“Dead center of the pond below the falls. She’d dropped through the ice. Again, it was Gallo who found her. He helped me drag her to shore, didn’t you, boy?” Chance tossed his companion the last crumbs of bacon. “She owes this dog her life, and I owe him a venison rump roast. All of it. Huh, boy?”
Gallo snarfed the tidbit, his tail thumping and his eyes bright.
Pinching his lips together, Pagan nodded. “You might be right, but it’s mighty odd she showed up at the same time I get called to off York. Damned odd.”
“I am right,” Chance declared, “and you’re too tired to think straight, now take off. Get some shuteye. I’ll take first watch.”
“That’s another thing.” Pagan’s eyebrow lifted along with the back legs of his chair. “The beacons weren’t on when I came in.”
“Duly noted.” Chance stared his stern brother down. The beacons were an early warning system of interconnected laser beams at the perimeter of his one hundred acre tract. Intended to alert him of any large animal’s approach, they emitted an ear-piercing, ultrasonic shriek that discomforted animal and man alike. At best, they were a redundancy to the security cameras he’d also installed along the perimeter. Both alerted him of incoming visitors/enemies, one with visuals, one with noise, but the beacons would’ve worked during the whiteout while the cameras would’ve been rendered useless. Pagan was right. If not for Suede, they would’ve been on.
“I was a little busy making sure our visitor survived,” Chance bit out. “My bad. It won’t happen again.”
His brother offered a chin nod at the closed bedroom door. “It’s not like you have a lot of visitors up here anyway, not in this weather. Guess it’s no big deal. How is she?”
“She’ll live.” But it was a big deal and Chance was worried. Pitching a woman, any woman, off that mountain might not be a ruse to infiltrate the SOBs, but it had created a distraction. Only Chance had been plenty distracted before he’d found Suede, so much so that he’d left his cabin unlocked and his defenses down when he’d gone after Gallo. He’d gotten lazy and lax over a dog and a woman. Things had to change.
Tired of the argument, Chance pointed at one of the two spare rooms. “Shower. Now.”
The Sinclair brothers’ bedrooms punctuated three of the four corners of the massive cabin. Each included an en suite bathroom, a wood-burning stove, and trap door that led to the escape tunnel beneath the cabin. Dug seven feet below surface, the tunnel held an armory of weaponry from guns and knives to flame throwers and gas masks in a vault at its entry. Its exit lay a half-mile due west and beyond another shale bed.
At the best, unexpected and unwanted company would be hard pressed to get inside the fortified cabin, but by the time they did, Chance, his brothers, and any guests would be long gone, if the beacons had been turned on. He rolled one shoulder, irritated at his lapse in judgment in the fury of locating Gallo and ultimately, of saving Suede’s life.
A sloppy SEAL was a dead SEAL. It wouldn’t happen again.
Chapter Eight
“It’d behoove you to watch your step, Miss Tennyson. Mountains can be dangerous this time of year.” Lionel sneered as he shoved her shoulder, pushing her back step-by-step. Then another.
At the edge, she slipped and lost her footing, stumbling over the cliff she hadn’t known was so close. Paralyzed with terror that the man who’d claimed he loved her could do such a despicable thing, she clung with all her strength to the gravel edge. “Lion! Save me!”
Instead, the waffle-tread of his boot came at her like a cannon ball shot from two feet away. Stars exploded inside her head, but Suede refused to let go. All ten fingernails shredded as she dug into rock and ice, hanging on for her life.
“Stop,” she told him through weak, teary eyes, snow and wind pelting her in the face. “Please don’t do this. H-help me.” She cocked a knee and dug in with the toe of her boot, sure she could still scramble to safety if he’d just offer a hand up.
“You’ve been a thorn in my side long enough, Suede Tennyson. So’s your goddamned father. Now fall, damn you!” Another kick came at her, but she ducked to the left at the last second. If he wasn’t going to help her, then damn the fucker. He could fall with her.
Wrong move.
She caught nothing but a handful of air and the mountain let go. For a dozen feet or so, her fingernails grated against sheer granite, frantically seeking any crack or root to prevent the plummet she knew lay in store for her.
