The Untamed Hunter

Turning coldly, Maggie stared at her across the office, the tension thick. “You could say that.” She saw the shock and concern on Casey’s face. It was obvious she didn’t realize what was going on. “I knew Shep a long time ago,” she said in a whisper. “At Harvard. He was going for a degree in engineering. He was a member of ROTC, which led him eventually into the Air Force, to become a pilot.” She waved her hand in irritation. “But that was after us. After a relationship that lasted my entire freshman year there at the university.”

“Oww,” Casey murmured, beginning to understand. “So, you two had an affair?”

Her shoulders had drawn up in sizzling tension, and Maggie forced herself to try and relax. Her heart was pounding wildly in her breast. She couldn’t control her breathing yet. It hurt to think of Shep. It hurt to remember. Their relationship had ended so many years ago. How was it he could still affect her like this now? With a groan, Maggie turned to Casey. She deserved the full story.

“It was more than that. We fought like cats and dogs, Casey. He wanted to control me. I fought him every inch of the way. We were both independent types. Both bullheaded as hell. He always thought his way was best and my ideas were second best to his. We fought…brother, did we fight. Of course, making up was a lot of fun, too….” She sighed, some of the anger in her voice dissolving. “I’ve never been in such a wildly passionate relationship before or since. He was everything I’d ever dreamed of in a man, but he treated me like an idiot with no brains. He never thought I had an equal idea to his, much less a better one. Of course,” she fumed, “more times than not, my ideas were better than his. But he had so much damned pride he’d never admit it. And on top of that, he was the strong, silent type.”

Casey groaned. “Oh, one of those Neanderthal throwbacks, eh? Pride is a problem with the Hunter men, from where I stand.”

“He was so arrogant,” Maggie said, a hard-edged rasp in her voice. “So full of himself. He always thought he was smarter than everyone else. Maybe he was, over in the engineering department, where he pulled straight A’s and was on the dean’s list. But in my world, he couldn’t shed that egotism and arrogance, Casey. He could never relax with me, let go and just be an ordinary human being who had good days and bad days, who needed someone else. He was such an iconoclast! He reminded me of Mount Everest—always proud, unapproachable, needing no one and nothing.”

Casey moved over to her side after placing the photo back into the file. “So you broke up because he couldn’t really be intimate with you? Is that the bottom line?”

Miserably, Maggie nodded. “Yeah, Case, it was.” She wiped her eyes. “Damn him. After all these years, I still feel so much for him! My heart is stupid. My head knows better now.” She pursed her lips and glared out the venetian blinds. “If he could have said ‘I need you’ just once, Case, I’d have jumped up and down for joy. But he never did.”

“Did you need him?”

“Sure I did,” she said bitterly. “Oh, he liked that. He wanted to feel needed by the weaker sex. Well, weak nothing! I was his equal. And he knew it. And he would never acknowledge that. He treated me like a twit.”

“Ouch,” Casey murmured. “Neanderthals have that proclivity, don’t they?”

Maggie raised an eyebrow. “You ought to know. You married one of them. But I can’t really believe Reid is like Shep. You wouldn’t have married him if he was.”

Casey chuckled. “You’re right. I’d have told him to get lost.”

“Maybe Reid’s different because he’s the youngest of the four,” Maggie said in a hurt voice. “He must be. I mean, I’ve met a lot of men in my life, and Shep Hunter takes the cake for the glacial Neanderthal type, believe me.”

“I met him,” Casey said slowly, “about six months ago. He was coming off a mission for Perseus, and he dropped by to see us here in Atlanta.”

Maggie peered up at her. “And he hasn’t changed one bit, has he?”

Hearing the hurt and pain in her voice, Casey shrugged. “He tried to be friendly when he met me. I could tell he was making an effort.”

“Maybe life’s changed him a little, after all,” Maggie whispered. “With age comes maturity, right? Don’t answer that.”

