Wild Rain (10 page)

Without waiting for her to answer, he lifted his weight from her. She sighed with relief and scrambled away as quickly as she could, taking care not to bang against his bad leg. In a matter of minutes they had the mattress propped up on the corner stacks, the center stack raising the middle high enough for them to sit without having to hunker down.

Jillian sat cross-legged on one side of the small space, and Reese stretched out his legs toward her from the other. The tear in his jeans caught her eye, thankfully giving her something to do.

“I’d better have a look at your thigh.”

“Fair’s fair.”

She glanced at his face. There was that quiet tone again. It was hard to tell with him, but she knew he was teasing her. The good kind though, the kind that made her belly feel warm.

She smiled at him, deciding she’d better learn how to handle his quixotic brand of charm fast since she was stuck in this crawl space with him for God only knew how long.

“You think looking down my shirt was a fair trade?”

His eyebrows lifted slightly. She’d surprised him with that one. Good.

Not willing to push her luck, she scooted over to his side and bent her head to examine his wound.

“Could you move the flashlight over this way a few inches?” She motioned with one hand, but didn’t look up. He didn’t reply, but the light shifted. “Stop. Good.” She moved the torn fabric away and peeled back part of the bandage. “It’s red and there’s been a bit of bleeding, but none of the stitches popped.”

“You do right good work.”

She looked up at him then. “Thank you.” He looked at her in a way that made the warm feeling in her stomach dip a bit lower, and burn a bit brighter. She cleared her throat. “Let me get you something a bit stronger for the pain.” She started to scoot away, but his hand on her arm stopped her.

“I’m okay. Just sit still. Relax.”

She laughed without thinking whether or not she should. “Easy for you to say.”

“I know you’re worried,” he responded, misreading her meaning. “You’d be a fool not to be. But don’t add me to your list, all right?”

She looked down at his hand on her arm. His
fingers were rough, scarred, his skin darker than hers. She watched them rub gently along her forearm. In the next instant his hand dropped away. She looked up at him, and it hit her that her attraction to him was more than simply physical. Sometimes, like now, she’d look in his eyes and find something … familiar.

“You don’t like people caring about you, do you? Why, Reese? Do you think that makes you weak?”

She’d asked him seriously, but as soon as the words were out she wondered if she should have given voice to her thoughts. He waited several moments, holding her gaze the entire time, until she was certain he wasn’t going to answer. But he did.

“Not weak. Just less self-sufficient.”

“And being completely in control is important to you?”

“It used to be the difference between breathing and dying.”

“Used to be?”

He didn’t move so much as a hair, but she sensed the sudden restlessness her question sparked.

“You’re one to talk,” he said finally. “Everything you’ve done today tells me you feel the same way. Your walls are pretty sturdy. What’s your reason?”

Now it was her turn to feel restless. “Not the same as yours, I imagine.”

Reese nodded, knowing Jillian’s response was
an unspoken request not to push the subject any further. He gladly complied, not at all comfortable with this conversation—or the woman he was having it with. And yet, he found himself unwilling to let the matter drop entirely.

“Why didn’t you evacuate?”

“For Cleo.”

“Cleo. The alligator?”

“Yup.”

“You mind explaining why you’d risk your life for a reptile?”

Reese winced inwardly when her expression became shuttered again. Too late, he recalled her words in the kitchen earlier. Now she thought he was just another coldhearted bastard who didn’t respect life in all its forms.

And, to a degree, she was right. He respected life, the right everyone had to live their own. But to do his job, to survive, he’d had to remain carefully detached from the rest of it. It was just that he’d never been bothered by that truth until just this moment.

“You tell me why you carry a gun and look at me like you can’t decide if I can be trusted—with what I don’t know—and I’ll explain why it’s so important to me to follow through with my commitment to Cleo. I imagine we’ll be equally unsuccessful.”

Obviously considering the matter closed, Jillian turned toward her side of the small space.

“I hugged you in the pantry because I thought you needed one.”

Jillian froze, holding as still as if he’d taken hold of her arm again, stunned by his admission. “You don’t strike me as the type to give comfort.”

He shrugged. But even more telling, he looked away from her.

She was crossing a mine field here, but she felt compelled to traverse the rest rather than retrace her steps. She turned completely and bent her knees, circling them with her arms and propping her chin on top. “You bark and roar like it’s second nature, you order and command and expect immediate compliance. I imagine that all has to do with the reason you carry a gun. But you can also be nice.”

His expression had grown quickly dark with her mini-analysis, but that last comment raised his eyebrows. “Me? Nice? What a horrible thing to say.”

She smiled. “See, you can tease. It doesn’t come easily to you.”

Reese’s expression darkened further. “Do you psychoanalyze all your patients, Doc?”

“Know what I think?”

“If I lie and say yes will you spare me?”

“I think you turned the light out in the pantry because you needed a hug too.”

“I strike you as a shy type? A man who can’t take what he wants in the light of day?”

“Darkness is as much a mental cloak as a visual
one. In the dark it’s easier not to examine motives. It’s easier to give in to instinct.”

“Ah, who are we talking about now, Jillian?” His voice was a rough purr, and as dangerous as a mountain cat. “What instincts do you give in to only in the dark?”

The way Reese said her name, with the soft Aussie twang, made it wonderfully exotic instead of plain and ordinary. She didn’t mind that he’d avoided commenting on her theory. She’d hardly expected a confession.

She pressed her lips against her folded hands, thinking about his question. She knew he was deflecting her, trying to put her on the defensive. It didn’t take a genius to figure out she was uncomfortable with her sexuality. And Reese was far from stupid. But she answered him anyway.

