Forbidden Stranger Read online

  He pulled his personal comm from his pocket and tapped it to pull up a familiar screen. It wasn’t exactly the same as the one she’d seen him using to track her, but close enough. A chilly formality went through her as she stepped back. She hadn’t forgotten that he’d been monitoring her, but she had pushed aside how it had made her feel when she found out. Now, that sense of betrayal came back. At least that would make it easier for her to stop drooling over him.

  Another boom of thunder was followed by a moment of darkness as the lights went out before coming back on at once.

  “Backup generators,” Ewan said, as though Nina had looked worried.

  “I’m not afraid of the dark,” she said.

  Ewan smiled. “It might be kind of fun if the lights go out.”

  “Would make it hard to see the board games if it gets dark,” she replied lightly, uncertain if he meant to be flirtatious and not daring to react in case he wasn’t. Or hell, she thought miserably, even if he was, because she didn’t want to try to sort out the mixed messages.

  “Right.”

  “That roast should be almost done. I’ll go take care of it,” she said, just as the lights went out again.

  The hallway wasn’t pitch black, but the light outside was gray enough that both of them were immediately cast into deep shadows. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds. The lights didn’t come back on immediately.

  Nina could hear Ewan’s breathing, slightly faster than normal. Beneath that, the steady thump of his heart was also rising. She shook her head a little. She couldn’t hear his heart beating. Could not sense a change in his temperature, getting warmer. It was insane to think there was any way she’d be able to feel any of that, yet she did. The tension crackled like the lightning still prickling the skies outside. Another bolt lit them both, and in that instant, Nina saw something on Ewan’s face.

  Fear.

  “What’s wrong?” Instinctively, she moved closer as her own pulse quickened.

  “Probably nothing. But the generator should have kicked in already.” Ewan moved toward the front door to look out at the sky. “Lightning might have struck it.”

  “Or?” Nina asked, because it seemed clear there was something else on his mind.

  Ewan shook his head without looking at her, but another wave of sensations rushed over her. She could smell him, she realized. A bitter tang of fear.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Nina moved closer to him. “You think it’s something else. I can tell. What are you afraid of?”

  “It’s nothing, Nina. I’m going out to the shed to check. You stay here.”

  Nina frowned, feeling dismissed. Still sensing there was more than he was saying. Not liking any of it.

  “Don’t be silly, I’ll go with you. You might need help.”

  Ewan shook his head and grabbed a slicker from the hook near the front door. “No. Stay here.”

  He moved past her, heading for the kitchen and the door into the garden. Nina grabbed a coat for herself and followed. She wasn’t going to let him go out into the cold and wet alone to check on anything.

  “I said stay here!” Ewan whirled so hard the gravel gritted beneath the heel of his shoe.

  A gust of wind whipped up and spattered hard rain into Nina’s face. “What’s the matter with you? What is going on?”

  “Stay!” Ewan pointed at the house and headed off to the shed.

  Seething, Nina took a few long strides to catch up to him. “I’m not a dog, Ewan! Or a child!”

  He twisted on his heel again, this time to grab her by the upper arms. More rain pelted them, harsh and stinging. It got in her eyes, burning like tears, and it had to be the rain, because surely she wasn’t crying about this stupid thing. The way he was acting, treating her as though she were useless. Helpless.

  “I need you to go inside the house and stay there!” he shouted. His fingers pinched, hurting.

  In that moment, an understanding grew within her. Nothing she could have determined if she’d thought hard on it, but something that happened from deep inside, a knowledge that ought to have surprised her but did not. She could take him down. Here and now.

  Assess.

  Protect.

  Eliminate.

  * * *

  He’d gone too far. Ewan saw that at once. He’d been too loud, too mean. He’d gripped her too hard.

  In the last few seconds before Nina inevitably laid him out on his back, he made sure to keep his eyes open. He wanted to see the angle of her fist coming in to sock his jaw. He wanted to see himself going down, toppling under her assault.

  Nina did not hit him.

  She stepped back with a few quick strides. Her eyes were wide and angry, her mouth a thin, grim line. Her fists clenched. But she tempered whatever impulse she might have felt to attack him. Hope, that nasty emotion, sifted through him again. She had control of herself, and that meant she was regaining control over the tech.

  Nina did not toss off a “fuck you” over her shoulder as she headed for the house, but she didn’t have to speak the words aloud for him to see them in every line of her body. She was pissed off, and he didn’t blame her, but damn it, the first thought he’d had when the genny didn’t kick on was that someone had managed to make it to the island and find their way into the shed to disable both the generators and the security systems.

  The last update from his security team had confirmed there was not so much as a whisper of threat against him or Nina. Ewan had successfully removed himself so thoroughly from the public eye that he wasn’t even being gossiped about. Despite this, the fact that Aggie and Jerome had left under what might be considered suspicious circumstances had made Ewan wary. What if someone had lied about their son? Or worse, deliberately run him down so that Nina’s protection would need to leave the island? There was no reason for the generators to fail, and that they’d done so within literal minutes of the airtranspo’s departure seemed too coincidental.

  Even as he watched Nina storm toward the house, the lights inside came back on. She threw a furious and triumphant glare over her shoulder at him, but kept going. Ewan didn’t take the return of the power for granted, though, and went into the shed. He ran a quick report on all the security. Nothing wrong. The generators, which ran on solar, had suffered a temporary overload that had been solved automatically by the system doing something complicated with switchovers and fuses that had all been documented in the report he pulled up on the monitor.

  No attack. Nothing to worry about. Nothing wrong but a system that had surprisingly not yet been tested in this kind of weather, but which had performed as it was meant to. Relieved but feeling sheepish, Ewan let himself out of the shed and back into the rain. What had been a pattern of needlelike raindrops had turned into sheets of water, thick as curtains. The sky had gone twilight-dark, although it was still only the middle of the afternoon. When lightning forked close enough to rise the hairs on the back of his neck, Ewan booked it into the house.

  Nina was in the kitchen, but she steadfastly ignored him when he came through the back door. He stamped the water off his boots and shook it from his hair. His slicker had kept his clothes mostly dry, but from the knees down, he was soaked. He tugged at the water-swollen laces of his boots to kick them off so he didn’t track mud and water all over Aggie’s spotless kitchen. He made a lot of noise doing all of this, but Nina didn’t so much as glance in his direction.

  Shoes off, socks wet, Ewan stood. He watched Nina slicing up the roast she’d pulled from the oven. He loved the way she tucked a slice into her mouth and licked the juice from her fingertips. Nina’s every move was slowly sensual, without any sense of self-consciousness. She had to be aware that he was watching, but she was refusing to show it.

  He loved her.

  Oh, by all the stars in the universe, he loved her so much, and all he could do was stand in the doorway, silent like some kind of creep, because if he so much as uttered a single syllable of her name, she would turn and kn