To Love and Protect Her

by Margaret Watson

  “Leave that door unlocked,” he said, just as she was about to close it.

  She gave him a suspicious look. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “I don’t want to have to break the door down in case you pass out in the bathtub. Ryan probably wouldn’t appreciate that.”

  “I’m not going to pass out in the bathtub,” she snapped. She didn’t want to argue with Griff. All she wanted to do was soak away some of the aches in her body, then crawl into bed.

  “Just leave the door unlocked.”

  “Fine.” She waited until he handed her the aspirin, then shut the door with a deliberate click, then dropped her clothes on the floor on the way to the bathroom. It was a decadent place, with windows looking out onto the mountains and a huge tub that would fit two. Willa refused to let herself think about sharing that tub with Griff. He wasn’t interested, and if she were smart, she wouldn’t be, either.

  The water felt blissfully good on her sore muscles, and even the stinging from the scrapes on her hands couldn’t take away from her pleasure. She sank into the depths of the tub, feeling the warm water easing away the worst of the aches from her arms and legs. When her arms and legs felt buttery soft and relaxed, she turned on the hot water again and watched the steam rise off the surface of the water. She closed her eyes, savoring the warmth and relaxation, and drifted off to sleep.

  The knock at the door startled her, and she jumped. The water had chilled around her, and when she moved, all her muscles protested. “What?” she said, as Griff knocked again.

  “Are you all right in there, Willa?”

  She heard the worry in his voice. “I’m fine,” she said. “I guess I fell asleep in the tub.”

  “Can you get out by yourself?”

  “Of course I can.” Did he think she was going to ask for his help? Her face burned just thinking about it.

  “I’ll wait here until you’re out.”

  She wanted to tell him to go away, but knew it would be a waste of time. So she sat up in the tub and tried to pull herself out.

  Vicious pain shot through her muscles, and she couldn’t stop herself from crying out. Immediately the door to the bathroom burst open, and Griff walked in.

  He grabbed a towel and held it in front of her, preserving her modesty, but she still instinctively covered herself. “Get out of here!”

  “You need help getting out of that tub,” he said, and he sounded implacable. “Come on, Willa. I’ll help you.”

  Humiliated and embarrassed, she allowed him to reach down and grasp her arms, lifting her out. He immediately wrapped the towel around her and stepped away.

  “Thank you,” she said, and she knew her voice didn’t sound very gracious. “I’m sure I can manage by myself now.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you out in the living room,” he said. Then he left, pulling the door closed behind him.

  Her face burned with humiliation, but she told herself to ignore it. Clearly Griff wasn’t interested in her sexually. She’d better get that through her head before she made a total fool of herself.

  The sun had already slipped behind the mountain outside the window, and the trees cast long shadows over the house. It was later than she’d realized, she thought as she dried herself and put on clean clothes. It had been a big mistake to fall asleep in the bathtub. Her muscles had stiffened again as the water cooled, and they protested painfully as she dressed.

  When she emerged into the living room, she saw that Griff had started a fire in the fireplace. He sat on the couch, but stood when he heard her behind him. “Come here and sit down,” he said, waving her toward the couch.

  She walked slowly, hating the fact that her muscles were sore, hating the fact that Griff would see her weakness. But he wrapped his arm around her and eased her to a sitting position.

  “You’re more sore than you expected to be, aren’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Anytime you take a tumble like that, you’re going to feel it. Even if you don’t think you hurt yourself, you’ll get plenty of bruises.” Once she was settled, he wrapped a blanket around her. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

  “That sounds great.” She watched him, puzzled. “I thought you’d be mad at me for falling off that cliff.”

  “I’m not mad at you, Willa.” He sat down next to her. “I’m mad at myself for taking you on a hike like that. Will you forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said gruffly. “It’s my own fault that I got hurt. If I hadn’t been so darned stubborn, I wouldn’t have fallen in the first place.”

  Six

  He leaned back and looked at her. “Why don’t we agree to forget about it? All’s well that ends well, after all.”

  “That’s fine with me,” she said, watching him carefully. “But can you do that?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “Are you sure?” She watched him steadily. “You’re pretty hard on yourself, Griff.”

  Instead of answering, he folded his arms across his chest and stared at her for a moment. Finally he said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what you think it means.” Exasperated, she eased herself off the couch and walked over to the window, watching the dusk eating away at the light. “It means that you blame yourself far more than most people would, and that you take far more responsibility than you need to take. It means that you don’t forgive yourself easily.”

  “I didn’t realize you were a psychologist,” he drawled.

  She didn’t turn around to face him. She’d heard the hint of fear beneath the sarcasm, and she was afraid her compassion would show on her face. That was only one of the things Griff didn’t want from her.

  “I’ve spent two whole days with you now, Griff. And as I said, I learned early in life to pay attention. You blamed yourself for not getting to my apartment earlier when I was kidnapped, and you blamed yourself for not catching the two people who tried to take me. Now you’re blaming yourself because I fell off the mountain. And none of it is your fault.”

