Read ROCKY MOUNTAIN RESCUE for Free Online Page B

really be stuck with no one to turn to. And he’d been a decent enough guy. He’d listened to what she’d had to say and hadn’t tried to order her around as if he automatically knew what was best. That was a change from the men she was used to dealing with.
    Not that he wasn’t all man. A woman would have to be half-dead not to notice those broad shoulders and muscular arms. He was taller and bigger than any of the Giardino men; she felt like a shrimp next to him. But that was okay. Being around him made her feel...safe. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
    He knocked on the door as she was washing the last of the blood out of her hair. She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her head, turban fashion, and opened the door. “What did they say?” she asked.
    “They agreed we shouldn’t involve the local police. It might endanger the boy and it could jeopardize our investigation.”
    “What investigation? You keep using that word, but what are you investigating—me?”
    “Not you. In fact, I want to move you into WITSEC right away. When we find Carlo, we’ll bring him to you.”
    “No.”
    “I know you don’t like the idea, but it’s the best way to protect you and—”
    “No. I’m not going anywhere until we know what happened to Carlo. When you find him, I’m going to be there.”
    “I can’t track criminals with you in tow.”
    “I’m not going to get in your way, and I can help.”
    “How can you help?”
    “I know how to shoot. I know how to keep quiet and stay out of the way and most of all—I know my child. In a tense situation, he’ll come to me and I can keep him calm.”
    His mouth remained set in that stubborn line, his gaze boring into her, but she refused to let him intimidate her. She was through with men who tried to boss her around. “I won’t go into WITSEC,” she said. “If you don’t let me go with you, I’ll search for Carlo on my own.” With no car, no gun and not even a clear picture of where she was, searching on her own wasn’t a choice she wanted to make, but she could steal a car, buy a gun and read a map if she had to. She’d do whatever it took to find her boy.
    “My first job is to protect you.”
    “Then you can do that by taking me with you to look for Carlo. Now come on. We’re wasting time talking about it. We need to go after them.”
    She tried to push past him, but he stopped her, one hand on her shoulder. “You can’t go out with wet hair. You’ll freeze.”
    She pulled the towel from her head. “I don’t care about my hair. It can dry in the car.”
    “You won’t be any good to Carlo, or to me, if you catch pneumonia.”
    “Fine.” She turned and grabbed the hair dryer that hung by the sink. “But as soon as my hair is dry, we leave.”
    She expected him to leave her to the task, but he remained in the doorway, reflected in the mirror, his gaze fixed on her. She tried to ignore him, but that was impossible; even if the mirror hadn’t been there, she could feel his eyes on her, sense his big, brooding presence just over her shoulder. Why had he said that, about her not being any good to him if she got sick? Did he really think she was such as important witness in his mysterious “investigation”? He certainly didn’t need her any other way.
    Except maybe in the way men always seemed to need women, a traitorous voice in her head whispered. She shifted against an uncomfortable tightness in her lower abdomen, an awareness of herself not as mother, wife or daughter, but as a young, desirable woman. She’d buried that side of herself when she married Sammy Giardino—that it should resurface now astounded her. She’d heard of people who reacted to stress in inappropriate ways, for instance, by laughing at funerals. Was her response to tragedy and peril going to be this odd state of semiarousal? She couldn’t think of anything less appropriate, especially if she was getting turned on by some big brute of a cop.
    She switched off