“Okay.”
“We could be snowed in for a couple more days, but there’s no way it’ll be longer than that before someone comes to rescue you. We’ve got food and water and firewood. We may be cold, but we’ll be able to manage.”
“Okay.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you. I know you’re hurt. Being stranded has to feel a lot more unnerving if you’re hurt. But I lived in Vermont my whole life. I can do whatever we both need doing. Don’t worry.”
“I wasn’t worried.”
“I realize this has to be uncomfortable for you-”
In spite of his pounding head and throbbing ankle, he reached over and kissed her. He wasn’t trying to shut her up. He didn’t give a damn if she talked and kept them both up all night. But he did mind her treating him as if he were a schoolboy who needed nonstop reassurance.
The kiss might have been impulsive, but it still seemed a reasonable, logical way to tactfully let her know he was a man, not a boy.
And that seemed the last reasonable, logical, tactful thought he had for a long time. Seconds. Minutes. Maybe even hours.
She was cold. Heaven knew how long she’d been freezing up in that chair, but her lips were chilled, her hands even more so. The instant his mouth connected with hers, though, she stopped moving altogether. She seemed to even stop breathing. Her eyes popped wide. His were already open, waiting for her. Both of them were suddenly frowning at each other in the shadow of the blankets.
There was a lot to frown about, Teague acknowledged, since they were obviously near-complete strangers, and neither expected any problem with intimacy. At least he hadn’t, for damn sure-but now he’d tasted her, he had to go back for another kiss.
She tasted like sleepy woman. Thick. Sweet. Her neck had the barest hint of scent. Not perfume exactly, but the echo of something clean and natural and soft…lavender, he thought. A whisk of spring in a night that couldn’t have been darker or colder.
And that was the last time either of them had to worry about the cold night. Body heat suddenly exploded between them. They could hardly move under their combined blankets, which was almost funny, since neither suddenly needed any of that blanket heat, anyway.
This wasn’t him, wildly kissing her, recklessly running his hands down her lithe, supple body. It couldn’t be. He wasn’t remotely a wild or impulsive man. He was the kind of man who paid attention to every detail, who did things right and thoroughly. But damn. Right then there were only two of them in a winter wilderness. A caveman who’d drawn his chosen mate under his bed of furs.
If she accidentally kicked his ankle, he’d undoubtedly cry like a baby.
But until then, the caveman thing was taking over his head, his hormones, his pulse. Either that or the taste of her, the touch of her, was acting like an uncontrollable fever. He didn’t respond to a woman like this. A few kisses never packed this kind of punch. And sex-the kind of sex that mattered, that pulled out all the stops-only happened between two people who knew each other damn well.
He didn’t know her at all.
But it felt as if he did. Maybe his reaction was explainable, two people caught in extraordinary circumstances, but it felt…she felt…as if no other woman had ever touched him. She made an oomph sound, a groan, when his mouth chased after hers yet another time. Lips teased, trembled together, then parted. Her tongue was already waiting for his.
Her rich, thick hair shivered through his fingers as he cradled her head, holding her securely to take her mouth, to dive for that sweetness again. She was already surfing on that channel. Her arms wound around him, tugged around him, as if she could anchor him to her. Through tons of blankets, tons of clothes, he could still feel her breasts throbbing, heating against his chest. Still feel the tension in her long, slim legs, still feel the chaotic burn, the urgency, of a connection neither wanted to break.
There’d been no one who kissed like her, and Teague sensed, never would be, never could be. Maybe he’d survive without another taste, but he couldn’t swear to it.
The fire sizzled and spit.
Dark shadows danced on the walls.
Blankets tangled and fought. His head, his ankle…both hurt. But not like the ache building deep in his groin. This was champagne he’d never tasted, a high he’d never expected. It pulled at him.
She pulled at him.
He didn’t believe for a second that she intended to respond this way. Wildly. No inhibitions. Just need, hanging as naked between them as secrets. Longings bursting to the surface because no one thought they’d needed a lock to protect them, not this night, not this way.
