A Bride For Crimson Falls

by Cindy Gerard

  No blazing light spilled out to greet him. No fire burned beyond the open door. No smoke hung in the air to indicate there had ever been one.

  Brows narrowed, he stepped warily across the threshold into the room. On a small night table in front of the window, a lone oil lamp burned at low wick, its flame illuminating the room in a soft, golden glow. Welcoming. Inviting. Like the bed with its covers turned down.

  He closed his eyes, shook his head to clear it, then scanned the room again. Nothing was amiss. His empty suitcases sat neatly in the far corner. A soft breeze stirred the curtains at the open window. Everything was peaceful. Normal. Orderly—except for the air, which seemed to close in around him like an invisible velvet glove. The space around him felt charged with electricity, pregnant with anticipation. as a movement on the far wall caught his peripheral vision.

  Slowly, he turned. Mesmerized, he watched as a shadow formed and swelled, dancing across the faded floral wall paper. He stared, disbelieving, as it undulated, changing height, changing size; even, it seemed, changing substance. He fought it every inch of the way, but there was no denying that as he stood there, captivated by the motion,, transfixed by the sight, the shadow took form and shape.

  Slowly, incredibly, as it hovered in the pale and fading light, the shadow seemed to solidify into the shape of a woman—a sensual, voluptuous woman, her seductive dance as intoxicating as aged brandy...as enticing as mist shifting through midnight... as inviting as the sighing sound of the door closing softly behind him.

  “What do you think?” Casey asked her mother as they observed Colin early the next morning from behind the partially open kitchen door. “He looks good and rattled to me.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Scarlett said, as she watched him where he sat in the dining room at the same corner table as he had last night. “He looks puzzled, but my guess is he’s busy making rationalizations as we speak.”

  “I figure she pulled the brilliant light and shadow dance number on him.”

  “That would be her usual opening act.” Scarlett shook her head, guilt getting the best of her. “I’d better go check on him. And I ought to be whipped for leaving him in that room.”

  “Ask him if he slept with the fire extinguisher all night,” Casey suggested, her amusement tinged with sympathy.

  “If he slept at all.”

  Cutting off a caramel roll from the ones she’d just pulled out of the oven, Scarlett set it on a plate, added a couple of pats of butter and headed for his table.

  She set the plate in front of him, then pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “Good morning,” she ventured softly.

  He dragged his gaze from his cup to her face.

  The dark circles under his eyes and the haggard lines around his mouth told her there was no need to ask if he’d slept well.

  “I believe I tried to warn you,” she said without preamble, but with the sympathy she felt he deserved.

  “There’s an explanation,” he said firmly. “For everything.”

  Although he was in denial, Scarlett gave him points for not denying that something out of the ordinary had happened in Belinda’s room last night. She hadn’t experienced firsthand the sight of light blazing from the window, the heat-charged doorknob or the dancing shadows, but she’d heard accounts from more than one shaken male guest.

  “Have you had the wiring in this place checked recently?”

  “No,” she conceded, giving him that straw to cling to. If he wanted to believe what happened was the result of bad wiring, she’d give him that small gift of peace of mind.

  “The new dock was the priority. Wiring is the next item on my list of repairs. In the meantime, just in case it is the wiring, why don’t we move you out of there today? If the Annabelle doesn’t suit you, there’s another room available with a lake view. I’m sure you’d like it.”

  “I’m fine right where I am,” he insisted, and she saw in his eyes the tenacity that had gotten him to the level of success he’d attained.

  To her way of thinking, though, that didn’t let her off the hook. “Look. There’s no need for you to stay there. You don’t have to prove anything to me. Besides,” she added, fabricating an excuse for him to vacate with grace. “I’d really hoped to give that room a good once-over this month. The floors need to be resealed, the windows washed—there’s at least two weeks of work I’ve been putting off.”

  “If you’ve put it off this long, then it can wait until after I’m gone.”

