by Cindy Gerard
She’d never vamped a man in her life. She didn’t let that stop her from giving it her all now. Brushing her lips to his, slowly, provocatively, she played on one of the oldest laws of nature to drive her point home.
“I want to be your wife, Abel Greene.” She nipped him lightly on his lower lip intending to seduce. But with a quickening of her heart and an unplanned lapse of purpose, she got caught up in the taste of him.
He tasted of danger. He tasted of need...and of a man standing on the edge of control. When his big body tensed in anticipation, she forgot she had a plan. She simply reacted. Tentatively she licked away the little sting her bite had given him.
“In every way...every way,” she repeated, hearing a huskiness in her murmur that had eased in without conscious thought.
When she pressed deeper against his body, it was desire, not determination that prompted her. When he didn’t pull away, it was temptation not calculation that had her slipping her fingers into the wealth of his thick, coarse hair, anticipation not manipulation that drew his mouth into more intimate contact with hers.
Temptress. Seductress. Wanton. They were new roles for her. But with Abel Greene’s hard, hot body beneath hers, with his big hands stiffening in resistance, then clutching at her waist, she found herself melting to the task like butter over a flame.
His arms suddenly banded like steel around her. Against her breast she felt the thunder of his heart as he opened his mouth beneath hers and, with drugging urgency, stole the last conscious thought from her mind.
The plan had been to tempt him. The plan had been to tease with a kiss, suggest a promise. The plan had not included that he would respond with a passion so ravenous she thought he’d eat her alive with need.
She wasn’t sure, but she guessed that she lost control about the same moment he did. Control didn’t stand a chance as their bodies spoke, explored, tasted, then dissolved into a straining knot of feminine heat and masculine fire.
Without breaking the contact of their mouths, he lifted her, separated her thighs and resettled her so she was straddling his lap. Cupping her bottom with a possessiveness that stole her breath, he pulled her hard to his hips before tunneling up under her sweater, kneading, stroking, caressing.
She sucked in a harsh breath when his powerful, yet achingly gentle hand stole between their bodies, skated over her ribs and cupped a bare breast. Knotting her hands in his hair, leaned into the caress of his callused palm, all reason, all restraint eroded by the power and the explosiveness of his passion.
He groaned when she rocked against him. She sighed his name when he tore his mouth from hers and with teeth and tongue, laved the tender skin beneath her jaw.
When he roughly shoved her sweater up and out of his way, she arched toward him as he lowered his mouth to her breast.
“Help.”
It could have been her calling out. Lord knows, she needed help. She’d planned on a kiss, not a quagmire of hot, mind-spinning caresses. She’d planned on a controlled, choreographed seduction, not a skidding, careening ride straight to the heart and the heat of an explosion.
It probably should have been her calling out, but it wasn’t. The most she could possibly manage at the moment was a breathless, begging moan. And it couldn’t have been Abel—his mouth was otherwise occupied. Wonderfully occupied, as he suckled and tugged and made sweet, savage love to her breast.
Through a haze of electric sensations, she heard the call again.
“Help...I think I need some help up here.”
With a guttural curse, Abel tore his mouth away. Breathing hard, he cocked his head toward the sound.
Mark’s tremulous plea reached them again from the far reaches of the loft, tentative with worry and concern.
“Hey...can anybody hear me? I think Nashata’s having her puppies.”
Frustration was a benign, inadequate description of how Mackenzie felt. Aggressive, blood-boiling need sizzled and seared through her veins, as she sagged against Abel’s broad chest.
“I’ll be right there.” His voice rumbled against her ear, sounding strained, his breath serrated and irregular.
She was still trying to catch her own breath when his long, strong fingers tangled in her short hair. His grip tightened, then tugged her head back so he could look into her eyes. With his other hand he stroked his knuckles along her jaw, studying her face with eyes as hot as burning embers.
