Still smiling, Bella scooted off of him and stood up, then she looked down at him and burst out laughing all over again as she held out her hand for him. “Come on, get up.”
He took her hand, and she helped him to his feet. He felt the knot on the back of his head. Damn good thing he had a hard head. “You all right?” he asked her.
“I’m fine. Sit down. On the couch.” Then she laughed again. “Let me see your head. Your lip’s bleeding.” She grabbed a paper towel and dabbed at his lip once he was seated.
“I’ve always heard about kisses that made the world fall out from beneath you,” Brandon said, “but I’m pretty sure I’ve never experienced one until tonight.”
“Very funny. I knew those chairs were dangerous.” She felt the lump on the back of his head and he winced. “I think you just have a death wish.”
He chuckled. “No. Definitely not.”
She checked his lip again. “That’s going to hurt.”
“Kiss it, make it better?” he asked sweetly.
She leaned down and ran her tongue gently over his slightly swollen lip. She tasted the salty flavor of his blood and for some totally inexplicable reason, her breath caught. He groaned and reached for her. She stepped away. “I think we should take this as a sign,” she said as she went to the kitchen and put some water on a clean paper towel.
“A sign?”
“It’s too dangerous for us to kiss any more.” She dabbed at his lip. Much too dangerous for her well-being, that was for damn sure. She wanted to be with him more than ever. If his kisses could make her feel so alive, so wonderful, what would it be like—
“I want to kiss you.”
She shook her head. “It’s only because it’s just the two of us here.” She tried to make her tone light, hoped she wasn’t failing miserably.
“You’re saying that it wouldn’t matter what woman was here with me?”
She threw the paper towel in the wastebasket and shrugged. “You’ve got it in your head you want to settle down. I’m assuming this is a new revelation to you. I happened to be the only one around at the time.”
Brandon surprised her by coming to his feet in a rush and grabbing her shoulders. “You’re crazy, you know that?” He gave her a gentle shake. “Your opinion of men is based on a lousy experience that was, what? Ten years ago?”
She squirmed away from his hands. “Am I wrong? Come on! If you want to sleep with someone, fine, I’m all yours. Could be fun. But don’t start offering me wine and roses and happily ever afters.” Her face heated with a blush. Had she really said that? Could be fun? She felt so stupid.
“Go to bed.” His voice had turned icy cold, little more than a menacing growl. When she glanced up at him, his eyes were hard. She took a step back, bumping into the table. “Get your cute little fanny up to that bed before I show you just how fun it could be.”
Isabella scrambled past him and up the short ladder to the loft. She kicked off her hiking boots and they fell with a hard thud on the floor next to Brandon. She almost wished they’d hit him. Boy! She’d surely smacked that bear in the nose. He looked mad enough to kill.
Well, she thought as she watched him opened the door and walk out into the cool night air, if I keep him mad at me, he won’t try to kiss me. That would be best. Wouldn’t it? Yes, of course it would. He wanted a family with children. And now he knew she couldn’t give him children, so there would be no point in carrying anything further.
She didn’t have the strength to have a fling with him. To love him and leave him. Parting with him would be hard enough to deal with. If she learned that he was even close to as good of a lover as he was kisser, she didn’t think she’d be able to leave him.
Then what? A few years down the road he turns on her and looks at her with the same eyes Bart had. Cold, filled with regret and disgust. No, no, no. She couldn’t stand that from Brandon. Bart had wanted to pass on his family name. He was the only male child in the family. Heredity meant so much to men. Brandon said he was an only child. His mother was his only living relative. He’d want to have children.
Chapter Ten
Lying back on the mattress, Isabella pressed her hand to her abdomen, swamped by the humiliation and shame of being only half a woman. She wanted children. Desperately. She’d wanted children ten years ago when she put up with sex with Bart. But there was no hope of that. Oh, it wasn’t completely impossible for her to conceive. There was about a ten-thousand-to-one chance. But what man in his right mind would take those odds?
Brandon was the only man who’d ever made her feel so alive. Kissing him was like waking up after a long, long sleep.
The front door opened, and she peeked over the edge of the loft to watch Brandon. He had an armload of clothes that he began hanging over the barrel stove.
“Where did those come from?”
“The plane. Go to sleep.”
“The plane? You went down there? In the dark? Without telling me? What if something would have happ—”
“Would it matter if something happened?” His tone was nasty, angry. He cursed himself for showing her his vulnerable side. “At least you’d be rid of me and my manly ways.” Damn, but she made him crazy. Kissing him senseless and then telling him it wouldn’t have mattered whom he was with. Yeah, right. She was the only woman he’d ever even contemplated taking home to Mom. And she thought she was some kind of conquest. Someone who was simply available.
“You’re impossible,” he heard her mumble.
I’m not the only one. At least now he’d have a couple changes of clothing. Jeans, underwear, warmer shirts. He’d swum down to the plane before supper. It was sitting upside-down on the bottom of the lake, about ten feet down. What a mess.
“Like I’d want to be eating fish out of a lake with a dead body floating around in it.” She mumbled the statement as she rustled around in her thick nylon sleeping bag. Probably taking off her clothes to put on the nightshirt that had felt so soft against him last night. Warm from her skin. He could have held her forever.
