by Nicole Helm
Cam wanted to argue with her, but he also wanted to talk to James out of her earshot. He pointed to the small living room area in the far corner—a chair and a couch arranged around a fireplace.
Cam decided to get the fire going as the evening would be cold. Since it was getting dark, the smoke wouldn’t be visible as long as he put it out before sunrise. “Maybe you’d like to fill me in on your connection to the Protectors,” he offered, picking a few logs from the stack on the floor.
“Maybe I wouldn’t.”
Cam eyed the man who’d settled himself into the chair. He looked exhausted, beaten. And pissed.
“It would help me keep your daughter safe if you filled me in on what I’m dealing with here.”
“Who asked you to keep her safe?”
“Someone needs to care enough to.” He picked up a long match from a box on the mantel and lit the fire.
Something fired in the man’s eyes, warning and violence, but exhaustion seemed to blank out both quickly enough. “You dragged her into this. God help you if you can’t drag her out.”
“No, James. You dragged her into it when you left her defenseless and alone,” Cam replied, keeping his tone equitable.
James’s face went mutinous, but he said nothing else. Which was good. Hilly didn’t need to hear them have an extended argument. There was a time and a place for it, and Cam would make sure he had the opportunity. But it wasn’t here.
He stoked the fire, letting the warmth of it seep into his skin and remind him how much walking he’d done today. Exhaustion threatened, but he pushed it away. James would take the first sleep rotation, then Hilly. Ideally, Zach would be back by then and they could decide what to do from there.
“Chili seemed to be the best choice out of the canned goods,” Hilly said, moving into the living room. She handed her father a bowl and then him one. Hilly went back to the kitchen and returned with her own bowl before curling up next to Cam on the couch.
They ate around the fire in sleepy silence. If Cam could forget about everything else going on, it might even be nice. Maybe when this was all over he and Hilly could...
Well, thoughts for another time.
Once they’d eaten, Hilly collected the empty bowls. “Dad, you should rest. You’re injured,” she said.
“I’m—”
“Hurt,” Hilly insisted. “Take a nap. We’ll hold down the fort, and once you’ve slept some, we’ll switch.”
She moved to the kitchen and James grumbled as he got to his feet. He moved to the bedroom, though he shot Cam one killing look. “Keep your hands off my daughter,” he muttered, then stepped into the room, Free at his heels. When they were both inside, he shut the door with a firm slap.
Cam sighed and got to his feet. He wasn’t worried about the man’s warning. He’d touch Hilly if he damn well pleased, and, yes, he rather pleased. But now was not the time nor place.
Hilly moved into the living room, wringing her hands. Her worried glance was on the bedroom door.
“You don’t think he’ll make a run for it, do you?” Cam asked, only half kidding.
Hilly shook her head. “I’m not sure what he’d get out of that. They were going to kill him, Cam. I know they were.”
Sympathy and affection wound so deeply inside of him it was hard not to stagger from it. He wanted to take that pain and fear away, and he couldn’t.
Just another failure.
He swallowed at the pain lodged in his throat. All his failures on complete display, but Hilly looked over at him like he had the answers, and he wanted to. He wanted to be strong and the person she leaned on.
The only way he could be that was to get over the guilt. He hadn’t thought that was in his control. Guilt existed, whether he wanted it to or not, but he realized in this moment as Hilly watched him that he’d used guilt for the past year as an excuse and a shield. Guilt was safe, because it meant you didn’t have to accept you couldn’t control everything.
He couldn’t, though. He hadn’t been able to control how Aaron felt about ending his life, and when Hilly was looking for answers he couldn’t give her. He knew there was nothing he could have done then.
There was nothing he could do now. He couldn’t control this situation he was in. He could only roll with it, react to what came and do everything in his power to get Hilly home safe.
He’d do his best for Hilly, and if it wasn’t good enough... That was life.
He shuddered out a breath. Guilt didn’t get a person anywhere. It held them back. That had been good enough in his first year out of the military, but it wasn’t anymore.
Not with her standing there, needing him.
He gestured her to the couch, where she sat back down. He took the seat next to her. What he wanted to do was pull her into him, let her sleep against his shoulder and assure her everything would be okay.
He clasped his hands together behind his neck, staring at the fire. “If they wanted him dead, why is he still alive?”
She shook her head, but he could tell she knew something. Something she wasn’t ready to tell him. He could see the marks on her wrists where they’d tied her up, and it reminded him to be patient. To give her space and time. They had that now.
Once Zach met them as he said he would later tonight, they’d be able to plan how to get back to Bent. They needed to make full use of this short respite.
“You should rest, too.”
She shook her head. “Too wired. Too...” She shook her head again, but she moved closer to him on the cushion. She looked up at him, searching his face for something. If he knew what, he’d give it to her, but as it was, he just held that warm brown gaze.
She leaned into him with no warning and brushed her mouth over his. It shocked him, not just because it was so familiar when it shouldn’t be, but because the small kiss rocketed through him like a meteor. Big and bright and changing.
