by Alicia Scott
"Here," he said abruptly. "I figured you had had a long week. So I brought just the thing for you."
He reached into the back seat and produced a big wicker picnic basket. He lifted the flap, letting the tempting odor of fried chicken waft across the parking lot.
She went weak in the knees. Her mouth salivated. She groaned. "You do not fight fair."
"Fried chicken, coleslaw and apple pie. Put the color back into your cheeks."
"And the cholesterol into my heart."
"Uh … this is cholesterol-free fried chicken? Come on, Tamara. It's just a meal, and I promise to be on my best behavior. The evening can end whenever you'd like."
She wanted to say no. She knew the smart thing was definitely to say no. Her gaze locked onto the wicker basket. She hadn't had real food in twenty-four hours, and Mrs. Toketee's coffee was settling badly in her stomach. The thought of chicken, slaw and apple pie sounded so tempting.
And dammit, some small, treacherous part of her was happy to see C.J. MacNamara. Some silly, naive part of her responded to his smiles. She had this ridiculous image of him running a warm, comfortable bar where everyone knew your name. She swore that after this she was never going to watch "Cheers" again.
"It's only because I like fried chicken," she warned.
"Of course."
"And I haven't eaten all day."
"Of course."
"All right, dinner. But only for an hour."
"Your gratitude warms my heart," he assured her.
She rolled her eyes. But she still wasn't as immune as she should have been. Shaking her head and muttering at her own weakness, she climbed into his car.
* * *
She had forgotten how beautiful Sedona was. As C.J. turned onto Highway 179, the sun set behind the red rocks and the landscape fired to life. For eighteen years, Tamara had grown up amid this incredible landscape, never appreciating the stark beauty, never wondering why the rest of the world didn't have anything so lovely. Now, quiet and alone in the passenger's seat, she could drink her fill of towering red rocks and a vast amber sky. Hundreds of years of eroded sandstone and petrified sand dunes combined in swirling streaks of pale gold and bloodred. Forest trees added a lush carpet of deep green.
She had been living amid glass skyscrapers and bustling traffic. She'd forgotten what it was like to stand in the middle of land and feel at once part of something so big and something so small. The rock monuments had formed more than several thousand years ago. They would still be here in another several thousand. Only Tamara would be forgotten.
C.J. pulled over on the side of the road, the way people did in Sedona. "Why don't we walk up here? The view from the top is amazing."
"All right." She bit her lip before she suggested a different stopping point. She was a vacationing New Yorker—she wasn't supposed to know Sedona that well.
"Will you be all right with your leg? It's not that far up. We can take it slow."
"I'll be fine. Exercise is good for it. Keeps it loose."
"Hmm, let me grab a blanket. Arizona can be hot as hell during the day, but once the sun goes down, it cools off in a hurry."
He lifted out the picnic basket, unburied a blanket from the trunk and led her to the trail cut in the sandy red ground by other hikers. They climbed without a word, weaving among the pine trees, creosote bushes and agave plants that dotted the lower grounds. Slowly, they worked their way up, the smooth sandstone rising in a series of undulating swells that started off easy and grew progressively steeper. Tamara, unfortunately, was wearing boots meant for form, not function. A third of the way up, she pulled them and her stockings off, and went at it barefoot. C.J. slowed his pace to match hers. Having donned a sweatshirt and hiking boots, he was perfectly attired for the climb. His strides were long and steady, revealing nicely muscled thighs. As he moved in front of her, she had a clear view of his firm butt caressed by worn denim. Fool that she was, she spent more time with her eyes on him than on the scenery. He was a very good-looking man.
In New York, she was surrounded by the ultra successful GQ sort of guy. Pierre Cardin suits, Armani wire-rimmed glasses. Donald, in particular, had been a very snappy dresser. When he'd smiled, however, laugh lines had not bracketed his eyes. His face was too smooth for that, having spent a great deal of quality time with expensive men's facial care products. Certainly one of the best things to come out of her year-long relationship with Donald had been a host of new conditioners that left her hair silky, shiny and full-bodied.
