Chapter 3

Three

Gabriella

M ac looked even better than I remembered. His dark hair was slightly longer than the close-cropped, military issue haircut he'd had when I met him. The chiseled jaw and strong, bulky build were the same.

But his eyes and his mouth had changed. Before his dark eyes were stony, they didn't give away even a tiny flicker of emotion. His mouth had been a sharp slash. When I'd managed to tease a small smile out of him, I'd felt like I'd been given a gift.

Now, his eyes crinkled in the corners. His mouth tipped up a tiny bit as if he was just waiting for an excuse to smile. There was an ease about him here that had been missing when I met him in Lover's Cove.

And as impossible as it seemed, that ease, that smile waiting to break the surface and share a joke, made him even more attractive than he'd been three months ago.

I couldn't move. But that didn't seem to matter. Mac scanned the room and as his gaze landed on Chief Marion, he stepped forward. Mid-step, his gaze found me. He paused for less than an instant before his long legs ate away the distance between us.

He reached us and didn't bother acknowledging Chief Marion. His hands came out and slid over my arms, pulling me closer until only inches remained between us.

"Gabriella, baby, what are you doing here? Are you looking for me?"

I jolted at his touch, every nerve-ending coming to life as if I'd been waiting forever for this contact. I couldn't find the words to describe the look on his face, but if I had to give it a label, I'd say it was wander. I braced my hands on his strong forearms and stared up into his too-handsome-to-be-real face.

I managed a nod but had trouble finding the words I'd painstakingly planned the entire time I spent on the bus.

"Are you okay? Is everything alright?" His big, warm hands—hands that were well acquainted with every inch of my body—moved up and down my arms as he spoke. I shivered and goose bumps rose along my skin.

I nodded again, and then realized I must look like an idiot. "I'm sorry for just showing up here like this. I know it's not what you…um, signed up for." I slid my eyes to the side, very conscious of Chief Marion standing a few feet away. Spitting out a string of lies to explain my presence would be hard enough without the overly suspicious police chief listening in.

Mac followed my gaze and grinned. "Sorry, Chief. I didn't mean to ignore you. I was just taken by surprise."

"So I see," Chief Marion said drily. "I didn't want to send Miss Cole to you in case you wouldn't be pleased with her unexpected visit." The chief's eyes traveled to his possessive grip on my arms and she pursed her lips. "But I can see that's not an issue."

Mac laughed and maneuvered me even closer to his body. "No. Not an issue at all." He shook his head and returned his attention to me. "More like a surprise. A very welcome surprise."

Warmth shot through me at his words, and without conscious thought, my body melted into his. I mean like really melted. There wasn't an inch of me not touching him. And I'm not sure how, but I could feel his steady breathing and heartbeat and it calmed mine to something resembling normal. I moved my hands up to rest on his chest and he pulled me tighter to him, linking his arms around my back.

"Apparently." Chief Marion's dry tone caught my attention and I couldn't miss the smirk and the raised eyebrow she sent Mac's way. "I'll leave you two to get reacquainted. Somewhere not in the middle of my department," she said pointedly. "Not everyone here can handle the heat coming off you two."

A glance around showed me we were the center of attention. I could feel my cheeks heat, and something down deep inside me felt restless and snarly.

Mac just laughed it off. "Don't worry. We'll clear out." He turned back to me. "Where are you staying?"

I shrugged and nodded at the suitcase I left next to the chair I'd been sitting in while I waited. "I hadn't exactly gotten that far. Is there a hotel nearby?"

I sank my teeth into my lower lip and silently cursed my own stupidity. Why hadn't I planned this part? I'd spent so much time thinking about what I was going to say to him and how I'd break the news of my pregnancy if I decided to tell him, and not one thought on the logistics entered my cloudy brain. Not like me. Not like me at all.

Mac released me only to slip my hand into his. He snatched the suitcase and led me toward the door. "No worries, gorgeous. You will stay with me."

I stood stock-still, yanking at Mac's hand when he kept moving. He turned to face me. "What's wrong?"

My breath caught in my throat and a powerful heat pulsed through me at the memory of what happened last time I shared a room with this man. "I can't stay with you, Mac. I don't even know you."

He grinned, a wolfish expression crossing his face, and damn it the man made my panties more than a little damp. He closed the distance between us. Towering over me, he gave me a smile that said he'd been thinking about the same things I had.

"Beautiful girl," he whispered close to my ear. "I'd say we know each other pretty fucking well. Biblically, you might say. There's not an inch on your body I didn't memorize with my hands, cock, or tongue. Or have you forgotten everything we did?"

His voice dipped low and growly, inviting me in, teasing me, igniting those same flames that drew me to him in the first place.

My breath left me on a huff, and I didn't want to smile, but I could feel my lips twitching. "You know what I mean! How do I know you're not a mass murderer or a psycho or some kind of perv? I can't go home with you."

His grin only grew. "There are lots of things I can imagine doing with you, beautiful. Murdering you definitely isn't one of them." His head tipped to the side. "Perverted might be up for debate. But I promise you'll like all the things I want to do to that curvy body."

I blinked up at him, my eyes going wide and my lips falling open with surprise. He thought my being here was a booty call. That he's my fuck boy and I've come looking for some action.

I didn't know if I should laugh, cry or take him up on the offer.

My hormones screamed all three were viable options.

My head spun and all I could think about was what it felt like when his hands were on me, his mouth devouring my nipples, his long hard cock touching places inside me I didn't know existed.

And he was right. I liked all of it.

"This is not going at all how I expected," I whispered.

"No? ‘Cause I think I had a few fantasies about you that went just like this. You showing up, me taking you home with me, me spreading you out on my bed and spending days devoting myself to pleasuring every inch…" His words trailed off leaving me to fill in the blanks with tantalizing images.

