SAY AHHH...

by Donna Sterling

  Tearing her gaze from his, she took over the task of buttoning the shirt, dazed by her intoxicating attraction to him. She should be focusing on the crisis she'd soon face. She had no doubt there would be one.

  "We've been gone all afternoon," she remarked, needing to break the heart-thudding silence between them, "and I didn't even tell Lorna I was leaving."

  "I told her."

  "She knows I'm with you?"

  "After our exit from the pool, I'm sure everyone does." He rose to his feet and held out his hand to help her up.

  She took it, relishing its steadiness and strength. "Then the only way she won't have my head," she predicted direly, "is if she personally sees me having a major blood transfusion tonight in your clinic."

  "That's an idea." He kept her hand loosely in his, even after she'd risen. "You wouldn't mind, would you? Might be the only excuse she'll accept for us being this late. Of course, I'd have to give my own blood."

  They shared a mere suggestion of a smile. Slowly he relinquished her hand, swept the blanket up from the ground and ushered her toward his gleaming black Jaguar. "I was supposed to pick her up at six."

  Sarah stared at him, absorbing his words, then shut her eyes. The dance! How could she have forgotten about the dance? She should have been baby-sitting the boys by now. And Connor should have been wearing some elegant tux, with Lorna grandstanding at his side. Lorna would be furious.

  "I'm sorry that I ruined your date," Sarah said miserably, mortified by the trouble she had caused. And yet, in a secret part of her heart, she hoped she had ruined their date … which mortified her all the more.

  With his sleek, muscular back to her, he tossed the blanket into his car and muttered something unintelligible. He couldn't know, of course, what Lorna's anger would mean for her. No one but Annie knew how desperately Sarah needed the job … and Annie would be gone for another couple of weeks yet.

  Sarah's anxiety mounted. She'd have nowhere to stay if Lorna fired her, and no money to tide her over until she found another job. How could she even look for another job? She had no car, phone or references … not even a social security number.

  Connor crossed his muscled arms, settled against his low, sleek sports car and studied her. "Don't worry about Lorna. I'll call and explain what happened. We'll stop by my house. I'll shower and change." He shrugged—a nonchalant, masculine movement of his broad shoulders. "We'll just be a little late, that's all."

  Sarah tossed her head in silent scorn. "How will you explain being so late? That we were sleeping together and lost track of the time?"

  A corner of his mouth shot up and an enchanting groove deepened beside it. "Maybe I won't put it quite that way."

  She let out a harried breath, raked a heavy wave of hair from her face and paced. "It won't matter what you tell her. The damage has been done. She's going to fire me."

  He watched the sway of her hips as she passed by him—a fact she noticed through the car's side mirror. "I don't see why," he replied gruffly. "I warned her last night that you needed a few days of bed rest. It's her fault as much as anyone's for not insisting you take off work at least one day."

  "It really wasn't Lorna's fault. She didn't drag me out of bed." Pacing back toward him, she threw a sheepish glance his way. "I … I guess I should have listened to you."

  "Damn right." He looked a little too pleased at her admission.

  "Of course, I probably wouldn't have fallen asleep at the pool if it hadn't been for that Punch Cola."

  "Punch Cola? You mean that liquid caffeine they sell as a soft drink?"

  "I thought it might help me wake up." Feeling somewhat abashed by the disapproval in his stare, she stopped her pacing and leaned against the car beside him. "Guess it had the opposite effect on me."

  "Caffeine puts you to sleep?" His eyebrow lifted with interest. "Hmm. That's rare. I've read case studies involving that reaction, but—" He paused, and his tawny brows converged. "If you know caffeine puts you to sleep, why did you think the cola would wake you up?"

  Nervousness flushed through her at the question. She searched for a plausible explanation. "I'd forgotten how caffeine puts me to sleep. I mean, I don't drink coffee or cola very often, and never very much of it." Which had been the truth … at least, for the past seven weeks since her accident.

  "You're twenty-five years old and haven't had much coffee or cola?"

  Her gaze snapped back to his. "You remembered my age from that medical chart, didn't you?"

  "That's right."

