"It... I know it sounds corny, but it... called to me. There's nothing like it. The river is... impartial. It doesn't hate you. If it hurts you, it's because you made a mistake. It's... clean, I guess, fighting something that doesn't have a motive. And if you're good enough, you can win."
She wondered if he realized how much he was betraying, how much of his battered soul he was revealing, in his words about the love he'd found. She couldn't have spoken, even
if she had the words.
"Gary Milhouse, the outfitter from up on the Tuolumne who ran the Kings River trip, was a friend of Rob's," Luke continued, "and he offered to teach me in exchange for me working on those trips for the city kids. So when the kids left for L.A., I went back with Gary to Whitewater West."
"Teach you?"
Luke nodded. "We started with class-one water, the easy stuff. I wanted to jump ahead, of course, but he made me take every baby step along the way. Took me three years to get to where I handled class-five to his satisfaction."
An adrenaline rush, Amelia thought suddenly, can be sparked in many ways. If you don't live on the edge of trouble anymore, there's always another way. Like a wild river. Another thought hit her; now she had the answer to the little gold paddle earring.
He paused before going on, and Amelia sensed he was getting to the crux of his tale. "And then?"
"I learned the Tuolumne, and that was it. I was hooked. I've been working for him ever since. He sent me to school to learn how to handle big rafts and people, and he paid for it. Then he gave me a job. He knew about my... history but said it didn't matter. Said Rob vouched for me, and so did the river."
What a... fanciful way of putting it, Amelia thought. But an unmistakable warmth filled her; while everyone here was convinced Luke was in jail somewhere, he'd in fact been working a steady job for years. And judging by his face, there was more. She waited in encouraging silence.
"And last year... I became a partner."
Her eyes widened. "A partner? In the business?" He shrugged. "I'd saved most of what I made. Not a lot of places to spend it up there, and besides, I just wanted to be on the river. Last year Gary wanted to expand, add more equipment, and he needed the cash. He owns his property free and clear and didn't want to mortgage it, so I offered to just loan it to him. He took it, but insisted that made me a partner."
He said it as if it were in name only, but Amelia sensed a deep feeling of pride beneath the offhand story. And rightfully so, she thought.
"So... now you help other kids like you were?"
"We do a weeklong trip every month during the summer, before the season ends in August, and one at spring break, for the more experienced kids. We teach them rafting, river safety, rescue skills, camping skills. Gary's wife, Diane, handles nature tours and interpretation. The trips are always full."
"You love it, don't you?"
He nodded. "It's the only job I can imagine having. I get to do what I love, and I get time to do some solo runs."
"Why do I get the feeling," she said wryly, "that your solo runs are a lot wilder than the ones you take other people out on?"
He grinned. "Because you're very perceptive?"
She laughed. He laughed with her. The pressure she'd been feeling since they'd left his mother's house slipped away.
"Your partner sounds like quite a guy."
He gave her a lopsided smile. "Gary likes to use me as his proof that no kid is too far gone."
Amelia felt a tightness in her chest that brought tears to her eyes. They'd all condemned him, certain he had nothing to offer the world, written him off as a lost cause. And how very, very wrong they all were. His mother most of all.
"He must be proud of you. And of himself, for seeing you weren't a lost cause."
"Yeah. I think he is."
She looked at him thoughtfully. "Did you ever think of... coming back? Just to show them how wrong they were?"
"The prodigal son bit? Yeah, it occurred to me. But I had a feeling they wouldn't believe me. And I'd have been right, obviously. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth it."
For a moment silence spun out. She might be feeling an easing of pressure, but Luke suddenly looked as if he might be feeling some of his own. He stood up, stepped away from her and walked around her office, as if looking at her posters, but she didn't think he was really seeing them. She was about to ask him what was wrong when he stopped and turned back to face her, and she saw that he was working up to saying something. And from his expression, she wasn't sure she wanted to hear it.
"Does it make a difference?" he asked finally, from safely near the door.
Not sure exactly what he meant, she lifted a brow. "A difference?"
"I'm not the nefarious, infamous scandal of Santiago Beach anymore. I'm not the guy who made the good girls whisper, the guy they used to use to get back at their parents. I'm just a guy who goes to work most days, gets a paycheck, pays taxes. Boring. Predictable."
When it dawned on her what he was getting at, her eyes welled up again. Boring? She knew in that moment that Jackie had been utterly, totally wrong.
"Not to me," she whispered.
He took a step toward her, then stopped. "You're sure? You don't think she was right?"
He didn't have to explain what "she" he meant. She got to her feet, leaving the safety of her chair and desk, and dosing the distance he'd put between them. She didn't stop until she was barely a foot away from him. She had to swallow tightly before she could speak.
"I wasn't drawn to you for your... bad boy reputation, Luke. I was drawn to you in spite of it."
She heard him let out a long breath, as if he'd been holding it. He was quiet for a moment, and she wasn't sure if she'd said the right thing or not. And then, huskily, he asked, "Just how drawn are you?"
She looked up at him, saw the flare of heat in his eyes. "Maybe drawn isn't the right word," she said, barely aware her own voice had taken on a husky note, as well.
