A Man of His Word

by Merline Lovelace

  “Reece…”

  “I know,” he growled. “You don’t want to repeat your mistake of ten years ago.”

  His hands tangled in her hair, holding her head still. Even in the dim light, Sydney saw the blue fire in the eyes that blazed up at her.

  “Just for the record, though, I’m not Jamie Chavez.”

  She sucked in a shocked breath. “I know that. I never thought… I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “And this isn’t ten years ago.”

  He dragged her head down and kissed her with stunning intensity. His mouth ravaged hers as if to prove his point that he was nothing like her charming, feckless first love. She felt swamped, consumed, almost savaged, and something primitive in her stirred. In this cave, in this darkness, with lightning crashing outside and hard stone beneath, she had a fleeting sense of what the Anasazi women must have felt centuries ago when their men came back from the hunt to claim them.

  For a moment the line between reality and fantasy blurred. The present merged into the past. A feeling of powerlessness invaded Sydney. Almost panic. Like the Weeping Woman of Chalo Canyon, she felt trapped, bound to this hard, muscular man with something stronger than rope, more binding than chains.

  She could stop what was happening with a word, a single push on his shoulder. She knew that. Reece wouldn’t follow this savage kiss with an equally savage possession if she dragged her head up and gasped out a protest.

  She tried to do it. Even managed to lift her head an inch or two before the primal need stirring in her belly smothered the protest. Instincts deeper than thought, older than time, drove her. She wanted to feel him, run her hands over his arms and back and shoulders, taste his salty skin. Surrendering to that dark, primal need, she tugged at his shirt, dragging the tail free of his jeans so she could slide her hands under it. He made a sound that could have been hunger, could have been triumph. Before she could decide which, he’d stripped off her tank top.

  The stretchy top ended up under her, wadded into a ball, cushioning her shoulders from the hard stone. His shirt followed a moment later, providing a pad for her hips. She’d barely registered the cool, damp air on her skin when Reece dipped his head for a hot, greedy exploration of her breasts. He took the peaks between his teeth, teasing, worrying, raising stinging needles that arched her back and had her panting.

  She was slick with sweat and wet with need when his hand went to the zipper on her shorts. The brush of his knuckles on her belly hollowed her stomach. She wanted to mate with this man. Wanted to take him into her, feel him inside her, test her will and her femininity against his awesome strength. Yet even the primal instinct that drove her couldn’t completely subdue her twentieth-century common sense.

  “We can’t,” she panted, her voice raw with regret. “I want to. Believe me, I want to! But I’m not— I haven’t— I don’t have any protection,” she ended on a wail.

  Above her, his mouth curved in a slow, wicked grin. “Didn’t I tell you about my brothers? I have four of them, one younger, three older.”

  This wasn’t exactly the moment Sydney would have chosen to exchange family histories. She could barely breathe, much less pretend an interest in anything other than the fingers making small circles just above her bellybutton.

  “From the time I was twelve,” he murmured, watching the rapid rise and fall of her stomach with great interest, “Jake and Evan and Marsh made sure I left the house prepared for any eventuality.”

  She managed a shaky laugh. “Twelve, huh?”

  “We Hendersons matured early,” Reece explained, his grin deepening to a slash of white teeth and unabashed masculinity.

  Early or late, they’d certainly matured. This one had, anyway. Sydney couldn’t help noticing how much when he shed his jeans. He was, to put it simply, magnificent. Rippling skin stretched tightly over corded muscles and lean hips. A dusting of black hair created shadows on his chest and lower belly.

  When he stretched out beside her, the instincts Sydney had fought to subdue just a moment before went out of control. She lifted her hips so he could slide off her shorts, taking her panties with them, and welcomed him eagerly when he covered her. His knees nudged hers apart, his mouth descended once more, hard, demanding.

  When his hand slipped between her legs, desire burst into a blinding, white-hot flame. Within seconds the flame became a raging inferno. To Sydney’s astonishment and complete mortification, she felt herself climaxing. She stiffened her legs. Tried to fight it. Couldn’t stop the spiraling sensations.

