“Right. Probably nothing will come of any of it.” Jac turned the chocolate bar around in her hands, staring at it as if she wasn’t quite certain what it was. “They’ll all be too busy following him around for a while, anyhow. If I stay here, out of the public eye, I just might make it through the summer.”

“I’m so sorry,” Mallory said.

“There’s no need to be. I’m used to it by now.” Jac refolded the newspaper and buried it in the bag along with the other trash. “I’m complicit to a degree. I went along with my father’s demand that I disappear to save my mother the strain of family strife and to give my sister a few more months of a normal life.”

“What about your life?” Mallory caught Jac’s hand and threaded her fingers through Jac’s. Such strong, capable hands.

Jac cradled Mallory’s hand between hers, stroking her thumb over Mallory’s knuckles. “I’m okay, really. I wanted this job long before my father decided it would be a good place to hide me. I’m just sorry you got saddled with me, and now this.”

“You’ve earned your place,” Mallory said. “I’ll admit, I was irritated when I thought you had gone around procedure to get a position, but I understand now what happened. You didn’t make it happen, your father did.”

Jac’s fingers tightened on Mallory’s. Light glanced off the knife-edge plane of her cheek, shadowing her eyes and casting the line of her jaw in sharp relief. “If I’d known this was coming, I wouldn’t have—”

“Wouldn’t have what?” A heavy weight settled on Mallory’s chest. She’d finally stopped running. Or almost. And now, what if it was all for nothing? “You wouldn’t have what, Jac? Wouldn’t have kissed me?”

“You don’t know how vicious politics can get.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“I do.” Jac clasped her hands between her knees, her face averted.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t know the answer,” Jac said softly.

“Let me know when you do.” Mallory fastened her seat belt, put the Jeep in gear, and drove into the storm.

Chapter Twenty-seven

“Looks like we have the place to ourselves,” Mallory said when she drove into base a little before six in the morning and pulled up in front of the hangar. A single light glowed over the shack door. All the windows were dark and the land vehicles were gone.

“Guess everyone’s at field camp,” Jac said, trying for a business-as-usual tone. The storm had finally tracked west, giving them clear skies for the final leg of their return trip. There wasn’t even any snow on the ground when they reached Yellowrock.

“At least they aren’t sleeping in snow out there.” Mallory rested her arms over the top of the wheel and rolled her shoulders. “We haven’t missed much—they’ve probably just got camp set up.”

“You’re not going to head right out, are you?” The last hundred miles had taken almost eight hours, and while Mallory drove, Jac had pretended to nap even though she wasn’t sleeping. She was still processing the news about her father, and still reeling from the kiss. She couldn’t quite believe she’d asked to be kissed—nothing could be more not her—or that Mallory had relented and actually touched her. Damn, what a kiss it had been too, just slow enough to bring her blood to a boil and hard enough, possessive enough, to make her hungry for a lot more than the kiss. If they’d been anywhere other than the front seat of the Jeep she wouldn’t have stopped with kisses. She’d been close to not being able to put on the brakes, even though she hadn’t gone all the way in a car since she’d moved out of her parents’ house and gotten her own place. Mallory lit her up like no woman ever had.

Now she was half sorry she hadn’t stopped before the kiss even got started. Knowing how well Mallory teased and taunted with the lazy play of her mouth, how demandingly Mallory’s hands skimmed over her, how good Mallory felt in her arms already made her throb for more, and there couldn’t be a worse time for her to get involved with anyone, especially someone she cared about. Her life was about to turn into a zoo. She’d been through this before—she was going to be on display every bit as much as her high-profile father, only this time she’d have nowhere to hide.

When her father had first run for the senate, she’d been in her late teens and suddenly been catapulted into the public eye. The whole family had been. Her father was no ordinary senatorial candidate, even then. He’d already been highly vocal and highly visible in the conservative Patriot Party—his family money and a great deal of financial and political support behind the scenes had skyrocketed him onto the national scene overnight. Reporters descended like locusts.

She’d been followed by paparazzi, her high school friends and enemies had been interviewed, and more than a few had been willing to talk about her partying and dalliances with other girls. That had been the beginning of her father’s behind-the-scenes campaign to make her conform to the image of the daughter he needed and, barring that, to at the very least make her invisible. Now that he was a presidential candidate, she wouldn’t be able to find a hiding place deep enough or dark enough to avoid the spotlight. And anyone close to her was going to be fair game. She didn’t want to drag Mallory through the kind of scrutiny she’d experienced for the last decade or so, even if Mallory thought she could handle it. “So what’s on the agenda?”

“I’d say we’ve earned a day of rest,” Mallory said. “Sarah and Cooper can handle the training for now. I’ll check in with Sully a little later and tell him we’ll be out tomorrow morning.”

“Okay.” Jac climbed out of the Jeep and dragged her pack with her. She slung it over her good shoulder and leaned down to look back at Mallory. “Do you mind if I grab a shower first?”

“No, go ahead,” Mallory said slowly.

Jac turned away from the questioning look in Mallory’s eyes and headed toward the standby shack. Once she got out into the field, she’d be able to put some space between her and Mallory. Mallory would be busy with the training program, and she’d be busy making sure she passed. She’d come here to work. At least she’d still have that.

Mallory sat behind the wheel, watching Jac stride stiffly across the yard. She could practically feel Jac’s pain rippling on the air and clutched the steering wheel, frustrated and more than a little bit scared.

