by Unknown
Finally, he’d separated himself from her, closed his ears to her sigh of regret, and left the suite. The desk clerk seemed surprised when he asked for his bill. It had taken a sharp reprimand from Hunter to force him to accept money from a Kincaid.
“I’ve paid our bill, except for your call. I’ll get that on the way out.”
“Do we have any money left?” Fortune hadn’t thought about the cost of their night together. She wondered if it was too high.
“Enough to last the rest of the week, if we’re frugal and if we don’t have to attend any more balls. I’m going to return the rentals while you dress and eat,” he explained, and gathered up the zippered bags containing the clothing. “Then we’ll hit the road.”
Fortune nodded and watched him leave the suite. He was back in leather again, once more the wicked Bounty Hunter. Now she knew why he’d been given that nickname. He’d caught her without a fight. She’s surrendered herself willingly, wishing even as the door closed that he’d come back to bed and take her in his arms.
Lucy, she needed to talk to Lucy. Her explanation, that of asking Lucy if she could shed any light on the final clue on their list, was only an excuse. She wanted to hear from Joe. Fortune hoped that he’d come back.
Lucy and the children were still at Rachel and Tom’s. She hadn’t heard anything from Joe, though Rachel had put out a quiet inquiry among the places that teens often stayed. So far nothing had happened—except the health department had issued an injunction against Lucy staying in the house. It was unsafe.
The one bright piece of information that Fortune got from Lucy was that Panther, Inc., did not yet have a scavenger-hunt winner.
Fortune hung up, assuring her friend that although she and Hunter Kincaid were very close to solving most of the clues, the creature with tears in its eyes was still a complete mystery.
Lucy promised to do some research at the library. In the meantime Fortune could only hope the other teams had the same clue and were no closer to solving it than she and Hunter were.
Fortune was dressed and packed and waiting for Hunter to return. The ball gown and last night in Hunter’s arms were beautiful memories, to be stored away and brought out in the quiet moments of her life, but they were only memories and should be treated as such. Reality was winning the scavenger hunt.
She heard Hunter’s plastic card in the door.
“Ready, partner?”
“Ready,” she said, and hurried past him into the corridor.
“Just a minute, Ms. Dagosta. You’ve forgotten something.”
Fortune stopped and turned around. “What?”
“This.”
He hadn’t meant to kiss her. He’d planned to gather her and her pack and get started without rekindling the fire. But she looked so distant, so stiff, as if she were wearing new shoes and they hurt her feet.
But he was kissing her. And she was kissing him back, as the pack dropped to the floor between them. The thoughts of winning a scavenger hunt were lost as their lips touched.
Finally, Hunter pulled back. “Don’t ignore what happened, wild woman. It’s never happened to me either, and I sure as hell don’t know what we’re going to do about it, but we aren’t going to ignore it.”
“What’s happened, cowboy?”
“I think we may have fallen in love, darling.”
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, I’d know, wouldn’t I? Falling in love is a forever-after kind of thing, and I don’t even know what tomorrow will bring. It’s not possible.”
“I know. It isn’t. Maybe I’m wrong.” He reached down, picked up her pack, and winced.
“Your back. Did we hurt it last night? I never even thought about it when …”
“My back is fine. My body is fine. It’s a beautiful day, darling. Let’s just go where the wind blows us.”
“So long as the wind blows us toward Lithia Springs.”
They mounted the bike and drove out of the Kincaid Hotel parking lot. Somewhere a church bell summoned early Sunday worshipers. As they rode out of town, the traffic thinned out. The sky was blue, the day was green, and the mountains were touched with pink. For two lovers it was spring, a lovely May morning. Suddenly, the day seemed fine.
Fortune slid her arms beneath Hunter’s vest and squeezed him, pressing her face against his back. She felt every ridge of his body, his buttons, the pockets, the small round foil packets inside.
She suddenly blanched. They’d been so carried away that she hadn’t even thought about protection. But Hunter had. Fortune felt her pulse flutter for a moment.
“What’s wrong?”
Hunter’s voice carried past the sound of the bike. He’d felt her body quiver. He’d felt her hands reach his pockets and stop. He’d meant to talk to Fortune about their being together, but everything was too new. He hadn’t know how. In the past he wouldn’t have been bothered, but this time he was.
Fortune merely shook her head and laid it against Hunter’s back. How could she explain what his actions meant to her? How could she tell him of the times her grandmother had warned her against doing just what she’d done, loving a man. She’d used her mother as an example of what happened when a woman was weak. Fortune had believed her, watching her mother struggle to help pick crops in the field, make their meager earnings stretch to buy clothes and food for a little girl and a man who drank away a good portion of his salary every week.
Yet, her mother had loved her father. Even when she didn’t have the strength to work anymore, she’d never refused him. Until the end when she’d finally had no more to give.
Fortune hadn’t known what poor was until she’d been forced to live with her grandmother, who’d taken Fortune in and never let her forget what an inconvenience she was.
Now Fortune had let Hunter make love to her. No, not let, she realized, she’d met him thrust for thrust, kiss for kiss. Even now her body was giving out subtle reminders that it recognized and welcomed the attention of the man she was touching so intimately.
