In the Lawman's Protection

by Janie Crouch

  She nodded. There wasn’t anything she was hiding in the bag. “I don’t really have anything.”

  “You have these.” He motioned for her to come forward. After a few steps she could see what he’d laid out on the floor.

  Her paints.

  “I saw them this morning, but I didn’t know if they were yours. Then a few minutes ago you mentioned working at an art studio so then I thought...”

  She couldn’t stop staring at them.

  “Are they not yours?” he finally asked.

  “No, they are. It’s just—it’s just... It’s been a long time since I’ve used them. I’ve been carrying them around, but never used them.”

  “How about now?”

  Her eyes flew to his face. “Now? Where? I don’t have any canvas.”

  “I thought maybe a section of that door could be your canvas. You could give the owners of this cabin a nice surprise. And if they don’t like it, it’ll take them ten minutes to sand it down.”

  “But...”

  He smiled, handing her a brush. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

  She took the brush. It was time to take back part of what had been stolen from her.

  Chapter Eleven

  He awoke to the sound of Natalie’s adorable snores against his neck.

  This was the third day in a row he’d woken up to the feel of her in his arms. This morning she had a leg thrown over his hips and her arm wrapped around his stomach as she’d plastered herself to his side. Unlike the other two nights, she’d been completely relaxed all night. And although she hadn’t started out in his arms, she’d certainly ended up there quickly. Not that Ren was complaining.

  Although he was not complaining for the wrong reasons.

  He should be happy that she was finally relaxed enough to roll into his arms because it meant she was getting closer to trusting him. Not because she felt damn near perfect in his arms.

  He’d watched her paint for hours last night until she’d been too tired to hold her arms up against the door that had become her small masterpiece.

  Had a hundred-dollar set of paints been the key to cracking Natalie from the beginning?

  After watching her for a few hours, Ren was sure he could’ve saved a whole lot of time and money by just showing up at her door in Santa Barbara with an easel and encouraged her to do her best.

  He wasn’t sure why no information about Natalie as an artist had been in her Omega file. But the more she worked on the painting, the more evident her talent became. Like professionally good.

  The sheer joy on her features as she worked—the utter serenity—was so intense it had been impossible for Ren to look away. Like she’d been waiting an unimaginable amount of time to do this, and then couldn’t stop if she wanted to. And she very definitely hadn’t wanted to.

  Last night, painting by firelight, Natalie was almost the polar opposite of the woman who’d been frantically searching for a way to lock windows and doors with no locks the night before. She was serene, calm and utterly beautiful.

  Actually, most of yesterday had been different. Except for the incident starting the fire, she’d been relaxed and helpful. She’d surprised him by wanting to learn how to hunt and how to prepare the animals to eat. Then surprised him even more at being so deft at it.

  The more she did, the more he wanted to show her. The more they talked, the more truths he told. When he’d told her about his time in the special forces he knew he was in dangerous territory. But more and more he was finding it impossible to believe that she could be in with Freihof.

  And if she wasn’t, if there was nothing she could tell him about Freihof’s location, then Ren knew he needed to end this. Tell her who he was, what was happening, and ask for her help. Lay all the cards out, talk her into helping, pack them up and leave.

  He looked over at her painting taking up about one quarter of the cabin door. She’d be done by the end of today at the rate she was going. He’d let her finish. Partially because doing so would hopefully make her more agreeable to helping them hunt her ex-husband. But mostly because he couldn’t stand to cut short the use of those paints that had brought such life to her so-often-haunted eyes.

  He’d try to get more information from her today as she painted and was more relaxed. Maybe she knew something she wasn’t aware of. Details that weren’t important to her, but could be used for finding and stopping Freihof.

  But one thing Ren knew for sure was that he needed to distance himself from her. Because, yeah, she was going to be mad when she found out he’d been deceiving her all this time. If he fostered any more closeness, it would just make the situation that much more difficult.

  Natalie shifted slightly from where she was draped over him. He closed his eyes as her body squeezed more tightly up against him.

  He needed distance just as much for his own sake as hers. Especially since he was the one who was undercover; and yet he was finding it almost impossible to lie to her.

  For someone who had made a career out of lying to others, giving them whatever false information and security they needed in order to get what he wanted, not being able to lie to this woman was downright disconcerting.

  Or maybe it wasn’t that he couldn’t lie to her, it was that he didn’t want to. Just about everything he’d told her except for his last name—and even then, Thompson was his mother’s maiden name—had been true. Telling her about his time in the special forces? Completely unnecessary. And yet...he hadn’t regretted telling her.

  He wanted her to know him. And when he asked questions, yes, he was always listening for potential info about Freihof, but he was also getting to know her.

  And was liking it.

  Which was possibly the most dangerous thing he could do. Especially given that nuclear kiss yesterday morning.

  Distance. It was the best tactical move he could make right now. He eased himself out from under her—ignoring his body’s demands that he stay exactly where he was—and got out of the bed.

  He needed distance.

