Chapter 5

Ivy couldn't shake the feeling that Harrison was escaping her. Was it her thanks or that moment of connection? Maybe both. She'd hit on something, and he'd said more than he meant to. But she recognized him. Recognized the kind of man he was. She'd written men like him. Studied them. And knew that they didn't get that look in their eyes without ghosts riding their shoulders.

"Sometimes whatever you're trying to escape by coming to a place like this is better held at bay by distraction. And you're definitely that."

She didn't know what to think about that. Did he mean the rescue and just having her in his space? Or did he mean something else? Did she want him to mean something else? Her still puckered nipples certainly came down on the side of oh hell yes.

The front door opened and Harrison hustled back through, laden with bags. A gust of cold air and a swirl of snow blew in behind him and had Ivy hunching back into the blankets still warm from his body. She already missed the feel of him wrapped around her and regretted the loss of that temporary intimacy. It had felt so good to be held, to be touched. Not from a sex standpoint - though certainly it was hard not to think about that when he was so...swoon-worthy - but just as closeness to someone else. Which just went to show how isolated she'd gotten in the last year. She needed to get a handle on this because it was wholly inappropriate for her to be macking on her host when the attraction clearly wasn't reciprocated.

Suddenly acutely aware she was still without pants, Ivy wished for a little escape herself. She needed some space to get her head back on straight. "Would you mind if I took a shower?"

"No. Go ahead. I'll bring in the rest of the stuff and get dinner going." He set her bag just inside the bathroom doorway.

"Thanks." Feeling a little foolish, she wrapped a blanket around her waist. He'd already seen everything. But he hadn't been actively looking, and he'd been distracted by her prospective hypothermia.

As soon as he headed back outside for the rest of the stuff, she made a shuffling dash for the bathroom, dragging the blanket with her. It was rustic but clean, with shiplapped walls and a tub-shower combo on the other side of the toilet. There were navy towels beneath the sink to match the plain navy shower curtain. She was surprised not to see camouflage everywhere, but this apparently wasn't like the hunting cabins she'd been to growing up. There was craftsmanship here. His? Or someone else's?

Shrugging off the question, she dropped the blanket and turned on the water to warm before stripping out of the rest of her clothes. She froze as she caught her reflection in the mirror. Angry bruising ran from her left shoulder, across her body, all the way down to her right hip. That was gonna be ugly for a while. But it could have been so much worse. Now that the adrenaline had faded, she was beginning to feel every ache and pain. No doubt that would become more pronounced over the next few hours. Painkillers were definitely in order. But shower first.

She stepped beneath the spray. Her skin woke up with a scream as sensation returned. Ivy stayed where she was and let the water sluice over her body. Once the initial pain was past, she closed her eyes and leaned against the front wall, glorying in the luxury of warmth. With warmth came clarity.

She was trapped for the foreseeable future, in a cabin with no means of contacting the outside world, with a guy who was still a veritable stranger. It sounded like the setup for one of the victims in her books or maybe a horror novel. And yet she wasn't afraid of Harrison. Maybe that was somewhat her neglected hormones talking because she'd been next to naked with him, but she didn't think so. Even with that moment in the kitchen, where he was clearly not entirely present, maybe seeing some of those ghosts he was running from, she hadn't been afraid of him.

Yeah, he'd started out gruff and taciturn, but he'd been focused on getting them to safety, then on taking care of her - something he hadn't asked for but hadn't begrudged or complained about. He'd been respectful and gentle, doing everything that needed to be done, including using his own body to warm her. That had been...frankly...amazing and had left her wanting a helluva lot more than a snuggle. And, at least for a bit there, so had he.

But he was a guy and they'd been almost naked together. His arousal was probably more about proximity and biology than actual attraction. Yet he'd softened toward her. He'd had such gentleness in his touch when he'd brushed the hair back from her face. She'd wanted to close that little distance between them. Wanted to kiss him and feel the scrape of his beard along her skin. And then there was that protective streak. He'd been all kinds of ready to take on someone who'd hurt her. It spoke volumes about the kind of man he was. The kind she found appealing on multiple levels.

Feeling almost human again, Ivy stepped out of the shower and toweled off.

