by Paula Graves
“What’s not wrong?” she asked, her shoulder rising in a halfhearted shrug. She was still wearing her pale gray T-shirt, but her jeans lay rolled up on the end of the bed, and she’d folded his jacket and laid it on the other bed before crawling under the bedcovers.
“We’re warm and dry. We’re safe, for now.”
She didn’t say anything in response, so he crossed to the other bed and sat next to his coat. She’d rolled onto her side, her gaze following him as he leaned toward her, resting his elbows on his knees.
“I get that you don’t like me or trust me. But I’m actually a pretty good guy to have around when there’s trouble.” He shot her a lopsided smile. “I’m just foolhardy enough to take a bullet for someone else, so there’s that, right?”
The corners of her lips quirked upward, just a bit, then a reluctant smile broke out across her face like sunshine, making his gut tighten with desire. “So I guess you’re not completely useless, then.”
“Get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll figure out what to do next.”
She nodded slowly and closed her eyes. This time, her breathing slowed and grew even within a few minutes.
Jack eased off his boots and set them quietly on the floor beside his bed, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. Fifty percent power. He’d left his charger in the hotel room back in Purgatory, but he could charge it on the vehicle charger in the morning.
He checked for text messages. Three from Riley; he’d left his phone on vibrate and had apparently missed the texts during the wild rush out of town. All three were a variation on the same question: had he lost his bloody mind?
He sent a text message to Riley, assuring him he was safe and would be in touch. As he did so, another text message came through, from Hannah this time. He read it once, then again, his tired brain mulling through the new information. Then he shut down the phone to save power and stretched out on the bed, rolling onto his side so he could see Mallory Jennings in the dim golden light from the lamp on the small table that sat between the beds.
The rain and her exertions had washed away what little makeup she’d donned that day, making her look years younger than she had when he’d seen her in the diner in Purgatory earlier that day. If any of Mara’s oblique references to her sister’s life had come close to the truth, Mallory had lived a harder life than her more settled twin, but whatever struggles she’d known hadn’t seemed to take a toll on her youthful vibrance.
He wondered what kind of life could have led her here, to this little motel in the middle of nowhere, holed up with a virtual stranger and running in fear for her life.
And what kind of man had he become, that being here with her, with almost no idea of who she really was, what kind of trouble she was in or where they were going next, was the most exhilarating feeling he’d experienced in a long time?
* * *
THE ACRID TANG of burning wood seeped into her car through the air vents long before she turned the corner on Cottonwood Street and saw the little white clapboard house aflame.
It was the closest thing she had to a home. And her sister had been sleeping inside when she sneaked out earlier that night.
She parked the car haphazardly in the driveway and raced up the walk, her heart pounding with each frantic step. The door was unlocked; Mara never locked it. Mallory had warned her that the world wasn’t safe enough for unlocked doors anymore, but Mara never listened.
“Mara!” She pushed through the thick, choking smoke, dodging the licking flames spreading quickly from the curtains now fully engulfed by fire to the furniture starting to incinerate from the inferno.
She almost stumbled on the body where it lay, still and oddly twisted, as if she were a doll someone had tossed to the floor and left to lie as it fell, arms and legs awkwardly turned, her head rolled to one side.
Her blue eyes were half-open. Unseeing. Blood pooled beneath her head, and long before her fingers touched the still vein in Mara’s neck, Mallory knew her sister was dead.
Head shots. Double tapped. She’d seen it before.
She’d prayed to God she never would again, but God hadn’t answered that prayer, either.
She started back toward the door, where Mara’s purse lay on the table in the entryway. As she grabbed her sister’s purse and started to dig for her phone, she stepped out onto the porch, seized by a painful coughing fit.
Her face felt damp. Reaching up, she felt tears sliding down her cheeks. Her knees grew wobbly and she stumbled toward the porch steps, grabbing the rail to keep from falling. Sitting with a thud on the top step, she opened Mara’s purse and looked inside for her cell phone.
What she found first was her sister’s wallet.
Mallory opened the wallet and found her sister’s face, eerily identical to her own, staring back at her from a Texas driver’s license.
When they were young, nobody had been able to tell them apart, she remembered. Then Mallory had changed her look, changed her attitude, changed her whole life, really. While Mara remained the same.
Mallory had changed her own look to match her sister’s on this most recent trip home to Texas. She’d done it deliberately, needing the connection with her twin that they’d once had, that intensity of sisterhood that time, distance and Mallory’s own foolish choices had never quite been able to obliterate.
And that need for a connection, that need to change herself back into her sister’s twin again, had gotten Mara killed.
There was no doubt in her mind. Those bullets had been for her.
And now someone very dangerous thought she was dead.
Mallory stood slowly, holding on to the rail for strength. And maybe for a little courage, too. With her sister’s purse and identity clutched firmly in hand, she descended the steps and walked back to her car.
The fire raged on, and Mallory waited as the world around her grew sooty and smothering, until everything light extinguished from her world.
