Jax dragged in a breath and let it out. He could have pretended to be watching for the water to boil. Instead he crossed to the table, pulled out the chair opposite Sam, and sat down. He eyed the cookies, but since Sam didn’t take another, he didn’t either.

All the way here, as they’d tramped through the snow, he’d been thinking that if they were going to be cooped up together, he was going to have to come clean with her.

His “okay” of agreement made her visibly relax, and he figured she’d probably thought he was going to keep stonewalling her.  Of course, he wasn’t going to tell her that a bunch of his friends were werewolves. But there were plenty of other talents he could mention among the group of Decorah operatives.

“Let me start with some of my coworkers.”

“Why?”

“It might make it easier to understand where I’m coming from. Frank Decorah is the founder of our agency and still runs the shop. He looks for men and women who have extra abilities that can help in our detective work,” he began.

“Extra training?”

“No, extra intuition.” He heard himself say, “Like one of us can communicate mind to mind with strangers, at least under certain circumstances.”

She seemed to mull over the claim.  “I guess I’ll have to take that on faith.”

“When you meet Jonah Raider, you can get a better explanation straight from him. The woman who later became his wife was being held captive by a serial killer.  He was able to reach out to her in her prison cell.  Or better yet, you can ask Alice about it.” 

Before Sam could comment, he went on.  “Another of our agents can pick up objects and get information about the owner.  Two of our guys are twins and can talk to each other without speaking—over distances.”

His gaze flicked to her face.  She looked like she was taking his word at face value—for the moment.

“And you?” she asked.

Well, they’d finally arrived at the moment of truth. “I told you Frank Decorah assigned me to this case. I started staking out the road where the UNSUB . . .”

“What’s an UNSUB?” she interrupted

“An unknown suspect. Frank was hoping I’d get enough insight into his next victim to keep it from happening again.”

“And you had to be out here so you’d be nearby when it happened.”

“Yeah.”

“I still don’t get how you knew it was going to be me specifically.”

He swallowed hard. “Okay, after I got the assignment, I started trying to focus on the next victim. At first nothing happened, and I was going to tell Frank it wasn’t working. Then I started dreaming about you.  I didn’t know your name, but I knew you were going to end up on this road—in danger.  After a week of the dreams, I started being able to tune in on you during the day.”

She reared back. “Let me get this straight.  You were spying on me?”

“No!”

“What would you call it?”

“I saw flashes of your life. I know you’re a teacher—of little kids. I know you love your job.”

“How?” she demanded.

“Because you’re always using your own money to buy supplies—and you’re always planning projects for the kids.” Before she could jump on that, he went on, “I know you cook instead of bringing in fast food. I know you have shelves full of books.  I know you have a flare for decorating your house. And I knew you were going to end up on the road here, but I didn’t know exactly when. I needed more information.” 

While she digested that, he got up and moved the pot off the burner before emptying packets of sweetened chocolate powder into two mugs.  He added hot water to each and stirred.

When he returned to the table with the hot drinks, her gaze was rigid. “I’m not comfortable with that. I mean, if you were . . . watching me . . . did you see me getting dressed? In the bathroom? What?”

“I . . . didn’t see you in any way that you would object to.”

“Except violating my privacy,” she said, punching out the words.

As if to add power to her observation, the wind outside picked up, howling around the corner of the little building, and he could imagine the snow swirling, obliterating their presence to the outside world. That was good. With the blackout shutters, the cabin would be invisible.

She was still staring at him, and he went on.

“I knew you had left home and were on the road this morning. Of course, I didn’t know you were going to have an accident, but I was worried about you out in this weather. I drove up and down this stretch of road half a dozen times. If I hadn’t been out looking for you this afternoon, you would be wherever that guy was planning to take you.”

She sucked in a sharp breath, then gave a little nod of acknowledgment. But it seemed she wasn’t going to let him switch the subject to his rescuing her.  Her lips firmed as she asked, “What else, exactly, do you know about me?”

He felt his insides clench. “I know you’re in some kind of trouble.  Or you’re seriously worried about something.”                           

He recognized at once that his words had been a trigger. He saw her struggling to hold her composure.  And then her breath hitched, and she started to sob.

It was the last thing Jax had expected.  He saw her trying to get control of herself and failing.  Maybe if they’d been in a bigger house, he would have given her some privacy.  No, that wasn’t true. He couldn’t stand that he’d cut to her tender core.

Without time to consider, he scraped back his chair, stood up, and rounded the table. Lifting her out of her chair, he sat down, then settled her in his lap. He expected her to resist. Instead she leaned into him and pressed her face to his chest, hiding as she sobbed.  When he felt her shoulders shaking, he stroked her and kept telling her everything was going to be okay, although he had no idea why she was in so much distress.

He had been watching her for over a month, and he had thought he had gotten to know her. But actually having her in his arms was different. She felt fragile and at the same time strong. And as he tried to comfort her, he wanted to wipe her tears away and then bring his lips to hers.

