He was a red-blooded man, after all. And it had been a long time since he’d hankered after a woman the way he hankered after Casey. That was what scared the bejesus out of him.
He’d had two other women who had clung to the same illusion he was presenting to Casey, until the autumn came and the image deteriorated before their very eyes. Until the wedding bands were on their fingers and they’d started living the everyday plodding life of the wife of a high-school teacher. Relationships that started this hot burned out quickly—and left bitter gray ashes in their wake.
Now here he was, camping in the Adirondack wilderness with a sexy woman, feeling as randy as a teenage boy, struggling with two equal and opposing forces. He wanted her, and he wanted to ward her off before the situation got too hot to handle.
“I think,” he began, “that it was the long fishing weekends at the cabin that always clued the ladies in.” He stared up at the canopy of leaves above them, at the last streaks of blue in the sky. He tried to sound easy and light. “Getting up at 4:00 a.m. to dig for worms might be a little much for someone who’s used to lingering over the New York Times and coffee until nine.”
She said nothing. She remained still. He was glad he’d chosen this spot to lean back, so he wouldn’t have to look into her eyes.
“Or maybe it was the high-school football games during the season. It can get really crazy, especially if my team makes the finals. I admit, the only people who can understand that obsession are adolescent boys and their families. But there it is.
“Of course, it could have been the family barbecues. You met the clan—they’re enough to drive anyone crazy. Maybe it was the combination of the three. That’s all the excitement Bridgewater has to offer. Pretty dull stuff for most women.”
He heard the creak of the packs rubbing against each other as she rearranged herself on her makeshift seat. He bent his knees, easing the pressure on his back.
“So, shoot me,” he continued, letting his lips curl back in a smile that was more grimace than grin. “Let my family believe whatever they want to believe. Let them think I’ve snagged a fine-looking woman for a couple of weeks.” He twisted, winked at her, then hiked himself up to poke a stick into the flames. “You’ve caught me on an upswing, Casey Michaels. Once a year I play Rambo. The rest of the year I’m a boring history teacher who can’t keep a wife.”
Inwardly he cringed the moment the words left his mouth. He hated making himself look like a pathetic fooL But the words had to be said. She had to know the truth. She had to understand that he would be willing to be her Indiana Jones these weeks, if that was what she wanted; he would be willing to play the part. But she damn well better know that he wasn’t the part; that he was an ordinary jock from upstate New York who’d had enough heartache to last him a lifetime.
“Lord, the lengths a man will go to rather than say he’s sorry,” she said, her voice dripping with skepticism. “You’re either lying to get my pity, Dylan, or that’s the most pathetic attempt I’ve ever seen of a man trying to be humble.”
He blinked at her. The stick he’d been using to stoke the flames caught fire itself. “You don’t believe me.”
“You’re not really blaming your divorces on too many high-school football games and fishing trips?” She dropped her freeze-dried dinner to her side. “C’mon, life is more complicated than that.”
“Not around here.”
“Then the problem was with the wives, not with the life. Barbecues and fishing trips are what life is made of.”
“Listen to you talking,” he said, giving the whip-lean brunette with brown lipstick a good once-over. “What the heck would you know about a normal life? With all your gallivanting across the States, chasing one adventure story after another.”
She glanced down and her hair slipped across her eyes, but it left her lips visible, vulnerable in a strange sort of smile. “So you’re worried I see you as some sort of Rambo, and here you are seeing me as some sort of globetrotter. Nobody is that simple, Dylan, we’re a sum of our parts. And I used to live a ‘simple’ life like that.”
“Get out of here.”
“Sure did,” she continued. “It wasn’t football for me, though. It was track. I was on the team. And we were all quite intense about the meets, I remember that.”
He glanced at those long, lean legs splayed out in front of her, and could easily envision her in high-school athletics. “You gave it up after high school, then.”
“After college I gave it up. Then I bought an acre of land with a big vegetable garden,” she continued. “And a sloppy old mutt I saved from the pound. Called him Poochy.”
