Outlaw Derek Read online

  “It belongs to me,” he said finally. “But it isn’t in my name, and it would take weeks to trace the deed back to me. We’re safe here for a while.”

  She was looking at him, but her eyes were focused on something else, something locked away somewhere inside her. “We moved a lot while I was growing up,” she said softly. “Packing and unpacking, a different house or apartment to get used to. Different school. People I didn’t know around me. I could never have a pet. And I always felt I—I wasn’t a part of anything. That I didn’t belong anywhere.”

  Derek hardly realized he was moving toward her; he knew only that the desolate, lost sound of her voice pulled at him like a magnet. He found himself sitting on the hassock and holding both her hands even when she would have instinctively pulled away. Even when she stiffened. His forearms rested just above her knees, and he could feel her tremble.

  “Shannon, honey, I know this is hard for you. It would be difficult for someone a hell of a lot tougher and harder than you could ever be. I know you feel lost, confused, scared; you’d have to be made of stone not to. But you aren’t alone. Do you understand that? I’m with you. I won’t leave you, no matter what. And I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  She looked down at her hands, lost in his, and the sensation of things whirling out of her control gradually slowed, steadied. She felt less dizzy, less cold. Less alone. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Derek. You’re being so kind and I’m falling apart like an idiot—”

  “Not like an idiot,” he interrupted to correct her. “Like a normal human being, Shannon. You’ve had one hell of a rug yanked out from under you, and it’s only natural to be disoriented and scared. Especially when we had to leave the apartment so suddenly, and you know we may have to move quickly again.” His voice altered suddenly, became light and rather pained. “And would you please stop telling me how kind I am? You’re going to give me a complex.” He squeezed her hands gently, then rose and returned to the kitchen to get the cocoa.

  Shannon discovered she was smiling. Had he really called her honey? No. No, of course not. Her imagination. “A complex? It was a compliment.”

  “Was it?” he asked, carrying two cups from the kitchen and handing her one before sitting at one end of the long couch. “And if I called you a ‘dependable sort,’ I suppose that would be a compliment?”

  She thought about it, and her smile became stronger. “No. No, it wouldn’t be.”

  “Exactly.”

  After a moment, still smiling, she started rocking again. This time the motion wasn’t tensely methodical, but lazy and relaxed. “What happens tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “we take it easy. I’ll make a couple more phone calls, see if I can find out more about this Cyrano gadget. And we’ll go on from there.”

  Shannon nodded, and he watched her, very conscious of her vulnerability. More relaxed now, she was nonetheless too withdrawn for his peace of mind. Last night, she had been too exhausted and frightened to hide within a shell, too desperate to keep herself from reaching out to someone else for comfort. And now, when she badly needed comfort, needed to be certain she was no longer alone, her wounded self wouldn’t allow her to accept reassurance.

  He wanted to hold her. But even if she were willing to accept that—and he knew she wasn’t—he didn’t trust himself. The desire that had coiled in his weary body last night had grown stronger, closer to the surface with every passing hour, and he was fighting to control it. Even assuming she could feel the same for him, such powerful emotions now would very likely send her even deeper into her shell.

  Derek had walked many fine lines in his life, performed many a balancing act between safety and danger, but he had never felt such caution within himself as he did now. With Shannon. To say that this situation was the worst possible one in which to begin building a relationship was a vast understatement.

  To say that he wanted that relationship more than he had ever wanted anything in his life was a vast understatement.

  “I think I’ll take a shower,” Shannon said, rising to carry her cup into the kitchen.

  Derek was too aware of her movements behind him in the kitchen. He watched her climb the stairs and knew she must be taking the silky pajamas Raven had bought her out of the suitcase. He heard her close the bathroom door.

  He set his almost-untasted cup of cocoa on the coffee table and frowned at it. He wanted something stronger, but didn’t get up to get it. There was, he reflected broodingly, little he could do about the situation at Civatech until he knew more. He’d have to go out there eventually, slip into the place somehow, but he wasn’t ready to try that just yet.

