Reckless River: Men of Mercy, Book 3

by Cross, Lindsay

  No way. Sparrow had too much skill to fall off the side of a cliff. Still, he leaned over the edge and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw nothing but the rocks in the river.

  He stood up, looking over the river valley, taking in the majestic mountain range. Tennessee held some awe-inspiring wonders. If only its people were as wonderful. Forcing back the memories, Jared turned to pick up where he’d left off.

  He heard her before he saw her.

  Moving away from the edge of the cliff, Jared eased back into the woods, walking carefully so as not to alert her to his presence. He spied her just beyond a dense cove of trees, sitting in a small clearing. She’d piled up some leaves and twigs and was trying to start a fire with two pieces of wood, but she was moving way too slow. Her hands shook so bad, she kept dropping the stick. Her chattering teeth sounded louder than a woodpecker tapping a tree.

  He had just started creeping forward when she dropped the sticks. “I know you’re there.”

  Jared stopped and hid his smile. “Told you I’d find you.”

  When she finally looked up, it was his turn to suck in a breath. Her blue lips stood out stark against her too pale skin and her pupils nearly swallowed her eyes. “Jesus, why didn’t you stop?”

  Her gaze narrowed. “Why? So you could torture me to death? No thanks. I’ve heard hypothermia is just like going to sleep, only you don’t wake up. Besides, I have to get back and stop Jimbo. He wants the mountain and if he gets it, he’ll kill Squirrel.”

  He’d pushed her to choosing death by exposure over him? Well, maybe he would make the same choice in her situation, but that sure as hell didn’t mean he wasn’t pissed off. Jared squatted next to her and made a grab for her arm.

  Sparrow jerked away from him, falling on her butt. “Get away from me.”

  “Don’t be stupid. I’ve got to warm you up.”

  She scrambled back on her hands and feet. “No thanks. Don’t much care for your style of warming.”

  Jared pushed his remorse down and continued to stalk forward. “You think I want you like that now? Sorry honey, but even I have limits.”

  “You think I believe that? Stay away from me.” Sparrow scrambled faster, but her elbow gave out and she fell to the ground. Only to push herself right back up. Jared forced himself to stop. Her expression had morphed from angry to frightened.

  “What’s it gonna take for you to believe me?”

  Her harsh laugh turned into a deep cough, and it took all his strength not to yank her into his arms and cradle her against him. “Nothing. You’ve made your point very clear.”

  “Dammit, I just said that to scare you. If you don’t stop and let me help you, you really are going to die.”

  She shook her head wildly, her teeth chattering even harder with the rough movement. His patience was at an end. It took him all of two leaps to grab her and lift her against his body.

  “Let me go!”

  “I’m not going to let you kill yourself.” Jared locked his arms tight, careful not to hurt her.

  She pushed against his chest and he barely felt it. But he did feel the freezing temperature of her body. Thunder boomed again. He had to find them shelter right now. Jared ripped off his poncho and wrapped her up in it to protect her from any more rain and hopefully trap in a little body heat. Then he picked her up, holding her in front of his chest. “I promise not to harm you in any way. It’s fixing to start raining and the temperature will continue to fall. If we don’t find shelter and heat, you will go into shock.”

  Her attempts to fight ceased and she sagged against him, out of breath and trembling. “I know. I was trying to find another cave, but I couldn’t keep going.”

  “Smart.” Jared started walking with Sparrow’s sparse weight clasped in his arms. The threat of rain hung heavy in the air and grey clouds obscured any sunlight.

  There were no more breaks in Sparrow’s teeth chattering. Her entire body shook. Jared cursed and tried to squeeze her against as much of his body as possible, but there was only so much he could do while still moving.

  “Sparrow, think. Any shelter you’ve ever heard of on this side of the river? Caves, hunting sheds, anything like that?”

  “N-n-n-no—no—wait. The bear’s den, where squirrel tracked his grizzly.”

  “Good girl, where is it?”

