High-Risk Affair

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She had met the rancher and his lovely British wife before and liked both them and their two children. She had no idea how Cale could have met them, but this didn't seem the right time to ask.

  She also couldn't quite figure out why he was telling her about his friendship with the Kellers until he reached across the table and captured her hand in his, the first time he had touched her since the night before. She wasn't prepared for the instant electric charge between them, or the way his larger hand seemed to engulf hers.

  "I come to Moose Springs often on my way to the Bittercreek. I would like to see you again under happier circumstances."

  She stared at him, totally unprepared for this.

  "Why?" she asked, then flushed. Had she really asked such a stupid question?

  His fingers wrapped around hers and she couldn't help the shiver at his touch.

  His sharp-eyed gaze didn't miss it. "That's why," he said quietly. "There's something between us, Megan— something I didn't expect and certainly wasn't looking for, but it's there. I.. .care about you. I'm not sure how it happened, especially under these difficult circumstances, but you've become very important to me. You and your children."

  A sweet warmth fluttered through her. She wanted to sit in this sun-dappled kitchen and soak up his words, to pull him toward her and let his strength surround her.

  Her hand clenched and his fingers curled around them—the fingers that were connected to an arm that was connected to a shoulder with a bullet hole in it.

  At the stark reminder, the joy blooming inside her turned instantly black and frost-singed.

  She slid her hand away from under his and folded it tightly on her lap, pressing it to her stomach. "I'm sure whatever it is is only a byproduct of the.. .the intensity of the situation."

  "Maybe. That's not all there is to it, though. I've been involved in hundreds of cases during my years at the FBI. Some that have ripped my guts out, and some that have consumed me for months. No one I've met in any of those cases has ever reached inside me like you have."

  Megan took a shaky breath, feeling light-headed and almost nauseous. She wasn't ready for this. She wasn't.

  She had tried to tell herself she had been imagining things the night before, had read far too much into a few little kisses. She surely couldn't possibly be falling in love with this hard, dangerous man. It was impossible. Utterly impossible.

  She couldn't let herself. That was all there was to it. She had lost too much in her life. Her parents, her brother.

  Rick.

  She couldn't survive loving and losing Cale.

  Her resolve wavered at the emotion in those blue eyes. How could she ever have thought them cool and distant in those early hours of the investigation? Now those eyes seemed to shimmer with heat, with banked emotion.

  She closed her own eyes, hating this. Her heart already felt as if it would crack apart, but she knew this was only a small spasm of pain compared to what would be in store for her if she didn't do her best to repair the holes he had battered in her defenses.

  Unable to face him, she drew in a shuddering breath, her gaze glued to the pattern on the tablecloth. "I don't think that would be a very good idea," she finally said, her voice low. "Seeing you again, I mean."

  He said nothing for several beats. "No?"

  Her gaze flashed to his, then down at the tablecloth once more. "I'm grateful to you for what you've done. More grateful than I can begin to tell you."

  Her fingers trembled on her lap. She had to hope the table hid them from his probing gaze so he wouldn't guess she was lying, trying to come up with any excuse to push him away.

  "I could try to pretend those feelings of gratitude are something else, to make them more than they are. For a while, I might even succeed in convincing both of us. But gratitude would only take me so far."

  "You never know. Something more might develop."

  "It wouldn't. I wouldn't let it."

  He blinked at her bluntness, and she saw hurt in those blue depths before he quickly concealed it. "Oh?"

  She pressed a fist to her stomach, sick at herself. She couldn't do this. She couldn't make him think she was coolly indifferent to him, not after everything he had done for her. It was cruel and cowardly.

  She sighed. "I owe you so much for what you have done for me and my family."

  "Forget about that for a moment," he said sharply.

  "I can't. I owe you everything, which means I owe you at least the truth, no matter how painful it is for both of us."

  Her gaze flashed to his, then she looked down at her coffee mug, one Rick had helped Cameron buy for her out of his allowance the last Mother's Day before he died.

