Come Gentle the Dawn (11 page)

Linc’s heart began a slow pound as he stepped inside the room. Brie was curled up and asleep in the chair, her head resting against the overstuffed fabric, the novel barely held between her long fingers. Linc removed the book from her grip and laid it on top of the bookcase. He placed his hand on her arm. He felt the texture of the cotton blouse and her supple flesh beneath it.

“Brie?”

She stirred slightly.

Linc watched her for several moments. He didn’t have the heart to wake her. Let her sleep. He slipped his hands beneath her back and legs and lifted her easily. She weighed next to nothing, he thought in alarm. Her head lolled against his jaw and he absorbed the soft curves of her womanly form against him. He was aware of the sandalwood scent to her skin and inhaled it deeply. Was it perfume? He felt her stir, her hands coming to rest against his chest.

“It’s all right, Brie,” he told her quietly. “I’m taking you to bed.”

“Bed?” she slurred.

Linc pushed the door open with his foot. “That’s right, bed.” He heard Brie mumble something, but he was unable to understand it. She relaxed totally within his arms, and it made him feel good. Trust was being established.

He laid her on the bed and drew the quilt over her.
Another shield enclosing his heart melted away as he watched her slide into the embrace of sleep. The urge to lean down and lightly brush her full, parted lips was excruciating. Linc pushed his fingers through his hair, agitated with all the feelings Brie was bringing to life in him. He walked to the door and left it ajar. If she was going to have any nightmares, he wanted to be able to reach her quickly. Good night, he told her silently. How he wished he was beside her.…

B
rie awoke, feeling at peace. She stretched, uncoiling from her position, vaguely aware of dawn light peeking through the windows. What time was it? Turning her head, she stared at the luminous dials of the clock on the bed stand. Six-fifteen. Time to get up. As she sat up and realized she was still dressed, Brie frowned. Then the events of the night before returned to her. She remembered being carried by Linc. She recalled his low, vibrating voice, the strength of his chest that her hands had rested upon and a delicious feeling of being cared for.

Care?
Her jade eyes narrowed as she considered where that word had come from. Closing her eyes, Brie allowed all the feelings that had come to her as Linc carried her to appear. She didn’t remember all their conversation, only that she felt warm and lovingly cared for. Ridiculous, she told herself. She was old enough to
know the difference between love and sexual attraction. And Linc was definitely sensual. It was nothing more than physical attraction, she told herself sternly. Besides, her instincts still shouted a warning to her, and until that feeling was explained, she could never fully trust him. Rubbing her face, Brie got to her feet and went to the closet to select a clean uniform. She tried to sidestep the fact that yesterday, her opinion of Linc had altered drastically. Linc was a loner because he had never been wanted. Yet he still had the ability to reach out and try to help her. That spoke of his sensitivity and unselfishness as a human being.

The lukewarm shower helped awaken her. Brie towel dried, splashed on her favorite perfume, then dressed. She continued to dwell on her budding emotional fusion with Linc. The feelings were there, whether she wanted to admit it or not. Looking at herself in the steamy mirror, Brie wondered what he saw in her. She had mouse-brown hair, now short because it had been burned off by the explosion. There was nothing exceptional about her face except for her eyes. Her mother had always told her she had lovely eyes. She wasn’t built like a voluptuous woman. Instead, her breasts were small and her hips and rear only vaguely hinted that she was a woman.

“You’re not a prize, Williams,” she told herself out loud. “But you have other assets.” She smiled because she was content to be herself and not a raving beauty depicted in so many magazines.

Brie halted at the entrance to the living room. Linc lay on the couch, too long for it, his knees drawn up beneath the pale yellow quilt, which barely covered his lower body. Her gaze moved to his naked torso, dark-
haired chest and broad shoulders. Last night, she had lain on that magnificent chest. In sleep, Linc looked vulnerable, and an ache seized her. His beard shadowed his features, making his cheeks more hollow than they actually were. The dark growth gave him a powerful look, and she trembled. Brie longed to walk over, kneel down and gently trace each of those lines that life had etched in his face. She suddenly wanted to talk at length with him and ask about each one, and how it had gotten there. She wanted to know him better.

With a shake of her head, Brie wondered if moon madness was upon her. Never had any man shaken her to the core as Linc did whenever he looked at her with those thoughtful blue eyes of his. Each time, Brie felt as if he was gazing past all the walls she had erected and was clearly seeing her. But there was something else in those eyes that held secrets, and it bothered her. Tucking all those warm and disturbing thoughts away about Linc, Brie forced herself to switch to work mode. Much had to be done today—and that wasn’t including possible haz-mat calls. First, coffee. And then she’d get Linc up.

