The Risk-Taker

by Kira Sinclair

  To protect herself, Hope dropped her gaze from his to the top of her immaculate desk. It didn’t help. She still knew he was there and wanted desperately to say, “The hell with everything else,” and just give in to what she wanted. Him.

  But she couldn’t do that. Not when cold sweat popped out across her brow at the mere thought of throwing caution to the wind and telling him that she loved him and wanted him in her life.

  Between the two of them, Gage was the caution-throwing one.

  A strangled sound from deep in his throat had Hope jerking her gaze back to his.

  He didn’t have to say a single word. She knew from the expression on his face and the direction of his eyes exactly what he was looking at. The document she’d been writing. About everything he’d told her last night.

  She protested, “That isn’t what you think.” The words were guttural and jumbled up as she tried to push them out faster than her lips and tongue could move.

  With deliberation, he reached for the mouse on her desk and with his newly bandaged thumb rolled the little wheel in the center. She tried to snatch it from his grasp, but he just picked it up and moved it out of her reach. Damn wireless technology.

  “That isn’t for the paper, Gage. I swear.”

  His skin turned red before blanching white. “Funny. It’s on your work computer at the paper. It reads like a feature article.”

  After several tense moments, Gage hung his head. His hands spread wide across the gleaming surface of her desk. Carefully, he stood. The wood groaned as he pushed against it.

  Silence strangled her. The pressure of it was a living thing, squeezing the life right out of her. “Look at me,” she whispered, deeply afraid of what she might see.

  And she had every right to be.

  Gradually, Gage lifted his head and looked at her with eyes so blank they could have been dead. But they weren’t. They were so much worse.

  Uncaring. Unfeeling. Indifferent.

  How was that possible?

  “You know what? Publish your article, Hope. You deserve it. You worked harder for it than anyone else. I was offered a heck of a lot of money from all sorts of news agencies and talk shows. But none of them offered to sleep with me. You had the perfect trump card, didn’t you? Something you always knew I wanted and no one else could give. That kind of commitment should be rewarded.”

  His words were a punch straight to the gut. She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs heaved. Her mouth worked, but nothing flowed into her body. The world went black and bright lights popped across the desolate space.

  Somehow she made it over to one of the chairs in front of her desk. She had no idea how long she sat there, staring blankly into space. But when she finally blinked back to reality she was alone.

  Outside the open door the familiar sounds of a working newspaper greeted her. A telephone. Someone typing on a keyboard. Murmured voices.

  They weren’t enough.

  When had they stopped being enough?

  * * *

  A SOFT RAIN PATTERED down onto the visor covering his face. He’d thrown on a helmet, the rain and Hope’s admonishing voice thick in his ear. He couldn’t even get away from her here.

  In retaliation—and to show that she didn’t matter—Gage pushed the bike faster. He raced down Main and elicited evil glances from several of the people inside the shops.

  Finally! Things were returning to normal. Maybe now everyone would stop walking on eggshells around him and treat him like regular Gage Harper, disappointing mayor’s son and boy who let the goats loose in the high school, instead of some exalted war hero.

  He didn’t want the title. Didn’t deserve it.

  The devil inside him urged him to just let go. To forget everything. Afghanistan. Tanner. Micah. Hope.

  As he twisted the throttle, the bike roared beneath him. Gage drove faster. The pavement was slick and it required all of his attention to keep the growling Harley on the road, which was a good thing because then he didn’t have to think about what he’d left behind.

  Although, the plan didn’t work very well. Images of Hope still managed to creep in. Her eyes spitting fire at him the night of the cocktail party. Wet and bedraggled outside the bowling alley. Staring up at him through hot, passion-filled eyes as he drove deep inside her. The way she laughed and argued and knew him.

  Dammit! How was he supposed to just let her go? To believe that she’d faked everything—okay, not everything—to get what she wanted?

  Even knowing what she’d done—manipulating him for her own ends—he didn’t want to let her go. She was the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time. Possibly ever.

  He couldn’t believe that she’d done it just for the story. Maybe he was naive, but everything inside him said there was more. That she really cared about him and always had. The words that she’d said first, her reasons for rejecting him when they were younger, rang in his ears. And they rang true.

  When he was with her the doubts he’d been having no longer mattered. The restlessness he’d always fought against disappeared. He was steadier. On firmer ground.

  He saw the possibilities. His life was dangerous and transient. He went where he was needed for as long as necessary. And in the past twelve years he hadn’t worried about what he was leaving behind. Not once.

  He did now. With her he wanted more than just a good time and a warm goodbye. And always had.

  Gage was a fighter. That’s what he did. It’s what he was good at. So why was he willing to just turn tail and run away from this? From her?

  He’d fought for his life. For the lives of the men he was responsible for. He’d looked dangerous, ruthless and sadistic men in the face and laughed at their attempts to break him.

  The reality was they couldn’t because nothing they’d done to him had mattered. The physical pain he could survive.

  The thought of losing Hope sent him into a mental tailspin. Now that his anger was spent, he had nothing to keep the throbbing ache of her betrayal at bay.

  It rushed him, blinding him for several seconds.

