Within Reason: Mill Brook Trilogy, Book 2

by Carla Neggers

  Ever the literalist, Char said, “She doesn’t own a shotgun.”

  Adam sighed. “She’d get one.”

  Char opened her mouth, no doubt to bring up some other impediment to Beth’s marching down to Tennessee to enforce a little vigilante justice on wealthy Harlan Rockwood, but she caught herself in time. She angled Adam a look. “You were speaking figuratively,” she said. ‘Then I assume you agree there’s no point in putting Beth through all that anger when I don’t have to. Her money is covered.”

  “That’s not the point,” Adam said quietly. He knew he was treading in a mine field now, meddling in the friendship his sister and Char had enjoyed since childhood. “You and Beth went into a bad deal together. Right now you’re suffering to protect Beth. In her place would you want that? Wouldn’t you want to sink or swim with her?”

  “You’re asking me to speculate.”

  “No, I’m asking you to put aside that stubborn Bradford pride and—”

  “My pride and my daughter are about all I have left. I don’t intend to lose either one.”

  She shot ahead of him. Adam started to chase after her, but let her go. He understood pride. And he understood parental love. In his own dark days pride and his children had kept him going. They had been his motivator, his reason for regaining some measure of control over his life. They had been a positive force, not a negative, not something that brought him down.

  He watched her walking into the stiffening breeze ahead of him and wondered how much alike he and Charity Winnifred really were. It wasn’t a thought that would ease his nights.

  Neither was the sight of her and what it was doing to his insides. Even mad she possessed a certain unexpected grace, a relentless belief in herself that permeated everything about her, including the way she walked. Her stride was long and quick, her legs able to take her fast pace, her hips—

  He’d better not think too much about her hips, he decided with a small grunt.

  The breeze caught the ends of her chin-length hair and whipped it into tangles. Before he could stop himself, he was imagining slowly smoothing out the tangles with his fingers.

  His pace slackened even as she hit the corner half a block ahead. He hadn’t made love with a woman since Mel’s death... since his accident. Three long years. He had sublimated all his sexual energy into his work. All along he had assumed one of these days, when the time was right, he would want a woman so badly, so obsessively, that no amount of log-sawing would help.

  He had just never expected that woman would be Charity Bradford, a no-nonsense attorney who hated Mill Brook as much as he loved it. The prospect of any kind of future with her, one in which they both could be happy and fulfilled, was limited, if not laughable. But right now Adam just didn’t give a damn about the future, at least not beyond tonight.

  Right now all he cared about was how much he wanted her.

  She waited for him at the corner. Her shoulders were hunched against the wind, and she shivered, remarking on the dropping temperature. Already accustomed to the brisk New England autumn, Adam barely noticed.

  Her eyes, luminous and yet almost black in the darkness, fastened on him in an intense look she could have patented. She asked abruptly, “We’re going to do it, aren’t we?”

  “What?”

  But he knew.

  Her expression was one that prompted her courtroom opponents to slink down in their chairs, but Adam remained focused on her eyes. Still luminous. Passionate. Wanting. And lonely, he realized, feeling a stab of pain for her. So damn lonely.

  She half smiled, then answered, “Share a sleeping bag tonight.”

  “Let’s not over-analyze,” he said, and tucked a tangled lock of hair behind her ear, feeling the cool softness of her cheek. “Let’s just go back to the house and see what happens.”

  For once she didn’t argue.

  What happened began with an appraisal of the sleeping accommodations. Char had two twin-size cots: one for her and one for Emily. Adam refused to sleep in Emily’s cot, on the grounds that he didn’t want to disturb the array of stuffed animals she had arranged on her dinosaur sleeping bag. Char wasn’t so sure: she had a feeling he had some kind of plan up his sleeve.

  Of course, her cot was out altogether.

  “Why?” she asked.

  He was standing in the doorway, looking into the tiny bedroom where she and Em had set up their beds. Char was in the narrow hallway behind him, near the bathroom and linen closet doors.

