This time she awoke on her own. For a while she lay in bed, indulging in long, lazy stretches and wicked thoughts about kissing Bolt Hunter. A subject that had been on her mind in one form or another practically nonstop since yesterday.
He was, without question, the most passionate kisser of all the men in her romantic past. Okay, so it was an admittedly limited romantic past. Cat was pretty sure that even if she’d had a much more promiscuous youth, Bolt’s kiss would still have ranked above all the rest.
She was accustomed to the sometimes clumsy, sometimes tentative, sometimes drunken kisses of college boys. What happened under that car with Bolt had been something else. He had kissed her the way a man kisses a woman whom he desires greatly. No pretense. No games. His intensity was contagious, because she’d been struck by none of her usual mid-kiss concerns, such as where to put her hands and monitoring where his hands were straying that perhaps they shouldn’t be and hoping her breath mints had worked. She hadn’t thought at all, only felt. And what she’d felt had scared the daylights out of her.
She’d felt him wanting her and she had wanted him back. That in and of itself didn’t scare her. Just because she was a little short on actual experience didn’t mean she was a prude. She knew all about sex and how natural and potent a force desire was. What alarmed her was that, for the first time ever, her body had been tricked into feeling it for the wrong man. So strong and compelling had been her urges lying under that car that if Bolt wasn’t so blatantly, undeniably wrong for her, she might be tempted to think he was the one she’d been waiting for all her life and throw caution to the wind.
She shook her head in amazement as she swung from the bed and fumbled for the cord to open the drapes on the sliding glass doors. Lust. What a crazy sensation. She was going to have to tread carefully around Bolt for the rest of the trip. For both their sakes.
The sliding doors opened to reveal a small balcony with a view of Baltimore’s famous Inner Harbor only a block away. From there Cat could see the sail and pleasure boats gliding across the still blue waters beneath a blazing late morning sun. She’d had no idea they were so close to the harbor and gave a small exclamation of delight.
“Quiet, damn it,” came the growl from the next balcony. Bolt’s balcony.
She quickly moved closer and peered over the shoulder-high privacy panel separating the two balconies. Bolt was sitting there, huddled in a white patio chair, shirtless except for the blanket wrapped loosely around his shoulders, his eyes closed.
“Bolt,” she exclaimed. “What are you doing out here?”
He opened one eye and didn’t look particularly happy to see her. “Oh, it’s you making the noise. I should have known.”
“Who did you think it was?”
“Damn blue jays. They’ve been yapping all night. I thought birds only sang in the morning or for their supper or something like that.”
She chuckled and shook her head. “Are you telling me you slept out here all night?”
“Slept might be going a little too far. Tried to, though.”
“But why? What’s wrong with the bed in your room?”
He shrugged. “I don’t like sleeping in strange beds.”
“Oh.” She hesitated. “More bad dreams?”
“Do me a favor, will you?” he asked, standing and stretching, the blanket falling to the chair. “Forget I ever mentioned anything about that. It was stupid.”
“I don’t think so. If the dreams bother you, then—”
“They don’t. So just drop it, okay?”
His harsh tone left her little alternative. “Sure, consider it dropped.”
“Thanks.” He ambled to the railing near where she was standing.
Cat gazed out over the harbor. “Pretty sight to wake up to, isn’t it?”
“Beautiful,” Bolt murmured.
Something in his voice made her turn quickly. She found him looking at her rather than at the harbor, his expression lazy and assessing, his bare chest much too close. It was hard and muscled, with a wide band of sleek dark hair running from breastbone to the open waistband of his jeans. She felt the same shiver of awareness she’d felt yesterday when his hand caressed her cheek.
“I was talking about the view,” she told him.
“I know.” He smiled slowly. “I wasn’t.”
She turned away, doing her best to hide behind the convenient curtain of her windblown hair. The sudden skittering of her pulse alarmed and confused her. She knew what it meant to feel this way and was certain she shouldn’t be feeling it for this man.
“What’s the matter, Tiger?” he asked, leaning closer so that Cat swore she could feel as well as hear the low-pitched timber of his voice. “Do I fluster you?”
“No,” she replied, forcing herself to meet his probing gaze with a careless smile. “Of course not.”
“Good. I prefer playing on a level field.”
“Playing what?”
He grinned and picked up the blanket from the chair. “What time are we supposed to be seeing this Buchanan guy?”
James Buchanan was a Baltimore shipbuilder whom Cat also intended to feature in her article on private libraries.
“He said to come by around two. His condo is on the Inner Harbor, and since we’re so close we could probably walk there. Playing what?” she asked again.
“Walking sounds good. I’m going to clean up.”
“Playing what?” she demanded.
He slid the glass door open and hesitated with one foot inside the room. “For keeps.”
“For keeps,” Cat repeated, scowling. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
But Bolt had already disappeared inside and closed the door, leaving her to figure it out for herself.
It wasn’t difficult. The only explanation that made sense was that because she had allowed him to kiss her, Bolt had reacted in typical male fashion and jumped to the conclusion they were now involved in some sort of seduction game. A game that, he no doubt had further concluded, would culminate in a little roadside fling.