  Was it less than twenty-four hours ago that Shannon had come into his life? Odd that events had a way of stretching time in improbable ways. Still, it was something he had seen happen more than once. He wasn’t sure if he had lived a week’s normal time at any point during the past ten years or so. One of these days he’d have to drop back into normal life, with its hectic but predictable schedule, and he’d probably suffer jet lag from the shock to his system.

  One of these days.

  His mind, never very far from Shannon, focused on her more intently as he heard the shower running. Cautious as he was toward her, he knew only too well that he couldn’t allow her to remain withdrawn. He had to reach her somehow. There was, inside that guarded, wounded woman, a vividly alive and laughing woman hidden away. He knew it. He felt it.

  She was stronger than she knew—she would have had to be to weather the shocks and pain of her life. She was innately a very strong woman; yes, he knew that as surely as he knew his own strengths and weaknesses. But she was so accustomed to being alone inside herself that withdrawal had become a part of her personality rather than a simple defense mechanism. And how could he teach this hurt, guarded woman to allow him close enough to share the careful space she had marked out for her own?

  It was what he had tried to do in explaining that she had to trust him. And though that first step had forged a tenuous bond, Shannon refused to let him close the distance between them. She needed time alone, safe time, he knew that. She needed to find a balance, to catch her breath. The problem was, he couldn’t give her that.

  The only safe time he could give her would be fleeting and uncertain, with the probability of fast action and danger hovering over them like a sword.

  Derek knew rationally that he was in no shape for this. It was beyond his experience. He was adept at functioning on little rest under stressful conditions, but he had never before had to do so with a fragile victim depending on him for her very life. And if he had been asked theoretically if he could have done so while also being emotionally involved with that fragile woman, he would have answered with an unequivocal no. But the question was hardly a theoretical one.

  He was here. She was dependent on him for her safety, her life. And he was emotionally involved with her despite every atom of good sense.

  “Derek?”

  He looked over at the steps of the platform, where Shannon stood hesitantly. The pajamas she wore provided adequate coverage, since they were long and plainly styled, with a top that was buttoned all the way to her throat. But the cream silk lent the outfit its feminine appearance as it clung like a living thing, and the slender curves of Shannon’s body were as seductively obvious to his intent eyes as they would have been clothed only in a brief silk teddy.

  Score one for Raven, Derek thought vaguely as he felt his belly knot in a sudden rush of heat. He’d told her that Shannon had injured a leg and was sensitive, and had asked the other woman not to buy too-revealing clothing that might make Shannon feel uncomfortable. He hadn’t said anything about not making him uncomfortable, though.

  “I can sleep on the couch,” Shannon offered a bit breathlessly, disturbed by his steady look and silence. “You couldn’t have gotten much rest last night, and—”

  “You take the bed.” He smiled. “The years have trained me. Like most soldiers, I can sleep anywhere
, probably even standing on my head.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.” Derek wondered if he was imagining that he could smell a delicate floral scent wafting to him from her; there was no soap with that scent in the loft. Had Raven taken care of that too? If so, he could blame her for a quick rise in his blood pressure. He cleared his throat strongly and concentrated on keeping his expression neutral. “I’ll probably be up for a while. Will the light down here bother you?”

  “No.” She hesitated another minute, then turned away toward the bed.

  Derek got up to turn off the overhead light anyway, leaving only the lamp by the couch on. He was unusually aware of the rustle of bedclothes in the silence, and reminded himself he was a grown man and perfectly capable of controlling his hormones. It didn’t help. He hadn’t really expected it to.

