“I didn’t know what kind of woman you were.”
She blinked in surprise. “What does that mean?”
“Some women are swayed by the academic challenge. Others are swayed by one man’s private passion.”
Somewhere in the woods an owl hooted. Dylan’s gaze fixed on her again, and the heat of it seeped through her body, like the heat of the glass candleholder warming the palm of her hand.
Then the intimacy that had fallen over them and had seemed so comfortable suddenly tightened, binding them by the force of their locked gazes. She began to realize the enormity of the decision she’d made this afternoon in the coolness of Dylan’s cabin. By agreeing to join him on this voyage, she’d chosen to share three weeks of nights with him. Twenty-one evenings as private as this one, lit by the stars and flickers of candlelight. Twenty-one evenings of intimate discussions. Sharing thoughts. Sharing private passions.
Abruptly she stood. The picnic bench scraped against the ground. “I knew you were hiding something.” Her bottle wobbled upon the table. She seized the neck to still it. “I just didn’t know it was such a good story.”
He replied, in a strange, soft voice, “I’m glad you think so.”
“I do. And I’ll use it. In my piece, I mean.” She ran her fingers through her drying hair. “But now, I should be off to bed. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us tomorrow.”
Somehow she made her way around the picnic table. Somehow she made it past him, past the hand he’d stretched out to her, past the whispered sound of her name on his lips.
Casey…
She slapped the door shut behind her and in a blind, frantic haze, made her way through to the bedroom. Dylan’s bedroom. The bedroom of a bootlegger’s grandson. In whose sheets she would be lying this night.
Alone.
5
CASEY HEAVED THE CLEAR morning air into her lungs as she pounded across the country path, avoiding tree roots and sharp-edged rocks. She’d been jogging for about a half hour now, and she’d long since passed the point where her lungs ached and her thighs cramped at the exertion. She’d settled into the familiar, easy rhythm of a three-mile-a-day runner and now she could finally clear her mind.
Charlie had introduced her to jogging. He’d been a track star in high school. At sixteen years of age, she would have chased him to the ends of the earth just to attract his attention. She practically did, joining the girls’ track team just so they would go to meets together, and have something to talk about Later, during their married life, they’d done most of their talking while on their morning run.
Jogging was the one thing she’d kept from that earlier life. Over the years she’d grown to love the few moments of solitude. She loved the open air. She loved the way it turned her thoughts away from her troubles, and onto something solid, onto the one thing she could control—the functioning of her own body.
They’d always jogged in perfect rhythm, Charlie and she, which was a product of so many years of shared exercise. She’d been so used to having him by her side that there had been times, after it was all over, when she would be running and her mind was elsewhere, and suddenly she would twist around to say something—to Charlie—only to find, with a jolt, nothing but silence and empty air.
It had been a long time since that had happened. She had been running alone for so long now.
She increased her pace. Streams of golden sunlight filtered down through the leaves, promising a warm bright day for the launch. She should be conserving her energy today, not sprinting out into the woods at the crack of dawn. But she’d realized the moment she woke up in Dylan’s bed for the second morning in a row that this was her last chance to get away from him—away from his bed, his cabin, his food, his bathroom, his searching gaze—for the next three weeks.
Now there was a problem she could focus on. A problem she’d best face right now, if she was to have any peace in the days to come. And face it she would. One hard lesson she had learned in all these years was that she always had to be honest with herself. A person could fool herself into believing a lot of strange things, if she wasn’t brutally honest.
The truth was this: It hadn’t been so long since Casey had felt a man’s admiring gaze. She’d been on a lot of assignments, had met a lot of men. Not all twenty-five-year-old jocks were immune to an older woman’s charms. It was just that, in all those years, she had never felt anything in return.
But she lit up like a live wire whenever Dylan was around. She found herself examining the shape of his hands as he held a paddle, the way his hair hung shaggy over his collar. She found herself lying flat on her belly in his bed, naked but for her underwear, spreading her arms across the width of the mattress as if she were making snow angels in the sheets—all the while wondering what the heck she was doing.
