“Damn right,” he grumbled.
“I know you’re mad at me—”
“I’m more than mad, lady. You stole my nephew! I can’t just forget that. If you were a man, you’d be nursing a bashed nose right now.”
She sent him an injured look. “I also brought him back. I didn’t have to do that. I had planned to take care of him alone until I figured out what’s really going on here. But that Rialto henchman showed up and—”
She shivered, and a primitive urge to hold her, comfort her, beat back her enemies with a club swamped him. Max forced his gaze back to the road.
“I got scared,” she whispered. “Worried…about you.”
He cut another quick, hard glance toward her. “Me?”
“You were vulnerable. Unarmed. A sitting duck out here by yourself.”
He didn’t like being called vulnerable, but in truth, he had been an easy mark. And she’d been worried about him. His anger eased its stranglehold a fraction more.
“I’ve never been so frightened.” She turned her bright, laserlike eyes to him. “The way he was watching me, the pure evil that surrounded him. I know he intended to kill me and take Elmer. He just couldn’t do it there in public.”
Cold fingers of terror crawled up Max’s spine. Knowing how close he’d come to losing Elmer for good, how close Laura had come to being killed left him chilled to the marrow.
His heart seized, and his anger cooled another degree. Not only had Laura risked her life to guard Elmer, she’d come back for Max himself when she feared for his life. For that, she regained a grudging measure of his respect.
“I’m not asking you to like me, Max. I’m not even asking you to trust me. But the truth is neither of us can do this alone. Those men are ready to kill to get this baby back. That gash in your shoulder proves that much.”
His gut tightened. She had a point. “Go on.”
“You need to have your full attention on watching out for the Rialtos. You can’t be distracted with caring for a newborn. That’s a full-time job in its own right. And if we drag the police into this, who knows where Elmer will end up. I don’t want him with a stranger.”
He sighed. “So what do you propose?”
“A truce. An alliance. We both have Elmer’s best interests at heart. We’ll take care of him and guard him together. At least until we can figure out something else.”
“And I’m supposed to forget that you took off with him once before?”
He saw the pain and guilt that flickered across her face. “I won’t keep apologizing for that. If you choose not to trust me, there’s nothing I can do about that. But I swear to you on my life, I would never do anything to hurt that little boy. That you can believe.”
And he did. She’d proven her loyalty to Elmer, if not to him. What she said about the Rialtos made sense. He did need to stay alert. Stay focused. Having her along hadn’t been part of his plan, but now it looked like his best move.
“All right. We have a truce. For Elmer’s sake. But from now on, I call the shots. You do what I say, no questions asked. Got it?”
Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth as if to protest.
He forestalled her complaint by poking a finger in her face. “I mean it. I’m in charge. Take it or leave it.”
Her shoulders drooped, and her already full lips pouted even more. “Fine.”
“Good. It’s settled then.”
“Actually, there is one other thing I need to know.”
“What?”
Laura leaned across the front seat, grabbed his chin.
And planted a kiss on his mouth.
Chapter 8
Max almost drove off the road in shock. Instead, he stood on the brake, stopping in the middle of the deserted highway. He sank his fingers into Laura’s riot of blond waves, anchoring her in place until he’d sated himself on her lips. Heat thickened his blood. Desire streaked through him like a blaze fed by gasoline. His tongue plundered, reveling in the sweet taste of her mouth. The soft caress of her lips, drawing gently on his, was a sensual dream come true.
She pulled away and gazed at him with heavy-lidded eyes. “Hmm. Not bad.”
She licked her lips as she settled back in the passenger seat. Calmly she tucked a tangled wisp of her gold hair behind her ear and turned to look out the window as if she hadn’t just blown his socks off.
Not bad? How could she be so blasé about something that still had his senses reeling?
“What was that about?” he asked, hating that his voice sounded stunned, thick with lust.
“Just satisfying my curiosity.”
He started to tell her it had been a damn sight better than not bad, but he swallowed his argument along with his pride. Maybe it had been only not bad for her. Maybe he’d lost his touch. Maybe he hadn’t shaken her to the core the way she’d shaken him.
It had been three years since he’d slept with a woman. More like six years since he’d made love for the sake of pleasure and sexual gratification.
In the final years of his marriage, sex had been about ovulation and conception and maximizing windows of opportunity. The process had become clinical and rehearsed and devoid of the passion that had marked the early years with Jennifer. Before she’d asked for a baby. Before they couldn’t conceive. Before they’d been told his sperm count made the odds of natural conception next to nil.
With a tired sigh, Max worked to push the memories aside, battling the swell of disappointment, the resentment, the humiliation. But Laura’s not bad assessment lanced a festering wound to his male ego, his pride. Knowing he couldn’t get a woman pregnant had struck a massive blow to his sense of masculinity. When sex with Jennifer had grown increasingly goal-oriented and decreasingly fun, he’d even questioned his ability to satisfy her physical needs.
Not bad. Damn it, he wanted her to melt from his touch, to scream with ecstasy and feel her whole world tilt on its axis because of his kiss.
