by Julie Miller
“Get something in your stomach,” he ordered. “I’m giving you some aspirin and we’ll doctor those up.”
Her immediate protests fell on deaf ears. He spread a tarp on the floor and set out aspirin, alcohol swabs and antibiotic ointment. He could sense her fatigue because the arguments didn’t last for long. When he told her to have a seat, she crossed her legs like a ballerina and folded herself, pretzel-style, to sit on the tarp.
Vincent brought the lantern close to illuminate his work. He bathed her face with water and dabbed the bruises with alcohol. She had such fine pale skin. Clear and smooth, like cream to the eye. And down the bridge of her nose, spilling onto her cheeks, a sprinkling of dusty freckles reflected the reddish highlights in her hair.
He pushed aside the red-gold locks that fell in waves past the top of her shoulders and tended the thick bruise across her neck. He recognized that kind of marking. She’d been choked to unconsciousness. Applying that kind of pressure a few inches higher or lower would have fractured her larynx or crushed her sternum. Either wound, left unattended, could have killed her.
Damn Chilton. Vincent didn’t know Whitney beyond the dossier her father had sent. But Jewel McMurty thought the world of this woman. Daniel Austin and his men were chomping at the bit to get her back. And though she’d already complicated the hell out of his well-laid plans, she’d proved herself to be more than a pretty face or a rich bank account. She didn’t deserve this kind of abuse.
No one did.
It was Vincent’s job to stop the bastards who preyed on innocent victims. Melissa Stamos, his high-school sweetheart, couldn’t see that calling. She’d bashed his heart and his pride on the altar of Saint Stephen’s Church in front of family and friends, condemning him for putting his life on the line for people he didn’t know.
He hadn’t known Whitney MacNair twelve hours ago, either. But he was damn glad to have her sitting in this abandoned cabin with him, enduring the clumsy doctoring of his big hands, instead of reading her name in the paper as another senseless victim of the Black Order’s killing spree.
“So what goes on in that head of yours?” Whitney asked.
Lost in his thoughts, her soft voice startled him. Lord, the woman liked to talk. And he still had nothing he needed to say to her beyond, “Let me see your wrists.”
Her frustrated sigh sounded a lot like Melissa just then.
He pulled her wrists into his lap and gently cleaned the wounds. She flinched at the mere touch of salve to the damaged skin, but didn’t cry out. An unforgiving fist tightened in his gut with each bit of pain he grudgingly inflicted. But Whitney endured the healing touches without a word of complaint.
However, it seemed nothing could stop her questions.
“You give new meaning to the cliché, ‘strong, silent type,’ you know that?”
Vincent continued his work, focused on the task at hand. He drew his fingers along the slender sculpt of her forearms, turning and inspecting them for further injuries. Her skin felt smooth, supple beneath his hands—softly pampered, as he expected, but with sleek muscle beneath the surface that indicated some honest work—or workouts, at the very least.
“Ow.” Without thinking, he’d pressed his thumb into a toned band of muscle, testing the refined strength of her arm. She tilted her head, studying him with a curious pout. “You don’t do this much, do you? I mean, the doctoring part. I imagine you do a whole lot of running around, shooting your gun, rescuing damsels in distress.”
Now how did he respond to that?
“Where else?” he demanded. Whitney’s bright eyes suddenly shuttered. He heard the harsh sound of his words echo in the cabin, and that fist squeezed even tighter inside him. She pulled her hands from his lap and reached for the bottle of water. He waited patiently while she took a drink. But he knew she still hadn’t answered. He dropped his voice to a raspy pitch, trying to soften its tone. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“My back. We wrestled on the ground, and I scraped it up a bit.” The forced lightness in her tone didn’t fool him. “It’s nothing serious,” she insisted. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for doing the rest, though.”
He tilted his head and asked her to turn around. “Let me see.”
“I tell you, it’s nothing.”
She scooted around on her bottom, giving him a good look at the back of her sweater. Cashmere didn’t lie. The tight weave had pilled and snagged and caught bits of leaves and dirt in the soft, furry nap.
