Rival Forces

by D. D. Ayres

  “I’ll tell you everything. But first.” He scooped a hand behind her head and brought her head down to his.

  At the touch of his mouth heat shook through her. His mouth was hungry and hard, as if he were imprinting her with his taste and touch. Or reminding her why he was here.

  Familiar passion surged through her. After all, they’d been together for more than a year. It was a good kiss. It was what she’d been waiting for, everything she expected. What she’d been hoping to recapture, needed desperately to make things whole again. This was it. The real deal. But it felt strange, all the same.

  Something had changed. She had changed.

  His eyes were heavy as he gazed at her, blue eyes now sharp and bright with desire. “God, I’ve been waiting to do that for three months.”

  “Me, too.” The words came automatically but felt false on her lips. She hoped he wouldn’t notice. Because it was no longer true.

  She was good at many things but she wasn’t a good liar. Even that much had her conscience squirming as she pulled back from him. Because somewhere in the middle of that kiss, Kye’s face had slid into view behind her closed lids.

  Confused and more than a little off kilter, she shifted her gaze to the blood on his jacket and winced. There were more important considerations than her feelings at the moment. “You’re bleeding! What can I do to help?”

  “I need to know a few things first.”

  He was watching her intently, as if looking for a tell if she’d lie. This was a new side of him, but one she suspected was necessary in the world in which he worked. “Has anyone been asking about me?”

  He wouldn’t be put off this time. “Yes. An FBI agent and a DEA agent were here yesterday asking questions about you. But that’s because I called them first. Weeks ago,” she added when his eyes widened. “You were missing and I was worried.”

  His eyes narrowed until his blue irises looked like chips of ice. “What did you tell them?”

  “The truth. That I hadn’t heard from you in three months.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “Nothing, at first. And then about a week ago I got a call saying they had learned that you had applied for a visa to leave the country permanently. Is that true?”

  “No. It was a cover.”

  “For what?”

  When he didn’t answer immediately, Yardley glanced down at the makeshift bandage around his right biceps again. It was oozing, which meant the wound was still bleeding. She glanced back to catch his expression as she voiced her worst fear. “Did someone in law enforcement do this?”

  His brows rose. “Are you hoping your guy’s turned romantic outlaw?”

  “Don’t joke, David. This is serious.”

  “You’re right.” He touched her face very gently with his left hand, rubbing his thumb lightly across her lower lip. “Those bruises are less than a day old. Are you certain you’re okay?”

  She grabbed his hand to still it. “I’m not a fragile flower who has to be distracted from reality, David. Tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “I was just about to ask the same question.”

  Both she and David turned toward the doorway at the sound of Kye’s voice.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Kye. I’m glad you’re here.” Yardley scooted off the bed but the man on it refused to release her hand. “We need your help.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “This is Dr. David Gunnar.”

  Kye stood stock-still. Concern had sent him looking for Yardley when she didn’t immediately return from her walk with Oleg. They could have been working in a classroom because the weather had turned nasty, as expected. But after all that had occurred within the past twenty-four hours, he wasn’t taking any chances.

  Now he wished he’d come looking for her a lot sooner.

  Dr. David Gunnar. In the flesh.

  He took in the guy on the bed in a glance. Male. Fit. Probably what women would call dreamy. Kye hated dreamy. In fact, instantly, everything about the guy irritated him.

  The doc’s teeth were too white in a face weathered by the elements. Even the squint lines around his light eyes seemed calculated to attract. His light hair, streaked almost platinum in places by the sun, made him look ruggedly handsome. His dirty and mud-spattered clothing should have ruined the effect. It didn’t. Well bred in rustic clothing, the doc looked like a blond David Beckham.

  “What the fuck are you doing here, Doc?” He added a hard glance for Yardley. She offered one right back but kept silent.

  The man struggled to a seated position. “Who are you?”

  “We’ll get to that when it becomes relevant.”