*

The aromatic smell of coffee pulled Linc from his sound sleep. He grimaced, his back in a knot because of the lumpy cushions he slept upon. He barely opened his eyes. At first, he didn’t believe what he saw. Then he forced himself to concentrate. Brie was standing in front of him, a welcoming smile on her lips, holding out a cup of coffee to him. He stared through his spiky lashes at her soft, pliant mouth, and a stab of yearning surged through him. He wanted to kiss her, to feel just how lush her red, inviting lips really were. His brain fogged and he blinked again.

“There’s no secret to how a woman gets you to wake up,” she said, placing the mug of coffee on the lamp table near his head. “It’s six-forty, Linc. Time to get up.”

Linc watched her turn with that feline grace that fed his hunger for her. She looked so damned good in that dark blue one-piece uniform. How did any man she worked with keep his hands or his eyes to himself? The scent of the coffee delighted his nostrils, and he inhaled deeply. Brie sure knew how to cater to him. For no particular reason, a lopsided smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he levered himself into a sitting position. He pushed unruly strands of hair off his brow and gratefully took the mug in his hands, cradling it reverently. He owed Brie one for her thoughtfulness.

After an eye-opening cold shower and shave, Linc felt semihuman. For the first time, he wore the dark blue one-piece haz-mat uniform. Last night, he had sewn on the required patches with needle and thread he found near the sewing machine. Of course, the red thread didn’t match, but he didn’t care. The silver name tag went over his right breast pocket and the silver badge over the left one. Linc felt strange when he stared at himself in the mirror. In reality, he was a government agent and had his real badge stashed away in his apartment in D.C. It was odd to be undercover and assuming a law-enforcement identity. It didn’t dissolve the fact that Brie believed in what he was, and the misrepresentation ate at him. Maybe on another case, where there was clear demarcation between himself and those committing an obvious crime, it wouldn’t bother him at all. Today it did, in a very deep and disturbing way. Brie could be a killer. He had to erect those guards to protect
his life and continue to play the game with her. But where did the game begin and end? The lines were blurred, and Linc felt uneasy.

He ambled to the kitchen, cup in hand. Brie was sitting at the table, chin resting in the palm of one hand, studying a clipboard before her. Soft waves of hair caressed her brow and framed her cheeks. He thought she looked beautiful, but he kept his heated, simmering comments to himself.

“Good morning,” he said, heading to the coffeepot on the counter.

Brie met his greeting with a crooked smile. “I keep wondering what you’ll be like when you have to take a call in the middle of the night.”

He snorted as he poured himself another cup. He turned, saw that her cup was empty and poured her another one. Settling himself at the table near her elbow, he drank in Brie’s radiant face. “You’d better have that quart thermos filled to the hilt with coffee before we leave or we’ll both be in big trouble,” he joked. Linc couldn’t hold back the compliments that he wanted to give her. It seemed the more personal he became, the more she dropped the walls she hid behind.

“I never realized a woman could look so good without makeup,” he told her in a husky voice.

Brie stared in shock for just a second, caught off guard. “Why, thank you.”

His smile tore at her senses. “You’re welcome. This coffee sure hits the spot. You make a good cup, lady.”

She colored prettily and pretended to concentrate on the task before her. “Strictly self-preservation, believe me. I can’t seem to get started without it, either.”

He rubbed his jaw, content to share the quiet of the morning with her. “I wonder if it has anything to do with the stress of our jobs? High stress means a lot of adrenaline flowing. Coffee’s a natural upper when you’re running low on adrenaline.”

“Makes sense. Trauma junkies always have their fix of coffee or cigarettes,” Brie observed.

He gave her a wry look, thinking how much a good night’s sleep had erased the shadows beneath those lovely green eyes of hers that glimmered with flecks of gold. “Healthwise, coffee is the lesser of two evils.”

“Amen,” Brie agreed fervently.

“You sleep okay last night?” he asked after a few moments.

She nodded, her heart picking up. “Yes. Thank you for tucking me in last night. I was dead to the world.”

“It was a pleasure, believe me,” Linc said, meaning it. He saw her cheeks turn pinker, and smiled more broadly.

“Stop enjoying my discomfort so much, Tanner. Few people get to see me sacked out on a chair.”

“I thought you looked kind of nice sleeping in it.” He slid her a wicked glance. “I had considered waking you up like Sleeping Beauty.”

Brie pursed her full lips and barely held his gaze. How many times had she wondered what it would be like to feel his strong mouth against hers? Brie tried to ignore the yearning in her body. The man carried secrets. Until he showed all of himself to her, Brie had to try to combat her attraction to him. “The day I’m Sleeping Beauty is the day Miss Piggy will win the Miss America contest,” she told him archly.

