When Emma’s hand sagged away from taking the bottle, Gabe steadied her, simultaneously scanning the bar. He checked the pale man, but he was absorbed in his drink. The other stranger had cleared out an hour earlier.
Knowing he’d missed something, Gabe let his gaze track Marsha Jean as she passed through the crowd with a heavy tray of drinks. And that’s when he saw him, an unfamiliar guy in a black sweater. Gabe’s mind raced, trying to assess the damage even though the man ignored them.
Dammit! Who the hell was he and where had he come from? More important, how long had he been there?
Those were questions Gabe shouldn’t have had to ask, and he knew it. He was a fool. He got sidetracked by the obvious and wrapped up in his proprietary feelings for Emma. If he didn’t stay sharp, he’d get them both killed.
Gabe walked her back a few steps, putting himself between her and the rest of the room. He let his free hand stray toward the shelf beneath the register. “Tell me what happened.”
“For a second, I thought …” Her voice faded uncertainly as she continued to stare around his body.
As his fingers inched beneath the towels covering his gun, he asked, “Thought what?”
“He—” She looked up into his eyes, her fear evident, her voice uncertain. “For a second, something about that customer, the one Marsha Jean wanted me to take the beer to … something about the way he turned made me think of what happened, made me think it was him. But now I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore.”
“Thought it was who? The gunman in the farmhouse?” Gabe asked quietly, and risked another glance at the man.
She nodded. “I just went cold inside when I saw him. And then … nothing.” Words tumbled out of her as she tried to explain her instincts away. “The feeling faded, and now I’m wondering if I imagined the whole thing. Maybe I’m just edgy. Maybe I’m looking for a monster behind every bush because of that rifle shot at Marsha Jean’s.”
“Take a deep breath and calm down.” When she did, he asked, “Did you get a good look at the man who shot the deputy marshal?”
“No. Not full on,” she whispered. “That night when he turned around I was so scared that I couldn’t see anything but the gun, and then I closed my eyes. The next thing I knew he was on the floor. I didn’t look when I walked by him. I couldn’t. I was trying to get to—to the marshal that was shot.”
“Hey, you two lovebirds! We got customers, you know,” Marsha Jean reminded them as she slapped her tray on the bar. “So let’s hop to it!”
“Been waiting on you, darlin’,” Gabe said, forcing himself to sound at ease. He managed to turn around while still shielding Emma and slid the beer toward the end of the bar in a smooth, fluid motion. “Take that to the gentleman with the black sweater. Then check the booth in the back. They haven’t ordered in a while.”
Marsha Jean eyed them thoughtfully. “You trying to get rid of me, boss?”
“How perceptive of you.” He increased the pressure on Emma’s arm, warning her to be quiet. “Now go away.”
Marsha Jean took the beer, but she warned him, “I love secrets. I’ll figure it out. Just you wait.”
As she left, Emily shook her head anxiously. “I don’t like this, Gabe. Marsha Jean suspects something already, and you’re sending her over there?”
“Shh … it’s all right. I think I know what happened—why you thought you knew him and now you’re not sure. Look at him,” Gabe ordered her. “Who does he remind you of?”
Emily stared for a minute as the man took the beer from Marsha Jean and cocked his head back, laughing at something she said. He obviously gave as good as he got, because Marsha Jean appeared flustered for a moment. Then she smiled, a calculating smile as if the man’s credit with her had unexpectedly gone up a notch.
“He reminds me of Patrick,” she said slowly. “Same color hair, same body type, same profile.”
“And that’s why you freaked. You’ve been running on emotional empty for four days, expecting the bad guy to catch you. You saw something familiar, your mind confused the signals, and you scared the hell out of yourself.”
“That sounds so simple,” Emily said, wanting to believe him, but her memory nagged her, reminding her that she had mistaken the gunman for Patrick once already.
But that was the silver gun, and the suit. Wasn’t it? She couldn’t be sure. And she couldn’t explain it to Gabe without telling him about Patrick.
“Believe me. It’s simple. The only woman he wants tonight is Marsha Jean,” Gabe told her, but silently he revised his own timetable, shaving off a day. Better safe than sorry.
Tomorrow was Monday. He’d give Patrick until Tuesday morning. If he didn’t call by then, it wouldn’t matter. He and Emma would be gone.
Gabe was going with her. At least until she was safe. A woman who froze the way she did wasn’t ready to take on the task of protecting herself. If they caught up with her, she’d be dead before she decided what to do.
“But what if next time it is someone after me?” she asked him quietly. “Maybe I should go. I can’t stand the thought that Marsha Jean or anyone else would be in danger because of me. I don’t want anything to happen to her. Or you. Not because of me.”
