Her Last Defense

by Vickie Taylor

  Then Ty came out of nowhere. He was hurt, but he stumbled through the wreck until he found the animal habitat. He smashed it, grabbed the monkey and ran. Michael yelled for me to stop Ty. We both took after him through the woods, but it was dark. I kept running into things and tripping. We couldn’t keep up.”

  Macy frowned. “What did Ty want with the macaque?”

  “He knew how much he was worth, I guess. He’d overheard me on the phone with the drug company. He said he wouldn’t tell anyone if I brought him to America and set him up with a job.”

  Macy felt like a well gone dry. She was tapped out, emotionless. Maybe this was why Clint seemed so detached sometimes. So removed. He’d faced this kind of insanity too many times. She couldn’t imagine the toll it would take on a person.

  She wanted to quit. To run. To hide. But there was more, and she had to know it all.

  “What happened to Michael? Do you know who shot him?”

  “He wouldn’t give up. Kept after Ty even after the sun came up. We had no idea where we were by then. No idea how to get back to the plane, or find our way out of the woods. So we just kept after Ty.”

  “You caught him?”

  “Michael tried to take him down. But Ty got the jump on him. He—” David’s face twisted. “He shot him in the head.

  “I—I think I charged him. I tried to hit him. He dropped the gun and the monkey got away. He went after it.”

  “How did you get the gun?”

  “I went after it. I saw Michael. Lying there. I was scared. I thought Ty might come back. I picked up the gun so I could protect myself.”

  “But Ty didn’t come back.”

  David shook his head. “I never saw him or the monkey again. I tried to go for help, but I couldn’t find my way our of the forest. It seemed like the woods went on forever.”

  Her heart heavy, Macy looked over her shoulder, careful to train her gaze only on the captain.

  He nodded to let her know they’d gotten all they needed.

  She stood. “You’re going to be fine, David. The doctors here will take good care of you.”

  He held on to her hand, wouldn’t let her go. “It was all for nothing, wasn’t it, Macy? Wouldn’t have mattered to you if I had developed a cure for ARFIS, been a millionaire.”

  Pressing her lips together, she squeezed his fingers. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “No it’s not. Everything’s gone to hell and it’s all my fault.”

  Without meaning to, she met Clint’s crystal gaze through the glass, though she could read nothing in it.

  “For what it’s worth, I did love you, Macy,” David said, his voice scratchy, dry from the effort.

  Looking down at him, Macy tried to remember what she’d once felt for the wasted man in the bed, but could only dredge up pity at the moment.

  “It might not have been the kind of love you wanted or needed. But I did love you.”

  When she turned toward the window again, Clint was gone.

  Chapter 12

  Now that they were sure Ty Jeffries had, indeed, survived the plane crash, Captain Matheson, Kat and Del were on their way back to Hempaxe and the Sabine National Forest to step up the search for the missing man. They’d asked the governor for more military helicopters to search the woods. The FLEER heat-sensing devices the army would bring to the party could find a live man even in the deepest woods by the heat his body produced. They had also put out a BOLO—Be On the Look Out—to law-enforcement agencies in three states in case Jeffries had escaped the area.

  Clint stayed behind to wait for Macy, figuring he would hitch a ride in the CDC chopper they were sending for her. While he waited for her to finish decontamination and debrief with the doctors who would continue David Brinker’s care, he stood before a window in the dim doctor’s lounge. He hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on. Just stood looking out at the Houston skyline against the black night sky.

  He hadn’t so much as moved a finger in five minutes. It was a technique he’d learned at a very early age. The more he churned on the inside, the quieter he became on the outside.

  His old man hadn’t liked whiners or complainers. He hadn’t put up with temper tantrums at all, and he’d had a mean backhand. As a kid, Clint’s ability to bottle up his sorrow, his rage, his pain and fear tight inside him and just stand still had saved him many a black eye.

  And worse.

  As a man, his self-control had earned him the nickname “Cool-hand” Clint, the Ranger who could stare down a dozen armed gunmen without flinching.