She’d never seen Jac close down this way, draw in on herself, go so cold and remote. “Ice” would suit Jac now, far more than her. She felt completely defenseless, without her usual shields and barricades. That simple kiss had ripped them all away, and she wasn’t sure she could put them back even if she wanted to. She didn’t think she wanted to. For the first time since she’d carried Phil and Danny’s bodies out of the mountains, she didn’t feel empty inside. She didn’t feel frozen. Jac had done that.

Jac, with her persistent honesty and fiery passion, had thawed the heart of her grief until she’d had no choice but to embrace it, and once she did, the terrible sorrow burned through her and purified her pain. She would never stop grieving, but she didn’t feel paralyzed in an endless loop of unrelenting guilt any longer.

The standby shack door slammed shut with a crack that echoed across the still yard like a gunshot. Jac was gone. Retreating, running away, and since Jac was no coward, Mallory could come up with only one explanation. If Jac pulled back, erected walls, she would do it because she thought Mallory needed protecting from the kind of intrusive scrutiny that had forced Jac to distrust everyone.

“I’m not everyone,” Mallory muttered. Jac spent altogether too much time trying to protect the people around her at her own expense—her mother, her sister, and, whether she acknowledged it or not, her father. In an effort not to compromise her father’s campaign, to spare her sister the kind of embarrassment that most teens would find devastating, and to shield her mother from family strife, Jac had willingly stepped aside. God, she’d even taken herself off to war, where even death didn’t scare her.

“Well, enough of that.” Mallory pocketed the keys, grabbed her gear, and followed Jac.

The shower was already running, and Jac’s clothes were heaped on the end of the bench. Mallory hesitated, took half a second to think rationally, and finally admitted she’d already gone well past the point of logic. She’d kissed Jac. More than once. If she let Jac pull away now, she might as well say none of it had mattered. And she couldn’t.

She stripped before she could panic and eased around the corner into the shower room.

Jac had turned on two showerheads full blast and the room was filled with steam. Jac leaned against the far wall, her arms braced, her head down, her back to Mallory.

Water cascaded in sheets over the bunched muscles in her shoulders and along her spine, breaking up into rivulets running over the rise of her ass and down the backs of her thighs. Jac’s right shoulder was discolored, a purplish bruise spreading down her arm and back, and Mallory wanted to kiss the hurt away. That hurt and every hurt Jac had ever suffered. Mallory’s skin misted with want and her throat closed. She ached to touch her, to trace her fingertips over the crests of Jac’s shoulders, along her arms. Her breasts swelled and her nipples tingled and she wanted to rub herself against Jac’s back. A tiny fragment of her brain still worked, and she cared too much about Jac to take her by surprise.

“Jac,” Mallory murmured, her voice breaking. Jac didn’t move and Mallory’s heart leapt into her throat. She wasn’t sure she could make her legs move enough to turn around and leave, but she would if she had to. She wouldn’t be another person Jac couldn’t trust. She wouldn’t go where she wasn’t wanted, but she couldn’t leave unless she knew for sure Jac wanted to be alone. “Jac, I’m here.”

Slowly, so slowly Mallory thought her heart might stop beating, Jac turned and flung the wet strands of dark hair away from her eyes with a flick of her head. Her tight breasts lifted away from her sculpted chest and the columns of muscles in her abdomen tensed. Her gaze raked down Mallory’s body. “There’s plenty of room.”

“I didn’t come to share the shower,” Mallory said, still not moving.

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

“No. Yes. Mostly.” Mallory moved closer. “I know right now I want you more than I’ve ever wanted any woman in my life. I can’t stand not touching you any longer. I can’t stand you going away—”

Jac groaned and pulled Mallory close, forcing their wet bodies together, and swallowed the rest of Mallory’s words with a kiss so hot and so hungry Mallory stopped breathing. Her thighs turned to molasses, and she wrapped her arms around Jac’s waist for support.

“Your shoulder,” Mallory gasped, backing Jac against the shower wall on the far side of the stream of water. She steadied herself with her arms against the wet tile on either side of Jac’s chest and pressed her hips between Jac’s legs. She was so aroused, so swollen, that the little bit of pressure was enough to make her come.

“Shoulder’s better already,” Jac rumbled, sweeping her hands down Mallory’s sides to cup her ass, yanking her even closer. She slid her teeth down Mallory’s throat and sucked lightly in the hollow between her collarbones.

“Be careful,” Mallory whispered, the first tendrils of pleasure unraveling inside her.

“Doesn’t hurt.” Jac kissed lower, over the curve of Mallory’s breast, until she licked the water droplets from Mallory’s nipple. Her tongue was soft, tantalizingly warm.

“Not talking about your shoulder.” Mallory arched, her head fell back, and she climbed another notch closer to the crest. “You’ll make me come.”

Jac laughed and massaged Mallory’s ass. “Damn right I will. But not just yet.”

“I don’t think,” Mallory gasped, shifting to straddle Jac’s thigh, “that’s up to you.”

“You feel so good. So wet, hot. Not rushing.” Jac’s breath came faster. She cradled Mallory’s breast in one hand and stroked down the center of Mallory’s stomach with the other, feathering her fingertips just above her clitoris.

“Oh God, touch me.” Mallory couldn’t stop her hips from rocking, couldn’t stand up much longer. She dropped her forehead to Jac’s shoulder and pushed herself harder into Jac’s hand. “Please, I need you. I need you now. There. Right there.”

“Soon.” Jac spun Mallory around until Mallory’s back was against Jac’s chest and her ass cushioned in the curve of Jac’s pelvis. Mallory moaned, protesting, feeling the absence of Jac’s heat against the front of her body like a missing part. And then Jac’s hands were caressing the curves of her breasts, cupping them in her palms, dancing her fingertips down Mallory’s belly. Making her tremble. Making her crazy.