by Cindy Dees
Anguish sliced her heart into tiny shreds. She turned and fled, hop-skipping down the hall. She headed for the stairs but then she heard a chair push back abruptly in the kitchen. Instead, she fumbled at the lock on the front door. She paused just long enough to slip her feet into a pair of sandals on the mat by the door, and then she was outside, fleeing clumsily into the night, its blackness enveloping her. Fleeing from the man who had just broken her heart. Again. Oh, Lord. Not again.
Tears streamed down her face. She could barely see where she was going. She didn’t care where she went, as long as it was far, far away from him. She heard footsteps behind her. Shouting. Mac wanted her to stop. Fat chance. She might not be an Olympic sprinter, but she knew every inch of the ranch. She stuck to the gravel paths to avoid Mac’s various traps, and the smooth footing helped her make better time. She slipped past the barns, past the pond, out toward the thick tangle of scrub pines and live oaks that passed for a forest in this part of the country.
The footsteps were closer now. She put on an extra awkward burst of speed and ducked under the first branches. Shadows closed around her and she slowed down to catch her breath and ease off her protesting knee. She followed winding paths she’d trod since her childhood, heading for her and Tex’s secret playhouse deep in the heart of the woods. Dodging limbs and stepping over logs as much by feel as by sight, she pressed forward in a blind fury of grief.
Mac wasn’t bothering to yell anymore, and she no longer heard his pursuit, but she felt his presence behind her as surely as if he was breathing down the back of her neck.
She made it into the playhouse her father had built for her and Tex not long after their mother left. She ducked inside the child-size door and into the musty darkness. Leaves littered the floor, and she kicked them aside with her good foot. Her knee creaked warningly and gave an ominous hitch. She sat down on one of the low benches built into the walls.
She never heard him coming. One second she was alone, and the next, a black shape loomed in the door. Terrified, she looked up. His eyes were pools of black rage, and violence fairly radiated from him. She’d never, ever, seen Mac Conlon this angry.
When he spoke, his voice was a sibilant hiss. “If you ever pull another damn fool stunt like this again, I’ll kill you myself. Understood?”
Her eyes widened as she nodded. He looked like he meant it, too. She began to shiver as the shock of reaction began to set in. He moved fully into the tiny room, filling it with his furious presence. He glanced around and sat down on the only other bench in the space. She watched fearfully as he propped his elbows on his hiked-up knees. But then he let his head hang down, slumping between his hunched shoulders. The fight rushed out of her in a whoosh. Apparently, she’d scared the living hell out of him with her flight from the house.
But then her own pain came raging back full force. “How could you do that to me?” she whispered painfully.
“Do what to you, Susan?” he replied wearily. “Fight to save your life? Argue with my own teammates because they want to expose you to more risk than I’m willing to? Throw my career away because I can’t make the tough decision to put you in harm’s way when I have to?”
“How could you have used me like that? Did you have to play on my emotions to get me to do what you wanted?” she half sobbed. “Don’t you know I’d give my life for you if you asked me to?”
He ran a hand through his dark hair, a gesture of frustration and pain. “But that’s the point. I would never ask that of you. I’m here to keep you safe. My life is the expendable one.”
“Why?” she cried out. “Because you think you owe me one after I got shot the last time? You think this time it’s your turn to dance with death?”
He looked up at her bleakly, and his eyes were pools of black. She battered him with her words. “Does that give you the right to manipulate me like this? Is this what you’ve become?”
He swore under his breath. “I have not manipulated you. I’ve done my damnedest not to act on my feelings for you, but I lost the fight. You’re right. It is my fault that I wasn’t strong enough to resist you. But I swear—I swear—I never used you.”
Each word he uttered bit like a knife in her heart. She cried out, “Why should I believe you? You lied to me the last time you were ordered to drive me away from a mission.”
“This time I told you what my orders were. I told you I was supposed to make you leave. I was straight with you, which is most definitely against my orders.”
