by Lee Kilraine
No, he would damn well crawl out of here if he had to. Hell, this was nothing compared to hiking through hundred-degree temperatures, sandstorms, and gunfire. He gritted his teeth and kept going, following Lu. Rain sliced at them, driven by the gusting wind, but Lu pushed forward with Houdini reined in tight, trying to keep him away from Tynan’s feet.
At one point the cat parked its butt in a pile of pine needles and stayed there. It hissed and glared at them all. Lu walked over and scooped it up. She handed it over to Tynan, and he draped it over his right shoulder, where it hung on for the ride.
Lu waited for his signal that he was ready to move again, then gathered the dog’s leash and moved forward. He kept shifting his gaze from Lu’s backpack to his feet. He didn’t want to fall on his face again or lose Lu in the woods.
A loud crack off to their left had Tynan jumping forward and grabbing Lu into his chest as an upper tree branch crashed to the ground next to them. Hell, another strong gust could easily take out one of the older pine trees. Tynan released Lu and they pressed forward at a slightly faster speed.
Finally, after about an hour and a half, they reached the cabin. In unspoken agreement, they headed straight for it. No point trying to drive through this and risk getting hit by a falling tree. They could shelter in the cabin until the storm had passed through.
Tynan pulled the cat down into his arms, leaned next to the cabin door for support, and looked at Lu. “Key?”
She shook her head at him. Right. She hadn’t taken ownership quite yet. He handed over the cat and brushed Lu back a pace before smashing his elbow into the corner windowpane above the doorknob. He reached his hand through and opened the door. They all piled inside. Ty had to put his shoulder into the door to push it closed against a gust of wind.
Inside, the noise was blessedly muted. The rain hit the shingle roof, finding a few places to sneak in and onto the floor. Overgrown branches swayed wildly, scratching and slapping up against the two windows in the room as the wind tore through the woods. Tynan dragged himself in farther and leaned against a wall in relief. Any port in a storm.
The room, stuffed with overlarge generic rental furniture, looked dim and gloomy. Lu ran her hand around near the door, looking for a light switch.
“Farther to the left.” He was afraid to tell her adding light wasn’t going to help.
She slid her hand further, and then Tynan heard a click and a sixty-watt bulb in the center of the ceiling oozed a murky yellow light down into the space.
Lu was busy looking around in the small dark corners of the place. He grinned at the disappointment on her face. And then he opened his mouth because he just couldn’t help himself. “Nice place you have here.”
She turned into the girl from The Exorcist right before his eyes. Her head spun around, and there might even have been sparks shooting from her eyes before she turned to look around the space again. “This is the cabin you were raving about? It’s . . . it’s . . .”
“Damn ugly. And it’s yours.”
Her gaze landed on his, biting her lower lip before she released it.
She looked so worried, the urge to wrap his arms around her and never let go hit him like a sledgehammer. But there were things he needed to say first. Apologies to be made and accepted. Questions to ask. Explanations they both needed to hear.
He straightened, using his shoulder to push himself off the wall. “I don’t know about you, but I think we should just wait the storm out for now.”
She stared at him, her hair plastered to her head, water dripping from her nose, and sighed. “That’s probably a good idea. I need to run out to my car. I packed extra supplies, just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“I have no idea, but those two over there”—she pointed to where the dog and cat lay curled up together on an armchair—“Houdini and DA, his diabolical assistant, were freaking out so much, they had me freaking out.”
“I’ll help.” Tynan limped toward her, trying not to grimace.
“No. I’ve got it. It’s just one trip.” She braced herself and rushed out, pulling the door shut behind her.
Houdini jumped down and paced by the window until she came back.
Lu returned in a gust of wind and rain, slamming the door and setting a brown paper grocery bag down on the floor. “I was wrong. One more trip. Be right back.”