“I’m falling!” she told the wind.
“See you at the bottom!” Lion yelled from above.
Suede was that cartoon mouse scrambling in super-fast-motion for purchase on rocks so slick that it seemed, for a moment there, she was suspended in space. Then—nothing but the disoriented sensation of falling through falling snow. She lost all sense of direction. There was no up. No down. No help in sight. Just a drawn out “No-o-o-o!” thrown into the heartless world.
I’m falling! I’m falling!
BLAM! Suede jump-started to her hands and knees, her scream pounding in her veins and shaken to her core. She licked her chapped dry lips, afraid of the dark for the first time in her life.
He pushed me. He kicked me. He… he killed me. Her heart felt ready to explode through the top of her head. The sheet knotted beneath her tender fingertips. Me! Suede Tennyson! He killed me...
There was no recollection of impact, only the gut-wrenching terror of the drop and the futility of ego, pride, and all that hard-earned independence. Only the degradation of life ending at someone else’s cruel hands and brutal boot. The soul-sucking knowledge that Lion hated her enough that he wanted her dead. Suede couldn’t wrap her head around any of it, not even the flailing and praying when she’d fallen to what should’ve been her death.
So why am I alive? Where am I? It took seconds to blink herself awake enough to remember. Chance’s cabin. Oh, yeah.
That was his fire in the stove in the corner of his room; his cough drop on her tongue. She remembered now. He’d breathed for her, and she clung to that shred of human decency like a life preserver. York meant to kill her, but Chance meant to save her. It mattered. Damn, how it mattered.
Tremors set in and she buried her face in his pillow, her wounded thigh on fire and her left butt cheek throbbing so hard that she didn’t dare lower either of them to the mattress. Here she was, at someone else’s mercy again. How fucking humiliating.
The questions of the ages assaulted her pulverized psyche. ‘Why am I still alive? I don’t deserve it.’
Followed immediately by, ‘What have I done with my life? I’ve wasted it. All of it. What do I do now?’
She knew to her soul she wasn’t devious enough to plot revenge, and neither did she have the resources to level the same degree of terror on Lion that he’d caused her. York was a wealthy sports legend, a celebrity who lived a secretive life surrounded by burly bodyguards who had, even on her best and bravest days, intimidated her. Until recently, she’d once been part of his inner circle. He’d proposed and bought her a three-carat diamond. He’d talked to her of marriage and a lavish wedding in Berlin, Germany, his hometown.
And then he tried to kill me.
A sob croaked out of her moisture-deprived throat. Unloved and unwanted for too long, she had to think. What was the best revenge? Living. For a woman with nothing to her name and less to show for her time on Earth, Suede meant to get her act together and start that living, as soon as she stopped crying.
But truth was a bitter pill to swallow. This was all her fault. Everything she’d done had led her to this low point. She was the one who’d alienated her friends until the only one left in her pathetic life was a creep like Lion. What a joke, huh? Just when you think you don’t need anyone, you—do.
A big palm came out of nowhere and landed over the blanket on her right butt cheek. She hadn’t heard the bedroom door open, but apparently, Chance was back, and there she was, ass up and head down.
“Hey. Are you okay?” he asked, his tone filled with w
orry.
Stupid, stupid question. She wasn’t okay. She was as stupid as that question. “No…” she whined like the petulant child everyone thought she was, her face still in the pillow. At this precise moment, depressed and foolish were better descriptors. The fall was Lionel’s fault, but Suede was no dummy. She owned every step of the way to the pit of despair she was now in.
“I suck,” she admitted hoarsely, her face still buried in Chance’s pillow. “I’ve been an idiot my whole life. I got myself into this mess. I just don’t know how to fix it and my leg hurts and my butt hurts and… I’m the biggest loser!” Didn’t that make her sound like the diva she was trying not to be? Apparently recreating herself was going to be harder than she thought.
That big warm hand smoothed over the blankets and up her spine to her shoulder. When he reached the edge of the covers, Chance tossed the blankets aside. For a brief moment, the blast of cool air on her bare backside reminded Suede that all she had on was his shirt, and she was showing more skin than she wanted.
