nearly laughed. Just a few minutes earlier, he’d been furious at himself for leaving her on the side of the road. Then more furious at himself for being weak enough to go back. He knew damned well it wasn’t because he needed to know why she followed him. Although that would’ve made perfect sense. The real reason was far more basic. Far more base.
From the moment he pulled away, Rush couldn’t stop seeing flashes of her tanned skin. Her throat. Her shoulder. The thin line between her tied-up T-shirt and the waistband of her pants.
If she’d been a sixty-five-year-old man with a bushy beard and dirty old jogging pants, he wouldn’t have turned around. Or maybe he would’ve just stuck around in the first place. At the very least, he would’ve saved himself the trouble of the ridiculous inner argument. Yet there he was, standing in the middle of the woods, searching for his stalker and worrying more about her well-being than he was worrying about his own.
And you forgot all of that?
“Um. Mr...Sunglasses?” The redhead’s voice—a little clearer but still hesitant—dragged him back to the fact that he was supposed to be doing something.
“Mr. Sunglasses?” he repeated, tipping his head to listen for her reply.
“Well,” she said, “it was a toss-up between that and Mr. Blue Truck.”
“It’s a Lada,” he corrected as he took a few steps in what he thought was the right direction.
“A what?”
“The ‘truck’ is actually a Lada.”
“Oh. Does that matter?”
“Well, it’s not really a truck. It’s more of an off-road vehicle.”
“It looks like a truck.” The statement had a stubborn note that made Rush smile.
“It’s not, though,” he said. “Technically.”
“Technicalities are that important?” she asked.
Rush’s smile slipped away. The flippant way she said it made him sure it wasn’t a dig of some kind. She wasn’t aware of his past. She couldn’t possibly have a clue about just how much weight a technicality could have in someone’s life. In his life. But it was still a damned good reminder that he wasn’t in Whispering Woods to make friends. He was there to right a decade-and-a-half-old wrong.
“Is there a particular reason you were following me?” he asked. “Or is stalking something you do for fun on Wednesdays?”
“I wasn’t following you,” she replied.
Her voice sounded impossibly close. Like she should be standing just in front of him.
Rush stopped walking, his eyes narrowing as he searched the dense trees for a sign of her. “You expect me to believe it was a coincidence that you made every turn I made while keeping a few hundred feet behind me?”
“That’s...well. Okay. Yeah. I can see how that could seem like stalking,” she said. “I mean. I was following you. But I wasn’t following you. If that makes sense.”
Weirdly...it did.
“Are you telling me all of this is because you took a damned wrong turn?” he asked.
“I was lost. It happens.” She said it like a shrug.
He considered it. He supposed she could be telling a story to cover up her true intentions. He had plenty of experience with liars, though, and if the redhead was one, she had to be damned near perfect at it. The thing that really tipped him in favor of believing her was her scream. He was damned sure it’d been genuine.
“Are you still there?” she called.
“Yeah. I’m still here. And I’m pretty sure you’re still lost.” He took two more steps.
“I’m not lost,” she told him. “I’m right down—”
Whatever else she said was swept away as Rush took another step, then fell.
Not over.
Not in a tumble or a trip.
Down.
An undignified holler and a stream of curses escaped his mouth. His back bumped painfully over dirt and roots and God knew what else and he scraped his way—down, down, down—into what appeared to be a pit in the middle of the forest floor. At the bottom, he hit the ground hard enough to rattle his teeth and cut away his breath. Remarkably, he was sure he wasn’t otherwise hurt.
He tried to inhale. To regain some sense of control. Instead, when he opened his eyes, the oxygen whipped out of his lungs again. The redhead sat in front of him, and her hair had ripped out of its bun, her lips were parted in surprise, and her gaze—the biggest, bluest one he’d ever seen—was fixed on him. Drawing him in. Holding him there. It gave Rush the strangest conflict of emotion he’d ever experienced.
Part of him was angry all over again. This woman, whose name he didn’t even know, had ruined his whole day. More than ruined it. She’d sent him barreling needlessly through the back roads that surrounded Whispering Woods. Then somehow got him to set aside reason and self-preservation in the name of coming back for her. Both of which stopped him from meeting with Jesse Garibaldi and pared down his chances of making the headway he’d been hoping to make. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she now had him stuck in a literal hole. Probably eight feet down.
But in spite of it all, another, surprisingly forceful part of him wondered if being lost in her eyes might actually be worth it.
* * *
The small space was suddenly much smaller. And for a several moments, the forced intimacy was almost overwhelming. Crouched down the way they were, there was only room for a few scant inches between Alessandra and the man who’d slid to a stop just in front of her. In fact, the space between their knees was nearly nonexistent. Alessandra could feel the heat of his body, the air a conduit from the denim of his jeans to the cotton of her pants. She was sure that the slightest shift would result in a touch. And for some reason, the idea sent her heart thumping.
You should be scared, a small voice in her head pointed out. The man has a gun. And he’s probably even less impressed now than he was when he pulled up in the truck.
Unconsciously, she dropped her gaze to the holster at his hip. The weapon was still there. But it didn’t worry her. Mostly because she spied something that was a greater concern. Something that should probably have been the first thing she realized. Something that seemed impossible to have missed, even in the wild, dirt-flying moment.
The man’s fall had caused an automatic reaction on her part. She’d shot out a hand, maybe to steady him, maybe to reassure him, it was hard to say. Either way, the result was the same. Her fingers were wrapped around his wrist. And for the life of her, Alessandra couldn’t get her brain to make them unfurl to release him.
She drew in a sharp breath as she tried to make her hand cooperate. The inhale was a mistake. Her nose immediately filled with a woodsy, masculine scent. It mingled with
