The knowledge that she’d wasted the past three years avoiding him infuriated her. She’d lain alone, staring into the darkness, aching for him. She’d watched for him each time she left the house and dreamed of him when she slept.
“This will be over soon, Sallie,” he suddenly promised her, reaching out to grip her hand where it laid on her lap, his fingers twining with hers. “And when it is, you have some big choices to make because I don’t intend to let you go. Not this time. Not for a second.”
She stared at where his larger, broader fingers held hers, his grip gentle but firm. The ridged calluses and roughened flesh could bestow the greatest pleasure … or kill when needed.
The fact that he not only could but would kill in defense of her should have caused at least mild trepidation, instead, the thought of that protectiveness, that determination to keep her safe, wrapped her in reassurance.
“I don’t want you to let me go, Jacob,” she told him, staring at his profile and the rough handsomeness that had always drawn her. “Not ever again.”
She loved him.
She loved him so much that she feared losing him again would be more than she’d ever be able to survive. But loving him meant the secrets she’d kept to herself and refused to share with him, would have to be told, soon. Before Jacob managed to find John and her ex-husband revealed them himself.
When they got back to the ranch, she’d tell him then. It wasn’t a discussion she could have in the truck, and she didn’t want to discuss at her house, not when Jacob felt it important to get back to where he felt she was most secure.
As he held her hand, she was aware of him talking in a low tone through the Bluetooth he wore, with the men he’d had watching her house. Evidently everything was secure because she heard him assure whoever he was talking to that they were minutes away.
Some clothes, the duffel bag she kept in her closet in case she had to run at a moment’s notice. The bag held the pictures important to her. Those of her parents before her father’s death, a few of friends, Sister Rebecca, and several of her with her father when she was an infant. Some jewelry passed down from her paternal grandmother, a baby blanket. A small snapshot she’d taken of Jacob in the hotel room in Switzerland when he hadn’t known what she was doing.
His expression had been unguarded, and she’d always told herself what she saw there was love. She’d fallen in love with in those three days, surely he’d loved her just a little. Then, when he hadn’t returned, she’d held on to the memories, to what he’d given her rather than the fact that he hadn’t returned.
“Here we are.” Jacob’s announcement broke into her thoughts.
She lifted her head as he released her hand and watched as he drove the truck into her driveway and beneath the carport just outside the kitchen door. Once he parked, he talked to whoever was in the house again, letting them know he was there.
“Try to hurry, baby,” he told her, his gaze going over the surroundings as he slid from the truck and motioned her out on his side.
Sallie nodded as she scooted across the seat and let him help her out. His arm went around her back and she noticed how he seemed to try to cover her at every possible angle before opening the door to the kitchen and pushing her inside.
Sallie paused after he closed the door, looking around the dimly lit house she’d bought when she learned Jacob lived in the area. She’d bought the furniture herself, decorated it, had begun to feel as though it was home.
“I bought the house just after I realized you lived here,” she told him, walking slowly across the room, her fingers trailing over the back of a chair with its pretty pale blue chair pad. “I’d never considered buying a house before that.”
It had nearly broken her the day she’d been introduced to him and realized he didn’t remember her.
She realized then that as much as she still loved the house, she loved Jacob’s house perhaps more, because he was there. Because she could feel him in every room even when he wasn’t there.
“I knew you were mine when I first glimpsed you in town, weeks before that,” he told her, following her as she moved through the house. “If other things hadn’t been going on at the time, then I would have realized my familiarity with you had to have a reason. By time I could focus on it, I’d had you in my head for more than a month. You were a part of me.”
He’d been dealing with terrorists and human traffickers and members of the town who had been involved in transporting both, she knew. The battle in the mountains outside Deer Haven hadn’t been given news coverage, it had been kept quiet, but still, gossip and Deer Haven, as Tara was wont to say, were like the best of friends and the worst of enemies.
“I have my stuff in the bedroom,” she told him, moving into the hall. “I keep it together, just in case I had to run fast I wouldn’t lose any of it.”
She went to the closet and pulled the duffel bag from inside, along with her suitcase. The suitcase wasn’t a large one, but it would hold enough clothes for about five days. With those at Jacob’s house, she’d be okay until she could come back to get the rest.
As she packed, she was aware of Jacob standing close to the door, appearing relaxed, in no hurry. She swore she could feel the tension emanating from him, though. He didn’t pace, or scowl, or look impatient. He looked as though he didn’t have a care in the world other than waiting for her to pack.
Once her clothes were packed, she put hiking and riding boots in, just in case she needed them and closed the case. As she snapped the locks in place, she turned just in time to catch a glimpse of Jacob flying across the distance to slam into her.
They went to the floor. Hooking an arm around her waist, Jacob dragged her to the other side of the bed as a weapon exploded into the silence. Several shots, the feel of bullets digging into the floor as Jacob cursed furiously.
“Stay down,” he hissed, returning fire as Sallie scrabbled along the floor as he kept pushing her toward the bed table and the window at the side of the room.
Where were the ranch hands he’d had in the house? She hadn’t heard anything. No struggle, no warning.
Terror tore through her, nearly stealing her breath as she huddled at the corner of the bed and the table, suddenly thankful she’d picked a bed with drawers at its base, rather than a traditional one. At least there was some protection.
“Your men are down, Donovan,” a familiar male voice called into the room. “They looked like good men too. Oh well.”
Ray Masser?
Her stepfather’s aide?
Sallie wanted to shake her head, to force it to make sense. What was he doing there and why was he shooting at them?
Jacob didn’t react. She watched as he reached to the ear that held the Bluetooth in place.
“Phone’s not working,” Jacob said, barely a breath of sound. “Jammed.”
Lowering his hand, lying flat against the floor, he glanced at her, and her breath caught at the predatory purpose in his face.
“It’s Ray?” She could barely breathe, let alone put enough sound to her voice to even approach a whisper.
He gave a brief nod before motioning her to silence.
Sallie laid her face against the floor, fighting to hold in her sobs, her fear. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She should have never stayed. Oh God, what if something happened to Jacob? What if they took him from her forever?