The Seduction of His Wife

Chapter Twenty-five

S arah twisted and squirmed until she could face Alex and grab the front of his jacket. “It’s the smugglers!” she told him. “They burned our house and are headed up to the caves where somebody named Spencer is waiting for them. We have to get out of here!” she cried, tugging harder when Alex didn’t even acknowledge he’d heard her. “Come on!”

But he still wouldn’t budge or say anything; he just mutely lowered his gaze to hers, his face ashen gray and his dark navy eyes haunted.

Sarah smacked his chest. “There’s three of them, Alex. We have to get out of here!”

He finally moved, only to grab her shoulders and violently shake her before crushing her against him, his arms locking around her like a vise.

“Alex,” she yelped into his jacket, squirming to get free. “Will you listen to me? I smashed their snowmobiles down at the stream, but they’re going to come after us. And they have guns!”

His arms only tightened more, and Sarah was forced to quit struggling because she couldn’t breathe. She could still hear, though, and Alex’s heart was pounding so violently it hurt her ears. Then he suddenly started pulling her over to the large pine tree she had driven the skidder into in order to stop it. Sarah dug in her heels to explain they had to get off the trail, but she snapped her mouth shut when Alex turned and gave her a lethal look. He let her go to pull his rifle off, appearing ready to pounce if she so much as blinked. He took off his jacket next, mutely stuffed her into it, then zipped it up to her chin. Still silent, he took her hand again and led her around the tree, then forced her down against the back side of the trunk.

Sarah’s breath caught when he hunched down and she found herself looking into his dangerous eyes. “I need you to stay here,” he said ever so softly. “You got that, Sarah?”

Sarah said nothing, merely pressing into the tree when he brought his face even closer.

“No matter what happens, no matter what you hear, you stay curled up here like a rabbit hiding from a pack of wolves until I get back.”

“But—”

“You need to stay here until I come back for you, Sarah.”

She nodded.

“Good,” he said, standing up to look past the tree at the trail. He turned back to her, his face chiseled from granite and his eyes even harder. “If they get this far, all they’ll see is the mess the skidder made. They might come close enough to look over the edge of the cliff, but they won’t be able to see you back here.”

He reached down and picked up his rifle, then slung it over his back. “They won’t bother looking for you once they see that skidder down in the ravine. You stay perfectly quiet and still, and they’ll think you went over the cliff with it.” He hunched down in front of her again, this time his hand spanning her face more gently. “You understand what I need you to do, Sarah? No matter what you hear in the next couple of hours, and no matter what those men say if they do make it this far, you can’t let them know you’re alive.”

“Wh-what are you going to do?”

He merely stood to look up and down the trail again. Sarah rose to her feet, but Alex spun around in warning, and she immediately halted. Good God, he was angry.

Sarah reached out and touched his chest. “I know I just gave you a terrible scare,” she quietly told him. “And that you don’t like how I put myself in danger coming up here to warn you. But, Alex, no one else could get here in time. There wasn’t anything else I could do. And at least they’re on foot now, thanks to me.”

His eyes narrowed, and his face darkened, but then he suddenly covered her hand on his chest and blew out a ragged breath. “You’re not going to stay here and hide like I want, are you?”

“I would try very hard to stay here,” she said, “because I understand your need to know that I’m safe so you can concentrate on the bad guys.” She shook her head. “But no, I can’t just sit up here while you go after them alone.”

“You need to trust me, Sarah.”

“I do trust you.”

“Then let me take things from here, Sunshine. Do as I ask, and I’ll be back within the hour, I promise.”

Sarah suddenly remembered the man named Spencer up at the caves. She nodded and started to turn back to the large pine, but Alex stopped her by squeezing her hand. “Promise me,” he whispered.

“I promise,” she said, rising on her toes to give him a kiss on the chin, then giving him a nudge. “So get going, already.”

He stood watching while she tucked herself between two of the pine’s massive roots, then settled a few broken branches around her to conceal her further from the trail before hunching down to cup her cheek. “I promise I’ll be back, Sarah,” he said softly. “We haven’t finished our novel yet. I still don’t know if Willow is going to marry Duncan.”

“Of course she is,” Sarah whispered, leaning into his hand. “It’s a romance novel. Everyone always lives happily ever after.”

His intense gaze locked on hers, Alex slowly shook his head. “I’m not so certain about that. There

’s a chance Willow is too afraid to risk her heart.”

“She will. Sh-she loves him.”

“You sure about that?”

