by Cara Colter
“By the time I got to the living room, my uncle Kettle was coming through the front door. We never found out how he knew there was trouble that night but he arrived, just in the nick of time, to save his baby sister.
“It’s funny,” Sophie said softly. “I have not thought of that for the longest time. But you’re right. It’s in me. Some kind of fear that never quite goes away. We never, ever talked about it.”
“Maybe now that you have some of that fear will go away,” he said, his voice unbelievably gentle.
And it felt like it might not because she had talked about it, though. Because she could feel his protection. Maybe, even as she grated against it, that was why she felt as safe as she ever had here on this island.
She had not been surprised to see Lancaster step out of the trees. Had she known he was there, as if, by some sixth sense she knew his proximity to her in the world?
“They’re in bad shape, lass? Your feet?”
She was grateful for the change of subject. “Yes.”
“You shouldn’t have walked from the ceilidh.”
Shouldna.
She sighed. “My life is probably just a long list of shouldnas.” For some reason, she thought of Troy, and she saw her relationship with him in a new light.
I seem to go for a type, she had confessed to Lancaster the first day she had come back here.
Had a largely unacknowledged fear driven her toward a certain type of man? Men like her uncle who had saved her mother that night?
“You have no one to blame but yourself,” he said, unsympathetically, obviously referring to her feet and not her heart. “Stubborn.”
“Ah, something we agree on.”
Wasn’t Connal Lancaster also that type? Not really. Troy had been faintly arrogant in his gym-enhanced strength. Not quite a bully, but always on the lookout for opportunities to prove himself as stronger, faster, more fearless.
Which she, admittedly, had been drawn to.
Connal was different. A quiet strength, an unspoken confidence in his abilities, a man who would lay down his life to protect others.
He cast her a look that erased the jumble of thoughts—particularly about Troy—from her mind. Then he slid off the bench beside her, and stood in front of her.
Connal Lancaster was, without a doubt, the most beautifully made and natural man in the world. His skin was wet from the rain and the springs. Fog and steam swirled around him. Each muscle, each curve, each rib seemed as if it had been carved by a master artist from smooth, pure alabaster. He was Michelangelo’s David. He was Bonnat’s Samson. He was Conca’s Hercules.
No wonder all the girls fawned after him, and dreamed their silly dreams of being the one. Sophie would not—
But then he reached into the water. With a tenderness that both shocked her and slayed her determination to not have any dreams at all about him, he cupped his hand under her calf, lifting her foot up through the steaming pool.
While Sophie was aware of her heart moving into the galloping rhythm of spoons played fast, Lancaster was purely a clinician. He frowned at the damage she had done, set that foot back in the water, and before her heart had any hope of slowing down, he picked up her other foot and inspected it.
He let it slide from his grasp, and she was not sure if she was relieved or let down by this reprieve from his touch. He turned from her, went to the pool’s edge and braced both his arms against it, making the rock-hard edge of his triceps ripple and making her stomach drop dizzyingly, like a rock from a cliff. He lifted himself out of the pool with easy, fluid strength.
Sophie ordered herself to look at anything but him. But it was impossible. He had become everything, and she could not take her eyes off him. He fished through his pants pocket and came out with a small blade. He went to one of the shrubs that grew around the pool and sliced several leaves from it.
He came and lowered himself back into the water. “Sit that way,” he said, motioning to her, “and stretch your legs out in front of you.”
He was a man used to giving commands and being obeyed, and she found any desire she had to defy him had melted at his first touch.
She did as he asked her, and watched as he sliced the top of one of the plump leaves he held. It oozed some thick white liquid into his hand.
“Are you familiar with the aloe vera plant?”
She nodded.
“This plant is a cousin. Our ancient books speak of its healing powers.”
It occurred to her what he intended to do. It occurred to her she should protest, or pull away. It occurred to her she was going to experience powerlessness as she had never quite experienced it before.
But Sophie could not speak as he again raised her left foot out of the water, cupping the heel in his hand. Her foot looked tiny in contrast to the strength and size of his hands. He bent his head over it, inspected it again, touching each of the blisters. His touch was unbelievably tender for such a powerful man. She remembered him holding the baby, Rowan, earlier, all that beautiful strength tempered. It was everything Sophie could do not to reach out and touch the wet, gold-red silk of his hair as he bent over her foot.
He began at her toes. There was a particularly nasty blister between her big toe and the second one, and he caressed the pain away with his touch and the thick ointment. Then he separated each of her toes in turn, and ran his oiled fingers between all of them, even those with no blisters. He worked with exquisite slowness, touching her lightly, as though he were stroking the wings of a butterfly. When he finished between her toes he worked the oil from the plant into each plump pad.
His touch, soft, sensual, exquisitely gentle, was making Sophie feel a tantalizing awareness of herself as a woman, and Lancaster as a man. That awareness screamed along her nerve endings, and was unlike anything she had ever experienced.
