Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover

Like a daffodil determined to bloom even though snow still lay on the ground in an icy blanket, her body responded to the memory as surely as the touch. She could only imagine what it might feel like to be claimed by such a man, one so powerful and strong, one so confident in his own desire. Sex with Jim had been good: loving and tender. She couldn’t help but feel that the entire experience would be different with Wade: hot and hard.

And maybe that’s what she needed now, someone to push her past all the invisible lines she had drawn around herself, someone to knock her off center enough to emerge from her cocoon.

Because she sure as hell needed some kind of kick.

Wade returned downstairs eventually, waking her from a half doze where dreams of hot kisses had collided with inchoate fears, the kind of feeling that something was chasing her, but she couldn’t escape it, and the kisses felt like both protection and trap.

Freshly shaven, smelling of soap even from several feet away, he sat facing her. “Sorry, woke you again.”

“I didn’t want to doze off. If you want some, the coffee should still be hot.” The memory of her odd half dream made her cheeks equally hot. She hoped he couldn’t see and thought he probably couldn’t since she kept the curtains closed, and the early daylight out.

It was time to start opening those curtains. Time to allow the sunlight into her house, something she hadn’t yet done in all this time.

She rose at once and went to the pull cord. The instant her hand touched it, Wade barked, “Don’t.”

With that single command, he drove all her resolutions out of her head and brought the crippling fear back in a rush.

She froze, feeling her knees soften beneath her. She wanted some anger, even just one little flare of it, but it failed to come. Instead she reached for the wall beside the curtain, propping herself against it and closing her eyes.

When her voice emerged, it was weak. “Why?”

“I’m sorry.” As if he sensed the storm that had just torn through her, leaving her once again gutted by fear, he came to her, slipping his arm around her waist, and guiding her back to the couch. “I’m sorry,” he said again as he helped her sit, and sat beside her. He kept her hand, holding it between both of his, rubbing it with surprising gentleness.

This had to stop, Cory thought. This had to stop. One way or another, she had to find a way to get rid of this fear. Else how was she ever going to do anything again? “I can’t keep doing this,” she said to Wade, her voice thin. “I can’t.”

“Keep doing what?”

“Being afraid all the time. And I was just starting to do things to fight it back. Like letting you move in here. Like helping Marsha yesterday. Like opening the damn curtains for the first time in a year! And you told me to stop. Why? Why?”

At least she didn’t dissolve into tears, but she felt on the brink of it. Ever since that phone call, she’d been teetering as she hadn’t teetered in a long time. Before that she’d lived in a steady state at least, even if it was one of grief and fear.

Wade surprised her by drawing her into his arms and holding her. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, and stroked her hair gently. “I’m sorry.”

“After...after...” The thought fled before a renewed rush of terror as something struck her. “What do you know?” she asked on a whisper. “What do you know that I don’t?”

His hand hesitated, then resumed stroking her hair. “I’m not sure I know anything.”

“Tell me!” Her hands balled into fists, and she pounded one of them against his chest, not hard, but enough to make a point. That chest yielded to her fist about as much as cement.

He sighed, tightening his arms around her.

“Wade, don’t do this to me. You either know something or you don’t.”

When his answer seemed slow in coming, she stiffened, ready to pull away. “You can’t do this,” she said, anger beginning to replace fear, and weakness with strength. “You can’t! You can’t just waltz into my life and then do things to make me afraid all over again. Not without a reason. I won’t stand for it.”

“All right. Just keep in mind this may be meaningless.”

“Just tell me.”

“That man we met at the store yesterday morning? The one we ran into later in the aisle?”

“Yes? What about him?”

“Early this morning I realized he was driving the car behind the woman who waved to us as we were walking back to the house.”

She hardly remembered the incident and had to make herself think back. Yes, a man had driven past them, right after that woman. She tipped her head back, trying to look at him. “But it was a different car.”

“Yes, it was. But it was the same man. Maybe he just owns two cars.”

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember the face of the man in the car during their walk. “How can you be sure? I can’t even remember what he looked like.”

“Training. If I hadn’t gotten so lazy over the last six months, I’d have picked up on it right away. And he might just have two cars. A lot of folks do.”

He looked down at her at last, his obsidian eyes like chips of stone. “I can’t ignore it. Coincidence or not, I cannot ignore it.”

She bit her lip, then said, “That’s what made you come down so early this morning. Why you went out to jog. You were looking for him.”

He nodded. “I didn’t find him.”

“So it could be coincidence.”

“Maybe.”

She shook her head a little, trying to sort through a bunch of conflicting thoughts. Finally she came up with one question. “That phone call couldn’t be part of it, could it? I mean...” She wanted to believe it was all random chance, but the phone call kept rearing up in her mind, some part of her insisting it was no prank. “It doesn’t make sense. Why call me if you know where I am?”

“Because maybe you don’t know exactly which of a handful of women is your target.”

“And how would that prove a damn thing?”

He loosened his hold on her, giving her space, but she didn’t move away. She didn’t want to. Odd considering that he was busy ripping her newfound courage to shreds. Not that it had been much to begin with.

He spoke finally. “Sometimes the only way to identify a target is to do something that makes them take a revealing action.”

She searched his face, but it remained unreadable. “You’ve done that?”

“A couple of times.”

“It works?”

“It did for me.”

“But I haven’t done anything since the call! So that can’t be what’s going on.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Stop being so elliptical. Just tell me what you’re thinking. Please!”

“I moved in here right before you got the call. What if the person trying to locate you saw me only after the call?”