Plain Refuge

by Janice Kay Johnson

  By the time he reached the road, the vehicle was receding. Too far away for him to shoot out a tire.

  But he’d taken in most of the license-plate number—and he’d seen the driver’s face.

  * * *

  A LITTLE AFTER seven that evening, Daniel let himself in the back door. Unless Rebecca was imagining things, he was moving stiffly as he turned to lock.

  She waited until she saw his face, heavily lined with weariness and something else. Her heart cramped.

  “You’re hurt.” She gripped the large spoon in her hand tightly.

  “Nothing major.” He came to her and nudged her hand back over the stove. “You’re dripping on the floor.”

  “Tell me.”

  A shadow crossed his face. “Some SOB tried to run me down. Clipped my shoulder. I picked up a few bruises and scrapes.”

  Some SOB?

  “Was it...about something else?”

  His eyebrows rose. “Besides you, you mean?”

  She bobbed her head.

  “No, it definitely had to do with you.”

  When she moaned, Daniel took the spoon away from her, turned off the burner and steered her to a seat at the kitchen table. Then he pulled up a chair himself, his knees touching hers.

  “You know we’ve been hunting for your ex and Josh.” He went on to tell her about realizing the house he was walking toward could be the one in which Anna Lantz and her son had been held. And the wrongness of the shades drawn and the barn door left standing open, followed by a sound that didn’t belong if the house was empty.

  “You saw the driver,” she said finally.

  He could tell what she was asking. “Nobody I recognize, but I’ll know him the next time I see him.” He told her that he’d called in deputies and searched the house, finding evidence that at least two men had been staying there, perhaps more. One of the deputies had taken pictures of the bedrooms and bathroom with his phone and driven to the Lantz farm so Anna could see them.

  “She made a positive ID.” His eyes, that unusual, deep blue, never left Rebecca’s face. “The kitchen was stocked. When they saw me out front, they must have packed fast and run, but we found a few things. A razor and two toothbrushes left in the bathroom, a few scraps of paper.” Daniel paused. “One of them had a phone number. Josh Griffen’s cell number.”

  “But...nothing leading to Tim?”

  His expression darkened. “Because he couldn’t possibly be involved?”

  Her temper flared, but she waited it out because he was right. She did keep trying to stick her head in the sand. “No,” she said at last. “I know he is.”

  Daniel’s eyes searched hers. “I’m sorry for jumping on you. I don’t like thinking you’re still—”

  “Still what?” she whispered.

  “Holding on to any love or regret, I guess.”

  Her heart drummed at his intensity. She couldn’t look away from him. “How can there not be regret after a divorce? You start out so filled with hope. And...we have a child together. I can’t walk away and never see him again, however much I wish I could.”

  “Do you really want to let him influence Matthew?”

  She didn’t, but... “I think Matthew needs to have some kind of relationship with him. Matthew needs to see that his father has good qualities.”

  Daniel bent his head suddenly and rubbed a hand over his face and through his hair, leaving it ruffled. “I’m being a jerk. This is hard for me.”

  “Being attracted to a divorced woman with a kid?” Okay, her temper was still simmering.

  His head came up sharply, his eyes pinning her again. “Not knowing how you feel about him.” His voice became huskier. “Or me.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “I DON’T KNOW how you feel!” Rebecca cried.

  “I want you.”

  “That’s not...” Her throat clogged.

  “Enough?” One side of his mouth tipped up in an odd smile. “I want you to tell me you won’t leave when this is all over. That you’ll...give me a chance.”

  The feelings swelled in her until her chest actually hurt. “You’ve...forgiven me?”

  “Forgiven you?” His face cleared. “You mean for not being truthful.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course I have,” he said, in a voice filled with tenderness. “No, that’s not right. Forgiveness isn’t necessary. I understand why you were afraid to tell me everything.”

  She couldn’t cry. Not at a moment like this. I will not. “Thank you for saying that.”

  “Will you?” He took her head. “Give me a chance? Consider staying?”

  She had to blink hard. “Yes. Of course I will.” A smile trembled on her lips. “I’d be crazy not to.”

  Just like that, they were grinning foolishly at each other. A chance. He was giving her a chance. What more could she ask?

  * * *

  DANIEL’S MOOD SOARED. Perhaps he shouldn’t read so much into so few words, but he let himself believe she had meant them.

  He ate the stew she had produced from what she’d found in his cupboards, and more pie given by Anna Lantz’s family. He and Rebecca talked while they ate, but not about anything important. These words didn’t seem to matter. The warmth in her eyes, the occasional shyness, the color that tinted her cheeks—those things spoke to him. He felt young and in love. That might sound naive by modern standards. Standards that might be hers, although he thought not. They fit so well because they had both lived with the confusion of not quite belonging where they’d found themselves.

  Rebecca insisted on putting away leftovers and cleaning the kitchen while he sat at the table drinking a cup of coffee. He tried to object—he had spent enough years taking care of himself to shake the belief that the kitchen was strictly a woman’s domain. Her ex-husband hadn’t wanted her to have any life outside the home. Daniel knew better than to make that mistake. She wasn’t Amish, and neither was he anymore. As he watched her move around the kitchen with a dancer’s grace, he conducted an internal battle.