This time the cat paced with Houdini. He’d have paced with them, but his ankle was throbbing as if an elephant had stepped on it. He also wanted to call Quinn and the park rangers, let everyone know they were safe and where they were, but not until Lu was safely back inside.
When he finally heard her on the porch he limped over and jerked the door open to let her in. He pulled his thermal shirt off over his head and crammed it into the square of missing window glass.
Water streamed down Lu’s face and neck and dripped down her jacket, leaving a wet trail on the wooden floorboards. She had his gym bag looped across her chest and was pulling the wheeled cooler from his garage. Lifting the strap from the bag over her head and off, she set it down on the floor. After peeling out of her soaked rain jacket she hung it next to the front door along a row of rusty hooks and kicked her shoe against the cooler. “Look. How great is this?”
“If you tell me that cooler is full of beer, I absolutely agree.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so.” The radiant smile fell from her face. She leaned down and opened the lid, gesturing with her hand to it. “Ta-da!”
Tynan looked down into the cooler. Inside was a half-melted bag of ice, a few stalks of celery, and a pomegranate. He was expecting something better from a chef of her caliber. “Yay? Celery and pomegranate.”
“No, not those. And don’t give me that disappointed face. That’s all you had in your refrigerator.” She pointed a finger at him. “I’m talking about the ice. The ice! You’re going to stick your ankle in the cooler every twenty minutes.”
Well, crap. He’d had to do that during high school lacrosse season once. It hurt like a bitch until it went numb, but she was right; it would help. “Okay. Good thinking. Let me see if the phone in the kitchen is working first, so I can call Quinn and let him know where we are.”
“Oh! Please ask him to call Beatrice and Agatha also. I wouldn’t want them to worry, plus I promised them I’d let them know where Houdini and DA wanted to go.”
He narrowed his gaze on her. “What do you mean, where they wanted to go?”
Lu had taken the two items out of the cooler and wheeled it over so it sat in front of one of the dining-table chairs. “Your dog and his damned assistant kidnapped me. They tracked me down, bullied me, and then forced me to drive them around looking for you. For an hour.”
Bullied? Kidnapped? “Why didn’t Beatrice and Agatha stop them?”
Lu squeezed the water out of her long hair so it fell into the cooler. Then she did some twisty thing with her hair until it was in one of those messy bun styles that make men think of rolling around in the sheets.
“Ha! They said it was more exciting than their TV crime shows and couldn’t wait to see where the two wanted to go.”
Tynan ran a hand over his face. “Let me understand this . . . Agatha and Beatrice let you head into the forest with a tropical storm on the way to look for me? By yourself?”
“Not exactly. Hey, you know what?” She blinked her big brown eyes up at him. “I would feel better if we got your ankle in the ice now.”
“Don’t think we’re done here.” He hit her with one of his most intimidating gazes and pointed his finger at her, then hobbled into the kitchen to make the call but the phone was dead. Without knowing what was going on with the weather, their safest bet was to stay put.
Tynan limped back into the main room. It looked as if he and Lu would have all night to talk things over, and that was more than fine with him. He was afraid he might need all night.
A month ago, when Lu first had walked into his life, he’d had no earthly idea what he wanted
. From day one she’d rubbed him the wrong way, but before long he hadn’t cared. She could have rubbed him up, down, sideways, or with sandpaper, as long as she was touching him. And he began needing to touch her.
Then the first blow had hit and she’d stolen his cabin. Next, he’d gotten slammed with the real bombshell when he’d discovered she’d been Joey’s fiancée. No, not just his fiancée but his high school sweetheart. Was he such an asshole that the universe needed to play this sad joke on him?
How else could a commitment-phobic lifer like himself suddenly find the one woman he could imagine having a real, committed relationship with—and it ended up being a woman who had every right to hate him for not keeping her fiancé safe and alive?
But standing here looking at Lu now, none of it mattered. None of it. Now all he had to do was convince her to believe that too.
