To Love & Protect Her (10 page)

A few minutes later she saw him on the mountain behind the house. She watched as he climbed steadily upward, then she deliberately turned away and picked up a book from the bookcase. She sat down, determined to read. But she stared at the same page for a long time.

 

Griff hiked steadily upward, refusing to slow down, refusing to stop even when his breathing became ragged and sweat poured down his back. He stripped off his shirt, tied it around his waist and kept on walking.

Finally he was high enough to look down and see the cabin, a miniature house set among toy trees, and he allowed himself to stop. He was far enough away now, out of reach of the temptation that was Willa.

He was far enough away that he could think this through without her distracting presence.

What the hell was the matter with him? He sank down onto a sun-warmed stone, but couldn't take his eyes off the cabin below. He'd made the mistake of falling asleep with her last night, and ever since he'd woken up tangled together with her this morning, all he could think about was laying Willa down on the closest horizontal surface and picking up where they'd left off.

He knew Willa was out of his reach. He knew it would be a huge mistake to get involved with her. It would end with nothing but heartbreak for Willa, and it would distract him from the job he needed to do. He couldn't be the kind of man she needed, the kind of man she deserved.

But that didn't seem to matter anymore. All his caution seemed to have flown out the window. It had taken just one look this morning at her beautiful, vulnerable face, nestled close to him with complete trust, and he'd been lost.

And worst of all, now she knew that he wanted her. Before today, he could pretend that she didn't matter. He could pretend that he didn't want her, that the wanting was all on Willa's side. But now he didn't even have that shield. He knew damn well that she'd seen the desire in his eyes, felt it in his touch.

So how were they supposed to get through the days—and nights—until Ryan found her would-be kidnappers? How was he supposed to not touch her?

He kicked a rock and listened with brooding satisfaction as it tumbled down the hill. He'd have to stay away from her.

But how could he do that if he was supposed to be protecting her?

He'd have to invent a lot of outside chores. And keep
her
in the house.

And that was going to be tougher than he'd originally thought. Willa had a mind of her own. She didn't hesitate to tell him when she thought he was wrong. And she wasn't the kind of woman who would stay obediently in the house when he told her to do so.

The need he felt for her terrified him. He'd faced down death in a dark, stinking alley with less fear. But somehow, in the last few days, Willa had man
aged to sneak into his soul, to touch him in a place no other woman had ever gone.

And he was afraid there was no turning back. Willa would always linger inside him, a memory that would creep up on him in the middle of the night, when he least expected it.

If he were smart, it would go no farther than this. If he were smart, Willa would never know how she'd managed to touch him. They would spend whatever time they had left at the cabin avoiding each other, and when Willa went back to College Station, he'd run as far and as fast as he could. He'd run all the way back to Australia, if he had to.

Yet he was terribly afraid that he wasn't smart at all. He was afraid that the next time Willa touched him, or the next time he touched her, he wouldn't be able to let go. He was afraid that he'd take a step that he'd regret forever.

And so would Willa.

They had no future. There was no forever for him and Willa.

He forced himself to stand and start walking back down the mountain. He couldn't stay up here for days or weeks until it was safe to go back to College Station. He'd have to face Willa sometime. It might as well be now.

Everyone said he had more willpower than any man they'd ever met. It was time to test that willpower.

 

Darkness was settling over the mountain when Griffin dried the last of the dinner dishes and slid
them back into the cabinet. Willa had curled up on the couch and had picked up her book again. She'd been reading it all afternoon, but he didn't think she'd turned many pages. They had avoided each other since he'd walked back into the cabin, but the atmosphere was still unsettled and restless.

“Do you want me to start a fire?” he asked.

She looked up from her book, her eyes wary. He didn't blame her. He'd hardly spoken two words to her all afternoon. “If you'd like to.”

“Might as well,” he muttered. “We have plenty of wood.”

“If we use it up, you can always chop more,” she said sweetly. “We make a good team when it comes to chopping wood.”

He stormed out the door, and returned a minute later with his arms full of logs. “Did anyone ever tell you that you have a smart mouth?”

“As a matter of fact, no. I guess you bring out the best in me.”

He tossed three more logs on the fire, then squatted in front of the fireplace for a while, pushing at them with the poker. Finally he stood and paced to the window. It was almost completely dark. The trees pressed in on the house, and he could barely see the mountain behind them.

“I'm going to take a look around the house,” he said abruptly.

She looked up, apprehension in her eyes. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” He grabbed his coat and headed for the door. “I want to make sure it stays that way.”

Nothing had disturbed the area around the cabin. It didn't take him long to realize that. But he kept moving through the trees, memorizing landmarks, telling himself that it was smart to know the area. Their lives might depend on it.

