by Tara Janzen
“Dear God . . .” His face contorted in pain, and a silent scream hissed through his bared teeth. He tried to jerk out of her grasp, but she held him tightly, her fingers strong and sure as she squeezed his toes and insteps.
“Shh . . .” she crooned softly in counterpoint to his labored groans, watching the heave and buck of his chest. The gasping sound tore at her heart. “Shh . . . you’re okay. I know it hurts.” She moved her hands up his calves, working magic with her fingers, helping him as much as she could.
She followed the rise of water up his body, rubbing and kneading his muscles back to life. Slowly his skin lost the icy paleness beneath the tan. Her knees were on either side of his, her hands massaging his thighs, when he pulled her down beside him, resting his head below her shoulder. And she let him, holding him until the water threatened to overflow the tub.
Gently she extricated herself from his arms and leaned forward to turn off the faucets. Just as gently he brought her back. The sweater-covered arm around her waist slid her closer until his head once again rested in the valley between her breasts. His groans turned into heavy sighs.
The action surprised her. The strength of the action surprised her even more. This was not a man on the edge of death. At least she didn’t think so.
“Jaz?”
“Hmmm.” The answer came from deep in his throat, like a growl, or a purr.
“Are you okay?”
Slowly he tilted his head back, inadvertently smearing her T-shirt with blackface. Murky gray eyes caught hers with a languid gaze. “I’m not sure. Can we try this a little longer?” The words slurred over one another.
“Uh . . . sure.” The first flush of modesty coursed up her neck and blushed her cheeks. She’d gotten herself into this, she thought, and she would tough it out. She hoped. Any doubts she had disappeared when she noticed the pink stain of his blood floating above their legs. He had to be hurting a lot more than his voice revealed.
“Great,” he mumbled, snuggling back down, and she let them both rest, her eyes drifting shut in pure weariness. He would live.
The quarter hour slipped into the half hour and still she held him, feeling his chest press against hers in deep, even breaths. His thigh was now on top of hers and his arm had wrapped completely around her waist. Steam rose around them, dampening her face and wetting a few straying tendrils of hair against her cheeks.
The quiet and the warmth—and the man—drained the tension from her body. She was suffused with a sweet weakness that spread inward in soft spirals of pleasure. Seductive, melting pleasure . . .
Her eyes popped open and a low gasp escaped her lips. Her half-dead stranger was very much alive—alive and nuzzling her breast with his open mouth, kneading her through the thin cotton of her T-shirt.
“Jaz!”
Her cry went unheard. He bit down gently and ran his tongue across the peak. The spirals tightened and shot straight down her middle.
Oh . . . my . . . Lord.
“Jaz.” She moaned, trying one more time to take control before she figuratively and literally sank.
Perplexed, glazed eyes lifted to hers. “Hi,” he said softly. What he didn’t say, but what she heard, was, “Who are you?”
“Jaz. If you’re warm now, I think I should take care of your shoulder.”
He nodded slowly, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “I’m plenty warm . . . real warm.” His slate-gray eyes began to clear, and the faintest hint of a smile touched a corner of his mouth. “Even hot.”
“Yes, well, then I’ll just get what I—”
His fingers brushed across her lips, stopping her words. “Tell me one thing. Was I dreaming?”
Truth struggled with embarrassment, and won. “No,” she admitted slowly. She couldn’t have been in a more vulnerable or compromising position if she’d planned it.
“Then I apologize. Honest, Chantal, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.” The contrition in his eyes told her he wasn’t lying. His simple confession of how she’d made him feel was something else entirely. She decided the most graceful way out of the situation was simple acceptance.
“It’s okay, Jaz. We’re both strung out.” She untangled her body from his and stepped out of the tub.
He tried to follow, but the weight of the sodden sweater held him down. A wince flashed across his face. “You’re going to have to cut this thing off me.” he said. “It’s killing my shoulder.”