  He glanced around at her. “I’m going to take your bed while you sleep on the floor?”

  “I’ll sleep in Em’s bed.”

  He didn’t like that, either. Like the Three Bears, Emily would know someone had been sleeping in her bed and would demand an explanation. When she discovered “Uncle” Adam had come to visit while she was out of town, she would be disappointed.

  “Then you sleep on the floor,” Char suggested, her mood something between frustration and anticipation.

  She wasn’t surprised when that idea didn’t meet with his approval, either. Shaking his head, he walked past her into the living room. She followed. The house was absolutely still, the shadows, the quiet, the slight chill all a reminder that it was nightfall.

  Adam surveyed the living room, frowning. “You don’t have any rugs,” he pointed out, “and my sleeping bag’s fairly thin. It’d be damn uncomfortable sleeping on the floor.”

  Char settled against the doorway, arms folded over her chest, one leg bent. “There’s still time to check into a hotel. Or you can try the old doghouse out back.”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “I do have an idea.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I noticed you have a thick sleeping bag. We could open it up and spread it on the floor as a makeshift mattress and use mine as a blanket.”

  She looked right at him. “That means sleeping together.”

  He looked back. “Uh-huh. It does.”

  Her lighthearted, teasing mood lasted only a few more seconds until she could feel the heat in his eyes, could feel it bubbling in her blood. They were finished playing games. They weren’t talking about a couple of old pals arm-wrestling for the hell of it. They were talking about spending the night together.

  “Adam, I don’t want to ruin our friendship.”

  He laughed softly, coming toward her. “What friendship?” he asked, slipping his arms around her.

  The strength of his chest against her felt so good, better even than she had hoped. All evening, Char thought, she had vacillated between feeling totally at ease with Adam Stiles and wanting to put him on the next plane headed north. Now any feelings of uneasiness seemed so long ago, so distant. She wanted to be exactly where she was. He went on, quietly, wryly, “You and I have tolerated each other for years. We haven’t been enemies—but friends? Come on. Seems to me we must have just been waiting for lightning to strike.”

  Lightning had struck all right, Char thought. Even her toes felt singed. His mouth found hers, opened at once, until she felt teeth and tongue, until she began to burn. Ignited, she slid her hands around his back and drew him toward her, pressing her breasts against the solid wall of his chest. He pressed back. She could feel the hardness of him. They were throbbing, burning.

  They made short work of their bedding arrangements. And their clothes. Char pulled the shades, Adam shook open the sleeping bags. They both helped with each other’s clothes. They were a giant bonfire that would burn for days. They were two people consumed with a flaming passion that had appeared as suddenly, as irrevocably, as a bolt of lightning on a barn filled with dry hay.

  Naked—sleek and hot—they fell atop both sleeping bags, Adam easing Char onto him. They kissed for a long time, deeply, touching and stroking, wanting. Char felt herself being transported into another place, another time... away from her problems, her doubts. It was as if the heat of their longing enveloped Adam and herself and kept the world at bay.

  Then all at once she felt herself plunging back to real
ity.

  All at once there wasn’t just the present. There wasn’t just heat and longing and now.

  She raised herself off Adam’s chest. ‘‘What about tomorrow?”

  “We’ll sleep late,” he said, running his hand along her side, from her hip to her shoulder, “and have one hell of a breakfast.”

  “And you’ll head back to Vermont.”

  His thick eyebrows drew closer together. “I have two kids.”

  “I know.” Her heart was drumming so hard she thought he must hear it. “I’m not complaining. But, Adam, what are we starting?”

  He gently pushed her hair back behind her ear, then eased her off him as he raised himself on one elbow. “I don’t know and I won’t pretend I do. Char, neither one of us has a crystal ball.”

  “Yes, but...” She licked her lips, wondering if she were going to end up as big a damn fool about romance as she was about horses. “We’re levelheaded people, Adam. I may have lost everything on a dirty horse deal, but that’s an aberration. And when it comes to men—”

  “You try to control what you can’t control,” he finished for her.