But the two spots of dried blood at her right shoulder blade weren’t part of the material’s design.
Vincent tucked his index finger beneath the hem and lifted. “Son of a bitch.”
Whitney laughed. “You repeat yourself a lot, you know.”
She reached behind and plucked the sweater from his hand. But he easily overpowered her protests and pulled the sweater up to her shoulders. “You call this nothing?” He focused on the deep cut right above her bra strap. “At least one of these marks needs a couple of stitches.”
“You’re no sweet old country doctor, are you?” she accused. The sharp bite of her voice might have something to do with the certain stinging he caused by cleaning the scrapes and bruises with alcohol. “You really need to get a bedside manner.”
Maybe he should say something about her grit. Her class-act determination. She hadn’t complained about her injuries though she had to be in obvious pain. Not once. Was that a by-product of East Coast breeding? A stiff upper lip? Or was it a sign of something more substantial inside this garrulous daddy’s girl?
Vincent gave it a shot. “You’re a tough cookie, MacNair. I know men who would have caved under the kinds of injuries you’ve sustained. You haven’t complained once.”
“Why should I?” She winced as he taped a bandage over the deepest cut. “I’m alive, aren’t I? People are dying all around me. Believe me, I have nothing to complain about. After all, what’s a little pain when you’re Whitney MacNair, blacklisted daughter of the MacNair dynasty?”
Whatever happened to a simple thank you? He pulled down her sweater and boxed up the supplies, not understanding the hysterical rise in her pitch.
“I don’t care where you’re from.” He shrugged the confusion from his shoulders. “You’re a human being. You feel pain like the rest of us.”
HUMAN?
No. She was Whitney MacNair. She wasn’t allowed to feel pain or fear or betrayal.
Whitney scrambled to her feet, unnerved by the surprisingly gentle ministrations of Vincent’s hands. Unnerved by the sudden reminder that he had risked his life to take her home—but they didn’t want her there.
She was an embarrassment to the MacNair name. Never mind that she’d done nothing wrong. Her family had overreacted when they’d read an inflammatory story about her flirtation with her married boss, and about the expensive gift he’d given her. They hadn’t even asked for her side of the story. Instead, they’d banished her to rural Montana.
She paced to the window, then settled for reading the label on his jeans when she remembered she couldn’t look outside.
It unnerved the hell out of her to hear this stranger with the midnight eyes pinpoint exactly what was wrong with her.
A human being?
Not until all hint of her scandal with Senator Ross Weston died down.
Vincent moved around the cabin with spare, sure ease, repacking his duffel bag and opening the door to check outside. When he came to the window where she stood to check the woods in that direction, she bolted to the opposite side of the cabin. He’d bull’s-eyed the vulnerable weakness in her don’t-care armor, and she desperately needed to get it back into place.
“Chilton’s an idiot, you know.” Vincent glanced her way when she spoke, but said nothing. “If he wants to raise money for his cause, or blackmail his way out of the country, he picked the wrong girl to ransom. I mean, even he knows about the scandal. There’s a very good chance my father wouldn’t pay to get me back. He doesn’t want to see the f
amily name splashed in the headlines again.
“I have four big brothers. Gerald, Jr., William, Derek and Brian. All in politics. Gerry’s running for attorney general of Massachusetts. The election’s in a couple of weeks. If it gets out that I was stupid enough to get kidnapped by a group of terrorists, that’d be even more bad press. Who knows where Dad would send me next?”
She felt the question in Vincent’s eyes when he crossed to the other window and secured it as well. But he didn’t ask it.
Whitney answered it anyway.
“That’s right. I’m not here by choice. Out of sight, out of mind. Out of the headlines. I’m used to the big cities. I mean—” she spread her arms wide “—there is just way too much scenery here. No cabs. No coffee shops.” She sought out his gaze across the room and found him still watching her. The eerie blackness in his eyes seemed to swallow her up, making her feel raw and exposed. She clutched her arms in a tight hug around her body, warding off a chill that caught her unawares. “I just wanted to make a difference…”
How many times had she said that? To her father? To Daniel Austin? To herself?