She shrugged. “I’m older and smarter. You needed a new tactic. It almost worked, too. I came very close to agreeing to leave. I was actually coming downstairs to tell you I’d thought it over and was going to do as you asked.” She laughed at the irony of it. “And then I walked in on you expressing your real feelings about me to your buddies.”
Mac surged to his feet, but sat back down abruptly when he nearly banged his head on the low ceiling. “How the hell do you know what my real feelings are? You’ve spent the last ten years believing I was a coward. Did it ever occur to you that I stayed away because I loved you? Because I thought that was what you wanted? That I ripped my heart out and let it bleed for ten years so you could have some peace?”
She stared at him in shock. Surely it wasn’t so… But his voice was ragged, and agony fairly poured off him. “Why should I believe you now?” she asked past the constriction in her throat.
He swore violently. “I lied to you just once, ten years ago, in the name of following orders and keeping you safe. Why are you so determined to believe I’m not telling you the truth now? Are you afraid to believe me? Are you the one who’s been the coward all this time?”
She reeled from the accusation. It cut bone deep, the way the truth always did. Was he right? Had she hidden behind anger at him to avoid facing her own fears? Her own sense of inadequacy? Her own insecurity over whether or not she was a lovable human being?
She stared out the tiny window for a long time, but no other answer came to her except a silent certainty deep down in her gut that he was right. Finally she released a shuddering breath. She’d blown it. She’d hidden behind her scars and her limp rather than face her feelings for Mac. She’d latched on to the fact that he’d lied to her as a defense against allowing herself to love him without reservation. She’d blamed him for their breakup, when it had been her fault as much as his, all along. He’d waited for ten years for a sign from her that she still wanted him, and she’d never given it. In her selfishness and fear, she’d hurt him far worse than he’d ever hurt her.
She half whispered, “You’re right. I was afraid to let you love me. Afraid I’m not worthy of your love.”
“But…”
“Don’t say it. I know you’re going to try to take the blame again. But it was my fault all along. Oh God, Mac. How can I possibly make it up to you?”
He reached forward across the small space. She would love nothing more than to curl up in his lap while he wrapped his strong arms around her, but she dared not. She leaned back, away from his hands. They fell back down to his sides.
“At the risk of completely pissing you off,” Mac asked quietly, “could you please explain something to me? Why is my wanting to protect you and keep you safe such a bad thing?”
She sighed. “It’s not a bad thing. But you deserve a woman who will love you with no strings attached. Without bringing all my hang-ups to the relationship.”
“I don’t care about the strings!” He took a deep breath and said more calmly, “My need to take care of you runs a lot deeper than mere responsibility. Deeper than my guilt over having a part in getting you hurt the last time around. But I have no idea how to convince you of that.” He stared out the same window she had a minute before. But then his gaze swung back to her, pinning her in place. “So how do we move forward from here?”
Her throat ached. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes briefly. “Great. I screwed it up this time, too.”
“
Stop it, Mac. I don’t want your guilt. We’ve both lost too much already. It’s time to put the past behind us and move forward.”
“How? Am I supposed to just walk away from you?”
Hearing the words said aloud brought anguish bubbling right up to the surface of her heart. She felt ready to collapse on the floor. She’d seen the truth too late. Realized her mistake too late. She’d inflicted too much pain on him and he was throwing in the towel. Somehow she managed to choke out, “It’s for the best, don’t you think?”
He leaned across the tiny space and grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to meet his urgent gaze. “Susan, I’m not going to let you throw everything we’ve ever had between us away, dammit!”
He slid forward and knelt in front of her as he yanked her close and his mouth closed upon hers, hot and angry and desperate. She couldn’t bear to tear herself away from him. Most of her adult life had been tied up with this man in one way or another. Cutting him out of her world would be like chopping off her right arm.
His mouth lifted away from hers. “Does this feel like pity?” he demanded harshly.
