Page 6

Early the next morning Metal watched as she came up slowly, like scaling a high mountain.

Her hand fluttered in his. Once, twice.

He’d been sitting all night by her bedside, holding her hand. If he lived to be a hundred he would never forget the look on her face as she stumbled into Lauren’s house. Lost, in pain, desperate. He didn’t want her waking up alone, in a strange house.

The instant that beautiful women fell into his arms, he felt a ferocious protectiveness rise up in him. She was Lauren’s friend which automatically made her okay in his book. But she was also fragile, delicate, scared witless.

Hurt.

Someone had tried to kill her and it burned in him. Someone had taken a knife and had sliced her open.

Metal knew knifework up close. He’d killed with a knife and he knew exactly how to do it. He’d seen teammates cut up and had closed more knife wounds than he could count.

But that was war. Men equipped to fight, trained to fight, meeting on the battlefield. Something as old as time.

But slashing open a beautiful and defenseless woman—that made his blood boil. It violated everything he knew about life. Smart women like Felicity were supposed to be protected. That was why humankind had protectors, like him and his father and his brothers. His dad and two O’Briens were gone, lost in the ashes and dust of the Twin Towers, but by God another O’Brien was left, and he was going to stand guard over this woman.

He’d find out who had hurt her and then he’d take the fight to the enemy.

Whoever was after her wasn’t giving up. Felicity had regained consciousness a few times in his SUV and she’d managed to gasp out some info. Metal could fill in the rest.

Her attacker had put a knife to her back and wanted to walk her out. That could mean someone from Portland but it could also mean another passenger. There were ways to get knives through security, and a ceramic knife wouldn’t even show up. Some ceramic knives were sharper than steel. He and Jacko would look at airport security footage and would check passenger lists. Felicity said she got a good look at him so if they had footage they’d have him.

The attacker had fucked with the wrong girl. Metal smiled grimly as he held her hand and watched her face. Lauren had said how smart Felicity was and he had to admit, hacking into the airport security system and pulling the bomb alarm was a stroke of genius.

She’d used her brains because God knows she couldn’t outfight the man. He’d seen her. She didn’t have fighting muscles. She was soft and slender.

That was okay, he had fighting muscles and he’d stand for her.

Her hand stirred in his again.

Metal leaned closer to the bed. He calculated it would take her another five to ten minutes to wake up fully. Gomez had administered enough ccs of tranquilizer to ensure that she rested without being knocked out. Everything medical that could be done had been done and now her body needed rest and nourishment and warmth to do its part. She was warm, he saw to that. He’d put two eiderdowns on the bed. As soon as she woke up, he’d feed her. And she’d rest. He’d see to that, too.

Her eyes opened and closed.

God. She had the most amazing color eyes he’d ever seen. A deep magnetic blue. He’d once heard Midnight’s wife, an interior decorator, refer to that color as robins egg. Hell if he knew what it meant. All he knew was that he’d never seen eyes that color before.

Actually, he’d never seen a woman that beautiful before.

His company, Alpha Security International, was awash in beautiful women. His two bosses were married to beautiful women. Their friend Bud Morrison of the Portland PD was married to a beautiful woman. Jacko had fallen for a beautiful woman, though he hadn’t screwed up the courage to ask Lauren to marry him. Yet.

None of these women were anything like Felicity, who looked like a cross between an angel and a top model, only shorter. The ASI women used elegant clothes and makeup to enhance their beauty. Felicity didn’t need that. With no makeup and in a tee shirt of his that hung down to her knees, she was stunning.

Her eyes popped open again, stayed open. Focused on his face.

“Hey.” Metal scooted his chair closer to his bed, clasped her hand more tightly.

She frowned, looked around his room, though there wasn’t much to see. Big bed because he was tall, a dresser, bedside table, a chair. Luckily, he was sailor-neat. Her eyes travelled back to him.

Metal smiled at her. “Hey,” he said again. “You’re awake.”

She licked her lips. Her mouth would be dry with the drugs. He had a thermos of hot tea with honey waiting. But first she had to relax. She probably didn’t remember much about last night.

“Where…what…” She could barely form the words.

Well, Metal was good at this. He was good at giving reports, marshaling facts, giving a clear picture. He knew how to put on a warrior’s face as he did so.

But he was also good with his nieces and nephews who didn’t know him as a navy SEAL but as the uncle who always brought gifts and played with them. So he made his face bland and non-threatening.

