Bear Claw Bodyguard. Jessica Andersen
Читать онлайн книгу.
for the sound of a footstep or the crack of a gunshot. He was sweating by the time he taped the last connection into place. Then, sending up a wordless prayer, he leaned across the driver’s seat and tried the key.
The engine turned over and started to come to life, but then coughed and died. “Come on, come on,” he muttered, slinging himself into the seat and risking a glance over to the tree line. Tori was just barely visible within the branches. She flashed him a thumbs up and mouthed You can do it, then faded back into the branches, leaving him to think she had stepped into view just for him.
Shaking his head, he tried the key again, goosing the gas a little. The SUV started, and this time it stayed running. “Nice!”
He waved to Tori as he lunged out of the vehicle to slam the hood, heart suddenly pounding where he’d been mostly calm up to this point. So close. They were so damn close to getting out of there! She burst from the trees, moving fast but still quiet, gripping his pistol two-handed and somehow managing to look simultaneously terrified and utterly capable as she piled into the SUV from the other side and banged the door shut with a slam that was gunshot-loud after all the quiet.
Pulse racing, he met her eyes. “Here goes nothing.” Only it was really everything as he shifted into gear, the transmission synched up and he hit the gas … and everything worked the way it was supposed to. He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until it came out in a big whoosh. “Come on,” he muttered under his breath. “Hang in there.”
Tori didn’t say a word, just kept the pistol in her lap and her eyes moving, scanning the passing scrub. But she reached over with her free hand and briefly gripped his wrist in thanks.
For Jack, the next few hours passed in a blur of death-gripping the steering wheel, squinting to tell the faint tread-marked trail from the surrounding unstable shale, and hoping to hell his patches would hold. He and Tori exchanged a few words now and then on the practicalities, and once they were out of the Forgotten, she set aside the pistol, turned up the heat and sagged against her door, her eyes still moving, watching for trouble even in the moonlit darkness.
They both knew that if there was going to be a problem at this point, they likely wouldn’t see it coming. The SUV’s headlights lit the night with an “aim the RPG here” sign in neon, but it wasn’t like he could turn them off. He was having a devil of a time staying on the trail as it was. So he drove, wincing with every bounce and bang, imagining his patches loosening up and the hoses teetering on the brink of separation.
He was strung out, his eyes burning, his body caught in a surreal state of exhausted terror that had him hallucinating as he tried his damnedest to see the track. That had to be a hallucination, because there was no way—
Tori jolted and straightened. “It’s the tower! We made it!”
He blinked hard, then had to blink again to clear his burning eyes, but the lights didn’t disappear along with the gritty fog shrouding his vision. They stayed true—small, amber pinpricks that expanded to glows and then became the solar floodlights that topped the observatory.
Station Fourteen had never looked so good.
“We could walk it from here,” he rasped, feeling the tension draining away, leaving him nearly limp with relief.
“Let’s not and say we did,” she said drily. Then she flashed him a grin, her eyes gleaming with the same mad joy that was suddenly pumping through him.
He snorted, guffawed, cracked up. And they rolled into the parking lot laughing like a pair of idiots.
The second he took his foot off the gas and hit the brake, though, the engine thudded and died. Kaput. Done.
He choked off the tension-relieving laughter, letting it bleed away in a long sigh. “Holy crap, Tori. We made it.”
She reached across and gripped his wrist as she had done before, only this time she let her hand linger. “We only made it because of you. Thank you, Jack. I …” She shook her head. “Thank you.”
The old “just doing my job” got stuck in his throat, locked there by the flare of heat that kindled at the point where she was touching him and rolled up his arm to fill his chest. He just shook his head, not even sure what he was denying anymore as he turned his grip inside hers to thread their fingers together and tug her closer.
She could have pretended not to understand, could’ve pulled away. She didn’t do either of those things, though. Instead, as the breath backed up in his lungs and the warmth turned to a gnawing ache mixed with flames, she leaned toward him in the darkness. He lifted his other hand and drew his fingers along the side of her face and back to brush her hair behind one ear, giving her one last chance to retreat. She didn’t, though.
And so, in a broken-down SUV that had died in the back of beyond, he broke the rules he’d spent most of his adult life figuring out—three dates to a kiss, at least ten to take it further, everything slow and methodical, and designed to test the compatibility and long-term potential of each match. This wasn’t the third date, wasn’t even a date, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was kissing Tori.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.