But he couldn't put off going back into the cabin forever. Finally he slipped back inside, hoping that Willa had gone to bed. But she was still sitting in front of the fireplace, staring at the pages of her book.

“Have you actually read any of that book today?” he asked.

She looked up at him, startled. “Of course I have.”

“I would have thought a college professor would read a lot faster than that.”

A slow flush crept up her neck and onto her face. “I've been distracted today.” She sat up straighter and looked him in the eye. “Kind of like you, I guess.”

“I haven't been distracted.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew he'd made a mistake. He tried to cover himself. “It's my job to make sure the house is safe.”

“Spare me, Griff.” She didn't take her eyes off him. “You were making sure the cabin was safe from the top of the mountain?”

He threw himself into the chair across the room from the couch. He didn't intend to get any closer to Willa than this. “All right, I was restless. I'll admit it. I'm not used to sitting and doing nothing.”

Her face softened as she watched him. “I'm not, either.” She actually smiled. “We're quite a pair, aren't we?”

“A couple of work addicts,” he said sourly. He was happy she'd made the assumption that he missed working. It took her attention away from the real issue. “I should have let you bring some work with you. Then you wouldn't be so bored.”

“I never said I was bored,” she said gently. “And I'm glad I didn't bring any work. That part of my life seems so far away.”

“Tell me about being a college professor,” he said, settling back in the chair and watching her face. “Is it what you've always wanted to do?” If they could talk about a different subject, maybe he could wrestle his mind away from the way she looked, her face flushed by the firelight and her glasses slipping down her nose. Maybe she could distract him from what he really wanted to do.

“My job?” She stared into the fire, a faraway look on her face. “You don't want to hear about that. It's a pretty boring subject.”

“If you feel that way, why do you do it?” He watched her with genuine curiosity.

She didn't say anything for a long time, then she sighed. “For my father, I guess. He was desperate to see me settled in one place, with a stable job. It was his reaction to the life we had led.”

“How do you mean?”

She roused herself and smiled at him. “My mother left us shortly after I was born. So it was just my
father and me while I was growing up. He was in the army, and they sent him all over the world. I was a typical army brat. I never went to one school more than two years in a row. Just as soon as I got used to one place, we had to move again.”

“You must have hated that.”

She shook her head, her mouth still curved into a faint smile as she stared into the fire again. “Strangely enough, I didn't. Part of it was because I never knew any other kind of life, of course, but part of me loved the excitement or adventure of it—the fresh beginning every couple of years. I was far more adventurous than my father ever realized.

“He always felt guilty for dragging me around the world with him. Then he got sick right after I graduated from college. Soon after I got my master's degree and started my PhD program, he passed away. By that time, I had already invested a lot of time and effort in getting my degree. Toward the end of his illness, he became obsessed with the idea of my becoming a college professor. It was his idea of the perfect life—teach and stay in one place for the rest of your life. It was the most stable job he could imagine.”

“And stability is important to you.” Griff held his breath, waiting for her answer.

“I
t was important to my father,” she said. “I haven't figured out yet how important it is to me. But I did accept a tenure-track position at the university.” She stared into the fire. “My father was so proud of me when I entered the master's program in political science. He would be ready to burst with pride if he were still alive.”

“It sounds as if your life is a dream come true.” Griff turned away and poked at the fire again, hiding his reaction from Willa. Disillusionment was a bitter taste on his tongue. What had he expected? he asked himself savagely. It was a long, hard road to become a college professor. And Willa had not only her own career aspirations, but also the hopes of her father riding on her slender shoulders.

She might not have intended her message to be quite so blunt, but nothing could have demonstrated their unsuitability for each other more clearly. She was a woman with a career, one she'd worked long and hard to attain. He was a man whose job took him around the world, often for months at a time. He lived with constant danger and spent his time with the dregs of society—people who Willa wouldn't even know
existed. Willa would be horrified if she knew about his colleagues, knew what kind of people they were.

He needed to hear this, he told himself as he gave one of the logs a vicious shove. He needed this reminder of just how different he and Willa were.

Then he realized she hadn't responded to his statement. He swiveled around to face her. She stared into the fire, her face troubled.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

She gave him a faint smile. “You said my life is a dream come true, and I guess it is. I'm just not sure whose dream it is.”

“I thought you loved your job.”

“I suppose I do. I love teaching. I love being there that moment when a student suddenly ‘gets it.' I love knowing that I'm helping someone learn.” She shoved her hair away from her face and gave a shaky laugh. “I'm just being silly. We don't have enough to do here in this cabin. It's given me way too much time to think. That's always dangerous,” she said lightly.

He wanted to stand and go to her, to sit next to her and wrap his arms around her. He wanted to have the right to comfort her, the right to listen to her dreams and share his with her.

