The hatch was locked, and he slapped his pants' pockets for the keys before remembering he'd left them in the ignition. Rounding the vehicle, he tried the driver's door handle, but it didn't budge either. He swore under his breath and peered in the windows just as dawn broke through the trees, marginally brightening the ash-gray sky. Well, great. All the doors were locked up tight, and Lily was asleep in the backseat, covered from stem to stern by the purple fleece blanket. Wisps of blonde hair were the only part of her he could see.
He rapped on the window, and felt an unworthy sense of satisfaction when she startled beneath the blanket. She raised her head, then slowly pushed up on one elbow, glancing around as if wondering where she was. Their gazes met through the window, and she blinked and gave him a sleepy smile.
It was a friendly smile, a sweet smile, and something jerked in his gut. Something else clamored for attention in his brain. Gritting his teeth, he ignored them both. "Unlock the door."
He saw the exact moment her mind engaged enough to remind her he wasn't her friend. She was in the midst of stretching for the mechanism to comply with his command when she suddenly stilled. Her hand dropped to her side and she struggled upright, wrapping the fleece blanket tightly around her. What the hell—was that his Northface she was wearing? "Will you move it?" he growled. "Let me in."
"No," she said.
"Dammit, Lily, open the door! It's snowing out here."
"I can see.that. Are you cold?"
"Yes!" And that was his jacket. The giveaway was the fact that it was about ten sizes too big for her.
"Well, gee, that's a crying shame. Although as I recall it, you didn't care that I was cold last night."
"Hey, I offered to share my bag." Big mistake. Not only did her upper lip curl in disdain, but his dick had a deja vu moment of the instant just after he'd proposed the option, when the ramifications of a possible acceptance had left him in a half erect state. He rattled the door. "Lemmein!"
"There are some things we need to discuss first."
He regarded her warily. "Like what?"
"I want a few concessions."
"Shit." But he knew he probably wouldn't get in without them—not without a lot of bother on his part. Mentally calculating how far he was willing to go, he demanded, "What do you want?"
"Bathroom stops I don't have to fight for, for starters."
"Oh." It caught him by surprise… then left him feeling guilty. Denying her those yesterday had been petty of him. "Okay, sure."
"And your word that you'll behave civilly from now on."
Now, that was a tougher one, especially considering his less-than-cheerful frame of mind lately. Still, he nodded. "You've got it." He watched through the window as she pulled her heels up on the seat next to her round little butt, pinched the toes of her socks—no, his socks, by God—and pulled them off her feet, trading them for her sandals. It was a sad day when a woman's naked feet got him itching. He raked his fingers through his hair. "What else?"
Dropping her feet to the floor, she straightened and fixed him with a stern glare. "I want water so I can wash up. Hot water."
"I'll get right on that—the minute I have access to the camp stove."
"Okay, then." She stretched over the front seat to flip the mechanism that opened all the locks.That was easier—not to mention a whole lot cheaper—than he'd expected. He went around to the cargo hatch and popped it open just as Lily tumbled out of the jeep and trotted awkwardly toward the stand of trees, a wad of tissues clenched in one fist. The sight brought a sardonic smile to Zach's lips, and he reached for the camp stove to heat her water. Damned if he hadn't been out-bluffed.
His amusement fled when he saw his belongings scattered all over the cargo area, and it suffered a further .downturn when he went looking for a dry shirt to put on and discovered his two long-sleeved thermal T's were gone. It was all he could do not to glare at Lily when she returned a short while later. "Give me back my shirts."
"Excuse me?" She cocked an expectant eyebrow at him.
Words he forced himself to swallow went down like ground glass. "Please."
To his surprise she immediately removed his North-face, laying the jacket inside the hatch. Then she reached for the hem of his burgundy T and peeled it off over her head. When she removed the silver one beneath it, her own top came partway with it, hitching up to expose a golden slice of skin just above her jeans waistband.
