Linda Howard: Prey

“Nothing’s the matter with me,” she said, her teeth clenched so tightly her jaw ached. Now that she’d looked at the scar on his throat, she found herself staring at the other scars on his face: the gouge high on his right cheekbone, another beside his mouth that actually looked like a dimple if you didn’t know the scars were from shrapnel, and another sort of arrow-shaped scar on the bridge of his nose. None of the scars was disfiguring; they didn’t seem to bother him and they shouldn’t bother her, except seeing them made her chest hurt from something that felt inexplicably like sorrow.

She pushed that thought away; she couldn’t afford to feel personal sympathy for him. So he’d been hit by shrapnel in Iraq; he was alive, he wasn’t disfigured or disabled, and she could feel sympathy for him in the abstract, as a service member, without letting him elicit any other emotion from her.

She wished his breath stank, instead of smelling pleasantly like coffee… wished there was something, anything, about him that was physically distasteful. What kind of idiot was she that in some weak moments she’d find herself wistfully thinking about what might have happened if she’d actually gone out with him when he’d first returned to the area and asked her out, if anything would have come of it? Then doubts would set in, and she’d wonder if maybe he’d set out to deliberately destroy her business because she’d turned him down; if so, that made him a major jerk, and no good could have come from dating him. What gave her emotional whiplash was that she simply didn’t know, which meant she kept worrying at the different scenarios without any way of knowing which one was true. All she knew for sure was that she wasn’t good with men, and that Dare Callahan had ruined her business. She was rock solid on those two things.

With him standing so close and the truck right behind her she felt hemmed in, trapped. Damn it, enough was enough; she couldn’t stand it, not for another second. She edged sideways, farther from the truck, though her damn stubborn pride wouldn’t let her actually step back from him.

He adjusted his position, too, turning with her so they remained face-to-face.

“Then what makes you act as if you have a stick shoved up your ass every time I’m around?” he snapped. “Just now you turned and ran as soon as you saw me. I’m tired of it, damn it. If you have a beef with me, then tell me to my face what it is.”

“I didn’t run ,” she snapped right back. Instinctively she slid another few inches to the side. “Maybe I thought of somewhere else I need to go.” She didn’t bother even trying to put any sincerity into her tone. Instead, her good sense seemed to have taken a hike, because she sounded as if she was taunting him. She didn’t want to wave a red flag at the bull, she didn’t want to escalate things into an all-out argument, she just wanted to get into her truck and leave. That was what she wanted, but instead she kept standing there, and things she hadn’t meant to say kept coming out of her mouth. “Maybe seeing you or speaking to you doesn’t rate very high on my list of things to do.”

Again he moved, keeping his position squared off with hers, and this time they both seemed to be caught in an unconscious momentum that kept them moving, slowly circling each other like angry combatants, each looking for the other’s weakness. She was vaguely aware that they looked like fools dancing a hostile tango in the parking lot, and hoped no one else saw them; everyone knew everyone else’s business around here, and she didn’t want to field any questions about what was going on between her and Dare Callahan. Lord, please don’t let Harlan look out his window right now, because he’d feel duty bound to come out and make sure everything was okay.

“Stand still,” he said, still growling, though with the damage to his larynx he’d sound growly even if he was trying to sing lullabies.

“Why should I? You’re the one who’s crowding me, not the other way around. If you want me to stand still, then back off.” She punctuated the last two words by putting the tip of one finger squarely in the middle of his chest and applying pressure; it was like pushing on a rock-a living, breathing rock, but still a rock. She wasn’t certain how easy it was to communicate with a rock, so just to make sure he understood, she repeated herself. “Back. Off.”

Under the brim of his hat, his brilliant blue eyes were narrow and angry. His head cocked a little, an arrogant, combative tilt of his chin, then he put his right forefinger in the middle of her chest, on her breastbone, duplicating her movement. “Make. Me.”

Furious heat surged under her skin. Make him? God, how she wished she could! Frustration and fury filled her chest, almost smothering her. She couldn’t budge him an inch, and they both knew it. Failing that, what she would most like to do was punch him in the jaw, but she wasn’t stupid. The best thing that could come of that would be that he’d have her arrested for assault, but she doubted that solution would even occur to him. No, he’d hand out the consequences himself, and even though she didn’t know what form that would take she was absolutely certain she wouldn’t like the result at all. Sometimes you just knew things about people, and she knew Dare Callahan was a stubborn jackass who would blow right past good manners if he had a point he wanted to make.

She also should have known he’d dig in his heels. Maybe he’d been a more even-tempered, congenial person when he was growing up, but since leaving the military and coming home he was known to be surly at best, and most times downright ill-tempered. Maybe he had reason to be a sorehead now, maybe he’d always been one. Either way, she had to deal with him as he was now, which was right in her face.

For a split second she weighed her choices as she stared up at him, torn between all those conflicting emotions, then abruptly something inside her heaved a tiny sigh and gave up. She could hold on to her pride and pretend she was leaving because she wanted to, but why try to put a good face on it? He’d won. Let him enjoy it.

She ground her teeth together, trying to get the words out. Damn, this was hard. She took a couple of breaths, digging deep for self-control, and finally was able to say, “It isn’t any of your business, but I just put my place up for sale.” She kept her voice low so if it wobbled, maybe he wouldn’t notice. “I’m sorry it hurts your feelings that I don’t feel like dealing with you right now, but I don’t feel like dealing with you right now . Got it?”

His expression went blank. He glanced up at Harlan’s office, then back at her. “You’re selling out?”

And there they went again, her back teeth locking together. Couldn’t he have used any term other than selling out ? She did some more deep breathing, blowing air out through her nose like an angry bull. “I don’t have a choice. My business has gone downhill since you moved back and went into competition with me. I can either sell or go bankrupt.” There, that was bald enough. She hadn’t tried to protect her pride, but neither had she accused him of deliberately running her out of business. Maybe he had, maybe he hadn’t. He was definitely the cause, whether deliberate or not, and that was all the credit and a lot less of the blame she was inclined to give him. At this point, it didn’t matter, because the end result was the same.

His expression shifted, hardened. “And you blame me.”

“I don’t see anyone else around here starting up a guide business.”

He stared down at her, eyes narrowed, his mouth a grim line. “For the record, I didn’t go after any of your customers. If any of them were yours first, they came to me, not the other way around. And I’ll be damned if I’ll apologize because they preferred me.”