Page 30 of Her Tempting Protector

“Have everyone ready to leave when I come back.”

She nodded once. She seemed steady as a rock.

“Anything else?”

“Keep your gun with you at all times. If anybody but me, or one of my men, comes through that door, shoot to kill.”

* * *

Having him gone was a blessing and a curse. She looked down at the gun in front of her on the rickety table. She had the door of the shack propped open just a little bit so she could hear if any vehicle was coming.

A headache of epic proportions was coming on so she had taken some ibuprofen—hopefully, that would do the trick. Hopefully.

“Admit it, you’re confused and scared.”

Talking things through out loud was a trick she’d learned from a psychologist she’d worked with years ago. He’d told her that if she said things out loud, and owned those feelings, they wouldn’t have as much power over her.

“I’m confused. I’m scared.”

This didn’t seem to be getting the job done. She jumped up from the table and strode across the room to look in on her charges. They were both asleep. She plopped back into the chair. She tried again.

“I’m confused. I’m scared.”

She heard Derek’s voice in her head laughing at her. He would know she wasn’t claiming all her emotions.

“Cullen has me more scrambled than an omelet. Are you happy, Derek?” she hissed.

She hadn’t felt this mixed-up in years. What the heck was wrong with her? Maybe her hormones were acting up.

She traced the grain of turquoise painted wood with her thumbnail and laughed at herself. Yeah, her hormones, the ones that hadn’t even clamored when she’d been married for two years. Those non-existent hormones. Derek sure wouldn’t believe that she was fiercely attracted to a man in less than twenty-four hours, when she’d made him wait until their wedding night to sleep with her.

Her head shot up as she snorted with laughter. She waited to see if she’d disturbed either Shada or the baby. When she didn’t hear anything from behind the blanket, she went back to her thoughts. If you could call them thoughts. More like letting the squirrel loose in her brain.

What the heck was wrong with her?

Ouch!

She pulled the sliver of painted wood out from under her nail and sucked on her thumb.

She’d come a long way since those residency days when she’d tried to juggle a new marriage and starting her career. Why had she let her parents and Derek push her into that? To this very day, her parents still harped on the fact that Derek now ran his father’s car dealership in Omaha and lived in the gated community with his wife and two children, and that could have been her.

They’d had the gall to have him and his wife at one of their Christmas parties when she was there five years ago—since then she’d avoided going home for the holidays. It was painful, even to take phone calls from her parents since they made it clear that she had chosen the wrong path in their eyes. Instead, when she was Stateside, she spent a lot of time with her friends David and Sarah Sloane, and a very few others.

She pushed away from the table and scooped up the gun. She hated the darn thing, but it was necessary. She needed fresh air. Thinking about her parents always did that to her. She looked up into the night sky.

How gorgeous.

For just a moment, she caught a breeze and it felt sultry against her skin, magically it seemed to heat her from the inside. Cullen, with his blue eyes and broad shoulders, heated her from the inside out, too. She shivered, not from cold, but from a long-dormant feeling of desire.

Whoa there, girlfriend. Desire? I must be tired.

She closed her eyes and leaned against the side of the house, knowing she’d hear anyone coming down the distant road.

What was going on?

“It’s a phase. You’re going through a phase,” she assured herself.

Thinking about all the changes she’d made in the last year, quitting Doctors Without Borders, and the time she’d taken to really look at her history and think about her future, she wondered how she got to this moment. Right before she’d taken this assignment, she’d decided it was time to start an actual life. She’d been shortlisted for a job at a small hospital in Eugene, Oregon. She’d been in escrow for a house, it was only a few hours’ drive from Sarah and David’s place.