“You do the same.” So, if this was the right thing to do, why did he feel like such a jerk? “I’ll get your bag.”
In an instant, she had the door open and had stepped out into the cold. “No, I’ll get it.”
Giving himself a firm shake, John opened his door and stepped into the brutal wind. Thankful for the distraction the cold offered, he walked around to the rear of the Jeep and opened the door. Hannah stood next to him with her arms wrapped around herself, shivering.
Tugging the single canvas bag from the rear compartment, he put it over his shoulder. “I’ll carry it in for you.”
“No. I’ve got it.”
“Your hands—”
“I need to do this on my own, John. I don’t want you to feel…you know, responsible for me. I may be a little down on my luck at the moment, but I’m capable of handling this.”
“Look, Red, it’s not like I expect you to be indebted to me for the rest of your life just because I was doing my job. That went out about the same time mummification did.”
She didn’t relent.
Clenching his jaw, he handed her the bag, watched her loop the strap over her shoulder. He wanted to carry it for her, dammit, but reminded himself this was not his concern. He was outta there. Back to his cabin. Alone. Where he was in control and didn’t have to worry about feeling something that would disrupt the balance he’d struggled so hard to achieve for so many years.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out one of his cards. “Take this.”
When she only shook her head, he took her hand in his and pressed the card to her bandaged palm. “If you have any problems in the coming days, call me. Anytime. Day or night. I’ll come no matter what. You got that, Red?”
He wasn’t sure why, but she looked stunned, like the young female cougar he’d seen up on Elk Ridge last winter, all restless and frightened and a tad too curious for her own good. John’s heart beat a hard staccato against his ribs as he absorbed the impact of her. The simple beauty of her face. The vulnerability etched into her features. The layers of mystery he longed to peel away. All of it veiled by a thin veneer of bravado that moved him more than anything else could have.
“Th-thank you for…everything you’ve done. I mean that. You saved my life. You bought me the coat.” Her hand was small and soft and warm within his. She tried to tug her hand away, but he didn’t release her. The fact that he didn’t want to unsettled him. He knew better than to indulge in a moment like this. She was vulnerable—not to mention pregnant with another man’s child and more than likely blissfully wed. But her scent was doing funny things to his common sense, and his body had taken note. Blood pooled in places he didn’t want to acknowledge. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to do something really stupid like kiss her.
The thought sent a wave of heat slicing right through his middle.
The wind in her hair made her look wild and inviting. He glanced down at her mouth and wondered if she would taste as sweet as she smelled. If her eyes would glaze with pleasure or if an impulsive kiss would panic her and make her pull away.
His brain told him to release her. He was John Maitland the Untouchable, after all. The one who never got involved. The man who didn’t need anyone. The man who was better at being alone than he was at being with a woman.
His body wasn’t listening to the rhetoric.
Throwing logic to the wind, he put his hands on her shoulders and gently backed her against the Jeep.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she whispered.
“I’m going to kiss you goodbye, if that’s all right.”
“Well, um…I…” She might not be able to get the words out, but he saw the answer clearly in her eyes. That was all he needed.
He eased the canvas bag from her shoulder and let it drop to the snow. Her eyes widened when he cupped her face with his hands. A small sound escaped her as he lowered his mouth to hers. And with the first sweet brush of her lips against his, John felt the thin ice upon which he’d been treading shatter beneath his feet.
* * *
Hannah didn’t need her memory to know the man knew how to kiss. She would even go so far as to call him an expert. The instant his mouth touched hers, every pleasure center in her body jolted as if it had been hit with a thousand volts of electricity. Her brain shorted out, and she promptly forgot all the reasons she shouldn’t be letting him kiss her, including the fact that she was pregnant with another man’s child and more than likely involved in a serious relationship.
