by Cara Summers
Muttering under his breath, Tracker shifted again. The damn tree limb was going to leave permanent markings on his backside. And to top it all off, he was beginning to suspect that he would find Sophie Wainright sound asleep and very safe in her bed.
A glance at his watch informed him that only three minutes had gone by since the last time he’d checked. The rain had stopped, but in the gray mist that clung to the mountains like a favorite cloak, it was impossible to guess exactly how long until sundown.
Tracker was literally counting the seconds. Sundown was nighty-night time at the Serenity Spa, and that meant that he could get into the offices and find Sophie’s room number. He was allowing himself an hour to locate her, verify that she was here and then…
Well, then he figured he’d even have time for a nap before Millie Jean made her morning delivery.
And this time he was going to make sure the Princess never knew she’d been checked on.
AS LUCAS WATCHED THE towel drop to the floor, he was quite sure he’d never felt the blood drain so quickly from his head before.
In the soft glow of the bedside lamp, her skin had the pale, creamy hue of porcelain. He knew exactly what it would feel like beneath his hands—still cool and slightly damp from her shower. He could smell the soap even from a distance.
He hadn’t moved. He didn’t know if he could. In the back of his mind he knew that he’d had a purpose for coming into the room. But all he could do now was look at her. Knowing that she was here, naked in his bedroom, understanding that she could be his in the time it took him to take three quick strides across the room—all of that had the need to touch her boiling in his blood.
“Lucas…”
He wanted her beneath him on that bed. Now. That thought, along with a sharp stab of desire, freed him from the paralysis that had gripped him since her towel had dropped. He’d taken those three steps toward her before he stopped himself.
This wasn’t what he’d planned. Ruthlessly, he tried to dredge up the details he’d carefully mapped out. He was going to take her out…on a date. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember where.
“Lucas…”
If she continued to look at him that way, there wasn’t going to be any date.
She moistened her lips with her tongue as she moved toward him and laid a hand on his chest. “What I have in mind is…”
Bells began to ring in his head. There was a shyness in her voice, a tentativeness in her approach that hadn’t been there with Lania or Sally or even Fiona. If this was yet another fantasy, he had to nip it in the bud.
“You dropped something,” he said. He saw the quick leap of surprise in her eyes and something else before she lowered her gaze. Embarrassment? Hurt? He stooped over to retrieve the towel, then handed it to her. As she wrapped it around herself and tucked it securely into place, he became certain of one thing. This was Mac standing in front of him. Lania, Sally and Fiona weren’t shy at all. But Mac was. She was also very neat and thorough about the way she tied a towel around herself.
And he’d just hurt her. He knew he had to make it right. Wanted to with all he had. More than anything, he wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her. But he didn’t trust himself to touch her. Still, he needed to erase the pain he’d seen in her eyes.
“Look at me, Mac.”
When her eyes met his, he said, “For the record, I want to make love to you more than anything right now.”
“Then why did you pick up my towel?”
“Because I was rough on you down in the lagoon, and I think we should both take a little break from…your research. And since it is finally my turn to call the shots—”
“It’s not your turn.”
Lucas frowned. “Time out. In the lobby earlier, you said it was your turn until we made love. We did. That means it’s my turn.”
“We made love two times. The second time was your turn. Now it’s mine.”
She had a point. More importantly, the hurt look had vanished from her eyes. “Look, we can argue about this, or we can compromise. What I was going to suggest is that we go out—on a date.”
Mac blinked. “A date?”
She sounded as if she’d never heard the word before, and quite suddenly Lucas began to enjoy himself. For the first time since Mac had stepped off his plane, he was beginning to feel as if he had a slight advantage. He intended to keep it. “That didn’t pop up in your research? I’m thinking of the kind of thing where a guy asks a girl out to dinner, maybe dancing. It’s an old-fashioned way of getting to know one another—”
“I’ve heard of a date before.”
The dry tone had him grinning. “I think we’re overdue for one, don’t you?”
“But we know each other.”
“Most definitely in the biblical sense. However, there are lots of things we don’t know yet. What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?”
“Rum raisin.”
“What do you have nightmares about?”
“Falling.”
“Ah. That fits with the fear of heights. But the rum raisin is a surprise. I would have picked you for a strawberry girl.”
She frowned, studying him as she turned over his proposal in her mind. Finally, she said, “This date wouldn’t count as anyone’s turn?”
“Scout’s honor.”
Still, she hesitated.
“Doc, it’s just a date. I’m not asking for your hand in marriage. I want to go out with you for one evening in Key West. Just you and me. Mac and Lucas. We leave Lania, Sally and Fiona here in the room with John and the shipwrecked sailors.”
She said nothing, and in the silence he could almost hear the wheels turning in her mind. He couldn’t recall ever having a woman hesitate about accepting a date with him. Instead of being annoyed he had to clamp down on the urge to hug her.
“You’re a tough sell, Doc. Let me sweeten the deal. If you’ll come along quietly, I’ll let you sneak in some of those questions on your questionnaire.”
