Deadly Hunter

by Rachel Lee

  “So am I.” He snaked an arm out until it wound around her shoulders. In front of them, the forest remained busy. And now they were bringing up floodlights. “We’d better go before we’re blinded.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “I can sure as hell limp.”

  “Lean on me if you need to.”

  His arm squeezed her. “I already leaned on you a whole lot tonight. You were magnificent.”

  Her heart nearly exploded with joy at that. It might have been a gross exaggeration on his part, but it felt good.

  She’d have felt a whole lot better if he had ever suggested he might hang around. Not after what she’d said to him. As they made their way down the mountain, a heaviness filled her heart. She couldn’t think of one good reason why he’d want to stay here. Not one.

  No apology could make up for the words she had thrown at him.

  Chapter 13

  They arrived home well after midnight. They’d shared few words, and that might have bothered Allison except she could tell from the way Jerrod kept shifting in his seat that he was hurting badly. He was a man to whom stillness seemed to come as naturally as moving but right then he just couldn’t hold still.

  “Are you going to be okay?” she asked finally. “Do you need to go to the E.R.?”

  “It was that damn kick that did me in. I’ll be fine.”

  She wasn’t exactly doing well herself. The adrenaline that had buoyed her for hours was now exacting its toll in extreme fatigue. She wanted her bed, and wanted it desperately. The whirling mass of thoughts and impressions in her head were just going to have to wait. She felt as if she could have conked out on a bed of nails.

  Jerrod eased out of the car in a way that made her wince for him.

  “I’m getting some fresh clothes,” he remarked. “I need to clean up.”

  She watched him limp toward his house, then went inside. She might be exhausted, but she wasn’t past feeling. She didn’t expect him to come back. In fact, she wondered if she would ever see him again.

  She’d been a fool, and his saying she had been magnificent didn’t make up for the fact that she’d let her feelings take charge from her brain.

  Idiot.

  Too late, she told herself. Too late. She’d said horrible things, then she’d done stupid things. She couldn’t take any of it back and... Oh, God, losing him was going to hurt beyond belief. The pain was already settling into her heart, constricting her breathing, feeling like the worst of toothaches with each breath she drew.

  She wanted to curl up in a ball and just sob, but first she made herself shower and change into a drab flannel nightgown. Only then did she crawl under the covers, resisting the urge to pull them over her head like a child.

  The sobs came at last, and tears were still pouring down her cheeks as sleep stole her away.

  * * *

  She awoke from a disturbing, mixed-up dream to the darkness and a realization that she wasn’t alone. She caught her breath and froze. There couldn’t be another threat, could there?

  “It’s just me,” Jerrod said. His voice came from the floor beside her.

  Startled, she sat up and looked over the edge of the bed. She could barely make him out in the dark. “What are you doing down there?”

  “Two things. Trying not to wake you up and trying to get my back to settle. I must have dislodged the shrapnel a bit.”

  “You need a doctor!”

  “No, I’ll be fine. They told me what to watch out for. It just needs to settle down.”

  “Can I get you anything? Can you get on the bed?”

  “I’d like to get on that bed with you, but right now...” He drew a deep breath, sat up and cussed. “Right now I think a chair might be best. One that isn’t padded.”

  “I’ll take the pillows off my rocker. Do you need help getting up?” Concern for him overrode her absolute relief that he was here. Part of her stubbornly wanted to rejoice, but most of her was focused on one thing: helping Jerrod.

  “I can get up on my own. I just won’t like it.”

  She hurried out to the living room to remove the pillows from her rocker. It would give him a hard, straight back to lean against. She heard him limp as he approached, then watched with nails biting into her hands as he lowered himself gingerly into it.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Do you want some coffee? Ibuprofen? Food?”

  “Haven’t you done enough tonight already?”

  Her heart sank, and the incipient sense of joy over him being here felt like a balloon that had just been pricked. She could feel her whole body sag as a renewed sense of impending grief rolled through her. “You’re right,” she said in a small voice.

  “Oh, hell, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. You must be exhausted. You don’t need to take care of me.”

  Her heart lifted, but just a tiny bit. “What if I want to do something for you?” She waited, hoping he didn’t reject her simple offer. If he did, she was going to lock herself in her bedroom with her own misery until he left.

  She was so tired of the roller coaster she had been on the past few days that she didn’t think she could stand another dip or plunge.

  “Coffee would be great. Anything to eat would be great. But it’s still the middle of the night, you need your rest and I don’t want you running around like my nanny.”

  A solo birdcall penetrated the house.

  “Not quite the middle of the night. The birds are waking. Jerrod, just let me do this. Then we can have it out, or you can try to sleep sitting up or whatever.”

