When they’d made it all the way to a new section of the creek, Grayson stopped and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Grayson spotted the gunman just as the man spotted them.
The gunman lifted his weapon, but Grayson was already braced for the attack. He shoved Eve back, took aim and fired before the gunman could. It was a sickening sound of the bullet slamming into human flesh.
A deadly thud.
Clutching his chest, the man flew backward and landed among the dense underbrush.
“Is he…dead?” Eve whispered.
“Maybe.” The moments crawled by, and Grayson waited. Watching. He looked for any movement, but he didn’t see it. “Stay here.”
Eve caught on to his arm and looked ready to launch into an argument about why he should stay put, but her gaze dropped to his badge. Resignation went through her eyes as a worried sigh left her mouth. “Be careful.”
“That’s the plan,” he mumbled, and he headed in the direction of the fallen gunman.
He kept watch on Eve and tried to push aside all the other things that crept into his mind, but Grayson knew once this threat was over, he had a dozen other things to deal with—especially Eve.
Grayson reached the spot he’d last seen the gunman, and he cursed. The gunman was still there, in the exact place where he’d taken his last breath. His gun had dropped from his hand.
“He’s dead,” Grayson relayed to Eve.
She started toward him, practically running. “You’re sure?”
Grayson leaned down and checked for a pulse, but that was just to keep everything straight for the reports he’d have to write up later. “Yeah.”
Eve was nearly out of breath by the time she made it to him. She took one look at the man’s ash-white face, and she shivered and leaned against Grayson.
He’d seen death before, maybe Eve had, too, but it was different seeing it like this. She was trembling hard now, and there were tears in her eyes, so he took her arm and led her away. There was no need for her to see any more of this.
“Why did he try to kill us?” she whispered, her voice clogged with emotion.
Grayson didn’t know for sure, but he figured it had something to do with the dead woman in the photos. Maybe this gunman had killed her. “I’ll find out,” he promised Eve.
Since she looked ready to collapse, Grayson pulled her into his arms. She didn’t put up a fight, probably because there was no fight left in her. This had taken, and would continue to take, a lot out of her. Grayson regretted that, but he didn’t regret that this guy was dead.
Or that he was able to give some small comfort to Eve.
She was still trembling, but her breathing started to level. What she didn’t do was move away, and Grayson was thankful for it. He hated to admit it, but the shooting had shaken him, and being this close to Eve was giving him as much comfort as he was hopefully giving her.
Even now, under the worst of circumstances, he couldn’t help but notice how nicely Eve still fit in his arms. Her body practically molded against his.
“We’re not bad people,” she mumbled. “This shouldn’t happen to us.”
Yeah. But Grayson knew that neither good nor bad had anything to do with this. The dead man was likely trying to cover up a murder, and in his experience people would do anything and everything to avoid jail.
She pulled back and stared up at him. Their gazes connected, and that fit, too. He could read her so well and knew the tears were about to spill again. She had a good reason to cry, and later he would lend her his shoulder, but for now, he had things to do.
“This guy might not be the one who killed Nina Manning. He could be just a triggerman,” Grayson explained, trying to keep his voice void of emotion so that she would stay calm.
He failed.
Despite her leveled breathing, Eve still looked anything but calm. So, to soothe himself and her, he brushed a kiss on her temple and then eased back so that she was no longer in his embrace.
“The only way we make this better,” Grayson whispered to her, “is to end it. I have to find out why this man came after us.”
Eve’s bottom lip trembled, and she nodded. Seconds later, she nodded again. “I’m not weak,” she assured him. Something he already knew.
“You just saw me kill a man. There’s nothing weak about your reaction. Truth is, I’m shaking inside.” And that was the truth. Killing didn’t come easy to him, and he hoped like hell that it never did.
Another nod. Eve blinked back tears and reached out to him, but neither of her hands was free. She had her gun in her right hand. The cell phone in the other.
He took the cell from her and motioned for her to move even farther away from the body. “I’ll call Dade,” he let her know. And he tried. But the signal was so low that the call wouldn’t go through. Grayson sent him a text instead and gave Dade their location.
Eve slipped her gun into her pocket and pulled her coat tightly against her. It wasn’t freezing, but it wasn’t warm, either. Besides, she was battling adrenaline and nerves, and that was no doubt contributing to the trembling.
“What now?” she asked.
Grayson took a deep breath before he answered. “We wait.”
She blinked. “For how long?”
He heard the unasked questions, and he knew she wouldn’t like the answers to any of them. “The text will eventually get through to Dade, and he’ll come after us.”
“Good.” Her face relaxed a little. “Then we should walk back to the road to meet him.”
Grayson glanced back at the body. “The coyotes won’t leave a fresh kill alone for long. I need to preserve the crime scene as much as possible because I need an ID on this guy.”
Eve started shaking her head. “But I need to get to Austin.”
He nodded and settled for saying, “I know.”
“No. You don’t know.” She huffed and blinked back more tears.
Hell.
Well, at least she wasn’t shaking so hard, but this was about to get ugly.
