Chill by Stephanie Rowe Page B

mother.”
    Isabella stiffened against him and she lifted her head to look at him. “What are you talking about? I thought she died on vacation.”
    “Yeah. Vacation.” Suddenly, he was back there again. Eight years old, stashed on some Caribbean island with his mom. And then the men had come. With guns. His mother dead. Sprawled across the floor.
    “Luke? You’re hurting me.”
    Luke immediately loosened his grip, startled to discover he’d been crushing Isabella against him. A bead of sweat trickled off his brow, and he shook his head to flick it off. He stopped walking and pressed his face into her hair, breathing in her scent. The hint of lavender, the perspiration, the musty scent of real woman. He narrowed his mind until he was entirely focused on the scent spreading through his body. He drilled his attention down like he did when he was engaged in an experiment, or flying in bad weather. Utter focus.
    Isabella squirmed in his arms, and Luke lifted his head from her neck. “You okay?” he asked.
    “You’re wigging me out.”
    He grinned, hoisted her higher on his hips and resumed his trek toward the road. “Psychotic Alaskan redneck?”
    “Something like that.” But she sighed and put her head back on his shoulder. It was actually more like she let her head flop back down because she couldn’t hold it up anymore. “Why are you helping me get out of Alaska? And for free?”
    Her repetition of the question triggered something in Luke, and he frowned as it registered. It wasn’t a casual question. Isabella needed to know why he was helping her. Why was it so important to her?
    “Luke?”
    “I won’t allow another woman die at the hands of Marcus Fie,” he snarled. His mother first. Then Anna.
    Anna had been what changed it all for him. Anna had been the point of no return. Anna had been a tragedy that still made his very soul turn over at night when he tried to sleep. Which was why he avoided sleep as much as possible.
    Isabella tensed against him. “You sounded like Marcus when you said that,” she said. “The Marcus that scares me.”
    Luke stopped in his tracks, stunned at her words. “I did?”
    She lifted her head to look at him. There was fear in her eyes. “Does that side rule you, or can you control it? I can’t live with it.”
    His fingers dug into her hips. “I am not Marcus,” he snapped. “I would never hurt you, or anyone.”
    She stared at him, searching his face for answers. He tensed at her hesitation, and he replayed his response in his mind.
    And even when she shrugged and put her head back on his shoulder without answering him, he wasn’t satisfied.
    He knew she was right. He had, for a split second, once again become the man Marcus had spent a lifetime trying to turn him into. Cold, ruthless, willing to kill.
    A man he had become for one night eight years ago, and the blood was still caked on his hands.
    Luke had walked away from that life, from that destiny, from that side of himself eight years ago, when he’d moved to Alaska.
    And in one night, Isabella had taken him back to that person, to the edge of that path that led to hell. Tothe side of himself that was his truth. A truth he despised. A truth he would not allow.
    Even if it meant leaving Isabella to the vultures trying to kill her?
    He swore as he looked down at the injured woman clinging to him. After Anna, after his mother, after that night eight years ago, he had to protect Isabella.
    But as God was his witness, she was not going to bring his old life back to him.

C HAPTER N INE
    It took almost three hours for Luke to circle back through the woods to the airport. Isabella had long since fallen asleep in his arms, her body slumped against his as he worked his way unerringly through the woods. She was trembling from the cold, and he’d long ago ditched his sweater and wrapped it around her. His adrenaline was so high he barely felt the cold wind whipping through the trees.
    Like most bush pilots, Luke flew on