She’d been through hell. She’d never said that exactly-but it was there, in her eyes, her touch, that kind of urgent take-me-take-me-because-I-want-the-hurt-to-go-away. He knew the words to that song. When you were hurt, you wrapped yourself up tight, so the wounds had a chance to heal. You’d have to be crazy to ask for a fresh hurt before the old scars healed up…yet loneliness was always the worst when you’d been hurt. It took you down. Made you doubt whether anyone’d ever be there for you again. Made you worry what was wrong with you, that someone you’d given your best to hadn’t loved you enough.
Hell. He not only knew that song. He knew the refrain and every verse. But as he increasingly sensed her vulnerability…he was stuck increasingly sensing his own.
He tore his mouth free from her, tried to gulp in some oxygen, when all he really wanted to do was gulp in her. Now. All night. Forever, and then all over again. “Daisy…”
“I know. This is insane.” She was struggling for oxygen just as he was, looking at him with dazed dark eyes. “But damn. I just wasn’t expecting this.”
“Neither was I.”
“Do you always kiss this well, or am I just really fantastic at bringing it out in you?”
“Um, something tells me there’s no way I can answer that question without getting my head smacked.”
Gentle fingers lifted to his cheek. “I wouldn’t hit you in the head, cher. Not when you’re already wounded. I wouldn’t do anything worse than slug you in the stomach, and that’s a promise.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“We’re both getting some common sense back, aren’t we.”
“Yeah,” he said regretfully.
“I’m up for doing impulsive things. For going with the moment. For living. But maybe…this is just a little too impulsive.”
“I know.” But he still couldn’t keep the regret out of his voice. “I never do stupid things.”
“No? Well, heaven knows, I do. I’ve made so many stupid, impulsive mistakes that really, I could give courses in blundering the wrong way through life. I could teach you how.”
“From you,” he said, “I’d like to learn.”
She chuckled, a seductive whisper from her throat. “How about if I promise, Teague, that sometime during this blizzard…”
He waited to hear the end of her comment. And when she said nothing else he tilted his head so he could easily see her face.
The eyes were shut, little breathy snores sneaking from her damp, parted lips again. She’d fallen asleep. Just like that. Leaving him harder than stone and with an unnamed promise.
He hoped to hell that wasn’t an omen.
Daisy vaguely heard the cell phone ringing. Jet lag and exhaustion had taken her down so deep she couldn’t seem to jolt herself awake. It was cold. Her brain got that right away. It was also daylight, because the unfamiliar room was much lighter than the night before.
Slowly more reality managed to bully itself into her mind, forcing her to seriously wake up. She was at the Cunninghams’. She’d kissed the stranger. She was in the middle of a blizzard. Damn, had she ever kissed the stranger. The fire was still going strong, ashes piled deep and glowing, fresh fed fairly recently-by someone who wasn’t her. She’d not only kissed the stranger lying next to her, she’d come on to him like a fresh-freed nun. Her family was all out of town; she was broke as a church mouse; her entire
life was in shambles. She seemed to be still wrapped around Teague Larson as if they were glued at the hip and pelvis.
And it was his cell phone ringing, demanding someone get up.
She pushed out of the blankets, had the cold air slap at her skin and decided that a girl only needed so much reality.
“Yeah,” she snapped at the sheriff when she finally grabbed Teague’s cell phone in the kitchen. “I’m well aware the power’s off, George. I’m going to look this morning to see if I can get the Cunninghams’ generator going. If I can’t, then I’ll bring in the wood from their garage. No, I don’t know how my patient’s doing…”
Blah, blah, blah. Twenty-three inches of snow. Still snowing, not as hard, but big winds, some six-and seven-foot drifts. The town was busted except for absolute emergencies for a few days. Like everyone in Vermont couldn’t guess the day’s news report?
She yawned, then waited until she could get a word in. “All right, all right. So we’re not on a level of heart attacks and babies being born. But Teague really was hit hard on the head. And I know his ankle’s hurt. You keep us on the rescue list, you hear? And, yeah, I’ll check in a little later today, so you know how we’re doing.”