  "I barely survived losing my husband," she whispered. "I didn't eat or sleep for weeks and I thought I was dying, too. I think I would have, if not for the children. The worst part was that while his death was hard enough, in many ways, living with him was even harder. I hated his job. 1 hated the risks he took, hated knowing every day might be the day the Navy chaplain showed up at my door."

  "Megan—"

  "I can't go through that again. I'm not strong enough. If I were ever to consider a.. .a relationship with someone, he would have to be someone safe. He could never be a soldier or a firefighter or a police officer." She paused. "Or an FBI agent who's already been shot at least once on the job and who caves and rock climbs on the side."

  He said nothing for a long moment. When she finally risked a look at him, she saw the bleakness had returned to his expression. "I guess that's clear enough," he murmured.

  "I'm sorry." It seemed grossly inadequate, but she knew there was nothing else she could say.

  "Don't be. I appreciate your honesty." He smiled slightly, but she saw the shadows had returned in his eyes.

  After a pause, he changed the subject. "I'll talk to the sheriff tonight at the celebration to make sure he puts measures in place to protect you and Cameron after I'm gone."

  "Thank you," she murmured, fighting down her misery.

  Hailey ran in before he could say anything in response.

  "Mommy, can you come play with us?" she begged.

  "Of course, sweetheart," she answered, seizing the chance to escape the thick, awkward tension.

  She was aware of him sitting at the table with his coffee while she shuffled the deck and dealt the cards. After a few moments, he rose and she heard the door leading to the deck open and close as he walked outside into the August morning.

  She held her cards tightly, fighting tears and despising herself for being such a craven coward.

  Chapter 15

  He had to admit, this was all pretty cool.

  Maybe a Nayy SEAL would think it was lame and boring, but Cameron wasn't a SEAL. It had been fun to pretend for a while, until he had been so stupid and took the make-believe too far. But sometimes it was more fun being nine years old, especially when people were being so. nice to him.

  A big sign over the bower in the park read Welcome Home, Cameron, just as if he were some kind of returning war hero. There had to be like a jillion people here. Most of them he didn't know, but they all acted super happy to see him.

  It made him feel kind of bad about how rotten he'd been to his mom when she told him they were moving away from San Diego and all his friends and his dad's SEAL team. He had been a big baby about it, telli ng her he didn' t want to move to some hick town in Utah, even if they would be closer to his cousins and his aunt and uncle.

  Because he had been mad about moving here, he had been pretty mean about it for a while. But he was starting to think maybe he'd been wrong about Moose Springs. People here were treating him like some kind of movie star.

  "There's my boy." He looked up to find his aunt Molly next to him. She opened her arms and pulled him into a big hug. Every time she had seen him today, she had hugged him tight as if she couldn't get enough. Usually he would have tried to get away as fast as he could, but since his rescue, he decided he didn't mind.

&nb
sp; She smelled like chocolate-chip cookies, and his stomach grumbled. When were they going to stop all this yakking and get-to the food? he wondered. He had been eating all day long but he was still hungry. Everything tasted so good to him, maybe because he had to spend those two days in the mine only eating a couple of lousy granola bars.

  His uncle Scott wasn't far behind Aunt Molly. He didn't hug Cam, thank goodness, he just put a hand on his shoulder and smiled down at him.

  "It sure is good to see you, kid," he said, and Cam got a funny lump in his throat.

  He liked his uncle a lot. He didn't do exciting stuff like blow up things and parachute behind enemy lines like his dad had done before he died.

  But he was never too busy to kick a soccer ball in the backyard with Nate and Cam, and he even sometimes played Barbies with McKenna and Hailey, which Cam thought was weird but kind of nice.

  Somebody called out to his uncle. He gave Cam another squeeze on the shoulder, then turned away to talk to whoever it was.

