The Last Lone Wolf

by Maureen Child

  “You could try,” Jesse goaded.

  “Nah,” Justice said, “Bella’d have a fit. And trust me when I say you don’t want to see that woman angry.”

  “Amen,” Jesse muttered.

  “Fine. No tossing in lakes, but no more ‘advice’ from you either,” Jericho said and slammed the gate of the truck shut with enough force to rattle metal.

  “Fine,” Jesse agreed. “No more advice, even though you really need it.”

  “Get in the truck,” Justice told him, then when Jesse was gone, he said, “He’s right, you know. About Daisy. And you. You might want to think about this before you screw something good up. I know. I damn near did the same thing myself.”

  Jericho sighed, shoved one hand through his hair and said, “I’m glad you and Maggie made it work. Really. But this thing with Daisy, it’s different.”

  “How?”

  “There are things she doesn’t know,” Jericho said. “Things we haven’t talked about. But even discounting that…bottom line?” Jericho said with a slow shake of his head. “We’re way too different. I’m scotch, she’s wine. I’m outdoors, she’s in. Just wouldn’t work because, like it or not, she doesn’t belong here.”

  Daisy bit down on her bottom lip to keep from speaking up and giving away her position. She should have known better than to stand there and listen in on Jericho and his brothers. And she really hadn’t meant to at first. But when she’d headed back for the house to get a pair of scissors to use to deadhead the flowers, she’d gotten caught back up in their conversation.

  It had been fun listening to the three brothers go back and forth, making fun, teasing each other. She’d been reminded of how she and Brant had talked and laughed together, so she’d stayed hidden, enjoying the easy banter between them.

  Then, when the conversation had shifted to her, she’d been too intrigued to leave.

  Now, anxiety wrapped itself around her and she felt cold to the bone. She leaned back against the side of the house and curled her hands into fists at her sides. It took everything she had to stand her ground and not go rushing out into the yard, demanding that Jericho tell her what he’d been keeping from her.

  What was it she didn’t know?

  What was he hiding?

  “And why?” she whispered, glancing briefly down at Nikki who sat, head cocked, ears lifted as if considering Daisy’s question.

  But when no answers came, Daisy shifted her gaze to stare up at the sky. She didn’t see the clouds sweeping across that wide expanse. Instead, she saw Jericho’s ice-blue eyes looking down at her. In her mind’s eyes, she saw his face, emotion charging his features as he covered her body with his. As they lay together in the shadows, talking and laughing after the loving.

  And she saw him now, as he’d faced Justice and said, She doesn’t belong here.

  How could he still believe that? Hadn’t she made a place for herself here? Hadn’t she helped him with his clients, turned his stark, barren house into a comfortable home? Hadn’t she spent every night in his arms?

  Irritation spiked inside her, warring instantly with the regret and sorrow that had her system strangling. He thought she was stubborn? They’d spent every day of the past few weeks together. Worked together. She’d gone on one survival trip with him and his clients and not only had she kept up, but she’d also handled the cooking and made the camp’s clients more comfortable. She’d proved herself, she knew she had.

  Yet, he still held back.

  Still stood to one side and pronounced that she didn’t fit. Didn’t belong. What would it take for him to admit that she did? Or would he, ever? If he was so determined to keep her out, would that ever change? Wasn’t she just setting herself up for disappointment and pain if she remained, waiting, hoping he’d see the light?

  “This is your own fault,” she muttered as she listened to the rumble of the men’s laughter. “If you hadn’t fallen for him, then this wouldn’t matter at all. You’d simply leave as you’d planned to do in the first place and you wouldn’t have looked back.”

  But that was the trouble, she told herself. She would be looking back. Always.

  Jericho laughed aloud at something one of his brothers said and the rich, deep sound of it sliced into her.

  Nikki whined and Daisy bent to scoop up the little dog and cuddle her close to comfort both of them. At the moment, she wanted nothing more than to walk right out there and confront Jericho. She wanted answers. She wanted him to look her in the eye and try to say she didn’t belong. That there was nothing between them.

  “This shouldn’t have happened,” she told herself quietly, her voice lost in the sigh of the wind. “Daisy,” she murmured, burying her face in Nikki’s soft fur, “why did you have to fall in love with him? Why couldn’t you have just slept with him and kept your heart out of the mix?”

  Too late to regret that now, she thought, as pain whipped through her. She wished she could see Jericho’s face. Would she see the lie in his eyes? Or would she see an indisputable truth written there?

  But she stood her ground, because as long as he was with his brothers, it wasn’t the time to confront him. She’d only look like the fool she felt for having been caught eavesdropping on them all.

  She stayed put and waited until the truck engine fired up and the three men rode off down the long drive. Only then did she come around the edge of the house to look at the fantail of dust rising up in the wake of the truck.

  Her heart ached as Jericho’s words played over and over in her head. He was determined to feel nothing for her, she realized. It didn’t matter that her own feelings had grown and changed since she’d first come to King Mountain. Didn’t matter that she loved him—he wouldn’t be interested.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and held on, scraping her hands up and down her upper arms in a futile attempt to beat back the rising chill inside her. Until just a few minutes ago, she hadn’t even been aware that she’d begun nursing dreams centered around Jericho. Dreams that had the two of them happily living together here on the mountain. Building a family. Raising their children and loving each other every night.