  The determination in his eyes, and the insistence in his tone, accomplished two things. One, her conscience quit harping at her. Two, his reference to his imminent departure caused a twinge of regret somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.

  Of the two, the latter was the most difficult to deal with.

  It made no sense that his leaving would bother her. She wasn’t even supposed to like the man. Before his arrival, she’d been anticipating his two-week stay the way she dreaded the first of each month when the bills were due.

  Yet here she was, anticipating the sting of his goodbye like some schoolgirl in the throes of her first crush.

  He wasn’t the only one who hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep. Belinda may have been the cause of his sleeplessness, but he’d been the cause of hers. As tired as she’d been last night, she’d lain awake far too long, thinking about the fact that he’d soon be gone. Attraction, she decided, was a really rotten thing. She seemed to have no control over it, and she couldn’t act on it. Not without making a fool of herself. Not without opening herself up to hurt.

  A lose-lose situation if she’d ever seen one.

  On a sigh, she rose. It was time to get on with her day. Now that the rolls were out of the oven, she could go for her run. The party of fishermen had left at the crack of dawn for an all-day excursion. The father and his sons were already loading up their boat and would be back in for rolls and juice an hour before they left for several days. If they followed tradition, the six women, who’d been coming to Crimson Falls for a week-long getaway for the past four years, wouldn’t start wandering down to the dining room until after nine. Casey could handle them and just about anything else that came up in her absence.

  “Is there anyplace to run around here?”

  His question stopped her, both surprising and tickling her. It surprised her because she hadn’t thought of him as a runner—although he did have the muscle tone. It tickled her because of the obvious.

  “Gosh, let me think.” She affected a puzzled scowl. “Where would a person who had access to fresh air and sunshine, and only about a thousand acres of wilderness area and forty miles of walking paths, run?”

  His mouth twitched in a self-mocking semblance of a smile. “So sue me. I’m city-born and bred. If I don’t see asphalt, I don’t see possibilities.”

  She smiled. “Go get your running shoes on,” she offered, against her better judgment. “I’ll meet you at the dock and take you on the loop. What’s your pleasure? A mile? Two miles?”

  “Five’s what I’m used to.”

  “Impressive,” she said, surprised and pleased by his choice. “Five is what we’ll do then. I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.”

  He handed back the caramel roll. “Don’t let this get away, okay? Me and my arteries will tackle it when we get back.”

  Smiling, she returned to the kitchen with the roll, and wrapped it up for him for later.

  “How’s he holding up?” Casey asked, as she filled a carafe with a mixture of white grape and orange juice to set out on the buffet table.

  “He’s chalked it up to bad wiring.”

  “Does that mean he’s not moving?”

  “Yes, sweet child who gets her kicks from Belinda, badgering nonbelievers, that means he’s not moving.”

  Casey’s squeal of delight and, “Oh, goodie,” had Scarlett shaking her head and grinning.

  “How long do you think he’ll last?”

  Scarlett raised her brows. “I don’t k
now. He’s pretty determined. Couple more nights, maybe.”

  “What do you think she’ll pull next? My money’s on the bed.”

  “Nope,” Scarlett said, considering. “It’s supposed to rain tonight. I figure she’ll opt for the window stunt.”

  “Quarter?” Casey suggested, with a challenging arch of her brow.

  “You’re on. And no IOUs this time,” she admonished good-naturedly, as she headed for the back staircase and jogged up to the second floor to change. “I want the cold cash, child, or there’ll be no more wagers for you.”

  Five

  Clad in an NYU T-shirt and running shorts and shoes, Colin walked toward the dock to wait for Scarlett. Halfway there, he turned and looked back up at his bedroom window. He was still puzzled by what had happened last night. He was also determined to find an explanation. The bright light could have been a trick of moon glow and reflection from the lake. The shadows on the wall more of the same. As to the hot doorknob, there was undoubtedly a short somewhere in the wiring. The old brass hardware made an excellent conductor for electricity.

