In the Arms of a Stranger (Entangled Ignite), page 6
Because if Brooks hadn’t wanted Abby to see Wade’s body, there was a chance he was still alive.
But would Wade do that to her? He may have betrayed JP, but it just didn’t fit that he’d let his wife and son believe he was dead. He may have lied through his teeth to them out of necessity, but JP knew Wade had genuinely loved his family.
With effort, JP swung his legs over the edge of the trough, clutching his side.
“So…what? You thought it would be safe to wander around inside a bull’s pen?”
He was half in, half out of the feed trough. Abby was fussing at him, the pressure of her fingers insistent on his elbow, her white sleeveless blouse bunched and dipped between her breasts. His throat went dry.
“That bull weighs over two thousand pounds,” she went on, clueless.
Determined to get out without any damn help, he pushed himself up. She reached out and placed an arm around his back in an effort to help him. It took everything he had not to lean into her. He’d spent an uncomfortable night flat on his back, unsure at first as to what type of creature was sharing the corral with him. Now Abby Price, with her lush woman’s body hovering over him, was a far too tempting contrast.
Somehow, he managed to stand up. He was wobbly, but he tried not to let her see that.
“Can you walk?”
Okay, maybe his legs weren’t working so great. But other parts—
He glanced down at himself in chagrin. Damn. He wouldn’t have thought this would even be possible, given his blood loss and the way his head was swimming. Hell, it was swimming because all his blood had rushed south. No wonder his legs felt like rubber.
A flash of stabbing pain stopped him from straightening fully. Clutching his side, he bent over. Convenient. She wouldn’t be able to see his body’s response to her touch.
She frowned at him. “The county’s large-animal vet keeps emergency medical supplies here. I’ll take a look at your wound. Do you need stitches?”
She was amazingly practical, amazingly unfazed by what was happening to him. But she was just concerned about his wound, he reminded himself. Not him.
She’d lost her husband. The husband she’d loved.
She wasn’t looking at JP as a man. She simply wanted something from him. Answers.
Answers he couldn’t give her.
Hell, he didn’t even know what questions to ask—not with Wade dead. And if Wade had never told her what he did for a living, JP’d be damned if he would.
He shook his head. “No stitches,” he said, forcing his thoughts away from her as a woman. He didn’t want to think of her like that. “I just need to get out of here.”
“Your car’s been towed away.”
He straightened enough to meet her gaze. “I’ll manage.”
“The deputy asked if I’d seen it before. They searched the creek bed, thinking the driver might have drowned, but they believe he—you—walked away. They’ll be looking for you. How do you plan to get away?”
He’d known the car was useless. There’d been no way to drive it out of the creek bed. He knew where he had to go now. She’d told him. Or rather, Wade had told her to tell him. The Springs. Whether that was a trap or something else, he wouldn’t know until he got there. He’d decided he could steal a car, but he was out in the middle of nowhere and the only car around was hers. Stealing from her wasn’t an option.
“Come on.” She caught his arm and led him into the darkened barn.
“Is he still a secret?” a small voice asked.
JP looked up to see Abby’s son climb down from stacked bales of hay.
“Yes,” she replied. “He’s still a secret.”
The child stared at him for a moment before saying, “Our secret.”
JP smiled at him, hoping a boy that age really knew how to keep his mouth shut.
“I’ll get the basic supplies we’ll need,” she said. “The vet keeps human antibiotics. Are you allergic to anything? Penicillin maybe?”
He shook his head.
“I’ll be back. Come on, Cole.”
“I want to play with Muffin’s kittens,” he protested.
“We’ll come right back.”
Cole still resisted, his whole body in rebellion. “But Mr. John—”
“Now, young man.”
JP watched the interaction. She didn’t trust him with her child. She’d taken some huge leaps of faith from the moment their paths had crossed. But she still didn’t completely trust him. Especially not with her son.
Did she really think he’d hurt the boy?
Reluctantly, Cole took her hand. They walked through the barn, a calico cat winding between their legs, making it impossible for them to hurry. Abby bent and lifted the cat, whispered something to her, then put her back down with a gentle rub along her back.
This was his chance. While they were gone, he could walk away. Disappear. She’d never find him. And he’d never have to hurt her by revealing what he did know about Wade.
If Wade had never told her what he did, why he was gone for months at time, he’d had a reason. Maybe she was the kind of person who’d be horrified if she knew what it took to serve their country.
Hell, be honest, Blackmon. What she thought of Wade doesn’t matter to you. You just don’t want her to know about you.
But he didn’t leave. Instead, he watched mother and child walk out of the barn into the bright light of day. He had no choice. Before he left, he needed to find out every last detail she might know—even if she wasn’t aware of it herself. Anything that might help his search for the truth.
If he didn’t, he could kiss his life good-bye.
…
Abby rummaged through the supplies Sam kept stored in the workshop so he wouldn’t have to drive all the way back to his office on the other side of the county. She grabbed what she thought she might need, along with antibiotics in tablet form, all the while reminding herself to slow down, to calm her chaotic emotions.
