Tempt Me
Tempt Me
Caroline Cross
He was chained to her bed. Ex-Army Ranger John Taggert Steele couldn't believe the pretty little mess he was in. The case should have been easy: Track down runaway murder witness Genevieve Bowen and return her to police custody. But somehow he ended up shackled to the sassy brunette's bed–and rather than thinking how to get out of it, he was sorely tempted to get Genevieve in it so he could teach her a much-needed lesson in domination.Because one way or another he'd regain control, and show her what happens when you play with a desperate man's heart.
Tempt Me
Caroline Cross
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
One
John Taggart Steele stood motionless in the shifting shadows that edged the towering stand of evergreens.
Snowflakes swirled in the icy air around him, swept from the treetops high overhead by a capricious wind. Narrowing his eyes against the October sun, he raised his binoculars to zero in on the tidy A-frame cabin in the clearing five hundred yards away, only to jerk the glasses away as his cell phone vibrated. Ripping it from the clip on his belt, he glanced at the screen and saw the call was from Steele Security’s Denver office. He hit the receive button and slapped the instrument to his ear. “What?”
“Looks like it’s her, all right.” As calm as a summer day, his brother Gabe’s voice held neither reproach at the brusque greeting nor satisfaction as he delivered the long-awaited confirmation.
Taggart said nothing, merely waited.
“The truck was recently registered to a woman calling herself Susan Moore. The previous owner is a Laramie grad student who says he sold the vehicle three weeks ago to a cocktail waitress at the bar he frequents. He described Bowen to a T, said she was ‘a real sweet little thing.’ She paid cash for the vehicle and confided she was headed south to see her ailing grandpa.”
“Laramie, huh?”
Gabe seemed to know exactly what Taggart was thinking. “Yeah. When she left Flagstaff, she bolted toward Denver, not away. Totally unexpected, completely illogical.” There was a pause, then he added thoughtfully, “It was a damn good strategy.”
Good strategy wasn’t quite how Taggart would describe it—not when he’d been chasing the elusive Ms. Genevieve Bowen for close to three months. Still, he shoved away the rude comment that sprang to mind, along with his uncharacteristic impatience. Emotion didn’t have a place in the job he did as a partner in Steele Security, the business he and his brothers ran out of their home base in Denver, Colorado. The kind of work they did—hostage and fugitive recovery, personal protection, threat management, industrial security—required clear but creative thinking, situational analysis, high-stakes decision making.
Taggart regarded being cool and impartial an absolute necessity. It ought to be chiseled in stone, if you asked him—his brother Dominic’s recent marriage to a wealthy debutante he’d rescued from the clutches of a ruthless Caribbean dictator notwithstanding.
He shifted his gaze from the cabin to the ancient Ford pickup parked at the far end of it. Just because the vehicle’s recent history fit with his quarry’s MO—blend in, deal in cash, vanish after dropping false hints about your destination—that didn’t automatically mean it was Bowen. There was still a chance she’d again eluded him—and gained the gratitude and ensuing silence of yet another needy young woman matching her general description—by giving away the truck the way she had three previous vehicles.
Only Taggart didn’t think so. And not merely because his instincts were clamoring that his luck had finally turned. Because this time, damned if he hadn’t seen her himself, bold as brass, driving out of the Morton’s Grocery parking lot on the outskirts of Kalispell.
The cabin door swung open. “I’ve got movement,” he told Gabe. “I’ll catch you later.” Not waiting for a reply, he disconnected and shifted the binoculars into place as a woman stepped out onto the porch that skirted the cabin.
With icy calm, he let his gaze climb her length, starting at her fleece-topped boots and moving up her slim, blue-jeaned legs, past a serviceable green parka until he arrived, at long last, at her face.
He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. It was her, all right. After the dozen weeks he’d spent on her trail, interviewing her friends and showing her picture around, her features were as familiar to him as his own. There was the full mouth, the straight little nose, the big dark eyes and the slightly squared chin. Her glossy brown hair, which she’d once worn in a thick braid that reached to her waist, was now cropped short and, after a number of cut-and-color transformations, back to its original color.
He frowned as something nagged at him, and then his face smoothed out as he realized he was simply surprised by how small she was. Even though his information on her included the fact that she was only five foot three, for some reason he’d expected her to appear taller.
Nevertheless, it was her—Ms. Genevieve Bowen, Silver, Colorado, bookstore owner and literacy booster, teen mentor, animal lover, occasional emergency foster mother. A woman so well-known for her random acts of kindness that her friends fondly referred to her as their own little Pollyanna.
Polly-pain-in-the-butt was more like it, Taggart thought, recalling the absolute futility of the past three months. Given Ms. Bowen’s glorified Girl Scout reputation, and the fact that your average model citizen didn’t know jack about being on the lam, he’d assumed he’d be able to track her down without breaking a sweat.
Wrong. First to his surprise and then to his exasperation—and his brothers’ not-so-subtle amusement—little Genevieve had made none of the usual beginner’s mistakes. Hell, she hadn’t made any mistakes. Instead, she’d simply vanished, turning a job that should have been a week-long romp into a test of Taggart’s cunning and perseverance.
It was just too damn bad for her that he was very, very good at his job.
That, being a methodical son of a bitch, he’d decided after losing her trail yet again to revisit all the places he’d initially pegged as being potential bolt holes for her, including her late great-uncle’s northern Montana cabin where she and her brother—who was currently being held without bail on charges of capital murder—had spent several long-ago summers.
And that, in an unpredictable turn of luck, he’d just happened to pull into that grocery store lot at the same time she’d been pulling out. Otherwise, he not only would have missed her, he’d have once again struck the cabin off his list for now and most likely spent another few weeks fruitlessly trying to locate her.
Instead, he’d called in the pickup’s plates to Gabe and followed her back here, managing to remain undetected only because he’d been pretty damn sure where they were going. Once again, what had been good for him had been bad for her.
But then, Genevieve hadn’t exactly had a banner year, what with her brother’s arrest for killing James Dunn, his client’s only son; her own unwanted role as the prosecution’s key witness and her dumb-ass decision to flee rather than testify.
Because now she was his. With a distinct surge of possessiveness, he watched as she reached the truck, keeping the binoculars trained on her vivid face as she retrieved a bag of groceries and trekked back the way she’d come.
Suddenly, just as she reached the stairs that led up to the cabin’s railed porch, she stopped. Swiveling her head, she looked straight at him.
Taggart knew damn well she couldn’t see him. Still, he felt her gaze like a lover’s touch. Rooted in place, he forgot to breathe, stunned as his skin prickled and he felt the oddest tug of recognition….
It seemed like an eternity before she looked away, gave the rest of the clearing a careful once-over, then squared her shoulders and went quickly up the trio of steps. Pausing under the wide overhang that sheltered the door, she abruptly glanced one last time directly at the spot where he stood before she disappeared inside.
Annoyed, he blew out his pent-up breath, asking himself what the hell had just happened. Just who did she think she was? Some sort of psychic? His long-lost soul mate?
Yeah, right. It’d be a cold day in hell when he started believing in that kind of delusional mumbo jumbo.
Jaw clenched, he stowed the binoculars and surged into motion. Carefully hugging the shadow of the trees, he began to work his way toward the back of the cabin, his powerful body making short shrift of the thigh-high snowdrifts.
Enough cat and mouse. It was time to take her down.
Genevieve set the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter. Chilled despite the warmth of her parka, she rubbed her arms and did her best to dispel her lingering sense of unease.
Try as she might to downplay it, she’d had the most uncomfortable sensation of being watched while she was outside. It had been sharp, overwhelming, eerie—as palpable as an actual touch. Alarm had flickered along her spine; gooseflesh had erupted on her arms and prickled the nape of her neck.
She’d felt a powerful urge to run.
That’s what you get for staying up late last night reading Stephen King. Keep it up, and the next thing you know, you’ll start to think the trees are alive. Or that a mutant squirrel is coming to get you….
A wry little smile tugged briefly at the corners of her mouth. Okay. So maybe she was a wee bit jumpy. It wasn’t really surprising, not when her stop in town to get supplies had filled her with such conflicting feelings.
Typical of her current existence, she’d been scared to death that someone might recognize her while also wishing fervently that she might see a familiar face. Which was not only illogical and contradictory, but also highly improbable since the last time she’d been in the area for more than a night she’d been barely fifteen, nearly half the age she was now.
Still, she knew she was taking a chance by coming here. How to Vanish without a Trace, the book that had been her bible these past months, warned against seeking out known and familiar places.
And yet…Not only was she running dangerously low on money, but she’d changed her identity so many times they were starting to run together. She needed a break—just a week or maybe two—to rest and regroup. And surely, after all this time, anyone still looking for her would have written this place off.
Lord, she hoped so, she thought, turning to glance fondly at the cabin’s simple interior. The structure was a standard, open-concept A-frame. Toward the back, an L-shaped kitchen occupied one side, while the bathroom and a sleeping area with a massive built-in bed occupied the other, the two areas separated by a narrow stairway that led up to a small loft.
A bank of windows stretched across the cabin’s front, divided by a floor-to-ceiling native-stone fireplace equipped with a glass-fronted heat insert. Although the oversized navy couch, the trio of maple occasional tables and the pair of padded rocking chairs were new, chosen by the property management company she’d hired when the place had passed to her and her brother, they had clean, uncluttered lines, like the old furniture she remembered, and were placed to make the most of the sweeping view of the surrounding peaks.
If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe it was fourteen years ago and that any second her great-uncle Ben would come clattering through the door, an adoring twelve-year-old Seth dogging his heels. The two would snatch away whatever book she happened to be reading—her little brother complained that Genevieve was always reading—and tug her out on the deck to see the sunset or watch an eagle soaring overhead.
Except that Uncle Ben had been gone more than a decade, the last to pass of the quintet of elderly relatives who’d done the best they could to provide their great-niece and great-nephew with some occasional normalcy. While Seth…
Her heart clenched at the memory of the last time she’d seen her brother. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his hands weighed down with shackles, Seth’s normally easygoing expression had been closed and implacable as he faced her through the mesh divide of the visitors’ room of the Silver County Jail. “No. No way, Gen,” he’d said flatly. “You go into court and refuse to testify, they’re going to throw you in jail, too.”
“But—”
“No. It’s bad enough that you’re probably going to lose your house—and for what? To pay an attorney who thinks I’m guilty? But I swear to God I’ll confess before I’ll let you sacrifice your freedom.”
“Seth, don’t be foolish—”
“I’m not kidding. It’s a slam dunk I’m going to be convicted.” His voice had been even, almost uninflected, but his eyes had been so defeated it had taken all her strength not to lay her head down on the scarred counter between them and weep. “The best thing you can do is accept that I’m a lost cause and just…move on.”
As if, Genevieve thought fiercely now. The mere thought of giving up on her little brother was inconceivable. They’d never known their father, and it had been just the two of them ever since their mother had abandoned them for good when Genevieve was ten and Seth was seven. She certainly wasn’t about to sit back now and do nothing while he was punished for something he hadn’t done. Any more than she would play a part, however unwilling, in making him appear guilty.
So, after considerable agonizing, she’d decided to run. It was far from a perfect solution—she accepted that eventually she’d have to pay for defying the court—but so far, at least, she’d done what she’d set out to. The trial had been delayed, buying Seth some time. And there was always a chance that one of the dozens of people she’d written to over the past three months—policemen, attorneys, private investigators, her congressman—might actually decide to do what she’d begged and look into the case.
In the meantime, she was doing okay. Sure, she was lonely—just as How to Vanish warned, the hardest part of disappearing wasn’t constructing a new identity or not leaving a paper trail or even not staying too long in any one place.
The hardest part was having no one to talk to. She couldn’t count the number of times during the course of a day that she longed to hear a familiar voice or see a familiar face. As much as she missed home, what she missed even more was someone to confide in, someone she could trust.
Still, as long as she had her books, her freedom and her sincere belief that if she just continued to insist on Seth’s innocence somebody somewhere would eventually listen, she could survive anything.
Uh-huh. Except for that killer squirrel that’s lurking outside, just waiting to get you.
Well, really. What was she going to do? Let herself be controlled by a nonexistent bogeyman, animal or otherwise? Crawl under the bed, cover her eyes and hide?
She drew herself up. Heck, no. She had enough legitimate worries without letting her imagination into the act.
