Strangers When We Meet Read online

  If Hamilton’s reflexes had not been so swift, his instincts so sure, she would have been crushed. Then Katya would have only the elderly aunt Lara paid to watch her when duty took her away. The mere thought made her hand shake so that she couldn’t extract a bill from her purse.

  Reaching past her, Dodge fed coins into the machine. “I’ll get this.”

  “I can pay,” she protested through stiff lips.

  “I just ’bout got us both creamed. Least I can do is buy you a cup of coffee.”

  “It is not meet. The treaty protocol…”

  “Screw the protocol. How do you like it?”

  “With milk and sugar,” she conceded. “Much sugar.”

  He had the hide of a bear, this one. And the charm of a gypsy. She’d seen his like before. They were not unique to America, these too-handsome cowboys. Russia, too, bred her share of careless, cocky rogues. He might wear scuffed boots, the jeans Americans seemed to pull on like a second skin and a wide leather belt with a silver buckle the size of a saucer, but he was the same under the skin as many she’d known in her own country.

  Thankfully, her Yuri had been a different sort of man altogether. Solid, dependable, always there for her when she needed him despite the demand of his military duties. He’d been there for Katya, too, when she’d needed him most.

  Without warning, Lara’s lungs squeezed so swift and hard she had to fight for breath. She stared at the paper cup that dropped into the slot, not seeing the stream of dark liquid that spurted into it. A wall of fire rose between her and the machine. She could almost feel its heat. Smell the acrid smoke it spewed. Hear her baby’s cries. Panic twisted inside her like a living thing, ripping her apart, tearing at her soul.

  “Here you go, milk and ‘much sugar.’”

  The flames had lit the night sky. Leaped almost to the stars. And the smoke! So thick and suffocating, it had blinded her.

  “Lara?”

  She was panting. Trying to draw air into her starved lungs. Screaming inside her head for Yuri, for Katya. Her baby, her tiny, helpless…

  “Lara!”

  A hard hand gripped her arm, pushed her toward a chair. “You’d better sit down.”

  She wanted to claw at the tight hold, wanted to fight free of all restraints, the way she had the night of the fire. The grip was like steel. She couldn’t twist away, couldn’t…

  The floor tilted. The tan-colored walls swam. Choked with panic, Lara saw the coffee cup splash into a trash can. A moment later, she was swept up and crushed against a broad chest. A shout rang out above her head, piercing the panic that beat at her with vicious fists.

  “Hey! Doc! We need help here.”

  Like waves crashing onto a rocky shore, the fear foamed, rose up a final time, receded. She was held fast in strong arms. Cocooned against hard muscles. Safe. The reality pierced her panic, but she was still quaking, still breathing in small, desperate gasps, when Dodge plunged back through the doors to the emergency room.

  Someone rushed toward them. A nurse, Lara thought. The doctor followed hard on the attendant’s heels.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. We were at the coffee machine and she just started to shake.”

  “Put her on the exam table.”

  Voices came at Lara from all directions. The nurse’s. The doctor’s. Dodge’s, deep and rumbling against her ear.

  The urge to cling to him jolted through her, sharp and all-consuming. She ached to stay within the circle of his arms. Just for a moment more. Just until the terror buried itself once again in the treacherous past and she’d drawn what she could draw from his strength, his heat.

  The violence of her need shocked Lara almost as much as the realization that she’d lost control. Again! For the third time since coming to this country, she’d let the awful memories escape. She hadn’t allowed them to surface for years, had never allowed them to take hold of her like that during the day. She’d devoted herself to Katya and her work, pushed Yuri’s horrific death as far to the back of her mind as it would go.

  It was that voice! The rasping growl that had tripped the safety wires she’d set around her mind. She had to get them set again, had to remember that she was here on an important mission. She couldn’t—wouldn’t!—let her personal demons jeopardize her career and her country’s security.

  Fully recovered now and mortified by her lack of control, she sat ramrod straight while the doctor lifted her eyelid and aimed a bright beam at her pupil.