  So why did the thought of facing one diminutive doctor have his heart pounding and his palms clammy?

  Maybe because she had more power to hurt him than his old man ever had. She touched places in him that fists couldn’t reach.

  As evidenced by the way his chest contracted at the sight of her reflection in the window before him.

  “Clint?”

  He turned slowly, as if waiting for the next blow.

  “I thought you’d gone back with the others.”

  He jerked his head once to the left. “Not yet. How’s David?” He couldn’t quite keep the venom out of his voice when he said the man’s name.

  “Better.” She walked toward him in measured steps. Wary steps.

  Smart girl.

  “His vital signs are back to normal and he’s less agitated.”

  It was inhumane to not be glad about that.

  He didn’t care.

  In fact, there was a part of him—an ugly part—that wanted David Brinker to suffer. Partly for the dangerous position he’d put the people of southeast Texas in.

  But mostly for the pain he’d seen on Macy’s face when she’d been questioning him. She’d loved Brinker once—he had no doubt about that. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of love she needed, the kind that would last a lifetime, see them through good times and bad, but she’d cared.

  Maybe she still did.

  Therein lay the source of his discomfort.

  Macy was a nurturer. It was in her nature to heal. Brinker was wounded. Would she be drawn back to him despite what he’d done?

  The thought had his fists clenching, his balance shifting to the balls of his feet as if preparing for a fight.

  “What will happen to him?” she asked.

  “Nothing as bad as what he deserves, the greedy bastard.”

  Her ankle was bothering her again. She limped around him, scraped a wooden chair back from a worn table littered with medical journals and a tabloid newspaper, and sat down heavily. “David was right about one thing. The CDC wouldn’t have given him any of the credit—much less the money—for a cure for ARFIS.”

  “And that makes what he did all right?”

  “No.” She twined her fingers. “But he was always kind of starstruck. He envied the doctors with the big houses and fancy cars. He is just as smart, just as capable as them, and virology saves a lot more lives than breast implants, and yet the plastic surgeons had everything he wanted. I think he felt…like he’d made a mistake with his life, sometimes. And yet he loved what he did at the CDC. It was his life.”

  “You’re working awfully hard to make excuses for him.”

  “Not excuse him.” She curled the corner of the National Enquirer. “Just understand him.”

  “Take a piece of advice from someone who’s busted more bad guys than you can count. Don’t try to figure out why they do the things they do. It’ll just drive you nuts.”

  “David isn’t a bad guy. He just…wanted more out of life.”

  “So does the junkie who takes a Saturday-night special into a convenience store and kills the clerk for the forty-two dollars and change in the till.”

  She scraped her chair back and limped toward him. Moonlight paled her dark complexion to ivory. The scent of Ivory soap reached him a second before she did.

  He leaned forward an inch, drawn to her like the tide to the shore. His body tightened until he ached with the need to reach out and touch he
r. Claim her.

  He didn’t want to talk about David anymore. Didn’t want to talk at all.

  “You don’t get it, do you? It has no effect on you.” She raised her gaze to his, her eyes searching. For what, he hadn’t a clue. “The lure of money. The attraction of fame. Temptation.”

  She inched closer. He held his ground, his senses filled with the sight of her, the sound of her voice. His mouth watered with the memory of her sweet, musky taste.

  “You’ve never wanted something just out of reach so badly that you thought about crossing the line to get it.”

  She was so close he could feel her breath on his chest. She tipped her head back to study him, her lips pursed, and laid her hand on his chest. His heart thundered beneath her fingertips.

  “You’re uncorruptible. Unseduceable, right?”

  His chest locked. Unable to draw a breath, he splayed his big palm over her tiny hand and pulled it lower. “Wrong.”

  Her eyes widened, luminous in the dimly lit lounge, as she felt just how seduceable he was a moment before his mouth crashed down on hers. He didn’t give her a chance to accept or reject. Just parted her lips and plundered. Took what he wanted.

  His skin itched with the need to claim her, to brand her as his own.

