Alex broke through the dense underbrush and dropped to his haunches beside her, scanning the woods around them with his gun poised to fire. Sarah scrambled to her knees and buried her face in his jacket.
Alex rocked Sarah back and forth in one arm, crooning nonsense to her as he scanned the woods. They, she had kept shouting, which meant there had been at least two men. Alex watched the woods for several minutes, his scowl darkening when he glanced down and saw the pieces of bark and leaves in her tangled hair. “What happened, Sarah?” He squeezed her softly when she didn’t answer and scanned the forest again. “What are you doing out here all by yourself?”
The sound of a car starting drew his attention, followed by the violent revving of an engine and the sound of tires spinning on gravel.
Alex eased Sarah away so he could see her face. “How long had they been chasing you? Did they hurt you?” he asked softly.
When he realized she wasn’t going to say anything, only shake her head, Alex tucked his gun into his belt, stood up, picked Sarah up, and carried her back to his truck. He set her in the passenger’s seat and closed the door, unloaded the handgun, shoved it under the driver’s seat, and climbed in. But instead of starting the truck, he stared out the windshield at the bicycle and Tucker’s old red wagon lying in the ditch.
“You shouldn’t ride a bike on this road, looking for your twigs and stuff,” he said, using every ounce of patience he had to soften his voice. He saw that Sarah was trembling uncontrollably, and his anger immediately vanished. He started the truck and put it in gear, then pulled Sarah against his side and headed for home with his arm wrapped tightly around her.
He had come back to the house two hours ago, hoping to spend time alone with Sarah by giving her a driving lesson—and getting her to see that he wasn’t just another member of her fan club. But all he’d found was her note on the windshield. Angry, though not really surprised, he had conceded this round in their battle of wills and gone back to work.
But then one of the drivers had climbed out of his rig at the logging yard just half an hour ago, unable to quit grinning as he told Alex that he’d seen his wife pedaling down the road like a cat with its tail dipped in turpentine, dragging an old wagon behind her.
Alex had sped back toward the house, hoping to catch her. When he’d found the unfamiliar car sitting by the side of the road, he’d started to worry. Seeing the bicycle and the wagon lying in the ditch and finding two sets of large footprints going into the woods, Alex had pulled out the handgun they always kept under the seat.
“Where were you, Sarah, when you yelled that the men had guns?” he asked, now that her trembling seemed to be easing, though she had her face buried in his side.
“In—in a tree.”
“You climbed a tree?”
She nodded against his jacket.
“And then what?”
“I jumped on them,” she whispered.
Alex was speechless. She’d jumped on the men with guns in their hands? “Why?” he croaked.
“They were going to ambush you.”
Alex felt the tremor begin deep in his chest before it worked out to his fingers and toes. She’d left her hiding place to save him? Holy hell, was she an idiot!
She suddenly pulled away, and Alex realized he’d spoken out loud. He tightened his arm around her and glared out the windshield as he turned onto their lane. “You do not jump on men with guns.”
She hit him with her own angry glare. “So I was supposed to sit there and watch them ambush you?”
Alex couldn’t for the life of him pick which emotion was in charge at the moment. He was violently shaking over what she’d done, but it might be anger tying his gut in a knot. She tried to sit up again, and he let her.
“Fine,” she said. “Next time, I’ll just let them shoot you.”
“Why were they chasing you?”
“I don’t know. I was pedaling down the road just as they came out of the woods.”
“You’ve never seen them before? In town? At Mary’s store, maybe?”
“No.”
“They were coming out of the woods, they saw you pedaling by, and they just started chasing you?”
She nodded.
“Did you talk to them?”
“No, I just waved at them and kept going,” she said, looking down at her hands as she gripped the knees of her dirty jeans.
Alex pulled into the yard, shut off the truck, and turned in his seat to face her. “You waved at them,” he repeated evenly.
His voice must have betrayed his anger, because she flinched. Alex closed his eyes and took a slow breath. “Sarah, you can’t go waving at strangers you see in the middle of nowhere.”