  “Keep your eye on the light, please.”

  Stiffly, without turning her head, she followed the beam. Dodge’s face came into view, bruised and tight with concern. No laughter softened the lines of his face. No smile teased his lips. He looked his years now, she thought, and more. Tough. Taut. Worried.

  Heat rushed into Lara’s cheeks. How ridiculous that she’d clung to him, that she’d wanted to cling to him. She hadn’t wanted a man since Yuri. Hadn’t needed one. Her work kept her busy, and Katya, the joy of her life, filled her heart. She didn’t need anything or anyone else. Especially one such as this.

  By the time the physician had monitored her blood pressure and pulse rate, Lara was firmly back in control. She would not lose it again. Preempting the doctor, she pronounced her own diagnosis.

  “It was the shock, I think, from the accident. It comes late.”

  “That’s definitely a possibility. How do you feel now? Any dizziness?”

  “No.”

  “Do you feel cold or clammy?”

  “No.”

  “Let me see your hands.”

  She held them out, palms up, relieved to see they didn’t tremble. The doctor observed them for a moment, then hooked her stethoscope around her neck and rolled back her stainless-steel stool.

  “I think you’ll be okay. Just to stay on the safe side, take it easy for the rest of the day and drink plenty of fluids.” Her glance shifted to Dodge. “Looks like you and your friend will be playing nurse, after all. Think you’re up to it?”

  “We’ll manage.”

  Chapter 6

  Lara Petrovna, both Dodge and Sam discovered during the half-hour drive from the hospital to the Double H, didn’t take kindly to being coddled. She proved just as stubborn when they walked into the house where Dodge, his two sisters and Sam had spent their boisterous, adventure-filled childhood.

  The weathered floorboards creaked a welcome. The comfortable mix of elkhorn table lamps, hand-woven Navajo rugs and worn leather sofas made Dodge feel instantly at home. But when he ordered Lara to plant her butt on one of the whiskey-colored sofas, she declined.

  “I am well.” Head cocked, she surveyed the bruise that had blossomed under his bandaged stitches. “Better than you, I think. Should you not take one of those pain pills the doctor prescribed?”

  “I don’t want to swallow anything that might take me off PRP.”

  “Ah, yes. Your Personal Reliability Program. It is strict, like ours.”

  It damn well needed to be. The PRP applied to everyone who worked around or with nukes. The slightest change in lifestyle, family circumstances or medication that might affect a person’s physical or mental state had to be reported. Even something as mundane as a cold or allergies that required antihistamines took a person off PRP.

  There were no penalties attached to coming off the program, no blame assigned. Everyone associated with nukes wanted the people working beside them to remain fully alert and functioning. Dodge would have to take himself off the program if the pain continued. He was too professional not to.

  Before that happened, though, he had a paint-scraped black SUV to track down and a certain Russian major to get close to. At the express orders of the OSI, no less.

  More anxious to get to that last task than he should have been, Dodge volunteered his cousin for kitchen duty.

  “Why don’t you rustle us up some lunch while I give Lara the grand tour?”

  Sam hooked a brow but turned a smile on Lara. “How wou
ld you like fried potatoes and a fat, sizzling rib eye, homegrown right here on the Double H?”

  “I do not know this rib eye,” she began doubtfully, “but we eat many potatoes in Russia.”

  “Not the way I fry ’em up,” Sam assured her. “You go on and leave the cooking to me.”

  “Very well. As long as your cousin does not ask me to wrestle cows or brand them with an iron,” she added with a faint hint of a smile.

  Damn! Dodge should be prepared by now for the kick to the gut the woman delivered when she thawed even a few degrees.

  “No wrestling,” he promised. “We tag stock these days, instead of branding them. And we don’t run cows, by the way, just feeder steers.”

  “So you do not breed your cattle, then, but buy them to fatten for market.”

  He shot her a surprised look. “You know about raising beef, do you?”

  “My grandfather came from the Steppes. Horses and cattle were in his blood.”

