Larger Than Life

by Alison Kent

  "Sure. Sounds like the perfect job for the walking wounded. Pay off a bit of this room and board."

  She frowned. "Mick, I don't expect payment in return for a kindness."

  Mick set his mug down on the table, left his hands there, his fingers spread wide. "All the places I've been, all the people I've known, I don't think I've ever run into anyone as kind as you are, Neva Case."

  Dear Lord. That was not how she wanted him to see her. Not at all. "Don't make me out to be a saint just because I let you kiss me. I'm anything but."

  "What are you then? A rescuer of road kill and runaways?" He looked up, the light in his eyes stopping her before she could answer. "By the way. I was there for that kiss. You were the one kissing me."

  "She wasn't a runaway. Just a confused young girl. But yes. I do have a soft spot for anyone suffering misfortune." She waited . .. waited .. . went for it. "Even men who don't understand the subtleties of a kiss."

  He almost choked. "You thought that kiss was subtle?"

  "That's not what I said." Oh, but he was good. "I said there were subtleties involved."

  "Seemed pretty straightforward to me."

  "Of course it would. You're a man."

  That had him frowning. "It's not the terminal condition you're making it out to be."

  "See? Subtleties." He might be good, but she was better. "I happen to love men. Men make the world go round."

  Mick shook his head, huffed. "That's because trying to figure out women keeps us spinning. Some of us keep doing it from the grave."

  "Ha." She sat back, crossed her arms. "If anything has you spinning, it's all the exaggerating you do."

  His head bobbed as he thought, and the tattoo on the back of his neck drew her gaze. "I guess the only way to settle this is to go back to the beginning."

  Uh-oh. "The beginning?"

  He looked over, his eyes found hers. "I'm just going to have to kiss you again."

  She looked at him for a long moment, wanting what he offered but knowing that taking it wouldn't come easy. It was daylight, and she wasn't feeling tired and out of sorts and vulnerable the way she had been last night.

  And so she hedged. "I'm pretty sure the beginning is where I found you on the side of the road. Are you sure you want to go back that far?"

  He considered what she'd said. "A compromise, then?"

  "Does that mean you have something in mind? Something that doesn't involve another kiss?" she hurried to add.

  "Halfway between here and there."

  "The Barn."

  He shrugged. "You can put me to work and tell me the story of how you ended up out here."

  Presumptuous, wasn't he? "Who said I didn't start out out here?"

  "Your neck. It's too white."

  "I work indoors."

  "Yeah. But Ed told me." He drained his coffee. "Now you can tell me the rest while you pretend you can't wait to kiss me again."

  The man was an incorrigible flirt. He was also way too perceptive. She wanted to kiss him more than she wanted to breathe. But she wouldn't. Last night hadn't been real. She wouldn't let it be real. If she could kiss him, touch him, hold him, even sleep with him and do so without involving her emotions, she would.

  In a heartbeat. A nanosecond. The blink of an eye.

  But he wasn't Ed Hill, a man to whom her only attraction was what he'd been able to do to her body and her ability to totally detach. Mick Savin was more.

  The proof lay in that middle-of-the-night slip of her control. Being this close to him, thinking about his mouth, the way he kissed, the way he tasted ... She needed distance now, and needed it in a very bad way.

  "What I want and what's going to happen are two different things. So I'll tell you what." She gathered the coffee mugs and the carafe. "I'll clean up in here while you get dressed and see to your dog."

  "That's it?" He looked crushed that she'd put an end to their banter.

  And so she smiled. "We'll see what happens when we get down to the Barn."

  Thirty minutes later, FM sniffing every square inch of grass along the way, Mick walked beside Neva from the house to the barn. Since he'd arrived last night near dusk to be caught up in her drama with the sheriff and the shark, he hadn't spent much time checking out the place.

  Judging by the drive in and what fence line he could see, he figured her property to be about ten acres, most of it nothing but yellowed grassland. Her house, two-story, white frame, with a storybook cottage appeal, sat in a clustered copse of pecan trees.