“I’ll get a pair of scissors,” she said, keeping her back to him as she padded around the room. At a hundred square feet, the bathroom doubled as a dressing area, easily accommodating a closet along one wall and her light-oak antique chiffonier. She grabbed dry undies, a towel, and her jeans and shirt. “I’ll be right back.”
In minutes she returned, fully clothed and holding the scissors in her hand. He’d let some of the water out of the tub, so only his legs were still covered.
“I thought I’d make it easier on us,” he said, grinning through the rivers of blackface streaking his face. “If you cut up the sleeve, we should be able to pull it over my head without doing me in.”
The camouflage was even more effective wet and runny, she thought, but somewhere underneath all that grime lurked a good, solid bone structure with everything in the right place and in the right proportion. Of course, a man didn’t need much more of an edge than a smile like his, a mouth like his, and the expertise to meld them both into mind-numbing kisses. She was almost afraid to see what he really looked like.
“Okay,” she replied, hoping she’d struck a casual note. She’d overcome the largest portion of her embarrassment in the living room, telling herself that if he’d thought he was dreaming he wouldn’t really remember what had happened. But all she had to do was look into his teasing gray eyes to know she was only fooling herself. He remembered plenty.
“You seem to have bounced back pretty well,” she continued in a light vein as she began cutting.
“Yeah, we Petersons are a tough breed.” The closer she got to his shoulder, the narrower his gaze became, following each snip.
“Don’t worry, Jaz, I’ve got steady hands. That slip-up at Sandhurst’s was a rare occurrence,” she said dryly, back on firm conversational ground.
His eyes fluttered open, the faint gesture an indication of his fatigue. “I trust you implicitly.” A vaguely mocking smile twisted his mouth. “It’s me I’m worried about.”
She lifted a dark brow quizzically, but otherwise ignored his statement. Just as well, he thought. He didn’t have the energy to explain the feelings she aroused. They were strong and tender, hotter than he’d confessed, and confusing him on more than one level.
Physically he understood his reaction. She was the prettiest, most delicately exotic woman he’d ever seen. A thoroughly mussed tumble of wild silver-blond hair was piled this way and that on top of her head, more than half of it falling around her shoulders. Her heart-shaped face and softly colored cheeks hinted at an innocence that belied her skill at Sandhurst’s. Her eyes were like a newborn fawn’s, soft and luminous, except bluer than a Colorado sky. Her skin looked like satin to touch. No, it didn’t surprise him that he wanted to take her to bed. But it surprised the hell out of him that he wanted her to take him to bed.
She leaned in closer, unwittingly echoing his thoughts, filling his nostrils with her special scent, and an unconscious groan escaped him.
She immediately lightened her touch. “I’m sorry, Jaz, but I’m almost finished.”
Her misinterpretation brought a wry smile to his mouth. And he was thinking about starting something she probably wouldn’t let him finish even if he could. The electric response they’d shared in the heat of danger wasn’t something he took for granted. When that much adrenaline was pounding through your blood, a person did a lot of things he wouldn’t consider when he was safe at home. But they were far from safe even now, and he wondered if she knew it.
Wielding the scissors gently, Chantal cut through the neck of his sweater.
“I’m going to take it off your other arm first; then we’ll get it over your head. I’ll try not to hurt you.”
She didn’t want to hurt him. The same maternal instincts she’d felt while she held him in the bathtub were at work now, cautioning her to be gentle. The other feelings she’d had when he had held her . . . Well, she was unsuccessfully trying to ignore those feelings.
She helped him slip his arm out of the intact sleeve and paused for a moment. “Are you ready?”
“Go for it.” He gave her the thumbs-up.
She bundled the bulk of the sweater around his neck with both hands and as carefully as possible eased it over his head. A tremor jumped across his shoulder blades, but she didn’t stop.
He pulled his head out from under the sweater and came up grinning. “We made it,” he said, and sighed, slipping down and stretching full out in the tub.