* * *
MALLORY BLINKED SLOWLY, disoriented by the sudden inky blackness surrounding her. She was lying on her back, on a mattress. The faint tang of disinfectant mingled with a whiff of mildew and a darker, richer smell of leather and spice. Tears dampened her cheeks; she dashed them away with her fingertips.
Then she heard breathing, deep and even. Masculine. Somewhere nearby.
Jack Drummond.
The lingering images of her dream faded, and the heavy thud of her pulse quickened as she remembered where she was and why she was there.
She hadn’t had a chance to get online to check the status of her latest query, and she sincerely doubted this fleabag motel had free Wi-Fi. Or any Wi-Fi. Not that she’d trust it anyway. She could create a hot spot with the burner phone she’d bought in case she ever had to bug out and leave behind the phone Quinn had given her as part of her job. She couldn’t afford to let him track her with the company phone.
But she’d have to wait until she could get hunkered down somewhere and get her own system set up.
She needed to get out of here. Get away from Jack Drummond and his big brown eyes, lean cowboy body and that delicious leather-and-spice smell still lingering on her shirt where his body had flattened her into the mattress.
Easing off the bed, she grabbed her rolled-up jeans and slipped them back on, hunching with her back to Jack to keep the sound of her zipper from reaching his ears. Her tennis shoes were still damp, but she pulled them on anyway, not wanting to take the time to dig in her duffel for a drier pair.
She picked up the duffel and her backpack and had started toward the door when she realized she might not get another chance to go to the bathroom for a while. Dropping the bags on her bed, she made a quick stop in the bathroom, not even bothering to turn on the light.
Coming back out into the darkened motel room, she stepped quietly past Jack’s bed, not letting herself look at him. She needed to get out of there fast. The farther away she could get while he slept, the better.
The floor creaked as she neared t
he door and she froze in place, her heart rattling wildly for a couple of seconds. She heard no sound of movement coming from the beds behind her, however, so she eased her hand around the doorknob and gave a slow twist.
As the door latch clicked open, a hand closed over her wrist, and Jack Drummond’s low voice hummed in her ear.
“Going somewhere?”
Chapter Seven
The scent of her, a delicate hint of flowers and something spicy, hit him like a two-by-four in the gut, and he had to struggle to keep his anger from dissolving into blazing desire.
“Let me go,” she said in a low tone edged with desperation.
He released her arm but didn’t move away, keeping her pinned in the narrow space between the door and his body. “Where did you plan to go?”
“If I wanted you to know that, I’d have told you.” She stood very still, not looking at him, barely even breathing.
“I’m not your enemy.”
“Then why are you keeping me captive?” she shot back, her gaze snapping up to meet his. In the faint light from outside that filtered in through the edge of the window drapes, her eyes glittered with anger and something else.
Fear.
He took a step back, gave her space to breathe.
She sucked in a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. “I need to get out of here.”
“Away from me, you mean.”
She didn’t deny it.
“If you leave, I’m going to follow you.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because you’re in trouble. And you’re Mara’s sister, and I know she loved you.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, feeling strangely vulnerable. He didn’t like the feeling. “I owe her.”
“I don’t need saving.”
“You need someone to watch your back while you do whatever it is you’ve got up your sleeve. I can do that.”
She cocked her head, her eyes narrowing. “What I have up my sleeve?”
“Mara once told me you were a computer whiz. Genius level. And that makes me wonder what you were doing carting lunch back and forth to a PI agency. You could be running their IT section, couldn’t you?”
“How do you know I’m not?”
“I don’t, I suppose.” He glanced at the duffel bag and backpack still hanging over her shoulder. “Computer whizzes don’t travel without a computer. Is yours in there?”
She clutched the strap of the backpack more tightly but didn’t answer.
He stepped closer, lowering his voice. The air between them recharged immediately, like turbulence fed by a brewing storm. “While I was waiting outside your cabin, my sister-in-law was doing a little bit of snooping of her own. See, she knows your boss, Alexander Quinn. They’ve apparently crossed paths a few times. And he owes her and her family for some things they’ve helped him out with in the past.”
Mallory’s lips flattened to a thin line, but she didn’t speak.
“She sent me a text earlier.” He couldn’t stop himself from leaning closer, erasing the distance he’d put between them moments before. “Quinn stopped by your cabin after we left. And whatever he found inside alarmed him enough that now he’s got people out there looking for you. And me.”
“Maybe you should let them find you,” she murmured, her gaze dipping to his mouth. Her own lips trembled apart, her breath quickening.
Answering heat flooded his body. “I told you. If you go, I’ll follow.”
“You’re crazy.” Somehow she was even closer to him, her breasts brushing against his chest. He didn’t know if she’d stepped closer or if he had been the one to close the distance.
He didn’t really care.
“I rode bulls for a living,” he answered, sliding one hand around to press against her spine, tugging her closer. “Crazy’s baked into that cake, sweetheart.”
She slipped her hands under the hem of his T-shirt, her fingers cool against his skin. She traced his muscles and the ridges of his rib cage with a light, maddening touch. “I don’t need you.”