Without even glancing up—thank goodness, for what would be revealed in her face right now—he moved on from her toes. His grasp on her heel tightened marginally, and he slid his other hand over the top of her foot, his palm pressing deeply into her water-softened and warmed skin, sliding back, doing it again. And then again. And again. And again. As if there was no such thing as time. There were no blisters there. He knew it, and she knew it.
His touch lit some deep fire in the core of her being, and every stroke stoked it. It was the most exquisite of experiences, part pleasure and part pain. The pain was not physical, but it was like having a hunger that could not be satisfied, an intensifying thirst that could not be quenched.
He switched again, moving from the top of her foot to the bottom of it. The slowness of his movements, as he kneaded deeply into the ball of her foot and the arch, was both exhilarating and excruciating. He moved to her ankle, and then to her calf. There were no blisters on her ankles, or her calves, either, and yet she was helpless to protest. Was he being deliberately so sensual?
Or did he just have a way about him? Being sensual was in every motion he made, every breath he took, every word he spoke. Being sensual was as natural to Lancaster as breathing.
Finally, when Sophie thought she could not take another second of what he was doing without doing something to slake her thirst and hunger for him, he surrendered her foot.
The relief—and the sense of loss—lasted seconds. He picked up her right one. And began the dance of touch all over again.
Sophie had to bite her lip to keep from moaning, and she had to make a conscious effort not to squirm. She closed her eyes and clutched her fists at her sides below the water against the tender torment of his touch.
Closing her eyes increased the intensity of feeling.
She knew, with a sudden primal knowing, that there was going to be only one way to satiate her hunger. She had to have his lips. She had to taste him. She had to run her hands through the wet silk of his hair and over the hard plains of his body. She had to know every line of
him. She had to celebrate his being a man.
She had to make him feel what he was making her feel.
And yet, a moment of sanity pierced the desire-driven thoughts.
It was just more of the same. Her history with Lancaster on endless repeat. Her wanting. Him resisting.
She was just like all those other girls who threw themselves at him, who wanted to penetrate his great mystery, who believed that the intensity of his masculine mystique could resolve some burning need in themselves.
How was she any different from any of them? Maybe she was worse, spending her life looking for someone to make her feel safe.
She yanked her foot out of his hand, and opened her eyes. He did not look the least surprised, as if he, too, had felt something dangerous building, had wondered if she would put an end to it.
He was looking at her, something veiled in his eyes. Her move. Why had he done this to her, given her history with him? Did some part of him enjoy her weakness?
But it was going to be a different move this time. She scrambled from the pool, before she gave in to the temptation. She was aware of his eyes on her, but when she glanced back, his gaze was hooded. Did he not feel any of the red-hot desire that was threatening to burn her up?
“I’m overheated,” she said. And how. She glanced down at herself. The delicate underwear had become transparent. For a moment, she just wanted to hide herself, but then she wanted something else more.
To make him feel the helpless sense of desire he had just made her feel. To make him suffer as she was suffering. She stood there, letting the water slide down her body, unflinching from his gaze.
But if he was in any way tormented, it did not show. Instead, he broke the eye contact between them, lifted himself from the pool, turned his broad back to her, and began to pull his clothes over his wet body.
She could offer to share her towel. No, she could not! She toweled off quickly, threw her raincoat on, jammed her feet back in her sneakers and headed for the pathway.
How could she make him see she was not the same as every other woman in his world? And how could she ever know if her attraction to him was just rooted in a long-ago incident, never truly resolved?
It came to her suddenly.
There was a secret about her Lancaster did not know. They had common ground. Something that they shared.
She noticed the rain had stopped, and the stars were beginning to shine through the trees, through the wisps of clouds. The world had a scent to it that was incredible, but, of course, all her senses were heightened right now.
“Better?” he asked.
Her feet! He was talking about her feet.
“Much better.” She had never felt better and she had never felt worse. “Thank you. That was a lovely thing to do.”
To torment a poor girl who has the hots for you.
But wasn’t it time, really, to see if there was anything beyond that? If they had any common ground beyond the chemistry he made her—and a million others—feel? Wasn’t it time to see if she had grown beyond that childish need for protection?
“I’d like to go fishing with you,” Sophie said. The path had narrowed and he followed behind her. She glanced back at him.
“What?” He laughed. “Females don’t fish.”
Doona.
Sophie had to remind herself not to react with aggravation. Havenhurst was not America. People here played more traditional roles, and did not seem any the less happy for it.
“That’s what you and Edward said about diving to Maddie,” she reminded him. “And look at her now.” Of course, Sophie already knew how to fish. Her quiet, bookish father had been the most devoted and skilled fly fisherman in Mountain Bend. And she had been tagging along with him since she was barely able to walk.
But she’d surprise Connal with that.
