by Meg Cabot
“Are you out of your mind?” she shrieked down at him, her face just inches from him. “That computer was the only thing keeping me sane, do you understand? I’m scared…and I’m hungry…and I’m freezing…and I can’t feel my toes…and I’m stuck in Alaska, in a snowstorm, with you! And it’s all your fault! So you had better go find that computer and it had better still be in one piece, because if it isn’t, I’ll shoot you myself !”
Jack, regarding her from the snow with an expression on his face that could only be called bemused, said, “You know something? You’re kind of cute when you’re mad.”
For a heartbeat or two, Lou just stared down at him, not certain she’d heard him right. Then she made her first mistake. She let go of his shoulders. She let go of his shoulders so her hands would be free to wrap around his stupid, egocentric, overprivileged neck—
It wasn’t easy, however, to choke someone who was laughing as hard as Jack Townsend happened to be. Especially since as soon as she got her fingers in the vicinity of his neck, he grabbed hold of both her wrists and neatly flipped her right off him, into the snow beside him.
And the next thing Lou knew, he was on top of her, exactly the way she’d been on top of him a few seconds before. Only instead of pinning her shoulders, he was pinning her wrists, so that she could not, as she would have liked to do, jab her thumbs in his eyeballs. Instead, her entire field of vision was taken up with his big, stupid, handsome, laughing face.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
“Let me up,” she grunted. It was really uncomfortable, lying like that. Snow was going down the collar of her coat, under her sweater, and down her neck. She hoped plenty had spilled down his. “Did you hear me? Let me up.”
“Now, I’d have to be pretty stupid to do that, wouldn’t I?” Jack said, with a laugh. His teeth were even and white and one hundred percent his, every last one of them. Lou had found that out courtesy of her dentist back in LA, who also happened to have filled Jack’s last cavity. “I mean, you said you were going to shoot me.”
“Jack,” Lou said, suddenly becoming conscious of the fact that his eyes, so pale blue they were almost gray, were rimmed in a darker shade that was almost black. “Look. Let me up and help me find the computer, and we’ll call it even. For now.”
The tanned skin around those incredibly blue eyes crinkled as he considered this offer.
“No,” he said, after a few seconds. “Sorry. Not good enough. I mean, after all, you looked pretty homicidal there for a minute or two. I’m not convinced that if I turn my back on you, you’re not going to drive an icicle through my skull—”
“Jack,” Lou said. The heat from his body was actually making her feel, for the first time all day, warm. It was a pleasant feeling. Too pleasant. Alarmingly pleasant. It had been weeks—months, even—since she’d last felt a man’s body this close to her…not counting what had happened this morning, that is. But she was pretty sure Jack hadn’t been aware of what he’d been doing then.
He knew now. Oh, he certainly knew now.
“Snow is going down my back,” Lou said. “Okay? So let me up.”
“I don’t know,” Jack said, pursing his lips thoughtfully. Unfortunately, this action only caused Lou’s gaze to be dragged towards his mouth. That laughing, insolent, sarcastic mouth. Which she did not want anywhere near hers. No, thank you. “Things have suddenly gotten kind of interesting. I can’t help asking myself what Detective Pete Logan would do in a situation like this.”
Lou, starting to feel a little breathless—though not because his body weight was making inhalation difficult, since it was only her hips he was straddling—said, in a warning voice, “Townsend. I’m serious. Let me up.”
“If this were a Copkiller script,” Jack went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, “by none other than the Academy Award– winning Lou Calabrese, Pete Logan would undoubtedly find himself out here in the twenty-degree cold without any pants on. Now, why is that? Can you tell me, Lou?”
“I am giving the people what they want,” Lou said, keeping her gaze on the sky, instead of his hypnotically blue eyes.
“Are you?” Jack asked. “Or are you just trying to punish me, script after script, for the I need a bigger gun thing?”
