Her Reluctant Hero: A Romantic Suspense Boxed Set

by MJ Fredrick

  “How come you’ve been to all these places?” Jacob asked. “You didn’t have specialties?”

  “Mine is languages and symbology,” Mallory said. “Adrian didn’t find his till later.”

  “Underwater archaeology,” Linda supplied.

  Mallory grit her teeth at the possessive tone, chided herself for the surge of jealousy. He wasn’t hers anymore.

  “So you’ve been all these places, seen all these things,” Linda pressed as Mallory swung her legs to the floor and stared out the windshield. “How could you walk away?”

  It seemed like everyone in the car quit breathing, waiting for her answer. She struggled to find the words that wouldn’t put too much on Adrian. She didn’t want to discredit him, especially when his faults had nothing to do with his job.

  “It’s not all finding old ships.” Mallory tried to force a lightness in her tone. “It can be deadly dull at times.”

  “And working for Global Alliance is nonstop action,” Adrian muttered, misnaming the corporation.

  “No.” She turned to him, hating to hurt him but needing distance between them again. She’d allowed herself to get too close with the trip down memory lane, and it seemed to be having the same effect on him. “But planning for a family is.”

  He sucked in his breath and tucked the empty bottle under his seat. Again, her heart twisted in pain for hurting him.

  “We better get some sleep. There will be a lot to clean up tomorrow.” He folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes, not fooling her for an instant.

  Sunlight shone through the window of the truck with a ferocity that matched the storm of the night before. Mallory turned her head from it, burrowing into her hard canvas pillow.

  Hard? Canvas? Her duffel?

  No. Oh, no.

  She sat up so fast she cracked her head on the steering wheel and saw stars, then damn near dropped her head into Adrian’s lap. Her hand covering her abused skull, she scrambled across the car, keeping low so not to strike her head on anything else.

  She’d fallen asleep on his lap. How would that look? What would he think? She didn’t even dare glance at his face in case he was awake and aware. Maybe the quantity of Scotch he’d had last night had him sleeping deeper than usual.

  “Good morning,” he said in his rough burr, the voice that had greeted her every morning for ten years.

  He knew. Mortified, she raised her face to his, blinking tears of pain away. “Good morning.”

  “Sleep well?” He was taunting her, damn him.

  “Yes, great, actually.” She rubbed her neck under her hair, surprised none of the muscles protested. “I’m surprised to see you still here.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb your sleep.”

  “Why—did I sleep there all night?”

  He stretched, cracking his back. “Yep.”

  “Why did you let me?”

  Silence hung between them for a long moment. She swore he even stopped breathing before he said, “Mallory.”

  She raised her hand to stop him, deciding she didn’t want to hear the answer after all. “At least the storm is past.”

  “It did its worst.” Adrian shifted, hoping she wouldn’t notice the effect she’d had on him, sleeping on his lap, her hand resting by her cheek, high on his thigh. Of course, she’d have to look at him to notice his response to her.

  He’d sat motionless for nearly an hour after he woke, barely daring to breathe lest he wake her. He’d watched the sun climb until it glowed on her hair. Resisting the urge to stroke her hair from her face, to toy with her manicured nails, to pretend she was still his, had been nearly impossible.

  He knew the moment she awoke she’d run away.

  She wasn’t going to be able to run far, not for a few days.

  “You’d better use the satellite phone to call the airline. You’re not going to make your plane.”

  “I have to get back, Adrian. I have to file the papers and the wedding—”

  He shook his head, taking perverse pleasure in her shock. “The roads will be impassable for days. You saw them when you came out here. They aren’t much to begin with. When it rains, we’re cut off from civilization.”

  His pleasure evaporated as her anxiety grew. “I didn’t plan to be gone more than two days. I have a ton of things to do.”

  “You’ll be home by the end of the week. As for now, we won’t even be able to drive. We’ll have to walk.”

  “Walk?”

  He nodded toward her window. “It’s not far.”

  She looked down at the camp.

  “Be careful when you get out,” he said and opened his own door.

  “Adrian, you don’t understand. There are a lot of details I need to attend to. Maybe we could take the boat. It wouldn’t take long, just a couple—” The sentence broke off in a squeal, and he rounded the rear of the truck to see the top of her head drop behind the foliage on the side of the road.

  Chapter Five

  “Mallory!” He lunged, flinging himself on his stomach and throwing his hands out, grabbing blindly. He caught and released a handful of weeds, of brush, before closing around skin.

  Bony skin. Her fingers.

  Scrambling forward on his stomach using his elbows, hanging onto her slipping fingers, he edged over to the side of the road. A trench of mud where the road had slid out from underneath her led him to Mallory. He looked down into her wide eyes, bright with terror.

  The drop to the beach below was maybe fifteen feet, survivable, but it would hurt like hell sliding through the brush to get there. He reached down and grasped her wrist. She swung her other arm up to grasp his forearm, her manicured nails gouging his flesh.

  “Dig your feet into the side of the hill,” he said as soothingly as he could, to calm her. “I’ll pull you up.”

  She nodded frantically, tears streaking down her face.

  “You have to help me now.” He tried to transmit a serenity he didn’t feel. “Put your feet against the hill.”

  The tension vibrated through her arms as she swung her feet until she could brace them against the cliff. She started walking up, but one foot slipped and she fell free, dragging Adrian forward. Her nails scored his arm as her grip slipped.

  “Adrian!” Her voice was strangled with fear, and he fought back his own.

  “I’ve got you. I won’t let go.” With one hand, he tugged at his belt, hoping the webbed fabric was strong enough, wishing that he hadn’t already sent everyone else to camp.

  “Adrian.” His name came out in three syllables as she struggled to once again brace herself against the hillside. “What—are—you—doing?”

  “Wait.” With no little difficulty, he pulled his belt free and slung it about the trunk of a nearby bush. He looped his free arm through it to secure himself, then slithered closer to the edge of the cliff. “Ready?”

  “No. I think—I’ll—enjoy—the view—a little longer.”

  “Smart ass,” he muttered and reached down. Together, her climbing, him pulling despite the mud that threatened his grip and her safety, they got her to the top of the cliff. Adrian flung himself on his back and she collapsed on top of him, breathing heavily, much, he thought, like after a bout of sex.

  He closed his arms around her, absorbed her trembling and offered her his strength.

  Finally she lifted her mud-smeared face to him. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He wanted to kiss her dirty mouth, wanted to stroke her mud-and-twig-tangled hair. But he had no right.

  He released her abruptly and took advantage of her weight shift to sit up. “Can’t have the bride walking down the aisle on crutches, can we?”

  The shock on her face had him pulling farther away, then standing.

  “If you’re up to it, we can head to camp. There’s work to do.”

  Slowly, bracing herself against the side of the truck, she stood. And damn it, her knees sagged. He stepped forward to catch her. She stiffened the minute he touched her.


  “I’m okay.” She splayed her hand against his chest to push him away. “Once I get the mud out of my bra, I’ll be just fine.”

  He forced a laugh past the image she’d painted in his mind, and once again released her. “We can hope the shower didn’t blow away.”

  “There’s always the ocean. I’m fine, Adrian, really. Just a little shaky. Good thing you’re a good driver or we might have all gone over last night.”

  “I hate to tell you, Mal. The road was about six feet wider last night.” He nodded toward the cliff. “We could’ve gone down in a mudslide.”

  Cautiously, she crept back to peek over the side and gasped.

  “There will be a lot of that until things dry out a bit. So till then, you’re stuck here with me.”

  Mallory limped into the camp, eschewing any help from Adrian, and grimaced when she saw the destruction. She couldn’t identify her tent from the others. All of them sagged with rainwater and lay tangled against the sand dunes that separated the camp from the sea. Twisted aluminum poles stuck up from the sand, marking the places the tents had once been.

