “lines” of their clothes. Because women were thought to be too vain. Because men were continually handing items to women with a casual, “Put this in your purse,” meaning, “So you can carry it and I won’t have to.” For women to be truly liberated, she thought, they should have burned their purses instead of their brassieres. And then thrown their high-heeled shoes onto the bonfire.

To keep from having to carry a bag, she had stocked her desk the day before with the grooming items she was likely to need during any given day. After all, not liking purses was no reason to go without lipstick. She did have personal standards to uphold.

She was normally the first person at work, and that morning was no exception. She liked mornings, and dawn in the desert was something special, with everything so clear and crisply outlined. Later in the day heat waves would blur the edges of the landscape, but right now it was perfect. She hummed as she made coffee. No matter how hot it got, coffee was a necessity in every workplace she’d ever seen.

She tore the wrapper off a honey bun, slapped the pastry into the microwave and zapped it for ten seconds. Breakfast was now ready. She settled into her chair and began rereading a report on the targeting system’s last performance as she absently pinched bites from the pastry.

Thirty minutes later Cal Gilchrist came in, looking surprised when he saw her at her desk. “You’re in early,” he said as he went straight to the coffeepot. “I didn’t see you at chow.”

“I ate a honey bun here.” Having finished reading, she tossed the report aside. Of the other three members of the team, Cal was the most amiable. To be honest, she admitted, he was more amiable than even herself. He was good-natured, friendly and capable, maybe thirty years old, still single and he enjoyed an active social life. She had met him before, but this was the first time they’d worked on a project together. They actually worked for two different companies, she with Boling-Wahl Optics, which had developed the laser targeting system, and Cal with DataTech, which had teamed with Boling-Wahl on the computer program that ran the system.

“There’s another test at 0800,” Cal said a she sipped his coffee. “When Adrian and Yates get here, we’ll all go to the control room so we can listen in on the flights. Colonel Mackenzie’s going up today. He always comes back to the control room after a flight, and I’ll introduce you to him.”

“We’ve already met,” she replied. “He came by last night before I quit for the day.”

“What did you think of him?”

She thought for a moment, trying to come up with a concise answer, and finally settled on “Scary.”

Cal laughed. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to cross him. I would have sworn that fighter pilots didn’t respect anything, but they sure as hell respect him, in the air and on the ground. One of them said that Mackenzie is the best pilot in the Air Force, period. That’s saying a lot, considering none of this group are slouches.”

The other two members of the team arrived. Yates Korleski, a short, sturdy, balding man, was the senior member and head of the team. Adrian Pendley was Caroline’s fly in the ointment on this particular assignment. He was tall and good-looking, divorced, and unrelentingly negative about having Caroline on the team. When she had first gone to work for Boling-Wahl he had given her the rush, and he’d never forgiven her for the brush-off she had given him in return. He was good at his job, though, so she was determined to work with him, even if it meant ignoring his incessant little gibes.

He walked past her without speaking, but Yates paused beside her desk. “Did you get settled in okay?”

“Yes, thanks. Met the head honcho last night, too.”

Yates grinned. “What did you think of him?”

“Like I told Cal, he’s a bit scary.”

“Just don’t ever make a mistake, or you’ll find out how scary.”

“No allowing for human error, huh?”

“Not with his birds or his men.”

Yates wandered off in the direction of the coffeepot, and Caroline decided that maybe her panic of the night before had been justified. Yates had been working on defense contracts for twenty years, so if he was impressed, the colonel wasn’t any ordinary joe. She grimaced at the inadvertent mental play on words.

At the appointed time they all trooped to the airfield, where the flights were being monitored. Their IDs were checked before they were allowed to enter the control room, reminding her of the tight security. The place swarmed with guards, and she knew that the Night Wing project was only one of several going on. There were a lot of civilians working at Nellis, people with both the highest credentials and the highest security rating. Just being here meant that her background had been checked so thoroughly that her file probably even contained the brand of breakfast cereal she’d liked best as a child.

The control room was a busy place, lined with monitors and people manning them. Practically every part of the Night Wing aircraft incorporated some radical change from how aircraft had been designed in the past, so there were a lot of different companies and defense contractors working to make certain everything was operational. A group of pilots had gathered, too, some in flightsuits and some in regular service uniforms. Several whistles filled the air when they caught sight of Caroline, and one grinning pilot clasped his hands over his heart.

“I’m in love,” he announced to the group at large.

“Don’t pay any attention to him, ma’am,” another of the pilots said. “That’s the third time this week, and it’s only Tuesday. He’s fickle, very fickle.”

“But good-looking,” the first pilot said in defense of himself. “So what about it, beautiful? Want to get married, live in a rose-covered cottage and have beautiful children?”

“I’m allergic to roses,” she said.

“And men,” Adrian muttered behind her, just loud enough for her to hear. She ignored him.

“Forget the roses,” the pilot said grandly. The tag on his shirt said his name was Major Austin Deale. “I’m adaptable. And fun. Did I mention that we’ll have lots of fun?”

A deep voice came over the speaker, and as if a switch had been thrown, the pilots stopped their bantering and turned toward the monitor. It took Caroline a moment to realize that it was an in-cockpit camera, letting them see what the pilot was doing and seeing.

“There are four planes up today,” Lieutenant Colonel Eric Picollo said, setting up the situation for them. “Two Night Wings and two F-22s. The F-22 is the only thing in production fast enough to give the prototypes a good test. The Night Wings are doing some stress maneuvers, and then they’ll test the targeting system.”

The deep voice came from the speakers again, laconic and matter-of-fact, as if the man weren’t screaming along faster than the speed of sound high above the desert floor. Caroline shivered, and goose bumps rose on her arms.

“Go to MIL.”

“Going to MIL,” another voice answered.

“Military power throttle setting,” Cal, who was standing just to her right, whispered. “All or more of an engine’s rated thrust.”

She nodded her understanding, her attention fixed on the monitor. All she could see of Colonel Mackenzie was his gloved hands and long legs, with the throttle between them, but she knew it was him she was watching rather than the other Night Wing pilot. There was just something about the way he moved.

The pilots took the aircraft through a series of maneuvers, and the sensors embedded in the aircraft’s skin sent back readings of the stress levels on the airframe.

“Twenty degrees alpha,” the deep voice said, confirming what the digital readout on the computer screen was telling them. “Thirty…forty…fifty…sixty.”

One of the pilots standing behind her muttered, “Damn,” in a nervous tone.

“Alpha is angle of attack,” Major Deale whispered, noticing Caroline’s puzzled look. His own expression was tense. “Most high-performance aircraft can only do about twenty degrees before they stall out. We’ve taken Baby to fifty degrees, because her vectored thrust gives better control, but even the X-29 wasn’t controllable above seventy degrees.”

“Seventy,” said the calm voice. “Seventy-five.”

The major had turned pale. He was staring at the changing numbers on the computer screen as if he could control them by willpower alone.

“Seventy-seven…seventy-nine…eighty…controls feel a little spongy. That’s enough for now, leveling out.”

“How’d Mad Cat do?” someone asked.

“Sixty-five,” another someone replied, and the group chuckled.

“Was that his alpha, or his pucker factor?”

“I was sweating at fifty.”

“We’ll have to haul Mad Cat out of the cockpit. He won’t have any starch left in his legs at all.”

“Bet Breed’s heart rate didn’t even go up. He bleeds ice water, man, pure ice water.”

Next, the aircraft pulled both negative and positive Gs, provoking more comments as the speakers carried the sounds of the grunts the pilots made to force more oxygen into their brains and keep from blacking out. A trained pilot could normally withstand up to six positive Gs before gray-out began, but with specialized breathing techniques tolerance could be raised to about nine Gs for short periods of time.

The colonel was pulling ten Gs.

“Level out, level out,” a captain said under his breath.

Major Deale was sweating. “Don’t do this to me,” he muttered. “Come on, Breed. Don’t push it any further.”

“Levelling out,” a calm voice said over the radio, and she heard the quiet release of air from several pairs of lungs.

“That son of a bitch is a genetic freak,” the captain said, shaking his head. “Nobody is supposed to be able to tolerate that. How long?”

“Not long,” the second lieutenant at the monitor replied. “He actually hit ten for about four-tenths of a second. He’s done it before.”

“I can only tolerate nine for that long. And he was making sense when he talked! I’m telling you, he’s a genetic freak.”

“Gawdamighty, think what he must’ve been like ten years ago.”

“About the same as now,” Major Deale said.

The next series of tests involved the laser targeting, and Caroline edged her way closer to the monitors. She felt oddly shaky inside, and she tried to gather her thoughts. When she had been chosen to replace Walton on the test site, she had done some quick research on jet aircraft, and that, coupled with her general technical knowledge, told her exactly how dangerous those maneuvers had been. He could have lost control of the aircraft at such extreme angles of attack, or he could have blacked out pulling so many Gs and not regained consciousness in time to keep from drilling the aircraft nose-first into the desert floor. The reactions of the other pilots told their own tale.

Adrian slipped in front of her, effectively blocking her view, since he was so much taller. Caroline brought her mind back to the current situation. She had no doubt he had done it deliberately, and if she let him get away with it he would only do something worse the next time. “Excuse me, Adrian,” she said politely. “Since you’re so tall, let me stand in front of you so we both can see.”

Yates looked up and smiled, either not seeing or choosing to ignore the sour expression on Adrian’s face. “Good idea. Step up in front, Caroline.”

The targeting test went well. They were currently sighting in on stationary targets, and all of the components performed within the acceptable range. The data streamed across the screen, each item swiftly checked and noted against the hard-copy lists they all carried.

The four aircraft landed safely, and the atmosphere in the control room suddenly lightened to an almost giddy buzz. The laser team stood around Lieutenant Colonel Picollo and went over the rest results with him. Caroline was initially surprised at his knowledge of the subject, then realized that she shouldn’t be. After all, he and the other pilots had been working on this project for some time; they would have had to be brain-dead not to absorb some of the information. “The colonel may have more questions,” he finally said, “but it looks like we can start testing how well it targets and tracks a moving object now.”

An arm slipped around her waist, and Caroline went rigid. Her head whipped around. Major Deale grinned at her as his arm tightened. Behind him, she could see the other pilots watching and grinning, too. They all looked like posters for a dental convention. Dismay filled her. Damn, it was starting already.

“So, beautiful, where do you want to go for dinner tonight?” the major asked.

“Hands off, Daffy,” came a deceptively mild voice behind them. “Dr. Evans will be with me tonight.”

There was no mistaking the speaker’s identity. Even if she hadn’t recognized those smooth, deep tones, she would have known by the way her heart began pulsing wildly and her lungs suddenly constricted, making it difficult to breathe.

They all turned around at once. Mackenzie was still in his flight suit, helmet under his arm. His black hair was drenched with sweat and plastered to his skull, and his eyes were bloodshot from pulling Gs. His expression was calm and remote as he looked at them.

“I saw her first,” Major Deale protested, but he dropped his arm from around her waist. “Damn it, Breed, you can’t just take one look and decide—”

“Yes I can,” Mackenzie said, then turned to Picollo and began firing questions at him.

The major turned and gave Caroline a slow, considering look, as if he were really seeing her for the first time, and maybe he was. Until then she had been just a reasonably pretty face, a lark, but now he had to look at her as a person. “I’ve never seen Breed do that before, and I’ve known him for fifteen years,” he said thoughtfully.

“I don’t know him at all,” Caroline replied in a tart voice. “I mean, I met him last night. Is he always that autocratic?”

“Breed? Autocratic?” The major pursed his lips.

“Despotic,” Caroline elaborated helpfully. “Dictatorial. Peremptory.”

“Oh, that kind of autocratic. You mean, does he make a habit of commandeering a woman’s company for dinner?”

“That narrows it down nicely.”

“Nope. First time. He usually has to beat women off with a stick. They love him to death. It’s the glamour of his profession, you know, the lure of the wild. Women looove uniforms, but underneath he’s really dull and boring.”

“Daffy…” The calm voice was both patient and warning.

The major looked over Caroline’s shoulder and broke into a smile. “I was just singing your praises.”

“I heard.”

Mackenzie was right at her elbow, but she didn’t dare glance at him. She had specifically asked him the night before not to single her out in any way, but the very next time she met him he had all but hung a sign around her neck that said “Mackenzie’s Woman.” She struggled to subdue the impulse to sink her fist into his belly. For one thing, violence was seldom the answer to anything. For another, he was the project manager, and it would be a very stupid career move. For yet another, he looked like he was made of tempered steel and it would probably break her hand.

So she did the prudent thing and concentrated on Major Deale. “Daffy? As in duck?”

“No,” Mackenzie said with grim relish. “As in petunia.”

“As in flower child,” added the captain, who had been in the group watching the monitors.

“As in…blooming idiot,” several others said in unison.

“Petunia,” Caroline repeated. “Flowers. Daffy Deale. Daffydeale. Daffodil!” she finished with a peal of laughter.

The major gave Mackenzie a dirty look. “I used to have a good, macho nickname. Concise. Thought provoking. Provocative. ‘Big.’ That’s a good nickname, isn’t it? Big Deale. It made women think. Was it just a play on my name, or was there a deeper meaning there? Then this…this spoilsport started calling me Daffy, and Petunia, and I got stuck with it.”

Mackenzie smiled. Caroline glimpsed it from the corner of her eye, and the reaction she had been trying to ignore was back in full force. She felt simultaneously hot and cold. Shivers ran up her back, but her skin felt flushed.

“Could you see me in my office in half an hour, Dr. Evans?” the colonel asked now. She hated the way he phrased something as a question when the underlying tone made it an order.

She turned and smiled brightly at him. “If you insist, Colonel.”

His eyes gleamed with recognition of the way she had forced him to make it an outright order, but he didn’t hesitate. “I do.”

“Half an hour, then.”

As she and the others walked back to their own offices, Adrian paused beside her. “Smart move,” he said, his hostility plain. “Snuggle up to the head man and it doesn’t matter if you screw up on the job.”

She kept her eyes straight ahead. “I don’t screw up on the job.” There wasn’t any point in denying that she had any sort of relationship with Mackenzie, so she didn’t waste the effort.

Cal glanced back, saw Adrian walking beside her, and slowed his steps to allow them to come even with him. “The complicated stuff starts with the moving targets, but so far there haven’t been many problems with the program. It’s almost scary how well the tests have gone.”

Adrian walked on ahead without speaking, and Cal whistled softly through his teeth. “He’s not the president of your fan club, is he? When we heard you were going to be the replacement he made some snide remarks, but I didn’t figure it was open warfare. What’s the deal?”

“Personality conflict,” Caroline replied. Trying to place the blame was another pointless exercise.

He looked worried. “We have to function well as a team, or Colonel Mackenzie will have us all replaced, and that won’t look good on our records. They’re under a deadline with these tests. They want something good to show Congress and the media when the vote for funding comes up, and that’s in a few weeks, I think.”

“I can ignore Adrian,” she assured him.

“I hope so. I’ll try to be a buffer when I can, but at some point the two of you will have to work together.”

“When it comes to work, I think both of us are professional enough to put our differences aside. But thanks for the thought.”

Cal nodded, then grinned at her. “So, the good colonel’s interested. He made it pretty plain, didn’t he?”

“Without reason,” she said grimly.

“Maybe from your way of thinking, but not from his.”

It was foolish of her, but she began to look forward to meeting Colonel Mackenzie in the privacy of his office. Project manager be damned, she was going to tell him a few things. At the appointed time, she got directions to the appropriate Quonset hut and marched across the tarmac with anger propelling every stride.

The outer desk was occupied by Sergeant Vrska, a burly young man who looked better suited to a pro-football team than a desk, but he greeted Caroline pleasantly and ushered her into the colonel’s private office.

Mackenzie had showered and changed into his summer service uniform; the blue of the material only intensified the pale blue of his irises. He leaned back in his chair and watched her calmly, as if waiting for her explosion.

Caroline considered exploding, even though he was obviously expecting it. For one thing, it would release a great deal of tension. Losing her temper, however, would only give the advantage to him. There was no invitation to take a seat, but she did so anyway, then crossed her legs and leaned back, her manner making it plain that the opening gambit was his.

“I read your file,” he said. “Impressive credentials. You were always ahead of your age group in school, began college at sixteen, B.S. degree at eighteen, master’s at nineteen, got your doctorate at twenty-one. Boling-Wahl considers you one of the most brilliant physicists in the country, if not the world.”

She didn’t know what she had expected, but a listing of her accomplishments wasn’t it. She gave him a wary look.

“You’ve never dated,” he continued. Alarm shot through her, and she sat up straight, her thoughts darting around as she tried to anticipate where he was going with that line. “Not in high school, which is halfway understandable, considering your age and study load, but not in college or graduate school, either. You’ve never had a boyfriend, period. In short, Dr. Evans, you don’t have any experience at all in handling a rowdy bunch like my men. It upset you when Major Deale put his arm around your waist.”

She didn’t speak, but continued to watch him.

“We all have to work together, because we have a lot to do and not much time left to do it in. I don’t want morale wrecked by hostility, and I don’t want you to suffer behavior from my men that makes you uncomfortable. They’re men, and they live their lives flying on the edge of disaster. They’re wild and arrogant, and they need to blow off steam, typically with booze and women and dumb stunts. One way to keep them from hitting on you is to turn this base into a war zone, with everybody disliking you and not cooperating with you, which won’t get the work done. The other way is to let them think you’re mine.”

She didn’t like his phrasing. “That’s so Neanderthal, it has hair all over it.”

“They won’t bother you then,” he continued, ignoring her comment. “In fact, they’ll be downright protective.”

She stood up and began pacing his office. “I just want to be left alone so I can work. Is that such a big thing to ask? Why should I have to hide behind a false relationship?”

“For one thing, they all assume that you’ve had the normal experiences of a woman your age.”

She scowled at him, not liking the way he’d phrased the sentence. Her “age” indeed! He’d made it sound as if she were almost ready to file for Social Security.

“It won’t occur to them that their actions could actually be frightening to you,” he continued. “There’s also the possibility that some of their teasing won’t be so lighthearted, that a couple of them might make some serious moves on you and could turn ugly when you slap them down. I can’t afford the disruption to the program if I had to bring disciplinary charges against any of my men. I need them, and I need you. Even if they knew you’re so inexperienced, it wouldn’t keep them from trying to get in your pants. If anything, knowing that you’re a virgin would make it worse. The best thing is to mark you out of bounds for them by pretending you’re involved with someone else, and the only man on the base they wouldn’t consider poaching on is me. So from now on, as far as they’re concerned, you’re mine. All you have to do is act halfway friendly to me in front of them, rather than glaring at me as if you’d like to have my head on a platter.”

“With an apple stuffed in your mouth,” she muttered. Then the details of what he’d just said hit her and she stared at him in mortification, her eyes widening and color burning in her cheeks. Damn it, why hadn’t she hooted with laughter when he’d talked about her being a virgin? Now it was too late to deny it.

Joe was still watching her with that calm, remote expression, but his eyes were narrowed and strangely intense.

She couldn’t meet that penetrating gaze. Her embarrassment was almost unbearable. She summoned her last dregs of composure and said, “All right.” Then, for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, she succumbed to the powerful urge to run from him.

Chapter 3

For several minutes after she had literally run from his office, Joe remained leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head and a small, satisfied smile curving the corners of his firm mouth.

So she was a virgin. He had only been guessing, but it had been a good guess. An experienced woman wouldn’t have been so embarrassed or at such total loss about what to say or do. Poor little darling. For all her intelligence, she was a babe in the woods when it came to men and sex, and the reaction she had learned in her youth, when some idiot had probably scared the hell out of her by grabbing at her, had become her standard way of dealing with a man’s attention.

He had been in the office before dawn, his mind on her rather than the coming flight and on impulse he had requested her file. It had been interesting reading. From the time she had started school, she had been separated from her own age group, and she had responded to the inevitable social alienation by devoting herself to her studies, thereby widening the gulf as she outpaced her schoolmates. That wasn’t exactly what had been in her file, of course; the impersonal papers had listed only numbers and accomplishments, except for the detailed security check, which had noted the lack of a personal relationship with a man—ever—but neither her psychological profile nor a detailed investigation had revealed any hint of homosexuality. Her work record did reveal a few instances when Dr. Evans hadn’t gotten along with a co-worker, always male, but as the field of physics was dominated by men that wasn’t in itself meaningful.

Remembering her reaction to him the night before, Joe had begun thinking. Was she so bristly because she had always been the odd man out, socially, emotionally and physically, during her childhood and adolescence? Her own age group would have shunned her, and her classmates wouldn’t have been interested in socializing with someone who, compared to them, was a child. By the time she was physically mature and old enough for it not to matter, the pattern was set and she had so many defenses in place that no one could get past all the thorns.

The only way for a man to get close to her was for her to open the gate herself, something that wasn’t likely to happen. But then he had seen the way she tensed when Daffy had put his arm around her waist, and the answer had flashed into his mind. A second later he had put his plan into action.

Her work was important to her. For that, she would tolerate the fiction of having a relationship with him, even though she had made it plain the night before that she didn’t want to be gossiped about. He knew she was going to be gossiped about under any circumstances, because she just wasn’t the type of woman who faded into the woodwork. Given the choice of having to pretend to be involved with him and putting up with the gossip, or possibly not being able to work on the Night Wing project at all, she had chosen the former. He had counted on that very reaction while he had been forming his argument.

Now the other men would leave her alone, giving him an unobstructed field, and he meant to use his advantage to the fullest. She would have to spend time with him, get to know him, learn to relax with him.

Her seduction would be the sweetest mission he’d ever undertaken. Taming that little hedgehog in bed would be more exciting than breaking Mach 3.

Caroline didn’t dare return to work; she knew her discomfort would be written plainly on her face for everyone to see, and Adrian would make some snide comments about taking care of her love life on her own time. She darted into the nearest ladies’ room and sought privacy in a stall.

She was trembling all over and felt strangely close to tears. She seldom cried, because it didn’t accomplish anything except making her nose stuffy. Even more strangely, she had been ignominiously routed again, and it was time she faced the facts.

It wasn’t anything Colonel Mackenzie had done that frightened her so; it was her own reactions to him that were terrifying. Intelligence wasn’t worth anything if she hid her head in the sand and didn’t admit the truth to herself. She had let herself grow too cocky about her ability to keep men at a distance by using her sharp tongue; not only was the colonel not intimidated by it—damn the man, he seemed to enjoy it!—but maybe she had been able to hold off those other men only because she hadn’t been attracted to any of them. The shortness of breath, the panic attacks, the pounding of her heart and cowardly behavior, could all mean only one thing: sexual attraction. As an intelligent female, her instinctive impulse was to run for her life.

She excused herself for not having recognized it immediately, because after all, it was the first time she had ever experienced the phenomenon. She hadn’t known how to drive a car the first time she had gotten behind the steering wheel, either. She had always been slightly puzzled by both genders’ sometimes feverish antics when trying to attract someone of the opposite sex, but now she knew what was at the bottom of it all. Gonads. It was disconcerting to have one’s glands turn traitor.

And now there was this situation she had somehow become mired in. She felt certain that if she only applied herself to it, she would be able to come up with some other solution, but her brain didn’t seem to want to work. It was probably a side effect of overactive gonads. After all, thinking wasn’t conducive to mating.

She tried to organize her thoughts. As the situation stood, she had agreed to pretend to be having a relationship with Colonel Mackenzie so the men would leave her alone and she would be able to work, and also so the men wouldn’t be distracted by her. Did the colonel pretend to have a relationship with every woman on base? Why her? What was it about her that was so disruptive that she had to be neutralized? She knew she was a reasonably attractive woman, but she certainly wasn’t a femme fatale.

And just what would pretending to be involved with him entail? Small talk and smiling? She thought she could handle that. She had never cooed like a lovesick bird the way she had seen some women do, but it couldn’t be that difficult. But if he thought this pseudo-relationship involved any hugging and kissing, she would have to call it off immediately, because her heart just couldn’t stand the strain. All that adrenaline rushing around couldn’t be healthy.

But the situation wasn’t unmanageable. If she just kept her head and remembered not to trust him no matter how reasonable he seemed, she should be all right.

With that thought firmly in mind, she squared her shoulders and left her refuge. As she crossed the tarmac, the desert heat scorched the top of her head and made her arms burn. Everything shimmered around her, and her ears were assaulted by the constant roar of jet engines as planes took off and landed. Airmen swarmed everywhere, attending to the business of the huge base. The activity was exhilarating, and even more exciting was the knowledge that she was working on the most advanced jet fighter ever designed.

Work had always been her panacea. She enjoyed it, embraced it, because it was the one part of her life where she excelled, where she fit in. It was comforting and familiar, even though Adrian Pendley was certain to do his best to ruin it for her. Well, if she could ignore Mackenzie, she could easily ignore Adrian.

The colonel’s darkly tanned, hawkish face swam before her eyes, forming amid the heat waves, and she stumbled on the edge of the tarmac before quickly regaining her balance. So she wasn’t ignoring Mackenzie that well; she would get better at it. For her own sake, she had to.

Sure enough, when she walked back to the office, with her clothing damp with sweat and wisps of hair sticking to her face, Adrian looked at her and sneered. “Didn’t you know it’s too hot for a quick tussle? You’ll learn to save it for a weekend in Vegas.”

Yates looked up and frowned. Caroline caught his eye and shrugged to show that it didn’t matter.

The laser program was fully developed; they were there as a trouble-shooting team, and since the day’s tests had gone well, there was little more to do than recap what they’d seen. Then they went over the next planned test, the first one using a moving target. The aircraft that would be used in the next tests weren’t the two that had flown that day, and their targeting systems had already been checked as part of the regularly implemented maintenance schedule. All of that had been done before Caroline’s arrival on the base. They did have to check the systems on the aircraft that had flown that day, and she, Yates and Adrian changed into coveralls for the job. Cal remained behind, rechecking the computer data.

“All the different systems people working on the Night Wing project have gotten along well,” Yates said as they walked to the hangar. “It’s been one of the smoothest operations I’ve been involved in.”

“So don’t go screwing it up by insulting any of them,” Adrian said.

Yates stopped and swung around to confront Adrian. “That’s enough,” he said evenly.

“It’s only the truth. You know she has a reputation for being hard to work with.”

“I know what I’m hearing, and Caroline isn’t the one who’s being an ass. I hope I don’t have to tell you that Colonel Mackenzie can have anyone on this team replaced with one phone call, and he’d do it in a heartbeat if he thought friction between any of us was hindering the work. If that happens, your career at Boling-Wahl would effectively be over, and that goes for both of you.”

Caroline stuffed her hands deep in the pockets of her coveralls. Though Yates had been directing his ire toward Adrian, she knew that her position at Boling-Wahl was a bit tenuous, due to her past difficulties on a couple of jobs. One of those incidents had been with Adrian. Perhaps she had been assigned to work with him as a sort of test and her job depended on passing it.

Adrian turned to glare at her. “I’ll stay out of her way,” he finally muttered, “if she stays out of mine.” Then he strode on ahead of them.

Yates sighed, and he and Caroline resumed walking, but at a more leisurely pace. “Ignore him as much as you can,” he advised. “I didn’t realize the situation between the two of you was so hostile.”

“I’m not hostile,” Caroline said in surprise.

He gave her a thoughtful look. “No, I don’t guess you are. But he is. Is it just a case of mutual dislike, or did something happen that I need to know about?”

She shrugged. “I don’t suppose it’s any big secret. He came on to me when I first started work for Boling-Wahl, and I turned him down.”

“Ahh. A hurt ego.”

“It would make more sense if we’d been involved and then broken up, but it was never that personal. I guess he doesn’t take rejection well.”

“That’s all it was? You turned him down for a date?” Yates asked skeptically.

“Not exactly. He made a pass at me.”

“And you…?”

She stared straight ahead, but she could feel her cheeks heating again. “He was…well, it was a pretty strong pass, if you know what I mean, and I couldn’t seem to make him understand that I wasn’t interested. I tried being polite, but it wasn’t getting through and he wouldn’t let me go. So I told him I’d have gone to work at a zoo if I’d wanted to be grabbed by an ape.”

Yates chuckled. “Not very tactful, but effective.”

That wasn’t all she’d told Adrian, but she thought she had admitted to enough. “He took it personally.”

“The two of you will have to get along for the duration.”

“I understand. I won’t snipe back. But if he grabs me again,” she warned, “I won’t be nice.”

Yates patted her arm. “If he grabs you, knock him on the head with something.”

She fully intended to.

They spent the rest of the day checking the targeting systems on the two aircraft, and everything looked good. As maintenance crews crawled in, under, over and around the sleek black aircraft, the scene reminded Caroline of Gulliver being swarmed over by the Lilliputians. Lines and hoses snaked everywhere, crisscrossing the hangar floor.

Adrian didn’t speak to her except about work, and that suited her fine. He was good at what he did, and as long as he restricted himself to that, she had no problem with him. Maybe Yates’ lecture had made an impression on him.

It was late afternoon before they had the two systems thoroughly checked, and Caroline was glad to call it a day. Thoughts of a long, cool shower filled her head. She returned to the office and didn’t bother changing out of the coveralls, simply collecting her dress and checking to make certain everything was locked up. Security demanded that nothing be left out on their desks.

When she reached her quarters she turned the air conditioning on high and stood in front of the cold air for a minute, sighing with relief. There was a benefit to having small rooms: they cooled off quickly. She counted herself lucky to have two rooms, period. The first room was a combination living room, dining room and kitchen, meaning that a nondescript couch and matching nondescript chair, with a scratched fake-wood coffee table, occupied one half of the room and the other half was taken up by a galley-size kitchen and a battered Formica table with two chairs. The predominant color seemed to be institutional green. The room was about twelve feet square and opened directly into the bedroom. The bedroom and bath combined were the same size as the front room. She had a bed that was supposed to be double-sized but didn’t quite make it, but since she slept alone it didn’t matter. There was a scarred chest of drawers, a cramped closet and a cramped bathroom with barely enough room for the essential plumbing, and then only because there was a small shower stall rather than a bathtub. It was livable, but she couldn’t see herself ever growing fond of it.

On the bright side, one of the first things she had done had been to replace the light bulbs in the bathroom with new ones of sufficient wattage for the application of makeup. She probably had the brightest bathroom on base. She rather liked the idea.

She took the long, cool shower she had promised herself, gradually turning the hot water off as she became accustomed to the chill, until the spray was satisfyingly cold. She felt herself revive as her overheated skin drank in the moisture. She didn’t turn the water off until she was shivering, then dried herself briskly and dressed in loose, cotton knit pants and a big T-shirt, which perfectly suited her notions of comfort.

Now for food. She had decided from the outset to eat in her quarters as much as possible, so she had stocked the tiny kitchen with a few staples. She was standing in front of an open cabinet door studying the contents and trying to decide on her meal when someone knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” she called.

“Mackenzie.”

He didn’t have to identify himself by name, she thought irritably as she strode to the door and opened it. All he had to do was rumble something in that deep voice.

She braced herself in the opening and felt the heat settle over her like a suffocating blanket. “What do you want?” she demanded. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but the glove-soft jeans, scuffed boots and white T-shirt were oddly disturbing, while the inevitable dark sunglasses every pilot wore hid his eyes. She didn’t like it; she didn’t want to know what he was like when he was off duty.

Joe noted her challenging stance and the fierceness of her glare. Evidently she had decided that her best course of action was to simply carry on as usual. He was glad; being around her might not be comfortable, but it was sure as hell exciting, and he didn’t want that to change.

“Supper,” he said.

She crossed her arms. “I’m not feeding you.”

“No, I’m feeding you,” he said mildly. “Remember? I told Daffy you’d be with me tonight, and everyone will know about it tomorrow if you aren’t.” It was an effort to keep his voice mild and his eyes on her face, because she was obviously braless. The thin T-shirt she was wearing plainly revealed the shape of her high breasts and the darker circles of her nipples. Every muscle in his big body tensed with growing arousal.

“Just a cheeseburger,” he cajoled in the soft voice he’d often used to calm nervous mares. “You don’t even have to change. Just slip on your shoes and we’ll go off base and find a hamburger joint.”

Caroline hesitated. The thought of a cheeseburger was enticing, since she had been about to choose between two brands of cold cereal.

“All right,” she decided abruptly. “Give me a minute.” She dashed into the bedroom and put on a pair of sandals, then raked a comb through her hair. Her freshly washed face stared back at her from the mirror, and she contemplated putting on makeup, then shrugged. A cheeseburger was waiting.

Just before she left the room she remembered that she wasn’t wearing a bra and hurriedly put one on. She didn’t think he would have noticed, but it was better to play it safe.

He hadn’t entered her quarters but was still standing just outside the open door. Caroline turned the lock on the door and stepped out, closed the door firmly, then tried the knob to make certain the lock had caught. Satisfied, she dropped her keys into her pocket.

He was driving a muscular black pickup truck. Caroline looked at him in surprise as he opened the door and she climbed up into the seat. “I never would have figured you for a truck person,” she said as he slid his long legs under the steering wheel.

“I grew up on a horse ranch in Wyoming,” he said. “I’ve driven pickups all my life. What did you think I’d drive?”

“Something low and red and flashy.”

“I save my speeding for the air.” His ice-blue eyes flicked at her. “What do you drive? I know what you’re driving now is a rental car, since you flew in, so that doesn’t count.”

Caroline settled back in the seat. She decided that she rather liked sitting up high so she could see, and she was feeling more comfortable by the minute. Maybe it was the truck that did it; it was such a no-nonsense kind of vehicle. “What do you think I drive?”

“Something safe and dependable.”

“Oh.”

The one syllable was a little disgruntled. Joe controlled a smile. “Am I wrong?”

“A tad.”

“So what do you drive?”

She turned her head to the side and stared out the window. “Something low and red and flashy.” She had absolutely rebelled against buying anything sedate and conservative. She had wanted power and speed and handling, and had paid a small fortune to get it.

“How flashy?” he asked.

“A Corvette,” she said, and suddenly chuckled at the contrast between them.

Joe looked at her again. He couldn’t keep from it. She had lived the life of a total egghead, reclusive and socially awkward, but the fire in her couldn’t be hidden. It was revealed in the unconscious sex appeal with which she moved and dressed, the fierceness of her temper, the adventurous car she drove. She sat so decorously on the passenger side, but her face was lifted to the hot wind blowing in through the lowered windows. There was a streak of wildness in her that intrigued him, and he shifted restlessly to ease the constriction of his jeans.

They were checked through the gate, and he turned the truck toward the sunset, blazing red and gold in front of them. She didn’t seem to feel any need to carry on a conversation; Joe was comfortable with silence, too, so he let it continue.

Caroline couldn’t stop herself from glancing at him every few minutes, though she would then jerk her gaze back to the sunset. The T-shirt bared his powerful arms, darkly tanned by the desert sun. He had so many muscles, it was unnerving. She knew that fighter pilots regularly worked out, because a dense muscle mass seemed to help them resist the effects of pulling Gs, but his muscularity was somehow different. He was powerful—the way a panther or a wolf is powerful—from a lifetime of work and using his body. The sun outlined his profile in gold, mercilessly revealing the bladelike bone structure, as clean and fierce as an ancient warrior’s face cast on a coin.

She stared at the thin, high-bridged nose, the wide forehead and high, chiseled cheekbones. His mouth was almost brutally clear-cut. The hot wind was sifting through his thick black hair, disarranging the short military cut and her vision blurred as a disturbing vision filled it of this man with his hair long and flying around his broad, bare shoulders. Her heart thumped in a sort of painful panic, and she jerked her gaze away yet again, but it didn’t do any good. She could still see him in her mind. It took her only a minute to decide that if out of sight wasn’t going to be out of mind, she might as well give in and let her eyes feast.

She turned her head toward him, and her hungry gaze slipped down over his wide, powerful chest to his flat belly. She just couldn’t stop it, though neither was she brave enough to let her eyes rest on the fly of his jeans, instead hurriedly skimming on to those long, muscled legs.

She blurted out, “Aren’t you almost too big to get into a cockpit?”

He briefly took his eyes off the road to look at her, though the dark lenses kept her from reading his expression. She wished he would take them off. “It’s a tight fit,” he replied, his voice low and slow and growling. “But I always manage to squeeze in.”

The underlying sexuality of his words hit her like a sledgehammer. She was woefully inexperienced but not naive, and there was no mistaking his meaning. Now she was glad he had those dark glasses on, because she didn’t want to read his expression. She wanted to hide her face in her hands. She wanted to jump out of the truck and run all the way back to the base and the safety of her quarters. Had she been mad? She had actually climbed in the truck with this man, and now here they were, alone in the Nevada desert with the sunset rapidly darkening to purple.

Then she remembered that it was her own reaction to him that frightened her, not anything he had done, and she wondered miserably if she should tell him to bail out now while he still could. The way she had been ogling him, he was probably wondering if he would make it back to the base with his pants on, though considering the notorious libido of pilots in general and military pilots in particular, he might not fight very hard. Maybe it was the contrast he presented that got to her the way no man had before, the sense of an intense, smoldering sexuality beneath that cool remoteness. And maybe, if she was lucky, he had no idea of the tumult going on inside her.

Joe was glad of the dark lenses that protected his eyes from the sun, because they allowed him to study her without her being aware of it. She had put on a bra, damn it, but the thin restricting material couldn’t quite disguise the pebbled hardness of her nipples. The little darling was aroused—and upset by it; he could feel her tension, see it in the faint trembling of her body that her still posture couldn’t control. His eyes went back to her distended nipples, and his hands tightened on the steering wheel as he inevitably began thinking about taking those hard buds into his mouth. She was so beautifully responsive, and she didn’t even know it. If she could be so aroused by a naughty comment, what would she be like when he was actually making love to her?

She wasn’t the only one who was aroused. If he looked at her nipples one more time, he might have to stop the truck on the side of the road, and she was far from ready for that. To keep himself from making a big mistake, he didn’t look at her again until they had reached his favorite drive-in hamburger joint, which was just seedy enough to be interesting.

He parked beside one of the speakers and turned off the ignition, then removed his sunglasses and put them on the dash. “What do you want?”

She wished he had phrased it differently. She leaned down so she could read the menu posted above the speaker and scowled as she forced herself to concentrate on food. The heavenly aroma of frying hamburgers, onions and French fries filled the air; why did the most unhealthy food always smell the best? “A cheeseburger basket and large soft drink.”

He punched the button on the speaker, and when a tinny voice answered, he ordered two cheeseburger baskets. Then he half turned toward Caroline, his wide shoulders wedged into the corner of the truck, and casually said, “I’m going to kiss you when we get back to the base.”

Caroline stared wide-eyed at him, her heart going into its crazy thumping rhythm again. “I want onions on my cheeseburger. Lots of onions.”

“You don’t have to be afraid I’m going to grab you,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “It’ll just be a kiss, outside your door where anyone walking by can see us, and someone probably will. I won’t even put my arms around you if you don’t want me to.”

“I don’t want you to kiss me,” she said, withdrawing to her own corner of the truck and glaring at him across the expanse of the front seat.

“I’m going to anyway. It’s expected.”

“I don’t care what’s expected. I agreed to come out with you tonight because it does seem to be a good way to keep all the others inline, but I never agreed to any kissing.”

“Don’t you like kissing?”

She glared sullenly at him. The perfect answer would be that yes, she liked kissing, but she didn’t want to kiss him. The perfect answer, however, was a bald-faced lie, and from the way her heart was fluttering like a Victorian maiden’s at the prospect of kissing him, she wouldn’t be able to carry it off. Lying, she found, seemed to work better when performed with a certain amount of detachment.

On the other hand, the truth was the worst answer she could give him. No, she hadn’t liked any of the sloppy kisses that had been forced on her in a hit-or-miss fashion because she’d been fighting like a wildcat to avoid them, but the thought of kissing him made her light-headed, and she was afraid she would like it too much.

When she didn’t reply he said calmly, “When we get back to your quarters, unlock your door, then turn and hold out your hand to me. I’ll take it, lean over and kiss you. It won’t be a long kiss, but it can’t be a quick peck, either. Does three seconds sound long enough to you? Then I’ll let go of your hand and say good-night. On a busy base, any number of people will see us, and the word will spread that we don’t seem to be having a flaming affair, but we’re definitely involved.”

She cleared her throat. “Three seconds?” That didn’t sound like very long. Surely she could manage not to disgrace herself for three seconds.

“Just three seconds,” he reassured her.

Chapter 4

The cheeseburger—without onions—and fries were delicious, reminding her of those few precious times during her childhood when she had been allowed to stay over with her mother’s brother and his wife, both of them about ten years younger than her parents, and Uncle Lee had invariably treated her to the biggest, juiciest hamburger she could eat, followed by ice cream, another forbidden food. Her parents had allowed her to eat sorbet or frozen yogurt, but never ice cream. If it hadn’t been for Uncle Lee, Caroline thought she might have reached the age of majority without knowing the joys of junk food. She still always felt as if she were having a special treat when she indulged.

After the cheeseburgers, he gave her a slow smile and asked, “Ever played the slots?”

“No. I’ve never been to a casino.”

“That’s about to change.” He started the truck, and soon they were tooling down Las Vegas Boulevard, an endless array of flashing neon lights in every color of the rainbow. They blinked, they arrowed, they cascaded, they exploded in endless neon showers, inviting one and all to sample whatever it was they were advertising. The big casinos drew the largest crowds, of course, but a goodly number of people were just strolling, tourists determined to see everything in this town geared toward attracting them. People were dressed in clothing that ran the gamut from shorts to formal gowns.

“Do you like to gamble?” she asked.

“I never gamble.”

She snorted. “Except with your life. I was in the control room today, remember? Hitting eighty degrees alpha and pulling 10 Gs isn’t what I’d call safe living.”

“That isn’t gambling. Baby was built to give us an unlimited angle of attack, but her capability doesn’t do us any good if we don’t know how to fly her. My job is to make certain she does what she’s supposed to do, get her fully tested out and operational and find out her limitations. I can’t do that if I don’t exceed what we’re already doing in the F-22.”

“None of the other pilots are pushing the envelope like that.”

His eyes were utterly calm when he looked at her. “They will now. Now that they know Baby will operate under those conditions.”

“You did it just to show them it could be done?”

“No. I did it because it’s my job.”

And because he loved it. The thought echoed in her mind. She had seen it that day when he had entered the control room after his flight, tired and sweaty, his eyes bloodshot, his expression as remote as ever. But his eyes had given him away. They had been fierce and…exalted, the fires of life burning white hot in him.

He parked the truck, and they strolled down the sidewalk. “Do you feel lucky?” he asked.

She shrugged. “How does lucky feel?”

“Want to try it?”

She paused before the entrance to one of the casinos, feeling the cool air gush out through the opened doors. Rows and rows of slot machines stretched before her and even spread out on the sidewalk. Most of them were manned by people automatically feeding in their tokens of worship and pulling the levers. Occasionally there were cries of delight as coins in varying numbers came tumbling out to reward their persistence, but mostly the machines took rather than gave.

“It isn’t cost-effective,” she said after studying the procedure for a few minutes.

He laughed softly. “That isn’t the point. Never gamble if you can’t afford to lose, that’s rule number one. Rule number two is to have fun.”

“They don’t look like they’re having fun,” she said doubtfully.

“That’s because they’ve forgotten rule number two, and maybe even number one. C’mon, I’ll stake you.”

But she waited another few minutes, until she saw someone abandon a machine that hadn’t paid anything in quite a while. The law of averages said it was more likely to pay out than one that had just disgorged a few coins would be to do so again. She sat down in front of it and fed in the quarters, feeling like an idiot as she did so. Joe stood behind her, softly laughing when the mechanical bandit gave her nothing in return. After she had fed in about five dollars without winning anything, Caroline began to take it personally. She muttered warnings and threats as she went through the procedure again—and lost again.

“Remember rule number two,” Joe cautioned, amusement in his voice.

She told him what he could do with rule number two, and he chuckled.

She hitched her stool closer to the machine and shoved a quarter into the slot. She pulled the lever and the pictures began whirring, then one by one clicked into place. Bells began ringing and quarters began flooding out of the bottom slot, spilling out onto the floor. Caroline jumped up and stared at the silver coins as other slot players crowded around, offering congratulations, and a smiling casino employee came over. Then she gave Joe a look of consternation. “All those quarters won’t fit in my pocket.”

He threw back his head and began laughing. She stared at his strong brown throat and felt suddenly dizzy as that damn light-headed feeling swept over her again.

The casino employee, still smiling, said, “We’ll be glad to change the coins into bills.”

They did, and to her relief Caroline found that the flood of quarters wasn’t a great fortune after all, only a little over seventy dollars. She returned Joe’s stake to him and stuffed the remaining bills into her pocket.

“Did you have fun?” he asked as they left the casino.

She thought about it. “I suppose so, but I was beginning to feel a little vindictive toward that machine. I don’t think I have the temperament to be a gambler.”

“Probably not,” he agreed, and took her hand in his to gently pull her out of the path of a man who wasn’t looking where he was going. But then he didn’t release her as she had expected.

She looked down at their clasped hands. His hand was big and hard, the fingers lean, his palm tough with calluses, but his grip was careful, as if he were very aware of his strength. She had never held hands before, and the touch of palm against palm was surprisingly intimate. She was beginning to realize that fear had kept her from doing a lot of pleasurable things before, but then, she had never before been even tempted to explore them. Her reactions to other men who had tried to venture into a physical relationship with her had varied from bored and disinterested to absolute revulsion.

She could tug her hand free. That was the safest course of action, but somehow she couldn’t do it. So she ignored the situation, acted as if her hand wasn’t nestled in his much more powerful one like a bird taking shelter, and inwardly she savored every moment of it.

Finally they walked back to the truck, and she realized she was reluctant for the night to come to an end. It was her first date, if she cared to categorize it as such, and it was almost over.

They were both silent on the drive back to the base, and inevitably her mind turned to the coming kiss. She felt both panicked and excited. Another first for her, the first kiss she had actually agreed to and welcomed. It was a toss-up whether she would bolt in fear or hurl herself into his arms.

The moment of truth came all too soon. He parked in front of her quarters and got out to walk around the truck and open the door for her. There were a number of personnel going about their business, glancing at them with idle curiosity, and she knew he had perfectly gauged the situation.

She took out her keys and unlocked the door, then turned and faced him in the colorless glow of the vapor lights overhead. Her eyes were solemn and defenseless as she stared at him, his eyes glittering like ice.

“Hold out your hand,” he commanded softly, and she obeyed.

His hard, warm hand enclosed her fingers, and he pulled her closer even as he bent. His mouth lightly touched hers, lifted, settled again. He turned his head slightly to adjust the pressure, and somehow the motion parted her own lips, so that they yielded to the molding of his.

His taste was warm and pleasant and…male. The scent of him enveloped her, and she shivered in response. His mouth was still on hers, moving gently. She felt the tip of his tongue touch and tease, making her stiffen at the jumbled memory of some uninvited, intrusive kiss, but this was nothing like that. She felt enticed rather than coerced, and his taste was filling her senses. Warm pleasure shuddered up from her depths; with a little whimper she opened her mouth, and slowly he took her.

The carnality of it was staggering, and so was her reaction to it. She heard herself whimper again, and then somehow she was pressed hard against him, her head tilted up and back to give him deeper access, an access he took with a hard male dominance that stunned her. She felt weak and hot, and her breasts tightened with an ache that contact with his hard chest both soothed and intensified. Her loins felt hot, too, as coils of pleasure tightened deep inside. She was clinging to his hand like a lifeline.

Slowly he lifted his mouth, and it was all he could force himself to do to break the contact. He gave into the temptation to take several more quick kisses from the soft, innocent mouth that had so quickly warmed to awareness, then he had to release her hand and step back. He had promised her. He wanted nothing more than to shove her inside her dark quarters and carry her down to the floor, mounting her with quick, hard urgency, but restraint now would bring him much sweeter rewards in the future. So he controlled his rough, quick breathing and tried to control the fierce rush of blood through his veins.

“Three seconds,” he said.

Her eyes were glazed as she stared at him, and she was weaving slightly. “Yes,” she whispered. “Three seconds.”

She didn’t move. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. “Go inside, Caroline.” His voice was low and calm. “Good night.”

“Good night.” She moved jerkily to obey, and as she reached the threshold she paused to look at him over her shoulder. Her eyes were huge and dark with some indefinable emotion. “That was much longer than three seconds.”

She switched on the light, then closed and carefully locked the door. Even as she turned the bolt, she heard him drive away, telling her that he hadn’t been tempted to linger for even a second, or hadn’t considered the idea of knocking on her door. He had accomplished his mission, which was to establish their “relationship,” so as far as he was concerned, there was no reason to hang around.

She sat down on the couch and remained there, motionless, for quite some time. She had some thinking to do, and she always concentrated better if she could just sit still and totally lock herself inside her brain, or perhaps it was more a matter of locking everything else out, and that included physical stimuli.

It hadn’t taken any psychoanalysis for her to understand years ago how her upbringing and accelerated progress through school had combined with her own nature to make her the odd man out, but she hadn’t minded. Why should she worry that she had never learned how to associate with the opposite sex on a social and emotional level, when there hadn’t been anyone of the opposite sex she was interested in associating with anyway? So she had never regretted her out-of-sync relationship with the rest of the world—until now.

Now, for the first time, she was strongly attracted to a man and wanted him to be attracted to her, but how did she go about accomplishing that feat? When other girls had been learning how, she had been studying physics. She was an expert in laser optics, but she didn’t know a damn thing about flirting.

Why couldn’t she have gotten her feet wet with someone less challenging, say a fellow physicist who had also spent more time with books than people and was a little awkward socially, too? But, no, instead she had fallen head over heels in attraction with a hotshot fighter pilot, a man who could make women go weak in the knees with one look from those diamond-blue eyes. She didn’t have to be an expert at kissing to be able to tell that he was, and she had a sneaking suspicion that she had made a fool out of herself. All he had done was hold her hand, as he’d promised, and she had practically been all over him. She had a distinct memory of pushing hard against him and rubbing her front against his like a cat, and thinking that she was going to fall in a heap at his feet.

He’d been nice to her this evening. He’d treated her as a friend, had let her relax, and she had had fun. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done something so totally useless and enjoyed it. Simple playing hadn’t been part of her childhood; her parents had carefully monitored her activities to make certain they were geared toward her educational progress. No ABC blocks for her; she had used flash cards. In defense of her parents, though, she had been an impatient child, irascible when the pace had lagged behind the speed of her inquisitive, hungry intellect. Her childhood hadn’t been unhappy, just different, and she had made her own choices in life.

She was groping her way through unfamiliar territory, but Caroline’s approach to any problem was to tackle it head-on. She didn’t really know how to use the weapons nature had given her, but Joe Mackenzie was about to find them all brought to bear on him.

The first step in solving any problem was to research the subject. It was early enough that a lot of people were still awake, and there were plenty of female Air Force personnel who turned out to be willing to lend her magazines with articles that she thought addressed the problem, and she was even able to come up with quite a bit of research on fighter pilots in general. She was an accomplished speed reader and sat up for several hours plowing her way through magazines offering such intriguing articles as “He’s Bad, Bad, Bad—So Why Do You Love Him Anyway?” and “Finding The Gold in The Dross—When Not To Give Up.” Double titles seemed to abound, as well as hundreds of glossy photos of women five feet nine inches tall who weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds, most of which was evidently hair and breasts. She learned how to tell when he was cheating, and how to get revenge. She learned how to break into real estate or start her own company, how to win at blackjack—she committed that to memory—and where to stay on vacation in Europe. Interesting stuff. She just might subscribe.

The material on fighter pilots was even more interesting.

She was in the office before dawn, dressed in a loose, lightweight jumpsuit. When she had been making her selection that morning, seduction had collided with comfort, and seduction had lost without even a whimper. The temperature hit a hundred and ten during the day, for heaven’s sake.

She hauled out the specs for the day’s tests and began rechecking them, making a mental note to ask Cal a few questions about the computer program. She had taken a second major in computer programming, which had seemed to be a good complement to physics, and it had in fact come in very handy on several occasions. She logged onto the computer and began running the tests through it, rechecking once again that everything was as perfect as they could get it.

“How long have you been in—”

She shrieked at the voice right behind her and came up swinging, overturning her chair in the process. Joe’s hand shot up and caught her right fist before it could connect with his face, and a split second later he caught the left one in his other hand, the twin movements like lightning.

“Don’t do that again!” she yelled, going up on tiptoe to glare at him, thrusting her jaw up to his. Her eyes were still dilated from fright. “What are you trying to do, give me a heart attack? From now on, whistle before you get to the door!”

With a deft motion he twisted her arms behind her back, still holding her fists clasped in his palms. The action brought her breasts firmly against him and encased her within his arms. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said softly. “But if your first reaction is always to attack, you should learn how to do it right, so you won’t wind up in the sort of predicament you’re in now.” He saw interest sharpen the dark bluish-green of her eyes and knew that he had successfully deflected her attention from the fact that he was holding her captive.

Caroline considered the situation. She tugged briefly on her arms, but he held her firmly, and there was no way she could free herself from those iron hands. He was too tall for her to hit him in the face with her head. “Is till have the option of stomping your instep and kicking your ankle or knee.”

“Yes, but you’re too close to put much power behind it. You can hurt me, but not enough to make me let you go. If I were an attacker, sweetheart, right now you’d be in some serious trouble.”

She wiggled experimentally again, testing her limits of movement. His arms were locked around her, and she was pressed fully against his muscled body. She shivered a little at the unexpected pleasure of it, so surrounded by his warmth and scent. He smelled delicious; she had never noticed any other man smelling the way Joe did, and it wasn’t just the fresh scent of soap lingering on hiss kin. It was a hot, musky scent, subtle and powerful, making her want to bury her nose against him and drink it in. The effects were strong and immediate; her breasts began to tingle and ache as her nipples peaked, and hot tension tightened her loins.

She cleared her throat and tried to take her mind off her body’s reaction; they were in the office, for heaven’s sake. Just because she had changed her mind about wanting to experience more of this man/woman thing didn’t mean she wanted to do it here. “Umm…so what should I do when I want to attack?”

“You should learn how to fight first,” he replied, and pressed a quick, hard kiss on her mouth as he released her.

Her lips tingled from the kiss, and she licked them. His gaze slid to her mouth and darkened. She tried for nonchalance to hide the fact that she was shaking all over. “So, what do you recommend?” she asked as she set the chair upright and briskly backed out of the computer program, just to give herself something to do. She switched the machine off and faced him with a bright smile. “Martial arts?”

“Dirty street fighting would be better. It teaches you how to win any way you can, and to hell with fighting fair. It’s the only way you should ever go into a fight.”

“You mean like throwing dirt in the guy’s eyes and stuff like that?”

“Whatever works. The idea is to win, and stay alive.”

“Is that the way you fight?” she asked. She desperately needed to sit down, her legs were shaking so much, but he would tower over her if she did, and the thought of that made her nervous, too. She compromised by propping herself on the edge of the desk. “Is that what the Air Force teaches its pilots now?”

“No, that’s the way I was taught to fight when I was a kid.”

“Who taught you?”

“My father.”

She supposed it was a masculine bonding thing. Her father had taught her calculus, but that wasn’t quite the same.

“I’ve been researching the typical fighter pilot,” she said. “It’s interesting reading. In some ways, you’re the perfect stereotype.”

“Is that so?” He showed his teeth in a very white smile, though maybe it wasn’t a smile at all.

“Well, in some ways you’re atypical. You’re unusually tall, more suited to a bomber than a fighter. But fighter pilots are typically intelligent, aggressive, arrogant and as determined—maybe stubborn is a better word—as a bulldog. They want to be in control at all times.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, dark lashes shadowing his glittering eyes.

“Fighter pilots have keen eyesight and fast reactions. Most of you have blue or light-colored eyes, so you’re certainly typical on that. And here’s an interesting little tidbit…fighter pilots usually have more female children than male.”

“Finding out will be fun,” he drawled.

She cleared her throat. “Actually, I thought you might already know.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Why’s that?”

“I did notice that they called you Breed. I assumed it’s because you do it so well.”

One corner of his mouth moved in a slow smile. “My breeding productivity doesn’t have anything to do with it. They call me Breed because I’m a half-breed Indian.”

Caroline was so startled that she could only stare at him. “A Native American?”

He shrugged. “That’s what you can call it if you want, but I’ve always called myself an Indian. Changing labels doesn’t change anything else.” His voice was casual, but he was watching her closely.

She studied him just as closely. Hiss kin was certainly dark enough, with a deep bronze hue that she had assumed was a dark tan. His hair was thick and black and straight, those sculpted cheekbones high and prominent, his nose thin and high-bridged, and his mouth was typically clean-cut and sensual. His eyes, however, were an oddity. She frowned and said accusingly, “Then how can you have blue eyes? Blue is a recessive gene. You should have dark eyes.”

He had been alert to how she would receive his heritage, but at her reply something in him relaxed. How else would Caroline respond to something but with a demand for more information? She wasn’t shocked or repelled, as some people still were by his mixed heritage, or even titillated, as sometimes happened—though he had become accustomed to that because women were often excited by his profession, too. Nope, she honed right in on the genetic question of why he had blue eyes.

“My parents were both half-breeds,” he explained. “Genetically I’m still half Indian and half white, but I got the recessive blue-eyed gene from both my parents. I’m one-quarter Comanche, one-quarter Kiowa and half white.”

She nodded in satisfaction, the mystery of his eye color having been explained. She pursued the subject with interest. “Do you have any brothers or sisters? What color are their eyes?”

“Three brothers and one sister. Half brothers and sister, to be precise. My mother died when I was a baby. My stepmother is white, and she has blue eyes. So do my three brothers. Dad was wondering if he was ever going to have a black-eyed baby until my sister was born.”

She was fascinated by this glimpse of family life. “I’m an only child. I always wanted a brother or sister when I was little,” she said, unaware of the faint wistful note in her voice. “Was it fun?”

He chuckled and hooked his foot in the chair, turning it around so he could drop his tall frame into it. Caroline remained propped against the edge of the desk, still effectively pinned there, because he was in the way, but she wasn’t paying attention to that any longer.

“I was sixteen when Dad married Mary, so I didn’t grow up with them, but it was fun in a different way. I was old enough to appreciate babies, to take care of them. The best times were when I would go home on leave and they would swarm all over me like little monkeys. Dad and Mary always take off for one night alone while I’m there, and I have the kids to myself. They aren’t little anymore, but we all still like it.”

She tried to imagine this big, dangerous-looking man relaxed and surrounded by kids. Even just talking about them had softened his face. It wasn’t until she saw him that way that she realized what a barrier he kept between himself and everyone else, because there was no barrier between him and his family. With them he would relax the iron control that characterized his every move, lose the remoteness that lay over his expression and in his eyes. The relationship he had with his men was different. It was the camaraderie that is established with a group whose members work together and depend on each other for a long time. That wasn’t personal, and in a way it required him to retain his control. Suddenly she felt cold and a little lost, because she wasn’t inside his intimate little circle. She wanted him to relax that guard with her, let her see the inner man and get close to him. With her recent feminine awakening came another insight, one that hurt even more: she wanted him to want her enough to lose that frightening control. It hurt because he didn’t, and she knew it. What was frightening was that she knew it wouldn’t matter to her unless she was already far more involved emotionally than she had thought.

She became aware that she had been staring silently at him for several long minutes, and he had been just as quietly watching her, one eyebrow slightly quirked as he waited for her to say something. She blushed without knowing why. He came lithely to his feet, stepping forward, so close that his legs were touching hers. “What’s on your mind, sweetheart?”

“You,” she blurted out. Why was he standing so close? Her pulse was beginning to race again. What was it about him that being close to him put her brain into neutral and her body into overdrive?

“What about me?”

She tried to think of something clever and casual, but she had never learned how to prevaricate or hide her feelings. “I don’t know anything about men. I don’t know how to act around them or how to attract them.”

His expression was wry. “You’re doing okay.”

What did he mean by that? She was being her usual blunt self, which had always sent men running. This was more difficult than she’d imagined it would be. She found that she was wringing her hands and was vaguely astonished at herself, because she’d never thought she was the hand-wringing type. “Am I? Good. I’ve never seen anyone I wanted to attract before, so I’m at something of a loss. I know you said we’d just pretend to have a relationship so your men wouldn’t bother me, but would it be too much of a bother for you if I wanted to make it more real?”

“Just how ‘real’ did you have in mind?” he asked, amused.

Again she was at a loss. “Well, how would I know? I just know that I’m attracted to you, and I’d like for you to be attracted to me, but I’ve never done this before, so you’re asking me to play a game without knowing the rules. Would you hand a football to some guy who’d never heard of the game before and say ‘Here you go, buddy. Play ball’?”

His eyes danced at the astringency of her tone, but his voice was calm and grave when he replied, “I see your point.”

“So?” She spread her hands inquiringly. “What are the rules? That is, if you don’t mind playing.”

“Oh, I like a little game now and then.”

He was drawling again. She gave him an uncertain glance, wondering if he was making fun of her.

He put his hands on her hips and moved her a little farther back on the desk. Caroline grabbed his upper arms, her nails digging into his biceps. No one had ever touched her hips before, except for one eager beaver who had pinched her bottom and gotten shoved over a wastebasket for his effort. The steely muscles under her fingers made her doubt she would be able to shove Joe anywhere.

He moved even closer and somehow used his hard thighs to spread her legs. She looked down in shock. He was between her legs. Her head jerked back up, but before she could say anything he brushed a light, gentle kiss across her mouth. The contrast between that non-threatening kiss and his very threatening position between her legs disoriented her.

He cupped her face with one hand, slowly caressing her cheek, his fingertips moving lightly over the smooth, velvet texture of her skin. His other hand slipped around over her bottom and firmly pulled her forward until he was nestled intimately in the notch of her thighs. Caroline’s heart thumped violently, and she lost her breath, as well as her ability to sit upright. Her bones turned liquid and she sank against him, unintentionally deepening the embrace. The hard bulge of his sex throbbed against the soft yielding of her loins, and she felt an answering throbbing begin deep inside her.

He kissed her again, this time with a slowly increasing demand. Helplessly she opened her mouth to the probing of his tongue. His hips moved against her, between her spread thighs, in the same rhythm as his tongue moved in her mouth. The hard bulge in his trousers was even harder, even bigger.

Her senses were swimming, just as they had been the night before. His tongue probed deep into her mouth, stroking her own tongue and demanding a response. His taste was hot and heady, hiss kin smelling of soap and man. Her breasts were throbbing, and again the only relief seemed to be contact with his hard, muscled chest. It was all almost too much to bear, but the only alternative was to tear herself out of his arms, and she couldn’t make herself do that.

She couldn’t, but he could. Somehow she found herself being gently freed and set away from him. She swayed, and he steadied her, his hard hands clasping her arms. She stared up at him a little wildly. Damn his control! Why couldn’t he feel even a little of the turmoil that enveloped her? He had gotten aroused, no doubt about that, but it hadn’t affected his control at all, while she was about to go up in flames.

“The rules are simple,” he said calmly. “We have to let you get accustomed to touching and being touched, and find out what you like. We’ll take it slow, go a little bit further each time. I’ll pick you up at seven tonight.”

He kissed her again and left as silently as he had entered the room. Caroline sat on the desk, trying to get control of her heart and lungs, trying to deal with the empty ache of her body. She was in trouble. She was in big trouble. She had started something she couldn’t handle, but she wouldn’t have called it off even if she thought she could, and she strongly suspected it was beyond her control anyway.

Unless she was very much mistaken, Joe Mackenzie intended to have an affair with her. A full-fledged, get-naked, lovemaking affair. And she was willing; she was going into this with her eyes open, knowing full well that for him it was likely to be only an affair, while it would be much more to her. He would always be in control, the strong core of him always guarded and remote and uninvolved, while she was well on her way to losing her heart.

Chapter 5

The tests went well that day, which was a good thing, because Caroline was in a daze. Adrian made a snide remark to her when they were alone and she confounded him by giving him a vague smile. She was alarmed at her own lack of concentration. That had never been a problem before; her ability to concentrate was so strong that one professor in college had made the comment that she would be able to read during an earthquake, and he hadn’t been far off the mark.

She would never have believed that a man could totally disrupt her thought processes, especially since he wasn’t paying her any particular attention. He didn’t have to, she realized. He had made his intention plain the day before, and he’d been seen kissing her good-night; as far as everyone on base was concerned, she was Colonel Mackenzie’s woman. He was the alpha male, and none of the other men would challenge him for his chosen mate. She was a little appalled at this demonstration of how little things had changed since prehistoric times, even though she had done her part by going along with him. Now there was food for thought. Had she gone along with him because his suggestion had made sense, or because he was the alpha male and she had felt subconsciously compelled to obey him?

Nah. She had never felt compelled, subconsciously or otherwise, to obey anyone. She had gone along with him because he made her heartbeat go crazy, pure and simple, and it was useless to keep looking for extenuating circumstances with which to excuse herself.

When they were back in the office going over the day’s test results and preparing for the next day’s flights, Cal rolled his chair over to hers. “So, how’d it go on the date with the boss man?”

Despite herself, her hands immediately started trembling and she laid down the paper she had been trying to read. “Very casual, low-key. Why do you ask?”

To her surprise, his friendly eyes were full of concern. “Well, I’ve never known you to date before, and I guess I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t twisting your arm. He is the head man on this project, and he has a lot of influence, not just with the base commander and the men here, but all the way to the Pentagon.”

She was touched. “And you thought I might feel I had to go out with him to stay on the team?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

She patted his hand, smiling. “Thanks, but everything’s okay.”

“Good. Adrian isn’t bothering you too much, is he?”

“I haven’t paid any attention to him, so I guess he isn’t.”

Cal smiled and rolled back to his own desk.

Caroline checked the time. Three and a half hours until seven o’clock. She had always found her work engrossing, but along with her loss of concentration she had evidently become a clock-watcher, too. No one had ever warned her that associating with men was efficiency-destroying.

For almost the first time in her life she stopped work when everyone else did. She hurried to her quarters, turned the air conditioner on high and jumped into the shower. It was only as she was stepping out of the stall that she realized she didn’t know where they were going or how she should dress.

She stared at the telephone. She could call him. She didn’t know his number, but that wasn’t any problem, because the base operator would. It was the sensible thing to do. She was a big believer inbeing sensible, so she sat down on the bed and placed the call before she talked herself out of her own common sense. He answered on the first ring. “Mackenzie.”

God, his voice sounded even deeper on the phone. She took a deep breath. “This is Caroline. Where are we going tonight?” There, that was just right. To the point, no silliness, a simple request for information.

“Wear a skirt,” he replied maddeningly, cutting through her no-nonsense question to the reason behind it. “Something I can get my hands under.”

The receiver clicked in her ear, and she stared at it. The damn man had hung up on her! And her heart was racing again. Damn him, damn him, damn him. It wasn’t fair. She was all but in a panic with anticipation and fear and wanting, and his heartbeat was probably as steady as a rock.

A skirt? After that comment, he was lucky she wasn’t running for the hills. There was no way she could get in that truck with him expecting at any moment to feel those hot, callused hands sliding up her thighs. If he’d kept his mouth shut she would probably have worn a skirt because it was cooler, but if she wore one now, she would automatically be giving him permission to put his hand up it, and God knows what else. And it wasn’t that she didn’t want him to, just that he’d said they would go slow and that didn’t sound slow at all to her, and even if it was, she would like to have a little control over the situation. What she would really like was to destroy his control, to have him as hot and bothered and on the verge of madness as she was.

She sat down on the bed and took several deep breaths. Maybe nuns had the right idea. Men were obviously detrimental to a woman’s mental health.

She put on khaki fatigue pants and a tailored white shirt. That was as close as she was going to get to a skirt…not very close at all.

He knocked on the door at seven o’clock precisely, and when she opened it he burst out laughing. “What have you been thinking?” he asked, still chuckling. “That I’m a big bad wolf all set to gobble you up?”

“The thought crossed my mind.”

He watched as she double-checked the appliances in the small quarters, then locked and double-checked the door. She was a cautious woman indeed. He put his hand on her waist as he walked her to the truck. “You don’t have anything to worry about,” he said soothingly. “I’m not going to eat you.” Three seconds ticked by before he murmured, “Yet.”

He felt her jump. Her peculiar blend of inexperience and sexuality was slowly driving him mad. When he kissed her, she responded with a heat and intensity that brought him to the brink of violence, but at the same time he sensed that she was ready to bolt at any time. She reminded him of nothing so much as a filly when a stallion is brought to her for the first time, nervous and apt to bite or kick, while at the same time her scent was telling the stallion she was more than ready for his mounting and he was going wild trying to accomplish it. Well, he’d calmed many a mare for both riding and servicing, and he knew just how to go about it.

He lifted her into the truck before she could change her mind and went around to the driver’s side. The proposition she had put to him that morning had been in his mind all day, as had the blunt, forthright way she had done it. Caroline didn’t know how to be flirtatious or sweetly cajoling; she had just laid it on the line, and her ego with it. He had wanted to take her in his arms and hold her, tell her that she needed to learn how to protect herself better than that. She had no defenses and didn’t even realize it. Everything about her was straight ahead, no detours or subterfuges. He’d never had a woman ask for him like that before, ask him to teach her about men and sex. He’d been half-aroused all day, silently cursing the constrictions of his uniform.

Now he was in his customary off-duty jeans and boots, but the jeans were even more restrictive. He shifted position uncomfortably, trying to stretch his leg out to give himself more room. Damn it, he either needed to get out of his pants or get rid of his hard-on—preferably both, and in that order.

“Where are we going this time?” she asked, pushing her wind-blown hair out of her face.

“Do you like Mexican?”

Her eyes lit up. “Tacos,” she purred. “Enchiladas. Sopapillas.”

He laughed. “Got it.” As she pushed her hair back once more, he said, “Would you rather I put up the windows and turned on the air conditioning?”

“No, I like it.” She paused before admitting, “My ’vette is a convertible.”

He was smiling as he returned his attention to the road. Her name should have been Paradox, because she was one conflicting characteristic after another.

They went to his favorite Mexican restaurant in Vegas, where the best enchiladas she’d ever eaten, coupled with a frozen Margarita, relaxed her and made her forget that she was nervous. Joe drank water with his dinner, something she found curious. “I thought pilots were supposed to be hard drinkers,” she said.

“Most of us put away our share of pilot juice,” he said lazily.

“But not you?”

“Nope. There’s a time limit within which you aren’t supposed to drink if you’re going to be flying the next day, but I think it’s too close. I want perfect control of myself and my machine. The laws of physics and aerodynamics aren’t very forgiving at Mach 2.” He lifted his glass of water in a little toast. “Not only that, I’m a half-breed. I don’t drink. Period.”

She gave a brief nod as if admitting the wisdom of that. “If it’s so dangerous, why do any pilots drink?”

“To wind down. You’re so tense for so long, with the adrenaline burning up your veins, that you can’t come down from the high. Our lives are on the line every minute up there, even on routine flights. Hell, there’s no such thing as a routine flight.”

She started to ask a question about Night Wing, but remembered where they were and left it for another time. Security wasn’t something she took lightly.

After dinner she said, “What now?” then wished she hadn’t. She also wished she hadn’t had that Margarita. She saw his point about needing perfect control.

“Now, sweetheart, we play.”

When he said play, he meant play. Ten minutes later they were on a miniature golf course.

She hefted the putter experimentally. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Looks like I’m going to be first with you at a lot of things,” he replied with that maddening calm of his.

She scowled and lifted the putter like a bat. “Maybe not.”

He kissed her even as he relieved her of the putter with a move so fast she saw only a blur. Disgruntled, she thought that if he’d lived in the Old West he would have been a gunfighter.

“Your first lesson,” he said, turning her so her back was to him and putting his arms around her. He folded her hands around the handle in the correct manner and showed her how to swing, smooth and level, hitting the ball with carefully restrained power. Strength wasn’t a factor in miniature golf; the game required judgment and coordination.

He made a hole in one on the first green. “You’ve done this before,” she accused.

“Among other things.”

“New rule. Each innuendo will add a stroke to your score.”

“Good. Added strokes means it’ll last longer.”

She wanted to throw her ball at him and stomp off the green, but instead she shouted with laughter and firmly added another stroke to his score. Rules were rules.

To her surprise, she seemed to have the needed judgment of distance, force and direction, and challenged him even though she had never played before. He was too aggressive by nature to give her the game and set himself to the task of beating her, displaying intense concentration and superb hand-eye coordination. Caroline was just as determined, and the game was largely played in silence, to a tie. He pointed out that it was a draw only because of the penalty stroke she’d added to his score.

“So let’s play another,” she challenged. “Throw this one out, and the best two out of three wins.”

“Deal.”

They had to play five more games, because two others ended in draws. He won the first game, she won the second, and the next two were the ties; he finally ended it by winning the fifth game by one stroke.

She was scowling as they turned in their putters, and Joe was reminded of the look on her face the night before, when the slot machine had kept taking her quarters without making a payoff. He had had the idle thought that she was on the verge of dismantling the machine when it had finally paid out. No doubt about it, Caroline made no pretense of being good-natured about losing. She didn’t like it. He understood that, because he didn’t like it, either.

On the drive back to the base he slowed and pulled off the road, then drove about a quarter of a mile into the desert before stopping. He killed the lights and motor, and the night silence poured in through the open windows.

“Are you ready for another first?”

Caroline tensed. “What kind of first?”

“Parking.”

“Thanks, but I had to pass a test on that when I got my driver’s license.”

He chuckled at the testy comment but sensed the nervousness behind it. “Here are our rules on making out. Number one, I’m not going to make love to you. Your first time is going to be on a bed, not in the front seat of a truck. Number two, we’re going to keep most of our clothes on, because if we don’t, your first time will be in the front seat of a truck.”

She cleared her throat. “It sounds pretty frustrating.”

“It is. That’s the whole point of parking and making out.” He laughed and slid out from behind the steering wheel, then scooped her onto his lap. A little more shifting and he was sitting with his back propped against the passenger door, his long legs stretched out on the seat, while she was lying pressed against his right side, half on the seat and half on him, her head on his shoulder with her face tilted up, and he was leisurely kissing her.

If the windows had been up they would have fogged over. His mouth was slow and hot and demanding, making her forget about time. The slow beat of pleasure began to pound in her veins, and her arms wound about his neck.

His palm covered her breast and the shock jolted her, making her tear her mouth from his. He ruthlessly took it again, stifling her instinctive protest, so she could only whimper into his mouth. As the shock faded, she began to whimper from the pleasure of it, and her nipple beaded tightly beneath the layers of cloth.

“Do you like it?” he murmured. “Or do you want me to stop?”

She liked it, maybe too much, but she didn’t want him to stop. Her breast was tingling and throbbing, the heat from it spreading down to her loins. His strong fingers were slowly kneading, taking care not to hurt her; then he found the turgid nipple and rubbed it through her shirt. She moaned and arched against him.

“Caroline?” he prompted. “Do you want me to stop? Or do you want more?”

“Don’t stop,” she said, her voice hoarse with strain. “Please, don’t stop.”

He kissed her reassuringly. “I won’t. I’m going to unbutton your shirt and slip my hand inside. All right?”

How was she supposed to stand that when she felt as if she were flying into a thousand pieces right now? But as soon as he said it, she knew that she wanted his hand on her naked breast, that the barriers of cloth between them were too maddening to tolerate. “All right,” she whispered, and somehow her hand was busy with the buttons of his shirt as he unfastened hers. She wanted to feel his bare skin as much as she wanted his touch on hers.

His long fingers dipped inside her open shirt and trailed lightly along the edges of her bra, pausing at the front center fastening. “Umm, good,” he said, and deftly unfastened the garment. She felt suddenly vulnerable as it loosened; then he slid his hand inside, and all her nerve endings rioted. His palm was hot and rough, the callused skin rasping over her swollen nipples as he rubbed and lightly pinched. She heard herself moan and buried her face against his shoulder to stifle the sound.

He shifted on the seat so he was more on his side and she was lying flatter. She felt like a doll, helpless to prevent him from moving her as he willed. He spread her open shirt wide, exposing her breasts to the bright starlight shining through the windshield. She had seen men do it to women in movies, but still she was unprepared when he bent his head and closed his mouth over her nipple, drawing it in with a curling motion of his tongue. Caroline arched wildly under the lash of a sensation so exquisite and unbearable that her entire body quivered. He controlled her with those incredibly strong hands of his and the pressure of his iron-muscled legs, pressing her down into the seat, and somehow he was on top of her.

Her heart was beating so hard it hurt, and her blood was pounding through her veins. She clung to him, barely able to breathe as her body adjusted to his weight and unyielding hardness. The jarring unfamiliarity of it was matched by a deeper, more primitive sense of rightness. He moved his thighs, spreading her legs and settling himself between them, pushing the hard ridge of his manhood against her soft folds. “This is how we’ll be when we make love,” he whispered, pressing slow kisses on her neck and collarbone, then moving down to suckle deeply on both her breasts, leaving her nipples tight and wet and painfully sensitive to the night air when he lifted his head. He eased the coolness with the hot pressure of his chest.

His voice was a low, almost soundless rustle in her ear. “I’ll move like this, slow and easy, until we’re both ready to climax.” His hips rocked leisurely, rhythmically pressing his sex against hers. Caroline’s whole body lifted into the contact, her slender hips straining and reaching. She wanted to speak, to beg him to do something to ease this unbearable tension inside her, but all she could do was gasp for air and dig her nails into his shoulders in an effort to communicate her need to him.

“Then, when it’s time, when we can’t stand it any longer, I’ll start moving harder and faster, going deeper and deeper into you.”

She made a high, wild, pleading sound, spreading her thighs wider and lifting them to clasp his hips. Her ankle banged the steering wheel, a welcome distraction, because the slight pain eased her body’s primal attention, but it wasn’t enough. She twisted under him, frantic with heat and need and a deep, empty ache.

Joe caught his breath at her wild beauty, fierce and demanding, with only the starlight shining across her face. Her body was hot and tense and untamed, demanding a satisfaction she hadn’t yet known, but the lure of which was compelling her ever closer and closer to the edge. He wanted to unfasten her pants and drag them down, then bare his own loins and drive into her, hard and fast, just as he’d told her. He wanted her naked, lying stretched out before him on a bed to cushion her from the force of his thrusts. He wanted to take her with swift, rough lust, plunging into her hot womanhood from behind so her buttocks slapped against his belly with the raw sound of sex. The blood of his ancestors ran hot and thick through his veins, the blood of warriors, uncomplicated, as forceful as the elements. He saw himself taking her with the sun burning down on their naked skin and nothing beneath them but the hard, hot earth. And she was clinging to him, a warrior’s woman, as fierce and demanding as he was. He had known she was wild the first time he’d seen her, a wildness that had been stifled and controlled, but it was there, just waiting to break out.

He hadn’t intended to go this far, but she was pure flame in his arms, her response immediate and strong. His hardness stretched painfully beneath his jeans, demanding his own release, and grimly he knew it wouldn’t take much. But the seat of his truck wasn’t the place to take her virginity; it was too cramped, too awkward, too inconvenient, and he had also promised her that he wouldn’t make love to her tonight. Caroline needed to know that she could trust him, so he grimly fought for control. It wasn’t easy; he was close to climax himself, racked with frustration, but his iron will slowly won out, and he eased himself from the clinging embrace of her arms and legs.

“We have to stop,” he said, making his voice even. It took more effort than he liked. “If we don’t, you’ll lose your cherry right here.”

“Yes,” she whispered, reaching for him again. She didn’t care if her first time was in a pickup truck. Her body burned and ached, and she needed the surcease of his possession.

He caught her hands and firmly held them down. “No. Not here and not now.”

She stared at him, her eyes wild with frustration; then anger exploded hotly through her veins. She shoved at him, fighting to sit up in a flurry of tangled arms and legs, and scrambled away from him. “Then why did you let it go that far if you didn’t intend to finish it?” she shouted. “You…you tease!”

Frustration frayed his own temper. Damn it, did she think it had been easy for him to stop? “Because I got carried away, too!” he snapped.

“Yes, I can tell,” she said with a sneer. “It really shows. Your breathing speeded up a little bit there.”

Furious, he grabbed her hand and carried it to the front of his jeans, pressing her palm hard against the rigid length of his manhood. “Maybe this feels unaffected to you, but you came damn close to finding out just how involved I am.” His voice was guttural with rage, and that made him even angrier, because it was evidence of just how far his control had eroded.

She jerked her hand away, even though the feel of that thick ridge was fascinating. She was too angry to be diverted. “I didn’t say no, did I?” she demanded hotly. “Just what was wrong with here and now?”

He ground his teeth together, savagely fighting both his anger and a violent resurgence of sexual need. It had been a mistake to force her hand down on his groin. “Here isn’t a bed, and now isn’t enough time. When I get in you, I’m not going to get up for a long time. A cramped quickie isn’t what you need or what I want.”

She crossed her arms and stared furiously out the windshield.

He was silent, too, as he mastered his temper and his voice, reaching deep down to find the icy control for which he was famous. He was astonished at how quickly she had made him lose his temper, something he couldn’t remember doing since childhood. He had been angry, but losing control was something he didn’t permit himself to do. It seemed Caroline had an astonishing knack for breaking through to his primitive impulses, and, even more disturbingly, she wasn’t even trying. He had always controlled the relationships he had with women, letting them get only as intimate as he wanted, ending things when he wanted. The first night he had met Caroline he had coolly decided to have an affair with her, but on his terms and his time-table. It was disconcerting to realize she could not only tempt him to break his own rules but could actually make him fight to control himself.

“My quarters are in the BOQ,” he finally said evenly. “I can’t take you there. It would be just as inappropriate to use your quarters. Tomorrow is Friday, and I’m off duty this weekend. We’ll check into a hotel in Vegas and spend the weekend there.”

He assumed she was still willing, she thought angrily, and was disgusted with herself because she was. But he’d made it plain that it had to be his way or not at all. He was the man in control.

“All right,” she said through clenched teeth.

The drive back to the base was completed in an atmosphere more like that between adversaries rather than two people who had just decided to begin an affair. When they reached her quarters, she opened the door and jumped down without waiting for him.

He left the engine running and caught her just as she reached the door, catching her arm and whirling her around. “My good-night kiss,” he reminded her, and hauled her into his arms.

There was no way anyone watching could have mistaken that kiss as polite or friendly or in the getting-to-know-you stage. He held her plastered to him from knees to breast, her head bent back under the pressure of his kiss. His mouth was hot and angry and overwhelming, forcing her to acknowledge his dominance. For a few seconds she tried to push him away; then she yielded abruptly to the penetration of his tongue and pressed herself even closer to his hard frame, accepting his aggression and meeting it with her own.

He released her abruptly and stepped away, his eyes glittering. “You won’t need to pack a nightgown,” he said.

She stood silently glaring as he walked to the truck and got in. “I hadn’t planned to,” she muttered as he drove off.

Chapter 6

Caroline couldn’t find her ID tag the next morning. She searched the dresser top where she usually put it, the kitchen table, the cabinet tops, under the furniture, in the dirty laundry where she had thrown the clothes she had worn the day before, even the trash cans, but it wasn’t to be found. She sat down and tried to think what she had done with the thing, since she knew she had worn it the day before, but she drew a complete blank. Joe had had her so distracted that she might have eaten it for all she knew.

She couldn’t get into the buildings without that tag; they were coded and electronically scanned at the entrances, and anyone entering a classified area without the proper ID set off an alarm that had the security police swarming with weapons drawn. She was mortified that she had so carelessly misplaced it. Security was so tight that cards couldn’t be duplicated; the lost or damaged one had to be voided out of the computer system, a new one issued with a new code and that information fed into the computers. Also because of the security, a jillion forms had to be filled out in quadruplicate to authorize and verify the change. Probably even the base commander, Major General Tuell, would have to sign off on it.

She had had it the day before; she couldn’t have gotten into the buildings without it. She distinctly remembered it snagging on a file folder. The tag had just been clipped on, so could it have been tugged loose without her noticing it? Probably. Joe’s kisses had turned her brain into mush, and she hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything but seeing him that night.

If the tag was lying somewhere in the office, why hadn’t the alarm been set off when she had left without the proper identification? Or was the scan positioned so that it only read the tags of those entering the building, on the theory that if no one without identification got in, they didn’t have to worry about who got out. It was a logical theory; she had no problem with it. Her problem was how to find out if her tag was in the office.

She considered her options. If she called the security police to have them check, it would mean reports and explanations, the very thing she wanted to avoid. So she called Cal to get him to search the office for her. If he didn’t find the tag, she would report it lost and face the hassle.

It took him several rings to answer the phone, and his voice was groggy. “Hullo.”

“Cal, this is Caroline. I’m sorry to wake you, but I think I dropped my ID card in the office yesterday, and I need you to look for it before I report that it’s gone.”

He made a grunting noise. “Wha—?” He sounded bewildered and still half-asleep. “Caroline?”

“Yes, this is Caroline. Are you awake? Did you understand what I said?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m awake. I got it.” He yawned into the receiver. “Look for your ID card. Lord, Caroline, how’d you misplace something like that?”

“I think I snagged it on a file folder.”

“So wear it on a chain around your neck instead of clipping it on.”

Since she had roused him from a sound sleep, she allowed him his disgruntled advice. Maybe it was a psychological thing, but she didn’t like chains around her neck, even when they were called necklaces. Instead she would make a mental note to add her ID card to the list of things she double-checked.

“How long will it take you to get dressed?” she asked.

“Give me five minutes.” He yawned again. “What time is it?”

She looked at the clock. “It’s 5:43.”

He groaned audibly. “I’m on my way. Actually, I’m trying to focus my eyes. You owe me one. I wouldn’t do this for just anybody.”

“Thanks,” she said fervently.

She met him outside the Quonset building five minutes later. He was unshaven, his hair rumpled, his eyes bleary, but he was dressed, and his own ID tag was hanging on a chain around his neck. She stood outside while he shuffled through the door, still yawning. He was back in less than three minutes, carrying her tag, which she took with a stream of thank-you’s.

“It was under your desk,” he said, blinking owlishly at her. “What are you doing going to work this early?”

“I usually do,” she said, surprised. She thought everyone knew her habit of going in early and staying late.

He suddenly broke into his normal, easygoing grin. “I’m going to have to revise my opinion of Colonel Mackenzie downward, since he obviously isn’t keeping you up late. I’m disappointed in the man.”

She lifted her eyebrows in feigned astonishment. “You thought he would let anything interfere with work? Surely you jest.”

“Evidently I do. Well, have fun. I’ll mosey on back to shower and shave and mainline some coffee. More moving-target tests today. We need to be on our toes, and I’m barely on my feet.”

She gave him a quick kiss on his beard-roughened cheek. “Thanks, Cal. It would have taken forever to get it replaced, not to mention all of the reports.”

“Anytime, anytime.” Then he snickered. “Or you could have called Adrian to look for it.”

“I’d rather face the security police.”

“That’s what I thought.” With a wave, he began trudging back to his own quarters, and Caroline firmly clipped the tag in place with a sigh of relief.

At six-thirty, she was engrossed in running through the tests when a low, melodious whistle caught her attention. She burst out laughing and looked up, and two seconds later Joe silently appeared in the doorway.

“Another first,” he observed. “No flying cups, reports or fists.”

He was dressed in his flight suit, though he wasn’t in full harness yet. Her heart was suddenly in her throat. None of the other flights or tests had made her nervous, but abruptly she felt stricken, barely able to breathe. She had never cared before, and all of a sudden her objectivity was destroyed.

It took a special type of man to be a military aviator, and even more so to qualify as a fighter pilot. The numbers were still overwhelmingly male, though women were now accepted into fighter training. Analysts were finding that the female jet jockey shared some personality characteristics with the male pilots, mostly coolness under pressure and situation awareness, but in other significant ways the female pilots were indubitably different from the males. The men were naturally arrogant and supremely self-confident; it took that kind of man to be a fighter pilot, to have the kind of assurance that would not only allow him to climb into a machine and streak through the sky at three times the speed of sound, but to have the bloody confidence that he could master not only the machine but anything that might happen, and live to do it again. Fighter training only reinforced that supreme self-confidence.

She stared at him, seeing not only the cool confidence in his eyes but the actual eagerness to strap on that lethal beauty he called Baby. He enjoyed the speed and power, the risk, the ultimate challenge of it. He had no doubt in his ability to make the aircraft perform as he wanted and bring it safely to earth again. His air of arrogant invincibility was almost godlike in its fierceness.

But for all his skill and superiority, he was a man, a human being. And men could be killed.

“You’re going up today,” she said, barely able to force the words through her constricted throat. “You didn’t tell me.”

One eyebrow rose in a faintly quizzical expression. “I’m going up today,” he replied mildly. “What about it?”

What was she supposed to tell him, that she was terrified because his chosen occupation was one of the most dangerous in the world? She didn’t have the right to impose her fears on him. There was no commitment between them, only an agreement to have an affair, which officially hadn’t even begun yet. It wasn’t his fault that she was falling in love with him, and even if he returned the sentiment, she wouldn’t tell him she was afraid, because she wouldn’t risk the possibility of distracting him when he needed to concentrate wholly on his job.

So she swallowed her fear and fought for control. “You’re too…um, I think overwhelming is the word, in a flightsuit. What do you have on under it?”

The diversion worked. The other eyebrow rose to join its twin. “T-shirt and shorts. Did you expect me to be stark naked?”

“I didn’t know. I’d never thought about it before.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “Go on, get out of here. You destroy my concentration. I couldn’t work all day yesterday after what you did, so I’m not letting you near me this morning.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth she realized she should have known better. The light of battle gleamed coolly in his eyes as he walked toward her. She had inadvertently issued a challenge, and his dominant nature compelled him to call her on it.

She was still sitting down, and he leaned over her, bracing his hands on the arms of the chair and capturing her before she could scramble away. He kissed her, slanting his hard mouth over hers and using his tongue with devastating thoroughness. Her toes curled in her shoes; she surrendered without even the pretense of struggle, accepting his intrusion and welcoming it with unguarded eagerness.

He shuddered and instantly straightened, his face hard with lust. “What are you wearing tonight?”

She struggled to gather her senses, so easily scattered by his touch. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

She had never before seen his eyes so blue and intense. “No. You’ll be naked five minutes after we check into the hotel.”

The image was shattering. Helplessly she closed her eyes, her mouth going dry. When she opened them again, he was gone.

If she affected him even half as much as he affected her, he wouldn’t be able to fly the damn plane. The fear rose nauseatingly in her throat again, surging back at full force. It took all of her willpower to force it away, but she managed it, because she knew that when it came down to it, that cold-blooded control of his would shut out every thought that didn’t pertain to flying, the real love of his life. The truth hurt, but she took comfort in it, too, for as unpalatable as it was it would keep him safe, and that was all she asked.

Cal had been making a point of arriving in the mornings before Adrian, but she had disrupted his schedule that morning and was still alone when Adrian came in. He gave her an almost automatic look of dislike, poured a cup of coffee and sat down without speaking. Adrian didn’t bother her much, anyway, but that morning she was so on edge that she scarcely even noticed he was there. She sat at her desk, torn between fear and anticipation. Part of her mind persisted in dwelling on the dangers of test flights, while the other part kept sliding away to sensual images of the coming night. She couldn’t believe she was actually looking forward to it, but not even the realistic expectation of discomfort, at the least, was enough to quell her fever. She wanted Joe, needed him desperately, with an instinct so primal that the threat of pain was swept aside like a toothpick in a flood.

But first she had to live through the flights today.

“Dreaming about lover boy?” Adrian asked nastily.

She blinked at the interruption. “What? Oh—yes. I was. Sorry. Did you ask me something?”

“Only about your love life. I’m a little surprised, though. I didn’t think it was men you liked, or have you decided to try some variety?”

Inexperience was not the same thing at all as ignorance, and she knew exactly what he was hinting at. She gave him a cold look, suddenly relishing the idea of a good, clean battle, free of entangling emotions. “Did you know I was always so much younger than the boys in my class that I was almost through college before I was mature enough for any of them to notice me?”

The question startled him; the puzzlement showed on his good-looking face. “So?”

“So they came after me hot and heavy, expecting me to know the score, but I didn’t know anything at all about men and dating. I’d never been around kids my own age. I’d never been kissed, never been to a prom, never learned the things other girls learned at parties and on double dates. When those guys came on so strong it scared the hell out of me, so I said and did whatever it took to run them off. Are you getting the picture?”

He didn’t, not at first. His incomprehension was plain. But then understanding broke through his hostility, and he stared at her in shocked disbelief. “Are you saying you were afraid of me?”

“Well, what else could I be?” she flashed. “You were grabbing at me and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“For God’s sake, I’m not a rapist!” he snapped.

“How was I supposed to know?” She stood up and shook her fist at him. “If you hadn’t been so damn sure of yourself and thought no woman could resist you, you might have noticed that I was scared!”

“You didn’t act scared!”

“So I get belligerent when I feel threatened.” She was standing over him now, glaring and all but breathing fire. “For your information, Colonel Mackenzie is the first man to notice how uneasy I was, and he doesn’t attack me like a hungry octopus.” No, all he did was make love to her with that infuriating control of his, reducing her to mush while he remained perfectly clearheaded. That, however, wasn’t any of Adrian’s business. “I’m tired of your snide remarks, do you understand? Put a sock in it, as of right now, or I’ll stuff one in for you.”

The shock left his face, and he glared back at her with a return of hostility. “Am I supposed to feel guilty because you’re a social misfit? You’re not the only one with problems, lady. I’d just gone through a god-awful divorce, my wife had dumped me for a weasel who made twice as much money as I did and I needed a little ego building myself. So don’t blame me for not noticing your delicate psyche and pandering to it, because you sure as hell didn’t notice mine!”

“Then we’re even,” she charged. “So get off my back!”

“With pleasure!”

She stomped back to her chair and flung herself into it. After glaring at the spec sheet for about thirty seconds she muttered, “I’m sorry about your wife.”

“Ex-wife.”

“She probably isn’t happy.”

Adrian leaned back in his chair, scowling at her. “I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t mean to.”

It was an effort, but she growled, “That’s okay.”

He mumbled something and turned to his own work.

She had sought relief and distraction in anger, and it had succeeded while it lasted, but now that the confrontation was over her edginess came creeping back. Still, it looked like the air might have cleared some between Adrian and herself, or at least settled down, so it had been beneficial in that way.

Yates and Cal came trooping in, Cal still looking rumpled and sleepy, but he gave Caroline a grin and a wink. Then they all went over to the control room for the day’s flights. The pilots were still there, four of them suited up in full harness, with straps and hoses and oxygen masks, and wearing speed jeans. Joe and Captain Bowie Wade were flying the Night Wings; Daffy Deale and Mad Cat Myrick were flying chase in the F-22s. Joe was totally absorbed in the job at hand, as she had known he would be, and the knot of fear in her throat relaxed some to actually be able to see it.

She tried not to let herself stare at him but the impulse was irresistible. He was a lodestone to her eyes, and she was fascinated by him. It wasn’t just his tall, superbly muscled body or the chiseled perfection of his face, but the aura surrounding him. Joe Mackenzie was a warrior—cool, nerveless, lethal in his controlled savagery. The blood of countless generations of warriors ran in his veins; his instincts were those honed in past wars, in numberless bloody battles. The other pilots had some of the same instincts, the same aura, but in him those things had been condensed and purified, meeting in a perfect combination of body, intellect and ability. The others knew it; it was obvious in the way they looked at him, the respect they automatically gave him. It wasn’t just that he was a colonel and in charge of the project, though his rank garnered its own respect, but what they gave him as a man and a pilot they would have given him even had they all outranked him. Some men stood out from the crowd, and Joe Mackenzie was one of them. He could never have been a businessman, a lawyer or a doctor. He was what he was, and he had sought the profession that would let him do what he was so perfectly suited to do.

He was a warrior.

He was the man she loved.

Somehow she had lost the ability to breathe, and it didn’t matter. She felt dazed, mired in unreality. There couldn’t be any more fooling herself. She had admitted her vulnerability to him, but never the immediacy of it. She had warned herself against the danger of letting herself fall in love with him, fretted that she might be losing her heart, but it had all been an emotional smoke screen to keep her from admitting that it was already too late. She’d had no more control over it than she had over her own body whenever he touched her, which should have been enough warning by itself. Her only excuse for her own blindness was that she’d never been in love before and simply hadn’t recognized it.

She couldn’t look at him as he and the three other pilots left the control room. If he’d glanced at her, everything that she was feeling would have been plain on her face, and she didn’t want him to see it, to maybe think about it at the wrong time. She felt absurdly naked, stripped of all her emotional protection, every nerve ending exposed and agitated by the merest stirring of air.

All four birds lifted off, and technicians crowded the terminals, intently studying the information already pouring back in from the sensors embedded in the skins of the Night Wings.

Within half an hour they were in position over the test site, where drones would provide them with moving targets at which to aim their lasers. Caroline always anticipated trouble, because in her experience no new system worked in practice exactly the way it worked in theory, but the tests had gone well so far, and she was optimistic that there wouldn’t be any major problems. That day, however, seemed to prove her right in her anticipation of trouble and wrong in her hope that it would be minor. The targeting systems refused to lock on the drones, though they had done so the day before. Two different aircraft were up there today, however, and a totally disgusted project manager ordered the day’s tests scrapped and the birds back to the base for a thorough check of the targeting systems.

Joe didn’t lose his temper, but his displeasure was plain when he strode back into the control room, his hair matted with sweat from the helmet.

“The birds are in the hangar,” he said with icy control, including Caroline in his ire as part of the laser team. “The same two are going back up Monday morning. You still have most of today to find the problem and fix it.” He turned and strode off, and Cal whistled softly between his teeth.

Yates sighed. “Okay, people, let’s get into our coveralls and get out to the hangars. We have work to do.”

Caroline was already mentally sorting through the options. Laser targeting wasn’t new; just the way they were applying it was. The problem could be the sensors in the pilots’ helmets, those in the missile optics, even the switch that activated the targeting. What was disturbing was that it had happened to both aircraft at the same time, possibly indicating a basic problem in manufacturing or even design. She glanced at Cal and saw that he was frowning deeply, for he would be thinking that for both aircraft to experience the same difficulty at the same time could indicate trouble with the programming of the on-board computers. They were worrying about the problem from different angles, but both of them had realized the implications.

This had just been a peachy-keen day from the very beginning. If the night with Joe followed the same pattern, she would probably find out she was frigid.

They worked through lunch, running computer analyses of the sensors to try to pinpoint the trouble, but nothing showed up. Everything seemed to be working perfectly. They ran the same tests on the three birds that hadn’t had any trouble and compared the results, again coming up with nothing. Everything matched. According to the computer, there was no reason why the lasers shouldn’t have locked on to the moving targets.

It was late afternoon, and the heat had built to an uncomfortable level inside the hangar despite the best efforts of the huge air conditioners, when Cal reran the tests on the firing mechanisms of one of the malfunctioning units, and on one that was working. For whatever reason, maybe just the gremlins that invariably plagued every project, this time the computer showed a break in the electrical current in the trigger mechanisms. They were all aggravated because the problem had turned out to be so relatively simple after they had driven themselves crazy for hours and forgone lunch when it was something that could be repaired in less than an hour.

She was in a wonderful mood for a romantic assignation: tired, hungry, hot and ill-tempered. She made a point of scowling down at the ID tag clipped to her pocket before she left the building and headed for her quarters.

A long, cold shower made her feel better, though she was still scowling as she literally threw some clothes and toiletry items into an overnight bag. If he wasn’t such a martinet, they wouldn’t have felt so driven to solve the problem. She could have eaten lunch. She wouldn’t now feel so frazzled and out of sorts. It would serve him right if she refused to go.

The only thing was, she wasn’t that big a fool. She wanted to be with him more than she wanted to eat, more than she wanted anything.

It was only six o’clock when the knock came on the door. She was dressed, but her hair was still wet, and she was still hungry. She threw the door open. “We worked through lunch,” she charged ominously. “We got finished—” she turned to check the clock “—thirty-five minutes ago. It was nothing—just a break in the current in the switches—but it took us forever to find it, because we were hungry and couldn’t concentrate.”

Joe lounged in the open doorway and surveyed her thoughtfully. “Do you always get ill-tempered when you’re hungry?”

“Well, of course. Doesn’t everyone?”

“Um, no. Most people don’t.”

“Oh.”

He held out his hand to her. “Come on, then, and I’ll feed you.”

“My hair isn’t dry.”

“It’ll dry fast enough in this heat. Are you packed?”

She fetched the overnight bag and did her quick, automatic tour to make certain everything was turned off. Joe took the bag from her hand and ushered her out, closing the door behind him. She stood there and stared meaningfully at the doorknob until he sighed and tried to turn it, to show her it was locked. Satisfied, she walked to the truck. He stowed the bag, then lifted her onto the seat. She had chosen to wear a halter-top sun-dress with a full skirt, deciding that it no longer mattered if he could slide his hand under it, since she had given him permission to do much more than that, but she nearly had heart failure when that warm, hard hand slipped up under the material and squeezed her bare thigh.

All thoughts of food fled her mind. She stared at him, hunger of another sort building, her need revealed in her suddenly darkened eyes and quickened breath. Joe lightly stroked her inner thigh with his fingertips, then forced himself to withdraw his hand. “Maybe I’ll feed you first,” he muttered.

Chapter 7

They could have eaten sawdust for all the attention she paid to their meal. All she remembered afterward was that the restaurant was cool and dim, and the dry wine had a crisp, pleasant bite to it. He sat across from her, big and masculine, and with that dangerous glitter in his blue-diamond eyes. He was thinking about the coming night, too, and his sexual intent was plain for her to see. He meant for her to know what he was thinking; he made his possessiveness obvious in the way he looked at her, his gaze lingering on her breasts, his voice low and deep with the gentling, persuasive note of seduction.

They lingered over the meal, and the waiting abraded her nerves like coarsely woven wool. Her clothing irritated her; her breasts ached. She blurted out, “Why are we waiting?”

He had been leisurely studying her erect nipples thrusting against her bodice, and his gaze slowly lifted to her face, scorching her with blue fire. “For you to settle down and relax,” he murmured. “For night to fall, so you can have complete darkness, if it would make you feel more secure.”

“I don’t care.” She stood up, her face as fierce and proud as a Valkyrie, her hair as pale as that of those virgin warriors. “You’ll have to find some other way to relax me.”

Slowly he stood, too, his face hard with the force of his surging lust. Silence strained between them as he paid the bill and they went back out to the truck. The heat was still almost suffocating, the sun a huge red ball low on the horizon, bathing everything with a crimson glow. His fierce, ancient bloodlines were obvious in the primal light falling across the stark lines of his face, giving the lie to the facade of civilization he wore in the form of a white dress shirt and black slacks. He should have been wearing buckskin pants and moccasins, his torso bare, his thick black hair falling free to those wide, powerful shoulders.

She remembered her terror of the morning, that he could be hurt or killed during a flight, and knew she would try never to tell him.

He checked them in at one of the Hilton hotels and, still silently, they rode the elevator upward, with the bellboy carrying their two small bags.

He had taken a one-bedroom suite, and the bellboy performed his customary routine, carrying the bags into the bedroom, showing them how to operate things they already knew how to operate, busily drawing open the curtains to let in the fierce red light of sundown. Joe pressed a five-dollar bill into his hand, and the bellhop took off.

She was still standing in the bedroom, her feet rooted to the carpet while she very determinedly did not stare at the king-size bed, and she listened to Joe lock and chain the door. He walked into the bedroom and very calmly pulled the curtains again, plunging the room into a gloom relieved only by what light spilled through the open doorway. The very air felt charged with tension. He opened his black leather bag and took out a box of condoms, placing it on the bedside table.

“A whole box?” she asked in a husky voice that didn’t sound like her own.

He came to stand behind her and deftly undid her dress. As it loosened and fell off her shoulders he said, “I’ll go down to the gift shop and buy some more when we run out.”

She was suddenly trembling madly, for she had worn only her panties under the dress. No bra, no slip, no hosiery. As the dress pooled around her ankles she was left standing all but naked in front of him, her breasts tight, her nipples thrusting forward in aching need. He lifted her in his arms, and her shoes were left behind on the floor, caught in the froth of material.

He placed one knee on the bed as he lowered her to the surface, then remained kneeling that way while he swiftly, efficiently stripped her panties down her legs. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how desperately she had needed that small scrap of protection, or how exposed and vulnerable she would feel without them. She made an incoherent sound of protest as she tried to sit up, for she was naked while he was still completely dressed, but the glitter in his eyes as he stretched her out on her back made her stop struggling.

Joe paused, taking the time to study her naked form and savor the primal satisfaction of the moment when she finally lay bare before him, her tender body exposed and his for the taking. He could already see the signs of arousal in her, manifested in the way her nipples had flushed darker and tightened into buds, and in the way her slim thighs, instinctively pressed together to guard the exquisitely sensitive flesh between them, quivered and flexed in a subtle message. Pale curls, only a shade or two darker than her hair, decorated her mound; a small, fleeting smile tugged at his mouth for a second as he remembered that he hadn’t thought her hair color was natural. According to the evidence of his eyes, it indisputably was her own. Those blond curls were so tempting that suddenly just looking wasn’t enough.

He put his hand on her breast, gently kneading, cupping, his rough thumb circling her nipple and making it draw even tighter. She caught her breath, which made her breast swell even more fully into his palm. With the same calm assurance he stroked his other hand down her abdomen to slip it between her legs, pressing his fingers hard against the soft folds of her womanhood. Lightning shimmered through her, lifting her hips from the bed in an automatic seeking of more. If his thumb had felt rough on her nipple, it felt even more so now as it rasped across flesh so sensitive she quivered wildly at the slightest touch.

It was unbearable and she suddenly fought away from him, rising to her knees on the bed, her breasts heaving with the force of her breathing. Joe stood up and began unbuttoning his shirt.

His powerful torso was bared as he stripped out of the garment, hiss kin bronzed, soft black hair matting his chest in a neat diamond and running in a silky line down the center of his stomach. His own nipples were small, dark and tight. He kicked his shoes off. Lean fingers unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly, hooked in the waistbands of both trousers and undershorts and pushed them down. His eyes never left her slim, nude body as he bent to remove them. When he straightened, he was as naked as she.

The strength evident in his masculine body was almost frightening. He could overwhelm her without effort if he chose. Iron-hard muscles ridged his flat belly, corded his rib cage and long thighs. His male length rose thick and full from his groin, visibly throbbing with the force of his lust. Despite the responding heat of her own blood, beating through her veins in rhythm with the throbbing in her loins, she began to have serious doubts about the possibility of this. She made a soft, panicked sound.

“Shh, sweetheart,” he murmured softly. “Don’t be nervous.” His hard hands closed gently on her shoulders, and somehow she found herself lying on her back again, and he was lying beside her, the heat of his big body searing and enveloping her as he folded her close to him. His nakedness was overwhelming, the strength of his sexuality no longer masked either by clothing or the boundaries enforced by society. He continued to soothe her with low whispers that might not even have been words, while his hands stroked slow fire over her.

Caroline clung to him, unsure of herself in this dramatically intensified situation. She had thought he had led her into sensual territory before, but now she found that she had only been loitering in the doorway. If it hadn’t been for the pleasure, she would have bolted. But the pleasure…ah, it was slow and insidious and mind numbing, gently seducing her into relaxing her tight muscles; then, when her resistance was gone, it abruptly turned into a thundering storm that crashed through her nerves and muscles. Her slender body quivered with it, drawing tight as a bowstring again, but this time from a different cause, and he was too instinctive a male animal not to immediately sense that difference. His hands moved over her with a sure and shattering purpose, no longer to calm, but to intensify her arousal.

His mouth drew her nipples into wet beads of sensual torment, punished by sharp little bites and soothed by his tongue. She writhed sinuously in his arms, her hips lifting and rolling in an ancient rhythm that called to him as surely as a drumbeat. Once again his fingers delved between the soft feminine folds and found her moist and swollen, aching for his touch; her thighs opened unconsciously to give him greater freedom, an opportunity he immediately exploited. He carefully penetrated her with one long finger, and a wild little sound burst from her throat as she surged upward against his hand. He lingered over her, drunk with the scent of her warm, aroused body, the silkiness of her skin. He would have crushed her against him if he could have absorbed her into himself, so violent was the urge to meld their two bodies together.

His probing touch taught him both the height of her excitement and the strength of her virginity, and his stomach muscles tightened with almost unbearable anticipation. He couldn’t wait much longer, but he wanted her so hot that she would willingly accept the pain of his penetration in order to take the deeper pleasure of their joining. She was so tight he didn’t know if he could stand it, but he would go mad if he didn’t thrust himself into her sweet depths.

She was arching nearer and nearer to climax as his sensual torment continued, her head thrashing on the bed in a tangle of blond hair, her hands clutching at him with desperate strength. She moaned and sank her nails into his chest. “Now.” Her voice was hoarse. “Now now now now!”

He couldn’t stand it any longer himself. He spread her thighs wide and mounted her, his hard weight pressing her into the mattress as his rigid length pushed against the soft heat of her intimate flesh and felt it begin to yield beneath the pressure. Then the exquisite feel of nakedness brought him to his senses, and he drew back from her, from the maddening closeness of penetration. He reached for the box on the bedside table, extracting one of the small foil packets and tearing it open with his teeth.

“No,” Caroline said fiercely, pushing his hand away. “Not this time, not the first time. I want to feel you, only you.”

Her passion-dark eyes glared up at him; her slim, heated body called to him with a primitive message. She was wild and pagan, even more the Valkyrie now when she lay naked, her thighs open to accept the male intrusion that would end her maidenhood. She challenged his domination, demanded his body and seed in this most ancient celebration of fertility.

Joe braced himself on his arms above her, his face savage as he brought his hips back to hers. He was experienced sexually where she wasn’t, knew the wild risk they were taking, but this one time, this first time he, too, wanted her without anything between them.

Caroline went still at the first blunt probing.

Their eyes met and held. A tiny muscle in his cheek twitched as he increased the pressure. Pain threatened for her, became a reality, but she didn’t try to push him away. She wanted this, hungered for his possession with a violence that made the pain as nothing. He didn’t take it easy with her. His penetration was inexorable: invading, stretching, forcing her soft sheath to accept and hold his turgid length. She arched wildly, unable to take any more, and by her own action found that she could. He gave a harsh sound of pleasure.

“Yes,” he muttered tightly. “That’s right, sweetheart, you can take me. Come on. More. Do it again.” The exquisite feel of her was mind shattering, like hot silk, tight and wet and incredibly soft.

Driven by some frantic need she did, and suddenly he was seated in her to the hilt, the solidness of his possession making hot tears spring to her eyes. The stretched, too-full sensation was unbearable, yet she bore it because the only alternative was to stop, and that was impossible. She was impelled by a need too instinctive for caution, too fierce to slow. The hard planes of his chest crushed her breasts; his hands slid under her and gripped her buttocks with bruising force as he lifted her into his thrusts, and sharp pleasure exploded through her. She clung to him, sobbing and gasping and half screaming.

Grinding his teeth, he fought his own climax and rode her hard, intensifying her spasms of release. Gradually she stopped shaking and the frantic tension eased from her muscles, letting her relax in his arms. A soft, almost purring note sounded in her throat. “Joe,” she whispered, just his name, and the lazy pleasure in her voice almost sent him over the edge.

“Now,” he said gutturally, rising to his knees. It was his turn, and his need was so savage he could barely control it. He hooked his arms under her legs and leaned forward, bracing himself on his hands with her legs forced high and wide, draped over his arms. She was completely vulnerable to him like that, totally unable to limit the depth of his thrusts, and he took full advantage of it. He drove into her hard and deep, his powerful shoulders hunched with the effort as he hammered into her, and the pleasure hit him just as it had her, without warning, slamming into him like a runaway train. He jerked convulsively under the force of it, a harsh cry ripping from his throat. The spasms went on and on, emptying him into the hot depths of the woman beneath him. When it finally did end, he sank heavily onto her, his chest heaving as his tortured lungs fought for air. His heart was thudding frantically in his chest, and he was so weak he couldn’t roll away from her. He’d never felt like this even when pulling Gs, and certainly never from having sex.

He dozed. She should have protested his heavy weight, but instead she cradled him close, loving the feel of his big body crushing her into the mattress. She could barely move, barely breathe, and it was heaven. She ached all over, but especially between her legs, where his heavy manhood still nestled within her, yet she was filled with a sense of contentment that permeated every cell of her body and all but negated the discomfort. Her eyes drifted shut. She had wanted it just the way it had been—raw and forceful. The only thing that could have made it better would have been if he had lost that damnable control of his. It had given a little, but still it had held, whereas she had been helpless in the grip of a wild passion that had known no limits.

“Caroline.” His mouth settled over hers just as he said her name, and drowsily she realized that she must have slept, because she hadn’t felt him move, but now he was braced on his elbows, her head cradled in his palms. Without pause she responded, her mouth opening and molding itself to his.

A little while later he forced himself to stop kissing her and gently disengaged their bodies. She remained limply sprawled on the bed while he went into the bathroom and came out a moment later with a wet washcloth. She thought she should be embarrassed at the intimate way he cleaned her, but it was beyond her. She yawned like a sleepy cat and curled onto her side when he had finished. “Did I bleed?” she asked, her voice holding only an absentminded curiosity.

“Only a little.” He caressed her buttocks possessively, filled with fierce satisfaction that she had given herself to him so completely. She hadn’t held anything back, hadn’t let discomfort or fear of the unknown prevent her from hurling herself headlong into the situation. He’d never been wanted like that before, had never wanted anyone like that before, with no reservations or restraints, no boundaries. Any other woman would have been frightened by the savagery of his possession, but Caroline had reveled in it. He’d never been so savage before, had never allowed himself to give in to the fierceness of his sexual needs. His rampant sexuality had always been held under ruthless control, yet now he had not only given into it, he had done so without protection. He might have made her pregnant with that one irresponsible act.

He should have been furious and disgusted with himself, but somehow he wasn’t. The utter pleasure of it had been too strong to allow room for regrets. A dangerous image formed in his mind, a picture of Caroline swollen with his child, and to his surprise he began to be aroused again.

She was asleep. He carried the washcloth back to the bathroom and returned to turn back the covers and tuck her between the cool sheets. She murmured softly; then, when he slipped in beside her, she cuddled against him, automatically seeking the comfort of his warmth. He cradled her head on his shoulder, his free arm wrapped possessively around her hips to hold her close. He went to sleep almost as easily as she had.

When he awakened later, his acute sense of time told him that he’d been asleep for about two hours. He was achingly aroused, and by the time he had caressed her awake, she was, too. This time he forced himself to use protection, though for the first time he bitterly resented the thin barrier between their complete intimacy. She gasped a little when he entered her, her tender flesh sore from the first time, but again she wouldn’t let him be gentle, even if he had wanted to be. There would be time for gentleness later; for now there was only the flood tide of desire, demanding release. They writhed and surged together in the darkness, the only sound the roughness of their breathing and the creaking of the bed beneath them.

They slept again. He awakened three more times during the night and had her. He wondered when the urgency would lessen.

It was after eight the next morning when he opened his eyes to find the bright morning sun trying valiantly to pierce the heavy curtains. The room was dim, the air conditioning quietly humming, the air pleasantly cool. His body ached from the unbridled activities of the night.

Caroline lay curled on her side, facing away from him, and for a moment he admired the delicate line of her spine. How could such a soft, delicately made body have withstood the demands he had made on it?

The bed was a wreck. The covers were all pulled loose and twisted, and mostly on the floor. At some point during the night Caroline had pulled one corner of the bedspread up to hug to her breasts. Even the fitted bottom sheet had come loose. One pillow was stuffed under the headboard. He had a distinct memory of there having been three pillows, but he had no idea where the other two were. He also had a distinct memory of having placed one under her hips during one of their ravenous encounters. He yawned, wondering if she would want to remake the bed before the hotel maids could see it. He didn’t see much point in remaking it at all.

He was hungry and gently shook her awake. “What do you want for breakfast, sweetheart? I’ll call room service, then we can take a bath while we’re waiting.”

She opened one eye. “Coffee,” she murmured.

“What else?”

She sighed. “Food.” The eye closed.

He chuckled. “Can you narrow it down a little?”

She thought about it. “Nothing green,” she finally mumbled into the mattress. “I can’t eat green in the mornings.”

Stunned by the idea, he shuddered with revulsion. Come to think of it, he couldn’t eat anything green in the mornings, either.

He ordered pecan waffles and bacon for both of them, with coffee and orange juice. The impersonal voice on the other end of the line informed him that it would be forty-five minutes to an hour before his order arrived, which was fine with him. He hung up the phone and shook Caroline awake again.

“Do you want a shower or a tub bath?”

“Tub. Can’t sit down in a shower.”

He went into the bathroom and turned on the faucets of the playground-size bathtub. Despite the size of the thing, the water level rose quickly. He returned to the bedroom and lifted Caroline in his arms. Her own arms curled trustingly around his neck. “Are you very sore?” he asked with concern.

“Not too sore, if that’s what you’re asking.” She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “It’s just that I can’t walk.”

He stepped into the tub with her still in his arms and carefully lowered himself into the warm water, then reclined against the back of the tub with her between his legs, her back to his chest. She sighed with pleasure as the warm water began soaking the stiffness from her legs and easing the discomfort between them.

She would have expected to be embarrassed by the intimacy that had passed between them during the night, as well as uneasy with their nudity, but she didn’t feel any of that. She felt bone-deep contentment, a sense of rightness and completion that she’d never before known existed. He was her man, she was his woman; how could she be embarrassed with him?

He bathed her, lathering his hands with the fragrant soap and gently sliding them over the tender parts of her body, which somehow seemed to need more attention than the other parts. By the time he finished she was feeling very warm and so was he, if the fullness of his hard male length was any indication. She returned the favor and bathed him, but the imminent arrival of their food prevented him from doing anything to relieve his arousal.

There were two thick, hooded terry bathrobes hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and they put them on a scant two minutes before the brisk knock on the door heralded room service. Joe signed the order slip while the cart was immobilized and the covers removed from the dishes.

The delicious scent of coffee brought her drifting in from the bedroom. Joe’s eyes sharpened with the quick resurgence of lust. Even with her face bare of makeup, her hair tousled and her body wrapped in a thick bathrobe, she was more alluring than every other woman he’d had or even seen. The men she worked with might call her the Beauty Queen because of her fastidious attention to her appearance, but her attraction didn’t rely on it.

She attacked the food with unselfconscious appetite, and he thought that even the way she ate made him hard. When she was finished she leaned back with a sigh of contentment and smiled at him, a lazy smile that made his blood sizzle.

“What are we going to do today?”

He lifted his black eyebrow. His pale eyes looked as hard and brilliant as diamonds, and there was fire in their depths. “I don’t plan on leaving the suite this entire weekend,” he said evenly. “Unless we run out of condoms.”

Slowly she stood up. “Maybe room service will deliver,” she said in a voice that was suddenly tight with need, and then she was in his arms.

Chapter 8

She drowned in sensuality that weekend. The two rooms of that impersonal hotel suite became very personal, imbued with the aura and memories of their lovemaking. They didn’t leave the suite at all, relying on room service for their food, and never dressing in anything except the bathrobes.

As a lover, he more than matched the strength of her passion. Caroline never did anything in halfway measures; she had been fiercely virgin, and now she was just as fierce in the giving of herself. He had never before given free rein to his appetites, but with Caroline he could. He sated himself with her, and yet never felt as if he had had enough. The hunger would roar back, again and again.

He had no inhibitions. He was earthy and powerful, sweeping her along with him, introducing her to more variations, techniques and positions than she could have imagined. Sometimes he was on top and sometimes she was; sometimes he was behind her. Sometimes he used his mouth, and he taught her how to use hers to pleasure him. He made love to her in the bathtub, on the couch, on the floor, wherever they happened to be.

He had a beeper on his belt, but the beeper remained silent and the outside world didn’t intrude on them. She had never before been so completely, overwhelmingly involved with another human being, to the exclusion of everything else. She didn’t think about work, didn’t fret for a book to read. She simply experienced.

By Sunday morning the initial frenzied hunger had been fed and their lovemaking had become more lei-surely, bringing with it the patience to linger over both arousal and satisfaction. An hour of sensual play had satisfied them for the moment, and Joe ordered a late breakfast; then they lounged in the parlor with their feet up while they watched television and caught up on the news. Caroline curled against his side, heavy-eyed with contentment.

He lifted a pale strand of her hair and let it drift down, the sunlight catching the gold and making it glitter. “Where are your parents?” he asked absently, paying more attention to the play of light than to his own question.

“Usually, or at this exact moment?” Her voice was just as lazy as his.

“Both.”

“Usually they’re in North Carolina, where they teach. Right this moment, they’re in Greece on a summer-long cultural tour. They’re supposed to come home the middle of September.”

“Were you lonely when you were little?”

“Not that I noticed. I wanted to learn,” she explained. “I couldn’t learn fast enough to keep myself satisfied. I wasn’t a comfortable child to be around, I don’t think. If I hadn’t had them for parents I probably would have been a complete wreck, but they helped me handle the frustration and didn’t try to limit what I learned.”

“You were probably a holy terror,” he said dryly.

“Probably.” She felt comfortable with it. “What about you?”

He didn’t answer immediately, and a tiny quiver of unease intruded on her massive contentment. He would talk easily about his experiences as a pilot, about work, but he kept his private life very private. He had relaxed his guard a little in telling her that he was a half-breed, and that he had three brothers and one sister, but very little else. He hadn’t related any childhood experiences to let the conversation get very close to him. Of course, she reminded herself, she hadn’t known him for long at all, actually less than a week. The speed and intensity of their relationship dazed her, made the flow of time seem exaggeratedly long.

“No, I wasn’t a holy terror,” he finally said. She sensed the remoteness in his answer.

“Are any of your brothers or your sister?”

Because she was so close to him, she could feel the subtle relaxation of his muscles. “Just my sister, and it isn’t that she’s destructive or bad tempered, just very determined to have her own way. She’s a little steam-roller.”

His deep love for his family was evident in his voice. She snuggled closer to him, hoping to keep him talking. “How old are your brothers and sister? What are their names?”

“Michael is eighteen. He’s just gotten out of high school and starts college next month. He’s interested in cattle ranching and will probably start his own spread when he gets out of college. Joshua is sixteen, and he’s the best-natured of the bunch, but he’s a jet freak, just like I was at his age. Damn his hide, though, he wants to be a Navy flier. Zane is thirteen, and he’s…intense. Silent and dangerous, like Dad. Then there’s Maris. She’s eleven going on a hundred. Small for her age, so delicate she looks like a breeze would send her airborne, and a will like iron. We’re all good with horses, damn good, but Dad is sheer magic with them, and so is Maris.”

“What about your stepmother?” Anything to keep him talking.

He gave a quiet laugh. “Mary. She’s even smaller than you are.”

She sat up. “I’m not small.” Her chin jutted out belligerently.

“You’re not exactly tall, either. Not quite average, I’d say. I’m almost a foot taller than you.” He pulled her back down against his side, her head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder. “Do you want to know about Mary or not?”

“Go ahead,” she grumbled, and he kissed her forehead.

“Mary is warm and open and loving, and when she makes up her mind to do something she’s unstoppable. She’s a teacher. I wouldn’t have made it into the Academy without her tutoring.”

“So you didn’t mind when she and your father married?”

“Mind?” He gave that quiet laugh again. “I did everything I could to throw them together. Not that it was all that difficult. Dad was like a corralled stallion. He was determined to have her, no matter how many fences he had to kick down or go over.”

His ease and earthy understanding of his father’s sexual nature made her smile. For her part, she simply couldn’t imagine her own parents as intensely sexual beings, probably because they weren’t. She was proof that they did have sex, but both of them were low-key and concerned more with intellectual matters than those of a physical nature. Their love life was probably warm and affectionate, rather than the raw, raunchy, intense lovemaking Joe had swept her into.

“What about your dad? What’s he like?”

“Tough. Dangerous. And the best father in the world. Even when I was a little kid, I always knew he’d fight to the death for me.”

That was an odd way to describe one’s parent, but looking at Joe she could easily believe that his father was dangerous. They were probably mirror images of each other.

“That’s enough about me,” he said abruptly, though very little of the conversation had actually told her about him. She sensed that wariness in him again as the steel door guarding his inner thoughts clanged shut. He lifted her astride his lap and pushed her robe open, closing his hands over her breasts. “I want to find out about you.”

She shivered and looked down at her breasts, at his bronze hands covering the soft, pale mounds. “That’s no longer virgin territory to you.”

“So it isn’t.” The blue of his eyes grew darker, more intense. He stroked one of his hands down her belly and into the notch of her legs, lightly probing. “This isn’t, either, but it’s even more exciting now than it was before. I could only imagine what you’d feel like before, but now I know how tight and hot you are, and how you start getting wet as soon as I touch you.” He circled her delicate opening with one rough fingertip, using exquisite care. She shuddered as pleasure rushed through her, hot and sharp, tightening her muscles and giving him the dampness he sought as her body immediately began preparing to receive him. He pushed his finger a little way into her, and her body quickened, her breath sighing in and out of her lungs, a fine quivering seizing her.

Joe pushed his own robe open. He was as ready as a stallion, his thin nostrils flaring at the female scent of her. With his hand on her bottom he urged her forward, positioned her, then reached down to hold himself steady as she sank onto him with a soft, wild cry. She enveloped him, and he moved his hand, using it to urge her closer.

“Now I know how soft you are,” he whispered, “and how you shiver around me, how all those sweet little muscles try to grab me tight and start milking me when we’re…damn!” The last word was low and fierce. Caroline scarcely heard it. She began moving on him, hungry for him, desperate for the release already luring her.