"What is?"
"Attracted? Captivated? Fascinated?"
She thought she saw him shiver slightly. "Any of those will do. For now."
Amelia knew they were hovering on the edge of a turning point, that whatever she said now would determine which way they would go. He hadn't let her make this decision before, when she'd been rattled by their encounter with Snake and his troop and then Jim's suspicions. But he stood silently, waiting, and she knew he was going to let her make it now.
If she decided yes, she would probably pay for it in very painful coin; there was no way he would stay in this town, and she was settled here, without the daring nature it took to leave. Not to mention that it seemed to her that anyone who liked suicidal runs through raging rapids wasn't the type to settle down.
But if she said no...
She looked up at him, at the heat glowing in his eyes, at the tightness of his jaw as he waited. She realized with a little shock that while she still got a case of the shivers whenever she was close to him, it wasn't for at all the same reasons anymore.
Luke McGuire was many things. He was reckless, still a bit wild, and dangerously good-looking. But he was also kind, caring and, to certain extent, noble. What he wasn't, was a bad boy.
And if she said no, she would wonder for the rest of her life.
"Those are perfectly good words," she said, barely managing to get the words out, knowing what would happen next. "But I just thought of another that's better."
"What?" His eyes never left her face.
She lifted her hands and placed them on his chest. "Hungry," she whispered.
He definitely shivered then. He grabbed her upper arms in a grip that was just short of painful. He took a gulping breath, and his eyes closed. "You're sure?"
"I'm sure," she said.
And she was. It didn't matter that she'd only known him for a matter of days; it didn't matter that her parents would have been scandalized; it didn't matter what price she might pay later. Right now, in this moment, looking up
at the man who had moved her as no other in her life ever had, the only person she had to answer to was herself.
And her answer was yes.
It must have shown in her face, because when he opened his eyes again and looked at her, the heat in his eyes flared higher, and a low, guttural sound escaped him.
"No woman," he said hoarsely, "has ever looked at me like that before."
She didn't try for sophistication, or to sound blase; she knew she couldn't carry it off. "It's the way I feel," she said simply.
"I can't find words for how I feel," he said, as if explaining. Then he pulled her into his arms and took her mouth, and she knew what he had meant.
She slipped her arms up around his neck, knowing she was going to need his strength; when he kissed her, hers seemed to vanish.
She trembled as he deepened the kiss, tasting, probing, urging. And she responded, kissing him back, wanting more of that hot, exotic male taste of him. And more, and more.
Her hands slid upward, into his hair. It slipped like warm, dark silk over her fingers, and she realized suddenly why one of the things all the uptight gossips said was that he needed a haircut; it was luxuriantly, dangerously sexy.
Luke moved his hands down her back, slowly, caressingly, to her hips. He pulled her against him, and she nearly gasped aloud at the feel of him, of ready male flesh pressing against her. Tentatively she moved, twisting, stroking him with her body, just to see what would happen.
He groaned, a low sound that she felt rumbling up in his chest before she heard it. He jerked slightly, pushing himself harder against her in response.
She wasn't sure how she ended up backed against her desk, but she was there. And Luke was leaning over her, pressing her backward, his mouth never leaving her, his hands moving over her as if he couldn't get enough, as if he wanted to touch her everywhere at once. The idea of being the one who made him feel that way thrilled her, and a delicious shudder rippled through her. He seemed to feel it, because he lifted his head, looking at her.
She felt bereft, already missing the sultry heat of his mouth. That made her think of that night on the beach and his mouth at her breast, his tongue on her nipple, and she almost cried out at the memory, wishing he would do it again, right here, right now....
"How much do you trust that Closed sign?" he asked, his voice thick.
It took her a moment to fight through the golden haze and realize what he meant. When she realized why he was asking, that he apparently had every intention of fulfilling the wish she'd just silently made, her breath left her in a rush. It was as if he'd read her mind.
Right here, right now...
Right here, on her office desk. Right now, in the middle of the day.
She shuddered in his arms, some wild part of her that she'd never even known existed screaming out yes. She felt the heat pooling low and deep as her body readied for him, readied for the consummation of the shocking, overwhelming urge to let Luke McGuire make love to her this instant. To let him peel away her clothes until she was naked in this place that, until now, had only meant her world of books to her. To strip him naked, as well, so that she could look her fill under the bright office lights that would let her see every beautiful male inch of him.
An image of them together flashed through her mind, more erotic than any of the imaginings she'd become prey to since he'd arrived.
"Damn," Luke muttered harshly. "I want to know what you were just thinking, but you've got me so hot already, I'm afraid if you tell me, I'll go off right now."
Amelia moaned. Luke pushed her back to lie on the desk, and she didn't even notice the edge of her calendar digging into her back. Not when Luke stepped between her knees and began to tug at the buttons of her blouse. In moments he had bared her breasts, and Amelia could feel the cool breath of the air-conditioning over her skin. She thought of how his mouth would feel, hot and wet and delicious compared to that coolness. She nearly cried out under the force of her body's response simply to the image in her mind.
