by Cindy Dees
Her kneecap wasn’t a smooth bump. Rather it had a giant dent across it that wasn’t natural. Crossing the dent was a puckered scar as wide as his finger, extending the entire length of her knee. Four small, circular scars bracketed her knee cap. Those were undoubtedly left behind by a surgeon performing arthroscopic surgery on the knee. Follow-up surgeries after the initial replacement, perhaps? Crap. How screwed up was her knee?
Acid burned in his gut at the sight of what Ruala’s bullet had done to her. He’d kill the bastard someday. But in the meantime, he had a hard question to ask.
“How much mobility do you have with your knee?”
She answered woodenly, “I can walk normally, and do light exercise after a fashion. I can go up and down stairs, squat if I’m careful, and even ride a horse. But the joint was not designed for running or quick changes of direction.”
He nodded, his throat tight. She’d loved to dance and had been an avid runner before Ruala wrecked her knee. Hell, she’d been training for a marathon.
He ought to say something to her about that night. Apologize for making love to her and then turning on her. For following orders and being a macho jerk. God, what had he cost them both? The one decent thing about it all was that he’d rather have the woman he loved alive and hating his guts than dead and gone forever.
He glanced up. Her face was averted. Was that a shimmer of tears in her eyes? Aww, hell. Now what was he supposed to say?
He looked away carefully from her knee. Her foot was slender and beautifully shaped. Like the rest of her. He’d forgotten how good she smelled. She still wore the same fragrance, something clean and citrusy, green smelling. Abruptly, he recalled the silky slide of her auburn hair across his skin, her mouth under his, the taste of her—
Damn, where had that explosion of memory come from? Better not let his thoughts go there. He cleared his throat. “You didn’t break any toes. They should feel okay in a day or two. Why don’t you try to get some sleep? It’s late.”
He resisted an errant impulse to let his fingers linger on her foot, to massage her arch with the heel of his hand. He didn’t need a second black eye to match the first one.
She pushed to her feet as if she was antsy to get away from him. Eyes narrowed, he watched her walk gingerly out of the kitchen. Her curves were more mature now She was less a girl and more a woman than ten years ago. Sexier than ever, dammit.
To think he could have been with this woman for all these years. Could have come home to her after each mission. Laughed and fought with her. Made love with her for the last decade. He’d been planning to spend forever with her before he’d gone and fucked it all up. The hell of it was he hadn’t even realized he’d already decided to propose to her until after he’d driven her away. After she was lying in a hospital bed fighting for her life. The bullet fragments in her leg hadn’t been clean and she’d gotten a hell of an infection from them.
He remembered like it was yesterday standing outside her hospital room for hours, looking through the glass window at her. Until she’d woken up, seen him, and turned her head away from him. There had been tears on her cheek.
That had been the last time he’d seen her. Until today.
He followed her silently down the hallway and up the stairs. Without saying good-night, or even looking back at him, she stepped into her room. He waited outside her door until he heard the lock turn. His mouth curled sardonically as he headed on down the hall to the next bedroom.
Who’d have thunk getting locked out of one woman’s bedroom could make a guy feel so lousy?
He’d made “There Are Always More Fish in the Sea” his motto for women for the last decade. And the theory hadn’t let him down yet. Until that damned lock snicked shut in his face.
If she’d shown the slightest pleasure at seeing him again—a smile, even a spark of interest—he’d have been all over putting the pieces back together and picking up where they left off. But all she’d been when he showed up on her porch was mad. Wet-cat, spittin’ mad. Damn.
He’d been an idiot to come on this mission. Susan Monroe was a troubled ghost from his past. One he should have known better than to try to appease. Or to exorcise.
SHE SMILED when her lover came to her, slipping ghost-like into her bed and into her arms. His form was dark and powerful, his kisses sweet and hot enough to drug her into insensibility. She pictured his physique as her hands felt him in the darkness. He was all flat planes and hard bulges, too complex to memorize in every detail.