  Even the sticking door—which he’d had a devil of a time getting open this morning—could be attributed to the aged and sagging state of the hotel. Everything was out of alignment. Later today he would hunt up a plane and shave some wood off the door to cure that problem.

  He turned back to the lake and picked up his pace, confident in his conclusions. The dream, however, kept niggling away. It had been so vivid. So erotic. He could have sworn he’d dreamed in colors and scents and sensation—even though he never had before. The fact was, he rarely dreamed at all, or if he did he rarely remembered.

  He remembered this one. The woman who’d come to him in the night had worn red. Something silk and sleek, falling off her shoulder, a long slit showing lots of leg. He could still feel the touch of her hands on his body. Still smell the lingering scent of her perfume that mingled with the fragrance of the flowers she’d carried.

  She’d been exotic, alluring, wanton.

  She’d been Scarlett Morgan, he admitted grudgingly as he reached the dock. And in his dreams she’d shared his bed, his body and his soul in a steamy night of passion.

  “In your dreams is as far as it’s going to get,” he muttered, and started his stretching exercises. That was one conclusion he was sure of. Scarlett Morgan, with her red-gold curls and her sexy little body and wickedly gooey caramel rolls did not factor into any of his equations. The woman canned vegetables, for pity’s sake. And made blueberry jam. She lacked both the sophistication and the callousness to enter into a casual affair and not feel diminished when it ended—which it would.

  Now that he was past his initial surprise of finding her in this north-woods Club Med, he could get his libido under control. Just like he’d gotten over his initial irritation at being manipulated into coming here.

  It had come to him on the dock last night that his friends may have been right. All work and no play made Colin a dull and horny boy. He’d been too long without the company of a woman. He could remedy that problem, once he returned to New York, to the mutual satisfaction of both himself and any number of partners—women who wanted the same thing out of the encounter as he did. Pleasure without pressure.

  On that note of resolution, he was ready to run off some of his pent-up energy. Scarlett Morgan and his preoccupation with her, sexual or otherwise, was tucked tidily away on the shelf marked, Off Limits, Do Not Touch, until he turned and saw her walking toward him in her black shorts and running bra beneath a loose, pink tank top.

  He propped his fists on his hips and hung his head. So much for hibernating libidos. No woman had a right to look that sexy and supple and desirable in running clothes. Her shoes were white and worn. Her socks were thick and pink and matched the shirt and the headband she’d slipped across her forehead. And that damn black spandex hugged every lush curve, every womanly ounce of flesh and bone and sleekly honed muscle.

  “Ready to rock and roll?” she asked brightly as she adjusted her headband.

  “Let’s do it,” he managed to say between clenched teeth, and fell into an easy jog beside her.

  If he’d been familiar with the territory, he’d have picked up the pace and pulled away from her. Since that couldn’t happen, his own exhaustion was his only hope. But as the first mile passed, and the path narrowed so that he had to run behind her, it became apparent that even if he ran ten miles, fatigue wasn’t going to put a leash on his libido.

  She stopped abruptly at a clearing. He was so intent on the unconsciously seductive movements of her hips that he almost ran her over.

  “This is our old docking area.” She pointed out a clearing that led to the lakeshore. “Up until this spring, our clients had to hike the mile to the hotel or wait for Geezer to come and pick them up in the Jeep. I’m hoping my money was well spent clearing out the shoreline and constructing the new dock closer to the hotel.”

  He just nodded, then fell into step behind her again when she resumed the run. The morning was cool, but the exertion quickly worked them both into a sweat. Her tank top clung to her skin as perspiration dampened the absorbent cotton. And though he tried to watch the path or the trees or the occasional glimpse of the lake that peeked through the forest when the running track neared the shoreline, his gaze was repeatedly drawn to her tidy little rear. She was compact, yet lean. Sleek, yet lush, an arresting combination of athlete and woman, maturity and youth.

