Excerpt of The Missing by Shiloh Walker

After all these years . . . she’d known she’d see him again.
Even when she drove away from Cullen Morgan’s home in tears,
she’d known it wasn’t over between them.

Why he was coming to her now, she didn’t know and honestly,
just then, she didn’t care.

She was so desperate to see him again, it was almost pathetic.

No, it was pathetic. It had been twelve years, and she was
all but panting at the thought of seeing him, of staring
into those amazing eyes and standing close enough to smell
him. How much had he changed? Taige wondered. Instinctively,
she knew that Cullen would be as devastating at thirty-three
as he’d been at twenty-one. The truck came to a stop close
to the house. She couldn’t see anything beyond the back
bumper, and when the taillights went off, she jerked as
though somebody had used a Taser on her.

She took a deep breath and then groaned as her shirt dragged
against her nipples. They were stiff and erect, throbbing
under the thin layer of cotton. Embarrassed, she folded her
arms over them and wished she could manage to get a damn bra
on. Her hand hurt too much to manage it, though.

Facing Cullen braless and in her bare feet: how much more
disconcerting could it get? She held herself stiff as the
knock came, pounding on the door as though he wanted to tear
the door from its hinges. It came a second time, and third.
Finally, she made herself move, shuffling through the dark
living room with her arms crossed over her breasts, the wrap
on her cast abrading the bare skin of her left arm and
rubbing against her nipples.

Nerves jangled in her belly. No butterflies; this felt more
like she had giant gryphons taking flight inside her,
gryphons with knife-edged wings. She reached out and closed
her left hand around the doorknob and slowly opened it, half
hiding behind the door. She kept her gaze focused straight
ahead so that all she saw was the way his white T-shirt
stretched across his wide, muscled chest.

Through her peripheral vision, she saw that he held
something in his hand. Something clutched so tight, his
knuckles had gone white. She hissed out a breath and forced
herself to look upward, up, up, up until she was staring
into his eyes. It took a little longer than it should have;
he was taller than he had been. At least by an inch. She was
five foot ten—she didn’t have to look up to many people, and
she decided then that she didn’t care for it at all.

“Taige.”

She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. Her throat felt
frozen, and forcing words past her frozen vocal chords
seemed impossible. She just stepped aside to let him come
in, and when he did, his arm brushed against hers. She
flinched and pulled away, backing away until a good two feet
separated them. Once he was inside, she closed the door and
leaned against it, resting her left hand on the doorknob and
holding her right hand against her belly and studying the fl
oor.

He turned to stare at her. From under her lashes, she
watched as his shoulders rose and fell, his chest moving as
he blew out a harsh breath, almost like he’d been holding
his breath the same way she had.

“God, Taige . . .”

Shoving away from the door, she kept her head down as she
moved around him and headed into the living room. He
followed behind her slowly. She heard a click, and light
flooded the room. She shot him a look over her shoulder,
just a quick glance, enough to tell her just how dead-on her
dreams had been.

“So, are you going to look at me or just let me stare at the
back of your head all night?” he asked softly.

She shot him another quick, almost nervous glance over her
shoulder, and Cullen blew out a breath.

When he spoke again, his voice was closer. “Aren’t you going
to ask me why I’m here?”

Aren’t you going to speak to me at all? Cullen wanted to ask.

Instead, he waited until she finally turned around and faced
him. In the brightly lit room, he noticed two things. The
first was that she had her arm, her right arm, in a cast
that went halfway up to her elbow. A chill raced down his
spine. The second was that her left eye was puffy and nearly
swollen shut, a dark, ugly bruise that Cullen suspected was
every bit as painful as it looked.

“I already know why you’re here. You need my help.” A bitter
smile curved her lips as she stared at him. “Why would else
would you be here?” She glanced at the file in his hand and
held out her hand.

Cullen swallowed and lifted it, staring at it with the
metallic taste of fear thick in his mouth. “You don’t owe me
a damn thing, Taige. I know that. I’ve got no right being
here, and I know that, too.”

She sighed and dropped her head, covering her eyes with her
uninjured hand. “Cullen, stop. You want something. Out with
it. I’ve got better things to do than stand here and have
you brooding all over me. So just spill it.”

“I . . . look, if I didn’t have to have your help, I
wouldn’t be here. But it’s not me that needs you—just . . .
just don’t—”

Taige cocked a brow. “You don’t have much of an opinion of
me, do you, Cullen? Whatever brought you here in the middle
of the night twelve years after kicking me out of your life
has to be pretty damn important, and considering the kind of
help you probably need, I’m going to assume there’s somebody
else involved.” She stared at him, her gaze shuttered. “You
think so little of me that I’d refuse to help whoever this
is just to make you suffer because you and me got some history?”

History . . . Is that what we had?