Love on the Edge: Nine Shades of Romantic Suspense, page 67
He sat down beside her, his hand hovered next to her cheek, then drew back when she shrank away from him. “Soon, Willow. Soon you’ll understand.”
A low moan brought Matt awake in a rush. His hand closed around the butt of his gun before his eyes opened. Took him a few seconds to realize he was in his own bedroom. In his bed, Dani moaned, her head turning from side to side as if she were trying to escape something. Or someone.
Hayes. How are you sleeping nights?
Still not good, it seemed. He rubbed his face, then leaned forward and touched the hand twitching on top of the blanket.
“Dani? Dani, it’s just a nightmare—” Her eyes opened so fast, so wide, he wasn’t ready. Their faces were too close together. He needed distance to look at the fear in her eyes and not feel anything but responsibility for erasing the cause. “It’s Matt. Matt Kirby. The—”
“—lonesome lawmen. I remember.”
He started at being nailed so neatly, went to let her go, but her hand gripped his for a endless moment, then relaxed so that he could sit back.
“What—time is it?”
He angled his arm. “Five am.”
“I had a feeling you’d say that.”
“It’s too early to get up. Why don’t you go back to sleep?”
A wry smile edged across her mouth. “I don’t think ‘the repose of the night’ belongs ‘to me.’ It opens an ‘inn for phantoms.’”
“What?”
“Bachelard. Gaston Bachelard. French philosopher.” She looked at him. “Ironic, don’t you think?”
“I’m not sure. What are we talking about?” Why—no—how could she quote a French philosopher at five in the morning?
“Spook. The king of quotes. I wouldn’t know why I can’t sleep if it weren’t for him launching the quote wars on the boards. Course, I wouldn’t need to know why if it wasn’t for him. That’s the ironic part.”
“Oh.” He didn’t know what to say. What she had done was stupid, but she knew that.
She sighed. “I guess I should have known he was a hit man.” Her mouth drooped at the edges. “Real men aren’t that sensitive.”
Matt grinned. “After twenty in the Marshals, I thought I’d seen all there was to see, but Hayes—well, he’s in a class of his own.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” Her eyes were losing their bruised look and her smile came more easily this time. “Thanks for being kind after I, you know, avoided you and everything.”
Matt rubbed his face, mostly to take a break from looking at her in his bed, her hair spread across his pillow. “I’ll admit it annoyed me.”
“It wasn’t personal,” Dani said, then, added with conscious honesty, “–until you told me to get my ass back into custody. Then it might have gotten personal.”
“Alice called me on it at the time,” Matt admitted.
“Alice?”
“Alice Paysse, a member of my team. You saw Riggs at Boomer’s and talked to Sebastian on line…”
“The counterfeit smiley guy?”
Matt grinned, the movement taking the harshness from his face. “That’s right. He enjoyed the world tour you took him on.”
“More than you did, I suspect.”
Matt didn’t answer, but his gaze was amused. “How did you learn to navigate cyberspace like that?”
Dani didn’t want to tell him she had learned the good stuff from Spook, so she arched her brows. “Isn’t it in my file? I thought you had all my sad, little secrets at your fingertips?”
“If I’d had all of them, we’d have had this chat a lot sooner.”
“Oh, really?” Dani punched up the pillow and tucked it behind her head. When she was comfortable, she donned her best innocent look, the one she used when being interviewed by jerks. “So it was simply a lack of information that complicated your hunting? Not seriously underestimating the romance writer?”
His stare tried to be hard, but he didn’t get the twinkle completely under control. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay. Tell me about yourself instead.” When he opened his mouth on a protest, Dani added, “It’s only fair. You have my file. Quid Pro Quo.”
He sighed. “What do you want to know?”
Everything, she thought, but aloud all she asked was, “What do you do when you aren’t tracking down poor, defenseless romance writers?”
The bushy line of dark brows shot up, but he didn’t take the bait. “This is Colorado. Rock climbing, skiing, hunting, hiking, fishing—we have a cabin up by the Rocky Mountain National Park.”
