She closed her eyes. She was exhausted, and the evening had been tense, scary, and confusing. She just wanted the oblivion of sleep. Hard to believe that a few hours ago, she’d been singing happy show tunes. The soundtrack for the night was vastly different. Unsettling. Discordant. Instrumental, it had no hook to hold on to, no familiar bridge or melody. Useless for scaring away bears, because there were no words to sing.
Did one sing to ward off tigers, or was that just a bear thing? Bears, she could handle—or rather, she knew what to do—but she had no knowledge or skills with tigers. She’d never imagined being stuck on a life raft with one. Or stuck in an old, musty, decaying cabin. Whatever.
She dozed lightly, never quite sinking into deep sleep. Sometime after one a.m., she felt compelled to check on Alec. He’d had a nasty blow to the head, and she’d never really examined him to see if he had a concussion.
She set her gun next to the backpack—so he couldn’t grab it from her—but kept the bear spray in hand—just in case—and silently crawled toward him.
She paused just out of his reach and studied him. His face was relaxed in sleep. The swelling around his eye had gone down, so there was just a slight bulge around the lid and cheek. When it disappeared completely, he’d be every bit as handsome as the campaign photos she’d seen.
She could see why he’d been so successful. He had the polish of a politician and the rugged edges of a soldier, and it translated well in TV interviews. Up close and personal, he had presence even when wounded. He was big, imposing, and at least one reporter—who, Isabel had figured, had a crush on him—had described his eyes as a clear, compelling topaz blue. She’d have to take the reporter’s word on that, because she’d only gotten a glimpse of burning, puffy, red eyes.
But then, she wasn’t exactly seeing him on his best day.
She touched his forehead. His skin was cold. Scary cold. She immediately checked for a pulse and found one, thank God.
But still, he was too cold for comfort.
Shit. There was only one solution. Well, two. Either give him her blanket, or share it with him.
The smart thing would be to share it. They’d both be warm. They’d both get the rest they needed to face the hike to her truck tomorrow.
But sharing a blanket, getting up close and personal with Alec Ravissant, definitely didn’t feel like the right thing.
The right thing would be to give him the blanket and get the hell out of the cabin, head back to her truck alone. When she arrived home, she could call Raptor and tell them where they could find their boss.
The smart thing, or the right thing?
“If you’re trying to decide if you should give me your blanket,” Alec said softly, “forget it. I won’t take it from you. I can handle a little chill.”
Crap. He was awake, meaning the right thing wasn’t an option. If she tried to leave, she had no doubt he’d follow her. And he was in no condition to traipse six miles through the windy woods in the middle of the night.
“No, I was debating sharing it with you.”
His mouth curved in a slow smile. “You wanna get close to my body, Jenna?”
She rolled her eyes at his tone even as she stiffened at the fake name. He was going to be so pissed when he found out who she really was. “No, but I don’t want you to die after I worked so hard to save your ungrateful life. It would be disappointing to know my shoulders ache for nothing.” She stood. “Can I trust you not to hurt me if we share the blanket?”
“Yes.”
She’d just have to take him at his word, because there was no way she’d bring the bear spray into the tube tent with her. Not when he could grab it the moment she drifted to sleep. She set the spray next to the gun and grabbed the Mylar tent.
“It’s not a regular emergency blanket, it’s the tent kind—a long tube. We’ll have to shimmy into it.”
“No problem,” he said.
Yeah, no problem for one person, but a little awkward for two, especially when she didn’t want to touch him. The tube tent crackled as he slid in first, making even more noise when she followed. He was a big man, with wide, muscular shoulders. No matter how much she tried to avoid him, her body brushed against his.
“I’m not contagious, Jenna.”
“I know, but I’m not in the mood to be strangled again.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice quiet and sincere. “I wish I hadn’t attacked you. It hadn’t occurred to me that you were helping me, not abducting me.”