  “It’s okay.” Yardley reached for the doc’s hand. “This is Kye McGarren, a friend of the family.”

  Kye’s attitude took a further nosedive. Of the family, my ass. I was the guy moving hot and heavy between your thighs not three hours ago.

  He shoved that thought aside as less than helpful at the moment. He pointed at the man’s bloody sleeve. “What have you got there?”

  “He’s injured,” Yardley said tightly.

  Ignoring her, Kye pointed again. “Mind if I look at it?”

  Gunnar gave him a hard man-to-man look. “You know first aid?”

  “MP. Two tours. Afghanistan.”

  The doc jerked his head once in the affirmative.

  Kye produced a Swiss army knife from his pocket. “Cutting your sleeve is the most efficient way to get to the injury. Sorry if it ruins your ensemble.”

  Doc gave up a ghost of a laugh.

  Kye frowned. Sense of humor. The annoyance factor with this guy just kept ratcheting up.

  Kye slit the sleeve before untying the bandage and slowly peeling it back. It was stiff with blood. He was more interested in the shape of the wound it covered. He pulled in a breath at the sight that was at once familiar, but shocking when discovered at Harmonie Kennels.

  He locked gazes with the doc. Confirmation was there in those steely blue depths. “He’s not hurt, Yard. This man’s been shot.”

  “Shot?” Yardley turned to David.

  The man’s expression went remote as it locked with Kye’s. “I need to talk with Yardley. Alone.”

  “Not going to happen.” Kye leveled him with a cold blast of distrust and pulled out his phone. “I’m calling the sheriff.”

  “Excuse me.” Yard’s voice was sharp enough to cut through the testosterone standoff. “Last time I checked this was my property. I make the decisions.” She looked down at David. “You want the police involved?”

  “We need to talk first.”

  She glanced up at Kye. “No police.”

  Kye rejected the first two, maybe three, thoughts that came to mind. Every one of them would be something he’d later regret. It was her eyes that won him over. There was a plea for understanding. Well, he didn’t understand. But he didn’t need to hurt her because of that.

  “Right. You two have a chat while I find something to bind up the doc’s wound. But don’t take long. It’s snowing like fuck out there.”

  “Wait. I’m coming with you. You don’t know where anything is.” She gave David a reassuring smile. “I’ll be right back. Don’t worry. Oleg will protect you.”

  Kye waited until they were both beyond the bunkhouse before turning and blocking Yardley’s path. “What the hell, Yard! When were you going to tell me he was here?”

  She jutted out her chin, the bruises smudging the lush beauty of her face but not dimming it. “I didn’t know. I had just stumbled upon him.”

  “You weren’t holding back earlier about your text messages?”

  “Why would I lie to you?”

  Kye ran a hand through his hair to dislodge the salting of snowflakes lighting there. “It’s fucking obvious he’s on the run, Yard. From something bad.”

  “I know that.” She swallowed, blinking snowflakes from her dark lashes. “He was about to explain what’s going on when you barged in.”r />
  Kye reared back. “So this is suddenly my fault?”

  Yard brushed snowflakes from her face. “Can we do this indoors?”

  “Fine. But I’m not going to back off.” She wasn’t listening to him, she was plowing ahead, leaving him to follow in her wake.

  Harmonie Kennels’ state-of-the-art facilities included, among other things, a fully stocked veterinary clinic where the needs of their K-9s could be taken care of. The small space was equipped with everything a small-animal vet might need, including an examination table, bandages, and a small fridge full of medications.

  Yardley began grabbing bandages and surgical tape off the shelves.

  Kye reached up to block her with his body when she reached for more. “It’s an arm wound, Yard. You’ve got enough stuff to make a mummy out of him.”

  She looked up, her face flushed. Something had changed; this was no longer only about them.