A mountain cabin. Why wasn’t she surprised. “We?”
“Me and my brothers. Luke, the oldest, is a cop and little brother, Jake who is also a Deputy Marshal, comes when he’s around. He travels a lot.”
“How law abiding you all are.”
Matt grinned. “Runs in the family, I’m afraid. My dad was a cop. His dad, too.”
Against the odds, Dani felt herself relax, felt sleep trying to steal back in. Matt had taken the edge off the fear she usually used to fight it back. He was far too comforting for his own good. Or hers.
“Was?”
“He died in the line of duty when I was in college.”
“My parents died just before I started college, but you know that already, don’t you?” The words came out in pieces as her mind began to blur.
“Yeah, I do.” Matt noted the signs of sleep returning with a mix of regret and relief. The more vulnerable she was, the more dangerous she was.
“Your mom,” she had to yawn before she could get the whole question out, “she’s still…”
“Yeah, she lives not far from here in the house I grew up in. She’s dating again. He was my dad’s best friend. She’s known him, well, since the wedding. He was the best man—”
“You don’t like it,” she said on a sigh.
“I do, too,” the protest was automatic, “I’ve known him forever.” He shoved his hands into hair. How had he got on this subject? “He’s a stand up guy—”
“I didn’t say you didn’t like him,” Dani said, her hand covering his where he gripped the sides of the chair. Her palm was cool. His skin heated to warm it. “I just said you don’t like the situation.”
“I don’t have the right—” To dislike the situation or to like her hand on his.
She smiled. “I’m glad you realize it. Though it’s natural to feel like he’s doing your dad down.” She yawned again, taking her hand off his to cover her mouth. Her words came out in sleepy pieces, “With guys, it’s about…territory. If you can see that might get over it…”
She yawned again, her eyes closing as her voice faded. She sighed, then turned on her side. She reached out and found his hand again. A strand of hair fell forward over her face, curling against the smooth line of her cheek. The hand she wasn’t touching curled into a fist. He flexed the fingers of his free hand, then smoothed the hair back behind her ear. Where her skin touched his, heat flowed, igniting the age old longing to mate.
She wasn’t, he reminded himself, a short-time girl. She was a lifetime woman for a guy with regular hours and a job that wasn’t life threatening. Someone who could be there when she needed him, not when he could fit her in.
She sighed, her body shuddering as she slipped into a deeper sleep. He closed his eyes. If he could just get through the night, the need would fade. He was just tired. That’s all. At five in the morning, everybody felt lonely…
*
Niall McBride was almost too easy to kill. The last five days had turned him into something that needed to be exterminated, Hayes decided with disgust, not sacrificed on the altar of pain. Hayes did it slow. He wanted him to know he was dying and why. As life faded from his eyes, he told him about Willow, told him why his betrayal was costing him so dear. Told him he wouldn’t burn. Hayes would not make him a martyr. All he was fit for was to wallow in his own blood.
Hayes sat and watched until the blood stopped flowing out the gash in his neck, then used his blood to write, “Not worthy” on the wall by his head. There was still the problem of Copeland, but he had a plan for him, too. When he walked out, he was almost a free man.
Willow was safe. Her enemies were dead. Even Orsini, though he hadn’t done the job himself. He smiled. The hit man had put out a contract on the employer. Ironic.
Willow would like that. She liked irony. He couldn’t wait to tell her about it. He could, now that it was time for them to be together.
All he had to do was find her.
*
Matt woke up hurting with the sun stabbing through a slit in the blinds right into his eyes. He was slouched deep in the chair, his back at a bad angle. Inch by painful inch he straightened. Good thing Dani was still asleep. Would not be good for the witness to see the Marshal grimacing and wincing in pain because he slept in a chair all night. Not when he was trying to inspire confidence in his ability to protect her.
Standing was marginally better than sitting. A hot shower would increase the margin. All he had to do was get there, as long he didn’t meet a belligerent two-year-old in the hall.
