by Linda Turner
The thought came out of nowhere, stealing the air right out of her lungs.
She shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d known for weeks that this crazy attraction she had for him was growing deeper, stronger, with every passing day, and she’d thought she could handle it. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Torn between sudden tears and an inexplicable happiness, she wanted to take his hand and tell him, to kiss him, to spend the rest of her life with him. There was just one tiny little problem…she didn’t doubt that he was attracted to her and liked her, but she couldn’t fool herself into thinking that he had any intention of making a commitment to her. And that hurt.
You can’t change the man, her heart warned her. He is who he is and he’s not going to change. Accept it or move on.
There was no question in her mind of what she would do. She’d already had one man who hadn’t been willing to stand up to his commitment to her and the boys—she couldn’t have another. Just thinking about it brought tears to her eyes, but she quickly blinked them away. There was no point in crying. She had this time with him, and she was grateful for it. She would enjoy it, enjoy him and, for the moment, pretend it was never going to end. It would, of course. Not only was the clock ticking on the dig, but also on the class. There were only two weeks left of class when they returned to the real world. She had her term paper to finish and exams to study for. There would be no time to spend with Max—the only time she would see him was when she was in class. And when the semester was over, they would be, too.
Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t realize he was studying her in the growing darkness until he said gruffly, “You okay? You got awfully quiet all of a sudden.”
“I was just thinking how fast the semester’s flown by. There are only two weeks left after we get home, and most of that will be spent finishing projects and studying for exams.”
“Hey, none of that,” he teased. “This might be a school-sponsored trip, but it’s also a minivacation, and we’re not going back to the real world until we’re absolutely forced to. Okay? Worrying about exams and school projects and everything you’ve got to do when you get home isn’t allowed.”
It wasn’t the exams she was worried about—it was having to walk away from him—but he was right. She would have to deal with reality soon enough. For now she was going to enjoy every second she had with him, and not worry about anything else.
“You’re the teacher,” she quipped with a grin. “Whatever you say.”
His blue eyes sparkled with mischief. “I’ll remind you of that later.”
Heat stole into her cheeks, but they sat in the shadows, and as darkness stole over the camp, the only light was that of the campfires. Max had brought lanterns, but he didn’t seemed inclined to light them, and no one else did, either. One of the guys had brought his guitar and was softly playing in the firelight. A quiet peace settled over the group, and everyone just settled back and enjoyed the music and the night.
More content than she’d been in a long time, Natalie could have sat next to Max in the darkness for hours. Mother Nature, however, had other ideas. One song changed to another, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, lighting streaked across the night sky. Startled, everyone glanced up…just as thunder boomed and the dark clouds opened up.
In the time it took to gasp, it was pouring. Muttering an oath, Max jumped to his feet and grabbed Natalie’s hand. “C’mon!”
Instantly soaked, her wet hair streaming in her eyes, she could hardly see as he pulled her after him farther into the trees. Lightning cracked almost directly overhead, and the ground seemed to shake beneath their feet. Her heart pounding, Natalie instinctively ducked her head, but Max never checked his pace. Just as the downpour threatened to turn into a real gully washer, he ducked into his tent and pulled her in after him.
Breathless, she fell against him in relief. “Thank God! Where did that come from? I thought we were supposed to have nice weather all weekend!”
“Me, too.” Pushing her streaming-wet hair back from her face, he peered down at her in the darkness. “Are you all right?”
“You mean other than being soaked to the skin?” she retorted, chuckling. “Nothing like a little thunderstorm to get the blood pounding.”
“I can think of something else that gets the blood pounding,” he murmured, and leaned down to kiss the side of her neck.
Need shuddering through her, she melted against him. “We can’t do this.”
“I know. Just let me hold you a little longer.”