He couldn’t help grinning. “Toochy?”’
“Yes. Poochy.” Her lips twitched into a ghost of a smile that faded more quickly than it was born. “He’s living with my sister in Connecticut now. Probably doesn’t remember me at all.”
“What happened?”
He’d asked too bluntly. She glanced at him, and it was as if she’d been shaken from a trance. Her amber gaze slid away as quickly as it had come. Along with the fragile thread of easy goodwill that had just begun to stretch between them.
“Well…I had to give it up.” She pursed her lips, then shook her head, once. “No. I chose to give it up. To chase other dreams.”
Her words hit him like a blow to the head. She chose to give up a simple life. To chase other dreams. Like his first wife. Like his second wife.
“If you don’t mind, Dylan,” she said, getting to her feet, oblivious to the havoc she’d just wreaked upon him, “I think I’m going to call it a night. I’m exhausted, and these mosquitos don’t seem to mind the repellent.”
“Take the propane lamp,” he muttered, gesturing to the lamp on top of a pile of their gear. “I’ll be in…in a while.”
He turned back to the flames, away from her. He listened to her rustle among the packs. He heard the clank of the handle of the propane lamp, the zip of the nylon tent flap, the rustle of her feet upon the nylon flooring. He imagined her stretching to get out of the oversize sweatshirt she’d donned when the sun set. He imagined what she would look like, peeling off her clothes, one layer at a time.
He wondered what kind of underwear she wore. Whether she was a cotton-panties type of woman, or whether she opted for silky slips of things edged in lace and cut high so those long, lean legs looked even longer.
Almost against his will, he found himself swiveling in the dirt to glance at the tent, which was lit from within by the golden glow of the propane lamp.
He watched the shadow of that woman he could not have, as she pulled the sweatshirt over her head. Her hair swung against her shoulders, and he could see her body, outlined starkly against the nylon tent.
He knew he should turn away. He told himself to turn away as she slipped one shoulder out of her bodysuit, then the other. But as she began to peel the whole thing down over her ribs and past the sucked-indentation of her belly, he knew he couldn’t turn away even if a bear had come rumbling up behind him.
The light cast her form in sharp relief, showing the swell of her breast, even the nub of her nipple, uptilted and sweet—then hidden behind the shadow of her arm as she shifted to slip the bodysuit down under her bottom and across those legs—now sharp again, silhouetted against the pale glow of the tent….
Then, somehow, he was there—just outside the tent—reaching out to trace, ever so gently, the rise and curve of that shadow of a breast, wishing he were touching warm puckered flesh and not cold nylon fibers. Wishing he had that hard nub against his tongue, suckling, while she made noises in her throat
What kind of noises would she make? Would she talk while she made love, would she guide him with her hands, or would she hold him hard while she struggled with the same intensity of passion that now flowed through him…?
He shoved his hands into his pockets to ease the pressure of his shorts against his loins. He couldn’t go into that tent. Not now. Not in an hour. Not until long after he heard
the soft, deep sound of her breathing. He wondered how bad the mosquitos would be if he laid his sleeping bag by the fire. He wondered if he would ever get to sleep.
He lifted his face to the heavens and stared at the blur of stars. And he told himself, over and over, that he would be damned if he would make the same mistake thrice.
6
“LETS TAKE A BREAK.” Dylan held his paddle a hairsbreadth above the water and scanned the rocky shore. “There,” he said, pointing to an outcropping. “A good place for a swim.”
Casey glared at his broad, tanned back. They’d been paddling since first light and her arms felt like overcooked linguine. “A swim, MacCabe? Or laps?”
He twisted with a stroke and flashed her a wicked grin. “A little touchy this morning?”
“Just wondering if this is a canoe trip or training for the triathlon. You must make one heck of a football coach.”
“The boys don’t complain.”
“I suspect the boys don’t dare complain. You’d probably assign them push-ups or chin-ups or some other indescribable torture.”
