SLOAN COULDN’T GET to sleep. He lay naked in his bed, hands behind his head. Tiny slivers of moonlight peeked in around the drawn blinds and heavy dark green curtains. The clock ticked away on a mahogany dresser opposite his king-size bed. His heart centered on Dev. Damn, she was excruciatingly innocent in a world that ate empaths up and spit them out for breakfast. No one had ever realized her high sensitivity to other people’s emotions. Dev felt like she was a human being without skin to protect her. Sloan was glad he’d grown up with Poppy Thorn as their Hill doctor. Poppy had also been his mother’s best friend. He’d seen similar reactions in Dev, and that was what brought him to the realization that she was truly unique among most human beings.
Sloan couldn’t shut off his mind as he wondered how in the hell Dev had managed two deployments to Afghanistan in the thick of combat situations, looking for IEDs that could kill her or her squad, with that kind of wide-open sensitivity. That was probably one of the reasons the Marine Corps had placed her as a K-9 handler. Dev’s sensitivity had shown up on the battery of tests that they performed on every recruit. Maybe living through that hellish family dynamic of hers had grafted a kind of skin that somewhat protected her during her combat deployments?
Closing his eyes, he thought about the threat of Bart Gordon in her life. Sloan wasn’t an empath, but he had his Ma’s intuition that warned him that Bart Gordon was someone who would seek revenge. And Gordon would seek it from Dev, no question. Sloan wasn’t sure how much he should emphasize this possibility to her. She was already stressed-out enough, still recovering from the assault and the police department of good ole boys who hadn’t taken her claim seriously. He wished he’d been there at Dev’s side to see her through that demeaning and intimidating process. Yet Dev was showing him that deep down she was tough and could gut it out when necessary. Although now, Sloan was sure he was seeing the fallout from extruding such strength from within herself. Dev was tired and he could see it, from the smudges beneath her rich green eyes to the way she easily tired by the end of a day.
Dev was good at putting on a game face, Sloan realized. But around him, she was letting it down, being more herself, maybe trusting him a little. His palm fell across his fast-beating heart as he thought about her in sexual terms. Yes, he wanted her. In every possible way. He wanted to feel how soft and lush her mouth blossoming beneath his would feel. To hear the softened sounds catching in her slender throat as he pleasured her. Something told him Dev was a woman who enjoyed and luxuriated in her sensuality. She would be hot, assertive and enjoy sex just as much as he did. Sloan would bet his life on it.
A bit of guilt ate at him because although he was sexually drawn to Dev, he also appreciated her on so many other equally important levels. Sloan liked the way she saw the world. Liked her innate gentleness and that soft, husky voice of hers. He could see her confidence clearly, but with him, she allowed him to see a little of who she was beneath it and that thrilled him as little else had in a long, long time. He wondered about her life. Had she ever been married? Divorced? God, he had a hundred questions for her and didn’t have an answer for any of them. Maybe tomorrow, if it felt right, and she was relaxed, he’d ask. More important, now that Sloan realized the pressures on Dev, he was going to make damn sure he didn’t trod like a bull on a rampage into her life. Pacing and timing with her was everything...
* * *
DEV GASPED WITH delight as their narrow, twisting riding trail opened up into an oval meadow with a small lake in the center. A cottontail rabbit startled near the only tree, an old oak, and it took off for the evergreen forest not far away. Both dogs’ ears pricked up, but they remained with their riders. Mouse whined.
“I think he thinks it’s a ball to chase,” Sloan confided, grinning over at Dev. She wore her USFS dark green baseball cap, but everything else was civilian, from her jeans to the long-sleeved pink blouse. The sun showed it was near noon, and it glinted down upon the loose black hair that framed her face. He tried not to drown in the happiness he saw reflected in the green depths of her eyes. And as his gaze fell to her lips, his entire lower body reacted. Too many nights lying awake, imagining kissing her, dammit. He dismounted. “Come on. Would you like to have that picnic under that old oak tree out there?”
“Looks perfect.” Dev sighed, dismounting. “Is it okay to give Bella the signal to go snoop around? Or do you think there are other rabbits around?”
Sloan’s eyes narrowed as he absorbed the tree line, looking for anything that appeared out of place. He glanced over at her as she came and stood at his side, the reins in one hand. “Tell me what you feel. You’re an empath. Do you feel anything threatening around here?”
She quirked her mouth. “Oh, I don’t think I have that kind of skill, Sloan. If I did, I sure as heck would have felt Gordon sneaking up on me.” His grin grew.
