Читать книгу Secret Dad - Raye Morgan - Страница 8

One

Denver McCaine winced as he climbed the trail to the cabin he’d rented for the month. His bruised, broken and thirty-eight-year-old body was rebelling, and he didn’t blame it. He’d wanted something remote, but if he’d known the cabin was going to be this hard to get to, he would have opted for something closer to the edge of the water.

“Go stay at Big Tree Lakes,” his coordinator, Josh Hoya had advised him. “You’ve had three rough assignments in a row. You’re not going to make it through another one without taking some time to heal.”

The casual onlooker might have thought Josh compassionate, but Denver knew better. Josh just wanted him ready for his next mission, and he wanted him in shape, just in case Denver had to pull the usual dangerous stunts he’d become known for during his almost twenty years as a government agent. But for the first time, Denver wasn’t sure he was going to be back when his R and R was over. For the first time, he felt a certain lack of will he’d never experienced before.

“You’re getting old,” he told himself, stopping to rest with his hand jammed against the rough bark of a pine to hold himself up. It might be time to consider changing to a desk job.

But that made him grin. A desk job—that would never happen. It just wasn’t his style. Still, this climb was destroying his right knee. He looked around for a better way to make it up to the cabin and his eye fell on an old streambed. That might give him better footing. He walked gingerly toward the rocky gully, cursing the foreign government soldier who had taken a whack at his leg with the butt of a rifle just three weeks ago—and the sniper who had put a bullet into his backside. All in all, he felt just this side of broken.

But he should have been paying attention to where he was placing his feet rather than cataloguing his pains. One misstep, then another, and he was falling, reaching out to try to catch himself on brush that came away in his hand, sliding down into the streambed on his back, wedged in between two boulders and twisted so that he knew right away it was going to be very difficult for him to get back up on his own.

A wave of pain swept over him and he closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for it to pass so that he could think straight. In the meantime, he uttered every curse word he knew, and some he’d only read in ancient books. This was so stupid, so avoidable. “See,” he muttered darkly to himself. “More evidence you’re losing your edge” He never made mistakes like this. What the hell was the matter with him?

Once he felt his strength coming back, he tried to leverage himself up into a sitting position, but he couldn’t get the traction he needed. His right leg was gone, completely unusable, and without it, he didn’t know how he was going to get up again.

He lay there, unbelieving, stream water soaking his pants. He was helpless. He—Denver McCaine, government agent, adventurer, sometime mercenary rescuer of damsels in distress, defender of the weak, the man who went where wise men feared to tread—here he was, flat on his back like a damn turtle. If he hadn’t felt so completely humiliated, he might have laughed.

“Hold on. I’m coming.”

The voice was female and he groaned. No woman should ever see him like this. This was not the face he usually presented to the world.

She came scrambling over the bank and toward him.

“Are you hurt? Do I dare move you? Or should I run into town and get a doctor?”

At first all he saw was a swirl of blond hair slashing through the sunlight above him, but as she bent over him, her face began to take shape and come into focus.

“I’m not really hurt,” he said gruffly, wondering just how he was going to explain. “I mean, I’m hurt, but it’s from an earlier incident. This isn’t bodily injury. It is, however, a definite wound to the spirit.”

She laughed softly, not taking him at his word as she quickly and gently tested his limbs for broken bones. “You seem to be okay,” she said, taking his hand. “You want to help me pull you up? I think I can do it.”

She set her feet against the rocks and locked her knees, tensing, and he set his jaw and willed her maneuver to work. Though she had to strain beyond what she’d expected, she soon had him back in a sitting position and out from between the two boulders.

“There,” she said, smiling at him and brushing her hands together as though she felt it had been a job well done. “How are you feeling?”

He didn’t answer. If he had been a normal man, his jaw might have dropped. But since he was a well-trained saboteur and warrior, he automatically hid his reaction to seeing her face-to-face. However, hiding was one thing—actually producing friendly chitchat was another. He was silent much too long for comfort, staring at her.

