Prey

sworn he’d been wearing one when they’d lain down, but… not now. Some time during the night he must have gotten too warm, and she’d been too out of it to wake up when he’d taken it off. She gaped at him, at the way the light gleamed on the powerful curve of his shoulders, the sinewy, vein-laced muscles in his arms. A dark patch of hair decorated the middle of his chest, spread lightly over his pecs. There was a scar on his right shoulder that ran in a jagged line about three inches long, but it was an old scar, smoothed by time to nothing more than a silver line. It was, nevertheless, a silent reminder that the man next to her was a warrior, a man who had seen battle and been shaped by it. He’d been wounded, he’d faced death, he’d maybe, probably, caused death. He’d know and understand strategy, and he’d go into any situation determined to win.

More rattled than seeing a half-naked man warranted, Angie squirmed, then casually tossed an arm over her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at him, but not because he was too hard on the eyes. Too much the opposite, in fact, so much so that seeing him like that interfered with her thought processes.

“After everything that’s happened, I have enough nightmare fodder to last me a lifetime, including sleeping with you.” She tried to sound insulting, but it didn’t work. Being so close to all that muscle had obviously fried her brain, because she couldn’t stop a teasing smile from quirking her lips. Teasing? Oh, God, was she actually trying to flirt with him? She needed to slap herself completely awake, and back to sanity, because otherwise she was just going to make a total fool of herself.

He laughed. Dare laughed. Despite the danger of seeing all that skin, Angie peeked out from under her arm, just enough to see that it was a genuine, natural laugh, the real deal. It was rusty and rough and sounded as if he had a hair ball caught in his throat, but it was a laugh, and she got that melty sensation in her chest again. She’d wanted to make him angry so he’d stop asking questions, but instead she’d undermined herself by smiling and he hadn’t taken her seriously.

When he stopped laughing, he propped on his elbow and looked down at her, leaning over her a little, and abruptly her heart stopped melting and began thumping hard inside her chest. Probably it was the light making his expression look like something it wasn’t, but right there, right then, she thought he was looking at her as if he wanted to eat her up.

Tension made her mouth go dry. She wasn’t the most experienced woman on the planet, but she instinctively knew that expression even if no man had ever before turned it on her. It was a completely male, sexual, predatory, hungry look that both lured her closer and at the same time made her want to run. This kind of sexy look was a trap, because it would make any woman melt from its toe-tingling, butterfly-inducing intensity.

She knew better than to fall for that; Dare wanted sex, but even though he’d saved her life and she owed him big time, she didn’t think she could handle going where he apparently thought this was going. She didn’t think he was thinking about her owing him; he was a man, so more than likely he wasn’t thinking about anything other than just sex. But if she had sex with him while she was thinking about owing him, then that put her in the category of prostitute, using her body to pay a debt. Then there was the big letdown that sex always was, the buildup that led to a fizzle. No matter how she looked at it, having sex was a bad idea.

“Don’t even think about it,” she warned.

His eyebrows went up, and he made a derisive sound in his throat. “You’re about two years too late,” he returned.

Two years? Startled, she gaped at him. “What?”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Tell me about your dream.”

Dream? What dream? Completely distracted, she shook her head, then belatedly realized that her dream might be a good way to distract him, because there was nothing admirable about her wedding.

“Fine.” She dropped her arm and glared at him, squarely meeting his gaze and ignoring the rugged attractiveness of his stubbled face. His expression didn’t change; he didn’t try to hide who he was and what he wanted. “I dreamed about mud and bears and wedding cake icing.”

His eyebrows did that quirking thing again. “Icing?” He blinked, and she could tell he was trying to connect a wedding cake to the bear.

“I was drowning in it. Mud at first, then it turned to icing.” She scowled at him. “You know I got married a few years back, right?” They lived in a small community. Everyone pretty much knew everything about everybody else, at least the pertinent information, though some details were less well known than others. Her dad had been at her wedding, of course, and had comforted and supported her afterward, but he’d never said what he’d told Harlan or anyone else once he got home, and she’d never asked.

“I heard you were supposed to, but something happened.” A cautious note entered his rough voice, as if he thought she’d been ditched at the altar, or something like that.

“I had it annulled.”

Surprise flickered in his eyes. “Annulled, huh?” An annulment wasn’t like a divorce; you could pretty much get a divorce for anything. Even something as simple as liking different colors could be the basis for incompatibility, but an annulment had very specific legal requirements.

“A divorce would have been easier,” she admitted grimly. “Even my lawyer advised me to just get a divorce, and he was right. But I was so… I just wanted it to be erased, as if it had never been, and there was no reasoning with me.”

He snorted. “You, unreasonable? Fancy that.” But there was no nastiness in his tone, just dry amusement.

He touched a fingertip to her cheekbone. Surprised, Angie put her hand up, and to her consternation discovered the damp track of a tear. Furiously she wiped it away. Crying over this, even getting just a little teary, would be so stupid. “Don’t pay any attention to that,” she ordered brusquely. “It’s nothing, and I’m not crying.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. And if I did, it would be because I’m so angry at myself, and embarrassed. I was an idiot.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing earth-shattering. That’s what makes it so embarrassing.”

He waited in silence while Angie sorted through all the anger and hurt feelings and sheer irrationality she still felt whenever she thought about the subject. Finally she fixed her gaze on the ceiling and firmed her lips.

“I’ve never been much of a girlie-girl,” she confessed. “I never knew how. You know-the makeup, the fussing with hair, all that stuff. It wasn’t like Dad could teach me any of that, and really, when I was a teenager, I wasn’t all that interested anyway. Even though I did more of it when I lived in Billings, I wasn’t-I’m still not-certain if I was doing it right and looked okay. But for my wedding I wanted to be pretty, I wanted my hair and makeup to be perfect.”

Exposing her uncertainty made her cheeks turn hot. She knew she wasn’t a beauty queen, but she wasn’t unattractive, either. Normally she didn’t give her looks any thought at all, beyond brushing her hair and using moisturizer with sunscreen. Admitting all of that to a man-to Dare Callahan, specifically-was still uncomfortable.

“How come your mom wasn’t around to teach you stuff like that?” he asked bluntly. “I don’t think I ever heard anyone say, not even Evelyn French, and that woman can talk the ears off a donkey.”

Despite her embarrassment, Angie had to grin. Anyone who ever set foot in the hardware store learned exactly how much Evelyn liked to talk. “Then she must never have got up enough nerve to ask Dad about it, otherwise she’d have told it. It’s no big deal. I don’t remember my mother. She left Dad and me before I was two. She had some sleaze she was cheating on him with, and I guess she liked the sleaze more than she liked being with us. So she left.”

His eyes narrowed. “That sucks.”

“It could have,” she agreed. “I can’t say I haven’t wondered what it would have been like if she’d stayed. But at the same time, Dad was great. He never talked bad about her, and when I asked he told me what had happened, and left it at that.” She paused. “I went through his papers, after he died, and found their divorce decree. She gave him full custody, signed me away, and I guess never looked back, because she never tried to see me or contact me in any way. I’ve returned the favor.”

“Pissed you off, huh?” His full attention was on her face, as if he wanted to catch every nuance of her expression. What? Did he think she was all messed up because her mother had abandoned her?

She started to deny it, then stopped herself. “In a way. I don’t feel traumatized, because I don’t remember her at all, but I think Dad must have been more torn up about it than he ever let on to me. That pisses me off, on his behalf. And, looking back, I wonder if he never dated much because he was so focused on taking care of me. It