  The truth was there in her eyes. So alive in a face she too seldom allowed its full range of emotion. She wasn’t an enigma. She was just very careful. Too careful for her own good. But now her expression was revealing every emotion running through her thoughts. There was fear. And the fierce need to protect. And affection. It just ate him up inside that it was caused by a man that wasn’t him.

  “What do you really know about this guy?”

  She didn’t answer, just started raiding drawers for tubes of ointment.

  He hip-checked her reach for the stethoscope hanging on the wall. She turned a blazing glance on him that nearly set his short hairs on fire. But at least he had her attention.

  “You two had a thing. I got that. But you know nothing about him but what he’s told you. He disappeared for months without any explanation. Believe me, you don’t know who he really is or what he really does.”

  “I know enough.”

  The reverberations of those three words made Kye sway on his feet. Law had warned him. This was the man Yard thought she wanted to marry.

  He and Yard had always had a volatile history. They were like oil and vinegar. Shake them up and they became a delicious blend of emotions to satisfy their sexual appetites. But when things settled out, they were once again divided in every way that mattered. To argue otherwise would be stupid, pointless, insane.

  Still, he wasn’t going down without a fight.

  He went toe-to-toe with her, bringing his body against hers without laying a finger on her. She didn’t back away. “Then add this into your calculation. Men don’t get shot at without reason. Someone wants him dead. Do you understand what that means?”

  Yard’s eyes grew wider but she came back at him like a tiger. “It means David needs my help.”

  “And you need mine.” He could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheek. It was killing him not to touch her. He reached out and pushed a lock of hair from her cheek. “The doc’s in no position to argue. I’m calling the sheriff or the FBI. Take your pick.”

  Outrage had never had a more beautiful canvas than her face. “You’d do that to me?”

  “To save your sweet ass? In a heartbeat.”

  She stared at him as if he had morphed into a troll. Then she shoved her armload of supplies against his chest. “First you need to finish what you started. Don’t drop anything. And try to keep up.”

  “I like the way you say Please, oh please, don’t abandon me, Kye. Yep, when you plead for help, it just goes all over a guy in a warm and fuzzy way.”

  She tossed the middle finger over her shoulder at him as she moved on to the next room to get antibiotics. But he would swear he caught the edge of a smile on her face as she turned the corner.

  * * *

  “I can do that.” Yard was watching Kye slit the rest of the sleeve of the doctor’s flannel shirt in order to get to the rear wound.

  “You’re emotionally involved.” Kye didn’t look up from what he was doing. “Don’t-give-a-damn trumps emotionally involved. If you want to help you can boil water.”

  “Screw you. I’m staying.”

  David looked back and forth between the pair. “You sound like an old married couple.”

  “Do not,” they replied in unison.

  Kye scowled at his patient. “If you can’t take the pain, let me know.”

  He levered the doctor’s arm high to check the back of his biceps. Then he pulled out a penlight and bent close for a better look at the injury.

  By the time the examination was done, Gunnar was sweating, and it wasn’t from the temperature. But his voice was steady and his gaze direct. “How bad is it?”

  “You know more than I do, of course. But I’d say it’s an ice-pick injury.”

  “Ice pick?” Yardley looked confused. “I thought he’d been shot.”

  “It means the bullet passed through my arm.” David reached out his good hand to her. “I agree. I did a preliminary examination first chance I could. I could tell by the blood flow that the bullet didn’t sever an artery. And the bone’s not broken.”

  “Still, it did damage, Doc.” Kye tried not to stare at the way Yardley was smoothing the hair back from the man’s face. But he was jealous. So green he made the Hulk look jaundiced. “You’ve got a lot of swelling, and judging by the heat around the wound, infection could be an issue really soon.”

  Gunnar was swearing softly by the time Kye finished rebandaging the arm. And his complexion seemed to be draining away behind his deep tan. He needed liquids, and probably some kind of sedative. But he wasn’t complaining.

