“And my hands are numb,” she continued more strongly, as if rallying.
Mac sucked a calming breath in through his teeth. The idea that some bastard had wrapped her wrists with duct tape made him want to start breaking faces. To say nothing of the rest of what had been done to her.
“I’ll get the tape off for you when we get to the hospital. Just a few more minutes.” His tone was soothing.
“The hospital?”
“That’s where we’re going.” Clearly she hadn’t registered what he’d said the first time. That worried him. Just how hard had she been hit? He stepped on the accelerator, glanced in the mirror again—and went straight through a stop sign. Jesus. He hadn’t even seen it. Good thing the traffic in Summerville at three in the morning was so light as to be almost nonexistent.
“Mac. Pull over.” There was a sudden urgency to her voice.
“What? Why?” He glanced in the mirror again.
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
Mac groaned, and pulled the Infiniti over to the side of the road.
Julie was already fumbling at the handle when he got her door open.
“Hold still.” He had his pocketknife out and ready. Hooking his fingers beneath the edge of the tape, he sliced through the sticky layers with relative ease, then pulled the tape off with one quick yank and felt a twinge of guilt as she winced. He imagined the sensation was something akin to having a mega-Band-Aid removed the quick way. In short, not pleasant.
“Mac, move.” The order was urgent, and then she pressed her lips tightly together as if she was afraid of what might follow the words. Even as she flexed her fingers and shook out her hands, she swung her legs out of the car and scooted forward. Her bare feet were pale against the dark bristle of the grass as she tried to stand. Her legs were long and slim and luscious beneath the hem of that unbelievably sexy nightgown. From the neck down, she was every teenage boy’s wet dream; from the neck up, she was every grown man’s fear of what he would end up sleeping with for the next fifty years once the honeymoon was over.
The bad part was, even with a silly ponytail and a face full of muck, she still looked beautiful. And with that thought, Mac realized to his dismay that he was already smack in the middle of the quicksand, and it was closing over his head.
She was about halfway out the door when she swayed and sank back. Mac, standing a little to one side to give her room, saw that she needed help and bravely put himself directly in the line of fire. Grabbing her by both elbows, he hauled her out. With an arm wrapped around her waist he supported her as she stumbled about six feet away from the car.
He then stood over her feeling helpless while she dropped to her knees at the side of the road.
16
HER HEAD SWAM, HER STOMACH HEAVED, but in the end she managed to keep herself from vomiting by sheer force of will. After a moment in which the issue hung in the balance, Julie sank back on her heels and flopped forward so that her head rested on her thighs and her arms lay limply on the grass beside her folded legs, too dizzy and exhausted to even sit up. Her stomach settled, but her head throbbed mercilessly, her throat ached, and her newly freed hands tingled and burned. Julie looked at the marks the tape had made on her wrists and shuddered.
“Julie?” Mac crouched beside her and put a hand, warm and large, on her back. For once the muggy heat was welcome; she felt cold to the bone. The scent of fresh-cut grass was all around her. The grass itself felt cool and faintly damp beneath her.
Julie turned her head toward him, registered the gilt-edged outline of his head against the star-dusted sky, registered the broad-shouldered power of his build, registered his sheer masculine beauty, and felt comforted. No matter if he had deceived her in the matter of Debbie, Mac could be counted on to keep her safe.
“I’m glad you’re not gay,” she said.
“Me too.” His voice was dry. He was looking her over carefully. She smiled at him. If it hadn’t been for Mac—well, she wasn’t going to think about that. Not now. If she thought about what might have happened, she feared she would totally lose it, which would not help the situation in any way that she could see.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay,” she said.
“I can tell.” The dryness took on a grim edge. She watched as he glanced away from her, then back. “There’s a water fountain over there. Feel like a drink?”
It was only then that she realized they were at the edge of Sawyer Park, a children’s play area consisting of a grassy acre chock-full of swings and slides and sandboxes and other assorted kiddie paraphernalia. She knew it well, thanks to countless afternoons spent playing in it with Erin and Kelly.
“Sounds good.”
Before she could make more than a feeble attempt to rise, he made a sound under his breath and scooped her up in his arms. He straightened as easily as if she weighed nothing at all, and started walking with her toward the small silver monolith of a drinking fountain that gleamed in the moonlight some hundred yards away.
Julie didn’t even think about protesting, but curled close against his chest and looped her arms around his neck, content to be right where she was. Her knees felt rubbery, her head swam, and she had a funny feeling that she wasn’t quite hitting on all her usual mental cylinders. She wasn’t sure she could have walked to the water fountain even if she’d wanted to. But she didn’t want to. She loved being in Mac’s arms. They were hard and strong beneath her knees and around her back. His chest was firm and solid, and his whole body was so warm. She realized that what she was experiencing was probably a traumainduced primitive female reaction to his superior male strength, mentally deplored the retro-ness of her own response, and settled down to savor it anyway. She let her head rest on his wide shoulder, closed her eyes, and tightened her hold on his neck.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Mac said a beat or so later, sounding slightly grumpy. She opened her eyes to find that they were closing on their goal fast: his long strides were eating up the ground. “Want to tell me what the heck that stuff is on your face?”
