She could let him be the strong one, the steady one. Not like it had been for the past year—when it was all on her. So much on her. But here . . . now . . . she could let go. Because he wouldn’t.
Don’t let go,
she thought. She couldn’t be set adrift again. She wouldn’t survive it. She’d drown for sure. Feeling suddenly panicky, she grabbed him.
I want to stay right here
.
“Don’t let me go.” She dug fingers into his jacket, clinging, clinging . . . but feeling so distant, so far away, like she was falling. She gripped harder. “Don’t let me go!”
“It’s okay, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
So steady. So strong. Then she felt . . . airborne. Weightless.
“Alex? Come on now. Alex!”
He sounded even sexier when he got all urgent like that.
“Stay with me. Open your eyes. Come on, stay with me. What are you on? What did you take? Alex!”
She smiled and let her cheek rest on his chest. Nice hard, warm chest. Silly, sexy sex god voice. Telling her to stay. She wasn’t going anywhere. She liked it when he said her name. All demanding and commanding. She liked it a lot.
The next thing she remembered was the sound of something metal snapping. And then the warmth, the solid chest, the strong arms were gone. She was floating. No, she was on something soft. Flat.
Where am I?
She blinked her eyes open, then squeezed them back shut again. She must have been having the most excellent dream, but the suddenness of being jerked out of it had sent the vision floating, drifting just out of reach. Not fair. She wanted it back again. It had been warm . . . safe. Not confusing, like whatever was happening on the other side of her closed eyelids.
Or like her life for that matter
.
“Miss MacFarland?” said a young voice. A woman’s voice.
She closed her eyes more tightly. Really unfair. She hadn’t slept well, or at all really, in . . . she couldn’t remember exactly. Months. A lifetime. No matter how exhausted she was, whenever she closed her eyes, she relived that horrible, horrible day. The day her life—the one she used to have—had ended.
Warm. Steady. Safe. That’s what she remembered feeling. She hadn’t felt any of those things in so . . . so long. And . . . that voice. The visions in her mind had been so . . . good. And more than warm. They’d been downright hot. She couldn’t remember where the sexy voice had come from, but she wanted it back.
“Alex?”
That’s the one
. She smiled, and relaxed, willing the dream to completely return.
“Alex.” More commanding this time.
She sighed. She remembered liking that, too.
“Open your eyes.”
Okay,
she thought.
But only for you
. She risked cracking her eyes open, just a tiny bit.
Oh . . . right
. He was real. The voice was real. Her Good Samaritan.
And it all came crashing back . . . right along with the accompanying mortification. She closed her eyes again.
“Alex, I’m Logan McCrae. I’m police chief here. Fergus McCrae, who hired you, is my great-uncle. Sort of. I own Pelican Point. You were headed out that way?”
She groaned. So, she’d been wrong about another thing.
Now
her humiliation was complete.
“Miss MacFarland? Can you hear me?” The woman’s voice again.
Alex had noticed her during her brief eyes-open stint, standing beside Sexy Sex-god Voice. The woman was dressed in what looked like some kind of EMT gear. Alex knew exactly what that gear looked like.
She squeezed her eyes more tightly. No longer hoping for the happy dream place, because there wasn’t one, but trying not to think about the last time she’d seen EMTs.
“Miss MacFarland? We need you to keep your eyes open. Come on. That’s it.” The young woman with pretty brown hair pulled up in a tight ponytail smiled at her. “Hello.”
Oh, she’s way too chipper
. Wanting nothing more than to sink right back into oblivion, Alex had to work at maintaining eye contact. “Hey,” Alex said, though it was more gravelly croak than actual language. “What . . . happened?”
As soon as she asked, she wished she hadn’t. She had enough of the tidbits floating around in her head—she could figure out how it had likely gone down. She really didn’t need chipper EMT girl rehashing the whole thing in front of Sex-god Voice, otherwise known as her new boss. She forced herself not to look at him. Seriously, hadn’t she paid enough karmic dues over the past year? Wasn’t it her turn for a little good? Or at least something not entirely awful?
“Miss MacFarland—”
“Alex,” she repeated. “I’m—fine.” Clearly untrue, but maybe if she said it and often, she could will it to be true. That trick had gotten her through the past fifteen months, anyway, hadn’t it?
“You’re dehydrated and I’m pretty sure your blood sugar just bottomed out,” the EMT was saying. “Are you on any prescribed medications? Have you taken anything else? Cold, flu medicines? Allergies?”
