by Robyn Neeley
“Kalin.”
He caught his fly and turned to look at her.
“I felt a drop of rain.”
“It won’t rain. I forbid it.”
But the weather ignored him. The sky grew steadily more overcast, and the drops began to fall in closer succession, until even Kalin had to admit that it was raining.
“I hate to leave when you’re doing so well.” He unhooked yet another fish for her, a perch this time.
“I’m not doing well.” Casey huddled in her car coat and wondered how soon she’d start to feel the wetness seeping through. “The fish are just hungry for crickets, that’s all.”
Kalin grinned at the miserable picture she presented. “I can see you’re a fair-weather fisherman. We’d better head for the car. It looks like it’s building for a real downpour.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
By the time he headed the boat toward the car, the rain fell in earnest. When she helped reload the boat on its trailer, Casey felt the rain soaking her shoulders. She was nicely wet by the time Kalin drove back down the isolated, dirt road.
“Are you all right?” Kalin glanced at her with concern.
The thorough wetting didn’t seem to bother him at all, Casey noted with resentment. “I’m dreaming about a hot shower and a hot cup of coffee.”
He grinned. “Good. So am I. What’s the fun of a fishing trip without a little misery?”
Casey rolled her eyes. He didn’t want to hear her comment on that remark.
By the time they pulled up in the driveway at her house, she shivered in earnest. Kalin had turned the heater up full blast.
“Inside with you,” he said. “Get into the shower right away. I’m not having you come down with pneumonia.”
Casey said something uncomplimentary about fishing as a form of relaxation and climbed stiffly down from the Cherokee while Kalin took her keys and unlocked the door.
She went into the bathroom, stripped off her damp clothing, and stood beneath the hot shower until she felt warm again. She wrapped herself in a thick towel and went to her bedroom — after first ascertaining that Kalin was busy in the kitchen — and dried her hair and put on her warmest robe.
“You’re still cold.” Kalin appeared in the doorway to her room and set a cup of hot coffee down on her bedside table. Then he took her in his arms.
Casey let him hold her and wondered what was coming next. His intense outdoorsman’s gaze had taken her in from head to foot, and he didn’t seem pleased with what he saw.
He sat her down on her bed, handed her the cup of coffee, and stood over her while she sipped it.
“You don’t have a bit of natural resistance left,” he said sternly. “Get into bed.”
Casey climbed into bed, robe and all, surprised at her own lack of interest in arguing about all the things she had to do. Fishing, it seemed, really did relax a person in the end.
Kalin had shucked off his down jacket, and his flannel shirt beneath it was dry as a bone. His jeans were damp and he removed them without embarrassment and climbed into bed beside her.
She shivered when he drew her into his arms and tried to warm her with his own body.
“I don’t think you have any extra fat on you anymore.” He curled around her.
“I hope not. A fat cook is bad for business these days.”
“I can see you have a whole new image brewing for Cap’n Bob’s. I’ll have to take my business to Dairy Queen.”
“Oh, no you won’t. Wait until you taste the new Cap’n Bob’s cheesecake. It will make the foodie columns all over Texas, I promise you.”
Kalin rubbed her arms vigorously. “I can’t wait.”
Casey began to feel warm and tingly as she sank beneath the spell of Kalin’s warmth and his distinctive woodsy scent. “I have plans. Deep Dark Secret.”
“Deep dark secret?” he repeated. “Is it the plans that are secret, or do you have some other secret you’re keeping from me? I wish you wouldn’t do that to me again. It was a very unpleasant shock to learn you were the daughter of a movie legend.”
“I really don’t know for sure who my father is.” She yawned. “Deep Dark Secret is the new chocolate cheesecake that’s going to make Cap’n Bob’s famous all over the state of Texas.”
He turned her to face him and pushed her hair back from her face. “I’ll be your chief taste tester.” He kissed her nose.
Kalin’s attitude of old family friend had begun to grate on her, although she would have died rather than indicate it.
If Kalin could be friendly, so could she. “I’ll start working on it next week.”
Kalin chuckled. “Are you feeling warmer?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Yes, thank you,” he repeated and laughed. The laugh sounded strangled. “You’re enough to make a man swear off fishing.”
“I wish.”
“You might as well learn to love it.”
“What for? When I get back to New York, fishing will be the farthest thing from my mind.”
Kalin seemed to stiffen, although she couldn’t be sure. He shifted so that her head lay on his shoulder.
“Are you going back to New York? After having all your things shipped home?” He hesitated, then added, “Your grandmother isn’t likely to recover fully, you know.”
He knew she had closed out her New York apartment. So did everyone else in town, she felt sure. The delivery people had probably talked.
“I know,” Casey said. “She might go back with me.”
That was a laugh. Alice Gray would no more leave Winnie for New York than open a house of ill-repute.
Kalin lay in silence a moment. He moved, and the next thing Casey knew, her head fell off his shoulder and he was leaning over her, staring down at her. His eyes, in the semi-darkness, were intensely blue. He appeared to arrive at a decision — and then took her face between his hands and kissed her.