That contrast of gentle caretaker and fierce protector intrigued her. She'd written plenty of fierce men, and her share of women, too. But she'd never really explored a softer side to any of them. There was little room for softness in their line of work. Death and darkness didn't exactly inspire it. And yet she had the sense that Harrison had seen his share of death and darkness, and he still had that capacity for gentleness. It made her think of Michael and wonder what - or who - it would take to soften him.

Was that what was missing? A situation to show another side of him? A window into something besides the wound that had made him leave the team?

Mulling it over, she stepped out of the bathroom to the scent of food. Following her nose into the little kitchen, she peeked into the pot simmering on the stove. It seemed like some kind of soup - the kind where you browned a pound of ground beef and dumped in a can of every vegetable you had. The scent of it had her stomach growling. It had been far too long since those snack cakes on the road. On the counter, she found a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers, but Harrison himself wasn't inside.

The thunk of an axe hitting wood drew her attention to the window. In the glow of a floodlight, Harrison tossed the split pieces onto a pile and placed another log on a tree stump. He wound up the swing and brought the axe down with an economy of motion that suggested he had plenty of practice. She watched him repeat the movement several more times, admiring the power of those broad shoulders and thick arms. She never would've imagined she had a thing for lumberjacks, but even with the overgrown beard, this whole mountain man picture was working for her.

A whole lot about Harrison was working for her.

And when did you start writing romance in your head?

Apparently about the time a big, burly stranger woke up my neglected libido.

Rolling her eyes at her own imaginings, Ivy retrieved her laptop case and braced herself for the worst. But the screen was intact. And when she pushed the power button, it sprang to life with no problems. It had survived the wreck. Thank God.

Wanting to capture some of her thoughts about Michael, she opened a fresh document and began to type. She was still working when Harrison opened the door sometime later, a bundle of logs under one arm. Ivy couldn't help watching as he crossed the room to dump the wood into the wire basket by the fireplace, then wandered into the kitchen to check the soup. She managed to jerk her attention back to the screen, away from his denim clad ass just before he turned.

"Doing okay?"

"Yeah. Getting hungry. The water's stayed down." Because thinking about that ass had made her mouth go dry, she picked up the water she'd refilled and drank more of it.

He nodded. "We should have plenty of firewood to get us through the night. I'll go shower off and then we'll eat."

"Sounds good."

He disappeared into the bathroom. Ivy tried to get back to work, but whatever groove she'd managed to find seemed to have deserted her. Her head felt scrambled. She wished she could blame it on the accident or on Harrison himself, but she knew it had been going on so much longer. She'd been mentally blank, going through the motions for so long, she was starting to worry that this wasn't writer's block.

Abandoning the laptop, she curled up in the chair by the fireplace, staring into the flames and brooding. What if whatever the hell was going on with her head couldn't be fixed? What if she was permanently broken? What if her career was over? The idea of it left a sick feeling in her gut. She loved her job. Or she had before it started to feel like opening her manuscript was tantamount to making a gallows walk.

The bathroom door opened. Ivy lifted her head in reflex, then blinked in confusion at the stranger who emerged, clad in a darker pair of jeans and yet another flannel shirt.

Holy shit.

He'd shaved the beard. Not all the way off, but he'd definitely attacked it with trimmers, knocking off several inches of ZZ Top wannabe and leaving him with a close-cropped beard that highlighted his strong jaw. It made him more approachable and...well, incredibly hot. Turned out the face that he'd been hiding underneath all that hair was as gorgeous as the well-toned body.

Perilously close to drooling, Ivy realized he'd said something to her. "I'm sorry, what?"

"I asked if you were getting any work done."

She couldn't stop the snort of disgust. "No. Not really."

He dumped his dirty clothes into a bag and padded into the kitchen. "You wanna talk about it?"

Her first instinct was a resounding no. Because what good would talking about it do? But watching him at the stove, she reconsidered. What little inspiration she'd cobbled together had been because of him. She wanted to know more about him. Sharing something of herself might get him to let down his walls again. And maybe, just maybe, she'd find the piece she'd been missing for her plot.

* * *

"I used to love my job."

There was so much longing in her tone, Harrison had to fight the urge to hug her. And what the hell was up with that? But he understood what it felt like - to have that high of being blessed enough to do the thing you felt like you'd been born to do, and the corresponding low when it all fell apart. He'd loved being a Ranger. Until he hadn't.

"You said you're a writer." Better to get his brain back on her and her issues.

