Wyoming Cowboy Marine. Nicole Helm
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Название: Wyoming Cowboy Marine
Автор: Nicole Helm
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Ужасы и Мистика
Серия: Mills & Boon Heroes
isbn: 9781474093811
isbn:
She still had her gun, though, so him turning her dog into a pathetic little affection fiend was only taking away one of her weapons. Not all of them.
She aimed the gun at him again as she held out the bandage. “Here. Now be on your way.”
He eyed the gun as he slowly got to his feet. Free whined. This close Hilly was uncomfortably reminded of just how large he was. Tall and broad and someone who could definitely outmuscle her if he wanted to.
But she had a gun. A gun. She tightened her grip on it.
“Are you going to shoot me if I reach for that?” He motioned to the bandage.
“Not if you reach for that and that alone.”
His mouth curved, some foreign thing in his eyes. Something like laughter, but sharper. Her cheeks heated. But he carefully reached for the bandage and plucked it from her outstretched fingers.
He shrugged off his coat. Then, in a mesmerizing move, he tore the sleeve from where it was ripped from the bullet. Two tugs and the sleeve was completely off, just a few threads hanging down over his biceps.
His arm was...an arm. Why was it fascinating? Dark hair dusted his forearm, but his biceps looked smooth, except the slight slash of the cut and the smudge of blood around it.
“I could help you, you know,” he said conversationally as he wound the bandage around his cut.
She wrenched her gaze from his arm and the easy way he dressed it as if he tended wounds every day. “I—I’d have to trust you,” she said, hating herself for the stutter. “I don’t.”
He nodded thoughtfully, then those hazel eyes pinned her where she stood. “What would you need? To earn your trust, what would I have to do?”
Nothing. Nothing at all. Which was just stupidity and she would not be stupid. That was what Dad would expect her to be. Too innocent and weak-willed to find him, to survive.
Well. She’d just have to find him and prove to him she could make choices, too. Even if it meant trusting an outsider.
She looked confused for a few seconds, then something like determination chased over her face. Too bad Cam didn’t know what she was determined to decide.
He finished wrapping the cut and picked his coat back up, pulling it on again. He ignored the shudder of cold that worked through him. “You’re worried about your father.”
“I am,” she said, chin lifting. “He goes away sometimes, but never this long.”
“And you don’t know where he goes?”
She paused. Not the kind of pause that preceded a lie either. That lost look in her eyes from the sheriff’s department stole through her once more, though she quickly hardened against it.
She was definitely young, but not that young. Early twenties, if he had to guess. She was strong enough to fire off a warning shot, kind enough to get him a bandage and smart enough not to give him her name.
No number of strange situations he’d found himself in as a Marine prepared him for this puzzle.
“I didn’t actually mean to shoot you,” she said, eyeing him. He noted it wasn’t an apology.
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“If you’d meant to shoot me, I’d have a lot bigger hole in my arm. Clipping this close without doing much damage? That’s pretty much luck of the try-to-get-close-enough-to-scare shooting variety.”
She studied the bandage he’d tied off, then him. “And you know a lot about shooting?”
“Enough.”
“You want me to trust you for no reason, and then you’re evasive?” she said with such utter contempt he had to believe she’d been hurt before. There was a reason she and her father were tucked away here, and judging from the weapon she’d used on him and the one she’d carried with her, cash flow wasn’t the problem, or the only one.
Unless the guns were obtained illegally, which was always possible. Too many questions. Not enough answers. Mostly, she was right not to trust him and find his evasion lacking.
If he wanted to help her—and he couldn’t explain to her or, even worse, to himself, why he wanted to help her—he’d need to offer up some truths. Besides, offering truths to her was better than finding the answer to that question inside himself.
“My name is Cameron Delaney, though I go by Cam,” he began, trying to think what would be important for a scared young woman to know. “I grew up in Bent, Wyoming. If you’ve ever been there you’ve probably heard of the Delaneys. My sister was the deputy you spoke with. I was in the Marines for almost fifteen years, but I decided to come home last year and open a security firm. Hence the knowledge of guns and shooting them. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”
“Why?”
“Well, there aren’t a lot of security options in—”
“No, why did you leave the Marines?”
He had practiced responses to that question. Responses he’d given his family and friends. The rote answers weren’t coming right this second. He had to search for them.
“It was time.”
“Why?”
“It’s grueling, and I wasn’t...” Fit. He’d known he wasn’t fit for duty anymore. Not with Aaron’s suicide hanging over him. Not with that utter failure to notice, to help. He hadn’t been able to get past that.
“You weren’t what?” the woman demanded.
He owed her nothing. He could turn around and go home. He had all the choices in the world. But if he could help her... If he could help people, surely at some point it would make up for what he hadn’t helped.
“A man in my unit committed suicide.” His voice sounded rough and strained, and he wasn’t sure what he expected the woman’s response to be, but she only blinked. “I had a hard time coping after that.”
“They kick you out?”
“No, I was granted an honorable discharge.” Honor. What a laugh.
“If I let you help me, what’s in it for you?”
“Having helped,” he replied with all the sincerity he had.
“You don’t know me. What would helping matter?”
He shouldn’t be baffled or irritated by her pressing the issue, demanding some kind of proof he was a decent human being. She shouldn’t believe he was. She shouldn’t trust him. “Haven’t you ever helped СКАЧАТЬ