Explosive Attraction

by LENA DIAZ,

  Rafe shuddered. He yelled at his fellow bomb techs. “Load and go. We’ve got wounded here. Let’s get them out. Now!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Darby wiped her palms on her slacks. She stared at the hospital room door and tried to work up the nerve to knock. She hadn’t seen Rafe or Nick since yesterday, when they’d been taken away in the ambulance. After everything that had happened, why was she so afraid to open the door to their room?

  She knew why. Because with the bomber dead, she had no excuses anymore to be with Rafe. Once she thanked him and said goodbye, she would go back to her life. He would go back to his. Instead of lovers, they’d be adversaries again.

  No, that wasn’t true. She’d never think of him as her adversary again. Because she was pathetically, hopelessly in love with him. That realization had slammed into her when she watched him being carted off in the ambulance. The sight of all that blood had nearly driven her to her knees, because it was Rafe’s blood. But what good was it to realize you were in love with someone, when they weren’t in love with you?

  “Miss, do you need something?” A nurse paused in the hallway, a curious smile on her face.

  “No, I’m... I was going to say hello to Detective Morgan, but I think maybe he’s sleeping. I’ll come back later.”

  “Have you knocked?”

  “No. Wait, don’t—”

  The nurse rapped on the door.

  “Come in,” Rafe’s deep voice called out from inside.

  “He’s awake,” the nurse said, holding the door open. “Go on in.”

  Panic rooted Darby in place. “I’ve changed my mind. I—”

  “I can hear you, Darby,” Rafe said in a loud voice. “Get in here.”

  Darby wanted to kick the nurse. She forced a smile instead. “Thank you.”

  “Have a nice visit.” The nurse headed back down the hall.

  “Darby?” Rafe repeated, sounding annoyed.

  Darby drew a deep, bracing breath, and entered the room.

  “It’s about time you came to see me,” Rafe said from his hospital bed.

  Darby stepped to his side. She glanced at Nick, lying in the other bed in their shared room.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Rafe said. “He’s asleep.”

  “No, I’m not.” Nick winced and opened his eyes. “I wish I were. You’d think the nurses were paying for the morphine out of their own pockets, as stingy as they are with it. I’m in pain here.”

  “Suck it up and shut up,” Rafe growled. “Darby, come closer.”

  She bristled at his order. “You’re still too bossy.”

  “And you’re still too stubborn.” His expression softened. “So stubborn you pushed through your fears and did the impossible. You saved my brother. Thank you.”

  Her face heated and she glanced at Nick. He propped his arms behind his head and didn’t bother to pretend he wasn’t watching their exchange with interest.

  “I didn’t save him. The bomb didn’t explode.”

  “You still get credit. Tell her thank-you, Nick.”

  “Thank you, darlin’, from the bottom of my heart.” He rubbed his chin. “Although, if there’s ever a next time, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t hit me quite so hard to get my attention. I think you cracked my jaw.” He winked as if to let her know he was teasing.

  Darby nodded, feeling uncomfortable with the praise. “I’m just glad you’re both going to be okay. I heard you were both extremely lucky.”

  “You do realize I was stabbed, right?” Nick asked in a grumbling tone.

  “So was Rafe. In his arm and his chest.”

  Nick snorted. “He had a scratch across his ribs, hardly a stab wound. He might have gotten more stitches than me, but I’m the one who had a knife in the gut.” He grinned. “I know what will make me feel better, though. Come here, Darby.”

  She started to cross to him but Rafe grabbed her hand. “I don’t think so.”

  Darby glanced between the two brothers, wondering what she’d missed. Rafe glared at Nick. Nick looked as though he was about to burst into laughter.

  “Well, I...ah, wanted to thank you,” she told Rafe.

  He raised a brow. “Thank me?”

  Why was he making this so hard? “Yes, thank you. You saved me, again. You’ve risked your life countless times for me now. I’ll never be able to repay you for that.”

  His jaw tightened. “I don’t want your gratitude.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t. I want—”

  A knock sounded on the door. It opened to reveal a petite woman, the same woman Darby had seen in the pictures on Nick’s bookshelf. Rafe and Nick’s mother.

  The woman let out an excited shriek. “They’re both in here. Come on.” She waved her hand and the room seemed to fill all at once with people talking and laughing and crying.

  More people poured into the room, and Darby found herself pushed back to the corner by the door. She waited through the tears and hugs, trying to catch a glimpse of Rafe again, but there were too many people. And as usual, everyone around her was taller than she was.

  Maybe it was better this way. No prolonged goodbye. No awkward conversation.

  She pulled the door open and stepped into the hall. Her feet dragged, even though she should have been relieved to leave. This hospital held no good memories for her. Rafe didn’t need her. And Mindy... Darby swallowed against the tightness in her throat. Poor Mindy had a long, hard recovery ahead of her and had been moved to a rehab facility. There was no reason for Darby to want to stay.

