“I don’t know why your name hasn’t been released,” he answered. “Unless whoever is after us thinks you know something that may be helpful to them if they get to us before the police do. Or something that may be harmful to them if the police find us first.”
Tara raised an eyebrow. “But I don’t know anything,” she protested. “I’m the innocent bystander in this mess.”
“Believe me, I’m aware of that,” Blake said regretfully.
Tara closed her eyes—only for a moment, she promised herself. “We have to figure out what’s going on,” she murmured. “We have to do something.”
“We will,” Blake assured her. He leaned over her, bracing his left arm on the other side of her, and gently stroked a strand of hair away from her cheek with his right hand. He lingered, slowly tracing the line of her jaw with his fingertips.
Tara’s eyes flew open as she became suddenly aware that she was practically lying in Blake’s arms.
His face was very close to hers, his eyes focused on her mouth. He was looking at her the way he sometimes did in her fleeting daydreams. As if she was a woman a man like him could find interesting. Exciting. Desirable.
She found him all those things, of course. And more.
He was everything she’d never been.
For just a moment, she had a crazy, reckless urge to reach up, wrap her arms around his neck and pull him down to her. To redirect all the pent-up energy that still lingered from their harrowing evening. But years of scrupulously developed self-control overcame that imprudent impulse. She lay still, looking up at him, wishing things were different Wishing she was different.
After a moment, Blake drew back with what might have been reluctance. “Just get some rest, Tara. I’ll keep watch for now.”
It occurred to her that it had been a very long time since anyone had “kept watch” over her. She’d become accustomed to taking care of herself, to being totally on her own. Everyone she knew seemed to think she was too strong and tough and competent ever to depend on anyone else. It was an image she’d fostered, but one that had felt like a trap during the past two weeks.
It felt rather nice to have someone else take charge for a little while, she mused, her thoughts beginning to drift. To have someone else do the worrying and the planning for a change.
There weren’t many people she would have trusted enough to put herself into their hands.
Oddly enough, considering that she hardly knew him, she trusted Blake.
It was the last clear thought she had before she allowed herself to fall asleep.
IN TARA’S DREAM, the man was lying on the floor, bleeding, his eyes open and staring into hers. Silently, he begged her to save him.
She turned to run for help, only to find herself facing the senior partners of the Carpathy, Dillon and Delacroix law firm.
“Don’t just stand there gawking, Ms. McBride,” Mason Carpathy ordered her sternly, glaring over the rims of his ever-present half glasses. “Take care of this
situation.”
“But I don’t know how. I’m a lawyer, not a doctor.”
“A lawyer?” Carpathy looked at his colleagues, who all smirked. “Not a very good one. We fired you, remember?”
She shook her head. “But I—”
The man on the floor moaned, reaching out to her.
“Aren’t you going to help him, Ms. McBride?” Earnest Dillon demanded.
She turned to Lester Delacroix, the one partner who’d tried to defend her during her downfall, though even he had been forced to concede in the end that the longtime client who wanted her fired was more important than one young attorney. “Please, Mr. Delacroix. Help me.”
He regarded her with a mixture of sympathy and disappointment. “You wouldn’t listen to my advice before, Ms. McBride. Had you done so, you would still be employed. Why would you ask for my help now?”
“But this is different! Please, don’t make me—”
The man on the floor gasped, coughed. His eyes rolled back.
Carpathy scowled over his glasses. “You’ve let him die, Ms. McBride.”