Midnight Man (Midnight #1)(37)
She’d dozed fitfully in the Yukon, the result more of exhaustion and overload than sleepiness. Something inside her balked at the idea of giving herself over to the unconsciousness of deep sleep, so she’d drowsed off and on, half-drugged with fear and shock, completely adrift as John drove the Yukon over unfamiliar roads.
Where were they? She had no idea, except probably high in the mountains. They’d been climbing steadily for hours. The sky was the pearly gray of cold mornings; light enough to see by but not enough to allow perspective.
A shack lay a few yards ahead. A simple wooden structure, square and unwelcoming. John killed the engine, plunging them into an eerie silence.
John turned in his seat, wide shoulders blocking the view of the sky out his window. “We’re here.” His voice was low and calm.
He seemed so huge in the cab of the vehicle, one strong arm draped over the wheel, big hand dangling. She tried and failed to wipe the image of the intruder with John’s knife through his throat from her mind. The sprays of blood on the floor and the walls, the lingering smell of coppery blood and fetid death. The sound of the crackling glass as the sniper fell to his death with two bullets through his head and the wet thump as he landed. No matter how hard she tried, the sights and sounds stayed front and center of her mind, jarring, shocking.
John moved and the hairs on the nape of her neck rose, but he was only shifting to open the door. He jumped lightly down and came around to open her door. He reached for her, big hands up. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his shoulders, feeling the banked strength there as he eased her down. Her feet touched the ground, but she kept her hands on him for a moment longer, anchoring herself to the only solid thing in a world gone suddenly insane.
They stared at each other, white breaths mingling in the cold morning air. He moved his head toward the shack. “Come on. It’s too cold to stay out here. We need to get you settled in.” He picked up her suitcase with one hand and took her elbow with the other.
Yes, they were in the mountains, she thought, as they tramped up the makeshift driveway full of loose gravel. The air felt thin and clean and brittle, laced with the unmistakable tang of miles and miles of uninterrupted pine trees. The few inches of snow on the ground looked like ice. They stepped up to a wooden porch. John opened the front door and gestured her inside.
Small, austere, unadorned. A sofa, two mismatched armchairs, a dining table, a small clean hearth, and a kitchenette. Bare wooden walls. Spare, cold, bleak. A musty smell permeated the shack.
“This way,” John said and opened a door. It gave onto a bedroom, as spare as the other room. Just a bed and a rocking chair. He dropped her suitcase on the floor and gestured to a door to the left. “Bathroom’s through there. I suggest you wash up and change into your nightgown. You must be tired and I think a few hours’ sleep in a bed would do you good. Come out when you’re ready. I’ll turn the heat on and make you some tea.”
He disappeared and Suzanne lifted her case onto the bed. Luckily, some instinct had made her pack two high-necked flannel nightgowns. They were warm and comfortable and above all, not revealing. She liked frilly sexy silk nightgowns, but now was definitely not the time for frills or silk. Or sex.
She felt raw enough as it was, on the run and alone with this large, dangerous man. Fleeing from some unknown, unseen danger.
She knew John wouldn’t force himself into her bed, but she’d proved to herself the other night that she had a fatal weakness for this man. If he asked, she’d say yes. She was cold from the bones out and sex with John was guaranteed to warm her up, take her out of herself, make her forget. She’d climaxed in an explosion of heat the other night. Kissing John, feeling his hard body against hers, in hers, oh yes, that was guaranteed to make her forget her troubles. But sex right now, when she felt so shaky, so unsettled, would be disastrous.
She’d nearly come apart at the explosive orgasm, leaving her weak and out of control. She’d fly into a million pieces now that the shards of her life lay in a heap at her feet.
A muffled whump told her that he’d switched on the heating. By the time she’d used the bathroom, scrubbed her face clean, brushed her teeth and changed into her pink flannel nightgown, the air was already starting to heat up. Good. She needed the warmth.
He was sitting at the table, two steaming mugs of dark liquid before him. He looked her quickly up and down, seemingly satisfied with what he saw, and pushed a mug over to her. “Drink. Then we’ll talk.”
Suzanne picked it up, nose wrinkling at the smell. She took a sip and coughed, eyes watering. “Is there any tea at all in this whiskey?”
His mouth lifted in a half smile. “Very little,” he confessed. “Tea is for wusses.”
Must be, because there wasn’t much in her cup. Suzanne sipped again and found on the second try that the hot tea-flavored whiskey went down like a dream, warming her all the way down, curling into her stomach and chasing the coldness away.
The warmth kick-started her brain. She looked around the bleak, sad, little room, then back at John. He’d abandoned the teacup and was drinking his whiskey straight, from a glass. That was a good sign. John struck her as the kind of man who would never drink alcohol if he felt danger was imminent, but she wanted to be certain.
“Where are we?”
“Near Mount Hood. The closest town is Fork in the Road, about three miles away.”