by Webb, Peggy
Her face flaming, Maggie whirled back around and kicked a tire again. “Crazy barbarian.”
She heard him behind her, opening her pickup door and putting his gun inside. His voice was muffled inside the cab when he spoke. “I see you decided to come hunting after all.” He was referring, of course, to her horn.
“Hunting for hunters,” she said fiercely. She wanted to strangle him for being the one to come along to pull her out of the mud, and for being so smug about it.
“And what do you intend to do with me now that you’ve found me?” He had come up behind her so quietly she had not heard him.
Whirling around, hands on hips, she faced him angrily. “Certainly not to bed you.” The minute she said it, she could have kicked herself all the way back to Belden.
Adam looked at her blazing face, tipped back his head, and laughed. “I must have made a bigger impression than I thought.” His blue eyes sparkled with humor as he baited her.
“You didn’t make any impression at all, you mule headed money changer!” She shoved at his chest with both hands. “Move out of my way. I’m leaving.” She bounded around him and slammed into her pickup.
“Maggie!” Adam called to her over the loud revving of her engine. Her tires spun uselessly, slinging mud in every direction as she stubbornly gave her truck the gas.
Tears of frustration stung her cheeks as she finally released the gas pedal and pounded her fists against the wheel. “Oh, shoot. Why did it have to be him?”
The door jerked open, and Adam reached in and yanked her out of the seat. “I ought to turn you over my knee and spank you.” Globs of black mud clung to his face and clothes. “What do you think you’re doing?” He gripped both her arms as he towered over her, scowling.
He hauled her up against his chest. Her chin brushed against his soft chamois shirt as she tilted her head up to look defiantly into his eyes. “If you’ll quit fighting, I’m trying to get you out of the mud.”
“I don’t need you,” she muttered as she struggled against him. She felt her boots slipping on the slick ground. Her feet did a wild dance, fighting for purchase in the mud.
Adam held her arms, trying to steady her, but his own feet lost ground as Maggie fell heavily against him, propelling them both backward. They had been standing on the edge of the sloping riverbank, and now they teetered uncertainty, feet scrabbling in the slippery earth. Adam grabbed at the low-hanging branch of a spindly willow tree and missed. He tipped over backward, and Maggie toppled with him.
Together they rolled down the embankment, legs tangled with legs, arms locked, gaining momentum as they went. Mud slicked their clothes and clung to their hair as their bodies pitched against each other’s. Maggie was conscious of broken twigs and prickly grass against her back. But most of all she was conscious of muscular thighs and a broad expanse of chest and a face pressed so close she could see a faint shadow of beard stubble.
They hit the water with a splat. Maggie lay solidly against Adam’s chest, the icy water lapping at her clothes, and mud caked in her hair. “Oh, you... you...” she sputtered. The water that had splashed into her face made small black rivers of the mud caked there.
Adam sat up in the shallow water, pulling Maggie with him. He shook the water from his hair, looked at her face, and roared with laughter. “You ought to see your face.” The whole situation struck him as ludicrous, and he sat in the Tallahatchie River chuckling.
“You mule! We’re going to freeze to death in the river and you sit there laughing.” Reaching into the river, she scooped up a handful of slime. With deliberation, she leaned over and smeared his face. “Now you should see yours.”
Adam struggled up from the water, his buckskin jacket hanging heavily and his jeans molded to his skin. He jerked Maggie up from the water and quickly divested her of her sopping parka. “Come on,” he said between chattering teeth.
“What are you doing? I’m not going anywhere with you.” She planted her feet in the river and glared at him.
“You’re the one who didn’t want to freeze to death, but if you’ve changed your mind, I’ll go without you.” Unceremoniously he hauled her out of the river and half-dragged her back up the slick bank.
She shivered as the sharp wind bit through her wet clothes. “Where are we going?” They surely couldn’t go anywhere in her truck. It was still stuck in the mud.
“My hunting cabin is less than half a mile from here. We can make it.” He shucked his heavy jacket and put it, along with her parka, into her pickup. Then he turned and wrapped his right arm around a shivering Maggie.