Before she could lose her nerve, she zipped up her parka, strode to the door and flung it open. Marching outside, she caught her breath as a blast of frigid air swept over her, but she didn’t falter. Planting herself at the top of the stairs, she scanned the clearing one more time, determined to put an end to her foolish fears. She scoured the snow for telltale footprints and searched the shadows at the base of the pines for anything out of place.
Nothing. Yet she still had the strangest feeling….
Determined to be thorough and be done with this once and for all, she turned and marched out onto the large, prow-shaped section of the deck that jutted from the cabin’s front. Again she looked and listened, but there wasn’t a thing to suggest another human presence. There was just a glint of sun on snow, the intermittent call of a hawk and the whisper of the wind sighing through the surrounding trees.
See? There’s nobody here but you.
Blowing out a breath, she forced her stiff shoulders to relax. Everything was fine. She and her memories were the only ones here. And once she had the rest of her things out of the truck and got started on the soup she planned to make for dinner, she’d feel even better. She turned and took a step toward the stairs.
Like a ghost come to life, a man materialized out of the shadows of the overhang.
Her heart slammed to a stop along with her feet as she stared at him, the blood suddenly roaring in her ears.
Like her, he was dressed for the weather in a parka, boots and jeans. But that was where all similarity ended. He was huge, six foot four at least, with powerful legs and shoulders like a linebacker’s. His hair was coal-black, cropped close to his head, and his hooded eyes were a pale, icy green.
His face was all angles, with a slash of high cheekbones, a straight blade of a nose, a stubborn chin and firm lips set in a straight, uncompromising line.
He looked dangerous as hell, and Genevieve hadn’t stayed free for three months without learning to trust her instincts.
Whirling, she ran for her life.
Two
Well, hell.
Feeling a distinct stab of annoyance, Taggart launched himself after little Ms. Bowen, who appeared to be operating under the delusion that now that he’d found her, he might actually let her get away.
He swallowed a snort. There was about as much chance of that as of him dancing in the Denver Ballet.
She might be fast, but he was faster. Not to mention bigger, stronger and trained—by the US Army Rangers—to take down considerably tougher, rougher members of society than Genevieve would ever be.
Although he had to admit, closing this case was going to make his week. Hell, who was he kidding? It was going to make his year.
Catching up to her with ease, he tackled her, hauling her close as they reached the edge of the deck, crashed into the railing, flipped over the top and plunged toward the snowbank below.
Instinctively—he wanted to take her into custody, not put her in the hospital, damn it—he twisted, taking the brunt of the impact as they slammed to the ground. He winced as his hip struck a rock and he heard a distinct crunch of plastic as his cell phone bit the dust. Then he winced again as the back of Bowen’s head slammed into his collarbone.
Baring his teeth at the pain, he loosened his grip a fraction, only to bite out a curse as his captive drove her heavily booted heels into his shins at the same time as she punched him hard in the stomach with one sharp little elbow.
That did it. Setting his jaw, he locked his legs around hers and tightened the grip he had on her midriff. “Knock it off.”
“Let go of me!” she countered. “Let go of me this instant or—” her voice wavered as he increased the pressure on her solar plexus, making it impossible for her to get a deep breath “—I swear…you’ll—you’ll be—sorry—”
She was threatening him? Unbelievable. The woman clearly had more nerve than sense. He tightened his hold even more. “Pay attention, lady. I’m in charge now. You do what I tell you. Understand?”
He waited a beat for her to answer.
When she didn’t, he increased the pressure until she couldn’t breathe at all, knowing from experience that the more he could dominate and demoralize her now, the less likely she’d be to give him trouble on their return trip to Colorado. “Understand?”
A whimper escaped her throat. “Yes,” she finally gasped. “Yes!”
“Good.” Satisfied, he loosened his hold, dumped her unceremoniously onto her side and climbed to his feet.
Knocking the snow from his pants, he considered her as she lay sprawled in the snow. With her shiny mop of hair, her eyes squeezed shut so that her inky lashes shadowed her smooth cheeks, her mouth trembling each time she took a greedy gulp of air, she looked small and defenseless, almost childlike.
Except that thanks to their recent tussle, the lush curve of her ass and the soft swell of her breasts were imprinted on his brain, leaving him in no doubt she was a thoroughly grown-up female.
And a treacherous one at that, he reminded himself, his shins throbbing annoyingly from where she’d kicked him.
“Get up,” he ordered.
She drew in one last shuddering breath, then opened her eyes. He watched her struggle to control her fear, and felt a grudging admiration as she willed herself to present a semblance of calm.
She pushed herself upright, watching him warily. “What do you want with me?” she demanded.
“I work for Steele Security. James Dunn’s parents hired us to find you.”
“Find me?” She widened her dark eyes in an excellent imitation of surprise. “But why would—”
“Forget it. I know who you are, Genevieve—so whatever you’re trying to sell, I’m not buying. Now, get up.”
She stayed where she was. Probing the back of her head, she winced and dropped her gaze. “I will. It’s just—I’m a little dizzy.”
He took a threatening step forward. “Now.”
She flinched and threw up her hands. “Okay, okay!” Brushing the hair out of her eyes, she gave a defeated sigh and reached up for assistance getting to her feet.
Normally he’d have taken a step back and left her to deal on her own. But not only were her lips trembling again, but her outstretched hand was suddenly shaking, too.
With a faint, exasperated sigh of his own, he reached down. Her delicate palm slid across his calloused, much larger one. Yet the instant he tightened his grip, damned if her other hand didn’t swing up and clamp around his wrist. With surprising strength for such a little bit of a thing, she threw her weight backward, yanking him forward at the same time she drew up her legs and lashed out.
She was quick, he’d give her that. Luckily, however, he was quicker. He threw himself sideways, and instead of her boot heels catching him in the groin as she’d obviously intended, they thudded heavily into his right thigh.
The blow caught him squarely in the femoris muscle and hurt like hell. Off balance, he stumbled, his leg twanging as if comprised of overstretched guitar strings.
It was all the advantage his adversary needed. Giving him one final kick, this time in the knee, she rolled away, sprang to her feet and bolted toward the trees.
“Son of a bitch.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost his temper, having learned early on to regard intense emotion of any kind as the enemy.
Yet suddenly he was on the verge of being genuinely pissed.
He tore after her. Catching up with her handily, he snagged the neck of her parka in his fist, then set his feet and yanked, jerking her off her feet.
“Let go of me! I’m warning you—” Twisting, she struck out at him, and damned if one of her flailing hands didn’t connect with a glancing blow to his mouth.
If he’d been Gabe, he probably could’ve soothed her with a few reasonable words. If he’d been Dominic or Cooper, he most likely could’ve charmed her into submission. But he had neither a gift for reassurance nor a way with women and he was sick and tired of being used as a punching bag.
“That’s it!” Ducking his head, he caught her by the thighs and tossed her over his shoulder.
This can’t be happening, Genevieve thought, kicking and squirming as her captor strode effortlessly through the snow. It wasn’t right. This big, scary-looking stranger with his hard body and shuttered eyes couldn’t just appear in her life, overpower her and drag her back to Silver.
Somebody obviously forgot to tell him that, though, because that seems to be exactly what he’s doing. And you can pummel and threaten him all you want, but he’s still going to be able to overpower you.
It was clearly time to change tactics. She was no match for him physically, which meant if she was going to have a chance at escape, she was going to have to out-wit him—easier said than done when she was hanging upside down, the blood rushing to her head, her stomach jouncing painfully against his hard shoulder with every step.
She thought hard for a moment, then blew out a breath, forced herself to quit struggling and went limp.
Nothing happened for what felt like an eternity. Finally, however, she felt the faintest hesitation in her adversary’s long, effortless stride. “You all right, Bowen?” he asked.
“No.” Sounding weak and pathetic didn’t require any effort. “If you don’t put me down, I’m going to lose my breakfast.”
Darned if he didn’t shrug, lifting and lowering her with a hitch of his shoulder as if she weighed nothing. “Tough.”
“But—”
“No.” He paused for a beat. “And if you get sick on me, you’re gonna regret it.”
His low voice held just enough menace that she believed him totally. Even so, he couldn’t really expect her to control something like that—could he?
Deciding she’d prefer not to find out, she swallowed. Hard. “What—what’s your name?”
He was silent so long she didn’t think he was going to answer. Finally, he said, “Taggart.”
“Is that your first name or your last?”
“Just Taggart’s all you need to know.”
Nobody was ever going to accuse him of being a chatterbox. She gulped as he hefted her a little higher. “Okay, Just—” She started to call him Just Taggart, then thought better of it. Antagonizing him more than she already had couldn’t be wise. “Listen, please? I’m not rich, but whatever you’re getting paid, I’ll double it if you’ll let me go.”
“No.”
“Then how about if you just put off taking me back for say…a week?” Surely she could find a way to escape in that space of time. “We can stay here. You’ll still be doing your job, but I’ll pay you, too, and I’ve got lots of supplies and—”
“No.”
“Then what about a day? Just one day. Surely twenty-four hours can’t matter—”
“Not gonna happen, Genevieve.” Without warning, he dumped her on her feet next to the truck. Towering over her, he gave her a quick once over, his ice-green eyes impossible to read. Then he caught her by the shoulder and spun her around. “Now shut up, keep your hands where I can see them and spread your legs.” Planting a palm between her shoulder blades, he gave her a nudge.
She had barely enough time to throw up her hands and brace herself against the fender before his big, hard hands were on her. They skimmed impersonally down her arms and skated over her back, breasts and sides, then slipped downward to explore her legs and thighs.
Humiliation painted her cheeks with fire as he patted her hips, then gave a huff of satisfaction as he encountered the car keys she’d zipped into her coat pocket. Before she could voice a protest, he took possession of them, then resumed his exploration. By the time he finished, she was shaking all over from the indignity of his touch.
“Okay,” he murmured, reaching around her to open the truck door. “Get in.”
“But my things—”
“Are in back where you left them.”
“But I can’t just leave!” She twisted around to face him. “What about the cabin? The fire’s going and I’ve got groceries sitting out and—”
“I’ll arrange for somebody to come and close things up.”
“Okay, but—but we really shouldn’t take the truck. The heater’s shot and the brakes aren’t reliable and the lights don’t always work and it’ll be dark soon—”
“No sweat. My rig is parked on the next track south.”
“But—”
“Enough.” The look he sent her was frigid enough to flash-freeze boiling water. “You can babble until hell freezes over, but I still plan to be back in Colorado—with you in custody—this time tomorrow. Got it?”
She thought about Seth, about his threat to confess rather than allow her to forfeit her own freedom and felt a spurt of desperation. Surely there had to be some way to reach this man, some way to change his mind. “I know you have a job to do, but you have to understand. I can’t go back. Not yet.”
“Oh, yeah. You can. You are.”
“Please! Just listen. My brother’s innocent. But if you take me back, he’ll feel obligated to try and protect me and—”
“Get in the truck, Bowen.” He took a step closer, the toe of one big boot bumping her smaller one.
It took every ounce of her courage, but she stood her ground. “Damn it, Taggart, if you’ll just listen—”
“No.” With a speed that was surprising for a man his size, he caught her under the arms and boosted her onto the seat. Then he gripped her right arm with one hand, reached under his coat with the other and the next thing she knew, he was slapping a handcuff around her wrist.
“Don’t!” She tried to twist away but it was too late as he snapped the other bracelet around the door handle. “Surely that’s not—”
“I don’t like surprises when I’m driving.”
Frightened, furious, she watched helplessly as he slammed the door and headed around to the driver’s side of the truck.
Think, she ordered herself as he slid the seat back as far as it would go to accommodate his mile-long legs and climbed inside.
Taking a firm grip on her emotions, Genevieve turned to face him. “I don’t have much money, most of it went to pay for Seth’s attorney, but you can have my house. I’ll sign it over. My business, too. I’ll—I’ll give you anything you want. Just name it.”
For a moment it was as if he hadn’t heard her. Then he abruptly twisted on the seat and leaned over so that only inches separated them. His cool compelling gaze slid from her hair to her eyes to her mouth, then flicked back up. “Anything?” His eyes gleamed dangerously.
He was so close she could see each individual inky whisker shadowing his cheeks, as well as a faint, razor-thin scar that cut through one corner of his hard, unsmiling mouth.
