“Why do you want to do this?” Echo asked, terrified he would kiss her, and pretty sure she’d collapse with disappointment if he didn’t. The air was thin—any second now, she expected yellow oxygen masks to drop from the ceiling.
“I wish I could give you an intelligent answer,” he replied. “All I can tell you is, I came from the other side of the planet because I need to be close to you.”
“Damn,” she said. “You’re good.”
He grinned, gave her a nibble-kiss, then yawned. Awaited her answer with sleepy eyes, luminous with mischief.
Echo caved.
She’d never claimed to be a woman of steel.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?” Another yawn. How could a man manage to contort his face like that and still look sexy as hell?
“Quit while you’re ahead, Rance,” Echo told him.
“I’ll just get my shaving kit.”
Echo’s gaze darted from his face to the display window, beyond which his SUV loomed like some vehicular Darth Vader. “Give me the keys,” she said, holding out one hand. “I’ll get it.”
Another grin. “No need,” he said. “It’s on the sidewalk, just outside the door.”
“You knew I’d say yes!”
He laughed. “Nope,” he told her. “But I’m a gamblin’ man, like my cousin Jesse. I’ll admit to hedging my bets a little.”
A few minutes later, they were upstairs—Snowball snoozing on her beloved airbed, Rance in the shower, Echo lying stiffly on one narrow slice of the bed, wishing there was a suit of armor in her wardrobe.
Suddenly, Snowball growled again, low and fierce.
“Shhh,” Echo said.
Snowball didn’t shhh.
The pipes rattled in the bathroom.
Echo tried to stretch her hearing beyond that and the spray of the shower.
The soft closing of a car door in the alley behind the shop.
Frowning, she rolled off the bed, padded to the back window and looked out, but she couldn’t see anything but the neighbor’s moonlit garage, because of the roof slanting over her storeroom.
Snowball bared her teeth, snarled.
A soft, metallic jiggle teased Echo’s ears, more of a prickle at the edge of her senses than a sound.
“Hush!” she whispered to the dog.
A faint pop, then the creak of hinges.
So much for Keegan and Jesse’s locksmithing skills. Somebody had just jimmied open the back door.
Echo scampered to the bathroom and practically dived through the shower curtain to get to Rance. He stared at her, half his face shaved, the other half lathered, then grinned.
“Somebody’s breaking in the back way!” she whispered.
He frowned, reached for a towel, wrapped it around his middle. He put a finger to his lips as he passed, and a low “Stay here” trailed in his wake.
Echo wanted to do just that, but her legs were already moving. Carrying her out of the steamy bathroom. She caught Snowball by the collar, just as Rance disappeared down the stairs, and crouched beside the dog, trying to muzzle her with one hand.
Today, she decided, she was definitely plugging in an upstairs phone.
Her heart hammered in her throat; she strained to hold on to Snowball and hear something—anything—from the first floor.
An instant later, her effort was rewarded by a crash that actually reverberated through the old walls of the building and threatened to bring the plaster crashing down from the ceiling.
Rance.
She launched herself from that crouch, like a runner on a block, and Snowball, freed from the five-finger muzzle, streaked ahead of her.
“Rance!” Echo cried from the middle of the stairs.
“Call Wyatt,” Rance answered. “Tell him we need an ambulance.”
Sheer terror sent her not to the phone, but into the back room, where the action was.
The light was on.
Rance was still standing, apparently unharmed. He hadn’t even lost the towel.
Bud Willand sat on the floor, lolling against the wall, blood streaming from his flattened nose.
“This sucks,” he said, aggrieved.
Echo glanced at Rance again, to make doubly sure there were no visible knife or bullet wounds, then turned and ran for the front of the shop.
Wyatt arrived, sleep-disheveled, before ten minutes had passed. His deputy screeched to a halt out front just as he was stepping over the threshold, and the ambulance wasn’t far behind.
“This way,” Echo said, beckoning toward the back room, where neither Rance nor Willand had moved from their original positions.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wyatt take notice of Rance’s presence, the towel and her own skimpy sleepwear. It was a relief when his attention shifted to the intruder.
Wyatt sighed. “Bud,” he said, “you are one stupid SOB, but I’ll give you one thing. You’re persistent.”
“I didn’t think he’d be here,” Bud answered peevishly, proving at least one part of Wyatt’s thumbnail personality profile. He glowered indignantly up at Rance.
“That’s obvious, Bud,” Wyatt said, stepping aside to let the paramedics through. “Rance, you want to tell me what happened here?”
Up until that moment, Rance hadn’t looked away from Willand’s battered face. It was as though he’d been keeping the man pinned to the wall with his gaze. “Not much,” he told Wyatt.
Willand groaned as an EMT tried to examine his nose. “Not much?” He pointed an accusing, and bloody, finger at Rance. “He knocked me clear from that doorway there to this wall. I never saw it comin’. It’s freakin’ assault, that’s what it is. I could be maimed for life. I might even lawyer up.”
Wyatt shook his head and sighed deeply. “You all right, Rance?”
Rance nodded.
