Page 6 of When He Fights (Protector & Defender #3)

Chapter Two

A giant, immovable object blocked the road. And she wasn’t talking about the big, gleaming Harley.

Kane Harte reclined on his bike like he didn’t have a care in the world.

He wore a white t-shirt, one that was super stretched because of his massive arms and shoulders.

Seriously, had the man gotten bigger in the last two years?

It sure appeared that way. He had a dark ball cap pulled low over his brow, and a short and—dang it—sexy beard covered his hard jaw line.

He lounged and kept those arms crossed over his chest and…

“Do you just hang around in intersections all the time?” The only thing she could think to say because he’d pretty much shocked Ana straight to her core. How was he in Gulfport? How was this happening? Two years had passed without a single word from him. Two. Years.

And three days.

Not that she’d counted or anything. Some dates were just hard-core burned in a woman’s memory. The date he’d left her? The date that she’d almost died?

Impossible to forget that.

“I was waiting for you.” Deep. Dark. Rumbly. The kind of voice that would make a woman quiver in all the right places.

She ignored the quiver. Not going down that path right now. Her chin notched up. “And you knew I would be coming this way because…?”

He stared at her.

“Because you’re psychic?” Ana threw into the silence. “Because you just had some massively wild hunch? Because?—”

“Gray called me. Told me you were running. I couldn’t let you leave. It’s not safe for you to run on your own.”

She waited for more. Only there was no more. “ How did you know I was coming this way, now?” There were a dozen ways she could have fled from her house. How had he known that she would be on this particular road, heading for this intersection?

He sighed. His hands finally dropped from his massive chest. He reached down, unzipped one of the pockets in his cargo pants, and he hauled out a phone.

“I tagged you, sweetheart.” His fingers swiped over the screen, and then he turned the phone back toward her.

She saw a small, glowing dot on that screen.

She was the dot? Oh, no. “Stop.” An angry snarl because she was at her limit. Too much had happened in way too short of a time.

My ex escaped prison.

He’s coming after me.

And Kane Harte is blocking the road so I can’t escape.

He’d also…tagged her? Since when? Anger burned in her gut. “How long have you been tracking me?” Had he been, ah, tagging her the entire time? For the last two years?

“Got in town before the sun rose. As soon as I learned that Logan had escaped and was after you, I came here.”

Her breath shuddered out. “You knew where I was?”

“I’ve known exactly where you were since the moment we parted ways.”

No, no, that made zero sense. “Grayson said my location was private. Confidential. I left everything behind when I moved here. New name. New life.” Her parents had both died when she was in college. She’d had no close relatives. No family that would look for her. She’d vanished after Logan’s trial.

He glanced around the empty intersection. “We should probably take this conversation somewhere else before some bozo decides to come plowing through and hit my bike.”

“Well, your bike is parked in the middle of the road so…yeah, you should move it.” She motioned toward him, waving her hand broadly. “Crank it up. Drive away. Go. Hurry. Wouldn’t want that precious bike to get damaged. It looks really expensive.”

He did not move. “I knew you were living in Gulfport. I was the one who suggested the location to Gray.”

Her jaw nearly hit the ground.

“You told me that you liked the beach. That you wished you could see it every day. Well, you have a rental house with direct beach views, so I figure that’s pretty close to your dream, isn’t it?”

She got a really bad, twisting feeling in her gut.

“I knew you were living here, but I didn’t tag you until I arrived in town. Gray had asked me to stand in the shadows until I got word from him. I was worried you’d flee before that word came from him. Couldn’t risk you going out on your own, so I tagged your vehicle while you slept.”

Rage almost choked her. Two years. Two years of dreaming about him, and he’d known the entire time exactly where she was. And he’d just… tagged her Jeep while she slept.

“A few minutes ago, I received a call from him telling me that you were coming in hot. He doesn’t want you leaving town.”

“So you made yourself into a roadblock. Sure. Why not? Totally logical.” No, it was not.

Not in any world. And she was done. So very done.

Ana turned on her heel and marched back toward her waiting Jeep.

A car was heading toward the stop sign near her Jeep.

A red Mustang. She could see the frowning face of the driver.

“I’d suggest you move,” she tossed over her shoulder at Kane.

Kane is back. Kane knew where I was the entire time.

Behind her, she heard the snarl of the motorcycle’s engine as it fired to life. The loud sound had her heart racing even more. She hurried to the Jeep and jumped inside. The Mustang whizzed by her and snaked through the intersection.