  She made a sound in the back of her throat, something between pleasure and pain, and he looped one arm around her waist, pulled her with him as he backed to the door, reached down with his free hand and twisted the lock. Then he spun her until she faced that door, braced herself with both palms against the wood.

  One-handed he yanked the knot from the drawstring at her waist and sank his hand deep into her surgical scrubs. With the other hand he palmed her breast through her bra and the thin, cotton top.

  She threw her head back, almost clunking him in the teeth.

  “I’m no goddamn saint,” he growled in her ear.

  But he was a fool. This was a no-win proposition, and he knew it. She could never be his. He would never be what she needed. Her heart was too big, too pure, and she would want to give it all to the man in her life.

  Clint didn’t know how to let a woman love him.

  But he damned sure knew how to make her feel so good she’d never love anyone else without thinking about him.

  The door to the darkened doctor’s lounge was cool beneath Macy’s palms. The body pinning her to it was searing hot. Clint’s assault obliterated all thought, all sense—except of him. His hard body pressed against her. His hands were on her breasts and between her legs. His breath, warm and ragged, was in her ear.

  The arousal he raised in her erased all the reasons they shouldn’t be doing this from her mind. It stole her will.

  Or maybe she gave that away by choice.

  Without free will, she wouldn’t be responsible for whatever course her life took, would she? Wouldn’t have to look back and feel guilty over the outcome of the decisions she’d made, the way she did now.

  She’d thought nothing could have made her feel worse than believing she’d caused David’s death. She’d been wrong. Knowing she’d driven him to ruin his life caused a pain so sharp and so deep she thought she might die from it.

  She’d known what she felt for David wasn’t the kind of love a man and woman built a future on. Yet she’d accepted his ring, worn it nearly eight months before admitting to herself—and finally to him—that he wasn’t what she wanted. What she needed.

  Her relationship with David had been safe, comfortable during a time when she’d been too raw from the betrayal of her first lover to risk anything else. She should have known David would sense her ambivalence toward him. She should have known the lengths he would go to in order to win her true love.

  How could she not have known?

  Now his life was over, and hers might as well be, too. She couldn’t bear the consequences of her actions. Couldn’t risk ruining more lives. Especially not Clint’s. He was too…too much. He was everything she’d lacked with David: heat, excitement, passion. On the outside, the Ranger might appear infuriatingly cool and composed, but she’d seen past that stony shell to the man inside. A man as unpredictable as an electrical storm, as charged as a lightning bolt.

  He was everything she’d once wanted—and the one thing she couldn’t have. Not now. Not with David lying down the hall, hurt and in trouble because of her. She owed him more than that. She had a responsibility, and it sat in her heart like a lump of ice so cold that even Clint’s fiery touch couldn’t melt it.

  He must have sensed her withdrawal. His left hand slid under her shirt, tweaked and rolled her nipple until she had to bite her lip to keep herself from arching her back, pushing her breast deeper into his warm, rough palm.

  “Let it go,” he growled in her ear. “Whatever you’re thinking about, let it go.”

  His right hand stroked the curls over her mound. Two fingers eased back and forth in the channel between her slick folds.

  She whimpered. “Clint—”

  “Shhh. Nothing matters right now but this. Just feel. I’ll make you feel good, I promise.”

  “Clint, please.”

  He spun her around with a suddenness that bordered on violence. Her back was against the door now, her heaving chest pinned to his. Shadows hid the coarse cut of his nose, the slash of his cheeks, but his eyes glittered like silver discs in the moonlight filtering into the room as he lowered his head, fused his mouth to hers, stifling her arguments.

  His tongue plunged into her mouth, reminding her of the way he’d plunged into her body once before. The way she wanted him to plunge again.

  Never breaking contact with her lips, he stooped and picked her up. Her legs hooked around his waist automatically, bringing her body against the hot, hard length of his erection. She moaned into his mouth, desperate for more of him, desperate to have him inside her and yet knowing she couldn’t. She had to stop this while she still could.

  If she still could.

