by Ruth Wind
Her mouth dried and she crossed her arms over her chest. "I could hear an argument when I got to the door, so I slipped to one side, behind a truck. I was just going to be inconspicuous, get my purse and get out of there."
She started to tremble and hugged herself closer. "I got to the office, grabbed my purse and was on my way out when Brian – um—" Her voice shook. She pressed her lips together and took a breath. "When he started shooting. I heard it before I saw it – there was so much noise – it echoed all through the room. It was huge, there were so many bullets…"
Blood everywhere. One of the men slammed against the truck she was hiding behind and he fell, his life spilling out on the floor all around. "I was frozen, kind of. I couldn't think what to do. He fell right by my foot and blood got on my shoe."
She stared at the floor, seeing in memory the traumatic moment. She gestured toward the mess she could see. "It was just everywhere. I'd never seen anyone shot except in the movies. I couldn't believe how much one person could bleed."
"Mattie."
She ignored him. "I looked up and Brain was standing there with this enormous gun and there was this look on his face – I knew he was going to kill me, too. So I ran."
Zeke moved abruptly, came to sit next to her. He took her hand. "You don't have to tell me any more. I'm sorry—"
"I slipped," she said in the same dull voice. The shivering in her limbs grew nearly uncontrollable. Distantly, she felt Zeke's strong arms encircle her, warm and steady, but she couldn't stop the unreeling filmstrip. "I fell," she said. "Right in that man's blood. It got all over me. My knee. My hand. But I couldn't stop. I ran out and stole Brian's car. I just started driving."
"I'm sorry, Mattie," Zeke said again, and tucked her head into his shoulder. "I shouldn't have asked."
"I don't know how he found me," she said. "I don't know how the police knew I was there."
"You probably left prints at the scene."
"My hands—" she held them up "—got bloody."
He caught her hands in his own. "I'm sorry, Mattie."
The trembling eased a little as she absorbed his strength and warmth. "But how did Brian find out I was in Kismet?" she said, lifting her head. "I'd never been there before. Never even heard of it before I got on the bus."
"It isn't as hard as you might think to track someone. You must have dumped the car, right?"
She nodded, feeling calm enough to pull away from him before she made a fool of herself.
"He started there, I can tell you." He let her go. "It's the police looking for you, Mattie, not him. They said on that program that they've been trying to put him away for years, but hadn't had anything solid to go on." He cleared his throat. "The men he killed were undercover detectives. They almost had him."
"I thought you said you didn't remember the program."
"I wanted to hear your side."
"Wanted to make sure I told the truth."
He was unapologetic. "Yeah."
Mattie nodded.
"Why don't you just turn yourself in? It would be the easiest way – and you'd be doing a good deed."
"No." The word was flat and harsh. "He might not be able to kill me himself, but he'd find someone to do it."
"If his house of cards is collapsing – and it sounds like it is – he won't have the power to do that."
"No."
He shrugged. "Suit yourself."
She sighed, suddenly exhausted by the whole day. "I will."
"How did you get mixed up with someone like that?"
"I didn't know he was like that until that night. I met him at Mass. He used to bring his mother."
"Mass?"
"Yes. He seemed like a good Irish Catholic guy. He had a big family, a successful business. I really thought…" She trailed off.
"Thought what?"
"That I was finally going to have a family of my own," she said quietly. "Losing that dream was almost worse than anything else."
"I understand that," Zeke said. "More than you know."
She looked at him intently, curious at the sound of old pain in his words. His expression was so bitter, she decided not to breach it. She shifted and groaned at the pull of muscles in her body. All over her body. "I had no idea riding a motorcycle was so much work," she said ruefully.
"You're likely to be pretty sore in the morning. Why don't you go take a hot shower?"
Mattie nodded. She was so tired, she could sleep sitting up, right there on the edge of the bed. Without another word, she grabbed her tote bag and headed for the bathroom.