  “Don’t know for sure.” She shuddered so hard he almost dropped her. “He said it’s halfway up the tallest ridge you can see. And the top of the hill is as bare as an old man’s bald head.”

  Great, a tall mountain in the Tennessee Mountains. Still, Jared looked around and nearly fell over in shock. The next hill over looked exactly as she’d described. “I’ll be damned. Hold on.”

  Jared took off at a brisk jog, carefully shielding her face from stray branches. Her body temperature seemed to drop even more and adrenaline fueled his muscles. He had to find shelter now.

  Jared began the ascent, his legs burning with pain. Didn’t matter. He kept going, cursing when he had to slow down and wind around a smattering of huge boulders jutting out of the earth. At least the trees were thinner up here; the scraggly pines didn’t have enough dirt in the rocky soil to spread their roots. He had to protect her. His woman.

  Shit. Not his. No matter how much he wanted to possess her, he couldn’t. Not until Hoyt woke and confirmed his suspicion.

  He kept scanning his surroundings, watching for some small break in the earth signaling the cave. But he needn’t have bothered. Suddenly, he was standing before a huge opening in the side of the mountain.

  One that was more than large enough to hold an entire family of bears.

  “Going to sit you right here for just a minute, make sure there aren’t any animals hiding out in there okay?” Jared gently laid her down on the ground and propping her against a boulder.

  Sparrow just leaned over on her side and tucked her knees against her chest. Without hesitation, Jared pulled his gun and went into the cave. He didn’t have much longer before she went into shock.

  The cave wasn’t deep, so he cleared it in seconds, studiously ignoring the obvious signs that some animal had lived there in the past. He ran back out, grabbed Sparrow, and carried her into the cave. Once she was tucked against the wall, he said, “I’ll be right back,” then ran out to gather as much dry kindling and as many twigs as he could find. He returned with a small arm load, which he dumped next to Sparrow. “I’ll have you dry and warm in just another minute.”

  Still no response, but her teeth were chattering as loud as gunfire in the cave. “Hold on.” Jared made a fire faster than he’d ever made one in his entire life, and when he was sure the flame could hold its own, he turned to Sparrow.

  Her pale skin was laced with blue veins and chill bumps. He didn’t think she was even aware of his presence. He ripped the knife from his pocket and started to cut away her wet clothes. It was obvious she was in serious trouble when she didn’t even protest him cutting off her shirt.

  Next, he went to work on her boots. They were knee-high and laced up the front. Perfect to protect from snakebites but terrible when submerged in water. He quickly unlaced the left boot and yanked it off, then her damp sock. He repeated the process on her right one, and when he yanked it off, her knife clattered to the floor.

  “Smart girl. I should’ve checked you for weapons.” Next, he pulled at her shorts, but they were plastered to her body. He didn’t want to, but he cut them off as well. She needed to get warm more than she needed to protect her modesty. He yanked his blanket from the bag, stripped off her panties, and rolled her into a cocoon next to the fire. Then he stripped and slid into the blanket with her, gasping when her skin made contact with his. She was like ice.

  His concern kicked into overdrive and Jared started rubbing brisk circles on her back, attempting to warm up her core. Her entire body shook and shivered, and Jared’s chest tightened with apprehension.

  “Foolish girl, you could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

  “Sa
fer than you,” she stuttered. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  He felt a small measure of guilt. He’d done his best to frighten her, but he’d been so angry. It was awful to see her this way.

  “C-c-clothes.”

  “There gone.”

  She struggled feebly against him, but he swatted her hand away like he would a fly. “You don’t have anything to worry about. I just want to get you warm.”

  “Why?”

  “I just do.” He couldn’t tell her that seeing her like this tore at his insides. Or that he’d seen soldiers go into hypothermia under milder conditions, with half the amount of exposure. “I can’t tell you, but I need you to get better, okay?”

  What was wrong with him? Maybe he should be rejoicing at her pain. But that voice in his head—the voice insisting she couldn’t do this thing, that she was innocent—was only growing louder.

