Hotter Than Wildfire

by Lisa Marie Rice

  But now he was glad that it took a while to get from the bathroom to the kitchen, because he could hold her hand. Her hand was small and soft in his and it felt…good. Damned good.

  He nearly snorted, thinking of what Mike would say. Mike, Mr. Unromantic, Mr. Fuck-’em-and-leave-’em. Holding hands wasn’t part of Mike’s style. Harry wouldn’t have thought it his style, either, though it had been a long, long time since he’d touched a woman in any way.

  Maybe that was why he got off on this so much. He was just holding her freaking hand, something kids did on a playground, not that he’d ever held a girl’s hand when he was a kid. As a kid, everyone had avoided him. His household had been bad news even in the slums they’d lived in.

  Now he got it, totally. Got why there were all these gauzy ads on TV, youngsters holding hands in a park, oldsters holding hands in the old folks’ home.

  It was nice. It was more than nice. It was warmth and connection. She looked up at him as they crossed the huge, bare expanse of his living room and smiled. He smiled back, lost himself in her eyes, and barely missed smacking his shin on the coffee table.

  He instinctively shortened his strides, slowed down to keep pace with her. She was still weak and moved slowly.

  Fine with him. He’d walk holding hands with her till sundown if he could. He was still savoring the feeling of her palm against his, trying to figure out the last time he’d held hands with a woman, when they finally arrived in the kitchen.

  Her eyes widened when she saw what was on the table. A French press full of steaming coffee, a big platter of bacon and eggs and toast, two stacks of silver dollar pancakes and a small pitcher of blueberry syrup.

  And—because Nicole had insisted—a big bowl of peeled and diced fruit and a couple of jars of plain low-fat yogurt, which he thought tasted like cardboard. But you didn’t say no to Nicole. That was the law.

  Harry held out a chair and she slid in as if her knees wouldn’t hold her any more. He frowned. She was still weak. She needed food and rest and exercise, in that order.

  He slid into the chair at a right angle to hers. “I can’t claim all the credit for this breakfast,” he said, pouring her some coffee. He held up the milk pitcher and raised his eyebrows. She nodded and he turned her coffee a pale tan. “Nicole and Sam’s housekeeper decided a couple of months ago that I needed fattening up, and she’s just continued bringing down food by the bucketful ever since.”

  Her eyes widened. Harry knew what she was thinking. He was a solid two twenty. It was all muscle, but no one looking at him now could possibly know that he’d been reduced to bone and gristle a year ago.

  She’d taken two silver dollar pancakes, poured four molecules of blueberry syrup over them and was eating daintily.

  Everything about this was just so great. Eve, in his kitchen. Okay, Ellen. But she was also Eve. And—unexpected bonus—lusciously beautiful.

  The hot water of the shower had put some rose under the ivory. Her colors were just incredible. The sun was shining in through the kitchen window and she lifted her face into it, closing her eyes.

  Harry hungrily watched her face as the sunlight brought everything to life. The deep-auburn eyebrows, delicately arched, the long, lush eyelashes slightly lighter at the tips, the full mouth so deeply red it didn’t need lipstick—unpainted, it was enough to bring a full-grown man to his knees. Not to mention the dark-red hair that revealed a thousand colors in the light, from dark brown to coppery red to streaks of blond. It was thick and glossy and starting to curl as it dried. A curling loop hung over her shoulder and he had to dig his fingernails in his palms to force himself not to pick it up and run it through his fingers.

  They’d kissed, yeah, okay. But women had this invisible rule book men weren’t allowed to read, and he didn’t know if some time had to pass from kissing her to fondling her hair.

  He’d have the right to touch her soon, though. And not just her hair. All over. Oh yeah, he would.

  “This is delicious. Thank her and Nicole for me.”

  “You can thank them yourself,” Harry said easily, as he transferred half the bacon and scrambled eggs to her plate. “We’re invited to dinner at Sam’s tonight.”

  For some reason that alarmed her. Her head rose and the coffee cup which she’d been holding to her mouth trembled. Harry reached out and cupped her hand with his.