  “Have it out?” he repeated. At last his dark eyes met hers. “Oh, woman, we have some talking to do.”

  “But not right now.”

  She flew to the kitchen, afraid of his coming words, afraid that she would once again be shredded by a man she cared about. And this time there’d be a whole lot of good reason for it.

  She wondered if she would ever come to terms with what she had done last night. The rest of her self-discoveries seemed minor by comparison. Each beat of her heart pained her. Each breath seemed almost impossible to draw against the weight in her chest.

  She made the coffee, trying to gird herself emotionally. He had brought her walls down, though, and she couldn’t seem to erect them again. Against him she was defenseless.

  She made him a ham sandwich from a thick slice she had bought to use for breakfasts. Keeping busy suddenly seemed as important as sleep had just a few hours ago. Thoughts raced around inside her head like mice scurrying for cover. She couldn’t seem to light on a single one. The overwhelming sense of doom was the only thing that remained stable.

  Well, she’d asked for this. All of this. She was out of her cocoon, back in the real world and probably about to be reminded why she had built that cocoon in the first place.

  He thanked her for the sandwich and coffee as she set them beside him. “This chair is great,” he remarked. “I guess I should get one.”

  His face looked more relaxed, she thought, not as tight as earlier. As if the pain was easing.

  “Aren’t you eating?” he asked.

  She shook her head and folded herself into a corner of the couch. She couldn’t have eaten to save her life. Not the way she felt then.

  He washed down a big bite of sandwich with coffee, then gave her one of his patented half smiles. “Perfect,” he said.

  “I’m glad.” As if she could be glad of anything at the moment except that he was still alive and still talking to her. Well, talking for now, at least.

  “We’ve got to get one thing straight now,” he said.

  She braced. Here it came. “What’s that?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t sound as small as she felt.

  “Don’t ever, ever scare me like that agai
n.”

  Surprise lifted her head a notch. “Scare you?”

  “Fear comes in all shapes and sizes. I thought I knew them all until last night. I swear to you, I was never as scared as I was when I found you in those woods. You could have been killed.”

  “So could you,” she argued. That was worth arguing about, no matter what.

  He waved his hand as if that didn’t matter a bit. “We’re not talking about me. I didn’t choose for that guy to come after me. I didn’t set this mess up. But you chose to walk right in the middle of it when I’d done everything possible to keep you out of it. You terrified me, and I don’t like that. Don’t ever do that again.”

  Her back stiffened a bit. She didn’t like being given orders, however justified. But then it struck her: he was talking as if he was going to be around. Her heart began to rise, and butterflies went crazy in her stomach. “I’m sorry,” she said on a breath. Her gaze was fastened to him now, unable to even glance away.

  “Don’t be sorry, just promise me.”

  “I promise. As much as I can, anyway.”

  Astonishingly, he laughed. It was a free and easy sound, music to her ears. “That’s the best I guess I can expect from a stubborn woman.”

  Some vitality began to return to her, as she realized this conversation sounded more and more like he wasn’t planning to go away. That didn’t necessarily mean a whole lot, but at least she’d have him for a while. “I was wrong to go out there last night,” she admitted. “I tried to talk myself out of it.”

  “What happened?”

  “I kept hearing myself tell you to never come back. I was hating myself and feeling guilty and terrified for you....” She trailed off.

  “Your heart drowned out your head.”

  “Basically,” she agreed. Nothing basic about it.

  “That’s never a good thing,” he said seriously. “Not when it comes to something like last night. But at other times...” Again he smiled, that breathtaking smile she could never get enough of. “Well, I’ve never had anyone like you ride to my rescue before.”

  “You probably wanted to kill me yourself.”

  He shook his head. “All I wanted was to make you safe. Then you couldn’t even stay where I planted you.”

  She bit her lip. “No. I figured I could stay out of sight, but I heard you arguing and I was scared for you. I needed to be there. I needed it.”

  He sighed, closed his eyes and tipped his head back. “It’s letting go.” Then his eyes snapped open and pinioned her. “I get it. I understand it. I’d have done the same thing.”

  “Wow. Really?” For the first time it occurred to her that she might not have been a total fool.

  “Allison, your reactions were right. Your instincts are the kind that my life has depended on. Buddies are there for buddies. So except for your lack of training, I can’t really criticize you. You had all the right reasons. I get it.”

  Buddies? She didn’t want to be his buddy, but she wasn’t immune to the high compliment he was paying her. “Thank you.”

  “I mean it. I found myself thinking last night that you and I are more alike than we probably realize. You’ve got the heart of a warrior. The part that matters most. And in the end you were awesome. Magnificent. Fantastic. So I’m not mad at you at all. I’m just wondering how many more times I can take a scare like that without having a heart attack.”

