by Susan Sey
The hair dryer cut out and, yep, sure enough. She stepped out of the bathroom, her cheeks flushed from the blast of hot air, her hair ruler straight, her eyes perfectly made up with some kind of smoky bronze stuff. She gave him that friendly, keep-your-distance smile and he smiled back, slow and hungry.
Her smile faltered, and she veered toward the kitchenette.
Good, he thought. She ought to be nervous. What, did she think he was going to roll over and play dead? Did she think he could be defeated by a blow-dryer? Fuck that. He didn’t want this perfectly manicured, exquisitely groomed doll. He wanted Maria. Funny, sharp, wounded Maria. The woman she kept as hidden as her curls and her shocking ability to kiss a man into near insanity.
And he meant to have her.
“Power’s back,” she said with determined cheer.
“So I see.” He studied her for two long beats, then pointed his chin at her. “You really think that’s going to work?”
She touched the smooth spill of her inky hair. “What’s going to work?”
He sat up to run a squint over her face, her hair. “All . . . that. It seems like a lot of effort for nothing.”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “It’s not nothing.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “No, I can see that. But why bother? I mean, I’ve already seen what you really look like. Who you really are.” He rose to his feet and she averted her eyes, as if she weren’t already intimately familiar with what he looked like, too. Even without the boxers he currently wore. “Plus I like you better curly. Way better.” He let his smile spread as he moved toward the kitchen. Toward her. “So why don’t we just head straight back into the bathroom and start again? Come on. I’ll scrub your back.”
She shot out a hand, palm first, the universal sign for Stop right there, buster.
“As it happens, I didn’t do this”—she waved a hand toward her exquisitely groomed person—“for you, okay?” She glared at him. “I did it for me.”
Rush stopped. “For you?”
“For me.” She threw him a bitter glance. “I’m not stupid, Rush. I’m well aware of what you saw last night. Who you saw.” She made a noise that was half disgust, half regret. “It’s hard to miss when I left the evidence all over your body.”
He glanced down at himself, then back up at her. “You’re upset because you gave me a hickey? So what? I’m pretty sure I gave you one, too.” He took a moment to consider that. “More than one, actually.” He smiled. “Want me to find them for you?”
She pressed those perfectly glossed lips together, hard. “Check out your back, Rush.” She turned away to fiddle with the coffeemaker. “You look like somebody zipped half a dozen feral cats into your sleeping bag last night.”
Rush followed her into the tiny kitchen. “So you scratched me. Big deal. Did you hear me complaining?” She didn’t turn to face him, stayed stubbornly focused on the coffee, so he grabbed the counter on either side of her hips and leaned in. He left a few inches of space between their bodies, between his mouth and her ear. He treated himself to the clean, green smell of her hair as he murmured, “Did you hear me say anything to you that wasn’t ‘harder,’ ‘more,’ or ‘God, just like that’?”
Even the shell of her ear went pink but she stayed silent. Still. Unhappy. God, that broke his heart. How unhappy she was.
“Will it make you feel better if you go back into the shower—alone—to have a look at all the marks I left on your body? Because you weren’t alone last night, Maria. I was there, too. And—I have to be honest here—the fact that you could drive me far enough around the bend to forget to be gentle with you? The fact that I can do the same to you? It turned me on. A lot. I’m turned on right now just remembering it. So if you want to talk about it much longer, you’re going to have to deal with the consequences.”
He closed the gap then, erased those few electric inches of space between their bodies. A hiss of agonized pleasure escaped her when the ache of his desire nestled into the soft curve of her behind, and he said, “I know, right? It’s crazy, what you do to me. But it’s so”—he rolled himself against her, slow and hot—“. . . so good.”
She spun around suddenly but not—to his everlasting regret—to hop onto the counter and wrap her legs around him.
“Rush.” She met his gaze head-on, made no attempt to hide the heat leaping in her eyes. The heat that was so at odds with her straight-arming him back to a civilized distance. Rush decided he fucking hated civilization. “I’m going to be honest here, too. That’s what you want, right? Honesty?”