His skin tingled with the contact, and his mouth was greedy for more, but he held himself back with that iron will he’d developed as a Marine.
“What was that for?” he managed to ask.
“I’m pretty sure the knight in shining armor always gets a kiss from the princess he saves.” She smiled up at him, soft and sweet. “At least, that’s what I always read.”
He found himself smiling in spite of everything going on around them. “I think you’re delirious.”
“Probably,” she agreed with a laugh. “But you could kiss me again just to be sure.”
It was too tempting to resist. She wanted him to kiss her, was hopeful for it. In what world would he ever refuse that?
He dropped his mouth to hers, softer and slower than he might have been with another woman. But she wasn’t timid. Unpracticed, maybe, but not timid at all. She met his mouth with hers, exploring with a curiosity that aroused him beyond measure.
Too much, too potent, and not just causing that iron tightening of his body, but clutching something deeper in his chest. In his heart.
Far too much to take, and yet far too much to resist.
She let out a shuddery sigh against his mouth and he had to remind himself Hilly had no experience with people, let alone men. Like this.
He opened his eyes, trying to center himself in the moment. In remembering that no matter how strong or in charge she appeared, she’d spent a lifetime sheltered away from the reality of life.
Slowly, she opened her eyes when he stopped. They were brown and luminous and it was hard to believe the truth of her being sheltered, because the woman with those eyes knew exactly what she was doing.
Or maybe he just wanted her to. “Hilly.”
“I know,” she said on an exhale. “It’s not the time or place.” She closed her eyes, and she let the exhaustion slump her body against him. She leaned into his shoulder, placing her hand over his galloping heart. “I just wanted to preten
d like it was all over for a second.”
Tempting, tempting to let her—to let himself. But not yet. “We’re getting there.” It was hard to think about what would come after, when there was so much in the here and now that didn’t make sense, but eventually it’d be over. He’d just be Cam Delaney, and she’d just be Hilly Adams, and maybe those two people could...
“Is it always like that?” she asked, studying his face. “A kiss. Does it always feel like...”
“No. Not always.” Never. Never had a kiss turned him inside out.
She rubbed her hand against his heart. “This is special. It feels special.”
He closed his hand over it. Special. It seemed like a weak word, like a child’s word, but whatever this was, this hard, twisting thing in his chest that felt like some mix of terror and elation, it was special, and it was important. “It is, Hilly. It is.” He pulled her hand off his chest. “But—”
“But we’re in the middle of danger.” She sat up, off his shoulder, met his gaze. “That’s the only thing holding you back, isn’t it?”
Cam blew out a breath. “No. Not the only thing.” He knew the next words would hurt her, but he also knew she needed to hear them. Maybe coming from him it wouldn’t be so bad. He could hope. “Hilly, you don’t know who you are.”
Chapter Sixteen
Those words hurt. For a second. But no matter the swirling confusion in her mind, Hilly rejected his words. She kept her gaze steady on his.
“I know exactly who I am.” Maybe not fully, but to an extent. She knew the woman she wanted to be, even if she didn’t know the things she wanted to do yet.
But she wanted Cam, and she wanted the truth. She’d have both eventually, but for now they’d focus on the truth. “He isn’t my father. He told me, more or less. Whoever I am, it’s not James Adams’s daughter.”
It was strange to say it out loud. To hear the words in her own voice. To accept it fully. She wasn’t really his. She wasn’t really her. Hilly Adams was a lie.
Her whole life, at least the part that she could remember, was a lie.
“Hilly?”
She looked up at Cam. The warmth of his hand holding hers reminded her where she was, who she was. “He’s not... I don’t know who is. I don’t know why he had me. But the Protectors wanted me dead, I guess. When I was a baby. It had to have been when I was a baby. I remember being such a little thing, and James Adams was my father. I was Hilly. I remember...” She shook her head. She had to be focused, meticulous now. She could have an emotional response to all this later, when they weren’t in danger. When she was home.
Home. She didn’t have a home. She didn’t have a home or a family. But Cam was holding her hand, and she hung on to that one connection.
“When we were locked in that building together, he insinuated that he was supposed to kill me, but he kept me instead.”
She watched Cam’s expression sharpen. He was putting pieces together. She didn’t understand how he could look so in control, so unfazed and as though exhaustion wasn’t everything this day was made of.
His hazel gaze met hers. “Hillary Simmons,” he said.
Hilly swallowed at the name that caused a physical reaction inside of her, this name that had to be hers. “That was the name the man said. The man in the meeting room—that’s where they took me first. They demanded to know who I was.” She thought of the painful blows and decided not to share those with Cam. Not yet. “He asked if I recognized the name Hillary Simmons, but I didn’t.”
“But who is Hillary Simmons? Why did the Protectors want you dead?”
“I don’t know.” Tears threatened, but she blinked them away. Tears and sadness didn’t change anything. “He won’t talk about it. Dad won’t... Even now, that was all he would give me. He said he had to protect me. I’m so damn tired of being protected, Cam.”
“Zach mentioned Hillary Simmons, too. So, he knew... Do you really think that’s you?”