“Of course not,” Lou said. “I happen to be a professional. I do not let my personal feelings get in the way of my work. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Townsend, but the reason Pete Logan keeps ending up in his birthday suit is because the American viewing public enjoys looking at your ass.”
“The American viewing public,” Jack said, one of those dark eyebrows rising, “or Lou Calabrese?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” But even as she said it, she could feel her face turning crimson. Suddenly the snow on her neck did not feel half so cold as it had. In fact, it almost felt refreshing. “My God, Townsend. This may come as a shock to you, but contrary to what you apparently believe, there are some women who care more about what a guy’s got in his head than in his pants.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jack’s face, she noticed, had gotten disturbingly close to hers. “Then why are you blushing again?”
“I’m not blushing,” Lou said, blushing harder. “If my face is red, it’s because you are cutting off the circulation to my upper body.”
“Oh, right,” Jack said. “I mentioned that I think you’re cute when you’re mad, didn’t I?”
“You said something along those lines,” Lou said. “But—”
“Good,” Jack said. “Then this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.”
And then that mouth—that laughing, infuriating, perfect mouth—came down over hers.
And Lou died and went to heaven.
16
She ought to have known, of course, that this is what it would be like. Kissing Jack Townsend. Or rather, being kissed by Jack Townsend. Because Lou was not the one doing the kissing. Oh, definitely not.
Except that it was sort of difficult, when one was being kissed as thoroughly and as expertly as Jack Townsend was kissing her, not to kiss back.
Which wasn’t to say she liked being kissed by Jack Townsend. Well, in theory.
In practice, however…well, in practice was another matter entirely.
Because Jack Townsend kissed like he meant it. This was no polite peck, no Beverly Hills air kiss. This was full-on, open-mouthed oral exploration—tongue wrestling, as her brothers had called it whenever they’d caught her engaged in it with Barry.
But kissing Barry had never been like this. Barry had never, as Jack was doing, conducted such a leisurely investigation of the territory in and around her mouth. Barry had never made her feel, as Jack was somehow managing to, that kissing her was absolutely the only activity on his agenda that day, and that there was all the time in the world with which to accomplish it. Barry had never, with a mere kiss, made her feel as if her heart was going to explode within her chest from the sheer physical pleasure of it.
But that’s exactly how Jack Townsend’s kiss made her feel. She could feel him, his heat, his weight, his intensity, from her lips all the way down to the tips of her toes— which were, she noticed, in some dim recess of her brain, not so frozen after all, if they could curl in her boots the way they did at the first electric touch of his mouth to hers.
It was ridiculous, of course, that her body should react this way to his. She was no starstruck teenager, no sex-starved old maid. She was a sophisticated professional, a woman whose meteoric career—not to mention love life, until recently, anyway—was an inspiration to chubby redheaded girls everywhere….
And a single kiss from America’s sweetheart, Jack Townsend, had turned her into a puddle of quivering feminine Jell-O.
On ice.
This, Lou was able to think in a part of her mind that had not been reduced to a mere gelatinous mass of misfiring neurons by the searing intensity of his kiss, was completely impossible. She hated this man.
So how was it possible that he, merely by putting his m
outh against hers, could make her feel this way…as if, for the first time in months, she was actually alive? Why did the weight of the length of his body on top of hers make her long to spread her legs—God help her—and wrap them around him? Why did the razor stubble on his face, scraping against her smooth—probably scarlet by now—cheeks, make her want to run her tongue all the way down his long, lean body?
It didn’t make any sense. One second she’d been ready to belt him between the eyes. The next, he had her purring like a kitten.
It wasn’t the magic of Hollywood, either. Oh, no. There were no visual effects involved. This was honest to God, old-fashioned chemistry.
Chemistry! Between her and Jack Townsend? Impossible!
Except that it wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t because of what was happening, she was very sorry to have to admit, between her legs.
