Linda Howard - Prey

“Yeah,” she agreed, and sighed. “They did.”

“So I saddled up that crab-hopping young son of a bitch and set out in the worst storm I’ve seen up here since I was a kid. I’d lost the trail and was doubling back when I heard you. You know the rest.”

“But how did you know where my camp was? I mean, you might be able to tell the general direction the shots came from, but-”

“Harlan told me which camp.”

“Harlan?”

“He was worried.”

Angie digested that in silence. Harlan’s concern was probably because she was a woman and her two clients were men, something she couldn’t completely discount because she was always careful, herself, in that regard.

“So he knew you were coming up here and-” She stopped, confused. And, what? Keep an eye on her? This cabin was several miles from her campsite, so if it hadn’t been for those shots in the middle of the night, there was no way Dare could have known that anything was going wrong at her camp. If Chad had waited until the next day, and shot Davis and her with the rifle, there was nothing that would have alarmed Dare because rifle shots were to be expected during a hunt.

He drank some more coffee, his eyelids lowered as if he were thinking. Then he said, “No, not exactly.”

“Not exactly?”

“I wasn’t coming up here. Harlan was worried and asked me to keep an eye on you, just in case. I decided to do some fishing while I was here.”

She almost dropped her cup, she was so flabbergasted. She stared at him, trying to sort through all the implications that were rushing through her brain. “So you… I…”

“Yeah. It wasn’t coincidence I was up here.”

He’d come up here, taken what could have been an entire week out of his time, to do a favor for Harlan? She could see him doing Harlan any number of favors, but considering the hostility in her own relationship with Dare, she couldn’t think of why he’d do that particular one.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re here,” she said, “but for the life of me I can’t imagine why you agreed to do that.”

“I’ve told you,” he returned, eyeing her over the rim of the cup. “I’ve been watching your ass for two years now. By the way, this really is some damn fine coffee.”

Alarm bells once again began ringing in the back of her head. Her reaction was instantaneous. “Oh, no,” she warned. “I told you, I’m not going there.”

“Yeah? Why not?”

From his tone of voice he might as well have been asking her why she didn’t want pizza for supper. That definitely punched her buttons, making her feel as if he were looking for nothing more than a sexual tissue, to be used and discarded. She scowled at him. “I have a better question: Why? I’m not into recreational sex, period, and it isn’t as if we’re dating.”

He cocked one knee up and rested his forearm on it, coffee cup in hand, giving her a long, considering look. “We could have been. Damn it, I asked you out twice. So now let me ask you a question: Are you attracted to me, or not? I’ve made it as plain as I can that I’m attracted to you, so now tell me straight out how you feel.”

Angie felt her face getting hot. She could lie-that is, if she hadn’t kissed him back the way she had, hanging on to him and meeting him tongue to tongue. He was asking a loaded question, one to which he already knew the answer. “That isn’t the point,” she muttered, shifting uncomfortably.

“That’s exactly the damn point. The least you can do is be as up-front with me as I’ve been with you.” He didn’t take his gaze from her face, studying every minute change of her expression. Such intense scrutiny made her feel emotionally naked, but then she’d given him that power by telling him all about her wedding, how much she doubted herself because of her own actions. He could figure out now what made her tick, how to get to her, and that was by making himself appear as vulnerable as she felt. The problem with that was she doubted this man had ever felt vulnerable in his entire life, even when shrapnel had sliced his throat. Some people just had that innate self-confidence that spilled over into every facet of their lives. She wasn’t one of them. Her self-confidence seemed to be confined to very specific areas, and didn’t bleed over into the others.

“It isn’t that I don’t find you attractive,” she snapped, resenting being cornered this way.

“Then why did you turn me down, twice ?”

He sounded really grumpy about that; surprised out of her resentment, Angie blinked at him. She couldn’t believe it mattered so much to him. Not that he sounded hurt or uncertain; he just sounded grumpy. “The first time, I wanted to go,” she blurted.

“But you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t . I was taking a hunting party out the next day, and I was running flat out getting everything ready and stocking up on supplies because I’d just gotten back from another hunt. I said I couldn’t, and you stomped off,” she charged, indignation growing. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you why. What was I supposed to do, yell it at your back?”

“Maybe. Guys don’t know what the hell to do.” He scowled at her. “If we’re persistent, we’re stalkers. If we don’t push, then we aren’t interested enough. You tell me what else I could have done. I did ask you out again.”

“That was different,” she grumbled. “It was months later. By that time, you’d already siphoned off so much of my business that I saw red every time I heard your name.”

He shoved his hand through his hair. “Look, I can’t do anything about that. I didn’t deliberately hurt your business, but I didn’t turn down anyone who contacted me. What would you have wanted me to do? What would you have done?”

That was a million-dollar question, because there was no easy, cut-and-dried answer. He hadn’t done anything illegal, or even unethical. He had as much right to make a living as she did. He hadn’t undercut her prices; if anything, he charged more for his services than she did for hers. She’d lost business simply because he was there, and was who he was, with different experiences and strengths that some of her clients had wanted more than they’d wanted hers.

It still pissed her off.

“I’m not saying you should have done anything,” she forced herself to admit. “Things are what they are. Regardless of whether or not we’re attracted to each other, the reality is that I’m going to be moving away and I’m really not interested in a temporary fling.”

He drank some more coffee, eyeing her above the rim of the cup. “Flings can be a lot of fun.”

Angie snorted. It wasn’t the most elegant sound but it expressed exactly how she felt. Goaded, she said, “Yeah, right. For a man, maybe.”

His head snapped back a little. He lowered the cup, his eyebrows peaking in surprise as he studied her. “You don’t like sex?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s okay.”

Shit! Why had she said that? She knew better. She might as well have waved a red flag in front of a bull, and as soon as the words were out of her mouth she wished like hell she could have taken them back. Men seemed to take it as a personal affront if a woman didn’t think sex was the greatest thing since sliced bread, then of course they wanted to show her how wrong she was, that-

He set the coffee down with a thunk that made the contents slosh dangerously close to the rim. “If it’s just ‘okay,’ then obviously you haven’t been with anyone who knew his ass from a hole in the ground.”

And … bingo! It took a great effort, but Angie didn’t roll her eyes. Not completely, anyway. She did cast them upward, as if asking for divine aid. Her common sense began shouting at her to just let it drop, to change the subject or even fake choking to death, but sex had been a source of dissatisfaction for her from the beginning, and she was tired of faking anything, even choking.