Baby, I'm Yours

by Susan Andersen

  Christ Almighty. How the hell was he supposed to have a prayer of remaining professional when she persisted in doing stuff like this?

  He peeled her off his chest and held her away at arm’s length to study her.

  The trek through the woods and a night spent in the open was a minor inconvenience to him. The experience had been far less kind to her. She was scratched and bug-bitten, her skin was even paler than usual, and half her hair was tumbled out of the bun that listed to the right of her crown.

  He roughly finger-combed her hair away from her left eye. “You okay now?”

  She took a deep breath and blew it out. Then her elegant little chin firmed up, her shoulders squared, and she nodded curtly. She stepped back from him, beyond the reach of his grooming fingers.

  His hand dropped to his side. She had guts, he’d give her that. “Good,” he said gruffly. “Let’s break camp, then, and move out.”

  Catherine trudged along in Sam’s wake for what felt like days. Periodically, she’d glance up from her careful scrutiny of the ground to glare at his back. The way he strode along, arms swinging, shoulders easy, whistling for God’s sake, they could have been strolling an upscale mall instead of picking their way through a vast forest in the middle of nowhere. It was highly irritating. Why didn’t it produce obstacles to trip him up the way it kept doing to her? And he couldn’t whistle for beans, either.

  She was so busy watching where she put her feet, one in front of the other, that she failed to realize when he stopped. She walked into him with enough force to flatten her breasts against his back.

  Steadying herself, she peered around him, amazed to find them right back where they had started, at their crumpled rental car with its hood ornament of an evergreen tree. She shot Sam a dubious glance.

  “Is this wise?”

  Sam went to the trunk and opened it. “I don’t know about wise, but its probably the safest place for us right now. The fumes have had time to dissipate.”

  “But what about Chains?”

  He tossed her Kaylee’s suitcase and slammed the trunk. Pulling a map out of his duffel bag, he shook it open and spread it across the trunk, anchoring it with one big hand.

  “Look,” he said, pulling her forward for a clearer view. “Close as I can figure, this is where he drove us off the road. I considered walking this way”—his long finger traced a route that bisected the highway farther along—“but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that’s where he’d expect us to come out.” He turned his head, and his voice growled directly in her ear when he said, “So, grab the stuff you can’t live without and leave the rest in the car. We’re going out here.”

  She looked up the steep, steep slope they had somehow managed to careen down alive. “Here?”

  “Here. And when I say pack light, Red”—his golden brown eyes pinned her in place—“I mean it. Take only what’s absolutely necessary. You’re going to want your hands free, and there’s no way in hell I’m carrying out any pink high heels.”

  Kaylee’s wallet went into Catharine’s back pocket. She selected clean underwear, a hairbrush, toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, and a bottle of moisturizing lotion. Then, sighing, she pulled a clean outfit out of the bag. Looked like she’d be back to wearing Kaylee’s clothes again. She dumped her selections in the discount-store bag and handed it to Sam.

  Pawing through it, he handed her back the bottle of moisturizer. “I said only what was absolutely necessary.”

  “That is necessary. It contains sunscreen.” She displayed her scratched arms for his consideration. “Just because you have hide like a rhinoceros doesn’t mean I won’t fry to a crisp. I’m fair-skinned, McKade; I burn easily.”

  For just one moment his gaze was all over her, taking in every inch of exposed skin. Then he grunted and tossed the moisturizer in the plastic bag and added a few items of his own. He tied it to his belt. “Here,” he said, digging through his duffel bag one last time. He handed her a squashed candy bar. “Breakfast.”

  “Oh, God, chocolate! Who said you don’t know how to treat a girl right.” She ripped it open and took a hungry bite. The bar was more than half consumed before it dawned on her that he wasn’t eating as well. She lowered her hand. “What about you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She’d seen the amounts of food he could consume. With a final look of longing, she extended the remainder of the bar to him. “Here. Kill it off.”

  The glance he shot her was impatient. “I’m fine, I said.”

  “Take it, Sam.” She thrust it out at him. “I don’t deal well with guilt.”

