Guarding Laura

by Susan Vaughan

  Color seeped back into her face, with crimson daubing her cheekbones. How had he spooked her so?

  “Oh, I see,” she said. “I’d heard…rumors about you and another girl. I saw you together outside the college. People said she was your next conquest. I think her name was Mona.”

  He scrubbed a hand across his shadowed chin. “Mona was Valesko’s ex-girlfriend. I helped her get away from him after he beat her up for the third time. That was all.”

  She gave him a rueful smile. “Of course you would help someone that way. I’m sorry I didn’t ask you about her.”

  “Then later you never even asked about me. It was like we’d never been together. Like I’d never existed. I was in the Marines, but I had word from some of the guys. When you came back from Europe, you didn’t try to find me. Then you didn’t return to Penn. You went off to some new college out west.”

  Laura shivered and hugged herself, her brown eyes sooty above her wan cheeks. She stood rigid, Midas’s daughter transmuted into unyielding metal.

  He’d hoped she’d prove wrong the cold rejection of the biker bum he used to be. The biker bum he’d fought to escape.

  Her silence struck flint to the low flame inside him. “I used to feel we connected, that you knew me, knew my soul, not just the bum everyone else saw. Was I wrong? Were you just a rich girl slumming?”

  Her chin shot up defiantly. She stood toe-to-toe with him, glaring at him. “You have no idea what I went through. Yes, we connected. I felt you were the other half of my soul. My world was turned upside down when I believed you’d tossed me away like a rusted motorcycle part. I had to put the pain behind me and find a new world.”

  The harsh belief he’d held all these years curled at the edges, ignited new questions. But finding the right words to ask her taxed him more than negotiations in Spanish or Pashtu.

  “During that damned weekend, we had plans to be together, dreams of a future. You were going to transfer to Georgetown. Finally I had attainable dreams. Education, job, then kids. You knew how I felt about a family. How the hell could you mow down those dreams?”

  Grief and sadness shadowed her face. And not from the business with Markos. She looked at him with overflowing eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, so you felt you had to leave and join the service.”

  “Don’t be sorry for me in that respect.” Giving in to impulse, he hugged her to him. “No regrets here about joining up. My interests in politics and history paid off. Without the Marines, I wouldn’t be a government officer today.”

  “Then you’re fortunate. As for the rest, fate and our immaturity conspired against us back then. Let’s leave the answer at that.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not enough.”

  She wrenched from his embrace and moved to the door. Her mouth and shoulders firmed. “It’s all I have to offer.”

  The tears brimming over in her eyes glistened in the arc cast by the outside spotlight. His gut instinct nagged him that she was still holding something back. If it wasn’t their biker-and-princess differences, what could it be?

  Damn. He was an idiot.

  Her tears were due to the shock of revisiting old wounds. Add to that her recent visit to hell. Witnessing a murder, nearly becoming the next victim. Going underground and living in fear. Then today’s brake failure. Another near miss.

  He’d pushed her as far as he should today. But he would eventually find out what she’d left unsaid. “Let’s go inside.” He tucked her behind him and finished unlocking the door for her. “You’re a target out here.”

  “For mosquitoes, definitely.” She swatted at one on her arm. Her voice was thick with emotion, but not humor. “What on earth are you doing?”

  He saw she was staring at the Glock he’d drawn from his ankle holster. “I’m going in to check out the cabin. Stay out here until I call you.”

  Pushing the door in slowly, he slipped into the darkened cabin and skirted the great room. He gagged at an alien odor.

  Gas.

  The chemical odorant the gas company added to the odorless gas was a precaution he was damned thankful for. The lousy heater was still leaking.

  If there was a hit man inside, he was dead to the world. Or dead period.

  After a quick tour of the rest of the cabin, he slipped the 9mm into its holster. No killer, sleeping or otherwise.

  He remembered where the heater was and quickly shut off the valve. Fixing the heater might not be the answer. Not worn threads, but a human hand had loosened it. He’d notify the others to surveil the cabin full-time.