“No, Maria. I like it when you lie to me. Because I’m so into subterfuge.” They both glanced at the massive erection tenting the front of his shorts. He sighed. “Yes. Please be honest.”
“What happened here last night. What I . . . did to you?” Her eyes dropped to the faint teeth marks on his shoulder. “It scared the hell out of me. It’s been a long time since I lost control like that and I’m feeling kind of fragile, okay?” She swallowed visibly. “I realize this is something we’re going to have to talk about eventually. But if it’s all the same to you, can we please just table it this morning? At least until I get my balance back?”
“Not if by ‘balance’ you mean painting your face and terrifying your hair.”
“Terrifying my hair?”
“Honey, you’re scared straight.” He frowned at her head. “I don’t know what you do with that blow-dryer of yours but it’s clearly hard-core. And I’m starting to have a real soft spot for those curls. I won’t have them bullied.”
A smile ghosted across her lips, faint but real. “No more straightening. Fine.”
“But as for the rest of it?” He tipped his head, considered. “Fine. I’ll give you today. But I’m not going to wait forever. What happened last night? What you did to me? What I did to you? I’m planning to do it again as soon as possible.” He leaned into the eye contact. “As soon as possible, Maria. Count on it. And when we do? You’re going to talk to me the whole time.”
She closed her eyes as if praying for strength. She kept them closed for a solid ten count. Then her cell phone did a little dance on the counter and sang its you-have-mail song.
“We have a deal?” he asked.
She nodded slowly, her pupils huge, her lips parted. He backed away from her open palm before he could talk himself off the high road. She’d come to him next time, he swore it. With that yes not only on her lips but in her heart. Even if it killed him.
“Go ahead,” he said, nodding toward her phone. “Go to work.”
She blinked, a flutter of blinks really, then focused and scooped up her phone. His own cell phone chirped like a demented cricket a little farther down the counter, indicating he ought to download his messages, too. Well, crap. He dialed his voice mail and scrolled through to the most recent messages.
Einar’s voice drifted small and tinny into his ear.
“Hey, Rush. Some storm, huh? Listen, Sir Humpalot demolished half my chicken coop this morning. Are you ever going to shoot that damn thing? Because I’m about ready to put a cap in his ass myself. Poor chickens, all crowded and traumatized and shit. I’m not going to bother rebuilding, either. Not until you’ve figured out the fucking wildlife around here, Mr. Park Ranger.” He paused. “I guess I could move up the slaughter a month or two. I might borrow your ski team for slave labor. Team building, you know?” He laughed. “Hey, speaking of chickens, I’m scheduled to fly out tomorrow morning, Tuesday. I won’t be back till Wednesday afternoon, earliest. Feed the girls while I’m away, will you?”
The sun pasted a watery yellow square on the old wooden floor and Rush realized that his cousin had just provided the perfect opportunity for Rush to invite Maria into Einar’s cabin for that search she was so anxious to perform.
He glanced down the counter at her as he dialed his boss at the Park Service and explained the moose situation. The glare off Maria’s hair was blinding, but he could still see the frown pinching her brows together as she s
cribbled on the pad in front of her. She flipped her phone shut, and he did the same.
“Lab results are back on that sample I sent in,” she said.
“Sample?”
“Blood sample. From the Stone Altar.”
“Yeah?” His chest tightened.
“It was chicken blood.”
“I . . . don’t know how to feel about that.”
“I know. I mean, thank God it wasn’t human, right? But still, chicken blood points pretty strongly in the direction I was already looking.”
“Einar.” He tapped his phone against his thigh. “Speaking of whom.”
She lifted her brows.
“I just got a voice mail. He’s leaving town tomorrow morning. Overnight. Chickens’ll need feeding.”
She studied him. “You up for company on that?”
He jerked a shoulder.