Damn. The advice Captain York had given him a few months ago suddenly made sense. He’d said after experiencing war things would never be the same. And you either let that eat away at your soul or you figured out how to build your life around that immovable boulder. If you were lucky, you could chip it down in size, but it would always be there at your core.
In that moment, as he stared at Lu, he had a revelation. Immovable boulders made strong foundations. He was ready to build his life on his. Preferably one with Lu standing beside him.
“Hey, hello, Tynan?” Lu stood next to the cooler waving her hand, trying to catch his attention. “What did Quinn say?”
“What? Oh, nothing. The phone line’s dead.” He sucked in a breath; it was now or never to make his case. “We’ll have to ride it out here.”
“Looks like it.” She shrugged then tapped the open lid of the cooler. “The ice is ready. Let’s get your foot in before it melts.”
“Right. But first—take off your clothes. Strip, Tink.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Strip? Liquid heat surged through her body. Hallelujah. Good things happened when her clothes came off around Tynan Cates. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“We’re both soaked through.” His brows lowered and he hobbled toward her. “It makes sense to get out of our wet clothes.”
“Oh, sure, right.” Gah! He’d meant strip as in get-out-of-your-wet-clothes strip, not strip-naked-so-I-can-do-lovely-things-to-you-with-my-mouth-and-hands strip. Well, if she was going to try to talk the commitment-phobic man into an actual relationship, doing it while half-naked might help. “You’re absolutely right. I’m feeling downright chilly. So we’ll strip. Get you in the ice and then I’ll get a fire going.”
There was no way she was going to give him a single second to think about this. She whipped her sweater off, followed by her jeans. Wet jeans never came off easily, so her dream of peeling them off like a sexy Victoria’s Secret model died when she fell backward onto the couch and kicked them off in frustration.
“I’m fine!” She jumped up, laying her clothes over the back of the couch, more than a little nervous about standing in front of him in her underwear. “You too. Should we cut your pants off?”
His gaze ate her up. “Let me take off my boot and get a look first.”
Holy cow, it was a painful process. Even using Tynan’s knife to cut off the rigged-up splint and the boot laces, it had to hurt like hell. He gritted his teeth and let her hack away at the boot until it finally came off. She rolled his sock down as gently as she could, but, oh lord, it was bruised about three different shades of purple. And the swelling . . . oh boy.
“You poor thing.” She bit her lip to stop from crying.
“Let’s do this.” Tynan grabbed the knife back and sliced up the outside seam of the pant leg on his injured side. Once it was open he cut the fabric off at midthigh, ending up with one long pant leg and the other baring his bulging thigh muscles. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, he stuck his injured ankle straight into the cooler of ice and water with a hiss of air through his teeth. “Oh shit.”
He sat on the chair, gripping the edges of the seat for a minute while he adjusted to the pain. “While my foot is going painfully numb, you can distract me with that explanation of how you ended up in Climax.”
“I stripped down to my underwear to distract you.”
“Oh, it’s working. Only between the sprain and the ice treatment, my pain level is pretty high.” He was working those crazy eyes of his. Shining them on her with so much heat, her stomach swirled and flopped where she stood. “I might need you to lose the bra too.”
“I just might.” She could tell when his foot started to go numb; the lines in his forehead smoothed out and his massive thigh muscles relaxed. She moved over to start a fire, bending over to peek up into the chimney to see if the flue was open.
“Christ, Lu, warn me next time.”
She grinned and went about building a fire from the logs on the hearth, letting him stare at her ass the whole time. She was hoping to distract him long enough for her to figure out where to start. Once the fire caught she turned back to Tynan. Outside, wind gusts rattled the windows while rain pounded, constant and heavy against the roof. DA jumped away from the window when a tree limb smacked up against it.
Lu crossed her arms under her breasts, trying not to look awkward. Tynan must have noticed because he pulled his T-shirt off and handed it to her.
“Here, put this on. I’m having trouble concentrating over here.”
