Zach's Law by Kay Hooper Page B

and twisted, if Zach had not been forced to twist his own body in order to reach her, he would have caught the bullet squarely in the center of his back.
    It almost made the pain go away.
    Trying to shake off the weakness of lost blood and shock, she murmured, “I’m fine, Zach. It’s just a scratch.”
    He sent her one look from glittering gray eyes, then concentrated entirely on the task of cleaning and bandaging her wound. His face was ashen, the scar on his cheek a livid slash, and his hands trembled slightly.
    Teddy wouldn’t have willingly put him through this for anything she could think of,but her heart leaped in joy when she realized that he really did care about her, whether he knew it or not. He had seen uncounted battlefield wounds and had suffered a few himself, yet the sight of what was in all honesty a slight injury to her had shaken him badly.
    In silence, he cleaned and disinfected the wound, being amazingly gentle under the circumstances, then bandaged it very carefully. Teddy found that the pain was only a dull throb, although she had no idea how badly it might hurt when the shock wore off completely.
    “It didn’t harm anything vital,” she said finally, watching his face.
    “No,” he agreed. “But you … lost a lot of blood.”
    Trying to ease the pain revealed by his bleak look, she said, “Only a pint or so. I’ve given that much at the blood bank.”
    “Not in shock, you haven’t. And not because of a bullet.” His expression remained the same, but now Teddy could tell that somethingterrible was going on inside Zach. He was holding her arm in his hands, staring down at the neat white bandage, and his long fingers quivered. In a strange, wondering tone, he said, “The bastard shot you.”
    Teddy caught her breath, staring at him, as aware of the danger filling the small cabin as if it were a visible thing. Menace literally came off Zach in waves, cold and deadly, like an Arctic wind howling off a glacier.
    In the back of her mind, memory stirred, and she recalled something a psychologist friend had once told her. One man in perhaps ten thousand was a throwback to those old Scandinavian berserkers, whose blood rages had been awesome and uncontrollable; that such a man, pushed too far, became something more dangerous than any man-made weapon could ever be. On those rare occasions he was beyond rational thought, existing briefly in an icy, remote place where violent action was the only solution to inner rage and anguish.
    Zach was going back up to the house, sherealized. In a blind, murderous rage, he was going after the man who had shot her. And there wouldn’t be any caution this time. He was a ticking time bomb, and the dear Lord only knew what would be destroyed by the explosion.
    Teddy gazed at him, at his still, white face and blank eyes, seeing his muscles bunch in preparation for action, and she rolled the dice one more time. If she had reached him, if he
did
care for her deeply enough …
    “Zach?” Her voice was calm and soft, nothing in it indicating that she was attempting to call a man back from hell.
    After an agonizingly long moment he looked at her, and the blind glaze slowly left his eyes. His muscles gradually relaxed, the tension seeped away. And he was there, he was sane. On a rough sigh he murmured, “Teddy.”
    She was enormously relieved and deeply shaken. She had hoped to coax a wild wolf to walk by her side, but she had never even dared to dream that the mere sound of her voice callinghis name could keep him from tearing out the throat of a mortal enemy.
    And she wondered if the fool in the house would ever know just how close to death he had come.
    Gesturing to the arm he was still holding gently, she said, “I can hardly feel it.”
    After a moment Zach lowered her arm. He got up and went over to her luggage, moving gracefully again, and bent to rummage among her clothing. “You’ll have to dress warmly. There isn’t any heat where we’re