“Nothing’s going to happen. I’m not going to let it,” Gabe told her firmly, and turned her toward the EMPLOYEES ONLY door. He leaned close to her ear. “Why don’t you call it a night and go upstairs,” he suggested. “It’s almost closing time.”
Emily tried not to let the way Gabe rubbed her shoulders affect her, but it did. He had a way of melting the tension in her muscles and replacing it with heat that was just as devastating to her nerves. Right now he tempted her with the promise that he’d take care of her. The promise was as seductive as his touch. Her heart was only now returning to normal rhythm, and he’d set it off again.
When she hesitated, he added, “I’ve got to stay downstairs and clean up. You’d just be in the way. Go. Feed Wart. Take a shower. Relax.” He tried to massage her shoulders, but she pulled away as if burned.
“All right,” she agreed, and took a deep breath. He wondered if the breath was meant to help her get across the room without running, or because he’d touched her.
Gabe watched as she said a quick good-night to Marsha Jean. Then he eyed the man in the black sweater, making certain that his gaze didn’t linger on Emma. It didn’t. Nevertheless Gabe continued to watch him.
The man left shortly before last call. He was agile on his feet; he had a balance that hinted at training of some sort. That didn’t mean he was after Emma, Gabe reminded himself. Emma’s fright had started his imagination working overtime, but he’d rather be prepared. He couldn’t afford another mistake. The men after Emma didn’t take prisoners, they played for keeps.
When everyone was gone, Marsha Jean put on her coat and started to say good-bye. Instead, she snapped her fingers and told him to hold off locking up while she ran out to her car. She came back in with a pair of figure skates.
“I keep these in my trunk along with Annabelle’s. Since Emily and I wear the same size shoe, I thought I’d leave them here.”
“What for?”
“She might like a chance to glide around Sutter’s Pond without reporters and coaches watching.”
Gabe wasn’t certain she was serious. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Hey, it’s only a couple of miles away, so close she could walk. It’s completely deserted during the week. You know that. And so does she. I told her.”
“Doesn’t matter. She’s not going skating. She’s not going anywhere without me. And I’m not going skating.”
“Well, the skates are here just in case.” Marsha Jean put them on the bar, but she looked like a woman who had something more to say. After a brief pause she spit it out. “You aren’t having an affair, are you? She’s in trouble. I mean real trouble.”
Gabe didn’t see the sense in lying. He nodded.
“You be careful with her, then. From what I saw today, I’d imagine bein’ in her skin is a little like bein’ in a pressure cooker with no release valve. Skating might help.”
“It’s too risky.”
She didn’t argue. She just shrugged and headed for the door. “You be careful with you too. I’ve gotten kind of used to having you around.”
“I’m always careful.” Except tonight, his conscience added.
Gabe locked the door behind her, checked it twice, and began to clean up. He took his time polishing the bar. He wasn’t certain he could sit and listen to Emma take a shower without losing his mind.
They might not be having an affair, but he’d gotten all tangled up in the woman somehow. She had him thinking stupid, and that was a dangerous way to think.
Never in his life had he felt so possessive of a woman, as if it were his job to protect her from everything in the world that might hurt her. Patrick wasn’t the only SEAL with a thing for scared strays.
Takes one to know one. That’s what he’d been all his life—a stray that no one adopted.
He stared at his big hands and admitted the spitfire who’d come out of Marsha Jean’s Clairol bottle would be a handful, even for him. Tonight for the first time he’d seen the energy that had taken her to so many world titles. That energy was as seductive as her softness had been. And then right before she went upstairs, a little of the old Emma—the uncertain one, the shy one—crept back into the new Emma.
They were going to have to come to an understanding about the chemistry between them. Otherwise they’d be walking on eggshells, and Gabe didn’t want to walk on eggshells.
Uncertain which Emma waited for him in his apartment, he climbed the stairs. When he looked at the place, he realized she’d been cleaning again. No question about that. The coffee table actually resembled a coffee table instead of a lost and found department.
Wart meowed a lazy greeting, and Emma stepped out of the kitchen. The movement caught his eye and his sense of the absurd. Gabe laughed outright, the tension inside him snapping.
“Pajamas with feet?” he queried when his spontaneous outburst subsided.
“I was lucky Marsha Jean found any at all,” she informed him primly, and smoothed the blue and white checked flannel. “They happen to be quite trendy and practical.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “If you’re four years old and keep losing your slippers. Or if you’re trying to run off the man in your life.”