Sarah cupped her hand over his. “I’m sure,”

Alex rubbed his thumb across her lips, kissed her forehead, then stood up and walked around the tree. Sarah bent forward to see him scuffing over their footprints with a branch he’d picked up, backing away until he reached his snowshoes. Then he looked at her. “I’m counting on you to stay safe, Sarah.”

“Only if you do the same,” she said, waving him away.

Alex picked up his snowshoes and started jogging down the trail toward the smugglers. Sarah watched until he was out of sight, then leaned back against the tree and closed her eyes, hugging her knees to her chest to stop her shaking. Yeah, she would stay here—but only because she needed to guard Alex’s back. The man up at the caves wasn’t getting past her, no way!

A fistful of snow blew off an overhead branch and landed inside her collar, the wind carrying the acrid smell of the Knight lodge burning flat to the ground. Sarah buried her face in her hands. She’d achieved her goal of warning Alex, and if she had insisted on going with him, she probably would have gotten in his way. So she stayed curled in a ball and prayed for her husband’s safe return while she guarded the trail leading up to the caves.

Her head snapped up at the sound of a gunshot not ten minutes later, the sharp noise echoing up the mountainside. It was followed by another shot less than five minutes later, then two more in rapid succession just minutes after that, the piercing echoes fading to an ominous silence. As the chill wind howled in the trees, Sarah shuddered in fear. Had Alex been shot? Had he been forced to shoot those men?

A few minutes later, she realized she was no longer hearing just the wind but the distant whine of a snowmobile engine. Only it wasn’t coming from below, it was coming from above her. Sarah tucked herself into the pine’s large roots as the snowmobile drew closer and watched as the speeding sled came to a stop not thirty feet from where she was hiding.

With the sound of the idling engine covering any noise she might make, Sarah turned and watched the lone man get off and walk over to the edge of the cliff.

Okay, it was now or never. She could do this. She could. Sarah moved around the pine and silently crept up behind the man just as he stepped forward to look over the edge—and shoved him with all her might.

The guy spun around off-balance with a shout of surprise, waved his arms like windmills, and fell back into empty air. Feeling as horrified as he had looked, Sarah watched him tumble down the steep hill, bouncing off bushes and snow-covered outcroppings, until he came to an abrupt halt against the mangled skidder. With a sense of surreal detachment and no small amount of guilt, she saw him slowly sit up and try to stand, then fall back and grab his twisted leg.

Relieved that she hadn’t killed him, Sarah eyed the snowmobile sitting in the middle of the trail, quietly idling. Then she looked down the trail, trying to gauge how much time had passed, flinching when another single shot suddenly cracked up the mountain.

Should she go after Alex or stay up here out of his way? She’d only promised to stay here in order to cover his back—and she had accomplished that quite nicely, hadn’t she? Sarah walked over to the snowmobile, slid her leg over the seat, and grasped the handlebars. Damn, nothing looked familiar. She didn’t know which lever was the throttle or which one was the brake. She finally settled her right thumb over the right lever and her left fingers over the long lever on that side and squeezed both hands closed. The snowmobile shot forward, and she grabbed at the handlebars to keep from falling backward, just as the engine died and the sled came to a skidding stop, sending her forward into the handlebars with a grunt of surprise.

“Now I’ve stalled the damn thing,” she muttered, searching the dash for the key, which she finally found and turned. Nothing happened. The sled remained silent beneath her. Well, that decided whether or not she’d stay put.

Then Sarah caught the distant wail of sirens coming from the main hauling road from town, and her heart lifted with hope.

She had told the dispatcher to tell John and Daniel the smugglers were on Whistler’s Mountain. And when she heard one lone siren break away from the others and turn up the road to the new site, she smiled broadly. Help was on the way—she only hoped that John Tate had arrived in time.

Alex wiped the blood running into his eye and stepped out of the woods, just as the sheriff’s cruiser came to a skidding halt in front of the tangle of snowmobiles littering the road. John climbed out of his car, and Alex walked across the frozen brook to meet him, avoiding the area where Sarah’s skidder had broken the ice.

“What in hell went on here?” John asked, assessing the snowmobiles before turning his gaze on Alex. “I hope that blood belongs to someone else.”

“Some of it’s mine,” Alex said raggedly. He jerked his thumb toward the woods. “But most of it is from one of the two men I shot about half a mile up the trail.”

“They dead?”

Alex shrugged. “I got the bleeding stopped on one of them, but without medical help, he’ll likely die from exposure within an hour.”

