The thing is, he lacked daring. Imagination. A true spirit of romantic devilment. Women wanted things like that. A true romantic hero would not think about the time or worry about interrupting her sleep. A true romantic hero took chances. He thought up much more exciting things than roses and gourmet dinners. He took his lady completely by surprise.
Abruptly, Alan sat up in bed and switched on the light. The mirror over his dresser reflected back a squinting man with disheveled hair, gray pajama tops and a determined scowl. You’re crazy, said a little voice in his head. You can’t do that. Go back to bed.
Clean black socks were neatly folded in his drawer. He put those on after he’d pulled on a dark sweater and jeans. Yawning, he grabbed a jacket and stuffed his keys in his back pocket. She’ll have the little men come to put you away. They’ll be smiling patiently and carrying a straitjacket…
He mentally suggested an anatomically impossible feat to his little voice, and persevered. A man had to do what a man had to do. Maybe the canoe trip had been a bomb, but he could make this work. Caro wouldn’t laugh at him. And if she took it in the right spirit, neither of them would be sleeping alone after this. Ever.
He refused to feel another qualm, until he reached Carroll’s building, parked the car and took a long look at the dark windows of her apartment. She was unquestionably asleep.
Sleepy, however, could be an advantage. She wouldn’t be quite so likely to think he’d lost his mind. Stop that kind of negative thinking, he commanded himself. Climbing out of the car, he took firm steps around the side of her building.
He knew which windows went to her bedroom. The trick was getting to them. He pivoted around to make sure no patrol cars were anywhere in sight, then let his eyes focus on the oak tree in her courtyard. No one could have asked for a sturdier tree, and there was a thick branch right next to her window. The trunk, however, grew six feet straight up before he could conceivably get a foothold. If he meant to climb the tree.
I think, the little voice said patiently, this has gone far enough. Go home, Alan.
Actually, the spirit of it was beginning to get to him. He wanted Caro. He wanted Caro with every breath he took these days. He breathed, dreamed and thrived on wanting her—it was not just a sexual need but a driving force that colored every hour in each day. He wandered to the side of the building, searching for a ladder.
There was no ladder, but there was an empty trash can. He stared at it for a moment, then carefully, quietly took off the lid, turned it upside down and carried it back to the oak. Once he was standing on it, it was only one long heave into the belly of the tree.
Branches snagged his jacket, and for a moment he lay winded, irritated beyond measure that he could be this badly out of shape. Still breathing heavily, he looked up. The yard light glowed brightly enough for him to see her window through the thick-fingered branches. They would hold his weight; that wasn’t a problem. Not having climbed a tree in many long years was the real problem, and his attitude toward heights had always been less than enthusiastic.
He shimmied forward along the strongest branch. A limb caught at his jeans; another tried to tangle in his hair. He lost his hat. In time, though, in methodical good time, he gained enough yardage so that he could reach out and touch her window. After that, he took several seconds to catch his breath and wipe the dampness from his brow.
He finally worked up the courage to rap once, then twice on the pane, very softly. So softly that he couldn’t believe it when the window was promptly thrown open.
By eleven that night, Carroll had been buried beneath three comforters in bed with a heating pad on her stomach. She was freezing. Nightmares were dancing on her walls.
It had been years since she’d missed a day of work. The only reason she hadn’t gone in that morning was that she hadn’t been able to sit up without cringing.
Now she didn’t really feel that bad. Actually, she felt increasingly wonderful, lightheaded and free and dreamy. Moonlight filtered in the window, making increasingly strange shapes on her bedroom wall.
Moonlight and dreams gradually blended together. She was making love with Alan under the cool trickle of a waterfall. Both of them were naked, their flesh slick and cool…instants later, the waterfall and Alan were gone and something dark and terrifying was chasing her in the night, chasing her with a torch, so hot, so hot…and then the weirdest dream of all, of a tall, dark stranger rapping on her window. Silly, her bedroom window was on the second floor, but the rapping continued, and in the dream it seemed perfectly natural to float out of bed, fly to the window and throw it open to the crisp, cold night and her ravisher.
