Heart of Danger

by Lisa Marie Rice

  “What is it?” Catherine sat up, the bedsheets falling to her waist.

  Mac was acutely aware of absolutely everything. The sound of the sheets sliding down, the brush of her hair against the pillows she stacked behind her, the soft sigh of regret when he pulled his hand away.

  And, crazily, he felt . . . bereft. As if he’d been snatched from somewhere warm and welcoming and plunged into an icy cold reality. His hand felt cold. Everything felt cold and alien, including himself.

  “Stella,” he said, holding himself utterly still, because the temptation was to crawl in with her, looking so mussed and delectable in his bed. Her smile had faded at his reaction, though. She hugged herself and shivered though it wasn’t cold in the room.

  It was never cold and never hot in Haven. It was always a steady 73 degrees.

  “What does she want?”

  “To feed us, is my guess.” Mac turned and walked to the door. And damned if it wasn’t hard. What was this shit? It was like walking through mud, each step away from her harder than the step before until he was straining to get at the door. It took his hand two seconds to reach the command on the wall, and when he went to touch it, he saw his fingers were trembling.

  Fucking trembling.

  His hands never shook. He’d killed at a mile out. He’d defused bombs. He’d stuck his hand in a scorpion’s nest. It never shook. Never.

  But it was shaking now.

  The door slid open and a cart was standing right outside. He pushed it into the room and back to the bed, fast, as if a rubber band had been overstretched and was now flinging him back where he belonged.

  Catherine watched him, silver gray eyes huge, full lips slightly pinched, biting back words.

  She scooted over to the cart filled with food, leaned over and took a sniff. She unpursed her lips and offered, “Wow. This looks better than Fortnum and Mason, in London.”

  London had been a fleeting impression of old and new buildings, on his way to Heresford for cross-training with SAS.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  Yeah. She would be. She’d missed lunch because she was helping one of his little tribe into the world.

  Haven wasn’t a place where people went hungry. There was plenty of that in the world outside. Mac had been so rattled by this woman that he hadn’t looked after her at all.

  So, yeah, he needed to feed her.

  He hadn’t thought of it, Stella had, bless her. She had tons of help in their communal kitchens but she would have prepared this stuff herself. She liked Catherine.

  “Okay, let’s see. We have hot sandwiches . . .” He pulled the crusty top off one. “Looks like pulled pork. You aren’t a vegetarian, are you?”

  “God, no.” She shook her head sharply, smiling.

  He handed her a sandwich wrapped in cloth, his fingers brushing hers and goddamned if his hand didn’t heat up. Must be the sandwich, he thought, but he really didn’t believe it.

  “We’ve got several types of sandwiches: tuna on whole wheat, roast beef on white roll—”

  “Baguette,” she interrupted.

  “What?”

  “It’s a baguette. French bread.”

  “Oh.” He held the bread up. Looked like a roll to him. “All right. Olives, mushrooms, cheese, roast potatoes with rosemary. And, let’s see—we also have a couple of wraps. Stella’s big on wraps. She wants us all to cut down on carbs. These sandwiches are an exception, just for you. We have some kind of salad with goat cheese on top, eggplant Parmesan.” He opened another container hoping to see something with some grease and carbs and was disappointed. “Orange and fennel salad. And here, hmmm, apple, carrot and pine nut salad. Jesus, Stell . . . you’re overdoing it. But we also have an omelette—Stell’s great with omelettes even though this one might have dicey stuff like arugula or radicchio—she’s big on radicchio.” He lifted another container lid. “Green stuff.” He closed the lid back.

  “Let me see.” Catherine lifted the lid and sniffed. “Braised escarole with balsamic vinegar.”

  Mac had no interest in that. He continued rummaging. “Dessert’s got to be here somewhere. Oh, yes, thank you, God. Cookies. And ice cream.” He looked up to find her watching him with a slight smile on her face. “So, what do you want?”

  The smile widened. “Everything. I’m so hungry I could eat a raw horse. Knowing it’s Stella’s cooking, I’m about to rip those things right out of your hands.”

