At Close Range. Marilyn Tracy

she said. “I didn’t mean to—I was just…”

      “It’s okay,” he growled. The light behind him blocked her from reading his face.

      “New place,” he said gruffly

      That he was in a new place didn’t account for the hours of pacing. “I saw your light on. I thought perhaps you needed something?”

      He turned his head toward the main house, eyes zeroing in on the only light visible, then, back to her. “You were up at this hour?”

      “Drink of water,” she lied.

      “Me, too,” he lied right back at her.

      “Oh. Of course. So you don’t need anything?” At best her question sounded lame, at worst it sounded like a come-on. She blushed.

      Luckily, he didn’t seem to read meaning into her words. “You and your partners have thought of everything. Except for clothes, I wouldn’t have had to bring a thing.”

      And he wasn’t wearing many of those, she thought. “Jeannie gets all the credit,” she said, and hoped he didn’t hear the breathlessness in her voice.

      “She deserves it,” he said.

      She shivered against the cold. Despite his lack of clothing, he seemed impervious to the deep chill and she wondered if his many wounds, the scars she could only faintly discern in the dimness, blocked the sensation of cold.

      “Well…thanks for thinking of me,” he said. His hand ran the length of his torso, a wholly unconscious gesture, but one that robbed her mouth of moisture.

      “What?” she asked.

      “Thanks for thinking of me.” There was a bitter note in his voice.

      She’d thought of little else since she opened the front doors to find him standing there for an interview. But at his words, she felt like a three-year-old being dismissed by a social worker.

      “Okay. Sure. As long as everything’s okay,” she said, her voice faltering. “I’ll—I’ll just go back now.” She turned, embarrassed she’d come out there, disturbed at the fact that she had, and that she’d done so armed with a handful of items more suited to welcoming an adolescent than an adult who had obviously survived more than his share of hardship. And then to stare at him like a love-starved teenager. She might be love-starved, but she wasn’t a kid anymore.

      However much she might be acting like one.

      I’m Corrie Stratton, and if I survived my childhood, I can survive this.

      Mack felt like a heel. All she’d done was come to check on him. She’d seen his light on at three-thirty in the morning his first night on the ranch, and had come out into the cold out of simple kindness and concern for him. And he’d greeted her as if she were a terrorist, was curt to the point of rudeness, then capped it off by lying to her and making her feel like she’d intruded.

      “Wait. Please…?”

      She stopped but didn’t turn around. “Yes?” Given her voice, even that single questioning syllable sounded like a chord straight from paradise.

      “Do you have any aspirin?”

      She slowly revolved back to face him and dug into her pocket. She withdrew a paperback, a notebook, a pen and, finally, a bottle of aspirin. She handed him the plastic bottle.

      “Thanks,” he said, working at the childproof cap. He had to fight himself not to ask about the other items she started to shove back into seemingly rapacious pockets. But he knew instinctively that she’d brought them for him for some reason.

      “Here, let me,” she said, bridging the gap between them as she stuffed the last of her things back into her pocket. She held out her hand for the bottle and he gave it up without a struggle, careful not to touch her. He was too aware of her standing so close to him in the night, too aware of his own near nudity, his terrible scars she didn’t so much as look at, and the way the merest hint of a breeze on the cold night air seemed to tease his newly formed skin.

      She flipped the aspirin bottle open and held it out at an angle, apparently prepared to shake them into his hand. Her hands trembled so much that only three aspirin fell onto his hand and a few more disappeared onto the ground. He closed his palm around her shaking fingers.