Cort worked his way around the cabin, checking for anything out of place while he thought about the situation. Had he caught the intruder unaware? Was that why the bastard hadn’t stayed to kill him? He’d been lying in wait for Jackson, but was not ready for Cort? Or had he had something else in mind?
Something having to do with Kaylie. And her family. Her mother.
Cort ground his jaw as he reached the bedroom window, shaded his eyes to check on Kaylie.
She was still sleeping, still looking like an angel.
He narrowed his eyes as he studied her. There was something about Kaylie and her family. Something that had gotten Jackson and Sara killed.
Pulling back from the window, he looked down at the ground, at the snow bank below the window from all the snow that had fallen off the slanted metal roof.
The snow was packed with footprints.
The bastard had been back.
Watching Kaylie.
Wanting her? Wanting the ring?
Cort squatted and studied the prints. Boots. Bigger than his. A large man. Kaylie would have no chance against him. Slowly, he rose to his feet, acknowledging the truth.
The bastard wasn’t going to walk away from Kaylie. Plus, she was the answer to Jackson’s death. She and her family.
Yeah, Kaylie was a temptation Cort couldn’t afford.
Yeah, if he stayed near her much longer, he was going to bed her again, and there’d be no going back.
Yeah, he’d be better off packing her on the next plane back to wherever she was from.
Didn’t matter.
He needed her.
Rising, he fisted his rifle and surveyed the woods. The snowmobile tracks were already fading in the rain. Tracks too broken for him to track from the air. Tracks that would be gone before he could hike them out.
Kaylie was his only clue.
And she was in danger, and there wasn’t a damn soul Cort would trust to keep her safe. Not when he didn’t know who was after her.
Dammit.
There was no other option.
He was keeping her.
A shadow passed in front of Kaylie’s eyes, jerking her into consciousness. She opened them and saw the outline of a man outside the window…and then realized it was Cort.
“Oy.” She flopped back down, hand over her hammering heart.
He was standing with his back to her, rifle in one hand, facing the woods, as if listening for something. A chill prickled down her skin. Had her stalker come back?
She swung out of bed and padded to the smaller side window. Cort turned sharply as she cranked it open. “Cort? Is everything okay?”
“He came back.” He pointed to the ground. “He was out here a good part of the night, I think. I didn’t hear him. He’s good.”
A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold air wracked her body, and she pressed her face to the screen to look down.
Footprints everywhere.
Big ones.
“Oh, wow.” Suddenly, the awkwardness between them last night didn’t matter. She was just so grateful Cort had been in that bed with her. What if he hadn’t been? What would have happened? “Can you follow the tracks?”
“Already tried. Too melted.” He walked over to the window and draped one arm over the frame, leaning toward her. Rain dotted the shoulder of his jacket and matted down his hair. The bandage on his head was stark against his hair, a dark spot in the middle indicating that it was still bleeding. Seeing that bandage was a reminder that, despite his strength and his aura of indestructibility, he was human. He could be hurt. He wasn’t immune from the risks of his lifestyle.
She had to remember that. Had to stay focused on that fact.
His gaze went to her chest. “Nice outfit.”
She looked down, her cheeks heating when she realized she hadn’t remembered to cover up when she’d gotten out of the bed. Her nipples were dark and puckered with cold, the sheer material doing nothing for modesty.
Then she got annoyed at herself for being embarrassed. For letting him make her feel self-conscious. The earrings, the sleep attire…She set her hands on her hips and smiled. “Thank you.” He’d already made love to her. What was the point in hiding from him?
He stared at her, and then the corner of his mouth quirked up, as if surprised by her reaction. “No. Thank you.”
Heat suffused her again, and this time it wasn’t embarrassment. “My pleasure.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. Then she intentionally touched her earring, making sure the back was still secure. He watched her do it, a muscle ticking in his cheek.
She dropped her hand and smiled, trying to pretend it didn’t bother her how he felt about who she really was. “So? What now?”
“No secrets.”
“No secrets? What are you talking about?”
He leaned closer, making her forget the screen was still between them. His presence was so powerful, so strong, that she could practically feel the heat emanating off him. He was a man who would dominate any room he stepped into, no matter who was in it. “From what I can tell, my best friend and his wife died because of your mother. Because of your family.”
Her throat tightened at his words. Was she really responsible for Sara’s dying? God, if it was about her, and her mother…
His face softened. “That doesn’t mean it’s your fault,” he said quietly. “It’s not the same thing.”
“You don’t believe that. And I don’t either.”
Cort’s hand went to the screen, his fingers digging, as if he wanted to grab her. “I do mean that. It’s not your fault.” His voice was hard. Unyielding. “But you’re our best lead to figure out what’s going on. You’re going to need to tell me everything about your family. I need answers.”
Kaylie wanted to run from the intensity of his gaze and the hard set to his jaw. From Alaska. From the dangers of this place. From the world she’d tried so hard to deny for so long. From the way she wanted to lean into that screen and press her face against it so she could get as close to him as possible. “What about Trooper Mann? Won’t he help now?”