“You’re playing with fire, little bird.” He gave her hair a hard, but not hurtful, tug for emphasis. “If you come back to play again, make no mistake—you’re going to get your feathers burned. And then we’re both going to be sorry.”
With a last dark look, he lifted her off his lap, set her down hard on the table and sprinted toward the loft.
“Oh, boy,” Mackenzie breathed, lifting her hands to her cheeks and feeling the burn.
Nothing like that had ever happened to her before. Nothing even remotely like that had ever happened to her. She wasn’t a virgin—but she’d strayed into virgin territory just now. At twenty-six, she’d had exactly two lovers in her life. One she’d intended to marry. When he’d skipped out for a thirty-six C-cup and an inheritance, she’d cried on a friend’s shoulder. He’d been more than sympathetic. He’d taken her to his bed in a misguided attempt at loving away the pain.
In the end it had been a big mistake. But not nearly as huge as her little plan to seduce Abel Greene.
Neither one of her previous relationships had lit a fire like the one he’d just started. Sex with Steven had been safe, secure and totally predictable. Sex with Brian had been sweet and gentle. One brief, wild encounter with Abel Greene—hardly more than a kiss, really—had served notice on all of her erogenous zones that sex with this man would be unlike anything she’d ever experienced.
“Oh, boy,” she murmured again. His morning stubble had left an erotically pleasant burn on the tender flesh of her breast. She touched her fingers to her mouth, still sensitized and gently throbbing from his kisses. And she felt the aching heat between her thighs that even now, after he’d dumped her on the table, grew in intensity.
“He’s right about one thing,” she mumbled, burying her face in her hands. “Fire has never burned this hot.”
Gingerly she scooted off the table. With a trembling hand, she finger-combed her hair, made a valiant attempt at setting her clothes right and walked on shaky legs toward the loft.
Only a fool would follow him. But only a coward would avoid another confrontation. Besides, she needed an ally. Maybe she and Nashata could bond during the birth experience. And maybe she could use the time to figure out who had gotten the best of whom just now in Abel Greene’s kitchen.
The birth process was new to Mackenzie. It was also everything it was cracked up to be. Frightening, enlightening, heartwarming. It was, in short, a miracle. It wasn’t just the miracle of the new life of four wiggling, grunting puppies that brought tears to Mackenzie’s eyes. It was the miracle of watching Mark let go of some of his street-smart, tough-guy machismo that he wore like barbwire around the sensitive and giving boy he’d once been.
She wasn’t sure when or how it had happened, but somewhere between dusk and dawn, Mark and Nashata had found some common ground. And somewhere between adolescence and innocence, the sweet, impressionable little boy she’d watched grow into a troubled teen had turned a corner back toward the straight and narrow.
It was in the midst of this secondary miracle and Nashata’s spellbinding, three-hour ordeal, that the storm finally blew itself out. Mark, hovering like a fascinated midwife over Nashata and her brood, didn’t notice the welcome intrusion of crisp, clear sunlight streaming through the peaks of the cathedral windows running the length of the loft.
Mackenzie noticed. She noticed the sudden absence of the tumultuous wind. She noticed the wary stillness of the man at her side. And she noticed the moment when the focus of his attention had shifted from Nashata and her pups to her face.
She felt the effect of h
is laser-sharp gaze in the places where he’d kissed her. She felt the struggle he was waging deep within himself—and the wanting that he ached to deny but couldn’t.
But mostly she felt alive. Alive like she’d never felt in her life. She was aware of each breath she drew, of the rise and fall of her breasts beneath her sweater, of the fine, silky hairs at the nape of her neck, of the tenderness of her skin, the sensitivity of her nipples. And she knew he was aware of what his gaze was doing to her.
Slowly she closed her eyes. Slower still she opened them to look at the man who wanted so badly not to want her. Twin cylinders of glittering, golden light arrowed through the tall windows and poured over them like crystal rain as they knelt, side by side, near Nashata’s makeshift whelping bed.