Now she could get her answers, explanations, something to prove she was right about Wade. That Brooks was dead wrong.
“I got carrots, Mommy,” Cole announced from behind her. He loved to feed them to Buck.
Back outside in the increasingly hot morning, he ran ahead, disappearing into the barn just as she reached the wide double doors. It took a second for her eyes to get used to the dark, then another second to realize JP had vanished. Again.
She blew out a frustrated breath. “Seriously?” she muttered.
“I’m here,” he said, stepping out from behind a large support post.
Frustration was instantly replaced by relief. He hadn’t left after all. But the intensity of his gaze gave her an odd sensation. Something like a prickling of…what? Danger?
No, not danger.
Feminine awareness.
“Carrots for Buck!” Cole shouted, running toward him and waving them in the air.
As the little boy reached him, his attention shifted to her son. She shook her head to clear away the rampant confusion. Something about him, about the way he’d looked at her just then, had sent puzzling signals to her overwrought emotions. She crossed her arms over her chest, recognizing a stab of desire, hot and heavy, in her breasts. No. No way this could happen. She dragged her gaze away from him, embarrassed by her body’s response.
You’re a widow. You’re entitled, she told herself.
Cole held a carrot up toward JP, offering him the treat of feeding the horse.
“Cole,” she said, gathering her wits, “why don’t you get…Mr. John a Coke from the refrigerator?”
“But we have to feed—”
“We’ll wait for you,” JP said.
Cole smiled up at him. It was an amazing smile. How could a man neither of them knew get such an unguarded, joyful response from her son?
“Sit down over there, let me take a look,” Abby ordered JP, her voice thick with shame at her jealousy.
JP sat on a bale of hay and unzipped his windbreaker, revealing the holster and gun. They suited him. A gun suited him. She should be scared, but she wasn’t. That said more about her than about him.
When she saw the blood-soaked, makeshift T-shirt bandage, she fought back a momentary panic. “Maybe you should lie down.”
“No,” he replied quickly. “No. You can get to it just fine with me sitting.”
All right. Maybe that was too much familiarity for him. Or vulnerability.
She knelt in front of him and pulled up his shirt. She had to bite her lip to contain her gasp.
“That’s deep.” And bloody. “Is this a knife wound or a bullet wound?” she asked. She’d never seen either before, never thought she would.
“Bullet. Never mind. I can take care of it myself,” he said, pulling his shirt back down.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, knowing full well he’d understood her shocked reaction.
“It’s pretty ugly.”
“No one could ever accuse a bullet wound of being pretty.” She took clean gauze and soaked it with antiseptic lotion.
He winced as she wiped around the wound. She held her breath.
“How did it happen?” she managed.
“My luck ran out,” he said on a hiss as she used a fresh, antiseptic-soaked gauze pad to dab gently at the area.
“The bullet—?”
“Just grazed me.”
She looked up to see him gazing beyond her, pain evident in the terse line of his lips.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He looked down at the wound, then up, to meet her eyes. “That it grazed me?”
She laughed. Hysteria, she was sure. Prepared to apologize, she caught the uptilt of one side of his mouth. The smile reached his eyes, softened his features. It made him look younger, even more attractive. He held her gaze for an uncomfortable moment, then reached for the gauze still clutched in her fingers.
She shook her head. “No, I can do it. Let me…” But her protest died on her lips. She couldn’t figure out what to do with his hand on hers, couldn’t deal with the look in his eyes. The same look she’d seen when she came back into the barn.
Heat?
No. No way. She was projecting.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, releasing her hand and the gauze. He was staring at her mouth.
“I can handle it.” She looked at the wound. She wouldn’t look at his face. Couldn’t. “Stand up.”
The uncomfortable moment passed. The wound looked even worse from the side. Ragged and inflamed. She cleaned it with antiseptic, put topical antibiotic on a gauze pad, then taped it all up.
Handing him two tablets, she said, “Antibiotics.”
“You sure these are safe?”
“I’m positive. Vets use human antibiotics a lot. This is one I’ve taken myself.” He looked doubtful enough that she added, “I’m still human. Promise.”
He gave her another one of those smiles, proving she was all too human—and all too female.
Before she made a fool of herself, she handed him the envelope of tablets. “I wrote the dosage down. You have enough for a week.”
“Coke!” Cole shouted.
Abby jumped. Feeling guilty. But guilty of what?
JP dropped the front of his shirt and zipped up the windbreaker again before Cole had a chance to see anything.
When her son stood before him, he let Cole take his hand and lead him toward the back of the barn, through the door, and outside. He paused, his stance wary, and looked around as her child pulled at him. With one last look toward the road, they walked along the edge of the corral, still close enough to the barn to be in the cooling shade, a tall man and a small boy. Cole looked up and said something to JP, who threw back his head and laughed. Then he gingerly lifted her son onto his shoulders.
Abby hugged herself. She hadn’t been interested in any man since Wade’s death. When anyone tried to play matchmaker, she’d used the excuse that it was much too soon. And it was, for her. But Cole needed a father. Her brother represented the only stable male influence in his life, but Steve could never take the place of his father.
