Courting Carolina

by Chapman, Janet

  Another, even longer hesitation, and then, “I know of them. So how come you’re not helping your uncle finish the resort? Only the first phase is completed, isn’t it? I think I read that someplace,” she quickly tacked on.

  “They started taking guests a couple of years ago as they built each of the sixteen planned cottages, and three of the five hotel segments opened just this month. But when Olivia mentioned that she’d like to offer backcountry camping, I volunteered to spend the summer building her a wilderness trail.”

  “But is it really a wilderness trail if there are bridges and shelters and privies?”

  He stopped and turned, disguising his checking on her with a crooked grin. “For city-dwellers, I imagine this is about as roughing it as they care to get. Having a marked trail and lean-tos makes the deep woods less overwhelming.” He shrugged. “The true naturalists still have the option of carrying a tent and compass, and stripping off to ford the rivers and larger streams.”

  Well, she didn’t look ready to faint. In fact, except for the handprint, her face was positively glowing. So maybe he’d been a bit hasty labeling her a princess, as the woman actually appeared to be enjoying herself. “How’s that bruise on your side?” he asked. “You want me to carry the pack?”

  “I can handle it,” she said, grasping the straps protectively.

  “At least let me take the water bottles,” he said, reaching toward her. “They have to be banging against your hip.”

  “I’m okay,” she said, moving past him. “How much of the trail have you finished?”

  Damn, now he was forced to watch that luscious heart-shaped bottom. He could see why she’d had the boots custom made, because those were really long legs.

  “Alec?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder.

  He lifted his gaze in time to see her smile when she realized where he’d been looking, and he’d swear her hips sashayed a bit more as she continued on.

  “What was the question?”

  “How much of the trail have you finished?”

  “About forty miles. I only have this last larger bridge and five small ones left to set in place, two more shelters and privies to find locations for, and a spur trail I want to lay out that’ll lead down to a pretty little grotto I found near the end of the fiord.”

  She stopped and turned. “What do you mean by a grotto?”

  “I discovered a small sandy beach hidden at the base of a crescent-shaped cliff, and the only way to get there is during low tide. There’s a shallow cave at the back that has a sweet-tasting spring flowing out of it.” He used the opportunity to take the lead again. “The place reminded me of a grotto, where a couple of lovebirds could have some privacy or a person could go and think in peace.”

  “You’re a romantic.”

  Alec tripped on a root and scrambled to catch himself. He’d been called a lot of things in his life, but sure as hell never a romantic. “Here we are,” he muttered, setting down his tools.

  “Oh, this is beautiful,” she said over the gush of the water tumbling down the narrow, boulder-strewn ravine. She turned to look at where the stream continued its descent below. “This is where you’re putting the bridge?” she asked, stepping up to the edge and peering down. She looked across to the other side, then back at him in surprise. “The span must be twenty-five or thirty feet! They’re going to fly a bridge that large out here dangling from a helicopter?”

  Good Lord, Duncan’s seven-year-old twin sons didn’t ask as many questions as she did. “The resort has two helicopters; one for scenic tours and one’s a workhorse designed for heavy lifting, like they use out west to log the steeper mountains.”

  She looked across the stream to the other side again, then down the ravine and then back up it. “How come you didn’t place the bridge up there where the span is narrower? It can’t be more than fifteen feet between those ledges, and there would have been less work constructing the abutment,” she said, pointing across the stream at the log cribbing he’d spent the last three days building and filling with rocks.

  “Because if I’d set it up there, you’d miss the beauty of the falls.”

  She blinked at him, and then her gaze suddenly dropped and he saw her cheeks redden, as if she were…embarrassed. “Oh, yes, that makes perfect sense.”

  Alec frowned as she walked to a boulder and slipped off the backpack. Now what in hell was she embarrassed about?

  “Um, did you remember to bring the clippers?” she asked, turning to him and holding out her hand—her gaze aimed in the vicinity of his chest.