Ahh, but she’d like to try. Maybe later, when his mouth and hands weren’t driving her out of her mind, when she could think again. Breathe again. The ecstasy built, and he beckoned her toward a pleasure so intense it was almost painful. She surged upward with him, reaching for more, and yet more, of the addictive pleasure he gave her…
A jangling noise yanked her out of her dream.
Susan slapped her alarm clock into silence and sagged back on the mattress, breathing hard.
Years ago she’d given up trying to rid herself of Mac’s appearances in her dreams. She figured it was her subconscious’s sick sense of humor. For some inexplicable reason, the one man she wanted nothing to do with was the one her dreaming mind most craved. A psychologist would probably have lots to say about that. She’d given up on fighting it long ago.
It was especially irritating to have such a vivid dream of Mac when she had to go downstairs and face him in the flesh this morning. Susan sprawled on her back while she mustered the willpower to think of something, anything, besides Mac Conlon. It didn’t work.
Reluctantly, she forced herself to get out of bed and spent several minutes carefully loosening up her knee. It still wasn’t recovered from her twisting fall down the stairs two nights ago. It was swollen and stiff, and pain shot through it as she carefully worked through a stretching regimen.
She looked at her upper arm in the mirror as she got dressed. A long scratch marred her flesh where the bullet had grazed her, but it felt better this morning. It was a far cry from the bullet scar on her neck. She pulled on a polo shirt, jeans, and her favorite—entirely obnoxious—hot-pink cowboy boots. She steeled herself not to blush horribly when she saw Mac, and headed downstairs.
By the time she painstakingly reached the first floor, the scent of freshly brewed coffee tickled her nose. That was definitely French toast she smelled, too. She walked off the worst of her morning limp in the long hallway leading to the kitchen and managed to stroll into the room casually.
All four of her house guests looked chipper. Well-rested, even Mac and Dutch who’d been awake in the wee hours of the night. She scowled at them all over the steaming cup of coffee Howdy passed to her. It just wasn’t fair that men got out of bed in the morning looking so good.
She watched in awe as they consumed an enormous breakfast and then cleaned up after it. Even performing a mundane chore like washing the dishes, they functioned as a well-honed military unit. The last dish went into the dishwasher and Mac turned to Susan. He wore a pair of faded jeans and a black T-shirt this morning. The denim looked painted on to his muscular legs, and the black cotton shirt stretched across rippling muscles that beggared the mind. Remnants of her steamy dream floated across her mind’s eye. She looked away from him hastily.
But Mr. Couldn’t-Catch-A-Clue sat down beside her, placing himself directly in her line of sight. “Ready to talk business?” he asked.
She turned to look him in the eye. And barely managed not to melt into those mesmerizing oceans of blue. Get it together! “Uhh, sure. What’s the plan for today?”
“To get you out of here and onto a battlefield of our choosing.”
A battlefield? She didn’t like the sound of that. “And just where is this battlefield going to be?”
The certainty in Mac’s eyes wavered a bit before he replied obliquely, “We know a few things about Ramon Ruala. First, we know he’s an urban operator all the way. Hates leaving behind his creature comforts and does not like operating in f
ield conditions.”
Dutch leaned forward and added, “Second, he doesn’t look to be in especially good physical condition in your thumb drive. He smoked a couple times in the tape, too, so he probably doesn’t have the greatest stamina if he’s a heavy smoker.”
Mac picked up the line of reasoning. “Then there’s the matter of your mobility. You can ride horses. We can use that to our advantage. Ruala probably doesn’t expect that. It’ll level the playing field, as it were.”
Smart thinking. That way, her only physical limitation would be the strength and stamina of her horse, instead of her own puny physical capabilities.
“Won’t Ruala climb in a Jeep and follow us?”
“We had a look at the terrain maps we brought with us. There’s some really rough country at the back end of your next door neighbor’s property that wheeled vehicles can’t handle. Plus, we ought to have a good head start on him and be able to reach it before he can catch up with us.”
That made sense. The panic tickling the edges of her consciousness subsided a little.