  He didn’t particularly want to smile but found his lips curling upward. It was impossible not to smile at that face. “Wouldn’t want that. So I guess I’ll just give you some of everything. There’s enough for seconds and thirds.”

  He stacked her plate high with Stella’s food, liking everything about this. The beautiful woman who now had a full smile on her face. In his bed, in his quarters.

  For most of his life, his bed had been empty, his life survival and leadership. The last year he’d spent constantly on the lookout because they had powerful enemies. They had the fucking U.S. government looking for them and he was under no illusions what would happen if the government found them. Whatever the powers that be had been told about Ghost Ops, the men hunting them had been given specific orders. Shoot on sight.

  They’d escaped once on their way to a court-martial. The government wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

  Everything that could be done to keep him, his men and their people safe, he’d done. But any soldier was familiar with the ways of that fuck Murphy so Mac was constantly on the lookout for trouble. Paranoia was the hallmark of a good soldier. He had every right to be paranoid, and he was.

  Not to mention the fact that somehow—he had no idea how—he’d been elected something between mayor and king of Haven. People now started coming to him with technical problems and organizational problems and lately—Jesus!—emotional problems. So besides keeping his people safe he now had to keep them happy and spiritually fulfilled.

  Mac wasn’t a priest. Though, come to think of it, lately he’d had the sex life of one.

  So, yeah, sitting relaxed on his bed with this gorgeous, smart woman, eating delicious food—that made for a nice break with his reality.

  She’d settled with her back to his headboard, a big plate on her lap, some green-and-orange concoction in a tall glass on his nightstand. He lifted his own glass. “What the fu—what the hell is this?”

  She laughed, head tilted back, long white neck exposed. Man, she had a pretty neck. He scratched his own, which wasn’t pretty, and studied hers. Necks like that were made to be touched, but this woman was too beautiful to touch. Off-limits.

  “You don’t have to censor yourself with me, Mac. I’m a big girl. To answer your question, I think it’s carrot juice and mint.” She lifted the glass and took a long drink. Mac followed the movements of her neck as she swallowed and his dick swelled even larger.

  Thank God he had on tight jeans and a long sweatshirt—his usual uniform in Haven. This moment was too good to ruin with a hard-on that couldn’t go anywhere. Because, really, what would a woman like her be doing with a man like him?

  They were like Beauty and the Beast, not to mention the fact that there was probably a million-dollar reward on his head. His face, Nick’s face and Jon’s face were no doubt on some playing cards in a Most Wanted deck. The operator who smoked him would get one big honking promotion.

  So, no. Sex wasn’t going to happen. However horny he was, she wasn’t. He knew what aroused women looked like and acted like, and this wasn’t it. She wasn’t sneaking looks at him, checking out his package, casually putting a hand high up on his thigh. Standard fare for the bar chicks he picked up. Used to pick up when he used to have a sex life.

  She just looked . . . happy. As happy as anyone can look whose home was trashed.

  “What?”

  She’d said something. “I said, how do you like the juice?” There was patience in her voice, like someone dealing with the demented.


  He took a long swig. “Frankly, I’d rather have a beer. Don’t know why she didn’t include one.”

  She smiled. “I’m sure if you call Stella she’d have a beer or two sent up.”

  He was tempted for about two seconds. Then—“Nah. It’s okay.” He took another swig of the stuff, not because he liked it but because he didn’t want to interrupt this. Whatever this was.

  Catherine bit into one of the roast beef sandwiches, chewed, sighed and swallowed. “Man this stuff is good. She’s amazing. Does she cook like this all the time?”

  She was smiling right at him and it was really natural to smile back, though Mac wasn’t much of a smiler. Good thing there were no vidcams in the room because Nick and Jon would have a heart attack if they saw him now. Lifting his mouth, showing his teeth. Not scowling. Talking.

  “Pretty much. We’re all addicted now. Any other food tastes funny.”

  “I bet.” She took another bite, then put the sandwich down. “So . . . what’s her story? How’d she end up here?”

