Dangerous Secrets: Callaghan Brothers, Book 1 (19 page)

Without hesitation, she jumped up from the sofa.  She watched him do one, then mimicked his actions on the far side of the cabin, throwing open the windows to grab at the heavy-duty shutters.  Even injured, he moved much faster than she did, pulling the shutters against the heavy gusts with his greater strength.  The wind was fierce, but he had to admit, she gave it her best effort, sometimes going as far as leveraging her feet against the wall to pull them closed.  By the time the last one was secured, they were both soaked through from the driving rain. 

Kiara moved toward the fire, her body shivering against the cold wetness of her clothes.  Clothes, Kane noted painfully, that consisted of a man’s shirt and little else.  It hung down to mid-calf.  Against the glow of the fire, he could see every curve silhouetted.  Damn it!  It was not what he wanted to see. 

“Here,” he said gruffly, tossing her one of his flannels.  She eyed him carefully.  “Go on,” he barked.  “Put that on and then we’ll see about that hand.”  Kiara looked down at her hand where red was once again seeping through the bandages.  She pushed it behind her back, as if to hide it from him.

Kane glared at her.  His eyes narrowed when she made no move to do as he said.  “Let’s get something straight right now,” Kane said, his voice nearly as booming as the thunder all around them, though he hadn’t raised it.  “My cabin, my rules.  Rule #1 is
listen to Kane when he’s trying to help you.
”

She tilted her chin defiantly, but Kane didn’t budge.  Hands on hips, he stared her down with a glare that had made grown men wet themselves.  The spirit was there, he could see that.  Too bad she was shaking so hard. 

“I don’t like that rule,” she said bravely.  “I have my own.  And my Rule #1 is
don’t follow anyone else’s rules
.”

Kane raised an eyebrow.  It was the most she had spoken at one time in the last eight hours.  The sound of her voice surprised him; it wasn’t high-pitched and girly like he would have expected, but low and soft, whiskey-smooth, even when she was clearly riled.  He shuddered to think of what she might sound like if she actually tried to be charming.  Not that it would do any good with him.  There was a reason they called him the Iceman.

“Fine,” he said, crossing his massive arms across his even bigger chest.  “There’s the door.”  She looked at him as if she couldn’t believe he had just called her bluff. 

“Fine,” she parroted after a moment.  Without any apparent modesty she lifted the shirt over her head, giving Kane an eyeful of the dragon clutching the side of her body, not to mention her full, round breasts and tiny waist.  But instead of putting on the flannel shirt he’d provided, she reached into her pack and extracted the clothes she’d had on earlier.  She didn’t bother with undergarments.  In one smooth move she pulled the cotton shirt over her head and proceeded to step into her jeans.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said, his voice a low growl.  She slipped her feet into her Reeboks and pulled on a hoodie.  Hefting the pack to her shoulder, she took her first step toward the door.

“Your cabin, your rules,” she said coolly.  Her voice was eerily calm, as was her expression.  There was no sign of the tantrum he was expecting to erupt at any moment.  “I can respect that.  Thanks for the lift today.  And the donuts.”

Kane’s first thought was that she was certifiably insane.  His second was that he was going to kill Jake for putting him in this situation to begin with.  Women were trouble personified. 

He took one step and effectively blocked the exit.  “You can’t possibly be serious.”  Another loud crack actually shook the cabin.  She jumped, but remained steadfast.

“Please move.”  It was a polite request, as if she was asking him to pass the salt.  Then it dawned on him:  she was bluffing.  No one in their right mind would head out into that mess.  She expected him to back down. 

Well, fuck that.  He would show her who was in charge here.  It sucked that it had to happen on a night like this, but better to get it out of the way now before the idea that she had a choice in any of this had a chance to take root.

He stepped to the side and allowed her to pass.  He had to give her credit, she sure put on a great show.  Yep, she was going to turn around any second and give him those big doe eyes, maybe with some extra moisture and a classic pout thrown in for good measure.  Yep.  Any second. 

She opened the door and the first sliver of doubt went through him.  Okay, so she was taking it farther than he would have thought, but that just meant she had some fire in her.  He could appreciate that.  It would make his little victory all that much sweeter when she was forced to admit that he was right.  He wouldn’t even gloat.  Much.