  Shoving open windows to help clear the air, he called for Laura to enter. She was frightened enough for tonight without his laying the latest on her. “But don’t turn on the light just yet. Even a small spark would be enough to blow us clear to New Hampshire.”

  Laura stepped into the kitchen and stood by the table. She hugged herself and shivered. No longer angry, she looked small and fragile and grief stricken. “I’ll talk to Stan tomorrow about getting that fixed.”

  Cole edged to the door, gazing out at the shadows beneath the trees. He braced his palms on the door frame.

  Laura watched him mulling over their conversation. Sooner or later she’d have to tell him.

  How much did he know already?

  “Turnabout is fair play,” she said in a voice that shook more than she wanted. “Did you ever go back to Potomac to learn the truth? Did you look for me later?”

  His back stiffened, and he turned slowly. “I went back one more time after basic. For my dad’s funeral. He drove with a snootful one too many times and plowed his car into a highway abutment.” He turned pale eyes to her, as bleak and bitter cold as winter.

  She started to go to him, to put her arms around his big shoulders. He’d been all alone, far away, and no one had comforted him then. Or since, she supposed. But she was too vulnerable to him as it was.

  So she clutched the kitchen chair and stayed where she was. “Cole, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  Hands fisted at his sides, he stared past her into the dark corners of the room. “I was celebrating the end of basic training with my first pass. A bunch of us guys just got back from a local bar after tossing down more than a few beers. When the cops phoned the base to give me the sorry-for-your-loss speech, I was drunk. Like him.”

  Her heart aching for him, Laura pushed the chair aside and crossed to him. His rigid shoulders didn’t invite cuddling, but she pried open his hand, lacing her fingers with his larger ones. She longed to press her other hand to his whisker-roughened cheek, to trace the groove that had deepened with his emotion. But she didn’t. “You couldn’t have known. And you had a right to celebrate.”

  “A right to celebrate.” He shook his head, then eased his hand away and opened the door. “I knew at that moment I didn’t want to end up like him. I haven’t touched alcohol since.”

  Alcoholism ran in families, so his was a wise decision. Compassion and admiration for him were the last emotions she expected to feel tonight.

  “Always a clear head, then, cowboy?”

  He barked a laugh. As she’d hoped, her light comment had lifted his dark mood a notch. “Not always, but at least my head’s not pickled.”

  Hell, in the long run, I did leave him. When he’d said that earlier, she’d wondered about the bitterness coloring his words. Now she understood. “Instead you’ve taken a long guilt trip. It wasn’t your fault, you know. The drink would’ve killed him one way or another even if you’d been there.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you? Do you really?”

  “Hell, woman. You know me too well. His liver was a sieve. Doctors said he didn’t have long to live anyway.”

  “So let the guilt and regrets go.”

  “And you?”

  His wolf’s gaze and pointed question kicked her in the chest. Somehow the topic had changed. He’d turned her probing back on her. But she wasn’t ready to delve into their mutual past again so soon. She mere
ly shook her head and shrugged.

  With that, he left the cottage and melted into the night.

  Laura closed—and locked—the door and checked the gas valve again in the dark. Tight. Of course Cole had made it secure.

  She turned on lights in the bedroom and bath and began getting ready for bed. As she washed her face, she felt the day’s tension and weariness deep in her bones. She barely had the strength to brush her teeth.

  A pounding on the door jarred her awake from dozing on her feet.

  The dragon of fear clawed at her. Trapped. Cole had left her, and she didn’t know how to contact him. But would a hit man knock at the door? She nearly giggled at the notion.

  Dousing the bathroom light, she squinted at the kitchen door. Through the glass, she saw a dark figure.

  Cole.

  With a small duffel over his shoulder. An overnight bag.

  She didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry or terrified. But her first thought up on the mountain had been correct.

  No escape.

  Chapter 5

  Gasping for breath, Laura surged to a sitting position. She shivered. Sweat beaded her brow and chest.

  Three a.m.

