She closed her eyes and turned her face upward as water rolled over her cheeks and down her neck. This was almost as good as the promise of a hot meal.
Chapter Five
Jericho stood outside the bedroom door listening as the shower came on and then to her sounds of pleasure. She sounded almost carefree in that one moment, as though she’d been denied the simplest of comforts and rediscovered them.
What was the fool woman doing running around the mountains naked? She didn’t seem crazy, just…unusual in a way that he couldn’t put his finger on.
“Is she staying?” Hunter called from the kitchen.
“Yes, she’s staying,” he said with mild exasperation. “Where the hell is she going to go?”
“And that stopped her before?”
Jericho didn’t bother with a response. Hunter usually had to have the last word anyway.
He stood there several more minutes and was about to go in to make sure she hadn’t taken a dive out the window when the door cracked open and she peered cautiously out.
Those amber eyes flashed against her small face, and unbidden images of the cougar came to his mind.
“Breakfast is about done. You coming out?” he asked when she made no move to walk out of the bedroom.
She hesitated for another brief second before opening the door wider. She slipped by him with barely a whisper, and she seemed to draw in her entire body to refrain from making incidental contact. Hell, he couldn’t be that scary.
But then again, in her place, he’d probably be a little worried. Being hauled out of a cave—no matter how weird that might be—by two strange men and taken to a remote cabin. No, that still wasn’t more bizarre than her running naked through the Rockies in the dead of winter.
He followed her into the kitchen and nearly ran over her when she came to an abrupt halt. Hunter was standing next to the small stove eyeballing her with that piercing stare of his.
She trembled against Jericho, and despite his resolve to exercise extreme caution when it came to handling her, he reached out and folded his hands over her slight shoulders.
“He won’t hurt you. He always looks like a bear with a sore tooth.”
She nodded solemnly. “Bears can be very cranky creatures. I try to avoid them at all costs.”
Hunter lifted one brow. “Good policy.”
“Go on and sit down,” Jericho coaxed. He nudged her toward the small table in the corner and gave Hunter a reprimanding glare as they walked by.
Hunter rolled his eyes as he slapped ham on a plate.
Jericho took the seat across from their guest and realized he had no clue what her name was. She sat there almost primly, ill at ease, as if with the slightest provocation she’d bolt like a deer.
“What’s your name?”
“I am Kaya.”
He puzzled over her stilted speech, trying to place the accent. He’d been a damn lot of places, but he couldn’t remember hearing someone who sounded like her.
“You are Jericho.”
His eyes widened. “How the hell did you know that?”
She paled and her eyes flashed with panic for a moment. “You told me.”
“No, I didn’t. We haven’t exchanged names yet, sweetheart. Hard to do that when you’re out cold.”
“I must have heard you and Hunter talking,” she mumbled.
Hunter plopped the food on the table between them and gave Jericho a look that clearly said I told you so before he settled into the seat next to Kaya.
She picked up both the fork and the knife and held them in tightly curled fists as she surveyed the plate in front of her. It was as if she didn’t know where to start.
“Dig in,” Hunter said as he speared a slab of ham and dragged it onto his plate.
She started by taking a piece of the ham as Hunter had, but then she quickly got into the spirit and spooned eggs, grabbed two biscuits and took some of the sausages as well.
There was no delicacy in her table manners. She dug in with almost scary zeal. Jericho exchanged a glance with Hunter. When was the last time she’d eaten?
He wanted to ask her questions, but he wasn’t about to interrupt the killing going on in her plate.
When she’d tucked the last morsel away, she sat back with a contented sigh. “Thank you. That was wonderful.”
Then to Jericho’s amazement she pushed from the table and stood. “I should be going now.”
He and Hunter bolted up at the same time. Hunter was less subtle than Jericho planned to be.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Hunter said with a growl.
Jericho wasn’t sure who was most surprised by that declaration. Him, Kaya or Hunter himself.
She edged backward, her posture defensive. “I can’t stay. Truly. I appreciate the clothes and the food.”
“Where the hell do you think you’re going to go? Back to that cave?” Jericho burst out.
Confusion darkened her eyes. “Well, maybe not that one.”
Hunter was evidently through talking. He closed in on Kaya and herded her toward the living room before she could even launch a protest. Jericho followed, shaking his head at Hunter’s inability to make up his mind whether he wanted the woman to stay or go.
Hunter was about to park her on the couch when he picked up her hand and turned it over. “What happened to your hand?”
Jericho got closer and noticed that there was a still-raw-looking wound in the crease of her palm. There was no blood and it was obviously healing, but it had been one hell of a gash.
She curled her fingers into a fist to hide the injury. “It’s nothing.”
“Seems to be your week for strays with wounded hands,” Jericho taunted Hunter.
Hunter shot him a quelling look and then returned his gaze to Kaya. “Have a seat. There are some questions I need answered before I let you just walk out that door.”
Kaya stared back at him in horror. He looked so…determined. “You can’t keep me here if I want to go.”
“Oh yeah? Watch me.”