Her stomach dropped and what was left of the moisture in her mouth dried up. She told herself not to be a fool, to say, “Yes, of course, whatever it takes,” but when she parted her lips, the words wouldn’t come out. “I—I—”
His head dipped even closer. Swallowing hard, she squeezed her eyes shut, her heart slamming into her throat as his hair—cool and unexpectedly soft—tickled against her cheek.
Then he abruptly straightened and she felt the pressure as he dragged her seat belt across her waist. Her eyes flew open as he jammed the end into the clasp with a distinctive click.
He sent her a mirthless smile as their gazes meshed. “Yeah. I didn’t think so. Which is just as well, since the only thing I want from you—” he fastened his own seat belt and slapped the truck into Reverse “—is your word that you won’t give me any more trouble.”
Embarrassed, insulted, affronted, disgusted—Genevieve couldn’t decide what she felt most. “Go to hell.”
He gave a faint sigh. “Too late. Already been there, done that,” he murmured. Depressing the clutch, he backed the vehicle out of its slot. He shifted, straightened the wheel and began to guide the truck down the narrow, tree-lined track that led to the road.
The deer came out of nowhere. One second there was nothing in front of them but an unobscured ribbon of white. In the next, a rangy young stag bounded squarely into their path, its dun-colored hide seeming to fill the entire windshield.
“Watch out!” Genevieve cried as Taggart wrenched the wheel to the left. He hit the brakes and the old Ford bucked wildly, fishtailed across the snowy ground and slammed driver’s side first into an enormous evergreen tree.
Taggart’s head hit the door frame with a sickening crunch.
Genevieve watched with a mixture of awe and horror as he slumped, his big body suddenly as limp as a rag doll’s. Dear God, what if he’s dead?
Fast on the heels of that thought came another. Dear God. What if he’s not?
Three
Taggart surfaced slowly.
As he did, several things seemed noteworthy. One was that his head felt as if a stake were being driven through it.
The other was that somebody—a woman, judging from her soft voice and even softer hands—was touching him. “Come on now,” she murmured, her husky voice tickling along his spine while her fingers sifted featherlight through the hair at his temple. “It’s time to quit fooling around. Wake up now. I know you can do it.”
She knew he could do it. Her faith gave him pause. The first and last female to unswervingly believe in him had been his mother. Yet he knew damn well that the woman murmuring to him wasn’t Mary Moriarity Steele.
She smelled entirely different, for one thing, like sunshine and soap instead of lavender and baby powder. Plus her hands were smaller and her voice was lower. Besides, his mother had been gone…
How long? Drawing a blank, he struggled to punch through the fog hazing his brain. For a frustrating moment his mind remained shrouded and sluggish. Then the knowledge abruptly bubbled up.
Twenty years. She’d died twenty years ago last month, the anniversary of her passing falling on the day after his thirty-third birthday.
What’s more, with another burst of returning memory he knew that it was Genevieve Bowen who was showing him such gentle concern. He recognized her voice at the same instant the recollection of tossing her over his shoulder and heading for her truck came rushing back at him. Yet after that…Nothing.
He didn’t have a single, solitary doubt who was to blame.
Marshaling his strength, he opened his eyes. He felt a perverse flicker of satisfaction as his quarry—hell, no, his prisoner—sucked in a startled breath and jerked back, snatching her hand away from his face.
“Genevieve.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded raspy.
“You’re back.”
“Yeah.” He blinked, tried to make sense of the timbered ceiling above his head and failed. With a prickle of uneasiness, he realized he was lying on a bed in a room he’d never seen before.
“How do you feel?”
He told himself to focus. Okay, so his brain seemed to be a few cards short of a full deck and he had a son of a bitch of a headache—so what? He’d survived worse. He concentrated on what he did remember and tossed out an educated guess. “The truck. There was an accident.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “There was a deer. In the road. You swerved to avoid it and hit a tree.”
“I knew that,” he lied. “What I meant was—how long have I been out?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”
A spark of something—it looked a lot like compassion except he knew damn well that couldn’t be right—flared in her eyes. “You’ve been in and out, but mostly out, the past hour. And in case you’re wondering, you’re in the cabin. My great-uncle’s cabin.”
Of course. He glanced around, taking note of the comfortable-looking furniture, the fire dancing cheerfully behind the glass doors of a big stone fireplace, the stretch of windows looking out on the jagged Montana peaks stabbing into the sky. Bringing his gaze back to her, he wondered how she’d managed to get him inside, given that he was twice her size, then decided there was a different question he was far more curious about. “And you’re still here…why?”
She was silent a moment, then gave a dismissive little shrug. “You took a pretty nasty knock to the head. I couldn’t just go off and leave you. Not until I was sure you were okay.”
Yeah, right. Pollyanna reputation or not, she wasn’t stupid and nobody was that good-hearted. More likely she was tired of being hunted and, having finally come face-to-face with what she was up against—that would be him—had realized the futility of continuing to run.
Then again, she’d saved him a boatload of aggravation by hanging around. If she wanted to pretend she was Doris Do-right, what the hell did he care? He inclined his chin a fraction, ignoring the ensuing howl of protest from his aching head. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Even as she took a step back, putting a little more distance between them, an uncertain smile kissed the corners of her full mouth.
He scowled as part of him that was unapologetically male whispered pretty. Reminding himself sharply that she was his assignment, not his date, for God’s sake—and he never mixed his personal and professional lives—he stared expressionlessly at her. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said flatly as he carefully pushed himself upright. “You’re still my prisoner and I’m—what the hell?”
Something heavy was dragging at his arm. He sensed Bowen moving even farther away as he glanced down, confounded to see that a handcuff was locked around his left wrist. What’s more, the adjoining stainless-steel bracelet had been threaded through the end links of a heavy chain that had been passed around the end support of the massive built-in bed frame.
He was trapped like a wolf in a snare.
Ignoring the pounding in his head, he didn’t think but acted, launching himself at his one chance at freedom.
He was within inches of grabbing her when it dawned on him that instead of bolting the way she ought to be, his nemesis was holding her ground, and a warning shrieked through his brain.
Too late. Unable to check himself, he reached the end of his tether and was damn near jerked off his feet.
The handcuff cut into his wrist. His arm felt as if it was being ripped from his shoulder. Then his momentum snapped him around and his head exploded in agony.
Gritting his teeth against the howl crowding his throat, he staggered back the way he’d come, braced himself against the bed frame and sank down onto the quilt-covered mattress.
So much for his luck having changed, he thought savagely. With a snap of her fingers, Lady Fortune had snatched away success and turned him from victor to casualty, from hunter to captive.
It was a road he’d traveled before, he reminded himself. Under far worse circumstances, with far graver consequences.
But he wasn’t going to think about that. It was over. In the past. Beyond his reach to change. He needed to focus on the here and now. On Genevieve.
Locking firmly onto that single thought, he squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to hold perfectly still as he waited for the worst of the pain to pass.
Enduring, after all, was what he did best.
“Here.” Genevieve set the pill bottle and the glass of water on the nightstand, all the while keeping a wary eye on the big man hunched on the bed. “This should help.”
Mindful of the terrifying show of speed and strength he’d put on just minutes earlier, she quickly stepped back out of reach. And waited.
Nothing. He continued to sit perfectly still, head slumped, eyes shut, broad shoulders rigid.
“It’s ibuprofen. My first aid book says that’s okay for someone in your condition.”
Still no reaction. With an inner shrug, she decided that if he wanted to imitate a boulder there was nothing she could do about it. She’d give it one more try; then she was done.
“If you think a cold compress would help, let me know. The fridge hasn’t been on long enough to make ice, but there’s plenty of snow outside.” Silence. “Hokay then, J. T.” With a shrug, she started to turn away. “I’ll just give you some space—”
“Don’t call me that.”
Turning back, she found his gaze fixed on her, his eyes hooded and impossible to read. “What?” Her response was automatic even though she knew perfectly well what he was referring to.
“J. T.,” he gritted out. “Don’t call me that. I don’t like it.”
For a second she was speechless. Of all the things she might’ve expected him to object to, her flippant abbreviation of Just Taggart wasn’t even on the list. Still, given that she had the upper hand, she supposed she could afford to be gracious. “All right. Plain old Taggart it is then.” She felt a fleeting flash of amusement as she considered what he’d say if she called him by that acronym.
Moving carefully, and looking as if he hadn’t smiled about anything in years, he reached for the pill bottle and thumbed off the cap. To her dismay, he proceeded to toss back considerably more than the recommended dosage. Setting down the water glass, he eased back farther on the bed, then sliced her a sharp look. “What?”
“I—nothing.” She wiped the concerned look off her face, telling herself not to be foolish. He was a grown-up, and bigger than average, and if he wanted to suck down the entire bottle of pain reliever, it was none of her business. While she obviously hadn’t been ruthless enough after the accident to shove him out of the truck and abandon him to his fate, she was neither stupid nor naive enough to think anything had changed.
He was her enemy.
A crucial little fact she couldn’t afford to forget, she reminded herself, turning away. Sure, she was lonely. Sure she was dying to talk openly to somebody. And yes, the sight of anyone injured or hurting tended to trigger what Seth had always claimed was her overdeveloped nurturing streak.
But she’d be grade-A certifiable, lock-me-in-the-asylum-and-throw-away-the-key crazy to let down her guard even an inch where the man on the bed was concerned.
And it wasn’t only the risk he posed to her freedom, his obvious mental toughness, killer physique or ability to handle himself that she found so threatening, she mused as she walked over to the kitchen and began methodically putting away the groceries.
No, there was something else, some intangible quality he possessed that made her feel off balance and not quite herself. Something that tugged at her senses and alarmed her recently awakened sense of self-preservation all at the same time.
Uh-huh. That’s called the thrill of danger, the call of the wild, Genevieve. Women have been drawn to dangerous men like moths to the flame since the beginning of time.
Add to that the fact that he wasn’t exactly ugly and it was perfectly reasonable that he inspired such conflicting feelings in her. Not that he was pretty-boy handsome. Far from it. Along with that dark hair and those pale eyes, he had the strongly sculpted, slightly ascetic face of a medieval warrior.
But she wasn’t attracted to him, for heaven’s sake. She absolutely was not. Even if she’d met him under different circumstances—say, when he wasn’t doing his damnedest to hijack her life—he was so far from her type it wasn’t even funny. He was too big, too tightly wound, too…male.
Plus he had an air of watchfulness, of being apart, that troubled her. Most people had a need to be liked, to connect with others, to smooth their path through life with at least a pretense of mutual experience or interest.
Not him. He seemed walled off, although she had a feeling she didn’t question that beneath that carefully controlled surface there were strong emotions at play. Perhaps that was why, even chained and hurting, he filled the cabin with his blatantly masculine presence, making her aware of him without ever saying a word.
Why even now, as she dragged a large cast-iron pot out of the cupboard, set it on the stove and busied herself with sautéing meat and chopping vegetables for the soup, she could feel him watching her. Just as she’d sensed him observing her earlier.
She gave a rueful little sigh. God. What she wouldn’t give for her earlier foreboding to have been caused by a good old killer squirrel, mutant or not.
Instead, she was stuck with a much more terrifying human male.
Of course, she supposed things could have turned out worse—far worse. She’d gotten incredibly lucky with that deer. And Taggart, for all his aura of imminent threat, hadn’t hurt her despite having had plenty of opportunity, not even in retaliation when she’d struck him first. In all fairness, she supposed she had to give him points for that—and consider the possibility that he was more civilized than she imagined.
“You don’t really think you’re going to get away with this, do you, Bowen?”
Then again, maybe not. Despite her prisoner’s uninflected tone, she recognized a threat when she heard one. Which, she reflected, as she added a can of tomatoes, broth and seasonings to the meat, really did take an incredible amount of nerve given their respective situations.
“Do yourself a favor. Undo these cuffs. I swear I’ll go easy on you.”
Oh, right. Like she believed that. And even if it was true, what exactly did it mean—that he’d use velvet ribbon to truss her up when he delivered her back to Silver?
Rolling her eyes, she transferred the raw carrots and potatoes she’d sliced into the pot. She put the lid in place, turned down the heat on the burner and moved to the sink to wash her hands.
“Okay, I get it now. This—tying guys to your bed—is how you get your kicks.”
She turned off the water and dried her hands. Surely she hadn’t heard that right?