* * *
Zeke let out a breath as the shower kicked on in the other room. Maybe he could pull himself together before she came out.
Again he told himself good girls just weren't his speed. Especially good girls who went to Mass on Sunday mornings. No, he corrected himself, not a girl. A woman who went to Mass. A woman with quiet allure instead of flashy charms. He liked fast women because he was a fast, blunt man.
But his body didn't seem to be getting the message. He'd spent the day with her soft breasts pressed gently against his back, with her thighs cradling his hips, her arms wrapped around his waist.
Even now, the memory had his unrepentant parts jumping in anticipation. He shifted irritably.
He was the one who needed a shower. A nice, sharp, cold one.
The situation was not improved when she emerged, her hair combed wet around her gamine face. Her skin held a dewy, scrubbed freshness, and she wore the baggy tank top and dowdy shorts he'd seen the morning at the canyon.
Except now, she wore no bra, and her breasts swayed seductively as she moved, bumping the cloth over them subtly. Subtle. Everything about her was subtle, hidden to those who didn't take the time to look: her sable-colored hair and soft brown eyes, that fragile collarbone and long, graceful neck.
"You're too little for all that hair," he said suddenly. "Nobody would see you at all."
She touched her neck and Zeke wanted to touch it, too, with his hands and lips and tongue. Wanted to taste her throat and those plump, perfect lips. A tic jumped in his eye.
"It was my only real beauty," she said, smiling ruefully. "One of my foster mothers used to tell me that a lot. That my hair was my glory."
That foster mother needed her head examined, he thought, and touched with his gaze the crook of neck and shoulder that seemed to beg for a kiss.
Damn. How was he going to get from the bed to the shower without showing off all his own charms at full alert? He'd been grateful for the two beds, but hadn't anticipated this part … being with her in a close, quiet room, having to smell her scent of soap and freshness.
His quandary was solved when she flipped back the covers and climbed into bed. "I hope you don't mind," she said, her eyes already closing. "I'm beat."
"Not at all." Tenderness gentled his desire as she nestled close into the pillows. She was asleep in seconds.
Leaving him alone to grapple with the fact that once again, he'd stuck his nose in someplace where it didn't belong. His weakness for the small and defenseless was going to get him in trouble one of these days. Big trouble.
In fact, this situation seemed to smack of big trouble. Old Brian sounded like the worst kind of man – mean and desperate. Like Mattie, Zeke had no doubts she'd be dead if Brian found her.
He hadn't been thinking this morning, not about long-term consequences. He'd operated on pure instinct, first to snatch her from her cabin, then in heading this direction. Now he wondered how wise it was. Until now, the land he owned in these mountains had been sacrosanct, his alone. He'd never been there with anyone – it was another of his rules. It was his own private retreat, the only thing he'd managed to save when his life had fallen apart two years ago.
But there was no place else. On his land, Mattie would be safe until they could figure out a long-term solution to her problem.
Wearily, he stood up, kicked off his boots, stripped off his shirt and headed for the shower. Her voice stop
ped him. "Zeke?"
He turned, cursing himself and feeling exposed. "Yeah?" Maybe the shadows and her sleepiness would cover him.
"You saved my life today."
A clutch of something touched his chest, deep inside. "No, Miss Mary, you'd have figured something out."
She turned on the bed. One full breast nearly spilled out of her shirt, but he was sure she didn't know it. He struggled to keep his eyes on her face, but that sweet curve nearly blinded him, right at the bottom of his peripheral vision. "He would have killed me," she said. "I wouldn't have had a chance to get away."
"You'd be surprised what you can do," he said gruffly, and escaped into the bathroom. Maybe by the time he finished his shower, she'd be asleep.
But she wasn't. In fact, she seemed to have caught a second wind, for she'd tossed off the covers and was leaning against the headboard, flipping channels lazily.
She seemed to have no earthly idea how appealing she was in her baggy shirt, with the loose shorts showing off her sexy legs. Wisps of hair had dried in wavelets around her waifish cheeks. His body, tamed to subservience for a moment, leaped to attention again, and he jumped into the bed, jeans and all, before she could realize it.