  She moved toward the elevators at the end of the hall. But when she passed one of the waiting rooms, a familiar voice had her pausing at the doorway.

  Jake.

  He was wearing his hospital gown because he was still a patient. Was he sitting in the waiting room, working up his nerve to see Rafe? Darby stiffened when she realized who was sitting beside Jake—the reporter Robert Ellington. The same reporter whose sloppy reporting had poisoned the relationship between Jake and Rafe.

  Darby marched into the waiting room.

  Five minutes later, she stepped out the door, feeling very satisfied with how things had turned out. She stopped at the elevator. When the doors opened, Captain Buresh was standing there.

  He smiled and shook her hand. “Dr. Steele. Going home already?”

  Home. A week ago that would have sounded good. Today it just sounded...lonely. “I guess I am. Thank you for everything.”

  “Wait a minute. I have something for you. I was hoping to catch you.” He dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

  “What is this?” Darby asked.

  “Rafe called when you two were at his cabin. He asked if I could have one of the guys look up something for him. With everything going on, I forgot about it, but he called me this morning before the sun came up and asked me whether I had the information yet. So here I am.” He handed the papers to her. “You take care, Dr. Steele.” He saluted her and headed down the hall, toward Nick and Rafe’s hospital room.

  More than anything Darby wanted to follow him, to see Rafe one more time. Instead, she shoved the papers into her purse and stepped into the elevator.

  Once she was in her car, she took the papers out, curious what Rafe had thought was so important that he’d called Buresh about it this morning.

  She unfolded the stack, and immediately stilled. The first page was a photocopy of an old newspaper story. The headline read Local Girl Found in Well After Exhaustive Search. And underneath it was a picture of her, twenty-six years ago.

  Search? She didn’t remember anyone searching for her. And they hadn’t found her. She’d clawed her own way out.

  Hadn’t she?

  She scanned the story, and the next one, and the next one, and by the time she was done, tears were flowing down her face so hard she couldn’t see to read anymore.

  * * *

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU EVER tell me the truth, Mom?” Darby squeeze
d her mother’s hand on the bench beside her. The front porch of her parents’ modest home was finally empty except for the two of them. The rest of her family—her father, her brothers and sisters, their wives, husbands, children—had all rushed over in an impromptu family reunion when they found out the prodigal daughter had returned.

  Not one of them had judged her, or berated her for having ignored them for over a decade.

  Her mother gave her a watery smile. “It took years of therapy just to get you to talk again after falling into that well. The doctors said not to push, not to try to get you to tell us anything, that you’d tell us in your own time, on your own terms.”

  Darby shook her head. “All these years, I thought no one looked for me. I made up my own story, that I’d climbed out of the well on my own. That no one came for me.” She looked at the little white lines on her fingers.

  Her mother smoothed the lines. “You tried to climb out but you couldn’t. Your daddy is the one who found you. You’d wandered off miles into the woods.”

  “It must have all been a dream, terrible and wonderful at the same time. I dreamed I was with Grandma, and I wandered off. But Grandma—”

  “Died a year before you fell down that well.”

  Darby stared out at the cars lined up and down the street. She was surrounded by love. She’d always been loved and had never realized it. She’d been blind to what she had, and had never known what she’d lost.

  Until now.

  Darby wasn’t wealthy, but she had plenty of money. Her parents had far less than her, yet they were far happier than she’d ever been. The misery Darby remembered wasn’t misery because of how little they had. It was their misery that their daughter couldn’t be happy, that she had withdrawn from her own family and had built a fake world to retreat into so she could cope.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I know.”

  The front yard began to fill with her family. One by one they drifted from the backyard, giving her tentative smiles, standing in groups or watching the children play.

  Darby’s oldest brother leaned down and kissed his wife.

  Darby’s heart squeezed in her chest.

  “Honey,” her mother said, “you have to stop blaming yourself. Everything turned out fine. You’re here now. Today is a happy day.”

  “I know I should be grateful. And I am, but so much has happened, so much you don’t know about.” She gave her mother a fierce hug, then pulled back. “Did you hear about that warehouse explosion over a week ago?”

  “Where the assistant district attorney was killed?”

  Darby swallowed hard. “Yes. That was an awful day. And I was there.” She began to tell the story, starting with the moment Rafe Morgan had burst into her office. As she spoke, her family gathered closer, listening with rapt attention. Halfway through, her mom gave her an odd look and went inside the house.

  “Go on,” Darby’s father urged her. “What happened next?”

  By the time Darby finished telling everything, her mother was back on the porch, and there wasn’t a dry eye in her entire family, except for Darby. She’d cried so much she didn’t think she had a drop of moisture left for even one more tear.

  Her father pulled her into a tight hug. “You’re lucky to be alive, young lady.”

  Darby hugged him back. “I know. Rafe saved me.”

