She peeked around his shoulder and saw trees and branches and sheets of water. Nothing moved and no sound came. She was about to ask what was happening when a smaller tree bent. The wind didn’t take this one. A shadow moved.
“Come out or we fire.” Joel pushed her deeper behind the tree as he motioned for Cam to take the far side. “You have three seconds.”
She shifted and looked out from the other side of the tree. Then she saw it. The shadow, clearly a large figure, stumbled. “Joel, I think—”
“One...”
“An animal maybe?” Cam asked.
“Two.”
Without a sound, the figure dropped. A man’s torso fell into the clearing with the rest left behind in the woods. Arms outstretched and a familiar green polo shirt. The rain pounded his face, which was turned toward them.
She started to rush out, but Joel caught her arm. “Wait.”
Cam’s shoulders fell as he lowered the weapon. “What the—”
But she knew exactly who it was. “It’s Perry.”
Chapter Nine
They’d informally shared her town house and slept together more times than he could count, but when he stepped into Hope’s confining cabin that night he still felt about three sizes too big. “At least it smells better in here than it did ten minutes ago.”
She glanced over at him and smiled. “Who knew a candle could help that much?”
The men had cleared out, with Charlie taking the cabin on one side of hers and dragging Lance and Jeff along with him. Cam was looking after their newest patient, Perry, next door while keeping the first watch on the camp.
The man hadn’t roused long enough to answer even one question. The nasty gash on the back of his head suggested a fall or a hit. Joel was betting on the latter.
They had gotten it bandaged, and Cam had agreed to wake him up in a few hours for a concussion check. Other than that, all they knew was Perry had the same clothes on when he stumbled back into camp that he had worn the night of Mark’s fight with Hope.
Every time Joel started to think they’d all walked into some big work argument between Perry and Mark, the reality of that gun rigging would strike. Joel just couldn’t see either man having the skills for that, never mind the equipment. Hope said she had done a bag check...of course, Mark got a gun through, so maybe it wasn’t impossible.
Joel took one last sweeping look out the door, then shut it behind him. The rain still fell, but the wind no longer whipped through the trees. He toyed with the idea of loading everyone up and heading for the helicopter, but the darkness and memory of the uneven ground stopped him. Last thing they needed was another injury.
“Still nothing from Perry?” She wadded the old sheet and blanket into a ball and threw them on the floor.
“He’s out cold.” Trying hard not to think of the bed and her in it, and failing miserably, Joel walked to the farthest point from her.
He should help her strip and remake the bed after they’d laid Perry out there. His clothes had been caked with mud and his shirt soaked with blood. But that side of the room spelled trouble. Even with the danger spinning around them, Joel wanted her and his self-control was going down for the count.
She froze in the act of unzipping her sleeping bag and spreading it over the bare mattress. “Any chance we could lose him during the night?”
Joel decided to go with the least panicked version. “Cam is staying with Perry. We’re worried about a concussion. His head is pretty banged up.”
“Maybe he got lost and the exposure—”
“No.” Joel couldn’t let her think that. Not when he needed her on guard for the worst-case scenario. “Something slammed into his head. Either he fell or he got hit.”
Her expression hardened. “Where’s Jeff right now?”
“Jeff, Charlie and Lance are bunking together.” Joel understood her narrow-eyed reaction because he also had suspicions about Jeff. Though the evidence pointed toward Mark as the attacker, something wasn’t right with Jeff. Something Joel couldn’t nail down. “I want someone with weapons knowledge in each cabin. I don’t know if I can trust Charlie, but I trust him more than Jeff.”
She dropped onto the bed and balanced a hand on the mattress on either side of her trim hips. “When can we leave?”
This he could handle. Simple emotionless conversation. Joel didn’t like the idea of Lance and Perry being hurt or Mark being on the loose, but getting them out of there alive gave Joel something to concentrate on...instead of thinking about her. “I’m not sure if we can move Perry. Without medical help, I can’t really assess how bad off he is, and I don’t want to drag him around and cause more damage.”
“So we’re going to live here now?”
“Hardly.” Joel bit back the wave of heat hitting him. She sat there in thin sweats and an even thinner tee, looking vulnerable, and his mind started flipping back to them as a couple. He cleared his throat and forced his mind to clear. “A group will go to the helicopter. If we can rig some sort of gurney, we may be able to carry Perry out and all go to the clearing.”
She frowned. “With a sniper out there?”
“First thing tomorrow I’ll check that station in the tree. I’m guessing I’ll find a jerry-rigged weapon and no space for a human shooter.” He sure hoped that was the case.
The scenario would at least give them a direction. Someone on foot with a gun could easily pick them off one by one as they lumbered along dragging Perry on a slab.
There was a nightmare thought. A rigged gun had a limited attack range. A human on foot spelled real danger.
“And that means we can walk through the woods.” She rubbed her hands together until the skin turned red.
“I think we need to take the risk.” He walked over and sat next to her. “Speaking of which, you were pretty impressive today.”