Linc started to laugh but stopped when he realized
she was serious. “Well,” he drawled, “guess I’ll have to prove to you that in my eyes, you’re a Sleeping Beauty and not bacon on the hoof.”

Brie rose, unable to stand his closeness. She went to the counter, hoping to hide her nervousness. “Jeff should be here any minute now.”

“You start at seven every morning?”

She automatically went through the motions of making beef sandwiches for three people. She had to do something, anything, to quell her nerves. “Take a look at the clipboard. It’s a list of companies we’ve got to check. At the bottom are the classes Jeff and I will be giving to the various fire departments in our quadrant this week.”

He dragged the clipboard over to him. The number of companies listed was staggering. “I was wondering what you did with your spare time,” he groused.

She put a sandwich into a plastic bag and set it to one side. The world beyond the curtained window was stained with a lovely apricot dawn. “If we don’t get any haz-mat calls, we can make all of them this week.”

“But you always get calls.”

“Sometimes we get a quiet week.”

“My luck won’t hold.”

She smiled absently, placing a bag of potato chips and a jar of sweet gherkins into a huge grocery sack along with the sandwiches. “I’m not Irish, either, so you can count on at least one haz-mat incident.”

Linc perused the list with more than a little interest. Brie was efficient and organized. Each company had been checked at three-month intervals. He twisted his head to the left, watching her work. A blanket of con
tentment washed over him. What would it be like to wake up every morning with Brie? The idea was tantalizing. “On an average, how many haz-mat calls do you get a week?”

“Three.”

Linc groaned.

“Now, that may include something as simple as checking out old chemicals in a high-school biology department to a full-scale incident. Saturday was considered a full-blown incident.” She shrugged her shoulders and added three bright red apples to the sack.

“What are you doing? Preparing to feed an army?”

“No. Just two men who have the appetite of growing boys, is all,” she answered blandly, setting the bag on the table. She went over to the coffeepot and filled her battered aluminum thermos.

“You make lunch every day?”

“Yes. Most of the time we’re nowhere near a McDonald’s or Wendy’s. And if we get a call, no one feeds you during the hours you’re working. You can’t just shimmy out of your gas suit and drive down to the nearest fast-food joint and order a hamburger, then get back to the site.”

Linc’s eyes glimmered. “Pity. No wonder you’re so skinny. You starve to death out there in the field. Jeff’s built like a toothpick, too.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, Linc, I’ll make sure you’re well fed.”

“How did you know the way to my heart was through my stomach?”

“Oh, please,” she said in an exasperated tone. “You’re as obvious as a charging bull elephant, Linc.”

He was rather pleased with the analogy. He watched her make another pot of coffee. “Thanks,” he murmured.

Brie cocked one eyebrow. “I wouldn’t be taking it as a compliment if I were you.”

There was a knock at the back door and they both turned. Jeff waved and came in, dressed in his uniform. Before he was able to get out his greeting, the phone on the wall rang. Linc saw Brie’s face close as she walked over to answer it. Jeff raised his hand in greeting and zeroed in on the grocery bag.

“Bad news,” Jeff warned Linc in a conspiratorial tone, motioning toward Brie.

“Why?”

“The chief knows we meet over here at Brie’s at seven sharp every morning. If something serious is up, he calls us here.” Jeff grimaced. “It’s gonna be a bad week if we’re gettin’ called by the chief this early.”

Linc turned his attention to Brie, who was leaning against the wall, her features sober as she talked in a low voice. What was up? he wondered. Finally, she hung up the phone, her lips thinned.

“Jeff, that was the chief. You’re to drive down to Reynoldsberg right now.”

“What?” he crowed in disbelief.

Brie came to the table, pulling out three beef sandwiches and an apple. “Yeah,” she answered in a clipped tone, anger in her voice. “Jim McPeak’s partner, Bob Townley, just got slapped into the hospital with injuries from that train derailment near Englewood.” She met Jeff’s widening eyes. “You’re heading south, Laughlin, so close your mouth and take this for your lunch. Where you’re going, you’re going to need it.”

“But I haven’t finished my training,” he protested.

Brie tried to control her anger. The chief had already boxed her into a corner by forcing Tanner on her. Now he was taking her right hand away from her. “It doesn’t matter, Jeff,” she said patiently. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your truck. There isn’t time to waste right now. McPeak needs you.” I need you, she thought angrily. Tanner knew nothing of procedures except as a fire fighter, which didn’t mean much. Brie wanted to slam her fist into something just to relieve the frustration she felt. Saxon was taking advantage of her, and they both knew it. Why couldn’t he have taken one of the other qualified people in Quadrant Two or Three?