  “I don’t want to be any trouble,” she said. Her voice was tight and strained. “As soon as I’m better, I’ll be on my way. With some help from you and Sam. So, really, there’s no reason to include me in any dinner invitations.”

  Harry listened calmly, refraining from rolling his eyes. He didn’t even dignify that ridiculous statement with an answer. She was here and she was staying.

  Instead, he leaned forward and watched her eyes. It wasn’t a hardship. In the morning light they looked like the finest green marble, with darker veins of color running through them. Back in his office, her eyes had been bloodshot with fatigue, dark purple smudges under them. Now the whites of her eyes were as clear as a child’s, the skin underneath fair and unblemished.

  “Why did you run?” he asked. She sucked in a little breath, the sound loud in the silence of the room. “You came to us for help, you were safe with us, but you ran away. Why?”

  Ellen put the cup down carefully on the saucer, focusing on her hands, as if it were a difficult and delicate task. She looked up, finally.

  “I thought—” she began, and stopped.

  “You thought?” He gave in to temptation and picked up the deep-red lock that had fallen forward and smoothed it back. Fuck the rule book. “What did you think?”

  She met his eyes and he nearly winced at the misery in them. Beautiful deep-green eyes full of pain and sorrow and a deep loneliness. She sighed. “You know I got your name through Kerry. Or the woman you know as Kerry because that’s the name you provided her with.”

  Harry nodded. He wasn’t the one who’d set Kerry—or Dove, or whatever the hell her name had been originally—up in her new life, Sam was.

  But had the roles been reversed, had it been Sam who’d been wounded, Harry or Mike would have been the ones to help Kerry into her new life. Her story had been terrifying. A rich, powerful, brutal, alcoholic husband who’d put her into the hospital over and over again, and who sooner rather than later would put her into a grave.

  “She shouldn’t have talked,” Harry said gently. If she hadn’t talked, Ellen would probably be dead by now, but they drummed into the women’s heads that no one—no one—was to know their story. It was their first line of defense. No one was to know, ever.

  Shelters had their hotline, which was the way the women found their path to RBK. It was way too dangerous to have an informal network of women talking among themselves. The men after them were brutal, but they weren’t necessarily stupid.

  “Yeah.” Ellen nibbled at a corner of a piece of toast, then put it down, pushed the plate away. “She knew that—believe me, she knew that. We became friends almost despite ourselves. We were both waitressing off the books. I could just tell from what Kerry was reading and the way she spoke that she was well educated, way overqualified for what she was doing. We just drifted together, I think, because we were both so…so lonely.”

  Harry nodded again. He knew. The women they spirited away had to keep their heads down for the rest of their lives, otherwise they were dead meat. But women are hardwired to make connections. They have to do real violence to themselves not to.

  Unlike guys.

  If Harry hadn’t had Sam and Mike, he’d have spent the worst periods of his life—after Crissy’s death and after Afghanistan—completely alone, never speaking to another human being. And while he’d been wounded, he hadn’t even wanted company. Sam and Mike pushed themselves into his life, never taking no for an answer. Because Harry’s instinctive response was to turn his face to the wall.

  “So you became friends? Told each other your stories?”

  She sighed. “Not
really. Neither of us sat down to ‘tell our story,’ as you put it. It’s more things that slipped out. I told you how this guy stopped by and asked about me. When she told me, she saw how panicked I was. She put that card in my hand, said that if I needed help to turn to Sam Reston in San Diego.” Her mouth tightened. “But then last week, like I said, I was coming back to my room after the evening shift. It was dark. I rented a room in a bad part of town and was used to being careful, being aware of my surroundings. But more because it’s an area of drunks and addicts than anything else. I thought Gerald would never find me. But there he was—one of Gerald’s men, dressed as a bum.”

  “Must have freaked you out.”

  Ellen gave a shaky laugh. “Yeah. You could say that. I keep a little running-away kit in my purse at all times. Cash, a big, floppy hat, sunglasses. I ran. They’d be watching airports and stations, I knew that. The only thing I could think of was a bus. I just hopped on the first bus south, went to Portland, then San Francisco, spent the night in one of those seedy all-night cinemas that show classic movies. At least it wasn’t showing porn—I don’t think I could have stood it.”

