Page 4 of Close Pursuit

He rolled his eyes but played along. “Fine. Do you have any siblings?”

She smiled in approval. “If I were like you, I would merely answer yes. But since I have excellent manners, I’ll answer, I have five older brothers. I’m the only girl.”

“That sounds…terrible.”

She shrugged. “They could be overprotective. I spent most of my childhood trying to prove I could take care of myself.”

Alex nodded. “Same.”

“It’s not like that, anymore. I have my own life and make my own decisions. In fact, my brothers were strongly against my coming here.”

“They were right.” And with that, he half-ran, half-slid down the steep slope, coming to a stop below their shelter, turning back to study it with the intensity of an art critic.

She had no desire to pick up a head of steam, lose her footing, and tumble the hundred feet or so down to where their Land Rover was hidden in a pile of dead brush and picked her way down the slope cautiously. But as she neared Alex, she stepped on a loose patch of gravel and pitched forward, arms flailing.

Alex lunged in front of her so fast she hardly saw him move. His arms shot out and hooked her under both armpits, dragging her upright against his body and using himself as a barrier to keep her from falling on down the mountain.

Her pulse leaped as she slammed into him. She registered his thighs against hers, her belly against his. Even her breasts were mashed against his chest. Lord, he was hard everywhere. He wasn’t a particularly bulked up guy, but he didn’t even budge when she crashed into him. He wasstrong.

She looked up at him, and he was staring down at her, his eyes blazing so intensely with awareness of her that her gaze slid away.

“Thanks. Sorry about that,” she mumbled.

“This isn’t a place for civilians. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Aren’t you a civilian?” she asked, startled at how breathless she sounded.

“Technically. But I’ve spent time in places like this, and I’ve been here before.”

“You’re not some sort of chauvinist, are you?”

“Not at all. But women aren’t even second-class citizens here. A good milk cow is more valuable than a woman in some of the places we’ll go.”

“Great. I always did want to compete with a cow for a man’s attention.”

A wry smile briefly flashed across his features. He set her back on her feet and moved away, resuming his scrutiny of the crude tent. But she noticed the tops of his ears were red, and not from sunburn.

“So. You are capable of smiling,” she said lightly. “I was beginning to wonder.”

He threw her a wary glance. He did that a lot—look at her like he thought she was about to leap on him and tear his shirt off.

Not that it hadn’t crossed her mind. But they had to live and work together in very close quarters for the next several months, and things could get very awkward between them if he rebuffed her or if they hooked up and it went badly?—

Interrupting her wholly inappropriate speculation, Alex commented, “I’m told I can be somewhat reserved when I meet new people.”

“You think?” she replied sarcastically.

“Sorry. I was always much younger than anyone I went to school with. I was isolated or ignored a lot. Got used to keeping to myself.”

The D.U. in-briefer told her Alex was a math prodigy, had graduated from medical school “young” and finished a residency in surgery before the wheels had come off his life. Of course, the D.U. guy had declined to explain whatthatmeant. Apparently, Alex had recently finished a residency in obstetrics, which made him the ideal candidate for medical missions to remote places where he was as likely to deliver a baby as perform emergency surgery.

She’d spent two years working in labor and delivery while she got her master’s degree in surgical nursing. As it turned out, moms in labor were a lot harder to manage than a nice, unconscious surgical patient. She supposed her unusual nursing skill set was why her anonymous benefactor had recruited her to come out here to the end of nowhere.

“How old were you when you started college?” she asked curiously. For him to complete an undergrad degree, medical school, and two residencies before the age of thirty, he must’ve started college really young.

Alex answered reluctantly, “Fourteen.”

Dang. At fourteen, she’d been trying to convince her parents to let her wear make-up and get her brothers to quit calling her Baby Butt. That was also the year Algebra 1 nearly did her in and her best friend stole the boy she had a crush on. She couldn’t imagine navigating college at that age. No wonder Alex had felt isolated and ignored.

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