  He kept seeing her as he had last night—not in the bar, but in his dreams. In his bed. And suddenly five miles alone with her seemed like the Boston Marathon.

  “How you doing back there?” she called over her shoulder.

  “Fine,” he muttered. “Just fine.”

  Amazingly, he made it though the run. She was marginally winded when they came full circle and jogged into a clearing that led them back to the dock.

  “You’re in pretty good shape for a city boy,” she said between labored breaths with a grin that acknowledged her approval.

  “You’re no slouch yourself. Obviously you do this on a regular basis,” he said, with just a hint of hope that he was wrong. He didn’t think he could take twelve more mornings of trailing her and not do something they’d both regret—like tackling her and taking her on the forest floor like an animal.

  “I try to. Depends on how busy we are. Sometimes I can’t work it in. Shouldn’t be any problem this week.”

  That’s what he was afraid of.

  “Well...” She wiped the back of her wrist across her headband, “I’m going to hit the shower before I go back to work.”

  “I think I’ll run another five.” What he needed more than anything right now was to get away from her and the new image she’d just managed to create of her standing naked under a shower spray.

  “Suit yourself. Do you think you can follow the right path and find your way back here?”

  “If I can find my way around Manhattan, I think I can manage a few trees.”

  “Okay,” she said warily, “but do stay aware of where you are. You can get lost in a flash in these woods.”

  “Yes, Mother,” he replied cheekily, because he knew it would make her smile and because he had a sudden urge to see that smile again.

  Fueled by it, he turned and headed back down the path. “Later.” He waved over his shoulder and forced himself not to look back.

  Much later he wasn’t feeling so smart. Or so sure that running alone had been such a great idea.

  “You’re no Boy Scout, Slater,” he grumbled aloud, when he walked by the same rock formation for the third time in the past hour. “You can’t swim, you can’t find your way out of the woods. If you had a blow torch, you probably couldn’t start a fire, and you can bet your last stock dividends you couldn’t tell a poison berry from a blueberry.”

  Aside from the embarrassment of getting lost, he was also getting hungry. At least he’d found something to take his mind off Scarlett’s delectable little derriere. Her del
icious caramel rolls shared top billing in his thoughts.

  He stopped, looked up at the sunlight breaking through the trees and knew he ought to be able to figure out both the time and the direction by the sun’s position.

  It was times like these that he regretted certain aspects of his childhood. When other boys were joining Cub Scouts and youth groups and the “Y,” he’d been hustling on the streets as a paperboy, or a stockboy or a gopher—all for the ultimate prize—money. It had always propelled him. It had always compelled him. It was the one thing his parents couldn’t give him that he’d wanted.

  He’d seen them struggle just to pay the bills. Seen them sacrifice their own pleasures so he and Cameron, had food in their bellies and clothes on their backs. And he’d sworn at a very early age that he was going to make more money than his parents would ever know what to do with, then pay them back for the sacrifices they’d made.

  It had taken him ten years, but he’d accomplished everything he’d set out to do. His parents lived in luxury between their Manhattan co-op and their beach house in the Keys. He’d taken his brother, Cameron, into the business as soon as he’d paid for his education, and he shared the wealth equally with him as a full partner.

  Yes. He had everything he wanted. Everything but the ability to sit back and enjoy it. And a history of being a Boy Scout, he thought again grimly, and cursed the trees and his poor sense of direction.

  He was debating whether or not he should turn around and head the other way when, from the corner of his eye, he caught a shadow of movement on the path ahead of him. He stopped cold as the shadow solidified—not into the shape of a bear, which he’d yet to see, but into one of a very large, very hungry-looking wolf.

  A low, feral growl vibrated across the ten feet of pine-needle- and moss-covered forest floor separating them. Before he could fully assess the extent of the trouble he was in, another predator emerged from the dense foliage crowding the walking path. This one, though no less threatening, stood on two feet, not four.