Cindy Dees - Close Pursuit

Alex circled back to the original conversation. “If fighting breaks out between the rebels and the locals, any women in labor tonight will stay home.”

“I dunno,” she responded. “These women are already braving pretty dangerous obstacles to get to you. I doubt a little gunfire will slow them down.”

“The rebels are well armed and violent. When they come, they’ll crush everything in their path.”

Yeah. Like the two of us. She shook her head, unconvinced, and declared, “I’ll bet you five bucks we deliver a baby tonight.”

The effect of her challenge on Alex was shocking. He went utterly still, and she thought she saw a shudder pass through him. From this angle, it looked as if he actually paled. The tension abruptly emanating from him was terrible in its intensity.

She was on the verge of asking him if he was okay when he turned abruptly. His gaze was hooded. Dark. And his entire being was suddenly sharply, dangerously alive. It was as if she’d woken a sleeping tiger. And now the beast was not only awake, but he was hungry...and on the hunt.

“Shall we make the wager a little more interesting?” he purred. The sexual energy in his voice raked across her skin like claws.

Whoa. She asked cautiously, “What did you have in mind?”

“What do you like best in all the world?” he asked.

“Ice cream,” she answered promptly. It was the first thing that came to mind.

“Better than sex?” He sounded skeptical.

She shrugged. “I stand by my answer.”

He replied huskily, “Then you haven’t had good sex.”

The promise of just that was thick in his throat. She didn’t dare let her gaze stray south to see if he was as turned on as she was, all of a sudden.

“I think we have the terms of our bet then.” Her gaze snapped to him as he prowled across the tiny space to less than arm’s length from her. “If you win, we have a date to eat ice cream together. If I win...” His mouth curved up in a smile that was pure sin.

Her jaw dropped. “No way!”

His heavy lids might hide the fire blazing in his eyes, but they in no way diminished it. “A woman daring enough to travel halfway across the world, to brave a war zone and death threats, living alone in the wilds with a stranger...” He shrugged. “I thought you were...more.”

More what? her brain shouted. More than average? More than a nice little schoolteacher? More than a desperate wannabe in a family of adventurers and warriors? More than a fraud?

Stung, her gaze narrowed and she glared at him. She thrust her hand out truculently. He stared down at it uncomprehendingly.

“Are we shaking on the bet or not?” she demanded.

His gaze lifted to hers, and if it had been hot before, it was an inferno now. Never breaking eye contact with her, he reached out slowly with his right hand and grasped hers. Heat built between their palms that scalded her all the way up her arm and down to her core. His fingers were strong. Capable. She’d watched that hand perform miracles. And right now, it claimed her fingers possessively, promising heretofore unimagined sensual delights.

His grip finally fell away and he broke the stare, turning away from her sharply. His rib cage lifted once short and hard. At least he wasn’t entirely unaffected. As for her, she was panting like a dog in a sauna.

Holy crap, I just agreed to have sex with him. What on earth had she been thinking? She’d known since she was about seven years old not to let boys goad her into accepting dares. He’d just manipulated her like a master, damn him.

Of course, if she was lucky, she’d win the bet and get an ice-cream sundae out of the deal. That was the lucky outcome...right?

* * *

ALEX STRETCHED OUT on the cot in the corner. He’d turned down the lantern hanging over the bed, intentionally wreathing himself in dark shadows. It was easier to watch Katie that way. She was pretending to read—she hadn’t advanced the screen on her e-reader for ten minutes.

She’d been as nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs and squirt guns ever since they’d made their bet. It was highly entertaining watching her alternate between wishing to win the bet and wishing to lose. Her face was a constantly changing mosaic of emotions ranging from chagrin to suspicion that he’d set her up—which he had, blatantly—to reluctant lust and back to chagrin.

If he were going to lie to himself, he’d say he’d made the bet with her to relieve the boredom and distract her from the building danger. To add a little spice to an otherwise tedious and miserable assignment. But the truth was he found her fascinating. She was such a girlie girl. But more compelling was how she reminded him of a shiny new penny that had never been nicked or tarnished. What must it be like to never have had anything bad happen in one’s life? To be good. The concept was completely beyond his comprehension.

A shocking compulsion to end all that innocence rolled over him. Most men would call it simple lust. But he knew it to be more.

The girls at his various universities had all been many years older than him, deeply intellectual and far too cool to pay any attention to the skinny kid blowing out all the grade curves in their classes. At the opposite end of the spectrum had been the groupies in the casinos. Hookers, showgirls and hangers-on looking to trade their bodies, and even their souls, for access to his bank account. Not that he particularly held it against them. They were using what tools they had to climb out of life’s cesspool, while he used them to climb into it.

There had been a few older women looking to take on the role of his missing mother—social workers, counselors, even a professor or two—who tried to mentor him along the way. Their hearts had been in the right place. Hell, they might even have had decent advice for him. But he hadn’t been ready to hear it. Not back then. Not before his life imploded and he sent himself to hell.

Some would say he’d always been in hell and had just managed to find a stairway down to a deeper circle of it. They were also the ones who tended to declare him a lost cause. Doomed to wallow in his own black pit of despair, forever. He was inclined to agree with that crowd.

A faint rumble rolled down the valley, and Katie looked up sharply, startled.

“It’s just thunder,” he murmured drowsily, pretending to be half-asleep.

“No, it’s not. That was a mortar explosion,” she retorted tersely.

“And you know this how?” he asked with more alert interest.

“Three of my brothers are in the military, the other two are in law enforcement and my dad’s an ex–Green Beret. We lived on army bases when I was a kid.” Another explosion sounded, closer this time, and she announced with certainty, “And that was a rocket-propelled grenade.”

Fuck. Supposedly harmless little Katie McCloud kept throwing him monkey wrenches. He needed her to be no factor in this mission. A know-nothing civilian translator who’d never been overseas and had no field experience. Naive. A bit of a dingbat. Manageable, dammit. But instead she was a dangerous wild card. What the hell was going on out here around them? Around him?

This job was supposed to be about redemption. About doing something decent with his life at long last. About escaping the clutches of his father, at least for a little while. Was it too much to ask to have one moment in his life to do what he wanted with it? If it wouldn’t have been completely paranoid of him, he would half suspect his father was behind the rebels managing to stay on their heels like this.

Katie was so damned quick on the uptake. Hell, he already had her half-trained to be a decent surgical nurse. She was intuitive. Attractive. And she could fricking tell mortars from RPGs. He swore silently and with great fervor. Why hadn’t anyone told him that about her?