Which was quite a lot, actually. Enough so that Lou, suddenly conscious of it—and of who was causing it: Jack Townsend. Jack Townsend, who’d broken the heart of her best friend. Jack Townsend, an actor. And she had forever sworn off actors—suddenly tensed and, ripping her wrists out from beneath his fingers, put her hands on his elbows and raised a knee until it rested against that famous ass.
Then, pulling on his elbows and pushing with her knee—a self-defense technique her father had taught her before she’d left for college, in case, he’d said, she happened to run into trouble at a frat house—she managed to send him flying over her head and crashing into the snow behind her.
The expletive that came out of Jack’s mouth as he landed was one that would have earned him an NC-17 rating from any Hollywood censor.
Lou climbed to her feet and, brushing her hands together the way Jack had done, after he’d sent her computer airborne, said, in a voice that was surprisingly steady, considering the fact that her knees were still quivering from his kiss—not to mention what still seemed to be going on in the crotch of her panties—“If I don’t find that computer in one piece, you’ll wish those guys back there had shot you after all.”
Then, striding through the snow—with difficulty, it had to be admitted, thanks to that traitorous dampness between her legs, though she was determined he would never, ever know about that—Lou headed towards the rise over which he’d heaved her laptop.
Lying in the snow, feeling as if his spine might be broken, Jack blinked up at the darkening sky and wondered what had just happened. Had he actually kissed Lou Calabrese? What had he been thinking? What could he possibly have hoped to accomplish?
Well, he knew what he’d accomplished, all right. He’d answered a question that had been bothering him for some time….
Well, since the night before anyway.
And that question—which had occurred to him as she’d sat there on that cot, with all that glorious red hair slipping down her shoulders, and those dewy lips of hers seeming to beckon to him—had been What would it be like to kiss Lou Calabrese?
Well, he’d gotten his answer, all right:
Painful. That was what it was like to kiss Lou Calabrese.
But before the pain…ah, yes. Before the pain, there’d been pleasure. And a lot of it.
He couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to actually act upon his desire. Of all the women in the world for him to find himself attracted to, he would have to have picked the one—certainly not the only one, but the only one he’d ever personally encountered—who hadn’t the slightest interest in him that way. Or any way, he suspected. Lou Calabrese was as immune to his charms—and Jack knew he had a few—as the screenplays she penned seemed immune to flopping.
She hated him.
But maybe not quite completely. Because there’d been a moment there, when he’d been kissing her, that he could have sworn she’d been kissing back. He’d felt the tentative, almost experimental touch of her tongue to his. He’d felt her breasts, even through all their various layers of clothing, seem to swell against him, almost daring him, he’d felt, to touch them.
Oh, no. She’d liked being kissed by him. Maybe just for a minute or two. But she’d liked it.
Now if he could just get her to admit it….
Not that he didn’t have more pressing concerns at the moment. Granted, he was hungry and cold, and seemingly lost in America’s largest state. It was snowing, and night was closing in, and if he kept on lying here, either the armed men who were after him or hypothermia would eventually get him.
Yet somehow, the most urgent of Jack’s problems seemed to be the one that was pressing so insistently against the zipper of his fly.
Wasn’t that always the way of it though? A guy could be starving in the middle of a blizzard, with assassins after him and a chance of survival that he’d be willing to place at about, oh, twenty percent, and all he was really concerned about was whether or not a girl liked him.
He ought to have known what kissing her would be like. It seemed like he’d known all along. It was like taking a live electric wire in his arms and wrapping his mouth around one end. That was how fully charged Lou Calabrese was, how filled with life and passion she was. If that’s how she kissed a guy she didn’t even like, he couldn’t imagine what she’d be like if she actually had some iota of affection for him.
Barry Kimmel was a fool.
So, he realized, was he. Because she’d been right there, under his nose, for the past six years—six years—and what had he spent all that time doing? Arguing with her over line deliveries instead of attempting, as he ought to have been doing, to make her his. Vicky had never kissed him with half as much abandon as Lou had, and Vicky had professed to love him with all her soul! And Greta?
