Daring to Fall

by T. J. Kline

  Stop! You’re going to find him and everything will be fine.

  It had to be.

  Ben parked the truck in front of the barn. “We’ll find him, Emma,” he said, as if reading her mind.

  Jake leapt from the cab and ran inside, reappearing after only a few minutes with two tranquilizer guns, several packs of darts and two brown bottles of sedative. He passed one set to Emma.

  Ben’s gaze darted between them. “Hey, what about me?”

  “Do you know how to use one?”

  “A gun? Yes.”

  “A dart gun is very different. You have to aim differently and account for how much sedative is given.” She shook her head. “If you shoot him in the wrong spot, it’ll kill him.”

  “And if he gets a hold of me?”

  “Hang on.” Jake ran back into the barn, returning with what looked like an automatic weapon and a container of large plastic BBs. “Here. Be careful with this.”

  “A pepper ball gun?”

  Emma was surprised he knew what it was. “Yes. It’ll be enough to deter Buster and turn him the other direction if he comes after you. It’s the same thing Monique and Sadie have. Jake and Brandon have been trained—”

  “Yeah, I get it.” He reached for the phone in his pocket.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “My brother. I texted him about the vandalism, remember? I need to warn him. The last thing we need is for one of the department to drive in and run into a mountain lion on the loose.”

  She reached for his wrist before he could dial. “The last thing I need is the police overreacting about this. Especially if I can get it under control quickly.”

  “Emma, he’s probably already on his way.”

  “Thanks to you,” she accused, opening the door, using it to cover one side of her while she prepped the darts. “Get into the house. Jake and I will comb the area looking for him.” She turned toward Jake. “You have your radio?”

  “I am not letting you go out alone looking for a mountain lion.”

  Emma’s brows shot up at the audacity he had, ordering her around. “You can’t stop me. And I’m not going alone. Jake’s going with me.”

  “Emma, he’s right.” She should have guessed that no matter what decision she made, Jake would find a reason to quibble. “It’s going to be getting dark soon. It would be stupid to go traipsing over the property at dusk and think Buster won’t be stalking you. We can set a trap out here, in the open for him, and I’ll set up another in his cage. He’s pretty lazy so we’ll make it easy pickings for him. I’ll keep watch on his cage and the other animals from the barn. You can keep an eye out for Buster from the house.” He looked at Ben. “Call your brother and tell them to stay away. Give him some sort of B.S. reason. A cop will want to call in Animal Control and those guys will just make a mess of things. We can deal with them after we find the cat.” He frowned at Emma, his disapproval evident. “At least that way, it won’t look quite as bad.”

  “Buster isn’t the only mountain lion out here, Jake.” Emma argued. “If he runs into another one, he has no way to defend himself.”

  “He has his teeth and we both know he’s not going to go far.” Jake shook his head. “This is what happens when people make wild animals into house pets.”

  Emma wasn’t sure whether Jake meant Buster’s original owners or her but she didn’t miss the deliberate look he shot her way. He had accused her of doing the same numerous times with several of the animals at the sanctuary.

  “I’m not going to leave you in the barn alone.”

  “The four of us can crash in the office. Mo and I have before.”

  A sly grin split his face but Emma wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of inquiring about his questionable relationship with her volunteers. They were grown women and it wasn’t her business to warn them off dating a jerk like Jake. Emma rolled her eyes, disgusted by him.

  “There’s enough to worry about without your overactive sex drive, Romeo.” Ben glared at Jake. “One animal on the loose is all we can handle right now.”

  He snorted. “Can’t make any promises.”

  “Don’t make me have to shoot you in the ass with one of your own darts,” Ben warned.

  Jake laughed arrogantly. “Says the guy holding a BB gun. Just make your call, hero, and stay with her at the house.”

  “I don’t need protection.” She glared at Jake, then at Ben. “From either of you.”

