Eye of the Beholder. Ingrid Weaver

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СКАЧАТЬ and rescue women for a living? Had he obtained these scars while he was being a hero for someone else?

      Whatever had caused it must have happened years ago—the skin had the firm smoothness of an old injury, like the tiny line on her own index finger that was a souvenir of a childhood mishap with a crystal water glass. She felt a surge of sympathy for him. What courage he must have, to continue to brave danger despite the pain he must have endured.

      Compared to him, she had been a cringing coward, afraid to fully live, to take a chance on life.

      Yes, well, she intended to change all of that.

      She moved her fingers along the ridges and grooves that crossed the rise of his cheekbone until she reached the corner of his eye. The scar didn’t extend this far, or it would have showed at the edge of his mask. The only lines on his skin here were laugh lines, too fine to feel, but she remembered them perfectly.

      He had beautiful eyes, so blue and piercing. Would the fine lines at the corners crinkle when he smiled? Was his laugh as deep and rich as his voice? Would she get the chance to hear it?

      Before today, the sensible, levelheaded Glenna Hastings wouldn’t have wasted one moment considering those questions. What possible relevance could the sound of his laughter or the color of his eyes have to her life?

      But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? She was alive, and she hadn’t forgotten what she had vowed when she had believed she was going to die. Every extra minute she lived was a gift. Every detail about her rescuer was relevant. The sound of his breathing, the scent of his skin, even the warmth of his blood against her palm…at this moment those things were more important than any of the thousands of trivial details that usually filled her days.

      Her knees nudged against his hip. She winced at the stinging from her scraped skin and the ache in her ankle, but her injuries were nothing compared to her rescuer’s. She moved her hand to his hair. In the shadows it was leached of color, but on the ride here she’d seen it gleam golden in the sunshine. It was cropped short in a no-nonsense style that had appeared stiff, but as she slid her fingers into it, she discovered that his hair was as fine as a baby’s. It tickled her fingertips in a caress of silk, and for the first time since she had left the airport in Montego Bay, she felt her lips relax in a smile.

      It was a little thing, to be sure, but taking pleasure in the texture of a strange man’s hair was something Glenna simply didn’t do. She might do lunch with a man. Or dinner and the theater, when her schedule allowed. Nice, sensible functions with no commitment, no expectations and no messy demands. She had found the situation completely satisfactory.

      But it all seemed so impossibly faraway now, another world, a previous existence.

      There was a furtive scrabbling along the far wall. Glenna’s smile faded as quickly as it had formed. Her situation was worse now than it had been hours earlier on the plane. She should be thinking about ways to escape instead of mooning over her fellow hostage.

      Is that what she was doing? Mooning over a man, like some teenager with a crush?

      Hardly. There was nothing juvenile about what she felt for this stranger. With one hand in the sensual softness of his hair, the other slick with the heat of his blood, Glenna had never felt more intimately connected to another human being in her life.

      For however long that lasted.

      Rafe came awake with brutal swiftness. His leg was on fire, and someone was slamming a sledgehammer into his head. His eyes had barely snapped open when he sensed a figure leaning over him.

      Why was everything so dim? Had the blows to his head messed up his vision? Either that, or night had fallen. How long had he been out? Where was he? The questions buzzed through his brain as his hands shot out to grasp his assailant’s wrists. With a twist of his torso, Rafe reversed their positions.

      There was a startled gasp. “Ow! What are you doing?”

      The voice was female. It didn’t take Rafe more than a second to realize that the body he’d pinned to the floor was female, too. More than that, she felt familiar. She smelled familiar, a blend of sunshine and citrus that had his nostrils flaring for more.

      Rafe blinked, trying to focus on the face beneath his. It was impossible to see anything more than a blur, yet he knew who this was. He might not be able to see her, but his other senses had no trouble recognizing her. It was the woman from the plane—the tall, classy redhead.

      He knew the chances of rescuing her had been slim when he’d seen her fall to the tarmac. He should have remained with Flynn and the team to cover Sarah’s retreat with the other hostages. This woman who lay beneath him was a stranger, he reminded himself again. No less and no more important than the others…but the decision to go after her hadn’t been made by his brain, it had been pure gut-level instinct.

      He breathed shallowly a few times, striving to control his pain the way he’d been trained to do. The pounding in his head retreated. The burning in his thigh settled into a deep throb. Bullet wound, he realized. He’d been hit five yards from the fence. He replayed the final moments, searching for an explanation for their present circumstances, but he must have been unconscious while they were transported here.

      Wherever “here” was.

      “Where are we?” he asked, careful to pitch his voice low enough not to carry. No point alerting anyone else that he was awake.

      “I don’t know.”

      He put his mouth close to her ear. “Keep your voice down. Is it a house? A factory? A warehouse? How big is it?”

      “It’s a house,” she whispered. “It was hard to tell how large because it was already dark when they brought us here. They dumped us in this room and left.”

      She had said it was already dark. That meant his vision was probably undamaged. One piece of good news. “They? How many?”

      “I’m not sure.”

      “Try to remember.”

      She paused. He could feel her body tremble. She was struggling for the control she’d exhibited before. Her terror was there, just under the surface, but she was fighting it down. “There might have been six or seven men on each truck,” she replied finally. “There are more in this place.”

      “We’re still on Rocama then?”

      “Rocama?”

      “The island where your plane landed.”

      “Yes. We must be.”

      “Son of a bitch.”

      “What is it?”

      He hadn’t liked the setup of this mission from the start. This proved his misgivings had been justified. “The locals were in on it.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “At the airport. Had to be. How else could the hijackers have gotten reinforcements through the police cordon and pulled off a raid of this scale?”

      “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

      “We weren’t allowed backup. That has to be why.” He squinted in the direction of his left СКАЧАТЬ