Wyoming Strong

by Diana Palmer

  She searched his face. “You think I’m in danger?”

  “I don’t know, Sara,” he said. “If she has someone watching, if she thinks I might be involved with you, perhaps. That’s one other reason I’m staying away. But if you need me, I’ll be there.”

  She managed a smile. “Thanks.”

  He sighed. “I can’t let anything happen to my confidant,” he mused.

  She smiled back. “Okay.”

  “You don’t snore, by the way,” he said as he opened the door. He grinned at her. “You looked like a dark angel, asleep in my arms.”

  She pushed back her long hair. She didn’t reply. The words were like a fire burning in her heart.

  “I’ll see you at breakfast.”

  He went out and closed the door. Sara took off the pajama top and looked at herself in the mirror. It was the first time in so many years that she’d wanted to see herself. She was amazed. The beautiful woman in the mirror was sensual and happy. Her eyes were like black stars, gleaming with pleasure.

  The door suddenly opened. “I meant to tell you...”

  He stopped dead as she turned, his face clenched. He actually shuddered.

  She didn’t try to cover herself. She let him look.

  “Were you seeing how much damage I did?” he asked softly.

  She shook her head.

  “Then what?”

  “I was seeing how hungry you were for me,” she whispered, “and thinking how sweet it was to let you touch me.”

  He closed his eyes. His tall body shuddered again as he fought his instincts, which were to throw her on the bed and do something, anything, to stop the ache.

  She retrieved the pajama top and put it on, buttoning it up. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I never seem to say the right thing.”

  “I want you so much that I’m almost bent over double with it,” he confessed roughly. “It wasn’t anything you said.”

  She studied him quietly. He was violently aroused. “Just from...looking?”

  “Yes,” he bit off.

  His very vulnerability made all her fear vanish. She relaxed.

  “You aren’t afraid of me,” he remarked as he fought for control.

  “No,” she said quietly. “I’m...” She searched for a word. “Proud,” she concluded finally. “Proud that you can want me, after what that awful woman did to you.”

  “Oh, baby,” he breathed.

  “I like it when you call me that.”

  He lifted his chin. “That’s because you remember the last time I called you that,” he said with helpless arrogance. “When you were crying out with passion.”

  She wasn’t embarrassed. Well, not so much. She nodded slowly.

  Weeks. Weeks. He wouldn’t be able to see her, contact her, for weeks. I’ll die, he thought to himself.

  “What did you come back to tell me?” she wondered aloud.

  “That Barbara’s going to drive you up to San Antonio,” he said with a harsh sigh. “I wanted to do it, but I don’t want us seen together, just in case.”

  “That’s all right.”

  He studied her, sketched her with hungry eyes and then turned away. “Come have breakfast before it gets cold.”

  “Okay.”

  He went out. He hesitated outside the door. There was still that small possibility, however faint, that he’d made her pregnant during the heavy petting session. But it was a long shot. She didn’t have any symptoms yet. Probably she wouldn’t, though. Not just yet.

  He thought about Sara growing big with his child, pregnant and her black eyes shining like lamps while she nursed the baby. She’d make a wonderful mother.

  He closed his eyes. No. It was too soon for that. She was just coming out of the darkness. She needed time, to explore, to see other men, to be certain that he was what she wanted. He didn’t want to push her away. For the time being, for her own safety, he had to. He was going to be seen with a bevy of beautiful blondes to throw Ysera off the track. If she knew, with her vindictive nature, that Sara was his heart, she’d find a way to hurt her, perhaps to kill her. The only thing on earth that Wofford Patterson couldn’t live without was Sara Brandon. He had to keep Ysera from realizing that.

  * * *

  HE WAS GENTLE with Sara when he said goodbye at the door while Barbara waited discreetly in the car.

  “It won’t be for long,” he said hesitantly. “Just until we can find her.”

  “We?” she asked, her eyes widening with fear.

