* * *
The sight of her bare back stopped Jake cold, like a ship that had run headlong into an iceberg. He felt the impact echo through his body, a paralyzing shock that went from his head all the way down to his very cold toes.
Only he definitely wasn’t cold anymore.
The woman had one hell of a nice back.
Water glistened on silky flesh that was golden in the flickering light of the fire. Her shoulders were slender and fragile. Her narrow rib cage tapered to a waist so small he could almost span it with his hands….
He felt as if he’d been hit right between the eyes with a two-by-four. For a full thirty seconds he stood perfectly still, knocked senseless, knowing he should be doing anything but admiring that pretty back. But for the life of him he couldn’t bring himself to tear his eyes away.
Vaguely he was aware of the wind at his back, the sting of cold on his cheeks, the dampness of snow in his hair. He knew he should shut the door to conserve heat from the fire, but some inner warning told him he didn’t want to be shut up in the cabin with this lovely creature. He knew enough about women to realize this one was a truckload of trouble. He knew enough about himself to know he was standing right in the path of that truck, that it was barreling toward him at a death-defying speed, and he was about to be plowed over.
What a way to go.
“If it’s not too much trouble, do you think you could close that door?” she snapped. “It’s getting a little drafty in here.” Glaring at him over her shoulder, clearly annoyed and discomfited, Abby fought her arms into the sleeves of her jumpsuit. “Sometime today, if you don’t mind.”
Even though her back was to him, Jake averted his eyes. But not before the image of her bare back had been branded onto his brain. Soft, glistening skin that curved in all the right places. Wet curls clinging to the graceful arch of her neck. The smell of woman and soap and her own unique scent filling the air like some exotic perfume.
Oh, boy.
Giving himself a hard mental shake, Jake turned away from her and slammed the door. Gripping the knob, he took a deep breath, tried to get a handle on the quick slice of heat low in his belly. He knew better than to let the heat get to him. Not over a female inmate, for God’s sake. He was a professional and took his job very seriously. He was courting serious problems by letting the sight of her turn him into a stuttering schoolboy with a bad case of hormones.
Refusing to acknowledge the power of his reaction, he stomped ice from his boots, brushed the snow from his duster onto the floor and tried to find something to look at that didn’t make his mouth go dry, his pulse pound.
“Lady, I suggest you get yourself decent pronto, because I’m not going back outside.” He’d tried to make his voice firm, but a peculiar hoarseness undermined his efforts.
“You agreed to five minutes.”
“I gave you ten.”
“I suppose cops aren’t known for their ability to count.”
That should have ticked him off, but it didn’t. He was too busy recovering from an overwhelming bout of lust to care if she’d just insulted him.
“At least we know how to stay out of jail,” he grumbled. A pang of disappointment rippled through him when she yanked the jumpsuit over her shoulders.
“You look like the Abominable Snowman,” she said after a moment.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s snowing outside.”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.” Zipping the jumpsuit up to her chin, she turned to face him. “Are the horses all right?”
“One horse. One mule.”
“Whatever.”
“I tossed them some compressed alfalfa and moved them to a more protected area out of the wind. But it’s damn cold out there.”
“The storm’s a bad one, isn’t it?”
Jake nodded, glanced out the window. He’d seen white-out conditions before. But he’d never seen anything this bad. The snow was coming down at a furious pace, the wind sending it sideways and whipping it into drifts high enough to swallow a sixteen-hand horse. It had taken him a full ten minutes to move Brandywine and Rebel Yell just five feet. Visibility was down to zero, and he’d had to feel his way back to the door. He hadn’t expected to walk in to find himself face-to-face with the most beautiful bare back he’d ever laid eyes on.
He wasn’t going to think about her back. Damn it, he wasn’t. But his mind refused to cooperate by conjuring up images of wet, fragrant skin….
A trickle of sweat dampened the back of his neck. It might be cold outside, but things were definitely heating up in the cabin.
Jake didn’t like the idea of keeping close quarters with this woman. He sure as hell didn’t like the idea of things getting too cozy between them. He was a professional, not some amateurish rookie. He understood boundaries. He respected them, abided by them. This woman had a way of muddling those boundaries. He knew he was skating awful close to the edge. He’d be wise to remember she was his prisoner. An escaped convict, for God’s sake. A murderer who’d already tried to use her body to undermine his discipline….
Jake didn’t want to think about her body. Not now. Not ever.
Thanks to another blonde with big baby blues and a tale that had made his heart bleed, he’d become immune to lying beauties.
Elaine had shown him what could happen to a man who listened to his heart, to a man who let himself get blinded by lust. Jake hated thinking of himself as vulnerable. He was an officer of the law. A man who made decisions based on logic and experience. A man who came to those decisions through slow and cautious deliberation.
Three years ago Jake had been neither cautious nor deliberate when he’d invited a woman he barely knew into his home. He’d acted like some love-sick teenager crazed with hormones and short on common sense. As a cop, that he’d been so gullible shamed him. As a man, the experience had scarred him for life. Right now, those scars were aching with remembrance and warning him not to make the same mistake twice.