I didn't miss the obvious either. He'd thought of me in our time apart.

He captured my lips in a claiming kiss, just like he did that first night. No warning, just taking. And I loved it. He took our kiss deeper, our warmth mingling, bodies molding together. Between us, I felt the hard length of his cock and my heart rate soared. My mind tripped back to our night together and all the emotion he elicited from me.

Somehow reality tore through all the pleasure swirling inside me and I pulled away, breaking our kiss.

I shook my head, a sad attempt to shake away the mental pictures. I pulled in a deep, not quite steady breath. "As tempting as your kisses and fantasies are…" and oh my, they were tempting beyond belief and under any other circumstances I'd take him up on them in a heartbeat. But right now the little soul inside me came first. "…I need to slow this down. This isn't why I came here."

His dark eyes traced the lines of my face and brushed over the throbbing pulse in my neck. He cupped a hand behind my head and the second those fingers buried beneath my hair my knees grew weak. "Why did you come here?"

"To…umm…" Oh, shit, what was I going to tell him? My mind went utterly blank for several seconds.

"Grab some downtime," I finally blurted out. "You made Hardwood sound so great I thought it would be a nice place to spend a week or two."

Yup. That's the brilliant story I managed to come up with in the day I spent on the bus.

"You're here on a vacation?" His eyes narrowed on me.

I nodded emphatically. It might not be a great story, but it was the one I had and now that I blurted it out, I needed to stick to it.

"You came here on vacation without making any hotel reservations?"

"I know. Stupid…" I shrugged. "It was a spur of the moment kind of thing."

I was going to hell for all my sins and lies.

He dropped his hand and eased away from me slightly, my body instantly missing the heat of his next to mine in the air-conditioned room.

"I guess, I just thought it would be fun to do something a little spontaneous. Take off somewhere new and let the vacation sort of unfold." I lifted a shoulder, going for nonchalance, but probably looking more awkward than anything.

"I became a little nervous as I got closer. I thought of looking you up and…" I gestured around the police station. "…here I am."

Spontaneous trips were so not like me. Not at all, but he didn't know that much about me.

He knew me as the girl from the bar who went back to his hotel a couple of hours after I met him. So for him, my spontaneous vacation might seem in line with what he'd expect from me.

And I wasn't going to spend too much time examining just why I acted so out of character every time we were together.

He looked at me for several long seconds, his expression inscrutable. He looked more like the soldier I'd met that night at the club, and I found myself mourning the loss of his easy grin.

I tilted my head to the side. "I don't want to put you out," I said softly. "I just…you seemed like a nice guy when I met you. I've thought about you since then. And when I got nervous about traveling on my own, I felt safer when I thought of getting in touch with you. That I might not be all alone after all."

I might have left out a bunch of the story, like the tiny fact I was pregnant with his baby, but I realized as soon as the words left my mouth, they were true. Since the moment I found out I was going to have his baby, I'd been scared out of my head. The one thing helping me keep it together was the thought of getting to Mac and the safety I felt in his arm.

His expression cleared and he smiled at me. "Then come home with me. I have a meeting in a little bit, but after that, we can have lunch and I can show you around town." He moved in close to me again. "I've thought about you, too."

My toes curled inside my black Converse and I shot my gaze to his mouth. I think I might have had a little mini orgasm just from his words.

"Ready?" He didn't wait for an answer. He snatched my hand and the handle of the suitcase and herded us out the door.

Before I knew it, I sat next to him in the passenger seat of his truck. I twisted my head to catch the sights we passed—the busy downtown area, a meadow of wildflowers, the green mountains acting as a backdrop to it all. It was so different from sandy Lover's Cove yet a welcomed change.

"Do you live in town?"

"No, but not too far from here. I live on my family's compound a little ways outside of city limits."

I turned my head toward him. The words "family compound" set off an alarm in my brain. On one hand, I knew some wealthy families referred to their estates as compounds. But I was picturing something more like a commune out in the wilderness where you'd find groups of people waiting to suck down some Kool-Aid.

He glanced at me and grinned as if he could read my mind. "Don't worry, beautiful. It's not that kind of compound." He chuckled. "I'm not the crazy mountain man with a wacky family. Promise. My family owns several hundred acres on this side of the mountain. Enough so we can live close, but not right on top of each other. It's nice."

The rest of the ride was pretty quiet. I spent it looking at the breathtaking scenery and praying I hadn't made the biggest mistake of my life coming here.

"We're here," he said quietly as we turned off the main road onto a long paved track only wide enough for a single car.

I peered out of the windshield. There were several houses dotting spots along the tree line. But he had been honest. They weren't right on top of each other.

He drove us for about a mile, past several homes—a couple of large log cabins, some low ranches painted in bright colors. He finally pulled into a driveway that led up to a sort of nondescript two-story home. The siding was beige and the shape was decidedly boxy. The back half of the house was lost to the forest behind it.

"Let me show you inside." His voice was quiet, and I knew he was regretting his offer to bring me here.

But he hopped down from the truck and hefted my suitcase out before coming around to help me down. I glanced up at him and noticed his easy smile and the laugh lines beside his eyes were gone.

I sighed as we took the steps up to his front door. Obviously, my story hadn't been as believable as I'd hoped.

I closed my eyes for a brief moment before I opened them again and followed him inside. How stupid could I be? The man was a trained Special Forces soldier, that much he did tell me. His instincts had been honed and harnessed in ways I probably couldn't even imagine. And I'd hoped to tell my stupid, stupid story and get away with it.

"I'm an idiot," I shared as we stepped into his entryway.

"Care to explain?" He dropped my suitcase near the door and gestured me to walk in front of him into the house.

I stepped through the entryway…and straight into something from a storybook.