She studied him for one more minute before she held out her hand. “It’s my turn when the date’s over and we come back here to the room.”
“You have my word on it.”
While they were shaking on it, he said, “One other thing. I get final approval on what you’re wearing this time.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE MOMENT THEY WALKED through the door, Mac felt her senses being bombarded from every direction at once. What she saw was a crowded, dimly lit room that might have been the set of a forties movie. If the lights had been brighter, she thought she might have even glimpsed Humphrey Bogart straddling one of the stools at the bar. She smelled perfume, liquor and cigarette smoke, mixing with the spicy scent of a pizza on the tray of a passing waiter. And through it all, she heard and felt the haunting, bluesy sound of a sax.
Nerves knotted in her stomach. How was she supposed to seduce a man in a crowded, noisy bar? Sally wouldn’t have had a problem, but she’d promised to be Mac. And Mac didn’t even have step one figured out in her mind.
“Lucas.” A large man in tan slacks, a crisp white shirt and wide red suspenders slid from a bar stool and hurried toward them. Mac guessed his age to be in the seventies. “Welcome. It’s been a long time.” He grasped Lucas’s hand and thumped him on the back. “I’ve got your grandfather’s favorite table ready for you.”
While Lucas introduced her to Joe Johnson, the current owner of the place, the large man ushered them past the band to a booth in a back corner. It was U-shaped with wooden partitions rising high on three sides and offering an illusion of privacy.
“You enjoy yourselves, hear?” Joe said as he left them.
“I’ve never been in a place like this,” Mac said as she slid into the seat.
“Good.”
But she wasn’t so sure of that.
“I’d like to be able to tell you that Ernest Hemingway wrote To Have and Have Not while he was sitting at this very table.”
; She glanced down at the scarred wood of the table, then back at him. “But you’re not telling me that.”
“Not with absolute certainty. The place has been renovated since the days when he used to hang out here.” He paused to glance around the room. “Some of the furniture goes back that far, I’m sure. What I can tell you is that this is the place where he wrote a lot of that novel—and others.”
Mac stared at him. “But this isn’t Sloppy Joe’s. It says in the guidebooks that’s where he wrote.”
“This is the building that housed the original Sloppy Joe’s. My grandfather used to bring me here, and then he’d tell me stories about the days when he and Papa Hemingway used to drink and fish. There’s a back room they used to play pool in.” He gestured toward a doorway next to the bar. “Each time he brought me here he’d swear that the table we were sitting at was the exact place where Hemingway had penned this or that story or scene.”
Mac glanced quickly around the room. “Which one were you sitting at?”
Lucas grinned at her. “We were at a different table each time we came here.”
She ran her hand reverently over the scarred wood in front of her. “But this was your grandfather’s favorite. So it really could be the one?”
“Could be.” He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I heard you talking to the bellhops in the lobby of the hotel. I thought you might like this even better than the museum.”
“I do.” She met his eyes then. “Thank you. You’re a very kind man.”
“No.” His grin faded as quickly as it had appeared. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that. Hasn’t Sophie disabused you of that notion?”
Mac reached for his hand then. “Sophie appreciates that you care for her. Or she will as soon as she gets over that Bradley creep.”
Lucas studied her for a moment. “When did you decide that Bradley was a creep?”
“The first time I met him.”
“And Sophie knew your opinion?”
She shook her head. “Of course not, although sometimes I had to bite my tongue. She suspected that I didn’t like him, but I would never have told her not to date him. Haven’t you noticed that she immediately does the thing that she’s been told not to do?”
Lucas laughed. “Yeah. I’ve noticed that pattern in her behavior.”
“If you ever really want Sophie to do something, tell her the opposite,” Mac said. “It’s the forbidden-fruit syndrome. It works every time.”
He could testify to that. His determination not to touch Mac was fueling his desire to do just that. And it had been growing steadily since he’d slid into the booth beside her—no, even before that, when she’d bent to get in the taxi and he’d caught a glimpse of that soft smooth skin at her navel, just below the spot where she’d knotted her shirt. He could reach out to brush his fingers along it right now.
It didn’t help one bit that her hand was still in his. It would be so easy to raise her fingers to his lips, scrape his teeth over her knuckles and watch her eyes cloud. She was so responsive…so tempting. But he’d promised her a date, and he was going to give it to her.
When he caught himself staring at her mouth, he cleared his throat and said, “I’ll have to remember that. About Sophie, I mean. The forbidden-fruit syndrome—the next time I want to handle her.” Good grief, he was babbling. He had to focus. Ask a question. “Why are you so afraid of heights?”
Mac blinked and stared at him. “Why would you ask that?”
He settled himself against the back of the booth. “Because I want to know. You must have given it some thought—tried to analyze it.”
She had, but it had been a long time since she’d dredged it up. She wasn’t sure she wanted to now.
“C’mon. We’re on our first date, remember. We get to ask questions so that we can learn more about each other. You can trust me, Mac.”