Cort gave a small snort of disgust. “Oh, I’m going to track Bill down and tell him, but you want to trust him to see it through the right way? You have that much faith in him?”
Kaylie bit her lip. She thought of the how Trooper Mann had dismissed her concerns about her family. The way he’d accused Cort of being crazy. How he’d thought she was lying for Cort so he would sleep with her. Thought of the disconcerting way his partner, Rich, had looked at her, as if he was picturing her naked.
No, she didn’t trust the state troopers to see it through.
Cort was personally invested in this because of Jackson. Kaylie had been a part of Cort’s grief that first night, and she knew he wouldn’t walk away from this situation. But could she withstand being close to him? What if he tried to kiss her again? Would she succumb as she had the last two times? How long would it take for her heart to get involved?
For him to destroy her.
She didn’t understand why, but she couldn’t deny that he affected her in a way no one else had. Even in the light of day, with the rain dripping on him and footsteps of a stalker in the snow outside her window, she wanted him.
Badly.
“Do you trust the Staties to keep you safe when that bastard comes back for you?” Cort asked. There was a dark turbulence in his eyes that made her stomach tighten. A fierceness. A protectiveness. “Because he’s coming back,” he said. “You know he is. And I’ll be waiting. You with me, or not?”
He’s coming back.
Kaylie knew Cort was right, and she didn’t want to be alone when the murderer returned.
There were more than half a million people in Alaska Kaylie could ask for help.
But Cort was the one she wanted. He was the one she trusted. Anyone could have killed Jackson and Sara. Trooper Mann, his partner, anyone she approached. But she knew, she knew down to the marrow of her bone
s, that Cort was innocent.
So, it had to be Cort.
She set her hands on her hips, knowing she was dooming herself even as the words came out of her mouth. “Okay. I’m in.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
By nighttime, they were in Twin Forks, a town forty-five minutes from Cort’s hangar. He hadn’t been able to track down Trooper Mann or his partner anywhere, so when she and Cort finished searching the rest of Jackson and Sara’s cabin, he’d decided to take control.
Now it was almost nine o’clock, the rain hadn’t let up, and they were hunting a state trooper.
According to Cort, the Shed was the place to go, both for a state trooper who wouldn’t return calls and to find the bush pilot who had flown her family up to the mountain.
Cort had been disappointed with the details about her family. No smoking gun suggesting why someone would be after her mother or herself. Kaylie hadn’t seen her parents in five years. Her brother e-mailed her periodically, but he hadn’t revealed some dark secret that would explain what was going on. She didn’t even know what part of the mountain they’d been on or what peak they’d been trying to climb.
He was surprised to learn the members of her family were legitimate climbers. He asked a few questions about why she didn’t climb now, but she hadn’t wanted to go into it with him. He hadn’t pried, and it had left him with no answers.
They’d both realized they had to find the pilot who’d flown them in. They needed a place to start.
And so, there they were. Walking into Twin Forks’s local tavern, a small wooden building with dim lighting and a huge stone fireplace taking up the center of the room. From what Cort said, it was the main watering hole for bush pilots.
Even with the flickering glow from the flames and the dusky sunlight outside, the bar was dark. Crowded. Packed with people who looked as if they could handle the worst Mother Nature offered and not even spill a drop of their beer.
It wasn’t their clothes or weathered faces that made them seem so tough, though most were in jeans and boots. Not a diamond earring to be seen.
It wasn’t the weathered faces that gave some of the patrons a roughened, lined expression. And it wasn’t the casual way they all chatted with one another, as if they’d known each other for thirty years and had no secrets left to hide.
It was the low energy humming from them, a fire, a realness much like what she’d felt off Cort the first moment she’d met him.
Heads turned as they entered, and Kaylie felt fifty sets of eyes dissect her, judge her, and then dismiss her.
She didn’t belong here.
She stopped, but Cort put his hand on her lower back and forced her to keep walking. He moved closer to her, his body brushing hers. “They don’t bite,” he said under his breath, low enough for only her to hear.
“Am I that obvious?”
“I can feel the muscles in your back clenching.” His hand slipped around her waist, and he tucked her under his arm.
Her body tightened at his nearness and she tried to pull away, hating her body’s reaction to him.
He kept her anchored ruthlessly to his side. “I know you think I’m not good enough for you,” he muttered. “But I’m pretty sure your stalker is a local, and I want it to get back to him that you’re under my protection. I want him to realize that he’s going through me to get to you. So get over your issues with me and try to look like you can’t wait to get into my pants.”
Her lower body quivered at his words, but he wasn’t looking at her. He didn’t even seem to have noticed what he’d said. Was he no longer interested in seducing her? Had last night cured him? If so…that was good. Really. It was. “You think he’ll hear about us here?”
“If he’s not here already. He knows I fly. He’ll come here eventually.”
Kaylie looked around the bar that seemed far more threatening than it had when she first walked in. People watching her out of the corner of their eyes, some staring with blatant curiosity. Did one of them have Sara’s and Jackson’s blood on his hands? Was one of them the person who’d taken her photo and—
She stopped fighting Cort’s grip and wedged herself against his side, taking comfort in the hard strength of his body, in the way she fit beside him.