  He went into the kitchen to the hidden control box for his security system; Shannon hadn’t noticed and he deliberately hadn’t pointed it out to her. The box was concealed behind what looked like just another section of the painted brick wall, opening to his familiar touch by a hidden spring. He set the system with the necessary codes, activating the alarms set at both downstairs doors and all the windows. Another switch activated timers in the three other lofts in the building so that lights would come on and go off at irregular intervals, suggesting the lofts were inhabited, which they weren’t.

  He set three final switches: one to activate pressure alarms on the roof, one to turn on motion-sensors and cameras placed strategically around the building, and the third switch to alert the building’s very dependable caretaker, who lived nearby, that Derek was “in residence” and not to be disturbed.

  Shannon didn’t know it, but she was sleeping in a virtual fortress.

  Having done everything possible to ensure an advance warning for them in case of visitors, Derek moved back toward the couch. It wasn’t until he glanced at the bed and saw Shannon sitting up that he realized she had watched his actions.

  “Who are you, Derek?” she asked softly.

  The light provided by the lamp barely reached her, and she was only an insubstantial shape, her silky pajamas reflecting the light in a faint shimmer. Derek sat on the couch because he didn’t dare remain standing; his body was having ideas that his mind found difficult to deny. “You know who I am.”

  “I wonder if anybody does. William would be surprised if he saw this place, wouldn’t he?”

  Derek didn’t think it likely. “In a fox hunt,” he said quietly, “the fox always has more than one way out of his burrow—if he’s smart. I’ve been hunted before, Shannon, so I’ve taken the idea a step farther. More than one burrow. And always more than one way out of each.”

  “What’s the other way out of this burrow?”

  He smiled faintly. “There’s a trap door inside the closet, and a tunnel leading to an outbuilding. James Bond stuff,” he mocked himself lightly.

  Shannon hugged her upraised knees and watched him, not yet ready to sleep because she was afraid she’d dream. “Has it been exciting—your life?”

  “I wouldn’t have stayed in this business otherwise,” he answered. “There are always benefits to my work. I’ve seen parts of the world the tourists will never see, for instance.”

  “And the drawbacks?”

  Derek fished a package of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. “Those too.”

  After a moment of silence, she said, “You don’t want to talk about the drawbacks?”

  No, he didn’t. Not to her. Not now, at least, when she was living under the threat of some of those drawbacks. “You should get some sleep, honey.”

  Shannon slid down in the bed and drew the covers up, gazing at a shadowy ceiling. He had called her honey this time. But it probably didn’t mean anything. She wished it did. Wished she could tell him how afraid she was to sleep, because she wasn’t too tired to dream tonight. Wished she could ask him to just hold her because—

  She felt shaken suddenly. Shocked. When had she ever asked anyone for that kind of physical closeness? It was hardly something she was used to. Her mother wasn’t a physically demonstrative woman, and Shannon had always felt stiff and uneasy whenever someone came too close. Why was she longing, now, for strong arms around her and the comforting sound of another heart beating under her ear?

  Because she was afraid? Or was it something else, something about Derek? Was that longing for his touch all tangled with her stark awareness of him? Stupid. Stupid! She’d been hung around his neck like an albatross, and that was all. The poor man was being forced to cope, not only with threats against him because of her, but with her fears, and—

  “Shannon?”

  He was standing by the bed, silhouetted by the lamp behind him on the lower level, his very outline unnervingly masculine and heart-catchingly powerful. And her heart jumped into an uneven rhythm as it thudded against her ribs. How had he known? What was he that he always seemed to know how she was feeling?

  “I’m all right,” she said, and they both knew she wasn’t.

  FOUR

  DEREK SAT DOWN on the edge of the bed and gently captured one of her hands that was twisting on top of the covers. Her hand was cold and tense in his for a long moment, but gradually relaxed. Quietly, he said, “It’s always worse at night, isn’t it? The darkness closes in, and it’s easy to feel like you’re alone. But you aren’t, Shannon.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said jerkily. “You’re in this mess because of me, and I can’t even make it easier for you. I want to be strong, but I can’t stop thinking about them out there looking for us as if we were animals being hunted. And I know I’m one of those drawbacks you didn’t want to talk about, tied around your neck and just weighing you down—”

  “Stop it, Shannon.” His voice was abruptly sharp. “Do you really think you’d be with me if I didn’t want it that way? I could have had you hidden away in protective custody somewhere until we got this whole thing sorted out. I could have sent you with Raven; the security system set up around her and her husband is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Hell, I could have called the cops and had them take care of you. You’re with me because I want you with me.”

