by Nicole Helm
So she would keep telling herself.
“Give me your right hand.”
With another swallow, she followed his instruction. He took her hand and positioned it over the grips of the gun.
“Put your index finger here, and the rest here. Curl the thumb around.” He moved her fingers exactly where he wanted them to go, and the more he did to help her put her hands in the right positions, the closer he got. The hard expanse of his chest brushed against her back.
She tried to suck in her breath and hold really still so he wasn’t actually touching her. Not because it was unpleasant, but because it was all too pleasant.
The hand not holding hers on the gun slid to her hip, and she very nearly squeaked when it fastened there. That was not...casual, a hand on her hip. Her hip. She could feel the sheer size of his hand, the warmth of his palm. She could feel far too much, sparkling through her.
“You want to plant your feet to maximize the steadiness of your arms. So, take a step forward with your right leg.” As she did as she was told, he used the hand on her hip to position her in a slightly different way than she would have on her own.
“There,” he said, his voice all too close to her ear, scratchy and, like, holy moly, sexy. Why did she have to find him sexy? Why would she think he was hot right now when he was teaching her how to use a deadly weapon?
She thought she heard him swallow, but she had to convince herself she was crazy. Someone like Vaughn would never be affected by this. He probably touched women all the time, and they didn’t have any affect on him whatsoever. He probably thought of her as some kind of criminal, and that perceived swallow was all in her head.
“If you have to shoot, you want to be able to get into this position. Only in the most strident of emergencies should you do anything else.”
“What’s considered a strident emergency?”
“If a person is in the act of physically harming you, then you have no choice. But if there’s any kind of distance between you, you want to try to get in this position. It’s going to make your shots straighter and smoother. In a dangerous situation, the last thing you want to do is start shooting willy-nilly. You have to know your target, and you have to be steady.”
“What if I’m shaking too hard to be steady?”
“Then you don’t shoot.”
“But what if someone’s in danger?”
“They’re going to be in more danger if you shoot when you don’t have a good handle on the gun or a good stance.”
“Okay. So then how do I shoot?”
He stepped closer, his body pressed to the back of hers. She knew he had to do it in order to show her how to properly shoot the gun, but that didn’t mean it was easy to focus on anything but the firm warmth of a wall pressing against her. She wanted to explore it. She wanted to find out what was underneath.
Because she was ridiculous, apparently.
She took a deep breath, trying not to give away how shaky it was. But considering he was pressed against her, he had to know. He had to know that he affected her. That was so hideously embarrassing she almost couldn’t concentrate.
“Now, you grip the trigger.” His hand tightened on hers, guiding her index finger back to the appropriate spot.
This time when Vaughn swallowed, she had no doubt. He was affected. Granted, he was probably even more horrified by that than she was, but it was still real.
This attraction wasn’t a one-sided idiotic thing. It was a two-sided idiotic thing.
“Now you’re going to focus on the black spot right there on the hill. Do you see it?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice giving away some of her anxiety. She hoped against all hope he thought it was anxiety over shooting a gun, not anxiety about how much her body wanted to rub against his.
“You’re going to focus on the black spot. Look through the sight and clear your mind so the only thing you’re thinking about is that black spot. There’s nothing to be nervous about. There’s nothing to be concerned about. All you’re trying to do is pull the trigger while focusing on that black spot.”
“Oh... Okay.” Except focus sounded nearly impossible when he was all but wrapped around her. Sturdy and strong and something she absolutely had to resist.
“You can do this, Natalie,” he said in her ear. “I have faith in you.”
He couldn’t possibly in his wildest dreams understand how much those words meant to her. How big they were even though he was someone she didn’t exactly care about. Or shouldn’t care about.
Still, his belief, his faith, was more than the people who were supposed to love her gave her. And she understood that. Their lack of faith and belief was mixed up in grief and a terrible tragedy. But that didn’t mean she didn’t miss it. She understood, but that didn’t mean she stopped craving some sort of support.
So when Vaughn said it, even if he was the last person in the world she should want belief from, it mattered.
He steadied her arms, he had faith in her. It made her feel like she could do not just this, but the whole thing. That together they could find the answers that had eluded her for eight years.
“Pull,” he said, and she did. Because he had faith in her. Because he had given her the tools to pull the trigger.
The gun gave a surprisingly harsh kick, but she remained steady and unshaken, even as the breath whooshed out of her.
“You hit it.”
She turned to face him, still kind of in the circle of his arms, their hands still on the gun. “Why do you sound surprised? You said you had faith in me.”
“Faith in you to shoot the gun, not actually hit the target.”
“But you were helping me.”
“I didn’t pull the trigger. I wasn’t looking at the sights. You aimed, you pulled, I just kept your body in position. Hitting the target was all you, Natalie.”
She laughed, the surprise of it all bubbling out of her. “You’re screwing with me. Trying to build up my confidence.”
