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“I’ll drive carefully.” He buckled a lap belt around Chloe, who stared suspiciously up at him. Then he closed her door and opened the front passenger door. “In you go,” he said quietly, that powerful hand engulfing Trina’s elbow. “Big step up.”
He didn’t quite say “upsy-daisy” but coaxed her and hoisted until she was somehow in. He closed this door with a soft thud, too, rather than slamming it, and was behind the wheel in the blink of an eye, firing up a powerful engine. When she made no move to put on the seat belt, he did it for her, not commenting on her grip on the armrest or the way she rolled her weight to the side.
He backed out and accelerated so gradually she was never thrust against the seatback.
“How long?” she asked, from between gritted teeth.
“About half an hour. Do you have pain pills?”
“Yes, but...”
“Take them. Are they in the duffel?”
She nodded.
Gabe reached a long arm back, his eyes still on the road, and tugged the duffel until it was between the seats. The bottle of water he handed her was warm, but it washed down two pills.
“You okay, Chloe?” she asked.
No answer, but Gabe’s gaze flicked to the rearview mirror. “She’s nodding,” he said quietly.
“Oh, good.” She thought that’s what she’d said. The words seemed to slur. Leaning her cheek against the window, she closed her eyes.
* * *
SHE DROPPED OFF to sleep like a baby, Gabe saw. That’s what she needed. He was sorry he’d have to wake her up when they got to the cabin.
The little girl was not asleep. She sat with her feet sticking straight out in front of her, her arms crossed and her lower lip pouting. Eyes as blue as his watched him in the rearview mirror. Clearly, she expected the worst. He kind of liked her attitude. He tended to expect the worst, too. That way you were prepared. Optimists could be taken by surprise so easily.
Once he made it onto the highway, he could relax a little. The couple of vehicles he could see in the rearview mirror hadn’t followed them from town. At this time of morning, most traffic was headed south into town, not north out of it.
He checked on the kid, to see her eyelids starting to droop, too.
Another sidelong glance made him wince. Trina’s contorted position had to be miserably uncomfortable. Burns, Joseph had said, without being specific. Gabe would have known they were on her back even if she hadn’t told him, since she’d done a face-plant on the window to avoid making any more contact than she could help with the seat. Twisted as she was, he saw a thickness that could only be bandages. Or, hey, Kevlar, but that wasn’t likely.
Since Joseph talked often about his sister, Gabe had known they were close. Funny his friend had never mentioned that she was a beauty, or a shrink of some kind. The stories had all been from their childhood, or repeating some amusing or pointed observation she’d made about life in general, politics and shifting international alliances more specifically. She probably followed the world news with more interest than most people did because she knew her brother was bound to get involved in a lot of the messes.
Gabe wondered in a general way what it would feel like to have parents or someone like her worrying about him. Would he be as anxious to get back in the action if his death would devastate someone else?
Impatiently, he shook off the descent into sentimentality. No family, no reason to think about it.
Instead, he circled back to the beginning. Katrina Marr would be spectacular with makeup, a snug-fitting dress and heels. Face showing strain and streaked with char, hair a tangled mess and wearing sacky, faded blue scrubs and thin rubber flip-flops, she was merely beautiful. With expressive green-gold eyes and hair the color of melted caramel, she was tallish for a woman, slender rather than model-skinny, and still possessing some nice curves.
One corner of Gabe’s mouth lifted. Could be this was why Joseph never mentioned his sister’s appearance. He might give one or more of the guys the idea of looking her up someday while on leave.
Fully amused now, Gabe thought that was just insulting.
But his amusement didn’t last long. To stay vigilant, he couldn’t afford any distraction. Somebody was gunning for the cute kid who’d now slumped sideways in sound sleep—and Gabe had no doubt Joseph’s sister would jump in front of the bullet to save that kid.
His job was to make sure that never happened. Plan A, he calculated: hide them. Plan B: make sure he fought any battles that did erupt. Plan C: take the bullet himself.
Chapter Three (#uf4bc461e-67f1-5e53-9b5d-0989e113ce76)
Trina opened her eyes to a dim room. The window was in the wrong place, she saw first. Light sneaking between the slats of the blinds told her it was daytime.
