No Stranger to Danger (12 page)

Yeah, she was in need of a serious reminder as to what normal looked like.

The woman gave her a knowing smile. "Was it one of those vacations you need a vacation from?" She winked at Mara. "Have a nice flight home, hon."

"Yeah, thanks." Mara felt a strain leave her as she started down the narrow ramp onto the plane. She could hear Logan behind her as she stepped aboard and passed the pilot. She scanned the rows as she walked down the aisle and found her window seat near the back and slid in. Logan sat beside her, filling up a good portion of the space.

Passengers began to cram into the seats around them, and Mara leaned over to Logan. "So where in Tennessee are we going? Obviously not
home
."

Logan settled himself into the seat, distracting her entirely with a twist of his hips that made her think naughty thoughts she shouldn’t be thinking.

Mara turned to look out the window with a blush.

"You'll see," he said behind her.

"I never like it when you say that," she mumbled and glanced over her shoulder to see him closing his eyes. He rested against the seat casually, as though he had not a care in the world.

Mara looked down him curiously. Though she knew better, she tried to conjure the image of him naked, fresh from bed. In all of five years, she hadn’t forgotten.

Any woman would have a hard time doing that
, she thought, as the snatch of memory dimly registered, of the last time they were together.

She frowned at that thought, more so at the feelings it aroused.

How many others had he been with since her?

Had he found someone quickly after their divorce? Or maybe even before?

It had taken her quite some time to move on, and even more before she could develop a deep enough relationship with another man to become intimate.

When Mara looked back up, she cast her gaze around quickly, finding him staring at her with an amused expression.

He leaned up, closer to her. "You know what that look always did to me."

Her eyes flew to his, locking. "What look?" she asked innocently, though her mind had wondered to devilishly
not
-innocent thoughts.

He smiled, and Mara bit down on her lip as her eyes fell to his sexy grin, his full lips. He reached over and tilted her chin up until she met his eyes again. Only this time there was a look of warning there. Teasingly sexy, but still a warning nonetheless.

His fingers slipped over the side of her neck, to cup her face, the roughness of his palm sending electrifying quivers through her cheek to her breasts, spiking at sensitive areas.

"Believe me when I say I'd like nothing better, but we can't afford to go there." He smoothed his thumb over her temple before he let go and sat back in his seat again as the fasten seatbelt sign dinged at them, reminding Mara that they were in a crowded plane—and they weren’t anywhere close to being out of danger.

Chapter Twelve

1300 hours, Friday

Outside Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

Mara groaned, lightly at first, but when the sun hit her and she squinted—as the motion carrying her gave her that floating on the sea feeling—she groaned louder and whimpered.

"When will this be over?" she asked, rubbing at her eyes. Talk about jetlag. They had moved around so many countries, it was ridiculous.

"Not anytime soon," Logan said, glancing over at her and then back to the road.

Mara looked at him from where she curled against the door, lifted herself and gave a lazy stretch. She reached up and flicked the visor down with her fingertips, instantly giving the mirror a sudden
oh-my-God
look. Quickly, she glanced at Logan to make sure he hadn’t seen the mess she'd made of her makeup in her sleep.

He had, of course, and steadied his gaze ahead at the road, silently fighting a smile.

Mara turned her back to him, dampening the corner of her over-shirt with her tongue and wiping the dried mascara from the corners of her eyes. Good Lord, but her hair was a mess, too. Mara pulled down the ponytail that had loosened in her sleep and now limply—after not showering in a full day—rested at the side of her head. She quickly finger-combed and began a loose fishtail braid at the side.

Finished and looping the band around the end, she looked out the window as the car Butler had left for them—packed with everything they would need and then some—turned off the paved road and rocked over the bumpy gravel drive, up a steep hill. Mara paused, cautiously hoping she was wrong.

But as the log cabin came into view, she whirled on Logan with wide eyes, briefly gaping before she pivoted again in her seat to look around the place she hadn't seen in years. They came to a stop, and her mouth fell agape at the picturesque afternoon in the high peaks of the Tennessee mountains.

"Are you
effin
' kidding me?" she asked, staring out into the midsummer day.

Logan put the car in park and looked across the console at her. "Nope." He shrugged. "Your parents' cabin is easily defensible."

