smartest move, even if his kiss did leave her breathless.
“Brace.” He pointed out a darker, faster patch of water and involuntarily she squeezed the steering
wheel. “We’ve got a submerged tree at two o’clock and bushes at eleven o’clock.”
“Got it,” she said and wondered if she did. Visibility lessened with each passing minute, until there was nothing but the driving rain and the shadows.
She hadn’t trusted him, she realized, when she’d pushed him away on the beach earlier. It didn’t make
sense to do so then. He’d walked—run—away from her before. Now, though, Daeg Ross was
dependable...worthy. She didn’t like being out of control, but she didn’t need to spend five years working as an actuary to know precisely how dangerous her current situation was. She’d miscalculated how much
time it would take to make the round trip from the cabin and, once there, she shouldn’t have left. Mistakes came with consequences and she already knew that Daeg Ross was extremely costly to her peace of mind.
HE GAVE HER the 411 as she drove along what had once been the seafront road but was now a
washed-out channel.
“Lucky for us this road’s a couple feet higher and hasn’t been entirely flooded yet.”
She didn’t believe in luck. She opened her mouth to tell him so when unexpectedly the Jeep’s front end
shuddered. The engine whined as she fed it more gas.
He released a string of expletives.
“Driveway,” she bit out and, sure enough, they’d reached their exit.
Somehow, with his suggestions and commands, she got the wheels on the gravel incline. The motor
was working overtime to pull the Jeep out of water and protested.
“Punch it,” he told her. “Hard left.”
The tires spun on the wet gravel as the Jeep started up the slight hill. A tree struck the back bumper, shifting them sideways.
“Again,” he barked. Looking at Daeg, it was clear he itched to be doing, not talking. He’d never be the kind of man who was comfortable riding in the passenger seat. She’d bet it had just about killed him to admit his knee wasn’t up to the job of driving. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity but what had, in fact, been—she checked the dashboard clock—forty minutes, Sweet Moon rose up before them, a
welcome sight.
“Your cabin or mine?” he asked. The Jeep’s headlights illuminated the group of buildings in a slice of rain-filled light.
“Mine.” She gestured toward a cabin set back from the others—the honeymoon suite came with extra
privacy.
Somehow she couldn’t imagine Rick there. She should have seen the warning signs sooner, but she’d
been too comfortable with their relationship. She’d been used to him. She’d known exactly how the days—
and the sex, if she was being honest—would unfold. And there was nothing noisy or wild about either. She frowned.
On the other hand, there was nothing comfortable about Daeg Ross. He was the exact opposite...and to
top it off, the man left a string of broken hearts in his wake.
He just didn’t know it.
7
DANI STARED AT her porch, the cabin barely visible through the driving rain. Daeg was right.
Tonight was no night to split up and stay alone. If the situation got worse, they needed to be close. While she thought that over, she parked his Jeep, tapping the brakes to work out some of the water.
“Stay put. I’ll bring the gear in and come back for you.”
She shrugged. Like the possibilities of that didn’t have warmth creeping up her cheeks.
She killed the engine and considered her next move.
“Wait here.” He reached behind the seat to collect his gear. “It’ll only take me a moment to open the
door, drop the stuff inside and then I’ll be right here.”
Right here. She sucked in a breath to avoid telling him to never leave her. It had to be the exhaustion making her think so irrationally. Sure, he was the sexiest man she’d ever seen, standing there, issuing orders and pressing her to let him keep her safe, but she’d been on her own for years now.
“I’ll come back with the tarp. You won’t get as wet.”
With that sweet knockout punch, he held out his hand for her key. Silently, she passed it to him. Daeg
Ross had certainly swept back into her life every bit as dramatically as the water. He knew his stuff. She didn’t want to take a backseat in her own life any longer.
So...she’d take control.
One step at a time, making the most of each and every opportunity that came her way. Tonight, for
instance, was one chance to turn her fantasies into reality. She eyed Daeg’s ass as he climbed the front steps of her porch.
