Hadn’t she learned her lesson about men? Or maybe the pain meds hadn’t quite left her system and her brain wasn’t functioning properly. Tonight, of all nights, with Mary Beth so recently dead, her own body not yet recovered from her recent attack and her daughter, his daughter missing, the last thing—the very last thing—Shannon should be thinking about was sex. Or sexy men. Or what it would feel like to have one of those big, calloused hands scale her ribs and touch her breasts.
She shivered. Was this what being faced with one’s own mortality brought on? Sharpened awareness? Heightened desire for intimacy? She couldn’t feel this way about Travis Settler…especially not Travis Settler.
Angry at herself, Shannon readjusted the band holding her ponytail away from her face and snapped the elastic into place. She needed some space from him, had to break the intimacy that the small environs of the cab seemed to create. Hopefully the open window and the rush of air would help to destroy any familiarity between them—imagined or otherwise.
Do not trust this man, Shannon. Do not. You know nothing about him other than that he’s Dani’s adoptive father and he knows everything about you.
As the rig picked up speed and the air whistled by, pulling some unruly hairs from the restraint of the hair band, she winced as she moved her shoulder, biting back the urge to swear. When the pain had passed, she slowly let out her breath. Surreptitiously she cast another glance at this stranger who had inserted himself into her life, this man who was her daughter’s father.
His maleness swamped her senses. She felt weak and vulnerable. She inwardly groaned. It wasn’t right.
His gaze was focused through the windshield as he drove, but he was as aware of her as she was of him. Twice he flicked a glance at his mirrors before changing lanes on the nearly deserted streets, but she guessed that he was observing her from the corner of his eye, that anything she did, any small gesture or movement wouldn’t go unnoticed.
“Okay, so I know some things about you, about your family, but not everything,” he said into the silence that had enveloped them. Shannon turned to him, glad to be yanked from her thoughts. “For instance, I don’t know why whoever has my daughter wants to bring you into it. I don’t know why one of your brothers became a priest or why his twin disappeared. I have no idea why whoever has Dani has started setting fires and worse yet, I don’t know who the murdering bastard is or what he’s done to my kid!” All of a sudden his calm cracked. “Something’s going on down here, something that doesn’t make sense and something that scares the hell out of me. I’m sick with worry, feel impotent as hell, and yeah, I’d like to know everything about anyone remotely connected to you and your family since the son of a bitch who kidnapped Dani is interested. You’re my only link to her and by God I damned well want to know every little thing about you because it might help.”
“But you don’t think I had anything to do with the kidnapping,” she clarified as he braked for a stoplight.
“Not anymore.” Illumination from the traffic signal cast a red, unworldly glow into the truck’s interior.
“Good.” She didn’t know if she believed him or not, figured it didn’t matter. She forced herself to look away from him and through the windshield to the night, still thick with smoke.
At the turn to Robert’s house, Travis continued straight, on a beeline out of town. “Hey, wait! You missed the turn,” she said, her eyes swinging from the deserted street leading to her brother’s house to Travis’s profile.
“You’re in no condition to drive.”
“What? Are you out of your mind? I can’t just leave my truck. W
here the hell do you think you’re going?”
“To your place. You can call one of your brothers to pick up the truck or get it in the morning.”
“It’ll be towed by morning.”
“The way I hear it you have connections in the police department.”
“No way! Turn around. Take me to my damned truck and don’t go all macho on me, okay? I can’t do this. You don’t have to act like John Wayne in some bad flick from the fifties, telling the little woman what to do. I can drive my own truck home.”
“Too late.”
Shannon’s mouth dropped open. “You’re unbelievable!”
“You look like hell and I’ve seen you wince and try to pretend that you’re not in pain, but it’s not working, okay? It’s been a long, hard night and I think you need a ride home.”
“I don’t care what you think I need, Settler. This is my life! Mine!” Angrily, she poked a thumb at her chest. “And it’s my truck and my decision and…Oh…” A pain shot through her ribs, cutting off any further argument. Almost as if to drive home his point. She sucked in a sharp breath, squeezed her eyes shut and silently cursed her weakness. “Fine, all right,” she muttered when she could breathe again. Glancing up at him she looked for any signs of a smirk, but found none, just a serious gaze that cut from her to the road. “Take me home. Do your worst.”
His lips faintly twitched.
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Chapter 17
What the hell had come over him?
Who was he to tell her what to do, to refuse to take her to her damned truck, to boss her around?
Travis, slowing for the turn into her lane, couldn’t believe what he’d done. There was just something about her that forced him to take charge. He’d known she was in agony, not only mental anguish but also pain from her injuries. Still, he had no right to take over her life.