  “Jared,” Sparrow gasped.

  He loosened his arms instantly, realizing he’d been squeezing her tighter and tighter. She would flee him if she were able, and he couldn’t blame her. He’d done his best to terrorize her. He wanted to hurt the person who was responsible for his brother’s pain. But was that person really her?

  He shook his head slightly. This wasn’t the time for questions. His instincts told him to take care of her, and he never ignored his instincts. “Talk to me.”

  She didn’t answer except for a fierce jerk. Jared rubbed her back harder, trying to create enough friction to produce heat. He’d isolated her between his body and the fire, but she still felt like ice. If she fell asleep, she might slip into a coma. And what the hell could he do about it out here?

  “Sparrow?” Jared gentled his voice, trying to ease some of her fear. Still no answer. He leaned back and saw that her lids had slid shut, and alarm skittered through him faster than a scorpion across the hot desert sand.

  “Open your eyes, dammit.” Her lids fluttered but didn’t fully open. Had he gotten so lost in his thoughts and anger and frustration that he let her slip away?

  “Sparrow. Open. Your. Eyes.” He punctuated each word, trying to somehow force his way into her consciousness. And he was rewarded by her pure gold gaze, making him feel as drunk as if they were the whiskey they resembled.

  “What?” Her question was delivered in a groggy voice.

  “I want you to talk to me.”

  “Why?”

  So that you don’t slip into a coma or shock. So that you don’t die. “I’m bored. It’s the least you can do since I saved you.”

  She grumbled a bit as he continued to try and heat her core temperature. “Just sleep.” Her eyes slid shut again.

  “No! Wake up. Talk to me.”

  She groaned, and damn it was sexy, punctuated even more when she opened those beautiful eyes again. “Let me sleep.”

  Over his dead body. “Tell me what it was like to grow up here.”

  Jared searched his own memories for any happiness he’d experienced here, but the most he could remember was the crisp air found only in the mountains. The hazy memory of his mother’s smile. A pair of whiskey eyes piercing the darkness. But everything after that was simply darkness. He shook himself.

  “Why do you care?” she grumbled.

  “I just do. Now tell me. I won’t leave you alone until you do.”

  They lay on their sides, faces only inches apart. Her body was gradually warming and he started to become aware of just how intimately they were pressed together.

  “It was hard.”

  “Wow, really? That’s all you’ve got?”

  “You should remember what it was like. Hard work. Hard life. Hard people.”

  Yes, he remembered. He remembered every time he closed his eyes. Every time he woke up in a cold sweat and had to turn on the fucking lamp to ease the fear. “But I left, remember? Tell me something good.”

  Because he didn’t want or need to hear what her life had been like after Miss Kay.

  “I guess the only really good memories I got are of Squirrel. Everything got better after he took me under his wing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He taught me how to hunt. How to fight and defend myself.” Jared had another brief image of the scrappy little girl who had rescued him and his brother from that dark closet. For the life of him he couldn’t picture her fighting anything bigger than a butterfly.

  “Why did you have to defend yourself?”

  “Jimbo. I had to fight against Jimbo and his brothers.”

  The image of Sparrow standing next to her hulking older brother filled him with fury. Jimbo could kill her with one punch.

  “That bastard hurt you?” Jared was already intent on killing Kay, but Jimbo had just moved up to number one on that list. More so now, because if Sparrow was telling the truth about her involvement, Jimbo is the one responsible for what happened to his brother.

  Sparrow gave a brittle laugh, which she punctuated when her teeth cracked together with another hard tremble. Jared tried to pull her more tightly against him, but they were already melded together so close they could be one person.

  “Not after I nearly took his balls off with my knife.”

  Her knife. His brother. No—not going there. “So that’s why you got the collection then? And why that Geraldine girl nearly pissed her pants when you slipped a knife around her throat?”

