Snowball's Chance Read online

Joe dropped her onto the closest one, then held her arm as she tried to shoot to her feet. “Easy. Easy—Damn it, woman, no biting! Sit your pretty ass down. I swear I’m not going to hurt you. We need to talk.”

  There wasn’t a vestige of color in her face. Amber freckles stood out across her ashen cheeks like cinnamon sprinkled on fresh snow. Her pretty hazel eyes were terror-wild as she stared up at him. Joe felt like a heel for scaring her. Feeling like a heel pissed him off. The fact that she could be stone fucking dead right now pissed him off even more. He’d handled this wrong. Joe hated being wrong.

  “You have five bullets in that peashooter of yours,” he said grimly. “You should’ve shot me, for Christ sake. Don’t give an attacker a chance to take the gun from you. Didn’t they teach you that at—Oh no you don’t.” He yanked her by the arm as she tried to make a break for it. She sank against the soft, copper-colored leather, her chest heaving beneath the cheerful red sweater.

  “You don’t think I’m going to sit here passively while you do God only knows what to me, do you?” she demanded through white lips, breath hitching. Her entire body vibrated with tension as she watched him like a mongoose watched a snake.

  Joe withdrew his hand from her arm. She rubbed where he’d been holding her with her other hand. Now that he’d seen the obscene scar running across the base of her throat he felt sick to his stomach. He rubbed his hand across his face. “Don’t run. Please,” he said quietly, dragging his gaze away from the healing gash made by Dwight Treadwell’s Ka-Bar knife. The scar was an obscenity across the smooth skin of Kendall Metcalf’s lovely throat just above the neckline of her cheerful red sweater.

  “I’m not going to sit here and chat with you before—” Her throat moved and she managed thickly. “Before—anything.”

  He felt like a God-damned bull in a china shop. When the hell had this turned from crap to shit? “We got off on the wrong foot—”

  “Gee. Ya think?” she interrupted, a little color returning to her cheeks. Sparks made her hazel eyes appear fiery green. “What’s the plan here, pal? I’m not going softly into that good night without fighting you tooth and nail, and I sure as hell refuse to have a polite conversation beforehand.”

  Joe rubbed a hand across his jaw. Shit. What a frigging mess. He gave her a steady look. She shot him a look of pure loathing. Fair enough.

  He pulled her little peashooter out of his belt in back. “Here.” She took it, flipped the safety off, pointed it at his groin, and glared at him.

  “Name’s Joe Zorn.” He took his wallet out of his hip pocket and flipped it open so she could see the bad photograph on his driver’s license.

  She frowned. “That expired three weeks ago.”

  Ah, hell! So it had. “That’s not the damn point, lady. It’s just ID—” Joe ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Look. Your business partner, Rebecca Metzner, hired me to protect you.” So much for his first vacation in two years. His boss, Roz, had hauled his ass off the slopes to do so.

  And look at the fine damn job he was doing protecting her so far, he thought with disgust. The woman looked ready to have a freaking heart attack.

  “But I gotta tell you, getting my nads shot off isn’t part of the contract, so could you point that thing someplace else?”

  She clicked on the safety, lowered the small barrel, slightly, and scooted back into the corner of the sofa. There wasn’t an atom of her body that wasn’t ready for flight. Even her flaming hair seemed to crackle and lift away from her shoulders as she moved, making a fiery nimbus around her head.

  Dragging in a ragged breath, she gave him a flat stare, chin tilted. Which exposed the raised red keloid tissue. “Protect me from what?”

  Christ, that scar was going to haunt him into his next lifetime. He felt too damn big. He’d been sent to protect her, and instead he’d scared the poor woman senseless. She needed protection from her protector, for God’s sake. “Who,” he corrected.

  Her pretty pinking-up lips formed the word who, but no sound emerged. She knew who. “Wh—” She had to lick her lips before she could get out that much.

  He gently took the wavering gun from her hand and laid it on the coffee table between them, before she accidentally on purpose shot him. “Dwight Gus Treadwell.”

