"Jade."

  She jerked. Her time had come. She was going to die now, too. "No. Don't. Please don't."

  "Jade, wake up," a low voice whispered in her ear.

  Real, not from her dream. Big warm hands, also real, capable of both calmly using a gun and also giving mind-numbing pleasure, tightened on her. "You're dreaming, Jade. Badly. Come on, wake up now."

  Her eyes flew open but the dark remained, and she gasped.

  "It's okay." Will rubbed his jaw against hers, and she realized she lay over the top of him, nestled in his lap. "It's me. It's Will."

  "I can't see."

  "It's dark. You had a dream." "It's over."

  "It is." But he held her for another long moment, running his hands up and down her chilled arms. "You always dream like that?"

  She could have told him it hadn't been just a dream, that what she'd been facing in her nightmares had really happened, but she shrugged.

  "Jade."

  "It's nothing."

  "Does it have anything to do with your fear of the dark?"

  She hesitated, too long, and though she couldn't see him, he tilted her face to his. "Does it?"

  "Yes," she whispered, and for balance in her crazy world, slid her arms around him. "But it's old stuff." "It was about your father."

  "Yeah." She drew in a shuddering breath. "He was a cop. A homicide detective. He was killed when his cover was blown."

  His hands tightened on her. "I knew it was bad."

  "I saw it happen. I was eight."

  "Ah, Jade." His lips brushed her temple. "Baby, that's not fair."

  "I recovered. I was fine. I am fine. I just sometimes . . . the dark ... I don't like the dark."

  "And twice now you've been stuck in it. No more, Jade." He pulled her to her feet and led her to the window. "It's time to go." He pulled the shade on the high, long, narrow glass, which didn't change the lighting in the room because it had grown dark outside as well.

  "There are boxes here," he said. "You'll climb up on them and follow me out."

  Right. Climb up. Climb out. Check.

  Will didn't use the boxes; he didn't have to. He pulled himself up with sheer strength. His head disappeared first, then his broad shoulders.

  And she was alone.

  Eager to follow, she climbed the boxes and reached for the window, but it wasn't as easy as he'd made it look. Her hair got caught on the latch, and she bashed her shoulder on the ledge, but from the outside, hands pulled her through, and then she was lying on the ground, in the dirt planter, surrounded by the myriad of annual spring flowers that had so recently bloomed.

  Will pulled her to her feet. "Come on."

  They passed her car. She eyed the way it sat low to the ground, on four slashed tires, and automatically slowed. "Oh my God."

  "Keep moving." He pulled on her hand, but before they went two more steps, a telltale ping buzzed past her ear and shattered her passenger window. In slow motion she watched it splinter. "Oh my God—"

  "Shit." Will forced her into a dead-out sprint, while pulling out his gun. "My truck. See it?"

  Another ping. She waited for the searing tearing of her flesh, but it didn't happen. Three cars down was his truck. "Yes. I see it."

  "Get in. Fast, Jade. And get low."

  In. Fast. Low. That was all she could repeat to herself before he shoved her toward the passenger side, and kept her body in the protective custody of his until she reached it; then he rounded the back of the truck at a sprint before hopping through the driver's door just as the back window shattered.

  Swearing again, Will thrust the truck in gear and hit the gas. "Down," he demanded, and added a rough hand to the back of her neck to make sure she got down enough. As they whipped through the streets, Jade caught slivers of glimpses of the city from her low perch as shock hit.

  Or maybe it was the old shock.

  She had no idea. She'd been running on adrenaline and fear for too long now. "It's a miracle, you know."

  Will didn't respond, and she glanced over at him. He was driving fast but calmly, his gaze divided between the road in front of them and the rearview mirror. His hair was whipping around, as was hers, in the wind through the blown-out window, but he might have been driving them toward a moonlit walk on the beach, he looked so casual.

  Then she took a deeper look. His eyes were ice. His jaw might have been carved from granite.

  Not so casual at all.