As she walked back in the living room, she reminded herself to contact her parents and sisters pretty quickly. They didn’t know she was back home in White Hills. She also hadn’t told them the whole story of her divorce from Jean-Luc, but that was a different issue. The only immediate problem was if they tried to reach her in France and couldn’t, they’d worry.
She raked a hand through her sleep-tumbled hair, her mind still galloping a zillion miles an hour, then stopped dead.
So did Teague.
For some unknown reason he was on his hands and knees, emerging from the back of the couch like a little kid playing hide-and-seek-at least until she spotted him. Or he spotted her. Whichever came first, both of them seemed to freeze in unison.
Daisy didn’t move, but her pulse suddenly lunged-just as it had last night when she’d touched him. When she’d judiciously crawled under the blankets with him to conserve heat. When she’d extremely unjudiciously started running her hands all over the man. It was as if someone had taken over her mind. How else could she explain how this confounding man had her hormones in such a buzz?
“What are we doing?” she asked tactfully, since he didn’t seem to be moving from his crawling position.
“I was looking for something behind the couch.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I dropped something out of my pocket last night. A key. It’s not like I needed it this minute, but when I realized it was missing, I thought I’d better find it before I forgot-”
She cut to the chase. “Your ankle is that bad? You can’t walk on it at all?”
He scowled at her. He had no way of knowing that she’d been lied to by the best. Her ex could lie to the Pope on Easter and look innocent.
“I can walk on it,” Teague said irritably.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “You crawl to the bathroom-in fact, we’ll call that your bathroom for the duration. I’ll use the one upstairs. No more showers or cleaning up for either of us, though, until the power goes back on, okay? But the point is-”
“There’s a point coming?”
“The point is, I’ll try and rig you up some kind of cane. And some ibuprofen. When you get back, you go for the couch, we’ll get your weight off the ankle and ice it.”
“I can do all that.”
He kept singing that refrain all day. Daisy might have become exasperated except that, damn, he kept getting cuter by the hour. Every time she started to do something, he crawled after her, determined to either help or do it himself. After being prey to the most dependent guy in the universe for the past several years, Teague’s bullheadedness was a treat.
“I know how to get the generator started,” he said.
“I’m sure you do. And it’s been years since I watched my dad do ours when we were growing up. I’m not sure I remember what he did, or that I can do it besides. But the generator’s still in the basement.”
“So?”
“So you can’t get down to the basement with that ankle. So it has to be me. Go sit on that couch.”
“I’ll sit at the top of the stairs in case you come up with questions.”
She screwed off the sweeper end of a broom to create a makeshift cane. Brought in another load of logs. Tended the fire. Battled the generator in the basement, couldn’t figure it out, braved Mr. Cunningham’s desk to see if she could find a file of appliance instructions, tried a second time to get the generator going. Failed again.
So they were going to be cold. At least they had the fire and firewood. Nobody was going to get frostbite or die or anything. But if the darn wind would quit howling and the sky quit dumping buckets, the power would have a chance to come back on. Then the snowstorm would just be a pain in the behind, but not really uncomfortable.
“I can go down in the basement,” Teague argued again.
“Yes. But what if you fell on that ankle? I couldn’t possibly carry you back upstairs.”
“I wouldn’t fall.”
He was so male. Only a male would make such a ridiculous statement. By that time she’d fixed them both an early dinner. “Eat,” she said, looking to divert him.
It worked. She looked at the wound on his head every time she could sneak a glance-which wasn’t easy, when he kept claiming it was fine. It wasn’t remotely fine. The gash was a good three inches, with a lump under it that looked bruised and swollen. On the other hand, she reasoned, he couldn’t be too injured if he could eat like a wolf at his last meal.
“I don’t understand how you could make this out of a nonexistent kitchen,” he said.