“Normally, I don’t go for the Suzy Homemaker type. But I suppose I could make an exception. Of course, first I’d want to see you nak—”
She swiveled around. “Are you out of your mind? Are you trying to tick me off?”
Propped up against the headboard, his legs stretched out, he hitched his shoulders a scant half inch. “Got your attention, didn’t I?”
“Oh, yes, you did do that.” She gave a theatrical sigh. “And to think three hours ago I was actually pining for the sound of another human voice.” She leveled her gaze at him. “So what is it you want to say that I just have to hear?”
“How long do you plan to keep me chained like this?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
She gave a little shrug. “A variety of things. Your health. My mood. Whether you persist in making any more objectionable personal comments.”
One level black eyebrow rose. “Is that a threat?”
“More like a promise,” she said sweetly.
“What am I supposed to do when I need to use the facilities?”
“Bathroom’s right there.” She indicated the door some four feet down the wall from the bed. “The chain will reach.”
“What are you going to do?”
“There’s a half bath up in the loft. Not perfect, but it’ll do.”
He started to scowl, then appeared to reconsider. “Look, my offer still stands. End this now, let me take you back and I’ll make sure the judge knows you cooperated.”
“How generous of you. But I think I’ll pass. You may not understand, but as I tried to explain earlier, I don’t care what the judge thinks—not about me. It’s my brother who matters.”
“Damn it, Bowen—”
“You know, if I were you, I really wouldn’t swear at me. What’s more, I’d at least try to be nice. Otherwise, I may forget to tell someone where you are once I’m gone.”
His face hardened. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I’m not buying. If you meant to take off and leave me to rot, you’d have done it earlier. You’re going to have to come up with a better threat than that.”
“I don’t think so.” She came to a sudden decision. So he thought he could predict her behavior, did he? Well, maybe he could as concerned this particular issue—damn him—but that didn’t mean she had to make it easy. It would do his character good to worry a little for a change.
Grabbing her parka off the hook near the door, she slid it on, checking her pocket to make sure the keys to his rig were still in it. “I guess I’ll see you later. Or then again—maybe not.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
She smiled without humor and scooped up her purse. “You think you know everything. Figure it out.” Her hand on the doorknob, she glanced back at him over her shoulder. “Oh, and just so we’re clear? I wouldn’t sleep with you if you came dipped in chocolate.”
Without looking back, she flicked him a wave and sailed out the door.
Four
Gripping the bathroom doorjamb, Taggart glanced narrowly at the silvery twilight rapidly fading beyond the cabin windows.
Terrific. Just frigging terrific. It was getting dark and there was still no sign of Bowen.
He walked unsteadily to the bed and sank gingerly down on the edge. Careful not to jar his head, he unlaced his hiking boots and slid them off, then lay back and stretched out, letting himself stew as he scowled up at the plank ceiling overhead.
Not that he was worried. At least, not much. While he still didn’t buy the concept that anyone could be as pure of heart as she was reputed to be, he was confident little Ms. Genevieve was coming back—and for reasons that had nothing to do with her supposed concern for his health.
She had, for example, gone to considerable effort putting together whatever was simmering deliciously on the stove. Why do that if she didn’t plan to return to eat some of it? It sure as hell wasn’t as if he could reach it, he thought, trying to ignore the pathetic way his mouth was watering in reaction to the rich, savory aroma.
What’s more, there was no way she would’ve taken off without the duffel bag and the box of books that were currently parked by the door, which she must’ve hauled in from the truck while he was in la-la land. It would also be reckless and stupid of her to have left so late in the day without a plan—and from everything he’d seen so far she was plenty smart.
By now, she was bound to have figured out it would be a day or two before anyone would expect them to show up in Silver. It wouldn’t take much additional brain power for her to realize that even when they were a no-show, an alarm most likely wouldn’t be immediately raised since he was so obviously not the kind of guy to tolerate a short leash.
Which was why the prudent thing for her to do would be to remain at the cabin and take some time considering her next move.
The alternative—that she’d taken off for good—was unacceptable.
Because, damn it, he’d already searched every inch of space he could reach and hadn’t found a thing he could use to pick the lock on the handcuffs. Just as he’d tested each chain link as well as the bed frame for weakness and scored a big fat zero.
So if Bowen didn’t come back, short of gnawing his hand off he’d have no choice but to wait to be rescued.
The mere thought of that set a nerve ticking in his jaw. And not just because of the obvious humiliation factor. Or that his brothers were guaranteed to give him serious grief the second they learned he’d let an amateur—and a woman at that, for God’s sake—get the drop on him. Or even because he’d be forced to start the hunt for a certain annoying little brunette all over again.
No, what was really going to rankle was that he’d have no one to blame for her decision to run but himself.
So what if he had a monster headache? So what if the past three months had been beyond frustrating? Who gave a rip that being at someone else’s mercy seriously teed him off? Or that it was a well-known fact, at least in his portion of the universe, that he sucked at charming chitchat.
Only a freaking idiot would antagonize his jailer without a specific goal or a damn good reason.
Yeah, but that’s precisely what you did, Ace. And you might as well admit that what really pushed you over the edge was Bowen herself. Face it. There’s just something about her that rubs you the wrong way.
The ache in his head ratcheted up a notch and with a stab of impatience he realized every muscle in his body was as tightly strung as a trip wire. More than a little exasperated—control, after all, was his middle name—he blew out a pent-up breath and ordered himself to get a grip.
Okay, so being around her made him feel…itchy. As if his skin was too small for his body. And for some inexplicable reason, probably because the blow to his head had temporarily disconnected a wire, he kept getting unwanted flashes of the way she’d felt against him, all small and soft and perfectly curved, when they’d wrestled in the snow earlier.
It didn’t excuse the fact that he’d screwed up. That he’d flat-out failed the first rule of Hostage 101, which was to make your captor see you as a fellow human being. Worse, he’d let his mouth get ahead of his brain and gone out of his way to antagonize her.
And now all he could do was wait—and reflect on his numerous and varied mistakes.
So that when Bowen did return—and she would, by God—he’d be ready to make nice, to channel some of his brothers’ winning ways with women and try to forge a bond between them, however slight.
But then, slight was all he needed. His goal, after all, wasn’t to become her best friend or her lover. It was simply to get her to stick around long enough for him to regain control of the situation. To regain control of her.
He didn’t have a doubt in the world he could do it. God knew, he’d faced far tougher situations doing recon missions in Afghanistan. And while the make-friends, play-nice-with-others thing wasn’t going to be easy, nothing that mattered ever was.
Besides, it wasn’t as if he had to share his life story with her. Or talk about anything he cared about. Like being banished as a kid to Blackhurst. Or the disaster at Zari Pass, which had put an end to his military career—and been the last time he’d allowed anyone to call him J. T.
No, his personal private business could, and would, remain just that. Personal and private.
All he had to do was be nominally civil. To offer Bowen—no, Genevieve, he admonished himself—the proverbial olive branch until either she lowered her guard enough for him to get the drop on her or he figured out how to free himself. As for payback…he’d see to that later.
For now, all he needed, all he wanted, he thought, finally giving in to the hammering in his head and letting his eyes drift shut against the fading light, was for this frigging headache to take a one-way hike.
And for Genevieve to be predictable for once and walk back through the door.
Nighttime fell like a heavy ebony cape.
Caught midway along the track that led to the cabin, Genevieve slowed the pickup to allow her eyes time to adjust to the swift slide from hazy dusk to inky darkness.
Despite the choppy rumble of the engine, she could hear the wind as it surged restlessly through the towering evergreens around her, making the snow-shrouded trees sway like uneasy ghosts. Overhead, a pack of marauding clouds took ever bigger bites out of the sky, obliterating the moon and swallowing stars a constellation at a time.
A shiver skated down her spine. She tried telling herself she was just chilled—she hadn’t been kidding earlier when she’d told Taggart the truck’s heater didn’t work, and in the past ten minutes her fingers, nose and toes had started to go numb—but she knew that wasn’t all it was. There was simply something spooky, a sort of bone-deep dread, that came with being alone in the dark, surrounded by an untamed wilderness, with the threat of a storm lurking in the wind.
Add to the cold and the declining weather the fact that she was tired, as much from the stressful events of the day as the three-mile hike through the snow she’d made to complete her errand, and it was no wonder she was ready to get back to the cabin.
Even if that meant having to share space with one John Taggart Steele. Whose complete name she now knew courtesy of the registration in his rig, which she’d confirmed by finally taking a look at the ID in his wallet, which she’d liberated when he’d been unconscious.
Not, she told herself hastily, that she cared what he called himself. Except for a mild curiosity about his aversion to being referred to as J. T, which, as it turned out, really were his initials, it was no skin off her nose if he went by Bozo the Clown.
What did matter was her discovery that he and the firm he worked for carried the same name. It might not be a hundred percent proof-positive, but when factored in with his relentless, self-assured personality, it made her strongly suspect that he was a principal in the enterprise rather than simply an employee.
If that was true, it was good news for her since it meant he had not just power but autonomy, and that made it a lot less likely anyone would be checking up on him anytime soon or expecting him to report in regularly.
It wouldn’t be smart to count on it, however, she reflected as the truck shuddered over the last rise and the cabin came into sight. Grateful that she’d had the foresight to switch on the stove and porch lights before she left, she drove down the shallow hill and parked, muscled open the badly dented driver’s-side door and headed inside, his lightweight pack slung over her shoulder.
No, she was a firm believer in hoping for the best but doing whatever was within her power to make things go her way. Which was why, she thought, as she climbed the cabin steps, retrieved the distributor cap from her pocket and dropped it with a satisfying thunk behind the wood pile, Taggart was going to have to make a trip to the auto parts store in the near future if he wanted his big black SUV to run. Of course, first he’d have to find it in the abandoned barn where she’d hidden it.
Stomping the snow off her boots, she said a sincere thank-you to the book gods for Alan’s Guide to Auto Engine Basics. Then she pushed open the door and stepped inside, mentally straightening her spine as she braced to go another round with her less-than-charming captive.
To her surprise, no sarcastic remark greeted her return. Instead, except for the faint hiss and pop of the fire, the dimly lit room was eerily quiet.
Her heart stuttered. In the space of time it took her to toss away his pack and pivot toward the bed, her imagination conjured the worst possible scenario: Taggart had somehow gotten loose. Any second now he was going to explode out of the shadows, wrap his iron-banded arms around her and yank her against his big, hard-as-steel frame—
But no. No. Relief sucked the starch right out of her as she made out the solid, long-legged shape sprawled on the bed. Locking her shaking knees, she fought to regain her composure, only to abandon the effort as fear for her safety reluctantly gave way to concern for his well-being.
She felt a stir of alarm at his continuing silence. Driven to make sure he was still breathing, she crossed the room and crept as close to the bed as she dared. To her gratification, from her new vantage point she could see his chest in his gray flannel shirt rising and falling as steadily as a metronome.
The breath she hadn’t known she was holding sighed out while her legs once again went as weak as spent flower stems. In need of a moment to regroup, she marshaled her strength and prepared to step away and leave him to sleep.
Before she could do more than think of retreat, up snapped Taggart’s eyelashes—thick, black as the night outside and the only part of his angular face that could possibly be described as soft looking—and then she was trapped in the pale-green tractor beam of his eyes.
“Hey.” For all the intensity of his gaze, his voice was as rough as a weathered board and more than a little groggy. “You’re back.”
“Yes.”
He glanced beyond her toward the darkened windows and frowned. “What time is it?”
“A little past seven.”
“Huh.” He raised his unfettered hand and she prepared to lunge for safety, but he only scrubbed it across his face. “Feels later.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah. I noticed.” His hand fell away and something she couldn’t define flickered in his eyes. “You had me worried.”
She wondered what he expected her to say. I’m sorry? Not a chance. Good, it serves you right? Well, that might be closer to the truth, but it wasn’t in her nature to gloat. Even if he so richly deserved it. She gestured toward the pack she’d deep-sixed near the door. “I brought your things.”
His gaze flicked over, took note, came back again. Speculation flashed across his face, but he didn’t say anything.
