The Lawman's Last Stand

by Vickie Taylor

  She sat on the bench again, preferring the shadows to the moonlight. “I needed some air.”

  “Air?” In a single word, he managed to express both his frustration and his perplexity.

  She nodded again. He looked into the night a moment, tugged the towel higher on his hips, then dropped to the bench next to her. “I guess I could use some air myself.”

  He still hadn’t shown her the anger she deserved. In a way she wished he would yell and get it over with. It would be easier to swallow than his quiet concern.

  He shifted back on the bench. The heat of his thigh warmed hers where he brushed against her. She glanced down and felt a smile tug at her lips.

  “What?” he asked, tilting his head to look at her.

  Her smile grew another inch. She tugged lightly—very lightly—at the corner of the towel. It draped barely halfway down his powerful thigh. On the underside, she’d bet it covered significantly less.

  “You’re going to get splinters,” she warned. The laugh she’d been suppressing bubbled up.

  He shifted gingerly. “Mm. I would have dressed more appropriately, but someone else had already taken all the good linens.” He tugged playfully at her bedspread toga until she stopped him with her hand over his.

  “Why are you doing this?” She nibbled her lower lip.

  “Because you needed some air.”

  “I mean all of it. Putting yourself in danger.” She lowered her eyes. “Putting up with me.”

  He waited until she had raised her gaze again to answer. “Because I’m a lawman.”

  “And you think I’m a fugitive?”

  “No, I think you’re in trouble.”

  “Ah, yes. You’re DEA. You live for trouble.”

  He sighed. “Not really. Not anymore.”

  “Then, why…?”

  “Because enforcing the law isn’t just what I do. It’s who I am.”

  A car passed on the highway out front. Shane watched until its red taillights faded in the distance.

  “You shouldn’t be doing this alone,” Gigi said. “Even your friend Bill said so.”

  “Ah, so you were eavesdropping on me and Bill.”

  “Of course,” she retorted, then gave him a wry look. “I had to know if you were talking about me.”

  “All you have to do is say the word, and I’ll call for backup.” Before she could consider the possibility, or the implications, he continued. “But you have to know that this is not DEA-related. Without Margo’s backing, I’ll be pulled off the case and you’ll be left with whomever they assign from the marshals’ office.” She swallowed hard, not wanting any of that, but not wanting the alternative, either. “I know it’s tough for you to sit around and wait for Margo when all your instincts are telling you to run, but it’s the safest thing to do. You can trust Margo, and you can trust me. We’ll keep you safe.”

  “Or die trying.”

  Some of the tension eased from his face as he stared at her, thoughtful. “Is that what this is really about? You’re worried about me?” He cupped the back of her head in his palm, threaded his fingers through her curls. “I’m happy that you care enough to be concerned, but you don’t have to worry. I’m good at what I do. I can keep us both safe.”

  Gigi forced back the tears rising in her throat. She’d heard those words before. When she’d been in protective custody, they assigned a young marshal to the safe house. His name was Tom. He had two kids, a girl and boy four and six years old. He showed her pictures. When the shooting started, he locked her in the cellar. But there were lots more shots, and some yelling. She’d gotten scared and climbed out a little window over the crawl space and ran. She looked back as she ran across the yard and saw Tom limp out onto the porch. He saw her, and waved for her to keep going. Then she heard another shot, and he fell. And she ran. She ran into the woods and didn’t look back again.

  Clasping the towel to his hip, Shane shoved himself to his feet. “Come back inside with me, Gigi.” His voice was rougher than it had been. When she hesitated, he extended his free hand back to her. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to die for you.”

  She touched her fingers to his tentatively, and he grabbed hold and squeezed. She wanted to tell him not to make promises he couldn’t keep, but before she could, he spoke again.

  “At least not tonight,” he said.

  Chapter 5

  The early morning sun inching over the horizon warmed Gigi’s back as she balanced two coffee cups in one hand and twisted the key in the doorknob with the other. At the click of the lock, she pushed her way into the room hip first, unconcerned about the squeak of door hinges as she passed.

  If her rattling around the room, running the water faucet, and clearing her throat several times—loudly—earlier hadn’t woken him, a few squeaky hinges weren’t likely to disturb his rest. He snoozed happily through it all, lying the wrong direction on the bed, his feet at the head, his head at the foot, as he’d fallen asleep.

  He’d stood over her last night, a sexy, lazy grin warming her cheeks, while she crawled into bed, and waited patiently while she fixed the bedcovers, unwrapping the bedspread from around herself and trying to straighten it over the mattress without dropping the sheet clutched against her chest.

  Then once she’d settled, he started to crawl in with her.

  “Don’t even think about it!” she warned, then slapped his hand away from the covers and clicked off the lamp.

  But he hadn’t disappeared in the darkness, as she’d hoped. At least not all of him. The white towel slung around his hips shone in the radiant moonlight filtering into the room. Above it, his straight white teeth glowed just as brightly.

  He was smiling.

  Teeth and towel floated to the foot of the bed. And then the towel disappeared.

  His smile got wider.