“Hi there,” Carroll said seductively. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Wonderful air as cold as ice rushed over her overheated skin from the opened window. She shivered from her toes to her soul in response. She’d had ravishment dreams before, but never as good as this one. The tall, dark stranger was turning into Alan, the best part of all. Some kidnapping dreams could pall when her seducer wasn’t real. Alan was deliciously real. He was also taking far too long to climb in her window.
“Waiting for me?” Dark eyes peered in, dazzling her with their intensity.
“All my life,” she said blithely. “Hurry. I love you.” Anticipation danced in her bloodstream. Exhilaration, laughter and champagne danced along with it. In the dream, she’d had liters and liters of champagne and no inhibitions at all. Heat was pouring from her nerve endings, pure female, lusty heat. She slipped her fingers through her hair, shaking the tousled mop in seductive invitation.
There was another slight hesitation, then one jeaned leg slid through the opening, then a long, bent-over body. “I love—” then the last leg “—you, too.” The window slammed behind him. Breathing heavily for a moment, Alan rubbed his hands on the backs of his jeans to rid them of bark and leaf debris, then stood there in silence. His voice finally pierced the darkness, low and hoarse. “Caro, I do love you. I’ve loved you for so long. I know this must look crazy…”
“No!” Her ravisher was shy, delighting her. “It’s not at all crazy.” She rushed forward on the thinnest carpet of air, slipping her arms around his waist. His jacket was freezing against her long flannel nightgown, for an instant shocking her, disturbing the sensations she was enjoying in the dream. Her fever-clogged brain refused the intrusion of reality. “Nothing’s crazy between the two of us. Take me, Alan!”
She rose up on tiptoe, sealing his cold lips with her own. With brazen freedom, she rocked her pelvis against him, let her wanton fingers rush through his hair and tighten. It took no time at all to warm his lips, no time at all for her kidnapper to pick up the spirit of devil-may-care seduction.
In the darkness, she could hear his change in breathing, reveled in it. Huge hands caressed from her back to her bottom and stopped there, holding her dancing hips still, molding them high and hard against him. His tongue dipped into her mouth, providing her with moisture she hadn’t known she was desperate for.
“Caro…ah, Caro. You just can’t know…”
Such wonderful hands he had, dozens of them. Roaming her back, sliding over her slim shoulders, brushing with teasing pressure on her breasts, up to that softest hollow in her throat. “Caro,” he breathed again, and she felt deliriously high. She’d wanted this for so long. Those fingers of his touched her face as he kissed her and kept on kissing her, a whispery touch that explored her cheeks, her closed eyelids, her forehead.
“Caro?” A flat hand suddenly pressed itself against her forehead. “Carroll!”
He tore himself away from her so fast she was left bereft, her arms still reaching for him. Her bedside lamp was switched on, and her dream took an abrupt, nightmarish turn. No decent dream would leave her stranded, wearing a long, bulky nightgown with white athletic socks. She immediately lunged for the light and switched it off. The darkness was better, but not quite as good as before. Something was going wrong very fast.
Actually, everything was go
ing very wrong very fast. She was no longer blazingly hot but chilled. A fit of trembling took her body by storm, and she felt damp and dizzy, but no longer nice-dizzy. A knife seemed to be lodged in her brain, slicing away, and her ravisher was no longer murmuring sweet nothings but a steady refrain of “dammit, dammit, dammit” as he moved around the room.
He changed the litany momentarily to “Caro, just stay there,” when he pushed her into a chair.
She heard the sound of his jacket flung against the wall, the incredibly loud switch-on of the overhead light. She winced at the cruel blaze of light. Confusion made everything surrealistic, like part of a dream. It had to be a dream. Logically, she simply had to reach for that champagne high again, that delicious heat…and there wasn’t anything logical about Alan stripping the sheets from her bed and swearing colorfully as he unplugged the heating pad.