No one would.
Cole chose that moment to laugh, his giggle so different from the one he used with her that she wanted to snatch her baby from JP and tell him not to enthrall her son with his masculinity.
As he had her.
The mere thought stopped her cold. She could not open that door. JP was as forbidden a territory as Wade should have been. Worse—once burned, twice shy.
No, not shy. Scared.
She mustn’t forget why she’d risked so much by keeping JP’s presence a secret from Brooks, from everyone.
Answers.
With a deep breath, she dropped her arms to her sides and walked quickly to catch up with JP and Cole, who were looking toward the pasture. June bugs buzzed lazily in the summer heat.
“How do you call Buck?” JP was asking her son.
“Mommy whissus,” he replied.
“Can you whistle?”
“Not like Mommy.” Cole turned toward her. “Whissu, ’kay?”
JP put Cole down.
Abby smiled, put her fingers to her lips, and blew.
The shrill sound carried across the hot, still morning. Cole clapped.
JP’s eyes widened and he smiled. “That’s some whistle your mom has,” he said, his gaze on Abby.
“Petunia comes, too,” Cole said, his face alive with pleasure.
“Petunia?”
“He’s a boy cow. He’s big.” Cole looked up at JP with a serious expression. “He likes for Mommy to talk to him.”
“I heard your mom talk to Petunia.”
Cole smiled. “Doc Sam aks Mommy to talk to Petunia so he can sew him up.”
JP’s reaction to that statement was priceless. His face showed disbelief, then something else. Admiration? Humor?
“I bet anything would hold still for your mom,” he said casually, as if in jest, but the timbre of his voice changed the simple meaning to something beyond. Something heated.
Ashamed of herself, of the places the sound of JP’s voice was taking her, she turned abruptly and pointed, “Look. There comes Buck!”
The light tan gelding was galloping toward the barn. With a whinny and a toss of his beautifully shaped head, Buck came to a bouncing halt at the fence in front of them. In the opposite pasture, still a good distance away, Petunia ambled toward them.
Cole ran to the wire fence topped with barbed wire and stretched his hand through, holding a carrot in his palm for the horse.
“What do we do when Petunia gets here?” JP asked.
“Throw some carrots on the ground for him and leave fast,” she replied with a laugh.
JP stepped back, indicating with a jerk of his head that she should follow him.
Standing not far from Cole, he asked quietly, “Wade didn’t have anywhere else he might have kept things for work?”
She didn’t like the question. It sounded like the ones Brooks had asked.
“Things like what?”
“You said he didn’t keep papers at home.”
“No.”
“He didn’t keep an apartment somewhere, in DC maybe?”
An apartment? Maybe a whole other life? Was that what he was asking? She hadn’t even thought of that possibility.
“I have no idea what Wade had away from here.” The statement hurt. A lot. She’d trusted Wade implicitly. He’d said his work wouldn’t touch their life together, and she’d believed him. Until the day it did touch their lives. Until the day she could do nothing to save him. That day had thrown all her preconceptions about Wade, about their marriage—about herself—into disarray.
“He sold—” She stopped to correct herself. “He said he sold his family’s place in Texas.”
“Where was it?”
He didn’t know about the Texas ranch. Strange. He’d known about Buck, about the Rangers, but he didn’t know this? He should know. Even Brooks knew. Or…was he testing her?
She faced him directly. “Why are you here, JP?”
He stiffened, the question apparently catching him off guard.
She held up a finger. “And don’t tell me you came to visit Wade. You’re running. Hiding. How do you think Wade could have helped you if he’d been here?”
He didn’t answer. Deciding what to say? How to lie? Oh, he’d definitely know how to lie. Wade certainly had.
“Finding out that Wade’s dead, that he’s been dead for over a year, doesn’t fit with the neat little scenario you had figured out,” she accused. “You have to look elsewhere for help now, but wherever that is, it has something to do with Wade.” She was rambling, thinking aloud.
“Abby—”
“Don’t lie to me. Do not do that.” Anger bubbled to the surface. “Don’t use what I know, then leave me here to wonder.”
“It’s not—”
“Is that how they train you?” she ground out. “To lie, to evade?”
His shoulders went rigid and his eyes hardened. “They train us to get the job done. To survive.”
“Well, Wade didn’t survive.” She spat the words at him. “He counted on you and you didn’t help him.”
The sounds of summer, the heat, the smells, all receded, suspended in time. Cole said something, but she barely registered his words.
“I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do for Wade now,” JP said softly.
“Yes, there is.”
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “He’s dead. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “You can prove that he died a hero.”
Chapter 5
No. That was the one thing JP couldn’t do.
Wade’s widow wanted her husband made into a hero. But everything he knew told him Wade was no hero. The man had set him up with a lie that had branded him a traitor and made him the target of a manhunt by his own country.
But what Abby was asking of him, the niggle of doubt she’d planted in his mind, meant that there could be another possibility.
Maybe both he and Wade had been set up.