Cat gave a mighty hurrumph just in case he was watching as she returned to her room.
All right, so maybe she hadn’t merely allowed him to kiss her. She had kissed him back, and with regrettable enthusiasm. But she hadn’t allowed it to go any further. She never would have. And she certainly had not meant to send him the signal that she was available to him in any way. Hadn’t the man understood a word she said in the car earlier?
Cat went still, staring into her suitcase in the middle of trying to decide between white slacks and a T-shirt or a pale flowered sundress. Or had Bolt listened all too well? Had he understood the point she’d been making and somehow, mistakenly, concluded that she was the woman for him and vice versa? No. Impossible. Cat dismissed the idea with a grimace. No one could make that big a mistake. What Bolt had on his mind had more to do with a momentary desire than destiny.
As dedicated as he was to his own men, Uncle Hank had warned her often enough about soldiers in general, about men who blithely went from woman to woman as carelessly as they moved from base to base. Men who subscribed to the belief that the next best thing to being with the one you love is to love the one you’re with. For all she knew, that was what Bolt was thinking right this moment.
Well, he could think again. She had no intention of allowing what was a business trip for her to become his personal joyride. Oh, no. One thing she did have ample experience doing was saying no.
Bolt might be older and more worldly than the guys she usually dated, but no still meant no. He would have to understand that. The fact that Uncle Hank trusted him assured her that even if he didn’t like being refused by her, he would accept it. Forewarned was forearmed, as her uncle was fond of saying. When the time came, if it ever did, she would simply make it clear to him that while his attentions were flattering, they were unwanted.
Nothing to it.
If Cat wasn’t so certain she had everything under control, she never would h
ave been able to relax enough to handle James Buchanan, who turned out to be a very crotchety old man and a most unwilling subject for her camera. Cat couldn’t imagine why he had consented to the shoot in the first place until he revealed that he’d written a book about his experiences at sea and as a shipbuilder and that his publisher thought his inclusion in her article would be good publicity. Buchanan made it clear the moment she arrived at his spacious waterfront condo that he expected her to plug his book in her piece. However, even Cat’s ready agreement did little to sweeten his disposition.
It was Bolt who ultimately managed to do that.
Once again Bolt voluntarily acted as her assistant. For what it was worth. Although he could hardly be blamed for the fact that, dressed in snug-fitting black jeans and a loose, collarless shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, he was as much a distraction to Cat as a help. The white of his shirt emphasized his olive skin and black whiskers, giving him the air of a pirate, something that appealed greatly to her romantic, swashbuckler-loving nature. Obviously Bolt’s notion of “cleaning up” didn’t include shaving, Cat noted. She wasn’t ordinarily a member of the five o’clock shadow fan club, but even so she found herself dwelling on the memory of what it had felt like to have his rough cheek rubbing against hers as he kissed her.
Her traitorous, wandering imagination only added to the difficulty of the session. She struggled to concentrate while Buchanan resisted her best efforts to get him to relax and open up about his extensive collection of books on subjects ranging from wildlife to coin collecting. Not until Bolt made an offhand reference to his military career did the man display interest in something other than getting the ordeal over with as quickly as possible. Cat was beginning to feel anxious when Mr. Buchanan unexpectedly revealed to Bolt that he had done a long stint in the Navy.
A predictable exchange of their impressions and opinions of the various branches of service followed, with Buchanan gradually doing more talking and less questioning of Bolt. Cat might as well have been one of the tall ship replicas perched on the study shelves for all the attention he paid her. Irritating as it was, this didn’t seem to be the time to try to raise Buchanan’s consciousness about women’s equality.
Cat wisely chose to simply listen and make herself and her camera as inconspicuous as possible as she moved about, quietly getting even better shots than she had originally planned. She counted it a bonus that in the process she learned nearly as much about Bolt’s past as she did about her subject. For the first time she understood how exciting, and dangerous, a life he had led.
The big payoff of the afternoon came when Mr. Buchanan—or Jim, as he insisted Bolt call him—revealed to them that he also had a collection of nineteenth-century volumes on British maritime history that he kept on specially built shelves in his bedroom. He barely hesitated before saying yes when Bolt asked if they might see and photograph them, as well. Cat was afraid to act too excited by the prospect, half-suspecting the old coot would change his mind if she did. So she held her breath and got great shots of his private sanctum, with its carved mahogany shelving and antique brass ship fittings. Shots that she already knew would be the cornerstone of her article.
“It was a major coup,” she told Bolt several hours later, as they sat on the outdoor deck of one of the restaurants that overlooked the busy harbor. A short distance away, a jazz band provided background music for what had turned out to be a very nice evening.
After finishing at Buchanan’s, they had strolled around the picturesque harbor area that had been reclaimed from the city’s once run-down waterfront. Now it featured flower gardens and trendy shops and a gigantic indoor farmer’s market. They explored all of it, sampling the frozen yogurt and sparkling water hawked from street corner pushcarts and stocking up on enough snacks—both healthy and un-healthy—to last for the rest of their trip.