He laughed easily. The sound rang out over the clear water. “This swim will be for pure pleasure. This will be the last open water well see for a while.”
Casey burrowed deeper into her black mood. Sure, he could laugh. The sun of the past two days had done no more than burnish his tan. Her shoulders itched and peeled from her foolishness yesterday, when she’d forgotten to reapply sunscreen in the afternoon. He could cover up his unwashed hair with a baseball cap. She had to be satisfied with sweeping her lifeless hair up in barrettes and pins that left tickling strands dripping across her face. He looked rakish with bristle on his face. Her legs, on the other hand, were looking just plain hairy.
She had forgotten why she disliked camping so much. Sunscreen and mosquito repellent pooled oily on her throat, under her breasts, between her toes. Splashing her face with lake water every morning just couldn’t take the place of a piping-hot shower—but it would be two weeks and four days before she felt that again.
All in all, she was feeling jumpy and wretched and completely out of sorts. She needed a shower. She needed a fresh salad. She needed some breathing room.
She helped pull the canoe up on a little spit of shore, curled deep within a sheltered cove. He leaped out with all the grace of a cat. She splattered into the cool water. She grimaced as she helped beach the canoe and secure it. She couldn’t help it. Her arms ached from the exertion, and her neck was stiff from sleeping on the hard ground on the wrong side. Her left side. She was used to sleeping on her right side, but in the tent they shared, Dylan slept against the left wall.
At least, she thought he did. She’d never actually seen him sleep, although she discovered, every morning, his rumpled sleeping bag lying beside hers. He claimed he came in after she’d already fallen asleep, and woke up long before she rose. With the way she’d been tossing and turning every night, anxious for his arrival, that meant he was subsisting on a fraction of the amount of sleep she was getting, which wasn’t much at all.
She turned away abruptly from the object of her thoughts, yanked off her T-shirt, snapped the barrette holding her hair up, and with a running jump, dived right into the water.
The water sluiced over her like cool gentle hands, and by the time she surfaced in the sunshine by the edge of the cove she felt a layer of mosquito repellent and sunscreen peel away. It would be nice to have a big, blowup float. It would be nice to have someone swim a strong icy Piña Colada out to her waiting hands. -
She heard Dylan’s splash and turned in time to see him surface, a few feet away.
Grinning. All white teeth in a tanned face. All bright, twinkling eyes. All grizzled and wet and wickedly naked from the waist up.
“So,” she said, sinking her water shoes into the soft bottom, “what did you mean when you said this was the last open water for a while?”
“We’re moving from ponds to creeks soon. Shallow and meandering little rivers. Shouldn’t see another pond until we’re practically in Canada.” His gaze flickered down her body, and she wondered if wearing her bright pink bikini had been the wisest thing to do this morning. “You’ll get a rest from paddling, but we’ll be portaging more.”
“Great. From Olympic rowing to world-class weight lifting.” She raked her fingers in her hair, vigorously scratching her itchy scalp. “Now you’re really going to wish Danny-boy was here.”
“Dan would be complaining about the mosquitos. And the lack of beer. And moaning that he had no time to fish.” He fell back in the water and lay, floating. He added, with a twinkle, “You’re doing all right, Casey. That is, for a girl.”
One well-aimed splash left him sputtering in his mirth. She waded past him toward the stern end of the canoe. She rifled around until she found her personal bag, tucked securely between two rucksacks, then tugged out a small white bottle.
She looked him square in the eye as she waded deeper, waving the shampoo. “It’s biodegradable.”
He swiped his face with his forearm. “Yeah?”
“It’s made from the yucca plant. I made sure of it before I bought it. So I’m not burying the suds, do you hear?”
His Viking gaze fell upon the bottle suspiciously.
She halted, hiking a hand on her hip. “I’m not packing them in, either, MacCabe.”
“You know the rules, Casey.” A wicked gleam lit his eye. ‘Take only pictures, leave only footprints.”
“And look like a grizzly bear by the time you get back to civilization.”