"Here, you wear this one," she said amiably, handing him the silver, waffle-weave shirt. "It does the most for your eyes. But I get to keep the burgundy one—at least until I warm up." She put it back on, then had to reroll the sleeves several times to prevent them from flopping over her fingertips.
Without her usual sky-high heels, the top of her head barely reached his chest, and his shirt wasn't simply long in the sleeves on her; it hung clear down to her knees. "You look like a damn kid playing dress-up," he muttered insincerely. No way in hell would anyone ever mistake her for a child. Not with those round hips or the sweet curve of her breasts pushing against his T.
He hated it that he was so physically aware of her. But when she pressed a hot wash cloth to her face a moment later and moaned in pure pleasure, he immediately thought of sex, down-and-dirty sex, in one position after another, each one of which flashed raunchier than the last across the screen of his mind. Disgusted, he stomped away and went to stand with his face lifted to the sluggishly falling snow.
Shit. Being rude to women might not be the way he was raised, but it had sure been a dandy cushion between him and the pull of Lily's sexuality. Now, because a deal was a deal, and he always kept his word, that cushion was gone.
Busy dealing with the nasty suspicion that this civility business just might be the death of him, he failed to notice the old Ford LTD parked behind the big wooden site map when he drove past it soon after.
Hours later Zach conceded that sometimes a man would just as soon not be right. His jaw ached from gritting his teeth as he drove through the sweeping ranch land of southernOregon. Dammit, did I call this or what? A guy honors his word to be polite and just look where it gets him — ass-deep in sexual frustration .
It was the very thing he'd feared, and observing Lily's feminine rituals sure as hell hadn't helped. At the campsite earlier she'd accommodated his need to hit the road by merely washing her face and brushing her teeth, then immediately restoring order to his trashed duffel bag without him saying a word. As soon as they'd gotten underway, though, she'd balanced her train case in her lap and started doing the girly thing.
She'd applied lotions and scents and war paint with a skill and feminine appreciation for the process that was downright erotic. From the corner of his eye he'd seen her mouth drop open slightly as she leaned into the mirror to apply mascara, watched her lips purse as she stroked on lipstick. She'd combed and teased her hair, then applied something to it and mussed it all up again until it looked as if a man's hands had just lost their grip on it in the wake of some world-class oral servicing.
Jesus,Taylor. He shifted in his seat. What're you, a masochist? Don't even go there .
It was the direction in which his mind kept wandering, though. A short while ago she'd decided she was finally warm enough and had peeled off his thermal T-shirt. It was a fairly utilitarian stripping, but he couldn't have been more affected if she'd been working the stage pole at the Pussy-Kat Club. That was approximately the same time he'd begun to notice that the silver T-shirt he wore—the one that "did the most for his eyes," for crissake—bore her scent. Man, he was beginning to lose it. But why the hell couldn't she be a tall brunette? None of this would be an issue if she were a tall, dark-haired woman, since for some odd reason they'd never held much attraction for him.
And why didn't she say something? Yesterday he'd been perfectly content to spend the entire drive without exchanging a word, but today he needed a distraction from all this awareness. Hell, at this point he'd even welcome a dialogue about David Beaumont, sister-hustling, m
oney-grubbing little pissant that he was. But although Zach's body kept hearing the whisper of come on and get me, big boy from Lily's lush curves, except for a single request for a pit stop about forty minutes ago, she hadn't uttered one word in the three hours they'd been on the road.
To be fair, she was probably waiting for him to demonstrate good faith and start the conversation himself. But he couldn't think of a thing to say.
Then, almost as if she could read his thoughts, Lily suddenly shifted in her seat to look at him. "Glynnis once told me she was born inAfrica."
All right! This is more like it. "Yeah, she was."
"She said she was too young to remember it, but that you actually lived there for quite a while?"
"Yep." Not exactly chatty, bud . He'd better improve on the monosyllabic responses or he'd be right back where he'd started—and that was a situation he wanted to avoid at all costs. "I lived in numerous small villages on the veldt of south and eastAfricauntil I was eleven."
