“Nick-”
“I’m not going to walk away, Danielle. Not until you’re okay. Don’t ask me to.”
“I have to.”
His eyes were dark. “Is that what you want?”
“I’m sure we both want that.”
“Don’t speak for me,” he said with his first hint of temper. “I’m asking you. Is that what you really want?”
“Yes,” she whispered, then covered her eyes. “Yes. God.” She looked at him again. He’d been so quick to mask his surprise and hurt, she wasn’t sure she’d even seen it. “It’s for the best, Nick, for you to go back to your life.”
“I never did like what was best for me,” he said, and just like that something inside her warmed. “You realize Ted knows you’re here, in the area.”
“Yes.” She was trying not to panic, not to look over her shoulder at every little sound.
“Let’s check out of the hotel, then find another place to go while we figure out what to do.”
“That’s a lot of ‘we’ stuff.”
“Yeah.” His eyes dared her to say more, and suddenly, she didn’t want to.
What she
His brow raised, and he sent her that slow, sure, sexy smile that never failed to melt her as his strong, warm arms came around her. “Such as…?” His mouth nuzzled her ear, and light-headed already, she tipped her head to the side to give him more room.
“Such as this,” she practically purred. “This is good ‘we’ stuff.”
“Mmm.” His fingers danced up her ribs. “So the ‘we’ is working for you?”
“At the moment…” Good Lord, his mouth. “Only because I like the way you kiss,” she warned breathlessly.
Against her skin, he grinned. “I can live with that.”
“Just so you know…” She broke off with a moan as he’d found a spot on her collarbone that made her writhe. “Soon as I’m done letting you kiss me, I’m done with the ‘we.”’
Laughing, he pulled her even closer. “Give it your best shot, sweetheart. Give it your best shot.”
“SO WHAT’S THE PLAN? Drive as far as the tank will take us?”
Nick smiled as he drove. “You’re a planner. I didn’t know that about you.”
“You don’t know a lot about me.” Danielle smiled back at him from the passenger seat of his truck, though he knew her well enough now to see past the dazzling beauty to the nerves shimmering beneath.
What was it about her that made him want to soothe? Protect? He put a hand on her knee, needing the contact in a way that no longer surprised him. “Which reminds me, I’d like to know more about you.”
“Other than I’m a wanted woman?”
Her quip didn’t fool him. She was scared and unsettled and it infuriated him that her life had come to this. “What have you been doing since high school?” he asked, thinking to distract her. Hell, if she opened up to him in the process, so much the better. “Other than handling dogs, that is. College? Travel? What?”
“No college.” She looked out the window. “No money for that, and my grades weren’t the greatest. I had a hard time keeping up with school-work, with working odd jobs at night.”
He’d known that money had been tight and cursed himself for bringing up bad memories. “I’m surprised you stuck around.”
She lifted a shoulder. “I’ve traveled. As a dog handler for the rich and bored, I’ve taken dogs all over the country to show them, and it’s been fun.”
“Been?”
She shot him a sad smile that stabbed right into his heart. “I’m not going to ever be a handler again, not after this.”
“Is there something else that would make you as happy?”
She studied the countryside whipping past them. “I’ll probably take any job for now, just because I’ve grown fond of eating.”
Nick contemplated that while his gut clenched. He wasn’t rich, but he’d never worried about things like having a roof over his head or food in his belly. He’d grown up with few worries and supportive parents who’d seen to it he had the confidence and skills to get through life on his own.
Danielle had the skills, she’d been on her own for far longer than he probably knew or really understood. But how many people had ever believed in her? Encouraged her?
“When I find a permanent place to settle down,” she said, “I’d like to save up, go to school.” She glanced at him for his reaction. As if maybe she expected him to discourage her. “I’m going to become a veterinarian.”
It wasn’t hard to smile at that. “You’d make a great vet.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah. You’ve got the right stuff.” His grin widened. “And a great bedside manner.”
She grinned back, looking relieved, and with far less nerves than before. “I think I’d make a great vet, too. You could get yourself a dog, you know, and then come see me once in a while for checkups.”
Well, if that didn’t bring reality crashing back, he didn’t know what did. Soon enough-and if she had her way it would be today-they would part ways.
He’d go back to the job he was no longer certain he wanted, and she would make a new life for herself.
A new life quite far away. Their paths might not cross for another fifteen years.
He didn’t like the way his stomach dropped at that thought. “I’m not big on dogs.” He glanced at Sadie in the rearview mirror, and oddly enough, felt a twinge at not seeing her again, either.
Oh boy, he was going soft. “When I’m working, I’m on the road. I couldn’t have a pet.” He felt her studying him intently and wondered what she saw when she looked at him like that. Turning his head he met her gaze. “What?”
“Do you miss your job?”
“Of course,” he said automatically, but even as the words left his mouth, they didn’t feel right. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I’ve been on the go for so long I’ve forgotten what it was like to slow down and smell the roses.”
“You haven’t slowed down since I walked in your door.”
“True.” He laughed. “But even this pace is practically resting compared to how it is when I’m working. To be honest, this relaxing thing, it’s…nice.”
“What would you do if you weren’t racing across the globe for the next story?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are we having a midlife crisis, Nick?”
“Bite your tongue. I’m not ready for middle age. Besides, I still have two weeks left on vacation to think about it.”
“I’m not taking up the rest of your two weeks. Maybe the rest of today…”
“Cooper’s Corner,” he said suddenly. “It’s where I want to take you.”
“Where?”
“It’s a couple of hours north of here, not too far. I have a couple of cousins there. They’re getting ready to open a bed-and-breakfast.”
She frowned. “I was thinking a lot farther away than that.”
Yeah, he knew that, but he didn’t like the thought of her far away, possibly in another state, completely on her own with no one to turn to.
She bit her lip and considered. “But I do want to go see the woman I got Sadie from. She lives north, too.”
“Okay, so we stay in Cooper’s Corner while you do that.”
“And then I’ll go.”
And then, from there, she’d go. God, how was he supposed to let her go? “Danielle…” He glanced over before taking his gaze back to the road. “My cousin Maureen, you’ll meet her. She used to be a cop.”
She stiffened. “Nick-”
“She’s good, Danielle.”
