“Come upstairs with me and I’ll find you something to change into,” Sam said, shivering as hard as Nora as he shucked off his snow-covered boots and went around turning on lights. “After that, I’ve got to check in with my deputies and telephone my grandparents to let them know where we are.” Sam helped Nora off with her boots and coat and placed both near the front door to dry. “Then we can see about rustling up some dinner.” He turned up the thermostat and went over to start a fire in the huge freestanding flag stone fireplace that warmed both kitchen and living areas, and acted as the dividing wall between the two rooms. Satisfied the fire was going, he stood and faced her. “I take it you haven’t eaten yet, either?”
Nora rubbed her hands together. “No.”
“Well, don’t worry,” he said, taking her elbow and leading her up the stairs to the loft that contained the master bedroom and bath. “I’ll see you’re well taken care of.”
Nora’s throat went dry as she looked at the mussed covers on his king-size bed and the ad joining bath, with a glassed-in shower stall big enough for two. Oblivious to the second thoughts she was having—“Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true!”—Sam disappeared into a walk-in closet and brought out a pair of sweat pants with a draw string waist, a matching sweat-shirt and a thick pair of socks. “These are probably all way too big.”
Nora shrugged. “They’re warm and dry, and that’s all that matters. Thanks.”
While he changed in the bedroom, she changed in the bathroom and ran a brush through her hair.
Nora looked at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold and exertion. His bathroom carried the faint scent of his aftershave. There was an unsettling intimacy in being here alone with him like this. Too much intimacy, Nora thought, for two people who had not yet made love, but had—foolishly?—agreed to think about doing so.
Aware that her cheeks were pinkening even more at the thought of what might happen in the hours ahead, she turned out the bathroom light and went back into the bedroom.
She knew Sam. Nothing was going to happen that she did not absolutely want to happen.
The problem was, she knew what she wanted to happen.
Was she ready?
Only time would tell.
In the meantime, able to tell by the sound of his voice that he was already downstairs, checking in via telephone, Nora drew a bolstering breath and prepared to go down to join him.
“I DON’T HAVE A CLUE what you’re talking about,” Sam told his deputy.
“I just got a call from a man from Pennsylvania. We’re supposed to have gotten a fax about his daughter yesterday afternoon…” Sam froze. Nora had burned a fax in the fireplace.
“…and there was a shortwave radio conversation with a woman in our office earlier today.”
Another wave of uneasiness washed over Sam.
Despite what she claimed, Nora had been talking on the shortwave radio, too.
“’Course, I wanted to know what woman in our office,” Sam’s deputy continued, bewildered, “since we don’t have a woman working in our office at the moment, but the detective that called couldn’t give me a name. I do, however, have the family’s number, if you want to call.”
“Yes,” Sam said, waving Nora on through to the kitchen, where a fresh pot of coffee was brewing, “I do.”
“EVERYTHING OKAY?” Nora asked Sam when he joined her in the kitchen fifteen minutes later. “You look kind of grim.” She knew he’d been talking to his deputy—and someone else.
Sam approached her cautiously, a muscle working in his jaw. “That’s because I feel grim,” he told her mildly.
Nora hitched in a breath. She did not like that look in his eyes—like he’d just found out he’d been double-crossed and was preparing to do battle. “Do I want to know why?” she asked weakly.
“Oh, probably,” Sam said in a cavalier voice. He strode closer, not stopping until he towered over her. He folded his arms in front of him. “I just had a most interesting conversation with the owner of the Hamburger Heaven restaurant chain.” Sam pinned her to the spot with a deadpan look. “Perhaps you know him?”
Nora’s heart pounded in her chest. She should have known her father would catch up with her sooner rather than later, storm or no storm! Darn it all, anyway, it was all she could do not to turn tail and run. “What did you tell him?” she asked Sam anxiously.
Sam narrowed his eyes at her grimly. “Exactly what you’d expect a sheriff to say to a parent of a missing person—that I would do everything possible to help him find his daughter.”
