He mustered up a smile as she neared, then kissed her cheek. “Hiya, doll.”
“Good to see you. Jack told me you have someone to protect? A friend.” Kimber was way more than that. Racing across a hundred miles of Texas, wondering if she was dead or alive, had slammed that fact into him like a fastball to the stomach.
For Morgan’s benefit, he shrugged. “Something like that. Jack here?”
“Inside turning on the generators and security equipment.” She laid a comforting hand on his arm. “You know Jack’s cabin is one of the safest possible places, right?” Deke agreed with a slight nod. “Yeah. No one in their right mind travels this deep into the swamp unless they know their way around.”
“Or the gators swallow them up,” Morgan agreed, easing her arms around his neck and giving him her sweet brand of comfort in a gentle squeeze. “It’ll be fine.” Damn it, he hoped so. Deke didn’t want to think about the alternative, didn’t want to relive the pure cold-sweat terror of wondering if some sick bastard had ended Kimber’s life. Suffering the painful, gaping hole in his chest at the thought she might be gone forever.
The thought of putting a name to the emotions those symptoms pointed to made him sweat.
“Hey, you pervert,” Jack called, stepping out the rustic cabin’s door. “Get your hands off my wife. You’re not getting the opportunity to fuck her again.” Behind him, Deke heard Luc help Kimber up on the dock at that moment. And he couldn’t miss Kimber’s little indrawn breath of shock.
Shit! Deke closed his eyes. Something cold and sludgy and dreadful washed over him. Shame. He recognized it for the first time in years. In that moment, knowing that Kimber could see firsthand exactly what his life had become… Suddenly, he hated the choices he’d made.
“Jack!” Morgan scolded her husband and flushed twenty shades of angry red.
“Oh, hell. I’m sorry.” Jack slapped him on the shoulder, his face contrite. “I feel like such an ass.”
“You are,” he growled. What else could he do? Jack hadn’t known his someone to protect was a female. He hadn’t known Kimber was within earshot when he’d opened his mouth. At the end of the day, none of this shit was Jack’s fault, Deke acknowledged. It was his own.
Jack reached out a hand to Kimber, steadying her as she stepped onto the little wooden dock. “Welcome, miss. I know you’re going through a tough time, but Deke is one of the best in the personal security business. Here, in the middle of nowhere, with him…there’s nowhere safer.”
With a reluctant, wide-eyed nod, Kimber shook Jack’s hand. He reached around to her elbow to guide her up the little platform, illuminated in the humid, hazy evening by a single sixty-watt bulb.
“Thank you,” she said finally.
Jack shook Luc’s hand briefly, then helped Kimber inside. Deke watched the little party head indoors and wondered what the hell would happen next. Now that he had Kimber away from this bomb-building asshole, he had to face reality. One, he cared about her far more than he should. Two, she’d apparently broken off her engagement, which his hungry cock told his easily duped brain made her fair game.
Three, he and Luc were going to be confined to this four-room cottage with her for days, perhaps weeks. Four, he wanted Kimber more than he had ever wanted anything or anyone in his life.
This has disaster written all over it.
Wiping a hand across his weary face, Deke reluctantly moved toward the cabin. A soft hand on his forearm held him back. Morgan.
At one time, Deke had wondered if he wasn’t half in love with the vivacious, submissive redhead, even though she was strictly Jack’s and they’d been married nearly three months. In the past, anytime he entered a room Morgan occupied, she’d get a rise out of him, and he’d feel the bite of desire in thirty seconds or less.
Three minutes ago, watching Kimber, despite her wariness and shock, he’d forgotten Morgan was even in the same state. Again, it spoke volumes—and he absolutely didn’t want to know what those tomes said.
“God, I’m so sorry Jack opened his big mouth. That girl, she’s more than a friend.” He looked away from Morgan’s searching blue gaze. “It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t. Do you love this girl?”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t want to. But do you?”
Deke cursed, refusing to even think of the answer. Damn, why did Morgan insist on dredging this up? He’d rather string himself up by the balls with barbed wire.
“You’re turning slightly green, so I’ll take that as a yes,” she said dryly. “Does she know about you and Luc and…?”
“Yeah, she knows.” He swallowed. “And I’ve got to stop thinking about Kimber.
It’s just wrong for me to want her.”
“If you recall, I thought the same about Jack not too long ago. As it turned out, he was exactly what I needed.”
True, but happy endings weren’t going to happen for him. He’d been around the block enough to know that fairy tales could turn to nightmares in the blink of an eye.
“I’m not what she needs.” Far from it. He sighed. “It might be hours, or if I’m really strong, days before I can’t resist anymore. But this bastard threatening her has put me in a corner too, and it’s not likely she’ll be a virgin much longer. Once that happens…I’ll destroy her.”
Surprise filtered across Morgan’s sweetly freckled face. “Or you might make each other whole. If your heart is drawing you to her, there’s a reason. Maybe you should just see where it leads.”
Kimber woke after a few hours of sleep in the cabin’s lone bed, cuddled against Luc’s solid warmth. Deke was nowhere in sight. Last night, like the days she’d stayed with the guys in East Texas, he’d slept elsewhere.
He wasn’t detached; he was scared. Something, feminine instinct maybe, told her that. He wasn’t avoiding her as much as he was trying to hold himself at arm’s distance. She wished to hell she knew why and what to do.
But now that the guys had brought her out to the middle of nowhere, she had lots of time to figure it out, she supposed. As soon as she could find some peace of mind. As soon as she had some news about her dad.
Jack Cole, the cabin’s owner, had explained last night that getting a cell phone signal in the middle of the swamp was nearly impossible, so she was welcome to use the cabin’s phone.
Rolling away from Luc, who grunted in protest in his sleep, Kimber rose and padded into the kitchen. Predawn filtered dingy gray light through the cabin’s huge picture windows. Deke wasn’t on the couch he’d insisted sleeping on last night. But she spied him out on the patio, looking out over the swamp, coffee in one hand.
A frown dominated the sharp angles of his face.