Surrender the Dark (7 page)

Still she couldn’t move. The quiet was like a yawning chasm she didn’t have the strength to leap past. Then pain rushed in to fill it, threatening to swallow her up, eat her alive. She hated him, hated him, hated him. Tears came. Hot, heavy, silent.

Crumpled in her own hallway, paralyzed by an exhaustion she couldn’t imagine recovering from, she gave
in to sobs as uncontrollable as her inability to walk away from him. The last thought she had before allowing fatigue to drift her into sleep was that she knew her tears weren’t just for herself.

The howl woke him. Jarrett opened his eyes slowly to the predawn shadows. The fog of waking up and his body’s aches did nothing to haze over what had happened just before he’d fallen asleep. The memory was every bit as stark and clear and ugly as if it had happened minutes ago, instead of hours.

He listened to the plaintive cries of the wolf pup and felt an answering tug inside his own chest. He wondered where Rae was. Had she left him? Gone into town? Gone for good?

He wouldn’t blame her if she had, he thought, then automatically chastised himself. That sort of thinking was not going to get the job done. But he was too damn tired to do battle with his emotions or his conscience.

“Damn animal. Shut up already,” he grumbled, the pup’s howl suddenly grating on his nerves. He lifted a hand to his forehead, pleased as much by the cool dry skin there as the steadiness in his fingers. He slowly flexed and relaxed various muscle groups. Minor improvements, but it was progress. Slow progress. God, he was so damn weak.

Curbing the useless frustration, he rolled carefully to his side. Five long minutes later he was standing beside the bed. The trip to the bathroom was slow, but he accomplished it on his own. He even managed to wash his
face and rinse his mouth before the fatigue and dizziness set in again.

He flipped off the light and started to head back to the bedroom. He knew he shouldn’t push too far or he’d lose what little ground he’d gained, but he found himself turning to the hallway door instead.

He wasn’t going anywhere, he promised himself. He just wanted to open it and listen for any signs that Rae was still in the house. Maybe the pup had woken her too.

What he found when he opened the door made bile rise in his throat as swiftly as adrenaline pumped into his bloodstream. Despite the shadows, he knew immediately that the woman slumped over in the hallway was Rae, but it took five or six mind-numbing seconds before he realized she was still alive. From the soft sounds coming from her mouth, she was apparently sleeping.

Sweat popped out on his face and chest as the rush subsided. He leaned heavily in the doorway, cursing his reaction under his breath. He’d frozen, like a green recruit, smack in the center of the doorway.

If she really had been attacked … Well, he’d probably be dead in his bed right now. Still, that didn’t excuse his immediate response. He hadn’t moved for cover, or changed his focus to his surroundings and the possible dangers that awaited him.

No, he’d stood there without a thought for his personal safety, much less for the danger to the mission. A literal naked target, big as life, and he’d just stood there, staring at her. His heart in his throat, his only thought
had been that she’d been taken from him while he slept. Taken from him before he had a chance to explain—

That thought brought him up cold. Explain what?

Biting back another curse, Jarrett closed off the chaos in his mind. He listened intently, but heard only the wolf pup, whose howls had turned to the whimpers of the lonesome. That struck a chord deep in Jarrett as well, and he ignored it this time too. He knew he didn’t have the energy or the strength to check out the rest of the house. If there had been an intruder, the pup would either have been barking his fool head off, or permanently silenced. There was no immediate danger.

Unless he counted the woman asleep at his feet.

He couldn’t just turn away and leave her there. He told himself he should at least make sure she really was okay. His thigh and taped ribs made kneeling or bending down impossible, and once again he was forced to swallow his frustration. He didn’t want to wake her, even if it was the simplest solution.

Waking her meant talking to her, watching her face, wondering what she was thinking, wondering what in the ever-living hell he was going to say to her. He didn’t want to deal with that right now. To be honest, he’d be perfectly happy not to deal with it at all, ever.

With a deep sigh and a grunt at the ache in his leg and ribs, Jarrett moved back into the bathroom and anchored his hip against the sink. Leaving the light off, he searched with his fingers until he found an endpiece of tape. He’d get the tape off his ribs, check on Rae, hopefully without waking her, then he’d go back to bed. And stay there. At least until he figured out what to do next.