“I got lucky.”
He slipped his hand over hers and stopped her fidgeting before she rubbed her skin raw. “I’m thinking your climbing skills and all those years of archery helped.”
“I’ll give you the archery.”
“Not the climbing?”
She shrugged. “I stick with normal climbing now.”
“Why?” He knew the story because he’d never stopped watching over her, making sure she was okay.
Part of the story anyway. He could tell from the nervous energy that she kept part of it trapped inside her and it needed to come out.
“A burst of sanity?”
His thumb rubbed over the back of her hand, and his thigh touched hers. “Hope, this is me. I know how much you love climbing. I’ve been along with you, seen your face.”
“To be fair, I’m a fan of almost anything that happens outside.”
He wasn’t buying it, refused to let her dismiss this. “You excelled at taking groups up. Your dad didn’t like it, but it was a good living.”
“Until it wasn’t.”
The monotone voice tugged at him. “What piece am I missing?”
“The accident.” Her free hand brushed over their joined ones. “Come on, you talk with my dad, right? You know about this.”
Joel had read the news articles about it and gotten the basic information from her dad. Joel knew it was a horrible accident—not her fault—but it didn’t sound like she did. “I know you took a group up Mt. Rainier and bad weather rolled in.”
She sighed and her shoulders fell. “Two men died, Joel.”
“You’re not responsible for an unexpected snowstorm, Hope.”
“But I am the one responsible for knowing when to turn around.” She loosened her grip on his hand.
“Wait a minute.” He held on, even squeezed her palm until she looked at him again. “I read the file—”
“What are you talking about?”
He refused to be derailed by the rising anger in her voice. “You’ve tracked me, at least a little, because you know I live in Annapolis. Well, I know what you’ve been doing since we broke up, and the point is you
trained that group and when something happened, a guy panicked and took his friend down the mountain with him.”
“We should have—”
“The other people in the group said you insisted everyone go down. You followed your own rules and didn’t screw around. The guy ignored you.”
“It was as if he expected me to chase him up the mountain.”
“Not to speak ill of the dead, but his ego took over. That’s on him, not you.” Joel had watched her struggle with male stupidity more than once in her work. She had all the skills and knowledge, but you put a bunch of guys together and sometimes a certain type would show off. Add in how pretty she was and some guys underestimated her.
Joel never did. She was stunning and fierce...and he loved her as much today as he did when he had walked out. Maybe more.
“All he had to do was turn around and slam his ax into the ice.” She whispered the words, lost in whatever mental image played in her head. “He was tied to his friend and they both raced down the slope and...”
“Listen to me.” Joel’s hand went into her hair and he turned her to face him. “I deal with danger and guilt all the time. I know the difference between negligence and horrible tragedy. You lived through the latter.”
“It destroyed my love of climbing.”
He leaned in and kissed her because he couldn’t stand not to right then. “It’s too soon to know that.”
“I just wanted to start over, find something else I loved, and now this.” She tucked her head under his chin.
“Also not your fault.”
The vanilla scent of her shampoo and smell of her skin had his mind blanking. He had to close his eyes to stay in comfort mode and away from whatever mode it was that had him wanting to push her back into the sleeping bag.
“The comment is funny coming from you.” Her hand pressed against his chest, and her fingers toyed with the neck band of his T-shirt. “You take on the weight of everyone else’s sins and let them define your life.”
“That’s not true.” He wouldn’t let that be true.
She lifted her head then and stared at him with those big brown eyes. “You left me because of things that have nothing to do with us.”
She kissed his chin. Let her fingertips dance over his cheek.
“Hope, don’t—”
“You love me.” She pressed her fingers to his lips.
He kissed the tips. “Always.”
“Yet we’re not together.”
“My feelings and reality are two different things.” The mantra played in his head, but his body and his heart rebelled. The need for her kicked strong enough to knock him over.
Being this close to her, holding her, seemed so easy. Made him doubt everything he believed about how his life should go. How he should stay alone rather than risk dragging someone else into his life.
Bottom line was he could easily become his father one day. The old man had been normal once, or so their old neighbors said. But at some point, he’d lost it. Joel worried every day he’d travel down the same road.
No, he was right. They couldn’t make this work. “We’re never going to agree on this.”
“How about this?” She swept her lips over his, gentle and quick.
His temperature spiked and somewhere in his brain an alarm bell rang. “What are you doing?”
“Wow, it really has been a long time for you, hasn’t it?” Her sexy smile promised a sleepless night.
It also smashed through his control with the destructive crush of a bulldozer. “This is a bad idea.”
“Then let’s do something bad.” She slid out of his arms and fell back against the mattress with her hair spilling over the small pillow.
Maybe if he kept saying her name his brain would have time to restart. “Hope...”
Having none of it, she pulled him down on top of her. “You want me. I want you.”
He balanced his weight on his elbows and stared down at her. “What we feel is deeper than that, and sleeping together could mess it all up.”