For long moments she continued to cry, until he knew she was making a mighty effort to get control of herself.

Finally, the storm raging inside her subsided. He’d left some paper napkins on the table, which she used to blow her nose.

She kept her face down for another few seconds, then raised her wet eyes to his.

“Sorry.” She pushed off his lap, and he felt the loss of her.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said as she settled into the chair across the table.

She swiped her hand across her face. “Okay, I had to get home because we just found out my mom has breast cancer. She’s scheduled for surgery right after Christmas.”

The way she said it stabbed at him. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. I know it was stupid to try to drive through the storm, but I kept thinking this might be my last Christmas with her, and I told myself that if I missed it, I’d hate myself for the rest of my life.”

“And now you’re probably going to spend Christmas with me.”

“Better than with him,” she clipped out.

And the family is going to wonder where you are, he thought, debating whether to voice it aloud. Maybe it was better to just leave that alone.

She dragged in a breath and let it out.  “Telling you about it helped.”

“Did it?”

“Holding it inside was a horrible strain. And now I’m wondering if I was building it out of proportion. I mean, Mom could end up okay. I know they’ve come a long way with . . . effective treatments.”

“Yes.”

As she let out a long sigh, it looked like weeks of worry were being lifted from her shoulders.  She let her gaze flick to the bags he’d brought in. “We can have Christmas Eve dinner.”

“Sounds good,” he answered, relieved that the atmosphere in the cabin had lightened a little.

She took a sip of the hot chocolate. “You might as well eat another cookie.”

“Dessert first?”

“Well, nothing about today is normal.”

“Right.”  Too bad that included their relationship. What was he going to tell her? That he’d fallen in love with her while he was spying on her?

Fallen in love?

The realization hit him like a punch in the gut.  He hadn’t admitted that to himself. But the reality had been staring him in the face for a long time.

He must have caught his breath, because she looked up at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You look—weird.”

“I’m just worried,” he managed to say, then kicked himself for grabbing at that excuse.

“About what?”

“That we’ll get snowed in,” he answered lamely.

She kept her gaze on him like she doubted his explanation, but she didn’t press him, thank the Lord.

To cover his stunned reaction to his own state of mind, he got up from the table and began poking in the carry bags on the counter.

“We both had a rough day. Maybe we should eat and try to get some rest.”

“Yes, right. “I’m sorry I don’t have the main part of the meal.  But I’ve got twice-baked potatoes.”

“I haven’t had those in years,” he answered, trying to focus on the food and not his roiling emotions.

“And two cold dishes.  Ham and broccoli salad and a green Jell-O mold with apples and pecans.”

“My lucky Christmas Eve. I was going to be lucky to get a can of tuna fish.”

She nodded, then walked to one of the windows and pulled the blackout shade aside, revealing the still-swirling snow.

As she let the shade fall back into place, she asked, “Could we walk to a place where you can get phone reception?”

“Maybe, but it could be a long walk through the snow, and I’m not going to take the chance of leaving you alone. We can hope that when I don’t check in, some of my Decorah buddies will come looking for me.”

She tipped her head to the side, considering the implications of what he’d said. “Isn’t this cabin safe?”

“I thought it was. But after you tripped over that stick, I’m reevaluating the situation.”

“Sometimes a stick is just a stick.”

“Sometimes it’s part of an alarm system. Let me show you something in case we need to make a quick getaway.” He got up, walked across the room and moved the bed aside. Below it was a place where she saw a rectangle outlined in the floorboards. It was a trapdoor, which he pulled up with a metal ring. The door exposed a narrow passageway below the floor. Leaning against the interior was a ladder going down.

“This leads to a tunnel that comes out twenty yards from the cabin, in a clump of brambles.  If we’re under attack, we might have to get out that way.”

She stared down into the secret passage, then back at him. “You went to the trouble of digging a passageway under the floor?”

“No. It was already here when Decorah rented the property. We just cleaned it out and shored it up with timbers. We think it was a stop on the Underground Railroad.”

“You mean where people helped slaves escape before the Civil War?”

“Yeah.”  He pushed the bed back into place. “We should eat, and you should get some sleep.”

“What about you?”

“I have to stand guard.”

“I can do that.”

He looked doubtful.

“All I have to do is wake you up if there’s trouble.”

“Let me think about it.”

She took the rest of the food out of the bags and put it on the counter. The Jell-O mold and ham salad were supposed to be served cold, but the potatoes were a problem. He decided to wrap a couple of them in aluminum foil, and put them in a skillet on the hot plate—and turn them frequently so they wouldn’t burn.

He gave her that job while he got out the plastic cutlery and paper plates he’d been using, then set out the cold dishes.

“How are the potatoes coming?” he asked.

She pulled the foil aside. “They’re a little warm. I think they need another ten minutes.”

“Okay,” he answered, thinking this was a pretty strange domestic scene. Frank Decorah had apologized for keeping him on assignment on Christmas, but he’d been afraid to give up watching the road. Now here he was with Samantha. That would be a dream come true if he weren’t still worried about her.