  She felt a silly smile tip up the corners of her mouth as she began to realize things were far from over. He was talking like there was a future for them, for crying out loud. At this point maybe only a few weeks or months, but she’d take every minute she could get. “I’m not planning to scare you again.”

  “It’s unlikely you’ll have to. But on the off chance, just promise me you’ll let me know next time you think I need a teammate.”

  “You weren’t here,” she reminded him. Then the silly smile turned into an equally silly giggle.

  He tilted his head, still smiling. “Maybe I need to hang a radio around your neck so you can let me know next time you want to go haring off.”

  Her smile grew so broad her cheeks began to hurt. “That sounds more like a promise than a threat.”

  “It’s not a threat.” His voice changed, growing even deeper. “Allison, sweetheart, you scared me so much last night that I realized something.”

  She held her breath. Her heart skipped, then began to hammer. “What?”

  “That I love you. More than I’ve ever loved in my life. I know it’s early days yet. I get that you hardly know me, but you stole my heart. Maybe you don’t want me around. Maybe it’s too soon. Either way, I can’t take back my heart. It’s yours.”

  Joy exploded in her, nearly blinding her with its intensity. Her answer was already there, hiding in plain sight. “I love you, too, Jerrod. It’s been killing me, thinking you’d go away.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Not for long, anyway, and only if I get called away. Take your time. The past few days have been hard on you. I need you to be very, very sure of this.”

  She’d never been surer of anything in her life.

  “Damn,” he said, “I wish I could take you to bed right now. All I want is to love you, to erase last night with something good and beautiful.”

  She rose and went to him, reaching for his hands, speaking with utter certainty. “We’re going to have a whole lot of time for that. The rest of our lives.”

  The expression on his face stole her breath once again. She’d never dreamed this man could look so happy. He tugged her hands until she perched on his lap.

  “Seal it with a kiss,” he demanded. Their lips met, a gentle kiss at first that steadily grew hungrier. She was gasping when she pulled her mouth back, her entire body aching with freshened need.

  “Sweetheart,” he said, “you are about to learn just how much I can ravish you while you sit on my lap.”

  He laughed, and she laughed with him, until the laughter dissolved into sighs, and the sighs into moans.

  Everything could be worked out with time. But happiness was here, now, forever.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from THE ROME AFFAIR by Addison Fox.

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  Chapter 1

  New York City—Today

  Kensington Steele picked up the two dozen long-stemmed red roses—freshly cut and still quivering from their time in the florist’s freezer—and dropped them into the trash. Although it pained her to throw away such a thing of beauty, she couldn’t hold back the anger at the card that had accompanied the red blooms.

  To a most worthy opponent—

  Looking forward to next time.

  Jack

  “Bastard.” She muttered the word under her breath as her gaze danced from the card to the glorious beauties that winked from the top of her office garbage can. On a weary sigh, she reached in and retrieved the roses. With the exception of one slightly bent stem and a few missing petals on the flowers that edged the bouquet, her aim had been quite good.

  Further proof he’d purchased excellent flowers from one of the city’s top suppliers.

  Kensington laid the ro
ses back in the large white flower box and resolved to have her assistant handle the arranging. At least she could get them out of her sight.

  A loud honk outside pulled her attention from the flowers, and she crossed her office to the windows that fronted the family brownstone that now served as the headquarters for the House of Steele. Their Upper East Side street was normally quiet and the racket currently taking place on the street below—two cabdrivers who’d clearly disagreed on who had the right of way on the tight street—was rare.

  About as rare as losing a major contract.

  The word bastard rose once more to her lips but she tamped it down. She wasn’t a sore loser and didn’t hold those who were in high regard. But damn it, her bid package had been flawless. So had the one two months ago when she’d gone up against Jack Andrews for the museum job in Memphis. And three months ago on the gallery opening in San Francisco. And five months ago for the Ming Dynasty artifact recovery in Hong Kong.

  The man kept beating her out on key proposals and she had no idea how he was doing it. It clearly wasn’t location based because each job was vastly different from the other. She’d had yet to find any other obvious connection, either.

  So how was it every time the House of Steele went up against Andrews Holdings they lost?

  The knock on her door pulled her attention from the drama on the street below. Her assistant, Molly, stood at the door, a thin tablet in hand. “You ready for our morning status?”

  “Can I ask a favor first?”

  “Does it involve delivering anything to your brother at home again? I’m still convinced I interrupted a rather delicate moment between him and his fiancée.”

  Kensington smiled at that. Molly had, in fact, interrupted Campbell and Abby in a moment in flagrante delicto. Of course, that’s what he got for attempting a morning quickie when there was work to be done. “Not at all. Would you mind getting those roses out of my sight?”