How many times had she been denied the chance?
“I know you think I’m crazy. That I just babble on for no reason, but—” Whitney’s breath caught on a strangled gasp and she realized she was about to cry. Not those silent tears that had put her to sleep last night. But a really big, bellowing cry that would leave blotches on her face and her sinuses plugged.
“Look. I’ve got some nervous energy I need to work off.” She pressed her fingers to her lips to stifle a sob. “I could use a little conversation to distract me.”
“We need sleep,” was all he offered.
Maybe that’s all it was. She was just too damn tired to fight off the shock of the trauma she’d been through.
“I’m the one who’s scared here. I’m the one who got kidnapped. I’m the one who’s been shot at and ogled and threatened. The one who’s wounded and bruised and humiliated. I’m the one who’s been pushed around by some big bully with a badge, who won’t talk, who throws dead buddies out of trucks and doesn’t even care—”
She fell silent, surprised by her own words. She walked over to Vincent, her hands held up in supplicant apology. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. You’ve done a lot for me.”
Still nothing.
She reached out farther, touched his forearm. The steely bulk of muscle there flinched beneath the brush of her fingertips, then went still. Unsure of how welcome her touch might be, she looked up.
He focused those black-as-night eyes on her, but said nothing.
What in the world made a man so quiet? Like stone.
As imposing and forbidding as the mighty Beartooth Mountains surrounding them.
She didn’t know if she’d ever get used to the silence of the mountains. No steady stream of traffic, no hum of voices and music until early in the morning, no whirl of energy.
Just—quiet.
She didn’t know if she could ever get used to Vincent’s silence, either.
Whitney curled her fingers into her palm, embarrassed by the rejection of both her touch and her apology. “Fine. I’ll talk to myself.” She hugged her arms around her middle and crossed to the empty fireplace. “So, Agent Romeo, how long have you been in the business? What? Forever? Carrying on a family tradition, I bet.”
“Leave my family out of your rambling.”
She whipped around, surprised to hear him speak. “Oh! He talks!” On the heels of embarrassment came a defensive burst of anger. “Tell me about your family. You’ve got a beautiful blond wife named Juliet, I bet. And a trio of little black-haired boys who don’t talk much, either. Let’s see, their names are Paris and Mercutio and—Friar Lawrence.”
“MacNair—”
“They probably don’t mind you traveling the world, seeing all the finest places, like this lovely, abandoned shack a thousand miles away from nowhere. You’ve probably risked your life hundreds of times. Saved diplomats and royalty. Blown up buildings and broken men’s necks. And here you are, stuck baby-sitting a ‘tough cookie’ like me.”
That’s when the first crack broke in her control. Her eyes burned with the fear and hurt and shame she’d endured. She clasped her hand to her mouth, but it was too late.
“I’m sorry.”
She tried to atone for going off the deep end. But the words opened the dam, and the tears became sobs that wrenched her body.
She hugged herself tighter and sank to her knees, too exhausted to endure the emotions buffeting her.
“Stop that.”
The hesitant command barely registered. She looked up through the veil of her tears, and saw Vincent close the distance between them. He stood over her a moment, tall and strong, and frowning with confusion.
After a moment he seemed to make a decision. He shrugged out of his jacket and knelt beside her. Without a word, he wrapped it around her shoulders.
She clasped the leather collar together and buried her chin inside. The weight of it felt like a hug. The silk lining still held Vincent’s warmth and his scent.
Her tears faded to silent sobs, but indicated no signs of stopping. She lifted her gaze and tried to show him her thanks. His mouth opened and closed, as if he was searching for words that eluded him. Whitney wasn’t going anywhere soon. She waited for him to speak.
Vincent shrugged helplessly, stretching the seams of his turtleneck beneath the black leather shoulder straps of his holster. He was such a big man. So hard. So purely masculine.
