jaw drop.
Was Kacey pregnant?
She was! Very, very pregnant and she was holding her swollen belly as her face twisted into a mask of pain. His eyes widened. He’d seen that same expression on his mother’s face when she went into labor with his little sister, Abbie. He’d only been six, but the fear made the memory stick.
Was Kacey in labor?
That was impossible. You’d have to be crazy to come up here to deliver a baby. He craned his neck to see her as she momentarily disappeared from view behind the trees. She was heading for the trail they had used to climb up to his family’s cabin. She knew the way.
Kacey had been a part of his family, had spent more time living in his house than in hers. Not that he blamed her. But she’d go home when her sister Jackie or Winnie would come and tell her that their mom was gone again. Running drugs for the Wolf Posse, Ty said, taking her cut in either money or product.
Colt moved parallel to Kacey as she walked along the road toward the trail, catching flashes of Kacey between the tree trunks. She looked thin, despite her swollen belly, and pale as if she had not been in the sun in months. Her gait was a scurry that combined the side-to-side rocking motion of a woman far along in her pregnancy with a girl in a hurry. She held both hands under her belly. Why did she keep looking behind her?
Kacey stopped, hunched and turned toward the road. What could she see that made her eyes round and her mouth swing open like a gate? Kacey ran now. She ran to the woods and rock outcropping with a speed he would not have believed possible.
“They’re here! Colt, do you hear me? They’re going to take me again.”
Again?
Oh no, they are not.
Colt didn’t know who they were or why they were after Kacey. What he did know was that they wouldn’t succeed in reaching her. He had the high ground, a rifle with extra rounds and the will to kill anyone who threatened Kacey. He might be a mental mess, but he remembered what it felt like to be in love with her. But now that memory only made his chest ache and his breathing hitch. Whatever part of him that understood how to love a woman had died back there in Afghanistan. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t protect her. He would, with his life.
Colt moved to a position that gave him a good vantage of her car and waited as the second vehicle approached. Colt lifted the rifle, pressing the familiar stock to his cheek and closing his left eye. The crosshairs fixed on the gray sedan.
He felt centered, calm, relaxed.
The first shot sent a bullet at the driver’s side of the windshield. The glass should have shattered into tiny cubes but instead remained intact. The second shot went to the passenger’s side. If there was a passenger behind the windshield, he should now have a bullet in his head, but instead the glass showed only a tiny nick. Colt was using .38 long-range ammunition. That windshield should be compromised. But it wasn’t and he knew why. The glass was reinforced.
“Bulletproof,” he muttered.
He had not seen that since Afghanistan. This was a very expensive vehicle. From within the luxury auto, someone shifted the sedan’s gears and the car reversed direction with a spray of gravel.
Colt marched down the hill. When he reached the road, the car was turning around. He got two shots into the side of the vehicle with nothing but damage to the paint. He missed the shot at the rear tire. The next shot pinged off the rear window of the retreating sedan. Who the heck was after her?
Whoever it was, they had money—lots of money.
He put a hole in the license for no reason except as a final farewell and a good riddance. If they came back, he’d use a hand grenade on their asses.
Colt turned to the woods, where Kacey now stood beside the outcropping of rock she had used for cover. She bent forward at the hips, clutching her belly with one hand and the boulder with the other, eyes pinched shut. Colt had a sickening feeling that while he had been up here brooding over Kacey’s departure and collecting the bits and pieces of his mind, Kacey had been in real trouble. He was equally afraid she was going to have that baby right here and right now.
“They’re gone,” Colt said, his voice slightly deeper than she remembered. He was at her side in an instant, rifle slung over his shoulder. His long black hair hung straight and loose past his shoulders. She met his stare, seeing the familiar espresso color of his irises, just slightly lighter than his pupils. His skin was bronze from the sun and his brows were thicker than she recalled, balancing the rich brown of his eyes and the symmetrical nose that seemed small by contrast to his wide mouth and full lips. The cleft in his chin looked deeper and his face leaner. He’d lost weight but gained muscle, she realized, making his body look harder and more dangerous.
She was safe. For the first time in months and months, she was safe and she was home. The joy bubbled up inside. She threw her arms around his neck, kissing him full on the lips. The warm familiar scent of pine and warm male skin enveloped her. He stiffened as their bodies met, his hands coming up to her shoulders, and for a moment she thought he would push her away. For another heartbeat, he hesitated and then he gathered her up and held her as his mouth took hers, deepening the kiss. She was home in his arms and everything would be—
He gripped her shoulders, increasing the tension as he pushed her to arm’s length. He stared at her, panting and feral, like a mad dog. Then he pressed his hand over his mouth and wiped away her kiss. The pain in her stomach morphed from sorrow at his rejection to another contraction. She grimaced and groped behind her for the solid security of the rock, seating herself as the contraction gripped her.
He was not the boy she recalled, the one who kissed her and told her that he’d come back for her. That boy had been joyful and optimistic. But the man before her was taller, leaner and harder than Colt Redhorse. There was a wildness around the whites of his eyes that reminded her of a mustang the instant he feels the rope cinch around his neck. Colt’s nostrils flared and he stepped back, his gaze sweeping down to her bare feet and then back up to her face.
She imagined what he must think, and the shame sent a guilty flush into her face, making it burn with heat. Kacey placed a hand on her distended belly and the other on the hollow below her cheekbone. Somehow in just over a year, everything had changed between them and they were strangers.
Beneath the skin, her muscles were contracting, sending pressure all the way around to her back. This one was worse. She hunched and groaned, squeezing her eyes shut.
“You shouldn’t do that. I’m not... I can’t.”
She heard the blast of air as he forcefully exhaled.
“They’ll come back for the baby.”
Colt glanced down the road in the direction of their retreat.
“Should I bring you to the clinic?” he asked.
Her reply was a shout. “No!”
Colt flinched. “All right. Where, then? Your mom’s?”
“They’ll look for me there. My sisters and brothers, I don’t want anything to happen to them.” Finally the pressure in her back eased and she could straighten. That was when she noted that Colt had one arm around her. The other she gripped, squeezing with a force that matched the contraction. She released his arm and saw the white print of her hand disappear as the blood returned to his forearm.
How long would this go on? It had been over an hour already.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“Ty said you agreed to come home after your discharge if you could come here.” She didn’t mention the reason for his discharge. Had Ty told her that his kid brother had been a POW, rescued and returned stateside?
“So you came here looking for me?” Colt asked.
She