“Is he all right?” Willand whined. “Look what he did to me!”
“Mr. Willand,” Wyatt said patiently, “you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, and unless you are an even dimmer bulb than I think you are, you will take full advantage of that right. You have the right—”
Echo began to tremble. The back room was getting crowded, and now that the immediate crisis was over and she knew Rance hadn’t been hurt, throwing up rose to the top of her personal agenda.
She rushed to the shop restroom and did so, and when she came out, Rance and Snowball were standing right there, waiting for her.
Bud Willand passed behind them on a gurney, handcuffed to one of the rails.
Rance opened his arms.
Echo went into them, and clung.
“You can make a report in the morning,” Wyatt told them. “Mike,” he added, addressing the deputy, “you secure the back door as best you can, then head for the station and get the paperwork started. I’ll hold Mr. Willand’s hand in the ER.”
Echo began to cry. Her home had been broken into. She’d inadvertently become the grand maven of love-spells. And on top of all that, her breath had to be terrible.
Snowball whimpered sympathetically.
And Rance tightened his hold on her, chuckled into her hair and whispered, “You know, of course, that we might as well go ahead and have sex, because once this story hits the streets, our reputations are toast, anyway?”
Echo laughed through her tears, and punched him in the chest with the heel of one palm. “Don’t you ever quit?”
“I’m a McKettrick,” he answered. “We have a dictionary all our own, and quit isn’t in it.”
Deputy Mike wandered through, pretending not to notice that Rance was all but naked and Echo bought her nightwear in the men’s department. “I wedged a chair under the knob in the back,” the officer said. “I figure the world is safe for democracy, tonight, anyhow.”
Rance steadied Echo by briefly gripping her shoulders, then turned and followed Deputy Mike to the front door. The two men shook hands, the cop left, and Rance turned the locks behind him.
Echo’s knees w
obbled. “What if you hadn’t been here?”
Rance came back, lifted her off her feet and carried her toward the stairs. Rhett Butler in a terry loincloth.
“I was here,” he told her. “That’s what matters.”
She rested her head against his bare shoulder. “Don’t kiss me,” she said.
He laughed, starting up the steps, Snowball following dutifully behind. “Why not?”
“Because I—was sick.”
“I’m guessing you own a toothbrush. Maybe even a bottle of mouthwash.”
“Very funny.”
Upstairs, Snowball settled onto the airbed again, sighed and immediately drifted off to sleep.
Echo dashed for the bathroom, shut the door and scrubbed her teeth and her tongue until her mouth stung. When that was done, she stared sternly at her reflection in the mirror, silently listing all the reasons why she should not have sex with Rance McKettrick.
He was emotionally unavailable.
The last time it happened, he’d dumped her and flown to Taiwan.
Indian Rock was a small town, and when this thing ended, provided it ever actually got started in the first place, they wouldn’t be able to avoid each other.
She could live a celibate life. Other women had done it. Mystics in the Middle Ages, for instance.
That was the list.
“You,” she whispered to her image, “would make a lousy lawyer.”
Rance rapped lightly at the bathroom door. “You’re not heaving up your socks again, right?”
Mr. Romance.
Echo turned the knob and peeked out through the tiny crack. “I’m not really dressed for sex,” she confided solemnly.
He laughed. “I didn’t know there was a uniform,” he replied. “Anyway, you look good in skin.”
She kept her voice down. Way down. “You probably didn’t bring any protection,” she said, “and I certainly don’t keep anything like that on hand.”
“Who are you afraid will hear you?” Rance whispered back. “The dog?”
“I’m serious, Rance.”
“So am I. Look in my shaving kit. It’s on the back of the sink.”
Echo retreated, leaving the door only slightly ajar, and peered into the black zippered bag. A razor. Deodorant. A toothbrush and paste.
And condoms. The man carried condoms.
“What do you do?” Echo asked, annoyed out of all proportion to the situation. “Sleep with somebody every time you shave?”
When she looked up, he was standing directly behind her.
Echo watched their reflections in the glass over the sink as he slowly raised her T-shirt up over her belly, until her breasts were bared.
She groaned.
He played with her nipples.
“It’s just adrenaline,” Echo said. “We’ll—ooooh—come to our senses in the morning….”
Rance pulled the T-shirt off over her head and tossed it aside. Then he cupped her breasts in his hands again, chafing the nipples with the sides of his thumbs. He rested his chin on top of her head, pressed closer from behind.
She groaned again. Serious erection at twelve o’clock. Or was it six?
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“I bet you—say that—to everybody….”
He chuckled, bent his head to nibble at her right earlobe. While his left hand continued to fondle her breast, his right slid slowly down over her stomach and then under the waistband of her boxers.
She gasped when his fingers found their target, tilted her head back and closed her eyes.
He told her to open them.
She did.
He teased her with his fingertips.
She squirmed as heat suffused her whole system.
Rance worked her harder, brought her to the brink, and then lightened his touch until she bit her lower lip to hold back a plea.
He grinned at her. Left off caressing her breast long enough to moisten the tips of his fingers with his tongue. Then he rubbed her nipple until it was so hard and wet, she tried to turn in his arms, wanting his mouth on her.