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Caroline Cross
He was chained to her bed. Ex-Army Ranger John Taggert Steele couldn't believe the pretty little mess he was in. The case should have been easy: Track down runaway murder witness Genevieve Bowen and return her to police custody. But somehow he ended up shackled to the sassy brunette's bed–and rather than thinking how to get out of it, he was sorely tempted to get Genevieve in it so he could teach her a much-needed lesson in domination.Because one way or another he'd regain control, and show her what happens when you play with a desperate man's heart.
Tempt Me
Caroline Cross
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
One
John Taggart Steele stood motionless in the shifting shadows that edged the towering stand of evergreens.
Snowflakes swirled in the icy air around him, swept from the treetops high overhead by a capricious wind. Narrowing his eyes against the October sun, he raised his binoculars to zero in on the tidy A-frame cabin in the clearing five hundred yards away, only to jerk the glasses away as his cell phone vibrated. Ripping it from the clip on his belt, he glanced at the screen and saw the call was from Steele Security’s Denver office. He hit the receive button and slapped the instrument to his ear. “What?”
“Looks like it’s her, all right.” As calm as a summer day, his brother Gabe’s voice held neither reproach at the brusque greeting nor satisfaction as he delivered the long-awaited confirmation.
Taggart said nothing, merely waited.
“The truck was recently registered to a woman calling herself Susan Moore. The previous owner is a Laramie grad student who says he sold the vehicle three weeks ago to a cocktail waitress at the bar he frequents. He described Bowen to a T, said she was ‘a real sweet little thing.’ She paid cash for the vehicle and confided she was headed south to see her ailing grandpa.”
“Laramie, huh?”
Gabe seemed to know exactly what Taggart was thinking. “Yeah. When she left Flagstaff, she bolted toward Denver, not away. Totally unexpected, completely illogical.” There was a pause, then he added thoughtfully, “It was a damn good strategy.”
Good strategy wasn’t quite how Taggart would describe it—not when he’d been chasing the elusive Ms. Genevieve Bowen for close to three months. Still, he shoved away the rude comment that sprang to mind, along with his uncharacteristic impatience. Emotion didn’t have a place in the job he did as a partner in Steele Security, the business he and his brothers ran out of their home base in Denver, Colorado. The kind of work they did—hostage and fugitive recovery, personal protection, threat management, industrial security—required clear but creative thinking, situational analysis, high-stakes decision making.
Taggart regarded being cool and impartial an absolute necessity. It ought to be chiseled in stone, if you asked him—his brother Dominic’s recent marriage to a wealthy debutante he’d rescued from the clutches of a ruthless Caribbean dictator notwithstanding.
He shifted his gaze from the cabin to the ancient Ford pickup parked at the far end of it. Just because the vehicle’s recent history fit with his quarry’s MO—blend in, deal in cash, vanish after dropping false hints about your destination—that didn’t automatically mean it was Bowen. There was still a chance she’d again eluded him—and gained the gratitude and ensuing silence of yet another needy young woman matching her general description—by giving away the truck the way she had three previous vehicles.
Only Taggart didn’t think so. And not merely because his instincts were clamoring that his luck had finally turned. Because this time, damned if he hadn’t seen her himself, bold as brass, driving out of the Morton’s Grocery parking lot on the outskirts of Kalispell.
The cabin door swung open. “I’ve got movement,” he told Gabe. “I’ll catch you later.” Not waiting for a reply, he disconnected and shifted the binoculars into place as a woman stepped out onto the porch that skirted the cabin.
With icy calm, he let his gaze climb her length, starting at her fleece-topped boots and moving up her slim, blue-jeaned legs, past a serviceable green parka until he arrived, at long last, at her face.
He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. It was her, all right. After the dozen weeks he’d spent on her trail, interviewing her friends and showing her picture around, her features were as familiar to him as his own. There was the full mouth, the straight little nose, the big dark eyes and the slightly squared chin. Her glossy brown hair, which she’d once worn in a thick braid that reached to her waist, was now cropped short and, after a number of cut-and-color transformations, back to its original color.
He frowned as something nagged at him, and then his face smoothed out as he realized he was simply surprised by how small she was. Even though his information on her included the fact that she was only five foot three, for some reason he’d expected her to appear taller.
Nevertheless, it was her—Ms. Genevieve Bowen, Silver, Colorado, bookstore owner and literacy booster, teen mentor, animal lover, occasional emergency foster mother. A woman so well-known for her random acts of kindness that her friends fondly referred to her as their own little Pollyanna.
Polly-pain-in-the-butt was more like it, Taggart thought, recalling the absolute futility of the past three months. Given Ms. Bowen’s glorified Girl Scout reputation, and the fact that your average model citizen didn’t know jack about being on the lam, he’d assumed he’d be able to track her down without breaking a sweat.
Wrong. First to his surprise and then to his exasperation—and his brothers’ not-so-subtle amusement—little Genevieve had made none of the usual beginner’s mistakes. Hell, she hadn’t made any mistakes. Instead, she’d simply vanished, turning a job that should have been a week-long romp into a test of Taggart’s cunning and perseverance.
It was just too damn bad for her that he was very, very good at his job.
That, being a methodical son of a bitch, he’d decided after losing her trail yet again to revisit all the places he’d initially pegged as being potential bolt holes for her, including her late great-uncle’s northern Montana cabin where she and her brother—who was currently being held without bail on charges of capital murder—had spent several long-ago summers.
And that, in an unpredictable turn of luck, he’d just happened to pull into that grocery store lot at the same time she’d been pulling out. Otherwise, he not only would have missed her, he’d have once again struck the cabin off his list for now and most likely spent another few weeks fruitlessly trying to locate her.
Instead, he’d called in the pickup’s plates to Gabe and followed her back here, managing to remain undetected only because he’d been pretty damn sure where they were going. Once again, what had been good for him had been bad for her.
But then, Genevieve hadn’t exactly had a banner year, what with her brother’s arrest for killing James Dunn, his client’s only son; her own unwanted role as the prosecution’s key witness and her dumb-ass decision to flee rather than testify.
Because now she was his. With a distinct surge of possessiveness, he watched as she reached the truck, keeping the binoculars trained on her vivid face as she retrieved a bag of groceries and trekked back the way she’d come.
Suddenly, just as she reached the stairs that led up to the cabin’s railed porch, she stopped. Swiveling her head, she looked straight at him.
Taggart knew damn well she couldn’t see him. Still, he felt her gaze like a lover’s touch. Rooted in place, he forgot to breathe, stunned as his skin prickled and he felt the oddest tug of recognition….
It seemed like an eternity before she looked away, gave the rest of the clearing a careful once-over, then squared her shoulders and went quickly up the trio of steps. Pausing under the wide overhang that sheltered the door, she abruptly glanced one last time directly at the spot where he stood before she disappeared inside.
Annoyed, he blew out his pent-up breath, asking himself what the hell had just happened. Just who did she think she was? Some sort of psychic? His long-lost soul mate?
Yeah, right. It’d be a cold day in hell when he started believing in that kind of delusional mumbo jumbo.
Jaw clenched, he stowed the binoculars and surged into motion. Carefully hugging the shadow of the trees, he began to work his way toward the back of the cabin, his powerful body making short shrift of the thigh-high snowdrifts.
Enough cat and mouse. It was time to take her down.
Genevieve set the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter. Chilled despite the warmth of her parka, she rubbed her arms and did her best to dispel her lingering sense of unease.
Try as she might to downplay it, she’d had the most uncomfortable sensation of being watched while she was outside. It had been sharp, overwhelming, eerie—as palpable as an actual touch. Alarm had flickered along her spine; gooseflesh had erupted on her arms and prickled the nape of her neck.
She’d felt a powerful urge to run.
That’s what you get for staying up late last night reading Stephen King. Keep it up, and the next thing you know, you’ll start to think the trees are alive. Or that a mutant squirrel is coming to get you….
A wry little smile tugged briefly at the corners of her mouth. Okay. So maybe she was a wee bit jumpy. It wasn’t really surprising, not when her stop in town to get supplies had filled her with such conflicting feelings.
Typical of her current existence, she’d been scared to death that someone might recognize her while also wishing fervently that she might see a familiar face. Which was not only illogical and contradictory, but also highly improbable since the last time she’d been in the area for more than a night she’d been barely fifteen, nearly half the age she was now.
Still, she knew she was taking a chance by coming here. How to Vanish without a Trace, the book that had been her bible these past months, warned against seeking out known and familiar places.
And yet…Not only was she running dangerously low on money, but she’d changed her identity so many times they were starting to run together. She needed a break—just a week or maybe two—to rest and regroup. And surely, after all this time, anyone still looking for her would have written this place off.
Lord, she hoped so, she thought, turning to glance fondly at the cabin’s simple interior. The structure was a standard, open-concept A-frame. Toward the back, an L-shaped kitchen occupied one side, while the bathroom and a sleeping area with a massive built-in bed occupied the other, the two areas separated by a narrow stairway that led up to a small loft.
A bank of windows stretched across the cabin’s front, divided by a floor-to-ceiling native-stone fireplace equipped with a glass-fronted heat insert. Although the oversized navy couch, the trio of maple occasional tables and the pair of padded rocking chairs were new, chosen by the property management company she’d hired when the place had passed to her and her brother, they had clean, uncluttered lines, like the old furniture she remembered, and were placed to make the most of the sweeping view of the surrounding peaks.
If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe it was fourteen years ago and that any second her great-uncle Ben would come clattering through the door, an adoring twelve-year-old Seth dogging his heels. The two would snatch away whatever book she happened to be reading—her little brother complained that Genevieve was always reading—and tug her out on the deck to see the sunset or watch an eagle soaring overhead.
Except that Uncle Ben had been gone more than a decade, the last to pass of the quintet of elderly relatives who’d done the best they could to provide their great-niece and great-nephew with some occasional normalcy. While Seth…
Her heart clenched at the memory of the last time she’d seen her brother. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his hands weighed down with shackles, Seth’s normally easygoing expression had been closed and implacable as he faced her through the mesh divide of the visitors’ room of the Silver County Jail. “No. No way, Gen,” he’d said flatly. “You go into court and refuse to testify, they’re going to throw you in jail, too.”
“But—”
“No. It’s bad enough that you’re probably going to lose your house—and for what? To pay an attorney who thinks I’m guilty? But I swear to God I’ll confess before I’ll let you sacrifice your freedom.”
“Seth, don’t be foolish—”
“I’m not kidding. It’s a slam dunk I’m going to be convicted.” His voice had been even, almost uninflected, but his eyes had been so defeated it had taken all her strength not to lay her head down on the scarred counter between them and weep. “The best thing you can do is accept that I’m a lost cause and just…move on.”
As if, Genevieve thought fiercely now. The mere thought of giving up on her little brother was inconceivable. They’d never known their father, and it had been just the two of them ever since their mother had abandoned them for good when Genevieve was ten and Seth was seven. She certainly wasn’t about to sit back now and do nothing while he was punished for something he hadn’t done. Any more than she would play a part, however unwilling, in making him appear guilty.
So, after considerable agonizing, she’d decided to run. It was far from a perfect solution—she accepted that eventually she’d have to pay for defying the court—but so far, at least, she’d done what she’d set out to. The trial had been delayed, buying Seth some time. And there was always a chance that one of the dozens of people she’d written to over the past three months—policemen, attorneys, private investigators, her congressman—might actually decide to do what she’d begged and look into the case.
In the meantime, she was doing okay. Sure, she was lonely—just as How to Vanish warned, the hardest part of disappearing wasn’t constructing a new identity or not leaving a paper trail or even not staying too long in any one place.
The hardest part was having no one to talk to. She couldn’t count the number of times during the course of a day that she longed to hear a familiar voice or see a familiar face. As much as she missed home, what she missed even more was someone to confide in, someone she could trust.
Still, as long as she had her books, her freedom and her sincere belief that if she just continued to insist on Seth’s innocence somebody somewhere would eventually listen, she could survive anything.
Uh-huh. Except for that killer squirrel that’s lurking outside, just waiting to get you.
Well, really. What was she going to do? Let herself be controlled by a nonexistent bogeyman, animal or otherwise? Crawl under the bed, cover her eyes and hide?
She drew herself up. Heck, no. She had enough legitimate worries without letting her imagination into the act.
Before she could lose her nerve, she zipped up her parka, strode to the door and flung it open. Marching outside, she caught her breath as a blast of frigid air swept over her, but she didn’t falter. Planting herself at the top of the stairs, she scanned the clearing one more time, determined to put an end to her foolish fears. She scoured the snow for telltale footprints and searched the shadows at the base of the pines for anything out of place.
