Taken by Surprise (12 page)

"The first threat?" Rhonda's eyes narrowed more.

Leave it to her to pick up on what he said. He ignored her quizzical stare. "I underestimated Phay, wrongly anticipated his plans. I messed up." How many times in his life had he made that confession? Not many.

"You messed up by not staying away to start with."

Frick, did she really have to agree with him?

"We went our separate ways that afternoon at the docks. That should've been it. You wouldn't let it be it."

"Is that why you didn't call me, send me a freaking e-mail to tell me you split with Preston?" Michael heard the frustration rising in his voice again and let it fly. "You didn't tell me because you wanted me to stay away? You're not the only one with things to be pissed about here, Rhonda. I wanted you. Damn it, you knew I wanted you from that first second. You knew, and you couldn't even pick up the phone and say, 'Hey, I finally dumped the dirtbag. How about we go for a friendly drink and talk research?'"

* * * *

Rhonda had never seen Michael look the way he did at this moment, furiously sexy, powerfully passionate, and sinfully tempting as all hell. She wanted to launch herself into his arms and take him to the ground, where she would ravish him like the beast inside her wanted. Even as the energies pulsed off him in waves, arousing her to the point of panty-creaming desire, his angry words deflated her resolve.

Yes, she had known he wanted her. She hadn't figured out how badly or precisely what he wanted her for—a bout of hot, sweaty sex in a race to Hormonal Paradise or a cool get-to-know-you climb up Forever Mountain—but she'd known.

"I was scared to tell you," she heard herself whisper. She saw his head jerk as a dazed shock came over his expression. The enormity of the want she experienced for him terrified her to her toes.

He opened his mouth, seemed unable to find the words he wanted to say, and dragged a frustrated hand through his already mussed dark hair. She knew how his hair felt sliding through her fingers, remembered tangling the silky strands in her hand as she held his face to her aching pussy. She wished she could do it again, longed to distract him by pleading for mercy, asking to forget as she had last night.

It worked then, but it wouldn't now. He deserved to know why she didn't tell him, even if it meant exposing her every fear, every doubt, every ounce of vulnerability. He served as a pillar of strength that she could relax against if only she let herself, if he allowed her. Much of the last few years had been about learning to lean only on herself. Explaining didn't mean giving in. It only meant proving her choices made sense.

He turned his back on her. She held her tongue for another minute, watching, waiting, giving them both time to let the anger calm and the surprise to settle. Even through the material of his black T-shirt, she could see the taut muscles of his broad shoulders and back. She balled her fists at her sides to keep herself from walking up behind him, flattening her hands on his back, leaning in to trace that corded line between his shoulder blades with her nose. Despite their exertion of the last hours, she knew from being so close to him in the night that he still smelled like Michael. Acutely male, powerful, and oozing with a strength she not only wanted to suffocate in, but allow herself to depend on. Her desire for the last proved a large cause for the fear she felt in his presence.

"Why?" Michael turned to her. The bewilderment in his tone betrayed his inscrutable face. "You said the same thing last night. You've always been scared of me. Being with me like this, like we were last night, scares you even more. But you didn't tell me why."

Rhonda licked her lips, swallowed. "Don't we need to keep moving? I'm not a great judge of distance, but I know we couldn't have made it far this morning."

"Rhonda." The exasperated warning in his tone almost made her laugh.

"I'm not dodging your question," she said quickly. "My primary goal of getting out of this freaking forest hasn’t changed, though. Have you checked your watch lately?"

"I have. The minutes are rolling by, but we'll still make the extraction point on time."

"Let's ensure we do. I might be blonde, but I can walk and talk at the same time."

"Nice." There was almost a trace of amusement in the word as he held out a hand for her.

Rhonda glanced at it, looked back at him, and hesitantly laced her fingers through his larger ones. The contact felt wonderfully warm, his palm slightly rough and reminding her that, while he spent the better part of his time at the agency behind his desk, he didn't balk at the chance to get out in the field.