But his breath was incredibly warm and sweet against her cheek. The scent of his aftershave curled around her brain like drugging smoke. His clever mouth coaxed hers into compliance with gentle efficiency. She didn’t have a choice but to open to him. When she did, the ground beneath her feet simply crumbled.
With a low growl, John took her acquiescence to heart and moved against her. The hardness of his body shocked her almost as much as the pleasure it evoked. The ensuing rush of heat made her feel feverish and dizzy and more than a little out of control. Need coiled and sprang free inside her. His hands skimmed through her hair, then roamed over her shoulders and back. When they stopped at the small of her back and pulled her closer, her body went liquid, and she knew the battle was lost.
John’s breath quickened. He deepened the kiss, but Hannah was too involved to think about caution. Instead, she marveled at the silky feel of his mouth, the taste of mint spiked with a hint of male lust. The combination thrilled her, shocked her, pleasured her until she was breathless and shaking and hungry for more.
His hands grew restless, skimming over the curve of her backside, brushing her breasts through the coat. Then he was touching her face, her throat, tangling his fingers in her hair. Angling her head for better access to her mouth, he plundered. When her legs went weak, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life.
Thoughts tumbled drunkenly through her mind. The shelter, her memory loss, the uncertainty of her future, even the cold wind cutting through her coat melted away as his mouth worked magic against hers. She didn’t need her memory to know she’d never been kissed like this before. Amnesia or not, a woman didn’t forget something like that. And Hannah knew she would never, ever forget this moment.
But no matter how good John Maitland kissed her, she knew it wasn’t going to help her situation. In fact, falling for that devil-be-damned grin and those vivid blue eyes of his promised to complicate her life in ways she was far from equipped to handle.
It took every ounce of discipline she possessed to pull away. John let her go easily, but reached out to steady her when she leaned against the Jeep for balance. Mercy, the man’s kisses were potent. She felt the effect all the way down to her toes.
“You might not remember your name, but you sure as hell didn’t forget how to kiss,” he said huskily.
Hannah would have laughed if her heart hadn’t been in her throat. She ordered her pulse to slow, her head to stop spinning. If she could just get some oxygen into her lungs, she might be able to say something halfway intelligent. Something that would let him know the kiss hadn’t affected her ability to speak or think or even stand upright without assistance.
“I—I have to go,” she said at last.
His eyes were dark as midnight in the dim light from the street lamp. He studied her as if she were a puzzle he’d just realized wasn’t going to get solved anytime soon. “I didn’t mean for that to get out of hand.”
“It didn’t. I mean, it did, but…it was just a goodbye kiss.”
“Yeah, and Everest is just a mountain.”
She choked out a helpless laugh. “I have to go.”
For a moment, he looked like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t. His jaw flexed. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
“You, too.” She didn’t want to step away from him, but she did. The effort cost her, but she didn’t let it show. “Put some ice on that bump.”
She wanted him to smile for her one last time, but he didn’t. He
just stood there, watching her, his jaw set.
Aware that her heart was still beating out of control, that her emotions were spinning just as wildly, she picked up her bag and set the strap on her shoulder. “Goodbye, John Maitland.”
Before he could respond, she turned and started toward the shelter at a brisk clip. She told herself it was for the best that she walk away now, while the walking was still good. Another kiss like that one and she might just be willing to stand out on the sidewalk in the cold and let him kiss her until she was mindless—or they both got a bad case of hypothermia.
John Maitland was a dangerous man to a woman in her predicament. She wasn’t a free woman and knew it wasn’t in her makeup to betray the man who loved her. It was just as well that she was walking away from John. After that kiss, it was obvious neither of them would settle for friendship. Hannah didn’t want anything more complex. She needed to concentrate on finding out who she was, not fall for a man with to-die-for eyes, a cocky grin and kisses good enough to make a woman weep for more.
Behind her, she heard the door of the Jeep slam shut. Her heart pinged hard against her ribs, but she didn’t stop walking. If she stopped now, she wasn’t going to make it all the way to that front door. Dammit, she didn’t need John Maitland complicating her already complicated life.