  The loss of concentration and winding, slippery roads made a terrible combination. One moment the bike was racing across open road. The next he was spinning out of control.

  He and the Harley hurtled through the air, the tires squealing uselessly as they tried to grab on to asphalt. He headed off the road at an odd angle, bumping across grass and gravel and heading straight for a grove of trees thirty yards away.

  Not good.

  Metal and wood connected with a terrible crunching sound. Jagged pain tore through his leg, stealing his breath. His shoulder connected with something hard. He heard a bone snap. He was coherent enough to wonder why it didn’t hurt.

  He and the bike came to rest between two trees. Through the starburst across his visor he could see the brighter color of wood where something—probably metal—had gouged into the bark. A wheel spun drunkenly.

  He was still breathing, and conscious. Both good signs.

  And then the pain hit. It radiated through him, worse than anything he’d ever felt in his life. It was everywhere.

  He had just enough strength to pull the cell phone out of his jacket pocket. After saying a small prayer of thanks that it still worked, he dialed 911.

  And then passed out.

  * * *

  HOPE HAD FINALLY DECIDED to go home. It wasn’t as if she was in any frame of mind to work. One of the other writers would have to pick up the piece. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to reassign something because she didn’t have time to write it.

  And yet, she still kept trying.

  Finally, in the safety of her own home, she’d broken down, crying until she didn’t have any more to give.

  She’d known he would hurt her.

  The problem was, she couldn’t completely blame him, could she? Even if she hadn’t intended that piece for publication, she had manipulated him with the express intention of getting what she wanted—whether he lik
ed it or not.

  Only after he’d left had she realized she hadn’t even admitted that. Or told him she was sorry.

  Eventually, she’d fallen asleep.

  A loud pounding on her front door had her bolting up from the sofa where she’d curled up.

  “Huh? What?” she asked no one, spinning confusedly in a circle.

  Only when the sound came again did it really register that someone was practically trying to drill through her front door.

  Racing over, she yanked it open before her brain kicked in and cautioned her that maybe she should have looked first. Luckily, it was Lexi standing on her stoop and not another horde of reporters.

  But it didn’t take her long to realize her friend looked like hell. Her first assumption was that Lexi must still be upset over Brandon. But then she realized her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen with new tears. When she’d left Sugar & Spice yesterday Lexi had been past that stage and well into being pissed. Something else was wrong.

  “What?” Hope grabbed onto her friend’s arm and hauled her inside.

  “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for the past hour.”

  Hope thought back to leaving the office and groaned, realizing she’d been in such a daze that she must have left her cell sitting on her desk. “I walked off and left my phone.”

  “Of all the days...” Lexi’s voice trailed off, thickening with new tears. Hope wrapped her in a hug and offered whatever comfort she could. She had no idea what was going on, but Lexi would tell her soon enough.

  Her friend clung to her, mumbling into her hair, “He’s been in an accident.”

  “Who?” Surely Lexi wasn’t talking about Brandon. But who else...

  In that moment she knew exactly who. All the blood drained from Hope’s head, leaving her shaken and pale. Oh, no. Not again. She couldn’t go through this again. Her mind flashed to that day so many years ago, when the officer had knocked on the front door and told her dad that her mom was gone.

  This time Lexi had come.

  Hope’s legs refused to hold her up and she collapsed beneath the combined weight of both of them.

  “Oh, my God.”

  A vision of his eerie, calmly irate eyes melded with him straddling that damn Harley, sunshine washing down over his naked head as he drove away.

  It was her fault. This accident was her fault. She should have stopped him. But she’d been so devastated that she hadn’t thought. Of course he’d go out and do something reckless and stupid. Like die.

  “Oh, my God.”

  He was dead. It was every nightmare she’d ever had. Absolutely everything she’d been afraid of with Gage come to real life. And she couldn’t take it. It hurt too much.

  Asshole, she thought desperately. A ragged sob erupted from her. He would survive being captured and tortured to come home and die in a motorcycle accident because he refused to wear a damn helmet.

  She was never going to forgive him.

  Or herself.

  “They’re keeping him overnight, but he’s been asking for you.”

  “Wait. What?” Hope shook her head. She had to mentally backpedal, to dovetail what Lexi had just said into the conclusion she’d jumped to. They didn’t fit. “He’s okay?”

  “Well, if you can call twenty stitches in his leg, a collarbone broken in two different places and a hell of a lot of bruises okay, then yeah.”

  Hope gripped Lexi’s shoulders and held her away so she could look into her friend’s eyes. “He isn’t dead?”

  Shock widened Lexi’s tear bright eyes. “No! I’m so sorry. I didn’t think... I’ve been holding it together for Mom and Dad. The minute I saw you all the fear and memories and relief just hit me.”

  “He’s alive?” Hope asked again, because she really, really needed to hear the words.

  “Yes, he’s alive. Banged up. But the doctors said it could have been worse. Luckily he was wearing a helmet.”

  “He was?” she asked incredulously. “He’s never bothered to wear one before. I’ve been giving him grief about it for days.”

  “Thank heaven he finally listened to you.”

