Undercover Refuge. Melinda Di Lorenzo

I’m still here. And I’m pretty sure you’re still lost.” He took two more steps.

      “I’m not lost,” she told him. “I’m right down—”

      Whatever else she said was swept away as Rush took another step, then fell.

      Not over.

      Not in a tumble or a trip.

       Down.

      An undignified holler and a stream of curses escaped his mouth. His back bumped painfully over dirt and roots and God knew what else and he scraped his way—down, down, down—into what appeared to be a pit in the middle of the forest floor. At the bottom, he hit the ground hard enough to rattle his teeth and cut away his breath. Remarkably, he was sure he wasn’t otherwise hurt.

      He tried to inhale. To regain some sense of control. Instead, when he opened his eyes, the oxygen whipped out of his lungs again. The redhead sat in front of him, and her hair had ripped out of its bun, her lips were parted in surprise, and her gaze—the biggest, bluest one he’d ever seen—was fixed on him. Drawing him in. Holding him there. It gave Rush the strangest conflict of emotion he’d ever experienced.

      Part of him was angry all over again. This woman, whose name he didn’t even know, had ruined his whole day. More than ruined it. She’d sent him barreling needlessly through the back roads that surrounded Whispering Woods. Then somehow got him to set aside reason and self-preservation in the name of coming back for her. Both of which stopped him from meeting with Jesse Garibaldi and pared down his chances of making the headway he’d been hoping to make. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she now had him stuck in a literal hole. Probably eight feet down.

      But in spite of it all, another, surprisingly forceful part of him wondered if being lost in her eyes might actually be worth it.

      * * *

      The small space was suddenly much smaller. And for a several moments, the forced intimacy was almost overwhelming. Crouched down the way they were, there was only room for a few scant inches between Alessandra and the man who’d slid to a stop just in front of her. In fact, the space between their knees was nearly nonexistent. Alessandra could feel the heat of his body, the air a conduit from the denim of his jeans to the cotton of her pants. She was sure that the slightest shift would result in a touch. And for some reason, the idea sent her heart thumping.

      You should be scared, a small voice in her head pointed out. The man has a gun. And he’s probably even less impressed now than he was when he pulled up in the truck.

      Unconsciously, she dropped her gaze to the holster at his hip. The weapon was still there. But it didn’t worry her. Mostly because she spied something that was a greater concern. Something that should probably have been the first thing she realized. Something that seemed impossible to have missed, even in the wild, dirt-flying moment.

      The man’s fall had caused an automatic reaction on her part. She’d shot out a hand, maybe to steady him, maybe to reassure him, it was hard to say. Either way, the result was the same. Her fingers were wrapped around his wrist. And for the life of her, Alessandra couldn’t get her brain to make them unfurl to release him.

      She drew in a sharp breath as she tried to make her hand cooperate. The inhale was a mistake. Her nose immediately filled with a woodsy, masculine scent. It mingled with the smell of damp, loose dirt. And even though Alessandra had been an ocean girl her whole life—raised on the beaches of the Washington coast—and loved the salt-tinged ocean air, the pleasant, earthy aroma struck a chord somewhere inside her.

      Startled by the sensation, she jerked her head up, which earned her the first full view of the truck driver’s face. He was no less attractive up close, either. And there was something about his appearance that perfectly matched his scent.

      In the somewhat muted light—filtered and cooled by the trees overhead—she could see that his eyes were deep, deep brown. The color of freshly brewed coffee. Alessandra’s favorite indulgence. A steaming cup on a cool morning. They were just as warm and inviting, too. She’d also been right about his age. In spite of the sweep of gray across his temple and the matching smattering of white in his beard, he definitely wasn’t much over thirty, if at all.

      Alessandra’s stare fell to the slash of pink that cut through his thick stubble. His lips. Not excessively full, but somehow appealing. She could easily picture them curling up in a smile. Parting as he laughed at some piece of dry wit. And—in a surprising turn of her mind—she could imagine the feel of them, too. Soft but firm. Warm like his skin under her fingers.

      Embarrassed, Alessandra jerked her eyes away from his mouth. But when her gaze found his eyes again, she saw that the warmth she’d spied before was gone. In its place was careful neutrality.

      A mask, she thought, even though she had no reason to assume a single thing about the stranger’s state of mind. Or maybe a shield.

      But when he spoke, it was with just enough antagonism that she suspected she was right.

      “Why in God’s name didn’t you warn me?” he growled.

      “I did scream,” she reminded him, at last able to drop her hand from his wrist.

      “Yeah. In a way that made me think you’d been attacked. Not in a way that made me think, ‘Hey, I fell into a hole, so be careful.’ Which might’ve been more prudent.”

      “Prudence wasn’t foremost on my mind.”

      “No?”

      “No. I was a little preoccupied with not wanting to get shot.”

      “Is there some reason why someone you’ve never met might want to shoot you?”

      Try as she might, Alessandra couldn’t stop her mind from slipping to the note and to everything that she’d experienced since finding it. And it made the question strike a nerve.

      “Is there a reason why you might pull a gun on someone you’ve never met?” she countered.

      He didn’t react, except to divert the conversation from the question by tipping his face toward the opening above them and muttering, “I need to get out of here.”

      “I think you mean we need to get out of here,” Alessandra corrected, inching back so she could push herself to her feet and look up. “Because it’s definitely going to take two of us.”

      He grunted an acknowledgment, then stood up as well. And even though the opposite should’ve been true, it made the space between them smaller. Or maybe it was just an illusion, created by the fact that now, instead of sitting across from him, she was standing nearly flush against him. They weren’t touching, but she could still feel his strength. He was compact but solid. Probably just barely topping six feet—not that much taller than her own five-foot-nine height. But his body had a palpable denseness. Like every bit of him packed a muscle-bound punch. It was impossible not to be aware of it.

      Alessandra tried anyway. She stared up for a second more, and a solution popped to mind. What she needed was a good old-fashioned boost. Of course, getting one would involve deliberately being in physical contact with the gruff stranger. Being near enough to know just how deep that woodsy scent of his ran, and to confirm that he was as solid as she presumed him to be. But it was still the easiest and most logical answer. So she cleared her throat, preparing to suggest it.

      But when she spoke, something entirely unplanned came out instead. “I feel like I need to tell you something. In the name of transparency. Because it’s my fault you’re down here. And if I don’t say something, then I feel like I’m doing you a disservice.”

      His brown eyes were unreadable when he looked down at her, but he was near enough that she could feel the slight increase in tension in his body.

      “All right,” he said evenly. “Tell me.”

      “It was kind of a lie,” Alessandra replied.

      “What