How was it that he could make her feel like a gauche schoolgirl, towering over her the way he did?
She straightened away from the wall and thrust back her shoulders. That was a wrong move, she could see it by the shift in his gaze, noting where it now rested. She felt her body tighten painfully in response to that look. She tried to ignore it.
"I want her out of here and I want this cabin fumigated. She has no place here."
His gaze turned expressionless as he studied her. Only his eyes seemed alive, the weathered cheeks and chiseled, square jaw, the set to his sculpted lips, gave her no indication of what he was thinking.
"So you'd kick her out without a penny, is that it?"
She nodded firmly. "You've got that right. Her and her two new playmates. Right pronto." She stared back at him, her chin jutting. "Why didn't you kick her out before this, Kolt?" She couldn't help but run her gaze over the hard body she remembered so well. "Or do you share her bed as well? Maybe you were just coming by to make it a foursome."
She yelped when he struck out faster than a rattler and grabbed her arm, yanking her up against his body. Her breath whooshed from her lungs, leaving her breathless.
"Is that the kind of man you think I am, Heidi? You think I'm some stud who beds anything on two legs? Is that why you left?"
He caught her off guard. Kolt's violent reaction was not what she'd expected. She'd thought she'd have more time to deal with her emotions, her responses to him. She hadn't expected this, and tried to stand her ground against the fierce attraction she felt for this granite-hard man.
"I don't know what I expected. It's been a long time."
His grip tightened. "And whose fault is that?"
There was a long silence as she battled with him for control. And then she looked away. She'd never been able to win with him. Not ten years ago and not now. "It's done and over with, Kolt. I don't want to rehash it again. I wasn't ready to get married."
"And does that mean you're ready now?" His gaze razed over her. "But that's not why you're here, is it? You just want what belongs to you. Whether you care about it or not. You just want to make sure she doesn't get it."
"Is that so wrong? Look what's going on in there? Does that look like a woman who is pining for the loss of the man she loved? My God, she's like an alley cat in heat. I don't know what my father was thinking."
His jaw hardened and she saw anger flare in his eyes. "He was tired of being alone. He needed companionship."
"He could have come home. Back to my mother."
Kolt sighed and leaned back. "Those two. Both of them were too prideful. Neither one would give an inch. Right up until the end." He looked back at her. "He did love your mother, but he always felt she walked out on him. And he couldn't give her what she wanted. He knew it, and so did she."
Heidi rubbed a hand across her eyes. "I don't want to argue with you. It's been a long drive."
"Did you drive all the way from San Francisco? Why didn't you fly up? I could have arranged to pick you up in Portland. You should have warned us you were coming."
"I didn't want anyone to know when I was arriving."
"In case you changed your mind and decided to turn tail and run back to the city?" he asked shrewdly.
She puffed out an exasperated sigh. "Damn you, Kolton Harris. I'm here, okay? I came back."
"For how long?"
She was silent. She had no idea how long she was going to stay. Certainly long enough to send Maura packing. She bit her lip. "Dad's will said I had to stay for at least six months if I wanted to inherit. I have two weeks off from work and I'll see how things go."
He jumped off the porch. Heidi followed him and then she winced as she heard another shriek coming from inside the cabin. Kolt looked down at her, a hot glint in his dark gaze. She was determined to ignore it.
"Where can I stay? I'm certainly not staying in there until it gets cleaned out."
"I canceled all the remaining contracts for the season. Take your pick of one of the other cabins." He narrowed his gaze. "Or you can stay with me."
Her heart jumped in her chest. She glanced up at him quickly and then looked away. "I don't think that's going to work. I'll grab the closest cabin to the office. That should be sufficient for now."
"Don't say I didn't offer."
She stopped walking and pivoted around toward him. "Kolt, I'm not here to pick up where we left off. It probably shouldn't have happened at all, but it did."
He stared down at her expressionlessly. "So you regret it."
"No--I didn't say that." How could she explain that she needed time and some distance. She wondered if he would give it to her.
"Then what are you saying?"
"Give me some time, Kolt. I just got back."
"The mountain's waiting for you, Heidi. It's been waiting a long time."
She gazed off into the distance, staring at the tall, majestic peak. "I haven't climbed in a very long time." Nor had she been made love to, certainly not by anyone remotely like Kolt.
He gripped her arms and stared down at her. "How long, Heidi? How long since you climbed to the peak?"
Was he talking about the mountain? Or passion?
She stared up at him. "A very long time." She shrugged away from him and strode toward her car to retrieve her bags. This was not going to be easy in any way, shape, or form. She should have known that.
Maybe she did. And still she came.
Chapter 7
* * *
Once Heidi had unpacked everything, it was early evening and her stomach had begun to rumble. Closing and locking the door of Cabin Number One, she walked up the small incline to the restaurant. Once she'd ordered her dinner of a small garden salad, buffalo stew, and a glass of red wine supplied by a local vineyard, she sat back and gazed out the window over the picturesque landscape.