  15

  HE’D BEEN HIT BY A freight train. Again. Had he been recaptured? He didn’t remember returning to Afghanistan, but maybe he’d blocked it. Every muscle, including a few he’d forgotten he had, ached.

  His leg throbbed like a son of a bitch and when he tried to roll onto his side he sucked in a sharp breath against the pain that shot across his chest and down his shoulder.

  What the hell?

  “Lie still.” A soft voice floated to him from across the room.

  Gage realized his eyes weren’t closed. The room was dark. Suddenly a light beside the bed flared on.

  Hope stood next to him, watching him with cautious, measured eyes.

  And like that everything was fine. Hope was with him and nothing else mattered.

  “Do you want me to call the nurse? You can probably have more pain meds.”

  “No,” he croaked through a dry throat. He didn’t like the meds. “They make my head fuzzy.”

  “Brave, stupid man.” Reaching over his head, she pressed the big button with the picture of a nurse on it. “Take the medicine. Who cares if you’re fuzzy? It isn’t like there’s anything else for you to do but sleep.”

  The nurse came in and pushed something into the IV still attached to his arm. He moved to yank it out, but two hands slapped over his, stopping him.

  The nurse gave Hope a rueful smile. “You warned me.” Transferring her hard gaze to Gage, she threatened, “If you try to pull that IV out I’m going to knock you out completely. Be a good boy.” Then she patted him on the cheek.

  “I like her,” Hope said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “I don’t.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” she said dryly.

  With a resigned sigh, Hope reached behind her and dragged one of the uncomfortable, heavy chairs that were a staple of all hospital rooms over to the side of the bed. He wanted to pull her up on to the bed beside him, but for some reason his limbs weren’t quite cooperating.

  She grasped his hand and bent her head to touch her forehead to where they joined. He was supposed to be angry with her. He remembered that clearly. But all he could find inside was bliss that she was beside him.

  Until she looked up and he realized she was crying. Quietly. Her stoic tears were the most heartbreaking thing he’d ever seen.

  “First, I want you to know that I was telling the truth about the document you saw this afternoon. I was writing it all down trying to figure out how to deal with it. How to help you deal with it. I use words to process things, Gage. That’s all it was.”

  The sincerity in her voice was difficult to argue with. He wanted to believe her, but part of him was reluctant to do that only to find out he’d been had.

  “But you were right about the guilt. I did feel guilty. I arranged for us to be together for Cupid week.”

  She paused, probably waiting for shock. She wouldn’t get any. He already knew that.

  Just to make sure he completely understood, she clarified, anyway. “I paid to nominate you. I paid to be paired with you.”

  “I know,” he said, the two words slurring out of his mouth uncomfortably. He wanted to say more, but his tongue felt like a useless flap.

  “You do? How?”

  “Dad let it slip.”

  “When?” Hope squeezed her eyes shut. “No, never mind. That isn’t important. I did it so that I could get the scoop on your story. I had every intention of using our time together to get you to open up.”

  Gage grunted. It was about all he could manage. His body was rebelling against him. It was taking everything he had to keep his eyelids from slipping shut. What had that nurse given him?

  “At first, anyway. And then you came to my house that night after the cocktail party. Upset about something.”

  “My friend committed suicide.” Sure, now his lips wanted to cooperate. He ha
dn’t meant to tell her that.

  Her soft green eyes widened with surprise and then crinkled at the corners with sadness. That’s one of the things he loved about her. She had such a tough, no-nonsense exterior, but inside she was nothing but a gooey marshmallow.

  He needed a gooey marshmallow to remind him there were still good things in the world. Things worth fighting for.

  Her hand brushed across his face. Gage turned into it, prolonging the contact. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  He shook his head, accepting.

  “It didn’t take me long to realize I’d made a mistake. I couldn’t have used anything you told me to write a story that I knew you didn’t want published. I still don’t understand why, but that doesn’t matter. You’ve earned your privacy, Gage. You paid for it with every scar on your body.

  “But it wasn’t just a matter of changing my mind. If that was the case then we could have had a nice time together, reminisced about the good times, finished out the week and both walked away with you never the wiser to my initial ulterior motives.”

  She glanced away, staring out the open door into the silent corridor. The muscles in her neck strained as she fought against something she didn’t want him to see. With unsteady fingers, Gage managed to cup her chin and make her look at him.

  Big, fat tears glittered like diamonds in the corners of her eyes. She tried to will them back, but that was a fight not even she could win.

  “I spent years telling myself I couldn’t love you. I couldn’t be just one more girl you took out on Friday night. Your friendship meant too much to me. You meant too much. But you were wild and dangerous, Gage. If there was a rule you wouldn’t rest until you’d broken it. You had this...drive. I knew, even back then, that you could hurt me. That letting you in would be just as dangerous as anything you’d ever thought of doing. And twice as stupid.”

  Gage brushed the pad of his thumb beneath her eye, swiping away the tear that clung there. He didn’t want to see her cry.

  “I thought you were dead tonight.” A sound wheezed out from between her parted lips. “Only for a few minutes, but it was enough. I can’t do that. I can’t go through that again.”