She should have stopped him right then. There were forty-nine students out there in the darkness, holed up in tents that couldn’t have been twenty or thirty feet away. They’d all scattered when the rain hit, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t seen Max pull her into his tent. What would they think? She tried to tell herself she didn’t care, but she did. She was a mother—she worried about people talking about her. Not that she could stop them now, she silently acknowledged. The entire group had seen her and Max cooking together, then later, sitting slightly apart from everyone else as they ate dinner. Like it or not, they were going to think the obvious.
“The second the rain hit, everyone ran for cover,” he said quietly, reading her mind as his arms tightened around her. “Trust me, they didn’t have time to pay attention to what we were doing. They were too worried about getting soaked.”
“I know. And it’s not like someone’s going to come looking for you. It’s pouring.”
“Exactly,” he murmured. “And from the looks of things, it’s not going to let up anytime soon.”
Outside, lightning flashed again, followed by an explosion of thunder that had her burying her face against his chest. All she had to do was breathe to draw in the damp, utterly male scent of him. Intoxicated, seduced, she sighed in pleasure. “Did I happen to mention how good you smell?”
He chuckled softly in the darkness. “No, as a matter of fact, you didn’t. You smell pretty damn good yourself.”
“It’s the rain.”
“No, it’s you,” he said thickly. “I noticed it before…it drives me crazy.”
He dropped slow, easy kisses at her temple, the curve of her cheek, the tip of her nose, scrambling her thoughts, making it impossible to remember why she shouldn’t be doing this. “Max…”
“You’re trembling. Are you cold? There must be a front coming through—the temperature feels like it’s dropped twenty degrees in the last half hour. Here, sweetheart, let me warm you up.”
Dazed, dizzy, her head in a cloud, she expected him to reach for the buttons of her blouse to get her out of her damp clothes. Instead, he grabbed his sleeping bag and wrapped it around her, then pulled her back into his arms. “Better?” he asked gruffly.
Touched, love squeezing her heart, she suddenly found herself fighting tears. “Yes.”
She would have sworn her voice was perfectly normal, but something in her tone had him pulling back slightly to peer down at her in the darkness. “Are you crying? What is it? What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”
“No,” she sniffed. “It’s just…”
When she hesitated, he cupped her cheek in his palm. “What, sweetheart?” he asked quietly. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
How could she tell him what his tenderness and caring did to her? Derek had never been a gentle man—she was the one who’d been the caring one in their marriage, and she’d come to believe that all men were the same. “You just surprised me with your gentleness,” she admitted honestly. “I thought you were going to pull my wet clothes off.”
He grinned in the darkness. “I can do that, too. Just say the word.”
Laughing, she slipped her arms around his neck. “And what word would that be?”
His smile faded, and in the continuing flash of lightning, his eyes searched hers. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I met you, Natalie. All you have to say is yes.”
So they’d finally reached it, the moment they’d been racing toward from the m
oment he’d stopped to help her change a flat the very first day of class. And right or wrong, she couldn’t deny herself this time with him. “Yes,” she said simply, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.
With a groan that seemed to come from the depth of his being, he started to return her kiss, only to pull back abruptly, frowning. “Are you sure, Natalie? I know it’s been a long time. If you’re not ready…”
She didn’t say a word. Instead she shrugged off the sleeping bag from around her shoulders, then reached for his hand. Bringing it to the buttons of her blouse, she pressed his hand to her breast and once again leaned up on tiptoe to kiss him gently, sweetly, on the lips.
Just that easily she completely unraveled him. He knew he was going to have to deal with that later, but for now he couldn’t think of anything but her and the way she seduced him with the soft, wet heat of her mouth and the giving fullness of her breasts beneath his fingers. She crowded closer, her hands sliding into his hair as she slowly, inexorably, took the kiss deeper, and he forgot his own name.
With a will of their own, his hands made short work of her buttons. Peeling her blouse from her, he reminded himself that he couldn’t take her like a wild man. She hadn’t let anyone this close to her in years, since her jackass of a husband had walked out on her. And she deserved a hell of a lot more than wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. And he was going to try his damnedest to give it to her.