“No, none of those things. No illegal things, either,” she added, remembering her Samaritan’s queries from before. She worked to clear the grit from her throat, and the remaining wisps of fog from her brain. “You—I think you got it right pretty much the first time.” She struggled not to look at Mr. McCrae. A vision of her reflection in her truck mirror with the tear-streaked tragic clown face passed through her mind, which admittedly made not looking his way a bit easier. If he was police chief, he’d probably seen it all. But she was pretty sure he hadn’t hired it.
Well . . . shit.
The one thing she’d had going for her, and she’d managed to screw it up before it even started. “I just . . . need to eat something. Get some sleep.”
Good luck with that
. She struggled to prop herself up on her elbows, which was when she realized she was strapped to a stretcher. Her head thunked back on the pillow, making her groan.
She gave the EMT a questioning look, but it was Chief McCrae who moved into view. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked him.
He waited half a beat too long, then said, “No, we were just keeping you from falling if you startled when you woke up.”
They were still outside, she realized, feeling the chilly breeze on her cheeks and nose. She shifted her head, noticed the ambulance, and beyond its open rear door she spotted her truck. Good. Because she wasn’t going anywhere in anything with a siren on top. “I’m fine—or I will be. Really.” There was no money for a medical bill, so as long as she was breathing, she was fine enough. “You can let me up.” She looked back to the EMT. “Thank you. Sorry for the trouble.” She prayed there was no bill for that. She hadn’t called for them, after all. “I’ll take better care. Promise.”
Alex glanced at Chief McCrae, then decided the EMT—Bonnie, she noted on her name tag—was the better bet. She tried a smile, then thought, recalling her mascara-streaked face, that it might look a little . . . manic. She went for earnest instead. “I was just in a hurry to get here. Start work. For the McCraes.” She spared a tiny glance at the Chief.
God, why can’t I stop thinking about the Sex-god Voice?
His expression was unreadable.
Just then his phone buzzed. He pulled it out, clearly not thrilled with whatever name was flashing on the screen. “What’s up, Gus?” There was a pause, then a glance at her, his expression still unreadable. Okay, maybe it was a little readable. None of it good. “Yes, we’ve met,” he said, then turned and stepped a few feet away, but not before she heard him say, “No, I don’t think that’s going to happen. We’ll discuss it later.”
“Well, Miss MacFarland—Alex,” Bonnie corrected, still smiling, as she reclaimed Alex’s attention.
Alex hadn’t missed the placating note to it.
Wonderful.
“You really aren’t fit to drive,” Bonnie told her. “It would be best if you’d come on in for a few more tests, make sure it’s nothing other than fatigue, improper diet.”
More like exhaustion and no diet,
Alex thought, then realized Bonnie thought the same thing, but was being gentle with her when she saw the EMT and Sex-god—er, Chief McRae share a look as he stepped back over to the stretcher.
Be nice to the crazy lady who drove into town, fell apart over a blown tire, then passed out on the chief of police.
Since she assumed Gus was Fergus, and Chief McCrae’s “I don’t think so” was pretty much going to translate to “sorry, you’re fired,” her only other option was to get the hell out of Dodge and figure out what her next step was going to be—which meant convincing them she could drive. Who wanted to start a job heading into a Maine winter, anyway? Maybe she’d find something down south.
She couldn’t exactly ask them to take her to the nearest motel. No budget for that. She’d been counting on the promised lodging in the keeper’s cottage that would be part of her fee. She tried to sit up again, then sighed. “Could you unstrap me?”
Bonnie looked at Chief McCrae, then smiled at Alex. “All right. But don’t get up, okay?” She undid the straps. “I’ll assist you.”
Alex smiled back, all convivial, the picture of health. She might have managed that if it wasn’t for the crazy, streaky clown face, quite likely paired with a nose and eyes both red from crying. Still, she went for it. What choice did she have?
“That’s okay. I’m good.” She shifted her legs off the stretcher and sat up all at once, intent on demonstrating just how good she was. Will didn’t trump desire. However, she swung up, the world swung the other way, and she went careening off the other side . . . right back into Sex-god Voice’s arms. Like she’d not only planned it, but executed it with such perfect placement and precision that the Russian judge would have given her a ten for sticking the landing.
Chief McCrae didn’t look all that impressed. Possibly because she was seeing two of him. She blinked her eyes a few times, but that made it worse, so she gave up, shut them, and kept them that way.
Bonnie stepped up. “Chief—”
“It’s okay. I’ll take care of it.”
“But—” Bonnie started.
“No, really, I’m—” Alex said at the same time.
“I’ll take care of it,” Logan repeated.
