Okay, this was never going to work. Was there a chance Emma had left the front door unlocked? She shoved open her door and sprinted across the thick carpet of pine needles coating the ground, grateful at least that her headlights were still working. She grabbed the doorknob, which turned easily under her hand. "Oh, thank God." She turned the handle, thrust the door open, and leapt inside —
To find herself staring down the barrel of a gun.
Chapter 2
Too late, Blue realized that the woman who'd barged into his cabin, startling him from a restless sleep, was not a threat. Swearing, he jerked his gun away from her and shoved it behind his back. "Sorry."
She was still staring at him, her eyes wide, literally frozen with terror.
Regret rushed through Blue, and he swore at himself, disgusted that he'd made that kind of mistake. Fuck. He jammed his gun in the waistband of his jeans and held up his hands. "I'm former military, licensed to carry. I thought you were a threat. I swear I'm not going to hurt you."
A small squeak of terror made it past her lips, and then she whirled around and sprinted out of the cabin.
Blue swore, cursing himself as he followed her to the door. The lights from her car blinded him, and he shielded his eyes, trying to see where she'd gone, but it was impossible to see past the glare of the headlights.
The sound of a car engine trying to start filled the night, and he grimaced, realizing that was the sound that had infiltrated his dreams. The car continued to sputter, and Blue ran his hand through his hair, sighing as he realized that he was going to have to fix this. Holding his hands up in the air to make himself look as harmless as possible, he cautiously approached the car. "Hey," he called out. "I swear I'm not dangerous. Let me help —"
The driver's door flew open, and he caught a glimpse of her leaping out and taking off into the woods.
Hell. She'd get lost in a split second.
Swearing, he dropped his hands and took off after her.
* * *
Chloe could hear his footsteps getting closer. He was shouting something to her, but she was too freaked out to hear what he was saying. She just ran harder, branches whipping at her face.
She felt his fingers touch her back, and she screamed, whirling around to face him.
He stopped immediately, holding up his hands. "I swear I'm not going to hurt you," he said, not even breathing hard. "I'm borrowing the cabin from Harlan Shea —"
"Harlan?" She was gasping for breath, stumbling over his words. "You know Harlan?"
"Yeah, he's letting me crash in his cabin."
"Harlan. He knows Harlan," she muttered under her breath. She knew Harlan, too. He was Emma's former military husband who had once worked for an outfit that rescued kidnap victims. Harlan was the type of guy who probably knew how to shoot a gun, and his friends probably did too. "Dear God. You know Harlan." She bent over, bracing her hands on her knees as she tried to get air into her lungs.
"Yeah." He crouched beside her, his hand going to her elbow. "You okay?"
"No. My heart just exploded in terror, and my brain is irretrievably melted from fear." She closed her eyes, trying to keep the dizziness at bay. "I am not built for that kind of running."
"I really am sorry. I was asleep and reacted instinctively when you barged in."
"I didn't barge. I was fleeing killer mosquitoes." Her lungs hurt. Her throat hurt. Had she been screaming? She kind of thought she might have been. "How much was I screaming just now?"
She heard him chuckle. "Not enough. If I really was a bad guy, you should have worked harder to alert help."
"Because the raccoons and skunks would definitely have come to my aid." She finally got a decent breath into her lungs, enough to look up at him. Of course, it was pitch black in the woods, and she could see nothing more than an outline of a man with wide shoulders. "Who are you?"
"Blue Carboni. I used to work with Harlan. You?"
"Chloe Dalton. I'm the incredibly dedicated social worker who helped Emma and Harlan adopt their kids. Except I got laid off yesterday due to budget cuts, so now I'm unemployed and have no professional identity whatsoever."
He laughed again. It was a deep, warm sound which made her want to smile. Well, it would have, if her heart wasn't still thundering so loudly that she didn't think she was out of the danger zone of having her head explode. "You scared the absolute crap out of me."
