Prey: A Novel Read online

  He could have been killed. If he’d hit his head, or his spine … Angie had to turn her head before he could read the sudden horror in her expression. She felt sick at the possibility, even though it was in the past, much as she felt sick whenever she saw the scar on his throat and realized how easily that piece of shrapnel could have killed him if it had hit his carotid artery. He’d been so close to death so many times, a matter of inches, a split second of time—

  She loved him. Or at least could love him. She pressed a hand to her stomach, fighting to control the same nauseating sensation she got on a Ferris wheel, which she didn’t enjoy at all. Her own history had taught her that having feelings for someone didn’t automatically turn everything into wine and roses. There was some sexual attraction going on, Dare had made that plain, but odds were sexual attraction was all that was going on.

  “You okay? You look a little green,” he commented as he stuffed his feet into his boots.

  “Headache,” she automatically replied, which was true enough because she hadn’t had coffee, or any other caffeine source, in two days. “I need that coffee.” She hoped he wouldn’t mention that she’d been pressing her hand to her stomach, not her head, because she didn’t want to get drawn into a personal conversation. Her instinct was to pull back, to protect herself. Maybe someone more self-confident in relationships would react differently, but she wasn’t that person, never had been. She was confident in her career, in commonsense stuff, but as far as she could see emotions had nothing to do with common sense.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m putting the water on to heat right now,” he drawled, though he was obviously still lacing his boots.

  “I can see that.” She decided to make herself useful, so she lit the heater, and checked the water level in the percolator. There were a couple of inches left. “How many cups will you drink?”

  “Two or three.”

  “Same here. Pass me three bottles of water, and it can be heating while we go downstairs.”

  He did better than that; he not only pulled three bottles of water from the case of water sitting on the floor, he rooted around and pulled out a bag of ground coffee. There was even a scoop inside the half-empty bag. She opened the bag and took a deep breath; just breathing in the aroma of the coffee was a pleasure. She was a by-the-numbers kind of coffeemaker, so she began doing math in her head, mumbling to herself as she did so. “Three bottles at sixteen-point-nine ounces … fifty point seven … add six … divide by five … eleven something … divide by two—”

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked incredulously, staring at her with a kind of horrified, I-don’t-believe-it expression.

  “Figuring out how many scoops of coffee to use.” Wasn’t it obvious? She frowned at him. She’d specifically mentioned the bottles, so what else would she have been doing?

  “Multiplying and dividing?”

  “Well, how do you do it?” She crossed her arms, both feeling and sounding defensive.

  “I put in the water, and I dump in how much coffee I think I’ll need.”

  “How does it taste?”

  He blew out a breath. “Sometimes it tastes pretty good,” he said cautiously.

  “I get better results than ‘sometimes’ with my method.”

  “But you need a fu—a damn calculator to figure it out!”

  “Oh, really?” Ostentatiously, she looked around. “I don’t believe I see one, and I was doing just fine.” She couldn’t believe it. He’d just caught himself before he said fucking, and substituted damn. When was the last time he’d bothered to moderate his language? Huh. She was beginning to have a little fun.

  “So what’s this magic formula?” he demanded after a few seconds, when she simply sat there looking at him, her head cocked a little as if she were waiting.

  “Figure out how many ounces of water you have and divide by five—”

  “Why?”

  “Because, for reasons unknown to mankind, coffeemakers figure a cup of coffee is five ounces, rather than eight.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No, it’s true. Haven’t you ever measured water into a coffeemaker and noticed it doesn’t match?”

  “I don’t pay attention to shit like that. But this isn’t a coffeemaker. It’s a percolator.”

  “But the scoops seem to be based on how much coffee you need for five ounces, so it doesn’t matter. Then the type of grind makes a difference—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. You’re making this way too complicated.”

  “I make good coffee.” She was beginning to feel a little indignant on behalf of her coffeemaking skills.

  “So you say. I haven’t seen any proof yet. Finish with this mathematical thing.” He was glaring at her as if she’d told him there was no Santa Claus.

  “If the grind is coarse, then you need to use a little bit more; if it’s fine, a little less. This looks like a medium grind, but the scoop looks big, so I’m estimating two cups for each scoop of coffee. Therefore, after I divide the ounces of water by five, I divide that answer by two, and that gives me how many scoops of coffee I need.”

  Still looking like a thundercloud, he pointed at the percolator. “All right, get the coffee going. This had better be good.”

  “Or what?” she taunted. “You’ll strip me of my coffee privileges, and risk death by dismemberment?”

  “Just make the damn coffee!”

  “Do you like it strong, weak, or medium?”

  His jaw clenched. “Go for medium.”

  “All right.” As she measured the coffee into the basket in the percolator, she couldn’t help prodding the beast just a little. “Do your clients like your coffee?”

  His jaw got even tighter. “One of them usually takes over making it, after the first day,” he finally admitted.

  “My clients like my coffee,” she said smugly. She added another half-scoop, because she figured he’d like it a little stronger than she did, and a half-scoop seemed like a nice compromise. Turning on the camp stove, she set the percolator on the fire. By the time they finished their trips to the outside, the coffee should be ready.

  With that in mind, she gingerly flexed her foot; the ache wasn’t too bad. “I think I can put some weight on my foot today, if you’ll help me up.”

  “And I think you’re rushing things,” he said, but he got to his feet and held both his hands out to her. She gripped them, and he effortlessly pulled her upright, releasing her hands to put both arms around her and support her weight.

  That wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind … and he still didn’t have a shirt on. She tried to ignore being cradled against that naked chest, and the strong arms that were wrapped around her, concentrating instead on gaining her balance as she stood on her left foot. Cautiously she put her right foot on the ground, held her breath, and transferred a little of her weight to her injured ankle. It hurt. It ached. But it wasn’t the shooting agony it had been when she’d first hurt it, and it didn’t buckle under the stress.

  “Let me see if I can take a step.”

  His deep voice rumbled against her temple. “I’ve got you. Go ahead.”

  And he did have her. She couldn’t have put all her weight on her feet even if she’d wanted to. She eased more pressure onto her foot and took one short, hobbling step. “Ouch. Wow.” She took a deep breath of relief. “It’s definitely better than it was, so I guess that means it’s a sprain and not a break.”

  “That’s enough. If you try to do too much, you’ll make it worse. C’mon, let’s go down and get this over with.”

  “Getting it over with” meant, of course, that she once again made the trip down the ladder while draped over his shoulder, as that was the fastest method. But it also meant that he had to put on his shirt, so all in all she considered that a good trade-off. She didn’t know how much longer she could have borne looking at all that muscle.

  Instead she was looking at something else.

  “Staring at your butt is getting ol