She rolled over and faced him. “You honestly thought I’d be capable of abducting you—a former Ranger—all by myself?”
“I have no memory of what happened to me. For all I knew, you had accomplices. Plus, my brain wasn’t exactly clear at the time. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“It never crossed my mind that you might not remember what happened to you, so I never considered that you’d think I was somehow the villain here.”
He reached toward her, and she stiffened, but then his fingers gently probed her neck, caressing the skin he’d bruised. A strange, fluttery feeling started low in her belly. A sensation she didn’t like at all. Not when Alec Ravissant was the person who caused it.
“If you hadn’t found me,” he said in a low, warm tone, “who knows how long I would have remained unconscious? I’d have lost a lot more blood and wouldn’t have shelter. Thank you for saving my life. I’m in your debt.”
She realized she was staring into two eyes, not just the one good one, and while it was too dark to gauge if they were indeed a crystal topaz blue, she couldn’t deny they were compelling. And she was glad his condition had improved.
Also, after hours of waiting for him to acknowledge what she’d done for him, he’d done a rather nice job of it. She gave him a soft smile. “You’re welcome. Now, let’s get some sleep so we can hike out of here tomorrow.” She rolled over, presenting her back to him and maintaining as much distance as the tube tent would allow.
His arm snaked around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. He tucked his knees behind hers and her butt pressed snugly against his crotch. “We’ll be warmer if we spoon. One of those things you learn in survival training.”
She snorted. “Yeah, I bet you Rangers all snuggled up tight.”
“If it were a matter of survival, we would.”
His breath tickled her ear, causing more unwelcome flutters in her belly. But damn, he did feel nice and warm at her back. She’d been colder than she wanted to admit.
“Do you have a husband or boyfriend, Jenna?”
She stiffened. Was he going to hit on her now?
“Relax. I’m just asking because I want to know if anyone is going to hear about this and demand an explanation. As it is, if the press gets wind of this, they’re going to have a field day.”
Oh God. There would be a massive media frenzy. And when the press learned her name…oh shit.
She probably should tell him right now.
But if she did, this fragile trust would go away. And he might just try to strangle her again.
Face it, the only good time to tell him would be via telephone.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“No. No boyfriend. No husband.” No brother. No family. “Just me,” she added.
“Well then, maybe to thank you for saving my life, you’ll let me take you out to dinner.”
She knew he expected a teasing rejoinder. Something about getting off cheap if all she got was a lousy meal, but her throat had gone dry, and she couldn’t muster the words.
Dinner with Alec Ravissant? Not just no, but hell no. And if he knew who she was, he’d feel the exact same way.
Finally, she found enough voice to say, “Go to sleep, Alec.”
He chuckled, tightened his arm around her, and did exactly that.
Of course, this morning of all mornings, he’d wake with a morning missile. But then, he had a soft, warm woman’s round ass pressed up against said missile, an
d he was only human.
God how he wanted to rock his hips and rub his erection against that ass. She smelled good too—warm, earthy, with a hint of yesterday’s shampoo. Her hair was carrot orange laced with blonde streaks. It was bound in a loose braid, and just enough strands had escaped to make him think she had wild curls, the corkscrew kind that would wrap around his fingers as he cradled her head and kissed her.
Whoa. Time to put on the mental brakes. That fantasy would be all too easy to make happen. But he couldn’t go there. Not until he was certain she really was an innocent geologist who was in the right place at the right time to save his life.
But if she were an innocent geologist… Well, that changed things. His campaign manager had put the kibosh on dating during the campaign, but surely dinner with the woman who’d saved his life was the exception. Hell, the press would go nuts for it.
Plus, he’d always had a thing for redheads. Sunlight filtered in through the intact dirty glass pane, revealing hundreds of adorable freckles he hadn’t seen in the shadows last night. Curls, freckles, and full lips that begged for attention. Plus she’d saved his life. No wonder he had a hard-on.
