The McClane Apocalypse: Book Two (26 page)

“That wasn’t very nice. You could’ve warned me,” he complains as he stands and strips off his shirt. What the hell? Does he do this on purpose to throw her off balance? “It’s midnight. You should get to bed. We need to move out early again tomorrow. Maybe not four a.m. early, but not noon, either.”

“Aren’t you going to bed, too?”

“I’ll be back in a minute. Gonna do a perimeter check,” John tells her gruffly as he retrieves his rifle from the table again. Wow, he’s still being grumpy about the chocolates. He really is a baby. “I’ll be back; just go to bed.”

She doesn’t need to be told twice, so she slips under the covers, shivering because her hair is still slightly damp. Sleep eludes her as she contemplates the bizarre day that they’ve had in the city. There is always so much going on in her life now, and it is all so much different than her life at school or working in the hospital. Six months ago, before her attack at the college and the fall of the country, Reagan had been more concerned about securing a position at Nashville General so that she could be closer to her family. She’d loved her work and the team with whom she’d worked at the OSU hospital in Ohio, but she needed her family more. It had been difficult being away from them while at college, and she’d longed to be near them again. Now she’ll never have that problem again. She just wishes the circumstances that brought her home had been different.

John slips stealthily into the cabin again, locks the door, extinguishes the lanterns and crawls into the bed beside her. He obviously believes that she’s asleep.

“I’m still awake,” she informs him.

He rolls to his side to face her, but Reagan refuses to do the same and keeps her back to him.

His deep voice lowers into a softer speaking tone. “Does your arm hurt? Or your side? Are you in pain?”

“Not much. I’m tougher than you think,” she corrects him. John chuckles at her.

“You really didn’t have to tell me that,” he answers.

They recline peacefully next to each other for another minute, and Reagan feels calmer just with his large presence so near her.

“Can’t sleep?” he asks in the darkness lit only slightly by the dying fire.

“No, just thinking about the family. I’m glad that I’m with them now. It was hard being away from them at school for so long,” she explains, although she’s not sure why. This is not the sort of thing she normally discusses with him.

“Yeah, I’m glad I made it home to Derek and the kids. It was hard when we got sent on separate missions, but that seemed to happen more often than not. Having Kelly helped, but he’s not my real brother. Plus, I like seeing Sue and their kids. It’s kinda’ weird when they call me “uncle.” Sometimes I forget they’re talking to me,” he admits. His deep voice resonates in the small cabin and sends shivers down Reagan’s back.

“She used to talk about you. Said you were so nice and funny and blah, blah, blah. She even said I’d like you if we ever met. Shows you what she knows,” Reagan teases him.

“Hey,” he says and pokes her in the back. Then he strokes her hair, bundles it in his fist and piles it high against her head so that she doesn’t soak the pillow. His touch makes her nervous. “I’m glad I made it to your farm because I met you, Reagan.”

The tone in his voice, coupled with the way he strokes her earlobe and then her neck makes her stiffen. John sighs and rolls back to his side of the bed. Thank God. Within minutes, he’s asleep. Good. She doesn’t want to continue on with that line of talk or the touching or the uneven, rushed way she is suddenly breathing. The things she feels for John are best kept buried. His machismo, his bravery and this constant need he feels that he should be the one to protect her never fails to unnerve Reagan. She’s never been around someone like John before. Her grandfather is brave, but his intellect is what he most often uses and what she loves about him. Her father was also probably brave, being a soldier, as well. But it wasn’t what she most remembered about him when, on the rare occasion, she actually thought about him. Chauvinistic and megalomaniacal were definitely more fitting descriptions of her father’s most memorable traits. He was nothing like John Harrison, soldier and devoted brother. There are a few reasons that she is glad he has come to live at her family’s farm, but she sure as hell isn’t ever going to tell him those.

Chapter Fifteen

Reagan

Just as the sun is rising, Reagan rolls to her side, the light from the single window in the cabin setting the room in a hazy, gray cast. It’s raining again. Shit. What the hell? Is this from the nukes overseas? She sure as hell doesn’t remember the end of summer being so wet before. Of course, it’s been awhile since she’s been home for a whole summer because she preferred to stay on campus to continue her research work at the university’s hospital. While young, nubile co-eds jetted off on planes to destinations with blue ocean water, cocktails on the beach and promiscuous nights spent with random strangers, Reagan had usually chosen to spend her time at school or on occasion she’d go home and work at her grandfather’s practice with him.

