“You’re not two on my speed dial.”
He grinned and waved his sat phone at her. “I am now.” He looked from her to Bagel. “Protect,” he ordered.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I wish I wasn’t. Sorry, mate,” he said to the dog, then looked back to her. “We work with what we’ve got. And don’t underestimate him just because he’s stubby.”
“Right. How long will you be out there?”
“As long as it takes.”
She folded her arms across her chest and clung to her cynical point of view. It was that or fling herself at him and beg him not to take one step outside the cabin until they were sure it was safe. “Why is it I feel like I’m suddenly in a Kathleen Turner-Michael Douglas movie?”
“You know, Kathleen never did it for me. Are you really a Michael Douglas fan?”
“Donovan,” she said warningly.
His grin was a quick flash. “I shouldn’t like it when you say it like that. But I do.” The grin vanished, and he was all business again. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m serious.”
“I’ll try and refrain from all my many outdoor activities.” She scooped up Finn’s report. “Besides, I have some reading to do. Be prepared to answer some questions when you get back from your mission,” she told him, using air quotes on the last part.
He looked a bit pained at that part, but said nothing. Then, at the door, he turned. “Take this seriously, okay?”
She nodded. Then as he walked out the door, she blurted, “Be careful!”
He paused and smiled back at her. “And ruin all the fun?” Then he was gone.
“Men,” she muttered for the second time that morning. Bagel whined. “You’re included in that gross generalization, so watch it.”
The dog padded over to her and sunk to the floor, propping his chin on her foot.
“And it’s precisely knowing when to do stuff like that, that keeps us from giving up on you altogether.” She reached down and patted his head. “Come on, let’s get some food and then we’ll see just how much trouble I’m really in.” But instead of walking to the fridge, she went to stand by the window, where she could see Mac moving quickly straight down the ridge toward the lake. “For a guy with bum knees, he sure moves fast,” she murmured. And again her mind went to the bed they might have shared last night, and other fast moves he was really good at making.
She swore under her breath and turned resolutely back to the kitchen. Men, indeed.
Chapter 13
Mac rubbed the paint off his fingers across the wood of the shed. Some of it had permanently adhered, enough to read the message, but most of it had mixed with the rain and moisture on the wood and was running off in Day-Glo orange rivulets.
Kate was right about the ground around the shed. She and the dog had obliterated any footprints that might have been remaining. Not that it would have told him a whole lot, but any additional information was better than the none he had at the moment. He turned slowly and scanned the surrounding area, looking for any kind of disturbance that would point to the direction the intruder had entered or exited by. A shame it wasn’t a little later in the season, when the leafy underbrush would have made it almost impossible not to make some kind of lasting mark.
He hunched over as the rain started to come down harder and make rivulets of its own, right down the back of his neck, past the collar of his jacket and his sweatshirt. He slowly began a methodical search, sectioning the area off in pie-shaped quadrants. The rain wasn’t doing him any favors, but if the vandal had moved close enough to the base of one of the pine trees, he’d have left a shoe impression that likely hadn’t washed away yet.
He just had to find that random print. Then he could track from there. With a track came a direction, and with a direction, he could locate where the intruder made his entrance onto camp property and get a feel for how well they knew the area. He’d already tracked one entrance/exit point to the driveway. But from this vantage point, he doubted they’d double all the way around to that point. Way too far, and almost impossible to do with any stealth. Especially in broad daylight. Or, well, broad rainy daylight.
Whoever had done this, it was a pretty ballsy move. Mac hadn’t made any attempt to disguise what he was doing this morning, and he’d been pretty noisy in making his presence and whereabouts known. Which, on the one hand, made it easier for the vandal as he knew Mac’s whereabouts while he did his artistic deed. But one glance from Mac across the lake could have easily revealed his position.
He looked back at the running paint. Too much was murking up the puddles at the base of the shed to have been there for very long. Certainly not before daybreak. He glanced back across the lake and up the hill to Kate’s cabin. Just thinking about her wandering around over here while the jackoff who did this was anywhere nearby made his eye twitch. Ballsy and stupid, he thought. Because now you’ve really pissed me off.
He continued his grid search methodically, albeit increasingly soggily. He should have grabbed some better rain gear, but he’d been too busy playing Douglas to her Turner. Now who was being stupid? Maybe if he got wet enough and cold enough, he’d remember to think with the head on his shoulders instead of the one between his legs. Well, more often, anyway. There had to be a law against anyone who could make baggy sweats and a faded sweatshirt look sexy as hell. That or he needed to get laid in the worst way.
Or both.
He went back to his search. His pocket hummed a second later. Adrenaline punched into his system as he quickly slipped his phone out, ducking his head down to keep the phone dry as he moved instantly toward her cabin. “What’s wrong?” He knew he shouldn’t have left her up there alone.
“Find anything?”
He stopped short. “Tell me you did not just call the Bat phone to ask me how my day was going?” He willed his heart to descend back out of his throat.
“Bat phone?”
“I’m lightening the mood.”
“Yeah, I can tell. I’m sorry. You’ve been out there forever. And I—I wondered if you’d found something.”