Okay, she told herself, taking a deep breath so she wouldn’t pass out from lack of oxygen somewhere on this country trail. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Jillian had warned her that the time would come when something like this would happen. She even remembered Jillian’s words—something about still being a living, breathing woman with a living, breathing woman’s needs. At the time, Casey had stared at her as if she’d grown two heads, to think that she could share those kinds of intimacies with any other man but Charlie.
Damn Jillian. In the three years Casey had known her, she’d always been right.
So, Casey thought, feeling the bite of tree bark as she rounded a curve in the narrow path, so she was physically attracted to Dylan MacCabe. She wiped sweat off her brow and smeared it on her gray cotton one-piece jogging suit. Being attracted to a single, handsome, witty, exciting man was a natural enough thing. So she was attracted to Dylan MacCabe. And that was the first step to recovery of any sort—admitting the problem.
So…what was she going to do about it?
She knew that Dylan felt the attraction, too, he’d made that clear enough that first evening. He’d also made it clear that he wasn’t looking for anything permanent. Neither was she. But he’d had two wives and who knew how many other women, while the sum total of all her experience was Charlie. She didn’t want that experience again. It had taken her too long to pull herself together after he was gone.
She’d long ago made the decision that she would never go back to that old life. She had a new one now: a life of excitement, a life of travel, a life of new experiences every day. She’d chosen it, she’d built it, and she would stick to it.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the rush of air in and out of her lungs, the throbbing of her heart and the thrum of blood in her ears. She launched herself back down the path, in the direction of the cabin, mulling over the dilemma with each rhythmic step. She was still lost deep in her thoughts as the cabin came into view. She blindly crossed the grass, rounded the Jeep and headed toward the front door.
Then slammed into a man’s solid chest.
“Whoa, lady!”
She bounced back in recoil. Two strong hands seized her by the arms, stilling her before she tumbled ungraciously onto her softer side. She struggled to gain a footing, tossed her sweat-drenched hair out of her eyes…and found herself chest-to-chest with Dylan MacCabe.
Dylan, in all his living, breathing glory; Dylan, tousle-haired, stubble-cheeked, looking as if he’d just rolled out of the steamy bedroom of her vivid imagination.
“Dylan,…”
His name fell from her lips in a breathless whisper. Even to her ears it sounded seductive. Intimate. Like sleepiness and rumpled sheets.
She felt rather than heard the catch of his breath. His hands tightened on her arms. “Good morning to you, too, Casey.”
She licked her lips and tasted the salt of her own sweat. She couldn’t help it—she’d just run three miles—she hadn’t meant to utter his name like that. Nor had she meant to slam bodily into him. She fixed her gaze on his throat—a safer spot than the darkening blue of his eyes. She noticed her hands lying flat between them, splayed upon his faded tank top as if sh
e were molding his pectoral muscles to her palms.
She yanked her hands away as if they’d been burned. She took two awkward steps back—away from Dylan’s rough and ready grin. His gaze fell to her gray one-piece jogging suit, and suddenly the bodysuit felt no more concealing than another layer of skin.
She scraped her palm down the sweat-plastered cloth. “I’m running late.”
“You were running, all right,” he said gruffly, obviously enjoying the view. “Hard and fast.”
She stood, trying to catch her breath, wondering at his tone of voice. “I thought I’d get a few miles in before the launch. I won’t be able to run all that much in unfamiliar woods—”
“You shouldn’t try so hard, Casey.”
She swiped the sweat off her forehead and frowned at him from under her arm. “What do you mean?”
He reached across and traced a trail of sweat down her cheek. “I mean that I’m a pretty nice guy, once you stay still long enough to get to know me.”
She froze. His thumb lingered on her jaw while a smile lingered on his lips—a deceptively easy smile. He knew. He knew how she was feeling; he knew why she took such long showers, why she ventured so far out in the woods on her morning runs, why she’d slept in both mornings and gone to bed at the first sign of dusk.