It took every last bit of his strength to get the words out. He didn’t mean them and hated saying them.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, and her body slid against his. “Do you honestly think our relationship could be a bigger mess than it is?”
“We broke up.” But he had nothing left. No way to fight her.
“And neither of us has moved on.” She treated him to a lingering kiss. “Do you want me to move on, Joel?”
Hell, no. “You need—”
“You.”
The next kiss didn’t brush or linger. It burned. Her tongue touched his and her hot mouth had him reeling.
When he lifted his head again he could barely breathe and his brain stuck on permanent misfire. “I have exactly one condom.”
Her eyebrow lifted. “I’m a little surprised you have even that.”
“Call it wishful thinking, but when I knew I was coming to you—”
“Go get it.” She whispered the command against his mouth.
He scrambled out of the bed and grabbed the wallet out of his pocket. After a second, he dropped it on the floor.
Before he could climb back onto the bed, she was there, sitting on the edge. Her fingers went to work on his belt, then his zipper. The screech echoed through the quiet room as she lowered it.
Her hand covered him and her breath blew across his boxer briefs. Looking down and seeing her hair, feeling her soft hand on his erection, proved to be too much. The last of his common sense fled as he threw the condom on the bed and pushed her back.
Hands roamed everywhere. His, hers, it didn’t matter. His shirt came off and then hers. It wasn’t until he saw her bare skin and the sweet shadow between her breasts that he forced his body to slow down, to savor.
He skimmed his fingers over the smooth skin of the top of her breasts, then slipped a finger inside the edge of a plain white bra. At that moment, the sexiest bra he’d ever seen. With a teasing flick over her nipple through the material, he heard her gasp.
“I can’t forget you.” His mouth went to her neck as he said the startling truth in a gruff voice.
“Don’t.”
He felt the tug of his pants and felt them slide down farther on his hips, freeing him. Her hand slipped past the elastic band of his underwear and then she was on him, skin against skin, and he had to grind his back teeth together from ending this too soon.
“I want you.” He told her right before he kissed her, not giving him a chance to take it back or her a chance to question.
His lips crossed over hers as the heat rolled through him. A signal went off in his brain. Protection...it was there somewhere. His hand patted the bed, searching for the condom. Adrenaline pounded him and he was about to rip the sleeping bag apart to find it when she picked it up and held it in front of his face.
“Looking for this?”
He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. He plucked it out of her hand and tore through the paper. His body was on fire now. He had to have her, to sink into her again.
Desperate to make it good for her, he ran a hand over her stomach and hit the band of her pants. Yeah, those had to come off. He didn’t waste a second as he stripped them down, taking her bikini bottoms with them and throwing the rumpled ball to the floor.
Then she was naked and open, her legs falling to the side to make room for him between them. When he dragged a finger through her heat, her back arched off the bed.
She was wet and ready. She didn’t pretend shyness. He could read the need on her face and see the excitement in the pink hue of her skin.
It was all the invitation he needed. Rolling the condom on, he fit his tip to her and pushed. His body plunged into hers as it always had, with a tightness that made a groan rumble up the back of his throat.
The night fell away and the closeness of the other cabins didn’t matter. He was back inside her as he’d fantasized about for so long. And he wanted it to last. He stilled, enjoying the feel of her
tight body around his.
She pinched his shoulder. “Joel, move.”
But his body had already taken over. He pressed in and pulled back out. A steady rhythm gave way to a frantic beating of his blood. Her nails dug into his shoulder as she whispered his name in his ear.
He kissed her, touched her, made love to her as the driving need took over. Tension coiled inside him. The building started in every limb. That’s what she did to him. Destroyed his intentions and stole control over his body.
Unable to hold back, he slid a hand between them and touched her. A slight circle with his finger and her head pressed back. When her mouth dropped open he covered it with his, thinking to catch those delicious gasps he loved so much as she found her release.
The orgasm slammed into him a second later. His body let go and his shoulders shook until he thought they wouldn’t hold him. With one last push, he surrendered.
His last thought was that he hadn’t taken the time to pull his pants off.
Chapter Ten
An alarm buzzed beside her head, breaking into Hope’s delicious dream. She thought about throwing it at the wall.
When her eyes opened and she adjusted to the overhead light and darkness outside the window, it all came rushing back. Joel’s arm across her stomach. His breath against her neck. The memories of the kissing and touching. Making love with him, feeling him over her. Rolling around after and his cursing once he remembered they only had one condom.
She’d wanted another morning after with him for so long. It was somewhere around three and not yet sunrise, but this was close enough.
Through the waves of anger and hurt all those months ago and every day since, she knew they’d get back to this emotional place. That they weren’t over. The real question was how long they could stay in this holding position.
The temptation to hide under the blanket and forget the world and the horrors outside the cabin rushed over her. She hated to wake him, but that was the deal. One person on guard duty, and Cam had been handling that for hours.
Now, deep into the night, rain still pinged against the cabin and the alarm on his simple black watched sounded a second time. No question about it, it was Joel’s turn to stand guard.
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