Taking the Heat

by Brenda Novak

  He didn’t ease his hold on her arm. “That’s exactly what you should have done.”

  “I should’ve let you die a miserable death.”

  “I don’t need you to save me,” he said, glaring down at her. “I don’t even want you here.”

  She tilted up her chin in defiance. “Oh, yeah? Well, you might not want me here, but you want me, all right.”

  “No, I don’t,” he growled.

  “Yes, you do. You’d never admit it, but your body gives you away and so does your kiss.” Raising up on her toes, she boldly licked his lip in the same slow-moving manner he’d licked hers earlier, wanting to taunt him, to fight with him, to incite him in spite of all the reasons she should do her best to keep the peace.

  Even though she’d expected some type of response, the quickness of his movement surprised her. Crushing her to him, he covered her mouth in another kiss, only this one was nothing like the first. This was rough and hungry and demanding, but somewhere in the deep recesses of Gabrielle’s mind it was also gratifying.

  “What do you want to hear?” he said as he pressed himself against her. “That I’ve never wanted a woman more? That I want to make love to you until I can no longer move? That I dream about you, crave you? Is that what you want to hear?”

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  He pulled back, looking stunned, but only for a moment. Then his hands were yanking on her clothes, finding their way to her breasts, and he was kissing her again, as greedily as though that simple response had sapped all restraint.

  Quickly ridding her of her shirt and bra, he stared down at her bare breasts. When he spoke, his voice came as a harsh whisper. “This is a dream I can believe in.” His mouth closed over one nipple, and Gabrielle moaned and arched into him, so caught up in the moment that she didn’t hear the distant beating of helicopter blades until he froze. Then she knew something was wrong. The steady thump, thump, thump entered her consciousness. But not until she saw a spotlight sweeping the ground about half a mile away did she realize what it meant.

  “Oh, God,” Tucker said, then he grabbed her clothes and her hand and began to run, pulling her along behind him.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “LET GO OF ME!” Gabrielle cried, digging in her heels and trying to release her arm. She had no idea what had happened when she was in Tucker’s embrace only moments before, what had possessed her to provoke him as she had. But the confusion and frustration she’d felt, even the anger and the passion, were quickly replaced by sheer desperation. She had to flag down the rescuers in that helicopter. If they didn’t find her, they’d keep going and she might never see Allie again.

  “Let go of me!”

  Tucker said nothing. Neither did he relinquish his hold on her wrist. He kept dragging her behind him until the distant thump of the blades beating the air turned into a loud swoop, swoop, swoop. The helicopter was drawing close. Gabrielle’s lungs burned by the time it was above them, but Tucker forced her to keep going, dodging this way and that to stay out of the light.

  “I’m here! I’m right here!” she shouted, waving her free arm at the sky. But the light hadn’t found them yet, and she knew the men in the helicopter couldn’t hear her above the engine and the prop.

  She began clawing and swinging at Tucker, doing everything in her power to break free, but nothing seemed to affect him. He was too bent on escape and only tightened his grip until it hurt.

  “You can run if you want to,” she told him, “but I’m not going to die in the desert.” She tried to bite him, but he jerked their clasped hands away from her mouth and shoved her down onto the ground. Quickly rolling her beneath the ledge of a small rock outcropping, he used his own body to pen her in out of sight.

  The helicopter hovered not far away. Gabrielle could hear it taunting her with every turn of the prop. Swoop…Swoop…

  Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes. “I’m here!” she yelled until she was hoarse. But she couldn’t overpower Tucker. He was too strong, too heavy. She wrestled with him anyway, but he had her pinned down so she could barely move, and she knew that the helicopter would soon pass them by. Maybe then the rescuers would give up. Maybe they would assume them both dead, go home to their own families and never come back….

  Gabrielle reached for her pistol. She didn’t want to shoot Tucker. She didn’t want to shoot anyone. But she was going to return to Allie, regardless of what she had to do to get there.

