by Dana Marton
His eyes flashed like sharp blades. “He came to see you?”
She nodded. “Took video.”
He had his phone out the next second. A few more seconds after that, he found the footage on the newspaper’s website. He growled with dark fury as her image filled the scene. “I’m going to kill him.”
Once the brief clip was over, she watched him shove his phone into his pocket, then step into his boots. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going home with you. If you won’t stay here, I’ll sleep on your couch. I’m not going to leave you alone and open to another ambush.”
She cleared her throat. “Sorry I called you incompetent in the video.”
“And other things.” He sounded more amused than offended.
“That too.”
“Forgiven.” His boots on, his full attention was on Jess once again, his expression open and earnest. “Could you please consider forgiving me for writing the book?”
She liked that he made that a separate issue, instead of saying, I’ll forgive you for the video if you forgive me for writing the book.
“I thought,” he added, “that if the book provoked the bastard into coming out of hiding, he’d be focused on me.” He shook his head. “But this video of you online. What if he sees it? What if he’ll focus on you instead?” He rubbed the heel of his hand against his sternum in a subconscious gesture, as if the idea hurt him inside.
She appreciated the offer of help, but . . . “I can take care of myself. If the bastard comes after me, he’ll find out I’m not a helpless little waif anymore.”
“Let me come along anyway. I can’t handle the thought of you and Zelda at the house alone at night. I’ll be pacing the floor over here, worried about you.”
“We’re not your responsibility.”
“When you care about people, they’re your responsibility.” His gaze warmed. “That’s how it works, Jess.”
Why did the thought that he cared about her have to make her heart beat faster? She cared about him too. They were old friends.
Friends, right? Nothing more. He’d said he cared about them—Zelda included. He cared about Jess the same way he cared about Zelda. So no reason to feel all flustered.
“Fine.” Jess opened the door and stepped out into the cold night before she could read too much into Derek’s declaration of caring.
He drove his own car over, following her, so he would have his car the next day. Today, since midnight had passed.
“Do you need anything?” she asked once they were inside, the mood between them awkward once again.
The couch was way too small for his large frame. But he’d managed when Eliot had been here, so he could probably manage another night.
He wasn’t looking at the couch. He was looking at her. “The throw pillow and Zelda’s quilt will work.”
She couldn’t hold his gaze. She moved away from him and up the stairs. She stopped only when she reached the top. “Good night, Derek.”
He was standing at the bottom of the staircase, watching her, as if maybe he was thinking about coming after her. Built like a warrior, he even stood like a warrior, feet at shoulders’ width, his whole demeanor alert. The only soft thing about him was the look in his eyes as he watched her.
Her heart beat a slow and steady rhythm. The staircase seemed to shrink between them, as if she could touch him if only she reached for him. Suddenly, her skin tingled with anticipation. Would he ask if he could come up? If he did, what would she say?
But in the end, he tore his gaze from hers and turned toward the sofa. “Good night, Jess.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sunday
WHEN DEREK WENT for his walk by the river midmorning, after switching Zelda out for Kaylee at the hospital, Jess went with him. The sun shrugged off its cloud cover, melting the last of the snow on the ground. They walked by the river first—the water swollen from the snowmelt rushing down from the hills—then through the woods.
He wanted, desperately, to find the words that would make everything all right between them. He was a writer, dammit; if he was good at anything, it was finding words.
Not today.
Maybe because she was more important to him than anything he’d ever done, any book he’d ever written.
So they talked about their work. As it turned out, working in the movie business and writing books had a lot in common. It was all about story.
The trees towered over them, enfolding them as if they were in their own little bubble.
“For a while, I thought I’d never love the woods again,” Jess said after a long stretch of silence, jumping a log, “but this is nice.”
She was tireless. Walking with her was like walking with one of the guys on Derek’s old team—she knew when to talk and when to listen to the forest. Not one word of complaint the whole time either; she knew how to get over and around obstacles. Derek liked hiking through the woods alone, but he found he liked hiking with Jess even more.
“I have a friend I was a POW with, Cole Makani Hunter, who married an ecotherapist,” he told her. “Being in nature is good for PTSD. She takes her patients on green walks. When she’s working. She’s not working right now. She just had a baby, a little girl.” He’d gotten the e-mail that morning, with half a dozen baby pictures, Cole bursting with pride and love. Man, seeing him that way was good. He’d gone through some hard times after their return from overseas.
“You don’t talk much about being a POW.”
“I don’t talk about it at all, if I can help it. Lost too many good friends. Six months of bloody torture. Not exactly fond memories.”
“You seem to be doing OK,” she said with caution.
“I think the books help. I used to have a lot of darkness inside. But then I write it down and put it in a book as part of a story, and then there’s this gap between me and those things suddenly. I get a little distance. It gets a little easier.”
“Writing therapy?”
He nodded, and she fell silent, which made him wonder if she was thinking about her own torture. Jess’s pain got to him on a visceral level, more than any pain he himself had suffered. He’d go back to the damn cave with the insurgents if that could erase what had happened to Jess.