“Well, you might have a point.” Sloan lifted his hand, gesturing around the meadow. “A little lesson here, because you’re still learning about this area. The first thing you want to be aware of is the willow stands. Moose feed on willows. But elk, and especially elk mothers with their newborn babies, will hide in them. So will a mama moose, with her babies, too. Either way, if you see willows, there’s always a chance that there’s a grizzly hunting them nearby. You’ll never hear the bear coming. They might sometimes weigh close to a thousand pounds, but you will not hear them until it’s too late. Even elk and moose, if they’re distracted, won’t hear them approach, which is how they lose their offspring. Or their own lives.”
“That’s awful,” Dev murmured, frowning. “I don’t see any willows around here.”
“Right. One of the reasons I wanted to ride up here today. Grizzlies naturally gravitate to the willow stands because that’s where their meat source is at. Here, you have a wide-open meadow, with no place to hide. There’s one tree, which isn’t enough cover for elk or moose. And the pond is small and ringed with reeds.”
“So? It’s safe?”
“Yep.” And then he chuckled. “Unless, of course, you actually see a grizzly walking through the meadow. Then we would leave immediately.”
“I don’t see any.”
“But the possibility of them being around is very real,” Sloan cautioned, clucking to his horse. “Let’s get to the tree and check out the whole meadow before we decide whether or not to let the dogs snoop around. We don’t want a grizzly around, unseen. If he sees a dog, there’s going to be a fight, and a bear weighs more than we do.”
“We never had this kind of issue in Smoky Mountains Park,” Dev said, falling into step with him, glad that Sloan was with her. The dark blue surface of the pond was dappled with sunlight, like jewels leaping and sparkling along the surface. There was a mallard duck couple at one end, opposite the oak tree. The grass across the oval meadow was lush and plentiful, barely ankle high because they were at eight thousand feet. Spring came slowly at higher altitudes, she knew.
“Black bears are easy to deal with in comparison to our grizzlies,” Sloan said. He halted at one end of the pond, observing the other half of the meadow. Both dogs sat, panting. He gestured to the other line of evergreens. “Hear that blue jay in the distance in that direction?”
“Yes.”
“Jays start screaming when they see a threat. Now, it could be a cougar, a bobcat, but it could be a grizzly, too.”
“So keep the dogs on a leash?”
“Right. Jays often will fly over the threat and keep calling to warn the surrounding area. And if he continues to call and he’s coming closer to us, then—” Sloan turned, placing his gloved hand over the butt of the .30-06 rifle in a leather sheath beneath his stirrup “—we might have to use this.”
“But...” Dev stumbled, searching his tense face. “You wouldn’t kill a grizzly, would you?”
“Not unless I have to. Often, if a grizzly hears humans, it’ll turn away and head in the opposite direction.” He pointed to Mouse and Bella. “But if the bear picks up on either of their scents, and if it feels threatened, it will charge the dogs, trying to kill them.”
She patted the quart of bear spray on her hip. “You said this will deter them.”
“I’ve seen it used on a charging grizzly,” Sloan said, gesturing for her to follow him. “It works. But dogs often provoke a bear with barking and that’s when the bear turns ugly. He’ll go out of his way to kill a barking dog, bear spray or not. It reminds the bear too much of a wolf pack, and they’re natural enemies to one another.”
Dev leaned over, petting Bella’s back. Her yellow Lab wanted to go run, smell and explore, but under the circumstances, it might not be a good idea. She followed Sloan to the tree, to the shade from the gnarled, ancient branches that had probably seen over a hundred years of harsh winters. To her they looked like arthritic arms and hands.
Sloan led his horse, Rocky, to the bank of the lake. Dev followed. Both horses thirstily drank their fill, their muzzles dripping with water as they smacked their lips afterward. Walking them beneath the oak tree, Sloan dropped the reins to his horse. Rocky was ground-tied trained and wouldn’t move. Sloan kept his hearing keyed to the blue jay, and the sound seemed to be lessening, as if the bird were moving away from their area. That was a good thing. He wanted a nice, peaceful lunch, without having to deal with a pissed-off grizzly. The dogs lay down side by side after drinking their fill of cold, clear water. They looked beautiful together, Mouse’s black-and-caramel-brindled coat next to Bella’s golden short-haired coat. Sloan pulled out a plastic case that held their lunch, handing it to Dev.
“What did you make us?” she asked, standing back as he spread a small red wool blanket on the ground beneath the shade of the tree.
“Nothing fancy. Tuna fish.” Kneeling down, Sloan smoothed out the blanket and looked up. “You okay with that?”