  “I won’t think about it if you won’t,” he said, and crawled between the top sheet and the bedspread, his head at the footboard.

  She thought about it. She thought about it a lot.

  But that was hours ago. He hadn’t moved since then. She was hoping the scent of caffeine would rouse him.

  Swinging around the edge of the door and shoving it closed with her foot, she turned to find him sitting on the edge of the bed in his blue jeans, bare-footed and bare-chested. Her first impression was that he looked incredibly good with the light streaming through the doorway behind her, casting a warm glow to his golden hair and burnished chest.

  Her second impression was that he was really mad.

  His elbows rested casually on his thighs and his thumbs twirled between his knees with deceptive calm, but the tension in his shoulders and neck gave him away. His muscles bunched and released like a caterpillar inching its way along a sidewalk, each length of sinew delineating itself from the others in the rippling play of skin over moving mass.

  Uh-oh.

  “You fibbed,” she said brightly, hoping to avoid the storm she felt brewing.

  He scoured his hand across the back of his neck. “About what?”

  “About sleeping lightly.” Kicking the door shut behind her, she extended one of the cups of coffee to him. “You sleep like a log.”

  “So you took that as an invitation to leave?” The gruffness in his voice didn’t stop him from accepting the offered coffee.

  “You also snore. I couldn’t stand the noise.”

  He took a sip, winced, and blew on the steaming cup. “I don’t snore.”

  “Okay, you don’t snore. I just needed my morning caffeine fix. But I brought some back for you. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “I’m surprised you came back at all,” he groused.

  She was beginning to think that Shane was not a morning person. “Mm, I can tell you were worried by the way you came charging after me.”

  He took a long draft of coffee, then set the cup on the night table. “You took the key.”

  Her brow furrowed. “So?”

  “I didn’t figure you’d both
er to take the key if you weren’t planning on coming back.”

  A warmth not unlike that she’d felt outside with the sun on her back crept over her. “You trusted me?”

  “I was going to give you thirty more seconds, and then I’d have been on your a—” The corners of his mouth lifted in a ghost of a smile. “Heels.”

  He got up and went to the window. “Everything quiet out there?”

  “I didn’t see any hit men, if that’s what you mean.”

  She fluffed the pillows and straightened the covers, but couldn’t bring herself to sit on the bed with him so close. Instead she leaned against the dresser. Try as she might not to notice, she couldn’t help but admire the breadth of his smooth back, marred as it was by a bullet’s trail, as he stood staring out the window.

  She offered to apply a new coat of antiseptic cream and a fresh bandage. By the time she’d finished, his mood didn’t seem as black. It seemed as good a time as any to bring up the question that had been weighing on her. “What do we do now?”

  “We wait,” he said without turning around.

  “Your friend isn’t going to be back for a while. We can’t just sit here.”

  “Sure we can.” Reaching for his coffee with one hand, he jammed the fingers of his other hand in the back pocket of his jeans.

  “Look, I tried. I came to Phoenix and went to your friend’s house. But I can’t stay in one place and just wait. Not with him on my tail.” She got her backpack from the chair and tossed it on the bed.

  Shane turned around, one hand still in his pocket, as she was folding yesterday’s blouse into the bag. “No one knows we’re here, and this place is quiet. It’s safe.”

  “Safe isn’t a word I believe in any longer.” Wheeling around to get her personal items from the bathroom, she walked into his chest. He swung his cup out of the way, but not in time. Coffee splashed over him.

  Instinctively she swiped the liquid off his skin with her hand, afraid she’d burned him, but found the coffee had already cooled to lukewarm.

  It was his skin that was hot.

  “You don’t have to believe in the word,” he said. “Just believe in me.”

  Oh, how seductive that suggestion was—more enticing than his granite sculpted body, more alluring than the husky timbre of his voice, more tempting than the roguish shadow of new beard growth shadowing his jaw.

  But she wouldn’t depend on anyone but herself ever again. She wasn’t sure she knew how. Flushed and flustered, she backed away. “We don’t have enough food.”

  “When we finish what Bill gave us, we’ll go to the store, pick up some munchies and eat here as often as we can. If we get desperate, we’ll hit the drive-throughs.”

  She swallowed hard. “I could wash the two outfits I have every other day, but you need some clothes.”

  He chuckled sardonically. “And here I thought you liked having me run around half-naked.”

  “Hardly.”

  This was supposed to be a serious conversation. He shouldn’t be able to make her laugh. So why were her lips quivering just because he’d straightened his back and puffed up his chest almost imperceptibly?

  Her breath hitched. She couldn’t stop her gaze from falling to territory it had no business exploring. When she recovered and lifted her look, a slow grin spread across his face.

  Despite her best efforts to contain it, a matching smile broke across her face.

  “Careful,” he said, chucking her lightly under the chin and then wiping his thumb across her lower lip as if he could erase her smile, “if you start looking at me like that, I might just take it as a challenge.”

  And I might just accept, she thought.

  By afternoon, neither of them had much to laugh about. Tedium had set in.

