Surrender the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page B

Before she could do much more than pause, a loud crash, followed quickly by the thud she’d been expecting earlier, resounded from the bathroom.
    “Damn his stubborn hide,” she muttered. Dropping the laundry, she ran to the door, but stopped just short of opening it. Five minutes ago she’d stared him down when he was buck naked, without so much as a flinch. Yet now … Maybe it was the disturbing realization of how strong her need was to rush to his aid that made her hesitate.
    A low string of expletives issued forth from behind the door. Rae released a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. “At least you didn’t knock yourself out.” Squaring her shoulders and blanking her mind, sherapped twice on the door. “Incoming,” she called out. “Prepare accordingly.”
    Get him well
,
get him out
, she reminded herself as she twisted the knob. Nothing could deter her.
    Rae gasped audibly as the door swung wide.
    Nothing, that is, except the sight that greeted her on the floor of her bathroom.

THREE
    “Haven’t you wasted enough blood?” Rae’s tone was curt, but more from the return of the spine-tightening tension than from real annoyance. “I know I’m not the greatest hostess in the world, but I’ve never had anyone try to kill himself over it.”
    Jarrett was lying on his side on the floor, a thick turquoise towel haphazardly tucked around his hips. Blood ran from a cut somewhere on his hand or wrist and pooled on the aquatic-print bath mat. Fragments of glass lay on the sink and the floor by his legs.
    “Most people have plastic cups,” he said, gripping his hand to stanch the flow of blood.
    Rae quickly yanked a small towel from the rack and knelt by his side. She took his hand firmly in hers and wrapped the terry cloth around his palm. “Put pressure here,” she said, placing the fingers of his other hand around the towel. “And you should know better than anyone that I’m not most people.” She stood, saying,“I’ll be right back. I think I have some gauze left out in the studio.” She looked down at him as she passed the door. “Roll over on your back before you hurt your shoulder again. And try not to drip any more blood on my rug, okay?”
    Jarrett opened his mouth to tell her just what he thought of her instructions, but she was gone. He sighed and rolled onto his back. Damn, but she was tough. But then, he acknowledged grimly, to survive what she’d undergone, she had to be tough and a whole lot more.
    Scowling at the unwanted prick to his conscience—a conscience that her every word seemed to be reminding him he still had—he shifted over onto his good leg and awkwardly worked his way up until he could sit on the closed lid of the commode. The towel was barely more than a sop to modesty, and not a very convincing one, but that was the least of his concerns. She’d made it perfectly clear that his big naked body posed no threat to her female susceptibilities.
    He spent a moment wondering if Rae had ever been the modest type. He had no idea. It shouldn’t bother him that until that moment he’d only thought about her in a professional sense; he was that way with all of his employees. Security, along with personal choice, dictated this stance. Rae had been top-notch, his best courier. Her specialty had been delivering sensitive information in terrorist situations. She was efficient, quick thinking, highly trained, and single-minded about completing each and every mission successfully.
    He knew what he’d read in her school file, the information provided by her counselor, and what the morein-depth follow-up background report had revealed. But beyond that, he knew nothing personal about the woman.
    When he’d first met her, he remembered thinking that despite their strikingly dissimilar upbringings, they were remarkably alike. She’d been orphaned young, while he’d been raised as far as his teens by a father who had loved him very much and whom Jarrett had idolized. Jarrett