  Linda was directing cleanup, which at this point meant finding someplace that didn’t have standing water so they could set up the mess tent. She turned when Adrian walked up, looked him over, then turned to Mallory.

  “What on earth happened?”

  “A little accident,” Adrian said.

  “If the mud was on your back instead of your front, I’d think we’d made a mistake leaving you alone up there.” She flashed Mallory a grin that confused her. She thought Mallory and Adrian had been fooling around and she was winking at Mallory? No jealousy at all? “Especially after that walk down memory lane last night. I’m telling you, this site is cursed.”

  Mallory decided the best defense was to ignore her. She stepped forward. “How can I help?”

  “Why don’t you guys clean up first?”

  Adrian glanced around. “I think the shower tent is on the bottom of that pile over there.”

  “Use the ocean.” Linda inclined her head toward the beach. “It’ll get most of that gunk off.”

  Mallory grimaced at the thought of bathing in salt water; it would itch like hell later. But she had mud in her bra, down the front of her pants, in her hair, her ears. She had to get cleaned up.

  And she’d left her clean clothes in the truck up on the hill.

  The hell with it. She was heading for the surf.

  Adrian came on her heels, also without a change of clothes. “Your stuff in the truck?” he asked.

  “Yep. Yours?”

  “Yep.”

  “So no points for planning ahead, huh?”

  She stopped dead when she reached the apex of the sand dune and looked out at the Miss M, tilted at a thirty-degree angle in shallow water. Adrian swore and ran past her, shouting for Toney and Jacob.

  The five of them working together got the boat righted. They found no significant damage, other than water in the gas tank. Adrian stepped away, grease from the gas and water filter now layered on top of the dried mud.

  “So much for taking the boat to the city to catch your plane,” he said over his shoulder. “The filter should dry in a day or so. Looks like we’re stuck here.”

  She struggled to hold on to her frustration. It wasn’t his fault they were stuck here, right? He hadn’t called the storm on them. He couldn’t have known the boat would be swamped.

  Tears burning her eyes, she turned away, not wanting him to see her cry.

  Adrian moved in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders. She tensed at his touch and he dropped his hands away, his face grim through her blurred vision.

  “It will be all right. Two days at the most. Two days won’t make that much difference.”

  She wished the wedding was the entire problem. No, her real problem was staying here with all the memories of what they’d once been.

  “You’ll feel better after you wash off. Come on.” He headed into the gently rolling water, peeling off his shirt. She turned away. The rippling muscles, the bronzed skin was too familiar.

  He noticed that she balked. “Come on, Mallory, it’s not like you’ve never seen it before, and we’re not exactly going to get this mud off with our clothes on.”

  She folded her arms and glanced behind her. The others had gone to camp, leaving them alone. Her nerves simmered.

  “I’m not going in with you if you’re going in naked.”

  He straightened, unzipping his shorts. “That’s a first.”

  Damn, damn, why did he have to go and say something like that? Now he had her remembering more than one time they’d gone into the surf shamelessly and made love in the waves. She could feel his arms around her, feel his body push inside her. “It’s not a good idea.”

  “We’re adults.” He shoved the shorts down and her face heated as she averted her gaze. His tone held the slightest hint of a taunt. “You said yourself you’d learned how to control your urges.”

  Not where he was concerned. Even mud-splattered, he was—

  No, she wouldn’t think about it as she walked into the surf. She gritted her teeth against the squeal—the rain had cooled the water significantly. It was an ice bath.

  Even the waves didn’t get to the mud inside her blouse. Adrian stood a distance away, like a sea god, his arms raised, hands folded behind his head, the water lapping at his bare hips. She turned and unbuttoned her blouse, unhooked her bra to wash the mud embedded in the lace. Dropping to her knees and crouching to hide beneath the water, she scrubbed at the fabric, lamenting the effect the mud and salt water would have on the expensive garment.

  “I can help you with that,” Adrian said, too close.

