Contract Bridegroom

by Sandra Field

  “Yes.” Just. And still trying to smother her with that confusing combination of over-protectiveness and emotional distance that had characterized their relations ever since her mother had died. For Ellis had retreated into a white-faced grief for his dead wife, grief that had been his companion for years, and that had shut Celia out as effectively as if he’d slammed a door in her face.

  “You don’t want to talk about him any more than I want to talk about Starspray.”

  With a wry grin, she said, “There’s always the weather. A ridge of high pressure is moving into the area. Visibility excellent, southerlies decreasing to ten knots.”

  “Back off—that’s what you’re saying.”

  “Hey, you’re quick.”

  Anger glinted in his steely eyes. “You sure know how to get under my skin, Celia Scott.”

  “I’d be willing to bet a night’s pay you’re used to women who bend over backwards to agree with every word you say.”

  “And who’d take money from me any chance they got.”

  Again there was real cynicism in his tone. She said lightly, “Kind of drastic that you just about had to drown yourself to meet someone who won’t let you go past $11.95 for a plate of scallops.”

  “You’re forgetting the Coke.”

  Celia laughed outright. “And the tip.” Her brow furrowed. “What’s the matter?”

  He said roughly, “You’re so goddammed beautiful when you laugh.”

  A blush scorched her cheeks, and for a moment that felt as long as an hour, Celia could think of absolutely nothing to say. Then she sputtered, “I’ll make you a deal, Jethro. You talk to me about Iceland and I’ll talk to you about Newfoundland. We’ll omit any mention of gratitude, fathers, lovers and money. Okay?”

  “Why aren’t you married?”

  “Because I don’t want to get married!…Oh thanks, Sally, that looks great, and you remembered the extra lemon,” Celia babbled.

  “Can I get you anything else?” Sally asked, eyeing Celia’s scarlet cheeks with interest.

  “That’s fine, thanks,” Jethro said, with a note in his voice that sent Sally scurrying back to the kitchen. Then he said flatly, “That sea captain—he’s your lover, right?”

  “Pedro? Oodles of charm waiting for the right heiress to come along. Pedro and I are friends, Jethro. Friends.”

  “Friendship’s impossible between a man and a woman.”

  “I disagree!”

  “Do you mean to say you never got into his bed?” he grated. “Or should I say his bunk?”

  “That’s precisely what I’m saying,” Celia announced and ferociously stabbed a scallop onto her fork.

  Jethro leaned back in his chair. “Don’t take it out on your dinner, Celia. Tell me to get lost.”

  “I’m going to finish eating first. I’ve got a twelve-hour shift ahead of me, or are you forgetting that?”

  “Friend,” he repeated in an unreadable voice.

  “That’s what I said. Why do you find it so hard to believe?”

  “Oh, that’s a long story and not one I’m about to tell. So why don’t we talk about Iceland instead? We were only there three days—just long enough for me to contract the flu. But while we were there, a friend of Dave’s drove us to the Hekla volcano.”

  As he kept talking, Celia ate another scallop, willing the color to fade from her cheeks. But Jethro was both entertaining and informed, and soon she forgot her self-consciousness, asking questions, telling him about her trip up the Labrador coast on the freight boat, and some of her adventures in scallop draggers offshore. Sally brought two pieces of chocolate cream pie, followed by coffee. Celia was leaning forward laughing at something Jethro had said, when he remarked, “I think that man wants to talk to you.”

  Celia glanced up; her smile vanished as if it had been wiped from her face. “Paul…” she faltered.

  Dr. Paul Fielding ran the clinic in Collings Cove. He was pleasant-faced, hard-working, and head over heels in love with her. She’d done nothing to encourage him, even while wondering why she didn’t—couldn’t—fall in love with him. He was everything Darryl wasn’t, he’d be unfailingly good to her, and he didn’t care about her money.

  But she’d never felt impelled into his bed. He’d have been willing; she was the one with the problem.

  “Paul,” she said, “this is Jethro Lathem. You remember I told you about the Mayday call last week? It was Jethro’s boat.”

