Tempt Me. Caroline Cross

evergreen tree.

      Taggart’s head hit the door frame with a sickening crunch.

      Genevieve watched with a mixture of awe and horror as he slumped, his big body suddenly as limp as a rag doll’s. Dear God, what if he’s dead?

      Fast on the heels of that thought came another. Dear God. What if he’s not?

      Three

      Taggart surfaced slowly.

      As he did, several things seemed noteworthy. One was that his head felt as if a stake were being driven through it.

      The other was that somebody—a woman, judging from her soft voice and even softer hands—was touching him. “Come on now,” she murmured, her husky voice tickling along his spine while her fingers sifted featherlight through the hair at his temple. “It’s time to quit fooling around. Wake up now. I know you can do it.”

      She knew he could do it. Her faith gave him pause. The first and last female to unswervingly believe in him had been his mother. Yet he knew damn well that the woman murmuring to him wasn’t Mary Moriarity Steele.

      She smelled entirely different, for one thing, like sunshine and soap instead of lavender and baby powder. Plus her hands were smaller and her voice was lower. Besides, his mother had been gone…

      How long? Drawing a blank, he struggled to punch through the fog hazing his brain. For a frustrating moment his mind remained shrouded and sluggish. Then the knowledge abruptly bubbled up.

      Twenty years. She’d died twenty years ago last month, the anniversary of her passing falling on the day after his thirty-third birthday.

      What’s more, with another burst of returning memory he knew that it was Genevieve Bowen who was showing him such gentle concern. He recognized her voice at the same instant the recollection of tossing her over his shoulder and heading for her truck came rushing back at him. Yet after that…Nothing.

      He didn’t have a single, solitary doubt who was to blame.

      Marshaling his strength, he opened his eyes. He felt a perverse flicker of satisfaction as his quarry—hell, no, his prisoner—sucked in a startled breath and jerked back, snatching her hand away from his face.

      “Genevieve.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded raspy.

      “You’re back.”

      “Yeah.” He blinked, tried to make sense of the timbered ceiling above his head and failed. With a prickle of uneasiness, he realized he was lying on a bed in a room he’d never seen before.

      “How do you feel?”

      He told himself to focus. Okay, so his brain seemed to be a few cards short of a full deck and he had a son of a bitch of a headache—so what? He’d survived worse. He concentrated on what he did remember and tossed out an educated guess. “The truck. There was an accident.”

      “Yes.” She nodded. “There was a deer. In the road. You swerved to avoid it and hit a tree.”

      “I knew that,” he lied. “What I meant was—how long have I been out?”

      “You don’t remember?”

      “No.”

      A spark of something—it looked a lot like compassion except he knew damn well that couldn’t be right—flared in her eyes. “You’ve been in and out, but mostly out, the past hour. And in case you’re wondering, you’re in the cabin. My great-uncle’s cabin.”

      Of course. He glanced around, taking note of the comfortable-looking furniture, the fire dancing cheerfully behind the glass doors of a big stone fireplace, the stretch of windows looking out on the jagged Montana peaks stabbing into the sky. Bringing his gaze back to her, he wondered how she’d managed to get him inside, given that he was twice her size, then decided there was a different question he was far more curious about. “And you’re still here…why?”

      She was silent a moment, then gave a dismissive little shrug. “You took a pretty nasty knock to the head. I couldn’t just go off and leave you. Not until I was sure you were okay.”

      Yeah, right. Pollyanna reputation or not, she wasn’t stupid and nobody was that good-hearted. More likely she was tired of being hunted and, having finally come face-to-face with what she was up against—that would be him—had realized the futility of continuing to run.

      Then again, she’d saved him a boatload of aggravation by hanging around. If she wanted to pretend she was Doris Do-right, what the hell did he care? He inclined his chin a fraction, ignoring the ensuing howl of protest from his aching head. “Thanks.”

      “You’re welcome.” Even as she took a step back, putting a little more distance between them, an uncertain smile kissed the corners of her full mouth.

      He scowled as part of him that was unapologetically male whispered pretty. Reminding himself sharply that she was his assignment, not his date, for God’s sake—and he never mixed his personal and professional lives—he stared expressionlessly at her. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said flatly as he carefully pushed himself upright. “You’re still my prisoner and I’m—what the hell?”

      Something heavy was dragging at his arm. He sensed Bowen moving even farther away as he glanced down, confounded to see that a handcuff was locked around his left wrist. What’s more, the adjoining stainless-steel bracelet had been threaded through the end links of a heavy chain that had been passed around the end support of the massive built-in bed frame.

      He was trapped like a wolf in a snare.

      Ignoring the pounding in his head, he didn’t think but acted, launching himself at his one chance at freedom.

      He was within inches of grabbing her when it dawned on him that instead of bolting the way she ought to be, his nemesis was holding her ground, and a warning shrieked through his brain.

      Too late. Unable to check himself, he reached the end of his tether and was damn near jerked off his feet.

      The handcuff cut into his wrist. His arm felt as if it was being ripped from his shoulder. Then his momentum snapped him around and his head exploded in agony.

      Gritting his teeth against the howl crowding his throat, he staggered back the way he’d come, braced himself against the bed frame and sank down onto the quilt-covered mattress.

      So much for his luck having changed, he thought savagely. With a snap of her fingers, Lady Fortune had snatched away success and turned him from victor to casualty, from hunter to captive.

      It was a road he’d traveled before, he reminded himself. Under far worse circumstances, with far graver consequences.

      But he wasn’t going to think about that. It was over. In the past. Beyond his reach to change. He needed to focus on the here and now. On Genevieve.

      Locking firmly onto that single thought, he squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to hold perfectly still as he waited for the worst of the pain to pass.

      Enduring, after all, was what he did best.

      “Here.” Genevieve set the pill bottle and the glass of water on the nightstand, all the while keeping a wary eye on the big man hunched on the bed. “This should help.”

      Mindful of the terrifying show of speed and strength he’d put on just minutes earlier, she quickly stepped back out of reach. And waited.

      Nothing. He continued to sit perfectly still, head slumped, eyes shut, broad shoulders rigid.

      “It’s ibuprofen. My first aid book says that’s okay for someone in your condition.”

      Still no reaction. With an inner shrug, she decided that if he wanted to imitate a boulder there was nothing she could do about it. She’d give it one more try; then she was done.

      “If you think a cold compress would help, let me know. The fridge hasn’t been