“No! It wasn’t like that. They didn’t follow me because I waved. I think they didn’t like the fact that I caught them coming out of the woods.”
“They were probably just hunting. Why in hell would they chase you for catching them hunting?”
“They were on the shortcut that leads to home. And they weren’t hunting. One guy was folding a map, and the other guy had a rifle, not a shotgun. And they were dressed in leather jackets and sneakers.” She shifted to face him, anger rising in her face. “I didn’t say anything to them. I just acknowledged their presence and kept pedaling. I couldn’t just ignore them.”
“Yes, you could.”
She started to open her door, but Alex reached out and took hold of her arm. “Sarah, you have no idea of the effect you have on men. When you smile, the pope himself would forget his vows.”
“So this is my fault?” she asked, her voice rising in disbelief. She jerked from his grip and folded her arms under her breasts. “Because I was foolish enough to smile and wave at those men, I invited them to chase me through the woods? With guns?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what exactly are you saying?”
Alex blew out a frustrated breath and rubbed his face with both hands. Dammit. He needed Sarah to promise never, ever to put herself between him and danger again.
Hell, what he really needed was to kiss every scratch and bruise on her body and assure himself she really was all right.
Her door opened, and Alex silently watched her stalk into the house.
He finally followed her, went over to her closed bedroom door, and stood listening to her quiet sobs for a full five minutes—every tick of the old kitchen clock echoing his escalating urge to lash out. Then he walked away before he broke down the door.
Sarah didn’t see Alex again that day, and it was nearly midnight and he still wasn’t home. He hadn’t returned to the work site, the others had said when they came home for dinner. After Sarah had told them what had happened, Ethan started cursing, then grabbed his jacket and stormed out, with Paul right behind him.
Grady had paced for twenty minutes as he made Sarah repeat exactly what had happened, before locking himself in his office. Sarah had kept Delaney and Tucker busy making Christmas decorations at the kitchen table after dinner.
But now it was nearing midnight, the kids were in bed, Grady was nursing a bottle of whiskey in his office, and Sarah was the one pacing the kitchen floor, fretting and worrying and blaming herself.
A truck finally pulled into the dooryard at a quarter to one. Sarah ran to the back door and saw three men get out and make their way to the porch. Their footfalls were heavy and unsteady, and one man was being supported by the other two. Sarah threw open the door just as Grady rushed into the kitchen.
Alex was between his brothers, his head bent as he cradled his ribs. When he looked up, Sarah couldn’t stifle her groan.
He was a mess. His face looked as if a skidder had hauled a load of logs across it; one eye was swollen almost completely shut, his other eye squinting below a bandage that covered his forehead. His left hand, holding his ribs, was also bandaged. His shirt was torn, there was blood on his collar and sleeve, and his lower lip was split. The smell of antiseptic wafted into the kitchen ahe
ad of him.
Ethan and Paul all but carried Alex to the table, then carefully settled him onto a chair. Grady, who had been speechless up to now, started cursing.
“What happened?” Sarah asked past the lump in her throat.
“You’re what happened,” Ethan snapped, turning on her.
“Ethan!” Alex said, only to suck in his breath.
Ethan ignored him, bringing his anger back to Sarah. “He went looking for those men who chased you today and spotted their car at the Greenville hotel.” He pointed at Alex. “The man’s not even near his full strength, yet he went looking to avenge you. When those bastards fled, my jackass brother tore after them. We found him and his truck wrapped around a tree!”
“That’s enough!” Alex shouted, slamming the table with his fist. He moaned in pain but never took his eyes off Ethan. “This is not Sarah’s fault,” he bit out with deadly softness.
“That’s enough from both of you,” Grady ordered. “It’s no one’s fault, except maybe Alex’s for going off half cocked.”
Ethan glanced at his battered brother, then stormed back out the door, his angry footfalls fading to a deafening silence. Alex’s groan broke the tension.
Sarah stepped to him and cupped his cheek, turning his face toward her as she examined him through blurry eyes. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Alex.”
