She blew out a hard breath and shook her head. The Mackays weren’t stupid, but sometimes her boss liked to pretend they were, and that was a very big mistake, especially in light of the fact that Cranston really wasn’t a fool.
She stared around the area before brushing back her dark blond hair and resigning herself to the inevitable.
Dawg Mackay had led her on a merry chase, and he had known exactly what he was doing. Through twisting hollows, up steep mountain roads that barely passed as trails, and into the thick forests that surrounded Lake Cumberland like a protective lover.
She would find her way out, eventually, but there was no doubt she was stuck for the night. Her satellite phone wasn’t cooperating for some reason, the cell phone had no reception, and night was coming on.
She straightened from the crouch where she had found the locator another agent had placed beneath the Mackay vehicle, propped her hands on her hips, and stared around the thick forest surrounding her.
It would have been enjoyable if she’d been prepared. Simple things like enough water to get her through the night, a sleeping bag maybe. She did have her weapon. And her thoughts. Too many thoughts the longer she stayed in Somerset—the longer she was around Natches Mackay and all the memories she tried to push behind her.
She shook her head and reached inside her back pocket for the habit she had picked up again in the past few months, only to find the cigarette pack she had stuck there earlier empty. Great.
Shaking her head, she wadded up the pack and tossed it into the back of the borrowed jeep her boss had had waiting for her just outside of Somerset, after she had reported the direction Dawg and his lover, Crista Jansen, had been heading in.
Crista Jansen looked too damned much like the woman brokering a missile sale between hijackers and terrorists to suit the Department of Homeland Security. It had been her job to follow Crista, to keep an eye on her and whoever she met with.
Knowing Dawg Mackay, Crista Jansen was meeting with nothing less than every inch of that Kentucky native’s hard body. Dawg wasn’t a traitor. He wanted those missiles as much as they did, and it was apparent he believed his woman was innocent.
But, hell, everyone thought the person they loved was innocent. Human nature had a tendency to overlook the truth whenever it wanted to. She had learned that lesson herself, the hard way.
Always the hard way. And look at what she had lost. Sometimes Chaya wondered if she hadn’t lost her soul in a desert so bleak it sucked the spirit out of a person.
She snorted at that thought as she kicked at a clump of grass and leaned against her car, determined to enjoy just a few minutes of being unreachable by her boss, Timothy Cranston. No doubt he was frantically calling both the cell and sat phones. And here she stood, breathing in the fresh mountain air, feeling the peace of the place wrap around her, sink inside her.
Beseeching her to relax. To remember. To remember one night. One man. Urging her to close her eyes and to remember his touch. A touch filled with tears and her sobs, but also with his gentleness, with the warmth of his kisses, the heat of his possession. A night she only remembered in her dreams.
Her lips kicked up in a grin at the thought. Yeah, relax and drop her guard. Hadn’t she done that before? And hadn’t she paid for it? Hadn’t she lost everything she loved in life because she had trusted the wrong person? And here she was, a part of her wishing, regretting things she knew she had no right to regret.
Strong arms that didn’t hold her through the night. A voice like aged whiskey that didn’t rasp her name with heated passion at his release. Hands, calloused and possessive. And she regretted, because that illusion was the most dangerous one she could ever reach out for.
A second later an unexpected sound had her jerking her weapon from the holster at the small of her back and taking aim at the front of the car.
She knew who it was. She took the precaution of waiting, watching, but the sound of the jeep rolling up the mountain was unmistakable. Powerful, a hard, male throb of power that her piece-of-crap borrowed jeep didn’t have.
At least he was driving up in front of her rather than slipping through the trees and taking aim. He could have taken her out before she knew what hit her. And he would. No matter how well he knew her, no matter the short history they had shared so long ago, he would put a bullet between her eyes as fast as he would an enemy combatant if he felt she was a threat.
She held the Glock comfortably, confidently, as the wicked black vehicle pulled over the rise. If a jeep could strut, it strutted up the mountain and caused her to grit her teeth. Cranston could make her crazy running her in circles, but he couldn’t give her a vehicle decent enough to make those circles in.
Tall tires, gleaming paint job, and a black pipe bumper. A winch at the front, the top pulled back, the man behind the wheel staring back at her from behind dark glasses, hiding those incredible green eyes.
But nothing could hide his somber expression as he jumped from the driver’s seat, the engine still idling, throbbing. Like the rumble of a monstrous cat.
This was the dream, and the illusion. And somehow she had known he would be here. Here, in the mountains that bred him, as strong, as secure, as dangerously primitive as the man himself. As dangerous as the regrets that whispered through her as she watched him.
Chaya licked her lips slowly, staring back at him, trying not to notice the smooth, corded grace of his body. The way his jeans hung low on his h*ps and drew attention to his thighs. The way his gray T-shirt snugged over taut abs. The aura of power and male grace that seemed to ooze from the pores of his heavily tanned skin.
The wind ruffled through his overly long black hair, whipping it across his forehead and along the nape of his neck. Those thick, tempting strands had her hands itching to touch them, her fingers curling into fists to restrain the need.
Hell, she needed that cigarette bad now. She’d been working with him for months, and she still couldn’t dampen the sickening nerves, the pain each time he came near her. The need. Oh God, the need wrapped around her until sometimes she wondered if it would eventually drive her insane. The need to touch. Just one more time, just one touch, one kiss, one more night to hide within his arms.
Instead, she tucked her weapon back into its holster and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she watched him. The way he moved. The intensity in his forest green eyes, the knowledge in his expression. There was always that knowledge, the words that whispered just below the surface, the memories that never really went away. The hunger that never really receded.