by Myrna Temte
“Let’s get out of the way, shall we?” Sliding his free hand behind her, Sam herded her out of the crowd.
She knew it was only a polite gesture on his part. His fingertips barely brushed the small of her back, but the fabric of her dress provided scant protection from the tingles of awareness that streaked across her skin from his hand down to the base of her spine and up to the nape of her neck. The sensation unnerved her enough to make her walk faster.
With his longer legs, Sam easily kept up with her, and he seemed perfectly content to accompany her all the way across the yard until the pasture fence blocked her path. A pair of pinto horses stopped grazing long enough to amble over to inspect their visitors. When no treats appeared, the animals wandered off again.
They were far enough from the house lights to make Julia realize the sun had gone down well over an hour ago. The air felt blessedly cooler away from the press of bodies. The strident sounds of the drum and singers softened into background noise. She glanced up at Sam and found him studying her with a shuttered expression that heightened her awareness of their relative isolation from the other guests. She wasn’t frightened, exactly, simply…wary.
“All right,” she said, turning to face him. “We’re out of the way. What’s going on?”
His grin flashed white in contrast to his swarthy skin. “What do you think is going on?”
She indicated her tea with a tip of her head. “Your sudden decision to be nice is surprising.”
“What can I say?” Raising both hands in a classic gesture of innocence, he stepped closer, set his glass on the top rail of the fence and gave her another slow, appreciative once-over. “Maybe you finally just won me over with your…charm.”
He took another step, bringing him much too close for her comfort. Holding her tea out in front of her as if it could offer protection, she stepped back. Sam took her glass and set it down beside his.
“Don’t play games with me,” she said.
A low, rough chuckle accompanied his next smile. “But Julia, I thought you liked games. You’ve been drivin’ me crazy for days.”
Her back hit the fence. She held both palms out, but Sam grasped her fingers and brought them flat against his broad chest. He moved closer still, his legs and hips brushing against hers. Wrapping his left arm around her waist, he lifted his right hand to the side of her neck, making her shiver.
“Easy,” he murmured.
Gently stroking the underside of her jaw with his thumb, he coaxed her chin up. His black eyes mesmerized her, holding her still as firmly as the long, hard fingers he’d cupped around the back of her head. This picture wasn’t right. She should know what was wrong with it; she was sure of that much.
But there was something so seductive going on here, she couldn’t think clearly. Couldn’t think at all, with the scent of Sam’s soap filling her nostrils and amazing waves of heat emanating from his big, strong body practically melting hers wherever they touched, which was pretty much a straight shot from her hips to her knees. It was happening fast, but somehow time didn’t seem the least bit important.
And then his lips settled onto hers, banishing all rational thought from her brain. Warmth, pleasure, delight burst open one after another inside her, like champagne bubbles exploding on contact with the air. Oh, wow. In some secret part of herself, she’d wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Now she knew. And it was…oh, wow.
She slid her hands up to grip his shoulders and hung on. A groan rumbled from deep in his chest, vibrating against her palms even as it reached her ears. She inhaled a shaky breath. The tip of his tongue followed her breath into her mouth, leisurely exploring the inner edges of her lips, the ridges of her teeth, enticing her to send her own tongue out to investigate the tastes and textures of his.
It was wonderful. Exciting. Consuming. There were no adequate words to describe the exquisite sensations his kiss engendered. Pounding heart, ragged breathing, feverish skin—she had them all and more, but no list of physical symptoms could ever explain the overwhelming rightness she felt in his embrace.
Could this really be happening? she wondered. With Sam Brightwater of all people? It seemed so unlikely, and yet… If simply kissing him was this good, what would it be like to make love with him?
He pulled back and stared down at her with an expression of shocked disbelief in his eyes that so accurately reflected her own reactions to the kiss, she nearly laughed out loud. Then he gave his head a violent shake, stared at her again and released her as if her skin had sprouted hot needles wherever he touched her. Swaying at the sudden lack of support for her mushy knees, she grabbed the fence rail behind her.
“Sor—” His voice cracked in midword. He cleared his throat. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…” He gulped. Shook his head again.
“Didn’t mean what?” Lord, her voice sounded every bit as husky as his did, and it was still a struggle to get enough air.
“Nothing.” Shoving his hands into his front jeans pockets as if he didn’t quite trust them, he looked off toward the horses. “Just, uh, forget that…ever happened, okay?”
“Forget it?”
“Yeah.” He stepped away from the fence, putting more distance between them with zero subtlety. “Forget it.”
“But, Sam—”
She reached for him. The big lug not only backed away another step, he actually turned tail and all but ran back to the party. Amazed and perplexed, she watched him wave at someone, then change direction and walk around to the front of the house. A moment later, she heard a pickup’s engine start and saw a pair of headlights cut a half circle, then disappear into the night.
“Forget the best kiss of my entire life?” She uttered a soft laugh and slowly shook her head. “I don’t think so, sweetie. I really don’t think so.”
The next Monday at lunchtime, Sam shot Julia a wary glance over his right shoulder. Did she know her hand had skipped across his shoulder blades just now? Or had that been an accidental contact? Uneasy, he shifted on his chair.