“You don’t look anything like a grizzly bear.”
She blinked up at him. The sunlight shone through the leaves above, dappling spotted light upon the water. Dylan suddenly seemed bigger. Taller. Stronger. She had an eerie sense of isolation, as they both stood here in the water of an unnamed lake, far from civilization. It had been over twenty-four hours since they’d even seen a stray hiker.
She felt light-headed, as if she’d stood up too abruptly.
Dylan jerked his chin toward the bottle. “Will that stuff put you in a better mood?”
“Huh?”
“The shampoo,” he said, gesturing to the bottle still gripped in her hand. “Washing your hair. Will it wipe that scowl off your face?”
Lately, she didn’t know what would put her in a better mood. Sleep might. Or a morning without the shock of stumbling out of the tent to find him, tanned and wet and male, waiting for her with a coffee cup in his hand.
The thought brought fresh heat to her cheeks.
“It’ll help,” she said, snapping open the bottle. “At this point, any creature comfort would help.”
“Then let me.”
He slipped the bottle out of her hand. Before she could react, he’d poured a glob into his palm, tucked the bottle inside the waistband of his swimsuit, and laid his hands upon her head.
She might have gasped aloud. She thought she had. She might have tried to jerk away. She thought she had. But at the first touch of his hands a rush of sensation blinded her, and she stood stiff in the midst of the wave, taking the onslaught until it ebbed away—leaving her tingling with shock and conscious only of the here and now.
The shine of the wet whorls of hair upon his chest. The smell of a man’s sun-warmed skin, of heated aloe. The screech of a blue jay, high up in the trees. The slap of the cool water against her midriff, against his abdomen. The light pressure of his fingers on her scalp.
He worked the shampoo through her hair. He had big, strong hands. He knew what he was doing. He knew how to touch, he knew where to press. He worked the foam all over her head, but his fingers did more than shampoo her hair. He pressed his thumbs against her temples, kneaded the part in her hair with his knuckles. He massaged the top of her head with the pads of his fingertips, then worked his way to the base of her neck and kneaded every taut, knotted muscle.
She made a sound. Almost a moan. She heard herself as if from far away, for the tension of the past week melt
ed under his fingers, and all of a sudden she wished that she could dissolve into the water and sleep. She wished, too, that he would go on massaging her scalp like this forever. She wished he would do her shoulders…her arms…that ache in the hollow of her back.
She didn’t know how long she stood, her head wobbling as he massaged her, finding the hollows behind her ears, massaging her hairline, digging his thumbs into the ridge at the nape of her neck. Until, suddenly, he took his hands away.
She swayed as she blinked her eyes open.
“Rinse,” he said in a ragged voice.
She responded by instinct. She dipped back into the water, submerged herself, and ran her fingers through her suddenly soft hair. A cloud of foam surrounded her, then swiftly dispersed. She propelled herself, face first, out of the water, raking her hair away from her forehead.
Then, suddenly, Dylan’s warm lips slid against her skin.
She knew they were his lips, though her eyes were still closed from the sting of the soapy lake water. She knew the roughness of that bristled cheek against her temple, she knew the smell of him from the long nights in the tent that seemed as small as a closet. She knew the feel of his lips against hers, remembered from that brief kiss they’d shared, the very first day they met.
It seemed she’d been waiting every moment since, for the taste of that mouth again.
She turned her face to meet his lips. She hadn’t consciously meant to do that, she told herself, anticipating the touch of his mouth upon hers; she really hadn’t meant to do this at all.
Their lips met, and merged in a breath. Loosened, then merged again. There was a pause—uncertain and tense—their lips apart only by moisture, only by a breath. Then another merging, another kiss; deeper this time, more intent.
He knew how to kiss. He knew how to suckle her upper lip into his mouth, then suckle the bottom one, too; he knew how to make her open her mouth and invite him deeper. He knew how to make her keep kissing. He knew how to make her forget herself.
Loving Wild Page 9