“There’s nothing going on between Cal and me.” She pulled her hand away with an angry jerk, immediately regretted the lack of contact.
Nat sat looking so handsome, so bloody perfect that she actually wanted to kiss him again. She needed to go, needed to get out of here before she made a fool of herself. Once she’d been tougher than this, but now she couldn’t even force her legs to move.
They sat quietly for a moment, listened to the silence of the room, interrupted only by the blast of the furnace.
“You called me a prick-tease.” Elizabeth muttered, irritated by that one little detail.
“Hmm.” Nat grimaced like he’d hoped she’d forgotten. “Yes ma’am, I did.”
“I didn’t...” Elizabeth stumbled over the clarification, struggling to find the right words. “I’m not,” she finished lamely.
“No, I figured that out all by myself.” Humor turned his smile into a sexy grin. “I’m a jackass.”
“Yes.” Elizabeth shot to her feet, needing to be honest. “No! It wasn’t your fault. With me kissing you the way I did and then treating you like some kind of...rapist.” She stumbled over the word. Looked quickly away.
Nat stared down at his scuffed boots for a long moment before saying quietly, “Well, I guess you had your reasons.”
Her heart froze. Silence stretched thin as she blinked at him in noiseless horror. The muscles in her throat constricted and she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t know. She wasn’t branded on the outside like one of his cattle. But the cowboy looked at her like she was as transparent as glass.
Chapter Nine
Nat watched her face, noted the skin whiten around her mouth. He clenched his fists. Something had happened to her, but she wasn’t giving away any secrets. Not that he blamed her.
When he’d first gone up to the summer cabin he’d been angry, furious even, reminders of Nina’s betrayal like a knife wound in his chest. But after a day or two of solitude, he’d given a lot of thought to the hot kiss he and Eliza had shared and the way she’d suddenly freaked out when he’d touched her. It didn’t take a Ph.D. in psychology to figure she had some hang-ups about sex.
As a freelance nature photographer, Nat had been around more than most. A decade ago, he’d been caught up in the bloody civil war in Rwanda, on a dream assignment photographing mountain gorillas for National Geographic. The dream had turned into a nightmare and he’d been lucky to get out alive. Others hadn’t been so lucky.
That horror had carved a hole in his soul that had never quite healed. That man could be so evil toward his fellow man had opened his eyes to the dark side of human nature.
The look on Eliza’s face after that kiss had been full of terror and self-loathing. Not teasing. His sexual frustration had clouded his judgment, but eventually, in the quiet of the mountains, he’d acknowledged it and been repelled by his own actions. Then Cal had called him up on the radio. Given him almighty hell for being an ass.
Nat didn’t want to get involved with another beautiful woman—didn’t like the way Eliza Reed stirred up those feelings that had lain dormant for the past three years. But despite her prickly armor and her ability to kick-ass, there was something fragile about this woman. She was dangerous—he knew that, but she had a vulnerability that pulled him, sucked him in and left him wanting to know more.
And if that kiss was anything to go by, the attraction went both ways. So, regardless of her suspicious nature, he was going to see where it led.
Eerie catlike eyes watched him, defiant and proud, and ready to flee.
“Wanna talk about it?” he asked.
Eliza shook her head, dark hair fanning her shoulders where it had come loose from its ponytail. Her narrowed eyes nailed him dead in the eye. “No.”
That drew a smile. Unlike most things tonight, that didn’t surprise him. Eliza Reed was more evasive than a timber wolf, and he had to wonder what the hell she was hiding from.
An abusive husband?
A fist of panic double-punched his gut, both the thought that she might be unavailable, and the thought that someone had lifted a hand against her.
The white sheen of bone showed beneath the skin of her knuckles as she gripped the mantel. Still as a statue and twice as pale, she was as nervous as hell, and he hated it.
“Where’d you learn to fight like that?” he asked, hoping to move onto neutral territory. She froze again, telling him a lot more than he wanted to know. Another sensitive subject.
