As Samuel bent to place a reverent kiss on each dusky nipple, Ellie issued a soft cry, wrapped her arms around his neck and drew his head to her breast. Grateful tears stung her eyes, moistened her cheek. Her heart felt as if it would burst with happiness. This was a complex man of strength and sensitivity, a man whose physical power belied a fragile heart and gentle soul. Every word, every gesture, every tender nuance of his being touched her on a level so deep she hadn’t been aware it existed.
Samuel was a part of her, and she was part of him. She wanted him. She wanted him fiercely. She wanted him now.
The gentle embrace intensified, chaste kisses deepened. Lips tasted, tongues tested, probed. Fingers traced, touched, caressed, ignited a thousand tiny fires of passion and promise. Soft moans floated on giddy wings, dipped into delighted gasps, spiraled with shocking whispers, giggled replies.
Every tender stroke sent shock waves coursing through her body, every erotic caress pulled her closer to the edge of ecstacy. Her breath huffed like a freight train, her body vibrated like a well-tuned jet. Passion fogged her mind, sensitized her skin until she was so crazed with desire that she feared she might unzip the fleshy cover and leap right out of it.
She’d never been so crazed, so desperate for intimate contact. When her groping hands were thwarted by a denim wall, she cried out in frustration. Fumbling madly, she managed to open the zippered gate, only to find herself tugging vainly at the stubborn waistband. It wouldn’t budge.
Samuel grunted, rolled over to fidget with the recalcitrant closer. A moment later he shoved the offending garment halfway down his thighs. Sweat glimmered from his face, dripped into eyes as glazed and bewildered as her own. “Wait,” he croaked.
That was the last word on earth Ellie wanted to hear. She shoved a wet tangle of hair from her face, sucked in enough breath to speak. “Why? What’s wrong.”
He rolled to the opposite side of the bed, mumbling and struggling to kick off the jeans bunched at his knees. The project hadn’t quite been completed when he reached the edge of the mattress, kept on rolling and hit the floor with a thud.
“Samuel?” Scrambling to her knees, Ellie yanked up the bedclothes, dragging them with her. From the floor, sounds of struggle were punctuated by muttered curses. She peered over the edge just as the offending jeans were kicked free. “What are you doing?”
“Back in a minute,” he assured her, then crawled over to retrieve something from the medical kit beside the nightstand.
As he tucked the item discreetly into his palm, Ellie caught the outline of a small square packet. “Condoms? I don’t believe this. You brought condoms to an isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere? What on earth were you planning—? No, never mind. I don’t think I want to know.”
Slipping off his boxer shorts, he had the grace to look embarrassed. “It happens to be a very complete med kit. Now—” he bounced into bed with a sexy leer “—where were we?”
“We were just reaching condom point.” Ellie made a grab for the packet, frowned when he held it out of reach. “Aren’t you going to let me put it on you?”
“That depends on whether or not you’re going to draw a face on it. I refuse to wear anything down there that’s smiling.”
The idea held a certain appeal. At the moment, however, Ellie much too anxious to bother. “Not this time.”
After a moment’s hesitation he relinquished the packet from which Ellie retrieved the little latex prize. With trembling hands, she managed to complete the process. He was every bit as gorgeous as she’d imagined, and touching him there had whipped her libido into renewed frenzy.
“Hurry,” she whispered, but before he could move, she practically flung him on his back and straddled him. He lifted her up, teased her by rubbing himself against her thigh. It was the most erotic sensation she’d ever experienced in her life. She moved with him, shivering with delight. “Ooh, ooh—Uh-oh.”
“Huh?” Samuel froze, followed her startled gaze. A pair of worried dark eyes stared back. Baloo sat beside the bed, whining, the tattered dog blanket clamped firmly in his mouth. “Oh, good grief. Go lay down.”
The hound issued a disgruntled huff, then padded back to his own bed dragging the beloved blanket be-hind him.
“Sorry about that.” Samuel’s apology was dampened by a glimmer of amusement. “I guess he thought you were cold.”