“Rush.” She reached across the counter as if she were going to touch his elbow, but then encountered all the bare skin of his chest and drew back before she made contact. “It’s better to find out than to wonder.”
“Yeah.” He shook himself, shook off the idea that his own cousin, his blood, could have possibly tangled himself up this badly. “Not going to find out today, though.” He pointed his chin at the snowdrift blocking most of the window. “Today, we dig out.” He gave her a speculative look. “Unless you’d rather stay snowbound for a few days?”
“Start shoveling, Rush.”
He sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
BY LATE morning, Rush had cleared a path from the door to the woodpile and reacquainted the windows with daylight. In spite of a bright sun and still sky, though, the mercury hovered stubbornly around fifteen below. And conditions inside the cabin weren’t much better, with Maria just as stubbornly ensconced inside the slick, impenetrable Goose. He was losing patience with that, promises be damned.
It was—in Rush’s personal opinion—high time to shoot the shit out of something.
He banged into the cabin on a blast of frigid air, clapped his gloved hands together as if he were a cruise director or a camp counselor and said, “On your feet, di Guzman. It’s time to earn your keep.”
She blinked up at him from behind the glowing screen of her laptop. “Excuse me?”
He grabbed her jacket from its hook near the door and said, “I just got a message from my boss. He gave us the go-ahead to take down the moose.”
“Sir Humpalot?”
“The very one.”
“You’re going to shoot him?”
“That’s the plan.” He tossed her jacket toward her. It floated through the air and landed on her head like a purple parachute. “And you’re coming with me.”
She lifted the hem of her jacket and peered at him. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“No?” He gave her a smile that dared her to explain why exactly several hours alone in the woods together wasn’t a good idea.
“I don’t really . . . hunt.”
“I bet you’ll pick it up quick enough, seeing as you’re an expert marksman.” She stared at him and he shrugged. “Again, you’re not the only one who knows how to use the Internet.”
“You read my file?”
“Enough to know that you’re perfectly capable of taking down a bull moose at two hundred yards with the proper equipment.” He gave her a significant smile. “And since you’ve read my file, I’m pretty sure you won’t be surprised to know I do have the proper equipment.”
“Of course you do.” She sighed and set aside her computer. “You seriously want me to go moose hunting?”
“Yes.”
“There’s nothing I can say that’ll change your mind?”
“Depends on who you are when you say it, Maria.”
She gave him a polite smile. “Give me a minute to get geared up.”
Chapter 24
MARIA STUMBLED along in Rush’s snowshoe prints for several frozen, silent hours, a high-powered hunting rifle in her icy hands, a perverse gratitude in her heart.
Not that she was enjoying tracking Sir Humpalot. God, no. Traipsing around the frozen tundra after a moose that had, for all practical purposes, vanished into an alternate dimension was about as entertaining as it sounded. But after last night she was hanging on to her composure by a thin, fragile thread, and the enforced silence of the hunt was nothing short of a blessing as far as she was concerned.
Last night. Pleasure and fear spurted through her in equal, baffling amounts. It had been so many years since she’d come face-to-face with her truest self, but Rush—hello, Maria—had set that woman free simply by refusing to accept that she didn’t exist. Most people saw what you showed them and nothing else, but Rush? Rush didn’t look away until he had the whole picture. And since he knew as well as she did that he didn’t have the whole picture yet, he wasn’t planning to look away anytime soon. Which was precisely why enduring an endless hike in the mooseless wonderland of Mishkwa—minus conversation and eye contact—wasn’t exactly torture.
Rush stopped short and Maria nearly plowed into his back. She jerked the barrel of her rifle to the side and said, “Jesus, Rush, you could say something—”
The words died in her throat when he reached out one big hand and, for the first time since he’d all but set her on fire next to the coffeemaker, touched her. But there was nothing loverlike in this touch. He simply spread his big hand on top of her head and stuffed her down onto her knees into a clump of sticks that had probably been a berry bush in friendlier seasons. He cut off her muffled exclamation with a gloved hand and jerked his chin toward the clearing beyond the brush in which she was now crouched.
