The McClane Apocalypse: Book Two (8 page)

“You didn’t answer any of my questions. What’s a hee-low?” she repeats slowly.

“A helo is short for helicopter,” he educates her as he picks at the bark on a tree while the horse chomps on the sweet grass at his feet. Reagan has told them not to let the horses eat with a bit in their mouth but since she’s twenty miles away he feels it’s ok to do it.

“You were in a helicopter crash?” she nearly shouts to which Kelly laughs, earning him a big scowl from her. “Why are you laughing?”

“I’m not laughing at you. It’s just that it would be nice if it had been only one crash,” he tells her with another laugh.

“Oh my, Kelly. How many times were you in a helicopter crash?”

“Just three,” he explains nonchalantly because it really isn’t a big deal.

“Just three? Kelly you could’ve been killed!”

“Relax, Hannah. Me and John were both in two of them together, the third we were in separate helos. He got cut up on the first one pretty good, but I walked away without a scratch all three times. I’m harder to kill than you might think,” he explains with a grin.

“That’s not funny,” she scolds him as he smiles down at her, though she cannot tell.

“Come,” he orders softly.

Kelly grasps her small, frail hand in his, and they walk up a short incline that looks down over the back of the entire farm. He can see the house, barns, animals and tidy, fenced-in pastures. It’s an amazing view, beautiful, but he can’t seem to tear his gaze from Hannah for more than a second to enjoy it. Hannah trips over a tree root, and Kelly helps her back upright.

“Here, Hannah, get back on and sit in the saddle. I can walk now. We’re close to being back,” he states and tries not to notice her frown of disappointment that mirrors his feelings. He also does not want their time alone to end but knows that his responsibilities back at the farm are more important. He helps her foot find the stirrup and her hand locate the saddle horn. There’s no easy way of helping a person onto a horse without touching them. As she has no upper body strength to pull herself up and over, Kelly gives her perfectly-shaped bottom a small boost. Once she’s safely in the saddle with both hands on the horn, Kelly’s hand slides from her backside around onto her thigh. He remembers this pale, long thigh bare against him, straddling him in the back of the cattle barn with her dress hiked up. Kelly allows his big, beefy, monstrous hand that nearly covers her entire thigh to slide down her leg to her slim calf all the way to her ankle, past the silly, decorative zipper there. Hannah sucks a deep breath in and holds it overly long until she finally releases it shakily. His breathing has also changed.

“Hold on, here we go,” he says abruptly and pulls lightly on the reins so as to not send Hannah off the back.

“And what about the torture you mentioned?” she asks as they come down a short incline toward the back pasture of the farm where the cattle graze peacefully. Does she forget nothing?

“Hannah,” Kelly warns.

“I want to know you, Kelly. All of you,” she argues so convincingly. When he glances up at her, the sun streaking through her lovely locks, he’s awestruck by her charm and innocence and unknowing sensuality.

“God, why do you do this? You don’t need to hear about shit like that,” he grumbles at her.

“Don’t speak the Lord’s name in anger, Kelly. And don’t swear or Grams might hear you,” she teases and berates him at the same time. She is a dog with a bone and not about to let up on him. “Now, tell me. I don’t just want to know the pretty.”

“With you that’s all there is- the pretty. With someone like me, it’s all ugly,” he self-criticizes.

“That’s not true. You are good and kind and helpful. And besides, I’m not just the pretty, Kelly. I’m... well, I can be...,” she stops, at a loss for words and frowns.

“See? Even you can’t think of anything. Like I said, you’re just all good,” he corrects her. “Lean back. We’re going down the hill toward the fence.” She does as he says, but when they come to flat ground again, she’s right back at it.

“Well, ok, I’m boring. I’ll admit that much...” she says, but Kelly interrupts her.

“No, you see that’s not what I’m saying. You’re not boring at all. You’re actually very... interesting,” to say the least, he thinks. She’s also sexy as hell and the most unaware, sensual woman he’s ever known. “But I’m all kinds of dark and bad and screwed up, Hannah. You can’t do what we had to do and think that you aren’t.”

Hannah reaches down, which scares the shit out of Kelly because he’s afraid she’ll fall off but somehow doesn’t, and touches his head and then down to his shoulder.