She almost didn’t explain, but this was Cam. Cam, who had saved her and her father. Cam, who’d done nothing but doggedly follow this whole thing even though it didn’t involve him at all. Cam, who proved everything her father had ever told her was a lie—from beginning to end.
“Laurel said the name Hillary was on the tape. She said that name and I... It gave me the creeps. Like an icy chill. Like a ghost. Why would the name Hillary do that if I wasn’t...”
“Okay. Okay.” He rubbed her hand between both of his. It was a comfort, an anchor while she was swept away in all these awful, confusing emotions. “Let’s try to work this out, piece by piece.”
She nodded, even though the thought was exhausting.
“So, we have this group who thinks you’re someone else. A name that seems slightly familiar to you. Your father admitting...” He trailed off, his eyes never leaving her face. He cocked his head, his expression falling to something less fierce and more...kind. Sympathetic. “You’re dead on your feet, Hilly.”
Hilly. My name isn’t even Hilly. Emotion clogged her throat. “We should go through it,” she managed to croak. “We have to figure it out.”
With a gentleness that completely undid her, he pulled her shoulders back so she was leaning on him again. He kept his arm around her shoulders, holding her there against the strength of him.
“It’ll keep.” He brushed his lips against her temple like he had when they’d been hiking. Just a simple expression of comfort, but there’d been so little effortless affection in her life it felt like...everything.
She turned her face into his neck. She tried really, really hard not to cry. It felt like such a weakness when he was so strong. She could be strong, too. Hadn’t she been strong? Hadn’t she paid attention? Wasn’t she rolling with the punches pretty darn well?
The sob escaped against him, but he didn’t even flinch. “Just let it out, baby.”
Baby. It seemed like that should be insulting somehow, but he said it in such a soft, soothing way it only made her feel good. Safe. Comfortable.
“I don’t want to cry,” she squeaked, even as tears were tracking down her cheeks. “I want to be strong like you.”
“It’s pretty easy to be strong when you’re not the one who’s life has been upended. Besides, crying isn’t the absence of strength, Hilly. You can’t bottle things like fear and frustration up. That only multiplies them. At some point you have to let them out.”
She didn’t know how to let it out with someone else around. At least, she thought she didn’t. But the tears came easily enough after those words, and it seemed so easy to curl into Cam, to find some solace in the way his hand rubbed up and down her back.
There was such peace in trusting someone with her emotions instead of trying to ignore them or reason them away. Such peace, she woke up sometime later not even realizing she’d fallen asleep on Cam’s shoulder.
But he was easing her off now, his weapon drawn.
Sleepy confusion sharpened immediately and she sat straight up.
Cam pointed to the front door. “Someone’s out there. It might be Zach, but I want to be careful.”
Might be. But he was holding his gun, creeping toward the window. Clearly he had some reservations.
“Go into the bedroom with your father. Just until we’re sure.”
“Cam.”
He turned his attention to her, nodded to the room again. “If it’s not Zach, whoever is out there wants you or your father. You need to go wake him up so he’s prepared to run if we need to. Okay?”
It was harder than it should have been to choose warning her father over staying with Cam. Except the man inside this bedroom wasn’t her father. He’d lied to her for more than twenty years.
And kept her alive.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a second, blaming the nap and the exhaustion on her brain’s circular thinking. She had to focus on one simp
le thing for the next little while: staying alive.
She might have complicated feelings about the man in the bedroom, but she wanted him alive, too. She slipped into the room, giving Cam one last glance. He stood next to the window, weapon drawn, that look of stoic concentration on his face.
He glanced at her once, clearly waiting for her to get safely in the room before he did anything. If he was only protecting her, she would have been furious. Mad that he’d act just like her father trying to keep her from things.
But this wasn’t only about her. He was also intent on keeping her father safe, and since it seemed they wanted him dead most of all, Hilly had to do her part in keeping Dad safe.
She crept into the room, pulling the door shut behind her. The room was dim, as the world outside the windows was dark. Free had padded toward the door she closed behind her and was now growling low in her throat.
“Dad?”
He wasn’t in the bed. He was halfway out the window. She couldn’t believe after all Cam had risked to save them, to help them, Dad was running away.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
“I’m glad you came back, Hilly. Come on now. We don’t have much time.”
She could only gape at her father as he slithered out the window and stood outside, holding his arm through the window toward her.
“You have to come with me,” he said, as if he was telling her to go do her chores.
She moved toward the window even though she had no intent of going with him. “Go with you where?”
“Away. That man out there wants me dead.”
“Who’s out there? Is Cam in dan—” Dad lunged and grabbed her arm before she could run back to the door.
“Forget the stranger,” Dad said, jerking her toward the window. “We have to save ourselves, Hilly. It’s our only chance to survive.”
“I can’t leave Cam. He saved us. Get back in here. We have to help him. We can’t leave him alone. What’s wrong with you?”
Dad shook his head, letting go of her arm. “I can’t stay. They will kill me, especially that one out there. I don’t know why you’re trusting a stranger over—”