"I know. I'm sorry." He sounded so genuinely apologetic that she believed him.
A man who apologized and meant it? She hadn't thought they existed. It was sort of nice to run into one, even if it had come at the cost of nearly losing her mind in terror.
"I'll buy you a beer from the stash I found in Harlan's fridge to make up for it."
"A stolen beer. Fantastic. That makes up for everything. I'm in." She stood up, aware of how badly her legs were shaking. Fear or from physical exertion? Or from a strange, inexplicable need to start randomly dancing in the middle of the woods? Yeah, probably not the latter.
She looked around, frowning when she saw only darkness. "We're lost."
"Not at all." He set his hand on her elbow, his grip surprisingly warm and steady, enough so that she kind of wanted to just lean into him, which she didn't, of course, because he was terrifying and he was a man, and she'd already had the irrevocable revelation that men ruined lives. "This way."
Well, men ruined lives, except when they were the only way out of the woods. Then they got bonus points for usefulness. But that was it. Men, at their best, could be useful. Anything else was a lie.
Chapter 3
Blue held the door open, waiting as Chloe turned off her headlights. The moment she did, the night plunged into absolute darkness, an impenetrable black.
Her voice rang out in the darkness. "A little help would be nice. I didn't pack my night vision goggles."
He grinned, surprised by how easily she made him smile. He didn't smile much as a general rule, but something about her got to him. "No problem." He reached inside the door and flicked on the outside light. The lone spotlight perched on the corner of the roof cast a faint yellow glow across the ground.
"God, I never thought a single lightbulb would make me so happy." She walked toward him, and Blue found himself watching with increasing curiosity as she approached the light. He hadn't gotten a good look at her when she'd barged into the cabin, and the woods had been too dark. But as she neared the light, his focus narrowed until he was fully consumed by an almost desperate need to see her face.
She stepped into the outskirts of the light and began walking toward him. Her hair was dark and curly, tumbling down around her shoulders as if it would never be tamed. Her skin was a gorgeous shade of brown that reminded him of the deep forest, where peace and serenity reigned. She had curves, curves that were all woman. But it was her face that got him. The dim light cast it in shadows, but there was no way to obscure the sadness in her dark brown eyes as she neared him, a weight that looked so heavy it might break her. His gut tightened, and he started to lift his hand to touch her face, as if he could wipe away whatever burden she was carrying.
She froze, sucking in her breath, as her gaze shot to his hand, mere inches from her cheek.
Was it fear in her eyes? Or longing? He stopped, unable to read her expression. He'd spent too much time with traumatized victims to risk touching someone who'd been spooked, so he slowly lowered his hand, forcing his fingers to loosen and relax.
The moment he lowered his hand, her gaze shot to his. For a split second, the air seemed to tighten, strung between them like a coiled thread. Raw, visceral longing exploded through him, a need so strong it seemed to choke the air from his lungs. A need for her, this woman who'd made him laugh only moments after he'd nearly scared her to death. "Chloe —"
Her phone rang, making them both jump. She jerked back, ducking under his arm as she bolted into the cabin.
Blue stayed still for several seconds, taking a deep breath as he fought to suppress his reaction
to her. He hadn't responded to a woman like that in a very, very long time, and he hadn't been prepared for it.
"Emma!" Chloe's joyous voice broke through his focus, and he jerked his gaze over to her. She was sitting on the faded couch, her phone to her ear. She sounded so relieved and so happy, her voice somehow breaking through the darkness that haunted him, giving him a respite from the weight he constantly battled.
He swung the door shut and flicked on the lamp by the door, casting a low light over the single room cabin.
Chloe looked up at him. "Yes, I met Blue," she said into the phone. "He seems charming and lovely."
The dryness of her voice made him laugh, and he bowed to her, grinning when he saw the corner of her mouth turn up. She waved him off, and he walked over to the kitchenette and opened the fridge. There were two bottles left of the local brew, Birch's Best. The stuff was kind of nasty, and he suddenly wished he was the type of guy to keep a bottle of white wine around, or something that would be more worthy of a woman like Chloe.