Her bedroom didn’t have rough-plastered walls, either. Awakening awareness of pain discouraged her from rolling onto her back. Instead, she pushed aside a comforter in a denim duvet cover and gingerly sat up.
It all rushed back. The fire, dropping from a second-story window, the hospital. Complete loss. Wasn’t that what the fire chief had said? Joseph.
Gabe Decker.
This must be his home, or at least his ranch hideout. The wide-plank floor looked like what she’d expect of a log house. A closer look at the window told her it was set in a wall thicker than usual.
And then her eyes widened. Chloe!
Still wearing the scrubs, she didn’t take time to use the bathroom or find her flip-flops. She rushed out into a hall and toward the staircase at the end.
Halfway down, she heard that deep, smooth voice. He was talking to someone, pausing for unheard answers. Telephone?
The vast living room was empty. She followed the voice to the kitchen, where she saw Chloe, perched on a tall stool, watching as the big, powerful man flipped a hamburger in a pan on the stove.
“Is that a yes or no to cheese?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder.
He took in Chloe’s nod, then saw Trina hovering. He didn’t smile; the way he looked her over was more assessment than anything. “You’re just in time for dinner.”
“Dinner.” She was dazed enough to feel out of sync.
Chloe swung around, scrambled off the stool and raced to Trina. She threw her arms around Trina’s legs and hugged, hard. That she’d regressed to being nonverbal felt like yet another deep bruise in the region of Trina’s chest.
“I’m glad to see you, too, pumpkin.” Trina found a smile for the little girl, who tipped back her head to look up at her. “Why don’t you start on your cheeseburger while I go back upstairs and, um, at least brush my hair?” And pee. She really needed that bathroom.
“Did you see your duffel at the foot of the bed?” Gabe asked.
“No, I suddenly panicked—” She broke off. “You know how confusing it is to wake in a strange place.”
His expression of mild surprise said he didn’t know. As often as he—and her brother—woke in strange and dangerous places, they probably knew where they were and why instantly, before they opened their eyes. They probably held on to the where and why while they slept.
“Never mind,” she mumbled, and took herself back upstairs to start over again. The woman she saw in the mirror horrified her. Her face was filthy, her eyes bloodshot and her hair a tangled mess. Lovely.
Washing her face helped only a little. She dug the bottle of pills out of the duffel and took one, hoping that would be enough to dull the pain without knocking her out again. Then she tackled her hair as well as she could when raising her arms stretched the skin on her shoulders and back. Her left shoulder ached fiercely, too, as did her left hip. No, those two pillows hadn’t softened her landing on the hard ground much, if at all. The doctor had warned her to expect swelling and colorful bruises.
A ponytail proved to be beyond her. Changing clothes...not yet, she decided. She craved a shower but shuddered at the idea of hot water on her back. Spot-cleaning was as good as it would get.
And once she had something to eat, she’d have to break it to the Army Ranger downstairs that he now had medic duties as well as KP.
He studied her again when she reappeared, small lines appearing on his forehead. Apparently, she hadn’t accomplished miracles.
“Cheese?” he asked.
“Please.”
She leaned against a sort of breakfast bar rather than trying to sit on a stool. She studied Chloe, who had made surprising inroads on her burger, which from experience Trina knew was completely plain. She wouldn’t have touched the sliced tomatoes, onions or lettuce Gabe had set out, or the ketchup or mustard, either. What surprised Trina was that the three-year-old didn’t seem wary of Gabe. She shied from most people, especially men, yet was happily eating food he’d put in front of her, her bare feet swinging.
“Did you nap?” Trina asked.
Chloe nodded.
“She was up for a couple of hours in the middle of the day,” Gabe said, “napped again and got up about an hour ago.”
Intrigued, Trina wondered how he’d entertained Chloe for those two hours. The little girl appeared surprisingly comfortable with him. “How long did I sleep?”
He glanced at the microwave. “Nine hours.”
“Really?” She’d have had to be deeply asleep for Chloe to have slipped out of bed without her noticing. “I never conk out like that.”
“I don’t suppose you had a very good night’s sleep,” he said dryly.
“Well, no, but...” Her stomach growled and she pressed a hand against it. “I’m starved. I haven’t had anything to eat since last night.”