He searched the mud with his stick on autopilot.
“Do you walk the same path every day?” she asked.
“No. Sometimes I go deep into the woods. I keep thinking that someday I’ll walk through a clump of bushes and the old camper will be there, covered by branches and weeds.”
Jess shuddered. “I can’t believe nobody ever came across that horrid thing.”
“Neither of us had a clue where to find it, other than the other side of the river.”
Hell, he’d been hopelessly turned around, running from a madman, carrying Jess. He’d had no idea where he was coming from or what direction he was running. He ran down whichever path was the easiest, ran through wherever the bushes were thinnest. Then he zigzagged on purpose and looped around so the masked man wouldn’t be able to follow his tracks.
Now, with his SEAL training, he had much better situational awareness. He wouldn’t be easily lost in the woods again. But back then . . .
They’d escaped in the middle of the day, the sun high in the sky. He couldn’t tell what was east and what was west. He was surprised when he’d burst out of the woods near the river. Even more surprised when the guy found them.
That spot on the riverbank where Derek had pushed their kidnapper into the icy water had been his only point of reference, the only place he could show the police.
The tracking dogs Sheriff Rollins requested arrived the following morning. Two feet of snow had fallen by then—no footprints to see and no scent to follow. And, since Derek had told them the man had drowned in the river, the police spent most of their time on the riverbank with the dogs, trying to find a body. They didn’t start looking for the camper until days later.
“That was another thing,” Derek sai
d now. “Why I think the bastard survived. Somebody had to have moved the camper. Otherwise the cops, or a hiker—someone—would have found it eventually. I would have. Those weeks while I waited for you to recover, I looked for that damn camper every single day.”
“You did?” She nearly stumbled over a protruding root, but caught herself. “I always thought nobody cared. We were gone, then we came back, the bad guy was dead. Everybody was just waiting for me to get over it.”
“A lot of people were looking.”
“You never told me.”
“You refused to see me.”
She shook her head. “You never came to the hospital.”
“I went every day. Your father wouldn’t let me in. He said you told him not to.”
She shook her head again, dazed. “I don’t remember.” Then, a moment later, “I probably did say that, at the beginning.”
“He kept to those orders. I was not to contact you in any way. You were upset, and everyone was worried that I’d upset you even more.”
“And when I got home?”
“I was turned away at the door. I sat nights under your window with a pebble in my hand.” He hung his head. “I never threw it. I felt so damn guilty for my part in your ordeal, for not being strong enough to stop it. I figured I didn’t deserve to see you. If you thought it’d hurt you to see me . . . I had no right to push you.”
She took several seconds to digest that. “Part of me was mad at you. I think deep down I always knew it was stupid.”
“But there was nobody else to blame.”
“I could have blamed the man.”
“He was dead, as far as anyone knew. A live guilty party is a lot more satisfying.”
“I went to the cabin with you. I wanted to. I blamed you so I wouldn’t have to blame myself.” She groaned and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she said, “Just like my mother blamed me so she wouldn’t have to blame herself.” She groaned again. “God, I’m my mother.”
“I like Rose. What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing,” Jess said after a moment. “Those three days in the camper changed everything for me. And nobody seemed to get it. Like . . .” She paused. “As if I’d been a fish, living in a lake all my life, and then suddenly I was pulled to dry land, but everyone I’d ever known kept saying, Keep swimming! While I was gasping for oxygen. And I wanted to scream that there was no swimming where I was now. I couldn’t even breathe there.”
Not taking her into his arms about killed Derek. “I’m sorry. I was a typical nineteen-year-old guy, just thinking, Hey, I thought we were going to die, but we’re both alive. Hooray!”
“You were right. I should have focused on that too, instead of being angry with everyone and running.”
“In hindsight, I’m glad you left. If we’re right and the bastard is still alive, he might have gone after you again to finish what he started.”
She shuddered.
“Do you know what I wonder sometimes?” he asked as they walked. “How did he find us after we escaped? I was running all over the place, lost some of the time, and at other times, deliberately trying to confuse tracks. So how did he catch up with us at the river?”
“He’s a good tracker?”
“Has to be. And he knows the woods like the back of his hands.”
“A hunter?”
“That’s my best guess.” He shook his head. “Trouble is, most everybody hunts around here.”
They fell silent, each deep in their thoughts as they walked. Then Jess stopped in her tracks, staring forward when she finally recognized the path she’d subconsciously taken. Derek had known where they were heading, but merely followed her instead of warning her. If she needed to be here, he would be here with her.
They were at the burned-down cabin, charred bricks and black, broken beams.
“Do you ever wonder,” she asked, “what life would be like if we had never come to the cabin that day?”
More times than it was healthy.
“Something like this,” he said, pulling her into his arms at long last and kissing her.
For a long, long moment, she let him; then she pulled back. Her gaze searched his. “Why did you do that?”