  It was fun to have everyone be so nice to him, but he was getting pretty tired of standing around with all the grown-ups. He looked on the edge of the bowery and saw Hailey playing in the grass with Kenna and some other kids he didn't know.

  He wanted to be there with them—even more, he wanted to go on the Vomit Comet with his cousin Nate as they had talked about. But his mom said he had to stand here in this dumb shirt and tie and be nice to all the people who had helped look for him.

  What were the chances Mom would let him go after they ate dinner? He had been here like forever. She would probably say no—she was funny about some things like that—but he decided he had to ask. He didn't want to miss his chance. Really, how often did the carnival come to Moose Springs?

  He turned to ask her about it, but some lady was talking to his mom and he knew he would have to wait until they were done or Mom would get mad at him for interrupting the grown-ups.

  His gaze wandered around the crowd while he waited and he caught sight of Agent Davis, the guy who had found him and pulled him out of the mine.

  He liked the FBI agent. They had spent a lot of time together that day. He knew a ton about climbing and had asked Cameron to show him his escape route out the window.

  He wanted to know all about it, how Cam had spent a week making the finger holes with his dad's hand drill when his mom wasn't looking and how he had practiced and practiced until he could go up and down fast.

  Cameron didn't think the FBI agent had really believed he could do it until he showed him. The look of shocked amazement in his eyes had been pretty cool.

  Of course, Agent Davis made him swear he wouldn't ever use them again. Then Mom said he could swear up and down all he wanted, but she was still going to find somebody to fill in the holes.

  He thought about asking Agent Davis if he wanted to go on the Vomit Comet, too, but when he looked at him again, the words clogged in his throat, like the time he ate too big a bite of hot dog. The FBI agent was staring at Cam's mom with a really weird look on his face, a look that made Cam's stomach feel funny.

  Agent Davis looked at his mom for a long time, then tilted his head down and found Cameron watching him. The weird look disappeared, and he kind of smiled at Cameron. Even though he didn't feel like it and even though he didn't want to think about what that look might be all about, he made himself smile back.

  The lady talking to his mom finally moved away but before Cam could talk to her about the ride, somebody else came up to his mom, a skinny guy with a mustache he thought might be one of his mom's tax clients.

  The guy hugged her. "This is a much happier day than the last time I saw you," he said in a laughing kind of voice.

  When he heard it, Cam froze and suddenly he couldn't breathe. His face felt hot and cold at the same time. He was afraid it might be one of those aura-thingies his neuro doctor talked about, that he might be heading for another stupid seizure.

  No. That wasn't it. He knew why he felt sick. Wild panic burst through him and he wanted to run away and hide, especially when the guy turned to him.

  "There's the young man of the hour," he said, and Cameron was afraid he was going to puke.

  He knew that voice!

  The last time he heard it had been in the mine, right before he heard gunshots.

  This had to rank right up there as just about the most miserable, god-awful evening of his life.

  Cale stood on the edge of the bowery, doing his best to keep his expression impassive, emotionless, as he scanned the crowd for any possible threat.

  Despite his efforts to focus only on keeping Cameron safe, he couldn't seem to prevent these random moments of deep, painful yearning.

  His chest felt tight and achy as he watched Megan accept hugs and good wishes from the people of Moose Springs. She was so lovely and serene, glowing from the inside out with her relief at having her son safe. He couldn't help wondering how the hell he was going to go on without her for the rest of his life.

  He was staring. He knew he was, but he couldn't seem to look away. He suddenly felt someone's gaze on him and found Cam watching him watch Megan.

  From somewhere deep inside, Caleb mustered a casual smile for the boy. After a moment, Cameron returned it hesitantly, then turned back to the woman talking to his mother.

  When he left tonight and returned to Salt Lake City and the rest of his life, he would be leaving a jagged chunk of his heart here in this little town. Not all of it belonged to Megan, either. Somehow during the search—even before he found the boy—he had come to care about Cameron and Hailey, as well.