  “Ryan entrusted your safety to me,” he said carefully. “Taking you on a hike wasn’t in the best interests of your safety.”

  She spun around to face him. “I already told you that I knew I was having problems and didn’t tell you. So how does that make it your fault?”

  “I should have been able to predict what would happen.”

  She gave him a tired glance. “Why should you have been able to predict my foolishness? You don’t know me that well, Griff.”

  “I know you better than you realize,” he muttered.

  “I doubt it.” She hoped her gaze was cool. “I can see this isn’t going to work. Maybe we’d better go back to College Station, after all.”

  “We’re not allowed to have a disagreement?” he asked.

  “Is that what you call it?”

  Surprisingly, his mouth curled into a faint grin. “It sounds a lot more dignified than saying we’re having a fight.”

  She found herself reluctantly smiling back at him. “Four days ago, I wouldn’t have imagined having either a fight or a disagreement with you.”

  “Four days ago, you were safe in your own world.”

  Her smile faded. “We’re back at the kidnapping. And that brings us back to College Station. I’m still not convinced we shouldn’t go back there.”

  “Come here and sit down, Willa.” Griff patted the couch.

  She sat down at the other end. “We’ve already discussed this, Griff. And I still think it’s a good idea.”

  “I know you do.” His mouth quirked up into a tiny smile again, momentarily softening his face. He looked like a man she could care about, she thought. Then she banished the idea from her mind. That way led to nothing but heartache for her, and discomfort for Griff.

  “And I think the idea stinks.”

  His blunt words startled her. “Don’t hesitate to say how you feel, Griff.”

  “I never have. And I know you haven
’t given up on this harebrained idea of yours.”

  He turned to face her and took her hands. Her heart lurched in her chest, but she tried to keep her face expressionless. “I don’t think it’s harebrained.”

  “You told me that Ryan is the only family you have left. Is that true?”

  “No, actually, it’s not. I don’t have any real family. Ryan is my make-believe family.” She smiled, although her heart wrenched. “I was an only child of an only child.”

  “All right, maybe the Fortunes aren’t blood relations. But they consider themselves your family, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they do. Ryan and my father became close friends while they were in the army. Dad asked Ryan to be my godfather and we’ve been close ever since.”

  “And you consider them your family?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  His hands shifted, and he twined his fingers with hers. She tried to ignore the pounding of her heart. “Don’t you think Ryan would be upset if anything happened to you?”

  “I know he would. That’s the kind of person Ryan is.”

  “Then why would you want to go back to College Station and take that kind of chance? Why can’t you let him do this for you? He’s not asking for much. He’s just asking for a little bit of your time.”

  Willa looked down at her hands, lost in Griff’s much bigger ones. “When you put it that way, you make me feel small and petty.”

  He gave her hands a squeeze. “I don’t mean to do that. The last thing anyone could call you is small or petty. Sometimes what we want to do might sound like the best plan to us, but it would hurt other people. Then we have to decide what’s more important.”

  She looked up at him. “You know Ryan is more important to me than going back to College Station.”

  He nodded, but there was a light in his eyes. “I thought you would say that. So we’ll stay here.”

  “Do you think this is the smartest thing to do?” she asked.

  For a moment his eyes hardened, and she saw the warrior inside him. “If it were just me, if I didn’t have to worry about someone else, I’d be back in College Station and I’d hunt those two down. But it isn’t just me. I can’t do what I want to do, because there’s someone else I have to think about.” He turned to her, and the fierce light faded from his eyes. “Making sure you’re all right is far more important than my own personal satisfaction. Those two will be caught, sooner or later. And they’ll be punished. I can wait.”

  “You’re very disciplined,” she murmured.

  He glanced at her, then looked into the fire. “It comes with the job. If you’re not disciplined, you don’t last for long.”

  “What is your job, Griff?” She gathered her courage and asked him directly. “Everyone in the Fortune family has his or her theory, but none of your siblings will tell us exactly what you do.”

  “That’s because none of them know, exactly,” he said.

  “Your own brothers and sister don’t know what you do for a living?” She stared at him, amazed.

  “It’s better that they don’t know.”

  “And why is that?”

  “It’s safer for them if they don’t know what I do.”

  “And how do you prevent them from knowing what you do?”

  “I don’t spend much time at home. That’s safer for them, too.”

  “So you keep yourself isolated and stay away from your family to protect them?” A warmth blossomed and swelled inside her.

  “You’re making this into a big deal, Willa. Believe me, it isn’t.”

  “I think it’s a very big deal,” she said softly. “You must love them very much.”

  “They’re my family,” he said. She could see the truth deep in his eyes: his family was everything to him.

  “I wish I had a family like that,” she said, hearing the wistful note in her own voice.

  “You do. The Fortunes are your family.”

  “It’s not the same.” She gave him a smile and let go of his hands. “And now we’re becoming maudlin. How about I fix some spaghetti for dinner?”