“You were wounded, Felicity. Do you remember?” She gasped in a breath, nodded, eyes huge. “Someone attacked you at the airport, but you were smart enough to get away. And you made it to Portland Memorial, only the guy who attacked you was there. Do you remember that? And then you made it to Lauren’s house. Do you remember that, too?”

Her mouth opened and she blew out a breath. Nodded.

“Before we go any further, I’ll bet you’re thirsty, right?”

She nodded, surprised. As if she hadn’t realized she was thirsty until that exact moment in which he mentioned it.

He let go of her hand and reached for the thermos. He poured almost a full cup into the top, lifted her head with one hand and with the other held the cup to her mouth. He’d made sure it wasn’t boiling hot when he put it in the thermos. It was just hot enough to make her feel better without burning her mouth.

“Drink,” he said quietly. “You’re going to be hungry soon and I have food for you. But first you need to drink.”

It was his command voice in gentle mode. His nieces and nephews responded to it like magic.

Felicity, too. He lifted her up and held her rock steady while she sipped. She cupped her hand under his, as if he would spill the tea if she didn’t. He let her because her soft touch was amazingly pleasureable but it wasn’t necessary. He wasn’t going to spill the tea. He was a sharpshooter and he had steady hands. But beyond that, he wasn’t about to allow hot liquid to spill on her. Nothing bad was going to happen to her while she was in his care.

“Sorry about the plastic cup. I think my mugs might be heavy for you to hold. Lauren has these fancy porcelain cups that are light as air that I’m sure you’d like better, but for now this will have to do.”

“Lauren,” she whispered, licking her lips. “Where?—”

Metal watched, fascinated as she licked her lips. She had the prettiest mouth he’d ever seen. Then he shook himself. Stop being an asshole .

Usually it wasn’t hard for him to focus. He focused really well. And as a trained medic he’d learned to disassociate the care he was giving from the person. Medics didn’t take Hippocratic oaths but they took their skills seriously. He sure did.

So, yeah, mooning about a patient’s pretty mouth and beautiful eyes wasn’t something he was proud of. But damn she was gorgeous.

Focus!

She shifted in the bed. He was holding her up with one hand against her narrow back. He could feel her heart beat fast and light against the palm of his hand. She was scared.

Metal had a deep voice and he’d shouted a lot in the Teams. His voice was rough. He didn’t know how to modulate it, soften it. He could only speak as quietly as he could.

“Would you like to stay sitting up? Or are your stitches pulling?” God he hated to think of her in pain, but she probably was. The painkillers would have worn off hours ago. He had meds with him.

“Sit up,” she said. “Against pillows.”

Okay. He understood that. Lying down or sitting up leaning against his hand would make her feel vulnerable.

She was watching him out of those huge sky blue eyes, wary. Not frightened. He knew how to make people scared but he was making an effort to be reassuring. So she wasn’t scared of him but she was with a stranger in a strange place and she’d been attacked and wounded. She’d be stupid not to be wary and this was not a stupid woman.

Moving slowly, Metal put pillows against his headboard and very carefully and very gently lifted her until she was sitting up against the pillows.

It was hard to let her go. As he’d lifted her, she’d clutched at his arms with elegant hands. He felt every inch of her that was touching him and even where he wasn’t touching her, he felt her body heat. She was light, delicate. Every single inch of her was beautiful. He had to consciously open his hands and step back because he was powerfully drawn to her. Wanted to lay her down and follow her, lie on top of her, feel all of her against him. Hold her head still and kiss that luscious mouth.

He stopped his thoughts right there, appalled at himself, deeply ashamed.

He was a medic. He knew what stitched wounds felt like. They fucking hurt. Knew she’d be feeling weak, turned inward on herself, the very opposite of sex. What the fuck was the matter with him?

He cleared his throat. “Do you want something to eat?”

She shook her head, eyes glued to his face.

“You should try to eat something,” he said gently. “You need to get your strength back. You lost almost a liter and a half of blood. We reinfused you, but still. Your body’s been through trauma.” Metal smiled. “I’m not a bad cook. I could make you some nice scrambled eggs.”

Her long pale throat bobbed up and down in a convulsive swallow. Okay. Not scrambled eggs.

“Or toast. I have some excellent wholewheat bread I made myself. I could toast a slice. Do you think you could keep that down?”

Eyes enormous, she nodded.