He kissed her again, more gently this time, absorbing her into himself with his whole body. His hands roamed up and down her back and his arms pressed her close against his glorious heat. His tongue invaded the most intimate places of her mouth, giving as well as taking, evoking erotic sensations all over her body.
“Does this feel like guilt?” he growled.
With a quick bunching of muscles, he carried her down to the pile of old blankets on the floor in the corner. He discarded her clothes with quick precision, and she burned everywhere he touched her. She couldn’t help responding to him any more than a flower could help turning toward the light. He’d always been her sun, the center of her universe.
“Does this feel like obligation?” he whispered.
And then he was inside her, all heat and friction and driving passion. Her universe expanded until it combusted in a supernova of blinding pleasure, catapulting her out of herself and up into the diamond-studded blackness of space. How could she turn her back on this? On him? She strained ever closer to him, willing him to understand what she felt for him. Willing him to understand that she needed to trust him. Needed to find the strength in her own heart to allow them to be together.
He froze for a second, staring down at her like he would consume her, and then they both plunged into the abyss together, pleasure exploding out of them as one.
She floated, disembodied in his arms for an eternity, wandering slowly through the dark, starry vastness of the universe, back toward the tiny, distant speck that was reality.
“How can you still doubt my feelings for you?” he murmured.
And the lovely starlight shattered around her like the illusion it was.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Susan closed her eyes against the hot tears threatening to spill over. “It’s not about my doubting your feelings. It’s about me coming to grips with mine. After what I’ve put you through for all these years…”
He drew breath to argue with her, but she laid her fingertips across his mouth, stopping the words. “Do we have to go there again? I can really do without the whole fight, fall into bed, then fight again routine.”
He rolled over on his back and drew her across his body, off the cold, scratchy blankets. “I agree,” he replied. “Next time let’s skip the fighting and go straight to the making love part.”
She had to smile. But she replied wistfully, “Mac, great sex doesn’t solve anything.”
He raised his head and stared down his chest at her darkly. “What you and I have between us goes a hell of a lot deeper than great sex.”
She shook her head, denying the truth of his words. “There’s got to be more. Friendship. Mutual respect—”
“We’ve got those,” he interrupted.
“—equality,” she finished. “If you think you’ve got to protect me constantly, and if I think I don’t deserve you, the relationship can’t work for the long term. You can’t save me from every possible accident life might throw at me, and I’ll always be trying to live up to some impossible standard to earn your love and respect. We’ll both fail because perfection isn’t attainable.”
“Dammit, Susan, why can’t you stop beating that dead horse?”
“Because I’m right. You’re just too wrapped up in your overdeveloped sense of duty to see it.”
“Oh, like you’re not wrapped up in your whole, I’m-too-flawed-to-be-loved-by-anyone thing?”
Her heart wrenched. They had indeed blown their chance at love. They’d been unable to overcome the mistakes of their past. “Mac, I care about you—about us—too much to let us destroy each other.”
He snatched up his jeans and threw them on, zipping them angrily. He stared down at her bleakly. “I swore I would do whatever it took, anything, to clean the slate between us and give us a new start. Even if that meant letting you tear my guts out and stomp them into the ground.”
She blinked, startled. He’d wanted a second chance for them all along?
“But I gotta say, babe. If you were looking to get your pound of flesh back out of me, you’re doing a hell of a good job of it. Honest to God, I hope this makes you happy, because you’re killing me.”
She got dressed in numb silence while Mac finished doing the same. How could two people love each other so much and still not manage to find a way to be together? I won’t cry. I will not cry.
She followed him out of the playhouse and back through the woods. He took it slow and held out a hand to her occasionally to help her over a log or past a rough spot in the trail. Bone-deep weariness coursed through her, making her limbs as heavy as stone. Blessed numbness began to creep over the torturous pain of loss twisting and writhing in her gut. They emerged from the woods and headed toward the house in silence. How she managed to stay upright, to keep putting one foot in front of the other, she had no idea. She just wanted to collapse in a heap and cry for days.