John’s bare back faces her as he lies on his side on his half of the bed. He sleeps quietly, almost soundlessly, but doesn’t awaken. At the farm he is always up so early, sometimes even before her. His breathing is deep and even. It gives her a chance to look more closely in the pre-dawn light of the cabin, the embers of the fire long since having gone out, at the crossing and intersecting white scars on his back. A circular scar near his shoulder would indicate a bullet’s exit wound. Toward the center of his back are wider scars, as if the musculature there had caused a whip or whatever has done this to him to make the marks more pronounced. His scars do nothing to diminish the beauty of John’s skin, though. Its caramel, tanned color set against the sinewy muscle is more than she wants to think on. And without thinking at all, Reagan runs a finger down his back three or four inches, tracing a scar and marveling at the different texture.

Without preemption or warning, John rolls in an explosion of movement onto his back where he comes over Reagan, pinning her hands above her head in a flash of movement so swift that had she known it was coming, she wouldn’t have been able to stop him anyway. The look in his blue eyes is feral, primitive, and she pants with fear that he’s about to kill her. Had she awakened him from a nightmare? What would cause such a horrible reaction in a person?

“Hey!” she calls to him in a rush of panic. “It... it’s me, John!”

His face is inches from hers, and it takes a moment before he awakens more fully, enough to reason out in his foggy brain that she’s not a threat.

“It’s just me,” she repeats shakily. His chest rises and falls at almost the same pace as hers does, but not quite.

“Sorry,” he mutters hoarsely and lays his head, face first, down beside hers on her pillow. He doesn’t get off of her, though. She can feel his hot breath coming fast in her ear as his cheek rests against hers.

“It’s ok,” she croaks out, wishing he’d get the hell off of her. This is beyond the no touching thing. This is a full-on body on body connection. After another fifteen seconds- because she counts them off in her head- John raises his head again, his chest rising and falling at a more controlled, calmer rate.

“I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” John asks with a great deal of concern as he releases her wrists.

Reagan’s not sure where to put her hands because he’s still on top of her. Her hands float around awkwardly, almost landing on his shoulders, then his chest. John, on the other hand, has no problem with what to do with his hands because he puts them on either side of her face and strokes her hair.

“No,” Reagan answers quickly, dismissively, hoping he’ll shove off. She refuses to make eye contact, preferring instead to stare at his bare chest. Where the hell had his shirt gone anyways? Hadn’t he come to bed wearing a t-shirt?

“I’m sorry, boss. I wouldn’t ever hurt you,” he reveals all the while his thumbs tread lightly over the crests of her cheekbones.

“Um, ok,” Reagan babbles uncomfortably.

She doesn’t trust him any more than she does any other man. Well, maybe she trusts him just a tad more, but not enough to allow him to lie on top of her. She shifts her hips- or tries to. His weight is half on her and half on the mattress. When he doesn’t move, Reagan finally glances furtively into his deep blue eyes. The anxiety he’d felt over potentially hurting her only a moment before is gone from his gaze and is replaced with something else. There is something there that is heated and something with which she’s unfamiliar. She doesn’t like it.

“Reagan,” he whispers huskily and runs the rough pad of his thumb over her brow bone.

John lowers his head toward hers, slowly as if he’s unsure of himself. A deep frown line pierces between his thick brows. His eyes close, but hers widen with fear... or some other emotion she doesn’t want to consider.

“What are you doing?” she breathes out in one surprised jumble of words.

“What I’ve wanted to do since I first met you,” John explains without his usual grin or good humor. His eyes are still hooded and sleepy. His blonde hair stands on end, and he smells musky, yet sweet.

“What? No! Get off!” she exclaims and presses at his muscular chest in a panic.

The evidence of his sudden, bizarre attraction is pressing against her outer thigh. She hopes that isn’t what she feels there, but Reagan’s not a total idiot when it comes to the male anatomy. And it doesn’t feel like some tiny, half-hearted attempt at the hardened male anatomy, either. There is no way he is getting near her like that.

