“And, anyway, this isn’t even about me,” she said. “It’s about you. You don’t want to have to be vulnerable to me. To anyone. You don’t want to open up to me.”
“I’ve opened up and shared more with you than just about anyone else,” he said.
“But you’ve still held back. You think you have to be perfect or some other such idiocy. But you’re forgetting, I already know you’re not perfect.”
Direct hit. And they both knew she was no longer talking about last night. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“You made a blanket decision about us without me. That’s what hurt me.”
“Yes, I did that,” he agreed. And he’d do the same thing again. “Come on, Holly, you know that back then a life with me was a guaranteed life of hurt.” He’d done her a favor by breaking things off before heading into the military. He’d always looked back on it just like that, telling himself she’d be happier without him.
Which meant that he had no right to feel anything for her now. He’d had his chance, and he’d made the choice to walk away. He’d refused to alter his life to fit her into it. He hadn’t been willing to add the complication. He wanted things as simple as possible.
Holly was a lot of things, but simple wasn’t one of them. Then or now.
“So what was last night, then?” she asked.
Well, hell.
“You don’t even know, do you,” she said in disbelief.
No, he didn’t. He didn’t have a clue.
“Really?” she said when he remained silent. “You’re going to go with the whole Dark, Tortured, Silent persona? Fine. That’s fine, Adam. Stick with what you’re good at. Because you are good at that. You’re the master at that. Sucking people in with your quiet, sexy charm, allowing them to think that they’re special to you, that you’re letting them in, all the while you’re keeping them at arm’s length and not letting them in at all.”
He rubbed his jaw and studied her, wondering if she was always so damn prickly in the mornings. Another question that would be better kept to himself. He knew better than to get dragged into a fight with her on a mountaintop with a possible storm coming and her father missing and her emotions so high. Maybe he could tease her to break the mood. “Last night,” he said. “When we—”
She closed her eyes. “Yeah, what about it?”
“You came, right?”
“Oh my God.” Her eyes flew open and she gave him a narrow-eyed look. “You think I faked the orgasm?”
“Three orgasms,” he pointed out, giving himself away. He’d known she’d come. He’d known exactly when and for how long, and he’d be reliving the moments for a long time to come.
Realizing he was pulling her leg, she blushed. “I wouldn’t fake.”
“Good to know,” he said. “But you seem pretty cranky for someone who got some, so…”
“Okay,” she said, backing away. “Fun as this awkward morning-after is, I’m going to…” She gestured to the woods.
“Wait.” He pulled a small canister of pepper spray from his backpack. “Take this with you.”
“For all the rapists that hang out here?”
“For the bears and other curious four-legged predators.”
Nodding, she clutched the canister, turned on her heels, and headed toward the woods.
“Don’t go far,” he said to her stiff spine. “It’s easy to get turned around—”
“Contrary to my latest stupidest decision—which was sleeping with you by the way,” she clarified helpfully, “I’m not a complete moron.”
“I meant because of the snow. We only got a few inches, but it’s deceiving.” He shoved the first-aid kit into his pack. “I’ll come with—”
“Follow me and die.”
He went still. “Okay, but just remember, everything looks the same right now with the low light—”
She waved a dismissive hand and kept going, vanishing into the woods.
“Milo,” Adam said, watching the spot where she’d vanished.
The dog bounded over.
“Seek,” he said, and pointed.
Milo went trotting after Holly. If she wouldn’t listen to reason, then she could have a babysitter while finding herself a tree.
But a few seconds later he heard her say “no,” quite clearly, obviously to the dog. She must have also given him the stern finger point, because a chastened Milo came slinking out of the woods.
“It’s okay,” Adam told him. “Good job.” He took a moment to call Dell and check in.
“Long night?” Dell asked casually.
“Don’t start.”
“I’m going to assume that since you’re still breathing, Holly didn’t kill you. You two find some…common ground?”
“I’m calling for my messages, Dell.”
“Look, just say yay or nay cuz Jade keeps texting me, wanting to know if I’ve heard from you yet.”
“Well, now you can tell her you’ve heard from me.”
“So, are you confirming or denying?” Dell pressed.
“Jesus.”
“Hey,” Dell said. “It’s not for me. It’s for Jade. She’s convinced you’re still into the guilt thing.” He paused. “You’re not, right? You’re…okay?”
Adam resisted the urge to bash his head against the tree. “Should I assume there’s nothing critical?”
“Depends on your definition of critical. Reno kicked me in the ass a little while ago. That horse has no manners.”
“Tell him I owe him a whole apple,” Adam said, and disconnected. He called Brady next, who told him that Donald still hadn’t shown up or reported in.
“Not good,” Adam said, because he knew what this meant—a trip to the f**king caves. Yay.
“You okay out there?” Brady asked, as always able to pick up on Adam’s stress.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”“I don’t know. You tell me.”
Adam paused. “Fucking Dell,” he said, and Brady laughed softly.
“Yeah, I’m right here next to him,” Brady said. “So it’s true, then. You and Holly.”
“Dell doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“So it’s not true.”
Adam drew in a deep breath, visions of last night haunting him. Holly beneath him, arms and legs wrapped so tight around him that he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began…
At the long pause, Brady laughed again. “Good luck. And trust me, you’ll need it.”
Adam paused. “Did you need luck? With Lilah?” The question shocked him. If he could have taken it back, he would have, in a heartbeat.
There was a beat of silence that told him that Brady was shocked by the unexpected reveal of vulnerability as well, and if he laughed, Adam was going to have to kill him.