The sheer cheerfulness of his smile warmed all the tender places of her heart. And the sight of his now nearly naked body turned those places to mush. No wonder he’d had the strength to hold her when by all rights he should have been helpless, she thought. Sinewy muscles wrapped over one another down the length of his arms, lean and tight, like the muscles in his chest. His darkly tanned skin stretched over the taut plane of his stomach, taking a concave dive below his ribs. Water lapped at the thin line of hair starting at his navel and disappearing under the only article of clothing she hadn’t stripped off him, a pair of black cotton running shorts. Wet, they didn’t hide much, and her heart flipped and sank.
“You got any soap, Chantal?” She snapped her gaze up to his face. He pushed himself upright, his eyes twinkling with an annoyingly accurate summation of her thoughts.
“Yes. Sure,” she said, giving herself a mental shake and reaching behind her. She knew she should leave now, before she made a complete gaping fool of herself. But she didn’t leave.
He soaped up the washcloth, and she watched as the veins rose and receded along his biceps, triceps, and every other muscle he had but she couldn’t name. Then he smeared the cloth over his face and hair, turning the pink cotton into gray. A small price to pay, she admitted when he sluiced the soap off.
Boyishly handsome, despite the crow’s feet feathering the corners of his eyes, his face reflected all the charm his smile had promised. His skin had the same rich tan all over, except for the tip and part of the bridge of his nose, which was peeling to pink in spots. Too many days in the sun, she decided. The dark curve of his cheekbones melded into the darker hair of his eyebrows. His lashes were even darker, thick and spiky with glittering drops of water. In contrast his eyes were shifting shades of gray, like a clear mountain stream. A slight cleft dented his chin, and creases deepened in his lean cheeks when he smiled—as he did now.
“Well, what do you think?” His softly spoken words jolted her out of her perusal.
“I . . . uh . . .” She lowered her eyes and scrambled mentally for something innocuous to say. “I think I’ll let you finish up alone. Are you hungry?”
His smile told her she hadn’t fooled him, not for a minute. All those tender, mushy places were experiencing liquid fusion, and she knew it was written all over her face. She stood to leave, busily drying her hands on a fluffy pink bath towel.
“Yes.”
“What?” she asked, confused. Then her blush shot up two degrees. She had asked him a question and he was answering, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember the question.
“Yes, I’m hungry, but don’t go to any trouble. And, Chantal?”
“Yes?” Her voice was a weak whisper, and she stopped her retreat toward the door, forcing herself to meet his eyes one more time.
“Thank you. You probably saved my life.”
“That makes us even,” she replied uneasily, not at all sure she liked the train of his thoughts.
Jaz shook his head. “No, I still owe you one.” Not even a hint of a smile graced his mouth or lit his eyes.
She definitely didn’t like the train of his thoughts. The last thing she needed was for Jaz Peterson to be in her debt. Debts had a funny way of changing the course of a person’s life, and she didn’t want the responsibility for his life. She’d helped him because she’d had to, and to relieve some of her own debts, not to generate another obligation. Fate wasn’t as easily dismissed, and she prayed her instincts were wrong concerning the unforeseen twists and turns this night had taken.
Or was the prayer something else? Her gaze lingered on a stranger’s face, and she saw a myriad of other possibilities shining in his eyes. But long ago she’d learned her lesson about fate.
“You don’t owe me anything, Jaz. Remember that.” She stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her, adding another note of finality to her statement.
Standing in front of her open refrigerator, she checked out her leftovers: mashed potatoes and gravy, fried chicken, peas, a dab of stuffing. She put a lot of everything on a plate and covered it with a paper towel for a zap in the microwave. On second thought, she lifted the paper towel and added another helping of potatoes. Plenty of carbohydrates to keep him warm all night long. She wished she’d bought an electric blanket the last time she’d been in Denver. They wanted a fortune for them in Aspen, and Elise never gave practical gifts.