  What just happened? One minute she was all excited and the next she was acting like he’d kicked her. He hadn’t sounded defensive when he’d told her why he’d placed the bridge down here, had he? “You really don’t have to make me a mattress,” he said, even as he pulled the clippers out of his hind pocket.

  “But I want to.” She took the clippers and turned away, then stood in the trail with her back to him and looked around. “That seems like a good stand of fir. I’ll be just over there,” she said, walking to where she’d been pointing.

  What in hell just happened?

  Whatever it was, it appeared to have passed an hour later when Jane had amassed a pile of fir tips large enough for all three of Goldilocks’s bears to sleep on, and for the last hour she and Kit had been watching him shovel dirt as if it were the most fascinating activity on earth. Jane would make him stop about every twenty minutes, though, and take a drink from the canteen she would hold out to him. During his last break, however, she’d snatched the shovel out of his hand and replaced it with a granola bar. So he was obediently sitting and eating, wondering when the last time was that anyone had treated him like a four-year-old—or worse, a little brother.

  “When is the helicopter bringing the bridge?” Jane asked after swallowing the last of her own granola bar.

  “Anytime now,” he said, looking up at the sky. “The drop is scheduled for ten o’clock, but they’ll call when they’re on their way to make sure I’m ready.”

  He saw her stiffen, her gaze snapping to her backpack. “Oh, no!” she cried, her face paling as her eyes met his. She jumped to her feet. “I forgot to bring the phone!”

  He also scrambled to his feet to stop her when she started for camp. “It’s okay. They’ll see me when they get here. It’s no big deal,” he added at her stricken look. He gave her a sheepish smile. “It won’t be the first time I don’t have it with me.”

  “But how will you communicate with the helicopter?”

  He guided her back to the rock she’d been sitting on. “We’ll use hand signals.” Alec lifted her chin to look at him. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, okay? You’re black-and-blue enough as it—” The chopper was practically on top of them before he heard the thump of the blades over the sound of the gushing falls. “Run,” he growled, lifting her off the rock and turning her toward the trail. “Hide.”

  “My backpack!” she cried over her shoulder as Kit bolted past her.

  “They’ll think it’s mine,” he shouted. Alec turned and looked up to see the chopper descending the ridge with the monstrous bridge hanging beneath it, and he couldn’t help but grin. Damn, he loved this job; mostly because Mac Oceanus had a bottomless bank account that he didn’t mind spending on whatever it took to build his wife an unrivaled world-class resort. Only much to the wizard’s consternation, Olivia was determined to keep it rustically simple; the irony being that doing so had turned Nova Mare into the most exclusive resort on the planet at the moment.

  “Where’s your goddamned phone?” Duncan’s voice boomed from the chopper’s speaker as he leaned out the cargo door against his harness and glared down at Alec.

  Alec waved him a cheery obscene gesture, even as he wondered what Duncan was doing running the crane instead of Pete, the guy who co-owned the chopper with the pilot. Damn, he hoped his uncle didn’t want to stay for lunch.

  Fighting the rotor backwash as well as the storm of blowing dust
and leaves it created, Alec scaled the ravine to halfway up the falls and, after a quick glance to make sure he couldn’t see Jane or Kit, reached out and grabbed the rope dangling from one end of the twenty-six-foot-long bridge. He signaled the pilot to start descending, then hopped from boulder to boulder while holding the rope until he reached the trail and gave the pilot the signal to hover.

  Duncan took over the bridge’s descent, working the winches as Alec swung the wooden structure into place so that the end of it lightly rested on the ledge. He then hopped onto rocks to cross the stream and scaled the other side. But instead of grabbing the rope, he took hold of the bridge itself and signaled Duncan to lower it as he manhandled it just above the log and rock cradle. Satisfied it was dead center, he signaled Duncan to lower the bridge, giving it one last shove as it dropped into place.

  He shook the bridge by its rail, then stepped onto it and jumped up and down. Giving a thumbs-up, he unhooked the cable the moment it slackened, then ran across the bridge and did the same on the other side. Duncan immediately engaged the winches to haul up the cables, then lowered a cooler tied to a rope down by hand. Alec unhooked the cooler and watched the rope retreat, then watched it return with a burlap sack full of more goodies before disappearing again.