He almost bruised her in his eagerness. He used his own tongue to open her mouth for his penetration then he filled her mouth as if he wanted to fill every bit of her at once.
Surprised, Casey automatically put her arms around his neck. Instantly he gentled, releasing some of the grinding pressure. Seconds later he lifted his head to look at her.
She stared back, unsure how to respond.
Kalin smiled. “I just want to kiss you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Recalling a time when she welcomed the roughest kisses she could get from Kalin, she closed her eyes. Now she had better fear her own response more than any roughness from him.
She could handle it, she told herself. Maybe she should not have put her arms around his neck.
Kalin leaned down and kissed her, coaxing her into parting her lips with the tender pressure of his own. She left her arms around his neck and let herself respond. This, she was prepared for, and she loved it.
He smiled at her. “I love to kiss you. Your lips are better than any cheesecake I ever tasted.”
She smiled back. “This is high praise indeed.”
“You have no idea.” He kissed her eyelids. “Your eyes are so beautiful. I love to see them smiling at me.” He touched his mouth to her temple. “I love to smell your hair. It reminds me of rich brocades. My grandmother had a closet of old clothes that smelled like your hair.”
“Mothballs?” Casey asked.
Kalin chuckled. “Brocade. She put spices and flower petals in the closet with them. It was a wonderful smell.” He ran his fingers into her thick chestnut hair and massaged her scalp gently. “Your hair even feels like those brocades.”
Casey quivered. He was seducing her with words as well as with his touch, and either one alone had once been enough to make her beg him to love her.
She would never beg him again.
Kalin stroked his long fingers along her neck then followed them with his lips. Casey tilted her chin up. Air entered and left her lungs on a shivering sigh.
He kissed the tender area beneath her earlobe and his warm, rough tongue touched her skin. Her fingers dug into his shoulders before she forced them to release him. If she didn’t get herself under better control, she would give herself away.
Kalin appeared to be enjoying himself. After all, they were in a bed together with no prospect of interruption — a situation they had only dreamed of in their younger days — and she offered no resistance to his lovemaking.
If she wasn’t actively encouraging it the way she once had, maybe that was an improvement in his eyes. She even understood how she might have embarrassed him in those days, the way she moaned and used her movements to entice him.
He turned her head to the side to investigate her opposite ear, and shivers of pleasure raised goose bumps down that entire side of her body. Casey drew in a ragged breath and practiced her deep-breathing exercise.
She needed to focus her mind on something. Seeking desperately, she settled at last on the texture of Kalin’s skin right there before her eyes. She studied it closely.
He lowered the zipper of her robe a few inches and transferred his attention to the hollow of her throat.
Once upon a time, Casey would have responded to this by shamelessly throwing her head back and lowering the zipper herself another twelve inches. Because she focused on his forehead, which was all she could see of his face at the moment, she was able to remain perfectly still.
Kalin lowered the zipper himself.
She caught her breath when she felt his warm lips at the pulse of her throat. She almost lost interest in investigating the evenness of his tan but caught herself swiftly when his intense gaze focused on her.
“Casey?”
“Yes?” She hoped she didn’t sound as choked as she felt.
“What are you thinking?”
Wariness descended on her. “I was admiring your tan.”
“Is that so? Is it dark enough for you?”
“It’s just right. Perfect.”
He kissed her throat. “Even enough for you?”
“Couldn’t be better.”
He kissed her lips, paying particular attention to the tender corners of her mouth. “Does it, then, meet with your approval?”
“Yes.” The words came out on a gasp, because his hands brushed lightly across her breasts on their way down to clasp her waist.
“Good.” He kissed her in earnest, using his tongue to probe deeply inside her mouth, and brushed his hands lightly across her breasts once more as he moved to massage her neck.
Casey tried not to lift toward his hands, but it was difficult, more difficult than forcing her arms to rest lightly around his neck as he kissed her. She tightened her muscles to restrain the shudder that threatened to give her away.
Kalin kept on kissing her. It was driving her crazy to allow him free access to her body without encouraging him to explore her further, but she managed it. She had never been one to lie passively while he kissed and caressed her, but if that was what he preferred, she could manage. Maybe.
He kissed his way down her neck and progressed into the valley between her breasts. His warm tongue covered the area with damp heat, then she felt the cool air bathe her skin as he lowered the zipper all the way to her waist.
This was the moment when she used to moan his name and dig her fingernails into his shoulders in her eagerness to feel his mouth on her. She practiced her deep breathing and waited, trying not to shiver with anticipation.
His hands touched her first, and she opened her eyes to find his enraptured gaze roving the area he had exposed. He used the pads of his thumbs to tease her nipples gently, and she bit back her gasp and tried to disguise the arching of her back.
The glittering, blue eyes met hers. “Would you rather I not do this?”
She stared at him, unable to speak. If he stopped, surely she would die.
