Her Lone Protector

by Pam Crooks

His gaze dropped to the handkerchiefs, then back up at her. From his confusion, it was clear he hadn’t made the connection she did.

  “It wasn’t like that.” He shook his head for emphasis. “I swear it.”

  When had she been so furious? “Bastardo!”

  Taken aback, he reached for her with his free hand. “Gina, wait a minute. Let me explain.”

  But she evaded him. Grabbing the valise and his towel, she all but ran inside the dim confines of the bathhouse. She stood on a buffalo skin and took quick, deep breaths to swallow down the hurt.

  And the humiliating realization that she’d fallen in love with him.

  Why had she let herself? Because he gave her strength and hope in her worries about Mama? Offered protection from the Sokolovs? Was excitement in her boring, mundane existence?

  All those things, yes.

  Yet he belonged to someone else. This Mary Catherine. Why did it have to be his love for her that made Gina realize her love for him?

  What an idiota she’d been. Creed Sherman was born for more exciting things in his life than being with her in hers. And Mary Catherine was one of them.

  Gina forced down the humiliation with a surge of resolve. If he followed her into the bathhouse, if he tried to sway her with more of his smooth words or bone-melting kisses to redeem himself, she would throw him out with her bare hands. She refused to be a toy to entertain him any longer, and she kept a close eye on him through the tiny slits between the logs.

  “Gina, I want you to listen to me.”

  His shape moved, then transformed into a shadow in the doorway.

  “Stay out!” she said.

  The shadow froze. “The whole damn thing with Mary Catherine was a mistake.”

  “I do not want to hear it.” Knowing of his intentions was enough. His details didn’t matter.

  “I’m not in love with her. I probably never was. And I’m not going to marry her.”

  Furiously, she blinked the sting of tears from her eyes. Once, she was foolish and gullible. Not again. “Now you say so, eh?”

  “I can see why you thought what you did, and I’m willing to—”

  And now he’s drowning his sorrows in you….

  “I am not listening.” Carefully, she set the valise down, dropped the towel on top. “I am busy with my bath.”

  He swore. But the shadow still didn’t move.

  She waited.

  Then she waited a little more.

  It seemed he would stay outside, after all, and she dared to remove her hat. More than ever, she longed for the soothing waters, but now she needed them to help soak away the hurt, the humiliation, to convince herself she didn’t need Creed Sherman like she thought she did.

  And when she finished, when she dried herself and put on her last clean dress, she would leave him.

  She took off her shoes and hosiery. The shadow in the doorway moved away, but her gaze found him again through the cracks between the logs, pacing back and forth. A caged lion, restless and impatient.

  She worked the buttons at her throat down to her waist. Her Sunday dress and chemise drifted to her ankles, and warm, moist air touched her bare skin.

  She stepped from the buffalo hide into the luscious heat, just deep enough to sit in. Faint tendrils of steam hovered over the swirling green spring, very different than the clear blue of those found off the coasts of Sicily.

  But oh, this one was just as wonderful.

  Smooth stones formed the bowl of the pool, and she sank against the side. A final glance revealed the doorway was still empty, all the permission she needed to lean her head back and close her eyes. Calming and tranquil, the water lapped gently at her breasts. Her muscles uncoiled; her body became attuned to the gently carbonating sensation flowing over her skin.

  “You know, Gina,” Creed called in, “I could ask you the same thing about Sebastian.”

  His demand intruded into her serenity. So now he thought he would turn the tables on her?

  Sebastian had never bought her anything as extravagant as those beautiful handkerchiefs. There was no comparison between them, and Gina refused to discuss it.

  “Go away,” she called back.

  He cursed. Boot soles tread closer. Her eyes opened, and there he was, right in front of her.

  She yelped and crossed her arms over her breasts.

  “Woman, this is ridiculous,” he growled, pulling his shirt from his shoulders. “I’ll be damned if I’ll have a conversation with you through a wall. We’ve got a problem between us, and we’re going to talk it out.”