  “Reece!”

  “It’s all right.” His mouth was hot on hers, his hand so skilled that a groan ripped from the back of her throat. “Let it go.”

  “As…if…I…have…any—” Her head went back. Her body arched. “Oh! Ooooh!”

  Her last coherent thought was that Reece had chosen the right profession after all. He certainly knew his way around dams. With one wicked twist of his fingers, he opened all the floodgates. Pleasure roared through and over and around Sydney, until she was sure she’d drown in it.

  She was still gasping for air when he thrust into her. Skillfully, sinfully, he filled the reservoir once more, bringing her to another shattering release before following her over the crest.

  Chapter 10

  S ydney didn’t notice that the storm had passed until she stretched, replete and catlike in her languorous contentment. The lazy twist brought her head around and the window into view. She stared at the narrow slit for long moments before recognizing the whitish glow outside as moonlight.

  The pale wash of gold stirred her. She’d love to capture the ruins in this light. Reece had told her that he’d sent Zack and Henry back to town with most of the equipment. Maybe they’d left a minicam behind. Not one of Tish’s expensive Cannons. She’d have taken those with her. But Sydney’s personal camera, snug and safe in its waterproof case, might still be there.

  Yet, as much as the moonlight tugged at her, she couldn’t bring herself to move. She didn’t want to untangle her arms and legs, or relinquish the damp heat of Reece’s powerful body pressed so intimately on hers.

  Even more to the point, she wasn’t ready to examine the nagging little worry that crept into her head. Maybe, just maybe she hadn’t learned her lesson of ten years ago as thoroughly as she thought she had.

  She could love this man, she thought with a catch in her throat. Easily. After their explosive joining, Sydney knew instinctively that she could make love with Reece Henderson again and again and never lose the wonder of it, the sheer, carnal delight.

  The thought scared the heck out of her and made her writhe inside when she remembered how she’d promised Reece she wouldn’t go all gooey-eyed on him. Swallowing a groan, she eased out from under the heavy leg thrown across both of hers and groped for her panties.

  What was it about Chalo Canyon that clouded her thinking, made her so damned vulnerable to a handsome face?

  No, not just a handsome face. As Reece had so forcefully reminded her, he wasn’t Jamie Chavez. Like she needed a reminder! Reece Henderson didn’t operate on the same plane, or even in the same sphere as the careless, casual Jamie.

  Resolutely she pulled on her wrinkled top. When her head pushed through the neck opening, she found Reece with his hands hooked comfortably under his neck, his eyes on her breasts, and a sexy smile on his lips. As if remembering the pleasure they’d experienced at the touch of those lips, her nipples peaked.

  For heaven’s sake! One look from the man and she was ready to throw herself on top of him again and devour him whole. So much for her promise not to make a fool of herself!

  “The storm’s passed,” she muttered, embarrassed by her body’s involuntary reaction.

  “I see.”

  Yanking down the hem of her tank top, she pointed out more of the obvious. “It’s late. The moon’s up.”

  He nodded solemnly.

  A little desperate, she tugged her shorts from under his hip. “At least we’ll have some ligh
t for the trek out of the canyon.”

  “You don’t have to worry, Sydney. I’ll get you home safely…if and when you’re ready to leave.”

  She bit down on her lower lip, both seduced and appalled at the invitation in his tanned-leather voice. She couldn’t blame him for wanting seconds. She wanted them, too. So badly her stomach curled in on itself. And she couldn’t blame anyone but herself for that lazy, predatory gleam in his eyes. She’d set this whole situation up, promised him a roll in the hay—or in this case, a roll on the rocks—with no strings attached.

  “I’m not worried,” she assured him. “I just want to take advantage of this glorious moonlight to shoot a few exterior angles.”

  His sexy little smile faded at her swift transition from passionate lover to equally passionate moviemaker.