He glanced at Laura, dropped his gaze to her lips, still swollen from their kiss. Need and longing kicked him in the gut.
Hell. He didn’t need a distraction from the serious business of protecting them from the Rialtos. But he wanted more than not bad. By God, he could please a woman, could make her scream with passion. And before they were through, Laura Dalton would know it, too.
For the past ten hours, as they’d driven to the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, Laura had thought of little besides that one kiss. Sure she’d kissed a few boys as a teenager—before she’d realized kisses could lead to crushes and then rejection—but Max was a man, not a fumbling boy.
Having no experience with men, nothing had prepared her for the mind-blowing sensation of Max’s firm lips possessing hers. He’d taken control of the kiss almost immediately and masterfully demonstrated how passionate that hard mouth of his could be. The memory of his tongue gently invading her mouth turned her insides to mush, and since she couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss, her body had quivered like jelly for the last five hundred miles.
Now, as they traveled a twisty mountain road, she wished for something to occupy her and get her mind off Max. She couldn’t even use Elmer as an excuse to busy herself, since he snoozed contentedly in his car seat.
When kept in a dry diaper and fed on schedule, Elmer proved to be an even-tempered baby. He’d slept much of the way up to the mountains and only fussed mildly as he settled back to sleep after a diaper change.
They hadn’t made it to the cabin before night fell as Max had hoped, and though the shifting shadows and darkness stretched Laura’s taut nerves even further, at least the cover of night hid her body’s reaction to Max. She didn’t want him to know that every time he sighed or cleared his throat or glanced her way, her pulse jumped and her limbs trembled. She wanted to appear cool and detached, even if her traitorous body longed to be close to Max. Very close.
“This is it.” He turned onto a narrow dirt road, and they bounced over the ruts that pocked the drive. Like the ot
her mountain roads they’d traveled for the last hour, the driveway to the cabin cut through a dense forest. Low-hanging branches scraped the car like hands grabbing at her from the blackness. “Damn. I forgot the place has no phone, or I’d have stopped earlier to check on Emily.” Max sighed. “I’ll have to drive down the mountain in the morning.”
Laura scrunched down deeper in her seat and tried to think of something besides the menacing stare of the goon at the diner. “So no phone. Does this place at least have indoor plumbing?”
“Yep. Indoor plumbing. As for electricity, well…”
“It doesn’t have electricity?” she asked, aghast.
“Sort of. Not exactly.”
“What exactly does it have if not electricity?” She tried to infuse her tone with humor. Or irritation. Anything but the panic that choked her.
No electricity meant no lights.
“Don’t freak. The place has a generator. A big enough one to power the place and all the appliances.”
She released the breath she’d been holding. “Then what’s the problem?”
“I won’t be able to start the generator until tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“It’s dark.”
Tell me about it! “So?”
He huffed and gave her a sideways glance. Even in the dim car, she saw the unsettling intensity of his mahogany eyes.
“Have you ever tried to start an engine, like a lawn mower or chainsaw, after months of nonuse?”
“No. Can’t say that I have. I use my chainsaw year-round.”
His scowl, illuminated by the dashboard lights, told her he’d heard the sarcasm in her tone.
“Well, they need work. Priming, tuning, call it what you want. I can’t see to fix the generator until morning.”
“Great. So you’re telling me there’ll be no lights.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. And since the water pump is electric, we won’t have water until morning, either.”
Laura shuddered. An isolated cabin. Killers after them. In the dark. Could it be any worse?
“Max?”
“Hmm?”
“I’mafraidofthedark.”
“What?”
She sighed and turned to face him as he cut the engine in front of a shadowy building.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I—I’ve been…afraid of the dark.”
He was silent for a minute, then he gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not. I—” She sighed heavily and dropped her gaze while she fidgeted with her fingers in her lap. “When I was five, my best friend’s brother died of SIDS. He was fine when her mom put him to bed, and in the morning, he was dead.”
“How horrible.”
“After that, I was afraid to go to bed at night, especially in the dark, because I thought I would die, too.”
“But you’re an adult now, and you know—”
“Then…when I was seven,” she interrupted, and he turned in his seat to face her more fully. “My babysitter woke me up to tell me that my mom, who’d been in the hospital for a simple procedure, had died of an allergic reaction to a medicine they’d given her. She died in her sleep. In the middle of the night.”
“Laura, I—I’m sorry.”
She avoided his gaze. Telling him the truth was one thing; facing his sympathy was another. She didn’t want to lean on him, count on his comfort. She had to be strong and take care of herself. As she’d had to do since she was seven. “After that I went into foster homes. Not only was I coping with the loss of my mom, I was in a different bedroom about every six months for the first three years. A total of twelve different homes by the time I left the system at eighteen.”
He was silent, staring at her across the front seat with an eerie stillness.
“So, yeah, I’m an adult now. My head knows it’s a silly fear. But…there it is. I sleep with a light on in my bathroom.”
He covered her fidgeting fingers with one large, warm hand, and her breath hung in her lungs. Gently he squeezed, his fingers curling around hers to still her nervous fumbling. “I’m sorry.”