  He framed her face in his big hands. “They. I meant they.”

  “Don’t die,” she whispered, fighting tears.

  “Oh, God,” he groaned against her mouth as he kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her, there in the shadows of the porch, out of sight of Barbara and the few cowboys moving around the corrals.

  He had to force himself to let her go. He kissed her tears away.

  “You remember what I said,” he told her, his voice deep and firm. “Watch your surroundings. Never go out at night alone, for any reason.” He hesitated. “If anyone calls you and tells you that I’m hurt, or that I want to see you, don’t listen. You call me directly. The same for Gabe,” he added. “They might try to use your brother to draw you out. They got Carlie Blair by pretending that her father was hurt.”

  “I remember.” She searched his eyes. “Just be careful.”

  “I’m always careful. Usually.” He shrugged. “Not with you,” he added sardonically.

  She smiled. “I’ll see you, then.”

  “Yes. You will.” The way he looked at her was almost a statement of intent.

  * * *

  SHE CLIMBED INTO the car with Barbara and waved. But she didn’t look back. If she did, and saw him standing there, so alone, she couldn’t have left.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be all right in that apartment?” Barbara worried. “You could stay with me in Jacobsville.”

  “And put you in danger, too?” she asked.

  Barbara frowned. “All I got were bits and pieces. What’s going on? Can you tell me?”

  “Not really,” Sara said. “Except that Wolf has enemies, and one of them might come after me. It’s not so far-fetched. One of Gabriel’s did come after me, but Gabe was home when he broke in the house. It was over very quickly.”

  “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “Michelle doesn’t know, either,” she added, referring to the ward she shared with her brother. “I haven’t told her anything about what’s going on, and I’m not going to. She’s doing very well in college. I don’t want to upset her.”

  “Michelle is very nice.”

  “Yes. My brother’s crazy about her.” She laughed. “But don’t you dare let that get out. He’s playing a waiting game, until she’s through school.”

  “She graduates very soon, doesn’t she?”

  “She does, in fact. She already has a job lined up, too. She’ll make a good reporter. I’m very proud of her. So is Gabriel.”

  “She’s had a hard life. Losing both her parents and then being landed with her idiot stepmother, having her stepmother die of a drug overdose in front of her.” She shook her head. “It was a good thing Gabriel took her in.”

  “And called me down to chaperone,” Sara said. “She and Gabriel have been my life for the past few years.”

  “I think you may have someone else in that circle pretty soon.” She glanced at Sara’s flushed face. “He’s very much a man.”

  “Oh, yes,” Sara said. “But he’s not a marrying man,” she added sadly.

  “Sweetheart, every man is a marrying man with the right incentive. You wait and see.”

  Sara was going to do that. But despite Wolf’s passion for her, she wondered if there was anything behind it. He wasn’t a man who trusted emotion. He felt guilty about the way he’d treated her, and she knew intimate things about him that nobody else did. They were confidants. But whether he could love her was another matter. She couldn’t settle for a loose relationship
based on intimacy, not with her past. But considering what he’d gone through, she wasn’t certain he could ever trust a woman enough to marry her. Ysera had put paid to that.

  She would have to wait and see, she supposed. She just hoped she could get through the next few weeks unscathed. She was already feeling the effects of leaving him behind. The weeks that she was apart from him were going to be excruciating. She didn’t really know how she was going to cope. She’d never loved a man before.

  Her heart jumped up into her throat. Love. She...loved. She closed her eyes. How incredible that she hadn’t realized it. How else could she have been so intimate with a man, except if she loved him? What a time to realize it. And what would she do now?

  * * *

  WOLF WENT BACK inside the house after the women drove away, morose and quiet. He looked around the empty rooms and thought that they were like his life. Empty. Some rooms open, many closed. He was alone.