Chapter Ten
“YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” Nora said.
“You’re right,” Sam replied as he lounged against the kitchen counter and watched her put together a quick meal of bread, fruit and cheese. “You should do that.”
Nora regarded Sam in obvious irritation. “Why?”
Sam stiffened at the accusatory edge in her voice. Obviously, she was ticked off at him for discovering what she had tried so hard to hide. He remained where he was with effort, aware that she had never looked more beautiful, with her dark hair all tousled, her cheeks flushed with anger and indignation, her lips enticingly soft and bare. “Because your dad’s going out of his mind with worry, that’s why,” Sam explained patiently.
Nora lifted her slender shoulders in an elegant shrug. “After the way he sold me off like a piece of property, my father deserves to worry.”
Sam regarded Nora, bemused. “Sold you—in this day and age?” What the hell was she talking about? Nora was as free to come and go as she pleased as any woman he had ever seen.
“I know.” Nora folded her arms in front of her and leaned against the opposite counter. “I thought dowries went out of style a long time ago, too. Apparently not in my family.”
Sam paused. His gut told him there was more to this. “Maybe it wasn’t the way it looked,” he said gently.
Nora tossed her head and fixed him with a mutinous look that let him know in a flash that her hurt was not un founded. “My father had a prenuptial agreement drawn up between—are you ready for this?—not me and Geoff, but my father and Geoff!” Her soft lips pursed tightly, and her emerald-green eyes shimmered with fury. “He gave Geoff shares in the family business. And then, to add insult to injury, both of them went to very great lengths to keep their little arrangement from me. So, Mr.-I-Have-All-the-Answers, what would you call that?”
On the surface? A betrayal that went straight to the heart and had damn near destroyed Nora in the process, Sam thought protectively. Yet, wary of jumping to conclusions about Geoff and her father in the same way that Nora had, Sam forced himself to consider other possibilities. “Maybe it was a wedding gift, Nora.”
“No, the car with the vanity license plates that read Number One Daughter was my wedding gift. Geoff got one, too, only his was a Mercedes SL convertible with the plates NO1-SIL, for—you guessed it—Number One Son-in-Law. No, they did this deliberately.”
Okay, Sam conceded privately, maybe they had. The question was why. Given the extensive search her father had under way for Nora, she was clearly loved very much. And, typically, fathers did not go around deliberately hurting children they loved very much.
Still trying to find a way to make peace between Nora and her father, the way she had tried to alleviate the tension between himself and his younger sister, Sam tried a different approach. “Maybe Geoff and your father meant well, but didn’t tell you because they knew how you’d react to such a generous gift from your father to Geoff,” he theorized gently.
Nora rolled her eyes and, shoving both hands through her hair, began to pace. “‘No duh’ to that!”
Sam fell in behind her. When she stopped at the sink, and turned to stare gloomily out the window at the mixture of snow and sleet still raining down from the sky, he lifted his hands to her shoulders. Feeling the tenseness of her muscles, beneath the warmth of her skin, he kneaded her muscles gently.
“Maybe it was a
surprise for you,” he continued, in an effort to make her feel better and come to grips with what had happened to literally send her running out into the cold. “Maybe your dad thought bringing Geoff into the company would make you happy.”
Nora whirled around so swiftly she collided with his chest. “No, he knew I’d object,” she disagreed firmly, looking up at him. “That’s why they didn’t tell me.”
Ignoring Nora’s dark warning look, Sam stared down into the flushed contours of her face. “Did they actually say this to you?” he demanded.