Gabe’s amusement died as Emma averted her gaze, and he realized that he’d stumbled on the truth with his wisecrack. Emma’s pajamas were a no-trespassing sign. He got the message loud and clear. The charming Emma Gabriel, ex-wife with the ready smile, was nothing more than a character in a play.
After all, she was used to performing. Wasn’t that what figure skating was? A performance sport?
Wise up, Gabe. The woman cozied up and hung around you tonight because she was scared and you were handy.
But even given her desperate circumstances, the classy Emily Quinn wouldn’t waste her time on a flat-broke, ex–Navy SEAL with no prospects beyond bartending. He was useful and nothing more. Silk and flannel, he reminded himself. Cut from a different cloth.
Even when she was the one in flannel.
Carefully controlling his voice, he asked, “Did Marsha Jean find anything normal in the rummage bin?”
As a matter of fact she had, but Emily wasn’t volunteering that information. She didn’t intend to wear the satin nightshirt because it was cut down to her belly button. Afraid he’d know she was lying if she didn’t meet his eyes, she lifted her chin to answer, and was caught off guard by the anger smoldering in Gabe’s dark gaze.
Nothing in his voice had prepared her for the way he looked at her. This was the intense man who had sized her up and dismissed her that first night in the bar. Gabe was the kind of man who could be angry at the world and never waste a breath on complaint. He kept so much inside, and right now he was unhappy with her.
She didn’t even know why. She didn’t like it though. Ironically, she wanted to make it better, but she had no idea where to start. Gabe wouldn’t help her. Helping her would be against the code—the code of the strong, silent type. Gabe was a hard man with hard rules, and she’d obviously broken one of them without even knowing it.
He probably learned this little technique for controlling people in officer candidate school. Keep the troops guessing. Keep them thinking they’ve done something wrong and they’d fall all over themselves trying to fix it. She figured her coaches had attended the same classes.
“Look, Gabe, I’m too tired to debate sleepwear fashions.” Or to play mind games with you. “Can’t we just arm-wrestle for the bed and get some sleep?”
“We both know that wouldn’t be a fair contest.”
“That’s the point.” She padded over to the bed, got her pillow from last night, and lifted the blanket off the end. “It’s your house, so you get the bed. I’m the guest, so I sleep on the couch.”
He didn’t move away from the couch, so she tried again. “Gabe, I appreciate your wanting to be kind or chivalrous or whatever. I do. But common sense alone will tell you that I actually fit on the couch comfortably. You don’t.”
“All right.” He knew better than to argue with a woman who had her mind made up. “Whatever you want.”
By the time Gabe had showered and changed into some jogging pants and a T-shirt, Emma had her nose buried in the pillow and her eyes squeezed shut, pretending to be asleep. Before he switched off the lights, he turned the stereo down low and put in a CD of old blues tunes. The sad music fit his melancholy mood. The world was damned unfair. Always dangling what he couldn’t have right in front of his nose.
A harmonica wailed softly about injustice as he killed the last light.
“ ’Night, Gabe,” Emma said softly when the bed creaked under his weight.
Surprised by the faint words, Gabe didn’t answer right away. He rolled over on his back and put his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Her whisper was the same clandestine sound he’d heard for so many years at the orphanage—the kind of whisper people used in the dark when they were afraid of being caught or of waking someone.
Who was she afraid of waking?
And then Gabe realized, she was afraid of him. She didn’t want to wake him—arouse him. She was scared of him. Of the fact that he could make her respond on a sensual level.
A long time later, he said, “ ’Night, Emma.”
“My name is Emily,” she corrected him in the same quiet, hesitant voice. “Even when we’re alone you don’t call me that.”
“Do you want me to?”
“No.” It was her turn for silence, and then another question. “I just wondered why? Are you afraid you’ll slip?”
Gabe was tired of walking on eggshells. So he told her. “Emily belongs to them. Emma is mine.”
Closing her eyes, Emily fought the intimacy of his words, fought the seduction of the dark. Emma is mine. Those three words had such incredible power. This declaration had nothing to do with the way he’d laid claim to her in the bar. This was about wanting the imperfect woman beneath the ice princess. No one had ever wanted that woman before. No one had ever known she was there.
With three words he’d managed to knock down most of the wall she’d built between them. The wall was supposed to keep her from doing something foolish, like completely trusting anyone. But the darkness encouraged confidences, and she was afraid to go to sleep. So she kept talking, pretending that they were having an innocent conversation.
“My granddad had a nickname for me. He used to call me Emmy Sue.”
“Was he a skater?”