But all he had was beer.
"Okay," Chloe was saying. "That sounds good. I can meet you there in an hour. Um...do you have the number of a mechanic? My car died —"
"I'll drive you." He made the offer without thinking, without even knowing what she needed, but the moment he made it, it felt right. He wanted more time with her, with her sense of humor, with her irreverence.
Her gaze shot to his, and her eyebrows went up. She put the phone against her shoulder, muting their conversation. "You don't even know —"
"I can probably fix the car, and if I can't, I'll drive you. It's after nine on a Friday night in Birch Crossing. No one's going to come out here tonight." He opened one of the bottles. "I owe you."
She raised her brows. "Do you even have a car? I didn't see one outside, or else I would have realized someone was here and not risked death by startling you."
Again, he grinned. He was pretty sure he hadn't grinned this many times in a row in his life… Nah, he knew when it was that he'd stopped smiling. It was that day when he was fourteen. The moment he thought about that day, his smile dropped off his face. He shrugged. "Yeah, whatever," he muttered. "My truck is parked around the side. But no biggie."
Chloe's eyebrows went even higher. "Wow. I'm pretty sure that I'm the one with the right to be moody and annoyed, given that I was the one with the gun in my face. What do you think?"
Blue slid his gaze toward her. She still had her phone pressed against her shoulder, and she was watching him carefully. He realized that despite her light tone, there was a wariness in her eyes and a tension in her shoulders because of his tone. Shit. Could he be more of an ass tonight? He let out a long breath and spread his hands. "Listen," he said. "It's not you. I've got some stuff on my mind." He managed a smile that wasn't legit. "It would be my honor to escort you to wherever you need to go."
She studied him for a long moment, her gaze searching his as if she was trying to read beneath the surface and figure out every secret that he kept buried inside him. Habit made him want to turn away, but he didn't. It was almost as if a part of him wanted her to drag it out of him. Like maybe she was the one that would have the answers that had eluded him for so damn long. Not that there were answers. Shit, he didn't even know what he wanted.
Except he did know.
In this second, he knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to help her. "Give me a chance to make it up to you, Chloe." The moment he said her name, her face softened, as if the sound of him saying her name had meant something to her.
Still watching him, she put the phone back to her ear, resuming the conversation with her friend. "Hi, Emma. Blue said that he'll fix my car or drop me off, so I'm all set. But if he can't fix it, I'll need the name of a mechanic for the morning."
Something inside Blue loosened when he heard her accept his offer, almost as if the chance to be with her for a little while longer made the tension inside him ease its relentless grip on his gut. It was unlike him to be reacting so strongly to a woman he'd just met, but there was something about Chloe that affected him. Maybe it was her resilience after he pulled a gun on her. Maybe it was the weight of her eyes, how they contradicted with her sense of humor and her warmth. Maybe it was simply that she made him smile, and something as simple as a smile felt so damn good that he wanted more of it. He didn't know exactly what it was, but he knew that he needed more of it. He needed more of her.
She listened for a moment. "I'm all set. I'll stop at Wright's for some food on the way. See you soon. And… Emma? Thank you. I don't know what I would've done without you." Her voice choked up, and Blue looked at her sharply. Her eyes were shiny, and she was gripping the phone so tightly that her knuckles were white. She cleared her throat, and nodded, apparently listening to something Emma was saying. "Right, I know. I'm fine. Really, I am. I'll see you soon. Bye."
She hung up the phone, leaned it against her forehead, and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, and then another, as if she'd forgotten she wasn't alone. Blue watched her, noting the way her shoulders were tucked up toward her ears ever so slightly, in a protective posture he'd seen many times as his latest rescued victim had hunched in the corner of the helicopter, unwilling to believe the nightmare was really over.
Instinctively, Blue walked over to her and crouched in front of her. "Hey."
