“What if Andy’s wrong?”

Gabe refused to let that thought snake its way in. Andy knew something. Now Gabe needed to know what. “Rarely happens.”

“You’ll understand if I don’t trust your hopeful loyalty to your baby brother.”

The same lethal baby brother who once took down a drug runner by stabbing him in the forehead. But Gabe didn’t start spouting off Andy’s resume or his own.

“Then trust me.” He’d been nothing but straight with her, even though it cost him to admit to the attraction kicking his ass. That had to count for something.

“Because we slept together.” Not a question. She said it as a statement, without judgment. Just a flat tone as she pretended to look at him but glanced past him in a check of the trees.

Part of him thought that should be enough, but he went with the more obvious answer. “Because this is what I do.”

“Fine.”

They walked faster, their boots clomping against the snow as he switched to a wider stride and pulled her along with him. “And, for the record, ‘slept’ suggests past tense, and I think we both know that’s not the case.”

“You’re awfully sure of yourself.” She matched her gait to his, never complaining, even as she grabbed on to his arm for balance.

Words ran through his head as tension built in his gut. Something was wrong. Really wrong.

He wanted her inside and behind a wall. Walking out in the open was an invitation to danger. He didn’t welcome that. “The blame is on you.”

“Of course it is,” she said in a dry tone.

“You’re the one who screamed my name the last time we were naked.” The memory pricked at him, but he blocked it. Had to. He needed all of his concentration to get inside the cabin and hunker down. Regain his bearings.

She picked up her pace even more. “Go to hell.”

A stray thought worked its way back into his mind, and he didn’t fight it. “I’d rather go back to bed.”

They reached the bottom porch step, and she practically jumped on it before turning back around to stare at him. “I have to stay alive for that to happen.”

That sobered him up. “No matter what I have to do, you will stay safe.”

She nodded. “Both of us.”

A nice idea, but he was starting to wonder. “Right.”

TEN

They’d been inside for over two hours, and Gabe hadn’t stopped pacing. He went from one cabin window to another. Since there were only three, and one amounted to little more than a slit for ventilation in the bathroom, that meant he circled. Round and round until she thought her brain might explode.

Since playing the audience seemed to be her only choice, she went with that. She balanced an elbow on the couch’s seat cushions as she sat on the floor and watched him stalk. That’s what it was. Not walking. The intensity rose well above a mere one-foot-in-front-of-the-other thing.

She rested her chin in her palm and continued to follow his set surveillance path from her seat on the floor. “You aren’t exactly inspiring confidence.”

With his back against the wall, he glanced out the window, keeping his body well behind the frame. “I’m checking for infiltration.”

Sometimes she wondered if he could stop a bullet with his bare hands. He came off as so capable and uncomplicated. The kind of guy with an ingrained set of rules and a theory about right and wrong that had more to do with practical life lessons than anything preached to him through the years.

That’s why the kid thing hit her wrong. A guy who stuck to her the way he had, despite her fighting and yelling and even attempts to ignore him, ignoring responsibility? The idea of that guy dropping off his son for a semester or a year and not looking back didn’t ring true for her.

Maybe the difference was cash. Powerful people paid him to protect her. People who insisted they were her friends, even though she’d never had many of those. No one paid him to watch over his son. Could be that made it easier to abandon him.

She shook her head and tried to clear the unwanted thoughts from her brain. How he treated his kid was none of her business. This didn’t amount to a love affair. Their time together centered on waiting out a threat, and possibly running from one, and sex. Boredom-burning, don’t-overanalyze-it sex.

And to get back to the mindless pleasure of that she needed him to step off guard duty. “No one is coming in without you knowing. Not on foot.”

He leaned his head back against the cabin wall and rubbed his eyes. “We can’t be sure.”

The man was losing it. “You’re the one who told me that.” She patted her hand against the hard floor. “Come here.”

He dropped his hand to his side and looked over at her. “I need to focus.”

She expected a haze. She got an unwavering stare. One that told her his mind had been on something other than a potential attacker. “You can’t do that here by the couch?”

“Not if I’m sitting with you.”

Big tough guy wanted sex and was determined to deny it. She’d dealt with cocky assholes her entire career. Guys who thought every word and every explanation they gave came dipped in gold. Seeing Gabe fight his attraction while trying to keep her safe turned out to be pretty endearing.

She didn’t do sweet or long. The last time a guy made a move to switch from convenient sex to something that included dinners and movies she cut him off. That was the right answer. Always the right answer. You stayed safe by staying smart. But the idea of losing herself in him for a few more days tugged at her. She just never thought she’d have to beg for it. Gabe MacIntosh was a mystery.

Instead of saying all of that or unbuttoning her shirt, she told the truth. One she struggled to understand because the concept seemed so foreign to her. “I trust your control.”

“Don’t.”

He meant sex. The guy preached pleasure and could back up the words. “You don’t strike me as someone who loses his way.”

“Usually, no.” He slid along the wall, away from the window and moved closer to her. “You’re different.”

If he let her she’d release some of that tension that caught him in a stranglehold. “How?”

“The competence.”

Well that was . . . not interesting at all. She could almost feel something inside of her deflate. “How sexy of you to notice.”

He laughed then, rich and deep, and the sound washed through the room. “It is. Trust me.”

Enough dancing around it. “Come. Here.”

“Why?” But he was already moving, coming in closer as his eyes flashed with an intense heat.

“The tension in here is about to choke us.” Much more of this and she’d drag him to the floor with her.

“Sitting will fix that?”

Damn the man was dense today. “I will fix that.”

“Something’s off.”

“What?” Whatever the sensation, it had been pricking him since they’d been outside. He stayed calm at seeing the tracks, or the not-really-tracks, but then something changed. A snap, and his mood morphed into something dark and almost paranoid.

“It’s a feeling, really. Like danger is coming and I need to be ready.”

She waited for her instincts to kick into gear and . . . nothing. She’d been so sure at the start of all this that the answer was to run off alone and hide. Somehow start her new, boring life that she hadn’t been trained to handle. No other option made sense, and dragging someone into her mess seemed ridiculous. But here, in the cabin with him, she felt at ease. The usual panic and need to plan an exit strategy didn’t hit her.

She sensed, even with someone lurking around out there, they were safe. At least for now. Which meant she needed to concentrate on him. “You can stare at the door the whole time.”

He shook his head as a smile inched up one side of his mouth. “I know I’ve said it before, but you are so fucking tempting. You say these things and all I want to do is get you naked.”