“Ok, good.” He shook two pills out in his hand and picked up the glass of water he’d put on the bedside table. “Take these.”

She was still, no expression on her face.

He didn’t sigh. Kept his face bland. “They’re painkillers. You have twenty stitches and you have bruises on your back and arms. You must be in pain. These are ibuprofen. You won’t be groggy and you won’t be out of it, it will just ease the pain. Trust me, please.”

“You’re a friend of Lauren’s,” she said, and he understood what she was saying.

He dipped his head. “I am. And a friend and teammate of her friend Jacko. And we are all on your side. Absolutely. ”

She looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings then back at him. “Where am I?”

“We’re at 224 Jackson. My place. You are completely safe. If someone somehow knows there is a connection between you and Lauren, they sure won’t know about me. And my place is secure. Jacko and I work in security and we have military backgrounds so we know what we’re doing.”

She was watching him carefully. “Lauren said that Jacko is a former SEAL. Are you?”

He nodded. She seemed to relax just a little. Damn straight. You’re in trouble? Then you want a SEAL at your back. No better friend, no worse enemy.

“But you seem to know a lot about medicine.”

He dipped his head again. “I was a medic.”

She frowned, blonde eyebrows pulling together. “Medic. OK.”

God knows what she was thinking. He wasn’t a doctor. But a battlefield medic deals with more emergency trauma than any hospital A & E doctor. He’d pit his trauma skills against any doctor. He couldn’t treat diabetes or high blood pressure but you got shot? He was your guy.

“Medic. The Navy trained me to deal with emergency wounds and that’s what you had. I didn’t stitch you up, though. I didn’t want to leave an ugly scar.”

Not on that pale, perfect skin.

“Who—who stitched me up?” She touched her side under the clean tee shirt he’d put on her. It fit like a huge nightgown. “I remember we went to this…place. With a nice doctor. You called him…Manuel?”

Sharp lady. He didn’t think she’d absorbed much. She’d been wounded and in pain. But she had.

The clinic was a secret that wasn’t his to share. “Someone else who knew what he was doing. But we made sure no one else could know that you were there. Look, I’m going to go get you something to eat and drink because that’s part of the healing process. And afterward I’ll answer all your questions, ok?”

She nodded.

He took one last look at her, sitting up in his bed, dressed in one of his tee shirts. Looking lost and vulnerable and so incredibly beautiful he had to turn on his heel and go to the kitchen fast before he did or said something he’d regret.

Metal was fast in most things. He was so big people naturally assumed he was slow but he wasn’t. In just a few minutes, he had a freshly brewed cup of tea and two toasted slices of his five grain bread on a tray together with some butter and honey.

She hadn’t moved. She watched him carefully as he put the tray on her lap. As he bent over her he could smell Betadine and faintly, under that, lavender. Looking down, he saw high cheekbones and long light brown eyelashes tipped with gold and a straight, perfect nose. He saw the most delicate skin he’d ever seen, ivory and smooth as satin. Two delicate collar bones rose above the collar of his tee which gaped open enough to see the swell of two small rounded breasts.

A pulse of blood shot through his groin and he stood up, fast, ashamed.

Metal had had problems with women all his life. He knew what he looked like. For some reason, mother nature had given him the looks of a thug. Any normal woman in an urban environment crossed the street to avoid him.

It was a source of sorrow to him because he liked women, a lot. He liked the sound of their voices and the way they smelled and the way they thought. Not too many women were willing to break through the barrier of his rough looks to find out what he was really like.

Suzanne and Allegra, his boss’s wives, they’d made the effort. And Claire Morrison, Bud’s wife. Lauren, too. They treated him normally, smiling and teasing him. He loved it. A lot of women were instinctively scared of him and he hated that.

To compensate he made sure his body language was unthreatening around the ladies. SEAL training had taught him how to intimidate, how to threaten without words. He was good at that. But he also worked at looking harmless, though it was hard when he was taller and bigger than most people.

One thing he never did was be overtly sexual with women unless they were in a bedroom and it had been established that they were going to get it on. Certainly not with a woman he didn’t know.

Having his dick stir in his pants was the last thing he needed and was guaranteed to make Felicity scared. She was alone in the house with him, she was wounded, she was vulnerable and he’d rather slice his own throat than be considered a menace.

So he shut his dick down, fast. And it was harder than it should have been, because he controlled his dick, it didn’t control him but man , the lady was so frigging beautiful, everywhere.

