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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] Gray examined everything he knew about Sam and her family. Her parents and an aunt and uncle had died in a light plane crash a crash in which Sam herself had been a passenger. Sam had been seven years old, and, miraculously, she had survived virtually unharmed. Her grandfather had been her last living relative. She would have had to have borne all the final rituals of his burial alone. He had been an old man, so it was likely she had had to care for him, maybe even nurse him as his condition slowly deteriorated. Gray hadn't bothered to find out those kinds of details, he hadn't had time, but he would damn sure do so now. The blankness of Sam's face bothered him, when he knew how much her grandfather must have meant to her. Knowledge struck him like a fist between the eyes, and fury channelled through him at what Sam had hidden from him, whathe had been too blind to see. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html She was frightened, and the big surprise would be if she wasn't. He had seen and experienced fear in many manifestations, watched men he worked and trained with cope with it. In battle fear could be as healthy as sweat, and it kept you alive as nothing else could. Then again, he had seen it work in the opposite way, freezing men in battle, making them incapable of the smallest action to savethemselves . He knew what it was like to feel crushing grief, but he couldn't comprehend what it would feel like to bury his entire family. What must it feel like to love with depth and loyalty,then lose not just one family member, but all of them? Sam shied away from intimacy because she had lost everyone she had ever loved. And that included him. His jaw tightened. He felt at once relieved that he had isolated the problem & and furious. Damn, he thought bleakly. It didn't take a genius to figure out how Sam would react when she found out that not only was he hunting Harper, but that Harper was doing his level best to killhim . That for the past few years he had walked a continual tightrope of danger and risk. That from whatever angle you chose to look at it predator or prey he was a man who could die any day. * Sam parked in her reserved space behind the Royal. Gray's truck nosed in seconds afterward, dwarfing her much smaller hatchback. She pushed her door open, gathered her jacket and handbag, and locked the car. When she straightened, Gray was beside her. It was a measure of just how much she had changed that she calmly accepted his closeness, but something about the watchfulness of his expression made her uneasy. "Have I got something on my face?" "Yeah."He dipped and fastened his mouth on hers with a casual intimacy that took her breath. "Me." The world spun,then levelled out. Gray's hand settled possessively at the small of her back, and she found herself moving toward the rear entrance of the hotel, her mouth still tingling from the contact. Gray opened the back door, and they strolled into the cool shade of the hallway. When they reached the lobby, a surprising number of people were milling near the elevator. A man peeled off from the group and lifted a camera. The flash momentarily blinded her. "Mr. Lombard," a svelte brunette declared, materialising from behind a large palm, "is it true that you're intending to take up residence inNew Zealand?" A confusing barrage of questions followed. Gray stepped past the young woman, his arm around Sam's waist, keeping her close to his side. Taken by surprise, Sam lost her balance, half falling against him. His arms closed around her, hugging her in close and restoring her balance. Several cameras clicked at that point. Ben and Carter appeared, and the noise escalated as they began hustling the reporters out of the hotel. "Who's the mystery lady, Mr. Lombard?" one of the men yelled over Carter's brawny shoulder. "Is she the reason you're here?" "Rumour has it you're engaged," someone else called. "Have you set the date?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Gray kept his arm around Sam, shielding her from the reporters as he urged her toward her office, closing the door. "Sit down," he ordered, but when she did so without argument, he wished she'd bit back at him as she usually did. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |