by Cindy Gerard
The Cessna cracked hard against the dock again, shaking the wood beneath his feet. When she bobbed up like a huge, gangly cork, he saw the damage. The tail end of a re-rod spike securing the cedar dock cribbing had gouged an angry-looking hole in one of the floats. It was then that he realized that if he stood there much longer debating, he’d lose her for good. When water filled the float, there was every possibility that she’d sink like a stone. And he simply couldn’t let that happen.
Without another thought to his own safety, he peeled off his sweatshirt and toed off his shoes. Clutching the rope attached to the front float tightly in his fist, he sucked in a deep breath and took a running leap off the end of the dock.
Maggie had fooled herself into thinking she could sleep. Why she thought tonight would be different from any other, she didn’t know. Insomnia had been her companion for several years, her persistent nemesis, always crowding her, always winning the battle of wills.
Tonight, with Blue Hazzard camped on her doorstep, it was a sure winner hands down.
She knew she had to concede that battle, but she wouldn’t give up the other one. She would not invite him in. She would not let him and his every-mother-loves-him grin and his sneak-up-on-you sense of humor, or even her own tendency to mother stray dogs and feed alley cats, sway her.
Or the memory of his kiss.
A swift, sweet tug of arousal arched through her body, then settled heavy and low. It was bad enough that she’d let him kiss her. Even worse, she’d kissed him back. And she’d enjoyed it. She’d enjoyed the sure and sudden reawakening of desire, the honest ache of passion. She’d welcomed the reminder that she was a woman who could still be ruled by instincts that could so decisively eclipse her unbreachable control. At least she’d thought it was unbreachable.
Her relationship with Rolfe had taught her the power and necessity of control. A relationship with a man like Blue Hazzard could threaten, if not destroy it. And loss of control could end up destroying her.
That’s why she couldn’t let him any closer. That’s why he couldn’t sleep on her sofa. He might have stumbled on to her by accident, but the fact that he was still here was as calculated as her plan to drop out of life as she’d known it.
He’d set her up. She could feel it as certainly as she felt her fatigue fight with her inability to get a good night’s sleep.
So she made herself stay in bed. Made herself quit getting up every five minutes to look out the window and see if the camp fire was still burning. Made herself stop trying to catch a glimpse of the sculpted angles of his profile as the firelight played across his features, tipping his golden hair with shades of amber and burnt sienna.
She willed herself to quit wondering if he was the kind of man he seemed to be. A man who loved life, loved to play, wasn’t above a little good-natured manipulating to get what he wanted, but didn’t have a mean bone in his body beneath all that sizzle and sex appeal.
No, she told herself firmly. Don’t get caught up in wishing for the impossible. Don’t get fooled by the pretty package. And for God’s sake, don’t forget what you’re running away from.
She rolled to her stomach, determined to ride this out until tomorrow when he’d be gone. The first drop of rain pelted the bedroom window then. The unmistakable howl of a rising wind was quick to follow. The sharp scrape and whine at her door came soon after that.
She scowled into the pillow then assimilated the sound with the cause. Hershey.
Her nurturing heart ruled her actions then. Poor baby. The lab was scared. Maggie knew all about fear. The fear of being left alone. The fear of wondering where her next meal would come from. The fear of wondering if she’d ever find a safe haven.
She tossed back the covers and snagged her robe from a chair by the bed. Shivering with the chill of the Minnesota night, she tied the robe tightly around her waist and walked on bare feet to the living room.
When she opened the door, it was to the most pitiful sight she’d ever seen. Hershey sat, one paw up, his ears hanging low, his brown eyes big and soulful and pleading. And while his thick brown coat had shed the rain as effectively as duck down, he was shivering as if he’d been caught in an ice storm.
“You ought to take that show on the road,” Maggie murmured with an amused shake of her head, then opened the door wide enough for the lab to snake through. “People would pay big money to see such a stellar performance— Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”
Just that fast, Hershey, with the instincts of a coonhound, homed in on the bedroom, made one huge happy leap and landed in the middle of her bed. With a grunt of satisfaction, he nosed under the covers and burrowed deep.
