Page 45 of Heart of Danger
Grateful for the distraction, Mac pulled his hand away and stood up. Goddamn it, his fucking knees felt weak. What had she done to him?
“What is it?” Catherine sat up, the bedsheets falling to her waist.
Mac was acutely aware of absolutely everything. The sound of the sheets sliding down, the brush of her hair against the pillows she stacked behind her, the soft sigh of regret when he pulled his hand away.
And, crazily, he felt…bereft. As if he’d been snatched from somewhere warm and welcoming and plunged into an icy cold reality. His hand felt cold. Everything felt cold and alien, including himself.
“Stella,” he said, holding himself utterly still, because the temptation was to crawl into bed with her, looking so mussed and delectable in his bed. Her smile had faded at his reaction, though. She hugged herself and shivered though it wasn’t cold in the room.
It was never cold and never hot in Haven. It was always a steady 73 degrees.
“What does she want?”
“To feed us, is my guess.” Mac turned and walked to the door. And damned if it wasn’t hard. What was this shit? It was like walking through mud, each step away from her harder than the step before until he was straining to get at the door. It took his hand two seconds to reach the command on the wall and when he went to touch it, he saw his fingers were trembling.
Fucking trembling.
His hands never shook. He’d killed at a mile out. He’d defused bombs. He’d stuck his hand in a scorpion’s nest. It never shook.Never.
But it was shaking now.
The door slid open and a cart was standing right outside. He pushed it into the room and back to the bed, fast, as if a rubber band had been overstretched and was now flinging him back where he belonged.
Catherine watched him, silver gray eyes huge, full lips slightly pinched, the way you do when you want to stop yourself from saying something.
She scooted over to the cart filled with food, leaned over and took a sniff. She unpursed her lips and offered, “Wow. This looks better than Fortnum and Mason, in London.”
London had been a fleeting impression of old and new buildings, on his way to Hereford for cross-training with SAS.
“Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
Yeah. She would be.
Haven wasn’t a place where people went hungry. There was enough of that in the world outside. Mac had been so rattled by this woman that he hadn’t looked after her at all. If she wasn’t a spy, if she wasn’t dangerous to them then she was…well, she was one of them. One of his tribe, the tribe he was supposed to protect. It was too late for him even to take that decision to fold her into the tribe because the tribe had taken the decision for him.
So, yeah, he needed to feed her.
“Okay, let’s see. We have hot sandwiches…” His pulled the crusty top off one. “Looks like pulled pork. You aren’t a vegetarian, are you?”
“God, no.” She shook her head sharply.
He handed her a sandwich wrapped in cloth, his fingers brushing hers and goddamned if his hand didn’t heat up.Must be the sandwich, he thought but he really didn’t believe it.
“We’ve got several types of sandwiches, tuna on wholewheat, roast beef on white roll?—”
“Baguette,” she interrupted.
“What?”
“It’s a baguette. French bread.”
“Oh.” He held the bread up. Looked like a roll to him. “All right. Olives, mushrooms, cheese, roast potatoes with rosemary and pesto. And, let’s see—we also have a couple wraps. Stella’s big on wraps. She wants us all to cut down on carbs. These sandwiches are an exception, just for you. We have some kind of salad with goat cheese on top, eggplant parmesan.“ He opened another container hoping to see something with some grease and carbs and was disappointed. “Orange and fennel salad. And here, hmmm, apple, carrot and pine nut salad. Jesus, Stell…you’re overdoing it. But we also have an omelette—Stell’s great with omelettes even though this one might have dicey stuff like arugula or radicchio—she’s big on radicchio.” He lifted another container lid. “Green stuff.” He put it down.
“Let me see.” Catherine lifted the lid and sniffed. “Braised broccoli with balsamic vinegar.”
Mac had no interest in that. He continued rummaging. “Desert’s got to be here somewhere. Oh, yes, thank you, God. Cookies. And ice cream.” He looked up to find her watching him with a slight smile on her face. “So, what do you want?”
