it was as though he had opened something inside her during that time in a cramped little hole in the desert. he had rescued her. he had protected her. and as danger swirled around her he had teased her and made her want to fight at a time when it felt as though the fight had been sucked out of her.

and that was how he made her feel now. like fighting. like tearing down the obstacles she knew stretched between them, and she knew it could be done so easily.

she could betray natches, or she could betray the rules she had lived her life by. and at this moment, she knew the choice she was going to make. no matter what tomorrow would bring, she chose natches. the naughty dream that haunted her, the man who owned her soul.

i love you. she mouthed the words against his chest because she couldn't bring herself to say them yet. as sanity began to whisper through her mind once again, that one shred of fear remained. she had only told one person in her life that she loved them, and that tiny vision of purity was gone now, jerked from her so brutally that she had feared she wouldn't survive it.

that edge of fear still held its grip on her, strangling her with the words that wouldn't whisper past her lips and bringing tears to her eyes as she held on to natches tighter.

"i love you, too, chaya," he said, his voice rough. "it's okay, baby, because i love you, too."

twelve

somewhere in the darkness of night, she had to have lost her ever-loving mind. and finding it again didn't appear to be an assignment natches was going to allow her.

"look, you have the information, the interview files, and the recordings," she told him the next morning as the first rays of the sun began to peek over the tops of the mountains. "i need to return to my hotel room-"

"and check out," he interrupted her, his voice controlled, mild, as he went through the files she had transferred to his laptop. "you'll move into the apartment with me. dawg and rowdy should have the door fixed by now."

she inhaled deeply. "that's not going to work right now, natches."

he lifted his head slowly. it was a curiously dangerous movementthe way he did it. the calculated restraint in it had her holding back the shiver that would have worked up her spine.

"why? because you won't have a chance to rebuild all those nifty little defenses you keep between us?" he asked, his mocking smile grating on her temper.

"because i won't have the investigation compromised any more than it has been already," she told him. "i'm sharing information with you despite direct orders to the contrary. do you have any idea how many years cranston could put me behind bars for that?"

he merely grunted at that and turned back to the file.

"i'm meeting mayes in just a few hours. i need clean clothes, and i have my own notes to put together as soon as cranston sends the new list of interviewees this morning. i can't do that with you breathing over my shoulder."

"you might as well give it up now," he murmured. "you're not driving back to that hotel alone and you're not staying there alone. you don't want to stay at the apartment, that's fine. i'll stay at the hotel."

he said it absently, his eyes narrowed on the laptop screen, as though simply because it was his decision then it was a foregone conclusion that it was happening.

"natches, you seem to be forgetting something here," she told him coldly. "this is my investigation and my job. i don't need your help doing it."

"so you keep tellin' me." that smooth southern drawl deepened, causing her to wince. this wasn't the sexy, lazy drawl. this was the cool, velvet drawl of a man who had no intentions of backing down.

"do i poke my nose into your garage?" she finally snapped. "do i tell you how to fix cars or how to deal with customers?"

he lifted his head and stared back at her. "not yet."

that shut her up and she hated it. turning her back on him she propped one hand on her hip as she nibbled at her thumbnail and glared at the covered window.

despite cranston's orders to keep the mackay cousins out of the investigation, she would have cheerfully told him to shove it if she thought the investigation would proceed better with natches involved. unfortunately, she had a feeling she knew exactly where it was headed, and she didn't need natches there for that.

she had read his file so many times she had nightmares about the childhood he had endured. his father was ex-marine and a sorry bastard. dayle mackay was a bully, heavily muscled; he had nearly beaten a young natches to death more than once. natches's back still held the scars of the most brutal beating that he had taken, at the age of twenty. the night his father had disowned him, he had beaten natches to the floor then ripped his back to shreds with a lash. all because natches had refused to allow his father to strike his sister, janey mackay.

"you'll only complicate matters for me at the moment, natches. as well as bring cranston out of the woodwork." she turned back to him as he lifted his head once again and stared back at her. his forest green eyes were mocking, his smile knowing.

"it's not happening, chay." he closed the files out before leaning back against the couch and watching her with hooded eyes now. "from this moment on, just call me your shadow. because doing this alone isn't going to happen."

"i have the sheriff with me. most of the people i'm talking to seem to share a dislike for you, natches. it wouldn't be conducive to my investigation if you're there."

he just smiled. a patient, questioning smile as though he were trying to figure out exactly why she was still arguing with him.

she propped her hands on her hips and glared back at him. "okay, let's try it this way. you are not accompanying me on those interviews. period."

