“My cord,” he demanded.
“My air conditioner,” she countered.
The sudden explosion of movement caught her off guard. He leapt forward, snagged her around the waist with one arm, and anchored a hand in the neck of her pajama top. Caroline felt the button straining under his grip.
“I’ll find my cord,” he explained.
Then the button and all its fellow buttons went flying into the darkness. Her top hung open, baring a swathe of her naked skin to the room’s cool air.
Caroline burst into action, stamping on his toes and swinging at him wildly. He grabbed her in both arms and pinned her against his body. “The cord, mademoiselle,” he said calmly.
“Bastard! This is assault!”
“I’m holding you, not assaulting you. You’re a trespasser. You’re also a thief.”
She grew still, her chest heaving with anxiety and the humiliation of being intimately clamped against his naked body. Her shirt had fallen back so that her breasts were against him, her nipples burrowing into his thick chest hair. His face was a mysterious shadow above her, but she could imagine the gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.
“Well, chère, at least I know where the cord is not. Let’s see if it’s down south.” He rotated his hips against her slowly, and his growing hardness was unmistakable. “Ah! I feel something unique. Have you ever considered joining a freak show?”
“All right, you win,” she whispered hoarsely, her body burning. At the moment she wanted nothing more than to get away from the scent and heat of him. It was impossible to feel him against her and not want him. The thought was a basic admission of the sexual energy that had tinted every word, gesture, and look between them since the moment he’d opened the limousine’s door.
She had known all along that she wanted him. She just hadn’t known it so desperately.
“Take it out,” he ordered. “Drop it on the floor.”
Caroline swallowed harshly. Her nipples were stiff against his chest; his shallow breathing gave evidence that he felt the contact as much as she did.
“You mean the cord, I assume,” she taunted.
“Anything else you find will be much bigger.” His voice was a low rumble. “And it’ll be connected to me.”
“I’ll be certain not to bother it.”
“No bother.”
She wedged her hand between their stomachs and worked it into her pajama bottoms. Caroline was so preoccupied with her mission that she leaned forward without noticing, and her forehead brushed the tip of his nose. She turned her face to one side, her breath rattling in her throat.
“Keep that thing out of my way,” she muttered.
“Big nose, big …”
“Okay, okay, I believe the analogy.”
Oh, how she believed it. The back of her hand pressed against him as she grasped the cord trapped between her thighs. She trembled and shut her eyes. Even more disastrous, he trembled.
“I don’t know why I want you, you hellion,” he whispered, “but I do.” Despite his words his voice was gentle.
Caroline groaned. Trembling and gentleness were unfair weapons. She made her voice hard. “A little gratuitous sex, doc?”
“Shhh. I wouldn’t take you to bed even if you asked me to.”
Her head tilted back. She gazed up at him, open-mouthed. “That’s the most arrogant thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“Our circumstances don’t make for much friendship, eh, chère?”
“Eh, no.”
“Well, as much as I’d enjoy sharing my bed with you, I won’t do it. I don’t like to be used by strangers, no.”
She was fascinated. It was either the best line in the world or she’d stumbled upon an incredible man. “I don’t like to be used by strangers either,” she murmured, her voice catching. “I’ve spent most of my life avoiding it.”
“Poor Caroline.” He brushed his lips across her scar.
The gesture was so disarming that a soft sound of anguish escaped from her throat.
“Poor Caroline,” he whispered again, pulling her tighter against him.
With movements that made them both shiver again, she drew the electrical cord from her pajama bottoms and dropped it on the floor. “I don’t want your pity,” she said in a raspy voice. “I hate it.”
“Shhh. So defensive.” He nuzzled her face and kissed her on the mouth.
It was a slow, easy kiss, as erotic as the warm night and full of promise. But there were no promises between them. There were only differences, distances, and a past that she couldn’t forget. Yet he was so incredibly desirable.
Tears slipped down her face even as she kissed him back, touching the tip of her tongue to his. Then choking sobs rose in her throat and she had to twist her mouth away in order to breathe.
He continued to hold her, his breath warm on her face while she cried with jerky little coughs.
“Maybe we could be friends, eh?” he offered by way of sympathy, and she heard the bewilderment in his voice. “We could try, yes?”
“No. Oh, n-no. We’re safer as enemies.” She pushed against his hold. “Let me go, Blue. I don’t want anything to do with you.”
He nearly released her, but his hand snaked around one wrist and kept her from backing away completely. He reached out and pulled her torn pajama top closed. Then he stroked her hair for a moment and ran his fingers over her scar.
“Don’t touch it,” she protested, whipping her head away.
“You’re vulnerable there,” he said gruffly. “It makes you feel helpless. But you confuse pity with compassion. Here. Feel.”
He took her hand and drew it to the back of his neck. Caroline’s fingers slipped across his warm, smooth skin until they reached a horrible swathe of raised tissue.
“Oh, God, Blue, so that’s why you keep your hair long. What happened?”
“You tell me about yours, I’ll tell you about mine.” He glanced down at himself. “But first I’ll cover the happy warrior here with a robe.”
Caroline couldn’t resist looking down too. Her eyes were attached to a willful part of her brain that had to see what she was going to miss.