He snagged a chair and sat by the bed watching her eat, trying not to notice how sexy that mouth looked when she put a piece of toast into her mouth, how delicate those long slender fingers looked holding the cup of tea. How his tee hung off her neck, exposing pale smooth shoulders.

She was here, under his protection, and she was scared. He had no intention of making her even more frightened.

So he did the very best thing he could. He sat completely still and didn’t talk.

Stillness was a gift and he had it. Stillness was a subconscious signal to her. Violent or untrustworthy men couldn’t stay still.

Finally she finished the tea and had finished the two slices of bread. She had more color back in her face, which pleased him.

They stared at each other. She swallowed heavily again. Not nausea, fear. Fear of betrayal. But she was going to have to trust him, no way around it. She trusted Lauren who trusted Jacko who trusted him.

A chain of trust. That was the way it worked. Otherwise you couldn’t navigate the world.

She opened her mouth, closed it. Sighed. “Did I lose my laptop?”

Well, that surprised him. Of all the things to ask about when you were wounded by a stranger and woke up in the home of another stranger, a computer wouldn’t be the first thing that sprang to mind.

He nodded. “Yeah. You were carrying it.” He didn’t smile. “We had to pry your fingers from the strap. You want it?”

“Yes, please.” Her voice was polite, but shook.

Metal had it back to her in a second. He placed the case gently in her lap. She didn’t open it immediately, just rested her hand on the tough canvas case. “There was a keyfob in my pocket. Did you find it?”

“Yeah, Jacko’s got the fob. It’s the key to a vehicle. Where’s it parked?”

After midnight, when Metal took Felicity back to his place, Jacko drove around Lauren’s house, pressing the fob. He didn’t find the vehicle.

“I parked—I parked as far away as I could, in case he found it, somehow traced it to Lauren. I left it on Waller.”

Christ, that was a brisk twenty-minute walk in the sunshine. She’d done it wounded, in a snowstorm. She really did want to protect Lauren. She could easily have not made it, would have fallen and died in the snow, to protect Lauren.

Metal had real respect for courage. This was right up there with anything any SEAL had ever done for his teammates.

She looked down at the key then back up to him. “It’s the key to an ambulance. I stole it.”

Fuck. One shock after another.

“You…stole it?”

She nodded. “From the hospital. When they took me there, I thought I was safe. When he slashed me at the airport, I got away, hid in the bathroom, hacked into the airport security system and pulled a bomb alert.”

Metal’s jaw dropped. “I heard about that. About a false bomb alert at the airport. That was you?”

“Yeah.” She found his hand again, curled her fingers around his. “I didn’t know what else to do. I was terrified. I, um, I stole a baby blanket to staunch the bleeding but I was losing blood and I felt faint and I knew he would eventually find me. I looked around for guards or a cop but couldn’t find one. So I made it to the bathroom, went into a stall, hacked into the airport’s system and called in a bomb alert.”

“Fuck,” Metal breathed. Damned if that wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever heard of. Then he realized what he’d said. “Sorry.”

Jesus. That was quick thinking. And really fast hacking. It would have taken him a full day to get into the security system of a major airport. If he even could. He was okay with computers but not more than that. “That was...amazing. What did you do then?”

“I, um, hacked into the emergency service of the airport and told the ambulances to come to the arrivals area. The guy was at the center exit, looking for me as the passengers were panicking and trying to push their way through. The first ambulance that came, I showed him the wound and they loaded me onto a gurney and went to Portland Memorial. I had to abandon my carryon. God knows where it is now, but I keep my essentials in my computer backpack. ID, money, credit cards, cell. I was in shock at the hospital. I didn’t know whether to call Lauren or not. I pulled my backpack up to get to my cell when—when I saw him.”

Metal nodded. “You insisted that we shouldn’t take you to a hospital. Now I see why. You thought he might be there. So, Sherlock, or maybe Houdini. How did you escape the second time?”

She flushed slightly, a small smile on her lips. The flush was like watching a flower bloom, like watching dawn in the mountains. He wasn’t a fanciful man at all but those were the only things he could compare it to.

“When the ambulances came at the airport, I made it to one. I was bleeding heavily and had them take me to the hospital. I thought I was safe. But he arrived and I—” she hesitated, shuddered. “I pulled the sheet over my head and pretended to be dead. After he left, I stole an ambulance.”