Except she did not turn around.  One second she was in the doorway, the next the door was pulled shut against the howling winds and Kane was left standing there alone in disbelief. 
Son of a bitch
.  The crazy female was probably hunkering down on the porch. 

It amazed him the lengths to which some women would go to prove a point.  Although with each passing minute, Kane’s uncertainty grew.  When he figured she’d had enough, he rushed toward the window, remembering at the last minute that they had shuttered them. 

“Let her get wet,” Kane muttered to himself.  “Maybe it will cool her off a little.”  He took two steps left, then right, then left again.  An entire minute went by before he couldn’t stand it anymore.  He threw open the door, pissed.

Kane was immediately hit with a blast of icy horizontal rain mixed in with quarter-sized hail.  It pelted him relentlessly with surprising force.  Lightning lit up the sky, and a quick scan left and right told him that the obdurate little female was not on the porch after all.

“Kiara!” he yelled.  It was doubtful that he could be heard over the roar of the wind, but he called out anyway, over and over again. 
Think
, he told himself.  She might be stubborn, but even that would be overridden by an innate sense of self-preservation.  She would look for shelter.  Considering that her view of the site was extremely limited upon arrival, that limited her options as well.  The only other possible shelter she might have been able to see was... the wooden lean-to where the extra firewood was kept. 

He headed for that, crouching against the deluge of hail that pounded on his back.  He could only imagine what it felt like on her much smaller frame.  On the far side, the side sheltered from the storm, he saw a small figure huddled as far back as she could go when the next strike of lightning briefly illuminated the area.

“Kiara!”  The figure moved slightly.  “I’m going to take you back inside.  Don’t fight me, it’ll only make it that much harder on both of us.”  He reached down and closed his arms around the figure, lifting her easily.  He hunched over, shielding her with his much larger body as he sprinted back toward the cabin.  They hadn’t even made it inside when lightning struck a huge oak beside the lean-to, sending a branch as thick as his truck down onto the roof.

Kane kicked the door shut and plopped his shivering bundle down in front of the fire.  Without hesitation, he began pulling off her soaked clothes and wrapping her in blankets.  He spoke not a word; neither did she, though it was doubtful she could have even if she wanted to, her teeth were chattering so badly.  He paused only slightly, inhaling sharply when he uncovered her dragon, but then continued on.  Only when she was sufficiently cocooned in warm blankets did he stalk off to his own room to change his own clothes.

* * *

L
ittle by little, Taryn’s body began to warm up again, but as it did, she was forced to face what she had done.  She felt like a complete idiot.  Once again her temper had almost been her downfall.  It was one thing to assert yourself; quite another to do something monumentally stupid that put your life and someone else’s in danger.  She didn’t have to worry about Gavin Howard finding her.  She’d end up killing herself first.

For the hundredth time she looked over at Kane’s door.  He still hadn’t come out, and probably wouldn’t anytime soon.  She couldn’t blame him.  And what had he done, really?  Given her something warm and dry to wear?  Offer to help her with her bleeding hand?  God, she really was an idiot.

One by one she removed the layers of blankets, reaching for the soft flannel he’d brought out for her earlier.  Wrapped inside was a pair of sweats as well.  She donned them, pulling the drawstring around her waist, then rolling and cuffing until she could both walk and use her hands.  Feeling a little like a kid playing dress-up, she made her way over to the kitchen and rooted around until she found what she was looking for.

* * *

K
ane paced the length of his bedroom so many times he would not have been surprised to see a path worn into the hardwood.  Had he not been fuming from the inside out he probably would have still felt the chill of the storm, even though he had pulled on dry clothes. 

Crazy, she was fucking crazy, he murmured to himself.  Next time he tried to save someone he would do well to make sure they didn’t have a death wish first.  Really, he wondered, what the hell had she been thinking? 
Oh, I’ll just go walking through a freaking thunder and hail storm in the middle of the night on a mountain I don’t know when I’m twenty fucking miles from the nearest road?