Alex groaned when Paul and Grady moved to help him stand up. “If this had been last year, those men wouldn’t have stood a chance when I’d caught them,” he boasted, which he ruined with another groan.
“No,” Paul assured him. “But then, you wouldn’t have had to go after them last year, would you?”
“Get a glass of water, and bring those pills, Sarah,” Grady said over his shoulder, nodding toward the tiny brown bottle Paul had set on the table as they helped Alex through the swinging door. “We’ll get him into bed.”
It seemed forever before Sarah was sitting by Alex’s side and the two of them were finally alone. The doctor had declared his ribs were bruised but not broken, Paul had explained. Alex also had six stitches over one eye, three cracked knuckles, and a banged knee. Sarah sat on the bed, a glass of water and two pain tablets in her hand.
Alex gave her a lopsided smile. “Ethan is really a sight to behold when he’s angry, isn’t he?” he said, obviously trying to make light of his brother’s scene downstairs.
Sarah shivered.
Alex reached for her hand. “Don’t take his words to heart, Sarah. He’s not mad at you. He’s mad at me for wrapping my truck around a tree, and madder still at the thought that I might have caught up with them.”
“Oh, Alex. You shouldn’t have gone after those men.”
Alex said nothing, and she closed her eyes. “One of them spoke with an accent. And they had a map and a rifle when they first came out of the woods.”
“It doesn’t matter, Sarah. All that matters is that they’re gone and I’m basically okay. I’m busted up a little bit, but I’ll be fine.
She reached out and took his bandaged hand in hers. “I won’t bicycle on the road again.”
“This isn’t your fault, Sarah.”
She just sniffled, and he lifted their joined hands, then said mischievously, “If you kiss my boo-boos, I bet I’ll feel better.”
That jolted Sarah out of her tears. Did the man think she was dumber than dirt, not to realize he was taking advantage of his situation? Then she saw the twinkle in his eyes. Though she hadn’t done anything wrong, he had gone after those men because they’d gone after her.
She lifted his hand to her lips and gently kissed the back of his bandage.
“Ohhh,” he moaned. “I couldn’t feel a thing. The bandage is in the way.” He pointed to his swollen eye. “Kiss me here?”
Sarah grinned and softly kissed his temple.
“And here?” He touched his lips. “If you kiss me here, I know I’ll feel good enough to go to sleep,” he cajoled.
Sarah looked at his poor, swollen mouth, then lifted her gaze to his. “How long ago did the doctor give you a pain killer?”
Alex looked fuzzy. “I don’t know. A while ago.”
Sarah hesitated the briefest of seconds, then leaned down and gently touched her lips to his.
Alex leaned forward to deepen the contact, then dropped back onto the pillow. “Now I feel better,” he whispered, his eyes closed and his battered face wearing a pained smile.
Chapter Eleven
S arah put her plans to move up the lake on hold, to take care of Alex for the next several days. She sat in the great room with him for hours each day. Sometimes they’d watch her how-to shows together, sometimes she would read to him, but sometimes they’d simply sit and talk—mostly about her, since that seemed to appease his growing restlessness. She didn’t know how it happened, but Sarah found herself telling Alex all about her life growing up on Crag Island, about her parents, and about the twelve years the Bankses had plagued her. She, however, was only able to get bits and pieces of Alex’s life, since every time she asked about his childhood, he always managed to turn the conversation back to her. The man should have been a CIA agent instead of an engineer.
Alex was initially an amiable patient, although he grumbled whenever he limped to the bathroom. He entertained his kids after school by checking their homework and planning their approaching Christmas vacation, just one week away, and told them hair-raising tales about his eleven-day hike through the jungle—though Sarah suspected he softened the desperate parts and embellished the heroic ones. All in all, she found dealing with Alex on a daily basis to be surprisingly easy and sometimes downright rewarding.
