“Pointless to hide, if you’re going to make yourself easily accessible.”
“I shouldn’t even be hiding,” she said petulantly. “I should be at home asleep in my bed.”
“If you were home, I guarantee you wouldn’t be sleeping. You’d be listening to your doorbell and phone ring off the wall. And if those guys hanging around outside have figured out a way to scale the rock wall that borders the street-side of your property, you might find yourself staring at a stranger’s face in your window—or worse, the lens of a camera. And when daylight arrives, you can bet at least one helicopter will be hovering over your house, taking aerial shots.” He waved a dismissive hand. “But once those pictures hit the papers, you wouldn’t have time to worry about the cameras any longer. You’d be too busy trying to stay alive.”
“Okay, okay,” she snapped. “I get your point.”
“Good. I really don’t want to have this conversation again.”
She saw a large shadow looming ahead and hit the bright lights. “Is that the cabin?” she asked.
“One of them.”
“How many are there?”
“Six, as I recall. They’ve left the cabin on the far end open for us.”
She’d driven past two, when he said, “It’s the next one”
“But you said there were six,” she said in confusion.
“At least that many. But there are only three on this particular road.”
She pulled to a stop, and glanced in the rearview mirror at the path they’d followed, barely visible in the red glow of her brake lights. “You call that a road?”
He climbed from the vehicle. “Accessibility,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled, as she trudged toward the rear of the SUV to help him with the bags. An eerie howl sounded in the distance and sent her scurrying to Garrett’s side. “Did you hear that?” she asked in a nervous whisper.
“Hear what?”
The howl sounded again. “That,” she said, with a shudder.
He pushed her tote against her chest, forcing her to take it. “Probably a coyote.”
“Probably?” With her gaze fixed on the darkness, she eased closer to his side. “You aren’t sure?”
He pulled out her suitcase and set it on the ground. “You’re the one from Texas. Don’t you know a coyote when you hear one?”
“Sorry,” she said dryly, “but we don’t have many coyotes roaming the streets of downtown Austin.”
He closed the rear hatch and the interior light blinked off, leaving them in inky darkness. He tried to turn, but with Ali on one side and her suitcase on the other, he was trapped.
“If you’ll give me some room,” he said in frustration, “I’ll lead the way to the cabin.”
She grabbed the handle of her suitcase and dragged it out of his path, but remained where she was. “No way, buster. You’re not leaving me to bring up the rear. The last person on the trail is always the one plucked off and never seen again.”
He heaved a sigh. “I’m sure there’s logic in there somewhere, but I’m too damn tired at the moment to reason it out.”
With Ali sticking to him like glue, he made his way to the cabin. Once inside, it didn’t take Ali long to figure out the cabin had only one bed, which she was quick to point out to Garrett.
“So we’ll share,” he replied. “It’s a king. It’s certainly big enough.”
“Both of us in the same bed?”
He shrugged off his jacket and tossed it to a chair. “If you have a problem sharing, you can sleep on the couch.”
She glanced through the doorway at the couch in the other room, thinking about the eerie howling she’d heard, as well as the lunatic who supposedly wanted Garrett dead. Deciding that sleeping on the couch held about as much appeal as being the last person on the trail, she snatched up pillows and began erecting a wall down the center of the bed.
“Line of demarcation,” she warned him.
Ali didn’t expect to sleep a wink. Not with the threat of an assassin on her mind and Garrett on the other side of the bed. To her surprise, within minutes of closing her eyes, she slipped into a deep sleep and didn’t stir until hours later, when sunlight flooding through the bedroom window pricked at her eyelids. In an effort to block the sun, she folded an arm over her head and snuggled deeper into the cocoon of bedding.
Her mind slowly registered a difference in the firmness of the wall of pillows at her back, as well as the heat it was producing. Praying the cause wasn’t what she feared, she cautiously pushed her buttocks against the wall and froze when she met the unmistakable shape and resistance of an erection.
“Don’t panic,” a sleepy voice said from behind her. “Men wake up like this all the time.”
She twisted around to find Garrett directly behind her. “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“Only if you considered it a threat.” He lifted a shoulder. “But if you prefer to claim ownership for producing it….”
“Claim ownership?” she repeated, then sputtered a laugh and rolled from the bed, pleased to discover he had a sense of humor. “As if.”
“Where are you going?” he called after her.
“To get dressed.”
“Don’t you want to finish what you started?”
She fluttered a hand, but kept walking. “No, thanks.”
After dressing, Ali went to the kitchen in search of food, and found Garrett sitting at the table in the breakfast nook, working at his laptop. “Have you eaten?” she asked, as she passed him on her way to the refrigerator.
“Nibbled.”
“Well, nibbling’s not going to cut it for me. I’m starving.” She opened the refrigerator and was surprised to find it fully stocked. “Wow. Your friends really know how to make a person feel welcome.”
“Mandy likes to play mother.”
She froze, her hand on a bowl of fruit. Mandy? Forcing the tension from her shoulders, she pulled out the bowl of fruit. “I, uh, assumed your friend was a male.”
“Mandy is Jase’s wife. They’re both friends.”
A pitifully brief explanation, but at least she now knew this Mandy person wasn’t a romantic interest of Garrett’s.
Not that she cared, she told herself.
She dropped down on the chair opposite him and plucked a grape from the bowl. “What are you doing?” she asked curiously.
“Checking my e-mail.”
“You can get Internet access in the boonies?” she asked doubtfully.
He tapped a finger against the side of his laptop. “Thanks to a wireless card from my cell phone provider. Anywhere I can receive cell phone reception, I can access the Internet.”
“Wow!” She popped the grape into her mouth, chewed. “So? Any word on the guy who’s threatened you?”
“No.”
“Have you checked to see if you’ve made the news?”
“No mention, yet.”
“Well,