The Jeep’s engine turned over. The realization that she would never see him again hit her hard. The thought was almost too much to bear. Still, she forced one foot in front of the other. She was halfway to the house. He would be gone soon. And the temptation to turn and run to him and fling herself into his arms would disappear as well.
Ice crunched beneath the Jeep’s tires as he pulled onto the street. Hannah stopped walking, felt her throat contract. Only then did she feel the sting of tears on her cheeks. Surprised and more than a little annoyed with herself, she brushed them away with the back of her bandaged hand. Like crying was going to help, she thought with dismay. If her emotions hadn’t been so close to spiraling out of control, she might have laughed at the absurdity of it.
Oh, why had she let him kiss her like that? Why hadn’t she just walked away from him and been done with it?
Determined to get through this with her emotions in check, Hannah hefted the bag. She was going to be fine, she assured herself as she started for the house. She would settle in for the night and get acquainted with Angela Pearl. Tomorrow she’d get her fingerprints taken at the police department. If she didn’t have her memory back by then, she’d make an appointment with the psychiatrist Dr. Morgan had recommended. She’d find out who she was and where she lived. She’d find the man she loved, the man who’d fathered her unborn child, the man who was probably out of his mind with worry and searching for her this very moment.
The sound of an approaching vehicle halted her in midstride. Despite her resolve to forget about John and that blasted kiss, joy burst through the cloak of despair. Dropping her bag in the snow, smiling like a fool, Hannah spun. She’d already taken several steps toward the street when she realized the vehicle wasn’t a Jeep, but a large SUV with dark windows and fancy wheels—and a huge dent in the passenger side door.
* * *
The kiss wasn’t going to change anything, John assured himself as he drove toward the highway that ran west toward his cabin. So what if it was the most mind-numbing kiss he’d ever experienced? Just because he could still feel the low ache of arousal in his groin didn’t mean he was going to forget everything he knew about the costs of caring for a woman. Just because his chest hurt at the thought of her spending the night alone and amongst strangers didn’t mean he was going to do something stupid like turn around and go back to her, did it?
Hell, no, it didn’t.
Walking away from emotional entanglements was what John Maitland did. He was good at it, he reminded himself. He knew what the alternative held, and he’d vowed a long time ago to never take the same path as his father. Even if he had inherited Dirk Maitland’s temper, John would never become the same kind of man. As a boy he’d witnessed the thin line between love and hate too many times to partake in such a vicious cycle. And he’d sworn a thousand times he would never breach that line.
His short but disastrous relationship with Rhonda had reaffirmed what he’d always known to be true. She’d burned him badly, and he felt the scald to this day. The logical side of his brain told him Hannah wasn’t anything like Rhonda. But the caution ran wide and deep, the scars even deeper, and John simply refused to lay himself open ever again.
But Hannah’s wildflower scent lingered, and it wasn’t doing much for his resolve. It made him remember that damn kiss—and what it had been like to hold her. It made him remember the shock in her eyes when she’d realized he was going to kiss her, and how that shock had transformed into pleasure when he had. He’d watched her eyes glaze, felt her body turn to liquid heat. Then she’d sighed and opened to him, giving him the sweetness of her mouth and the most erotically charged kiss he’d ever experienced.
He cursed in the silence of the Jeep.
That blasted kiss had changed everything.
But John knew his limits. His attraction to her pushed those limits and made warning bells clang in his head. The fact that she was pregnant with another man’s child should have him running away like a racehorse from the chute. He was insane to be thinking of her in intimate terms when he knew she was probably involved with somebody else. Still, he couldn’t deny there was a small part of him that didn’t care. A part of him that wanted to take her away from the man who’d put that child inside her, the man who hadn’t been able to keep her safe. And he couldn’t help but wonder if the man she was involved with was the same man who’d put those bruises on her throat and left her up on that mountain to die.