Fortune shuddered. She was learning that people could truly care for each other, and that loving could be very right. A blue-eyed cowboy with sun in his hair and heat in his loins had taken away all her resolve and left her wanting more.
Run away, that’s what she ought to do. But she’d seen what happened to her children when they didn’t face their troubles. They didn’t run away from a problem, they simply carried it with them.
Truth was, she and Hunter were running together, through a spring day, toward a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to the wonderful feelings rushing through her.
Seven
Hunter seemed anxious to get to the springs. They covered the distance back to Chattanooga by lunch, stopped for burgers, fries, and drinks at the take-out window of a local drive-in, and got back on the bike.
Fortune was disappointed when Hunter kept going. She didn’t know how he was going to eat and drive, but she didn’t doubt that he could do it if he wanted. She’d thought they might stop, talk a bit, and give his back a rest. He didn’t explain his action, and she didn’t ask.
There was an awkwardness between them that she didn’t understand.
Then he pulled off the highway and drove down a gravel road. Minutes later they were beneath a stand of trees at the bank of the Tennessee River. Hunter killed the engine, kicked the stand in place, pulled off both their helmets and dropped them on the ground as he took her into his arms, giving her the kiss she’d unconsciously been waiting for all morning.
“Lord, I’ve wanted to do that for the last hour,” he said, his voice ragged with strain.
“I’ve wanted you to for longer,” she confessed, suddenly conscious that she was holding the take-out bag, when what she wanted to do was put it down and hold Hunter. “Let me get rid of this bag and get off this bike so we can do it again.”
He pulled back and looked at Fortune, at her small, heart-shaped face, at the flush that highlighted her cheekbones an
d made her look as if she were a little girl at her first circus. He put the bag on the ground and half lifted her from the bike as he continued to hold her.
“Let’s find a place,” he said, and turned toward the river. The bag of food was forgotten as they sank to their knees beneath the trees and stared at each other.
“You know, this isn’t smart, Hunter. Someone might come by.”
“No, I’m sure they won’t.”
“You are?” She gazed up at him, not realizing how happiness colored her eyes. Instead of being dark orbs of blackness, in the bright morning light they were more like caramel, hot caramel, the kind that burned your tongue with its heat.
He pushed her to the grassy bank and moved over her, his fingertips touching her face, brushing back a strand of hair, as he caught her lower lip with his teeth. He was shaken by the depth of his desire, by his overwhelming need to be inside her.
There’d been women, and he’d enjoyed a full sexual life, but this was different. Making love to Fortune was a fulfillment that felt so right, so complete. He’d been so careful, sensing that she was as concerned about the results of their lovemaking as he. Suddenly, everything changed. He never understood what commitment meant, until the thought of her carrying his child swept over him. But those kinds of thoughts were foolish; he couldn’t be certain that her feelings were as strong as his. He wanted her to be a part of his life forever.
Now, looking at the desire in her eyes, he knew that she was as caught up in the moment as he. For now, it was enough. He pulled off her shirt and gazed at her breasts. “You’re so very beautiful,” he said, his voice husky.
“Beautiful? I’m too small, and my nipples are too big and dark for the rest of my—me—”
“Never hold back from me, wild woman. Talk to me, say what you feel, the way you make sounds when you’re hot and ready to come.”
Fortune blushed and turned her head to the side. “I do? I’m—I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Don’t ever be sorry for feeling pleasure when I love you, for wanting me, for wanting to please me in return. That’s what happens when two people are right together. That’s the way it ought to be.”
“But, I’m so—so—”
Then she lost the rest of her sentence as he took her breast in his mouth. She brought her hands up to thread them through his hair and hold him against her. More, she wanted to say.
“I thought you were hungry,” she managed as he lifted her, and her jeans and panties went sliding down her legs.
“I am. This is what I’m hungry for, what I’m starving for, wild woman. What about you?”
“Oh, yes.” She groaned as he stood and removed his pants.
“Oh, yes.” From the pocket of his shirt he pulled the packet, tearing it open as he knelt beside her.
She watched as he held it between his fingers and rolled it over the length of him. Hunter was magnificent. She didn’t know how he could possibly be interested in her, but he was. She wasn’t silly enough to believe he’d meant the falling in love part. And as he lowered himself over her, she told him of her feelings with her eyes.
Fortune knew that if he’d forgotten the protection, she’d never have mentioned it. She was bothered by such a change in her thinking. All her life she’d known she’d always be careful about that one thing. No babies, no unwanted babies, no trapping herself or a man into a relationship that neither wanted.
Until now.
Now she understood total commitment—the forever kind of love.
Hunter was over her, the tip of him pressing against her, prolonging what was to come as if he were waiting for her to approve. She moistened her lips with her tongue and lifted herself to him, slowly, with trembling body and gasping breath.
What happened next was good and right and basic. It was a reflection of the emotion they felt, but it was more. It was a declaration of what was in their hearts. Their bodies brushed aside all thoughts, concentrating on the ascending rhyme of desire, building it higher and higher until they seemed to explode in a kaleidoscope of sensation.
