LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Three

      Owen tucked Tara more fully behind him, squaring his shoulders in an attempt to look larger than he was. What he wouldn’t give to have the pecs and deltoids of Mike Strong, who’d instructed him in hand-to-hand combat during his first grueling weeks of probationary training at Campbell Cove Security Services. Strong had insisted that Owen’s lean, wiry build didn’t mean he couldn’t hold his own in a fight, but until today, he’d never had a reason to test that theory.

      And given how badly his attempt to save Tara outside the church had gone, he wasn’t confident that Strong would be proven right this time, either.

      He could hear his father’s voice, a mean whisper in his ear. “You’re weak, Owen. Life ain’t kind to the weak.”

      Grimly shutting out that voice, he searched the shadowy interior of the cabin for something he could use as a weapon, but the place had been stripped mostly bare a long time ago, from the looks of it. There was a rickety camp bed left in one corner, and the mattress of another lying on the floor nearby, but that was all. What he wouldn’t give for one of those cheap little bow and arrow sets he and the other Scouts had learned to use that summer twenty years ago.

      Not that he’d remember how to use it.

      The footsteps on the porch moved closer, the steps careful. Deliberate. There was an oddly light touch to the sounds that didn’t remind him much of the hulking men who’d shoved him into the side of the van earlier that day. These footfalls sounded almost—

      A face peered around the edge of the door. Small, pale, freckled and terrified.

      A kid, no more than ten or eleven. He froze there, his face framed by the bright red hood of his rain slicker. A second later, a second face appeared next to the boy’s, smaller. More feminine. She had big, dark eyes and frizzy curls framing her face beneath her pink rain hood.

      Owen took a step toward them. “Hello—”

      The boy opened his mouth and screamed, triggering an answering shriek in the girl. They sped off into the rainy woods, their terrified wails turning to hysterical giggles of pure adrenaline rush before they faded from earshot.

      Owen felt Tara’s forehead press hard against his back. “Kids?”

      “That could have been us twenty years ago.” Owen turned to look at her. “Sneaking around Old Man Ridley’s cabin, trying to catch him red-handed at murder.”

      Tension seeped slowly out of her expression, a faint smile taking its place. “Remember that summer he almost caught us?”

      “One of the top ten most terrifying moments of my life.” He laughed softly.

      “Do you think those kids will come back with grown-ups next time?”

      He shook his head. “Are you kidding? They’d probably be grounded for life just for sneaking around this old cabin.” He pulled out the lighter and relit the candle he’d extinguished. “Come on, let’s see what kind of shelter we can make of this place.”

      The place was grimy and drafty, but the tin roof seemed to have weathered the years without springing leaks, which had kept the interior dry and mostly free of mildew. The cot mattresses were a disaster, but Owen uncovered an old military footlocker half hidden by the remains of one of the cots. Inside, he found a couple of camp blankets kept well preserved within the airtight trunk. They smelled of the cedar blocks someone had placed inside the trunk to ward off moths.

      “Here, wrap up in this.” He unfolded the top blanket and wrapped it around Tara’s shoulders, not missing the shivers rattling through her. “I wish we could risk starting a fire in that fireplace,” he said with a nod toward the river stone fireplace against the near wall. “But the chimney’s probably blocked by now, and besides, we don’t want to risk smoke alerting anyone to where we are. Not yet.”

      She stepped closer to him, curling into him like a kitten seeking heat. “Just hold me for a minute, okay? They say body heat is the best heat.”

      Owen quelled the instant reaction of his body to hers, a talent he’d honed since their early teens, when Tara’s femininity blossomed in time for his hormones to rev up to high gear. She’d put deliberate boundaries between them, first unspoken ones and then, later, when he’d wanted to push those barriers out of the way, spoken ones.

      “I’ve never had a friend like you, Owen,” she’d told him that night after the high school football game when he tried to kiss her in the car after he’d driven her home. “I need you to be Owen. My best friend. We can’t risk changing that. Do you understand? Boyfriends are complicated. Relationships are volatile. I have enough of that in my life.”

      He couldn’t argue with that. Motherless since just before they’d met, Tara had struggled to connect with her rough-edged, emotionally conservative father, who’d had to give up the military life he’d loved to take care of his daughter. Tara had felt as if he resented her for the end of his Marine Corps career, which had added to the existing friction between them right up until his death.

      Owen had swallowed his desire and given Tara what she needed, as much as it had cost him to do so. But the desire had never gone away, married as it was to his enduring love for his best friend.

      And at times like these, with her slender body pressed so intimately to his, what was left of her clothing clinging to her body and leaving little to his imagination, tamping down that desire was a Herculean task.

      “Maybe the rain will stop soon,” she mumbled against his collarbone, her breath hot against his neck.

      “Maybe,” he agreed. “Those children must live nearby, which is promising, because when this was a Boy Scout camp years ago, there were no houses in easy walking distance at all.”

      She burrowed deeper in his embrace. “I wonder how I’m going to explain walking around in the woods wearing a slip, half a wedding dress and my ruined silk pumps.”

      “Very carefully,” he answered, making her chuckle. The sound rippled through him, sparking a shudder of pure male need.

      “I don’t think the rain is supposed to end before morning,” she said with a soft sigh that heated his throat again. “We’re going to need to find somewhere to sleep tonight. And I have to say, I’m not thrilled about sharing a cot where a possum was probably nesting.”

      “The blankets from that chest are pretty clean. We could cover the mattresses with those.”

      “Mattress,” she corrected.

      “Mattress?”

      She looked up at him, her expression serious. “It’s too cold in here for us to sleep apart. Right?”

      He stared at her, his heart rattling in his chest like a snare drum. He swallowed hard and forced the words from his lips. “Right. Body heat is the best heat.”

      He

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