Why the heck was she standing behind him instead of one of the other guys while she took their orders? She was so close he could smell her shampoo, and her warm breath tickled the side of his head. Her low, slightly husky laugh threatened to give him goose bumps, but he didn’t want to start squirming around like some kid with a teacher breathing down his neck.
She moved forward to take Ray’s menu, accidentally brushing her left hip against Sam’s shoulder and arm. That whole quadrant of his body snapped to full-alert status. Stepping around behind him, she moved up to the table on his left side and bumped his other arm when she reached across the table for Harvey’s menu. The testosterone rush made him dizzy.
But he shouldn’t leap to any conclusions. They were at a smaller table than usual today because a tour group had come in first and taken over the crew’s favorite spot. Julia was just doing her job in the limited space available. She wouldn’t deliberately try to make him notice her hips and her round little rump. Would she? Nah. No way.
Sam shifted his weight to his right buttock, leaning as far away from her as he could get without making an issue of it. He glanced up at her and felt his pulse stutter when he saw her gazing down at him with a soft yet knowing smile on her sweet, luscious lips.
Oh, hell.
She hadn’t forgotten that kiss. That gut-wrenching, mind-bending, heart-melting kiss. She’d enjoyed it every bit as much as he had; furthermore, she wanted to do it again. It was all right there for him to see in her blue, blue eyes, in the silent invitation of her smile, in the way her whole body subtly gravitated toward his. As if to confirm his suspicions, she gave him a slow, sexy wink, then turned and sauntered off to the kitchen.
Man, he was in trouble here. Really big trouble. No matter what his logical mind said, the rest of him wanted to hold her again. To feel her soft curves plastered against him. To lose himself in the excitement and pleasure of exploring her mouth with his lips and his tongue. And then… No. He didn’t dare take
his fantasies any further than that kiss.
He’d been reliving it over and over all weekend, so he probably shouldn’t be surprised that she hadn’t forgotten it, either. But he’d hoped. God knew how he’d hoped.
What was it about the Brightwater men that made them do such stupid, self-destructive things? Besides his dad drinking himself to death, Sam knew of an uncle who’d been killed by a bull at a rodeo, another one who’d overdosed on drugs and another one who’d been killed in a bar fight over another man’s wife. Sam had spent his whole life trying to avoid any kind of behavior that could conceivably get him into trouble.
He’d done a darn good job of it, too. Until last Saturday night. If only he hadn’t kissed Julia…
The kitchen door swung open and she walked into the servers’ station, laughing at something. She bent over, scooped ice into five glasses and proceeded to fill them with water. Loading the full glasses onto a tray, she balanced it on the palm of her left hand and came back to the table.
Sam felt a fresh line of sweat break out on his forehead. While the other guys only saw a pretty, nice young woman who would feed them and chat with them, he saw a siren, bent on luring him away from his goals and his principles. Even to him, that sounded melodramatic, but none of them had ever kissed her; they didn’t know how dangerous that nice young woman could be to a man’s peace of mind.
Moving in on his left, she reached across his body and set a water glass directly above his knife. There was nothing unusual about that, he told himself. Waitresses usually served from the left and cleared from the right. Right? No big deal.
Then why was he suddenly so intensely conscious of the light floral scent of her skin, the crispness of her uniform, the subtle movement of her breasts beneath that uniform? He’d noticed all of those things before, of course, but not to this…painful extent. Pausing a moment longer than necessary, she turned her head and smiled at him again.
Sam’s temperature soared. His mouth dried out. He couldn’t tear his gaze from her lips. Dang woman was flirting with him. She was deliberately trying to seduce him, and she was succeeding. Big-time.
She knew the effect she was having on him and worse yet, she found it amusing. He glared at her. She uttered a soft, challenging, sexy-as-hell chuckle, turned and strolled away to check on another table, hips swinging just enough to taunt him. In a battle of the sexes, it was nothing short of a declaration of war.
Sam gulped, then shot frantic glances to each side, desperately trying to see if anyone else had guessed what was going on between him and Julia. God, he hoped not. He felt like such a big dope.
Oh, man, he was in really, really, really big trouble here. He was having a hard enough time fighting his own urges and desires. If he had to fight hers, too…
“Resistance is futile,” he muttered, quoting a line from his favorite Star Trek movie.
“What was that, Sam?” Ray Hawk said.
“Huh?” Sam glanced around the table and found his crew giving him puzzled looks. He shook his head and laughed to cover his embarrassment. “Nothing. I was thinking about something else. You guys are making good progress on that subdivision. Any problems with the equipment?”
As he’d known they would be, the men were easily diverted into a conversation about work. Since Brightwater Construction offered a generous profit-sharing plan, the employees all had a personal stake in the company’s performance beyond a regular paycheck. Sam believed it was the most important reason his business continued to thrive when larger construction companies in the area were going under.
But even while he collected vital information about the work site, he was disgusted to realize that one part of his brain was constantly monitoring Julia’s whereabouts. The woman obviously thought she had him where she wanted him. She’d practically challenged his manhood. He didn’t have to take that from her or any other woman. Didn’t he have any pride, for God’s sake?