But he didn’t allow her to turn around.
The pressure began to build, and still Rance played between her legs.
She moved against him, unable to help herself, her breath fast and shallow. “Oh—Rance—please…”
He eased her back from the sink, just far enough to kneel in front of her, and then he parted her with his fingers. She gripped the edges of the counter, felt his tongue flick lightly across her clitoris. A searing tremor snaked out from the epicenter.
“Do…not…close…your…eyes,” he told her.
The climax had already begun, a soft shattering, starting deep, building slowly but inexorably toward a flash-point of cosmic scale.
“Rance,” she whispered, her voice ragged. “Rance.”
He suckled.
Echo stood, supported by Rance’s hands, now clasping her bare buttocks, staring at her reflection in the mirror and watching herself come. Her body moved to its own ancient rhythm, swaying and supple, seeking release from something it craved.
When it was over, she slid to her knees, spent.
Rance had long since lost the towel, and he reached back over one shoulder, fumbling for his shaving kit, even as Echo sought a sweet vengeance all her own.
The black bag tumbled to the floor, and the contents scattered.
“Echo,” Rance rasped. “The con—”
She looked up at him, saw that his head was thrown back, and the cords in his neck stood out with the effort to restrain a force as natural, and as inviolable, as gravity.
Later, she would wonder what possessed her.
In the moment, she simply shifted, until she was astride Rance, and claimed him in one sure motion of her hips.
He said her name again, and might have lifted her off, except that it was already too late. She rode him unmercifully, faster and faster, until they both splintered into fragments.
*
“I CAN’T BELIEVE WE DID IT ON the bathroom floor,” Echo said an hour later, lying flat on her back in the middle of the bed, while Rance rested with his head on her stomach.
“Believe it,” he said.
“Are you going to fly to Taiwan again?”
He planted a circle of kisses around the circumference of her navel. “No,” he answered. “Are you?”
The truth was, a part of Echo wanted to load Snowball and a couple of suitcases in the Volkswagen and boogie for parts unknown.
“I’m a nervous flier,” she said. “Is there a bridge?” She tried to laugh at her own joke, but it came out sounding more like a sob.
Rance moved up beside her, took her in his arms. Brushed his lips across her temple. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she answered.
“I’m not leaving,” he told her.
“Me, neither,” she replied. “But not because I’m not scared.”
He raised himself onto one elbow. “I’m sorry, Echo,” he said.
The words froze her blood. Not an easy thing, since it had been molten only minutes before. “You’re…sorry?”
“Not about the lovemaking.”
“What then?”
He widened his eyes at her, circled one of her nipples with an idle motion of his fingertip. “Taiwan,” he said.
She bolted upright. “You did something in Taiwan? That’s why you had condoms in your shaving kit—”
Rance laughed, eased her back onto the pillows. “No,” he said. “But I like knowing it would matter if I had.”
She giggled, snorted and cried harder. “Of all the—”
He kissed her, deeply.
“What now?” she asked, with her heart, as well as her lips, when she could breathe again.
“I was going to ask you the same question,” Rance admitted.
She wished she could blow her nose. Tears might be romantic, but boogers were over the line. “Any suggestions?” she asked.
He grinned, stretched to pluck
a wad of tissues from the box on the table next to the bed, and handed them to her.
She reminded herself of the mirror session, and the fact that she’d thrown up earlier. Dignity was a faint memory.
She sat up and blew.
Rance watched with a sort of amused tenderness. “I guess I’d suggest that we agree not to panic,” he said. “We’re going to have to find our way through this thing, whatever it is. Figure it out.”
“Are we dating?”
He laughed again. “After what happened on the bathroom floor? God, I hope so.”
Echo remembered a pivotal moment and slapped a hand over her mouth.
“What?” Rance asked.
“That one time—we didn’t—I didn’t…”
He’d reached for a condom. Echo hadn’t given him a chance to open the packet, let alone put the thing on.
“How’s the timing?”
“The timing?”
“Echo? Don’t echo.”
She blushed. “My cycle? Is that what you’re asking about?”
“That’s what I’m asking about.”
“I’m irregular,” she said.
“Then I guess we have to play that part by ear.”
“You’re not…mad at me?”
He took her hand, kissed the backs of her knuckles. “Do I look mad?”
“No.”
“My turn to ask a question.”
Echo waited, building up her courage, watching him, memorizing his face. What she had with Rance was half again too good to last. She’d survived being jilted at the altar, because that was Justin, and a part of her had been relieved. Yes, she’d cried when she realized her groom wasn’t going to show up. Yes, she’d gone back to her solitary hotel room and thrown pillows, the phone book, and everything in the desk drawer against the walls.
And then she’d done a victory dance and consumed a little bottle of champagne from the minibar.
“What’s your real name?”
“I’m not ready to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s not me. Not yet.”
“How can she not be you?”
“She just isn’t.”
“Hortense,” Rance guessed.
Echo laughed.
“Minerva?”
She hit him with a pillow.
“Wilhelmina?”
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