But he needed the time to soak in the vision before him, because she was not a stranger. This was a woman he knew. He remembered her from years before. Hers was not a face that was easy to forget. He placed her immediately, remembering the private boarding school he’d scrimped and saved and put his life on the line to send his little sister to. This woman had been his sister’s roommate, and everything about her had been indelibly branded into his brain.

“Uh...are you sure you’re okay?” she asked him, growing a bit anxious at the silence and searching his face.

He nodded, still struck dumb. She was more beautiful than ever, her hair a floating cloak the color of corn silk, her huge violet eyes soft as velvet, her hands fluttering like small birds. She wore white shorts and a blue halter top and her skin looked like butter, like cream, so smooth he could almost taste it. At first glance, she could still have been a girl, but another look showed a depth of experience in her sultry eyes. The lovely girl he’d admired years ago had turned into a woman.

“My name is Charlie Smith,” she said sunnily.

“The hell it is,” he muttered, surprised. Adrianna Charlyne Chandler was more like it.

“What?” she asked brightly, puzzled by him.

But he shook his head and didn’t repeat it, and she seemed to assume he was in pain from the sympathetic look on her face.

Charlie Smith indeed. That was a good one.

But wait. Suddenly he realized she must have gotten married since he knew her. After all, he told himself savagely, the rest of the world couldn’t sit around waiting for his adolescent dreams to clear up like a bad case of acne. Of course she was married, probably to some handsome stockbroker who wore double-breasted suits and talked on his cell phone all day—some normal but very wealthy man whom she adored and who was as different from Denver as night was from day. That was the way things worked, and he didn’t have to think very hard to know it might work that way for her.

“My name’s Denver,” he told her when he realized it was time to reciprocate. “Denver, uh...Smith.”

She laughed, delighted. “Not really? Isn’t that a scream? You’re a Smith, too?”

He nodded, frowning slightly and wondering if her name was as phony as his He’d rented the cabin under the name of D. Smith, more out of force of habit than anything else. The years had taught him to go incognito whenever possible, because his line of work was one that cultivated enemies and you couldn’t be too careful. And Smith was about as anonymous as you could get.

“What a coincidence,” she said, looking as though that really tickled her.

“Yeah,” he replied, hoping she didn’t catch the sarcasm in his tone. He was going to have to watch that. Sarcasm was all very well in his line of work, but it wouldn’t do around ladies like this.

He rose a little shakily and tried to walk, but the right knee was having none of it. It collapsed under him and she had to reach out quickly to help him regain his balance.

“Bad luck,” she murmured. “You’re not going to get far on that leg, are you?”

He didn’t answer. He was too busy experiencing the feel of her hands and taking in her honey scent as she helped him sit back down on a flat rock. He’d never been this close to her before. In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever spoken directly to her before. But he had certainly been aware of her existence.

“Where are you staying?” she asked him, standing over him with her hands on her hips.

He gestured in the direction of his cabin up the steep side of the hill.

She looked from the rugged terrain to his leg and shook her head. “You’re not going to make it up there under your own steam, that’s a cinch. We’d better call for a paramedic.”

“No,” he said quickly. “I can handle it by myself.”

She gazed at him frankly. “No, you can’t. Listen, my cabin’s not far, and it’s all downhill from here. You’d better come and rest there until we figure out what to do.”

“Forget it.” Rising, he lurched forward, almost falling again.

She was there in a flash, holding his arm, acting as his support. “Come on, tough guy. You’re coming home with me.”

He looked down into her mass of shiny hair. “Your husband...”

She stiffened. “I don’t have a husband. Only one little five-year-old boy, who is going to be thrilled to see you. Come on.”

He hesitated but she wasn’t taking no for an answer, and he’d lost the will to fight for the moment. His leg felt pretty bad. She was probably right. And for the first time since his mother had died, he meekly did what a woman told him to do.