The thought sent the slow burn of fury through him.
Even if she wasn’t attached—she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, after all—Hannah wasn’t the kind of woman he took home for a one-night stand. Not only was she vulnerable because of the amnesia, but she was warm and real and kind with a heart as big as the Continental Divide. A heart he wanted absolutely nothing to do with.
So why couldn’t he stop thinking about her?
“Because you’re a damn hypocrite,” he muttered.
Rapping his palm hard against the steering wheel, he cursed and whipped the Jeep into a U-turn so fast, the wheels skidded.
John Maitland the Untouchable had been touched. The realization thoroughly shocked him. For the first time in his life, he didn’t want to walk away. Couldn’t walk away no matter how staunch his belief that it was the right thing to do.
As long as he didn’t relinquish control, he assured himself. As long as he didn’t let his emotions get involved, he would be able to walk away when the time was right. And John knew as surely as he’d ever known anything in his life that the time to walk away always came sooner or later.
Holding that thought, he sped toward Angela Pearl’s.
CHAPTER 7
Hannah stared at the SUV, frozen, telling herself it wasn’t the same vehicle that had driven her and John off the road just a few hours earlier. But she knew it was—she remembered the fancy wheels—and knew as surely as she saw the exhaust spewing into the cold air, as surely as she heard the rumble of the engine over the pounding of her own heart that she was in danger. She sensed it, felt it in the air like the zing of ozone a second before a deadly lightning strike.
A dozen yards separated her from the front door of the shelter. The urge to run was strong, but she resisted, not wanting to draw attention to herself in case the driver hadn’t yet spotted her. She stood frozen as the SUV idled up to the curb. The burn of adrenaline ripped through her when the passenger side window eased down. Fear transformed into horror when the black muzzle of a gun emerged, like a deadly snake slithering from its hole.
Terror and disbelief tangled in her brain. Realizing there was no place to hide, she sprinted toward the house. She’d only gone a few feet when two shots snapped
through the air. Something whizzed past her head so close, she felt the puff of hot air. Another wave of disbelief sliced her when she realized it was a bullet.
Someone was shooting at her!
Another shot rang out. Simultaneously she heard the metallic whisper of the bullet, felt a tug on the sleeve of her coat like a menacing ghost. On instinct, she ran in a zigzag pattern, but lost her footing on a patch of ice and went down on her hands and knees.
“Help me!” Scrambling to her feet, she stumbled up the porch steps. Next to her, a window exploded. Glass tinkled onto the wood planks of the porch. “Please! Someone, help me!”
The groan of a revved engine drew her attention. A dozen emotions jammed her throat when she saw John’s Jeep ram the SUV hard enough to send the other vehicle over the curb and into the yard. The sound of crunching metal followed by the blare of his horn split the air.
He’d come back for her!
The SUV’s engine had died, and the driver worked frantically to restart it. Gears ground when the Jeep reversed as if in preparation to ram the SUV again.
Hannah never took her eyes from the two vehicles as she streaked across the porch. Arms outstretched, she hit the front door and slapped her palms against the wood surface. “Help me!”
Behind her, the SUV’s engine whined. Snow spewed high into the air as it spun out of the yard and into the street. Hannah’s heart hammered out of control in her chest as the Jeep jumped the curb and slid to a stop a few yards away. John had the door open before the vehicle had even come to a stop, and sprinted toward her. “Hannah!”
She took a step toward him on quaking legs. “John. Oh my God.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay.” Her pulse skittered wildly with the remnants of shock and terror as he took the porch steps two at a time. If it hadn’t been for her adrenaline, she felt sure she would have fainted on the spot. “Wh-what are you doing here?”
“Are you hurt? Did that bastard—” His curse burned the air. Raw fury darkened his face. Intensity shone bright and hot in his eyes as his gaze raked her. “I need to know, honey. Are you hurt?”