Free Her Last Defense by Vickie Taylor

celebrate life?
    She tipped her head back to look at him through the corkscrew locks of dark hair that shuttered her seductress’ eyes, to smile at him, and—
    Oh, hell. Stifling a groan, he lowered his lips to hers. Kissed her. Tasted her. Memorized the shape and texture of her.
    And realized that he’d dodged one bullet this morning, only to have another, in the form of a sexy, sassy little doctor, strike him dead in the heart.

Chapter 7
    M acy’s body softened like warm wax under the Ranger’s onslaught of a kiss. Her senses were overwhelmed with his woodsy smell, the feel of hard muscles and heat. Had she wondered if there was heat in him? There was fire inside this man. Molten lava, bubbling, unseen but felt, just below the surface of that stoic exterior.
    How did he hide it so well?
    Why did he hide it at all?
    What was she doing thinking when there was so much to feel, to experience? To enjoy.
    She stretched up onto her toes to give him fuller access. His hands slid down her back, pulling her closer, leaving her skin tingling along their trail. His hips surged forward, tantalizing her with an intimate impression of him against her thigh.
    Oh, my.
    “Macy, we need to know what you want to tell—Oh. Ahem.”
    Macy jumped away from the Ranger, dizzy. Her thoughts whirled. Her senses shorted out for a moment at the sudden loss of the high-voltage charge they’d been receiving only a moment before.
    Susan stood outside the clear plastic tent seal, her cheeks as red as strawberries behind her face mask. “Sorry to interrupt.”
    Gathering herself, Macy tugged her sweater down and cleared her throat. “You weren’t interrupting. We were just— That is—” She looked over her shoulder for help, found none. “We got a little carried away with the good news. What is it you said you needed?”
    Susan’s gaze jumped from Macy to the Ranger and back. “Umm—”
    “It’s okay. Whatever it is, he can hear it.”
    “We need to know what you want to tell the workers. Some of them are asking about going home.”
    Macy studiously avoided looking back at the Ranger. “Ask them to be patient a little while longer.”
    Susan nodded as she backed away. “Yeah. Sure. Okay.”
    Macy could feel the Ranger behind her. The air vibrated with his presence. Or maybe that was her, shaking in her tennis shoes.
    “You’re not going to let them go, are you?”
    A moment ago, she would have given this man her body, if he’d asked. The least she could do now was give him the truth. “I can’t.”
    “You can’t keep them here forever.”
    “Just until we catch the monkey.”
    “ If you catch the monkey.”
    “We’ll get him. But we can’t let the men go back to town until we do.”
    “Because they know the truth,” Clint said.
    “They’ll start a panic.”
    “Maybe you should have thought about that when you decided to lie to the public, to tell them you were out here looking for a rabid monkey, to begin with.”
    “I didn’t lie to anyone. I put my career on the line, trying to help you get the truth out, if you remember. And besides, I’m not just keeping them here because I don’t want them talking in town.”
    His eyelids flickered, almost imperceptibly. It wasn’t much, but she interpreted it as intrigue. He wondered what she was up to, she realized, and took some small measure of satisfaction in the fact that she recognized it.
    Maybe the Ranger’s control wasn’t so iron-clad after all. He showed his emotions, if subtly. A girl just had to pay attention, and know how to read them.
    She was learning.
    “You said they were good men,” she answered his unspoken question. “They know these woods. They know how to hunt, to track animals. I’ve got a bunch of city boys out there, and we’ve got a hundred traps to check, and keep checking until we catch that monkey. If we pair them up, they’ll make better time, cover more ground.” She looked at him through her lashes. “I need their help. Assuming