  Pressing the muzzle of the gun against his chest, she tried to lower the pitch of her voice to just this side of hysterical so he’d know she meant business. “I’m going home. Let me out, or I’ll shoot.”

  He stilled, and she knew instinctively that he believed her. “If they find you, they’ll find me,” he said.

  Gabrielle was crying now and couldn’t keep her voice steady, but she didn’t care. “I’ll shoot you, Tucker.” She gulped a breath of air. “I’ll shoot.”

  “I’m not going back, Gabrielle.”

  It was the only time he’d ever used her first name. He’d spoken it as though she meant something to him, but Gabrielle was too frantic to let anything so subtle make a difference. She had to get to Allie, couldn’t risk losing her daughter. Allie was all she had. “I want my baby. She needs her mother.”

  “You’ll see her soon,” he said. “But I can’t let you go until we reach a town or some other neutral ground. If the police find either of us right now, I won’t stand a chance.”

  On some level, his words made sense. Except they might not reach a town before they ran out of water. They could die within a few miles of where they were now. “We’re lost,” she said.

  “We’ll find something,” he assured her, but his answer wasn’t specific enough to counteract the appeal of help so close by. When? When would they find a town?

  As the helicopter passed and the noise of the rotors began to dim, Gabrielle’s panic suddenly spiked. Her hand was sweating on the butt of the gun, and she felt dizzy, ill. “I have to get out! I have to go with them now!” she cried.

  “I can’t let you!” he said again.

  Before she even knew she was going to do it, she pulled the trigger with one hand and tried to shove Tucker’s body out of the way with the other so she could get out before it was too late. But the gun only clicked. There was no report, no recoil. It was empty.

  Gabrielle heard Tucker’s quick intake of breath, felt his eyes bore holes through the darkness, and couldn’t believe she’d just tried to shoot him. She loved him. No, she hated him. She loved him and she hated him. God, what had he done to her?

  Shaking and crying, she dropped the gun and buried her face in his neck, but he didn’t respond. As soon as the helicopter was gone, he scooted out from beneath the ledge and silently handed over her shirt and bra. Then he turned his back on her and strode away.

  HE WAS REALLY going to leave her this time. Gabrielle could tell by the set of his shoulders, the finality of his walk. Over the past two days he’d let his defenses slip just enough to show her he was still human, that as much as he tried to deny it, he still had the hopes and dreams most men possess.

  And she’d just thrown his trust back in his face.

  “Tucker?” she called as he disappeared into the darkness. But she knew he wouldn’t respond.

  She stared after him, letting tears roll down her cheeks and drip off her chin. Whatever emotion he might have felt toward her had disappeared in that moment. She’d seen it in his eyes. They’d gone empty and cold in the space of a heartbeat. Somehow, seeing that—and knowing what she’d done to him—felt as if she’d just plunged a knife between her own ribs.

  But doing anything less would have compromised Allie, David, her colleagues at the prison, herself.

  “I had no choice! You would’ve done the same thing,” she called. Only an owl called back.

  “HERE, HAVE A DRINK.”

  Someone nudged his shoulder and Tucker blinked, momentarily blinded by the sun until Gabrielle moved to b
lock the glare. Evidently he’d slept for some time. His nice shady spot was now in direct sunlight—and he wasn’t rid of her yet. God, what did it take?

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought we parted ways.”

  “You left the water behind.”

  “You think I don’t know that? How’d you find me?”

  “I followed you.”

  “You were exhausted.”

  “I was also determined.”

  “You should’ve stayed where you were and made a still,” he said.

  She held out the almost-empty jug. “Once you stopped to rest, I tried to make a still, but this is all I got. I broke it down when I began to worry that you’d gone without water for too long.”

  She reached out to press a finger to his cheek, then frowned when he ducked away from her touch. “You’re getting burned pretty badly. You need more sunblock,” she said.