He smiled at her and lowered his mouth to the tip of one breast, and she caught her breath on a gasp.
The intense pleasure burst through her, roaring through her body and settling between her legs. Her control came perilously close to shattering as he teased the tip into hardness then transferred his attentions to the other. She shook, unable to stop the tremors, and flexed her fingers.
Kalin whispered something against her skin and lifted his head to kiss her lips as if he was deliberately trying to coax a response from her. She held on to her control, shuddering.
Inside, she flamed with the passion he aroused in her by simply existing. She had never bothered to hide or control it before, and she wondered if the effort might kill her.
Before, Kalin had behaved as if her passion drove his own. She thought she knew better now, but the knowledge did not bank the fires raging within her.
Kalin stroked his thumbs over her sensitized nipples and thrust his tongue fiercely into the recesses of her mouth.
And Casey’s control broke. She moaned and writhed and arched, digging her nails into his shoulders in attempt to bring him closer still.
Kalin groaned and jerked her zipper back up so swiftly, it jammed. He turned her quickly on her side so that she faced away from him and wrapped her in his arms.
She was so caught up in her own anguish that she barely noticed that he sounded as if he’d just run a marathon, and that the arms that held her so tightly trembled.
She closed her eyes and lay still, wondering bitterly when she would ever learn.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop,” Kalin said.
She said nothing. If she opened her mouth, she’d scream.
He kissed the sensitive area behind her ear. “I thought I’d have more control, but it’s obvious I don’t. When you finally responded, I almost went totally crazy.”
Casey cleared her throat. “Is something wrong with that?”
“Yes, I think so,” he said. “I can’t help wanting to touch you and kiss you. You’re the most powerful temptation known to man, to this man at least.”
She turned her head to look at him then tried to sit up. He refused to let her.
“It’s obvious enough that I hurt you a lot worse than I thought five years ago. You’re still not over it. I can’t make love to you until things are right between us.”
“Things were right between us five years ago,” she reminded him in dull tones. “You wouldn’t make love to me then.”
“You were underage. With Uncle Jack and your grandfather both telling me the awful consequences of making love to a minor, it’s a wonder I was able to kiss you without having nightmares.”
“Maybe things will never be right for us.”
“That,” Kalin said, “is entirely up to you.”
Chapter 8
Casey drove to the hospital that evening still berating herself over her loss of control.
Kalin, after lying with her a few more minutes, had wasted no time in putting his damp jeans back on and leaving. He’d claimed he had to return his uncle’s boat.
Casey watched him leave, well aware that Dr. Jack Johnson could not have cared less about what hour his boat was returned.
Now that Kalin knew she could still behave like her old self, he should be satisfied. He could go back to Houston secure in the knowledge he had done no permanent damage to his old girlfriend.
Was she easy, or what? A few kisses and touches, and five years’ worth of resolve vanished inside of less than ten minutes.
When she walked into her grandmother’s hospital room that evening, she had somehow schooled her face into its usual expression of bland tranquility.
“You look better already,” Alice Gray observe
d from her propped-up position on the hospital bed. “Jack Johnson should have been a psychiatrist. Then he could charge for those fishing trips of his.”
Casey smiled and unpacked the box she’d brought. “Didn’t I tell you? Dr. Johnson couldn’t take me after all. He sent Kalin.”
“Jack’s nephew?” Alice’s old eyes surveyed Casey shrewdly. “You may have mentioned it. Although I doubt it.”
“What do you mean, Granny?” Casey leaned down to kiss her grandmother’s cheek. “Why should I hide it?”
“You tell me,” Alice said. “Why aren’t you with him right now? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“I’d rather be with you tonight, Granny. You’re my family. Kalin is with his own family.”
“Hummph,” Alice said.
Casey thought of Kalin and his relatives in Dr. Johnson’s big living room, sitting around the Christmas tree listening to the doctor read the Christmas story as recorded by St. Luke from his Bible.
Alice frowned at her. “I hope you don’t mean to live with him without the benefit of marriage, young lady. I brought you up better than that.”
“Kalin told me years ago he didn’t believe in living together.” Casey set out one of Alice’s own china plates and arranged a small, tender steak on it. “So that’s the least of your worries.”
“Don’t you believe it, Casey Gray. Young men nowadays don’t know the meaning of honor and fidelity.”
“You forget, Granny. Kalin grew up under Dr. Johnson’s tutelage, and he does know. I’ll tell you a secret.” She smiled and winked as she placed the prettily arranged tray over Alice’s lap. “It wasn’t my idea to remain chaste and untouched five years ago. I tried everything I knew to get Kalin to make love to me, but he kept holding out until I was older.”
“Humph,” Alice said again, an unwilling smile tugging the unaffected corner of her mouth. “Now that you’re older, you’d better find out why he’s holding out now, hadn’t you?”
Casey laughed. “I guess I had. Eat your dinner so we can have Christmas Eve together.”