  That was something he could identify with and he took it, wolfing it down as he watched her clean melted chocolate from her fingertips with delicate, catlike laps of her tongue. He cleared his throat. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” She gave a comic groan. “Please.”

  He grinned at her. “You’re a good sport, Red. You ready to move out?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

  It was an arduous climb but not truly difficult until they neared the top. Panting, Catherine pulled herself over another hillock by a grabbing a fistful of brush. She wiped stinging sweat from her eyes with the back of her hand, then stared in dismay at the steep cliff that towered above her as Sam pulled himself up to join her. “Oh, God, look at that. It’s impossible.”

  “No it’s not. You’re doing great. And there are a lot more hand- and footholds than it appears at first glance.” He took her shoulders in his big hands and turned her slightly to the left. “Look, over here. Reach up and grab that rock. Good. Now, put your foot right there.”

  He guided her hand by hand, foot by foot up the cliff. After several yards, the slope tilted inward, much to Catherine’s heartfelt relief. The new angle made it feel a little less as if she were hanging out over a sheer drop.

  Then, suddenly, she was at the top. Hooking her elbows over the verge, she found a last foothold and thrust herself up and over, rolling to lie on her back on firm ground. A moment later, Sam joined her. Staring up at the sky, she laughed breathlessly, then turned her head to look at him. “We made it.” She laughed louder. “Dear God, we made it!” She rolled over on top of him and kissed him soundly.

  His hand wound in her hair as he kissed her back. Then they pulled apart, sat up, and grinned at each other. He pushed to his feet, extending a hand to help her up.

  They were brushing themselves off when footsteps sounded behind them. Smiles fading, they slowly turned.

  “Welcome back,” Jimmy Chains said. The gun in his hand pointed steadily at Catherine. “Sure took your own sweet time about it.”

  22

  CONTRARY TO SAM’S expectations, it had never occurred to Chains to check a map to see where the highway connected up again in case Sam and Catherine decided to hike out in another direction. After watching them scramble to safety at the bottom of the ravine yesterday, he had briefly considered climbing down to complete the job. But one look at the rugged terrain and another at the fine finish on his loafers had discouraged that idea.

  So he’d waited. It had been boring, and his clothes were badly crumpled, which annoyed the hell out of him, but all things considered, he was pretty pleased with both himself and the situation.

  Damn. All these years and he’d never realized it, but he had the makings of a goddamn genius.

  He wagged the gun at Catherine. “Come over here.”

  Catherine didn’t think so. She thought she’d just huddle here at Sam’s side, behind the comfortingly wide protection of his shoulder. But then she remembered what he had said—was that only the night before last?—about the technique employed by the military police. She sighed in resignation.

  “Flanking maneuver,” she said sotto voce as she left Sam’s side and thus divided the target they presented.

  “Red, get your butt back here!” Sam made a grab for her, but she sidestepped his reach, and Chains’s gun swung away from her to cov
er him.

  Well, hell. That wasn’t what she’d intended. Sam was the one with the weapon, and in order to give him an opportunity to use it, she needed to keep Jimmy Chains’s attention firmly on her.

  “You hear how he talks to me, Jimmy?” she demanded petulantly. The morning sun glittered off the hit man’s tangle of gold jewelry and picked out the gleam of his pristinely polished shoes, and Catherine slapped unproductively at the dirt on her own clothing as she widened the gap between herself and Sam. “And would you look at this? I’m filthy. Not that it was much to begin with, but at least it was clean. It’ll never be the same now.”

  Jimmy Chains turned his head to inspect her. His gun, however, remained pointed at Sam. “Doesn’t look like a big loss to me, Kaylee. Where’d you get it, Kmart?”

  “Exactly. Can you imagine? But Junior G-man here doesn’t like chorus-girl clothing, and he tossed out all my cool stuff. He thinks I’m a bimbo.”

  “There’s no ‘think’ about it, Sister,” Sam growled. “You are a bimbo if you think this little ploy’s gonna get you anywhere.”