  * * *

  NATALIE COULD HONESTLY say she’d never seen a door be used as an actual canvas before. Her face broke out into a grin as she leaned back in to complete the section she was working on. Who cared if it was untraditional, if the paint soaked in more than it would on canvas? It still worked.

  And she was painting. It had been years since she’d held a brush. Since she’d felt the calm flow through her body that she only got when painting.

  She was painting the view of the Pacific from the beach house. It was an unusual choice for a cabin in a landlocked state, particularly in the middle of winter, but she liked to think the owners would come and be surprised and like it.

  Although they couldn’t possibly like looking at it as much as she’d liked painting it. She’d started again as soon as she’d woken up this morning, after eating the breakfast Ren had already graciously fixed, and had been at it most of the day. She’d only stopped when her arms or back—unused to this type of abuse since it had been so long since she’d painted—had begun to protest too loudly.

  She painted in another section of blue that morphed into teal. The colors blended beautifully in front of her, the image from her mind taking formation on the wood. This was what she was meant to do. Had always been what she’d been meant to do.

  She couldn’t believe she’d allowed this to be stolen from her for so many years. During her marriage—when none of her paintings had ever been perfect enough for Damien—but then also after. She’d been so busy making sure she was ready to run, able to hide, that she’d forgotten to live.

  “Is that an ocean view?” Ren asked now that the picture was really starting to take shape, the lines of blues and greens clearly the ocean.

  “Yep.”

  He’d been in and out of the cabin all day. They had eaten dinner, which he had pre
pared—more small game with mixed canned vegetables this time—and she tried to do the cleanup but he’d insisted she spend her time painting. She’d been happy to agree. Now she was back to painting by firelight, like she had last night. Normally that might be frustrating but she didn’t care.

  “You drawing that from your imagination or from a place you’ve been?”

  She smiled at him over her shoulder. “Believe it or not, this was the view from my back door in Santa Barbara. The Pacific.”

  “Really? Wow. I can’t believe you even pretended to have interest in my family’s farm if you had that view to wake up to every day.”

  She turned back to the painting, laughing. “Well, it wasn’t actually my house. I wish I had that sort of money. I’d just been house-sitting for a couple of weeks before I left.”

  “House-sitting?”

  She added another patch of blue that would blend into the gold of the shoreline. “Yeah. Honestly, I don’t even know the people who live there. It just fell into my lap. A lady I worked with was supposed to do it but then had to go out of town on an emergency. Next thing I knew I had a close-up view of the Pacific.”

  Not that she’d taken advantage of it. And she hoped Olivia didn’t get in trouble with the owner since Natalie had left so abruptly.

  “Really? You were house-sitting?”

  Ren’s voice sounded strange. Half-strangled. She turned to look at him. “Yeah. Do they not have a lot of house-sitting in Montana?”

  “Not really.” He shook his head, looking a little strange. “I guess you were lucky your friend thought of you for the house. What did you guys do together at your job?”

  She turned back to the painting. He was fishing for info, as he had been all day. Questions about her childhood, her past, her friends and plans. That should make her nervous, but instead it spread a feeling of warmth through her.

  Ren wanted to know more about her.

  This sexy, intelligent, insightful man wanted to know more about her.

  She knew that didn’t mean anything, that this...attraction between them couldn’t lead to anything permanent, or any sort of serious relationship.

  But he wanted to know stuff about her. What harm could there be in telling him about herself? So she had. Not everything, of course, but some. It wouldn’t hurt her to tell him about a job she was never going back to.

  “Olivia and I worked together at a bar. She waited tables. I did other stuff. Washed dishes, bussed tables, cleaning.”

  “Living in California on a dishwasher’s salary couldn’t be easy, even with house-sitting.”

  She shook her head without looking away from the door. “You’re not kidding. I actually worked two other jobs. Nothing very glamorous, just cleaning office buildings in the mornings. Between the three jobs, I was able to make ends meet.” She laughed a little. “Barely.”

  “Why stay in California at all? It’s so expensive there, especially in Santa Barbara.”

  She shrugged. “Honestly, I was avoiding someone. My ex.” There. She’d said it. It hadn’t been so hard. “He once said he never wanted to step foot in California ever again. I was sort of hoping that was true.”

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”

  “Six years.”

  “He never tried to get in touch with you in all that time?”

  No, because he thought she was dead. That was too complicated to even begin telling. “I kept a pretty low profile.”

  “Sounds like you wanted to stay away from him pretty badly. You had to take some pretty drastic measures.”

  Oh, God, how had he known that? Had she slipped and said something she shouldn’t? She turned slowly. “What do you mean?”

  “Even for a farmer who knows what it’s like to work seven days a week, working three jobs just to avoid someone is pretty drastic.”

  If Ren thought that was pretty drastic, telling him how she pretended to be dead would definitely seem like overkill, pardon the pun.

  “He was worth avoiding.”