For a moment Julie couldn’t think what he was talking about. Then she remembered the Mudd, and surprised herself by smiling. Here she was, enjoying a little escapist romantic fantasy about being borne away into the darkness by a truly hot guy, and all the while she looked like a refugee from an I Love Lucy episode. Was that the way life worked or what? At least, her life.
“Mudd.”
“You usually sleep with mud on your face?” He sounded politely interested.
“Mudd. M-U-double dee. It’s a mask. For your skin. I was going to take a bath before I went to bed, and I put Mudd on my face first. Then I saw him in the mirror before I could get in the tub.”
She shuddered, and his grip tightened. The instant when she had seen her attacker in the mirror was vivid—too horribly vivid to be borne. She tried to dismiss it from her mind; it was impossible. Out of nowhere came the memory of her little voice. Goose bumps prickled to life all over her as she realized that the voice had been warning her. It must have been some kind of sixth sense. On some level, she must have realized that there was someone in the house.
That thought was scary, too. She didn’t much like the idea that she knew things she didn’t know she knew.
“How did you know I was in trouble?” Maybe he’d had a sixth sense experience, too.
“Darlin’, you have a scream like a banshee. I was standing outside by your pool when you let loose. Hearing you took about twenty years off my life, by the way.” He took a deep breath. “Then I saw that someone had already broken in. It wasn’t the best moment I’ve ever had, let me tell you.”
For a moment neither of them said anything more. His feet moving over the grass and the chirping chorus of the usual insects were the only sounds. Moonlight bathed the playground in a ghostly glow. The playthings took on a whole different ambience in the dead of night, Julie discovered. A sinister ambience.
She felt a chill race down her sp
ine and realized that the sheer terror of being attacked in her own home was still with her, hiding deep within her body’s cells to reemerge at will like a particularly nasty virus. Never again, she feared, would she feel totally safe. If it could happen there, it could happen anywhere, even in this innocuous little playground. “Assume the worst” seemed to be her body’s new rule of thumb, and she was correspondingly anxious. Thank God Mac was with her. She would have been spooked out of her mind otherwise.
No, if Mac hadn’t been with her, she wouldn’t have been here in this cheerful-by-day, eerie-by-night playground to be creeped out by ghostly toys.
Maybe she wouldn’t have been anywhere. The thought sent a whole series of chills chasing after the first. He must have felt her shiver, because his arms tightened around her, cuddling her closer.
“Mac. Thank you.”
“For?” He slanted a glance down at her. His face was very close.
“I think you probably saved my life.”
He grunted. “Not a problem.”
“What if he comes after us here?” Her voice was low. The terror was bubbling up again, sparked by their isolation, by the darkness, by the sense that anything could lurk in the shadows. She glanced fearfully around.
“I’ll keep you safe whatever happens, I promise. But you don’t need to worry: he won’t come. He’s long gone, believe me.”
“You have a gun, don’t you?”
“Yup.”
“You know how to use it, right?”
His mouth twitched. “I used to be a cop. Before that, Navy SEAL. That make you feel better?”
“A little. No, actually, a lot.” She felt dizzy, and rested her head against his shoulder again. He looked down at her.
“You okay?”
“Yes. Why aren’t you a cop anymore?”
His jaw tightened. She felt a sudden tension in his body. For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer, and she lifted her head and looked at him inquiringly. His gaze met hers and held for the briefest of moments. Then he glanced away.
“I got fired.”
“You got fired?” Getting fired from the police force was the last thing she would ever expect to happen to Mac, Julie realized with some surprise. The Debbie thing notwithstanding, he was just about the most solidly reliable person she had ever met in her life. “Why?”
He sighed. “Because drugs went missing from the evidence room and were found in my possession. A boatload of people were willing to swear I’d been dealing. I got fired. I would have been prosecuted, but the department didn’t want the publicity.”
“You were innocent.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah, I was. The guy I was investigating at the time got to me before I could get him.”
They reached the fountain then and he set her on her feet, keeping both hands on her waist and standing behind her, bracing her body with his. Julie rinsed her mouth several times then sluiced her face and throat, which felt bruised on the outside but didn’t hurt particularly when she swallowed. No internal damage then, she judged, and felt thankful. The water was more lukewarm than cold, but it rinsed the Mudd away and made her feel better nonetheless. After several splashes she felt almost normal. When she was finished, she looked around at Mac, blinking as she wiped the water from her cheeks with her fingers.
“Here.” He turned her around with his hands on her hipbones and wiped her face dry with the hem of his shirt.
“Now your shirt’s wet.” She steadied herself by grabbing onto his waist. It was narrow and hard beneath his T-shirt. His muscles flexed beneath her fingers as he moved.
“I’ll survive.”
He reached out and tugged at the scrunchie that held her hair up. Her hair was falling out of its high ponytail anyway, with tendrils straggling around her ears and down the back of her neck and tickling her cheeks. The bulk of it tumbled around her face as he pulled the scrunchie free. Julie instinctively shook her head to restore what order she could to her errant locks, then winced at the resultant stab of pain. He handed her the scrunchie and she slid it onto her arm.