His hands bit into her hips almost as if he would stay her movements, and she whimpered, but then with another muttered curse he grasped her buttocks and moved her in a hard, quick rhythm on his invading length. This wasn’t one of the leisurely times; it was fast and ruthless and basic. She grabbed at his shoulders for balance as she began convulsing and only a heartbeat later he joined her, his head arching back, veins and tendons cording in his muscular neck.

Recovery took longer than the act itself. She slumped forward to lie in exhausted silence on his chest. He smoothed her hair away from her face with gentle fingers, then held her close to him. “I haven’t been taking very good care of you,” he said quietly. “That’s twice.”

She couldn’t think of any way he could take any better care of her. “What is?” she murmured.

“That I’ve taken you without protection.”

“But I asked you to.” She closed her eyes, savoring in both memory and actuality the intimate feel of him. “I wanted to know everything, feel everything, about you.”

“The first time, yes. Even then, I should have had better sense. And there wasn’t any excuse for this time.”

At the hardness of his tone she sat up and squarely met his gaze. “I’m neither a child nor an idiot, Joe. I know the risk and the consequence, and the responsibility is half mine. I could have said no, but I didn’t. The risk isn’t that great. One of the benefits of having an inquiring mind is that I’m curious about almost everything, so I read about it. I know all about rhythm and timing, and we’re fairly safe. Safe enough that I’m not going to sweat and watch the calendar.”

“There’s no guarantee on that. All the timing can give us is better than even odds, and I told you, I’m not a gambler.”

“Would you mind so very much?” she asked steadily.

“Wouldn’t you?”

She shook her head. “No.” Her voice was quiet and rock solid.

He gave her a piercing look. She waited for him to ask her why, but he didn’t. Instead he said, “I want to know if your next period is even a day late.”

His tone of command was so obvious that she snapped off a sharp salute and barked, “Yes, sir!” Sometimes he was very much the colonel.

He laughed and swatted her lightly on the bottom as he shifted her off his lap. She stood up and tied the robe around her. “When do we have to leave?”

“I arranged for a late checkout,” he said. “By six tonight.”

So their remaining time locked in their private little world could now be counted in a dwindling number of hours. It was amazing how quickly she had grown accustomed to room and maid service, to having him all to herself, to the intoxicating delights of the flesh. Probably this seclusion would wear thin if it stretched out for a week, but she would like to have that week. It wasn’t to be, however. Tomorrow they would both be back at work, she on the ground and he in the air. Tomorrow she would have to deal with the fear all over again, because the man she loved was doing something dangerous and she couldn’t stop it. It would be obscene to even try. Joe was an eagle; only death or age would ground him. She would gladly endure years of quiet terror, if only they would be granted.

For now, she didn’t want to waste even one minute before they were forced to face real life again.

She didn’t know what this weekend had meant to him, maybe only a prolonged, intense roll in the hay, sufficient for the pleasure it provided, but for her the man and the weekend had been the catalyst that had unlocked the passion of her nature. She felt…changed inside, somehow, freer, more content. It was as if she had been viewing life through a gray veil and it had been ripped aside, letting her see the true, vibrant colors. She no longer felt set aside and isolated, but part of it all. She was no longer alone, as she had essentially been for most of her life, from the time she had first realized that her brain made her different. In giving herself to him, she had gained rather than lost, because she now had a part of Joe that would never leave her. He had given her memories, experience…ecstasy. Under his earthy tutelage, she had bloomed inside herself, learned the rich depths of her own nature.

Abruptly, despite her own common sense and in full recognition of the difficulties it would involve, she hoped that the timing had been wrong for her and she was carrying his child.

“What?” he asked, black brows lifted, and she realized she had been standing in front of him staring intently at him for God only knew how long.

A slow smile broke across her face, lighting her up like dawn. “I was just thinking,” she said seriously, “that a lot more women would enlist if you’d just pose for recruiting posters in the nude.”

He looked briefly startled, then gave a roar of laughter as he surged to his feet. He grabbed a fistful of robe and hauled her to him. “Do you mean you’d share me with the women of America?”

“Not in this life time.”

“Not even if my country needed my services? Where’s your patriotism?”

She reached into his open robe and firmly cupped him. “One place it isn’t,” she replied sweetly, “is here.”

He began to fill her palm as he responded to her touch, despite their recent lovemaking. “I’ll give you two days to stop that, then I’m calling the police.”

“We don’t have two days,” she pointed out. She looked at the clock. “We only have about eight hours.”

“Then damn if I’m going to waste a minute of it,” he replied, swiftly lifting her into his arms. He preferred the bed for prolonged lovemaking. As he carried her into the other room she clung tightly, wishing that time could stand still.

It didn’t, of course. It couldn’t, despite her wishes. It felt strange leaving their intimate cocoon, but by six-thirty they were headed back to the base. She sat silently, trying to brace herself for the abrupt end to the intimacy they had shared for the past two days. She would sleep alone that night and every night, until the weekend came again. Perhaps even then. He hadn’t said anything about tomorrow night, much less next weekend.

She glanced at him. It was a subtle difference, but the closer they got to the base he became less her lover and more the colonel. His thoughts were already on Night Wing, on those sleek, deadly, beautiful planes and how they responded to his skilled hands. Maybe the change in him was that he became their lover rather than hers. They flew for him; they carried him higher and faster than she ever could. She only hoped they would protect him as fiercely, and bring him back to her.

Long before she was ready, he was depositing her at her door. He stood in front of her, those clear, bottomless eyes lingering over every detail of her appearance. “I’m not going to kiss you good-night,” he said. “I won’t want to stop. I’m too used to having you.”

“Then…good night.” She started to hold out her hand, then quickly pulled it back. She couldn’t share even a handshake with him. It was too much after the concentrated intimacy of the weekend, too much of a temptation, too sharp a reminder that tonight they would sleep alone.

“Good night.” He turned abruptly and strode to his truck. Caroline quickly unlocked the door and stepped inside, not wanting to see him drive away. The tiny quarters, luxurious as they were in comparison with most of the temporary quarters on base, were both desolate and suffocating. She quickly turned the air conditioner on high, but nothing could ease the emptiness. Nothing, that is, except Joe.

She didn’t sleep well that night. She kept reaching for him, searching for his warmth, for the big, hard, masculine body she had slept draped over and entangled with for the past two nights. Her own body, abruptly deprived of the sensual orgy it had become accustomed to, ached with frustration.

She was awake well before dawn and finally gave up on sleep. Work had always been a panacea for her, so perhaps it would be again. She was assigned to the project to work, after all, not to moon over the project manager.

It did help. She managed to lose herself quite satisfactorily in preparation for the day’s tests. Joe didn’t stop by, for which she was oddly grateful. She was just now getting her bearings back; if he’d kissed her, she would have been lost again. She would probably also have been stretched out across one of the desks with her legs wrapped around his waist. Typically, he had seen the temptation and resisted it. She wasn’t certain she could have.

As usual, Cal was the second to arrive. “Where were you this weekend?” he asked casually. “I tried to call a couple of times to see if you wanted to catch a movie.”

“In Vegas,” she replied. “I stayed there.”

“Wish I’d thought of that. It’s a fun town, isn’t it? Did you hit the casinos?”

“I’m not much of a gambler. Miniature golf is more my game.”

He laughed as he got himself a cup of coffee. “You’d better watch living in the fast lane like that,” he advised. “Too much excitement can make you old.”

If that were the case, she would have aged at least a hundred years over the weekend. Instead, she felt more alive than she ever had before.

Joe wasn’t in the control room when the laser team arrived; the pilots were already in the aircraft, engines screaming. The assignments were the same as they had been on Friday: Joe and Bowie Wade in the Night Wings, Daffy Deale and Mad Cat Myrick in the F-22s. All the project teams gathered around their assigned monitors so they could scan the sensor readouts during the flight.

The birds lifted off.

It went smoothly at first, with the lasers locking on to the drones just the way they were supposed to do. Caroline let out a long sigh of relief. She wasn’t naive enough to think there wouldn’t be any more problems, but at least that particular one seemed to have been solved. They ran through it time after time, at different speeds and ranges. Yates was smiling.

On their return to base, Mad Cat was on Joe’s wing and Daffy was shadowing Bowie Wade, to provide visual verification during the flights. Caroline was still idly watching the monitor when suddenly Bowie’s target signal lit up. “Did he hit the switch?” she asked aloud.

Yates and Adrian turned back to the monitor, their brows knit with puzzlement. Cal looked up from his own computer. Almost simultaneously, the computer started flashing the red firing signal and all hell broke loose on the radio and in the control room.

“I’m hit, I’m hit!” Daffy screamed, and Bowie was yelling, “This goddamn thing just went off! What the hell happened?”

“What’s the damage?” It was Joe’s voice, deep and cool, the authority in it overriding everything else.

“No control, my hydraulics are shot to hell. I can’t hold it.” Daffy’s voice was tight.

“Eject!” Bowie was yelling. “Stop screwing around, Daffy. You can’t make it!”

The voices were stepping all over each other, and the control room was in an uproar. The pilots there were turned to stone, their faces frozen masks as they waited to see if one of their own made it back or was going to die right in front of them.

Then Joe’s voice again, roaring. “Eject—eject—eject! Now!”

The iron authority got through to Daffy as nothing else could have, and the computers registered a pilot ejection.

“I see a chute!” It was Mad Cat. “He’s too low, he’s too low—”

Then the radio exploded with noise as the F-22 augered into the desert floor.

Chapter 9

Joe was in a rage when he strode into the control room, but his rage was cold, ice-cold. His eyes were blue frost as he fastened them on the laser team. “What the hell happened?” he snapped. “The laser cannon isn’t even supposed to be activated, much less go off by itself.”

They were all at a loss. The systems had checked out perfectly on Friday afternoon.

“Well?” The single word was as sharp as the crack of a rifle. “I nearly lost a man because of it. An eighty-million-dollar aircraft is in tiny pieces all over a square mile of desert. Do any of you have any idea what the hell you’re doing?”

The control room was dead silent as everyone waited for a reply, any reply. Yates said softly, “We don’t know what happened. But we’ll find out.”

“You’re damn right you will. I want a report on this within thirty-six hours, your analysis of the problem and what you’ve done to fix it. All flights are scrubbed until I know what happened and I’m satisfied it won’t happen again.” He didn’t even glance at Caroline as he turned and walked out, still as furious as he had been when he had entered the room.

Someone whistled softly through their teeth. Yates’ face was drawn. “We don’t sleep until we know,” he said simply.

The loss of the aircraft was bad enough, but it was Daffy’s close call that had stretched Joe’s control perilously close to the snapping point. Daffy was lost to him anyway: he’d been too low when he ejected for his chute to adequately deploy, and he had landed too hard and too fast. He was hospitalized now with a concussion and a broken left leg.

Bowie, badly shaken, swore he hadn’t touched either the lock-on switch or the trigger, and Joe believed him. Bowie was too good, too careful, but the damn laser cannon had somehow locked on and fired by itself, and Daffy had nearly died. The computers would tell them exactly what had happened, but what Joe wanted to know was why. The lasers weren’t supposed to be activated yet, but the one on Bowie’s bird, at least, had been. Had peak energy been used, the F-22 would have been destroyed in the air and Daffy wouldn’t have had any chance at all.

Joe’s anger was intensified because the misfire was probably linked to the lock-on problem they’d had the Friday before. Caroline had said the problem was a simple break in the electrical signal and that it had been corrected, but obviously the trouble was much worse than that, and, far from being corrected, it had nearly killed a man. His fury included Caroline; she was part of the laser team, and his relationship with her had nothing to do with her responsibility as a team member. It wouldn’t win her any special favors or leniency.

The laser team wouldn’t be the only one working late. The loss of an F-22 and the injury of a pilot weren’t things the Air Force took lightly. He had to make a report to the base commander and to General Ramey in the Pentagon. Moreover, they couldn’t afford this kind of trouble with the Night Wings, not with the vote for funding coming up shortly in Congress. He had to get the tests completed and the kinks worked out; one of the major pluses the project had going for it was that it was coming in on time and under budget, and delays meant money. If the Night Wings were over budget and not working properly when the vote was taken, the project would be in trouble. Funding depended on how well he did his job and demonstrated both the feasibility and dependability of the birds.

His call on a secure line to General Ramey only underlined his concern. “You have to find out what happened with that laser cannon and make damn sure it never happens again,” the general said quietly, but those who knew Ramey knew that he meant what he said. “The vote is close, too close for us to afford this kind of snafu. What good is it to have the first feasible X-ray laser cannon if it’s uncontrollable? We have to have it, Joe. The Night Wing project is too important.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe replied. Having flown the birds, he knew exactly how important they were. An aviator going up in a superior aircraft had a much better chance, all other things being equal, of coming back alive. The Night Wing birds gave a huge advantage to American pilots, and to Joe that meant American lives saved as well as wars won. He had already been in two wars and he was only thirty-five, and the world situation was even more volatile now than it had been when he had entered the Academy back during the Cold War. Brush-fire wars sprang up overnight, and all of them had the potential of dragging the rest of the world into the maw, while technology was exploding. Within five years the F-22s would merely be equal to other countries’ fighters, rather than vastly superior. The Night Wings would get that edge back—in a big way.

“Is there any indication of sabotage?” the general asked.

“There haven’t been any alarms triggered, but I’ve asked the security police for an analysis of the work patterns to see if there’s anything suspicious.”

“What’s your gut feeling?” General Ramey had the utmost respect for Joe’s instincts.

Joe paused. “A catastrophic situation developed without warning. We don’t know yet if it involves only that one laser cannon or if it’s common to all the aircraft, but it’s either a major problem with the system, or someone deliberately caused it. It’s fifty-fifty, so I can’t ignore the possibility of sabotage. I’ll know more after I get the computer analysis.”

“Call me immediately when you know something.”

“Yes, sir, I will.”

Joe sat back in his chair, his eyes thoughtful. Sabotage. No one ever liked to consider it, but he couldn’t afford to discount it. Technology constantly created new techniques in spying and sabotage. The security police had gone to great lengths to keep Night Wing under wraps, which was why every entrance into every building, both doors and windows, contained sensors linked to a central computer that kept track or who was in each building at any given time, recording both entrance and exit times. Guards were also posted at the hangars at night and no one had approached the planes without proper clearance, but if the problem was sabotage, that meant only that the saboteur had the required security clearance.

If he were lucky, the laser team would find the problem and it would be something mechanical, something explicable. If not, he wanted to have the security check already in progress.

What a bitch. If they didn’t find out what was wrong immediately, it would ensure that he wouldn’t see Caroline tonight, and last night without her had been pure torment. It was amazing how quickly his body had become accustomed to frequent gratification, and how strong his sexual hunger for her was. He’d never wanted a woman that way before, like an incessant fever that refused to be cooled. He’d never enjoyed a woman that way before, without any boundaries or restrictions. She was vital and electric, as straightforward with her loving as her thoughts and personality were.

It had been a mistake to let his thoughts slip to her. His pants had become very uncomfortable. Down, boy, he thought wryly. Now was definitely not the time or the place.

No matter how they checked, they couldn’t discover how the laser had been activated by accident. Caroline’s actual expertise was with the laser itself, not with the triggering mechanism. That was Adrian’s field, and he was surly because of it. If the problem was laid at his door, he might be recalled from the project or possibly even fired. Typically, he took out his frustration on Caroline.

“What are you, a jinx?” he muttered, scowling as he painstakingly checked every detail of the firing mechanism. “Everything was going fine, just a few minor kinks now and then, until you showed up. Things started falling apart as soon as you started working on them.”

“I haven’t worked on that mechanism,” she pointed out, refusing to let him anger her or to get embroiled in a finger-pointing episode. She didn’t have to say anything else, however, because Adrian took her comment to mean that he had been working on it, so therefore it was obviously his fault.

“Let’s stop the bickering,” Yates ordered. “Cal, is anything showing up on the computer?”

Cal looked exhausted, his eyes bloodshot from staring at a monitor screen and stacks of dim print outs for too many hours. He shook his head. “It’s all checking out on paper.”

They were standing grouped around the laser pod on the belly of the aircraft Bowie had been flying. Caroline stared at the pod, deliberately blotting out what everyone else was saying as she tried to sort things out. The laser seemed to be in perfect working order, as did the firing mechanism. The lock-on was also performing perfectly, but then, they already knew that. After all, it had locked on to Daffy’s bird and blown it out of the sky. But what had told it to lock on? According to the computer record, Bowie definitely hadn’t touched the switch, so the lock-on and firing mechanisms had both operated automatically, something they weren’t supposed to do. Nor was the laser supposed to have been activated; actually firing the lasers hadn’t been scheduled for another ten days. Three things had gone wrong simultaneously: the laser had activated, the lock-on had targeted Daffy’s aircraft and the thing had automatically fired. None of those three things was supposed to have happened at all; for all of them to have happened at the same time went beyond chance or Murphy’s Law.

She didn’t like the direction her thoughts were taking. If it wasn’t logical for those three things to have happened by accident, then they had to have happened by design. The laser couldn’t be activated by an accidental bump, and it certainly didn’t have an outside switch labeled On and Off. Activating the laser was something the laser team had to do with a precise set of commands to the computer. Because of the security involved, they were the only ones with access to those commands.

Inescapable logic indicated that one of the team had activated the laser.

Caroline didn’t believe in leaping to conclusions. Her work habits were orderly and painstakingly precise. Before she let herself begin thinking that one of the three men she worked with was deliberately sabotaging the laser, she had to make certain there was no way anyone outside the team could do it. Everything was computerized now, and though safeguards were built into the programs and elaborate precautions taken, nothing was impossible. There were a lot of things so difficult that no one had done them yet, but that didn’t make them impossible. It was feasible that if someone could get the activation commands, he or she could also get into the program and use them. And it would be child’s play for anyone that knowledgeable about computers to add commands that would override the pilot’s physical keying of the lock-on switch, say if another aircraft came within a certain distance. Maybe Bowie had been flying a ticking time bomb today, just waiting for the right set of circumstances. It had been Daffy’s bad luck that he had been assigned to shadow Bowie, but it could as easily have been Mad Cat, or even Joe, who had been shot down.

Yates had been watching her thoughtfully for several minutes. She was standing motionless, her gaze locked on the pod but not seeing it, with all her concentration turned inward. He could almost see that computer brain running down a checklist and inexorably narrowing the possibilities.

“What is it?” he finally asked when he couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. “Any ideas?”

She blinked, and her eyes slowly refocused on him. “I think we should check the computer program,” she finally said. “If it isn’t the equipment, it has to be the program.”

Cal looked positively haggard. “Do you know how long it will take to check this entire program?” he asked incredulously. “This thing is huge. It’s the most complicated program I’ve ever worked on.”

“Maybe a Cray…” she murmured, looking back at the pod.

“Book time on a Cray supercomputer?” Yates made it a question, but he was already mentally running through the logistics. “Expensive as hell.”

“Not as expensive as stopping the program.”

“It could take forever to get a booking, unless the Pentagon can line up some priority time.”

“Yeah, that’s a fine idea,” Adrian said impatiently, “but you people are forgetting that the big man gave us thirty-six hours, of which we have already used ten. I don’t think he’s going to be satisfied with a possibility.”

“We’ve come up with nothing everywhere else. Do you have a better idea?” Caroline replied just as impatiently.

He glared at her without answering. The truth was, they had all reached a dead end.

Caroline didn’t mention her other conclusion, that if the solution to their problem was in the computer program they still had to discover whether it was a basic error in programming or if someone had deliberately programmed it in, but running everything through a Cray would give them the answer to that. By comparing the working program with the original, the Cray could tell them if the working program had been altered in any way. If it hadn’t, then it was back to the drawing board for DataTech; if it had, then they had to find the person responsible for the changes.

“So what do we do?” Cal asked, rubbing his eyes. “Stop looking and just assume we’re going to find it in the program, or stay up all night looking for something when we don’t know what we’re looking for?”

Despite herself, Caroline had to grin. “If you’re as groggy as that sentence sounded, I don’t think you can stay up all night.”

He gave her a bleary look and an equally bleary grin. “Sad, isn’t it? In my younger days I could carouse all night and work all day, then go back out for more carousing. What you see here is a shadow of my former self.”

“I’m glad you two don’t find this serious,” Adrian snapped.

“Knock it off!” Yates ordered, temper in his usually calm voice. They were all tired and frazzled. He moderated his tone. “I mean it literally as well as figuratively. We aren’t accomplishing anything except exhausting ourselves. We’re calling it quits for the night, despite what I said earlier. I think we’ve eliminated everything it could be except the program, so that’s our logical next step, and we can’t do it here. I’m going to clean up and have a good meal while I think about this, then I’m going to have a talk with Colonel Mackenzie. Let’s get some rest.”

Captain Ivan Hodge, head of security, said without preamble, “We have a very suspicious pattern here, sir.”

Joe’s stern face showed no emotion, though he wished the captain hadn’t found anything.

Major General Tuell’s flinty eyes became even flintier. As base commander, he was ultimately responsible for everything that happened, and he was intensely concerned with whatever had caused the crash of an F-22. “Show us what you’ve found.”

The captain was carrying a thick log. He deposited it on Joe’s desk and flipped it open to a premarked page. “Here.” He noted an entry he had already highlighted in yellow. “This is the security code number for a member of the laser team, Caroline Evans. She arrived last Tuesday as a replacement for a worker who had a heart attack.”

Joe’s guts knotted up and his eyes went blank as he waited for Captain Hodge to continue.

“She has a pattern of arriving in the morning before everyone else and being the last to leave,” the captain said, and Joe relaxed a little. Caroline was a workaholic; hardly damning circumstances, and he himself had walked in on her unannounced several times, catching her doing nothing suspicious…although she had quickly cleared the computer screen that one time. He had briefly wondered about it, then forgotten it, until now.

“You yourself have that pattern, sir,” Captain Hodge said to Joe. “In itself, it doesn’t mean anything.” He flipped to another premarked page. “But here, on Thursday night, the sensors show Ms. Evans entering the laser work area shortly before 2400 and not leaving until almost 0400. She was alone the entire time. She reentered the building at 0600 for her normal workday. The birds went up that morning and for the first time experienced some malfunction with the lasers, isn’t that right?”

The ice was back in Joe’s eyes. “Yes.”

“She left the area late that afternoon with the other members of the team and didn’t return until Sunday night, again shortly before 2400. Again, she was the only person there. She left the building at 0430, returned at her usual time of 0600. This time, Major Deale’s aircraft was shot down. Hell of a lot more disruptive than the lasers not working at all. These midnight appearances in the work area, combined with the fact that the trouble didn’t start until she arrived, don’t look good.” The captain hesitated as he looked at Joe. The colonel’s expression was enough to make any sane man hesitate, and Captain Hodge considered himself very sane. Nevertheless, it had to be said. “I understand you’ve taken a…uh, personal interest in Ms. Evans.”

“We’ve gone out together a few times.” They’d done a hell of a lot more than that, he thought savagely. She had given herself to him with a completeness that had shattered his memories of other women, reduced them to nothingness. And after they had returned from Vegas Sunday night she had slipped out to the work area and…done what? Secretly activated the laser on Bowie’s aircraft? Had the laser on the bird he’d been flying been activated, too? Could he just as easily have been the one who shot down a friend?

Captain Hodge looked uncomfortable. “While you were with her, did she say anything? Ask any questions pertaining to Night Wing?”

“No.” He was certain of that. Work had been mentioned in only the most general way. But then again, why should she have to ask him anything? “She has the clearance to find out anything about the project that she wants without having to ask anyone else.”

“That’s true. But did she say anything that, in retrospect, you could construe as being a reason for wanting the lasers to fail? Or for wanting to scuttle the Night Wing project?”

“No.” But she wouldn’t; Caroline was too smart for that. Caroline was brilliant. Caroline was perfectly capable of activating the lasers; she was not only an expert, she had access to the codes. “She has the knowledge and she had the opportunity,” he heard himself saying. “Do you have anything else? Motive, anything suspicious in her past, any current money problems?”

“Her background is clean as a whistle,” the captain admitted. “We’re going to do a total recheck to make certain it’s correct and none of it has been fabricated, but that’s only a precaution. Everyone connected with this project has been verified down to the fillings in their teeth.”

“Clarify this for me,” Major General Tuell said. “She could activate the lasers from the work area, without actually being in contact with the lasers themselves? The birds are under twenty-four-hour guard.”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Hodge said. “By computer command. And Ms. Evans carried a double major in college. She got her doctorate in physics, but she also has a master’s in computer sciences. She knows her way around computers.”

“I see.” The general sighed. “What are your recommendations?”

“We won’t file formal charges, sir. We can prove opportunity, and the timing is very suspicious, but we haven’t as yet proven that the computers have actually been reprogrammed to arm and fire the lasers. There’s still a possibility that it’s a mechanical snafu.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“No sir. The problems began when she arrived, and in both instances they occurred after she had made midnight visits to the work area. She’s a civilian. I recommend that the FBI be notified and that she be restricted to base, but not yet taken into custody. As a precaution, I would also restrict the entire laser team from the work area until this is settled.”

“Why is that, Captain?”

“As I said, sir, as a precaution. She may not be the only one involved.”

“The logs don’t show anyone else entering the work area at suspicious times.”

“That doesn’t mean they didn’t know about it. I think Colonel Mackenzie will agree with me that it’s less expensive to halt testing for a few days than to lose another F-22, or maybe even one of the prototypes.”

“Yes.” Joe’s voice was hard. “Are you going to question Ms. Evans?”

“Yes sir.”

“I’d like to be there.”

“Of course, sir.” Captain Hodge thought wryly that Colonel Mackenzie didn’t have to have permission; he had supreme authority on this base with anything concerning the Night Wing project. He would defer to Major General Tuell, but it would be by choice.

“When?”

“I can have my people escort her here now, if you’d like.”

“Then do it.”

Major General Tuell stood. “Gentlemen, I’m leaving this in your hands. I trust you’ll both make certain of our position before charges are filed. However, do whatever has to be done to solve this. The project is too important.”

They both saluted, and he returned it. As he left, Captain Hodge gestured to Joe’s telephone and said, “With your permission, sir.”

Joe nodded curtly. Captain Hodge lifted the receiver and pressed a code. “Have Ms. Caroline Evans, C12X114, escorted to Colonel Mackenzie’s office. Verify.”

Whoever had answered the phone repeated the code number. Captain Hodge said, “Correct. Thank you.”

He hung up the phone and turned to Joe. “Ten minutes,” he said.

Chapter 10

Caroline had never felt so small and exposed and terrified. She sat in a chair in Joe’s office and tried to catch his eye, to silently plead with him to believe her, but he wouldn’t look at her. Or rather, he was looking at her all right, but it was with a cold, totally impersonal gaze, as if he were observing a bug. He wasn’t seeing her, Caroline. It was the look on his face more than anything else that frightened her. It was as hard as stone.

“No, I did not reenter the work area on those occasions,” she repeated for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“The sensors logged both your entrance and exit times, Ms. Evans.” Captain Hodge, the head of base security, was also good at repeating himself.

“Then the sensors are wrong.”

“No, the sensors are extremely accurate. State-of-the-art.”

“The sensors are wrong.” She drew a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She felt almost sick with fear. “I dislodged my ID card somehow during the day Thursday. I discovered it was missing Friday morning when I dressed.”

“So you keep saying. We have no record of you filing a report on this so-called missing card, and you realize, of course, how important this would be on a top-security project. Perhaps you would like to explain your reasoning again.”

“I remembered snagging it on a file folder Thursday and thought it must have come loose then. I didn’t notify security because it seemed like a lot of bother when I was fairly certain it wasn’t lost but was still in the office.”

“But the sensors record you leaving the building that afternoon with the other members of your team. You had to have had your tag on for that to be possible, and believe me, Ms. Evans, the security works on both entering and exiting. If anyone crosses that threshold from any direction without the proper identification, it triggers an alarm.”

“And that’s why I’m telling you that the sensors have to be malfunctioning. When I discovered that I’d misplaced my tag, I called Cal Gilchrist and got him to check the office for me. He found my tag lying on the floor under my desk. He brought it back out to me and returned to his quarters while I began work. All you have to do is ask him.”

“Mr. Gilchrist will be asked the appropriate questions. However, what the logs show is that both you and Mr. Gilchrist entered the building together and left together two minutes later. Then you reentered alone, and it was over an hour before Mr. Gilchrist returned.”

“That’s impossible. I did not go into the building until Mr. Gilchrist returned with my tag. What do your precious sensors tell you when two tags but only one body leave a building?”

The captain ignored her question and instead made a quick notation on the clipboard he carried. “Did you also misplace your tag on Sunday night?”

“No. I didn’t enter the building on Sunday night.” She couldn’t prevent herself from giving Joe another quick, imploring glance. What was he thinking? Surely he didn’t suspect her of sabotaging the lasers.

“The sensors say you did. And by your own testimony, your ID tag was with you.”

“The tag was exactly where I had left it Friday afternoon when I put it on again this morning.”

“You didn’t move it at all during the weekend?”

“I spent the weekend in Vegas.”

“And left your tag behind.”

“Do you wear your ID tag off-base, Captain?” she shot back.

He said mildly, “I’d like to remind you that I’m not the one under suspicion.”

“Under suspicion of what? Spell it out for me,” she challenged.

He refused to be drawn. “You spent all weekend in Vegas, you say. You didn’t return to the base either Friday night or Saturday night?”

“No.”

“Where were you in Vegas?”

“At the Hilton.”

“There’s more than one. But of course this can be verified?”

Joe interrupted. “Ms. Evans and I spent the weekend together. I can verify her time from late Friday afternoon until 1900 hours Sunday.”

“I see.” Captain Hodge kept his voice noncommittal, but Caroline’s face burned. This time she didn’t glance at Joe. “So the name tag was locked in your quarters the entire time.”

She tried another calming breath. They didn’t seem to be working very well. “Yes.”

“You’re certain your quarters were secured.”

“Yes. I always double-check my door.”

He looked sceptical. “‘Always’ is a very exact term. It means without fail. Are you saying you’ve never failed to double-check your door?”

“On this occasion, Colonel Mackenzie himself checked the door while I watched.”

The captain glanced at Joe, who nodded. Joe’s eyes were hooded, his expression unreadable.

“You verify that the tag was in your possession and no one else’s. You were recorded entering the work area at exactly—” he paused to check the log “—2347 on Sunday night.”

“I was in bed at that time Sunday night.”

“Alone?” the captain asked indifferently.

“Yes.”

“No one can verify that. You say you were in bed. The computer log says you were in the work area.”

“Talk to Cal Gilchrist!” she said fiercely. “Stop wasting time with this and verify what I’ve already told you.”

“On Thursday morning, when I walked into your office you cleared the screen and turned the computer off,” Joe said. His voice was cold and deep. “What was on the screen that you didn’t want me to see?”

She stared at him in silence, completely at a loss. He sounded as certain of her guilt as Captain Hodge was, but surely he knew…She tried to concentrate, to bring the occasion to mind. Thursday morning. He had startled her yet again, she remembered, and when she had reflexively started to slug him he had jerked her into his arms. She remembered fiddling with the computer to give herself something to do while she tried to get a handle on her reaction to him, but she had no idea what she had been working on.

“I don’t remember,” she said weakly.

“Come on,” he scoffed. “You remember everything. You have a mind like a steel trap.”

“I don’t remember,” she repeated, staring at him. With a shock she realized that the expression in his eyes was one of disdain…disgust…even rage. Yes, it was mostly rage, but not the normal heat of temper. Joe Mackenzie’s rage was ice-cold, and all the more frightening because of it. He was looking at her as if he could destroy her without regret. He didn’t believe her!

The enormity of that realization almost choked her. As it was, a huge knot in her chest swelled until she could scarcely breathe, until her heart was beating with slow, painful effort. Had their situations been reversed she would have given him her complete, unqualified trust without hesitation, because, despite the evidence, she knew he would never betray his country. Evidently he believed her capable of doing just that. Her thought processes were orderly and logical, but all of a sudden a staggering instinctive knowledge filled her: she would trust him because she had been fascinated by him, intensely involved with learning about him as a man because she loved him, while for him their time together had been purely physical. He hadn’t bothered to learn about her as a person because he didn’t care.

In shock, she withdrew. She didn’t move physically, but she had been reaching out to him mentally, and now she slammed her mind’s door on those thoughts. She pulled all her reactions inward, bolting them inside in an effort to reestablish her emotional safeguards. It was probably too late, but the human animal’s instincts were always to survive, and so she obeyed those instincts. Her face went smooth and expressionless, and she stared back at him with eyes as blank as glass. She couldn’t afford to give him even a sliver of herself.

“What were you working on?” he repeated.

“I don’t remember.” Even her voice was flat. She had so desperately clamped down on her emotions that none of them stood a chance of escaping. Just as emotionlessly she said, “I’m going to assume I’m under suspicion of sabotage.”

“We haven’t said that,” Captain Hodge replied.

“Nor have you said that I’m not, and this feels very much like an interrogation.” She fastened her gaze on him, because she couldn’t bear to look at Joe. She didn’t know if she could ever look at Joe again. Later, when she was alone, she would regroup and take stock, do a damage assessment, but for right now she felt as if everything in her would shatter if she had to look at him. The pain was just too great; she couldn’t handle it, so she had to ignore it.

“We couldn’t find any malfunction at all in the laser on Captain Wade’s aircraft,” she said, and even managed a little bit of pride in the evenness of her tone. It was as flat as the EEG line of a corpse. “We all talked it over. Yates Korleski, the team leader, was going to talk to Colonel Mackenzie tonight after he’d thought about it a bit longer, but we think the problem is in the computer program.”

Captain Hodge looked mildly interested. “What kind of problem are you talking about, Ms. Evans?”

“We don’t know. We want to compare the working program with the original to tell us if any changes have been made on the program we’re actually using.”

“And if there are changes?”

“Then we find out what those changes are.”

“Whose idea was it to verify the program?”

“Mine.”

“What made you think of it?”

“It was a process of elimination. The computer program is about all that’s left that could be wrong.”

“But the program was working perfectly before you arrived. It would be a major feather in your cap if you solved a problem of this magnitude, wouldn’t it, Ms. Evans?”

She didn’t flinch, just continued to stonily watch him. “I didn’t sabotage the program so I could have the glory of finding the problem.”

“I didn’t accuse you of doing so. I merely asked if it would be a feather in your cap if you pinpointed a major flaw in a project this large and important.”

“I already have a good professional reputation, Captain. That’s why I’m on the team.”

“But you weren’t an original member, so evidently you weren’t good enough for that. Did you resent not being picked in the beginning?”

“I didn’t know about it, so I couldn’t be resentful. I was working on something else. The Night Wing project was already in full swing before I finished my own project. I only became available a month ago. That’s verifiable,” she added before he could ask.

“Hmmm.” He studied the notes he had on his clipboard a moment longer, then looked up with a thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I believe that’s all I have to ask you for now, Ms. Evans. You may go. Oh—you’re restricted to the base. It wouldn’t look good if you were caught trying to leave.”

“Are my telephone calls also restricted?”

“Do you need to call someone?” he asked without answering her question. “An attorney, perhaps?”

“Do I need one?”

He gave her that thin smile again. “We haven’t pressed any charges yet.”

He just had to put that “yet” in there, she noticed distantly, but it didn’t affect her. “You aren’t filing charges but I’m restricted to base. Let me remind you that I’m a civilian, Captain Hodge, not a part of the military.”

“And let me remind you, Ms. Evans, that you are on a military base and this is a military matter. If necessary, we can hold you in the brig for the maximum length of time before charges have to be formally filed. A lot of this can be checked out by then, and you may be exonerated, but if you insist on spending the time behind bars, we can accommodate you.”

“You’ve made your point.”

“I thought I had.”

Caroline got up and concentrated on her legs. She made certain they didn’t wobble, that they moved when she told them to. She didn’t look at Joe as she walked out of the office, or at burly Sergeant Vrska on duty in the outer office. Evidently the good sergeant left only when the colonel did.

They would talk to Cal, and he would verify everything she had told them, which would force them to accept that their precious security sensors could and had malfunctioned. Perhaps there had been a major foul-up in security and two ID tags had been issued with the same bar code. Perhaps someone had been entering the work area with a duplicate of her tag and had indeed been sabotaging the computer program, but questioning Cal would force them to admit that it wasn’t her.

She wasn’t worried about being charged with sabotage, though enduring the captain’s questions hadn’t been a pleasant experience. But she might never recover from the look in Joe’s eyes and the realization that he didn’t trust her, that he believed her capable of sabotage.

She had made a monumental, colossal fool of herself. Despite the superior capability of her brain, she had made the fundamental feminine mistake of assuming that making love with a man signaled a commitment from him. No, not making love, having sex. That was another mistake she had made, assigning too much importance to the act. To men it was the simple gratification of a physical appetite, like eating. No emotional baggage was involved. She had made love; he had had sex. She had given herself to him, heart, soul and body, and he had given her pleasure in return but nothing of himself beyond the temporary use of his own body. Magnificent as his body was, she had wanted more. She had thought she was getting more.

Oh, she hadn’t gone so far as to think he was in love with her, but she had still thought he cared, at least a little. But she had been confusing sexual technique with emotions. He had none, at least none that she could reach. He was always controlled, his inner self firmly locked away from everyone except his immediate family. She was beginning to see the wisdom of that. Right now she would give anything if her own emotions had been that protected, so she wouldn’t be about to collapse and curl up in a fetal knot from the pain of it. She would do so if she thought it would ease the pain, but she knew it wouldn’t. There was no ease.

Perhaps when he knew the truth he would expect to continue their affair as if nothing had happened. Caroline tried to imagine how she would handle the situation if he did, but she simply couldn’t bring anything to mind.

Nor could she imagine continuing to work here, seeing him every day. She had always been right, after all, never to become involved with anyone. The first time she had done so had certainly been a disaster. So now she either had to do the unthinkable and somehow manage to survive working with him, or she had to ruin her professional reputation by asking to be taken off the project.

It looked as if her work would be all she had, so she’d be damned if she would throw that away just because of a man, even if that man was Colonel Joe Mackenzie. If it took every ounce of strength she had, she would finish this damn project. She would talk with him about work. She would even be polite. But there was no way she would ever risk opening her heart to him again. She simply couldn’t afford the pain. This was already costing her almost more than she could bear, and the ordeal had just begun.

“Cal Gilchrist categorically denies finding her ID card under her desk,” Hodge told Joe later. It was almost midnight, but there was no possibility of sleep in sight. “He says she called him early Friday morning and asked him to walk her to the building because she thought someone had followed her the morning before and it made her nervous. He says he also went inside with her for a quick check of the building, then returned to his quarters to shower and shave.”

Joe’s face was stony. He hadn’t allowed himself to hope that Gilchrist would verify everything she had said. It would have been asking for too much, when the sensors had plainly placed her there when she shouldn’t have been.

“Then why use him for an alibi? She must have known he wouldn’t cover for her.”

“Maybe not. Evidently they’re fairly good friends. Certainly Adrian Pendley wouldn’t have gone a single step out of his way for her. And maybe she and Gilchrist had something going on in the past, for her to feel confident he would protect her if he could.”

“No.” At least he was certain about that. Caroline had never been intimate with anyone but him. Before Ivan could question him on his certainty Joe asked, “What about Korleski? Did they discuss the possibility that the problem was with the computer program?”

“Yes. She told the truth right down the line with that. He verified that she’s the one who suggested the program be checked. He was also vehement that she wouldn’t sabotage a project so she could have the credit of saving it. Neither did he believe she would do it for money.”

“Did he think anyone else on the laser team would do it for either money or prestige?” Joe asked.

Ivan shook his head.

“How do the rest of them check out?”

“It’ll take time to reverify everything, but all of them are spotless. I never would have suspected her if it hadn’t been for the entrance and exit records.”

Joe could understand that. He never would have suspected her, either, but then, he hadn’t been able to see past his own obsession with her. All he’d been able to think about was getting her in bed and burying himself in that sweet body. Now he had to wonder how much of it had been calculated, if she had indeed been so attracted to him that she’d given up her virginity to him with hardly a thought or if she had done it…God, what possible reason was there for making love with him the way she had, other than desire? No, she hadn’t come on to him in an attempt to find out classified information on Night Wing or to use him for protection if she were caught. She hadn’t needed him to find out anything; she had access to all the information she wanted. And it was simply too iffy to assume he would protect her just because he’d slept with her. Caroline had wanted him. Even if he couldn’t trust anything else about her, he could trust that.

So what did he do now? He’d never before been so enraged and…hurt. He might as well admit it. This had been like taking a roundhouse to the gut. Nobody had ever gotten to him the way Caroline had, with her uncomplicated fierceness. She had been forthright and brutally honest, without any hidden agenda or stratagems. He wanted to be able to step back from the situation and look at it without emotion, but he couldn’t.

He’d never felt about any aircraft the way he felt about Night Wing. It was special. It was more than special. It was history in the making, pure magic in the air. He would give his own life unhesitatingly to protect those planes, because they were necessary to protect his country. Simple patriotism, pure love for those birds. They were his.

And he’d considered Caroline his, too. His woman.

If the choice had been simply between Caroline and the aircraft, he would have chosen Caroline. He might despise himself for it, but he couldn’t have stood by and let her be harmed. But between Caroline and his country… There was no choice. There couldn’t be. He couldn’t let there be. No matter how fierce and gutsy she was, no matter how she challenged him on a level no one else ever had before and threw herself without restraint into the battle. She hadn’t let him be gentle when he’d taken her for the first time; she had insisted on receiving his full strength and had met him with her own. Caroline met life head-on, without wavering.

He paused in his thoughts, a tiny frown puckering his eyebrows. Caroline didn’t seem the type to sneak around in the dark. Maybe he hadn’t known her as well as he’d thought, but he would have sworn there wasn’t a devious bone in her body.

He wanted to see her. He wanted to ask her some questions one on one, without anyone else in the room to buffer them. He would get the truth out of her come hell or high water.

Chapter 11

He had intended to go straight to her quarters, but he stopped halfway there and detoured to his own quarters in the BOQ instead. He was too angry to face her now, especially in the temporary civilian housing where there would be too many onlookers who didn’t need to know any of what was going on.

He didn’t think he’d ever been this angry before, but then, he’d never been betrayed like this before. Damn it, why would she do something like that? It had to be money, but he’d never understood the mentality that could view treason as just another financial opportunity.

Treason. The word reverberated through his consciousness. If she were charged and convicted, she would likely spend the rest of her natural life behind bars, without possibility of parole.

He would never make love to her again. The thought made him erupt with fury, and he restlessly paced the small confines of his quarters. One weekend hadn’t been enough. He doubted that a thousand weekends would be enough to get her out of his system. Nor could he let himself forget that he had made love to her twice without protection. Despite her assurances that the timing was wrong, she could be pregnant.

Hell, what a mess! If she was pregnant…There wasn’t any use in borrowing trouble; he’d know soon enough. But what would he do if she was carrying his child? There still wasn’t any way he could keep her out of prison.

That was assuming she would even tell him. By the time she had left his office that night she had refused to even look at him. He’d been watching her, trying to read her reactions, and all of a sudden she had started withdrawing. He’d seen it happen right in front of his eyes. It was as if a light had been quenched. All the vitality, the responsiveness, the incredible energy of her, had vanished, and all that had been left was a frozen mannequin of a woman who had answered in a monotone and whose eyes were as blank as a doll’s.

It had been infuriating to see her that way. He had wanted to jerk her to her feet and shake her, to make that wonderful, uncomplicated anger come rushing upward to meet him. But he hadn’t. If he gave in to those urges, he would lose his control once and for all, and he never wanted to do that.

What he did want to do, more than anything else in the world, was storm over to her quarters and make love to her so hard and so long that when it was over she would know she belonged to him. Maybe it wouldn’t solve any of this, but it would sure as hell make him feel better. But he couldn’t do that, either. Seeing her at all would knock down the last critical brick behind which he had dammed up his temper, releasing a flood of emotion that would sweep him away along with everything else.

Caroline lay on top of the covers on her narrow mattress, too listless to crawl between the sheets and actually go to bed. Such a normal action was beyond her. She had showered and dressed for bed, but she couldn’t even go through the motions of pretending to sleep. All she could do was lie there in the silent darkness and stare at the ceiling. She could feel her heart beating, feel the slow, rhythmic expansions of her rib cage as she breathed. Those actions said that she still lived, but she didn’t feel alive. She felt numb, dead inside.

By now they would have talked to Cal, who would have verified that she’d been telling the truth. Joe would know that he’d been wrong, but somehow that didn’t give her any satisfaction. Still, she had expected at least a phone call from either him or Captain Hodge, to say “Sorry, we made a mistake.” Surely they wouldn’t be stupid enough to think she was resting and would rather they wait until morning to tell her.

Or Cal could have lied.

She couldn’t deny the possibility. The thought had slipped into her consciousness not long after she had lain down on the bed. If she hadn’t been so upset, it might have occurred to her earlier. It was the natural progression of the line of thought she had been following earlier in the hangar, when she had been staring at the laser pod and sorting out the various ways in which what had happened could have happened.

Cal was a whiz with computers. He was the one who had found that minor glitch on Friday, but only when Caroline had begun nosing around the computer. She hadn’t thought anything of it then, but if he had tampered with the commands, he wouldn’t have wanted her to really concentrate on the program. He knew she had a degree in computer science, because they had talked shop on several occasions. And on both Friday and today—yesterday, now, since it was past midnight—he had really looked exhausted. From being up all night? Cal was normally as bouncy as a rubber ball.

And Cal was the only other person who had touched her ID tag. Maybe he had picked it up on Thursday when she’d lost it and had left when she had so that the sensors would match the number of warm bodies leaving with the number of ID cards. She hadn’t known the sensors monitored those leaving the buildings, too, but maybe Cal had; after all, he’d been working here from the beginning and noticed things like that, while she tended to pay attention only to what directly concerned her job.

Even if he had used her ID tag to regain entrance to the building Thursday night, she knew he hadn’t had it on Sunday night.

But how easily could they be duplicated? He would have had to leave the base to get it done, but she was certain it was possible. After all, the sensors had said she had reentered the work area at midnight, which would have given him several hours to have a copy made.

Then she had called him on Friday morning asking him to search the office for her tag, which had given him the perfect opportunity to return it to her and keep security from being notified. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to use the card again, because security would have removed that particular code from the computers.

She stopped her thoughts and rubbed her forehead, trying to force everything into making sense. If her call for help had been pure chance, then there wouldn’t have been any reason for him to have had the card duplicated. Had he played the odds that she would call him? They were good odds, she had to admit. She wouldn’t have called Yates, and she certainly wouldn’t have wasted her time calling Adrian. It was also a good bet that she wouldn’t have wanted to call security. Not a certainty, but good enough that it wasn’t much of a risk, either.

So what had happened then? The sensors showed both her and Cal entering the building, then both leaving. He must have had her card on him where the sensor could read it, thereby establishing proof that he hadn’t had the opportunity to tamper with the computer program because he hadn’t been in there alone. But why hadn’t the sensor noticed that there were two cards but only one body?

Maybe the sensors weren’t as good as Captain Hodge obviously liked to believe they were. Maybe they were programmed to catch people without cards, but no one had thought to program it to catch cards without people. Maybe Cal had figured out a way to fool it. There were a lot of maybes, all of them possible. As good as he was with computers, maybe he had somehow gotten into the base computers and logged her both in and out of the building that morning. She didn’t know and might never find out.

But what would Cal do now, if he were guilty? If the programs had been tampered with, he would know that analysis would discover it. Would he try to get back into the program and cover his tracks by undoing what he had done, hoping that the analysis wouldn’t go any further than a simple comparison? Or would he try to plant more evidence against her?

She had to go with the second option. It was so much more feasible. Why would Cal go to so much trouble only to undo it? No, as long as the finger was pointing toward her, he would be smart to try to make certain it remained pointing in that direction.

Her heart suddenly began thundering in her chest. If Cal were guilty, if he were going to do anything else, he would have to do it tonight, while things were still in an upheaval. Given enough time, the security net would settle down so tightly that nothing would be able to escape, but there were still windows of opportunity when things first started happening.

She knew the entire laser team was being restricted from the work area, but had their bar codes already been deleted from the computers? The military worked a lot like big business when it came to office work: most of it was done during the day. Since the restriction order had only been issued that night, had Captain Hodge called in someone to enter it into the computer or left it to be done first thing in the morning? Knowing human nature, she would bet on the latter. After all, she was the only one under suspicion, and she was probably under surveillance in the interim.

On a hunch she rolled out of bed and silently walked to the small, old-fashioned crank-out window set high in the wall in the kitchen area. She had to stand on a chair to see out of it. Sure enough, a security police car was parked on the opposite side of the street. In the glow of the streetlight she could plainly see two men in the front seat. They were making no effort to disguise their purpose, but then, why should they? This wasn’t clandestine surveillance, but plain old guard duty.

There was no other door.

There was, however, another high, narrow window in the bedroom. In the almost total darkness she carefully made her way back to the bedroom and stared at the small oblong of light in the wall. A man certainly couldn’t get through there, and she had doubts that she could, either. Nevertheless, she stood on the bed and peeped out. That side of the street was empty.

Well, there was no point in putting herself to a lot of trouble if Cal was peacefully sleeping in bed. She mustn’t let herself forget that he might be totally innocent, that he had indeed verified her story. Innocent until proven guilty was the law of the land, though Captain Hodge could use a little refresher course in the concept.

She didn’t want to turn on any lights, alerting those two out front that she was awake, so she dialed Cal’s number by feel. What better way to find out if he was in his quarters than to call him? If he answered, she might even chat awhile.

By the fifth ring she began to have serious doubts that he was there. She let it ring longer, just in case he was sleeping very soundly, but on the twentieth ring she replaced the receiver. Twenty rings, especially since the phones were installed right beside the beds to make certain the occupants would be awakened by any middle-of-the-night phone calls, would wake even the soundest of sleepers. Cal wasn’t in his quarters.

She clenched her teeth in anger. Damn him! She had thought he was her friend; she had liked him, trusted him. First Joe, now Cal. Her mind immediately shied away from Joe, because that hurt was too powerful to linger over. It was much safer to focus her anger on Cal.

She stared up at that little window again. Two long, narrow louvered panes that cranked out to let the built-up heat of the day escape. She would have to dismantle the entire mechanism in the dark, and even then, she wasn’t certain she would fit through the slot.

Well, she would never know if she didn’t try.

Working on lasers and computers had made her familiar with tools, and she never traveled anywhere without a small pouch containing a selection of screwdrivers and pliers, because she never knew when she would need them. She fetched the pouch from the closet and dumped the tools out on the bed. Problem was, in the dark she couldn’t tell which tool she needed.

She did have a pencil flashlight and decided she would have to take the risk of the small beam being detected through the window, but it wasn’t likely to throw a lighted patch on the ground outside and alert the guards. She climbed up on the bed and switched the flashlight on for only the smallest of intervals, just long enough for her to see that the screws holding the mechanism in place needed a Phillips head screwdriver. Five minutes later the two window slats and the cranking mechanism, in pieces, were lying on her bed.

That had been the easy part. Getting through the window was something else.

She measured it visually. She could angle her shoulders through; her head and hips would be the biggest problem, but her buttocks would compress and her skull wouldn’t. She decided to go headfirst, so she could find out immediately if her head would fit through. It would be awful to go out feet first, then be stuck with her head inside and the rest of her body outside. Humiliating, at the very least. That is, if she didn’t find herself hanged.

First, she had to change clothes and put on some shoes. She shone the pencil flashlight on the contents of her closet, taking care that no light was visible from the outer rooms. Dark clothes would be practical, but she hadn’t brought any dark clothes with her. It was August in the southern Nevada desert; she hadn’t anticipated being obliged to sneak around in the dark.

She would stand out like a sore thumb in her light-colored clothes, but there wasn’t any help for it. She would just have to make certain no one saw her.

Nevertheless irritated by her lack of preparedness, she quickly pulled on a pair of thin cotton pants and a T-shirt, and defiantly slipped her ID tag into her pocket. If she got caught, they wouldn’t be able to say she didn’t have proper identification. As an afterthought, she added her keys to her pocket. She could hardly reenter by the window, though if she managed to catch Cal up to no good, she wouldn’t have to worry about the guards out front.

She climbed up on the bed again, but a minute’s experimentation made it plain that she needed to be higher so she could angle through from a more horizontal position. She got a kitchen chair and balanced it on the bed, then climbed up on the chair. It was a wobbly perch, but she was holding on to the edge of the window and wasn’t afraid of falling.

One arm and shoulder went first, then she turned her head to the side and eased it through the slot, earning nothing more horrendous than a minor scrape. She wiggled the other shoulder and arm through and braced her arms on the wall below her as she wriggled forward. As soon as her hips were through, she suspected, her center of gravity would shift drastically forward and she would fall on her head, dragging her legs the rest of the way through the window. It wasn’t a high drop, but she didn’t want to break her neck landing. To prevent it, or at least slow her down, she hooked her legs backward so her heels were braced against the inside wall, and inched forward some more.

The edge of the window cut into her soft bottom but she ignored the pain and forced herself on through. Immediately she lurched forward and only her hooked legs inside kept her from doing exactly as she had feared. Frantically, she braced her arms again, forcing herself as far away from a vertical position as possible, then cast a fearful glance toward the front of the building where the guards were parked. To her relief, she couldn’t see the car from where she was.

She hung there a minute before she faced the inevitable: there was no graceful way to do it. She was going to be scraped and bruised. Moreover, there was no way she could now reverse the process and inch back inside. Her legs were trembling from the strain. Without giving herself time to dwell on how much it was going to hurt, she straightened her legs and gave a push with her arms at the same time, launching herself the rest of the way out of the window. She tried to turn in midair so nothing vital was damaged on landing, like her head, and succeeded in turning mostly to the side. The impact was harder than she ever would have suspected for such a short distance. The loose gravel scraped skin on her temple and cheek, down the side of her left arm and on her left ankle. She had banged both knees somehow, and jarred her shoulder.

But she couldn’t just sit there and take stock of her injuries. Her senses were still swimming when she forced herself to move, to scramble against the shadows at the side of the building and walk quickly in the opposite direction. Only when she had gone almost a hundred yards without hearing a warning shout did she relax and take a deep breath. Immediately her pains made themselves felt, and she stopped to lean over and rub both aching knees, then her bottom. She rotated her shoulder to make certain it was in working order and gingerly touched the side of her face. She didn’t seem to be bleeding, but the scrapes burned. A scarf threaded through the loops of the pants usually served her as a belt, but she stripped it out and carefully blotted the scrapes to remove the dirt and tiny bits of gravel from her face.

Something else she could lay at Cal’s door.

She trudged the long way around, no longer making an effort to avoid being seen on the theory that someone would be more likely to notice her if she was trying not to be noticed. If she acted normally, no one would pay any attention to her.

Joe sat up and threw the sheet off, cursing steadily under his breath even as he got up and began dressing in jeans and boots. It wasn’t military business he had to attend to, and the long, restless hours in a bed that was far too empty had steadily eroded his patience until there was none left. He glanced at his watch, surprised to see that it was only about 0200 hours. He’d been in bed less than two hours, but it had felt more like four or five. It didn’t matter. No matter how long it had been, he wasn’t going to be able to sleep until he’d had it out with Caroline. He wanted to hear her explanation of why she’d done what she had, and he wanted her to tell him to his face. He wouldn’t let her ignore him again the way she had earlier in his office.

He decided to walk rather than take the truck for the relatively short distance; maybe the walk would settle him down. He was dangerously close to exploding, and he knew it. He had been six years old the last time he’d lost his temper, and he’d sworn then never to do it again, but Caroline tested his control to the extreme.

He’d walked less than a quarter of a mile when he first saw the slim figure walking boldly through the night, and his first thought was that temper was making him hallucinate. He stopped and stepped back out of sight, going down on one knee next to a trash can. He hadn’t mistaken her identity; the overhead streetlights gleamed on her pale hair, and he knew that walk as intimately as he knew his own face. The arrogant set of slim shoulders, the gentle sway of rounded hips, were burned into his memory.

Was she coming to see him? His heart thumped wildly, but then he wondered how she had gotten past her guards. He knew they had been there, because he had suggested to Hodge that it would be a good idea, and Hodge had agreed. He’d even heard Hodge give the orders. But here she was, walking around the base at two a.m., not a guard insight.

He waited until she had walked past him before slipping from his cover. As always, he moved soundlessly, dropping back about fifty yards but always keeping her insight. If she turned toward the BOQ he could rapidly close the distance and approach her. But she didn’t even pause at the BOQ, and his anger rose to the boiling point. She was headed straight for the laser work area, damn her treacherous little heart. His palm itched with the almost irresistible impulse to storm up behind her, take her by the nape of the neck and bend her over his knee. By the time he got through walloping that pretty little backside he would feel a lot better and she would have a better appreciation of just how angry he was. Damn it, didn’t she know how serious her situation was?

Of course she did. By her own actions, she was proving herself guilty. Probably she intended to finish the traitorous work she had already begun.

He thought of stopping to alert the security police, but decided in favor of keeping her insight. If she tried anything like setting the place on fire he could subdue her and hold her until security got there. In fact, he would enjoy subduing her. He just might get that walloping accomplished while they were waiting.

He saw her stop and get something out of her pocket, then attach it to her shirt. Her ID tag. Why hadn’t Hodge relieved her of it? Because he hadn’t seen any need to; she had been under guard, and the codes would be deleted from the computer first thing in the morning. Joe was suddenly furious again, but this time at both Hodge and himself. They had been inexcusably lax, especially for a project with security as tight as Night Wing. She couldn’t get off the base, but she could still wreak havoc on base. They relied too much on technology to do their guarding for them, something he intended to change immediately.

Someone was already inside the building; there was a very dim glow coming from one of the windows, barely noticeable. Caroline saw it, too. He saw her head turn as she stared at the light; then she continued straight up to the door and slipped inside, as silent as a wraith.

Twenty seconds later, he followed. He wasn’t wearing his ID tag, so he knew central security would be alerted immediately.

Up ahead, he saw Caroline reach into the office and flip on the light switch, bathing her in the bright light. “What did you do, use my name tag again?” she demanded furiously of someone else inside. “The computers will probably go crazy when they record Caroline Evans entering twice in a row. You sabotaged my project, damn you!”

Realization burst in his brain like a bomb, and shock slammed through him as she stepped completely inside the office, out of sight. Damn the little idiot! She didn’t have one iota of caution. She had simply charged straight in without thinking that cornering a traitor could be dangerous. Joe launched himself down the corridor, running silently, desperately praying with every fiber in him that he wouldn’t hear a gunshot that would mean the end of that foolhardy courageousness.

He heard a sudden movement, a gasp, a sickening thud, and he burst through the open doorway just as Caroline slid to the floor. Cal Gilchrist was standing in front of a glowing computer monitor, his face utterly white. Too late Joe saw Cal’s eyes dart to the side, behind him. He tried to whirl, but he’d been too distracted by his own unreasoning fear. Before he could react, something hard crashed against his temple. It felt as if his head was exploding. Then there was nothing but total blackness.

Chapter 12

Caroline slowly regained consciousness, at first aware only of being jounced uncomfortably. Her head hurt with a deep throbbing that dulled her senses, but gradually she became aware of pain in her shoulder and arms, too. Then she began to realize that she could hear voices, that there was someone else near her, but for a blank, frightening moment she didn’t know who or where she was.

Then she recognized one of the voices, and awareness swept through her. She remembered everything. Cal. It was his voice she recognized, and just as she realized that, she also realized that she was in a vehicle of some sort, perhaps a van, and she was tied. Gagged, too, damn it.

Slowly she opened her eyes, quickly closing them again in pain when a bright light flashed quickly through the windows. She heard a rushing sound and realized some other vehicle had passed them on the road, nothing more. She tried again, this time opening her lids only a slit so she could accustom herself to the discomfort. This must be what a hangover felt like, and she hadn’t even indulged. All the misery without any of the fun.

Someone was lying beside her.

This time she closed her eyes in panic, startled by the realization that there was a man right next to her. She was acutely aware of her helplessness. Oh, God, were they going to rape her?

But the man wasn’t moving. Cautiously she opened her eyes one more time and found herself staring straight into Joe Mackenzie’s pale, furious eyes.

Even if she hadn’t been gagged, she couldn’t have said a word, she was so astonished. How had he gotten there? She had a good idea how she had come to be in such a predicament, because she had foolishly rushed into the office to confront Cal without making certain he was alone. But how had Joe gotten involved? Then fear swelled in her chest, because he was in danger, too.

“I say we forget about it and get out of the country,” Cal was saying feverishly. “It’s over. I can’t take it any further. They’re going to check the entire system, and they’ll find everything.”

“I told the others you didn’t have the nerve for this,” someone else replied dismissively. Caroline tore her gaze from Joe’s and craned her neck so she could see up front. Another man was sitting beside Cal, who was driving. She didn’t recognize him, but at the same time he looked vaguely familiar.

“Nothing was said about murder,” Cal replied furiously.

“And I suppose if that pilot had died when his plane was shot down, you wouldn’t have been responsible for that?”

“That was different.” Despite his words, Cal’s tone was uneasy.

“Yeah, sure.”

“That was…chance. But this is cold-blooded murder. I can’t do it.”

“No one’s asking you to do it,” the other man said impatiently. “You don’t have the nerve for it. We’ll take care of it. Don’t worry, you won’t even see it happen.”

If her hands hadn’t been tied behind her back, Caroline would have lunged for the man, she was so angry. He was talking about killing them as casually as he would talk about doing the laundry! Joe silently nudged her ankle with his boot; actually, it was more of a kick, and her ankle was already sore. She turned her glare on him, and he gave a tiny, warning shake of his head. She kicked him in return, and he blinked at the pain.

They were in a van, one which was evidently used for hauling cargo rather than people, for there was no carpeting on the floor, only bare metal. The vehicle swayed with every turn, curve and bump, adding to the discomfort of her position. She was lying on her sore shoulder anyway, and having her hands tied behind her made it worse.

She tried to discern what they had used to bind her; it felt like nylon cord, while it was probably her own scarf they had tied around her mouth, adding insult to injury. Her keys were still in her pocket. If she could get them out, and if she and Joe turned so their backs were to each other, and if they had enough time, she might be able to use the edge of a key to saw through the nylon. The keys weren’t sharp, but they were rough. Joe’s pockets had probably been searched for a knife, a common item for men to carry, but women weren’t expected to carry anything in their pockets, and evidently Cal and his cohort had totally overlooked hers.

“There’s no point in killing them,” Cal was saying raggedly. “It’s over. We barely got out of there before the security police started swarming all over the place. By now they know I left the base, and they have a record of the van’s license plate. When Caroline and the colonel are both reported missing but neither of them is recorded as leaving the base, they’ll put two and two together so fast there’ll be an APB out for the van within another hour, at most. Right now we’re looking at life, but if we kill them, we’ll get the death penalty.”

To Caroline that sounded like a very convincing argument, but the other man didn’t seem impressed. He didn’t even bother to respond.

Sometimes she wished she weren’t so darn logical. She couldn’t turn off her thought processes even when they were telling her something she would rather not know. If the other man disregarded Cal’s argument, then it must be because he had some reason to believe he himself wouldn’t be tied in to the sabotage. As Cal had pointed out, his own involvement was known, but this other guy must think himself safe…except Cal knew about him and could tie him to everything. Therefore, the man felt safe only if he knew that Cal wasn’t going to be alive to make the connection.

Furiously she began rubbing her face against the floor of the van, trying to scrape the gag away from her mouth, pushing against it with her tongue at the same time. Joe glared another warning at her, but she ignored him. Her frantic movements attracted the attention of the man in the passenger seat up front, and he turned around.

His voice was genial. “Welcome back, Ms. Evans. I hope your headache isn’t too bad.”

Joe had closed his eyes again and was still lying motionless. Caroline made an angry noise, muffled by the scarf, and continued her struggles. She kicked her bound feet and twisted her torso, all the while fighting the gag.

“You might as well stop wasting your time,” the man said in a mild, faintly bored tone. “You can’t get free, and all you’re doing is pulling the cord tighter.”

She wasn’t concerned about the cord. Her two aims were to get the gag off and somehow dislodge the keys from her pocket. Not an impossible task, since her pants were loose, flimsy cotton, but not an easy one, either, because the pockets were deep. She mumbled a few unintelligible curses at him and continued with her struggle.

She had managed to push the scarf out of her mouth, and on an impulse she scooted over next to Joe and pushed her face hard against his shoulder, using the contact and the friction between his shirt and the scarf to roll the gag downward. Joe didn’t move, and his eyes remained closed. She worked her jaw until the gag slipped down to hang around her neck. The man in the front seat was frowning at her, starting to get up on his knees and twist around.

“You dirtbag, you’ve killed him!” she croaked, forcing as much rage as possible into her voice, even though her tongue and jaw didn’t want to work.

The van swayed alarmingly as Cal jerked on the wheel, his head swiveling around to stare into the back. The other man fought for his balance. “Keep your eyes on the road!” he barked at Cal.

“You said he was just unconscious!”

“He isn’t dead, damn it. I hit him harder than I did her because I didn’t want any trouble with the big bruiser if he woke up before we could get them out of there and tied up.”

Caroline yelled, “Cal, he’s going to kill you, too! Why else wouldn’t he be worried about a murder charge unless he’s going to try to blame the whole thing on you?”

The man lunged at her from over the seat, reaching back to grab her around the throat. Quick as a cat she turned her head and sank her teeth into his arm. He howled and tried to jerk back, but she hung on like a limpet, working her jaws to inflict as much damage as possible.

The van was swerving all over the road. Cal was using his right arm to grab at the other man while still driving. Both men were yelling and cursing. Suddenly the other man used his right fist to club her on the side of the head and she saw stars, her jaws going slack as she helplessly sank back. She didn’t lose consciousness, but the blow definitely addled her.

They were fighting in the front seat, and the van rose dangerously on two wheels; then Cal jammed on the brakes and it slewed violently to one side, sliding off the pavement. She felt the distinct difference between pavement and dirt; then the van tipped a little to the right as it came to rest, probably in a shallow ditch. The movement threw her against Joe, and she felt his muscles tense as he took her weight, but he didn’t so much as even grunt. Instead, there was an almost soundless, barely intelligible whisper against her ear. “There’s a knife in my right boot.”

Well, of course there was. Didn’t all colonels carry knives in their shoes? Furious because he managed to be armed when she couldn’t even get her keys out of her pocket, she thought about biting him, too. Instead, she hurled herself toward the rear of the van, collecting even more bruises in the process. Cal and the other man were still grappling, and she caught a glimpse of something metallic gleaming in the other man’s hand. Instinctively she recognized it as a pistol.

Cal somehow got his door open and leapt out, probably figuring he didn’t have very good odds in such close quarters with a pistol. The other man was swearing viciously, steadily, as he shoved open his own door and went in pursuit.

Caroline rolled around so her back was to Joe’s feet, searching by feel for his right boot, struggling to push his pants leg up so she could reach the knife. They wouldn’t have long, probably less than a minute. Her scrabbling fingers, numbed from the tightness of the nylon cord, finally grasped the knife handle and drew it out.

Joe was already rolling, presenting his bound hands to her. It wasn’t easy to position the knife between their backs, unable to see if she was slicing into flesh or nylon, but she figured Joe would let her know when she got to skin. The knife must have been sharp; within five seconds she felt the cord give and he was rolling away from her again and sitting up. The blade was removed from her numb hands. She twisted her head to see him bending forward to quickly slice the cord around his feet; then he whirled toward her. She felt a swift tug at her hands and they came free. Before she could even bring her arms around he had jackknifed to a sitting position and freed her feet. Only then did he remove his own loosened gag, tugging it down so it hung around his neck just the way the scarf hung around hers.

A shot boomed from in front of them.

“Stay back here,” Joe ordered as he lithely swung into the front and folded himself behind the steering wheel. The engine was still running; he slammed the van into gear and stepped on the gas pedal. The wheels spun uselessly, and he cursed himself even as he let up on the gas and put the transmission in reverse, this time easing down on the gas. He was used to his truck, but the van didn’t have that kind of traction. The tires clawed for purchase on the loose, shifting dirt, finally caught and reversed out of the rut he’d dug with the first effort.

In the beam of the headlights he could see the second man running back toward the van. There wasn’t any sign of Cal.

Caroline’s head popped up beside him a she shifted into first, and simultaneously the man stopped and lifted the pistol. Joe put his hand on Caroline’s head and shoved her sideways as he ducked himself, just as the pistol boomed again and the windshield shattered, spraying shards of glass all over the interior of the van. He kept his foot on the gas pedal and his head down as the van leapt out of the slight depression and skidded when the tires touched asphalt, slewing sideways again. He fought to keep the vehicle upright.

More shots, one following immediately after the other. He could feel the impact of the heavy slugs on the van. One headlight went out. Briefly he saw the man pinned in the remaining headlight; then the guy jumped sideways to safety as the van roared past.

“Caroline!” he shouted, needing to know if she was okay, but he had his hands full battling the van, the wind full in his face and blinding him now that the windshield was gone, and he couldn’t turn to see.

“What?” she shouted in reply.

“Stay down, he might shoot—”

Before he could complete the sentence, bullets ripped into the rear of the van, shattering those windows, too. His blood went cold.

“Caroline!”

“What?” she roared, plainly aggravated, and he could have laughed with relief. If Caroline was in a bad mood, she was all right.

The relief didn’t last half a minute. A quick glance at the gauges showed the engine’s temperature was quickly climbing; one of the shots must have hit the radiator. They were out in the desert somewhere, without a sign of a town, community or even a lone dwelling. The only light was from the stars and their one headlight. They wouldn’t be able to get far before the engine locked up, but he intended to put every foot of distance that he could between them and the man with the gun.

The temperature gauge redlined. He kept his foot on the gas pedal.

The engine locked with a harsh, grinding sound. Caroline shot up beside him as they rolled to a stop. “What’s going on?”

“Some of those shots hit the radiator. The motor’s gone. Come on, out of the van.”

She obeyed, pushing the sliding side door open and staggering out into the cool desert night. “Over here,” Joe ordered, and she made her way painfully around the van.

“Now what?”

“Now we walk. I hope you’re wearing good shoes.”

She shrugged. She was wearing loafers, not as good as boots, but better than sandals. She hadn’t dressed with an odyssey like this in mind, but what did it matter? She had to walk, even if she’d been barefoot.

“In which direction?”

“Back the way we came.”

“He’s back there.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know where we are, or how far it is to even a gas station going in the direction we were heading. At least we know that if we go back the way we came, we’re going at least roughly toward the base.”

Logical. But…“If we’re going back the way we came, why didn’t you drive in that direction to begin with?”

“Because then he’d know what direction we were going in,” he explained. “He’ll find the van, but he won’t know if we continued on ahead or doubled back.”

“But obviously we’re going to have to pass by him at some point.”

“Very possible, but not a dead certainty. He may decide to run rather than try to catch us. Since we don’t know, we have to assume he’s after us.”

She trudged silently beside him as he walked out into the desert. They didn’t dare risk walking on the road, so that meant they had to parallel it, far enough from the roadside that they couldn’t easily be spotted, but close enough that they wouldn’t lose sight of the pavement. She ached in so many places that it didn’t seem worth the effort to worry about any of them. They had to walk, so she walked. It was as simple as that.

“Are you wearing a watch?” she asked. “What time is it? It isn’t dawn yet, so they couldn’t have taken us far.”

Joe tilted his wrist to read the luminous dial. “It’s four-thirty, so it’ll be dawn soon. If they just threw us in the van and left immediately, before the security police could close the base, we’re talking at least an hour of driving time. We could be anywhere from thirty to sixty miles away from base.”

Walking sixty miles was a daunting thought, but not nearly as daunting as facing that man again. “There are others,” she said aloud. “Maybe close by. They could have been taking us to turn over to them. It’ll be dawn soon, but we don’t dare try to flag anyone down, because we don’t know who the others are or what they look like.”

“You got it,” he said grimly.

“So we have to walk every foot of that blasted sixty miles.”

“Unless we see a state trooper. At least when the sun comes up I’ll have some idea where we are.”

Too far away from anything to suit her. She stopped talking, partly because sound carried so far in the desert and she didn’t want to alert anyone to their presence, but mostly because it was taking all her effort just to walk. She had been awake all night—except for when she’d been unconscious, but she was fairly certain that didn’t qualify as rest—and she was exhausted. Her head pounded. She supposed Joe’s head hurt, too, but he’d only been hit once. First she had tumbled out her window, then she’d been hit on the head, probably with the pistol, then with that guy’s fist, and finally she had hit her head against the side of the van when Joe had shoved her. The wonder was that she had any sense left at all. She ached in every muscle of her body, and a good many of the bruises adorning her had come at Joe’s hands. She was glad she’d kicked him back and only wished she had gone ahead and bitten him, too. She hoped he had the granddaddy of all headaches.

Twice he drew her down when a noise alerted him. She never did see anything, but he had superior eyesight, so she let him do the work while she seized the opportunity to rest. When he decided it was safe to continue on he would urge her to her feet with an implacable hand under her elbow, and she would walk some more.

Dawn began to turn the sky pearly to their left, giving them the basic information that they had been carried north into the desert and were now headed south, back toward the base. She supposed it was good information to have, in case they had to lose contact with the road.

“We can’t go on much longer,” Joe murmured in her ear. “Anyone passing will be able to see us from the road, and it’ll get too hot to walk, anyway. We need to find shelter for the day.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. It was safer to stay hidden and sleep during the day, walking only at night, but it was sure going to take them a long time to get to the base. If she hadn’t been so tired she could have argued, but she was beginning to feel incapable of going another foot, and she suddenly realized just how much the night’s events had taken out of her. They simply had to rest.

He veered sharply away from the road, deeper into the desert. The light slowly changed to gray, letting them see details but not yet color. A huge rocky outcropping loomed in the distance, and she stared at it in dismay. That was almost surely where he was going, and she wasn’t certain she could make it. She ground her teeth to keep from protesting. She either made it or she took a nap in the sun, which would soon be broiling. She was also thirsty, but they had no water, so there wasn’t any point in bringing it up. He had to be thirsty, too.

When they finally reached the rocks she leaned thankfully against one huge boulder. “Now what?” she gasped.

“Stay here.”

He was already gone, vanished into the rocks. She mumbled, “Sure,” and sank down to the ground. Her temples were throbbing. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the stone behind her.

It felt as if she had no sooner closed her eyes than he was saying, “Come on,” as he ruthlessly hauled her to her feet. He pulled her higher up into the rocks and shade enveloped her. Until then, she hadn’t realized how quickly the desert had heated. He’d found a niche in the rock deep enough to provide protection for both of them, and he deposited her in the crude shelter.

“I’ve already checked for snakes,” he said as he put a stick in her hand. “But if any show up, knock them away with this. I’m going to wipe out our tracks and find something to drink.”

Automatically she closed her fingers around the stick. She knew she should be uneasy at the thought of snakes, not to mention watchful, but she had more important things to do right then, like sleep. She turned over onto her right side, because it hurt the least, and immediately dozed.

Joe stared down at her, his jaw muscles flexing. The left side of her face was bruised and scraped, and so was her left arm. He could plainly see a lump on her temple. She was chalk white with exhaustion and pain, her clothes dirty and sporting a few small tears. The contrast between her normally pristine appearance and now, when she lay bedraggled at his feet, sleeping in the dirt, utterly enraged him. Cal Gilchrist was probably dead, but he wanted the other one dead, too, for what they had put her through. He himself hadn’t done a very spectacular job of keeping her safe, and he included himself in his rage.

She looked so small and helpless, curled on her side like that, though he knew she wasn’t exactly helpless. He remembered her furious struggle to free her mouth from the gag so she could yell her suspicions at Gilchrist; she had caused the fight between the two men, thereby engineering their own escape. It was up to him now to make certain nothing else happened to her.

His own fatigue pulled at him as he backtracked for quite a distance, then obliterated all sign of their passing on his return to the outcropping. He ignored the weariness of his muscles. They needed water; not desperately, not yet, but they would stay much stronger if they had adequate liquids. Before he let her get dehydrated he would take the chance of flagging down a car, but it hadn’t come to that yet, and he didn’t want to take unnecessary chances. With an expert eye he noted the stunted plant life dotting the desert floor, studying the growth pattern and picking out the plants that looked slightly more succulent than others growing nearby and indicating more moisture underground. They would be all right.

He climbed back to the niche in the rocks. Caroline hadn’t moved; she was breathing with the slow, heavy rhythm of deep sleep. Suddenly it seemed like a lifetime since he had held her, felt her nestling trustingly in his arms, and one moment longer was too long. He lay down beside her and eased her into his arms, cradling her head on his shoulder. She sighed, her soft breath brushing his skin.

Damn her, why hadn’t she called him, told him of her suspicions about Gilchrist? It had been obvious that she wasn’t surprised to find the man in the work area, had in fact gone there specifically to find him. She had barged straight into danger rather than picking up the telephone and calling him, or even Hodge. All of this could have been prevented if she’d just made that call instead of trying to do things herself.

That would be the first thing he got straightened out between them when she woke up. Why the hell hadn’t she trusted him? If he had to tie her to the bed every time she was out of his sight to keep her from rushing headlong into dangerous situations, he would do it. He remembered the black terror he’d felt, seeing her dart into the office to confront the saboteur, and he wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled.

Instead he held her tighter, smoothing her pale hair back from her face. He could feel her heart beating against his, and right now that was all he required. He slept as easily as she had, simply closing his eyes and letting weariness sweep over him in a tide.

Chapter 13

It was the heat that woke her. She felt rested, her headache having subsided to a distant and far more tolerable ache. Slowly she sat up, staring out at the glaringly hot landscape stretched before her, wavering in the heat: reds in every shade, yellows, browns, sand colors. Small specks of green that testified to the sparse plant life. Beautiful. Basic. Cal was probably dead somewhere out there, and despite what he had done, what he had tried to do, she couldn’t help but mourn him. He hadn’t wanted to kill them, had argued against harming them. Poor Cal. He’d been a traitor, but not a murderer, though what he’d been doing could easily have led to someone’s death. Poor Cal. But if Joe had been harmed because of him, she would have killed him herself.

Sweat stung her eyes, and she dried her face on the arm of her shirt. If it hadn’t been for the sheltering rock, the heat would have been intolerable. She reached out and touched the stone, found it cool to the touch. Where the sun kissed it, it would fry eggs.

Joe wasn’t there, but she wasn’t alarmed. She had a vague impression that he’d been lying beside her, and the imprint in the dirt confirmed that. Probably he had disturbed her when he’d gotten up, and that had allowed the heat to intrude on her consciousness.

She felt incredibly grubby, and looking down at herself, she saw that she was incredibly grubby. She didn’t think she’d been this dirty since…come to think of it, she’d never been this dirty before. She had been a fastidious child, eschewing the joys of mud puddles for those of computers and books.

Stiffly she climbed to her feet, wincing as her various aches made themselves felt. Aching or not, nature called.

When she returned to the niche, she found Joe leaning propped against the rocks, looking disgustingly capable. His eyes were piercingly alert, and even though his clothes were as dirty as hers, they looked made to be dirty. Jeans and a khaki shirt were far more utilitarian than thin white cotton pants and an oversize white T-shirt. Even his scruffy boots were better suited to the desert than her loafers; she had to be careful how she stepped, to avoid getting the fine silt inside her shoes, where it would promptly rub her feet raw.

After a single encompassing look that avoided meeting his gaze, she stepped past him and sank down in the shade of the rocks again.

Joe’s back teeth ground together. He’d thought he had himself firmly in control once more, but all of a sudden he was right back to where he’d started, dangerously close to the precipice. She was shutting him out, damn it, and he found it intolerable.

Grimly he regulated his breathing, forcing his hands to relax, his jaw to unclench. She was still fragile from the rough handling she’d had the day before; now wasn’t the time to force a confrontation, even if he had been sure of his control, which he wasn’t. Later. He promised himself full satisfaction—later.

“We both need something to drink,” he finally said. “Come on.”

Unhesitatingly she got to her feet without any sign of her usual argumentativeness, which had to mean she was very thirsty.

They didn’t have far to walk; Joe had already scouted the area and marked the most likely spot in a small arroyo, where the scrub grew profusely. He knelt on the sandy bottom and began scooping up the sand with his hands. It quickly grew damp. He slipped the knife from his boot and dug deeper, until muddy water began to gather in the hole.

His gag had been made from a handkerchief, and it came in handy now. He spread the square of cloth over the water to filter the liquid, then gestured for her. “Drink.”

Caroline didn’t take exception to his curt tone; he had produced water, and that was the important thing. She didn’t cavil about unsanitary conditions or the indignity of having to get on her hands and knees and lap liquid like a dog. It was water. She would gladly stand on her head to get it if it was required. She could feel the membranes of her mouth and throat absorbing the tepid moisture, and it was wonderful.

Still, she forced herself to stop long before her thirst was quenched and moved away from the tiny water hole. She gestured to him. “Your turn.” She didn’t know how much water there was; there might be only enough for both of them to have a few swallows each.

He stretched out full length on the sand to drink, which she considered and decided was a far more comfortable position. She should have thought of it herself, but then, she had never lapped water from a puddle before. She would know next time. Absently she studied his prone figure. As big as he was, it stood to reason that he had more blood in his body than she did, so he would probably require more water. Biology had never been one of her interests, but she would bet he had at least one more deciliter of blood than she did, perhaps two. An interesting little tidbit she needed to investigate…

She blinked and became aware that he had risen to his feet and was waiting, having evidently asked her something. “Do you want more water or don’t you?” he repeated impatiently.

“Oh. Yes, thank you.” This time she stretched out as he had done, which gave her better access to the small puddle of water. She sucked enthusiastically until she began to feel as if she’d had enough. She paused to ask, “Have you finished, or do you want more?”

“I’ve had enough,” he said.

She soaked the handkerchief as best she could, then gingerly washed her face and hands, wincing when the water stung the scrapes. When she had finished, she offered the handkerchief to Joe, and he scrubbed the damp material over his own face and hands, and around the back of his neck. The moisture had a cooling effect, something he needed right then.

“We’ll wait in the rocks until sundown,” he said, and she nodded. Without another word she headed back to the protective niche.

Damn it, she was treating him like some stranger she’d been stranded with. No, even worse than that. She would have talked more to a stranger. She hadn’t once looked him in the eye. Her gaze would slide past his face without connecting, as if he were someone she passed on the street. His hands clenched into hard fists as he strode after her. It was time to have it out, damn it.

She was sitting on the ground in the niche when he got there, her arms looped casually around her drawn-up knees. Joe deliberately walked so close that his boots nudged her feet, forcing her to either stand up and face him or tilt her head back as far as it would go. She continued to sit.

“Why the hell didn’t you call me last night instead of tackling Gilchrist on your own?” he asked softly, so softly it would take a discerning ear to catch the quiet fury underlying the words.

Caroline heard it but didn’t much care. She shrugged. “I didn’t think of it. I wouldn’t have, anyway. Why would I?”

“So I could take care of it. So you wouldn’t nearly have gotten yourself killed.”

“And you, too,” she pointed out. “How did you get involved?”

“I was following you.”

“Ah.” She gave him a brittle smile. “Thought you’d catch me in the act, didn’t you? What a surprise to find out it was someone else who got caught.”

“And you knew it when you went there. Damn it, Caroline, for such a smart person, that was a stupid thing to do. You should have called me when you first suspected him.”

“Yeah, sure. Why waste my breath?” she asked scornfully. “I’d already seen how much you believed me. I’d rather have called Adrian Pendley than you, and he hates my guts.”

His breath hissed softly between his teeth as he leaned down and grasped her arms, jerking her unceremoniously to her feet. “If you ever need anything,” he said, the words deliberately spaced as he forced them out, “you call me. My woman doesn’t go to someone else.”

She pulled sharply, trying to dislodge his grip on her arms, but he merely tightened his hands. “Interesting, I’m sure,” she snapped. “When you find her, be sure to tell her that, but I’m not interested.”

A red mist swam in front of his eyes. “Don’t push me,” he heard himself say hoarsely. “You’re mine, damn it. Admit it.”

Again she tried to pull away, her blue-green eyes spitting fire at him. If he thought he could just pick up again where they had left off, now that it had been proven to his satisfaction that she was worthy, he was in for a nasty surprise. She wanted to scream at him, but instead she limited herself to a scathing retort. “We had a hot weekend in bed, but that doesn’t give you a deed to me. Boy, were my eyes opened. I knew you weren’t madly in love with me or anything, but you really can’t have much of an opinion of someone at all if you think they’re capable of betraying their country. It was certainly a learning experience—”

“Shut up.” His voice was guttural now.

“Don’t tell me to shut up,” she fired back. “The next time I go to bed with a man I’ll make certain he—” “You’ll never go to bed with any man but me.” He began shaking her, the force of it whipping her head back and forth. The thought of her turning to another man was unbearable, shattering the last tenuous thread of his control and letting rage spew forth like lava, red-hot and molten. She was his, and he was never going to let her go.

Somehow his mouth was on hers, his hand locked in her hair at the back of her head, holding her still. He tasted blood, whether his or hers he didn’t know, but the coppery taste called up a fiercely primitive instinct to brand her as his, sear his flesh into hers so she would never be free of him. His skin felt burning hot and too tight, as if it would burst from the force of his blood pounding beneath it. His manhood was iron hard with lust, straining against the front of his jeans.

He carried her to the ground, blind with the need to feel her soft body beneath him. He began jerking at her pants, tugging them down and off. Her underwear tore when it was subjected to the same treatment.

Caroline lay still, staring in mute fascination at his face. She had always sensed his control and resented it, but abruptly it had shattered, and the naked intensity of his expression was almost frightening. Almost, because in the deepest, most basic part of her, she trusted him not to hurt her. She saw the savagery of his eyes, felt the barely restrained strength of his hands as he stripped her clothing away, and his wildness called her own fierce spirit soaring up to meet him.

She heard herself give a wild cry; then her hands were buried in his thick black hair, pulling him down to her.

He tore at the fly of his jeans, grunting as he freed his rigid length. He entered her with a powerful, driving thrust that made her cry out again from the impact of it; then her legs came up to hold him in the cradle of her hips as her silky hot depths wrapped around him, yielding, caressing, demanding. The sensation made him feel as if his skull was going to explode.

He rode her hard, grinding her into the hard ground beneath them in his frenzy to irrevocably meld their flesh into one. He’d never felt so savage, so utterly dominant and primitive; he was out of control, reacting purely as a male animal who needed his mate more than anything else in the world.

Caroline lifted her hips to meet his heavy thrusts. She had been sucked up into the maw of a powerful storm, and she loved it, reveled in it, embraced it and wanted more. The pleasure exploded in her, hard and deep. She clutched his hair, her heels digging into the backs of his muscled thighs as her slim body arched in a powerful bow, lifting him with her. The rhythmic surge rolled through her like thunder, and she gave herself up to it with a cry.

Her completion called up his own, the exquisite milking sensation on his hard length sending him over the edge. He convulsed with a powerful jetting that emptied him but seemed to go on forever, longer and harder and deeper than he’d ever known before. He was barely conscious when it ended, barely able to move. He didn’t have the strength to roll away from her, or even to support his weight on his arms. He sank down onto her with the dim wish that he would never have to move, that they could lie there entwined for the rest of their lives.

He needed her for the rest of his life. He’d always loved flying with a passion that had overshadowed what he’d felt for other women, but right from the start he’d found it impossible to put Caroline out of his mind as he’d always been able to do once he was in the cockpit. She would never make a comfortable wife, but hell, if comfort and placidity were what he wanted, he would never have become a fighter pilot. He’d never been in a fighter yet, not even Baby, that kept him on his toes the way Caroline did. She both delighted him and challenged him, and she met the strength of his sexual drive with matching strength. He was a warrior, and she was as fierce as he was, with more guts than brains, and that was saying a lot. In more ancient times she would have fought beside him, a sword in her own hand. His Valkyrie. He felt humbled by her spirit.

“I love you,” he said. He hadn’t known the words were there until they came out, but he wasn’t surprised by them. Somehow he found enough strength to surge up onto his elbows, looking down at her with his savage, glittering eyes narrowed. “You’re my woman. Don’t ever forget it.”

Caroline’s eyes flared, the pupils expanding to huge black circles that almost completely swallowed the vivid color of her irises. “What did you say?” she demanded.

He thrust his hips against her, deepening the invasion of his still-firm male flesh. God, how could he still be aroused? He was almost dead from exhaustion, but the want, the need, was still there. “Is aid I love you. And you’re mine, Caroline Evans. Forever and a day.’ Til death and beyond.”

“In sickness and in health,” she prompted; then suddenly tears welled and overflowed, trickling down her temples.

He cradled her head in his hands and caught the tears with his tongue, tenderly nuzzling against her. His own chest felt tight. He’d never imagined his valiant little warrior crying, and it was almost more than he could bear. “Why the tears?” he murmured, pressing light kisses across her face and neck. “Did I hurt you?”

“You nearly killed me,” she replied. “When you didn’t believe me.” And she balled up her fist and punched him on the side of the head, because it was the only place she could reach. It was an awkward punch, because of their closeness and her position, and didn’t pack as much power as she would have liked, but he gave a very satisfying grunt. “Don’t let it happen again.”

He jerked his head back and glared down at her. “Why in hell did you do that?”

“Because you deserved it,” she said, and blinked back another tear.

Joe’s mouth twitched, and the glare turned into something tender. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, feathering a kiss on each corner of her mouth. “I’m sorry. I was a blind, bull-headed ass. Just the suggestion that you might have betrayed me sent me into a flat spin, and I couldn’t pull out of it. I was on my way over to see you when you came marching toward me, right down the middle of the base like you owned it, when you were supposed to be under guard.” A quick frown knitted his brow, and he pulled back a little to scowl at her. “How did you get out?”

“I dismantled the glass slats in the bedroom window and crawled out.”

He looked astounded. “You can’t fit through there. It’s too little.”

“Hah. I got some scrapes from it and hurt my shoulder when I fell, because I had to go out headfirst, but it can be done.” Then she judiciously added, “Though I don’t think you would fit through even if you were greased from head to foot.”

“Or any other man on base,” he said dryly.

“Well, times have changed,” she pointed out. “The security police should realize that women are a permanent part of the Air Force, even flying fighters into combat now, so they should adjust their thinking.”

Typical of Caroline to point out the security police’s errors in letting her escape. He would be sure to pass them on to Hodge. If he beat Caroline to it, that is.

She gave a delicate little cat yawn, and her dark sea-colored eyes looked sleepy. Still, Joe was reluctant to disengage their bodies, though she was lying naked with nothing beneath her but the hard ground. He solved the problem by anchoring her hips with a hard arm and rolling so he was on bottom. She made a soft sound of contentment, very like a purr, and nestled her head into the hollow where his neck and shoulder met.

He leisurely stroked her slim back for a minute, then abruptly his hands tightened, and he lifted her off his chest to give her a hard look. “What about you?” he demanded sharply. “Do you love me, Caroline? Say it.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel,” she murmured in response to the commanding tone. She supposed it was something he couldn’t help. “I love you, Colonel, sir. Stupid of me, wasn’t it, to fall in love when you were so determined to hold back, to not give me anything more than sex?”

Tension pulled the skintight across his cheekbones, starkly revealing the chiseled bone structure. He felt the nausea of panic coiling in his stomach, because suddenly he saw that Caroline would never tolerate that rigid control, doling out passion and love in measured amounts. She wanted all of him. A cliff yawned at his feet, and if he stepped over the edge his life would never be the same, but if he didn’t take that one step, he would lose her. He knew it all the way down to his bones, and just the thought of it was a hammer blow to the chest that told him he would never be able to survive the reality. His instincts were too sharp, too primal, for him to think he would be able to shrug it off. She was his mate; there was no other for him.

Somehow he forced his lips to move, though they felt numb. “I…I need to be in control.”

He felt her hand on his hair, gently stroking, her soft fingertips trailing down to his cheek and then to his lips. “I noticed,” she said, softly wry.

It was hard to explain, impossible with her lying on top of him, so close that she couldn’t miss even the most minute change in his expression. He lifted her off him, though his body felt abruptly incomplete without the linkage to hers. She looked disoriented by the sudden shift, automatically crossing her arms over her bare breasts in response to her inner uncertainty. The gesture was so innately feminine that he grabbed her to him, holding her close and savoring the feel of her silky skin, gathering his strength. He brushed the dirt from her back, took off his shirt and slipped it on her. Her own clothes, he saw, were a tangled mess.

He kissed her, hard and quick, before tension drove him to his feet. He stood with his back to her, staring out over the stark, lovely desert.

“Dad was put in prison when I was six years old,” he said. His voice was hoarse and raw. “He was innocent. The guy who had committed the crime was finally caught for something else, and he admitted everything. But Dad spent two years in prison, and for those two years I was in foster homes.”

There was total silence behind him, but he sensed the intensity of her attention. “Maybe there was just something about me that the man in the first home hated. Maybe it was because I’m a half-breed. They kept other foster kids, but he singled me out. I was just a kid. I broke things, I’d lose my temper playing with the other kids, the way kids do. I was bigger and stronger than most kids my age, but I didn’t know how to control that strength. If any of them said anything about Dad being a dirty half-breed jailbird, I went at them and did as much damage as I could. God, did I have a temper.

“And this man would beat me whenever I did something, even if it was stumble over an ashtray that he’d left on the floor. At first he used a belt, but it wasn’t long before he was using his fists. I fought him, and he beat me that much worse. I missed more school than I attended, because he wouldn’t let me go to school with my face bruised up.”

It got harder to say, the memories blacker as he dredged them up, and the worst was yet to come. He made himself continue. “He kicked me down the steps once, broke a couple of my ribs. And still I kept fighting him. I guess you could say I didn’t have stopping sense, but my temper flashed like black powder, and I couldn’t control it. He started burning me with cigarettes if I sassed him, or twisting my fingers, just to see if he could make me cry.

“I was in a nightmare and I couldn’t get out,” he said softly. “Nobody seemed to care what happened to me. I was just a half-breed, worth less than a mongrel dog on the side of the road. Then one day he slapped me, and I really lost my temper. I went on a rampage. I kicked in the television set, threw all the little knick-nacks against the wall, got in the kitchen and started breaking the dishes, and he was right behind me, hitting me with his fists, trying to kick my ribs in. I lost, of course. I was only six, even if I was big for my age. He dragged me down to the basement, stripped me naked and beat the bloody hell out of me.”

His heart was pounding now, just as it had been that day almost thirty years before. He’d never said it before, but it had to be said now. “Then he raped me.”

He could hear the swift movement behind him, feel the rush of air as Caroline surged to her feet. He kept his back turned.

“Looking back, I think it shocked him that he’d done it. He never touched me again, even in the slightest way. And I never lost control again,” he said remotely. “He must have called the welfare people, or maybe his wife did. I was gone from that house within two weeks. I spent those two weeks in the basement, alone, silent. I stopped talking. The other foster homes were okay, I guess, but I didn’t take any chances. I did exactly what I was told, never lost my temper, never lost control, never talked. Then one day, when I was eight, Dad showed up. He’d gotten out of prison and tracked me down. I don’t know if he had authorization to get me or if no one was brave enough to tell him he couldn’t, but he picked me up and held me so close it hurt, and it was the best hurt in the world. I was safe again.”

“Did you tell him?” she asked, the first time she had spoken. He was a little startled at the harshness of her tone.

“No. I’ve never told anyone, until now. If you knew my dad, you’d know why. He would have gone after the guy and literally killed him with his bare hands, and I couldn’t stand to lose Dad again.” He steeled himself to turn and face her, braced for the pity he would see in her eyes, but what he saw was a long way from pity. She was standing with her fists clenched, her face savage with rage. If that long-ago man had been standing there right then, Caroline Evans would have killed him, too. She wasn’t a half-breed Comanche warrior, but her spirit was just as swift and fierce, and her sea-colored eyes were blazing. Startled, he began to laugh.

“Don’t laugh, don’t you dare laugh!” she roared. “I’ll kill him—”

“You don’t have to, sweetheart,” he soothed, jerking her into his arms when she evaded his more gentle attempts to embrace her. “He’s dead. He died two years after the welfare people took me away. After I had graduated from the Academy I decided to check, just for the information. Hell, who am I kidding? There’s no telling what I would have done if he’d still been alive.”

He pushed her hair away from her face and kissed her. “Maybe I was tougher than most kids, but he didn’t damage me permanently, except for always wanting to be in control. He didn’t warp me sexually. Being around Dad was probably the best therapy I could have had, as far as sex is concerned. He was always totally open about it, treating it as just part of nature. And we had the horse ranch. A kid learns the basics damn fast on a ranch. I was okay with in six months of getting back with Dad. There was a bedrock of love there that never let me down.”

“Except you’re still a control fanatic,” she growled.

He had to laugh again. “You can’t even lay all the blame for that on what happened. I’m a fighter pilot. My life depends on being in control. It’s part of my training as well as my personality.”

She nuzzled her face against his sweat-dampened chest. “Well, you have a reason for it, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”

“No, I don’t guess you would,” he said in amusement. “That’s why you continually push me, trying to make me lose control. Well, lady, you succeeded. Are you pleased with yourself?” His voice turned deep and serious. “I could have hurt you, sweetheart.”

She looked like the cat who had had an entire gallon of cream, not just a measly saucerful. “It was wonderful,” she purred. “And I wasn’t frightened. You can’t hurt me by loving me. The only way you’ll ever hurt me is if you stop loving me.”

His arms tightened around her. “Then you’re safe for a lifetime.” He held her close for a long, long time, and he felt something relax within him, something that he hadn’t even known was tightly wound. She was inside his defenses now, and he no longer had to keep his guard up. Defeat had never been sweeter, because he’d come away with the grand prize.

At the moment his grand prize was bruised and half-naked, but still valiant. He released her with a little swat to her bare backside. “Get your clothes on, woman. It’s sundown, and we have to get back to the base.”

Chapter 14

It was almost anticlimactic. The danger the night before had been very real, but it wasn’t long after dusk when they veered back close to the road and a car came by, cruising very slowly, shining a spotlight off to the side. Caroline gasped and started to hit the dirt, but Joe kept her upright with a firm grip on her arm. His eagle eyes had spotted something she couldn’t make out in the darkness: the row of lights on top of the car. Literally dragging her in his wake, he strode out into the road.

The car stopped. The spotlight wavered, then settled on him. “I’m Colonel Joe Mackenzie, out of Nellis,” he said. His deep voice carried that unmistakable note of command. “I need to get back to the base as soon as possible.”

The state trooper switched off the spot and got out of the car. “We’ve been searching for you, sir,” he said in a respectful tone. Military personnel or not, there was something about Joe Mackenzie that elicited that response. “Are you all right, injured in any way? A van was found—”

“We know about the van. We were in it,” Joe said dryly.

“We were ordered by the governor to give every assistance to the military in finding you. A statewide search was started this morning.”

Joe put his arm around Caroline and ushered her into the back seat; then he went around and took a seat up front. Caroline found herself staring at the back of his head through steel mesh.

“Hey,” she said indignantly.

Joe glanced back and began to laugh. “Finally,” he said, “I’ve found a way to control you.”

“The sensor alarms went wild,” Captain Hodge said. “Once when Ms. Evans entered the work area after she was already recorded as being inside, and again when you entered without your ID tag, Colonel. The first guard was there within two minutes, but the building was empty. They must have dragged both of you out immediately and then panicked. They loaded you in Mr. Gilchrist’s van and bolted.

“Ms. Evans’ quarters were checked and she was discovered missing. Amazing. I didn’t know anyone could get out a window that small,” he said, glancing at her.

“I’m not very thick,” she replied coolly.

He cleared his throat at the look in her eyes. “I tried to notify you, Colonel, and found that you were missing, too, though there was no record of you leaving the base. Nor had Ms. Evans attempted to leave. There was a record, however, of Mr. Gilchrist leaving immediately after the alarm had sounded.”

“The other guy must have been hidden in back with us,” Joe said.

“Who was he?” she asked. “He looked familiar, but at the same time I didn’t know him.”

Hodge looked at his ever-present clipboard. “His name was Carl Mabry. You’d probably seen him in the control room. He was a civilian working with the radar.”

“How did Gilchrist get involved with him?” Joe asked. “And there are others. Have you found out anything about them?”

They were sitting in his office. Both he and Caroline had been checked over by the medics and declared basically sound. Somewhere along the line, Caroline’s clothes had vanished and the well-meaning nurses had tried to stuff her into one of the too-revealing backless, shapeless gowns that were standard for every hospital. Caroline’s sense of style had been outraged, but the green surgicals had appealed to her. She was wearing a set now and somehow looked dashing in them.

“Evidently, Gilchrist was recruited after he began work here,” Hodge said. “Mabry belonged to a radical group that opposed defense spending. You know the type. They want the money for humanitarian purposes, even if they have to kill to get it.”

“Then just how,” Caroline asked in an awful tone, “did he get security clearance?”

Hodge winced. “I—uh, we’re still checking on that. But he didn’t have clearance into the laser building.”

“So how did he get in without triggering the alarms?” Joe asked impatiently.

Caroline snorted. “The program has a major weakness. The alarm is set off by a body entering or leaving without a card—but not a card entering or leaving without a body.”

Hodge’s hair was too short to pull, so he ran both hands over his crew-cut head. “What?” he almost yelled.

“Well, it’s obvious. I certainly didn’t go into the building with Cal when he was supposedly searching for my tag, but the computer said that I did, which means he must have had the tag with him and flashed it so the sensors would pick it up, thereby destroying any record that he had entered the building alone and discrediting my story of having misplaced my tag. There wasn’t anything Cal didn’t know about computers. He probably figured it out not long after he started work on base, testing it by swinging the tag through the doorway on a string, or something like that. If he’d been caught, he wasn’t doing anything he would be arrested for, just playing with the computers like any hacker would. Evidently he picked up my tag when I lost it, but left at the same time I did that day so the sensors weren’t set off. He carried it off base and had it duplicated, then returned the original to me the next morning so there wouldn’t be a report on it. The night we caught them—” She paused, looking confused. “When was it? Just last night?”

“Seems longer, doesn’t it?” Joe commented, grinning at her.

“Anyway, he would have entered with the duplicate tag, then tossed it through the doorway to Mabry, who would also have used it to enter. If you check the logs, you’ll probably find entry, exit, then reentry with just a few seconds between. If you had been on your toes, Captain Hodge, you would have made certain my code had been immediately deleted from the computer instead of waiting until morning, thinking you had me safely under guard.”

Hodge was crimson with embarrassment. “Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled.

“Likewise, instead of assuming you had the problem contained, the entire laser team should have been restricted to base until you were certain.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The sensor program needs to be rewritten. It’s humiliating to think of a sophisticated security system being bypassed by two people tossing ID tags through a doorway like kids playing catch.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Joe had covered his mouth with his hand to hide his grin, but his blue crystal eyes were shining. Poor Hodge, by-the-book person that he was, was no match for Caroline at her most haughty, and his little hedgehog was most definitely feeling put upon. He decided to intervene before the captain was reduced to a sense of total inadequacy. “You used the past tense when speaking of Mabry. Is he dead?”

“Suicide. Gilchrist, by the way, was doing it for the money, not for any ideological reason, but Mabry firmly believed that the Night Wing program should be scrapped. They intended to cause so many problems with the tests that funding wouldn’t be granted. Good plan, considering the economic and political climate. Pressure is high in Washington to spend money only on things that work. We’ve tied Mabry to a group called Help Americans First. I don’t know if we’ll be able to implicate any of them without his testimony, but we might be able to turn up a paper trail that ties them to it. We know they were willing to kill both you and Ms. Evans to complete their sabotage of the lasers, so we aren’t talking about innocent do-gooders here.”

“I want them nailed, Hodge,” Joe said softly.

“Yes, sir. The FBI is working on it.”

Caroline yawned. Despite sleeping all day, she was tired; it had been an eventful twenty-four hours. Joe leaned back in his chair and hooked his hands behind his head, watching her. It gave him a deep sense of contentment to watch her.

“You’re the first to know, Hodge,” he said lazily. “Ms. Evans and I are going to be married.”

To his amusement, a look of disbelief crossed the captain’s face. Hodge looked at Caroline the way he would have looked at a wild animal that had suddenly been turned loose, as if he didn’t know whether to run or freeze. She returned the look with a sort of warning indifference.

“Uh…good luck, Colonel,” Hodge blurted out. “I mean—congratulations.”

“Thank you. And I’ll probably need that luck.”

Two weeks later Caroline whirled in her husband’s powerful arms to the strains of a waltz. Washington society glittered around them. The huge ballroom was resplendent with silks and satins, jewels both paste and real, bright chatter and serious dealing. Intermingled with the formal black, gray and midnight-blue tuxedos of the civilians were the gorgeous dress uniforms of the various branches of the military. Joe looked magnificent in his. Caroline saw more than one set of feminine eyes following him wherever he went, and she had been forced to glare several of the owners of those eyes into submission.

“We should have waited,” she said.

“For what?” His arm tightened around her as he swung her around.

“To get married.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“For your family.”

He laughed aloud. “Dad understood. When he decided to marry Mary, he had the deed done within two days. It took me three.”

“General Ramey seemed pleased,” she commented.

“He is. The Air Force likes its officers to be married. It makes us more settled.”

“Sure,” she replied doubtfully. “If going Mach 3 is considered settled.”

The funding for Night Wing had been granted by a wide margin in Congress the day before. Joe had had to testify before the committee, requiring his presence in Washington, and he had categorically refused to be separated from his wife, so Caroline’s presence had also been required.

The federal investigation into Help Americans First was ongoing, as was the final phase of testing on the Night Wing project, but the aircraft and laser systems were all functioning perfectly. The damage Cal had done to the computer program had been rectified. And Caroline was slowly beginning to realize what it would mean to her life to be married to a career military officer. When the final testing was completed he would be taking over as wing commander of the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing at Langley AFB in Virginia. She had learned a lot about the military in the ten days they had been married and knew that Joe would be up for his first star after that posting. He was thirty-five years old and would probably make general before he was thirty-seven. She would never admit it to him, because she felt he needed someone who didn’t jump every time he issued an order, but sometimes she was a little in awe of his abilities.

He pulled her closer, and the movement of the waltz brought her lower body into firm contact with his. Her gaze flew up to meet his, and she saw his arousal reflected in the glittering blue depths of his eyes.

“I like you in white,” he murmured.

“That’s good. I wear it a lot.” She was wearing it now. Her ball gown was pure, snowy white.

“You look better on white sheets than anyone I know.”

“Hmm. I’m going to take flying lessons, so maybe I’ll need to have several jumpsuits made in white.”

Incredibly, she felt his shoulder tense under her hand. “Flying lessons? Why? If you want to fly, I’ll teach you.”

She gave him a calm smile. “No. I’d turn you into a trembling wreck if you tried to teach me how to fly, and I’d be ready to kill you. But I need to know, so I’ll know something of what it’s like for you up there.” She figured it was the best way to get over the fear she felt every time he went up. Rather than risk clipping his wings, out of his concern for her, she would grow her own wings.

He still looked uneasy. “Caroline…”

“Joe,” she replied firmly, “I’m good at anything I decide to do. Physics, computers, sex. I’ll be good at flying, too. And having babies.”

He stopped dead in the middle of the dance floor. “Caroline!”

She lifted her brows, ignoring the smiling glances directed their way. “What?”

“Are you pregnant?”

“It’s possible,” she said serenely. “The timing wasn’t right during our weekend in Vegas, but what about since then? Name one time when you used any protection. If I’m not now, the odds are good I will be before the end of the year.”

He couldn’t seem to breathe. Hell, she probably was pregnant. As she had said, she was very good at anything she decided to do, and so was he.

“It’ll be interesting,” she said, “to find out if you make girl babies or boy babies.”

A slow grin moved his hard, beautiful mouth. “As long as I make you, I’m happy.”

“Oh, you do make me, Colonel Mackenzie. Very well indeed. When are we going to Wyoming?”

He adjusted to her lightning change of subject without a pause and resumed the dance. “Next month. I’ll only have a week, but we’ll get back for Christmas.”

“Good. I’ve talked to Boling-Wahl, and they’ll try to keep me assigned to projects in your general vicinity, though of course I won’t be working on any project for the Air Force. I may be working in Baltimore while you’re at Langley, but the commute isn’t bad.”

“Not bad,” he said doubtfully, “but I don’t really like the idea of you having to battle that traffic.”

She pulled back a little and her brows slowly rose. “Me?” she asked after a delicate pause.

He stifled a shout of laughter. “I have to be closer to the base than that,” he explained, keeping his voice level with an effort.

“Oh.” She considered the situation for a moment, then said, “Okay, I’ll do it this time. But you owe me, big time, because I believe inbeing comfortable, and fighting the traffic violates that belief. I’ll let you know when I think of some way you can make it up to me.”

He tugged her closer, still fighting laughter as he savored the feel of her in his arms. “Mary’s going to love you,” he said under his breath.

Mary did love her.

The two women were immediate friends, sensing a basic likeness in each other. Caroline fell in love, not only with his family but with Ruth, Wyoming and the prosperous horse ranch on top of Mackenzie’s Mountain. The place was beautiful, and the ranch house was one of the most cheerful places she’d ever been in her life.

Mary Mackenzie was a slight, delicately formed woman with soft blue-gray eyes, pale brown hair and the most exquisite complexion in the world. At first sight she struck Caroline as rather plain, but by day’s end her gaze had accustomed itself to the glowing purity of Mary’s features and she thought her mother-in-law incredibly beautiful. Certainly Wolf Mackenzie thought his wife was beautiful, if the obvious love and lust in his black eyes every time he looked at her were anything to go by.

She had never seen two men more alike than Joe and his father, the only real difference being that Wolf’s eyes were as black as night while Joe’s were that brilliant, diamond blue. And looking at Wolf, she could easily understand why Joe had thought his father would kill the man who had abused him, if he had known about it. Wolf Mackenzie protected his own. Like his son, he was pure warrior.

Mary was dwarfed by her sons, even thirteen-year-old Zane, the intense one. Michael was off at college; it would be Christmas before she would meet him. But Joshua, at sixteen, was almost as big as Wolf and Joe. Josh was as bright and lighthearted as Zane was dark and quiet, his gaze watchful. The same dangerous intensity that burned in both Joe and Wolf was evident in the boy.

Then there was Maris. At eleven, she was small for her age, with Mary’s slight build and exquisitely translucent complexion. Her hair was pale, her eyes as black as Wolf’s. She was her father’s shadow, her small hands gentling and soothing the fractious horses as well as Wolf’s strong ones did.

For the first time Caroline saw Joe with horses, and another element of his character fell into place. He was infinitely patient with them and rode as if he’d been born in the saddle, which he almost had.

She stood at the kitchen window watching him and Wolf and Maris in the corral with a tall black mare who was currently Maris’s favorite. Mary came to stand beside her, knowing instinctively who Caroline was watching. “He’s wonderful, isn’t he?” Mary sighed. “I loved him the first moment I saw him, when he was sixteen. There aren’t many men in this world like Joe. He was a man even then, and I mean it in the purest sense of the word. Of course, I’m prejudiced, but you are, too, aren’t you?”

“Just looking at him gives me shivers,” Caroline admitted dreamily, then caught herself with a laugh. “But don’t tell him that. Sometimes he can be very much the colonel. I try to keep him from being too commanding.”

“Oh, he knows. The thing is, you give him shivers, too. Keeps things nice and balanced. I should know. His father has been giving me shivers for almost twenty years now. Do you suppose it’s inherited?”

“It probably is. Look at Joshua and Zane.”

“I know,” Mary sighed. “I feel so sorry for all the girls in school. And all those poor girls in college with Michael haven’t had time to get used to him, the way the girls he grew up with did. Not that it did them much good.”

“Maris will balance it out with the boys.”

Through the window she watched Joe lightly vault the fence and start toward the house. Wolf tousled Maris’s hair and followed his son, while Maris remained with the mare.

Both men entered the house, their tall, broad-shouldered forms suddenly making the kitchen seem too small. They brought with them the earthy scents of the outdoors, horse and hay and clear fresh air mingled with their own male sweat.

“You two look guilty,” Joe observed. “What have you been talking about?”

“Genetics,” Caroline replied.

His brows lifted in that characteristic way. She shrugged. “Well, I can’t help it. I’m probably going to be very interested in genetics for the next eight and a half months. Do you want to lay odds on whether it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Oh, it’s a boy,” Mary said, her entire face lit with delight. Joe had gone weak at the knees, and Wolf was laughing at his son as he helped him to a chair. “Joe’s a Mackenzie, hardly a female sperm to be found. Mackenzies have to work really hard to have daughters. That’s why they appreciate them so much.”

Epilogue

Mary was absolutely right. John Mackenzie, eight pounds and two ounces, made his debut right on time. His heritage was immediately apparent in the thick black hair, blue eyes and straight black brows of his father. After his birth Caroline slept, and Joe dozed in the chair by her bed, his son lying on his chest and making squeaky little grunting noises. Caroline awakened, her drowsy eyes moving around the room until her gaze lit on the pair by her side. She reached out, first touching her husband’s hand and then the tiny hand that lay curled on his chest.

Joe’s eyes opened. “Hi,” he said softly.

“Hi, yourself.” He looked wonderful, she thought. Kind of grubby and rumpled. He was still in uniform, having been summoned straight from the base. The nurses were probably all swooning at his feet. She grabbed his tie and pulled him closer. “Give me a kiss.”

He did, his mouth lingering hungrily over hers. “In a few weeks I’ll give you a lot more.”

“Umm. I can’t wait.” He made a few lascivious promises to her that made her heart pound, and she laughed as she took the sleeping baby from him. “You shouldn’t talk like that in front of him. He’s too young.”

“It’s nothing new to him, sweetheart. He’s been well acquainted with me from the very beginning.”

She looked down at the tiny, serious face, and this time her heart swelled, blooming until it nearly filled her chest. It was incredible. This magnificent little creature was incredible. Her parents, having decided to stay in Greece for a couple of years, were on their way, but the flight was so long and the connections so horrible that it would be another ten hours before they arrived. John’s other grandparents, however, had managed to get there before he was born, and he’d already been in their arms.

“Where are Wolf and Mary?” she asked sleepily.

“In the cafeteria. They said they were hungry, but I think they wanted to give us some time alone.”

“I wish they’d brought Maris and the boys.”

“They were taking final exams at school. They’ll see him soon enough.”

She looked back down at the baby, tracing the downy cheek with her fingertip. To her surprise, he abruptly turned his head toward the touch, the tiny mouth opening as he sought it.

Joe laughed and said, “That isn’t it, son. You need to fine-tune your targeting a little.”

The baby had begun fretting. Caroline opened her gown and gently guided the avid little mouth to her breast. He clamped down on it with a grunting noise.

“He’s a typical Mackenzie,” she murmured. “Which means he isn’t typical at all.”

She looked up and met Joe’s eyes, brilliant and filled with more desire and love than she’d ever thought to see in her life. No, there was nothing typical about this man. He was on a fast track to the stars, and he was carrying her with him.

Mackenzie’s Pleasure

By Linda Howard

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

Prologue

Wolf Mackenzie slipped out of bed and restlessly paced over to the window, where he stood looking out at the stark, moonlit expanse of his land. A quick glance over his bare shoulder reassured him that Mary slept on undisturbed, though he knew it wouldn’t be long before she sensed his absence and stirred, reaching out for him. When her hand didn’t encounter his warmth, she would wake, sitting up in bed and drowsily pushing her silky hair out of her face. When she saw him by the window she would slide out of bed and come to him, nestling against his naked body, sleepily resting her head on his chest.

A slight smile touched his hard mouth. Like as not, if he stayed out of bed long enough for her to awaken, when they returned to the bed it wouldn’t be to sleep but to make love. As he remembered, Maris had been conceived on just such an occasion, when he had been restless because Joe’s fighter wing had just been deployed overseas during some flare-up. It had been Joe’s first action, and Wolf had been as tense as he’d been during his own days in Vietnam.

Luckily, he and Mary were past the days when spontaneous passion could result in a new baby. Nowadays they had grandkids, not kids of their own. Ten at the last count, as a matter of fact.

But he was restless tonight, and he knew why.

The wolf always slept better when all of his cubs were accounted for.

Never mind that the cubs were adults, some of them with children of their own. Never mind that they were, one and all, supremely capable of taking care of themselves. They were his, and he was there if they needed him. He also liked to know, within reason, where they were bedding down for the night. It wasn’t necessary for him to be able to pinpoint their location—some things a parent was better off not knowing—but if he knew what state they were in, that was usually enough. Hell, sometimes he would have been glad just to know which country they were roaming.

His concern wasn’t for Joe, this time. He knew where Joe was—the Pentagon. Joe wore four stars now, and sat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Joe would still rather strap on a metal bird and fly at twice the speed of sound, but those days were behind him. If he had to fly a desk, then he would damn sure fly it the best it could be flown. Besides, as he’d once said, being married to Caroline was more challenging than being ina dogfight and outnumbered four to one.

Wolf grinned when he thought of his daughter-in-law. Genius IQ, doctorates in both physics and computer sciences, a bit arrogant, a bit quirky. She’d gotten her pilot’s license just after the birth of their first son, on the basis that the wife of a fighter pilot should know something about flying. She had received her certification on small jet aircraft around the time the third son had made his appearance. After the birth of her fifth son, she had grumpily told Joe that she was calling it quits with that one, because she’d given him five chances and obviously he wasn’t up to the job of fathering a daughter.

It had once been gently suggested to Joe that Caroline should quit her job. The company that employed her was heavily engaged in government contract work, and the appearance of any favoritism could hurt his career. Joe had turned his cool, blue laser gaze on his superiors and said, “Gentlemen, if I have to choose between my wife and my career, I’ll give you my resignation immediately.” That was not the answer that had been expected, and nothing else was said about Caroline’s work in research and development.

Wolf wasn’t worried about Michael, either. Mike was the most settled of all his children, though just as focused. He had decided at an early age that he wanted to be a rancher, and that’s exactly what he was. He owned a sizable spread down toward Laramie, and he and his wife were happily raising cattle and two sons.

The only uproar Mike had ever caused was when he decided to marry Shea Colvin. Wolf and Mary had given him their blessing, but the problem was that Shea’s mother was Pam Hearst Colvin, one of Joe’s old girlfriends—and Pam’s father, Ralph Hearst, was as adamantly opposed to his beloved granddaughter marrying Michael Mackenzie as he had been to his daughter dating Joe Mackenzie.

Michael, with his typical tunnel vision, had ignored the whole tempest. His only concern was marrying Shea, and to hell with the storm erupting in the Hearst family. Quiet, gentle Shea had been torn, but she wanted Michael and refused to call off the wedding as her grandfather demanded. Pam herself had finally put an end to it, standing nose to nose with her father in the middle of his store.

“Shea will marry Michael,” she’d stormed, when Ralph had threatened to take Shea out of his will if she married one of those damn breeds. “You didn’t want me to date Joe, when he was one of the most decent men I’ve ever met. Now Shea wants Michael, and she’s going to have him. Change your will, if you like. Hug your hate real close, because you won’t be hugging your granddaughter” or your great-grandchildren. Think about that!”

So Michael had married Shea, and despite his growling and grumping, old Hearst was nuts about his two great-grandsons. Shea’s second pregnancy had been difficult, and both she and the baby had nearly died. The doctor had advised them not to have any more children, but they had already decided to have only two, anyway. The two boys were growing up immersed in cattle ranching and horses. Wolf was amused that Ralph Hearst’s great-grandchildren bore the Mackenzie name. Who in hell ever would have thought?

Josh, his third son, lived in Seattle with his wife, Loren, and their three sons. Josh was as jet-mad as Joe, but he had opted for the Navy rather than the Air Force, perhaps because he wanted to succeed on his own, not because his older brother was a general.

Josh was cheerful and openhearted, the most outgoing of the bunch, but he, too, had that streak of iron determination. He’d barely survived the crash that left him with a stiffened right knee and ended his naval career, but in typical Josh fashion, he had put that behind him and concentrated on what was before him. At the time, that had been his doctor—Dr. Loren Page. Never one to dither around, Josh had taken one look at tall, lovely Loren and begun his courtship from his hospital bed. He’d still been on crutches when they married. Now, three sons later, he worked for an aeronautics firm, developing new fighter aircraft, and Loren practiced her orthopedic specialty at a Seattle hospital.

Wolf knew where Maris was, too. His only daughter was currently in Montana, working as a trainer for a horse rancher. She was considering taking a job in Kentucky, working with Thoroughbreds. From the time she’d been old enough to sit unaided on a horse, her ambitions had all centered around the big, elegant animals. She had his touch with horses, able to gentle even the most contrary or vicious beast. Privately Wolf thought that she probably surpassed his skill. What she could do with a horse was pure magic.

Wolf’s hard mouth softened as he thought of Maris. She had wrapped his heart around her tiny finger the moment she had been placed in his arms, when she was mere minutes old, and had looked up at him with sleepy dark eyes. Of all his children, she was the only one who had his dark eyes. His sons all looked like him, except for their blue eyes, but Maris, who resembled Mary in every other way, had her father’s eyes. His daughter had light, silvery brown hair, skin so fine it was almost translucent, and her mother’s determination. She was all of five foot three and weighed about a hundred pounds, but Maris never paid any attention to her slightness; when she made up her mind to do something, she persisted with bulldog stubbornness until she succeeded. She could more than hold her own with her older, much larger and domineering brothers.

Her chosen career hadn’t been easy for her. People tended to think two things. One was that she was merely trading on the Mackenzie name, and the other was that she was too delicate for the job. They soon found out how wrong they were on both counts, but it was a battle Maris had fought over and over. She kept at it, though, slowly winning respect for her individual talents.

The mental rundown of his kids next brought him to Chance. Hell, he even knew where Chance was, and that was saying something. Chance roamed the world, though he always came back to Wyoming, to the mountain that was his only home. He had happened to call earlier that day, from Belize. He’d told Mary that he was going to rest for a few days before moving on. When Wolf had taken his turn on the phone, he had moved out of Mary’s hearing and quietly asked Chance how bad he was hurt.

“Not too bad,” Chance had laconically replied. “A few stitches and a couple of cracked ribs. This last job went a little sour on me.”

Wolf didn’t ask what the last job had entailed. His soldier-of-fortune son occasionally did some delicate work for the government, so Chance seldom volunteered details. The two men had an unspoken agreement to keep Mary in the dark about the danger Chance faced on a regular basis. Not only did they not want her to worry, but if she knew he was wounded, she was likely to hop on a plane and fetch him home.

When Wolf hung up the phone and turned, it was to find Mary’s slate blue gaze pinned on him. “How bad is he hurt?” she demanded fiercely, hands planted on her hips.

Wolf knew better than to try lying to her. Instead he crossed the room to her and pulled her into his arms, stroking her silky hair and cradling her slight body against the solid muscularity of his. Sometimes the force of his love for this woman almost drove him to his knees. He couldn’t protect her from worry, though, so he gave her the respect of honesty. “Not too bad, to use his own words.”

Her response was instant. “I want him here.”

“I know, sweetheart. But he’s okay. He doesn’t lie to us. Besides, you know Chance.”

She nodded, sighing, and turned her lips against his chest. Chance was like a sleek panther, wild and intolerant of fetters. They had brought him into their home and made him one of the family, binding him to them with love when no other restraint would have held him. And like a wild creature that had been only half-tamed, he accepted the boundaries of civilization, but lightly. He roamed far and wide, and yet he always came back to them.

From the first, though, he had been helpless against Mary. She had instantly surrounded him with so much love and care that he hadn’t been able to resist her, even though his light hazel eyes had reflected his consternation, even embarrassment, at her attention. If Mary went down to fetch Chance, he would come home without protest, but he would walk into the house wearing a helpless, slightly panicked “Oh, God, get me out of this” expression. And then he would meekly let her tend his wounds, pamper him and generally smother him with motherly concern.

Watching Mary fuss over Chance was one of Wolf’s greatest amusements. She fussed over all of her kids, but the others had grown up with it and took it as a matter of course. Chance, though…he had been fourteen and half wild when Mary had found him. If he’d ever had a home, he didn’t remember it. If he had a name, he didn’t know it. He’d evaded well-meaning social authorities by staying on the move, stealing whatever he needed, food, clothes, money. He was highly intelligent and had taught himself to read from newspapers and magazines that had been thrown away. Libraries had become a favorite place for him to hang out, maybe even spend the night if he could manage it, but never two nights in a row. From what he read and what little television he saw, he understood the concept of a family, but that was all it was to him—a concept. He trusted no one but himself.

He might have grown to adulthood that way if he hadn’t contracted a monster case of influenza. While driving home from work, Mary had found him lying on the side of a road, incoherent and burning up with fever. Though he was half a foot taller than she and some fifty pounds heavier, somehow she had wrestled and bullied the boy into her truck and taken him to the local clinic, where Doc Nowacki discovered that the flu had progressed into pneumonia and quickly transferred Chance to the nearest hospital, eighty miles away.

Mary had driven home and insisted that Wolf take her to the hospital—immediately.

Chance was in intensive care when they arrived. At first the nursing staff hadn’t wanted to let them see him, since they weren’t family and in fact didn’t know anything about him. Child services had been notified, and someone was on the way to take care of the paperwork. They had been reasonable, even kind, but they hadn’t reckoned with Mary. She was relentless. She wanted to see the boy, and a bull-dozer couldn’t have budged her until she saw him. Eventually the nurses, overworked and outclassed by a will far stronger than their own, gave in and let Wolf and Mary into the small cubicle.