She drew in a deep breath as they started to walk. By the light of the day, she realized there wasn't an actual path for them to follow. It had felt different before, like they walked along a preset course or a trail rutted through an enchanted forest of silvery moon and predawn light. She felt pretty certain they had begun their journey following a predetermined path. Then she remembered how Michael seemed to lead her in a circle before veering off sharply after their scare with the pangolin. He'd done it to throw off anyone that might have been following them, ensuring when he told her that her back was safe, it wasn't a lie.

Now, a tapestry of foliage created a canopy over any path that may once have existed. They reached an area of the forest where the ground felt carpeted by tender ferns, making it easier for her to walk on her injured feet. A kaleidoscope of colors greeted her as the trees parted enough that she didn't have to stay behind Michael anymore. She stepped lightly, more adjacently to his right. His steps were only a fraction in front of hers. His arm brushed her breasts every few steps, drawing her nipples to a beaded peak of burning desire.

"I didn't have any minutes on my cell phone the night Preston left." She let her attention travel as she talked, as they walked. She gave herself the time to truly enjoy the life around her, the peacefulness of the fantastical greens, wondrous sounds, and encouraging strength. She absorbed the energies she felt wafting from Mother Nature and found the words to keep talking. "I know that sounds like a lame excuse for not calling you," she said after a long moment. It saved her, though, stopped her and made her think.

"Considering the day and age in which we live, the fact that you had my e-mail address, knew where I worked and how to get there, et cetera, et cetera, yeah, it sounds pretty lame."

"I didn't have any left because Preston used them all talking with his ex-girlfriend from nine and a half years ago."

Well, that got Michael's attention. She shot him a look as his step faltered and he tripped over a tree root. His grip tightened on her hand as he regained his balance. "He was cheating on you?"

Rhonda considered that for a long moment and then shook her head. "I don't know. He never would tell me one way or another. The thing is, it didn't matter. My marriage ended years ago."

"You stayed for Lucas, tried to make it work so that your son could be raised in a home with both his parents."

She did. For more than six years of the total nine and a half, she stuck it out, attempted to find a happiness she could live with, to uncover a larger reason to stay. Instead, she found every reason to go.

"That's admirable. It shows your love for your son, your concern for his well-being, even over your own. Sadly, there are few children lucky enough to grow up with even one parent who loves him that much."

Like you?
She didn't ask, because she already knew the answer. He told her once about his childhood, how his parents gave him up as a toddler to a system that tossed him around until his grandfather found him, fought for him. Three days before Michael's eighteenth birthday, his grandfather passed away. Michael found himself alone in a bottomless grief he combated by taking the opportunities his grandfather had opened for him and carrying them through to his career with the DEA.

"I left for the same reason, for Lucas. For myself, too, of course, but I realized my endeavors to forge something out of the debacle my marriage became actually began causing more harm to him than anything." She gave Michael's hand a furtive squeeze to draw attention to her next statement. "I started realizing that a few days before I met you."

Michael made a noncommittal sound, and then he said, "Some timing, huh?"

She had pondered over that, wondered if she should see it as a sort of sign. Despite her unhappiness, her search for a solution, there had never been anyone but Preston. She hadn't been able to see past him, hadn't noticed another man until Michael. When she did, she knew in an instant her feelings for him would threaten the plans she had nurtured for years, plans she had put into play even before leaving Preston.

Just in case.

"Lucas told me something that really put the icing on the proverbial cake. He said I needed to find someone who would treat me better, that I should divorce his father. He said I would be happier, that we would both be happier." He'd been seven at the time, a few days before his eighth birthday.

"Smart kid," Michael commented and pulled her behind him as the space between two lines of trees narrowed.

"He is that," Rhonda agreed. She stumbled slightly in her effort to keep up with his long strides while not stepping on his heels in the process. "The thing is, when a child says something like that, you know things aren't right." She waited until the trees opened up once more, until she could walk almost alongside Michael again, before she continued. "So I took his advice. Well, I took comfort in knowing that, even though he would miss his father despite what he said, leaving would be best for us both."

"You've said you don't have any regrets."

