Page 43 of Risk It All
“Sorry.” Despite her apology, Cara had to duck her head to hide her smile. Her amusement disappeared when she glanced toward the balcony doors, however. Henry had turned the lights off downstairs, so the cabin was only lit by the fire in the woodstove. The exposed French doors somehow made things spookier. Her imagination conjured up all sorts of nightmares waiting just beyond that dark glass. Now that he’d mentioned it, she could easily picture someone scaling the balcony and breaking into the bedroom while they slept. She shivered, unable to look away.
“Get in bed.” Henry’s voice broke the frightening spell, and she turned her head from the French doors and the unknown that lay beyond them. He must’ve misread her hesitation as a reprimand for his bossiness, because his tone mellowed when he continued, “You’re cold.”
Rather than explain why she was freaked out, she took the excuse he offered and folded back the covers to reveal a bare mattress beneath. “You didn’t happen to see any sheets when you were nosing around, did you?”
Wordlessly, he turned and opened the closet, pulling a set of folded flannel sheets from the top shelf. As he brought them over, Cara pulled the covers off all the way. For some reason, she half expected him to dump the sheets on her and watch while she made the bed, but he did his part with the hospital-cornered efficiency that screamed boot camp—or nurses’ training.
As she held a pillow under her chin so she could slide a case over it, she studied him curiously. She’d investigated his background, but she’d been focusing more on the crimes he was accused of and possible places he might be hiding out. This small detail made her realize how little she actually knew about the facts of his life.
“Were you in the military?” she asked, making him pause with another pillowcase in his hand.
“Not really.”
Frowning, she said, “That’s not a good answer, as answers go.”
For that, she got an amused upward lip twitch in response, but no clarification.
“Were you trained as a nurse?” She was determined to get some answers out of the man. For as close as she felt to him, she knew very little about the details of his life.
He blinked. “As a medic, yeah. How’d you guess?”
“The hospital corners on your sheets.” She could tell he hadn’t expected that answer, and she gave herself a point for surprising him. “Plus, there’s that way you look at me when you think I might be injured. It’s clinical, but also…not.” Her skin warmed as she thought about the way his eyes blazed with concern for her whenever she was shot at or almost blown up or driven off a cliff.
He made ahmmsound, even as his gaze locked on her. The heat in his expression made her squeeze the pillow she still held to her chest.
“Yeah.” Her voice was husky. “That’s the look, except with a double helping of lust.”
A laugh burst out of him, and she gave herself a solid ten points and a high five for that.
Ducking her head to hide her pleased smile, she dropped the pillow onto the mattress and flipped the thick quilts over the newly made bed. As she climbed in, giving a little shiver at the cool flannel against her bare feet, Henry crossed the room and checked the lock on the French doors. When he turned back around, she could see he was scowling again.
“What’s wrong?” She drew the quilts up to her chin, feeling like a kid hiding under the covers from the things that went bump in the night—although Abbott’s boogeymen were all too real.
“That lock’s too…” His voice trailed off as he met her eyes, finishing with a brusque wave of his hand as if he was dismissing his concerns.
“What?” His uncharacteristic hesitance made her even more worried than she’d been before he’d answered—orhadn’tanswered. “What’s wrong with the lock?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it.” When she raised her eyebrows skeptically, he relented. “It’s just not the kind I would’ve chosen if this were my place.”
She couldn’t hold back a snort.
“What?” He echoed her earlier question.
“As if you’d have French doors on your house.” He gave her a look but didn’t argue, and she grinned in triumph. “Your dream home is probably an underground bunker with enough supplies to last through a nuclear winter.”
He looked slightly put-out, but she noticed he still didn’t deny it.
“You wouldn’t even want a window, much less a French door with a piddly lock.”
“I’m fine with windows.” He sounded a bit grumpy that she’d read him so well. “As long as they have bullet-resistant glass and solid locks.”
“And bars?”
Shooting a final glare at the French doors under discussion, he circled to the other side of the bed. “No. Not crazy about bars.”
His grim expression reminded her that he’d been behind bars, at least for the short time before he’d bonded out. Her urge to tease him more about his love of home security faded, and she burrowed deeper under the covers before changing the subject. “Did you check all the doors and windows downstairs to make sure they’re locked?”
HisWhat do you think?look was answer enough. Before he got into bed, he paused for a fraction of a second, making Cara wonder if he felt any of the heavy sexual tension that she did. Then he was climbing in, as expressionless as always, and suddenly his muscular body was very, very close. She went still, not wanting to accidentally touch him but, at the same time, really wanting to intentionally touch him.
