God, she wanted to shock the bastard. Spit in his face and verbally cut off his balls by demanding he take her back to Brandon’s car so she could zoom back to Houston, far away from his challenging words and his wicked touch.
But once again, damn it, he was right. Putting herself back in the path of a killer because Jack pushed a few of her sexual buttons was flat stupid. She had no place safe to go, and despite Brandon’s suggestion, she was not calling Senator Ross. He wouldn’t lift a finger to help her.
“I’ll go with you,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Good girl. We’ve got a few hours to travel and it’s getting late. Try getting some sleep.”
Morgan wasn’t sure she could. Being that vulnerable around a man like Jack, especially while she still had a stalker on her tail. “I’m fine.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion. We’re not being followed. No one is on this road for miles.” He gestured to the open road and fields around them, completely devoid of headlights. “You’re safe and you’re going to need your strength later, cher, in case we haven’t lost your stalker for good.”
She sighed, then shot him a reluctant glance. Again, he was right.
Morgan crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her body toward the passenger window. But soon the rhythmic motion of the car lulled her. She closed her eyes and drifted off.
Two hours later, Jack stopped the truck at the water’s edge, in front of the boat waiting where he’d left it. After he scrambled aboard with a groggy Morgan, they cruised down the river for a while, Jack poling his way down the swamp with Morgan drifting in and out of sleep and shivering in the February air. He did his best to shelter her from the wind with his body. She unconsciously snuggled into him when he wrapped one arm around her.
That gave him a hard-on so stiff it hurt.
They reached their destination shortly before ten. Jack lifted a slumbering Morgan into his arms, settled her in his grasp, and headed for the dark cottage.
He’d expected to have to talk fast in Lafayette, to hustle and sweet-talk her to a hotel room to get his revenge. Having her here, in his domain, was better—and worse. Her stalker had helped him maneuver Morgan right where he wanted her and never dreamed he’d have her. He would have Morgan to himself, on his turf, where he could devote hours to her seduction and his revenge. Sweet, yes.
But Jack couldn’t pretend her sick stalker didn’t concern him. At least here, with him, he could protect her from the psycho who’d clearly decided that if he couldn’t have Morgan, no one else would. He would keep her safe; he owed her that much. Particularly since it was clear Morgan could no longer fend for herself and was exhausted beyond her endurance.
But on a basic physical level, she trusted him. That trust shimmered through his body, both hardening his c**k and softening his gut. Why fight it? He liked her, even if he hated her fiancé’s guts. She was by turns feisty and vulnerable, sharp and gullible. And for some reason so damned familiar, as if he’d seen her somewhere before…
Shifting Morgan in his grasp, Jack shoved the key in the lock, then thrust open the door. Inside the little Craftsman cottage, clean lines and pine floors reminded him of his boyhood, of fishing with his grand-pere Brice. This place never failed to inspire great memories, even if the old family legends his grandfather told here made him laugh.
“Ah, so you made it.”
Jack started—until he recognized the voice. “Holy shit, old man. You trying to scare me to death so you can have your fishing hole back?”
Brice waved him away. “You wish. I wouldn’t have this place back for nothin’. Rat trap.”
Jack knew better, but Brice was too old to live out here, so far away from a hospital.
“The place is stocked with food. The security cameras, they’s all on and the generator is running. Use it sparingly.”
“Thanks. I knew I could count on you.”
“This the girl you called about, the one runnin’ for her life?” Brice gestured to Morgan, whom Jack still held.
“Yeah.”
With narrowed eyes, Brice peered closer and stared at Morgan. “You sure he’s not just out to bed her? She’s one jolie fille, but she dresses like a whore, that one.”
“It’s a disguise, Grand-pere.”
Brice frowned his gray head, disapproval still shadowing his strong features. Smiling to himself, Jack stepped around his grandfather and headed for the cottage’s lone bedroom. He set Morgan down on the bed, then bent to remove her black boots. If his grandfather weren’t watching, he’d pull off the rest of her clothes for the mere pleasure of looking at her…but Brice would both disapprove and get an eyeful that could damage his heart at eighty-two.
“You still been havin’ them dreams?” his grandfather asked suddenly.
Jack rolled his eyes, ruing the day he’d said anything. “They don’t mean anything.”
“Boy, you been raised in the bayou, even if the army and big city spoiled you some. A curse is a curse. If you’re dreaming about a redheaded woman over and over, you’re about to meet her and she’s your heart’s mate.”
Here we go again with this bullshit, Jack thought with a sigh. If Brice wanted to use the legend to justify his marrying an underage girl sixty years ago, goody for him. As it was, Jack refused to believe that some faceless woman he’d seen in his dreams with red hair glinting across bare shoulders in dawn’s light was destined to be his one and only love. There was no such thing. The redhead was just a fantasy f**k his mind had conjured up.