One instant he was on the far side of the room, and the next instant he was kneeling in front of her, his dark blue eyes relentless, piercing, as fathomless as those of the pirate lover in some historical novel. He was furious, the rational part of her brain told her, but that dreaming part of Carroll heard his voice, gentle, tender, as soothing as velvet. “I’m going to take your nightgown off, love. You’ll be far more comfortable in a dry one.”
Maybe true, but the nightgown he’d pulled from her drawer was old, faded and insufferably prim. “I’d prefer,” she whispered, “the pink one with lace.”
“Pardon?”
“The pink one. Alan, I’m not making love to you in that nightgown.”
“Ah. Sweetheart, when we make love you won’t be wearing anything, so it hardly makes any difference. And in the meantime, raise your arms.”
She wasn’t inclined to comply. Another dammit escaped under his breath before Alan could stop it. He lifted her arms and tugged off the long, damp nightgown. Beneath it, she was bare and shivering.
Horror rushed through her. “Turn around!”
“Caro, this is me. Me. Relax,” he said impatiently.
“It isn’t that. It’s the socks. No way am I going to be naked except for socks.” She bent down too quickly; the knife sliced clear through her skull. Stupid. How stupid. There was suddenly no dream to cling to, just this horrid thick dizziness, a body that felt battered, and somewhere, yes, an obstinate trace of vanity. She really did want the darned socks off.
His chuckle startled her, and so did the swift brush of lips on her forehead, followed all too rapidly by her arms being slipped into the fresh nightgown.
“I can—” she started to say, but he was paying no attention.
“Hush. Let me. And someday,” he said gently, “I’m going to make love to you with just your socks on, to show you how silly you are. You’re sexy to me no matter what you’re wearing, kitten, and you always will be. Now try to think clearly.”
She was thinking clearly. That was the problem.
“Where’s your thermometer?”
She couldn’t think that clearly.
“All right. I’ll find it. Now, have you taken aspirin?”
He urged her into bed, a feat that didn’t take much coaxing. He seemed to have stolen all her blankets except the comforter, which wasn’t enough to keep her warm. She tried to tell him, but he popped a thermometer into her mouth.
Five thousand years from now, when she regained her sense of humor, she was going to tell Alan that he was rapidly losing credibility as a ravisher. He grabbed her hand, but it wasn’t a loverlike hold. His two fingers were pressed to her wrist, and with the other hand he was smoothing back her hair. She pushed her hair forward again, the way it was supposed to go. Otherwise, it would stand straight up. Nothing more ghastly than hair standing up every which way; she looked bad enough.
“Would you stop fighting me,” he scolded, and released her wrist. “And if I ever discover you’ve gone to bed with a plugged-in heating pad again, you’ll be in big trouble.”
She didn’t know when he’d dropped the gentle voice, but when he read the temperature on the thermometer he looked vaguely as if he might shoot her.
“A hundred and three degrees. A hundred and three degrees, and you didn’t call me!”
“I feel fine,” she assured him.
“You feel like hell.”
“A little,” she admitted. “Alan, don’t go…”
“I’m not going anywhere. You may be. Now answer quick, and no more nonsense. Throat sore?”
She shook her head.
“Your stomach?”
She shook her head.
“Caro,” he said patiently, “you had a heating pad on. Did you have stomach cramps? Have you kept food down? Diarrhea?”
He’d folded back her blanket and was poking her lower abdomen, paying no attention to the mortified flush that climbed her cheeks. The pallor beneath the flush seemed the only thing that fascinated him.
“No, no, and no! Stop that. Darn it, Alan, every kid in school has the same stupid flu. A high fever and aches and pains and that’s it. I am fine, and my glands are wonderful, thank you.” She pushed his hands away from the swollen nodules in her throat.
“My four-year-olds make better patients than you do,” Alan informed her, and stood up, readjusting the covers around her chin. “I’m going to get you something to drink and some aspirin… What’s that?” He motioned to the glass by her bed.
“Whiskey with honey and lemon. My mother’s cure for everything that ails you.”
“You didn’t drink any.”