She opened her eyes and quickly lowered the phone, sitting up straighter in a posture clearly designed to make sure no one knew the weight she was carrying inside her. She met his gaze for a split second, then her attention dropped to the beer he was holding. "Is that for me?"
Silently, he handed it to her, still watching her. "It'll be okay," he said. "Whatever the nightmare is, it can't get inside you unless you let it." Of course, he knew all too well about the damage nightmares could do, but just because he couldn't shield himself from his own baggage didn't mean he was unaware of how it could work if someone had their shit together better than he did.
She narrowed her eyes. "It's that easy to let it go? Really? I had no idea." She sounded a little annoyed, as if insulted he would reduce all her problems to some philosophical resolution.
He got that. He inclined his head in acknowledgment. "Theoretically, yeah, it's simple as shit. In reality, it can eat away at you until you're so dead on the inside that life stops mattering. Until all you can do is run as hard as you can, hoping that you can escape the darkness before it consumes you."
She froze with the bottle of beer halfway to her lips, her eyes widening in surprise. Belatedly, he realized what he'd said and what he'd revealed about himself. Grimacing, he shrugged, and took a sip of his own beer. "Or so I've heard."
Chloe angled the mouth of the bottle toward him as if pointing at him. "You, my friend, are a wealth of complexity, aren't you?"
Blue grinned. "Nah. I drink beer. I shoot guns. And, after tonight, apparently I can add terrorizing women to my list. It's pretty simple and basic. I'm just your normal, upstanding boy-next-door kind of guy. I'm exactly the type that mothers fantasize their daughters will fall for."
Her gaze flicked to his cheek, and he suddenly remembered the scar that bisected the side of his face. He never thought about it much. Who the hell cared about a scar? But Chloe was soft, gentle, sensitive. What would she think about a three-inch scar that belied every claim he just made? The thought made him tense, and he didn't like that. He didn't like thinking about his scar, or what someone would think about it.
Scowling, he stood up and paced away from her. He leaned against the tiny kitchenette counter and folded his arms over his chest. "So, tell me, Chloe Dalton. Why were you barging into this cabin at nine o'clock at night in the first place?"
She raised her eyebrows. "I felt as though my life was too tame and predictable. I thought that getting the living daylights scared out of me would make my day more interesting."
He felt himself grin again, but he was learning not to be surprised by the fact she could coax a smile out of him. "Any other rea
sons?"
She took a drink of her beer, wrinkling her nose as the bitterness drifted across her tongue. "First of all, you're kind of nosy. Second of all, this beer is kind of horrible."
He grinned wider, amused by her inability to school her face into impassive, neutral expressions. "You know, the problem with trying to avoid questions with me, is that I'm kind of an expert on not telling anyone anything that I don't want them to know. So yeah, I'm nosy. Yeah, the beer sucks. But I still want to know what's going on that made you show up at this cabin and sprint into it without checking to see if anyone was here."
She cocked her head, studying him. "Why do you want to know so badly?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. I just do."
She smiled then, a smile that made him want to grin. "Fair enough." Her gaze flicked away from him, drifting over the bare walls of the rustic cabin, before coming back to rest on his face. "In addition to losing my job yesterday, I also got evicted from the place I've been living for the last decade."
Her voice was tight and calm, but he could instantly sense the depth of grief at her words, grief she was absolutely refusing to succumb to.
Respect flooded him, but also empathy. She was tough, refusing to be broken, but something really shitty had crashed down upon her. "Sorry about that."
"It's fine." She shrugged, tracing her fingers over the condensation on the bottle. "I was a little desperate, so Emma said I could stay at Harlan's cabin until I figure things out, because it was empty." She glanced at him, cocking a sassy eyebrow. "She didn't realize, however, that Harlan had already told you the same thing. That phone call I just answered? That was Emma calling to warn me that you're already living here. Being highly observant, I, of course, had already figured that out."
Irresistibly Mine Page 2