"The veldt ofAfrica," she repeated dreamily. "It sounds like something out of a Karen Blixen novel. That must have been so fascinating. And your parents! Your sister mentioned they were doctors whose specialty was working with the natives. I know she's terribly proud of them. You must have been, too."
"Proud? Yeah, I suppose so." Mostly, though, an unsatisfied yearning was the feeling that came to mind when he thought of his parents. Their grand passion for each other and for their work hadn't left much over for anyone else, and the benign neglect that had been his childhood had taught him early on that you couldn't rely on others for your emotional well-being. But if he'd often felt left out, even forgotten, at least he'd had the freedom of the veldt. Running with the nomadic Maasia tribesmen in the high open grasslands had given him his first taste for adventure and gone a long way toward alleviating his loneliness.
Then, that too, had been denied him shortly after Glynnis was born, when his mother and father, who'd claimed to love them so much, had shipped him and his infant sister back to the states. "Glynnis never actually had the opportunity to know our parents," he heard himself admit. "I might have romanticized them a bit for her benefit."
"How so?"
He had to hand it to her; she was all big-eyed curiosity. Yet even the cynical suspicion that she couldn't possibly be that interested didn't prevent him from responding to all that intense attention being focused on him. "They were rabid about the plight of the natives, which made them excellent doctors. But they weren't exactly the most attentive mom and dad in the world. They packed us off to our grandparents in Philadelphia when Glynnie was less than six months old, and they only ever bothered to come see her a handful of times after that. Yet I could hardly tell her that other people obviously mattered more to them than she did, could I? They were the only parents she had." He shrugged to make clear his supreme indifference. "So I emphasized the great demands put on them by their humanitarian deeds." He shot her a quick sideways glance, then turned his attention back on the road. "For Glynnis's sake I always hoped the situation would someday change, but as you already know, a fever swept through the village where they worked when Glynnis was eight, and it killed them both."
"Yes, I'm sorry."
He shrugged again. "Given the conditions they routinely worked in, it was bound to happen."
But Lily watched a flash of pain come and go across his face, and her stomach performed a funny little somersault. Okay, so maybe he's not the demon spawn I pegged him to be . Observing his profile from beneath her lashes, she deduced that his hopes for a change in his parents' situation probably hadn't been merely for Glynnis's sake. And Lily had to wonder: Where the heck had he come into the equation? He'd talked about other people mattering more to his parents than his sis-ter, but what about him? He'd lived with them for eleven years before Glynnis was even born—what had happened during that decade that their only son seemed not to expect any attention for himself? For the first time since clapping eyes on him in hisLaguna Beachkitchen, she found herself regarding him not as a gorgeous hunk or an insulting Neanderthal, but as an intriguing puzzle she'd very much like to figure out.
Before she could decide what it would take to do so, however, Zach surprised her by saying, "What about you? Are your parents still around?"
"Oh, yeah." She laughed. "Very much so." For a second she considered not saying anything else to see if he was interested enough to ask for details, but decided against it. If he hadn't said a word for almost two hundred miles, what were the chances of him suddenly demanding all the details of her life? Clearly he'd be perfectly happy to travel in silence for the rest of the day.
She couldn't claim the same; the last couple of hours had nearly driven her up the wall. "My folks sound the polar opposite of yours, at least as far as education goes. They had to get married when they were both seventeen, so they barely made it through high school."
He didn't take his eyes off the road. "Was that because of you?" he asked, "or do you have an older sibling somewhere who forced that marriage?"
"No, that would be me. Conceived, I've been told, in the backseat of a '62 Buick at the Sunset Drive-in Theater in a little one-horse town in Idaho I'm sure you've never heard of."
"So which parent did you end up with?" He deigned to take his eyes off the road long enough to slide a fast glance over her. "I'm guessing your mother."
She looked at him in surprise. "I lived with both of them."
"They're still married? Isn't that against every statistic for couples that wed so young?"