  "What did you do?" she cried in exasperation. "Memorize the whole blasted thing?"

  "So what if I did? It's part of my job."

  "To remember my birth date?"

  "Do you remember it, Sarah?" There was no escaping his keen gaze. "Do you remember what date you wrote down as your birthday?"

  She didn't. She hadn't paid much attention to the date she'd randomly chosen. But she thought back to what he'd said at the pool, just before she'd nodded off to sleep. "September fifteenth."

  "Wrong. September sixteenth."

  She blanched in speechless dismay. He'd tricked her!

  "I don't understand why you'd lie about a thing like that," he rebuked, "or anything else on a medical form … and yet, everything on yours was a lie, wasn't it?"

  "Not a lie!" She felt unreasonably offended by the harsh term. After a moment, though, she hesitantly allowed, "Maybe all the information wasn't exactly precise…"

  "Why not?"

  When she failed to answer, his mouth thinned. The silence between them grew tense. "Keep your secrets, then," he said in a low, hoarse rumble, "if that makes you feel safer. But understand this, Sarah." His stare pinned her against the car. "No matter what kind of trouble you're in or what you're running from, you can tell me. I won't do anything you don't want me to. I won't hurt you."

  Her throat closed up. She felt like crying. Should she tell him about her amnesia? The truth couldn't make him any more suspicious of her than he was right now.

  She wanted to trust him. She did trust him. That fact alone frightened her. She'd trusted foolishly before, with disastrous results…

  While she searched her mind for how she knew this, Connor turned away and reached through the open window of his car for the cell phone. The warmth had gone from his expression. He now looked dark and shuttered.

  A stranger.

  The choice had been hers.

  "Connor," she whispered on an impulse, catching hold of his arm.

  His muscles hardened beneath her fingers as he swung his gaze back to hers with a stern, silent question.

  An odd tenderness welled up in her. She couldn't forget his kindness today, or the time he'd devoted to her. Or the way his kiss had blessed her with a sweet, vibrant taste of life—maybe the only taste she'd have in a long, long time to come.

  Her lips curved and her eyes misted. "Before things get any worse with Lorna and I get sidetracked, I … I want to thank you for helping me today." She swallowed a sudden thickness in her throat. "For taking me from the club and staying with me. I know you had better things to do with your time."

  The guardedness left his face and his eyes darkened with a powerful intensity. "I can't think of a damn thing better than holding you all afternoon. Unless it's holding you all night."

  Sensual longing engulfed her. His dark solemn face filled her vision. The promise of his kiss overwhelmed her with need.

  A sudden ringing of a cell phone erupted between them. Startled, she drew back.

  Connor uttered a soft curse, swept a heated gaze across her mouth and brought the cell phone to his ear. After a brusque greeting, he stiffened and turned away. "Lorna. I was just about to call you. Sorry I'm late. If you still want to go, I can stop by my—"

  He broke off abruptly, and a moment passed. "You called me? I didn't hear the phone. Guess I left it in the car." He fell silent again, and his gaze met Sarah's. "Yeah, she's still with me."

  Sarah caught her bottom lip between her
teeth.

  A frown gradually formed on his face. "Hold on, there, Lorna. We've been dealing with a health-related issue, which—if you'll remember—I warned you about last night." He glared into the steadily increasing darkness. "You made the choice to send her to the pool with the kids after I made it perfectly clear—"

  He paused. A subtle flush seeped beneath his tan. "Juneberry Lake? Well, yeah, I suppose we were, but…" He shut his eyes and bowed his head. In the next instant, he brought it back up. "Actually, it's none of your business what we were doing there. I've apologized for being late, and I— Lorna?"

  Clenching his jaw, he slung the cell phone through the open window into his car. Bracing herself for the worst, Sarah waited in dread for the news he'd surely deliver.

  After a grim, silent moment, he turned to her. She sensed anger simmering within him, yet his gaze conveyed his regret. "I'm sorry, Sarah. You were right. Lorna fired you. She's, uh, leaving your suitcase on her front porch. You can pick up your final paycheck next Friday."