Casey stood there, in a quandary. “Maggie, if you take this mission, you take Shep, too. It’s a done deal. Everything is set up. Morgan feels that Shep will give you the best chance of surviving.”

Bitterly, Maggie folded her arms against her chest. “Yes, that’s one thing Shep Hunter is very good at—survival. He won’t let you into his heart, that’s for sure. He’d just as soon walk away from a woman who loved him, really loved him. He’s a coward, Casey. Such a coward…”

“Men who can’t be intimate are scared,” Casey agreed softly. “It takes a lot of courage to share our feelings with one another.”

“Women do it at the drop of a hat. You can’t tell me men can’t. It’s just that they won’t. That’s a big difference. They’re made just like us. They have hearts that feel.” Making a strangled sound once more, Maggie turned and said, “Don’t get me started on this. I used to have this argument every day with Shep. I’m surprised our relationship lasted a full year before we agreed, mutually, to walk away from one another.”

Casey could see the pain in Maggie’s large hazel eyes. “You walked away because it was destroying you. I’m sure Shep walked away out of relief because he couldn’t take the pressure of your demands for him to open up and be emotionally accessible to you.”

“You should have been a shrink, Case. Yes, that’s hitting the nail on the head.”

“Well,” Casey murmured, looking back at her desk, where the file lay, “what are we going to do? I won’t be able to change your guard dog for you.”

“I don’t want him on this mission, Casey. Anybody but him. Please…”

Casey studied her friend’s strained features, wishing it wasn’t too late to grant her desperate request.

“Well, Shep, what do you think?” Morgan tried to gird himself for Hunter’s reaction to the mission. More than anyone in his organization, Shep Hunter was a loner. Morgan knew why and understood Shep’s demand for solo missions. Morgan studied the man standing before his desk in the war room of Perseus, which was hidden deep in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. Shep was a giant at six foot six inches tall, and the thirty-eight-year-old ex-air force pilot was one of Morgan’s best mercenaries. Shep was heavy-boned and muscular, and even dressed in jeans, cowboy boots and a denim long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs rolled up to his elbows, he looked dangerous. Maybe it was his square face and that jutting, rock-solid jaw that gave Shep such a hard look, Morgan thought. With his short black hair and thick, black eyebrows, which emphasized his frosty blue eyes, Shep Hunter reminded Morgan of a mighty eagle ready to swoop in an attack and gut the quarry he had his sights on.

“Humph,” Shep said as he sat down in the chair across from Morgan’s desk and continued to read the mission proposal rapidly. “OID, huh?”

“Read on…there’s more to this,” Morgan warned him briskly. He was prepared to see Shep refuse the mission once he read page two, which identified the OID virologist who would be on the mission with him. Every time Morgan tried to pair Shep up with a partner, he’d refused. They’d had hellacious shouting matches over the subject from time to time, in this very room. And Morgan knew Shep would walk out and quit rather than be assigned a partner. No, ever since Sarah had died on that fateful mission with him, Shep had closed up tighter than an proverbial clam. He absolutely refused to be partnered up again.

And yet, as he tried to appear at ease as Shep devoured the mission brief, Morgan gathered his argument points as to why, if Shep wanted this mission, the OID decoy must be part of it. He just hoped Shep would take it. No one was better suited for this task than Shep, Morgan knew.

Glancing at the photos of his family on one side of his desk, Morgan felt some of his tension easing. The fraternal twins in Laura’s lap were smiling. How simple and beautiful life could be. He loved his wife and four children more than anything in the world. Looking up at Shep once more, Morgan realized he saw a lot of his former self in him. Morgan had once been as hard and icy as this merc sitting in front of him. It would take a woman who had metal, who had courage to probe the depths of Shep’s fear of intimacy, to help open him up. Morgan acknowledged even today that Laura had had more courage than he’d ever had back then. She’d taken him on—and won. But Morgan was the real winner as far as he was concerned.