Holding Greta was like holding a dishrag, when he compared the experience to holding Lou.
It was amazing, he thought, as he slowly sat up, and discovered, to his surprise, that he’d apparently suffered no broken bones. But for the first time in a long time, he actually felt…well, alive. Hungry, yes. Cold, certainly. But alive. Thanks to Lou Calabrese. And not just because she’d proved to be so handy with a gun.
Limping a little—where had she learned a move like that? All the women he’d been with lately had had a distinct preference for Pilates over self-defense. Lou evidently wasn’t the Pilates type—he followed her over the rise, noticing that the snow was starting to fall more thickly than ever. It would be dark soon. If they didn’t get out of this wind and start a fire soon, they’d be polar bear bait.
Lou, he saw through the snow, was kneeling beside something at the bottom of the rise he’d tossed her computer over. She glanced over her shoulder at him as she heard the crunch of snow breaking beneath his weight.
“You’re lucky,” she informed him darkly as she dusted snow from her laptop. “It’s still in one piece.”
“Lou,” he said, coming to a halt a few feet away from her. He had to raise his voice more than he liked to be heard above the roar of the wind, which had picked up, this side of the rise. “We have to talk.”
He was not, by force of habit, a talker. That was one of the reasons, he’d often thought, that he spent so much time at his ranch. He wasn’t called upon to say very much there—except of course when he made the mistake of bringing a female companion along. Women had this incessant need to discuss things, to talk about their feelings, rather than simply letting them happen. Jack had never been able to understand it.
But this was one of the few times Jack thought a conversation about feelings might just be necessary. Not that he was anywhere close to understanding his. Feelings, that is. Just that, well, something pretty powerful had happened back there, and he wasn’t going to ignore it. He couldn’t.
But Lou, apparently, could, since all she said was—being careful, he noted, not to meet his gaze—“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Jack, feeling the wind biting at his back, said, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice, “Uh, I’m afraid I don’t agree with you there, Lou. What just happened back there was—”
“What just happened ba
ck there was a big, colossal, stupid mistake,” Lou said, crisply. She was looking up at him now, squinting against the wind. “Okay? It’s over. There, you don’t have to say it. I already did. Now, in the unlikely event that we ever get back to civilization and I plug this thing in and find out that I can’t access any of my documents, I want you to know right now that I intend to hold you personally responsible for any loss of income such an occurrence might engender. You got it, Townsend?”
Jack, however, was barely listening. That’s because while she’d been blathering away—the first woman he’d ever met who clearly did not enjoy talking about her feelings—he had spied something tucked against the trees a few hundred yards away. He couldn’t be sure what it was, with the snow swirling all around him, and darkness falling so fast. But it appeared to be…it almost looked like…
“Townsend, are you listening to me?” Lou was zipping her computer back into its padded case. “Look, we’ve got to get out of this wind. Maybe we should start gathering fallen branches for a lean-to, or something. Isn’t that what they’re called? That thing Tom Hanks built in Cast Away, you know, before he found the cave. At least it’ll cut the wind….”
Without taking his gaze from the thing in the trees, Jack reached down and took her by the arm. “I don’t think we’re going to need a lean-to,” he said, pulling her up to her feet, then pointing. “Unless that turns out to be a mirage.”
Lou looked in the direction he was pointing. Even with shadows under her eyes and snow in her hair, he noticed, she was breathtakingly beautiful. How he ever could have thought her a coldly calculating ice-bitch—which, he freely admitted, he’d once called her—he could no longer imagine.
Then she inhaled sharply.
“Oh, my God,” she cried. “Is that a house?”
Jack dropped his arm. A sort of lethargy came over him. Was it wrong of him to feel that at last, they might be safe?
“So you see it, too,” he said. “I wasn’t sure whether or not I was imagining it….”