“Not—not embarrassed.”
“No?” He spread a second blanket on the ground then completely opposite of the stern tone of voice he’d been using he helped her to lie down on it.
“So—o—rry bout Jeep. I—ran out—of gas right—in the mid-dle of—the creek.”
Lacey’s teeth knocked together. She clutched the sides of the blanket under her chin and shook.
Danger looked up, searching her pale face. He so did not give a shit about the fucking Jeep, but she needed a distraction. Hell, he needed a distraction. Otherwise, he was going to rip that damn blanket right off her and take another gander at her beautiful breasts.
“If you’d— filled your—gas tank, I—wouldn’t have been—caught in the flood.”
“Ho, you’re not blaming me for this, Georgia. You stole my Jeep. I don’t think I’m obligated to provide you a full tank of gas for a getaway.” He tugged at her boots and socks and left them piled in a heap near the destroyed blouse and bra. Those soggy-ass jeans were coming off her next and then, shit, the French-cut panties.
Swearing, he jumped up and tossed more wood on the fire. Images of red silk panties floated through his head. Lacey ones. Plain ones. Low-cut. High-cut. Cotton. Crotchless. Shit almighty. He was so fucked. He kicked one of the chunks of wood deeper into the fire and scowled at the flames.
“Danger?”
He whipped around. Right. Back to his job. She needed him and here he was killing time because he knew he wasn’t going to be able to take his eyes off the silk between her thighs. Shit. Shit. Shit. He coughed and moved back to where she lay on the blanket staring at him.
“And just exactly where is my Jeep?” He hunkered down beside her and grabbed another blanket. He spread it over her then tucked the edges around her hips.
Danger glanced up when she didn’t answer. He frowned at the ribbon of blood sliding down the side of her colorless face. Not good. A head injury was not his idea of fair play. He tilted her head to one side and swore beneath his breath. “Where else are you hurt?”
“Everywhere—and your—little car—went for—a swim.”
“What?”
Lacey bit her lip. “Not—not—my fault. The—thing—just—floated away.”
Danger snapped his teeth together. “Lady, you are a walking disaster. Floated away? In other words you lost it and have no idea where it is?”
“My—my head. A—a log hit—my—head.” Lacey locked her fingers around his wrist.
“What-are-you-doing?”
“Getting you out of these wet jeans. You’re cold as a fish.”
“The hell—you—are—Jay—Jay Silverheels.”
Danger leaned back on his heels and eyed her. “You’re calling me Tonto?”
“No, I—called—you—Jay Silverheels, he—he played Tonto.”
He groaned. “Dammit, woman, I know who the hell Tonto is. I really don’t want to play this game with you right now.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I—need—to, take—my—my mind—off the—cold. I— hurt.”
Danger puffed out a disgusted breath and nodded. “Don’t cry. Okay? You wanna play, we’ll play. Silverheels wasn’t even American born. He was born in Canada.”
Lacey’s teeth clacked together like a jackhammer at work. “He was—a—fullblood Mohawk. That makes—him Indian. His real—name was—uh—Harold J. Smith.” She giggled. “Smith. Such—a common—name.”
For a moment, Danger couldn’t say a word. The tone of her giggle was such a foreign sound, nothing like her light, teasing laughter. Lack of concern and poor judgment were signs the hypothermia was winning. He didn’t want to play this little trivia game she seemed determined to play. Not now. Not when he was so scared she would die.
“Lady, I don’t give a flying fuck if his name was Smith, Jones or John Henry. I don’t give a shit about Tonto or who the hell he was.”
Lacey gasped. “He—was—Ca—na—dian.”
“Yeah? Then let ‘The Lone Ranger’ give a flying fuck.”
He fumbled beneath the blanket. “Lift your butt.”
She didn’t budge. Danger looked up, his jaw tight. He felt a twitch at the corner of his left eye. It had been a very long time, since he’d undressed a woman, certainly never one who glared at him with daggers in her eyes and a touch-meand-you-die warning burning in her eyes.
His patience dangled by a thread, bobbed like a fucking yoyo at the end of a string. The longer she took to undress, the worse her condition was likely to become. The ground was wet beneath the blanket. He needed to get her inside the tent, but he wanted her out of the wet clothes first and thawed some by the campfire before he moved her. He wanted out of his wet clothes too, but she came first.
This morning, when she’d escaped, well, it seemed a long time ago now. His ass had bounced in a saddle most of the day. He’d misjudged the distance she’d traveled. He’d finally figured he was going to have to cross the creek. The waters had risen swiftly since he’d crossed. By God, now they were stuck on the wrong side of the bank, with no way back across.
He had a sinking feeling the creek hadn’t reached peek stage yet, so there was not going to be a way out of this for several days. He figured they had until sometime tomorrow, before the water crested and went over the banks. They needed to be on higher ground by then.