  “You watched the Thin Man movies.” Harry could see it—a terrified Ellen on the run, huddled in the dark in a movie theater. Alone and scared. “Nora Charles.”

  She huffed out her breath. “Yeah. I was so tired, so scared when I called, it was the first name I could think of.”

  “Here. Eat that.” He pushed the plate back to her and put command into his voice. He didn’t normally do that with women, but he made the exception with her. She needed to eat. More than that, Harry needed her to eat food he’d provided for her. “And after you’ve finished, you can tell me why you ran from us.”

  She slanted him an amused look, those brilliant, uptilted eyes narrowing. “Yes, sir!”

  Damn straight, yessir.

  She ate half of what was on her plate and pushed it away again. “Before you say anything, I’d love to finish everything on the plate, it’s all delicious, but I simply can’t. My stomach is cramping.”

  A hot flush of shame shot through Harry. In his zeal to see her eat, he’d completely forgotten how much Sam and Mike had had to coax him to eat when he’d first come back to San Diego a broken man. His stomach had rebelled at nearly everything. For a time there, he’d eaten with either Sam or Mike standing over him until he choked down every bite.

  “Okay,” he said gently. “Now talk. Why’d you run from us?”

  “It was your faces,” she said.

  Harry’s brows lifted. Granted, he and Sam weren’t beauties by any stretch, but still…“Our faces?”

  “When I mentioned Gerald and Bearclaw. You knew him and you knew the company, I could tell. And you looked at each other. It was quick, but I caught it. You run a security company, like Bearclaw. I thought I’d jumped straight into the frying pan.”

  “Yeah, we know Montez,” Harry said grimly. “But trust me, RBK isn’t anything like Bearclaw. That fuckhead Montez—pardon my French—cost Sam four of his men in country. Bearclaw and its men are a menace. We’d love to get back at them. That’s what you picked up on.”

  She paled, a long, slender hand moving up to cover her mouth. Her voice was low, shaky. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. I ran for nothing. I put myself and you in danger for nothing.”

  Harry couldn’t stand to see her upset. He pulled her hand away from her mouth and brought it to his own.

  “You couldn’t have known,” he said softly. “It’s not your fault. Being able to react fast has kept you alive so far. You couldn’t have known that we’re Bearclaw’s enemies, not friends. But the big question is, how did they track you down? How could they be waiting for you at your hotel?”

  “I used my cell phone as an excuse, but then I realized I really had left it at the hotel. It’s still there.”

  “Actually—” Harry reached back to the counter and threw a plastic object onto the table. “Your cell is here.”

  Ellen reacted as if he’d thrown a snake onto the table. “Oh my God! He can track us! He can tell where I am!” She was fumbling for the controls when Harry put his hand over hers to still it.

  “No, he can’t track us. It’s off, and Mike removed the battery and the SIM card in your room. While I was taking a bullet out of your shoulder, Mike was removing all traces of you from the hotel room. It was just your cell and a travel toothbrush, but they’re gone. And he wiped down all surfaces with bleach. He checked the phone very briefly while in your room—Montez would know you were there anyway if he sent men to snatch you—and he saw that you’d only called one number.”

  “My agent’s number. I bought a cheapie cell just to communicate with him. He didn’t really understand why I wanted to remain anonymous, thought it was some kind of PR ploy, but he played along. It’s a prepaid. No one should have been able to trace me through it unless…” Ellen’s voice died as she lost what little color she’d had.

  “Unless they got to him,” Harry finished for her. He pulled out his own cell. “Let’s call him.”

  “No!” She pushed his cell away, her voice rising in panic. “Oh my God, no! They’ll trace it back here. They’ll trace it to you! You’ll be in danger, too.”

  Harry opened his cell again. God, she was worried about him. She was on the run for her life, and she didn’t want to put him in danger. He didn’t usually explain himself, but this time he made an effort.