Her gaze flitted to where Jericho stood a few feet away, but the resolve framing his jaw was no less than Hunter’s.
“Where the hell do you live?” Hunter asked.
“I live here,” she said simply. Then she realized how that sounded. “Not here, I mean here. I live in the mountains. This is my home.”
“Is there any reason you broke into our cabin then?” Jericho asked.
She twisted her fingers nervously in front of her. “I was hungry.” And lonely. Desperate for human contact. Not just any, but theirs.
“So wherever it is you live, you obviously have no food,” Hunter said grimly.
“There’s food,” she said truthfully. The cougar enjoyed the occasional wild game, but she’d long gone without hot, cooked food that humans enjoyed.
Hunter and Jericho exchanged frustrated glances. Then Jericho turned back to her. “Are you alone? Do you live with anyone else? I’d feel a whole lot better if I knew you weren’t wandering around these mountains by yourself.”
Her brows came together. “But I’m always alone. There’s no crime in that.”
Hunter let out a sigh, and then he leaned down, framing his hands on either side of her legs as he faced her. Their noses were just inches apart, and she blinked as she stared into his green eyes.
“Let me make myself clear, Kaya. You’re staying. Until you can come up with some answers that make sense and you can convince me that you’ll be okay, you’re not budging from this cabin. Are we clear?”
Fear fluttered into her throat, and deep within, the cat snarled and hissed its displeasure. She wanted her freedom.
“You can’t do that,” she whispered.
“We’ve already covered this,” he said in a bored tone.
Her gaze flew to Jericho, a helpless plea for him to understand. It was like meeting with a stone wall.
“Please. I have to go.”
“Why?” Jericho demanded. “You look like you’
re about to crawl right out of your skin. We’re not going to hurt you, Kaya. We want to help you.”
“I don’t need your help. I can take care of myself.”
“What are you hiding?” Hunter asked bluntly.
The blood drained from her face. “N-nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
“What do you care?” she shot back. “Let me go.”
Something odd flickered in Hunter’s eyes for a moment. Then he backed away, slowly straightening. He shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced at Jericho.
“She’s right. We can’t keep her against her will.”
“What?” Jericho exploded. “Are you shitting me? You know we can’t let her wander off in the snow again.”
Kaya inched forward, her hands curling around the edge of the couch. Jericho jerked around to glare at her and pointed a finger in her direction.
“You don’t move.”
She swallowed as she watched the two men square off in front of her.
“You can’t keep her,” Hunter said calmly. “She’s a grown woman, and from what I can tell, while maybe a little strange, she seems to be in full control of her faculties.”
“You’re just going to let her walk out of here in bare feet, baggy-ass sweats and my shirt?”
Hunter’s teeth flashed, reminding Kaya of a wolf. It had been so long since she’d seen one. Not since her childhood in Alaska.
“Not at all. She’ll stay tonight, and if in the morning she’s still hot to trot to get out of here, you and I will take her home and make sure she hasn’t lied to us about having a place to live.”
He turned to her again and eyed her levelly. “Got a problem with that?”
She swallowed and shook her head. What else could she do or say? She cast a longing glance toward the window to where pale moonlight bathed the snow. The cougar rolled within, edgy and impatient. Run.
She shook off the instinct. Then she looked back up at Hunter and then Jericho. “I will stay tonight, but tomorrow I must leave.”
Chapter Six
Jericho sprawled on the sofa in front of the fire and took turns watching Kaya pace across the floor as she alternately stared from him and Hunter to outside the window, and Hunter who observed Kaya in brooding silence.
There was enough tension to dull his sharpest buck knife.
“Hell, you don’t even have any goddamn shoes,” Jericho said as his gaze dropped to her bare feet.
She glanced down as if the thought had not occurred to her. “It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t,” Hunter growled. “Who are you, Kaya, and what the hell are you running from?”
She blinked. “I’m not running from anyone.”
Jericho could see the surprised sincerity in her face. She wasn’t lying. Which made it all the more puzzling. He didn’t get her, and it bugged the shit out of him.
Hunter snorted. “You’re trying to tell me that it’s perfectly normal to run around in the snow, no clothes, no shoes. You have no food wherever it is you live. We find you in a damn cave that could be inhabited by all sorts of wild animals.”
She cocked her head, and her brow furrowed as she studied Hunter. “I never said I was normal. I imagine you find me strange, but I’ve committed no crime. No one is after me. I simply prefer to be…alone.”
A flash of pain accompanied her last words. Hunter didn’t miss it either.
“What happened to you?” Hunter asked softly.
“What happened to you?” Kaya thrust her chin up in challenge as she stared him down. “You and Jericho live up here alone. No people for miles. You drag in at odd times and stay holed up in here until you leave again, and then you don’t come back for weeks.”
Both men stared at her in shock.
“How the hell would you know that?” Jericho asked softly.
Another look of fright scurried across her face, and she visibly retreated. “I told you I lived here. These mountains are my home.”
“We’re not talking about us,” Hunter pointed out. “We’re talking about you.”
“Not anymore,” she said stubbornly.
