She was, actually. She grinned. “Vegas is in the wrong direction,” she told him. “We’re headed to Georgia, remember?”
He still looked hopeful, his eyes alight with the possibility of poker chips and free booze. “Maybe so, but Tunica is just a hop, skip and a jump away.”
“I know,” she said. She scowled significantly. “Tubby runs buses back and forth twice a day. I’d be spotted the minute we got into town.”
He passed a hand over his jaw, grimaced. “Damn.”
She released a disbelieving breath, feeling her eyes round. “You were really considering it, weren’t you?”
“It’s as good a place as any to disappear. Or it would have been, had the man who wants to see you dead not been an issue.”
She chewed the inside of her cheek. “There is that.”
“I wouldn’t have really done it,” he told her. “Just thought about it for a minute. Just like you thought about calling the D.A. and threatening not to testify,” he pointed out, a shrewd glint in his dark gaze.
He had her there, the wretch. “Who says I’m still not going to do it?”
“Intuition,” Judd told her. “You’re scared, Noelle. I know that. You’d be a fool not to be.” His voice was low, kind and laced with an understanding that surpassed good instincts. He hesitated, studying her intently with more scrutiny than she was particularly comfortable with. She felt stripped, oddly vulnerable. Her secrets open to him. “But you can be afraid without being a coward. And you’re not a coward.” He flashed a grin. “At least not on paper, anyway.”
Ah, she thought, inclining her head. Her file. What else had he read into her? Noelle wondered. What else had he seen in her file that made him so certain he could judge her accurately? And if he’d picked up on that from whatever information his company had gleaned about her, then what would he see in her in person?
For whatever reason, her own intuition told her that he didn’t—or wouldn’t—miss much. And if she had a prayer of keeping any part of herself hidden or secret, then she’d better have a care.
Or she’d be in danger of caring too much.
7
JUDD MADE THE final turn onto Bear Track Road and checked the mailboxes against the house number he’d be given.
Having dozed off fifty miles ago, Noelle stretched in the seat beside him. “Are we there yet?” she teased with a chuckle, her sleepy voice low and foggy.
He grinned. “I wondered when you would ask.”
“Because I’ve behaved like a child?” she asked. “Or because of my naturally charming sense of curiosity?”
A little of both to be honest, but he had no intention of telling her that. He’d rather enjoyed her temper tantrum in the parking lot when she’d stomped all over her phone. And he even understood it, to a point. Her world was spinning out of control, her life was in danger—and the lives of those around her, as well—and sometimes the need to just lose it, to simply say “let the chips fall where they may,” was almost too powerful to resist.
But she had resisted, which had necessitated the bucket-kicking fit.
Hell, he ought to recognize one, Judd thought with an inward grin. He’d had his fair share of them as well. He cast her a droll glance. “Definitely your curiosity,” he told her.
Her pale green eyes twinkled in the darkness. “Charming curiosity,” she corrected. She frowned, her brow wrinkling in thought as she peered out through the window. “You leave that bit off and I just sound nosy.”
He smothered a laugh. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course not. Oh, look at that,” she exclaimed, pointing to a darkened car on the side of the road with a handmade neon sign on the back windshield that read, “We’re fine, thanks for asking.”
Judd chuckled and shook his head.
“How odd,” she remarked, sitting a little more straightly in her seat. “Are they being sarcastic or are they really stranded?”
And she thought she wasn’t nosy? His lips twitched. “I don’t know.” Admittedly, it was bizarre.
“I think we should check on them,” she said, straining to look over her shoulder. “Turn around and go back.”
“That sounded like an order. Were you ever in the military?”
“Come on, Judd. What if something is wrong?”
“I seriously doubt anything is wrong,” he said, angling the car into a nearby driveway so that he could double back. Not because she’d told him to, but because his father had always taught him to never pass a motorist in distress. “If nothing else, they still have their sense of humor.”
“It’s—” she checked the review display “—thirty-four degrees. It’s too cold to sit in a broken-down car on the side of the road.”
“I didn’t see anybody in the car.”
“I didn’t either, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
He approached slowly, turning his high beams on to get a better look into the darkened car. Two people. Early twenties. One male, behind the wheel. A female in the passenger seat. She was smiling. The driver, however, was not. He didn’t see anyone in the backseat, but knew better than to assume no one was there.
“I’m going to pull alongside them and roll down my window,” he told her. This felt odd. Not dangerous, necessarily, but a little off all the same. “Let me do the talking. Please,” he tacked on, before she could respond. He shot her a look. “You’re in hiding, remember? You can’t slip up and tell anyone your name, no matter how innocent they might seem.”
Her expression blanked as though the idea had never occurred to her. “Oh. Right.”
Confident that she’d follow direction, Judd did as he said and slowly approached the silent car. He powered the driver’s-side window down and waited for the boy opposite to do the same. He did, so the battery wasn’t an issue.
“You need some help?” Judd asked him.
The girl in the seat next to him bounced delightedly up and down and punched the driver on the arm. “See!” she said. “I told you. I told you that people would stop.”
The driver pulled a long-suffering breath through his nose, directed his attention at Judd. “No, thanks. We’re fine. Just conducting a little social experiment, that’s all.”