“You little finagler,” Maggie scolded as she trailed after the damp dog and tried to coax him out from under the blankets.
Hershey’s only response was a low, warning growl.
Maggie grinned. “So you want to play hardball, huh?”
Hands on her hips, she stared at the lump in the middle of the mattress and wondered why she wasn’t more upset. In the next instant, she knew the reason. Where the dog went, so went the man. So why hadn’t he been begging at her door with Hershey?
An electrifying bolt of lightning cracked through the night, illuminating the dark cabin and the world outside the window.
She stood transfixed as her eyes took in the sudden storm, the violent crash of water to shore—and the figure hunched on his knees at the end of her dock.
Even through the dark and even at this distance, his size made it impossible to mistake him for anyone but Blue. Her brows drew together in instinctive alarm as she walked closer to the window. “What is he doing?”
Though her vision was hampered by darkness and rainwashed windowpanes, she didn’t have to wonder long. Another lightning flash lit up the night just as he leaped into the bay.
“Oh, my God.” One hand rose instinctively to her mouth while the other hugged her waist. “Is he crazy?”
For a full minute she stood there, trying to search him out amid the flashes of lightning and the black murky swells that battered her dock and crashed against the shoreline. When she saw a slow and gradual inching of the plane away from the dock, struggling to stay clear of the rocks, she understood.
He was trying to save the plane. That stupid, beat-up plane. And he was liable to drown himself or get fried by lightning in the process.
“Not only are you a conceited, arrogant jerk, you are certifiably insane, Blue Hazzard,” she muttered under her breath. “And you’re really going to get yourself killed this time.”
For all of ten seconds she debated. Then she whipped off her robe, tugged on a pair of sweats over her panties and T-shirt and jammed her feet into her tennis shoes. Snagging a flashlight from above the refrigerator, she grabbed her slicker from the coat rack and headed out the door.
Shoulders hunched against the downpour, she hurried down the slope toward the lake, rounded the boathouse, stopped, then backtracked. After finding a length of rope inside the boathouse, she headed back along the shoreline toward the beach. With every step she refused to think that he might have already drowned out there. With every stumble, she took solace in the fact that though the Cessna was not making much progress, she could still spot its silhouette bobbing wildly in the confines of this small finger of the bay. As long as the plane was inching its way toward the beach, that meant Blue was out there struggling. The damn fool! If he got out of this alive, she was going to cheerfully strangle him.
The beach was only thirty yards from the dock by water. By land, it was more like a hundred. She had to skirt an outcropping of rock, work her way carefully through a weaving uphill path through the woods and then, at the clearing, maneuver her way down a ten-foot cliff wall that gradually sloped to the small, protected cove with its sandy beach below.
In daylight and dry weather, the sandy gold beach was a pleasant little hike and a prize worth pursuing, a rarity in this glacial lake where shoreline was carved primarily from stone. In th
e dark, however, it was a slippery, treacherous trek. Uneven stones and gnarled tree roots grabbed at her toes and tried to trip her. Jagged rock and rain-slickened lichen made purchase hazardous and the going slow.
Finally, she reached the bottom of the rock wall, her ankles scratched, her shoes soggy, her hair flattened to her head and dripping over her eyes, blinding her.
She shoved it away from her face and ran to the edge of the sand. Fanning the flashlight’s beam out into the water, she searched the rolling surface for a sign of Blue.
She’d weathered her share of wild, unexpected rainstorms in the past two months. Sometimes the skies turned heavy and gun metal gray in the hours before the rain came. Then it would settle in for days, the rain itself steady, the winds rising and falling with the tide. Sometimes, though, like tonight, the storms came with little or no warning. Screeching out of the night like a banshee, the wind would flex its muscle, turning the lake into a hazardous tumult of four- and five-foot swells that rolled over everything in its path.
