He wasn’t being sneaky about it, either. He wanted her to know he was after her, that he knew she was with Finn. Or assumed it. Or… maybe he thought she was one of the assassins after Finn. His actions told her that he was letting her know he could take her out whenever he wanted.
He didn’t know her that well. Let him make the first mistake.
At first he was too close, his headlights pressed tightly against her back bumper. And she didn’t like it. Even if he wasn’t pursuing her and was just a man about town, she hated when someone crowded her. Probably that had to do with the time she was on a mission and had been shoved and pushed in an open market, arrested, and thrown into a South American jail on trumped-up charges. Before that, crowds hadn’t bothered her. But since then, they made her leery, afraid of a repeat performance. She meant to keep her body relaxed and her mind cool to deal with the perceived threat like she had been trained, but her skin prickled with heat and every muscle was tightly wired.
And as far as keeping her thoughts collected and unperturbed? He was rattling her, damn it, as much as she hated to admit it.
But then he backed off, as if… as if he was worried he’d scare her. Maybe just in case she was a clueless civilian who might fear that he was stalking her. Maybe he realized she might not be someone who had the military training and the wherewithal to use her programmed senses of escape and evasion. She fished out her cell phone, not intending to speak into it because he’d see her and most likely realize she was calling in support. Instead, she attempted to covertly type a message to Finn, who would disseminate the information to the rest of the team.
Joe, 4 door sliva
Shit. How could she type and watch the road at the same time, while pretending not to be typing a message? She’d never tried to do that before, and her feeble attempts were proving to be too much to handle. Her palms were sweaty as she tried again.
Silver sedan 91
Her car tires hit gravel on the shoulder, spitting the bits of stone into the grass, and she snapped her attention from her rearview mirror back to the road, yanking the car back into her lane. Her heart pounded spastically, and her skin chilled with the fear of having nearly had an accident. Hell.
She wondered what her tail thought about her actions. Probably that she was overly tired and falling asleep at the wheel, or had too much to drink or was trying to text for backup.
She wished she had eyes in the back of her head. Maybe she could pull over and… too bad she couldn’t take a picture of his license plate. His whole car at the same time. But as soon as she held up the phone, he’d see what she was doing. Even if a light didn’t show from the phone, their wolf vision would allow him to see the phone, the movement of her holding it up catching his attention. He’d know she was taking a picture to pass along to others. Although, she wasn’t sure if the camera would take a picture of anything more in the dark than glaring headlights.
Her hand shaking, she sent off the partial message, hoping Finn would get it and make sense of it. She set the phone in the console and then tried to view Joe’s license plate through the rearview mirror while still watching her driving. If she could memorize it…
She squinted. Mud covered the number on the plate. Terrific.
Where to go to next? Get a room at a hotel or a cozy little bread-and-breakfast up the road? Try to lose him? Losing him sounded like fun. But she hated to do that when, as long as he was in her sights, she wouldn’t have to track him down later. Maybe she could get word out to the team about her location and others could join her in learning who he was.
Her phone played the little jingle, “Li’l Red Riding Hood,” compliments of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. She held the phone up only so high, unable to lift it to her ear without alerting the guy on her tail that she’d contacted someone. She called out to the caller, “Shout to me!”
“Anna, are you all right?”
She’d expected it to be Finn. But Paul? Hunter’s other SEAL teammate? He was supposed to be hiding in… well, wherever he was supposed to be hiding. No one knew for sure where.
“Yeah,” she said. “Got a tail.”
“Where?”
“Coastal road, heading north.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“Get a room. Invite him in.”
Paul didn’t say anything for a while, then spoke again. “Need a bedmate?”
She chuckled. “Think I might already have one.”
“I won’t be there for another three hours or so. Can you sit tight?”
“Depends on what his next move will be. I don’t want to lose track of this guy.”
“I’ll join you. Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“You mean like rash?” When the guys did something that she considered rash, they considered it heroic or necessary; they had no other choice. When she did something that she felt was heroic, they called her rash. “I’ll watch myself. See you soon.”
She disconnected and started to look for a place to stay, while Joe stuck to her like a shark after his next meal.