  “Just because you feel responsible—”

  “No.” He hesitated, then said dryly, “Maybe it’s my ego saying I can take care of you better than anyone else. Maybe it’s those big brown eyes of yours—or the way you looked in that damned red dress.” He felt her hand tense again, and wondered if he’d gone too far. How far could he go to get close to her without pushing her even farther away?

  “It wasn’t even my dress.” Her voice was low, shy.

  He laughed softly, and purposely kept his voice light and unthreatening. “It was yours once you put it on. A dress like that on a woman like you could make a grown man cry. Or start writing sonnets in his mind. Unfortunately, I have no creative ability when it comes to words, and that dumb macho ethic kept me from breaking into tears.”

  She laughed shakily. “So what do you do?”

  “I bit down on a knuckle when you weren’t looking,” he told her solemnly.

  Shannon laughed again, honestly amused. “I can’t see you doing that.”

  “I don’t want you to see me doing that,” he said in a reproving tone. “It ruins my tough, manly image. I debated whether to cook for you, but decided in the end that since there are so many male gourmets, I was pretty safe.”

  “You showed talent as a masseur too,” she reminded gravely.

  “Masseur.” He corrected her pronunciation in a grand French accent. “If you know the French for a thing, it takes away any gender connotations.”

  “I would have thought it was the other way around,” she said with a little choke of laughter. “The French seem fairly conscious of gender.”

  After a deliberate moment, Derek said consideringly, “You could be right there. I may have sacrificed my tough manly image by—no, I forgot, that was in another life. Just some residual technique left ove
r for this life. So I’m safe.” Her hand was relaxed now in his, and warm, and her laugh was rich with humor. A part of him was elated, but there was another cautious part that reminded him it was easier to find closeness in the dark than in the light.

  “I think you really are a magician,” she said suddenly in a surprised tone.

  “Well, legerdemain is a nice, masculine talent,” he allowed seriously. “I won’t object to that.”

  She chuckled and said, “I feel better now. Thank you, Derek.”

  He didn’t want to leave her, even though it was costing him to remain there. Common sense and caution won out over the demands of his body, and he squeezed her hand briefly before rising to his feet. “Good. Now get a good night’s sleep, honey.” He was at the steps when she spoke again.

  “Derek?”

  He paused and looked back at her.

  “What did you mean—a woman like me?”

  He didn’t need the question clarified. “You’re beautiful, Shannon,” he said quietly. “Someday I’ll teach you to believe that.”

  After a moment, she whispered, “Good night.”

  “Good night, honey.” Derek returned to the lower level and sat down on the couch, trying consciously to relax taut muscles in an effort he knew to be worthless.

  How much more easily she responded to him in the darkness. As if darkness were the only wall she needed then, and light brought her self-made walls rising instantly. Only in the darkness had he heard her laugh; only in the darkness had he heard the intriguing note in her voice that was so vividly alive it made his heart stop.

  That was the real Shannon, he thought, coming alive in the darkness like some rare and fragile flower that showed its blooms only to the night. Was it because of her leg? Partly, he thought; the core of that characteristic could probably be found in her constant awareness of her flaw. In the darkness she couldn’t be seen, and her self-consciousness vanished.

  He could reach her then, in the darkness. Closer one step at a time, unthreatening and undemanding. And the cost to him would be well worth the result if he managed to reach her fully. But he didn’t deceive himself that it would be easy. No, it wouldn’t be easy.