“I guessed. Here.” He handed her a plate with baked beans, corn and a cheeseburger on a fat bun. “Chloe declined the beans.”
The little girl wrinkled her nose.
Trina kissed the top of her head. “She’s at an age to be picky.”
“Figured.” He produced silverware, then brought his own plate over to the bar and sat on Chloe’s other side, hooking the heels of his boots on a rung as if it were a fence rail.
After gobbling half her meal, Trina said, “It’s been peaceful?”
He glanced at her sidelong. “Yep. We made a clean getaway.”
“Yes, but... I can’t be completely out of touch.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
Something about his tone made her wonder how two-way he intended that talk to be. Did he really think Joseph’s sister would be meek and docile? Dealing with him would be easier if she could read him better, but he was so guarded she wondered what it would take to shatter his control. Something told her pain hadn’t done it. In fact, he might have shored up his walls during his lengthy recuperation.
Chloe dropped her cheeseburger without finishing it. She immediately crawled over onto Trina’s lap. Trina held her with her left arm and kept eating.
“I don’t suppose you have any toys around?” she asked after a minute.
Gabe snorted.
“Didn’t think so.”
“Actually... Well, I’ll look around. I said it was okay for Boyd to loan this place out to a friend of his. Ski vacation. He had a family. Don’t know how old the kids were. They might have left something behind.”
Chloe’s head came up. She’d been following the conversation.
Unable to quite clean her plate, Trina finished eating first. “Do you have a satellite dish?”
“Yeah. Hey. Channel three has the lineup.”
She’d seen the living room but not taken it in. She couldn’t describe it as homey, exactly; Gabe had furnished it with the basics but not bothered with artwork or homey touches like table runners or rugs. The sofa and a big recliner were brown leather that made her think of saddles. The clean lines of the oak coffee table and single end table might be Mission style. Built-in bookcases lined one wall and held an impressive stereo system as well as quite a library. A big-screen TV hung above a cabinet that had drawers. Trina went to investigate those.
Among a good-size collection of movies for grown-ups, she found three DVDs aimed at kids: Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life and Arthur’s Perfect Christmas. Chloe decided on Arthur’s Perfect Christmas. Trina succeeded in getting it started and Chloe climbed onto the sofa and settled happily to watch.
Returning to the kitchen, Trina reported, “Your renters apparently went home without a few of their movies.”
He was loading the dishwasher and glanced up. “Ones she’ll watch?”
How a man could look so sexy doing such a mundane task, she didn’t know, but he succeeded.
“Yep.”
“Then this is probably a good time for us to talk.”
“Yes, except...” She nibbled on her lower lip. “I have a problem.” Actually, she had so many problems they’d add up to a lengthy list, but one thing at a time, Trina decided. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to change the dressings on my back and apply more ointment. Unless you have a mother or girlfriend nearby who could be persuaded to volunteer.”
“Neither.”
* * *
WELL, HELL. SHE was going to half strip so he could stroke ointment over her skin with his bare hands? Might as well ask him to run his hand along a strand of barbed wire. Dangerous. He wasn’t the only one conscious of the risks, either; the pink in her cheeks was from a different kind of heat.
Think of this as a medical problem, he told himself. “How badly are you burned?”
“Not that terrible. According to the doctor, mostly first-degree, spots of second-degree. No worse than a really bad sunburn. The fire didn’t touch me, but while I was lowering Chloe out the window and waiting until I could follow her, flames burst through the door behind me and—” She visibly shied from the memory. “I was just...too close to it.”
“Okay.” He tried to sound gentle, which had the effect of roughening his voice. “How often do we do it?”
“Twice a day until it’s obviously healing. Which shouldn’t be more than two or three days.”
Gabe thought it over. “I don’t want to leave Chloe downstairs by herself. If you’ll pause the movie—”
“Why don’t we wait until she’s gone to bed?”
Yeah, sure. Then they’d be alone, house quiet and dark around them. Her stretched out on his bed, since Chloe would be in hers.
He cleared his throat. “If you don’t need it done sooner.”
“It can wait.”
“All right.” Needing a distraction, he lifted the carafe from the fancy coffee maker that had been one of his first purchases after he’d had the cabin built. “Would you like a cup?”
“That would be great.”
“You okay on the stool, or would a chair be more comfortable?”