  His life would seem colorless and drab without all of them.

  "Agent Davis," a female voice said loudly into his ear. He turned away to find Megan's sister, Molly Randall, standing next to him, a strange light in her eyes. He had the uncomfortable feeling she had been trying to get his attention for some time.

  "Yes?" he asked, hoping like hell his emotions weren't plastered all over his face for everyone to see.

  She blinked a little at his abrupt tone. "Um, Meg tells me you're leaving after the party. I wanted to tell you again before you go how obliged we all are for what you've done."

  He shifted, uneasy with her gratitude. Word must have spread about the details of Cameron's rescue and the tunnel collapse they had narrowly missed. All evening, he had been doing his best to fend off praise and effusive thanks from the people of Moose Springs.

  It made him itchy and out of sorts because he didn't know how to respond. He wasn't any good at accepting gratitude, and he knew he wasn't some kind of hero.

  He had been doing a job, that's all. The real heroes were the hundreds of volunteer searchers who had given up sleep and food and time with their families to look for the boy.

  Cale and Ben Lucero just happened to have been the first ones lucky enough to stumble across him.

  He forced his features into what he hoped was a polite smile at Megan's sister. "I'm glad I could be in the right place at the right time."

  To his further discomfort, she took his hands in hers and squeezed them. "It was more than that, and everyone knows it. 1 heard the details of the rescue from the sheriff. 1 know you risked your own life to pull Cameron out of that cave and that you reinjured yourself in the process. We can never repay you for returning him to us."

  She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. "I just wanted you to know you always have friends in Moose Springs. No matter what, you're always welcome."

  Not everywhere. Megan had made no secret that she didn't want him here anymore after tonight. She wanted him to go back to Salt Lake City and take his inconvenient feelings with him. He wondered if Molly Randall would continue to look at him with such open friendliness if she knew her sister had pushed him away.

  "Thank you," he murmured, trying to fight down the hollow ache in his chest.

  Above Molly's head, his gaze strayed to Megan, as it tended to do whenever possible. He was just in time to catch sight of a lean man with
carefully styled blond hair and a mustache hugging her. He had seen the guy around the search command center, he remembered, and had thought then that he looked entirely too smoothly manicured to be of much use on a rough-and-ready SAR unit.

  What was their relationship? he wondered as the man continued to hug her a moment longer than necessary. Jealousy spurted through him, taking him completely off guard.

  He had no right to be jealous of anything having to do with Megan Vance, he reminded himself sternly. She had told him so with unavoidable certainty.

  Still, something about the other man raised Cale's hackles. Was this the kind of man she wanted? Someone smooth and polished and soft?

  Something was off. He couldn't put a finger on it, but his instincts were suddenly humming and it wasn't just from the man's apparent familiarity with Megan.

  His gaze shifted to Cameron and those humming instincts shoved him like a fist in the solar plexus. Something was definitely wrong. The boy's features had lost every bit of color, and he looked as if he was going to lose the vast quantities of food he'd been putting away all day.

  Cale didn't take time to think through his actions. He just crossed the short distance between them and took up position behind the boy, his hand casually set in easy reach of his weapon.

  Megan gave him a startled look at his protective stance, then cleared her throat. "Uh, Cale, this is one of the clients of my accounting business, Wayne Shumway. Wayne is on the Moose Springs Search and Rescue team. Wayne, this is Caleb Davis."

  Something flashed in the man's gaze, but it was gone so quickly Cale couldn't figure it out. He smiled a little too broadly. "You're the FBI agent who found Cam in the mine, right?"

  He could feel the boy shudder and knew he was clinging to his fraying control. "That's right," he said, his mind racing to come up with some excuse to separate the boy from the crowd so he could find out what was wrong, though his gut had already guessed it.

  "I've never been involved in an underground rescue," Shumway said, "though I did help bring a couple stranded hikers down from the face of Mount Baldy. Let me tell you, that was quite an experience."