Initially, she’d thought Joe was trying to unsettle her. Normally, she wasn’t the unsettled type. She still needed to get her nerves under control, which she attributed to the near accident, but if he wanted to play predator stalking prey, that was fine with her. Only she fully intended to be the predator.
***
Tension filling every muscle, Finn held his cell phone in hand, waiting for another text from Anna while he lay squished against a bunch of lace-trimmed, silk pillows on the guest mattress that formed a wall between him and Meara.
The phone jingled, indicating he had another text message, and he looked at it.
“Hmm, Finn,” Meara sleepily muttered, her tone annoyed. “If you’re going to have your phone jingling all night, find another bed to sleep in. You shouldn’t be in here with me anyway. Or you should have left me on the couch in the first place.”
Finn ignored her, his back to her. As soon as he’d woken her while checking his emails, she’d stuck the bunch of decorator pillows between them, clearly stating: your side, my side. And in case he hadn’t gotten the point, she’d also told him.
The damn pillows took up so much room on the queen-sized mattress that he was getting ready to toss them.
He read the message from Paul, not liking Paul’s explanation of Anna’s situation, which he described in more detail than Anna’s cryptic text message had. But Finn wasn’t about to jeopardize Meara’s safety by leaving her alone so that he could help Anna. She usually knew what she was doing. Meara wasn’t trained to protect herself the way Anna was. Plus, this Joe didn’t know where he and Meara were, and if Finn went to help Anna, this guy would know Anna was with him. And that would make it easier for Imposter Joe to locate Meara again.
Finn had texted Paul with the news about Anna and had asked how close Paul was, in case he could give her a hand. Paul had responded quickly that he was coming to the rescue, but he was three hours out. Hell.
Paul texted: I worry about her doing something stupid.
Finn responded: I know. We just have to trust her. I’ll keep in touch.
Finn set his phone aside, his body protesting that he was attempting to sleep on the edge of the mattress and close to falling off at any moment. To hell with that. Meara was just going to have to put up with not having a barrier between them. He grabbed two armfuls of silky decorator pillows and tossed them over the edge of the bed. Two more handfuls to go, and no more barriers.
He smiled at Meara as she gave him a grumpy look over her shoulder. The way her dark hair fell over her bare shoulders, the tiny strap of the silky tank top dangling precariously down her arm, and with her tantalizing lips parted in surprise, she looked like an open invitation to sex.
That’s when he knew he should concede and leave the bed, the room, and the sweet temptation behind.
But he had a job to do, and he was staying put.
She turned away from him, jerked the covers over her shoulder, and didn’t say another word. He watched her and knew she wasn’t sleeping, despite the way she was so still. He assumed she was wondering what all the text messaging was about. Questioning what the problem was.
He sighed and folded his arms behind his head, staring at the sparkly ceiling and wanting to get back to sleep, but he couldn’t. Not until he knew Anna was safe and Paul had arrived to watch her back.
“Well?” Meara said, cranky as could be, her back still to him.
Knowing she couldn’t leave well enough alone without asking what was up, he chuckled. But he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of telling her straight out. In fact, he was fairly sure it would be best for all concerned if he didn’t say what was going on.
“Well, what?” he asked, as if that was a perfectly acceptable response to her query. And to him it was. Anna was his business, not Meara’s.
He didn’t see her reaction coming. Not in a million years. And he’d thought he was damned good at judging character. Meara moved so quickly that it didn’t even register that the pillow her head had been resting on was now slamming into his face until it socked him.
In lightning-quick response, he jerked the pillow to the floor and tackled her. Before she could react, he pinned her on her back against the mattress, straddling her waist, his hands restraining her wrists on either side of her head. Her stomach was bare, as the soft pajama shorts she wore were slung low and the matching aqua tank top had ridden high during the flip. Her hair draped over her throat, and her breasts in the skimpy tank top rose and fell as her heartbeat quickened. Both straps were negligently resting halfway down her arms, pulling down the top edge of the top to expose more of her creamy breasts than he should be able to see.
Looking away from all that tantalizing skin, he focused on her flushed face, with eyes narrowed and lips provocatively parted as she breathed fast and hard. He should have talked to her—told her she didn’t need to know the details of what was going on with the team, or told her something of what was going on to appease or reassure her.