He tugged hard, the tape pulling and tearing the hair from his skin. Jarrett clenched his teeth to keep the hiss of pain locked in his throat. He was starting to lose his balance on his good leg and knew he should sit down for a few minutes. But it was as if a demon were driving him to get this done and done fast. The longer he took, the longer his mind had a chance to think about Rae, to mull over the possible reasons why he’d found her as he had, to wonder if she’d been there all night long, and if so—

The light suddenly blinked on. “What in the hell are you doing?”

Jarrett spun around, too fast. He lost his balance and flung an arm out for support. He missed the shower curtain rod and barreled forward, directly into Rae, who was standing in the middle of the open doorway.

The force of his motion landed them both in a heap in the hallway. His grunt of pain underscored her curses. Seconds later they both stilled. Except for the heavy panting breaths they were exhaling, there was no sound. Jarrett thought absently that even the wolf pup had finally shut up.

He wasn’t sure who was the first to become aware of their landing position, but within a moment there was no doubt that they were both vitally aware of it.

Rae was on her back, one shoulder pressed up against the wall. Jarrett was simply pressed on her. All of her.

Wincing, he shifted his bandaged thigh off her leg. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She looked up at him and blinked.

Her lips were parted. Her eyes were heavy-lidded from sleep, dark and unfocused, still reflecting her surprise at the sudden impact. Her hair was tousled. She looked warm, and soft, and vulnerable. He wanted to touch her skin, feel its heat. But even more he wanted to drop his head down an inch or so and claim her mouth, to drink from the solace he somehow knew he would find there.

Struggling to ignore the poorly timed demands that his body was making on his mind—not that there would ever be a good time to act on them—Jarrett shifted slightly to free his hand. Rae gasped. He went completely still, then quickly pulled his bandaged hand free from where it had been pinned between them.

“Did you hit your head on the wall?” he asked, her gasp bringing him at least partially back to his senses. When she still didn’t answer, he lifted his hand to her forehead, intending to brush back the snarled curls. “Rae?”

She ducked away, the action obviously instinctive. “I’m … I’m fine.”

Her sudden move made his body tighten, but this time in shame. Jarrett dropped his hand immediately and, bracing it on the floor, levered himself completely off of her. He rolled into a sitting position, his back against the wall. Using the light spilling out of the bathroom, he bent to check his bandaged thigh. It was only then that he remembered he was naked. His reaction to those few moments of lying on top of Rae was still apparent.

Was that why she’d gasped? Had she felt … him?
A hot flush crept up his neck, the sensation so foreign to him, he had no idea what to do about it. Reacting instinctively, he bent his good leg, drawing his knee up to provide a barrier between Rae and the … obvious. Even as he did it, he felt ridiculous. She’d made it clear that the only emotion he inspired in her was loathing.

Rae scrambled onto her knees. “Here, let me check that. You’ll be lucky if you haven’t torn it all open again.”

He grabbed her arm just before she could touch him. “Don’t,” he ordered. Then with a sigh of self-disgust, he added more calmly, “I can handle it.”

She froze, looking nonplussed for a second, then the wariness and control crept in. If he hadn’t been watching so closely, he’d have missed the hurt and vulnerability that had flickered in her eyes.

It was that tiny flicker he should be exploiting, that and the fact that she still felt compelled to help him even after their earlier confrontation. Both cracks in her guard were tools. Ways to get her to bend to his will, to agree to help him, to do what was right.

So why had his first thought been to lower his leg and prove to her that he wasn’t averse to her touch? Following swiftly on the heels of that dangerous idea had been the equally strong need to push her away. Out of his reach. Out of his mind.

More confused than he could ever remember being, Jarrett dropped her arm as if it were a live wire. He immediately shifted his attention back to his leg, acknowledging the action for the escape that it was and not giving a damn.

Rae pushed herself upright, then leaned against the wall for a moment while she worked out the kinks in her limbs.

“Yeah, you can handle it, all right, McCullough,” she said tightly as she stepped over his outstretched legs. “All of it.” Then she walked down the hallway and disappeared into the dusky shadows of the new dawn.

Rae told herself she didn’t care if he bled to death in her hallway. She stalked over to the cabinet next to the stove and yanked out the coffee canister, then dumped twice as much coffee as she normally did into her automatic coffeemaker. God knew, she needed it. “I hope he pulls every hair out of his perfectly shaped chest ripping the rest of that tape off.” She poured the water into the machine, visualizing tearing the tape off for him. Really, really slowly.