For a moment that seemed like an eternity Luke didn't move. Amelia couldn't stop herself from arching upward, offering her breasts, begging without words.
Luke move swiftly then, one hand on her left breast, his fingers rolling and twisting the nipple, while his head darted to the other, taking the nipple and suckling it deep and hard while his tongue teased the tip.
She did cry out then, and her body rippled under the wave of rich, hot sensation.
The phone rang.
Luke swore. Amelia whimpered.
It rang again.
Luke straightened up. Amelia whimpered.
The third ring. She had it set on five during the day, so she could get to it from the storage room.
Or, in this case, from where she was spread half-naked across her desk, wishing Luke would just ignore the ringing and go back to what he'd been doing.
With a whimper she smothered this time, Amelia sat up.
She answered the phone.
"Ms. Blair? This is Elizabeth Adams, at Santiago Beach Bank."
Amelia tried to focus. She vaguely remembered the woman, one of the supervisors at her branch. "Yes?''
"Did you write a check today for the amount of five hundred dollars?"
"What?" she asked, tugging her blouse closed while still fighting the glorious fog Luke had put her in. "No. No, I didn't."
"Are you missing any checks?"
That got her attention. "From my business account? I don't think so, but let me look."
She sat down the phone, slid to her feet and walked around the desk, feeling herself flush as she realized how close she'd come to having what she could only call wild sex atop her desk blotter.
She shook her head sharply to clear the last of the haze. She unlocked her desk and pulled out the large, notebook-style business checkbook. Luke was watching, still clearly aroused, still breathing hard and fast. She nearly forgot the phone as she stood there staring at him. Then she flipped open the checkbook.
She sank down in her office chair.
"Trouble?" Luke asked, his voice still showing a trace of the earlier sexy huskiness.
"Five hundred dollars worth, it seems," she said, reaching for the phone. "Mrs. Adams? Yes, I seem to be missing a single check."
"Number thirty-five oh-two?"
"Yes. I gather someone used it?"
She fought the panic rising in her, wondering what else might be missing, and how this had happened in the first place. She closed her eyes, thinking.
"Tried to, this morning, at our branch at Pacific Center." Another pause. Amelia concentrated. And then it struck her. The day Snake and his cohorts had come in, the day she'd showed him his knife in the book... she had been paying bills that morning. She knew she had shoved the checkbook under the counter, but one of them had been right there; if he'd leaned far enough, he could have seen it.
"Did you hire some new help?" the woman from me bank asked.
"No, I haven't. Is that what they said?"
"Yes. Our teller caught it, luckily. He usually works here, but he was filling in at the other branch. The signature didn't look right to him, and the person was very nervous, so he asked a couple of questions, enough to scare him off."
"Bless him," Amelia said as she finished rebuttoning her blouse. "I hope he gets a raise."
Elizabeth chuckled. "I'll see what I can do."
"Do you know who it was?"
"A young man, Eric said. Not eighteen, he didn't think."
Amelia sighed. "That explains it. I had a group of rather... unfriendly kids in here a couple of days ago."
"We have his photo on our branch security video. Could you come down and take a look, make an identification for the police report?''
"I... yes, I could. When?"
"As soon as possible. We want to turn it and the check over to the police by end of business."
"All right."
She hung up. She was reeling a bit; the change from hot, eager passion to
the chill of the phone call was dizzying. Then Luke was there, his hands on her shoulders, steadying her.
"What's wrong?"
She explained what had happened, and her suspicions that it was one of Snake's cohorts.
"They're stupider than I thought," Luke muttered.
"I have to go look at the security film."
"Now?"
She nodded mutely. He was upset, she thought. She was upset. But he said nothing except, "Let's go."
They were ready for her, and when she sat in the back office in front of a television screen, she was thinking how to explain that she had no idea who any of the boys really were. She could identify Snake, of course, and maybe most of the others, but she didn't know their real names. She didn't think Luke did, either; they'd let him in because she'd told them he knew the boys she suspected, although he hadn't been a witness to the incident where they took the check.
The screen flickered, and she turned her attention to it. They'd cued it up right to where the boy was at the teller window with the stolen check.
It was David.
Chapter 14
Luke didn't know which made him feel the sickest, looking at his brother's unmistakable image on the videotape or at Amelia's face as she watched it.
She looked stunned.
He was furious.
Maybe David did feel let down, maybe he felt betrayed. But that was no reason for him to turn around and in turn betray the only person in Santiago Beach who had genuinely wanted to help him.
"You look surprised," Mrs. Adams said. "It's not who you expected?''
Amelia swallowed. She looked at Luke. He waited. He wouldn't blame her if she turned David in; he was halfway tempted to do it himself. She had every right; the boy had abused her trust and her friendship, and deserved whatever he got.
My, what a holier-than-thou hypocrite you've become, he said wryly to himself. That had been said more than once about him, he was sure.
But he was still angry. David had hurt Amelia, and he didn't like that. At all. His reaction was so fierce it startled him, but before he had time to analyze that, Amelia was answering the bank supervisor.
The Reture of Luke McGuire Page 16