  Would she come to his bed if he asked? A part of him thought it would be wrong to ask. He should wait until she wasn’t dependent on him to keep her safe.

  But his gaze lingered on the sway of her hips before moving to her long, slender neck, bared when her ponytail swung. He had mentally stripped her a hundred times, and he did it again now, imagining how her breasts would fill his hands, how her legs would wrap around his waist, and how the strong hands she was now drying on a dish towel would knead his shoulders and back.

  Suddenly he realized she had quit moving and was watching him. Her eyes were dilated, her lips parted. Without thinking, he shoved back the chair and took the few steps he needed to reach her.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said roughly. “I don’t think you know.”

  She shook her head in instant denial. “No more than plenty of other women.”

  “In my eyes, that’s not so. But it isn’t just your lips—” he rubbed his thumb over them “—or your eyes or...” He was the one to shake his head this time. “It’s the way you carry yourself. The softness I see on your face when you look at your son, the determination to protect the people you love, the shame you can’t hide when you think you wronged someone. The way you guard yourself, even as your eyes give you away.” He bent his head until their foreheads touched. “Emotions so open. You’ve...troubled me from the minute I saw you.”

  Now dampness shimmered in her eyes. “You’ve troubled me, too. I couldn’t understand why I was so sure I could trust you. Why, when I should stay away from you, I was so happy every time I saw you.”

  “Yes,” he murmured, and kissed her.

  * * *

  REBECCA COULD NO more have prevented herself from responding than she could have stoppe
d loving Matthew. Daniel’s passion for her was compelling enough, but the tenderness in his every touch had brought so much to life in her. There was no need for her to ask herself whether she trusted him completely.

  She had fallen in love with him so quickly, so hard, she had to believe she wasn’t wrong about him.

  His lips brushed hers, his tongue dampened them; he nipped and teased, and she did all the same to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, bringing her body in full contact with his, muscular and solid. His hands roved, warm and strong. He explored every dip and hollow, his fingertips lingering on the bumps of her vertebrae. He kneaded her butt as he lifted her higher against him. She wanted more. His tongue in her mouth, his—

  Daniel groaned and deepened the kiss. Suddenly, her back was against something hard. Startled, she realized he had walked her backward. By some instinct, she wrapped one leg around his. Her rubber flip-flop dropped to the floor, and he growled something as both his hands gripped the backs of her thighs.

  “Your shoulder.”

  “Don’t care,” he muttered. His hard length pressed between her thighs as he pinned her to the wall and kissed her deeply with a driving passion that made her melt. She tried to rock her hips and couldn’t, but, oh, he felt so good. Her fingers had slid into his hair, feeling its heavy silk as she sucked on his tongue.

  An indescribable sound vibrated from his chest. When he went completely still, Rebecca almost whimpered.

  He rubbed his bristly jaw over her cheek. “Rebecca.” His voice was guttural. “If you’re not ready...”

  For an answer, she closed her teeth on his earlobe.

  Another of those raw sounds escaped him. “Then hold on tight.”

  She already was, her legs locked around his hips.

  He carried her out of the kitchen and up the stairs, pausing twice along the way to kiss her again with ravening hunger.

  In his bedroom, they undressed each other. He removed his belt first, laying it with the holster and gun on the bedside table. After that, he let her undo one button on his shirt at a time. Despite their growing urgency, neither was hasty. Once she’d tossed the short-sleeved shirt aside, she squeezed the muscles between his neck and shoulders, stroked the powerful planes of his chest dusted with hair a shade darker than that on his head, kissed the horrible bruise that capped one shoulder. His muscles jerked at her every touch.

  He tested the weight of her breasts, flattened a hand on her stomach before his fingers slid beneath the waistband of the skirt. Rebecca bent her head and watched him tug the skirt over her hips, letting it fall to pool at her bare feet. She was even paler than she’d been when they came to Missouri, except for tanned forearms and face. The contrast looked odd to her, but nothing in his rapt expression suggested he was disappointed. When finally he looked up, his eyes were pure heat, the blue at the center of a flame, while dark color ran across his cheekbones.

  “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, broad shoulders, sleek muscles, the arrow of hair disappearing beneath his uniform pants.

  Embarrassed at the compliment, she said, “Where’s the Amish in you?”

  He nuzzled her face. “Amish boys dream about naked girls, too, you know. But this isn’t like that.”

  “I’m glad,” she whispered shakily.

  For an instant, they looked at each other, naked in a way that went far beyond unclothed bodies.

  And then he reached behind her and unclipped her bra. Even as his mouth found her breast, he swung her up and laid her down on his bed. The pull on her breast had her arching and crying out, grabbing his head to keep him close. She didn’t want to let him go when he sat up—until she saw him untying and then tossing away his shoes, stripping off his socks and unzipping his pants.

  Then he muttered something beneath his breath and took out his wallet, removing a small packet from it.

  Oh, heavens—she hadn’t given a thought to birth control. Truthfully, she hadn’t done anything she could call thinking since his mouth first closed over hers.

  “You’ve been carrying one?”

