“Go ahead and tell me,” she said. “I’m interested and I know Boone will be.”
Colin couldn’t resist and caught her braid in his hand. “Isabella. I just can’t believe it’s you. Are you married?”
“No. There’s no man in my life. And you’re changing the subject.”
His gaze drifted over her features. “Must be your choice, then.”
“You were telling me about what happened to you. You said you had operations.”
“Yeah,” he said as they entered the kitchen. He paused, taking in the oak cabinets, earth-colored ceramic flooring, burnt-orange-tiled countertops and copper pans hanging from a pot rack above a tiled island.
“Sit down. I’ll get you something. What would you like to drink? Mike has everything—beer, milk, tea, coffee, soda.”
“I’ll get a beer and if you have sandwich fixings, that’ll do.”
“You can have a sandwich or what I had tonight—prime rib, baked potato—which will take no time in the microwave oven.”
“You twisted my arm,” he said, his mouth watering over the thought of prime rib. “I’ve been on the run and haven’t been visiting four-star restaurants. I haven’t eaten anything since about five this morning.” As he started toward the refrigerator, she walked toward the pantry and they brushed against each other.
Colin reached out to steady her and this time the tension that streaked between them sizzled. Inhaling, he turned away, clamping his jaw tightly closed as he yanked open the refrigerator door, took out a cold beer and uncapped it.
“You won’t join me?” he asked, pulling out a chair at the long, oak table. Watching Isabella bustle around the kitchen, he looked at her long, bare legs again, still surprised at the changes in her. Izzie.
“No, as I said, I ate earlier,” she said. “But I’ll have a glass of iced tea with you.”
She opened a cabinet and stood on tiptoe to try to reach a glass pitcher on a high shelf. When she did, her T-shirt pulled tightly across her full breasts and Colin inhaled, his temperature rising another notch. He stood and crossed the room, reaching up to get the pitcher and hand it to her, his fingers brushing hers when he did so.
Again something flickered in the depths of her eyes. He knew she felt that sparkling electricity, too.
He clenched his teeth and turned away. He didn’t want to feel sparks if she were a total stranger much less someone he had known for years. Years and another lifetime ago.
He sat and ran his fingers along the cold beer bottle, then raised it to hold against his hot temple. He tried to keep his gaze anywhere except on her.
Giving him a speculative look, she said, “I don’t suppose you’re checked into the Stallion Pass Grand.”
He shook his head. “I’ll get out of here. Stop worrying.”
“Where will you go?”
He thought about what he would do next. “I wanted to see your brother and Jonah while I’m here, but I want to see Mike first. I don’t have to, I just wanted to. We go back a long way.”
“You can stay here,” she said.
“After what I put you through, I figured you’d want me gone.”
“I know Mike and Jonah. You four guys were really close. They’d want you to stay,” she said, getting ice and pouring tea for herself. Having washed a potato and put it in the microwave oven for him, she put a thick piece of prime meat in the oven. “I don’t mind you being here.”
“Thanks. I’ll take you up on that offer. It’ll be paradise after where I’ve been.”
In minutes she had the prime rib, a steaming potato with butter and grated cheese ready for him, along with generous slices of French bread. She sat across from him.
“You said you were concerned about being followed. How likely is it that you were?”
“Not likely,” he answered. Then dug into his dinner with relish.
“I’ve got someone after me who wants me dead,” Colin explained, picking his words carefully. “If he had been following me that closely, I wouldn’t be here talking to you. He wouldn’t have waited until I got here. I’ve been damn careful—which you may not believe since you almost pulverized me.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I said before, I know that you could have stopped me. You just didn’t want to hit a woman. It sounds like you’re involved in some serious stuff, right up to your chin. Are you bringing trouble to my brother and Mike and Jonah?” she asked bluntly.
“That’s the last thing I want to do, which is why I went to so much trouble to keep my tracks covered and to slip into this house and contact Mike at night when no one else would see me. I don’t want to increase the danger to any of them.”
“’Increase the danger,’ she repeated with arched eyebrows. “So why did you come then? Why do you want to see them?” she asked with curiosity.
He knew she was worried about her brother. “I need to warn Mike, Jonah and Boone. I know I’m in danger. I think the three of them might be in danger, too.”
Chapter 2
“Why would they be in danger?” Isabella demanded, chilled enough to rub her arms. Colin’s smoke-colored eyes were as cold as marble. None of her brother’s and his Special Forces friends were prone to exaggeration and she might not have seen Colin in years, but she doubted the man would be here without a good reason.
“All of them have been out of the military, away from that life, for a long time now,” she commented while Colin ate his dinner. “They have their lives and have been in the spotlight with this inheritance. Their lives are open and if anyone wanted to find them, it would be an easy thing.”
“It’s something that goes back to the explosion when everyone thought I’d been killed.” Putting down his fork, he gazed beyond her, a distant look coming to his eyes as if he had forgotten her existence or even where he was. “I died then in many ways,” he said so quietly that she had to lean closer to hear him; she was certain he had forgotten her presence.
“For a long time, I didn’t want to live.” With each word his voice grew more harsh, increasing the coldness surrounding her. “I still don’t care if I live or not, but I’m concerned about my friends. I don’t want anything to happen to them.”
As he talked, she studied his rugged yet appealing features. She had seen all the scars on his chest and back, but he was lean and muscular and looked incredibly fit. She was responding to him physically in a way she shouldn’t be. For all she knew, the man was married. Yet he certainly was sexy, dressed in black from head to toe. Dangerous and tough. There was no denying what those smoke-colored eyes could do to her pulse….
“That last mission I was on was covert. The four of us were to rescue an agent who had been taken hostage by a criminal terrorist.”
She remained silent. Boone never talked about his missions, especially that one, and she had only a sketchy knowledge of what had happened five years ago.
“I was the first to get to the building where they held the hostage. The other guys were behind me. As I went in, someone detonated a bomb. The hostage and I were closest to it.”
“That’s dreadful!” she exclaimed, half not wanting to hear what had happened and half of her needing to know.
“Someone had tipped the guys off. If the bomb had blown seconds later, all of us would have been killed.”
“But why didn’t anyone know you were alive?”
“When the car bomb exploded, I was directly in its path. The others