by JoAnn Ross
“Never happen.” Dane’s grin was quick and reassuring. “You’re thinking of the Inuit cruiser style, which is designed for speed and minimum wind interference. You’ll be in double touring kayaks, which are extremely stable. Think of them as floating minivans.”
“My minivan is a lot bigger,” Laura argued.
“People,” Greg interjected sharply, “we’re wasting valuable time here.” He turned toward Dane. “As fascinating as all this might be,” he said, his sarcastic tone indicating otherwise, “we don’t have all day So, if you’re through with the instructions, Cutter, it’s time to get this show on the road.”
“It’s your show,” Dane said agreeably. But Amanda could see a simmering irritation in his dark eyes. “I’ll need a volunteer for a demonstration.” His seemingly casual gaze moved over the group before landing on Amanda. “Ms. Stockenberg,” he said, “how about helping me with a little show-and-tell?”
Every head on the beach had turned toward her. Knowing that refusal would garner unwanted interest, Amanda shrugged. “Fine.”
She took the orange life jacket Dane held out to her and put it on over her challenge T-shirt.
“Need any help with that?” he asked, reminding her of the time she’d pretended to need him to fasten the ties for her.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“Actually,” he murmured, for her ears only, “you’re a helluva lot better than fine, contessa.”
Her temper flared, predictably. Remembering where she was, Amanda tamped it down.
“You’ll need this.” He handed her a helmet not unlike the one she wore when rollerblading or biking. “There are a lot of rocks around the lighthouse.”
“I thought you said there’s no risk of capsizing,” she argued as she nevertheless put the white fiberglass helmet on.
“Good point. But it never hurts to be prepared.”
Good point, she echoed mentally as she watched him drag the kayak toward the water. If she’d been prepared to discover Dane still working here, she wouldn’t be suffering from these unsettling feelings.
Within minutes of being afloat, she began to remember the rhythm he’d so patiently taught her that long-ago summer. Holding the blade of the wooden paddle close to her chest, her hands a bit more than shoulders’ width apart, she plunged the blade in cleanly, close to the hull, pulling back with her lower hand, using torso rotation rather than arm strength, punching forward with her upper hand at the same time. When the blade of the paddle reached her hip, she snapped it out of the water and stroked on the other side.
Stab, pull, snap. Stab, pull, snap. Behind her, she could feel Dane moving in concert. Stab, pull, snap. “Not bad,” Dane said. “For someone who probably considers the rowing machine at the gym roughing it.”
Since his remark hit close to the truth, Amanda opted not to take offense. “I can’t believe it’s coming back so fast.” Stab, pull, snap. Left, right, left, right. Although the touring kayak was built for stability, not speed, they were skimming through the surf toward the lighthouse. “I suppose it’s like riding a bicycle.”
“Or kissing,” Dane suggested. Stab, pull, snap. The paddles continued to swish through the water. “We always did that well together, too. Ten years ago. And again, last night.”
His words stopped her cold. “I don’t want to talk about last night.” Unnerved, she forgot to pull the paddle out until it had drifted beyond her hip. When she did, she caused the boat to veer off course.
The brisk professional ad executive was back. Dane was tempted to flip the kayak just to teach her a lesson. And to cool himself off. Didn’t she know what she’d done to him last night? Didn’t she realize how all it had taken was the taste of those succulent lips and the feel of that soft body against his to cause time to go spinning backward and make him feel like a horny, sex-starved teenager again?
“Tough,” he deftly corrected, setting them straight again. Didn’t she know that showing up this morning in that soft cotton T-shirt and those shorts that made her legs look as if they went all the way up to her neck was like waving a red flag in front of a very frustrated bull?
When he felt his hand tighten in a death grip on the smooth wooden shaft, he flexed his fingers, restraining the urge to put them around her shoulders to shake her.
“Because I have no intention of spending the next five nights lying awake, thinking about might-have-beens.”
His tone was gruff, but Amanda was no longer an easily cowed fifteen-year-old girl. She began to shoot him a glare over her shoulder, but the lethal look in his eyes had her missing yet another stroke.
“You agreed to teach the kayaking just to get me alone with you, didn’t you?”
“I could see from that schedule you and Mr. Slick have devised for the week that having you to myself for any decent length of time was going to be difficult, if not impossible,” he agreed without displaying an iota of guilt about utilizing such subterfuge. “Fortunately, I’ve always prided myself on managing the impossible. Like resisting making love to a painfully desirable teenager.”
“Dane…” Words deserted her as something far more dangerous than anger rose in those dark eyes.
They were behind the lighthouse now, out of view of the challenge-team members waiting for them back on the beach.
Dane stopped stroking and laid his paddle across the kayak. “I’ve thought about you, Amanda. I’ve remembered how you felt in my arms, how you tasted, how my body would ache all night after I’d have to send you back to your room.”
“Don’t blame me. You’re the one who didn’t want to make love.”
“Wrong. What I wanted to do and what I knew I had to do were two entirely different things, contessa. But just because I was trying to do the honorable thing—not to mention staying out of jail—doesn’t mean that I haven’t imagined how things might have been different. If we’d met at another time.”
