by Cindy Gerard
“Now that you mention it,” he said, “I was considering asking Scarlett if she’d mind if I did a little work for her.”
“Mind? She wouldn’t mind. She’d be relieved that someone was taking some of the burden of this place off her shoulders.”
“I don’t consider Crimson Falls a burden,” Scarlett said between tightly clenched teeth.
“Of course you don’t,” Mackenzie amended quickly. “I meant that with all of the other things you have to do around here to keep you busy, an extra pair of hands would be appreciated.”
“I think maybe it’s time we got you back home,” Abel said with an indulgent look at his wife, before turning an apologetic but amused gaze on Scarlett. “She’s wound up like a thunderbird in an electrical storm, and sometimes she doesn’t know to quit while she’s ahead.”
“You have to leave so soon?”
Colin noted that while Scarlett’s protest sounded sincere, her relief was also evident. Mackenzie’s not-so-subtle attempts to throw them together and to paint Scarlett as a woman in need of a man around the house had rattled her big-time.
“We have to leave,” Abel stated firmly, and helped his marginally miffed wife to her feet. “I want to make the crossing before the winds rise and the lake gets choppy. A storm front’s moving in tonight, and we can’t be subjecting you or the baby to any rough water.”
Mackenzie smiled lovingly at Abel, then turned to Scarlett with an elaborate sigh. “I love it when he gets all busbandly.”
Abel snorted. “I sincerely hope this child does not come equipped with your smart mouth.”
“You love it,” she returned cheekily, and Colin could see by the look on Abel’s face that he did.
Feeling as though he was intruding on a private moment, he looked away. Without conscious thought, his gaze went straight to Scarlett’s. She, too, had averted her attention from the tender looks passing between husband and wife, and he sensed what she was feeling. It was the same thing he was feeling. A sense of loss. Acute, cutting loss—for everything Abel and Mackenzie shared. For everything that Scarlett had never had and deserved. For his own inability to commit to anything beyond the scope of his business. And suddenly he was struck by a deep feeling of regret.
He was stunned. He understood why a woman like Scarlett would have feelings of something missing. He had no understanding of why he was struggling with them. He was perfectly content with his life the way it was. He didn’t need an intimate relationship— emotional or physical—to feel complete. And yet here he sat, numbed by the emptiness that gripped him.
Scarlett met his eyes, then quickly glanced away. “I’ll go get Mark.”
In silence, he watched her walk out of the room.
“She’s a very special person.” Mackenzie’s tone was soft, her eyes searching.
Colin drew a deep breath before addressing Mackenzie with a quick, thoughtful smile. “Yes. She is.”
“Pretty, too.”
Abel shook his head, gently gripped his wife’s arm and led her toward the door.
“Enough, woman.” He sent Colin another apologetic look over Mackenzie’s head.
Yeah. Enough, Colin thought. Enough of this introspective conjecturing about what his life would be like with someone like Scarlett to share it.
The night was dark and overcast. The wind Abel had expressed concern about had picked up. Colin stood on the end of the dock, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. Oblivious to the night chill and the gusts that whipped the bay into rolling, white-capped swells, he thought back to the events of the day.
After meeting Mackenzie’s younger brother Mark, he’d bid his goodbyes and taken a quick shower. Then, looking for something to occupy his time, he’d double-checked with Scarlett to make sure she really didn’t mind if he tinkered around.
“I want to start with the door to my room,” he’d explained. Graciously, but with reservations that she’d tried to hide, she’d assured him that if that was the way he wanted to spend his vacation, he was welcome to do anything he wanted.
Anything he wanted. If she only knew.
With a weary shake of his head, he resumed his distracted study of the night.
He’d planed the door to his room until he was certain there was no way it could stick again. He’d repaired the porch board he’d nearly tripped over yesterday. He’d waited until she’d left the kitchen after lunch, then replaced the washers in the dripping faucet.
It was while he was standing on the verandah, contemplating what other Band-Aid fixes he could perform on a structure that needed major surgery, that the women had approached him. Shyly at first, but then with a flirtatious friendliness he’d found hard to resist, they’d roped him into a game of cards. They delighted in teaching him hearts, promising him with teasing smiles that they’d work up to strip poker if he’d rather play that particular game.
They’d been outrageous, and absolutely harmless, he’d realized. As the afternoon had worn on, he’d let them lure him into a state of relaxation he hadn’t imagined he’d had in him to feel. When they’d conned him into playing pool in the bar and then proceeded to beat the pants off him, he’d called it quits. They’d good-naturedly offered him a rematch anytime he wanted one and then had headed to the dock to soak up some sun. With that distraction gone, he’d hunted down Geezer and helped him mow the lawn.
Even now, as he stood on the dock and thought back, he’d known what he’d been doing. He’d been running. And hiding. From emotions that felt raw and exposed. From the unsolicited sensations Scarlett Morgan stirred up every time their gazes accidentally collided.
She had neither the sophistication nor the guile to hide the confusion she was feeling. He both damned and treasured that lack of calculation. Those liquid, telling eyes of hers gave away every emotion. She wanted him. She was afraid of wanting him. She knew it wasn’t wise to want him.