  “I don’t want you looking out for me,” he snapped. “I don’t need anything from you.”

  “Are you going to have a drink or not?”

  He considered the water; he almost refused but ultimately sacrificed some of his pride to his terrible thirst, then gave her back the jug. “Thanks for the drink. Now take your water and get out of here.”

  She accepted the jug, but stood right where she was, hands propped on her hips. “What you did to me was just as bad, you know. You kept me from reaching safety. Out here, that’s almost the same as pulling the trigger.”

  He squinted up at her. “You think I’m blaming you for what happened?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No. I turned on you. You turned on me. We’re enemies. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

  “But I didn’t really mean to hurt you. You know that, don’t you? I just…” She shoved a hand through her hair and seemed to search for the right words. “I panicked, I guess. All I could see was—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, cutting her off before her soulful eyes could weaken his resolve. “Considering the situation, we shouldn’t be traveling together.”

  “We’ve come this far,” she said.

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I think it does.”

  They stared at each other, locked in some sort of psychological standoff.

  “Hate me if you want,” she said finally. “But get up and get moving. We need to find some shade.”

  Tucker considered her as she turned and started walking. The fatigue in her movements told him she was close to exhaustion. Tired as she’d been last night, it was a wonder she’d made it this far. “Haven’t you slept?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I dozed off a little after I built the still.”

  He scanned the flat monotonous desert, softening despite the fact that they should part company. If he hadn’t been around when that helicopter came by, she would’ve been free to flag it down. She’d already be on her way home to Allie and David instead of facing endless miles of walking, unknown hours of hunger and thirst, almost unbearable heat and the distinct possibility that things wouldn’t end well. Didn’t she understand that?

  “Over there,” she said. “We’re going to have to walk a ways, but there’s a cluster of paloverde trees that should provide some shade where we can rest.”

  “Can you make it?” he asked.

  She nodded, giving him another glimpse of her backbone. After two days of peeling back the emotional layers that made Gabrielle Hadley who she was, he’d finally reached the core—and she was far tougher than he’d imagined.

  “Where’s the still?” he asked.

  She led him to the hole she’d dug.

  It was no wonder she hadn’t come up with much water. Whatever stick or rock she’d been using to dig with wasn’t big enough to be very effective and had obviously caused a lot of work without much reward. The hole wasn’t even deep enough to sink the jug, so her still wasn’t going to do them any good. But he was amazed and impressed that she’d had the willpower and presence of mind to attempt its construction after everything they’d been through.

  He glanced at her hands, noted the broken nails and dirt and blisters, and felt something very close to admiration.

  She grabbed the plastic she’d used for the still cover, shoved it into her purse, along with the empty water jug, and started out. Tucker caught up with her long enough to take the purse so she wouldn’t have the added weight of it, but then let her move on ahead of him. They’d withdrawn from each other completely, and he knew they were better off that way. What good would it do to plunge back into that same sweet torture he’d known last night, when she’d clung to him as he’d scrambled to rid them of their clothing? What good would it do to allow himself to touch and taste and feel her? He’d instantly want to pull closer and closer, to bury himself inside her until he no longer knew where his body stopped and hers began—only to have her torn away from him in the end. Either they were going to live, which meant they had to go their separate ways, or they were going to die. There was no in-between.

  He walked slowly, watching her plod stubbornly on despite her exhaustion, and wanted to make love to her, anyway. But the memory of loving Gabrielle Hadley was one form of torture he would not give fate to use against him. Neither would he leave her with the shame of it. As things stood, she’d be able to go back to work at the prison, hold her head high among the other guards and tell them she did her damnedest to bring him in.

  And—he thought of that surreal moment when she’d fired the gun—it would be true.

  GABRIELLE couldn’t believe her eyes. She blinked several times, wiped the sweat off her brow and squinted to see if the vision in front of her would vanish.