Steam rose from her sweaty skin. “I am definitely not cold.”
“I’d agree with that.” Wrapping an arm around her waist, he rolled over, taking her with him until he was firmly settled on top. “You’re a lot of things,” he mur-mured, yanking the bedclothes over their heads to form a privacy tent. “Cold is not one of them.”
Ellie gasped as he pressed against her, wrapped her arms around his neck with a moan. His breath puffed moist and hot against her cheek as he rotated his hips slowly, sensually, easing himself into her slick warmth. She raised up to meet him, cried softly at the sweet ache of their joining.
He loved her tenderly, with a passion beyond any-thing she’d ever known. It was true, she thought in amazement, all that she’d ever read about the passion of true lovers was all true. Stars exploded. Bells rang. Two halves. A perfect whole. Complete now, and forever.
“Such a fussy boy,” Ellie cooed, clapping Daniel’s tiny hands together. “Yes, he is, a fussy little man. You want attention, don’t you?” The baby smiled, emitted a happy gurgle. “How about if Mommy tickles that fat little tummy? Here it comes, ba-dum, ba-dum, badum—” Feeling buoyant, well loved and profoundly satisfied after last night’s passion, she lifted the baby’s shirt, blew a noisy raspberry on her son’s freshly bathed belly. Daniel reacted by flailing his hands and emitting a real, honest-to-goodness giggle. Ellie straightened, fried with excitement. “You laughed, you actually laughed! Samuel—!” She spun around, faced an empty cabin and remembered.
Samuel wasn’t here.
Her excitement died instantly, replaced by a bubble of apprehension. He left two hours ago and should have been back by now. Unless something had gone terribly wrong.
Ellie bit her lip, scooped Daniel into her arms. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispered for her own benefit rather than her son’s. “Samuel will be back any minute, and he’s going to have wonderful news. I can feel it in my bones.”
In truth the only thing she felt in her bones was sheer dread, but optimism was her crisis crutch, and she leaned on it now with a vengeance. “We’re going to be free, Daniel, I’m sure of it. Samuel’s going to tell us—”
A thud on the front porch spun her around. Footsteps, the familiar scrape of boots on rough wood. She held her breath. The knob rattled, turned. Baloo leapt from the sofa, sat by the front door, tail wagging, butt bouncing in excitement.
Only when the door swung open did Ellie dare breathe. “Samuel, thank God.”
Shifting Daniel against her shoulder, she rushed across the room, jockeyed for position with the exuberant hound. A satisfying ear scratch had Baloo in the throes of an ecstacy he was clearly unwilling to relinquish. Ellie, however, would not be denied. She flashed an “excuse me” smile, gently hip-checked the startled dog aside and lifted her lips for Samuel’s kiss. She was not disappointed. “Umm,” she murmured. “Nice. I’ve missed that.”
“Me, too.” Smiling, Samuel nodded at the baby’s bobbling head. “How’s our boy?”
“He giggled, he actually laughed out loud.”
“I wish I’d heard that.” He wistfully stroked the baby’s soft scalp, then turned away to shrug off his jacket.
Ellie waited anxiously, but not for long. “Did you get through to your friend?”
“Yes.” On his way to the kitchen Samuel dug the fire tower key out of his pocket, returned it to the cabinet drawer. “If long-range forecasts and thaw rates match computer models, the high-country lakes will be open by the first of April.”
Which meant that all the isolated access roads, including the one leading to the cabin, were expected to be
clear and passable by then. “That gives us a couple of weeks. By then the snow crust should be thin enough to drive your truck out.” She watched his expression carefully. It remained impassive, unreadable. “Assuming, of course, that we still have to leave. Do we, Samuel?”
He filled a water glass, drained it, then met her worried gaze. “Yes.”
Her heart dropped to her toes, but she simply nodded.
Setting down the empty glass, Samuel propped a hip against the counter and crossed his arms. “My contact at the forest service says that a search team is scheduled for the first week in April. He asked if Baloo and I would be available.”