Mac continued. “The plan is for the three of us to hide out until Doc and Howdy get back from delivering your affidavit with an arrest warrant for Ruala. Then the three of us will ride back in, join Doc and Howdy, and we’ll all set up our trap for Ruala.”
“Arrest. Right,” she mumbled.
Mac shrugged. “We have to play by the rules. But if Ruala gives us an excuse, we’ll splatter him all over west Texas.” He paused. Asked cautiously, “Is riding around the ranch for a couple days going to be too much for your…for you?” he finished lamely.
Thank God his eyes didn’t flicker sympathetically. The tough, brave facade she was doing her best to maintain would’ve cracked for sure. “I can ride all of you guys into the ground,” she retorted. “But we could go a whole lot farther a whole lot faster if we just got in a car and drove away from here.”
Mac shook his head. “Then we’d be operating on Ruala’s playing field. We want him on our turf. And that means pulling him out into the wilds where there are no roads, no hotels, no phones.”
Camping, in other words. She sighed.
Mac leaned down, his palms flat on the table in front of her. He loomed close enough for her to notice he smelled like soap and something else masculine and wonderful she couldn’t place. He murmured, “With some jobs, the easy way isn’t always the best way.”
She leaned away from his disturbing closeness, hoping he wouldn’t notice. He did. He flashed her a grin that declared her a coward. Drat. Her stomach turned to molten lava and formed a puddle somewhere near her feet.
He straightened abruptly, releasing her from the byplay between them. She sagged on the bench. Damn him.
“Time to go,” Mac announced. He led her out to the main horse barn, where Frank Riverra was waiting for them. She made introductions all around. He owned the spread next door and managed the land Susan had inherited for a percentage of the profits from this place. It was his land they’d be riding on.
She gaped when Frank nodded at Mac and said, “I took care of the arrangements for her ranch hands like you asked. The guys said to thank you.”
Susan rounded on Mac. He’d been talking to her manager behind her back? “What arrangements?” she asked darkly.
Mac answered casually, “I put your employees on paid vacation for a couple of weeks. All expenses covered by Uncle Sam, of course.”
“And who’s going to clean my barn and unload hay and paint fences and—”
“We will.” Mac gestured at Dutch. “The other guys will be back in a few days with the warrants, and we’ll all take over the basic work. Frank says none of it is hard to learn.”
Mad and Dutch grinned at her like total greenhorns. They didn’t have a clue what it took to operate a ranch like this. She scowled. She was tempted to let them find out the hard way. Except she didn’t want the livestock to suffer.
“I gather neither of you have any experience with ranching.”
“Frank says he can show us what to do.”
She glared at Mac. “This is my home. My employees. You had no right!”
Mac’s gentle gaze almost did it. She almost allowed herself to get lost in those china blue depths, to forget about everything else and open herself up to him. It was such hard work being strong all the time. The gut-wrenching terror of the last couple days was finally catching up with her, and her facade started to crack. Her worries and fears crowded forward, jostling for her attention. She did her best not to give in to it all, but she was just too tired to be brave anymore. A tear spilled over onto her cheek.
Mac brushed away the droplet with his thumb. “You’ve had a rough couple of days, kiddo. But we’ll fix it. I promise.”
She fought an overwhelming urge to collapse onto his shoulder and borrow a little of his strength while she bawled her eyes out. This was the side of Mac that had beguiled her, had kept her waiting for him all these years. Whoa. All what years? That was Mac Conlon’s shoulder. She would swallow broken glass before she’d show weakness to him. She took a deep breath and stiffened her spine.
Mac stepped back immediately. Either he was more perceptive than she remembered, or he had a healthy respect for the proximity of his crotch to her good knee.
He said, “If, in fact, one of your hands could be bought off by Ruala, we just made the job of infiltrating your ranch a lot harder for the bastard.” His gaze took on a reproachful air. “Besides, we don’t want your employees getting caught in the crossfire. We sent your men away for their own safety, too.”