  “How do you do?” Paul said, without any real warmth.

  “Why don’t you join us for coffee?” Jethro said smoothly.

  Sally was hovering in the background, as bright-eyed as if her favorite soap opera was playing. “Want a piece of pie to go with your coffee, doc?”

  “Just the coffee, Sally, thanks.” Paul switched his attention to Celia. “All set for the dinner on Saturday? Six-thirty, isn’t it?”

  He was, with no subtlety whatsoever, laying claim to her. Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with him? If she’d accepted the heirloom ring he’d kept pressing on her, it would have made her father happy. She’d be married. Settled in Collings Cove for the rest of her life, and what could be safer than that? “Six-thirty for seven,” she said, and started describing the clinic to Jethro. She didn’t want Jethro knowing it was a farewell dinner.

  Sally brought the coffee in record time. Her blond curls bobbing, she said, “Celia, you make sure you come back here before you head to Washington. I’ll see you get a piece of pie on the house, you betcha.”

  “You’re leaving here?” Jethro demanded.

  “Tonight’s her last shift,” Paul said glumly.

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Jethro said.

  “Why should I?” Celia responded in open defiance. She glanced at her watch. “Talking of shifts, I’ll have to go in five minutes.”

  Sally brought the bill, Jethro paid, and all three of them got up. As Celia walked past the cash register, Sally winked at her. “Have a good evening.”

  “I’m going to work,” Celia said repressively, stomped down the steps and marched toward her car, Paul hot on her heels. As she unlocked the door, he grabbed her in his arms, planted a clumsy kiss in the vicinity of her mouth and said loudly, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  With a brief nod at Jethro, he climbed into his battered Jeep and drove off, gravel spitting from his tires. Jethro said, “Why don’t you marry him and put him out of his misery? The man’s besotted with you.”

  “I know you must find this difficult to believe—most men do—but I don’t want to marry anyone!”

  “I could better that kiss.”

  The keys dropped from her hand. The evening sun gilded Jethro’s dark hair, the breadth of his shoulders in his leather jacket, his flat belly under his denim shirt. He was three or four inches taller than Paul; he possessed in spades what Paul lacked. Sex appeal. Charisma. Animal magnetism.

  And didn’t he know it!

  She picked up her keys, swung into her seat and slammed the door. “You’re not going to get the chance to try. Thanks for dinner. You can write me off the books—you don’t owe me a red cent.”

  He was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I’ll decide what I do or don’t owe you, Celia.”

  If only he wasn’t so devastatingly attractive. If only he didn’t make her blood thrum in her veins and all her recklessness leap to the fore. As she turned the key in the ignition, she found herself gazing at him as though she wanted to imprint him on her memory; because, of course, she wouldn’t be seeing him again. “Goodbye, Jethro,” she said, and suddenly gave him a wicked grin. “You’ve left Sally with enough gossip for the next week. Not bad for one scallop dinner.”

  “Then maybe I’ll have to eat there again.”

  She didn’t want him staying in Collings Cove. She wanted him gone. Out of her life. She said coolly, “Stay away from the steak, it’s as tough as your hide.”

  Unexpectedly he began to laugh. The way his eyes crinkled at the corners
made her want to salivate. Get me out of here, Celia thought wildly.

  She jammed the Toyota into reverse, swung round and drove away as fast as she could.

  Jethro watched Celia drive off. Then he went back to his motel, where he phoned the airport, discovering there was a flight out early in the morning. “I’ll call you in five minutes to confirm,” he said.

  Going straight to the top drawer of the bureau, he unfolded the weekly issue of the local paper that was stashed there. It had come out two days after Starspray had sunk. Quickly he ran his eyes down the column. The journalist had done her homework. The article referred to Jethro as an international financier, owner of a huge fleet of oil tankers and container ships. Filthy rich, in other words.

  Celia would have seen the paper. In a place this size, she couldn’t have avoided it. So, was her refusal to take any money from him genuine? Or merely a clever ploy?