Or she was worried about him. He wasn’t sure if he should like the idea of that so much. Usually, he preferred no one worry about him. It made what he did for a living much easier. “You read Finn’s report.”
There was silence, then, “Yes. Yes, I did.”
Good. Maybe she’d stop waffling now. But whether he liked it or not, for her sake, he didn’t need her worrying about him on top of the rest. “I’m trying to track the entrance/exit point. Stay put.”
“Yes, sir, oh Defender of Gotham City.”
He couldn’t help it, he chuckled. “I’ll be back when I’m done. Keep Robin in the house, will ya?”
“He’s presently deep into some doggie dream, so I don’t think this will be a big issue. Some guard dog you left me with.”
“Hey, you adopted him. I didn’t.”
“He seems to have adopted you, and you put him in charge.”
He looked up the ridge to the cabin and wished like hell he didn’t feel what he was feeling. Like she fit him. Effortlessly. “I liked it better when you were bitchy,” he lied. “It keeps you sharper.”
“No problem. Just say something else to piss me off. Shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Very funny.” He could feel her smile. And maybe that was why he’d done it. Except making her smile and distracting her from her problems might make him feel good, but that wasn’t what was going to keep her safe. “Make a list of the questions you want to badger and annoy me with. And a hot lunch when I get in wouldn’t be turned down, either.”
“Bingo,” was all she said, then clicked off.
He stared at the now dead phone. “So, would that be ‘bingo, sure no problem, chief,’ or ‘bingo, bite me’?” He really shouldn’t be smiling as he pocketed his phone. This was serious business. But he was.
At this rate, they were both doomed.
It took him another very wet twenty
minutes to find the trail, what there was of it. But it was enough to track. Eventually it led him to one of several old dirt roads that had been cut through the mountains back in the fifties, to allow fire equipment access to the higher elevations. Kids with four-wheelers enjoyed off roading on the overgrown, rutted trails, and hikers occasionally used them as a short cut, but otherwise the fire roads were largely ignored. Or had been during his childhood. The condition of this one led him to believe that hadn’t changed much. But whoever had parked their big-ass truck here had been away from it long enough for the rain to make turning around a bit of an adventure. Either that, or the driver had been in a hurry.
The tracks were relatively fresh, which tied in to the fresh paint. He wondered why Kate hadn’t heard the engine, though between the rain and him drilling, he could understand it going undetected.
“Dammit.” He didn’t bother tracking farther. He knew where the cut-through road went, where it emptied out, and the driver had two choices. Drive straight into the camp, or across the mountain and down into the valley toward town.
He turned back to the lake and began the hike back to the cabin. Why would someone risk entry during daylight hours, hearing obvious sounds of inhabitants, just to spray paint another sign like all the rest? The risk didn’t make sense.
He stopped by the cabin down the hill from hers and grabbed his duffel. When he was back on the porch, he pulled off his boots after knocking as much mud off them as possible, then left them beside the muddy rags before rapping on the frame of the door and letting himself in. “Hi, honey, I’m home.”
She looked up from the papers she was reading. Finn’s file. “You look like something the cat and the dog dragged in.”
“You have to be willing to get dirty if you want the job done right.” He skirted the table and moved toward her bedroom.
“Where are you going?”
“Shower.” He sniffed the air. “I don’t smell any lunch. You know, us superheroes, after putting in a long couple of hours tracking bad guys, really go for a hot meal.”
“So I hear.”
“I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
“Oh, please, make yourself right at home.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her if she wanted to help him with the hard-to-reach places. She was cranky because of last night. Not that he could blame her. It wasn’t a habit of his to take a woman all the way to the edge like that, then walk away. And it took considerable control now not to nudge her in that direction again. But then, he hadn’t expected resisting her would be easy. He just wanted to see her smile was all.
And if she was naked in the shower with him at the time, well, he wouldn’t say no.
He swore under his breath and closed her bathroom door behind him before he did something he’d live to regret. This was the right thing to do. He knew it, and he bet she knew it, even if she was pissed off at him. Tangling themselves up any further than they already had was just begging for trouble. He couldn’t stay focused on the job if he was focused on getting her naked. And he would be. Hell, he already was. And the little tugs he was experiencing inside his chest whenever he looked at her were downright terrifying. He’d been back in her orbit for only a couple days. No way should she be having this effect on him. But there was no denying she was affecting the hell out of him. And it was more than sexual need fanning those flames.
He shucked out of his muddy clothes, carefully putting them in her sink, then climbed under the steamy spray. He closed his eyes and let the water beat on him while he tried to clear his head. Focus. They needed a game plan. He’d finish installing the security system tomorrow after the rain let up. Shimmying any more trees wasn’t happening until things dried out a little. Which meant being stuck in the cabin with Kate.
No problem. He’d fix them both lunch, then answer her questions. Keep it business. He imagined she’d want to know exactly what it was he was doing security-wise, so he’d sketch it out. Walk her through the process, and how it was going to work. They also needed to come to an agreement on how they were going to proceed with the rest. He could handle security, the town, and Timberline if he had to, but she was going to have to handle her stepbrother.