"it makes me hard when you get mean, chay," he drawled. "come over here and sit on my lap while we discuss it." he patted his knee invitingly and she wanted to kick herself for almost moving toward him.

"you're just being an ass now, natches. stop it and let me do my job. i can be amazingly adept at that when i don't have to deal with men who think they can do everything better than i can." she smiled with false sweetness.

"it's hard to watch your back when you're concerned with watching where you're going." he shrugged. "i watch backs real good. ask the marines, they loved me."

of course they had, he had been a suicide mission waiting to happen for over four years and probably would have taken another tour if a sniper hadn't taken out his shoulder.

there was talk that natches had arranged the hit, that he knew it was coming and managed to deflect the damage. chaya knew better. natches didn't play games. oh, he may well have known the danger was there and that the shot would be taken. his instincts were so well honed that he had probably felt it coming and, yes, deflected the damage. but it wasn't arranged. natches was too honest for that, too in-your-face to ever play those games.

"i don't need you to watch my back here," she told him. "that's the sheriff's job. you have no place in this assignment, and you don't need to be involved."

and he just smiled. again.

"damn it, natches. you're not even a contract agent on this assignment. i am not letting you butt your nose into it."

"are you ready to go pick your stuff up at the hotel this morning? you can pack while you're waiting on cranston's e-mail to come through."

he was as immovable as the mountains surrounding them. stubbornness defined his expression and the cool green of his eyes, and had her gritting her teeth to hold back her anger and her desperation.

was it too much to ask for just a few hours to think? to clear her head enough to make sense of what she had done the night before? was that too much to ask for? evidently it was as far as he was concerned.

"you are not returning to the hotel with me. i know how to pack on my own." there was no getting out of moving in with him, and she knew it. but at the moment, that was as far as she was willing to go. "you can give me that redneck pride and stubborn look until hell freezes over, but i'm a fairly competent agent, natches. until cranston begins sending names that might actually trip some tempers in your fair little county, i'm doing this by the book. period. and my book says i follow orders. and those orders say no mackay cousins involved. period."

frustration flickered in his eyes-and an edge of anger-as he rose from the couch, standing to his full, impressive six feet two inches. and he glared at her. natches's glaring was sexy as hell, but it was also damned intimidating.

"you don't know this town or these people," he argued again. "you don't know which questions will trip tempers, and from the looks of the previous questions, tempers were more than likely tripped further than what you believe. this isn't the city, chay. it's kentucky."

"you make it sound like another planet." she rolled her eyes at his tone. "they're still people, natches."

"are they?" he growled. "one of the good ole boys you questioned can shoot a deer from over a half mile out and his hunting rifle is sighted for even farther distances. how much easier would it be to take out one lone little agent?"

"and now you stop bullets, too?" she widened her eyes in mock surprise. "why, natches. why didn't you tell me sooner that you were freakin' superman?"

she watched him grind his teeth, the bunching of his jaw muscles, the flattening of his lips. yeah, it was sexy as hell, but pretty damned intimidating.

"i was a marine assassin," he snarled. "do you think i won't feel those sights on you before some stupid bastard takes the shot? i know what it feels like, chay, and you don't want me going hunting if something happens to you, because the first son of a bitch i'd look up would be timothy cranston."

chaya almost took a step back at the banked anger in natches's eyes. she wanted to tell him yes more than anything. but if she gave in to him now, then she may as well turn the entire investigation over to him because she would completely lose control.

"and do you think i don't know when i have gunsights leveled on me, natches? do i really look that fucking green? that i'm not aware of when i'm pushing too many damned buttons?"

"international fucking terrorists are not damned pissed-off rednecks," he almost yelled. "no rules here, chay. no warning. no instinct, unless you're one of them."

she held on to her own temper by a fingernail.

"my strength in these interviews is the fact that you aren't with me, and though you've been shadowing me, you're far enough away that most people are more amused than concerned. you'll hamper my ability to get the answers i need, natches, and that will only hinder the investigation."

"and you think people aren't going to know you're living with me?" he crossed his arms over his chest and glowered back at her.

"where i sleep isn't as big an issue as you sitting there terrifying everyone i question or having you chauffeur me from place to place. if we change the process at this point, we hamper it."

"and what the bloody hell does that have to do with me returning to the hotel with you this morning?" his voice rose slightly, just enough to assure her that his patience was reaching its limit.

"because i need a few minutes to think if you don't fucking mind," she yelled back at him. "excuse me, natches, but you have my brain in so many damned pieces it resembles a puzzle right now."

"he does have that habit." dawg stepped in as he slid the sliding glass door open and stared at chaya, who fought to pull her anger back and adopt the cool, unaffected appearance she gave everyone but natches.