That’s right, fantasize a little.
Act out lots.
She considered the possibilities while she folded up the blanket he’d lent her. The wind had died down
considerably for the moment, and with just the darkness surrounding her—strangely comforting her—it
had a way of making a girl want certain things.
Daeg wanted to spend the night with her.
So, okay, that wasn’t precisely what he’d said, nor did he have nefarious designs on her body, but it was a start. Of sorts. He must have settled for setting his stuff just inside the door of her cabin because he turned around almost immediately. Standing there on her porch, Daeg Ross was the antithesis of safe— six-plus feet of hard, sun-bronzed trouble. Still, no man had ever made her feel like this, as if she should kiss first and analyze later.
He left the porch and raised a large sheet of heavy plastic up over his head.
Maybe he was exactly the right soldier to help her out. Maybe she didn’t need to ignore the sensual pull between them. She was still running through her options when Daeg appeared at her door and tapped the
window. When she opened the door and got out, he already had the plastic positioned over her.
“Ready?” he asked. “We’re going to make a run for it.”
“Count of three?” she teased and he grinned.
They ran for the door, his arm locked around her shoulders, holding her tight to him.
“Mission complete,” she said lightly when they landed on the porch, and he shot her a look.
“Uh, no,” he bit out. “We’re not home free yet, Dani. But I promise I won’t let anything bad happen to
you. You hear me on that one?”
Did she want to let him take charge? Or did she want to do something different? Here was her chance to
step outside of her comfortable, everyday life. Spending the night marooned with Daeg was about as far
from number crunching in a cubicle as she could get. Ha! She was already halfway there, wasn’t she? She took a deep breath.
Yes.
INSIDE HER CABIN, Daeg reached for the light switch. To Dani’s visible surprise, the overhead
flickered but came on. The power hadn’t gone out. Yet. So he could see all too clearly that Dani’s cabin looked like it had been copied from the pages of a bridal magazine. Not that he read those things, but the fiancée of one of his team members had stuffed her letters with pages she’d clipped out, and they’d passed the sentimental pics back and forth to tease their buddy.
Now his imagination went straight into overdrive. All the scented candles and gauzy white stuff weren’t his thing, but the bed had definite possibilities. He sure liked the idea of holing up there with Dani to wait out this storm. And learning more about why she was camped out in the honeymoon suite with no husband
in sight. Unfortunately, his training kicked in, and he remembered a number of important details he needed to take care of, including the fact that this place was unfamiliar territory and he would have to learn it down to the last detail.
He was definitely a man aroused, however, because his attention skidded back to thinking about Dani
and getting into that bed. That four-poster had possibilities.
He grinned at her. “Hell of a date, even if I do say so. Do I get a kiss for escorting you to your door?”
8
SHE GAPED AT him and tried to think of something to say that would encourage him to get on with
the kissing. Something clever, sexy or even fun. That was something else she wasn’t always good at. Other people had an arsenal of witty comebacks at their fingertips. She had numbers. And Daeg’s hand at the
small of her back. A gentle push propelled her to a sofa.
“If it is a date, then it’s the worst one ever.” Stupid, she should be encouraging the date idea.
He laughed. “Think of the stories we could tell our grandkids. About how their Nonna and Pappi
rescued each other and then hooked up during the storm of the century.”
Sliding the dead bolt back and forth, he tested the lock on the front door. A good safety precaution, she guessed. When, in fact, biding time locked in a cabin with Daeg Ross was something out of one of her
fantasies.
“You don’t tell grandkids that.” She wouldn’t let him see how much his joking comments affected her.
How much she liked the thought of him with grandkids. “And, obviously, this isn’t a date.”
“I’d tell mine,” he said.
She hadn’t ever pictured him with grandkids. That would mean kids, and just the thought of Daeg as a
father caught her off guard. He didn’t seem like the happy-family sort, but he’d do that like he did
everything else. Wholeheartedly. At the moment, though, she was more interested in the act that led to kids.