  “You’re the same way with women.”

  He didn’t argue.

  “We haven’t had a proper date yet,” she blundered on, “and here we are in bed together.

  “Sometimes things just happen.”

  “They can’t. Not with me, not anymore.”

  Adam sighed, rolling up into a sitting position. Char took due note of his flat stomach, the hard muscles of his shoulders and arms, but quenched any renewed sparks.

  “Char, you’ve known me your entire life. It’s not as if we’re a couple of strangers who just met.”

  “I know. Maybe it’d be easier if we were.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Look—” He raked his hand through his hair. “If you want to stay up half the night talking, would you mind if we got up? It’s been a while for me, and speaking of control...”

  “Oh.” Char could feel herself flushing from head to toe. “Oh! Adam, I’m sorry.”

  “We haven’t done anything to be sorry about,” he pointed out wryly.

  “Well, we could finish—”

  “For my sake? I’d rather be celibate than accept charity sex—no pun intended.”

  Char backed off the bedding and stood up quickly, the rush of cool night air on her overheated skin having a devastating effect. It was rather like tossing gasoline on hot coals. There was no question she was aroused... that she desperately wanted this man.

  But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? She didn’t want to act out of desperation.

  She couldn’t.

  “I need to get my life in order,” she mumbled, noticing Adam’s eyes on her pebbled nipples, “Before I get involved.”

  He nodded curtly. “Okay.”

  She was relieved that he wasn’t pressing her for a better explanation. And also a little annoyed. “That’s it? Just ‘okay’?”

  “We can talk in the morning. Char, I can see you’re ambivalent about what’s going on between us.”

  “I’m not. I want what’s happening to happen, just not right now. No, that’s not true, either. I’m glad you’re here. I hated the idea of being alone this weekend.” She sighed, her shoulders sagging. “You’re right. I am ambivalent. But doesn’t that bug you just a little?”

  He gave her a dry look. “‘Bug’ isn’t the word I’d use.”

  “Then what?”

  “Frustrate.”

  “You mean you’re not just going to roll over and go to sleep?”

  “Hardly.”

  She grabbed her shirt and pulled it over her head. “Good.”

  Adam shifted onto his stomach, his torso raised as he looked up at her. “And you?”

  “I’ll sleep in Em’s bed. One thing about a dinosaur bag,” she said, “I’ll bet it eradicates all thoughts of sex.”

  Fortunately or unfortunately, it didn’t.

  Chapter Seven

  AS HE LISTENED to the shower pounding on Char’s lithe body from the kitchen, Adam came to the conclusion something strange was in the Tennessee air. He wasn’t acting normal. Wanting to make love to a woman was normal enough, he supposed. But wanting to make love to Char? Mill Brook’s sharp-eyed ex-lawyer? Harlan Rockwood’s latest victim? A woman who would rather live in a tent than admit failure?

  No, wanting to make love to Char wasn’t normal. It was madness.

  He imagined the hot water streaming down the silken skin of her back.

  Lord.

  Charity Winnifred Bradford, he reminded himself, wasn’t the easiest person in the world to be around.

  She lived in Tennessee, a thousand miles from Vermont.

  She hated Mill Brook.

  Adam jumped up from the folding chair at her saw-horse kitchen table. The woman was in such a predicament—one she would, of course, insist she get herself out of on her own—that she didn’t even have a decent chair. She owned several, but they were all in storage in her despised hometown.

  But the uncomfortable chair wasn’t why he was uneasy, and Adam knew it. He was uneasy—damn uneasy—because a night’s sleep hadn’t changed a thing.

  Because, awakening this morning, he had wanted Char as much as he had the night before.

  Worse.

  He dragged out her cast-iron skillet and slammed it down on her stove.

  Would she never finish with her shower?

  He could feel his mouth on her hot, wet skin. He could taste her sweet, soapy kiss. He could feel the slap of her wet hair against his shoulder.