He shook his head.  As long as he lived, he would never,
ever
understand women, which is one of the reasons he steered as far away from them as possible.  Kane was a man of logic, of process, of order, of discipline.  Hell yes, he understood pride.  Had it in spades himself.  He also had a healthy appreciation for common sense, which she apparently lacked.

He was half-tempted to call Jake and tell him to forget it.  There was no way he was going to make it a full week playing sitter to the little hellcat.  He pulled out his cell, finger poised over the speed dial, then put it away.  He did that several times.  Each time it was his own pride that kept him from following through.  He’d spent months fighting guerrillas in the jungles of Central America.  Gone deep into the hills in Afghanistan.  Holed up in caves in northern Siberia.  And he was actually considering bailing on a mission that entailed spending one week with a slip of a woman in his own cabin on his own land?

A soft knock roused him from his musings.  He stopped pacing and listened until it was repeated.  Damn it!  The woman was proving once again she hadn’t an ounce of common sense – or self-preservation.  Didn’t she know how dangerous it was to pick another fight with him right now?

He took two long strides to the door and yanked it open, ready to give her a piece of his mind.  Instead, his brain went into instant lock-down.  His unwanted cabin-guest stood there, dressed in his clothes, looking up at him with those huge eyes while her hair curled around her face in big, loose waves. 

She held her hands out to him.  He looked down and saw the steaming mug of coffee she offered him.  “I – I made some coffee,” she said quietly.  “Thought it might warm you up.”

“You did, did you?”  His voice was a deep growl.  She might look adorable, but he wasn’t a total pushover.  He kept one hand on the door, the other on the door frame, looming over her menacingly.  Then she said the words that totally annihilated his defenses. 

“I’m sorry.”

Kane blinked, then narrowed his eyes.  Was this some sort of trick?  He studied her face, but saw none of the defiance there he’d seen earlier.  Only resignation and yes, maybe even a little humility.  He reached out and accepted the mug she offered him.  She turned to go.

“Let me see that hand,” he demanded, testing her.  He knew he was pushing it.  Saw it in the way her shoulders stiffened and then slumped.  She faced him again, and held out her hand.  She didn’t meet his eyes though.  That was okay.  He wasn’t a total bastard.

They moved in front of the fire, the sounds of the storm continuing to wail all around them as he removed her soaked bandages.  He was acutely aware of her stare as he tended to her.

“Hell of a cut you got there,” he said, spilling antiseptic over it.  Other than a slight hiss, she didn’t move.  He was impressed.  She seemed to have just accepted the fact that he was going to do this and gave herself up to it.  That was progress.  It made his job so much easier.  “You didn’t slice your palm to do one of those satanic blood rituals, did you?”

He actually saw a spark of amusement in her eyes.  Her freaking
violet
eyes that were reflecting the flames like some sort of demoness. 

“No.  It was an accident.”

“So you’re headstrong
and
clumsy,” he quipped, rewrapping her hand almost as skillfully as Michael had.  He saw her lips tighten and thin but she kept her mouth shut.  Maybe he could make it through the week after all.  “Remind me to hide the axes.”

And then, like magic, she grinned and it was like the sun came out.  “I’d say that would be a pretty smart move on your part.”  Her smile faded, and she placed both of her small hands around his much larger one.  “Thank you.  That’s twice you’ve come to my rescue today.”

Ah, goddammit
, he thought.  He was beginning to think he liked her better when she was giving him a hard time.  At least then he didn’t have to think about how fragile she looked in the firelight.  He gave himself a mental shake.  He didn’t want to like her or develop any kind of feelings for her one way or the other.  She was a package, nothing more.  And he was only doing this for his family, not out of any sense of chivalry on his part.  He just wasn’t that nice.

So why was she looking at him as if he was a frigging knight in shining armor?

“Don’t make me do it again,” he said, a little more gruffly than he’d intended.  He expected her to shrink back, but to his surprise, she grinned.  “I won’t.”

Shit
.

K
ane awoke with one hell of a crick in his neck and his ass hurting.  He was on the floor, his back against the sofa.  His head had dropped back at an uncomfortable angle at some point, and that’s where it had apparently stayed.  There was a soft weight leaning against his chest.  He held in a groan as he looked down and saw the top of a golden head with dark red streaks.