“So hire an interior decorator.”
“Wouldn’t work.”
“Ah.” She rubbed her hands together. “Am I picking up the real reason you ended up in a godforsaken small town? An affair with an interior decorator?”
“Did anyone ever mention that you were nosy?”
“Just my mother. Come on, give. What good is a secret if you don’t tell it?”
“It isn’t a secret,” he said with exasperation.
“Well, that’s great, because then you can tell me the story for sure,” she said beguilingly, and made him laugh. More to the point, he gave in.
“I started out in Raleigh, North Carolina. Grew up there. Still have family there. I was engaged once, back when I was still going to be a lawyer, but she didn’t like it when I turned blue collar.”
“So she was stupid. Thank God you got rid of her,” Daisy filled in.
“Um, actually, she got rid of me-”
“Either way, you got saved from a fate worse than death. So. What happened after that?”
“After that, I met up with Jim Farrington-the best carpenter I ever met. I started apprenticing with him. He was obstinate as a mule, but fantastic as far as his work. He had a younger sister.”
“Aha.”
“Yeah. I guess you could say that was an ‘aha.’ I took one look at her and fell so hard I’m not sure I ever got up again. I was ready to marry her on the first date, but actually, it made more sense for me to work my way into a partnership with Jim. It takes money to marry, start a life. And she didn’t want to settle down that fast, anyway. So we hooked up for a couple years, planned on marrying, just didn’t do the deed. That is, the marriage deed-”
“Um, I don’t need to hear details about any other kinds of deeds.”
“Okay. Anyway, a problem came up.”
“And the problem was…?”
“Well…I can’t tell you how good a person Jim was. Or how good he was with the work. That’s the thing, the whole reason I was sure we could make a great partnership. He felt the same about me. Only for some reason he always thought he was right.”
“Was he?”
“Hell, no. I was the one who was always right.”
“Ah. I’m beginning to get a much bigger picture now.”
“As far as Jim, if he said black, I said blue. If he said right angles, I said left. We started out fighting with each other, but then we started fighting in front of clients, too. If he hadn’t been so bullheaded and sure of himself and uncompromising-”
“Like you?”
“That was exactly the problem. We were like identical twins. Anyway, the only answer possible was to sever the relationship. By then I’d already severed the personal stuff with his sister-she was caught between loyalties, and by then, truth to tell, I think we both knew we weren’t going any further together. Anyway, it was at that point I took off, because Jim started the business, so he was entitled more than I was to keep on with it. And I wanted to go somewhere where I could work alone. A place that wasn’t so big that a partner was going to be required, but where there’d still be definitely enough work to make a decent living.”
“Where you didn’t have to worry about someone finding out that you were boneheaded and always right and a pain in the butt?”
“I didn’t say boneheaded. I said bullheaded.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Of course there’s a-” Teague stopped talking abruptly. When she cocked an eyebrow in question, he raised a finger, asking her to be quiet. She was, unsure what he heard that had caught his attention.
But then she heard it, too.
Silence.
The fire was crackling in the hearth, spitting sparks and wooshing smoke up the chimney. But the ever-present wolf wind had suddenly stopped.
They both tore off for the closest window at the same time, Teague hobbling on his broomstick crutch. Daisy pushed at the drapes to peer out. Neither had been keeping track of time-what difference did it make with the storm? But it was early evening. Dark. And after hours of that incessant wind and blowing, hurling snow, suddenly there was…magic.
The wind had completely died as if it had never been. Moon glowed on a pristine, pure landscape. It looked as if the Pillsbury Dough Boy had been making whipped-cream frosting in mountainous quantities, with fat dollops here and there, mounds higher than buildings in places, and swirls and twirls and soft cups in other places. Moonshine gave the snow a sugar glaze, yet it still looked soft and cushiony. There were no footprints, no lights, no cars or other signs of civilized life marring the beauty yet.
Daisy felt a deep, raw pull inside her. She’d left Vermont. She’d never wanted to come back. She never needed to go through another blizzard in this lifetime…yet she’d forgotten this part of it. The part when the blizzard was over and the whole world turned magical. The part when there was no other beauty like this-and never would be again-because blizzard snowfalls were never the same. The moonlight, the magic, the diamonds in the snow…it was damned impossible not to feel something. An awe. A wonder. A rush of pleasure, just for the sheer beauty of it.
She turned her head, saw Teague looking at her instead of out the window.
“It’s just…so special,” she said helplessly.
“Yeah, you are,” he said lowly, and reached for her.
Four
Okay, okay. Daisy had known for years she was susceptible to magical moments…and magical men. That was precisely how and why she’d turned so cynical. Hard-boiled cynical. More careful around guys than a nun in a chastity belt, in fact.
But Teague didn’t play fair. First of all, he’d been making her laugh. And then out of the total blue, he’d suddenly called her special-when God knows no one had seemed to see her that way in a very long time. And then, when he pulled her in his arms…
She melted like warm ice cream. Like an ice cube in sunlight. Like a damn fool woman who didn’t have the sense of a goose.