So completely out of his element at this moment.
“Don’t. C’mon.”
His distress reached out to the part of her that could still think clearly. “I’ll try not—” A hiccup cut her short.
“Hell.” He tucked his hands beneath her elbows and lifted her to her feet. He pulled her into his arms and turned her head and cradled it against his chest. “You’re just tired. Cold and beat-up and tired.”
The heat from his skin seeped through his sweater and into her cheek. The black wool tickled her nose, but she breathed in anyway, absorbing his clean, male scent like a soothing vapor.
He patted her head, unsure or unwilling to hold her tighter. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”
Hurting? She hadn’t felt this safe and sheltered since—since ever. She sniffed twice, then lifted her head to see past the stubble on his square jaw. She wanted him to know that he hadn’t hurt her. “No. You’re doing just fine.”
His dark eyes sparkled with some unnamed emotion. Whitney discovered she could get lost there. Lost in the mysterious depths of those eyes.
“In that case…” He pulled away. Oh no, he wasn’t going to leave her? Not when she’d just said he’d been gentle with her. But he pried one of her hands from its death grip on his sweater and led her over to the tarp. “I haven’t had more than a catnap in the past three days. And you’re exhausted.”
He knelt on the floor and pulled her down beside him. He sat with his back against the wall and guided Whitney to the vee between his legs. Then he pulled her against his chest and wrapped her in the snug circle of his arms and body.
With her cheek resting over the steady beat of his heart, Whitney sucked in a deep breath, and finally felt herself relax.
“It’s gonna get colder before morning.” She heard his words through the cavern of his chest. “We’ll need to keep each other warm.”
Practical words. Vincent Romeo seemed to be eternally practical.
Whitney nodded. A heavy blink took her by surprise. Her eyelids burned with the salt of her tears, but she discovered she was too tired to care. The weight of fatigue kept them closed.
Vincent was so warm. So strong. So sweet.
And she’d been so… Before sleep claimed her, Whitney summoned the strength to remember her manners. “I’m sure you have a lovely wife and family. I didn’t mean to insult—”
“I’m not married.” Vincent adjusted his position. He tucked his
jacket up around her neck and pulled her hair outside the collar. His hand seemed to linger there, straightening the tangled length of careless curls. “I keep bad hours and bad company.”
Whitney yawned and felt her body sinking into his strength and warmth. “Has there ever been anyone special?”
His silence tugged at her compassion. And made her curious enough to lift her head. “Romeo?”
She’d never again make the mistake of thinking his eyes were black voids that revealed nothing. He squeezed them shut to mask the glimpse of turbulence she saw there. When he opened them again, she could see they blazed with pinpoints of light, like tiny stars dotting the sky at night. And they were filled with sadness.
“Romeo?”
He cupped her cheek in his big hand and pulled her back to his chest. “Once.”
“What happened?”
“She dumped me at our wedding.”
That seemed like quite an admission from a man who had shunned all personal questions up until now. Whitney felt guilty for prying the information out of him. She snuggled closer, offering comfort even if it might not be appreciated. “Why?”
“The job.”
So he was a big tough loner who killed bad guys and tended wounds with equal finesse.
Whitney wanted to tell him thanks. That she was glad he was on her side.
But sleep claimed her first.
Chapter Four
“Move it, MacNair.”
Vincent shook Whitney by the shoulder and watched her curl into a ball in response to his summons.
He felt less like a heel for waking her so early when she found the energy to say, “Go away.”
So she was mule-headed from the get-go, was she? He almost smiled, but common sense overruled. His Washington contact had promised a chopper on a burnt-out plateau a good two hours’ hike from here. He needed to be there at noon for the pickup.
Vincent had every intention of being there. And every intention of arriving before sunrise so that Chilton and his men would have a harder time tracking them.
He couldn’t afford the delays that had cost them their rescue last night. Or the distraction of another night as Whitney’s bed pillow.