Vickie Taylor - The Lawman's Last Stand

And himself so out of sorts, as well. Damn she was beautiful in the firelight. In any light.

Forgetting his manners, he searched the depths of her mysterious eyes. Searched beneath the surface of whatever was bothering her to see if she felt what he felt.

And he found it.

Buried deep, the answering call to his cry. A spark of attraction. He studied it with the same awe that early man must have studied fire. She turned her face up as if she might say something, and without thinking he lowered his mouth to hers.

Her lips were incredibly soft. Incredibly warm. He kept his touch light. It was meant to be a kiss of comfort. At least at first. But when her initial shock faded and she leaned into him with a soft sigh of acquiescence, comfort became need. Then need bordered on greed.

He touched his fingertips to the graceful arch of her cheek and slid his hand down, past her jaw, until his palm splayed around the fragile column of her neck. Holding her, he raised over her, slanted his head and probed at the entrance to her sweet mouth. He wanted to feel her, taste her. All of her. He’d wanted her from the moment she’d pushed her way through a dozen armed DEA agents and ordered him to sit still and shut up while she tended his wound and he hadn’t dared do anything but comply.

He surged against her, long-denied desire curling in his blood. Her lips parted, and for an instant he felt the moist slip of her tongue against his.

Then she reared back, pushing at his shoulders with fisted hands. “No!” Panic laced her eyes. She braced against the back corner of the couch and clutched the blanket to her chest with both hands.

He lurched to his feet and took two steps back. The sight of her fear soured his stomach until he had to turn and stalk away. That reaction hadn’t been caused by any accident. It was much too sudden, much too intense. Only one thing could have caused it.

Him.

Whatever had possessed him to kiss her? He’d known she didn’t want him. She’d proven it often enough since that day on the mountain. Her medical training had kicked in during the crisis, but afterward, every time he’d tried to get a word with her in town, she’d made a hasty escape.

If he turned north on a street corner, she turned south. If he walked in someplace, she walked out. Just like she’d left Mariah’s tonight almost as soon as he’d arrived.

In a moment of stark self-awareness, he realized that was why he’d followed her. He’d wanted to see her safely home, yes. But he’d also wanted to find out why she was avoiding him. Why she got such a trapped look in her eyes whenever he got close.

In the darkened doorway to the great room he stopped, his back still to her. The spit and hiss of the fire mingled with a barrage of curses heard only in his mind.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, his jaw tight.

“Of course not. You’re a cop.”

“You say it like it’s a dirty word.”

She didn’t respond for a long time. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a long day.”

An apology, or a hint for him to make himself scarce? He had no idea. Still wondering, he left the firelight behind and let the darkness of the hall devour him.

Long into the night, Gigi stared at the fire, dreading the moment the last ember would flicker out. Quietly she reached over the side of the couch and picked up her handbag, the tapestry one with horses galloping gaily across the side. From it she drew a folded square of newspaper. The golden glow of the fire shed light across the banner at the top of the page—Oil Exec Returns to Scene of Crime—For Wedding.

Eric had given her the clipping at the party just hours earlier. How quickly her life could change.

The story had run in the business section of a major Los Angeles newspaper. It described how Eric Randall—an oil executive and now Mariah’s fiancé—had helped the DEA— Shane—bring down a drug operation here. And how in the process Eric had fallen in love with Mariah and resigned from his position with the oil company to return to Utah to marry her.

But the article wasn’t what bothered Gigi. That right belonged to the accompanying picture. A photographer had caught all four of them—Eric, Mariah, Gigi and a wounded Shane unloading from the DEA helicopter that had carried them off the mountain. She’d never even seen the cameraman.

That was how they’d found her. It had to be.

Why she had to leave.

In a way, leaving Utah would be a relief. Her life here was a lie. A necessary one, but still a deception. The more she came to care about this place and its people, her friends, the harder the deception became. And the worst lie of all was the lie she had told to herself. That she was safe here. That they wouldn’t find her, this time. What a fool she’d been.

Feeling the thrum of fear strike up a new beat in her breast, she put the news article back in her handbag, set the handbag on the floor, and picked up her survival pack. She hadn’t been without the bag since she’d left New York, three years ago. The bag was her safety net.

Whether he knew it or not, tonight it was Shane’s safety net as well. If the man after her somehow did manage to find her, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill one unsuspecting DEA agent. He’d killed federal agents before.

Guilt struck a sour chord in her head. She really didn’t believe anyone would find her in the next few hours, but she still should have told him. Her silence—her very presence—put him at risk.

Glancing down the darkened hallway, she thought about telling him now. But he was probably long asleep, and she couldn’t knock on his door in the middle of the night wearing nothing but her bare feet and a soft flannel bathrobe that smelled like him. Not after that kiss.

Not after the way she’d treated him after the kiss. She had no right to ask him for anything, least of all to watch over and protect her. Besides, he was a cop. He would ask questions she couldn’t answer. So tonight, like every night, she would watch over and protect herself.

And she would protect him, too.

Digging past the assorted getaway paraphernalia in her backpack, Gigi wrapped her hand around a solid shape folded inside a cotton T-shirt.

She’d never loaded the gun before. Didn’t want to do it now. But she had no choice. By letting him bring her here, she’d taken Shane’s life in her hands. She had to be prepared to defend it.

With the pistol on her lap, she unzipped an outer pocket of the pack and pulled out the ammunition. Carefully, just like she’d been shown in New York, she inserted the shells.

By sheer will, she kept her hands from trembling. All she had to do was make it to morning, she told herself. Then she would leave Utah forever. Because she’d stayed too long. Because she’d let a cop get too close.

And because somewhere out there, a cold-blooded killer was looking for her.

After a chilly morning at his cabin—one due more to the frosty demeanor of his houseguest than the unusually cool spring weather—Shane dropped Gigi off at John Lane’s scrap yard. She’d called John not thirty seconds after sunrise, the moment the ice on the roads began to melt, and talked the tow truck driver into going after her truck. Then she’d banged around the kitchen under the pretense of making coffee until Shane couldn’t stand the noise and got up to see what the racket was about. She’d seemed so desperate to leave that Shane had joked that if she was in such a hurry, she needn’t have bothered to wait for him to take her to town. She could have just stolen his truck and driven herself.

Gigi hadn’t laughed.

Shaking his head, he pushed his way through the door to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office with one hand, carrying a cup of coffee from the diner in the other.