He turned off the flashlight and placed it on the table beside him. “You must lose power here a lot.”
“More than I’d like,” she admitted. “But I keep a fire going in here most of the winter anyway. This close to the ocean there’s not a lot of snow or ice, but the wind is awful and the cold just goes straight through to your bones.”
Jack caught movement out of the corner of his eye and noticed her large dog joining them. He sought out his oversize fluffy pillow by the fireplace and settled onto it. Resting his head on his paws, he watched Jack in a way that made him uneasy. Like the dog didn’t trust him with his mama. Jack smothered a smile. His mama could take care of herself. Jack was the one at her mercy.
The rain started coming down harder, filling the room with a loud roar as the wind whipped it into sheets that pummeled the house. Thunder continued to rumble around them with the occasional nearby flash of lightning dancing over the living room skylight that faced the woods. Combined with the hum of the generator that had finally kicked in, Jack was fairly certain he wouldn’t be falling asleep again anytime soon.
“Would you like some hot tea or something?” Willow asked. She was standing with the fireplace behind her. The flames had grown enough that the light shone through the fabric of her thin cotton pajama gown. He could easily make out the narrow outline of her hips and the slight cut in of her waist before it widened to her chest. She didn’t have a very voluptuous figure, but it was womanly enough and he found himself being tantalized by the unexpected glimpse of it he was being given. The nightgown itself was fairly short, falling midthigh and providing him with a full view of her long, feminine legs and dainty feet with pink toenail polish.
It was a silly detail to notice, but one that made him smile. His savior might seem like a hard wilderness woman on the outside, but there was a soft, unexpectedly feminine side to her that had his full attention, as well.
“Jack?”
His gaze shifted quickly to her face. “Yes?”
“Would you like some herbal tea?”
“Yes, please,” he said with a smile he hoped would cover up the fact that he’d been admiring her figure.
“Okay,” she said with a curious wrinkling of her brow. “I’ll go make it.”
Jack leaned back into the recliner with a sigh as she left the room and followed it with a groan as he once again moved too quickly. He welcomed that pain this time, though. The sharp sensation would hopefully dull the arousal that had warmed his bloodstream faster than the fire had. Even with no memory of his past, he now knew for sure that women played a very large and important role in his life.
He was also certain that things with Willow had suddenly become decidedly more interesting.
Four
As comfortable as her recliner was, Jack found himself moving over to the couch, where he could sit beside Willow and share his blanket with her. It wasn’t an entirely magnanimous gesture; he wanted to be closer to her, but if he could help her stay warm, all the better. She had pulled a chenille robe on over her nightie when she returned from the kitchen, which disappointed him a bit, but he imagined it wasn’t the warmest outfit under the circumstances. She settled in on the other end of the couch and happily tugged her end of the blanket over her bare legs to chase away the chill.
He took a sip of the tea she’d made for him. It had a floral taste with a sweetness he didn’t recognize, which wasn’t surprising given the situation. “What kind of tea is this?” he asked.
“Chamomile with local honey. It’s good for relaxation and sleep, plus it helps with my allergies. I drink it nearly every night. Sometimes I get a little spun up writing and a cup of this helps me turn off my brain and get some rest.”
“It’s good.” He took another sip and looked around the room for what they could discuss next. “So since we’re awake with nothing to do, tell me more about you, Willow. I know you’re a writer and you live on this island with your dog. What else is there to know about you?”
Her eyes widened for a moment at his question. “There’s not much to know. Honestly, I’m not that great talking about myself. I’m better at making things up.”
There was plenty to discuss—of that he was certain—but he just had to convince her to open up. “Well, I can’t talk about myself. We can’t discuss movies or literature. So unless we’re going to stare awkwardly at each other all night, how about you start at the beginning.”
Willow let a blast of air out of her lungs in resignation. “Okay. Well, I grew up not far from here in a commune on the mainland. My parents were major hippies and vegans before it was really a thing. My dad was one of the farmers that grew food and supplies, and my mother worked taking care of the children in the community. It was a different kind of upbringing. We had electricity, but we didn’t have televisions or video games. There was one landline phone everyone shared. We played outside and with the other children. I read every book we had in our little library. My sister and I were basically free to roam because it was a safe place for us. I really loved my life there.
“Then my parents split up,” she continued. “My mom decided she didn’t want to stay with my father there, so she packed us girls up and we moved to Seattle to live with my maternal grandmother.”
“How old were you when you left?”
“I was about eleven, I think. My sister was thirteen.”
Jack wasn’t sure what his childhood was like, but if he had to guess, it wasn’t anything like hers. “I bet that was a shocking transition.”
“It was devastating. Public schools, buses, traffic, pollution, fast food, violence, sitcoms...things that were normal to other people were completely alien to us. There were good things, but they were outnumbered by the bad for me. I remember crying and begging Mama to take us back home. She may have even considered it. But then my grandmother got sick and we had to stay and take care of her. We never did go back.”