But he seemed not to notice her southern exposure. Handily, Chance lifted her into his arms and curled her to his lap as he sat on the bed. Almost fatherly, he pulled the blankets up and re-covered her. His lips pressed to her forehead. “I was afraid of this. You’re running a fever.”
See? He doesn’t want me either. The only reason he put his lips on me was to check my temperature. Suede couldn’t believe how pathetic she felt, how miserable or how easily she’d slipped back into the role of being a whiner. Wah!
“There, there,” Chance soothed as he popped the plastic tops off two small bottles on the nightstand. He refilled her glass from the bottle of water setting there and lifted it to her lips. “Drink.”
Suede obeyed, swallowing the cool liquid past her sore teeth and tongue. Her mouth felt coated and thick with infection.
“I brought toast, bacon, and eggs if you’re hungry. Would you like coffee?” he asked as he touched the pills to her lips.
Opening her mouth, she swallowed again. “Thank you, yes. You don’t have to do any of this, but you are, and... and thank you for everything.”
He drew the blanket up to her shoulders, wrapping her tight and rocking as if she were a little girl instead of a grown woman. This strange man had a way of getting past her prickly defenses, and maybe it was just that he’d saved her life, but being with him made her feel safe. Protected, maybe. She didn’t trust it, and yet she did.
“Your only mission is to heal and get back in the game, Suede. Unless you develop complications, a couple days downtime ought to do it. That leg will heal. Then you’ll be back to your old self in no time. You’ll see.”
She shook her aching head against his massive shoulder. “I’m not going back to my old self,” she said, her voice more growl than whine. “Ever. I’ve been…” She gulped, not sure if he truly knew what an awful beast she’d been. Her parents deserved her leaving them, but everyone else she’d stepped on, trash-talked, or backstabbed since then hadn’t deserved the nastiness she’d dished out. She had a lot of forgiveness to ask for, and she knew it. “I’ve been bad.” And dumb. I can’t go back to being who I was. I want a new me.
“You have been a firecracker,” he agreed.
Wait. Is he laughing at me? Suede snuggled deeper into the warmth of his body and the blanket, embarrassed but a little pleased he knew something about her. “Which YouTube video did you see?”
He didn’t laugh, but he did admit, “The one on the Ferris wheel is your all-time best. I think every red-blooded male in the civilized world has seen it maybe, oh, a thousand times.”
She closed her eyes, ashamed at what Lionel had talked her into. Yes, she’d exposed herself with sass and flare, but the idea was his. He’d said it would make her parents look bad, and at the time, that was all she’d wanted, to embarrass them. To pay them back for the neglect at their hands. All he’d needed was an idiot to command, and she’d certainly stepped up to the plate, shook her ass and tits like a brain dead cheerleader and said, ‘Ooooo, ooooo, pick me! Pick me!’
“Like I said, I’ve been dumb, but I’m not going to be dumb any longer.” The alcohol she’d drunk the morning of the ‘Ferris wheel incident’ hadn’t helped. She’d passed out after her gaudy performance and woke up in her bed at York’s place, not sure how she’d gotten there and afraid to ask. The raunchy display, she remembered though. How could she forget?
Chance tilted back to peer down at her. “I hope you mean that, Suede. People can change, but only if they want to. The toughest hurdle to overcome is always the one in our own minds.”
The ibuprofen must’ve started working. Suede nodded, sleepy and warm and finally feeling like she was on the right track.
“But it will be hard. You’ll have to put blinders on and shut the world out for a while. You’ll have to be determined and fierce, no matter what people say about you. You’ll have to be brave. Can you do that?”
No one had insinuated she could be brave before. Ever. Her mom called her a nuisance and her dad said she was a sycophant. Suede cringed. She’d actually consulted Merriam Webster that day, she’d been so naive. Imagine the kick to her heart when she’d realized her parents thought she was a bootlicker and a flunky. A brown-noser. A parasite.
She scrubbed a quick hand over her face to hide behind, just for a second. So why had Chance Sinclair’s words rung with inspiration? Why’d he make her think she could be brave when she’d never been courageous before?