But he was a man without any dreams, he reminded himself harshly. He had seen too much ugliness in his life to have any dreams left. He was a man who lived in a world of shadows and darkness, a world he couldn't ask any woman to embrace. And especially not a woman like Willa.

So he stared at the flames leaping in the fireplace and tightened his grip on the poker. “Your father was right to be proud of you,” he said, but he didn't turn around to look at her. “You're a remarkable woman, Willa.”

“Now you sound like one of my students when they're angling for a higher grade.” Her voice was teasing, and he slowly turned to look at her. “I guess you have too much time on your hands, too.”

He had far too much time on his hands, especially since he'd been able to think about only one thing lately—Willa. But he'd just been given another lesson in why Willa was exactly the wrong woman for him. So he stood and strolled to the window. It was the farthest place in the room from Willa.

“I'm sorry you're in this position,” he said, and genuine regret filled his voice. He wished he weren't here with Willa. He wished he'd never gotten to know her like this. When she had been a college professor who appeared only occasionally at the Fortune ranch, he could fantasize about her, but he didn't have this gut-deep, aching need for her. If he'd never gotten to know Willa, he wouldn't have to deal with the gaping hole her absence would make in his life.

“Hey, don't worry about it,” she said. “I'm thankful that you came along when you did. I don't want to think about what might have happened if you hadn't come to College Station that night.”

He didn't want to think about it, either. “I'll call Ryan tomorrow or the next day. Maybe he's found something out that will help us figure out who those
people were.” He knew, though, that if Ryan had learned anything, he would have called.

“It's all right,” she said gently. “Ryan will call when he has something to tell us. In the meantime, we'll survive in this cabin.”

Speak for yourself.
He turned away to look out the window. He wasn't sure how much more of this torture he could take.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said from the couch.

He turned around to look at her. “What do you want to know?”

She shrugged. “Tell me what's important to Griffin Fortune.”

He hesitated for a moment, then he crossed over to sit on the chair across from her. He'd tell her what was important to him. In fact, that was a wonderful idea—in case she still had any ideas about having some kind of relationship with him, he'd tell her exactly who he was. If that didn't make her run far and fast, he didn't know what would.

“I'm not really a Fortune,” he began.

She cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“Teddy and Fiona Fortune adopted me when I was about seven years old. Actually, I'm not sure they ever even went through the legal formalities. They took me in and raised me.”

“I know that. But what do you mean that you're not really a Fortune?”

He scowled and looked away. “I mean, I'm not related to the Fortunes by blood.”

Willa smiled at him. “Don't you know that blood
ties are the least important? What matters are the people who raise you and the values they give you. What matters is the man or the woman who tucks you into bed at night and listens to you when you need to talk. What matters are the people who were there for you when you were growing up. And the Fortunes were those people. You're just as much a Fortune as your sister Matilda and your brothers Brody and Reed.”

“You don't know what I come from. Hell, neither do I.”

“Where or what you come from doesn't matter nearly as much as where you end up. And I'd say you ended up in a pretty good place.”

“Has anyone ever told you how Teddy found me?” He had to make her see.

“No, all I heard was that you were adopted.”

“Willa, I don't even know my real name. I have no memory of my life before Teddy found me. And that's literally what happened. He found me sleeping under a bush on a remote part of his ranch. I was filthy dirty and wearing nothing but rags. I didn't even have any shoes, and it was early spring.” He paused, waiting for the memories to come, but they never did. It was as if the entire first seven years of his life had been erased, leaving nothing behind. His first memory was waking beneath that bush and seeing Teddy Fortune crouching next to him.

“You're lucky that Teddy found you,” she said softly.

“I'm damn lucky. I had been beaten, badly. I had
a broken collarbone, a broken arm, and I was covered with bruises. Teddy took me back to his wife Fiona.”

“And she took you in.”

“It didn't matter that she already had four sons. Christopher was only a baby at the time, but she took care of me like I was one of her own children. Teddy tried to find out who I was and where I belonged, but there was no trace of me. He always says it was like I just appeared out of the blue, a gift to the Fortunes.”

“I think I'd like your parents,” she said softly.

“They're wonderful,” he said gruffly. “I didn't speak when I first went to them. No one knew why, and not even the doctors could give them an answer. But it didn't matter to Teddy and Fiona. They made me feel like I belonged with them.”

“And you did.” Willa's face glowed, and he looked away.

“I was a troublemaker,” he said harshly. “Reed and Brody were afraid of me. Max didn't trust me. The baby didn't know enough to be scared, but he should have been. I'm sure I gave my parents plenty of sleepless nights.”

“What changed things with your family?” she asked.