He was cold, bone-tired, hungry and scared. And if this woman died, he’d never get it off his conscience. She was stripping bare-assed naked whether she liked it or not and shocker, so was he. Eventually, she’d have reason to become alarmed because both of them were naked, well, that was just asking for trouble.
“Look, you’re cold and wet, and I suspect you have some hidden injuries. I don’t have a choice but to undress you. Hypothermia can kill, and your body temperature is low, cold-fish low. I have to get you dry and warm. Now, lift your ass so I can get these fucking wet jeans off you.”
A faint grin touched her blue lips, and she let go of his wrist. “Canadian— huh?”
She sounded so weak.
His throat constricted. He swallowed hard. Fear knotted his gut tying his insides together like a damned Christmas bow. “Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat.
He jerked the jeans down her hips and legs beneath the blanket and tossed them on top of her boots.
Christ, the woman had a set of vocal cords.
He sincerely doubted she was anywhere near death. By the time he had her down to her panties, he was nearly deaf. “Christ woman, would you stop that bellowing? You aren’t the first nearly naked woman I’ve ever seen and certainly not the most tempting. So shut the hell up.”
Her mouth opened, worked, then tightened as she clamped her lips together like a vise. He shoved the blankets aside before she had time to change her mind and scaled his gaze up her slender legs. He did a double-take. Well, hell. Okay, so he’d lied about her being the most tempting female he’d ever seen, but she didn’t need to know that, not right now.
But this, this was beyond tempting. This was just plain old sexily alluring and his eyes fastened on the tat at the inner curve of her left thigh as if it was a lifeline. There, a tattoo of a bow and arrow. The bow was drawn back, the arrow aimed exactly toward her—
“Jesus Christ,” he choked
Red, French-cut panties, clung wetly to her flesh. Oh, yeah. The real thing was so much better than his imagination. He licked his lips. His breath lodged in his chest. He was dying here, but he deserved this treat. He really did. After all the yelling he’d just had to put up with, after fighting her in the water to keep them both from drowning, he deserved these few seconds of pleasure.
“Bastard,” she groaned. “You’ve been—trying to—undress me from—the first mo—ment we met.”
Danger shot her a startled look and then snorted. “Now, little cat, that’s just not true. You’re the one who held me at gunpoint and forced me to strip. At least, I’m not holding a gun on you.”
“That was—business. Not—pleasure.”
She moaned. “Yes. F—for luck. Obvious—mistake.”
Lacey moaned as she attempted to sit up, then fell back. Danger swore softly at the pool of blood that trickled down her right thigh. He rummaged through the pile of clothes and dug her blouse out then folded it into a pad and pressed it against the wound. He drew his gaze down her entire body with a detached, impersonal inspection then helped her into a sitting position.
Lacey closed her eyes and groaned while he probed at the multiple scrapes and bruises on her ribs and back. She bit her lip as he turned her head to look at the laceration on her left temple.
The two-inch wound disappeared into her hairline. Danger gently pushed back the wet strands of her hair for a closer look. He wondered how in hell she was still conscious. Still alert.
He lifted the ragged scraps of her blouse from the wound and took another gander at it. Blood quickly filled the gaping tear and ran down her thigh. He slapped the pad back in place and applied more pressure.
Lacey moaned and turned a sickly gray. Her eyelids fluttered. She gave a choking little gasp and went limp as an over-cooked noodle in his arms. Her head lolled lifelessly against his chest.
“Lacey? No. You can’t do this!”
Frowning, he briskly rubbed her icy arms and legs trying to stimulate her circulation. She was so cold. So still. Incredibly pale.
“Lacey? Answer me, dammit. Don’t do this to me.”
Helplessly, he watched her chest rise on a single, ragged breath, then she breathed out, a long slow whiff of air, then her chest stilled. Panic swept through him. His ears roared. His heart stuttered, then hammered his chest. He couldn’t breathe.
“Baby, come on. Breathe goddammit!”
Gently, he stretched her out on the blanket, pinched her nostrils tight and covered her mouth with his. Her chest rose with the air he forced into her lungs. Three breaths. Check for pulse. Three breaths. Again the EMT thing. Breaths. Pulse check.
“Talk to me,” he rambled between rounds of the George Clooney ER doc thing. “I promise not to pick on you anymore. You can hold a gun on me. I’ll strip completely naked for you if that’s what you want me to do.” Three breaths. Check the pulse. “If it makes you happy, you can kiss me for luck.” Breaths. Pulse. “You can call me any damned Indian chief you wanna call me. Dammit, don’t you fucking die on me!”
No response. She was still and silent as a grave. Her face, chalky pale and as waxen as a magnolia blossom, reminded him of a corpse. Her lips were dull blue. Nails cyanotic.
Danger stared in utter disbelief. He suddenly felt as fragile as spun glass. He bowed his head, his wet hair closing around her face as he dragged her into his arms and rocked back and forth.
That quickly, he’d lost her.