She gaped again. "It's also where we spent our honeymoon, you bastard." Mara reached for the handle behind her, glaring at Logan as she pushed the car door open so hard it slammed back into her as she exited the vehicle.

Like she needed any more of a reminder of what they had shared—of what he had ripped from her.

Mara slammed the door and put her hands on her hips, the dust from the gravel road still settling around her.

Logan rolled the window down. "You go on in, honey, and I'll hide the car," he called.

Mara raised her hand and flipped him off, turning on her heel to start up the wooden steps to the cabin.

She couldn't believe he would bring her here of all places.

There were far too many memories hovering around the walls of this place, like ghosts of their former life together coming back to haunt her.

And it hurt.

Her heart constricted with that pain as she stooped for the key under the little gnome statue.

It really hurt, because despite how much she desperately wanted to hate Logan—she still loved him with the same passion.

She had never
stopped
loving him.

****

Logan pulled the car into the back, close to the house. There was a drop off the mountainside about twenty yards away that left him limited places to put the vehicle out of sight. Since Conyers had a man outside the terminal they had departed from in Caracas, it was safe to assume he already guessed their plans of returning to Tennessee, and it would be short work for Conyers to link Mara to her parents’ mountain cabin.

They would be found again eventually, and probably sooner rather than later. Conyers was too good at what he did, and whoever he was using was pretty damn good, too. Logan thought back on all the missions he had been on with the man. It didn’t surprise him that the operative working for Conyers was also former CIA.

Finding them here was what he was banking on though. He needed to keep them busy while
MacKall
did the legwork.

Logan killed the engine and paused in the seat, glancing up the backside of the split-level log cabin through the glass of the window.

Mara was pissed at him, evidently, and with good reason.

But he hadn't chosen the cabin without purpose, or just to remind Mara of their wedding night as she probably thought. The cabin was well positioned and easy to defend, an easy place to draw Conyers in to. Logan looked at the back of the dark cedar structure where window boxes clung to the upstairs windows. They had once held beautiful spring flowers and the cabin had also once been neatly kept. That wasn’t to say it was so shabby now, but he would guess Mara's family hardly used the place at present.

Which was good.

No intrusions from her family would be best.

Up in the mountains, he doubted anyone would be bothering them—except Conyers. Any police were miles away, so were the nearest homes. Good thing they’d stopped in Knoxville for what supplies Butler hadn’t provided.

Logan let himself wonder back to that night so long ago. He remembered Mara's laughter. He remembered tumbling her back onto crisp linen sheets and her dark hair spilling under her like a dark wave of silk as he pinned her wrists to the bed above her head.

Damn it, it had been five years, but he could still remember the taste of her.

Logan shut his eyes hard. He was suddenly finding the cabin more easily defensible than his heart.

Logan pulled himself from the car, and every fiber of his being sagged with the weight of the long journey he had been on for the last several weeks since he'd first arrived in Bishkek.

No. His journey had taken far longer.

It had been the better part of a year since he had been able to rest easily, to close his eyes without worrying he would open them and find a loaded barrel in his face.

He was tired. He was ready to quit.

But he couldn't.

The warrior in him would not allow that.

Besides, he had to finish this. He had to protect Mara and had to see that Conyers met with the justice no man on earth could give him. When this was done, there was only one judge for John Conyers, and if he had to escort the bastard all the way to the gates of hell, then so be it.

Chapter Thirteen

1330 hours, Friday

Outside Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

Mara pulled the white sheet off the couch, coughing as a wall of dust rose, and she waved a hand in front of her face to clear the air. Years had passed since she had been here. Mostly because of Logan, but also, coming here wasn’t the same without her parents.

A sad little twinge bit her heart at the thought of them, but she smiled as she dropped the sheet to the floor. They'd had a happy, full life. A lot happier than hers had been.

Her parents had left the cabin to the family as a whole, and other relatives occasionally stayed here for a summer getaway. Gosh, it had to have been last summer since anyone had come to the cabin, that she knew of anyway. Mara waved her hand again at the last settling particles.

She turned in a little circle, toward the empty, clean fireplace and glanced around the classy-rustic living area. She stepped over the dropped sheet and went around the cozy hunting lodge styled room, pulling sheets from the armchair and soft brown-leather chaise by the window.