She closed the refrigerator door and rested her forehead against the cool metal. What had she done? A hot, very hot, piece of jewelry was stashed in her hope chest, only a small part of her father’s salvation, yet a big part of her love. What was she doing? A practically naked stranger, with a kiss that could melt the snow off the Burn, was soaking in her tub. A sheaf of stolen documents, which she hadn’t even looked at, was concealed with the necklace. She needed some answers.
Rolling her head sideways, she glanced at the cedar chest where she had hidden her pack. None of your business, her conscience told her. You’re already in this thing up to your neck, her curiosity replied.
Picking up her brandy in one hand and tucking a few of the many straying tendrils of hair behind her ear with the other, she crossed to the chest. He had given her the papers, hadn’t he? she thought, kneeling in front of the chest. Under duress, and to deliver, not rummage through, her conscience answered. She stared at the lock, long and hard. Then she reached.
With her eyes closed she worked the combination lock, feeling for tension in the tumblers. It was an easy trick with a cheap lock, but it kept her in practice. She should have stopped playing these childhood games a long time ago. Then the option to steal back the necklace wouldn’t have been open to her.
The lock released and she opened her eyes. Regrets usually came fast on the heels of should have’s, and she was still too deep in the middle of this to contemplate regrets. She pulled his documents out of her pack and laid them in her lap. The words TOP SECRET stamped in red on the cover page gave her a moment’s pause.
Despite her curiosity, she had no business looking at the papers he had stolen, even if they could supply her with some answers. But then again, maybe some answers were worth the risk. Come what might, a stranger was in her tub and she had promised him refuge for the night. She had a right to check him out, and the only means at her disposal were the papers. It was wonderful how the mind could work, she thought, and flipped the cover page over.
One thing became immediately clear: They were government documents, or, rather, Air Force documents. The names and ranks at the top of the page also told her they must be very important. Chantal was proud of her American citizenship, and she made a point of following the news. She had seen some of those names in the newspapers.
Fighting the temptation to look further, she closed the papers. Sandhurst could only have gotten the documents through illegal means—the same way he’d gotten her father’s necklace. As best she could tell, Jaz Peterson was who he said he was, a sanctioned envoy of the American government. The thought eased her mind about the night still ahead. Then, with a twinge of regret, she realized his apparent legitimacy only widened the gu
lf between them.
“So what?” she whispered in self-defense, unaware that she’d voiced the words. She didn’t have to live with Jaz Peterson and whatever he might think about her. She only had to live with herself.
“Dammit.” His deep voice jerked her attention to the bathroom.
Chantal jumped up, the documents crunched in her fist. Guilt spread over her face like a red mask, but Jaz wasn’t looking at her—yet. Still, there was no way for her to hide the papers discreetly.
Lean and lanky, he stood in the doorway, masculinity defined in its purest sense. The dusky pink bath towel was knotted around his slim hips, hanging to his knees and showing off his dark tan to perfection. A smear of white antibiotic cream streaked across his cheek. Another trailed across the cut on his shoulder.
“Could you give me a hand with this?” he asked between his teeth, which were clamped down on a length of first-aid tape. The gauze bandage was crumpled in his hand. Then he glanced up and saw her holding the papers. His eyes narrowed as his gaze traveled from the documents to her face. He took a step forward, removing the first-aid tape from his mouth.
Seconds stretched into eternity as their eyes met, guilty blue and questioning gray.
“That’s dangerous information, Chantal,” he said softly. “You’d be better off not knowing.”
“I didn’t read them.” By some miracle she kept her voice steady, despite the heat in her cheeks and the evidence in her hand. Her pride refused to allow her to give him more of an explanation. He’d either believe her or damn her, no matter how fast she talked.
“Checking me out?” he asked, lifting both dark brows.
She nodded, and Jaz thought of how deceiving looks could be. If this were their first meeting he would have thought the lady with the wild blond curls and crystalline blue eyes incapable of subterfuge, but he’d seen her in action. Regardless, he knew beyond doubt that she wasn’t an arms dealer, or a thief, or a liar. General Moore might disagree with his gut instincts, but they’d gotten Jaz through more than one tight spot.