  The dial of her bedside clock cast the only light in the small bedroom. Outside, trees blocked the moonlight from the window. A sleepy chirp was the only disturbance in the night. She lifted the heavy mass of damp hair sticking to her neck.

  The old nightmare.

  She rubbed her eyes to rid her vision of the terrifying kaleidoscope—the spinning car, the screech of metal against metal, the rag doll that wasn’t a rag doll. The blood.

  Oh, God. A thunderstorm of memories crashed around her. She fought to control the anguish that churned like an egg-beater in her stomach.

  Breathe. Count of four in…four out. Four in. Four out.

  The techniques she’d learned from counseling after the miscarriage were holding her together now—just barely. Breath control, visualization—she knew what to do, whatever the cause of panic.

  After the attempt on her life, knives and tiny claws and crimson darkness had monopolized the prime-time nightmare slot, then tapered off. Tonight by popular demand the old rerun returned.

  In the dark she fumbled her way out of the clammy sheets. She was calmer now, but her parched throat needed water.

  She pressed her sweat-damp forehead against the closed door. The feel of the solid wood recalled her to the present.

  Her dead son’s father lay out there asleep on her sofa.

  Drat the man. He was the cause of the dream’s return. The cause of all her anguish.

  Tears leaked from her squeezed eyelids. How could she have any left?

  Following the roller-coaster ride that had totaled her car, the day had continued its downhill slide. A wary Cole in military mode had stayed close, a wolf on lookout. They’d cleared up past misunderstandings, but his not knowing she’d been pregnant was a guillotine hanging over her head. If he kept badgering her, eventually she’d have to tell him.

  At least part of the story.

  Her emotions were too raw, and she feared breaching the dam if she explained now. She didn’t owe him the rest.

  No, that was her private, lonely hell.

  Cole’s reentry into her life had flung her into a new level of the Inferno. The man was much more than the boy, a man to make her long for impossible dreams. Every minute with him burned that into her soul. He still knew her too well for her to dissemble for long. How long could she last?

  Seeing pity and rejection in other people’s eyes had cut her deeply. Seeing them in his would kill her. She would endure his suspicions. He knew she wasn’t giving him the whole story.

  Single people adopted children all the time. She’d made appointments at three agencies, but witnessing murder had abruptly cancelled them.

  She’d had two serious relationships after Cole, and both had ended after her admission. A man wanted his own progeny.

  Cole especially.

  Cole had left, grim-faced and strung tight, after his own emotional dam had burst. A while later, he’d reappeared to spend the night. No more bivouacs in the woods, he’d said, plopping his duffel on her living room floor. By tacit consent, they’d avoided any further mention of the past.

  And now he was snoring on her sofa.

  The bathroom faucet sometimes shrieked like a teakettle. So if she wanted water, could she sneak by him to the kitchen without waking him?

  The awareness of his presence had kept her so tense that her muscles and her temple ached. When he’d showered, she’d tried to think of anything but his fit, muscular body dripping with soap—her soap. After he’d settled down, she’d tried not to listen to every creak of the wooden frame, tried not to wonder if he slept in his underwear. Or in nothing at all.

  Surely he slept soundly. Didn’t spies and soldiers, like doctors, learn to sleep anywhere, anytime?

  He slept, but she lay awake until exhaustion finally overtook her. Then the nightmare strobed her mind’s screen and woke her. The waking memories were no less torturous.

  She didn’t usually close her bedroom door, so she didn’t know if it squeaked. Drawing a deep breath, Laura twisted the flimsy metal knob slowly.

  Silence.

  She pulled the door open.

  Silence.

  Relaxing a bit, she eased barefoot across the threadbare carpet into the living room.

  “Are you okay?” He clicked on the table lamp.

  She started. At his sexy, sleep-thickened voice as much as at the bulb’s glare through the stained paper shade. His liquid drawl tempted her to curl up with him on the couch.

  Blinking, she couldn’t help noticing his bare chest above the sheet and light blanket. Whorls of dark, curling hair sprinkled the muscled planes of his chest. Denser than in his youth, but not so heavy a woman’s fingers couldn’t reach the firm, warm flesh beneath. On his flat stomach, the ebony hair swirled downward to disappear beneath the thin coverlet.