  “Sounds good to me.” Griff sounded as eager to change the subject as she was. “Why don’t I give you a hand?”

  “Great.” She forced herself to smile. “You can make the salad.”

  “I think I can handle that.”

  She watched as his competent hands shredded lettuce and chopped carrots. She didn’t want to discuss family with Griff. He fascinated her, but they had skated uncomfortably close to discussing her own family, and she wasn’t ready to do that. After her mother walked out on them, it had been only her and her father. They had been close—she would have done anything for him.

  And she had, she thought. She’d let him dictate her choice of career. She’d agreed with her father when he suggested a job as a college professor, because he was gravely ill at the time and she didn’t want to upset him. And it had seemed as good an idea as any back then, when she couldn’t think of anything but her father.

  But after only one semester at the university, she was already chafing at the bit. And the two days she’d spent with Griff made her even more unsure of what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.

  She didn’t have to decide that now, she told herself. In fact, it would be a pretty bad idea to make a decision like that under these circumstances. So she would put it out of her head, and concentrate on getting through the next few days with Griff, without embarrassing herself or him again.

  And that was going to be harder than she could ever have imagined. She hadn’t known that she could be so wildly attracted to a man. She hadn’t known that she could completely melt from one kiss. And she hadn’t known how painful it would be to realize that he wasn’t nearly as interested in her.

  Griff watched Willa as she poured the spaghetti sauce into a pan and started the water boiling, and wondered what put such sadness in her eyes. He suspected it had something to do with her family. She’d been awfully quick to change the subject.

  He wanted to wrap his arms around her and comfort her. God help him, he wanted to tell her that it felt like she belonged to him. And that thought scared him more than any assassin or any thug ever could.

  He wasn’t the right man for Willa. Hell, he was as far from the right man as she could get. And he’d better keep that firmly in mind.

  “Why don’t we eat in front of the fire?” he said, keeping his voice light. “It’s a shame to waste it.”

  “That sounds like a great idea,” she said, equally lightly. “Why don’t you put that salad on the coffee table, and I’ll bring over the spaghetti.”

  “Consider it done.”

  He gradually relaxed as they ate, and he even managed to carry on a normal conversation with Willa. He told her about London, where he had been based, and she told him, delightedly, that she’d spent some time there with her father. When he prodded her to tell him more about her travels around the world, she happily complied. He found there were a number of places around the globe they’d both visited.

  “I didn’t realize your father was posted so many places outside the U.S.,” he said as he carried the remains of their dinner into the kitchen.

  “I’ve been all over the world.” She leaned back on the couch and stared at the fire. “I guess that’s why I’m so attached to the Fortunes. They’ve been the one stable thing in my life.”

  He joined her on the couch, sitting far enough away to avoid temptation.

  “He and my father served in the army together in Vietnam. They always made it a point to get together once or twice a year. So I grew up as a sort of honorary cousin to all Ryan’s kids. We’d stay for a few days, then move on.”

  “No wonder you wanted a job like the one you have,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” She crinkled her forehead.

  “Being a university professor is about as stable a job as you can get. Once you get tenure, you’re there for as long as you want to be.”

  She nodded. “It’
s stable, all right.” She hesitated, and he thought she was going to add something. Instead she turned to him and said, “And how do you like traveling the world?”

  He didn’t want to tell her that he didn’t see the pleasant side of the various parts of the world he visited. Most of the time, all he saw was the seedy, dangerous and dark parts of each country. He definitely didn’t visit the tourist attractions.

  “I have a job to do,” he finally said. “If you ask any businessperson who travels for a living, he or she would tell you the same thing. They don’t see the places they visit. They just do their job and then go home.”

  “Don’t you ever take vacations?”

  “Yeah, I take vacations. I go home to our ranch in Australia.”

  “And I go to Ryan’s ranch,” she said softly. She stared at the fire. “It sounds like we’re a lot alike.”

  Her words brought pleasure to him, an insidious pleasure that threatened to worm its way into his heart. He banished it immediately.

  They weren’t alike in any way, shape or form, he reminded himself savagely. Willa was a lady, a woman who taught college and knew nothing of the ugly side of life.

  He was a man who lived daily in the very ugliest parts of life. He was a man who knew three hundred ways to kill with his bare hands. Griff was a man who knew things no decent man would ever know. And the darkness that ran through him, that consumed him at times, was something totally alien to a woman like Willa.

  Before he could think of a clever retort, a way of pointing out to Willa that they would never be at all alike, the lights flickered off in the cabin. They came back on immediately.

  Willa sat up on the couch. “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure.” Griff automatically reached for his gun at the small of his back, then realized he wasn’t wearing it. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  He took the stairs to the loft two at a time. In moments he’d strapped his gun in place, and ran back down the stairs. Willa was on the couch, staring over her shoulder at him. Her blue-gray eyes were enormous in her face.

  “Is something wrong?” Her voice was hushed.

  “I don’t know. But I’m not going to take any chances.”