The look in his eyes was so calm and patient, she found herself saying, “When I was five, my father built me a swing set in the backyard. There was a trapeze on it, and he’d been disappointed in me because I couldn’t sit on it. I’ve never been very athletic.”
“So?”
“My father had wanted a son. That’s what my mother told me after he left us. Anyway, this one night I wanted to please him when he came home from work, and so I climbed up on the trapeze and tried to do this trick. I wanted to swing all the way around the trapeze bar like they do in the circus. I kept swinging higher and higher, but the trick wasn’t as easy as it looked and I fell and broke my arm. My mother blamed my father for building the swing set, and my father was furious. The next day he packed up and left. Ever since then, I’ve been afraid of heights.”
Lucas’s fingers tightened on hers. “And you blamed yourself because your father left.”
“At the time, I did. It was a long time before I understood that he’d found another woman he loved better than he loved my mother and me. She gave him the son he wanted. And eventually my mother found someone too. They’re both very happy with their new families.”
“And you’re still afraid of heights.”
She shrugged. “Fears aren’t rational.”
“No. It takes a brave person to battle them.”
When he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, Mac felt something inside her dissolve and stream away. No one had ever had this effect on her. She’d never allowed it. But when he looked at her the way he was now, she couldn’t seem to prevent it. And she wanted, more than anything, she wanted to know that she truly was the person he’d made love to in the lagoon. Sophie’s advice streamed into her mind—that she should seduce him as herself.
Wasn’t it her plan to do just that?
“What can I get for you folks?” The waitress, a thin woman with a blond ponytail, beamed a smile at them.
“What kind of beer do you have on tap?” Lucas asked.
What if she wasn’t the woman he’d made love to in the lagoon? What if she found out that Lucas was just being kind to his sister’s friend? She’d forced herself to face other fears, but this—
She watched Lucas’s eyes light with laughter at something the waitress said.
If she didn’t at least try, she was the worst kind of coward. But she couldn’t attack him the way Sally had. No, he would have to know it was Mac. She’d have to start with the questionnaire. When she pulled it out of her bag, her fingers were trembling.
The moment the woman hurried off, Mac smoothed it out on the table, “Before I drink any beer, I’m going to get you started on these questions.”
“You know, I wish I had my camera with me. I’d like to capture that on film.”
“What?” She glanced quickly around.
“The way you turn yourself from Mac, the woman who is enchanted because she might be sitting at a table where Hemingway wrote, into the focused, very serious-minded Dr. Lloyd.”
“I didn’t. I—”
“Oh yes, you did, the moment you pulled out that questionnaire. It wasn’t quite as dramatic as Mr. Hyde turning into Dr. Jekyll. But I think I could definitely capture it on film. Your smile fades, then your eyes become darker, very intent, and I can almost hear the wheels start to turn in that pretty little head of yours.”
As he talked, she studied him as closely as he was studying her. He was teasing her. She was almost sure of it. But there was something else in his eyes that she was equally sure was dead serious. “You’re starting to make me feel like I have a split personality.”
“Maybe you do, in a way. My theory is that you turn into the doc when you want to escape.”
Mac stared at him. He was right. Why should it surprise her that he knew that about her?
“My question is, why? You’re certainly not a coward.”
“It’s easier to be Dr. Lloyd.” The words tumbled out before they’d been fully formed in her mind. “She can be clinically detached. She doesn’t get hurt as easily.”
For a moment she thought she saw a flash of unde
rstanding in his eyes.
Then the waitress appeared. “Two beers,” she said as she slapped them on the table.
The moment the woman moved away again, Lucas said, “Okay, you can be the doc—for a few questions. Then I want Mac back.”
Then I want Mac back. His words moved through her, weakening her and strengthening her at the same time. Blinking twice, she glanced down at the questionnaire and asked the first question she focused on. “Have you ever had anyone make love to you while you were blindfolded?”
“Blindfolded?”
“So that you can’t see, and you can’t tell what your lover is doing exactly. The sensual pleasure is incredibly heightened.”
“Really.”
She waited for a beat, then said, “You haven’t answered the question. Have you ever let anyone make love to you while you were blindfolded?”
“No.”
She nodded. “Because you want to stay in control.”
“Perhaps. What’s the next question?”
She glanced down. “What is your favorite position for sex?”
“My favorite position?”
She looked at him. “You know—on top, on the bottom, behind?”
“I know what you’re asking. Let me see that.” He pulled the papers closer and skimmed the page quickly. “Where did you get these questions?”
“I compiled them myself.”
“And who else have you done this questionnaire with?”
“No one. I developed it especially for the man who would be my research partner.”
“And that’s me?”
She nodded and saw some of his tension ease. Was he jealous? Was that why he sounded so tense and annoyed? The possibility sent a little wave of pleasure through her. “You haven’t answered the question yet.” And she was suddenly curious. They certainly hadn’t used any of the normal positions yet. “What is your favorite sexual position?”
Lifting his beer, he took a drink. “I pretty much like them all.”
“That’s not a very explicit answer.”
He narrowed his eyes at her over the rim of his glass. “Give me another one. I’ll try to do better.”