Why had he done it, anyway? He had all but come to terms with the fact that the trek would have to be canceled. Danny-boy had made sure of that. Dylan had already been planning to return the grant to the geographical alliance, with hopes of winning it again next year. Next summer. With a partner less likely to cause the same kind of trouble—a partner who was most definitely not a long-legged amber-eyed beauty, either.
But giving up the trip meant four weeks before returning to work, and no plans. Four weeks of hanging around Flynn’s pub and water-skiing or fishing on the weekends at the cabin. He’d had his fill of that in July, knowing he would be off doing something more exciting in August. He’d spent his whole year planning for the four weeks in August when he would do something that would prove he hadn’t turned into his own moniker in Bridgewater—Dullas-Dishwater-Dylan.
Then she had waltzed into his backyard looking all sleek and breezy and worldly. He was a sucker, for sure, to fall for the same kind of woman every time.
“I think you’ve got it,” he said, as they reached a narrow in the pond. “Let’s do something different—I’ve got to teach you how to ferry.”
Uses different muscles, he thought, as he took a break to explain how they were going to sidle the canoe from one bank to the other without any forward motion. Of course, there was only the faintest of currents in this neck of the pond. Not like some of the fast-moving rivers they would be navigating, the hairpin curves littered with boulders they would have to ferry across, to avoid white water and mishaps. But that wasn’t till the second half of the trip, when, hopefully, she would be better conditioned.
He glanced over his shoulder. She dug the paddle into the water. She’d bitten off most of that brown lipstick, and sweat gleamed in the hollow of her throat.
Her legs were braced in the bottom of the boat, her toes curling into the ribs, her thighs taut, the yellow-checked bathing suit collapsing into ripples over her abdomen.
Hell. His paddle clattered as he dropped it into the canoe and held his hand out for hers.
“What?”
“Secure the paddle. Under the struts.”
“Why?” she asked, as she did as she was told.
“Time for lesson number three, Casey.”
With one well-timed push, he heaved the canoe over and deposited them both into a cold bath.
She sputtered up from the water and shoved her hair off her face. “All right, I get it, you’re one of those sadistic football coaches, right?” She checked for her sunglasses, still hanging around her neck. “I had a gym teacher like you in sixth grade. Took pleasure in her students’ pain. Well, are you satisfied, Dylan?”
No. He trod water. The cold eased his torment somewhat, but he sensed that the only real ease he would get was hot, and it lay between her long, lean legs.
“C’mon, Casey. The water’s fine.”
“For penguins, maybe.” She swam over to where the overturned canoe drifted. “Now, are you going to tell me how we get back into this thing?”
“Lesson number three. Bring it to the shore, if you can.”
She started paddling toward the shore, but he seized one of her legs—hard and lean and slippery in his hand. She narrowed her eyes at him. Her chocolate brown hair lay slicked back against her head, and instead of looking unkempt and sodden, she looked like one of those models in the mascara commercials—lipstick all but intact, droplets careening picturesquely over her cheeks.
“Uh-uh. That’s the easy way, Casey. We’re going to learn the hard way.”
“Of course.” She twisted her lips at him. “Is it sergeant? Or lieutenant-major?”
“It’s Dylan to you.”
“Not Sir Dylan, that’s for sure. Chivalry is obviously dead in this neck of the woods.”
“Move toward the shore,” he said, “until you can feel the bottom.”
He paddled in her wake, one hand gripping the canoe, until she hesitated and rose up breast-high in the water.
“All right,” she said, swiping both hands over her face. The water lapped at the knotted peaks of her breasts. “Now what?”
“You’re the lighter one.” He pushed the canoe so she stood midship. “Pull yourself up and over the gunwale at the center, here. I’ll hold it as still as I can.”
Two attempts failed. She gave him a look out of the corner of her eye. On the third attempt, she got high enough for the gunwale of the boat to dig into her belly. She bent in two, then struggled to hike her legs into the canoe.