The sun was just beginning to set and there were a myriad of deep colors, crimson and simmering orange coal embers painting the landscape surrounding the mountain. Layers of wispy clouds dancing through and around the mountain offered a gorgeous panoramic vision. She felt its draw. Each minute she was here was going to make it more difficult to leave. If she decided to leave.
The meeting with Kolt had been unexpected at best, but the sexual tension between them still seemed to be as strong as it ever was. This wasn't going to be easy.
"Hello, Heidi. I see you finally made it."
She should have known this peace and quiet wasn't going to last forever. She stiffened and turned to face the woman. She studied her short, dark brown hair, a body that was tight and hard. Lithe and thin. The last glimpse she'd had of it was bare and sandwiched between two naked men. Eyes glacial blue, cutting and determined. Not a hint of the woman caught in the throes of lust just hours before.
"Maura." She nodded to the woman.
"So you actually came back." She plopped herself down into the wooden chair across from Heidi.
"Did you honestly think I'd let you inherit my father's property?"
"What do you care? You haven't been up here in years from what I understand."
Heidi leaned forward. "Do you really think I'd let you have what by all rights belongs to my mother? You can think again. You and your two lovers can just pack your bags now because I want you gone. You make me sick."
Maura reeled back and her gaze narrowed. "You don't know anything about me."
"And I don't want to. With those banshee yelps this afternoon, did you think no one would know what you were up to--or who you were with? And my father hardly cold in his grave. How dare you?"
Maura tossed her head and lifted her chin. "You'll regret this, Heidi. You never should have come back."
"Is that a threat, Maura? I'm not afraid of a little gold digger like you."
"You have no idea what type of relationship I had with your father. You didn't want to know." She leaned forward. "He needed some passion and I was here to give it to him. I'm not like Lorene. I gave him what he needed and wan
ted."
Heidi reared back. "You bitch. Get out. Now."
Maura leaned back and licked her lips, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. "Do you think Kolt wants me gone? Maybe you better check with him first. He is half owner here. You can't just make decisions about the business on your own. As a matter of fact, Kolt and I have become...quite close."
Heidi jumped to her feet, almost overturning the chair. "If you won't leave, then I will. You make me sick."
Maura rose slowly to her feet. "Does that bother you, Heidi? That Kolt and I might be getting it on? Which bothers you more? Me fucking those college students..." She stepped closer to Heidi. "Or Kolt fucking me?"
Heidi didn't think she'd ever loathed anyone as much as she did Maura right now.
"Go to hell, Maura," she bit out and then whirled around and stalked out of the restaurant, racing down the steps like the hounds of hell were chasing her. What had her father been thinking to get involved with someone like her?
Suddenly, a pair of strong arms grabbed her and whirled her around.
"Where's the fire?" Kolt asked her.
"I want her gone, Kolt. Now. Damn her, damn her to hell. What did he see in her?" She shot her angry gaze up to his. "What do you see in her?" She might as well find out right now where she stood with him.
Certainly, she didn't expect he'd been a monk over the years, but had he really made Maura, her father's ex-lover, his lover? God, she couldn't stomach the thought.
She waited, but he didn't answer and that unnerved her. His eyes were hard as he pinned her beneath his expressionless stare. The stray thought went through her head that he'd make a great poker player. He never let his thoughts or his emotions interfere.
Except when they'd been making love, she reminded herself. That was a little devil of a thought she didn't need to hear right now. But she couldn't bear the vision of him making love with Maura.
And he never had answered her about whether he'd come to the cabin to make up a fourth. She shook her head, trying to fight the emotions that swamped through her, tried to take control of her.
"I have to get out of here." Suddenly she felt like she was suffocating, strangling on the thoughts running through her head. She felt dizzy and much to her amazement, she thought she might faint right here.
She pulled away from him and staggered back, eyes wide. She lost her footing, but firm hands grabbed her as Kolt dived forward.
"Oh, no you don't," he said, picking her up and carrying her over to the porch of the building that housed the climbing wall and exercise equipment. He set her on the top step and then pushed her head down between her legs.
"Take some deep breaths. It'll pass, just breathe deep and slow. Damn, Heidi, you've gotten yourself too wound up. Just relax. When did you eat last?"
She felt the hard grip of his callused hand on her neck, beneath her hair. It was warm and solid. It eased slightly and he began to knead in what to her, was a sensual, easy rhythm she remembered so well.
"You can let me go now," she whispered. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine. What just happened? You're as pale as a ghost."
He helped her to sit back up, and he brushed her hair away from her face. She slid her gaze upward and met his concerned, penetrating gaze. She licked her lips as the unbidden desire raced through her.
She looked away. "I was up at the restaurant and Maura decided to come in."
"You had a fight."
"I was minding my own business. She's the one who approached me."
"What happened?"
"I don't want to talk about it now. But I told her to get off this property."
"Well, you sure don't waste time."
"Why should I? I can't stand having her here. Just thinking about it--"
Suddenly she found herself straddled across his lap, her pussy nudged closely against his bulging erection.
"What bothers you most Heidi? Her gold-digging ways? Or the possibility that I was there in that cabin to join her little menagerie?"
"I think you mean ménage."