  The shirt dropped onto her dress. He balanced on one leg to tug off a boot.

  Her alarmed gaze shot upward.

  “You cannot come in the waters with me!” she gasped.

  The second boot landed next to the first. He unfastened his Levi’s. “The hell I can’t.”

  She darted a frantic glance to his towel and found it helplessly out of reach. She slid deeper into the spring, up to her neck. “Then I will get out. Turn away.”

  He stood on the rocks, a Roman god of perfection, as oblivious to his nakedness as she was aware of it, and dear, sweet Madonna, she couldn’t help but look at him. From the wide breadth of his shoulders down to his lean hips and well-hung masculinity.

  “You’re not going anywhere just yet, Gina.”

  His thigh bulged from the movement of stepping into the spring. The bulk of his body sloshed water against the rocks. He glided closer, and she drew her knees up. If she could slink any lower without drowning herself first, she would.

  “Are you in love with him?” he demanded.

  Her concentration scattered being with him like this, her legs only inches from his chest. Both of them naked. “Who?”

  “Sebastian. He’s crazy about you. Are you planning on making him your husband some day?”

  “It is not your business.”

  “I’m making it mine.”

  “He would make a fine one,” she said, goading him. “He is a good man, a hard worker. Very respected.”

  “But is he fine enough for you?” Creed insisted.

  It’d serve him right if she told him she was in love with Sebastian. Then maybe he’d feel some of the same humiliation she did from the kisses they’d shared while he belonged to another.

  But in truth, she couldn’t.

  “I will not marry until I have independence and the money I make from my dress shop.” Many times, she had dreamed it. Vowed it. “I have love for Sebastian, yes. But it is not the right kind to marry him.”

  “Good.” Creed nodded in approval. Some of the tension left him. “Very good.”

  “If I had, I would not have slept with you last night, Creed. I would not have betrayed him in such a way.”

  “And you think I betrayed Mary Catherine.”

  She arched a haughty brow. “You planned to marry her. You say this yourself.”

  “Yeah, well, my father married her instead.”

  Gina stilled. “What?”

  Creed sighed heavily. “Her family’s spread borders ours. Our mothers were best friends. Mary Catherine and I all but grew up together. Folks expected us to marry, so did we.”

  She remembered the work that meant so much to him. “But you leave to be a mercenary soldier first.”

  He nodded. “I wasn’t in a rush to get back to her, either, and she got tired of waiting. Ma died about then. I guess the Old Man and Mary Catherine needed each other to get through the loneliness.”

  “And now they are happy?”

  He grunted. “Happy enough to make a baby together.”

  “Oh.” She pressed wet fingers to her lips in surprise.

  Which melted into amusement.

  “You think that’s funny?” he growled.

  She shook her head. It’d be almost impossible for him to marry Mary Catherine now, even if he wanted to. “No. The little one will be theirs to enjoy, but it is hard for you to think of what they did in their bed, eh?”

  His
head angled, as if he fought the image of it. “It’s harder to think of him with another woman besides my mother. In bed or out.”

  “Did you expect him to mourn her forever?”

  His expression hardened. “Mary Catherine is young. He watched her grow up. She was practically a daughter to him.”

  “That is only how you remember her,” Gina admonished in a gentle voice. “You fight for America a long time. You do not see her grow into a woman. You do not know her desires and dreams. Or that she becomes lonely without you? Even before your mother dies?”

  “If he would’ve married anyone else but her,” Creed grated. “Maybe it’d be easier to accept.”

  “But he did not.”

  “No. But now, at his age, he’s starting all over. With a baby on the way. Her baby.”

  “They are man and wife, Creed,” she said firmly. “It is their privilege. You cannot deny them their right to be a new family with one another. Do you not want the same for yourself some day?”

  He said nothing, but the deep almond in his eyes darkened.