“You don’t know,” she repeated, and she just kept on repeating it until the words and the tears got the best of her. She sagged against a tree.
“Eve,” he said reaching out to her, but she just moved away.
Her breath broke on a sob. “I’ve made some terrible mistakes in my life. First, giving you that ultimatum. And then I promised my heart and life to a man I didn’t love. I’m the Typhoid Mary of relationships, Grayson, but I know I’m meant to be a mother.”
She was. Grayson didn’t doubt that. Heck, she’d practically been a mother to his youngest brother. Grayson, however, didn’t have a good track record. And he tried one last time to convince Eve of that.
“I’m not the man you want to father your baby,” he insisted.
She opened her mouth to say something, but Grayson didn’t want her to tell him something along the lines of his being the only man she wanted for that job. He couldn’t hear that. Not now. Not with Eve falling apart like this.
“I sucked as a father,” he continued, trying to snag her gaze. Eye contact might help her see the determination. “My brother, Gage, is dead.”
“Gage died doing a job he loved,” she clarified. “You couldn’t and wouldn’t have stopped him from joining the Justice Department any more than he could have stopped you from being sheriff of Silver Creek.”
Maybe. But that didn’t change things. Besides, Gage was just one of his failures.
“Dade has got so much rage inside him. Nate’s just one bad day away from needing professional help. And Mason? Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if he hunted our father down just so he could kill him in cold blood.” Grayson paused because he had to. “That’s the kind of family I raised.”
Now she made eye contact, and the jolt was like a head-on collision. Grayson had hoped she would see his emotion, and maybe she did, but he saw hers in complete vivid detail. The pain. The need.
The hopelessness of her situ
ation.
“If I helped you,” he managed to say, “I’d just screw things up again.”
She swiped away the tears and stared at him. “If you don’t help me, I’ll never know what it’s like to be a mother. I’ll never have a part of my life that I want more than my next breath.” She walked closer. “Grayson, you would have no responsibility in this, other than having sex with me. I swear, no responsibility.”
He had to say no. Had to. And Grayson just kept repeating that.
But he knew the reality here.
Even if Dade got the text and responded right away, it would be an hour or more before they could get this body out of the woods. Grayson would need another vehicle since his truck was in the creek. It would be nightfall or later before he could get Eve to a clinic in Austin. Since it was just three days before Christmas, it was likely the clinics had already closed for the day. Maybe for the rest of the holiday week.
Still, Grayson had to say no.
Didn’t he?
“Don’t think too much,” she whispered, walking closer.
The cold air mixed with her breath and created a misty fog around her face. It seemed unreal. Like a dream. And Grayson had had so many dreams about her that he nearly got lost in the moment.
Oh, man.
She could still make him burn.
Eve stopped, directly in front of him. So close he could take in her scent. She leaned in and put her mouth to his ear. She didn’t touch him. Didn’t have to touch him. Her scent was enough. He fought to hang on to the denial he intended to give her, but it was a battle that Grayson knew he was losing.
Worse, he wanted to lose.
“Just consider this a big favor for an old friend,” she whispered.
A friend? Eve was plenty of things, but she wasn’t a friend. Whatever she was, she was pulling him closer. And closer.
“Please,” she said. Just that one word. Her warm breath brushed against his mouth like a kiss.
He looked into her eyes and didn’t look beyond that. Yeah. He could say no. He could turn and walk away.
But that wasn’t what Grayson was going to do.
What he did was exactly as Eve had said. He didn’t think too much. He didn’t look beyond this moment and the bad mistake he was about to make.
Grayson cursed and pulled her to him.
Chapter Eight
Eve was too afraid to ask Grayson if he was sure about this. She was too afraid to delay even a second because she couldn’t risk that he would change his mind.
This had to happen, and it had to happen now.
Grayson was obviously with her on the now part. He slid down, his back against the tree, and he pulled her down with him.
Eve’s breath was racing already. Her heart pounded against her ribs so hard that it felt her bones would break. She was trembling, scared and cold, but she pushed all those uncomfortable things aside and pressed her mouth to his.
Big mistake.
She felt him stiffen, and the air between them changed. He’d agreed to the sex, to the making a baby part, but that stiff mouth told her that he wasn’t ready or willing to go back to where they’d been.
“All right,” she mumbled, hoping the sound of her own voice would steady her nerves.
It didn’t, but Eve didn’t let raw nerves or Grayson’s steely look get to her. She worked fast, sliding up her dress and moving onto his lap in the same motion. She didn’t meet his gaze. Didn’t want to. This was already difficult enough without seeing the proof of what he was thinking.
And he was no doubt thinking this was a big mistake.
Eve didn’t let him voice that. She knew what she had to do. She’d had years of experience making out with Grayson. After all, they’d had their first kiss when she was fifteen, and they had spent years driving each other crazy.
She knew how to make him crazy.
Eve didn’t kiss him again, but she put her mouth right next to his ear. He liked the breath and heat. He liked the pressure and the touch of her tongue there. Well, at least that’s what used to fire him up. She had another moment of panic when she realized that her mouth might not have the same effect on him as it had back then. He might push her—
Grayson made a slight, familiar sound.