“Sure am,” Dev said, handing him the container. Going to her saddlebags, she reached into one of them and pulled out a large plastic container and carried it back to where he sat cross-legged. Sitting opposite him, she said, “Chocolate pudding for dessert?” She held it up toward him.
“Great. You’ll find I’m a human garbage can,” he reassured her, opening the container and handing her a carefully wrapped sandwich. “I’ll eat anything as long as it doesn’t move.” And his mouth twisted. “Well, I should amend that. There were times Mouse and I were up on ten-thousand-foot ridges in the Hindu Kush, having gone through all our food, and I’d send him out to hunt. He always brought back something.” He opened his sandwich, taking a bite. “No fire, either.”
Wrinkling her nose, Dev said, “Ugh. Let’s talk about something else.”
Sloan gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry. What would you like to talk about?”
“You.”
Swallowing his surprise, Sloan saw the dark green of her eyes and she reminded him of a dog on a hunt. And he was her target. He shrugged. “Told you about my family. What else is there?” He kept his voice light and teasing because today he did not want to stress Dev. Sloan wanted her to enjoy the day without any pressure. A light danced in her eyes and he had no idea what it meant.
“Well,” Dev hedged, wiping the corner of her mouth where a bit of mayonnaise was stuck, “I have a question for you, but maybe it’s too personal? And you don’t have to answer it if it is,” she added hastily.
“Okay,” Sloan said. His instincts told him this was far more serious than what he had in mind. Clearly, it was important to Dev, so he gave her an easy smile and said, “Fire away.” He saw her cheeks turn a deeper pink. She was blushing. Why?
“You’re too nice of a man to not be married. I guess I was wondering if you ever were?”
Sloan kept his face carefully arranged, mulling over her question. He hadn’t prepared for it because he hadn’t known whether she was curious about this facet of him. And why was she? Because she might be thinking of some kind of a relationship with him? He didn’t know. Sloan always thought he knew women and knew their minds, but his ex-wife, Cary, sure as hell had destroyed all his confidence in that department. “Yes, I was married once.” He gave her a wry look. “My ma counseled me to marry when I was older, rather than when I was young. She told me I really didn’t have the maturity or experience to tell a good partner from a bad one when I was in my early twenties.”
Sloan lay down on the blanket, propping himself up on one elbow across from her. “I’d just gotten out of the Army at twenty-two and I was messed up with PTSD. And maybe—” he hitched his one shoulder “—I was needing to feel alive again. I met Cary just after I got a job with the US Forest Service. My first assignment was the Grand Canyon in Arizona and she was a waitress just outside the gates of the park where I used to get breakfast every morning, before I went on duty.”
Sloan saw the seriousness in Dev’s eyes. Her legs were crossed, her elbows resting on her knees.
“I was pretty dead inside from those deployments over to Afghanistan. I wanted to feel something...anything.” He lifted his chin, looking across the quiet, beautiful meadow for a moment. “Cary was a live wire. Always smiling. Always up. Always on. Unlike me. I felt like I was a robot, numb, not alive at all.” He heaved a sigh and studied Dev. “It was the PTSD symptoms. I’d seen too much in combat, gone through too much, and my emotions were numbed out. Much later, after I got treatment for my anxiety with Dr. Jordana McPherson, who is a physician and head of ER at the local hospital, I began to realize what had happened. My cortisol was far above normal. It works in concert with adrenaline and shoots into our bloodstream when we’re under threat or think we’re going to die.”
Dev groaned. “I should get tested, too.”
Nodding, Sloan said, “More than likely a test would confirm the same thing in you. Your job in Afghanistan was never safe, either. You pulled two tours. That’s enough to make anyone’s cortisol shoot through the roof.”
“Once I settle in with my new job, I will get tested. So,” Dev said, grappling with his story, “you were drawn to Cary because you felt numb inside? And she made you feel things again?”
“Something like that,” Sloan grudgingly admitted. “I just wanted to be around normal people again, I guess. I wanted to try to be like them. But I had a hole in my body as big as a crater and I couldn’t feel anything. Even Cary couldn’t do it for me. My ma was right: I was young and stupid. I thought being around Cary more would make me feel things again. I just wanted to feel normal. And I put all my chips on her, and married her.” Sloan saw her flinch. “Yeah, bad choice for the wrong reasons,” he added wryly.
“Twenty-two is young,” Dev agreed softly. “You did the best you could at the time.”