  She had flower beds with hardy summer blooms but no grass or yard to speak of. Less upkeep, he supposed, not taming the land into something it wasn't meant to be, blending into her surroundings, hiding out in plain sight. Yeah. That was what it was.

  He'd slipped his arm into the sling for the walk to the barn and made sure to walk with Neva on that side. Bound up like he was, he couldn't accidentally touch her. Even so, she still kept her arms crossed protectively in front of her body. He could've sworn she'd enjoyed their kiss as much as he had. Now he wanted to swear that she didn't like herself for liking it. Or just swear because that was the case.

  She stayed silent as they walked, and he didn't press for conversation, letting her set the pace of their steps. The barn sat straight ahead. It was twice the size of her house, if not three times as big, and looked like it had been plucked out of a Pennsylvania Dutch pasture and dropped into place.

  It had a shingled roof that sloped on a deep curve and was as tall as the structure's first floor. The small parking lot out front was the same gravel as the drive; the sidewalk down the one side he could see was concrete. He wondered if she actually had visitors stop in to shop. As off any beaten path as she was, he didn't see how that was likely.

  Neva led him around the far side where the picnic tables sat on the covered patio. "The showroom's in the front, but we can access it through a door in the studio."

  "Is that where you're going to put me to work?"

  "No. That's where Candy works." Neva stopped, pulled open the windowed door leading inside. "The shipping center is at the rear."

  He stepped into the big room that wasn't as spacious as the exterior had led him to believe. He pointed to the back wall. "What's on the other side?"

  "Candy's apartment." Neva followed him in and let the door close behind her. "It's about twelve hundred square feet."

  Making the two-story barn around five thousand. "What's upstairs?"

  "Just. . . stuff." She fluttered a hand. "Storage. Typical attic junk."

  An awful big attic for junk, he wanted to say, but stopped when a blowtorch fired off at the front of the room. Neva headed the opposite way, around shelves stacked high with bins of supplies, stools tucked up beneath worktables, unused machine stands, and spools of cord, filament, and chain, to the corner of the room.

  The corner of the room had a computer workstation against one wall, a numbered cubbyhole system on the other, both separated from the larger room by a counter set up for the packing and shipping he'd been drafted to do. The stack of unassembled mailing boxes was his first clue.

  "Welcome to the nerve center of the Big Brown Barn," Neva said, waving one arm with a flourish.

  He could see the log-in screen for the e-commerce website on her monitor. "Nice digs."

  "We like it. Suits our purpose with the added benefit of tons of personal space." She glanced around as if trying to see what he would see.

  All he saw was what she claimed the place to be. At least when he wasn't looking at her, her thick rust-colored hair, the freckles on her cream-colored skin, her body, which was tight and solid and stirred his to life. His throat ached just enough to rough up his voice. "What is your purpose?"

  She made her way to the computer station. "I told you. We sell jewelry. Candy's original designs."

  He let out a low whistle, not that he knew dick about what he was saying. "Must be working with a hell of a markup. Unless you've got private backers helping to keep this place afloat.
"

  "Actually," she began, and bristled, "we do quite well. Candy's designs are sold in a handful of exclusive galleries across the country. Plus, she does a lot of work on commission. So, no. We don't need patrons backing us. In the past, maybe. But not anymore."

  Mick decided to back off, to ask later about how they'd started—and why here of all places. "And you do all the grunt work."

  "This summer I have, yeah." She tucked her hands into her jeans pockets. "Except last week with Liberty here. During the school year and especially at the holiday season, I always have one or two kids from the high school working for me."

  He supposed it wouldn't be easy for her to hide runaways with part-time help in and out. "What about your law practice?"

  "All I do these days are wills, real estate deals, and the occasional breeding contract."

  "Legal disbursement of semen." He shook his head. "Sort of takes the fun out of the concept of being a stud."