  She nodded against him. He tucked her head into his neck, taking pleasure in the way her hot little breasts puffed against his skin. Her tremors gentled to the occasional shake.

  “Tell me something else that you remember.” Talking about her knives wasn’t safe for either of them. The doubt growing in his mind about her involvement was close to taking over.

  “I remember you. And how fierce you were that night I freed you.”

  Her whispered words shocked him. “Fierce? I don’t remember that part of it.” No, he remembered the pain. And Sparrow, of course.

  “You were determined to protect your little brother. And when we escaped, you were determined to protect me too.”

  Her words tugged at his memory. Flashes of them running through the woods. Of Hoyt and Sparrow and him in the dark forest. ” I wanted you to come with us.”

  She nodded against him and snuggled a little closer. Her feet wiggled between his calves, still cold, but not frozen.

  “And you wouldn’t leave with us.”

  Sparrow nodded her head again and let out a yawn. An occasional tremor still shook her, her temperature had warmed enough to safely rule out shock. But that wasn’t the most pressing thought on his mind. “Why wouldn’t you come?”

  He remembered now, remembered screaming her name as she disappeared into the woods after refusing to leave with them. Remembered dreaming about rescuing her from this evil mountain. But those had been the dreams of a young boy.

  Sparrow interrupted his thoughts, her voice no longer a weak whisper. “I couldn’t leave my mom. She needed me to take care of her.”

  “Isn’t that supposed to be the other way around?”

  Sparrow shrugged. “Maybe in other parts. But if not for me, she would have gone hungry.”

  So after rescuing him and his brother that scared little girl had returned to this piece of shit mountain to take care of her mother?

  “How old were you? What happened to your mother?”

  She got very still against him, and Jared held his breath, waiting to see if she’d fallen asleep. Her words had been getting softer toward the end of their conversation, fatigue weighing her down as heavy as a damn boulder.

  “I was eight when I found her dead,” she said softly. “She’d overdosed on pain killers.”

  Holy shit that was fucked up. How awful it must have been for her to find her momma that way. Especially after staying on that mountain only for her. “And then Miss Kay took you in?”

  “She let me live in her house. Made sure I was fed.”

  “What about protecting you from her sons?”

  “She was b
usy. I needed to learn how to fend for myself anyway.” In those words, Jared could hear the broken dreams of a young girl.

  Sparrow spoke, “Miss Kay controls everyone. Everyone but her sons.”

  19

  Sparrow woke up bundled in a cocoon of incredible warmth, with Jared’s lips pressed to her neck. A chill shot down her spine, but it wasn’t from the cold. She’d never felt so hot in her entire life. She tried to remember the night before, but the only thing that stood out was the memory of feeling cold, so cold she’d feared she would die from it. Apparently, Jared had had other plans.

  Careful not to move, she studied him while he slept. Up close, his black hair appeared silky and she took the opportunity to run her fingers through it and learn its texture. They lay on their sides facing each other. She traced his arms, his thick neck and shoulders, fascinated by how soft his skin was over the hardness of his muscles.

  He shifted and she came to the dawning awareness that she was naked. And he was damn near close to naked too. Bells went off, and she jerked against him, unable to hold still. Jared awoke immediately, his dark eyes holding her immobile.

  “You made it.” His sleepy smile was so sexy and sweet. Her heart flipped over hard in her chest.

  “Apparently, I did.” She buffeted her snarky comment by soothing a thumb over his cheek.

  ” Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

  “It was because I was so scared of you,” she choked out.

  Instead of getting angry or even remorseful, Jared simply nodded. “I know.”

  And then he pulled her tighter against him and she became aware of every single inch of skin pressed to hers. She fought the urge to wiggle against him, but it was impossible to control her racing heart or the shallow breaths sawing in and out of her chest.

  Sparrow swallowed, for some reason feeling like she owed him some sort of further explanation. But she kept her mouth shut, unwilling to give him more ammunition to use against her later. She wanted this calm version of Jared to stay around as long as possible.