  Even before he’d finished speaking, every vestige of returning color drained from her face. “No!” Her hand flew instinctively to her throat. “He’s in Washington State Prison.”

  Joe shook his head, and the spark went out of her eyes.

  She wet her lower lip, clearly trying to marshal her emotions before she whispered, “He won’t look for me in Montana.” She pulled her bare feet up close to her body, hugging her knees with her arms, and gave him a look that sent shards of ice through Joe’s veins. A look that said she knew she wasn’t safe. Anywhere.

  She crossed one pale, slender foot over the other, curling her toes defensively. Joe frowned at how ridiculously … vulnerable her feet looked. He dragged his gaze back to her face.

  Her large hazel-green eyes glittered. Not with tears, but with fury. “That psycho knows where I am, doesn’t he?”

  Without a doubt. Joe could practically hear shark music as the son of a bitch got closer. “The guards tossed his room after he escaped early this morning. They found a copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. One article had been torn out.”

  She blanched. “‘Local Designer Returns to Work After Harrowing Ordeal with Serial Killer.’” She quoted as if reading the headline.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Which means he knows about the party tomorrow night. Has the location.” Sheer, unadulterated terror showed in her expressive eyes. Shit. Shit and double shit. “Doesn’t mean he’ll come after you,” Joe added, though even he didn’t believe the backpeddling in his addendum.

  “He promised at his sentencing that he’d find a way to kill me.” Kendall hugged her calves even tighter. From her tone and the haunted look in her eyes, Joe figured she’d replayed that ugly moment in her mind a million times.

  Just seeing the photographs from Treadwell’s crime scenes were enough to turn Joe’s stomach. She was lucky, damn lucky, to be alive.

  He was here to make sure she stayed that way.

  “I’m just here as a precaution. Think about it. Treadwell is on the run with no money, no nothing. He’ll be recaptured soon but until then, I’m here to keep you safe.”

  She met his gaze, her eyes haunted but steady. “I appreciate the sentiment, but seventeen hours—a lifetime in Kendall Marie Metcalf years—being taunted and tortured by that lunatic before he slashed my throat taught me there’s no such thing as safe.”

  3

  Kendall’s mind shied away from the memory of that hellish eternity spent with Treadwell. Without conscious thought she lay her hand protectively against the base of her throat as she scanned the great room with a professional eye. Mentally she started making a list of what had to be done before she could leave. A coping mechanism she’d perfected in the last few months. She’d discovered that if she kept her body and mind busy enough, she could keep the horrific memories at bay. Almost.

  She needed to focus on what had to be done now so she didn’t lapse into a full-blown panic attack.

  She’d been so tired. So terrifyingly debilitated by her terror for those hours with Dwight Treadwell, that she’d almost begged him to end it—

  “Beg me.”

  “Go to hell.”

  He positioned the paring knife just above her left breast and applied just enough pressure for the tip to pierce her skin.

  She gritted her teeth to prevent herself from crying out.

  He did it again and again, decorating her torso with a neat pattern of dots. Each dot burned like fire.

  “Beg me now, pretty girl,” he whispered, leaning close to her ear.

  “F-fuck you.”

  Stop. Stop. Stop!

  The tree. The tree still had to be finished. Three hours.
Tops. The bedrooms were ready for the onslaught of guests, the mantels—oh blast it—except for the one in the small downstairs office, were done. That one would take at least an h—

  Good God! What the hell was she thinking? She jumped to her feet. Ready for action when there was no action to be taken. “We have to tell Denise to cancel the party!” Damn. Damn. Damn. The phone wasn’t working, and according to Joe, they couldn’t leave until the high winds and this snowstorm abated at least enough to make their trip marginally safer.

  She started to pace. It was a nice big room, and she lengthened her stride as her mind raced. “We have to contact the guests in the cottages. They’ll come with us when we go, of course, but we should warn them about Treadwell n—”

  “No.”

  “No?” She stopped pacing for a second. Had she taken all the flower arrangements from the mudroom to the bedrooms? She’d better check—She frowned at him. “No, what?”