  “Be happy for them.” Now that she understood the place Mary Catherine held in his life, or at least used to, much of Gina’s hurt faded. She trailed her wet knuckles along his jaw in a tender caress, an easing of those things that pained him, deep inside. “I think they are sad you are not.”

  His lean fingers encircled her arm, and he pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist. His eyes closed, the burden he struggled with.

  “It will be fun to be a big brother again,” she added. “Your father’s baby is a gift he gives you. And Marcus, too.”

  For a long moment, Creed didn’t move. When he did, he drew her closer and nuzzled his jaw against her temple.

  “Seems I was in love with expectations,” he murmured. “Not a woman. It was a long time ago, besides. And you’re right. I’m a bastard. A selfish one.”

  The admission came low in her ear. She breathed in the scent of him, male and steamy and rousing. His warmth, his strength surrounded her, and how could Mary Catherine not have fallen in love with him when they were young and impressionable?

  Little wonder she waited for him, year after year, until her hopes died. But even Gina knew Creed wasn’t right for Mary Catherine, a woman who loved the Sherman ranch as much as the man who owned it. His father. So much that she accepted the bonds of marriage to live the rest of her life with him there.

  Not Creed.

  His destiny involved something no less honorable, but infinitely more dangerous and valiant. The ideals that he’d learned, that he instinctively embraced, ran strong within him.

  His need to protect Gina, his ability to save her from Nikolai’s revenge, was proof. Was it any wonder she’d fallen in love with him?

  Her head lowered to rest against the warm skin of his shoulder, strong and broad, like the man. He was capable of love. Or of hate. He could harden his heart to kill or fill it with fierce loyalty. Enough loyalty to encompass an entire nation.

  Or a single woman, like herself. Gina Briganti, a poor immigrant seamstress. A nobody.

  Humbled beyond words, she squeezed her lashes to hold back the sting of tears.

  He would always roam the world at his country’s beckoning, always restless with the need to fight and defend.

  And like Mary Catherine, Gina’s fragile love could never be.

  She couldn’t wait for years in wasted hope. Her immediate fight lay in finding her mother. Creed’s lay in something far different, that of finding the Sokolovs and ensuring his country’s security.

  She’d be a fool to expect anything more lasting than that.

  Suddenly, being with him now, this moment, took on new meaning. An urgency which flickered and flared into a burning need to take a part of him with her, to hold in her heart and cherish when he was gone.

  Slowly, she drew back. Time seemed to stand still, but in reality, it couldn’t. She speared her hands into his hair and pulled him down to take her kiss. She would leave him. They would leave each other, and she had little to give him to remember her in return.

  Except herself.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Creed tasted the fire in her.

  The unexpected desperation.

  She all but set him on fire, too. Her mouth opened wet and hungry under his, hot enough to stoke his own flames and get them going, but good.

  He’d never been one to retreat from an opportunity, and they didn’t come any sweeter than this. He wasn’t a saint, nor did he claim to be, and what man could deny himself a beautiful, willing woman?

  But something told him he needed enough control for the both of them, at least until he knew what was running through her mind, fueling her fire, and it took every shred of control he possessed to pull back.

  “Gina, honey,” he said, his voice husky. Ragged. He touched his forehead to hers, giving them both a little breathing room. “When a woman pushes a man too far, it makes it hard for him to stop. You’ve got me there, y’know that? Right on the brink.”

  Her arms curled to his neck. “Do you not feel what I feel? That soon everything will change for us?” She looked up at him, and the desperation was there, in the obsidian depths of her eyes. “We are together now, but only for a little while longer.”

  Creed knew about change all right. How fate could throw him in its path, force him into a whole new direction, whether he wanted to go there or not.

  Like when he’d walked into the Old Man’s house thinking he was going to marry Mary Catherine. He’d walked out, knowing he never would.

  Gina knew change, too. The flick of a match kind of change. Loss. Uncertainty.