Jack could tell that she didn’t like talking about herself, so he was pleased she was indulging him even if he did have to prompt her for details. “Did you opt for college or jump right in to writing?”
“I got an English degree,” she said. Willow perked up a bit as though shifting to her writing was far more comfortable a discussion. “I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do and it seemed like a good way to avoid facing real life for a few more years. I found I really enjoyed my creative writing classes and my professor encouraged me to pursue fiction writing, so I tried my hand at it. It was something I could do while helping out my mom at home when she got sick. By the time she passed away, I had already published a couple mysteries and I was doing well enough to be able to live on my own.”
It seemed even discussing her writing wasn’t safe. He noticed the sadness in her eyes despite talking of her success. He could tell the cloud of losing her mother hung over it, tainting it. “It sounds like you lost a lot of people in your life at a young age.”
Willow nodded. “Cancer is a bitch,” she said with a tone of finality that ended that line of discussion.
“When did you decide to move here?” he asked.
“There were a few years where I thought Seattle was where I would stay. I needed to be close to civilization for a while,” Willow said with a pained expression pinching her face. “But when I was able to get away, I came here. It reminded me of where I grew up, wild and yet safe at the same time.”
“Don’t you get lonely out here all by yourself?”
She narrowed her gaze at him. He watched a confusing mix of emotions dance across her face for a moment before she shook her head. “I prefer to be alone. It makes it easier to work without distractions.”
“Yeah, I can see that. But don’t you want to have a family one day? At least a partner to share your life with? You can’t meet someone if you never leave your house.”
He watched Willow stiffen slightly before reaching out to set
her mug on the table. “No, I don’t want any of that. I knew early on that the normal life path wasn’t for me. My older sister, Rain, did the husband-and-kid thing. I can always visit her if the urge to cuddle my nephew strikes, but that’s a choice I made. There are just certain things about my family that don’t need to be passed along to another generation. Motherhood is not in the cards. I don’t think love is, either. And I’m okay with that. I have my house, my community. I have Shadow, of course. And dogs are superior to people in so many ways.”
She chuckled softly at her observation, but the laughter didn’t reach her eyes. There was something sad there instead. The way she looked at him as she spoke told Jack that she was lying to him about how she felt. Perhaps even lying to herself. She didn’t want to be alone, not really. She was just...scared...perhaps to be with someone. Perhaps she’d lost too many people in her life to risk having it happen again. Maybe she’d been hurt in a past relationship. He could understand wanting to swear off love if she’d been burned. But not everyone was a bad guy. Not everyone would leave her. Jack, for example, wasn’t a bad guy. At least he didn’t think so.
It was the way she looked at him then that urged him to lean closer to her. When she didn’t pull away, he knew he was reading her right. He reached out to cup her cheek and draw her lips up to his own.
It started off as a soft, hesitant kiss. With no memories of his past, Jack felt like some awkward kid kissing his first girl under the bleachers after school. But it all came back to him pretty quickly. He deepened the kiss, holding her face in his hands, drawing her closer and drinking her in. She tasted like the honey from her tea, and the sweetness caused him to groan against her lips.
Willow reached out and wrapped her warm palm over his knee. Even through the wool blanket, her touch was enough to make his insides turn molten with a familiar need that wore away at his self-control. He wanted to touch her. Explore more of her body and reacquaint himself with the female form. He slipped his hand from her cheek to her shoulder and then lower.
Jack knew the instant he’d pushed her too far. Willow froze in place, her lips suddenly hard and unyielding when they had been soft a moment before. Half a second later, she was on the far side of the couch and he was aware of the chilly absence of her body close to his. Not even the fireplace could take the place of her warmth.
“I—I’m sorry,” he said instinctively, although he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done wrong. Reaching out to touch her had felt like the most natural thing in the world to do. But he’d been incorrect in his instincts where Willow was concerned. He had barely grazed her chest. He hadn’t even gotten far enough to feel the weight of her breast in his hand before she was gone. Maybe he’d moved too fast with someone he hardly knew. Maybe she’d had second thoughts about making out with her strange visitor with an unknown past. She was right to hold back. He could be anyone, anything. He couldn’t find any prison tattoos, but maybe he was afraid of needles. He didn’t think he was a bad person, but how many good people wash up on a beach in his condition?
“It’s not your fault.” Willow tugged her robe closed with her fists, effectively closing off her body from him. “I just... I never should’ve kissed you. That was stupid of me. I led you on and I shouldn’t have. You’re in no condition for...”
“I’m feeling better every minute.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s the medication, not the curative powers of my kisses. There are other reasons. It’s a bad idea all around.” Willow got up from the couch and went to stoke the fire with the iron poker leaning against the stone hearth.
Jack reached out for her, but the low grumble of a growl stopped him short before he could grasp her wrist. He looked to see that her dog was no longer asleep on his pillow but had moved between the two of them and was watching Jack warily. He drew back his hand and the growling stopped.
“It’s okay, Shadow bear,” she said, reaching out to stroke the dog’s head. “He’s very protective of me.”