Bonnie stepped back. Alex might have sighed a little.
But the Sex-god Voice mixed with the Man of Steel attitude was really more than she could handle in her diminished state. Had she been healthy and hydrated, surely she’d have stood up to him.
As opposed to now, when you can’t seem to stop thinking about being under him
.
He turned toward his SUV.
“Where are you taking me?” She should be alarmed. Or care what his answer was. All she could think about was how good it felt to be snuggled back up against his broad chest again. She really needed a snack.
“Out to the Point. You were headed there, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“It’s dark. Or close enough. And cold.”
“My truck—”
“Still has a flat. I’ll get it taken care of. You need rest. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“No need for that. You can fire me right here.”
“Who said I was going to fire you?”
“You did. I mean, isn’t that what you just told Fergus?”
“Do you want me to fire you?”
Why is he being deliberately obtuse?
“What I want is to not needlessly draw things out only to be fired later. I’m not a fan of drawing things out. Rip the Band-Aid straight off. That’s my motto.”
“That hurts more, you know. It’s a myth that it doesn’t.” She looked at him. “First, it’s a metaphor, and secondly, yes, it hurts like hell. But it goes away a lot faster.”
He stared at her for the longest time. “Does it really?”
As horrifying as they were unavoidable, the tears sprang right back.
“Exactly. You’re coming with me. We’ll sort the rest out later.”
Chapter 3
M
ercifully, for both their sakes, she remained silent as he drove out to the Point. He’d glanced at her a few times, but told himself it was to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid. Like fling herself from the moving vehicle into the sound.
He didn’t think she was intent on doing herself any harm, but, to be honest, he didn’t know what she was. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. He knew she was wounded. Maybe not in some obvious way. But in a way that was still unmistakable. If you knew the signs.
He knew all of them.
What he didn’t know was how damaged she’d been by whatever had happened to her. Though, given the present circumstances, he was putting together a pretty good idea. Still, he didn’t think she was a jumper. More like a runner. He wondered what she was running from. And how long she’d been at it. A good while, given the shape she was in.
They pulled up in front of the house, saving him from having to think about it any longer. He didn’t want to be thinking about it at all. She wasn’t his problem. He shut off the engine. “Stay put until I come around the other side,” he said, pocketing the keys. “The ground is rocky and uneven and the lights aren’t on yet.” Remembering her distinct lack of respect for instructions, he added, “If you so much as move, I’ll call Bonnie and tell her to come out here and pick you—”
A death rattle wheezed out from the passenger side of his truck. He instantly popped his door open so the overhead dome light came on, not wanting to admit that his heart had done a pretty hard stutter at the sound. He and Bonnie had agreed that they didn’t think the new arrival was on anything, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been wrong.
He snapped off his seat belt and was already reaching for her, intending to check her pulse, when her head lolled to the side, toward him . . . and she let out a nose-sucking, throat-gurgling, chest-rattling snore that would have put a three-hundred-pound man to shame.
He couldn’t help it. He grinned. Okay, he might have chuckled. “Alex?” he said quietly.
Nothing—if you didn’t count another nose-sucking snort.
Probably stuffed up from all the crying,
he thought, trying to be charitable. But mostly to offset the continued chuckling. He reached over anyway and, careful not to disturb her any more than necessary, touched the pulse on her neck.
Steady, solid. Good.
Before he could take his fingers away, she shifted and trapped his hand between her cheek and the back of the seat. Her skin was soft, delicate. And surprisingly warm. If he could find a way to look past the red swollen nose, the splotchy cheeks streaked with mascara, and the significantly whacked-out hat hair that had emerged when Bonnie had taken her knit cap off to check for injuries earlier . . . she looked fragile. Vulnerable. In ways that had nothing to do with the superficial wreckage of a single day’s events.
The glow of the overhead light wasn’t great for making any real diagnosis, but he didn’t need to see her. He’d gotten a very good look earlier when she’d first passed out. Faint purplish shadows were under her eyes, the fine skin looking drawn, stretched almost too thin. Cheekbones and a jawline that were probably a bit more pronounced than they might normally have been. Not gaunt, but heading in that direction. Long-term illness would have been most people’s guess.
He’d held her, looked into those eyes before they went permanently spacey. Beautiful, haunting eyes the color of the deep blue sea. A very turbulent, deep blue sea. Actually, not
haunting
. Haunted.
Yeah, she was suffering all right, but she wasn’t sick. Though she was doing a pretty damn good job of getting herself that way.