The request didn’t surprise her, since Samuel had mentioned that Baloo’s one redeeming talent was an uncanny ability to sniff out lost skiers under conditions so poor that most rescue dogs couldn’t even locate a scent trail. “They’re still looking for me, aren’t they?”
“Actually they’re looking for a body.”
“They think I’m dead?” The thought buoyed her spirits. “That’s good, isn’t it? If Stanton believes I’m dead, he’ll stop searching and we can go on with our lives.”
Samuel considered that. “Under the circumstances of your disappearance, Mackenzie clearly fears the worst, but without proof I doubt he’ll accept it. From what I was told, missing-person flyers have been plastered all over the mountain, along with a photograph and a hefty reward offer. If we stay here, sooner or later someone will stumble up the road and recognize-you.”
“I suppose so.” Deeply disappointed, Ellie laid Daniel in the cradle. “I never really believed that Stanton would give up, but when you mentioned there was a chance he hadn’t pursued the search, I got my hopes up. That’s why I asked you to, well, you know.”
No response was given. None was expected. The trip to the radio tower had been Ellie’s idea. Once she’d convinced herself there was a chance—however slim—that Stanton might have given up the search, she’d pleaded with Samuel to check it out. He’d agreed, deciding the information could be gathered under the guise of a routine weather check.
Now Ellie fussed with the rumpled receiving blanket, smoothed the downy fuzz of her drowsy son’s scalp. Guilt pricked her. Life on the run was not what she wanted for her precious baby. There had to be a way to provide Daniel with a happy, normal childhood and still keep him safe. At the moment she had no clue as to how that could be done without losing him completely.
A whisper startled her. “He’s getting big.” Samuel gazed over her shoulder, slid his arms around her waist. “Look at those fat cheeks. He’s beginning to look like a bald chipmunk.”
Resting her head beside his cheek, Ellie relaxed against him. “My son is not bald. A little thin on top, maybe, but definitely not bald.” A subtle tension seeped from his torso. “Samuel, is something wrong?”
A brief hesitation added to her concern. “No.”
“Are you sure?” She turned in the circle of his arms. “Is there something you haven’t told me, something you found out from your friend?”
“No, nothing.” The cloud of uncertainty in his eyes was worrisome. “I’m just disappointed, that’s all. I’d hoped—” He blinked, shuttered his gaze. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”
“What’s nothing?” She reached out as he turned away. “Samuel, tell me.”
Clearly disturbed, Samuel crouched to stroke Baloo’s head. He spoke without looking up. “I just wonder if you’re doing the right thing. You can’t avoid Daniel’s father forever. Sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with him.”
A frisson of fear fingered the base of her spine. “No, I don’t, and I won’t. Stanton Mackenzie is a liar, a cheat and a totally unprincipled cad. I won’t let my son have anything to do with him.”
Samuel sighed, stood. “You don’t have the right to make that choice.” He snagged her wrist as she turned away. “Listen to me, honey, I’m on your side.”
She pulled away. “It doesn’t sound like it.”
“How long can you keep running, looking over your shoulder, putting your entire life on hold?”
“As long as it takes.” An edgy bite in her voice made him flinch. She didn’t care. “I won’t give up my son, Samuel, not for you, not for anybody.”
If she’d slapped him, he couldn’t have looked more stung. “I’m not suggesting that, Ellie.”
“Then what exactly are you suggesting? That I pit an empty wallet against a bottomless bank account, my overworked lawyer from the Legal Aid Society against Stanton’s team of silk-suited barracudas, all in some futile, misguided hope that I might, might get visitation rights to my own child?”
“I’ll get you a lawyer, Ellie, a good one. You won’t lose Daniel. I’ve already told you I won’t let that happen.”
“How will you stop it, Samuel? Have you forgotten that I’m technically in violation of a court order? By this time Stanton’s probably already been awarded temporary custody. I won’t even be able to file a challenge until I hand Daniel over to him, and I won’t do that. Do you hear me, Samuel? I will never, ever do that.”
“Honey, please—”
“No!” She stepped back, hands raised like a shield. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
Samuel dropped his arm to his side. “You can’t solve your problems by running away from them.”