“Tell me,” she says insistently but still in her angelic, soft voice.

“Ok, fine. Sometimes when we would catch bad-guys, they would have information that we needed so we could catch more bad-guys that they didn’t want to tell us about or at least tell us where they were hiding. Me and John and some of the other guys in our Special Ops unit would get them to... divulge that information,” he explains without giving up any of the gory details. Talking about making another man piss himself from pain and fear isn’t what he wants Hannah to know about him. He’d been an animal when the situation had called for it. And the situation had called for it many times.

“How?” Well, of course she wants to know the exact details of the macabre events.

“No, I’m not telling you that. And you can threaten me and bully me all you want. You’ll not get that information.” This gets a riotous laugh from her.

“Me bully you? That’s a good one,” she says and tosses her head back and laughs again, exposing the naked flesh of her long neck that he’d like to kiss and lick and travel further south.

Kelly stops again to open and re-shut the gate to the inner pasture where they continue to the barn, and he helps her down again. Where she floats right down the front of him like an innocent seductress again, whether she knows it or not. The mare sidesteps, impatient to be free of them, and bumps Hannah even closer into him, further testing his restraint, which is already thin at best. He wants so badly to kiss her right here in the open barnyard, right in front of anyone who might see.

“I need to take this saddle off and get her out to pasture,” he quickly rattles out to dissuade his degenerate thoughts and mostly to get rid of her.

“Ok, I’ll help.” Of course she will. Kelly bites his bottom lip until it is too painful to continue doing so.

He takes her and the horse into the barn where he hooks the mare to the cross ties to remove her gear. Kelly is shocked when Hannah runs her hand over the horse’s shoulder, finding the saddle girth and cinch strap and begins tugging until she gets it free. Obviously he’s been underestimating her physical strength. Carefully, lest he earn Reagan’s wrath, he removes the bridle, replacing it with a halter.

“Let me, Hannah,” he orders and gently moves her back two steps so that he can heft the saddle off of the horse.

His hands rest a moment too long on her slim shoulders. Why the hell does she have to be blind? There is no way of not touching her sometimes. He wishes that she had some other handicap that didn’t require him to touch her all the damn time. Then again, he’s starting to learn that Hannah McClane is very far from being handicapped.

The mare immediately starts prancing and whinnying to her friends that she’ll be right along to share in the mid-morning bounty of deep pasture grass and whatever it is that horses gossip about. They whinny right back to her.

“Wait over here,” Kelly says as he leads Hannah to stand directly with her back against a stall door where she’s out of his way. Again with the touching, “Stay right here. I’ll be right back, ok?”

“Aye, aye, captain,” she says and salutes proudly. Her salute is all kinds of fucked up, but she’s cute as hell doing it, so he ruffles the wind-blown hair on top of her head. She smiles broadly at him in response.

He has the mare out to pasture in six seconds flat. Conveniently, Kelly tells himself that it’s because he doesn’t want to leave Hannah alone too long, when in truth, it’s because he doesn’t want to be away from her for longer than six seconds. When he returns, she is right where he left her. At least she listened. This time.

“I just need to put this saddle and gear away. I’ll be right back again, ok?” he tells her, and she nods absent-mindedly. She has her head tilted back toward the barn roof, smiling to herself and swaying slightly.

“Hannah? You ok?” he pauses with all the tack on his one arm.

“Yes, I’m ok, Kelly. Are you ok?” she asks him in that soprano, Disney character voice without even glancing his way. He frowns at her but knows she can’t tell. Of course, knowing her she probably damn well can.

“What the heck are you doing?”

“Listening, smelling. I like the different sounds in here. It’s going to storm,” she says with absolute certainty. Sometimes she freaks him out a little, though he isn’t going to admit that to anyone, especially not her. Maybe she
is
touched like Grams infers.

“I don’t think so. It’s clear as a bell out today, hot, not a cloud in the sky,” he reports to her, trying to help her not feel foolish for incorrectly predicting the weather.

“No, it’s going to rain,” she declares with cast-iron conviction. He frowns at her again and shakes his head.

“All right, I’ll be back in a sec,” he concedes and walks quickly to the back of the barn where the tack room is located.

