“Jacob, I want to take a look at your arm before you two head out to the police station. And don’t bother to tell me you’re fine. I know all about the ego you boys tote around, and I’m not backing down.”

Jacob’s arm. How could she have forgotten his injury just because he’d ditched his sling? She’d been so immersed in her own mess that she hadn’t even given him any warning of what they would hear. She was being selfish, especially after all he’d done for her.

Now if she could just scavenge some communication skills she had no way of knowing she possessed.

Hunger roared to life within him, a hunger fired by more than the woman walking beside him as they left the police station and settled into his truck.

They’d filed an official report. During their afternoon at the station, they hadn’t learned anything new from the police about her. The cops had actually been more interested in the fact that the Suburban plates hadn’t appeared in any data bank. Had Mr. Smith written down the wrong number by accident or on purpose? No way of knowing.

Jacob gripped the steering wheel tighter. He’d done all he could for today. With a trip to the doctor and the cops. Now he couldn’t avoid thinking about what they’d learned from Doc Bennett.

Dee had a child.

Just when he’d thought he couldn’t be surprised anymore, there came the latest bombshell. Jacob slid the key into the ignition and cranked the engine. He hooked his arm along the seat, turning to look out the rear window as he backed out.

Seeing Dee stopped him cold.

She wasn’t crying, not outwardly. She simply sat, her fingers gripping the lap belt over her stomach. And she was shaking, not much, but enough for him to notice. Her teeth began chattering.

“The heat should kick in soon.”

She nodded tightly, her face front, her gaze veering neither left nor right.

He slid the truck back into Park. “You okay?”

Dee nodded again.

“You’re scaring me a little here.”

Her head tucked, the bare curve of her neck showing through the glide of her hair. “It’s a lot to take in. That’s all. I’ll be fine. How’s your arm?”

“I’m cleared to go back to work when my leave’s over in a couple of weeks.”

“That’s wonderful. I’m so relieved to hear it.”

Dee’s fists squeezed around the seat belt until her knuckles shone white as the tender line of her neck. He’d watched plenty of women pump out tears over the years, but he’d never seen one try so valiantly not to cry.

It caught him like a quick uppercut to the jaw. Anger began to take a backseat to sympathy and something else. Something dangerous that lured him to sling an arm along the back of her seat. “You’re not fine.”

She dipped her head lower and mumbled, “Rocket scientist as well as military hero and motel mogul.”

Jacob felt a chuckle escape. How could he not admire her grit? He should have realized she’d fire back, a way of going numb rather than launching into overemotionalism.

He notched a knuckle under her chin and lifted her face. “We’re going to find out who you are. And we’re going to find out about your child. I know you don’t always welcome my help, hell, anyone’s help, but I’m in for the long haul. Understand?”

She shrugged away, swiping the back of her hand across her eyes. “I’m sorry for not telling you before about the C-section scar.”

At least she’d begun to thaw, not that it relieved him the way it should have. “I know now, and we’re doing all we can. The world won’t end if we sit tight for a few minutes while you have a good cry.”

“Sobbing my eyes out won’t fix anything.”

She had that much right. Why then did he want to convince her she needed a good three-hanky vent?

Jacob unbuckled her seat belt and allowed himself to cup her shoulders. Even through her coat, he could feel her fragile bones, but he now knew she had a steely spine for support.

He tugged her toward him. “Come here.”

She resisted, as he’d known she would.

“I just need to hold you for a second, okay?”

Her back bowed as she angled away. “Why?”

He reminded himself he was only convincing her because she needed to be held. Not because he was locked in the grip of some fierce longing to press her against him and reassure himself. “Because you’re all right. I was worried about you. And because I know you must be scared as hell wondering if you have a kid out there somewhere!”

Dee sniffled and Jacob smiled, not because he was glad she’d begun crying but because for once he understood her. He could handle tears, dish out comfort. He pulled her to his chest. His forehead fell to rest against her hair. Motel shampoo mixed with the lingering antiseptic scent of the hospital.

For years, he’d accepted that the honed instinct to protect couldn’t be shut off at the end of a mission. The need to protect the woman in his arms throbbed through him. It scoured him, tearing away boundaries, leaving behind something more basic, fundamental, elemental.

His hand traveled up to cradle the back of her head, his fingers massaging her scalp. The very feel of her sizzled up his arm, shooting straight through him with a need he’d stamped down for longer than he cared to remember.

God, he wanted her. Not that he could do a thing about it. The woman had just been subjected to a traumatic morning filled with an invasive physical and a police interrogation.

With shaky restraint, Jacob fenced in his own needs and continued rubbing gentle, small circles into her head. A moan whispered from her lips, nothing much, just a small little breath of sound.

A small sound that charged the air.

Her fingers dug into his arms, tighter, then crawled to his shoulders and into his hair. She tilted her face just as she pulled his down to meet her.

What the hell? He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do this.

But he wasn’t. She was.

“Thank you, Jacob.” She skimmed her lips over his.