A sigh of defeat vibrated low in his diaphragm and he rubbed his chin. At first he didn’t think she was going to answer, he could see her mentally weighing the odds of opening up.
“Law enforcement,” she said finally, breaking the silence with a giant breath, and putting a tentative hand to her scalp wound. “I used to be in law enforcement.”
“Law enforcement?” He rolled the words on his tongue to see how they fit. Not what he’d expected to hear—not in a million years, but... “That where you learned to shoot?” The pieces snapped together.
“Yes.” Eliza walked over and picked up her jacket off the newel of the stairs. “And now I’m going to bed.”
“Okay. I’m with ya,” he said, rising off the couch.
“No. You’re not.”
Nat laughed, the sound bursting out before he could stop it, even though he knew it’d irritate the hell out of Eliza; he enjoyed shaking her out of that silent control. Better than watching fear pull down the shutters on her emotions.
“You’re concussed, remember?” Nat walked past her, out of the den and down the hall toward the kitchen. He held the door open while Eliza stood and gaped at him.
“I don’t need anyone watching out for me.” She followed him out into the hall, her gaze ripe with exasperation.
“Yeah, well, Sas said you do and she’s the doc.” Nat walked back to where she stood, casting her in shadow. “I’ll sleep on the pull-out in the other room and wake you every couple of hours.”
Eliza held his gaze for a full ten seconds before giving in. She deflated before his eyes, shrank as the anger left her, and brushed past him into the kitchen.
“Eliza.” Nat called out softly as she walked away from him. “If I’d wanted to hurt you, I’d have done it the first night you were here. Before anybody even knew you’d arrived.”
She stopped with her hand on the doorknob and turned back to face him, her eyes dark bruises that haunted a pale face.
“I won’t hurt you.” He wanted to shout the words but whispered them instead.
She nodded and headed out the door.
****
He caught up with her just outside the kitchen door. Elizabeth forced herself to walk slowly, not to run away as her instincts urged her to do. Nat hadn’t bothered with a jacket. He led her through the cold night wearing only a blue plaid shirt and a pair of old Wranglers. He didn’t seem to notice the cold that made her huddle into the warm depths of her coat, her breath condensing on the inside of her collar.
They reached the steps of the cottage and Nat walked right in, held the door for her before going over to fill the wood stove.
Like he owned the place.
Oh yeah. He did own the place. She stifled a giggle with the fingers of her right hand. Maybe she did have a concussion.
Blue’s tail thumped lazily against the bare wooden floor. Elizabeth closed the door behind her, took off her jacket and stood twisting it in her fingers. The cottage was small but comely, with yellow walls that gave it a cozy feel. The stripped pine and hardwood floor glowed from years of waxing and polishing and she loved the warm rustic charm of the place.
But she hadn’t noticed how small it was until now.
Nat watched her, his eyes moving over her like a laser that missed nothing. The lamps she’d left on cast an amber glow across his features and defined the plains of his face, catching pale highlights in his hair.
Beautiful. Gilded in gold.
Somehow his beauty only made her life seem mor
e hideous.
“What was that fight about?” Elizabeth asked, unsure of how to behave with this man in her cabin. Last time she’d jumped him and her cheeks heated at the memory.
Nat carried on watching her, but didn’t reply. She looked at his big hands filling the wood-burner with large logs of split wood and made a last determined effort, wanting to break the spell he cast over her nerves. “Why did those guys beat up Cal?”
Nat closed the burner and dusted his hands on the front of his jeans before moving toward her. Slow steps that made her want to bolt. She held very still, every muscle tensed. He reached out, took the jacket from between her nervous fingers.
“Cal told you he served time, right?”
She nodded as he hung her coat on the back of the door. She twisted the ring on her finger.
“His step-daddy was one mean old son of a bitch, and used to beat the crap out of Cal and his mother every time he tied one on. I saw Cal a couple of times...afterwards.” Nat shook his head. “One day Cal snapped. He was just a boy, but he hit his step-daddy over the head with a baseball bat and broke the fucker’s skull.”