And she thought he just wanted to screw because she was female and he was male. Okay, so he did. But it was so much more. He wasn’t a saint—he’d been with his fair share of women. Most of the affairs had been brief—very brief. He’d never wanted any attachments. Could honestly say he’d never wanted to just snuggle up with a woman and hold her and make the world stop.
If she only knew how close he’d come to taking her offer. It had sounded too much like a challenge to him. It might be fun. Oh, it’d be a hell of a lot more than fun. It’d be hot and wet and hard and—he had to stop thinking about it or he might climb up there and prove it to her. And then he’d hold her in his arms until the sun came up. And then he’d wake her and do it all over again in the daylight, watching her face flush as she...
He groaned and dropped down on the couch. “Would you stop squirming around up there and go to sleep?” he growled.
“Oh, shut up. If you hadn’t chased me up here, I could have changed down there where I could move.”
Her body was in shadow. He couldn’t see anything except the moving sleeping bag. All of a sudden she popped out, her upper body hanging over the edge of the platform as she reached into the pantry. She grabbed something and then disappeared back into the cocoon of her nylon shell. He heard paper ripping. And then a small moan of pleasure as she bit into a candy bar.
She was going to drive him to insanity.
“How the hell are you so skinny when all you do is eat?”
“I’m twenty pounds underweight. I’m trying to gain it back. You really shouldn’t ask women such questions. You’ll never find your perfect little wife if you insult everyone you come across.”
He smiled. Then chuckled. “You’re a brat.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Why are you twenty pounds underweight? How’d you lose it?”
She didn’t answer.
“Bella?” he asked, trying to make out her shape under the thick
blanket of quilted nylon.
“Goodnight, Brandon.”
~*~*~
After unending hours of tossing and turning, Brandon was up with the sun. Between the lumpy cushions and thoughts of Bella, he’d spent most of the night staring across the cabin, out the window at the stars. As soon as the sun peeked over the tops of the hills, he rolled off the torture-bed and pulled on his jeans and a heavy, still slightly damp, flannel shirt.
After a quick trip to the outhouse, where he discovered a thick layer of frost covering the ground, he stoked up the fire in the stove and went into the kitchen to make coffee.
The lump on his forehead was finally smoothing out. The one on the back of his head only hurt if he touched it. His bottom lip was tender and a bit swollen on one side. He’d live. Maybe. If he didn’t die of sexual frustration.
Listening to Bella move around all night, to the sound of her breathing in the still cabin, the soft sounds she made as she slept, had nearly driven him outside into the cold. He’d almost wished she’d have another nightmare to give him an excuse to climb up there and hold her.
“What are you doing up so early?” a sleepy, extremely intoxicating voice asked.
He turned away from the burner after setting down the coffee pot to see Bella hanging over the edge of the loft like she had the night before to grab a candy bar.
“Coffee.”
“You look tired.”
No kidding, he wanted to say, but bit his tongue. “I’m fine.”
“Come here.” She reached down and grabbed his shoulder. He stepped closer to her. Her face turned red from hanging upside down. She ran her thumb over his swollen lip. “I’m really sorry about that. I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.”
Placing his hand over hers, he kissed her palm. “I’ll live.”
Her eyes widened for an instant then she tried pulling away. He let her go. She completely disappeared into the blankets. “How’s your arms? Are the scratches red? Do you need more salve?”
She just didn’t get it, did she? She threw her little fits and then wanted to pamper and tend his wounds. He shook his head. “I’m sure they’re fine.”
From the pantry he pulled out a box of hot cereal mix. Bella came down the ladder fully dressed in jeans and flannel and thick gray sweat socks, looking about as cute and sleepy and cuddly as a kitten. She slipped on her boots that he’d left right where they’d fallen. He still wondered if she’d intended to hit him with them.
“We got frost last night. Maybe we should go pick some blueberries this afternoon.”
“Sure.” She practically ran out the door.
They spent the morning each doing their own thing. Brandon went fishing, while Bella sat on the porch, her feet propped up on the hand rail, writing in her notebook. He’d been tempted to peek at whatever she wrote when he’d used her paper and pen to write the letters, but he’d refrained. He didn’t want to invade her privacy, not like that anyway. He wanted her to tell him her secrets, not find them out through snooping.
Around noon she came down to the stream and handed him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “How’s the fishing?” she asked as she sat herself on a nearby boulder.
“One more and we’ll have dinner.” He took a bite of the sandwich. “Unless you want me to catch your limit, too. We know how much you can eat.”
She rolled her eyes at him, and he smiled. First smile of the day. He hadn’t realized how much he missed them until there weren’t any.
“What are you working on?” he asked before he took another bite.
“What?”
“The writing.”
“Oh, nothing. Well... I’m trying to write a résumé so I can start looking for a job.” She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. Damn, she looked sexy when she did that. “I don’t even know what I want to do with myself,” she added with a little shrug.
He finished off the sandwich, wiped his hands on his jeans, then sat down next to her. Their arms touched. She didn’t pull away. “You were happy traveling the world with your uncle?”