When Shep rapidly flipped the page, Morgan steeled himself.

“I’ll be damned.”

Morgan leaned forward in the chair and put his elbows on his desk. He saw surprise in Shep’s normally hard, unreadable features. “What?” he asked tentatively.

“I’ll be damned. I don’t believe this,” he said in a deep tone. He held the file pointing to the photo. “This is the woman I’m supposed to guard? Dr. Maggie Harper? Are you sure?”

Puzzled by Shep’s unexpected reaction, Morgan said, “Yes. Why? Is there a problem?”

With a shake of his head, Shep uncoiled to his full height. Tossing the folder on Morgan’s desk, he turned and walked around the large, silent room with his hands on his hips. “I’ll be go-to-hell, Morgan. Life really is full of surprises and twists.”

Morgan scooped up the file and looked at the photo of the doctor. He didn’t understand Shep’s reaction. He’d never seen Shep act this way about a mission. And Morgan wasn’t sure if Hunter’s response was a good or bad one. Usually, Shep would throw the file at him and tell him to go to hell if there was a partner involved. This time, the man’s face was softening. Morgan could see a glimmer of something warm and tentative in his icy blue eyes. And his mouth, usually a thin line, had the corners turned up in a slight smile.

Stymied, Morgan held up the file. “Clue me in, will you, Hunter?”

Turning, Shep gave his boss a measured look. Though his fingers were draped casually across his narrow hips, tension thrummed through him. He felt his heart beating hard in his chest. And he felt happiness threading through him. The feeling was completely unexpected, but beautiful. It made him breathe in deeply—as if he were coming alive after a long, long sleep. How long had it been since he’d felt anything? Especially happiness? Oh, he’d felt happy for his younger brother, Reid, when he finally met Casey Morrow. And he was overjoyed that Ty and Dev had finally found women they wanted to spend their lives with, too. Yes, everyone in the family was married now—except him. And each time he’d met the woman one of his younger brothers had chosen to marry, he’d felt sad, too. Sad because he knew no one would want him. He was one mean son of a bitch who didn’t give an inch in a relationship. But after what had happened to him, how could he?

That was life, Shep decided. Life had been cruel to him. And torturous. After Sarah…He quickly snapped his mind shut, like a bear trap. Pain suddenly intermingled with the quiet joy pumping through him with each powerful beat of his heart.

“That is Maggie Harper?” he demanded. “She is a graduate of Harvard Medical School, right?”

Floundering because Shep never reacted this way to a potential partner, Morgan quickly flipped to the back page of the mission folder and glanced at her bio. “Yes, Harvard.” Looking up, he narrowed his eyes. “Just what is going on here, Shep? Tell me what I don’t know. Usually you blow up when there’s a partner even mentioned. This time you’re standing over there like a raccoon grinning over a crawdad you just caught.”

Shep smiled a little more widely. “Maggie Harper was my first real relationship. We met in our freshman year at Harvard. What a hellion she was.” He shook his head in fond remembrance. “She had guts to take me on.”

Tentatively, Morgan murmured, “I see….”

Allowing his hands to slip from his hips, Shep moved back toward the desk where Morgan still stood with a confused look on his face. “I’ll take the mission, Morgan.”

Stunned, Morgan held the younger man’s stare. Shep wasn’t one to smile often. He wasn’t exactly smiling now, but the corners of his broad, generous mouth were pulled slightly upward. Morgan saw something else in Hunter’s eyes that he’d never seen before: happiness. And hope. He stared back at the color photo of Maggie Harper.

“Does she…I mean, have you had contact with Dr. Harper—”

Chuckling, Shep said, “Nope, haven’t seen her in—let’s see—almost twenty years. I think I’m going to find this interesting, Morgan. It says she’s on a sharpshooting team. Third best in the U.S. She hasn’t changed at all. She was riding eventing horses before she went to Harvard. Looks like she’s still doing the same thing—taking risks.”