Read Online Her Last Defense by Vickie Taylor - Free Book Online Page B

Ranger. Life never threw you any curves?”
    “Until recently.”
    How could she have forgotten? She’d sat here wallowing in her own misery as if his life—or death—didn’t hang on a simple blood test to be performed in the morning. Without thinking she reached out and took his hand. His fingers were warm. There was heat inside him, after all. She wondered if there was passion, as well, beneath the stoic exterior, then chastised herself for the direction of her thoughts.
    Wrong man. Wrong place. Wrong time.
    He eased his hand from hers, but when he walked away, his back seemed more rigid, his gait stiffer. She wished she could reassure him everything would be all right, but she couldn’t be sure it would. Besides, he obviously didn’t want her comfort.
    Deciding not to poke the wounded bear, she sighed,dug through her footlocker for the playing cards she always carried on field missions, and laid out the first of many hands of solitaire.
     
    Clint twitched at the sound of every voice outside the tent. Jumped at every footstep that sounded as if it might be coming his way.
    The sun had come up an hour ago. Dr. Attois’s assistant, Susan, a large-boned woman with a wide mouth, had taken blood samples from both him and the doctor shortly thereafter. The tests should be done any minute.
    “Pacing isn’t going to bring Susan back any quicker.”
    She was still sitting on her cot playing solitaire. Said it relaxed her.
    He hadn’t said so, but he found her choice of distraction sad. She shouldn’t need to play card games alone to relax. Wouldn’t need to, if she was his woman.
    But she was not his woman. Never would be. Not in this lifetime.
    However long or short that might prove to be.
    Dragging his hand through the roots of his hair, he started back across the tent that seemed to be shrinking by the minute, then whirled when he heard the zipper on the outside tent flap open. A tall, blond guy in a full environmental suit stood outside the clear interior tent flap, which was still secured.
    That couldn’t be good, could it?
    Dr. Attois unfolded herself from her cot and hurried over. “Curtis?”
    “Just wanted to let you know that Christian and Ihave finished screening all the workers. None of them are showing any symptoms, and their blood is still clean. They’re good to go.”
    “Excellent.”
    “Still no sign of José, but the military dropped a hundred traps baited with fruit into the woods last night within a three-mile radius of where you saw him. He’s got to get hungry. We’ll get him.”
    “Good,” Dr. Attois said. Was Clint imagining it, or did her voice sound strained?
    “Yeah,” the man she’d called Curtis said, and turned to leave. “It is.”
    Two steps away, he stopped and looked back at them. “Oh, I almost forgot. Susan asked me to tell you she finished your blood work.” He peered at them solemnly through his face shield, then cracked a wide grin. “No virus. You’re in the clear.”
    Dr. Attois’s breath shot out of her chest. She charged the door, grabbing for her gas mask. “Curtis Leahy, I’m going to kill you when I get out there!”
    But she was smiling as she threatened him. He just laughed and strode away with a wave.
    She dropped her mask back onto the table and turned, nearly running into Clint. He put his arms out instinctively to balance her. She wrapped hers around his back and squeezed.
    “We’re clear. Did you hear? We’re clear! I knew everything would be all right.”
    At the moment, Clint was anything but all right. The news that he and the doctor both had dodged the ARFIS bullet had his heart in high gear. That, and the press ofher plump breasts against his chest, the friction of her thighs scraping against his as she hopped up and down on her toes in joy, had his blood roaring, his hands wandering from her shoulders to her back, then lower, and his mind conjuring up crazy possibilities about the two of them. Right here. Right now.
    What better way to