But Brady didn’t laugh. “Hell, man,” he finally said. “I needed a lot more than luck. I needed divine intervention to land that woman, and I still almost screwed it up.”
Brady was just about the toughest son of a bitch Adam had ever known. And yet somehow he’d managed to land the sweetest woman on the face of the earth. They’d gotten married last month, a beautiful, emotional ceremony with a reception that had the entire town partying all night long. Still, Adam never got over his surprise while watching them together. Lilah would needle Brady, get on his case about something, anything. Food, work, his overprotectiveness…She’d keep after him until he’d start to get pissed, and then she’d go toe-to-toe with him. The kitten up against the lion. Adam had never seen anyone do that to Brady before, but Lilah had no fear of Brady. She’d throw her arms around the guy’s neck and kiss him, and he’d grin down at her like a teenager. Even now, to this day, when Adam was with Brady when his cell phone rang with Lilah’s ringtone, Brady would get that same big-ass grin on his face.
“Don’t screw it up,” Brady said.
With nothing else to say, Adam disconnected. He spent a few minutes packing everything up, with the exception of the two granola bars, apples, and water he’d taken out for their breakfast.
Still no Holly.
He paced the clearing, stopping every few seconds to peer into the woods where she’d vanished. “Holly.”
Nothing.
Dammit. “I’m coming in, Holly.” He did not want to surprise her. He’d armed her, for one thing. And getting Maced sucked. Besides that, he understood wanting privacy for whatever complicated morning routine a woman might try to go through out here. But if she was out there sulking, trying to punish him, then that was another thing altogether. He’d told her the truth last night, he wasn’t playing games. “Holly.”
Still nothing.
He gave her another sixty seconds, which was sixty seconds too long in his book because everything inside him was saying he needed to go after her now. He did realize that his instincts when it came to women were completely screwed up, but all his life his gut feelings were all he’d ever had. Even when things had gone FUBAR on his last mission, it hadn’t been his instincts that had failed him. He whistled for Milo and then once again pointed where Holly had vanished. “Seek.”
Adam followed the dog, immediately picking up Holly’s boot prints in the snow. Milo had run ahead. Adam could no longer hear the dog, but then he heard the “tell,” three short, quick barks in a row, signaling Milo had made his find.
Adam trailed after both Holly’s booted prints and the dog’s paw prints, coming into another clearing. There he found both his dog and woman sitting on a fallen log. He paused, not sure what the hell to say to her.
Holly was sitting, legs bent, arms around her shins, head down on her knees. He could see the tension in every line of her body, tension that he was going to hope like hell was temper and not tears.
Temper was always infinitely preferable to tears.
Milo stood at Holly’s side, alert, eyes on Adam as he approached. “Good boy.”
Milo happily relaxed and plopped down to the snow.
“Holly.”
She lifted her head and looked at him. And for the first time since he’d last seen his therapist and had been forced to discuss feelings he didn’t want to discuss, he felt that same old familiar lick of panic.
Twelve
Holly took one look at Adam’s expression and dropped her head back to her knees. Nope, she still wasn’t ready to see him. “I told you I needed a minute,” she said.
“No, you said you’d kill me if I followed you.”
He didn’t sound bothered by this, which somehow made her want to smack him. But she had bigger issues. First of all, she’d slept in her contacts, which always made her eyes sore and swollen. Dumb move. She’d just been forced to take them out and was as good as blind without them. And okay, so there hadn’t been a whole lot of “sleeping” going on last night, but her eyes were definitely suffering the consequences—unlike the rest of her body, which was actually still operating on a low-level hum of excitement. She couldn’t help it, every movement reminded her that she’d used muscles long out of practice.
That wasn’t the only thing she’d been out of practice at. Having a man inside her, moving over her, murmuring sweet erotic nothings in her ear as he took her places she couldn’t get on solo expeditions…
But he already regretted it, and that really chapped her ass.
And hurt her heart.
“I was willing to give you a minute,” he said. “But you were gone much longer than that.”
She jumped when she felt the warmth of his thigh as he sat next to her. The man moved like smoke. “Okay, so I needed a few minutes,” she said, keeping her face averted.
“Are you crying?” He sounded worried. Going to war hadn’t worried him. Facing down wolves hadn’t worried him. Traveling into the storm hadn’t worried him.
But tears apparently did. She sighed. “No.”
Not that she’d admit it, anyway.
He let out a long, slow, relieved breath that made her grind her teeth. “Thank Christ,” he murmured.
With a sound of exasperation aimed at the both of them, she rose to her feet, and then remembered the problem. Without her contacts, she couldn’t see a thing. Dammit! She sat down again.
“Hey,” Adam said with surprising gentleness. Crouching before her, balancing on the balls of his feet, he put his hands on her arms. She sensed his careful scrutiny, but thanks to being both near and farsighted, all of which added up to being as blind as a bat in daylight, she couldn’t see his expression clearly.
Probably not a bad thing.
“Just having trouble seeing,” she said.
“You wearing your contacts?”
For a guy who liked to pretend they barely knew each other—at least until last night—he sure remembered a hell of a lot about her. “I had to take them out,” she admitted.
He let out a breath. “You have your glasses with you?”
“Maybe in my pack.”
“Maybe?”
“Hopefully.”
“Shit, Holly.”
Which translated into Dumb move, Reid. Since she already knew this, she nudged him out of her way—or maybe it was more of a rude push—and rose. “It’s no big deal. We can still do this.” She pulled out her cell and hit Red’s number.
“There’s no news,” Adam said. “I already checked.”