Jericho shook his head. He’d never come across a woman like Kaya. Ever. And he’d met some doozies.
Was the only reason he didn’t want her to leave because he was concerned about her? Or was it a case of wanting? He wanted her.
He couldn’t claim desperation. It wasn’t as if he lived like a complete monk. That was Hunter’s job. There was something elemental about Kaya. An earthy beauty that went far beyond the outer trappings. She was mysterious and soulful looking, a lost waif with liquid amber eyes.
Short of tying her down, he didn’t see a way to keep her from leaving, and it frustrated the hell out of him. How could he just turn her out into the snow, no matter how much she wanted to go? Yet, how could he keep her against her will?
He looked at Hunter for help, but Hunter was unreadable, his thoughts closed off by his look of indifference.
“Where will I sleep tonight?” she asked quietly.
“You can have my room,” Hunter said. “I’ll sleep out here on the couch.”
A look of wonder crossed her face. “I can have your bed?”
Hunter’s lips thinned, and he frowned harder. “I said I’d sleep out here.”
“Then I would very much like to go there now. I’m tired, and a bed would feel so wonderful.”
Jericho started to rise, but Hunter beat him to the punch. “Would you like anything else before you go to bed?”
She shook her head. “You and Jericho have been very kind. It was nice to visit with you both.”
Hunter shot Jericho a strange look. Jericho shrugged. He didn’t understand this woman any more than Hunter did. She made it sound like the entire episode had been nothing more than a social call. And to think he used to believe that nothing out of the ordinary ever happened up here. Just the way he liked it.
“Come on, I’ll show you to the bedroom,” Hunter muttered.
Jericho sat in silence, contemplating the oddity of their encounter with Kaya. A few minutes later, Hunter returned and flopped down in the chair next to the couch.
“What the hell kind of bizarre case have we got, Jericho?”
“Fuck if I know. I’ve never been so goddamn confused in my life. You get the sense we’re not getting the full story?”
“And what was your first clue?”
“Maybe she just wanted company for a while. If she does live up here, there aren’t a lot of folks around.”
“Yeah, but where does she live? I don’t know of another cabin or dwelling within miles,” Hunter said. “And there’s the fact that we dragged her out of a cave in the dead of winter. At first I thought she was a few boxes short of a full load, but she seems okay, if a little odd.”
“For someone who didn’t seem to want anything to do with her, you sure were quick to tell her she couldn’t leave.”
Hunter scowled. “She’s your stray.”
“And you can’t make up your mind whether you want her or not, am I right?”
Hunter’s eyes flickered as he caught Jericho’s gaze. “What exactly do you mean?”
“Just what I said. You seem to battle over whether or not you’re going to admit you want her. One minute you’re all but holding the door open for her to leave and the next you’re threatening to tie her to a chair.”
Hunter’s scowl deepened. “If she wants to leave, I can’t stop her.”
“But you want to stop her.”
“Shut the fuck up, man. It doesn’t matter what we want.”
Jericho acknowledged that with a nod. “That’s true.”
“She couldn’t stay anyway,” Hunter continued on. “We’re likely to be called away any time, and she sure as hell can’t go with us.”
Silence fell over the living room. Hunter stared broodingly into the fire while Jericho focused his attention on nothing in particular.
“Do you ever think about giving it up?” J
ericho asked.
Hunter’s head whipped around. “Give what up?”
“The job. What we do.”
“That’s a dumbass question. We promised Rebeccah.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have,” Jericho said quietly. “And we didn’t promise her that we’d keep running ourselves to death. We promised to support her cause. We’ve earned enough money for two lifetimes. When are we going to slow down and have a life?”
“You’re saying you want to quit?” Hunter asked in disbelief.
“Maybe. I don’t know. There has to be more to life than what we’re doing. Rebeccah is gone. We can’t bring her back by killing ourselves.”
Hunter closed his eyes and reclined his head until he faced the ceiling. “You want to know why I keep going?”
Jericho didn’t say anything.
“Because I can’t remember what she looks like sometimes. I get away from the kids, the camps, and she starts to fade, but when I’m there, I can see her. Smiling and laughing. I don’t want to forget.”
The last was said with a note of raw agony that cut Jericho to the core.
“I loved her too,” he said in a low voice. “But she’s gone. We can’t bring her back.”
“No, but we can keep her memory alive by helping the kids she loved more than anything.”
“There are ways to do it other than the way we’ve gone about it,” Jericho said carefully.
Hunter didn’t reply, and Jericho didn’t chase it further. He’d said enough. Planted the idea in Hunter’s head. He’d have to make the decision on his own.
Kaya woke after only a few hours. She was used to fractured sleep, taking what she could when she could. For a moment, she snuggled deeper into the covers and inhaled the firm, masculine scent that permeated the bed.
Hunter’s smell was so different from Jericho’s, and yet both told of powerful, strong men.
How she wished she could stay, but she couldn’t go much longer without shifting. She simply hadn’t spent enough time as a human over the years. The cougar was strong within her. Willful and protective. It was too easy to let the cat have her way. Already she’d been denied longer than she was used to.