Cindy Dees - Close Pursuit

She was so frantic not to lose the bet that she was seriously considering heading for the nearest village to go door-to-door looking for women in labor. Okay, she wasn’t serious about canvassing the neighborhood for business. But she wanted to do it.

As the first hint of dawn touched the peaks at the opposite rim of the valley, she reluctantly admitted defeat and burrowed deeper into her sleeping bag. What had she done? Why did she have a feeling deep in her gut that she had jumped off a cliff and just didn’t know it yet?

* * *

KATIE WOKE WITH a jolt and was stunned to see sunlight inching in the tent flap. “What time is it?” she demanded, disoriented. She looked around and was alarmed to see that the tent was empty. Where was Alex?

“Almost two o’clock,” he answered from outside.

She leaped out of the sleeping bag, shocked. Her feet hit the cold dirt, and she hopped uncomfortably from foot to foot until she could slip into her unlaced hiking boots. She gathered her hair up in a high ponytail. Today was hair-washing day, and she already dreaded dousing her head in ice water. But it was better than having greasy hair.

Alex ducked inside the tent and handed her a steaming mug of coffee. Their fingertips brushed as they made the handoff, and her pulse leaped wildly. She looked up at him involuntarily. One corner of his mouth turned up in sardonic amusement at her jumpiness. It was official. She’d made a deal with the devil. To have sex. Ho. Lee. Crap.

Freaked out, she stared down at her mug of coffee unseeingly. Slowly, slowly, her pulse returned to normal, leaving behind a low-level background hum of panic. She would figure out a way to dodge the bullet. After her coffee.

She inhaled the bitter aroma with great relish. It wasn’t that she was the world’s biggest fan of coffee, but it was the smell of home. Of the civilized world beyond this isolated valley. Of life’s little indulgences.

“Thanks,” she murmured. As usual, Alex didn’t reply as he moved past her to the back of the tent. But today, she followed up with, “Why don’t you ever say ‘you’re welcome’ or something to that effect?”

“It’s redundant. I’ve already done something polite or thoughtful and the recipient has acknowledged it. There’s no need for further exchange.”

“Are you always so...cold-blooded in your approach to human interactions?” she asked curiously.

He moved shockingly fast to stand right behind her. Her pulse leaped at his proximity. Was he going to collect on the bet right now? She started to feel light-headed, and her legs trembled so badly with an urge to bolt that they would barely support her weight.

“No, Katie.” His voice was barely more than a whisper sliding across her skin. “I’m not cold-blooded about everything.”

Her breath hitched, and she had to force herself to take her next breath.

A single finger touched the nape of her neck right where her hair met bare skin. It drew slowly down her spine to the top of her T-shirt. “For the record, I’m not going to fall on you and ravish you like some clumsy, horny American boy.”

She turned sharply, mostly to escape that disturbingly sensual caress, but also to stare at him in surprise. “You’re American, aren’t you?”

“I am a citizen, yes.”

“But?”

“But I was born abroad. And my father did not raise me particularly American.”

“What about your mother?”

“No mother,” he bit out.

She replied drily, “Last I heard, there’s only been one documented case of immaculate conception.” She added even more drily, “Assuming, of course, that you accept the Bible as valid documentation. And even then, it was the male parent in absentia.”

His eyes were the roiling gray of a thundercloud as he stared down at her. What on earth was he thinking to send that turbulence through his eyes? She continued looking back at him expectantly.

After a moment, he muttered, “Let me guess. You’re not going to leave the subject of my missing mother alone until I give you an explanation.”

She smiled triumphantly. “Congratulations! You’re finally learning to read women, grasshopper.” A scowl crossed his face, but she waited him out. She had a lot of experience outlasting stubborn males in her family.

Finally he shoved a hand through his hair, standing it up in short dark spikes all over his head. “My mother left my father, or vice versa, when I was an infant. I never knew her, and, no, I don’t know the circumstances behind it.” He added sharply, “And don’t tell me you’re sorry. I never knew what it was like to have a mother, so I have no frame of reference to measure whether or not it was a loss.”

“Do you always intellectualize painful things?” she asked him.

Her question seemed to stop him in his tracks, and he studied her intensely. He looked as if he’d turned the full power of his formidable mind to analyzing her. His reply, when he finally spoke, shocked her. “Has anything truly terrible ever happened to you?”

She had to think about it for a minute. “Our dog died when I was in college. That was really sad. And my grandmother died a few years back.”

“Let me guess. She was a hundred and ten years old, lived a rich and productive life, died in her sleep and everyone praised her full life and bemoaned her premature passing.”

“She was ninety-five,” Katie answered a little defensively.

He stepped close to her, and she was abruptly aware of how much taller he was. His head tilted down toward her as he murmured, “But you’ve never had everything you believed in ripped away from you? Never experienced regret so bad it burns a hole through your gut that won’t heal? Never made a mistake that costs you everything?”

She shook her head, her stomach fluttering so much she felt sick.

“If you had any sense, you’d run away from me as fast as you could, little girl.”

She bristled at being called a little girl, and her spine stiffened. “I can take anything you can dish out to me.”

“We’ll see about that,” he replied so low she barely heard him.

If she didn’t know better, she’d say his eyes burned for a moment with a hot, unholy fire. But on second look, it was just a trick of the late afternoon sunlight reflecting off his light gray eyes. Still, the fire reached out to her, tempting her, enthralling her, arousing something restless and dangerous deep in her belly.

Eventually he swore under his breath in some foreign tongue she didn’t recognize. But it was definitely cursing. He turned away and headed outside, grabbing the water bucket as he went. She listened to his angry footsteps retreating down the path to the river and, very slowly, let out the breath she’d been holding.

Alex was surly and uncommunicative when he returned from the river, his hair wet, and he retreated immediately into the tent to take a nap. She mimicked him and washed her hair. She brushed it out as she perched on the flat boulder outside and waited for the sun to set beyond the mountains. It was risky to sit outside like this in plain sight of anyone who happened by, but she got horrendously claustrophobic inside the tent, especially when Alex’s brooding presence filled it so completely. She found it strange to sit in silence like this and just contemplate existence.

His earlier question disturbed her. So what if nothing tragic had ever happened in her life? That wasn’t her fault. She and her family had been lucky. She got the feeling he hadn’t been so lucky, though. A desire to know him, to know the source of the darkness she sensed in him, rattled in her gut...along with trepidation at what she might learn. People didn’t get that dark without some serious crap in their pasts.

It was windy today, and the dust in the atmosphere made for a spectacular sunset that stretched high up into the heavens. As beautiful as it was, it also marked the inevitable passage of time. Would Alex insist on collecting his winnings when he woke up? He’d said yesterday that he doubted she would get much sleep tonight. Was he referring to the bet, or patients, or something else altogether?