However, if she woke up and felt his erection at her back, she’d likely freak out, and rightly so. Spooning for warmth wasn’t tacit agreement for anything more, and he hoped to hell she’d understand that he knew that. The erection wasn’t anything more than a basic biological reaction, no matter how much he wanted to grind into her.
He ran through a litany of non-sexy thoughts, realizing, as he did so that he’d been so focused on the almost painful erection, it hadn’t registered that he felt much better this morning. His head still throbbed, but nothing like last night.
Thinking about his injuries was the perfect cure for the inconvenient erection, and he turned his thoughts to yesterday and how he’d ended up here with Jenna.
He remembered a bit more. He was driving, heading toward the compound, nearing the turn off to Tamarack, when a light flashed into his eyes. Repeatedly. Not a trick of the sun. Deliberate.
Then a moose had darted into the road.
Thank God his erection went down, because it had felt far too good against Isabel’s ass. It had taken some serious willpower to feign sleep and not let on she was aware of the hard man with the even harder prick pressed against her. She’d wanted so badly to grind her butt against him and see what happened.
Guilt stabbed her.
The man she’d wanted to grind against was Alec Ravissant. What the hell was wrong with her?
She rolled forward, to put some space between her and the man who might have covered up her brother’s murder to save his business. To save his campaign.
Behind her, the coldhearted politician cleared his throat. “Sorry. It happens. Bad morning for it.”
She pressed her face into the floor and shook her head, unable to speak. She didn’t blame him. Couldn’t blame him. At least, not for that. That was just biology and proximity.
“Jenna, I wouldn’t have touched you. I promise.”
The hell of it was, she couldn’t tell him why she was upset. She finally had Alec Ravissant’s undivided attention and couldn’t tell him what she thought of him. She certainly couldn’t admit that being turned on by his erection had triggered a deep wave of self-loathing.
She cleared her throat. “I know.” She rolled over to face him, the Mylar enclosure crackling with every movement.
Sunlight sparked across the shiny tent and glinted in his dark hair. Those clear blue eyes were no longer bloodshot. He sported a day’s worth of dark stubble on his firm, square jaw and was more handsome than was reasonable, given the situation.
She had never quite registered how handsome he was. Figures she’d notice upon waking up after spending the night in his arms, even if it had been purely for survival reasons. “I need to tell you something. I didn’t tell you last night because you tried to strangle me, and I was afraid of your reaction.”
His jaw tightened. “I’m sorry about that. I don’t think I can ever apologize enough—”
She pressed her fingers to his lips to stop him. “I—”
The front door burst in at the same time the intact window shattered. All at once, men sporting forest camouflage and toting big guns poured into the cabin from both openings.
They circled her and Alec, but every gun pointed at her.
She met the gaze of the leader. Brad Fraser, one of the operatives she sometimes hung out with at the Roadhouse. She had no idea if he was friend or foe at this moment, but the gun pointed at her head argued for foe.
His brow furrowed in confusion. “Isabel? What the fuck? You kidnapped Rav?”
4
“Isabel?” Alec rolled backward, splitting the Mylar tent along the taped seam. “Isabel Dawson?” He swore. Holy shit. He’d been ready to believe she was the innocent geologist she’d claimed to be, but she was the nut job archaeologist with a vendetta against his company. A vendetta against him.
He jumped to his feet, ignoring the ache the movement triggered behind his eyes, and faced Brad Fraser, who was one of his top operatives and the leader of Falcon team. “How did you find me?”
“It took half the night, but we finally found your car in the woods. There were all-terrain vehicle tracks from there, which we followed until they disappeared. It took us a while to pick up the trail again, but finally, we found a pool of blood.” He looked down. “Shit, Rav. That scared us. We feared the worst. But there were tracks extending directly from the blood, and it was easy to follow.”
Yeah. The travois trail may as well have been lit with neon. He’d figured that was to his advantage, and he was right. Stupid of Isabel not to realize that.
But then, it was stupid of her to pull this crazy stunt at all.