Just like he wanted her. Was afraid of wanting her. Knew it wasn’t wise to want her.
He lifted his face to the wind and sincerely hoped she had the strength to cling to her convictions, because he sure as hell was having trouble sticking to his.
“I don’t have to worry about you falling asleep standing up, do I?”
He’d been so preoccupied thinking about Scarlett, he hadn’t heard her step onto the dock. Only when he turned and felt a rich flood of pleasure wash through him, did he realize that no matter how much he told himself it was wrong, he’d been hoping she would come looking for him.
He smiled in the dark. “I don’t think there’s much danger of that.”
But there was danger here. Danger in the way his heart thundered as she approached...tentatively, with her hands tucked in the pockets of a light weight jacket, her tanned bare legs looking even darker in the night.
He bit back a rueful smile, wondering when he’d strayed so far away from the convictions that had ruled his life. Business had always been first. Then he’d met Scarlett Morgan, and all she had to do was stand there and he was lost in the wanting for something more.
She was beguiling in the dark, enticing beneath the heavy sky and beside the restless water. The wind played with the fine curling wisps of her hair. The night shadowed and shaded the delicate contours of her face, nearly hiding the vulnerability in her eyes.
“We worked you pretty hard today,” she said, tipping her face into the wind, intentionally avoiding eye contact.
Obviously he hadn’t worked hard enough or he’d be in bed now. Asleep. Alone. Instead of contemplating that bed with both of them in it.
“It felt good to be doing something with my hands,” he said, trying to put some distance between them with conversation—-no matter how inane. “Before Slater Corporation got so big, we were still working on brownstones and apartment buildings. I used to do a lot of the actual renovation work myself. I don’t get a chance to dig in much anymore. Too much paperwork. Too much travel. I realized today how much I’ve missed it.”
“Well,” her tension was e
vident in her continued reluctance to look at him. “I hope you didn’t let Geezer take advantage of you.”
He smiled in spite of himself. “I don’t let anyone take advantage unless I want to be taken advantage of.”
“Like the way the girls did this afternoon?”
He chuckled, remembering. “They’re quite the crew. I don’t think I’ve ever been around women who had so much fun just entertaining each other. They laughed constantly.”
He studied her soft smile in profile and knew he wanted to see it a hundred other ways. Looking up at him from his pillow. Looking down at him in the throes of passion.
“I always enjoy the week they spend here—the way they let loose. They make me feel like a kid again.”
The wistfulness in her voice shifted his thoughts from desire to anger—not at her but for her. “A kid who works all the time and watches from a distance, while everyone else has fun?”
When she just shrugged, he pressed her. “What does Scarlett Morgan do for fun, anyway? Besides work in her garden and take care of everyone else?”
Again she lifted a shoulder, then wrapped her jacket tighter against the buffet of the wind. “When I have time, I read. I listen to music. Sometimes I get around to watching one of the movies J.D. is always lending me from his collection of classics.”
“That’s it?”
She squared her shoulders defensively. “That’s it. And it’s enough. But what about you?” she countered, finally turning to face him. “From the account J.D. gave me, all you do is work. What do you do for fun in your life?”
Nothing, he admitted to himself reluctantly. He didn’t know when regret for that omission had settled in. He suspected, though, that it was his lack of attention to more frivolous needs that had him in this fix right now. This fix of wanting something more—to distraction. Something, or someone.
“Point taken,” he conceded. “So we’re both guilty of working too hard. Old habits are hard to break, I guess.”
The longing in his voice must have alerted her. Just as the understanding in her eyes had him moving toward her.
“Maybe the question now,” he said, searching her face for a warning to back away, “is what are we going to do about it?”
Even before he asked, he knew the thrust of their conversation had shifted. Even as she stood there, her eyes alight with hesitancy and a shimmering, forbidden excitement, he sensed she knew it, too.
They weren’t talking about their work habits. They weren’t talking about leisure activities. He wasn’t sure they ever had been. That idle bit of chatter had been filler, a temporary diversion to keep them from dealing with the real issue of why he was standing here on the dock and why she had sought him out.
“What are we going to do about what?”
Her voice had dropped to a soft, tentative whisper. No competition for the pummeling wind and the crash of water on the shore, but he heard her, anyway, and he knew the issue as surely as she did.
It was inevitable. Had been destined to happen since he’d first seen her in her kitchen with frosting on her cheek and surprise in her eyes. He’d wanted her then with a stunning certainty. He wanted her now with a ruthless urgency.
“What are we going to do about this,” he murmured, gave in to the need and lowered his mouth toward hers
Scarlett knew she shouldn’t let it happen. She knew she shouldn’t just stand there as he moved toward her. His intent was as clear as lake water by sunlight. But she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, as he searched her face beneath the cloud-covered sky.
He was going to kiss her. And she was going to like it. And want it. And want him in ways she’d never wanted another man.
The hands that gripped her shoulders were strong but not possessive; his body next to hers, a warm and welcome buffer against the wind. In his eyes was a hunger, reckless and dark that mingled with apology for what he was about to do.