“Better,” he said, looking her over. “Not that you didn’t look good with that mud stuff all over your face and your hair done up like a mop, of course.”
Julie smiled. “Lying’s going to get you in big trouble one of these days.”
For a moment he simply looked down at her without saying anything. His hands rested on her upper arms. Their heat burned her skin. He was standing very close. Her breasts were just inches from his chest, her pelvis just inches from the zippered front of his jeans. A sudden, sensual hunger sprang to life inside her. She shivered a little, remembering the way he had kissed her earlier, welcoming the memory because it crowded out all the horrible memories that had come later. He made a slight, restive movement and she glanced up. Her gaze collided with his. He was frowning down at her, and the air between them was suddenly charged. Her lips parted. Her breathing quickened. His fingers tightened on her arms.
She felt positively light-headed—and she didn’t think it was because of the blow to her head.
“We need to get going. You up to walking, do you think?” His abrupt words belied the heat in his eyes.
She smiled dreamily up at him. The alternative, of course, was for him to sweep her up in his arms again and carry her away into the night. Every atom of her being practically drooled at the prospect. In some small part of her mind, Julie recognized that weakness and fear had rendered her vulnerable, and mentally girded her loins. She wanted to be in his arms, but, she reminded herself sternly, a little wanting of that nature could be a dangerous thing.
“I can walk.” Her voice sounded far more robust than she felt.
He let go of her arms, and she was both glad and sorry to be taken at her word. Instead of sweeping her up, he slid a hand around her elbow with all the decorousness he might have shown a maiden aunt, and urged her forward. Setting her jaw determinedly, Julie started walking, breathing deep of the heavy night air that was, she discovered, the opposite of revivifying. She made it about half a dozen paces. Then her knees dissolved from rubbery straight to pure liquid, and she folded like an accordion. Mac grabbed her around the waist in the nick of time, barely saving her from ending up flat on her face in the grass.
“To hell with it,” he said, sounding angry, and scooped her up again. Try though she might, Julie couldn’t summon up so much as a smidgen of regret. Her head swam and her limbs felt as limp as cooked noodles—but not limp enough to prevent her from wrapping her arms around his neck. It was then that she faced the awful truth: Dangerous or not, Mac’s arms felt like home to her now.
For the length of a couple of strides neither of them said anything. Julie breathed in the slightly beery, slightly musky scent of him and snuggled as close as she could get. He basically walked and breathed.
Then Mac gave a disgusted grunt. His hands—one on her bare thigh just above her knee, one just below her right breast—tightened.
“Just for the record, are you wearing anything at all under that nightgown?”
Julie looked up at him, admiring the clean, classical lines of his jaw and chin and noting with some interest that blond men were perfectly capable of sprouting a considerable amount of five-o’clock shadow given the right circumstances.
“No. Not a thing.”
“That’s what I thought.”
He was sweating, she noticed, observing small beads of moisture on his forehead with interest, although she didn’t think it was from effort. After all, he had carried her from the car to the drinking fountain without any trouble. And, hippy or no, she didn’t weigh all that much.
“So what’s your point?” she prodded when he didn’t say anything else.
“No point.”
They reached the car. Keeping a steadying arm around her waist, Mac set her on her feet to open the front passenger door. Tugging the hem of her nightgown down—it had ridden up to the point of indecency as she slid down his body—she leaned cont
entedly against him, her bare shoulder butting into his chest, her silk-clad hipbone nudging his abdomen. She shifted position a little and her hip brushed the front of his jeans. There was a palpable hardness there. Julie registered it, and her lips curved into a small, purely feminine smile.
“Don’t you like my nightgown?” There, she was flirting with him, openly, unmistakably flirting, pounding head, bruised throat and all. Julie realized that she hadn’t flirted in years; flirting, she rediscovered, was fun.
Mac looked down at her with a considering expression. The now-open door waited beside her like an eager mouth, but she wasn’t ready to be swallowed up by it just yet.
“That depends.” He sounded cautious as he studied her face. Then he seemed to make up his mind about something. His jaw tightened, his lips compressed, and he added in a firmer tone, “Now be a good girl and get in.”
When she didn’t move but just stood there smiling beatifically at him, he grimaced and bundled her inside with ruthless efficiency, lifting her legs in when she was slow to do so, pulling her seat belt down and leaning across her to fasten it.
“Depends on what?” Voice sultry, she slid her hand up inside his T-shirt as he leaned across her, enjoying the feel of his warm, satiny skin, the hard smoothness of his stomach, the brawny width of his chest. He froze at her touch, and as her fingers traveled upward, burrowing into the soft mat of hair she discovered, his gaze met hers. Their faces were so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin.
His eyes were hot; his mouth was—sexy as hell. She couldn’t stop looking at it. Her hand stilled on his chest, palm flattening, fingers spreading luxuriantly in the silky hair. She could feel the steady beat of his heart against her palm.
To Trust a Stranger Page 18