She was going to miss quite a lot.
“No, don’t,” she said quickly, stepping farther away from him and fixing her gaze on his face. “I mean, I’m going back to my room. I really don’t want to talk about my scar.” She inhaled raggedly. “I don’t want to be friends with you. It’s too complicated.”
“Life is simple at Grande Rivage, chère. You have only to give it a chance.”
“No.” Shaking her head almost desperately, she made a wide arc around him and headed to the door. She opened it and paused, looking back at him. He was a tall, inviting mixture of shadows.
“Get some sleep, chère,” he called. “Tomorrow I’ll put an air conditioner in your window. Then you won’t have to sneak into my room and pretend not to like me.”
Strangling on self-rebuke for all the misery and confusion she’d brought on herself through a dumb prank, she stepped into the hallway and slammed his door shut.
Three
Even a bad night’s sleep didn’t mar his enjoyment of dawn. Paul stretched widely and sucked quantities of cool, clean air into his lungs as he walked through the compound. Above the forest the eastern sky was splashed with Easter-egg colors.
He frowned, thinking about the emotional scene with Caroline, and his mood quieted. He could resist anything but the underlying gentleness in the she-cat’s nature; he was drawn to the mysterious sorrow that made her so angry.
Shoving his hands into the pockets of the faded khaki trousers he wore, Paul strolled along lost in contemplation. Two of the female college interns yelled good morning to him from the window of the small white cabin they shared.
He raised a hand in reply and flashed a quick smile without really noticing them. He was vain enough to enjoy the way they ogled him as he walked past, but cynical enough to dismiss its importance. Superficial pleasures were easy
to come by—and just as easy to forget.
When he rounded the corner of a building and saw Caroline sitting on a small boulder in the panther’s habitat, he forgot superficial pleasures and everything else.
Cursing under his breath, Paul ran to the tall chain-link fence that surrounded the habitat’s wide moat. Within the circle of fence and dark water were two acres of woodland inhabited solely by a large, untamed, and entirely unpredictable cat as black as midnight and capable of killing any human who upset him.
The cat crouched at the base of the boulder where Caroline sat, his eyes fixed on her, the tip of his dark tail popping back and forth. She had her knees drawn up with her arms wrapped around them. She looked completely relaxed. She appeared to be talking to the panther.
Paul ran to a nearby building and retrieved a chunk of beef from a meat cooler there. Several fears tore at him: one involving a lawsuit from Caroline Fitzsimmons’s relatives, one involving the loss of a new federal grant he needed badly, and the worst a mental image of what the cat’s claws could do to her.
When he returned he unlocked the compound’s gate and slipped inside, moving with a grace honed by years of delicate work with skittish animals. He walked up behind the boulder without her noticing, but the cat’s yellow eyes turned slowly toward him.
Paul watched Caroline’s back stiffen. “You don’t have to sneak up on us, doc,” she announced coldly.
Paul stopped, his teeth clenching, his fingers digging into the piece of meat he held in front of him. How did she know that he’d entered the habitat? “I’ll deal with you in a minute,” he answered. He advanced until the panther rose and gazed eagerly at the meat.
“Here you go, Cat,” Paul murmured in a soothing tone, and tossed the chunk to him. Cat pounced on it, snatched it into his mouth, then galloped into the woods.
Caroline turned to eye him dourly. She propped her elbow on one knee and her chin on one hand. “Cat. Wolf. You don’t waste energy on names, do you?”
Paul exhaled raggedly. She was out of danger—from Cat, at least. Her nonchalant stupidity enraged him. “Tu es un peu zinzin sur les bords!” he shouted. “Do you know what that means?”
Caroline’s face paled. “No, and I certainly don’t care to—”
“You’re cracked around the edges! An idiot!”
“He wouldn’t hurt me.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I climbed the fence and waded the moat.”
Paul swept a disbelieving gaze over her pristine outfit, a blue maillot with a print scarf wrapped around it like a skirt. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” he muttered. “Talking is hopeless!”
He grabbed one of her wrists, pulled her forward, and scooped her over his shoulder. Hanging upside down, she clutched the back of his light tank top in silent shock as he marched out of the pen and slammed the gate.
He dumped her unceremoniously by the fence and backed her against the cool metal links. Her eyes were wide with amazement. He pointed a finger under her nose and said softly, his breath hissing against her face, “If I ever catch you in the pen with that panther again, I’ll drag you to the main road and tie you to the mailbox, where you can wait for the next limousine to take you back where you belong.”
Her gold-green eyes narrowed slowly until they became twin suns glowing behind her lashes. “The panther wouldn’t have hurt me.”
“How do you know that!”
Checkmate. She wasn’t going to tell him or anyone else about her talent with animals. She’d learned from harsh experience that it was best kept a secret.
“Trust me …” she began.
“Merde! You think you can flounce around a full-grown panther as if it were some lazy house pet? Did you spend your formative years on drugs? What are you trying to prove, that you’re a fool?”
Trembling from frustration and a disturbing sense of being very female in comparison to Paul’s sheer masculine strength, she planted both hands against his chest and shoved him. He thrust his jaw forward belligerently and refused to move.