  Then he heard the water shut off and exhaled in relief.

  His relief was short-lived. Another image took form in his mind. He could see her drying off with a soft, warm towel... as soft and warm as her body.

  He tore open the refrigerator and dug around until he found the pound of Tennessee sausages they had bought yesterday. His fingers were shaking. Hell, all he needed to do was hack off the top of a finger.

  Calm down, my man.

  But it had been three years.

  Down the hall in the bathroom, Charity began to hum.

  ‘‘Char, are you deliberately trying to torture me?”

  “Huh?”

  So innocent.

  “Never mind,” he said.

  Using his left forearm and right hand, he deftly got the wrapping off the sausages and sliced off eight fat chunks. His frustration with working one-handed had lessened with time and experience, but there were still moments, if increasingly rare, when he yelled and threw things and generally locked horns with his disability.

  Generally, unless he was reminded, he no longer gave it much thought.

  He laid the sausages in the skillet and hunted up the pancake mix they had also picked up on their shopping excursion. Ordinarily he made pancakes from scratch, but he didn’t want to take any chances with Char’s supply of cooking utensils. From his survey of her kitchen, he would say that had been smart thinking. She would blame her subsistence living, he supposed, but even back in Vermont, with a well-equipped kitchen at her disposal, Char had never put herself out when it came to cooking.

  All he had to do to the pancake mix was add an egg and milk, which he did while the sausages began to sizzle. He would have breakfast ready in no time. Food, he hoped, would help the raw ache gnawing on his insides. At the rate he was going, they would be finished by eleven... and his flight didn’t leave until after nine tonight.

  He held the bowl with his forearm and beat the batter hard.

  If Char thought he was going to spend the entire day locked up in this tiny house with her, she’d better think again. Being an uninvited guest permitted her to subject him to only so much torture.

  The bathroom door creaked open, and in a moment Char came into the kitchen in her ratty, outrageously sexy white chenille bathrobe. She dropped into a chair. Her cheeks were rosy. Her hair was bundled up in a tangerine towel. She had nothing on her feet.

  Adam figured it would
take two seconds, maybe three, to untie her robe and just let it fall from her shoulders.

  “Good morning,” he said, quickly turning back to his sausages.

  “Morning.”

  The sausages were cooking fast now. Since Char didn’t have a griddle, he would have to clean out the skillet before he could cook the pancakes. He didn’t mind. Better that he should keep busy.

  Last night had opened doors he had shut and locked years ago. Even before Mel’s death he had given up on personal happiness for himself. His kids were healthy, his work was satisfying. That was enough. A man, he had assumed, shouldn’t ask for too much in life; it was all too easy to lose what you had. Romantic love was a myth, he had decided. What he and Mel had had for most of their marriage was what most people had: a relationship built on conditions, in their case, lots of conditions.

  He had loved Mel. The passion, the infatuation, the needing—that was all a distant memory now, and had been for a long, long time. If he had wanted to work out their problems before her death, it had been a desire born more of stubbornness than enduring love. He had never dreamed about Mel, had never fantasized about her. He wasn’t a romantic soul, he had concluded. He wasn’t a dreamer.

  Last night, however, he had dreamed about Charity Bradford.

  He had fantasized about her.

  He knew what making love to her would be like. And he knew that knowing wasn’t enough. Sooner or later, it was something they were going to have to experience together.

  Right now, looking at Char, feeling his raw, pounding desire for her, he would bet on sooner rather than later. He sensed her thoughts were drifting in the same direction, but he remembered last night. That they would be able to pull back again was expecting too much for their beleaguered bodies, but he didn’t want to do anything they, or she, would regret.

  “The sausages smell great,” she said, sounding awkward for smooth-talking Char Bradford. “Do I have time to get dressed before we eat?”

  Adam’s mouth went dry. “You’d better take time.”

  She managed a weak smile. “Yeah, I guess so. Frankly, Adam, this whole thing feels weird.”

  He arched her a look, but kept quiet.