He looked away. “I started school in the fall. They didn't know what grade to put me in, because I couldn't talk, but they put me in a class based on my size. No one bothered me. I think all the other kids were afraid of me, too. I didn't know my real name, so my parents named me Griffin because I was so wild. Then one day an older boy tried to pick on
Brody. This boy was a bully, but he'd left me alone. I guess he thought Brody would be an easier target because he was younger.”

She leaned forward. “What happened?”

“I heard the commotion and went over to see what was going on. Brody was trying to defend himself, but the other boy was at least three years older than Brody, and a lot bigger. Some of his friends were holding Reed to keep him from helping Brody.”

His eyes darkened. He still remembered the anger that had boiled over when he saw the younger Brody being pushed around. “I beat the boy bloody. It took three other boys to pull me off him. I stood there glaring at all of them, then asked if anyone else wanted to pick on a Fortune. I was shocked when the sounds of the words came out of my mouth. For a moment, no one moved. Then Reed came over and stood next to me, then Brody.”

He shrugged, trying to lighten the atmosphere. He hadn't meant to tell her so graphically what had happened. “Ever since, the three of us have been close.”

“I heard you were inseparable.”

He shrugged again, uncomfortable with the admiration in her face. “We stuck together. We lived a long way from town. Even in this country, I suspect farm and ranch kids are close to their brothers and sisters. There's no one else around when you live that far away from everything else.”

“How can you say you're not a real Fortune?” she demanded. “You're as much a Fortune as any of your siblings.”

“You missed the point, Willa. I don't know where I came from. I don't know my roots, and I never will.”

“Roots aren't important. It's the tree that everyone sees, and it's the tree that is productive.”

“But the roots hold it in place and nourish it. And I don't have any.”

“You have as many roots as your brothers and your sister. Yours just got started a little later in your life.” Her voice was firm. “Your roots are probably stronger than theirs, in fact. You had to work to develop them. It took a tremendous amount of determination and inner strength to rebound from the kind of beginning you must have had in your life. If you hadn't been a strong person to begin with, that kind of beginning would have destroyed you.”

“Willa, I didn't tell you my life story so you would admire me,” he said, frustrated.

“Then why did you tell me?”

“So you could see how different I am from you. So you could see the kind of background I came from.”

“Are you trying to scare me away?” she demanded.

“Yes,” he growled. “I'm not the kind of man you deserve. I'm not like you, Willa.”

“I think you're more like me than you want to believe,” she said gently. “I think your family means everything to you, and you would do anything for them. I've seen how you've watched over them, particularly Matilda, and I've seen the love on your face
when you think no one's looking. I think you work hard at your job, and that it's important to you. You're an honorable man, Griff, and there's nothing in your life story that could make me think otherwise.”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” he said, shaking his head.

She merely smiled at him. “Remember how I told you that I learned early to watch and figure out the people around me? I still do. And long before you rescued me at my apartment, I was watching you. I had you figured out before the first time you said hello to me.”

This conversation was getting away from him. He didn't want to hear about how Willa had been watching him for a long time. He didn't want to hear about what she thought of him. And he particularly didn't want to hear that she'd wanted him for a long time. That was coming next. He could see it in her eyes.

“Isn't it about time for bed?” he asked abruptly.

For a moment she held his gaze steadily. Her eyes told him that she understood what he was doing, understood the desperation that fueled it. Then she nodded slowly. “I guess so.” She glanced at the fire. “Do we have to put the fire out first?”

“I'll leave it going, just in case the generator breaks down again.”
Or we end up on the floor in front of the fire.

He put that thought firmly out of his head.

“I'll check the doors and windows,” he said, jumping out of his seat. He was too edgy to sit still
and watch her. He wanted, too badly, to touch her again. So he'd send her to the bedroom, and he'd hide in the loft. He wouldn't sleep for a long, long time, but at least he wouldn't have the temptation of her within arm's reach.

“Thanks,” she said, standing. When she stretched, he closed his eyes. Her shirt tightened over her breasts and her jeans outlined her legs and hips. If he looked at her, he would be lost.

“I'll see you in the morning,” she said, then closed the bedroom door softly behind her.

He was alone in the room. Thank God. He couldn't have taken much more. For a moment, he seriously considered taking her back to College Station, as she'd wanted to do. At least they wouldn't be trapped in this tiny cabin, with no place to go to escape the tension that simmered between them.

Then he rejected the idea. No matter what the cost to himself, he would protect Willa. He'd promised Ryan, and he'd promised Willa. This cabin was far safer than College Station. So here they would stay.

After checking all the windows and the door one final time, he banked the fire, closed the fireplace screen and turned off the lights. He could hear the generator humming softly outside the cabin. A part of him, a part that appalled him, longed for it to break down again, so that he would have an excuse to get close to Willa.