"That's what it says on my résumé. I'm not feeling much like one lately." She accepted the bowl of soup he passed her and went to sit at the little dinette table.

He followed with his own bowl and a sleeve of crackers. "Written anything I'd have heard of?" Probably not. She looked young. Not jailbait young, but definitely not over thirty, like he was. He pegged her for a romance writer or maybe young adult.

"Maybe." She restlessly stirred her soup, as if that would make it cool faster, and didn't meet his eyes.

Harrison waited for her to elaborate, but she said nothing. He wasn't used to having someone wait him out, and her reticence had his curiosity piqued. "Are you embarrassed or worried this is gonna turn into a Misery kind of situation?" As soon as the words were out, he winced. "Sorry, bringing up a writer who gets kidnapped and tied to a bed is probably in poor taste under the circumstances."

But it got her to look at him again. For just a moment, those silver-green eyes held an unmistakable glint of lust and intrigue that had Harrison's brain scrambling down an entirely different path than the one he'd been joking about. Shit, he hadn't had any intention of going there and now they were both thinking about the sofa and skin and...

Ivy pointed her spoon at him, her expression shifting to amusement. "You are no Annie Wilkes."

What would she say if he told her they shared a last name? Before he could ask, she continued.

"And I'm not embarrassed." The pretty flush of her cheeks belied her words, but that was probably about the inadvertent naked thoughts. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part.

"What?" he teased. "Is it some of that Fifty Shades kind of sh - stuff?" What the hell was wrong with him, pursuing this line of questioning? When had he decided it was a good idea to flirt with this woman?

She made a disgusted face and shook her head with vehemence as she dug into the soup. "It is definitely not erotica. It's not even romance, although there are some romantic elements that have cropped up in the series. It's just that nice girls aren't supposed to write about gruesome things like serial murder."

Harrison didn't bother to mask his surprise. "You don't look like someone who'd write about something that dark."

One dark brow arched up. "And what does someone who writes about the ultimate darkness of the human heart look like? There are some who would say I'm extremely well-adjusted because I exorcise my less-acceptable impulses through fiction."

"So you're saying you have recurrent thoughts of homicide?"

She pointed her spoon at him. "Don't piss off the writer. She may put you in a book and kill you. As it happens, I've gotten fictional revenge on a looooot of people."

Beyond mildly curious now, he ripped open the crackers and pulled out a few. "What series?"

"The Sloan Maddox series."

The crackers fell out of numb fingers and into his soup as Harrison stared. "You're Blake Iverson?"

She gave a little shrug and a half smile. "Guilty."

Hollow Point Ridge, the final book in the series, was on his e-reader right now. "But everybody assumes you're a dude." Certainly the dark, gritty thrillers that were driving Jack Reacher fans wild did not in any way give hints of this tiny, gentle-looking woman.

"It's ridiculous, but there's wider marketability that way. Men are more likely to pick up a book by a guy than they are something by Ivy Blake. And since I refuse public appearances, nobody is any the wiser."

"Well, I'll be damned. So this book you're late on is the next Sloan Maddox? I thought book six was the end of the series."

Again with the head shake. "My publisher wants me to branch out. It's supposed to be the start of a new series featuring another character from the core series, but it's just not gelling."

"Which character?"

Her brow winged up. "You've read one of them?"

"I've read all of them. Well, I haven't finished the latest one yet. I had to set it aside just after they found the second body." Because he'd had to go bury another one. But he didn't want to bring that up right now. "I had intended to finish it tonight when I got here."

There went the blush again. Damn, she was cute. How did a woman like this turn out books that made his skin crawl?

"You have a dark and twisted mind." Too late, it occurred to him that she might be offended by that observation.

But Ivy just grinned. "Thanks. I might as well get some use out my graduate degree."

"Which is in what?"

"Forensic psychology."

Harrison blinked, surprised yet again. "Seriously?"

She inclined her head and shrugged, as if to say "Guilty."

"What were you originally gonna do with that?"

"I had a notion of eventually going into the FBI and the Behavioral Analysis Unit. I'm fascinated by the criminal mind. But I'm way less okay with going out in the field, which I discovered during a very brief relationship with a homicide detective while I was in grad school. He got called to a scene while we were out, and I was a dumbass who didn't follow orders and stay in the car. I knew when I saw my first - and only - homicide victim, I'd never hack it as an actual member of law enforcement. It takes a special kind of tough to do those jobs, and I don't have it."