  That was the danger in witness protection, Shane had learned over the years. With each hour that dragged by, the body’s ability to maintain a state of readiness diminished. TV numbed the mind even as inactivity numbed the body. Production of adrenaline and endorphins essential to alertness dropped. Boredom became carelessness. Carelessness got people killed.

  Flicking the TV remote control to mute, Shane sat up on the bed and stretched. He needed to move. He needed to think.

  He needed to kiss that pout off of Gigi’s face.

  That ought to get her adrenaline flowing. And probably his endorphins—nature’s painkiller—as well, since she was likely to slug him.

  She sat at the tiny table by the window with one leg curled under her on the chair, leaning over the puzzle book they’d picked up earlier, along with a deck of cards, munchies, and a change of clothes for him. She twirled a pencil absently between her fingers and she was frowning slightly, obviously deep in thought. One day, he hoped she’d devote that kind of undivided attention to studying him.

  Without looking up, she asked, “What’s a five-letter word for courageous?”

  He lifted his eyebrows, grinned. “Shane?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  He sighed. “How about brave?” he asked, pulling his gun off the table as he stood.

  Gigi rolled the pencil eraser across her chin. He tucked his weapon in the back of his jeans and pulled the hem of his newly purchased T-shirt over it.

  “It ends with y, I think.”

  He shrugged, unable to come up with anything. She tipped the pencil against her lips and nibbled endearingly on the tip. Fascinated, Shane stopped and watched. A slow burn started in his groin and spread outward until he had to stifle a groan. Tearing his eyes away, he headed for the door.

  She looked up, all innocence. “Where are you going?”

  “To check the grounds. I’ll check a couple of times a day while we’re here, just to see who’s about or if anything looks out of place.”

  “You’re leaving me alone?”

  He didn’t know whether to be relieved or feel guilty at the tiny tremor in her voice. Not long ago, she couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. Now she didn’t want to see him go. And he didn’t want to leave.

  “Just for a few minutes,” he said, then he reached for her backpack and pulled out the handgun and box of shells she’d brought. He loaded the gun quickly and pressed it in her palm.

  “What’s this for?” She looked at the rubber-gripped Taurus as if it might bite her.

  “I’ll leave the room key here,” he said by way of an answer. “When I knock, make sure it’s me and make sure I’m alone before you open the door.”

  From the look on her face, he could see she still hadn’t caught on. “In case someone gets the drop on me and makes me bring them back here.”

  “You wouldn’t lead anyone back here.”

  “I might if they threatened to blow my head off if I didn’t.” He paused to let that sink in. “In that case, it’s your job to shoot them before they shoot me.”

  He reached for the doorknob.

  “Wait! I—I can’t do that.” She stood up, holding the pistol carefully, as if it might go off if she jostled it. “I don’t really know…how to use it,” she confessed.

  “You don’t know how to fire a gun?”

  She shook her head, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. “I’m not sure I could shoot a human being, anyway. I don’t think you want to die finding out.”

  He snatched the weapon from her hands. “For God’s sake, then, what are you doing carrying the thing?”

  “It came with the fake IDs—one price for everything.” She shrugged. “The getaway package special.”

  Incredulous, he removed the bullets and tossed the useless weapon on the bed. “Great. Just great.”

  Even as he grumbled, though, something swelled in his chest. There was something alluring about a woman with a killer on her tail who had never learned to use her gun because she didn’t think she could shoot another human being. That combination of naiveté and optimism was rare. He sup posed that was because people with an outlook like that didn’t survive long, these days.

  Reaching for the doorknob aga
in, he softened his tone. “At least make sure I’m alone before you open the door.”

  “Wait!”

  He turned.

  She twisted her hands in front of her. “Will you teach me?”

  “If you’re not willing to shoot someone, what good would it do?”

  “I could shoot someone, maybe,” she admitted softly, sincerely, “if someone else’s life depended on it.”

  He flattened the smile that threatened to shine across his face. “Someone like me?”

  She snatched the pistol off the bed, quickly looking away. “I said maybe.”

  Stepping up behind her, he wedged one foot between hers and spread her legs to shoulder width, then cupped her elbows and brought them level, her arms outstretched before her. His hands were big enough to wrap around hers, adjusting their position and grip on the gun.

  “There,” he said, a sudden gruffness in his voice that had little to do with anger at Gigi and a lot to do with regret that this woman ever felt she had to learn to use a gun. And sadness that she was doing it for him—because she was afraid she might be called on to protect him.

  “A two-handed grip is best. Keep your back straight, shoulders relaxed, arms level.”

  The sudden realization that as much as he liked touching her, smelling her, he’d rather be doing it for any reason other than teaching her proper posture for taking a life assailed him.

  “Shane? What do I do now?”

  He winced at the looming loss of innocence. “Ease the trigger back.”

  When she pulled, the barrel of the gun tipped up forty degrees. “Good.” He forced a smile to his lips. “You just killed the light fixture.”

  She frowned. “What did I do wrong?”

  “Nothing. It takes a while to get used to the feel of the gun and the weight of the trigger, that’s all.”

  “But I don’t have a while. I need to know how to do it now.”