Abel was as beautiful by sunlight as he was by shadows and fire glow. His dark hair was highlighted to a blue-black sheen, his thick lashes tipped in feathery gold. But it was his face and the way the light played across the bronze planes of his cheeks and rugged jaw that defined and dramatized the character of the man within. And the inner struggle he was waging.
While she understood that he hadn’t yet accepted their fate, she felt enfolded in a warm, almost prophetic sense of rightness. In this unlikely place, at this unexpected time, she saw them kneeling together again—but at an altar, about to become husband and wife. And she wasn’t afraid anymore.
She’d learned something about this man in the last three hours. All her uncertainty had left her as they’d held vigil over Nashata here in the loft. Abel Greene’s gruff, stoic. aloofness was a ruse. All the posturing about sending her away was a defense. The gentleness he’d shown with Nashata as she’d struggled to bring her puppies into the world, the patience he’d shown Mark, who had worried over the event like a nervous godparent, all spoke to qualities any woman would want in a man. It had also told her that he didn’t really want to be alone. He had a lot to give to a relationship. He just didn’t know it yet.
The fact that they barely knew each other was irrelevant. People married all the time and didn’t really know each other. Her mother and father had been married almost twenty years. They still hadn’t known each other when they’d parted ways.
Mackenzie wouldn’t make that mistake. She might not know Abel now, but she would get to know this man. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe in something as fanciful as love might actually happen between them. She’d come here accepting that and was willing to settle for mutual respect.
Coming to Abel Greene had been exactly the right thing to do. For both of them. In spite of his determination to do otherwise, she wasn’t going to let him make the mistake of sending her back.
“It seems I need to thank you again.”
They were sitting at the kitchen table some time later. She’d followed him there after leaving Mark with Nashata and the pups.
He raised a fresh cup of coffee to his mouth.
She lifted her chin in the direction of the loft. “You were wonderful up there with Mark—the way you trusted him and made him feel you were counting on him to help you with Nashata.”
He shrugged. “I did need his help.”
“No, you didn’t.” Her smile was one of warmth and confidence. “Neither did Nashata. She was just doing what comes naturally. And I think you were doing what comes naturally, too. You made him feel necessary. Other than me, no one’s ever extended that kind of trust to him before.”
His response was to rise, snag his heavy coat from the coatrack by the door and shrug his broad shoulders into it.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, the snow has stopped. As soon as I get the lane cleaned out, I’ll take you back to the bus terminal.”
Her heart fell. She’d known he wasn’t ready to roll over and play dead in terms of allowing her to stay. But she had hoped she’d have some more time to convince him.
A quick glance out the window gave her new hope. There wasn’t—in the most literal sense—a snowball’s chance in hell that he was going to get that lane cleaned out anytime soon.
“It’s going to take a mighty big shovel to clear out all that snow.”
He shoved his hands deep into thick leather gloves. “It just happens I’ve got a mighty big shovel.”
He snagged a set of keys from the key caddy by the door.
“You need keys for a shovel?”
“I need keys for the Cat.”
She felt another stirring of unease. “Cat?”
“As in Caterpillar. I’ll have the drive cleared out within the hour. You might want to use the time to pack.”
“Well, hell,” she sputtered, as she shivered in the wake of the winter-cold air that had sneaked in when he’d stalked out the door. “Now what are you going to do, Kincaid?”
As it turned out, she didn’t have to do much of anything. Fate—and the interference of Abel’s friends—did the doing for her.
Five
When she first heard the roar of an engine shortly after Abel stalked outside, she assumed he was firing up his plow. Then it dawned on her that the sound had started out faint and gotten louder.
Mackenzie scooted away from the table and peeked out the kitchen window—just as a pair of sleek, black snowmobiles crested a ridge and zigzagged through a stand of trees, shooting snow in their wakes.
She’d seen snowmobiles in pictures and films—but none had done justice to the gleaming pair of space-age-looking machines that slowed to a crawl, then idled to a stop by Abel’s back door.
