Alec huffed out a deep breath that billowed like a silvery cloud in the icy air. He’d made his choice, had known the isolated and lonely existence he’d lead when he’d joined the world of black ops and counterterrorism. But his work, protecting his country, was worth the price.
Alec wound his way to the mouth of the cave and discovered that snow had piled up overnight and blocked the cave exit.
“Damnation!” Growling his determination, Alec scooped at the snow mound with his hands, digging fruitlessly. He chiseled out a small hole only to find equally high piles of the white stuff blanketing the mountainside. Until the sun had time to work its melting magic, they were snowbound.
Alec punched the ice wall with his fist. He had a fix on Daniel’s location, leads to track down, traitors to unearth. But for the foreseeable future he’d be sitting tight, wasting precious time, while cooped up with a sweet temptation his duty and honor dictated he must resist.
* * *
“I’m taking you with me to Louisiana,” Alec announced over a dinner of canned chili that night.
Erin paused, her spoon halfway to her mouth. “You don’t think I’d be safe here alone?”
“I think you’d be safer with me, where I can protect you.”
He continued eating, but his comment resonated inside her, stirring a fuzzy warmth. He’d elected himself her personal bodyguard and defender. She smiled. “Your dedication to protecting me is sweet. Very chivalrous.”
His eyebrows puckered, and he sent her a dubious frown. “Sweet’s got nothing to do with it. Until this is over, you’re my responsibility. It’s my duty to keep you alive.”
“Oh.” The glow of romanticism she’d indulged in dimmed. “I guess I thought…never mind.”
His spoon clinked in his empty bowl. “Don’t take it personally. I like you just fine. But that has nothing to do with anything. My job is to find my partner, figure out who’s been sabotaging our work in Colombia and keep you from getting killed in the process. I can’t let the lines get blurred, or I’ll lose perspective and professional objectivity.”
A hollow sensation plucked at her. She understood his reasoning, the necessity for his distance. Yet in the past few days, she’d come to admire so much about Alec. She’d hoped he felt a mutual respect for her. And their kiss…
She pressed her lips together when they tingled with the memory of his ardor and skill. Had she been the only one who’d felt the promise in that kiss? She knew what Alec had said last night about not kissing her again, but she’d also seen the way he looked at her as they worked on the map this morning. The heat in his eyes was unmistakable.
With a frustrated grunt, he pushed to his feet and stormed from the table. He’d been tightly wound in the hours since he’d discovered the snow had trapped them, delaying their departure.
Erin rubbed a hand over the bump at her belly and broached a topic that had been nagging her for the last two days. “Alec, how are we supposed to get back to civilization? We have no car, no plane and no bridge, thanks to your precaution of cutting the ropes.”
He shifted his deep blue gaze toward her for a moment, but said nothing. His expression gave nothing away.
“Alec?”
“I’ll send word to a contact of mine when we’re ready to be airlifted out. There’s a place a few miles from here where a chopper can land.”
“So we hike down to this landing spot? What about that big gulch out there? How are we supposed to get back across?” She noticed a slight movement in his face, almost a wince. Suspicion and alarm wrenched her stomach. “Alec?”
“We won’t go across.” He swallowed hard and faced her with his jaw firmly set. “We’ll go down it. Rappelling.”
Erin clapped a hand to her mouth as the contents of her stomach lurched. A cold, sinking dread crashed down on her, and she moaned.
The last time she’d been rappelling, she’d watched Bradley die.
Chapter 7
Alec had expected the notion of rappelling wouldn’t sit well with Erin, but he’d never imagined she’d react as drastically as she did.
Her face paled. Her hands shook. Tears blossomed in her wide, dark eyes.
He raised a hand, ready to counter her arguments. “I know you think you can’t do it. But I’ll walk you through every step. I swear I won’t let anything hap—”
“No!” She stood and stumbled back from the table so fast, her chair toppled with a crash. “Please, don’t—” With a hiccupping gulp, a keening moan tore from her throat, a terrifying sound that scraped down Alec’s spine and raised the hairs at his nape.