Nothing. Yet she still had the strangest feeling….
Determined to be thorough and be done with this once and for all, she turned and marched out onto the large, prow-shaped section of the deck that jutted from the cabin’s front. Again she looked and listened, but there wasn’t a thing to suggest another human presence. There was just a glint of sun on snow, the intermittent call of a hawk and the whisper of the wind sighing through the surrounding trees.
See? There’s nobody here but you.
Blowing out a breath, she forced her stiff shoulders to relax. Everything was fine. She and her memories were the only ones here. And once she had the rest of her things out of the truck and got started on the soup she planned to make for dinner, she’d feel even better. She turned and took a step toward the stairs.
Like a ghost come to life, a man materialized out of the shadows of the overhang.
Her heart slammed to a stop along with her feet as she stared at him, the blood suddenly roaring in her ears.
Like her, he was dressed for the weather in a parka, boots and jeans. But that was where all similarity ended. He was huge, six foot four at least, with powerful legs and shoulders like a linebacker’s. His hair was coal-black, cropped close to his head, and his hooded eyes were a pale, icy green.
His face was all angles, with a slash of high cheekbones, a straight blade of a nose, a stubborn chin and firm lips set in a straight, uncompromising line.
He looked dangerous as hell, and Genevieve hadn’t stayed free for three months without learning to trust her instincts.
Whirling, she ran for her life.
Two
Well, hell.
Feeling a distinct stab of annoyance, Taggart launched himself after little Ms. Bowen, who appeared to be operating under the delusion that now that he’d found her, he might actually let her get away.
He swallowed a snort. There was about as much chance of that as of him dancing in the Denver Ballet.
She might be fast, but he was faster. Not to mention bigger, stronger and trained—by the US Army Rangers—to take down considerably tougher, rougher members of society than Genevieve would ever be.
Although he had to admit, closing this case was going to make his week. Hell, who was he kidding? It was going to make his year.
Catching up to her with ease, he tackled her, hauling her close as they reached the edge of the deck, crashed into the railing, flipped over the top and plunged toward the snowbank below.
Instinctively—he wanted to take her into custody, not put her in the hospital, damn it—he twisted, taking the brunt of the impact as they slammed to the ground. He winced as his hip struck a rock and he heard a distinct crunch of plastic as his cell phone bit the dust. Then he winced again as the back of Bowen’s head slammed into his collarbone.
Baring his teeth at the pain, he loosened his grip a fraction, only to bite out a curse as his captive drove her heavily booted heels into his shins at the same time as she punched him hard in the stomach with one sharp little elbow.
That did it. Setting his jaw, he locked his legs around hers and tightened the grip he had on her midriff. “Knock it off.”
“Let go of me!” she countered. “Let go of me this instant or—” her voice wavered as he increased the pressure on her solar plexus, making it impossible for her to get a deep breath “—I swear…you’ll—you’ll be—sorry—”
She was threatening him? Unbelievable. The woman clearly had more nerve than sense. He tightened his hold even more. “Pay attention, lady. I’m in charge now. You do what I tell you. Understand?”
He waited a beat for her to answer.
When she didn’t, he increased the pressure until she couldn’t breathe at all, knowing from experience that the more he could dominate and demoralize her now, the less likely she’d be to give him trouble on their return trip to Colorado. “Understand?”
A whimper escaped her throat. “Yes,” she finally gasped. “Yes!”
“Good.” Satisfied, he loosened his hold, dumped her unceremoniously onto her side and climbed to his feet.
Knocking the snow from his pants, he considered her as she lay sprawled in the snow. With her shiny mop of hair, her eyes squeezed shut so that her inky lashes shadowed her smooth cheeks, her mouth trembling each time she took a greedy gulp of air, she looked small and defenseless, almost childlike.
Except that thanks to their recent tussle, the lush curve of her ass and the soft swell of her breasts were imprinted on his brain, leaving him in no doubt she was a thoroughly grown-up female.
And a treacherous one at that, he reminded himself, his shins throbbing annoyingly from where she’d kicked him.
“Get up,” he ordered.
She drew in one last shuddering breath, then opened her eyes. He watched her struggle to control her fear, and felt a grudging admiration as she willed herself to present a semblance of calm.
She pushed herself upright, watching him warily. “What do you want with me?” she demanded.
“I work for Steele Security. James Dunn’s parents hired us to find you.”
“Find me?” She widened her dark eyes in an excellent imitation of surprise. “But why would—”
“Forget it. I know who you are, Genevieve—so whatever you’re trying to sell, I’m not buying. Now, get up.”
She stayed where she was. Probing the back of her head, she winced and dropped her gaze. “I will. It’s just—I’m a little dizzy.”
He took a threatening step forward. “Now.”
She flinched and threw up her hands. “Okay, okay!” Brushing the hair out of her eyes, she gave a defeated sigh and reached up for assistance getting to her feet.
Normally he’d have taken a step back and left her to deal on her own. But not only were her lips trembling again, but her outstretched hand was suddenly shaking, too.
With a faint, exasperated sigh of his own, he reached down. Her delicate palm slid across his calloused, much larger one. Yet the instant he tightened his grip, damned if her other hand didn’t swing up and clamp around his wrist. With surprising strength for such a little bit of a thing, she threw her weight backward, yanking him forward at the same time she drew up her legs and lashed out.
She was quick, he’d give her that. Luckily, however, he was quicker. He threw himself sideways, and instead of her boot heels catching him in the groin as she’d obviously intended, they thudded heavily into his right thigh.
The blow caught him squarely in the femoris muscle and hurt like hell. Off balance, he stumbled, his leg twanging as if comprised of overstretched guitar strings.
It was all the advantage his adversary needed. Giving him one final kick, this time in the knee, she rolled away, sprang to her feet and bolted toward the trees.
“Son of a bitch.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost his temper, having learned early on to regard intense emotion of any kind as the enemy.
Yet suddenly he was on the verge of being genuinely pissed.
He tore after her. Catching up with her handily, he snagged the neck of her parka in his fist, then set his feet and yanked, jerking her off her feet.
“Let go of me! I’m warning you—” Twisting, she struck out at him, and damned if one of her flailing hands didn’t connect with a glancing blow to his mouth.
If he’d been Gabe, he probably could’ve soothed her with a few reasonable words. If he’d been Dominic or Cooper, he most likely could’ve charmed her into submission. But he had neither a gift for reassurance nor a way with women and he was sick and tired of being used as a punching bag.
“That’s it!” Ducking his head, he caught her by the thighs and tossed her over his shoulder.
This can’t be happening, Genevieve thought, kicking and squirming as her captor strode effortlessly through the snow. It wasn’t right. This big, scary-looking stranger with his hard body and shuttered eyes couldn’t just appear in her life, overpower her and drag her back to Silver.
Somebody obviously forgot to tell him that, though, because that seems to be exactly what he’s doing. And you can pummel and threaten him all you want, but he’s still going to be able to overpower you.
It was clearly time to change tactics. She was no match for him physically, which meant if she was going to have a chance at escape, she was going to have to out-wit him—easier said than done when she was hanging upside down, the blood rushing to her head, her stomach jouncing painfully against his hard shoulder with every step.
She thought hard for a moment, then blew out a breath, forced herself to quit struggling and went limp.
Nothing happened for what felt like an eternity. Finally, however, she felt the faintest hesitation in her adversary’s long, effortless stride. “You all right, Bowen?” he asked.
“No.” Sounding weak and pathetic didn’t require any effort. “If you don’t put me down, I’m going to lose my breakfast.”
Darned if he didn’t shrug, lifting and lowering her with a hitch of his shoulder as if she weighed nothing. “Tough.”
“But—”
“No.” He paused for a beat. “And if you get sick on me, you’re gonna regret it.”
His low voice held just enough menace that she believed him totally. Even so, he couldn’t really expect her to control something like that—could he?
Deciding she’d prefer not to find out, she swallowed. Hard. “What—what’s your name?”
He was silent so long she didn’t think he was going to answer. Finally, he said, “Taggart.”
“Is that your first name or your last?”
“Just Taggart’s all you need to know.”
Nobody was ever going to accuse him of being a chatterbox. She gulped as he hefted her a little higher. “Okay, Just—” She started to call him Just Taggart, then thought better of it. Antagonizing him more than she already had couldn’t be wise. “Listen, please? I’m not rich, but whatever you’re getting paid, I’ll double it if you’ll let me go.”
“No.”
“Then how about if you just put off taking me back for say…a week?” Surely she could find a way to escape in that space of time. “We can stay here. You’ll still be doing your job, but I’ll pay you, too, and I’ve got lots of supplies and—”
“No.”
“Then what about a day? Just one day. Surely twenty-four hours can’t matter—”
“Not gonna happen, Genevieve.” Without warning, he dumped her on her feet next to the truck. Towering over her, he gave her a quick once over, his ice-green eyes impossible to read. Then he caught her by the shoulder and spun her around. “Now shut up, keep your hands where I can see them and spread your legs.” Planting a palm between her shoulder blades, he gave her a nudge.
She had barely enough time to throw up her hands and brace herself against the fender before his big, hard hands were on her. They skimmed impersonally down her arms and skated over her back, breasts and sides, then slipped downward to explore her legs and thighs.
Humiliation painted her cheeks with fire as he patted her hips, then gave a huff of satisfaction as he encountered the car keys she’d zipped into her coat pocket. Before she could voice a protest, he took possession of them, then resumed his exploration. By the time he finished, she was shaking all over from the indignity of his touch.
“Okay,” he murmured, reaching around her to open the truck door. “Get in.”
“But my things—”
“Are in back where you left them.”
“But I can’t just leave!” She twisted around to face him. “What about the cabin? The fire’s going and I’ve got groceries sitting out and—”
“I’ll arrange for somebody to come and close things up.”
“Okay, but—but we really shouldn’t take the truck. The heater’s shot and the brakes aren’t reliable and the lights don’t always work and it’ll be dark soon—”
“No sweat. My rig is parked on the next track south.”
“But—”
“Enough.” The look he sent her was frigid enough to flash-freeze boiling water. “You can babble until hell freezes over, but I still plan to be back in Colorado—with you in custody—this time tomorrow. Got it?”
She thought about Seth, about his threat to confess rather than allow her to forfeit her own freedom and felt a spurt of desperation. Surely there had to be some way to reach this man, some way to change his mind. “I know you have a job to do, but you have to understand. I can’t go back. Not yet.”
“Oh, yeah. You can. You are.”
“Please! Just listen. My brother’s innocent. But if you take me back, he’ll feel obligated to try and protect me and—”
“Get in the truck, Bowen.” He took a step closer, the toe of one big boot bumping her smaller one.
It took every ounce of her courage, but she stood her ground. “Damn it, Taggart, if you’ll just listen—”
“No.” With a speed that was surprising for a man his size, he caught her under the arms and boosted her onto the seat. Then he gripped her right arm with one hand, reached under his coat with the other and the next thing she knew, he was slapping a handcuff around her wrist.
“Don’t!” She tried to twist away but it was too late as he snapped the other bracelet around the door handle. “Surely that’s not—”
“I don’t like surprises when I’m driving.”
Frightened, furious, she watched helplessly as he slammed the door and headed around to the driver’s side of the truck.
Think, she ordered herself as he slid the seat back as far as it would go to accommodate his mile-long legs and climbed inside.
Taking a firm grip on her emotions, Genevieve turned to face him. “I don’t have much money, most of it went to pay for Seth’s attorney, but you can have my house. I’ll sign it over. My business, too. I’ll—I’ll give you anything you want. Just name it.”
For a moment it was as if he hadn’t heard her. Then he abruptly twisted on the seat and leaned over so that only inches separated them. His cool compelling gaze slid from her hair to her eyes to her mouth, then flicked back up. “Anything?” His eyes gleamed dangerously.
He was so close she could see each individual inky whisker shadowing his cheeks, as well as a faint, razor-thin scar that cut through one corner of his hard, unsmiling mouth.
Her stomach dropped and what was left of the moisture in her mouth dried up. She told herself not to be a fool, to say, “Yes, of course, whatever it takes,” but when she parted her lips, the words wouldn’t come out. “I—I—”
His head dipped even closer. Swallowing hard, she squeezed her eyes shut, her heart slamming into her throat as his hair—cool and unexpectedly soft—tickled against her cheek.