Shaking thoughts of the past from his mind, angry that he would think of Elaine now, he slapped the rest of the snow from his duster and started toward the fire to warm himself. His hands were half frozen. His face was numb. He was almost to the hearth when his left boot came down on something mushy and slick. Before he could look down, both feet slipped out from under him as though someone had pulled out the rug.
What the—
He landed on his back hard enough to drive every last bit of oxygen from his lungs.
“Oh my gosh! Jake! Are you all right?”
Vaguely, he was aware of Abby kneeling next to him. He would have cursed if he’d had the breath. But he didn’t. He barely had enough wind to groan, but he managed. Barely.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
He opened his eyes, found himself staring into a bottomless violet gaze that would have taken his breath if he’d had any to spare. “Get…away,” he growled.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“What the hell did you put on that floor?”
“N-nothing.”
“Or maybe you’re trying to kill me.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Struggling to sit up, he glanced over at the floor where he’d slipped. A skimpy bar of soap glistened against the rough-hewn planks a few feet away. Jake looked from the soap back to Abby, felt his temper wind up. “Oh, that’s real good, Blondie. No wonder the cops love you.”
“Now wait just a moment, I didn’t—”
“You just happened to leave the bar of soap on the floor, hoping you might get lucky.”
“It slipped out of my hand. I—I was in a hurry to finish my bath and planned to pick it up when—”
“Or maybe you set the soap by the door and then took your shirt off hoping to distract me, so I’d break my neck.”
“If I wanted to distract you, you’d know it.”
Jake didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to think about just how hard it would be to resist this woman should she decide to test his wil
lpower, so he let the comment pass.
She looked over at the soap and bit her lip. “I know it might seem like I did that on purpose, but I didn’t.”
“Well, maybe you just got lucky.”
“Maybe you weren’t watching where you were walking.”
Gritting his teeth, Jake struggled to his feet. Damn, he was getting too old for this crap. “You’re a menace, lady, you know that?”
“So, I’ve been told.” She sighed. “Look, I didn’t mean for you to fall. And I wouldn’t…I didn’t…”
He cut her a hard look, decided it was best if he didn’t know how she was going to end the sentence. “Never mind.”
“Are you…okay?”
“Fine.” His butt hurt, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.
Tossing his duster onto the table, he stalked to the hearth and stuck his hands over the fire to warm them. Behind him, he heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker. Turning, he glared at her over his shoulder. “What’s so damn funny?”
She tried to sober, but she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “Nothing.”
“Yeah, that’s why you’re biting your cheeks to keep from laughing.”
She pursed her lips, but Jake could tell she was losing the battle with her sense of humor. Damn it, she thought this was funny. “Go ahead. Laugh,” he said peevishly.
The laugh that broke from her throat was a musical sound in the silence of the cabin, rising over the howl of the wind like the cry of a songbird lost in a storm. Jake should have been annoyed that she was laughing at him, but he wasn’t. He was too enthralled by the sound of her voice to be annoyed.
“I’m sorry…but…but…” Laughter overtook her before she could finish the sentence.
“But what?”
She put her hand over her mouth, but she couldn’t hold back the laughter. Her shoulders shook with it. Tears formed in her eyes. “You looked so…funny.”
The situation wasn’t funny. This woman, who couldn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds, had wrecked his radio, given him the mother of all shiners, then knocked him flat on his back. Him. Jake Madigan. Ex-Marine Corps officer. Chaffee County sheriff’s deputy. Lawman of the Year two years running.
It should have rankled, but it didn’t.
It was too damn funny to rankle.
A reluctant smile tugged at his mouth. He looked over at her. She was doubled over with laughter, and he felt a reluctant chuckle emerge. He told himself it was the stress of the situation—a combination of keeping close quarters with a way-too-attractive convict and being without radio communication during a dangerous storm—that had him wanting to laugh. But the image he must have made when he’d hit the deck was too much. A full-fledged belly laugh broke free.
“I don’t see what’s so funny about any of this,” she said.
“Me neither,” he said between chortles. “It’s not a bit funny.”
She pressed her hand to her stomach. “You could have been seriously hurt.”
“I was.”
“You should have seen your face.”
“You should have seen yours.”
She doubled over again, her hair tumbling wildly down.
Jake watched her, and felt something shift in his chest. He’d known plenty of women in his time, but he couldn’t remember a single woman ever making him laugh like this. Laughter was the one thing he’d never shared with a woman. It felt good, he realized. Laughing with her felt…real. Made him feel human. Connected.
Their laughter echoed in the cabin. He watched her covertly. The fire shot blond sparks through her hair. Tons of hair that was wild and flowed like corkscrews around her shoulders. It was a crazy thought, but suddenly Jake wanted to reach out and touch her hair, just to see if it was as soft as it looked. He wanted to run his fingers through those wild curls, bring them to his face to see if they smelled like her.