“Trust me, if I helped, I’d let you know. It’s not worth giving you confidence if you don’t actually know what you’re doing in the process.”
She looked at the black spot and the little scarring inside it. She hadn’t hit it exactly where she’d been aiming—right in the middle—but she had hit that black spot.
She looked back at Vaughn again, their gazes meeting. Their hands were still on the gun, and she was still pressed up against him. His hand was on her hip, his other arm curled around her other side. It was a very...intimate position—aside from the fact they were both still holding the gun—and yet she couldn’t seem to make herself move.
She was pinned by that gray-blue gaze that seemed to have warmed up a little bit in the fading sunlight. Like something about the heavily setting dusk teased out the flashes of darker blue in his eyes.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, and her entire insides shivered and shimmered to life. As though that gaze meant something. As though he had the same thoughts she did—kissing thoughts. Maybe even naked thoughts.
He was so not going to kiss her, what was she even thinking? He didn’t like her. He was the consummate professional. Mr. Conventional. Any thoughts about kissing were hers and hers alone, and so out of place it wasn’t even funny.
“We should head back in now that it’s just about dark.”
“Right.”
“You can...” He cleared his throat, his eyes still on her mouth.
That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe you have something on your face. He’s not wondering what your lips feel like on his, that’s all you, sister.
“You can let go of the gun,” he said, that note of gentleness she hated back in his voice as he carefully started to separate their bodies.
“Right.” She dropped the weapon all too quickly, but Vaughn managed to catc
h the gun before it fell to the ground.
They were completely apart now, a few feet between them. Vaughn put the gun in his holster, not even needing to look at the gun to do so. Which, honestly, should ease her embarrassment. He was so in charge and in control and certain, why wouldn’t she be attracted to that in a situation like this?
It was just...one of those things. Hero worship or something. Natural to find yourself wondering what a kiss would be like from the man who was dedicated to keeping you safe.
“We’ll do more tomorrow. Of the...shooting. We’ll shoot more tomorrow. Not... I mean.” He cleared his throat. “We’ll practice more shooting tomorrow.”
She stared at him, something in her chest loosening. He had stuttered. Ranger Vaughn Cooper had just stuttered at her.
He was walking toward the house now, and she followed, but she couldn’t quite stop the smile from spreading across her face.
Maybe just maybe, she wasn’t as out of her mind as she thought.
Chapter Nine
After two days of practice, Natalie had become proficient with his Glock. She had a natural talent, and she impressed him every day.
Vaughn tried not to think too much about that. Because the more he was impressed by her, the more he felt a certain affinity toward her, and that just wouldn’t do.
He’d spent half the past two days searching for information on Victor Callihan. He traded emails with Stevens about the man, but so far they were coming up empty. Clean as a whistle, an upstanding member of the community. Vaughn didn’t trust it. But he couldn’t deny the fact that someone else could be at the center of all this. Just because Callihan was the owner didn’t mean he was the perpetrator. There were a lot of people in his corporation who could be The Stallion and thus connecting the Corlico Plant to The Stallion.
Vaughn’s frustration with the case was mounting. Especially after the email from Stevens that informed him Natalie’s mother’s home had been burglarized while she was at work last night. Vaughn still hadn’t decided whether to tell Natalie. Which was why he was currently doing as many sit-ups as he possibly could to take his mind off of the internal debate.
Natalie would be upset. She would be more scared than she already was. He wasn’t sure she needed that, but he also didn’t like the idea of keeping it from her. Which wasn’t personal. It was his code of ethics. He didn’t like keeping things from people. That was all.
Sure, that’s all.
He continued to do the sit-ups, pushing harder and harder in the hopes of dulling his brain completely. He took off his shirt before switching over to push-ups.
It wasn’t just trying to outexercise his thoughts. He needed to stay sharp physically as well, and the more he exerted himself, the better he slept for the short snatches he allowed himself. Which kept him better rested, all in all.
It has nothing to do with the fact that you can’t seem to help fantasize about Natalie as you’re drifting off.
Yeah, it had nothing to do with that.
The fact of the matter was, they couldn’t stay here indefinitely. More important, he didn’t want to stay here indefinitely. They had to get somewhere in this case so he could go back to his life, and Natalie could go back to hers—what little was left of it. But surely she wanted to rebuild. Surely she wanted to get back to normalcy. God knew he did.
He pushed up and down, and up and down, and up and down, his arms screaming, but his mind still going in circles. How did they prove there was a connection? How did they get the answers they needed? And how did he take Natalie back to Austin once their time ran out, knowing she would be in imminent danger if they didn’t figure it out?
Just another case you can’t solve, the obnoxious voice in his head taunted.
Did it ever occur to you that police work might not be your calling, Vaughn? I mean, really. If you need to focus your whole attention on it, and none on me, how can this be what you’re good at?
