TWICE A HERO By Susan Krinard

Because he’d been wrong. He couldn’t take Mac and feel nothing, take nothing, pay nothing.

He heaved himself off of her, the muscles in his arms shaking with knotted tension. In his hunger and need to forget, he could put a child in her body, become responsible for her. Responsible for a woman who could have no place in his future or in his life. A woman whose recklessness and bold nature—the very nature that inexplicably drew him—would make it impossible for him to protect her.

And as those thoughts crystallized in his mind, the chill of them worked through his body and doused his lust to ashes.

Mac’s gaze, blank with bewilderment and desire, followed him as he rolled away on the cot. He grabbed the edges of her shirt and closed them across her chest, covering her thighs with the long shirttail. With an awkward motion he tucked himself back into his trousers and buttoned them again. Only then did he reach over the side of the cot and grab the whiskey bottle Mac had dropped. There was still one sip left.

The silence was profound. Mac didn’t move for many long minutes.

“Well?” he said harshly. “The lesson’s over, Mac.”

“What?”

He rolled to his feet and sauntered to the desk, slamming down the bottle with deliberate force. “Please forgive me if I let it go a little too far.”

“The lesson, or the joke?” She paused, clutching her shirt to her chest. “It was a joke to you, wasn’t it?”

Strange. Her voice was subdued and flat, not angry or hurt. Not Mac’s usual spirit at all. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and watched her, severing any emotion except indifference. The empty bottle taunted him.

“Call it what you like.”

Her fingers were steady as she knelt on the edge of the cot and buttoned her shirt. As if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t been about to take her with her full cooperation.

She was pale and composed, revealing no emotion. Just like that her passion was snuffed out. Instead of relief he felt an emptiness in his belly that was more than unsatisfied hunger, a flare of consternation that she’d pushed him away so easily.

More easily than he’d pushed her away.

“It was pleasant enough,” he said, turning back to her, “but I got a little… carried away.” That was all he would concede, all he could admit.

Mac had drawn her knees up under the tails of the shirt so that all of her but her feet was covered. “You never had anything to learn, did you?” she said.

Poker-faced. Not the Mac he knew. A stab of guilt thrust at him. “Ah, well, darlin’,” he said. “No hard feelings.”

A flicker of something in her eyes. Anger? Humiliation? But she rose from the cot and quietly retrieved the trousers he’d thrown on the ground.

“Turn around,” she said.

He did, trying to remember the retort he’d been about to make. Damn.

“Well,” he said, shrugging into his shirt, “you did say you thought you had a way back to… where you came from. I’ll have Fernando prepare a meal, and then we’ll go to the tunnel, or wherever you choose.”

She stood where she was, her back still turned. “Wherever I choose?” she repeated. “How generous.”

Flat. Cold. He ran his hand through his damp hair, wincing at the returning pain in his shoulder, and walked to the tent flap. “I pay my debts.”

“Oh, yeah.” The shirt pulled against her shoulders as she hugged herself. “That’s what really counts.”

He didn’t pause at the entrance to exchange another barbed sally. Just outside the tent he waited, his mind gone blank, for any sounds of rage or weeping. None came. He tried to remember the last time he’d felt so much the blackguard. And for what, damn it? He was doing the girl a favor. She was still as pure—or not—as she’d been before.

If she was working for Perry—and Liam no longer knew what to believe—she was no worse off. And neither was he.

Liam slammed his fist into his palm. The pain of realization was still sharp, but now it was overlaid by deep and bitter rage. If Perry had tried to have him killed, the betrayal was beyond comprehension. Nothing would stop Liam from returning to San Francisco now.

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