  She was highly intelligent. It was one of the several reasons he was so attracted to her. Intelligent enough to play a double game? He was rich beyond anything Collings Cove could imagine. Was there a woman born who could turn her nose up at his money? More to the point, was Celia Scott that woman?

  Did he want to hang around long enough to find the answer?

  He’d never chased a woman in his life. Never had to. And anyone who was as prickly as Celia, he dropped quicker than a plugged nickel. Why bother with a female who wasn’t going to come across when the world was full of those who would?

  Anyway, he’d known a lot of women more classically beautiful than Celia. Certainly more sophisticated. She wasn’t his type.

  So why was he so intrigued by the way her flame-filled hair contrasted with the dark pools of her eyes? How temper painted a flush over her cheekbones and the hollows beneath them? The delicious curve of her mouth when she laughed?

  She laughed as though she meant it. Yet her dead mother still caused her sorrow.

  Dammit, man, will you forget Celia Scott? You’re going to go back to Manhattan tomorrow morning and start planning your next challenge. After all, isn’t your whole life organized around challenging yourself? You can’t do any more solo races in Starspray. But those peaks in the Andes in Peru, you could take an expedition down there in the next six months….

  Impatiently Jethro reached for the phone.

  A gray jay squawked from the trees. The breeze smelled pungently of resin and peat, and impetuously Celia pulled off the elastic holding her ponytail and shook out her hair for the wind to play with. A seagull swooped overhead, pristinely white. Free, she thought. Free.

  She’d broken her own record. Normally it took her an hour and a quarter to climb Gun Hill, the small mountain behind Collings Cove. But this afternoon she’d done it in sixty-five minutes.

  Because she didn’t want to think about Jethro, who must have left town this morning on the early flight? She sure didn’t want to think about the dream she’d had, in which they’d both been stark naked in a bunk on a scallop dragger.

  Or was her headlong rush up the hill to keep at bay the dilemma of her father, who wanted her married and settled and safe. What was she going to do about his request?

  What could she do?

  Nothing.

  Celia sighed. She was glad she was going back to Washington. Even if she couldn’t get married to please Ellis, she could at least spend these last few months with him. And who knows, maybe they’d be able to bridge the gap that had widened so drastically with the years. She’d like that. She’d like it very much—enough to put all her energy and imagination into bringing it about.

  She sat down on the wind-scoured rocks of the peak and took out an apple, chewing with keen pleasure, then tossing the core to a passing raven.

  Behind her she heard a scrape on the rocks.

  The hair rose on the back of her neck. She stood up. Picking each step so as not to make a sound, she crossed the rocks to the crest of the north face. Even though logic was telling her it was an unlikely place to find a wild animal, a rattle of falling stones came to her ears. A bear? And her face-to-face with it? Holding her breath, she peered over the edge.

  A man was climbing the last few yards of the northern escarpment, every movement smooth and economical. Jethro.

  He hadn’t left on the morning plane.

  Her first reaction was sheer joy, her second dismay. She had no desire to come face-to-face with him, either, she thought, stifling that treacherous—and meaningless—surge of pleasure. Swiftly, before he could look up, she retreated from the edge. But there was nowhere to hide, and even if she scuttled back down the trail, Jethro would see her: the treeline was well down the slope. Is that what she wanted? To be found in retreat, scurrying for shelter like a frightened rabbit? No way.

  So Celia stood her ground, and as Jethro’s crop of dark hair appeared over the crest of rock, she said cordially, “Good afternoon, Jethro.”

  His body froze to utter stillness, his fingernails digging into the rock. He hadn’t known she was here: that was obvious. He must have parked on the north side of Gun Hill, where he wouldn’t have seen her car.

  In a single lithe movement he hauled himself onto the peak: he wasn’t even breathing hard. Standing up, he rubbed the dirt from his fingers down the sides of his shorts. “Celia.”

  She had no idea what he was thinking; inscrutability had been invented with him in mind. Of its own accord, her gaze fell lower, to his long, strongly muscled legs. In her dream, they’d wrapped themselves around her thighs, molding her to his body. She blurted, “I came up here to be alone.”