“Good Lord, no. He didn’t know a thing about ice skating, but he built the most beautiful birdhouses for me. Most of the time I couldn’t tell one bird from another, but I loved to watch them land and take off. They were so graceful.”
“So were you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I am always amazed at what a person with a computer can find out if he knows his way around the Internet system.”
“You researched me?” She wasn’t sure whether to be offended or flattered.
“For instance, I found out that Emily Quinn has no equal when it comes to takeoffs and landings.”
“That’s a little exaggerated,” she told him as she stroked the heavy ball of fur that had taken up residence on her belly. “But jumps were my trademark, my signature on the ice.”
“Darlin’, they were more than that, I think. To quote one particularly eloquent journalist, ‘She rides on a cushion of air that other skaters cannot find.’ ”
“You dug up that old article?” She smiled. “Although, that was a great quote. My granddad loved it. He said his birdhouses were responsible. They were too. They were my secret. Watching the birds taught me how to soar. For me, those few seconds in the air were the only times I felt truly in control of anything.”
“I have a hard time believing that. No one gets to that level of competition without enormous self-discipline.”
Emily rubbed the cat beneath his chin, letting his purr create an accompaniment to the music. “Oh, I don’t have a self-disciplined bone in my body. You are sadly mistaken if you thought I called the shots in my career.”
“Then who did?”
“Who didn’t! My parents. Coaches. Choreographers picked my music and choreographed my routines according to the coaches’ guidelines. Designers created the costumes, usually without input from me. Coaches decided when and where I would compete. Fitness consultants mapped out my strength training, and nutritionists monitored my diet. I showed up for practice. I was just the talent, the trained seal.”
Gabe laughed. “So was I, darlin’.”
“Oh, yeah!” Emily grinned at her unintentional pun. “I guess you were.”
“We all are, one way or another. Control is just an illusion.”
“Maybe it is,” she agreed thoughtfully, and turned over on her side, slipping her hands beneath her cheek. Wart log-rolled as she turned and settled on her hip. “Because every time I think I’ve figured it out, it slips away again. When I hurt my ankle, even the illusion was gone. I lost the ability to take a world that was spinning out of control and balance it again on the edge of my blade.”
“Can you skate at all anymore?”
“Oh, I can skate better than the average Joe, but without the jumps there isn’t much point. Not to competing anyway.” She yawned. “Are the doors locked?”
“Yes.”
“Did you—”
“Checked ’em twice.”
He thought she’d fallen asleep, until she hesitantly asked, “Mind if I turn on the bathroom light?”
“Go ahead.”
Gabe heard her displace Wart and pick her way across the room. She flipped the switch and retraced her steps.
“ ’Night, Gabe.”
“ ’Night, Emma.”
Although she had turned on the bathroom light, the closet door was still wide open. Progress, Gabe thought. Not much, but progress.
Gabe rose early, driven by a sense of urgency he couldn’t shake, and by the need to beat the snow predicted by early afternoon. The round trip to the cemetery was over a hundred miles, and most of Mountain Loop Highway was barely a step up from a logging road. Twenty miles out of town it turned into a narrow dirt road.
The woman occupying the passenger seat in his truck had barely spoken all morning other than to ask how cold it was and offer him Coke or coffee with his oatmeal. Right now she huddled in her parka, staring out the window as if her life depended on it.
She was mulling something over. That much was obvious. He suspected it had something to do with last night. But what?
The more he watched her, the harder she looked out the window, and the farther away she scooted. Finally he couldn’t resist commenting any longer. “If you get any closer to the passenger door, you’ll be riding on the outside of the truck.”
Emily jumped as the sound of his voice startled her. For the past twenty minutes all she’d heard was the heater fan and the whine of the transmission as Gabe shifted gears to accommodate the road grade or icy condition. Checking her body position on the seat, she frowned.
Her knees were pressed tightly together and angled toward the door while her shoulder was jammed into the corner of the seat back and truck frame. Her right arm lay on the armrest and the fingertips of her left hand balanced on the base of the window. Gabe was right; she was practically out the door.
Anyone with half a brain would see the unusual amount of space between them and jump to the conclusion that she was afraid of him. And they’d be right. Everything about Gabe unsettled her, especially when he focused that incredibly intense gaze on her. It literally pushed heat at her. Like now.
Unzipping her parka and flapping the front, she made up an excuse for her odd behavior. “I guess I was trying to cool off. It’s colder by the door.”
She could tell he didn’t believe a word, but he leaned over and cut the temperature lever back.
“Thanks,” she said lamely.
“No problem. I was beginning to feel the heat myself.” He checked the road and then let go of the wheel with one hand to shrug out of his coat. He waited until she reached out to help him before he looked her way. “I forgot how quickly two bodies can heat up a small space.”