Then he abruptly straightened and she felt the pressure as he dragged her seat belt across her waist. Her eyes flew open as he jammed the end into the clasp with a distinctive click.
He sent her a mirthless smile as their gazes meshed. “Yeah. I didn’t think so. Which is just as well, since the only thing I want from you—” he fastened his own seat belt and slapped the truck into Reverse “—is your word that you won’t give me any more trouble.”
Embarrassed, insulted, affronted, disgusted—Genevieve couldn’t decide what she felt most. “Go to hell.”
He gave a faint sigh. “Too late. Already been there, done that,” he murmured. Depressing the clutch, he backed the vehicle out of its slot. He shifted, straightened the wheel and began to guide the truck down the narrow, tree-lined track that led to the road.
The deer came out of nowhere. One second there was nothing in front of them but an unobscured ribbon of white. In the next, a rangy young stag bounded squarely into their path, its dun-colored hide seeming to fill the entire windshield.
“Watch out!” Genevieve cried as Taggart wrenched the wheel to the left. He hit the brakes and the old Ford bucked wildly, fishtailed across the snowy ground and slammed driver’s side first into an enormous evergreen tree.
Taggart’s head hit the door frame with a sickening crunch.
Genevieve watched with a mixture of awe and horror as he slumped, his big body suddenly as limp as a rag doll’s. Dear God, what if he’s dead?
Fast on the heels of that thought came another. Dear God. What if he’s not?
Three
Taggart surfaced slowly.
As he did, several things seemed noteworthy. One was that his head felt as if a stake were being driven through it.
The other was that somebody—a woman, judging from her soft voice and even softer hands—was touching him. “Come on now,” she murmured, her husky voice tickling along his spine while her fingers sifted featherlight through the hair at his temple. “It’s time to quit fooling around. Wake up now. I know you can do it.”
She knew he could do it. Her faith gave him pause. The first and last female to unswervingly believe in him had been his mother. Yet he knew damn well that the woman murmuring to him wasn’t Mary Moriarity Steele.
She smelled entirely different, for one thing, like sunshine and soap instead of lavender and baby powder. Plus her hands were smaller and her voice was lower. Besides, his mother had been gone…
How long? Drawing a blank, he struggled to punch through the fog hazing his brain. For a frustrating moment his mind remained shrouded and sluggish. Then the knowledge abruptly bubbled up.
Twenty years. She’d died twenty years ago last month, the anniversary of her passing falling on the day after his thirty-third birthday.
What’s more, with another burst of returning memory he knew that it was Genevieve Bowen who was showing him such gentle concern. He recognized her voice at the same instant the recollection of tossing her over his shoulder and heading for her truck came rushing back at him. Yet after that…Nothing.
He didn’t have a single, solitary doubt who was to blame.
Marshaling his strength, he opened his eyes. He felt a perverse flicker of satisfaction as his quarry—hell, no, his prisoner—sucked in a startled breath and jerked back, snatching her hand away from his face.
“Genevieve.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded raspy.
“You’re back.”
“Yeah.” He blinked, tried to make sense of the timbered ceiling above his head and failed. With a prickle of uneasiness, he realized he was lying on a bed in a room he’d never seen before.
“How do you feel?”
He told himself to focus. Okay, so his brain seemed to be a few cards short of a full deck and he had a son of a bitch of a headache—so what? He’d survived worse. He concentrated on what he did remember and tossed out an educated guess. “The truck. There was an accident.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “There was a deer. In the road. You swerved to avoid it and hit a tree.”
“I knew that,” he lied. “What I meant was—how long have I been out?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”
A spark of something—it looked a lot like compassion except he knew damn well that couldn’t be right—flared in her eyes. “You’ve been in and out, but mostly out, the past hour. And in case you’re wondering, you’re in the cabin. My great-uncle’s cabin.”
Of course. He glanced around, taking note of the comfortable-looking furniture, the fire dancing cheerfully behind the glass doors of a big stone fireplace, the stretch of windows looking out on the jagged Montana peaks stabbing into the sky. Bringing his gaze back to her, he wondered how she’d managed to get him inside, given that he was twice her size, then decided there was a different question he was far more curious about. “And you’re still here…why?”
She was silent a moment, then gave a dismissive little shrug. “You took a pretty nasty knock to the head. I couldn’t just go off and leave you. Not until I was sure you were okay.”
Yeah, right. Pollyanna reputation or not, she wasn’t stupid and nobody was that good-hearted. More likely she was tired of being hunted and, having finally come face-to-face with what she was up against—that would be him—had realized the futility of continuing to run.
Then again, she’d saved him a boatload of aggravation by hanging around. If she wanted to pretend she was Doris Do-right, what the hell did he care? He inclined his chin a fraction, ignoring the ensuing howl of protest from his aching head. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Even as she took a step back, putting a little more distance between them, an uncertain smile kissed the corners of her full mouth.
He scowled as part of him that was unapologetically male whispered pretty. Reminding himself sharply that she was his assignment, not his date, for God’s sake—and he never mixed his personal and professional lives—he stared expressionlessly at her. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said flatly as he carefully pushed himself upright. “You’re still my prisoner and I’m—what the hell?”
Something heavy was dragging at his arm. He sensed Bowen moving even farther away as he glanced down, confounded to see that a handcuff was locked around his left wrist. What’s more, the adjoining stainless-steel bracelet had been threaded through the end links of a heavy chain that had been passed around the end support of the massive built-in bed frame.
He was trapped like a wolf in a snare.
Ignoring the pounding in his head, he didn’t think but acted, launching himself at his one chance at freedom.
He was within inches of grabbing her when it dawned on him that instead of bolting the way she ought to be, his nemesis was holding her ground, and a warning shrieked through his brain.
Too late. Unable to check himself, he reached the end of his tether and was damn near jerked off his feet.
The handcuff cut into his wrist. His arm felt as if it was being ripped from his shoulder. Then his momentum snapped him around and his head exploded in agony.
Gritting his teeth against the howl crowding his throat, he staggered back the way he’d come, braced himself against the bed frame and sank down onto the quilt-covered mattress.
So much for his luck having changed, he thought savagely. With a snap of her fingers, Lady Fortune had snatched away success and turned him from victor to casualty, from hunter to captive.
It was a road he’d traveled before, he reminded himself. Under far worse circumstances, with far graver consequences.
But he wasn’t going to think about that. It was over. In the past. Beyond his reach to change. He needed to focus on the here and now. On Genevieve.
Locking firmly onto that single thought, he squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to hold perfectly still as he waited for the worst of the pain to pass.
Enduring, after all, was what he did best.
“Here.” Genevieve set the pill bottle and the glass of water on the nightstand, all the while keeping a wary eye on the big man hunched on the bed. “This should help.”
Mindful of the terrifying show of speed and strength he’d put on just minutes earlier, she quickly stepped back out of reach. And waited.
Nothing. He continued to sit perfectly still, head slumped, eyes shut, broad shoulders rigid.
“It’s ibuprofen. My first aid book says that’s okay for someone in your condition.”
Still no reaction. With an inner shrug, she decided that if he wanted to imitate a boulder there was nothing she could do about it. She’d give it one more try; then she was done.
“If you think a cold compress would help, let me know. The fridge hasn’t been on long enough to make ice, but there’s plenty of snow outside.” Silence. “Hokay then, J. T.” With a shrug, she started to turn away. “I’ll just give you some space—”
“Don’t call me that.”
Turning back, she found his gaze fixed on her, his eyes hooded and impossible to read. “What?” Her response was automatic even though she knew perfectly well what he was referring to.
“J. T.,” he gritted out. “Don’t call me that. I don’t like it.”
For a second she was speechless. Of all the things she might’ve expected him to object to, her flippant abbreviation of Just Taggart wasn’t even on the list. Still, given that she had the upper hand, she supposed she could afford to be gracious. “All right. Plain old Taggart it is then.” She felt a fleeting flash of amusement as she considered what he’d say if she called him by that acronym.
Moving carefully, and looking as if he hadn’t smiled about anything in years, he reached for the pill bottle and thumbed off the cap. To her dismay, he proceeded to toss back considerably more than the recommended dosage. Setting down the water glass, he eased back farther on the bed, then sliced her a sharp look. “What?”
“I—nothing.” She wiped the concerned look off her face, telling herself not to be foolish. He was a grown-up, and bigger than average, and if he wanted to suck down the entire bottle of pain reliever, it was none of her business. While she obviously hadn’t been ruthless enough after the accident to shove him out of the truck and abandon him to his fate, she was neither stupid nor naive enough to think anything had changed.
He was her enemy.
A crucial little fact she couldn’t afford to forget, she reminded herself, turning away. Sure, she was lonely. Sure she was dying to talk openly to somebody. And yes, the sight of anyone injured or hurting tended to trigger what Seth had always claimed was her overdeveloped nurturing streak.
But she’d be grade-A certifiable, lock-me-in-the-asylum-and-throw-away-the-key crazy to let down her guard even an inch where the man on the bed was concerned.
And it wasn’t only the risk he posed to her freedom, his obvious mental toughness, killer physique or ability to handle himself that she found so threatening, she mused as she walked over to the kitchen and began methodically putting away the groceries.
No, there was something else, some intangible quality he possessed that made her feel off balance and not quite herself. Something that tugged at her senses and alarmed her recently awakened sense of self-preservation all at the same time.
Uh-huh. That’s called the thrill of danger, the call of the wild, Genevieve. Women have been drawn to dangerous men like moths to the flame since the beginning of time.
Add to that the fact that he wasn’t exactly ugly and it was perfectly reasonable that he inspired such conflicting feelings in her. Not that he was pretty-boy handsome. Far from it. Along with that dark hair and those pale eyes, he had the strongly sculpted, slightly ascetic face of a medieval warrior.
But she wasn’t attracted to him, for heaven’s sake. She absolutely was not. Even if she’d met him under different circumstances—say, when he wasn’t doing his damnedest to hijack her life—he was so far from her type it wasn’t even funny. He was too big, too tightly wound, too…male.
Plus he had an air of watchfulness, of being apart, that troubled her. Most people had a need to be liked, to connect with others, to smooth their path through life with at least a pretense of mutual experience or interest.
Not him. He seemed walled off, although she had a feeling she didn’t question that beneath that carefully controlled surface there were strong emotions at play. Perhaps that was why, even chained and hurting, he filled the cabin with his blatantly masculine presence, making her aware of him without ever saying a word.
Why even now, as she dragged a large cast-iron pot out of the cupboard, set it on the stove and busied herself with sautéing meat and chopping vegetables for the soup, she could feel him watching her. Just as she’d sensed him observing her earlier.
She gave a rueful little sigh. God. What she wouldn’t give for her earlier foreboding to have been caused by a good old killer squirrel, mutant or not.
Instead, she was stuck with a much more terrifying human male.
Of course, she supposed things could have turned out worse—far worse. She’d gotten incredibly lucky with that deer. And Taggart, for all his aura of imminent threat, hadn’t hurt her despite having had plenty of opportunity, not even in retaliation when she’d struck him first. In all fairness, she supposed she had to give him points for that—and consider the possibility that he was more civilized than she imagined.
“You don’t really think you’re going to get away with this, do you, Bowen?”
Then again, maybe not. Despite her prisoner’s uninflected tone, she recognized a threat when she heard one. Which, she reflected, as she added a can of tomatoes, broth and seasonings to the meat, really did take an incredible amount of nerve given their respective situations.
“Do yourself a favor. Undo these cuffs. I swear I’ll go easy on you.”
Oh, right. Like she believed that. And even if it was true, what exactly did it mean—that he’d use velvet ribbon to truss her up when he delivered her back to Silver?
Rolling her eyes, she transferred the raw carrots and potatoes she’d sliced into the pot. She put the lid in place, turned down the heat on the burner and moved to the sink to wash her hands.
“Okay, I get it now. This—tying guys to your bed—is how you get your kicks.”
She turned off the water and dried her hands. Surely she hadn’t heard that right?
“Normally, I don’t go for the Suzy Homemaker type. But I suppose I could make an exception. Of course, first I’d want to see you nak—”
She swiveled around. “Are you out of your mind? Are you trying to tick me off?”