  She didn’t want to talk about Damien. Didn’t want to think about him. Out here in this cabin in the middle of nowhere, in this dream where she was doing what she loved to do, with a sexy man watching her and talking to her, Damien had no part.

  Ren was already in bed—she’d been so focused she hadn’t even realized it—by the time her arms refused to let her do any more work. She was at a good stopping place. Tomorrow she’d finish it.

  Then it would be time to get back to the real world. Or at least out of this dream house.

  She put away her paints and cleaned her brushes as best she could before turning to her own personal hygiene. She slipped out of her jeans and sweater and into the pajama pants and tank she’d been sleeping in, wishing it was something sexier.

  Because she’d already decided that if her time was running out here in the dream cabin, then she wasn’t going to waste the time she had left with Ren.

  She was going to seduce him, right now.

  Chapter Twelve

  Of course, wanting to seduce and actually knowing how to seduce were two very different things.

  Natalie crawled onto her side of the bed and pulled the covers over herself, staring up at the ceiling without touching him. How come her sleeping body never seemed to have any problem plastering itself all over him, but awake she couldn’t even force herself to touch him at all?

  Then Ren moved in his sleep, rolled toward her, the shift in the mattress causing her to slide toward him.

  Then she just let herself fall the rest of the way into him.

  She trailed her fingers across his naked chest, since he just slept in a pair of sweatpants they’d found. She loved touching him, his muscles so defined, yet had never once been used in any sort of violent way against her. The opposite, in fact. Only used to help make her feel secure, safe. Her fingers trailed slightly lower, over his abs. They tensed just the slightest bit under her touch.

  “You’re awake,” she whispered.

  “From the second those fingers touched me.”

  She snatched her hand back. “I’m sorry. You were trying to sleep. I don’t know what I’m doing. I—”

  She stopped abruptly as he reached out with his own hand and brought hers back down to his chest. “I wasn’t complaining about your hand being there.”

  He slipped his other arm under his head, giving her room to move in a little closer to him. In the soft light of the dying fire he looked so relaxed, half smiling at her with drowsy eyes.

  She was never going to get another opportunity like this.

  She didn’t let herself think about it too much, she just reached in and kissed him. She was tentative, unsure how to show him how she wanted more.

  She needn’t have worried.

  At just the slightest bit of persuasion from her, Ren’s mouth was hot and open against hers, his tongue sliding inside, coaxing her for more. It was different than the kiss outside in the snow. Slower, less frantic, more exploratory. But no less passionate.

  His tongue skimmed across her bottom lip slowly before nibbling on it, like he had all the time in the world to taste her and no plans to ever move from this bed.

  Natalie couldn’t help it—she sighed into his mouth, wanting him closer.

  Then the kiss changed. Every part of her hummed with excitement as he pulled her hard against him, his hand curving around her nape to hold her there. He moaned against her skin as his lips worked their way from her ear down her jaw to her neck.

  He grabbed the hem of her shirt like he was going to pull it over her head—something she desperately wanted—but then paused.

  They were both breathing hard as he leaned his forehead against hers.

  “Natalie...we should stop.”

  “Oh. This isn’t what you want?” She’d been such an idiot. Just because
she’d been attracted to him and wanted to take advantage of this time for intimacy didn’t mean he did. Maybe he’d just kissed her so she wouldn’t feel bad. She shot back from him. “I’m so sorry. I—”

  “Peaches.” His voice was guttural as he grabbed her and pulled her back against him so her fingers were once again touching his chest. “Believe me, I want this. But there’s stuff about me you don’t know. Important stuff.”

  He had things he hadn’t told her. Logically she already knew that. But they couldn’t possibly be as big as the ones she hadn’t told him. Her fingers curled into his muscles.

  “Is there someone waiting for you at home who will be upset if we do this?”

  He gave a shake of his head against the pillow. “No. Nothing like that.”

  Really, that was all Natalie needed to know. She leaned back in to kiss him, but he stopped her again, holding her by the upper arms while his thumbs drew gentle circles on her shoulders.

  “Natalie, you still need to know—”

  She cut him off with a finger to his lips. “You know what? There’s stuff about me—also important stuff—you don’t know. We’ve both got secrets. But just for tonight, let’s leave them out in the snow, okay? For tonight, it’s just you and me inside this place. Nothing else. No one else.”

  His eyes were burning, tortured. “Peaches—”

  She brought her lips up to his, replacing her finger, knowing he didn’t know how much it was costing her to put herself out there like this, how much his rejection would completely crush her.

  “Ren, the only question I need answered right now is whether or not you want me.”

  He didn’t answer her in words. He didn’t have to. Instead, his hand gripped the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head, throwing it to the side. He fisted a handful of her hair as his lips ravished hers, his tongue licking deep into her mouth as if he couldn’t get enough of the taste of her.

  A hot wave crashed in her chest. She had never felt like this. Desired like this. She was drowning in it.

  Ren’s other hand slid down to her hips, pulling her up against him. Leaving her zero doubt that he did, in very definite fact, want her.