The Harder They Fall (Intimate Moments)

by Lovelace, Merline

  Evan hadn’t touched her since she’d opened the door, then quickly backed away from him. He’d make up for that serious error in judgment in a bit. First, she had to deliver the speech she’d obviously been rehearsing in her head for the past ten minutes. Dragging in a deep breath, she plunged into it.

  “Look, we both got a little carried away the last time you were here.”

  “A little?”

  “Okay, a lot. It was crazy. The whole weekend was crazy. I knew nothing could come of it… That we couldn’t…”

  He wasn’t letting her off the hook. Weaving a path through the boxes, he came around the end of the bed. Whatever she wanted to say, she’d have to say it right in his face.

  “That we couldn’t what, Lissa?”

  “That we couldn’t have any kind of relationship…outside of the hours you could ‘carve’ out of your schedule.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t play games with me! You know why not.”

  “Humor me,” he fired back. “Let’s hear your version of the facts as you see them.”

  Goaded, she lifted her chin another notch. “One, there’s the fact that I’ve got a past hanging over me that isn’t going to go away, no matter how much I wish it. The same black cloud will hang over anyone stupid enough to linger in my general vicinity. Two, there’s the fact that the cloud’s about to burst. My, uh, fath…”

  She tripped over the word. Couldn’t get it out. Evan’s anger melted as she fumbled for a neutral reference to the stranger who’d fathered her.

  “Arlen tried to fob Hawthorne off,” she said tightly, “but he’s probably on his way out here as we speak.”

  “We’ll handle Hawthorne.”

  “Yes, well, you’ve just hit on fact number three. There is no ‘we.’ There can’t be.”

  “You’re right back where you started. Give it up, Lissa. You’ve lost this case.”

  Surrendering to the need to touch her, he reached out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. She jerked away, desperate now.

  “Evan, think! That day, outside Charlie’s, Carrie said you’re the front-runner for an appointment to the D.A.’s job next year. What do you suppose it will do to your chances if word leaks out that you’re tangled up with…someone like me?”

  “Ask me if I care about the D.A.’s job.”

  “Well, if you don’t, I do! I ruined my reputation. I’m not going to ruin yours, too.”

  Her jaw set, she tried to wedge past him. Evan’s arm shot out. Planting his palm against the wall, he trapped her in the narrow space between the bed and the ancient pecan paneling.

  “Ask me if I care about my reputation, Lissa. And while you’re at it, ask me if there’s anyone I’d rather get tangled up with than you.”

  “I’m not going to play word games.” She gathered her dignity around her like a threadbare coat. “This is too impor…”

  “I love you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I love you.”

  Stunned, she stared up at him for long moments. Evan kept one palm hard against the wall and curled the fingers of his other hand under her chin. Gently he nudged up her sagging jaw.

  “I know. I’m as flabbergasted as you are.”

  Sometime during the wild ride back to Paradise, he’d admitted the truth. Those long, dark stretches of interstate had helped put things in perspective. Or maybe it was his driving need to get to Lissa before she packed up and disappeared.

  He would have gone after her, of course, but just the thought that she might disappear for the days or weeks it would take him to find her had generated a wave of urgency. He had to tell her she filled his every thought, every corner of his heart. Had to know if he figured in hers.

  “I’m not sure when it happened,” he admitted, pushing a grin through the tight knot in his throat. “Sometime between that Saturday Night Special and Friday Morning Delight, I imagine. I just know when Charlie called and relayed the details of your trip into LaGrange this afternoon, I couldn’t let you leave Paradise without telling you that I’ll go with you. Whenever you choose to leave. Wherever you choose to go.”

  “You say that now!” she cried. “But you can’t imagine what it will be like when the Hawthornes of the world catch up with us.”

  “I told you.” The hand under her chin came up to cup her cheek. “We can handle Hawthorne and his kind.”

  He started to tell her then that he’d already lined up a another juicy story for the persistent reporter. One that would divert the media’s attention from Lissa to another, more appropriate prey.