Mara ran her hands down the backs of her thighs, dusting off her hands before she reached to part the curtains, which hadn't collected dust as badly as the rest of the room. She paused and took a breath, looking behind her. She was fairly certain Logan was still outside securing the perimeter.

She pushed the blinds apart with two fingers and peeked. There he was, going around the side of the house and slipping from sight. She sighed hard and turned her back to the wall next to the window. She wanted to slip down that wall and give up.

Why did he have to be so difficult?

Mara shook her head against the wall, the girl she used to be running off to places she shouldn’t in her mind, to memories of hers and Logan's past together.

Logan had had a rough life when they found one another.

She smiled at the image of Chance loping up to them on the beach the first time she had met Logan, the memory clear as though it were yesterday and not seven years ago. That day hadn't been exactly the fairytale one-hundred-and-one Dalmatians leash around the legs meeting. No, Chance had been too coarse and unrefined a dog for that.

If not for Chance though, they might never have approached one another that day.

She laughed aloud and swiped a tear from her cheek, her eyes falling to the spot beside the stone fireplace where the shaggy brown beast of a dog used to lie in front of the heat.

She sniffed, the man on her mind returning. Logan had never known any love from family, never really
had
a family. After his parents died and his uncle dropped him off at a home for boys, Logan had only known survival.

Maybe that was why he was so good at what he did, and so awful at letting people into his heart.

"Mara."

She jumped at the deep sound of his voice, her stare darting to him at the door just as Logan shut it.

"Think you can take a look at the incision
MacKall
made to get the microchip out?" he asked, sitting the bags of groceries and miscellaneous items he'd said they'd need on the table.

Mara shook herself. "Yeah, sure." She cleared her throat, hoping he hadn't witnessed her little trip down memory lane, and started toward the table. Mara stopped at the edge and dipped her hands into the plastic sacks, scanning the contents.

"He went a little deeper than he needed to," Logan said, lifting his shirt and looking down on the bled-through gauze.

Mara rummaged until she found the peroxide, Neosporin, and gauze pads, sitting each to the side as she found them. Hesitantly, she stepped closer to Logan, reaching to take his shirt. Her fingers grazed the black tee, and she pulled it higher, over the hard muscles and up to his sternum.

She cringed a moment, quickly offering an apologetic smile as she started to pull away the taped-on gauze. Reluctantly, she stooped down in front of him to see what she was doing, her fingers touching the taut skin of his stomach, and Logan's hand brushed hers as he took his shirt from her again, holding it out of the way.

Mara swallowed at the hot rush going through her. Those damn ghosts were picking at her at the wrong time.

She dropped to her knees as she set the used bandage on the table and reached up for the peroxide, twisting the cap and poking the seal. She set the brown bottle by her knee and ripped open a gauze package, taking out two squares and then picked up the peroxide to tip the bottle over the red gash. As she poured the peroxide, the slit in his skin turned white.

Logan didn't make a sound, but Mara sucked in a hissed breath. "It's getting infected," she said.

"Just bandage it up."

Mara shook her head at his stubbornness. He probably needed a few stitches, but that wasn’t something she was prepared to do. As she reached for the Neosporin, she caught him looking at her. There was something sensual about his gaze, causing her to blush at being on her knees in front of him—a position he used to like a lot. Really, she wondered if
that
was what he was thinking of, too. Whatever was going through his mind, it certainly was not concerning the wound she mended.

Mara dabbed the medicine on the cut, and Logan growled at her.

"He did go a bit deep," Mara said.

"I think he felt I deserved it."

Mara rolled her eyes. "He wouldn’t have done this on purpose, not to you," she said, though Logan hadn’t sounded serious.

“Nah. He was pretty mad at me though.”

She flicked her stare up to him, briefly, then down to the wound. Her mind drifted back to that conversation the two men shared, and her cheeks warmed even more than a moment ago. “Why would you think so?”

She had never thought of
MacKall
as anything other than a friend, but it seemed Logan suspected there was more.
 
He didn’t answer that question, but another came to mind.

"Why did you hit
Connar
?" she asked.

Logan looked at her sharply. "Who said I hit him?"

Mara lifted a brow. "The bruise on his eye was hard to miss."

"He needed a reminder that you were once
my
wife."