As soon as he saw the boy, Wolf knew why Mary was so taken with him. It wasn’t just that he was deathly ill; he was obviously part American Indian. He would have reminded Mary so forcibly of her own children that she could no more have forgotten about him than she could one of them.

Wolf’s expert eye swept over the boy as he lay there so still and silent, his eyes closed, his breathing labored. The hectic color of fever stained his high cheekbones. Four different bags dripped an IV solution into his muscular right arm, which was taped to the bed. Another bag hung at the side of the bed, measuring the output of his kidneys.

Not a half-breed, Wolf had thought. A quarter, maybe. No more than that. But still, there was no doubting his heritage. His fingernails were light against the tanned skin of his fingers, where an Anglo’s nails would have been pinker. His thick, dark brown hair, so long it brushed his shoulders, was straight. There were those high cheekbones, the clear-cut lips, the high-bridged nose. He was the most handsome boy Wolf had ever seen.

Mary went up to the bed, all her attention focused on the boy who lay so ill and helpless on the snowy sheets. She laid her cool hand lightly against his forehead, then stroked it over his hair. “You’ll be all right,” she murmured. “I’ll make sure you are.”

He had lifted his heavy lids, struggling with the effort. For the first time Wolf saw the light hazel eyes, almost golden, and circled with a brown rim so dark it was almost black. Confused, the boy had focused first on Mary; then his gaze had wandered to Wolf, and belated alarm flared in his eyes. He tried to heave himself up, but he was too weak even to tug his taped arm free.

Wolf moved to the boy’s other side. “Don’t be afraid,” he said quietly. “You have pneumonia, and you’re ina hospital.” Then, guessing what lay at the bottom of the boy’s panic, he added, “We won’t let them take you.”

Those light eyes had rested on his face, and perhaps Wolf’s appearance had calmed him. Like a wild animal on guard, he slowly relaxed and drifted back to sleep.

Over the next week, the boy’s condition improved, and Mary swung into action. She was determined that the boy, who still had not given them a name, not be taken into state custody for even one day. She pulled strings, harangued people, even called on Joe to use his influence, and her tenacity worked. When the boy was released from the hospital, he went home with Wolf and Mary.

He had gradually become accustomed to them, though by no stretch of the imagination had he been friendly, or even trustful. He would answer their questions, in one word if possible, but he never actually talked with them. Mary hadn’t been discouraged. From the first, she simply treated the boy as if he was hers—and soon he was.

The boy who had always been alone was suddenly plunged into the middle of a large, volatile family. For the first time he had a roof over his head every night, a room all to himself, ample food in his belly. He had clothing hanging in the closet and new boots on his feet. He was still too weak to share in the chores everyone did, but Mary immediately began tutoring him to bring him up to Zane’s level academically, since the two boys were the same age, as near as they could tell. Chance took to the books like a starving pup to its mother’s teat, but in every other way he determinedly remained at arm’s length. Those shrewd, guarded eyes took note of every nuance of their family relationships, weighing what he saw now against what he had known before.

Finally he unbent enough to tell them that he was called Sooner. He didn’t have a real name.

Maris had looked at him blankly. “Sooner?”

His mouth had twisted, and he’d looked far too old for his fourteen years. “Yeah, like a mongrel dog.”

“No,” Wolf had said, because the name was a clue. “You know you’re part Indian. More than likely you were called Sooner because you were originally from Oklahoma—and that means you’re probably Cherokee.”

The boy merely looked at him, his expression guarded, but still something about him had lightened at the possibility that he hadn’t been likened to a dog of unknown heritage.

His relationships with everyone in the family were complicated. With Mary, he wanted to hold himself away, but he simply couldn’t. She mothered him the way she did the rest of her brood, and it terrified him even though he delighted in it, soaking up her loving concern. He was wary of Wolf, as if he expected the big man to turn on him with fists and boots. Wise in the ways of wild things, Wolf gradually gentled the boy the same way he did horses, letting him get accustomed, letting him realize he had nothing to fear, then offering respect and friendship and, finally, love.

Michael had already been away at college, but when he did come home he simply made room in his family circle for the newcomer. Sooner was relaxed with Mike from the start, sensing that quiet acceptance.

He got along with Josh, too, but Josh was so cheerful it was impossible not to get along with him. Josh took it on himself to be the one who taught Sooner how to handle the multitude of chores on a horse ranch. Josh was the one who taught him how to ride, though Josh was unarguably the worst horseman in the family. That wasn’t to say he wasn’t good, but the others were better, especially Maris. Josh didn’t care, because his heart was wrapped up in planes just the way Joe’s had been, so perhaps he had been more patient with Sooner’s mistakes than anyone else would have been.

Maris was like Mary. She had taken one look at the boy and immediately taken him under her fiercely protective wing, never mind that Sooner was easily twice her size. At twelve, Maris had been not quite five feet tall and weighed all of seventy-four pounds. It didn’t matter to her; Sooner became hers the same way her older brothers were hers. She chattered to him, teased him, played jokes on him—in short, drove him crazy, the way little sisters were supposed to do. Sooner hadn’t had any idea how to handle the way she treated him, any more than he had with Mary. Sometimes he had watched Maris as if she was a ticking time bomb, but it was Maris who won his first smile with her teasing. It was Maris who actually got him to enter the family conversations: slowly, at first, as he learned how families worked, how the give-and-take of talking melded them together, then with more ease. Maris could still tease him into a rage, or coax a laugh out of him, faster than anyone else. For a while Wolf had wondered if the two might become romantically interested in each other as they grew older, but it hadn’t happened. It was a testament to how fully Sooner had become a part of their family; to both of them, they were simply brother and sister.

Things with Zane had been complicated, though.

Zane was, in his own way, as guarded as Sooner. Wolf knew warriors, having been one himself, and what he saw in his youngest son was almost frightening. Zane was quiet, intense, watchful. He moved like a cat, gracefully, soundlessly. Wolf had trained all his children, including Maris, in self-defense, but with Zane it was something more. The boy took to it with the ease of someone putting on a well-worn shoe; it was as if it had been made for him. When it came to marksmanship, he had the eye of a sniper, and the deadly patience.

Zane had the instinct of a warrior: to protect. He was immediately on guard against this intruder into the sanctity of his family’s home turf.

He hadn’t been nasty to Sooner. He hadn’t made fun of him or been overtly unfriendly, which wasn’t in his nature. Rather, he had held himself away from the newcomer, not rejecting, but certainly not welcoming, either. But because they were the same age, Zane’s acceptance was the most crucial, and Sooner had reacted to Zane’s coolness by adopting the same tactics. They had ignored each other.

While the kids were working out their relationships, Wolf and Mary had been pushing hard to legally adopt Sooner. They had asked him if that was what he wanted and, typically, he had responded with a shrug and an expressionless, “Sure.” Taking that for the impassioned plea it was, Mary redoubled her efforts to get the adoption pushed through.

As things worked out, they got the word that the adoption could go forward on the same day Zane and Sooner settled things between them.

The dust was what had caught Wolf’s attention.

At first he hadn’t thought anything of it, because when he glanced over he saw Maris sitting on the top rail of the fence, calmly watching the commotion. Figuring one of the horses was rolling in the dirt, Wolf went back to work. Two seconds later, however, his sharp ears caught the sound of grunts and what sounded suspiciously like blows.

He walked across the yard to the other corral. Zane and Sooner had gotten into the corner, where they couldn’t be seen from the house, and were ferociously battering each other. Wolf saw at once that both boys, despite the force of their blows, were restraining themselves to the more conventional fisticuffs rather than the faster, nastier ways he’d also taught them. He leaned his arms on the top rail beside Maris. “What’s this about?”

“They’re fighting it out,” she said matter-of-factly, without taking her eyes from the action.

Josh soon joined them at the fence, and they watched the battle. Zane and Sooner were both tall, muscular boys, very strong for their ages. They stood toe to toe, taking turns driving their fists into each other’s faces. When one of them got knocked down, he got to his feet and waded back into the fray. They were almost eerily silent, except for the involuntary grunts and the sounds of hard fists hitting flesh.

Mary saw them standing at the fence and came out to investigate. She stood beside Wolf and slipped her small hand into his. He felt her flinch every time a blow landed, but when he looked at her, he saw that she was wearing her prim schoolteacher’s expression, and he knew that Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie was about to call the class to order.

She gave it five minutes. Evidently deciding this could go on for hours, and that both boys were too stubborn to give in, she settled the matter herself. In her crisp, clear teaching voice she called out, “All right, boys, let’s get this wrapped up. Supper will be on the table in ten minutes.” Then she calmly walked back to the house, fully confident that she had brought detente to the corral.

She had, too. She had reduced the fight to the level of a chore or a project, given them a time limit and a reason for ending it.

Both boys’ eyes had flickered to that slight retreating figure with the ramrod spine. Then Zane had turned to Sooner, the coolness of his blue gaze somewhat marred by the swelling of his eyes. “One more,” he said grimly, and slammed his fist into Sooner’s face.

Sooner picked himself up off the dirt, squared up again and returned the favor.

Zane got up, slapped the dirt from his clothes and held out his hand. Sooner gripped it, though they had both winced at the pain in their knuckles. They shook hands, eyed each other as equals, then returned to the house to clean up. After all, supper was almost on the table.

At supper, Mary told Sooner that the adoption had been given the green light. His pale hazel eyes had glittered in his battered face, but he hadn’t said anything.

“You’re a Mackenzie now,” Maris had pronounced with great satisfaction. “You’ll have to have a real name, so choose one.”

It hadn’t occurred to her that choosing a name might require some thought, but as it happened, Sooner had looked around the table at the family that pure blind luck had sent him, and a wry little smile twisted up one side of his bruised, swollen mouth. “Chance,” he said, and the unknown, unnamed boy became Chance Mackenzie.

Zane and Chance hadn’t become immediate best friends after the fight. What they had found, instead, was mutual respect, but friendship grew out of it. Over the years, they became so close that they could well have been born twins. There were other fights between them, but it was well known around Ruth, Wyoming, that if anyone decided to take on either of the boys, he would find himself facing both of them. They could batter each other into the ground, but by God, no one else was going to.

They had entered the Navy together, Zane becoming a SEAL, while Chance had gone into Naval Intelligence. Chance had since left the Navy, though, and gone out on his own, while Zane was a SEAL team leader.

And that brought Wolf to the reason for his restlessness.

Zane.

There had been a lot of times in Zane’s career when he had been out of touch, when they hadn’t known where he was or what he was doing. Wolf hadn’t slept well then, either. He knew too much about the SEALs, having seen them in action in Vietnam during his tours of duty. They were the most highly trained and skilled of the special forces, their stamina and teamwork proven by grueling tests that broke lesser men. Zane was particularly well-suited for the work, but in the final analysis, the SEALs were still human. They could be killed. And because of the nature of their work, they were often in dangerous situations.

The SEAL training had merely accentuated the already existing facets of Zane’s nature. He had been honed to a perfect fighting machine, a warrior who was in top condition, but who used his brain more than his brawn. He was even more lethal and intense now, but he had learned to temper that deadliness with an easier manner, so that most people were unaware they were dealing with a man who could kill them in a dozen different ways with his bare hands. With that kind of knowledge and skill at his disposal, Zane had learned a calm control that kept him in command of himself. Of all Wolf’s offspring, Zane was the most capable of taking care of himself, but he was also the one in the most danger.

Where in hell was he?

There was a whisper of movement from the bed, and Wolf looked around as Mary slipped from between the sheets and joined him at the window, looping her arms around his hard, trim waist and nestling her head on his bare chest.

“Zane?” she asked quietly, in the darkness.

“Yeah.” No more explanation was needed.

“He’s all right,” she said with a mother’s confidence. “I’d know if he wasn’t.”

Wolf tipped her head up and kissed her, lightly at first, then with growing intensity. He turned her slight body more fully into his embrace and felt her quiver as she pressed to him, pushing her hips against his, cradling the rise of his male flesh against her softness. There had been passion between them from their first meeting, all those years ago, and time hadn’t taken it from them.

He lifted her in his arms and carried her back to bed, losing himself in the welcome and warmth of her soft body. Afterward, though, lying in the drowsy aftermath, he turned his face toward the window. Before sleep claimed him, the thought came again. Where was Zane?

Chapter 1

Zane Mackenzie wasn’t happy.

No one aboard the aircraft carrier USS Montgomery was happy; well, maybe the cooks were, but even that was iffy, because the men they were serving were sullen and defensive. The seamen weren’t happy, the radar men weren’t happy, the gunners weren’t happy, the Marines weren’t happy, the wing commander wasn’t happy, the pilots weren’t happy, the air boss wasn’t happy, the executive officer wasn’t happy, and Captain Udaka sure as hell wasn’t happy.

The combined unhappiness of the five thousand sailors on board the carrier didn’t begin to approach Lieutenant-Commander Mackenzie’s level of unhappiness.

The captain outranked him. The executive officer outranked him. Lieutenant-Commander Mackenzie addressed them with all the respect due their rank, but both men were uncomfortably aware that their asses were in a sling and their careers on the line. Actually, their careers were probably in the toilet. There wouldn’t be any court-martials, but neither would be there any more promotions, and they would be given the unpopular commands from now until they either retired or resigned, their choice depending on how clearly they could read the writing on the wall.

Captain Udaka’s broad, pleasant face was one that wore responsibility easily, but now his expression was set in lines of unhappy acceptance as he met the icy gaze of the lieutenant-commander. SEALs in general made the captain nervous; he didn’t quite trust them or the way they operated outside normal regulations. This one in particular made him seriously want to be somewhere—anywhere—else.

He had met Mackenzie before, when both he and Boyd, the XO, had been briefed on the security exercise. The SEAL team under Mackenzie’s command would try to breach the carrier’s security, probing for weaknesses that could be exploited by any of the myriad terrorist groups so common these days. It was a version of the exercises once conducted by the SEAL Team Six Red Cell, which had been so notorious and so far outside the regulations that it had been disbanded after seven years of operation. The concept, however, had lived on, in a more controlled manner. SEAL Team Six was a covert, counterterrorism unit, and one of the best ways to counter terrorism was to prevent it from happening in the first place, rather than reacting to it after people were dead. To this end, the security of naval installations and carrier battle groups was tested by the SEALs, who then recommended changes to correct the weaknesses they had discovered. There were always weaknesses, soft spots—the SEALs had never yet been completely thwarted, even though the base commanders and ships’ captains were always notified in advance.

At the briefing, Mackenzie had been remote but pleasant. Controlled. Most SEALs had a wild, hard edge to them, but Mackenzie had seemed more regular Navy, recruiting-poster perfect in his crisp whites and with his coolly courteous manner. Captain Udaka had felt comfortable with him, certain that Lieutenant-Commander Mackenzie was the administrational type rather than a true part of those wild-ass SEALs.

He’d been wrong.

The courtesy remained, and the control. The white uniform looked as perfect as it had before. But there was nothing at all pleasant in the deep voice, or in the cold fury that lit the pale blue gray eyes so they glittered like moonlight on a knife blade. The aura of danger surrounding him was so strong it was almost palpable, and Captain Udaka knew that he had been drastically wrong in his assessment of Mackenzie. This was no desk jockey; this was a man around whom others should walk very lightly indeed. The captain felt as if his skin was being flayed from his body, strip by strip, by that icy gaze. He had also never felt closer to death than he had the moment Mackenzie had entered his quarters after learning what had happened.

“Captain, you were briefed on the exercise,” Zane said coldly. “Everyone on this ship was advised, as well as notified that my men wouldn’t be carrying weapons of any sort. Explain, then, why in hell two of my men were shot!”

The XO, Mr. Boyd, looked at his hands. Captain Udaka’s collar felt too tight, except that it was already unbuttoned, and the only thing choking him was the look in Mackenzie’s eyes.

“There’s no excuse,” he said rawly. “Maybe the guards were startled and fired without thinking. Maybe it was a stupid, macho turf thing, wanting to show the big bad SEALs that they couldn’t penetrate our security, after all. It doesn’t matter. There’s no excuse.” Everything that happened on board his ship was, ultimately, his responsibility. The trigger-happy guards would pay for their mistake—and so would he.

“My men had already penetrated your security,” Zane said softly, his tone making the hairs stand up on the back of the captain’s neck.

“I’m aware of that.” The breach of his ship’s security was salt in the captain’s wounds, but nothing at all compared to the enormous mistake that had been made when men under his command had opened fire on the unarmed SEALs. His men, his responsibility. Nor did it help his feelings that, when two of their team had gone down, the remainder of the SEAL team, unarmed, had swiftly taken control and secured the area. Translated, that meant the guards who had done the shooting had been roughly handled and were now in sick bay with the two men they had shot. In reality, the phrase “roughly handled” was a euphemism for the fact that the SEALS had beaten the hell out of his men.

The most seriously wounded SEAL was Lieutenant Higgins, who had taken a bullet in the chest and would be evacuated by air to Germany as soon as he was stabilized. The other SEAL, Warrant Officer Odessa, had been shot in the thigh; the bullet had broken his femur. He, too, would be taken to Germany, but his condition was stable, even if his temper was not. The ship’s doctor had been forced to sedate him to keep him from wreaking vengeance on the battered guards, two of whom were still unconscious.

The five remaining members of the SEAL team were in Mission Planning, prowling around like angry tigers looking for someone to maul just to make themselves feel better. They were restricted to the area by Mackenzie’s order, and the ship’s crew was giving them a wide berth. Captain Udaka wished he could do the same with Mackenzie. He had the impression of cold savagery lurking just beneath the surface of the man’s control. There would be hell to pay for this night’s fiasco.

The phone on his desk emitted a harsh brr. Though he was relieved by the interruption, Captain Udaka snatched up the receiver and barked, “I gave orders I wasn’t to be—” He stopped, listening, and his expression changed. His gaze shifted to Mackenzie. “We’ll be right there,” he said, and hung up.

“There’s a scrambled transmission coming in for you,” he said to Mackenzie, rising to his feet. “Urgent.” Whatever message the transmission contained, Captain Udaka looked on it as a much-welcomed reprieve.

Zane listened intently to the secure satellite transmission, his mind racing as he began planning the logistics of the mission. “My team is two men short, sir,” he said. “Higgins and Odessa were injured in the security exercise.” He didn’t say how they’d been injured; that would be handled through other channels.

“Damn it,” Admiral Lindley muttered. He was in an office in the U.S. Embassy in Athens. He looked up at the others in the office: Ambassador Lovejoy, tall and spare, with the smoothness bequeathed by a lifetime of privilege and wealth, though now there was a stark, panicked expression in his hazel eyes; the CIA station chief, Art Sandefer, a nondescript man with short gray hair and tired, intelligent eyes; and, finally, Mack Prewett, second only to Sandefer in the local CIA hierarchy. Mack was known in some circles as Mack the Knife; Admiral Lindley knew Mack was generally considered a man who got things done, a man whom it was dangerous to cross. For all his decisiveness, though, he wasn’t a cowboy who was likely to endanger people by going off half-cocked. He was as thorough as he was decisive, and it was through his contacts that they had obtained such good, prompt information in this case.

The admiral had put Zane on the speakerphone, so the other three in the room had heard the bad news about the SEAL team on which they had all been pinning their hopes. Ambassador Lovejoy looked even more haggard.

“We’ll have to use another team,” Art Sandefer said.

“That’ll take too much time!” the ambassador said with stifled violence. “My God, already she could be—” He stopped, anguish twisting his face. He wasn’t able to complete the sentence.

“I’ll take the team in,” Zane said. His amplified voice was clear in the soundproofed room. “We’re the closest, and we can be ready to go in an hour.”

“You?” the admiral asked, startled. “Zane, you haven’t seen live action since—”

“My last promotion,” Zane finished dryly. He hadn’t liked trading action for administration, and he was seriously considering resigning his commission. He was thirty-one, and it was beginning to look as if his success in his chosen field was going to prevent him from practicing it; the higher-ranking the officer, the less likely that officer was to be in the thick of the action. He’d been thinking about something in law enforcement, or maybe even throwing in with Chance. There was nonstop action there, for sure.

For now, though, a mission had been dumped in his lap, and he was going to take it.

“I train with my men, Admiral,” he said. “I’m not rusty, or out of shape.”

“I didn’t think you were,” Admiral Lindley replied, and sighed. He met the ambassador’s anguished gaze, read the silent plea for help. “Can six men handle the mission?” he asked Zane.

“Sir, I wouldn’t risk my men if I didn’t think we could do the job.”

This time the admiral looked at both Art Sandefer and Mack Prewett. Art’s expression was noncommittal, the Company man refusing to stick his neck out, but Mack gave the admiral a tiny nod. Admiral Lindley swiftly weighed all the factors. Granted, the SEAL team would be two members short, and the leader would be an officer who hadn’t been on an active mission in over a year, but that officer happened to be Zane Mackenzie. All things considered, the admiral couldn’t think of any other man he would rather have on this mission. He’d known Zane for several years now, and there was no better warrior, no one he trusted more. If Zane said he was ready, then he was ready. “All right. Go in and get her out.”

As the admiral hung up, Ambassador Lindley blurted, “Shouldn’t you send in someone else? My daughter’s life is at stake! This man hasn’t been in the field, he’s out of shape, out of practice—”

“Waiting until we could get another team into position would drastically lower our chances of finding her,” the admiral pointed out as kindly as possible. Ambassador Lindley wasn’t one of his favorite people. For the most part, he was a horse’s ass and a snob, but there was no doubt he doted on his daughter. “And as far as Zane Mackenzie is concerned, there’s no better man for the job.”

“The admiral’s right,” Mack Prewett said quietly, with the authority that came so naturally to him. “Mackenzie is so good at what he does it’s almost eerie. I would feel comfortable sending him in alone. If you want your daughter back, don’t throw obstacles in his way.”

Ambassador Lindley shoved his hand through his hair, an uncharacteristic gesture for so fastidious a man; it was a measure of his agitation. “If anything goes wrong…”

It wasn’t clear whether he was about to voice a threat or was simply worrying aloud, but he couldn’t complete the sentence. Mack Prewett gave a thin smile. “Something always goes wrong. If anyone can handle it, Mackenzie can.”

After Zane terminated the secure transmission he made his way through the network of corridors to Mission Planning. Already he could feel the rush of adrenaline pumping through his muscles as he began preparing, mentally and physically, for the job before him. When he entered the room with its maps and charts and communication systems, and the comfortable chairs grouped around a large table, five hostile faces turned immediately toward him, and he felt the surge of renewed energy and anger from his men.

Only one of them, Santos, was seated at the table, but Santos was the team medic, and he was usually the calmest of the bunch. Ensign Peter “Rocky” Greenberg, second in command of the team and a controlled, detail-oriented kind of guy, leaned against the bulkhead with his arms crossed and murder in his narrowed brown eyes. Antonio Withrock, nicknamed Bunny because he never ran out of energy, was prowling the confines of the room like a mean, hungry cat, his dark skin pulled tight across his high cheekbones. Paul Drexler, the team sniper, sat cross-legged on top of the table while he wiped an oiled cloth lovingly over the disassembled parts of his beloved Remington bolt-action 7.62 rifle. Zane didn’t even lift his eyebrows at the sight. His men were supposed to be unarmed, and they had been during the security exercise that had gone so damn sour, but keeping Drexler unarmed was another story.

“Planning on taking over the ship?” Zane inquired mildly of the sniper.

His blue eyes cold, Drexler cocked his head as if considering the idea. “I might.”

Winstead “Spooky” Jones had been sitting on the deck, his back resting against the bulkhead, but at Zane’s entrance he rose effortlessly to his feet. He didn’t say anything, but his gaze fastened on Zane’s face, and a spark of interest replaced some of the anger in his eyes.

Spook never missed much, and the other team members had gotten in the habit of watching him, picking up cues from his body language. No more than three seconds passed before all five men were watching Zane with complete concentration.

Greenberg was the one who finally spoke. “How’s Bobcat doing, boss?”

They had read Spooky’s tension, but misread the cause, Zane realized. They thought Higgins had died from his wounds. Drexler began assembling his rifle with sharp, economical motions. “He’s stabilized,” Zane reassured them. He knew his men, knew how tight they were. A SEAL team had to be tight. Their trust in each other had to be absolute, and if something happened to one of them, they all felt it. “They’re transferring him now. It’s touchy, but I’ll put my money on Bobcat. Odie’s gonna be okay, too.” He hitched one hip on the edge of the table, his pale eyes glittering with the intensity that had caught Spooky’s attention. “Listen up, children. An ambassador’s daughter was snatched a few hours ago, and we’re going into Libya to get her.”

Six black-clad figures slipped silently along the narrow, deserted street in Benghazi, Libya. They communicated by hand signals, or by whispers into the Motorola headsets they all wore under their black knit balaclava hoods. Zane was in his battle mode; he was utterly calm as they worked their way toward the four-story stone building where Barrie Lovejoy was being held on the top floor, if their intelligence was good, and if she hadn’t been moved within the past few hours.

Action always affected him this way, as if every cell in his body had settled into its true purpose of existence. He had missed this, missed it to the point that he knew he wouldn’t be able to stay in the Navy without it. On a mission, all his senses became more acute, even as a deep center of calm radiated outward. The more intense the action, the calmer he became, as time stretched out into slow motion. At those times he could see and hear every detail, analyze and predict the outcome, then make his decision and act—all within a split second that felt like minutes. Adrenaline would flood his body—he would feel the blood racing through his veins—but his mind would remain detached and calm. He had been told that the look on his face during those times was frighteningly remote, jarring in its total lack of expression.

The team moved forward in well-orchestrated silence. They each knew what to do, and what the others would do. That was the purpose of the trust and teamwork that had been drilled into them through the twenty-six weeks of hell that was formally known as BUD/S training. The bond between them enabled them to do more together than could be accomplished if each worked on his own. Teamwork wasn’t just a word to the SEALs, it was their center.

Spooky Jones was point man. Zane preferred using the wiry Southerner for that job because he had unfrayable nerves and could ghost around like a lynx. Bunny Withrock, who almost reverberated with nervous energy, was bringing up the rear. No one sneaked up on Bunny—except the Spook. Zane was right behind Jones, with Drexler, Greenberg and Santos ranging between him and Bunny. Greenberg was quiet, steady, totally dependable. Drexler was uncanny with that rifle, and Santos, besides being a damn good SEAL, also had the skill to patch them up and keep them going, if they were patchable. Overall, Zane had never worked with a better group of men.

Their presence in Benghazi was pure luck, and Zane knew it. Good luck for them and, he hoped, for Miss Lovejoy, but bad luck for the terrorists who had snatched her off the street in Athens fifteen hours ago. If the Montgomery hadn’t been just south of Crete and in perfect position for launching a rescue, if the SEALs hadn’t been on the carrier to practice special insertions as well as the security exercise, then there would have been a delay of precious hours, perhaps even as long as a day, while another team got supplied and into position. As it was, the special insertion into hostile territory they had just accomplished had been the real thing instead of just a practice.

Miss Lovejoy was not only the ambassador’s daughter, she was an employee at the embassy, as well. The ambassador was apparently very strict and obsessive about his daughter, having lost his wife and son in a terrorist attack in Rome fifteen years before, when Miss Lovejoy had been a child of ten. After that, he had kept her secluded in private schools, and since she had finished college, she had been acting as his hostess as well as performing her “work” at the embassy. Zane suspected her job was more window dressing than anything else, something to keep her busy. She had never really worked a day in her life, never been out from under her father’s protection—until today.

She and a friend had left the embassy to do some shopping. Three men had grabbed her, shoved her into a car and driven off. The friend had immediately reported the abduction. Despite efforts to secure the airport and ports—cynically, Zane suspected deliberate foot-dragging by the Greek authorities—a private plane had taken off from Athens and flown straight to Benghazi.

Thanks to the friend’s prompt action, sources on the ground in Benghazi had been alerted. It had been verified that a young woman of Miss Lovejoy’s description had been taken off the plane and hustled into the city, into the very building Zane and his team were about to enter.

It had to be her; there weren’t that many red-haired Western women in Benghazi. In fact, he would bet there was only one—Barrie Lovejoy.

They were betting her life on it.

Chapter 2

Barrie lay in almost total darkness, heavy curtains at the single window blocking out most of whatever light would have entered. She could tell that it was night; the level of street noise outside had slowly diminished, until now there was mostly silence. The men who had kidnapped her had finally gone away, probably to sleep. They had no worries about her being able to escape; she was naked, and tied tightly to the cot on which she lay. Her wrists were bound together, her arms drawn over her head and tied to the frame of the cot. Her ankles were also tied together, then secured to the frame. She could barely move; every muscle in her body ached, but those in her shoulders burned with agony. She would have screamed, she would have begged for someone to come and release the ropes that held her arms over her head, but she knew that the only people who would come would be the very ones who had tied her in this position, and she would do anything, give anything, to keep from ever seeing them again.

She was cold. They hadn’t even bothered to throw a blanket over her naked body, and long, convulsive shivers kept shaking her, though she couldn’t tell if she was chilled from the night air or from shock. She didn’t suppose it mattered. Cold was cold.

She tried to think, tried to ignore the pain, tried not to give in to shock and terror. She didn’t know where she was, didn’t know how she could escape, but if the slightest opportunity presented itself, she would have to be ready to take it. She wouldn’t be able to escape tonight; her bonds were too tight, her movements too restricted. But tomorrow—oh, God, tomorrow.

Terror tightened her throat, almost choking off her breath. Tomorrow they would be back, and there would be another one with them, the one for whom they waited. A violent shiver racked her as she thought of their rough hands on her bare body, the pinches and slaps and crude probings, and her stomach heaved. She would have vomited, if there had been anything to vomit, but they hadn’t bothered to feed her.

She couldn’t go through that again.

Somehow, she had to get away.

Desperately she fought down her panic. Her thoughts darted around like crazed squirrels as she tried to plan, to think of something, anything, that she could do to protect herself. But what could she do, lying there like a turkey all trussed up for Thanksgiving dinner?

Humiliation burned through her. They hadn’t raped her, but they had done other things to her, things to shame and terrorize her and break her spirit. Tomorrow, when the leader arrived, she was sure her reprieve would be over. The threat of rape, and then the act of it, would shatter her and leave her malleable in their hands, desperate to do anything to avoid being violated again. At least that was what they planned, she thought. But she would be damned if she would go along with their plan.

She had been in a fog of terror and shock since they had grabbed her and thrown her into a car, but as she lay there in the darkness, cold and miserable and achingly vulnerable in her nakedness, she felt as if the fog was lifting, or maybe it was being burned away. No one who knew Barrie would ever have described her as hot-tempered, but then, what she felt building in her now wasn’t as volatile and fleeting as mere temper. It was rage, as pure and forceful as lava forcing its way upward from the bowels of the earth until it exploded outward and swept away everything in its path.

Nothing in her life had prepared her for these past hours. After her mother and brother had died, she had been pampered and protected as few children ever were. She had seen some—most, actually—of her schoolmates as they struggled with the misery of broken parental promises, of rare, stressful visits, of being ignored and shunted out of the way, but she hadn’t been like them. Her father adored her, and she knew it. He was intensely interested in her safety, her friends, her schoolwork. If he said he would call, then the call came exactly when he’d said it would. Every week had brought some small gift in the mail, inexpensive but thoughtful. She’d understood why he worried so much about her safety, why he wanted her to attend the exclusive girls’ school in Switzerland, with its cloistered security, rather than a public school, with its attendant hurly-burly.

She was all he had left.

He was all she had left, too. When she’d been a child, after the incident that had halved the family, she had clung fearfully to her father for months, dogging his footsteps when she could, weeping inconsolably when his work took him away from her. Eventually the dread that he, too, would disappear from her life had faded, but the pattern of overprotectiveness had been set.

She was twenty-five now, a grown woman, and though in the past few years his protectiveness had begun to chafe, she had enjoyed the even tenor of her life too much to really protest. She liked her job at the embassy, so much that she was considering a full-time career in the foreign service. She enjoyed being her father’s hostess. She had the duties and protocol down cold, and there were more and more female ambassadors on the international scene. It was a moneyed and insular community, but by both temperament and pedigree she was suited to the task. She was calm, even serene, and blessed with a considerate and tactful nature.

But now, lying naked and helpless on a cot, with bruises mottling her pale skin, the rage that consumed her was so deep and primal she felt as if it had altered something basic inside her, a sea change of her very nature. She would not endure what they—nameless, malevolent “they”—had planned for her. If they killed her, so be it. She was prepared for death; no matter what, she would not submit.

The heavy curtains fluttered.

The movement caught her eye, and she glanced at the window, but the action was automatic, without curiosity. She was already so cold that even a wind strong enough to move those heavy curtains couldn’t chill her more.

The wind was black, and had a shape.

Her breath stopped in her chest.

Mutely she watched the big black shape, as silent as a shadow, slip through the window. It couldn’t be human; people made some sound when they moved. Surely, in the total silence of the room, she would have been able to hear the whisper of the curtains as the fabric moved, or the faint, rhythmic sigh of breathing. A shoe scraping on the floor, the rustle of clothing, anything—if it was human.

After the black shape had passed between them, the curtains didn’t fall back into the perfect alignment that had blocked the light; there was a small opening in them, a slit that allowed a shaft of moonlight, starlight, street light—whatever it was—to relieve the thick darkness. Barrie strained to focus on the dark shape, her eyes burning as she watched it move silently across the floor. She didn’t scream; whoever or whatever approached her, it couldn’t be worse than the only men likely to come to her rescue.

Perhaps she was really asleep and this was only a dream. It certainly didn’t feel real. But nothing in the long, horrible hours since she had been kidnapped had felt real, and she was too cold to be asleep. No, this was real, all right.

Noiselessly the black shape glided to a halt beside the cot. It towered over her, tall and powerful, and it seemed to be examining the naked feast she presented.

Then it moved once again, lifting its hand to its head, and it peeled off its face, pulling the dark skin up as if it was no more than the skin of a banana.

It was a mask. As exhausted as she was, it was a moment before she could find a logical explanation for the nightmarish image. She blinked up at him. A man wearing a mask. Neither an animal, nor a phantom, but a flesh-and-blood man. She could see the gleam of his eyes, make out the shape of his head and the relative paleness of his face, though there was an odd bulkiness to him that in no way affected the eerily silent grace of his movements.

Just another man.

She didn’t panic. She had gone beyond fear, beyond everything but rage. She simply waited—waited to fight, waited to die. Her teeth were the only weapon she had, so she would use them, if she could. She would tear at her attacker’s flesh, try to damage him as much as possible before she died. If she was lucky, she would be able to get him by the throat with her teeth and take at least one of these bastards with her into death.

He was taking his time, staring at her. Her bound hands clenched into fists. Damn him. Damn them all.

Then he squatted beside the cot and leaned forward, his head very close to hers. Startled, Barrie wondered if he meant to kiss her—odd that the notion struck her as so unbearable—and she braced herself, preparing to lunge upward when he got close enough that she had a good chance for his throat.

“Mackenzie, United States Navy,” he said in a toneless whisper that barely reached her ear, only a few inches away.

He’d spoken in English, with a definitely American accent. She jerked, so stunned that it was a moment before the words made sense. Navy. United States Navy. She had been silent for hours, refusing to speak to her captors or respond in any way, but now a small, helpless sound spilled from her throat.

“Shh, don’t make any noise,” he cautioned, still in that toneless whisper. Even as he spoke he was reaching over her head, and the tension on her arms suddenly relaxed. The small movement sent agony screaming through her shoulder joints, and she sucked in her breath with a sharp, gasping cry.

She quickly choked off the sound, holding it inside as she ground her teeth against the pain. “Sorry,” she whispered, when she was able to speak.

She hadn’t seen the knife in his hand, but she felt the chill of the blade against her skin as he deftly inserted the blade under the cords and sliced upward, felt the slight tug that freed her hands. She tried to move her arms and found that she couldn’t; they remained stretched above her head, unresponsive to her commands.

He knew, without being told. He slipped the knife into its scabbard and placed his gloved hands on her shoulders, firmly kneading for a moment before he clasped her forearms and gently drew her arms down. Fire burned in her joints; it felt as if her arms were being torn from her shoulders, even though he carefully drew them straight down, keeping them aligned with her body to lessen the pain. Barrie set her teeth again, refusing to let another sound break past the barrier. Cold sweat beaded her forehead, and nausea burned in her throat once more, but she rode the swell of pain in silence.

He dug his thumbs into the balls of her shoulders, massaging the sore, swollen ligaments and tendons, intensifying the agony. Her bare body drew into a taut, pale arch of suffering, lifting from the cot. He held her down, ruthlessly pushing her traumatized joints and muscles through the recovery process. She was so cold that the heat emanating from his hands, from the closeness of his body as he bent over her, was searingly hot on her bare skin. The pain rolled through her in great shudders, blurring her sight and thought, and through the haze she realized that now, when she definitely needed to stay conscious, she was finally going to faint.

She couldn’t pass out. She refused to. Grimly she hung on, and in only a few moments, moments that felt much longer, the pain began to ebb. He continued the strong kneading, taking her through the agony and into relief. She went limp, relaxing on the cot as she breathed through her mouth in the long, deep drafts of someone who has just run a race.

“Good girl,” he whispered as he released her. The brief praise felt like balm to her lacerated emotions. He straightened and drew the knife again, then bent over the foot of the cot. Again there was the chill of the blade, this time against her ankles, and another small tug, then her feet were free, and involuntarily she curled into a protective ball, her body moving without direction from her brain in a belated, useless effort at modesty and self-protection. Her thighs squeezed tightly together, her arms crossed over and hid her breasts, and she buried her face against the musty ticking of the bare mattress. She couldn’t look up at him, she couldn’t. Tears burned her eyes, clogged her throat.

“Have you been injured?” he asked, the ghostly whisper rasping over her bare skin like an actual touch. “Can you walk?”

Now wasn’t the time to let her raw nerves take over. They still had to get out undetected, and a fit of hysteria would ruin everything. She gulped twice, fighting for control of her emotions as grimly as she had fought to control the pain. The tears spilled over, but she forced herself to straighten from the defensive curl, to swing her legs over the edge of the cot. Shakily she sat up and forced herself to look at him. She hadn’t done anything to be ashamed of; she would get through this. “I’m okay,” she replied, and was grateful that the obligatory whisper disguised the weakness of her voice.

He crouched in front of her and silently began removing the web gear that held and secured all his equipment. The room was too dark for her to make out exactly what each item was, but she recognized the shape of an automatic weapon as he placed it on the floor between them. She watched him, uncomprehending, until he began shrugging out of his shirt. Sick terror hit her then, slamming into her like a sledgehammer. My God, surely he wasn’t—

Gently he put the shirt around her, tucking her arms into the sleeves as if she was a child, then buttoning each button, taking care to hold the fabric away from her body so his fingers wouldn’t brush against her breasts. The cloth still held his body heat; it wrapped around her like a blanket, warming her, covering her. The sudden feeling of security unnerved her almost as much as being stripped naked. Her heart lurched inside her chest, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. Hesitantly she reached out her hand in an apology, and a plea. Tears dripped slowly down her face, leaving salty tracks in their wake. She had been the recipient of so much male brutality in the past day that his gentleness almost destroyed her control, where their blows and crudeness had only made her more determined to resist them. She had expected the same from him and instead had received a tender care that shattered her with its simplicity.

A second ticked past, two: then, with great care, he folded his gloved fingers around her hand.

His hand was much bigger than hers. She felt the size and heat of it engulf her cold fingers and sensed the control of a man who exactly knew his own strength. He squeezed gently, then released her.

She stared at him, trying to pierce the veil of darkness and see his features, but his face was barely distinguishable and blurred even more by her tears. She could make out some details, though, and discern his movements. He wore a black T-shirt, and as silently as he had removed his gear, he now put it on again. He peeled back a flap on his wrist, and she caught the faint gleam of a luminous watch. “We have exactly two and a half minutes to get out of here,” he murmured. “Do what I say, when I say it.”

Before, she couldn’t have done it, but that brief moment of understanding, of connection, had buoyed her. Barrie nodded and got to her feet. Her knees wobbled. She stiffened them and shoved her hair out of her face. “I’m ready.”

She had taken exactly two steps when, below them, a staccato burst of gunfire shattered the night.

He spun instantly, silently, slipping away from her so fast that she blinked, unable to follow him. Behind her, the door opened. A harsh, piercing flood of light blinded her, and an ominous form loomed in the doorway. The guard—of course there was a guard. Then there was a blur of movement, a grunt, and the guard sagged into supporting arms. As silently as her rescuer seemed to do everything else, he dragged the guard inside and lowered him to the floor. Her rescuer stepped over the body, snagged her wrist in an unbreakable grip and towed her from the room.

The hallway was narrow, dirty and cluttered. The light that had seemed so bright came from a single naked bulb. More gunfire was erupting downstairs and out in the street. From the left came the sound of pounding feet. To the right was a closed door, and past it she could see the first step of an unlit stairway.

He closed the door of the room they had just left and lifted her off her feet, slinging her under his left arm as if she was no more than a sack of flour. Barrie clutched dizzily at his leg as he strode swiftly to the next room and slipped into the sheltering darkness. He had barely shut the door when a barrage of shouts and curses in the hallway made her bury her face against the black material of his pants leg.

He righted her and set her on her feet, pushing her behind him as he unslung the weapon from his shoulder. They stood at the door, unmoving, listening to the commotion just on the other side of the wooden panel. She could discern three different voices and recognized them all. There were more shouts and curses, in the language she had heard off and on all day long but couldn’t understand. The curses turned vicious as the guard’s body, and her absence, were discovered. Something thudded against the wall as one of her kidnappers gave vent to his temper.

“This is One. Go to B.”

That toneless whisper startled her. Confused, she stared at him, trying to make sense of the words. She was so tired that it took her a moment to realize he must be speaking a coded message into a radio. Of course he wasn’t alone; there would be an entire team of rescuers. All they had to do was get out of the building, and there would be a helicopter waiting somewhere, or a truck, or a ship. She didn’t care if they’d infiltrated on bicycles; she would gladly walk out—barefoot, if necessary.

But first they had to get out of the building. Obviously the plan had been to spirit her out the window without her kidnappers being any the wiser until morning, but something had gone wrong, and the others had been spotted. Now they were trapped in this room, with no way of rejoining the rest of his team.

Her body began to revolt against the stress it had endured for so many long hours, the terror and pain, the hunger, the effort. With a sort of distant interest she felt each muscle begin quivering, the shudders working their way up her legs, her torso, until she was shaking uncontrollably.

She wanted to lean against him but was afraid she would hinder his movements. Her life—and his—depended completely on his expertise. She couldn’t help him, so the least she could do was stay out of his way. But she was desperately in need of support, so she fumbled her way a couple of steps to the wall. She was careful not to make any noise, but he sensed her movement and half turned, reaching behind himself with his left hand and catching her. Without speaking he pulled her up against his back, keeping her within reach should he have to change locations in a hurry.

His closeness was oddly, fundamentally reassuring. Her captors had filled her with such fear and disgust that every feminine instinct had been outraged, and after they had finally left her alone in the cold and the dark, she had wondered with a sort of grief if she would ever again be able to trust a man. The answer, at least with this man, was yes.

She leaned gratefully against his back, so tired and weak that, just for a moment, she had to rest her head on him. The heat of his body penetrated the rough fabric of the web vest, warming her cheek. He even smelled hot, she noticed through a sort of haze; his scent was a mixture of clean, fresh sweat and musky maleness, exertion and tension heating it to an aroma as heady as that of the finest whiskey. Mackenzie. He’d said his name was Mackenzie, whispered it to her when he crouched to identify himself.

Oh, God, he was so warm, and she was still cold. The gritty stone floor beneath her bare feet seemed to be wafting cold waves of air up her legs. His shirt was so big it dwarfed her, hanging almost to her knees, but still she was naked beneath it. Her entire body was shaking.

They stood motionless in the silent darkness of the empty room for an eternity, listening to the gunfire as it tapered off in the distance, listening to the shouts and curses as they, too, diminished, listened for so long that Barrie drifted into a light doze, leaning against him with her head resting on his back. He was like a rock, unmoving, his patience beyond anything she had ever imagined. There were no nervous little adjustments of position, no hint that his muscles got tired. The slow, even rhythm of his breathing was the only movement she could discern, and resting against him as she was, the sensation was like being on a raft in a pool, gently rising, falling….

She woke when he reached back and lightly shook her. “They think we got away,” he whispered. “Don’t move or make any sound while I check things out.”

Obediently she straightened away from him, though she almost cried at the loss of his body heat. He switched on a flashlight that gave off only a slender beam; black tape had been placed across most of the lens. He flicked the light around the room, revealing that it was empty except for some old boxes piled along one wall. Cobwebs festooned all of the corners, and the floor was covered with a thick layer of dust. She could make out a single window in the far wall, but he was careful not to let the thin beam of light get close to it and possibly betray their presence. The room seemed to have been unused for a very long time.

He leaned close and put his mouth against her ear. His warm breath washed across her flesh with every word. “We have to get out of this building. My men have made it look as if we escaped, but we probably won’t be able to hook up with them again until tomorrow night. We need someplace safe to wait. What do you know about the interior layout?”

She shook her head and followed his example, lifting herself on tiptoe to put her lips to his ear. “Nothing,” she whispered. “I was blindfolded when they brought me here.”

He gave a brief nod and straightened away from her. Once again Barrie felt bereft, abandoned, without his physical nearness. She knew it was just a temporary weakness, this urge to cling to him and the security he represented, but she needed him now with an urgency that was close to pain in its intensity. She wanted nothing more than to press close to him again, to feel the animal heat that told her she wasn’t alone; she wanted to be in touch with the steely strength that stood between her and those bastards who had kidnapped her.

Temporary or not, Barrie hated this neediness on her part; it reminded her too sharply of the way she had clung to her father when her mother and brother had died. Granted, she had been just a child then, and the closeness that had developed between her and her father had, for the most part, been good. But she had seen how stifling it could be, too, and quietly, as was her way, she had begun placing increments of distance between them. Now this had happened, and her first instinct was to cling. Was she going to turn into a vine every time there was some trauma in her life? She didn’t want to be like that, didn’t want to be a weakling. This nightmare had shown her too vividly that all security, no matter how solid it seemed, had its weak points. Instead of depending on others, she would do better to develop her own strengths, strengths she knew were there but that had lain dormant for most of her life. From now on, though, things were going to change.

Perhaps they already had. The incandescent anger that had taken hold of her when she’d lain naked and trussed on that bare cot still burned within her, a small, white-hot core that even her mind-numbing fatigue couldn’t extinguish. Because of it, she refused to give in to her weakness, refused to do anything that might hinder Mackenzie in any way. Instead she braced herself, forcing her knees to lock and her shoulders to square. “What are we going to do?” she whispered. “What can I do to help?”

Because there were no heavy blackout curtains on this grimy window, she was able to see part of his features as he looked at her. Half his face was in shadow, but the scant light gleamed on the slant of one high, chiseled cheekbone, revealed the strong cut of his jaw, played along a mouth that was as clearly defined as that of an ancient Greek statue.

“I’ll have to leave you here alone for a little while,” he said. “Will you be all right?”

Panic exploded in her stomach, her chest. She barely choked back the scream of protest that would have betrayed them. Grinding her teeth together and electing not to speak, because the scream would escape if she did, she nodded her head.

He hesitated, and Barrie could feel his attention focusing on her, as if he sensed her distress and was trying to decide whether or not it was safe to leave her. After a few moments he gave a curt nod that acknowledged her determination, or at least gave her the benefit of the doubt. “I’ll be back in half an hour,” he said. “I promise.”

He pulled something from a pocket on his vest. He unfolded it, revealing a thin blanket of sorts. Barrie stood still as he snugly wrapped it around her. Though it was very thin, the blanket immediately began reflecting her meager body heat. When he let go of the edges they fell open, and Barrie clutched frantically at them in an effort to retain that fragile warmth. By the time she had managed to pull the blanket around her, he was gone, opening the door a narrow crack and slipping through as silently as he had come through the window in the room where she had been held. Then the door closed, and once again she was alone in the darkness.

Her nerves shrieked in protest, but she ignored them. Instead she concentrated on being as quiet as she could, listening for any sounds in the building that could tell her what was going on. There was still some noise from the street, the result of the gunfire that had alarmed the nearby citizenry, but that, too, was fading. The thick stone walls of the building dulled any sound, anyway. From within the building, there was only silence. Had her captors abandoned the site after her supposed escape? Were they in pursuit of Mackenzie’s team, thinking she was with them?

She swayed on her feet, and only then did she realize that she could sit down on the floor and wrap the blanket around her, conserving even more warmth. Her feet and legs were almost numb with cold. Carefully she eased down onto the floor, terrified she would inadvertently make some noise. She sat on the thin blanket and pulled it around herself as best she could. Whatever fabric it was made from, the blanket blocked the chill of the stone floor. Drawing up her legs, Barrie hugged her knees and rested her head on them. She was more comfortable now than she had been in many long hours of terror and, inevitably, her eyelids began to droop heavily. Sitting there alone in the dark, dirty, empty room, she went to sleep.

Chapter 3

Pistol in hand, Zane moved silently through the decrepit old building, avoiding the piles of debris and crumbled stone. They were already on the top floor, so, except for the roof, the only way he could go was down. He already knew where the exits were, but what he didn’t know was the location of the bad guys. Had they chosen this building as only a temporary hiding place and abandoned it when their victim seemingly escaped? Or was this their regular meeting place? If so, how many were there, and where were they? He had to know all that before he risked moving Miss Lovejoy. There was only another hour or so until dawn; he had to get her to a secure location before then.

He stopped at a turn in the corridor, flattening himself against the wall and easing his head around the corner just enough that he could see. Empty. Noiselessly, he moved down the hallway, just as cautiously checking the few rooms that opened off it.

He had pulled the black balaclava into place and smeared dust over his bare arms to dull the sheen of his skin and decrease his visibility. Giving his shirt to Miss Lovejoy and leaving his arms bare had increased his visibility somewhat, but he judged that his darkly tanned arms weren’t nearly as likely to be spotted as her naked body. Even in the darkness of the room where they had been keeping her, he had been able to clearly make out the pale shimmer of her skin. Since none of her clothes had been in evidence, giving her his shirt was the only thing he could have done. She’d been shaking with cold—evidence of shock because the night was warm—and she likely would have gone into hysterics if he’d tried to take her out of there while she was stark naked. He had been prepared, if necessary, to knock her out. But she’d been a little trooper so far, not even screaming when he had suddenly loomed over her in the darkness. With his senses so acute, though, Zane could feel how fragile her control was, how tightly she was strung.

It was understandable. She had likely been raped, not once but many times, since she had been kidnapped. She might fall apart when the crisis was over and she was safe, but for now she was holding together. Her gutsiness made his heart clench with a mixture of tenderness and a lethal determination to protect her. His first priority was to get her out of Libya, not wreak vengeance on her kidnappers—but if any of the bastards happened to get in his way, so be it.

The dark maw of a stairwell yawned before him. The darkness was reassuring; it not only signaled the absence of a guard, it would shield him. Humans still clung to the primitive instincts of cave dwellers. If they were awake, they wanted the comfort of light around them, so they could see the approach of any enemies. Darkness was a weapon that torturers used to break the spirit of their captives, because it emphasized their helplessness, grated on their nerves. But he was a SEAL, and darkness was merely a circumstance he could use. He stepped carefully into the stairwell, keeping his back to the wall to avoid any crumbling edges of the stone. He was fairly certain the stairs were safe, otherwise the kidnappers wouldn’t have been using them, but he didn’t take chances. Like idiots, people stacked things on stair steps, blocking their own escape routes.

A faint lessening of the darkness just ahead told him that he was nearing the bottom of the steps. He paused while he was still within the protective shadow, listening for the slightest sound. There. He heard what he’d been searching for, the distant sound of voices, angry voices tripping over each other with curses and excuses. Though Zane spoke Arabic, he was too far away to make out what they were saying. It didn’t matter; he’d wanted to know their location, and now he did. Grimly he stifled the urge to exact revenge on Miss Lovejoy’s behalf. His mission was to rescue her, not endanger her further.

There was a stairwell at each end of the building. Knowing now that the kidnappers were on the ground floor at the east end, Zane began making his way to the west staircase. He didn’t meet up with any guards; as he had hoped, they thought the rescue had been effected, so they didn’t see any point now in posting guards.

In his experience, perfect missions were few and far between, so rare that he could count on one hand the number of missions he’d been on where everything had gone like clockwork. He tried to be prepared for mechanical breakdowns, accidents, forces of nature, but there was no way to plan for the human factor. He didn’t know how the kidnappers had been alerted to the SEALs’ presence, but he had considered that possibility from the beginning and made an alternate plan in case something went wrong Something had—exactly what, he would find out later: except for that brief communication with his men, telling them to withdraw and switch to the alternate plan, they had maintained radio silence.

Probably it was pure bad luck, some late-night citizen unexpectedly stumbling over one of his men. Things happened. So he had formulated Plan B, his just-in-case plan, because as they had worked their way toward the building, he’d had an uneasy feeling. When his gut told him something, Zane listened. Bunny Withrock had once given him a narrow-eyed look and said, “Boss, you’re even spookier than the Spook.” But they trusted his instincts, to the point that mentally they had probably switched to Plan B as soon as he’d voiced it, before he had even gone into the building.

With Miss Lovejoy to consider, he’d opted for safety. That was why he had gone in alone, through the window, after Spook’s reconnaissance had reported that the kidnappers had set guards at intervals throughout the first floor. There were no lights in any of the rooms on the fourth floor, where Miss Lovejoy was reportedly being held, so it was likely there was no guard actually in the room with her; a guard wouldn’t want to sit in the darkness.

The kidnappers had inadvertently pinpointed the room for him: only one window had been covered with curtains. When Zane had reached that room, he had carefully parted the heavy curtains to make certain they hadn’t shielded an interior light, but the room beyond had been totally dark. And Miss Lovejoy had been there, just as he had expected.

Now, ostensibly with nothing left to guard, the kidnappers all seemed to be grouped together. Zane cat-footed through the lower rooms until he reached the other staircase, then climbed silently upward. Thanks to Spooky, he knew of a fairly secure place to take Miss Lovejoy while they waited for another opportunity for extraction; all he had to do was get her there undetected. That meant he had to do it before dawn, because a half-naked, red-haired Western woman would definitely be noticeable in this Islamic country. He wouldn’t exactly blend in himself, despite his black hair and tanned skin, because of his dark cammies, web gear and weaponry. Most people noticed a man with camouflage paint on his face and an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.

He reached the room where he’d left Miss Lovejoy and entered as quietly as he’d left. The room was empty. Alarm roared through him, every muscle tightening, and then he saw the small, dark hump on the floor and realized that she had curled up with the thin survival blanket over her. She wasn’t moving. Zane listened to the light, almost inaudible evenness of her breathing and realized she had gone to sleep. Again he felt that subtle inner clenching. She had been on edge and terrified for hours, obviously worn out but unable to sleep; the slight measure of security he’d been able to give her, consisting of his shirt, a blanket and a temporary, precarious hiding place, had been enough for her to rest. He hated to disturb her, but they had to move.

Gently he put his hand on her back, lightly rubbing, not shaking her awake but easing her into consciousness so she wouldn’t be alarmed. After a moment she began stirring under his touch, and he felt the moment when she woke, felt her instant of panic, then her quietly determined reach for control.

“We’re moving to someplace safer,” he whispered, removing his hand as soon as he saw she was alert. After what she had been through, she wouldn’t want to endure a man’s touch any more than necessary. The thought infuriated him, because his instinct was to comfort her; the women in his family, mother, sister and sisters-in-law, were adored and treasured by the men. He wanted to cradle Barrie Lovejoy against him, whisper promises to her that he would personally dismember every bastard who had hurt her, but he didn’t want to do anything that would undermine her fragile control. They didn’t have time for any comforting, anyway.

She clambered to her feet, still clutching the blanket around her. Zane reached for it, and her fingers tightened on the fabric, then slowly loosened. She didn’t have to explain her reluctance to release the protective cloth. Zane knew she was still both extrasensitive to cold and painfully embarrassed by her near nudity.

“Wear it this way,” he whispered, wrapping the blanket around her waist sarong-style so that it draped to her feet. He tied the ends securely over her left hipbone, then bent down to check that the fabric wasn’t too tight around her feet, so she would have sufficient freedom of movement if they had to run.

When he straightened, she touched his arm, then swiftly lifted her hand away, as if even that brief touch had been too much. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Watch me closely,” he instructed. “Obey my hand signals.” He explained the most basic signals to her, the raised clenched fist that meant “Stop!” and the open hand that meant merely “halt,” the signal to proceed and the signal to hide. Considering her state of mind, plus her obvious fatigue, he doubted she would be able to absorb more than those four simple commands. They didn’t have far to go, anyway; if he needed more commands than that, they were in deep ca-ca.

She followed him out of the room and down the west staircase, though he felt her reluctance to step into the Stygian depths. He showed her how to keep her back to the wall, how to feel with her foot for the edge of the step. He felt her stumble once, heard her sharply indrawn breath. He whirled to steady her; his pistol was in his right hand, but his left arm snaked out, wrapping around her hips to steady her as she teetered two steps above him. The action lifted her off her feet, hauling her against his left side. She felt soft in his grip, her hips narrow but nicely curved, and his nostrils flared as he scented the warm sweetness of her skin.

She was all but sitting on his encircling arm, her hands braced on his shoulders. Reluctantly he bent and set her on her feet, and she immediately straightened away from him. “Sorry,” she whispered in the darkness.

Zane’s admiration for her grew. She hadn’t squealed in alarm, despite nearly falling, despite the way he’d grabbed her. She was holding herself together, narrowing her focus to the achievement of one goal: freedom.

She was even more cautious in her movements after that one misstep, letting more distance grow between them than he liked. On the last flight of steps he stopped, waiting for her to catch up with him. Knowing that she couldn’t see him, he said, “Here,” when she was near, so she wouldn’t bump into him.

He eased his way down the last couple of steps into the faint light. There was no one insight. With a brief wave of his hand he signaled her forward, and she slipped out of the darkness of the stairwell to stand beside him.

There was a set of huge wooden double doors that opened onto the street, but Zane was aware of increased noise outside as dawn neared, and it was too risky to use that exit. From their left came a raised voice, shouting in Arabic, and he felt her tense. Quickly, before the sound of one of her kidnappers unnerved her, he shepherded her into a cluttered storage room, where a small, single window shone high on the wall. “We’ll go out this window,” he murmured. “There’ll be a drop of about four feet to the ground, nothing drastic. I’ll boost you up. When you hit the ground, move away from the street but stay against the side of the building. Crouch down so you’ll present the smallest possible silhouette. Okay?”

She nodded her understanding, and they picked their way over the jumbled boxes and debris until they were standing under the window. Zane stretched to reach the sill, hooked his fingers on the plaster and boosted himself up until he was balanced with one knee on the sill and one booted foot braced against a rickety stack of boxes. The window evidently hadn’t been used in a long time; the glass was opaque with dust, the hinges rusty and stiff. He wrestled it open, wincing at the scraping noise, even though he knew it wouldn’t carry to where the kidnappers were. Fresh air poured into the musty room. Like a cat he dropped to the floor, then turned to her.

“You can put your foot in my hand, or you can climb on my shoulders. Which do you prefer?”

With the window open, more light was coming through. He could see her doubtful expression as she stared at the window, and for the first time he appreciated the evenness of her features. He already knew how sweetly her body was shaped, but now he knew that Miss Lovejoy didn’t hurt his eyes at all.

“Can you get through there?” she whispered, ignoring his question as she eyed first the expanse of his shoulders and then the narrowness of the window.

Zane had already made those mental measurements. “It’ll be a tight fit, but I’ve been through tighter ones.”

She gazed at his darkened face, then gave one of her sturdy nods, the one that said she was ready to go on. Now he could see her calculating the difficulty of maneuvering through the window with the blanket tied around her waist, and he saw the exact moment when she made her decision. Her shoulders squared and her chin came up as she untied the blanket and draped it around her like a long scarf, winding it around her neck and tossing the ends over her shoulders to dangle rakishly down her back.

“I think I’d better climb on your shoulders,” she said. “I’ll have more leverage that way.”

He knelt on the floor and held his hands up for her to catch and brace herself. She went around behind him and daintily placed her right foot on his right shoulder, then lifted herself into a half crouch. As soon as her left foot had settled into place and her hands were securely in his, he rose steadily until he was standing erect. Her weight was negligible compared to what he handled during training. He moved closer to the wall, and she released his right hand to brace her hand against the sill. “Here I go,” she whispered, and boosted herself through the window.

She went through it headfirst. It was the fastest way, but not the easiest, because she had no way of breaking her fall on the other side. He looked up and saw the gleam of pale, bare legs and the naked curves of her buttocks; then she vanished from sight, and there was a thump as she hit the ground.

Quickly Zane boosted himself up again. “Are you all right?” he whispered harshly.

There was silence for a moment, then a shaky, whispered answer. “I think so.”

“Take the rifle.” He handed the weapon to her, then dropped to the floor while he removed his web gear. That, too, went through the window. Then he followed, feet first, twisting his shoulders at an angle to fit through the narrow opening and landing in a crouch. Obediently, she had moved to the side and was sitting against the wall with the blanket once more clutched around her and his rifle cradled in her arms.

Dawn was coming fast, the remnants of darkness no more than a deep twilight. “Hurry,” he said as he shrugged into the web vest and took the rifle from her. He slid it into position, then drew the pistol again. The heavy butt felt reassuring and infinitely familiar in his palm. With the weapon in his right hand and her hand clasped in his left, he pulled her into the nearest alley.

Benghazi was a modern city, fairly Westernized, and Libya’s chief port. They were near the docks, and the smell of the sea was strong in his nostrils. Like the vast majority of waterfronts, it was one of the rougher areas of the city. From what he’d been able to tell, no authorities had shown up to investigate the gunfire, even supposing it had been reported. The Libyan government wasn’t friendly—there were no diplomatic relations between the United States and Libya—but that didn’t mean the government would necessarily turn a blind eye to the kidnapping of an ambassador’s daughter. Of course, it was just as likely that it would, which was why diplomatic channels hadn’t been considered. The best option had seemed to go in and get Miss Lovejoy out as quickly as possible.

There were plenty of ramshackle, abandoned buildings in the waterfront area. The rest of the team had withdrawn to one, drawing any pursuers away from Zane and Miss Lovejoy, while they holed up in another. They would rendezvous at oh-one-hundred hours the next morning.

Spooky had chosen the sites, so Zane trusted their relative safety. Now he and Miss Lovejoy wended their way through a rat’s nest of alleyways. She made a stifled sound of disgust once, and he knew she’d stepped on something objectionable, but other than that she soldiered on in silence.

It took only a few minutes to reach the designated safe area. The building looked more down than up, but Spooky had investigated and reported an intact inner room. One outer wall was crumbled to little more than rubble. Zane straddled it, then caught Miss Lovejoy around the waist and effortlessly lifted her over the heap, twisting his torso to set her on the other side. Then he joined her, leading her under half-fallen timbers and around spiderwebs that he wanted left undisturbed. The fact that he could see those webs meant they had to get under cover, fast.

The door to the interior room hung haphazardly on one hinge, and the wood was rotting away at the top. He pulled her inside the protective walls. “Stay here while I take care of our tracks,” he whispered, then dropped to a crouch and moved to where they had crossed the remnants of the outer wall. He worked backward from there, scattering dirt to hide the signs of their passage. There were dark, wet places on the broken pieces of stone that were all that remained of the floor. He frowned, knowing what those dark patches meant. Damn it, why hadn’t she said something? Had she left a trail of blood straight to their hiding place?

Carefully he obliterated the marks. It wasn’t completely her fault; he should have given more thought to her bare feet. The truth was, his mind had been more on her bare butt and the other details of her body that he’d already seen. He was far too aware of her sexually; the proof of it was heavy in his loins. After what she had been through that was the last thing she needed, so he would ignore his desire, but that didn’t make it go away.

When he had worked his way to the room, he silently lifted the door and reset it in the frame, bracing it so it wouldn’t sag again. Only then did he turn to face her. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d cut your foot? When did it happen?” His voice was low and very even.

She was still standing where he’d left her, her face colorless in the half light coming through the open shutters of the window, her eyes so huge with fatigue and strain that she looked like a forlorn, bedraggled little owl. A puzzled frown knit her brows as she looked at her feet. “Oh,” she said in dazed discovery as she examined the dark stains on her left foot. “I didn’t realize it was cut. It must have happened when I stepped in that…whatever…in the alley. I remember that it hurt, but I thought there was just a sharp rock under the…stuff.”

At least it hadn’t happened any sooner than that. Their position should still be safe. He keyed the radio, giving the prearranged one click that told the team he was in the safe area and receiving two clicks in return, meaning his men were secure in their position, too. They would check in with each other at set intervals, but for the most part they would spend the day resting. Relieved, Zane turned his mind to other matters.

“Sit down and let me see your foot,” he ordered. The last thing he needed was for her to be hobbled, though from what he’d seen of her so far, she wouldn’t breathe a word of complaint, merely limp along as fast as she could.

There was nothing to sit on except the broken stones of the floor, so that was where she sat, carefully keeping the blanket wrapped around her waist. Her feet were filthy, caked with the same mess that caked his boots. Blood oozed sullenly from a cut on the instep of her left foot.

Zane shucked off his black hood and headset, took off his web vest and removed his gloves; then he unpacked his survival gear, which included a small and very basic first-aid kit. He sat cross-legged in front of her and lifted her foot to rest on his thigh. After tearing open a small packet containing a premoistened antiseptic pad, he thoroughly cleaned the cut and the area around it, pretending not to notice her involuntary flinches of pain, which she quickly tried to control.

The cut was deep enough that it probably needed a couple of stitches. He took out another antiseptic pad and pressed it hard over the wound until the bleeding stopped. “How long has it been since your last tetanus vaccination?” he asked.

Barrie thought that she had never heard anything as calm as his voice. She could see him clearly now; it was probably a good thing she hadn’t been able to do so before, because her nerves likely couldn’t have stood the pressure. She cleared her throat and managed to say, “I don’t remember. Years,” but her mind wasn’t on what she was saying.

His thick black hair was matted with sweat, and his face was streaked with black and green paint. The black T-shirt he wore was grimy with mingled dust and sweat, not that the shirt she had on was in much better shape. The material strained over shoulders that looked a yard wide, clung to a broad chest and flat stomach, stretched over powerful biceps. His arms were corded with long, steely muscles, his wrists almost twice as thick as hers; his long-fingered hands were well-shaped, callused, harder than any human hands should be—and immensely gentle as he cleansed the wound on her foot.

His head was bent over the task. She saw the dense black eyelashes, the bold sweep of his eyebrows, the thin and arrogantly high bridge of his nose, the chiseled plane of his cheekbones. She saw his mouth, so clear-cut and stern, as if he seldom smiled. Beard stubble darkened his jaw beneath the camouflage paint. Then his gaze flicked up to her for a moment, cool and assessing, as if he was gauging her reaction to the sting of the antiseptic, and she was stunned by the clear, pale beauty of his blue gray eyes. He had silently and efficiently killed that guard, then stepped over the body as if it didn’t exist. A wicked, ten-inch black blade rode in a scabbard strapped to his thigh, and he handled both pistol and rifle with an ease that bespoke a familiarity that went far beyond the normal. He was the most savage, dangerous, lethal thing, man or beast, that she had ever seen—and she felt utterly safe with him.

He had given her the shirt off his back, treating her with a courtesy and tenderness that had eased her shock, calmed her fears. He had seen her naked; she had been able to ignore that while they were still trapped in the same building with her kidnappers, but now they were relatively safe, and alone, and she was burningly aware of both his intense masculinity and of her nakedness beneath his shirt. Her skin felt unusually sensitive, as if it was too hot and tight, and the rasp of the fabric against her nipples was almost painfully acute.

Her foot looked small and fragile in his big hands. He frowned in concentration as he applied an antibiotic ointment to the cut, then fashioned a butterfly bandage to close the wound. He worked with a swift, sure dexterity, and it was only a moment before the bandaging was complete. Gently he lifted her foot off his leg. “There. You should be able to walk with no problem, but as soon as we get you to the ship, get the doc to put in a couple of stitches and give you an injection for tetanus.”

“Yes, sir,” she said softly.

He looked up with a swift, faint smile. “I’m Navy. That’s, ‘Aye, aye, sir.”’

The smile nearly took her breath. If he ever truly smiled, she thought, she might have heart failure. To hide her reaction, she held out her hand to him. “Barrie Lovejoy. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

He folded his fingers around hers and solemnly shook hands. “Lieutenant-Commander Zane Mackenzie, United States Navy SEALs.”

A SEAL. Her heart jumped in her chest. That explained it, then. SEALs were known as the most dangerous men alive, men so skilled in the arts of warfare that they were in a class by themselves. He didn’t just look lethal; he was lethal.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“My pleasure, ma’am.”

Hot color flooded her face as she looked at her blanket-covered lap. “Please, call me Barrie. After all, your shirt is the only thing I…” Her voice trailed off, and she bit her lip. “I mean, formality at this point is—”

“I understand,” he said gently, breaking into her stumbling explanation. “I don’t want you to be embarrassed, so the circumstances are strictly between us, if you prefer. But I advise you to tell the ship’s surgeon, or your own doctor, for the sake of your health.”

Barrie blinked at him in confusion, wondering what on earth her health had to do with the fact that he’d seen her naked. Then comprehension dawned; if she hadn’t been so tired, she would have realized immediately what conclusion he had drawn from the situation.

“They didn’t rape me,” she whispered. Her face flushed even hotter. “They—they touched me, they hurt me and did some…other things, but they didn’t actually rape me. They were saving that for today. Some important guy in their organization was supposed to arrive, and I suppose they were planning a sort of p-party.”

Zane’s expression remained calm and grave, and she knew he didn’t believe her. Why should he? He’d found her tied up and naked, and she’d already been in the kidnappers’ hands for most of a day. Chivalry wasn’t part of their code; they had refrained from rape only on orders from their leader, because he wanted to be there to enjoy her himself before the others had their turn on her.

He didn’t say anything, and Barrie busied herself with the used antiseptic pads, which were still damp enough to clean the rest of the disgusting muck from her feet. She longed for a bath, but that was so far out of the question that she didn’t even voice the wish.

While she busied herself with tidying up, he explored the small room, which didn’t take long, because there was nothing in it. He closed the broken shutters over the window; the wooden slats were rotted away at the top, allowing some light through but preventing any passersby from seeing inside.

With the room mostly dark once more, it was like being in a snug, private cave. Barrie smothered a yawn, fighting the fatigue that dragged on her like lead weights. The only sleep she’d had was that brief nap while Zane had been finding a way out of the building, and she was so tired that even her hunger paled in comparison.

He noticed, of course; he didn’t miss anything. “Why don’t you go to sleep?” he suggested. “In a couple of hours, when more people are moving around and I won’t be as noticeable, I’ll go scrounge up something for us to eat and liberate some clothes for you.”

Barrie eyed the paint streaking his face. “With makeup like that, I don’t believe you’re going to go unnoticed no matter how crowded the streets are.”

That faint smile touched his lips again, then was gone. “I’ll take it off first.”

The smile almost kept her awake. Almost. She felt her muscles slowly loosening, as if his permission to sleep was all her body needed to hear. Her eyelids were too heavy for her to hold open anymore; it was like a veil of darkness descending. With her last fraction of consciousness, she was aware of his arms around her, gently lowering her to the floor.

Chapter 4

She had gone to sleep like a baby, Zane thought, watching her. He’d seen it often enough in his ten nephews, the way little children had of dropping off so abruptly, their bodies looking almost boneless as they toppled over into waiting arms. His gaze drifted over her face. Now that dawn was here, even with the shutters closed, he could plainly see the exhaustion etched on her face; the wonder was that she had held up so well, rather than that she’d gone to sleep now.

He could use some rest himself. He stretched out beside her, keeping a slight distance between them; not touching, but close enough that he could reach her immediately if their hiding place was discovered. He was still wired, too full of adrenaline to sleep yet, but it felt good to relax and let himself wind down while he waited for the city to come completely awake.

Now he could also see the fire in her hair, the dark auburn shade that, when she stood in the sun, would glint with gold and bronze. Her eyes were a deep, soft green, her brows and lashes like brown mink. He wouldn’t have been surprised by freckles, but her skin was clear and creamy, except for the bruise that mottled one cheek. There were bruises on her arms, and though he couldn’t see them, he knew the shirt covered other marks left by brutal men. She’d insisted they hadn’t raped her, but probably she was ashamed for anyone else to know, as if she’d had any choice in the matter. Maybe she wanted to keep it quiet for her father’s sake. Zane didn’t care about her reasons; he just hoped she would get the proper medical care.

He thought dispassionately about slipping to the building where they’d held her and killing any and all of the bastards who were still there. God knew they deserved it, and he wouldn’t lose a minute’s worth of sleep over any of them. But his mission was to rescue Miss Lovejoy—Barrie—and he hadn’t accomplished that yet. If he went back, there was the chance that he would be killed, and that would endanger her, as well as his men. He’d long ago learned how to divorce his emotions from the action so he could think clearly, and he wasn’t about to compromise a mission now…But damn, he wanted to kill them.

He liked the way she looked. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous or anything like that, but her features were regular, and asleep, with her woes put aside for the moment, her expression was sweetly serene. She was a pretty little thing, as finely made as an expensive porcelain figurine. Oh, he supposed she was probably of middle height for a woman, about five feet five, but he was six-three and outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, so to him she was little. Not as little as his mother and sister, but they were truly slight, as delicate as fairies. Barrie Lovejoy, for all her aristocratic bloodlines, had the sturdiness of a pioneer. Most women, with good reason, would have broken down long before now.

He was surprised to feel himself getting a little drowsy. Despite their situation, there was something calming about lying here beside her, watching her sleep. Though he was solitary by nature and had always preferred sleeping alone after his sexual appetite had been satisfied, it felt elementally right, somehow, to guard her with his body as they slept. Had cavemen done this, putting themselves between the mouth of the cave and the sleeping forms of their women and children, drowsily watching the gentle movements of their breathing as the fires died down and night claimed the land? If it was an ancient instinct, Zane mused, he sure as hell hadn’t felt it before now.

But he wanted to touch her, to feel the softness of her flesh beneath his hand. He wanted to fold her within the warm protection of his body, tuck her in close, curl around her and keep her there with an arm draped around her waist. Only the knowledge that the last thing in the world she would want now was a man’s touch kept him from doing just that.

He wanted to hold her. He ached to hold her.

She was dwarfed by his shirt, but he’d seen the body hidden by the folds of cloth. His night vision was very good; he’d been able to discern her high, round breasts, not very big, but definitely mouth-watering, and tipped with small, tight nipples. She was curvy, womanly, with a small waist and rounded hips and a neat little triangle of pubic hair. He’d seen her buttocks. Just thinking about it made him feel hollowed out with desire; her butt was fine indeed. He would like to feel it snuggled up against his thighs.

He wasn’t going to be able to sleep, after all. He was fully aroused, desire pulsing through his swollen and rigid flesh. Wincing, he turned onto his back and adjusted himself to a more comfortable position, but the comfort was relative. The only way he would truly find ease was within the soft, hot clasp of her body, and that wasn’t likely to happen.

The small room grew brighter and warmer as dawn developed into full morning. The stone walls would protect them from most of the day’s heat, but soon they would need water. Water, food, and clothes for her. A robe would be better than Western-style clothing, because the traditional Muslim attire would cover her hair, and there were enough traditionalists in Benghazi that a robe wouldn’t draw a second glance.

The streets were noisy now, the waterfront humming with activity. Zane figured it was time for him to do some foraging. He wiped the camouflage paint from his skin as best he could and disguised what was left by smearing dirt on his face. He wasn’t about to go unarmed, so he pulled the tail of his T-shirt free from his pants and tucked the pistol into the waistband at the small of his back, then let the shirt fall over it. Anyone who paid attention would know the bulge for what it was, but what the hell, it wasn’t unusual for people to go armed in this part of the world. Thanks to his one-quarter Comanche heritage, his skin had a rich bronze hue, and in addition he was darkly tanned from countless hours of training in the sun and sea and wind. There was nothing about his appearance that would attract undue notice, not even his eyes, because there were plenty of Libyans with a European parent.

He checked Barrie, reassuring himself that she was still sleeping soundly. He’d told her that he would be slipping out for a while, so she shouldn’t be alarmed if she woke while he was gone. He left their crumbling sanctuary as silently as he had entered it.

It was over two hours before he returned, almost time for the designated check-in time with his men. He had a definite talent for scavenging, he thought, though outright thievery would probably be a better term. He carried a woman’s black robe and head covering, and wrapped up in it was a selection of fruit, cheese and bread, as well as a pair of slippers he hoped would fit Barrie. The water had been the hardest to come by, because he’d lacked a container. He’d solved that by stealing a stoppered gallon jug of wine, forbidden by the Koran but readily available anyway. He had poured out the cheap, sour wine and filled the jug with water. The water would have a definite wine taste to it, but it would be wet, and that was all they required.

While he had the opportunity, he disguised the entrance to their lair a bit, piling some stones in front of it, arranging a rotted timber so that it looked as if it blocked the door. The door was still visible, but looked much less accessible. He tested his handiwork to make certain they could still get out easily enough, then slipped inside and once again braced the door in its sagging frame.

He turned to check on Barrie. She was still asleep. The room was considerably warmer, and she had kicked the blanket aside. His shirt was up around her waist.

The kick of desire was like taking a blow to the chest. He almost staggered from it, his heart racing, his breath strangling in his throat. Sweat beaded on his forehead, ran down his temple. God.

He should turn away. He should put the blanket over her. He should put sex completely out of his mind. There were any number of things he should do, but instead he stared at her with a hunger so intense he ached with it, quivered with it. Greedily his gaze moved over every female inch of her. His sex was throbbing like a toothache. He wanted her more intensely than he’d ever wanted a woman before. His famous cool remoteness had failed him—there wasn’t a cool inch on him, and his desire was so damn strong and immediate, he was shaking from the effort of resisting it.

Moving slowly, stiffly, he set his purloined goodies on the floor. His breath hissed between his clenched teeth. He hadn’t known sexual frustration could be this painful. He’d never had any trouble getting a woman whenever he’d wanted one. This woman was off-limits, though, from even an attempt at seduction. She’d been through enough without having to fend off her rescuer, too.

As warm as the room was now, if he spread the blanket over her she would only kick it off again. Gingerly he went down on one knee beside her and with shaking hands pulled the shirt tail down to cover her. With slight disbelief he eyed the fine tremor of his fingers. He never trembled. He was rock steady during the most tense and dangerous situations, icily controlled in combat. He had parachuted out of a burning plane, swum with sharks and sewn up his own flesh. He had ridden unbroken horses and even bulls a time or two. He had killed. He had done all of that with perfect control, but this sleeping, red-haired woman made him shake.

Grimly he forced himself to turn aside and pick up the radio headset. Holding the earpiece in place, he clicked once and immediately heard two clicks in response. Everything was okay.

Maybe some water would cool him down. At least thinking about it was better than thinking about Barrie. He dropped a couple of purification tablets into the jug, in case the small amount of wine that had remained in it wasn’t enough to kill all the invisible little critters. The tablets didn’t improve the taste any—just the opposite—but they were better than a case of the runs.

He drank just enough to relieve his thirst, then settled down with his back to a wall. There was nothing to do but wait and contemplate the walls, because he sure as hell didn’t trust himself to look at Barrie.

Voices woke her. They were loud, and close by. Barrie bolted upright, her eyes huge with alarm. Hard arms grabbed her, and an even harder hand clamped itself over her mouth, stifling any sound she might have made. Confused, disoriented, in sheer terror she began to fight as much as she could. Teeth. She should use her teeth. But his fingers were biting hard into her jaw, and she couldn’t open her mouth. Desperately she tried to shake her head, and he merely gathered her in tighter, tucking her against him in a way that was oddly protective.

“Shh” came that toneless whisper, and the familiarity of it cut through the panic and fog of sleep. Zane.

Instantly she relaxed, weak with relief. Feeling the tension leave her muscles, he tilted her face, still keeping his hand over her mouth. Their eyes met in the shadowed light, and he gave a brief nod as he saw that she was awake now, and aware. He released her jaw, his hard fingers trailing briefly over her skin in apology for the tightness of his grip. The barely there caress went through her like lightning. She shivered as it seared a path along nerve endings throughout her body and instinctively turned her face into the warm hollow created by the curve of his shoulder.

The arm around her had loosened immediately when she shivered, but at her action she felt him hesitate a fraction of a second, then gather her snugly against him once more.

The voices were closer, and added to them were some thuds and the sound of crumbling rock. She listened to the rapid, rolling syllables of Arabic, straining to concentrate on the voices. Were they the same voices she had heard through yesterday’s long nightmare? It was difficult to tell.

She didn’t understand the language; hers had been a finishing-school education, suited to an ambassador’s daughter. She spoke French and Italian fluently, Spanish a little less so. After her father’s posting in Athens she had made it a point to study Greek, too, and had learned enough that she could carry on a simple conversation, though she understood more than she spoke.

Fiercely she wished she had insisted on lessons in Arabic, too. She had hated every moment she’d spent in the kidnappers’ hands, but not speaking the language had made her feel even more helpless, more isolated.

She would rather die than let them get their hands on her again.

She must have tensed, because Zane gave her a light squeeze of reassurance. Swiftly she glanced at his face. He wasn’t looking at her; instead he was concentrating on the fragile, half-rotted door that protected the entrance to their sanctuary, and on the voices beyond. His expression was utterly calm and distant. Abruptly she realized that he did understand Arabic, and whatever was being said by the people picking through the ruins of the building, he wasn’t alarmed by it. He was alert, because their hiding place could be compromised at any moment, but evidently he felt confident of being able to handle that problem.

With reason, no doubt. From what she’d seen, she thought he was capable of handling just about any situation. She would trust him with her life—and had.

The voices went on for a long time, sometimes coming so close to their hiding place that Zane palmed that big pistol and held it aimed unwaveringly at the door. Barrie stared at that hand, so lean and powerful and capable. There wasn’t the slightest tremor visible; it was almost unreal, almost inhuman, for any man to be that calm and have such perfect control over his body.

They sat silently in the warm, shadowy little room, their breathing for the most part their only movements. Barrie noticed that the blanket no longer covered her legs, but the shirt, thank God, kept her reasonably decent. It was too hot to lie under the blanket, anyway.

Time crept by at a sloth’s pace. The warmth and silence were hypnotic, lulling her into a half dream state of both awareness and distance. She was ferociously hungry, but unaffected by it, as if she was merely aware of someone else’s hunger. After a while her muscles began to ache from being in one position for so long, but that didn’t matter, either. Thirst, though, was different. In the increasing heat, her need for water began to gnaw at her. The kidnappers had given her some water a couple of times, but she’d had nothing to drink in hours—since she had learned they expected her to relieve herself in their presence, in fact. She had chosen to do without water rather than provide them with such amusement again.

Sweat streaked down Zane’s face and dampened his shirt. She was perfectly content to remain where she was, nestled against his side. The arm around her made her feel safer than if their hiding place had been constructed of steel, rather than crumbling stone and plaster, and rotting wood.

She had never been exposed to a man like him before. Her only contact with the military had been with the senior officers who attended functions at the embassy, colonels and generals, admirals, the upper brass; there were also the Marine guards at the embassy, with their perfect uniforms and perfect manners. Though she supposed the Marine guards had to be exemplary soldiers or they wouldn’t have been chosen as embassy guards, still, they were nothing like the man who held her so protectively. They were soldiers; he was a warrior. He was as different from them as the lethal, ten-inch black blade strapped to his thigh was from a pocketknife. He was a finely honed weapon.

For all that, he wasn’t immortal, and they weren’t safe. Their hiding place could be discovered. He could be killed; she could be recaptured. The hard reality of that was something she couldn’t ignore as she could hunger and cramped muscles.

After a long, long time, the voices went away. Zane released her and walked noiselessly to the door to look out. She had never before seen anyone move with such silent grace, like a big jungle cat on velvet paws instead of a battle-hardened warrior in boots.

She didn’t move until he turned around, the faint relaxation of his expression telling her the danger was past. “What were they doing?” she asked, taking care to keep her voice low.

“Scavenging building materials, picking up blocks, any pieces of wood that hadn’t rotted. If they’d had a sledgehammer, they probably would have dismantled these walls. They carted the stuff off in a wheelbarrow. If they need more, they’ll probably be back.”

“What will we do?”

“The same thing we did this time—hunker down and keep quiet.”

“But if they come in here—”

“I’ll handle it.” He cut her worry short before she could completely voice it, but he did it with a tone of reassurance. “I brought some food and water. Interested?”

Barrie scrambled to her knees, eagerness in every line of her body. “Water! I’m so thirsty!” Then she halted, her recent experience fresh in her mind. “But if I drink anything, where will I go to…you know.”

He regarded her with faint bemusement, and she blushed a little as she realized that wasn’t a problem he normally encountered. When he and his men were on a mission, they would relieve themselves wherever and whenever they needed.

“I’ll find a place for you to go,” he finally said. “Don’t let that stop you from drinking the water you need. I also found some clothes for you, but as hot as it’s getting in here, you’ll probably want to wait until night before you put them on.”

He indicated the black bundle beside his gear, and she realized it was a robe. She thought of the modesty it would provide, and gratitude flooded her; at least she wouldn’t have to face his men wearing nothing more than his shirt. But he was right; in the heat of day, and in the privacy of this small room, she would prefer wearing his shirt. They both knew she was bare beneath it; he’d already seen her stark naked, and demonstrated his decency by giving her the shirt and ignoring her nakedness, so there was no point now in swathing herself in an ankle-length robe.

He produced a big jug and unstoppered it. “It’ll taste funny,” he warned as he passed the jug to her. “Purification tablets.”

It did taste funny—warm, with a chemical flavor. But it was wonderful. She drank a few swallows, not wanting to make her stomach cramp after being empty for so long. While she was drinking, he unwrapped the bits of food he’d procured—a loaf of hard bread, a hunk of cheese and several oranges, plums and dates. It looked like a feast.

He straightened the blanket for her to sit on, then took out his knife and cut small portions of both the loaf and cheese and gave them to her. She started to protest that she was hungry enough to eat much more than that, but realized that what he had would have to last them all day, and perhaps longer than that. She wasn’t about to complain about the amount of food she did have.

She had never been particularly fond of cheese, and she suspected that if she hadn’t been so hungry she wouldn’t have been fond of this cheese, either, but at the moment it was delicious. She nibbled at both bread and cheese, finding satisfaction in the simple act of chewing. As it happened, she had overestimated her appetite. The small portion he had given her was more than enough.

He ate more heartily, and polished off one of the oranges. He insisted that she eat a couple of the juicy slices and drink a bit more water. Feeling replete, Barrie yawned and refused the offer of another orange slice.

“No, thanks, I’m full.”

“Would you like to freshen up now?”

Her head whipped around, sending her red hair flying. Amusement twinkled in his pale eyes at her eager, pleading expression. “There’s enough water?”

“Enough to dampen a bandana.”

She didn’t have a bandana, of course, but he did. Carefully he poured just enough water from the jug to wet the square cloth, then politely turned his back and busied himself with his gear.

Slowly Barrie smoothed the wet cloth over her face, sighing in pleasure at the freshness of the sensation. She hadn’t realized how grimy she felt until now, when she was able to rectify the situation. She found a sore place on her cheek, where one of the men had hit her, and other tender bruises on her arms. Glancing at Zane’s broad back, she quickly unbuttoned the shirt just enough that she could slide the handkerchief inside and rub it over her torso and under her arms. After she fastened the garment, her dusty legs got the same attention. The dampness was wonderfully cooling, almost voluptuous in the sensual delight it gave her.

“I’m finished,” she said, and returned the dark bandana to him when he turned around. “It felt wonderful. Thank you.”

Then her heart leaped in her chest, because he evidently felt the same need to cool off as she had, but unlike her, he didn’t keep his shirt on. He peeled the snug black T-shirt off over his head and dropped it on the blanket, then sat on his heels while he moistened the bandana and began scrubbing it over his face.

Oh, my. Helplessly she stared at the rippling muscles of his chest and stomach, the way they flexed and relaxed with the flow of his movements. The dim light caught the deep bronze of his skin, gleamed on the smooth, powerful curve of his shoulder. Her fascinated gaze wandered over the slant of his shoulder blades, the diamond of black hair that stretched from nipple to nipple on his chest. He twisted around to reach for something, and she found his back equally fascinating, with the deep furrow of his spine bisecting two muscular planes.

There was an inch-long scar on his left cheekbone. She hadn’t noticed it before because his face had been so dirty, but now she could plainly see the silvery line of it. It wasn’t a disfiguring scar at all, just a straight little slash, as precise as a surgeon’s cut. The scar along his rib cage was different, easily eight or nine inches in length, jagged, the scar tissue thick and ridged. Then there were the two round, puckered scars, one just above his waist, the other just below his right shoulder blade. Bullet wounds. She’d never seen one before, but she recognized them for what they were. There was another slash running along his right bicep, and God only knew how many other scars there were on the rest of his body. The warrior hadn’t led a charmed life; his body bore the signs of battle.

He squatted half-naked, unconcernedly rubbing the damp handkerchief across his sweaty chest, lifting his arms to wash under them, exposing the smooth undersides and intriguing patches of hair. He was so fundamentally, elementally male, and so purely a warrior, that her breath strangled in her lungs as she watched him.

The rush of warmth through her body told her that she was more female than she’d ever imagined.

A little dazed, she sat back, resting against the wall. Absently she made certain the shirt tail preserved her modesty, but thoughts were tumbling through her mind, dizzyingly fast yet very clear.

They weren’t out of danger yet.

During the past twenty-four horrific hours, she hadn’t spent a lot of time wondering about the motive behind her kidnapping. She’d had too much to deal with as it was, the sheer terror, the confusion, the pain of the blows they’d given her.

She’d been blindfolded much of the time, and disoriented. She’d been humiliated, stripped naked and roughly fondled, taunted with the prospect of rape, and yet they had stopped short of rape—for a reason. Sheer psychological torture had undoubtedly played a role, but most of all they’d had orders to save her for the man who was to arrive today.

Who was he? He was the one behind her kidnapping; he had to be. But why?

Ransom? When she thought about it now, coolly and clearly, she didn’t think so. Yes, her father was rich. Many a diplomat came from a moneyed background; it wasn’t unusual. But if money had been the motive, there were others who were richer, though perhaps she had been chosen specifically because it was well known that her father would beggar himself to keep her safe. Perhaps.

But why would they have taken her out of the country? Wouldn’t they have wanted to keep her close by, to make the exchange for money easier? No, the very fact that they’d taken her out of the country meant they’d kidnapped her for another reason. Maybe they would have asked for money anyway; since they already had her, why not? But money wasn’t the primary object. So what was?

She didn’t know, and since she didn’t know who the leader was, she had no way of guessing what he truly wanted.

Not herself. She dismissed that notion out of hand. She wasn’t the object of obsession, because no man so obsessed with a woman that he was driven to such lengths would let his men maul her. Nor was she the type to inspire obsession, she thought wryly. Certainly none of the men she’d dated had shown any signs of obsessive behavior.

So…there was something else, some piece of puzzle she was missing. Was it someone she knew? Something she’d read or seen?

Nothing came to mind. She wasn’t involved in intrigue, though of course she knew which employees at the embassy were employed by the CIA. That was standard, nothing unusual. Her father often spoke privately with Art Sandefer and, lately, Mack Prewett, too. She’d often thought that Art was more bureaucrat than spy, though the intelligence in his tired gaze said he’d done his time in the field, too. She didn’t know about Mack Prewett. There was something restless and hard about him, something that made her uneasy.

Her father said Mack was a good man. She wasn’t certain about that, but neither did he seem like a villain. Still, there had been that time a couple of weeks ago when she hadn’t known anyone was with her father and had breezily walked in without knocking. Her father had been handing a thick manila envelope to Mack; both of them had looked startled and uncomfortable, but her father wasn’t a diplomat for nothing. He’d efficiently smoothed over the slight awkwardness, and Mack had left the office almost immediately, taking the envelope with him. Barrie hadn’t asked any questions about it, because if it was CIA business, then it wasn’t her business.

Now she wondered what had been in that envelope.

That small incident was the only thing the slightest bit untoward that she could remember. Art Sandefer had once said that there was no such thing as coincidence, but could that moment be linked to her kidnapping? Could it be the cause of it? That was a reach.

She didn’t know what was in the envelope, hadn’t shown any interest in it. But she had seen her father giving it to Mack Prewett. That meant…what?

She felt as if she was feeling her way through a mental maze, taking wrong turns, stumbling into dead ends, then groping her way back to logic. Her father would never, in any way, do anything that would harm her. Therefore, that envelope had no significance—unless he was involved in something dangerous and wanted out. Her kidnapping made sense only if someone was using her as a weapon to make her father do something he didn’t want to do.

She couldn’t accept the idea of her father doing anything traitorous—at least, not voluntarily. She wasn’t blind to his weaknesses. He was a bit of a snob, he didn’t at all like even the idea that someday she might fall in love and get married, he was protective to the point of smothering her. But he was an honorable man, and a truly patriotic man. It could be that the kidnappers were trying to force her father to do something, give them some information, perhaps, and he had resisted; she could be the means they were using to force him to do what they wanted.

That felt logical. The envelope probably had nothing at all to do with her kidnapping, and Art Sandefer was wrong about coincidence.

But what if he wasn’t?

Then, despite her instincts about him, her father was involved in something he shouldn’t be. The thought made her sick to her stomach, but she had to face the possibility, had to think of every angle. She had to face it, then put it aside, because there was nothing she could do about it now.

If the kidnappers had been going to use her as a weapon against her father, then they wouldn’t give up. If it had just been ransom, they would have thrown up their hands at her supposed escape and said the Arabic equivalent of, “Ah, to hell with it.”

The leader hadn’t been here. She didn’t even know where “here” was; she’d had too much on her mind to ask questions about her geographic location.

“Where are we?” she murmured, thinking she really should know.

Zane lifted his eyebrows. He was sitting down, lounging against the wall at a right angle to her, having finished cleaning up, and she wondered how long she’d been lost in thought. “The waterfront district,” he said. “It’s a rough section of town.”

“I meant, what town?” she clarified.

Realization dawned in his crystal clear eyes. “Benghazi,” he said softly. “Libya.”

Libya. Stunned, she absorbed the news, then went back to the mental path she’d been following.

The leader had been flying in today. From where? Athens? If he’d been in contact with his men, he would know she’d somehow escaped. But if he had access to the embassy, and to her father, then he would also know that she hadn’t been returned to the embassy. Therefore, she would logically still be in Libya. Also logically, they would be actively searching for her.

She looked at Zane again. His eyes were half-closed, he looked almost asleep. Because of the heat, he hadn’t put his T-shirt back on. But despite the drowsy look on his face, she sensed that he was vitally aware of everything going on around them, that he was merely letting his body rest while his mind remained on guard.

After the humiliation and pain her guards had dealt her, Zane’s concern and consideration had been like a balm, soothing her, helping to heal her bruised emotions before she even had time to know how deep the damage went. Almost before she knew it, she had been responding to him as a woman does to a man, and somehow that was all right.

He was the exact opposite of the thugs who had so delighted in humiliating her. Those thugs were probably searching all over the city for her, and until she was out of this country, the possibility existed that they would recapture her. And if they did, this time there would be no respite.

No. It was intolerable. But if the unthinkable happened, she would be damned if she would give them the satisfaction they’d been anticipating. She would be damned if she would let them take her virginity.

She had never thought of her virginity as anything other than a lack of experience and inclination. At school in Switzerland there had been precious few opportunities for meeting boys, and she hadn’t been particularly interested in those she had met. After she left school, her father’s protective possessiveness, as well as her duties at the embassy, had restricted any social life she might have developed. The men she met hadn’t seemed any more interesting than the few boys she had met while in school. With AIDS added in as a threat, it simply hadn’t seemed worth the risk to have sex simply for the experience.

But she had dreamed. She had dreamed of meeting a man, growing to love him, making love with him. Simple, universal dreams.

The kidnappers had almost taken all that from her, almost wrecked her dream of loving a man by abusing her so severely that, if she had remained in their hands much longer, she knew she would have been so severely traumatized that she might never have been able to love a man or tolerate his touch. If Zane hadn’t taken her out of there, her first sexual experience would have been one of rape.

No. A thousand times no.

Even if they managed to recapture her, she wouldn’t let them murder that dream.

Scrambling to her feet, Barrie took the few steps to where Zane lounged against the wall. She saw his muscled body come to alertness at her action, though he didn’t move. She stood over him, staring at him with green eyes burning in the dim light. The look he gave her was hooded, unreadable.

“Make love to me,” she said in a raw voice.

Chapter 5

“Barrie…” he began, his tone kind, and she knew he was going to refuse.

“No!” she said fiercely. “Don’t tell me I should think about it, or that I really don’t want to do it. I know what I went through with those bastards. I know you don’t believe it, but they didn’t rape me. But they looked at me, they touched me, and I couldn’t stop them.” She stopped and drew a deep breath, steadying herself. “I’m not stupid. I know we’re still in danger, that you and your men could be wounded or even killed trying to rescue me and that I could end up back in their hands anyway. I’ve never made love before, with anyone. I don’t want my first time to be rape, do you understand? I don’t want them to have that satisfaction. I want the first time to be with you.”

She had surprised him, she saw, and she had already noticed that Zane Mackenzie wasn’t a man whose expression revealed much of what he was thinking. He sat up straight, his pale eyes narrowed as he examined her with a piercing gaze.

He was still going to refuse, and she didn’t think she could bear it. “I promise,” she blurted desperately. “They didn’t do that to me. I can’t have any disease, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No,” he said, his voice suddenly sounding strained. “That isn’t what I’m worried about.”

“Don’t make me beg,” she pleaded, wringing her hands together, aware that she was already doing exactly that.

Then the expression in those pale eyes softened, grew warmer. “I won’t,” he said softly, and rose to his feet with that powerful, feline grace of his. He towered over her, and for a moment Barrie felt the difference in their sizes so sharply that she wondered wildly what she thought she was doing. Then he moved past her to the blanket; he knelt and smoothed it, then dropped down on it, stretching out on his back, and watched her with a world of knowledge in his slightly remote, too-old eyes.

He knew. And until she read that knowledge in his eyes, she hadn’t even been aware of what she really needed. But watching him lie down and put himself at her service, something inside her shattered. He knew. He understood the emotions roiling deep inside her, understood what had brought her to him with her fierce, startling demand. It wasn’t just that she wanted her first time to be of her own volition, with the man of her choice; the kidnappers had taken something from her, and he was giving it back. They had tied her down, stripped her, humiliated her, and she had been helpless to stop them. Zane was giving control back to her, reassuring her and at the same time subtly letting her exact her vengeance against the male of the species.

She didn’t want to lie helpless beneath him. She wanted to control this giving of her body, wanted things to move at her pace instead of his, wanted to be the one who decided how much, how far, how fast.

And he was going to let her do it.

He was giving control of his body to her.

She could barely breathe as she sank to her knees beside him. The warm, bare, richly tanned flesh lured her hands closer, closer, until the urge overcame her nervousness and her fingers lightly skimmed over his stomach, his chest. Her heart hammered wildly. It was like petting a tiger, knowing how dangerous the animal was but fascinated beyond resistance by the rich pelt. She wanted to feel all of that power under her hands. Carefully she flattened her hands along his ribs, molding his flesh beneath her palms, feeling the resilience of skin over the powerful bands of muscle and, beneath that, the strong solidity of bone. She could feel the rhythmic thud of his heartbeat, the expansion of his ribs as he breathed.

Both heartbeat and breathing seemed fast. Swiftly she glanced at his face and blushed at what she saw there, the heat in his heavy-lidded eyes, the deepened color of his lips. She knew what lust looked like; she’d seen the cruel side of it on the faces of her captors, and now she saw the pleasurable side of it in Zane. It startled her, because somehow she hadn’t considered lust in the proposition she’d made to him, and her hands fell away from his body.

His lips parted in a curl of amusement that revealed the gleam of white teeth, and she felt her heart almost stop. His smile was even more potent than she’d expected. “Yeah, I’m turned on,” he said softly. “I have to be, or this won’t work.”

He was right, of course, and her blush deepened. That was the trouble with inexperience. Though she knew the mechanics of lovemaking, and once or twice her escort for the evening had kissed her with unexpected ardor and held her close enough for her to tell that he was aroused, still, she’d never had to deal directly with an erection—until now.

This particular one was there for her bidding. Furtively she glanced at the front of his pants, at the ridge pushing against the cloth.

“We don’t have to do this,” he offered once again, and Barrie flared from hesitance to determination.

“Yes, I do.”

He moved his hands to his belt. “Then I’d better—”

Instantly she stopped him, pushing his hands up and away, forcing them down on each side of his head. “I’ll do it,” she said, more fiercely than she’d intended. This was her show.

“All right,” he murmured, and again she knew that he understood. Her show, her control, every step of the way. He relaxed against the blanket, closing his eyes as if he was going to take a nap.

It was easier, knowing he wasn’t watching her, which of course had been his intention. Barrie didn’t want to fumble, didn’t want to underline her inexperience any more than she already had, so before she reached for his belt she studied the release mechanism for a moment to make certain she understood it. She didn’t give herself time to lose her nerve. She simply reached out, opened the belt and unfastened his pants. Under the pants were black swim trunks. Puzzled, Barrie stared at them. Swim trunks?

Then she understood. He was a SEAL; the acronym stood for SEa, Air and Land. He was at home in all three elements, capable of swimming for miles. Since Benghazi was a seaport, that was probably how his team had infiltrated, from the sea. Maybe they’d used some sort of boat to reach land, but it was possible they’d been dropped off some distance from the port and had swum the rest of the way.

He had risked his life to save her, was still doing so, and now he was giving her his body. Everything inside her squeezed tight, and she trembled from the rush of emotion. Oh, God. She had learned more about herself in the past twenty-four hours than in the entire past twenty-five years of her life. Perhaps the experience had changed her. Either way, something had happened inside her, something momentous, and she was learning how to deal with it.

She had let her father wrap her in a suffocating blanket of protection for fifteen years; she couldn’t blame him for it, because she’d needed that blanket. But that time was past. Fate had pitched her headlong into life, ripped her out of her protective cocoon, and like a butterfly, she couldn’t draw the silken threads back around her. All she could do was reach out for the unknown.

She slipped her hands under the waistband of the swim trunks and began working them, and his pants, down his hips. He levered his pelvis off the ground to aid her. “Don’t take them all the way off,” he murmured, still keeping his eyes closed and his hands resting beside his head. “I can handle things if I get caught with my pants down, but if they’re completely off, it would slow me down some.”

Despite her nervousness, Barrie smiled at that supreme self-confidence, the wry humor. If he wasn’t so controlled, he could be described as cocky. He had no doubt whatsoever about his fighting ability.

Her hands stroked down his buttocks as she slipped her hands inside his garments. An unexpected frisson of pleasure rippled through her at the feel of his butt, cool and smooth, hard with muscle. Tush connoisseurs would envy her the moment, and she wished she had the nerve to linger, to fully appreciate this male perfection. Instead she tugged at his clothes, pulling them down to the middle of his thighs. He relaxed, letting his hips settle on the blanket again, and Barrie studied the startling reality of a naked man. She’d read books that described sexual arousal, but seeing it firsthand, and at close range, was far more impressive and wondrous.

Blindly she reached out, her hand drawn as if by a magnet. She touched him, stroking one fingertip down the length of his swollen sex. It pulsed and jerked upward, as if following the caress. He inhaled sharply. His reaction warmed her, and the tightness in her chest, her body, clenched once more, then began to loosen with that rush of warmth. Bolder now, she folded her fingers around him, gently sighing with pleasure as she felt the heat beneath the coolness, iron beneath silk, the urgent throbbing.

And she felt her own desire, rushing like a heated river through her flesh, turning angry determination into lovemaking. This is how it should be, she thought with relief; they should come together in pleasure, not in anger. And she didn’t want to wait, didn’t want to give herself time to reconsider, or she would lose her nerve.

Swiftly she straddled him, mounted him. No longer in anger at other men, no longer in desperation. Pleasure, warm and sweet. With her knees clasping his hips, acting on instinct, she held the thick shaft in position and slowly sank down on him, guiding their bodies together.

The first brush of his flesh against hers was hot, startling, and she instinctively jerked herself upright, away from the alien touch. Zane quivered, the barest ripple of reaction, then once more lay motionless between her legs, his eyes still closed, letting her proceed at her own pace.

Her chest was so constricted she could barely breathe; she sucked in air in quick little gasps. That contact, brief as it had been, had touched off an insistent throbbing between her legs, as if her body, after its initial startled rejection, had paused in instinctive recognition of female for male. Her breasts felt tight and feverish beneath the black fabric of his shirt. Alien, yes…but infinitely exciting. Desire wound through her, the river rising.

She told herself that she was prepared for the sudden acute sense of vulnerability, for her body’s panic at the threat of penetration, even though desire was urging her on to that very conclusion. More gingerly, she settled onto him again, holding herself steady as she placed him against the entrance to her body and let her weight begin to impale her on the throbbing column of flesh.

The discomfort began immediately and was worse than she’d expected. She halted her movement, gulping as she tried to control her instinctive flinching away from the source of pain. He was breathing deeply, too, she noticed, though that was the only motion he made. She pushed harder, gritting her teeth against the burning sensation of being stretched, and then she couldn’t bear any more and jerked herself off him. This time the discomfort between her legs didn’t go away but continued to burn.

It wasn’t going to get any better, she told herself. She might as well go ahead and do it. Breathing raggedly, once more she lowered herself onto him. Tears burned in her eyes as she struggled to complete the act. Why wouldn’t it just go in? The pressure between her legs was enormous, intolerable, and a sob caught in her throat as she surged upward.

“Help me,” she begged, her voice almost inaudible.

Slowly his eyes opened, and she almost flinched at the pale fire that burned there. He moved just one hand, the right one. Gently he touched her cheek, his callused fingertips rough and infinitely tender; then he trailed them down her throat and lightly over the shirt to her left breast, where they lingered for a heart-stopping moment at her nipple, then finally down to the juncture of her legs.

The caress was as light as a whisper. It lingered between her legs, teasing, brushing, stroking. She went very still, her body poised as she concentrated on this new sensation. Her eyes closed as all her senses focused on his hand and what it was doing, the way he was touching her. It was delicious, but not…quite…enough. He tantalized her with the promise of something more, something that was richer, more powerful, and yet that lightly stroking finger never quite touched her where she wanted. Barrie inhaled deeply, her nipples rising in response. Her entire body hung in suspense. She waited, waited for the gentle touch to brush her with ecstasy, waited…. Her hips moved, her body instinctively seeking, following his finger.

Ah. There. Just for a moment, there. A low moan bubbled up in her throat as pleasure shot through her. She waited for him to repeat the caress, but instead his fingers moved maddeningly close, teasing and retreating. Again her hips followed, and again she was rewarded by that lightning flash of pure sensation.

A subtle, sensual dance began. He led, and she followed. The just-right touches came more often, the pleasure became more shattering as the intensity built with each repetition. Between her legs, his male shaft still probed for entrance, and somehow each movement of her hips seemed to ease him a bit closer to that goal. Her body rocked, swaying in the ancient rhythm of desire, surging and retreating like the tides. She could feel him stretching her, feel the discomfort sharpened by her movements…and yet the desire lured her onward like a Lorelei, and somehow she began to need him inside her, need him to the point that the pain no longer mattered. She braced her hands on his chest, and her movements changed, lifting and falling rather than swaying side to side. His touch changed, too, suddenly pressing directly on the place where she most wanted it.

She bit her lip to keep from crying out. His thumb rubbed insistently, releasing a torrent, turning the warm river into something wild and totally beyond her control. She was so hot that she was burning up with desire, aching with emptiness. The pain no longer mattered; she had to have what his body promised, what hers needed. With a low moan she pressed downward, forcing her soft flesh to admit the intruder. She felt the resistance, the inner giving; then suddenly his hot, swollen sex pushed up inside her.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. She froze in place, and her eyes flew open, huge with distress. Their gazes locked, hers dark with pain, his burning with ruthlessly restrained desire. Suddenly she became aware of how taut the muscled body beneath her was, how much his control was costing him. But he had promised to let her set the pace, and he had kept that promise, moving only when she had asked for help.

Part of her wanted to stop, but a deeper, more powerful instinct kept her astride him. She could feel him throbbing inside her, feel the answering tightening of her body, as if the flesh knew more than the mind, and perhaps it did. He tensed even more. His skin gleamed with sweat, his heartbeat hammered beneath her palm. She felt a jolt of excitement at having this supremely male, incredibly dangerous warrior as hers to command, just for this time suspended from reality. They had met only hours ago; they had only hours left before they would likely never see each other again. But for now he was hers, embedded inside her, and she wasn’t going to forgo a moment of the experience.

“What do I do now?” she whispered.

“Just keep moving,” he whispered in return, and she did.

Rising. Falling. Lifting herself almost off him, then sinking down. Over and over, until she forgot about the pain and lost herself in the primeval joy. His hand remained between her legs, continuing the caress that urged her onward, even though she no longer needed to be urged. She moved on him, faster and faster, taking him deeper and deeper. His powerful body flexed between her thighs, arching, and a growl rumbled in his throat. Immediately he forced himself to lie flat again, chained by his promise.

Up. Down. Again. And again, the crescendo building inside her, the heat rising to an unbearable fever, the tension coiling tighter and tighter, until she felt as if she would shatter if she moved another muscle. She froze in place over him, whimpering, unable to push herself over the final hurdle.

The growl rumbled in his throat again. No, deeper than a growl; it was the sound of a human volcano exploding from the forces pent up inside. His control broke, and he moved, fiercely clamping both hands on her hips and pulling her down hard even as he arched once more and thrust himself in her to the hilt. He hadn’t gone so deep before; she hadn’t taken that much of him. The sensation was electric. She stifled a scream as he convulsed beneath her, heaving upward between her thighs, lifting her so that her knees left the ground. His head was thrown back, his neck corded with the force of his release, his teeth bared. Barrie felt the hot spurting of his release, felt him so deep inside her that he was touching the very center of her being, and it was enough to push her over the edge.

Pure lightning speared through her. She heard herself cry out, a thin cry of ecstasy that nothing could stifle. All her inner muscles contracted around him, relaxed, squeezed again, over and over, as if her body was drinking from his.

Finally the storm subsided, leaving her weak and shaking. Her bones had turned to jelly, and she could no longer sit upright. Helplessly she collapsed forward, folding on him like a house of cards caught in an earthquake. He caught her, easing her down so that she lay on his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her as she lay there gasping and sobbing. She hadn’t meant to cry, didn’t understand why the tears kept streaming down her face. “Zane,” she whispered, and couldn’t say anything more.

His big, hard hands stroked soothingly up and down her back. “Are you okay?” he murmured, and there was something infinitely male and intimate in his deep voice, an undertone of satisfaction and possessiveness.

Barrie gulped back the tears, forcing herself to coherency. “Yes,” she said in a thin, waterlogged tone. “I didn’t know it would hurt so much. Or feel so good,” she added, because she was crying for both reasons. Odd, that she should have been as unprepared for the pleasure as she had been for the pain. She felt overwhelmed, unbalanced. Had she truly been so foolish as to think she could perform such an intimate act and remain untouched emotionally? If she had been capable of that kind of mental distance she wouldn’t have remained a virgin until now. She would have found a way around her father’s obsessive protectiveness if she had wanted to, if any man had ever elicited one-tenth the response in her this warrior had aroused within two minutes of their meeting. If her rescuer had been any other man, she wouldn’t have asked such an intimate favor of him.

Their lovemaking had forged a link between them, a bond of the flesh that was far stronger and went far deeper than she’d imagined. Despite her chastity, had she believed the modern, permissive notion that making love could have no more lasting meaning than simple fun, like riding a roller coaster? Maybe, for some people, sex could be as trivial as a carnival ride, but she would never again think of lovemaking as anything that shallow. True lovemaking was deep and elemental, and she knew she would never be the same. She hadn’t been from the moment he had given her his shirt and she had fallen in love with him. Without even seeing his face, she had fallen in love with the essence of the man, his strength and decency. It wouldn’t have mattered if, when morning came, his features had been ugly or twisted with scars. In the darkness of that barren room, and the darkness of her heart, she had already seen beneath whatever lay on the surface, and she had loved him. It was that simple, and that difficult.

Just because she felt that way didn’t mean he did. Barrie knew what a psychologist would say. It was the white-knight syndrome, the projection of larger-than-life characteristics onto a person because of the circumstances. Patients fell in love with their doctors and nurses all the time. Zane had simply been doing his job in rescuing her, while to her it had meant her life, because she hadn’t for a moment supposed that her captors would let her live. She owed him her life, would have been grateful to him for the rest of that life—but she didn’t think she would have loved just any man who had crawled through that window. She loved Zane.

She lay silently on him, her head nestled against his throat, their bodies still linked. She could feel the strong rhythm of his heartbeat thudding against her breasts, could feel his chest expand with each breath. His hot, musky scent excited her more than the most expensive cologne. She felt more at home here, lying with him on a blanket in the midst of a shattered building, than she ever had in the most luxurious and protected environment.

She knew none of the details of his life. She didn’t know how old he was, where he was from, what he liked to eat or read or what programs he watched on television. She didn’t know if he’d ever been married.

Married. My God, she hadn’t even asked. She felt suddenly sick to her stomach. If he was married, then he wouldn’t be the man she had thought he was, and she had just made the biggest mistake of her life.

But neither would the fault be entirely his. She had begged him, and he had given her more than one chance to change her mind. She didn’t think she could bear it if he’d made love to her out of pity.

She drew a deep breath, knowing she had to ask. Ignorance might be bliss, but she couldn’t allow herself that comfort. If she had done something so monumentally wrong, she wanted to know.

“Are you married?” she blurted.

He didn’t even tense but lay utterly relaxed beneath her. One hand slid up her back and curled itself around her neck. “No,” he said in that low voice of his. “You can take your claws out of me now.” The words were lazily amused.

She realized she was digging her fingernails into his chest and hastily relaxed her fingers. Distressed, she said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“There’s pain, and there’s pain,” he said comfortably. “Bullets and knives hurt like hell. In comparison, a little she-cat’s scratching doesn’t do much damage.”

“She-cat?” Barrie didn’t know if she should be affronted or amused. After a brief struggle, amusement won. None of her friends or associates would ever have described her in such terms. She’d heard herself described as ladylike, calm, circumspect, conscientious, but certainly never as a she-cat.

“Mmm.” The sound was almost like a purr in his throat. His hard fingers lazily massaged her neck, while his other hand slipped down her back to burrow under the shirt and curl possessively over her bottom. His palm burned her flesh like a brand. “Dainty. And you like being stroked.”

She couldn’t deny that, not when he was the one doing the stroking. The feel of his hand on her bottom was startlingly erotic. She couldn’t help wiggling a little, and then gasped as she felt the surge of his flesh inside her. His breath caught, too, and his fingers dug into the cleft of her buttocks.

“I need to ask you a couple of questions,” he said, and his voice sounded strained.

Barrie closed her eyes, once again feeling the warm loosening deep inside that signaled the return of desire. That had been a remarkable sensation, when his sex had expanded inside her, both lengthening and getting thicker. Oh, dear. She wanted to do it again, but she didn’t think she had the strength. “What?” she murmured, distracted by what was happening between her legs.

“Did you get rid of the ghosts?”

Ghosts. He meant her lingering horror at the way those men had touched her. She thought about it and realized, with some surprise, that she had. She was still angry at the way she’d been treated, and she would dearly love to have Zane’s pistol in her hands and those men in her sights, even though she’d never held a pistol before in her life. But the wounded, feminine part of her had triumphed by finding pleasure in making love with Zane, and in doing so she had healed herself. Pleasure…somehow the word fell far short of what she had experienced. Even ecstasy didn’t quite describe the intensity, the sensation of imploding, melting, becoming utterly lost in her physical self.

“Yes,” she whispered. “The ghosts are gone.”

“Okay.” His voice still sounded strained. “Second question. Will that damn shirt have to be surgically removed?”

She was startled into sitting upright. The action drove him deeper inside her and wrenched a sharp gasp from her, a groan from him. Panting, she stared at him. They had just made love—were, in fact, still making love—but the shirt she wore was what had kept her from going to pieces when he’d first found her, had given her the nerve to run barefoot down dark alleys, had become the symbol of a lot more than just modesty. Maybe she wasn’t as recovered as she’d thought. The kidnappers had stripped her, forced her to be naked in front of them, and when Zane had first entered the room and seen her that way, she had been mortified. She didn’t know if she could be naked with him now, if she could let him see the body that had been pinched and bruised by other men.

His crystal clear gaze was calm, patient. Again he understood. He knew what he was asking of her. He could have left things as they were, but he wanted more. He wanted her trust, her openness, with no dark secrets between them.

He wanted them to become lovers.

The realization was sharp, almost painful. They had loved each other physically, but with restraint like a wall between them. He had done what she had asked of him, had held himself back until the last moment, when his climax had shattered his control. Now he was asking something of her, asking her to give as he had given.

Almost desperately she clutched the front of the shirt. “I—they left marks on me.”

“I’ve seen bruises before.” He reached up and gently touched her cheek. “You have one right here, as a matter of fact.”

Instinctively she reached up to the cheek he’d touched, feeling the tenderness. As soon as she released the front of the shirt, he moved his hands to the buttons and slowly began unfastening them, giving her time to protest. She bit her lip, fighting the urge to grab the widening edges of the cloth and hold them together.

When the garment was open all the way down, he slid his hands inside and cupped her breasts, his palms hot as they covered the cool mounds. Her nipples tingled as they hardened, reaching out for the contact. “The bruises shame them,” he murmured. “Not you.”

She closed her eyes as she sat astride him, feeling him hard and hot inside her, his hands just as hard and hot on her breasts. She didn’t protest when his hands left her breasts, left them feeling oddly tight and aching, while he pushed the black shirt off her shoulders. The fabric puddled around her arms, and he lifted each in turn, slipping them free.

She was naked. The warm air brushed against her bare skin with the lightest of touches, and then she felt his fingertips doing the same, trailing so gently over each of the dark marks on her shoulders, her arms and breasts, her stomach, that she barely felt him. “Lean down,” he said.

Slowly she obeyed, guided by his hands, down, down—and he lifted his head, meeting her mouth with his.

Their first kiss…and they’d already made love. Barrie was shocked at how she could have been so foolish as to forgo the pleasure of his kisses. His lips were firm, warm, hungry. She sank against him with a little sound of mingled surprise and delight humming in her throat. Her breasts flattened against him, the crisp hair on his chest rasping her ultrasensitive nipples, another joy she had unknowingly skipped.

Oh, this was delicious. His tongue probed for entrance, and she immediately gave it.

Several minutes later he let his head drop to the blanket. He was panting slightly, his eyes heavy-lidded. “I have another question.”

“What?” She didn’t want to give up the delights of his mouth. She’d never enjoyed kissing so much before, but he was diabolically good at it. She followed him down, nipping at his lower lip, depositing hot little kisses.

He chuckled beneath her mouth. The deep, rusty sound charmed her. She sensed that his laughter was even rarer than his smiles, therefore doubly precious.

“Will you let me be on top this time?”

The question surprised her into laughter. She stifled it as best she could, burying her head against his neck, but her body shook with giggles. He slipped out of her, making her laugh even harder. She was still laughing when he wrapped one strong arm around her and rolled, lifting her so they didn’t roll off the blanket, efficiently tucking her beneath him and settling between her legs. Her laughter caught on a gasp as he surged heavily into her.

Her senses swam as she was bombarded by new feelings, when she had already experienced so much. She’d known he was a big man, but lying beneath him sharply brought home the difference in their sizes. Though he propped his weight on his forearms to keep from crushing her, she still felt the heaviness of that iron-muscled body. His shoulders were so broad that he dwarfed her, wrapped around her, shielded her. When she had been on top, she had controlled the depth of his penetration. The control was his now, her thighs spread wide by his hips. He felt bigger, harder than he had before.

He waited a moment to see how she would accept the vulnerability of her position. But she didn’t feel vulnerable, she realized. She felt utterly secure, buffered by his strength. Tremulously she smiled at him and lifted her arms to wind them around his neck.

He smiled in return. And then Zane Mackenzie made love to her.

Chapter 6

There seemed to be scarcely a moment for the rest of the day when they weren’t making love, resting from making love or about to make love. The sounds of the waterfront surrounded them, the low bellow of ships, truck horns, the sounds of chains and cranes, but inside that small, dim room there seemed to be nothing else in the world but each other. Barrie lost herself in the force of his unbridled sensuality and discovered within herself a passion that matched his. The need to be quiet only added to the intensity.

He kissed the bruises on her breasts and sucked her nipples until they throbbed with pleasure. His beard-stubbled chin rasped against her breasts, her belly, but he was always careful not to cause her pain as he searched for all the other bruises on her body and paid them the same tender homage.

“Tell me how they hurt you,” he murmured, “and I’ll make it better.”

At first Barrie shied away from divulging the details, even to him, but as the hot afternoon wore on and he pleasured her so often she was drunk with the overload on her senses, it began to seem pointless to keep anything from him. Haltingly she began to whisper things to him.

“Like this?” he asked, repeating the action that had so upset her—except it wasn’t the same. What had been meant to punish at the hands of the kidnappers became purest pleasure in Zane Mackenzie’s hands. He caressed her until her body forgot those other touches, until it remembered only him.

She whispered another detail, and he wiped out that memory, too, replacing the bad with caresses that lifted her to peak after sensual peak. She couldn’t imagine being handled more tenderly than he handled her, or with such delight. He didn’t try to hide how much he enjoyed looking at her, touching her, making love to her. He reveled in her body, in the contrast between her soft curves and his hard muscularity. It aroused her to be the focus of such intense masculine pleasure, to feel his absorption with the texture of her skin, the curve of her breast, the snug sheathing between her legs. He explored her; he petted her, he drowned her in sexuality. The area around them was still so busy they didn’t dare converse much, so they communicated with their bodies.

Three times, while they were lying drowsily in the aftermath of loving, he checked his watch and reached for the headset radio. He would click it once, listen, then put it aside.

“Your men?” she asked, after the first time.

He nodded. “They’re hiding out, waiting until it’s safe to rendezvous.”

Then the chatter of voices outside became louder as some people approached, and they fell silent.

The afternoon wore on, and the light began to dim. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but Zane insisted that she eat. He pulled up his pants; she once more donned his shirt. More formally attired now, they sat close together on the blanket and finished off the bread and fruit, but neither of them wanted any of the cheese. The water was warm and still tasted of chemicals. Barrie sat within the curve of his arm and dreaded leaving.

She wanted to be safe and comfortable again, but she hated to lose this closeness with Zane, this utter reliance and companionship and intimacy. She wouldn’t push him to continue their relationship; under the circumstances, he might feel responsible and think he would have to let her down gradually, and she didn’t want to put him in that position. If he indicated that he wanted to see her afterward, then…why, then her heart would fly.

But even if he did, it would be difficult for them to see each other regularly. He was more than just a military man; he was a SEAL. Much of what he did couldn’t be discussed. He would have a home base, duties, missions. If they escaped safely, the danger to him didn’t end there. A chill settled around her heart when she thought of the times in the future when, because it was his job, he would calmly and deliberately walk into a deadly situation. While they were hidden in this small room might be the only time she could ever be certain he was safe and unharmed.

The fear and uncertainty would almost drive her mad, but she would endure them, she would endure anything, for the opportunity to see him, to grow closer to him. Their relationship, if there was to be one, would have to grow in reverse. Usually people came to know each other, grew to trust and care, and then became lovers; they had become lovers almost immediately, and now they would have to get to know each other, find out all the quirks and personal history and tastes that made them individuals.

When she got back, she would have to deal with her father. He must be frantic, and once she was safely home, he would be even more paranoid and obsessive. But if Zane wanted her, she would have to deliberately hurt her father’s feelings for the first time in her life; he would be supplanted as number one in her life. Most parents handled the change in their offsprings’ lives with happiness, assuming the chosen mate was decent, but Barrie knew it wouldn’t matter who she fell in love with, her father would be opposed to him. No man, to him, was good enough for her. Even more, he would bitterly resent anything that would take her out of his protection. She was all he had left of his family, and it didn’t help that she greatly resembled her mother. As ambassador, her father had a very active social life, but he’d only ever loved one woman, and that was her mother.

She would never turn her back on her father, because she loved him dearly, but if the chance for a relationship, possibly a lifetime, with Zane was in the balance, she would put as much distance between herself and her father as necessary until he accepted the situation.

She was planning her life around dreams, she thought wryly as she brushed the bread crumbs from the blanket. She would do better to let the future take care of itself and concern herself with how they were going to get out of Benghazi.

“What time do we leave?”

“After midnight. We’ll give most people time to get settled down for the night.” He turned to her with the heavy-lidded gaze she had already learned signaled arousal and, reaching out, he began to unbutton her shirt. “Hours,” he whispered.

Afterward they lay close together, despite the heat, and dozed. She didn’t know how long it was before she woke, but when she did it was to almost total darkness. Unlike the night before, though, when she had lain in cold, lonely terror, now she was pressed against Zane’s side, and his arms securely held her. Her head was pillowed on his shoulder, one bare leg was hooked over his hips. She stretched a bit and yawned, and his arms tightened, letting her know that he was awake. Perhaps he had never slept at all, but had held her and safeguarded her. The noise beyond the ruined building had died down; even the sounds from the docks were muted, as if the darkness smothered them.