  And still he drove with a cool precision, taking them through neighborhoods she'd never seen before, until she was good and turned around.

  "It's a miracle," she said again over the wind whipping through the vehicle, "that neither of us was hit."

  He still didn't answer.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Cabo. By way of LAX," he said tersely, and she didn't try talking to him again until thirty-five minutes later, when they parked in a short-term parking lot. He turned off the engine, and let out a slow breath. "Okay, I need you to listen carefully." He didn't look at her, just kept eyeing the mirrors and all the cars around them. It was early evening yet, and there was plenty of activity—cars coming and going, people walking. He looked less than thrilled with all of it.

  "Were we followed?"

  "Tailed for a bit, yes." His voice was still clipped, with none of the earlier warmth in it. "We lost them."

  She let out a slow, relieved breath. "For now."

  And the breath backed up in her lungs.

  "We're going to go inside," he said. "Scope out the flights to Cabo leaving tonight. We're married. Newlyweds. Spending the cash we just got from our wedding for the honeymoon."

  "Will—"

  "We'll buy our tickets with this." He reached beneath his seat and pulled out an envelope busting at the seams. When he lifted the flap, Jade saw that it was filled with cash, which he separated into two fistfuls. "We'll buy fully refundable tickets because we're not sure how long we want to stay. We just want to hang out on the beach and make love to each other all day long. In fact, we can't keep our eyes off each other, or our hands. Got it?"

  Not trusting her voice, she nodded.

  He thrust out one handful of the cash. "Keep this in case we're separated."

  She took the money and gulped.

  He looked at her for a long moment, saying nothing. There were lights in the parking lot, sending slants of yellow beams through the Jeep. His eyes glittered. Not with a barely controlled anger, as she'd thought at first, but with pain. "Will?"

  He shook his head and reached into the back, coming up with a small white first-aid kit, which he tossed into her lap. She looked down at it, and then up at him.

  "How are you with blood?" he asked.

  "Blood?"

  A car drove past them, the bright white headlights flashing through the front of the truck, and for a moment she could see quite clearly.

  Will was gritting his teeth. A line of sweat ran down his temple.

  And then she saw why. His arm was covered in blood. Her heart stopped. "You were shot."

  "Yeah, I was shot." With a grimace, Will ripped the left sleeve of his shirt away. "Jesus, I'd forgotten how much it hurts."

  "Ohmigod." Jade came up on her knees in the passenger seat to lean over him for a look. "Ohmigod. We need to get you to a hospital."

  "It's okay, just scratched me good," he said, peering at the ripped flesh of his bicep where the bullet had grazed him. He felt a line of sweat run down his spine, and he shuddered as the fire sang down his entire body. "Just have to stop the bleeding and wrap it up." He struggled to get the rest of his shirt off.

  She tried to help him with shaking fingers. When his torso was bared, she stared at the wound in horror. "Oh, Will. This is bad."

  "No. Bad would have been a few inches to the

  inside." He tried a smile, but she didn't return it, and he sighed. "I think the airport frowns on letting bloody passengers on the planes."

  "I imagine so." Fingers shaking, she opened the first-aid kit, pulled out a few gauzes and then looked at him. "Ready?" She looked green.

  "Open the door and get some air," he instructed.

  She shook her head. "I'm okay." She opened the gauze. "It's you who's not." Leaning over him, bracing herself with a hand to his chest, she pressed the gauze to the wound.

  He sucked in his breath through his teeth and said every foul word he could think of.

  She bit her lower lip, her eyes huge on his. "Oh, Will."

  "It's fine," he grated out.

  "It's not." She pulled back and gingerly lifted one corner of the gauze. "This isn't going to work. We need to go to the hosp—"

  "We're not stopping now." Sucking in air at the movement, he turned to face her. She was straddling the stick shift in her torn denim skirt, which had risen high enough on her thighs that if it'd been daylight, he could have seen those panties he'd so briefly touched earlier. That he could even think it, now, in the midst of this, told him he was going to make it. "I've been tracking Mario for two goddamn months. I can taste him. We're going to Cabo to find him."