“And the other one?” John asked.

Alex shrugged again. “There’s also a third guy, but last I saw, the bastard wasn’t having much luck outrunning the rock slide I started.” Alex strode over to his undamaged snowmobile sitting on the snowbank. “Sarah’s still up there, John,” he said, straddling the seat and taking the key out of his pocket.

“And she mentioned a fourth guy waiting up at the caves.”

But just as Alex started to put the key in the ignition, he noticed the wires hanging out of the side of the hood. “Shit,” he hissed, lifting the hood to find that they’d cut the plug wires. He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Reed’s on his way,” John said. “He’ll have his snowmobile in the back of his pickup. Where is she? Is she hurt?”

“I hid her behind a pine tree about two miles up the trail,” Alex told him, climbing off the sled and walking toward the brook. “We can’t wait for Daniel. The guy up at the caves must have heard the gunshots.”

John stopped him. “Listen. That’s a truck coming,” he said, looking past his car. “It could be Daniel,” he added, drawing his gun as a precaution.

Daniel Reed came tearing up the road in his pickup, slamming on the brakes behind the cruiser and jumping out of his truck. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“We need to go after Sarah,” Alex said as he ran to the back of Daniel’s truck and started undoing the tethers holding the snowmobile in place. “I stashed her two miles up the trail, and there’s supposed to be a fourth guy up at the caves. Back up to the snowbank,” he ordered, jumping into the truck bed.

Daniel climbed into the cab and backed the truck up to the snowbank, shut off the engine, and tossed the sled’s keys to Alex. “We’re going with you,” he said, pulling his rifle from the gun rack in the rear window. “We’ll drop you off at Sarah, then John and I will head up to the caves.”

Alex started the snowmobile and backed it off the truck, then slid back on the seat to make room for John so that Daniel could squeeze in front of them to drive. Alex was more than willing to let the lawmen take care of the fourth guy. He was focused only on getting back to Sarah—hoping like hell she was still tucked behind that pine when they got there. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never get the image out of his head of Sarah cresting that knoll at full throttle or of the skidder rolling over the side of the cliff just seconds after he’d gotten her out.

Alex snorted to himself just as the sled shot across the brook. Who was he kidding? The chances of finding Sarah still hiding behind that tree were about as good as hell freezing over. Which was why Alex wasn’t at all surprised when they crested a knoll about a quarter-mile from the pine and saw his wife running down the trail toward them.

“Alex!” she shouted, rushing toward them. “Oh, my God, you’re okay.” She came to a skidding stop when he climbed off the sled and faced her. “You’re covered in blood!” she cried. “You’ve been shot!”

“Only the blood on my face is mine,” he growled, walking over and taking hold of her shoulders.

“Dammit, Sarah, you’re supposed to be hiding,” he snapped, using every bit of willpower he possessed not to shake her.

“I heard the sirens,” she snapped back. “And I thought—” She stopped with a choked cry and threw herself at his chest.

Daniel and John walked up to them, and Alex spoke over Sarah’s head as he hugged her against him. “We’ll be fine here,” he told them. “Keep going.”

Sarah’s head popped up. “It’s not over?” she asked, looking at Daniel and John.

“Alex mentioned a fourth man up at the caves,” John said. “We’ll go deal with him.”

“He’s not there,” Sarah informed them, effectively stopping the two lawmen. Alex closed his eyes on a deep sigh. Why wasn’t he surprised? “Do you happen to know where he is?” he asked.

“He’s at the bottom of the cliff,” she said softly. “I think he broke his leg when he, ah…when he tripped and fell over the edge.”

Alex counted to ten, but when that didn’t work, he simply pulled Sarah against him as Daniel grabbed a coil of rope off his sled and trotted up the trail toward the cliff with John. “You’re going to be the death of me, Sunshine,” he growled into her hair.

Honest to God, he wanted to…he wanted to…aww, hell! “Dammit, Sarah, quit crying,” he ordered, rubbing his thumbs across her tear-stained cheeks. “And tell me where you’re hurt.”

“In here,” she cried, thumping her chest. “In my heart.”

“Your heart?” he repeated in alarm. “You’re having a heart attack?”

“Yes,” she said, glaring up at him. “And you gave it to me. You scared me spitless, you jerk!” she shouted. “And if you don’t quit growling at me and tell me you love me right now, I will die.”

Relief washed through him. “I seem to remember saying that hell would be covered in three feet of snow before I’d say those words to you.”