  “I just hope Zack left some of the high-speed film,” she added under her breath, scrambling into her shorts with more haste than dignity.

  “Wait a minute. We have to talk.”

  “No, we don’t.” She summoned what was probably the world’s most insipid smile. “We talked before I jumped your bones, remember? I promised you I wouldn’t make the same mistake I made ten years ago, and I won’t.”

  He dragged on his jeans. “Dammit, Sydney…”

  “It’s okay.” She backed away, groping behind her for the opening in the stone that formed the door. “I’m not expecting any declarations of undying love, and I certainly won’t lay any on you.”

  On that firm note, she ducked under the stone lintel and disappeared through the doorway, leaving Reece to glower at the dark rectangle. Five minutes ago he’d roused from a lazy state of satisfaction to the glorious sight of Sydney nearly naked, her mouth still swollen from his kiss and her eyes filled with confusion as she tried to sort out the ramifications of what they’d just shared.

  Reece could appreciate her confusion. He was tasting its sharp tang himself. He’d pulled Sydney into his arms with only a vague, hazy worry about where they’d go from here, but now…

  Now, what?

  Now he wanted her even more fiercely than he had an hour ago. He’d just admitted it to himself when she’d brushed him off with that casual assurance that she wouldn’t fall in love with him. Somehow, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear right now. Casual didn’t come close to describing his feelings for Sydney Scott at this moment.

  He yanked on his clothes, trying to catalogue and arrange the sensations she evoked in him in ascending order of importance.

  Irritation. Lust. Admiration. Worry.

  Especially worry.

  His face grim, he yanked on his shirt and ducked through the low door to retrace his steps through the dark, winding ruins. Pushing upright outside the last building, he scanned the cave’s mouth.

  Silhouetted against a midnight-blue sky studded with thousands of stars, Sydney picked her way through the ruins toward the ladder. Reece reached her just in time to bar her descent.

  “We need to talk. Not about what just happened between us,” he added quickly when she opened her mouth to give him what he guessed would be another of her thanks-it-was-fun-and-I’ll-call-you-sometime speeches. “We’ll discuss that later. Before we do, I need to tell you what brought me into the canyon tonight.”

  So much for her fatal attraction, Sydney thought wryly. She’d gotten so caught up in the moment…and in his arms…that she hadn’t even questioned Reece’s unexpected appearance at the ruins.

  “Did you get the results back on your computer simulations?” she asked, cutting to what she assumed was the key issue.

  His mouth settled into a tight line. “Yes, I did.”

  “Not good?”

  “Let’s just say they weren’t what I expected. We start blasting tomorrow. You won’t be able to access this part of the canyon for the next couple of days.”

  She bit back her instinctive protest. She’d agreed to work around his schedule. But two days! Two precious days in which she’d planned to retake the footage lost to the slasher.

  Her mind raced. She could still make her deadline. She’d do the interviews in town, rerecord Henry’s stories. Maybe go over the stock tapes on the Anasazis she’d purchased from the State Historical Archives to see how and where she could flesh out her own footage. Absorbed in her mental calculations, she almost missed Reece’s next comment.

  “I talked to Martinez this afternoon. Out on Canyon Rim Road, at the spot where you drove over the cliff.”

  No one seemed to make the fine distinctions she did about that particular incident. She folded her arms, determined to set the record straight once and for all.

  “Swerving to avoid a rock in the road and having the road crumble beneath you is not the same as driving over a cliff.”

  “That’s true,” Reece admitted.

  She barely had time to savor her little victory in the war of words before the ground started to crumble beneath her feet again.

  “Some people are questioning how that rock got into the road,” he said slowly.

  Her arms dropped. “Like who, for instance?”

  “Like me.”

  “I thought…” Reeling, Sydney struggled to grasp the implications of that terse reply. “I assumed—”

  Oh, God! She’d assumed that slab of limestone had simply fallen from the cliff beside the road, an accidental product of rain and the eroding wind that whistled through the canyon.