Suede gathered her best intentions and answered as truthfully as she knew how. “I can be brave.” I think.
Yeah. Had to be the meds.
Chapter Nine
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. There Chance sat with a very seductive woman in his lap and he was telling her to be brave and courageous? Him? The guy who’d been licking his wounds for months while his brothers took up the slack?
Not any longer. Like fear, courage could be a wildfire that burst to life inside a man’s gut, compelling him to action when he’d rather sit back while others did the dirty work. The unlikely soldier in Chance’s lap had awakened someone he’d been hiding from. Himself. If Suede Tennyson, with her wild, sordid reputation could change, he could certainly get his ass back in the saddle and go active again. His heart kicked up a lively beat, and damn it. His old self emerged with its cocky swagger, ready to take on the world and Mr. York with it.
Suede lifted her chin, eyeing him as she licked her lips. “If you were me, what would you do first?” she asked, her voice timid.
The sincerity in her eyes melted his resolve. This was not what he’d expected in a diva. It threw him off balance and Chance Sinclair caved. There was life in this woman and an energy he needed as much as she did. “I’d kiss me.” He took her mouth, tenderly because of her fat lip.
Suede blocked him at first, but softened with a sigh, just enough to mold her lips to his. Yet when he pressed for more and teased the seam of her mouth with his tongue, she resisted. Saturated and content with just the feel of this woman inside his arms, he let her win this round. Chance licked his way to her earlobe instead and whispered, “’To thine own self be true’, Suede. Stop trying to please the world. Trust me, they’re not worth it.”
A tiny whine sounded deep in her throat. “You make it sound easy, but it’s not. I’ve done so many things…” Her voice trailed away, but her lashes lifted, and he was lost in the ocean of her incredible blue eyes. He’d never fallen so hard. Tears glimmered like rainfall in a tropical island forest, and, damn it. What the hell am I doing?
Chance eased back from his patient. That was all she was, not a lover and not a friend. Just a woman he’d rescued like so many others from combat zones and perilous situations. Whatever this was between them, it was downright radioactive and he needed to back off. He’d overstepped his bounds because he thought he’d recognized something of himself in her, but it wouldn’t happen again.
The drill instructor stuck forever inside his head kic
ked in. “The change has to come from inside. No one can want that more than you.”
“I do, but—”
“But you’re tired and sick.” He eased her off his lap and onto the mattress, covering her tempting but wounded body before he got any more bright ideas or out of control impulses. “Breakfast first, then if you’re up to it” —he quirked his head toward the open bathroom door— “maybe a shower or bath. Come on, let’s get it done.”
No response. Suede sat there with the blanket tugged up to her chin, her big blue doe-eyes glimmering. It wasn’t hard to read what was going on in her head. Rejection. Maybe even betrayal. She was right. He’d led her on, then dumped her in a sixty-second reach for what, he wasn’t sure. His natural male instinct to protect the females of his species he understood, but the fire in his gut was something else.
The second she’d come to, Suede had lit his cabin with a light no male on Earth possessed. Even near death, she was that sputtering candle glowing in a very dark room. She was ground zero, the epitome of what men lived and died for. The light in her deep blues threw him off balance as much as it grounded him. Suede was unexploded ordnance, nitroglycerine in its most volatile state, and he was that unstable environment where anything could happen. He couldn’t get caught in her frag zone. It just Would. Not. Happen.
“How’s that sound?” he asked, keeping his tone crisp and businesslike. Formal. A complete one-eighty from the passionate kiss he’d initiated that, oh yeah, like a smart woman, she’d initially resisted. But she’d wanted it, too. He damned well knew that much.
Her lashes fell. “Fine,” she murmured to the blanket.
His hard head bobbed with relief. “Yes, ma’am. Coming right up.”
The moment he lifted the lid off the tray at her bedside, ahem, his bedside, she sniffed at the breakfast aromas trapped under that aluminum dome. Her head lifted. “Bacon?”
“That’s the spirit.” Chance brandished the cloth napkin he’d stuck on the tray at the last moment on his way out of the kitchen.
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