She started to protest through quivering lips, but he cut her off. “Body heat. We’ll have to walk fast, Maggie. Put your arms around me and stay close.”
With Adam setting the pace, they walked rapidly through the forest. Their wet boots slogged and squished as Maggie’s long legs matched his stride.
“Adam…”
“Don’t talk. You need all your wind for walking. We should be there in less than ten minutes if we can keep up this pace.”
The wind sliced into them, and Maggie hid her face in the lee of Adam’s shoulder for protection from its icy blast. He pulled her closer, and, through their wet clothes, she could feel a faint warmth from his body.
When Maggie had decided that she could go no farther, that she would just sit down on a log and turn to a lump of ice, they came upon the cabin. Set among the lush forest of pine and cedar, its weathered cypress walls and wooden shingles seemed to blend in with the trees. Beside the front door stood two enormous cottonwood trees, their limbs bare of leaves and their silver-white trunks gleaming in the afternoon shadows.
Spurred on by the welcome sight, Maggie and Adam ran the remaining few yards to the front door. The heavy wooden door squeaked on its hinges as they stepped inside the cabin.
Maggie hugged her arms around herself and shivered as Adam began stripping off his clothes. Although there was no fire inside the cabin, it felt like an oven compared to the frigid temperature outside.
She heard Adam’s boots hit the floor with a thud and then watched with fascination as he unbuttoned his chamois shirt and slid it from his shoulders. A fine pelt of dark hair covered his chest and came to a V at the top of his waistband.
She bit her blue lips to stop the chattering of her teeth as she watched his hands move to his belt buckle. Good grief! He was going to strip buck naked while she stood there and gawked like a sixteen-year-old. Blushing, she turned her back on him and looked for something to wrap around herself.
“Good Lord, woman,” Adam bellowed, “don’t just stand there. Strip!”
Her head shot up, and their eyes clashed. His hands hovered near his belt buckle, and his voice held a veiled threat when he spoke again. “Are you going to get undressed or shall I do it for you?”
CHAPTER NINE
“You wouldn’t dare!” Maggie answered furiously.
Adam’s eyebrows shot up over his extraordinary eyes. “Oh, wouldn’t I?” he asked softly. He took a step in her direction.
Her eyes widened in panic. Good Lord, he meant it. “Where?” she asked, scanning the room for a place to strip out of her wet clothes. The room they were in had been designed for cooking, sleeping, and eating. There seemed to be no escape from Adam’s eyes.
“Through there.” Adam’s nod indicated a door that Maggie’s panic-stricken eyes had missed. Shivering, she hurried in that direction.
The door led to a large bathroom that was meant to be strictly functional. The cypress walls had been coated with sealer and left their natural color. There was a full towel rack on one wall, and a mirror big enough for a man to see his face while shaving.
Maggie leaned over and pulled off her wet boots, and then her nerveless fingers fumbled with the buttons on her sodden shirt. “Shoot,” she muttered as they resisted her efforts to pop them open.
“Need any help in there?” Adam called cheerfully through the door.
Maggie’s head snapped up. “N
o!” She cocked her ear to the door, listening. What was he up to? Would he come barging through the door to undress her as another one of his taming tactics? She heard a metallic clunk as his belt buckle hit the floor. Her face flushed hot at the idea of Adam standing on the other side of the door in just his underwear.
With a guilty start, she backed away from the door and struggled out of her wet clothes. What did it matter to her if he was standing out there naked? She flung her wet army pants into the corner and stripped off her panties and bra. She was in a real huff by the time she got into the shower.
She slathered herself with soap and scrubbed away the mud. The hot water stung her skin’s chilled surface, and the faintly spicy smell of soap rose in the steam of the shower. It was a man’s soap. His soap. She stood for a second, the soap poised in midair. Adam had stood in this same spot, massaging this same soap into that magnificent chest of his. Maggie closed her eyes and let the fragrance drift around her.
“You can put this on when you’ve finished.”