“Erin?” As he stepped around the counter, not sure how he could calm her, she wrapped an arm around her middle and doubled over. Alec rushed forward and caught her before she slumped to the floor.
Panic slammed through him, an unfamiliar feeling for a man trained to keep a cool head in the direst of situations. “Erin! What’s wrong? Is it the baby?”
“B-Bradley…” she rasped, flinging her arms around Alec’s neck and clinging to him. Her whole body shook, and sobs racked her chest.
“What about Bradley, sweetcakes?”
“Dead… H-he fell!” she stuttered through her tears. “I c-couldn’t help him. An a-anchor failed, and h-his rope… He—”
Understanding dawned, yanking a knot in his gut. “Bradley died while rappelling?”
Her head bobbed, and a fresh gush of tears trickled down her cheeks. “I s-saw it all. I couldn’t h-help him. I… Alec, it was awful! He—”
“Shh.” He touched a finger to her lips, his heart aching for the horror she’d witnessed. He’d seen people die, but never someone he loved. He could hardly imagine the agony she’d suffered.
Scooping her limp form into his arms, Alec held her close, carried her to the sofa and sat down with her in his lap. He was at a loss how to ease her pain, and that sense of helplessness rankled, leaving him even more off balance. A choice curse word formed in his mind, but he swallowed it. Here was another reason to avoid emotional entanglements. This useless, clawing sympathy sucked.
“Please, Alec…” She sniffed and angled wet, red eyes up to him. “I can’t do it. I’m afraid I-I’ll freeze or… I don’t know. I just c-can’t…”
“Aw, sweetcakes…” He swiped a thumb under her eye, drying her tears, then smoothed a hand down her silky curls. For several minutes he simply held her, his arms wrapped securely around her trembling body as if he could absorb the shock, the misery, and take away her pain.
As her sobs receded and her tremors eased, he grew sharply aware of how good she felt crushed against his chest, held snugly in his embrace with her round bottom perched on his lap. Drawing deep breaths to rein in his libido only filled his lungs with her sweet womanly essence, her tempting vanilla scent.
Erin nestled her face in the curve of his neck, and the tickle of her hair under his chin, on his cheek, teased him and sensitized his skin.
“Please…don’t make me do it, Alec,” she murmured, her breath hot against his throat.
“I know you’ll be scared. I understand that. But we have to—”
Her grip tightening, she lifted wide eyes and shook her head. “No! Please. There has to be another way out of here.”
Her plea mingled with the pulse of desire rising inside him, tangling with his frustrating inability to comfort her, morphing into an aching need far stronger than mere lust. He could no longer separate the clambering impulse to kiss her from his steely determination to protect her.
“Please, Alec…” When she met his eyes, his breath lodged in his throat. His heart rolled in his chest. Determination besieged him to do whatever was necessary to allay Erin’s fears and to protect her from the pain of her loss.
He finger-combed tear-dampened wisps of hair away from her face and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Okay. I’ll find another way down from here.”
“Really?”
The relief and gratitude that welled in her eyes humbled him. He’d never savor
ed a greater sense of victory or accomplishment, even after completing a tedious mission.
A thin smile tugged the corners of her mouth, though her bottom lip still quivered. She cupped a hand against his cheek and whispered, “Thank you.”
He covered her hand with his. Laced their fingers. Kissed her palm.
Erin sucked in a sharp breath and dropped her gaze to the spot he’d kissed, then to his lips. He felt the tremor that raced through her, watched her pupils dilate and her cheeks flush.
His own breath hissed through his teeth as she leaned in, lifting her mouth toward his. A siren in the back of his mind screamed a warning that this was wrong, that his honor demanded he not take advantage of her vulnerability.
But her lips touched his before sanity could pull him back, and he was lost.
She nibbled his bottom lip tentatively at first, testing. The tiny kisses sizzled through his blood like sparks eating up a fuse, inching toward a powder keg. Tensing, he tapped every ounce of his restraint not to seize control of the kiss and ravage her mouth.
With a mewling sigh, she angled her head and captured his lips fully. She slid her hands up, spearing her fingers into his hair to cradle his head and tug him nearer.