  She couldn’t swallow. Her mouth was the Sahara. “I’m fine. Just thirsty.”

  Drat. All she wore was a flimsy T-shirt and boxers. She scooted sideways to stand behind the only upholstered chair. Not much cover, but most of the room lay in shadows.

  “You sure? I heard groans. It’d be a miracle if you didn’t have nightmares. The murder attack or the car crash?”

  She reeled from the pain of his perception. How did he—

  But of course he meant this morning’s crash. Not the other one. He couldn’t know about that one. She hoped.

  She exhaled slowly, aiming for nonchalance. “All my disasters seem to involve vehicles. Maybe in a previous life I was a race driver.”

  “Or a bad mechanic.” He cocked his head at her. “When this is over, you might want some help with PTSD.”

  Post-traumatic stress disorder. She knew much more about PTSD than he imagined.

  “You a psychologist now?” She shouldn’t let him see her irritation at his bull’s-eye. She was handling the stress just fine. Except for the nightmares. And the odd panic attack.

  She fluttered a hand. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  A smile flickered and vanished. “You getting water?”

  Tugging the T-shirt down to cover as much as she could, Laura hustled to the sink. “Would you like some?”

  “Sure, if you’re buying.”

  The warm resonance of his voice flip-flopped her stomach. Her unwanted reaction was a warning. She mustn’t let down her protective barriers. She had to fight the attraction. Trying not to stare at his bare chest or inhale his male scent, overlaid with her soap, she handed him a glass and turned to go.

  “Sit down. You’re not going to sleep anyway. We need to talk about your extreme driving…adventure.”

  Cole relaxed on the sofa, one arm stretched along the back, the other propping the glass on his flat belly. Rumpled and heavy-lidded, he looked sensual and decadent. Replace the jelly glass with a wine goblet and bring on th
e Roman orgy.

  Grabbing one of the pillows he’d kicked onto the floor, she held it in front of her bare legs. She sat in the chair that had hidden her from his burning gaze.

  “Impressive control up there, babe. Worthy of NASCAR. How’d you learn those moves?”

  She shrugged. “I took a defensive driving course a few years ago.” Her counselor had suggested it might cure her fear of driving after the accident. It had helped.

  “Being on the street for months, you must have developed a sixth sense for danger. Wasn’t there a brake fluid warning light on the dashboard? I remember driving you home once because you ignored the low-gas indicator.”

  A heated flush crept up her cheeks at his reminder of her infamous neglect.

  But this time was different.

  “I bought the car third or fourth-hand in New Jersey at Trusty Tom’s, a shark’s den where neither buyer nor seller asks many questions. I barely made it to Maine. I’ve been having trouble with the dashboard lights, but repairs cost money I don’t have.”

  He nodded and swallowed the rest of his water in one gulp. Noticing the Adam’s apple moving in his strong throat quickened her pulse.

  “I can’t get over you living underground like this. How’d you get to Jersey?”

  “I hitched.” His brow shot northward at that. Enjoying his reaction, she went on. The topic was a safe one. “Truckers were very helpful. Sometimes I went Greyhound.”

  “Winter must’ve been tough in Maine.”

  He was fishing now. He had no idea where she’d been before Passabec Lake. Unaccountably, that pleased her. “I spent the winter in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, delivering pizza and hooking plastic covers on dry cleaning.”

  “New skills for the anthropologist.” He saluted her with his empty glass.

  “Survival skills. I learned a lot about people. Most were kind. A pawnshop owner in Trenton helped me change the name on my driver’s license from Rossiter to Murphy.”

  “Most were kind. Not all. Guys hassle you?”

  An involuntary shiver quaked her shoulders as his question triggered a memory. “Some men were pretty crude. I left the dry cleaners because the boss had wandering hands. But there was only one time when I was in real danger. I was on the way to buy the car, all my savings in cash in my purse. Two men came out of an alley and tried to mug me.”