On the other, his snide rejection stung.
Of course she had threatened to kill him, and she had tried to beat him down.
Obviously, he hadn’t considered that a turn on, or a come on, she thought wryly.
Despite her uneasiness about his temper, she found she felt immensely more secure in Dax’s cabin than she thought anybody with any sense should have.
She wasn’t all together certain she would have objected all that strenuously if he had taken it as an invitation. In fact, she was fairly certain objecting would have been the last thing on her mind.
It was a good thing she’d managed to thoroughly piss him off, because she was a complete moron. “You want me to stay here?” she asked, proving to herself and Dax that, yes, she was an idiot.
He sent her a look. “Not especially,” he growled.
There was nothing quite like a warm welcome, Lena reflected miserably, but at least she didn’t have to worry about anybody else trying to kill her. Just Dax.
“Nigel will know me,” she said abruptly.
He said nothing, merely staring at her speculatively.
“I knew right off when they … when they....” She broke off, struggling against the sudden urge to burst into tears. “They killed him, didn’t they? There’s no chance that they just imprisoned him?”
His face hardened. “None.”
She wanted to cry. She hadn’t really had the chance to let go of her grief over losing Morris. She’d been too scared at first to let on she knew it wasn’t the real Morris, and too busy since the attack trying to stay alive. She saw that Dax wasn’t just angry. The knowledge hurt him, too, and it didn’t seem right to inflict her own sorrow on him when he was struggling so hard to contain his. She’d loved Morris like a father, but he had been Dax’s father. That had to wound him deeply, maybe more so because he’d seen so little of him in years and there had been a tremendous barrier between them that they couldn’t seem to bridge.
“I’m so sorry,” she said shakily.
He sent her a surprised look and then frowned, pouring himself a second drink. “About what?”
Right up until he asked, she hadn’t realized that she had so much she should apologize for. Guilt swamped her. “About … everything. About Morris, about hitting you, about blaming you when it was all my fault.”
He sent her a searching glance and finally shrugged. “Like I said, I figured I had it coming.”
She saw with a touch of relief that he merely sipped the second drink. “It wasn’t really your fault, you know.”
She tried not to look too hopeful.
He scrubbed his hand over his chin tiredly. “Mostly, you were just caught up in the middle of things completely out of your control. Nigel would’ve been dragged in even if you hadn’t gone to him for help. They would’ve still gone after you, and he would still have felt the need to try to help you.”
Lena thought that over. She knew that much was true, but she also knew that she’d set the entire thing in motion by deciding to try to talk Morris into coming to live with her. “I led them to him, didn’t I?”
He shrugged. Leaning back in the chair, he lifted his long legs one at the time and stretched them out on the desk top, crossing them. “Maybe.”
Lena got off ofthe bed, looked around for someplace else to sit and finally sat down on the edge of the bunk again. “I’m pretty sure I did. He said something was going on at the clinic where Nigel worked, and I went to see him not long after I’d been.”
Dax’s gaze flickered over her. After a moment, he drained his glass, set it down carefully on the desk top, and got up.
As she watched, he rounded the desk and moved toward her. Her ass came up off of the bunk as he neared her. He sent her a wry glance as he dropped down on the edge of the bunk, tugging his boots off.
Lena put a little more distance between them, eyeing him uneasily.
“They were already on to Morris,” he murmured, lying back against the pillows and draping an arm across his eyes. “That’s why I was there the day you came. He’d sent for me, because he didn’t trust anybody else with what he had to say.”
Stunned by his revelation, Lena moved back to the bunk to stare down at him and finally perched on the edge. “They were? You mean … I didn’t lead them to him? It wasn’t my fault?”
He sat up so suddenly Lena merely gaped at him, too surprised to consider what the purposeful gleam in his eyes might mean. She gasped as he caught her and rolled, pressing her to the mattress and pinning her down with his weight.
A faint smile curled his lips as he gazed down at her startled expression. “Don’t look so hopeful,” he murmured, snuggling his head next to hers on the pillow. “I’m dead on my feet. I wouldn’t be of any use to you if I tried anything.”