Sarah suddenly gave him a smile that made him go weak in the knees. “I’ve been sitting in hell for the last hour—and the snow looks about three feet deep to me.”

He started to tell her the words she wanted to hear, then snorted. “Oh, no you don’t. That smile isn’t going to work this time, Sarah. You’re not distracting me from the fact that you probably helped that guy over the edge of the cliff. Not to mention that you had no business coming up here in a skidder in the first place.”

“Even if I came up here to tell you what I’ve decided?”

Alex groaned. Following his skidder over the cliff might be safer than hitching himself to this maddening woman for the next fifty years. He ran his fingers up the back of her neck into her hair. “So what have you decided?”

“That I want a honeymoon.”

“What?”

“In England. Then I want to take one of those hovercraft ferries to Europe and make the grand tour.”

Alex opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“We’ll have to go in the summer when the kids aren’t in school,” she continued, “because they’re going with us. They need to realize there’s a big, wonderful world outside these woods.” She frowned.

“But it’ll have to be next year, because I’ll be too pregnant this summer.”

Alex looked toward the cliff, then looked back at Sarah, who was smiling up at him again. “Say it,” he demanded as he pulled her toward him.

“I love you, Alex Knight.”

“I love you, Sarah Knight,” he said at the same time, just before covering her mouth with his. And damn if she didn’t kiss him back with all the passion of one hell of a feisty woman. Alex folded her against him and deepened the kiss, letting her know just how glad he was about her decision—that is, until she muttered something into his mouth.

He leaned back. “Now what?”

“You taste like blood,” she said, still succeeding in keeping him off-guard with that damn smile as she reached up and touched the crusted cut on his forehead. “I think it’s time we headed home, don’t you?” She suddenly sobered. “But we don’t have a home to go to anymore. They burned it down.”

He gave her an encouraging smile. “Your sporting lodge is about to have its first guests, Mrs. Knight. We’ll move everyone over there.”

“But Delaney and Tucker will be devastated. They’ve lost everything but the clothes they wore to school today.”

“We’ll make them see this as an adventure.”

“And all your mother’s beautiful things—Grady’s going to think he’s lost Rose all over again.”

“Grady’s tougher than all of us put together,” Alex assured her, looping his arm around her shoulders to guide her up the trial. “His grandfather came here from Norway seventy years ago with nothing more than a double-bladed axe and a hundred dollars in gold.” He looked over at her and bobbed his eyebrows. “You didn’t know you fell in love with a Viking, did you?”

She gave him a sultry smile. “I’ve read a few Viking romance novels.”

“Really? I wouldn’t mind reading a story with a Viking hero. Out loud, of course,” he added with a wink, only to stop short when he spotted the fourth man’s snowmobile sitting half off the trail, its nose buried up to the windshield in the bushes. He looked down at Sarah and stifled a sigh. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that just before he tripped over the edge, the guy crashed his sled into the trees?”

She gave him a maddeningly guileless smile. “Lucky for us he’s a bit of a klutz, huh?”

“Why don’t you take Sarah down on the guy’s sled?” John suggested, walking over to them as he brushed snow off his pants from his climb out of the ravine. “Then you can take my cruiser to the hospital and get both of you checked over. We’ll haul this guy up and bring him down on Daniel’s sled. I radioed for backup, and when they get here, we’ll find the other three men.”

Alex led Sarah over to the snowmobile, yanked it out of the bushes so that it was pointed down the trail, and turned the key.

“I broke—I mean, it broke when it crashed,” she said when it didn’t start. Alex reached down on the handlebars, lifted the emergency kill switch, turned the key again, and the engine immediately started.

Sarah glared at the button on the handlebars. “What did you do?”

“The guy must have accidentally hit the kill switch when he crashed,” Alex explained, setting Sarah on the seat. He sat behind her. “This is the throttle,” he said, placing her thumb over the lever on the right handlegrip. “And this is the brake,” he added, placing her left fingers over the lever on the left handlegrip.

“And that,” he said, pointing to a dial on the dash, “is the tachometor. Try to keep it below 2500, will you?”

She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “You’re going to let me drive us down?”

He lifted his feet onto the running boards, securing her legs inside his. “You managed a runaway skidder well enough. I think you can handle this little sled.”

She shot him a beautific smile that outshone the sun, turned forward and nestled into his chest, and squeezed the throttle with all her might.

Alex winced at the pain in his right thumb wedged under the throttle, and kept his left hand within inches of the kill switch as his heroine wife finished rescuing him.