Propped up against the headboard, his legs stretched out, he hitched his shoulders a scant half inch. “Got your attention, didn’t I?”
“Oh, yes, you did do that.” She gave a theatrical sigh. “And to think three hours ago I was actually pining for the sound of another human voice.” She leveled her gaze at him. “So what is it you want to say that I just have to hear?”
“How long do you plan to keep me chained like this?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
She gave a little shrug. “A variety of things. Your health. My mood. Whether you persist in making any more objectionable personal comments.”
One level black eyebrow rose. “Is that a threat?”
“More like a promise,” she said sweetly.
“What am I supposed to do when I need to use the facilities?”
“Bathroom’s right there.” She indicated the door some four feet down the wall from the bed. “The chain will reach.”
“What are you going to do?”
“There’s a half bath up in the loft. Not perfect, but it’ll do.”
He started to scowl, then appeared to reconsider. “Look, my offer still stands. End this now, let me take you back and I’ll make sure the judge knows you cooperated.”
“How generous of you. But I think I’ll pass. You may not understand, but as I tried to explain earlier, I don’t care what the judge thinks—not about me. It’s my brother who matters.”
“Damn it, Bowen—”
“You know, if I were you, I really wouldn’t swear at me. What’s more, I’d at least try to be nice. Otherwise, I may forget to tell someone where you are once I’m gone.”
His face hardened. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I’m not buying. If you meant to take off and leave me to rot, you’d have done it earlier. You’re going to have to come up with a better threat than that.”
“I don’t think so.” She came to a sudden decision. So he thought he could predict her behavior, did he? Well, maybe he could as concerned this particular issue—damn him—but that didn’t mean she had to make it easy. It would do his character good to worry a little for a change.
Grabbing her parka off the hook near the door, she slid it on, checking her pocket to make sure the keys to his rig were still in it. “I guess I’ll see you later. Or then again—maybe not.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
She smiled without humor and scooped up her purse. “You think you know everything. Figure it out.” Her hand on the doorknob, she glanced back at him over her shoulder. “Oh, and just so we’re clear? I wouldn’t sleep with you if you came dipped in chocolate.”
Without looking back, she flicked him a wave and sailed out the door.
Four
Gripping the bathroom doorjamb, Taggart glanced narrowly at the silvery twilight rapidly fading beyond the cabin windows.
Terrific. Just frigging terrific. It was getting dark and there was still no sign of Bowen.
He walked unsteadily to the bed and sank gingerly down on the edge. Careful not to jar his head, he unlaced his hiking boots and slid them off, then lay back and stretched out, letting himself stew as he scowled up at the plank ceiling overhead.
Not that he was worried. At least, not much. While he still didn’t buy the concept that anyone could be as pure of heart as she was reputed to be, he was confident little Ms. Genevieve was coming back—and for reasons that had nothing to do with her supposed concern for his health.
She had, for example, gone to considerable effort putting together whatever was simmering deliciously on the stove. Why do that if she didn’t plan to return to eat some of it? It sure as hell wasn’t as if he could reach it, he thought, trying to ignore the pathetic way his mouth was watering in reaction to the rich, savory aroma.
What’s more, there was no way she would’ve taken off without the duffel bag and the box of books that were currently parked by the door, which she must’ve hauled in from the truck while he was in la-la land. It would also be reckless and stupid of her to have left so late in the day without a plan—and from everything he’d seen so far she was plenty smart.
By now, she was bound to have figured out it would be a day or two before anyone would expect them to show up in Silver. It wouldn’t take much additional brain power for her to realize that even when they were a no-show, an alarm most likely wouldn’t be immediately raised since he was so obviously not the kind of guy to tolerate a short leash.
Which was why the prudent thing for her to do would be to remain at the cabin and take some time considering her next move.
The alternative—that she’d taken off for good—was unacceptable.
Because, damn it, he’d already searched every inch of space he could reach and hadn’t found a thing he could use to pick the lock on the handcuffs. Just as he’d tested each chain link as well as the bed frame for weakness and scored a big fat zero.
So if Bowen didn’t come back, short of gnawing his hand off he’d have no choice but to wait to be rescued.
The mere thought of that set a nerve ticking in his jaw. And not just because of the obvious humiliation factor. Or that his brothers were guaranteed to give him serious grief the second they learned he’d let an amateur—and a woman at that, for God’s sake—get the drop on him. Or even because he’d be forced to start the hunt for a certain annoying little brunette all over again.
No, what was really going to rankle was that he’d have no one to blame for her decision to run but himself.
So what if he had a monster headache? So what if the past three months had been beyond frustrating? Who gave a rip that being at someone else’s mercy seriously teed him off? Or that it was a well-known fact, at least in his portion of the universe, that he sucked at charming chitchat.
Only a freaking idiot would antagonize his jailer without a specific goal or a damn good reason.
Yeah, but that’s precisely what you did, Ace. And you might as well admit that what really pushed you over the edge was Bowen herself. Face it. There’s just something about her that rubs you the wrong way.
The ache in his head ratcheted up a notch and with a stab of impatience he realized every muscle in his body was as tightly strung as a trip wire. More than a little exasperated—control, after all, was his middle name—he blew out a pent-up breath and ordered himself to get a grip.
Okay, so being around her made him feel…itchy. As if his skin was too small for his body. And for some inexplicable reason, probably because the blow to his head had temporarily disconnected a wire, he kept getting unwanted flashes of the way she’d felt against him, all small and soft and perfectly curved, when they’d wrestled in the snow earlier.
It didn’t excuse the fact that he’d screwed up. That he’d flat-out failed the first rule of Hostage 101, which was to make your captor see you as a fellow human being. Worse, he’d let his mouth get ahead of his brain and gone out of his way to antagonize her.
And now all he could do was wait—and reflect on his numerous and varied mistakes.
So that when Bowen did return—and she would, by God—he’d be ready to make nice, to channel some of his brothers’ winning ways with women and try to forge a bond between them, however slight.
But then, slight was all he needed. His goal, after all, wasn’t to become her best friend or her lover. It was simply to get her to stick around long enough for him to regain control of the situation. To regain control of her.
He didn’t have a doubt in the world he could do it. God knew, he’d faced far tougher situations doing recon missions in Afghanistan. And while the make-friends, play-nice-with-others thing wasn’t going to be easy, nothing that mattered ever was.
Besides, it wasn’t as if he had to share his life story with her. Or talk about anything he cared about. Like being banished as a kid to Blackhurst. Or the disaster at Zari Pass, which had put an end to his military career—and been the last time he’d allowed anyone to call him J. T.
No, his personal private business could, and would, remain just that. Personal and private.
All he had to do was be nominally civil. To offer Bowen—no, Genevieve, he admonished himself—the proverbial olive branch until either she lowered her guard enough for him to get the drop on her or he figured out how to free himself. As for payback…he’d see to that later.
For now, all he needed, all he wanted, he thought, finally giving in to the hammering in his head and letting his eyes drift shut against the fading light, was for this frigging headache to take a one-way hike.
And for Genevieve to be predictable for once and walk back through the door.
Nighttime fell like a heavy ebony cape.
Caught midway along the track that led to the cabin, Genevieve slowed the pickup to allow her eyes time to adjust to the swift slide from hazy dusk to inky darkness.
Despite the choppy rumble of the engine, she could hear the wind as it surged restlessly through the towering evergreens around her, making the snow-shrouded trees sway like uneasy ghosts. Overhead, a pack of marauding clouds took ever bigger bites out of the sky, obliterating the moon and swallowing stars a constellation at a time.
A shiver skated down her spine. She tried telling herself she was just chilled—she hadn’t been kidding earlier when she’d told Taggart the truck’s heater didn’t work, and in the past ten minutes her fingers, nose and toes had started to go numb—but she knew that wasn’t all it was. There was simply something spooky, a sort of bone-deep dread, that came with being alone in the dark, surrounded by an untamed wilderness, with the threat of a storm lurking in the wind.
Add to the cold and the declining weather the fact that she was tired, as much from the stressful events of the day as the three-mile hike through the snow she’d made to complete her errand, and it was no wonder she was ready to get back to the cabin.
Even if that meant having to share space with one John Taggart Steele. Whose complete name she now knew courtesy of the registration in his rig, which she’d confirmed by finally taking a look at the ID in his wallet, which she’d liberated when he’d been unconscious.
Not, she told herself hastily, that she cared what he called himself. Except for a mild curiosity about his aversion to being referred to as J. T, which, as it turned out, really were his initials, it was no skin off her nose if he went by Bozo the Clown.
What did matter was her discovery that he and the firm he worked for carried the same name. It might not be a hundred percent proof-positive, but when factored in with his relentless, self-assured personality, it made her strongly suspect that he was a principal in the enterprise rather than simply an employee.
If that was true, it was good news for her since it meant he had not just power but autonomy, and that made it a lot less likely anyone would be checking up on him anytime soon or expecting him to report in regularly.
It wouldn’t be smart to count on it, however, she reflected as the truck shuddered over the last rise and the cabin came into sight. Grateful that she’d had the foresight to switch on the stove and porch lights before she left, she drove down the shallow hill and parked, muscled open the badly dented driver’s-side door and headed inside, his lightweight pack slung over her shoulder.
No, she was a firm believer in hoping for the best but doing whatever was within her power to make things go her way. Which was why, she thought, as she climbed the cabin steps, retrieved the distributor cap from her pocket and dropped it with a satisfying thunk behind the wood pile, Taggart was going to have to make a trip to the auto parts store in the near future if he wanted his big black SUV to run. Of course, first he’d have to find it in the abandoned barn where she’d hidden it.
Stomping the snow off her boots, she said a sincere thank-you to the book gods for Alan’s Guide to Auto Engine Basics. Then she pushed open the door and stepped inside, mentally straightening her spine as she braced to go another round with her less-than-charming captive.
To her surprise, no sarcastic remark greeted her return. Instead, except for the faint hiss and pop of the fire, the dimly lit room was eerily quiet.
Her heart stuttered. In the space of time it took her to toss away his pack and pivot toward the bed, her imagination conjured the worst possible scenario: Taggart had somehow gotten loose. Any second now he was going to explode out of the shadows, wrap his iron-banded arms around her and yank her against his big, hard-as-steel frame—
But no. No. Relief sucked the starch right out of her as she made out the solid, long-legged shape sprawled on the bed. Locking her shaking knees, she fought to regain her composure, only to abandon the effort as fear for her safety reluctantly gave way to concern for his well-being.
She felt a stir of alarm at his continuing silence. Driven to make sure he was still breathing, she crossed the room and crept as close to the bed as she dared. To her gratification, from her new vantage point she could see his chest in his gray flannel shirt rising and falling as steadily as a metronome.
The breath she hadn’t known she was holding sighed out while her legs once again went as weak as spent flower stems. In need of a moment to regroup, she marshaled her strength and prepared to step away and leave him to sleep.
Before she could do more than think of retreat, up snapped Taggart’s eyelashes—thick, black as the night outside and the only part of his angular face that could possibly be described as soft looking—and then she was trapped in the pale-green tractor beam of his eyes.
“Hey.” For all the intensity of his gaze, his voice was as rough as a weathered board and more than a little groggy. “You’re back.”
“Yes.”
He glanced beyond her toward the darkened windows and frowned. “What time is it?”
“A little past seven.”
“Huh.” He raised his unfettered hand and she prepared to lunge for safety, but he only scrubbed it across his face. “Feels later.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah. I noticed.” His hand fell away and something she couldn’t define flickered in his eyes. “You had me worried.”
She wondered what he expected her to say. I’m sorry? Not a chance. Good, it serves you right? Well, that might be closer to the truth, but it wasn’t in her nature to gloat. Even if he so richly deserved it. She gestured toward the pack she’d deep-sixed near the door. “I brought your things.”
His gaze flicked over, took note, came back again. Speculation flashed across his face, but he didn’t say anything.
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Caroline Cross
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: He was chained to her bed. Ex-Army Ranger John Taggert Steele couldn′t believe the pretty little mess he was in. The case should have been easy: Track down runaway murder witness Genevieve Bowen and return her to police custody. But somehow he ended up shackled to the sassy brunette′s bed–and rather than thinking how to get out of it, he was sorely tempted to get Genevieve in it so he could teach her a much-needed lesson in domination.Because one way or another he′d regain control, and show her what happens when you play with a desperate man′s heart.