  He broke off the kiss long enough to set her on the leather couch beneath the window. She gulped for air, tried to calm her pounding pulse, gather her wits to explain to him that they couldn’t. She couldn’t.

  But it was too late. She hadn’t yet even managed to string a logical thought together, much less speak, when she realized the bottoms to her surgical scrubs lay in a puddle of blue cotton at her feet. Clint was spreading her knees, lowering his head.

  She nearly bucked off the couch at the first touch of his tongue to her most intimate recesses.

  One of his hands found hers, linked fingers with her, holding her to earth when gravity seemed to have abandoned her. When her body wanted to float away of its own accord. His other hand joined his lips in the sensual invasion of her body.

  Yes.

  No.

  “Clint, this isn’t—” His fingers probed deeply, finding a cluster of nerves she hadn’t known existed. Her head thrashed from side to side. Her heels dug into his back. “We can’t—”

  His tongue swirled. He sucked on her gently and her power of speech abandoned her in midsentence. Her whole body quivered. Her hand that wasn’t held captive by his skimmed across his temple, around the back of his head seeking purchase but finding none in his short hair. With every stroke of his hand, each intimate kiss, her hips undulated against him, begging him for more even while her mind begged him to stop. Stop.

  “S-stop.”

  Using his shoulders, he nudged her thighs wider.

  Need gusted through her, whipping and lashing at the limbs of her resistance, gathering force and intensity like a thundercloud ready to burst into a full-fledged storm at any second. She reached deep for her resolve, held tight to her determination against the onslaught.

  “I said stop.” Hooking one arm over the back of the couch, she dragged herself away from Clint. When his hold on her tightened, she shoved at him with her feet. A sob tore out of her. “Please. Just…stop it!”

  Looking as dazed as she felt, he rocked back on his heels. Even in the dim light, she cou
ld see his face was ruddy. His breath came in long, hard rasps. “What?”

  Unable to look him in the eye, she reached for her pants, arranged her clothing. “I can’t do this.”

  Just like that, he went from dazed to enraged. His big fingers snapped around her wrist, stilling her shaking hands before they could tied the drawstring at her waist. “Can’t do what? Can’t get off on a crummy leather couch in a doctor’s lounge? Or can’t make love with me now that David is back?”

  His sneer was ugly. Accusing.

  Deserved.

  She flicked a glance up at him. It was enough to see that his expression had set like concrete. The inscrutable Ranger was back.

  “Both,” she told him honestly. “Either. You’re hurting me.” She looked down at the wrist he held.

  As slowly as if his hand were mired in mud, he un-curled his fingers, let her go. Then he lurched to his feet, wheeled and headed for the door.

  “Clint?”

  “I have to get back to Hempaxe.” The words were as tight as a bowstring. “We still have a monkey—and a terrorist—to catch.”

  He stopped at the door to flip the lock, lingered a moment without looking back. “You’re staying here.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  If she’d fallen down a flight of stairs, her head and her heart wouldn’t have tumbled one over the other in such rapid succession. She wanted to call him back. Explain, as if she had words to express what she was feeling. To hold him, let him hold her and finish what he’d started. To give back to him what he’d tried to give to her.

  In the end, she simply said, “Yes,” and he walked out the door before she could tell him that she had to stay to talk to David about the monkey. She had to find out more about its immunity, the cure for ARFIS the animal might provide.

  Not that his leaving without waiting for her explanation mattered. She doubted he would have believed it.

  She wasn’t sure she believed it herself.

  Freshly shaved and wearing the new clothes he’d picked up on his way out of Houston that morning, Clint walked into room 143 at the Lonesome Pines Motel, where the Rangers of Company G had set up shop. Too bad he hadn’t been able to purchase a new mood as easily as he’d acquired the jeans, boots and Western shirt to replace the blue CDC jumpsuit he’d grown to hate. The best he could hope for was that somewhere along the two-hour drive through the Texas woods, he’d managed to shore up the veneer of his control enough that the others wouldn’t see he wasn’t himself.