He belatedly realized he was slowly stroking her cheek with the side of his thumb and went still, then shook his head at himself.
Because, what? You’re suddenly sixteen and so dorky you’re afraid to touch a girl?
With a dry smile aimed at himself, he carefully slid his hand free, trying real hard to ignore how long it had been since he’d stroked a woman’s face.
He climbed out his side of the truck and closed the door, then hunkered his shoulders against the constant breeze and circled around to the passenger side. He carefully opened the door and leaned across to unhook her seat belt, then scooped her up before she could slither to the floor of his truck in a boneless, snort-snoring heap.
Smiling again as she let a particularly staccato one rip, he shifted her in his arms so she tipped against his chest, her cheek against his jacket, then toed the truck door shut.
The air had a pretty good snap to it and she shivered as he made his way over the rocky drive to the smoother brick path that led to the side porch. He tucked her closer and tried to angle himself to shield her as much as possible . . . and found himself noticing that for all her hair might have looked like it hadn’t seen a shower recently, it actually smelled . . . nice. Sweet, a little fruity.
He chuckled. “Like its owner.”
“Hmm?” She made another little groggy sound and he firmed up his hold on her.
“I’ve got you,” he said quietly, calmly. “Go back to sleep. You’re fine.”
Far from,
he thought, but didn’t want a repeat of her trying to throw herself off the stretcher to prove her independence.
That thought made him loosen his hold slightly.
Is that it? Is she running from a threat?
He stepped up on the porch and shifted her weight so he could turn the knob, and boot open the side door to the mudroom and kitchen. No, he decided, discarding that possibility as instantly as it had occurred to him.
That isn’t it.
He was mostly certain because he recognized the difference between a haunted look and a hunted one. He grinned as he made his way down the hall, past the bathroom, to the first-floor guest bedroom. He was 100 percent certain, however, because at one point in her exhaustion-induced delirium she’d called him Sex-god Voice . . . and had seemed pretty pleased about it. A woman on the run from a threat, particularly the male kind, wouldn’t likely say anything like that, especially to a stranger, no matter what kind of shape she was in.
Sex-god Voice.
He probably shouldn’t get such a kick out of it. Women had commented on his deep voice any number of times, but that particular description was a first. He hoped Bonnie hadn’t picked up on it. It was one thing for him to be privately amused as all hell, but the idea of anyone else in town getting hold of that moniker made him shudder to even contemplate.
He leaned over the bed and started to lower her to the mattress, but the instant her body angled away from his, she grabbed the front of his jacket and tugged hard. “Don’t let go!” she cried, the words muffled against his jacket.
He paused and looked down. Her eyes were still closed. She was still asleep. But her expression was contorted, strained. He paused for a moment and her hands relaxed a bit, so he tried to put her on the bed again.
“Don’t go! Just hold on!
Hold on!
” She wasn’t clutching him any longer, but she was shuddering, and her voice was shaking, thick with emotion. “Come on, hold on. You can. Just . . .
don’t let go
.” The last came out on a choked sob, and then she gripped his jacket again, pressing her face against it, shaking. Tears squeezed out.
A dream. More like a nightmare.
“Dad! No!
Daddy!
” That last part had come out on a heart-wrenching wail. She clung to Logan, crying, keening.
Shaken up, he didn’t quite know what to do. Force her awake? Or let her cry it out? He had the burgeoning feeling that the episode on the ramp earlier was likely because she’d spent too much time forcing herself to stay awake, and not enough time just letting it all out. Whatever
it
was.
He turned and slowly lowered his weight and hers into the oversized stuffed chair angled in the corner next to the bed, shoving the matching ottoman out of the way with his heel as he settled her against him, and simply held on.
There were no more words, no more pleas. Just wrenching, frame-shaking sobs. He questioned himself several times on whether it was the right thing to do, but saying her name, stroking her hair back from her damp cheeks, didn’t elicit even a ripple of awareness in her. He couldn’t bring himself to do anything harsher or more abrupt to shake her out of it. So he did what she’d asked.
He didn’t let go.
He wasn’t sure when the tears stopped. At some point, he’d drifted off. He felt her stir against him . . . and lifted his cheek from where it was resting on top of her head.
The room was in deep shadows, with only a glimmer of light coming from the mudroom back down the hall, and a sliver of moonlight peeking in through the curtains. Just enough so that when she opened her eyes and looked up at him, they were deep, luminous pools.
“It’s you.” Her words were raw and gritty.
He didn’t know the best way to handle it, and he was still a bit foggy, so he simply said, “Yeah. It’s me.”
