When Somebody Loves You

by Cindy Gerard

  But as mistakes went, she knew this one ranked right up there among her biggest. This one just might get her killed.

  The advertising brochures she’d had made up for next season referred to Kabetogama as “a remote and beautiful glacial lake.” The churning black water swirling around her kayak right now bore little resemblance to the placid vacation paradise the layout depicted. In the space of a heartbeat, the glass-smooth lake had begun to live up to the name the Ojibwe Indians had given it long ago: Kabetogama, lake of rough waters.

  Since she’d grown up on Kabby, she knew its moods. She could read all the signs. She read them that morning, but devastated by Steve’s news, she’d ignored them. Another bright move in a string of monumental blunders, she thought as she fought to ride out another swell.

  The storm had come up quickly, catching her far out on open water. She’d barely had time to haul her life vest out from under the hull and buckle it when the first swell hit, forcing her to make a decision. Turning back then had been out of the question. She was out too far. Whichever direction she decided to take—inland toward the north shore or east toward Jug Island—the distance had seemed insurmountable. She’d considered the wind and opted for Jug. Then she’d put her head down and stroked for her life as all hell broke loose around her.

  Another huge wave slammed across her bow, another in a series of hundreds. Or was it thousands? She’d lost count, was past caring. Shifting her weight instinctively, she dug deep with the paddle and somehow set the struggling kayak right again.

  Risking a swipe at her face, she brushed a rain-soaked swath of hair from her eyes so she could see. Ha. See what? There was nothing but black sky and angry water hammering at her from all sides. Nothing but raging, whitecapped swells and vicious wind battering her bow, trying to turn her, to push her backward and away from her destination. She was exhausted. Adrenaline alone wasn’t going to pull her through many more waves like that last one.

  If she could just make it to Jug.

  That thought sustained her. She had to be close. She had to be!

  She thought of Adam, of the way he’d looked when she’d left him, of the things she’d said and of all the things she might never get to say to him, and suddenly in the midst of it all, nothing else mattered. Not the very real possibility that she’d lose the lodge, not the anguish and despair she’d felt over the loss of her father. What mattered was that she wanted to see Adam again.

  “You are not going to die!” she shouted above the storm’s roar. “Not here. Not like this. Not alone.”

  She’d hardly completed that thought when she was hit by another monstrous wall of water and a desperate yearning to be anywhere but on this damn lake!

  Tears of frustration ran down her chilled cheeks, mingling with the downpour and the frigid spray. She fought her terror and the urge to let the storm take her. Panic wouldn’t help. Her stubbornness had dumped her into this mess. Now it could damn well drag her out of it.

  “Hang on, dammit!” she demanded, praying the next stroke of the oar would be her last, the next slap against the kayak’s fragile hull would be the shore.

  And then, without warning, the lake fell out from underneath her. The kayak dropped with a sickening thud into the belly of a swell, cracking hard with the impact.

  The jolt stunned her, then she was sucked under. Clawing her way back up, she broke the surface, spitting water and gasping for air while the night around her exploded with the sound of rock scraping against wood. The kayak lurched forward, then flipped over on its side again.

  She hit the water fighting for her life and came up coughing. Intense pain lanced through her body. Pain and relief. She’d hit rock. Solid, unsinkable rock. She’d made it!

  Scrambling out of the kayak, she sank chest-deep in the murky water before her feet connected with the slippery floor of the lake bed. She broke free of the undertow and stumbled across the rocks toward safety, where she collapsed on the shore. Gasping for breath, barely aware of the sting of wet sand and sharp stones scraping her face and bare legs, she clung to the island like a lost child reunited with its mother.

  The wind screamed. The rain pummeled. But it was the pain that kept her conscious . . . and the chill. It had crept into her blood through ice-cold limbs and settled deep. She lay there shivering until self-preservation instincts urged her to her knees. She knew she had to find shelter before shock set in.