There it was, that tight little bottom with the elastic edge of her yellow-checked bathing suit clinging to the curve. Her legs flailed as she tried to pull herself in. He stared at her, trying to hold the canoe still, while erotic visions flooded his mind.
Finally, he shoved the heel of his hand against her bottom—felt the give of flesh, felt the heat of her—and he lurched her into the boat.
She struggled to a sitting position in the wobbling vessel and gave him a look over the gunwale that could have burned a hole through glass.
“I think,” she said, “you’re enjoying this.”
“What,” he retorted, pulling himself into the canoe, “is there not to enjoy?”
He seized his paddle and fixed his gaze on an outcropping on the other side of the pond, then dug the blade into the water.
Think of the journey, he told himself, as the wind of their motion chilled his skin. Three long weeks with the image of that tight little ass in his head.
Heck. He should have known better.
But he had a feeling this trip was going to be one hell of an adventure.
4
“THE SHOWER IS ALL yours.”
Casey bolted upright on the couch. She shook herself from an exhausted haze in time to see Dylan saunter out of the cabin’s only bedroom. She fumbled for the paperback splayed on the couch, and in her awkwardness sent it flying over the edge with a flap of yellowed pages. She hazarded a glance at Dylan. He’d rounded the counter, stuck his head into the refrigerator and hadn’t spared her a glance.
She retrieved the book and laid it back on the pine-board coffee table. She eased herself to her feet, wincing at the ache in her shoulders. When they’d returned from the pond, she had insisted that Dylan take the first shower, claiming she had to unload some luggage from the back of her van. The truth of the matter was that she was too exhausted to make any effort, even the effort to take a shower. All she wanted to do was collapse in a soft bed and sleep.
But she didn’t want Dylan to see that. Not after the past few hours at the pond. He’d acted strangely. Of course, she didn’t know him well enough to judge, but it seemed to her he’d lost some of the forceful enthusiasm that had bowled her over and led her into agreeing to join him on this trip. Or maybe he’d just been playing the part of football coach, and she’d come up short of expectations.
“How ’bout burgers for dinner?”
Casey jerked at the sound of his voice. She glanced up to see him peering at her over the refrigerator door.
“That’s about all we’ve got,” he said, straightening. “Burgers and beer. Unless you want to go into town—”
“No.” The thought of bouncing over rutted roads for fifteen miles was enough to send her screaming back into the canoe. “No, burgers will be fine. I’ll be out in a few minutes to help.”
She winced and grimaced all the way to the bedroom. She closed the door behind her, stripped off her T-shirt and bathing suit, then headed toward the bathroom.
She halted at the door. She stared wide-eyed into the small room. Mist billowed in the air. Steam fogged the mirror. A towel lay damp across the tiled floor. Brown bristles speckled the white porcelain sink. The scent of aftershave floated on the air. The shower curtain was swept halfway open, as if Dylan had just stepped dripping wet and naked out of the tub.
She let her hands drift up from her elbows to her shoulders, to protect her naked breasts from the caress of the settling steam. The last lingering tendrils of her exhaustion rece
ded like mist under a hot sun. Suddenly she was tinglingly, shockingly awake.
Trust a man, she thought, to leave a bathroom in such a state. The toilet seat stood shamelessly upright. A razor lay by the side of the sink, smeared with cream. The tube of toothpaste lay abandoned, squeezed tight in the middle. A damp towel lay halfway over the dowel behind the shower.
C‘mon, Casey, get a grip. She was used to the sterile uniformity of hotel bathrooms—the crinkling white strip of paper across the toilet, the palm-size bars of soap. She was used to seeing one toothbrush dangling above the sink. She had forgotten what it was like to share a bathroom with a man.
Shaking herself, she stepped resolutely into the tub. Into a small, warm puddle of water. Trying all the while to ignore the fact that this water had recently sluiced off his skin. She reached down and cranked the knob to Cold.