“Are you kidding? This is the kind of cooking that’s all fun. You get to use your imagination instead of just opening a can and punching a microwave.” Truthfully, he was giving her a bunch of unwarranted praise. She hadn’t been that creative, just unearthed some clothes hangers to twist into spits, then raided the Cunninghams’ freezer for a couple of steaks. She was going to owe them all kinds of supplies when this was over with. Anyway, she’d rubbed some garlic and tarragon and a few other surprises on the steaks. Wrapped some potatoes in foil. Added this and that. The thing was, everything always tasted good by fire. It’s not as if she’d pulled off a miracle.
“It wouldn’t be so hard if we just got the generator going. I know I could do it-”
That again. If she kept him out of the basement, it’d be a miracle. She tried diverting him again. “So exactly how did you get into the demolition business?”
“Demolition?”
“Yeah. You know. Tearing up kitchens. Tearing down walls. Getting to use power tools all day, make noise and lots of sawdust. I mean, have you always had this calling, or did you just never grow up?”
He almost choked-but Teague, it was clear, was never going to waste a good bite of steak, even when he had to fight not to laugh.
“I was playing with wood from the time I was a little kid. Couldn’t shake the love for it, so made a career out of it. The Cunningham job, though, was more a favor than the kind of work I normally do. They were going to be out of town for a few weeks, so I could fill in here when I had time from other projects. Mostly, though, I do reconstruction stuff. Old wood. Uneven floors. Tilted ceilings. Ruined woodwork-”
She could hear the joy building up in his voice like an opera singer letting loose with an aria. “Now, don’t go have an orgasm on me.”
He grinned. “I can’t help it. That’s the stuff that pulls my chain. I went to college to be a lawyer. Just wasn’t for me, hated every minute of it. Went back to do the apprentice thing with a master carpenter.”
“So. Why are you working solo and how on earth did you get stuck in White Hills?”
“What makes you think I’m stuck?”
“Because I know you didn’t start out here. I’d have known you-we’d have gone
to school together. Or I think we would have. How old are you?”
“Thirty-four.”
“A few years older than me. Which means I’d definitely have known you, because I knew every cute boy who was a few years older than me. And I’ll bet you were downright adorable in high school, because you’re so delectable now.”
That almost made him choke on his food a second time. “Campbell, you are one bad, bad woman. You always tease like this?”
“Good grief, no. Only with people I’m stranded with. Especially when I’m stranded with someone for an unknown period of time without deodorant or enough water to take a shower.”
“There’s deodorant in the downstairs bathroom.”
She lifted a brow. “There’s some upstairs, too. I was just trying to make the subtle point that we’re stuck with each other for company, so we might as well enjoy it. Which means I think you should tell me why in God’s name you picked a rustic village like White Hills to live.”
“Hey, there are lots of old homes here. Homes, historic buildings, stores, churches. And that’s what I love best. Restoring stuff. Not necessarily restoring it back to how it looked historically, but taking something that’s turned ugly and bringing it back to life.”
“That’s cool. But you couldn’t find any place more exciting than White Hills?”
“Maybe I didn’t want to.”
“Maybe you’re hiding a deep, dark secret,” she suggested instead.
He looked amused at her nosiness. “For the record, I’m making money hand over fist in your little burg.”
“That’s nice. But it doesn’t answer the question why you picked this town to live in.”
“I had a job here once, liked the place. And since moving here about five years ago, I’ve built up more work than I know what to do with. The only thing really holding me back is being so unartsy.”
She cocked her head. “You need to be artsy to be a carpenter?”
“Not always. I mean, give me a kitchen, a blank room, and I’ll come up with a floor plan, a way to use the existing features and space to make the most of it. I love that kind of creative work. But these days, people hire someone for a major restoration project, they really like all the experts in one basket. I’m first fiddle in the carpentry department. But when they want me to pick a color for a wall, or what knobs on a door, or what furniture to go with the floor…hell, I don’t see why they want decorator stuff from me. But that’s the part I’m missing. Assuming I wanted my business to grow. Which I don’t. But sometimes that does hold me back.”
Wild in the Moment Page 4