  “Sure you don’t.” Jake grabbed the radio clipped to his side pocket and called for Sadie, informing her and Monique to get to the barn before he called for his brother. He hurried to the barn doorway and pointed at Ben, ignoring Emma altogether. “Help her get that trap set before the sun goes down. That cat may not have claws but he’s still wild enough to figure out how to use those teeth. I may not agree with her methods, but I don’t really want to see Emma dead.”

  Emma’s heart thudded in her chest at his words, driving home the very real possibility of someone getting hurt.

  Aw, Jake, here I thought you didn’t care.

  Ben hung up the phone after lying out of his ass to persuade his brother that he’d call him later with the details of the vandalism and that Emma didn’t want to report it. Luckily, Andrew had assumed Ben was trying to keep him away in order to put the moves on the “hot vet” and Ben wasn’t going to argue just to save face. He’d confess the truth later, when his brother wouldn’t be tempted to single-handedly face down a mountain lion just to show off. He walked back into the kitchen.

  “Get everything taken care of?” Emma glanced his way as she slid a package of ground beef from the refrigerator, tossing it into a mixing bowl. Going back, she retrieved several pieces of raw chicken and she cut the thigh from the drumsticks before dropping them into the bowl as well.

  “Are you just going to put some anesthetic into that?”

  She didn’t even look his way. “No.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to drug Buster with food than to try to wait for him to show up and then attempt to shoot him?”

  She paused, turning toward him, irritation practically oozing from every pore. “First, I wouldn’t know how much anesthetic he was actually getting if he didn’t eat all of the meat. Second, if, for some reason, he’s able to eat the meat without getting trapped, he could escape with only a partial dose. This way, if we trap him, I have the dart stick. If not, I can dart him with the gun from a distance and it will take effect almost immediately. It’s safer.”

  “It sounds like you’re more worried about Buster than everyone else.”

  “A half-drugged mountain lion isn’t safe for anyone. I don’t want to put anyone at risk. That’s how we do things here, with the safety of everyone in mind.”

  “I highly doubt that.”

  “Excuse me?” She narrowed her eyes, flames of fury lighting them. Any mild irritation she might have felt toward him earlier disappeared in the smoking aftermath of her rage. She threw the raw chicken leg into the bowl with a splat and advanced on him, looking almost as dangerous as the lion that was the cause of this mess. Her eyes glimmered with indignation. “What would you know about how this place runs?”

  She might be dangerous, but Ben wasn’t about to run. Not when he was right. He’d done what she asked, against his better judgment and called his brother, but there was still a wild animal on the loose and that put the entire town at risk until he was captured. She either needed to catch this cat right away or he was calling in reinforcements. Emma needed to face the truth of this potentially dangerous situation, even if it was brutal.

  “I knew your dad and I may not have been out to the sanctuary that often, but it’s a small town. People talk, Emma, and I don’t once recall hearing about animals on the loose. I’m sure this isn’t the way you normally run the sanctuary but—”

  “Don’t lecture me.”

  “I’m only giving you until morning and then I’m calling Andrew in. There are lives at stake here. I’m not sayin
g you can’t do this but, Emma, you need more help.”

  “I can do this and I don’t need more help. I locked that cage.” She turned her back on him, but not before he’d seen the uncertainty flood her eyes.

  “Emma?”

  “Before I went into town, I checked the cat enclosures. I always do.” She shook her head and pursed her lips, frowning. “I know that cage was locked.”

  Ben narrowed his eyes and tried to comprehend what she wasn’t actually saying, what she seemed too afraid to say aloud. Free the slaves. After the graffiti he’d seen at the front entrance, it wasn’t far-fetched. But why would someone have done something this extreme?

  “You think someone let him out.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Her gaze sought his, pleading. He couldn’t tell if she was more worried that he might agree, or that he wouldn’t and this might be her own fault. She threw up her hands and finished with the raw meat before washing them at the sink and brushing her hair back from her face.

  “I don’t know. I can’t believe that anyone would misunderstand what I’m doing here so much that they would risk lives.”

