floor, arms outstretched.
Blood roared in Laura’s ears as her killer took the final step then paused before the gray, graffiti-covered metal door that stood between them. Did he know that she was there? Could he smell her fear? Could he hear her heart pounding?
Bracing her hands against the cold metal walls, Laura gritted her teeth and kicked the door outward as hard as she could. The answering grunt told her she had connected with her target—his face hopefully. Laura quickly scrambled to the floor, beneath the enclosure and into the next stall. Hot oaths and the scraping of boot heels echoed around her. Her body shaking, her breath coming in ragged spurts, Laura crawled from one stall to the next to retain cover. She had to get out of here. Had to run!
To get to Robby!
The door of the stall she had just wriggled into suddenly swung open. “Don’t move,” an angry male voice ordered.
Laura frowned. There was something vaguely familiar about that low, masculine drawl. As if in slow motion, her gaze traveled from the polished black boots, up the long jean-clad legs to the business end of the handgun trained on her. She blinked, feeling strangely disconnected from her body. Then her gaze shifted upward to look into the face of death.
Nick.
It was Nick.
“DON’T MAKE ME SORRY I put my weapon away,” Nick growled close to her ear. Awareness punched him square in the gut when he inhaled the gentle fragrance that was Laura’s alone. No store-bought perfume could ever match that natural sweetness. He clenched his jaw and simultaneously tightened his grip on her arm as they moved toward his rental car.
Hell, the Beretta had been overkill, he knew. Laura hadn’t even been carrying a purse, much less a weapon of any sort. But Nick wasn’t taking any chances this time. She hadn’t had a weapon the last time either.
His right leg throbbed insistently, but he gritted his teeth and ignored the pulsing burn. He had found Laura, alive and well, and that’s all he cared about right now.
Lucky for him Bay Break streets were deserted as far as he could see. He supposed that most of the residents out and about this morning were huddled in and around voting booths inside the courthouse, or sitting around a table in the local diner discussing how the election would turn out. Nick didn’t keep up with Mississippi politics, but James Ed Proctor III’s sensational reputation was hard to miss in the media. And, from what Nick had heard, whomever the man supported for Congress or the Senate was a sure winner.
The cold wind slapped at Nick’s unshaven face. After a late night flight, a long drive, and an even longer surveillance of the little town’s streets before Laura made her midmorning appearance, Nick welcomed the unseasonably cold temperature to help keep him alert.
He had fully expected Bay Break to be a good deal warmer than Chicago, but he’d gotten fooled. According to the old-timers hanging around the general store, all the signs warned of an early snow. Nick didn’t plan to hang around long enough to see if their predictions panned out. Between twelve hours of mainlining caffeine and the unanticipated cold, Nick felt more alert than one would expect after virtually no sleep in the last thirty hours. But by the time he drove to Jackson and did what he had to do, he would be in desperate need of some serious shut-eye. And, of course, there was that R-and-R Victoria had ordered. Yeah, right, Nick thought sarcastically.
Laura struggled in his grasp, yanking his attention back to the here and now. Nick frowned when he considered the woman he was all but dragging down the sidewalk. There was something different about her, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. She seemed softer somehow. He scowled at the path his thoughts wanted to take. He knew just how soft and delicate Laura Proctor was in all the places that made a man want a woman—except one. It took a woman with a cold, hard heart to walk away from a man who lay bleeding to death.
“You can’t do this,” Laura muttered heatedly. She scanned the sidewalks and streets. Looking for someone to call out to for help, Nick surmised.
“Who the hell do you think you are? You’re not a cop,” she added vehemently. “And I have rights!”
Anger kicked aside his foolish awareness of her as a woman and resurrected more bitter memories. Nick paused, then jerked her closer, his brutal hold eliciting a muffled yelp of pain, or maybe fear, at the moment he didn’t really care which. “When somebody put a bullet into my chest and you left me to die, you lost your rights as far as I’m concerned.”
Seconds ticked by as Laura tried her best to stare him down, her sky blue gaze watery behind thick lashes. She could cry a river of tears and he would still feel no sympathy for her. Nick mercilessly ignored the vulnerability peeking past that drop-dead stare, and turned the intimidation up a couple of notches. Laura’s defiant expression wilted.
His point made, Nick escorted her the last few steps to the car. After unlocking the driver’s side door, he pulled it open and ushered Laura inside. Her long blond hair trailed over his hand, momentarily distracting him and making his groin tighten. He squeezed his hand into a fist and forced away the unwanted desire. He had come here to take her back, not take up where they had left off. Laura Proctor would never make a fool of him again. And this time, he would be the one walking away.
As he had anticipated, once in the car she bolted for the passenger side. With a smug smile, Nick slid behind the wheel and started the engine, almost drowning out her surprised gasp when she couldn’t open the door.
“You bastard,” she snarled, her eyes unnaturally dark with anger. Her breasts rose and fell with her every frustrated breath. “This is kidnapping!”
Nick’s smile widened into a grin of pure satisfaction. “Consider it a citizen’s arrest,” he offered. Before he could back out of the parking slot Laura flew at him, a clawing, kicking tangle of arms and legs.
Nick shoved the gearshift back into park. After several seconds of heated battle he subdued her, but not without a slash across his throat from her nails. He shook her, none too gently. “Look,” he ground out. “I’m trying not to hurt you.”
“Sure,” she hissed. “You don’t want to hurt me, you just want to get me killed.”
For one fleeting instant Nick allowed himself to feel her fear. There had supposedly been a couple of attempts on her life two years ago. Could she still be in danger? Even now, after all she had put him through, Nick’s gut clenched at the thought. Hell, he couldn’t say for sure that there had ever been any real danger in the first place. According to the reports he had been privy to, Laura had possessed a wild streak, not to mention an overactive imagination. Her older brother, Mississippi’s esteemed Governor, was always getting her out of one scrape or another. Who was to say that the whole thing was anything more than her vivid imagination? And the guy she had been romantically linked to back then was over the edge in Nick’s opinion. He doubted her poor taste in associates had changed since.
Nick swallowed hard at the thought of Laura with another man.
Did he care?
No, he told himself. The lie, unspoken, soured in his throat.
“You don’t have to worry, Laura. I’m taking you back home, to your brother. I’m—”
“My brother?” She quickly retreated to the passenger side of the car, as far away from Nick as possible. “I can’t go back home! Don’t you understand? It’s not safe.”
Nick