  “Hey, Grizzly Adams,” Duncan shouted from the speaker as he peered down. “Have your phone with you tomorrow morning and be wearing sneakers. We’re bringing three of the smaller bridges in one trip, and you’re going to have to run to each brook to off-load them.” Alec saw him grin behind the mike. “Or hitch a ride on the cable. Oh, and thanks for calling to tell us about those two dead men, by the way.”

  Alec held his fingers to his mouth and ear in the universal symbol for I’ll call you, which he quickly followed with the signal for go to hell, you big bastard, then picked up his supplies and walked off the bridge to Duncan’s booming laughter. The helicopter lifted, hovered briefly again, then shot down the mountain toward the fiord like an oversize dragonfly diving for prey.

  “How did he know about the men?” Jane shouted over the fading thump of the blades as she came running up the trail toward him.

  Alec set down his supplies. “I imagine everyone in town heard about them when the sheriff landed in Spellbound with two body bags in his boat. Don’t worry; if Duncan even suspected there was more to the story, he’d have had the pilot land on the ridge and hiked down to see me.” He gave a laugh when she threw herself at him and wrapped her up in his embrace. “Your secret’s still safe, sweetheart.”

  “I’m not your sweetheart,” she muttered—although he noticed she wasn’t in any hurry to step away. In fact, she snuggled against him with a shiver.

  “Sorry, but you are for the next week, sweetheart.”

  She snorted and leaned her head back to look him in the eyes, her own eyes narrowed. “You are not riding dangling in the air from that cable tomorrow.”

  “I’m not?” He sighed to hide his grin. “You want me to flat-out run seven miles trying to keep up with the chopper? It can’t hover all day waiting for me to mosey along from one brook to the other.”

  “You will call your uncle tonight and tell him to bring one bridge at a time. And you said you guided it down with the rope, but I saw you grab the bridge itself while it was hanging by only two thin cables, and the wind from the blades was making it sway. You could have been hit in the head or pinned up against a rock.”

  Alec finally let his grin free. “Careful, sweetheart, or I might think you care.”

  “I care not to be picking up body parts.” Her eyes narrowed again. “Is Olivia aware that you’re taking such risks while in her employ?”

  Alec arched a brow. “The Olivia you know of?” Her cheeks flushed, and he tightened his embrace when she tried to step away. “So well, apparently, that you’re on a first-name basis with her?”

  “You told me she was your boss.”

  Well, she had him there. Alec glanced around looking for the wolf, then kissed her beautiful scowling mouth—loving that he didn’t get a kink in his neck doing so. And although Jane didn’t seem real eager to participate, she didn’t push him away, either. All by itself, without any encouragement from him, one of his hands slid down and cupped her heart-shaped bottom and pressed her more intimately against him.

  Still no reaction, except maybe her shivering stopped.

  Okay then; so far, so good. But would it hurt her to kiss him back? Because honestly? He couldn’t quite tell if she was happy to have his mouth devouring hers, or just curious, or politely waiting for him to figure out that she wasn’t all that impressed.

  Hell, he wasn’t very impressed with himself, either. Maybe he had been out in these woods too long. But just seconds away from giving up, Alec felt her hands slide up his back just as her head tilted to fit her mouth more perfectly against his, and her lips parted and her tongue touched his. Not hesitantly, either, but with the boldness of a woman who knew exactly what she did to men.

  As for what she did to him in particular…well, he didn’t know which was going to give first, his control or the zipper on his jeans. Damn, she felt good in his arms with her unconfined breasts pressing into his chest, her mouth fully engaged now and tasting sweeter than maple sugar, and her smelling like fir sap and fresh air and sunshine.

  If this was a nightmare he wasn’t in much of a hurry to wake up, he decided, finally breaking their kiss to lean his forehead against hers with a soft growl. “I’m beat. Let’s go back to camp and take a nap.”