“I can see that.”
He leaned back onto the couch, letting Willow escape and soothing the concerns of her furry guardian. There was no sense in pushing her. Like it or not, he was stuck with her on this island until the storm blew through and the ferry was running again. There was no reason to make things more awkward with his host than they already were.
But what he did know, deep down, was that he’d never kissed a woman like Willow before. And he liked it. Very much.
* * *
“What are you doing?”
Sawyer looked up from his suitcase with a guilty but determined look on his face. Kat wouldn’t be happy with him, but he had no choice. “I’m packing to fly to Seattle.”
Kat sighed and sunk down onto the bed beside his luggage. “Just because Finn’s body wasn’t one of the four they recovered doesn’t mean he’s alive, honey. That hole that blew into the side could’ve sucked him out over the ocean or the woods well before the crash and we’ll never find him.”
Sawyer continued to pack. “That’s what they told me. It’s very logical, of course. But I’ve got to go. I’ve got to at least look for him. It might be a lost cause, but he’s my twin brother. He’d do the same for me.”
“Would he?”
Sawyer paused and looked at his wife. The beautiful redhead had been the center of his universe since she marched into his sister’s wedding reception and slapped him hard across the face. Now, in her third trimester of her pregnancy, she was practically glowing with radiant beauty. But he wouldn’t let her talk him out of this.
With a heavy sigh, he tossed his toiletry bag into his suitcase and flipped the lid closed. “My brother is a complicated person to love. There are times when I’ve resented the hell out of him. Times when I felt like he practically got away with murder, living his life without consequences while the rest of us cleaned up his messes. He’s a hedonistic playboy. Absolutely. But deep down, my brother is a good person. And yes, I do think he would look for me. He might seduce my nurse while sitting by my bedside while I was in a coma, but he’d be there. So I have to go.”
Kat nodded in resignation. “How long do you think you’ll be gone?”
“A couple of days at the most. I really don’t know what I’m going to do once I get there. Talk to the local police. The coast guard, maybe. Visit a few hospitals and see if they have any John Does I could try to identify. But I know I’m tilting at a windmill.”
Kat pushed herself up from the bed, belly first, and wrapped her arms around him. Sawyer buried his face in her auburn hair and inhaled the scent of the shampoo she used. He needed to breathe in enough of her to last him until he got home.
“If you need anything while I’m gone, call Mother or the girls. I know Morgan or Jade would be here in a flash. Actually, what about staying with one of them while I’m gone?”
“I’m pregnant, not an invalid. I’ll be fine alone. I lived alone a long time before the Steele family crashed into my life.”
“Yes, well,” he said in a begrudging tone, “don’t be surprised if they drop in to check up on you.”
“You told your sisters that you’re leaving?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Before you told me?” Kat asked with an irritated arch in her eyebrow.
He had to tread carefully here with his hormonally charged wife. “Morgan and Jade were both there this afternoon when we got the news about the dental record results. We discussed me going out there. Otherwise, of course I would’ve told you first. You’re my wife. The mother of my future child. You’re my world. That will never change.”
Kat dropped her forehead against his chest as her annoyance faded away. “Hurry home to me, Sawyer Steele. My baby has probably already lost one father. I need the other one.”
* * *
Willow looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and frowned. She felt stupid. It had been two days since the
kiss and she’d been dancing around Jack as though he were going to jump her bones at any moment. Ridiculous. He hadn’t so much as looked at her suggestively since the night of the storm. He’d been a perfect gentleman and guest.
Initially, he slept a lot. And as his pain and the associated medications decreased, he was even helpful around the house. He’d attempted to cook a few times and tidied up the best he could. He’d helped her clean up outside after the storm, too. He couldn’t haul broken branches or climb up on the roof to throw a tarp over an area that had lost shingles, but he did what he could to be a help and not a hindrance while Willow did those things.
But he hadn’t laid a hand on her. Jack probably thought she was scared of him, and she felt bad about that. Honestly, he hadn’t done anything wrong. When Jack had kissed her, she’d panicked. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to kiss him. She did. So badly. It was just that she hadn’t kissed a man since her treatments and surgery.
In the moment, it was all too much. Before that night, she hadn’t given any thought to how she’d react in that situation because part of coming to this island was to make sure she was never put in that kind of scenario. Living alone, writing her books, isolating herself on this island...it was all by design. She wanted to put that chapter of her life, and everything that came with it, behind her.
She’d lived the past fifteen years of her life knowing that one day, she would likely develop breast cancer. Her grandmother and mother had both succumbed to it within a few years of each other. They’d had the gene that predisposed them to breast and ovarian cancer, and with her family history it was almost a certainty. And after years of screening, a questionable spot had finally shown up on her mammogram. Willow knew the instant she saw it that it would be cancer. And she was right. The doctor had been optimistic since they caught it so early. Perhaps only a lumpectomy and some chemotherapy would be required.
Promises from a Playboy--A secret billionaire with amnesia romance Page 5