  “So, oddly enough, did I.”

  “I’ll leave then, I have to go home and get ready for the movers, they’re coming first thing in the morning and—”

  Jethro took two steps toward her, put his arms around her and kissed her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FOR A FULL two seconds Celia stood rigid with shock, too startled to struggle. Then the firm pressure of Jethro’s lips, the warmth of his skin, the sureness with which he was coaxing her lips apart, flooded her with a wild, sweet pleasure that rippled through her limbs as inexorably as the tides rose on the beach. Sheer heaven, Celia thought, and kissed him back, her body pliant in his embrace, her hands sliding up his chest to circle his nape.

  He was the heat of the sun and the freedom of the wind: everything that was elemental. He was her dream, flowering into reality in her body.

  Then Jethro strained her toward him, pulling her the length of his frame, one hand burying itself in her hair, the other moving from her waist to clasp the swell of her hip.

  He was fully aroused. Desire was like a sunburst in her belly, aflame with hunger and golden with pleasure, to which she surrendered with a low moan of delight. As Jethro thrust with his tongue, the flames leapt higher, encompassing her in their implacable demands. She felt his hands sweep the curve of her spine, drawing her still closer, heard him mutter her name against her lips. Her nostrils filled with the male scent of a man she had expected never to see again.

  Briefly he loosened his hold, his hands reaching for the hem of her sweatshirt. Her breath caught in her throat as desire was suddenly eclipsed by terror. Darryl had done the same thing. Kissed her, then tried to fondle her breasts. But Darryl hadn’t listened when she’d asked him to stop.

  She pulled back with an inarticulate cry. “Don’t, Jethro! Please, don’t.”

  Her palms were flat against his chest; he was wearing a T-shirt that was like a second skin, through which she could feel the taut curve of his ribs and the heavy pounding of his heart. He said tersely, “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything! We shouldn’t be doing this, it’s crazy—”

  “Don’t try and tell me you didn’t like it—I know better.”

  “Maybe I did like it. But not any more.”

  Very deliberately he released her, stepping back, his face like a carved mask; the bruise on his jaw stood out like a brand. “Why not?”

  “We don’t even know each other, we—
”

  “I’d say we found out one hell of a lot about each other in that kiss.”

  “I’m leaving here on Sunday and we’ll never see each other again—what are you looking for, a quick lay?”

  His jaw tightened. “Why were you up here waiting for me, then?”

  “Waiting for you?” she squawked, almost inarticulate with rage. “You think I was waiting for you?”

  “You must have known I was coming up here—I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “Then you’d better expand your horizons. I most certainly didn’t know you were up here or I’d have stayed away. I told you, I wanted to be alone.”

  “Come off it—you saw my Nissan parked down below and you climbed the south slope because it’s quicker.”

  If she had any sense, she’d run straight back down the south slope: Jethro looked angry enough to be a greater threat than any bear. “I’ve got better things to do than chase men up mountains,” Celia blazed. “I said goodbye to you last night and I meant it. I don’t play games and I sure didn’t climb all the way up here just to have a fight with you.”

  “So what was wrong with that kiss, Celia? Because that’s all it was—a kiss. You think I was about to make love to you on top of a chunk of solid rock? I’m not that desperate.”

  “Aren’t you? You were giving a damn good imitation!”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you?” he sneered. “You’re beautiful and sexy and it’s been a long time since I’ve bedded anyone. A very long time. Get the picture?”

  “I sure do. You have a real way with compliments—that kiss was nothing to do with me, any female would have done.”

  “It had everything to do with you!”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Oh yeah.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Why did you get so frightened?”

  Her temper died. He’d just asked the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, the one that led her straight back to Darryl. But her heart was no longer trying to batter its way out of her ribcage and Jethro had, after all, let her go when she’d asked him to. Perhaps she owed him the truth. She said, choosing her words, “I had a bad experience with a man once, and I don’t want to repeat it.” From somewhere she dredged up a smile. “The way I backed off—don’t take it personally, in other words.”