Kane had already moved his ride.

He…

Drove toward her vehicle. Spun the bike and brought it back so that he could pause right next to the driver’s side. “We need to talk,” he informed her.

“I need to run,” she informed him right back.

“Not an option.”

The hell it wasn’t. Her go bag was in the seat beside her. It was stocked with clothes, a wig, and cash. She even had a fake ID in there that she’d picked up from a slightly shady guy during her last visit to New Orleans. She was ready to vanish.

Except for the pesky tag that he’d placed somewhere on her Jeep.

“Gray wants you to stay put,” Kane told her.

Gray—Grayson. His good FBI buddy. “What if I don’t particularly care what Grayson wants?” Her head turned. She’d left the Jeep door open, mostly just because he hadn’t given her time to shut it before he’d rolled up. “You going to force me to stay?”

“I just want to talk,” he told her. He sounded all reasonable, even with that deep and dangerous voice of his.

“Give me twenty minutes, that’s what I’m asking.

Let’s go back to your place. Get inside—you know, where we’re not in danger of getting smashed by other drivers and where we won’t be overheard with what is a pretty confidential conversation—and then we can talk. We can make a plan.”

“And if I don’t like what you have to say? What happens if I don’t like your plan?” She wet her lips.

His gaze dropped to her mouth. Lingered. Heated.

Whoa. Hold up. Heated?

He pulled out a pair of sunglasses and slipped them over his eyes. Now all she could see was her own slightly desperate expression staring back at her. Okay, fine, her expression was more than slightly desperate.

And he hadn’t responded to her questions. So she gave an answer. “If I don’t like your plan, I leave.” There. Done. “You remove the tag from my Jeep, and I drive away. You let me vanish.”

He nodded. “If you don’t like the plan, we’ll drive away.”

Her shoulders sagged in relief. Great. Fantastic. She would—uh, oh. Back up. He’d said we’ll. As in, plural. “Wait?—”

“I’ll follow you back to the house. Not exactly safe for us to keep lingering here. So haul that sweet ass, and let’s go.” An order.

He revved the motorcycle’s engine again.

Her eyes narrowed. Glaring at him, Ana snapped, “It’s fantastic to see you, too, Kane.

You look great. So glad the last two years have treated you well.

Always fun to run into an old friend who…

oh, just happens to basically be stalking you.

Lovely surprise on this beautiful day. Lovely.

” She jerked the Jeep’s door closed. Glared at him.

He made a motion with his hand. A turn of his fingers. As in… turn this vehicle around.

She made a motion with her hand, too. As in… fuck you.

But she cranked her Jeep. Ana quickly repositioned her lucky duck army—her nickname for the cute, plastic ducks she’d started collecting once she became a Jeep owner.

Once the ducks who’d tumbled at her sudden and fierce braking were resettled, Ana released a long breath.

Then, for the moment, she turned around and headed back to her place.

Blind panic and soul-crushing fear had sent her fleeing before.

She could take a breath. She could give him twenty minutes. She could hear him out.

Then, when they were done talking, she could leave his sexy, muscled ass behind. Because there was no “ we” in this situation. There was just her. And it was her life on the line.

Had he come off stalkerish? Probably. Correction, definitely.

As Kane shoved down the kickstand on his Harley and stared at the house that waited about twenty yards away, he realized that he could have handled things differently with Ana.

Used a hell of a lot more tact. This had not exactly been the reunion he envisioned.

Yeah, dammit, he’d envisioned a few reunions over the last two years.

They’d mostly involved her running straight into his arms. Kissing him frantically.

Fucking him right then and there.

If a guy didn’t have dreams, how was he supposed to get through the days?

She slammed the Jeep’s door. A black bag hung from one delicate shoulder. “Are you coming in or what? We gonna have this big talk in my backyard? Or…” Her delicate jaw hardened. “Should I say your backyard?”

Oh, shit. She’d figured that out, had she?

“Because see, I have this really bad suspicion that I am staring straight at my mysterious landlord. Grayson told me that a friend of his owned the place. A person he trusted completely.”

“Gray is typically not big on trust,” Kane said as he left the motorcycle and stalked toward her. What would she do if he kissed her?

Her gaze shot chips of golden fire at him.

Right. She’d probably slap him. A kiss might just be worth a slap, though.