He went down and stayed on the ground, more than a little irritated that Jenny’s doubts were creeping into his own mind. They’d ended their marriage because he hadn’t been able to give her what she wanted, but it had really ended when he hadn’t wanted to fight for someone who refused to believe in his lifework. Because becoming a police officer had never been just a thing to do, or something frivolous or unimportant. It had been a calling. It had been something that he excelled at. Her doubts had eaten away at what little was left of the feelings between them.
“Are you asleep?”
Vaughn pushed up into a sitting position and glanced at Natalie, standing there in the opening of the hallway. She was wearing shorts today, which seemed patently unfair. Yesterday she had worn the clothes she’d been wearing the morning they left, but the day before she’d been wearing his sister’s clothes again.
On the days she wore his sister’s clothes, he pretty much wanted to walk around blindfolded so he didn’t have to see the expanse of olive skin, or notice how the casual fabric clung to the soft curves of an all too attractive body.
Most of all, he had to work way too hard to ignore that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so attracted to someone. And the more time they spent together, the less that was just physical.
“No. Not asleep. Just resting.”
“Right. Well. I thought we could practice shooting a little bit more before you go back to sleep.”
“You need to eat something. Then I thought maybe we could work on a little bit of hand-to-hand self-defense.” Which was the absolute last thing he wanted to do with her—touch her. But he thought it was important. If he had to take her back to Austin without cracking this case, she needed more than a gun to protect herself. She needed every possible tool in his arsenal.
And he wanted to give it to her. He needed to make sure she was going to be safe. No matter what happened here. Even if his superiors ended up calling him back before they could figure this all out, he would consider Natalie under his protection. He wouldn’t look too far into why that was. It was just his nature. He was a man of honor, and seeing things through to the end was why he was in unsolved crimes, because he didn’t give up on things. He didn’t walk away when things got hard.
“Hand-to-hand...self-defense?”
She sounded unsure, so as he grabbed his shirt, he tried to give her a reassuring glance, but he noticed where her eyes had drifted.
Not to his face, not to anything else in the room. She was staring at his chest, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth in a way that made him all too glad he was wearing loose-fitting sweatpants. Because no matter how hard he had to ignore that little dart of arousal that went through him, it was still there. Prominently.
“There are a variety ways to protect yourself,” he managed to say. “I think you should know them all.”
Slowly, way too slowly for his sanity and giving him way too much pleasure, her eyes drifted back up to his face. Her cheeks had tinged a little pink, and she blinked a little excessively.
She was attracted to him. Which he needed to not think about.
“So, there haven’t been any breakthroughs in the case, I’m assuming?”
This was his chance to tell her about her mother’s burglary. He couldn’t do it. Natalie had started to relax, and she didn’t seem nervous, most of the time. He didn’t want to add to that. He’d tell her before they went back, but not now. Not now when she was on some kind of solid ground.
“Not so far. Callihan continues to come up clean, but we’re looking more into your sister’s case, and cases similar to it that are unsolved. Herman did say girls, plural.”
“So, you’re doing exactly what I’ve already been doing for the past eight years?”
He frowned at that. “You don’t have the access to information that we have.”
“You’d be surprised at what I found out.” Sh
e laughed, but it was a kind of bitter, sad sound. And he wanted to comfort her. He could keep ignoring that want, and he would certainly keep not acting on it, but he was having a hard time denying that it existed.
“Maybe we should sit down and talk about it. You can tell me your assumptions, and I can match them with the case details.”
She looked perplexed, and she stood there quietly for a few minutes while he pulled his shirt on.
“I thought you’d be angrier that I kept my connection from you.”
“Just because I’m willing to help you doesn’t mean I’m not angry that you kept something from me. But I also knew you were keeping something from me, so it’s not as though it was some betrayal.”
“Right. You don’t care about me.”
It was uncomfortable how badly he wanted to argue about that, but it was best if he didn’t. It was best if he pretended like he didn’t care about her at all. “I care about your safety.”
“Because that’s your job.”
“Yes.” Yes, that was the care. It certainly wasn’t something more foolish with some woman he’d known for only a handful of days. He was too rational and practical for all that. Attraction could bloom in an instant, care could not.
She didn’t say anything to that, but there was something in her expression that ate at him. Something about the unfairness of this whole situation...grating. It was beyond frustrating that he was now part of a case where he was not just failing, but he had to stand in front of someone who was affected by the case, and tell her, every day, that he continued to fail at solving it. That he wasn’t doing his job as well as he wanted to.
“I’m not sure what I could tell you about my sister’s case that you don’t already know if you’ve seen her file.”
“Why don’t you tell me about her.”
“It wasn’t her fault. Believe me, I’ve been through every police officer who wants to say that Gabby was at fault, that she had to have done something. I have had my fill of people who want to make it into something that couldn’t be helped and can’t be fixed. I have no interest in doing that with you.”