  She laughed, and he swore she blushed, but then she just as quickly sobered. There were so many things he could say, none of which he did. He just leaned back against the shipping counter and let the storm of tension spin. It wasn't a gentle storm, it was fierce and powerful, sucking them in and pulling the air from the room.

  He saw it in the rapid rise and fall of her chest, felt it in his own. Breathing that should've come easy took effort, as did staying put. He wanted to hook his good arm around her neck, haul her into his body, snap his fingers and rid them both of their clothes. He wanted to learn her scent, to taste her, to teach her what he liked.

  He wanted to do things to her that shocked him, and he saw the mirror of that need in her eyes. He ached with it. He burned. He watched the same fire creep over her skin and color her, unnerve her, reveal all that she was feeling— none of which he was certain she wanted him to know.

  And so he searched for his voice, found it, put an end to the flash fire, reducing it to embers with a question. "Why don't you show me what you need done."

  "Sure. Okay." Clearing her throat, she walked toward the counter and slapped down the stack of papers she pulled from the workstation's heavy duty printer. "Let me show you how to work these invoices. The shipping labels are on the bottom of each page and are self-adhesive."

  "Hmm. Sounds challenging." And not half as fun as what he'd been thinking.

  "If Liberty can do it, you can do it."

  "Obviously she couldn't, or it would've been done."

  Neva pursed her lips. "Let's just say she suffered a lack of motivation."

  "Or maybe fear for her life?"

  And then she sighed. "I'm sure that was a large part of her distraction. Hindsight and all, I could've been easier on her."

  He waited to see if she offered up anything more. When she didn't, he went on. "Hopefully her leaving this job undone wasn't because you didn't show her where and how to pull the items to be shipped."

  "Ack, sorry." She grabbed the top invoice and gestured for him to follow her to the wall of cubbyholes. "The item numbers on the invoices correspond to the label beneath each cubby. The pieces have already been placed inside a jewelry box, but open it to make sure you've got a match to the picture printed on the invoice."

  She found the item she needed and lifted the top from the box to reveal several colored crystals strung on clear filament and framing a teardrop of hammered silver. "See? Same piece. We're good to go."

  "Nice." He fingered the crystals. "Do you photograph the items for the website?"

  She shook her head. "Candy shoots them as she's done. We have a program that sizes them automatically and uploads the files. Our tech then makes them live on the site. He's in El Paso."

  "Can't get good help in Pit Stop?"

  "For ranching, sure. But not for graphics work." She settled the lid back on the box and handed it to him. "Easy enough?"

  "I think I can handle it."

  "It's not as exciting as hunting mule deer, but it'll keep you busy. And out of trouble," she added, her eyes sparkling.

  "Hey," he said, removing his sling. "I'm not the one the sheriff's interested in."

  "That's only because I didn't find you on his side of the state line."

  The woman didn't give an inch. He wasn't going to get anywhere, find out anything, learn any more about her than he already had. Not at this rate. Under these conditions. "You going to hang around here and supervise?"

  She twisted her mouth, screwed it to one side. "I'm trying to decide if it's safe to leave."

  "No pockets. No backpack." He turned in a circle. "I'll even let you hang onto the sling if it makes you feel better. 'Course, I could always sneak the pricey pieces out in my pants."

  "You sure you have room down there?" she asked, her chin lifting. "Being that you're the size of a horse and all?"

  And at that, he laughed. It was either that or admit to feeling offended. "You really don't trust people much, do you? Or maybe it's just me."

  "No." She scrunched up her freckled nose. "I mean, it's not you. Not you, specifically. Just. . . men in general that I don't trust easily."

  Men in general. As in plural. His blood froze at the implications, and his thoughts about the local doctor were no longer so charitable.

  "Look," she began. "Forget I said anything."

  "Neva—"

  "I'm going to check in with Candy. I'll be back in a few." Whirling around, she headed past the counter and back the way they'd originally come.

  For several long minutes, Mick stood still and stared, helpless to do anything more. He was a trained field operative. Bloody hell, he was an assassin—or he had been before coming to work for SG-5. He was valued for his cool head under all conditions. But nothing had prepared him for this fierce wave of protectiveness.