"Yeah, well, the statisticians never met my folks. Until I took over their finances, they might not have had two nickels to rub together, but one thing they always have had is true love." She caught Zach's eye roll. "I'm not saying they didn't occasionally indulge in a scream-the-house-down fight. But there was never any doubt that their marriage was solid."
This time when he took his eyes off the road, it was to give her a look she couldn't even begin to decipher. "So you had yourself a white-picket-fence upbringing?"
Lily couldn't help it—she threw back her head and laughed herself silly. "I'm sorry," she said in the face of his irritation once she'd collected herself. "I'm not laughing at you. It's just—a white-picket-fence upbringing is about the farthest thing from the truth. My folks led a restless lifestyle. We moved a lot. Usually once, often twice, and sometimes even three times a year. I dreamed of a house with a white picket fence." She made a wry face. "I never actually got to live in one."
"Huh." He fell silent, his eyes narrowing in concentration as he swung around a semi. More and more traffic began to clog the interstate the closer they got to Salem, and Zach seemed focused not only on getting through it, but making good time as well.
Lily found herself shooting him frequent glances, wondering what he was thinking beyond the fact that Oregon's fifty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit clearly didn't sit well with him. They stopped occasionally for her to use the restroom, or to grab something to eat, but Zach's growing impatience was all but palpable. Surprisingly, rather than annoying her, his restlessness made Lily long to reach across the console and give him a little there-there pat on the knee. She managed to engage him in a couple more brief exchanges, but it was like trying to detangle hair from a fine chain necklace at the back of one's neck, difficult and painstaking.
He pulled into the first gas station he saw after they'd crossed the Oregon border into Washington later in the day. "Here." He shoved a handful of bills into Lily's hand. "Go get us something to eat. I'm gonna fill up the tank now that we're finally in a state where you can pump your own."
She felt a smile crook her lips as she went into the minimart. Zach had taken Oregon's law that prohibited the pumping of one's own gas as a personal affront. No doubt the service station attendants weren't fast enough to suit his exacting standards.
Picking over the store's selection for something that wasn't loaded with preservatives, she experienced a sudden surge of homesickness for a real kitchen. She was tired
of fast food and minimart fare. She'd give a bundle to be able to whip up something with ingredients she knew to be fresh. A pragmatic woman at heart, though, she did the best she could with the limited resources at hand.
She was headed back to the car with a small bag of provisions when a dark-haired young man suddenly materialized at her side.
"Mees?" He was handsome and well built… and perhaps just the tiniest bit too aware of both facts. But the smile he gave her was polite and endearingly hesitant. "H'excuse me; I'm sorry for bothering you. But I wonder if I might trouble you for some help."
"Sure. What can I do for you?"
"My H'english is not so good—"
"On the contrary, your English is quite excellent."
" Gracias , but I cannot seem to make myself h'un-derstood to—" He gave a vague wave in the direction of the minimart, or perhaps to the pumps on the far side of it—"and I wondered if you might trouble yourself to assist me?"
"I'd be happy to do what I can. What exactly seems to be the misunder—"
" Lily ! Get your butt over here now, or I'm leaving without you!"
The sheer impatience of Zach's roar had her shifting the bag and shrugging at the young man. "I'm sorry, those dulcet tones belong to my ride, so I'm afraid I won't be able to help you after all. But truly," she assured him as she headed for the Jeep, "your English is much better than you seem to believe. Just speak slowly to whomever you're having the problem with and I'm sure everything will work out just fine.
"Threats, Zach?" she asked a moment later as she climbed into the car. "That's hardly what I call being civil."
"Hey, I've been gracious as an old lady at a frigging tea party the whole damn day," he growled as she buck-led her seatbelt. "But I'm not waiting around while you flirt with the local boys. Do that on your own time. I've got a schedule to keep." And punching the accelerator, he sent them roaring out of the station.
Chapter 7
Zach's schedule smacked up against the Washing-ton state ferry system in Anacortes several hours later and promptly came out the loser. He stared at the ticket seller incredulously. "A three-hour wait?"
Getting Lucky m-2 Page 7