"Whatcha watching?" he asked.
A shrug. "News."
"You mind if I shut off the light?" He reached for it, giving her little choice, but he wasn't quite quick enough. Before he reached the switch, he saw her eyes snag on the scars that riddled his back and sides. There were some on his arms, too, but they didn't stand out so much there, where people naturally got cuts and scrapes and such.
He clicked off the light. "Good night, Mattie," he said. "Get some rest, huh?"
He felt her liquid gaze on him. He closed his eyes and covered his head with the pillow to shut her out.
"Zeke?"
He sighed. "Yeah?"
"Why are you doing this?"
"I don't know, Mattie," he said hoarsely. "Somebody has to help you."
"Well, I want you to know I'll be okay now. You don't have to be my bodyguard or anything like that. There's no reason for you to get mixed up in all this."
"I'm already mixed up in it," he said, shoving the pillow into better shape.
"Tomorrow, I'll hitch a ride somewhere, or something. You can go back home."
"Kismet isn't home."
"'Whatever." She sighed. "I just don't want to burden you. It's my problem and I'll solve it."
"Not alone you won't."
"I just wanted you to know," she said, and he heard the rustle of covers settling. He pushed away the tempting visions his mind offered and tried to get some sleep. Tried not to think of her sweet curves, all warm and fresh, only a few feet away.
He had to be crazy.
* * *
Scars.
His back and sides and stomach were littered with them. In the still light of morning, Mattie could see there were some of the same marks on his arms, but they passed unnoticed until you saw the same pattern on the rest of him. She sat on the side of her bed, already dressed, her hands folded, and absorbed them.
Tiny half moons and jagged little Z's. A couple of long, long stripes that looked like the marks of a whipping. A single jagged, puckered scar, shaped like a crescent, looked as if it had healed poorly. The worst were the cigarette burns. Unmistakable if you'd ever seen them, and Mattie had.
Upon closer examination, she saw a small scar by his eye, one thin mark on his mouth. All of them were very old, healed a long, long time ago.
She sighed. It had been a long time since she'd seen this kind of damage. Jamie had some of the same kinds of marks – and undoubtedly Zeke's had come from the same source. It made her feel a little sick.
As she watched him sleep, the sun suddenly burst between the cracks in the curtain to gild him, hiding the marks of a brutal childhood, and Mattie heard a tiny pained sound of surprise escape her throat. It was one thing to allow herself to see him as the grown man Jamie might have become if he'd survived. It was quite another to allow this wave of desire to fill her.
And yet, how could she help it? He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.
Roxanne's words came back to her: I want you to think about that man in your bed, with nothing on except maybe a sheet.
Well, it wasn't her bed and he did wear a pair of jeans, but the rest was right. A thick restlessness crawled in her limbs, moved low in her belly. All the careful controls she'd exercised over herself disappeared like spiderwebs in a gust of wind. That fast, that completely.
She wanted him. Not in the sweet way of poetry, though there was that music in the symmetry of his body, in the careful meshing of bone and sinew and flesh that made him.
Her want was raw. Physical. She felt it in the palms of her hands and the flesh of her lips and the heaviness of her breasts.
In her life, she'd been hungry, and thirsty. She'd needed sleep. She had never, in her life, needed to touch a man.
Why this one? He was sexy, but he wasn't really her type. He hadn't been particularly nice to her aside, of course, from the fact that he'd saved her life. But this … lust or whatever it was, had started the day he'd walked into the café and electrified her with one long glance.
A flush touched her cheeks at the pagan nature of her thoughts, but even that didn't shame her enough to make her look away.
As if her examination were physical, he started awake. For a minute, he blinked uncertainly, obviously getting his bearings, then turned and saw Mattie. Staring at him.
