was frigid enough to flash-freeze boiling water. “You can babble until hell freezes over, but I still plan to be back in Colorado—with you in custody—this time tomorrow. Got it?”
She thought about Seth, about his threat to confess rather than allow her to forfeit her own freedom and felt a spurt of desperation. Surely there had to be some way to reach this man, some way to change his mind. “I know you have a job to do, but you have to understand. I can’t go back. Not yet.”
“Oh, yeah. You can. You are.”
“Please! Just listen. My brother’s innocent. But if you take me back, he’ll feel obligated to try and protect me and—”
“Get in the truck, Bowen.” He took a step closer, the toe of one big boot bumping her smaller one.
It took every ounce of her courage, but she stood her ground. “Damn it, Taggart, if you’ll just listen—”
“No.” With a speed that was surprising for a man his size, he caught her under the arms and boosted her onto the seat. Then he gripped her right arm with one hand, reached under his coat with the other and the next thing she knew, he was slapping a handcuff around her wrist.
“Don’t!” She tried to twist away but it was too late as he snapped the other bracelet around the door handle. “Surely that’s not—”
“I don’t like surprises when I’m driving.”
Frightened, furious, she watched helplessly as he slammed the door and headed around to the driver’s side of the truck.
Think, she ordered herself as he slid the seat back as far as it would go to accommodate his mile-long legs and climbed inside.
Taking a firm grip on her emotions, Genevieve turned to face him. “I don’t have much money, most of it went to pay for Seth’s attorney, but you can have my house. I’ll sign it over. My business, too. I’ll—I’ll give you anything you want. Just name it.”
For a moment it was as if he hadn’t heard her. Then he abruptly twisted on the seat and leaned over so that only inches separated them. His cool compelling gaze slid from her hair to her eyes to her mouth, then flicked back up. “Anything?” His eyes gleamed dangerously.
He was so close she could see each individual inky whisker shadowing his cheeks, as well as a faint, razor-thin scar that cut through one corner of his hard, unsmiling mouth.
Her stomach dropped and what was left of the moisture in her mouth dried up. She told herself not to be a fool, to say, “Yes, of course, whatever it takes,” but when she parted her lips, the words wouldn’t come out. “I—I—”
His head dipped even closer. Swallowing hard, she squeezed her eyes shut, her heart slamming into her throat as his hair—cool and unexpectedly soft—tickled against her cheek.
Then he abruptly straightened and she felt the pressure as he dragged her seat belt across her waist. Her eyes flew open as he jammed the end into the clasp with a distinctive click.
He sent her a mirthless smile as their gazes meshed. “Yeah. I didn’t think so. Which is just as well, since the only thing I want from you—” he fastened his own seat belt and slapped the truck into Reverse “—is your word that you won’t give me any more trouble.”
Embarrassed, insulted, affronted, disgusted—Genevieve couldn’t decide what she felt most. “Go to hell.”
He gave a faint sigh. “Too late. Already been there, done that,” he murmured. Depressing the clutch, he backed the vehicle out of its slot. He shifted, straightened the wheel and began to guide the truck down the narrow, tree-lined track that led to the road.
The deer came out of nowhere. One second there was nothing in front of them but an unobscured ribbon of white. In the next, a rangy young stag bounded squarely into their path, its dun-colored hide seeming to fill the entire windshield.
“Watch out!” Genevieve cried as Taggart wrenched the wheel to the left. He hit the brakes and the old Ford bucked wildly, fishtailed across the snowy ground and slammed driver’s side first into an enormous evergreen tree.
Taggart’s head hit the door frame with a sickening crunch.
Genevieve watched with a mixture of awe and horror as he slumped, his big body suddenly as limp as a rag doll’s. Dear God, what if he’s dead?
Fast on the heels of that thought came another. Dear God. What if he’s not?
Three
Taggart surfaced slowly.
As he did, several things seemed noteworthy. One was that his head felt as if a stake were being driven through it.
The other was that somebody—a woman, judging from her soft voice and even softer hands—was touching him. “Come on now,” she murmured, her husky voice tickling along his spine while her fingers sifted featherlight through the hair at his temple. “It’s time to quit fooling around. Wake up now. I know you can do it.”
She knew he could do it. Her faith gave him pause. The first and last female to unswervingly believe in him had been his mother. Yet he knew damn well that the woman murmuring to him wasn’t Mary Moriarity Steele.
She smelled entirely different, for one thing, like sunshine and soap instead of lavender and baby powder. Plus her hands were smaller and her voice was lower. Besides, his mother had been gone…
How long? Drawing a blank, he struggled to punch through the fog hazing his brain. For a frustrating moment his mind remained shrouded and sluggish. Then the knowledge abruptly bubbled up.
Twenty years. She’d died twenty years ago last month, the anniversary of her passing falling on the day after his thirty-third birthday.
What’s more, with another burst of returning memory he knew that it was Genevieve Bowen who was showing him such gentle concern. He recognized her voice at the same instant the recollection of tossing her over his shoulder and heading for her truck came rushing back at him. Yet after that…Nothing.
He didn’t have a single, solitary doubt who was to blame.
Marshaling his strength, he opened his eyes. He felt a perverse flicker of satisfaction as his quarry—hell, no, his prisoner—sucked in a startled breath and jerked back, snatching her hand away from his face.
“Genevieve.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded raspy.
“You’re back.”
“Yeah.” He blinked, tried to make sense of the timbered ceiling above his head and failed. With a prickle of uneasiness, he realized he was lying on a bed in a room he’d never seen before.
“How do you feel?”
He told himself to focus. Okay, so his brain seemed to be a few cards short of a full deck and he had a son of a bitch of a headache—so what? He’d survived worse. He concentrated on what he did remember and tossed out an educated guess. “The truck. There was an accident.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “There was a deer. In the road. You swerved to avoid it and hit a tree.”
“I