  Her mother shoved in between them and cupped Darby’s face in her hands. “Answer me one question. Are you in love with Detective Rafe Morgan?”

  Darby’s face heated and she glanced at her family gathered around her.

  “Mom, I can’t—”

  “Do you love him? One simple question, young lady. I could hear it in your voice the entire time you were telling your story. The answer is obvious to me and everyone else, but you need to admit it to yourself.”

  “It doesn’t matter how I feel. He doesn’t love me.”

  “Darby.”

  “Yes, yes, okay? Yes, I’m in love with a man who doesn’t love me.”

  Her mother grinned and stepped to the side. “Everyone, move out of the way.” Her mother waved them back.

  “Mom, what are you...” Darby gasped and her hand flew to her throat.

  Rafe stood at the bottom of the steps, his right arm in a sling, staring up at her. Now she knew why her mom had gone inside. She’d meddled, had called Rafe. Darby didn’t know what her mom had said to him to get him to come here, and she was too afraid to hope.

  “Rafe,” she choked out. “What are you doing here? You should be in the hospital.”

  “I’m still a cop, Darby Steele.”

  Her hopes plummeted. “And I’m still a therapist.”

  He climbed the first step. “I’m still going to put as many criminals as I can behind bars.”

  Darby stiffened. “And I’m still going to fight you every chance I get. Nothing has changed.”

  Rafe climbed another step. “Everything has changed. Before I knew you...before I really knew you, I didn’t understand. I never considered people’s pasts, what they’d been through, what they’d suffered. I never considered that criminals might be victims, too.” He raised a hand as if to stop any crazy thoughts she might be having. “I still think most of those criminals should do hard time. But now I’m willing to consider both sides.”

  He climbed another step.

  Darby stood and crossed to the top step, but even with him a step below her, she had to crane her neck up to look him in the eyes. “You didn’t answer my question. Why are you here?”

  “I would have chosen you.”

  “What?”

  “Remember what you said in my car, about Batman having to choose between saving two different people? It doesn’t matter who the other person is. If I had to choose, to save someone else or to save you, I would always choose you.”

  “Oh, that’s so sweet,” one of Darby’s sisters whispered next to her.

  Darby elbowed her in the ribs. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why are you here?”

  He lifted his hand to cup her face. “You left the hospital in the middle of our conversation.”

  She looked around at her family, her face flushing even hotter. Every one of them was staring at her. “Fine,” she said. “What else did you have to say?”

  “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

  “Make what easy?”

  “This, I needed to tell you this.” He pulled her against him and gave her a blistering hot kiss, right on the porch steps, in front of her mom, her dad, her entire family.

  Darby was blinking in shock when he ended the kiss.

  “I love you, Darby Steele,” he said. “I want to marry you, but we haven’t known each other that long. I understand if you want to date first, and take your time. But you’re going to have to agree to live in sin with me. Because I can’t stand the thought of not being with you. I’m not a saint. And you’re way too sexy, especially when you make those little moans deep in your throat—”

  She clapped her hand over his mouth.

  Rafe’s eyes danced with mischief, and Darby’s family broke into laughter around them.

  Everyone except her father.

  He cleared his throat and stepped next to her. “Young lady, I’ll not tolerate this kind of behavior. If you and this man have done something you shouldn’t, well, then, you’re going to have to make it right. Looks like you’re going to have to get married.” He winked and broke into a smile.

  Darby looked around, overwhelmed by the love surrounding her. The tears she’d thought had long ago dried started running down her cheeks. She reached up and wrapped her arms around Rafe’s neck. “I love you. You gave me back my family.”

  “You gave me back my best friend.”

  “Jake went to see you?”

  “You know he did.”

  She shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. “I’d hoped. I didn’t know, but I’d hoped.”

  He brushed back her hair from her face. “You ga
ve me something else, Darby. Something far more precious than anything I gave you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You gave me your heart.”

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt of Ultimate Cowboy by Rita Herron!

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  Chapter One

  “This special news report just in—an amber alert has been issued for six-year-old Hank Forte. Hank was last seen at the county fair in Amarillo.”

  Brody Bloodworth’s heart clenched as a photo of the boy appeared on screen. The little boy had blond hair, was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He could be one of the kids on the BBL, the Bucking Bronc Lodge he had started for needy children.

  But he reminded him more of his own little brother, Will, and launched him back seven years ago to the day Will had gone missing.

  Not from a county fair but from the rodeo where he was supposed to be watching him.

  Self-loathing and guilt suffused him, once again robbing his lungs of air. He understood what the family of that little boy was going through now. The panic. The fear.

  The guilt.

  If only they’d kept a better eye on him. If only they hadn’t turned their head for a minute.

  What was happening to him? Had he just wandered off? Would they find him hiding out or playing somewhere at the fair? Maybe he had fallen asleep in a stall housing one of the animals...