His body thrummed, and his head felt muzzy. He drew on her lips, imbibing the sweetness she offered. When her tongue made a foray into his mouth, he greeted her boldness with a throaty growl of approval. Meeting her parry, he engaged her in an erotic duel.
He hadn’t kissed another woman in a long time, but he couldn’t remember the taste of a woman’s lips or the gentle pressure of a woman’s mouth ever filling his senses like Erin’s did. Her kiss made him shake with need and longing. She touched a place deep into his soul and wrenched feelings from him he’d never experienced before.
She scared the hell out of him.
Drawing on the last thread of his willpower, Alec pulled away from her and dragged in a ragged breath. As much as he wanted to push her down on the sofa and make love to her, a louder voice in his head reminded him of his duty to protect her. Even from himself.
He couldn’t, he wouldn’t take advantage of her need for comfort and manipulate it for his own pleasure. Scooting her legs off his lap, he shoved away from the sofa.
“Alec?”
He heard the hurt and confusion in her voice and gritted his teeth. A strangling tightness squeezed his chest, made him want to run back to her and promise her anything, just to soothe the pain his rejection caused her. But he didn’t have the luxury of making her promises, of giving her anything other than his protection—at least as long as the threat Daniel had uncovered hung over their heads.
“I need to study a map of the area, find a route we can hike down.” He stalked to the wall near the computer, where a topographical map was tacked up, and yanked it down.
He spread the map on the computer desk and dragged a hand down his cheek. The taste of Erin’s kiss lingered, taunting him as he scanned the elevation and directional markings. Their best move, it seemed, was to head north, then hike down from the far side of the mountain.
His smartest course of action was to keep his rampaging testosterone in check and leave Erin the hell alone. He’d kept plenty of femmes fatales at a distance, stayed emotionally unencumbered and kept his fly zipped countless times in the past. So why did Erin weaken his defenses and rattle his control?
She rose from the sofa and chafed her arms. “I’m sorry. I know you must think I’m a real wimp. I mean the way I freaked out about rappelling… I—”
“You have a right to be freaked by it. You witnessed something no one should have to see. I understand.” He sensed more than saw her step up beside him to look over his shoulder at the map.
“The ironic thing is I used to do so many things with Bradley. Surfing, parasailing, rock climbing, skydiving…” She sighed and dropped into Daniel’s computer chair. “And, well…other stuff. Bradley couldn’t wait to push the boundaries and take his adventures, as he called them, to the next level.”
Her confession startled him. He hadn’t expected this daring side of Erin. She’d seemed so intimidated by the paces he’d put her through getting up to the bunker. But her memories of Bradley’s tragic death explained her current fear of such daredevil endeavors. “So you and Bradley were both adrenaline junkies, huh?”
She grunted. “He was. I’d have been happy just camping out or walking nature trails in national parks. I had to do a bit of soul searching to work up the nerve to jump out of a plane with him. Shooting a class-four rapid in a kayak and bungee jumping were a little scary, too.”
He peered up at her from the map. “You went bungee jumping?”
“Uh-huh. Nothing too high up, though. And Bradley really had to lay the guilt trip on hard to get me up there.” A sad smile ghosted over her lips, a wistfulness that unsettled Alec. “But I did it. Because I didn’t want to let him down. Didn’t want to be left behind.”
Erin stared down at her hands in her lap, her eyebrows furrowed.
Alec pushed the map aside and studied her slumped shoulders, uneasy with the direction of the conversation. “Bradley made you feel guilty if you didn’t do all these stunts with him?”
She shrugged. “Sort of. He’d…challenge me.” She peeked up briefly, then lowered her gaze again. “He wouldn’t let me give in to my fears and back out. He’d say, ‘Where’s your sense of adventure, Erin? You aren’t going to chicken out after we’ve come this far, are you?’” She gave a quiet, nervous-sounding laugh, and she squeezed her hands into fists in her lap.
Alec read her body language, listened to the warbling tone of her voice and filled in the blanks. The urge to wrap his hands around Bradley’s neck shot through him like a bullet burning a path through his soul.
