Hide and Seek - Lara Adrian Page 0,9

couple hours away from the base in his Marine dress blues, announcing he was there to pick her up after learning that her date had gotten sick the day before and cancelled. Handsome, heart-stopping John, with his regulation-trimmed dark hair, his face tanned from time on deployment in the desert, his strong, squared jaw clean-shaven, even near the tail end of his two-week liberty back home in the States.

She’d been furious with Kyle for drafting his friend to rescue her from going stag to the wedding, but any humiliation she’d felt had evaporated the instant John smiled at her and told her she looked beautiful in her peach bridesmaid’s dress and upswept hair.

They’d danced together, laughed together... and after one too many champagne cocktails on her part, she’d kissed him on the dance floor. A moment of pure spontaneity, a reckless, unstoppable impulse that had taken hold of her and given her courage she never would have had otherwise. Their kiss had been electrifying, astonishing. And too hot to contain.

They’d left the wedding to avoid the prying eyes of friends and fellow servicemen, John explaining he had somewhere private they could go. This cabin, nestled high on the side of a mountain in North Carolina, had been branded into her memory as permanently as the night they’d shared together inside it.

Followed by the awkward morning after, the silent ride of shame back to her apartment the next day, and the stinging knowledge that John shipped out a few days later without so much as a phone call or word of goodbye.

All of that was indelibly burned into her memory, too.

She and John had gone on with their lives as if the night hadn’t happened, which was apparently how he’d preferred to keep it. A fact that made talking about it now all the more uncomfortable.

Of course, it didn’t help that he was still the same dark, sexy warrior he had been before. Her heart still raced every time she looked at him. Her skin still felt tight and too warm, her senses far too tuned in to everything about him.

As he looked at her from across the table, she could have sworn she saw a flicker of heat in his dark gaze, too. But it was there and gone, leaving his expression that same rigid, unreadable warrior’s mask she’d seen the morning after they’d made love all those years ago.

John cleared his throat and dropped his gaze to the empty bowl in front of him. “I owe Kyle a lot, Lisa. He’s pulled my ass out of danger more than one time, same as I’ve done for him. He was—is—like a brother to me, too.”

The slip to past-tense hadn’t escaped her. It put a fresh chill in her blood, and brought her back to reality as effectively as a physical blow. She swallowed the knot of misery that threatened to climb up her throat. “You don’t think he’s...”

She couldn’t finish the sentence, but John didn’t make her. “I don’t know. That’s the shittiest part of this whole thing.”

“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “And I need to have that answer. I need to find my brother, and I don’t know how to do that alone.”

He lifted his head and stared at her for a long moment. Then he blew out a long sigh, punctuated by a low curse. “What if he doesn’t want to be found? Have you considered that?”

“Then why would he send me that text?” She slowly shook her head, certainty building as surely as her dread. “He’s in danger. I know it. I feel it in my bones, in my heart.”

“Jesus Christ.” John’s bleak gaze verged on pity, but she didn’t let it dissuade her. She sat unfazed as he raked his fingers through his thick, coffee-brown hair. “He didn’t ask you to go looking for him. Hell, we can’t even confirm that text is from him in the first place.”

“It is.” She had no doubt in her mind at all about that. “It’s from Kyle, and he’s in some kind of bad trouble. He needs help.”

“No, Lisa.” Anger flared in those unnerving brown eyes. “If your brother sent that text to you, then all he wants is for you to obey it. He told you to hide. Not run for help from me. Not set out on some reckless course to try to find him. Just hide.”

Fury sparked to life in Lisa now, too. “So, you’re saying you won’t help me? You won’t help Kyle?”

He leaned across