  Dodge was impressed. The tough, wiry Cossacks who’d roamed Russia’s equivalent to the Great Plains were legendary horsemen.

  “Do you ride?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  “Next time you come to visit, we’ll get you up on Thunder. Hang loose and I’ll grab you a jacket. We wouldn’t want you to catch a chill and faint in my arms again, would we?”

  To his surprise, a flush stained her cheeks. “No, we would not.”

  He might have enjoyed her reaction if he hadn’t remembered the stark terror that had gripped her there in the hospital. Still, that sudden heat was worth pondering as he made a detour to the bathroom.

  His bloodied shirt went into the overflowing hamper. He replaced it with a denim work shirt from the closet where he stashed clothes for his increasingly infrequent visits. He returned to the living room a few moments later with a flannel-lined canvas duster for Lara. Her flush had faded, but she surprised him again when he handed her the duster.

  “I do not express the proper gratitude to you, I think. First you get the field jacket for me and the other members of my team. Then you invite me to come with you today.” She fingered the buttons on the duster. “I am not always so ungracious, but the treaty protocol is so very strict. One must be careful in circumstances such as ours, no?”

  “Very careful. Although I was anything but when that SUV came at us,” he added in disgust.

  “The accident was no fault of yours,” she countered swiftly. “Your quick action saved us both from worse hurt.” She cocked her head, studying his face. “You have very sure instincts. You are a good pilot, I think.”

  “One of the best.”

  The cocky reply drew another of her rare smiles. “So do all you aviators say.”

  She was melting fast. So was Dodge, dammit! Reminding himself that he was on a mission here, he held out the duster for her to slip into. She could have wrapped it twice around her thin frame. Patiently, he waited for her to roll up the cuffs.

  “All set?”

  “Da.”

  As Dodge walked Lara past the barn to the corral behind it, he tried to assess the pull she exerted on him. It was more than the job. More than the deliberate distance she insisted they had to maintain. She represented such a contradiction in his mind, all cool and remote, with powerful emotions churning just below the surface.

  Hooking a boot on the bottom rail of the corral, he treated himself to a long, slow look. She was silhouetted against a late-afternoon sky streaked with gold. Her arms folded on the top rail, she was smiling at the antics of the frisky bay colt one of the mares had dropped this spring.

  Just watching her put a hitch in Dodge’s breath. Even bundled up in his old duster, she was something. The wind played with her hair and whipped some color into her cheeks. The flush became her, he decided, a delicate rosebud-pink in keeping with her porcelain skin and pale hair. With an itch that wouldn’t quit, he wanted to reach over and run his hand through the loose strands. He’d bet it was smoother than spilt milk.

  Then there were those scars. Most females would opt for plastic surgery if they could afford it, or try to cover them with makeup if they couldn’t. Lara didn’t flaunt her tortured flesh any more than she tried to hide it. It was just there, part of her, like her high cheekbones and the hands-off tilt to her chin.

  She reminded him of the flowers on a night-blooming cactus, Dodge decided. Pale white blossoms that opened only in the quiet of the night, unseen, unsavored except by those with the patience to wait for them to unfurl, petal by petal, in the moonlight.

  He sucked in a swift breath, his mind filled with the sudden image of Lara sprawled across his bed, unfurling for him. His throat went dry, and the hard push against his jeans convinced him he would never figure the woman out. Best to just make his move.

  Casually, he reached over to turn up the collar on her borrowed jacket. She started under his hand, every bit as skittish as the bay colt.

  “I know, I know,” he said, preempting her protest. “It is not permitted to touch.”

  Her ice-blue eyes narrowed. “Do you mock me?”

  “Mock, no. Tease…yes.”

  The look she gave him could have skinned the bark off a cottonwood in one long peel. Muttering some thing in Russian, she flattened her palms on his chest and pushed. Obligingly, Dodge retreated a pace or two.

  “You are worse than my daughter. She, too, badgers me to get her way.”

  “Is Katya as beautiful as her mother?”

  As before, the mere mention of her daughter’s name softened her face.

