by JoAnn Ross
“Honestly?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I wanted you to lie.”
“Okay, the truth is, I can see you fitting into whatever life you chose. Or whatever situation you landed in.”
“Well.” She seemed a bit surprised by that. And more than a little pleased. “Thank you.”
“Like I said, it’s the truth. But since you had family money, it couldn’t have been that much of a stretch for you.” Not enough of one to make her former fiancé’s wealth an issue.
“Thanks to some wise investments my grandfather made, I’ve always been comfortable. But unlike my mother, I’ve never been into social cliques, or status, or any of that stuff. I hate the game playing, and while that’s very nice of you to say you can imagine me fitting in anywhere, I’m honestly not very good at it. As Mrs. Douglas was always pointing out.”
“Mrs. Douglas sounds like she was as much of an idiot as her son.”
“Ethan graduated summa cum laude from Princeton. Along with an MBA from Wharton business school and a Harvard law degree. That’s what he does, mostly. Business law for the family firm.”
“Good for Ethan.” But the guy was still obviously an idiot for letting this woman get away.
“So, Mrs. Douglas—and no, I was never invited to call her by her first name, in case you were wondering— insisted I take etiquette training so I’d know which of about a gazillion forks to use for formal occasions. Did you know that the oyster fork is the only fork ever to be placed on the right side of a plate?”
“I didn’t even know there was such a thing as an oyster fork.”
“Neither did I. It does, however, go to the right of the spoons.”
“I’ll keep that in mind in case I ever encounter one at the Crab Shack.”
“Good idea. Needless to say, I pretty much flunked the part of the test that covered the nuances of formalized behavior people like the Douglases live by.”
“So why did you get engaged to the guy?”
“Believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time asking myself the same question. And it’s complicated to explain, but looking back on it, I think one of the main reasons I accepted Ethan’s proposal was that while he could admittedly be stuffy, I found the rock-solid stability of his family appealing.”
“You wanted to set down roots.” Another reason he should just stay the hell away from her.
Too late.
“Exactly.”
“Which you’ve managed to do for yourself here in Shelter Bay. So it looks as if you didn’t need your fiancé for that.”
“True.” She paused, as if trying to decide whether to tell him the entire story of how she’d become a runaway bride and ended up here on the edge of the continent, in Shelter Bay, Oregon.
He waited. If there was one thing both the Marines and photography had taught him, it was patience.
Finally, she shook her head. “As I said earlier, it’s too lovely an evening to ruin it by talking about this,” she said. When she shrugged, the blouse slipped off her shoulder, revealing enticingly smooth skin. “I’ve no idea why I brought the subject up again.”
“Maybe because it still bugs you.”
“I told you, I don’t have any feelings for Ethan. What bugs me is making such a mistake.”
“We all make mistakes. At least yours wasn’t fatal.”
“Good point.”
The tide was beginning to come in. Foamy waves lapped closer and closer toward the towering cliff. Out at sea, the setting sun created a gilded path that looked as if you could walk right out over the curve of the earth.
Turning back to avoid running out of room, they dodged around the blackened remains of a beach bonfire.
They were walking side by side in companionable silence when Gabe decided that maybe he wasn’t in such a hurry to move on after all. It wasn’t as if he had a hard deadline. He’d made that clear when he’d agreed to sign on to the project.
“I’ll do it.”
“What?” He’d surprised her again. When she slipped climbing over a wet, mossy driftwood log, he reacted instinctively, catching her as she nearly fell into his arms.
Oh, damn. As his hands bracketed her hips, Gabe told himself that he was only steadying her until she caught her balance again.
“I said I’ll do it. The camp thing.”
Her smile was blinding, like a sunset breaking through the quilted gray sky. “Oh, thank you! I promise you won’t regret it.”
Part of him, the part that had been determined to get out of Dodge before he found himself getting involved with this woman, already did.
“If you plan to print out those photos, you’re going to need printers.”
“I have two at my office. Since I’m having another vet from Depoe Bay fill in for me during the afternoons when I’m at the camp, I could take one of them. And I can probably round up more if I ask around.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve two large-format ones I’ll bring with me.”
“That’s very thoughtful.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t dumped on the system like the kids you get at your camp. My parents didn’t die until my freshman year of college. But they weren’t the easiest people to live with, so I pretty much ended up raising myself. I probably could’ve ended up going down a wrong and very rocky road if someone hadn’t stuck a camera in my hand when I was fifteen. So I’m not going to turn down a chance to pay it forward.”
“Okay. Despite the fact that you weren’t exactly George Clooney suave when we first met at the wedding, I’m starting to like you, Gabriel St. James.”
“Well, that’s handy. Since I already like you back.” Unable to resist, he skimmed his fingertips down her cheek.
Insane, the little voice of conscience, of sanity, shouted out from the far reaches of his mind. It’d be sheer lunacy to get involved with this woman.
True. But as noisy gulls wheeled overhead and the sun sank silently into the water, Gabe ignored it, lowered his head, and touched his mouth to hers. And in that instant knew, in what small part of his brain was still operating, that he was sunk.