He gave a grunt of satisfaction. “I see Rich in back, getting drunk. Probably means Bill is around here somewhere, as I thought.” Cort nodded at almost everyone they passed, but he didn’t stop to talk to anyone. Instead, he steered them ruthlessly toward the rear of the bar.
Kaylie tensed even more when she caught sight of Rich in the back. He was leaning against a wall, a pool cue in his hand, and his eyes were on her.
Watching her.
Without any pretense that he wasn’t.
Cort’s arm stiffened around her waist and he stopped. “I think,” he said quietly, “I need to have a private conversation with Rich.”
Kaylie glanced nervously around the bar. “After that little speech, you’re going to leave me alone in here?”
Cort steered her toward an empty table up against the wall. “Once the room realizes you’re with me, no one is going to let you be dragged out of here.” He pulled out a chair. “Sit.”
She eased into the chair, and Cort set one hand on the back of the chair and one palm on the table, leaning over her. “These are my rules,” he said. “You stay in that chair, and you don’t get up for any reason. Don’t go to the bathroom, don’t go out to the truck, not even if there’s a fire. I’ll be right out back, and I will return for you. Do you understand?”
He was so intense, so close, that Kaylie had to lean back to look at him. His face was hard, determined, nothing like the carefree man she’d seen on several occasions. This guy was a warrior.
This man would keep her safe.
He leaned closer. “Don’t pull away,” he said quietly. “This is my insurance to make sure no one in this room touches you while I’m gone. To make sure everyone here understands exactly what the situation is.”
“What—?”
He kissed her. Not a gentle kiss. A deep invasion that stated to everyone in that room that he was her lover and that he wanted them all to know it. His tongue was wet and demanding, his lips fierce, and she couldn’t stop her hand from going to the back of his head as she kissed him back.
She wasn’t kissing him because of their audience. She was kissing him because she wanted his mouth on hers. She craved the taste of him, the feel of his hair beneath her hand, the heat of his body against hers.
Maybe it was because she was terrified of everything she was facing, and he was all she had.
Maybe it was because he was her worst nightmare and she was too stupid to know better.
Or maybe it was something else.
Something she didn’t dare acknowledge.
His hand went to the back of her neck, and he locked her against him, immobilizing her as he deepened the kiss. She knew the moment it switched for Cort from a stage kiss to raw wanting. His hand tightened on her, and the kiss took on a desperation and intensity that made tingles race down her spine. Her belly clenched, and her whole body cried out for him.
Cort wrenched his mouth from hers, staring down at her, still gripping the back of her neck. “Hell.”
Heat suffused her body. “You don’t even like me.”
He gave her a grim smile. “And you think I’m not good enough for you. It’s a helluva match, isn’t it?”
“It’s not a match. It’s stupidity.”
His thumb rubbed over the back of her neck, sending chills over her entire body. “Yeah, well, I’m a bush pilot. Pushing the edge is what I do best.” Then he turned and was gone, melting through the crowd and heading straight for Trooper Parker.
Who was still watching her, and now he looked angry.
Pissed.
As if Kaylie was his girl and she’d cheated on him.
Cort reached him, had a word, then the two of them walked out the back door.
Leaving her alone in
the bar—
“Here you go.”
Kaylie jumped at the interruption, turning to find a young woman in jeans and a green apron setting a beer in front of her. Kaylie frowned when she saw the label. It was her mother’s favorite beer. She looked up and caught the waitress’s arm as the girl began to walk away. “I didn’t order this.”
The waitress smiled. “No worries. It’s been taken care of. Welcome to Twin Forks.”
Kaylie’s fingers curled into the waitress’s arm. “Who took care of it? Who ordered it?” It was a common enough brand. It could be a fluke. Or it could be a statement that he was there and wanted her to know it.
Her smile fading as she pulled out of Kaylie’s panicked grasp, the waitress shrugged. “I don’t know. Some folks like to stay anonymous out here. There was a note on the bar with a five.”
Her voice said to back off and accept it, but Kaylie couldn’t. “Do you still have the note? Can I see it?”
The waitress frowned. “I tossed it. There’s no name. Trust me, I can read.”
“No, it’s not that.” Kaylie hesitated, embarrassed that the waitress would think that about her. Did everyone in this state assume she was elitist snob just because of the way she dressed? “I just…There’s been a creep following me back home, and I’m worried he’s tracked me here.”
“Oh.” The waitress nodded. “Been there before. Well, that’s different. I’ll see if I can find it.”
Kaylie managed a smile and released her. “Thank you so much.”
“No problem.” The waitress seemed to relax a bit now that Kaylie wasn’t trying to arm wrestle her to floor. “My name’s Annie, if you need anything.” Her voice took on a curious tone, and an interested light came into her eyes. “Is Cort coming back? Want to order for him? Food? Drinks? How long you two staying?”
Kaylie glanced past Annie and saw several people at the bar watching them, and she knew Annie would be reporting back. “Sure, bring whatever Cort usually drinks and a couple burgers. And I’ll have some water.”
“Sure thing…” Annie raised her brows, waiting for Kaylie to fill in.
“Kaylie.”
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