rest of the car ride was silent. Hawk exited the freeway and took a curvy highway heading northwest. Then he pulled off on the side of the road and shut down the vehicle.
“I need to go in on foot, make sure the place is safe,” he told her. He took a gun out of his side holster and held it out to her. “Stay here. If anyone approaches, I want you to shoot first and ask questions later.”
She recoiled from the weapon as if it were a venomous snake. “I’m not touching that thing.” She glanced at Lizzy. “We’re better off without it.”
Hawk’s lips tightened, giving her the impression he wasn’t happy. But he so rarely revealed any emotion that she thought she may have misinterpreted it. He gently placed the weapon in her lap. “You’ll use it if your life or Lizzy’s is threatened.”
Without waiting for her to respond, he slipped out of the car and shut the door behind him.
She watched him round the front of the SUV and head into the woods. One minute he was there, the next he was gone, somehow without leaving obvious boot prints in the snow behind. The man moved with incredible silence, making her wonder where he’d learned such a skill.
The service? Had Hawk spent time in the military the way James had? Yet if that was the case, why was he working as a private investigator? Why not join a police force?
She shook her head. This insatiable curiosity about her neighbor wasn’t healthy. Hawk’s personal decisions were not any of her business. She wasn’t interested in anything beyond friendship.
Ignoring the gun in her lap, she twisted the wedding band on her finger, thinking about James. How much she missed him. How he was everything she could have asked for in a husband and how he would have been an amazing father to Lizzy.
Then she thought about Hawk. Who was here, now. Who had not only helped her with house maintenance without being asked but was determined to keep her and Lizzy safe.
She slipped the ring off, and then, besieged by a rush of guilt, pushed it back on. Staring out through the windshield, she wondered how long it would take Hawk to check out the cabin. This sitting in the darkness, waiting, was getting on her nerves.
She heard a noise and froze. Then she did something she never thought she’d do. She picked up the gun. It felt heavy and cold in her hand and she had to wrap both her hands around the handle to keep it steady.
Another rustle and she instinctively knew the sound wasn’t from Hawk returning. The man was too quiet to cause this much noise. She tightened her grip on the gun, sweeping her gaze from the windshield to the passenger-side window, searching for anything amiss.
Two deer walked out from the woods. They stopped, looked at her with glassy eyes and then gracefully leaped and ran across the street right in front of the SUV.
She let out her breath in a whoosh. Deer. A doe and her fawn. Not men wearing ski masks.
Yet she didn’t release her grip on the gun.
Five minutes later, she noticed a dark shadow stepping out of the woods. She tightened her grip on the weapon but within a few seconds recognized the shadow as Hawk. The moonlight on his face made it easy to see his scar.
He quietly approached the car, nodding an acknowledgement when he caught her looking at him. He came around and slid into the driver’s seat.
“It’s clear.”
She held out the weapon. “Take this. I don’t want it.”
He took the gun and pushed it back into its holster. He drove a quarter mile down the road and turned into a gravel driveway.
The cabin was about a hundred yards in, nicely surrounded by trees. He pulled to a stop and then climbed out. “Do you want me to carry Lizzy?”
“I’ll get her. She might cry if she wakes up to a stranger.”
He nodded, grabbed the duffel and went over to hold the door. A dusting of snow clung to her boots, so she kicked the lower doorjamb to clear them before going inside. Lizzy snuggled against her chest as Jillian carried her across the living room. She hesitated, glancing at Hawk questioningly.
“There are twin beds in this room.” He opened the door to the right of what looked to be a bathroom. “The other room is off the kitchen.”
“Thanks.” She went inside and gently set Lizzy on the twin bed closest to the door. After removing her winter coat and boots, she tucked her daughter into the sleeping bag on top of the bed. She straightened and turned to find Hawk standing close.
Too close.
In the darkness she couldn’t see his face very clearly, but she had often wondered about the deep scar he carried along his left cheek. Catching a whiff of his aftershave, she found her pulse kicking up and her knees going weak.
It was the same brand James used to buy.
“Excuse me.” Moving abruptly, she ducked around him and left the bedroom. Her heart was pounding erratically and for a moment she feared she was losing her mind.
In that brief instant, she’d thought the man standing beside her was James. Same height, same weight, same aftershave.
Impossible. James was dead. This was nothing more than her overactive imagination playing tricks on her. Hormones reacting to a familiar scent.
She wasn’t interested in a relationship with Hawk.
Yet for the moment, her life and Lizzy’s depended on him. On his strength and ability to keep them both safe from harm.
Battling guilt, Hawk silently followed Jillian into the living room and began making a fire in the wood-burning stove to heat up the cabin. He hadn’t meant to frighten her, but given the way she’d bolted out of the room, he knew he must have. He’d worked hard over the past several months to remain nonthreatening. To provide help without getting too close.
But discovering Lizzy was his daughter had changed things. He’d wanted to peer down at her tiny face while she slept. He’d wanted the right to bend down to kiss her forehead and whisper good-night.
Unfortunately, his life, the life he should have had, remained far out of reach. Maybe forever.
Not that it should matter. There were more important things to worry about at the moment. Like who’d sent professional assassins to Jillian’s home. To kidnap them? Or kill them? Kidnapping he could understand, because it would be a way to use Jillian and Lizzy as leverage against him. But killing them made no sense.
It occurred to him that if his real identity had been uncovered, then the assassins would have come directly to his house, not Jillian’s. Which meant his current identity was safe.
For now.
Yet he knew his recent probing into Rick Barton’s past had not gone unnoticed. Senator Barton was a powerful man in Washington, DC, but very few knew the truth about how Barton had climbed the ranks. Hawk must have gotten close enough to