The air left her sails in a rush. “Oh.” Here she was being all tense and grouchy while he was looking out for her people. Her eyes burned. Great. She must have contracted a severe case of weepy hormones overnight. She turned away fast—she was not going to cry in front of Mac.
She pointed at the small tack barn, speaking briskly to mask her wildly surging emotions. “We keep camping gear in there. You guys figure out what you want to take, and Frank will help you pack it on the horses.”
She left Mac and Dutch rummaging around the tackroom and went back to the horse barn to collect herself. A little gray Arab mare named Moofah munched on her sweet feed as Susan entered her stall, but she took a moment to greet Susan with a friendly snuffle.
What if Ruala was en route to her ranch this very minute to kill her? A noise behind her made her jump, and she spun around.
“Easy, Suz,” Mac murmured.
“You startled me,” she mumbled, rubbing the mare’s neck.
“Sorry,” he replied. Gently Mac reached out and brushed a strand of hair back from her face. Her senses tumbled at the sweet familiarity of his touch. If only she didn’t remember how good it had been between them in the beginning. Their romantic relationship had been as natural as breathing and as powerful as a hurricane rolling in off the open sea.
Mac’s voice was regretful. “I wish I could tell you this will all just go away, but it won’t. Not until we take out this guy. I swear, though, we’ll give you your life back.”
She stared into the clear blue depths of his eyes. For a moment his gaze was warm and open, and she felt the old connection between them. Just as it had been before. Before he blew her world apart. Before she blew his op apart…
Mac snapped closed the shutters to his soul once more. He took a step back to a more impersonal distance. “I came to tell you we’re ready to go.”
“So soon?” she replied, surprised.
One corner of his mouth turned up in what might pass for a smile. “We’re not raw recruits who take all day to pack. Besides, we brought our own gear. We just supplemented our usual equipment with a few extra supplies for you.”
Would he and The Blackjacks really be able to catch Ruala and return her life to normal?
Mac gestured toward the door of the stall. “After you.”
Except how was anything ever going to be normal again, now that Mac had come back into her life? As much as she’d hated him for th
e pain he’d caused her, as many times as she’d vowed she never wanted to see him again, his return forced her to acknowledge a stark fact: she might have moved beyond him, but she’d never gotten over him.
Stunned by the revelation, she followed him numbly back to the waiting cluster of horses.
Frank finished tying down the last pack and announced, “All ready.” Worry darkened his eyes and made the wrinkles etching his face look deeper than usual this morning.
She gave him a grateful hug. “Thanks, Frank. Don’t worry about this mess. Everything will turn out fine.”
He nodded, but his expression told her he didn’t buy that any more than she did. Maybe if she repeated it to herself a few hundred times she’d start to believe it.
She moved around to the right side—usually the wrong side to mount on a horse, but necessary with her bad left knee—and climbed awkwardly onto her favorite mare, Malika. She was a long-legged, chestnut Arab with velvet gaits, the endurance of a marathon runner, and a heart as big as the desert she was bred for.
Susan settled into the saddle and moved her knee with reasonable ease. She grinned as she watched the big, bad, Special Forces soldiers attempt to climb into their own saddles. Clearly they had basic horsemanship training, but born to the saddle they were not. Legs, elbows, stirrups and reins went every which way, and the horses jigged, alarmed by the theatrics. Frank met her gaze briefly, humor dancing in his eyes. They looked away from each other quickly lest they laugh aloud.
Mac caught her expression and grinned, complaining from his big bay gelding, “How do you make this thing go?”
Susan grinned back. “The crucial question when you’re astride twelve hundred pounds of horse is, ‘How do I make it stop?’”
He flexed his feet in his stirrups. “Now that you mention it, I don’t see any brake pedals,” he groused.
Susan led Mac and Dutch to a paddock and gave them a quick crash course on starting, stopping and turning her horses based on how they were trained. She was surprised by how fast they caught on. But then, she supposed the men chosen for Special Forces were pretty quick studies. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Frank had mounted them on the two most unflappable horses in her stable, either.