“How much longer?” she asked, sitting up to fumble for the jug of water. She found it and drank; the taste wasn’t too bad, she decided. Maybe she was becoming used to the chemicals, whatever they were.

He peeled the cover from his watch so he could see the luminous dial. “Another few hours. I need to check in with the guys in a couple of minutes.”

She passed the water jug to him, and he drank. They lay back down, and she cuddled close. She put her right hand on his chest and felt the strong, healthy thudding of his heart. Idly she twirled her fingers in the crisp hairs, delighting in the textures of his body.

“What happens then? When we leave, I mean.”

“We get out of the city, make our rendezvous point just at sunrise, and we’re picked up.”

He made it sound so simple, so easy. She remembered the swim trunks he wore and lifted her head to frown at him, even though she knew he couldn’t see her. “Is our rendezvous point on dry land?”

“Not exactly.”

“I see. I hope you have a boat?” It was a question, not a statement.

“Not exactly.”

She caught his chest hairs and gave them a tug. “Exactly what do you have?”

“Ouch!” Snagging her hand, he disentangled it and lifted it to his mouth, lightly brushing his lips across her knuckles. “Exactly, we have a Zodiac, a seven-man, motorized inflatable craft. My team came in short two men, so there are only six of us. We’ll be able to fit you in.”

“I’m so glad.” She yawned and snuggled her head more securely into the hollow of his shoulder. “Did you leave someone behind so there would be room for me?”

“No,” he said shortly. “We’re undermanned because of a problem I’ll have to take care of when we get back. If there had been any other team available, we wouldn’t be here, but we were the closest, and we needed to get you out in a hurry, before they moved you.”

His tone dissuaded her from asking about the problem that put him in such a black mood, but she’d seen him in action; she knew she wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of his anger when he got back. She waited while he picked up the headset and checked in with his men, then returned to her questions.

“Where do we go in the Zodiac?”

“Out to sea,” he said simply. “We radio ahead, and we’ll be picked up by a helicopter from the Montgomery, an aircraft carrier. You’ll be flown home from the carrier.”

“What about you?” she whispered. “Where will you go?” That was as close as she would allow herself to get to asking him about his future plans.

“I don’t know. My team was performing exercises on the Montgomery, but that’s blown to hell now, with two of them injured. I’ll have to clean up that mess, and I don’t know how long it will take.”

He didn’t know where he would be, or if he did, he wasn’t saying. Neither was he saying that he would call her, though he did know where she would be. Barrie closed her eyes and listened painfully to all that he wasn’t saying. The hurt was worse than she’d anticipated, but she closed it off in a place deep inside. Later it would come out, but if she only had a few hours left with him, she didn’t intend to waste them crying about what might have been. Few women would have a chance to even know a man like Zane Mackenzie, much less love him. She was greedy; she wanted it all, wanted everything, but even this little bit was more than a lot of people experienced, and she would have to be grateful for that.

Whatever happened, she could never return to the safe little cocoon her father had fashioned for her. She couldn’t let herself forget the kidnapping and the unknown why of it. Of course, her father would know why; the kidnapper would already have made his demands. But Barrie wanted to know the reason, too; after all, she had been more directly affected than anyone else.

Lightly Zane touched her nipple, circling it with his callused fingertips and bringing it erect. “I know you have to be sore,” he said, sliding his hand down her belly to nestle it between her legs. “But can you take me again?” With the utmost care he eased one long finger into her; Barrie winced, but didn’t flinch away from him. Yes, she was sore; she had been sore since the first time. She had discovered that the discomfort was easily discounted when the rewards were so great.

“I could be persuaded,” she whispered, sliding her hand down his belly to measure his immediate seriousness. She found that he was very serious. Granted, she had no experience against which to compare this, but she had read magazine articles and knew that usually only teenage boys and very young men could maintain this pace. Maybe it was because he was in such superb physical condition. Maybe she was just lucky, though twenty-four hours before she hadn’t thought so. But circumstances had changed, and so had she.

Fate had given her this man for now, and for a few more hours, she thought as he leaned over her and his mouth captured hers. She would make the most of it.

Once more he led her through the maze of alleys, but this time she was clad in the enveloping black robe, and a chador covered her hair. Her feet were protected by slippers, which were a little too big and kept slipping up and down on her heels, but at least she wasn’t barefoot. It felt strange to have on clothes, especially so many, even though she was bare underneath the robe.

Zane was once more rigged out with his gear and weaponry, and with the donning of those things he had become subtly more remote, almost icily controlled, the way he’d been the night before when he’d first found her. Barrie sensed his acute alertness and guessed that he was concentrating totally on the job at hand. She silently followed him, keeping her head a little bowed as a traditional Muslim woman would do.

He halted at the corner of a building and sank to his haunches, motioning for her to do the same. Barrie copied him and took the extra precaution of drawing the chador across her face.

“Two, this is One. How’s it looking?” Once more he was speaking in that toneless whisper that barely carried to her, though she was right behind him. After a moment he said, “See you in ten.”

He glanced around at Barrie. “It’s ago. We don’t have to shift to Plan C.”

“What was Plan C?” she whispered.

“Run like hell for Egypt,” he said calmly. “It’s about two hundred miles due east.”

He would do it, too, she realized. He would steal some kind of vehicle and go for it. His nerves must be made of solid iron. Hers weren’t; she was shaking inside with nervousness, but she was holding up. Or maybe it wasn’t nervousness; maybe it was exhilaration at the danger and excitement of action, of escaping. As long as they were still in Benghazi, in Libya, they hadn’t really gotten free.

Ten minutes later he stopped in the shadow of a dilapidated warehouse. Perhaps he clicked his radio; in the dark, she couldn’t tell. But suddenly five black shapes materialized out of the darkness, and they were surrounded before she could blink.

“Gentlemen, this is Miss Lovejoy,” Zane said. “Now let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

“With pleasure, boss.” One of the men bowed to Barrie and held out his hand. “This way, Miss Lovejoy.”

There was a certain rough élan about them that she found charming, though they didn’t let it interfere with the business at hand. The six men immediately began moving out in choreographed order, and Barrie smiled at the man who’d spoken as she took the place he had indicated in line. She was behind Zane, who was second inline behind a man who moved so silently, and blended so well into the shadows, that even knowing he was there, sometimes she couldn’t see him. The other four men ranged behind her at varying distances, and she realized that she couldn’t hear them, either. In fact, she was the only one of the group who was making any noise, and she tried to place her slippered feet more carefully.

They wound their way through the alleys and finally stopped beside a battered minibus. Even in the darkness Barrie could see the huge dents and dark patches of rust that decorated the vehicle. They stopped beside it, and Zane opened the sliding side door for her. “Your chariot,” he murmured.

Barrie almost laughed as he handed her into the little bus: if she hadn’t had experience navigating long evening gowns, she would have found the ankle-length robe awkward, but she managed it as if she was a nineteenth-century lady being handed into a carriage. The men climbed in around her. There were only two bench seats; if there had ever been a third one in the back, it had long since been removed, perhaps to make room for cargo. A wiry young black man got behind the steering wheel, and Zane took the other seat in front. The eerily silent man who had been on point squeezed in on her left side, and another SEAL sat on her right, carefully placing her in a human security box. The other two SEALs knelt on the floorboard behind them, their muscular bodies and their gear filling the limited space.

“Let’s go, Bunny Rabbit,” Zane said, and the young black man grinned as he started the engine. The minibus looked as though it was on its last wheels, but the motor purred.

“You should a been there last night,” the black guy said. “It was tight for a minute, real tight.” He sounded as enthusiastic as if he was describing the best party he’d ever attended.

“What happened?” Zane asked.

“Just one of those things, boss,” the man on Barrie’s right said with a shrug evident in his voice. “A bad guy stepped on Spook, and the situation went straight into fubar.”

Barrie had been around enough military men to know what fubar meant. She sat very still and didn’t comment.

“Stepped right on me,” the SEAL on her left said in an aggrieved tone. “He started squalling like a scalded cat, shooting at everything that moved and most things that didn’t. Aggravated me some.” He paused. “I’m not staying for the funeral.”

“When we got your signal we pulled back and ran like hell,” the man on her right continued. “You must’ve already had her out, because they came after us like hound dogs. We laid low, but a couple of times I thought we were going to have to fight our way out. Man, they were walking all over us, and they kept hunting all night long.”

“No, we were still inside,” Zane said calmly. “We just stepped into the next room. They never thought to check it.”

The men snorted with mirth; even the eerie guy on her left managed a chuckle, though it didn’t sound as if he did it often enough to be good at it.

Zane turned around in the seat and gave Barrie that brief twitch of a smile. “Would you like some introductions, or would you rather not know these raunchy-smelling bums?”

The atmosphere in the bus did smell like a locker room, only worse. “The introductions, please,” she said, and her smile was plain in her voice.

He indicated the driver. “Antonio Withrock, Seaman Second Class. He’s driving because he grew up wrecking cars on dirt tracks down South, so we figure he can handle any situation.”

“Ma’am,” said Seaman Withrock politely.

“On your right is Ensign Rocky Greenberg, second in command.”

“Ma’am,” said Ensign Greenberg.

“On your left is Seaman Second Class Winstead Jones.”

Seaman Winstead Jones growled something unintelligible. “Call him Spooky or Spook, not Winstead,” Zane added.

“Ma’am,” said Seaman Jones.

“Behind you are Seamen First Class Eddie Santos, our medic, and Paul Drexler, the team sniper.”

“Ma’am,” said two voices behind her.

“I’m glad to meet you all,” Barrie said, her sincerity plain. She had trained her memory at countless official functions, so she had their names down cold. She hadn’t yet put a face to Santos or Drexler, but from his name she figured Santos would be Hispanic, so that would be an easy distinction to make.

Greenberg began to tell Zane the details of everything that had happened. Barrie listened and didn’t intrude. The fact was, this midnight drive through Benghazi felt a little surreal. She was surrounded by men armed to their eye-teeth, but they were traveling through an area that was still fairly active for so late at night. There were other vehicles in the streets, pedestrians on the sidewalks. They even stopped at a traffic light, with other vehicles around them. The driver, Withrock, hummed under his breath. No one else seemed concerned. The traffic light changed, the battered little minibus moved forward, and no one paid them any attention at all.

Several minutes later they left the city. Occasionally she could see the gleam of the Mediterranean on their right, which meant they were traveling west, toward the center of Libya’s coast. As the lights faded behind them, she began to feel lightheaded with fatigue. The sleep she had gotten during the day, between bouts of lovemaking, hadn’t been enough to offset the toll stress had taken on her. She couldn’t see herself leaning on either of the men beside her, however, so she forced herself to sit upright and keep her eyes open.

She suspected that she was more than a little punch-drunk.

After a while Zane said, “Red goggles.”

She was tired enough that she wondered if that was some kind of code, or if she’d misunderstood him. Neither, evidently. Each man took a pair of goggles from his pack and donned them. Zane glanced at her and said in explanation, “Red protects your night vision. We’re going to let our vision adjust now, before Bunny kills the headlights.”

She nodded, and closed her eyes to help her own vision adjust. She realized at once that, if she wanted to stay awake, closing her eyes for whatever reason wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but her eyelids were so heavy that she couldn’t manage to open them again. The next thing she knew, the minibus was lurching heavily from side to side, throwing her against first Greenberg, then Spooky. Dazed with sleep, she tried to hold herself erect, but she couldn’t seem to find her balance or anything to hold on to. She was about to slide to the floorboard when Spooky’s forearm shot out in front of her like an iron bar, anchoring her in the seat.

“Thank you,” she said groggily.

“Anytime, ma’am.”

Sometime while she had been asleep, Bunny had indeed killed the headlights, and they were plunging down an embankment in the dark. She blinked at something shiny looming in front of them; she had a split second of panic and confusion before she recognized the sea, gleaming in the starlight.

The minibus lurched to a halt. “End of the line,” Bunny cheerfully announced. “We have now reached the hidey-hole for one IBS. That’s military talk for inflatable boat, small,” he said over his shoulder to Barrie. “These things are too fancy to be called plain old rafts.”

Zane snorted. Barrie remembered that he’d described it as exactly that, a raft.

Watching them exit the minibus was like watching quicksilver slip through cracks. If there had been a working overhead light when the SEALs had commandeered the vehicle, they had taken care of that detail, because no light came on when the doors were cracked open. Spooky slipped past her, no mean feat given the equipment he was carrying, and when Greenberg slid the side door open a few inches, Spooky wiggled on his stomach through the small opening. One second he was there, the next he was gone. Barrie stared at the door with widened eyes in full appreciation of how he’d acquired his nickname. He was definitely spooky.

The others exited the minibus in the same manner; it was as if they were made of water, and when the doors opened they simply leaked out. They were that fluid, that silent. Only Bunny, the driver, remained behind with Barrie. He sat in absolute silence, pistol in hand, as he methodically surveyed the night-shrouded coast. Because he was silent, she was too. The best way not to be any trouble to them, she thought, was to follow their example.

There was one quick little tap on the window, and Bunny whispered, “It’s clear. Let’s go, Miss Lovejoy.”

She scooted over the seat to the door while Bunny eeled out on the driver’s side. Zane was there, opening the door wider, reaching in to steady her as she slid out onto the ground. “Are you holding up okay?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, because she was so tired her speech was bound to be slurred.

As usual, he seemed to understand without being told. “Just hold on for another hour or so, and we’ll have you safe on board the carrier. You can sleep then.”

Without him, though; that fact didn’t need stating. Even if he intended to continue their relationship, and he hadn’t given any indication of it, he wouldn’t do so on board the ship. She would put off sleeping forever if it would postpone the moment when she had to admit, once and for all, that their relationship had been a temporary thing for him, prompted by both the hothouse of intimacy in which they’d spent the day, and her own demands.

She wouldn’t cry; she wouldn’t even protest, she told herself. She’d had him for a day, for one incredibly sensual day.

He led her down to the small, rocky strip of beach, where the dark bulk of the IBS had been positioned. The other five men were gathered around it in specific positions, each standing with his back to the raft while he held his weapon at the ready, edgily surveying the surroundings.

Zane lifted her into the IBS and showed her where to sit. The IBS bobbed in the water as the men eased it away from the shore. When the water was chest deep on Santos, the shortest one, they all swung aboard in a maneuver they had practiced so many times it looked effortless. Spooky started the almost soundless motor and aimed the IBS for the open sea.

Then a roar erupted behind them, and all hell broke loose.

She recognized the sharp rat-tat-tat of automatic weapons and half turned to look behind them. Zane put his hand on her head and shoved her down to the bottom of the boat, whirling, already bringing his automatic rifle around as he did so. The IBS shot forward as Spooky gave it full throttle. The SEALs returned fire, lightning flashing from the weapons, spent cartridges splattering down on her as she curled into a ball and drew the chador over her face to keep the hot brass from burning her.

“Drexler!” Zane roared. “Hit those bastards with explosives!”

“Got it, boss!”

Barrie heard a grunt, and something heavy and human fell across her. One of the men had been hit. Desperately she tried to wriggle out from under the crushing weight so she could help him, but she was effectively pinned, and he groaned every time she moved.

She knew that groan.

Terror such as she had never felt before raced through her veins. With a hoarse cry she heaved at the heavy weight, managing to roll him to the side. She fought her way free of the enveloping chador and didn’t even notice the hot cartridge shell that immediately skimmed her right cheek.

An explosion shattered the night, lighting up the sea like fireworks, the percussion knocking her to the bottom of the boat again. She scrambled to her knees, reaching for Zane. “No,” she said hoarsely. “No!”

The light from the explosion had sharply delineated every detail in stark white. Zane lay sprawled half on his side, writhing in pain as he pressed his hands to his abdomen. His face was a colorless blur, his eyes closed, his teeth exposed in a grimace. A huge wet patch glistened on the left side of his black shirt, and more blood was pooling beneath him.

Barrie grabbed the chador and wadded it up, pressing it hard to the wound. A low animal howl rattled in his throat, and he arched in pain. “Santos!” she screamed, trying to hold him down while still holding the chador in place. “Santos!”

With a muttered curse the stocky medic shouldered her aside. He lifted the chador for a second, then quickly pressed it into place and grabbed her hand, guiding it into position. “Hold it,” he rapped out. “Press down—hard.”

There was no more gunfire, only the hum of the motor. Salt spray lashed her face as the boat shot through the waves. The team maintained their discipline, holding their assigned positions. “How bad is it?” Greenberg yelled.

Santos was working feverishly. “I need light!”

Almost instantly Greenberg had a flashlight shining down on them. Barrie bit her lip as she saw how much blood had puddled around them. Zane’s face was pasty white, his eyes half-shut as he gasped for breath.

“He’s losing blood fast,” Santos said. “Looks like the bullet got a kidney, or maybe his spleen. Get that damn helicopter on the way. We don’t have time to get into international waters.” He popped the cap off a syringe, straightened Zane’s arm and deftly jabbed the needle into a vein. “Hang on, boss. We’re gonna get you airlifted outta here.”

Zane didn’t reply. He was breathing noisily through his clenched teeth, but when Barrie glanced at him she could see the gleam of his eyes. His hand lifted briefly, touched her arm, then fell heavily to his side.

“Damn you, Zane Mackenzie,” she said fiercely. “Don’t you dare—” She broke off. She couldn’t say the word, couldn’t even admit to the possibility that he might die.

Santos was checking Zane’s pulse. His eyes met hers, and she knew it was too fast, too weak. Zane was going into shock, despite the injection Santos had given him.

“I don’t give a damn how close in we still are!” Greenberg was yelling into the radio. “We need a helo now. Just get the boss out of here and we’ll wait for another ride!”

Despite the pitching of the boat, Santos got an IV line started and began squeezing a bag of clear plasma into Zane’s veins. “Don’t let up on the pressure,” he muttered to Barrie.

“I won’t.” She didn’t take her gaze off Zane’s face. He was still aware, still looking at her. As long as that connection was maintained, he would be all right. He had to be.

The nightmare ride in the speeding boat seemed to take forever. Santos emptied the first bag of plasma and connected a second one to the IV. He was cursing under his breath, his invectives varied and explicit.

Zane lay quietly, though she knew he was in terrible pain. His eyes were dull with pain and shock, but she could sense his concentration, his determination. Perhaps the only way he could remain conscious was by focusing so intently on her face, but he managed it.

But if that helicopter didn’t get there soon, not even his superhuman determination would be able to hold out against continued blood loss. She wanted to curse, too, wanted to glare at the night sky as if she could conjure a helicopter out of thin air, but she didn’t dare look away from Zane. As long as their gazes held, he would hold on.

She heard the distinctive whap-whap-whap only a moment before the Sea King helicopter roared over them, blinding lights picking them out. Spooky throttled back, and the boat settled gently onto the water. The helicopter circled to them and hovered directly overhead, the powerful rotors whipping the sea into a frenzy. A basket dropped almost on their heads. Working swiftly, Santos and Greenberg lifted Zane into the basket and strapped him in, maneuvering around Barrie as she maintained pressure on the wound.

Santos hesitated, then indicated for her to let go and move back. Reluctantly she did. He lifted the chador, then immediately jammed it back into place. Without a word he straddled the basket, leaning hard on the wound. “Let’s go!” he yelled. Greenberg stepped back and gave the thumbs-up to the winch operator in the helicopter. The basket rose toward the hovering monster, with Santos perched precariously on top of Zane. As the basket drew even with the open bay, several pairs of hands reached out and drew them inward. The helicopter immediately lifted away, banking hard, roaring toward the carrier.

There was an eerie silence left behind. Barrie slumped against one of the seats, her face rigid with the effort of maintaining control. No one said a word. Spooky started the motor again, and the little craft shot through the darkness, following the rapidly disappearing lights of the helicopter.

It was over an hour before the second helicopter settled onto the deck of the huge carrier. The remaining four members of the team leaped to the deck almost before the helicopter had touched down. Barrie clambered after them, ran with them. Greenberg had one hand clamped on her arm to make certain she didn’t get left behind.

Someone in a uniform stepped in front of them. “Miss Lovejoy, are you all right?”

Barrie gave him a distracted glance and dodged around him. Another uniform popped up, but this one was subtly different, as if the wearer belonged on board this gigantic ship. The first man had worn a dress uniform, marking him as a non-crew member. Greenberg skidded to a halt. “Captain—”

“Lieutenant-Commander Mackenzie is in surgery,” the captain said. “Doc didn’t think he’d make it to a base with such a high rate of blood loss. If they can’t get the bleeding stopped, they’ll have to remove his spleen.”

The first uniformed officer had reached them. “Miss Lovejoy,” he said firmly, taking her arm. “I’m Major Hodson. I’ll escort you home.”

The military moved at its own pace, to its own rules. She was to be taken home immediately; the ambassador wanted his daughter back. Barrie protested. She yelled, she cried, she even swore at the harried major. None of it did any good. She was hustled aboard another aircraft, this time a cargo transport plane. Her last glimpse of the Montgomery was as the sun’s first rays glistened on the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and the sight was blurred by her tears.

Chapter 7

By the time the transport touched down in Athens, Barrie had cried so hard and for so long that her eyes were swollen almost shut. Major Hodson had tried everything to pacify her, then to console her; he assured her that he was just following orders, and that she would be able to find out how the SEAL was doing later. It was understandable that she was upset. She’d been through a lot, but she would have the best medical care—

At that, Barrie shot out of the uncomfortable web seat, which was all the transport plane afforded. “I’m not the one who was shot!” she yelled furiously. “I don’t need medical care, best, worst or mediocre! I want to be taken to wherever Zane Mackenzie is taken. I don’t care what your orders are!”

Major Hodson looked acutely uncomfortable. He tugged at the collar of his uniform. “Miss Lovejoy, I’m sorry. I can’t do anything about this situation. After we’re on the ground and your father is satisfied that you’re okay, then where you go is up to you.”

His expression plainly said that as far as he was concerned, she could go to hell. Barrie sat down, breathing hard and wiping away tears. She’d never acted like that before in her life. She’d always been such a lady, a perfect hostess for her father.

She didn’t feel at all ladylike now; she felt like a ferocious tigress, ready to shred anyone who got in her way. Zane was severely wounded, perhaps dying, and these fools wouldn’t let her be with him. Damn military procedure, and damn her father’s influence, for they had both wrenched her away from him.

As much as she loved her father, she knew she would never forgive him if Zane died and she wasn’t there. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know about Zane; nothing mattered compared to the enormous horror that loomed before her. God, don’t let him die! She couldn’t bear it. She would rather have died herself at her kidnappers’ hands than for Zane to be killed while rescuing her.

The flight took less than an hour and a half. The transport landed with a hard thump that jerked her in the web seat, then taxied for what seemed like an interminable length of time. Finally it rolled to a stop, and Major Hodson stood, plainly relieved to be free of his unpleasant burden.

A door was slid open, and a flight of steps rolled up to it. Clutching the black robe around her, Barrie stepped out into the bright Athens sunlight. It was full morning now, the heat already building. She blinked and lifted a hand to shield her eyes. It felt like forever since she’d been in the sunshine.

A gray limousine with darkly tinted windows was waiting on the tarmac. The door was shoved open, and her father bounded out, dignity forgotten as he ran forward. “Barrie!” Two days of worry and fear lined his face, but there was an almost desperate relief in his expression as he hurried up the steps to fold her in his arms.

She started crying again, or maybe she had never stopped. She buried her face against his suit, clutching him with desperate hands. “I’ve got to go back,” she sobbed, the words barely intelligible.

He tightened his arms around her. “There, there, baby,” he breathed. “You’re safe now, and I won’t let anything else happen to you, I swear. I’ll take you home—”

Wildly she shook her head, trying to pull away from him. “No,” she choked out. “I’ve got to get back to the Montgomery. Zane—he was shot. He might die. Oh, God, I’ve got to go back now!”

“Everything will be all right,” he crooned, hustling her down the steps with an arm locked around her shoulders. “I have a doctor waiting—”

“I don’t need a doctor!” she said fiercely, jerking away from him. She’d never done that before, and his face went blank with shock. She shoved her hair out of her face. The tangled mass hadn’t been combed in two days, and it was matted with sweat and sea spray. “Listen to me! The man who rescued me was shot. He might die. He was still in surgery when Major Hodson forced me on board this plane. I want to go back to the ship. I want to make sure Zane is okay.”

William Lovejoy firmly took hold of his daughter’s shoulders again, leading her across the tarmac to the waiting limo. “You don’t have to go back to the ship, sweetheart,” he said soothingly. “I’ll ask Admiral Lindley to find out how his man is doing. He is one of the SEAL team, I presume?”

Numbly she nodded.

“There wouldn’t be any point ingoing back to the ship, I’m sure you can see that. If he survived surgery, he’ll be airlifted to a military hospital.”

If he survived surgery. The words were like a knife, hot and slicing, going through her. She balled her hands into fists, every cell in her body screaming for her to ignore logic, ignore the attempts to soothe her. She needed to get to Zane.

Three days later, she stood in her father’s office with her chin high and her eyes colder than he’d ever seen them. “You told Admiral Lindley to block my requests,” she accused.

The ambassador sighed. He removed his reading glasses and carefully placed them on the inlaid walnut desk. “Barrie, you know I’ve denied you very little that you’ve asked for, but you’re being unreasonable about this man. You know that he’s recovering, and that’s all you need to know. What point would there be in rushing to his bedside? Some tabloid might find out about it, and then your ordeal would be plastered in sleazy newspapers all over the world. Is that what you want?”

“My ordeal?” she echoed. “My ordeal? What about his? He nearly died! That’s assuming Admiral Lindley told me the truth, and he really is still alive!”

“Of course he is. I only asked Joshua to block any inquiries you made about his location.” He unfolded his tall form from the chair and came around to lean against the desk and take her resistant hands in his. “Barrie, give yourself time to get over the trauma. I know you’ve invested this…this guerrilla fighter with all sorts of heroic characteristics, and that’s only normal. After a while, when you’ve regained your perspective, you’ll be glad you didn’t embarrass yourself by chasing after him.”

It was almost impossible to contain the volcanic fury rising in her. Nobody was listening; no one wanted to listen. They kept going on and on about her ordeal, how she would heal in time, until she wanted to pull her hair out. She had insisted over and over that she hadn’t been raped, but she had fiercely refused to be examined by a doctor, which of course had only fueled speculation that the kidnappers had indeed raped her. But she’d known her body bore the marks of Zane’s lovemaking, marks and traces that were precious and private, for no one else’s eyes. Everyone was treating her as if she was made of crystal, carefully not mentioning the kidnapping, until she thought she would go mad.

She wanted to see Zane. That was all. Just see him, assure herself that he would be all right. But when she’d asked one of the Marine officers stationed at the embassy to make some inquiries about Zane, it was Admiral Lindley who had gotten back to her instead of the captain.

The dignified, distinguished admiral had come to the ambassador’s private quarters less than an hour before. Barrie hadn’t yet returned to her minor job in the embassy, feeling that she couldn’t keep her mind on paperwork, so she had received the admiral in the beautifully appointed parlor.

After polite conversation about her health and the weather, the admiral came to the point of his visit. “You’ve been making some inquiries about Zane Mackenzie,” he said kindly. “I’ve kept abreast of his condition, and I can tell you now with complete confidence that he’ll fully recover. The ship’s surgeon was able to stop the bleeding, and it wasn’t necessary to remove his spleen. His condition was stabilized, and he was transferred to a hospital. When he’s able, he’ll be sent Stateside for the remainder of his convalescence.”

“Where is he?” Barrie had demanded, her eyes burning. She’d scarcely slept in three days. Though she was once more impeccably clothed and coifed, the strain she’d been under had left huge dark circles under her eyes, and she was losing weight fast, because her nerves wouldn’t let her eat.

Admiral Lindley sighed. “William asked me to keep that information from you, Barrie, and I have to say, I think he’s right. I’ve known Zane a long time. He’s an extraordinary warrior. But SEALs are a breed apart, and the characteristics that make them such great warriors don’t, as a whole, make them model citizens. They’re trained weapons, to put it bluntly. They don’t keep high profiles, and most information about them is restricted.”

“I don’t want to know about his training,” she said, her voice strained. “I don’t want to know about his missions. I just want to see him.”

The admiral shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Nothing she said budged him. He refused to give her even one more iota of information. Still, Zane was alive; he would be all right. Just knowing that made her feel weak inside, as the unbearable tension finally relaxed.

That didn’t mean she would forgive her father for interfering.

“I love him,” she now said deliberately. “You have no right to keep me from seeing him.”

“Love?” Her father gave her a pitying look. “Barrie, what you feel isn’t love, it’s hero-worship. It will fade, I promise you.”

“Do you think I haven’t considered that?” she fired back. “I’m not a teenager with a crush on a rock star. Yes, I met him under dangerous, stressful circumstances. Yes, he saved my life—and he nearly died doing it. I know what infatuation is, and I know what love is, but even if I didn’t, the decision isn’t yours to make.”

“You’ve always been reasonable,” he argued. “At least concede that your judgment may not be at its sharpest right now. What if you acted impulsively, married this man—I’m sure he’d jump at the chance—and then realized that you really didn’t love him? Think what a mess it would be. I know it sounds snobbish, but he isn’t our kind. He’s a sailor, and a trained killer. You’ve dined with kings and danced with princes. What could the two of you have in common?”

“First, that doesn’t just sound snobbish, it is snobbish. Second, you must not think much of me as a person if you consider your money my only attraction.”

“You know that isn’t what I meant,” he said, genuinely shocked. “You’re a wonderful person. But how could someone like that appreciate the life you live? How do you know he wouldn’t have his eye on the main chance?”

“Because I know him,” she declared. “I know him in a way I never would have if I’d met him at an embassy party. According to you, a SEAL couldn’t be kind and considerate, but he was. They all were, for that matter. Dad, I’ve told you over and over that I wasn’t raped. I know you don’t believe me, and I know you’ve suffered, worrying about me. But I swear to you—I swear—that I wasn’t. They were planning to, the next day, but they were waiting for someone. So, though I was terrified and upset, I haven’t been through the trauma of a gang rape the way you keep thinking. Seeing Zane lying in a pool of blood was a hell of a lot more traumatic than anything those kidnappers did!”

“Barrie!” It was the first time her father had ever heard her curse. Come to think of it, she had never cursed at all, until rough men had grabbed her off the street and subjected her to hours of terror. She had cursed them, and meant it. She had cursed Major Hodson, and meant that, too.

With an effort, she regulated her tone. “You know that the first attempt to get me out didn’t quite work.”

He gave an abrupt nod. He’d suffered agonies, thinking their only hope of rescuing her had failed and imagining what she must be suffering. That was when he’d given up hope of ever seeing her alive again. Admiral Lindley hadn’t been as pessimistic; the SEALs hadn’t checked in, and though there were reports of gunfire in Benghazi, if a team of SEALs had been killed or captured, the Libyan government would have trumpeted it all over the world. That meant they were still there, still working to free her. Until they heard from the team that the rescue had failed, there was still hope.

“Well, it did work, in a way. Zane came in alone to get me, while the rest of the team was a diversion, I guess, in case things went wrong. He had a backup plan, what to do if they were spotted, because you can’t control the human factor.” She realized she was repeating things Zane had said to her during those long hours when they had lain drowsily together, and she missed him so much that pain knotted her insides. “The team was so well-hidden that one of the guards didn’t see Spooky until he actually stepped on him. That’s what gave the alarm and started the shooting. A guard had been posted in the corridor outside the room where they had me tied up, and he ran in. Zane killed him,” she said simply. “Then, while the others were chasing the team, he got me out of the building. We were separated from the team and had to hide for a day, but I was safe.”

The ambassador listened gravely, soaking up these details of how she had been returned to him. They hadn’t talked before, not about the actual rescue. She had been too distraught about Zane, almost violent in her despair. Now that she knew he was alive, even though she was still so angry she could barely contain it, she was able to tell her father how she had been returned to him alive.

“While I stayed in our hiding place, Zane risked his life by going out and stealing food and water for us, as well as the robe and chador for me. He took care of the cut on my foot. When scavengers were practically dismantling the place around us, he kept himself between me and any danger. That’s the man I fell in love with, that’s the man you say isn’t ‘our kind.’ He may not be yours, but he’s definitely mine!”

The expression in her father’s eyes was stunned, almost panicked. Too late, Barrie saw that she had chosen the wrong tack in her argument. If she had presented her concern for Zane as merely for someone who had done so much for her, if she had insisted that it was only right she thank him in person, her father could have been convinced. He was very big on preserving the niceties, on behaving properly. Instead, she had convinced him that she truly loved Zane Mackenzie, and too late she saw how much he had feared exactly that. He didn’t want to lose her, and now Zane presented a far bigger threat than before.

“Barrie, I…” He fumbled to a stop, her urbane, sophisticated father who was never at a loss for words. He swallowed hard. It was true that he’d seldom denied her anything, and those times he had refused had been because he thought the activity she planned or the object she wanted—once it had been a motorcycle—wasn’t safe. Keeping her safe was his obsession, that and holding tightly to his only remaining family, his beloved child, who so closely resembled the wife he’d lost.

She saw it in his eyes as his instinct to pamper her with anything she desired warred with the knowledge that this time, if he did, he would probably lose her from his life. He didn’t want occasional visits from her; they had both endured that kind of separation during her school years. He wanted her there, in his everyday life. She knew part of his obsession was selfish, because she made domestic matters very easy for him, but she had never doubted his love for her.

Pure panic flashed in his expression. He said stiffly, “I still think you need to give yourself time for your emotions to calm. And surely you realize that the conditions you describe are what that man is used to. How could he ever fit into your life?”

“That’s a moot question, since marriage or even a relationship was never discussed. I want to see him. I don’t want him to think that I didn’t care enough even to check on his condition.”

“If any sort of relationship was never discussed, why would he expect you to visit him? It was a mission for him, nothing more.”

Barrie’s shoulders were military straight, her jaw set, her green eyes dark with emotion. “It was more,” she said flatly, and that was as much of what had happened between her and Zane as she was willing to discuss. She took a deep breath and pulled out the heavy artillery. “You owe it to me,” she said, her gaze locked with his. “I haven’t asked any details about what happened here, but I’m an intelligent, logical person—”

“Of course you are,” he interrupted, “but I don’t see—”

“Was there a ransom demanded?” She cut across his interruption.

He was a trained diplomat; he seldom lost control of his expression. But now, startled, the look he gave her was blank with puzzlement. “A ransom?” he echoed.

A new despair knotted itself in her stomach, etched itself in her face. “Yes, ransom,” she said softly. “There wasn’t one, was there? Because money wasn’t what he wanted. He wants something from you, doesn’t he? Information. He’s either trying to force you to give it to him, or you’re already in it up to your eyebrows and you’ve had a falling out with him. Which is it?”

Again his training failed him; for a split second his face revealed panicked guilt and consternation before his expression smoothed into diplomatic blandness. “What a ridiculous charge,” he said calmly.

She stood there, sick with knowledge. If the kidnapper had been using her as a weapon to force her father into betraying his country, the ambassador most likely would have denied it, because he wouldn’t want her to be worried, but that wasn’t what she’d read in his face. It was guilt.

She didn’t bother responding to his denial. “You owe me,” she repeated. “You owe Zane.”

He flinched at the condemnation in her eyes. “I don’t see it that way at all.”

“You’re the reason I was kidnapped.”

“You know there are things I can’t tell you,” he said, releasing her hands and walking around the desk to resume his seat, symbolically leaving the role of father and entering that of ambassador. “But your supposition is wrong, and, of course, an indication of how off-balance you still are.”

She started to ask if Art Sandefer would think her supposition was so wrong, but she couldn’t bring herself to threaten her father. Feeling sick, she wondered if that made her a traitor, too. She loved her country; living in Europe as much as she had, she had seen and appreciated the dramatic differences between the United States and every other country on earth. Though she liked Europe and had a fondness for French wine, German architecture, English orderliness, Spanish music and Italy in general, whenever she set foot in the States she was struck by the energy, the richness of life where even people who were considered poor lived well compared to everywhere else. The United States wasn’t perfect, far from it, but it had something special, and she loved it.

By her silence, she could be betraying it.

By staying here, she remained in danger. Kidnapping her had failed once, but that didn’t mean he, the unknown, faceless enemy, wouldn’t try again. Her father knew who he was, she was certain of it. Immediately she saw how it would be. She would be confined to the embassy grounds, or allowed out only with an armed escort. She would be a prisoner of her father’s fear.

There was really no place she would be entirely safe, but remaining here only made the danger more acute. And once she was away from the enclave of the embassy, she would have a better chance of locating Zane, because Admiral Lindley’s influence couldn’t cover every nook and cranny of the globe. The farther away from Athens she was, the thinner that influence would be.

She faced her father, knowing that she was deliberately breaking the close ties that had bound them together for the past fifteen years. “I’m going home,” she said calmly. “To Virginia.”

Two weeks later, Zane sat on the front porch of his parents’ house, perched on top of Mackenzie’s Mountain, just outside Ruth, Wyoming. The view was breathtaking, an endless vista of majestic mountains and green valleys. Everything here was as familiar to him as his own hands. Saddles, boots, some cattle but mostly horses. Books in every room of the sprawling house, cats prowling through the barns and stables, his mother’s sweet, bossy coddling, his father’s concern and understanding.

He’d been shot before; he’d been sliced up in a knife fight. He’d had his collarbone broken, ribs cracked, a lung punctured. He had been seriously injured before, but this was the closest he’d ever come to dying. He’d been bleeding to death, lying there in the bottom of the raft with Barrie crouched over him, pressing the chador over the wound with every ounce of her weight. Her quickness, her determination, had made the difference. Santos squeezing the plasma from the bags into his veins had made the difference. He had been so close that he could pick out a dozen details that had made the difference; if any one of them hadn’t happened, he would have died.

He’d been unusually quiet since leaving the naval hospital and returning home for convalescence. It wasn’t that he was in low spirits, but rather that he had a lot of thinking to do, something that hadn’t been easy when practically the entire family had felt compelled to visit and reassure themselves of his relative well-being. Joe had flown in from Washington for a quick check on his baby brother; Michael and Shea had visited several times, bringing their two rapscallion sons with them; Josh and Loren and their three had descended for a weekend visit, which was all the time Loren’s job at the hospital in Seattle had allowed. Maris had driven all night to be there when he was brought home. At least he’d been able to walk on his own by then, even if very slowly, or likely she would still be here. She had pulled up a chair directly in front of him and sat for hours, her black eyes locked on his face as if she was willing vitality from her body into his. Maybe she had been. His little sister was fey, magical; she operated on a different level than other people did.

Hell, even Chance had shown up. He’d done so warily, eyeing their mother and sister as if they were bombs that might go off in his face, but he was here, sitting beside Zane on the porch.

“You’re thinking of resigning.”

Zane didn’t have to wonder how Chance had known what was on his mind. After nearly battering each other to death when they were fourteen, they had reached an unusual communion. Maybe it was because they’d shared so much, from classes to girls to military training. Even after all this time, Chance was as wary as a wounded wolf and didn’t like people to get close to him, but even though he resisted, he was helpless against family. Chance had never in his life been loved until Mary had brought him home with her and the sprawling, brawling Mackenzies had knocked him flat. It was fun to watch him still struggle against the family intimacy each time he was drawn into the circle, because within an hour he always surrendered. Mary wouldn’t let him do anything else; nor would Maris. After accepting him as a brother, Zane had never even acknowledged Chance’s wariness. Only Wolf was willing to give his adopted son time to adjust—but there was still a limit on how much time he would allow.

“Yeah,” he finally said.

“Because you nearly bought it this time?”

Zane snorted. “When has that ever made any difference to either of us?” He alone of the family knew the exact details of Chance’s work. It was a toss-up which of them was in the most danger.

“Then it’s this last promotion that did it.”

“It took me out of the field,” Zane said quietly. Carefully he leaned back in the chair and propped his booted feet on the porch railing. Though he was a fast healer, two and a half weeks wasn’t quite long enough to let him ignore the wound. “If two of my men hadn’t been wounded in that screw up on the Montgomery, I wouldn’t have been able to go on this last mission.”

Chance knew about the screw up. Zane had told him about it, and screw up was the most polite description he’d used. As soon as he’d regained consciousness in the naval hospital, he’d been on the phone, starting and directing the investigation. Though Odessa would fully recover, it was likely Higgins would have to retire on disability. The guards who had shot the two SEALs might escape court-martial if their counsel was really slick, but at the very least they would be cashiered out of the service. The extent of the damage to the careers of Captain Udaka and Executive Officer Boyd remained to be seen; Zane had targeted the shooters, but the ripple effect would go all the way up to the captain.

“I’m thirty-one,” Zane said. “That’s just about the upper limit for active missions. I’m too damn good at my job, too. The Navy keeps promoting me for it, then they say I’m too highly ranked to go on missions.”

“You want to throw in with me?” Chance asked casually.

He’d considered it. Very seriously. But something kept nagging at him, something he couldn’t quite bring into focus.

“I want to. If things were different, I would, but…”

“What things?”

Zane shrugged. At least part of his uneasy feeling could be nailed down. “A woman,” he said.

“Oh, hell.” Chance kicked back and surveyed the world over the toes of his boots. “If it’s a woman, you won’t be able to concentrate on anything until you’ve gotten her out of your system. Damn their sweet little hides,” he said fondly. Chance generally had women crawling all over him. It didn’t hurt that he was drop-dead handsome, but he had a raffish, daredevil quality to him that brought them out of the woodwork.

Zane wasn’t certain he could get Barrie out of his system. He wasn’t certain he wanted to. He didn’t wonder why she had disappeared without even saying goodbye, hope you’re feeling better. Bunny and Spook had told him how she’d been dragged, kicking and yelling and swearing, aboard a plane and taken back to Athens. He figured her father, combined with the Navy’s policy of secrecy concerning the SEALs, had prevented her from finding out to which hospital they’d taken him.

He missed her. He missed her courage, her sturdy willingness to do whatever needed doing. He missed the serenity of her expression, and the heat of her lovemaking.

God, yes.

The one memory, more than any of the others, that was branded in his brain was the moment when she had reached for his belt and said in that fierce whisper, “I’ll do it!”

He’d understood. Not just why she needed to be in control, but the courage it took her to wipe out the bad memories and replace them with good ones. She’d been a virgin; she had told the truth about that. She hadn’t known what to do, and she hadn’t expected the pain. But she had taken him anyway, sweetly, hotly, sliding her tight little body down on him and shattering his control the way no other woman had ever done.

She could have been a spoiled, helpless little socialite; she should have been exactly that. Instead she had made the best of a tense, dangerous situation, done what she could to help and hadn’t voiced a single complaint.

He liked being with her, liked talking to her. He was too much of a loner to easily accept the word love in connection with anyone other than family, but with Barrie…maybe. He wanted to spend more time with her, get to know her better, let whatever would develop get to developing.

He wanted her.

First things first, though. He had to get his strength back; right now he could walk from room to room without aid, but he would think twice about heading down to the stables by himself. He had to decide whether or not he was going to stay in the Navy; it felt like time to be moving on, since the reason he’d joined in the first place was being taken away from him as he moved up the ranks. If he wasn’t going to remain a SEAL, then what would he do for a living? He had to decide, had to get his life settled.

Barrie might not be interested in any kind of relationship with him, though from the way Spook and Bunny had described her departure, he didn’t think that was the case. The day of lovemaking they had shared had been more than propinquity for both of them.

Getting in touch with her could take some doing, though. That morning he had placed a call to the embassy in Athens. He’d given his name and asked to speak to Barrie Lovejoy. It had been Ambassador William Lovejoy who had come on the line, however, and the conversation hadn’t been cordial.

“It isn’t that Barrie doesn’t appreciate what you did, but I’m sure you understand that she wants to put all of that behind her. Talking with you would bring it all back and needlessly upset her,” the ambassador had said in a cool, well-bred voice, his diction the best money could buy.

“Is that her opinion, or yours?” Zane had asked, his tone arctic.

“I don’t see that it matters,” the ambassador had replied, and hung up.

Zane decided he would let it rest for now. He wasn’t in any shape to do much about it, so he would wait. When he had his mind made up about what he was going to do, there would be plenty of time to get in touch with Barrie, and now that he knew the ambassador had given orders for his calls not to be routed to her, the next time he would be prepared to do an end run around her father.

“Zane,” his mother called from inside the house, pulling his thoughts to the present. “Are you getting tired?”

“I feel fine,” he called back. It was an exaggeration, but he wasn’t unduly tired. He glanced at Chance and saw the smirk on his brother’s face.

“With all the worry about you, she forgot about my cracked ribs,” Chance whispered.

“Glad to be of service,” Zane drawled. “Just don’t expect me to get shot every time you bang yourself up a little.” The entire family thought it was hilarious the way Chance reacted to Mary’s coddling and fussing, as if the attention terrified him, even though he was never able to resist her. Chance was putty in Mary’s hands, but then, they all were. They’d grown up with the fine example of their father to emulate, and Wolf Mackenzie might growl and stomp, but Mary usually got her way.

“Chance?”

Zane controlled a grin as Chance stiffened, the smirk disappearing from his face as if it had never been.

“Ma’am?” he answered cautiously.

“Are you still keeping a pressure wrap on your ribs?”

That familiar panicked expression was in his eyes now. “Ah…no, ma’am.” He could have lied; Mary would have believed him. But none of them ever lied to her, even when it was in their best interests. It would hurt the little tyrant’s feelings too much if she ever discovered any of her kids had lied to her.

“You know you’re supposed to wrap them for another week,” said the voice from inside the house. It was almost like hearing God speak, except this voice was light and sweet and liquidly Southern.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Come inside and let me take care of that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Chance said again, resignation in his voice. He got up from his rocking chair and went into the house. As he passed Zane, he muttered, “Getting shot didn’t work. Try something else.”

Chapter 8

Two months later, Sheriff Zane Mackenzie stood naked at the window of the pleasant two-bedroom Spanish-style house he had bought in southern Arizona. He was staring out over the moonlit desert, something wild and hot running through him at the sight. His SEAL training had taught him how to adapt to any environment, and the hot, dry climate didn’t bother him.

Once he’d made up his mind to resign his commission, things had rapidly fallen into place. Upon hearing that he was leaving the Navy, a former SEAL team member who was now on the governor’s staff in Phoenix had called and asked if he would be interested in serving the remaining two years of the term of a sheriff who had died in office.

At first Zane had been taken aback; he’d never considered going into law enforcement. Moreover, he didn’t know anything about Arizona state laws.

“Don’t worry about it,” his friend had said breezily. “Sheriff is a political position, and most of the time it’s more administrative than anything else. The situation you’d be going into is more hands-on, though. A couple of the deputies have quit, so you’d be shorthanded until some more can be hired, and the ones still there will resent the hell out of you because one of them wasn’t appointed to finish out the sheriff’s term.”

“Why not?” Zane asked bluntly. “What’s wrong with the chief deputy?”

“She’s one of the ones who quit. She left a couple of months before the sheriff died, took a job on the force in Prescott.”

“None of the others are qualified?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Then what would you say?”

“You gotta understand, there’s not a lot of selection here. A couple of the young deputies are good, real good, but they’re too young, not enough experience. The one twenty-year guy isn’t interested. A fifteen-year guy is a jerk, and the rest of the deputies hate his guts.”

Sheriff. Zane thought about it, growing more intrigued with the idea. He had no illusions about it being a cakewalk. He would have difficulties with the fifteen-year veteran, at least, and likely all the other deputies would have some reservations and resistance about someone from the outside being brought in. Hell, he liked it better that way. Cakewalks didn’t interest him. He’d rather have a challenging job any day. “Okay, I’m interested. What does it involve?”

“A lot of headache, mostly. The pay’s decent, the hours are lousy. A reservation sits on part of the county, so you’ll have to deal with the BIA. There’s a big problem with illegal immigrants, but that’s for the INS to worry about. Generally, this isn’t a high crime area. Not enough people.”

So here he was, his strength back, the owner of a house and a hundred acres of land, newly sworn in as sheriff. He’d brought in a few of his horses from his parents’ place in Wyoming. It was a hell of a change from the Navy.

It was time to see about Barrie. He’d thought about her a lot over the past few months, but lately he couldn’t think about anything else. The uneasy feeling was persisting, growing stronger. He’d put his resources to work, and to his surprise found that she’d left Athens within a week of being returned there. She was currently living at the Lovejoy private residence in Arlington, Virginia. Moreover, last month the ambassador had abruptly asked to be replaced, and he, too, had returned to Virginia. Zane wished Mr. Lovejoy had remained in Athens, but his presence was a problem that could be handled.

No matter what her father did or said, Zane was determined to see Barrie. There was unfinished business between them, a connection that had been abruptly cut when he’d been shot and she had been forced aboard a flight to Athens. He knew the hot intimacy of those long hours together could have been a product of stress and propinquity, but at this point, he didn’t give a damn. There were other considerations, ones he couldn’t ignore. That was why he had a flight out of Tucson to Washington in the morning. He needed to be sleeping, but one thought kept going around and around in his head. She was pregnant.

He couldn’t say why he was so convinced of it. It was a gut feeling, an intuition, even a logical conclusion. There hadn’t been any means of birth control available; they had made love several times. Put the two facts together, and the possibility of pregnancy existed. He didn’t think it was a mere possibility, though; he thought it was a fact.

Barrie was going to have his baby.

The rush of fierce possessiveness he felt was like a tidal wave, sweeping away all his cautious plans. There wouldn’t be any gradual getting-to-know-each-other stage, no easing into the idea of a serious relationship. If she was pregnant, they would get married immediately. If she didn’t like the idea, he would convince her. It was as simple as that.

She was pregnant. Barrie hugged the precious knowledge to herself, not ready yet to let anyone else know, certainly not her father. The kidnapping and the aftermath had driven a wedge between them that neither of them could remove. He was desperate to restore their former relationship; nothing else could have induced him to resign from a post, an action that could have had serious repercussions for his career if it hadn’t generally been thought that he had resigned because she had been so traumatized by the kidnapping that she couldn’t remain in Athens and he wanted to be with her.

She tried not to think about whatever he might be involved in, because it hurt. It hurt horribly that he might be a traitor. Part of her simply couldn’t believe it; he was an old-fashioned man, a man to whom honor wasn’t just a word but a way of life. She had no proof, only logic and her own deductions…that, and the expression he hadn’t quite been able to hide when she had asked him directly if he was involved in anything that might have resulted in her being kidnapped.

It also hurt horribly that he had kept her from Zane. She had made inquiries once she reached Virginia, but once again she had collided with a stone wall. No one would give her any information at all about him. She had even contacted SEAL headquarters and been politely stone-walled again. At least with the SEALs it was probably policy to safeguard the team members’ identities and location, given the sensitive nature of the antiterrorism unit.

She was having his baby. She wanted him to know about it. She wouldn’t expect anything of him that he didn’t want to give, but she wanted him to know about his child. And she desperately wanted to see him again. She was adrift and lonely and frightened, her emotions in turmoil, and she needed some security in that part of her life, at least. He wasn’t the kind of man who would blithely walk away from his offspring and ignore their existence. This baby would be a permanent link between them, something she could count on.

She doubted her father would relent concerning Zane even if he knew about the baby; his possessiveness would probably extend to a grandchild, even an illegitimate one. He would take steps to keep her pregnancy quiet, and even when the news got around, as it inevitably would, people would assume it was a child of rape, and they would look at her pityingly and talk about how brave she was.

She thought she would go mad. She had escaped to Virginia only to have her father follow. He panicked if she went anywhere unescorted. She had her own car, but he didn’t want her driving it; he wanted his driver to take her wherever she wanted to go. She had had to sneak to a pharmacy to buy a home pregnancy test, though she had been sure fairly early on that she was pregnant. The test had merely confirmed what her body had already told her.

Barrie knew she should be worried and upset about this unplanned pregnancy, but it was the only thing in her life right now that made her happy. She was intensely lonely; the kidnapping and the long hours alone with Zane had set her apart from the other people in her life. She had memories they couldn’t share, thoughts and needs no one could understand. Zane had been there with her; he would have understood her occasional pensiveness, her reticence in talking about it. It wasn’t that she was secretive, for she would have liked to talk to someone who understood. But what she had shared with Zane was like a combat experience, forming a unique bond between the people who had lived it.

She wouldn’t be able to keep her pregnancy secret much longer; she had to arrange prenatal care, and all telephone calls were now recorded. She supposed she could sneak out again and set up a doctor’s appointment from a pay phone, but she would be damned if she would.

Enough was enough. She was an adult, and soon to be a mother. She hated the fact that her relationship with her father had deteriorated to the point where they barely spoke, but she couldn’t find a way to mend it. As long as the possibility of his involvement in treasonous activities remained, she was helpless. She wanted him to explain, to give her a plausible reason why she had been kidnapped. She wanted to stop looking over her shoulder every time she went out; she didn’t want to feel as if she truly needed to be guarded. She wanted to live a normal life. She didn’t want to raise her baby in an atmosphere of fear.

But that was exactly the atmosphere that permeated the house. It was stifling her. She had to get away, had to remove herself from the haunting fear that, as long as her father was involved in whatever had given him such a guilty expression, she could be kidnapped again. The very thought made her want to vomit, and she didn’t have just herself to worry about now. She had her baby to protect.

The fatigue of early pregnancy had gotten her into the habit of sleeping late, but one morning she woke early, disturbed by a pair of raucous birds fighting for territory in the tree outside her window. Once she was awake, nausea soon followed, and she made her usual morning dash to the bathroom. Also as usual, when the bout of morning sickness had passed, she felt fine. She looked out the window at the bright morning and realized she was inordinately hungry, the first time in weeks that the idea of food was appealing.

It was barely six o’clock, too early for Adele, the cook, to have arrived. Breakfast was normally at eight, and she had been sleeping past that. Her stomach growled. She couldn’t wait another two hours for something to eat.

She put on her robe and slippers and quietly left her room; her father’s bedroom was at the top of the stairs, and she didn’t want to disturb him. Even more, she didn’t want him to join her for an awkward tête-àè-tête. He tried so hard to carry on as if nothing had happened, and she couldn’t respond as she had before.

He should still be asleep, she thought, but when she reached the top of the stairs she heard him saying something she couldn’t understand. She paused, wondering if he’d heard her after all and had been calling out to her. Then she heard him say Mack in a sharp tone, and she froze.

A chill roughened her entire body, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. The only Mack she knew was Mack Prewett, but why would her father be talking to him? Mack Prewett was still stationed in Athens, as far as she knew, and since her father had resigned, he shouldn’t have had any reason to be talking to him.

Then her heart leaped wildly as another possibility occurred to her. Perhaps he had been saying Mackenzie and she’d heard only the first syllable. Maybe he was talking about Zane. If she listened, she might find out where he was, or at least how he was. With no additional information about his condition, it had been hard to believe Admiral Lindley’s assurance that he would fully recover. Belief required trust, and she no longer trusted the admiral, or her father.

She crept closer to his door and put her ear against it.

“—finished soon,” he was saying sharply, then he was silent for a moment. “I didn’t bargain on this. Barrie wasn’t supposed to be involved. Get it wrapped up, Mack.”

Barrie closed her eyes in despair. The chill was back, even colder than before. She shook with it, and swallowed hard against the return of nausea. So he was involved, he and Mack Prewett both. Mack was CIA. Was he a double agent, and if so, for whom? The world situation wasn’t like it had been back in the old days of the Cold War, when the lines had been clearly drawn. Nations had died since then, and new ones taken their place. Religion or money seemed to be the driving force behind most differences these days; how would her father and Mack Prewett fit into that? What information would her father have that Mack wouldn’t?

The answer eluded her. It could be anything. Her father had friends in every country in Europe, and any variety of confidential information could come his way. What didn’t make sense was why he would sell that information; he was already a wealthy man. But money, to some people, was as addictive as a narcotic. No amount was ever enough; they had to have more, then still more, always looking for the next hit in the form of cash and the power that went with it.

Could she have been so wrong in her judgment of him? Had she still been looking at him with a child’s eyes, seeing only her father, the man who had been the security in her life, instead of a man whose ambitions had tainted his honor?

Blindly she stumbled to her bedroom, not caring if he heard her. He must still have been engrossed in his conversation, though, or she didn’t make as much noise as she thought she had, because his door remained closed.

She curled up on the bed, protectively folding herself around the tiny embryo in her womb.

What was it he hadn’t bargained on? The kidnapping? That was over two months in the past. Had there been a new threat to use her as a means of ensuring he did something?

She was helplessly fumbling around in the dark with these wild conjectures, and she hated it. It was like being in alien territory, with no signs to guide her. What was she supposed to do? Take her suspicions to the FBI? She had nothing concrete to go on, and over the years her father had made a lot of contacts in the FBI; who could she trust there?

Even more important, if she stayed here, was she in danger? Maybe her wild conjectures weren’t wild at all. She had seen a lot during her father’s years in foreign service and noticed even more when she had started working at the embassy. Things happened, skulduggery went on, dangerous situations developed. Given the kidnapping, her father’s reaction and now his unreasonable attitude about her safety, she didn’t think she could afford to assume everything would be okay.

She had to leave.

Feverishly she began trying to think of someplace she could go where it wouldn’t be easy to find her, and how she could get there without leaving a paper trail that would lead a halfway competent terrorist straight to her. Mean-while, Mack Prewett wasn’t a halfway competent bureaucrat, he was frighteningly efficient; he was like a spider, with webs of contacts spreading out in all directions. If she booked a flight using her real name, or paid for it with a credit card, he would know.

To truly hide, she had to have cash, a lot of it. That meant emptying her bank account, but how could she get there without her father knowing? It had reached the point where she would have to climb out the window and walk to the nearest pay phone to call a cab.

Maybe the house was already being watched.

She moaned and covered her face with her hands. Oh, God, this was making her paranoid, but did she dare not suspect anything? As some wit had observed, even paranoids had enemies.

She had to think of the baby. No matter how paranoid an action seemed, she had to err on the side of safety. If she had to dress in dark clothing, slither out a window in the wee hours of the morning and crawl across the ground until she was well away from this house…as ridiculous as it sounded, she would do it. Tonight? The sooner she got away, the better.

Tonight.

That decision made, she took a deep breath and tried to think of the details. She would have to carry some clothing. She would take her checkbook and bank book, so she could close out both her checking and savings accounts. She would take her credit cards and get as much cash as she could on them; everything together would give her a hefty amount, close to half a million dollars. How would she carry that much money? She would need an empty bag.

This was beginning to sound ludicrous, even to her. How was she supposed to crawl across the lawn in the darkness, dragging two suitcases behind her?

Think! she fiercely admonished herself. Okay, she wouldn’t have to carry either clothes or suitcases with her. All she would need to carry was her available cash, which was several hundred dollars, her checkbook and savings account book, and her credit cards, which she would destroy after they had served their purpose. She could buy new clothes and makeup, as well as what luggage she would immediately need, as soon as a discount store opened. She could buy do-it-yourself hair coloring and dye her red hair brown, though not until after she had been to the bank. She didn’t want the teller to be able to describe her disguise.

With cash in her possession, she would have several options. She could hop on Amtrak and go in any direction, then get off the train before her ticketed destination. Then she could buy a cheap used car, pay cash for it, and no one would know where she went from there. To be on the safe side, she would drive that car for only one day, then trade it in on a better car, again paying cash.

These were drastic measures, but doable. She still wasn’t certain she wasn’t being ridiculous, but did she dare bet that way, when her life, and that of her child, could hang in the balance? Desperate times call for desperate measures. Who had said that? Perhaps an eighteenth-century revolutionary; if so, she knew how he had felt. She had to disappear as completely as possible. She would mail her father a postcard before she left town, letting him know that she was all right but that she thought it would be better to get away for a while, otherwise he would think she had indeed been kidnapped again, and he would go mad with grief and terror. She couldn’t do that to him. She still loved him very much, even after all he had done. Again a wave of disbelief and uncertainty hit her. It seemed so impossible that he would sell information to terrorists, so opposite to the man she had always known him to be. She was aware that he wasn’t universally well liked, but the worst accusation she had ever heard leveled against him was that he was a snob, which even she admitted was accurate. He was very effective as a diplomat and ambassador, working with the CIA, which was of course set up in every embassy, using his social standing and contacts to smooth the way whenever a problem cropped up. He had personally been acquainted with the last six presidents, and prime ministers called him a friend. This man was a traitor?

It couldn’t be. If she had only herself to consider, she would give him the benefit of the doubt.

But there was the baby, the tiny presence undetectable to any but herself. She could feel it in her breasts, which had become so tender she was always aware of them, and in the increased sensitivity and pressure low down in her abdomen, as her womb began to swell with amniotic fluid and increased blood flow. It was almost a hot feeling, as if the new life forming within her was generating heat with the effort of development.

Zane’s baby.

She would do anything, no matter how Draconian, to keep it safe. She had to find some secure place where she could get the prenatal care she needed. She would have to change her name, get a new driver’s license and a new social security card; she didn’t know how these last two would be accomplished, but she would find out. There were always shady characters who could tell her. The driver’s license could be forged, but the social security card would have to come through the regular administration. Even though social security was being phased out, until it was completely gone, everyone still had to have a number in order to get a legitimate job.

There was something else to consider. It would be stupid of her to live off her cash until it was all gone. She would need a job, anything that paid enough to keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. She had degrees in art and history, but she wouldn’t be able to use her own name, so she wouldn’t be able to use those degrees to get a teaching job.

She didn’t know what the job situation would be wherever she settled; she would simply have to wait and see. It didn’t matter what she did, waiting tables or office work, she would take whatever was available.

She glanced at the clock: seven-thirty. Nerves notwithstanding, she was acutely hungry now, to the point of being sick with it. Her pregnant body had its own agenda, ignoring upset emotions and concentrating only on the business at hand.

The thought brought a smile to her face. It was almost as if the baby was already stomping a tiny foot and demanding what it wanted.

Tenderly she pressed her hand over her belly, feeling a slight firmness that surely hadn’t been there before. “All right,” she whispered to it. “I’ll feed you.”

She showered and dressed, mentally preparing herself to face her father without giving anything away. When she entered the breakfast room, he looked up with an expression of delight, quickly tempered by caution. “Well, it’s a pleasure to have your company,” he said, folding the newspaper and laying it aside.

“Some birds woke me up,” she said, going to the buffet to help herself to toast and eggs. She fought a brief spell of nausea at the sight of sausage and changed her mind about the eggs, settling on toast and fruit. She hoped that would be enough to satisfy the demanding little creature.

“Coffee?” her father asked as she sat down. He already had the silver carafe in his hand, poised to pour.

“No, not today,” she said hastily, as her stomach again clenched warningly. “I’ve been drinking too much caffeine lately, so I’m trying to cut down.” That was a direct lie. She had stopped drinking anything with caffeine in it as soon as she suspected she might be pregnant, but it was as if her system was still warning her against it. “I’ll drink orange juice.” So far, that hadn’t turned her stomach.

She applied herself to her food, replying civilly to his conversational gambits, but she couldn’t bring herself to wholeheartedly enter into a discussion with him the way she once would have done. She could barely look at him, afraid her feelings would be plain on her face. She didn’t want him any more alert than he already was.

“I’m having lunch with Congressman Garth,” he told her. “What are your plans for the day?”

“None,” she replied. Her plans were all for the night.

He looked relieved. “I’ll see you this afternoon, then. I’ll drive myself, so Poole will be available to drive you if you do decide to go anywhere.”

“All right,” she said, agreeing with him because she wasn’t going anywhere.

Once he’d left the house, she spent the day reading and occasionally napping. Now that she had made up her mind to go, she felt more peaceful. Tomorrow would be an exhausting day, so she needed to rest while she could.

Her father returned in the middle of the afternoon. Barrie was sitting in the living room, curled up with a book. She looked up as he entered and immediately noticed how the drawn look of worry eased when he saw her. “Did you have a nice lunch?” she asked, because that was what she would have done before.

“You know how these political things are,” he said. Once he would have sat down and told her all about it, but this time he smoothly evaded talking specifics. Senator Garth was on several important committees concerning national security and foreign affairs. Before she could ask any more questions, he went into his study, closing the door behind him. Before, he had always kept it open as an invitation to her to visit whenever she wanted. Sadly Barrie looked at the closed door, then returned to her book.

The doorbell startled her. She put the book aside and went to answer it, cautiously looking through the peephole before opening the door. A tall, black-haired man was standing there.

Her heart jumped wildly, and a wave of dizziness swept over her. Behind her, she heard her father coming out of his study. “Who is it?” he asked sharply. “Let me get it.”

Barrie didn’t reply. She jerked the door open and stared up into Zane’s cool, blue gray eyes. Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe.

That sharp gaze swept down her body, then came up to her face. “Are you pregnant?” he asked quietly, his voice pitched low so her father couldn’t hear, even though he was rapidly approaching.

“Yes,” she whispered.

He nodded, a terse movement of his head as if that settled that. “Then we’ll get married.”

Chapter 9

Her father reached them then, and shouldered Barrie aside. “Who are you?” he demanded, still in that sharp tone.

Zane coolly surveyed the man who would be his father-in-law. “Zane Mackenzie,” he finally replied, when he had finished his appraisal. His darkly tanned face was impassive, but there was a piercing quality to his pale eyes that made Barrie suddenly aware of how dangerous this man could be. It didn’t frighten her; under the circumstances, this quality was exactly what she needed.

William Lovejoy had been alarmed, but now his complexion turned pasty, and his expression froze. He said stiffly, “I’m sure you realize it isn’t good for Barrie to see you again. She’s trying to put that episode behind her—”

Zane looked past Lovejoy to where Barrie stood, visibly trembling as she stared at him with pleading green eyes. He hadn’t realized how green her eyes were, a deep forest green, or how expressive. He got the impression that she wasn’t pleading for him to be nice to her father, but rather that she was asking for help in some way, with some thing. His battle instincts stirred, his senses lifting to the next level of acuity. He didn’t know exactly what she was asking of him, but he would find out, as soon as he dealt with the present situation. It was time to let the former ambassador know exactly where he stood.

“We’re getting married,” he said, still looking at Barrie, as he cut through the ambassador’s continuing explanation on why it would be best if he left immediately. His steely voice, which had instantly commanded the attention of the deadliest guerrilla fighters in the world, cut through Lovejoy’s stuffy, patronizing explanation.

The ambassador broke off, and a look of panic flashed across his face. Then he said, “Don’t be ridiculous,” in a strained tone. “Barrie isn’t going to marry a sailor who thinks he’s something special because he’s a trained assassin.”

Zane’s cool gaze switched from Barrie to her father and went arctic cold, the blue fading to a gray that glinted like shards of ice. Lovejoy took an involuntary step back, his complexion going from pasty to white.

“Barrie, will you marry me?” Zane asked deliberately, keeping his gaze focused on Lovejoy.

She glanced from him to her father, who tensed as he waited for her answer.

“Yes,” she said, her mind racing. Zane. She wouldn’t question the miracle that had brought him here, but she was so desperate that she would have married him even if she hadn’t loved him. Zane was a SEAL; if anyone could keep her safe from the unknown enemy who had her father so on edge, he could. She was carrying his child, and evidently that possibility was what had brought him to Virginia in search of her. He was a man who took his responsibilities seriously. She would have preferred that he cared for her as deeply as she did for him, but she would take what she could get. She knew he was attracted to her; if he wasn’t, she wouldn’t be pregnant.

She would marry him, and perhaps with time he would come to love her.

Her father flinched at her answer. Half turning to her, he said imploringly, “Baby, you don’t want to marry someone like him. You’ve always had the best, and he can’t give it to you.”

Squaring her shoulders, she said, “I’m going to marry him—as soon as possible.”

Seeing the intractability in her expression, her father looked at Zane. “You won’t get a penny of her inheritance,” he said with real venom.

“Dad!” she cried, shocked. She had her own money, inheritances from her mother and grandparents, so she wasn’t worried about being destitute even if he carried through on his threat; it was the fact that he’d made the threat at all, that he would try to sabotage her future with Zane in such a blatant, hurtful manner, that hurt.

Zane shrugged. “Fine,” he said with deceptive mildness. Barrie heard the pure iron underlying the calm, even tone. “Do what you want with your money, I don’t give a damn. But you’re a fool if you thought you could keep her with you for the rest of your life. You can act like an ass and cheat yourself out of your grandchildren if you want, but nothing you say is going to change a damn thing.”

Lovejoy hung there, his face drawn with pain. Anguish darkened his eyes as he looked at his daughter. “Don’t do it,” he pleaded, his voice shaking.

Now it was her turn to wince, because in spite of everything, she hated to hurt him. “I’m pregnant,” she whispered, straightening her shoulders against any other hurtful thing he might say. “And we’re getting married.”

He swayed on his feet, stunned by her announcement. She hadn’t thought it possible he could turn any whiter, but he did. “What?” he croaked. “But—but you said you weren’t raped!”

“She wasn’t,” Zane said. There was a soft, drawling, very masculine undertone in his voice.

Their eyes met. Barrie gave him a soft, wry smile. “I wasn’t,” she verified, and despite everything, a sudden, subtle glow lit her face.

Her father couldn’t think of anything else to say. He gaped at them for a moment, unable to handle this turn of events. Then a red tide of anger ran up his face, chasing away the pallor. “You bastard!” he choked out. “You took advantage of her when she was vulnerable—”

Barrie grabbed his arm and jerked him around. “Stop it!” she yelled, her slender body tense with fury. Her nerves had been shredded since that morning, and this confrontation was only making them worse. Zane’s sudden appearance, though it made her almost giddy with happiness, was another shock to her system, and she’d had enough. “If anyone took advantage, I did. If you want the details I’ll give them to you, but I don’t think you really want to know!”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him if he’d thought he could keep her a virgin forever, but she bit the bitter words off unspoken. That would be too hurtful, and once said, she would never be able to take the words back. He loved her, perhaps too much; his fear of losing her was why he was lashing out. And, despite everything, she loved him, too. Pain congealed inside her as she stared starkly at him, all pretense gone. “I know,” she whispered. “Do you understand? I know. I know why you’ve been so paranoid every time I’ve left the house. I have to leave.”

He inhaled sharply, shock ripping away his last vestige of control. He couldn’t sustain her burning gaze, and he looked away. “Keep her safe,” he said to Zane in a stifled voice, then walked stiffly toward his study.

“I intend to.” That difficulty solved, he spared no more than a glance for his departing foe. His gaze switched to Barrie, and a slow, heart-stopping smile touched his lips. “Go get packed,” he said.

They were on their way within the hour.

She hurried up to her bedroom and filled her suitcases, bypassing the evening gowns and designer suits in favor of more practical clothing. The ankle-length cotton skirt she was already wearing was comfortable enough for travel; she pulled on a silk shirt over the sleeveless blouse she wore and let it go at that. Every instinct she had was screaming at her to hurry.

She dragged the bags to the top of the stairs. It didn’t require a lot of effort, they all had wheeled bottoms, but when Zane saw her, he left his post by the door and took the stairs two at a time. “Don’t lift those,” he ordered, taking the bags from her hands. “You should have called me.”

His tone was the same one he had used in commanding his men, but Barrie was too nervous to fight that battle with him right now. He lifted all three cases with an ease that made her blink and started down the stairs with them. She rushed after him. “Where are we going? Are we flying or driving?”

“Las Vegas. Flying.”

“You already have the tickets?” she asked in surprise.

He paused and glanced over his shoulder at her, the dark wings of his eyebrows lifting fractionally. “Of course,” he said, and resumed his trip down the stairs.

Such certainty and self-assurance were daunting. Briefly she wondered what on earth she was getting herself into. More and more she was becoming aware of just how much in control Zane Mackenzie was, of himself and everything around him. She might never be able to break through that barrier. Except in bed. The memory zinged through her, bringing a flush to her cheeks that wasn’t caused by rushing around. He had lost control there, and it had been…breathtaking.

“What time is the flight?” Once more she hurried to catch up to him. “Will we have time to go to my bank? I need to close out my accounts—”

“You can transfer them to a local bank when we get home.”

While he carried her bags out to the rental car he was driving, Barrie went to the study and knocked softly on the door. There was no answer; after a moment she opened the door anyway. Her father was sitting at the desk, his elbows propped on top of it and his face buried in his hands.

“Bye, Dad,” she said softly.

He didn’t answer, but she saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.

“I’ll let you know where I am.”

“No,” he said, his voice strangled. “Don’t.” He lifted his head. His eyes were anguished. “Not yet. Wait…wait awhile.”

“All right,” she whispered, understanding slicing through her. It was safer for her that way. He must suspect the phone line was tapped.

“Baby, I—” He broke off and swallowed hard again. “I only want you to be happy—and safe.”

“I know.” She felt dampness on her cheeks and wiped away the tears that were wetting them.

“He isn’t the kind of man I wanted for you. The SEALs are—well, never mind.” He sighed. “Maybe he can keep you safe. I hope so. I love you, baby. You’ve been the center of my life. You know I never meant—” He halted, unable to go on.

“I know,” she said again. “I love you, too.”

She quietly closed the door and stood with her head bowed. She didn’t hear him approach, but suddenly Zane was there, his arm hard around her waist as he drew her with him out to the car. He didn’t ask any questions, just opened the door for her and helped her inside, then closed the door with a finality that was unmistakable.

She sat tensely during the drive to the airport, watching the traffic buzz around them.

“This is the most privacy we’ll have for a while,” Zane said as he competently threaded the car through the insanity of rush hour. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” He had slipped on a pair of sunglasses, and his eyes were hidden from her view, but she didn’t have to see them to know how cool and remote the expression in them was.

She lifted her chin and stared straight ahead, considering the way his suggestions sounded like orders. This wasn’t going to be easy, but he had to know everything. She needed his protection, at least while she still carried his child. He wouldn’t be on guard unless he knew there was a threat. She had to be honest with him. “I want you to know—one of the reasons I agreed to marry you is that I need protection, and you’re a SEAL. If anything…dangerous…happens, you’ll know how to handle it.”

“Dangerous, how?” He sounded very matter-of-fact, almost disinterested. She supposed that, given his job, danger was so common to him that it was more the rule than the exception.

“I think the kidnappers may try again. And now I have more than just myself to worry about.” Briefly, unconsciously, her hand moved to her lower belly in the instinctive way a pregnant woman touched the growing child within, as if reassuring it of its safety.

He glanced in the rearview mirror, calmly studying the traffic behind and around them. After a moment of consideration, he went straight to the heart of the matter. “Have you notified the FBI? The police?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I think Dad may be involved,” she said, almost strangling on the words.

Once again he checked the rearview mirror. “In what way?”

He sounded so damn remote. She clenched her hands into fists, determined to hold on to her control. If he could be self-contained, then so could she. She forced her voice to evenness. “The reason for the kidnapping wasn’t ransom, so they must want information from him. I can’t think of anything else it could be.”

He was silent for a moment, deftly weaving in and out of the tangle of vehicles. She could almost hear that cool, logical brain sorting through the ramifications. Finally he said, “Your father must be in it up to his neck, or he’d have gone to the FBI himself. You would have been taken to a safe place and surrounded by a wall of agents.”

He’d reached exactly the same conclusion she had. That didn’t make her feel any better. “Since we’ve been back in Virginia, he’s been impossible. He doesn’t want me to leave the house by myself, and he’s monitoring all telephone calls. He was always protective, but not like this. At first I thought he was overreacting because of what happened in Athens, but when I thought it through, I realized the threat still existed.” She swallowed. “I’d made up my mind to sneak out tonight and disappear for a while.”

If Zane had waited another day, she would have been gone. He wouldn’t have had any idea where to find her, and she had no way of contacting him. Tears burned her eyes at the thought. Dear God, it had been so close.

“Hold on,” he said, then jerked the steering wheel to the right, cutting across a lane of traffic and throwing the car into a sharp turn into another street. The tires squealed, and horns blared. Even with his warning, she barely had time to brace herself, and the seat belt tightened with a jerk.

“What’s wrong?” she cried, struggling to right herself and ease the strangling grip of the seat belt.

“There’s a possibility we had company. I didn’t want to take any chances.”

Alarmed, Barrie twisted around in the seat, staring at the cars passing through the intersection behind them, vainly trying to see anyone who looked familiar or any vehicle making an obvious effort to cut across traffic and follow them. The traffic pattern looked normal.

“Two Caucasian men, in their thirties or forties, both wearing sunglasses,” Zane said with no more emphasis than if he’d been observing the clouds in the sky. She remembered this almost supernatural calmness from before. In Benghazi, the more tense the situation, the cooler he had become, totally devoid of emotion. For him to take the action he had, he’d been certain they were being followed. The bottom dropped out of her stomach, and she fought a sudden rise of nausea. To suspect she was in danger was one thing, having it confirmed was something else entirely.

Then what he’d said registered in her brain. “Caucasian?” she echoed. “But—” She stopped, because of course it made sense. While she had subconsciously been looking for Libyans, she had to remember that this Gordian knot of intrigue involved both Libyans and Mack Prewett’s cohorts; given his resources, she had to be suspicious of everyone, not just Middle Easterners. Black, white or Oriental, she couldn’t trust anyone—except Zane.

“Since they know what I’m driving, we’re going to ditch the car.” Zane took another turn, this time without the dramatics, but also without signaling or slowing down more than was necessary. “I’ll make a phone call and have the car taken care of. We’ll get a ride to the airport.”

She didn’t ask who he would call; the area was crawling with military personnel from all the branches of service. Someone in dress whites would collect the car and return it to the rental company, and that would be that. By then, she and Zane would be on their way to Las Vegas.

“They’ll be able to find me anyway,” she said suddenly, thinking of the airline ticket in her name.

“Eventually. It’ll take a while, though. We have a substantial grace period.”

“Maybe not.” She bit her lip. “I overheard Dad talking to Mack Prewett this morning. Mack’s CIA, deputy station chief in Athens. Dad told him that he wanted this finished, that he never meant for me to be involved.”

Zane lifted his eyebrows. “I see.”

She supposed he did. If her father was working with the CIA in anything legitimate, he would have been able to protect her through legal channels. Mack Prewett’s involvement changed the rules. He would have access to records that ordinary people wouldn’t have. Even though the CIA didn’t operate within the United States, the tentacles of influence were far-reaching. If Mack wanted to know if she’d taken a flight out of either of the major area airports, he would have that information within minutes.

“If they were sharp enough to get the license plate number on the car, they’ll have my name very shortly,” he said. “If they didn’t get the number, then they won’t have a clue about my identity. Either way, it’s too late to worry about it now. They either have it or they don’t, and there’s no need to change our immediate plans. We’ll take the flight to Las Vegas and lose them there, at least for a while.”

“How will we lose them? If Mack can get access to your records…”

“I resigned my commission. I’m not a SEAL anymore.”

“Oh,” she said blankly. She struggled to adjust to yet another change. She had already been imagining and mentally preparing for life as the wife of a military officer, with the frequent moves, the politics of rank. It wouldn’t have been much different from life in the embassy, just on a different level. Now she realized she had no idea what kind of life they would have.

“What will we do, then?” she asked.

“I’ve taken the job of sheriff in a county in southern Arizona. The sheriff died in office, so the governor appointed me to complete his term. There are two years left until new elections, so we’ll be in Arizona for at least two years, maybe more.”

A sheriff! That was a definite surprise, and the offhand manner with which he had announced it only deepened her sense of unreality. She struggled to focus on the important things. “What your job is doesn’t matter,” she said as evenly as possible. “It’s your training that counts.”

He shrugged and wheeled the car into the entrance of a parking garage. “I understand.” His voice was flat, emotionless. “You agreed to marry me because you think I’ll be able to protect you.” He let down the window and leaned out to get the ticket from the automatic dispenser. The red barrier lifted, and he drove through.

Barrie wound her fingers together. Her initial flush of happiness had given way to worry. Zane had come after her, yes, and asked her to marry him, but perhaps she’d been wrong about the attraction between them. She felt uprooted and off-balance. Zane didn’t seem particularly happy to see her, but then, she had certainly tossed a huge problem into his lap. He would become a husband and a father in very short order, and on top of that, he had to protect them from an unknown enemy. He hadn’t even kissed her, she thought, feeling close to tears, and she was a little surprised at herself for even thinking of such a thing right now. If he was right and someone had been following them, then the danger had been more immediate than she had feared. How could she worry about his reasons for marrying her? After all, the baby’s safety was one of the reasons she was marrying him. “I want you to protect our baby,” she said quietly. “There are other reasons, but that’s the main one.” Her feelings for him were something she could have handled on her own; she wouldn’t take that chance with her baby’s safety.

“A damn important one. You’re right, too.” He gave her a brief glance as he pulled the car into a parking slot on the third level. “I won’t let anything hurt you or the baby.”

He pulled off his sunglasses and got out of the car with a brief “Wait here,” and strode off toward a pay phone. When he reached it, he punched in a series of numbers, then turned so he could watch her and the car while he talked.

Barrie felt her nerves jolt and her stomach muscles tighten as she stared across the parking deck at him. She was actually marrying this man. He looked taller than she remembered, a little leaner, though his shoulders were so wide they strained the seams of his white cotton shirt. His black hair was a bit longer, she thought, but his tan was just as dark. Except for the slight weight loss, he didn’t show any sign of having been shot only a little over two months earlier. His physical toughness was intimidating; he was intimidating. How could she have forgotten? She had remembered only his consideration, his passion, the tender care he’d given her, but he’d used no weapon other than his bare hands to kill that guard. While she had remembered his lethal competency and planned to use it on her own behalf, she had somehow forgotten that it was a prominent part of him, not a quality she could call up when she needed it and tuck away into a corner when the need was over. She would have to deal with this part of him on a regular basis and accept the man he was. He wasn’t, and never would be, a tame house cat.

She liked house cats, but she didn’t want him to be one, she realized.

She felt another jolt, this time of self-discovery. She needed to be safe now, because of the baby, but she didn’t want to be permanently cossetted and protected. The grueling episode in Benghazi had taught her that she was tougher and more competent than she’d ever thought, in ways she hadn’t realized. Her father would have approved if she’d married some up-and-coming ambassador-to-be, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted some wildness in her life, and Zane Mackenzie was it. For all that maddening control of his, he was fierce and untamed. He didn’t have a streak of wildness; he had a core of it.

The strain between them unnerved her. She had dreamed of him finding her and holding out his arms, of falling into them, and when she had opened the door to him today she had expected, like a fool, for her dream to be enacted. Reality was much more complicated than dreams.

The truth was, they had known each other for about twenty-four hours total, and most of those hours had been over two months earlier. In those hours they had made love with raw, scorching passion, and he had made her pregnant, but the amount of time remained the same.

Perhaps he had been involved with someone else, but a sense of responsibility had driven him to locate her and find out if their lovemaking had had any consequences. He would do that, she thought; he would turn his back on a girlfriend, perhaps even a fiancée, to assume the responsibility for his child.

Again she was crashing into the brick wall of ignorance; she didn’t know anything about his personal life. If she had known anything about his family, where he was from, she would have been able to find him. Instead, he must think she hadn’t cared enough even to ask about his condition, to find out if he had lived or died.

He was coming back to the car now, his stride as smooth and effortlessly powerful as she remembered, the silent walk of a predator. His dark face was as impassive as before, defying her efforts to read his expression.

He opened the door and slid behind the wheel. “Transport will be here in a few minutes.”

She nodded, but her mind was still occupied with their personal tangle. Before she lost her nerve, she said evenly, “I tried to find you. They took me back to Athens immediately, while you were still in surgery. I tried to get in touch with you, find out if you were still alive, how you were doing, what hospital you were in—anything. Dad had Admiral Lindley block every inquiry I made. He did tell me you were going to be okay, but that’s all I was able to find out.”

“I guessed as much. I tried to call you at the embassy a couple of weeks after the mission. The call was routed to your father.”

“He didn’t tell me you’d called,” she said, the familiar anger and pain twisting her insides. Since she’d been forced off the Montgomery, those had been her two main emotions. So he had tried to contact her. Her heart lifted a little. “After I came home, I tried again to find you, but the Navy wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“The antiterrorism unit is classified.” His tone was absent; he was watching in the mirrors as another car drove slowly past them, looking for an empty slot.

She sat quietly, nerves quivering, until the car had disappeared up the ramp to the next level.

“I’m sorry,” she said, after several minutes of silence. “I know this is a lot to dump in your lap.”

He gave her an unreadable glance, his eyes very clear and blue. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

This time the look he gave her was so long that she blushed and concentrated her attention on her hands, which were twisting together in her lap.

“If I did, I wouldn’t have made love to you,” he finally said.

Oh, dear. She bit her lip. This was going from bad to worse. He was getting more and more remote, as if the fleeting moment of silent communication between them when he’d asked her to marry him had never existed. Her stomach clenched, and suddenly a familiar sensation of being too hot washed over her.

She swallowed hard, praying that the nausea that had so far confined itself to the mornings wasn’t about to put in an unexpected appearance. A second later she was scrambling out of the car and frantically looking around for a bathroom. God, did parking decks have bathrooms?

“Barrie!” Zane was out of the car, striding toward her, his dark face alert. She had the impression that he intended to head her off, though she hadn’t yet chosen a direction in which to dash.

The stairwell? The elevator? She thought of the people who would use them and discarded both options. The most sensible place was right there on the concrete, and everything fastidious in her rebelled at the idea. Her stomach had different ideas, however, and she clamped a desperate hand over her mouth just as Zane reached her.

Those sharp, pale eyes softened with comprehension. “Here,” he said, putting a supporting arm around her. The outside barriers of the parking deck were waist-high concrete walls, and that was where he swiftly guided her. She resisted momentarily, appalled at the possibility of throwing up on some unsuspecting passerby below, but his grip was inexorable, and her stomach wasn’t waiting any longer. He held her as she leaned over the wall and helplessly gave in to the spasm of nausea.

She was shaking when it was over. The only comfort she could find was that, when she opened her eyes, she saw there was nothing three stories below but an alley. Zane held her, leaning her against his supporting body while he blotted her perspiring face with his handkerchief, then gave it to her so she could wipe her mouth. She felt scorched with humiliation. The strict teachings of her school in Switzerland hadn’t covered what a lady should do after vomiting in public.

And then she realized he was crooning to her, his deep voice an almost inaudible murmur as he brushed his lips against her temple, her hair. One strong hand was splayed over her lower belly, spanning her from hipbone to hipbone, covering his child. Her knees felt like noodles, so she let herself continue leaning against him, let her head fall into the curve of his shoulder.

“Easy, sweetheart,” he whispered, once again pressing his lips to her temple. “Can you make it back to the car, or do you want me to carry you?”

She couldn’t gather her thoughts enough to give him a coherent answer. After no more than a second, he evidently thought he’d given her enough time to decide, so he made the decision for her by scooping her up into his arms. A few quick strides brought them to the car. He bent down and carefully placed her on the seat, lifting her legs into the car, arranging her skirt over them. “Do you want something to drink? A soft drink?”

Something cold and tart sounded wonderful. “No caffeine,” she managed to say.

“You won’t be out of my sight for more than twenty seconds, but keep an eye out for passing cars, and blow the horn if anything scares you.”

She nodded, and he hit the door lock, then closed the door, shutting her inside a cocoon of silence. She preferred the fresh air but understood why she shouldn’t be standing outside the car, exposed to view—and an easy target. She leaned her head against the headrest and closed her eyes. The nausea was gone as swiftly as it had come, though her insides felt like jelly. She was weak, and sleepy, and a bit bemused by his sudden tenderness.

Though she shouldn’t be surprised, she thought. She was pregnant with his child, and the possibility of exactly that was what had brought him in search of her. As soon as he’d realized she was nauseated, a condition directly related to her condition, so to speak, he’d shown nothing but tender concern and demonstrated once again his ability to make snap decisions in urgent situations.

His tap on the window startled her, because in her sleepy state she hadn’t thought he’d been gone nearly long enough to accomplish his mission. But a green can, frosty with condensation, was in his hand, and suddenly she ferociously wanted that drink. She unlocked the door and all but snatched the can from him before he could slide into the seat. She had it popped open and was drinking greedily by the time he closed the door.

When the can was empty, she leaned back with a sigh of contentment. She heard a low, strained laugh and turned her head to find Zane looking at her with both amusement and something hot and feral mingled in his gaze. “That’s the first time watching a woman drink a soft drink has made me hard. Do you want another? I’ll try to control myself, but a second one might be more than I can stand.”

Barrie’s eyes widened. A blush warmed her cheeks, but that didn’t stop her from looking at his lap. He was telling the truth. Good heavens, was he ever telling the truth! Her hand clenched with the sudden need to reach out and stroke him. “I’m not thirsty now,” she said, her voice huskier than usual. “But I’m willing to go for a second one if you are.”

The amusement faded out of his eyes, leaving only the heat behind. He was reaching out for her when his head suddenly snapped around, his attention caught by an approaching vehicle. “Here’s our ride,” he said, and once again his voice was cool and emotionless.

Chapter 10

She was marrying him because she wanted his protection. The thought gnawed at Zane during the long flight to Las Vegas. She sat quietly beside him, sometimes dozing, talking only if he asked her a question. She had the drained look of someone who had been under a lot of pressure, and now that it had eased, her body was giving in to fatigue. Finally she fell soundly asleep, her head resting against his shoulder.

The pregnancy would be taking a toll on her, too. He couldn’t see any physical change in her yet, but his three older brothers had produced enough children that he knew how tired women always got the first few months—at least, how tired Shea and Loren had been. Nothing ever slowed Caroline down, not even five sons.

At the thought of the baby, fierce possessiveness jolted through him again. His baby was inside her. He wanted to scoop her onto his lap and hold her, but a crowded plane wasn’t the place for what he had in mind. That would have to wait until after the marriage ceremony, when they were in a private hotel room.

He wanted her even more than he had before.

When she had opened the door and he’d looked down into her stunned green eyes, his arousal had been so strong and immediate that he’d had to restrain himself from reaching for her. Only the sight of her father bearing down on them had held him back.

He shouldn’t have waited as long as he had. As soon as he’d been able to get around okay, he should have come after her. She had been living in fear, and handling it the same way she had in Benghazi, with calm determination.

He didn’t want her ever to be afraid again.

Bunny’s and Spooky’s arrival at the parking deck, in Bunny’s personally customized 1969 Oldsmobile 442, had been like a reunion. Barrie had tumbled out of the rental car with a happy cry and been enthusiastically hugged and twirled around by both SEALs. They were both discreetly armed, he’d noticed approvingly. They were wearing civilian clothes, with their shirts left loose outside their pants to conceal the firepower tucked under their arms and in the smalls of their backs. Normally, when they were off-duty, they didn’t carry firearms, but Zane had explained the situation to them and left their preparations to their own discretion, since he wasn’t their commanding officer any longer. In typical fashion, they had prepared for anything. His own weapon was still resting in a holster under his left armpit, covered by a lightweight summer jacket.

“Don’t you worry none, ma’am,” Spooky had reassuringly told Barrie. “We’ll get you and the boss to the airport safe and sound. There’s nothing outside of NASCAR that can keep up with Bunny’s wheels.”

“I’m sure there isn’t,” she’d replied, eyeing the car. It looked unremarkable enough; Bunny had painted it a light gray, and there wasn’t any more chrome than would be on a factory job. But the deep-throated rumble from the idling engine didn’t sound like any sound a factory engine would make, and the tires were wide, with a soft-looking tread.

“Bulletproof glass, reinforced metal,” Bunny said proudly as he helped Zane transfer her luggage to the trunk of his car. “Plate steel would be too heavy for the speed I want, so I went with the new generation of body armor material, lighter and stronger than Kevlar. I’m still working on the fireproofing.”

“I’ll feel perfectly safe,” she assured him.

As she and Zane crawled into the back seat of the two-door car, she whispered to him, “Where’s Nascar?”

Spooky could hear a pin drop at forty paces. Slowly he turned around in the front seat, his face mirroring his incredulity. “Not where, ma’am,” he said, struggling with shock. “What. NASCAR. Stock car racing.” A good Southerner, he’d grown up with stock car racing and was always stunned when he encountered someone who hadn’t enjoyed the same contact with the sport.

“Oh,” Barrie said, giving him an apologetic smile. “I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe. I don’t know anything about racing except for the Grand Prix races.”

Bunny snorted in derision. “Play cars,” he said dismissively. “You can’t run them on the streets. Stock car racing, now that’s real racing.” As he was speaking, he was wheeling his deceptive monster out of the parking deck, his restless gaze touching on every surrounding detail.

“I’ve been to horse races,” Barrie offered, evidently in an attempt to redeem herself.

Zane controlled a smile at the earnestness of her tone. “Do you ride?” he asked.

Her attention swung to him. “Why, yes. I love horses.”

“You’ll make a good Mackenzie, then,” Spooky drawled. “Boss raises horses in his spare time.” There was a bit of irony in his tone, because SEALs had about as much spare time as albinos had color.

“Do you really?” Barrie asked, her eyes shining.

“I own a few. Thirty or so.”

“Thirty!” She sat back, a slight look of confusion on her face. He knew what she was thinking: one horse was expensive to own and keep, let alone thirty. Horses needed a lot of land and care, not something she associated with an ex-Naval officer who had been a member of an elite antiterrorism group.

“It’s a family business,” he explained, swiveling his head to examine the traffic around them.

“Everything’s clear, boss,” Bunny said. “Unless they’ve tagged us with a relay, but I don’t see how that’s possible.”

Zane didn’t, either, so he relaxed. A moving relay surveillance took a lot of time and coordination to set up, and the route had to be known. Bunny was taking such a circuitous route to the airport that any tail would long since have been revealed or shaken. Things were under control—for now.

They made it to National without incident, though to be on the safe side Bunny and Spooky had escorted them as far as the security check. While Zane quietly handled his own armed passage through security, his two former team members had taken themselves off to collect the rental car and turn it in, though to the agency office at Dulles, not National, where he had rented it. Just another little twist to delay anyone who was looking for them.

Now that they were safely on the plane, he began planning what he would do to put an end to the situation.

The first part of it was easy. He would put Chance on the job of finding out what kind of mess her father was involved in; for her sake, he hoped it wasn’t anything treasonous, but whatever was going on, he intended to put a stop to it. Chance had access to information that put national security agencies to shame. If William Lovejoy was selling out his country, then he would go down. There was no other option. Zane had spent his adult years offering his life in protection of his country, and now he was a peace officer sworn to uphold the law; it was impossible for him to look the other way, even for Barrie. He didn’t want her to be hurt, but he damn sure wanted her to be safe.

Barrie slept until the airliner’s wheels bounced on the pavement. She sat upright, pushing her hair away from her face, looking about with a slight sense of disorientation. She had never before been able to sleep on a plane; this sleepiness was just one more of the many changes her pregnancy was making in her body, and her lack of control over the process was disconcerting, even frightening.

On the other hand, the rest had given her additional energy, something she needed to face the immense change she was about to make in her life. This change was deliberate, but no less frightening.

“I want to shower and change clothes first,” she said firmly. This marriage might be hasty, without any resemblance to the type of wedding ceremony she had always envisioned for herself, but while she was willing to forgo the pomp and expensive trappings, she wasn’t willing—outside of a life-and-death situation—to get married wearing wrinkled clothes and still blinking sleep from her eyes.

“Okay. We’ll check in to a hotel first.” He rubbed his jaw, his callused fingers rasping over his beard stubble. “I need to have a shave anyway.”

He had needed to shave that day in Benghazi, too. In a flash of memory she felt again the scrape of his rough chin against her naked breasts, and a wave of heat washed over her, leaving her weak and flushed. The cool air blowing from the tiny vent overhead was suddenly not cool enough.

She hoped he wouldn’t notice, but it was a faint hope, because he was trained to take note of every detail around him. She imagined he could describe every passenger within ten rows of them in either direction, and when she’d been awake she had noticed that he’d shown an uncanny awareness of anyone approaching them from the rear on the way to the lavatories.

“Are you feeling sick?” he asked, eyeing the color in her cheeks.

“No, I’m just a little warm,” she said with perfect truth, while her blush deepened.

He continued to watch her, and the concern in his eyes changed to a heated awareness. She couldn’t even hide that from him, damn it. From the beginning it had been as if he could see beneath her skin; he sensed her reactions almost as soon as she felt them.

Slowly his heavy-lidded gaze moved down to her breasts, studying the slope and thrust of them. She inhaled sharply as her nipples tightened in response to his blatant interest, a response that shot all the way to her loins.

“Are they more sensitive?” he murmured.

Oh, God, he shouldn’t do this to her, she thought wildly. They were in the middle of a plane full of people, taxiing toward an empty gate, and he was asking questions about her breasts and looking as if he would start undressing her any minute now.

“Are they?”

“Yes,” she whispered. Her entire body felt more sensitive, from both her pregnancy and her acute awareness of him. Soon he would be her husband, and once again she would be lying in his arms.

“Ceremony first,” he said, his thoughts echoing hers in that eerie way he had. “Otherwise we won’t get out of the hotel until tomorrow.”

“Are you psychic?” she accused under her breath.

A slow smile curved his beautiful mouth. “It doesn’t take a psychic to know what those puckered nipples mean.”

She glanced down and saw her nipples plainly beaded under the lace and silk of her bra and blouse. Her face red, she hastily drew her shirt over the betraying little nubs, and he gave a low laugh. At least no one else was likely to have heard him, she thought with scant comfort. He’d pitched his voice low, and the noise on board made it difficult to overhear conversations, anyway.

The flight attendants were telling them to remain in their seats until the plane was secured and the doors opened, and as usual the instructions were ignored as passengers surged into the aisles, opening the overhead bins and dragging down their carry-on luggage or hauling it out from under the seats. Zane stepped deftly into the aisle, and the movement briefly pulled his jacket open. She saw the holster under his left arm and the polished metal butt of the pistol tucked snugly inside it. Then he automatically shrugged one shoulder, and the jacket fell into place, a movement he’d performed so many times he didn’t have to think about it.

She’d known he was armed, of course, because he’d informed the airport and airline security before they’d boarded the plane. During the boredom and enforced inactivity of the flight, however, she had managed to push the recent events from her mind, but the sight of that big automatic brought them all back.

He extended his hand to steady her as she stepped into the aisle ahead of him. Standing pressed like sardines in the line, she felt him like a warm and solid wall at her back, his arms slightly extended so that his hands rested on the seat backs, enveloping her in security. His breath stirred the hair on top of her head, making her realize anew exactly how big he was. She was of average height, but if she leaned back, her head would fit perfectly into the curve of his shoulder.

The man in front of her shifted, forcing her backward, and Zane curved one arm around her as he gathered her against his body, his big hand settling protectively over her lower belly. Barrie bit her lip as her mind bounced from worry to the pleasure of his touch. This couldn’t goon much longer—either this exquisite frustration or the sharp darts of terror—or she would lose her mind.

The line of passengers began to shuffle forward as the doors were opened and they were released from the plane. Zane’s hand dropped from her belly. As she began to move forward, Barrie caught the eye of an older woman who had chosen to remain in her seat until the stampede was over, and the woman gave her a knowing smile, her gaze flicking to Zane.

“Ma’am,” Zane said smoothly in acknowledgment, and Barrie knew he’d caught the little byplay. His acute awareness of his surroundings was beginning to spook her. What if she didn’t want him to notice everything? Most women would be thrilled to death with a husband who actually took note of details, but probably not to the extent that Zane Mackenzie did.

On the other hand, if the alternative was living without him, she would learn how to cope, she thought wryly. She’d spent over two months pining for him, and now that she had him, she wasn’t about to get cold feet because he was alert. He was a trained warrior—an assassin, her father had called him. He wouldn’t have survived if he hadn’t been aware of everything going on around him, and neither would she.

That alertness was evident as they followed the signs to the baggage claim area. The airport was a shifting, flowing beehive, and Zane’s cool gaze was constantly assessing the people around them. As he had more than once before, he kept himself between her and everybody else, steering her close to the wall and protecting her other side with his body. He’d already taken one bullet while doing that, she thought, and had to fight the sudden terrified impulse to grab him and shove him against the wall.

Before they reached the baggage claim, however, he pulled her to a halt. “Let’s wait here a minute,” he said.

She strove for calm, for mastery over the butterflies that suddenly took flight in her stomach. “Did you see anything suspicious?” she asked.

“No, we’re waiting for someone.” He looked at her, his cool gaze warming as he studied her face. “You’re a gutsy little broad, Miss Lovejoy. No matter what, you hold it together and try to do the best you can. Not bad for a pampered society babe.”

Barrie was taken aback. She’d never been called a broad before, or a society babe. If it hadn’t been for the teasing glint in his eyes, she might have taken exception to the terms. Instead, she considered them for a moment, then gave a brief nod of agreement. “You’re right,” she said serenely. “I am gutsy for a pampered society babe.”

He was surprised into a chuckle, a deliciously rich sound that was cut short when they were approached by a middle-aged man who wore a suit and carried a radio set in his hand. “Sheriff Mackenzie?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Travis Hulsey, airport security.” Mr. Hulsey flashed his identification. “We have your luggage waiting for you in a secure area, as requested. This way, please.”

So he’d even thought of that, Barrie marveled as they followed Mr. Hulsey through an unmarked door. An attempt to grab her inside the airport would be tricky, given the security, so the most logical thing to do would be to wait at the ground transportation area, where everyone went after collecting luggage, then follow them to their destination and wait for a better opportunity. Zane had thwarted that; he must have made the arrangements when he’d gone forward to the lavatory.

The dry desert heat slapped them in the face as soon as they stepped through the door. Her three suitcases and his one garment bag, which he had collected from a locker at National, were waiting for them at a discreet entrance well away from the main ground transportation area. Also waiting for them was a car, beside which stood a young man with the distinctive austere military haircut, even though he wore civilian clothes.

The young man all but snapped to attention. “Sir,” he said. “Airman Zaharias at your service, sir.”

Zane’s dark face lit with amusement. “At ease,” he said. “I’m not my brother.”

Airman Zaharias relaxed with a grin. “When I first saw you, sir, I wasn’t sure.”

“If he pulled rank and this is messing up your leave time, I’ll get other transport.”

“I volunteered, sir. The general did me a personal favor when I was fresh out of basic. Giving his brother a ride downtown is the least I can do.”

Brother? General? Barrie raised some mental eyebrows. First horses, now this. She realized she didn’t know anything about her soon-to-be husband’s background, but the details she’d gleaned so far were startling, to say the least.

Zane introduced her with grave courtesy. “Barrie, Airman Zaharias is our safe transport, and he has donated his personal vehicle and time off for the service. Airman Zaharias, my fiancée, Barrie Lovejoy.”

She solemnly shook hands with the young airman, who was almost beside himself in his eagerness to please.

“Glad to meet you, ma’am.” He unlocked the trunk and swiftly began loading their luggage, protesting when Zane lifted two of the bags and stowed them himself. “Let me do that, sir!”

“I’m a civilian now,” Zane said, amusement still bright in his eyes. “And I was Navy, anyway.”

Airman Zaharias shrugged. “Yes, sir, but you’re still the general’s brother.” He paused, then asked, “Were you really a SEAL?”

“Guilty.”

“Damn,” Airman Zaharias breathed.

They climbed into the air-conditioned relief of the airman’s Chevrolet and were off. Their young driver evidently knew Las Vegas well, and without asking for instructions he ignored the main routes. Instead he circled around and took Paradise Road north out of the airport. He chattered cheerfully the entire time, but Barrie noticed that he didn’t mention the exact nature of the favor Zane’s general brother had done for him, nor did he venture into personal realms. He talked about the weather, the traffic, the tourists, the hotels. Zane directed him to a hotel off the main drag, and soon Airman Zaharias was on his way and they were checking in to the hotel.

Barrie bided her time, standing quietly to one side while Zane arranged for them to be listed in the hotel’s computer as Glen and Alice Temple—how he arrived at those names she had no idea—and ignoring the clerk’s knowing smirk. He probably thought they were adulterous lovers on a tryst, which suited her just fine; it would keep him from being curious about them.

They weren’t alone in the elevator, so she held her tongue then, too. She held it until they were in the suite Zane had booked, and the bellman had been properly tipped and dismissed. The suite was as luxurious as any she had stayed in in Europe. A few hours before, she might have worried that the cost was more than Zane could afford, that he’d chosen it because he thought she would expect it. Now, however, she had no such illusion. As soon as he had closed and locked the door behind the bellman, she crossed her arms and stared levelly at him. “Horses?” she inquired politely. “Family business? A brother who happens to be an Air Force general?”

He shrugged out of his jacket, then his shoulder holster. “All of that,” he said.

“I don’t know you at all, do I?” She was calm, even a little bemused, as she watched him wrap the straps around the holster and deposit the weapon on the bedside table.

He unzipped his garment bag and removed a suit from it, then began unpacking other items. His pale glance flashed briefly at her. “You know me,” he said. “You just don’t know all the details of my family yet, but we haven’t had much time for casual chatting. I’m not deliberately hiding anything from you. Ask any question you want.”

“I don’t want to conduct a catechism,” she said, though she needed to do exactly that. “It’s just…” She spread her hands in frustration, because she was marrying him and she didn’t already know all this.

He began unbuttoning his shirt. “I promise I’ll give you a complete briefing when we have time. Right now, sweetheart, I’d rather you got your sweet little butt in one shower while I get in the other, so we can get married and into this bed as fast as possible. About an hour after that, we’ll talk.”

She looked at the bed, a bigger-than-king-size. Priorities, priorities, she mused. “Are we safe here?”

“Safe enough for me to concentrate on other things.”

She didn’t have to ask what those other things were. She looked at the bed again and took a deep breath. “We could rearrange the order of these things,” she proposed. “What do you think about bed, talk and then wedding? Say, tomorrow morning?”

He froze in the act of removing his shirt. She saw his eyes darken, saw the sexual tension harden his face. After a moment he pulled the garment free and dropped it to the floor, his movements deliberate. “I haven’t kissed you yet,” he said.

She swallowed. “I noticed. I’ve wondered—”

“Don’t,” he said harshly. “Don’t wonder. The reason I haven’t kissed you is that, once I start, I won’t stop. I know we’re doing things out of order—hell, everything’s been out of order from the beginning, when you were naked the first time I saw you. I wanted you then, sweetheart, and I want you now, so damn bad I’m aching with it. But trouble is still following you around, and my job is to make damn sure it doesn’t get close to you and our baby. I might get killed—”

She made a choked sound of protest, but he cut her off. “It’s a possibility, one I accept. I’ve accepted it for years. I want us married as soon as possible, because I don’t know what might happen tomorrow. In case I miscalculate or get unlucky, I want our baby to be legitimate, to be born with the Mackenzie name. A certain amount of protection goes with that name, and I want you to have it. Now.”

Tears swam in her eyes as she stared at him, at this man who had already taken one bullet for her and was prepared to take another. He was right—she knew him, knew the man he was, even if she didn’t know what his favorite color was or what kind of grades he’d made in school. She knew the basics, and it was the basics she had so swiftly and fiercely learned to love. So he wasn’t as forthcoming as she might have wished; she would deal with it. So what if he was so controlled it was scary, and so what if those uncanny eyes noticed everything, which would make it difficult to surprise him on Christmas and his birthday? She would deal with that, too, very happily.

If he was willing to die for her, the least she could do was be completely honest with him.

“There’s another reason I agreed to marry you,” she said.

His dark brows lifted in silent question.

“I love you.”

Chapter 11

He wore a dark gray suit with black boots and a black hat. Barrie wore white. It was a simple dress, ankle length and sleeveless, classic in its lines and lack of adornment. She loosely twisted up her dark auburn hair, leaving a few wisps hanging about her face to soften the effect. Her only jewelry was a pair of pearl studs in her ears. She got ready in the bath off the bedroom, he showered in the bath off the parlor. They met at the door between the two rooms, ready to take the step that would make them husband and wife.

At her blunt declaration of love, an equally blunt expression of satisfaction had crossed his face, and for once he didn’t hide anything he was feeling. “I don’t know about love,” he’d said, his voice so even she wanted to shake him. “But I do know I’ve never wanted another woman the way I want you. I know this marriage is forever. I’ll take care of you and our children, I’ll come home to you every night, and I’ll try my damnedest to make you happy.”

It wasn’t a declaration of love, but it was certainly one of devotion, and the tears that came so easily to her these days swam in her eyes. Her self-contained warrior would love her, when he lowered his guard enough to let himself. He had spent years with his emotions locked down, while he operated in tense, life-and-death situations that demanded cool, precise thoughts and decisions. Love was neither cool nor concise; it was turbulent, unpredictable, and it left one vulnerable. He would approach love as cautiously as if it was a bomb.

“Don’t cry,” he said softly. “I swear I’ll be a good husband.”

“I know,” she replied, and then they had both gone to their separate bathrooms to prepare for their wedding.

They took a taxi to a chapel, one of the smaller ones that didn’t get as much business and didn’t have a drive-through service. Getting married in Las Vegas didn’t take a great deal of effort, though Zane took steps to make it special. He bought her a small bouquet of flowers and gave her a bracelet of dainty gold links, which he fastened around her right wrist. Her heart beat heavily as they stood before the justice of the peace, and the bracelet seemed to burn around her wrist. Zane held her left hand securely in his right, his grip warm and gentle, but unbreakable.

Outwardly it was all very civilized, but from the first moment they’d met, Barrie had been acutely attuned to him, and she sensed the primal possessiveness of his actions. He had already claimed her physically, and now he was doing it legally. She already carried his child inside her. His air of masculine satisfaction was almost visible, it was so strong. She felt it, too, as she calmly spoke her vows, this linkage of their lives. During a long, hot day in Benghazi they had forged a bond that still held, despite the events that had forced them apart.

He had one more surprise for her. She hadn’t expected a ring, not on such short notice, but at the proper moment he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced two plain gold bands, one for her and one for him. Hers was a little loose when he slipped it over her knuckle, but their eyes met in a moment of perfect understanding. She would be gaining weight, and soon the ring would fit. She took the bigger, wider band and slid it onto the ring finger of his left hand, and she felt her own thrill of primal satisfaction. He was hers, by God!

Their marriage duly registered, the certificate signed and witnessed, they took another taxi to the hotel. “Supper,” he said, steering her toward one of the hotel’s dining rooms. “You didn’t eat anything on the plane, and it’s after midnight eastern time.”

“We could order room service,” she suggested.

His eyes took on that heavy-lidded look. “No, we couldn’t.” His tone was definite, a little strained. His hand was warm and heavy on the small of her back. “You need to eat, and I don’t trust my self-control to last that long unless we’re in a public place.”

Perhaps feeding her was his only concern, or perhaps he knew more about seduction than most men, she thought as they watched each other over a progression of courses. Knowing that he was going to make love to her as soon as they reached the suite, anticipating the heaviness of his weight on her, the hard thrust of his turgid length into her…the frustration readied her for him as surely as if he was stroking her flesh. Her breasts lifted hard and swollen against the bodice of her dress. Her insides tightened with desire, so that she had to press her legs together to ease the throbbing. His gaze kept dropping to her breasts, and as before, she couldn’t temper her response. She could feel her own moisture, feel the heaviness in her womb.

She was scarcely aware of what she ate—something bland, to reduce the chances of early-pregnancy nausea. She drank only water. But turnabout was fair play, so she lingered over each bite while she stared at his mouth, or in the direction of his lap. She delicately licked her lips, shivering with delight as his face darkened and his jaw set. She stroked the rim of her water glass with one fingertip, drawing his gaze, making his breath come harder and faster. Beneath the table, she rubbed her foot against the muscled calf of his leg.

He turned to snare their waiter with a laser glare. “Check!” he barked, and the waiter hurried to obey that voice of command. Zane scribbled their room number and his fictitious name on the check, and Barrie stared at him in amazement. It was hard to believe he could remember something like that when she could barely manage to walk.

For revenge, when he pulled her chair back so she could stand, she allowed the knuckles of one hand to brush, oh, so very lightly, against his crotch. He went absolutely rigid for a moment, and his breath hissed out between his teeth. All innocence, Barrie turned to give him a sweetly inquiring What’s-wrong? look.

His darkly tanned face was even darker with the flush running under the browned skin. His expression was set, giving away little, but his eyes were glittering like shards of diamond. His big hand closed firmly around her elbow. “Let’s go,” he said in the soundless whisper she’d first heard in a dark room in Benghazi. “And don’t do that again, or I swear I’ll have you in the elevator.”

“Really.” She smiled at him over her shoulder. “How…uplifting.”

A faint but visible shudder racked him, and the look he gave her promised retribution. “Here I’ve been thinking you were so sweet.”

“I am sweet,” she declared as they marched toward the elevator. “But I’m not a pushover.”

“We’ll see about that. I’m going to push you over.” They reached the bank of elevators, and he jabbed the call button with more force than necessary.

“You won’t have to push hard. As a matter of fact, you can just blow me over.” She gave him another sweet smile and pursed her lips, blowing a tiny puff of air against his chest to demonstrate.

The bell chimed, the doors opened, and they stood back to allow the car’s passengers to exit. They stepped inside alone, and even though people were hurrying toward them to catch that car, Zane ruthlessly punched their floor number and then the door close button. When the car began to rise, he turned on her like a tiger on fresh meat.

She stepped gracefully out of his reach, staring at the numbers flashing on the digital display. “We’re almost there.”

“You’re damn right about that,” he growled, coming after her. In the small confines of the elevator she didn’t have a chance of evading him, not that she wanted to. What she wanted was to drive him as crazy as he was driving her. His hard hands closed around her waist and lifted her; his muscled body pinned her to the wall. His hips pushed insistently at hers, and she gasped at how hard he was. Automatically her legs opened, allowing him access to the tender recesses of her body. He thrust against her, his hips moving rhythmically, and his mouth came down on hers, smothering, fiercely hungry.

The bell chimed softly, and the elevator gave a slight lurch as it stopped. Zane didn’t release her. He simply turned with her still in his grasp and left the elevator, striding rapidly down the hall to their suite. Barrie twined her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips, biting back little moans as each stride he took rubbed his swollen sex against the aching softness of her loins. Pleasure arced through her like lightning with every step, and helplessly she felt her hips undulate against him in a mindless search for a deeper pleasure. A low curse hissed out from between his clenched teeth.

She didn’t know if they passed anyone in the hall. She buried her face against his neck and gave in to the soaring hunger. She had needed him for so long, missed him, worried herself sick about him. Now he was here, vitally alive, about to take her with the same uncomplicated fierceness as before, and she didn’t care about anything else.

He pushed her against a wall, and for one terrified, delirious moment she thought she had tempted him too much. Instead he unhooked her legs from around his waist and let her slide to the floor. He was breathing hard, his eyes dilated with a sexual hunger that wouldn’t be denied much longer, but on one level he was still very much in control. Lifting one finger to his lips to indicate silence, he slipped his right hand inside his jacket. When his hand emerged, it was filled with the butt of that big automatic. He thumbed off the safety, dealt with the electronic lock on the door to their suite, depressed the door handle and slipped noiselessly inside. The door closed as silently as it had opened.

Barrie stood frozen in the hallway, sudden terror chasing away her desire as she waited with her eyes closed and her hands clenched into fists, all her concentration focused on trying to hear anything from inside the suite. She heard nothing. Absolutely nothing. Zane moved like a cat, but so did other men, men like him, men who worked best under cover of night and who could kill as silently as he had dispatched that guard in Benghazi. Her kidnappers hadn’t possessed the same expertise, but whoever was behind her abduction wouldn’t use Middle Eastern men here in the middle of the glitter and flash of Las Vegas. Perhaps this time he would hire someone more deadly, someone more interested in getting the job done than in terrifying a bound and helpless woman. Any thump, any whisper, might signal the end of Zane’s life, and she thought she would shatter under the strain.

She didn’t hear the door open again. All she heard was Zane saying, “All clear,” in a calm, normal tone, and then she was in his arms again. She didn’t think she moved; she thought he simply gathered her in, pulling her into the security of his embrace.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured against her hair as he carried her inside. He paused to lock and chain the door. “But I won’t take chances with your safety.”

Fury roared through her like a brushfire. She lifted her head from the sanctuary of his shoulder and glared at him. “What about yours?” she demanded violently. “Do you have any idea what it does to me when you do things like that? Do you think I don’t notice when you put yourself between me and other people, so if anyone shoots at me, you’ll be the one with the bullet hole?” She hit him on the chest with a clenched fist, amazing even herself; she had never struck anyone before. She hit him again. “Damn it, I want you healthy and whole! I want our baby to have its daddy! I want to have more of your babies, so that means you have to stay alive, do you hear me?”

“I hear,” he rumbled, his tone soothing as he caught her pounding fists and pressed them against his chest, stilling them. “I’d like the same things myself. That means I have to do whatever’s necessary to keep you and Junior safe.”

She relaxed against him, her lips trembling as she fought back tears. She wasn’t a weepy person; it was just the hormonal roller coaster of pregnancy that was making her so, but still, she didn’t want to cry all over him. He had enough to handle without having to deal with a sobbing wife every time he turned around.

When she could manage a steady tone, she said in a small voice, “Junior, is it?”

She saw the flash of his grin as he lifted her in his arms. “I’m afraid so,” he said as he carried her to the bed. “My sister Maris is the only female the Mackenzies have managed to produce, and that was twenty-nine years and ten boys ago.”

He bent and gently placed her on the bed and sat down beside her. His dark face was intent as he reached beneath her for the zipper of her dress. “Now let’s see if I can get you back to where you were before you got scared, and we’ll introduce Junior to his daddy,” he whispered.

Barrie was seized by a mixture of shyness and uneasiness as he stripped the dress down her hips and legs, then tossed it aside. Since her kidnappers had stripped her in a deliberate attempt to terrorize her, to break her spirit, she hadn’t been comfortable with being naked. Except for those hours hidden in the ruins in Benghazi, when Zane had finally coaxed her out of his shirt and she had lost herself in his lovemaking, she had hurried through any times of necessary nudity, such as when she showered, pulling on clothes or a robe as soon as possible. Once upon a time she had lingered after her bath, enjoying the wash of air over her damp skin as she pampered herself with perfumed oils and lotions, but for the past two months that luxury had fallen beneath her urgent need to be covered.

Zane wanted her naked.

Her dress was already gone, and the silk and lace of her matching bra and underpants weren’t much protection. Deftly he thumbed open the front fastening of her bra, and the cups loosened, sliding apart to reveal the inner curves of her breasts. Barrie couldn’t help herself; she protectively crossed her arms over her breasts, holding the bra in place.

Zane paused, his face still as his pale gaze lifted to her face, examining the helpless, embarrassed expression she wore. She didn’t have to explain. He’d been there; he knew. “Still having problems with that shirt?” he asked gently, referring to the way she’d clung so desperately to his garment.

He’d switched on a single lamp. She lay exposed in the small circle of light, while his face was shadowed. She moistened her lips and nodded once, a slight acknowledgment that was all he needed.

“We can’t undo things,” he said, his face and tone serious. Using one finger, he lightly stroked the upper curves of her breasts, where they plumped above the protection of her crossed arms. “We can put them behind us and move on, but we can’t undo them. They stay part of us, they change us inside, but as other things happen, we change still more. I remember the face of the first man I killed. I don’t regret doing it, because he was a bomb-happy piece of scum who had left his calling card on a cruise ship, killing nine old people who were just trying to enjoy their retirement. Right then he was trying like hell to kill me…but I always carry his face with me, deep inside.”

He paused, thinking, remembering. “He’s a part of me now, because killing him changed me. He made me stronger. I know that I can do whatever has to be done, and I know how to go on. I’ve killed others,” he said, as calmly as if he was discussing the weather, “but I don’t remember their faces. Only his. And I’m glad I won.”

Barrie stared at him, the shadows emphasizing the planes and hollows of his somber face, deepening the oldness in his eyes. Deep inside she understood, the realization going past thought into the center of instinct. Being kidnapped had changed her; she’d faced that before Zane had rescued her. She was stronger, more decisive, more willing to take action. When he’d shown up that afternoon, she had been preparing to take extraordinary measures to protect herself and the child she carried by disappearing from the comfortable life she’d always known. She’d been naked with Zane before—and enjoyed it. She would again.

Slowly she lifted one hand and stroked the precise line of the small scar on his left cheekbone. He turned his head a little, rubbing his cheek against her fingers.

“Take off your clothes,” she suggested softly. Balance. If her nudity was balanced by his, she would be more comfortable.

His eyebrows quirked upward. “All right.”

She didn’t have to explain, but then, she’d known she wouldn’t. She lay on the bed and watched him peel out of his jacket, then remove the shoulder holster, which once more carried its lethal cargo. This last was carefully placed on the bedside table, where it would be within reach. Then his shirt came off, and he dropped it on the floor, along with her dress and his jacket.

The new scar on his upper abdomen was red and puckered, and bisected by a long surgical scar where the ship’s surgeon had sliced into him to stop the bleeding and save his life. She had seen the scar before, when he had removed his shirt before showering, but she had been under orders not to touch him then lest she make him forget his priorities. There was no such restriction now.

Her fingers moved over the scar, feeling the heat and vitality of the man, and she thought how easily all of that could have been snuffed out. She had come so close to losing him….

“Don’t think about it,” he murmured, catching her hand and lifting it to his lips. “It didn’t happen.”

“It could have.”

“It didn’t.” His tone was final as he bent over to tug off his boots. They dropped to the floor with twin thuds, then he stood to unfasten his pants.

He was right. It hadn’t happened. Pick yourself up, learn something, and go on. It was in the past. The future was their marriage, their child. The present was now, and as Zane swiftly stripped off his remaining clothes, a lot more urgent.

He sat beside her again, comfortable in his own skin. It was such wonderful skin, she thought a little dreamily, reaching out to stroke his gleaming shoulders and furry chest and rub the tiny nipples hidden among the hair until they stood stiffly erect. She knew she was inviting him to reciprocate, and her breath caught in her chest as she waited for him to accept.

He wasn’t slow about it. His hands went to the parted cups of her bra, and his gaze lifted to hers. “Ready?” he asked with a slight smile.

She didn’t reply, just shrugged one shoulder so that her breast slid free of the cup, and that was answer enough.

He glanced downward as he pushed the other cup aside, and she saw his pupils flare with arousal as he looked at her. His breath hissed out through parted lips. “I see our baby here,” he whispered, gently touching one nipple with a single fingertip. “You haven’t gained any weight, your stomach’s still flat, but he’s changed you here. Your nipples are darker, and swollen.” Ever so lightly, his touch circled the aureola, making it pucker and stand upright. Barrie whimpered with the rush of desire, the familiar lightning strike from breast to loin.

He rubbed his thumb over the tip, then gently curved his hand beneath her breast, lifting it so that it plumped in his palm. “How much more sensitive are they?” he asked, never looking up from his absorption with these new details in her body.

“Some—sometimes I can’t bear the touch of my bra.” she breathed.

“Your veins are bluer, too,” he murmured. “They look like rivers running under a layer of white satin.” He leaned down and kissed her, taking possession of her mouth while he continued to fondle her breasts with exquisite care. She melted with a purring little hum of pleasure, lifting herself so she could taste him more deeply. His lips were as hot and forceful as she remembered, as delicious. He took his time; the kiss was slow and deep, his tongue probing. Her pregnancy-sensitive breasts hardened into almost painful arousal, her loins becoming warm and liquid.

He bore her down onto the pillows, his hands slipping over her body, completely removing the bra and then disposing of her underpants. His eyes glittered hotly as he leaned over her. “I’m going to do everything to you I couldn’t do before,” he whispered. “We don’t have to worry about being on guard, or making noise, or what time it is. I’m going to eat you up, Little Red.”

She should have been alarmed, because his expression was so fierce and hungry she could almost take him literally. Instead, she reached out for him, almost frantic with the need to feel him covering her, taking her.

He had other ideas. He caught her hands and pressed them to the bed, as she had once done to him. He had trusted her with control, and now she returned the gift, arching her body up for whatever was his pleasure.

His pleasure was her breasts, with their fascinating changes. He took one distended nipple into his mouth, carefully, lightly. That was enough to make her moan, though not with pain; the prickles of sensation were incredibly intense. His tongue batted at her nipple, swirled around it, then pushed it hard against the roof of his mouth as he began suckling.

Her cry was thin, wild. Her breath exploded out of her lungs, and she couldn’t seem to draw in any replacement air. Oh, God, she hadn’t realized her breasts were that sensitive, or that he would so abruptly push her past both pleasure and pain into a realm so raw and powerful she couldn’t bear it. She surged upward, and he controlled the motion, holding her down, transferring his mouth to her other nipple, which received the same tender care and enticement, then the sudden, deliberate pressure that made her cry out again.

He wouldn’t stop. She screamed for him to, begged him, but he wouldn’t stop. She heard her voice, frantic, pleading: “Zane—please. Oh, God, please. Don’t—more. More.” And then, sobbing, “Harder!” And she realized she wasn’t begging him to stop, but to continue. She writhed in his arms as he pushed her higher and higher, harder and harder, his mouth voracious on her breasts, and suddenly all her senses coalesced into a huge single throb that centered in her loins, and she came apart with pleasure.

When she could breathe again, think again, her limbs were weak and useless in the aftermath. She lay limply on the bed, her eyes closed, and wondered how she had survived the implosion.

“Just from sucking your breasts?” he murmured incredulously as he kissed his way down her stomach. “Oh, damn, are we going to have fun for the next seven months!”

“Zane…wait,” she whispered, lifting one hand to his head. It was the only movement she had enough energy to make. “I can’t—I need to rest.”