C.J. didn't look like a deep-conditioning sort of guy. She figured him as wash-and-wear. He probably didn't use a loofah or exfoliate. His hands were formed like the sandstones from years of exposure, erosion and use. Strong, enduring, commanding. The kind of hands a woman couldn't ignore as they brushed through her hair or lazily outlined the curve of her breast.
"Okay. Here." C.J. stopped abruptly.
She looked at him blankly, requiring several moments to pull herself together. Her mouth was dry. "What?"
"We'll eat here. We don't have the gear to climb higher."
Belatedly, Tamara looked past C.J. to the towering red rocks. It soared almost straight up now, for several hundred feet.
"Oh. Of course."
C.J. came to stand beside her, smelling of soap and shampoo and, darn it, Old Spice again.
"Look," he said, and twisted her slightly. "Look there."
She caught her breath. The sun was captured like a sinking doubloon between two canyons. It retaliated fiercely, showering the cliffs with dazzling gold rays. The colors were so bright, they hurt her eyes. She watched, anyway, transfixed by the beauty.
"This is my favorite spot," C.J. murmured by her ear. "I like to come here and just look."
"It's … it's something." It was more than something. It was beautiful, it was primordial. And it was odd and strange and powerful to see it and feel C.J. standing next to her. She heard the soft rhythm of his breathing. Her stomach tightened again. Strange, exotic sensations danced in her blood. When she looked down, her hands were shaking slightly.
She fisted her fingers and ordered the trembles to stop.
"Umm … maybe we can eat now. The chicken?"
"Sure." C.J. opened the picnic basket and briskly set out everything. She helped arrange things on the blanket, needing something to do with her hands. He sat down, not across from her as she would've liked, but right beside her. When he leaned forward to pick up the chicken, his cheek brushed her hair. When he turned to offer her a piece, she felt his breath whisper across her lips.
His eyes were clear, blue, gentle. Blond hair waved across his brow. It looked like it would be soft to the touch.
She turned away, feeling absurdly self-conscious.
"Chicken?" C.J. asked quietly.
"All … all right." She edged back a few inches, needing the space. Unconcerned, C.J. fell to eating, ripping into a piece of breast meat with sharp white teeth as if he hadn't a care in the world. After a moment, she followed his lead.
"How's your ankle?" C.J. asked.
"Fine."
"Surgery?"
She stiffened, then realized that her ankle was now exposed since she'd taken off her boots and socks. She had three very distinct scars. Two round holes, almost like bullet wounds, where the screws had been for the external fixation. Then a thin, snaking line from the surgery that had happened later, when the fracture still hadn't healed.
"Bone graft," she said.
"Ouch."
She shrugged. "At least the bone graft healed the fracture once and for all."
They ate in companionable silence. C.J. finished off one piece and reached for a second. Then he uncovered the coleslaw and apple pie. Tamara finished her first drumstick, then grabbed a second.
Behind the cover of his chicken, C.J. watched her with genuine appreciation. Her shoulders had come down, her posture easing. Her long sable hair swept down her back like a beautiful scarf. She tossed her head a little when strands threatene
d to interfere with eating her chicken. By the end of her second piece, she had a grease stain on her cheek and a gleam in her eye.
He had a feeling she wasn't eating or sleeping enough. At least now she was beginning to relax. He liked that. He liked that a lot.
"So what do you think?" he asked at last, tossing aside a second bone and digging into the coleslaw. "Is Arizona beautiful or what?"
"Stunning." She perked up at the sight of coleslaw.
"I spent the first half of my youth in L.A.," C.J. volunteered. "Certainly Sunset Boulevard and Sedona cannot be compared. Then I lived with my grandma for a while in Tillamook, Oregon. That's a small dairy community nestled on the coast. You ever been out west?"
She shook her head, her gaze clear and curious for a change.
