Susan Kearney - The Hidden Years

Dazed blue eyes looked at him with fear. Blood trickled from her mouth. “Jake?”

She was alive! Pleasure shot through him, but as much as he yearned to gather her into his arms, touch that golden skin, inhale her feminine scent and reassure himself that she was all right, he hesitated. He had no desire to renew the old feelings, sensations and emotions that touching her had once caused.

“Someone hit me.”

“He won’t anymore. Not ever again. I’m here now, Sunshine.”

He ached to pull her into his arms and hold her tenderly, but he shoved aside his needs, his urge to comfort her by touch and satisfy himself she was unharmed. Instead, he knelt and untied her hands and used his voice to give reassurance. “You’re safe. Whoever hit you went out the back door. I assume there was just one?”

Cassidy rubbed her wrists slowly but didn’t attempt to rise from the chair, reminding him of a wild bird caged too long and afraid to fly free. Banishing his own fears at what touching her might do to his turbulent emotions, Jake reached for her, but she twisted away, terror darkening her eyes and arrowing straight to his core.

Jake ignored her automatic rejection and how much his insides churned. She needed time to recover, time to collect herself. While she watched him with suspicion, he gave up trying to touch her again.

Jake took his phone off the belt clip. “Harrison, you still there?”

“Yes, boss.”

“Inform the cops that the suspect fled the area on foot. We’re okay in here.”

Distrust still clouding her eyes, Cassidy looked from the gun in Jake’s hand to the phone in the other. Her voice came out like a croak. “What are you doing here?”

“Explanations can wait. An ambulance is on the way. But let me see to that cut on your lip.” Jake took a clean dish towel, ran water over it, rinsed it out, then wrapped ice in it. He handed it to her. “Place this where it hurts.”

“Everything hurts.” Eyes narrowed, Cassidy stared at his gun as if she feared he’d shoot her any second.

Jake put on the safety, then handed her his weapon, butt first. “Smell my gun. It hasn’t been fired. Someone else attacked you, Sunshine. I would never hurt you.”

She sniffed the gun, and just the fact that she couldn’t take his word squeezed Jake’s emotions all over again. But he felt better when some of the fear left her eyes. He also realized how innocent she was. If he had been the intruder, he could have had two weapons.

Cassidy didn’t seem to have the strength to hold the ice to her swollen lip. Slowly he knelt beside her. “Here, let me do that.”

This time she allowed him to touch her. Jake gently eased the ice pack from her lip to her cheeks where bruises were already darkening beneath her golden skin. What kind of bastard struck a helpless woman across the face?

His expression must have shown his anger, because Cassidy, eyes bleak, jerked away from him.

“You’re going to be okay,” he murmured. “We’re going to install an alarm system in your house so this can never happen again. And one at your office, too.”

“He was going to kill me,” Cassidy muttered.

Jake wanted to question her, but recognized her dilated pupils as a sign of shock. He suspected that she barely knew what she was saying. So he just let her talk.

“He kept asking me who I worked for.” Cassidy started to shake. “I’m so cold.”

Jake swept her up into his arms and carried her into the den, her scent enveloping him, just as he’d feared, in old hungers, old needs. Ruthlessly he tried to ignore the softness of her breasts crushed against his chest, the silk of her hair against his neck.

Cassidy needed him, and he could no more ignore her pain than he could ignore a crying baby back in the orphanage. He sat on the sofa and wrapped an afghan around her. Cradling her head on his chest, he tried to warm her with his body heat, and the entire time he wondered how many sleepless nights this would cost him. Still, he’d gladly pay the price of turning and tossing for a year, if that was what it took to give her back her sense of safety.

“No more.” She shivered, and when he kept the ice pressed to her face, she pushed it away.

“Ice will keep the swelling down. You don’t want to mar that perfect complexion. Just bear the cold a little longer. You’re strong. You can do that, Sunshine. Just a little longer, okay?”

He spoke soothingly, but she never relaxed, and her trembling frightened him. Maybe he shouldn’t have moved her. She might be injured more badly than he’d thought.

Where the hell was that ambulance?

THE COPS SHOWED UP entirely too soon for Cassidy. She would have been content just to stay on Jake’s lap, rest her head against his chest and let the security of his strong arms banish the horror of her ordeal.

Never before had she suffered pain that intense. Never before had she suffered such fear. Never before had she faced her mortality on such intimate terms.

She’d thought she was going to die, not in some indeterminable time in the future, but today. Although she’d never resigned herself to dying, she’d had no hope. She hadn’t thought just of the past, of opportunities lost and old regrets, but of all the things she’d never experience. She’d hoped to fall in love. Have children. Grandchildren. And her future could have been taken from her, and she had no idea why.

Then, somehow, Jake had rescued her, and now she wanted to enjoy each priceless moment. Each breath seemed a gift, each caress of his fingers through her hair precious. And the future was once again filled with wondrous possibilities.

“Thank you for saving my life.”

“I was happy to do it, Sunshine. I just wish I’d caught the bastard.”

Thanking Jake wasn’t enough. He’d given her the invaluable gift of time, and she wanted him to understand. She could hear the police coming down her street, but she wanted Jake to know how she felt before they arrived.

“Have you ever been sick?”

“Not often,” Jake admitted, “but a few times.”

Pleased that he didn’t seem disturbed by her strange choice of topic, she continued, “Remember all the things you missed? How food didn’t taste good? How you didn’t feel up to a walk on the beach or making a momentous decision?” She tilted her head back and gazed into his warm amber eyes. “Remember how good it felt to get well again? To move with energy and determination, to laugh?”

As if he couldn’t forget what had almost happened to her, Jake looked down at her without smiling. “The newness and wonder of feeling healthy again never lasts. We soon forget and go on as before.”

“Exactly.”

Jake had always been quick to catch on to the threads of her thoughts and weave them together into meaningful ideas.

“I don’t ever want to forget how precious life is,” she said. “I don’t want to waste another minute.”

Jake cocked an arrogant eyebrow and his sexy mouth curved upward in amusement. “You always did live for today, Sunshine.”

“There have been lost opportunities.”

“Is that so?” he murmured, his voice purring like a cat in her ear.

“Things I did and things I didn’t.”

“Like what?”

“I’ve always wanted to travel and I never had the time.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Tahiti, Europe, the Far East.”

“What else?”

“I want children. I want to leave this world knowing I changed it somehow.”

“You still have time for kids.”

“Thanks to you.” But she’d never found the right time and the right man to have those kids with. She hesitated to say more, but then decided to tell him the rest. She wasn’t sure why she wanted to tell him, but after almost dying, the world seemed bright and clean, and she wanted to start over with a fresh slate. And maybe, just maybe, she was testing him, to see his reaction.