His comforting hand felt incredibly good in her lap. A slow warmth spread through her, chasing away the chill of fear.
But she pulled her hands from his. Depending on him for support would be a mistake, one she’d already made too many times before as a kid. The problem with depending on any one person for comfort or encouragement or affection was that people left. Or sent you away. Or got lost in the system.
“I’ll be all right.” She turned to open her door. “I don’t know why I even told you that. I… Forget it.”
As she climbed out, gravel crunched under the thin-soled tennis shoes she’d bought at the discount store the night before. A stiff, frosty wind cut through her thin blouse, and she chafed her arms to fight the surprisingly brisk temperature. “Brr. Dadgum, it’s cold up here.”
“Yep. It’s the elevation. It’ll get even colder tonight. I’ve been up here before when it snowed in October.”
She pivoted to look at Max across the hood of the car. “No way.”
“Oh, yeah.” He ducked his head into the backseat to get Elmer out of the car.
Laura peered through the window and watched Max cover the baby with both a soft blanket and the thick jacket he’d bought himself at the discount store.
“Why didn’t you warn me how cold it would be up here?”
“Didn’t know you’d be with me.”
She sighed. “I told you last night, I—”
“I know what you said. But I figured by now you’d have changed your mind.”
“Well, you figured wrong.” She jogged a few steps to keep up with Max’s long strides as he headed to the front porch of the cabin. “This isn’t just a lark for me. I’m here because I care about Elmer.”
“That makes two of us.” He thrust the baby carrier into her arms then jangled his keys as he searched by feel for the one that fit the front door.
“And I’m not leaving him until I can be certain he’s where he belongs, because I don’t want to see him bounced from one foster home to another while his custody is decided.”
“There’s nothing to decide. Emily’s his mother, and she’ll raise him as soon as she gets out of the hospital. My job is just to keep Elmer safe until Emily can take over.” Once Max had unlocked the door, he shoved it open and stood back. “After you.”
He reached for Elmer’s carrier, and she pulled it away. “I’ve got him.”
After taking a few tentative steps into the dark cabin, she stopped short. Max collided with her, his hard, wide chest bumping her from behind. “Would you move?”
“But I can’t see anything. I don’t want to—”
A crash and a mumbled curse from Max interrupted her.
“—trip over something,” she finished, chuckling.
“Ha ha. Will you help me find a flashlight? There’s a bed to the right where you can put the baby seat. Next to the bed is a small nightstand. Check the drawer.”
She scanned the dark room, hoping to make out some vague outline of the interior as she took shuffling, baby steps to the right. A dank, musty smell pervaded the interior, along with the mellow scent of cut wood. When her knees bumped a mattress, she groped in front of her before setting the baby seat on the bed. Then, feeling her way hand over hand, she moved toward the head of the bed and found the nightstand, the drawer and a flashlight.
Flipping on the light, she swept the beam around the room to find Max. The cabin appeared more spacious from the inside than from her impressions of the exterior.
“Now what?”
“Give me the flashlight.” Max extended his hand. “I’ll go try the generator and see if by some miracle it will crank. If not, maybe there’s some wood already cut for a fire.” Taking the light from her, he left her in a totally black room.
She listened to the thud of his footsteps on the wooden porch and waited for him to return. He
r pulse pounded, and her senses went on full alert. The night sounds—crickets chirping, the hoot of an owl, the wind rustling the leaves—seeped in from outdoors, joining the sound of her own harsh breathing.
Dang, it was cold. Better to concentrate on the cold than on the dark. And the men with guns who could be lurking—
Elmer whimpered, and she started. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she fumbled through the darkness to find him. The bed gave a protesting creak when she sat down beside the baby carrier to unbuckle him. “Shh, sweetie. I’m here.”
Remembering the tiny penlight in her purse, she shuffled across the floor to the front door and made her way back to the car to retrieve her purse and Elmer’s diaper bag. The moon was full and bright and provided enough light to make her way across the lawn.
When she returned to the cabin, she held the penlight in her teeth while she checked Elmer’s diaper.
Wet.
Fishing out a clean diaper, she started the process of changing him, grateful for the distraction to keep her busy until Max returned.
She had nearly finished when she heard him bump through the front door and sigh. “Nothing. No wood and no luck with the generator. Looks like we’re in the cold and dark until morning.”
The floor shook slightly as he walked toward her and shone his bigger flashlight on Elmer.
“Is he okay?”
“Mrwr.”
His fingers brushed her lips as he took the penlight from her mouth. A warm tingle chased over her skin from the brief contact.
“Say that again.”
“Elmer’s fine. Just getting dry pants.”
“Dress him warmly. As many clothes as will fit on him. It’s gonna get frigid in here tonight.” The flashlight beam reflected the thin white cloud that formed when Max spoke, echoing his statement.
“Who has a fireplace but no wood?”
“Charles doesn’t keep extra wood around ’cause it rots over the summer, and he doesn’t want termites getting near the cabin.” Max sighed. “That’s why I wanted to be here before dark.”
In Protective Custody Page 10