She didn’t make it easy for him. Trailing kisses along his jaw and down the side of his neck, she reached for the hem of his sweatshirt and nearly turned him inside out. “Whoa!” he groaned, grabbing her hands and holding them still at his waist. “Not so fast. Let’s take this slow and easy.”
“Do we have to?”
“Yes.” He chuckled. “Or it’s going to be over before it’s begun.” Cautiously he released her hands. “Don’t move. Okay? Just give me a second to smooth out the sleeping bag so we can get comfortable.”
She moved, but only to help him, and she had no idea how tempting she looked, kneeling in nothing but her jeans and a plain cotton bra as she smoothed the sleeping bag. Just looking at her made him ache. “Sweetheart, you’re killing me,” he groaned.
Glancing up in surprise, she smiled, delighted. “Really?”
“Really,” he rasped and reached for her.
She came to him willingly, sinking down to the sleeping bag like it was a feather bed, her arms already closing around him as he moved to join her. Once again, her hands moved to the hem of his sweatshirt, and this time, his were there to help. She pulled it over his head and he tossed it aside, and a heartbeat later he reached behind her to the snap of her bra. With a whisper-soft movement that stole her breath, he whisked it away and sent it in the direction of his sweatshirt. Then his hands were closing around her, stroking, caressing, trailing liquid fire.
A cool, damp wind drifted under the closed flap of the tent, but the only notice either of them gave it was to slip inside the sleeping bag together. The rest of their clothes melted away, and in the dark of the night, their legs tangled, their hands stroked and teased, and it was nearly impossible to tell where she ended and he began.
Given the chance, Max would have sworn he knew what it felt like to make love to a woman he cared about. But as he moved over her, in her, and she arched to meet him, he realized that he knew nothing…nothing about women, nothing about need, nothing about making love. She moved, and his every nerve ending hummed in expectation. His name a soft moan on her lips, she called to him, gave to him, with an unselfishness that totally destroyed him.
A wise man would have known then that he was in trouble. But he couldn’t think. His brain clouded, the need burning in his gut tightened like a fist, and when she cried out his name like he was the answer to all her dreams, he lost all chance of resisting her. With a groan that came from the depths of his being, he lost himself in her.
With the rising of the sun, Natalie came awake slowly. Sprawled on her stomach, her face buried in her folded arms, she shifted in her sleep, and the sleeping bag slid off her shoulder, exposing her bare skin to the cool touch of the morning air. Startled, she came awake with a gasp and realized she was naked. Just that quickly the memories of the night came rushing back.
Her heart pounding, she saw in an instant that the tent was empty, but she’d known that before she even opened her eyes. After what she and Max had shared during the night, she was intimately acquainted with the sound and feel and whisper of his every breath. If he’d been in the tent with her, she would have known it instantly.
Just days ago that would have shaken her to the core. But she couldn’t regret what they’d shared, couldn’t regret Max. He’d been so careful with her, so gentle, that if she hadn’t already loved him, she would have fallen head over heels last night for no other reason than that. He was wonderful. With nothing more than the touch of his hands and the hunger of his kisses, he’d made her feel beautiful and wanted. And she told herself it didn’t matter that he might not love her back. She almost believed it.
Sometime while she’d slept, Max had slipped her backpack into the tent, and she gratefully pulled on clean clothes and brushed her hair. Finding herself smiling over nothing, she realized she was as giddy as a schoolgirl. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this happy. And it was all because of Max.
Laughing at herself, she debated the idea of putting on makeup, only to immediately reject it. She would be digging in the mud, cooking again over the campfire, and Max would hardly be expecting her to look like some kind of fashion model on a dig. If he was, then he’d obviously made love to the wrong woman last night.