In The Arms Of Danger
Chapter Ten
It don’t take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.
Cowboy Quotes
Rimrock Sheriff’s Dept. Sat. 4:15 p.m.
Coe Blackstone settled into the worn-out leather chair behind Danger’s desk and scowled. Damn, what a miserable mess this had all turned into. Of all the nights for him to have chosen to go for a night ride, he had to choose last night.
This was not good.
He couldn’t just sit here on his ass at the office, while Danger stumbled around out there in the wilderness searching for a woman who’d already held his brother at gunpoint once already—no telling what he might find.
He looked up as his brother-in-law Blake walked in and headed straight for the coffee pot. “Blake, you shouldn’t be here.”
Blake rubbed a hand down his face then stared at nothing, his eyes redrimmed and tired. “I couldn’t stay in the house any longer. It was driving me insane hearing Mom cry.”
Coe nodded. “Jacob’s got your shift covered for the next three days. You don’t have to stay. Up to you.”
Blake gave a single jerk of his head, his long, dark hair falling past his shoulders. “Any monkey grease left in old man coffee?”
“Sure. Fresh pot.”
Blake poured a cup, topped Coe’s, and ambled back to the coffee maker. “You going out there?” He turned and blew into his cup before taking a sip. Coe shrugged. “I just don’t like him being out there, alone.”
“You went out there alone.”
“I did, but I had the dark to help conceal me. If there’s a predator still out there, and I think there is, then it could be this woman Danger’s hunting. It might also be someone else and that leaves him possibly targeted by two people. I don’t like those odds.”
“Go,” Blake said. “I don’t like those odds for shit either. I already lost one brother, you feel me?”
“It means neither of us will be here for Hank’s funeral tomorrow. I’m sorry.” Blake nodded. “I’d rather you find his killer. I’ll get extra help in here to cover your and Danger’s shifts. Don’t worry about things here. Just be careful and keep your eyes open.”
Coe stood up, stretched and took a final swallow of the black brew in his cup. “I’m going to get a couple of horses from your ranch. If I go out to the grandparents, they’ll ask questions I don’t want to answer. And Danger’s place is too far out. I’d lose more time going there and coming back.”
“Take Sam and Molly, they’re both sure-footed animals. They won’t panic if they catch a whiff of bear or mountain lion.”
Coe unlocked the gun cabinet and grabbed a rifle and a box of cartridges. “You know how Fox Creek floods. If Danger ended up on the back side of the creek, he’d be on the far end of Jace Remington’s ranch.”
Blake looked up. “Shit.”
“Yeah. That’s been bugging the hell outta me all day. He’d be there in a virgin wilderness that spans thousands of acres. If he needed help, it would take him days just to reach Jace’s ranch.”
“You honestly think this woman is a threat to your brother?”
“I don’t know. The only thing I know for certain is she pulled a gun on him, and there’s a killer out there who has no mercy.”
In The Arms Of Danger
Chapter Eleven
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.
Cowgirl Quotes
Montana Backcountry Sat. 4:30 p.m.
“Not. . .dead. . .”
As the wisp of broken words trailed away from Lacey, Danger gave a crack of laughter and squeezed her tight. Tension and grief slammed through him and out in a hiss of breath.
“Thank God,” he murmured. He pushed her back, so he could get a good look at her face. “You’re still pale as a ghost. Those wounds haven’t stopped bleeding, but I can live with that as long as you’re breathing and talking.”
“You kissed me?”
“Nah. When I kiss you darlin’, there won’t be any doubt in your mind you’ve been kissed. I was helping you breathe, a little mouth to mouth.”
“When you kiss me?” she croaked.
“Yeah. I don’t kiss females cold as frogs. It’s unlucky. Our lips might get stuck. You know, like when one sticks their tongue to an ice tray?”
A ghost of a smile touched her blue lips. “Now’s the time to do it, while I’m weak and helpless and can’t possibly fight you off.”
“Uh-uh. I like a good fight. It makes the blood hot and the effort so much more worthwhile.”
“Darn. I just don’t think I’m up to a worthwhile fight right now.” She shivered. “I’m so cold.”
“I know.”
Danger stood up and stripped the soggy jeans off his hips. “I’m cold, too. We’ll get warm.”
He glanced up, saw where her eyes dwelled and grinned. She frowned when he dragged a blanket across his lap then reached under and tore off his underwear.
“I don’t give peep shows.”
“Why the hell not?” she complained.
Danger arched a brow. “We have enough problems without complica
ting things.”
“We do?”
“Yep. In another few minutes, those black clouds rolling our way are going to dump a ton of rain on us. I want you inside the tent with some warm food shoveled in before that happens.”
Lacey closed her eyes, battling a wave of nausea. She was hungry. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten, but the thought of food made her stomach churn. Her head felt as if a ten-pound hammer had crashed down on it, and her skull had fragmented into a million pieces.
In The Arms Of Danger Page 16