Elizabeth swallowed as the graphic image formed in her mind. At the age of fourteen, Cal killed a man. At age fourteen, all she’d been worried about was whether she was going to have to share a room at school and what exam subjects to take. There were worse things in life than being an orphan.
Nat’s blue eyes watched her carefully. “One of the guys in the bar was Cal’s younger stepbrother. He’s still a little pissed at Cal for killing his daddy.”
Elizabeth nodded, understanding the pain of losing a parent to violence. Her own had been innocent victims of the terror campaign that had nearly destroyed Northern Ireland, but she still couldn’t sympathize with a bully.
Silence hung heavy in the air between them.
Elizabeth stood and shivered, but not from cold. Life was never simple. Everybody had a story. She twisted the gold signet ring on her pinkie, aware her nervous traits were showing through, but unable to control them. Those dark-blue eyes of his watched her with a look that was close to caring; spun magic around her—scared her with maybes.
What would it be like to get involved with a man like Nat Sullivan? More to the point, could she face a lifetime wondering what it would have been like to be held in those strong arms and kissed by that beatiful mouth? No matter how short that lifetime may be?
Could she let DeLattio control her life even now?
A smile tugged Nat’s lips, as if he could read her mind. He lifted his hand and gently brushed a strand of hair from her forehead.
She could get lost in that gaze, drown in those seductive blue depths, or the curve of his mouth that hooked a single dimple in his left jaw. Heat bloomed in her cheeks as she retreated an inch. She wasn’t strong enough. Not yet. She took a half step back, nonplussed, bit her bottom lip.
“Go to bed,” he ordered, as if he hadn’t noticed her staring at him with naked longing a second earlier. “I’ll wake you in a couple hours.”
“Gee, thanks,” she forced a laugh, started to turn away. She wasn’t ready for intimacy, but God she wouldn’t mind a kiss. Better that than the nightmares that usually kept her company.
She hesitated.
“Least I can do. Go.” He slapped her on the backside and she jumped in surprise. She wasn’t somebody who touched very easily, never had been. People usually kept their distance.
She arched a brow at his grinning face. “You may not have noticed, Mr. Sullivan, but I don’t like being ordered around.” As she said it, she turned her back on his smile. The thought of sex should have made her run a mile, but tonight it tempted.
“Oh, I noticed all right,” Nat drawled as she paused in the bedroom doorway and glanced over her shoulder. Then he grinned, looking like a sinner at the gates of Heaven. “But frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
****
The insistent beep of his wristwatch alarm pulled Nat from a deep sleep. It took him a moment to remember why he was asleep on the couch in the guest cottage, but when he did, he threw off the blanket and pulled on his jeans. He didn’t bother with his shirt.
Blue’s legs twitched in his sleep as he dreamed of chasing rabbits.
Nat padded barefoot to the bedroom and carefully opened the door. A slice of soft light filtered through from the lounge where the lamp still shone. It cut across the folds and curves of the covers that outlined Eliza’s sleeping form.
She lay flat on her back, her hand thrown up over the pillow behind her head. Quietly, he crossed to the bed, noting her breathing was deep and even, her dark hair tousled around her face. Nat gently pushed it back off her forehead. He told himself he was checking her scalp wound, tried not to savor the softness of the tresses.
“Eliza,” he breathed softly. “Wake up call.”
Nothing. Not even the rhythm of her breathing changed.
“Eliza,” he spoke louder now, “come on, wake up.”
Nothing happened.
Nat touched her shoulder, shook her, and called her name again.
Next thing he knew, he was flat on his back on the floor, staring down the muzzle of a matt-black handgun. Eliza’s eyes were wide and staring, her breath rapid and shallow.
Nat knocked her hand aside, grabbed her wrist and tore the gun from her rigid fingers.
“What the fuck?” Nat yelled. “You sleep with a gun under your pillow? God! Jesus! Fuck!”