“Calm down and back off,” she warned. “I know more about animals than you can learn in your whole life. You don’t have to worry about me.”
He made a derisive sound. She grabbed his face between her hands and pulled him to her. Caroline bit his lower lip and heard his muffled yelp of astonishment.
He anchored one hand on her jaw and held her still while he jerked his mouth away from her attack. His chest moving swiftly, he stared down at her through hooded eyes. “Play with fire, chérie,” he said in a husky voice, “and you’ll get burned.”
She gasped as his arm snaked around her and pulled her forward and up so that she was standing on tiptoe, her torso mashed intimately against his. With only her blue maillot and his thin tank top between them, she felt as though her soft breasts were in direct contact with his hard-packed chest.
Caroline slid her fingers up his neck and wound them into his hair. “I’ll pull out so much hair that you’ll need a transplant.”
His eyes glittered fiercely. “Are you pushing me away or pulling me closer?”
Caroline made a garbled sound of frustration. She wasn’t certain at the moment.
He angled one of his legs between hers with a suddenness that caught her off guard. It destroyed her balance so that one foot dangled above the ground. She jerked on his hair reproachfully and tried not to wiggle atop his thigh.
“Is this how you want to become friends?” she asked tersely. “Friends don’t humiliate each other.”
“If we were friends you wouldn’t try to scare the hell out of me,” he retorted. “You wouldn’t put yourself in a stupid situation where you could get hurt.”
Caroline felt a pang of guilt. There was no way he could have thought anything but the worst of her, under the circumstances. He was frightened for her sake. He cared.
She was suddenly in serious danger of smiling widely, wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug, and thereby confirming his suspicion that she was nuts.
“I did a stupid thing. I’m honestly sorry,” she blurted out.
He was so astonished by her apology that he just stared at her. “You’re driving me crazy,” he finally managed to say.
“Good. Now let me go. I’d rather not spend the entire morning straddling your leg.”
At that his eyes became devilish and his smooth Cajun patois deepened, making him sound wicked and exotic. “Your body, she knows how to start a friendship better than you do, yes? Why are you squeezing me with your thighs?”
“I’m trying not to fall over!”
His voice dropped lower. “Oh, I won’t let that happen, not before I do this.”
He dipped his head, his eyes open and burning into hers as he started to kiss her. She was breathing so hard that she swayed in his powerful embrace. But she didn’t push him away.
His mouth came down on hers, rough and hot. She moaned against the delicious assault and returned it.
The furry thing that shoved against their legs wasn’t the least bit shy about intruding.
“What the … well, bonjour!” Paul exclaimed.
He drew back, frowning. Dazed, Caroline stared at him, her mouth open, her body still intimately astride his leg. Finally she followed his gaze downward. His arm loosened reluctantly. She hopped back, grasping the fence for support.
“You interrupted me,” he told the newcomer, shaking his head in rebuke.
“You saved me,” Caroline added drolly.
Slowly she sank to her heels. She stared into steel-gray eyes and temporarily forgot what had just happened between her and Paul. Caroline knew that she’d never met an animal as noble as the one who stared back at her now. “Hello, Wolf,” she said politely.
Wolf tilted his head to one side, listening to the psychic greeting she conveyed also. He looked from her to Paul and back again. Then he plopped a paw on her shoulder and yipped softly, displaying the Labrador retriever hidden under his wild exterior.
/> “Well, I’ll be damned,” Paul muttered.
“Probably,” Caroline assured him, but without true malice. She was caught up in Wolfs thoughts. The rush of communication was staggering, and his gleeful message unnerved her.
Happy! Good! Master no more lonely! Master takes a mate!
The atmosphere was electric in the aftermath of their tempestuous confrontation. Paul strode back to the house with Wolf at his heels, and she could tell that he was puzzled and annoyed by her effect on an animal he thought he understood completely.
Caroline, grinning, followed them through the house and into the kitchen. She sat down in a cane-bottom chair beside a massive, battle-scarred table that was little more than a slab of crudely finished timber atop legs as thick as her waist.
“I’ll have Wolf wrapped around my little finger by the end of the day,” she announced. “He’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Without pausing to look at her, Paul uttered in French a one-word opinion of that claim. He slapped a coffee kettle under the sink faucet.
Caroline made a face at his well-formed back. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not. And if you’re going to insult me, do it in English. You’re as American as I am.”
“I’m Cajun, and proud of it. If you were Cajun, you’d understand.”
She made an odd, strangled sound that was so plaintive, he glanced at her over his shoulder. Paul wanted to ask what was wrong, but he couldn’t bring himself to forgive her for the panther incident, and for being so smug about Wolf, and especially for ruining his gallant intentions about women and friendship.
To hell with friendship. He wanted to chain Caroline Fitzsimmons to his bed, himself along with her, and see how long it would take for the two of them to scorch the sheets. Then they could discuss friendship.
“Swallow a bug?” he inquired.
She huffed in disgust. “You’re so transparent. I may be demanding and cocky, but you admire that. Admit, it, Belue, you’ve met your match.”
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