So. That agenda should take them through dinnertime. And with daylight still at a premium, even if it stopped raining right that second, it would be too dark to do any more work outside tonight. Nothing was hooked up yet, so he planned to do a perimeter patrol. Maybe walk the interior paths as well. If for no other reason than if someone was watching from any point, they’d know he was out there, watching right back. He could walk the lake path, too. Just in case.
Anything to keep him out of this cabin for the rest of the night.
He’d moved his gear into the cabin just down the hill last night, but with this latest escalation in the vandalism, it would be best to stay closer. He wondered how long it would take him to convince Kate of that. Not to mention how he was going to last the night on her couch, knowing she was mere feet away. And, as of last night anyway, willing to share her nice warm bed with him. If not her nice warm self.
He groaned and reached for the soap.
“Hurt something?”
The soap went shooting out of his hand, and he almost lost his balance. “What the hell?”
A hand emerged between the shower curtain and the wall, and a mug was thrust at him. “Coffee. It’s not a hot meal, but it’s a start.”
“Uh, thanks. And I mean that,” he added quickly, before she dumped the scalding contents on some part of his naked body. “You can just set it there by the sink if you don’t mind. And don’t freak over the muddy clothes. I’ll take care of it when I get out of here.”
“Yes, you will. Exactly what were you planning on putting on when you got out?”
“I—” He’d been so caught up in trying not to do anything stupid, like drag her into the shower with him, he’d sort of forgotten about that part. “I left my duffel on the porch.”
“How convenient.”
He swallowed a sigh. “I don’t suppose—”
He heard a thud as something soft and heavy hit the bathroom floor. “Don’t mention it.”
“Thanks.” He frowned, still trying to figure out what she was doing in here. “I—uh, was kidding, before.”
“About being a superhero? Good, because I was already really disappointed about last night as it was. If I thought I’d missed out on some kind of other hidden superpowers, I’d be really pissed off.”
His lips twitched, and he fought a laugh. “I meant about lunch. I’ll put something together when I get out.”
“I’m making some soup. And there might be a sandwich or two in your future.”
He heard the slap of her closing the toilet seat lid, then, “So, about Finn’s report.”
Wait. She wanted to do this…here? “I don’t suppose we could wait until I’m done here?”
“You’ve had the upper hand since you walked in here. And you put me at a distinct disadvantage last night that I really didn’t appreciate.”
“Listen, you know that wasn’t any kind of rejection of you. And I know you don’t know me all that well now, but I don’t do that. Ever. I just—I had no choice. I should have never let it go that far, and I take full responsibility for it. It’s not like it’s easy for me, either.”
Silence.
He was tempted to tell her exactly what he’d been thinking since he’d stripped naked, but he doubted that would help either of them out. “Kate? Can we do this out there? Please?”
“I think it’s Shelby,” she said quietly, so he could barely hear her over the spray. “I didn’t think it was him at first. Then I waffled. Then I tried to convince myself again it just couldn’t be him. I’ve tried to think it through, figure out why he’d be doing this. I’m still not sure it all follows.” There was a long pause, then, “But my gut tells me he’s probably behind this. I don’t have a clue how, but it would just be too typical of him.”
Holding
the curtain closed in front of his body, Mac poked his head out. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s not like we have any love lost for each other. I just didn’t think he’d go to these lengths to screw me over. Do you think there’s a chance he’s not involved? That maybe the developer contacted him and he turned them down, so now they’re going after me, knowing I’m the future owner?”
Mac just held her gaze. He hated seeing her look so defeated. “Not much of one, no. If it was just them behind this, they’d come straight to you and offer a buyout.”
“Except I’m not the owner. So they went to Shelby.”
“Looks that way.”
“Even if he’s in it with them, why the stupid graffiti threats? If I back away from wanting this place and agree to renege on our inheritance deal, he stands to lose so much. Why would he risk that?”
“Maybe the development deal is bigger.”
“Could that really be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s trying to find a way to keep both, or to just buy you out altogether, and by sabotaging the place, he can get it from you for a lower price. You said he felt he deserved it all; maybe that’s what he’s angling for after all.”
“So why not just tell me flat out he’s not signing, that he wants a new deal?”
“Because he thinks you’ll fight him and tie things up longer, and maybe he can’t afford that either. So maybe he’s trying to make you want to walk away. I don’t know.”
“Where does Ralston fit in, then?”
Mac pressed his forehead against the tile and sighed. “Let me finish up here, and we’ll sit down and develop a plan of attack, okay?”
He looked up in time to see a surprising hint of a smile curve her mouth. “Oh, I’m fine right here.” She crossed her legs and leaned back, her gaze dipping pointedly lower.
He realized he’d released his grip on the curtain just slightly while they’d been talking and quickly snatched it closed again. “Okay, you’ve had your little revenge.”
“No, not really. It’s not every day a girl gets rejected bedside. Her own bedside, for that matter.”
The Black Sheep and the Princess Page 20