The moose was there, maybe twenty yards away, his big nose to the ground, huffing and snuffling in a churned-up patch of snow. His rack arched wide and impressive away from his giant head, and his waggly beard dangled in the snow, white with the frost of his own breath. Awe broke open inside her at the sight of something so huge and wild, so close she could hear it breathing.
Rush’s mouth came down to her ear, his warm exhale sending a completely inappropriate tingle through parts she thought had gone numb hours ago.
“We’re upwind,” he said, his words more breath than voice. “He can’t smell us, but you don’t want to waste time. You have a round in the chamber, so—”
She stared at him, shocked. “You want me to shoot him?”
“I didn’t chamber a round,” he said. “He’ll hear if I do it now. But I chambered a round for you when I showed you how to do it back at the cabin.” He nodded at the moose. “It’s your shot.”
A screaming panic filled her brain. Oh God, oh God, oh God. She didn’t want to shoot this moose. She didn’t want to shoot anything. She didn’t care what her file said—she was a computer geek, not a sharpshooter. She’d pointed a loaded gun at a living creature exactly once before in her entire life and she still wasn’t out from under the cosmic debt she’d incurred that day.
But what else could she do? After last night’s debacle, she was holding together Goose’s cultivated composure with duct tape and bravado. Did she really think it would survive one more blow? Did she really think she could refuse to pull the trigger without explaining why?
She slowly shouldered the heavy gun and sighted down the barrel. She breathed, willed her trembling hands to steady, her thundering heart to slow. And she prayed. Prayed to whoever was in charge of desperate wishes that the strength, the courage and the composure she’d perfected the appearance of could be hers in reality. Just this once.
The moose raised its head. He glared at her, as if he’d sensed her intention, and didn’t care one bit for the impudence. You think you can take me? it seemed to ask. You think you have anything that would wound the majesty of me?
Her blood thudded in her ears and her body went through the motions without her volition, the action bred into her through years of rigorous practice. She pulled in a shaky breath then squeezed the trigger with her exhale. Squeezed i
t slowly, deliberately, though her heart beat crazily and her vision started to dapple. She sent up one last prayer, tried valiantly to control her breathing then absorbed the big rifle’s kick with a sense of submission. Her pain—even this small one—was well deserved.
The shot skewed high, cracking a tine off the moose’s rack but otherwise leaving him unmolested. He snorted out a great, derisive raspberry, wheeled and bolted into the brush. Rush patted her shoulder.
“Okay,” he said. “Not bad for a first try.”
“Thanks,” she said, handing him the gun. He sounded like he was talking to her from the other end of a train tunnel. “Hold on to this, will you?”
“Why?”
“I’m going to pass out now.”
“What?”
The dancing black spots closed in on her and she gave herself up to them.
RUSH SHOVED a cup of coffee into Maria’s hand as she sat, pale and unhappy, at the tiny kitchen counter of the Ranger Station.
“So,” he said conversationally. “Do you pass out every time you fire a gun?”
“No.” Her lips barely moved. Nothing did. Not her hair, her hands or even the brows that normally animated her face. She looked taut, as if even an attempt to smile might shatter her. “Only when I aim it at a beating heart before pulling the trigger.”
“And how often have you done that?”
“Just the once.” She shook her head, as if rattling things back into place. “No, twice. If you count today.”
Rush fixed himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t want one but he needed something to do with his hands. He still didn’t know why she was wrapped up so tightly in this slippery shell of hers, but he’d bet the farm it had its roots right here in whatever had her going lights-out every time she fired a gun in earnest.
“How old were you?” he asked softly. “The first time this happened?”
“Sixteen.”
“Were you shot?” His mouth went desperately dry at the very idea.
“No.”
Relief flooded him and he said, “Somebody you loved, then.”