  He wanted to track down every bloody bastard who'd ever hurt Neva and break their necks with his bare hands. The strength of his wrath shocked him. Blind anger led to making mistakes.

  And too many mistakes would get him killed.

  Nine

  In his Calvin Klein pajama bottoms, matching robe, and house shoes, Holden stood staring out his kitchen window into his backyard's tropical garden. Beside him on the black marble counter, the coffeemaker brewed. He enjoyed sleeping in on Saturday mornings, but couldn't name a time when he'd ever slept past ten A.M. the way he had today.

  He blamed his exhaustion on yesterday's trying events and the immense relief of disaster averted. Had Liberty left the Barn with Sheriff Munroe and returned to her parents' home, Holden would have had to scramble for a backup plan. Right now, he had none. So far he'd had no need.

  Things were continuing to go smoothly his way. Liberty was upstairs in his guest bedroom still sleeping, or so he supposed. He'd slept downstairs on the sofa in his study in order to avoid any hint of impropriety. He didn't want to frighten her and have her run off again before he'd tied her to him legally as his wife.

  That would happen later today. He'd already put out a call to Judge Ahearn. The judge had agreed to meet Holden at the courthouse in the county seat of Pit Stop at four P.M. Holden rarely had need to exercise the power his position provided. In this case, in the matter of saving his own life, there had been no hesitation at all.

  Judge Ahearn would have his clerk draw up the marriage license, would waive the waiting period, and simply replace Cal Abie's name with Holden's on the parental consent form the Mitchells had already filed. Hardly aboveboard, but Holden was willing to take the risk.

  The Mitchells would be hard-pressed to prove any wrongdoing on behalf of the judge or Holden himself. They were two of the county's most highly respected citizens, while the Mitchells had only lived in the township a year, and their arrival from California and the life they'd lived there was still considered suspect by most.

  The coffeemaker finished gurgling and Holden reached into the cupboard for a cup. He wondered if Liberty enjoyed coffee in the mornings, before remembering her age and family situation. The Mitchells were almost rabid in their religiou
s zeal and had no doubt banned caffeine from their home along with television and all things secular.

  Still, coming from California as a worldly teen, Holden couldn't imagine Liberty hadn't sampled the menu at Starbucks. He'd have to look into ordering her an espresso machine along with all the other things he'd made note of. The one thing he'd learned about his bride-to-be was that money could indeed buy her happiness.

  Last night after he'd proposed, he'd driven her out to see the property where he was building his dream house. He'd walked her through the plot, explaining where he planned to locate the media room with its personal home theater system and computer network. She loved movies, she'd told him.

  The lack of entertainment options in Earnestine was one of the two things she missed most about living in California. The other was the beach. At that, he'd pointed out where he'd staked off a section of the property for a wave pool. Her eyes had sparkled and her smile had grown more animated than he'd seen it all night.

  He felt that the tour had gone well, a feeling capped off by her appreciation of the simple gold necklace he'd given her last night and her eventual agreement to the elopement he'd planned for today. She'd seen what he could offer her now, what he could offer her in the future. And with the choice being between him and Cal Able, well. . . there was no real choice, was there?

  He picked up his coffee and sipped, reaching for the stack of yesterday's mail he'd dropped on the kitchen bar but had yet found time to sort. He'd shower and dress, then wake Liberty and take her shopping for something to wear to their wedding. If they got on the road soon, they should have time to make it to El Paso and back before they were scheduled to meet Judge Ahearn.

  Once the marriage was a fait accompli, they'd visit the Mitchell home and share the joyful news. At least news he would consider joyful. Much as he was feeling now. It was almost over. It was almost done. By tonight he would hold the upper hand.

  He was feeling so confident that when he ran across it in the stack of mail, the hand-printed envelope failed to cause the same blip to his pulse as the others. The ones that had been arriving monthly for the past year.