"I don't," Rhonda confirmed quickly. She laughed, a quick burst of air. "I can't remember being as happy as I've been since leaving Preston. Sometimes I wonder what awful thing is going to happen to ruin it. You know, like it's all too good to be true."

"You shouldn't think that way. You deserve to be happy, Rhonda."

She scrutinized him for several heartbeats. A bead of sweat trickled down his hairline. She followed it with her gaze until it passed over the pulse throbbing at the base of his neck. He looked determined, the anger from earlier still simmering just below the surface. Her explanations weren't helping to calm the boil.

"I know I do," she told him with supreme confidence. "I deserve better than what I had with Preston. I've found better."

"Alone." Michael's grip on her hand didn't change, but the despondent shadow in his eyes when he glanced at her spoke volumes. "Or rather, with just you and Lucas."

"See, that's where the turmoil starts." Needing to touch more of him, she flattened her free hand on his shoulder slightly below the bullet wound. Maybe if she willed it, he would feel the emotions behind her words as much as hear them. "I've accomplished a lot in the last two years. I've turned my writing into a full-time career that almost totally supports myself and Lucas. I only work two nights a week at the restaurant these days. I've bought a house, a car. I've showed Lucas that the world revolves around more sunlight than gloom, that all the negativity that weighted us down had nothing to do with us. I would never flat out tell him Preston caused all that, but he knows without my saying it." She paused, her heart picking up a steady cadence in her chest as she hesitated to put voice to the admission she often struggled to ignore. "I've done so much, and I did it all while fighting aloneness that threatened to make me fail."

Damn it, her voice wobbled. She didn't want sympathy or compassion. She wanted understanding. He didn't give her any of that. Instead, he shot her one of the coldest looks she thought she had ever seen on his handsome face. She sucked in a quick breath, dropped the hand on his shoulder to her side.

"You never had to be alone."

"You're wrong. I did." The time she'd spent with Michael as friends only reinforced how much she needed it. As angry as he'd made her by cutting contact the way he did, she had felt herself growing less focused on her quest to find contentment alone and more interested in spending time with him. "My marriage taught me a lot of things I couldn't afford to ignore. I vowed to learn from my mistakes. The biggest of which has always been the need to have a man in my life. I've never looked for one to support me. It's a good thing, too, because Preston was a miserable failure at that. Still, I've never been happy just being me, just being, well,
alone
. A strong woman doesn't need a man in her life to be happy. I needed to find that strength."

She paused again, half hoping he would say something, half scared of what it might be. When he continued to glide purposely along, hand still gripping hers in a firm but sure hold, focus seemingly locked on the endless trees ahead, she sighed.

"I needed that time to put the past behind me, to learn to truly stand on my own, to give Lucas a life without the interference of another man in our lives. That's why I didn't call you when I left Preston. I was afraid of rebounding, and, yes, I knew you had a pair of strong arms ready to catch me if I came bouncing your way."

She had wanted to bounce. Deflating the urge to do exactly that had tested her willpower beyond measure. Despite Preston's lack of dependability in almost every area, she still found herself counting on him if only to simply be that bump on a log, that constant in her life.

"I promised myself when I finally left Preston that I would never be dependent on anyone again. I had to know I could make it on my own."

Michael stopped so abruptly she plowed into the back of his shoulder. The hand that held hers guided her arm behind her back as he turned, snaking his arm around her waist. He drew her impossibly close, embraced her deliciously tight, and the swirl of emotions in his eyes,
gods
, she nearly whimpered at the sight.

Her body fit perfectly against him, her pliant curves to his chiseled lines. A single thought skittered through her mind.

This is where I belong
.

After all she had gone through, all she'd achieved, she knew it to be true. She firmly believed in fate, the will of the gods. The path she had followed led her straight into this man's arms.

Straight to where I belong
.

"You feel confident you've learned the things you wanted to know?" His tone dropped so low, turned so husky it made him sound sinfully dangerous, amazingly sexy.

Rhonda tried to swallow, tried to speak. She failed at both and settled on a nod.