ROCKY MOUNTAIN RESCUE by Cindi Myers Page B

her, calling for her, his little face streaked with tears.
    “Stacy, wake up. It’s all right. You’re safe.”
    She woke sobbing, the pillowcase wet from her tears. In the dim glow from the bedside lamp, she stared at Patrick. He’d removed his shirt, belt and shoes, and sat on the side of the bed dressed only in slacks. Light glinted on the dusting of hair across his muscular chest. Such an odd thing to notice at a time like this, she thought. It was such an intimate, masculine detail—maybe her mind’s attempt to avoid thinking about the bad dreams, or the reality that her son had been taken from her.
    “You had a bad dream,” he said, one hand resting warm and heavy on her shoulder.
    “I was dreaming of Carlo.” Her voice broke, and she closed her eyes in a futile effort to hold back more tears.
    “I really don’t think the people who took him will hurt him,” he said.
    “How can you say that? I read in the paper about children who are kidnapped and suffer horrible things.” She pressed her hand to her mouth to stop the words, though she couldn’t keep back the thoughts behind them.
    “This doesn’t feel like that kind of crime,” he said. “They wanted Carlo specifically, and I think they want him alive and unharmed.”
    “You can’t know that,” she said.
    “No. But I have good instincts about these things.”
    She wanted to believe him. He sounded so calm and certain. So reassuring. “I’m scared to go back to sleep,” she said. “Scared of the dreams.”
    “You need to rest.” He looked at the clock beside the bed. It showed 3:19 a.m., though it seemed days since she’d gotten off the bus in Durango. So much had happened.
    He reached to turn off the light again and she grabbed his wrist. “Please.”
    “You want me to leave the light on?”
    With the light on the chances of either one of them getting more sleep would be less. And she needed him alert and ready for action tomorrow. Or later today, actually. But the thought of facing the darkness again unsettled her. “Maybe you could just...lie here beside me.” She looked away as she spoke. He probably thought she was trying to come on to him; men always thought that. “Just lie here, nothing else,” she added. “I’d feel safer that way.”
    He looked past her to the pillow on the other side of the bed. “All right.” He got up and walked around the bed, then stretched out on top of the covers. “Will you cut the light out now?” he asked.
    She reached up and switched off the lamp. The weight of his body made the mattress dip toward him. If she relaxed even a little, she’d probably slide down toward him. “You should get a blanket,” she said. “You’ll be cold.”
    He reached over and pulled the spread from the bed closest to the door. “I’ll be fine now,” he said. “Get some sleep.”
    She closed her eyes and tried to do as he’d said, but the awareness of him next to her kept her tense. She lay rigid, trying not to move or breathe, waiting for morning.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked, long after she was sure he’d fallen asleep.
    You’re what’s wrong, she could have said. I want you here and I don’t want you here. “I don’t know,” she said. “So much has happened.”
    “You’ve been through a lot,” he said. “Too much.”
    “How do you deal with it?” she asked. “I mean, people shooting at you. Having to shoot other people.”
    “I try to stay focused on what’s important.”
    “What’s important,” she repeated. Carlo was the only thing that was really important to her. “Do you have a family? Kids?” She knew so little about him.
    “No family. No kids. My parents are still alive, but they retired to Florida. I don’t see them a lot.”
    “So it’s just you.”
    “I have a sister. She’s in Denver, so I see her as much as I can.”
    “That’s nice.” She’d always wanted a sister or brother, someone who knew her and all about her life and loved her anyway.