The smile this notion brought to her face quickly faded, and she fought the edges of fright ruffling her anger. Righteous anger, she told herself as she struggled to hold on to it. She knew the second she stopped focusing on the anger, the rest of it would cave in. She simply wasn’t up to dealing with such upheaval at—she glanced at the coffeemaker clock and sighed—five o’clock in the morning.

Why had she fallen asleep in the hallway? And why
oh why when she’d woken up, hadn’t she just crept down the hall and away from McCullough? She snorted under her breath. “Because you looked up and saw him standing in front of you,” she muttered. She remembered thinking that even banged up and bandaged, he’d seemed like some towering pagan god cast in evocative shadows.

She hadn’t been able to breathe for those few silent moments, much less creep away. Not that she’d even thought to, she realized now, humiliated. To complete her crashing descent into mortification, the instant she’d seen him weave with fatigue, she’d snapped out of it, but only to charge in, concern for his sorry hide literally screeching from her mouth.

“I might as well have just up and handed him the key to my soul,” she muttered in disgust. By revealing her continued concern for him, she’d given him the perfect reason to keep gunning for her help. She’d opened a vein yesterday and bled in front of him, spilling everything out. And for what?

Nothing.

She reached up to get a coffee cup out of the cabinet, digging way back for the big mug. She might need a good weapon, she told herself.

When she turned back around, she almost had a heart attack, and only barely managed to place the heavy stoneware mug on the counter instead of letting it crash to the floor.

“I wasn’t aware your soul had a key,” McCullough said, his expression calm, but his eyes glittering with a
new awareness that had the hairs on her neck rising right along with her pulse rate.

He was sitting in one of her thickly cushioned rattan breakfast-nook chairs. Actually,
sprawled
better described it. Arrogantly sprawled, she decided as she willed her heart to slow to something under two hundred beats a minute. His legs were stretched out in front of him, the thick aqua towel slung low on his hips, not quite covering the bandage on his thigh. The discolored bruise on his shoulder hardly distracted her from noticing how his big arms were crossed over his now tapeless chest and abs. She scowled at the swirls of hair still very apparent across his oh-so-perfect pecs.

“I’d make a comment about people who eavesdrop,” she said, turning her back to him and picking up the coffeepot. “But then it’s hard to appeal to the conscience of a man who doesn’t have one.”

“You’re getting very good at launching killer salvos, then walking away before assessing the damage,” he replied.

“Obviously they aren’t as killing as I’d hoped.” Having fixed her coffee, she turned her attention to wiping down the counter and putting the coffee container away.

“Truce,” he said. She spun around, but he lifted his hand to stop her retort. “Just a small one that lasts, say, as long as a decent cup of coffee?”

He shouldn’t be capable of sounding so damn reasonable, she thought. He shouldn’t look so damn good wrapped in nothing but one of her towels either, but that was beside the point. Without a word, she turned and pulled down another mug and filled it.

She crossed to the far side of the table and scooted in across to him, then moved back to the counter for hers.

“Thank you, black will be fine,” he said, his tone dry as he picked up the mug and warmed his hands with it.

“Some truce,” she shot back. She leaned against the counter, cradling her mug in her own hands. His mouth actually began to curve in a smile, and Rae panicked. She was having a hard enough time dealing with him as it was. She definitely didn’t need to allow him to add what was certain to be a killer smile to his repertoire.

“I’m going to work in my shop for a couple of hours then I’m going into town.” She was satisfied and more than a bit relieved by the immediate darkening of his expression. “It’s not up for discussion. I have to go. I assume you didn’t come up here alone and that it wasn’t by choice. I’ll watch my back and I won’t give you away. No phone calls, no unnecessary conversations.” She drained her mug swiftly and turned to the sink. Over the running water as she rinsed it out, she added, “That’s all the concessions you’re going to get from me and it’s more than I should have to give. I’ll leave by eight and be back inside of four hours.” That said, she took a breath and faced him. “Do you need help back to—” She broke off on the word
bed
, her gaze automatically dropping to the muscled leg stretched out before her “Your room?” she finished evenly, fixing her gaze on his determined to keep it there or die trying.