  “No, we are not hauling innocent people with us all over God’s creation. When we leave it’ll be at a moment’s notice. And just the two of us.” He rose, withdrawing a large, nasty-looking black gun from the waistband at the small of his back. It looked mean, and powerful, and as if it meant business. Very much like the man carrying it.

  Even with Joe and his big gun here with her, her body was taut with fear. Memories of Treadwell and what he’d done to her were as much a part of her now as her distinctive red hair. She counted her own heartbeats as Joe stood.

  “Come with me.” He picked up her girl gun and handed it to her. He waited while she tucked it into the elastic waist of her leggings, then started walking, clearly expecting her to follow. “I want to check all the windows and doors.”

  “Sure,” she murmured absently, following him across the enormous room. She wasn’t much of a follower, but where Joe and that cannon went, so goeth Kendall Metcalf. “There are only two couples—”

  “I don’t give a damn whether they’re crickets I can stick in my back pocket. Nobody goes with us to slow us down. Conversation closed.”

  Conversation closed, she mimicked silently as she followed him into the dimly lit kitchen. The radio was still playing softly, and she went to turn it off to save the batteries as Joe checked the latches on the bay window overlooking the snow-blanketed front yard.

  She didn’t give a damn what he said. She had no intention of leaving four unsuspecting people here for that—that monster to find.

  Joe pulled the oak shutters closed over the black-and-white scene outside just as the lights flickered. They came on again briefly, then went out, plunging the entire house into pitch darkness.

  Treadwell exchanged the small paring knife for a big one, pausing only long enough to wipe the flecks of dried blood from his previous toy on her bare leg. She screamed in earnest when he started taking shallow slashes at her skin as he connected dots in an obscene scarlet geometric pattern.

  The lights went out….

  Kendall froze beside the center island, a feeling of dread replacing her concern about Denise’s guests. “Oh, God. He’s here.”

  “Not possible,” Joe assured her. “Hang tight, the generator—” The lights came back on. “—will kick in. Go and turn—”

  “The outside lights off.” She was already striding toward the mudroom where that control panel was located. She turned to look at Joe. He’d stopped dead in the middle of the kitchen. “Coming?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes looked a little glazed.

  Kendall shot him a worried glance. “You’re not sick are you?”

  He swiped a large hand across his jaw. “I’m fine. Hit those lights. I want to get cracking and check upstairs.”

  He sounded as if he were coming down with a cold. Which was unfortunate. Because just looking at him made her feel hot all over.

  Odd because she had felt nothing sexually in over a year. Not a flicker. Not even a nanosecond of thought. Yet here was this giant of a man, with his dangerous eyes and his sexy mouth and all she could think of was wanting to climb his body and kiss him.

  She shook her head. She was really losing it if she was this tempted to jump the bones of a man she’d just met. She’d had two fairly long-term relationships over the last ten years. She’d dated Jerry for a year, and Andy for more than six months, before sleeping with him.

  She just wasn’t that spontaneous. She liked to think things through. Weigh the pros and cons. Deliberate. Kendall bit her lip as she pondered this weird anomaly. Part of it, she admitted to herself, was the latent strength and power of Joe Zorn. Not only did he make her feel sexy; more important, he made her feel safe.

  Almost —almost—back to her previously invincible self. That in itself was a big turn-on to a woman who’d begun to believe her fear was part and parcel of who she’d become.

  The scars Dwight Gus Treadwell had inflicted on her weren’t all on the outside.

  Joe followed her to the door of the mudroom and waited while she dealt with all the plugs and switches for the outside Christmas lights. That done, she crossed to the counter and started cleaning up the mess she’d made earlier when she’d done the floral arrangements.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Her hands cradling wet newspapers filled with flower stems and stripped leaves, she glanced at Joe over her shoulder. “Cleaning up my mess.”

  He rolled his eyes. A very male, extremely irritating gesture, that immediately brought back to mind the reason she was racing hither and yon like a florist on speed.

  “Leave it,” he told her shortly, motioning for her to go through the door ahead of him.