  How hard it was to feel those nebulous dreams shatter and dissolve as if they’d never been. But through that pain, she managed to console herself with the fact that she’d done what she’d originally come here to do. She’d made love with Jericho King and if the gods were kind, she was already pregnant. She’d find out soon and then, while she still was able, she’d leave him here on his precious mountain and find another place to belong.

  But not, she told herself, before she found out exactly what he was hiding from her.

  Ten

  By the end of the following week, Daisy felt as if her nerves were strung as tight as a newly tuned piano’s strings. After his brothers left for home, Jericho had retreated into himself. He hadn’t touched her, kissed her—had hardly looked at her in days. And the strain of that was beginning to take its toll. While she stood at her bedroom window looking out at the night, her mind raced even as she stood as if frozen in place.

  Sensing a coming confrontation between her and Jericho, Daisy had made a trip into the local town and found the pregnancy test she’d been looking for. But buying it didn’t mean using it. The tidy blue box was still sitting in the cupboard beneath her bathroom sink, unopened.

  She knew why she was hesitating to use it, of course. If she wasn’t pregnant, then she’d be staying on, whether Jericho approved or not—she’d find a way to stay close. To fight his instincts to chase her off. If she was pregnant, then she could leave—just as he wanted her to. As she’d planned.

  Which, she told herself sadly, was exactly why she hadn’t used the test kit yet. She didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to leave Jericho, this place and the handful of employees that had given her such a feeling of family. She was a part of the life here now. She’d become one of them. She’d found her place in the world, found the one man she wanted above all others and she didn’t want to lose any
of it.

  Giving up went against her very nature, she thought. But was it giving up to leave when that had been the original plan? And was it worth it to stay if Jericho never allowed himself to care for her? God, her head hurt.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Nikki yipped in excitement from her perch on the bed and Daisy spun around to face Jericho when he spoke up from the doorway to her bedroom.

  “Nothing,” she blurted because he’d caught her off guard and at a vulnerable moment. She forced a smile that felt brittle and false. “Just thinking.”

  He walked into the room and didn’t stop until he was no more than an arm’s reach away. He ignored Nikki, who pranced to the edge of the bed, hoping for a scratch and head rub.

  “I’ve been doing some thinking, too,” he said and he didn’t look any happier with his thoughts than she was with hers.

  The time had come. Everything inside Daisy braced for whatever was next.

  When silence spun out between them, Daisy took it for as long as she could and then felt what little patience she had left splinter and blurted, “For heaven’s sake, Jericho, just say it.”

  His dark brows drew together and his mouth flattened into a grim line. “Say what?”

  “What you came here to say,” she challenged. “What you’ve been dying to say since the day I arrived. You want me to leave the mountain.”

  “You’re wrong,” he ground out. Shoving one hand through his hair, he stalked past her, looked out the window and, after a long minute, swiveled his head to lock his gaze with hers. “I don’t want you to go…”

  Her heart swelled and an instant later deflated as if someone had popped it with a needle.

  “…which is why you have to.”

  She blinked at him, shook her head and finally managed to say, “That makes absolutely no sense.”

  “Doesn’t have to,” he told her flatly. “Like I said before, my mountain, my rules.”

  So cold. So hard. So distant. Not the man she’d come to know at all. He was already pulling away so fast she could hardly reach him. And that tore at her.

  “So I’m supposed to just leave. Without an explanation. Without— Why, Jericho? Do I worry you that much?”

  He laughed shortly, but there was no humor in the sound. “You don’t worry me, Daisy. You just have to go.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he told her.

  “Oh, I think I will.” As she said it, as her spine stiffened and her shoulders squared, she realized that she was going to fight to stay, not even knowing if she was pregnant or not, she was going to take a stand. Because looking up into his ice-blue eyes, Daisy knew he was something worth fighting for. What they had together was too important to let die without a battle.

  He looked like the cold-eyed warrior he was, she thought. But her brother had been a Marine, too. Now, Jericho was about to realize that this Saxon could be just as tough as any combat-hardened Marine.

  And she fired her biggest gun with her first salvo.

  “I love you.”

  His features went blank and, if possible, his eyes became even icier, more remote. “No, you don’t.”

  Anger, hot and alive, pumped through her and she stepped right up to him. Tipping her head back so she could give him a full power glare, she said, “You might think you know everything, Jericho King, but you do not get to tell me what I do and don’t feel. I said I love you. And I meant it. Now you have to deal with it.”

  She didn’t have to wait long for his response and, frankly, it was pretty much just what she had expected.

  “You think I’m blind, Daisy?” He countered, looming over her. His voice was low, rough and sounded as if the words were being ripped from his soul. “You think I don’t see what’s really going on? It’s not me you love. It’s being here, with me, with Sam and the others. You’ve been lonely since your brother died and now you’ve made us the family you want back so badly.”