Or maybe not. Because from the look on his face, he was going to refuse her this. Fishing was, from what Calum had said, Connal’s private sanctuary, the place that had saved him when he had refused all other comforts.
He would not want to invite someone into this most personal of his spaces. He would not want to invite her into his world.
She could tell already that he might have regretted joining her in the hot spring, that in his mind, some professional line had been crossed.
“Don’t worry if you don’t want to,” Sophie said lightly. “I’ll ask someone else.”
She glanced back again. Bull’s-eye! He hated that.
“You want to try it that badly?” he asked skeptically.
“I do.”
Oh! If there were words one should ever avoid completely around a man who could turn you into a quivering bowl of jelly with just his touch, it was those ones.
I do.
Time, she told herself firmly, to find out if there was anything else here beside the leap of her heart and the sizzle of her blood anytime that he was near her. Time to find out if there was anything beyond the crazy fantasy that seemed to endure, despite her life experiences, despite her maturity, despite her admonishing herself not to invest any more time or energy in this vision.
And the vision was of her walking down an aisle, in a flowing white gown.
Toward him.
It was time to find out if there was any substance to this wisp of a dream that would not seem to let go of her no matter how hard she tried to break from its grasp.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THREE DAYS LATER Lancaster scrambled over a slippery rock and turned to help Sophie. But this was what he needed to remember about her: despite that veneer of sophistication she now had, she was still a young woman who had been born and raised in wild country not unlike what he was taking her through.
They were following a trickle of a brook through a narrow, deeply shaded canyon. There was a bit of a trail, neglected, and covered in slick, fallen leaves. It was obstructed, regularly, by toppled trees and huge boulders.
Many other people, including men, might have decided at the first creek crossing that a day’s fishing was not worth the fight through the rugged canyon.
But Sophie came over that rock with the agility of a mountain goat. She was breathing hard and laughing. He tucked his hand away before she even realized he’d offered it.
“Are your feet holding out okay?” he asked her.
She balanced on one leg, on the top of that slippery rock, and wagged a foot at him. It was clad in a sturdy hiking boot.
“Never better,” she said.
One false move and she was going to topple a good six feet off that rock and probably keep going into the creek below.
He bit his tongue to keep from telling her to get both her feet underneath her. She was not one of his men to give orders to, and she would probably do handstands on top of that slippery surface to drive home that point to him.
She tucked the foot she had been wagging at him up against her thigh, creating a triangle. Then she stretched her hands way up over her head, pressed the palms together and drew them to her heart and closed her eyes.
She was doing yoga!
His breath caught in his throat at the contrast she had unwittingly created: feminine softness and suppleness against the hard, unyielding surface of the rock. Then, she wobbled, making him take a quick step toward her. Before he reached her, she let go of her pose and landed perfectly on both feet.
She couldn’t be doing yoga on a fishing trip! The picture she had just created reminded him a little too strongly of her goddess qualities the other night. But again, if he said anything, she’d probably torment him with yoga poses for the rest of the day.
She smiled at him, and hopped down off the rock. To him, Sophie seemed at home in some way that she had not been since she arrived on Havenhurst. The deeper they moved into the woods away from the road, the happier she appeared, as if that super sophisticated outfit she had
been wearing the day she got off the plane was a disguise, some sort of mask that hid who she really was.
But Sophie being who she really was, Lancaster told himself sternly, was not necessarily a good thing. Sophie was a beauty at any time. But, today, hair plaited in a thick braid, no makeup, a ball cap, sturdy boots, a pair of shapeless hiking pants and a plaid shirt, she looked better than ever.
Whom was he kidding? It had nothing to do with the wholesome mountain girl outfit she was looking so at ease in. It was the light that was on in her. Had something changed, ever so subtly, after she had told him about the attack on her mother when she was a child?
Whatever the cause, the goddess shone through, no matter what she was wearing. A man who had been cold too long could be drawn to that warmth, helplessly, like a moth to the brilliance of flame.
Just as he had been the other night. He was trying to banish the sensation of her foot in his hand from his brain. It represented the total collapse of his professionalism. And yet, even knowing better, here he was, testing himself again. He turned away from her and continued on.
Ten minutes later, the creek that the rough trail ran adjacent to cascaded down a series of mossy rocks into a pool. The canyon walls widened, and they emerged from its shadows. The sun filtered through fall foliage, golden. It danced across the dark waters of the pool, in a trail of starbursts.
“Oh,” Sophie breathed, and stopped up short behind him.
He turned and looked at her. She knew. She recognized this as a place that was special.
He did not know how many other people on Havenhurst knew about this place, but if they did, it was not because of him.
A fisherman’s secret fishing hole was not something he shared with anyone.
And yet here she was, in his place, silent, looking about her with the reverence such a place deserved.
Lancaster knew he should have never agreed to take Sophie fishing. It was as close to sacred as anything came in his life.