  “Are you saying someone pushed that rock into the road deliberately? Someone who knew I’d be driving along that stretch of the canyon after dark?”

  “I’m saying it’s possible.” He kept his eyes on hers, as if to gauge her reaction. “I found some marks on the stone that could have been made by a chisel.”

  “A chisel,” Sydney echoed, feeling sick.

  “Or by another falling rock,” he added sharply. “Martinez shipped a piece of it to a metallurgy lab in Tucson. We should hear from them within a day or two.”

  Wrapping her arms around her waist, she fought the sudden chills that started at her fingertips and worked their way inward toward her heart.

  “Sebastian.”

  A shiver danced like a nervous spider down her back.

  Seeing the shudder, Reece felt his jaw tighten in its socket. He hated scaring her like this, hated seeing that grim, determined look in her eyes.

  Restraining the urge to fold her into his arms, he was obligated to repeat the deputy’s caution. “As of this point, there’s no proof that any of the Chavez family was involved in either your accident or the malicious destruction of your cassettes.”

  “It was Sebastian.”

  Silently Reece could only agree with her low, reverberating assertion. Arlene might have slashed her perceived rival’s tapes out of desperation, but only Sebastian possessed the strength or the ruthlessness to arrange such a clever and convenient obstacle on Canyon Rim Road.

  If it was arranged.

  They wouldn’t know for a few days, Reece reminded himself. In the meantime he and Henry would keep Sydney and her crew under close surveillance. Very close surveillance.

  And Reece would take the night shift.

  The quiet that stretched between him and Sydney during the drive back to town told Reece that he’d be keeping watch over her tonight from a distance. The mind-shattering intimacy they’d shared during that hour in the cave dissipated a little more with every mile. By the time he pulled into the Lone Eagle Motel’s gravel parking lot, a quiet, withdrawn woman had completely effaced the one who’d shattered into a million pieces in his arms.

  Reece missed her…more than he was ready to admit.

  They had just climbed out of the Jeep when a door banged open and Zack sauntered out.

  “Where you been, boss? I was, like, getting worried.”

  “We got caught by the storm.”

  The kid’s gaze drifted from Sydney’s tangled hair to Reece’s half-buttoned shirt. A smirk tilted down the corners of his mouth.

  “Musta been some storm.
”

  “It was.”

  She shoved her key in the lock and pushed open the door of her room. Reece brushed past her. A quick search of the bedroom and the bathroom beyond revealed no destruction or uninvited guests. Satisfied, he went back outside to unload the Jeep.

  “Here, I’ll take those,” she said.

  Lifting the cases from his hands, she muttered a stiff good-night. A moment later the door banged in his face.

  Reece stood on the stoop, debating whether he should pound on the door and inform Ms. Scott that they still had unfinished business to discuss or just open the blasted thing and walk in. He didn’t want to leave her alone and shaken like this. Hell, he might as well admit it. He didn’t want to leave her at all.

  What he wanted was Sydney. Any way he could have her. The truth hit him right between the eyes just seconds before Zack hit him right between the shoulder blades. The friendly thump carried more force than the kid’s thin frame and lank manner would suggest he possessed.

  “You look like you could use a beer. I know I could. I’ll keep you company if you’ll buy.”

  Reece slanted him an assessing look. “Are you old enough to drink? Legally?”

  “I’m old enough to do anything legally. It’s the illegal stuff that gets me in trouble. Hey, man,” he added when his prospective drinking companion didn’t jump at the offer, “I’m twenty-five and then some. Ask Lula if you don’t believe me. She’s already carded me twice.”

  “Once wasn’t enough?”

  “She had a few doubts about my driver’s license the first time I showed it to her,” he admitted. “On closer examination, she finally decided that geek with the glasses and the greased-down hair was really me.” He palmed his green-tinted spikes. “Took me a while to convince her that people do change over the years.”

  Years, hell. Reece had changed profoundly in the past few hours. He just wasn’t sure how, yet.