Mara glanced up as she started taping on fresh gauze. "Careful, you sound a little jealous." She quickly finished, tearing two strips of the medical tape and securing the gauze, then sealing it with two more on the sides. She reached for the table, grabbing the edge to pull herself up. When she stood, she rubbed her palms against her jeans. Her hands trembled not from the ugly sight of the cut, but from
touching
her ex-husband, of the ludicrous thoughts tumbling through her mind.

Logan had always had an effect on her she could not manage.

He took a step closer, reminding her of the subject she had broached, and for the first time ever, Mara shrank back. There was something darker in his presence, something harder than she remembered.

"There has never been anything between me and
MacKall
," she said. "And even if there had been I don't think I need to remind you that our marriage is over. He only stepped in to lend a shoulder when I needed one," she said, reaching up to push a strand of bangs from her eyes.

Logan's stare softened in the slightest. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. You have every right to hate me." His eyes trailed down to her lips, and if it was possible for Logan's stare to shatter—it did. "I have to see to a few more precautions outside." He turned from her and started to walk out, but Mara caught his arm.

"I don't hate you," she said lightly.

He turned over his shoulder and stared at her a moment, hard and unpredictable. "You should." 

****

1930 hours Friday

Outside Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

A few hours later, after dicking around outside for as long as he could, just to stay away from Mara, Logan stood from the table and went to scrape the remaining food on his plate into the trash and put his dishes in the sink. He gave Mara her space as she entered the kitchen behind him to begin cleanup, slipping around her to grab his go-bag—courtesy of Butler—from the table.

Logan swept back to the living area and dropped the black bag by a chair, going further into the room to check the bay windows for any signs of Conyers's men. He separated a portion of the blinds with his fingers and looked out.

Nothing.

It was almost as disturbing as there being a shadow lurking around.

He began to check all the other windows throughout the downstairs, making sure latches were secured, locking them if they weren't.

"Have you given any thought toward sleeping arrangements?" Mara asked from the kitchen.

Logan stilled as he re-entered the living area and paused before the chaise. Hands on hips, he turned to look at her. A brief image of them sharing the bed above stairs, their legs tangled together, flashed through his mind.

"You take the bed. I'll sleep down here." He turned back to what he had been doing and went to the far right window, looking into the dark night beyond. "If I sleep at all," he added with a roll of his eyes. If his mind kept wandering to images of Mara on her knees, he wouldn't damn sleep or do anything else he should be.

His hand fumbled on the string to the blinds, and they half crashed down into the window frame while the other side remained in the air at an angle like a fan.

Logan muttered a curse and stilled at Mara's gentle laughter from the kitchen. A moment later, he heard her flick off the light and listened to her footsteps as she left for the upstairs in the dark.

"Goodnight," she called down when she was halfway up.

Logan caught her image just as she pulled her hair from the ponytail and ran her hands through the strands, moonlight from the hexagon window above the stairs catching on her.

He clenched his fists.

He would like to run his own hands through her hair, he'd like to pull it, to pin her to the bed by those dark tresses as he fucked her.

He shut his eyes and took a deep breath as Mara shut the bedroom door. He switched positions and lifted a section of the blinds from another window. Nothing.

Logan dropped the piece and went to a chair by the empty fireplace, sitting and pulling his newly put together go-bag nearer his feet. Logan dug for fishing line to begin a booby-trap for the door, but his hand caught a strip of plastic and he pulled a strip of condoms from the bag. His head shot up, eyes flaring at the bedroom door, and he sucked in a hard breath as the strip dangled in front of him.

"You dickhead,
MacKall
," Logan muttered. Butler might have put the condoms in the bag, but he was sure it was at
MacKall's
direction.

Her Pleasure
, the package said.

Logan swallowed hard and gritted his teeth, but the sound of the door opening above him had him stuffing the strip into the bag and jumping to his feet—as though he'd been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

He glanced down to the bag and scooted it away with his foot, running a hand over his hair and then planting his hands on his hips. Logan tried for a stern look.

He was completely unprepared for the sight of Mara in her slip again—especially now—as she came down the stairs, tight lipped and furious. He swallowed hard, but did not attempt to hide the hot look he glided over her—he was pretty certain doing so would be the impossible.