Maggie nearly jumped out of her skin. He was there in the bathroom with her. From the sound of his voice, he was standing right outside the shower door, the smoky glass door that would have perfectly silhouetted her body for his viewing. She swallowed a lump in her throat and stood still under the rush of water.
The seconds crawled slowly by, and at last she heard his footsteps and then the slamming of the bathroom door. Cautiously she opened the shower door a crack and peeked around the corner. A large shirt in apple-green chamois was lying on the vanity. She hastily finished her shower. She didn’t want to be in there a minute longer than she had to, with Adam roaming in and out at will.
Maggie stepped out of the shower and toweled herself dry. Then, wrapping the towel around her wet hair, she put on Adam’s shirt. The shirttail came to mid-thigh, but even so, she’d have to be careful, for the only underwear she had lay in a soggy heap on the floor.
She opened the bathroom door cautiously, half expecting to see Adam parading around stark naked. Instead, he was bending over the fireplace in a pair of dry jeans, coaxing the freshly laid fire to life.
“That fire looks wonderful,” Maggie said as she crossed the room. She noticed that Adam had managed to wash the mud off his face while she’d been showering.
He glanced across his shoulder at her, and his eyebrows rose. “That’s a definite improvement.”
“Getting rid of the mud helped.”
“I’m not talking about the mud. I’m talking about my shirt. It looks better with you in it.”
Maggie knelt in front of the fire and extended her hands. It would be best to ignore that comment. The situation was volatile enough already. “Hmm, that feels good.” Maggie took the towel from her hair and began to massage its wet strands. The blaze from the fire cast a red glow across her cheeks and gilded her exposed legs with gold.
The fire crackled as Adam watched her in silence. Abruptly, he stood up and stomped across the room.
Startled, Maggie looked up. “Where are you going?”
“To take a shower. I could get twenty years for what I’m thinking.” The bathroom door banged shut behind him.
Maggie sank back on the thick-piled rug and stretched out her legs. “Whew!” It was a good thing Adam had left. If he had stayed a minute longer, there was no telling what she might have done. Sitting half-naked with him in front of a cozy fire in a cabin deep in the woods revived all the sexual tension between them. And where Adam was concerned, it didn’t take much to do that.
While he was in the shower, Maggie gazed around the room. The bed dominated one corner. It was a cherry wood four poster, covered with a brightly colored quilt. An eighteenth century gate leg table made of cedar and cypress stood in the center of the room. Two cane bottom chairs stood beside the table, and two more flanked the fireplace. Adam obviously loved antique furniture and had spared no expense in furnishing his cabin.
The corner of the room opposite the bed had been furnished as a kitchen, and Maggie noticed that he had rigged the sink into an oak washstand. With its natural cypress walls and antique furnishings, there was a true flavor of early Americana in the cabin. Being here was almost like being transported backward in time.
The opening of the bathroom door caused Maggie to jump. Hastily she tucked her legs under her.
Adam chuckled. “What’s the matter, Maggie— afraid I’ll eat you?” He strode across the room and sat back on his heels on the hearth rug. The fire glistened on droplets of water clinging to his bare chest. His dark hair was still damp and tousled across his forehead.
No, afraid I’ll eat you, Maggie thought. “Of course not,” she said firmly.
“By the way, I rinsed your under things and hung them in the bathroom to dry.”
“You did what?”
“Unless you’d prefer to go ‘au naturel’ while you’re here with me.” He kept a straight face, but his eyes sparkled with humor. “The rest of your clothes will require a little more attention, I’m afraid.”
Her face flushed at the idea of Adam’s performing such an intimate chore for her. Ever since he had stepped out of the forest to rescue her, the situation had been spiraling out of control. Maggie felt herself being irrevocably pulled into the bright web of passion that had already ensnared them in its subtle threads. Her only defense was anger.
“How dare you, you... you Peeping Tom! First you dump me into the Tallahatchie River and now you maul my—”
“Panties.” He grinned at her.
“You keep out of this.” She jumped to her feet. “You’ve been nothing but trouble ever since I met you. You and your gun toting, animal slaughtering tactics.”
“Maggie,” he warned her.