“I wanted to.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure if I’ve ever stopped wanting you, Jess.”
She abruptly turned from him, as if turning from accepting his words. “You’ve seen me . . .” She sucked in a harsh breath. “You’ve seen me at my worst.”
“I’ve seen you survive.”
She remained silent. She wouldn’t even look at him.
“Are you . . .” He had no idea how to ask whether the attack had lingering effects. “Do you not like it when I touch you?”
Slowly, she turned back. “Are you asking if I’m afraid of men? No. I’m not scared of physical intimacy. I worked with an excellent therapist in LA on that for years. Aunt Linda made me go. She was pretty easygoing in every other way, but she made it clear on day one that the therapist wasn’t optional.”
He filled his lungs with the cold air of winter. He didn’t want to think about her life in LA. But he couldn’t ignore it either.
“When you go back, are you planning on . . . Are you and Eliot going to get together?” The idea bothered Derek to a shocking degree.
She stiffened. “None of your business.”
“I want you to be mine.” He hadn’t known just how much, until he’d said the words. But now, anything else seemed unacceptable, unbearable.
For a couple of seconds, they both held their breaths.
Then Jess stepped back to him, and she kissed him.
He didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. He took her face in his hands and angled her head for better access.
No smashing of lips or bumping of teeth, no awkwardness—as if they’d never stopped kissing but had been together for the past decade. She was the one who licked the seam of his lips! He groaned, instantly filled with blinding need, instantly hard.
When she sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, then gently nibbled on him, he almost went up in flames. “Jesus, Jess.”
He slowly backed her against the wide trunk of a birch tree behind her. Then he unbuttoned her coat. He needed to touch her. His need for her raced out of control. Take it easy. Don’t scare her. Don’t lose it, man.
Her hands were on the zipper of his jacket. She finished first. Her palms smoothed over his chest, then his abdomen, as she discovered him.
If only it was summer—images of him stripping her naked flashed through his brain.
He deepened the kiss, wanting to take what he could, everything he could, while he could. But even after several seconds, she didn’t push him away. She moaned, a soft little moan, so unlike tough, kick-ass Jess.
That heady sound of capitulation slayed him.
His fingers burrowed under her sweater, under her shirt, until they touched hot skin. Her stomach was flat under his palm. His fingers glided over her rib cage on their way to her breasts.
He tunneled under the sports bra until firm globes of flesh filled his hands. He shaped them, massaged, and caressed. He ran his thumbs over her hardening nipples. He drank in the feel of her, that she was his once again, if only for a moment. Any second now, she would pull away. He wanted to have as much as he could until then.
Except, she didn’t tell him to stop. She tugged his shirt out of his pants instead. If any cold air got in, he sure didn’t feel the chill. He felt nothing but the heat of her hands on his skin.
“Jess.” No man had ever sounded more desperate.
He rubbed his hardness against her center. When she opened her legs so he could get closer, he slipped his hands from her perfect breasts and ran them down her sides, her incredible ass, to her thighs, so he could hook under them.
He lifted her, and she responded immediately by wrapping her long legs around his waist. As he rocked into her, she moaned.
He kissed a fevered path down her n
eck. He wanted her nipples in his mouth, one after the other, but the damn sweater was in the way.
“Take it off,” he rasped.
She reached for the sweater’s hem, leaned her weight toward him and away from the tree for a moment, and ripped the damn thing over her head. Then her back was against the tree again, the sweater stuck behind her back, her hands braced on his shoulders.
He was already focused on the next obstacle. What obstacle? He ripped the top buttons of her shirt off with his teeth until he could finally bury his face in the valley of her breasts.
He stopped on a scar, pulled back an inch or two and saw another, then another and another. He looked up into her eyes. “How did you get hurt?”
“In every way humanly possible. Stuntwomen tend to have more injuries than the men.”
“I’m guessing it’s not because they’re clumsier?” Because there was nothing clumsy about her. She exuded competence, which he found sexy as hell.
“I’ve done most of my stunts in miniskirts and sports bras.” Her breath was gratifyingly uneven. “Directors don’t like covering up their leading ladies. I have to be equally undressed. As much bare skin as possible. No place to hide padding.”
“That’s bullshit.” The thought of her in danger boiled his blood, every single time.
“I look at it as a challenge to be better than the men.”
He could believe it. He crushed her mouth under his, hungry for her. He tasted her lips, then the soft skin on her neck.
When he pulled the sports bra away from her skin with his mouth, she laughed and squealed, “Wait!”
She tugged the elastic material down to under her breasts, the perfect globes suddenly elevated to his mouth, dusky nipples drawn into tight buds and ready for him, like dessert on a plate.
Man, was he ready for them.
He went at them like a starving man. As he sucked her hot and fast and rough into his mouth, he kept grinding against her center, the two layers of jeans driving him crazy. Naked would be better. But from the mindless sounds she was making, he was pretty sure he was going to be able to get her to the goal line even like this.