Grimacing, Sloan smoothed out the wrinkles in the blanket before him with his long fingers. “I was still learning how to read people, and I sure didn’t read Cary right.” Pain drifted through his heart. And sadness. “It took me three years to realize she had a cocaine habit. She’d been addicted to drugs since she was thirteen, but I didn’t know anything about it until much later.” Years later. Years of nothing but pain for him. He forced himself to look up at Dev. He saw anguish in her eyes.
“That’s awful...”
Tell me about it. But Sloan didn’t say those bitter words. “When I took Cary home to my parents, my ma pulled me aside and said there was something wrong with her. She couldn’t put her finger on it. I laughed it off and married her, anyway. It was a pretty bad decision on my part for a lot of wrong reasons.”
“Had you ever dealt with someone who was addicted before?” Dev wondered quietly, searching his saddened expression.
“No. Way beyond my personal life experiences.” His mouth slashed into a grimace. “But I sure as hell learned about drug addiction. When I caught her using unexpectedly one morning, all hell broke loose. She turned angry, blaming me, saying it was my fault for the way she was. That she couldn’t help herself. She needed her cocaine.”
“That’s the drug speaking,” Dev said gently. “My father would blame my mother for his drinking problem, too. Same old story.”
“I took it personally. I had no idea how to deal with an addicted person.”
“They’ll lie to you with a straight face,” Dev muttered.
“Cary lied to me all the time,” Sloan admitted. “But I never knew it. I tried to get her to rehab, to help her, but she didn’t want to go. She said she was fine, that she was happy with the way she was.”
“When they don’t want to fix themselves,” Dev said, “that’s the stance they take. If you have a drug or alcohol addiction, you gotta wanna.”
“What do you mean?”
“You gotta wanna quit,” Dev said with a slight one-cornered smile, opening her hands. “And most addicted people don’t want to quit. It doesn’t matter if they spend a lot of money buying the drugs, or what it does to their loved ones or their children. They really don’t care about anyone except themselves. It’s an awful situation.”
“Yeah,” Sloan rasped, “it sure as hell was. After two more years, I divorced her because Cary used me as her whipping post, blaming me for everything, the way she was, said that I was making her unhappy...”
“Because you were trying to get her well, and she didn’t want to go there. So, she used her anger to push you away from her, Sloan. I saw that happen between my mother and father. But my mother never divorced him, and I don’t understand why to this day. I watched her disconnect emotionally from him. Now, they’re like two strangers living in the same house. There’s nothing that I can see between them anymore.”
Shaking his head, Sloan looked up at her. “I had five years of hell. I can’t even begin to imagine eighteen years of living in that kind of toxic environment.” Dev might appear innocent and vulnerable, but Sloan knew from his own experience with Cary that she had to have some serious underlying strength. Otherwise, she would not be as resilient, would not have a healthy way of living as she did today. “Being empathic, you had to absorb all their tension.”
Dev snorted and looked up at the puffy clouds drifting overhead. “It left me exhausted every night. I tended to hide in my bedroom to stay away from them. There was so much unspoken rage between my parents,” Dev said, “you could cut the air with a knife. If my mother wasn’t screaming at my father, or he was angry and shouting back at her, that toxic silence filled the house instead. There was always ugly energy between them.”
“You had a continual war going on in your house,” Sloan muttered darkly. Pain came to Dev’s green eyes.
“Yes, and I went from an eighteen-year war inside my home, then stepped into the Marine Corps and went directly into another kind of war in Afghanistan. I made some bad decisions, too. Go figure...”
“It’s all you knew,” Sloan said gently, seeing the anguish in her expression, the way her lips compressed for a moment.
“But you came out of a good family, Sloan. And you didn’t know Cary was a druggie. I’ve discovered that, coming out of an alcoholic’s household, I can spot an addicted person a mile away.”
“At least you haven’t married one like I have. I had no experience at all with people like that. I do now and I agree with you. I can spot an addicted person real easy nowadays. Helluva lesson.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through it,” Dev told him, meaning it. “It’s a special emotional hell. I would never wish it on anyone. All an addicted person does is tear up their own life and the lives of their loved ones.” Her mouth curved downward. “The loved ones, the children, if there are any, all come in second place to them getting their drugs. It’s a terrible situation...”
“It is,” Sloan agreed thickly.
“You divorced Cary when you were twenty-seven, then?”
“Yes. I couldn’t get her to change. The more I tried, the angrier and more accusing she became.”
“You hung in there a long time,” Dev said quietly. “If I hadn’t been a kid, I would have walked out of my home situation long before age eighteen.” She laughed bitterly. “In fact, I was always running away. I didn’t realize why. I felt trapped and suffocated in that house. I felt like I was slowly dying. Starting at ten years old, I drove my father nuts. I’d pack my knapsack full of clothes and food, slip out my bedroom window and head on down the highway. I didn’t know where I was going, but I just knew if I didn’t run away, I was lost to myself.”