  * * *

  5

  « ^ »

  They found her suitcase on the wide, columned front porch of Lorna's Colonial mansion—one suitcase with a folded note taped to its handle. Nothing more. He'd expected considerably more. She had, after all, been living here.

  The sight of that lone suitcase somehow made Connor feel worse than he already did. The look on Sarah's face had told him how much the job meant to her. He couldn't understand why. He felt sure she could find a better one. She didn't seem to realize that, though.

  Not that she'd shared her feelings with him. She'd barely said a word since they'd left the lake.

  He followed her up the walkway to the porch, where she stooped beside the suitcase and unzipped a small, almost-hidden side compartment. Reaching in, she retrieved a slim stack of cash. Flipping through bills, she bit her lip and tucked the money into her purse.

  "Is it all there?"

  "Of course," she murmured. "I never suspected it wouldn't be. I just couldn't remember exactly how much I'd saved."

  From her air of subdued desperation, he guessed it wasn't enough. Surely, those few bills couldn't be all her savings. She'd certainly have a bank account to draw on and a few credit cards at her disposal.

  His gut told him otherwise.

  "Do you have a car here?" he asked.

  "No."

  She detached the note taped to the handle of her suitcase, and he read the emotions in her cloud-gray eyes. Anger, though not nearly enough of it to suit him. Remorse, which shouldn't have been there at all. But the dominant emotion looked like fear.

  Why should losing a temporary job cause her fear?

  Her steadfast refusal to vent her feelings only fanned his anger at both Lorna and himself. He believed that Lorna had acted out of spite. And he, damn his soul, had acted out of self-gratification. He should have dropped Sarah off at Lorna's after leaving the club, but he'd wanted to stay with her. He should have watched the time, but he'd gotten lost in the wonder of holding her. He'd fallen asleep with the scent of her in his nostrils and the feel of her in his arms … a pleasure too intense to regret, even now.

  Calling himself the worst of names, he grabbed the suitcase from beside her and carried it to his car.

  Sarah remained on the porch and read the note. When she'd finished, her chin came up and she pivoted to rap on Lorna's door.

  Lorna, however, didn't answer the brisk knocking, just as she hadn't answered her phone when Connor had tried to call. Squaring her shoulders,

  Sarah kept her head high as she strode down the walkway from the mansion's porch.

  From his watchful stance beside the car, Connor noticed how pale she had grown. "What was in the note?" he demanded, fully intending to be told.

  She hesitated, but after a glance at his face, let out a weary breath and shrugged, as if it mattered little to her what the note had said. "Her reasons for firing me."

  "What were they?"

  Though she tried to remain impassive, telltale color seeped into her face. "Leaving her children unsupervised at the club while I…" She paused, as if trying to find the right words.

  He snatched the note from her hand and read it for himself. She'd left out the part where Lorna had accused her of "throwing herself at men," and her report that the entire community was "shocked and dismayed by her behavior."

  Connor crumpled the note in his fist and glared at the house. "I'll 'shock and dismay' her, all right." He started toward it.

  Sarah stepped in his way to stop him. "I appreciate your support, Connor, but this isn't your battle to fight. There's been a simple misunderstanding. I can see how she'd arrive at the conclusion she has. We walked out of the club with your arm around me, and she apparently learned that we spent the afternoon at Juneberry Lake. If you care about your relationship with her, you'll wait until tomorrow when she's cooled down and explain that there's nothing between us."

  "But that would be a lie." He held her gaze the way he wanted to hold her. "Whether you're willing to do anything about it or not … there is something between us, Sarah."

  A breathless silence overtook them.

  A boyish shout disrupted that silence. "Sarah!" A small, barefoot figure darted from the shadows at the side of the mansion. "Sarah, wait!"

  "Timmy." She turned toward him and gaped at the pajama-clad boy running barefoot down the long, rolling driveway. "It's getting chilly out here. You should have shoes on, or slippers."

  "Sarah!" he wailed. To Connor's surprise, the holy terror of the peewee baseball league threw his chubby arms around her knees. "Please don't go!"

  "Hey, hey, what's this all about?" she asked in a gentle, almost-teasing tone as she tousled his dark, reddish hair. "I haven't seen you run that fast since you made your big home run."