  "And what then?" She checked on the bleeding again, which was finally slowing down. Pale as moonlight, she rifled through the first-aid kit, grabbing a tube of antiseptic cream, a roll of two-inch gauze, and some tape. She glanced at him, waiting for an answer.

  Not exactly the wallflower he'd thought.

  "Will? What then?"

  I'll make him pay for Wendy's murder.

  She opened the tube of antiseptic, squeezed it on a fresh pad of gauze, and pressed it to his wound, making him see stars.

  "Will?" She touched him, the first time she'd done so without him touching her first. She cupped his face, turning it toward her. "You're hurt. It doesn't make sense for you to go now. Surely if Mario is so wanted, you have others working with you who can take it from here."

  She believed that Mario was his own personal caseload. She thought that because he'd let her, even though Mario was the FBI's concern, nothing at all to do with his job as a DEA agent. He didn't intend to do anything stupid, he would never risk his oath as an agent, or his own morals, but he did intend to do whatever it took to get Mario behind bars.

  Her fingers were cool heaven on his face, and he had the oddest urge to set his head on her breast and close his eyes. "I want to do this personally."

  "Why?"

  "Because—" He jerked when she began wrapping his arm in the clean gauze, bending to her task so that her hair tingled over his bare chest.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered, casting him a regretful glance. She took more gauze and began to wipe at the drying blood, cleaning it off his arm, chest and side. Towering over him, concentrating on her work, she let out low, soft sounds of sympathy as her fingers danced over his bare skin. She'd braced herself up with her free hand on his good side, and oddly enough, that was all he could feel, her hand on him. He wanted her to put her lips on him as well, and he stared up at her, thinking all it would take was one little nudge at the small of her back and she'd tumble down over him. She'd snuggle close and—

  "Will?" With a frown, she slid a hand to his forehead. "You're hot."

  He wrapped his fingers around her wrist. "Yeah."

  "It's bad if you're fevered already."

  "I'm hot because you've got your hands all over me."

  He couldn't see her blush in the darkness, but he could feel the heat of it as she pulled back and sat on her heels. "I have some aspirin."

  He let out one short, mirthless laugh and scrubbed his good hand over his face. "Yeah. A whole bottle should do it." He reached for a clean shirt from his backpack, and gritting his teeth began to pull it on. "You have to change your skirt."

  "I know." Jade's hands joined his, smoothing his new shirt down over his chest and his good arm. Then she grabbed her spare pair of pants from her backpack. "Close your eyes." "Why?"

  "I'm going to change now."

  "Right." He squelched the urge to smile, because it was absurd that it amused him that she was modest. So he obeyed. He closed his eyes, then felt her shift, heard her low, murmured curse, and suddenly it didn't matter that his eyes were closed, because he could picture her shimmying out of her skirt. For one blessed moment the image in his mind erased the pain in his arm.

  "Okay." She sounded breathless.

  He opened his eyes. She smiled into his. "Thanks." She squeezed his hand, playing with his brain some more, then looked over the job she'd done on his arm before she glanced back up. Her smile faded at whatever he had on his face. "What?"

  He touched her jaw. "You're nothing like I thought you were going to be in that first moment I saw you."

  "And what did you think I was going to be?"

  A pain in his ass. "Not the strong, courageous, beautiful woman looking at me right now."

  "Really?" She let out a small smile. "You're not who I thought you were either."

  "And who's that?"

  "The bad guy," she said simply, getting out of the car before he could call her back, before he could tell her not to put her trust in him, that he was a bad bet. A really bad bet.

  Crossing the street toward the terminal, Jade felt Will squeeze her hand with his good one as he led the way. His transformation from gunshot victim to "doting new husband" was a bit unnerving, and she glanced at him.