Sloan studied her, the silence hanging between them. “Your spirit was dying.” He saw her tilt her head, giving him an understanding look.
“Yes, but as a little kid, you don’t realize that. All I realized was if I didn’t try to run away, to leave my father far behind me, I’d feel like I was going to die. It was a terrible feeling to have, Sloan. I loved my mother, but she was gone three to four days at a time because of her flight demands. I was alone with him and he didn’t try to hide his drinking from me. He’d get so drunk, he’d pass out on the couch or bed after a while. I was relieved when he did. Those were the only times he left me alone.”
“What do you mean?” Sloan asked.
“He’d scream and yell at me. Tell me I was underfoot. That he wished I hadn’t been born. That I was a pain in the ass he had to always take care of.”
“Damn,” Sloan growled, feeling anger flow through him.
“My mom wasn’t around to protect me,” Dev said simply, smoothing the blanket out in front of her knees. “And when I tried to tell her what happened when she got home, she didn’t want to hear it. I think the long hours, the flying and knowing she was coming home to a drunk husband was just too much for her. I was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was just one load too many for her to carry.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You were caught in a trap that wasn’t of your making.” And then Sloan grimaced. “Unlike me, who walked into it with his eyes open, as an adult.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sloan. You had no experience with a drug-addicted personality. They’re chameleons. They become what you need them to be when you’re around them. When you’re gone, they revert back to who they really are. It usually takes people years to figure out what’s going on because they’re so good at manipulating other people’s minds and emotions.”
Sloan gave her an admiring look. “What impresses me the most about you, Dev, is that you not only survived that family hell, but look at you now. You’re making a good life for yourself. You learned a helluva lot of lessons growing up in that snake pit. And you do good things for people.” He gestured to Bella, who sat near her. “You save people’s lives. That’s a pretty strong statement about who you are. You care. You’re connected with others. You serve in a positive way within society.”
“I didn’t want to be like my father,” Dev said sadly. “To this day, I’m angry at him for what he did to me, to my mother. I just can’t understand why they’re still together.”
Sloan raised his brows and ventured, “Is she an enabler? That’s what I learned when I went to a drug counselor to start understanding Cary and myself. I learned I was enabling her.” Shaking his head, Sloan muttered, “Those counseling sessions showed me how I was contributing and feeding into her behavior.”
“Yes, but Cary knew exactly what she was doing to you, Sloan. If she really loved you, she wouldn’t have done that to you. Druggies see their entire life through a drug filter. They don’t really see you. Not ever.” Her voice grew hoarse. “My father never saw me. Nor did he see my mother. Not to this day...”
Feeling her anguish, Sloan rasped, “I can’t imagine the pain it causes you, Dev. I really can’t, because I had a good family who loves me. I went back home after divorcing Cary to try to get my head screwed on straight. My parents had seen her behavior, but they hadn’t ever seen a drug personality around and couldn’t identify Cary’s issues any more than I could. But we sure all learned from it.” He picked up a dry piece of a pine twig and snapped it in two between his fingers. It was symbolic of his broken marriage. Of the bad choice he’d made. “And,” he said, “I was fighting PTSD. I didn’t understand what it was doing to me except that I felt numb.”
“And where are you today with that numbness?”
“I’m feeling again,” Sloan promised, seeing hope spring to life in her eyes. “Dr. McPherson has helped a lot.”
“So you can feel anger? Happiness? Everything in between?”
“Yes, the whole gamut.” Sloan sighed, relief in his tone. “I never thought I’d feel as grateful as I did when I felt my emotions starting to come back online as the cortisol reduced back to normal levels within me. I welcome them all back. I’d rather feel them, even the negative ones, than feel dead inside.”
Dev nodded, frowning. “Maybe I should go talk to her soon, then. I have my feelings. I never lost them. But I hate this constant state of high anxiety I wrestle with when I’m awake. I have trouble sleeping, too.” She pointed to the darkness beneath her eyes.
“Ask her to help you get your cortisol down to normal,” Sloan advised her, “and you will sleep like a baby at night. It also made most of my weekly nightmares go away, for good, too.”
Dev pulled out her cell phone and clicked on her address book. “I’m sick to death of feeling like this. I’d like to have a normal life again.” She wrote the note to herself to call Jordana tomorrow. Dev managed a choked laugh. “Not that I’ve ever led a normal life...”