“Why don’t you go in and shower.” He dropped his hand from her jaw and it was as if he’d stepped back twenty feet. “It’ll be your last chance for hot water in three long weeks.”
She took him up on his offer and, wordlessly, rounded him to escape through the cabin door.
Within the hour she was steering a wheezing Bessie down the rutted, unpaved road, following Dylan and his laden Jeep into the nearest town. He pulled into a gas station where, the day before, they’d made arrangements to leave her van for repairs. She reluctantly tossed the grizzled mechanic the keys, patted Bessie on the hood, took a deep cleansing breath and climbed into the small cabin of Dylan’s Jeep.
He gave her a sexy little smile. “Ready?”
No.
“Yes.” She tilted her chin, hated herself for the gesture, then turned away from Dylan so he wouldn’t see her misgivings. She caught one last glance of Bessie as they pulled out of the gas station. The mechanic was smoothing an oily rag down the dented hood as he searched for the lever to lift it.
“Are you sure,” she asked, “that it’s not inconvenient for Daniel to pick up my van?”
“Casey, I told you, he asked to do it,” Dylan replied. “Danny feels bad about this whole situation. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have had to hijack you for this trip.”
Hijack you for this trip. She glanced at his profile, wondering if she’d heard a trace of regret in his voice, or if she’d only imagined it. “Did you tell him that the mechanic said it could be days, or even a week, before she’s ready?”
“Yeah, yeah, he knows. Danny’s staying in his cabin with his wife and kids. ‘Recuperating,’ is the word he used. He’s not going anywhere and he has nothing better to do than wait on Fred’s whim”
“But to drive it all the way up to Canada to meet us… Bessie’s really temperamental, you know.”
“Bessie?”
“My van.”
“You named your van?”
“Yeah.” She cast him a narrow-eyed look. “You got a problem with that, MacCabe?”
A grin twitched his lips. “Let’s put it this way—I haven’t named our canoe yet.”
“We haven’t gone over eighty thousand miles with your canoe, yet.”
“Well, I hope you reassured Bessie that she’ll be in good hands with Daniel.”
She frowned. He made it sound as if she talked to a hunk of metal. She’d hadn’t become that lonely in the past three years. “I’m used to her, I know her quirks. Daniel doesn’t.”
“Hopefully, that mechanic will have gotten rid of those ‘quirks’ by the time Danny gets his hands on it.”
She was acting irrationally. She knew it. But she couldn’t get it out of her head that some strange man would be tinkering with Bessie’s insides. Tightening her screws. Lubricating her parts. Holding her, driving her, tuning her until she purred and hummed.
For a brief, shimmering moment, Casey wondered who she was thinking about—Bessie or herself.
Dylan turned his Jeep onto the gravel of a launch, just outside of town, then came to a jerking halt. A cluster of well-wishers milled by the riverbank.
“Uh-oh,” he muttered.
“What?” She straightened at the sight of his sheepish look. “What is it?”
“The bon-voyage party,” he said, gesturing to the fifteen or twenty people now rushing toward the Jeep. “I had hoped they’d forget that today was the launch.”
“What’s the problem?” she asked, leaning forward. “Are any of them reporters?”
“No. Well, not really.” He elbowed his door open with more muscle than was necessary. “But by noon tomorrow all of Bridgewater’s going to know that some sleek little brunette took Danny-boy’s place.”
“What?”
“Brace yourself,” he grunted, crunching a heel into the gravel. “You’re about to meet the MacCabe clan.”
They came at the Jeep like Viking marauders. Tall and blond and red-faced from too much sun. One broad-shouldered bull of a man charged ahead with what sounded suspiciously like a rebel yell. He caught Dylan in the abdomen, then heaved him up with a clank onto the hood of the Jeep. Dylan shoved him off and the two went at it like mountain goats locking horns. The rest of the clan formed a respectable circle around the wrestling pair, and it seemed to Casey that the ones who weren’t clucking or shaking their heads were urging the two men on with laughing gusto.