Like when she trounced him at chess eight games out of ten. She had teased Alex that just as in chess, being a successful innkeeper required not only discipline and strategy but the ability to recognize impending disasters and the smarts to head them off. And like when Alex sent her to the attic to find his scruffy old pack basket of ice-fishing equipment, and she had sat mesmerized as he replaced all the line on his fishing traps while explaining how they worked.
Sarah found herself looking forward to New Year’s Day, when ice-fishing season started. The next time she went to Mary’s store in Oak Grove, she was buying herself a set of ice traps so she could try her hand at freshwater fishing. It couldn’t be any more difficult than saltwater fishing, Sarah had blithely declared. This resulted in Alex issuing her a fishing challenge for New Year’s Day.
The stakes? A kiss lasting at least two minutes if Alex won, an evening of dinner and dancing in Greenville if Sarah caught more fish. Sarah started rethinking her prize within minutes of shaking hands on their wager. Dinner and dancing was basically a date, wasn’t it? So who was actually winning what?
After six days of inactivity and being fed gallons of nutritious soup, Alex’s mood began to change from compliant to cranky. Sarah would just start on a chore when she would be called—not by the bell she’d given him but by a shout—into the great room. “Read to me,” he would demand. “Or give me a sponge bath,” he’d petition, his no-longer-swollen eyes now looking anything but pained.
But the crankier Alex got, the more diabolical Sarah became. She would patiently read him articles from forestry magazines and engineering journals, instead of one of her romance novels as he kept asking for, and on more than one occasion, Sarah simply gave him his dose of pain pills and patiently waited until they put him to sleep. Then she would escape to the attic to work on another quilt hanging to send to Clara in New York City.
There had been a close call two days ago, when Alex had answered the phone and Clara Barton had asked to speak to Sarah. Sarah had immediately grabbed the phone and gone into her bedroom for privacy; Alex was the last person she wanted speaking to Clara. And though she knew Alex had been curious about who was calling her, he’d been polite enough not to ask, and Sarah hadn’t offered any explanation. She had learned long ago that the less said, the better.
Too bad she hadn’t remembered that little truth
when Alex had been probing about her life with Roland and Martha Banks.
Alex had spent the last six days lying on the couch, surrounded by enough Christmas decorations to fill the White House and staring at a Christmas tree large enough to be in Rockefeller Center, with plenty of time to think about the two men who had chased Sarah. Just thinking of her jumping on those men would make Alex’s blood boil, sending cold chills down his spine.
John Tate had been called the next morning, and he had come out and taken Sarah’s statement, reassuring her that the men were likely long gone after Alex’s foolish attempt to catch them. But as soon as Sarah had gone upstairs to make the beds, John had told Alex and Grady and Paul that he would contact the border patrol as well as Daniel Reed, the local game warden, to pass on the information, and that he would start making their logging roads part of his daily rounds.
Ethan hadn’t been there to hear John’s concerns, because he hadn’t returned after storming out that first night. John said he’d seen Ethan in Greenville and that if he ran into him again, he’d bring him up to speed on what was happening. Two days later, Ethan had stopped into the house just long enough to pack some clothes and camping equipment. He’d had nothing to say to Sarah—who had gone to her room when he’d come through the back door—and very little to say to Alex, except to inquire how he was feeling.
Alex hadn’t pushed the issue, knowing Ethan would apologize to Sarah as soon as he figured out why he’d gotten so mad at her to begin with.
But it was Sarah’s daily escapes that really puzzled Alex. She seemed to take a lot of walks, though she assured him she was staying in the woods and not walking their road. But sometimes when she disappeared, Alex would hear soft footfalls coming from the attic. She would always check to see if he was sleeping—which he always made sure he appeared to be—and then she would quietly head up to the attic. He figured Christmas presents were her secret there.
Alex marked his page, stuffed the romance novel between the couch cushions, got up with a muttered curse at his still sore knee and ribs, and limped to the office. It was time he went back to work, even if that meant sitting at a desk instead of in his skidder. He sat down at his drafting table with a sigh and smiled in anticipation of his own present for Sarah, which was being delivered Christmas morning.
The Seduction of His Wife Page 12