Blue Hazzard was in its path right now—and it was battering him like a heavyweight going in for the knockout punch. She sucked in a harsh breath when she saw his head surface, then disappear when he was sucked into the belly of a swell that swallowed him completely.
“Blue!” She screamed his name above the wind’s roar, then cried out in relief when he bobbed to the surface again.
“He’ll never make it,” she thought frantically, gauging the distance between him and the shore. Not with that damn plane in tow. And yet she knew he’d never let it go.
Fueled by anger as much as by fear for him, she planted the heel of the flashlight in the sand. The light beam arched upward like a beacon for him to follow. Then she searched for the nearest boulder. With the wind and icy rain slowing her down, she dropped to her knees in the sand and tied one end of the rope securely around it.
Rising to her feet and fighting the slicker that flapped against her legs and hampered her movements, she gripped the loop of rope and ran to the edge of the beach. With all her strength, she threw the loose end of the rope as far as she could toward the spot where she’d last spotted Blue.
The limp nylon barely made it ten yards before the wind sucked it down, stopping its outward arch. The coil of rope landed uselessly in the water several yards short of the mark. Her hopes of reaching him sank as the waves washed the floating tangle back to shore like sea foam.
With a deep, determined breath and a silent curse for her own poor judgment, she made a decision. If she was going to help him, she wasn’t going to be able to do it from here.
She shrugged out of her slicker and stripped down to her panties and T-shirt. Shivering violently, she grasped the rope snugly in her hand. Setting her sights toward the nose of the Cessna, she waded into the hammering, icy surf toward the spot where she’d last seen Blue go under.
Four
J.D. had made some reckless decisions in his life. Diving into this churning lake at midnight might just top the list. But he’d do it again in a heartbeat if it meant the difference between saving or losing his plane.
When he saw the flash of light on the beach in a short, focused moment of clarity, however, he knew that this time he might have gone too far. This time it wasn’t just his own safety that was being compromised.
Maggie. My, God! She must have seen him out here, figured he was in trouble and decided to come in after him.
“No!” he yelled around a mouthful of lake water as a vicious undertow yanked him beneath the surface again with the zealous strength of a possessive lover.
Muscling his way to the surface, he broke the crest of a wave spitting water and gulping for air. “Maggie—g-go back!”
The screaming wind stole his water-choked words, whipping them back into the midst of the storm and out of her earshot.
“Go back!” he yelled again as she stumbled and went down fifteen yards ahead of him.
He lost sight of her completely then. And in that moment, he discovered fear as he’d never known it. Heartstalling, chest-crushing, forget-to-breathe fear. His lungs burned. His ribs ached with each wild, laborious lurch of his heart as he searched the undulating surface and swore at the undertow that was determined to suck him out into open water and away from Maggie and the beach.
“Maggie!” he roared. He was desperate to find her, determined that he would, or die trying. It came down to saving her or the plane. Without a second thought, he let go of the tow rope and dove for her.
Cold, murky blackness—so thick it made his lungs contract, so heavy it felt like his eardrums would burstblocked his way. He groped blindly for a connection—any connection—with an arm or a leg or, please, God, a handful of that glorious chestnut hair.
When he could stand it no longer, he broke to the surface, sucking air, stalling panic. Clinging to the necessity of a clear head, he dragged in another lung full of air and was ready to go under again when he heard her voice.
“Hazzard!”
Through a vortex of funneling wind and pounding waves, it came to him. The sweetest sound. The truest tone. The proof that he hadn’t lost her to the lake. He whipped around toward the sound that was now behind him, straining to see through the darkness.
“Maggie!” he swore, disbelieving when he spotted her, only her head and the slope of her shoulders visible above the aggressive surf.
“Grab—grab the rope!” she yelled, fighting to be heard above the wind and the crash of water to rock. “The rope!” she repeated in a frazzled, frustrated command. “Grab it!”