He reached out a hand to Fraser. “You have cuffs?”
“Yes, sir.” He dropped a pair in Alec’s outstretched hand.
Alec turned to Isabel, who’d stood while his back was turned, and grabbed her arm, pulling it behind her. “What the hell? I saved your life!”
“Sure you did, Jenna.” He took her other wrist and locked the cuff around it.
“I was about to tell you! I lied because you tried to strangle me. You made it clear you thought I’d abducted you. I was afraid of what you’d do—what you’d believe—if I told you my name.”
“Good call. But then, I’ve always heard you’re crazy, not stupid.” He pushed her toward one of the operatives behind Fraser. The guy looked familiar, but at the moment, Alec couldn’t come up with a name. Hell, he considered himself lucky he could stand without the room spinning. “Take her to the compound and put her in one of our holding cells.”
“No,” a uniformed officer said as he stepped into the cabin. “She’s coming with me.”
Alec faced the officer and was relieved it only took a moment to pull a name out of his throbbing brain. “Lieutenant Westover?”
The officer nodded.
If Alec remembered correctly, the man had worked for Raptor but took the job at the new state trooper post around the time Alec acquired the company. Alec had all employees vetted when he took over—weeding out those who were loyal to Robert Beck, the former owner who was now sitting in a federal prison—but Westover had escaped that scrutiny, leaving Alec to wonder if the man could be trusted.
Not that he had a choice. Westover was the only law in Tamarack. As much as Alec wanted Isabel Dawson in his custody, he didn’t have any legal standing to detain her. “You’re arresting her?” he asked.
“She abducted you?”
Alec hesitated. A light in his eyes. A moose on the road. Then…nothing. “She tied me up and brought me here. I don’t know how, or why, or if she had help. I don’t remember.”
“Tied you up?” she shrieked. “You ungrateful ass!” The high pitch disappeared as her voice shook with anger. “I tied you to the travois, so I could drag you to shelter. You’d have died exposed in the wind last night if I hadn’t done that.�
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Westover frowned. “I can detain her. But we’ll need more. A search warrant of her cabin could get us what we need to charge her.”
Fraser leaned toward Alec. “Rav, we’ve got her on the restraining order.”
“What do you mean? The restraining order is to keep her off Raptor land—not away from me.”
“We’re on Raptor land right now,” Fraser said.
Surprise rippled through him. He’d try to figure out what she was doing here later. For now, it gave him the leverage he needed. To Westover, Alec said, “Book her on the restraining order violation, then see if you can get a search warrant for her cabin.”
Westover bristled, probably at Alec’s commanding tone, but he ignored the officer’s irritation. He was used to giving orders and didn’t see a reason to change now. Westover turned to Isabel and launched into her Miranda rights.
Isabel glared at Alec, interrupting the speech to say to him, “You’re every bit as vile as I’ve always believed.” Her eyes teared. “I’m on Raptor land because this was the only shelter for miles. I should have left you to die.” She turned and headed for the open door. “C’mon, Westover. Take me to jail.”
“The ATV tracks ended on the other side of the hill about two hundred yards from here. Given the terrain, it took some time to find the blood trail, but once we did, it led us here.” Fraser pointed to a glacier-smoothed bedrock outcrop heavily splattered with blood. A pool of it had gathered in a bowl-shaped depression in the stone.
Not just any blood. Alec’s blood. From an injury he didn’t remember receiving, in an assault he didn’t remember happening. He must have lain on the rock for a long time for that much blood to have pooled in the depression. That argued for Isabel’s claim she’d found him.
He touched the butterfly bandages on his temple. Had she built the travois while he lay bleeding and then bandaged him? Somehow, he couldn’t imagine that.
She wouldn’t even let him drink stream water without warning him about iodine allergies and the risk of crypto in the water. She wouldn’t have left him to bleed, not even while she built the life-saving travois.
Vote Then Read: Volume II Page 241