  It didn’t. They’d found an old weatherbeaten house, a row of single-room adobe huts, two mobile homes with junk-filled yards, several cars and a tractor. Best of all, they’d found someone driving an old pickup between several long rows of buildings made mostly of corrugated metal. A cinder-block building painted the same blue as the house sat in the center of everything, angled slightly away from them, with a sign painted along one side that read, Bountiful Harvest Egg Ranch.

  They’d found an egg ranch. They’d found life!

  She started to run, but her legs had no strength left in them. She fell almost immediately. Tucker came up from behind and hauled her to her feet. Then he pulled her into the trees. She tried to run again before realizing he still held her and wasn’t letting go.

  “Not so fast,” he growled. “What are you going to do?”

  What did he think? She was going to drink water until she couldn’t drink any more. She was going to rush back to her daughter and hold Allie close until the need to feel her baby against her lessened to something tolerable. Then she was going to eat and sleep and forget, in that order. But when she saw the intensity on Tucker’s face, she knew it wouldn’t be that easy, even though he’d promised to let her go once they reached “neutral” ground.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked warily, knowing that her earlier panic wouldn’t help her now. Tucker couldn’t trust her; he’d know better than to let her go running into this little settlement wearing a Department of Corrections uniform and pointing a finger at him.

  He stared straight ahead at the rooster tail of dust created by the moving truck. “I’m going to do you a favor.” Forcing her down onto the dirt in the cover of the trees, he rolled her onto her stomach and started twisting her arms behind her back.

  “No, stop,” she cried as the tiny rocks bit through the fabric of her clothes. “Don’t do this. Please! Tucker! We’ll figure something out. I’ll give you a few minutes’ lead time or…or…” She couldn’t think or talk fast enough to stop him. He was pressing her down with one knee while removing his T-shirt.

  “I’ll scream! I can’t let you leave me here,” she told him. “I could die, Tucker. What if they don’t find me until it’s too late? Tucker!”

  “They’ll find you. I’ll make sure of it,” he said
. “This is for your own good. It’s best for both of us.”

  “Both of us?” She screamed even though she doubted anyone could hear her, considering that it was a mile or so to the egg ranch and the truck had already disappeared from view. She hoped there were other men, in the long metal chicken coops perhaps, who might react to her screams. But Tucker silenced her in a matter of seconds by pressing her face into the dirt, where she dared not breathe for fear of suffocating.

  The truck motor suddenly coughed, sputtered and died, but no one came running. Only the sound of ripping fabric broke the deathly silence as Tucker tore his T-shirt into strips. He gagged her with one strip, then hoisted her into an upright position and used the others to tie her to a tree.

  “Sorry about the gag,” he said, double-checking the security of his knots. “I’ll make sure someone finds you before dark.”

  Dark! It was only midmorning. Dark seemed like eons away, and she wanted out of here now. She wanted Allie….

  Humiliation and fury welled up inside Gabrielle. She longed to get her hands on Tucker one last time, to physically vent her powerful rage with her fists, her legs, anything she could use to hurt or maim him. He made her crazy. She spent half her time wanting to make love with him and the other half wanting to kill him.

  But then his fingertips gently brushed her cheek, and confusion clouded her anger. “Gabrielle, in another time, another place, I could have…” Suddenly he fell silent and dropped his hand. “Never mind.”

  The implacable mask he’d worn since the helicopter incident last night fell into place again as he stood and squinted toward the egg ranch. Retrieving her purse, he began riffling through it.

  “I’m taking your money,” he announced, his tone matter-of-fact, as though it hadn’t been filled with regret, even tenderness, just a few seconds before. “I’ll mail it back to you later.”

  He tossed her wallet, now empty of thirty-five dollars, next to the water jug and her purse.

  Gabrielle didn’t respond. She could barely breathe because of the gag and the emotions pounding through her. She stared up at him, feeling an odd, panicky aggression borne more of helplessness and fear than that initial surge of anger.