  Mac hesitated. Stella’s story belonged to the community, not to outsiders.

  Then again, Catherine was one of them and she needed to know the story. If it turned out she wasn’t one of them, she’d be injected with a really big dose of Lethe, enough to cover three days, and set loose in the valley.

  Mac’s spirits dimmed a little at the thought, but it was what it was. “You know she had a stalker, right?”

  She nodded. “It was in all the blogs and gossip sites.”

  “Well, the blogs forgot to mention the fact that the fuck had been stalking her for years. Sending razor blades in roses, live scorpions in jewelry boxes, once a diamond ring on the leg of a giant tarantula. All that good stuff. And her fucking entourage hid all that from her. They vetted everything that was sent to her and vetted her calls. Assholes never let on that she was under threat, because it would upset her and upset their meal ticket.” Mac’s fists balled. The thought of it still drove him crazy. “She had no idea a crazy fuck was after her.” He breathed in deeply, let it out in a heavy gust. “Sorry.”

  “I saw her face, Mac,” Catherine said quietly. “Crazy fuck is the least of it.”

  “Her agent hired a bodyguard. She thought he was her personal assistant. The bodyguard intercepted about three attempts on her life but was under strict instructions not to let her know. She was filming High in the Sky and people were starting to talk Oscars and nobody wanted her off her game.”

  Her small fist clenched and she bounced it off her knee. “That’s unforgiveable,” she said quietly.

  It was a good thing the bodyguard was already dead. Otherwise Mac would have been tempted to have a word or two with him, of the physical variety.

  “Yeah. Anyway, one night, right after the party when they finished filming—Stella told me it’s called a wrap party—she gave her housekeeper and driver the night off and went to bed around two. The coroner says that the bodyguard was killed around three A.M. His throat was slit. At the autopsy it turned out that the bodyguard had a point-three blood alcohol level. He was essentially in a coma. Easy prey.”

  “God,” she breathed.

  “Yeah.” His jaw muscles flexed. “So the fucker had total access. Really went to town. She had almost fifty cuts. Several sliced right through her cheek. Lost a third of the blood in her body. It was only by some miracle that she kicked at him, he slipped in her blood and fell on his knife. She called 911 and they did their job. Unlike the bodyguard.”

  “She disappeared after that, didn’t she?”

  “Took six surgeries and a year for her to start to heal. In the meantime, the guy was jailed, then released on bail because he had money. That’s when Stella took serious steps to find a place to hide—and then at trial the fuck was judged insane and remanded to a psychiatric prison.”

  “And escaped,” she added quietly. “I remember now.”

  “She’d always loved cooking and she ended up as a short-order cook at a greasy spoon in Montrose. Sixty miles from here. Jon loved the food there, had made friends with her.”

  “Jon?” She tilted her head, a little frown between her eyebrows. “Oh. Yeah, right.” Her face cleared. “Surfer Dude.”

  “Surfer Dude, yep.” Mac nodded his head. It was great hearing her say that. Jon was used to being underestimated.

  “Jon was with her when the news came on and the anchor said that her attacker had escaped from the psychiatric institute. She started shaking so badly she couldn’t hold anything. Her scars were barely healed. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. Jon invited her up here and she came and we can’t do without her now.”

  Catherine gave a sigh. “Well, she’s clearly at home here.”

  Yep. Stella was one of them. No question.

  “What did you guys do for food . . . before?”

  “Before?”

  “Before Stella. Did someone cook?”

  He winced just thinking about it. “There weren’t too many of us then. We’ve . . . grown.” Mac watched her carefully but she didn’t take him up on the opening he’d given her. A spy would have used this moment to gently probe, find out more about Haven. And even if she wasn’t a spy, most outsiders would be curious about them. Who they were. What they were.

  Not Catherine. She just sat quietly and listened. “So you all cooked?” she asked. “Nope. Nick and I did.” His mouth turned down. “We nearly had a mutiny once. Then Stella came and everyone was happy. She saved our bacon.”

  He blinked.