His broom-handle crutch thumped on the carpet when he dropped it. Both his arms went around her then, his hands framing her face to tilt her lips toward his, where he could sip at her mouth and then aim for another deeper drink.
She had to wind her arms around his waist or risk falling. Her hand let go of the open drape in the process, which cut off the cold window draft and sealed them into their shadowy, fire-lit nest at the same time. She didn’t know him. He didn’t know her. Yet instead of feeling crazy, a little devil whispered in her heart that this was different. It really was a moment in time that she’d never have, never feel again.
He tasted so…warm. So hungry. In that instant she just desperately didn’t want to lose that feeling. Eleven years of shouldering her private problems alone suddenly eased. She hadn’t suddenly lost her mind. She knew she hadn’t faced her immediate dragons, and that reality was going to smack her in the teeth very, very soon. But so many years had passed. She’d forgotten what it felt like…to just feel good with someone, to feel that excitement with a guy where desire bubbled up between them like a champagne surprise. To feel delight in a man without worrying how much the later cost would be. To feel something that didn’t have unwanted secrets attached.
“Whoa,” Teague whispered. “Lady, when you turn on…you really turn on.”
“I was just going to complain about the same thing with you.”
“Um, just to be straight with you… I wasn’t complaining.”
“Neither was I.” She tilted her head recklessly. “Are we actually going to lose our heads and do this…or are we both going to use some intelligence and slow down?”
“I vote for losing our heads.”
“You really want to be reckless and irresponsible?”
“Yeah. Totally yeah.” He hesitated. “As soon as I get a condom, anyway.”
Something warmed inside her even more than all that hot, combustible sexual heat. It was just…she hadn’t planned on liking a man, really liking one, for at least another millennium. But s
he loved babies, far too much to risk one, and it was rare to find a guy who put babies first the same way. In fact, she liked him so much at that instant that she had to hesitate. “You don’t think you’re going to regret this? That we’re moving way too fast?”
“Of course we’re going to regret this. Of course we’re moving too fast.” He was still aiming for another kiss, and his voice was thicker than honey. “You know damn well it never works out to have sex too soon. It takes over everything.”
“I know. And I know better.” She found herself staring at his mouth.
“So do I. Believe me, this is your call. Totally. You want to send up a stop sign, we quit, all’s fair. Just try to do it within the next minute, okay?”
“What on earth made you think I was going to put up a stop sign?” she asked. He responded with a quick smile, but that was it; he pounced. His lips claimed hers again in one slow, lazy, breath-stealing sonata of a kiss.
They’d been teasing at the heat thing before, but not like this, nothing like this. This was enough heat to melt all the icicles from the blizzard. There seemed more smoke between them than was zooming up the chimney. Dizzying kisses circled her throat, circled her heart. She was used to passion. She liked passion. Too much. She’d always liked that feeling of recklessness, the taste of danger, of being sucked in by a guy so powerful he gave her heartbeat a kick.
Except, it was only and always the scoundrels who put that zing in her pulse.
She couldn’t take it anymore. She could accept that she had terrible judgment in men, that she never fell for the guys who were right for her. But she just didn’t think she could survive having her heart kicked again. She had to get tougher. She had to stay away from the scoundrels.
Only, something seemed different this time.
The excitement, the danger, the recklessness and urgency-it was all there. Times ten. But this wasn’t the kind of man she knew or had ever known.
“Teague,” she whispered in a hesitant voice, when Daisy knew she’d never had a hesitant bone in her entire body. But that seemed to be the precise problem. Her body. The body that was slowly, mercilessly turning into shambles.
He’d already pulled her sweater over her head, sent it soaring somewhere in the dark shadows. His big, callused hands slipped in the waistband of her pants, then, lingered long enough to cup her fanny, then slid her black slacks down her thighs to her ankles. Then-possibly because he couldn’t keep his weight on his bad ankle any longer-he sank down to the couch. Only he didn’t sit down immediately. His mouth trailed down from her breasts to her ribs to her navel, chasing the same path as his hands did on her derriere.
She was wearing underwear. French underwear. Tap pants, ivory with lace. And that’s where his mouth stopped traveling. He lingered there, first kissing the lace, then the ivory satin…not kissing bare skin, never kissing bare skin. But the whisper of satin was hardly a barrier.
An embarrassed groan whispered from her throat, the last sound she made. She couldn’t seem to keep oxygen going in and out of her lungs. She reached for him, found the muscles in his back bunching and clenching for her touch. His mouth came back to hers, and while his lips clung to hers, held hers intimately, she pushed at his shirt, pushed at his jeans, pushed at his zipper.
At some point they seemed all tangled up, her trying to pull him on top of her on the couch-Teague trying to pull her on top of him. Somehow the couch got abandoned. It was just too hard to find it with her eyes closed and nothing on her mind but touching him and being touched. The scratchy carpet at least cushioned her bare back, and still he kissed her, rubbing his pelvis against her bare tummy now, so she could feel how hard and urgently he wanted her.