"It's beautiful, Tamara. Green mountains and rolling fog. Nothing at all like Sedona, and yet, I really think Tillamook and Sedona are two of the most beautiful places in the world."
"That's why you moved here?"
"Absolutely. Besides, real estate's cheap and there's enough stuff to keep a guy like me happy."
"Women?" she quizzed dryly. "I thought they were everywhere."
He chuckled and offered her a bit of coleslaw on his spoon. After a brief hesitation, she accepted it. "Hmm. Good slaw."
"Thank you, I bought it myself. Oh, yes, the subject of 'stuff.' Not women—though of course I checked that out—but outdoor activities. Some of the best hiking, rock climbing and white-water rafting in the world is right here in Arizona. Oh, and golf."
"Of course."
He held out another spoonful of coleslaw. This time she took it without hesitation. She was definitely beginning to catch her second wind. When he'd first spotted her pulling up into the parking lot of her hotel, he'd thought she looked like a woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders. And almost immediately—hell, instinctively—he'd wanted to do something about that.
Once, one of the barn cats on his grandmother's farm had given birth to six kittens and hidden them under the flooring of the hayloft. He and Maggie had discovered them, and C.J. had promptly picked one up—at which point the tiny, trembling creature had split open C.J.'s hand from the base of his finger to his wrist. He'd dropped it with a howl, Maggie had leapt back ten feet, and they'd run out of the loft as if they had the very devil on their heels. His grandmother, Lydia, had shaken her head the whole time she'd cleaned up his hand.
"They're wild cats, C.J., not meant to be coddled. Leave them alone."
He'd nodded, but both he and Maggie had ended up there again the next afternoon. Maggie simply adored kittens and wanted to see them. C.J. … C.J. couldn't let them go. They looked so tiny, so helpless. He wanted to touch them, to hold them. And yet the one orange kitten had hurt him fiercely, and he hated it for that. He wanted to walk away, he wanted to hate the kitten. He glowered a lot. Blamed it all on Maggie and her obsession with "dumb animals." But he couldn't keep away. He made it one week, then simply had to try again. The orange kitten had grown, and so had its claws. He came racing back to the house with Maggie hot on his heels, both of them convinced he was going to bleed to death. They'd slapped a whole box of Band-Aids onto his hand, then waited in fear for Lydia to find out.
"You tried to pick up the kitten again."
"Did not."
"Don't lie to me, C.J. You're not on the streets anymore. You're part of a family. You don't lie to family."
He'd scowled. His father had lied a lot, especially to his mother. In the end, he'd lied to his mother a lot, too. No, I didn't steal the sandwiches. Of course I went to school.
Hey, your temperature is coming down. You're getting better. Everything is going to be all right.
"It's just a damn kitten," he'd muttered to Lydia at last.
Lydia had handed him a bar of soap to wash out his mouth for swearing. When that was over, she'd sat him down. "You're going to try again, aren't you?"
"Maybe." He was trying to sound tough. He kicked at the ground a few times for good measure. Lydia was patient, but he was never sure how patient. He'd gone through a mother and a father. At this point, he was pretty sure this grandma was just passing through, as well.
"All right, C.J., this is what you do. Go every afternoon. Sit there with Maggie. Move a little closer each time. Let the kittens get used to you, your presence, your smell. Just be, and after a while, they'll know you. And soon, they'll be so curious, they'll approach you. Then you be very gentle and very patient. And someday, you'll get to hold that kitten again, and it won't hurt you."
"I don't care."
"Of course."
But he and Maggie had done exactly what Lydia had recommended, and Lydia knew the day they finally achieved contact because they carried their newfound friends back to the house for inspection. C.J. had named his orange kitten Speedy, and she'd been his cat until he'd turned eighteen and joined the marines.
He'd loved that cat. And over the years, he'd come to love his grandmother for everything she'd taught the wild, destructive, angry boy he'd been.
"Your family in New York?" he asked Tamara at last
For the first time, Tamara hesitated over her chicken. "No. My … my parents died when I was younger."