Holding onto her wrist, he slid the gun to the floor and stood as Eliza stared at him with naked eyes so defenseless they just about broke his heart.
What the hell had happened to her?
He gentled his grip on her wrist and slid his palm down until he held her hand. “Eliza, I’m not going to hurt you.”
The clock ticked down the seconds as she said nothing, just stared back at him not quite conscious.
Picking the gun off the floor, he turned to leave. Her voice reached him through the darkness, just a whisper of breath, impossibly quiet.
“I didn’t know it was you, Nat.”
Rage and fury shot through his mind, anger soaking into his soul like a stain. He kept his voice even. Controlled. “It’s okay, Eliza. Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you in another couple of hours.”
****
Quantico, Virginia, April 12th
“That bitch. That mother-fucking bitch!” Spittle flecked Andrew DeLattio’s chin. He grabbed the orange plastic chair and slammed it into the wall, pounded it until large shards of jagged plastic flew off into a sterile corner of the interview room.
Larry Frazier stood back out of range, nodding the guards away as they tried to enter the room.
DeLattio’s civilized persona cracked a little more each day. He felt it, something dark, twisting like a feral beast desperate to get out. Juliette Morgan, Fed bitch, was going to discover that his first night in her apartment had been just a warm up. He’d make her wish she’d never taken her first breath, never become a Fed, never set foot in New York City.
Irish bitch.
DeLattio swore again. “A Fed. The whole time she was a cock-sucking Fed.” He clutched his hands to his head and laughed hysterically, “Jesus Christ, I nailed a Federal Agent and those bastards let me do it.”
For the first time, Andrew DeLattio felt a kernel of admiration for the FBI’s Organized Crime Unit. They’d never played hardball before. They’d actually made a fool of him.
Larry had the gall to smile.
Andrew’s gaze narrowed and Larry’s smile turned sickly. The little man started to perspire.
“Isn’t that entrapment?” Andrew asked.
“No,” Larry said. He shook his head and stood straighter. “You drugged her and entered her apartment illegally. If she’d invited you back, then maybe you could have argued it. Except, given the state they found her in, they could still have pressed charges for assault of a federal officer.”
DeLattio scratched his jaw as his anger receded and logic took over.
The fact that she was a Fed must have been the reason she’d never invited him back to her apartment in the first place. Never let him come upstairs, never once let him touch her outside those perfunctory little kisses that had left him sweating. He’d thought she was sophisticated and discriminating—maybe even a virgin. She had captivated him totally, until she’d dumped him.
A growl worked its way up his throat and he clamped his lips together to stop it escaping. He’d practically had to beg her to go out with him. Woo her with flowers, diamonds and chocolates.
And she’d been playing him like a pro.
Clever bitch. Clever, clever bitch.
‘Beware the fury of a patient man.’ Patience. Fury. He’d show her fury all right.
He wanted to smash down the walls with his bare hands, wanted to smash his lawyer’s nose until it split in two. Sweat dripped down his back, hands clenched into tight fists. He couldn’t stand it. Could not stand it.
Leaning his head against the wall, absorbing the coolness of the plaster though his hot pores, his rage eased as plans formed.
“What else did you find out?” Andrew asked. He took a slow breath.
Larry shrugged his bony shoulders in a quick gesture. “Not much. She’s gone on the lam and the FBI is looking for her.”
“That bitch set me up,” Andrew said. Ruined his life, destroyed his family. He took another deep breath, letting the oxygen calm his wrath.
He knew what he had to do.
“Find her.” He held Larry’s gaze, told him without words what it would mean if he didn’t do as instructed. The lawyer nodded, scurried about collecting his papers.
She’d played him for a fool. Even tied up and bleeding, she’d won the first round. But he was gonna get out of here soon, and when he did, she was going to find out what revenge was all about.
****
Elizabeth ran fast through a dark forest, missed her footing and cried out as she stumbled, but was up again in a second. She didn’t have time. She couldn’t see through the fog that swirled around her, but she knew she didn’t have time.
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