That last sentence and the warmth of his coat as she curled her fingers into the lining were Emily’s wake-up call. Heat that had nothing to do with the hot air blowing out of the vents flooded her cheeks. All her life she’d been the center of people’s attention, but never like this. Never like she was being savored.
Since breakfast she’d been trying to convince herself that Gabe didn’t mean what he’d said last night. That he didn’t want Emma. Did he?
In public he played the role of an enamored ex-husband: kissing her, placing his hand protectively at the small of her back, trying to rub her shoulders. He’d performed a hundred small services the previous night, exploiting anything that gave him a legitimate right to touch her. And warning off any man who so much as looked in her direction.
In private he kept his hands to himself, but he managed to touch her all the same.
Swallowing, Emily hoarsely suggested, “The road.”
“Right.” Gabe refocused on the road, barely avoiding a jolt to the truck but not the one to his solar plexus.
He felt like a raw recruit about to take his first rocket ride out of a C-130 plane. All a man could do was close his eyes, kiss his fear good-bye, and jump. Emma didn’t look much better.
Despite the deplorable road conditions, they reached the first Darrington cemetery by nine o’clock. The spot was easy to miss, barely a dip between two forested slopes. Snow covered the ground already, the white blanket a remnant of the past week’s storm. Silver firs and mountain hemlocks dotted the uneven ground and stood somber watch over the scattered graves. The tombstones resembled eerie marble petit fours, frosted with ice and snow. More ice dribbled down the sides of the monuments and glistened in the early morning sun.
A cloud scudded across the sky and cast a shadow. Emily shivered involuntarily. She’d been expecting some sort of modern cemetery with a big stone fence around it, perfectly tended grounds, and asphalt pathways. This place was none of those things. It was an old churchyard—obviously still used for burials, but isolated and tended only by love. The kind of place that cradled the history of families.
Another chill crept over her. She was about to steal the life of one of their children. That action made her feel as if she were taking on a job, a responsibility. She wondered if Gabe felt the same. She almost said something, but he shoved the truck in park and killed the engine.
After he gave the place a quick once-over for anything out the ordinary, he told her, “Let’s do it.”
“It seems so dishonest to take someone’s name, someone’s life.”
“It is, but it’s better than being dead. Let’s go.”
When she still didn’t open her door, Gabe got out and wrenched it open for her. “Come on, darlin’. You know you hate not being in control of your life.”
“I never said that.”
“Not in so many words, but it’s true. So, I’m asking you—do you want to start taking control of your life? Or do you want to sit there and give it away again?”
Stunned, Emily knew he was right. Over the years it had been easier, less risky to agree rather than take action or live with conflict. If she wasn’t in control, then other people were always to blame for the bad things that happened.
Gabe might have found one of her flaws, but he also revealed the secret to maintaining control. She had to be willing to take the blame, to make the decision. That was the secret. That’s why she felt in control when she jumped. She made every decision—when to take off, how fast to spin, how many revolutions, and when to land. If she fell on her butt or her face, she was responsible. She stayed in the air until she said it was over.
“I’ll pick the name in a heartbeat, and I guarantee you won’t like it if I do,” Gabe warned her softly.
“You’re right,” she said. “I won’t like it at all if you pick the name.”
“See there? I keep telling you I’m right, but you don’t listen.”
“That’s because you’re usually yelling at me,” she retorted as she swung her legs around.
“That’s because you don’t listen.” He held out his hand to help her down. “Careful. This parking lot is a sheet of ice.”
“Ice I can handle. I grew up on it,” she told him as she hopped down without accepting his help. Her feet immediately slid out from under her.
Gabe caught her, dragging her back up against his chest, where his coat hung open. He gave her a minute to catch her breath, enjoying the feel of her in his arms again, enjoying the way she leaned into him so naturally. Wishing he had more time. Wishing for what he couldn’t have.
Gabe drew back from the edge, but only because an icy cemetery parking lot was no place to kiss Emma. He didn’t draw back completely, just far enough that something besides testosterone could influence his thinking.
“Darlin’, if you handled ice any better, I’d have to carry you.”
Obviously embarrassed, Emma straightened and stared at his throat. Her cheeks were flushed. “That won’t be necessary. I can handle it from here.”
Unfortunately she turned away from him too quickly and had to put a hand on the truck bed to steady herself.
“Right,” Gabe said sarcastically.
She swung around to explain about the tennis shoes being slippery, but the excuse died on her lips. Gabe pulled a pad of paper and a gun from the glove compartment.