  There was more to her suspicions than she was telling him. He could see it in the way she was avoiding his gaze. He watched her profile, willing her to look at him but she deliberately focused on everything else.

  This was too dangerous a situation for Ben to let this drop. “Emma, this isn’t the first time, is it?”

  He saw the muscle in her jaw clench, as if she were biting back the admission. “It is, but I think someone’s been tampering with the cages,” she confessed. “The chain link on Wally’s cage was cut last week but I found it before he was able to really do anything but scrape himself on it. Then I found the door unlatched on Mama Hoot’s aviary.” She faced him. “These animals can’t survive in the wild. I would never risk them getting out, they’d die. But I think someone is trying to let them out. I think someone wants to sabotage me by making it look like I’m unfit to run the sanctuary.”

  “Who?” Ben’s mind ticked through anyone he could think of who might not agree with her vision, or that of the sanctuary. But people in Hidden Falls loved her father, even if they hadn’t always agreed with his ideals for wildlife preservation. There was really only one reason for someone to target a sanctuary. “You think it’s some animal rights group?”

  She shrugged and for the first time, Ben saw fear in her aqua eyes. “I really have no clue, but it’s escalating. If someone let Buster out on purpose, it wasn’t just to scare me or make me look bad. Buster is probably the most dangerous animal here, even if he was once a pet.”

  Ben took a deep breath and glanced up at the ceiling, praying this feeling of dread would go away. He didn’t want to get mixed up in her civil war, didn’t want to feel responsible for her. He didn’t want to be a hero.

  Except that he was lying to himself and he knew it. He absolutely wanted all of those things and more.

  “Mountain lions are like a wildfire. Most of the time, you don’t see the danger coming until suddenly it’s right up on you.”

  Fighting back the urge to draw her into his embrace, to promise he’d protect her, Ben gave her the most confident, reassuring smile he could muster.

  “Then it’s a good thing you have a damn good fireman on hand.”

  Chapter Nine

  Emma stared out the kitchen window, watching the trap she’d set nearly four hours ago. She hadn’t meant to tell Ben about her suspicions. Talking about sabotage and someone being out to get her only made her sound like a paranoid freak.

  But Ben hadn’t laughed off her fears.

  In fact, he hadn’t even questioned it, which only made her more concerned because it meant he thought she might be right. Which surprised her because Ben seemed like a Boy Scout, the kind of guy inclined to believe the best of everyone, the kind who followed every rule and regulation, the kind who looked at the big picture. She actually liked that about him and, under normal circumstances, it was something they had in common. Although she could be impulsive, charging headfirst into matters but she did it within the confines of regulations. However, when it came to keeping her sanctuary open, she’d break every rule in the book if she had to in order to make it happen.

  That started with luring Buster back in his cage safely. It was going to be a long night, staring out into the stillness of the night, waiting for Buster to, hopefully, decide to return to the easy meal they’d laid out for him. She prayed he’d return; he had to. Then maybe she’d take Ben’s advice, do something to reach out to the community and let them see she was able to run this place just as well as her father had. If she could keep her animals safe.

  “Hey, Emma?”

  Ben’s voice was husky as he came down the hall, into the kitchen, rubbing a towel over his dark hair, making it stand in spikes.

  But it wasn’t his voice or his hair that made her throat close. It was the man, standing in her doorway barefoot, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, unbuttoned at the waist, with droplets of water from his shower still clinging to his skin. One broke free and slid down his chest, over his well-defined abs and past the opening of his jeans.

  Oh, to be that bead of water.

  His dark gaze slammed into hers and Emma felt a fire ignite within her. She actually squeezed her thighs together in an effort to hold back her body’s response to the Adonis standing before her. Ben McQuaid wasn’t just a fine specimen, he was a statue of perfection, carved by the hand of a god. The man was rippling muscles, long and lean, chiseled and carved flesh, and Emma wanted to trace the lines that crisscrossed and overlapped like marble artwork. The sleeve tattoo that covered most of his right arm, from the forearm to his shoulder, made the clean-cut fireman look dangerous.