  And yeah, they were here, together, in Ma’s favorite hot mineral spring. Naked and alone.

  His gaze dragged downward to Gina’s breasts. Water glistened on the rounded globes, and her nipples hardened beneath his lusty stare.

  His hand moved to cup one mound; his fingers flexed lazily over her supple flesh, and her breath hitched in response.

  “No way to know what’s going to happen in the time we have left,” he said. “Is there?”

  Her throat moved, and she shook her head. That uncertainty again. As if she was afraid of it.

  He understood then, this need which drove her. The reason for her passion. To revel in the glory while they could.

  “How could any man not want to make love to you?” he murmured.

  He kissed her again, long and thorough, stirring the fires until they raged hot in him again. With a throaty growl, he lifted his head and changed their positions, twisting to sit against the back of the pool, bringing her with him. The warm waters gave her a buoyancy to smoothly straddle him. He clasped her waist, easily lifted her up and toward him, his mouth already open to take her nipple in.

  She gripped his shoulders and hissed in a breath, revealing the newness of the sensation, the feel of a man suckling in pleasure at a female breast. His tongue laved across the rounded peak, over and around, again and again; he opened wider and used his teeth to nip and plunder.

  She moaned something in Italian; her head fell forward, and her fingers speared through his hair, holding him to her while he seduced the other. A spiraling heat spread, deep in his groin. A wanting to consume her, send her hurtling to the peaks with him. Her hips swiveled as if searching, as if craving, and he groaned with a pretty hefty craving of his own.

  “Touch me, Gina,” he whispered.

  He eased her lower into the water, and he took her lips in a greedy feast to take what she offered, his tongue swirling and thrusting, hers hot and wild, the passion in him escalating into roaring fire.

  Her hands slid across the breadth of his chest, his skin as slick as hers. Her leisurely exploring continued downward past his belly. His muscles tautened in anticipation as she explored lower yet.

  Her fingers found his blade and curled around him. He groaned and gloried in this power she held over him. She whispered his name, and he gripped her hips; she moved over him, finding her
place. He entered her, slowly at first, then deeper, and deeper still, until the hot, slick feel of her stole his breath. Filled his body. Liberated his soul.

  They found their rhythm. Sensation arced inside him while it built into a fevered pitch, thrust after mind-numbing thrust. Higher, higher, he climbed, until together, they exploded, triumphant, into a crescendo of ecstasy more dazzling than any he’d experienced before.

  Ever.

  She collapsed against him with a rocking of the waters, both of them deliciously spent. He heaved a satisfied breath into her hair and slid his arms around her back, holding her snug against him.

  Creed couldn’t move. For long minutes, Gina didn’t, either.

  “Next time, we’ll use a bed,” he said finally.

  Her mouth curved against his shoulder. “Next time?”

  “We’ll use it longer, too. The whole night if we want.”

  She sighed. Dreamy and lethargic. “After how you make me feel now, I do not think I can.”

  He chuckled and relished the weight of her against him. A strange sense of contentment curled through his chest. The feeling he was right where he needed to be.

  Man with woman.

  Gina.

  He didn’t know what to make of it, this feeling she aroused in him. He’d not felt it from a woman before, not even Mary Catherine at the peak of his infatuation.

  But Gina got him to thinking. And that got him to wanting. Long-term things, like the kind that came with a future. A succession of nights’ worth of a future.

  Had he fallen in love with her?

  His eyes opened. Sunlight glinted through the doorway, and reality crashed in.

  His mouth tightened. What was he doing? His thoughts came from the lust, that’s all. The musings of a sexually satisfied man. The Sokolovs wouldn’t get found while he was in here, loving her up. Nor would her mother, and that’d be most important of all in her mind.

  He had no right thinking like he was. And he sure as hell couldn’t fancy himself being in love. Not when he had a war to fight not far beyond these bathhouse walls.

  He needed all his willpower to get back to it.