  Kendall was so filled with nervous energy, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She dumped the armload of cuttings into a nearby pail and busied herself washing and drying her hands. “You’re annoyingly bossy, Mr. Zorn.” She turned to look at him.

  His gaze drifted to her mouth, and something elemental sparked between them. He hadn’t moved from the doorway, but Kendall felt crowded, breathlessly so. He lifted his eyes back to hers. “And you’re annoyingly … busy, Miss Metcalf,” Joe drawled.

  “Yeah?” He wasn’t getting out of the way, and she started to move past him. “Well, there are a billion things to d—” He snagged her arm and her gaze clashed with his. She forgot what she’d been about to say, her breath stopping altogether at the blaze of predatory heat she saw in his eyes. The smell of him—damp wool, woodsy cologne, male—was intoxicating, and made her giddy with longing.

  She ached to slide her hands under his sweater so she could touch hot, bare skin. She wanted to stand on her toes and press her mouth to his. God. She wanted him to kiss her until she forgot why he was here.

  Amusement danced in the smoldering flame of his blue eyes, but he didn’t smile back. “We’ve known each other all of—what? A couple of hours? And I already know a lot about you.”

  “Oh yeah?” She dragged in a ragged breath. “Like what?” It was almost impossible to have a coherent thought when all her senses were on overload. The smell of him, the strength of his hand on her arm, the radiant heat of his big body so close to hers—all conspired to make Kendall’s brain fog up.

  “You babble when you’re nervous.”

  Since right now she was pretty much speechless with lust, she blinked. “Excuse me? I don’t babble …. Okay, yes, guess I do. Sometimes.”

  “You make busywork when you’re scared.”

  That too. She narrowed her eyes and glared at Mr. Know It All. “So? I also own my own—very successful I might add—business, make the best homemade chili, and knit sweaters to die for. What’s your point?”

  His gaze moved over her face in a disconcertingly thorough sweep as though he were memorizing each feature, every freckle. Kendall’s breath caught in her throat as their bodies seemed to gravitate closer without them actually moving their feet.

  “I bet your bras match your panties.”

  Now that came out of left field. It also jump
-started her heart as though she’d been resuscitated. Holy cow. “That’s an incredibly personal observation for a stranger to make,” she told him primly. “And by the way. You’d be wrong. I don’t wear panties.” A thong, but not panties.

  “Ah, Jesus.” He choked back a laugh. “No fair.” He was still smiling when his big hands framed her face, then he touched a gentle hand to her hair. “Cool, not hot.” His voice was husky, thick with desire. A desire Kendall, too, was feeling. He stroked his hand down the glossy curtain, then curled his fingers beneath the strands to cup the back of her head, drawing her toward him.

  “You have the most beautiful hair.” He brought a handful to his face, rubbing the bright strands against his skin. “So soft. Smells like pears. Delicious.” He sifted the filaments through his fingers, watching intently as the red-gold strands drifted to cling to her shoulders and breasts.

  He traced her lower lip with his thumb, then bent his head and kissed her as if he were a starving man at a feast. The pleasure of his open mouth on hers was so intense Kendall went deaf and blind with it. His lips were firm, his taste heady, and the unexpected intimacy of his tongue curling against hers was shockingly sweet. Oh, Lord, Kendall thought, that feels so good. Wonderful. Amazing.

  Fisting his hands in her hair, Joe pushed her back against the doorframe, kissing her with the same urgency she felt. He pressed his knee to the juncture of her thighs. She whimpered with relief. She clutched at his arms for balance as he drew her against the muscled plane of his chest. She needn’t have bothered. Joe wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly against him, until their heartbeats echoed one another.

  She went up on tiptoe, wrapping her arms around his neck, eagerly pressing her mouth to his. Eyes closed, her senses flooded with the taste of him as he explored her mouth. There was nothing tentative about the kiss. Apparently he’d been as curious about the taste of her as she had been of him.

  She made a soft, inarticulate sound of need, of hunger, her soft breasts pinned against the hard plane of his chest.