At least hurting had killed horny.
Dani chose that moment to roll over, taking her covers with her. Her dress had ridden high on her thighs. Way too high. Her legs, still covered in black nylon, were dangerously good in daylight. She sighed, then bent one leg, sliding it up the pillow she was hugging. This took her hem line to new heights. That made her three for three on the lust scale. He could be in trouble here.
For the third time in twelve hours, he turned and stalked away from her. He would like to meet the idiot who said there wasn’t life after forty, he decided. Probably some kid who didn’t know that if there was breath, there was life.
On the other side of a cold, then hot shower, his stomach rumbled a reminder it wasn’t just sex that had been in short supply last night. In the kitchen, the refrigerator was almost bare, a state easily corrected with a market just across the street, if it weren’t for the stairs. He tossed back a couple of Tylenol. Out in the hall, he locked the door, then punched the buttons on his cell as he headed down the hall. When his assistant answered he said, “Let me talk to Alice.”
*
Dani woke face down in bed facing a long, narrow window that she didn’t recognize. Hovering at the edge of full consciousness, her hand opened and closed, as if it missed something. She rolled onto her back with a groan. Above her was an unfamiliar ceiling.
“Where am I?” For a moment she felt like she had done this before. She frowned. In her book Putting Love Away, her protagonist, Gemma had awakened in a strange room, so in a way she kind of had done it before. Gemma, she recalled, had been naked when she woke up. Dani lifted the sheet and examined her clothed body with mixed feelings. “Obviously I didn’t do what Gemma did.”
Dani sat up, pulled her legs to her chest and propped her arms on her knees. She couldn’t believe she had slept past five. It was a breakthrough, even if her brain still felt like mush. Waking up was not something she was good at no matter what time it was. She needed a Diet DP and/or chocolate to smooth the transition. With an instinct that was well honed, she sensed neither was available here. She was in the lonesome lawman’s den. He had been making coffee—then boom, morning to face.
Imagination filled in the details. He had carried her to his bed. Then, she looked around, sat in that chair pulled close to the bed and guarded her rest.
How heroic.
Kelly would be thrilled he was finally playing the part nature had so perfectly fitted him for. Too bad his heart wasn’t in it. No, good thing his heart wasn’t in it. Her heart was no match for a determined assault by someone who looked that good in jeans and didn’t mind taking on the odd killer.
Dani had sampled the bed and found it good. Now she studied his room. It was surprisingly old fashioned with its high, sloped ceiling and crisp, white walls. It wasn’t a large room, but, like everything else she had seen, it was a masculine one.
The king sized bed, the dresser and night stand were hewn in blunt, clean lines that solidly filled space without overpowering the small area. In the corner, a closet door stood ajar. The chair by the bed was rugged, but comfortable looking.
She straightened. She did wake at five. They had chatted about his mother—the details came back in bits—then she had fallen back to sleep. A vague memory rose up to tease her, of Matt holding her hand and smoothing back her hair.
Dani shook it away. Not a good thing for a writer to mix fantasy with her reality. It was almost as dangerous as mixing reality with her fantasy.
She should go shower, but that open closet door was beckoning. She gnawed her lip as conscience battled curiosity. He had snooped extensively into her life, turnabout was fair play. It wasn’t like she was opening it to snoop. He had left it that way, practically inviting her to peek.
Inside she found guy clothes sharing space with guy stuff, mostly sports guy stuff like skis and fishing poles and a locked rifle case. Now she remembered him mentioning his vices and shuddered. Far more interesting was the total lack of anything female. It upheld her impression she had wandered into a confirmed bachelor zone. A photo album was shoved onto a shelf overhead, just begging to be removed and opened. So she did.
Inside she found snaps taken outside the cabin he had mentioned. The men must be the brothers. One was an older carbon copy of Matt, the other only like him around the eyes. Others snaps followed, some of Matt, some of the brothers, wearing snow skis atop steep slopes or holding up huge fish or lolling animal heads.