“I try not to give in to instincts at all, dark or light.”

“Then we are very different people.”

“Why, because you let yourself be guided by instinct?”

“I’m alive today for that reason. But that’s not what I meant.”

“Then why do you think we are so different?”

“Because we both rely on instinct to save us. Only I don’t lie to myself about it.”

Before she could answer, he leaned forward and ran a rough-tipped finger down the length of her nose, letting it rest on her bottom lip.

“The question is, mite, what do you think you’re saving yourself from?”

The shock of his unexpected caress, the pressure of his finger on her lip had her answering without thought to what she revealed. “Pain. Myself.”

“Is it working?”

She lifted her head and pulled away from his touch. “Yes.”
Until now.

Jillian scooted back to her side of the small space, then rummaged in the cooler for a soda. As she wiped the condensation off the cold aluminum, she wondered if she’d be lucky enough to survive the storm, only to fall prey to her own foolish reaction to Reese.

“Slide the radio over here. Maybe we can find out what’s going on outside.”

A sigh of relief breathed out as she did as he asked. She’d rather listen to damage reports and the very real possibility that her home was going to be destroyed than sit in this small shadowed closet and dredge up painful memories best left buried and then trust them to the care of a man like Reese Braedon.

Static filled the stuffy room, and Jillian caught herself smiling as Reese swore very colorfully while he fiddled with the knobs.

“Is everyone in Australia as inventive as you when it comes to foul language?”

He spared her a brief glare, then returned to his
efforts. “I’d ask if that was an insult, but I’ve heard you swear, so I’ll take it as professional curiosity.”

This time she did laugh. And caught Reese’s complete, immediate attention. “What?” she asked, surprised by the intensity of his reaction.

He bent his head again. After several long seconds in which he grumbled under his breath, he said, “Your laughter. Sounds nice.”

That warm feeling stole into her belly again, and she didn’t even bother trying to squelch it. Reese being sincere
and
nice at the same time was simply too irresistible.

“Thank you. Feels good too. You ought to try it sometime.”

He didn’t respond and as Jillian stared at the top of his blond head, she had the strangest notion that he might want to, but didn’t know how. Or had forgotten how somewhere along the way.

She couldn’t decide if that idea made her want to tease a smile from him. Or take him in her arms and hold him.

Just then a deep voice pierced the silence.

“… heading up the Gulf Coast just off land, picking up speed over the open water. Ivan is expected to hit land just north of Marco and the Ten Thousand Islands region around nine o’clock this evening. The entire area from Ten Thousand Island area to the south of Venice has been evacuated, but no matter where Ivan hits, potential damage to property has been estimated to possibly reach well into the millions.”

Just as suddenly as it had spurted to life, the newscast reverted to static. Jillian lifted her eyes from the radio to Reese.

“It’ll be okay, Jillian. We’ll make it.”

In the next instant a tremendous crash reverberated through the house with enough force to rattle the stacks of boxes holding up the mattress.

Jillian instinctively ducked and threw her hands over her head. Reese reacted instinctively as well. Before the echoes had died out, he’d leaned forward and grabbed her by the shoulders. Pulling her half under him, he used his body as a shield in case the roof came down on them.

“Reese?” Her voice was as shaky as her nerves.

Resting on his good hip, he tucked her closer to his chest, his wounded leg between hers. He looked down at her, then reached up to smooth her bangs from her forehead.

“I think we’re okay.”

“Good.” His hand felt strong and reassuring against her cheek. It wasn’t until he ran his fingers over her lips that she realized he was trembling too.

“Reese?” She said it so softly, she wasn’t sure he’d heard it.

“Hmmm?” His gaze was steady on her mouth.

“I think I could use another one of those hugs.”

His finger paused, then withdrew. Jillian braced herself for him to withdraw the rest of his body from her as well.

Instead he reached behind her head and flicked off the light. The room pitched into total darkness.
In the next instant, he gathered her into his arms and pulled her firmly against his chest. Then, as if that wasn’t close enough, he used his foot to tuck her legs tighter against him.

She felt his chin come to rest on the top of her head. Only then did it occur to her what he’d admitted by turning off the light.

“Thank you,” she whispered against his chest.

His arms tightened briefly. “No problem.”

And with his heart pounding strong and steady beneath her ear, she let her hands steal around his waist, and hugged him back.

SIX

Reese thought he knew every level of hell. He was wrong.

But unlike the other trials he’d endured over the past ten years, this form of torture was exquisite agony. Offering pleasure as its temptation, all the while knowing that the man desperate enough to reach for it would damn himself as a fool for eternity.

This lesson Reese understood. Painfully. Intimately.

And yet he laid there in the dark, the noise of the storm raging over his head like a thousand Valkyries screeching at him to run fast, run far, run forever … he laid there and continued to hold Jillian Bonner in his arms.

And when he felt her small hands sneak around his waist, he knew fool was the least of the names he’d call himself.

Reese shut out the voices inside his head, shut out the deafening sound of the storm outside, and concentrated on the feel of the woman in his arms.

Jillian couldn’t have known how right she was about the cloak of darkness. Or maybe she did. He hadn’t. Not until now. He’d acted on instinct both times he’d shut off the light—only now he understood the motivation wasn’t as simple as defining his attraction to her. It went deeper than that, was riskier than that, powerful enough that he’d grasped for whatever was available as a defense. Darkness was the only shield he had, so he’d used it.

Her body was so small. He dwarfed her, he felt as if he could wrap himself completely around her. Protect her.