  It looked like the pressure Marsh and his Mexican contacts had exerted on Jonah Dawes’s “business associate” in Cuidad Juárez would soon pay off. As promised, the nervous Mexican banker had set up a meeting with an American counterpart who’d supposedly agreed to funnel Doc’s cash reserves into the stock market. The moment Dawes drove across the Rio Grande to the clandestine meeting, a swarm of U.S. Customs officers would descend on his vehicle.

  Lissa didn’t give Evan the chance to tell her anything about the bust, however. Before his startled eyes, she burst into tears. Feeling as helpless as he did the last time her defenses had crumbled like this, he gathered her in his arms.

  “It’s okay, Lissa. We’ll work this out.”

  Clumsily he stroked her hair and waited until she choked back her sobs and lifted a face at once exasperated and chagrined.

  “This is so embarrassing,” she sniffled. “I never cry! Never! Why do I keep making such a fool of myself in front of you?”

  “Maybe the whole idea of being in love scares you as much as it did me.”

  She leaned back in his arms to search his face with tear-sheened eyes. “You’re scared?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe. But you know what they say.”

  She made a little noise that could have been a sob or a gulp. “The bigger they are…” she murmured raggedly.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. It was just something Josephine mentioned the other day. What do they say, Evan?”

  “The best way to conquer your fears is to face them head-on.”

  She bit down on her lower lip again. Lashes spiked by tears framed wide, questioning eyes.

  They’d reached a turning point. They both knew it. Evan had already taken the first step. The next was Lissa’s. She could run from her past…and from the future he was offering. Or she could face them both head-on.

  Evan didn’t realize he’d held his breath until she slid her arms around his neck. Rising up on tiptoe, she brought her mouth within a whisper of his.

  “All right. I’m… I’m willing to give it a shot if you are.”

  It wasn’t quite the declaration he’d hoped for, but the way her body melted against his more than made up for the hesitant response.

  Despite the smoky love songs she used to croon, Lissa didn’t consider herself particularly romantic. She’d never really thought about the appropriate setting for the first time she admitted that she loved and was loved in return. If she had, she probably would have envisioned soft music, dim lights and chilled wine somewhere in the vicinity.

  Certainly not a ramshackle trailer. A tiny bedroom so crowded with boxes she couldn’t move for fear of planting a foot in one. Or a man who crushed his mouth to hers and fired her with such instant, explosive need that mere moments later she found herself on the floor, wedged between the cartons.

  Would it always be like this? she wondered on a gasp as his mouth and teeth worked their rough, tender torment. Would she always flare white-hot at his touch? Always feel this tightening in her womb when she slid her palms along his ridged muscles and smooth, slick flesh? Always tangle her legs around his, and arch her hips to meet his thrusts, and take him into her so greedily?

  Would she always look up into his eyes and see herself reflected in their depths?

  Lissa woke first. A combination of refrigerated air and desert dawn chilled her front. Her back snuggled warm
and toasty against Evan. Moving slowly so as not to disturb him, she tugged the tangled bedspread free of the box that anchored it and covered them both.

  Despite her cautious movements, Evan grunted and shifted his hips. His arm flopped over her waist and lay heavy against the underside of her breast. She trailed a finger along the light furring on his forearm, not wanting to wake him. Only to touch him.

  The intensity of this need for contact staggered her. After their explosive joining amid the boxes—and the slower, sweeter coming together that followed—she would have thought her satiated senses couldn’t absorb any more of Evan Henderson.

  Yet, here she was, lying still and silent in the first pink of dawn, aching all over with the pleasure of just touching him. And worrying more with every featherlight stroke.

  Evan had sounded so sure, so confident he could handle the havoc she’d wreak on his career. Maybe he could. The question was, could she?

  Her stomach clenched. Although he’d shrugged aside the prospect, she knew she’d destroy his future the way she’d destroyed her own. Overwhelmed with the knowledge, Lissa edged his arm aside and inched off the bed. She had to get outside. Clear her head. Think things through without the distraction of Evan’s all-too-persuasive presence.