  Maybe he wasn’t as safe as she’d first assumed.

  His mouth tipped in a lopsided grin, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  Please, don’t let him realize what I’m thinking.

  “Where’d you want me to put this towel?”

  “The . . . uh . . .” she stammered, unable to get her brain functioning again. “Um . . . in the . . .” Shit, what was that room called?

  “Laundry room?” he filled in for her, his lips quirking to one side and deepening that damn dimple.

  “Yes.” She jumped up from the table, needing something other than his rock-hard body to focus on. “I think I still have some of my dad’s t-shirts if you need a clean shirt to sleep in.” She plucked the towel from his fingers and felt her entire body throb when his hand reached out, grasping her wrist.

  “Don’t worry about it. I always have a bag in the back of my truck, in case I stay over at the station.”

  His voice was more gravely than she’d realized. His eyes practically glowed with golden flecks in the depth of his dark gaze as it skimmed over her, caressing her face and lingering on her lips.

  Please, don’t look at me like that. I can’t be responsible for anything I might do.

  Ben’s thumb brushed along the inside of her elbow making goose bumps break out over her arms. She could smell her own soap mixed with the male scent of his skin—so tantalizing. Emma fought back a shiver of need, wishing she could just lean into him.

  Hell, who was she kidding? What she really wanted to do was to drag him into her room and have her way with him. Her breath caught in her chest at the fantasy.

  “You think it’s safe for me to go grab it?”

  “Safe?” she repeated, dumbly, wishing her brain would get with the program.

  “Because of Buster,” he reminded her, lifting his brows. He was probably questioning her sanity at this point. “Do you think I could go out and grab my bag?”

  “Oh . . . oh! Yeah, because of Buster.” She took a step back, away from his spellbinding touch, needing to put some space between him and her so that her brain could function properly again. “I’ll get it.”

  She hurried past him, holding her breath and trying desperately to get
through the doorway without touching the bared skin of his chest. She didn’t need anything else that might scatter her thoughts, or her senses, and touching him would definitely do it. Emma rushed through the front door, uncertain whether she was more anxious to get away from Ben or to get some clothes on him so she could stop thinking about how much she wanted to see exactly how warm and wet his body would feel beneath her fingers.

  “Wait a second,” he called, running after her, his feet padding quietly on the hardwood floor.

  “It’s fine,” she yelled back. “You don’t have shoes on.”

  “No, you need this.”

  Emma ignored him, jogging down the steps and threw open the passenger door of his truck, leaning inside, grateful for the respite to cool the very hot fantasies about a certain half-naked fireman and what sort of fire she’d like him to put out for her. She glanced around the front seats, but saw no bag.

  Where would I put a duffel bag?

  Emma climbed into the truck, looking into the backseat. Sure enough, tucked partially out of sight under the backseat was a black duffel bag. She tugged on the handle, sliding the zipper back to reveal what appeared to be several changes of clothing. Emma fought back a grin. He was a Boy Scout, for sure.

  “Got it!” she yelled, holding the bag up as she backed out of the truck.

  “Don’t move.” Ben’s voice was low but authoritative.

  She looked back toward the porch, where he waited. “What? I’m just—”

  Then she heard it, that low rumble she’d recognize anywhere. Buster’s warning growl. She looked past the back of the truck, on the other side of the driveway, where she’d set the trap up under the trees.

  Buster was crouched low, as if he’d been trying to get at the meat she’d left out without getting caught in the trap but without claws, he couldn’t quite manage to grasp the meat. His golden eyes glowed in the near dusk as he focused in on her, the shadows making his tawny fur look darker than usual, more like a panther. She would have had a perfect shot to dart him in the hindquarters without risking any injury to him, if she hadn’t been in such a hurry that she’d forgotten to bring the dart gun.