“I hate whiskey.”
“Never drink it when you have the flu,” he muttered. “Just puts sugar in the blood, kitten. Worst thing you could do. Now, stay there.”
He wagged his finger at her, as if he thought she might rush off. She couldn’t imagine why she was happy he was there. He was treating her like one of his four-year-old patients; she did not want the glass of orange juice he bullied her into drinking, and embarrassing fragments of an extremely silly dream were gradually filtering back to her. She tried to apologize, but all Alan could talk about was how relieved he was that her fever was breaking. She’d been a lot happier when the fever was raging. Now she felt truly awful.
Still, when he turned out the light, she panicked. “You’re not going home?”
“No.” In the darkness, he shucked off his clothes and slid into bed beside her. Gently, he turned her on her side, facing away from him, and tucked her spoon-fashion against his chest and bent knees before pulling the light cover up to her chin. With a sigh, he settled down. His arms slid firmly around her waist. “I guarantee,” he murmured, “to keep you warm, Caro.”
Fuzzy, woolly darkness enclosed her. She suddenly didn’t feel nearly as bad, just sleepy and a little achy and impossibly cuddly. Her eyes closed, and she nestled her back more firmly against Alan’s bare chest. His beard nuzzled her neck for a moment as he bestowed a surprise of a kiss, and then there was silence.
Just before she fell asleep, she murmured, “Alan, did I dream all of it?”
“Hmm?”
“I dreamed you climbed in the window.”
“Caro,” Alan said gently, “you were delirious.”
“But I know I locked the door. I always lock the—”
“Ssh. Sleep now. You need rest.”
Chapter 7
Carroll stretched, yawned and sleepily opened her eyes…then blinked. A shaggy bear seemed to be lying next to her. A huge, warm shaggy bear with disheveled brown hair and a brown beard and alert blue eyes. “G’morning,” she said groggily.
“Feel better?”
She nodded and snuggled closer. Climbing mountains in Shades Park now seemed like a terrible idea, but the lead was gone from her head, and her body was no longer creaking and groaning. She simply felt on a basic empathic level with a mop. Her cheek burrowed against Alan’s bare warm chest. She saw no particular reason to move from that spot all day.
“You’re not wearing a stitch of clothes,” she mentioned.
“No.”
&nb
sp; “Nothing.”
Alan reached under the covers, captured her wandering hand and pinned it against his chest. He never blinked an eye.
She smiled sleepily, and her eyelids drifted closed again. Vague memories of the night before began wandering through her consciousness, most of them running a fine line between mortification and embarrassment. Since she couldn’t pretend they hadn’t happened, owning up seemed like the only sensible choice. “I’m sorry, Alan,” she said quietly.
“Hey. Don’t be silly.” His thumb stroked her cheek. “Are you ever going to get ill like that again without calling me?”
“No, sir.”
“The fever’s gone, kitten.”
“And I feel wonderful.” To prove it, she slid her arms around his bare waist and sneaked a flannel-covered leg between his. She’d wasted hours, having him naked in bed with her and not even knowing it. And after all those months of postponing intimacy, she could no longer remember a single reason why. It felt perfectly natural waking up with Alan.
It felt even more natural to touch him. He was built along the lines of Gibraltar, strong and solid. The parts of Alan she’d touched before didn’t begin to make up the whole. He had sprinkles of wiry hair on his chest, not a lot of it. A flat abdomen, no rear end to speak of, strongly muscular legs. All of those parts appealed to her, but the whole was the surprise. Alan added up to a physically beautiful man. She’d never really thought about it before.
Nor had she ever realized he was so responsive to her touch. His pulse leaped when her palm touched his nipple. His skin warmed when her hands strayed down to his ribs and abdomen. And she found her hands gently pinned when they tried to stray lower. Blue eyes bore into her, focused on her mischievous smile.
“When,” he murmured, “did the lady get so brazen?”
“I think she was brazen all along. Maybe she has always had a latent sensual streak, just waiting for a chance to break out.”
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