He slid down between her legs and lifted her thighs onto his shoulders. “You don’t have to move,” he promised her in a deep, rich voice. “All you have to do is lie there.” Then he kissed her, slowly, deeply, and her body arched as it began all over again, and he showed her all the things he hadn’t been able to do to her before.

He brought her to completion once more before finally crawling forward and settling his hips between her thighs. She moaned when he filled her with a smooth, powerful thrust. She quivered beneath him, shocked by the thickness and depth of his penetration. How could she have forgotten? The discomfort took her by surprise, and she clung to him as she tried to adjust, to accept. He soothed her, whispering hot, soft words in her ear, stroking her flesh, which was already so sensitive that even the smooth sheet beneath her felt abrasive.

But, oh, how she had wanted this. This. Not just pleasure, but the sense of being joined together, the deep and intimate linkage of their bodies. This fed a craving within her that the climaxes he’d given her hadn’t begun to touch. Her hips lifted. She wanted all of him, wanted him so deep that he touched her womb, ripening with his seed. He tried to moderate the thrusts that were rapidly pushing her toward yet another climax, but she dug her nails into his back, insisting without words on everything he had to give.

He shuddered, and with a deep-throated groan, gave her what she asked.

She slept then. It was long after midnight on the east coast, and she was exhausted. She was disturbed by the presence of the big, muscled man beside her in the bed, though, his body radiating heat like a furnace, and she kept waking from a restless doze.

He must sleep like a cat, she thought, because every time she woke and changed positions, he woke up, too. Finally he pulled her on top of him, settling her with her face tucked against his neck and her legs straddling his hips. “Maybe now you can rest,” he murmured, kissing her hair. “You slept this way in Benghazi.”

She remembered that, remembered the long day of making love, how he had sometimes been on top when they dozed, and sometimes she had. Or perhaps she had been the only one who dozed while he had remained alert.

“I’ve never slept with a man before,” she murmured in sleepy explanation, nestling against him. “Slept slept, that is.”

“I know. I’m your first in both cases.”

The room was dark; at some time he had turned off the lamp, though she didn’t remember when. The heavy curtains were drawn against the neon of the Las Vegas night, with only thin strips of light penetrating around the edges. It reminded her briefly of that horrible room in Benghazi, before Zane had taken her away, but then she shut out the memory. That no longer had the power to frighten her. Zane was her husband now, and the pleasant ache in her body told her that the marriage had been well and truly consummated.

“Tell me about your family,” she said, and yawned against his neck.

“Now?”

“Mmm. We’re both awake, so you might as well.”

There was a twitch of flesh against her inner thigh. “I can think of other things to do,” he muttered.

“I’m not ruling anything out.” She wriggled her hips and was rewarded by a more insistent movement. “But you can talk, too. Tell me about the Mackenzie clan.”

She could feel his slight shrug. “My dad is a half-breed American Indian, my mom is a schoolteacher. They live on a mountain just outside Ruth, Wyoming. Dad raises and trains horses. He’s the best I’ve ever seen, except for my sister. Maris is magic with horses.”

“So the horses really are a family business.”

“Yep. We were all raised on horseback, but Maris is the only one who went into the training aspect. Joe went to the Air Force Academy and became a jet jockey, Mike became a cattle rancher, Josh rode jets for the Navy, and Chance and I went to the Naval Academy and got our water wings. We can both fly various types of aircraft, but flying is just a means of getting us to where we’re needed, nothing else. Chance got out of Naval Intelligence a couple of years ago.”

Barrie’s talent with names kicked in. She lifted her head, all sleepiness gone as she ran that list of names through her head. She settled on one, put the details together and gasped. “Your brother is General Joe Mackenzie on the Joint Chiefs of Staff?” Of course. How many Joe Mackenzies were Air Force generals?

“The one and only.”

“Why, I’ve met him and his wife. I think it was the year before last, at a charity function in Washington. Her name is Caroline.”

“You’re right on target.” He shifted a little, and she felt a nudging between her legs. She inhaled as he slipped inside her. Talk about right on target.

“Joe and Caroline have five sons, Michael and Shea have two boys, and Josh and Loren have three,” Zane murmured, gently thrusting. “Junior will be the eleventh grandchild.”

Barrie sank against him, her attention splintered by the pleasure building with each movement of his hips. “Don’t talk,” she said, and heard his quiet laughter as he rolled over and placed her beneath him…just where she wanted to be.

Chapter 12

Barrie awoke to nausea, sharp and urgent. She bolted out of bed and into the bathroom, barely reaching it in time. When the bout of vomiting was over, she sank weakly to the floor and closed her eyes, unable to work up enough energy to care that she was curled naked on the floor of a hotel bathroom, or that her husband of less than twelve hours was witness to it all. She heard Zane running water; then a wonderfully cool, wet washcloth was placed on her heated forehead. He flushed the toilet, something she hadn’t been able to manage, and said, “I’ll be right back.”

As usual, she rapidly began to feel better after she had thrown up. Embarrassed, she got up and washed out her mouth and was standing in front of the mirror surveying her tousled appearance with some astonishment when Zane appeared with a familiar green can in his hand.

He had already popped the top. She snatched the can from him and began greedily drinking, tilting the can up like some college freshman guzzling beer. When it was empty, she sighed with repletion and slammed the can down on the countertop as if it was indeed an empty soldier of spirits. Then she looked at Zane, and her eyes widened.

“I hope you didn’t go out to the drink machine like that,” she said faintly. He was still naked. Wonderfully, impressively naked. And very aroused.

He looked amused. “I got it out of the minibar in the parlor.” He glanced down at himself, and the amusement deepened. “There’s another can. Want to go for it?”

Barrie drew herself up and folded a bold hand around his thrusting sex. “I’m not the kind of woman who loses her inhibitions after a couple of Seven-Ups,” she informed him with careful dignity. She paused, then winked at him. “One will do.”

Somehow she had expected they would make it back to the bed. They didn’t. His hunger was particularly strong in the mornings, and after a tempestuous few moments she found herself on her knees, half bent over the edge of the bathtub while he crouched behind her. Their lovemaking was raw and fast and powerful, and left her once again lying weakly on the floor. She found some satisfaction in the fact that he was sprawled beside her, his long legs stretched under the vanity top.

After a long time he said lazily, “I’d thought I could wait until we were in the shower. I underestimated the effect of a soft drink on you, sweetheart…and what watching you drink it does to me.”

“I think we’re on to something,” she reflected, curling nakedly against him and ignoring the chill of the floor. “We need to buy stock in the company.”

“Good idea.” He turned his head and began kissing her, and for a moment she wondered if the bathroom floor was going to get another workout. But he released her and rose lithely to his feet, then helped her up. “Do you want to have room service, or go down to a restaurant for breakfast?”

“Room service.” She was already hungry, and with room service their breakfast should be there by the time she showered and dressed. She gave Zane her order, then, while he called it in, she selected the clothes she wanted. The silk dress was badly wrinkled, so she carried it into the bathroom with her to let the steam from her shower repair the damage.

She took her time in the shower, but even so, some wrinkles remained in the dress by the time she finished. She left the water running and turned it on hot to increase the amount of steam. On a hook behind the door hung a thick terry-cloth bathrobe with the hotel’s logo stitched on the breast pocket. She pulled it on and belted it around her, smiling at the weight and size of the garment, and went out to see how long it would be before their breakfast arrived.

Zane wasn’t in the bedroom; she could hear him talking in the parlor, and wondered if room service had been unusually quick. But she heard only his voice as she walked to the open door.

He was on the phone, half-turned away from her as he sat on the arm of the couch. She had the impression that he was listening to the shower running even as he carried on his conversation.

“Keep the tail on her father, as well as on his tail,” he was saying. “I want to catch them all at one time, so I don’t have to worry about any loose ends. When the dust settles, Justice and State can sort it out between them.”

Barrie gasped, all the color washing out of her face. Zane’s head jerked around, and he stared at her, the blue mostly gone from his eyes, leaving them as sharp and gray as frost.

“Yeah,” he said into the receiver, his gaze never wavering from hers. “Everything’s under control here. Keep the pressure on.” He hung up and turned fully to face her.

He hadn’t showered yet, she noticed dully. His hair wasn’t wet; there was no betraying dampness to his skin. He must have gotten on the phone as soon as she had begun her shower, setting in motion the betrayal that could send her father to jail.

“What have you done?” she whispered, barely holding herself together against the pain that racked her. “Zane, what have you done?”

Coolly he stood and came toward her. Barrie backed up, clutching the lapels of the thick robe as if it could protect her.

He flicked a curious glance toward the bathroom, where billows of steam were escaping from the half-open door. “Why is the shower still running?”

“I’m steaming the wrinkles out of my dress,” she answered automatically.

His eyebrows lifted wryly. Though she didn’t find the pun amusing, she had the thought that this was evidently a wrinkle he hadn’t anticipated.

“Who were you talking to?” she asked, her voice stiff with hurt and betrayal and the strain of holding it all under control.

“My brother Chance.”

“What does he have to do with my father?”

Zane watched her steadily. “Chance does intelligence work for a government agency; not the FBI or CIA.”

Barrie swallowed against the constriction in her throat. Maybe Zane hadn’t betrayed her father; maybe he’d already been under surveillance. “How long has he been following my father?”

“Chance is directing the tails, not doing them himself,” Zane corrected.

“How long?”

“Since last night. I called him while you were showering then, too.”

At least he didn’t try to lie or evade. “How could you?” she whispered, her eyes wide and stark.

“Very easily,” he replied, his voice sharp. “I’m an officer of the law. Before that, I was an officer in the Navy, in service to this country. Did you think I would ignore a traitor, even if it’s your father? You asked me to protect you and our baby, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. When you clean out a nest of snakes, you don’t pick out a few of them to kill and leave the others. You wipe them out.”

The edges of her vision blurred, and she felt herself sway. Oh, God, how could she ever forgive him if her father went to prison? How could she ever forgive herself? She was the cause of this. She had known the kind of man Zane was, but she had allowed herself to ignore it because she’d wanted him so desperately. Of course he’d turned her father in; if she’d been thinking clearly, instead of with her emotions, her hormones, she would have known exactly what he would do, what he had done. It didn’t take a genius to predict the actions of a man who had spent his life upholding the laws of his country, and only a fool would ignore the obvious conclusion.

She hadn’t even thought about it, so she guessed that made her the biggest fool alive.

She heard him say her name, his tone insistent, and then her vision was blocked by his big body as he gripped her arms.

Desperately she hung on to consciousness, gulping in air and refusing to let herself faint. “Let go of me,” she protested, and was shocked at how far away her voice sounded.

“Like hell I will.” Instead he swung her off her feet and carried her to the bed, then bent to place her on the tumbled sheets.

As he had the night before, he sat beside her. Now that she was lying down, her head cleared rapidly. He was leaning over her, one arm braced on the other side of her hip, enclosing her in the iron circle of his embrace. His gaze never left her face.

Barrie wished she could find refuge in anger, but there was none. She understood Zane’s motives, and his actions. All she could feel was a huge whirlpool of pain, sucking her down. Her father! As much as she loved Zane, she didn’t know if she could bear it if he caused her father to be arrested. This wasn’t anything like theft or drunken driving. Treason was heinous, unthinkable. No matter what conclusion her logic drew, she simply couldn’t see her father doing anything like that, unless he was somehow being forced to do it. She knew she wasn’t the weapon being used against him, although she had been drawn into it, probably when he had balked at something. No, she and Zane had both realized immediately that if she was being threatened and her father had nothing to hide, he would have had her whisked away by the FBI before she knew what was happening.

“Please,” she begged, clutching his arm. “Can’t you warn him somehow, get him out of it? I know you didn’t like him, but you don’t know him the way I do. He’s always done what he thought was best for me. He was always there when I needed him, and b-before I left he gave me his blessing.” Her voice broke on a sob, and she quickly controlled it. “I know he’s a snob, but he isn’t a bad person! If he’s gotten involved in something he shouldn’t, it was by accident, and now he doesn’t know how to get out without endangering me! That has to be it. Zane, please!”

He caught her hand, folding it warmly within his. “I can’t do that,” he said quietly. “If he hasn’t done anything wrong, he’ll be all right. If he’s a traitor—” He shrugged, indicating the lack of options. He wouldn’t lift a finger to help a traitor, period. “I didn’t want you to know anything about it because I didn’t want you to be upset any more than necessary. I knew I wouldn’t be able to protect you from worry if he’s arrested, but I didn’t want you to find out about it beforehand. You’ve had enough to deal with these past couple of months. My first priority is keeping you and the baby safe, and I’ll do that, Barrie, no matter what.”

She stared at him through tear-blurred eyes, knowing she had collided with the steel wall of his convictions. Honor wasn’t just a concept to him, but a way of life. Still, there was one way she might reach him. “What if it was your father?” she asked.

A brief spasm touched his face, telling her that she’d struck a nerve. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I hope I’d be able to do what’s right…but I don’t know.”

There was nothing more she could say.

The only thing she could do was warn her father herself.

She moved away from him, sliding off the bed. He lifted his arm and let her go, though he watched her closely, as if waiting for her to faint or throw up or slap him in the face. Considering her pregnancy and her state of mind, she realized, all three were possible, if she relaxed her control just a fraction. But she wasn’t going to do any of them, because she couldn’t afford to waste the time.

She hugged the oversize robe about her, as she had once hugged his shirt. “What exactly is your brother doing?” She needed as much information as possible if she was going to help her father. Maybe it was wrong, but she would worry about that, and face the consequences, later. She knew she was operating on love and blind trust, but that was all she had to go on. When she thought of her father as the man she knew him to be, she knew she had to trust both that knowledge and his honor. Despite their enormous differences, in that respect he was very like Zane, the man he’d scorned as a son-in-law: honor was a part of his code, his life, his very being.

Zane stood. “You don’t need to know, exactly.”

For the first time she felt the flush of anger redden her cheeks. “Don’t throw my words back at me,” she snapped. “You can say no without being sarcastic.”

He studied her, then gave a curt nod. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

She stalked into the bathroom and slammed the door. The small room was hot and damp with steam, the air thick with it. Barrie turned off the shower and turned on the exhaust fan. There wasn’t a wrinkle left in the silk dress. Hurriedly she shed the robe and pulled on the underwear she’d carried into the bathroom, then pulled the dress on over her head. The silk stuck to her damp skin; she had to jerk the fabric to get it into place. The need to hurry beat through her like wings. How much time did she have before room service arrived with their breakfast?

The mirror was fogged over. She grabbed a towel and rubbed a clear spot on the glass, then swiftly combed her hair and began applying a minimum of makeup. The air was so steamy that it would be a wasted effort to apply very much, but she wanted to appear as normal as possible.

Oh, God, the exhaust fan was making so much noise she might not have heard their breakfast arriving. Hastily she cut it off. Zane would have knocked if their food was here, she assured herself. It hadn’t arrived yet.

She tried to remember where her purse was, and think how she could get it and get out the door without Zane knowing. His hearing was acute, and he would be watching for her. But the room service waiter would bring their breakfast to the parlor, and Zane, being as cautious as he was, would watch the man’s every move. That was the only time he would be distracted, and the only chance she would have to get out of the room undetected. Her window of opportunity would be brief, because he would call her as soon as the waiter left. If she had to wait for an elevator, she was sunk. She could always try the stairs, but all Zane would have to do was take the elevator down to the lobby and wait for her there. With his hearing, he probably heard the elevator every time it chimed, and that would give him an idea of whether she had been able to get one of the cars or had taken the stairs.

She opened the bathroom door a little, so he wouldn’t be able to catch the click of the latch.

“What are you doing?” he called. It sounded as if he was standing just inside the double doors that connected the bedroom to the parlor, waiting for her.

“Putting on makeup,” she snapped, with perfect truth. She blotted the sweat off her forehead and began again with the powder. Her brief flash of anger was over, but she didn’t want him to know it. Let him think she was furious; a woman who was both pregnant and angry deserved a lot of space.

There was a brief knock on the parlor door, and a Spanish-accented voice called out, “Room service.”

Quickly Barrie switched on the faucet, so the sound of running water would once again mask her movements. Peering through the small opening by the door, she saw Zane cross her field of vision, going to answer the knock. He was wearing his shoulder holster, which meant, as she had hoped, that he was on guard.

She slipped out of the bathroom, carefully pulled the door back to leave the same small opening, then darted to the other side of the bedroom, out of his line of sight if he glanced inside when he passed by the double doors. Her purse was lying on one of the chairs, and she snatched it up, then slipped her feet into her shoes.

The room service cart clattered as it was rolled into the room. Through the open parlor doors she could hear the waiter casually chatting as he set up the table. Zane’s pistol made the waiter nervous; she could hear it in his voice. And his nervousness made Zane that much more wary of him. Zane was probably watching him like a hawk, those pale eyes remote and glacier-cold.

Now was the tricky part. She eased up to the open double doors, peeking through the crack to locate her husband. Relief made her knees wobble; he was standing with his back to the doors while he watched the waiter. The running faucet was doing its job; he was listening to it, rather than positioning himself on the other side of the table so he could watch both the waiter and the bathroom door. He probably did it deliberately, dividing his senses rather than diluting the visual attention he was paying to the waiter.

Her husband was not an ordinary man. Escaping him, even for five minutes, wouldn’t be easy.

Taking a deep breath, she silently crossed the open expanse, every nerve in her body drawn tight as she waited for his hard hand to clamp down on her shoulder. She reached the bedroom door to the hallway and held the chain so it wouldn’t clink when she slipped it free. That done, her next obstacle was the lock. She moved her body as close to the door as possible, using her flesh to muffle the sound, and slowly turned the latch. The dead bolt slid open with smooth precision and a snick that was barely audible even to her.

She closed her eyes and turned the handle then, concentrating on keeping the movement smooth and silent. If it made any noise, she was caught. If anyone was walking by in the hallway and talking, the change in noise level would alert Zane, and she was caught. If the elevator was slow, she was caught. Everything had to be perfect, or she didn’t have a chance.

How much longer did she have? It felt as if she had already taken ten minutes, but it was probably no more than one. Crockery was still rattling in the parlor as the waiter arranged their plates and saucers and water glasses. The door opened, and she slipped through, then spent the same agonizing amount of time making sure it closed as silently as it opened. She released the handle and ran.

She reached the elevators without hearing him shout her name and jabbed the down button. It obediently lit, and remained lit. There was no welcoming chime to signal the arrival of the elevator. Barrie restrained herself from punching the button over and over again in a futile attempt to convey her urgency to a piece of machinery.

“Please,” she whispered under her breath. “Hurry.”

She would have tried calling her father from the hotel room, but she knew Zane would stop her if he heard her on the phone. She also knew her father’s phone was tapped, which meant that incoming calls were automatically recorded. She would try to protect her father, but she refused to do anything that might endanger either Zane or their baby by leading the kidnappers straight to the hotel. She would have to call her father from a pay phone on the street, and a different street, at that.

Down the hall, she heard the room service cart clatter again as the waiter left their suite. Her heart pounding, she stared at the closed elevator doors, willing them to open. Her time was down to mere seconds.

The melodic chime sounded overhead.

The doors slid open.

She looked back as she stepped inside, and her heart nearly stopped. Zane hadn’t yelled, hadn’t called her name. He was running full speed down the hall, his motion as fluid and powerful as a linebacker’s, and pure fury was blazing in his eyes.

He was almost there.

Panicked, she simultaneously pushed the buttons for the lobby and for the door to close. She stepped back from the closing gap as Zane lunged forward, trying to get his hand in the door, which would trigger the automatic opening sensor.

He didn’t quite make it. The doors slid shut, and the box began to move downward. “God damn it,” he roared in frustration, and Barrie flinched as his fist thudded against the doors.

Weakly she leaned against the wall and covered her face with her hands while she shook with reaction. Dear God, she’d never imagined anyone could be so angry. He’d been almost incandescent with it, his eyes all but glowing.

He was probably racing down the stairs, but he had twenty-one floors to cover, and he was no match for the elevator—unless it stopped to pick up passengers on other floors. This possibility nearly brought her to her knees. She watched the numbers change, unable to breathe. If it stopped even once, he might catch her in the street. If it stopped twice, he would catch her in the lobby. Three times, and he would be waiting for her at the elevator.

She would have to face that rage, and she’d never dreaded anything more. Leaving Zane had never been her intention. After she’d warned her father, she would go back to the suite. She didn’t fear Zane physically; she knew instinctively that he would never hit her, but somehow that wasn’t much comfort.

She had wanted to see him lose control, outside of that final moment in lovemaking when his body took charge and he gave himself over to orgasm. Nausea roiled in her stomach, and she shuddered. Why had she ever wished for such a stupid thing? Oh, God, she never wanted to see him lose his temper again.

He might never forgive her. She might be forsaking forever any chance that he could love her. The full knowledge of what she was risking to warn her father rode her shoulders all the way to the lobby, one long, smooth descent, without any stops.

The rattle and clink of the slot machines never stopped, no matter how early or how late. The din surrounded her as she hurried through the lobby and out to the street. The desert sun was blindingly white, the temperature already edging past ninety, though the morning was only half gone. Barrie joined the tourists thronging the sidewalk, walking quickly despite the heat. She reached the corner, crossed the street and kept walking, not daring to look back. Her red hair would be fairly easy to spot at a distance, even in a crowd, unless she was hidden by someone taller. Zane would have reached the lobby by now. He would quickly scan the slot machine crowd, then erupt onto the street.

Her chest ached, and she realized she was holding her breath again. She gulped in air and hurried to put a building between herself and the hotel entrance. She was afraid to look back, afraid she would see her big, black-haired husband bearing down on her like a thunderstorm, and she knew she would never be able to outrun him.

She crossed one more street and began looking for a pay phone. They were easy to find, but getting an available one was something else again. Why were so many tourists using pay phones at this time of the morning? Barrie stood patiently, the hot sun beating down on her head, while a blue-haired elderly lady in support stockings gave detailed instructions to someone on when to feed her cat, when to feed her fish and when to feed her plants. Finally she hung up with a cheerful, “Bye-bye, dearie,” and she gave Barrie a sweet smile as she hobbled past. The smile was so unexpected that Barrie almost burst into tears. Instead she managed a smile of her own and stepped up to the phone before anyone could squeeze ahead of her.

She used her calling card number because it was faster, and since she was calling from a pay phone, it didn’t matter how she placed the call. Please, God, let him be there, she silently prayed as she listened to the tones, then the ringing. It was lunchtime on the east coast; he could be having lunch with someone, or playing golf—he could be anywhere. She tried to remember his schedule, but nothing came to mind. Their relationship had been so strained for the past two months that she had disassociated herself from his social and political appointments.

“Hello?”

The answer was so cautious, so wary sounding, that at first she didn’t recognize her father’s voice.

“Hello?” he said again, sounding even more wary, if possible.

Barrie pressed the handset hard to her ear, trying to keep her hand from shaking. “Daddy,” she said, her voice strangled. She hadn’t called him Daddy in years, but the old name slipped out past the barrier of her adulthood.

“Barrie? Sweetheart?” Life zinged into his voice, and she could picture him in her mind, sitting up straighter at his desk.

“Daddy, I can’t say much.” She fought to keep her voice even, so he would be able to understand her. “You have to be careful. You have to protect yourself. People know. Do you hear me?”

He was silent a moment, then he said with a calmness that was beyond her, “I understand. Are you safe?”

“Yes,” she said, though she wasn’t sure. She still had to face her husband.

“Then take care, sweetheart, and I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Bye,” she whispered, then carefully hung the receiver in its cradle and turned to go to the hotel. She had taken about ten steps when she was captured in the hard grip she had been dreading. She didn’t see him coming, so she couldn’t brace herself. One second he wasn’t there, the next second he was, surfacing out of the crowd like a shark.

Despite everything, she was glad to see him, glad to get it over with instead of dreading the first meeting during every dragging step to the hotel. The tension and effort had drained her. She leaned weakly against him, and he clamped his arm around her waist to support her. “You shouldn’t be out in the sun without something on your head,” was all he said. “Especially since you haven’t eaten anything today.”

He was in control, that incandescent fury cooled and conquered. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe it was gone, however. “I had to warn him,” she said tiredly. “And I didn’t want the call traced to the hotel.”

“I know.” The words were brief to the point of curtness. “It might not make any difference. Las Vegas is crawling with a certain group of people this morning, and you may have been spotted. Your hair.” Those two words were enough. Redheads were always distinctive, because there were so few of them. She felt like apologizing for the deep, rich luster of her hair.

“They’re here?” she asked in a small voice. “The kidnappers?”

“Not the original ones. There’s a deep game going on, baby, and I’m afraid you just jumped into the middle of it.”

The sun beat down on her unprotected head, the heat increasing by the minute. Every step seemed more and more of an effort. Her thoughts scattered. She might have plunged Zane and herself into the very danger she’d wanted to avoid. “Maybe I am a pampered society babe with more hair than brains,” she said aloud. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” he said again, and unbelievably, he squeezed her waist. “And I never said you have more hair than brains. If anything, you’re too damn smart, and it seems you have a natural talent for sneaking around. Not many people could have gotten out of that suite without me hearing them. Spook, maybe. And Chance. No one else.”

Barrie leaned more of her weight against him. She was on his left side, and she felt the hard lump of the holster beneath his jacket. When he’d grabbed her, he’d instinctively kept his right hand free, in case he needed his pistol. What he didn’t need, she thought tiredly, was having to support her weight and keep his balance in a firefight. She forced herself to straighten away from him, despite the way his arm tightened around her waist. He gave her a questioning look.

“I don’t want to impede you,” she explained.

His mouth curved wryly. “See what I mean? Now you’re thinking of combat stuff. If you weren’t so sweet, Mrs. Mackenzie, you’d be a dangerous woman.”

Why wasn’t he lambasting her? She couldn’t imagine he’d gotten over his fury so fast; Zane struck her as the type of man who seldom lost his temper, but when he did, it was undoubtedly a memorable occasion—one that could last for years. Maybe he was saving it for when they were in the privacy of the suite, remaining on guard while they were in the street. He could do that, compartmentalize his anger, shove it aside until it was safe to bring it out.

She found herself studying the surging, milling, strolling crowd of tourists that surrounded them, looking for any betraying sign of interest. It helped take her mind off how incredibly weak she felt. This pregnancy was making itself felt with increasing force; though it had been foolish of her to come out into the sun without eating breakfast, and without a hat, normally she wouldn’t have had any problem with the heat in this short amount of time.

How much farther was it to the hotel? She concentrated on her steps, on the faces around her. Zane maintained a slow, steady pace, and when he could, he put himself between her and the sun. The human shade helped, marginally.

“Here we are,” he said, ushering her into the cool, dim cavern of the lobby. She closed her eyes to help them adjust from the bright sunlight and sighed with relief as the blast of air-conditioning washed over her.

The elevator was crowded on the ride up. Zane pulled her against the back wall, so he would have one less side to protect, and also to set up a human wall of protection between them and the open doors. She felt a faint spurt of surprise as she realized she knew what he was thinking, the motives behind his actions. He would do what he could to keep anything from happening, and to protect these people, but if push came to shove, he would ruthlessly sacrifice the other people in this elevator to keep her safe.

They got off on the twenty-first floor, the ride uneventful. A man and woman got off at the same time, a middle-aged couple with Rochester accents. They turned down the hallway leading away from the suite. Zane guided Barrie after them, following the couple until they reached their room around the corner. As they walked past, Barrie glanced inside the room as the couple entered it; it was untidy, piled with shopping bags and the dirty clothes they’d worn the day before.

“Safe,” Zane murmured as they wound their way to the suite.

“They wouldn’t have had all the tourist stuff if they’d just arrived?”

He slanted an unreadable look at her. “Yeah.”

The suite was blessedly cool. She stumbled inside, and Zane locked and chained the door. Their breakfast still sat on the table, untouched and cold. He all but pushed her into a chair anyway. “Eat,” he ordered. “Just the toast, if nothing else. Put jelly on it. And drink all the water.” He sat down on the arm of the couch, picked up the phone and began dialing.

Just to be safe, she ate half a slice of dry toast first, eschewing the balls of butter, which wouldn’t melt on the cold toast anyway. Her stomach was peaceful at the moment, but she didn’t want to do anything to upset it. She smeared the second half slice with jelly.

As she methodically ate and drank, she began to feel better. Zane was making no effort to keep her from hearing his conversation, and she gathered he was talking to his brother Chance again.

“If she was spotted, we have maybe half an hour,” he was saying. “Get everyone on alert.” He listened a moment, then said, “Yeah, I know. I’m slipping.” He said goodbye with a cryptic, “Keep it cool.”

“Keep what cool?” Barrie asked, turning in her chair to face him.

A flicker of amusement lightened his remote eyes. “Chance has a habit of sticking his nose, along with another part of his anatomy, into hot spots. He gets burned occasionally.”

“And you don’t, I suppose?”

He shrugged. “Occasionally,” he admitted.

He was very calm, unusually so, even for him. It was like waiting for a storm to break. Barrie took a deep breath and braced herself. “All right, I’m feeling better,” she said, more evenly than she felt. “Let me have it.”

He regarded her for a moment, then shook his head—regretfully, she thought. “It’ll have to wait. Chance said there’s a lot of activity going on all of a sudden. It’s all about to hit the fan.”

Chapter 13

They didn’t have even the half hour Zane had hoped for.

The phone rang, and he picked it up. “Roger,” he said, and placed the receiver into its cradle. He stood and strode over to Barrie. “They’re moving in,” he said, lifting her from the chair with an implacable hand. “And you’re going to a different floor.”

He was shoving her out of harm’s way. She stiffened against the pressure of his hand, digging in her heels. He stopped and turned to face her, then placed his hand over her belly. “You have to go,” he said, without a flicker of emotion. He was in combat mode, his face impassive, his eyes cold and distant.

He was right. Because of the baby, she had to go. She put her hand over his. “All right. But do you have an extra pistol I could have—just in case?”

He hesitated briefly, then strode into the bedroom to his garment bag. The weapon he removed was a compact, five-shot revolver. “Do you know how to use it?”

She folded her hand around the butt, feeling the smoothness of the wood. “I’ve shot skeet, but I’ve never used a handgun. I’ll manage.”

“There’s no empty chamber, and no safety,” he said as he escorted her out the door. “You can pull the hammer back before you fire, or you can use a little more effort and just pull the trigger. Nothing to it but aiming and firing. It’s a thirty-eight caliber, so it has stopping power.” He was walking swiftly toward the stairs as he talked. He opened the stairwell door and began pushing her up the stairs, their steps echoing in the concrete silo. “I’m going to put you in an empty room on the twenty-third floor, and I want you to stay there until either Chance or I come for you. If anyone else opens the door, shoot them.”

“I don’t know what Chance looks like,” she blurted.

“Black hair, hazel eyes. Tall. So good-looking you start drooling when you see him. That’s what he says women do, anyway.”

They reached the twenty-third floor. Barrie was only slightly winded, Zane not at all. As they stepped into the carpeted silence of the hallway, she asked, “How do you know which rooms are empty?”

He produced one of the electronic cards from his pocket. “Because one of Chance’s people booked the room last night and slipped me the key card while we were eating supper. Just in case.”

He always had an alternate plan—just in case. She should have guessed.

He opened the door to room 2334 and ushered her inside, but he didn’t enter himself. “Lock and chain the door, and stay put,” he said, then turned and walked swiftly toward the stairwell. Barrie stood in the doorway and watched him. He stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. “I’m waiting to hear the door being locked,” he said softly.

She stepped back, turned the lock and slid the chain into place.

Then she stood in the middle of the neat, silent room and quietly went to pieces.

She couldn’t stand it. Zane was deliberately walking into danger—on her account—and she couldn’t join him. She couldn’t be there with him, couldn’t guard his back. Because of the baby growing inside her, she was relegated to this safe niche while the man she loved faced bullets for her.

She sat on the floor and rocked back and forth, her arms folded over her stomach, keening softly as tears rolled down her face. This terror for Zane’s safety was worse than anything she’d ever felt before, far worse than what she’d known at the hands of her kidnappers, worse even than when he’d been shot. At least she’d been there then. She’d been able to help, able to touch him.

She couldn’t do anything now.

A sharp, deep report that sounded like thunder made her jump. Except it wasn’t thunder; the desert sky was bright and cloudless. She buried her face against her knees, weeping harder. More shots. Some lighter, flatter in tone. A peculiar cough. Another deep thundering, then several in quick succession.

Then silence.

She pulled herself together and scrambled to the far corner of the room, behind the bed. She sat with her back against the wall and her arms braced on her knees, the pistol steady as she held it trained on the door. She didn’t see how anyone other than Zane or Chance could know where she was, but she wouldn’t gamble on it. She didn’t know what any of this was about, or who her enemies were, except for Mack Prewett, probably.

Time crawled past. She didn’t have her wristwatch on, and the clock radio on the bedside table was turned away from her. She didn’t get up to check the time. She simply sat there with the pistol in her hand and waited, and died a little more with each passing minute of Zane’s absence.

He didn’t come. She felt the coldness of despair grow in her heart, spreading until it filled her chest, the pressure of it almost stopping her lungs. Her heartbeat slowed to a heavy, painful rhythm. Zane. He would have come, if he’d been able. He’d been shot again. Wounded. She wouldn’t let herself even think the word dead, but it was there, in her heart, her chest, and she didn’t know how she could go on.

There was a brief knock on the door. “Barrie?” came a soft call, a voice that sounded tired and familiar. “It’s Art Sandefer. It’s over. Mack’s in custody, and you can come out now.”

Only Zane and Chance were supposed to know where she was. Zane had said that if anyone else opened the door, to shoot them. But she’d known Art Sandefer for years, known and respected both the man and the job he did. If Mack Prewett had been dirty, Art would have been on top of it. His presence here made sense.

“Barrie?” The door handle rattled.

She started to get up and let him in, then sank back to the floor. No. He wasn’t Zane and he wasn’t Chance. If she had lost Zane, the least she could do was follow his last instructions to the letter. His objective had been her safety, and she trusted him more than she had ever trusted anyone else in her life, including her father. She definitely trusted him more than she did Art Sandefer.

She was unprepared for the peculiar little coughing sound. Then the lock on the door exploded, and Art Sandefer pushed the door open and stepped inside. In his hand was a pistol with a thick silencer fitted onto the end of the barrel. Their eyes met across the room, his weary and cynical and acutely intelligent. And she knew.

Barrie pulled the trigger.

Zane was there only moments, seconds, later. Art had slumped to a sitting position against the open door, his hand pressed to the hole in his chest as his eyes glazed with shock. Zane kicked the weapon from Art’s outstretched hand, but that was all the attention he paid to the wounded man. He stepped over him as if he wasn’t there, rapidly crossing the room to where Barrie sat huddled in the corner, her face drawn and gray. Her gaze was oddly distant and unfocused. Panic roared through him, but a swift inspection didn’t reveal any blood. She looked unharmed.

He hunkered down beside her, gently brushing her hair from her face. “Sweetheart?” he asked in a soft tone. “It’s over now. Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer. He sat down on the floor beside her and pulled her onto his lap, holding her close and tight against the warmth of his body. He kept up a reassuring murmur, a gentle sound of reassurance. He could feel the thud of her heartbeat against him, the rhythm hard and alarmingly slow. He held her tighter, his face buried against the richness of her hair.

“Is she all right?” Chance asked as he, too, stepped over Art Sandefer and approached his brother and new sister-in-law. Other people were coming into the room, people who tended to the wounded man. Mack Prewett was one of them, his eyes sharp and hard as he watched his former superior.

“She’ll be fine,” Zane murmured, lifting his head. “She shot Sandefer.”

The brothers’ eyes met in a moment of understanding. The first one was tough. With luck and good care, Sandefer would survive, but Barrie would always be one of those who knew what it was like to pull that trigger.

“How did he know which room?” Zane asked, keeping his voice calm.

Chance sat down on the bed and leaned forward, his forearms braced on his knees. His expression was pleasant enough, his eyes cool and thoughtful. “I must have a leak in my group,” he said matter-of-factly. “And I know who it is, because only one person knew this room number. I’ll take care of it.”

“You do that.”

Barrie stirred in Zane’s grip, her arms lifting to twine around his neck. “Zane,” she said, her voice faint and choked, shaking.

Because he’d felt the same way, he heard the panic in her voice, the despair. “I’m okay,” he whispered, kissing her temple. “I’m okay.”

A sob shook her, then was quickly controlled. She was soldiering on. Emotion swelled in his chest, a huge golden bubble of such force that it threatened to stop his breathing, his heartbeat. He closed his eyes to hold back the tears that burned his lids. “Oh, God,” he said shakily. “I thought I was too late. I saw Sandefer walk in before I could get off a round at him, and then I heard the shot.”

Her arms tightened convulsively around his neck, but she didn’t say anything.

Zane put his hand on her belly, gulping in air a she fought for control. He was trembling, he noticed with distant surprise. Only Barrie could make mincemeat of his nerves. “I want the baby,” he said, his voice still shaking. “But I didn’t even think about it then. All I could think was that if I lost you—” He broke off, unable to continue.

“Baby?” Chance asked, politely inquiring.

Barrie nodded, her head moving against Zane’s chest. Her face was still buried against him, and she didn’t look up.

“Barrie, this is my brother Chance,” Zane said. His tone was still rough, uneven.

Blindly Barrie held out her hand. Amused, Chance gently shook it, then returned it to Zane’s neck. He had yet to see her face. “Glad to meet you,” he said. “I’m happy about the baby, too. That should deflect Mom’s attention for a while.”

The room was filled to overflowing: hotel security, Las Vegas police, medics, not to mention Mack Prewett and the FBI, who were quietly controlling everything. Chance’s people had pulled back, melting into the shadows where they belonged, where they operated best. Chance picked up the phone, made one brief call, then said to Zane, “It’s taken care of.”

Mack Prewett came over and sat down on the bed beside Chance. His face was troubled as he looked at Barrie, clutched so tightly in Zane’s arms. “Is she all right?”

“Yes,” she said, answering for herself.

“Art’s critical, but he might make it. It would save us a lot of trouble if he didn’t.” Mack’s voice was flat, emotionless.

Barrie shuddered.

“You were never meant to be involved, Barrie,” Mack said. “I began to think Art was playing both sides, so I asked your father to help me set him up. The information had to be legitimate, and the ambassador knows more people, has access to more inside information, than can be believed. Art went for the bait like a hungry carp. But then he asked for something really critical, the ambassador stalled, and the next thing we knew, you’d been snatched. Your dad nearly came unglued.”

“Then those bastards in Benghazi knew we were coming in,” Zane said, his eyes going cold.

“Yeah. I managed to shuffle the time frame a little when I gave the information to Art, but that was the most I could do to help. They weren’t expecting you as early as you got there.”

“I couldn’t believe it of him. Art Sandefer, of all people,” Barrie said, lifting her head to look at Mack. “Until I saw his eyes. I thought you were the dirty one.”

Mack smiled crookedly. “It rocked me that you figured out anything was going on at all.”

“Dad tipped me off. He acted so frightened every time I left the house.”

“Art wanted you,” Mack explained. “He was playing it cool for a while, or we would have had this wrapped up weeks ago. But it wasn’t just the information. Art wanted you.”

Barrie was stunned by what Mack was saying. She glanced at Zane and saw his jaw tighten. So that was why she hadn’t been raped in Benghazi; Art had been saving her for himself. He could never have released her, of course, if she had seen his face. Perhaps he would have drugged her, but more likely he would simply have raped her, kept her for himself for a while, then killed her. She shuddered, turning her face once more against Zane’s throat. She was still having trouble believing he was safe and unharmed; it was difficult to drag herself out of the black pit of despair, even though she knew the worst hadn’t happened. She felt numb, sick.

But then a thought occurred to her, one she would have had sooner if concern for Zane hadn’t wiped everything else from her mind. She looked at Mack again. “Then my father’s in the clear.”

“Absolutely. He was working with me from the get-go.” He met her gaze and shrugged. “Your dad can be a pain in the rear, but his loyalty was never in question.”

“When I called him this morning—”

Mack grimaced. “He was relieved to know you loved him enough to call, despite the evidence against him. Your leaving the hotel stirred up a hornet’s nest, though. I thought we had everything under control.”

“How?”

“Me,” Chance interjected, and for the first time Barrie looked at her brother-in-law. She didn’t drool, but she had to admit that his good looks were startling. Viewed objectively, he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. However, she far preferred Zane’s scarred, somber face, with its ancient eyes.

“I checked into another hotel under Zane’s name,” Chance explained. “You weren’t listed at all, but Art knew you were with Zane, because he’d checked the license plate on that rental car and traced the rental to Zane’s credit card. We didn’t want to make it too obvious for him, we wanted him to have to work to find us, so he wouldn’t be suspicious. When he found out you’d married Zane, though, he stopped being so cautious.” Chance grinned. “Then you went for a walk this morning, and fubar happened. The pay phone you chose was right across the street from the hotel where I’d checked in, and Art’s people spotted you immediately.”

Across the room, the medics finally had Art Sandefer ready for transport to a hospital. Zane watched the man being carried out, then cut his narrowed gaze to Mack. “If I’d known about you a little sooner, most of this could have been avoided.”

Mack didn’t back down from that glacial stare. “As far as that goes, Commander, I didn’t expect you to have the contacts you have—” he glanced at Chance “—or to move as fast as you did. I’d been working on Art for months. You made things happen in one day.”

Zane stood, effortlessly lifting Barrie in his arms as he did so. “It’s over now,” he said with finality. “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I need to take care of my wife.”

Taking care of her involved getting a third room, because the suite was in bad shape and he didn’t want her to see it. He placed her on the bed, locked the door, then stripped both her and himself and got into bed with her, holding their naked bodies as close together as possible. They both needed the reassurance of bare skin, no barriers between them. He got hard immediately, but now wasn’t the time for lovemaking.

Barrie couldn’t seem to stop trembling, and, to her astonishment, neither could Zane. They clung together, touching each other’s faces, absorbing the smell and feel of each other in an effort to dispel the terror.

“I love you,” he whispered, holding her so close her ribs ached from the pressure. “God, I was so scared! I can’t keep it together where you’re concerned, sweetheart. For the sake of my sanity, I hope the rest of our lives are as dull as dishwater.”

“They will be,” she promised, kissing his chest. “We’ll work on it.” And tears blurred her eyes, because she hadn’t expected so much, so fast.

Then, finally, it was time for more. Gently he entered her, and they lay entwined, not moving, as if their nerves couldn’t stand a sharp assault now, even one of pleasure. That, too, came in its own time…her pleasure, and his.

Epilogue

“Twins,” Barrie said, her voice still full of stunned bewilderment as she and Zane drove along the road that wound up the side of Mackenzie’s Mountain. “Boys.”

“I told you how it would be,” Zane said, glancing at the mound of her stomach, which was much too big for five months of pregnancy. “Boys.”

She gave him a glassy stare of shock. “You didn’t,” she said carefully, “say they would come in pairs.”

“There haven’t been twins in our family before,” Zane said, just as carefully. In truth, he felt as shaky as Barrie did. “This is a first.”

She stared out the window, her gaze passing blindly over the breathtaking vista of craggy blue mountains. They lived in Wyoming now; with Zane’s two-year tenure as sheriff in Arizona over, he had declined to run for election, and they had moved closer to the rest of the family. Chance had been after him for those two years to join his organization—though Barrie still wasn’t certain exactly what that organization was—and Zane had finally relented. He wouldn’t be doing fieldwork, because he didn’t want to risk the life he had with Barrie and Nick and now these two new babies who were growing inside her, but he had a rare knack for planning for the unexpected, and that was the talent he was using.

The entire family, including her father, was gathered on the mountain to celebrate the Fourth of July, which was the next day. Zane, Barrie and Nick had driven up two days before for an extended visit, but today had been her scheduled checkup, and he’d driven her into town to the doctor’s office. Given the way her waistline had been expanding, they should have expected the news, but Zane had simply figured she was further along in her pregnancy than they’d thought. Seeing those two little fetuses on the ultrasound had been quite a shock, but there hadn’t been any doubt about it. Two heads, two tails, four arms and hands, four legs and feet—and both babies definitely male. Very definitely.

“I can’t think of two names,” Barrie said, sounding very near tears.

Zane reached over to pat her knee. “We have four more months to think of names.”

She sniffed. “There’s no way,” she said, “that I can carry them for four more months. We’ll have to come up with names before then.”

They were big babies, both of them, much bigger than Nick had been at this stage.

“After Nick, it took a lot of courage just to think of having another baby,” she continued. “I’d geared myself up for one. One. Zane, what if they’re both like Nick?”

He blanched. Nick was a hellion. Nick had a good shot at turning the entire family gray-haired within another year. For a very short person with a limited vocabulary, their offspring could cause an unbelievable uproar in a remarkably short period of time.

They reached the crest of the mountain, and Zane slowed the car as they neared the large, sprawling ranch house. A variety of vehicles were parked around the yard—Wolf’s truck, Mary’s car, Mike and Shea’s Suburban, Josh and Loren’s rental, Ambassador Lovejoy’s rental, Maris’s snazzy truck, Chance’s motorcycle. Joe and Caroline and their five hooligans had arrived by helicopter. Boys seemed to be everywhere, from Josh’s youngest, age five, to John, who was Joe’s oldest and was now in college and here with his current girlfriend.

They were adding two more to the gang.

They got out and walked up the steps to the porch. Zane put his arm around her and hugged her close, tilting her face up for a kiss that quickly grew heated. Barrie glowed with a special sexuality when she was pregnant, and the plain truth was he couldn’t resist her. Their love play was often extended these days, now that pregnancy had once again made her breasts as sensitive as they had been when she’d carried Nick.

“Stop that!” Josh called cheerfully from inside the house. “That’s what got her in that condition in the first place!”

Reluctantly Zane released his wife, and together they went into the house. “That isn’t exactly right,” he told Josh, who laughed.

The big television was on, and Maris, Josh and Chance were watching some show-jumping event. Wolf and Joe were discussing cattle with Mike. Caroline was arguing politics with the ambassador. Mary and Shea were organizing a game for the younger kids. Loren, who was often an oasis of calm in the middle of the Mackenzie hurricane, gave Barrie’s rounded stomach a knowing look. “How did the checkup go?” she asked.

“Twins,” Barrie said, still in that numb tone. She gave Zane a helpless, how-did-this-happen look.

The whirlwind of activity came to a sudden stop. Heads lifted and turned. Her father gasped. Mary’s face suddenly glowed with radiance.

“Both boys,” Zane announced, before anyone could ask.

A sigh almost of relief went around the room. “Thank God,” Josh said weakly. “What if it was another one—or two—like Nick!”

Barrie’s head swiveled around as she began searching for a particular little head. “Where is Nick?” she asked.

Chance bolted upright from his sprawled position on the couch. The adults looked around with growing panic. “She was right here,” Chance said. “She was dragging one of Dad’s boots around.”

Zane and Barrie both began a rapid search of the house. “How long ago?” Barrie called.

“Two minutes, no more. Just before you drove up.” Maris was on her knees, peering under beds.

“Two minutes!” Barrie almost moaned. In two minutes, Nick could almost single-handedly wreck the house. It was amazing how such a tiny little girl with such an angelic face could be such a demon. “Nick!” she called. “Mary Nicole, come out, come out, wherever you are!” Sometimes that worked. Most times it didn’t.

Everyone joined in the search, but their black-haired little terror was nowhere to be found. The entire family had been ecstatic at her birth, and she had been utterly doted on, with even the rough-and-tumble cousins fascinated by the daintiness and beauty of the newest Mackenzie. She really did look angelic, like Pebbles on the old Flintstones cartoons. She was adorable. She had Zane’s black hair; slanted, deceptively innocent blue eyes; and dimples on each side of her rosebud mouth. She had sat up by herself at four months, crawled at six, walked at eight, and the entire family had been on guard ever since.

They found Wolf’s boot beneath Mary’s glassed-in collection of angels. From the scuff marks on the wall, Zane deduced his little darling had been trying to knock the collection down by heaving the boot at it. Luckily the boot had been too heavy for her to handle. Her throwing arm wasn’t well developed yet, thank God.

She had a frightful temper for such a little thing, and an outsize will, too. Keeping her from doing something she was determined to do was like trying to hold back the tide with a bucket. She had also inherited her father’s knack for planning, something that was eerie in a two-year-old. Nick was capable of plotting the downfall of anyone who crossed her.

Once, when Alex, Joe’s second oldest, had seen her with a knife in her hand and swiftly snatched it away before she could harm anyone or anything, Nick had thrown a howling temper tantrum that had been halted only when Zane swatted her rear end. Discipline from her adored daddy made her sob so heartbrokenly that everyone else got a lump in their throats. That, and making her sit down in her punishment chair, were so far the only two things they’d discovered that could reduce her to tears.

When she had stopped sobbing, she had pouted in a corner for a while, all the time giving Alex threatening looks over one tiny shoulder. Then she had gone to Barrie for comfort, crawling into her mother’s lap to be rocked. Her next stop had been Zane’s lap, to show him that she forgave him. She’d wound her little arms around his neck and rubbed her chubby little cheek against his rough one. She’d even taken a brief nap, lying limply against his broad shoulder. She’d woken, climbed down and darted off to the kitchen, where she’d implored Mary, whom she called Gamma, for a “dink.” She was allowed to have soft drinks without caffeine, so Mary had given her one of the green bottles they always kept in store especially for Nick. Zane and Barrie always shared a look of intimate amusement at their daughter’s love for Seven-Up, but there was nothing unusual about seeing her clutching the familiar bottle in her tiny hands. She would take a few sips, then with great concentration screw the top onto the bottle and lug it around with her until it was finally empty, which usually took a couple of hours.

On this occasion, Zane had happened to be watching her, smiling at her blissful expression as her little hands closed on the bottle. She had strutted out of the kitchen without letting Mary open the bottle for her and stopped in the hallway, where she vigorously shook the bottle with so much vigor that her entire little body had been bouncing up and down. Then, with a meltingly sweet smile on her face, she had all but danced into the living room and handed the bottle to Alex with a flirtatious tilt of her head. “Ope’ it, pees,” she’d said in her adorable small voice…and then she’d backed up a few steps.

“No!” Zane had yelled, leaping up from his chair, but it was too late. Alex had already twisted the cap and broken the seal. The bottle spewed and spurted, the sticky liquid spraying the wall, the floor, the chair. It hit Alex full blast in the face. By the time he’d managed to get the cap securely back on the bottle, he was soaked.

Nick had clapped her hands and said, “Hee, hee, hee,” and Zane wasn’t certain if it was a laugh or a taunt. It didn’t matter. He had collapsed on the floor in laughter, and there was an unbreakable law written in stone somewhere that you couldn’t punish youngsters if you’d laughed at what they’d done.

“Nick!” he called now. “Do you want a Popsicle?” Next to Seven-Ups, Popsicles were her favorite treat.

There was no answer.

Sam tore into the house. He was ten, Josh and Loren’s middle son. His blue eyes were wide. “Uncle Zane!” he cried. “Nick’s on top of the house!”

“Oh, my God,” Barrie gasped, and rushed out of the house as fast as she could. Zane tore past her, his heart in his throat, every instinct screaming for him to get to his child as fast as possible.

Everyone spilled into the yard, their faces pale with alarm, and looked up. Nick was sitting cross-legged on the edge of the roof, her little face blissful as she stared down at them. “Hi,” she chirped.

Barrie’s knees wobbled, and Mary put a supporting, protective arm around her.

It was no mystery how Nick had gotten on the roof—a ladder was leaning against the house, and Nick was as agile as a young goat. The ladder shouldn’t have been there; in fact, Zane would have sworn it hadn’t been when he and Barrie had arrived, no more than five minutes earlier.

He started up the ladder, his gaze glued on his daughter. A scowl screwed her small features together, and she scrambled to her feet, perilously close to the edge of the roof. “No!” she shrieked. “No, Daddy!”

He froze in place. She didn’t want to come down, and she was absolutely fearless. She paid no more heed to her danger than if she’d been in her bed.

“Zane,” Barrie whispered, her voice choked.

He was shaking. Nick stomped one little foot and pointed a dimpled finger at him. “Daddy down,” she demanded.

He couldn’t get to her in time. No matter how fast he moved, his baby was going to fall. There was only one thing to do. “Chance!” he barked.

Chance knew immediately. He ambled forward, not making any swift movements that would startle her. When he was directly below her, he grinned at his cherubic niece, and she grinned at him. He was her favorite uncle.

“Dance,” she crowed, showing all her tiny white teeth.

“You little Antichrist,” he said fondly. “I’m really going to miss you when you’re in prison. I give you…oh, maybe to the age of six.”

Benjy, Josh’s youngest, piped up behind them, “Why did Uncle Chance call her Dannychrist? Her name’s Nick.”

Nick spread her arms wide, bouncing up and down on her tiptoes. Chance held up his arms. “Come on, cupcake,” he said, and laughed. “Jump!”

She did.

He deftly snagged her in midair, and hugged the precious little body to his chest. Barrie burst into tears of relief. Then Zane was there, taking his daughter in his arms, pressing his lips to her round little head, and Barrie rushed over to be enveloped in his embrace, too.

Caroline looked at Joe. “I forgive you for not having any female sperm,” she announced, and Joe laughed.

Josh was frowning sternly at Sam. “How did the ladder get there?” he demanded.

Sam looked at his feet.

Mike and Joe began to frown at their boys.

“Whose bright idea was it to play on top of the house?” Mike asked of the seven boys who hadn’t been inside, and thus absolved of blame.

Seven boys scuffed their shoes on the ground, unable to look up at the three fathers confronting them.

Josh took down the ladder, which was supposed to be in the barn. He pointed to the structure in question. “March,” he said sternly, and two boys began their reluctant walk to the barn—and their retribution. Benjy clung to Loren’s leg, blinking at his two older brothers.

Mike pointed to the barn. His two boys went.

Joe raised an eyebrow at his three youngest. They went.

The three tall, broad-shouldered brothers followed their sons to the barn.

Nick patted Barrie’s face. “Mommy cwy?” she asked, and her lower lip quivered as she looked at Zane. “Fix, Daddy.”

“I’ll fix, all right,” he muttered. “I’ll fix some glue to your little butt and stick you on a chair.”

Barrie giggled through her tears. “Everyone wished for a girl,” she said, hiccuping as she laughed and cried at the same time. “Well, we got our wish!”

Wolf reached out and plucked his only granddaughter from his son’s brawny arms. She beamed at him, and he said ruefully, “With luck, it’ll be thirty years before there’s another one. Unless…” His dark eyes narrowed as he looked at Chance.

“No way,” Chance said firmly. “You can turn that look on Maris. I’m not getting married. I’m not reproducing. They’re starting to come by the bunches now, so it’s time to call a halt. I’m not getting into this daddy business.”

Mary gave him her sweet smile. “We’ll see,” she said.

A Game of Chance

By Linda Howard

Contents

The Beginning

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

The Beginning

Coming back to Wyoming—coming home—always evoked in Chance Mackenzie such an intense mixture of emotions that he could never decide which was strongest, the pleasure or the acute discomfort. He was, by nature and nurture—not that there had been any nurturing in the first fourteen or so years of his life—a man who was more comfortable alone. If he was alone, then he could operate without having to worry about anyone but himself, and, conversely, there was no one to make him uncomfortable with concern about his own well-being. The type of work he had chosen only reinforced his own inclinations, because covert operations and anti-terrorist activities predicated he be both secretive and wary, trusting no one, letting no one close to him.

And yet…And yet, there was his family. Sprawling, brawling, ferociously overachieving, refusing to let him withdraw, not that he was at all certain he could even if they would allow it. It was always jolting, alarming, to step back into that all-enveloping embrace, to be teased and questioned—teased, him, whom some of the most deadly people on earth justifiably feared—hugged and kissed, fussed over and yelled at and…loved, just as if he were like everyone else. He knew he wasn’t; the knowledge was always there, in the back of his mind, that he was not like them. But he was drawn back, again and again, by something deep inside hungering for the very things that so alarmed him. Love was scary; he had learned early and hard how little he could depend on anyone but himself.

The fact that he had survived at all was a testament to his toughness and intelligence. He didn’t know how old he was, or where he had been born, what he was named as a child, or if he even had a name—nothing. He had no memory of a mother, a father, anyone who had taken care of him. A lot of people simply didn’t remember their childhoods, but Chance couldn’t comfort himself with that possibility, that there had been someone who had loved him and taken care of him, because he remembered too damn many other details.

He remembered stealing food when he was so small he had to stand on tiptoe to reach apples in a bin in a small-town supermarket. He had been around so many kids now that, by comparing what he remembered to the sizes they were at certain ages, he could estimate he had been no more than three years old at the time, perhaps not even that.

He remembered sleeping in ditches when it was warm, hiding in barns, stores, sheds, whatever was handy, when it was cold or raining. He remembered stealing clothes to wear, sometimes by the simple means of catching a boy playing alone in a yard, overpowering him and taking the clothes off his back. Chance had always been much stronger physically than other boys his size, because of the sheer physical difficulty of staying alive—and he had known how to fight, for the same reason.

He remembered a dog taking up with him once, a black-and-white mutt that tagged along and curled up next to him to sleep, and Chance remembered being grateful for the warmth. He also remembered that when he reached for a piece of steak he had stolen from the scraps in back of a restaurant, the dog bit him and stole the steak. Chance still had two scars on his left hand from the dog’s teeth. The dog had gotten the meat, and Chance had gone one more day without food. He didn’t blame the dog; it had been hungry, too. But Chance ran it off after that, because stealing enough food to keep himself alive was difficult enough, without having to steal for the dog, too. Besides, he had learned that when it came to survival, it was every dog for himself.

He might have been five years old when he learned that particular lesson, but he had learned it well.

Of course, learning how to survive in both rural and urban areas, in all conditions, was what made him so good at his job now, so he supposed his early childhood had its benefits. Even considering that, though, he wouldn’t wish his childhood on a dog, not even the damn mutt that had bitten him.

His real life had begun the day Mary Mackenzie found him lying beside a road, deathly ill with a severe case of flu that had turned into pneumonia. He didn’t remember much of the next few days—he had been too ill—but he had known he was in a hospital, and he had been wild with fear, because that meant he had fallen into the hands of the system, and he was now, in effect, a prisoner. He was obviously a minor, without identification, and the circumstances would warrant the child welfare services being notified. He had spent his entire life avoiding just such an event, and he had tried to make plans to escape, but his thoughts were vague, hard to get ordered, and his body was too weak to respond to his demands.

But through it all he could remember being soothed by an angel with soft blue-gray eyes and light, silvery brown hair, cool hands and a loving voice. There had also been a big, dark man, a half-breed, who calmly and repeatedly addressed his deepest fear. “We won’t let them take you,” the big man had said whenever Chance briefly surfaced from his fever-induced stupor.

He didn’t trust them, didn’t believe the big half-breed’s reassurances. Chance had figured out that he himself was part American Indian, but big deal, that didn’t mean he could trust these people any more than he could trust that damn thieving, ungrateful mutt. But he was too sick, too weak, to escape or even struggle, and while he was so helpless Mary Mackenzie had somehow hog-tied him with devotion, and he had never managed to break free.

He hated being touched; if someone was close enough to touch him, then they were close enough to attack him. He couldn’t fight off the nurses and doctors who poked and prodded and moved him around as if he were nothing more than a mindless piece of meat. He had endured it, gritting his teeth, struggling with both his own panic and the almost overpowering urge to fight, because he knew if he fought them he would be restrained. He had to stay free, so he could run when he recovered enough to move under his own power.

But she had been there for what seemed like the entire time, though logically he knew she had to have left the hospital sometimes. When he burned with fever, she washed his face with a cold cloth and fed him slivers of ice. She brushed his hair, stroked his forehead when his head ached so bad he thought his skull would crack; and took over bathing him when she saw how alarmed he became when the nurses did it. Somehow he could bear it better when she bathed him, though even in his illness he had been puzzled by his own reaction.

She touched him constantly, anticipating his needs so that his pillows were fluffed before he was aware of any discomfort, the heat adjusted before he became too hot or too cold, his legs and back massaged when the fever made him ache from head to toe. He was swamped by maternal fussing, enveloped by it. It terrified him, but Mary took advantage of his weakened state and ruthlessly overwhelmed him with her mothering, as if she were determined to pack enough loving care into those few days to make up for a lifetime of nothing.

Sometime during those fever-fogged days, he began to like the feel of her cool hand on his forehead, to listen for that sweet voice even when he couldn’t drag his heavy eyelids open, and the sound of it reassured him on some deep, primitive level. Once he dreamed, he didn’t know what, but he woke in a panic to find her arms around him, his head pillowed on her narrow shoulder as if he were a baby, her hand gently stroking his hair while she murmured reassuringly to him—and he drifted back to sleep feeling comforted and somehow…safe.

He was always startled, even now, by how small she was. Someone so relentlessly iron-willed should have been seven feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds; at least then it would have made sense that she could bulldoze the hospital staff, even the doctors, into doing what she wanted. She had estimated his age at fourteen, but even then he was over a full head taller than the dainty woman who took over his life, but in this case size didn’t matter; he was as helpless against her as was the hospital staff.

There was nothing at all he could do to fight off his growing addiction to Mary Mackenzie’s mothering, even though he knew he was developing a weakness, a vulnerability, that terrified him. He had never before cared for anyone or anything, instinctively knowing that to do so would expose his emotional underbelly. But knowledge and wariness couldn’t protect him now; by the time he was well enough to leave the hospital, he loved the woman who had decided she was going to be his mother, loved her with all the blind helplessness of a small child.

When he left the hospital it had been with Mary and the big man, Wolf. Because he couldn’t bear to leave her just yet, he braced himself to endure her family. Just for a little while, he had promised himself, just until he was stronger.

They had taken him to Mackenzie’s Mountain, into their home, their arms, their hearts. A nameless boy had died that day beside the road, and Chance Mackenzie had been born in his place. When Chance had chosen a birthday—at his new sister Maris’s insistence—he chose the day Mary found him, rather than the perhaps more logical date that his adoption was final.

He had never had anything, but after that day he had been flooded with…everything. He had always been hungry, but now there was food. He had been starved, too, for learning, and now there were books everywhere, because Mary was a teacher down to her fragile bones, and she had force-fed him knowledge as fast as he could gulp it down. He was accustomed to bedding down wherever and whenever he could, but now he had his own room, his own bed, a routine. He had clothes, new ones, bought specifically for him. No one else had ever worn them, and he hadn’t had to steal them.

But most of all, he had always been alone, and abruptly he was surrounded by family. Now he had a mother and a father, four brothers, a little sister, a sister-in-law, an infant nephew, and all of them treated him as if he had been there from the beginning. He could still barely tolerate being touched, but the Mackenzie family touched a lot. Mary—Mom—was constantly hugging him, tousling his hair, kissing him good-night, fussing over him. Maris, his new sister, pestered the living hell out of him just the way she did her other brothers, then would throw her skinny arms around his waist and fiercely hug him, saying, “I’m so glad you’re ours!”

He was always taken aback on those occasions, and would dart a wary glance at Wolf, the big man who was the head of the Mackenzie pack and who was now Chance’s dad, too. What did he think, seeing his innocent little daughter hug someone like Chance? Wolf Mackenzie was no innocent; if he didn’t know exactly what experiences had molded Chance, he still recognized the dangerous vein in the half-wild boy. Chance always wondered if those knowing eyes could see clear through him, see the blood on his hands, find in his mind the memory of the man he had killed when he was about ten.

Yes, the big half-breed had known very well the type of wild animal he had taken into his family and called son, had known and, like Mary, had loved him, anyway.

His early years had taught Chance how risky life was, taught him not to trust anyone, taught him that love would only make him vulnerable and that vulnerability could cost him his life. He had known all that, and still he hadn’t been able to stop himself from loving the Mackenzies. It never stopped scaring him, this weakness in his armor, and yet when he was in the family bosom was the only time he was completely relaxed, because he knew he was safe with them. He couldn’t stay away, couldn’t distance himself now that he was a man who was more than capable of taking care of himself, because their love for him, and his for them, fed his soul.

He had stopped even trying to limit their access to his heart and instead turned his considerable talents to doing everything he could to make their world, their lives, as safe as possible. They kept making it tougher for him; the Mackenzies constantly assaulted him with expansions: his brothers married, giving him sisters-in-law to love, because his brothers loved them and they were part of the family now. Then there were the babies. When he first came into the family there was only John, Joe and Caroline’s first son, newly born. But nephew had followed nephew, and somehow Chance, along with everyone else in the Mackenzie family, found himself rocking infants, changing diapers, holding bottles, letting a dimpled little hand clutch one of his fingers while tottering first steps were made…and each one of those dimpled hands had clutched his heart, too. He had no defense against them. There were twelve nephews now, and one niece against whom he was particularly helpless, much to everyone else’s amusement.

Going home was always nerve-racking, and yet he yearned for his family. He was afraid for them, afraid for himself, because he didn’t know if he could live now without the warmth the Mackenzies folded about him. his mind told him he would be better off if he gradually severed the ties and isolated himself from both the pleasure and the potential for pain, but his heart always led him home again.

Chapter 1

Chance loved motorcycles. The big beast between his legs throbbed with power as he roared along the narrow winding road, the wind in his hair, leaning his body into the curves with the beast so they were one, animal and machine. No other motorcycle in the world sounded like a Harley, with that deep, coughing rumble that vibrated through his entire body. Riding a motorcycle always gave him a hard-on, and his own visceral reaction to the speed and power never failed to amuse him.

Danger was sexy. Every warrior knew it, though it wasn’t something people were going to read about in their Sunday newspaper magazines. His brother Josh freely admitted that landing a fighter on a carrier deck had always turned him on. “It falls just short of orgasm,” was the way Josh put it. Joe, who could fly any jet built, refrained from commenting but always smiled a slow, knowing smile.

As for both Zane and himself, Chance knew there were times when each had emerged from certain tense situations, usually involving bullets, wanting nothing more than to have a woman beneath him. Chance’s sexual need was ferocious at those times; his body was flooded with adrenaline and testosterone, he was alive, and he desperately needed a woman’s soft body in which he could bury himself and release all the tension. Unfortunately, that need always had to wait: wait until he was in a secure position, maybe even in a different country entirely; wait until there was an available, willing woman at hand; and, most of all, wait until he had settled down enough that he could be relatively civilized in the sack.

But for now, there was only the Harley and himself, the rush of sweet mountain air on his face, and the inner mixture of joy and fear of going home. If Mom saw him riding the Harley without a helmet she would tear a strip off his hide, which was why he had the helmet with him, securely fastened behind the seat. He would put it on before sedately riding up the mountain to visit them. Dad wouldn’t be fooled, but neither would he say anything, because Wolf Mackenzie knew what it was to fly high and wild.

He crested a ridge, and Zane’s house came into view in the broad valley below. The house was large, with five bedrooms and four baths, but not ostentatious; Zane had instinctively built the house so it wouldn’t attract undue attention. It didn’t look as large as it was, because some of the rooms were underground. He had also built it to be as secure as possible, positioning it so he had an unrestricted view in all directions, but using natural formations of the land to block land access by all but the one road. The doors were steel, with state-of-the-art locks; the windows were shatterproof, and had cost a small fortune. Strategic walls had interior armor, and an emergency generator was installed in the basement. The basement also concealed another means of escape, if escape became necessary. Motion sensors were installed around the house, and as Chance wheeled the motorcycle into the driveway, he knew his arrival had already been signaled.

Zane didn’t keep his family locked in a prison, but the security provisions were there if needed. Given their jobs, prudence demanded caution, and Zane had always prepared for emergencies, always had a backup plan.

Chance cut off the motor and sat for a minute, letting his senses return to normal while he ran a hand through his windswept hair. Then he kicked the stand down and leaned the Harley onto it, and dismounted much the way he would a horse. Taking a thin file from the storage compartment, he went up on the wide, shady porch.

It was a warm summer day, mid-August, and the sky was a cloudless clear blue. Horses grazed contentedly in the pasture, though a few of the more curious had come to the fence to watch with huge, liquid dark eyes as the noisy machine roared into the driveway. Bees buzzed around Barrie’s flowers, and birds sang continuously in the trees. Wyoming. Home. It wasn’t far away, Mackenzie’s Mountain, with the sprawling house on the mountaintop where he had been given…life and everything else in this world that was important to him.

“The door’s open.” Zane’s low, calm voice issued from the intercom beside the door. “I’m in the office.”

Chance opened the door and went inside, his booted feet silent as he walked down the hall to Zane’s office. With small clicks, the door locks automatically engaged behind him. The house was quiet, meaning Barrie and the kids weren’t at home; if Nick was anywhere in the house she would have run squealing to him, hurling herself into his arms, chattering nonstop in her mangled English while holding his face clasped between both her little hands, making certain his attention didn’t wander from her—as if he would dare look away. Nick was like a tiny package of unstable explosives; it was best to keep a weather eye on her.

The door to Zane’s office was unexpectedly closed. Chance paused a moment, then opened it without knocking.

Zane was behind the desk, computer on, windows open to the warm, fresh air. He gave his brother one of his rare, warm smiles. “Watch where you step,” he advised. “Munchkins on deck.”

Automatically Chance looked down, checking out the floor, but he didn’t see either of the twins. “Where?”

Zane leaned back in his chair a little, looking around for his offspring. Spotting them, he said, “Under the desk. When they heard me let you in, they hid.”

Chance raised his eyebrows. To his knowledge, the ten-month-old twins weren’t in the habit of hiding from anyone or anything. He looked more carefully and saw four plump, dimpled baby hands peeping from under the cover of Zane’s desk. “They aren’t very good at it,” he observed. “I can see their hands.”

“Give them a break, they’re new at this stuff. They’ve only started doing it this week. They’re playing Attack.”

“Attack?” Fighting the urge to laugh, Chance said, “What am I supposed to do?”

“Just stand there. They’ll burst from cover as fast as they can crawl and grab you by the ankles.”

“Any biting involved?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay. What are they going to do with me once they have me captured?”

“They haven’t gotten to that part yet. For now, they just pull themselves up and stand there giggling.” Zane scratched his jaw, considering. “Maybe they’ll sit on your feet to hold you down, but for the most part they like standing too much to settle for sitting.”

The attack erupted. Even with Zane’s warning, Chance was a little surprised. They were remarkably quiet, for babies. He had to admire their precision; they launched themselves from under the desk at a rapid crawl, plump little legs pumping, and with identical triumphant crows attached themselves to his ankles. Dimpled hands clutched his jeans. The one on the left plopped down on his foot for a second, then thought better of the tactic and twisted around to begin hauling himself to an upright position. Baby arms wrapped around his knees, and the two little conquerors squealed with delight, their bubbling chuckles eliciting laughter from both men.

“Cool,” Chance said admiringly. “Predator babies.” He tossed the file onto Zane’s desk and leaned down to scoop the little warriors into his arms, settling each diapered bottom on a muscular forearm. Cameron and Zack grinned at him, six tiny white baby teeth shining in each identical dimpled face, and immediately they began patting his face with their fat little hands, pulling his ears, delving into his shirt pockets. It was like being attacked by two squirming, remarkably heavy marshmallows.

“Good God,” he said in astonishment. “They weigh a ton.” He hadn’t expected them to have grown so much in the two months since he had seen them.

“They’re almost as big as Nick. She still outweighs them, but I swear they feel heavier.” The twins were sturdy and strongly built, the little boys already showing the size of the Mackenzie males, while Nick was as dainty as her grandmother Mary.

“Where are Barrie and Nick?” Chance asked, missing his pretty sister-in-law and exuberant, cheerfully diabolic niece.

“We had a shoe crisis. Don’t ask.”

“How do you have a shoe crisis?” Chance asked, unable to resist. He sat down in a big, comfortable chair across from Zane’s desk, setting the babies more comfortably in his lap. They lost interest in pulling his ears and began babbling to each other, reaching out, entwining their arms and legs as if they sought the closeness they had known while forming in the womb. Chance unconsciously stroked them, enjoying the softness of their skin, the feel of squirming babies in his arms. All the Mackenzie babies grew up accustomed to being constantly, lovingly touched by the entire extended family.

Zane laced his hands behind his head, his big, powerful body relaxed. “First you have a three-year-old who loves her shiny, black, patent leather Sunday shoes. Then you make the severe tactical error of letting her watch The Wizard of Oz.” His stern mouth twitched, and his pale eyes glittered with amusement.

Chance’s agile mind immediately made the connection, and his acquaintance with the three-year-old in question allowed him to make a logical assumption: Nick had decided she had to have a pair of red shoes. “What did she use to try to dye them?”

Zane sighed. “Lipstick, what else?” Each and every young Mackenzie had had an incident with lipstick. It was a family tradition, one John had started when, at the age of two, he had used his mother’s favorite lipstick to recolor the impressive rows of fruit salad on Joe’s dress uniform. Caroline had been impressively outraged, because the shade had been discontinued and finding a new tube had been much more difficult than replacing the small colored bars that represented medals Joe had earned and services he had performed.

“You couldn’t just wipe it off?” The twins had discovered his belt buckle and zipper, and Chance moved the busy little hands that were trying to undress him. They began squirming to get down, and he leaned over to set them on the floor.

“Close the door,” Zane instructed, “or they’ll escape.”

Leaning back, Chance stretched out a long arm and closed the door, just in time. The two diaper-clad escape artists had almost reached it. Deprived of freedom, they plopped down on their padded bottoms and considered the situation, then launched themselves in crawling patrol of the perimeters of the room.

“I could have wiped it off,” Zane continued, his tone bland, “if I had known about it. Unfortunately, Nick cleaned the shoes herself. She put them in the dish-washer.”

Chance threw back his head with a shout of laughter.

“Barrie bought her a new pair of shoes yesterday. Well, you know how Nick’s always been so definite about what she wants to wear. She took one look at the shoes, said they were ugly, even though they were just like the ones she ruined, and refused to even try them on.”

“To be accurate,” Chance corrected, “what she said was that they were ‘ugwy.”’

Zane conceded the point. “She’s getting better with her Ls, though. She practices, saying the really important words, like lollipop, over and over to herself.”

“Can she say ‘Chance’ yet, instead of ‘Dance’?” Chance asked, because Nick stubbornly refused to even acknowledge she couldn’t say his name. She insisted everyone else was saying it wrong.

Zane’s expression was totally deadpan. “Not a chance.”

Chance groaned at the pun, wishing he hadn’t asked. “I gather Barrie has taken my little darling shopping, so she can pick out her own shoes.”

“Exactly.” Zane glanced over to check on his roaming offspring. As if they had been waiting for his parental notice, first Cam and then Zack plopped down on their butts and gave brief warning cries, all the while watching their father expectantly.

“Feeding time,” Zane said, swiveling his chair around so he could fetch two bottles from a small cooler behind the desk. He handed one to Chance. “Grab a kid.”

“You’re prepared, as always,” Chance commented as he went over to the twins and leaned down to lift one in his arms. Holding the baby up, he peered briefly at the scowling little face to make sure he had the one he thought he had. It was Zack, all right. Chance couldn’t say exactly how he knew which twin was which, how anyone in the family knew, because the babies were so identical their pediatrician had suggested putting ID anklets on them. But they each had such definite personalities, which were reflected in their expressions, that no one in the family ever confused one twin for the other.

“I have to be prepared. Barrie weaned them last month, and they don’t take kindly to having to wait for dinner.”

Zack’s round blue eyes were fiercely focused on the bottle in Chance’s hand. “Why did she wean them so early?” Chance asked as he resumed his seat and settled the baby in the crook of his left arm. “She nursed Nick until she was a year old.”

“You’ll see,” Zane said dryly, settling Cam on his lap.

As soon as Chance brought the bottle within reach of Zack’s fat little hands the baby made a grab for it, guiding it to his rapacious, open mouth. He clamped down ferociously on the nipple. Evidently deciding to let his uncle hold the bottle, he nevertheless made certain the situation was stabilized by clutching Chance’s wrist with both hands, and wrapping both chubby legs around Chance’s forearm. Then he began to growl as he sucked, pausing only to swallow.

An identical growling noise came from Zane’s lap. Chance looked over to see his brother’s arm captured in the same manner as the two little savages held on to their meals.

Milk bubbled around Zack’s rosebud mouth, and Chance blinked as six tiny white teeth gnawed on the plastic nipple.

“Hell, no wonder she weaned you!”

Zack didn’t pause in his gnawing, sucking and growling, but he did flick an absurdly arrogant glance at his uncle before returning his full attention to filling his little belly.

Zane was laughing softly, and he lifted Cam enough that he could nuzzle one of the chubby legs so determinedly wrapped around his arm. Cam paused to scowl at the interruption, then changed his mind and instead favored his father with a dimpled, milky smile. The next second the smile was gone and he attacked the bottle again.

Zack’s fuzzy black hair was as soft as silk against Chance’s arm. Babies were a pure tactile pleasure, he thought, though he hadn’t been of that opinion the first time he’d held one. The baby in question had been John, screaming his head off from the misery of teething.

Chance hadn’t been with the Mackenzies long, only a few months, and he had still been extremely wary of all these people. He had managed—barely—to control his instinct to attack whenever someone touched him, but he still jumped like a startled wild animal. Joe and Caroline came to visit, and from the expressions on their faces when they entered the house, it had been a very long trip. Even Joe, normally so controlled and unflappable, was frustrated by his futile efforts to calm his son, and Caroline had been completely frazzled by a situation she couldn’t handle with her usual impeccable logic. Her blond hair had been mussed, and her green eyes expressed an amazing mixture of concern and outrage.

As she had walked by Chance, she suddenly wheeled and deposited the screaming baby in his arms. Startled, alarmed, he tried to jerk back, but before he knew it he was in sole possession of the wiggling, howling little human. “Here,” she said with relief and utmost confidence. “You get him calmed down.”

Chance had panicked. It was a wonder he hadn’t dropped the baby. He’d never held one before, and he didn’t know what to do with it. Another part of him was astounded that Caroline would entrust her adored child to him, the mongrel stray Mary—Mom—had brought home with her. Why couldn’t these people see what he was? Why couldn’t they figure out he had lived wild in a kill-or-be-killed world, and that they would be safer if they kept their distance from him?

Instead, no one seemed to think it unusual or alarming that he was holding the baby, even though in his panic he held John almost at arm’s length, clutched between his two strong young hands.

But blessed quiet fell in the house. John was startled out of his screaming. He stared interestedly at this new person and kicked his legs. Automatically Chance changed his grip on the baby, settling him in the cradle of one arm as he had seen the others do. The kid was drooling. A tiny bib was fastened around his neck, and Chance used it to wipe away most of the slobber. John saw this opportunity and grabbed Chance by the thumb, immediately carrying the digit to his mouth and chomping down. Chance had jumped at the force of the hard little gums, with two tiny, sharp teeth already breaking the surface. He grimaced at the pain, but hung in there, letting John use his thumb as a teething ring until Mom rescued him by bringing a cold wet washcloth for the baby to chew.

Chance had expected then to be relieved of baby duty, because Mom usually couldn’t wait to get her hands on her grandson. But that day everyone had seemed content to leave John in his hands, even the kid himself, and after a while Chance calmed down enough to start walking around and pointing out things of interest to his little pal, all of which John obediently studied while gnawing on the relief-giving washcloth.

That had been his indoctrination to the ways of babies, and from that day on he had been a sucker for the parade of nephews his virile brothers and fertile sisters-in-law had produced on a regular basis. He seemed to be getting even worse, because with Zane’s three he was total mush.

“By the way, Maris is pregnant.”

Chance’s head jerked up, and a wide grin lit his tanned face. His baby sister had been married nine whole months and had been fretting because she hadn’t immediately gotten pregnant.

“When is it due?” He always ruthlessly arranged things so he could be home when a new Mackenzie arrived. Technically, this one would be a MacNeil, but that was a minor point.

“March. She says she’ll be crazy before then, because Mac won’t let her out of his sight.”

Chance chuckled. Other than her father and brothers, Mac was the only man Maris had ever met whom she couldn’t intimidate, which was one of the reasons she loved him so much. If Mac had decided he was going to ride herd on Maris during her pregnancy, she had little hope of escaping on one of those long, hard rides she so loved.

Zane nodded toward the file on his desk. “You going to tell me about it?”

Chance knew Zane was asking about more than the contents of the file. He was asking why it hadn’t been transmitted by computer, instead of Chance personally bringing a hard copy. Zane knew his brother’s schedule; he was the only person, other than Chance himself, who did, so he knew Chance was currently supposed to be in France. He was also asking why he hadn’t been notified of Chance’s change in itinerary, why his brother hadn’t made a simple phone call to let him know he was coming.

“I didn’t want to risk even a hint of this leaking out.”

Zane’s eyebrows rose. “We have security problems?”

“Nothing that I know of,” Chance said. “It’s what I don’t know about that worries me. But, like I said, no one else can hear even a whisper of this. It’s between us.”

“Now you’ve made me curious.” Zane’s cool blue eyes gleamed with interest.

“Crispin Hauer has a daughter.”

Zane didn’t straighten from his relaxed position, but his expression hardened. Crispin Hauer had been number one on their target list for years, but the terrorist was as elusive as he was vicious. They had yet to find any way to get close to him, any vulnerability they could exploit or bait they could use to lure him into a trap. There was a record of a marriage in London some thirty-five years ago, but Hauer’s wife, formerly Pamela Vickery, had disappeared, and no trace of her had ever been found. Chance, along with everyone else, had assumed the woman died soon after the marriage, either by Hauer’s hand or by his enemies’.

“Who is she?” Zane asked. “Where is she?”

“Her name is Sonia Miller, and she’s here, in America.”

“I know that name,” Zane said, his gaze sharpening.

Chance nodded. “Specifically, she’s the courier who was supposedly robbed of her package last week in Chicago.”

Zane didn’t miss the “supposedly,” but then, he never missed anything. “You think it was a setup?”

“I think it’s a damn good possibility. I found the link when I checked into her background.”

“Hauer would have known she’d be investigated after losing a package, especially one containing aerospace documents. Why take the risk?”

“He might not have thought we would find anything. She was adopted. Hal and Eleanor Miller are listed as her parents, and they’re clean as a whistle. I wouldn’t have known she was adopted if I hadn’t tried to pull up her birth certificate on the computer. Guess what—Hal and Eleanor never had any children. Little Sonia Miller didn’t have a birth certificate. So I did some digging and found the adoption file—”

Zane’s eyebrows rose. Open adoptions had caused so many problems that the trend had veered sharply back to closed files, which, coupled with electronic privacy laws and safeguards, had made it damn difficult to even locate those closed files, much less get into them. “Did you leave any fingerprints?”

“Nothing that will lead back to us. I went through a couple of relays, then hacked into the Internal Revenue and accessed the file from their system.”

Zane grinned. If anyone did notice the electronic snooping, it likely wouldn’t even be mentioned; no one messed with the tax people.

Zack had finished his bottle; his ferocious grip on it slackened, and his head lolled against Chance’s arm as he briefly struggled against sleep. Automatically Chance lifted the baby to his shoulder and began patting his back. “Ms. Miller has been employed as a courier for a little over five years. She has an apartment in Chicago, but her neighbors say she’s seldom there. I have to think this is a long-term setup, that she’s been working with her father from the beginning.”

Zane nodded. They had to assume the worst, because it was their job to do so. Only by anticipating the worst could they be prepared to handle it.

“Do you have anything in mind?” he asked, taking the bottle from Cam’s slackened grip and gently lifting the sleeping baby to his own shoulder.

“Getting next to her. Getting her to trust me.”

“She’s not going to be the trusting sort.”

“I have a plan,” Chance said, and grinned, because that was usually Zane’s line.

Zane grinned in return, then paused as a small security console in the wall dinged a soft alarm. He glanced at the security monitor. “Brace yourself,” he advised. “Barrie and Nick are home.”

Seconds later the front door opened and a shriek filled the house. “Unca Dance! UncaDanceUncaDanceUncaDance!” The chant was punctuated by the sound of tiny feet running and jumping down the hall as Nick’s celebration of his visit came closer. Chance leaned back in his chair and opened the office door a bare second before Nick barreled through it, her entire little body quivering with joy and eagerness.

She hurled herself at him, and he managed to catch her with his free arm, dragging her onto his lap. She paused to bestow a big-sisterly kiss and a pat on the back of Zack’s head—never mind that he was almost as big as she was—then turned all her fierce attention to Chance.

“Are you staying dis time?” she demanded, even as she lifted her face for him to kiss. He did, nuzzling her soft cheek and neck and making her giggle, inhaling the faint sweet scent of baby that still clung to her.

“Just for a few days,” he said, to her disappointment. She was old enough now to notice his long and frequent absences, and whenever she saw him she tried to convince him to stay.

She scowled; then, being Nick, she decided to move on to more important matters. Her face brightened. “Den can I wide your moborcycle?”

Alarm flared through him. “No,” he said firmly. “You can’t ride it, sit on it, lean on it, or put any of your toys on it unless I’m with you.” With Nick, it was best to close all the loopholes. She seldom disobeyed a direct order, but she was a genius at finding cracks to slip through. Another possibility occurred to him. “You can’t put Cam or Zack on it, either.” He doubted she could lift either of them, but he wasn’t taking any risks.

“Thank you,” Barrie said dryly, entering the office in time to catch his addendum. She leaned down to kiss him on the cheek, at the same time lifting Zack from his arms so he could protect himself from Nick’s feet. All the Mackenzie males, at one time or another, had fallen victim to a tiny foot in the crotch.

“Mission accomplished?” Zane asked, leaning back in his chair and smiling at his wife with that lazy look in his pale eyes that said he liked what he was seeing.

“Not without some drama and convincing, but, yes, mission accomplished.” She pushed a feather lock of red hair out of her eyes. As always, she looked stylish, though she was wearing nothing dressier than beige slacks and a white sleeveless blouse that set off her slim, lightly tanned arms. You could take the girl out of the finishing school, Chance thought admiringly, but you could never take the finishing school out of the girl, and Barrie had gone to the most exclusive one in the world.

Nick was still focused on negotiating riding rights on the motorcycle. She caught his face between her hands and leaned down so her nose practically touched his, insuring his complete attention. He nearly laughed aloud at the fierce intent in her expression. “I wet you wide my twicycle,” she said, evidently deciding to cajole instead of demand.

“Somehow I missed that,” Zane murmured in amusement, while Barrie laughed softly.

“You offered to let me ride your tricycle,” Chance corrected. “But I’m too big to ride a tricycle, and you’re too little to ride a motorcycle.”

“Den when can I wide it?” She made her blue eyes wide and winsome.

“When you get your driver’s license.”

That stymied her. She had no idea what a driver’s license was, or how to get it. She stuck a finger in her mouth while she pondered this situation, and Chance tried to divert her interest. “Hey! Aren’t those new shoes you’re wearing?”

Like magic, her face brightened again. She wriggled around so he could hold one foot up so close to his face she almost kicked him in the nose. “Dey’re so pwetty,” she crooned in delight.

He caught the little foot in his big hand, admiring the shine of the black patent leather. “Wow, that’s so shiny I can see my face in it.” He pretended to inspect his teeth, which set her to giggling.

Zane rose to his feet. “We’ll put the boys down for their naps while you have her occupied.”

Keeping Nick occupied wasn’t a problem; she was never at a loss for something to say or do. He curled one silky black strand of her hair around his finger while she chattered about her new shoes, Grampa’s new horses, and what Daddy had said when he hit his thumb with a hammer. She cheerfully repeated exactly what Daddy had said, making Chance choke.

“But I’m not ’posed to say dat,” she said, giving him a solemn look. “Dat’s a weally, weally bad word.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice strained. “It is.”

“I’m not ’posed to say ‘damn,’ or ‘hell,’ or ‘ass,’ or—”

“Then you shouldn’t be saying them now.” He managed to inject a note of firmness in his tone, though it was a struggle to keep from laughing.

She looked perplexed. “Den how can I tell you what dey are?”

“Does Daddy know what the bad words are?”

The little head nodded emphatically. “He knows dem all.”

“I’ll ask him to tell me, so I’ll know which words not to say.”

“Otay.” She sighed. “But don’t hit him too hard.”

“Hit him?”

“Dat’s de only time he says dat word, when he hits his dumb wid de hammer. He said so.”

Chance managed to turn his laugh into a cough. Zane was an ex-SEAL; his language was as salty as the sea he was so at home in, and Chance had heard “dat word,” and worse, many times from his brother. But Mom had also instilled strict courtesy in all her children, so their language was circumspect in front of women and children. Zane must not have known Nick was anywhere near him when he hit his thumb, or no amount of pain could have made him say that in her hearing. Chance only hoped she forgot it before she started kindergarten.

“Aunt Mawis is goin’ to have a baby,” Nick said, scrambling up to stand in his lap, her feet braced on his thighs. Chance put both hands around her to steady her, though his aid probably wasn’t needed; Nick had the balance of an acrobat.

“I know. Your daddy told me.”

Nick scowled at not being the first to impart the news. “She’s goin’ to foal in de spwing,” she announced.

He couldn’t hold back the laughter this time. He gathered the little darling close to him and stood, whirling her around and making her shriek with laughter as she clung to his neck. He laughed until his eyes were wet. God, he loved this child, who in the three short years of her life had taught them all to be on their toes at all times, because there was no telling what she was going to do or say. It took the entire Mackenzie family to ride herd on her.

Suddenly she heaved a sigh. “When’s de spwing? Is it a wong, wong time away?”

“Very long,” he said gravely. Seven months was an eternity to a three-year-old.

“Will I be old?”

He put on a sympathetic face and nodded. “You’ll be four.”

She looked both horrified and resigned. “Four,” she said mournfully. “Whodadunkit?”

When he stopped laughing this time, he wiped his eyes and asked, “Who taught you to say whodathunkit?”

“John,” she said promptly.

“Did he teach you anything else?”

She nodded.

“What? Can you remember it?”

She nodded.

“Will you tell me what they are?”

She rolled her eyes up and studied the ceiling for a moment, then gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Will you wet me wide your moborcycle?”

Damn, she was bargaining! He trembled with fear at the thought of what she would be like when she was sixteen. “No,” he said firmly. “If you got hurt, your mommy and daddy would cry, Grampa and Gamma would cry, I would cry, Aunt Maris would cry, Mac would cry, Unca Mike would cry—”

She looked impressed at this litany of crying and interrupted before he could name everyone in the family. “I can wide a horse, Unca Dance, so why can’t I wide your moborcycle?”

God, she was relentless. Where in the hell were Zane and Barrie? They’d had plenty of time to put the twins down for their naps. If he knew Zane, his brother was taking advantage of having a baby-sitter for Nick to get in some sexy time with his wife; Zane was always prepared to use a fluid situation to his advantage.

It was another ten minutes before Zane strolled back into the office, his eyes slightly heavy-lidded and his hard face subtly relaxed. Chance scowled at his brother. He’d spent the ten minutes trying to talk Nick into telling him what John had taught her, but she wasn’t budging from her initial negotiation. “It’s about time,” he groused.

“Hey, I hurried,” Zane protested mildly.

“Yeah, right.”

“As much as possible,” he added, smiling. He smoothed his big hand over his daughter’s shining black hair. “Have you kept Uncle Chance entertained?”

She nodded. “I told him de weally, weally bad word you said when you hit your dumb.”

Zane looked pained, then stern. “How did you tell him when you aren’t supposed to say the word?”

She stuck her finger in her mouth and began studying the ceiling again.

“Nick.” Zane plucked her from Chance’s arms. “Did you say the word?”

Her lower lip stuck out a little, but she nodded, owning up to her transgression.

“Then you can’t have a bedtime story tonight. You promised you wouldn’t say it.”

“I’m sowwy,” she said, winding her arms around his neck and laying her head on his shoulder.

Gently he rubbed his hand up and down her back. “I know you are, sweetheart, but you have to keep your promises.” He set her on her feet. “Go find Mommy.”

When she was gone, out of curiosity Chance asked, “Why didn’t you tell her that she couldn’t watch television, instead of taking away the bedtime story?”

“We don’t want to make television attractive by using it as a treat or a privilege. Why? Are you taking notes on being a parent?”

Appalled, Chance said, “Not in this lifetime.”

“Yeah? Fate has a way of jumping up and biting you on the ass when you least expect it.”

“Well, my ass is currently bite-free, and I intend to keep it that way.” He nodded at the file on Zane’s desk. “We have some planning to do.”

Chapter 2

This whole assignment was a tribute to Murphy’s Law, Sunny Miller thought in disgust as she sat in the Salt Lake City airport, waiting for her flight to be called—if it were called at all, which she was beginning to doubt. This was her fifth airport of the day, and she was still almost a thousand miles from her destination, which was Seattle. She was supposed to have been on a direct flight from Atlanta to Seattle, but that flight had been canceled due to mechanical problems and the passengers routed on to other flights, none of which were direct.

From Atlanta she had gone to Cincinnati, from Cincinnati to Chicago, from Chicago to Denver, and from Denver to Salt Lake City. At least she was moving west instead of backtracking, and the flight from Salt Lake City, assuming it ever started boarding, was supposed to actually land in Seattle.

The way her day had gone, she expected it to crash instead.

She was tired, she had been fed nothing but peanuts all day, and she was afraid to go get anything to eat in case her flight was called and the plane got loaded and in the air in record time, leaving her behind. When Murphy was in control, anything was possible. She made a mental note to find this Murphy guy and punch him in the nose.

Her normal good humor restored by the whimsy, she resettled herself in the plastic seat and took out the paperback book she had been reading. She was tired, she was hungry, but she wasn’t going to let the stress get to her. If there was one thing she was good at, it was making the best of a situation. Some trips were smooth as silk, and some were a pain in the rear; so long as the good and the bad were balanced, she could cope.

Out of ingrained habit, she kept the strap of her soft leather briefcase looped around her neck, held across her body so it couldn’t easily be jerked out of her grasp. Some couriers might handcuff the briefcase or satchel to their wrists, but her company was of the opinion that handcuffs drew unwanted attention; it was better to blend in with the horde of business travelers than to stand out. Handcuffs practically shouted “Important stuff inside!”

After what had happened in Chicago the month before, Sunny was doubly wary and also kept one hand on the briefcase. She had no idea what was in it, but that didn’t matter; her job was to get the contents from point A to point B. When the briefcase had been jerked off her shoulder by a green-haired punk in Chicago last month, she had been both humiliated and furious. She was always careful, but evidently not careful enough, and now she had a big blotch on her record.

On a very basic level, she was alarmed that she had been caught off guard. She had been taught from the cradle to be both prepared and cautious, to be alert to what was going on around her; if a green-haired punk could get the best of her, then she was neither as prepared nor alert as she had thought. When one slip could mean the difference between life and death, there was no room for error.

Just remembering the incident made her uneasy. She returned the book to her carry-on bag, preferring to keep her attention on the people around her.

Her stomach growled. She had food in her carry-on, but that was for emergencies, and this didn’t qualify. She watched the gate, where the two airline reps were patiently answering questions from impatient passengers. From the dissatisfied expressions on the passengers’ faces as they returned to their seats, the news wasn’t good; logically, she should have enough time to find something to eat.

She glanced at her watch: one-forty-five p.m., local time. She had to have the contents of the briefcase in Seattle by nine p.m. Pacific time tonight, which should have been a breeze, but the way things were going, she was losing faith the assignment could be completed on time. She hated the idea of calling the office to report another failure, even one that wasn’t her fault. If the airline didn’t get on the ball soon, though, she would have to do something. The customer needed to know if the packet wasn’t going to arrive as scheduled.

If the news on the flight delay hadn’t improved by the time she returned from eating, she would see about transferring to another airline, though she had already considered that option and none of the possibilities looked encouraging; she was in flight-connection hell. If she couldn’t work out something, she would have to make that phone call.

Taking a firm grip on the briefcase with one hand and her carry-on bag with the other, she set off down the concourse in search of food that didn’t come from a vending machine. Arriving passengers were pouring out of a gate to her left, and she moved farther to the right to avoid the crush. The maneuver didn’t work; someone jostled her left shoulder, and she instinctively looked around to see who it was.

No one was there. A split-second reaction, honed by years of looking over her shoulder, saved her. She automatically tightened her grip on the briefcase just as she felt a tug on the strap, and the leather fell limply from her shoulder.

Damn it, not again!

She ducked and spun, swinging her heavy carry-on bag at her assailant. She caught a glimpse of feral dark eyes and a mean, unshaven face; then her attention locked on his hands. The knife he had used to slice the briefcase strap was in one hand, and he already had his other hand on the briefcase, trying to jerk it away from her. The carry-on bag hit him on the shoulder, staggering him, but he didn’t release his grip.

Sunny didn’t even think of screaming, or of being scared; she was too angry for either reaction, and both would have splintered her concentration. Instead, she wound up for another swing, aiming the bag for the hand holding the knife.

Around her she heard raised voices, full of confused alarm as people tried to dodge around the disturbance, and jostled others instead. Few, if any, of them would have any idea what the ruckus was about. Vision was hampered; things were happening too fast. She couldn’t rely on anyone coming to help, so she ignored the noise, all her attention centered on the cretin whose dirty hand clutched her briefcase.

Whap! She hit him again, but still he held on to the knife.

“Bitch,” he snarled, his knife-hand darting toward her.

She jumped back, and her fingers slipped on the leather. Triumphantly he jerked it away from her. Sunny grabbed for the dangling strap and caught it, but the knife made a silver flash as he sliced downward, separating the strap from the briefcase. The abrupt release of tension sent her staggering back.

The cretin whirled and ran. Catching her balance, Sunny shouted, “Stop him!” and ran in pursuit. Her long skirt had a slit up the left side that let her reach full stride, but the cretin not only had a head start, he had longer legs. Her carry-on bag banged against her legs, further hampering her, but she didn’t dare leave it behind. Doggedly she kept running, even though she knew it was useless. Despair knotted her stomach. Her only prayer was that someone in the crowd would play hero and stop him.

Her prayer was abruptly answered.

Up ahead, a tall man standing with his back to the concourse turned and glanced almost negligently in the direction of the ruckus. The cretin was almost abreast of him. Sunny drew breath to yell out another “Stop him,” even though she knew the cretin would be past before the man could react. She never got the words out of her mouth.

The tall man took in with one glance what was happening, and in a movement as smooth and graceful as a ballet pirouette, he shifted, pivoted and lashed out with one booted foot. The kick landed squarely on the cretin’s right knee, taking his leg out from under him. He cart-wheeled once and landed flat on his back, his arms flung over his head. The briefcase skidded across the concourse before bouncing against the wall, then back into the path of a stream of passengers. One man hopped over the briefcase, while others stepped around it.

Sunny immediately swerved in that direction, snatching up the briefcase before any other quick-fingered thief could grab it, but she kept one eye on the action.

In another of those quick, graceful movements, the tall man bent and flipped the cretin onto his stomach, then wrenched both arms up high behind his back and held them with one big hand.

“Owww!” the cretin howled. “You bastard, you’re breaking my arms!”

The name-calling got his arms roughly levered even higher. He howled again, this time wordlessly and at a much higher pitch.

“Watch your language,” said his captor.

Sunny skidded to a halt beside him. “Be careful,” she said breathlessly. “He had a knife.”

“I saw it. It landed over there when he fell.” The man didn’t look up but jerked his chin to the left. As he spoke he efficiently stripped the cretin’s belt from its loop and wound the leather in a simple but effective snare around his captive’s wrists. “Pick it up before someone grabs it and disappears. Use two fingers, and touch only the blade.”

He seemed to know what he was doing, so Sunny obeyed without question. She took a tissue out of her skirt pocket and gingerly picked up the knife as he had directed, being careful not to smear any fingerprints on the handle.

“What do I do with it?”

“Hold it until Security gets here.” He angled his dark head toward the nearest airline employee, a transportation escort who was hovering nervously as if unsure what to do. “Security has been called, hasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” said the escort, his eyes round with excitement.

Sunny squatted beside her rescuer. “Thank you,” she said. She indicated the briefcase, with the two dangling pieces of its strap. “He cut the strap and grabbed it away from me.”

“Any time,” he said, turning his head to smile at her and giving her her first good look at him.

Her first look was almost her last. Her stomach fluttered. Her heart leaped. Her lungs seized. Wow, she thought, and tried to take a deep breath without being obvious about it.

He was probably the best-looking man she had ever seen, without being pretty in any sense of the word. Drop-dead handsome was the phrase that came to mind. Slightly dazed, she took in the details: black hair, a little too long and a little too shaggy, brushing the collar at the back of his battered brown leather jacket; smooth, honey-tanned skin; eyes of such a clear, light brown that they looked golden, framed by thick black lashes. As if that wasn’t enough, he had also been blessed with a thin, straight nose, high cheekbones, and such clearly delineated, well-shaped lips that she had the wild impulse to simply lean forward and kiss him.

She already knew he was tall, and now she had the time to notice the broad shoulders, flat belly and lean hips. Mother Nature had been in a really good mood when he was made. He should have been too perfect and pretty to be real, but there was a toughness in his expression that was purely masculine, and a thin, crescent-shaped scar on his left cheekbone only added to the impression. Looking down, she saw another scar slashing across the back of his right hand, a raised line that was white against his tanned skin.

The scars in no way detracted from his attractiveness; the evidence of rough living only accentuated it, stating unequivocally that this was a man.

She was so bemused that it took her several seconds to realize he was watching her with mingled amusement and interest. She felt her cheeks heat in embarrassment at being caught giving him a blatant once-over. Okay, twice-over.

But she didn’t have time to waste in admiration, so she forced her attention back to more pressing concerns. The cretin was grunting and making noises designed to show he was in agony, but she doubted he was in any great pain, despite his bound hands and the way her hero had a knee pressed into the small of his back. She had the briefcase back, but the cretin still presented her with a dilemma: It was her civic duty to stay and press charges against him, but if her flight left any time soon, she might very well miss it while she was answering questions and filling out forms.

“Jerk,” she muttered at him. “If I miss my flight…”

“When is it?” asked her hero.

“I don’t know. It’s been delayed, but they could begin boarding at any time. I’ll check at the gate and be right back.”

He nodded with approval. “I’ll hold your friend here and deal with Security until you get back.”

“I’ll only be a minute,” she said, and walked swiftly back to her gate. The counter was now jammed with angry or upset travelers, their mood far more agitated than when she had left just a few moments before. Swiftly she glanced at the board, where CANCELED had been posted in place of the DELAYED sign.

“Damn,” she said, under her breath. “Damn, damn, damn.” There went her last hope for getting to Seattle in time to complete her assignment, unless there was another miracle waiting for her. Two miracles in one day was probably too much to ask for, though.

She needed to call in, she thought wearily, but first she could deal with the cretin and airport security. She retraced her steps and found that the little drama was now mobile; the cretin was on his feet, being frog-marched under the control of two airport policemen into an office where they would be out of the view of curious passersby.

Her hero was waiting for her, and when he spotted her, he said something to the security guys, then began walking to meet her.

Her heart gave a little flutter of purely feminine appreciation. My, he was good to look at. His clothes were nothing special: a black T-shirt under the old leather jacket, faded jeans and scuffed boots, but he wore them with a confidence and grace that said he was utterly comfortable. Sunny allowed herself a moment of regret that she would never see him again after this little contretemps was handled, but then she pushed it away. She couldn’t take the chance of letting anything develop into a relationship—assuming there was anything there to develop—with him or anyone else. She never even let anything start, because it wouldn’t be fair to the guy, and she didn’t need the emotional wear and tear, either. Maybe one day she would be able to settle down, date, eventually find someone to love and marry and maybe have kids, but not now. It was too dangerous.

When he reached her, he took her arm with old fashioned courtesy. “Everything okay with your flight?”

“In a way. It’s been canceled,” she said ruefully. “I have to be in Seattle tonight, but I don’t think I’m going to make it. Every flight I’ve had today has either been delayed or rerouted, and now there’s no other flight that would get me there in time.”

“Charter a plane,” he said as they walked toward the office where the cretin had been taken.

She chuckled. “I don’t know if my boss will spring for that kind of money, but it’s an idea. I have to call in, anyway, when we’re finished here.”

“If it makes any difference to him, I’m available right now. I was supposed to meet a customer on that last flight in from Dallas, but he wasn’t on the plane, and he hasn’t contacted me, so I’m free.”

“You’re a charter pilot?” She couldn’t believe it. It—he—was too good to be true. Maybe she did qualify for two miracles in one day after all.

He looked down at her and smiled, making a tiny dimple dance in his cheek. God, he had a dimple, too! Talk about overkill! He held out his hand. “Chance McCall—pilot, thief-catcher, jack-of-all-trades—at your service, ma’am.”

She laughed and shook his hand, noticing that he was careful not to grip her fingers too hard. Considering the strength she could feel in that tough hand, she was grateful for his restraint. Some men weren’t as considerate. “Sunny Miller, tardy courier and target of thieves. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. McCall.”

“Chance,” he said easily. “Let’s get this little problem taken care of, then you can call your boss and see if he thinks a charter flight is just what the doctor ordered.”

He opened the door of the unmarked office for her, and she stepped inside to find the two security officers, a woman dressed in a severe gray suit and the cretin, who had been handcuffed to his chair. The cretin glared at her when she came in, as if all this were her fault instead of his.

“You lyin’ bitch—” the cretin began.

Chance McCall reached out and gripped the cretin’s shoulder. “Maybe you didn’t get the message before,” he said in that easy way of his that in no way disguised the iron behind it, “but I don’t care for your language. Clean it up.” He didn’t issue a threat, just an order—and his grip on the cretin’s shoulder didn’t look gentle.

The cretin flinched and gave him an uneasy look, perhaps remembering how effortlessly this man had manhandled him before. Then he looked at the two airport policemen, as if expecting them to step in. The two men crossed their arms and grinned. Deprived of allies, the cretin opted for silence.

The gray-suited woman looked as if she wanted to protest the rough treatment of her prisoner, but she evidently decided to get on with the business at hand. “I’m Margaret Fayne, director of airport security. I assume you’re going to file charges?”

“Yes,” Sunny said.

“Good,” Ms. Fayne said in approval. “I’ll need statements from both of you.”

“Any idea how long this will take?” Chance asked. “Ms. Miller and I are pressed for time.”

“We’ll try to hurry things along,” Ms. Fayne assured him.

Whether Ms. Fayne was super-efficient or yet another small miracle took place, the paperwork was completed in what Sunny considered to be record time. Not much more than half an hour passed before the cretin was taken away in handcuffs, all the paperwork was prepared and signed, and Sunny and Chance McCall were free to go, having done their civic duty.

He waited beside her while she called the office and explained the situation. The supervisor, Wayne Beesham, wasn’t happy, but bowed to reality.

“What’s this pilot’s name again?” he asked.

“Chance McCall.”

“Hold on, let me check him out.”

Sunny waited. Their computers held a vast database of information on both commercial airlines and private charters. There were some unsavory characters in the charter business, dealing more in drugs than in passengers, and a courier company couldn’t afford to be careless.

“Where’s his home base?”

Sunny repeated the question to Chance.

“Phoenix,” he said, and once again she relayed the information.

“Okay, got it. He looks okay. How much is his fee?”

Sunny asked.

Mr. Beesham grunted at the reply. “That’s a bit high.”

“He’s here, and he’s ready to go.”

“What kind of plane is it? I don’t want to pay this price for a crop-duster that still won’t get you there in time.”

Sunny sighed. “Why don’t I just put him on the line? It’ll save time.” She handed the receiver to Chance. “He wants to know about your plane.”

Chance took the receiver. “McCall.” He listened a moment. “It’s a Cessna Skylane. The range is about eight hundred miles at seventy-five percent power, six hours flying time. I’ll have to refuel, so I’d rather it be around the midway point, say at Roberts Field in Redmond, Oregon. I can radio ahead and have everything rolling so we won’t spend much time on the ground.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “With the hour we gain when we cross into the Pacific time zone, she can make it—barely.”

He listened for another moment, then handed the receiver back to Sunny. “What’s the verdict?” she asked.

“I’m authorizing it. For God’s sake, get going.”

She hung up and grinned at Chance, her blood pumping at the challenge. “It’s ago! How long will it take to get airborne?”

“If you let me carry that bag, and we run…fifteen minutes.”

Sunny never let the bag out of her possession. She hated to repay his courtesy with a refusal, but caution was so ingrained in her that she couldn’t bring herself to take the risk. “It isn’t heavy,” she lied, tightening her grip on it. “You lead, I’ll follow.”

One dark eyebrow went up at her reply, but he didn’t argue, just led the way through the busy concourse. The private planes were in a different area of the airport, away from the commercial traffic. After several turns and a flight of stairs, they left the terminal and walked across the concrete, the hot afternoon sun beating down on their heads and making her squint. Chance slipped on a pair of sunglasses, then shrugged out of the jacket and carried it in his left hand.

Sunny allowed herself a moment of appreciation at the way his broad shoulders and muscled back filled out the black T-shirt he wore. She might not indulge, but she could certainly admire. If only things were different—but they weren’t, she thought, reining in her thoughts. She had to deal with reality, not wishful thinking.

He stopped beside a single-engine airplane, white with gray-and-red striping. After storing her bag and briefcase and securing them with a net, he helped her into the copilot’s seat. Sunny buckled herself in and looked around with interest. She’d never been in a private plane before, or flown in anything this small. It was surprisingly comfortable. The seats were gray leather, and behind her was a bench seat with individual backs. Carpet covered the metal floor.

There were two sun visors, just like in a car. Amused, she flipped down the one in front of her and laughed aloud when she saw the small mirror attached to it.

Chance walked around the plane, checking details one last time before climbing into the seat to her left and buckling himself in. He put on a set of headphones and began flipping switches while he talked to the air traffic control tower. The engine coughed, then caught, and the propeller on the nose began to spin, slowly at first, then gaining speed until it was an almost invisible blur.

He pointed to another set of headphones, and Sunny put them on. “It’s easier to talk using the headphones,” came his voice in her ear, “but be quiet until we get airborne.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, amused, and he flashed a quick grin at her.

They were airborne within minutes, faster than she had ever experienced on a commercial carrier. Being in the small plane gave her a sense of speed that she had never before felt, and when the wheels left the ground the lift was incredible, as if she had sprouted wings and jumped into the air. The ground quickly fell away below, and the vast, glistening blue lake spread out before her, with the jagged mountains straight ahead.

“Wow,” she breathed, and brought one hand up to shield her eyes from the sun.

“There’s an extra pair of sunglasses in the glove box,” he said, indicating the compartment in front of her. She opened it and dug out a pair of inexpensive but stylish Foster Grants with dark red frames. They were obviously some woman’s sunglasses, and abruptly she wondered if he was married. He would have a girlfriend, of course; not only was he very nice to look at, he seemed to be a nice person. It was a combination that was hard to find and impossible to beat.

“Your wife’s?” she asked as she put on the glasses and breathed a sigh of relief as the uncomfortable glare disappeared.

“No, a passenger left them in the plane.”

Well, that hadn’t told her anything. She decided to be blunt, even while she wondered why she was bothering, since she would never see him again after they arrived in Seattle. “Are you married?”

Again she got that quick grin. “Nope.” He glanced at her, and though she couldn’t see his eyes through the dark glasses, she got the impression his gaze was intense. “Are you?”

“No.”

“Good,” he said.

Chapter 3

Chance watched her from behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses, gauging her reaction to his verbal opening. The plan was working better than he’d hoped; she was attracted to him and hadn’t been trying very hard to hide it. All he had to do was take advantage of that attraction and win her trust, which normally might take some doing, but what he had planned would throw her into a situation that wasn’t normal in any sense of the word. Her life and safety would depend on him.

To his faint surprise, she faced forward and pretended she hadn’t heard him. Wryly, he wondered if he’d misread her and she wasn’t attracted to him after all. No, she had been watching him pretty blatantly, and in his experience, a woman didn’t stare at a man unless she found him attractive.

What was really surprising was how attractive he found her. He hadn’t expected that, but sexual chemistry was an unruly demon that operated outside logic. He had known she was pretty, with brilliant gray eyes and golden-blond hair that swung smoothly to her shoulders, from the photographs in the file he had assembled on her. He just hadn’t realized how damn fetching she was.

He slanted another glance at her, this time one of pure male assessment. She was of average height, maybe, though a little more slender than he liked, almost delicate. Almost. The muscles of her bare arms, revealed by a white sleeveless blouse, were well-toned and lightly tanned, as if she worked out. A good agent always stayed in good physical condition, so he had to expect her to be stronger than she looked. Her delicate appearance probably took a lot of people off guard.

She sure as hell had taken Wilkins off guard. Chance had to smother a smile. While Sunny had gone back to her gate to check on the status of her flight, which Chance had arranged to be cancelled, Wilkins had told him how she had swung her carry-on bag at him, one-armed, and that the damn thing had to weigh a ton, because it had almost knocked him off his feet.

By now, Wilkins and the other three, “Ms. Fayne” and the two security “policemen,” would have vanished from the airport. The real airport security had been briefed to stay out of the way, and everything had worked like a charm, though Wilkins had groused at being taken down so roughly. “First that little witch damn near breaks my arm with that bag, then you try to break my back,” he’d growled, while they all laughed at him.

Just what was in that bag, anyway? She had held on to it as if it contained the crown jewels, not letting him carry it even when she was right there with him, and only reluctantly letting him take it to stow in the luggage compartment behind them. He’d been surprised at how heavy it was, too heavy to contain the single change of clothes required by an overnight trip, even with a vast array of makeup and a hairdryer thrown in for good measure. The bag had to weigh a good fifty pounds, maybe more. Well, he would find out soon enough what was in it.

“What were you going to do with that guy if you’d caught him?” he asked in a lazy tone, partly to keep her talking, establishing a link between them, and partly because he was curious. She had been chasing after Wilkins with a fiercely determined expression on her face, so determined that, if Wilkins were still running, she would probably still be chasing him.

“I don’t know,” she said darkly. “I just knew I couldn’t let it happen again.”

“Again?” Damn, was she going to tell him about Chicago?

“Last month, a green-haired cretin snatched my briefcase in the airport in Chicago.” She slapped the arm of the seat. “That’s the first time anything like that has ever happened on one of my jobs, then to have it happen again just a month later—I’d have been fired. Heck, I would fire me, if I were the boss.”

“You didn’t catch the guy in Chicago?”

“No. I was in Baggage Claims, and he just grabbed the briefcase, zipped out the door and was gone.”

“What about security? They didn’t try to catch him?”

She peered at him over the top of the oversize sunglasses. “You’re kidding, right?”

He laughed. “I guess I am.”

“Losing another briefcase would have been a catastrophe, at least to me, and it wouldn’t have done the company any good, either.”

“Do you ever know what’s in the briefcases?”

“No, and I don’t want to. It doesn’t matter. Someone could be sending a pound of salami to their dying uncle Fred, or it could be a billion dollars worth of diamonds—not that I think anyone would ever ship diamonds by a courier service, but you get the idea.”

“What happened when you lost the briefcase in Chicago?”

“My company was out a lot of money—rather, the insurance company was. The customer will probably never use us again, or recommend us.”

“What happened to you? Any disciplinary action?” He knew there hadn’t been.

“No. In a way, I would have felt better if they had at least fined me.”

Damn, she was good, he thought in admiration—either that, or she was telling the truth and hadn’t had anything to do with the incident in Chicago last month. It was possible, he supposed, but irrelevant. Whether or not she’d had anything to do with losing that briefcase, he was grateful it had happened, because otherwise she would never have come to his notice, and he wouldn’t have this lead on Crispin Hauer.

But he didn’t think she was innocent; he thought she was in this up to her pretty neck. She was better than he had expected, an actress worthy of an Oscar—so good he might have believed she didn’t know anything about her father, if it wasn’t for the mystery bag and her deceptive strength. He was trained to put together seemingly insignificant details and come up with a coherent picture, and experience had made him doubly cynical. Few people were as honest as they wanted you to believe, and the people who put on the best show were often the ones with the most to hide. He should know—he was an expert at hiding the black secrets of his soul.

He wondered briefly what it said about him that he was willing to sleep with her as part of his plan to gain her trust, but maybe it was better not to think about it. Someone had to be willing to work in the muck, to do things from which ordinary people would shrink, just to protect those ordinary people. Sex was…just sex. Part of the job. He could even divorce his emotions to the point that he actually looked forward to the task.

Task? Who was he kidding? He couldn’t wait to slide into her. She intrigued him, with her toned, tight body and the twinkle that so often lit her clear gray eyes, as if she was often amused at both herself and the world around her. He was fascinated by her eyes, by the white striations that made her eyes look almost faceted, like the palest of blue diamonds. Most people thought of gray eyes as a pale blue, but when he was close to her, he could see that they were, very definitely, brilliantly gray. But most of all he was intrigued by her expression, which was so open and good-humored she could almost trademark the term “Miss Congeniality.” How could she look like that, as sweet as apple pie, when she was working hand in glove with the most-wanted terrorist in his files?

Part of him, the biggest part, despised her for what she was. The animal core of him, however, was excited by the dangerous edge of the game he was playing, by the challenge of getting her into bed with him and convincing her to trust him. When he was inside her, he wouldn’t be thinking about the hundreds of innocent people her father had killed, only about the linking of their bodies. He wouldn’t let himself think of anything else, lest he give himself away with some nuance of expression that women were so good at reading. No, he would make love to her as if he had found his soul mate, because that was the only way he could be certain of fooling her.

But he was good at that, at making a woman feel as if he desired her more than anything else in the world. He knew just how to make her aware of him, how to push hard without panicking her—which brought him back to the fact that she had totally ignored his first opening. He smiled slightly to himself. Did she really think that would work?

“Will you have dinner with me tonight?”

She actually jumped, as if she had been lost in her thoughts. “What?”

“Dinner. Tonight. After you deliver your package.”

“Oh. But—I’m supposed to deliver it at nine. It’ll be late, and—”

“And you’ll be alone, and I’ll be alone, and you have to eat. I promise not to bite. I may lick, but I won’t bite.”

She surprised him by bursting into laughter.

Of all the reactions he had anticipated, laughter wasn’t one of them. Still, her laugh was so free and genuine, her head tilted back against the seat, that he found himself smiling in response.

“‘I may lick, but I won’t bite.’ That was good. I’ll have to remember it,” she said, chuckling.

After a moment, when she said nothing else, he realized that she was ignoring him again. He shook his head. “Does that work with most men?”

“Does what work?”

“Ignoring them when they ask you out. Do they slink away with their tails tucked between their legs?”

“Not that I’ve ever noticed.” She grinned. “You make me sound like a femme fatale, breaking hearts left and right.”

“You probably are. We guys are tough, though. We can be bleeding to death on the inside and we’ll put up such a good front that no one ever knows.” He smiled at her. “Have dinner with me.”

“You’re persistent, aren’t you?”

“You still haven’t answered me.”

“All right—no. There, I’ve answered you.”

“Wrong answer. Try again.” More gently, he said, “I know you’re tired, and with the time difference, nine o’clock is really midnight to you. It’s just a meal, Sunny, not an evening of dancing. That can wait until our second date.”

She laughed again. “Persistent and confident.” She paused, made a wry little face. “The answer is still no. I don’t date.”

This time he was more than surprised, he was stunned. Of all the things he had expected to come out of her mouth, that particular statement had never crossed his mind. Damn, had he so badly miscalculated. “At all? Or just men?”

“At all.” She gestured helplessly. “See, this is why I tried to ignore you, because I didn’t want to go into an explanation that you wouldn’t accept, anyway. No, I’m not gay, I like men very much, but I don’t date. End of explanation.”

His relief was so intense, he felt a little dizzy. “If you like men, why don’t you date?”

“See?” she demanded on a frustrated rush of air. “You didn’t accept it. You immediately started asking questions.”

“Damn it, did you think I’d just let it drop? There’s something between us, Sunny. I know it, and you know it. Or are you going to ignore that, too?”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

He wondered if she realized what she had just admitted. “Were you raped?”

“No!” she half shouted, goaded out of control. “I just…don’t…date.”

She was well on her way to losing her temper, he thought, amused. He grinned. “You’re pretty when you’re mad.”

She sputtered, then began laughing. “How am I supposed to stay mad when you say things like that?”

“You aren’t. That’s the whole idea.”

“Well, it worked. What it didn’t do was change my mind. I’m sorry,” she said gently, sobering. “It’s just…I have my reasons. Let it drop. Please.”

“Okay.” He paused. “For now.”

She gave an exaggerated groan that had him smiling again. “Why don’t you try to take a nap?” he suggested. “You have to be tired, and we still have a long flight ahead of us.”

“That’s a good idea. You can’t badger me if I’m asleep.”

With that wry shot, she leaned her head back against the seat. Chance reached behind her seat and produced a folded blanket. “Here. Use this as a pillow, or you’ll get as tiff neck.”

“Thanks.” She took off the headset and tucked the blanket between her head and shoulder, then shifted around in her seat to get more comfortable.

Chance let silence fall, occasionally glancing at her to see if she really fell asleep. About fifteen minutes later, her breathing deepened and evened out into a slow rhythm. He waited a few minutes longer, then eased the plane into a more westerly direction, straight into the setting sun.

Chapter 4

“Sunny.” The voice was insistent, a little difficult to hear, and accompanied by a hand on her shoulder, shaking her. “Sunny, wake up.”

She stirred and opened her eyes, stretching a little to relieve the kinks in her back and shoulders. “Are we there?”

Chance indicated the headset in her lap, and she slipped it on. “We have a problem,” he said quietly.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach, and her heartbeat skittered. No other words, she thought, could be quite as terrifying when one was in an airplane. She took a deep breath, trying to control the surge of panic. “What’s wrong?” Her voice was surprisingly steady. She looked around, trying to spot the problem in the cluster of dials in the cockpit, though she had no idea what any of them meant. Then she looked out of the window at the rugged landscape below them, painted in stark reds and blacks as the setting sun threw shadows over jagged rock. “Where are we?”

“Southeastern Oregon.”

The engine coughed and sputtered. Her heart felt as if it did, too. As soon as she heard the break in the rhythm, she became aware that the steady background whine of the motor had been interrupted several times while she slept. Her subconscious had registered the change in sound but not put it in any context. Now the context was all too clear.

“I think it’s the fuel pump,” he added, in answer to her first question.

Calm. She had to stay calm. She pulled in a deep breath, though her lungs felt as if they had shrunk in size. “What do we do?”

He smiled grimly. “Find a place to set it down before it falls down.”

“I’ll take setting over falling any day.” She looked out the side window, studying the ground below. Jagged mountain ridges, enormous boulders and sharp-cut arroyos slicing through the earth were all she could see. “Uh-oh.”

“Yea. I’ve been looking for a place to land for the past half hour.”

This was not good, not good at all. In the balance of good and bad, this weighed heavily on the bad side.

The engine sputtered again. The whole frame of the aircraft shook. So did her voice, when she said, “Have you radioed a Mayday?”

Again that grim smile. “We’re in the middle of a great big empty area, between navigational beacons. I’ve tried a couple of times to raise someone, but there haven’t been any answers.”

The scale tipped even more out of balance. “I knew it,” she muttered. “The way today has gone, I knew I’d crash if I got on another plane.”

The grouchiness in her voice made him chuckle, despite the urgency of their situation. He reached over and gently squeezed the back of her neck, startling her with his touch, his big hand warm and hard on her sensitive nape. “We haven’t crashed yet, and I’m going to try damn hard to make sure we don’t. The landing may be rough, though.”

She wasn’t used to being touched. She had accustomed herself to doing without the physical contact that it was human nature to crave, to keep people at a certain distance. Chance McCall had touched her more in one afternoon than she had been touched in the past five years. The shock of pleasure almost distracted her from their situation—almost. She looked down at the unforgiving landscape again. “How rough does a landing have to get before it qualifies as a crash?”

“If we walk away from it, then it was a landing.” He put his hand back on the controls, and she silently mourned that lost connection.

The vast mountain range spread out around them as far as she could see in any direction. Their chances of walking away from this weren’t good. How long would it be before their bodies were found, if ever? Sunny clenched her hands, thinking of Margreta. Her sister, not knowing what had happened, would assume the worst—and dying in an airplane crash was not the worst. In her grief, she might well abandon her refuge and do something stupid that would get her killed, too.

She watched Chance’s strong hands, so deft and sure on the controls. His clear, classic profile was limned against the pearl and vermillion sky, the sort of sunset one saw only in the western states, and likely the last sunset she would ever see. He would be the last person she ever saw, or touched, and she was suddenly, bitterly angry that she had never been able to live the life most women took for granted, that she hadn’t been free to accept his offer of dinner and spend the trip in a glow of anticipation, free to flirt with him and maybe see the glow of desire in his golden-brown eyes.

She had been denied a lot, but most of all she had been denied opportunity, and she would never, never forgive her father for that.

The engine sputtered, caught, sputtered again. This time the reassuring rhythm didn’t return. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. God, oh God, they were going to crash. Her nails dug into her palms as she fought to contain her panic. She had never before felt so small and helpless, so fragile, with soft flesh and slender bones that couldn’t withstand such battering force. She was going to die, and she had yet to live.

The plane jerked and shuddered, bucking under the stress of spasmodic power. It pitched to the right, throwing Sunny against the door so hard her right arm went numb.

“That’s it,” Chance said between gritted teeth, his knuckles white as he fought to control the pitching aircraft. He brought the wings level again. “I have to take it down now, while I have a little control. Look for the best place.”

Best place? There was no best place. They needed somewhere that was relatively flat and relatively clear; the last location she had seen that fit that description had been in Utah.

He raised the right wingtip, tilting the plane so he had a better side view.

“See anything?” Sunny asked, her voice shaking just a little.

“Nothing. Damn.”

“Damn is the wrong word. Pilots are supposed to say something else just before they crash.” Humor wasn’t much of a weapon with which to face death, but it was how she had always gotten herself through the hard times.