  She pointed an accusing finger at him as she edged farther away. “You drag me through the woods and make me sleep in the dirt, and I’m the dumb, uncivilized one? There are spiders out there, Chains. Big, black, hairy ones.” She didn’t need to fake a shudder. “I hate all this nature. My idea of roughing it is leaving the salt off the tequila glasses. I want to go home, where people know how to act. He certainly doesn’t have a clue.” She shot Sam a dirty look and took the step that would force Chains to choose which person he wanted to cover.

  Jimmy Chains finally turned to face her fully, and his gun sagged at his side. “Man, Kaylee,” he said plaintively. “You sure make it hard to do what a guy’s s’posta do.”

  She saw Sam’s hand go to the back of his waistband. Simultaneously, she heard car tires crunch to a stop on the gravel of the shoulder behind him. The vehicle was partially hidden from sight by the curve of the road and a low sweep of evergreen branches. She stepped into the road to see who had stopped, and nearly sang a hosanna when she saw the swirling lights atop a Highway Patrol car. “The police,” she murmured reverently.

  Then she turned an incredulous grin on Sam…and noticed Jimmy Chains had disappeared. Whirling around, she heard a car roar off down the highway behind her. “Hey,” she protested indignantly, but Sam was at her side practically before the objection left her mouth, reaching out a strong hand to grip her wrist with punishing force. Her gaze shot up to his and she saw murder in his golden brown eyes.

  Directed at her, for God’s sake.

  “Keep your mouth shut and let me handle this,” he said under his breath.

  “But he’s getting away!”

  “So, what was I supposed to do to stop him, Red, pull my gun? I was in full view of the Smokey while Chains was out of sight—that’s a good way to get myself shot. We’ll tell the cop about him, but if Chains has half a brain, he’s already found himself a little side road somewhere to pull off and wait for the heat to die down. Now, would you, for once in your life, leave it to me?”

  A patrolman stepped out of his cruiser. “You folks need help?”

  “Yes,” Sam agreed at the same time Catherine said with fervent sincerity, “Officer, are we glad to see you!”

  Sam squeezed her wrist. “We got run off the road yesterday—”

  “By a maniac. We’re lucky to be alive.” Catherine wrenched her arm out of Sam’s hold before he could inflict further damage on her bruised flesh. She didn’t know what his problem was, but he wasn’t taking it out on her—she’d sustained enough abuse for one week. “Tell him about Chains taking off just now.”

  “Dammit, I’m trying, if you’d let me get a word in edgewise.”

  The highway patrolman’s eyes weren’t visible behind the reflective lenses of his sunglasses, but there was no mistaking the sudden alertness of his posture. “Someone ran you off the road? Deliberately?”

  “Yes, sir, and he was still waiting for us here when we climbed out today. He just took off a minute ago when he saw you arrive.”

  “Wait a minute, he ran you off the road yesterday and then hung around waiting or you to climb out? Why? Where?”

  “The why is a little complicated. But it was over here.” Sam led the way down the highway to the spot where they’d left the road.

  Catherine broke out in a sweat seeing the evidence of their hurtling journey down the mountainside. There were skid marks on the asphalt, the verge was chewed up, and all down the cliff and hillside scarred rock, flattened brush, and broken saplings gave mute testimony of the path the vehicle had taken. The back end of the car, foreshortened from this distance, was visible beneath drooping evergreen limbs.

  The patrolman whistled. “You’re right, you are lucky to be alive. I think you’d better explain.”

  Sam did so concisely without going into a great deal of detail. The officer wrote everything down and checked Sam’s ID and gun permit. He was clearly unhappy. “You at least get the license plate from his car?”

  “No, it happened too fast,” Sam said. “It was a newer model silver Chrysler, but I was too busy trying to keep us on the road to read its plate.” He reached out for Catherine’s hand and pulled her to stand in front of him. Pushing a tumbling strand of hair away from her eye, he inquired gently, “How about you, Catherine? You get the number?”

  He might look solicitous to the highway patrolman, but Catherine could see the fury deep in his eyes. She didn’t understand it, and for the moment didn’t try. She simply answered and reanswered numerous questions.

  “Listen,” Sam finally said. “It’s been a rough twenty-four hours. Ms. MacPherson’s beat. Do you think you could take us to a hotel? I’d like to get her settled before I start all the arrangements with the insurance and car rental and towing companies. I’ll be happy to answer any further questions you have in the car.”