In the midst of the chaos, she swung open the door and stepped out into the sunshine. She moved toward the edge of the circle. A fortyish woman who was definitely a MacCabe turned a streaked-blond head to glance at her, looked back at the wrestlers, then swung her head around to stare at Casey wide-eyed. A well-placed elbow alerted the man beside her, an indelicate grunt alerted the man beside him, and within minutes the wrestlers no longer held the attention of the crowd.
The wrestlers noticed the murmuring silence, too, for suddenly they pushed off each other, laughing. The broad-shouldered bull who’d started all the trouble glanced at her, paused, then without hesitation let out a low, long whistle.
“Well, lookee here,” he said, shouldering past Dylan. “Dylan’s got himself another wife candidate.”
Dylan’s voice rose amid the rising murmurs. “Bill—”
“The name’s Bill MacCabe,” the bull said, coming to a halt one step too dose to her and flashing a lopsided grin whiter than Dylan’s. “And where did my brother find you?”
Bill gave her a once-over as thorough as Dylan had given her, and though she didn’t experience the same belly-deep frisson, it made her uncomfortable about having chosen to wear a black thigh-length bodysuit.
“The name’s Casey,” she said, peering over the bull’s shoulder toward Dylan’s looming form. “And I’d have thought Dylan would have told you I was coming.”
“Didn’t have a moment,” Dylan said, seizing his brother by the scruff of the neck and dragging him back a few feet.
Casey cast Dylan a sidelong look. Didn’t have a moment? Didn’t they spend the morning in town yesterday, taking care of last-minute details? There were pay phones enough, even in this backwater.
But Dylan ignored her glare and urged her forward with two fingers at the base of her spine. “Folks, this is my new canoeing partner, Casey Michaels.”
The questions surged as if in one voice. “What?” “Partner?” “What happened to Danny?” “Where is Danny, anyway?” “Is she joining you and Danny?”
“Danny broke his arm and bruised a couple of ribs on the ski jump last week. Yeah, yeah, he’s fine,” Dylan added at the feminine gasp. “His pride is bruised more than his ribs. But he’s out of the picture as far as the expedition is concerned.”
“Lucky you,” Bill commented.
“But, Dylan…” The fortyish woman cocked him a look. “You and Danny have been planning this for y—”
“Yeah, and if Danny had thought of that before launching himself headlong off the ski jump; I wouldn’t have had to search around for a substitute. As it is, I didn’t have to look for one. She came to me.” Dylan finally glanced down at Casey. “She’s a freelance journalist. She showed up at the cabin looking for a story, and I talked her into joining the expedition with me.”
A rumble of suggestive laughter vibrated through the crowd. Casey felt the first heat of embarrassment stain her cheeks. Dylan urged her closer into the circle and began rattling off introductions she knew she would never remember.
Anne, the tall fortyish woman who was apparently Dylan’s older sister, curled around the other side of Dylan after the introductions were finished and spoke in a hushed whisper.
“Dylan, are you sure about this? This is terribly last-minute, and such a long voyage—”
“Stop being a clucking hen, Anne. Casey has experience. She’s done the Snake River, she can handle this.”
Anne pursed her lips and gave Casey the once-over. Casey was beginning to wonder if that manner of seeing through a person with one swift, spearing glance was a family trait. Dylan flattened his hand over the small of her back, as if warning her not to correct him about the Snake River. The truth was, she didn’t feel like correcting him, she felt like boxing his ears for putting her on the spot like this.
“Gotta admit, didn’t think you had it in you, bro.” Bill swaggered back over and smacked Dylan on the chest. “You one-upped me on this one.”
Another man wearing wire-rimmed glasses piped up and said, “Isn’t there a morals clause in your teaching contract forbidding this kind of behavior?”
“Casey, hon, let’s leave the boys to their sports talk,” Anne said, disengaging Casey from the flat of Dylan’s hand and the brunt of the laughter and innuendo. “I’ve got a thermos full of hazelnut coffee down here, and I’m sure you’re going to need it.”
Casey heard Dylan’s low laugh as a circle of men closed in around him. “Somehow,” she muttered, “I don’t think they’re talking sports.”
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