"That's hard."
She shrugged, clearly not wanting to talk about it. "That was a long time ago."
"My parents died when I was younger, too. That's why I was raised by my grandmother in Tillamook."
She looked at him silently, and he realized she'd never ask the questions on her own. If he wanted to volunteer information, she was leaving it up to him.
"My parents never married," he said easily. "My father, Max, apparently only married women with money. So he married my half brother's mother, who had a decent-size inheritance from England, and he married my half sister's mother for her inheritance. My mother, he liked to say, he was with out of love."
"And she didn't mind?"
C.J. shrugged. "I think she did. But I think she also thought it was romantic. My mother … she was sweet. Gentle. Sometimes she didn't have the best judgment. Max said he would take care of her and me, so she trusted him to do that and she was always happy when he came to visit."
"I see."
"She became very ill when I was eleven. We didn't have much money. The doctors put her on antibiotics, but they didn't seem to help. I tried to find Max, but he traveled all the time. I couldn't reach him. Eventually, her condition deteriorated. By the time Max arrived, it was all over."
"Oh."
C.J. offered her a reassuring smile. "It's okay. I don't expect you to murmur any magical words that make it better. Life goes on, you know?"
Mutely, she nodded.
"I lived with my father for a year, traveling all over the world, but then his plane went down in Indonesia and that was that. I stayed with my grandmother, Lydia, and met my other half siblings, Maggie and Brandon."
"What did your father do?"
C.J. grinned, he couldn't help it. "That's subject to some debate," he said dryly.
"Debate?"
"Honestly, I think he was a crook." That got her full attention. He winked. "Think about it. The man called himself an 'importer-exporter.' He was always traveling around the globe, he seemed to have unbelievable sums of cash, yet none of us ever saw him actually conduct any business. My grandma, his mother, to this day doesn't know what his job really was. None of his wives ever understood it. As a kid, I was very impressed with the whole nine yards—the travel, the plane, the presents. As an adult, I look back at him and I think he had to have been a smuggler. It's the only thing that makes sense."
"I … I suppose."
"Now, my sister, Maggie, is a romantic. I think she's decided he was a secret agent because that sounds like a great dad thing to be."
"That would be romantic," Tamara agreed. She hesitated a moment, leaning forward ever so slightly. He held his breath. He didn't think she was aware of it, but her eyes were large and clear, her expression earnest. In
spite of herself, she'd gotten caught up in the conversation. Perhaps she was even enjoying his company. "You're very close to your half siblings."
"Yeah. My grandma brought us together because she wanted us to learn how to be a family. My grandma is a very smart woman."
"I never had any brothers or sisters."
"Yeah? I have to say, I like mine more than I thought I would when I was a streetwise only child hell-bent on taking care of himself. When my grandma introduced me to Brandon, my first words to him were 'Go to hell.' Luckily, his English reserve allows him to blow off such things."
"You told your brother to go to hell?"
"I was a bit of a head case," he admitted. He grinned. "Not at all the charming young man you see before you now. These days I would never dream of doing the slightest misdeed. I am an angel. Ask anyone."
"Uh-huh," she said with just the right note of skepticism.
"Are you besmirching my reputation?"
"Uh-huh."
"After I just fed you chicken?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well." He crossed his arms in mock indignation and gave her his most affronted gaze. Slowly, but surely, her lips curved into a smile. It brightened her whole face, brought a luminescent sheen to her eyes. He liked it very much when she smiled. He intended to make sure she smiled again and then again after that.
"You're very beautiful, you know?"
Her smile vanished. She looked startled, then uncomfortable. She drew back, and he could tell she was suddenly awkward. It puzzled him.
"Surely you've heard that before."
"I'm … I work a lot. In fact, I have work to do tonight. I really should get back to the hotel." Her fingers fumbled with her napkin. She began to pick up chicken bones.
He covered her hand with his, stilling her motions. He watched her chest rise and fall too rapidly in the silence. "Tamara, I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable."