Cabin Fever

by Felicity Heaton

  And she wasn't running away.

  Something about Jack was different to all the men that she'd been out with previously. He made her feel relaxed and things between them seemed so natural rather than forced.

  And she wasn't running away.

  She was surprised that she wasn't doing to Jack what she'd done to every other man she'd liked or dated. She'd always pushed them away, put distance between them and then ran in the opposite direction as fast as she could. She could never bring herself to commit to something that she knew would end the same way as all her previous relationships—with her realising that it wasn't the man that her heart wanted.

  Was Jack that man?

  He seemed to have passed some test that was laid out by her heart, and she couldn't deny her attraction to him. He did seem to have the elusive ‘it'. She tried to remember what the girls had said ‘it’ was.

  Helen had said that it was love that she was looking for.

  Did she love Jack?

  Could you really fall for someone at first sight? Because if it was love that she was looking for then that's what had happened. She'd felt it the moment she'd laid eyes on him, the moment he'd caught her when she'd fallen.

  It had been instant.

  Was that why she wasn't running away from Jack? Because she loved him?

  She remembered how her sister had laughed at her all those years ago when she'd said that she thought she was in love with her ski instructor. Thinking back, she realised now that it couldn't have been love, because it felt nothing like this. This was all fire and burning, and it felt as though it was going to consume her. It was all fear and worry, all concern and anxiousness. It was hope. It was as though she'd found what she'd been searching for all her life.

  All in one man.

  Jack.

  She bit her lower lip as she smiled broadly and let her chin rest on her knees.

  She didn't care who he was, or what he did. She didn't care that he had a gun, because she knew now that he wouldn't hurt her, he couldn't hurt her. He felt something for her too and that's why he'd came to save her, that's why he'd watched over her all night.

  Starting slightly as she heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up outside, she wondered how long she'd been sitting on the bed thinking. It couldn't have been long enough for Jack to get all the way to the cabin and then all the way back to her. He would have to go down to the town in his car and then back up the mountain again.

  Wrapping the blankets tightly around herself, she walked to the window and peered out through the same gap that Jack had been looking through. She gasped as she saw a man getting out of a black four-wheel drive vehicle that she recognised as one of the cars from the Donovan's cabin.

  Hurrying back to the bed, she threw the blanket onto it and tried to breathe as steadily as possible as her heart accelerated away with her. She grabbed her underwear and put it on as fast as she could with her hurt arm. Shimmying into her jeans, she gritted her teeth as she buttoned them up and the wound on her arm throbbed madly, and she hurriedly pulled her jumper on and grabbed her boots.

  Putting them on as she moved towards the door, she wished that Jack had been wrong about the men finding them and that he hadn't gone to his car. Her ankle wasn't that bad. She could have walked on it.

  Her eyes widened as she heard the man ascending the stairs and realised that she wouldn't have time to get to the attic before he rounded the corner. Quietly closing the bedroom door, she looked around for an avenue of escape and then stared at the window at the front of the house.

  Moving over to it, she quickly pushed it open and stepped out onto the slippery porch roof. She held on to the guttering on the roof above her as she closed the window and then moved along the porch. Looking down, she carefully edged forwards and then turned around so she could drop to the ground.

  As she landed in the snow, she straightened up and then held her breath as she heard a noise. Turning quickly, she opened her mouth to scream but managed to stop herself in time when she found a hand over her mouth and saw who it belonged to.

  Jack arched a brow at her and then pressed his finger against his lips, intimating for her to be quiet.

  Releasing her mouth, he took hold of her hand and kept his gun up by his side as they moved around the outside of the cabin. Peering around the corner at the back of the cabin, he assessed the situation and then looked at Kate.

  He mouthed. “How many?"

  "One. Upstairs,” she whispered back at him and he nodded.

  Creeping towards the back door beside him, Kate kept a firm hold of his hand and kept her eyes fixed on his face. He seemed so intent on the job that she wondered if he was even aware of her being there, or whether he was only aware of the other man. Following him into the building, she moved as quietly as possible behind him, fearing that she'd give away their position somehow and thinking that she should have stayed outside. Something told her Jack wouldn't have allowed that.

  He wanted to keep her with him so he knew that she was safe.

  Jack cautiously ascended the stairs with both his gun and Kate kept as close to his body as possible so the man couldn't get the jump on them. Edging up to the bend in the stairs, he quickly glanced around it and then listened.

  The hall was empty. The man must have been in one of the rooms and it was obvious to Jack where they would find him. It would be in the room he'd left Kate in.

  The room that they'd spent the night in.

  He looked down at her hand where it was firmly gripping his and then raised his eyes to meet hers. She was looking right at him and he couldn't miss the feelings that were playing out in her eyes. They seemed to draw his to the surface as though they were calling to him, luring them out into the open so she could see that he felt the same way.

  Turning away from her, he started down the hall, moving painstakingly slowly and hoping that the man wouldn't hear them. As they neared the door, he let go of her hand and moved to stand on the opposite side of it. He held his hand up, silently telling her to stay where she was, and then slipped in through the open door.