The fire suddenly sent a fireworks of sparks up the chimney. A log tumbled to the grate. All this time, they’d been warm enough with the fire, as long as they wore all their clothes, yet now they were both peeled down to near bare flesh-give or take socks-and she was still amply warm.
Hell’s bells, she could have swum in the snow and might still need to do that just to cool off. That funny thought surfaced, but it wouldn’t stick. It should have stuck. Sex was fun. It made life worthwhile. It made a woman feel alive, feel important, feel her own power. But it shouldn’t tear a girl’s soul out, should it?
Daisy was no baby about this. She knew life. She couldn’t be fooled by fairy tales, not anymore. But damn. This yearning seeping through her, eeking through her, aching through her, was scary and troubling and…compelling.
Teague’s eyes suddenly opened, found hers, held hers. “You ready?” he asked her.
“Oh, yes. Ten times yes.”
“If we fall off the world, we do it together.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t give a damn about tomorrow. You’re mine tonight.”
“Yes. And you’re mine.”
“Ah, hell, yes.” And then he thrust inside her, his head thrown back, the pulse in his throat throbbing as hard as hers was. “Yes.” He thrust again, looked at her. “Oh, yes,” he whispered that third time, as if he were finally there, impaled as deeply inside her as any man had been, any man would be or could be.
And then it was just as he said. She tipped off the world. With him. Into him.
She woke up to a nightmare. One instant she’d been burrowed in a cocoon of warmth and safety; the next, there was a frantic thud in her tummy and fear slamming in her pulse.
Her eyes shot wide. Yesterday morning she’d been wakened by a cell phone, and from somewhere in the house the same phone was beeping now. Everything else was a jolt of a surprise, though. Sunlight sneaked through cracks in the curtains. Every light and lamp in the Cunningham house seemed to be turned on. New noises emanated from everywhere-the hum of a refrigerator motor, a radio in another room, the clang of hot water pipes. A man was wrapped around her as if he were the birthday boy and she was his present.
Faster than a blink she realized power had been restored and the blizzard really did seem to be over. But the man spooned around her, protecting her from dragons and darkness and all… There was the nightmare.
Guilt hit her brighter than the daylight. Maybe she’d curled up with Teague that first night, but nothing serious had happened. She could forgive herself a lost moment in time. But last night…
Last night she’d made love with him-a near stranger. She didn’t do that. Ever. She was capable of being very foolish, of making impulsive decisions, of choosing the wrong men. But she’d never been a complete and total idiot before.
“That cell phone,” the low-whiskey baritone said to the curve of her neck, “keeps ringing. Apparently the caller’s not going to give up. You want me to get it?”
“No, I will. You’re just going to hurt your ankle if you try to hustle. And it has to the sheriff.” It was. Unfortunately, she couldn’t discover that for sure until she’d charged out from under the covers naked as a jaybird. The cell phone was in the kitchen, plugged in, but obviously the power hadn’t been on long because the connection was scratchy.
“Daisy Campbell, if you hadn’t answered soon, I was going to have a heart attack. I thought something happened to the two of you!”
“No, we’re both fine, George.” She whirled around, searching frantically for something in the torn-up kitchen to cover herself with. The only thing in sight was a scratchy-looking carpenter’s apron. Useful for covering up the front of her. Marginally. Sort of. “I just couldn’t get to the phone any faster, but we’re both all right.”
“Good. Plows have been out on the road for a good three hours now. We should be getting into your neck of the country within the next hour. That’s the best I can do. You’re high on the list, but we had to clear the highways and town before we could head out for the back roads. I take it your patient survived the night?”
Her patient. The one with the head wound and the sprained ankle. The one who’d made love to her mercilessly and tirelessly for most of the night. “Um, he seems to be less injured than I first thought.”
“Well, that’s good. Still, we should be able to get him checked out at the hospital this morning. Now, as far as you getting to your place-”
“The furnace wasn’t working at my parents’ house. That was why I trekked over to the Cunninghams’ to begin with.”
“All right. When I get off the phone with you, I’ll…”
George said something else. She had no idea what. She had no idea when she stopped talking and hung up, either, but suddenly Teague seemed to be standing in the doorway, wearing jeans almost zipped up, looking her over quietly, thoroughly.
His carpenter apron was draped over certain strategic spots and it wasn’t freezing like before; the furnace had obviously been chugging hot water through the radiators for several hours. Yet feeling Teague’s eyes on her made her feel barer than cold.
Everything about him tracked memories from last night. His tousled hair-she remembered riffling her fingers through that thick, wiry hair, dragging him closer to her, demanding more kisses, deeper kisses, more-intimate kisses. She remembered the taste of that narrow mouth and those smooth, seductive lips. She remembered the exact moment she’d put a love bite on his left shoulder. She even remembered his bare feet…yelping when he’d suddenly touched her with those cold toes, and then laughing, laughing just before he’d pressed her into the blankets and taken her down with another kiss.
By night he’d been her lover…but by daylight he was a stranger. A stranger she’d shared more with-more honesty with-than she had with her husband. She didn’t know what to make of that, except that there wasn’t a man on the planet who unnerved her. Ever. Until now.
Wild in the Moment Page 5
