Susan stood frozen in the doorway to the kitchen, staring at Mac. Shock numbed her body. She couldn’t believe he’d just said that. After everything she’d shared with him, after the way they’d made love… He didn’t see her that way. He couldn’t think of her as a cripple. He wouldn’t have lied to her about it. About everything.

He stared back at her, guilt written in every line of his body.

He did. And he had. He’d lied to her about it all. His own words from yesterday came back to her with painful clarity. He said he’d do anything to get her to leave. Apparently, that included sleeping with her and playing her emotions like a concert violinist.

She was so stunned she couldn’t even work up the energy to be angry at him. Without any heat at all, she tried to call him a bastard, an asshole…anything. But her heart wasn’t in it. She had no anger. Just pain and more layers of pain.

Anguish sliced her heart into tiny shreds. She turned and fled, hop-skipping down the hall. She headed for the stairs but then she heard a chair push back abruptly in the kitchen. Instead, she fumbled at the lock on the front door. She paused just long enough to slip her feet into a pair of sandals on the mat by the door, and then she was outside, fleeing clumsily into the night, its blackness enveloping her. Fleeing from the man who had just broken her heart. Again. Oh, Lord. Not again.

Tears streamed down her face. She could barely see where she was going. She didn’t care where she went, as long as it was far, far away from him. She heard footsteps behind her. Shouting. Mac wanted her to stop. Fat chance. She might not be an Olympic sprinter, but she knew every inch of the ranch. She stuck to the gravel paths to avoid Mac’s various traps, and the smooth footing helped her make better time. She slipped past the barns, past the pond, out toward the thick tangle of scrub pines and live oaks that passed for a forest in this part of the country.

The footsteps were closer now. She put on an extra awkward burst of speed and ducked under the first branches. Shadows closed around her and she slowed down to catch her breath and ease off her protesting knee. She followed winding paths she’d trod since her childhood, heading for her and Tex’s secret playhouse deep in the heart of the woods. Dodging limbs and stepping over logs as much by feel as by sight, she pressed forward in a blind fury of grief.

Mac wasn’t bothering to yell anymore, and she no longer heard his pursuit, but she felt his presence behind her as surely as if he was breathing down the back of her neck.

She made it into the playhouse her father had built for her and Tex not long after their mother left. She ducked inside the child-size door and into the musty darkness. Leaves littered the floor, and she kicked them aside with her good foot. Her knee creaked warningly and gave an ominous hitch. She sat down on one of the low benches built into the walls.

She never heard him coming. One second she was alone, and the next, a black shape loomed in the door. Terrified, she looked up. His eyes were pools of black rage, and violence fairly radiated from him. She’d never, ever, seen Mac Conlon this angry.

When he spoke, his voice was a sibilant hiss. “If you ever pull another damn fool stunt like this again, I’ll kill you myself. Understood?”

Her eyes widened as she nodded. He looked like he meant it, too. She began to shiver as the shock of reaction began to set in. He moved fully into the tiny room, filling it with his furious presence. He glanced around and sat down on the only other bench in the space. She watched fearfully as he propped his elbows on his hiked-up knees. But then he let his head hang down, slumping between his hunched shoulders. The fight rushed out of her in a whoosh. Apparently, she’d scared the living hell out of him with her flight from the house.

But then her own pain came raging back full force. “How could you do that to me?” she whispered painfully.

“Do what to you, Susan?” he replied wearily. “Fight to save your life? Argue with my own teammates because they want to expose you to more risk than I’m willing to? Throw my career away because I can’t make the tough decision to put you in harm’s way when I have to?”

“How could you have used me like that? Did you have to play on my emotions to get me to do what you wanted?” she half sobbed. “Don’t you know I’d give my life for you if you asked me to?”

He ran a hand through his dark hair, a gesture of frustration and pain. “But that’s the point. I would never ask that of you. I’m here to keep you safe. My life is the expendable one.”

“Why?” she cried out. “Because you think you owe me one after I got shot the last time? You think this time it’s your turn to dance with death?”

He looked up at her bleakly, and his eyes were pools of black. She battered him with her words. “Does that give you the right to manipulate me like this? Is this what you’ve become?”

He swore under his breath. “I have not manipulated you. I’ve done my damnedest not to act on my feelings for you, but I lost the fight. You’re right. It is my fault that I wasn’t strong enough to resist you. But I swear—I swear—I never used you.”

Each word he uttered bit like a knife in her heart. She cried out, “Why should I believe you? You lied to me the last time you were ordered to drive me away from a mission.”

“This time I told you what my orders were. I told you I was supposed to make you leave. I was straight with you, which is most definitely against my orders.”

She shrugged. “I’m older and smarter. You needed a new tactic. It almost worked, too. I came very close to agreeing to leave. I was actually coming downstairs to tell you I’d thought it over and was going to do as you asked.” She laughed at the irony of it. “And then I walked in on you expressing your real feelings about me to your buddies.”