Unbelievably, he grinned. “But I haven’t crashed yet, sweetheart. Have a little faith. I promise I’ll say the right word if I don’t find a good-looking spot pretty soon.”

“If you don’t find a good-looking spot, I’ll say it for you,” she promised fervently.

They crossed a jagged, boulder-strewn ridge, and a long, narrow black pit yawned beneath them like a doorway to hell. “There!” Chance said, nosing the plane down.

“What? Where?” She sat erect, desperate hope flaring inside her, but all she could see was that black pit.

“The canyon. That’s our best bet.”

The black pit was a canyon? Weren’t canyons supposed to be big? That looked like an arroyo. How on earth would the plane ever fit inside it? And what difference did it make, when this was their only chance? Her heart lodged itself in her throat, and she gripped the edge of the seat as Chance eased the pitching aircraft lower and lower.

The engine stopped.

For a moment all she heard was the awful silence, more deafening than any roar.

Then she became aware of the air rushing past the metal skin of the plane, air that no longer supported them. She heard her own heart beating, fast and heavy, heard the whisper of her breath. She heard everything except what she most wanted to hear, the sweet sound of an airplane engine.

Chance didn’t say anything. He concentrated fiercely on keeping the plane level, riding the air currents down, down, aiming for that long, narrow slit in the earth. The plane spiraled like a leaf, coming so close to the jagged mountainside on the left that she could see the pits in the dark red rock.

Sunny bit her lip until blood welled in her mouth, fighting back the terror and panic that threatened to erupt in screams. She couldn’t distract him now, no matter what. She wanted to close her eyes, but resolutely kept them open. If she died now, she didn’t want to do it in craven fear. She couldn’t help the fear, but she didn’t have to be craven. She would watch death come at her, watch Chance as he fought to bring them down safely and cheat the grim horseman.

They slipped below the sunshine, into the black shadows, deeper and deeper. It was colder in the shadows, a chill that immediately seeped through the windows into her bones. She couldn’t see a thing. Quickly she snatched off the sunglasses and saw that Chance had done the same. His eyes were narrowed, his expression hard and intent as he studied the terrain below.

The ground was rushing at them now, a ground that was pocked and scored with rivulets, and dotted with boulders. It was flat enough, but not a nice, clear landing spot at all. She braced her feet against the floor, her body rigid as if she could force the airplane to stay aloft.

“Hold on.” His voice was cool. “I’m going to try to make it to the stream bed. The sand will help slow us down before we hit one of those rocks.”

A stream bed? He was evidently much better at reading the ground than she was. She tried to see a ribbon of water, but finally realized the stream was dry; the bed was that thin, twisting line that looked about as wide as the average car.

She started to say “Good luck,” but it didn’t seem appropriate. Neither did “It was nice knowing you.” In the end, all she could manage was “Okay.”

It happened fast. Suddenly they were no longer skimming above the earth. The ground was there, and they hit it hard, so hard she pitched forward against the seat belt, then snapped back. They went briefly airborne again as the wheels bounced, then hit again even harder. She heard metal screeching in protest; then her head banged against the side window, and for a chaotic moment she didn’t see or hear anything, just felt the tossing and bouncing of the plane. She was boneless, unable to hold on, flopping like a shirt in a clothes dryer.

Then there came the hardest bounce of all, jarring her teeth. The plane spun sideways in a sickening motion, then lurched to a stop. Time and reality splintered, broke apart, and for a long moment nothing made any sense; she had no grasp on where she was or what had happened.

She heard a voice, and the world jolted back into place.

“Sunny? Sunny, are you all right?” Chance was asking urgently.

She tried to gather her senses, tried to answer him. Dazed, battered, she realized that the force of the landing had turned her inside the confines of the seat belt, and she was facing the side window, her back to Chance. She felt his hands on her, heard his low swearing as he unclipped the seat belt and eased her back against his chest, supporting her with his body.

She swallowed, and managed to find her voice. “I’m okay.” The words weren’t much more than a croak, but if she could talk at all that meant she was alive. They were both alive. Joyful disbelief swelled in her chest. He had actually managed to land the plane!

“We have to get out. There may be a fuel leak.” Even as he spoke, he shoved open the door and jumped out, dragging her with him as if she was a sack of flour. She felt rather sacklike, her limbs limp and trembling.

A fuel leak. The engine had been dead when they landed, but there was still the battery, and wiring that could short out and spark. If a spark got to any fuel, the plane and everything in it would go up in a fireball.

Everything in it. The words rattled in her brain, like marbles in a can, and with dawning horror she realized what that meant. Her bag was still in the plane.

“Wait!” she shrieked, panic sending a renewed surge of adrenaline through her system, restoring the bones to her legs, the strength to her muscles. She twisted in his grasp, grabbing the door handle and hanging on. “My bag!”

“Damn it, Sunny!” he roared, trying to break her grip on the handle. “Forget the damn bag!”

“No!”

She jerked away from him and began to climb back into the plane. With a smothered curse he grabbed her around the waist and bodily lifted her away from the plane. “I’ll get the damn bag! Go on—get out of here! Run!”

She was appalled that he would risk his life retrieving her bag, while sending her to safety. “I’ll get it,” she said fiercely, grabbing him by the belt and tugging. “You run!”

For a split second he literally froze, staring at her in shock. Then he gave his head a little shake, reached in for the bag and effortlessly hefted it out. Wordlessly Sunny tried to take it, but he only gave her an incendiary look and she didn’t have time to argue. Carrying the bag in his left hand and gripping her upper arm with his right, he towed her at a run away from the plane. Her shoes sank into the soft grit, and sand and scrub brush bit at her ankles, but she scrambled to stay upright and keep pace with him.

They were a good fifty yards away before he judged it safe. He dropped the bag and turned on her like a panther pouncing on fresh meat, gripping her upper arms with both hands as if he wanted to shake her. “What the hell are you thinking?” he began in a tone of barely leashed violence, then cut himself off, staring at her face. His expression altered, his golden-brown eyes darkening.

“You’re bleeding,” he said harshly. He grabbed his handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it to her chin. Despite the roughness of his tone, his touch was incredibly gentle. “You said you weren’t hurt.”

“I’m not.” She raised her trembling hand and took the handkerchief, dabbing it at her chin and mouth. There wasn’t much blood, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped. “I bit my lip,” she confessed. “Before you landed, I mean. To keep from screaming.”

He stared down at her with an expression like flint. “Why didn’t you just scream?”

“I didn’t want to distract you.” The trembling was growing worse by the second; she tried to hold herself steady, but every limb shook as if her bones had turned to gelatin.

He tilted up her face, staring down at her for a moment in the deepening twilight. He breathed a low, savage curse, then slowly leaned down and pressed his lips to her mouth. Despite the violence she sensed in him, the kiss was light, gentle, more of a salute than a kiss. She caught her breath, beguiled by the softness of his lips, the warm smell of his skin, the hint of his taste. She fisted her hands in his T-shirt, clinging to his strength, trying to sink into his warmth.

He lifted his head. “That’s for being so brave,” he murmured. “I couldn’t have asked for a better partner in a plane crash.”

“Landing,” she corrected shakily. “It was a landing.”

That earned her another soft kiss, this time on the temple. She made a strangled sound and leaned into him, a different sort of trembling beginning to take hold of her. He framed her face with his hands, his thumbs gently stroking the corners of her mouth as he studied her. She felt her lips tremble a little, but then, all of her was shaking. He touched the small sore spot her teeth had made in her lower lip; then he was kissing her again, and this time there was nothing gentle about it.

This kiss rocked her to her foundation. It was hungry, rough, deep. There were reasons why she shouldn’t respond to him, but she couldn’t think what they were. Instead, she gripped his wrists and went on tiptoe to slant her parted lips against his, opening her mouth for the thrust of his tongue. He tasted like man, and sex, a potent mixture that went to her head faster than hundred-proof whiskey. Heat bloomed in her loins and breasts, a desperate, needy heat that brought a low moan from her throat.

He wrapped one arm around her and pulled her against him, molding her to him from knee to breast while his kisses became even deeper, even harder. She locked her arms around his neck and arched into him, wanting the feel of his hard-muscled body against her with an urgency that swept away reason. Instinctively she pushed her hips against his, and the hard length of his erection bulged into the notch of her thighs. This time she cried out in want, in need, in a desire that burned through every cell of her body. His hand closed roughly around her breast, kneading, rubbing her nipple through the layers of blouse and bra, both easing and intensifying the ache that made them swell toward his touch.

Suddenly he jerked his head back. “I don’t believe this,” he muttered. Reaching up, he prised her arms from around his neck and set her away from him. He looked even more savage than he had a moment before, the veins standing out in his neck. “Stay here,” he barked. “Don’t move an inch. I have to check the plane.”

He left her standing there in the sand, in the growing twilight, suddenly cold all the way down to the bone. Deprived of his warmth, his strength, her legs slowly collapsed, and she sank to the ground.

Chance swore to himself, steadily and with blistering heat, as he checked the plane for fuel leaks and other damage. He had deliberately made the landing rougher than necessary, and the plane had a reinforced landing gear as well as extra protection for the fuel lines and tank, but a smart pilot didn’t take anything for granted. He had to check the plane, had to stay in character.

He didn’t want to stay in character. He wanted to back her against one of those big boulders and lift her skirt. Damn! What was wrong with him? In the past fifteen years he’d held a lot of beautiful, deadly women in his arms, and even though he let his body respond, his mind had always remained cool. Sunny Miller wasn’t the most beautiful, not by a long shot; she was more gamine than goddess, with bright eyes that invited laughter rather than seduction. So why was he so hot to get into her pants?

“Why” didn’t matter, he angrily reminded himself. Okay, so his attraction to her was unexpected; it was an advantage, something to be used. He wouldn’t have to fake anything, which meant there was even less chance of her sensing anything off-kilter.

Danger heightened the emotions, destroying inhibitions. They had lived through a life-threatening situation together, they were alone, and there was a definite physical attraction between them. He had arranged the first two circumstances; the third was a bonus. It was a textbook situation; studies in human nature had shown that, if a man and a woman were thrown together in a dangerous situation and they had only each other to rely on, they quickly formed both sexual and emotional bonds. Chance had the advantage, in that he knew the plane hadn’t been in any danger of crashing, and that they weren’t in a life-and-death situation. Sunny would think they were stranded, while he knew better. Whenever he signaled Zane, they would promptly be “rescued,” but he wouldn’t send that signal until Sunny took him into her confidence about her father.

Everything was under control. They weren’t even in Oregon, as he’d told her. They were in Nevada, in a narrow box canyon he and Zane had scouted out and selected because it was possible to land a plane in it, and, unless one had the equipment to scale vertical rock walls, impossible to escape. They weren’t close to any commercial flight pattern, he had disabled the transponder so no search plane would pick up a signal, and they were far off their route. They wouldn’t be found.

Sunny was totally under his control; she just didn’t know it.

The growing dusk made it impossible to see very much, and it was obvious that if the plane was going to explode in flames, it would already have done so. Chance strode back to where Sunny was sitting on the ground, her knees pulled up and her arms wrapped around her legs, and that damn bag close by her side. She scrambled to her feet as he approached. “All clear?”

“All clear. No fuel leaks.”

“That’s good.” She managed a smile. “It wouldn’t do us any good for you to fix the fuel pump if there wasn’t any fuel left.”

“Sunny…if it’s a clogged line, I can fix it. If the fuel pump has gone out, I can’t.”

He decided to let her know right away that they might not be flying out of here in the morning.

She absorbed that in silence, rubbing her bare arms to ward off the chill of the desert air. The temperature dropped like a rock when the sun went down, which was one of the reasons he had chosen this site. They would have to share their body heat at night to survive.

He leaned down and hefted the bag, marveling anew at its weight, then took her arm to walk with her back to the plane. “I hope you have a coat in this damn bag, since you thought it was important enough to risk your life getting it,” he growled.

“A sweater,” she said absently, looking up at the crystal clear sky with its dusting of stars. The black walls of the canyon loomed on either side of them, making it obvious they were in a hole in the earth. A big hole, but still a hole. She shook herself, as if dragging her thoughts back to the problem at hand. “We’ll be all right,” she said. “I have some food, and—”

“Food? You’re carrying food in here?” He indicated the bag.

“Just some emergency stuff.”

Of all the things he’d expected, food was at the bottom of the list. Hell, food wasn’t even on the list. Why would a woman on an overnight trip put food in her suitcase?

They reached the plane, and he set the bag down in the dirt. “Let me get some things, and we’ll find a place to camp for the night. Can you get anything else in there, or is it full?”

“It’s full,” she said positively, but then, he hadn’t expected her to open it so easily.

He shrugged and dragged out his own small duffel, packed with the things a man could be expected to take on a charter flight: toiletries, a change of clothes. The duffel was unimportant, but it wouldn’t look right if he left it behind.

“Why can’t we camp here?” she asked.

“This is a stream bed. It’s dry now, but if it rains anywhere in the mountains, we could be caught in the runoff.”

As he spoke, he got a flashlight out of the dash, the blanket from the back, and a pistol from the pocket in the pilot’s side door. He stuck the pistol in his belt, and draped the blanket around her shoulders. “I have some water,” he said, taking out a plastic gallon milk jug that he’d refilled with water. “We’ll be all right tonight.” Water had been the toughest thing to locate. He and Zane had found several box canyons in which he could have landed the plane, but this was the only one with water. The source wasn’t much, just a thin trickle running out of the rock at the far end of the canyon, but it was enough. He would “find” the water tomorrow.

He handed her the flashlight and picked up both bags. “Lead the way,” he instructed, and indicated the direction he wanted. The floor of the canyon sloped upward on one side; the stream bed was the only smooth ground. The going was rough, and Sunny carefully picked her way over rocks and gullies. She was conscientious about shining the light so he could see where he was going, since he was hampered by both bags.

Damn, he wished she had complained at least a little, or gotten upset. He wished she wasn’t so easy to like. Most people would have been half-hysterical, or asking endless questions about their chances of being rescued if he couldn’t get the plane repaired. Not Sunny. She coped, just as she had coped at the airport, with a minimum of fuss. Without any fuss, actually; she had bitten the blood out of her lip to keep from distracting him while he was bringing the plane down.

The canyon was so narrow it didn’t take them long to reach the vertical wall. Chance chose a fairly flat section of sandy gray dirt, with a pile of huge boulders that formed a rough semi-circle. “This will give us some protection from the wind tonight.”

“What about snakes?” she asked, eyeing the boulders.

“Possible,” he said, as he set down the bags. Had he found a weakness he could use to bring her closer to him. “Are you afraid of them?”

“Only the human kind.” She looked around as if taking stock of their situation, then kind of braced her shoulders. It was a minute movement, one he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been studying her so keenly. With an almost cheerful note she said, “Let’s get this camp set up so we can eat. I’m hungry.”

She squatted beside her bag and spun the combination dial of the rather substantial lock on her bag. With a quiet snick the lock opened, and she unzipped the bag. Chance was a bit taken aback at finding out what was in the bag this easily, but he squatted beside her. “What do you have? Candy bars?”

She chuckled. “Nothing so tasty.”

He took the flashlight from her and shone it into the bag as she began taking out items. The bag was as neatly packed as a salesman’s sample case, and she hadn’t been lying about not having any room in there for anything else. She placed a sealed plastic bag on the ground between them. “Here we go. Nutrition bars.” She slanted a look at him. “They taste like you’d expect a nutrition bar to taste, but they’re concentrated. One bar a day will give us all we need to stay alive. I have a dozen of them.”

The next item was a tiny cell phone. She stared at it, frozen, for a moment, then looked up at him with fragile hope in her eyes as she turned it on. Chance knew there wasn’t a signal here, but he let her go through the motions, something inside him aching at the disappointment he knew she would feel.

Her shoulders slumped. “Nothing,” she said, and turned the phone off. Without another word she returned to her unpacking.

A white plastic box with a familiar red cross on the top came out next. “First aid kit,” she murmured, reaching back into the bag. “Water purification tablets. A couple of bottles of water, ditto orange juice. Light sticks. Matches.” She listed each item as she set it on the ground. “Hairspray, deodorant, toothpaste, pre-moistened towelettes, hairbrush, curling iron, blow dryer, two space blankets—” she paused as she reached the bottom of the bag and began hauling on something bigger than any of the other items. “—and a tent.”

Chapter 5

A tent. Chance stared down at it, recognizing the type. This was survivalist stuff, what people stored in underground shelters in case of war or natural disaster—or what someone who expected to spend a lot of time in the wilderness would pack.

“It’s small,” she said apologetically. “Really just a one-man tent, but I had to get something light enough for me to carry. There will be enough room for both of us to sleep in it, though, if you don’t mind being a little crowded.”

Why would she carry a tent on board a plane, when she expected to spend one night in Seattle—in a hotel—then fly back to Atlanta? Why would anyone carry that heavy a bag around when she could have checked it? The answer was that she hadn’t wanted it out of her possession, but he still wanted an explanation of why she was carrying it at all.

Something didn’t add up here.

His silence was unnerving. Sunny looked down at her incongruous pile of possessions and automatically emptied out the bag, removing her sweater and slipping it on, sitting down to pull on a pair of socks, then stuffing her change of clothes and her grooming items back into the bag. Her mind was racing. There was something about his expression that made a chill go down her spine, a hardness that she hadn’t glimpsed before. Belatedly, she remembered how easily he had caught the cretin in the airport, the deadly grace and speed with which he moved. This was no ordinary charter pilot, and she was marooned with him.

She had been attracted to him from the first moment she saw him, but she couldn’t afford to let that blind her to the danger of letting down her guard. She was accustomed to living with danger, but this was a different sort of danger, and she had no idea what form it could, or would, take. Chance could simply be one of those men who packed more punch than others, a man very capable of taking care of himself.

Or he could be in her father’s pay.

The thought chilled her even more, the cold going down to her bones before common sense reasserted itself. No, there was no way her father could have arranged for everything that had happened today, no way he could have known she would be in the Salt Lake City airport. Being there had been pure bad luck, the result of a fouled-up flight schedule. She hadn’t known she would be in Salt Lake City. If her father had been involved, he would have tried to grab her in either Atlanta or Seattle. All the zig-zagging across the country she had done today had made it impossible for her father to be involved.

As her mind cleared of that silent panic, she remembered how Chance had dragged her bodily from the plane, the way he had draped the blanket around her, even the courtesy with which he had treated her in the airport. He was a strong man, accustomed to being in the lead and taking the risks. Military training, she thought with a sudden flash of clarity, and wondered how she had missed it before. Her life, and Margreta’s, depended on how well she could read people, how prepared she was, how alert. With Chance, she had been so taken off guard by the strength of her attraction to him, and the shock of finding that interest returned, that she hadn’t been thinking.

“What’s this about?” he asked quietly, squatting down beside her and indicating the tent. “And don’t tell me you were going to camp out in the hotel lobby.”

She couldn’t help it. The thought of setting up the tent in a hotel lobby was so ludicrous that she chuckled. Seeing the funny side of things was what had kept her sane all these years.

One big hand closed gently on the nape of her neck. “Sunny,” he said warningly. “Tell me.”

She shook her head, still smiling. “We’re stranded here tonight, but essentially we’re strangers. After we get out of here we’ll never see each other again, so there’s no point in spilling our guts to each other. You keep your secrets, and I’ll keep mine.”

The flashlight beam sharpened the angles of his face. He exhaled a long, exasperated breath. “Okay—for now. I don’t know why it matters, anyway. Unless I can get the plane fixed, we’re going to be here a long time, and the reason why you have the tent will be irrelevant.”

She searched his face, trying to read his impassive expression. “That isn’t reassuring.”

“It’s the truth.”

“When we don’t show up in Seattle, someone will search for us. The Civil Air Patrol, someone. Doesn’t your plane have one of those beacon things?”

“We’re in a canyon.”

He didn’t have to say more than that. Any signal would be blocked by the canyon walls, except for directly overhead. They were in a deep, narrow slit in the earth, the narrowness of the canyon limiting even more their chances of anyone picking up the signal.

“Well, darn,” she said forcefully.

This time he was the one who laughed, and he shook his head as he released her neck and stood up. “Is that the worst you can say?”

“We’re alive. That outcome is so good considering what could have happened that, in comparison, being stranded here only rates a ‘darn.’ You may be able to fix the plane.” She shrugged. “No point in wasting the really nasty words until we know more.”

He leaned down and helped her to her feet. “If I can’t get us going again, I’ll help you with those words. For now, let’s get this tent set up before the temperature drops even more.”

“What about a fire?”

“I’ll look for firewood tomorrow—if we need it. We can get by tonight without a fire, and I don’t want to waste the flashlight batteries. If we’re here for any length of time, we’ll need the flashlight.”

“I have the lightsticks.”

“We’ll save those, too. Just in case.”

Working together, they set up the tent. She could have done it herself; it was made for one person to handle, and she had practiced until she knew she could do it with a minimum of fuss, but with two people the job took only moments. Brushing away the rocks so they would have a smooth surface beneath the tent floor took longer, but even so, they weren’t going to have a comfortable bed for the night.

When they were finished, she eyed the tent with misgivings. It was long enough for Chance, but…She visually measured the width of his shoulders, then the width of the tent. She was either going to have to sleep on her side all night long—or on top of him.

The heat that shot through her told her which option her body preferred. Her heart beat a little faster in anticipation of their enforced intimacy during the coming night, of lying against his strong, warm body, maybe even sleeping in his arms.

To his credit, he didn’t make any insinuating remarks, even though when he looked at the tent he must have drawn the same conclusion as she had. Instead, he bent down to pick up the bag of nutrition bars and said smugly, “I knew you’d have dinner with me tonight.”

She began laughing again, charmed by both his tact and his sense of humor, and fell a little in love with him right then.

She should have been alarmed, but she wasn’t. Yes, letting herself care for him made her emotionally vulnerable, but they had lived through a terrifying experience together, and she needed an emotional anchor right now. So far she hadn’t found a single thing about the man that she didn’t like, not even that hint of danger she kept sensing. In this situation, a man with an edge to him was an asset, not a hindrance.

She allowed herself to luxuriate in this unaccustomed feeling as they each ate a nutrition bar—which was edible, but definitely not tasty—and drank some water. Then they packed everything except the two space blankets back in the bag, to protect their supplies from snakes and insects and other scavengers. They didn’t have to worry about bears, not in this desertlike part of the country, but coyotes were possible. Her bag was supposedly indestructible; if any coyotes showed up, she supposed she would find out if the claim about the bag was true, because there wasn’t room in the tent for both them and the bag.

Chance checked the luminous dial of his watch. “It’s still early, but we should get in the tent to save our body heat, and not burn up calories trying to stay warm out here. I’ll spread this blanket down, and we’ll use your two blankets for cover.”

For the first time, she realized he was in his T-shirt. “Shouldn’t you get your jacket from the plane?”

“It’s too bulky to wear in the tent. Besides, I don’t feel the cold as much as you do. I’ll be fine without it.” He sat down and pulled off his boots, tossed them inside the tent, then crawled in with the blanket. Sunny slipped off her own shoes, glad she had the socks to keep her feet warm.

“Okay, come on in,” Chance said. “Feet first.”

She gave him her shoes, then sat down and worked herself feetfirst into the tent. He was lying on his side, which gave her room to maneuver, but it was still a chore keeping her skirt down and trying not to bunch up the blanket as she wiggled into place. Chance zipped the tent flaps shut, then pulled his pistol out of his waistband and placed it beside his head. Sunny eyed the big black automatic; she wasn’t an expert on pistols, but she knew it was one of the heavier calibers, either a .45 or a 9mm. She had tried them, but the bigger pistols were too heavy for her to handle with ease, so she had opted for a smaller caliber.

He had already unfolded the space blankets and had them ready to pull in place. She could already feel his body heat in the small space, so she didn’t need a blanket yet, but as the night grew colder, they would need all the covering they could get.

They both moved around, trying to get comfortable. Because he was so big, Sunny tried to give him as much room as possible. She turned on her side and curled her arm under her head, but they still bumped and brushed against each other.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready.”

He turned off the flashlight. The darkness was complete, like being deep in a cave. “Thank God I’m not claustrophobic,” she said, taking a deep breath. His scent filled her lungs, warm and…different, not musky, exactly, but earthy, and very much the way a man should smell.

“Just think of it as being safe,” he murmured. “Darkness can feel secure.”

She did feel safe, she realized. For the first time in her memory, she was certain no one except the man beside her knew where she was. She didn’t have to check locks, scout out an alternate exit, or sleep so lightly she sometimes felt as if she hadn’t slept at all. She didn’t have to worry about being followed, or her phone being tapped, or any of the other things that could happen. She did worry about Margreta, but she had to think positively. Tomorrow Chance would find the problem was a clogged fuel line, he would get it cleared, and they would finish their trip. She would be too late to deliver the package in Seattle, but considering they had landed safely instead of crashing, she didn’t really care about the package. The day’s outcome could have been so much worse that she was profoundly grateful they were all in one piece and relatively comfortable—“relatively” being the key word, she thought, as she tried to find a better position. The ground was as hard as a rock. For all she knew the ground was a rock, covered by a thin layer of dirt.

She was suddenly exhausted. The events of the day—the long flight and fouled-up connections, the lack of food, the stress of being mugged, then the almost unbearable tension of those last minutes in the plane—finally took their toll on her. She yawned and unconsciously tried yet again to find a comfortable position, turning over to pillow her head on her other arm. Her elbow collided with something very solid, and he grunted.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. She squirmed a little more, inadvertently bumping him with her knee. “This is so crowded I may have to sleep on top.”

She heard the words and in shock realized that she had actually said them aloud. She opened her mouth to apologize again.

“Or I could be the one on top.”

His words stopped her apology cold. Her breath tangled in her lungs and didn’t escape. His deep voice seemed to echo in the darkness, that single sentence reverberating through her consciousness. She was suddenly, acutely, aware of every inch of him, of the sensual promise in his tone. The kiss—the kiss she could write off as reaction; danger was supposed to be an aphrodisiac, and evidently that was true. But this wasn’t reaction; this was desire, warm and curious, seeking.

“Is that a ‘no’ I’m hearing?”

Her lungs started working again, and she sucked in a breath. “I haven’t said anything.”

“That’s my point.” He sounded faintly amused. “I guess I’m not going to get lucky tonight.”

Feeling more certain of herself with his teasing, she said dryly, “I guess not. You’ve already used up your quota of luck for the day.”

“I’ll try again tomorrow.”

She stifled a laugh.

“Does that snicker mean I haven’t scared you?”

She should be scared, she thought, or at least wary. She had no idea why she wasn’t. The fact was, she felt tempted. Very tempted. “No, I’m not scared.”

“Good.” He yawned. “Then why don’t you pull off that sweater and let me use it as a pillow, and you can use my shoulder. We’ll both be more comfortable.”

Common sense said he was right. Common sense also said she was asking for trouble if she slept in his arms. She trusted him to behave, but she wasn’t that certain of herself. He was sexy, with a capital SEX. He made her laugh. He was strong and capable, with a faintly wicked edge to him. He was even a little dangerous. What more could a woman want?

That was perhaps the most dangerous thing about him, that he made her want him. She had easily resisted other men, walking away without a backward look or a second thought. Chance made her long for all the things she had denied herself, made her aware of how lonely and alone she was.

“Are you sure you can trust me to behave?” she asked, only half joking. “I didn’t mean to say that about being on top. I was half-asleep, and it just slipped out.”

“I think I can handle you if you get fresh. For one thing, you’ll be sound asleep as soon as you stop talking.”

She yawned. “I know. I’m crashing hard, if you’ll pardon the terminology.”

“We didn’t crash, we landed. Come on, let’s get that sweater off, then you can sleep.”

There wasn’t room to fully sit up, so he helped her struggle out of the garment. He rolled it up and tucked it under his head, then gently, as if worried he might frighten her, drew her against his right side. His right arm curled around her, and she nestled close, settling her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

The position was surprisingly comfortable, and comforting. She draped her right arm across his chest, because there didn’t seem to be any other place to put it. Well, there were other places, but none that seemed as safe. Besides, she liked feeling his heartbeat under her hand. The strong, even thumping satisfied some primitive instinct in her, the desire not to be alone in the night.

“Comfortable?” he asked in a low, soothing tone.

“Um-hmm.”

With his left arm he snagged one of the space blankets and pulled it up to cover her to the shoulders, keeping the chill from her bare arms. Cocooned in warmth and darkness, she gave in to the sheer pleasure of lying so close to him. Sleepy desire hummed just below the surface, warming her, softening her. Her breasts, crushed against his side, tightened in delight, and her nipples felt achy, telling her they had hardened. Could he feel them? she wondered. She wanted to rub herself against him like a cat, intensifying the sensation, but she lay very still and concentrated on the rhythm of his heartbeat.

He had touched her breasts when he kissed her. She wanted to feel that again, feel his hard hand on her bare flesh. She wanted him, wanted his touch and his taste and the feel of him inside her. The force of her physical yearning was so strong that she actually ached from the emptiness.

If we don’t get out of here tomorrow, she thought in faint despair just before she went to sleep, I’ll be under him before the sun goes down again.

Sunny was accustomed to waking immediately when anything disturbed her; once, a car had backfired out in the street and she had grabbed the pistol from under the pillow and rolled off the bed before the noise had completely faded. She had learned how to nap on demand, because she never knew when she might have to run for her life. She could count on one hand the number of nights since she had stopped being a child that she had slept through undisturbed.

But she woke in Chance’s arms aware that she had slept all night long, that not only had lying next to him not disturbed her, in a very basic way his presence had been reassuring. She was safe here, safe and warm and unutterably relaxed. His hand was stroking slowly down her back, and that was what had awakened her.

Her skirt had ridden up during the night, of course, and was twisted at midthigh. Their legs were tangled together, her right leg thrown over his; his jeans were old and soft, but the denim was still slightly rough against the inside of her thigh. She wasn’t lying completely on top of him, but it was a near thing. Her head lay pillowed on his chest instead of his shoulder, with the steady thumping of his heart under her ear.

The slow motion of his hand continued. “Good morning,” he said, his deep voice raspy from sleep.

“Good morning.” She didn’t want to get up, she realized, though she knew she should. It was after dawn; the morning light seeped through the brown fabric of the tent, washing them with a dull gold color. Chance should get started on the fuel pump, so they could get airborne and in radio contact with someone as soon as possible, to let the FAA know they hadn’t crashed. She knew what she should do, but instead she continued to lie there, content with the moment.

He touched her hair, lifting one strand and watching it drift back down. “I could get used to this,” he murmured.

“You’ve slept with women before.”

“I haven’t slept with you before.”

She wanted to ask how she was different, but she was better off not knowing. Nothing could come of this fast-deepening attraction, because she couldn’t let it. She had to believe that he could repair the plane, that in a matter of hours they would be separating and she would never see him again. That was the only thing that gave her the strength, finally, to pull away from him and straighten her clothes, push her hair out of her face and unzip the tent.

The chill morning air rushed into their small cocoon. “Wow,” she said, ignoring his comment. “Some hot coffee would be good, wouldn’t it? I don’t suppose you have a jar of instant in the plane?”

“You mean you don’t have coffee packed in that survival bag of yours?” Taking his cue from her, he didn’t push her to continue their provocative conversation.

“Nope, just water.” She crawled out of the tent, and he handed her shoes and sweater out through the opening. Quickly she slipped them on, glad she had brought a heavy cardigan instead of a summer-weight one.

Chance’s boots came out next, then him. He sat on the ground and pulled on his boots. “Damn, it’s cold. I’m going to get my jacket from the plane. I’ll take care of business there, and you go on the other side of these boulders. There shouldn’t be any snakes stirring around this early, but keep an eye out.”

Sunny dug some tissues out of her skirt pocket and set off around the boulders. Ten minutes later, nature’s call having been answered, she washed her face and hands with one of the pre-moistened towelettes, then brushed her teeth and hair. Feeling much more human and able to handle the world, she took a moment to look around at their life-saving little canyon.

It was truly a slit in the earth, no more than fifty yards wide where he had landed the plane. About a quarter of a mile farther down it widened some, but the going was much rougher. The stream bed was literally the only place they could have safely landed. Just beyond the widest point, the canyon made a dog leg to the left, so she had no idea how long it was. The canyon floor was littered With rocks big and small, and a variety of scrub brush. Deep grooves were cut into the ground where rain had sluiced down the steep canyon walls and arrowed toward the stream.

All the different shades of red were represented in the dirt and rock, from rust to vermillion to a sandy pink. The scrub brush wasn’t a lush green; the color was dry, as if it had been bleached by the sun. Some of it was silvery, a bright contrast against the monochromatic tones of the earth.

They seemed to be the only two living things there. She didn’t hear any birds chirping, or insects rustling. There had to be small wildlife such as lizards and snakes, she knew, which meant there had to be something for them to eat, but at the moment the immense solitude was almost overwhelming.

Looking at the plane, she saw that Chance was already poking around in its innards. Shoving her cold hands into the sweater pockets, she walked down to him.

“Don’t you want to eat something?”

“I’d rather save the food until I see what the problem is.” He gave her a crooked grin. “No offense, but I don’t want to eat another one of those nutrition bars unless I absolutely have to.”

“And if you can fly us out of here, you figure you can hold out until we get to an airport.”

“Bingo.”

She grinned as she changed positions so she could see what he was doing. “I didn’t eat one, either,” she confessed.

He was checking the fuel lines, his face set in that intent expression men got when they were doing anything mechanical. Sunny felt useless; she could have helped if he was working on a car, but she didn’t know anything about airplanes. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she finally asked.

“No, it’s just a matter of taking off the fuel lines and checking them for clogs.”

She waited a few more minutes, but the process looked tedious rather than interesting, and she began getting restless. “I think I’ll walk around, explore a bit.”

“Stay within yelling distance,” he said absently.

The morning, though still cool, was getting warmer by the minute as the sun heated the dry desert air. She walked carefully, watching where she placed each step, because a sprained ankle could mean the difference between life and death if she had to run for it. Someday, she thought, a sprain would be an inconvenience, nothing more. One day she would be free.

She looked up at the clear blue sky and inhaled the clean, crisp air. She had worked hard to retain her enjoyment of life, the way she had learned to rely on a sense of humor to keep her sane. Margreta didn’t handle things nearly as well, but she already had to deal with a heart condition that, while it could be controlled with medication, nevertheless meant that she had to take certain precautions. If she were ever found, Margreta lacked Sunny’s ability to just drop out of sight. She had to have her medication refilled, which meant she had to occasionally see her doctor so he could write a new prescription. If she had to find a new doctor, that would mean being retested, which would mean a lot more money.

Which meant that Sunny never saw her sister. It was safer if they weren’t together, in case anyone was looking for sisters. She didn’t even have Margreta’s phone number. Margreta called Sunny’s cell phone once a week at a set time, always from a different pay phone. That way, if Sunny was captured, she had no information her captors could get by any means, not even drugs.

She had four days until Margreta called, Sunny thought. If she didn’t answer the phone, or if Margreta didn’t call, then each had to assume the other had been caught. If Sunny didn’t answer the phone, Margreta would bolt from her safe hiding place, because with the phone records her location could be narrowed down to the correct city. Sunny couldn’t bear to think what would happen then; Margreta, in her grief and rage, might well throw caution to the wind in favor of revenge.

Four days. The problem had to be a clogged fuel line. It just had to be.

Chapter 6

Mindful of Chance’s warning, Sunny didn’t wander far. In truth, there wasn’t much to look at, just grit and rocks and scraggly bushes, and those vertical rock walls. The desert had a wild, lonely beauty, but she was more appreciative when she wasn’t stranded in it. When rain filled the stream this sheltered place probably bloomed with color, but how often did it rain here? Once a year?

As the day warmed, the reptiles began to stir. She saw a brown lizard dart into a crevice as she approached. A bird she didn’t recognize swooped down for a tasty insect, then flew back off to freedom. The steep canyon walls didn’t mean anything to a bird, while the hundred feet or so were unscalable to her.

She began to get hungry, and a glance at her watch told her she had been meandering through the canyon for over an hour. What was taking Chance so long? If there was a clog in the lines he should have found it by now.

She began retracing her steps to the plane. She could see Chance still poking around the engine, which meant he probably hadn’t found anything. A chilly finger of fear prodded her, and she pushed it away. She refused to anticipate trouble. She would deal with things as they happened, and if Chance couldn’t repair the plane, then they would have to find some other way out of the canyon. She hadn’t explored far; perhaps the other end was open, and they could simply walk out. She didn’t know how far they were from a town, but she was willing to make the effort. Anything was better than sitting and doing nothing.

As she approached, Chance lifted his hand to show he saw her, then turned back to the engine. Sunny let her gaze linger, admiring the way his T-shirt clung to the muscles of his back and shoulders. The fit of his jeans wasn’t bad, either, she thought, eyeing his butt and long legs.

Something moved in the sand near his feet.

She thought she would faint. Her vision dimmed and narrowed until all she saw was the snake, perilously close to his left boot. Her heart leaped, pounding against her ribcage so hard she felt the thuds.

She had no sensation or knowledge of moving; time took on the viscosity of syrup. All she knew was that the snake was getting bigger and bigger, closer and closer. Chance looked around at her and stepped back from the plane, almost on the coiling length. The snake’s head drew back and her hand closed on a coil, surprisingly warm and smooth, and she threw the awful thing as far as she could. It was briefly outlined against the stark rock, then sailed beyond a bush and dropped from sight.

“Are you all right? Did it bite you? Are you hurt?” She couldn’t stop babbling as she went down on her knees and began patting his legs, looking for droplets of blood, a small tear in his jeans, anything that would show if he had been bitten.

“I’m all right. I’m all right. Sunny! It didn’t bite me.” His voice overrode hers, and he hauled her to her feet, shaking her a little to get her attention. “Look at me!” The force of his tone snagged her gaze with his and he said more quietly, “I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?” She couldn’t seem to stop touching him, patting his chest, stroking his face, though logically she knew there was no way the snake could have bitten him up there. Neither could she stop trembling. “I hate snakes,” she said in a shaking voice. “They terrify me. I saw it—it was right under your feet. You almost stepped on it.”

“Shh,” he murmured, pulling her against him and rocking her slowly back and forth. “It’s all right. Nothing happened.”

She clutched his shirt and buried her head against his chest. His smell, already so familiar and now with the faint odor of grease added, was comforting. His heartbeat was steady, as if he hadn’t almost been snake bitten. He was steady, rock solid, his body supporting hers.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “That was awful.” She raised her head and stared at him, an appalled expression on her face. “Yuk! I touched it!” She snatched her hand away from him and held it at arm’s length. “Let me go, I have to wash my hand. Now!”

He released her, and she bolted up the slope to the tent, where the towelettes were. Grabbing one, she scrubbed furiously at her palm and fingers.

Chance was laughing softly as he came up behind her. “What’s the matter? Snakes don’t have cooties. Besides, yesterday you said you weren’t afraid of them.”

“I lied. And I don’t care what they have, I don’t want one anywhere near me.” Satisfied that no snake germs lingered on her hand, she blew out a long, calming breath.

“Instead of swooping down like a hawk,” he said mildly, “why didn’t you just yell out a warning?”

She gave him a blank look. “I couldn’t.” Yelling had never entered her mind. She had been taught her entire life not to yell in moments of tension or danger, because to do so would give away her position. Normal people could scream and yell, but she had never been allowed to be normal.

He put one finger under her chin, lifting her face to the sun. He studied her for a long moment, something dark moving in his eyes; then he tugged her to him and bent his head.

His mouth was fierce and hungry, his tongue probing. She sank weakly against him, clinging to his shoulders and kissing him in return just as fiercely, with just as much hunger. More. She felt as if she had always hungered, and never been fed. She drank life itself from his mouth, and sought more.

His hands were all over her, on her breasts, her bottom, lifting her into the hard bulge of his loins. The knowledge that he wanted her filled her with a deep need to know more, to feel everything she had always denied herself. She didn’t know if she could have brought herself to pull away, but he was the one who broke the kiss, lifting his head and standing there with his eyes closed and a grim expression on his face.

“Chance?” she asked hesitantly.

He growled a lurid word under his breath. Then he opened his eyes and glared down at her. “I can’t believe I’m stopping this a second time,” he said with a raw, furious frustration. “Just for the record, I’m not that noble. Damn it all to hell and back—” He broke off, breathing hard. “It isn’t a clogged fuel line. It must be the pump. We have other things we need to do. We can’t afford to waste any daylight.”

Margreta. Sunny bit her lip to hold back a moan of dismay. She stared up at him, the knowledge of the danger of their situation lying like a stark shadow between them.

She wasn’t licked yet. She had four days. “Can we walk out?”

“In the desert? In August?” He looked up at the rim of the canyon. “Assuming we can even get out of here, we’d have to walk at night and try to find shelter during the day. By afternoon, the temperature will be over a hundred.”

The temperature was probably already well into the seventies, she thought; she was dying of heat inside her heavy sweater, or maybe that was just frustrated lust, since she hadn’t noticed how hot it was until now. She peeled off the sweater and dropped it on top of her bag. “What do we need to do?”

His eyes gleamed golden with admiration, and he squeezed her waist. “I’ll reconnoiter. We can’t get out on this end of the canyon, but maybe there’s a way farther down.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Look for sticks, leaves, anything that will burn. Gather as much as you can in a pile.”

He set off in the direction she had gone earlier, and she went in the opposite direction. The scrub brush grew heavier at that end of the canyon, and she would find more wood there. She didn’t like to think about how limited the supply would be, or that they might be here for a long, long time. If they couldn’t get out of the canyon, they would eventually use up their meager resources and die.

He hated lying to her. Chance’s expression was grim as he stalked along the canyon floor. He had lied to terrorists, hoodlums and heads of state alike without a twinge of conscience, but it was getting harder and harder to lie to Sunny. He fiercely protected a hard core of honesty deep inside, the part of him that he shared only with his family, but Sunny was getting to him. She wasn’t what he had expected. More and more he was beginning to suspect she wasn’t working with her father. She was too…gallant was the word that sprang to mind. Terrorists weren’t gallant. In his opinion, they were either mad or amoral. Sunny was neither.

He was more shaken by the episode with the snake than he had let her realize. Not by the snake itself—he had on boots, and since he hadn’t heard rattles he suspected the snake hadn’t been poisonous—but by her reaction. He would never forget the way she had looked, rushing in like an avenging angel, her face paper-white and utterly focused. By her own admission she was terrified of snakes, yet she hadn’t hesitated. What kind of courage had it taken for her to pick up the snake with her bare hand?

Then there was the way she had patted him, looking for a bite. Except with certain people, or during sex, he had to struggle to tolerate being touched. He had learned how to accept affection in his family, because Mom and Maris would not leave him alone. He unabashedly loved playing with all his nephews—and niece—but his family had been the only exception. Until now. Until Sunny. He not only hadn’t minded, he had, for a moment, allowed himself the pure luxury of enjoying the feel of her hands on his legs, his chest. And that didn’t even begin to compare to how much he had enjoyed sleeping with her, feeling those sweet curves all along his side. His hand clenched as he remembered the feel of her breast in his palm, the wonderful resilience that was both soft and firm. He ached to feel her bare skin, to taste her. He wanted to strip her naked and pull her beneath him for a long hard ride, and he wanted to do it in broad daylight so he could watch her brilliant eyes glaze with pleasure.

If she wasn’t who she was he would take her to the south of France, maybe, or a Caribbean island, any place where they could lie naked on the beach and make love in the sunshine, or in a shaded room with fingers of sunlight slipping through closed blinds. Instead, he had to keep lying to her, because whether or not she was working with her father didn’t change the fact that she was the key to locating him.

He couldn’t change the plan now. He couldn’t suddenly “repair” the plane. He thanked God she didn’t know anything about planes, because otherwise she would never have fallen for the fuel pump excuse; a Skylane had a backup fuel pump, for just such an emergency. No, he had to play out the game as he had planned it, because the goal was too damned important to abandon, and he couldn’t take the risk that she was involved up to her pretty ears, after all.

He and Zane had walked a fine line in planning this out. The situation had to be survivable but grim, so nothing would arouse her suspicion. There was food to be had, but not easily. There was water, but not a lot. He hadn’t brought any provisions that might make her wonder why he had them, meaning he had limited himself to the blanket, the water and the pistol, plus the expected items in the plane, such as flares. Hell, she was a lot more prepared than he was, and that made him wary. She wasn’t exactly forthcoming about her reason for toting a damn tent around, either. The lady had secrets of her own.

He reached the far end of the canyon and checked to make certain nothing had changed since he and Zane had been here. No unexpected landslide had caved in a wall, allowing a way out. The thin trickle of water still ran down the rock. He saw rabbit tracks, birds, things they could eat. Shooting them would be the easy way, though; he would have to build some traps, to save his ammunition for emergencies.

Everything was just as he had left it. The plan was working. The physical attraction between them was strong; she wouldn’t resist him much longer, maybe not at all. She certainly hadn’t done anything to call a halt earlier. And after he was her lover—well, women were easily beguiled by sexual pleasure, the bonds of the flesh. He knew the power of sex, knew how to use it to make her trust him. He wished he could trust her—this would be a lot easier if he could—but he knew too much about the human soul’s capability of evil, and that a pretty face didn’t necessarily mean a pretty person was behind it.

When he judged enough time had passed for him to completely reconnoiter the canyon, he walked back. She was still gathering sticks, he saw, going back and forth between the bushes and the growing pile next to the tent. She looked up when he got closer, hope blazing in her expression.

He shook his head. “It’s a box canyon. There’s no way out,” he said flatly. “The good news is, there’s water at the far end.”

She swallowed. Her eyes were huge with distress, almost eclipsing her face. “We can’t climb out, either?”

“It’s sheer rock.” He put his hands on his hips, looking around. “We need to move closer to the water, for convenience. There’s an overhang that will give us shade from the sun, and the ground underneath is sandier, so it’ll be more comfortable.”

Or as comfortable as they could get, sleeping in that small tent.

Wordlessly she nodded and began folding the tent. She did it briskly, without wasted movement, but he saw she was fighting for control. He stroked her upper arm, feeling her smooth, pliant skin, warm and slightly moist from her exertion. “We’ll be okay,” he reassured her. “We just have to hold out until someone sees our smoke and comes to investigate.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said shakily. “You said so yourself. And I only have four days until—”

“Until what?” he asked, when she stopped.

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” She stared blindly at the sky, at the clear blue expanse that was turning whiter as the hot sun climbed upward.

Four days until what? he wondered. What was going to happen? Was she supposed to do something? Was a terrorist attack planned? Would it go forward without her?

The dogleg of the canyon was about half a mile long, and the angle gave it more shade than where they had landed. They worked steadily, moving their camp, with Chance hauling the heaviest stuff. Sunny tried to keep her mind blank, to not think about Margreta, to focus totally on the task at hand.

It was noon, the white sun directly overhead. The heat was searing, the shade beneath the overhang so welcome she sighed with relief when they gained its shelter. The overhang was larger than she had expected, about twelve feet wide and deep enough, maybe eight feet, that the sunshine would never penetrate its depths. The rock sloped to a height of about four feet at the back, but the opening was high enough that Chance could stand up without bumping his head.

“I’ll wait until it’s cooler to get the rest,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Let’s have half of one of your nutrition bars now, and I’ll try to get a rabbit for dinner.”

She rallied enough to give him a look of mock dismay. “You’d eat Peter Cottontail?”

“I’d eat the Easter Bunny right now, if I could catch him.”

He was trying to make her laugh. She appreciated his effort, but she couldn’t quite shake off the depression that had seized her when her last hope of getting out of here quickly had evaporated.

She had lost her appetite, but she dug out one of the nutrition bars and halved it, though she hid the fact that Chance’s “half” was bigger than hers. He was bigger; he needed more. They ate their spartan little meal standing up, staring out at the bleached tones of the canyon. “Drink all the water you want,” he urged. “The heat dehydrates you even in the shade.”

Obediently she drank a bottle of water; she needed it to get the nutrition bar down. Each bite felt as if it was getting bigger and bigger in her mouth, making it difficult to swallow. She resorted to taking only nibbles, and got it down that way.

After they ate, Chance made a small circle of rocks, piled in some sticks and leaves, both fresh and dead, and built a fire. Soon a thin column of smoke was floating out of the canyon. It took him no more than five minutes to accomplish, but when he came back under the overhang his shirt was damp with sweat.

She handed him a bottle of water, and he drank deeply, at the same time reaching out a strong arm and hooking it around her waist. He drew her close and pressed a light kiss to her forehead, nothing more, just held her comfortingly. She put her arms around him and clung, desperately needing his strength right now. She hadn’t had anyone to lean on in a long time; she had always had to be the strong one. She had tried so hard to stay on top of things, to plan for every conceivable glitch, but she hadn’t thought to plan for this, and now she had no idea what to do.

“I have to think of something,” she said aloud.

“Shh. All we have to do is stay alive. That’s the most important thing.”

He was right, of course. She couldn’t do anything about Margreta now. This damn canyon had saved their lives yesterday, but it had become a prison from which she couldn’t escape. She had to play the hand with the cards that had been dealt to her and not let depression sap her strength. She had to hope Margreta wouldn’t do anything foolish, just go to ground somewhere. How she would ever find her again she didn’t know, but she could deal with that if she just knew her sister was alive and safe somewhere.

“Do you have family who will worry?” he asked.

God, that went to the bone! She shook her head. She had family, but Margreta wouldn’t worry; she would simply assume the worst.

“What about you?” she asked, realizing she had fallen halfway in love with the man and didn’t know a thing about him.

He shook his head. “C’mon, let’s sit down.” With nothing to use for a seat, they simply sat on the ground. “I’ll take two of the seats out of the plane this afternoon, so we’ll be more comfortable,” he said. “In answer to your question, no, I don’t have anyone. My folks are dead, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters. There’s an uncle somewhere, on my dad’s side, and my mom had some cousins, but we never kept in touch.”

“That’s sad. Family should stay together.” If they could, she added silently. “Where did you grow up?”

“All over. Dad wasn’t exactly known for his ability to keep a job. What about your folks?”

She was silent for a moment, then sighed. “I was adopted. They were good people. I still miss them.” She drew a design in the dirt with her finger. “When we didn’t show up in Seattle last night, would someone have notified the FAA?”

“They’re probably already searching. The problem is, first they’ll search the area I should have been over when I filed my flight plan.”

“We were off course?” she asked faintly. It just kept getting worse and worse.

“We went off course looking for a place to land. But if anyone is searching this area, eventually he’ll see our smoke. We just have to keep the fire going during the day.”

“How long will they look? Before they call off the search?”

He was silent, his golden eyes narrowed as he searched the sky. “They’ll look as long as they think we might be alive.”

“But if they think we’ve crashed—”

“Eventually they’ll stop looking,” he said softly. “It might be a week, a little longer, but they’ll stop.”

“So if no one finds us within, say, ten days—” She couldn’t goon.

“We don’t give up. There’s always the possibility a private plane will fly over.”

He didn’t say that the possibility was slight, but he didn’t have to. She had seen for herself the kind of terrain they’d flown over, and she knew how narrow and easily missed this canyon was.

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs, staring wistfully at the languid curls of gray smoke. “I used to wish I could go someplace where no one could find me. I didn’t realize there wouldn’t be room service.”

He chuckled as he leaned back on one elbow and stretched out his long legs. “Nothing gets you down for long, does it?”

“I try not to let it. Our situation isn’t great, but we’re alive. We have food, water and shelter. Things could be worse.”

“We also have entertainment. I have a deck of cards in the plane. We can play poker.”

“Do you cheat?”

“Don’t need to,” he drawled.

“Well, I do, so I’m giving you fair warning.”

“Warning taken. You know what happens to cheaters, don’t you?”

“They win?”

“Not if they get caught.”

“If they’re any good, they don’t get caught.”

He twirled a finger in her hair and lightly tugged. “Yeah, but if they get caught they’re in big trouble. You can take that as my warning.”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised. A yawn took her by surprise. “How can I be sleepy? I got plenty of sleep last night.”

“It’s the heat. Why don’t you take a nap? I’ll watch the fire.”

“Why aren’t you sleepy?”

He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

She really was sleepy, and there was nothing else to do. She didn’t feel like setting up the tent, so she dragged her bag into position behind her and leaned back on it. Silently Chance tossed her sweater into her lap. Following his example, she rolled up the sweater and stuffed it under her head. She dozed within minutes. It wasn’t a restful sleep, being one of those light naps in which she was aware of the heat, of Chance moving around, of her worry about Margreta. Her muscles felt heavy and limp, though, and completely waking up was just too much trouble.

The problem with afternoon naps was that one woke feeling both groggy and grungy. Her clothes were sticking to her, which wasn’t surprising considering the heat. When she finally yawned and sat up, she saw that the sun was beginning to take on a red glow as it sank, and though the temperature was still high, the heat had lost its searing edge.

Chance was sitting cross-legged, his long, tanned fingers deftly weaving sticks and string into a cage. There was something about the way he looked there in the shadow of the overhang, his attention totally focused on the trap he was building while the light reflected off the sand outside danced along his high cheekbones, that made recognition click in her brain. “You’re part Native American, aren’t you?”

“American Indian,” he corrected absently. “Everyone born here is a native American, or so Dad always told me.” He looked up and gave her a quick grin. “Of course, ‘Indian’ isn’t very accurate, either. Most labels aren’t. But, yeah, I’m a mixed breed.”

“And ex-military.” She didn’t know why she said that. Maybe it was his deftness in building the trap. She wasn’t foolish enough to attribute that to any so-called Native American skills, not in this day and age, but there was something in the way he worked that bespoke survival training.

He gave her a surprised glance. “How did you know?”

She shook her head. “Just a guess. The way you handled the pistol, as if you were very comfortable with it. What you’re doing now. And you used the word ‘reconnoiter.”’

“A lot of people are familiar with weapons, especially outdoorsmen, who would also know how to build traps.”

“Done in by your vocabulary,” she said, and smirked. “You said ‘weapons’ instead of just ‘guns,’ the way most people—even outdoorsmen—would have.”

Again she was rewarded with that flashing grin. “Okay, so I’ve spent some time in a uniform.”

“What branch?”

“Army. Rangers.”

Well, that certainly explained the survival skills. She didn’t know a lot about the Rangers, or any military group, but she did know they were an elite corps.

He set the finished trap aside and began work on another one. Sunny watched him for a moment, feeling useless. She would be more hindrance than help in building traps. She sighed as she brushed the dirt from her skirt. Darn, stranded only one day and here she was, smack in the middle of the old sexual stereotypes.

She surrendered with good grace. “Is there enough water for me to wash out our clothes? I’ve lived in these for two days, and that’s long enough.”

“There’s enough water, just nothing to collect it in.” He unfolded his legs and stood with easy grace. “I’ll show you.”

He led the way out of the overhang. She clambered over rocks in his wake, feeling the heat burn through the sides of her shoes and trying not to touch the rocks with her hands. When they reached more shade, the relief was almost tangible.

“Here.” He indicated a thin trickle of water running down the face of the wall. The bushes were heavier here, because of the water, and the temperature felt a good twenty degrees cooler. Part of it was illusion, because of the contrast, but the extra greenery did have a cooling effect.

Sunny sighed as she looked at the trickle. Filling their water bottles would be a snap. Washing off would be easy. But washing clothes—well, that was a different proposition. There wasn’t a pool in which she could soak them, not even a puddle. The water was soaked immediately into the dry, thirsty earth. The ground was damp, but not saturated.

The only thing she could do was fill a water bottle over and over, and rinse the dust out. “This will take forever,” she groused.

An irritating masculine smirk was on his face as he peeled his T-shirt off over his head and handed it to her. “We aren’t exactly pressed for time, are we?”

She almost thrust the shirt back at him and demanded he put it on, but not because of his comment. She wasn’t a silly prude, she had seen naked chests more times than she could count, but she had never before seen his naked chest. He was smoothly, powerfully muscled, with pectorals that looked like flesh-covered steel and a hard, six-pack abdomen. Alight patch of black hair stretched from one small brown nipple to the other. She wanted to touch him. Her hand actually ached for the feel of his skin, and she clenched her fingers hard on his shirt.

The smirk faded, his eyes darkening. He touched her face, curving his fingers under her chin and lifting it. His expression was hard with pure male desire. “You know what’s going to happen between us, don’t you?” His voice was low and rough.

“Yes.” She could barely manage a whisper. Her throat had tightened, her body responding to his touch, his intent.

“Do you want it?”

So much she ached with it, she thought. She looked up into those golden-brown eyes and trembled from the enormity of the step she was taking.

“Yes,” she said.

Chapter 7

She had lived her entire life without ever having lived at all, Sunny thought as she mechanically rinsed out his clothes and draped them over the hot rocks to dry. She and Chance might never get out of this canyon alive, and even if they did, it could take a long time. Weeks, perhaps months, or longer. Whatever Margreta did, she would long since have done it, and there wasn’t a damn thing Sunny could do about the situation. For the first time in her life, she had to think only about herself and what she wanted. That was simple; what she wanted was Chance.

She had to face facts. She was good at it; she had been doing it her entire life. The fact that had been glaring her in the face was that they could very well die here in this little canyon. If they didn’t survive, she didn’t want to die still clinging to the reasons for not getting involved that, while good and valid in civilization, didn’t mean spit here. She already was involved with him, in a battle for their very lives. She certainly didn’t want to die without having known what it was like to be loved by him, to feel him inside her and hold him close, and to tell him that she loved him. She had a whole world of love dammed up inside her, drying up because she hadn’t had anyone to whom she could give it, but now she had this opportunity, and she wasn’t going to waste it.

A psych analyst would say this was just propinquity: the “any port in a storm” type of attraction, or the Adam and Eve syndrome. That might be part of it, for him. If she had to guess, Sunny would say that Chance was used to having sex whenever he wanted it. He had that look about him, a bone-deep sexual confidence that would draw women like flies. She was currently the only fly available.

But it wasn’t just that. He had been attracted to her before, just as she had been to him. If they had made it to Seattle without trouble, she would have been strong enough to refuse his invitation and walk away from him. She would never have allowed herself to get to know him. Maybe they had met only twenty-four hours before, but those hours had been more intense than anything else she had ever known. She imagined it was as if they had gone into battle together; the danger they had faced, and were still facing, had forged a bond between them like soldiers in a war. She had learned things about him that it would have taken her weeks to learn in a normal situation, weeks that she would never have given herself.

Of all the things she had learned about him in those twenty-four hours, there wasn’t one she didn’t like. He was a man willing to step forward and take a risk, get involved, otherwise he wouldn’t have stopped the cretin in the airport. He was calm in a crisis, self-sufficient and capable, and he was more considerate of her than anyone else she had ever known. On top of all that, he was so sexy he made her mouth water.

Most men, after hearing something like what she had told him, would have immediately gone for the sex. Chance hadn’t. Instead, he had kissed her very sweetly and said, “I’ll get the rest of the things from the plane, so I can change clothes and give you my dirty ones to wash.”

“Gee, thanks,” she had managed to say.

He had winked at her. “Any time.”

He was a man who could put off his personal pleasure in order to take care of business. So here she was, scrubbing his underwear. Not the most romantic thing in the world to be doing, yet it was an intimate chore that strengthened the link forming between them. He was working to feed her; she was working to keep their clothes clean.

So far, Chance was everything that was steadfast and reliable. So why did she keep sensing that edge of danger in him? Was it something his army training had given him that was just there no matter what he was doing? She had never met anyone else who had been a ranger, so she had no means of comparison. She was just glad of that training, if it helped keep them alive.

After his clothes were as clean as she could get them, she hesitated barely a second before stripping out of her own, down to her skin. She couldn’t tolerate her grimy clothes another minute. The hot desert air washed over her bare skin, a warm, fresh caress on the backs of her knees, the small of her back, that made her nipples pinch into erect little nubs. She had never before been outside in the nude, and she felt positively decadent.

What if Chance saw her? If he was overcome with lust by the sight of her naked body, nothing would happen that hadn’t been going to happen, anyway. Not that it was likely he would be overcome, she thought wryly, smiling to herself, her curves were a long way from voluptuous. Still, if a man was faced with a naked, available woman—it could happen.

She poured a bottle of water over herself, then scooped up a handful of sand and began scrubbing. Rinsing off the sand was a matter of refilling the bottle several times. When she was finished she felt considerably refreshed and her skin was baby smooth. Maybe the skin-care industry should stop grinding up shells and rock for body scrubs, she thought, and just go for the sand.

Naked and wet, she could feel a slight breeze stirring the hot air, cooling her until she was actually comfortable. She didn’t have a towel, so she let herself dry naturally while she washed her own clothes, then quickly dressed in the beige jeans and green T-shirt that she always carried. They were earth colors, colors that blended in well with vegetation and would make her more difficult to see if she had to disappear into the countryside. She would have opted for actual camouflage-patterned clothing, if that wouldn’t have made her more noticeable in public. Her bra was wet from its scrubbing, so she hadn’t put it back on, and the soft cotton of the T-shirt clung to her breasts, clearly revealing their shape and their soft jiggle when she walked, and the small peaks of her nipples. She wondered if Chance would notice.

“Hey,” he said from behind her, his voice low and soft.

Startled, she whirled to face him. It was as if she had conjured him from her thoughts. He stood motionless about ten yards away, his eyes narrowed, his expression focused. His whiskey-coloured gaze went straight to her breasts. Oh, he noticed all right.

Her nipples got even harder, as if he had touched them.

She swallowed, trying to control a ridiculous twinge of her nerves. After all, he had already touched her breasts, and she had given him permission to do more. “How long have you been there?”

“Awhile.” His eyelids were heavy, his voice a little rough. “I kept waiting for you to turn around, but you never did. I enjoyed the view, anyway.”

Her breath hitched. “Thank you.”

“You have the sweetest little ass I’ve ever seen.”

Liquid heat moved through her. “You sweet talker, you,” she said, not even half kidding. “When do I get a peep show?”

“Any time, honey.” His tone was dark with sensual promise. “Any time.” Then he smiled ruefully. “Any time except now. We need to move these clothes so I can set the trap up here. Since this is where the water is, this is where the game will come. I’ll set the traps now and try to catch something for supper, then wash up after I clean whatever we catch—if we catch anything at all.”

He wasn’t exactly swept away with lust, but there was that reassuring steadfastness again, the ability to keep his priorities straight. In this situation, she didn’t want Gonad the Barbarian; she wanted a man on whom she could depend to do the smart thing.

He began gathering the wet clothes off the rocks, and Sunny moved to help him. “Let me guess,” she said. “The clothes still smell like humans.”

“There’s that, plus they’re something different. Wild animals are skittish whenever something new invades their territory.”

As they walked back to the overhang she asked, “How long does it normally take to catch something in a trap?”

He shrugged. “There’s no ‘normal’ to it. I’ve caught game before within ten minutes of putting out the trap. Sometimes it takes days.”

She wasn’t exactly looking forward to eating Peter Cottontail, but neither did she want another nutrition bar. It would be nice if some big fat chicken had gotten lost in the desert and just happened to wander into their trap. She wouldn’t mind eating a chicken. After a moment of wishful thinking she resigned herself to rabbit—if they were lucky, that is. They would have to eat whatever Chance could catch.

When they reached “home,” which the overhang had become, they spread their clothes out on another assortment of hot rocks. The first items she had washed were already almost dry; the dry heat of the desert was almost as efficient as an electric clothes dryer.

When they had finished, Chance collected his two handmade traps and examined them one last time. Sunny watched him, seeing the same intensity in his eyes and body that she had noticed before. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she asked, only mildly surprised. This was, after all, the ultimate in primitive guy stuff.

He didn’t look at her, but a tiny smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “I guess I’m not all that upset. We’re alive. We have food, water and shelter. I’m alone with a woman I’ve wanted from the first minute I saw her.” He produced a badly crushed Baby Ruth candy bar from his hip pocket and opened the wrapper, then pinched off small pieces of it and put them in the traps.

Sunny was instantly diverted. “You’re using a candy bar as bait?” she demanded in outraged tones. “Give me that! You can use my nutrition bar in the traps.”

He grinned and evaded her as she tried to swipe the remainder of the candy bar. “The nutrition bar wouldn’t be a good bait. No self-respecting rabbit would touch it.”

“How long have you been hiding that Baby Ruth?”

“I haven’t been hiding it. I found it in the plane when I got the rest of the stuff. Besides, it’s melted from being in the plane all day.”

“Melted, schmelted,” she scoffed. “That doesn’t affect chocolate.”

“Ah.” He nodded, still grinning. “You’re one of those.”

“One of those what?”

“Chocoholics.”

“I am not,” she protested, lifting her chin at him. “I’m a sweetaholic.”

“Then why didn’t you pack something sweet in that damn survival bag of yours, instead of something that tastes like dried grass?”

She scowled at him. “Because the idea is to stay alive. If I had a stash of candy, I’d eat it all the first day, then I’d be in trouble.”

The golden-brown gaze flicked at her, lashing like the tip of a whip. “When are you going to tell me why you packed survival gear for an overnight plane trip to Seattle?” He kept his tone light, but she felt the change of mood. He was dead serious about this, and she wondered why. What did it matter to him why she lugged that stuff everywhere she went? She could understand why he would be curious, but not insistent.

“I’m paranoid,” she said, matching his tone in lightness. “I’m always certain there will be some sort of emergency, and I’m terrified of being unprepared.”

His eyes went dark and flat. “Bull. Don’t try to blow me off with lies.”

Sunny might be good-natured almost to a fault, but she didn’t back down. “I was actually trying to be polite and avoid telling you it’s none of your business.”

To her surprise, he relaxed. “That’s more like it.”

“What? Being rude?”

“Honest,” he corrected. “If there are things you don’t want to tell me, fine. I don’t like it, but at least it was the truth. Considering our situation, we need to be able to totally rely on each other, and that demands trust. We have to be up front with each other, even when the truth isn’t all sweetness and light.”

She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes, giving him an “I’m not buying this” look. “Even when you’re just being nosy? I don’t think so.” She sniffed. “You’re trying to psych me into spilling my guts.”

“Is it working?”

“I felt a momentary twinge of guilt, but then logic kicked in.”

She sensed he tried to fight it, but a smile crinkled his eyes, then moved down to curl the corners of that beautifully cut mouth. He shook his head. “You’re going to cause me a lot of trouble,” he said companionably as he picked up the traps and started back to their little water hole, if a trickle could be called a hole.

“Why’s that?” she called to his back.

“Because I’m afraid I’m going to fall in love with you,” he said over his shoulder as he walked around a jutting curve of the canyon wall and disappeared from sight.

Sunny’s legs felt suddenly weak; her knees actually wobbled, and she reached out to brace her hand on the wall. Had he really said that? Did he mean it? Would a man admit to something like that if he wasn’t already emotionally involved?

Her heart was pounding as if she had been running. She could handle a lot of things most people never even thought of having to do, such as running for her life, but when it came to a romantic relationship she was a babe in the woods—or in the desert, to be accurate. She had never let a man get close enough to her to matter, because she had to be free to disappear without a moment’s notice or regret. But this time she couldn’t disappear; she couldn’t go anywhere. This time she was in a lot more trouble than Chance was, because she was already in love—fully, falling-down-a-mine-shaft, terrifyingly in love.

The feeling was a stomach-tightening mixture of ecstasy and horror. The last thing she wanted to do was love him, but it was way too late to worry about that now. What had already begun had blossomed into full flower when he didn’t make love to her after she had said he could. Something very basic and primal had recognized him then as her mate. He was everything she had ever wanted in a man, everything she had ever dreamed about in those half-formed thoughts she had never let fully surface into her consciousness, because she had always known that life wasn’t for her.

But those circumstances held sway up in the world, not down here in this sunlit hole where they were the only two people alive. She felt raw inside, as if all her nerve endings and emotions had been stripped of their protective coverings, leaving her vulnerable to feelings she had always before been able to keep at bay. Those emotions kept sweeping over her in exhilarating waves, washing her into unknown territory. She wanted very much to protect herself, yet all the shields she had used over the years were suddenly useless.

Tonight they would become lovers, and one last protective wall would be irrevocably breached. Sex wasn’t just sex to her; it was a commitment, a dedication of self, that would be part of her for the rest of her life.

She wasn’t naive about what else making love with him could mean. She wasn’t on any form of birth control, and while he might have a few condoms with him, they would quickly be used. The bell couldn’t be unrung, and once they had made love they couldn’t go back to a chaste relationship. What would she do if she got pregnant and they weren’t rescued? She had to hold out hope that they wouldn’t be down here forever, yet a small kernel of logic told her that it was possible they wouldn’t be found. What would she do if she got pregnant even if they were rescued? A baby would be a major complication. How would she protect it? Somehow she couldn’t see herself and Chance and a baby making a normal little all-American family; she would still be running, because that was the only way to be safe.

Keeping him at a distance, remaining platonic, was the only safe, sane thing to do. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to have a good grip on her sanity any longer. She felt as if those waves had carried her too far from shore for her to make it back now. For better or worse, all she could do was ride the current where it would take her.

Nevertheless, she tried. She tried to tell herself how stupidly irresponsible it was to risk getting pregnant under any circumstances, but particularly in this circumstance. Yes, women all over the world conceived and gave birth in primitive conditions, but for whatever reasons, cultural, economic or lack of brain power, they didn’t have a choice. She did. All she had to do was say “no” and ignore all her feminine instincts shrieking “yes, yes.”

When Chance returned she was still standing in the same spot she had been when he left, her expression stricken. He was instantly alert, reaching for the pistol tucked into his waistband at the small of his back. “What’s wrong?”

“What if I get pregnant?” she asked baldly, indicating their surroundings with a sweep of her hand. “That would be stupid.”

He looked surprised. “Aren’t you on birth control?”

“No, and even if I was, I wouldn’t have an unlimited supply of pills.”

Chance rubbed his jaw, trying to think of a way around this one without tipping his hand. He knew they wouldn’t be here for long, only until she gave him the information he needed on her father, but he couldn’t tell her that. And why in the hell wasn’t she on some form of birth control? All of the female agents he knew were on long-term birth control, and Sunny’s circumstances weren’t that different. “I have some condoms,” he finally said.

She gave him a wry smile. “How many? And what will we do when they’re gone?”

The last thing he wanted to do now was make her hostile. Deciding to gamble a little, to risk not being able to make love to her in exchange for keeping her trust, he put his arms around her and cradled her against his chest. She felt good in his arms, he thought, firm with muscle and yet soft in all the right places. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the way she looked naked: her slender, graceful back and small waist, and the tight, heart-shaped—and heart-stopping—curve of her butt. Her legs were as slim and sleekly muscled as he had expected, and the thought of them wrapping around his waist brought him to full, instant arousal. He held her so close there was no way she could miss his condition, but he didn’t thrust himself at her; let her think he was a gentleman. He knew better, but it was essential she didn’t.

He kissed the top of her head and took that gamble. “We’ll do whatever you want,” he said gently. “I want you—you know that. I have about three dozen condoms—”

She jerked back, glaring at him. “Three dozen?” she asked, horrified. “You carry around three dozen condoms?”

There it was again, that urge to laugh. She could get to him faster than any other woman he knew. “I had just stocked up,” he explained, keeping his tone mild.

“They have an expiration date, you know!”

He bit the inside of his jaw—hard. “Yeah, but they don’t go bad as fast as milk. They’re good for a couple of years.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “How long will thirty-six condoms keep you supplied?”

He sighed. “Longer than you evidently think.”

“Six months?”

He did some quick math. Six months, thirty-six condoms…he would have to have sex more than once a week. If he were in a monogamous relationship, that would be nothing, but for an unattached bachelor…

“Look,” he said, letting frustration creep into both his voice and his expression, “with you, three dozen might last a week.”

She looked startled, and he could see her doing some quick math now. As she arrived at the answer and her eyes widened, he thrust his hand into her hair, cupping the back of her head and holding her still while he kissed her, ruthlessly using all his skill to arouse her. Her hands fluttered against his chest as if she wanted to push him away, but her hands wouldn’t obey. He stroked his tongue into her mouth, slow and deep, feeling the answering touch of her tongue and the pressure of her lips. She tasted sweet, and the fresh smell of her was pure woman. He felt her nipples peak under the thin fabric of her T-shirt, and abruptly he had to touch them, feel them stabbing into his palm. He had his hand under her shirt almost before the thought formed. Her breasts were firm and round, her skin cool silk that warmed under his touch. Her nipples were hard little nubs that puckered even tighter when he touched them. She arched in his arms, her eyes closed, a low moan humming in her throat.

He had intended only to kiss her out of her sudden attack of responsibility. Instead, the pleasure of touching her went to his head like old whiskey, and suddenly he had to see her, taste her. With one swift motion he pulled her shirt up, baring her breasts, and tilted her back over his arm so the firm mounds were offered up to him in a sensual feast. He bent his dark head and closed his mouth over one tight, reddening nipple, rasping his tongue over it before pressing it against the roof of his mouth and sucking. He heard the sound she made this time, the cry of a sharply aroused woman, a wild, keening sound that went straight to his loins. He was dimly aware of her nails biting into his shoulders, but the pain was small, and nothing in comparison with the urgency that had seized him. Blood thundered in his ears, roared through his veins. He wanted her with a savage intensity that rode him with sharp spurs, urging him to take instead of seduce.

Grimly he reached for his strangely elusive self-control. Only the experience and training of his entire adulthood, spent in the trenches of a dirty, covert, ongoing war, gave him the strength to rein himself in. Reluctantly he eased his clamp on her nipple, giving the turgid little bud an apologetic lick. She quivered in his arms, whimpering, her golden hair spilling back as she hung helplessly in his grasp, and he almost lost it again.

Damn it all, he couldn’t wait.

Swiftly he dipped down and snagged the blanket from the ground, then hooked his right arm under her knees and lifted her off her feet, carrying her out into the sunlight. The golden glow of the lowering sun kissed her skin with a subtle sheen, deepened the glitter of her hair. Her breasts were creamy, with the delicate blue tracery of her veins showing through the pale skin, and her small nipples were a sweet rosy color, shining wetly, standing out in hard peaks. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said in a low, rough voice.

He set her on her feet; she swayed, her lovely eyes dazed with need. He spread out the blanket and reached for her before that need began to cool. He wanted her scorching hot, so ready for him that she would fight him for completion.

He stripped the T-shirt off over her head, dropped it on the blanket, and hooked his fingers in the waistband of her jeans. A quick pop of the snap, a jerk on the tab of the zipper, and the jeans slid down her thighs.

Her hands gripped his forearms. “Chance?” She sounded strangely uncertain, a little hesitant. If she changed her mind now—

He kissed her, slow and deep, and thumbed her nipples. She made that little humming sound again, rising on her toes to press against him. He pushed her jeans down to her ankles, wrapped both arms around her and carried her down to the blanket.

She gasped, her head arching back. “Here? Now?”

“I can’t wait.” That was nothing more than the hard truth. He couldn’t wait until dark, until they had politely crawled into the tent together as if they were following some script. He wanted her now, in the sunlight, naked and warm and totally spontaneous. He stripped her panties down and freed her ankles from the tangle of jeans and underwear.

It seemed she didn’t want to wait, either. She tugged at his shirt, pushing it up. Impatiently he gripped the hem and wrenched the garment off over his head, then spread her legs and eased his weight down on her, settling into the notch of her open thighs.

She went very still, her eyes widening as she stared up at him. He fished in his pocket for the condom he’d put there earlier, then lifted himself enough to unfasten his jeans and shove them down. He donned the condom with an abrupt, practiced motion. When he came back down to her, she braced her hands against his shoulders as if she wanted to preserve some small distance between them. But any distance was too much; he grasped her hands in one of his and pulled them over her head, pinning them to the blanket and arching her breasts against him. With his free hand he reached between them and guided his hard length to the soft, wet entrance of her body.

Sunny quivered, helpless in his grasp. She had never before felt so vulnerable, or so alive. His passion wasn’t controlled and gentle, the way she had expected; it was fierce and tumultuous, buffeting her with its force. He held her down, dwarfed her with his big muscular body, and she trembled as she waited for the hard thrust of penetration. She was ready for him, oh, so ready. She ached with need; she burned with it. She wanted to beg him to hurry, but she couldn’t make her lungs work. He reached down, and she felt the brush of his knuckles between her legs, then the stiff, hot length of him pushing against her opening.

Everything in her seemed to tighten, coiling, focusing on that intimate intrusion. The soft flesh between her legs began to burn and sting as the blunt pressure stretched her. He pushed harder, and the pressure became pain. Wild frustration filled her. She wanted him now, inside her, easing the ache and tension, stroking her back into feverish pleasure.

He started to draw back, but she couldn’t let him, couldn’t bear losing what his touch had promised. She had denied herself so many things, but not this, not now. She locked her legs around his and lifted her hips, fiercely impaling herself, thrusting past the resistance of her body.

She couldn’t hold back the thin cry that tore from her throat. Shock robbed her muscles of strength, and she went limp on the blanket.

Chance moved over her, his broad shoulders blotting out the sun. He was a dark, massive silhouette, his shape blurred by her tears. He murmured a soft reassurance even as he probed deeper, and deeper still, until his full length was inside her.

He released her hands to cradle her in both arms. Sunny clung to his shoulders, holding as tight as she could, because without his strength she thought she might fly apart. She hadn’t realized this would hurt so much, that he would feel so thick and hot inside her, or go so deep. He was invading all of her, taking over her body and commanding its responses, even her breathing, her heartbeat, the flow of blood through her veins.

He moved gently at first, slowly, angling his body so he applied pressure where she needed it most. He did things to her with his hands, stroking her into a return of pleasure. He kissed her, leisurely exploring her with his tongue. He touched her nipples, sucked them, nibbled on the side of her neck. His tender attention gradually coaxed her into response, into an instinctive motion as her hips rose and fell in time with his thrusts. She still clung to his shoulders, but in need rather than desperation. An overwhelming heat swept over her, and she heard herself panting.

He pushed her legs farther apart and thrust deeper, harder, faster. Sensation exploded in her, abruptly convulsing her flesh. She writhed beneath him, unable to hold back the short, sharp cries that surged upward, past her constricted throat. The pounding rhythm wouldn’t let the spasms abate; they kept shuddering through her until she was sobbing, fighting him, wanting release, wanting more, and finally—when his hard body stiffened and began shuddering—wanting nothing.

Chapter 8

A virgin. Sunny Miller had been a virgin. He tried to think, when he could think at all, what the possible ramifications were, but none of that seemed important right now. Of far more immediate urgency was how to comfort a woman whose first time had been on a blanket spread over the rough ground, in broad daylight, with a man who hadn’t even taken off his boots.

He lay sprawled on his back beside her on the blanket. She had turned on her side away from him, curling in on herself while visible tremors shook her slender, naked body. Moving was an effort—breathing was an effort—as he pulled off the condom and tossed it away. He had climaxed so violently that he felt dazed. And if it affected him so strongly, with his experience, what was she thinking? Feeling? Had she anticipated the pain, or been shocked by it?

He knew she had climaxed. She had been as aroused as he; when he had started to pull back in stunned realization, she had hooked her legs around his and forced the entry herself. He had seen the shock in her eyes as he penetrated her, felt the reverberations in her flesh. And he had watched her face as he carefully aroused her, holding himself back with ruthless control until he felt the wild clenching of her loins. Then nothing had been able to hold him back, and he had exploded in his own gut-wrenching release.

For a woman of twenty-nine to remain a virgin, she had to have some strongly held reason for doing so. Sunny had willingly, but not lightly, surrendered her chastity to him. He felt humbled, and honored, and he was scared as hell. He hadn’t been easy with her, either in the process or the culmination. At first glance the fact that she had climaxed might make everything all right with her, but he knew better. She didn’t have the experience to handle the sensual violence her body and emotions had endured. She needed holding, and reassuring, until she stopped shaking and regained her equilibrium.

He put his hand on her arm and tugged her over onto her back. She didn’t actively resist, but she was stiff, uncoordinated. She was pale, her eyes unusually brilliant, as if she fought tears. He cradled her head on his arm and leaned over her, giving her the attention and the contact he knew she needed. She glanced quickly up at him, then away, and a surge of color pinkened her cheeks.

He was charmed by the blush. Gently he smoothed his hand up her bare torso, stroking her belly, trailing his fingers over her breasts. The lower curves of her breasts bore the marks of his beard stubble. He soothed them with his tongue, taking care not to add more abrasions, and made a mental note to shave when he washed.

Something needed to be said, but he didn’t know what. He had talked his way into strongholds, drug dens and government offices; he had an uncanny knack for making a lightning assessment of any given person and situation, and then saying exactly the right thing to get the reaction he wanted. But from the moment he had seen Sunny, lust had gotten in the way of his usual expertise. No amount of prep work could have prepared him for the impact of her sparkling eyes and bright smile, or told him he could be so disarmed by a sense of humor. “Sunny” was a very apt nickname for her.

Just now his sunshine was very quiet, almost stricken, as if she regretted their intimacy. And he couldn’t bear it. He had lost count, over the years, of the women who had tried to cling to him after the sex act was finished and he slipped away, both physically and mentally, but he couldn’t bear it that this one woman wasn’t trying to hold him. For some reason, whether this was simply too much too soon or for some deeper reason, she was trying to hold her distance from him. She wasn’t curling in his arms, sighing with repletion; she was retreating behind an invisible wall, the one that had been there from the beginning.

Everything in him rejected the idea. A primitive, possessive rage swept over him. She was his, and he would not let her go. His muscles tightened in a renewed surge of lust, and he mounted her, sliding into the tight, swollen clasp of her sheath. She inhaled sharply, the shock of his entry jarring her out of her malaise. She wedged her hands between them and sank her nails into his chest, but she didn’t try to push him away. Her legs came up almost automatically, wrapping around his hips. He caught her thighs and adjusted them higher, around his waist. “Get used to it,” he said, more harshly than he’d intended. “To me. To this. To us. Because I won’t let you pull away from me.”

Her lips trembled, but he had her full attention now. “Even for your own sake?” she whispered, distress leaching the blue undertones from her eyes and leaving them an empty gray.

He paused for a fraction of a second, wondering if she was referring to her father. “Especially for that,” he replied, and set himself to the sweet task of arousing her. This time was totally for her; he wooed her with a skill that went beyond sexual experience. His extensive training in the martial arts had taught him how to cripple with a touch, kill with a single blow, but it had also taught him all the places on the human body that were exquisitely sensitive to pleasure. The backs of her knees and thighs, the delicate arches of her feet, the lower curve of her buttocks, all received their due attention. Slowly she came alive under him, a growing inner wetness easing his way. She began to move in time with his leisurely thrusts, rising up to meet him. He stroked the cluster of nerves in the small of her back and was rewarded by the reflexive arch that took him deeper into her.

She sighed, her lips parted, her eyes closed. Her cheeks glowed; her lips were puffy and red. He saw all the signs of her arousal and whispered encouragement. Her head tossed to the side, and her hardened nipples stabbed against his chest. Gently, so gently, he bit the tender curve where her neck met her shoulder.

She cried out and began climaxing, her peak catching him by surprise. So did his own. He hadn’t meant to climax, but the delicate inner clench and release of her body sent pleasure roaring through him, bursting out of control.

He tried to stop, tried to withdraw; his body simply wouldn’t obey. Instead, he thrust deep and shuddered wildly as his seed spurted from him into the hot, moist depths of her. He heard his own deep, rough cry; then both time and thought stopped, and all that was left of him sank down on her in a heavy sprawl.

Shadow had crept across the canyon floor when he wrapped her in the blanket and carried her back to the sheltering overhang. The surrounding rock blocked the sun during the day, but it also absorbed its heat so that at night, when the temperature dropped, it was noticeably warmer in their snug little niche than it was outside. Sunny yawned, drowsy with satisfaction, and rested her head on his shoulder. “I can walk,” she said mildly, though she made no effort to slide her feet to the ground.

“Hey, I’m doing my macho act here,” he protested. “Don’t ruin it.”

She tilted her head back to look at him. “You aren’t acting, though, are you?”

“No,” he admitted, and earned a chuckle from her.

Time had gotten away from him while they drifted in the sleepy aftermath of passion. The sun was so far down in the sky that only the upper rim of the canyon was lit, the reds and golds and purples of the rock catching fire in the sunset, while the sky had taken on a deep violet hue.

“I’m going to check the traps while there’s still a few minutes of light left,” he said as he deposited her on the ground. “Sit tight. I won’t be long.”

Sunny sat tight for about two seconds after he disappeared from view, then bounced to her feet. Quickly she washed and dressed, needing the protection of her clothing. She had the uneasy feeling that nothing was the same as it had been before Chance carried her out into the sunlight. She had been prepared for the lovemaking, but not for that overwhelming assault on her senses. She had hoped for pleasure, and instead found something so much more powerful that she couldn’t control it.

And most of all, Chance had revealed himself for the marauder he was.

She had seen glimpses of it before, in moments when the force of his personality broke through his control. She should have realized then; one didn’t bolt a steel gate on an empty room. His control had given her the rare, luxurious feeling of safety, and she had been so beguiled that she had ignored the power that gate held constrained, or what would happen if it ever broke loose. This afternoon, she had found out.

He had said he’d been in the Army Rangers. That should have told her everything she needed to know about the kind of man he was. She could only think she’d let the stress of the situation, and her worry about Margreta, blind her to his true nature.

A shiver rippled down her spine, a totally sensual reaction as she remembered the tumultuous hour—or hours—on the blanket. She had been helpless, totally blindsided by the force of her reaction. She had known from the beginning that she responded to him as she never had before to any man, but she still hadn’t been prepared for such a complete upheaval of her senses. He wasn’t the only one accustomed to control; her very life had depended on her control of any given situation, and with Chance, she had found that she couldn’t control either him or herself.

She had never been more terrified in her life.

The way she had felt about him before was nothing compared to now. It wasn’t just the sex, which had been so much more intense and harsh than she had ever imagined. No, it was the part of his character he had revealed, the part that he had tried to keep hidden, that called to her so strongly she knew only her own death would end the love she felt for him. Chance was one of a very special breed of men, a warrior. All the little pieces of him she had sensed were now settled into place, forming the picture of a man who would always have something wild and ruthless inside him, a man willing to put himself at risk, step into the line of fire, to protect what he loved. He was the complete antithesis of her father, whose life was devoted wholly to destruction.

Sunny hadn’t had a choice in a lot of the sacrifices of her life. Their mother had given her and Margreta away in an effort to save them, but hadn’t been able to completely sever herself from her daughters’ lives. Instead, she had taught them all her hard-learned skills, taught them how to hide, to disappear—and, if necessary, how to fight. By necessity, Pamela Vickery Hauer had become an expert in her own brand of guerrilla warfare. Whenever she thought it safe she would visit, and the kindly Millers would go out of their way to give her time with her girls.

When Sunny was sixteen, Pamela’s luck had finally run out. Their father’s network was extensive, and he had many more resources at his disposal than his fugitive wife could command. Logically, it had been only a matter of time before he found her. And when she was finally run to ground, Pamela had killed herself rather than take the chance he would, by either torture or drugs, be able to wring their location from her.

That was Sunny’s legacy, a life living in shadows, and a courageous mother who had killed herself in order to protect her children. No one had asked her if this was the life she wanted; it was the life she had, so she had made the best of it she could.

Nor had it been her choice to live apart from Margreta; that had been her sister’s decision. Margreta was older; she had her own demons to fight, her own battles to wage, and she had never been as adept at the survival skills taught by their mother as Sunny had been. So Sunny had lost her sister, and when the Millers died, first Hal and then Eleanor, she had been totally alone. The calls on her cell phone from Margreta were the only contact she had, and she knew Margreta was content to leave it at that.

She didn’t think she had the strength to give up Chance, too. That was why she was terrified to the point of panic, because her very presence endangered his life. Her only solace was that because he was the man he was, he was very tough and capable, more able to look after himself.

She took a deep breath, trying not to anticipate trouble. If and when they got out of this canyon, then she would decide what to do.

Because she was too nervous to sit still, she checked the clothes she had washed out and found they were already dry. She gathered them off the various rocks where they had spread them, and though the little chore had taken only minutes, by the time she walked back to the overhang there was barely enough light for her to see.

Chance hadn’t taken the flashlight with him, she remembered. It was a moonless night; if he didn’t get back within the next few minutes, he wouldn’t be able to see.

The fire had been kept smoldering all day, to maximize the smoke and conserve their precious store of wood, but now she quickly added more sticks to bring up a good blaze, both for her own sake and so he would have the fire as a beacon. The flickering firelight penetrated the darkness of the overhang, sending patterns dancing against the rock wall. She searched through their belongings until she found the flashlight, to have it at hand in case she had to search for him.

Total blackness came suddenly, as if Mother Nature had dropped her petticoats over the land. Sunny stepped to the front of the overhang. “Chance!” she called, then paused to listen.

The night wasn’t silent. There were rustlings, the whispers of the night things as they crept about their business. A faint breeze stirred the scrub brush, sounding like dry bones rattling together. She listened carefully, but didn’t hear an answering call.

“Chance!” She tried again, louder this time. Nothing. “Damn it,” she muttered, and flashlight in hand set off for the deep end of the canyon where their life-giving water trickled out of a crack in the rock.

She walked carefully, checking where she put her feet. A second encounter with a snake was more than she could handle in one day. As she walked she periodically called his name, growing more irritated by the moment. Why didn’t he answer her? Surely he could hear her by now; sound carried in the thin, dry air.

A hard arm caught her around the waist and swung her up against an equally hard body. She shrieked in alarm, the sound cut off by a warm, forceful mouth. Her head tilted back under the pressure, and she grabbed his shoulders for support. He took his time, teasing her with his tongue, kissing her until the tension left her body and she was moving fluidly against him.

When he lifted his head his breathing was a little ragged. Sunny felt obliged to complain about his treatment of her. “You scared me,” she accused, though her voice sounded more sultry than sulky.

“You got what you deserved. I told you to sit tight.” He kissed her again, as if he couldn’t help himself.

“Is this part of the punishment?” she murmured when he came up for air.

“Yeah,” he said, and she felt him smile against her temple.

“Do it some more.”

He obliged, and she felt the magic fever begin burning again deep inside her. She ached all over from his previous lovemaking; she shouldn’t feel even a glimmer of desire so soon, and yet she did. She wanted to feel all the power of his superbly conditioned body, take him inside her and hold him close, feel him shake as the pleasure overwhelmed him just as it did her.

Finally he tore his mouth from hers, but she could feel his heart pounding against her, feel the hard ridge in his jeans. “Have mercy,” he muttered. “I won’t have a chance to starve to death. I’m going to die of exhaustion.”

Starving reminded her of the traps, because she was very hungry. “Did you catch a rabbit?” she asked, her tone full of hope.

“No rabbit, just a scrawny bird.” He held up his free hand, and she saw that he held the plucked carcass of a bird that was quite a bit smaller than the average chicken.

“That isn’t the Roadrunner, is it?”

“What’s this thing you have with imaginary animals? No, it isn’t a roadrunner. Try to be a little more grateful.”

“Then what is it?”

“Bird,” he said succinctly. “After I spit it and turn it over the flames for a while, it’ll be roasted bird. That’s all that matters.”

Her stomach growled. “Well, okay. As long as it isn’t the Roadrunner. He’s my favorite cartoon character. After Bullwinkle.”

He began laughing. “When did you see those old cartoons? I didn’t think they were on anywhere now.”

“They’re all on disk,” she said. “I rented them from my local video store.”

He took her arm, and they began walking back to camp, chatting and laughing about their favorite cartoons. They both agreed that the slick animated productions now couldn’t match the older cartoons for sheer comedy, no matter how realistic the modern ones were. Sunny played the flashlight beam across their path as they walked, watching for snakes.

“By the way, why were you calling me?” Chance asked suddenly.

“It’s dark, in case you didn’t notice. You didn’t carry the flashlight with you.”

He made a soft, incredulous sound. “You were coming to rescue me?”

She felt a little embarrassed. Of course, a former ranger could find his way back to camp in the dark. “I wasn’t thinking,” she admitted.

“You were thinking too much,” he corrected, and hugged her to his side.

They reached their little camp. The fire she had built up was still sending little tongues of flame licking around the remnants of the sticks. Chance laid the bird on a rock, swiftly fashioned a rough spit from the sticks, and sharpened the end of another stick with his pocket knife. He skewered the bird with that stick, and set it in the notches of the spit, then added some small sticks to the fire. Soon the bird was dripping sizzling juice into the flames, which leaped higher in response. The delicious smell of cooking meat made her mouth water.

She shoved a flat rock closer to the fire and sat down, watching him turn the bird. She was close enough to feel the heat on her arms; as chilly as the night was already, it was difficult to remember that just a few short hours ago the heat had been scorching. She had camped out only once before, but the circumstances had been nothing like this. For one thing, she had been alone.

The amber glow of the flames lit the hard angles of his face. He had washed up while he was gone, she saw; his hair was still a little damp. He had shaved, too. She smiled to herself.

He looked up and saw her watching him, and a wealth of knowledge, of sensual awareness, flashed between them. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

“I’m fine.” She had no idea how her face glowed as she wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her drawn-up knees.

“Are you bleeding?”

“Not now. And it was only a little, at first,” she added hastily when his eyes narrowed in concern.

He returned his gaze to the bird, watching as he carefully turned it. “I wish I had known.”

She wished he didn’t know now. The reasons for her recently lost virginity weren’t something she wanted to dissect. “Why?” she asked, injecting a light note into her tone. “Would you have been noble and stopped?”

“Hell, no,” he said. “I’d have gone about it a little differently, is all.”

Now, that was interesting. “What would have been different?”

“How rough I was. How long I took.”

“You took long enough,” she assured him, smiling. “Both times.”

“I could have made it better for you.”

“How about for you?”

His dark gaze flashed upward, and he gave a rueful smile. “Sweetheart, if it had been any better for me, my heart would have given out.”

“Dit to.”

He turned the bird again. “I didn’t wear a condom the second time.”

“I know.” The evidence had been impossible to miss.

Their gazes met and locked again, and again they were linked by that silent communication. He might have made her pregnant. He knew it, and she knew it.

“How’s the timing?”

She rocked her hand back and forth. “Borderline.” The odds were in their favor, she figured, but it wasn’t a risk she wanted to take again.

“If we weren’t stuck here—” he began, then shrugged.

“What?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

Desire surged through her, and she almost jumped his bones right then. She got a tight grip on herself, literally, and fought to stay seated. Hormones were sneaky devils, she thought, ready to undermine her common sense just because he mentioned wanting to make her pregnant.

“Neither would I,” she admitted, and watched to see if he had the same reaction. Color flared high on his carved cheekbones, and a muscle in his jaw flexed. His hand tightened on the spit until his knuckles were white. Yep, it went both ways, she thought, fascinated by his battle to remain where he was.

When he judged the bird was done, he took the skewer off the spit and kicked another rock over to rest beside hers, then sat down on it. With his pocket knife he cut a strip of meat and held it out to her. “Careful, don’t burn yourself,” he warned as she reached eagerly for the meat.

She juggled the strip back and forth in her hands, blowing on it to cool it. When she could hold it, she took her first tentative bite. Her taste buds exploded with the taste of wood and smoke and roasted fowl. “Oh, that’s good,” she moaned, chewing slowly to get every ounce of flavor.

Chance cut off a strip for himself and took his first bite, looking as satisfied as she with their meal. They chewed in silence for a while. He was careful to divide the meat equally, until she was forced to stop eating way before she was satisfied. He was so much bigger than she was that if they each ate the same amount, he would be short-changed.

He knew what she was doing, of course. “You’re taking care of me again,” he observed. “You’re hell on my image, you know that? I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”

“You’re a lot bigger than I am. You need larger portions.”

“Let me worry about the food, sweetheart. We won’t starve. There’s more game to catch, and tomorrow I’ll look for some edible plants to round out our diet.”

“Bird and bush,” she said lightly. “What all the trendy people are eating these days.”

Her quip made him grin. He persuaded her to eat a little more of the meat, then they finished off one of the remaining nutrition bars. Their hunger appeased, they began getting ready to turn in for the night.

He banked the fire while she got the tent ready. They brushed their teeth and made one last nature call, just like old married folks, she thought in amusement. Their “home” wasn’t much, really nothing more than a niche in the rock, but their preparations for the night struck her as very domestic—until he said, “Do you want to wear my shirt tonight? It would be more like a nightgown on you than the shirt you’re wearing.”

There was nothing the least bit tamed in the way he was looking at her. Her heartbeat picked up in speed, and the now familiar heat began spreading through her. That was all he had to do, she thought; one look and she was aroused. He had taught her body well during the short time she had been sprawled beneath him on the blanket. Now that she knew exactly how it felt to take his hard length inside her, she craved the sensation. She wanted that convulsive peak of pleasure, even though it had frightened her with its intensity. She hadn’t realized she would feel as if she were flying apart, as if her soul was being wrenched from her body. In a blinding, paralyzing moment of clarity, she knew that no other man in the world would be able to do that for her, to her. He was the One for her, capital O, big letter, underlined and italicized. The One. She would never again be whole without him.

She must have looked stricken, because suddenly he was by her side, supporting her with an arm around her waist as he gently but inexorably guided her to the tent. He would be considerate, she realized, but he didn’t intend to be refused.

She cleared her throat, searching for her equilibrium. “You’ll need your shirt to keep warm—”

“You’re joking, right?” He smiled down at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Or did you think we were through for the night?”

She couldn’t help smiling back. “That never crossed my mind. I just thought you’d need it afterward.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, his hands busy unsnapping her jeans.

They were both naked and inside the tent in record time. He switched off the flashlight to save the batteries, and the total darkness closed around them, just as it had the night before. Making love when one was going totally by feel somehow heightened the other senses, she found. She was aware of the calluses on his hands as he stroked her, of the heady male scent of his skin, of the powerful muscles that bunched under her own exploring hands. His taste filled her; his kisses were a feast. She reveled in the smooth firmness of his lips, the sharp edges of his teeth; she rubbed his nipples and felt them contract under her fingers. She loved the harsh groan he gave when she cupped the soft, heavy sacs between his legs, and the way they tightened even as she held them.

She was shocked when she closed her hand around his pulsing erection. How on earth had she ever taken him inside her? The long, thick column ended in a smooth, bulbous flare, the tip of which was wet with fluid. Entranced, she curled down until she could take the tip in her mouth and lick the fluid away.

He let out an explosive curse and tumbled her on her back, reversing their positions. The confines of the small tent restricted their movement, but he managed the shift with his usual powerful grace.

She laughed, full of wonder at the magic between them, and draped her arms around his neck as he settled on top of her. “Didn’t you like it?”

“I almost came,” he growled. “What do you think?”

“I think I’ll have my way with you yet. I may have to overpower you and tie you up, but I think I can handle the job.”

“I’m positive of it. Let me know when you’re going to overpower me, so I can have my clothes off.”

That afternoon, caught in the whirlpool of his lovemaking, she wouldn’t have believed she would be so at ease with him now, that they could indulge in this sensual teasing. She wouldn’t have believed how naturally her thighs parted to accommodate his hips, or how comfortable it was, as if nature had designed them to fit together just so. Actually nature had; she just hadn’t realized it until now.

He gave her a taste of her own medicine, kissing his way down her body until his hair brushed the insides of her thighs and she discovered a torture so sweet she shattered. When she could breathe again, when the colored pinpoints of light stopped flashing against her closed eyelids, he kissed her belly and laid his head on the pillowing softness. “My God, you’re easy,” he whispered.

She managed a strangled sound that was almost a laugh. “I guess I am. For you, anyway.”

“Just for me.” The dark tones of masculine possessiveness and triumph underlaid the words.

“Just for you,” she whispered in agreement.

He put on a condom and slid into place between her thighs. She fought back a cry; she was sore and swollen, and he was big. He moved gently back and forth until she accepted him more easily and the discomfort faded, but gradually his thrusts quickened, became harder. Even then she sensed he was holding himself back to keep from hurting her. When he climaxed, he pulled back so only half his length was inside her, and held himself there while shudders racked his strong body.

Afterward, he tugged his T-shirt on over her head, immediately enveloping her in his scent. The roomy garment came halfway to her knees—or it would have if he hadn’t bunched it around her waist. He cradled her in his arms, one big hand on her bare bottom to keep her firmly against him. He used her rolled-up cardigan for a pillow, and she used him. Oh, this was wonderful.

“Is Sunny your real name, or is it a nickname?” he asked sleepily, his lips brushing her hair.

Even as relaxed as she was, as sated, a twinge of caution made her hesitate. She never told anyone her real name. It took her a moment to remember that none of that made any difference here now. “It’s a nickname,” she murmured. “My real name is Sonia, but I’ve never used it. Sonia Ophelia Gabrielle.”

“Good God.” He kissed her. “Sunny suits you. So you’re saddled with four names, huh?”

“Yep. I never use the middle ones, though. What about you? What’s your middle name?”

“I don’t have one. It’s just Chance.”

“Really? You aren’t lying to me because it’s something awful, like Eustace?”

“Cross my heart.”

She settled herself more comfortably against him. “I suppose it balances out. I have four names, you have two—together, we average three.”

“How about that.”

She could hear a smile in his voice now. She rewarded him with a small, sneaky pinch that made him jump. His retaliation ended, a long time later, in the use of another condom.

Sunny went to sleep to the knowledge that she was happier now, with Chance, than she had ever before been in her life.

Chapter 9

The next morning the traps were empty. Sunny struggled with her disappointment. After such an idyllic, pleasure-filled night, the day should have been just as wonderful. A nice hot, filling breakfast would have been perfect.

“Could you shoot something?” she asked as she chewed half of one of the tasteless nutrition bars. “We have eight of these bars left.” If they each ate a bar a day, that meant they would be out of food in four days.

In three days, Margreta would call.

Sunny pushed that thought away. Whether or not they got out of here in time for her to answer Margreta’s call was something she couldn’t control. Food was a more immediate problem.

Chance narrowed his eyes as he scanned the rim of the canyon, as if looking for a way out. “I have fifteen rounds in the pistol, and no extra cartridges. I’d rather save them for emergencies, since there’s no telling how long we’ll be here. Besides, a 9mm bullet would tear a rabbit to pieces and wouldn’t leave enough left of a bird for us to eat. Assuming I could hit a bird with a pistol shot, that is.”

She wasn’t worried about his marksmanship. He was probably much better with a rifle, but with his military background, he would be more than competent with the pistol. She looked down at her hands. “Would a .38 be better?”

“It isn’t as powerful, so for small game, yeah, it would be better. Not great, but better—but I have a 9mm, so it’s a moot point.”

“I have one,” she said softly.

His head whipped around. Something dangerous flashed in his eyes. “What did you say?”

She nodded toward her bag. “I have a .38.”

He looked in the direction of her gaze, then back at her. His expression was like flint. “Would you like to tell me,” he said very deliberately, “just how you happen to have a pistol of any kind with you? You were on a commercial flight. How did you get past the scanners?”

She didn’t like giving away all her secrets, not even to Chance. A lifetime on the run had ingrained caution into her very bones, and she had already given him more of herself than she ever had anyone else. Still, they were in this together. “I have some special containers.”

“Where?” he snapped. “I saw you unpack everything in your bag and there weren’t any—ah, hell. The hair spray can, right?”

Unease skittered along her spine. Why was he angry? Even if he was a stickler for rules and regulations, which she doubted, he should be glad they had an extra weapon, no matter how they came by it. She straightened her shoulders. “And the blow-dryer.”

He stood over her like an avenging angel, his jaw set. “How long have you been smuggling weapons on board airplanes?”

“Every time I’ve flown,” she said coolly, standing up. She was damned if she would let him tower over her as if she was a recalcitrant child. He still towered over, just not as much. “I was sixteen the first time.”

She walked over to the bag and removed the pertinent items. Chance leaned down and snagged the can of spray from her hands. He took the cap off and examined the nozzle, then pointed it away from him and depressed it. A powder-fine mist of spray shot out.

“It’s really hair spray,” she said. “Just not much of it.” She took the can and deftly unscrewed the bottom. A short barrel slid out of the can into her hands. Putting it aside, she lifted the hair-dryer and took it apart with the same deft twist, yielding the remaining parts of the pistol. She assembled it with the ease of someone who had done the task so often she could do it in her sleep, then fed the cartridges into the magazine, snapped it into place, reversed the pistol and presented it to him butt-first.

He took it, his big hand almost swallowing the small weapon. “What in hell are you doing with a weapon?” he bit out.

“The same thing you are, I imagine.” She walked away from him and missed the look of shock that crossed his face. With her back to him she said, “I carry it for self-protection. Why do you carry yours?”

“I charter my plane to a lot of different people, most of whom I don’t know. I fly into some isolated areas sometimes. And my weapon is licensed.” He hurled the words at her like rocks. “Is yours?”

“No,” she said, unwilling to lie. “But I’m a single woman who travels alone, carrying packages valuable enough that a courier service is hired to deliver them. The people I deliver the packages to are strangers. Think about it. I’d have to be a fool not to carry some means of protection.” That was the truth, as far as it went.

“If your reason for carrying is legitimate, then why don’t you have a license?”

She felt as if she were being interrogated, and she didn’t like it. The tender, teasing lover of the night was gone, and in his place was someone who sounded like a prosecutor.

She had never applied for a license to carry a concealed weapon because she didn’t want any background checks in the national data system, didn’t want to bring herself to the notice of anyone in officialdom.

“I have my reasons,” she retorted, keeping her tone very deliberate.

“And you aren’t going to tell me what they are, right?” He threw her a look that was almost sulfuric in its fury and stalked off in the direction of the traps. His stalking, like everything else he did, was utterly graceful—and completely silent.

“Good riddance, Mr. Sunshine,” she hurled at his back. It was a childish jab, but she felt better afterward. Sometimes a little childishness was just what the doctor ordered.

With nothing better to do, she set off in the opposite direction, toward the plane, to gather more sticks and twigs for the all-important fire. If he tried to keep her pistol when they got out of here—and they would get out, she had to keep hoping—then it would be war.

Chance examined the compact pistol in his hand. It was unlike any he had ever seen before, for the simple reason that it hadn’t come from any manufacturer. A gunsmith, a skilled one, had made this weapon. It bore no serial number, no name, no indication of where or when it was made. It was completely untraceable.

He couldn’t think of any good reason for Sunny to have it, but he could think of several bad ones.

After yesterday, he had been more than halfway convinced she was innocent, that she was in no way involved with her father. Stupid of him, but he had equated chastity with honor. Just because a woman didn’t sleep around didn’t mean she was a fine, upstanding citizen. All it meant was that, for whatever reason, she hadn’t had sex.

He knew better. He was far better acquainted with the blackness of the human soul than with its goodness, because he had chosen to live in the sewers. Hell, he came from the sewers; he should be right at home there, and most of the time he was. The blackness of his own soul was always there, hidden just a few layers deep, and he was always aware of it. He used to make his way in the dangerous world he had chosen, shaped it into a weapon to be used in defense of his country and, ultimately, his family. And being on such intimate terms with hell, with the twisted evil humans could visit on one another, he should know that golden hair and bright, sparkling eyes didn’t necessarily belong on an angel. Shakespeare had hit the nail on the head when he warned the world against smiling villains.

It was just—damn it, Sunny got to him. She had slipped right past defenses he would have sworn were impregnable, and she had done it so easily they might as well not have been there at all. He wanted her, and so he had almost convinced himself that she was innocent.

Almost. There was just too much about her that didn’t add up, and now there was this untraceable pistol that she smuggled on board airplanes, concealed in some very effective but simple containers. Airport scanners would show metal, but if a security guard was suspicious enough to check, he or she would find only the normal female styling aids. The hair spray can actually sprayed, and he didn’t doubt the blow-dryer would work, too.

If Sunny could get a pistol on board a plane, then others could, too. He went cold at the thought of how many weapons must be flying around at any given time. Airport security wasn’t his line of work, but damn if he wasn’t going to make it a point to kick some asses over this.

He shoved his anger aside so he could concentrate on this assignment. He hoped he hadn’t blown it by losing his temper with her, but his disillusionment had been too sharp for him to contain. The pleasure of the night they had just spent together should more than outweigh their first argument. Her inexperience with men worked against her; she would be easy to manipulate, where a seasoned veteran of the mattress wars would be more wary and blasé about their lovemaking. He still held all the trump cards, and soon he would be playing them.

He reached a particular point in the canyon and positioned himself so he was in the deepest morning shadows. Sunny couldn’t catch him unawares here, and he had a clear line of sight to a certain rock on the rim of the canyon. He took a laser light from his pocket, a pencil-thin tube about two inches long that, when clicked, emitted an extraordinarily bright finger of light. He aimed it at the rock on the rim and began clicking, sending dashes of light in the code he and Zane had agreed on at the beginning of the plan. Every day he signalled Zane, both to let him know that everything was all right and that they shouldn’t be rescued yet.

There was an answering flash, message received. No matter how closely he watched that rock, he never saw any movement, though he knew Zane would have immediately pulled back. He himself was damn good at moving around undetected, but Zane was extraordinary even for a SEAL. There was no one else on this earth Chance would rather have beside him in a fight than Zane.

That mission accomplished, Chance settled down in some cover where he could watch the trickle of water. Since the traps hadn’t been productive overnight, he really did need to shoot something for supper. He was willing to starve to achieve his ends—but only if he had to. If a bunny rabbit showed its face, it was history.

As Sunny walked the canyon floor, picking up what sticks she could find, she studied the rock walls, looking for a fissure that might have escaped notice, an animal trail, anything that might point the way to freedom. If they only had some rock-climbing gear, she thought wistfully. A rope, cleats, anything. She had tried to anticipate any possible need when she packed her bag, but somehow being trapped in a box canyon hadn’t occurred to her.

For the most part, the walls were perpendicular. Even when they slanted a little, the angle wasn’t much off ninety degrees. Erosion from wind and rain had, over millions of years, cut grooves in the rock that looked like ripples in water. The only sign the canyon wasn’t impregnable was the occasional little heap of rubble where smaller rocks had crumbled and fallen.

She had passed several of those small heaps before the light went on.

A fragile stirring of hope made her stomach tighten as she investigated one scattered pile of rock. It looked as if a larger boulder had fallen from the rim and shattered on impact. She picked up a fist-sized rock and rubbed her thumb over the surface, finding it gritty, the texture of sandpaper. Sandstone, she thought. It was a lovely pink color. It was also soft.

Just to be certain, she banged the rock down on a larger rock, and it broke into several pieces.

This site was no good; it was too steep. She walked along the wall, looking up at the rim and trying to find a place where the wall slanted back just a little. That was all she asked; just a little slant, enough that the angle wasn’t so extreme.

There. One of the ripples curved backward, and when she picked her way through rocks and bushes to investigate she saw the opportunity for which she had been looking. She ran her hand over the rock, exulting in the sandpaper texture of it under her palm. Maybe, just maybe…

She ran back to the camp and grabbed the curling iron out of the bag. Chance hadn’t asked, but the pistol wasn’t the only weapon she carried. Quickly she unscrewed the metal barrel from the handle and removed a knife from the interior. It was a slender blade, made for slicing rather than hacking, but sharp and almost indestructible.

Her idea registered somewhere between being a long shot and just plain crazy, but it was the only idea she’d had that was even remotely possible. At least she would be doing something, rather than just waiting around for a rescue that might never happen.

She needed gloves to protect her hands, but she didn’t have any. Hastily she opened the first-aid box and took out the roll of gauze. She wrapped the gauze around her palms and wove it in and around her fingers, then taped the loose ends. The result was crude but workable, she thought. She had seen the gloves rock climbers wore, with their fingers and thumbs left free; this makeshift approximation would have to do. She might wear blisters on her hands, anyway, but that was a small price to pay if they could get out of here.

Knife in hand, she went back to her chosen point of attack and tried to figure out the best way to do this. She needed another rock, she realized, one that wasn’t soft. Anything that crumbled would be useless. She scouted around and finally found a pitted, dark gray rock that was about the size of a grapefruit, heavy enough to do the job.

Digging the point of the knife into the soft sandstone of the wall, she gripped the rock with her right hand and pounded it against the knife, driving the blade deeper. She jerked the blade out, moved it a little to the right, and pounded it in again. The next time she drove the knife in at a right angle to the original gouge, and hammered it downward. A chunk of sandstone broke loose, leaving a nice little gouge in the rock.

“This just might work,” Sunny said aloud, and set herself to the task. She didn’t let herself think how long it would take to carve handholds out of the rock all the way to the top, or if it was even possible. She was going to try; she owed it to Margreta, and to herself, to do everything she could to get out of this canyon.

Almost two hours later, the sharp crack of a pistol shot reverberated through the canyon, startling her so much that she nearly fell. She clung to the rock, her cheek pressed against the rough surface. Her heart pounded from the close call. She wasn’t that high, only about ten feet, but the canyon floor was jagged With rock, and any fall was certain to cause injuries.

She wiped the sweat from her face. The temperature was rising by the minute, and the rock was getting hotter and hotter. Standing with her toes wedged into the gouges she had hammered out of the rock, she had to lean inward against the rock to brace herself, because she had to have both hands free to wield the knife and the rock. She couldn’t put nearly as much effort into it now, or the impact would jar her from her perch.

Panting, she reached over her head and blindly swung the rock. Because she had to press herself to the rock to keep her balance, she couldn’t see to aim. Sometimes she hit the target and the knife bit into the rock; sometimes she hit her own hand. There had to be a better way to do this, but she couldn’t think of one. She was an expert at working with what she had; she could do it this time, too. All she had to do was be careful, and patient.

“I can do this,” she whispered.

Chance carried the skinned and cleaned rabbit back to the camp. He had also found a prickly pear cactus and cut off two of the stems, sticking himself several times as he removed the spines. The prickle pear was both edible and nutritious; it was usually fried, but he figured roasting would do just as well.

His temper had cooled. All right, so she had taken him in. He hadn’t blown the plan; everything was still on track. All he had to do was remember not to be fooled by that oh-so-charming face she presented to the world and the plan would work just as he had expected. Maybe he couldn’t make her love him, but he could make her think she did, and that was all he needed. A little trust, a little information, and he was in business.

He stepped beneath the overhang, grateful for the relief the shade afforded, and took off his sunglasses. Sunny wasn’t here. He turned around and surveyed what he could see of the canyon but couldn’t spot her. Her green T-shirt and beige jeans didn’t exactly stand out in the terrain, he thought, and abruptly realized what effective camouflage her clothing was. Had she chosen it for that exact purpose? She must have; everything she carried in that bag had been geared toward survival, so why should her clothing be any different?

“Sunny!” he called. His voice echoed, then died. He listened, but there was no answer.

Damn it, where was she?

The fire had died down, which meant she hadn’t tended it in quite a while. He bent down and added more sticks, then skewered the rabbit and set it on the spit, more to keep it away from insects than anything else. The fire was too low to cook it, but the smoke wafting over the meat would give it a good flavor. He wrapped the prickly pear stems in his handkerchief and walked back under the overhang to keep them out of the sun until he was ready to cook them.

The first thing he saw was the open first aid kit.

Alarm punched him in the gut. The paper wrapping had been torn off the roll of gauze; the tape was lying in the lid of the box, and it had also been used, because the end had been left free rather than stuck back to the roll.

Another detail caught his eyes. The curling iron had been taken apart; the two halves of it lay in the sand.

He swore viciously. Damn it, he should have remembered the curling iron and not assumed the pistol was the only weapon she had. She couldn’t have hidden another pistol in the curling iron, but a knife would fit.

He didn’t see any blood, but she must have injured herself somehow. Where in the hell was she?

“Sunny!” he roared as he stepped back out into the sun. Only silence answered him.

He studied the ground. Her footprints were everywhere, of course, but he saw where she had walked to her bag, presumably to get the first aid kit; then the prints led back out into the canyon. She was headed toward the plane.

He wasn’t aware of reaching for his pistol. He was so accustomed to it that he didn’t notice the weight of it in his hand as he followed her tracks, everything in him focusing on finding her.

If it hadn’t been for the tracks, he would have missed her. She was almost at the far end of the canyon, past where the plane sat baking in the sun. The rock walls were scored with hundreds of cuts, and she was tucked inside one of them, clinging to the rock about a dozen feet off the ground.

Astonishment, anxiety, relief and anger all balled together in his gut. In speechless fury he watched her reach over her head and stab a wicked-looking blade into the soft rock, then, still keeping her face pressed against the hot stone, use another rock to try to pound the knife deeper. She hit her hand instead of the knife handle, and the curse she muttered made his eyebrows rise.

Strips of gauze were wound around her hands. He didn’t know if she had wrapped her hands because she had hurt them, or if the gauze was an effort to keep them from being hurt. All he knew was that if she fell she would likely maim herself on the rocks, and that he really, really wanted to spank her.

He ruthlessly restrained the urge to yell at her. The last thing he wanted to do was startle her off her precarious perch. Instead, he stuck the pistol in his waistband at the small of his back and worked his way over until he was standing beneath her, so he could catch her if she fell.

He forced himself to sound calm. “Sunny, I’m right beneath you. Can you get down?”

She stopped with her right hand drawn back to deliver another blow with the rock. She didn’t look down at him. “Probably,” she said. “It has to be easier than getting up here.”

He was fairly certain what she was doing, but the sheer magnitude of the task, the physical impossibility of it, left him stunned. Just for confirmation he asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m cutting handholds in the rock, so we can climb out of here.” She sounded grim, as if she also realized the odds against success.

His hands clenched into fists as he fought for control. He looked up at the towering wall, at the expanse stretching above her. The dozen feet she had climbed was only about one tenth of the distance needed—and it was the easiest tenth.

He put his hand on the rock and almost jerked back at the heat radiating from it. A new concern gnawed at him. He didn’t yell at her that this was the stupidest idea he’d ever heard of, the way he wanted. Instead, he said, “Sweetheart, the rock’s too hot. Come down before you’re burned.”

She laughed, but without her usual humor. “It’s too late.”

To hell with cajoling. “Throw the knife down and get off that damn rock,” he barked in sharp command.

To his surprise, she dropped the knife, then the rock she held in her right hand, tossing both to the side so they wouldn’t land near him. Every muscle in her body was taut with strain as she reached for the handholds she had cut and began to work her way down, feeling with her toes for the gouges. He stood directly beneath her, reaching up for her in case she fell. The muscles in her slender arms flexed, and he realized anew just how strong she was. One didn’t get that kind of strength with a once-in-a-while jog or the occasional workout in a gym. It took dedication and time; he knew, because he kept himself in top physical condition. Her normal routine would be at least an hour of work, maybe two, every day. For all he knew, while he had been checking the traps she had been doing pushups.

For all the gut-deep burn of his anger, it was overridden by his concern as he watched her inch her way down the face of the rock. She was careful and took her time, despite the fact that he knew the rock was scorching her fingers. He didn’t speak again, not wanting to distract her; he simply waited, not very patiently, for her to get within his reach.

When she did, he caught her feet and guided them to the next gouges. “Thanks,” she panted, and worked her way down another foot.

That was enough. He caught her around the knees and scooped her off the rock. She shrieked, fighting for her balance, but now that he had her in his grip he wasn’t about to let her go. Before she could catch her breath, he turned her and tossed her face down over his shoulder.

“Hey!” The indignant protest was muffled against his back.

“Just shut up,” he said between his teeth as he dipped down to pick up her knife, then set off for the camp. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Good. You had too much hell in you, anyway.” She clutched him around the waist to steady herself. He just hoped she didn’t grab the pistol out of his waistband and shoot him, since it was so close to hand.

“Damn it, don’t you dare joke about it!” Her upturned bottom was very close to his hand. Temptation gnawed at him. Now that he had her down, he was shaking, and he wanted some retribution for having been put through that kind of anxiety. He put his hand on her butt and indulged in a few moments of fantasy, which involved her jeans around her knees and her bent over his lap.

He realized he was stroking his palm over the round curves of her buttocks and regretfully gave up on his fantasy. Some things weren’t going to happen. After he tended her hands and got through raising hell with her for taking such a risk, he fully intended to burn off his fright and anger with an hour or two on the blanket with her.

How could he still want her so much? This wasn’t part of the job; he could live with it, if it had been. This was obsession, deep and burning and gut-twisting. He had tried to put a light face on it, for her benefit, but if she had been more experienced, she would have known a man didn’t make love to a woman five times during the night just because she was available. At this rate, those three dozen condoms wouldn’t last even a week. He had already used six, and it might take two or three more to get him settled down after the scare she had given him.

The hard fact of it was, a man didn’t make love to a woman that often unless he was putting his brand on her.

This wouldn’t work. Couldn’t work. He had to get himself under control, stay focused on the job.

He heard her sniffing as they neared the camp. “Are you crying?” he demanded incredulously.

She sniffed again. “Don’t be silly. What’s that smell?” She inhaled deeply. “It smells like…food.”

Despite himself, a smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “I shot a rabbit.”

There was a small disruption on his shoulder as she twisted around so she could see the fire. Her squeal of delight almost punctured his eardrums, and his smile grew. He couldn’t stop himself from enjoying her; he had never before met anyone who took such joy in life, who was so vibrantly alive herself. How she could be a part of a network devoted to taking lives was beyond his understanding.

He dumped her on the ground under the overhang and squatted beside her, taking both her hands in his and turning them up for his inspection. He barely controlled a wince. Her fingers were not only scorched from the hot rock, they were scraped raw and bleeding.

Fury erupted in him again, a flash fire of temper at seeing the damage she had done to herself. He surged to his feet. “Of all the stupid, lame-brained…! What in hell were you thinking? You weren’t thinking at all, from the looks of it! Damn it, Sunny, you risked your life pulling this stupid stunt—”

“It wasn’t stupid,” she shouted, shooting to her feet to face him, her brilliant eyes narrowed. She clenched her bleeding hands into fists. “I know the risks. I also know it’s my only hope of getting out of this damn canyon before it’s too late!”

“Too late for what?” he yelled back. “Do you have a date this weekend or something?” The words were heavy with sarcasm.

“Yeah! It just so happens I do!” Breathing hard, she glared at him. “My sister is supposed to call.”

Chapter 10

A sister? Chance stared at her. His investigation hadn’t turned up any information about a sister. The Millers hadn’t had any children of their own, and he had found adoption papers only on Sunny. his mind raced. “You said you didn’t have any family.”

She gave him a stony look. “Well, I have a sister.”

Yeah, right. “You’d risk your life for a phone call?” Some terrorist act was being planned after all, he thought with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. That was why she’d been lugging the tent around. He didn’t know how the tent fit into the scheme, but evidently she had been planning to drop out of sight.

“I would for this one.” She wheeled away, every line of her body tense. “I have to try. Margreta calls my cell phone every week at the same time. It’s how we know the other is still alive.” She turned back to him and shouted, “If I don’t answer that call, she’ll think I’m dead!”

Whoa. Once again, the pieces of the puzzle that was Sunny had been scattered. Margreta? Was that a code name? He searched his memory, which was extensive, but couldn’t find anything or anyone named Margreta. Sunny was so damned convincing….

“Why would she think you’re dead?” he demanded. “You might just be in a place that doesn’t have a signal—like here. What is she, some kind of nutcase?”

“I make certain I’m always somewhere that has a signal. And, no, she isn’t a nutcase!” She threw the words back at him like bullets, her mouth twisted with fury at him, at the situation, at her own helplessness. “Her problem is the same as mine—we’re our father’s daughters!”

His pulse leaped. There it was, out in the open, just like that. He hadn’t needed seduction; anger had done the job. “Your father?” he asked carefully.

Tears glittered in her eyes, dripped down her cheeks. She dashed them away with a furious gesture. “Our father,” she said bitterly. “We’ve been running from him all our lives.”

The pieces of the puzzle jumped about a little more, as if a fist had slammed down and jarred them. Easy, he cautioned himself. Don’t seem too interested. Find out exactly what she means; she could be referring to his influence. “What do you mean, running?”

“I mean running. Hiding.” She wiped away more tears. “Father dear is a terrorist. He’ll kill us if he ever finds us.”

Chance gently cleaned her hands with the alcohol wipes from the first aid kit, soothed the red places with burn ointment and the raw spots with antibiotic cream. The gauze she’d wrapped around her hands had protected her palms, but her fingers were a mess. Sunny felt a little bewildered. One minute they had been yelling at each other, the next she had been locked against him, his arms like a vise around her. His heart had been pounding like a runaway horse.

Since then he had been as tender as a mother with a child, rocking her in comfort, cuddling her, drying her tears. The emotional firestorm that had burned through her had left her feeling numb and disoriented; she let him do whatever he wanted without offering a protest, not that she had any reason to protest. It felt good to lean on him.

Satisfied with the care he had given her hands, he left her sitting on the rock while he added some fuel to the fire and turned the rabbit on the spit. Coming back under the overhang, he spread the blanket against the wall, scooped her into his arms, and settled on the blanket with her cradled against him. He propped his back against the wall, arranged her so she was draped half across his lap and lifted her face for a light kiss.

She managed a shaky smile. “What was that? A kiss to make it better?”

He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip, his expression strangely intent as if studying her. “Something like that.”

“I’m sorry for crying all over you. I usually handle things better than this.”

“Tell me what’s going on,” he said quietly. “What’s this about your father?”

She leaned her head on his shoulder, grateful for his strength. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? But he’s the leader of a terrorist group that has done some awful things. His name is Crispin Hauer.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Chance lied.

“He operates mostly in Europe, but his network extends to the States. He even has someone planted in the FBI.” She was unable to keep the raw bitterness out of her voice. “Why do you think I don’t have a license for that pistol? I don’t know who the plant is, how high he ranks, but I do know he’s in a position to learn if the FBI gets any information Hauer wants. I didn’t want to be in any database, in case he found out who adopted me and what name I’m using.”

