Sarah McCarty by Slade Page A

to the crib, or keep a gun pointed at her?”
    “Neither.” He pulled her up against him, brushing the hair off her cheek, shifting her hand out from between them when she frowned in discomfort. “I figured I’d appeal to her sense of injustice.”
    “Does she have one?”
    More than she should. “Oh, yeah.”
    “So you’re telling me she has a hero complex?” Caleb asked.
    “No.” He watched the scenery pass. “What I’m telling you is that I think she’s an empath who’s driven to make sure she never feels those feelings again.”
    Derek cast him another look over his shoulder, taking his attention away from the outside. “So you’re thinking of mating to a woman who doesn’t want to feel emotion. Nice.”
    It probably would be merely “nice” if she succeeded, but Jane was nothing but logic and emotion, the two uncomfortably coexisting. And he wanted both. He wanted that calculating mind and that passionate heart. In order to get through her defenses, Slade would have to be honest with her, and all he had to give her right now was lies.
    “I didn’t say a thing about mating.”
    Derek snorted. “I find it amusing that you Johnsons always start a relationship thinking there’s a choice.”
    “There’s always a choice.”
    “Then how come you didn’t give her one?”
    “She doesn’t know what she’s facing.”
    “Did you tell her?”
    “Yes.”
    “And yet you still forced her to come along against her wishes.”
    “Shut up, Derek.”
    Derek chuckled. “It should be interesting when she wakes up.”
    No. It was going to be straightforward and as uncomplicated as he could make it. “Not if you follow orders.”
    Caleb arched a brow as he looked at Slade in the rearview mirror. “You’re giving orders now?”
    “I always give orders. You just hear them as suggestions. Makes you more pliable.”
    “Uh-huh. Well you might take a minute to figure out how you’re going to suggest to Allie that she go along with kidnapping a woman.”
    “Allie won’t care if it means Joseph’s life.”
    “Have you met my wife?”
    “Many times.”
    “And you still believe she has a selfish bone in her body?”
    “She loves her son.”
    “Yes, but she won’t go along with this.”
    “She will.”
    A mother’s love was predictable. Reliable.
    Caleb snorted again. “Uh-huh.”
     
     
    “I am not participating in kidnapping the woman who might save my child’s life.” Standing on the wide, covered porch of her house, hands on hips, Allie tossed her head, causing the soft brown fall of her shoulder-length hair to swing about her expressive face.
    “Allie, be reasonable,” Caleb cajoled. “We need her.”
    “I am being reasonable. You’re being reactionary.” Allie shook her head. “Kidnapping a woman. Caleb, what were you thinking?”
    “Hell, what makes you think it was my idea?”
    Allie searched his gaze before turning slowly toward Slade, shaking her head. “I thought you were the reasonable one of the brothers.”
    “I’m always reasonable.”
    Just not always as balanced as people believed. But that was his secret.
    Slade looked toward the small cabin to the right of the main house where Jane slept in the big brass bed. Even separated by walls and a hundred yards he was drawn by that inner hum of rightness to touch her energy, to feel it close around him. He succumbed to the temptation, reaching out with his mind. Her energy was soft now, peaceful, free of the stress and worries that haunted her mind. At least he’d been able to give her that.
    “Not everyone is as open-minded as you,” Slade said. “And Joseph needs her.”
    Allie turned in Caleb’s embrace and leaned back against his hard chest. The way his brother loomed behind her, his muscle backing her stance wasn’t an illusion. Caleb would always have Allie’s back. From the day he’d met her, she’d been his focus. At first, he’d thought to hold himself back from her, knowing there was no future for her without