She was so incredibly soft. As soft as the mist surrounding them. And he was so frigging, painfully hard.
Even as he knew the smart thing, the logical thing, the safe thing, to do would be to pull away, he drew her even closer.
Her breath caught. Then she opened her lips, inviting him to deepen the kiss. Which he did.
Her cool lips warmed. Her body, which had momentarily tensed when he’d captured her mouth, slowly relaxed.
Heat, already sparked, crackled, zigzagging back and forth between them like summer lightning.
He wanted her. Naked. Beneath him. Surrounding him.
The mist had beaded up on that honey-hued shoulder, creating a wild need to bite it. He doubted she’d object, because unless every instinct Gabe possessed had suddenly gone on the blink, which wouldn’t be all that surprising since the intensity appeared to have short-circuited his brain, she wanted him, too.
As IEDs exploded inside him, Gabe knew that with the slightest effort—a stroke of the hand here, a touch of the lips where that pulse was beating beneath her jaw, some hot words whispered into her ear—he could be back at the motor home tangling the sheets with the lovely and luscious Dr. Charity Tiernan.
Just as he knew he shouldn’t do it.
He slowly, reluctantly lifted his head.
She blinked. Slowly. Once. Then again. Desire swirled like a tempest in her eyes.
Hell. Talk about the road to hell being paved with the best intentions. . . .
He pressed his hand against the small of her back, fitting her even more solidly against his aching erection. “Again.”
“Again,” she agreed in a low, throaty voice that had Gabe understanding why ancient sailors had believed in mermaids. And why they’d allowed themselves to be lured into treacherous, storm-tossed waters.
This time his mouth came down hard. And ruthless.
There was a rushing, like t
he sea, in his ears. As she rose up on her toes, straining against him, he was hit by a wave of emotion that battered against the rigid self-control he’d begun acquiring early in life to escape repeating his father’s mistakes. To keep his purpose.
Sweet.
Dr. Charity Tiernan was impossibly sweet. Kissing her was like a cool drink of water, or an icy beer after days spent crawling across scorching desert sands.
With heat curling deep in his belly, he slipped his hand beneath her blouse and felt her tremble, which sent a sense of power streaking through him. Although he didn’t know all that much about her, Gabe suspected that the intelligent, confident veterinarian was not a woman to tremble for just any man. Yet she was trembling for him.
Encouraged, and unable to resist, he shaped her breast with his palm and felt the sigh beneath his mouth.
Damn. It would have been easier if she’d resisted. Or even held back, just a little. But instead, she’d thrown herself into the kiss, giving without hesitation.
Although he may have remained resolutely celibate during his travels across America, Gabe had not forgotten how it felt to have his body burn in response to a woman. He was accustomed to a woman’s touch making his blood hot and he knew the ability of a woman’s mouth to fog his mind.
But this was different.
Never had he experienced such hunger from a mere kiss. It battered at him with an intensity that bordered terrifyingly on need.
Which was why, with a very real regret, and ignoring her faint murmured protest, he lifted his head and backed away.
Silence descended.
“Well.” She dropped her hands and took a deep breath that only drew his attention to those silky breasts he was still aching to lick. “That was . . . interesting.”
“If interesting is as high as you’re going to score it, I must have been doing it wrong.”
“No.” Another breath. “Actually, it was quite nice.” She surprised him by smiling at that at the same time she held up her hand. “Sorry. Delete nice. But I’m certainly not going to complain.”
“My ego thanks you.”
“I do have one question, which I usually wouldn’t ask at this point, but since it appears we’re going to be spending the next two weeks together . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she seemed to be thinking of how to phrase the question.
“Shoot.”
“Where exactly do we go from here?”
Talk about getting to the point. Although it would’ve been easier to lie, Gabe told the absolute truth. “I have no idea.” Then, because it was also fact, he said, “I know I want you. A lot.” And wasn’t that an understatement? He was perilously close to begging.
She tilted her head. If she was still even the slightest bit shaken by the kiss that had rocked his world, she didn’t show it. “You don’t sound very happy about that.”
“I’m not. I’ve always prided myself on my self-control.”
Another smile. That touched her eyes and, God help him, had him on the edge of groveling. “Me, too. Which is why I suspect I pretty much know what you’re feeling.”
“I can’t give you what you’re looking for.” He thought, since something was obviously happening between them, he ought to make that clear from the beginning.
“Oh?” As her warm gaze instantly frosted, he was surprised it hadn’t turned the drizzle to sleet. She folded her arms. “And what would you think that might be?”
Intrigued by the way what he’d originally thought was innate and unrelenting sunshine could turn icy, Gabe shrugged.
“Pretty much what most women want. A house, white picket fence, two-point-five kids, a guy who comes home at six Monday through Friday, and coaches the kids’ soccer games on Saturday.”
Able to view himself with the same brutal lens he turned on the subjects of his photos, Gabe knew that he was too emotionally bankrupt to give her any of those things.