For one long moment, she was snagged by his pale green eyes, so startling in his dark face. The expression in them grew from sleepy to amused. "'Mornin'" he said, the word slow and deep. He moved a little, settling his head more comfortably in the pillows. Mattie's blood danced.
"'Morning," she said, and hated herself for the soft, whispery sound of it.
"How long you been sittin' there?"
"I don't know."
He reached out unexpectedly and touched her calf. "Like what you see?"
To her surprise, Mattie didn't move away. Along his jaw was a shadow of beard, and his hand, moving lazily on her leg, was strangely stirring. The wild, raw need in her jumped another notch. He touched her ankle, his gaze on her face, moving all over it like a caress.
"I won't bite." He tugged a little on her leg. "Come on."
Panic struck her. Abruptly, she jumped up and moved away, putting her back to him. "I'm starving," she said. "I was about to wake you up so we could get something to eat."
"Is that what you were doing?"
"I don't know," she said honestly, and turned. It was a mistake. He'd shifted so he lay on his stomach, his head sideways on the pillow, his long, brown, muscled back displayed in full beauty. The sight of it struck her hard. Her breath left her on a little sigh.
"Don't," he said. The teasing fled his eyes. "It was all a long time ago."
The scars. "Zeke, that's not—"
His face was painfully wary and sharply shuttered. "Yeah," he said shortly, and got to his feet. "Tell me you didn't sit there feeling sorry for me, Miss Mary. Wondering how poor old Zeke got so messed up."
She pressed her lips together. "I didn't have to wonder," she said quietly. "I lived in a lot of foster homes. Most of them were okay, but there was a man in one of them who did that to some of the boys."
"Well, mine wasn't a foster parent. He was the real thing."
"Was?"
"He got beat to death in a bar fight when I was seventeen." He grabbed his shirt from the back of the chair and tugged it on. "It was the happiest day of my life."
Mattie said nothing.
He took his socks from his boots and grimaced. "It'll be nice to get some clean clothes on. I hate dirty socks." He put them on, anyway. "I'll run and get us some breakfast and we can get on the road again."
"No, Zeke."
"Thought you said you were hungry."
"Not no food, no more hiding. I can't stand to be in here like this, all cooped up
. I'll wear your sunglasses if you think it's that big a deal." She had another agenda in mind, too, but she'd wait until he'd eaten something before she plunged into that. "I want to be outside."
He considered for a minute. "You still don't take it seriously, do you? You think you're in some movie and some good guy is going to come along at the right moment every so often."
That stung. "No, I just…" She shook her head. "I don't want to be stuck in this room when there's a whole beautiful little town out there to look at."
He chuckled. "You oughta see your eyes when you say that. I thought they quit making such sweet women a long time ago."
"Is that a yes?"
"I guess it is."
* * *
Chapter 7
«^»
Over big plates of pancakes and scrambled eggs, Mattie leaned forward. "Can I take off these glasses in here? I feel silly eating breakfast with sunglasses on."
"The waitress already heard your excuse. You've got a light-sensitivity problem." He grinned, rather wickedly, Mattie thought.
"But I can't see the view at all." She peeked over the top of the sunglasses to the stair-stepped expanse of blue mountains, drawn across the horizon like a jagged curtain. "I never dreamed there was anything so beautiful."
"It is beautiful," he said, and Mattie thought his eyes, soft with appreciation, ran a close second to the view. "I always think about it when I'm not here."
Mattie dipped her head, letting the glasses slide down her nose, to look at him. "You mean this was a destination? You drove here on purpose?"
Zeke chuckled. "Yep."
Nonplussed, she put down her fork. "Oh."
He went back to his pancakes. The waitress came by with more coffee and Zeke gave her a friendly smile. She smiled back. Naturally.
That single exchange – Zeke's effortless and omni-present charm and the waitress's immediate response – brought everything into focus for Mattie. She didn't know what his motives were, why he'd so selflessly rescued her, but she couldn't let it go on. "Zeke," she said, "I appreciate everything you've done for me."