  In little under an hour, the cruiser pulled into Fort Collins. “Pick your poison,” the patrolman said as he drove past several motels, indicating accommodations whose prices ran the gamut from low end to top dollar.

  “That one,” Catherine said, pointing to the nicest place she saw, and the patrolman pulled into its lot. When Sam’s hand closed warningly on her thigh, she murmured for his ears alone, “This one’s on Kaylee. It’s the least she owes us, and frankly, McKade, I’m tired of staying in dumps.”

  His grip relaxed.

  The highway patrolman stopped Sam a moment later as he started to climb out of the cruiser in Catherine’s wake. “If you’ll just read over this report and sign it, sir, we can start the search for Mr. Slovak.”

  “I’ll get us the room,” Catherine offered. She thanked the patrolman for his help and walked into the office.

  Sam was still talking to the officer when she’d completed the transaction, so she gave him a key and made her way to the room. Letting herself in, she tossed Kaylee’s wallet on the bed and stripped, dropping her clothes to the floor in a careless trail from bed to bathroom. She turned on the shower, stepped into the tub, and with a sigh of pleasure, stood under the pounding, steaming spray.

  She’d just finished rinsing the shampoo from her hair when the shower curtain was yanked back with a clatter of rings. She whipped around, hands and arms slapping with automatic protectiveness over exposed feminine body parts. Sam stood on the other side of the tub, the plastic curtain bunched in one big fist, a black scowl pulling his eyebrows together.

  “What the hell were you trying to do out there with Chains?” he snarled. “Get yourself killed?”

  He’d managed to keep it all bottled up while they dealt with the cop, and now he wanted nothing so much as to reach across the tub, grab her by her slippery white shoulders, and shake her until her pearly little teeth rattled. “Christ Almighty,” he roared. “You ’bout gave me a friggin’ heart attack! Or was that your plan? Maybe you weren’t trying to kill yourself at all, maybe you were trying to kill me.” His
fingers on the curtain were so tense the knuckles stood white beneath his skin. “Dammit, Red! I had visions of you in matching wheelchairs alongside Gary. And I’m telling ya, I don’t think I can bear up under that burden one more time.”

  She quit shielding her breasts and reached out a hand. He felt the soft slide of her fingers along his jaw. “We’re really going to have to talk about your overweening sense of responsibility one of these days,” she murmured.

  Then she launched herself at him, and he found himself in a sudden stranglehold of damp arms and dripping hair, with 130 pounds of lush, wet redhead plastered to his front. “God,” she whispered, her breath hot in his ear. “I thought we were dead for sure when Chains showed up.”

  “So you thought you’d just offer yourself up as a sacrifice?”

  “No, my thinking was more along the lines of dividing the target, the way you told me.” Her hand tangled in his hair, pulling his head back, and her mouth blindly sought his. “I don’t want to talk about this now. Kiss me, Sam.”

  He’d promised himself no more sex, that from now on he was going to act professional.

  It was a pledge he broke without a qualm.

  His mouth moved the fraction of an inch necessary to make contact with hers, and he groaned at the softness of her lips, at the hot, sweet flavors his tongue collected when those lips parted.

  His hands were grappling for purchase on her slippery back, seeking to pull her closer, when she laughed against his marauding mouth and pushed away.

  She slicked a tongue over her bottom lip. “You have on way too many clothes, McKade,” she said, reaching for the button on his waistband. He yanked his shirt over his head while she wrestled with his fly. Toeing off shoes, shedding underwear, seconds later he stood naked before her. She gave his arm an urgent tug, and he stepped up into the tub, jerking the curtain closed behind them. Water poured over his head, slicked down his back.

  “Turn around,” she whispered. “I’ll wash your back.”

  Cleanliness wasn’t exactly his top priority, but he turned away obediently and braced his hands against the enclosure wall. Head hanging, he struggled to catch his breath as sudsy hands slipped and slid over his shoulders, his back, his buttocks. Busy, soapy fingers slithered between his cheeks, touched his testicles, and he widened his stance.