"You'd never know it from your books. Some of your serial killers have given me nightmares." And he'd been relieved when her characters' darkness had choked out his own.

Ivy beamed. "Thanks."

"I, for one, am glad you took a different path." He hated the idea of her losing her softness. Though given the sort of books she wrote, maybe that was an illusion. How could someone understand darkness that well and still remain any kind of innocent?

"You and my parents both. They always hated the idea of me being FBI."

"Dangerous job. It's a parent's prerogative to hope their kid doesn't do something that's liable to get them shot." His mom certainly hadn't been keen on him going into the Army. She'd been proud of his service but terrified the whole time. She'd thrown a huge party when he decided not to re-up.

"Why did you want to do it?" He couldn't imagine this petite woman in the soft sweater and well-worn jeans with the formal bearing and bland suit of a federal agent.

"I'm good at reading people. I guess that came from moving around a lot, always being the new kid in class."

"Were you a military brat?"

"Preacher's kid. The Methodist Church likes to move its ministers every few years within the jurisdiction. So I've lived all over the southeastern US. When you're always the new kid, it's handy to be able to size people up in a hurry. Figure out where you might best fit in."

"True enough, but it's a long way from new kid in school to FBI." There had to be some bigger reason than simply curiosity.

Ivy flashed a self-deprecatory smile. "You're wondering if I have some kind of trauma or something that prompted me to want to go out and get all the bad guys."

He should not play poker with this woman. "It seems the logical conclusion."

"Profiling isn't always about logic. Whether you're talking serial killers or regular people. I like the puzzle of trying to figure out what makes someone tick, and it turned out I had an aptitude for it."

Harrison thought of her earlier observation. Nobody comes to a place like this if they want company. No matter what she'd said about logic, that one wasn't difficult to puzzle out. But he wondered what else she'd uncover during their time together and wasn't at all sure he'd be comfortable with her insights.

Shrugging off his unease, he turned his attention back to their conversation. "So why not regular psychology? Why the criminal stuff?"

"For one thing, I have zero tolerance for everyday problems. A lot of therapy involves just listening to people bitch and never actually wanting to change. I'd have been miserable inside a year. But the bigger reason? Well, you'll think it's stupid."

"Try me."

"I saw reruns of this show from the late nineties. Profiler. The heroine was this forensic psychologist who worked for some fictional government division that partnered with assorted other agencies to bring down the perpetrators of violent crimes. I loved the crap out of that show. It fascinated me, and I thought what a great job. Taking down the bad guys by basically outsmarting them. After that I was hooked."

"You decided to join the FBI because of a TV show?"

"I told you you'd think it was stupid." The hunch in her shoulders suggested she'd gotten that reaction before.

"Not stupid. Just surprising."

"I don't have some noble reason for doing it. And, as it happened, I didn't have the stomach to do more than write about it."

"You're damned good at the writing of it, so there's hardly any shame in that. Not everything has to be done for some noble cause."

"Did you have some noble reason for going into the military?"

Harrison shouldn't have been surprised. She'd been sitting here talking about having studied to be a profiler. But the question sat him back in his chair. "That obvious?"

"That you were in the military? Yes. You rappelled down the side of a mountain in a Tennessee blizzard, by yourself, to help a perfect stranger and didn't even break a sweat."

Well, she'd been wrong about that part. Nice to know it hadn't shown. "It was a baby mountain and not anywhere approaching a real blizzard."

"Still. That's not a thing the average civilian is capable of or inclined to do. Plus, there's the way you move - with this total economy of motion, nothing wasted. And even if you hadn't broken out your badass search and rescue skills, there was your response to the raccoon. You thought I was in danger and you reacted with the kind of speed that only someone with considerable training can manage. So I'm betting you weren't just military, you were special forces."

Harrison's mouth went dry. If that was her takeaway from the raccoon incident, then maybe she wasn't quite as observant as she seemed. Or maybe he hadn't been as obvious as he'd thought. "How do you know I'm not still active?"

"Unless you were coming off of some posting where relaxed grooming standards were the norm, you had way too much beard for active military and your hair isn't military cut. I'd guess you've been out two or three years."

He wished he'd cracked open one of the beers in the fridge, but he wasn't about to betray himself by doing it now. He'd been trained to withstand torture. He could tolerate some discomfort from one incredibly intuitive woman.