“So he doesn’t know who you are?”

She shook her head. She had spent a lifetime keeping all her fear and worry bottled up inside her, and now she couldn’t seem to stop it from spewing out. “My mother took Margreta and left him before I was born. I’ve never met him. She was five months pregnant with me when she ran.”

“What did she do?”

“She managed to lose herself. America’s a big place. She stayed on the move, changing her name, paying with cash she had taken from his safe. When I was born, she intended to have me by herself, in the motel room she’d taken for the night. But I wouldn’t come, the labor just kept on and on, and she knew something was wrong. Margreta was hungry and scared, crying. So she called 911.”

He wound a strand of golden hair around his finger. “And was there something wrong?”

“I was breech. She had a C-section. While she was groggy from the drugs, they asked her the father’s name and she didn’t think to make up a name, just blurted out his. So that’s how I got into the system, and how he knows about me.”

“How do you know he knows?”

“I was almost caught, once.” She shivered against him, and he held her closer. “He sent three men. We were in…Indianapolis, I think. I was five. Mom had bought an old car and we were going somewhere. We were always on the move. We got boxed in, in traffic. She saw them get out of their cars. She had taught us what to do if she ever told us to run. She dragged us out of the car and screamed ‘Run!’ I did, but Margreta started crying and grabbed Mom. So Mom took off running with Margreta. Two men went after them, and one came after me.” She began shuddering. “I hid in an alley, under some garbage. I could hear him calling me, his voice soft like he was singing. ‘Sonia, Sonia.’ Over and over. They knew my name. I waited forever, and finally he went away.”

“How did your mother find you again? Or was she caught?”

“No, she and Margreta got away, too. Mom taught herself street smarts, and she never went anywhere that she wasn’t always checking out ways to escape.”

He knew what that was like, Chance thought.

“I stayed in my hiding place. Mom had told us that sometimes, after we thought they were gone, the bad men would still be there watching, waiting to see if we came out. So I thought the bad men might be watching, and I stayed as still as I could. I don’t think it was winter, because I wasn’t wearing a coat, but when night fell I got cold. I was scared and hungry and didn’t know if I’d ever see Mom again. I didn’t leave, though, and finally I heard her calling me. She must have noticed where I ran and worked her way back when she thought it was safe. All I knew was that she’d found me. After that was when she decided it wasn’t safe to keep us with her anymore, so she began looking for someone to adopt us.”

Chance frowned. He hadn’t found a record of any adoption but hers. “The same family took both of you?”

“Yes, but I was the only one adopted. Margreta wouldn’t.” Her voice was soft. “Margreta…remembers things. She had lost everything except Mom, so I guess she clung more than I did. She had a hard time adapting.” She shrugged. “Having grown up the way I did, I can adjust to pretty much anything.”

Meaning she had taught herself not to cling. Instead, with her sunny personality, she had found joy and beauty wherever she could. He held her closer, letting her cling to him. “But…you said he was trying to kill you. It sounds as if he was trying very hard to get you back.”

She shook her head. “He was trying to get Margreta back. He didn’t know me. I was just a means he could have used to force Mom to give Margreta back to him. That’s all he would want with me now, to find Margreta. If I was caught, when he found out I don’t know where she is, I’d be worthless to him.”

“You don’t know?” he asked, startled.

“It’s safer that way. I haven’t seen her in years.” Unconscious longing for her sister was in her voice. “She has my cell phone number, and she calls me once a week. So long as I answer the call, she knows everything is all right.”

“But you don’t know how to get in touch with her?”

“No. I can’t tell them what I don’t know. I move around a lot, so a cell phone was the best way for us. I keep an apartment in Chicago, the tiniest, cheapest place I could find, but I don’t live there. It’s more of a decoy than anything else. I suppose if I live anywhere it’s in Atlanta, but I take all the assignments I can get. I seldom spend more than one night at a time in one place.”

“How would he find you now, since your name has been changed? Unless he knows who adopted you, but how could he find that out?” Chance himself had found her only because of the incident in Chicago, when her courier package was stolen and he checked her out. As soon as he said it, though, he knew that the mole in the FBI—and he would damn sure find out who that was—had probably done the same checking. Had he gone as deep in the layers of bureaucracy as Chance had, to the point of hacking into those sealed adoption records? Sunny’s cover might have been blown. He wondered if she realized it yet.

“I don’t know. I just know I can’t afford to assume I’m safe until I hear he’s dead.”

“What about your mom? And Margreta?”

“Mom’s dead.” Sunny paused, and he felt her inhale as if bracing herself. “They caught her. She committed suicide rather than give up any information on us. She had told us she would—and she did.”

She stopped, and Chance gave her time to deal with the bleakness he heard in her voice. Finally she said, “Margreta is using another name, I just don’t know what it is. She has a heart condition, so it’s better if she stays in one location.”

Margreta was living a fairly normal life, he thought, while Sunny was on the move, always looking over her shoulder. That was what she had known since birth, the way she had been taught to handle the situation. But what about the years they had spent with the Millers? Had her life been normal then?

She answered those questions herself. “I miss having a home,” she said wistfully. “But if you stay in one place you get to know people, form relationships. I couldn’t risk someone else’s life that way. God for bid I should get married, have children. If Hauer ever found me—” She broke off, shuddering at the thought of what Hauer was capable of doing to someone she loved in order to get the answers he wanted.

One thing didn’t make sense, Chance thought. Hauer was vicious and crazy and cunning, and would go to any lengths to recover his daughter. But why Margreta, and not Sunny, too. “Why is he so fixated on your sister?”

“Can’t you guess?” she asked rawly, and began shuddering again. “That’s why Mom took Margreta and ran. She found him with her, doing…things. Margreta was only four. He had evidently been abusing her for quite awhile, maybe even most of her life. By then Mom had already found out some of what he was, but she hadn’t worked up the nerve to leave. After she found him with Margreta, she didn’t have a choice.” Her voice dropped to an agonized whisper. “Margreta remembers.”

Chance felt sick to his stomach. So in addition to being a vicious, murdering bastard, Hauer was also a pervert, a child molester. Killing was too good for him; he deserved to be dismembered—slowly.

Worn out by both physical labor and her emotional storm, Sunny drifted to sleep. Chance held her, content to let her rest. The fire needed more fuel, but so what? Holding her was more important. Thinking his way through this was more important.

First and foremost, he believed every word she’d said. Her emotions had been too raw and honest for any of it to have been faked. For the first time, all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, and his relief was staggering. Sunny was innocent. She had nothing to do with her father, had never seen him, had spent her entire life running from him. That was why she lugged around a tent, with basic survival provisions; she was ready to disappear at any given moment, to literally go to ground and live out in the forest somewhere until she thought it was safe to surface and rebuild her life yet again.

She had no way of contacting Hauer. The only way to get to him, then, was to use her as bait. And considering how she felt about her father, she would never, under any circumstances, agree to any plan that brought her to his attention.

He would have to do it without her agreement, Chance thought grimly. He didn’t like using her, but the stakes were too high to abandon. Hauer couldn’t be left free to continue wreaking his destruction on the world. How many innocent people would die this year alone if he wasn’t caught?

There was no point in staying here any longer; he’d found out what he needed to know. Zane wouldn’t check in again, though, until tomorrow morning, so they were stuck until then. He adjusted Sunny in his arms and rested his face against the top of her head. He would use the time to formulate his game plan—and to use as many of those condoms as possible.

“Get away from me,” Sunny grumbled the next morning, turning her head away from his kiss. She pried his hand off her breast. “Don’t touch me, you—you mink.”

Chance snorted with laughter.

She pulled his chest hair.

“Ouch!” He drew back as far as he could in the small confines of the tent. “That hurt.”

“Good! I don’t think I can walk.” Quick as a snake, her hand darted out and pulled his chest hair again. “This way, you can have as much fun as I’m having.”

“Sunny,” he said in a cajoling tone.

“Don’t ‘Sunny’ me,” she warned, fighting her way into her clothes. Since they barely had room to move, he began dodging elbows and knees, and his hands slipped over some very interesting places. “Stop it! I mean it, Chance! I’m too sore for any more monkey business.”

More to tease her than anything else, he zeroed in on an interesting place that had her squealing. She shot out of the tent, and he collapsed on his back, laughing—until she raised the tent flap and dashed some cold water on him.

“There,” she said, hugely satisfied by his yelp. “One cold shower, just what you needed.” Then she ran.

If she thought the fact that he was naked would hamper his pursuit, she found out differently. He snatched up a bottle of water as he passed by their cache of supplies and caught her before she had gone fifty yards. She was laughing like a maniac, otherwise she might have gotten away. He held her with one arm and poured the water over her head. It was ice-cold from having been left out all night, and she shrieked and sputtered and giggled, clinging to him when her legs went weak from so much laughter.

“Too sore to walk, huh?” he demanded.

“I w-wasn’t walking,” she said, giggling as she pushed her wet hair out of her face. Cold droplets splattered on him, and he shivered.

“Damn, it’s cold,” he said. The sun was barely up, so the temperature was probably in the forties.

She slapped his butt. “Then get some clothes on. What do you think this is, a nudist colony?”

He draped his arm around her shoulders, and they walked back to the camp. Her playfulness delighted him; hell, everything about her delighted him, from her wit to her willingness to laugh. And the sex—God, the sex was unbelievable. He didn’t doubt she was sore, because he was. Last night had been a night to remember.

When she awakened yesterday afternoon she had been naturally melancholy, the normal aftermath of intense emotions. He hadn’t talked much, letting her relax. She went with him to check the traps, which were still empty, and they had bathed together. After a quiet supper of rabbit and cactus they went to bed, and he had devoted the rest of the night to raising her spirits. His efforts had worked.

“How are your hands?” he asked. If she could pull his chest hairs and slap his butt, the antibiotic cream must have worked wonders.

She held them out, palms up, so he could see. The redness from the burns was gone, and her raw fingertips looked slick and shiny. “I’ll wrap Band-Aids around them before I get started,” she said.

“Get started doing what?”

She gave him a startled look. “Cutting handholds in the rock, of course.”

He was stunned. He stared at her, unable to believe what he was hearing. “You’re not climbing back on that damn wall!” he snapped.

Her eyebrows rose in what he now recognized as her “the-hell-you-say” look. “Yes, I am.”

He ground his teeth. He couldn’t tell her they would be “rescued” today, but no way was he letting her wear herself out hacking holes in rock or put herself at that kind of risk.

“I’ll do it,” he growled.

“I’m smaller,” she immediately objected. “It’s safer for me.”

She was trying to protect him again. He felt like beating his head against a rock in frustration.

“No, it isn’t,” he barked. “Look, there’s no way you can cut enough handholds for us to climb out of here in the next two days. You got, what, twelve feet yesterday? If you managed twelve feet a day—and you wouldn’t get that much done today, with your hands the way they are—it would take you over a week to reach the top. That’s if—if— you didn’t fall and kill yourself.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” she shot back. “Just give up?”

“Today you aren’t going to do a damn thing. You’re going to let your hands heal if I have to tie you to a rock, is that clear?”

She looked as if she wanted to argue, but he was a lot bigger than she was, and maybe she could tell by his expression that he meant exactly what he said. “All right,” she muttered. “Just for today.”

He hoped she would keep her word, because he would have to leave her alone while he went to the spot where he signaled Zane. He would just have to risk it, but there would be hell to pay if he came back to find her on that rock.

He quickly dressed, shivering, and they ate another cold breakfast of water and nutrition bar, since there wasn’t anything left of the rabbit from the night before. Tomorrow morning, he promised himself, breakfast would be bacon and eggs, with a mountain of hash browns and a pot of hot coffee.

“I’m going to check the traps,” he said, though he knew there wouldn’t be anything in them. When he’d checked them the afternoon before, knowing they would be leaving here today, he had quietly released them so they couldn’t be sprung. “Just tend to the fire and keep it smoking. You take it easy today, and I’ll wash our clothes this afternoon.” That was a safe promise to make.

“It’s a deal,” she said, but he could tell she was thinking about Margreta.

He left her sitting by the fire. It was a good ten-minute walk to the designated spot, but he hurried, unwilling to leave her to her own devices for so long. Taking the laser light from his pocket, he aimed it toward the rock on the rim and began flashing the pickup signal. Immediately Zane flashed back asking for confirmation, to make certain there wasn’t an error. After all, they hadn’t expected this to happen so fast. Chance flashed the signal again and this time received an okay.

He dropped the light back in his pocket. He didn’t know how long it would take for Zane to arrange the pickup, but probably not long. Knowing Zane, everything was already in place.

He was walking back to the camp when the small twin-engine plane flew over. A grin spread across his face. That was Zane for you!

He began running, knowing Sunny would be beside herself. He heard her shrieking before he could see her; then she came into view, jumping in her glee as she came to meet him. “He saw me!” she screamed, laughing and crying at the same time. “He waggled the wings! He’ll come back for us, won’t he?”

He caught her as she hurled herself into his arms and couldn’t stop himself from planting a long, hard kiss on that laughing mouth. “He’ll come back,” he said. “Unless he thought you were just waving hello at him.” The opportunity to tease her was too great to resist, considering she had pulled his chest hair and poured cold water on him. He’d retaliated for the cold water; this was for the hair-pulling.

She looked stricken, the laughter wiped from her face as if it had never been. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

He didn’t have the heart to keep up the pretense. “Of course he’ll come back,” he chided. “Waggling the wings was the signal that he saw you and would send help.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, blinking back tears.

“I promise.”

“I’ll get you for this.”

He had to kiss her again, and he didn’t stop until she had melted against him, her arms locked around his neck. He hadn’t thought he would be interested in sex for quite a while, not after last night, but she proved him wrong.

He huffed out a breath and released her. “Stop manhandling me, you hussy. We have to get packed.”

The smile she gave him was brilliant, like the sun rising, and it warmed him all the way through.

They gathered their belongings. Chance returned her pistol to her, and watched her break it down and store the pieces in their hiding places. Then they walked back to the plane and waited.

Rescue came in the form of a helicopter, the blades beating a thumping rhythm in the desert air, the canyon echoing with the sound. It hovered briefly over them, then lowered itself like a giant mosquito. Sand whipped into their air, stinging them, and Sunny hid her face against his shirt.

A sixtyish man with a friendly face and graying beard hopped out of the bird. “You folks need some help?” he called.

“Sure do,” Chance answered.

When he was closer, the man stuck out his hand. “Charlie Jones, Civil Air Patrol. We’ve been looking for you for a couple of days. Didn’t expect to find you this far south.”

“I veered off course looking for a place to land. Fuel pump went out.”

“In that case, you’re mighty lucky. That’s rough territory out there. This might be the only spot in a hundred miles when you could have landed. Come on. I expect you folks are ready for a shower and some food.”

Chance held out his hand to Sunny, and she gave him that brilliant smile again as she put her hand in his and they walked to the helicopter.

Chapter 11

Sunny was almost dizzy with mingled relief and regret; relief because she wouldn’t miss Margreta’s call, regret because this time with Chance, even under such trying conditions, had been the happiest, most fulfilling few days of her life and they were now over. She had known from the beginning that their time together was limited; once they were back in the regular world, all the old rules came back into play.

She couldn’t, wouldn’t risk his life by letting him be a part of hers. He had given her two nights of bliss, and a lifetime of memories. That would have to be enough, no matter how much she was already aching at the thought of walking away from him and never seeing him again. At least now she knew what it was to love a man, to revel in his existence, and she was richer for it. She wouldn’t have traded these few days with him for any amount of money, no matter the price in loneliness she would have to pay.

So she held his hand all during the helicopter flight to a small, ramshackle air field. The only building was made of corrugated metal, rounded at the top like a Quonset hut, with a wooden addition, housing the office, added to one side. If the addition had ever seen a coat of paint, the evidence of it had long since been blasted off by the wind-driven sand. After living under a rock for three days, Sunny thought the little field looked like heaven.

Seven airplanes, of various makes and vintage, were parked with almost military precision along one side of the air strip. Charlie Jones landed his helicopter on a concrete pad behind the corrugated building. Three men, one wiping his greasy hands on a stained red rag, left the building by the back door and walked toward them, ducking their heads against the turbulence of the rotor blades.

Charlie took off his headset and hopped out of the chopper, smiling. “Found ’em,” he called cheerfully to the approaching trio. To Chance and Sunny he said, “The two on the left fly CAP with me. Saul Osgood, far left, is the one who spotted your smoke this morning and radioed in your position. Ed Lynch is the one in the middle. The one with the greasy hands is Rabbit Warren, the mechanic here. His real name’s Jerome, but he’ll fight you if you call him that.”

Sunny almost laughed aloud. She controlled the urge, but she was careful not to look at Chance as they shook hands with the three men and introduced themselves.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw your bird in that little bitty narrow canyon,” Saul Osgood said, shaking his head after Chance told them what had happened. “How you ever found it is a miracle. And to make a dead stick landing—” He shook his head again. “Someone was sure looking out for you, is all I can say.”

“So you think it was your fuel pump went out, huh?” Rabbit Warren asked as they walked into the hangar.

“Everything else checked out.”

“It’s a Skylane, right?”

“Yeah.” Chance told him the model, and Rabbit stroked his lean jaw.

“I might have a pump for that. There was a feller in here last year flying a Skylane. He ordered some parts for it, then left and never did come back for ’em. I’ll check while you folks are refreshing yourselves.”

If “refreshing” themselves had anything to do with a bathroom, Sunny was more than ready. Chance gave her the first turn, and she almost crooned with delight at the copious water that gushed from the faucet at a turn of the handle. And a flush toilet! She was in heaven.

After Chance had his turn, they indulged in ice-cold soft drinks from a battered vending machine. A snack machine stood beside it, and Sunny surveyed the offerings with an eager eye. “How much change do you have?” she asked Chance.

He delved his hand into his front pocket and pulled out his change, holding it out for Sunny to see. She picked out two quarters and fed them into the machine, punched a button, and a pack of cheese and crackers fell to the tray.

“I thought you’d go for a candy bar,” Chance said as he fed more quarters into the machine and got a pack of peanuts.

“That’s next.” She raised her eyebrows. “You didn’t think I was going to stop with cheese and crackers, did you?”

Ed Lynch opened the door to the office. “Is there anyone you need to call? We’ve notified the FAA and called off the search, but if you have family you want to talk to, feel free to use the phone.”

“I need to call the office,” Sunny said, pulling a wry face. She had a good excuse—a very good one—for not making her delivery, but the bottom line was that a customer was unhappy.

Chance waited until she was on the phone, then strolled over to where Rabbit was making a show of looking for a fuel pump. His men were good, Chance thought; they had played this so naturally they should have been on the stage. Of course, subterfuge was their lives, just as it was his.

“Everything’s good,” Chance said quietly. “You guys can clear out after Charlie takes us back to the canyon with the fuel pump.”

Rabbit pulled a greasy box from a makeshift shelf that was piled with an assortment of parts and tools. Over Chance’s shoulder he eyed Sunny through the windowed door to the office. “You pulled a real hardship assignment this time, boss,” he said admiringly. “That’s the sweetest face I’ve seen in a while.”

“There’s a sweet person behind it, too,” Chance said as he took the box. “She’s not part of the organization.”

Rabbit’s eyebrows went up. “So all this was for nothing.”

“No, everything is still a go. The only thing that’s changed is her role. Instead of being the key, she’s the bait. She’s been on the run from Hauer her entire life. If he knows where she is, he’ll come out of hiding.” He glanced around to make certain she was still on the phone. “Spread the word that we’re going to be extra careful with her, make sure she doesn’t get hurt. Hauer has already caused enough damage in her life.”

And he himself was going to cause more, Chance thought bleakly. As terrified as she was of Hauer, when she learned Chance had deliberately leaked her location to the man she was going to go ballistic. That would definitely be the end of this relationship, but he’d known from the beginning this was only temporary. Like her, he wasn’t in any position for permanent ties. Sunny’s circumstances would change when her father was gone, but Chance’s wouldn’t; he would move on to another crisis, another security threat.

Just because he was her first lover didn’t mean he would be her last.

The idea shot a bolt of pure rage through him. Damn it, she was his—he caught the possessive thought and strangled it. Sunny wasn’t his; she was her own person, and if she found happiness in her life with some other man, he should be happy for her. She more than deserved anything good that came her way.

He wasn’t happy. Her laughter, her passion—he wanted it all for himself. Knowing he couldn’t have her was already eating a huge hole out of his insides, but she deserved far better than a mongrel with blood on his hands. He had chosen his world, and he was well-suited for it. He was accustomed to living a lie, to pretending to be someone he wasn’t, to always staying in the shadows. Sunny was…sunny, both by name and by nature. He would enjoy her while he had her—by God, he’d enjoy her—but in the end he knew he would have to walk away.

Sunny ended the call and left the office. Hearing the door close, he turned to watch her approach, and he let himself savor the pleasure of just watching her.

She wrinkled her nose. “Everyone’s glad the plane didn’t crash, that I’m a live—but the fact that I didn’t die makes it a little less forgivable that I didn’t deliver the package on time. The customer still wants it, though, so I still have to go to Seattle.”

She came to him as naturally as if they had been together for years, and just as naturally he found himself slipping his arm around her slender waist. “Screw ’em,” he said dismissively. He lifted the box. “Guess what I have.”

She beamed. “The keys to the kingdom.”

“Close enough. Charlie’s going to take me back to the plane so I can swap out the fuel pump. Do you want to go with me, or stay here and rest until I get back?”

“Go with you,” she said promptly. “I don’t know anything about airplanes, but I can keep you company while you work. Are we coming back here, anyway?”

“Sure. This is as good a place to refuel as any.” Plus she wouldn’t find out they weren’t in Oregon as he’d told her.

“Then I’ll leave my bag here, if that’s all right with Rabbit.” She looked inquiringly at Rabbit, who nodded his head.

“That’ll be just fine, ma’am. Put it in the office and it’ll be as safe as a baby in the womb.”

Sunny walked away to get the bag. She felt safe, Chance realized, otherwise she would never let the bag out of her possession. Except for her worry for Margreta, these last few days she must have felt free, unburdened by the need to constantly look over her shoulder.

He had enjoyed their little adventure, too, every minute of it, because he had known they weren’t in any danger. Sunny made him feel more alive than he ever had before, even when he was angry at her because she had just scared him half to death. And when he was inside her—then he was as close to heaven as he was ever likely to get. The pleasure of making love to her was so intense it was almost blinding.

He grinned to himself as he hefted his own overnight bag. No way was he leaving it here; after all, the condoms were in it. No telling what might happen when he and Sunny were alone.

The afternoon was wearing on when Charlie set the helicopter down in the canyon again. He looked up at the light with an experienced pilot’s eye. “You think you have enough time to get that fuel pump put on before dark?”

“No problem,” Chance said. After all, as he and Charlie both knew, there was nothing wrong with the fuel pump, anyway. He would tinker around for a while, make it look realistic. Sunny wasn’t likely to stand at his elbow the entire time, and if she did he would distract her.

He and Sunny jumped out of the helicopter, and he leaned in to get his bag. “See you in a few hours.”

“If you don’t make it back to the airfield, we know where you are,” Charlie said, saluting.

They ducked away from the turbulence as the helicopter lifted away. Sunny pushed her hair away from her face and looked around the canyon, smiling. “Home again,” she said, and laughed. “Funny how it looks a lot more inviting now that I know we aren’t stuck here.”

“I’m going to miss it,” he said, winking at her. He carried his bag and the box containing the fuel pump over to the plane. “But we’ll find out tonight if a bed is more fun than a tent.”

To his surprise, sadness flashed in her eyes. “Chance…once we’re away from here…” She shook her head. “It won’t be safe.”

He checked for a moment, then very deliberately put down the bag and box. Turning back to her, he put his hands on his hips. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, you can just forget about it. You aren’t dumping me.”

“You know what the situation is! I don’t have a choice.”

“I do. You’re not just a fun screw who was available while we were here. I care about you, Sunny,” he said softly. “When you look over your shoulder, you’re going to see my face. Get used to it.”

Tears welled in her brilliant eyes, filling them with diamonds. “I can’t,” she whispered. “Because I love you. Don’t ask me to risk your life, because I can’t handle it.”

His stomach muscles tightened. He had set out to make her love him, or at least get involved in a torrid affair with him. He had succeeded at doing both. He felt humbled, and exhilarated—and sick, because he was going to betray her.

He had her in his arms before he was aware of moving, and his mouth was on hers. He felt desperate for the taste of her, as if it had been days since he’d kissed her instead of just hours. Her response was immediate and wholehearted, as she rose on her tiptoes to fit her hips more intimately to his. He tasted the salt of her tears and drew back, rubbing his thumbs across her wet cheeks.

He rested his forehead against hers. “You’re forgetting something,” he murmured.

She sniffed. “What?”

“I was a ranger, sweetheart. I’m a little harder to kill than your average guy. You need someone watching your back, and I can do it. Think about it. We probably made the news. When we get to Seattle, don’t be surprised if there’s a television camera crew there. Both our faces will be on television. Besides that, we were reported missing to the FAA, which is federal. Information would have been dug up on both of us. Our names our linked. If the mole in the FBI tumbles to who you are, your father’s goons will be after me, anyway—especially if they can’t find you.”

She went white. “Television?” She looked a lot like her mother; Chance had seen old photos of Pamela Vickery Hauer. Anyone familiar with Pamela would immediately notice the resemblance. As sharp as she was, Sunny also knew the danger of being on television, even a local newscast.

“We’re in this together.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles, then grinned down at her. “Lucky for you, I’m one mean son of a bitch when I need to be—lucky for you, unlucky for them.”

Nothing she said would sway him, Sunny thought with despair late that night as she showered in the hotel suite he had booked them into for the night—a suite because it had more than one exit. He had been exactly right about the television news crew. Crews, she corrected herself. News had been slow that day, so every station in Seattle had jumped on the human-interest story. The problem was, so had both national news channels.

She had evaded the cameras as much as possible, but the reporters had seemed fixated on her, shouting questions at her instead of Chance. She would have thought the female reporters, at least, would be all over Chance, but he’d worn such a forbidding expression that no one had approached him. She hadn’t answered any questions on camera, though at Chance’s whispered suggestion she had given them a quick comment off-camera, for them to use as a filler on their broadcast.

Her one break was that, since it had been so late when they landed, the story didn’t make even the late news. But unless something more newsworthy happened soon, the story would air in just a few hours over millions of breakfast tables countrywide.

She had to assume her cover had been blown. That meant leaving the courier service, moving—not that she had much to move; she had never accumulated many possessions—even changing her name. She would have to build a new identity.

She had always known it could happen, and she had prepared for it, both mentally and with actual paperwork. Changing her name wouldn’t change who she was; it was just a tool to use to escape her father.

The real problem was Chance. She couldn’t shake him, no matter how she tried, and she knew she was good at that kind of thing. She had tried to lose him at the airport, ducking into a cab when his back was turned. But he seemed to have a sixth sense where she was concerned, and he was sliding in the other door before she could give the driver the address where she had to deliver the courier package. He had remained within touching distance of her until they walked into the hotel room, and she had no doubt that, if she opened the bathroom door, she would find him sprawled across the bed, watching her.

In that, she underestimated him. Just as she began lathering her hair, the shower curtain slid back and he stepped naked into the tub with her. “I thought I’d conserve water and shower with you,” he said easily.

“Hah! You’re just afraid I’ll leave if you shower by yourself,” she said, turning her back on him.

A big hand patted her bottom. “You know me so well.”

She fought a smile. Damn him, why did he have to be so well-matched to her in every way? She could, and had, run rings around most people, but not Chance.

She hogged the spray, turning the nozzle down to rinse her hair. He waited until she was finished with that, at least, then adjusted the nozzle upward so the water hit him in the chest. It also hit her full in the face. She sputtered and elbowed him. “This is my shower, and I didn’t invite you. I get control of the nozzle, not you.”

She knew challenging him was a mistake. He said, “Oh, yeah?” and the tussle was on. Before she knew it she was giggling, he was laughing, and the bathroom was splattered with water. She had played more with Chance than she had since she’d been a little girl; she felt lighthearted with him, despite her problems. Their wet, naked bodies slid against each other, and neither of them could get a good grasp on any body part. At least, she couldn’t. She suspected he could have won the tussle at any time simply by using his size and strength and wrapping his arms around her, but he held back and played at her level, as if he were used to restraining his strength to accommodate someone weaker than himself.

His hands were everywhere: on her breasts, her bottom, sliding between her legs while she laughed and batted them away. One long finger worked its way inside her and she squealed, trying to twist away while excitement spiraled wildly through her veins. Their naked wrestling match was having a predictable effect on both of them. She grabbed for the nozzle and aimed the blast of water at his face, and while he was trying to deflect the spray she made her escape, hopping out of the tub and snatching up a towel to wrap around her.

He vaulted out of the tub and slammed the door shut just as she reached for it. “You left the shower running,” she accused, trying to sidetrack him.

“I’m not the one who turned it on.” He grinned and hooked the towel away from her.

“Water’s getting all over the floor.” She tried to sound disapproving.

“It needed mopping, anyway.”

“It did not!” She pushed a strand of dripping wet hair out of her eyes. “We’re going to be kicked out. Water will drip through the floor into the room below and we’ll be kicked out.”

He grabbed her and swung her around so she was facing the shower. “Turn it off, then, if you’re worried.”

She did, because she hated to waste the water, and it was making such a mess. “There, I hope you’re satisfied.”

“Not by a long shot.” He turned her to face him, holding her lips against his and angling her torso away from him, so he could look his fill at her. “Have I told you today how damn sexy you are?”

“Today? You’ve never told me at all!”

“Have so.”

“Have not. When?”

“Last night. Several times.”

She tried not to be entranced by the way water droplets were clinging to his thick dark lashes. “That doesn’t count. Everyone knows you can’t believe anything a man says when he’s in…uh—”

“You?” he supplied, grinning.

She managed a haughty look. “I was going to say ‘extremis,’ but I think that applies only to dying.”

“Close enough.” He looked down at her breasts, his expression altering and the laughter fading. Still holding her anchored to him with one arm, he smoothed a hand up her torso to cup her breasts, and they both watched his long brown fingers curve around the pale globes. “You’re sexy,” he murmured, a slow, dark note entering his voice. She knew that note well, having heard it many times over the past two nights. “And beautiful. Your breasts are all cream-and-rose colored, until I kiss your nipples. Then they pucker up and turn red like they’re begging me to suck them.”

Her nipples tightened at his words, the puckered tips flushing with color. He groaned and bent his dark head, water dripping from his hair onto her skin as he kissed both breasts. She was leaning far back over his arm, supported by his arm around her hips and her own desperate grasp on his shoulders. She didn’t know how much longer she would be able to stand at all. Her loins throbbed, and she gasped for breath.

“And your ass,” he growled. “You have the sweetest little ass.” He turned her around so he could stroke the aforementioned buttocks, shaping his palms to the full, cool curves. Sunny’s legs trembled, and she grabbed the edge of the vanity for support. The cultured marble slab was a good six feet long, and a mirror covered the entire wall behind it. Sunny barely recognized herself in the naked woman reflected there, a woman whose wet hair dripped water down her back and onto the floor. Her expression was etched with desire, her face flushed and her eyes heavy-lidded.

Chance looked up, and his gaze met hers in the mirror. Electricity sparked between them. “And here,” he whispered, sliding one hand around her belly and between her legs. His muscled forearm looked unbelievably powerful against her pale belly, and his big hand totally covered her mound. She felt his fingers sliding between her folds, rubbing her just as she liked. She moaned and collapsed against him, her legs going limp.

“You’re so soft and tight,” the erotic litany continued in her ear. “I can barely get inside you. But once I do—my heart stops. And I can’t breathe. I think I’m going to die, but I can’t, because it feels too good to stop.” His fingers slid farther, and he pressed two of them inside her.

She arched under the lash of sensation, soaring close to climax as his fingers stretched her. She heard herself cry out, a strained cry that told him exactly how near she was to fulfillment.

“Not yet, not yet,” he said urgently, sliding his fingers out of her and bending her forward. He braced her hands on the vanity. “Hold on, sweetheart.”

She didn’t know if he meant to the vanity, or to her control. Both were impossible. “I can’t,” she moaned. Her hips moved, undulating, searching for relief. “Chance, I can’t—please!”

“I’m here,” he said, and he was, dipping down and pushing his muscled thighs between her legs, spreading them. She felt his lower belly against her buttocks, then the smooth, hard entry of his sex. Instinctively she bent forward to aid his penetration, taking all of him deep within her. He began driving, and on the second hard thrust she convulsed, crying out her pleasure. His climax erupted a moment later, and he collapsed over her back, holding himself as deep as he could while he groaned and shook.

Sunny closed her eyes, fighting for breath. Oh God, she loved him so much she ached with it. She wasn’t strong enough to send him away, not even for his own protection. If she had been really trying, she could have gotten away from him, but deep down she knew she couldn’t give him up. Not yet. Soon. She would have to, to keep him safe.

Just one more day, she thought as tears welled. One more. Then she would go.

Chapter 12

Ten days later, Sunny still hadn’t managed to shake him. She didn’t know if she was losing her touch or if army rangers, even ex ones, were very, very good at not being shaken.

They had left Seattle early the next morning. Sunny was too cautious to fly back to Atlanta; as she had feared, the morning newscasts had been splashed with the “real-life romantic adventure” she and Chance had shared. His name was mentioned, but by some perverse quirk his face was never clearly shown; the camera would catch the back of his head, or while he was in a quarter profile, while hers was broadcast from coast to coast.

One of the a.m. news shows even tracked them down at the hotel, awakening them at three in the morning to ask if they would go to the local affiliate studios for a live interview.

“Hell, no,” Chance had growled into the phone before he slammed it down into the cradle.

After that, it had seemed best they remove themselves from the reach of the media. They checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the airport before dawn. The plane was refueled and ready to go. By the time the sun peeked over the Cascades they were in the air. Chance didn’t file a flight plan, so no one had any way of finding out where they were going. Sunny didn’t know herself until they landed in Boise, Idaho, where they refurbished their wardrobes. She always carried a lot of cash, for just such a situation, and Chance seemed to have plenty, too. He still had to use his credit card for refueling, so she knew they were leaving a trail, but those records would show only where they had last been, not where they were going.

Chance’s presence threw her off her plan. She knew how to disappear by herself; Chance and his airplane complicated things.

From a pay phone in Boise, she called Atlanta and resigned her job, with instructions to deposit her last paycheck into her bank. She would have the money wired to her when she needed it. Sometimes, adrift from the familiar life she had fashioned for herself, she wondered if she was overreacting to the possibility anyone would recognize her. Her mother had been dead for over ten years; there were few people in the world able to see the resemblance. The odds had to be astronomical against one of those few people seeing that brief human-interest story that had been shown for only one day.

But she was still alive because her mother had taught her that any odds at all were unacceptable. So she ran, as she had learned how to do in the first five years of her life. After all, the odds were also against her getting pregnant, yet here she was, waiting for a period that hadn’t materialized. They had slipped up twice, only twice: once in the canyon, and in the hotel bathroom in Seattle. The timing hadn’t been great for her to get pregnant even if they hadn’t used protection at all, so why hadn’t her period started? It was due two days ago, and her cycle was relentlessly regular.

She didn’t mention it to Chance. She might just be late, for one of the few times in her life since she’d starting having menstrual periods. She had been terrified when she thought they were going to crash; maybe her emotions had disrupted her hormones. It happened.

She might sprout wings and fly, too, she thought in quiet desperation. She was pregnant. There were no signs other than a late period, but she knew it deep down in her bones, as if on some level her body was communicating with the microscopic embryo it harbored.

It would be so easy just to let Chance handle everything. He was good at this, and she had too much on her mind to be effective. She didn’t think he’d noticed how easily distracted she’d been these past few days, but then, he didn’t know when her period had been due, either.

She had talked to Margreta twice, and told her she was going underground. She would have to arrange for a new cellular account under a different name, with a new number, and do it before the service she now had was disconnected. She had tried to tell Margreta everything that was going on, but her sister, as usual, kept the calls short. Sunny understood. It was difficult for Margreta to handle anything having to do with their father. Maybe one day they would be able to live normal lives, have a normal sisterly relationship; maybe one day Margreta would be able to get past what he had done to her and find some happiness despite him.

Then there was Chance. He had brought sunshine into her life when she hadn’t even known she was living in shadows. She had thought she managed quite well, but it was as if B.C., Before Chance, had been in monochrome. Now, A.C., was in vivid technicolor. She slept in his arms every night. She ate her meals with him, quarreled with him, joked with him, made plans with him—nothing long term, but plans nevertheless. Every day she fell more and more in love with him, when she hadn’t thought it possible.

Sometimes she actually pinched herself, because he was too good to be true. Men like him didn’t come along every day; most women lived their entire lives without meeting a man who could turn their worlds upside down with a glance.

This state of affairs couldn’t last much longer, this aimless drifting. For one thing, it was expensive. Chance wasn’t earning any money while they were flying from one remote airfield in the country to another, and neither was she. She needed to get the paperwork for her new name, get a job, get a new cellular number—and get an obstetrician, which would cost money. She wondered how her mother had managed, with one frightened, traumatized child in tow, pregnant with another, and without any of the survival skills Sunny possessed. Pamela must have spent years in a state of terror, yet Sunny remembered her mother laughing, playing games with them, and making life fun even while she taught them how to survive. She only hoped she could be half as strong as her mother had been.

She was full of wild hopes these days. She hoped she hadn’t been recognized. She hoped her baby would be healthy and happy. Most of all, she hoped she and Chance could build a life together, that he would be thrilled about the baby even though it was unplanned, that he truly cared about her as much as he appeared to. He never actually said he loved her, but it was there in his voice, in his actions, in his eyes and his touch as he made love to her.

Everything had to be all right. It had to. There was too much at stake now.

Sunny slept through the landing as Chance set the plane down in Des Moines. He glanced at her, but she was soundly asleep, like a child, her breathing deep and her cheeks flushed. He let her sleep, knowing what was coming to a head.

The plan was working beautifully. He had arranged for Sunny’s face to be broadcast worldwide, and the bait had been taken immediately. His people had tracked two of Hauer’s men into the country and maintained discreet but constant surveillance on them. Chance hadn’t made it easy for anyone to follow him and Sunny; that would have been too obvious. But he had left a faint trail that, if the bloodhounds were good, they would be able to follow. Hauer’s bloodhounds were good. They had been about a day behind them for about a week now, but until Hauer himself showed up, Chance made sure the hounds never caught up with him.

The news he’d been waiting for had finally come yesterday. Word in the underground of terrorist organizations was that Hauer had disappeared. He hadn’t been seen in a few days, and there was a rumor he was in the States planning something big.

Somehow Hauer had slipped out of Europe and into America without being spotted, but now that Chance knew there was a mole in the FBI helping Hauer, he wasn’t surprised.

Hauer was too smart to openly join his men, but he would be nearby. He was the type who, when Sunny was captured, would want to interrogate this rebellious daughter himself.

Chance would take him apart with his bare hands before he let that happen.

But he would have to let them think they had her, not knowing they were surrounded at all times, at a distance, by his men. Chance just hoped he himself wasn’t shot at the beginning, to get him out of the way. If Hauer’s men were smart, they would realize they could use threats to Chance to keep Sunny inline, and they had proven they were smart. This was the risky part, but he had taken all the safeguards he could without tipping his hand.

His interlude with Sunny would end tonight, one way or another. If all went well, they would both live through it, and she would be free to live her life out in the open. He just hoped that one day she wouldn’t hate him, that she would realize he had done what he had to do in order to capture Hauer. Who knows? Maybe one day he would meet her again.

He guided the Cessna to a stop in its designated spot and killed the engine. Sunny slept on, despite the sudden silence. Maybe he’d cost her too much sleep and it had finally caught up with her, he thought, smiling despite his inner tension. He had glutted himself with sex for the past two weeks, as if subconsciously he had been trying to stockpile memories and sensations for the time when she was no longer there. But as often as he’d had her, he still wanted her. Again. More. He was half hard right now, just thinking about her.

Gently he shook her, and she opened her sleepy eyes with a look of such trust and love that his heart leaped. She sat up, stretching and looking around. “Where are we?”

“Des Moines.” Puzzled, he said, “I told you where we were going.”

“I remember,” she said around a yawn. “I’m just groggy. Wow! That was some nap. I don’t usually sleep during the daytime. I must not be getting enough sleep at night.” She batted her eyelashes at him. “I wonder why.”

“I have no idea,” he said, all innocence. He opened the door and climbed out, turning around to hold his hands up for her. She clambered out, and he lifted her to the ground. Looking up at the wide, cerulean-blue sky, he stretched, too, twisting his back to get out the kinks. “It’s a pretty day. Want to have a picnic?”

“A what?” She looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language.

“A picnic. You know, where you sit on the ground and eat with your hands, and fight wild animals for your food.”

“Sounds like fun. But haven’t we already done that?”

He laughed. “This time we’ll do it right—checkered tablecloth, fried chicken, the works.”

“All right, I’m game. Where are we going to have this picnic? Beside the runway?”

“Smart-ass. We’ll rent a car and go for a drive.”

Her eyes began to sparkle as she realized he meant it. That was what he loved best about Sunny, her ability to have fun. “How much time do we have? What time are we leaving?”

“Let’s stay for a couple of days. Iowa’s a nice place, and my tail could use some time away from that airplane seat.”

He handled his business with the airport, then went to a rental car desk and walked away with the keys to a sport utility.

“You rented a truck?” Sunny teased when she saw the green Ford Explorer. “Why didn’t you get something with style, like a red sports car?”

“Because I’m six-three,” he retorted. “My legs don’t fit in sports cars.”

She had bought a small backpack that she carried instead of the bulky carry-on she had been lugging around. She could get her toiletries and a change of clothes into the backpack, and that was enough for the single night they usually spent in a place. That meant her pistol was always with her, fully assembled when they weren’t having to go through x-ray scanners, and he didn’t protest. He always carried his own pistol with him, too, tucked into his waistband under his loose shirt. She put the backpack on the floorboard and climbed into the passenger seat, and began pushing buttons and turning knobs, every one she could reach.

Chance got behind the wheel. “I’m afraid to start this thing now. There’s no telling what’s going to happen.”

“Chicken,” she said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I’m just thankful Explorers don’t have ejection seats,” he muttered as he turned the key in the ignition. The engine caught immediately. The radio blared, the windshield wipers flopped back and forth at high speed, and the emergency lights began blinking. Sunny laughed as Chance dived for the radio controls and turned the volume down to an acceptable level. She buckled herself into the seat, smiling a very self-satisfied smile.

He had a map from the rental car company, though he already knew exactly where he was going. He had gotten very specific directions from the clerk at the rental agency, so the clerk would remember where they had gone when Hauer’s men asked. He had personally scouted out the location before putting the plan into motion. It was in the country, to cut the risk of collateral damage to innocent civilians. There was cover for his men, who would be in place before he and Sunny arrived. And, most important, Hauer and his men couldn’t move in without being observed. Chance had enough men in place that an ant couldn’t attend this picnic unless he wanted it there. Best of all, he knew Zane was out there somewhere. Zane didn’t usually do fieldwork, but in this instance he was here guarding his brother’s back. Chance would rather have Zane looking out for him than an entire army; the man was unbelievable, he was so good.

They stopped at a supermarket deli for their picnic supplies. There was even a red-checkered plastic cloth to go on the ground. They bought fried chicken, potato salad, rolls, cole slaw, an apple pie, and some green stuff Sunny called pistachio salad. He knew he wasn’t about to touch it. Then he had to buy a small cooler and ice, and some soft drinks to go in it. By the time he got Sunny out of the supermarket, over an hour had passed and he was almost seventy bucks lighter in the wallet.

“We have apple pie,” he complained. “Why do we need apples?”

“I’m going to throw them at you,” she said. “Or better yet, shoot them off your head.”

“If you come near me with an apple, I’ll scream,” he warned. “And pickled beets? Excuse me, but who eats pickled beets?”

She shrugged. “Someone does, or they wouldn’t be on the shelves.”

“Have you ever eaten pickled beets?” he asked suspiciously.

“Once. They were nasty.” She wrinkled her nose at him.

“Then why in hell did you buy them?” he shouted.

“I wanted you to try them.”

He should be used to it by now, he thought, but sometimes she still left him speechless. Muttering to himself, he stowed the groceries—including the pickled beets—in the back of the Explorer.

God, he was going to miss her.

She rolled down the window and let the wind blow through her bright hair. She had a happy smile on her face as she looked at everything they passed. Even service stations seemed to interest her, as did the old lady walking a Chihuahua that was so fat its belly almost kept its feet from touching the ground. Sunny giggled about the fat little dog for five minutes.

If it made her laugh like that, he thought, he would eat the damn pickled beets. But he’d damn sure eat something else afterward, because if he got shot, he didn’t want pickled beets to be the last thing he tasted.

The late August afternoon was hot when he pulled off the road. A tree-studded field stretched before them. “Let’s walk to those trees over there,” he said, nodding to a line of trees about a hundred yards away. “See how they’re growing, in a line like that? There might be a little creek there.”

She looked around. “Shouldn’t we ask permission?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Do you see a house anywhere? Who do we ask?”

“Well, all right, but if we get in trouble, it’s your fault.”

He carried the cooler and most of the food. Sunny slung her backpack on her shoulders, then took charge of the ground cloth and the jar of pickled beets. “I’d better carry these,” she said. “You might drop them.”

“You could take something else, too,” he grunted. This stuff was heavy.

She stretched up to peek in the grocery bag. The apple pie was perched on top of the other stuff. “Nah, you won’t drop the pie.”

He grumbled all the way to their picnic site, more because she enjoyed it than any other reason. This was the last day she would ever tease him, or he would see that smile, hear that laugh.

“Oh, there is a creek!” she exclaimed when they reached the trees. She carefully set the jar of beets down and unfolded the ground cloth, snapping it open in that brisk, economical movement all women seemed to have, and letting it settle on the thick, overgrown grass. Alight breeze was blowing, so she anchored the cloth with her backpack on one corner and the jar of beets on the another.

Chance set the cooler and food down and sprawled out on the cloth. “I’m too tired now to enjoy myself,” he complained.

She leaned over and kissed him. “You think I don’t know what you’re up to? Next thing I know you’ll get something in your eye, and I’ll have to get really, really close to see it. Then your back will need scratching, and you’ll have to take off your shirt. Before I know it, we’ll both be naked and it’ll be time to leave, and we won’t have had a bite to eat.”

He gave her a quizzical look. “You have this all planned out, don’t you?”

“Down to the last detail.”

“Suits me.” He reached for her, but with a spurt of laughter she scooted out of reach. She picked up the jar of beets and looked at him expectantly.

He flopped back with a groan. “Oh, man. Don’t tell me you expect me to try them now.”

“No, I want you to open the jar so I can eat them.”

“I thought you said they were nasty.”

“They are. I want to see if they’re as nasty as I remember.” She handed him the jar. “If you’ll open them for me, I’ll let you eat fried chicken and potato salad to build up your strength before I wring you out and hang you up to dry.”

He sat up and took the jar. “In your dreams, little miss ‘don’t-touch-me-again-you-lech.”’ He put some muscle behind the effort, twisting the lid free.

“I’ve been sandbagging,” she said. “This time, don’t even bother begging for mercy.”

She reached for the jar. The loosened lid came off, and the jar slipped from her hands. He dived for it, not wanting beets all over everything. Just as he moved, the tree beside him exploded, and a millisecond later he heard the blast of the shot.

He twisted in midair, throwing himself on top of Sunny and rolling with her behind the cover of the tree.

Chapter 13

“Stay down!” Chance barked, shoving her face into the grass.

Sunny couldn’t have moved even if she had wanted to, even if his two hundred-plus pounds hadn’t been lying on top of her. She was paralyzed, terror freezing in her veins as she realized her worst nightmare had come true; her father had found them, and Chance was nothing more than an obstacle to be destroyed. That bullet hadn’t been aimed at her. If she hadn’t dropped the jar of beets, if Chance hadn’t lunged for it, the slug that blew chunks of wood out of the tree would have blown off half his head.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered above her, his breath stirring her hair. “Sniper.”

The earth exploded two inches from her head, clods of dirt flying in her face, tiny pieces of gravel stinging her like bees. Chance literally threw her to the side, rolling with her again; the ground dropped out from beneath her, and her stomach gave a sickening lurch. As suddenly as the fall began, it stopped. She landed hard in three inches of sluggish water.

He had rolled them into the creek, where the banks afforded them more cover. A twist of his powerful body and he was off her, his big pistol in his hand as he flattened himself against the shallow bank. Sunny managed to get to her knees, slipped on the slimy creek bottom, and clambered on her hands and knees to a spot beside him. She felt numb, as if her arms and legs didn’t belong to her, yet they were working, moving.

This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. How had he found them?

She closed her eyes, fighting the terror. She was a liability to Chance unless she got herself under control. She’d had close calls before and handled herself just fine, but she had never before seen the man she loved almost get killed in front of her. She had never before been pregnant, with so much to lose.

Her teeth were chattering. She clamped her jaw together.

Silence fell over the field. She heard a car drive by on the road, and for a wild moment she wondered why it didn’t stop. But why would it? There was nothing the average passerby would notice, no bodies lying around on the highway, no haze of gun smoke hanging over the green grass. There was only silence, as if even the insects had frozen in place, the birds stopped singing; even the breeze had stopped rustling the leaves. It was as if nature held its breath, shocked by the sudden violence.

The shot had come from the direction of the road, but she hadn’t seen anyone drive up. They had only just arrived themselves; it was as if whoever had shot at them had already been here, waiting. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? The picnic was an impulse, and the location sheer chance; they could just as well have stopped at a park.

The only other explanation that occurred to her was if the shooter had nothing to do with her father. Maybe it was a crazy landowner who shot at trespassers.

If only she had brought her cell phone! But Margreta wasn’t due to call her for several more days, and even if she had brought the phone, it would be in her backpack, which was still lying on the ground cloth. The distance of a few yards might as well be a mile. Her pistol was also in the pack; though a pistol was useless against a sniper, she would feel better if she had some means of protection.

Chance hadn’t fired; he knew the futility of it even more than she did. His dark gold eyes were scanning the countryside, looking for anything that would give away the assailant’s position: a glint of sunlight on the barrel, the color of his clothing, a movement. The extreme angle of the late afternoon sun picked out incredible detail in the trees and bushes, but nothing that would help them.

Only nightfall would help, she thought. If they could just hold out for…how long? Another hour? Two hours, at most. When it was dark, then they could belly down in the little creek and work their way to safety, either upstream or down, it didn’t matter.

If they lived that long. The sniper had the advantage. All they had was the cover of a shallow creek bank.

She became aware that her teeth were chattering again. Again she clamped her jaw together to still the movement. Chance spared a glance at her, a split-second assessment before he returned to once again scanning the trees for the sniper. “Are you all right?” he asked, though he obviously knew she was all in one piece. He wasn’t asking about her physical condition.

“S-scared spitless,” she managed to say.

“Yeah. Me, too.”

He didn’t look scared, she thought. He looked coldly furious.

He reached out and rubbed her arm, a brief gesture of comfort. “Thank God for those beets,” he said.

She almost cried. The beets. She had thoroughly enjoyed teasing him about the beets, but the truth was, when she saw them in the supermarket she had been overcome by an almost violent craving for them. She wanted those beets. She felt as if she could eat the entire jar of them. Could cravings start this early in a pregnancy? If so, then he should thank God not for the beets, but for the beginnings of life forming inside her.

She wished she had told him immediately when her period didn’t come. She couldn’t tell him now; the news would be too distracting.

If they lived through this, she thought fervently, she wouldn’t keep the secret to herself a minute longer.

“It can’t be Hauer’s men,” she blurted. “It’s impossible. They couldn’t be here ahead of us, because we didn’t know we were coming here. It has to be a crazy farmer, or a—a jerk who thought it would be funny to shoot at someone.”

“Sweetheart.” He touched her arm again, and she realized she was babbling. “It isn’t a crazy farmer, or a trigger-happy jerk.”

“How do you know? It could be!”

“The sniper’s too professional.”

Just four words, but they made her heart sink. Chance would know; he had training in this sort of thing.

She pressed her forehead against the grassy bank, fighting for the courage to do what she had to do. Her mother had died protecting her and Margreta; surely she could be as brave? She couldn’t tell Hauer anything about Margreta, so her sister was safe, and if she could save Chance, then dying would be worth it….

Her child would die with her.

Don’t make me choose, she silently prayed. The child or the father.

If it were just her, she wouldn’t hesitate. In the short time she had known Chance—was it really just two weeks?—he had given her a lifetime of happiness and the richness of love. She would gladly give her life in exchange for his.

The life inside her wasn’t really a child yet; it was still just a rapidly dividing cluster of cells. No organs or bones had formed, nothing recognizable as a human. It was maybe the size of a pin head. But the potential…oh, the potential. She loved that tiny ball of cells with a fierceness that burned through every fiber of her being, had loved it from the first startled awareness that her period was late. It was as if she had blinked and said, “Oh. Hello,” because one second she had been totally unaware of its existence, and the next she had somehow known.

The child or the father. The father or the child.

The words writhed in her brain, echoing, bouncing. She loved them both. How could she choose? She couldn’t choose; no woman should have to make such a decision. She hated her father even more for forcing her into this situation. She hated the chromosomes, the DNA, that he had contributed to her existence. He wasn’t a father, he had never been a father. He was a monster.

“Give me your pistol.” She heard the words, but the voice didn’t sound at all like hers.

His head snapped around. “What?” He stared at her as if she had lost her mind.

“Give me the pistol,” she repeated. “He—they—don’t know we have it. You haven’t fired back. I’ll tuck it in the back of my jeans and walk out there—”

“The hell you will!” He glared at her. “If you think I—”

“No, listen!” she said urgently. “They won’t shoot me. He wants me alive. When they get close enough for me to use the pistol I—”

“No!” He grabbed her by the shirt and hauled her close so they were almost nose to nose. His eyes were almost shooting sparks. “If you make one move to stand up, I swear I’ll knock you out. Do you understand me? I will not let you walk out there.”

He released her, and Sunny sank back against the creek bank. She couldn’t overpower him, she thought bleakly. He was too strong, and too alert to be taken by surprise.

“We have to do something,” she whispered.

He didn’t look at her again. “We wait,” he said flatly. “That’s what we do. Sooner or later, the bastard will show himself.”

Wait. That was the first idea she’d had, to wait until dark and slip away. But if Hauer had more than one man here, the sniper could keep them pinned down while the other worked his way around behind them—

“Can we move?” she asked. “Up the creek, down the creek—it doesn’t matter.”

He shook his head. “It’s too risky. The creek’s shallow. The only place we have enough cover is flat against the bank on this side. If we try to move, we expose ourselves to fire.”

“What if there’s more than one?”

“There is.” He sounded positive. A feral grin moved his lips in a frightening expression. “At least four, maybe five. I hope it’s five.”

She shook her head, trying to understand. Five to two were deadly odds. “That makes you happy?”

“Very happy. The more the merrier.”

Nausea hit the back of her throat, and she closed her eyes, fighting the urge to vomit. Did he think sheer guts and fighting spirit would keep them alive?

His lean, powerful hand touched her face in a gentle caress. “Chin up, sweetheart. Time’s on our side.”

Now wasn’t the time for explanations, Chance thought. The questions would be too angry, the answers too long and complicated. Their situation was delicately balanced between success and catastrophe; he couldn’t relax his guard. If he was correct and there were five men out there hunting them—and that was the only explanation, that one of his own men was a traitor and had given Hauer the location of their supposedly impromptu picnic—then they could, at any time, decide to catch him in a pincer movement. With only one pistol, and Sunny to one side of him, he couldn’t handle an attack from more than two directions. The third one would get him—and probably Sunny, too. In a fire fight, bullets flew like angry hornets, and most of them didn’t hit their target. If a bullet didn’t hit its target, that meant it hit something—or someone—else.

His own men would have been stood down, or sent to a bogus location. That was why there hadn’t been any return fire when he and Sunny were fired on—no one was there. For that to have happened, the traitor had to be someone in a position of authority, a team leader or higher. He would find out. Oh, yeah, he’d find out. There had been several betrayals over the years, but they hadn’t been traceable. One such breach had almost cost Barrie, Zane’s wife, her life. Chance had been trying to identify the bastard for four years now, but he’d been too smart. But this time it was traceable. This time, his men would know who had changed their orders.

The traitor must have thought it was worth blowing his cover, to have this opportunity to kill Chance Mackenzie himself. And he should be here in person, to see the job done. Hauer’s two men would bring the count to three. Hauer made it four. The only way Hauer could have gotten into the country and moved about as freely and undetected as he had was with inside help—the FBI mole. If Chance were really lucky, the mole was here, too, bringing the count to five.

But they’d made a big mistake. They didn’t know about his ace in the hole: Zane. They didn’t know he was out there; that was an arrangement Chance had made totally off the record. If Zane wasn’t needed, no one would ever know he was there. Chance’s men were damn good, world class, but they weren’t in Zane’s class. No one was.

Zane was a superb strategist; he always had a plan, and a plan to back up his plan. He would have seen in an instant what was going down and been on the phone calling the men back into position from wherever they’d been sent. How long it took them to get here depended on how far away they were, assuming they could get here at all. And after the call Zane would have started moving, ghosting around, searching out Hauer and his men. Every minute that passed increased the odds in Chance’s favor.

He couldn’t explain any of that to Sunny, not now, not even to ease the white, pinched expression that made him ache to hold her close and reassure her. Her eyes were haunted, their sparkle gone. She had worked her entire life to make certain she was never caught off guard, and yet she had been; he himself had seen to it.

The knowledge was bitter in his mouth. She was terrified of the monster who had relentlessly hunted her all her life, yet she had been willing to walk out there and offer herself as a sacrifice. How many times in the short two weeks he’d known her had she put herself on the line for him? The first time had been when she barely knew him, when she swooped down to grab the snake coiled so close to his feet. She was terrified of snakes, but she’d done it. She was shaking with fear now, but he knew that if he let her, she would do exactly what she’d offered. That kind of courage amazed him, and humbled him.

His head swiveled restlessly as he tried to keep watch in all directions. The minutes trickled past. The sun slid below the horizon, but there was still plenty of light; twilight wouldn’t begin deepening for another fifteen, twenty minutes. The darker it was, the more Zane was in his element. By now, he should have taken out at least one, maybe two—

A man stepped out from behind the tree under which Chance and Sunny had intended to have their picnic and aimed a black 9mm automatic at Sunny’s head. He didn’t say “Drop it” or anything else. He just smiled, his gaze locked with Chance’s.

Carefully Chance placed his pistol on the grass. If the gun had been aimed at his own head, he would have taken the risk that his reflexes were faster. He wouldn’t risk Sunny’s life. As soon as he moved his hand away from the pistol, the black hole in the man’s weapon centered between his eyes.

“Surprised?” the man asked softly. At his voice Sunny gasped and whirled, her feet sliding on the slippery creek bottom. Chance reached out and steadied her without taking his gaze from a man he knew very well.

“Not really,” he said. “I knew there was someone.”

Sunny looked back and forth between them. “Do you know him?” she asked faintly.

“Yeah.” He should have been prepared for this, he thought. Knowing one of his own men was involved, he should have realized the traitor would have the skill to approach silently, using the same tree that helped shield them as his own cover. Doing so took patience and nerve, because if Chance had happened to move even a few inches to one side, he would have seen the man’s approach.

“H-how?” she stammered.

“We’ve worked together for years,” Melvin Darnell said, still smiling. Mel the Man. That was what the others called him, because he would volunteer for any mission, no matter how dangerous. What better way to get inside information? Chance thought.

“You sold out to Hauer,” Chance said, shaking his head. “That’s low.”

“No, that’s lucrative. He has men everywhere. The FBI, the Justice Department, the CIA…even here, right under your nose.” Mel shrugged. “What can I say? He pays well.”

“I misjudged you. I never thought you’d be the type to get a kick out of torture. Or are you chickening out and leaving as soon as he gets his hands on her?” Chance nodded his head toward Sunny.

“Nice try, Mackenzie, but it won’t work. He’s her father. All he wants is his little girl.” Mel smirked at Sunny.

Chance snorted. “Get a clue. Do you think she’d be so terrified if all he wanted was to get to know her?”

Mel spared another brief glance in her direction. She was absolutely colorless, even her lips. There was no mistaking her fear. He shrugged. “So I was wrong. I don’t care what he does with her.”

“Do you care that he’s a child molester?” Keep him talking. Buy time. Give Zane time to work.

“Give it up,” Mel said cheerfully. “He could be Hitler’s reincarnation and it still wouldn’t change the color of his money. If you think I’m going to develop a conscience—well, you’re the one who needs to get a clue.”

There was movement behind Mel. Three men approaching, walking openly now, as if they had nothing to fear. Two were dressed in suits, one in slacks and an open-necked shirt. The one in slacks and one of the suits carried hand guns. The suit would be the FBI informant, the one in slacks one of Hauer’s bloodhounds. The man in the middle, the one wearing the double-breasted Italian silk suit, his skin tanned, his light brown hair brushed straight back—that was Hauer. He was smiling.

“My dear,” he said jovially when he reached them. He stepped carefully around the spilled beets, his nose wrinkling in distaste. “It is so good to finally meet you. A father should know his children, don’t you think?”

Sunny didn’t speak for a moment. She stared at her father with unconcealed horror and loathing. Beside her, Chance felt the fear drain out of her, felt her subtly relax. Extreme terror was like that, sometimes. When one feared that something would happen, it was the dread and anxiety, the anticipation, that was so crippling. Once the thing actually happened, there was nothing left to fear. He took a firm grip on her arm, wishing she had remained petrified. Sunny was valiant enough when she was frightened; when she thought she had nothing left to lose, there was no telling what she would do.

“I thought you’d be taller,” she finally said, looking at him rather dismissively.

Crispin Hauer flushed angrily. He wasn’t a large man, about five-eight, and slender. The two men flanking him were both taller. Chance wondered how Sunny had known unerringly how to prick his ego. “Please get out of the mud—if you can bring yourself to leave your lover’s side, that is. I recommend it. Head shots can be nasty. You wouldn’t want his brains on you, would you? I hear the stain never comes out of one’s clothes.”

Sunny didn’t move. “I don’t know where Margreta is,” she said. “You might as well kill me now, because I can’t tell you anything.”

He shook his head in mock sympathy. “As if I believe that.” He held out his hand. “You may climb out by yourself, or my men will assist you.”

There wasn’t much light left, Chance thought. If Sunny could keep delaying her father without provoking him into violence, Zane should be here soon. With Hauer out in the open, Zane must be positioning himself so he could get all four men in his sights.

“Where’s the other guy?” he asked, to distract them. “There are five of you, aren’t there?”

The FBI man and the bloodhound looked around, in the direction of the trees on the opposite side of the road. They seemed vaguely surprised that no one was behind them.

Mel didn’t take his attention from Chance. “Don’t let him spook you,” he said sharply. “Keep your mind on business.”

“Don’t you wonder where he is?” Chance asked softly.

“I don’t give a damn. He’s nothing to me. Maybe he fell out of the tree and broke his neck,” Mel said.

“Enough,” Hauer said, distaste for this squabbling evident in his tone. “Sonia, come out now. I promise you won’t like it if my men have to fetch you.”

Sunny’s contemptuous gaze swept him from head to foot. Unbelievably, she began singing. And the ditty she sang was a cruel little song of the sort gradeschoolers sang to make fun of a classmate they didn’t like. “Monkey man, monkey man, itty bitty monkey man. He’s so ugly, he’s so short, he needs a ladder to reach his butt.”

It didn’t rhyme, Chance thought in stunned bemusement. Children, crude little beasts that they were, didn’t care about niceties such as that. All they cared about was the effectiveness of their taunt.

It was effective beyond his wildest expectation.

Mel Darnell smothered a laugh. The two other men froze, their expressions going carefully blank. Crispin Hauer flushed a dark, purplish red and his eyes bulged until white showed all around the irises. “You bitch!” he screamed, spittle flying, and he grabbed for the gun in the FBI mole’s hand.

A giant red flower bloomed on Hauer’s chest, accompanied by a strange, dull splat. Hauer stopped as if he had run into a glass wall, his expression going blank.

Mel had excellent reflexes, and excellent training. In that nanosecond before the sound of the shot reached them, Chance saw Mel’s finger begin tightening on the trigger, and he grabbed for his own weapon, knowing he wouldn’t be fast enough. Then Sunny hit him full force, her entire body crashing into him and knocking him sideways, her scream almost drowning out the thunderous boom of Mel’s big-caliber pistol. She clambered off him almost as fast as she had hit him, trying to scramble up the grassy bank to get to Mel before he could fire another round, but Mel never had another opportunity to pull the trigger. Mel never had anything else, not even a second, because Zane’s second shot took him dead center of the chest just as his first had taken Hauer.

Then all hell broke loose. Chance’s men, finally back in position and with the threat to Chance and Sunny taken care of, opened fire on the remaining two men. Chance grabbed Sunny and flattened her in the creek again, covering her with his own body, holding her there until Zane roared a cease fire and the night was silent.

Sunny sat off to the side of the nightmarish scene, brightly lit now with battery-operated spotlights that picked out garish detail and left stark black shadows. From somewhere, one of the small army of men who suddenly swarmed the field had produced a bucket that he turned upside down for her, providing her with a seat. She was wet and almost unbearably cold, despite the warmth of the late August night. Her muddy clothes were clammy, so the blanket she clutched around her with nerveless fingers didn’t do much to help, but she didn’t release it.

She hurt, with an all-consuming agony that threatened to topple her off the bucket, but she grimly forced herself to stay upright. Sheer willpower kept her on that bucket.

The men around her were professionals. They were quiet and competent as they dealt with the five bodies that were laid out on the ground in a neat row. They were courteous with the local law enforcement officers who arrived en force, sirens blasting, blue lights strobing the night, though there was never any doubt who held jurisdiction.

And Chance was their leader.

That man, the one who had first held a gun on them, had called him “Mackenzie.” And several times one or another of the locals had referred to him as Mr. Mackenzie; he had answered, so she knew there was no mistake in the name.

The events of the night were a chaotic blur in her mind, but one fact stood out: this entire scene was a setup, a trap—and she had been the bait.

She didn’t want to believe it, but logic wouldn’t let her deny it. He was obviously in charge here. He had a lot of men on site, men he commanded, men who could be here only if he had arranged it in advance.

Viewed in the light of that knowledge, everything that had happened since she met him took on a different meaning. She even thought she recognized the cretin who had stolen her briefcase in the Salt Lake City airport. He was cleaned up now, with the same quiet, competent air as the others, but she was fairly certain he was the same man.

Everything had been a setup. Everything. She didn’t know how he’d done it, her mind couldn’t quite grasp the sphere of influence needed to bring all of this off, but somehow he had manipulated her flights so that she was in the Salt Lake City airport at a certain time, for the cretin to grab her briefcase and Chance to intercept him. It was a hugely elaborate play, one that took skill and money and more resources than she could imagine.

He must have thought she was in cahoots with her father, she thought with a flash of intuition. This had all happened after the incident in Chicago, which was undoubtedly what had brought her to Chance’s notice. What had his plan been? To make her fall in love with him and use her to infiltrate her father’s organization? Only it hadn’t worked out that way. Not only was she not involved with her father, she desperately feared and hated him. So Chance, knowing why Hauer really wanted her, had adjusted his plan and used her as bait.

What a masterful strategy. And what a superb actor he was; he should get an Oscar.

There hadn’t been anything wrong with the plane at all. She didn’t miss the significance of the timing of their “rescue.” Charlie Jones had just happened to find them first thing in the morning after she spilled her guts about her father to Chance the night before. He must have signaled Charlie somehow.

How easy she had been for him. She had been completely duped, completely taken in by his lovemaking and charm. He had been a bright light to her, a comet blazing into her lonely world, and she had fallen for him with scarcely a whisper of resistance. He must think her the most gullible fool in the world. The worst of it was, she was an even bigger fool than he knew, because she was pregnant with his child.

She looked across the field at him, standing tall in the glaring spotlights as he talked with another tall, powerful man who exuded the deadliest air she had ever seen, and the pain inside her spread until she could barely contain it.

Her bright light had gone out.

Chance looked around at Sunny, as he had been doing periodically since the moment she sank down on the overturned bucket and huddled deep in the blanket someone had draped around her. She was frighteningly white, her face drawn and stark. He couldn’t take the time to comfort her, not now. There was too much to do, local authorities to soothe at the same time that he let them know he was the one in control, not they, the bodies to be handled, sweeps initiated at the agencies Mel had listed as having Hauer’s moles employed there.

She wasn’t stupid; far from it. He had watched her watching the activity around her, watched her expression become even more drawn as she inevitably reached the only conclusion she could reach. She had noticed when people called him Mackenzie instead of McCall.

Their gazes met, and locked. She stared at him across the ten yards that separated them, thirty feet of unbridgeable gulf. He kept his face impassive. There was no excuse he could give her that she wouldn’t already have considered. His reasons were good; he knew that. But he had used her and risked her life. Being the person she was, she would easily forgive him for risking her life; it was the rest of it, the way he had used her, that would strike her to the core.

As he watched, he saw the light die in her eyes, draining away as if it had never been. She turned her head away from him—

And gutted him with the gesture.

Shaken, pierced through with regret, he turned back to Zane and found his brother watching him with a world of knowledge in those pale eyes. “If you want her,” Zane said, “then don’t let her go.”

It was that simple, and that difficult. Don’t let her go. How could he not, when she deserved so much better than what he was?

But the idea was there now. Don’t let her go. He couldn’t resist looking at her again, to see if she was still watching him.

She wasn’t there. The bucket still sat there, but Sunny was gone.

Chance strode rapidly across to where she had been, scanning the knots of men who stood about, some working, some just observing. He didn’t see that bright hair. Damn it, she was just here; how could she disappear so fast?

Easily, he thought. She had spent a lifetime practicing.

Zane was beside him, his head up, alert. The damn spotlights blinded them to whatever was behind them. She could have gone in any direction, and they wouldn’t be able to see her.

He looked down to see if he could pick up any tracks, though the grass was so trampled by now that he doubted he would find anything. The bucket gleamed dark and wet in the spotlight.

Wet?

Chance leaned down and swiped his hand over the bucket. He stared at the dark red stain on his fingers and palm. Blood. Sunny’s blood.

He felt as if his own blood was draining from his body. My God, she’d been shot, and she hadn’t said a word. In the darkness, the blood hadn’t been noticeable on her wet clothing. But that had been…how long ago? She had sat there all that time, bleeding, and not told anyone.

Why?

Because she wanted to get away from him. If they had known she was wounded, she would have to be bundled up and taken to a hospital, and she wouldn’t be able to escape without having to see him again. When Sunny walked, she did it clean. No scenes, no excuses, no explanations. She just disappeared.

If he had thought it hurt when she turned away from him, that was nothing to the way he felt now. Desperate fear seized his heart, froze his blood in his veins. “Listen up!” he boomed, and a score of faces, trained to obey his every command, turned his way. “Did anyone see where Sunny went?”

Heads shook, and men began looking around. She was nowhere insight.

Chance began spitting out orders. “Everyone drop what you’re doing and fan out. Find her. She’s bleeding. She was shot and didn’t tell anyone.” As he talked, he was striding out of the glare of the spotlights, his heart in his mouth. She couldn’t have gone far, not in that length of time. He would find her. He couldn’t bear the alternative.

Chapter 14

Chance blindly paced the corridor outside the surgical waiting room. He couldn’t sit down, though the room was empty and he could have had any chair he wanted. If he stopped walking, he thought, he might very well fall down and not be able to stand again. He hadn’t known such crippling fear existed. He had never felt it for himself, not even when he looked down the barrel of a weapon pointed at his face—and Mel’s hadn’t been the first—but he felt it for Sunny. He’d been gripped by it since he found her lying facedown in the grassy field, unconscious, her pulse thready from blood loss.

Thank God there were medics on hand in the field, or she would have died before he could get her to a hospital. They hadn’t managed to stop the bleeding, but they had slowed it, started an IV saline push to pump fluid back into her body and raise her plummeting blood pressure, and gotten her to the hospital still alive.

He had been shouldered aside then, by a whole team of gowned emergency personnel. “Are you any relation to her, sir?” a nurse had asked briskly as she all but manhandled him out of the treatment room.

“I’m her husband,” he’d heard himself say. There was no way he was going to allow the decisions for her care to be taken out of his hands. Zane, who had been beside him the entire time, hadn’t revealed even a flicker of surprise.

“Do you know her blood type, sir?”

Of course he didn’t. Nor did he know the answers to any of the other questions posed by the woman they handed him off to, but he was so numb, his attention so focused on the cubicle where about ten people were working on her, that he barely knew anyone was asking the questions, and the woman hadn’t pushed it. Instead, she had patted his hand and said she would come back in a little while when his wife was stabilized. He had been grateful for her optimism. In the meantime, Zane, as ruthlessly competent as usual, had requested that a copy of their file on Sunny be downloaded to his wireless Pocket Pro, so Chance would have all the necessary information when the woman returned with her million and one questions. He was indifferent to the bureaucratic snafu he was causing; the organization would pay for everything.

But the shocks had kept arriving, one piling on top of the other. The surgeon came out of the cubicle, his green paper gown stained red with her blood. “Your wife regained consciousness briefly,” he’d said. “She wasn’t completely lucid, but she asked about the baby. Do you know how far along she is?”

Chance had literally staggered and braced his hand against the wall for support. “She’s pregnant?” he asked hoarsely.

“I see.” The surgeon immediately switched gears. “I think she must have just found out. We’ll do some tests and take all the precautions we can. We’re taking her up to surgery now. A nurse will show you where to wait.” He strode away, paper gown flapping.

Zane had turned to Chance, his pale blue eyes laser sharp. “Yours?” he asked briefly.

“Yes.”

Zane didn’t ask if he was certain, for which Chance was grateful. Zane took it for granted Chance wouldn’t be mistaken about something that important.

Pregnant? How? He pinched the bridge of his nose, between his eyes. He knew how. He remembered with excruciating clarity how it felt to climax inside her without the protective sheath of a condom dulling the sensation. It had happened twice—just twice—but once was enough.

A couple of little details clicked into place. He’d been around pregnant women most of his life, with first one sister-in-law and then another producing a little Mackenzie. He knew the symptoms well. He remembered Sunny’s sleepiness this afternoon, and her insistence on buying the beets. Those damn pickled beets, he thought; her craving for them—for he was certain now that was why she’d wanted them—had saved his life. Sometimes the weird cravings started almost immediately. He could remember when Shea, Michael’s wife, had practically wiped that section of Wyoming clean of canned tuna, a full week before she missed her first period. The sleepiness began soon in a pregnancy, too.

He knew the exact day when he’d gotten her pregnant. It had been the second time he’d made love to her, lying on the blanket in the late afternoon heat. The baby would be born about the middle of May…if Sunny lived.

She had to live. He couldn’t face the alternative. He loved her too damn much to even think it. But he had seen the bullet wound in her right side, and he was terrified.

“Do you want me to call Mom and Dad?” Zane asked.

They would drop everything and come immediately if he said yes, Chance knew. The whole family would; the hospital would be inundated with Mackenzies. Their support was total, and unquestioning.

He shook his head. “No. Not yet.” His voice was raw, as if he had been screaming, though he would have sworn all his screams had been held inside. If Sunny…if the worst happened, he would need them then. Right now he was still holding together. Just.

So he walked, and Zane walked with him. Zane had seen a lot of bullet wounds, too; he’d taken his share. Chance was the lucky one; he’d been cut a few times, but never shot.

God, there had been so much blood. How had she stayed upright for so long? She had answered questions, said she was all right, even walked around a little before one of the men had found that bucket for her to sit on. It was dark, she had a blanket wrapped around her—that was why no one had noticed. But she should have been on the ground, screaming in pain.

Zane’s thoughts were running along the same path. “I’m always amazed,” he said, “at what some people can do after being shot.”

Contrary to what most people thought, a bullet wound, even a fatal one, didn’t necessarily knock the victim down. All cops knew that even someone whose heart had been virtually destroyed by a bullet could still attack and kill them, and die only when his oxygen-starved brain died. Someone crazed on drugs could absorb a truly astonishing amount of damage and keep on fighting. On the other side of the spectrum were those who suffered relatively minor wounds and went down as if they had been poleaxed, then screamed unceasingly until they reached the hospital and were given enough drugs to quiet them. It was pure mind over matter, and Sunny had a will like titanium. He only hoped she applied that will to surviving.

It was almost six hours before the tired surgeon approached, the six longest hours of Chance’s life. The surgeon looked haggard, and Chance felt the icy claw of dread. No. No—

“I think she’s going to make it,” the surgeon said, and smiled a smile of such pure personal triumph that Chance knew there had been a real battle in the O.R. “I had to remove part of the liver and resection her small intestine. The wound to the liver is what caused the extensive hemorrhage. We had to replace almost her complete blood volume before we got things under control.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “It was touch and go for a while. Her blood pressure bottomed out and she went into cardiac arrest, but we got her right back. Her pupil response is normal, and her vitals are satisfactory. She was lucky.”

“Lucky,” Chance echoed, still dazed by the combination of good news and the litany of damage.

“It was only a fragment of a bullet that hit her. There must have been a ricochet.”

Chance knew she hadn’t been hit while he’d had her flattened in the creek. It had to have happened when she knocked him aside and Darnell fired. Evidently Darnell had missed, and the bullet must have struck a rock in the creek and fragmented.

She had been protecting him. Again.

“She’ll be in ICU for at least twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight, until we see if there’s a secondary infection. I really think we have things under control, though.” He grinned. “She’ll be out of here in a week.”

Chance sagged against the wall, bending over to clasp his knees. His head swam. Zane’s hard hand gripped his shoulder, lending his support. “Thank you,” Chance said to the doctor, angling his head so he could see him.

“Do you need to lie down?” the doctor asked.

“No, I’m all right. God! I’m great. She’s going to be okay!”

“Yeah,” said the doctor, and grinned again.

Sunny kept surfacing to consciousness, like a float bobbing up and down in the water. At first her awareness was fragmented. She could hear voices in the distance, though she couldn’t make out any words, and a soft beeping noise. She was also aware of something in her throat, though she didn’t realize it was a tube. She had no concept of where she was, or even that she was lying down.

The next time she bobbed up, she could feel smooth cotton beneath her and recognized the fabric as sheets.

The next time she managed to open her eyes a slit, but her vision was blurry and what seemed like a mountain of machinery made no sense to her.

At some point she realized she was in a hospital. There was pain, but it was at a distance. The tube was gone from her throat now. She vaguely remembered it being removed, which hadn’t been pleasant, but her sense of time was so confused that she thought she remembered the tube being there after it was removed. People kept coming into the small space that was hers, turning on bright lights, talking and touching her and doing intimate things to her.

Gradually her dominion over her body began to return, as she fought off the effects of anesthesia and drugs. She managed to make a weak gesture toward her belly, and croak out a single word. “Baby?”

The intensive care nurse understood. “Your baby’s fine,” he said, giving her a comforting pat, and she was content.

She was horribly thirsty. Her next word was “Water,” and slivers of ice were put in her mouth.

With the return of consciousness, though, came the pain. It crept ever nearer as the fog of drugs receded. The pain was bad, but Sunny almost welcomed it, because it meant she was alive, and for a while she had thought she might not be.

She saw the nurse named Jerry the most often. He came into the cubicle, smiling as usual, and said, “There’s someone here to see you.”

Sunny violently shook her head, which was a mistake. It set off waves of agony that swamped the drugs holding them at bay. “No visitors,” she managed to say.

It seemed as if she spent days, eons, in the intensive care unit, but when she asked Jerry he said, “Oh, about thirty-six hours. We’ll be moving you to a private room soon. It’s being readied now.”

When they moved her, she was clearheaded enough to watch the ceiling tiles and lights pass by overhead. She caught a glimpse of a tall, black-haired man and quickly looked away.

Settling her into a private room was quite an operation, requiring two orderlies, three nurses and half an hour. She was exhausted when everything, including herself, had been transferred and arranged. The fresh bed was nice and cool; the head had been elevated and a pillow tucked under her head. Sitting up even that much made her feel a hundred percent more normal and in control.

There were flowers in the room. Roses, peach ones, with a hint of blush along the edges of their petals, dispensed a spicy, peppery scent that overcame the hospital scents of antiseptics and cleaning fluids. Sunny stared at them but didn’t ask who they were from.

“I don’t want any visitors,” she told the nurses. “I just want to rest.”

She was allowed to eat Jell-O, and drink weak tea. On the second day in the private room she drank some broth, and she was placed in the bedside chair for fifteen minutes. It felt good to stand on her own two feet, even for the few seconds it took them to move her from bed to chair. It felt even better when they moved her back to the bed.

That night, she got out of bed herself, though the process was slow and unhappy, and walked the length of the bed. She had to hold on to the bed for support, but her legs remained under her.

The third day, there was another delivery from a florist. This was a bromeliad, with thick, grayish green leaves and a beautiful pink flower blooming in its center. She had never had houseplants for the same reason she had never had a pet, because she was constantly on the move and couldn’t take care of them. She stared at the bromeliad, trying to come to grips with the fact that she could have all the houseplants she wanted now. Everything was changed. Crispin Hauer was dead, and she and Margreta were free.

The thought of her sister sent alarm racing through her. What day was it? When was Margreta due to call? For that matter, where was her cell phone?

On the afternoon of the fourth day, the door opened and Chance walked in.

She turned her head to look out the window. In truth, she was surprised he had given her this long to recover. She had held him off as long as she could, but she supposed there had to be a closing act before the curtain could fall.

She had held her inner pain at bay by focusing on her physical pain, but now it rushed to the forefront. She fought it down, reaching for control. There was nothing to be gained by causing a scene, only her self-respect to lose.

“I’ve kept your cell phone with me,” he said, walking around to place himself between her and the windows, so she had to either look at him or turn her head away again. His conversational opening had guaranteed she wouldn’t turn away. “Margreta called yesterday.”

Sunny clenched her fists, then quickly relaxed her right hand as the motion flexed the IV needle taped to the back of it. Margreta would have panicked when she heard a man’s voice answer instead of Sunny’s.

“I talked fast,” Chance said. “I told her you’d been shot but would be okay, and that Hauer was dead. I told her I’d bring the phone to you today, and she could call again tonight to verify everything I said. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t hang up on me, either.”

“Thank you,” Sunny said. He had handled the situation in the best possible way.

He was subtly different, she realized. It wasn’t just his clothing, though he was now dressed in black slacks and a white silk shirt, while he had worn only jeans, boots, and casual shirts and T-shirts before. His whole demeanor was different. Of course, he wasn’t playing a raffish, charming charter pilot any longer. He was himself now, and the reality was what she had always sensed beneath the surface of his charm. He was the man who led some sort of commando team, who exerted enormous influence in getting things done his way. The dangerous edge she had only glimpsed before was in full view now, in his eyes and the authority with which he spoke.

He moved closer to the side of the bed, so close he was leaning against the rail. Very gently, the touch as light as gossamer, he placed his fingertips on her belly. “Our baby is all right,” he said.

He knew. Shocked, she stared at him, though she realized she should have known the doctor would tell him.

“Were you going to tell me?” he asked, his golden-brown eyes intent on her face, as if he wanted to catch every nuance of expression.

“I hadn’t thought about it one way or the other,” she said honestly. She had just been coming to terms with the knowledge herself; she hadn’t gotten around to forming any plans.

“This changes things.”

“Does it really,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. “Was anything you told me the truth?”

He hesitated. “No.”

“There was nothing wrong with the fuel pump.”

“No.”

“You could have flown us out of the canyon at any time.”

“Yes.”

“Your name isn’t Chance McCall.”

“Mackenzie,” he said. “Chance Mackenzie.”

“Well, that’s one thing,” she said bitterly. “At least your first name was really your own.”

“Sunny…don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t try to find out how big a fool I am? Were you really an army ranger?”

He sighed, his expression grim. “Navy. Naval Intelligence.”

“You arranged for all of my flights to be fouled up that day.”

He shrugged an admittance.

“The cretin was really one of your men.”

“A good one. The airport security people were mine, too.”

She creased the sheet with her left hand. “You knew my father would be there. You had it set up.”

“We knew two of his men were trailing us, had been since the television newscast about you aired.”

“You arranged that, too.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Why did we fly all over the country? Why didn’t we just stay in Seattle? That would have been less wear and tear on the plane.”

“I had to make it look good.”

She swallowed. “That day…the picnic. Would you have made love—I mean, had sex—with me with your men watching? Just to make it look good?”

“No. Having an affair with you was necessary, but…private.”

“I suppose I should thank you for that, at least. Thank you. Now get out.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He sat down in the bedside chair. “If you’ve finished with the dissection, we need to make some decisions.”

“I’ve already made one. I don’t want to see you again.”

“Sorry about that, but you aren’t getting your wish. You’re stuck with me, sweetheart, because that baby inside you is mine.”

Chapter 15

Sunny was released from the hospital eight days after the shooting. She could walk, gingerly, but her strength was almost negligible, and she had to wear the nightgown and robe Chance had bought her, because she couldn’t stand any clothing around her middle. She had no idea what she was going to do. She wasn’t in any condition to catch a flight to Atlanta, not to mention that she would have to travel in her nightgown, but she had to find somewhere to stay. Once she knew she was being released, she got the phone book and called a hotel, made certain the hotel had room service, and booked herself a room there. The hotel had room service; until she was able to take care of herself again, a hotel was the best she could do.

In the hospital she had, at first, entertained a fragile hope that Margreta would come to stay with her and help her until she was recovered. With their father dead, they didn’t have to hide any longer. But though Margreta had sounded happy and relieved, she had resisted Sunny’s suggestion that she come to Des Moines. They had exchanged telephone numbers, but that was all—and Margreta hadn’t called back.

Sunny understood. Margreta would always have problems relating to people, forming relationships with them. She was probably very comfortable with the long-distance contact she had with Sunny, and wanted nothing more. Sunny tried to fight her sadness as she realized she would never have the sister she had wanted, but melancholy too easily overwhelmed her these days.

Part of it was the hormonal chaos of early pregnancy, she knew. She found herself tearing up at the most ridiculous things, such as a gardening show she watched on television one day. She lay in her hospital bed and began thinking how she had always wanted a flower garden but had never been able to have one, and presto, all of a sudden she was feeling sorry for herself and sitting there like an idiot with tears rolling down her face.

Depression went hand in glove with physical recovery, too, one of the nurses told her. It would pass as she got stronger and could do more.

But the biggest part of her depression was Chance. He visited every day, and once even brought along the tall, lethal-looking man she had noticed him talking to the night she was injured. To her surprise, Chance introduced the man as his brother, Zane. Zane had shaken her hand with exquisite gentleness, shown her photos of his pretty wife and three adorable children, and spent half an hour telling her yarns about the exploits of his daughter, Nick. If even half of what he said about the child was true, the world had better brace itself for when she was older.

After Zane left, Sunny was even more depressed. Zane had what she had always wanted: a family he loved, and who loved him in return.

When he visited, Chance always avoided the subject that lay between them like a coiled snake. He had done what he had done, and no amount of talking would change reality. She had to respect, reluctantly, his lack of any attempt to make excuses. Instead, he talked about his family in Wyoming, and the mountain they all still called home, even though only his parents lived there now. He had four brothers and one sister, a dozen nephews—and one niece, the notorious Nick, whom he obviously adored. His sister was a horse trainer who was married to one of his agents; one brother was a rancher who had married the granddaughter of an old family enemy; another brother was an ex-fighter pilot who was married to an orthopedic surgeon; Zane was married to the daughter of an ambassador; and Joe, his oldest brother, was General Joseph Mackenzie, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

That couldn’t all be true, she thought, yet the tales had a ring of truth to them. Then she remembered that Chance was a consummate actor, and bitterness would swamp her again.

She couldn’t seem to pull herself out of the dismals. She had always been able to laugh, but now she found it difficult to even smile. No matter how she tried to distract herself, the knowledge was always there, engraved on her heart like a curse that robbed her life of joy: Chance didn’t love her. It had all been an act.

It was as if part of her had died. She felt cold inside, and empty. She tried to hide it, tried to tell herself the depression would go away if she just ignored it and concentrated on getting better, but every day the grayness inside her seemed to spread and deepen.

The day she was released, the escort finally arrived with a wheelchair and Sunny called a taxi to meet them at the entrance in fifteen minutes. She gingerly lowered herself into the wheelchair, and the escort obligingly placed the small bag containing her few articles of clothing and her backpack on her lap, then balanced the bromeliad on top.

“I’m sure I have to sign some papers before I’m released,” Sunny said.

“No, I don’t think so,” the woman said, checking her orders. “According to this, you’re all ready to go. Your husband probably handled it for you.”

Sunny bit back the urge to snap that she wasn’t married. He hadn’t mentioned it, and in truth she hadn’t given a thought to how she would pay for her hospital care, but now that she thought about it, she realized Chance had indeed handled all of that. Maybe he thought the least he could do was pick up her tab.

She was surprised he wasn’t here, since he’d been so adamant about being a part of the baby’s life, and persistent in visiting. For all she knew, she thought, he had been called away on some mysterious spy stuff.

She underestimated him. When the escort rolled her to the doors of the patient discharge area, she saw a familiar dark green Ford Explorer parked under the covered entrance. Chance unfolded his long length from behind the steering wheel and came to meet her.

“I’ve already called a taxi,” she said, though she knew it was a waste of breath.

“Tough,” he said succinctly. He took her clothes and the bromeliad and put them in the back of the Explorer, then opened the passenger door.

Sunny began to inch herself forward in the wheelchair seat, preparatory to standing; she had mastered the art when seated in a regular chair, but a wheelchair was trickier. Chance gave her an exasperated look, then leaned down and scooped her up in his powerful arms, handling her weight with ease as he deposited her in the Explorer.

“Thank you,” she said politely. She would at least be civil, and his method had been much less painful and time-consuming than hers.

“You’re welcome.” He buckled the seat belt around her, making certain the straps didn’t rub against the surgical incision, then closed the door and walked around to slide under the steering wheel.

“I’ve booked a room in a hotel,” she said. “But I don’t know where it is, so I can’t give you directions.”

“You aren’t going to a hotel,” he growled.

“I have to go somewhere,” she pointed out. “I’m not able to drive, and I can’t handle negotiating an airport, so a hotel with room service is the only logical solution.”

“No it isn’t. I’m taking you home with me.”

“No!” she said violently, everything in her rejecting the idea of spending days in his company.

His jaw set. “You don’t have a choice,” he said grimly. “You’re going—even if you kick and scream the whole way.”

It was tempting. Oh, it was tempting. Only the thought of how badly kicking would pull at the incision made her resist the idea.

The dime didn’t drop until she noticed he was driving to the airport. “Where are we going?”

He gave her an impatient glance. “I told you. Hell, Sunny, you know I don’t live in Des Moines.”

“All right, so I know where you don’t live. But I don’t know where you do live.” She couldn’t resist adding, “And even if you had told me, it would probably be a lie.”

This time his glance was sulfuric. “Wyoming,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m taking you home to Wyoming.”

She was silent during the flight, speaking only when necessary and then only in monosyllables. Chance studied her when her attention was on the landscape below, his sunglasses hiding his eyes. They had flown around so much during the time they’d been together that it felt natural to once again be in the plane with her, as if they were where they belonged. She had settled in with a minimum of fussing and no complaints, though he knew she had to be exhausted and uncomfortable.

She looked so frail, as if a good wind would blow her away. There wasn’t any color in her cheeks or lips, and she had dropped a good ten pounds that she didn’t need to lose. The doctor had assured him that she was recovering nicely, right on schedule, and that while her pregnancy was still too new for any test to tell them anything about the baby’s condition, they had taken all precautions and he had every confidence the baby would be fine.

As thrilled as he was about the baby, Chance was more worried that the pregnancy would sap her strength and slow her recovery. She needed all the resources she could muster now, but nature would ensure that the developing child got what it needed first. The only way he could be confident she was getting what she needed was if he arranged for her to be watched every minute, and coddled and spoiled within an inch of her life. The best place for that was Mackenzie’s Mountain.

He had called and told them he was bringing Sunny there, of course. He had told them the entire situation, that she was pregnant and he intended to marry her, but that she was still mad as hell at him and hadn’t forgiven him. He had set quite a task for himself, getting back in Sunny’s good graces. But once he had her on the Mountain, he thought, he could take his time wearing her down.

Mary, typically, was ecstatic. She took it for granted Sunny would forgive him, and since she had been prodding him about getting married and giving her more grandchildren, she probably thought she was getting everything she wanted.

Chance was going to do everything he could to see that she did, because what she wanted was exactly what he wanted. He’d always sworn he would never get married and have children, but fate had stepped in and arranged things otherwise. The prospect of getting married scared him—no, it terrified the hell out of him, so much so that he hadn’t even broached the subject to Sunny. He didn’t know how to tell her what she needed to know about him, and he didn’t know what she would do when she found out, if she would accept his proposal or tell him to drop dead.

The only thing that gave him hope was that she’d said she loved him. She hadn’t said it since she found out how he’d set her up, but Sunny wasn’t a woman who loved lightly. If there was a spark of love left in her, if he hadn’t totally extinguished it, he would find a way to fan it to life.

He landed at the airstrip on Zane’s property, and his heart gave a hard thump when he saw what was waiting for them. Even Sunny’s interest was sparked. She sat up straighter, and for the first time since she’d been shot he saw a hint of that lively interest in her face. “What’s going on?” she asked.

His spirits lifting, he grinned. “Looks like a welcoming party.”

The entire Mackenzie clan was gathered by the airstrip. Everyone. Josh and Loren were there from Seattle with their three sons. Mike and Shea and their two boys. Zane and Barrie, each holding one of the twins. And there was Joe, decked out in his Air Force uniform with more rows of fruit salad on it than should be allowed. How he had carved time out of his schedule to come here, Chance didn’t know—but then, Joe could do damn near anything he wanted, since he was the highest ranking military officer in the nation. Caroline, standing beside him and looking positively chic in turquoise capri pants and white sandals—and also looking damn good for her age—had probably had a harder time getting free. She was one of the top-ranked physicists in the world. Their five sons were with him, and John, the oldest, wasn’t the only one this time who had a girlfriend with him. Maris and Mac stood together; Mac had his arm draped protectively around Maris’s slight frame. And Mom and Dad were in the middle of the whole gang, with Nick perched happily in Wolf’s arms.

Every last one of them, even the babies, held a balloon.

“Oh, my,” Sunny murmured. The corners of her pale mouth moved upwards in the first smile he had seen in eight days.

He cut the motor and got out, then went to the other door and carefully lifted Sunny out. She was so bemused by the gathering that she put her arm around his neck.

That must have been the signal. Wolf leaned down and set Nick on her feet. She took off toward Chance like a shot, running and skipping and shrieking his name in the usual litany. “UncaDance, UncaDance, UncaDance!” The balloon she was holding bobbed like a mad thing. The whole crowd started forward in her wake.

In seconds they were surrounded. He tried to introduce everyone to Sunny, but there was too much of a hubbub for him to complete a sentence. His sisters-in-law, bless them, were laughing and chattering as if they had known her for years; the men were flirting; Mary was beaming; and Nick’s piping voice could be heard above everyone. “Dat’s a weally, weally pwetty dwess.” She fingered the silk robe and beamed up at Sunny.

John leaned down and whispered something in Nick’s ear. “Dress,” she said, emphasizing the r. “Dat’s a weally, weally pwetty dress.”

Everyone cheered, and Nick glowed.

Sunny laughed.

Chance’s heart jumped at the sound. His throat got tight, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a second. When he opened them, Mary had taken control.

“You must be exhausted,” she was saying to Sunny in her sweet, Southern-accented voice. “You don’t have to worry about a thing, dear. I have a bed all ready for you at the house, and you can sleep as long as you want. Chance, carry her along to the car, and be careful with her.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Wait!” Nick wailed suddenly. “I fordot de sign!”

“What sign?” Chance asked, gently shifting Sunny so he could look down at his niece.

She fished in the pocket of her little red shorts and pulled out a very crumpled piece of paper. She stretched up on her tiptoes to hand it to Sunny. “I did it all by myself,” she said proudly. “Gamma helped.”

Sunny unfolded the piece of paper.

“I used a wed cwayon,” Nick informed her. “Because it’s de pwettiest.”

“It certainly is,” Sunny agreed. She swallowed audibly. Chance looked down to see the paper shaking in her hand.

The letters were misshapen and wobbly and all different sizes. The little girl must have labored over them for a long time, with Mary’s expert and patient aid, because the words were legible. “‘Welcome home Sunny,”’ Sunny read aloud. Her face began to crumple. “That’s the most beautiful sign I’ve ever seen,” she said, then buried her face against Chance’s neck and burst into tears.

“Yep,” Michael said. “She’s pregnant, all right.”

It was difficult to say who fell more in love with whom, Sunny with the Mackenzies, or the Mackenzies with her. Once Chance placed her in the middle of the king-sized bed Mary had made up for her—he didn’t tell her it was his old bedroom—Sunny settled in like a queen holding court. Instead of lying down to sleep, she propped herself up on pillows, and soon all of the women and most of the younger kids were in there, sitting on the bed and on the floor, some even in chairs. The twins were working their way from one side of the bed to the other and back again, clutching the covers for support and babbling away to each other in what Barrie called their “twin talk.” Shea had Benjy down on the floor, tickling him, and every time she stopped he would shriek, “More! More!” Nick sat cross-legged on the bed, her “wed cwayon” in hand as she studiously worked on another sign. Since the first one had been such a resounding success, this one was for Barrie, and she was embellishing it with lopsided stars. Loren, being a doctor, wanted the details of Sunny’s wound and present condition. Caroline was doing an impromptu fashion consultation, brushing Sunny’s hair and swirling it on top of her head, with some very sexy tendrils curling loose on her slender neck. Maris, her dark eyes glowing, was telling Sunny all about her own pregnancy, and Mary was overseeing it all.

Leaving his family to do what they did best, weave a magic spell of warmth and belonging, Chance walked down to the barn. He felt edgy and worried and a little panicked, and he needed some peace and quiet. When everything quieted down tonight, he had to talk to Sunny. He couldn’t put it off any longer. He prayed desperately that she could forgive him, that what he had to tell her didn’t completely turn her against him, because he loved her so much he wasn’t certain he could live without her. When she had buried her face against him and cried, his heart had almost stopped because she had turned to him instead of away from him.

She had laughed again. That sound was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard, and it had almost unmanned him. He couldn’t imagine living without being able to hear her laugh.

He folded his arms across the top of a stall door and rested his head on them. She had to forgive him. She had to.

“It’s tough, isn’t it?” Wolf said in his deep voice, coming up to stand beside Chance and rest his arms on top of the stall door, too. “Loving a woman. And it’s the best thing in the world.”

“I never thought it would happen,” Chance said, the words strained. “I was so careful. No marriage, no kids. It was going to end with me. But she blindsided me. I fell for her so fast I didn’t have time to run.”

Wolf straightened, his black eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘end with you’? Why don’t you want kids? You love them.”

“Yeah,” Chance said softly. “But they’re Mackenzies.”

“You’re a Mackenzie.” There was steel in the deep voice.

Tiredly, Chance rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s the problem. I’m not a real Mackenzie.”

“Do you want to walk in the house and tell that little woman in there that you’re not her son?” Wolf demanded sharply.

“Hell, no!” No way would he hurt her like that.

“You’re my son. In all the ways that matter, you’re mine.”

The truth of that humbled Chance. He rested his head on his arms again. “I never could understand how you could take me in as easily as you did. You know what kind of life I led. You may not know the details, but you have a good general idea. I wasn’t much more than a wild animal. Mom had no idea, but you did. And you still brought me into your home, trusted me to be around both Mom and Maris—”

“And that trust was justified, wasn’t it?” Wolf asked.

“But it might not have been. You had no way of knowing.” Chance paused, looking inward at the darkness inside him. “I killed a man when I was about ten, maybe eleven,” he said flatly. “That’s the wild kid you brought home with you. I stole, I lied, I attacked other kids and beat them up, then took whatever it was they had that I wanted. That’s the kind of person I am. That kid will always live inside me.”

Wolf gave him a sharp look. “If you had to kill a man when you were ten, I suspect the bastard deserved killing.”

“Yeah, he deserved it. Kids who live in the street are fair game to perverts like that.” He clenched his hands. “I have to tell Sunny. I can’t ask her to marry me without her knowing what she’ll be getting, what kind of genes I’ll be passing on to her children.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Except I don’t know what kind of genes they are. I don’t know what’s in my background. For all I know my mother was a drugged-out whore and—”

“Stop right there,” Wolf said, steel in his voice.

Chance looked up at him, the only father he had ever known, and the man he respected most in the world.

“I don’t know who gave birth to you,” Wolf said. “But I do know bloodlines, son, and you’re a thoroughbred. Do you know what I regret most in my life? Not finding you until you were fourteen. Not feeling your hand holding my finger when you took your first step. Not getting up with you in the night when you were teething, or when you were sick. Not being able to hold you the way you needed holding, the way all kids need holding. By the time we got you I couldn’t do any of that, because you were as skittish as a wild colt. You didn’t like for us to touch you, and I tried to respect that.

“But one thing you need to know. I’m more proud of you than I’ve ever been of anything in my life, because you’re one of the finest men I’ve ever known, and you had to work a lot harder than most to get to where you are. If I could have had my pick of all the kids in the world to adopt, I still would have chosen you.”

Chance stared at his father, his eyes wet. Wolf Mackenzie put his arms around his grown son and hugged him close, the way he had wanted to do all these years. “I would have chosen you,” he said again.

Chance entered the bedroom and quietly closed the door behind him. The crowd had long since dispersed, most to their respective homes, some spending the night here or at Zane’s or Michael’s. Sunny looked tired, but there was a little color in her cheeks.

“How do you feel?” he asked softly.

“Exhausted,” she said. She looked away from him. “Better.”

He sat down beside her on the bed, taking care not to jostle her. “I have some things I need to tell you,” he said.

“If it’s an explanation, don’t bother,” she shot back. “You used me. Fine. But damn you, you didn’t have to take it as far as you did! Do you know how it makes me feel that I was such a fool to fall in love with you, when all you were doing was playing a game? Did it stroke your ego—”

He put his hand across her mouth. Above his tanned fingers, her gray eyes sparked pure rage at him. He took a deep breath. “First and most important thing is: I love you. That wasn’t a game. I started falling the minute I saw you. I tried to stop it but—” He shrugged that away and got back to the important part. “I love you so much I ache inside. I’m not good enough for you, and I know it—”

She swatted his hand aside, scowling at him. “What? I mean, I agree, after what you did, but—what do you mean?”

He took her hand and was relieved when she didn’t pull away from him. “I’m adopted,” he said. “That part’s fine. It’s the best. But I don’t know who my biological parents are or anything about them. They—she—tossed me into the street and forgot about me. I grew up wild in the streets, and I mean literally in the streets. I don’t remember ever having a home until I was about fourteen, when I was adopted. I could come from the trashiest people on the planet, and probably do, otherwise they wouldn’t have left me to starve to death in the gutter. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but if you marry me, you have to know what you’ll be getting.”

“What?” she said again, as if she couldn’t understand what he was telling her.

“I should have asked you to marry me before,” he said, getting it all out. “But—hell, how could I ask anyone to marry me? I’m a wild card. You don’t know what you’re getting with me. I was going to let you go, but then I found out about the baby and I couldn’t do it. I’m selfish, Sunny. I want it all, you and our baby. If you think you can take the risk—”

She drew back, such an incredulous, outraged look on her face that he almost couldn’t bear it. “I don’t believe this,” she sputtered, and slapped him across the face.

She wasn’t back to full strength, but she still packed a wallop. Chance sat there, not even rubbing his stinging jaw. His heart was shriveling inside him. If she wanted to hit him again, he figured he deserved it.

“You fool!” she shouted. “For God’s sake, my father was a terrorist! That’s the heritage I’m carrying around, and you’re worried because you don’t know who your parents were? I wish to hell I didn’t know who my father was! I don’t believe this! I thought you didn’t love me! Everything would have been all right if I’d known you love me!”

Chance uttered a startled, profound curse, one of Nick’s really, really bad words. Put in those terms, it did sound incredibly trivial. He stared at her lovely, outraged face, and the weight lifted off his chest as if it had never been. Suddenly he wanted to laugh. “I love you so much I’m half crazy with it. So, will you marry me?”

“I have to,” she said grumpily. “You need a keeper. And let me tell you one thing, Chance Mackenzie, if you think you’re still going to be jetting all over the world getting stabbed and shot at while you get your adrenaline high, then you’d better think again. You’re going to stay home with me and this baby. Is that understood?”

“Understood,” he said. After all, the Mackenzie men always did whatever it took to keep their women happy.

Epilogue

Sunny was asleep, exhausted from her long labor and then the fright and stress of having surgery when the baby wouldn’t come. Her eyes were circled with fatigue, but Chance thought she had never been more beautiful. Her face, when he laid the baby in her arms, had been exalted. Until he died, he would never forget that moment. The medical personnel in the room had faded away to nothing, and it had been just him and his wife and their child.

He looked down at the wrinkled, equally exhausted little face of his son. The baby slept as if he had run a marathon, his plump hands squeezed into fierce little fists. He had downy black hair, and though it was difficult to judge a newborn’s eye color, he thought they might turn the same brilliant gray as Sunny’s.

Zane poked his head in the door. “Hi,” he said softly. “I’ve been sent to reconnoiter. She’s still asleep, huh?”

Chance looked at his wife, as sound asleep as the baby. “She had a rough time.”

“Well, hell, he weighs ten pounds and change. No wonder she needed help.” Zane came completely into the room, smiling as he examined the unconscious little face. “Here, let me hold him. He needs to start meeting the family.” He took the baby from Chance, expertly cradling him to his chest. “I’m your uncle Zane. You’ll see me around a lot. I have two little boys who are just itching to play with you, and your aunt Maris—you’ll meet her in a minute—has one who’s just a little older than you are. You’ll have plenty of playmates, if you ever open your eyes and look around.”

The baby’s eyelids didn’t flicker open, even when Zane rocked him. His pink lips moved in an unconscious sucking motion.

“You forget fast how little they are,” Zane said softly as he smoothed his big hand over the baby’s small round skull. He glanced up at Chance and grinned. “Looks like I’m still the only one who knows how to make a little girl.”

“Yeah, well, this is just my first try.”

“It’ll be your last one, too, if they’re all going to weigh ten pounds,” came a voice from the bed. Sunny sighed and pushed her hair out of her eyes, and a smile spread across her face as she spied her son. “Let me have him,” she said, holding out her arms.

There was a protocol to this sort of thing. Zane passed the baby to Chance, and Chance carried him to Sunny, settling him in her arms. No matter how often he saw it, he was always touched by the communion between mother and new baby, that absorbed look they both got as if they recognized each other on some basic, primal level.

“Are you feeling well enough for company?” Zane asked. “Mom’s champing at the bit, wanting to get her hands on this little guy.”

“I feel fine,” Sunny said, though Chance knew she didn’t. He had to kiss her, and even now there was that flash of heat between them, even though their son was only a few hours old. She pulled back, laughing a little and blushing. “Get away from me, you lech,” she said, teasing him, and he laughed.

“What are you going to name him?” Zane demanded. “We’ve been asking for months, but you never would say. It can’t stay a secret much longer.”

Chance trailed his finger down the baby’s downy cheek, then he put his arms around both Sunny and the baby and held them close. Life couldn’t get much better than this.

“Wolf,” he said. “He’s little Wolf.”

Mackenzie’s Magic

By Linda Howard

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Her head hurt.

The pain thudded against the inside of her skull, pounded on her eyeballs. Her stomach stirred uneasily, as if awakened by all the commotion.

“My head hurts.” Maris Mackenzie voiced the complaint in a low, vaguely puzzled tone. She never had headaches; despite her delicate appearance, she possessed in full the Mackenzie iron constitution. The oddity of her condition was what had startled her into speaking aloud.

She didn’t open her eyes, didn’t bother to look at the clock. The alarm hadn’t gone off, so it wasn’t time to get up. Perhaps if she went back to sleep the headache would go away.

“I’ll get you some aspirin.”

Maris’s eyes snapped open, and the movement made her head give a sickening throb.

The voice was male, but even more startling, it had been right beside her; so close, in fact, that the man had only murmured the words and still his warm breath had stirred against her ear. The bed shifted as he sat up.

There was a soft click as he turned on the bedside lamp, and the light exploded in her head. Quickly she squeezed her eyes shut again, but not before she saw a man’s broad, strongly muscled, naked back, and a well-shaped head covered with short, thick dark hair.

Confused panic seized her. Where was she? Even more important, who was he? She wasn’t in her bedroom; one glance had told her that. The bed beneath her was firm, comfortable, but not hers.

An exhaust fan whirred to life when he turned on the bathroom light. She didn’t risk opening her eyes again, but instead relied on her other senses to orient herself. A motel, then. That was it. And the strange whumping sound she had only now heard was the blower of the room’s climate-control unit.

She had slept in plenty of motels, but never before with a man. Why was she in a motel, anyway, instead of her own comfortable little house close by the stables? The only time she stayed in motels was when she was traveling to or from a job, and since she had settled in Kentucky a couple of years ago the only traveling she’d done had been when she went home to visit the family.

It was an effort to think. She couldn’t come up with any reason at all why she was in a motel with a strange man.

Sharp disappointment filled her, temporarily piercing the fogginess in her brain. She had never slept around before, and she was disgusted with herself for having done so now, an episode she didn’t remember with a man she didn’t know.

She knew she should leave, but she couldn’t seem to muster the energy it would take to jump out of bed and escape. Escape? She wondered fuzzily at the strange choice of word. She was free to leave any time she wanted…if she could only manage to move. Her body felt heavily relaxed, content to do nothing more than lie there. She needed to do something, she was certain, but she couldn’t quite grasp what that something was. Even aside from the pain in her head, her mind felt fuzzy, and her thoughts were vague and drifting.

The mattress shifted again as he sat down beside her, this time on the side of the bed closest to the wall, away from the hurtful light. Carefully Maris risked opening her eyes just a little; perhaps it was because she was prepared for the pain, but the resultant throb seemed to have lessened. She squinted up at the big man, who sat so close to her that his body heat penetrated the sheet that covered her.

He was facing her now; she could see more of him than just his back. Her eyes widened.

It was him.

“Here you go,” he said, handing the aspirin to her. His voice was a smooth, quiet baritone, and though she didn’t think she’d ever spoken to him before, something about that voice was strangely familiar.

She fumbled the aspirin from his hand and popped them into her mouth, making a face at both the bitter taste of the pills and her own idiocy. Of course his voice was familiar! After all, she’d been in bed with him, so she supposed she had talked to him beforehand, even if she couldn’t remember meeting him, or how she’d gotten here.

He held out a glass of water. Maris tried to prop herself up on her elbow to take it, but her head throbbed so violently that she sank back against the pillow, wincing with pain as she put her hand to her forehead. What was wrong with her? She was never sick, never clumsy. This sudden uncooperativeness of her own body was alarming.

“Let me do it.” He slipped his arm under her shoulders and effortlessly raised her to a sitting position, bracing her head in the curve of his arm and shoulder. He was warm and strong, his scent musky, and she wanted to press herself closer. The need surprised her, because she’d never before felt that way about a man. He held the glass to her lips, and she gulped thirstily, washing down the pills. When she was finished, he eased her down and removed his arm. She felt a pang of regret at the loss of his touch, astonishing herself.

Fuzzily she watched him walk around the bed. He was tall, muscular, his body showing the strength of a man who did physical work instead of sitting in an office all day. To her mingled relief and disappointment, he wasn’t completely naked; he wore a pair of dark gray knit boxers, the fabric clinging snugly to his muscled butt and thighs. Dark hair covered his broad chest, and beard stubble darkened his jaw. He wasn’t handsome, but he had a physical presence that drew the eye. It had drawn hers, anyway, since she’d first seen him two weeks ago, forking down hay in the barn.

Her reaction then had been so out of character that she had pushed it out of her mind and ignored it, or at least she had tried. She had deliberately not spoken to him whenever their paths crossed, she who had always taken pains to know everyone who worked with her horses. He threatened her, somehow, on some basic level that brought all her inner defenses screaming to alert. This man was dangerous.

He had watched her, too. She’d turned around occasionally and found his gaze on her, his expression guarded, but still, she’d felt the male heat of his attention. He was just temporary help, a drifter who needed a couple of weeks’ pay in his pocket before he drifted away again, while she was the trainer at Solomon Green Horse Farms. It was a prestigious position for anyone, but for a woman to hold the job was a first. Her reputation in the horse world had made her a sort of celebrity, something she didn’t particularly enjoy; she would rather be with the horses than putting on an expensive dress and adorning a party, but the Stonichers, who owned Solomon Green, often requested her presence. Maris wasn’t a snob, but her position on the farm was worlds apart from that of a drifter hired to muck out the stables.

He knew his way around horses, though; she’d noticed that about him. He was comfortable with the big animals, and they liked him, which had drawn her helpless attention even more. She hadn’t wanted to pay attention to the way his jeans stretched across his butt when he bent or squatted, something that he seemed to do a thousand times a day as he worked. She didn’t want to notice the muscles that strained the shoulder seams of his shirts as he hefted loaded shovels or pitchforks. He had good hands, strong and lean; she hadn’t wanted to notice them, either, or the intelligence in his blue eyes. He might be a drifter, but he drifted for his own reasons, not because he wasn’t capable of making a more stable life for himself.

She’d never had time for a man in her life, hadn’t particularly been interested. All her attention had been focused on horses, and building her career. In the privacy of her bed at night, when she wasn’t able to sleep and her restless body felt too hot for comfort, she had admitted to herself the irony of her hormones finally being kicked into full gallop by a man who would likely be gone in a matter of weeks, if not days. The best thing to do, she’d decided, would be to continue ignoring him and the uncomfortable yearnings that made her want to be close to him.

Evidently she hadn’t succeeded.

She lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the light as she watched him return the water glass to the bathroom, and only then did she notice what she herself was wearing. She wasn’t naked; she was wearing her panties, and a big T-shirt that drooped off her shoulders. His T-shirt, specifically.

Had he undressed her, or had she done it herself? If she looked around, would she find their clothes haphazardly tossed together? The thought of him undressing her interfered with her lung function, constricting her chest and stifling her oxygen flow. She wanted to remember—she needed to remember—but the night was a blank. She should get up and put on her own clothes, she thought. She should, but she couldn’t. All she could do was lie there and cope with the pain in her head while she tried to make sense of senseless things.

He was watching her as he came back to bed, his blue eyes narrowed, the color of his irises vivid even in the dim light. “Are you all right?”

She swallowed. “Yes.” It was a lie, but for some reason she didn’t want him to know she was as incapacitated as she really was. Her gaze drifted over his hairy chest and flat belly, down to the masculine bulge beneath those tight boxers. Had they really…? For what other reason would they be in a motel bed together? But if they had, why were they both wearing underwear?

Something about those sophisticated boxer shorts seemed a little out of place on a guy who did grunt work on a horse farm. She would have expected plain white briefs.

He turned off the lamp and stretched out beside her, the warmth of his body wrapping around her as he settled the sheet over them. He lay on his side, facing her, one arm curled under his pillow and the other resting across her belly, holding her close without actually wrapping her in his embrace. It struck her as a carefully measured position, close without being intimate.

She tried to remember his name, and couldn’t.

She cleared her throat. She couldn’t imagine what he would think of her, but she couldn’t bear this fogginess in her mind any longer. She had to bring order to this confusion, and the best way to do that was to start with the basics. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, almost whispering. “But I don’t remember your name, or—or how we got here.”

He went rigid, his arm tightening across her belly. For a long moment he didn’t move. Then, with a muffled curse, he sat bolt upright, the action jarring her head and making her moan. He snapped on the bedside lamp again, and she closed her eyes against the stabbing light.

“Damn it,” he muttered, bending over her. He sank his long fingers into her hair, sifting through the tousled silk as he stroked his fingertips over her skull. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”

“I didn’t know I was.” It was the truth. What did he mean, hurt?

“I should have guessed.” His voice was grim, his mouth set in a thin line. “I knew you were pale, and you didn’t eat much, but I thought it was just stress.” He continued probing, and his fingers brushed a place on the side of her head that made her suck in her breath as a sickening throb of pain sliced through her temples.

“Ah.” Gently he turned her in to him, cradling her against his shoulder while he examined the injury. His fingers barely touched her scalp. “You have a nice goose egg here.”

“Good,” she mumbled. “I’d hate for it to be a bad goose egg.”

He gave her another narrow-eyed look, something he had down to an art. “You have a concussion, damn it. Are you nauseated? How’s your vision?”

“The light hurts,” she admitted. “But my vision isn’t blurred.”

“What about nausea?”

“A little.”

“And I’ve been letting you sleep,” he growled to himself, half under his breath. “You need to be in a hospital.”

“No,” she said immediately, alarm jangling through her. The last thing she wanted was to go to a hospital. She didn’t know why, but some instinct told her to stay away from public places. “It’s safer here.”

In a very controlled tone he said, “I can handle the safety. You need to see a doctor.”

Again there was that nagging sense of familiarity, but she couldn’t quite grasp what it was. There were other, more serious, things to worry about, however, so she let it go. She took stock of her physical condition, because a concussion could be serious, and she might indeed need to be in a hospital. There was the headache, the nausea…What else? Vision good, speech not slurred. Memory? Rapidly she ran through her family, remembering names and birthdays, thinking of her favorite horses through the years. Her memory was intact, except for…She tried to pinpoint her last memory. The last thing she could remember was eating lunch and walking down to the stables, but when had that been?

“I think I’m going to be okay,” she said absently. “If you don’t mind, answer a couple of questions for me. First, what’s your name, and second, how did we wind up in bed together?”

“My name’s MacNeil,” he said, watching her closely.

MacNeil. MacNeil. Memory rushed back, bringing with it his first name, too. “I remember,” she breathed. “Alex MacNeil.” His name had struck her when she’d first heard it, because it was so similar to the name of one of her nephews, Alex Mackenzie, her brother Joe’s second-oldest son. Not only were their first names the same, but their last names both indicated the same heritage.

“Right. As for your second question, I think what you’re really asking is if we had sex. The answer is no.”

She sighed with relief, then frowned a little. “Then why are we here?” she asked in bewilderment.

He shrugged. “We seem to have stolen a horse,” he said.

Chapter 2

Stolen a horse? Maris blinked at him in total bewilderment, as if he’d said something in a foreign language. She’d asked him why they were in bed together, and he’d said they had stolen a horse. Not only was it ridiculous that she would steal a horse, but she couldn’t see any connection at all between horse thievery and sleeping with Alex MacNeil.

Then a memory twinged in her aching head, and she went still as she tried to solidify the confused picture. She remembered moving rapidly, driven by an almost blinding sense of urgency, down the wide center aisle of the barn, toward the roomy, luxurious stall in the middle of the row. Sole Pleasure was a gregarious horse; he loved company, and that was why his stall was in the middle, so he would have companionship on both sides. She also remembered the fury that had gripped her; she’d never been so angry before in her life.

“What is it?” he asked, still watching her so intently that she imagined he knew every line of her face.

“The horse we ‘seem’ to have stolen—is it Sole Pleasure?”

“The one and only. If every cop in the country isn’t already after us, they will be in a matter of hours.” He paused. “What were you planning on doing with him?”

It was a good question. Sole Pleasure was the most famous horse in America right now, and very recognizable, with his sleek black coat, white star, and white stocking on the right foreleg. He’d been on the cover of Sports Illustrated, had been named their Athlete of the Year. He’d won over two million dollars in his short career and been retired at the grand old age of four to be syndicated at stud. The Stonichers were still weighing the offers, determined to make the best deal. The horse was black gold prancing around on four powerful, lightning-fast legs.

What had she been going to do with him? She stared at the ceiling, trying to bring the hours missing from her memory back to the surface of consciousness. Why would she steal Sole Pleasure? She wouldn’t have sold him, or raced him—in disguise, of course—on her own. She rejected those possibilities out of hand. Stealing a horse was so foreign to her nature that she was at a loss to explain having apparently done exactly that. The only reason she could even imagine having for taking a horse would be the animal was in danger. She could see herself doing that, though she was more likely to take a whip to anyone mistreating one of her babies, or any horse at all, for that matter. She couldn’t bear seeing them hurt.

Or killed.

The thought knifed through her, and suddenly she knew. Oh, God, she knew.

She jerked upright in bed. Instantly pain mushroomed inside her skull, the pressure almost blinding her for a second. She gave a gasping, almost soundless cry; a hard arm shot upward and closed around her, preventing her getting up, but it didn’t matter anyway. She felt her muscles going slack, unable to support her, and she slumped over on him. The pain quickly subsided to a far more manageable level, but the moment of agony left her weak and shaking, collapsed on his chest, in his arms, her eyes closed as she tried to recover from the shock.

MacNeil gently turned so that she was flat on her back and he was half over her, one heavy, hairy, muscled leg thrown across her much slimmer ones, his arm under her neck, his broad shoulders blocking the light from her closed eyelids. One big hand covered her left breast, the contact brief and warm and electrifying, then moved up to her throat. She felt his fingers pressing against the artery there, then a soft sigh eased from him, and he briefly leaned down to press his forehead against hers, very gently, as if he were afraid the touch might hurt her. She swallowed, trying to control her breathing. That was the limit of her control, though, because there was nothing she could do about the speed at which her blood was thundering through her veins.

Only the thought of Sole Pleasure kept her focused. Maris gulped, opening her eyes and staring up at him. “They were going to kill him,” she said in a stifled tone. “I remember. They were going to kill him!” Renewed rage bubbled in her bloodstream, giving force to the last sentence.

“So you stole him to save his life.”

He said it much more as a statement than as a question, but Maris nodded anyway, remembering at the last second to limit herself to only a tiny movement of her head. The calmness of his voice again piqued her interest with its familiarity. Why wasn’t he alarmed, indignant, or any number of other responses that could reasonably be expected? Maybe he’d already guessed, and she had only confirmed his suspicion.

He was a drifter, a man who routinely walked away from responsibility, but even though he’d guessed what she was doing, he had involved himself anyway. Their situation was highly precarious, because unless she could prove the charge she’d made, they would be arrested for stealing Sole Pleasure, the most valuable horse in the country. All she remembered now was the danger to the stallion, not who was behind it, so proving it could be a bit chancy.

Chancy…Chance. Chance and Zane. The thought of her brothers was like sunrise, bringing light to the darkness in her mind. No matter what was going on or who was behind it, all she had to do was call Zane, and he would get to the bottom of it. Maybe that had been her original plan, lost in the fog that obscured the past twelve hours. Get Sole Pleasure out of harm’s way, contact Zane, and lay low until the danger was over.

She stared at the ceiling, trying to remember any other detail that would help clear up the situation. Nothing. “Did I call anyone last night?” she asked. “Did I say anything about calling one of my brothers?”

“No. There was no time or opportunity to call anyone until we got here, and you were out like a light as soon as you hit the bed.”

That information didn’t clear up the question of whether she had undressed herself or he had done it. She scowled a little, annoyed at how the physical intimacy of the situation kept distracting her from the business at hand.

He was still watching her closely; she felt as if his attention hadn’t wavered from her for so much as a split second. She could sense him analyzing every nuance of her expressions, and the knowledge was unsettling. She was accustomed to people paying attention to her; she was, after all, the boss. But this was different, on an entirely different level, as if he missed nothing going on around him.

“Were you going to call your family for help?” he asked when she didn’t say anything else.

She pursed her lips. “That would have been the most logical thing to do. I should probably call them now.” Since Zane had left the SEALs, he was much easier to contact; Barrie and the kids kept him closer to home. And he would know how to get in touch with Chance, though the odds of Chance even being in the country weren’t good. It didn’t matter; if she needed them, if she made the call, she knew her entire family would descend on Kentucky like the Vikings swooping down on a medieval coastal village—and heaven help those who were behind all this.

Maris tried to ease herself away from him so that she could sit up and reach the phone. To her amazement, he tightened his grip, holding her in place.

“I’m okay,” she said in reassurance. “As long as I remember to move slowly and not jar my head, I can manage. I need to call my brother as soon as possible, so he can—”

“I can’t let you do that,” he said calmly.

She blinked, her dark eyes growing cool. “I beg your pardon?” Her tone was polite, but she let him hear the steel underlying it.

His lips twitched, and a ruefully amused look entered his eyes. “I said I can’t let you do that.” The amusement spread to his mouth, turning the twitch into a smile. “What are you going to do, fire me?”

Maris ignored the taunt, because if she couldn’t prove Sole Pleasure was in danger, neither of them would have to worry about a job for some time. She lay still, considering this sudden change in the situation, possibilities running through her mind. He was too damn sure of himself, and she wondered why. He didn’t want her to call for help. The only reason she could come up with was that he must be involved, somehow, in the plot to kill Sole Pleasure. Maybe he was the one who’d been hired to do it. Suddenly, looking up into those blue eyes, Maris felt the danger in him again. It wasn’t just a sensual danger, but the inherent danger of a man who had known violence. Yes, this man could kill.

Sole Pleasure might already be dead. She thought of that big, sleek, powerful body lying stiff, never to move again, and a nearly crippling grief brought the sheen of tears to her eyes. She couldn’t control that response, but she allowed herself no other. Maybe she was wrong about MacNeil, but for Sole Pleasure’s sake, she couldn’t take the chance.

“Don’t cry,” he murmured, his voice dropping into a lower note. He lifted his hand to gently stroke her hair away from her temple. “I’ll take care of things.”

This was going to hurt. Maris knew it, and accepted the pain. Her father had taught her to go into a fight expecting to get hurt; people who didn’t expect the pain were stunned by it, incapacitated and, ultimately, defeated. Wolf Mackenzie had taught his children to win fights.

MacNeil was too close; she was also lying flat on her back, which took away a lot of her leverage. She had to do it anyway. The first blow had to count.

She snapped her left arm up at him, striking for his nose with the heel of her palm.

He moved like lightning, his right forearm coming up to block the blow. Her palm slammed into his arm with enough force to jar her to the teeth. Instantly she recoiled and struck again, this time aiming lower, for his solar plexus. Again that muscular forearm blocked her way, and this time he twisted, catching both of her arms and pinning them to the pillow on each side of her head. With another smooth motion he levered himself atop her, his full weight crushing her into the bed.

The entire thing took three seconds, maybe less. There had been no explosion of movement; anyone watching might not even have realized a brief battle had taken place, so tight had been the movements of attack and response, then counterattack. Her head hadn’t even been unduly jarred. But Maris knew. Not only had she been trained by her father, she had also watched Zane and Chance spar too often to have any doubts. She had just gone up against a highly trained professional—and lost.

His blue eyes were flinty, his expression cold and remote. His grip on her wrists didn’t hurt, but when she tried to move her arms, she found that she couldn’t.

“Now, what in hell was that about?” His voice was still calm, but edged with an icy sharpness.

Then it all fell together. His control, his utter self-confidence, the calmness that seemed so familiar. Of course it was familiar—she saw it constantly, in her brothers. Zane had just that way of speaking, as if he could handle anything that might happen. MacNeil hadn’t hurt her, even when she had definitely tried to hurt him. She couldn’t have expected such concern from a thug hired to kill a horse. The clues were there, even those sexy gray boxers. This was no drifter.

“My God,” she blurted. “You’re a cop.”

Chapter 3

“Is that why you attacked?” If anything, those blue eyes were even colder.

“No,” she said absently, staring up at his face as if she’d never seen a man before. She felt stunned, as if she really hadn’t. Something had just happened, but she wasn’t sure what. It was like the way she’d felt when she first saw him, only more intense, primally exciting. She frowned a little as she tried to pin down the exact thought, or sensation, or whatever it was. His hands tightened on her wrists, drawing her back to the question he’d asked and the answer he wanted, and reluctantly she gathered her thoughts. “I just now realized that you’re a cop. The reason I tried to hit you was because you wouldn’t let me call my family, and I was afraid you might be one of the bad guys.”

“So you were going to try to take me out?” He looked furious at the idea. “You have a concussion. How in hell did you expect to fight me? And who taught you those moves, anyway?”

“My father. He taught all of us how to fight. And I could have won, against most men,” she said simply. “But you—I know professional training when I see it.”

“So the fact that I know how to fight makes you think I’m a cop?”

She could have told him about Zane and Chance, who, even though they weren’t cops, had many of the same characteristics she’d noticed in him. She didn’t, though, because she wasn’t one hundred percent certain their organization or agency or whatever it was was exactly squared away with either the State or Justice Department. Instead, she gave MacNeil a secret little smile. “Actually, it was your shorts.”

He was startled out of his control, his blue eyes widening. “My shorts?”

“They aren’t briefs. They’re not white. They’re too sexy.”

“And that’s a dead giveaway for being a cop?” he asked incredulously, color staining his cheekbones.

“Drifters don’t wear sexy gray boxers,” she pointed out. She didn’t mention the interest she could feel stirring in those sexy gray boxers. Perhaps, under the circumstances, she shouldn’t have mentioned his underwear. Not that his reaction was unexpected, she thought. She was barely clothed, and he wore even less. She could feel the hard, hairy bareness of his legs against hers, the pressure of his hips. Just minutes before, she had thought his touch carefully controlled, so that there was no intimacy, despite his closeness. She didn’t feel that way now. It wasn’t just his arousal; there was something very intimate in the way he held her beneath him, as if their brief battle had startled him out of his careful control and provoked him into a heated, purely male response. She took a deep breath as an unfamiliar excitement made her heart beat faster, made every cell in her body tingle with life. The secret part of her, the wildness that she had always known was there but which no man had ever before managed to touch, shivered in fierce satisfaction at the way he held her.

“Cops don’t necessarily wear them, either.”

Her comment about his shorts had definitely disturbed him. She smiled again, her dark eyes half closing in sensual delight as she absorbed the novel sensation of having a hard male body on top of her—an extremely aroused male body. “If you say so. I’ve never seen one undressed before. What kind of cop are you, specifically?”

He was silent for a moment, studying her face. She didn’t know what he saw there, but the set of his mouth eased, and if anything, he settled even more heavily against her. “Specifically, FBI. Special agent.”

A federal agent? Startled out of her sensual preoccupation, she gave him a puzzled look. “I didn’t think stealing a horse was a federal crime.”

He almost smiled. “It isn’t. Look, if I let go of your hands, are you going to try to kill me again?”

“No. I promise,” she said. “Besides, I wasn’t trying to kill you, and even if I had been, I’m not as good as you are, so you don’t have to worry.”

“I can’t tell you how reassuring that is,” he said dryly, but he released her hands and shifted his position a little, propping himself over her on his forearms. The change forced his hips more firmly against hers, forced her thighs slightly apart to accommodate the pressure. She caught her breath. His interest had grown, to the point that there was no politely ignoring it. But he was ignoring it, not in the least embarrassed by his body’s response to her.

Maris took another deep breath, delighting in the way the simple action rubbed her breasts against the hard, muscled planes of his chest, making her nipples tingle. Oh, God, that felt so good. She would gladly lie in his arms and do nothing more than breathe, if they didn’t have a stolen champion horse stashed somewhere and someone presumably on their trail, trying to kill both them and the stallion.

But they did have a stolen horse hidden away, and a big problem on their hands. She focused her thoughts, and despite the fact that she was lying helplessly pinned beneath him, she fixed him with a dark, penetrating gaze. “So why was a federal special agent mucking out my stables?”

“Trying to find out who’s been killing horses and collecting the insurance money on them—boss.” He added the last word in a dry tone, responding to her arrogant claiming of the Solomon Green stables as her own.

She ignored the not-so-subtle teasing, because she’d heard it so often from her family. What she loved, she claimed; it was as simple as that. She drew her head back deeper into the pillow and gave him a frankly skeptical look. “Insurance fraud rates a special agent?”

“It does when it involves kidnapping, crossing state lines and murder.”

Murder. So she’d been right: Someone was trying to kill them. Had this someone hit her on the head, or had she gained the goose egg by a more mundane method, such as falling?

“What brought you to Solomon Green?”

“A tip.” One corner of his mouth curved slightly. His face was so close to hers that she could see the tiny lines created by the movement, as if he smiled easily. “Law enforcement agencies couldn’t operate without snitches.”

“So you knew Sole Pleasure was in danger?” She didn’t like that. Anger began to smolder in her dark eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have been on guard without causing any suspicion. You didn’t have a right to gamble with his life.”

“All of the horses are insured. Any of them could have been targeted. Sole Pleasure should have been their least likely target, because he’s so well-known. His death would raise a lot of questions, attract a lot of attention.” He paused, watching her carefully. “And, until last night, you were on my list of suspects.”

She absorbed that, her only reaction a slight tightening of her mouth. “How did last night change your mind? What happened?” It was both frustrating and frightening, not being able to remember.

“You came to me for help. You were so angry you could barely speak, and you were scared. You said we had to get Sole Pleasure out of there, and if I didn’t want to help, you’d manage on your own.”

“Did I say who was after him?”

He gave a slight shake of his head. “No. Like I said, you were barely speaking. You wouldn’t answer any questions. I thought at the time you were too scared, and once we had the horse safe, I was going to give you a little time to settle down before I started questioning you. Then I noticed how pale and shaky you were, maybe a little shocky from the adrenaline crash. You wanted to go on, but I made you stop here. You conked out as soon as we got in the room.”

That reminded her again of both the interesting question of whether she had undressed herself or he had done it for her and his rather irritating assumption that he could make her do anything. She frowned when she realized that he could back up that assumption with action; her current position proved it. He hadn’t hurt her, but physically she was still very much under his control.

Her frown deepened as she grew more annoyed with herself than before. She was doing it again, letting her attention drift. She could keep letting herself get sidetracked by her undeniable attraction to him, or she could keep her mind on the problem at hand. Sole Pleasure’s life, and perhaps her own, depended on doing whatever she could to help this man.

There was no question which was most important.

“The Stonichers,” she said slowly. “They’re the only ones who would benefit financially from Sole Pleasure’s death, but they’d make more by syndicating him for stud, so killing him doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s another reason I didn’t think he was in danger. I was watching all the other horses. The insurance on them wouldn’t be as much, but neither would their deaths cause much of a stir.”

“How did I find you?” she asked. “Did I come to your room? Call you? Did anyone see us, or did you see anyone?” His room was one of ten, tiny but private, in a long, narrow block building the Stonichers had built specifically to house the employees who were transient and had no other quarters, as well as those who needed to be on-site. As the trainer, Maris was important enough to have her own small three-room cottage on the premises. The foaling man, Mr. Wyse, also had his own quarters, an upstairs apartment in the foaling barn, where he watched the mothers-to-be on video monitors. There were always people around; someone had to have seen them.

“I wasn’t in my room. I’d been in the number two barn, checking around, and had just gone out the back door when you rode by on Sole Pleasure. It was dark, so I didn’t think you’d seen me, but you stopped and told me I had to help you. The truck and trailer that brought in that little sorrel mare this afternoon were still sitting there, hooked up, so we loaded Sole Pleasure in and took off. If anyone saw us, I doubt they could even have seen there was a horse in the trailer, much less recognized it as Sole Pleasure.”

It was possible, she thought. The number two barn was where the mares who had been sent to the farm for breeding were stabled. Night came early in December, and the horses were already settled down, the workers relaxing or at supper. The truck and trailer didn’t belong to Solomon Green, and everyone knew they had brought in a mare that afternoon, so no one would think anything of the rig leaving, except the driver, who had decided to spend the night and start back at dawn the next day. And Sole Pleasure was exceptionally easy to load; he never made a fuss and, in fact, seemed to enjoy traveling. Loading him wouldn’t have taken more than a minute, and then they would have been on their way.

“I didn’t have a chance to call my family,” she said, “but did you call anyone while I was asleep?”

“I went out to a pay phone and let my office know what was going on. They’ll try to run interference for us, but they can’t be too obvious without blowing the operation. We still don’t know who’s involved in the ring—unless you’ve remembered something else in the past few minutes?”

“No,” she said regretfully. “My last clear memory is of walking down to the stables yesterday afternoon. I know it was after lunch, but I don’t know the exact time. What little else I remember is just flashes of being angry, and scared, and running to Pleasure’s stall.”

“If you remember anything else, even the smallest detail, tell me immediately. By taking the horse, we’ve given them the perfect opportunity to kill him and blame it on us, or at least they’ll see it that way, since they don’t know I’m FBI. They’ll be after us hot and heavy, and I need to know who to expect.”

“Where’s Pleasure now?” she asked in alarm, putting her hands on his shoulders and pushing. She squirmed under him, trying to slip free of his weight so that she could get up, get dressed and get to the horse. It wasn’t like her to be so lax about a horse’s comfort and security, and though she had watched MacNeil enough to know that he was conscientious with the animals, the final responsibility was hers.

“Calm down. He’s all right.” MacNeil caught her hands, once more holding them down on the pillow. “I’ve got him stashed in the woods. No one’s going to find him. I couldn’t make it easy for them. Leaving him in the parking lot, where anyone could get at him, would have made even a fool suspicious. They’re going to have to come to us in order to find him.”

She relaxed against the pillows, reassured about Pleasure’s safety. “All right. What are we going to do now?”

He hesitated. “My original plan was to find out what you knew, then put you somewhere safe until we had everything settled.”

“Where were you going to put me, in the trailer with Pleasure?” she asked, a slight caustic edge to her voice. “Well, too bad. I can’t tell you what I know, and you need to keep me handy in case I do remember something. You’re stuck with me, MacNeil, and you aren’t putting me anywhere.”

“There’s only one place I’d like to put you,” he said slowly. “And I already have you there.”

Chapter 4

It wasn’t a surprise, given all the evidence at hand.

Pure male possessiveness was in Alex MacNeil’s attitude, in every line of his body, staring plainly down at her from those sharp blue eyes.

Maris knew she wasn’t mistaken about that look. She had grown up seeing it in her father’s eyes every time he looked at her mother, seen the way he stood so close to her, touched her, a subtle alertness in every muscle of his body. She had also seen it innumerable times in her five brothers, first with their girlfriends and later, for four of them, with their wives. It was a look of desire, heated and potent.

It was both scary and exhilarating, startling her, and yet at the same time it was as if she had known, from the moment she first saw him, that there was something between them and eventually she would have to deal with it.

That was why she’d been at such pains to avoid him, not wanting the complication of an involvement with him, or having to endure the resultant gossip among the other employees. She had dated, some, but she had instinctively shied away whenever a boy or man showed signs of becoming too involved, possessive. She’d never had much time or patience for anything that interfered with her concentration on her horses and her career, nor had she ever wanted to let anyone that close to her.

She had a strong private core that she’d never let anyone touch, except for her family. It seemed to be a Mackenzie trait, the ability to be alone and be perfectly content, and even though all her brothers except Chance had eventually married and were frighteningly in love with their wives, they had married because they were in love. Maris had always been content to wait until that once-in-a-lifetime love happened to her, too, rather than waste time by flinging herself without thought into a brief affair with any man who just happened to have the right physical chemistry with her.

The chemistry was there with MacNeil, all right. The proof of it, on his part, was pressing urgently against the soft notch of her legs, tempting her to open her thighs wider and allow herself to feel that rigid length full against her loins. The fact that she wanted to do so was proof of the right chemistry on her part. She should move away, she knew she should, but she didn’t. There wasn’t a cell in her body that wanted to move, unless it was closer into his embrace.

She stared up into his beard-stubbled face, into blue eyes that were hard and darkened by sharp desire, a desire he was ruthlessly containing. Her own eyes were dark, bottomless pools as she met that sharp gaze. “The question is,” she said slowly, “what are you going to do about it?”

“Not very damn much,” he muttered, shifting restlessly against her. His jaw tightened at the sensations resulting from that movement, and his breath sighed out between his teeth. “You have a concussion. You have a killer headache. We have an unknown number of unknown people looking for us, so I have to keep my mind on the situation, instead of thinking about getting into your little panties. And even if you said yes, damn it, I’d have to say no, because the concussion could be causing mental impairment!” The last sentence was raw with frustration, ground out as if every word hurt him.

She lay very still beneath him, though her instinct was to part her thighs and cradle him against her, pulling him into her soft heat. Her eyes went as dark as night, softening, something mysterious and eternal moving there. “My headache is better.” Her voice was low, her gaze drawing him in. “And I’m not mentally impaired.”

“Oh, God,” he groaned, resting his forehead against hers and closing his eyes. “Two out of four.”

Maris moved her hands, and he immediately freed them. She laid her palms against his shoulders, and he tensed, waiting for her to push him away, knowing it was for the best but dreading the loss of contact. She didn’t push. Instead, she curved her hands over the powerful muscles that cushioned the balls of his shoulder joints, trailed her fingers over the curve of his collarbone and finally flattened her hands against the hard planes of his chest. His crisp black chest hair tickled her palms. His tiny flat nipples hardened to pinpoints, intriguing her. His heartbeat was hard and strong, throbbing beneath her touch.

She was amazed, a little taken aback, by the intensity of the desire that shook her. No, not just desire—need. Need, hot and strong. She had seen sexual attraction all her life, at the most basic level in her horses and the other animals on the ranch, and in her own family as something powerful and tender and somehow both straightforward and complicated at the same time. She didn’t underestimate the compelling power of sex. She had seen it, but she’d never before felt it, not this heat and ache, this emptiness that could be filled only by him, this melting sensation deep inside. She had always thought that if she ever felt this way it would be associated with love, and love was impossible here, because she didn’t know him, not really. She knew his name and his occupation, but nothing about the type of person he was, and it was impossible to love a stranger. Be attracted, yes, but not love.

But her sister-in-law Barrie had once said that within five minutes of meeting Zane she had known the kind of person he was, and loved him. They had been strangers, but extraordinary circumstances had forced them into an intimate situation and shown them facets of each other’s characters that otherwise would have taken months for them to discover.

Maris considered her own situation and the stranger who was so intimately sharing it with her. What had she learned about him since awakening—or regaining consciousness—in his arms?

He wasn’t pushing her. He wanted her, but he wasn’t pushing. The circumstances weren’t right, so he was waiting. He was a patient man, or at least a man who knew how to be patient when he had to be, something that was entirely different. He was intelligent; she would have seen that days—weeks—ago, if she had let herself study him. She wasn’t certain, but she thought that an FBI special agent had to have a law degree. He had some working medical knowledge, at least about concussions. He was evidently strong-willed enough to have gotten her to do something she didn’t want to do, though, of course, with a concussion she wouldn’t have been at her best. He had taken care of her. And most of all, despite the fact that she had slept almost naked in his arms, he hadn’t taken sexual advantage of her.

That was quite a list. He was patient, intelligent, educated, strong-willed, caring and honorable. And there was something else, the subtle quality of danger and controlled power. She remembered the quiet, authoritative tone of his voice, the utter confidence that he could take care of any problem that might arise. In that he was like her brothers, particularly Zane and Chance, and they were two of the most dangerous men she could imagine.

She had always known that one of the reasons she’d never fallen in love was that so few men could compare favorably with the men in her family. She had been content to dedicate herself to her career, unwilling to settle for less than what she knew a man could be. But Alex MacNeil was of that stamp, and her heart lurched. Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she was in danger of falling in love.

And then, looking into those eyes so blue it was like drowning in the ocean, she knew. She remembered the change inside herself, the quiet recognition of her mate.

“Oh, dear,” she said softly. “I have a very important question to ask you.”

“Shoot,” he said, then gave a wry shrug of apology at his word choice.

“Are you married, or otherwise involved with anyone?”

He knew why she was asking the question. He would have had to be dead not to feel the electricity between them, and his state of arousal proved that he was far from it. “No. No involvements, period.” He didn’t ask the same question of her; the background check he’d run on all the employees at Solomon Green had given him the basic information that she was single and had no record of prior arrests. In the time he’d worked at the farm, from the questions he’d asked, he had also found out that she didn’t date any one man on a steady basis. The other guys had kidded him about having the hots for the boss, and he’d gone along with the idea. Hell, it was true, so why not use it as part of his cover?

Maris took a deep breath. This was it, then. With the directness with which she faced life, and the fey quality with which she saw things so clearly, she gave him a tiny smile. “If you aren’t already thinking of marrying me,” she said, “you’d better get used to the idea.”

Mac kept his expression still, not allowing it to betray the shock that was reverberating through him. Marriage? He hadn’t even kissed her yet, and she was talking marriage!

A sane man would get up and get his mind back on the business at hand, which included keeping them alive through the next few hours. A sane man wouldn’t continue to lie here with this woman in his arms, not if he wanted to preserve his enjoyable single state.

He wanted her, no doubt about that. He was familiar with desire, having indulged that particular urge since the age of fourteen, and knew how to ignore it when indulgence would interfere with work. The work was absorbing, and he’d thrown himself into it with the cool, incisive intelligence that he also used to govern his personal life. He’d always been the one in control in his relationships, the one who called an end to things whenever he thought a woman was beginning to cling, to expect more from him than he was willing to give. It wasn’t fair to string a woman along and let her hope when there was no hope, so he always simply ended the affair before it got to the tears-and-recriminations stage.

But then, he’d never met Maris Mackenzie before.

He didn’t get up. More disturbing, he didn’t laugh and say the concussion must have impaired her mentally after all. She was small, delicately built, even fragile, so it was ridiculous for him to dread making her angry or, even worse, hurting her feelings. He wanted to continue holding her, wanted to cradle her close to him and protectively cover her, keep her safe from the danger that would erupt around them within the next couple of hours, shield her from everything—except himself. He wanted her open to him, vulnerable, naked, completely at his disposal. He wanted to sink into those beguiling, mysterious black eyes and forget everything but the feverish delight of thrusting into her.

The sharp turn of events had thrown him off balance, that was all. Until last night, she and everyone else at Solomon Green had been on his list of possible suspects, and he had refused to let himself dwell on the heat that ran through him every time her slight, disconcertingly female body came within sight. Hell, she hadn’t even had to be in sight; the thought of her had slipped into his consciousness at odd times during the day and disturbed his sleep at night.

He had resented his inability to ignore her as easily as she ignored him. She had a very still, intense quality about her, a focus that bespoke a will of iron. She was as absorbed in her job as he was in his, to the point that he’d thought she didn’t even know he existed as a person, much less as a man. The idea had been strangely disturbing. He’d needed to blend in, but instead he’d found himself wanting to stand out, so that she would look at him with recognition in her eyes instead of a blank stare. Night after night he’d lain alone and thought about her, resenting both the fact that he couldn’t seem to stop and the fact that she was oblivious to him. He wanted her to be as aware of him as he was of her, wanted to know that she, too, twisted on lonely sheets and thought of him in bed with her.

He wanted her with an intensity that infuriated him. Everything about her appealed to him, and that was surprising in itself, because there was nothing overtly sexual about her manner. She was pure business; she never flirted, never played favorites with the men under her authority, never made a suggestive remark, didn’t go out of her way to make herself more attractive. Not that she had to; he couldn’t have been more aware of her than if she made a practice of parading naked in front of him.

He knew exactly how her jeans clung to her curvy little ass, had imagined more than once gripping those round cheeks in his hands and lifting her into his thrust. He’d studied the shape of her high, round breasts underneath the flannel shirts she wore and, considering the slightness of her build, driven himself crazy thinking about how tight she would be when he slid into her. He’d had all the normal, heated sexual thoughts. But he’d also found himself absorbed in the satiny texture of her skin, as flawless as if she didn’t spend countless hours outdoors. No woman should have skin like that, as pure as a child’s, and so translucent he could see the fragile blue veins in her temples. He would look at her pale brown hair, bleached by the sun into streaks of ashy blond, and think of how it would trail across his arm like a fall of silk. Her eyes were as black as night, fey and unfathomable, tempting a man to try to plumb those mysterious depths.

Desire, like heat, was measured in degrees, and ran the gamut from lukewarm to vaporization. She had long since turned him to steam, he thought; it was nothing short of a miracle that he’d held her in his arms all night and done nothing more than that, even though all she was wearing was a pair of skimpy, blood-pressure-raising panties and his own T-shirt, which was so large on her that it kept slipping down to reveal one silky shoulder.

This was desire, all right—and more. It was want carried to a higher degree than he’d ever before experienced, a fever that refused to cool, a need he hadn’t let himself satisfy. Until last night, he hadn’t even let himself talk to her, even though he’d known he should, to see what, if anything, he could find out from her. Oddly enough, she had seemed to avoid him, too, though he’d noticed immediately that Ms. Mackenzie was a hands-on trainer who knew everyone working under her and was on easy terms with them. She was pure magic with the horses and a tyrant when it came to their care, but a benevolent tyrant, and everyone from the stable hands to the riders seemed to treat her with varying degrees of respect and adoration. It was out of character for her to avoid him, but that was exactly what she’d done.

It had made him suspicious. It was his job to be suspicious, to notice anything out of the ordinary, and her behavior toward him had made him wonder if something about him had made her suspicious, put her on guard. With his background, he was familiar with horses, which had made him the logical choice for the job, and he’d tried to blend in. Still, he was always aware that his training had permanently changed him, and a sharp eye might be able to spot the little things that forever set him apart from others: the extraordinary alertness, so that he was aware of every little detail of the activity going on around him; his sharp, fast reflexes; his unconscious habit of placing himself in positions that could be defended.

And she had spotted those details, known what they meant. He didn’t at all like the swiftness with which she had sized him up and said, “You’re a cop,” even if her actions of the night before had already convinced him that she wasn’t involved in the ring that killed racehorses and collected the insurance money. She saw too much, with those black eyes of hers, and now she was looking at him as if she could see into his soul.

Honesty prodded at him. Even though every hormone in his body was roaring at him not to do anything to jeopardize his current position, to stay right where he was, on top of her and all but between her legs, he ground his teeth and said what he knew he had to say.

“Marriage? You must be hurt worse than I thought, since you’re delirious.”

She didn’t take offense. Instead, she curled her arms around his neck and gave him that small, inscrutable, damnably female smile again. “I understand,” she said gently. “You need time to get used to the idea, and you have a job to do. This can wait. Right now, you have to catch some damn horse killers.”

Chapter 5

She needed to clear her head, needed some time away from him so that her nerves would settle down. Maris pushed lightly against his shoulders; he hesitated, but then rolled to the side, freeing her from his weight. The loss of that heavy pressure, the vital heat, was so unexpectedly painful that she almost reached out to pull him over her again. One glance at the straining fabric of his shorts told her that he might not be able to withstand any more temptation, and while her entire body yearned for him, she wanted to be able to fully enjoy their first time together. She had a concussion, and there were an unknown number of people after them who would likely try to kill them, as well as Sole Pleasure—powerful distractions, indeed.

Gingerly she sat up on the side of the bed, being very careful to hold her head as still as possible. The aspirin had helped; the pain was still there, but it didn’t throb as sickeningly as it had before. She eased into a standing position and was relieved when the room remained stable.

Instantly he was on his feet beside her, his hand on her arm. “What are you doing? You need to rest as much as possible.”

“I’m going to take a shower and get dressed. If I’m going to be shot at, I want to be on my feet and wearing clothes when it happens.” God, he was big, and there was all that naked flesh right in front of her. She took a deep breath, fighting the urge to press herself against him, to find out exactly where her head would fit against his shoulder now that they were standing up. His body was so beautiful, his shoulders wide and powerful, his arms and legs thick with muscle. How silly she’d been to avoid him all these weeks, when she could have been getting to know him! Silently she mourned those wasted days. She should have realized sooner why her reaction to him had been so sharp, why she’d felt that odd sense of fright.

This was the man with whom she would spend the rest of her life. No matter where her career had taken her, home had always been a mountain in Wyoming, and Alex MacNeil was going to change that. Her home would be with him, wherever he was, and an FBI special agent could be assigned anywhere. Though her life would never be completely without horses, he might be assigned to a city, where she wouldn’t be able to find a job as trainer. She had never before met a man whom she would even consider putting ahead of her horses—but she looked at him and instinctively thought, No contest.

He was hers. She was his. She recognized it at every level of her being, as if she were vibrating to a resonance that only he produced.

But danger surrounded them, and she had to be prepared.

He had been watching her face with that narrow-eyed, intensely focused way of his. He didn’t release her, but drew her closer, his arm circling her narrow waist. “Forget whatever you’re thinking. You don’t have to do anything but stay out of the way.”

His nearness was too tempting. Maris leaned her head on his chest, rubbing her cheek against the hairy roughness as an almost painful tenderness filled her. “I won’t let you do this alone.” His nipple was right there, only a few inches from her mouth, and as irresistible as catnip to a kitten. She moved those few inches, and her tongue darted out, delicately licking the flat brown circle.

He shuddered, his arm tightening convulsively around her. But his gaze was grim and determined as he cupped her chin with his other hand and gently lifted her face. “It’s my job,” he said in the even, quietly implacable tone she had heard before. “You’re a civilian, and you’re hurt. The best way you can help me is by staying out of the way.”

She smiled in wry amusement. “If you knew me better, you wouldn’t say that.” She was fiercely, instinctively, protective of those she loved, and the thought of letting him face danger alone made her blood freeze in horror. Unfortunately, fate had decreed that she love a man whose profession was putting himself between the lawless elements in society and those he had sworn to protect. She couldn’t demand that he quit his job any more than her family had demanded that she quit the dangerous work of gentling unbroken horses. He was what he was, and loving him meant not trying to change him.

She straightened away from him. “I’m still going to shower and dress. I still don’t want to face anyone in just my panties and a T-shirt….” She paused. “Except you.”

He inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring, and she saw his hand flex as if he wanted to reach for her again. Because time had to be growing short, she stepped away from him, away from temptation, and gathered up her clothes. Just as she reached the bathroom door a thought occurred to her, and she stopped, looking back at him. Was he alone? Though Zane and Chance never talked about their assignments, they had sometimes discussed techniques, back in their training days, and she had absorbed a lot. It would be very unusual for an FBI agent to be working without backup.

“Your partner should be close by,” she said. “Am I right?”

His eyebrows lifted in faint surprise; then he smiled. “In the parking lot. He got into position an hour or so after we got here. No one’s going to take us by surprise.”

If his partner hadn’t been on watch, Maris realized, MacNeil never would have relaxed his guard enough to be in bed with her or let himself be distracted by the sexual attraction between them. Still, she was certain he hadn’t slept but had remained awake in case his partner signaled him.

“What’s his name? What does he look like? I need to be able to tell the good guys from the bad.”

“Dean Pearsall. He’s five-eleven, skinny, dark hair and eyes, receding hairline. He’s from Maine. You can’t miss the accent.”

“It’s cold out there,” she said. “He must be frozen.”

“Like I said, he’s from Maine. This is nothing new to him. He has a thermos of coffee, and he lets the car run enough to keep the frost off the windshield, so he can see.”

“Won’t that be a dead giveaway, no frost on the car?”

“Only if someone knows how long the car has been there, and it isn’t a detail most people notice.” He picked up his jeans and stepped into them, never taking his eyes off her as he considered the somewhat startling workings of her nimble brain. “Why did you think of it?”

She gave him a sweet smile, her mother’s smile. “You’ll understand when you meet my family.” Then she went into the bathroom and closed the door.

Her smile faded immediately once she was alone. Though she fully realized and accepted the wisdom of not interfering with a trained professional and his partner, she was also sharply aware that plans could go wrong and people could get hurt. It happened, no matter how good or careful someone was. Chance had been wounded several times; he always tried to keep it from their mother, but somehow Mary always sensed when he’d been hurt, and Maris did, too. She could feel it deep inside, in a secret place that only those she loved had managed to touch. She had been almost insane with fear that time when Zane was nearly killed rescuing Barrie from terrorists in Libya, until she saw him for herself and felt his steely life force undiminished.

It had happened to Zane, and he was the best planner in the business. In fact, expecting things to go wrong was one of the things that made Zane so good at what he did. There was always a wild card in the deck, he said, and she had to be prepared for it, no matter how it was played.

Her advantages were that she was trained in self-defense, was a very good shot, and knew more about battle tactics than anyone could expect. On the other hand, her pistol was in her cottage, so she was unarmed, unless she could talk MacNeil into giving her a weapon. Considering how implacable his expression had been, she didn’t think she had much chance of that. She was also concussed, and though the headache had lessened and she was feeling better now, she wasn’t certain how well she could function if the situation called for fast movement. The fact that her memory hadn’t returned was worrisome; the injury could be more severe than she’d initally thought, even though her other symptoms had lessened.

Who had hit her? Why was someone trying to kill Sole Pleasure? Damn it, if only she could remember!

She wrapped a towel around her head to keep her hair dry and stood under a lukewarm spray of water, going over and over the parts she remembered, as if she could badger her bruised brain into giving up its secrets. Everything had been normal when she went back to the stables after lunch. It had been after dark, say around six or six-thirty, when she stumbled across MacNeil. Sometime during those five hours she had learned that Sole Pleasure was in danger and either surprised someone trying to kill him or confronted the person beforehand and earned herself a knock on the head.

It didn’t make sense, but the Stonichers had to be behind the threat to their prize stallion, because they were the only ones who could benefit financially from his death. Since they would make much more by syndicating him for stud, the only way killing him made any sense at all was if he had some problem that would prevent them from syndicating him.

It wasn’t a question of health; Maris had grown up around horses, loved them with a passion and devotion that had consumed her life, and she knew every detail of the well-being of her charges. Sole Pleasure was in perfect health, an unusually strong, fast horse who was full of energy and good spirits. He was a big, cheerful athlete who ran for the sheer love of running, sometimes mischievous but remarkably free of bad habits. She loved all her horses, but Pleasure was special to her. It was unthinkable that anyone would want to kill him, destroy forever that big, good-natured heart and matchless physical ability.

The only thing she could think of that would interfere with his syndication, the only possible reason anyone would grab for insurance money rather than hold out for the much larger fortune to be gained from syndicating him, was if the fertility tests had proved him sterile.

If that was the case, the Stonichers might as well geld him and race him as long as he was healthy. But injuries happened to even the hardiest animals, and a racing career could be ended in a heartbeat. The great filly Ruffian had been on the way to victory, well ahead of her male opponent in a special match race, when an awkward step shattered her leg and she had to be put down. Given the uncertainties of winning purses on the track and the given of insurance money, if Sole Pleasure was sterile, the Stonichers could conceivably be going for the sure thing and have hired someone to kill him.

She didn’t want to think it of them. Joan and Ronald Stonicher had always seemed like decent people to her, though not the kind with whom she would ever be close friends. They were Kentucky blue bloods, born into the life, but Ronald particularly seemed to be involved in raising horses only because he’d inherited the farm. While Joan knew the horses better and was a better rider than her husband, she was a cool, emotionally detached woman who paid more attention to social functions than she did to the earthy functions in the stables. The question was, could they deliberately kill a champion Thoroughbred for the insurance money?

No one else was in a position to collect, so it had to be them.

They wouldn’t do it themselves, however. Maris couldn’t imagine either one of them actually doing the deed. They had hired someone to kill Pleasure, but who? It had to be someone she saw every day, someone whose presence near the horses wouldn’t attract attention. It was likely one of the temporary hands, but she couldn’t rule out a longtime employee; a couple hundred thousand would be terribly tempting to someone who didn’t care how he earned it.

She turned off the shower and stepped out, turning the situation around and around in her head. By the time she was dressed, one thought was clear: MacNeil knew who the killer was.

She opened the door and stepped out, almost stumbling over him. He was propped against the countertop in the small dressing area, his arms crossed and his long legs stretched out, patiently waiting in case she became dizzy and needed him. He, too, had dressed, and though he looked mouth-wateringly tough and sexy in jeans, flannel shirt and boots, she regretted no longer being able to see him in nothing more than tight-fitting boxers.

Maris jabbed a slender finger at his chest. “You know who it is, don’t you?”

He looked down at the small hand so imperiously poking him, and one dark brow lifted in bemusement. He probably wasn’t accustomed to being called to account by someone he could have picked up with one hand. “Why do you think that?” he asked in a mild voice, but even so he stood so that he towered over her, silently reestablishing his dominance.

It might have worked if she hadn’t grown up watching her petite mother rule over a household populated by brawny males. She was very much her mother’s daughter; it never occurred to her to be intimidated. Instead she poked him harder.

“You said a tip led you to Solomon Green. Obviously the FBI has been working on this for a while, so just as obviously you have to have a list of suspects you’re watching. One of those suspects is now working at Solomon Green, isn’t he? That’s what tipped you off.” She scowled up at him. “Why did you say I was a suspect, when you know darn good and well—”

“Hold it.” He held up a staying hand, interrupting her. “You were a suspect. Everyone was. I know who my main suspect is, but he isn’t working alone. This ring has to have the collusion of a lot of people. The owners are the main ones to profit, but any of the employees could also be in on it.”

She didn’t like to think any of her people would be involved in murdering a horse for profit, but she had to admit it was possible. “So you followed him there and you’ve been watching him, trying to catch him in the act so you’ll have proof against him.” Her dark eyes caught fire. “Were you going to let him actually kill a horse, so there would be no doubt?”

“That isn’t the outcome we’d like,” he said carefully, watching her. “But we’re aware that could be the scenario.”

Her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t fooled by his formal “official speak,” used by both the military and law-enforcement organizations. Reading between the lines, she knew that while he might not like letting a horse be harmed, he’d been willing to let it happen if that was what it took.

She wasn’t thinking of slugging him; she was angry, but not foolish. He’s already proven he was more than a match for her. Still, the expression on her face must have made him think she was about to try again to take him down, because his hand came up in one of those lightning-fast movements and caught her wrist, holding it against his chest.

She drew herself up to her full five feet almost three inches and lifted her chin. “I refuse to sacrifice a horse. Any horse.”

“That isn’t what I want, either.” He gently cupped her stubborn chin, his fingertips tracing over the satiny skin of her jaw. “But we can’t make our move until they do something conclusive, something we can make stick in the courts. We have to tie everything together in a knot some slick lawyer can’t undo, or a murderer is going to walk. This isn’t just about horses and insurance fraud. A stable hand was killed, a kid just sixteen years old. He must have stumbled across something the way you did, but he wasn’t as lucky. The next morning there was a dead horse in the stall and the kid was missing. That was in Connecticut. A week later his body was found in Pennsylvania.”

She stared at him, her dark eyes stark. The Stonichers might just be after the money, but they had aligned themselves with people who were truly evil. Any regret she might have felt for them vanished.

MacNeil’s face was like stone. “I won’t move too soon and blow the investigation. No matter what, I’m going to nail these bastards. Do you understand?”

She did. Completely. That left only one thing to do. “You refuse to compromise the case, and I won’t let Pleasure be hurt. That means you’ll have to use me as the bait.”

Chapter 6

“Absolutely not.” The words were flat and implacable. “No way in hell.”

“You have to.”

He looked down at her with mingled exasperation and amusement. “Sweetheart, you’ve been the boss for so long that you’ve forgotten how to take orders. I’m running this show, not you, and you’ll damn well do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, or you’re going to find yourself handcuffed and gagged and your sweet little ass stuffed in a closet until this is over.”

Maris batted her long eyelashes at him. “So you think my ass is sweet, huh?”

“So sweet I’ll probably be biting it before too much longer.” The concept appealed to him; she could tell by the way his eyes darkened. She was rather taken by it, herself. Then he shrugged the moment away and grinned. “But no matter how good you taste or how fast you flutter those eyelashes, you aren’t going to change my mind about this.”

She crossed her arms and offered him an irrefutable fact. “You need me. I don’t know what I saw or who hit me. It could have been one of the Stonichers, or it could have been whoever they hired. But they don’t know that I can’t remember, and they don’t know about you, so they think I’m the biggest threat to them.”

“That’s exactly why you’re staying out of sight. If it’s one of the Stonichers holding the gun, I can’t predict how he or she will act. Give me a professional killer any day, rather than an amateur, who’s likely to panic and do something really stupid, like shooting you in front of a bunch of witnesses.”

“God forbid you should have to deal with anyone who would get rattled by committing murder,” she said, sweetly sarcastic, and he gave her another of those patented narrow looks of his. She continued with her argument. “They’re probably surprised that I haven’t already called the cops on them. By now they’re figuring I was either hurt more than they’d thought at first and I’m lying unconscious somewhere, or that I’ve realized I have no proof to take to the cops, so I have no excuse for stealing a priceless horse. Either way, they want me. I’m the perfect patsy. They can kill Pleasure, make it look like I did it, and then kill me. Everything’s tied up nice and clean, and who knows, the insurance policy may even pay double indemnity, which is more money in everyone’s pocket. Nothing will make them commit faster than seeing me.”

“Damn it, no.” He shook his head in exasperation. “I can’t believe the way your mind works. You must read a lot of thrillers.”

She glared at him, affronted. Her argument was perfectly logical, and he knew it. That didn’t mean he liked it. It didn’t even mean he would agree with it; she was fast learning that she could add protective to the list of his characteristics. And stubborn. God forbid she should forget stubborn.

“Sweetheart…” He smoothed his hands over her shoulders, an unfamiliar, tender ache in his chest as he felt the delicacy of her bones. He tried to think of the words that would convince her to leave this business to him and Dean. It was their job; they were trained for it. She would be in the way, and worrying about her would drive him crazy. God, she evidently thought she was seven feet tall and made of pig iron, but he could see how pale she was, how carefully she moved. She wasn’t normally fragile, despite the slightness of her build; he’d seen her ride, effortlessly controlling stallions that most men would have trouble handling, so he knew she was strong. She was also alarmingly valiant, and he didn’t know if his nerves could stand the stress.

“Look at it this way,” she said. “As long as they don’t know where Pleasure is, I’m safe. They need me to get to him.”

He didn’t argue, didn’t try to convince her. He just shook his head and said, “No.”

She gave his forehead an experimental rap with her knuckles, a puzzled look on her face.

He drew back a little, blinking in surprise. “What are you doing?”

“Seeing if your head’s made out of wood,” she retorted, her exasperation showing through. “You’re letting your emotions interfere with your job. I’m your best bet—so use me!”

Mac stood motionless. He couldn’t have been more stunned if this delicate fire-eater had suddenly lifted him over her head and tossed him through the window. He was letting his emotions interfere with the job? That was the last thing he’d ever imagined anyone would say to him. What made him so good at his job was his ability to divorce himself from the emotions that could hamper his actions. He’d always been the one who kept his head, who remained cool no matter how tense the situation. He might have some sleepless nights afterward, he might sweat bullets, but while the job was going down he was an iceman.

He couldn’t be emotional about her; it wasn’t logical. Okay, so he’d had the hots for her since he’d first seen her. Chemistry happened. With her, it had happened in a big way. And he liked her; he’d learned a lot about her since she had practically commandeered him the night before. She was quick-thinking, had a sense of humor, and was too damned gutsy for his peace of mind. She also responded to his slightest touch, her soft body melting against him, with a sheer delight that went to his head faster than a hit of whiskey.

He frowned. Only the fact that she was concussed had kept him from taking her, and even then, it had been a near thing. Never mind that they were waiting for a killer to come after them, that he had deliberately left a trail that was just difficult enough to keep from being obvious. He never should have undressed last night; he knew that. But the fact was, he had wanted to feel her against his skin, and so he’d taken off everything but his shorts and slipped into bed with her. Dean would beep him when anyone showed up; if Mac had timed it right, he figured it would take another hour at least before anything happened, but still he should have been dressed and ready in case something went wrong. Instead, he had been on top of her, between her legs, and thinking that only two thin layers of cotton were keeping him from her. It would have taken him maybe five seconds to get those two layers out of the way, and then he would have been inside her and to hell with anything else.

But none of that was emotion. That was liking, and a powerful lust. So she had this crazy idea, after spending only a few hours with him—and being asleep most of that time—that they were going to get married. Just because she felt that way didn’t mean he did, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let himself be buffaloed into something like marriage, no matter how hard he got whenever she was anywhere around.

The thought of using her as bait almost made the top of his head come off, but that wasn’t emotion, it was common sense.

“You’re concussed,” he finally said. “You’re moving like a snail, and you don’t need to be moving at all. You’d be more of a hindrance than a help, because I’d have to watch you, as well as myself.”

“Then give me a weapon,” she replied, her tone so unruffled that he wasn’t sure he’d heard right.

“A weapon?” he echoed incredulously. “Good God, you think I’m going to arm a civilian?”

She straightened away from his grasp, and his palms ached from the loss of contact. All of a sudden her black eyes weren’t bottomless at all, they were cool and flat, and the recognition of what he was seeing jolted him.

“I can handle a pistol as well as you, maybe better.”

She wasn’t exaggerating. He’d seen that look in the eyes of snipers, and in the eyes of some fellow agents who had been there, done that, and had the guts to do it again. He had seen it in his own eyes, and he’d understood when some women had shied away from him, frightened by the dangerous edge they sensed in him.

Maris wouldn’t shy away. She looked delicate, but she was pure steel.

He could use her. The thought flashed into his brain, and he couldn’t dismiss it. Policy said that no civilians should be involved if it could be avoided, but too many times it couldn’t be avoided. She was right; she was his best bet, and he would be a fool if he compromised the investigation by not using her. It wrenched every instinct he had to do it, but he had to put his feelings aside and concentrate on the job.

Damn it, he thought in surprise, he had been letting his emotions cloud his thinking. That wasn’t a good sign, and he had to put a stop to that kind of idiocy right now.

“All right,” he said swiftly, wheeling around to get their jackets. He jerked his on and began stuffing Maris into hers. “Time’s short, so we have to move fast. First we need to get the stallion out of the trailer and hidden somewhere else, then position the trailer so that whoever comes can’t see that he isn’t in it. Then we come back here. You drive the truck, I’ll be hidden in the truck bed, under some blankets or something.” He turned out the bathroom light and began ushering her toward the door. “We’ll post Dean down the road, where he can see them arrive. He’ll leave then and get into position at the trailer. He’ll give us warning. You leave by the back way just as they arrive, let them get a glimpse of the truck. They follow.”

They reached the door. MacNeil turned out the lights and took a small radio out of his pocket, keying it. “Is everything clear?” he asked. “We’re coming out.”

“What?” His partner’s voice was startled. “Yeah, everything’s clear. What’s up?”

“Tell you in a minute.”

He slipped the radio back into his pocket and unchained the door. He paused then, looking down at her. “Are you sure you can do this? If your head is hurting too much, let me know now, before it goes any further.”

“I can do it.” Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact, and he gave a short nod.

“Okay, then.” He opened the door, and cold air slapped her in the face. She shivered, even though she was wearing her thick down jacket. The weather bureau had been predicting the arrival of a cold front, she remembered. She had watched the noon news and weather yesterday; perhaps that was why she now had this thick jacket instead of the flannel-lined denim jacket she had been wearing yesterday morning. She was glad she had changed coats, because the temperature now had to be in the twenties.

She looked around as she left the cozy warmth of the motel room. The motel office and the highway were on her right. MacNeil took her arm and steered her to the left, circling her behind a late-model pickup truck that was covered over with frost. “Hold it a minute,” he said, and left her hidden by the truck’s bulk while he went around to the driver’s side. He opened the door and leaned in. She caught the faint metallic jingle of keys; then the motor started and settled into a quiet idle. She noticed with approval that the interior light hadn’t come on, which meant he had taken care of that little detail earlier.

Interior lights. As he closed the truck door with a barely audible click, the neon light from the motel sign slanted across his high cheekbones, and a door opened in her mind.

She remembered the way his face had looked last night as he drove, the grimness of his expression highlighted by the faint green glow from the dash.

She remembered the desperation with which she had hidden her condition from him. She had been afraid to let him know how weak she was, how terribly her head hurt, that she was vulnerable in any way. He hadn’t said much, just driven in dark silence, but even through her pain she had felt the physical awareness running between them like a live electrical wire. If she showed any vulnerability, she’d thought, he would be on her. That was why he’d come with her, not because he was concerned about Sole Pleasure.

Her thinking had been muddled by the knock she’d taken on the head. She had been terrified for Pleasure’s safety, trying to think of the best way to protect him, and she hadn’t been certain she could trust MacNeil. She had taken a big chance in asking for his help; he had given it without question, but afterward she’d been too unbalanced by the concussion and the strength and unfamiliarity of her own sensual awareness of him to think straight.

She had wound up exactly where she was afraid she would, under him in bed. And he hadn’t done a darn thing, except make her fall in love with him.

“Come on,” he said softly, not looking at her. In fact, he was looking at everything except her, his head swiveling, restless eyes noting every detail of their surroundings.

The early morning was dark and silent, so cold that their breath fogged into ice crystals. No stars winked overhead, and she knew why when a few white flakes began drifting soundlessly to the ground. A cold breeze sliced through her jeans, freezing her legs.

He led her across to a nondescript tan Oldsmobile that was backed into a parking slot between a scraggly bush, the motel’s attempt at landscaping, and a Volvo station wagon. She walked carefully, and her headache obliged by remaining bearable.

He opened the rear door of the four-door car and put her inside, then he got into the front, beside his partner. Dean Pearsall was exactly as MacNeil had described him, thin and dark, as well as definitely puzzled. “What the hell’s going on?”

Briefly MacNeil outlined the plan. Pearsall’s head swiveled, and he looked over the seat at Maris, doubt plain in his expression.

“I can do it,” she said, not giving him time to voice that doubt.

“We have to work fast,” MacNeil said. “Can you get the video equipment set up?”

“Yeah,” Pearsall replied. “Maybe. We’re cutting it damn close, though.”

“Then let’s not waste any more time.” MacNeil popped open the glove box and removed a holstered pistol. He took it out, checked it, then slid it back into the holster before handing it back to Maris. “It’s a .38 revolver, five shots, and there’s a round under the hammer.”

She nodded and checked the weapon herself. A faint smile eased the grim line of his mouth as he watched her; he wouldn’t have taken someone else’s word on the state of a weapon’s readiness, either.

“There’s a Kevlar vest on the seat beside you. It’ll be way too big for you, but put it on anyway,” he instructed.

“That’s your vest,” Pearsall said.

“Yeah, but she’s going to wear it.”

Maris slipped the revolver into her coat pocket and grabbed the vest. “I’ll put it on in the truck,” she said as she opened the door and slid out. “We have to hurry.”

The snowflakes were still drifting down, ghostly in the predawn quiet. Their footsteps crunched on the gravel as she and MacNeil crossed the parking lot to the truck. The defroster had cleared the bottom half of the windshield, and that was enough for him to drive.

He didn’t turn on the headlights until they were on the highway and he could tell there was nothing in sight in either direction except for the tan Oldsmobile, which had pulled out behind them. Then he hit the switch, and the green dash lights illuminated his face just as they had earlier.

Maris shrugged out of her coat and into the Kevlar vest. It was heavy and far too big, so big it covered her hips, but she didn’t waste her time arguing about wearing the cumbersome garment, because she knew MacNeil would never give in on this.

“I remember driving with you last night,” she said.

He glanced at her. “Your memory’s back?”

“Not all of it. I still don’t remember who hit me on the head, or taking Pleasure. By the way, don’t you think you should tell me?”

He grunted. “I don’t know who hit you. There’s a choice between at least three people, maybe more.”

“Ronald and Joan are two. Who’s the one you followed to Solomon Green?”

“The new vet. Randy Yu.”

Maris was silent. That name surprised her; she would have thought of a lot of other people before she would have come up with the vet’s name. She’d been impressed with his skill, and he’d never shown anything but the utmost care for his four-legged patients. He was a quarter Chinese, in his middle thirties, and with the strength a veterinarian needed. If he was the one she’d tangled with, she was surprised she’d managed to get away from him with no more than a bump on the head. Of course, whoever she’d fought with wouldn’t have expected her to know how to fight, much less fight hard and dirty.

“It makes sense,” she said, thinking about it. “A quick injection, Pleasure dies of cardiac arrest, and it looks like natural causes. Not nearly as messy as a bullet.”

“But you ruined that plan for them,” MacNeil said, harshness underlying the calm of his tone. “Now they’ll be planning to use bullets—for both you and the horse.”

Chapter 7

Sole Pleasure wasn’t happy. He didn’t like being alone, he didn’t like being cramped in a small trailer for so long, and he was both hungry and thirsty. MacNeil had backed the horse trailer deep into a section of woods, so deep she didn’t know how he’d managed it, and Pleasure didn’t like the unfamiliar surroundings, either. He was a horse accustomed to open pastures, roomy stalls, noise and people. As soon as they got out of the truck they heard his angry neighing and the thud of one of his rear hooves repeatedly kicking against the back of the trailer.

“He’ll hurt himself!” Maris hurried to the trailer, moving faster than she should have for the sake of her head, but if Pleasure managed to break his leg, he would have to be put down. “Easy, baby, easy,” she crooned as she unlatched the back gate, the special note she used for her horses entering her tone. The kicking stopped immediately, and she could almost see the alert black ears swiveling to catch her voice.

“Hold it.” MacNeil’s hand came down on top of hers as she started to open the gate. “I’ll get him out. He’s fractious, and I don’t want him bumping you around. You stand over there and keep talking to him.”

She gave him a considering look as she moved to the side. Really, the man was acting as if this were the first time she’d ever been hurt. Anyone who worked with horses could expect to be kicked, bitten, bruised and bucked off—though she hadn’t been thrown since she’d been a kid. Still, she’d collected her share of injuries: Both arms had been broken, as well as her collarbone. She’d had a concussion before, too. What was the best way to handle an overprotective man, especially after you were married?

Exactly the way her mother handled her father, she thought, grinning. By standing her ground, talking rings around him, and distracting him with sex, and by choosing her battles and sometimes actually letting him have his way. This was one of the times to not kick up a fuss. She would ignore him later, when the stakes were greater.

MacNeil skillfully backed the big stallion out of the trailer; Pleasure came eagerly, happy to have company again, relieved to be unconfined. He showed his happiness by dancing around and playing, shoving MacNeil with his head and generally acting like any four-year-old. All things considered, Maris was just as happy not to be on the receiving end of those head butts, or to have to control all that power as he danced around. He would have been quieter for her—the horses found her especially soothing—but any jolt right now wasn’t fun.

MacNeil led Pleasure away from the trailer, the stallion’s hooves almost soundless on the thick pad of pine needles and decomposing leaves that carpeted the forest floor. He tied the reins to a sapling and patted the animal’s glossy neck. “Okay, you can come over now,” he called to Maris. “Keep him happy while I reposition the trailer.”

She took control of the stallion, calming him with her voice and hands. He was still hungry and thirsty, but he was such a curious, gregarious horse that his interest in the proceedings kept him occupied. Dean Pearsall had stopped the Oldsmobile farther back, positioning the car so its headlights lit the area. MacNeil got in the truck and put it in reverse, leaning out the open door to check his position as he backed the truck up to the trailer. He was good at it; it took some people forever to get the trailer hitch in the right position, but MacNeil did it on the first try. Pretty good for an FBI agent, Maris thought. He was a fed now, but he’d obviously spent a lot of time around horses in the past.

It was snowing a little more heavily now, the headlight beams catching the drifting flakes as they sifted through the bare branches of the hardwoods. The pines were beginning to acquire a dusting of white. MacNeil maneuvered the trailer around, threading it through the trees, repositioning it so that it directly faced the narrow trail they’d made and anyone coming down it wouldn’t be able to see that Pleasure wasn’t inside. There were high, narrow side windows in the trailer, but none in front.

As soon as the trailer was in position and MacNeil had unhooked the truck and pulled away, Pearsall went to work, squirming underneath the trailer and setting up a video camera so that it couldn’t easily be seen but would still have a good angle on anyone approaching the trailer.

MacNeil turned to Maris. “While Dean’s working, let’s get Pleasure tucked away back in the woods.” He checked the luminous hands on his watch. “We need to be out of here in five minutes, ten tops.”

The trailer contained blankets that had been used to cover the mare who had been brought to Solomon Green the day before. Maris got the darkest one and spread it across Pleasure’s broad back. He liked that, swaying his muscular rump as if he were doing the hootchie-cootchie, and blowing in the particular way he did when he was pleased. She laughed, the sound quiet and loving, as she reached up to hug his big neck. He lipped her hair, but gently, as if he’d somehow realized by the way she moved that she wasn’t quite up to speed.

“This way.” MacNeil’s voice held an odd note as he handed a flashlight to Maris, then untied the reins and began leading Pleasure deeper into the trees. He curved his other arm around Maris, holding her close to his side as they walked. Between the oversize Kevlar vest and her thick down jacket, he couldn’t feel her, so he slipped his hand under the coat, under the vest, resting it on the swell of her hip. “How are you feeling?” he asked as they picked their way through the dark woods, stepping over fallen limbs and evading bushes that clutched at their clothes.

“Okay.” She smiled up at him, letting herself lean closer into the heat and strength of his big body. “I’ve had a concussion before, and though this one isn’t any fun, I don’t think it’s as bad as the first one. The pain is going away faster, so I don’t understand why I can’t remember what happened.”

Her bewilderment was plain, and his fingers tightened on her hip. “A different part of your brain is affected, I guess. And parts of your memory are already coming back, so by tomorrow you’ll probably remember everything.”

She hoped so; these blank holes in her life were unsettling. It was just a matter of a few hours now, as she regained partial memory of things that had happened both before and after she was hit, but she didn’t like not knowing everything that had happened. She remembered driving with MacNeil, but why couldn’t she remember arriving at the motel?

Only one way to find out what she wanted to know. “Did I undress myself?”

Glancing up, she saw him smile at the abrupt change of subject. His voice deepened, evidence of the way the memory affected him. “It was a joint effort.”

Maybe she would have been embarrassed an hour ago, but not now. Instead she felt a sort of aroused contentment fill her at the thought of him pulling off his T-shirt and putting it on her, the soft cotton still warm from his body.

“Did you touch me?” The whispered words were like heated honey, flowing over him, telling him how much she liked the idea.

“No, you were too out of it.” But he’d wanted to, he thought. God, how he’d wanted to. He helped her over a fallen tree, supporting her so that she wouldn’t stumble, but he was remembering how she’d looked sitting on the side of the bed, wearing nothing but her panties, her eyes closing, her pale hair floating around her delicate, satiny shoulders. Her breasts were high, firm, small but deliciously round, her nipples like dark pink little crowns. His right hand clenched on the reins; his palm was actually aching to touch her now, to fill his hand with that cool, richly resilient flesh and warm it with his loving.

“Well, darn,” she said sedately, and in the glow of the flashlight he saw the welcome in her night-dark eyes.

He inhaled deeply, reaching for control. They had no time for any delay, much less one that would last an hour. An hour? He gave a mental snort. Who was he kidding? He was so worked up that five minutes was more like it, and that was only if his self-control turned out to be a lot stronger than it felt right now.

“Later,” he promised, his voice a rough growl of need. Later, when this was settled and his job done. Later, when he could take the time with her that he wanted to take, behind a locked door and with the telephone off the hook. Later, when she felt better, damn it, and wasn’t dealing with a concussion. He figured it would be two days, at least, before her headache was gone—two long, hellish days.

He stopped and looked back. They had gone far enough that he could no longer see the headlights through the trees. A small hollow dipped just ahead, and he led Sole Pleasure into it. The hollow blocked the wind, and tall trees leaning overhead protected him from the light snow. “You’ll be okay here for a couple of hours,” he told the horse as he tied the reins to a low, sturdy branch. Pleasure would be able to move around some, and if there were any edible leaves or stray blades of grass, he would be able to graze within a small area.

“Be good,” Maris admonished the horse, stroking his forehead. “We won’t be gone long. Then we’ll take you back to your big, comfortable stall, and you can have your favorite feed, and an apple for dessert.” He blew softly, then bobbed his head up and down in agreement. She didn’t know how many actual words he understood, but he definitely understood the love in her voice, and he knew she was telling him good stuff.

MacNeil took the flashlight from her hand and settled his arm around her again as they walked back to the truck. Pleasure neighed his disapproval of being left alone, but soon the trees blotted out the sound and there was only the rustle of their feet in the leaves.

“You know what to do,” he said. “They won’t follow you too closely on the highway, because they won’t want to make you suspicious. Let them see where you leave the road, but then drive as fast as you can, to give yourself as much time as possible. They’ll be able to follow the tracks. Pull up to the trailer, get out of the truck and get into the trees. Don’t waste time, don’t look back to see what I’m doing. Get into a protected place and stay there until either Dean or I come for you. If anyone else shows up, use that pistol.”

“You need the vest more than I do.” Worry gnawed at her. He was sending her out of harm’s way, while he would be right in the middle of it, without protection.

“They might pull in before you’re completely out of sight and get a shot off at you. The only way I’ll let you do this is if you’re wearing the vest.”

There that stubborn streak was again, she thought. Streak? Ha! He was permeated with it. She was beginning to think that if she scratched his skin, stubbornness would ooze out instead of blood. Living with him was going to be interesting; as he’d noted, she was used to being the boss, and so was he. She looked forward to the fights—and to the making up.

Pearsall was waiting for them when they got back. “Everything’s ready,” he said. “There’s a six-hour tape in the camera, and the battery pack is fully charged. Now, if we can just get back into position before the bad guys show up, we’re set.”

MacNeil nodded. “You leave first. We’ll let you get out of sight before we follow. Radio if you see anything suspicious.”

“Give me an extra minute so I can swing through the motel parking lot to make sure there aren’t any new arrivals. Then I’ll pull back and take up position.” Pearsall got into the car and backed out, his headlights bobbing through the trees.

Darkness settled around them as they listened to the sound of the car fading in the distance. MacNeil opened the passenger door of the truck and put his hands on Maris’s waist, lifting her onto the seat. In the darkness, his face was only a pale blur. “Whatever happens, make sure you stay safe,” he growled, and bent his head to her.

His lips were cold, and firm. Maris wound her arms around his neck and opened her mouth to him as he deepened the kiss, slanting his head for better contact. His tongue wasn’t cold at all, but hot and strong, and her entire body tightened with excitement as she leaned closer to him. It wasn’t enough; with the pleasure came frustration. She swiveled on the seat to face him, parting her legs so that he stood between them, pressed hard against her as the kiss changed yet again, into something fierce with need.

It was their first kiss, but there was no tentativeness, no searching. They already knew each other, had already made the inner adjustment to the hot ache of physical desire, and accepted the hunger. They were already lovers, though their bodies hadn’t yet been joined. The pact had been made. Invisible strands of attraction had been pulling them together from the first, and the web was almost complete.

He tore his mouth away from hers, breathing hard, his breath fogging in the cold air. “No more,” he said, the words strained. “Not now. I’m as hard as a rock already, and if we—” He broke off. “We have to go. Now.”

“Have we given Dean enough time?”

“Hell, I don’t know! All I know is that I’m about ten seconds away from pulling your jeans off, and if we don’t go now, the whole plan is blown.”

She didn’t want to let him go. Her arms didn’t want to release their hold on him, her thighs didn’t want to loosen from around his hips. But she did it, forced herself to open her embrace, because she could feel the truth pushing against her.

In silence he stepped back, and she turned in the seat so that she faced forward. He closed the door, then walked stiffly around the truck to climb in under the steering wheel, a look of acute discomfort on his face.

She wasn’t good for his sanity, he thought as he started the truck and put it in gear. She made him forget about the job and think only about sex. Not sex in general, but sex in particular. Sex with her. Again and again, holding that slim body beneath him until he was satisfied.

He tried to imagine being sated with her, and he couldn’t. Alarm tingled through him. He tried to think of some of the other women he’d slept with over the years, but their names wouldn’t come to mind, their faces eluded him, and there was no concrete memory of how any of them had felt. There was only her mouth, her breasts, her legs. Her voice, her body in his arms, her hair spread across the pillow. He could imagine her in the shower with him, her face across the table from him every morning, her clothes hanging beside his in the closet.

The most frightening thing was that it was so damn easy to imagine it all. The only thing that frightened him more was the thought that it might not happen, that he was actually using her in a setup where she could be hurt, despite all the pains he was taking to keep her safe.

They left the cover of the woods, and he eased the truck across the rutted ditch and onto the highway. No headlights appeared in either direction. Fat snowflakes swirled and danced in the beams of their own headlights, and the low clouds blocked any hint of the approaching dawn.

The radio remained silent, meaning Dean hadn’t seen anything suspicious. After several minutes the lights of the motel sign came into view, and a few seconds after that they passed the Oldsmobile, pulled off on the side of the road and were facing back the way they’d come. It looked unoccupied, but Mac knew Dean was there, watching everything. No vehicle could approach the motel without being seen.

He pulled into the parking lot and backed into a slot, so that she could get out faster. He left the engine running, though he killed the lights. He turned to face her. “You know what to do. Do exactly that and nothing else. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I’m going to get into the back of the truck now. If the fools start shooting early, hit the floorboards and stay there.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, this time with a hint of dryness.

He paused with his hand on the door handle. He looked at her and muttered something under his breath. Then she was in his arms again, and his mouth was hard, urgent, as he kissed her. He let her go as abruptly as he’d grabbed her, and got out of the truck. Without another word, he closed the door, then vaulted lightly into the truck bed, where he lay down out of sight and waited for a killer to appear.

Chapter 8

The motel was located where a small side road entered the main highway. The highway ran in front of the motel, the secondary road along the right side. Dean had checked out the little road as soon as he arrived and found that it wandered aimlessly through the rural area. No one looking for them was likely to arrive by that route, because it went nowhere and took its time getting there. The Stonichers and/ or their hired killer would be on the highway, checking motels, following the faint but deliberate trail Mac had left. The plan was for Maris to let their pursuers catch a glimpse of her as she drove around the back of the motel and onto the secondary road. She would turn left, then right, onto the highway. They would notice immediately that she wasn’t pulling the horse trailer, so instead of trying to cut her off, they would hang back and follow her, expecting her to lead them to Sole Pleasure.

At least Mac hoped that was how it worked. If Yu was the only one following them, that was how it would go down. Yu was a professional; he would keep his head. If anyone else was with him, the unpredictability factor shot sky-high.

It was cold in the back of the truck. He had forgotten to get any blankets to cover himself, and the snow was still falling. Mac huddled deeper into his coat and tried to be thankful he was out of the wind. It wasn’t working.

The minutes dragged by, drawn out agonizingly by his tension as he waited. Dawn finally began to penetrate the cloud cover, the darkness fading to a deep gray, though true daylight was at least an hour away. Traffic would begin picking up soon, making it difficult for Dean to spot their tail. People would begin leaving the motel, complicating the traffic pattern even more. And better light would make it more difficult for Maris to hide in the woods.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered. Had he made the trail too difficult?

Right on cue, the radio clicked. Mac keyed it once in reply, then gave a single rap on the back of the cab to alert Maris, who had shifted into position behind the wheel.

The radio clicked again, twice this time. Quickly he rapped twice on the cab. Maris put the truck into gear and eased out of the parking slot. She was turning the corner behind the motel when headlights flashed across the cab as a vehicle pulled into the lot, and Mac knew the lure had been cast. In a few seconds they would know if the bait had been taken.

Maris kept the truck at an even pace. Her instinct was to hurry, but she didn’t want whoever was following them to know they’d been spotted. The car hadn’t turned the corner behind them by the time she pulled onto the secondary road, so if it was them, they were hanging back, not wanting her to spot them.

She stopped at the stop sign, then turned right onto the highway. Watching her rearview mirror as she turned, she saw the car easing out from behind the motel. Its lights were off now, and its gray color made it difficult to spot in the faint light; she wouldn’t have noticed it at all if she hadn’t been looking for it.

They were driving Ronald’s gray Cadillac. Maris had only seen it once or twice, because she usually dealt with Joan, who drove a white BMW. The driveway wasn’t visible from the stables, and she seldom paid attention to the comings and goings at the big house. All that interested her was at the stables.

Still, she wondered that they would drive one of their personal cars at all, until she realized that it didn’t matter. Sole Pleasure was their horse, and no crime had been committed. If she had called the police, it would have been their word against hers that a crime had even been attempted, and no one in the world would believe the Stonichers were willing to kill a horse worth over twenty million dollars.

Dean’s Oldsmobile was nowhere in sight. Maris hoped she was giving him the time he needed to drive the car deep enough into the woods that it couldn’t be seen and to work his way into position on foot.

Watching the mirror, she saw the Cadillac turn onto the highway behind her. Without its headlights on, and with the swirling snow cutting visibility, she could barely make out the gray bulk. They would be able to see her much better than she could see them, though, because her lights were on; that was why they were hanging back so far, because they were unable to judge how visible they themselves were.

Their caution was working for her and against them. The distance would give her a few extra seconds to get out of the truck and hide, a few seconds longer for Dean to get set, a few seconds longer that Mac was safe. She tried not to think of him lying on the cold metal bed, unprotected from any stray bullets except by a thin sheet of metal that wouldn’t even slow down a lead slug.

It was only a few miles to the place where she would leave the road and drive into the woods. A couple of times the snow became so heavy that she couldn’t see the Cadillac behind her. The white flakes were beginning to dust the ground, but it was a dry, fluffy snow that swirled up with every breath of wind, and the passage of the truck blew it off the highway.

She maintained a steady speed, assuming they could see her, even though she couldn’t see the Cadillac. She couldn’t do anything that would make them suspicious. Finally she passed the mile marker that told her she was close, and she began braking, looking for the tire ruts where they’d driven before. There. She steered the truck off the highway, bouncing across the ditch faster than, for the sake of her head, she wanted to, but she didn’t want to go any slower than she already was. Now that they had seen her leave the highway, she wanted to go as fast as she could, to gain a few more of those precious seconds.

Her headache, which had lessened but never disappeared, increased in severity with each bounce. She ignored it, gritting her teeth against the pain, concentrating on steering the truck on the narrow, winding path MacNeil had already blazed through the trees. She couldn’t begin to imagine how difficult it must have been to do this with the trailer in tow, but it was a testament to both his stubbornness and skill that he had.

The Cadillac wouldn’t be able to take the bumps and holes as fast as the truck did; it was too low to the ground. More seconds gained.

A bare limb scraped over the windshield, then her headlights caught the dark bulk of the trailer, almost concealed among the trees. Now. She parked the truck in the exact position MacNeil had decreed, killed the lights so the glare wouldn’t blind the camera hidden under the trailer, then slipped out the door and walked swiftly to the trailer and then beyond it. She cut sharply to the left, stepping in places where the snow hadn’t sifted down. She left no tracks as she removed herself from the scene so he could do his job without worrying about her.

She’d caught movement in her peripheral vision as she walked away, a big, dark shape silently rolling over the side of the truck bed to conceal himself behind one of the tires. At least he would have some protection, she thought, trying to console herself with that. His mind might be easier now, but hers certainly wasn’t. He needed the vest she was wearing; she would never forgive herself if he was killed because she’d agreed to take his vest. It would have been better to remove herself entirely, even if it meant they wouldn’t be able to get any solid evidence against the Stonichers. The FBI would get another crack at Randy Yu, but she would never find another MacNeil.

She’d gone far enough. She stopped, her back against a big oak. Snowflakes drifted silently down in the gray dawn, settling in a lacy cap on her unprotected head. She leaned her aching head against the tree and closed her eyes, listening, waiting, her breath almost halted, her heart barely beating, waiting.

Mac waited, his eyes never leaving the rutted trail. They might drive right up to the truck, but if Yu was in charge, they would probably get out of the car and come the rest of the way on foot. He and Dean were prepared for both circumstances. The underbrush was thick; if they tried to force their way through it, they would make a lot of noise. The best thing to do was to walk up the trail, staying close to the edges. Maris had parked the truck so that they could bypass it only on the driver’s side; the tailgate on the passenger side was right up against the bushes. Anyone coming along that trail would be funneled into the camera’s view and duly recorded on tape.

After what seemed an interminable length of time, he heard a twig snap. He didn’t move. His position, crouched by the right front tire, was secure; he couldn’t be seen until they walked in front of the truck, but by then they would have looked into the cab and seen it was empty, and wouldn’t pay any more attention to the truck. They would be looking instead at the trailer, and at Maris’s small footprints in the thin layer of snow, leading right up to it.

There were other sounds now, rustles from careless feet, more than one pair; the brushing sounds of clothing, the harshness of someone who was slightly winded trying to regulate their breathing. They were close, very close.

The footsteps stopped. “She isn’t in the truck.” The whisper was barely audible, sexless.

“Look! Her footprints go right up to the trailer.” It was another whisper, excitement making it louder than the first.

“Shut…up.” The two words were hissed between clenched teeth, as if they had already been said more than once.

“Don’t tell me to shut up. We have her cornered. What are you waiting for?”

Though still whispering, the speaker’s voice was so forceful that it was almost as audible as if he—or she—had spoken aloud. The mike might have caught it, Mac thought. With enhanced sound-extraction techniques, which the Bureau had, he was certain the words were now on tape. The only problem was, they hadn’t exactly been damning.

“You hired me to do a job. Now stay out of my way and let me do it.” There was fury evident now, in both words and tone.

“You’re the one who bungled it the first time, so don’t act as if you’re Mr. Infallible. If you’d been half as smart as you seem to think you are, the horse would already be dead and Maris Mackenzie wouldn’t suspect a thing. I didn’t bargain on murder when I hired you.”

That should do it, Mac thought with grim satisfaction. They had just talked themselves into a prison sentence.

He tightened the muscles in his legs, preparing to step out and identify himself, pistol trained and ready. A crashing, thudding noise behind him made him freeze in place. He looked over his shoulder and almost groaned aloud. A big, black, graceful horse was prancing through the trees toward them, proudly shaking his head as if wanting them to admire his cleverness in getting free.

“There he is! Shoot him!” It was a shout. Pleasure’s unexpected appearance had started them out of caution. Almost instantaneously there was the sharp crack of a shot, and bark exploded from the tree just behind the horse.

Damn amateurs! He silently cursed. Pleasure was behind him; if he stood up now, he would be looking straight down the barrel, caught between the shooter and the target. He couldn’t do anything but wait for the next shot to hit the beautiful, friendly stallion, who had evidently caught their scent and pulled free so he could join the party.

Dean realized Mac’s predicament and stepped from concealment, pistol braced in both hands. “FBI! Drop your weapons on the ground—now.”

Mac surged upward, bracing his arms across the hood of the truck. He saw Randy Yu, his hands already reaching upward as his pistol thudded to the ground. You could always trust a professional to know how to do things. But Joan Stonicher was startled by Mac’s sudden movement, and she wheeled toward him, her eyes wide with panic and rage. She froze, the pistol in her hand and her finger on the trigger.

“Ease off, lady,” Mac said softly. “Don’t do anything stupid. If I don’t get you, my partner will. Just take your finger off the trigger and let the gun drop. That’s all you have to do, and we’ll all be okay.”

She didn’t move. From the excellent viewpoint he had, Mac could see her finger trembling.

“Do as he says,” Randy Yu said wearily. The two agents had them caught in an excellent cross field. There was nothing they could do, and no sense in making things worse.

Pleasure had shied at the noise of the shot, neighing his alarm, but his life had been too secure for him to panic. He trotted closer, his scooped nostrils flaring as he examined their familiar scents, searching for the special one he could detect. He came straight for Mac.

Joan’s eyes left Mac and fastened on the horse. He saw the exact instant when her control shattered, saw her pupils contract and her hand jerk.

A shrill whistle shattered the air a split second before the shot.

A lot of things happened simultaneously. Dean shouted. Randy Yu dropped to the ground, his hands covering his head. Pleasure screamed in pain, rearing. Joan’s hand jerked again, back toward Mac.

And there was another whistle, this one earsplitting.

Maris stepped from behind a tree, her black eyes glittering with rage. The pistol was in her hand, trained on Joan. Joan wheeled back toward this new threat, and without hesitation Mac fired.

Chapter 9

He was mad enough to murder her, Maris thought.

She was still so enraged herself that it didn’t matter. Fury burned through her. It was all she could do to keep from dismantling Joan Stonicher on the spot, and only the knowledge that Pleasure needed her kept her even remotely under control.

The woods were swarming with people, with medics and deputies and highway patrol officers, with onlookers, even some reporters already there. Pleasure was accustomed to crowds, but he’d never before been shot, and pain and shock were making him unruly. He’d wheeled at Maris’s whistle, and his lightning reflexes had saved his life; Joan’s bullet had gouged a deep furrow in his chest, tearing the muscle at an angle but not penetrating any internal organs. Now it took all of Maris’s skill to keep him calm so she could stop the bleeding; he kept moving restlessly in circles, bumping her, trying to pay attention to her softly crooning voice but distracted by the pain.

Her head was throbbing, both from Pleasure’s skittishness and from her own desperate run through the woods. She’d heard him moving through the trees, and in a flash she’d known exactly what had happened, what he would do. How he’d gotten free didn’t matter; he had heard and smelled them, and pranced happily to greet them, sure of his welcome. She’d known he would catch her scent on MacNeil’s clothes and go straight to him. It had been a toss-up which of them would be shot first, MacNeil or Pleasure. All she could do was try to get there in time to draw the horse’s attention, as well as everyone else’s.

For one awful, hellish moment, when Pleasure screamed and she saw Joan swing back toward MacNeil, she’d thought she’d lost everything. She had stepped out from the trees, moving in what felt like slow motion. She couldn’t hear anything then, not even Pleasure; she hadn’t been able to see anything except Joan, her vision narrowing to a tunnel with her target as the focus. She hadn’t been aware of whistling again, or of taking the pistol from her pocket, but the weapon had been in her hand and her finger had been smoothly tightening on the trigger when Joan jerked yet again, panicked, this time aiming at Maris. That was when Mac had shot her. At such close range, just across the hood of the truck, his aim had been perfect. The bullet had shattered her upper arm.

Joan would probably never have use of that arm again, Maris thought dispassionately. She couldn’t bring herself to care.

The entire scene had been recorded, complete with audio. The camera had playback capability and Dean had obliged the sheriff by playing the tape for him. Both Yu and Joan were nailed, and Yu, being the professional he was, was currently bargaining for all he was worth. He was willing to carry others down with him if it would lighten his sentence.

It had stopped snowing, though the day hadn’t gotten any warmer. Her hands were icy, but she couldn’t leave Pleasure to warm them. Blood glistened on his black chest and down his legs, staining his white stocking, splattering on the snow-frosted leaves and on Maris. She whispered to him, controlling him mostly with her voice, crooning reassurance and love to him while she held his bridle in one hand and with the other held some gauze the medics had given her to the wound on his chest. She had asked a deputy to contact a vet, but as yet no one had shown up.

Yu could have seen to the horse, but he hadn’t offered, and Maris wouldn’t have trusted him, anyway. It was he who had hit her on the head. As soon as she saw him again she had remembered that much, remembered his upraised arm, the cold, remorseless expression in his dark eyes. Other memories were still vague, and there were still blank spots, but they were gradually filling in.

She must have gone to the big house to see Joan about something. She didn’t know why, but she remembered standing with her hand raised to knock, and freezing as Joan’s voice filtered through the door.

“Randy’s going to do it tonight. While everyone’s eating will be a good time. I told him we couldn’t wait any longer, the syndicates are pushing for a decision.”

“Damn, I hate this,” Ronald Stonicher had said. “Poor Pleasure’s been a good horse. Are you certain the drug won’t be detected?”

“Randy says it won’t, and it’s his can on the line,” Joan had coolly replied.

Maris had backed away, so angry she could barely contain herself. Her first concern had been for Pleasure. It was the time when the stable hands would either be eating or have gone home for the night. She couldn’t delay a moment.

Her next memory was of running down the aisle to his stall. She must have surprised Randy Yu there, though she didn’t remember actually coming up on him. She remembered enough to testify, though, even if she never remembered anything else, and assuming her testimony was needed. The tape was solid evidence.

Another vehicle joined the tangle, and a roly-poly man in his late fifties, sporting a crew cut, got out of a battered pickup truck. He trudged wearily toward Maris, clutching a big black bag in his hand. Finally, the vet, she thought. Dark circles under his eyes told her that he’d probably been up late, possibly all night, with an ailing animal.

Tired or not, he knew horses. He stopped, taking in Pleasure’s magnificent lines, the star on his forehead, the bloodstained white stocking. “That’s Sole Pleasure,” he said in astonishment.

“Yes, and he’s been shot,” Maris said tersely. Her head was throbbing; even her eyeballs ached. If Pleasure didn’t settle down soon, her head would likely explode. “No internal organs affected, but some chest muscle torn. He won’t settle down and let the bleeding stop.”

“Let’s take care of that problem, first off. I’m George Norton, the vet hereabouts.” He was working as he spoke, setting down the bag and opening it. He prepared a hypodermic and stepped forward, smoothly injecting the sedative into one of the bulging veins in Pleasure’s neck. The stallion danced nervously, his shoulder shoving her once again. She clenched her teeth, enduring.

“He’ll quiet down in a minute.” The vet gave her a sharp glance as he peeled away the blood-soaked gauze she’d been holding to the wound. “No offense, but even with the blood, the horse looks in better shape than you do. Are you all right?”

“Concussion.”

“Then for God’s sake stop letting him bump you around like that,” he said sharply. “Sit down somewhere before you fall down.”

Even in the midst of everything that was going on, as the medics readied Joan for transport, Mac somehow heard the vet. All of a sudden he was there, looming behind her, reaching over her shoulder for Pleasure’s bridle. “I’ll hold him.” The words sounded as if he were spitting them out one at a time, like bullets. “Sit down.”

“I—” She’d started to say “I think I will,” but she didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence.

He assumed she was about to mount an argument, and barked out one word. “Sit!”

“I wasn’t going to argue,” she snapped back. What did he think she was, a dog? Sit, indeed. She felt more like lying down.

She decided to do just that. Pleasure was going to be all right; as soon as he quieted and let the vet do his work, the bleeding would stop. The torn muscle would have to be stitched, antibiotics administered, a bandage secured, but the horse would heal. Even though the truck and trailer were stolen, under the circumstances she couldn’t imagine that there would be any problem with using them to transport Pleasure back to Solomon Green. Until the vet was finished and Pleasure was loaded in the trailer, she intended to stretch out on the truck seat.

Wearily she climbed into the cab. The keys were still in the ignition, so she started the engine and turned on the heater. She took off her coat, removed the Kevlar vest and placed it in the floorboards, then lay down on the seat and pulled the coat over her.

She almost cried with relief as the pain immediately began easing now that she was still. She closed her eyes, letting the tension drain out of her, along with the terror and absolute rage. She might have killed Joan. If the woman had shot Mac, she would have done it. Enveloped in that strange vacuum of despair and rage, she had been going for a head shot. She hadn’t even thought about Pleasure, not in that awful moment when Joan turned on Mac. She was glad she hadn’t had to pull the trigger, but she knew she would have. Knowing her own fiercely protective nature was one thing, but this was the first time she had been faced with the true extent of it. The jolt of self-knowledge was searing.

Mac had already faced this; it was in his eyes. She had seen it in her father, in her brothers, the willingness to do what was necessary to protect those they loved and those who were weaker. It wasn’t easy. It was gut-wrenching, and those who were willing to stand on the front lines paid for it in a thousand little ways she was only beginning to understand. She hadn’t had to take that final, irrevocable step, but she knew how close it had been.

Her mother also had that willingness, and a couple of her sisters-in-law. Valiant Mary, intrepid Caroline, sweet Barrie. They had each, in different circumstances, faced death and seen the bottom line. They would understand the wrenching she felt. Well, maybe Caroline wouldn’t. Caroline was so utterly straightforward, so focused, that Joe had once compared her to a guided missile.

The door by her head was wrenched open, and cold air poured in. “Maris! Wake up!” Mac barked, his voice right over her. His hand closed on her shoulder as if he intended to shake her.

“I am awake,” she said, without opening her eyes. “The headache’s better, now that I’m still. How much longer will it be before I can take Pleasure back?”

“You aren’t taking him anywhere. You’re going to a hospital to be checked out.”

“We can’t just leave him here.”

“I’ve arranged for him to be driven back.”

She could hear the effort he was making to be calm; it was evident in his careful tone.

“Are things about wrapped up here?”

“Close enough that I can leave it with Dean and take you to a hospital.”

He wouldn’t let it go until a doctor had told him she was all right, Maris realized, and with a sigh she opened her eyes and sat up. She understood. If their situations were reversed, she would be doing the same thing.

“All right,” she said, slipping on her coat. She turned off the ignition and picked up the Kevlar vest. “I’m ready.”

Her willingness scared him. She saw his eyes darken, saw his jaw clench. “I’ll be okay,” she said softly, touching his hand. “I’m going because I know you’re worried, and I don’t want you to be.”

His expression changed, something achingly tender moving in his eyes. Gently he scooped her into his arms and lifted her from the truck.

Dean had brought the Oldsmobile out of its hiding place. Mac carried her to it and deposited her on the front seat as carefully as if she were made of the most fragile crystal. He got in on the driver’s side and started the car; the milling crowd in front of them parted, allowing them through. She saw Pleasure, standing quietly now. The bandage was in place, and the wild look was gone from his eyes. He was watching the activity with his characteristic friendly curiosity.

As they drove by, Dean lifted his hand to wave. “What about Dean?” Maris asked.

“He’ll get transport. It isn’t a problem.”

She paused. “What about you? When do you leave? Your job here is finished, isn’t it?” She didn’t intend to let him get away, but she wasn’t sure exactly how much he understood of their situation.

“It’s finished.” The words were clipped. The look he gave her was one of restrained violence. “I’ll have to do the paperwork, tie up some loose ends. I may have to leave tonight, tomorrow at the latest, but I’ll be back, damn it!”

“You don’t sound happy about it,” she observed.

“Happy? You expect me to be happy?” His jaw clenched. “You didn’t obey orders. You stepped right out into the open, instead of staying hidden the way you were supposed to. That idiot woman could have killed you!”

“I was wearing the vest.” She pointed that out rather mildly, she thought.

“The damn vest only improves the odds, it isn’t a guarantee! The issue here is that you didn’t follow the plan. You risked your life for that damn horse! I didn’t want him hurt, either, but—”

“It wasn’t for Pleasure,” she said, interrupting him. “It was for you.” She looked out the window at the snow-dusted pastures they were passing.

It was quiet in the car for a moment.

“Me?” He was using that careful tone again.

“You. I knew he’d go straight to you, that he’d catch my scent on your clothes. At the very least he would distract you, bump you with his head. It was even possible he’d give away your position.”

Mac was silent, absorbing the shock of the realization that she was willing to risk her own life to protect his. He did the same thing on a fairly regular basis, but it was his job to take risks and protect others. But he’d never before felt the terror he’d known when he saw Maris draw Joan’s attention, and he hoped he never felt it again.

“I love you,” she said quietly.

Damn. Sighing inwardly, Mac kissed his bachelorhood goodbye. Her courage stunned him, humbled him. No other woman he’d known would have put herself on the line the way Maris had done, both physically and emotionally. She didn’t play games, didn’t jockey for control. She simply knew, and accepted; he’d seen it in the soft depths of her black eyes, an instinctive inner knowledge that few people ever achieved. If he didn’t snatch her up, it would be the biggest mistake of his life.

Mac didn’t believe in making mistakes.

“How long does it take to get married in Kentucky?” he asked abruptly. “If we can’t get it done tomorrow, we’ll go to Las Vegas—assuming the doctor says you’re all right.”

He hadn’t said he loved her, but she knew he did. She sat back, pleased with the situation. “I’m all right,” she said, completely confident.

Chapter 10

“Getting married in Las Vegas seems to be a tradition in my family,” she mused the next day as her new husband ushered her into their suite. “Two of my brothers have done it.”

“Two? How many brothers do you have?”

“Five. All of them older.” She smiled sweetly at him over her shoulder as she walked to the window to look out at the blazing red sunset. It was odd how completely connected to him she felt, when they hadn’t had time to talk much, to share the details of their lives. Events had swept them along like gulls before a hurricane.

The emergency room doctor had pronounced her concussion mild and told her to take it easy for a day or so. He had agreed with her that, if she had been going to lapse into a coma, she would already have done so. Over the course of the day her memory had completely returned, filling in the blank spots, so she knew she was okay.

Reassured, Mac had driven her back to Solomon Green and turned his attention to the job, ruthlessly clearing up details and paperwork so he could concentrate on the business of getting married. While she slept, he and Dean had worked. He had arranged for time off, checked into the details of marriage in Kentucky, decided it couldn’t be done fast enough to suit him and booked them on a flight to Las Vegas.

Ronald Stonicher had been arrested for conspiracy to commit fraud; he’d had no idea his wife and Randy Yu planned to kill Maris, too, and was shattered by what had happened. Joan had undergone surgery on her arm, and according to the surgeon the nerve and tissue damage was extensive; he expected her to regain some use of the arm, but she would never again be able to write with her right hand, or eat, do or anything else requiring precise movements. Randy was spilling his guts to the feds, implicating a lot of people in the horse world in the scheme to kill off horses for the insurance money. He hadn’t been charged with killing the sixteen-year-old boy. Evidently he had some information on it, though, and was holding that in reserve to bargain for an even bigger break on the charges.

Maris had called her mother, briefly filled her in on what had happened and told her she was getting married. “Have fun, baby,” Mary had told her daughter. “You know your father will want to walk you down the aisle, so we’ll plan another wedding for Christmas. That gives me three weeks. There shouldn’t be any problem.”

Most people would have screamed in panic at the thought of organizing a wedding in three weeks. Mary saw no problem, and from experience Maris knew that while other people might have problems accomplishing what her mother wanted, in the end she would have her way.

Mac had phoned his family, which consisted of his mother, step-father and two half-sisters. They would be joining the Mackenzies in Wyoming for the wedding at Christmas.

During the ceremony an hour before, Maris had learned that her husband’s full name was William Alexander MacNeil. “A few people call me Will,” he told her afterward, when she mentioned how difficult it was for her to think of him as Alex. “Most people call me Mac.” Since in her mind she had already begun shortening MacNeil to Mac, that suited her fine.

“Five older brothers?” Mac asked now, walking up behind her and slipping his arm around her waist. He bent his head to nuzzle her pale hair.

“Five. Plus twelve nephews and one niece.”

He chuckled. “Holidays must be lively.”

“Riotous would be a better word. Wait until you see.”

He turned her in his arms. “What I can’t wait to see is my wife, in bed with me.”

She clung to his neck as he lifted her and carried her into the bedroom. His mouth closed on hers as he lowered her to the bed, and the aching passion that had subsided but never vanished surged back at full force. He crushed her into the mattress in his need, but at the same time he tried not to be rough as he eased her out of her clothes.

She squirmed against him, pulling at his clothes, the roughness of the fabric against her nakedness driving her crazy. Mac drew back, staring down at her delicate body with open hunger. He was breathing hard, obviously struggling for control, his eyes hard and glittering with lust. Gently he shaped her breasts with his hand, each in turn, rubbing his thumb over her nipples and bringing them to aching hardness.

“Hurry,” she whispered, reaching for his belt.

He laughed a little, though there was no humor in the sound; instead, it was raw with need. He shed his clothes, kicking them away, and rolled on top of her. A groan of deep satisfaction tore from her throat as his heavy weight settled on her, and she opened her legs to cradle him close. She wanted him with a ferocity that would brook no delay, wanted him as she had never wanted or needed anything else in her life.

Mac positioned himself, then framed her face with his hands and kissed her as he slowly pushed into her body. Her flesh resisted, and she gasped, surprised by the painful difficulty. She had expected all her riding to have eased the way, but the lack of a barrier had in no way prepared her for his size.

He lifted his mouth, staring down at her as realization dawned. He didn’t say anything, didn’t ask any questions, but something hot and primitive flared deep in his gaze. As gently as possible, he completed his penetration, and when he was fully home inside her he waited, waited until the tension left her and her body softened beneath him, around him. Then he began moving, a slight rocking at first that did no more than nudge him back and forth, but enough to make her gasp again, this time with sensual urgency, and lift herself to him.

He took exquisite care with her, restraining the power of his thrusts, maintaining a slow, easy pace even when anticipation clawed at him, making him groan aloud with each movement. She clung to him, desperately searching for her own ease, trying to take him as deep inside her as possible, because instinct led her to that satisfaction. She cried out, overwhelmed by the sheer glory of this dance and struggle they shared, by the generosity of his loving.

She surged upward, unable to bear it a moment longer, and everything inside her shattered with a burst of pleasure so intense that she lost herself, sucked down in the whirlpool of sensation, a mindless creature knowing only the feel of his body, and hers. And she felt him join her, convulsing, thrusting, hotly emptying.

He cradled her afterward, stroking her with shaking hands as if to reassure himself she was real, that both of them were still whole.

“How did this happen?” he asked roughly. He tilted her chin so he could look into her face, and she saw that the glitter in his eyes was wetness now, not lust. “How could I love you so much, so fast? What kind of magic did you use?”

Tears burned her own eyes. “I just loved you,” she said, the words simple. “That’s all. I just loved you.”

The mountain was wreathed with snow, and her heart lifted when she saw it. “There,” she said, pointing. “That’s Mackenzie’s Mountain.”

Mac stared with interest at the massive bulk. He’d never known anyone before who owned an entire mountain, and he wondered about the people, and the way of life, that had nurtured this magical creature beside him. In the two days they had been married, he had come to wonder how he’d ever existed without her. Loving her was like becoming whole, when he hadn’t even known anything was missing. She was so delicate and fairylike, with her pale hair streaming over her shoulders and her great black eyes that held all the knowledge of centuries of women, but he’d learned that she was strong, and that the heart of a lion beat beneath her lovely breasts.

His wife! The unexpected marvelousness of it kept waking him in the middle of the night to look at her, to wonder at how fast it had happened. Only three days before, she had awakened in his arms and politely said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember your name,” and the realization that she’d been hurt had jarred him down to his toes. Only three days, and yet now he couldn’t imagine sleeping without her, or waking without seeing her sleepy urchin’s grin as she curled into his arms.

He had only five days off, so they had to make the best of it. Yesterday they had made a fast trip to San Antonio, where he had introduced her to his family. Both of his sisters had arrived with their broods of kids, three each, husbands in tow, but after the crowd Maris was accustomed to, she hadn’t turned a hair at any of it. His mother had been absolutely thrilled that he’d married at last, thrilled at the prospect of a Christmas wedding on top of a snow-covered mountain in Wyoming. Having gotten the telephone number from Maris, her mother had already called his mother, and they’d evidently become fast friends, judging from the number of times his mother referred to what Mary had said.

Today they were in Wyoming, and Mac wondered why he was getting a tight feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Tell me about your brothers,” he murmured. “All five of them.” He knew something about older brothers, being one himself.

She smiled, her eyes going soft. “Well, let’s see. My oldest brother, Joe, is a general in the air force—on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a matter of fact. His wife, Caroline, has doctoral degrees in physics and computer science, and they have five sons.

“My next-oldest brother, Mike, owns one of the largest cattle ranches in the state. He and Shea have two sons.

“Next is Josh. He was a navy fighter pilot, aircraft carrier, until a crash stiffened his knee and the navy grounded him. Now he’s a civilian test pilot. His wife, Loren, is an orthopedic surgeon. They have three sons.”

“Do any of your brothers have anything but sons?” Mac asked, fascinated by the recital, and growing more worried by the minute. He tried to focus on the mundane. He thought he remembered Maris saying she had a niece, but perhaps he’d been mistaken.

“Zane has a daughter.” There was a different note in Maris’s voice and he raised his eyebrows in inquiry, but she ignored him. “He and Barrie also have twin sons, two months old. Zane was a Navy SEAL. Barrie’s an ambassador’s daughter.”

A SEAL. He wondered how much worse this could get.

“Then there’s Chance. He and Zane might as well be twins. They’re the same age, and I think their brains are linked. Chance was in Naval Intelligence. He isn’t married.” She deliberately didn’t mention what Zane and Chance did now, because it seemed safer not to.

“I wonder,” Mac murmured to himself as he steered their rented four-wheel-drive up the mountain, “why I expected you to have a normal family.”

She lifted delicate brows at him. “You’re a special agent with the FBI,” she pointed out. “There isn’t one of those standing on every street corner, you know.”

“Yeah, but my family is normal.”

“Well, so is mine. We’re just overachievers.” Her smile turned into a grin, the urchin’s grin that had laced itself around his heart and tightened the bonds every time he saw it. He stopped the Jeep in the middle of the road and reached for her. His kiss was hard, urgent with hunger. Her eyes were slumberous when he released her. “What was that for?” she murmured, her hand curling around his neck.

“Because I love you.” He wanted to tell her one last time, in case he didn’t survive the coming confrontation. She might think her family would welcome him with open arms, but he had a much better understanding of the male psyche and he knew better. He put the Jeep in gear again, and they resumed their drive up the snow-covered road.

When they topped the crest and saw the big ranch house sprawling in front of them, Maris said happily, “Oh, good, everyone’s here,” and Mac knew he was a dead man. Never mind that he’d married her before sleeping with her; he was an unknown quantity, and he was making love to their darling every night. She was the only daughter, the baby, for God’s sake. He understood. If he lived, and he and Maris ever had a daughter, there was no way in hell he was going to let some horny teenage boy anywhere near his little girl.

He looked at the array of vehicles parked in front of the house, enough vehicles to form a good parade, and wondered if they would give chase if he turned around and headed back down the mountain.

Well, it had to be done. Resigned, he parked the Jeep and came around to open the door for Maris, clasping his hands around her narrow waist and lifting her to the ground. She took his hand and led him up the steps, all but running in her eagerness.

They stepped into warmth, into noise, into confusion. A very small person wearing red overalls suddenly exploded from the crowd, racing forward on chubby legs and shrieking, “Marwee, Marwee,” at the top of her lungs. Maris laughed and dropped to her knees, holding out her arms in time to catch the tiny tornado as she launched herself forward. Mac looked down at the little girl, not much more than a baby, and fell in love. He lost his heart. It was that simple.

She was beautiful. She was perfect, from the silky black hair on her round little head to her crystal-blue eyes, dimpled cheeks, rosebud mouth and dainty, dimpled hands. She was so small she was like a doll, and his arms ached to hold her. Little kids and babies had never affected him like this before, and it shook him.

“This is Nick,” Maris said, rising to her feet with her niece in her arms. “She’s the one and only granddaughter.”

Nick reached out a tiny hand and poked him in the chest, in a movement so exactly like Maris’s that Mac couldn’t help grinning. “Who dat?” the little angel asked.

“This is Mac,” Maris said, and kissed the soft, chubby cheek. Nick solemnly regarded him for a moment, then stretched out her arms in the manner of someone who is absolutely sure of their welcome. Automatically he reached out and took her, sighing with pleasure as the little body nestled against his chest.

Mac became aware of a spreading silence in the room, of what looked like an entire football team of big men getting to their feet, menace in every movement, in the hard faces turned toward him.

Maris looked at them, her face radiant, and he saw her eyes widen with surprise at their militant stances.

He eyed the competition. His father-in-law had iron gray hair and the black eyes Maris had inherited, and looked as if he ate nails for breakfast. His brothers-in-law looked just as lethal. Expertly Mac assessed each one, trying to pick out the most dangerous one. They all looked like bad asses. The one with the graying temples and the laser blue eyes, that would be the general, and damn if he didn’t look as if he went into combat every day. That one would be the rancher, whipcord lean, iron hard, a man who faced down Mother Nature every day. The test pilot…let’s see, that would be the one standing with his feet apart in the instinctive cocky stance of someone who cooly gambled with death and never blinked an eye.

Then Mac’s gaze met a pair of deadly, icy eyes. That one, he thought. That was the most dangerous one, the one with the quiet face and eyes like blue-gray frost. That one. He would bet a year’s pay that was the SEAL. But the one who moved up to stand beside him looked just as lethal, despite the almost unearthly handsomeness of his face. That would be the one in naval intelligence.

He was in big trouble. Instinctively he moved, depositing Nick in Maris’s arms and stepping in front of them both, shielding them with his body.

Six pairs of fierce eyes noted the action.

Maris peeked around his shoulder, assessing the situation. “Mother!” she called urgently, stressing both syllables as she brought in reinforcements.

“Maris!” There was utter delight in the soft voice that came from what Mac assumed was the kitchen, the cry followed by light, fast footsteps. A small, delicate woman, no bigger than Maris and with the same exquisite, translucent skin, burst into the room. She was laughing as she grabbed her daughter, hugging her and doing the same to him, even though he stood rigidly, not daring to take his eyes off the threat looming in front of them like a wall.

“Mom,” Maris said, directing her mother’s attention across the room. “What’s wrong with them?”

Mary took one look at her husband and sons and put her hands on her hips. “Stop that right now,” she ordered. “I refuse to have this, do you hear?”

Her voice was sweetly Southern, as light as a breeze, but Wolf Mackenzie’s black eyes flickered to her. “We just want to know a little about him,” he said in a voice as deep and dark as thunder.

“Maris chose him,” Mary replied firmly. “What else could you possibly need to know?”

“A lot,” the one with the quiet, lethal eyes said. “This happened too fast.”

“Zane Mackenzie!” a pretty redhead exclaimed, stepping out of the kitchen and eyeing him in amazement. “I can’t believe you said that! We got married after knowing each other for one day!” She crossed the no-man’s-land between the two battle lines, hugged Maris and turned to glare at her husband.

So he’d been right, Mac thought. That was the SEAL. It would look good on his tombstone: He Was Right.

“This is different,” said the general, a perfect clone of Wolf Mackenzie except for his light blue eyes. He, too, looked as if nails were a regular part of his diet.

“Different, how?” asked a crisp voice, and a stylish blonde stepped out of the kitchen. She pinned a sharp green gaze on the six men. “You’re all suffering from an overdose of testosterone. The main symptom is an inability to think.” Marching forward, she aligned herself on Mac’s other side. Something that was both heated and amused lit the general’s eyes as he looked at his wife.

Another bruiser, the test pilot, said, “Maris is—”

“A grown woman,” another feminine voice said, interrupting. A tall, curvy woman with chestnut hair and serene blue eyes took up a position beside the blonde. “Hi, I’m Loren,” she said to Mac. “The one who just spoke is Josh, my husband, who usually exhibits better sense.”

“And I’m Shea, Mike’s wife.” Another reinforcement arrived. She was dark haired, and sweetly shy. She stood beside Loren, crossed her arms over her chest and calmly looked across at her husband.

The two sides looked at each other, the men glaring at their turncoat wives, the women lined up protectively beside Mac. He was a little stunned to find himself surrounded by this perfumed wall of femininity.

Caroline gave her husband glare for glare. “Every one of us was welcomed with open arms when we married into this family, and I expect you to extend the same courtesy to Maris’s husband—or else!”

Joe considered the challenge, his pale blue eyes glittering as he cocked his head. “Or else, what?” he asked, his deep voice silky and full of something that might have been anticipation.

Silence fell in the room, even the kids were quiet as they watched their parents. Mac looked at the six women ranged on either side of him, and his face softened into tender amusement. “It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.”

“I’m glad you do, because I don’t,” Maris growled.

“It’s a—”

“Don’t say it’s a man thing,” Mary warned, interrupting, and he bit back the words.

“No, ma’am,” he said meekly.

Wolf’s dark face lightened, and his lips twitched. Those two words were very familiar to him.

Nick squirmed to get down, and Maris leaned over to deposit her on her feet. The little girl patted Mac on the knee and said, “Mac,” with great satisfaction in her tone. She trotted across to her father, holding up her arms to be picked up. Zane leaned down and lifted her, settling her on one brawny arm. “Dat’s Mac,” she said, pointing. “I wike him.”

Suddenly that hard, deadly face softened into a smile, and a big hand smoothed a silky tendril of hair away from her face. “I noticed,” he said dryly. “He took one look at you and turned into your slave, just like the rest of us. That’s what you really like, isn’t it?”

Her little head bobbed up and down, very definitely. Zane chuckled as he shot an amused glance across the room at her mother. “I thought you would.”

From somewhere down the hall came a baby’s wail. “Cam’s awake,” Barrie said, and immediately abandoned Mac to go to her baby.

“How does she do that?” Chance asked of the room in general. “They’re only two months old. How do you tell twins apart by their cries?”

The females, Nick included, had won. The tension in the room dissipated, smiles breaking out as Chance followed his sister-in-law down the hall, intent on finding out if she’d been right. Before he walked out he winked at Mac, in a moment of male understanding. The crisis had come and gone, because when it came down to it, the Mackenzie men were unwilling to distress their women. The women had liked Mac on sight, and that was that.

Barrie was back in only a moment, a squirming bundle in her arms. Chance followed her, expertly holding another one. “She was right,” he announced, shaking his head in bewilderment.

Mac looked at the two tiny faces, finding them as identical as if they were mirror images. It was impossible to tell them apart even by looking at them; how in hell did Chance know if she was right or not?

“Cameron,” Barrie said, indicating her burden and smiling at his skeptical look. “Chance is holding Zack.” She also carried two small, milk-filled bottles.

“How do you know?” He shook his head, still looking for any distinguishing difference in the babies.

“Cameron’s the most impatient, but Zack is more determined.”

“You can tell that in their cries?”

“Well, of course,” she said, as if anyone should be able to do the same.

Nick was climbing up on her father’s shoulder, gripping his hair for leverage. “Wook, Unca Dance,” she exclaimed, standing upright and releasing her safety hold.

Zane reached up and snagged his daughter off his shoulder. “Here, swap with me,” he said, and he and Chance exchanged kids. Zane settled the baby in the crook of his arm and took one of the bottles from Barrie, expertly slipping the nipple into the rapacious little mouth.

Chance balanced Nick on his hands, firmly holding her feet while she straightened and crowed with delight at her achievement. “Chance,” he coaxed. “My name is Chance. Chance.”

Nick placed her little hands on each side of his face, leaning close to peer into his eyes and impress him with her seriousness. “No,” she said with great finality. “Dance. Oo say it wong.”

The room exploded with laughter at Chance’s expression. He eyed the pint-size dictator in his hands, then shook his head and gave up. “Are you sure you want to marry into this family?” He directed the question at Mac.

Mac looked at Maris and winked. “Yeah,” he said.

Zane was watching him while the baby took the bottle, his calm eyes measuring. “Maris said you’re an FBI special agent,” he said, and something in his tone must have alerted Maris.

“No,” she said firmly, pushing Mac toward the kitchen. “You can’t have him. Being in the FBI is enough. You absolutely can’t have him.”

Mac found himself borne along on the tide of women, because they all wanted to discuss the wedding, but before he left the room he looked back. His gaze met Zane’s…and Zane Mackenzie smiled.

“Welcome to the family,” he said.

Epilogue

“You so pwetty,” Nick sighed, her big blue eyes rapt as she propped her elbows on Maris’s knee and stared at her aunt. The entire process of preparing for a wedding had fascinated the little girl. She had intently scrutinized everything as the women of the household had painstakingly made hundreds of tiny net bags, filled them with bird seed and tied them with ribbons. She had stood on her tiptoes, clinging to the table’s edge, and watched as Shea, who made wonderful cakes, practiced making dozens of roses from icing before decorating Maris’s wedding cake. Before long the practice roses had all borne evidence of a tiny, investigative finger. Once Nick had determined they were edible, they’d gradually disappeared, and her little face wore telltale smears.

Maris’s gown held her absolutely enthralled. The long skirt, the lace, the veil, everything about it entranced her. When Maris had tried it on for the final fitting, Nick had clasped her hands under her chin and with shining eyes had said, “Oo a pwincess!”

“You’re pretty, too, darling,” Maris said. Nick was her flower girl. Zane had muttered about inviting disaster, and since Nick wasn’t quite three years old, Maris was prepared for anything, including an outright refusal to perform her role. At the rehearsal the night before, however, Nick had strutted down the aisle with her little basket of rose petals and proudly strewn them, aware that every eye was on her. Whether she would do so when watched by a huge crowd was another question, but she was undeniably adorable in her long, blush pink dress, with ribbons and flowers in her silky black hair.

“I know,” Nick replied matter-of-factly, and left her post at Maris’s knee to return to the mirror to admire herself. It was something she had done every five minutes since Barrie had dressed her.

Barrie and Caroline were the acknowledged fashion mavens of the Mackenzie family, and they had taken over the arrangement of Maris’s hair and the application of her makeup. They were astute enough to keep things simple, rather than overwhelming Maris’s dainty face and frame with big hair and layers of makeup. Barrie had finished her hair and retired to a rocking chair to nurse the twins before the ceremony started. She supplemented their feedings with a bottle, but breast milk kept them contented longer, and she didn’t want to have to feed them again in the middle of the reception.

Mary had quickly realized that the Mackenzie house, as large as it was, simply couldn’t hold the crowd that was invited to the wedding. Because Christmas was on a Wednesday, the church in Ruth had held its Christmas service on Sunday, freeing it for the ceremony. The nine-foot-tall Christmas tree still stood in the corner, its multitude of white lights twinkling. Holly and evergreen needles still decorated the windowsills, filling the church with a wonderful aroma. White lights outlined the arched doorway, the windows, the sanctuary and the steps leading up to it. Rows of white candles lent their mellow glow to the church. None of the overhead lights would be on, but the tree, the Christmas lights and the candles combined to give the setting a magical aura.

This was Christmas Eve, a time when most of the occupants of Ruth would normally have been at home either having their private celebrations or preparing for them the next day. This year they were attending a wedding. From the private room off the vestibule Maris could hear the swell of noise as more and more people arrived.

Mary stood quietly, a sheen of tears in her slate blue eyes as she watched her daughter prepare for her wedding. It didn’t matter that Maris and Mac were already married; this was the wedding that counted. This was her beloved daughter who looked so delicate and beautiful in her silvery white gown, a color that turned Maris’s pale, ash brown hair to a darker shade of silver. She remembered the first time she had seen her daughter, only seconds old, so tiny and lovely and already staring around with big, solemn black eyes, her father’s eyes. She remembered the tears that had sheened Wolf’s own black eyes as he’d taken Maris in his arms and hugged the little scrap to his chest as if she were the most precious thing he’d ever seen.

There were thousands of other memories. Her first tooth, her first step, her first word—predictably, “horsie.” Maris sitting on a pony for the first time, her eyes huge with delight while Wolf kept a protective arm around her. Maris, a little shadow dogging her father’s footsteps just as her older brothers had done. Maris in school, fiercely joining in any fight the boys had gotten into, her little fists flying as she rushed to their defense, utterly ignoring the fact that the boys were twice her size. Maris sobbing when her old pony had died, and her radiant joy when, the next Christmas, Wolf had given her her first “real” horse.

There had been Maris’s first date, and Wolf’s scowling, prowling nervousness until his baby was safely back under his roof. One of Mary’s favorite memories was of Zane and Josh and Chance pacing along with their father; if Joe and Mike had been there, they would have been pacing, too. As it was, the poor boy who had been so brave as to take Maris out had been terrified when the four Mackenzie males met them on the front porch on their return and had never asked her out again. They had gotten better about it over the years, but Maris must have forgotten her first date or she wouldn’t have been so surprised at their reaction to Mac when she’d brought him home. Men. Mary loved her men, but really, they could be so overbearing. Why, they liked Mac, once they’d gotten over their bristly protectiveness. If Maris didn’t watch out, Zane would have Mac recruited into whatever it was he and Chance—

Zane. Mary stopped short in her thoughts, looking around the room. All three of his children were here, with Barrie. Usually he was tending to at least one of the babies, or riding herd on Nick. That meant Zane was free and unencumbered, and she was sure it wasn’t by accident.

“Zane’s free,” she announced, because she thought Maris really ought to know.

Her daughter’s head snapped up, and her lovely eyes caught fire. “I’ll skin him alive,” she said wrathfully. “I will not have Mac gone for months on end the way Chance is. I just got him, and I’m not letting him go.”

Barrie looked startled; then she, too, realized the significance of having all three children with her. She shook her head in rueful acknowledgment of her husband’s canniness. “It’s too late to do anything about it now. He’s had plenty of time to have a private talk with Mac, and you know Zane—he planned it perfectly.”

Maris scowled, and Caroline drew back with the eye shadow brush in her hand. “I can’t do this with your eyebrows all scrunched up,” she admonished. Maris smoothed her expression, and Caroline went back to work. “I don’t believe in letting hormone-driven men interfere in a woman’s wedding. You can skin him alive tomorrow. Ambush him when he least expects it.”

“Zane always expects everything,” Barrie said, grinning. Then she looked at her daughter, who was twirling and dancing in front of the mirror, admiring herself. “Except Nick,” she added. “He wasn’t prepared for her.”

“Was anyone?” Loren murmured, smiling fondly down at the little girl. Nick, hearing her name, stopped her pirouetting to favor them all with an angelic smile that didn’t fool them for one second.

“Mac’s be sotted with her,” Maris said. “He didn’t turn a hair even when she polished his boots with the Magic Marker.”

“An indication of true love if I’ve ever seen it,” Caroline said dryly. She touched the mascara wand to Maris’s already dark lashes, then stood back to admire her handiwork. “There! Mac would be crazy to leave you and go running around half-civilized countries where there’s no sanitation and no shopping.” Caroline’s philosophy in life was to be comfortable, and she went to extraordinary lengths to accomplish it. She would gladly walk miles to find the perfect comfortable pair of shoes. It made perfect sense to her, since her work often required her to be on her feet for hours; how could she possibly concentrate if her toes were cramped?

“I don’t think Mac would care about the shopping,” Shea said. She picked Nick up and whirled around the room with the giggling little girl, humming a lively tune.

There was a knock on the door, and John poked his head inside. “It’s time,” he said. His pale blue gaze fell on Caroline. “Wow, Mom, you look great.”

“Smart guy,” she said approvingly. “I’ll let you stay in my will.”

He grinned and ducked out again. Maris stood, sucking in a deep breath. It was time. Never mind that they’d been married for three weeks already; this was a production, and practically the entire town was on hand to witness it.

Shea set Nick on her feet and got the basket of rose petals from the top of the closet, where they’d put it to keep Nick from scattering the flowers around the room. They’d already picked up the velvety petals once, and once was enough.

Barrie laid Zack beside Cameron. Both babies were sleeping peacefully, their little bellies full. Right on time, one of Shea’s teenaged nieces arrived to watch them while Barrie attended the wedding.

The music began, their cue to begin entering the sanctuary.

One by one they began filing out, escorted by the Mackenzie men to their reserved seats. Zane’s big form filled the doorway. Maris said, “No,” and he grinned as he held his hand out to Barrie.

“Just a minute.” Barrie stooped in front of Nick, straightening the ribbons in her hair and at last placing the basket of flower petals in the eager, dimpled little hands. “Do the flowers just the way you did them last night, okay? Do you remember?”

Nick nodded. “I fwow dem aroun’ on de fwoor.”

“That’s right, sweetheart.” Having done all she could, Barrie stood and went to Zane, who slipped his arm around her waist and briefly hugged her close before they left to take their places.

Wolf came to the door, severely elegant in a black tuxedo. “It’s time, honey,” he said to Maris. His black eyes were tender as he wrapped his arms around her and rocked her back and forth, the way he had done all her life. Maris laid her head on her father’s chest, almost overwhelmed by the sudden rush of love for him. She’d been so lucky in her parents!

“I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever forget about horses long enough to fall in love,” he said, “but now that you have, I feel like we haven’t had you long enough.”

She chuckled against his chest. “That’s exactly how I knew.” She lifted her head, her eyes shining with both tears and laughter. “I kept forgetting about Sole Pleasure and thinking only about Mac. It had to be love.”

He kissed her forehead. “In that case, I’ll forgive him.”

“Poppy!”

The imperious small voice came from the vicinity of his knee. They looked down. Nick was tugging on Wolf’s pant leg. “We dotta huwwy. I dotta fwow fwowers.”

As usual, her mangled English made him laugh. “All right, cupcake.” He leaned down and took her free hand, to keep her from darting ahead of them and “fwowing fwowers” before they were ready.

He and Maris and Nick made their way into the vestibule, and Maris leaned down to kiss Nick’s cheek. “Are you ready?” she asked.

Nick nodded, her slanted blue eyes wide and shining with excitement, and she clutched the flower basket with both hands.

“Here you go, then.” Gently Maris urged Nick forward, into the center aisle. The church glowed with candlelight, and hundreds of smiling faces were turned toward them, it seemed.

Nick stepped out into the limelight like a Miss America taking her victory walk. She bestowed smiles to the left and the right, and she daintily reached into the basket for a rose petal. One. She held it out and let it drift downward. Then she reached for another. One by one she distributed the rose petals on the carpet with dainty precision, taking her time, even stooping once to adjust a petal that had fallen too close to another one.

“Oh, God.” Beside her, Maris could feel Wolf shaking with laughter. “She’s enjoying this too much. At this rate, you won’t get to walk down the aisle until midnight.”

People were turning and looking, and laughing at Nick’s concentration on the task. Barrie buried her head in Zane’s shoulder, lost in a helpless fit of giggling. Zane was grinning, and Chance was laughing out loud. Mac, standing at the altar, was beaming at the little imp who had so won his heart. The pianist, looking around, saw what was taking so long and gamely continued playing.

Tickled to be the center of attention, Nick began improvising. The next rose petal was tossed backward, over her shoulder. The minister choked, and his face turned red as he tried to hold back his guffaws.

She twirled on her tiptoes, flinging rose petals in a circle. Several flew out of the basket, and she frowned, stooping to pick them up and return them to the basket.

I can’t laugh, Maris thought, feeling it bubbling inexorably upward. If I laugh, I’ll laugh until I cry, and it’ll ruin my makeup. She put her hand over her mouth to hold the mirth inside, but it didn’t work. Her chest constricted, her throat worked and suddenly laughter burst joyously out of control.

Nick stopped and turned to look, beaming at them, waiting for them to tell her what a good job she was doing.

“Fwow—I mean, throw them,” Maris managed to say between whoops.

The little head tilted to one side. “Wike dis?” she asked, taking a handful of petals from the basket and flinging them upward.

At least it was a handful, and not just one. “Like that,” Maris said in approval, hoping it would speed the procedure.

It did. Another handful followed the first one, and Nick’s progress down the aisle picked up speed. At last she reached the end, and bestowed an absolutely radiant smile on Mac. “I fwowed dem all,” she told him.

“You did it just right,” he said, barely able to speak for laughing. Her mission accomplished, she strutted to the pew where Zane and Barrie sat, and held up her arms to be lifted to the seat.

Relieved, the pianist launched into the familiar strains of “Here Comes the Bride,” and at last Wolf and Maris began their stately walk down the aisle. Everyone rose to their feet and turned to watch, smiling.

Because time had been so short, there were no bridesmaids or groomsmen, no maid of honor or best man, so only Mac awaited Maris at the altar. He watched her approach, his hard face relaxed in a tender expression, his blue eyes still shining from his laughter. As soon as she stopped beside him, he gently took her hand in his, and behind them, they heard his mother give a teary, joyful little gasp.

Because Maris and Mac were already married, they had decided to skip the part about “who gives this woman.” Wolf leaned down and kissed his daughter’s cheek, hugged her tenderly, then shook hands with Mac and took a seat beside Mary.

“Dearly beloved,” the minister began; then there was another gasp behind them. Recognizing Barrie’s voice, Maris wasn’t surprised when a little body slithered between her and Mac, taking a stance directly in front of them.

“I do it, too,” Nick chirped, her little voice audible in every corner of the church.

Glancing over her shoulder, Maris saw Zane start to rise to retrieve his errant offspring. She shook her head, smiling. He winked and sank back into his seat.

So Nick stood pressed against their legs while the minister performed the service. They could feel her quivering with excitement, and Mac subtly gathered her closer to him so he would have a better chance of grabbing her if she started to do something startling, such as peek under the minister’s cassock. She was already eyeing the garment with some curiosity. But she was content for the moment, completely taken with the ceremony, the candles, the twinkling Christmas tree, the beautiful clothes. When the minister said, “You may now kiss the bride,” and Mac did so, Nick merely tilted her head back to watch.

“What’s the best way to handle her when we leave?” Mac whispered against Maris’s lips.

“Pick her up and hand her to Zane as we pass,” she whispered back. “He’ll be expecting it.”

The pianist launched into the familiar stirring strains. Mac swooped Nick up with one arm, put the other around Maris, and they hurried up the aisle to the accompaniment of music, laughter, tears and a round of applause. As they passed the second pew, a tiny girl in a long dress was deftly passed from one pair of strong arms to another.

The reception was a long, glorious party. Maris danced endlessly with her husband, her father, all her brothers, several of her nephews, her brothers-in-law and an assortment of old friends. She danced with the sheriff, Clay Armstrong. She danced with Ambassador Lovejoy, Barrie’s father. She danced with Shea’s father and grandfather, with the ranchers and merchants and gas station attendants. Finally Mac claimed her again, holding her close and swaying to the music as he rested his cheek against hers.

“What did Zane say to you?” she demanded suddenly.

She felt him grin, though he didn’t lift his head. “He said you’d know.”

“Never mind that. What did he say?”

“You already know what he said.”

“Then what did you say?”

“That I’m interested.”

She growled. “I don’t want you to spend months out of the country. I’m willing—barely—to let the FBI use you on investigations, but I don’t like it. I want you with me every night, not thousands of miles away.”

“That’s exactly what I told Zane. Remember, I don’t have to do what Chance does.” He held her closer, dropping his voice to an intimate murmur. “Has your period started yet?”

“No.” She was only two days late—but two days was two days, and she was normally very regular. It was possible her system had been disrupted by the concussion and the stress of everything that had happened, so she wasn’t making any announcements yet. “Would you mind if I am pregnant so soon?”

“Mind?” He kissed her ear. “When we might get our own Nick?” His shoulders quivered under her embrace. “I didn’t think she was ever going to get rid of those damn flower petals.”

“She’s one of a kind, I hope.” But she leaned against him, feeling her breasts, her entire body, tighten with desire. If she wasn’t already pregnant, she likely would be soon, given how often he made love to her.

They danced in silence for a moment, then Mac said, “Pleasure should have arrived by now.”

She had to blink back tears, because Mac had given her the most wonderful gift for Christmas. With Sole Pleasure’s worth hugely reduced now that the racing world had been rocked with news of his very low sperm count, the syndication offers had evaporated. It was possible Pleasure could sire a foal, but it was such a small possibility as to be negligible. He still had worth as a racehorse, and Ronald Stonicher might have gotten more for him than Mac had offered, but huge legal expenses had been staring him in the eye, and he’d jumped at the chance to sell the horse. Maris had worried so about Pleasure’s future that Mac had made the offer for him without telling her, because he didn’t want her to be disappointed in case the deal fell through.

“Dad can hardly wait to ride him,” she said. “He’s said several times that he envied me because I got to work with Pleasure.”

They fell silent, simply enjoying the feel of being in each other’s arms. Their wedding hadn’t been a stately, solemn affair—Nick had seen to that—but it had been perfect. People had laughed and enjoyed themselves, and everyone for years would smile whenever they thought of Maris Mackenzie’s wedding.

“It’s time to throw the bouquet!”

The cry went up, and they swung around to see a crowd of giggling teenage girls gathering for the tradition, flipping back their hair, throwing sidelong glances at the older Mackenzie boys. There were more mature women there, too, giving Chance measuring looks.

“I thought you were supposed to throw it when we’re ready to leave?” Mac said, amused.

“Evidently they can’t wait.”

She didn’t mind hurrying things up a little; after that dance, she was ready to be alone with her husband.

Nick had been having the time of her short life, stuffing herself with cake and mints, and being whirled around the dance floor in the arms of her father, her grandfather and all her uncles and cousins. When she saw Maris get the bouquet that had so fascinated her earlier, with all the “pwetty” flowers and lace and ribbons, she squirmed away from Sam’s grip on her hand and moved to where she had a better view of the situation, her little head cocked to the side as she intently watched.

Maris climbed on the dais, turned her back and threw the bouquet high over her shoulder. Cries of “Catch it! Catch it!” filled the reception hall.

Almost immediately there was a collective cry of alarm. Maris whirled. The crowd of girls and women was rushing forward, eyes lifted, intent on the bouquet sailing toward them. And directly in front of them, also concentrating on the bouquet as she darted forward, was a tiny figure in pale pink.

There was a surge of black-clad bodies moving forward as seventeen males, one MacNeil and sixteen Mackenzies, from six-year-old Benjy up to Wolf, all leapt for the little girl. Maris caught a glimpse of Zane’s face, utterly white as he tried to reach his baby before she was trampled, and somehow she, too, was running, leaping from the dais, heedless of her dress.

Two crowds of people were moving toward each other at breakneck speed, with Nick caught in the middle. One of the teenage girls looked down, saw Nick and emitted a shrill scream of panic as she tried to stop, only to be shoved forward by the girl behind her.

Chance had been standing back, avoiding any contact with that wedding bouquet business, but as a result, his movements were less impeded. He reached Nick two steps ahead of Zane, scooping her up, enfolding her in his arms and rolling with her out of harm’s way. Zane veered, putting himself between Chance and anyone who might stumble over him, and in another second there was practically a wall of boys and men protecting the two on the floor.

The bouquet hit Chance in the middle of the back.

Carefully he rolled over, and Nick’s head popped out of the shield he’d made with his arms. “Wook!” she said, spying the bouquet. “Oo caught de fwowers, Unca Dance!”

Maris skidded to a stop beside them. Chance lay very still on the floor, with Nick on his chest. He glared up at Maris, his light, golden-hazel eyes narrow with suspicion. “You did that on purpose,” he accused.

The MacNeils and the Mackenzies moved forward, smiles tugging at stern mouths. Maris crossed her arms. “There’s no way I could have arranged this.” She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at his outraged expression.

“Hah. You’ve been doing spooky stuff all your life.”

Nick leaned over and grasped one of the ribbons of the bouquet, pulling it toward her. Triumphantly she deposited it on Chance’s chest. “Dere,” she said with satisfaction, and patted it.

Zane rubbed the side of his nose, but he was less successful than Maris at hiding his grin. “You caught the bouquet,” he said.

“I did not,” Chance growled. “She hit me in the back with it!”

Mary walked up and stood beside Wolf, who automatically put his arm around her. Slowly a radiant smile spread across her face. “Why, Chance!” she exclaimed. “This means you’re next.”

“I—am—not—next.” He ground the words out, sitting up with Nick in his arms. Carefully he put her on her feet, then climbed to his own. “Trickery doesn’t count. I don’t have time for a wife. I like what I do, and a wife would just get in the way.” He was backing away as he talked. “I’m not good husband material, anyway. I—”

A little hand tugged on his pant leg. He stopped and looked down.

Nick stretched on tiptoe, holding the bouquet up to him with both hands. “Don’t fordet oor fwowers,” she said, beaming.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-0635-3

Copyright © 2007 Harlequin Books S.A.

The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

Mackenzie’s Mountain

Copyright © 1989 by Linda Howington

Mackenzie’s Mission

Copyright © 1992 by Linda Howington

Mackenzie’s Pleasure

Copyright © 1996 by Linda Howington

A Game of Chance

Copyright © 2000 by Linda Howington

Mackenzie’s Magic

Copyright © 1996 by Linda Howington

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

www.eHarlequin.com