  He’d liked that, before. Being alone. But now it was a cold existence. He could picture Sara in every room, especially in the living room, where he’d taught her pleasure and then destroyed her pride. He closed his eyes, hating himself for that. But then he looked at the same sofa where he’d had her innocence, in a sense, and recalled her lying in his arms asleep, so trusting that it broke his heart.

  “Sara,” he groaned to himself.

  He went into the kitchen and took the cup she’d held to her lips and put his own lips against it, where pale lipstick remained. He shivered.

  He forced himself to put the cup in the sink along with the breakfast dishes. He stared at it with eyes that didn’t see it. She was gone. He’d let her go.

  Then he remembered why he’d let her go.

  He put the dishes in the dishwasher and turned it on, mopping up the sink. Then he went into a locked room and turned on a scrambler unit and called Eb Scott.

  * * *

  “WHAT’S UP?” EB asked at once.

  “Any news?”

  “Yes. Bad news. I was going to call you later. Ysera got through the security we’d put in place, and she’s back in Africa. She bought her old hotel and moved in with her millionaire lover. I have a contact who knows him. The word is that she paid half a million to someone we don’t know, to take you out.”

  Wolf grimaced. “Vindictive.”

  “Yes.” He hesitated. “You’ve had Sara Brandon out there this week...”

  “I’ve had Barbara Ferguson out here this week,” he lied. “Rick Marquez put a man in jail who threatened vengeance. Sara came over to chaperone. Her brother, Gabe, is probably the only friend I’ve got.”

  “Oh, I see.” He laughed. “Sorry. I was thinking other things.”

  “She’s too young for me,” Wolf said quietly.

  “Beautiful, though, isn’t she?” Eb asked.

  “What else did you find out?”

  Eb saw the change of subject in a light that Wolf didn’t guess, but he managed to keep the smile out of his voice. “The men she hired got on a plane to Heathrow, and we lost them. We figure they’ll be in the States pretty soon.”

  “I’ll make sure my own security is beefed up. Got a couple of extra men you can loan me? How about Rourke?”

  There was a hesitation. “Something’s going on with him. He was in Africa, then he was in Manaus, now nobody knows where he is.”

  “Something classified, I imagine.”

  “Exactly. But I have two good men with solid backgrounds. I’ll send them over. Make sure one of them stays on your tail, all the time.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “And, Wolf, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a few dates with several women,” he said quietly. “So Ysera doesn’t get the idea that you’re set on any one of them. She’d be an immediate target—perhaps the primary one.”

  “I’m two steps ahead of you there.”

  There was a hesitation. “Gabriel’s in some trouble, too.”

  His heart jumped. “What sort?”

  “It’s nothing big, yet. He’s helping guard the oil fields in one small Middle Eastern village, but there are insurgents who don’t want them safe. I’m afraid there may be a big blowup one day soon.”

  “I trained Gabriel,” he reminded Eb. “He’s one of the best professional soldiers I’ve ever known.”

  “Almost your equal,” Eb agreed. “Almost. I’ve never known a man who could pull off the strategies you did.”

  He chuckled. “I had a great tutor.”

  “Yes. I remember. Keep yourself safe.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “And stay clear of women you...care about,” he added.

  “No worries there. I hate women.”

  Eb almost bit his tongue through. “Okay. See you.”

  “See you. And thanks.”

  “That’s what friends are for.”

  The connection went still. Wolf leaned back in the chair. Sara. He couldn’t afford to see Sara, speak to her, touch her. He’d put a target on her forehead if he did. Ysera would kill her. He shivered gently as he recalled how vindictive Ysera was. The woman was psychotic. Emma had told him that, from the crumbs she dragged out of him. Sara had told her everything as he’d asked her to. Wolf couldn’t open up to Emma. Perhaps he could manage that, later. He had to come to grips with the past so that he had a future with...

  He bit down hard on the thought. His life was still full of danger. He did odd jobs for the government, black ops. He hadn’t told Sara about them, but he thought she knew anyway, or suspected. He couldn’t live without the adrenaline rushes.