Other than offering her a hand up after a short rest on a stone wall or placing his hand gently at the small of her back when they moved through the jostling crowd inside the farmer’s market, Bolt didn’t touch her. Gone was the heavy, seductive implication of that morning. His manner now was that of an old friend. She might as well be having dinner with Uncle Hank, she thought at one point, slightly disgruntled as she wondered if perhaps she had imagined the exchange on the balcony.
Dinner had been fresh seafood eaten on the deck, and now they were lingering over their drinks. Scotch straight up for Bolt and a frozen margarita for Cat. Her third, actually.
“To you,” she proclaimed, lifting her half-full salt-rimmed glass in a salute. “It was a coup and I owe it all to you.” She giggled. “Coup and you. That rhymes.”
“It sure does. Which means,” Bolt said in a dry tone as he removed the glass from her hand and stood, “that it’s time to go.”
“Go?” she echoed, her brows lowering in a frown. “Not home? I’m having too much fun to go home.”
“I know. But trust me, if you stay and drink any more, you won’t be having much fun in the morning. Riding with a hangover is a real bitch.”
She wasn’t so tipsy she couldn’t appreciate the truth of that. With a resigned sigh, she got to her feet and allowed him to lead her outside.
She really didn’t want anything more to drink. She liked it just fine right where she was, a little silly, a little mellow, her senses in overdrive, acutely receptive to the caress of the light breeze that blew off the water and rustled the planters all around them, carrying with it a faint tang of salt and a hint of roses. But while she didn’t want anything more to drink, neither did she want the night to end. The thought of saying good-night to Bolt and returning alone to her room wasn’t appealing at all.
“Can you walk?” Bolt asked as they left the well-lit harbor area and started up the tree-lined hill to their hotel.
“Of course, I can walk. Watch.”
She took a few steps in front of him, aware of her hair moving on her bare back and the soft cotton fabric of her sundress swishing around her thighs. Aware, too, that he was watching every move she made.
“Good,” he responded in that same dry tone. “No offense, but it’s been a long day and I wasn’t looking forward to carrying you up this hill.”
Cat paused, allowing him to catch up. “It does seem a lot steeper now than it did coming down, doesn’t it?”
“It’s not, though,” he assured her. “Here, give me that bag.”
Ignoring her protest that she could carry her own bag, he took it from her and added it to the camera cases and shopping bag already slung over his shoulder. She was left with only the bunch of daisies she’d bought on impulse from a street vendor, now looking in desperate need of water.
“I want to carry it for you,” he insisted.
Cat smiled at the sidewalk, secretly as thrilled as she had been when Matt Rivers had asked to carry her books home from the bus stop in junior high, and for pretty much the same reason. Even at the tender age of thirteen she’d understood it meant Matt had a crush on her.
Did Bolt have a crush on her? She giggled to herself. Probably not. He was too cool and self-contained to feel anything so romantic. No, Bolt’s intentions were probably a whole lot more physical than Matt Rivers’s had ever been.
Cat supposed she shouldn’t feel flattered by that fact, let alone thrilled. But she did. As impossible and shameless as Bolt’s intentions were, there was something irresistible about being the center of a sexy man’s attention on a moonlit summer night.
Chapter Eight
There was no denying that Bolt was sexy as sin. Not in the way that usually appealed to her of course. Still, Cat reasoned as she plodded along, just because a woman preferred champagne didn’t mean she couldn’t acknowledge the appeal of a glass of ale. Dark ale.
She once again giggled quietly at her own humor, wondering if any of this would seem as funny in the morning. Unconsciously she began humming “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” She felt like singing, but since she was beyond counting backward, humm
ing was as much as she could handle.
“That’s not what I think it is, is it?” Bolt asked as they neared the end of their climb.
“I don’t know. What do you think it is?”
“That stupid song about falling beer bottles?”
“That’s it! Congratulations. I’ll bet you’re great at playing Name That Tune.”
He made a disgusted sound. “That’s one tune I’d rather forget, if you don’t mind. It brings back too many memories of long bus rides and school field trips.”
“Bad memories, I take it?”
He shrugged. “Not particularly, so don’t go putting your amateur therapist’s cap on.”
“Do I do that?”
“No, I guess you don’t,” he said, his voice softening a little. “I’ve known women who have, though...who think psychoanalysis is a parlor game.”
“Me, too,” she countered, grinning. “Don’t you hate when that happens?”
He glanced at her, looking a little surprised. “Yes, I do.”
She bumped him teasingly with her shoulder. Intentionally, though the look he gave her suggested he thought it might have been the result of drunken weaving.
“So,” she said, mostly in an attempt to convince him otherwise with her scintillating conversation. “Where did you go to school?”
Still looking slightly surprised, he named a small town in the midwest and then a large state university. In response to her query about whether he’d enjoyed it, he shrugged again. “School was school. I did all right, played a few sports without becoming a superstar at any of them. When graduation rolled around, I was glad to get out and enlist.”
They’d reached the hotel grounds and followed the well-lit path around to the front entrance.
“What made you decide to go in the Army?” Cat asked with real interest. “And Special Services at that?”
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