He hangs the bridle on its pre-determined hook and the saddle on its own rack to air out the underside’s thick wool padding. The plaid saddle pad and Navaho print blanket go on a different rack to allow them to dry the horse’s sweat more thoroughly. When he turns to go and retrieve Hannah, he nearly runs her down as she stands just inside the doorway of the tack room.

“Jesus, Hannah!” he exclaims. “You startled me. How the hell did you get over here so fast? I didn’t even hear you.” She smiles at him and looks at her feet, causing her hair to fall about her face in soft cascades.

“I just followed you. I
can
hear
you
. You aren’t exactly quiet, Kelly,” she purrs demurely and looks up again, pinning him with those strange eyes.

“Um, all right, let’s go to the house now, ok?” he requests uneasily and takes her hand. He wants to dump her in the house and go cut lumber or pick up a bunch of heavy bales of hay or muck stalls or do any number of laborious activities to get her off his mind for at least a short while. “I have work I need to do around here.” It isn’t a total lie.

“Want to go swimming?” she asks brightly, blinking and smiling, all lightness and charm.

“What? No!” he says on a ragged, quick whisper. Just seeing her in that, what he now deems as, too-snug polo shirt and those damn jeans is enough to raise a carnal lust in his groin. He is in no shape to look at her in the hot pink swimsuit again. He’d worked so hard that day on not looking at her or her long legs, or her creamy skin, or the deep vee of her cleavage which is more ample than he’d thought. And he has given it a lot of thought, even though he tries his damnedest not to.

“Why not? All you do is work hard around here. Let’s do something fun!” she says with child-like enthusiasm.

“No, that’s not responsible, Hannah,” he scolds her.

“That’s not responsible,” she mocks with derision and pokes out her bottom lip. He’d like for the second time today to punish her with a kiss but grits his teeth instead.

“That’s not funny, Hannah. Don’t be immature,” he tries to discipline her with harsh criticism. She takes a brave step toward him instead and tugs on his hand.

“So? What are you going to do about it? Am I making you mad?” she asks with a haughty smile on her mouth and tips her head to the side.

She steps again. He wants to step back but refrains. He has never backed away from anyone in his life. As a matter of fact, most people, especially women, backed away from him or retreated altogether.

“Yes, actually, you are,” he says a little louder this time, dislodges her hand from his and jams his fists onto his hips much the way he would if was talking to an errant child. She is becoming exasperating.

“I liked what happened the last time you got mad at me,” she says very quietly and grins up at him, showing two deep dimples. Kelly grinds his teeth very hard and feels his nostrils flare violently at those haunting memories, the feel of her slim body in his lap.

“Hannah, don’t say that,” he reprimands and looks heavenward for help. He’s not gonna get any. God tends not to grant the prayers and wishes of men like him.

“Why not? I did. A
lot
,” she murmurs like a sultry vixen. Where did she learn to act like this? She is killing him. “And if I have to anger you to get you to do it again, then I’m ok with that.” She raises the eyebrow of her paler blue eye at him jauntily.

“Don’t,” he demands as brusquely as he can manage. It doesn’t sound very convincing as his restraint wanes thin.

“Don’t what? Don’t do this?” she asks coyly and flattens her palm against his chest. Her fingers curl and uncurl against him there. He snatches her hand in his own, making her stop.

“That’s not appropriate behavior, Hannah. Your grandfather wouldn’t approve,” h reminds her, and she pouts daintily.

“Will you never kiss me again, Kelly?” she boldly asks, a frown puckering between her fair brows. Kelly’s legs about go out from under him with shock. She is nothing if not direct.

“Damn it, Hannah,” he swears with frustration.

It kills him when she looks down at her feet with embarrassment and twists her fingers nervously. She lets out a big melancholy sigh and raises her perfectly lovely face to his again and advances one step closer, which puts her less than a foot from him. But she starts worrying, playing with an imaginary braid in her hair, grimacing and just plain jittering about.

“I... I know that I’m not... you know, probably someone you’d ever be interested in. I just like you, and I wanted you to like me, too. And I know I don’t have experience or...”

“Kelly? Yo, you in here, bro?” Cory yells loudly from the vicinity of the barn entrance area. Damn Cory! He doesn’t want to leave it like this with Hannah, but now he has no choice.