  Digging through a packed box, she found clean panties and her white cotton/spandex sports bra. Tugging on shorts and a top, she searched for her running shoes. One turned up in a box, the other under the bed. Sneakers in hand, she tiptoed down the hall.

  Cool, dry air wrapped around her the moment she stepped outside. The eastern sky wore its morning dress of riotous pinks and purples. The sun peeked over the distant mountains and shed enough light to paint the desert with misty blues and golds, but not enough to raise the heat waves that would come later.

  While she sat on the top step to pull on her shoes, a scraggly shadow emerged from under the trailer, stretching first one leg behind him, then the other. Instantly another worry pinged at Lissa. What would she do with Wolf if she went back to San Diego with Evan, as he wanted her to? He and the dog had achieved a wary sort of truce, but she couldn’t imagine them living in close proximity, let alone in Evan’s high-rise condo.

  “Hello, boy,” she said softly, wishing this business of being in love wasn’t so darned complicated. “Want to run with me?”

  His flanks quivered in anticipation of their morning ritual. Lissa did some quick stretches, then started off at a slow jog for the path atop the ridge. Wolf raced ahead, nimbly dodging clumps of prickly pear. He stopped to sniff out his favorite rabbit holes, lifted his leg a few times and doubled back once or twice to make sure Lissa was still slogging along at her usual pace.

  On either side of the high ridge, the vast Sonoran Desert stretched to the horizon. Tumbleweeds gleamed a silver-gray in the clear light. A large organ pipe cactus was just folding its tender lavender-white blossoms away for the day. The sky promised another panorama of lucent blue.

  The awesome majesty helped Lissa put things in perspective. Bit by bit, the tranquillity of the scene nudged aside everything but the memory of Evan’s voice when he’d admitted that he was scared, too. A reluctant smile pulled at her lips. With six feet two of solid muscle and a grin that could make grown women walk into walls, she suspected he’d exaggerated his fears a bit for her benefit.

  The sight of a vehicle parked alongside the road some miles outside Paradise snapped the smile off her face. Lissa jerked to a halt, her chest heaving, and stared down from her lofty perspective at the distant car. She didn’t have any doubt now about who sat behind the wheel.

  Arlen had fobbed Hawthorne off yesterday, fiercely denying that his long-lost daughter lived just ten miles away. But Lissa had seen his jaw drop, and heard the incredulity in his voice when he repeated the reporter’s offer. He’d refused, but the disbelief had lingered in his sunken eyes after he’d hung up.

  Lissa hadn’t been able to take any more at that point. She’d turned on her heel, swept out of the store, and driven home with both shaking hands wrapped around the wheel.

  Now that the shock had passed, she supposed she owed him for his attempt to shield her. Assuming, of course, he hadn’t snatched up the phone and called Hawthorne back the moment she’d driven off.

  One more worry, she thought on a sigh. One more complication.

  She’d tell him she was leaving Paradise, she decided. That’s all she owed him. Nothing more.

  That was her intent, anyway. She hadn’t counted on Wolf racing back at the precise moment she decided to make her way down the steep slope to the road below. In joyous pursuit of a scurrying mouse, the dog careened along the narrow trail. The mouse darted between her tennis shoes. Lissa jumped back at the same instant Wolf swerved to miss her. They both went down with a yelp and tumbled off the ridge.

  The dog scrambled upright after only a few twisting flips. Far less agile than her four-footed companion, Lissa slid down the rocky slope.

  Her arms and legs flailed wildly, scraping against sand and shale. One elbow smashed into something hard. By some miracle, she missed the clumps of cactus dotting the slope, but rolled over several scratchy tumbleweeds. At last she thumped into a shallow-depression and halted her precipitous descent.

  Wheezing, she sprawled faceup. She couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t feel anything except a stabbing pain in her hip. The overhead sun blinded her. A melange of sounds assaulted her, foremost among them the clatter of stones from the small avalanche she’d started. When the last of the rocks slid past her, the other noises sorted themselves out.