They were nearing the edge of the woods when the body blow came from her left, knocking her completely off her feet, shock rendered her mind completely blank. She pitched onto the soft, leaf-covered dirt, gasping for air, but nothing came. What had just happened? She tried to breathe, but it felt as if an anvil was sitting on her chest, crushing her lungs. Belatedly, panic slammed into her. It ripped through her like a tornado, tearing up her thoughts and emotions and jumbling them in a chaotic mess. The dead weight rolled off her, and her ribs expanded hungrily, finally letting her pull in a sobbing breath. The smell of dirt and wet grass filled her nose.
Mac had tackled her.
Still lying half-across her, Mac murmured in her ear in the barest whisper, “We’ve got company.”
Soul deep fear detonated inside her. Not now! Not yet! It wasn’t time. Ruala wasn’t supposed to be here for several days!
“Stay here. Don’t move. I’ll be back,” Mac murmured tersely.
Oh, God. Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod…
She realized he was staring at her expectantly, so she nodded her terrified understanding. He slithered away on his belly. She lost sight of him as he melted into the shadows a few yards beyond her. And then she was alone. There was a bush a couple yards to her right. Should she crawl under it or stay where she was? She remembered Mac saying once that it was possible to hide right out in plain sight as long as a person didn’t move a muscle. She plastered herself to the wet, cold grass and made like a rock.
She lay there for several long minutes. And then, without warning, Mac was back. Just like that. She felt his presence an instant before his whisper came out of the dark only feet away.
“It’s me.”
She sagged with relief as he made his way to her on his belly, stopping only when he was plastered against her side from head to toe, an arm across her protectively. His mouth moved against her ear. “Ruala and his men are here.”
She’d known it the second Mac tackled her, but hearing the words sent a
n icy, ominous chill through her.
“He’s between us and the house, and I don’t think we can get around him. So, we can’t head back there.”
“Can we go back into the woods?” she breathed.
“One of his guys is circling out that way, right now. Our best bet is to head for the barns. It looks like they’ve already searched that area and are fanning out away from it. We can slip in behind them and take cover.”
She nodded against his shoulder. Oh, Lord. Mac didn’t have any of his gear with him. No weapons, no night-vision goggles, no radio to let the rest of the Blackjacks know what was going on. Her mind threatened to vapor lock completely at the danger they were in.
As if he’d read her mind, he whispered, “We’ve got our brains and my training going for us. We’re going to have to out-think the bastards until I can get my team’s attention.”
She nodded again.
“When I tell you the coast is clear, we’re going to jump up and run like hell for the broodmare barn.”
“Uh, problem. I can’t run.”
“How about if I hold your elbow and take the weight from your left side?”
She nodded gamely, gulping. It was anybody’s guess as to whether her knee would cooperate or not. But it wasn’t as if they had any choice. She had to try. If she couldn’t cut it physically, she or Mac could get seriously hurt. Or worse.
Warning bells clanged wildly in her head at the prospect of so much depending on her completely untrustworthy knee. She pushed herself to her feet. Her knee hitched ominously before it unfolded. Oh, God. It was already being cantankerous.
“Let’s go,” he murmured. He grabbed her left arm and hoisted about three-quarters of the weight off her left leg. She hop-skipped forward beside him, her left foot barely touching down. Had she not been fleeing for her life, the sensation of moving like this again after all these years would have been exhilarating.
Thin clouds obscured most of the moonlight, but she still felt practically lit up by spotlights on the wide expanse of grass separating them from the barns. She felt Ruala’s gaze boring into her back, right between her shoulder blades. Despite a sharp stitch in her side, she hop-skipped even faster. She did her best to keep up with Mac in the race to the first barn, but she wasn’t used to such strenuous exercise. A bad cramp stabbed her under the ribs. But Mac dragged her forward while she concentrated on keeping her feet under her and letting him do most of the work. Finally they reached the blackness of the barn’s alleyway.