She scrubbed herself clean. She let the cold water shiver over her skin and strip off the sheen of soap. She showered fast and hard, and when it was done, she wrapped herself in a towel and stood staring into the same mirror he’d used to shave, feeling edgy and completely unlike herself, wondering how she was going to handle the intimacies of the trip they were going to take if she felt so unbalanced after doing something as simple as sharing a canoe and a bathroom.
She yanked the towel off her body and let it drop to the floor, then padded into the neutrality of the bedroom. Her rucksack lay open on the bed and she rifled through it until she found fresh undergarments. She put them on and was about to pull a cotton T-shirt and shorts out of her bag when something soft and silky brushed her knuckles. She paused, then pulled on the cloth. A little slip of a silk dress poured out onto the bed.
Casey swept it up and held the scooped neckline against her chest. The silk felt cool and soft against her skin.
She remembered buying this dress. She’d purchased it two years ago. Two years ago, after she’d received the settlement—the money that was supposed to compensate her for her husband’s sudden death. She remembered carrying the check around with her for days, even bringing it un-cashed to her therapy session to show it to Jillian. She remembered spending hours touching it, fingering it, looking at the number printed in black ink and trying to reconcile it to all that she’d lost. She’d wondered, aloud, what she should do with all that money. She asked Jillian the same.
Jillian, as cool as ice, had lit a cigarette and sat back in her creaking leather chair and suggested that Casey blow it all.
Or part of it, at least. Do something mad. Fly to Paris. Buy a sports car. Eat at the fanciest restaurant in Manhattan. Buy Tiffany diamonds.
Casey had mused for days, then, in an uncharacteristic spurt of spontaneity, had gone out and spent a good chunk of the money on clothing—linen suits and chic little dresses and shoes that matched them, with all the scarves and accessories she could ever desire. She’d bought the kind of clothes she had no use for, and never would have bought in all the years before. Then she’d spent a day at a salon getting her long, straight hair cut in the style she still wore, and watching a makeup artist wield his magic upon her face.
After those crazy few days, Casey had looked at herself in the mirror and seen a woman she didn’t recognize: a stylish young woman. And she’d begun to think that she could start a new life—if she had the courage. Which, it turned out, was what Jillian had intended for her to realize in the first place….
She hugged the silk dress close to her skin. She had changed. Oh, yes, her life had changed. But sometimes… sometimes she felt a little too much like the scared young woman from New Jersey who had put on pretty clothes and brown lipstick and set off with a hope and a prayer on Route 80 West.
She snapped the dress free of wrinkles and wrestled it over her head.
“So,” Casey said, as she stepped out of the bedroom a few minutes later, “how are those burgers coming?”
“I only just fired up the grill,” he said. “Had to change a propane tank.”
He glanced up at her. He paused in shaking pepper over a plate of burger patties. His gaze swept from her wet, brushed-back hair to the strappy flat sandals on her feet.
A tingling tremor skittered up her spine—a strange fluttery sensation she couldn’t quite define. Uniquely feminine. Completely unnerving.
He started shaking pepper again. She pushed one of the stools aside and leaned into the counter. The dress wasn’t inappropriate, she told herself. Maybe a little sassy for the Adirondacks, but not out of line for a barbecue. She gestured toward the plate of raw hamburger patties in front of him—huge pink patties that he was still sprinkling with pepper. “Those look good.”
“My one and only specialty.”
“Any chance of a salad to go along with those hunks of cow?”
“Ahh…”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “No chance you and Danny-boy bought any lettuce, hmm?”
“There might be some tomatoes in the fridge.” He put the pepper on the counter, then backed off with the plate of burgers in his hand. “Feel free to dig around.”
He shouldered his way out the back door. She rounded the counter, pulled the fridge open and frowned. Dylan wasn’t kidding. But for a half gallon of milk, some eggs, and mounds of hamburger buns, the refrigerator yielded up no viable side-dish for dinner. She grabbed a beer and popped the cap, then started opening cabinets as she took the first shocking swig. She’d never been much of a beer drinker, but over the past years she’d found it helped in “bonding” with the guys she was writing about if she could drink the drink and talk the talk.
