When Lightning Strikes

He sat very still. That tension was back inside him, tightening his muscles. His jaw clenched, his hands fisted. He felt the anger rising through his blood like a quick-moving tide. "People always have a choice."

She struggled to sit up. Without thinking, he reached out to help her. The simple touch was electric; he felt a jolt of awareness sizzle through his blood. He yanked his hand back.

She must have felt it, too. She made a small, gasping

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sound and tilted her face up, staring at him through wide, unblinking eyes.

She angled back from him a little, as if the intimacy of their nearness was frightening. "Next time, I'll take a horse."

"Next time?" He sprang up from the bed and spun away from her, pacing the small cabin. Back and forth. Anger choked him, made it difficult to breathe. It took all his self-control not to pick her up and shake her until her teeth rattled.

"Yeah, Killian, next time," she said evenly. "I have a child to get back to."

He surged forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, lifting her off the bed. "You idiot! Don't you know that you could have died out there? If I hadn't come along . . ." His throat thickened suddenly, made it impossible to force the words out.

He let go of her and stumbled back. She crumpled onto the bed, but didn't look away. Those dark eyes lifted to his, asked for a million heart-wrenching choices.

He jerked around and strode to the stove, grabbing a coffeepot. The pots clanged and clanked as he fumbled through the dry goods with shaking hands.

She'll do it again. And maybe next time, he wouldn't be there to save her. Maybe next time, she'd make it farther and he'd never find her again. The thought scared the shit out of him.

Lainie watched him trying to make coffee. He was burrowing through the pots and pans like a madman.

He was angry . . . and scared.

She frowned, sitting up straighten "Killian? Come here."

He froze. He sat there crouched in front of the supplies, his long, silver hair a tangled curtain that swung

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below his collar. Then, slowly, he got to his feet and turned around.

She slipped out of bed and walked toward him. They came together near the warmth of the stove. He looked down at her and she could see the anger in his eyes, and the fear, too.

"What are you so afraid of, Killian?"

He took forever to answer, then almost too softly to hear, he said, "You."

Warmth moved through her at the simple word. She shivered slightly and almost smiled. He glanced away for a moment. She could see the barely banked anger in his face, in the tightness of his jaw and the taut skin around his eyes. Finally, almost reluctantly, he looked back down at her.

Their gazes met, held. For a dizzying second, Lainie couldn't breathe. They were alike, somehow. Both lonely and lost, both afraid of connecting with other people.

And suddenly she understood. He'd let Emily down. John MacArthur Killian, the legendary Texas Ranger, had let down his own wife. He hadn't been there when she needed him and?somehow?she'd died. He blamed himself.

Lainie knew how that felt. She'd spent years?a lifetime?blaming herself for her parents' irresponsibility. She'd taken it all onto her slim shoulders; they'd left because she was selfish and unlovable. Somehow, it was her fault that they didn't love her.

Killian had done the same thing. He'd taken Emily's weakness as his failing. That's why he was here, an outlaw living among social outcasts.

Lainie had asked the one thing of him he couldn't give. Or didn't believe he could give. Help. Because to

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give it, to help her, he'd have to believe he was a good man.

She wanted to reach out to him then, to trail her fingertips along his beard-stubbled cheek. But she didn't. A lifetime's worth of fear held her immobile, wanting what she knew she couldn't have. "I'm not like Emily," she said quietly.