Cradling her to him, still half-afraid she might be as fragile as she looked, Jacob brushed her mouth with his in a tender salute. The thread of longing between them pulled tauter, drawing him deeper. Gently he traced her lips, then teased her tongue with his, tasting morning coffee and acquainting himself with the unique flavor of Dee.

She flattened herself to him. Her fingers gripped the neck of his shirt and tugged, hard. “More.”

So much for thoughts of restraint.

His mouth settled over hers with a firm rightness he could have never predicted, and wasn’t quite sure he could handle while maintaining any semblance of sanity.

Dee all but wrapped herself around him as she kissed him back, fiercely, with an intensity that rocked all his plans for reserve. Maybe he’d thawed her a little too much. Her kisses had a frenzied edge that went beyond passion.

A chill settled over Jacob. She didn’t really want him, just somebody, anybody to shake her from the numbing sensation that had come from her messed-up life.

Talk about the proverbial bucket of cold water. If—when—he made love to her it wouldn’t be in the front seat of a truck, and it wouldn’t be because she was running from something.

He wanted her running to him.

“Dee, we have to stop.” With more than a little regret, he untwined her arms from around his neck. “We’re in a parking lot.”

And damned if that didn’t make him start looking over his shoulder again as he’d done during their drive into town. Luckily nobody appeared to be paying any attention to a truck with fogged windows.

She stiffened, then flung herself away against the seat. “I can’t believe I did that. Like you haven’t already got a thousand reasons to think all sorts of crazy things about me, I go adding more ammo to the impression.”

“I’m not thinking anything other than you needed to blow off some steam, and this isn’t the right way. It’s okay.” Well, it wasn’t, but it would be once he could suck in a few more breaths.

Her sigh rippled through the air before she nodded and smiled, a wry, wobbly grin that caressed his hand. “What a first kiss, huh?”

“What?”

“My first kiss. Even if I’ve been kissed a thousand times before, it’s not like I remember any of them. So this is it. My new first. Is that strange or what?”

“Or what.” A new chill seeped through Jacob, dousing his need more effectively than a dive into a snowbank.

Yes, he wanted her, and he couldn’t help but notice she might want him a little in return. But they had a problem.

He’d considered any number of reasons why he shouldn’t lunge across the truck cab and convince her to find the nearest bed—or even ask her out to dinner and a movie. She had a life out there somewhere. He had a mess of a life here.

But he hadn’t considered one fundamental reason to tread warily, if at all.

This woman beside him, a woman who signed into a motel as “Mrs. Smith,” a woman who’d given birth to a child, a woman who might well have a husband, this woman was for all intents and purposes—a virgin.

Chapter 7

H e hated that damned virtuous act of hers. Of anyone, he knew how she really acted in bed.

His foot pressed the accelerator, the SUV’s tires gripping for traction even with the four-wheel drive. He forced his focus back on the road as he neared the Lodge. He just needed to see her, find out what she was doing, be sure she wasn’t making it with some other guy.

Everybody should know what a slut she was. They should hear the truth about her, but he couldn’t tell them. He’d needed to be attentive, loving. Appearances mattered. What people thought of him mattered if he ever wanted to put his life back together again.

He turned off the highway onto the side road, hunting rifles rattling in the floorboards as he bumped and jostled toward the out-of-the-way restaurant. All he’d wanted was money and a way out of the ball-and-chain life he’d been stuck with.

So why didn’t he just leave? Loose ends. If it weren’t for their kid, he would have walked away from her a long time ago.

He couldn’t wait for luck to turn his way any longer. He needed to take fate into his own hands.

Dee stared out the truck window. She wanted to ask more about Jacob’s military world, a place where he felt comfortable, even if the gates and fences and airplanes roaring overhead left her feeling a bit claustrophobic. But Jacob was even more reticent than he’d been on the drive earlier.

Perhaps the icy roads simply demanded his full attention.

At first, she’d wondered if Jacob’s moodiness could be a by-product of her having thrown herself at him. What had she been thinking? Obviously she hadn’t been thinking of anything but soaking up the comfort of his strength.

Dee spun thoughts of him over and over as they drove along the gravel road toward Marge’s Diner. She could imagine him in a uniform. The mental picture was more than a little exciting, the brooding, twenty-first-century warrior. It seemed right somehow.

The same man running a motel for years on end…That image didn’t gel at all. Already she recognized his need for action, his inescapable manner of taking charge. It wasn’t frenzied, just even-paced, steady, as he took care of everything from filing a police report to making sure she remembered to eat.

Jacob slowed the truck, wheels crunching across the diner’s parking lot. Trucks and Suburbans dominated the unmarked spaces. A replica of a prairie schoolhouse sat perched by a lake. The candy-apple-red building splashed color onto the otherwise gray mountainous horizon. A pier spiked out of the frozen waters, providing a narrow wooden path above the sheet of ice.

Not at all what she’d expected.

She’d been looking for some fifties throwback diner with jukeboxes and counter service. Had she subconsciously substituted something from her own hometown into expectations for Jacob’s area? She reached into her mental recesses in hope of finding the face of her child….