Not that she wanted to bond with Dylan, of course, on anything but the most professional level. She simply wanted him to see her as just one of the boys. Just a substitute for “Danny-boy.”
Sure, Casey, that’s why you wore this dress.
She shook the thought out of her head and set her mind resolutely on dinner. She poked her way through the bare cabinets, but found nothing but mismatched coffee cups, steak sauces and canned beans. Then, in a high cabinet, she stumbled on a box of pasta and a cluster of glass jars.
She heard the slap of the screen door and Dylan’s sure footsteps, just as the pot of pasta she’d set on the stove started to boil.
“What’s cooking?” he asked, coming up behind her.
“Pasta.”
“Really?”
“Yes…it’s a strange selection you have here,” she said, sliding along the counter to get away from the brush of his breath on her shoulders. “Canned beans and…artichoke hearts.” She reached for a jar. “Sun-dried tomatoes.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry, Dylan,” she said, fussing with the jars so they stood evenly on the counter. “I find it charming for a man to prefer balsamic vinegar to the regular stuff.”
“I didn’t buy this.”
“Defensiveness is a true sign of guilt.”
“No, really,” he said, eyeing her with a grin. “This must be leftovers. Probably from Renee.”
Casey’s smile froze on her face. She didn’t have to ask to know that Renee was a woman. A woman that he must have brought to this cabin for an intimate dinner of pasta salad and…what else? Wine? Candlelight? Raucous lovemaking before a roaring fire?
“Or Janet,” he added, rolling back against the counter and giving her a sly smile, “though that was too long ago and not really likely.”
Had any other jock said those words to her, she would have scoffed and written it off as youthful arrogance. But Dylan stood there grinning at her with a twinkle in his eye, and she felt an odd frisson—the way women throughout the centuries must have felt when faced with a blatant, unrepentant rogue.
She arched a brow and said, “Renee and Janet are your sisters, no doubt.”
“Oh, no,” he said, grabbing a dishrag and wiping his hands on it. “Renee and Janet were my wives.”
He had the nerve to stand there and grin at her while she absorbed this information. Wives. Two of them, at least. And spoken in the past tense, a
s if they were already gone.
Then she realized she didn’t even know if he still had a wife. She had assumed not, because he wore no ring… because of the way he’d grabbed her and kissed her… because of the way he’d spoken to her…because of the way he’d molded his hand over her bottom this afternoon, as he pushed her into the canoe.
But all that didn’t mean anything. He was of an age to be married. Not all men wore rings. And the wife wasn’t here, if there was one. He could be as much of a modern-day roué as he looked. She’d seen uglier situations on assignment. Heck, for all she knew, those wives of his could have been disembodied and entombed in the woods. She didn’t know anything at all about this man.
Except that he was handsome. Strikingly so, leaning up against the counter with his shoulders as wide as a beam, the golden rays of the late-afternoon sun pouring through the window and shining on his hair. He was grinning at her, his eyes twinkling, watching her try to get over that bombshell.
He had a disconcerting habit of doing that. Dropping bombs on her. Knocking her off her feet. Sweeping her along in his plans. She was beginning to think he did it on purpose, just to watch her reaction.
“So,” she said, forcing her voice to sound casual, “should I have checked expiration dates before I opened all these jars?”
“Naw. It was probably Renee’s doing. She was here only last summer. Everything’s fresh enough.”
Fresh, indeed. Less than a year widowed or divorced. Divorced, most likely, or else he wouldn’t be making so light of the matter. Didn’t that just fit—that Dylan MacCabe, log-chopping, camp-loving woodsman, would flit in and out of relationships as easily as a wild buck?
She grabbed a wooden spoon to fish a piece of rotini out of the roiling water. “Mrs. MacCabe had good taste.”
“Both of them did. They married me, didn’t they?” He twisted a bottle of black olives around so he could see the label. “Of course, they both dumped me, too.”
Loving Wild Page 5