She lost it all then. Her resolution. Her ability to deny him. She forgot about wisdom and mistakes and consequences and raised a trembling hand to his face.
With the wind sighing around them and the water washing up over the dock, she let him draw her against his taut, hard body and into his kiss as effortlessly as dusk drawing darkness from light.
It was everything his eyes had promised. He was all she’d imagined—neither tentative, nor apologetic as he touched his mouth to hers. He didn’t ask but neither did he dominate as his touch transcended to something deeper and darker and infinitely more consuming.
His mouth was hard and demanding. Yet he offered and took with equal measure, enticing her to a flash point of pure physical need. This was passion as she’d never experienced it. This was pleasure like she’d never known. And it was something she’d lived without for far too long.
His scent surrounded her, masculine and woodsy, laced with the lake wind, heated by his arousal. The taste of him, strong coffee and after-dinner wine and a hunger she hadn’t imagined she could foster, was a tangible enticement too delicious to deny. When he drew her tighter in his arms and groaned his pleasure into her mouth, she melted against him like chocolate beneath a beating sun.
She wanted it to go on forever. The kiss. The contact. The feelings he’d awakened that were rich and heady and real. But forever was for fairy tales, and that’s something her life had never been.
She didn’t stop him; yet slowly, with a lingering resistance and a necessary resolve, he raised his head. His hand was shaking when he touched it to her hair. His breath was ragged as he folded her against him and pressed her face into the hollow of his throat. She felt his pulse beating there and knew he was as aroused as she was—and just as reluctant to end it.
And possibly, he was just as confused.
“Scarlett...”
Her name on his lips was little more than a whisper, but she heard so much in that one, raspy word. Regret. Need. Resolution.
She drew in and let out a deep breath. “I know.”
She made herself move out of the circle of his arms. Turning toward the lake, she crossed her arms over her waist to stall the chill the wind and his absence created. “Big mistake, that.”
Soundlessly he moved behind her. After a moment’s hesitation, he tugged her back against his chest. He let out a deep breath and rested his chin on the top of her head. “You regret it?”
She covered the arms he’d folded around her with her hands. “I didn’t say that. I said it was a mistake.”
His silence confirmed his agreement. “So,” he said finally, his warm breath feathering through her hair, “what are we going to do about it?”
With a lethargy she had no business feeling, she smiled. “I believe that was the question that got us into this.”
Again a prolonged silence passed before he ended it. “And what, exactly, are we into here?”
While he attempted to make the question light, his tone relayed his unease.
She knew she should move away from him. But the warmth and strength of his chest against her back felt too good and too right for something that was so wrong. She stayed where she was, promising herself it was only for a few minutes more. She hadn’t known how much she’d missed being held by a man. Hadn’t known how much she’d missed the sensual side of being a woman.
“I think the term is deep water,” she said finally.
“Yeah,” he agreed, sounding weary. “I think maybe it is.”
For several oddly comforting minutes they stood together, she, leaning back against him, he, holding her close from behind. Both of them wondering how they were going to back away from this, when their heads were at odds with their hearts.
“I’m not up for a casual affair, Colin.” She hated the tremor in her voice and the artlessness of her admission. Still, she stayed the course. “And we both know that’s all this could ever be.”
His arms tightened before he exhaled a deep breath, then slowly let her go. “I know. And I’m sorry. I wish it could be otherwise.”
S
he turned to him. Even in the darkness she could see his regret, see the lingering heat of his desire. But most of all she saw the man who had made her feel alive, as a woman, for the first time since the death of her marriage. For that gift she would always be grateful. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for.”
Colin searched her face as she stood there. She looked vulnerable and vital and determined, all at the same time. He couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman more—or when he’d made a mistake as big as pulling her into his arms.
She wasn’t having any of his regrets, though. But neither was she going to let this go further. With a soft smile she assured him that all was well. Then, exercising a wisdom he’d do well to imitate, she bid him good-night and walked away.
“You’re so wrong,” he whispered, too low for her to hear. He did have something to be sorry for. For the first time in his life, he was truly sorry he couldn’t offer a woman—that he couldn’t offer this woman—what she needed from him as a man.
“Now, I could understand why a person would wanna run if he had someplace t’ go,” Geezer grumped, as he thumbed back his cap and satisfied an itch on the top of his bald head. “But t’ just run around in a circle in the woods like a bear chasin’ his tail, it don’t make no sense.”
Colin listened to Geezer’s grousing with half an ear, as he walked a slow circle to cool down and regain his breath. He’d done a brisk five miles at daybreak. Another five as a bonus, or penance, he couldn’t decide which. He’d just known he had to get out of that hotel and away from its women and its quirks before he drew some conclusions he’d been trying to avoid. And he didn’t want to chance running into Scarlett on the trail.
“So, what’d Belinda pull last night? Shakin’ bed or open window?” Geezer asked without preamble. “The little girl and her momma got a bet on it, and I’m holding the quarters.”
Colin sent the old man a suspicious look. “What do you know about what happens in that room?”