She rapidly slides out of the bed, landing on all fours on the floor beside it. So it isn’t the most graceful exit, but at least it got her away from him. What the hell has gotten into him? First he tries to kill her, maybe, and then he attempts to kiss her? Men are so strange.

“What the fuck, John?” she yells at him. That ought to wake him up and cool his heels.

“Sorry! One minute I was sleeping, and then I thought someone was touching me. I just freaked. Were you... touching me?” he asks hesitantly.

“What? No way,” Reagan expediently spits a lie. Her toes curl into the hardwood floor.

“I could’ve sworn someone touched me, touched my back,” he admits with a shake of his head. He’s come up to a half sitting position. Reagan is still standing by the bed in her sweats and tank top.

She clears her throat and feigns a cough. “Hm, weird. Maybe it was a spider,” she lies again and looks at the wall.

He seems dubious. She isn’t about to confess to the crime. Hell no. He grimaces when she mentions the spider. Is he afraid of them? Doubtful. She doesn’t think John Harrison is afraid of anything.

“Look, just go back to sleep. I’m going to work for a while. It’s pouring down rain again, so there’s no sense in rushing out into this. It’s not even six yet.”

“Work?”

“Yeah, I found a couple books in that hospital, so I stuck them in my pack. Just go back to sleep. You haven’t slept much the last few days anyways,” she offers. He eases slowly back to a lying position on the bed, on
her
side of the bed. He inhales deeply of her pillow.

“Sorry about the... well, trying to kiss you,” John apologizes with genuineness. “Sort of.”

He chuckles once and is back to sleep before Reagan can even retort. He probably won’t even remember the whole episode when he awakens later. Good. She’s more than happy to put it behind her, as well.

Reagan crosses the room on shaky legs and digs for their radio to call the farm. She doesn’t want any of the family worrying about them. She reaches Derek, tells them about the rain and that they’ll check in again tonight. With no small amount of effort and certainly more than John ever exhibited, she finally gets the fire going again and heats water in the stainless steel teapot that she’d brought to the cabin in the spring. After fishing around in her sack, she finds the three tea bags she’d brought and tosses one in a mug. It’s bitter, not the sweet, honey-filled concoctions like she makes at the farm, but it’ll do. She even eats a package of the small coffee cakes they’d taken last night from Starbucks.

Pulling out her notebook, pen and a book on diseases of the female reproductive organs, Reagan begins her studies. It’s hard to concentrate with the softly snoring, half naked- mostly naked- man across the room from her spread out on the bed on his back, his arms flung over his head with careless abandon. Perhaps he feels safer having her watch his back and can finally sleep like he needs to. Perhaps he is just really freagin’ tired, too.

His wide chest rises and falls rhythmically, the bronze expanse of it so heavily muscled and strong. Upon further, uninterrupted inspection of John since he’s really only six feet from her, Reagan can just make out tiny laugh lines around his closed eyes that mimic the ones near his chiseled mouth. That mouth that had almost been against hers just a short while ago. Reagan shakes her head with a frown. Those kind of stupid thoughts are exactly what she doesn’t want or need to focus on regarding John. She wishes that he’d just leave their damn farm so she doesn’t have to think about him at all. Maybe he can also build a cabin at the rear of the farm and get the hell out of her bedroom back at home.

How he even laughed enough to get laugh lines she’ll never know. His job in the Army sounded dangerous. Sue had told her a few weeks back with a bit more detail about what the Rangers did for the Army. Dangerous was the understatement of the century. It was like saying that surgery was just like sticking a bandage on a diseased gall bladder. Her sister had recounted a few of the stories that Derek had shared with her over the years. She’d also admitted that Derek rarely talked of his service and what they all did for their country. So far, Reagan’s not sure how lethal John can be, but he’d managed to keep himself alive in the Army for twelve years in near constant warring in foreign countries so he must have a much different side to him. He’s also kept them both alive in the city, even though she believes that he lied about the hospital incident when she’d stayed with that family. She can’t imagine him just shooting at people to scare them off, but maybe he did. His life in the Army must’ve been like being in a different world. Always moving around the world, never being around his family, fighting for wars he may not have even believed in would’ve all been awful.