  Shaking with fatigue and cold, she struggled to her feet, shrugged out of the life vest, and beached the kayak more securely. When the storm cleared, she would need it to get back home. At this moment she wasn’t taking any bets on when that would be.

  Leaning heavily against a peeling birch tree, she caught her breath and squinted into the blackness to get her bearings. She knew Jug well in the daylight. As a child, she’d spent many happy summer hours visiting the island. It had been her special, secret place and was nearly as familiar to her as the area around her north shore lodge. But in pitch-black night and punishing rain, the island was uncharted ground.

  Finally, she decided on a route and chanced it. She hiked for what seemed like an hour. Realistically, she knew it couldn’t have been more than minutes. Jug was a relatively small island, but she could have easily taken the wrong path. In the dark, one rock looked like another, each stand of trees like the last. Disheartened, she was about to retrace her steps when the pale silhouette of the cabin took shape.

  “Thank you,” she whispered heavenward, and heaved a shivering sigh of relief.

  Weathered by time and the elements, the faded white structure, its pine steps sagging and gray-shingled roof dotted with moss, beckoned like an old friend.

  Propelled by the prospect of the dry interior, she quickened her pace. Impatience and exhaustion made her careless. She stumbled over a rock and went down, hard. She cried out as swift, explicit pain shot through her right hand.

  Curling into a ball, she clamped her hand to her breast, biting back a wave of nausea. She didn’t need to see to know she’d broken it.

  Hot tears burned her eyes. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” she railed, giving in to the anger but not the pain.

  That same anger forced her to her feet. Brushing wet leaves and twigs from her face and tangled hair, she started out again. Shivering violently but employing infinitely more care this time, she maneuvered the slippery path to the cabin. Her joints were stiff with cold and her palm already blessedly numb as she reached the rickety porch steps.

  She climbed to the top step and swayed heavily against the railing. Too miserable to focus on anything but escaping the cold, she turned the doorknob, put her shoulder to the door, and fell inside.

  He was a cop. He’d survived a war. He’d killed men . . . reluctantly, dutifully. Through it all he’d never laid a hand on a woman in anger. Yet tonight, as he fought the lake and the storm, Adam swore to God that if he didn’t drown out there, and if he found that little redheaded whelp in one piece, he was going to derive intense personal satisfaction from tearing her apart limb by freckled limb!

  Then he was going to pick up the pieces, gather her close, and give thanks to the powers that be that she was alive.

  If she was alive.

  She will be, he told himself, as if challenging the other possibility would negate it. She had to be alive.

  He hated feeling this helpless. He hated this leaky boat and its short-cycling motor. The icy rain and darkness hampering his vision added to his frustration. His ignorance of the lake compounded the fear that he wouldn’t find her. There were dozens of islands, miles of shoreline where she could have sought shelter. He had set a course for only one, Jug Island.

  He’d pinned all his hopes on a brief conversation they’d had one night, when, sounding a little wistful, she’d told him about the cabin on Jug Island. Before she’d caught herself, she’d let it slip that when she was a child, Jug had been a haven of sorts whenev
er she’d felt threatened.

  She’d definitely felt threatened today. That was why she’d run. Her promised two hours had come and gone, then the storm had shown up. She hadn’t. He hadn’t been able to stay at the lodge and do nothing any longer. He’d gassed up one of her leaky tubs and thrown everything he could think of—food, dry clothes, first-aid supplies, a sleeping bag—into a waterproof duffel. After snagging the map of the lake from the boathouse wall, he’d ignored the swells hammering up over the dock and headed for Jug.

  It was a damn fine time to find out he hated the water!

  Rain or lake water, he could no longer tell which, beat against his raincoat and slapped him in the face as the small motorboat chopped with agonizing slowness through the pounding swells. More than once, when he was swallowed by the gaping jaws of a wave, he was certain it would be his body that someone would find washed up on a remote shore come morning.

  Fear for Joanna urged him on. On to where, he was no longer certain. It had been an hour since he’d seen anything but black. He’d long ago lost his sense of direction.