  “Think you can scare up some painkillers from the clinic, Yard? I figure Dr. Gunnar will know which he can safely take and at what dose.” He glanced at his patient. “Of course, you won’t get the cherry flavoring.”

  Yardley passed a worried glance between the two men before she turned to leave.

  “Take Oleg. For safety.”

  She nodded, grabbing the dog’s leash. Lily had long ago curled up under the bunk the doc occupied.

  When she left, Kye turned to David. “Start talking and make the words count.”

  Gunnar watched Kye for a moment, and Kye knew he was weighing his options. “How long have you known Yardley?”

  Kye glanced at the door. Yardley would make that the fastest trip possible. “I trained under her father about a dozen years ago.”

  “Why do you call her Yard?”

  “All her friends do.” The doc was getting exactly one more question before it was his turn again.

  “You’re more than a friend.”

  Kye held the man’s gaze. He knew what he was asking. “We’ve got a lot of shared history. First her father. Then I served with her brother in Afghanistan.”

  The doctor blinked. “I didn’t know she had a brother.”

  “If you want to know more about Yard, you’d better ask her.”

  A sketch of a smile appeared on Gunnar’s face. “She’s a very independent and private person. It’s one of the things I like best about her.”

  Kye flicked him a look. “Let’s cut to the chase. I haven’t called the authorities because she asked me not to. But I don’t trust her judgment about you. You put her through hell. So you don’t get to come here with your wounded-warrior act and lean on a woman whose only real flaw, in my opinion, is her weakness for you. You need to tell the truth about what’s going on. Then let her decide if she wants to be part of your bullet-dodging world. Do we understand each other?”

  “That’s a lot of talking for an uninvolved man.”

  “Yeah. I work alone a lot. You should ask my dog Lily about how I can chatter on.”

  “You have feelings for Yard.”

  “Well, I’m just a touchy-feely kind of guy.”

  “Does she know?”

  “If it mattered do you think I’d be talking to you instead of hauling your ass out of here?”

  Gunnar gave him a long look. “I haven’t done anything illegal.”

  “Tell Yard the whole truth. She’s a big girl. She can deal. If she wants to. If she doesn’t
, I’m going to be a bigger problem than anything you’ve got going now.”

  Yardley came back then, moving in a hurry, Oleg at her heels. “I found several meds that might work. But we need to move David to the house. It’s freezing in here. And the weather is getting worse.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Yardley sat beside her bed watching the handsome man propped up on her pillows. How many times during the last three months had she lay in this bed wishing David could be here with her? Now he was. Yet all she could think about was being overheard by the man on the other side of the closed bedroom door.

  Maybe that was because what David had explained to her so far about what lay behind his sudden disappearance was a long way from reassuring. The fake drug industry, that’s what David had set himself against. He was a witness in a government task force to take down traffickers in bogus pharmaceuticals. She didn’t have to ask if it was dangerous. He’d been in protective custody, waiting until he could give testimony in a trial. And when he left, he’d been shot. She had a thousand questions but he was very weak, and getting more so by the moment. There was one, at least, that demanded an answer.

  Her gaze strayed to his wound. “You haven’t told me who shot you.”

  “The less you know the safer is it for everyone.” His expression was strained by pain since she and Kye half carried him to the house. He was gray-faced by the time they got him into bed. He had rallied a little after sips of Gatorade, green tea, and a couple of the heavy-duty pain meds she’d found in her bathroom cabinet. She’d kept them after healing from a muscle pulled while demonstrating how to rappel down a thirty-foot wall with a K-9 strapped on.

  “You’ve got to give me something, David.” She locked eyes with him. “Why did you come here?”

  “You.” His smile winked in. It didn’t have a firm perch on his lips.

  “I never gave you any personal information. How did you know how to find me?”

  “The FBI.” He closed his eyes, the effort to speak taxing him. “They told me you had come to them for help finding me.” His eyes opened again, searching hers with a seriousness she’d never before seen from him. “Is that true?”