He heard Noelle lean forward, felt her shoulder up against his. “A social experiment? What kind of social experiment?”
Judd turned to glare at her and she blinked innocently back at him.
The girl in the car answered before the boy could. “Chad is convinced that the human race is doomed because of indifference, that people simply don’t care about each other anymore.” She preened. “I, on the other hand, don’t agree, so we staged this little experiment to see who was right. We’ve been sitting here for hours, pretending to be stranded, counting the cars that passed without stopping as a vote for his opinion and the cars that do as a vote for mine. Y’all passed, but you came back. That’s why he’s annoyed. Because I’ve won.”
Judd didn’t know whether to applaud their ingenuity or rip them a new one for wasting people’s time and putting themselves in danger. Purposely luring strangers was stupid no matter which way you sliced it. Who knew who might have come along? Who knew whether an ax murderer might have decided that they were easy pickings?
“That’s excellent that you’ve had more offers of help than not,” Noelle remarked, her voice on the high end of strained. She’d moved closer to him, to keep from having to shout, he imagined, but the reason hardly mattered. Her soft breast rested against his arm and the smell of her shampoo invaded his nostrils—something fruity and warm—and a bolt of sensation landed fully in his groin. He gritted his teeth.
“But the next time you do one of these little experiments,” she continued, “you should consider doing it in a safer environment—” she frowned “—sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Marissa,” the girl supplied, looking mildly chagrined.
“What a lovely name,” Noelle remarked, beaming at her. She might as well climb into his
lap, Judd thought. His dick couldn’t get any harder. “Anyway, you should do it somewhere less secluded, Marissa. Somewhere with street lamps and excess traffic. It’s far too dangerous to be out here. Better safe than sorry, right?”
Marissa glared at her partner and punched him on the arm. “See, I told you,” she grumbled. “That’s what I’d said,” she told Noelle, as if Judd was not there at all and not part of the conversation, which he wasn’t at this point. “But Chad said that people would stop when it was presumably safe, that the test wouldn’t be accurate unless we moved to somewhere less desirable.”
Then Chad was a moron, Judd thought. Or he’d just been looking for a place to go parking with his girlfriend, which was more likely. The boy looked at Judd, the tops of his ears pinkening with embarrassment.
Noelle chuckled and sent a knowing look at Chad. “It’s possible, I suppose,” she said. “But I suspect Chad was more interested in privacy than leveling your variables.”
Marissa blinked, seemingly confused. “What? But I—”
“Has he told you any ghost stories?” Noelle asked, humor lacing her voice. “Tried to scare you so that you’d snuggle up a little closer to him?” What a wonderful idea, Judd thought. He wondered if that would work on her.
Marissa’s eyes widened and she inhaled audibly, then her outraged but clearly flattered gaze swung to Chad. “You opportunistic jerk!” she admonished, punching him once again. “I can’t believe you—”
“Take it off the side of the road, guys,” Judd told them, laughing softly under his breath. “Or into a parking lot, at the very least.”
Noelle waved goodbye, then moved back over into her seat. She shook her head and chuckled, the sound soft and strangely intimate. “I’m a glass half full kind of girl and have seen the evidence of genuine human kindness, but I sincerely hope I was never—and will never—be that naive.”
Judd laughed, wheeled the SUV back around and aimed it toward their cabin. Bare branches crowded the space above the road, then suddenly gave way to a low, one-lane bridge over a decent-sized creek. No doubt that water was colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra, Judd thought, glad that he lived in an era of modern convenience, the invention of the water heater being one of his favorites. “She’s young,” he said. “It comes with the territory.”
“Or maybe she was willfully stupid,” Noelle remarked thoughtfully. “Maybe she wanted a secluded spot with Chad as well, and was too afraid of potential rejection to admit it.”
Hmm. Voice of experience? Judd wondered. She wasn’t married, he knew, and her Facebook profile—which had been included with her file, thanks to their resident hacker, Charlie Martin—had her relationship status as “single.” Had there been a recent significant other? Had someone broken her heart? Was she too wed to her causes to consider a permanent relationship? Or was it something simpler? His lips twitched.
Like not being told what to do.
Because she clearly hated that.
“I thought I asked you to let me do the talking,” he reminded her. Smiling, he heaved a why-do-I-bother sigh, then drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “Do you always have this sort of trouble following instruction, or is it just me you object to listening to?”
“I listened,” she told him, her lips curving. “I didn’t tell them my name.”
He snorted. “You didn’t listen. You ignored and improvised. That’s not the same thing.”
She turned to study him, her speculative gaze entirely too bold for comfort. “I bet they don’t like that sort of initiative in the military, do they? I bet that was especially difficult for you. You don’t strike me as the blind obedience type, either.”
Ha. She had no idea. He laughed darkly. “It’s not called initiative in the military, sweetheart. It’s called insubordination.”
And yes, blind obedience—otherwise known as the chain of command—had been unbelievably difficult for him. Yes, he’d understood the reasoning behind it. The last thing Uncle Sam needed was a group of well-trained, armed-to-the-teeth anarchists. Someone had to be in charge, the chief to Indian ratio kept in check. Still, the bit had chafed and he’d struggled with it from the beginning.