Checking her hair once more in the small mirror she’d packed, she hurried outside and immediately spied Max working on the campfires, trying to relight them after last night’s rain. He must have been watching for her. The second she stepped out of the tent, he looked up and his eyes locked with hers—and for a long, timeless moment, all she could think of was last night. Her heart slamming against her ribs, she wanted to go to him, to touch him, to kiss him like she had last night, but that was impossible. A handful of students were milling around the campfire, helping him, and others were poking their heads out of their tents, obviously sniffing for breakfast.
From fifty feet away her gaze met his, and the rueful frustration she saw in his eyes made her heart soar. He grimaced, and his shrug said it all. Later. He never said the word, but he didn’t have to. She heard him, and suddenly she couldn’t stop smiling.
There was, however, no chance of a private conversation, not when the students who were helping him clean out the wet fire pits were well within hearing distance. Crossing to him, all she could say was, “That was some storm we had last night.”
“You’re not kidding,” he said gruffly, mischief glinting in his eyes. “I thought it was going to blow us right off the mountain.”
“Me, too. I’ve never been caught up in something like that before. It was pretty incredible.”
“Yeah, I was checking the weather on my cell phone earlier. Tonight we could have more of the same.”
Fighting a smile, she raised a delicately arched brow. “Really? Good. I slept great last night.”
The glint in his eyes promised her she would sleep just as well every night of the dig, but there was no time for any more innuendo. Last night’s storm was long gone, the sun was rising above the treetops, and it was time to eat breakfast and get on with the day. “I’ll keep you posted on those coming storms,” he promised with a wink. “What’s for breakfast?”
Chapter 11
Word spread through the camp like wildfire. Natalie and Beverly, a student in one of Max’s other classes, had found a beaded pouch in the northwest quadrant of the dig. Before Natalie could even pick it up, Max came running with the rest of the students. “You found a hide pouch?”
Her heart pounding, Natalie held up the small bag that she and Beverly hadn’t even realized was there when they first started trying to sift the damp dirt
through a screen. Made of deer hide and sinew, it was intricately decorated with tiny blue- and rose-colored beads. “I didn’t even think there was anything here,” she told him.
He grinned. “That’s why we screen everything—there’s no way to know when we start what’s hidden in the dirt. Okay, everybody,” he told the students that surrounded them, “we’re digging in the right spot. Let’s see what else we can find.”
He didn’t have to tell them twice. Grabbing trowels and screens, they went back to work with renewed enthusiasm. Turning to Natalie, his blue eyes glinting, he grinned. “Good work. So what’s the next step?”
“Label it, bag it and record it.”
“Good. Glad you came?”
“Oh, Lord, yes! I feel like I just found a diamond.”
“That’s why I love it,” he retorted. One of the other students at the opposite end of the grid called out to him, and he said, “Duty calls. See if you and Beverly can find the moccasins that probably match that.”
Natalie would have liked nothing more, but excavating a dig wasn’t something that was done quickly. Everything from the dirt to the smallest shard of pottery to pieces of bone that appeared to have been used as utensils were painstakingly collected and recorded. The sun had dried much of mud that was a result of the rain two nights ago, but it was still messy. Later, she knew she would probably be desperate for a bath, but she didn’t complain, and neither did anyone else. This was what they’d been preparing for all semester.
As they diligently worked, small treasures were uncovered one by one, and Max moved around, helping, giving suggestions, getting down in the mud with everyone else. He was in his element and it showed. Every time her eyes connected with his, he was smiling, laughing, and there was a sparkle in his eye that said more clearly than words that he was having the time of his life.
And it was his enthusiasm that made the dig so much fun for everyone else. With any other professor in charge, the trip could have been a tedious exercise in excavation, but Max was like a kid going to the circus for the first time. He threw himself into the work and when anyone found something, he couldn’t have been more thrilled if he’d single-handedly found the secrets to the pyramids. Excitement whipped through the dig site, and students that Natalie had never seen participate in class were eagerly asking for Max’s help.