  Her husky laugh held a hint of alarm as she slipped out of his embrace and turned away, giving an imperial wave over her shoulder. “You go ahead, then. I wish to sit on this flying bridge and stare at the falling water and…think.”

  Alec shot around her and stood blocking the way, because last he knew, a woman sitting and thinking usually meant trouble for the poor bastard she was thinking about. “It’s not safe yet. I haven’t finished anchoring it into place.”

  “You walked across it.” Her gaze traveled down the length of him and back up, her kiss-swollen lips turning up in a smile. “And you obviously weigh more than I do.”

  Lord, he was tempted to kiss her again, but was afraid if he did they wouldn’t make it back to camp before he had them both horizontal. So he very nobly took hold of her hand and led her onto the bridge, stopping directly in the center to face upstream.

  She clutched the railing and looked up at the falls tumbling toward them over the worn boulders, and gasped. “Oh, Alec, it’s beautiful!” she cried, lifting her face to the fine mist floating on the air. “This is why you went through all the trouble of building that abutment.” She turned to him, her mist-dewed cheeks suddenly flushing as her gaze dropped to his chest. “I’m sorry I questioned you earlier as to why you didn’t put the bridge up on the ledges. It’s obvious you knew exactly what you were doing.”

  He started to lift her chin but dropped his hand to his side, realizing they were back to her looking embarrassed and him not knowing why. “It was an intelligent question,” he said. “And one I asked myself when I first came across the falls. It took me three days of studying the ravine from every angle to decide to put the bridge here.” He smiled when she finally lifted her gaze, her deep green eyes…aw hell, now she looked grateful. He turned her around so she wouldn’t see his frown and guided her off the bridge. “How about we find out what goodies Duncan’s camp cook—who also happens to be his mother-in-law—packed for me? I don’t know about you, but I’m starved. You check out the cooler while I ransack the sack,” he suggested, picking up the burlap bag.

  But he waited until she opened the cooler and heard her gasp. “There’s mostly beer in here,” she said, picking up one of the ice-cold cans.

  Alec plucked it out of her hand, popped the top and took a long guzzle, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve with an appreciative groan. “Go ahead,” he said, stifling a laugh at her horrified expression as he used the can to point at the cooler. “Have one. It’s good for what ail
s ye.” Whatever the hell that might be, he silently added.

  She closed the cover and stood up. “Thank you, but I believe I’ll wait and have one with dinner tonight. Is there any food in the sack?” He saw a corner of her mouth twitch. “Other than pretzels?” she drawled as one of her perfectly arched eyebrows lifted. “Beer and pretzels is the preferred diet of American males, is it not?”

  He pushed the sack toward her with his toe and downed the rest of his beer. “Personally, I prefer ham and cheese on homemade bread slathered with mustard with my beer,” he said, lifting the cooler cover and dropping the empty can inside. He pawed through the ice and pulled out a white paper package. “Ah, Jeanine’s maple-glazed ham,” he said after tearing open the wrapper.

  Jane snatched it away just as he was reaching for a thick slice of the ham, and immediately wrapped it back up. “Your hands are dirty, and once you start eating I’m guessing you’re the sort of man who doesn’t stop until it’s all gone.”

  “There’s at least four pounds there. And I was going to share.”

  “After you wash up I will make you a proper sandwich,” she said, setting the ham back in the cooler next to the package of cheese. She straightened and looked down the trail, then back at him. “Do you have mustard in your food locker?”

  Alec nodded on a sigh, set the sack on the cooler and picked them both up, and started toward camp. “We’ll go make lunch then come back, and you can read or listen to music while I anchor the bridge into place.” Dammit, half the fun of a supply delivery was immediately gobbling down some of everything.

  Jane gathered up an armful of fir boughs and fell into step behind him. “Alec, can I ask you a question?”

  “Aye. What?”

  “Can you explain to me why you set the shelter so far from the stream? Wouldn’t the hikers like to go to sleep to the sound of the falls and wake up to their beauty?”