  Swearing into the wind, he looked around, and for a brief, teasing moment a window opened up ahead of him. In that elusive instant he caught the outline of a tree-studded shoreline. Gunning the complaining motor, he made a mad dash toward the spot, taking advantage of the only break he’d gotten since night had descended.

  The boat lurched forward for several long, frustrating minutes. He was beginning to think he’d missed his mark when he hit land with a serrated screech of wood against rock. The boat plowed recklessly onto the shore, then skidded to an abrupt stop, throwing him headlong over the bow.

  He lay flat on his back, trying to catch his breath as the bed of rocks bit into his back and the icy rain pelted his face and slithered down his neck. Rolling onto all fours, he shook his head to clear it and came nose to nose with the one thing that could still his thundering heart and ease the burning ache in his thigh—a bright red kayak beached in the underbrush.

  He’d found her.

  Relief, when it swamped him, was too strong, too consuming. He closed his eyes and willed anger to take its place.

  She was going to pay royally for what she’d put him through. The rough water, the wet and cold, the danger to his own life that her stupid, fly-off-the-handle nonsense had placed him in.

  And she was going to pay for making him care, damn her. For reducing him to the most vulnerable of creatures—a man with a weakness for one woman.

  He rose stiffly to his feet, rummaged around in the shattered remains of the boat, and snagged the duffel. Grim-faced, he slung it over his shoulder and headed inland.

  It wasn’t long before he spotted the cabin. His head down against the unrelenting downpour, he limped up the rickety steps. Driven by his anger, he shoved open the door and stepped inside.

  The cabin was black as a cave, the silence within so wary, he physically felt her fear.

  “Joanna?” he called as the wind whipped his raincoat around his legs and slammed the door against the wall.

  More silence, then a small, disbelieving whisper. “Adam?”

  He heard the rustle of wet clothes in the darkness and her whimper of relief when she fully embraced the truth that it was him.

  “Adam.” She materialized out of nowhere and launched herself into his arms. The blow knocked him off balance. He staggered back against the wall as she locked her arms around his neck and burrowed against him.

  Wrapping his own arms around her instinctively, protectively, he let go of his need to chew a strip of hide off her slim little backside. Anger, for the moment, had to be content to stalk the outskirts of his emotions. A profound, penetrating relief held it at bay. She was here. She was safe.

  Without releasing her, he wrestled the door closed, shutting out the driving rain. “Are you okay?” he asked gruffly as he collapsed against the cabin wall again.

  Trembling, she tightened her hold and nodded against his chest.

  Drowning in the feel of her, in the reality that he had her wrapped securely in his arms, he closed his eyes and lowered his mouth to her hair. “I ought to beat you within an inch of your life.”

  A beating was the last thing he wanted to give her, though. Instead, he skated his hand upward from her waist, checking for injuries. What he discovered was a delicate framework of ribs that rose and fell with each unsteady breath she drew. What he felt was a heart that fluttered wildly beneath the heel of his hand.

  His heart did a dance of its own. “Damn you, Joanna,” he growled as he cupped her jaw in his hand and tipped her face to his. Raking the wet tangle of hair back from her face, he searched her eyes in the darkness. They were fire bright and glistening, not with pain but with longing. He cursed her again. Then he lowered his head and took her mouth in a desperate kiss.

  He poured into that kiss all the fear, all the passion, and the barely leashed anger that had brought him to this point. Shifting their bodies until it was her back against the wall, he pressed his weight into hers. His mouth demanded. His hands possessed as she moved against him and moaned into his mouth, not only yielding to his urgency but returning it with stunning demands of her own.

  He skimmed his hand down her throat and chest, never hesitating before closing over her small but distinctly feminine breast. She was so tiny . . . and so needy as she murmured something unintelligible and arched into his hand. She was liquid fire, combustible heat. Her little furnace of a body burned through her wet clothes as her small, responsive nipple tightened against his palm.

  He groaned and deepened the kiss with a savage hunger, losing himself somewhere between reason and rage.