  “No,” she murmured, “Katya has more the look of her father.”

  She’d handed him an opening, such as it was. Fighting a reluctance to delve into a past he knew was painful for her, he probed gently.

  “How long were you married?”

  She crossed one arm under her breasts. The other crept up to the underside of her chin. Dodge guessed she had no idea that her fingers trembled when they stroked the tortured flesh.

  Cursing himself, he waited for her to work through the memories that seemed to grip her. They weren’t happy ones. That much was obvious from the shadows in her eyes when she turned to him.

  “Why…why do you ask about my husband?”

  “I guess I just wanted to know what makes you who you are,” he said softly, realizing at that moment it was true.

  She didn’t answer, just stared at him with those haunted eyes. Christ! He’d take one of her icy glares any day over that bruised look.

  “Lara, I’m sorry.”

  He couldn’t stand the way her fingers trembled against her throat. Advancing the steps he’d retreated a few moments ago, he gathered her into his arms. She got as stiff as an old saddle but didn’t push away. She needed comforting, he guessed, as much as he needed to give it.

  He held her, just held her, while the wind rustled like brown paper through the cottonwoods planted around the house. The bay colt came to investigate, poking his muzzle through the split-rail fence.

  It was a new experience for Dodge, holding a woman, feeling her wind-tossed hair tickle his chin and wanting only to ease her hurts. Wanting mostly to ease her hurts, he amended grimly when she shifted in his arms.

  “The fire,” she said, so low the wind almost snatched the words away. “It…it burned our apartment building to the ground. Yuri saved Katya, but could not save himself.”

  The pain in her voice stripped him raw. He couldn’t exploit it.

  “Don’t talk about it if it hurts, sweetheart.”

  The endearment slipped out. Neither of them noticed.

  “I think…” Her throat worked. “I think I must. Perhaps by doing so I will chase away the voice in my head. It has haunted me, this voice, since I have come to your country.”

  Dodge kept perfectly still as she looked away, chasing away her private ghosts. When she turned back, regret flickered deep in her eyes.

  “But not to you, Dodge. I cannot speak of these things to you.”

  H
er deliberate withdrawal got halfway down his craw and stuck there. That was the only reason he could come up with for giving in to the insane impulse to reach up and tunnel his fingers through the thick mass of her hair. It was every bit as soft and silky and seductive as he’d imagined.

  “Fine,” Dodge growled. “Let’s not talk at all.”

  He took full advantage of her startled gasp to tug her close, bend down and cover her mouth with his. She tasted as good as she looked, he decided on a swift rush of heat. Like a swallow from a cold mountain stream on a hot summer day. He drank greedily, and wanted more.

  Shifting, he widened his stance and brought her against him. His lips molded to hers. Demanding, coaxing, blackmailing a response. He didn’t know whether it was reflex or sheer astonishment that made her mouth open under his, and didn’t care.

  Long before Dodge was ready, she wrenched away from him. The haunted look was gone, he saw with vicious satisfaction, although the fire that replaced it looked hot enough to boil the hair from his hide. Luckily, he was saved by the bell.

  “That’s Sam,” he said in response to the loud clanging. “Sounds like he’s got the steaks on.”

  Torn between disgust and dismay, Lara stomped toward the house. When had she become so lost to all sense of duty? So weak that she would lean into this cowboy’s arms and draw from his strength? And how could she ache to feel his mouth on hers again and again?

  She’d yielded to the wild hunger that had leaped through her at his touch. Just for a moment. Barely long enough for him to shift and gather her closer. Where she’d found the will to wrench out of his hold, she would never know.

  Shaken by how much it had cost her to pull away, she said little during a lunch that would normally have fed her and Katya for three days. Her steak was an inch thick and so large it took up three-fourths of her plate. Mounds of potatoes fried with onions and green peppers took up the rest. A bowl of salad sat untouched by the two men in the center of the table. Lara forced down a few bites of the greenery to balance the meat and potatoes but had to admit it was tasteless compared to the succulent steak.