He shook his head and pulled her closer. "Not with her. They trail around after her like little puppies, adding more as she goes along. It's more of a damned menagerie."
She gasped and shot her gaze up to clash with his. She saw it coming and hardly had time to take a breath before his mouth fastened over hers. And any possibility of an answer flew straight out of her head.
Chapter 8
* * *
She curled her arms around his neck. She'd always known that if she came back here, she wouldn't be able to walk away from him.
He pulled her closer, crushing her against him. His hands fisted in her hair, yet the small amount of pain from the tension only added to the primal desire billowing inside her. At this rate her resistance was crumbling as quickly as a 7.0 earthquake could topple an office building to the ground.
She pulled her mouth from his, gulping for air, for sanity. He spun around and had her flat on her back across the deck, behind the railing, before she could utter a sound. He pressed over her, forcing her thighs apart and shoved his stiff erection deeper against her crevice.
The moan that erupted from between her lips couldn't be held back. She needed him too badly. His hands kept her head imprisoned, locked to the wooden porch as he rose up and looked down at her. For the first time since she'd arrived, she saw raw emotion in his expression, his eyes dilated to black, bottomless caverns.
She opened her mouth to say what, she had no idea, but his lips possessed hers fiercely, his tongue diving into her moist recess. As though reacquainting himself with her, his tongue burrowed deeply, circled over the roof, tracked along her teeth, as he sucked her soul from inside her.
He did what he had always done, pushing her to the peak, fast and hard without surcease. He rubbed against her, his muscular legs keeping her spread for his pleasure. Her pleasure.
She arched her hips, needing closer contact, wanting him inside her. The ache built rapidly. He plunged against her again and again and she heard the whimpers that erupted from her throat, swallowed by his invading mouth.
And then she peaked, an avalanche descending, and she couldn't breathe, couldn't descend, as though she was rooted twenty thousand feet off the ground. She cried out and clung to Kolt as she tumbled over and over down the steep, exhilarating slope of her orgasm.
She lay quietly in his arms in the aftermath, her head notched at his shoulder, still trembling. She was so thankful the camp was closed. Yet, she knew the restaurant was still open and anyone could have seen what just happened.
Slowly Kolt lifted up and gently drew her to her feet where she wove unsteadily, and his arms came around her to anchor her.
He sighed and ran a hand through his thick hair. "We need to talk."
She couldn't look at him after what had just happened. Darkness had descended, which was probably the only thing that had kept them from putting on a show for the world. She had to at least be thankful for that small comfort.
Finally, she looked up at him. "We don't seem to have a knack for talking. And I'm not sure I'm up to it tonight. It's been a really long day, Kolt."
He gripped her shoulders and forced her to face him. "You've put this off for ten years. What are you afraid of?"
She jutted her chin. "I'm not afraid of anything Kolt Harris. Certainly not of you."
"Don't go getting all snarly like a little tiger cat ready to claw." Without warning he reached down and cupped her mound.
"You're still hot, honey. So damned hot. You and I have unfinished business that goes pretty damned deep. But we'll talk first." He grabbed her hand and yanked her off the porch. "First you're going to eat. And we'll see where it goes from there. Can you call a truce until after that?"
She stumbled after him. "I don't think I can eat."
"Tough. Then you can sit and watch while I eat. But you're coming to that restaurant with me."
"I don't want to see Maura again. Not tonight."
She yanked at his hand forcing him to stop. "Kolt, wait." He turned to look down at her.
"What now? Can't it wait? I've got the appetite of a bear after hibernation."
"Did you sleep with her?" She simply had to know and it couldn't wait.
She saw his lips tighten and his coal-black eyes glittered. "You don't think very highly of me, do you?" He raised a hand and tilted her chin up, surveying her face. "Do you really think I'd do that to your father? Do you?"
She felt the tears well in her eyes. "No," she whispered, the words sticking in her throat.
"He was my best friend, Heidi. You have to know that. I'm not a poacher. He needed comfort and he took what she offered. I always kept my distance." He looked beyond her in the direction of the mountain that was now shrouded in darkness. "He thrived on the elements of that mountain. He was one with her and I envied that. I tried to learn everything he could teach me." Again, he looked at her. "Ten years ago, he knew I was in love with you. Do you really think I would have become your lover if I wasn't in love with you? That I would have destroyed my relationship with your father just for a summer fling?"
"Kolt, I--" How did she answer that? He'd broadsided her when he just said he loved her. He hadn't told her that ten years ago. Maybe she would have reacted differently. She'd always thought it was just guilt that made him propose to her. What if she'd twisted it all around somehow?
"No, don't say anything else. You need to get some dinner in you and then a good night's rest. No more arguing, no more fighting. And just for the record, I already gave Maura her walking papers. She's supposed to be out by the end of the week."
He pivoted away and continued walking toward the restaurant.
With dragging footsteps she followed. This was just too much emotion for one day. She was so mixed up. Maybe Kolt was right and she shouldn't think about it any more today. Some dinner and a good night's rest was what she needed more than anything right now.
Breathless Peaks Page 3