If she’d been any other woman, she might not have even heard the catch in his chest, the small burst of breath that he tried to choke back. But Eve heard those things, and she knew exactly what they meant. This was still a fire spot for him. So were her hands on his chest. Since his shirt was already partially unbuttoned, she ran her fingers through his chest hair. And lower.
Grayson liked lower.
Still did, apparently.
Because by the time she trailed her fingers from his stomach and to the front of his jeans, she found him already huge and hard. She pressed her sex against his.
Eve suddenly didn’t feel so cold.
A thought flashed through her head—this was like riding a bicycle. Well, better actually. Her body knew exactly what Grayson could do to her, how he could make her soar. And fall. That wouldn’t happen now. It couldn’t. She had to keep this as clinical as possible. He was merely a sperm donor here and not her lover.
Eve fumbled with his zipper and finally managed to lower it. No thanks to her hands. She was trembling. So was her mouth, but that didn’t seem to affect the kisses she lowered to his neck.
She reached to take off her panties, but Grayson latched onto her hand. His grip was as hard as the part of him she was pressed against.
Her gaze snapped to his, and again Eve was terrified that he was stopping this. But Grayson didn’t look her in the eyes. He made another of those sounds, a growl from deep within his throat, and he grabbed her with his other hand. He turned her, shoving her back against the tree. The impact and her surprise nearly knocked the breath out of her.
Grayson seemed to have no trouble breathing. He yanked off her panties and pushed his hips between her legs. He was on his knees now, and the weight of him pinned her to the tree.
For just a moment, she registered the rough bark against her back and bottom. His raw grip. The harsh profanity he was mumbling. Then, he thrust into her. One long stroke that was nearly as rough as the hold he had on her wrists.
Her body gave way to his sex. Welcoming him. Yes, he was rough, and the thrusts inside her didn’t become gentle, either. Of course, he knew her body as well as she knew his. And Grayson knew her. Gentle didn’t work for her. She had always been in such a hurry to have him that she had begged for hard and fast.
Exactly what he was giving her now.
The man knew what he was doing, that was for sure. He’d learned to make love with her. He knew how to bring her to climax within seconds. Normally, Eve would have gladly surrendered to that climax. She would have surrendered to Grayson, but she instinctively knew that would make the aftermath even worse than it already would be.
And it would be bad.
This would cut her off from Grayson forever. Once he’d had time to apply his logical no-shades-of-gray mind to this, he would feel that she’d manipulated him. And she had. Later, Eve would deal with it, too. But for now, she pressed her mouth to the spot just below his ear. She whispered his name.
“Grayson.”
The trigger, he had once called it. To finish him off, all she had to do was say his name. It had just the effect she knew it would.
He thrust into her one last time and said her name, too. Almost.
“Damn you, Eve,” Grayson cursed.
And he finished what he’d started.
Chapter Nine
Grayson got up as soon as he could move. He fixed his clothes and then put some distance between Eve and him. He couldn’t go far, but even a few yards would help.
He hoped.
Behind him, he could hear Eve milling around. She was also mumbling. Grayson didn’t want to figure out what she was saying. He didn’t want to figure out anything except why he’d snapped and done the very thing he’d sworn
he wouldn’t do.
“If you’re waiting for me to say I’m sorry, then you’ll be waiting a long time,” Eve let him know. “Because I’m not sorry, and I hope you’re not, either.”
Oh, he was. Sorry and stupid. But that wouldn’t change what had happened. There was no way he could justify having sex with Eve. Yes, she might get pregnant. She might finally get that baby she wanted, but that put him right in a position he didn’t want to be.
He didn’t want to be a father.
Of course, the odds were against Eve having conceived. Grayson had no idea of the stats, but even with her at the prime time of the month, this had to be a long shot.
Hell.
That bothered him, too.
He wanted Eve to have this chance at motherhood, but Grayson wanted what he wanted, as well. Too bad he couldn’t quite put a finger on what he did want. Nor did he have time to figure it out. His phone beeped, and he glanced down at the message as it came onto the screen.
“Is it Dade?” Eve asked, hurrying to his side. She was still fixing her clothes, and she smelled like sex. Looked like it, too, Grayson noticed when he risked glancing at her. He looked away as fast as he could.
“Yeah.” Grayson worked his way through the abbreviations Dade had used in the message and gave her a summary. “He used my cell phone to pinpoint our location and will be here soon.”
She made a sound of relief. So different from the sound she’d made just minutes ago when he’d taken her against the tree. The memory of it flashed through his head, and Grayson knew that memory would give him no peace.
His phone beeped again, and there was a new message from Dade. “He wants me to take a picture of the body,” Grayson relayed to Eve. “As soon as we have a better signal, I can send it to the Rangers and they can feed it through the facial recognition program.”
Something that Grayson should have already thought of, but then he’d had sex with Eve on his mind.
He cursed himself again.
“Wait here,” he ordered, and Grayson walked across the woods to the body. Even the mini break from Eve might help because right now his stomach was knotted even harder than it had been in the middle of the attack.
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