Nora tossed her mane of hair and propped her fists on her slender hips. Tilting her head back, she continued to stare up at him irately—irritated that, right or wrong, he hadn’t automatically taken her side. “We didn’t discuss it,” she told him tersely. “I heard them going over the terms of the agreement, line by line, item by item, just the way you do in any complicated business agreement. Then I saw Geoff smile like he couldn’t wait to collect his payoff and pick up the pen to sign it.” Nora paused abruptly, the humiliation she’d felt explicit in her eyes. She swallowed hard and continued, in a low, husky voice, “So I wrote a note telling everyone the marriage was off, and then I left,” she concluded in a low, anguished tone.
Sam admired the fact that Nora was strong enough to do what she felt she had to do in any given situation. He didn’t like the fact that she had run away before giving anyone a chance to state the reasons behind their actions, or say why they felt justified in doing so. Two wrongs did not make a right. They never had and never would.
“Well, that explains why your dad is so frantic,” Sam sighed. It didn’t explain why Geoff did not appear to be at least equally involved in the search for his missing fiancée, Sam thought. If he had been in Geoff’s shoes, he would have gone to the ends of the earth to protect Nora, and to ensure her happiness. He certainly would not have accepted a lucrative gift from her family when he knew—as Geoff had to know—it would hurt Nora so. Sam didn’t care what the business or familial rationale was.
Nora pouted and placed her hands square on Sam’s chest. “Fine. My father’s frantic. I’m hurt. End of story.”
She pushed as if to expand her personal space and move him away from her, but Sam stayed where he was—trapping her between him and the counter—and refused to budge until he’d said everything that needed to be said. “You need to fix things with your dad, Nora,” he told her sternly.
Nora released a furious sigh and turned her head to the side, away from his passionately imploring gaze. “Sam, stay out of this,” she told him, reminding him that when threatened she never gave an inch without a fight.
He cupped her chin with his hand and turned her face to his. Her soft body trembled against the length of his as he warned, “It’ll haunt you if you don’t. Call him.”
Nora regarded him can tankerously, refusing to back down. “No.”
“Then promise me you’ll at least think about calling him.”
Nora shook her head and remained adamantly opposed.
Frustrated, Sam kept her eyes on the flushed contours of her face and tried another approach. “If you don’t, you know someone else is going to eventually see one of the flyers they’ve had printed up and collect the reward.”
She scoffed and regarded him with a derisiveness that made his heart pound all the harder. “Who—you?”
Doing his best to ignore the compelling drift of her floral perfume and the soft warmth of her body, where it pressed up against his, Sam swore curtly. “Dammit, Nora, you know money isn’t my interest here.” You are.
“Then what is?” she returned, just as shortly.
“Taking care of you—and your family.”
Nora shook her head and pushed away from Sam. “I understand you take your job as community peacemaker seriously, and wish your parents were still alive. But my situation is different, Sam.” She spun around to face him. “If I call my father, we’ll argue. Trust me. That is not going to make either of us happy. Then he’ll track me down, using your phone number. And we’ll all be even more unhappy.”
Sam closed the distance between them and took her all the way into his arms. “He’s going to track you down, anyway,” he told her silkily. “Why not get it over with? Why not contact him first, on your terms?” he asked softly, tunneling his hands through the silk of her hair.
Nora went very still. She tilted her head back and studied him as relentlessly as he was surveying her. Her conflicting feelings on the subject were reflected in her dark green eyes. “You’re not going to give up on this, are you, Sam?” she asked wearily at last, her slender body softening against his.
Sam shook his head and stroked a comforting hand down her back. Although he knew the timing was off, he wanted nothing more than to kiss her until all the hurt she felt went away—and stayed away. “You owe it to your father to at least let him know you’re all right,” Sam told her softly, lacing both his hands around her hips.
“Fine.” Nora sighed in defeat as she slipped from his arms once again and bounded toward the kitchen phone. “I’ll call his office and leave a message on his voice mail.” Apparently determined to get the unpleasant chore over with as swiftly as possible, Nora punched in a number, then waited impatiently until it was time to record a message.