“Wow. Are all Marines such a throwback to the cavemen, or are you merely an exception?”
The ice in her eyes had turned, in a blink of one of those siren eyes, to humor. Instead of being annoyed at his purposefully exaggerated chauvinism, she appeared to be laughing at him. The same way she’d been when he’d first shown up at her door.
The weird thing was it only made her more appealing. Which could mean that it had definitely been too long since he’d gotten laid.
“Are you saying you don’t want a family?”
“No. What I’m saying is that while I may not want to follow in my mother’s Louboutins, my vision of what a family entails has actually graduated beyond Father Knows Best. And even if I had a sudden urge to morph into a Stepford Wife, which, for the record, I don’t, just because I happen to lock lips with someone doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m looking for it to lead to a diamond ring and a walk down the aisle.”
“What happened to that moratorium?”
“The moratorium was on sex. What you and I just shared was merely a kiss.”
His skepticism must have shown on his face because she added, “Okay, it was a rock-the-world kiss that may have landed on my top ten kisses of all time if it’d continued for another few seconds. But surely you don’t marry every woman you kiss?”
“Of course not.”
“How about sex?”
“I’m a guy. Which means, in principle, I’m for it.”
“I meant, do you have sex with every woman you kiss?”
He threw the question back at her. “Talk about the third degree. What do you think?”
“A lot of women go for men in uniforms.”
And didn’t he know that all too well? “And you don’t?”
“We’re talking about you.”
Which was exactly what he was trying not to do. “No. I’m not saying I have sex with every damn woman I kiss.” Frustrated, he rubbed the bridge of his nose. If he’d screwed up a mission as badly as this, he wouldn’t have made it home to even be having this discussion. “I’m just trying to do the right thing here and warn you that this—whatever the hell it is—can’t go anywhere.”
“What makes you think I want it to? Am I attracted to you? Sure.” She shrugged. “That should be obvious even to someone as clueless about women as you appear to be. But just because we admittedly seem to have chemistry doesn’t mean that I’m suddenly smelling orange blossoms and looking for ever-afters. Or, for that matter, even looking to sleep with you, though I won’t deny that there was a moment there when I was tempted. So what’s the problem?”
The damn problem, which he wasn’t willing to share with her, was that the sexy veterinarian with the skin of silk terrified him.
“Are you always this honest?”
“I’m afraid so,” she admitted. I deplore lies. And having watched too many of my mother’s marriages fail due to lack of communication, I’m also a firm believer in getting things out into the open.
“Look,” she suggested, placing a hand on his arm when he didn’t immediately respond. “We’re going to be spending a lot of time together.” She paused. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about helping out at the camp?”
“No. Whatever else you might be thinking, I’m not the kind of guy to welsh on an agreement. The Marine code—honor, courage, commitment—isn’t just words. It is, as we say in the corps, what you are in the dark. If I give my word, I damn well keep it.”
She was studying him again. In that searching way of hers. Gabe felt her on the verge of saying something when an incoming wave suddenly rushed in, coming close to drenching them.
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said. The moment had passed and she was back to the friendly, focused vet who’d opened the door to her pretty sunshine yellow house and tilted his world on its axis.
“We’d better be getting back before we end up stranded. Do you want to meet out there at the camp?” she asked conversationally as they headed back down the damp sand. Or would you rather just stop by the house and we can drive out together? That way I can
introduce you around.
“The first half day is mostly a getting-acquainted, laid-back type of deal, so I won’t be taking the dogs out until we set up teams and figure out how many we need. You can bring yours over to the clinic. We have a doggy day care and he’d probably love playing with others.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll dump him on you and leave town?”
“Nope.”
“You’re that sure of yourself?”
“No.” Her laughing gaze turned serious again for a moment. “I’m that sure of you.”
Gabe had always been able to compartmentalize. Not only had it been imperative as a Marine on a mission; he’d developed the talent early, living with his parents. But the way she’d managed to continually switch gears not only impressed him; it also made him want to get to know her better. To start peeling away those layers he was discovering.
Of course, the safest and easiest thing would be to just keep as much distance from the woman as possible. But just as he’d never been a fan of safe, a lifetime of experience had taught Gabe not to trust easy.
“What time do you want me to show up?”
“The buses never arrive until noon. So why don’t we make it around one? That way I can make sure everything’s set at the clinic before we take off.”
“Works for me.”
“Super.”
Her smile lit up the foggy dusk. Then she laced her fingers with his in a casual, uncalculated gesture as they continued back toward where he’d left the Jeep.
A mistake, he warned himself yet again. As he breathed in the seductive scent of flowers wafting on the sea air, Gabe vowed to remember that.
25
It would have been so easy, Charity thought as they drove toward Shelter Bay while a silvery rain beaded the windshield. He wanted her. She wanted him. They were both adults, after all. And even if she was looking for a happily ever after, which truthfully she was, someday , Gabriel St. James would be the last person she’d consider.
How far, she wondered, would things have gone if he hadn’t had that surprising attack of conscience? It would have been so easy just to give in to instinct and take. And be taken.