  It was her yielding, her total trust and acquiescence that finally set him on the right path. Reason somehow intervened, warning him that in the state he was in, if he didn’t back away now, he’d take her there, against the wall. No matter how much her murmurs told him she wanted him, he couldn’t do that to her.

  Breathing hard, he pushed himself away. Anger was his only combatant against the look in her eyes. And his anger, finally, was going to have its say.

  Shivering in the absence of Adam’s body heat, Jo huddled into herself and listened to his movements in the darkness.

  Glass scraped against metal. A match struck flint, then burst into flame. The acrid odors of sulfur and kerosene blended with the scent of her own anxiety as he touched fire to wick. The lamp on the table in the middle of the room flared to life. Its blue-yellow flame cast the cabin in diffused light . . . and Adam in harsh, flickering shadows.

  A moment ago he’d been protective, steely strength pressed against her. He’d been wild, reckless desire. But the tension in his stance now was as naked as the anger on his face. A new brand of chill shivered up her spine as he replaced the chimney on the lamp and turned to her, impaling her with slate-gray eyes as stony as the profile she’d just assessed.

  Not knowing what to make of the change in him, she swallowed thickly, then jumped when he grabbed the duffel from the floor and tossed it at her feet.

  “I brought dry clothes.” Sounding as caring as a prison guard, he barked his orders. “Get out of those wet ones and put them on.”

  Cold, hurt, and confused, she just stood there trying to sort through her own feelings so she could identify and deal with his.

  He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her as if she were a child in need of a good lecture—until his gaze dropped to her clingy wet T-shirt. It lingered there with the same heated intimacy as if he’d touched her.

  “Adam—”

  The look in his eyes stopped her as he forcibly wrenched his attention back to her face. “Out of the clothes.” His gravelly rasp sent her heart skittering. “After that little joyride, I don’t have it left in me to wet-nurse a brat who doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain.”

  Weary of the mixed signals he was sendi
ng her, she met his eyes with defiance. “You don’t have to wet-nurse anyone. I’ve told you before, I can take care of myself.”

  “Why is it, then, that every time I turn around I find you in way over your head? No,” he growled before she could utter a protest. “I don’t want to hear it. None of it.” Rage, harsh and cutting, tempered his tone. “Just get out of those clothes. Now. And don’t worry.” The smile that touched his lips was forced and mocking. “Your virtue’s safe with me. My tastes still run more toward women, not girls.” With a disdainful look, he turned toward the fireplace, dismissing her.

  After the way he’d kissed her, she wasn’t about to be dismissed. “And next you’re going to tell me that wasn’t a woman you had backed up against the wall a minute ago.”

  A slight tightening of his shoulders was the only response he gave her. It wasn’t enough. “Or,” she went on, “do you have another explanation for what just happened between us?”

  He turned to face her. Their gazes tangled and held as the flame in the oil lamp sputtered and flared from orange to white when remnants of a wind gust found its way into the cabin through a crack in the warped pine siding.

  “Adrenaline,” he stated with a conviction that dared her to dispute it. “Adrenaline is what happened between us. Don’t mistake it for anything else.”

  It was one shove too many in a day marred by disaster. She was cold, shaking, and the pain in her hand had shot past annoying and was working toward agony. She was weary, too, of his Ping-Pong reactions. “You’re the one making the mistake, Dursky.” Then, using the most vulgar obscenity she knew, she told him what he could do with his adrenaline.

  Her pithy suggestion stopped him cold. He cocked a blond eyebrow. “You’re right about one thing. No little girl I know uses that word.”

  “For the last time, I am not a girl! And you, more than anyone, know it.” Tears of frustration stung her eyes.

  “What I know,” he began, emphasizing each word, “is that I’m cold and tired . . . mostly tired of putting up with your sass. And before that stubborn chin of yours lifts any higher, I’d suggest you think twice before you take any more chances, especially with me. I’m really not in the mood, so don’t push it, Red. I’m about that far from turning you over my knee and peppering your backside with the flat of my hand.”