  Vaguely she heard Wolf scrabbling down the slope above her, whining in distress. In the distance, a car door slammed and someone—Arlen—shouted her name. As he pounded toward her, Lissa gave serious consideration to letting loose with a shout or a whine herself. At the very least a whimper.

  But another sound pierced her eardrums at that moment and paralyzed every one of her muscles, including those in her throat. It was a rattle. A furious rattle.

  Only feet from her ear.

  Terror suspended all thought. All movement. Lissa didn’t breathe. Didn’t turn her head. Didn’t want to turn her head! She wasn’t into snakes at the best of times, and definitely not when one was shaking his tail right beside her ear.

  “Missy!” Footsteps thudded across the desert floor. “Sweet Lord, Missy, don’t move!”

  She barely heard the frantic shout. Everything she’d ever heard, everything she’d read about rattlesnakes since she’d moved to Paradise thundered in her head. Snakes were defensive animals. They’d go to any lengths to avoid contact. When provoked or startled, they’d take flight and only attack if there was no way out.

  Even if they did attack, there was always the chance they’d just fed, just drained their reservoir of venom to stun another prey. She managed one choked prayer that this particular rattler had gorged itself silly right before Lissa tumbled off the ridge and into its nest.

  She’d never know what told her the reptile was about to strike. Maybe it was the sudden hiss almost buried amid the furious rattles. Or the snarl that ripped from Wolf’s throat as he launched himself down the rest of the slope. Or the sixth sense all creatures exhibit in the face of danger.

  Instinct had her flinging up an arm to protect her face.

  Instinct brought Wolf flying across her body, teeth bared.

  Instinct sent her father into a crashing dive a half second before the rattler struck.

  Chapter 15

  For the rest of her life, Lissa would shudder every time she recalled the horrific moments that followed her tumble down the slope.

  Man, dog and snake convulsed in a blur of whirling, writhing movement. Wolf’s savage snarls ripped through air that vibrated with furious hisses and rattles.

  Terrified, Lissa rolled onto her side and scrabbled frantically to her hands and knees. Choking with horror, she saw Wolf emerge from the melee, his jaws locked behind the head of a slashing, gray-brown diamondback.

 
It couldn’t have taken the dog more than a few seconds to finish off the creature. But every snarl that ripped from his throat, every vicious spin of his body, every time he slammed the rattler’s scaly length against the ground, stopped Lissa’s heart.

  With a final jump and midair twist, Wolf flipped the carcass over his back and—mercifully—out of sight. Legs spread, ears back, fangs bared, he swung his head from side to side, searching for other foe.

  His feral growls beat the air as Lissa crawled the few feet to the third combatant in the deadly duel. Fear contorting his haggard face, Arlen pushed himself up on one elbow.

  “Missy! Baby, did it bite you?”

  “I don’t…” She lifted a shaky hand, shoved back her bangs. “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you sure?”

  A quick visual showed a considerable collection of scrapes and cuts but nothing resembling fang marks.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Thank God!”

  He crumpled back to the ground, his eyes closing.

  “What about you?” she asked on a wave of panic. “Did it get you?”

  His lids fluttered up. A slow apology filled his eyes. “’Fraid so.”

  “Oh, God! Where?”

  He lifted his left arm an inch or two and gestured to his right. Lissa’s lungs squeezed when she spotted the small, diagonal wound just below a tattooed eagle.

  “Don’t fret,” he said hoarsely. “You’re all right. That’s all that matters to me.”

  “Not to me!”

  Throwing back her head, she gulped down her panic. Okay! All right! She’d made it a point to read up on the desert when she first moved to Paradise. Picked up all kinds of information about kangaroo rats and Gila monsters and sidewinders…including several articles on ways to prevent and treat venomous bites.

  One in particular her frantic brain dredged up. It was written by Rattlesnake Ray, who claimed the dubious distinction of stuffing more venomous pit vipers into a burlap bag than any other living Texan. Among other things, the article stressed that some eight thousand people were bitten every year in the United States. Maybe nine or ten died. Lissa latched onto that statistic like a drowning swimmer would a lifeline.