“It wouldn’t be the same.” It was what she’d been telling herself for years. “That summer was something apart, Dane. Something that belongs in its own time and its own place. It doesn’t even seem real anymore. And it certainly doesn’t fit in our real lives.”
She wasn’t saying anything Dane hadn’t told himself innumerable times. The problem was, he hadn’t bought the argument then. And he wasn’t buying it now.
“Are you saying you haven’t thought about me?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” It was the first and only lie she’d ever told him.
“Never?”
“Never.”
He considered that for a moment. “All right. Let’s fastforward to the present. Tell me you didn’t feel anything last night, and I’ll never mention it again.”
“I didn’t mean for that to…” She shook her head. “It just happened,” she said weakly.
“Tell me.”
She swallowed and looked away, pretendingsudden interest in a trio of dolphins riding the surf on the horizon. There was a tug-of-war going on inside her. Pulling her emotionally toward Dane, pushing her away. Pulling and pushing. As it had done all during the long and lonely night.
“Tell me you haven’t thought about how it could be,” he continued in a low, deep voice that crept beneath her skin and warmed her blood. “Tell me you haven’t imagined me touching you. You touching me. All over. Tell me that you don’t want me.”
Amanda knew that the easy thing, the safe thing, would be to assure him that the kiss they’d shared had been merely pleasant. But certainly nothing to lose sleep over. Unable to lie, she did the only thing she could think of. She hedged.
“You’re certainly not lacking in ego.” She tried a laugh that failed. Miserably.
“Tell me.” His soft, gently insistent tone, touched with a subtle trace of male arrogance, was, in its own way, more forceful than the loudest shout. Once again Amanda wondered why Dane was wasting such talents here, at a small inn in a small coastal town, miles from civilization.
“I can’t.” She closed he
r eyes and shook her head.
Dane let out a long relieved breath that Amanda, caught up in the grips of her own turmoiled emotions, did not hear. So he’d been right. She wanted him, even as she didn’t want to want him. He knew the feeling all too well.
“Have dinner with me tonight.”
Was there anyone in the world who could resist that deep velvet voice? She certainly couldn’t.
“I can’t.” Her voice shimmered with very real regret. “Greg and I have to go over today’s results at dinner. And try to come up with substitutes for the bike race, backpacking trip and rock climb, now that we’ve lost our adventure leader.”
“That’s no problem. I’ll do it.”
The part of her who was desperate for the challenge week to be a success wanted to jump at his offer. Another, even stronger part of her, the part she feared was still a little bit in love with Dane, could not put his job in jeopardy on her account.
“I can’t let you do that.”
“I told you, it’s no big deal.”
“You won’t think so if you lose your job.”
Dane shrugged. “Jobs are easy to come by.” His smile, while warm, was unthreatening. “Now, dinner with a beautiful woman, that’s well worth throwing caution to the wind for.
“I’m volunteering for purely selfish reasons, Amanda. If I help out with the rest of the challenge week, you won’t have to spend so much of your evenings with that cretin you’re working so hard to get promoted back East, so I can be with you.”
Her eyes widened. “How did you know I was trying to get Greg promoted to Manhattan?”
Amanda desperately hoped that he hadn’t overheard any of the team members discussing such a possibility. She hadn’t wanted anyone but Susan to know about her plan to win Greg Parsons’s job. The job, she reminded herself, that should have been hers.
He watched the fear leap into her eyes and wondered if she realized that the goal she was chasing was not only illusive, but not worth the struggle.
“Don’t worry. It was just a wild shot in the dark.” He wanted to touch her—not sexually, just a hand to her cheek, or her hair, to soothe her obviously jangled nerves. “It’s you city folks who are big on corporate intrigue. Out here in the boonies, we tend to spend more time trying to decide whether to take our naps before dinner or afterward.”
Amanda still hadn’t gotten a handle on Dane. But she knew he wasn’t the country bumpkin he was pretending to be.
“I’d love to have you take over leading the corporate challenge. Of course, the agency will insist on paying you.”
The figure she offered would pay for the new furnace the inn needed if he wanted to stay open year-round. Pride had Dane momentarily tempted to turn it down. He remembered just in time that the money would not come out of Amanda’s pocket, but from the corporate checkbook of a very profitable advertising agency.
“That sounds more than reasonable. It’s a deal.”
“Believe me, Dane, you’re saving my life.”
He watched the worry lines ease from her forehead and wished that all her problems could be so simple to solve. He also wondered how bad those headaches would become, and how many cases of antacids she’d have to chew her way through before she realized that advertising wasn’t real life.
“So, now that we’ve solved that problem, what about dinner?”
“I honestly can’t.”
She paused, running through a mental schedule. Now that they didn’t have to come up with new activities, she and Greg didn’t have all that much to cover. Besides, he’d undoubtedly want to get away early in order to sneak off to Kelli’s room. Which, she’d noticed, conveniently adjoined his.
“How about dessert? We have to get together,” he reminded, “so you can fill me in on the rest of the activities the leader you originally hired had planned for the week.”
Telling herself that she’d just have to keep things on a strictly business level, Amanda said, “With your mother in the kitchen, how can I turn down dessert?”
