nod was curt. “Apology accepted.”
“Where’d you pick up your friends?”
“Somewhere over the last ridge. I’d hoped I’d lost them, but they kept on coming.” Her voice took on an edge.
He didn’t bother telling her not to worry. She’d be a fool if she wasn’t scared, and this woman was nobody’s fool. A woman who’d made Ranger was exceptional. He’d known plenty of men, good men, who hadn’t been able to make the grade.
The three-legged dog was another mystery. Obviously well trained, the dog was probably military. Military dogs were heroes in their own right. They had been instrumental in taking down bin Laden. If Mace were to guess, he’d say Sammy had been an explosives-sniffing dog, probably losing his leg doing just that.
“Sammy’s ex-military, right?”
She nodded. “He lost his leg searching a building for explosives. He found something and refused to leave until he’d let his handler know. He saved my life that day plus six of my teammates.” Her eyes darkened. “Three didn’t make it.”
Her terse explanation didn’t pretty up the facts, though it had obviously cost her to recount that day. The affection between her and the big shepherd was palpable.
Mace darted a glance her way, then quickly looked away when he saw her bowed head. Though she didn’t say anything, he knew she was praying. While he respected, even admired, believers, he couldn’t agree with their faith. His own faith in the Lord had died during his years in Afghanistan. What kind of God allowed the atrocities he’d witnessed to take place?
Laurel looked up. “I apologize if my praying made you uncomfortable.”
“No problem.”
She slid her gaze over him. “But you’re not a believer?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe. It’s that I can’t.”
To his relief, she didn’t pursue the subject. She folded her hands in her lap and went still. Despite her energy and skills, she had a restful quality to her that he appreciated.
Once again, he experienced a jolt of attraction. That kind of reaction wasn’t typical for him, and he didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all. Only one other time had he felt such a pull toward a woman and look at how that had turned out.
He resisted putting a hand to the scar that bisected his right cheek. No sense in drawing attention to it. Not that anyone could miss it. The scar, courtesy of a terrorist’s knife, was the least of his wounds. The left leg that would never be fully functional again came from time in a POW camp.
But even that paled compared to the scars that marked his soul. From long habit, he pushed away the spiraling downward turn of his thoughts and focused on the client at his side.
Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, but this lady would make any man sit up and take notice. Flawless skin was complemented by heavily fringed eyes and a mouth that looked like it might have curved in a smile easily enough had the circumstances been different. As it was, her lips were firmed in an uncompromising line.
He didn’t fault her for that. Having two of the Collective’s foot soldiers on your tail tended to take the fun right out of you.
She held herself tightly, the tense posture saying more than words could that she was preparing for a fight. Her eyes blazed with the rush of adrenaline, and he knew his did as well.
“Relax,” he said. “I haven’t lost a client yet.”
His lame attempt at humor didn’t raise so much as a small smile from her.
“Sorry.” She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “It’s been a pretty intense twenty-four hours.”
“I get it.”
After that brief exchange, she lapsed into silence.
* * *
Laurel understood that she was being vetted by the bodyguard. She didn’t mind. Much. She was doing some vetting of her own and decided that Mace Ransom was a straight shooter who didn’t waste time. She appreciated that. A complicated man, she judged.
He was tall, with a rangy build that spelled both strength and speed. Along with jeans and Frye combat boots, he wore an Under Armour shirt and a tactical Blackhawk Warrior Wear jacket system. She guessed there was a holstered weapon beneath the jacket.
His no-nonsense clothes echoed her own. With the temperature steadily dropping in the deep woods, she was grateful for her Duluth Trading jacket, flannel shirt, jeans and Asolo hiking boots.
She turned her attention away from his clothes to the man himself. A bladed nose, sharp cheekbones and narrow-set eyes hinted of Native American ancestry. It wouldn’t be surprising. Many people in the South bore a trace or more of Cherokee blood. All in all, it made for a compelling face.
His features were too rough-hewed, his eyes too full of determination for the bland good looks that found favor in the glossies and online e-zines. No, Mace Ransom would never be mistaken for a movie star or a media idol.
He was closemouthed but could ask questions when he wanted to know something. Even if she hadn’t known he was an ex-Ranger, she’d have made him as spec-ops. It was there in the smoke-colored eyes that missed nothing, in the ramrod posture with the resolutely set shoulders.
His bearing shouted military. She liked the reassurance of that, the familiarity of it. Everything about him was hard. Hard eyes. Hard hands. Hard driven. She’d been around such men for the last nine years of her life. They didn’t give in and they didn’t give up. For that, she was grateful.
The scar on his cheek didn’t repel her. She’d seen worse. Far worse. Along with a day’s growth of beard that roughened his jawline, it added to the dark and dangerous appeal of the man. She bore her own share of scars, some visible, others not. Stars and scars, one of the men in her unit had used to describe spec-ops soldiers.
There was a faint indentation on his chin that might have been a dimple if his lips were to curve in a smile, but the harsh lines bracketing his mouth told their own story, that of a man who rarely if ever smiled. Had life in the Rangers turned him bitter and angry or was there another explanation for the dark cast to his face?
He bore not a lick of the gloss that had characterized her onetime fiancé, though he had been military, too. Jeffrey had been all spit and polish on the outside. It was a pity that he’d been so ordinary on the inside. Laurel pushed memories from her mind of the man who hadn’t been able to handle her making Ranger when he’d washed out.
Unless she missed her guess, there was evidence of a deeper kind of pain in Mace Ransom, the kind that shadowed the heart and the soul. She saw it in the darkening of his eyes when he turned her way and the tight control with which he held himself. At the same time, she detected a steady kind of valor in his eyes, the kind that said he’d do what was right, regardless of the cost to himself.
Whatever put the pain in his eyes, it was not her problem. Or her business.
She wasn’t there to psychoanalyze the S&J agent. She needed his help. Ever since the explosion that had injured her shoulder, she had been functioning at half speed. She needed