“And giving interviews behind my back just because you’re some hotshot banker!” Maggie was on a roll now. “Sneaking around in a Santa Claus suit, fooling little old ladies. Well, you can’t fool me.”
Adam was on his feet beside her. His arm snaked out and brought her against his body with a soft whump. “Are you finished?” His voice was tight as their eyes met.
“No, you bar—” His mouth stopped her words. Fiercely his lips pressed against hers, goaded by the anger that crackled in the air around them.
Maggie tried to steel herself against him, to resist her overwhelming hunger for his touch. His tongue pushed impatiently against her closed lips, and his hands cupped her bare buttocks, hauling her hard against his lean hips.
Maggie was powerless against the passionate assault. Her arms circled his shoulders as her lips responded to his demands. The desire that had been simmering between them since that icy day in Boguefala Bottom exploded.
Adam groaned deep in his throat as his anger turned to intense need. His hands reached up and popped the buttons of her shirt as he impatiently tore it aside. Pressed against his chest, and from a long way off, Maggie heard the buttons as they pinged to the floor one by one.
Adam lowered her to the deep pile rug, and her hair made a bright fan as it streamed behind her in the firelight. Their eyes locked for a moment, burning with the awareness of their shared passion.
“Lord, you don’t know how long I’ve wanted this,” Adam said huskily, and Maggie heard his belt buckle hit the floor somewhere behind him.
Her arms yearned upward, imploring him to relieve the raging fire that consumed her. Behind them, the fire cast an other-worldly glow over the timeless dance their bodies performed. All their pent-up passions exploded in a release that shook them to the core.
Adam lay still atop her, nuzzling her sweat dampened brow with his lips. “Maggie,” he breathed. “Oh, my Lord, Maggie.”
Her arms tightened around him, crushing him to her breasts. Their loving had felt like coming home to Maggie, and now she knew. There were no halfways and nearlys and almosts with Adam. She could no longer kid herself. She was in love with him, completely and irrevocably.
Tears trembled on the tips of her lashes, and she blinked to keep them from spilling ov
er. Everything about this love was impossible, but she would hold him just a little while longer. She wrapped her arms tighter around Adam.
“Hey, Maggie.” Adam lifted his head and gave her a lopsided grin. “Not so tight.” Seeing the glistening of tears in her eyes, his teasing quickly changed to concern. He shifted his weight off her and propped himself up on his elbow at her side. One hand gently brushed across her eyelashes. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything.”
“No, It’s not. I love you, Maggie.”
“But—”
His fingers pressed softly against her lips. “Let me finish. I’ve fought it for a long time. I kept telling myself that I would make you pay for spoiling my hunts and bringing havoc to my bank, to my life. But every time I came near you, I ended up wanting you in my arms. I think I’ve loved you since that first time I saw you, so cocksure and gorgeous. riding that boat in the Tallahatchie River and tooting that damned horn.”
She gave him a tremulous smile. “It’s not a damned horn; it’s a silver trumpet.”
He lifted the hand that lay between them and kissed the tips of her fingers. Maggie’s heart melted as she looked up at him. The firelight gilded his sun-bronzed skin and danced in his remarkable blue eyes.
Outside the cabin the wind moaned beneath its heavy load of snow and finally dropped its burden like a white blanket over the earth. The snow blew down over the trees and drifted over the bushes and sifted down on the windowsills. It covered the ground in a deep carpet, hiding the roads and banking along the roadsides.
Inside the cabin, Maggie and Adam were too absorbed in each other to know the capricious trick nature had played on the South.
Shivers scattered along her spine as Adam continued his slow, lazy kissing of her hand. His lips moved across the palm, skimmed the wrist, and inched upward to plant a warm, moist kiss in the crook of her elbow.
“I can’t love you, Adam. I won’t. We’re too different.”
“Goodness, I hope so,” he said with a soft chuckle as his lips nipped at her ear.
“That’s not what I mean. Get serious.” She reached up her hand to push his head away, but instead her fingers curled in the hair at the back of his neck and moved in lazy circles there.