“Terrific.” His smile was quick and warmed her to the core. “I’ll meet you down by the boathouse.”
The boathouse had been one of their secret meeting places. Amanda knew that to be alone with Dane in a place that harbored so many romantic memories was both foolhardy and dangerous.
“Something wrong with the dining room?”
“It’s too public.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Ah, but I was under the impression that part of the corporate challenge agenda was to keep the teams off guard. So you can observe how they respond to unexpected trials.”
Amanda vaguely wondered how Dane knew so much about corporate game-playing strategy. “So?”
“So, if we go over the events you have planned in any of the public rooms, some of the team members might overhear us.”
He had, she admitted reluctantly, a good point.
“There’s always my room,” he suggested when she didn’t immediately answer.
“No,” she answered quickly. Too quickly, Dane thought with an inward smile. It was obvious that they were both thinking about the first time she’d shown up at his door.
“Okay, how about the tower room?”
Not on a bet. “The boathouse will be fine.”
“It’s a date.”
“It’s not a date.” Amanda felt it important to clarify that point up front. “It’s a business meeting.”
Dane shrugged. “Whatever.” Matters settled to his satisfaction, he resumed paddling.
As Amanda had suspected, other than complain about the outcome of the first challenge event, Greg was not inclined to linger over dinner. Forgoing appetizers, he got right to the point of their meeting as he bolted through the main course.
“Today was an unmitigated disaster.” His tone was thick with accusation.
“It wasn’t all that bad,” she murmured, not quite truthfully. The race hadn’t been as successful as she’d hoped.
Unsurprisingly, Julian and Marvin had not meshed. They never managed to get their stroking rhythm in sync, and although each continued to blame the other loudly, their kayak had gotten so out of control that it had rammed into the one piloted by Laura and Don at the far turn around the lighthouse. Fortunately, Dane was proved right about the stability of the craft. But although neither kayak overturned, once the four were back on the beach, the three men almost came to blows.
Needless to say, Greg’s subsequent cursing and shouting only caused the friction level to rise even higher. The only thing that had stopped the altercation from turning into a full-fledged brawl was Dane’s quiet intervention. Amanda had not been able to hear what he was saying, but his words, whatever they were, obviously did the trick. Although their boatmanship didn’t improve much during the second heat, the combatants behaved like kittens for the remainder of the afternoon.
“It was a disaster,” Greg repeated. He pushed his plate away and lit up one of the cigars he was never without. “I don’t have to tell you that your career is on the line here, Amanda.”
She refused to let him see how desperately she wanted the week to be successful. If he knew how important it was to her, he might try to sabotage her participation.
She held back a cough as she was engulfed in a cloud of noxious blue cigar smoke. “If I remember correctly, this entire scheme was your idea.”
“True.” He turned down a second cup of coffee from a hovering waitress, and declined dessert. “But my job’s not in jeopardy so long as I’m the one who eats a family holiday dinner with Ernst Janzen every Christmas.” He placed his napkin on the table and rose.
“Make it work, Amanda,” he warned, jabbing the lit cigar toward her. “Or you’ll be out on the street. And your assistant will be pounding the pavement, looking for a new job right along with you.”
She felt the blood literally drain from her face. It was just an idle threat. He couldn’t mean it, she assured herself. But she knew he did.
It was on
e thing to blow her plans for advancement. She was also willing to risk her own career. But to be suddenly responsible for Susan’s job, six months before her assistant’s planned wedding, was more pressure than Amanda needed.
“I expect tomorrow’s exercise to be a model of efficiency and collaboration,” he said. “Or you can call Susan and instruct her to start packing both your things into boxes.”
With that threat ringing in her ears, he turned on his heel and left the dining room.
The long day, preceded by a sleepless night, had left Amanda exhausted. Her dinner with Greg had left her depressed. And although she’d been secretly looking forward to being with alone with Dane, now that the time had arrived, Amanda realized she was more than a little nervous.
Butterflies—no, make that giant condors—were flapping their wings in her stomach and she’d second-guessed her agreement to meet with him at least a dozen times during dinner.
Admittedly stalling, she was lingering over dinner when Mary appeared beside the table, a small pink bakery box in her hand.
“How was your meal?”
Amanda smiled, grateful for the interruption that would keep her from having to decide whether or not to stand Dane up again. Which would be difficult, since they were scheduled to spend the remainder of the week working on the challenge together.
“Absolutely delicious.” The salmon pasta in white-wine sauce had practically melted in her mouth. “I’ll probably gain ten pounds before the week is over.”
“From what Dane tells me, with the week you have planned, you’ll undoubtedly work off any extra calories.” Mary held out the box. “I thought you and Dane might enjoy some carrot cake.”
For ten years Amanda had been searching for a carrot cake as rich and sweet as Mary Cutter’s. For ten years she’d been constantly disappointed.
“Make that twelve pounds,” she complained weakly, eyeing the box with culinary lust.
Mary’s look of satisfaction was a carbon copy of her son’s. Although not as direct as Dane, in her own way, Mary Cutter could be a velvet bulldozer. “As I said before, a few extra pounds couldn’t hurt, dear.”