She shrugged. “It sounds pretty pathetic, but I worked at a grocery store until I left Bart, and then went right to work with Cam. I’ve never really thought about doing anything else. Sometimes the places we went were exciting and wonderful. Those trips I really enjoyed.”
“Like what?” He put his arm around her waist. Again, she didn’t move away. Another bit of progress.
“He did an entire piece on the castles of Ireland.” She smiled, staring off over the gurgling creek, as if she was envisioning Ireland all over again. “We spent a month there, traveling from place to place. Talking with locals, learning the lore. The land is beautiful. The people and places magical.”
When he gently pulled her closer, she leaned against his side. Laid her head against him.
“Of course, there was the billionaire we sailed the Caribbean with on his yacht. That was a pretty fantastic voyage.” She sighed. “But those were the times it was like a vacation. Most of the time accommodations weren’t so luxurious. And the locals weren’t so welcoming.”
“Tell me?” he whispered, her silky hair tickling his lips as he pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head.
“The middle east. Religious wars. The battle between the Koreas. Leper colonies in India. The poor of Appalachia. Gang wars in L.A.” Her voice dropped to a shallow whisper. “Guerilla warfare in Central America.” She took a deep shaky breath. “Even though we were there looking for some rare species of bird, Cam found the guerillas.”
Brandon’s muscles tightened. Those were no places for a woman. Her uncle had no business dragging her to those Godforsaken spots. She could have been killed, or worse. Dear God, the worse was unspeakable. He’d been sent on missions to pull out Americans that had been taken by guerillas. The women who’d survived wished they hadn’t.
“I’d say it was about fifty-fifty,” Bella continued, her tone almost matter-of-fact. “The good times to the bad. I’ve traveled the world. Been on every continent except Antarctica, and I’ve seen some of the most amazing things. The pyramids in Egypt, Aztec ruins, twelve-hundred-year-old castles.” She turned her head taking in the scenery.
“I think Uncle Cam would have liked it here. It’s so new, yet so old. Ancient glaciers that date back tens of thousands of years, yet the civilization is so young. He’d talked about coming up here in the next couple of years to do a story on the Iditarod or Yukon Quest or one of those dog sled races. Of course, that would have been in the winter and we might as well have gone to Antarctica.” She chuckled. “He loved to fish, though. We once spent time on a fishing trawler off the coast of North Carolina.”
He still couldn’t believe it. That she could talk that way about her uncle who’d hauled her skinny little behind all over the globe, exposing her to the worst horrors of humanity.
“Sweetie,” he said softly, holding his fury at her uncle in check. “Why?”
She turned her head to meet his eyes. “Why, what?”
“Why did you go with him to those horrible places?”
Her brow wrinkled in a frown of confusion. “He needed me. We worked well together. I don’t think he would have been as successful as he was if I hadn’t been there. And he paid me well.”
“Did you get a byline? Any credit? How much did he pay you?”
Bella slipped from beneath his arm, slid off the rock, her eyes never wavering from his. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” he asked as he came off the rock to stand toe-to-toe with her. “What was wrong with him, hauling you around to places you had no business being.”
“How dare you speak about Cam that way.” Her eyes fairly crackled with anger, her face flushing deep pink. “He never made me go anywhere. It was by my own choice!”
“That’s how you know about this, isn’t it?” he pointed at his tattoo. “You had to be extracted out of somewhere you should never have been.”
She flinched. Her bottom lip trembl
ed.
“That’s how he died, isn’t it?” Brandon pressed on. “We didn’t get there in time.” He reached for her, but she backed away. “Bella, tell me.”
“We were looking for a Goddamned bird!” Her hands clenched in fists and tears rolled down her cheeks. “It wasn’t supposed to be a dangerous project. Just a bird. A lousy bird.” Her legs buckled, but he caught her and pulled her into his arms. Her hot tears soaked through his T-shirt as she sobbed.
“Bella, I’m sorry.” She clung to him, her whole body shaking. “Sweetheart,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to upset you. God, baby, I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t know if she heard him or not. She buried her face against his shoulder, her hands clenching the front his shirt in tight fists, and cried all the harder. His guts twisted. That fist that had been tampering with his heart squeezed painfully.
He lifted her into his arms and headed back to the cabin. Once inside, he sat down on the couch, snuggled her on his lap, and let her cry. Maybe that was what she needed. Maybe she’d never let it out. He could only imagine what she’d seen. How she may have been hurt. He prayed none of those bastards had touched her as he ran his hand over her arm, her back, her legs, reassuring himself she wasn’t hurt. Hadn’t been hurt. “Sweet baby,” he whispered against her temple.
Her fist twisting in his shirt slowly loosened. Brandon pulled the bottom of his shirt up and wiped her face, her nose. “Everything’s all right, baby.”
She nodded, her breathing choppy, hiccupping like a child. Her body still trembled with each shuddery breath.
“Relax.” He cupped her cheek, rubbed his thumb over her silky skin. He couldn’t believe how much he ached for her. How he felt her pain so deep inside him like a knife to his gut.
“I was so sick,” she whispered.
He waited, his thumb lightly caressing her cheek. Could she feel his love, his worry?
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