Free Woman On the Run by Lisa Marie Rice Page B

around his head, making him look slightly unreal. Those strong, unhandsome, craggy features seemed chiseled from stone, as if he were a statue in the mist instead of a human being in the cold. Only his eyes glittered.
    For some obscure reason, Julia found herself staring into those bottomless eyes. She was no longer frightened of him, not really, however forbidding he looked. He seemed so remote, so untouchable. Yet he’d shown her—and Fred—nothing but kindness. It was hard to square that kindness with a man who could make his little son so miserable.
    They were so close and he was so tall, she was getting a crick in her neck looking up at him. Fred kept swinging his head back and forth between his new friends.
    It was as if he held her in some kind of thrall. When Julia felt herself beginning to lean forward as if Cooper’s eyes were a tractor beam in a science fiction film, she stepped back and tried to collect her scattered thoughts.
    “Rafael,” she said breathlessly. She found it impossible to tear her gaze from his. “He’s such a nice little boy. I’m sure that with a little bit of help, things will straighten themselves out.”
    He was standing blocking her doorway and precious heat was dissipating into the gelid night. Wisps of steamy warm air curled around his legs. He turned and walked across the rickety porch. The second step down had a loose plank and it creaked. She watched him walk across her small garden. Halfway across he stopped and turned. “Miss Anderson…”
    “Sally,” she said.
    “Sally. Rafael is…” Cooper hesitated.
    “Yes, Cooper?” Her voice sounded soft in the snowy darkness. “Rafael is what?”
    “Not my boy,” Cooper said. He turned on his heel, climbed up into his pickup truck and drove away into the black, sleety night.

* * * * *
    Cooper could drive the 27.2 miles from Simpson to the Double C blindfolded and handcuffed, using his toes, which was a damned good thing because all he could see was Sally Anderson’s face in front of him and all he could think about was his steel hard-on, which fucking hurt.
    It still hadn’t gone down. Cooper was worried that his cock had somehow zeroed in on Sally Anderson and now had a serious jones for her and her alone. This probably meant he was never going to have sex again in this lifetime, considering how he’d behaved. He hadn’t been able to get more than ten words out and had rubbed his hard-on against her when he held her after she’d been frightened by the trick-or-treaters.
    She probably thought he was some kind of weirdo who couldn’t talk to women, just rub up against them for his jollies.
    Still, he couldn’t fault his cock for its excellent taste. There was just something about Sally Anderson. Something about the quality of her skin, pale and so luminous it seemed to glow as if there were a light within. Or maybe it was the clear turquoise eyes, the color of the sea at Coronado at dusk. Whatever it was, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.
    She had a small dimple in her left cheek when she smiled and he suddenly wished he could have coaxed another smile out of her, just to see it. But he’d lost the art of making a woman smile, if he’d ever had it. He could rappel down from a hovering helicopter, scuba dive to 200 feet, make a two thousand yard shot, tame the wildest horse, but making a woman smile…that was another matter.
    Cooper knew everything there was to know about soldiering and everything there was to know about livestock. But damned if he knew how to coax a beautiful woman into his bed.

* * * * *
    “Not my boy.” Julia thought in bed later that night, as she read the same paragraph for the third time in a row.
    Now what on earth did that mean? That Rafael was his wife’s child? If so, not my boy seemed such a cold, cruel way of putting it. But Sam Cooper didn’t strike her as cruel.
    Granted, he wasn’t the most articulate of men—though Julia felt that was due more to a defect of