“I think maybe you do.” He bent his head and nipped at her jawline with his lips, eliciting a soft hum of pleasure from her throat. The sound vibrated through him to settle low in his groin.
“Only for this,” she growled before she pushed him backward.
He stumbled, falling backward onto the bed. Sprawling there, he gazed up at her as she stood over him, realizing she could make a run for it before he could scramble up off the bed.
Even as he pushed himself to a sitting position, ready to take chase, she moved toward him, shoving him back down on the bed. Straddling his hips, she bent to kiss him. Fiercely. Hotly. All tongue and teeth and scorching lips and roaming hands.
She dragged his T-shirt up his body, scraping her short nails over his abdomen hard enough to leave his skin tingling. There’d be marks in the morning, he thought, and the image stoked his desire to a whole new level.
He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and rolled over so that she was pinned beneath him, her body soft and welcoming as he settled between her thighs. Even in the darkness, he could see the gleam in her eyes, the faint glint of light reflected off her feral smile. The desire to take her was overwhelming. His mind was already three steps ahead of the rest of him, already buried inside her, moving within her, staking claim.
He was quickly losing control, something he could ill afford to do with a woman like Mallory Jennings.
He rolled off her, pushing away her hands as they clung to hold him in place. Crossing on shaky legs to the door, he leaned against the hard surface and flicked the light switch, flooding the small motel room with a bright golden glow.
He wished he’d left it dark, for the sight of Mallory still sprawled on the bed, her hair mussed, her breath coming in soft gasps and her eyes drunk with desire, was almost enough to unravel the last strands of his control.
“Why didn’t you run?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed, the desire fading into cool calculation. “And miss my chance to ride a genuine cowboy?” Her light Texas twang deepened. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Her tone was flippant, but in those cobalt eyes he saw a feral desperation that echoed in his own chest. She wanted to escape. But not from here.
Not from him.
“Let me help you,” he said, even though it was the last thing he’d intended to say. “Trust me.”
Her eyes closed. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not trustworthy.” Her eyes snapped open. “And even if you were, I’ve learned the hard way not to trust anyone.”
“Is that why you’re even running from Alexander Quinn?”
She sat up slowly, straightening her shirt so that it covered her bare midriff. As the T-shirt hem skimmed down to cover the waistband of her jeans, the light revealed a detail he hadn’t seen in the dark—a small silver hoop pierced through the skin of her navel.
How he’d ever mistaken her for Mara, he couldn’t imagine. About the only thing the two women had shared in common was their DNA.
“I realize the man your sister described to you was not trustworthy. But I’m not that same man.”
“Just because you supposedly stopped drinking?” She stood to face him, all long legs and messy hair, temptation personified. “How long since your last drink, cowboy? A month? A year?”
“Four years.” It had been hard for the first year, easier as time passed and he didn’t slide back into old habits. He couldn’t say he wasn’t tempted at times, but he’d managed to stay strong and sober so far, and as long as he never let himself think he was totally cured, he had a chance of staying clean for good.
“Well, good for you.” She said the words flippantly, but he didn’t miss a hint of surprise in her voice, or the grudging look of admiration in her eyes. “I never manage to kick a bad habit for more than a few days.” Her lips curved in a wry smile. “Which probably explains my throwing you on the bed and trying to get in
to those jeans.”
“You’re really going to have to stop saying things like that.” His voice came out in a growl.
The smile widened. “So you haven’t kicked all of your addictions, then?”
“Stop trying to change the subject, Mallory.” He put out a hand as she took a step closer. “What are you into? Is it illegal?”
“No.” There was a hint of hesitation in her voice that made him doubt she was telling the whole truth.
“Unethical?”
“No.” Her feral smile had faded into a wary frown. “Jack, if I tell you what I’m doing—” She stopped short, her expression pained. “People’s lives are at risk. I’m trying to—” She stopped again and turned away.
“Trying to what? Save them?” He pushed away from the door and moved closer. “Protect them?”
She darted a quick look at him out of the corner of her eye. “Me? Do something altruistic? Didn’t you listen to anything Mara told you about me?”
“She loved you. She had a lot more faith in you than you seem to have in her.” As soon as he said the words, he knew they were harsh and unfair, and Mallory’s flinch confirmed the fact. “I’m sorry. That was a low blow.”
She pushed her fingers through the messy auburn waves of her hair, as if to tame the locks. She didn’t quite succeed, but when she turned to face him, her expression had settled into a cool mask of indifference. “I don’t really care what you think of me.”
“I care what you think of me.” He really did care, he realized with some dismay. “I want you to let me help you. I need to do it.”
“Penance?”
“I suppose.”
She looked at him then, really looked at him, her narrowed gaze sharp enough to cut. He tried not to squirm under her sudden, intense scrutiny as he wondered what she saw when she looked at him.
A washed-up cowboy without a clue what to do with his life now that his days on the circuit were over? A former drunken womanizer who’d broken her sister’s fragile heart? The stubborn jerk who stood in the way of her own escape plans?
He was all three, he knew. But he couldn’t change the past, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let her hare off into God only knew what kind of danger by herself.