When she called Matt a hunting hound dog it had been an understatement of massive proportions.
She lingered for a bit over a picture of a younger Matt, his arm looped around a brunette with sad eyes. Bending close she could just make out what looked like wedding rings on both their fingers. There had been a woman in his life, but there wasn’t now. They had a divorce in common.
The romance writer and the lawmen? She was, she told herself, was examining the idea for fictional reasons. She turned the page and found a shot of Matt hanging over the side of a cliff, a slight smile edging his firm mouth, a predatory look in his eyes. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he climbed rock. He had just neglected to mention how high the rock was.
Just looking at the photo made her dizzy. Not even on paper could she work the kinks out of a romance between a rock climbing Marshal and a romance writer with acrophobia.
Dani studied the steep drop that the camera angle revealed and flinched. Nah. Never happen. He was wedded to rock and job. Didn’t need to be a rocket scientist or a romance writer to know that about him. She only needed to be hunted by him for five days to reach that level of enlightenment. She set the album aside. Time for that shower.
In the hall there were two doors to choose from. Lucky for her the one to the bathroom was open. She listened at the closed door, but didn’t hear any sounds emitting from it. Either the roommate was out or a very quiet sleeper. In the bathroom, she showered quickly. It wasn’t like she had a lot to do. No toiletries. No clothes.
There was a towel and a toothbrush in a package on the side of the sink. Did it mean the lawman wasn’t always lonesome or just thoughtful? There was no way to know, but she decided to assume he was thoughtful and helped herself to a dark silk robe hanging on the back of the door. It smelled like him, tough and earthy and good. She tried not to inhale—it had worked for Clinton—as she rolled up the sleeves, then headed for the living room. Time to beard the mighty hunter in his lair. No, that was mixing her metaphors. Time to beard him in his—what? Where did hunters lurk? The gun shop?
“Hello?” she said, relieved when there was no answer.
She had taken in the broad outlines of his home last night. Now she walked around, looking for details to fill in the outlines. She started with his books, glad the worn covers indicated they weren’t there for show. A small thing, but something in common. The titles tended toward action adventure fiction, sports, Louis L’Amour, and law tomes.
Her idea of exercise was to walk to Cafe de Monde for beignets and coffee. She turned her back on the books and discovered it was her laptop on his desk. The nerve of him snooping through her hard drive. Then realized she would have to pretend she wasn’t tempted to snoop through his drawers. That was the problem with righteous indignation. It left you nowhere to go.
The telephone rang and almost put her through the high ceiling. She stared at it, fighting the peculiar compulsion to answer that six months cut off from the world obviously hadn’t blunted one bit. It rang again and she gave in to temptation, even though it wouldn’t be for her.
“Hello?”
There was a pause, then a female voice said, “Is Matt there?”
“No. He stepped out—” The phone slammed down. With a slight smile, she replaced it. She had never cared for “other woman” plots anyway. Almost immediately it rang under her hand. With one success under her belt, she didn’t hesitate.
A pause, then a deep, cheerful man’s voice asked, “Is Matt there?”
“He stepped out for a minute. Can I take a message?”
“This is his brother, Luke.”
“Luke? Oh, the big brother.” Odd to think of Matt as a little brother. He was so not little.
A moment of surprised silence, then a laugh. “That’s right. Who are you?”
She hesitated. “Louise. This is Louise.”
“Oh. Well, Louise, they told me at his office he was home.”
“Yes. He is, well, he was. He stepped out for sustenance, which seems to be in short supply. But I’m sure he’ll be back shortly. I can tell him you called.”
“Maybe you can tell me, do you know if he’s still planning on going to the cabin with me tonight?”
Dani edged aside the curtain. Down on the street, Matt looked at a bin of apples, while talking to the grocer. She hoped he was asking the man for chocolate and her soda. She wasn’t into apples. “I don’t know what his plans are for tonight.”
Luke’s rich chuckle startled her. “If he can’t figure something out, yours truly is available.”