Protecting his pride gave him enough fortitude to meet Julia’s smiles and glances over the next week with a facade of bland indifference. As a result, he learned the true meaning of the word persistence. Inevitably, a day finally came when he just couldn’t take any more.
Sending the men back to the work site without him, he remained at the table, reading paperwork and drinking ice water while the lunch crowd cleared out. Julia came by with a water pitcher and one of her cheeriest smiles. She refilled his glass, then set the pitcher down and rested one hip against the back of the chair next to Sam’s.
“I don’t always add very well when I’m in a hurry.” She inclined her head toward the check lying in the middle of the table. “Is there a problem?”
“Yeah, you could say there’s a problem,” Sam said. “I want you to stop it.”
Her eyebrows arched in a surprised and yet oh-so-innocent expression. “Stop what, Sam?”
Leaning closer, he pitched his voice as low as he could and still be heard over the clatter the busboy made cleaning off tables. “Stop flirting with me.”
A gleeful light entered her eyes. “About time you noticed, Brightwater.”
Sam glared at her. “I’ve noticed all along, and I want you to stop.”
A soft laugh bubbled out of her mouth. “Bothers you, does it?”
“Yes, but I’m not interested, Julia.”
“Oh, really?” She leaned down until her nose nearly touched his, filling his head with the smell of her skin and his vision with a tempting glimpse of cleavage beneath the first button on her uniform. “You seemed interested…when you kissed me.”
“That was just…hormones.” He gulped, one half of him desperately wanting to pull away from her, the other half wanting nothing more than to grab her and kiss the daylights out of her all over again. “Believe me, I’m not interested.”
“Are you a logical man, Sam?”
“Of course.”
“Then why don’t you put this in your logical brain and think about it?” Uttering another soft laugh, she leaned even closer to him. “If you’re really and truly not interested, my flirting with you shouldn’t bother you at all, now, should it?” She dropped a quick, light kiss on the tip of his nose, straightened, picked up her water pitcher and sauntered away.
Of course, his attempt to confront her did him absolutely no good. The woman didn’t even slow down, much less stop flirting with him. Hell, she escalated their private war at every opportunity. She was sneaky and devious enough with her actions that no one else caught on to what she was doing to him.
A covert touch here and there, a new perfume that lingered in his nostrils long after she was gone, a gaze that locked with his and lasted a second or two longer than necessary, teasing remarks that could be taken in more than one way. Julia was proficient—no, make that extremely talented—at all of the tricks a woman might use to keep a man turned on and wanting her.
In a weird sort of way, it was even flattering to have a woman pursue him with such determination. If he’d noticed such a thing happening to anyone else, he would have found it hilarious. But it wasn’t happening to anyone else. Dammit, it was happening to him, and it wasn’t funny.
He didn’t enjoy knowing exactly how the deer felt on the first day of hunting season. He didn’t enjoy living in a constant state of unsatisfied arousal. He didn’t enjoy worrying about what would happen if he simply lost his iron control someday and gave her what she so obviously wanted.
When his masculine pride could offer him no more protection, he tried anger. Who did she think she was? He’d given her no encouragement, so why didn’t she just give up on him? Where did she get off treating him as if he was such an easy target?
Of course, he didn’t like the answer to that last question. The truth was, he was an easy target for her. He could have said to hell with whatever his crew thought, and stopped going to the Hip Hop, couldn’t he? He hadn’t made much effort to avoid Julia on the res, either, had he? And why not?
He didn’t like the answer to that last question, either. The tru
th was, he really didn’t want to avoid her. He wanted exactly what she wanted—to kiss her again and see what kind of fireworks developed. Only it wouldn’t stop with a kiss this time. Would it?
The answer to that question scared the devil out of him. The truth was, he feared that if he ever kissed Julia again the way he had at the Hawks’ house, neither one of them would stop until he’d buried himself to the hilt in her sweet, lush body, and he might not be very gentle about getting there. And he simply didn’t feel capable of assuming the kind of mental and emotional commitment having sex with her would require of him.
Caught between his baser instincts and his conscience, he felt as helpless to deal effectively with Julia as a pine beetle trapped in a little boy’s bug jar. God, but he hoped she went back to Colorado soon.
“Got a minute?”
Shelving books the children had returned that morning, Julia looked over her shoulder and smiled. Maggie Hawk stood in the doorway of the Indian school’s library, practically vibrating with excitement. “Sure. What’s up?”
Maggie hustled across the room. “How hard would it be for your principal in Arvada to replace you?”
“We’ve always got so many teachers looking for full-time jobs, he could probably do it with a couple of phone calls,” Julia said with a shrug. “Why?”
Brushing her palms over the front of her jeans and blouse and straightening her posture as if she was trying to look imposing and official, Maggie cleared her throat. “On behalf of the Laughing Horse Tribal Council Personnel Committee, I am officially offering you a job teaching fourth grade in our new elementary school for the coming academic year.”
Julia gaped at her friend, then turned around and leaned against the bookcase. “Are you serious?”
“I wouldn’t tease anyone about something like this.” Maggie’s smile brightened the whole library. “So? What do you think?”
“I don’t know. May I have a few days to consider it?”