  “Don’t worry,” he said gently. He held his cell up. “It’s a special phone. Or rather, a special software program. The call is routed through a couple of servers and, anyone tracing it will think the call originated from a cell about fifty miles from Calgary, Canada. The cell is billed to a company we’ve set up that has two dead men as owners. It’s better than being an anonymous prepaid because it fu—er…messes with people’s heads. Anyone trying to trace it just wastes a lot of time.”

  She just watched him, pale and trembling and the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  He’d memorized the number, punched it out, listened to the rings at the other end. Tried again. “Home number?” he asked quietly.

  Ellen gave him the number. Another minute, listening to the phone ring and ring.

  “Where else can we try?”

  She was trying to hide her agitation. “I’ve never known him not to pick up his cell. He lives on that damn phone. Where’s a computer?”

  Harry led her into the living room, to his laptop. He switched it on, switching on the anonymizing program at the same time. No one was going to be able to trace anything back to this laptop, or the IP.

  She was feverishly typing. “Oh no! He hasn’t updated his Facebook entries in a week, and he hasn’t tweeted in a week either.” She lifted troubled eyes to his. “This is so unlike him. He’s so proud of staying connected. What are we going to do?”

  There wasn’t much choice. Harry had a friend in Seattle, or rather he was a friend of Mike’s—a former Marine turned SWAT member. “The only thing we can do,” he said. “Call Seattle PD.”

  Chapter 8

  San Diego

  “Two silk shirts, three cotton sweaters, a cotton skirt, two pairs of jeans and a couple of sweat suits, one powder blue and the other hot pink. It’ll look great with your coloring,” Nicole said triumphantly, pulling clothes out of boxes. “And…” She stretched the word out, reaching behind the sofa and pulling out a beige-and-pink bag. “Voilà! La Perla,” Nicole breathed, more or less like one would say, “Voilà! The Mona Lisa!”

  Ellen peered inside and blinked. Silk and lace and satin, in sherbet colors. Wow. Better than the Mona Lisa, oh yeah.

  She pulled out a pale-lilac silk bra and panty set with lace inlays and held them up reverently. They were pure works of art. She was just about to hold the bra up against herself when she heard a choked sound and looked over.

  The three men of RBK were seated on a sofa, happy and replete. They’d just consumed an unholy amount of food, all of it exquisite. Sam Reston and Mike K
eillor were looking amused and interested.

  Harry looked as if a nuclear explosion had just occurred inside his head, behind his eyes.

  Ellen peered down at herself and realized that in her excitement and pleasure, she’d been a hair’s breadth from trying on underwear in front of three strange men.

  Well…two strange men.

  Harry didn’t feel like a stranger anymore. Harry felt…wow. She didn’t know what Harry felt like, she didn’t have any personal experience with what he was making her feel, but “stranger” wasn’t a part of it.

  Maybe it was the fact that he’d spent days holding her hand. She didn’t remember much, but there had been a definite feeling of something powerful watching over her as she’d slept. A dragon guarding her. A knight defending her.

  Nice feeling.

  Right now, though, as she let the incredibly sexy and appealing underwear—so unlike her usual very plain white cotton bras and briefs—slip through her nerveless fingers, what Harry was making her feel wasn’t nice. It was hot.

  Hot as in sex. Sex on a stick.

  The three men sitting on the very long and very fashionable couch in Sam and Nicole’s very large and very elegant living room were all fit and good looking, but Sam and Mike couldn’t hold a candle to Harry.

  Harry was like a god. A golden god. Sam was darkly suntanned and underneath that he was swarthy. Mike had the light-blue eyes, light skin and dark hair of the Irish. Harry had been painted by the hand of a greater god.

  He was as tall as Sam Reston and as muscular, but where Sam was densely muscled, Harry’s muscles were tighter, leaner, extremely broad shoulders tapering down to that ridiculously small waist and lean hips. His hair was golden, his skin was golden, his eyes were golden. He looked like an Incan god made flesh.

  There was enough heat in his eyes right now to make them glow.