“Daddy, this is Nora. I’m still angry with you, but I’m all right, so stop worrying about me and stop looking for me, and for heaven’s sake, take that reward off my head! Because I am not coming home until I’m ready, and right now I don’t know when that will be—if ever!” Finished, Nora slammed down the phone and whirled toward him. She tossed her mane of dark hair and folded her arms in front of her. “There!” she said hotly, looking Sam up and down, her entire body seething with suppressed fury. “I’ve done it!”
Sam grinned broadly, pleased he’d talked some sense into her, against all odds. Now that they’d made some headway on that score, it was time to work on getting the rest of Nora’s life in order. And he knew just where to start in making her feel a lot less misunderstood and a lot more loved.
“I hope you’re satisfied!” Nora continued furiously, stalking past him.
Sam caught her by the hem of her sweat shirt, and brought her back around to face him. “Not yet,” he drawled playfully, sinking into a chair and pulling her down onto his lap, so that her gently rounded bottom contacted the hardness of his thighs. “But I could be,” he promised in mock seriousness.
“Really?” she queried defiantly, with a temper Sam found every bit as delicious as her kisses. “What else do you want?”
You, Nora, heart and soul, Sam thought. But, determined to keep it light and easy as they left their disagreement behind them and focused on the future, he placed his finger beneath her chin and pulled her face to his. “Given our agreement to take our attraction for each other all the way, I’d think that would be obvious.” He lowered his mouth to hers, felt her soft gasp, felt her tense in anticipation. And still the desire in her was nothing compared to his. “I want this.”
Sam kissed Nora, letting his feelings take over as the kiss edged toward desperation. Nora did not pull away until his hand moved toward her breasts, and then she did pull away—decisively. “You’re saying you want us to make love—now—just like that?” Nora said, her face assuming a panicked look that spoke even more eloquently of her lack of bedroom experience than her previous statements on the subject.
“No,” Sam said softly, knowing that Nora was one woman who would take lots of careful handling and tender loving care, if she was to achieve the satisfaction she deserved, but he was more than up to the task. Given half a chance, he knew, he could make her happier than she had ever been—in bed and in life.
“Most definitely not just like that, Nora,” Sam told Nora softly, commiserating with her sudden case of nerves as he sifted his hands through the silken ends of her hair. “I want us to make love.” He drew back and looked into her face. “But only when we’re both ready, and the time is right for both o
f us.”
Nora jerked in a breath as her emerald-green eyes darkened with a mixture of anxiety and pleasure. He knew she was oblivious to the way her sweat shirt clung to her breasts, delineating the softly rounded globes, but he sure wasn’t.
Her arms clung softly to his shoulders as she told him with wry self-deprecation, “I’m not sure I’m experienced enough to figure that out, Sam.”
A very primitive, very male satisfaction rushed through Sam as he scooped her closer and positioned her against his chest. Maybe it was the Neanderthal in him, but he was glad her experience in the bedroom was limited. He wanted to be the first to show her. He closed his eyes and, just for a moment, touched his lips to her temple, inhaling the flowery scent of her hair and skin. “Trust me. We’ll both know when the time is right,” Sam promised as he bent to kiss her, in a soft, evocative way that soon had her nerves fading.
“And in the meantime, until it is—?” Nora queried, as she clung to him and their slow, languid kiss came to a halt.
“We’ll take it slow and easy,” Sam promised. “And concentrate on getting to know each other a little better.” He grinned and, knowing he had better get her off his lap if he was to keep his promise, set her aside and rolled to his feet. He started for the dinner she’d been fixing, and also grabbed a bottle of wine from the rack. “Fortunately, since we’ve found ourselves snowed in, it won’t be difficult to give each other our undivided attention.” He gave her a teasing wink. “’Cause this evening, I want you to be all mine.”
SAM was as good as his word, Nora swiftly realized as the two of them warmed bread and cheese in the microwave, opened a bottle of wine, added fruit to their dinner tray and then took it all into the living room to sit before the fire.
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