Erin scrunched her nose and glanced at him. “And he had this look. His eyes would get all sad like he was disappointed in me, and without saying a word, he’d have me doing things I never would have dreamed I’d do.”
Fury boiled through Alec’s blood, but he forcibly shoved it down to keep his voice neutral. “He manipulated you.”
Erin’s head snapped up. “No!”
“That’s what it sounds like to me. He sounds like a self-serving bastard who didn’t care how you felt and who coerced you to follow him on his adrenaline trips by making you feel like less of a person for your reluctance. He took your love for him and your desire to make him happy and used it against you.”
Horror and hurt blazed in Erin’s eyes, and for a moment she only gaped at him. Finally she drew her shoulders back and pulled in a deep breath. “You’re wrong. Bradley was a good man. He loved me. He just wanted me to push myself, to experience life to the fullest.”
“His idea of a full life or yours?” He’d said too much, crossed the line. He knew that, yet his disgust with Bradley goaded him on. “You said yourself you always wanted children, wanted to raise a family with him. That was your dream. So how full is your life now as a widow, facing motherhood alone?”
Erin gasped, lurched to her feet. “That’s a horrible thing to say!”
The pain and anger in her eyes castigated him. He drew a slow breath to keep his tone even. “I just think that if he cared about you, he’d have respected your needs, your feelings, your dreams.”
She blinked slowly, and a tear escaped her thick fringe of eyelashes. That lone tear sent a sucker punch to his gut. He had no right to make judgments and less right to voice them, to cast aspersions on the man she’d married, no matter what he thought of her choice. So why had he pushed? Why had he felt compelled to shake up her memories of her husband?
Alec kneaded the back of his neck and puffed out a harsh sigh. “Damn it, Erin. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
He shoved to his feet and stalked to the kitchen. Somewhere in the cabinets, surely he or Daniel had stashed a bottle of bourbon or rum or something. Anything with a bite to it.
As he ransacked the shelves, Erin moved into his peripheral vision and pressed a hand
over her belly. Concerned, he gave her a more thorough scrutiny and noticed her wan complexion.
“Are you all right? Do you feel sick again?” He grabbed out a box of crackers from the cabinet. “Do you need to eat?”
“When Bradley died,” she said, her voice almost a whisper, “I was so mad at him. I was hurt and sad and numb with grief, too, but mostly I was mad.”
Alec swallowed hard as his chest contracted. He set the box of crackers on the counter and let her talk. He’d said his piece, and now he owed it to her to listen, as difficult as it might be to hear about her heartache and turmoil.
“After all I’d done so he wouldn’t leave me behind…he left me anyway. He died, and I was all alone. But as angry as I was with him, I was more furious with myself.”
“Yourself? Why?” Alec took a step toward her, wanting to touch her, to hold her, but knowing he didn’t have any right.
“He was coming to help me…when he fell. My line had gotten hung up somehow, and when he tried to come help me…one of his anchors failed and—” A shiver shook her, and she hugged herself. “It was my f-fault.”
Alec mumbled a curse under his breath and wrapped her in his arms. “It’s not your fault.”
“That’s easy to say. Not so easy to believe. Especially considering what happened with Joey Finley.”
Alec wrinkled his brow. “With who?”
She shook her head, wiggled free of his arms. “Forget it. I’ve dumped enough on you.”
Erin dashed the moisture from her cheeks and squared her shoulders. “I’m tired. I think I’ll take a nap.”
Clamping down on the painful whirlwind filling in his chest, he nodded. He watched her crawl under the covers of the Murphy bed and pull the sheets up to her chin.
How the hell had she managed to burrow under his skin and free all the emotions he’d kept locked away for years? Caring for Erin, feeling so much for her, was dangerous. To him. To her. The woman had suffered enough. He refused to add to her pain, and he knew he could offer her nothing but more heartbreak. He had to squelch his obsession with her and get himself under control before his unwise attraction to her burned them both.
Soldier's Pregnancy Protocol Page 9