She ran her gaze over his face, searching for pain. “Oh no. Your concussion?”
“No. Your breasts.”
She almost snorted, but then noticed he was actually serious, and that made her heart skip a beat. So instead, she slipped on the T-shirt quickly. It was soft, warmed by his body, and smelled faintly of his spicy aftershave and rain.
Taking a deep breath, she tried to focus on everything in her heart she wanted to lay out and expose to him.
“It all started when I saw your photo in the newspaper. I’d been stuck ever since Joe died. You were laughing, and I wondered how the heck you’d managed it. I saw your face that day, and I had this feeling you held the secret to helping me get unstuck. And you did—just not the way I thought.
“Joe mentioned you in his letters. A lot. That you cussed like a sailor and had a wicked sense of humor. You had a habit of adopting strays—both people and animals. You had quite a reputation with the ladies. But also that your men trusted you because you never asked them to do something you wouldn’t do yourself.” She shrugged. “Thinking about it now, deep down I think I trusted you’d help me too.”
His blue-green eyes captured and burned into hers, holding them hostage until she couldn’t breathe.
“It’s been twenty minutes,” she whispered.
“What?” Tynan’s gaze didn’t move from hers. “Oh, the ice.”
Lu escaped into the kitchen to catch her breath and then returned with two dish towels, handing them to Tynan.
He took the towels from her hand and nodded but didn’t move, waiting for her to continue.
“I got the job on your crew, figuring over a week or two I’d get you to open up and tell me how you’d moved on.” She shook her head. “But I couldn’t get you to tell me anything. Well, hardly anything. And then one day I heard you tell Kaz you were responsible for Joe’s death, and I . . . I wanted to hurt you the way I was hurting.”
“So you bought this crappy place before I could.”
Her gaze shot up to his. “I’m sorry. Really sorry. You can have it. I’ll just sign it over to you.”
He shrugged, his large shoulders gleaming in the firelight. “It’s not that important now.”
What was he saying? That nothing between them mattered now? She walked back toward the window, staring out into the darkness. The storm was fierce now, slashing the rain sideways, bending trees, and tossing branches. Similar to the feeling in her chest right now. Houdini hopped over and leaned his body next to her leg, and she reached down and stroked his head.
She turned back, lifting her chin, de
ciding she might as well say it all, even if it wasn’t important, so she would know she tried.
“I’m not sure what to say. What words to use. How do I say ‘I forgive you’ when in my heart I know there isn’t anything to forgive? I was never really angry at you. I was angry at the world, at Joe for leaving me, and at myself. And all of that was too hard to deal with. It was so much easier to take all that anger and turn it on you.”
The soldier, the man, who already blamed himself for a sin he hadn’t committed. And if she couldn’t say “I forgive you,” how in the world would she turn around and ask for his forgiveness? For the cruel way she’d blamed him. Tried to hurt him. She’d been mad at herself for being so weak, and she’d taken the cowardly way out and thrown it all at him instead of herself.
“The thing is, Joe could have died over there even if he’d never been in your unit. Lots of good men died over there. And I’m sorry you’re stuck with the blame. I don’t blame you anymore. I never really did, but I had so much anger and you were the safest place to aim it. I guess because you were in the way.” She shrugged, then shook her head. “But also because I think deep down I knew you were strong enough to handle it. To handle everything I couldn’t handle by myself.”
* * *
Tynan busied himself with pulling his foot from the ice bath while he digested everything Lu had said. He used the towels she’d handed him to carefully dry off his foot, which was totally, blessedly numb. What she’d said . . . was everything he had needed to hear. Her words were like being dipped in healing waters. They flowed over him and into that dark place where he’d hid his pain and guilt and helped wash it away.
He admired her guts. Her willingness to go after what she wanted. He owed it to her, and to himself, to do the same. Carefully resting his foot on a nearby chair, he turned back to her.