His gaze swept over her. The state-issue jumpsuit was buck ugly. The material was dirt-smudged and unflattering. But Jake instinctively knew the body beneath would be breathtaking. Even through the thick canvas material he discerned curves and softness and a woman’s secret places. Secret places he wanted her to share with him.
The image of her bare back flashed in his mind’s eye. He’d seen wet flesh. Feminine lines and soft curves. Fragrant skin lit by firelight and dimpled with gooseflesh. Jake’s body tightened with unexpected force. Heat surged low in his groin. The power of his response stunned him, left him incredulous and more than a little disturbed.
What the hell was he thinking? He was a cop, for God’s sake. This woman was his prisoner.
The realization of what he’d allowed to happen hit him like a slap. The laugh in his throat turned cold and sour. The weight of his responsibility, not only to the law, but to himself—to his own personal code of honor—sobered him as effectively as a glass of ice water thrown in his face.
He stopped laughing.
As if realizing what had happened, Abby straightened, used the back of her hand to shove a curly lock of hair off her forehead. Her gaze met his, her smile withering. Jake felt the pull of her gaze, and took a cautious step back.
The moment ended as abruptly as it had started. Breathing a sigh of relief, he cleared his throat. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us. We’d best get some rest.”
CHAPTER 5
Abby snuggled into the sleeping bag and listened to the wind claw at the cabin. The floor was hard and cold beneath her and shuddered with each gust. Despite the fire raging in the stone hearth just a few feet away, she was cold to her bones.
She lay on her side, staring into the flames, thinking about fate and wishing things could have turned out differently. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d felt this way, locked away in her cell, lying on her cot, alone and forgotten. The entire time she’d been in prison anger and frustration and a terrible sense of helplessness had tormented her like a painful disease. She’d been demoralized and humiliated by a system that was far from perfect—and downright cruel to those sorry few who were still human enough to feel the fangs of injustice.
A year and a half ago, she never would have dreamed her life would take such a terrible turn. Or that Fate could be so vicious. Sometimes she still couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe she was a convicted killer on the run from the law. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, she might have laughed at the absurdity.
The man determined to return her to the hands of justice sat on the floor a few feet away, brooding into the fire, a steaming cup in his hands. Abby wondered what he was thinking about. Wondered if it had anything to do with that crazy moment when they’d both been laughing like a couple of kids. She told herself it was exhaustion and fear that had had her emotions ebbing and flowing like a crazy tide. But in that instant when the laughter had poured out and she had heard Jake’s answering laugh in her ears, she’d felt human again. She’d felt alive, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. And she hadn’t felt so terribly alone.
As she stared into the fire the weight of the world pressed down on her with the force of a car crusher.
“You want some coffee?”
She started at the sound of Jake’s voice and risked a look at him. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
Rising, he walked over to his saddlebag. “You’re shivering. Something hot will help.”
She hadn’t even realized she was shivering. Physical discomfort in the face of the monumental disaster her life had become just didn’t seem very important in the scope of things. Her only hope of clearing her name was quickly vanishing with every hour that passed.
Jake removed a cup from the saddlebag and tapped a small amount of instant coffee into it. At the fire, he filled the cup with steaming water, then handed it to her. “It’s instant, but it’ll keep you warm.”
“Thanks.” The warm cup felt heavenly against her hands.
He didn’t walk away, but stood there looking down at her. “We need to get some sleep. If the storm lets up,
we’ve got some hard riding to do tomorrow.”
Her heart sank when she saw him reach for the cuffs attached to his belt. “Oh, I get it. You need to sleep. Can’t do it when you have to worry about me slipping out the door and riding into the sunset, huh, partner?”
“Give me your wrist.”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t think I’m stupid enough to run out into this storm, do you?”
“I don’t think you want me to answer that.”
“Give me a break, Cowboy, will you? I’ve had a tough day, and I’m not up to doing anything crazy, all right?” She tried to assume an annoyed countenance, but it wasn’t working. In reality she had been thinking about trying to slink away during the night. If he cuffed her, she could forget it. And she’d rather face the elements anyday than a knife in the shower room back at Buena Vista.
“I’m not going to run away,” she said, stalling.
His jaw flexed. “Your wrist. Now.”
Shaking her head in disgust, Abby set the coffee on the floor next to her and proffered her right wrist. His hands were warm and encompassed hers completely when he took it. Without speaking, he closed the cuff around her wrist, then snapped the other end around the lowest rung of a straight-backed chair.
“I’m sorry if that’s going to be uncomfortable for you, but it’s for both our safety,” he said.
“I appreciate you thinking of my safety,” she said sarcastically. “How selfless of you.”
He went back to his sleeping bag and sat.
Abby sat up and tested the cuff. It was secure, damn it. Her arm was going to fall asleep. Her hand was going to be very cold by morning. It was going to be a very long and uncomfortable night.