  Flushed and panting, he regarded her dolefully from beneath shaggy bangs. "My mom's giving Tofu away, and now she's giving you away, too. It's not fair. Don't go, Sarah. Jeffrey and me, we want to keep you!" His voice had choked up.

  She dropped to her knees with a tender smile. "Oh, Timmy, I wish I could stay. But I… Well, I have to find another job."

  "No, no… Then you won't watch cartoons with us, or play."

  "We might get the chance to have fun together again. I might even come to some of your ball games … if I stay in town."

  "If I stay in town." Connor tensed at that.

  "Promise?" Timmy implored her. "Cross your heart, hope to die, stick a hundred needles in your eye?"

  She winced with comic exaggeration, but held her hand up and uttered a vow. "If I'm in town, I promise to come to as many of your games as I can. Now, you'd better get back to the house. The Gruesome Twosome show will be coming on TV soon."

  "The Gruesome Twosome!" he exclaimed with boyish vigor. "I better get the remote before Jeffrey does." He took off running. But then he stopped, turned back to her and dug something out of his pajama pocket. "I almost forgot. I brought these for you." He cupped his hand over hers and dropped his offering into her palm. "In case you want to play when I'm not there."

  She closed her hand around the gift, murmured her thanks and hugged him—really hugged him, as a mother might hug her son. Timmy tolerated it for a moment, then pulled away, leaving her with a shout of, "See ya later, alligator!"

  "After a while, crocodile!" she called back. She slowly stood and stared in the direction he'd taken until they heard the side screen-door slam. Wordlessly, then, she turned to Connor, who guided her with a light hand at her waist to his car.

  When she'd settled into the passenger seat, he paused in the open doorway. "What did he give you?"

  She smiled up at him with shiny, liquid eyes. "Army Men." Unfurling her hand, she showed him. Her smile slipped a little. She turned her head abruptly away, closed her hand and held it against her heart. "His favorite ones," she croaked.

  He fell in love with her then, or maybe he just realized at that moment how totally, overwhelmingly, he'd already falle
n. He wanted to take her home with him and make love to her for the rest of his life … not just to her lush, slender body, but to the woman behind the tear-shiny eyes and tender smile.

  He understood perfectly what Timmy had meant.

  Connor, too, wanted to keep her. Badly.

  It was craziness, of course. As crazy as his father's obsession with the "natural way" and the mountains he'd considered paradise. As crazy as his mother's belief in yin and yang, the zodiac and the curative powers of flute music. As crazy as their needless deaths.

  Falling in love was the craziest of all—especially with Sarah Flowers. He knew nothing about her other than the fact that she'd lied on her medical form, ran away from him whenever she could, turned him inside out with her kiss and whispered another man's name in her sleep.

  He was in trouble. Deep trouble. He'd lost his head and he'd have to find it. But she needed him at the moment, and he would, by God, help her.

  "Let's go get some supper," he suggested. "It's seven-thirty. You've got to be as hungry as I am."

  "Thanks, but I'd better register in a hotel. Would you mind dropping me off at the nearest one?"

  "A hotel? I thought you'd want to go to Annie's. She is your cousin, isn't she?"

  That wary look entered her eyes again and made his muscles tense up. "She's away on a camping trip. She won't be home for another couple weeks."

  He pursed his lips and drove for a while in speculative silence. "The only hotel nearby is Beck's Lodge at the fishing camp. I have no idea what your financial situation is, but it'll cost you around a hundred dollars a night to stay there."

  Fear flickered again in her eyes, but she didn't reply.

  "Are you planning to find another job here," he persisted, maybe a little too gruffly, "or leave town?"

  "I … I really can't say."

  "'Can't say?'" His anger surged. He cut the wheel sharply and turned down the road to his house in simmering, tight-lipped silence.

  "Connor?" She gripped the armrest and glanced at him as he turned into his tree-lined driveway and brought the car to a sudden halt.

  "I'm not going to beg you to trust me." He pulled the key out of the ignition, removed it from his key ring and tossed it into her lap. "Take the car. Go to the hotel."