  She whipped around, wrapping her arms around herself. Cautiously lifting one hand, she shoved her muddy hair back from her face and glared.

  He moved toward her, and her eyes were drawn to a deep dimple in his cheek beneath the reddish stubble. Okay, actually her eyes were drawn elsewhere, but she forced herself to focus on the dimple.

  “Go. Away.”

  “A fine way to treat the man who saved your life,” he teased.

  The tide flowed out and she caught a glimpse of bare hip. She had to get away from here, now. She didn’t trust her hormones. They remembered Adrian and wanted to party. Distance. She needed distance.

  Still underwater, she tugged on her dirty T-shirt, giving herself another layer of defense. It wasn’t enough. His eyes flicked to the bra in her hand and she flushed. Damn it, she would not let him get to her. She rose and moved deeper into the water, holding his gaze, daring him to keep his eyes on hers and not glance at her breasts, no doubt clearly defined under her wet shirt.

  He met her dare, his eyes only flicking to her cheek. “You have mud just there.”

  Slipping his hand under her wet hair, he stroked his thumb over her cheek. She lost the will to pull away, slap him, any of the things she should do. She just looked into his eyes helplessly as he lowered his head.

  A wave swept past them, and her ring floated free of her shirt, floated between them on its chain. Only then did she find the strength to yank away.

  “Adrian,” she said, at once chiding and regretful. “It’s—it would be a mistake.” She walked out of the ocean, her shorts still full of mud. Maybe Linda was right. Maybe this site was cursed.

  Mallory was still shaking as she helped put the camp in order, a cumbersome task, but one that left plenty of time for thinking. For a moment there, she’d wanted nothing more than to kiss Adrian, to feel his familiar mouth, the scrape of his stubble against her skin and the heat that had been between them.

  She had forgotten all about Jonathan. A woman in love didn’t do that. Especially when her reason for forgetting her fiancé was a man who had hurt her.

  She found Adrian settling Dr. Vigil in his tent. She softened when she saw the old man and smiled at him. His night in the truck had taken its toll—he looked exhausted. Adrian was good to look after him befor
e he righted his own tent.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt. I need the satellite phone. Or is it still in the truck?”

  “Linda had it last. Ask her.”

  She crossed her arms, feeling the need to explain. “I’m calling the airline and Jonathan.”

  Adrian nodded, bending a leg of the cot in place, not looking back. “Go ahead. Just don’t tell him what we have out here.”

  It took her a moment to realize he wasn’t talking about the two of them and their almost-kiss. She gaped. “Surely you don’t think Jonathan—”

  He straightened and turned, exasperated. A fine sheen of sweat coated his skin. She hadn’t noticed it was all that hot. Now she did.

  “I tell everyone the same thing, Mal. Don’t get your panties in a knot.”

  “Can’t,” she muttered, shoving aside the tent flap. “They’re still too muddy.”

  Adrian snorted a laugh and she flounced out.

  “It’s good to see her again,” Robert said with a sigh, reaching in his breast pocket for the bottle of pills. “Good to hear the two of you bantering again.”

  The pain must be bad after spending the night in the Land Cruiser. Robert never took the pills in front of anyone. Adrian pretended not to see. “It’s called fighting, Prof, and don’t get used to it.” He tested the cot’s stability, pressing both hands in the center. Either it was stable or had sunk deep enough in the sand. How the scrawny old man could sleep comfortably without padding, Adrian had no idea. “She’s not the same person. Neither am I.”

  “Surely that can only be a good thing.”

  Maybe, if they’d grown to want the same things. But no, if anything, the gap between them was wider than before. He needed this find; she needed a home.

  “There’s no going back.” He hefted himself to his feet and walked over to the chest where Robert kept his books. It had survived several continents and a mudslide—had it kept the books dry in last night’s storm?

  The professor rose, quicker than the old man had moved in a long time, but Adrian already had the lid open. He breathed a sigh of relief to see the books intact, no water damage. And yet the old man hovered at his shoulder.