  He’d made a goddamned pun! Since when did he make puns?

  It startled a laugh out of her, jostling the plate she was holding on her knees. “Oh!”

  They both grabbed for it. Mac was faster and she ended up holding his wrist, fingers curled around him.

  Everything stopped. It felt like his heart stopped, too.

  No sound, no movement. No laughter now.

  There was a sudden, immense hush in the room. Catherine’s smile faded and God knew he didn’t feel like smiling. Couldn’t. Something huge was happening, something completely new, some outside force taking over his body.

  Where she touched him, heat rose, painless fire, searing him inside out. Light glowed from him, from her. For a second he wondered whether they’d been irradiated, it was that intense. Her hands melted into his wrists, or at least that was what it felt like. As if they were fused, as if they would never be separated again. Tendrils from her hands sank into his, invisible tendrils tethering him to her. He couldn’t move his hands, not an inch. The mere thought of separation from her was too painful to even think about.

  He felt his blood pulse into her body, he felt parts of her inside him. He could hear her heartbeat. He could freaking feel her heartbeat—not through his hands but through his own heart, because it was as if her heart were beating inside his chest.

  Light and heat filled him up and his head buzzed, became light, threatened to float away. He swayed as if in a wind, but there was no wind here, only her hands on him, in him, reaching deep inside him.

  An explosion behind his eyes, lighting up everything in the room with a surreal light, like a flashbang only without the noise. Everything brilliantly illuminated as if on a stage.

  Emotions. Intense and sharp. Fear and loneliness and desire. Intense desire, but it didn’t have the taste of his own desire. Someone else’s desire. Someone else’s emotions. Somehow he was in someone else’s head and he was feeling desire, hot lust for someone . . .

  He saw himself from the outside, as if looking out through someone else’s eyes. Through her eyes. Catherine’s eyes . . .

  . . . so very attractive. . .

  The vagrant thought, as clear as if someone had whispered directly into his ear, wafted across his consciousness. It galvanized him, broke the spell.

  Holy shit, that thought was about him! He jerked away from her touch as if from an electric prod, his movement so abrupt her plate toppled and fell to the floor.

  He didn’t pay it an
y attention, he barely noticed over the sudden thudding of his heart, the adrenaline of danger pumping way too late through his system. Whatever the fuck had happened to him, he hadn’t been fast enough to stop it. No warning signs at all, just that one lightning-fast fatal blow.

  “Shit!” His fists clenched. He couldn’t hit a woman, didn’t have it in him, but by God . . . He bent and put his face next to hers, making sure he didn’t touch her anywhere.

  She’d gone dead white, gray eyes huge in a shocked face, pupils dilated. She shrank back, face pinched, nostrils white with tension.

  “Did you just drug me?” he barked.

  She had to swallow first. Even her lips had gone white. “No,” she whispered in a shocked voice. “No, of course not. I keep telling you that.”

  Mac picked up the sheet and grabbed her hands using the sheet as a barrier. It would have been better to have latex gloves but he didn’t have a pair with him. The sheet would have to do. And even if it didn’t protect him, it provided at least a psychological barrier because he knew, the certainty like a deep, dull ache inside him, that touching her was bad for him.

  Or good for him.

  Or . . . something. Something overwhelming.

  He scrutinized the palms of her hands, checking carefully, inch by inch. There had to be something there . . . maybe microneedles embedded in the skin, some capsule she could break and that worked on contact. Something.

  He was rough but she didn’t protest. Just let him study her hands. They were beautiful. Slender, long-fingered, soft. And however hard he looked, devoid of any drug-delivery systems he could see.

  He looked up from her hands, which trembled in his. “Do you have some way to hypnotize me?”

  Her voice was stronger now. “No.”

  “Then tell me what the fuck just happened here!” He threw her hands down, took a step back, furious. “I fucking touch you and it’s like my lights went out. What the fuck was that?”

  She straightened up, pulling up the bedclothes, bunching them around her neck as if a few yards of material could provide a barrier if he chose to attack her.