  He smiled down at her. Smiled. She hadn't seen much of that, and whoa, baby, she had to say that was probably a good thing. Slow and lazy, full and warm, all with a dash of wickedness thrown in, and staring up at him, she stumbled over her own two feet.

  "Careful, baby." He pulled her tighter to him, to his good side. "Can't have my new wife breaking her ankle before the honeymoon even starts." His sinful smile went downright naughty, and her body temperature, along with her pulse, shot off the chart.

  Then he upped the ante even more when he leaned down and playfully bit her jaw. "I have plans for you, you know."

  Oh God. Goose bumps rose along every inch of her body, even as she knew he was pretending for anyone watching them. She opened her mouth to tell him that he didn't have to pretend yet, no one was paying them the slightest bit of attention, but still smiling, he tightened his grip on her.

  Play along, his eyes said while the heat of him burned her skin, making her recognize he was still in unthinkable pain.

  If he could do this while so badly injured, she sure as hell could. She'd pretend he was her new husband, who had intentions of ravishing her the moment they got alone. It wouldn't be difficult, seeing as apparently her entire body was wishing for that very thing.

  He kept his stride even, walking along with a sure, easy confidence, and if she hadn't seen the bullet trail in his flesh herself, she'd never guess.

  Except she did know, and when someone jostled into them at the curb, she felt his flinch reverberate through her body. Worry for him filled her, adding to the mix of fear and angst.

  As they entered the terminal, he nibbled at her ear, his breath sending a shiver of heat down her spine. "Two men at six o'clock— No, don't look. They're searching for us. Keep moving."

  Oh God, oh God. Keep moving. They headed toward the ticket counter of Mexi Air. The line was wrapped around and around, twisting in a series of S-turns like her stomach.

  Appearing unperturbed, Will settled into the line and pulled Jade tightly to his chest, running his hands down her spine and cupping her butt. His expression seared every nerve-ending in her body. "Happy fourth-hour anniversary," he murmured in a seductive voice.

  The couple in front of them, looking to be in their late thirties, had a small infant sleeping in a stroller between them. The woman smiled. "You're just married? So sweet. Honey, isn't that sweet?"

  Her husband shook his head at Will. "My condolences."

  His wife smacked him upside the head, making him laugh and rub the spot. "I was just kidding! I remember being a newlywed: I got lucky three times a week."

  Will laughed softly, as if three nights a week weren't going to be enough, and the sound put even more butterflies in Jade's abdomen.

  But Will just hugged her closer. "They just passed us," he whispered in her ear.

  And she realized he'd turned her away from the men's view, once again protecting her with his body.

  She didn't want that to move her. After all, he was simply doing his job, going after Mario. Her tagging along was a necessity for him, and whether he melted her bones or not, she needed to remember that.

  Finally, it was their turn in line. They bought their tickets, and then Will nudged her aside while he spoke quietly to the woman behind the ticket counter.

  Afterward, he murmured in her ear, "I have to go through a different kind of security because of my gun. Don't be alarmed when we're separated."

  They made their way through security, were indeed separated while Will dealt with his weapon, then finally headed toward their gate, stopping at the restrooms, where Will had them change their clothes again.

  When Jade came out, she found him in soft, faded Levi's and a plain, light-blue T-shirt. Average Joe. Except nothing about his long, rangy, solidly built body seemed average Joe.

  He looked over her low-rider khaki cargo capris and white blouse, and nodded. Apparently she suited as Mrs. Average Joe, and they continued to the gate.

  "But this is the wrong one," she pointed out when he stopped six gates short.

  "You're mistaken," he said lightly. She looked into his eyes and understood. He didn't want to go to the right gate, not this early, and possibly have the men after them figuring out which flight they were taking. She forced a smile. "You're right. You're distracting me."

  "I plan to do a lot more of that." She didn't know how to take such statements from him. Was he still pretending?

  They had two and a half hours to pass before they could board, and she didn't know if she could handle the idle time after the wild suspense of the day. She had Will take a seat, startled when he pulled her onto his lap and began nuzzling at her neck.

 

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