  Kate followed.

  She flinched as Jack put a single bullet in the man's head and she watched him fall onto the bed.

  "I probably didn't want to see that.” She pulled a disgusted face as she looked at the body and then at Jack.

  "I did tell you,” he said and then grabbed the radio out of the dead man's hand.

  He held it up to his ear. She listened to a broken conversation about the cabin and the fact that they were sending back up.

  "We better go. Grab blankets, anything that will keep you warm. We can't stay here. We have to get to my car and get you down off the mountain.” Jack slipped the radio into his pocket and then looked at her when she didn't respond.

  "You didn't get to your car?” she asked and searched his eyes, wanting to see if he was being honest.

  "No.” He looked awkward as he answered.

  Kate realised that he'd used her as bait. He'd had no intention of going to his car without her. He'd wanted to see if they were going to be found quickly by the men from the Donovan's cabin. Why? Why hadn't he taken her with him? They could've gone to his car this morning.

  "How's your ankle and arm?” He gave her a concerned look, his eyes narrowing softly as he looked her over.

  When his words sunk in it all became clearer in her head. He had wanted to give her time to rest. He'd gone outside into the wilderness and played sentinel while she had time to recover from the shock of being shot and her injuries. How long would he have waited out in the woods for the men to come? If it had taken them days to find them, would he have waited days just so she could heal? He didn't want to hurt her. He didn't want it so badly that he was willing to waste precious time letting her ankle and arm get better before trekking to the cabin.

  She just blinked at him and then realised that he wanted an answer.

  "Um ... ankle is getting there. My arm hurts ... but it'll heal.” She gave him a look
that said she knew that he'd wanted to buy her time to heal and that she was thankful.

  Jack nodded and then smiled. There was something about this girl that made her hard to fool. She seemed to be able to see right through him and figure out in an instant what he'd really been doing. It was refreshing to know that someone could still do that with him, that his training hadn't made it impossible for everyone to read him. There were still a few people out there that could see past the barriers and into his heart.

  "Good.” He looked up at the early afternoon sun and the patchy clouds through the branches of the trees, and then at the woods in the direction of her cabin. “Because we need to move fast if we're going to get down this mountain in one piece."

  Kate knew that he wasn't talking about the fact that the men would be coming after them. The road down from the cabin was still covered in at least a foot of snow and it was best if they went down during daylight hours.

  Nighttime on the mountain made everything a million times more treacherous.

  Chapter 18

  Kate hung back as they walked. Her ankle was aching but she didn't complain. She didn't want to make him worry. It was important that they got to his Hummer so they could get down off the mountain and that meant keeping as brisk a pace as she could manage. If she gave an outward sign that she was hurting, Jack was bound to make her take a break and rest for a while.

  They couldn't have walked far. The sun had changed position above them, indicating that time was really against them if they planned on getting to the bottom of the mountain before nightfall.

  Glancing at Jack's profile, she watched him as she walked. He seemed deep in thought and she wondered if he was thinking about the same thing she was—them and last night.

  Jack looked over at Kate and gave her a brief smile before focusing on the path ahead. He could sense her unease as though it was physically coming off her in waves. An air of awkwardness had settled between them since the Frakes’ cabin and he didn't know how to dispel it. Everything about being with her seemed confusing.

  He realised that it wasn't her so much as what had happened to him in his past, what had happened with his last partner. He couldn't let himself be with Kate. He felt as though he needed to keep his distance so the same thing wouldn't happen to him again.

  Even though that was impossible.

  Kate was so different to her.

  Kate hurried to be alongside him as she heard a noise in the woods and gave him a nervous smile as he looked at her. She wished that she'd chosen to walk on the other side of him. In the weak daylight she could see the peppered cuts and deep bruising that littered the side of his head where she'd hit him with the branch, and it made a feeling of intense guilt settle in her stomach. It mixed with the feeling of unease that was already there and made it burn with acid.

  Putting her hand over the wound on her arm, she looked down at the floor as she continued to walk beside him and avoided his gaze.

  He sighed and she looked up at him.

  "Shouldn't even be here,” he mumbled to himself as he looked at the trees ahead of them. “Was supposed to be off the job after the incident."

  "Incident?” She couldn't stop herself from voicing the question and he gave her a look that told her that he hadn't realised that he'd said it aloud for her to hear.

  She noted the way he turned away again and ignored what she'd said, as though he didn't want to talk about it. Well, he didn't get to have a choice this time. She wanted to know who he was and, right now, he was a captive audience for her questions.

  "Who's Jack Darcy?” she asked and he frowned at her as though she'd gone insane. “Tell me your story."

  "It's complicated,” Jack replied in a gruff tone as he tore his eyes away from her again. She had such a beautifully curious look on her face that he wanted to make her wait as long as he could before caving and telling her.

  "So un-complicate it.” She smiled at him as he looked down at her again.

  He heaved a sigh.