“Why not?” she shot back. “You do.”
The moment the words left her mouth, she wished them back. It was too late. Samuel’s eyes glazed with anguish, his expression crumpled into a mask of utter despair.
Ellie reached out. “Samuel, I—”
“We’re out of firewood,” he said quietly.
Then he took his jacket from the coat peg, opened the front door and was gone.
Chapter Ten
A cold wind howled from the east. Flurried snow stung like biting gnats. Samuel shivered, cursed his foolishness at having left his jacket inside the cabin. A flannel shirt was scant protection against the sudden arctic wind.
He trudged another hundred feet down the crusted road, paused to jab a tree limb into the iced snow. The measurement came up at eighteen inches, give or take, although he knew it would be deeper a few miles up the road where the forest thickened. Consistency below the crust was mushy. Spring thaw would be rapid this year. Creeks would rise quickly, the road would become a river of mud.
Their timing would have to be perfect.
Samuel tossed the limb aside, blew into his hands to warm them. The truck, a four-wheel-drive pickup already dug out and dressed in tire chains, could handle at least a six-inch snow crust, maybe eight. More than that would risk clogging the axle; less meant getting bogged down in a quicksand of oozing muck.
Spring could arrive unexpectedly in the mountains, and with amazing speed. Sometimes the sun showed itself without fanfare, and smiled warmly until fall. Sometimes snow fell until June. Late-season snow melted quickly, of course, which kept the creeks rushing at flood level and added to a watery rush of mud.
Yes, their timing would definitely have to be perfect.
Jamming his hands into his pockets, Samuel ducked into the wind and headed back toward the cabin. He shouldn’t have walked out like that, shouldn’t have been wounded by the truth. Ellie’s words had sliced him to the quick, but she’d been right. Samuel, too, was running from reality, a gutless retreat based on motives considerably less substantial and more cowardly than hers.
Ellie was running from fear to protect her son; Samuel was running from failure to protect himself.
It was Ellie who had the most to lose, yet he’d blithely advised her to face Daniel’s father in court and risk losing custody of her child when Samuel himself didn’t have the courage to face the man whose life he had ruined. What arrogance.
All he could do now was apologize and beg forgiveness.
He hurried through the storm, pausing frequently to catch his breath and cough away an annoying tightness in his chest.
By the time Samuel reached the cabin,
he was freezing and wheezing and desperate for warmth. He burst in the door, teeth chattering. As he entered the blessed warmth of the living room, he saw Ellie standing with her back to the open bathroom door, peering over her shoulder as if studying her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Her eyes popped as he staggered to thaw himself at the woodstove. “Good grief, where on earth have you been?” She rushed to snag the comforter off the bed and wrap it around his shoulders, clucking and tsking like a mother hen. “Oh, look at you, your lips are blue and you’ve got icicles on your nose.”
Samuel doubted the icicle part, but was fairly certain her assessment of lip color was accurate. “I forgot my jacket,” he said stupidly.
“Well, duh.” She jerked a thumb toward the occupied coat peg, her eyes flashing adorably. “No kidding. I ran out with it as soon as I saw it still hanging on the hook, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. I was just about to take Baloo and hunt you down.”
“Don’t ever do that,” he murmured between shivers. “If you put yourself at risk, you put Daniel at risk.” He tugged the blessed comforter around his shoulders, saw Ellie’s guilty flush as he turned to absorb the woodstove’s radiant heat.
She licked her lips, avoided his gaze. “I’ll get coffee.”
As she turned, he touched her arm, stopping her. “You did the right thing, honey.” When she shook her head, he folded a hand under her chin, urged her to look at him. He knew she’d been worried about him, and he felt bad about that. He also knew that she hadn’t searched beyond the clearing because to do so would mean leaving her baby son alone. “Daniel is your first, your only priority. Don’t ever jeopardize his safety for me, or for anyone else.”
Her eyes darkened with conflict, but she simply nodded, smiled. “Now about that coffee...”
Baby In His Cradle Page 14