“Wow!” Fortune let her hands fall to the earth beside her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I thought it would be—I mean I didn’t expect—”
Hunter moved off her and lay on his back. “Neither did I,” he said.
For a long time they didn’t speak, each caught up in the wonder of what they’d experienced.
Then Hunter heard Fortune stirring. He opened his eyes. She’d come to a sitting position. There was a wrinkle in her forehead and a frown on her face. “What’s wrong, darling?”
“Why did you call me ‘darling’?”
“Does it bother you?”
“I don’t know. Nobody but my mother ever called me that before.”
There was a shadow across Fortune’s face, a shadow that came with the mention of her mother. He didn’t like that. Fortune ought always to be smiling. “Tell me about your mother.”
“I don’t remember a lot. She was beautiful to me, until she got sick. Then she got thinner and paler, and finally one night in a stinking little shack where the mosquitoes were the size of horseflies, she died.”
“Ah, darling, I’m sorry.”
Hunter took Fortune’s hand and pulled her down beside him, capturing her head on his shoulder and her body in his arms. He wanted to hold her, take away the sadness.
Fortune continued. “My father had to take time off from work to dispose of me. He missed a good picking week while he took me to his mother’s house and left me.”
“Picking week?”
“My folks were migrant workers, cowboy. Peaches, oranges, grapefruit, strawberries. Whatever was in season. For a while after my mother died, my father came home when there was nothing to pick, and then finally, he didn’t come anymore. Not until my grandmother died. Then he came to claim the farm.”
“What happened?”
“He’d started drinking more and more. He didn’t have any reason to stay sober. And then one day he realized that I was grown up. He—he finally decided it was time for us to get acquainted.”
Hunter didn’t have to ask what she meant; he could tell by the sudden stiffness of her body as she remembered. “The bastard!”
“Yes, but I ran away before he—well, you know.”
Hunter tightened his grip. He couldn’t take the memories away, but he wanted so badly to make it better. “I know how you must have hated him. I know what it means to lose someone you love. It’s happened to me twice.”
“But you still have your mother, Hunter.”
“Yes, but she belongs to Hale now. No matter how hard I try not to resent it, I do. I’m beginning to understand that he didn’t kill my father. But habits are hard to break. For so long, every time he touched my mother I wanted to hurt him.”
The words tumbled out. For the first time in his life Hunter Kincaid shared his secret pain with another person. “My father worked for Hale, in the chemical plant. They made fertilizer. They made it the cheapest way possible. When he bought the plant, he’d been warned about safety measures. Oh, he’d put in some new equipment, added some protective gear, but not enough. One night there was an accident. My father was killed.”
“Oh, Hunter, I’m sorry.” Fortune forgot her pain as she tried to assuage Hunter’s.
“I was eight years old. But I knew the plant wasn’t safe. The whole town knew. After that Hale closed the plant until he could correct the problems, but it was too late. Oh, he tried to make it up to me and my mother. The bastard gave her a job, moved us to Greenville, South Carolina, where Mother became his secretary.”
“At least he tried to make it up to you, didn’t he?”
“To me? I don’t think so. It was my mother. Two years later he married her. It was a guilty conscience. He was a wealthy man. My mother was a simple woman. He didn’t love her, I was sure of it.”
“But he adopted you?”
Something about that decision bothered Fortune. The man had married Hunte
r’s mother. Maybe he cared about her, maybe not. But adopting her son, making it possible for him to inherit the Kincaid family fortune, seemed unnecessary.
“Yeah, he couldn’t have a kid around with a different name. That would mean explanations, and Hale Kincaid is a very proper man.”
“But they’re still married. And you have two sisters and a brother?”
There was a long silence. “Yes. I never understood that. I could almost see why she married him. She wanted to provide for me. But they slept together, made children together. And she’s very loyal to him, even now.”
“Did you ever ask her about that, Hunter?”
“Ask my mother why she slept with her husband?” Hunter’s expression was one of incredulity. “Don’t you think that’s a little private?”
“Perhaps, but if you love your mother, and I think you do, maybe you owe it to her to try and understand. After all, she lost your father. Withholding your love seems like punishment to her as well as Hale.”
Hunter didn’t answer. He’d never thought about it that way. His mother always welcomed him home, and she’d tried to talk about Hale, make Hunter respect him and appreciate what they had. He hadn’t listened. He’d done everything a boy could do to cause trouble for the man who’d taken his father’s place.
But Hale Kincaid was a stubborn man. He’d refused to respond to Hunter’s outbursts. When Hunter had got into trouble in grammar school, Hale had punished him and then put the incident behind them. When Hunter had refused an allowance, Hale had seen to it that Hunter had a part-time job that provided him with spending money.
When his sister Julie had been born, Hunter ran away for the first time. He’d been eleven. But Hale had found him and brought him home. That was the first time Hale Kincaid had really been angry with him. He’d made it plain that if Hunter didn’t want to have a father-son relationship, he’d accept that. But his mother had just had a baby, and Hale wouldn’t allow Hunter to spoil that for her by running away.