  "Who's Jack Darcy?” he said as he looked at her and then raised his brows as he thought about it. “He's thirty-eight. Mother is dead. Father is somewhere. Has a younger brother who settled down in Milan and who has a whole bunch of brats running around. Works for the British Government."

  "No. Not who, Jack ... who. As in...” her eyes locked with his and hers narrowed slightly as she stared deep into them, “...who are you?"

  Jack fell silent as he considered her question. It had been complicated enough when he'd thought that she wanted the basics, but now she was dredging up things that he never wanted to think about like this again.

  Jamming his hands into his pockets, he stared at the floor, frowned and tried to think of how to put things. He hadn't been lying when he'd said that it was complicated. It wasn't just that there was a lot of pain attached to the memories, it was that he had to be careful about what he said so he didn't give things away that were classified information and would lead to a disciplinary.

  But he needed to tell her and she needed to know.

  "I had a partner once,” he started and tried to shut down his emotions as the memories came flooding back like a tidal wave. “In more than one way."

  Kate raised her brows into an expression of ‘oh’ when he looked at her and gave her a little smile.

  "She was deadly. We were the best there was ... only that wasn't good enough for her."

  She caught the sad note in his voice as he looked away from her and stared at the snowy ground.

  "She turned on us. Apparently she was a double agent.” Jack swallowed down his feelings as he thought about the moment that he'd found out about her double-crossing him. He'd felt so empty, so void of feeling. She'd broken him so easily, just like she'd planned. He saw the sorry look in Kate's eyes and watched her carefully as he revealed what had happened. “I believed she loved me ... I'd had no reason not to believe it. When she was discovered, she was deemed my responsibility. I should have spotted her earlier ... but I was too close, so close that I was blind to what she really was. Do you know how hard it is to stand in an office in front of your superior and be told that you have to take responsibility for what had happened?"

  She shook her head in the negative.

  "Do you know what ‘take responsibility’ means in my world?” He didn't wait for her to answer this time. “It means killing ... I killed her, Kate. I went into ‘our’ apartment and I shot her three times in the chest and once in the head ... just like I was told to. After that incident I was declared off the job until such a point occurred where I felt I could return."

  "Why are you telling me this?” she said as he clenched his jaw and sighed out heavily through his nose.

  It was clearly hurting him to talk about what had happened between him and this girl. She had seen in his eyes when she'd first met him that there were things in his past that he had trouble dealing with, but she hadn't expected them to be this bad. Was this what he'd been thinking about when they'd been in the kitchen fixing warm brandies? Was this the hurt that he hid behind his eyes? He'd had to kill the woman he loved, but it wasn't only that. She had fooled him into believing that she loved him in return. He'd been strung along and had then been forced to deal with her by his superiors. She couldn't imagine what kind of psychological damage that had done to him.

  "Because it's something you need to know ... it's something you need to know in order to trust me, to see me. I want to be honest with you, or as honest with you as my job allows. This is what I do, Kate. This is who I am ... this job. It's what I do even when they tell me it isn't. It took them a year to realise that ... and then they send me back out ... to this ... middle of nowhere with an arms dealing ring and a girl who is making me wish I was someone else.” He turned away from her and stared into the distance.

  She felt confused. Was he warning her? Did he see this as some kind of test that she needed to pass, something that she needed to know so she could decide whether she wanted to be with him still, know
ing that he'd killed his last lover? Or did he really just want to be honest with her? By being honest with her, he'd made her realise that what he'd said was true. His job did make up a part of who he was, but she knew that it wasn't all of him. Locked inside him there was still the man whose heart had been broken, and it was that man that she had been drawn to. The mystery of his job hadn't enthralled her, but the mystery of him as a whole did.

  She wanted to reassure him that she still felt the same way about him even after his revelation about his past, but she didn't know what to say so she stepped closer to him and slipped her hand into his. She felt relieved when he shifted his fingers, interlocking them with hers.

  Jack swallowed hard, trying to force down the lump of emotions that were constricting his throat. He hadn't expected her to take it so well. She hadn't even said the James Bond line like everyone else did when they discovered he was an agent. Looking down at her, he found her looking back at him with wide understanding eyes that were full of so much feeling.

  She smiled shakily. “I don't wish you were someone else."

  He frowned for a split second and then the corners of his lips curved into a smile. She didn't want him to be someone else. It was oddly relieving to hear her say those words. She liked him just the way he was. She liked him as the agent with the weight of emotional baggage and a licence to kill. She liked him.

  He watched her as she attempted to clear her long brown locks from her face and winced as her arm hurt. He pushed her hair behind her ear for her.

  He liked her.

  That's why he'd needed to tell her. He'd needed her to know who he was inside before things between them went any further, needed her to understand what she was getting into with him.

  Looking at their surroundings as a comfortable silence fell between them, Kate found herself thinking about everything that had happened on her vacation. Her eyes moved from tree to tree as she thought about how it had seemed as though it was going to be so relaxing. Two weeks with her friends, with nothing to do but ski and hang out. Things hadn't gone smoothly from the start. It had been bad enough when Nick had invaded with his friends and had only got worse when she'd sprained her ankle.