Only then did he realize she’d strung a lifeline from the shore to the spot where she treaded water. And only then did he realize she held it in one hand, and the Cessna’s rope was in her other hand.
With a whoop of jubilation and relief he dove for her. “You sweet, stupid woman! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded when he reached her. Wrapping her snugly in his arms, he lifted her above the choppy surface.
“I’m saving your worthless neck!”
Spitting water and trying, unsuccessfully, to rake the soaked tangle of knotted hair from her face, she let him relieve her of the weight of the Cessna’s rope as the waves fought to lure the plane out to open water.
“Damn right you are!” Rain pelted him in the face as he laughed into her eyes. “And you saved my plane, too! When we get out of here, lady, I’ll show you just how grateful I am.” Lightning cracked across the night sky. “But you gotta get out of this water, Maggie. Now!”
He turned her around and shoved her none too gently ahead of him toward the beach. “Get the hell back to shore!” he demanded, making sure she had a death grip on the lifeline. “That lightning is too damn close.
“Go!” he ordered as he fought with the tow rope and she hesitated, determined to help him.
With a scowl as dark as the night, she finally obeyed. She worked her way slowly along the rope as the water and the wind combined in an attack force against her. Only when she was well on her way did J.D. tie the ends of the two ropes together, securing the safety of the plane. And only when he was sure his knot was fast did he follow her, fighting his way by inches, to the beach.
Drained and winded, he crawled the last yard to the shore on hands and knees and collapsed face first in the surfsoaked sand.
Beside him, prostrate and exhausted, Maggie lay like a limp rag doll, her breath coming in labored, gasping gulps.
With the last of his strength, J.D. rolled toward her. Gathering her in his arms, he sheltered her against the wind and rain that pummeled them both.
“Are you all right?” he demanded, raking the tangled snarl of wet hair away from her eyes.
She nodded and burrowed closer to his heat.
“God, Maggie.” He lowered his mouth to her hair. “You scared ten years off my life. If…if anything had happened to you, I’d never be able to live with myself.”
He drew her closer still, shaken by the violent trembling of her body, taken by her val
or, seduced by her near-naked wet length. And there, with the wind and the rain cocooning them like shipwrecked survivors, the romantic in him eclipsed his concern and his current discomfort.
She was a quivering bundle of lush feminine flesh. Near naked. Near freezing. Nearly his for the taking.
Her soaked T-shirt had ridden up high on her hip, exposing a strip of delicate white silk banded together by tiny ribbons of lace at her hip point. The soft fullness of her breasts with their diamond-hard nipples pressed against him, separated from his bare chest by the mere barrier of clinging, wet cotton. Another movie scene came vividly to mind, this one a foreshadowing of everything he wanted to share with Maggie—the heat, the passion, the desperate need:
A man and a woman lay entwined in each other’s arms on a remote, moon-lit beach. Not just any man. Not just any woman. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr rolled in the surf-swept sand, oblivious to the crash of the breakers around them, locked in each other’s arms, lost in each other’s love…
“Blue…”
“Yes, Maggie,” he whispered, closing his eyes, letting himself get swept up in the moment and the miracle as it unfolded.
“Blue…if you don’t get your grubby paws off of me, my knee is going to connect with a part of your anatomy that you, no doubt, highly value, and that I could happily put out of commission for the rest of your natural life.”
His eyes snapped open. He pulled back, blinked, then blinked again. “Huh?”
“Back off, buster,” she gritted out between chattering teeth.
“Oh.” Reality interloped on fantasy with grating finality. “Oh, yeah. I’m…ah, sorry. Can…can you, ah, get up?”
She glared at him. “I could if you’d get off me.”
“Oh. Ah, yeah. Sure.”
He wasn’t quite sure when he’d been reduced to monosyllabic mutterings. Somewhere between here and eternity he’d guess—or between the mention of her knee and his highly valued parts. The look in her eyes warned him that she meant business. Since he had plans for those parts that included both him and her, instinct took over.