  The eyes that met hers were almost black with intensity. “I came so close to making love to you that night behind the barn.”

  She might have been annoyed that he had assumed she was willing...except he was right. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to stop him.

  “Later, I realized I didn’t have a condom with me. I bought some right away.” One side of his mouth curved. “In case.”

  Rebecca felt her cheeks warming as he stripped out of his trousers and knit boxers. So silly—but she’d seen only one other naked man in her life. And this one was...magnificent. Despite the shyness, she couldn’t resist reaching out to touch. He watched with that burning gaze as she tentatively stroked him and even imagined kissing him there, something she had never dreamed of doing with Tim.

  Daniel’s fingers suddenly closed around her wrist. “No more,” he said roughly. “I need to be inside you.”

  He had her panties off so fast she didn’t see them go flying. He was beside her, above her, stroking until she needed something so desperately. She tried in every way she knew to tell him without words. She didn’t even have a moment of apprehension when he found his place between her thighs and pressed slowly inside her, watching her the entire time. His teeth were set, the skin stretched tight across his cheekbones, the dark hunger in his eyes as powerful as what he was doing to her body.

  She didn’t last long, but he didn’t, either. She didn’t quite scream...but close. The raw sound Daniel made might have been ripped from his throat.

  He rolled to one side then, leaving a chill that was psychological rather than real—but then he gathered her back into his arms and settled her with her head on his shoulder.

  * * *

  DANIEL DIDN’T LET himself wonder whether she’d prefer not to cuddle in the aftermath, given that they were both sweat-slick from the furious lovemaking and the heat that rose to the second story on September nights. He needed to keep her close.

  He was shaken in a way he hadn’t expected. Sex was fun—forbidden fun, a long-suppressed voice would whisper in his head. But this, what he and Rebecca had just done, was something more. Something out of his control, as Rebecca had been from their first eye contact.

  He stayed silent because he didn’t know what to say. What seemed extraordinary to him might not to her. Feeling like an uncertain boy didn’t sit well with him. But this silence could be damaging. What was she thinking?

  She stirred. “Say something.”

  Did that mean she felt as vulnerable? Daniel wondered. “I’m still speechless.”

  “You don’t look down on me because I said yes, do you?”

  “What?” He rolled again, so that he was above her with his weight on his elbows. “How can you think that?”

  “Grossmammi would think I behaved like an Englischer, making myself cheap.”

  Was she joking? But her eyes were dark and serious, her teeth closed on her lower lip.

  “I think your grandmother would be angry at me, not you,” he said honestly. “I know I should have waited until you didn’t need me to keep you safe.”

  “You don’t think...I came to bed with you so you’d keep helping me?”

  “No.” He pressed a soft kiss on her mouth. “You don’t hide what you feel that well.”

  Rebecca wrinkled her nose, altering the mood. “I’ll have to practice.”

  “Don’t.” His voice lowered. “I like seeing your emotions passing through your eyes.”

  “Oh.” She lifted a hand to cup his cheek. “I’ve never felt like this before.”

  That was all the reassurance he needed. “I haven’t, either.” There was a wet smack of skin separating when he lifted hims
elf off her. Daniel laughed. “The shower isn’t huge, but I think we could share it.”

  “Please,” she said.

  Of course, they got sweaty again not long after taking the cool shower, but the experience was so pleasurable, even joyous, Daniel was happy to start all over again. In fact...he was so happy, he felt as if the hollow inside him had been filled to overflowing.

  * * *

  REBECCA WALKED DANIEL to the back door before work the next morning. She’d put on the same skirt with a camisole from her duffel bag, explaining she’d die of heatstroke in the clothes she set out from San Francisco with.

  “Do you think you could buy me a pair of shorts?” she asked, sounding hopeful.

  Imagining how they would expose a luscious length of her legs, he said, “Sure.” He loved her bare toes—and that he could tell she hadn’t put on a bra this morning. Her hair was still wet from a morning shower, too. It was hard to tear his gaze from the droplets shimmering on her neck.

  Of course, he couldn’t exactly buy shorts for a woman at Miller’s General Store without giving away a whole lot, but he wouldn’t mind taking the time to drive to Byrum.

  Determined to do some research today and call or email Estevez, Daniel had his tablet tucked under his arm. The situation had become frustrating. What had happened with the warrant? He wanted to get his hands on Josh and Tim both and wring the identities of their confederates out of them, too—especially the one who’d tried to run him down.

  Seeing her glance at the tablet, he said, “I’m sorry I can’t leave it so you can go online today.”

  Her head tilted like a bird’s. “Why are you so worried I’ll be bored?”

  Her question poked at his deepest core of insecurity. If she thought Hadburg was dull, she’d want to leave. Going with her...that would be like trying to transplant a deep-rooted tree. She understood that; he didn’t think she’d ask it of him, but that didn’t mean she’d be content here.

  “I don’t know,” he lied.

  Rebecca went on tiptoe and kissed his jaw. “You have everything here I need to entertain myself.” Her lips flirted with a tiny, mischievous smile. “I think I’ll start browsing those books on remodeling. It might be fun to learn to tile or who knows what else.”