  If he got involved, he’d have to give it up. He was almost thirty-eight. He was slowing down just a little. He was physically fit, but he was slower. That made him a liability in a forward unit. So he was usually the tactical officer now, the planner.

  He thought about Sara’s beautiful breasts with a tiny head pressed against them, nursing. He thought of them with real hunger.

  That was when he remembered what he’d done with Sara, and what the result could be. But he put it out of his mind. It wasn’t likely. Besides, he couldn’t think about a shared future until he dealt with the present, and he couldn’t afford distractions. He was going to have to lay some false trails, to convince Ysera that he was really playing the field.

  He picked up the phone and called the first number on his contacts list.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WOLF HAD SAID that he was going to break all contact with Sara for several weeks, while he made sure that she wasn’t targeted by Ysera. Despite the pain of not seeing him, that would have been all right. Except that the third week after she left the ranch, she started losing her breakfast.

  She hadn’t really believed what Wolf, and then Emma, had told her, that pregnancy could result from intimacy that didn’t include going all the way. She didn’t know what to do. So for several days, she did nothing.

  She noticed that she was followed everywhere she went. She tried to limit her trips to the store, to shop for groceries, to once a week. She had restaurants send food to the apartment, without knowing that every delivery boy was stopped and gently questioned by her unseen bodyguards. But she was nervous about what to do.

  It would be impossible for her bodyguards not to notice that she went to a doctor, but she coughed loudly on the way there, hoping they’d hear and think she had a cough.

  Dr. Medlin was young and sweet, blonde and pretty. She had the nurse draw blood and left Sara long enough to see another patient. But in minutes she was back with the results, and she wasn’t smiling.

  “You have decisions to make,” she told the younger woman.

  Sara closed her eyes. “I’m pregnant.”

  “Yes, you are. About three weeks, from what I can tell. Now, this might be a false positive. That can happen. But the other symptoms make it a fairly safe diagnosis. Do you want the baby?”

  “With all my heart,” Sara managed, averting her eyes.

  “What about the father?”

  She fo
ught down fear. “He said he wanted to know, if it happened. He didn’t...mean it to,” she confessed. “It was a heavy petting session. You know I can’t have, well, I’ve got that issue...”

  The doctor put a hand over hers. “I know.”

  “So it didn’t go all the way, but...”

  “It doesn’t have to.”

  Sara drew in a long breath. “I don’t know what to do. I’ll have to tell him. But if he wants me to go to a clinic...I don’t know if I can.” Her face was tragic. “I just don’t think I can do that. But he said a decision that concerns both people shouldn’t be made arbitrarily by one of them.”

  “I agree.” She went on about prescriptions she was giving Sara and what they were for, but Sara rather blanked out during the conversation. She was thinking about her baby and how Wolf would react to the news that he was going to be a father. He’d never spoken of marriage. He was thirty-seven, and he’d only been seriously involved, as far as she knew, with one woman, with Ysera. If he’d stayed single all those years, it had to be from choice.

  “Sara, did you hear me?” the doctor asked gently.

  Sara smiled. “Yes. Of course.” Sara stared at her hands. “Could you do something for me while I’m here?”

  “Certainly. What?”

  Sara flushed, but she told her.

  The doctor only smiled. “Let me call the nurse in.”

  * * *

  SHE BROODED FOR three days. But then she picked up her cell phone and sent a brief text to Wolf. She was afraid that it would make him angry. He’d warned her to have no contact with him. But he’d also said he wanted to know. She couldn’t tell him over the phone. So she just asked, Will you be at the symphony Friday night?

  He texted back one word, Yes.

  He typed nothing else. Neither did she.

  * * *

  FRIDAY NIGHT, SHE put on a new black evening gown, one that had a little extra fullness in the belly, because there was new tautness there, a slight rise in the flesh. She looked radiant. Her eyes were wide and soft, her face more beautiful than ever. Her skin was extraordinarily clear and bright.