“You didn’t let go.”
The combination of wonder and affirmation might have made the corners of his mouth kick up a little, but it was some other emotion entirely that pinched at his heart. “No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t.”
“I thought you were a dream.”
He didn’t want her to think about her dreams. “You’re awake now. It’s all okay.”
“Your voice,” she said, hers gravelly. She was still only half awake, groggy.
Sex-god Voice.
His body surprised him by stirring, remembering how she’d smiled when she’d first called him that.
She wasn’t smiling. She was warm, and soft, pliant in his arms, all tucked up against his chest . . . with big, bottomless eyes looking straight into his. When that gaze dropped to his mouth, his body went from stirring to leaping. Then he wasn’t smiling, either.
“Alex—”
She made a soft little moan at the sound of her name, and then completely and utterly shocked him by lifting her head up and nipping his bottom lip.
He made a little grunt of surprise, while his body made a far more enthusiastic shout of hello.
“I knew it would be,” she murmured, then slid her hand over his cheek and into his hair, pulled his head further down, and kissed him.
And damn if he didn’t let her.
For the first split second, he told himself it was because he was simply too stunned to do anything else. But then she moaned a little, suckled and nipped at his bottom lip again, and he was suddenly kissing her back.
Instinct,
he told himself. Because she was warm and soft, and her firm little butt was pressed against his now raging hard-on. And because she was a hell of a kisser. Slow, but greedy, unhurried yet demanding. He felt like he’d just been tossed into the endless sea of her deep blue eyes without a lifejacket. He was drowning, and he just didn’t care.
He let her pull him under for a third time before he finally shook awake some part of what functioning brain cells he had left and broke it off. Her lips, warm and damp, her bottom lip all soft and full, clung to his until the last second before he broke contact entirely. He wasn’t sure who groaned softly, and didn’t want to know.
She sighed, and he was all caught up in the wonder that was the sweet, satisfied smile on her face as she settled right back against his chest again, as trusting as a kitten.
“That was even better,” she murmured drowsily.
And then she was out—leaving him sitting there, half dazed, pulse thundering, hard-on throbbing, wondering how the hammering of his heartbeat wasn’t jarring her awake.
He
was sure as hell awake. More awake than he’d been in . . . well, too long.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to think about all the things that were wrong with what he’d just let happen, and figure out what the hell he was going to do about it. But closing his eyes just enticed him to want to sink right back into the moment.
Jesus.
The friction of her sweet backside pressed against him was making him a little crazy. So the first thing he needed to do was get her out of his lap. Then take a very long cold shower. Then—then he didn’t know what.
First things first.
Carefully, and not without a little grimacing and wincing on his part, he managed to get them both up and out of the chair. When he laid her down on the bed, she didn’t rouse at all. In fact, she rolled to her side and curled up, face nuzzling into the pillow.
Like she’d just nuzzled into my chest.
Yeah, don’t think about that.
He debated on taking her jacket and shoes off, but figured escaping was the better part of valor. He shook out the quilt folded over the footboard of the double bed and draped it over her. Then stood for another thirty seconds, watching her chest softly rise and fall, before finally kicking his ass out of his own guest bedroom.
He glanced at the clock over the stove as he walked into the kitchen, surprised to discover it was past midnight.
Awesome.
He’d lost an entire evening. Not to mention dinner. He debated throwing something together, then remembered there was nothing to throw. Not to mention it was hard to think about food when he had a raging erection distracting the ever-loving hell out of him . . . and the warm, soft woman responsible for it was curled up in bed down the hall.
Swearing under his breath, he headed out of the kitchen toward the stairs up to his bedroom, but paused, looking back down the hallway. He told himself he just wanted to make sure she wasn’t going back to nightmare land. But she’d been deeply asleep when he’d left her—like the very exhausted woman she was. He climbed the stairs, thinking he’d figure out what the hell to do about all of it in the morning.
At the moment, there were more pressing . . . needs that he had to tend to. He trudged into his bedroom, peeling out of his uniform and kicking off boots as he went, then flipped on the shower in the master bath. At the last second, he slid the faucet to hot instead of cold. He stepped in, closing his eyes as the hot water beat on the tight muscles in his neck that came from ending a long day by sleeping in the guest room chair. Then pooled some thick body wash in his hands . . . and took care of his other stiff muscle. No need to let that go to waste, he figured, groaning as he leaned back against the tile wall, stroked himself, and let himself imagine how the evening could have ended if she’d been awake and lucid when she’d started kissing him. At least he’d get something out of the wasted night.