Mac surged to his feet, but sat back down abruptly when he nearly banged his head on the low ceiling. “How the hell do you know what my real feelings are? You’ve spent the last ten years believing I was a coward. Did it ever occur to you that I stayed away because I loved you? Because I thought that was what you wanted? That I ripped my heart out and let it bleed for ten years so you could have some peace?”

She stared at him in shock. Surely it wasn’t so… But his voice was ragged, and agony fairly poured off him. “Why should I believe you now?” she asked past the constriction in her throat.

He swore violently. “I lied to you just once, ten years ago, in the name of following orders and keeping you safe. Why are you so determined to believe I’m not telling you the truth now? Are you afraid to believe me? Are you the one who’s been the coward all this time?”

She reeled from the accusation. It cut bone deep, the way the truth always did. Was he right? Had she hidden behind anger at him to avoid facing her own fears? Her own sense of inadequacy? Her own insecurity over whether or not she was a lovable human being?

She stared out the tiny window for a long time, but no other answer came to her except a silent certainty deep down in her gut that he was right. Finally she released a shuddering breath. She’d blown it. She’d hidden behind her scars and her limp rather than face her feelings for Mac. She’d latched on to the fact that he’d lied to her as a defense against allowing herself to love him without reservation. She’d blamed him for their breakup, when it had been her fault as much as his, all along. He’d waited for ten years for a sign from her that she still wanted him, and she’d never given it. In her selfishness and fear, she’d hurt him far worse than he’d ever hurt her.

She half whispered, “You’re right. I was afraid to let you love me. Afraid I’m not worthy of your love.”

“But…”

“Don’t say it. I know you’re going to try to take the blame again. But it was my fault all along. Oh God, Mac. How can I possibly make it up to you?”

He reached forward across the small space. She would love nothing more than to curl up in his lap while he wrapped his strong arms around her, but she dared not. She leaned back, away from his hands. They fell back down to his sides.

“At the risk of completely pissing you off,” Mac asked quietly, “could you please explain something to me? Why is my wanting to protect you and keep you safe such a bad thing?”

She sighed. “It’s not a bad thing. But you deserve a woman who will love you with no strings attached. Without bringing all my hang-ups to the relationship.”

“I don’t care about the strings!” He took a deep breath and said more calmly, “My need to take care of you runs a lot deeper than mere responsibility. Deeper than my guilt over having a part in getting you hurt the last time around. But I have no idea how to convince you of that.” He stared out the same window she had a minute before. But then his gaze swung back to her, pinning her in place. “So how do we move forward from here?”

Her throat ached. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes briefly. “Great. I screwed it up this time, too.”

“Stop it, Mac. I don’t want your guilt. We’ve both lost too much already. It’s time to put the past behind us and move forward.”

“How? Am I supposed to just walk away from you?”

Hearing the words said aloud brought anguish bubbling right up to the surface of her heart. She felt ready to collapse on the floor. She’d seen the truth too late. Realized her mistake too late. She’d inflicted too much pain on him and he was throwing in the towel. Somehow she managed to choke out, “It’s for the best, don’t you think?”

He leaned across the tiny space and grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to meet his urgent gaze. “Susan, I’m not going to let you throw everything we’ve ever had between us away, dammit!”

He slid forward and knelt in front of her as he yanked her close and his mouth closed upon hers, hot and angry and desperate. She couldn’t bear to tear herself away from him. Most of her adult life had been tied up with this man in one way or another. Cutting him out of her world would be like chopping off her right arm.

His mouth lifted away from hers. “Does this feel like pity?” he demanded harshly.

He kissed her again, more gently this time, absorbing her into himself with his whole body. His hands roamed up and down her back and his arms pressed her close against his glorious heat. His tongue invaded the most intimate places of her mouth, giving as well as taking, evoking erotic sensations all over her body.

“Does this feel like guilt?” he growled.

With a quick bunching of muscles, he carried her down to the pile of old blankets on the floor in the corner. He discarded her clothes with quick precision, and she burned everywhere he touched her. She couldn’t help responding to him any more than a flower could help turning toward the light. He’d always been her sun, the center of her universe.

“Does this feel like obligation?” he whispered.

And then he was inside her, all heat and friction and driving passion. Her universe expanded until it combusted in a supernova of blinding pleasure, catapulting her out of herself and up into the diamond-studded blackness of space. How could she turn her back on this? On him? She strained ever closer to him, willing him to understand what she felt for him. Willing him to understand that she needed to trust him. Needed to find the strength in her own heart to allow them to be together.

He froze for a second, staring down at her like he would consume her, and then they both plunged into the abyss together, pleasure exploding out of them as one.

She floated, disembodied in his arms for an eternity, wandering slowly through the dark, starry vastness of the universe, back toward the tiny, distant speck that was reality.

“How can you still doubt my feelings for you?” he murmured.

And the lovely starlight shattered around her like the illusion it was.