The riders were as futuristic in appearance as their transportation. Dressed in black boots and gloves, snug black suits and black, visored helmets, they looked like a pair of Darth Vader clones gone ice age. The drama of their entrance was offset only by the antics of a big, brown Labrador retriever that bailed out of the sidecar attached to the bigger machine.
Mackenzie watched as the riders each threw a leg over the back of their snowmobiles and stood, knee-deep in snow, while the dog leapt in comical, animated circles around them.
“Woa! Check out those machines.”
“Yeah. Woa,” she repeated, as Mark, apparently drawn by the roar of the engines, had left his vigil in the loft and joined her by the window.
“Who is that?”
As fascinated as Mark, she watched the pair approach the kitchen door. Even more fascinating was the way they met Abel there. The taller one of the two, obviously male and almost as tall as Abel, extended his hand. The smaller rider, undoubtedly female and model slim, embraced him.
“Looks like we’re about to find out,” she murmured, and braced herself for meeting some people who were evidently important to Abel.
“It’s her,” Mark whispered, just short of openmouthed gaping. He stared in star-struck awe as J.D. and Maggie Hazzard pulled off their helmets, zipped out of their snowmobile suits and made themselves at home in Abel’s kitchen. “It’s Maggie. The Maggie,” he repeated, unable to stop himself.
The statuesque brunette, whose face and figure were recognizable to every male who had a heartbeat and every female who’d ever dreamed about being perfect, just smiled.
“She had that effect on me, too, the first time I saw her.” A grinning J. D. Hazzard was quite openly as smitten as the rest of the world with his famous wife, who had recently, and at the top of her career, retired from the world of fashion modeling to try her hand behind the camera. “But you get used to it after a while,” he confided, and gave his wife a sympathetic look. “Too bad she’s so plain. But hey, love is blind, right Stretch?”
“Deaf, too,” Maggie retorted, with as much teasing warmth as her husband, “or I never would have fallen for that line of bull you dish out, Blue Hazzard.”
Mackenzie listened to the playful banter, as overwhelmed as Mark by Maggie’s beauty and fame. She was just as taken by J.D.’s blond good looks and how perfect the two of them looked together. Overriding everything, however, was the fact that the Hazzards had been the references listed in Abel’s ad—and both of them had made it clear th
at they thought Abel Greene could walk on water and make it rain.
“Taking a bit of a risk—coming out in this snow, don’t you think?”
This from a scowling Abel, who had been brooding and silent since he’d ushered the Hazzards into the cabin and made curt, unembellished introductions.
“No risk. Not now that the storm has blown itself out. You’re forgetting, we’re only ten minutes away by snowmobile. Besides, we were going a little stir crazy in the cabin.”
“Who was going stir crazy?” The smile Maggie gave her husband sold him out.
“So when the sun came out to play,” J.D. said, as if he hadn’t heard her, “we came out to play, too.”
“And to snoop,” Maggie added with an apologetic glance at Mackenzie.
When J.D. winked at her, Mackenzie couldn’t help but grin over his lack of guile.
“Okay, so we heard you had company over here. It was only the neighborly thing to do to extend a Northern Minnesota welcome.”
“News travels fast,” Abel grumbled, and they all knew that Scarlett had been busy on the radio.
J.D. ignored Abel’s scowl, his grin encompassing the room in general before lighting on Mackenzie again. “It’s nice to meet you in person, Mackenzie.”
Clearly J. D. Hazzard wasn’t going to be content until Abel’s bare-bones introductions were fleshed out.
Abel’s gaze cut to Mackenzie, the dark slash of his brows hooding his eyes. “In person?”
“I spoke with the Hazzards on the phone a couple of weeks ago.”
“The ad, remember?” J.D. prompted. “When I sent it in, I listed Maggie and me as references.”
Again Abel’s gaze returned to hers.
“Well, it wasn’t like I was going to come into this completely blind,” she said defensively.