  She felt as if he’d slapped her. Perhaps there was some truth in his words, but it wasn’t the whole picture, not by a long shot. Yes, she’d come here looking to find a family again. She hadn’t expected to find love, but she had. And she wouldn’t let him make that less than it was.

  Honestly. She told him she loved him and he threw her feelings back in her face? What kind of man did something that stupid?

  “You idiot. Do you really believe I’m that big a simpleton? Do you think I don’t know the difference between love and longing?” She fisted her hands at her hips and leaned in, narrowing her gaze on him until her eyes were mere slits of fury. “Of course I was lonely. But I didn’t just pick the first man I ran into to become the family I miss so much. I came here because you knew my brother. I didn’t come looking for a husband or someone to cling to. I don’t cling. I didn’t mean to fall for you. It just…happened.”

  He frowned, but she wasn’t finished.

  “Of all the arrogant, foolish, stubborn men in the world, why is it you I had to fall in love with?” Shaking her head, she reached up and yanked at her own hair in frustration. “You’re so determined to lock yourself away up on this mountain, shut away from anything or anyone who might matter to you that you absolutely refuse to see that not only do I love you, but you love me back!”

  He took a step away, ground his teeth together so hard she could see a muscle in his jaw twitch. She watched as he fought for control and finally managed it. Only then did he speak.

  “You know, I didn’t ask for this. Didn’t want it.” He blew out a breath. “You’re the one who showed up and wouldn’t go away. You’re the one who kept pushing and prodding me until I was in a corner.”

  “Poor you,” she said with a slow shake of her head.

  A smirk curved his mouth briefly. “Justice and Jesse don’t know squat about tough women,” he said. “You could give their wives lessons.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Not sure it was a compliment.”

  “I am. I’m not afraid to say what I want. To fight for what I want. Are you?”

  He inhaled sharply, deeply. “If a man said that to me, I’d punch him,” he admitted. “Really?”

  He didn’t respond to that. “I made up my mind before I left with my brothers that when I came back, I was going to take you to bed and keep you there for twenty-four straight hours and then I was going to send you away. For your own good.”

  She rocked in place, shaken by his words. “But you haven’t so much as touched me in days.”

  “Because when I got back and saw you again…I knew that if I touched you I’d never let you go. And I have to let you go.”

  Something small and sharp seemed to tear at her heart. “Why?”

  He shook his head.

  “There are things you don’t know…”

  “So tell me,” she countered.

  He scrubbed one hand across his face.

  “Honestly, Jericho, does the thought of being loved really engender so much panic?”

  “Not panic, no,” he told her honestly, the shutters in his eyes lifting slightly, the ice there melting just enough for her to see a glimmer of warmth shining out at her. “But second thoughts, even third…yes. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “You’re wrong.” She walked toward him, one deliberate step after another.

  He stood his ground. Not backing away. Not turning from her. Just watching her with a fire in his eyes that melted the last of her anger and fueled another emotion entirely.

  “No, I’m not,” he said softly, gaze locked with hers as she approached. “If you knew what was good for you, you’d pack up your stuff and be off the mountain inside an hour.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “To tell the truth, never thought you would,” he admitted and swallowed hard as he reached for her. “I may be damned for this one day, but God help me, I can’t let you go. Won’t let you go.”

  “What’re you saying?” she whispered
.

  “I’m saying that right here, right now, I need you.” He took a breath. “Not talking about a future or happily ever after. Don’t ever count on a future. Right now is all I can offer.”

  “Then for now,” she said, “that’s all I’ll ask for.”

  Jericho’s arms came around her like a vise, holding her to him, pressing her body’s length along his. She buried her face in the curve of his neck as he clung to her and he felt her warmth slide into him, filling all the cold, empty places he’d been living with for days.

  She loved him and he was going to let her. For however long it lasted, he would take what she so wanted to give and give her what he could in return. He’d never thought of himself as the “forever” kind of man, but he knew that for right now, he was where he belonged. With the woman he wanted above all else.

  When he cupped her face with his palm and turned her mouth up to his, he kissed her with a depth that left him hungry for what he found only with her. But an instant later, that moment was shattered by a single shout from outside. “Fire!”

  The barn was burning and the next few hours passed in a blur.

  Heat, shifting light thrown by wind fed writhing flames, the shouts of men and the screams of terrified horses filled the night air. Jericho directed his men, shouting orders over the noise. The volunteer fire department had been called out, but no one was standing around waiting. Hoses were dragged from every area of the yard, and water was aimed at the flames licking along the sides and climbing toward the roofline of the barn.

  They fought to get the fire under control to prevent it from spreading not only to the other buildings but to the forest itself. It had been a long dry summer and the only thing they had going for them was the fact that it had recently rained.

  The crackle and hiss of the fire sounded like demons chattering in the shadows. And that was what it felt like as well—as if hell had come to the mountain. The heat was amazing and Jericho felt sweat pouring down his back as he made run after run into the barn, leading the horses out. The terrified animals refused to cooperate, so the process took far longer than it should have. But he was intent on getting every animal out of the barn alive.