Jeb had known it, of course—just like everything else—but, as far as he knew, no one else ever had. That she’d picked up on that little characteristic in such a short amount of time with even less information was more than mildly disturbing. It unnerved the hell out of him. Judd didn’t have any desire to be mysterious, but having one person in his life who was always in his head was enough, thank you very much. He wasn’t too keen on having another. And yet...
He couldn’t deny that there was a certain attractive element to it as well, something that made him feel...less alone. Which was ridiculous because he’d never been lonely, never desired a deeper connection with anyone else before—particularly a woman, after the Heather debacle. He inwardly grimaced. Interestingly enough, until now, he’d never considered just how much he’d allowed that experience to impact his life, to shape his perceptions and resulting actions.
He shied away from the rest of that thought because he gloomily suspected he wasn’t going to care for the outcome of that bit of self-examination. The idea that he’d let that conniving little gold digger control him in any way beyond the breakup made him want to howl....
“Do you call everyone sweetheart or I am just special?” Noelle asked, giving her shoulders a mocking little squeeze.
Judd grinned, shook his head. “Oh, you’re special, all right.” Truer words, he was sure, had never been spoken. Intuition told him she was going to be particularly unique, that he was hovering on the edge of a whole new world, one that he wasn’t completely sure he wanted to inhabit. “A special pain in the ass,” he added under his breath.
Another truth.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” he lied. He wheeled the car into the driveway, catching the front of their cabin in the headlights in the process. “We’re here,” he announced, shifting the gear into Park.
Let the fun begin.
* * *
“DID YOU change your mind about dragging me in by the hair of my head?” she asked, smiling as she sent him a sidelong glance. The night was quiet and still, and a cold wind billowed up beneath her skirt, making her shiver as they neared the front porch. Thankfully, a motion light blinked on as they ascended the steps.
He sighed, the sound humorous but weary. Driving for any length of time always wore her out, so she could sympathize. “Too tired,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow. You’re not disappointed, are you?” he teased.
“Not in the least.” Though if he wanted to pick her up and carry her again, she wouldn’t have any objection. Ridiculous, Noelle thought. She was going to get her Girl Power card revoked if she didn’t quit thinking about that.
Weary, but uncomfortably aware that she was going to be sleeping in the same space with this criminally sexy man—six and half feet of pure, sinful temptation—Noelle waited as patiently as possible for Judd to unlock the door and usher her in. She caught a whiff of his cologne as she walked past, something dark with a hint of patchouli. She’d noticed it when she’d been slung over his shoulder and then later, when they’d been in the car.
It smelled better up close, enhanced by the warmth of his skin.
A zing of heat pinged her sex, sent a wave of gooseflesh up over her belly. The strength in her neck lessened beneath the weight of desire while the rest of her muscles tensed with anticipation. She inwardly winced.
They were doomed to disappointment.
Because sex, she was relatively certain, was not on the agenda.
Only she wasn’t so certain that the owners of the cabin were aware of that. Because a “Welcome, Honeymooners!” banner hung from the second-story rail, and a bottle of champagne chilled in a bucket on the bar along with a basket of chocolates, whipped cream, a long white feather and massage oil. A trail of pink and red rose petals led from the front door, up the sta
irs to what was presumably the bedroom.
The bedroom. Because there obviously wasn’t one on this level. Noelle gulped. Oh, Lord...
“Umm, Judd?”
Having spied the Honeymooner’s Special as well, his face had gone comically blank. “What the hell?” he muttered.
“Are you sure we’re in the right cabin?”
He walked over to the bar and peered at a note attached. “I didn’t make the reservations,” he said, shooting her a grim look. “But considering the key opened the door and this—” he waggled the note at her “—is addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, this is definitely the right cabin. I’m going to have to kill someone,” he muttered under his breath, his expression blackening with every passing second. “Slowly, painfully throttle the life right out of them,” he remarked through gritted teeth. A bark of laughter erupted from his throat, then he gave his head a disbelieving shake and looked heavenward, evidently for some divine intervention. “And to think I left the military to avoid doing just that.”
Had she not been listening closely, she would have missed that last bit and, for whatever reason, she was certain it was significant. His face was a mask of irritation and outrage and there was a fleeting expression of sadness—a grimness around his especially beautiful mouth—that made her want to hug him, to offer some form of comfort.
His cell phone suddenly lit up on his waist, snagging his attention. “Yes, yes, I know, Jeb, I know. Trust me, you’re going to hear from me,” he said, more to himself to her.
Noelle grinned at his exasperated expression. “Do you often talk to yourself? Or do you have an imaginary friend I can’t see?”
His lips twitched. “Both.” He blew out a heavy breath, then turned to look at her, his face a mask of forced cheerfulness. “Right,” he said with a brisk nod. “I’m going to step outside and make a quick phone call.”
She pitied the person on the other end of the line. She nodded. “Should I settle in or are we going to try to move?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But we’re definitely not going anywhere tonight. You take the bedroom,” he told her. He gestured to the living room. “I’ll take the couch.”
His First Noelle Page 7