Lorina straightened her shoulders, her chin rising as Thompson gave her a questioning once-over. “I am, and I’ll be happy to get some shots of you digging in the cellar.”
“Er . . . yes, that would be fine.” Thompson looked anything but thrilled by the idea, but manfully proceeded with directing everyone to their tasks.
“Here, you can have these, since Paul’s selfishly taken the best for himself,” Daria told Lorina, and handed her another shovel and a small pickax. “You’ll need them if you can convince he-who-shall-be-obeyed to let you dig.”
“Daria, I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t worry about it. Karma will out, I’ve always found.” Daria turned and walked stiffly toward the fields.
With a last uncertain glance toward Gunner, Lorina hefted the two shovels, the pickax, and her dig kit, and started off toward the castle.
Paul, after a brief confab with Roger, clapped his hands and ordered the rest of the team to their duties. He spied Gunner and frowned. “Are you still here?”
“Obviously so,” Gunner replied, calmly regaining his seat on the scooter.
“My people have gone to the castle. They’ll need you to show them how to access the cellar, and I’m sure you won’t wish to delay filming, so if you could just . . .” He made shooing motions.
“I wouldn’t dream of doing anything so heinous as delaying the production,” Gunner said, and gunning the motor of the scooter as much as possible—which really did nothing other than make the battery hum—he zoomed off, making sure to head straight for Lorina.
She didn’t realize his intention until the scooter was almost upon her, at which point Gunner reached out and simply scooped her up, pulling her, the tools, and the dig bag onto his lap.
“Ack!” she shrieked, struggling enough that one of the shovel handles smacked him sharply on the chin. “What are you doing?”
“Seeing stars right now, although that’s clearing,” he admitted, grabbing the shovel handles as she squirmed around to see him. “Ow. Could you move that bag? I may wish to have other children in the future, and the edge of the dig bag is coming close to ensuring that possibility doesn’t exist.”
Lorina’s gaze turned to his crotch, which instantly hardened. Her cheeks turned dusky red as she hurriedly shifted the dig bag onto her lap. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt anything?”
“Nothing that can’t be mended by some dedicated attention later,” he said with a lascivious waggle of his eyebrows.
A little smile started to curl her lips, those deliciously pink lips, but sadly, it faded as she stiffened her back, and turned around to face front. “It’s your own fault if you got hit with the shovel. What did you think you were doing, anyway, grabbing me like that?”
“I was thinking something along the lines of a dashing knight scooping up a fair maiden in distress and setting her atop his mighty stallion, actually. It was a very romantic picture in my head, although I admit I failed to factor in the shovels. Would you mind not flailing them about? That was my shin you just slammed one against.”
“Sorry. Stop the scooter, Gunner. Two people can’t ride on it.”
“On the contrary, I believe we are proving that they can.”
“Do you hear that noise?”
“Yes.”
“That is the noise of a pissed-off scooter. One that is about to burst its gussets, or whatever scooters have. Let me off.”
“No.” His arm tightened around her waist, pulling her back against his chest. He breathed in the smell of her hair. It was floral-scented, just like the rest of her. “Or rather, yes, I will, but on one condition.”
“I am not having sex with you!” she squawked loudly, then shuffled the dig bag so that she could slap a hand over her mouth for a few seconds. When she removed it, she glared over her shoulder at him as best she could. “Goddamn it, Gunner! You’re making my mouth do this!”
He did a little more eyebrow waggling at her, and waited.
“I really object to you encouraging me to make a fool of myself.” She took a deep breath, which he felt down to this toenails, and then asked, “What condition?”
His arm tightened again as the scooter lurched over a bump and they hit the gravel path that led toward the front of the house. “That you tell me what this secret plan is that you are harboring. It has something to do with Thompson—that much I know—but just why you are pretending that he fascinates you is beyond my understanding. Care to enlighten me?”
“No,” she said, and tried to climb off his lap, even though they were still moving.
He held her firmly against him.
“Dammit, Gunner!” She pinched his wrist. “Stop flexing your biceps at me, and don’t tell me you aren’t, because I can feel it against my waist.”
“Why are you pretending to be a photographer?”
She stopped squirming. It took a minute before she asked, “What makes you think I’m not one?”
“Grant me the basic intelligence to recognize a fellow professional from an amateur.”
“Perhaps I don’t have the level of professionalism that you have, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a legitimate photographer.” She stopped, swore softly under her breath, but not softly enough.
“My sweet, you may be many things—fascinating, enticing, deliciously made, and intriguing in ways I’ve never before encountered—but a photographer you are not.”
She stayed stiff for the count of twenty, then slumped back against him. “I knew it. I just knew my mouth would give me away. What did I say? I was careful not to mention anything about those f-stop things you grilled me about the first day.”
“Actually, it wasn’t what you said—although the combination of f-stop and lenses that you mentioned would have been all but useless—but it’s your actions that gave you away. No photographer worth her salt would let the camera stray from her side. When I’m on a job, I live and breathe through my camera.”
He stopped when she turned on his lap, swinging her legs over his, careful to shift the shovels to the other side so they wouldn’t hit him on the face again. “Now what? Are you going to tell Roger and Paul?”
He tempted to force her to tell him the truth about what she was up to by using the threat of disclosing her ignorance about photography to Roger, but that thought just irritated him. “I’ve never had to force a woman to do anything, and I’m not about to start now,” he told her.
She looked a bit confused.
“Sorry. I was having an argument with myself.”
“Oh. I have those all the time. It’s the ones I lose that really piss me off, like this morning in the kitchen.” She blushed again, but this time, it made her eyes sparkle. “You should have heard me yell at myself for giving in to the lure of your chest. And butt. And legs and back and, really, all of you. Can I say right now that I dislike intensely the fact that you’re so sexy you make me forget my common sense?”
“I’d apologize, but there’s not a lot I can do about my appearance.”
“Oh, like hell there isn’t.” She now faced him squarely with a jaded expression. “I bet you love how you look, don’t you? You like having women go gaga over you when you parade about in nothing but a pair of damned near indecent shorts. And really, Gunner, what sort of man stands around in nothing but a scrap of silk while a seventeen-year-old girl is in the same room?”
“A man who is the girl’s father, and who made sure the sight of appropriate body parts was blocked by a chair when a certain someone aroused him to the point where it would have been noticeable to said daughter.”
“Hmph. I notice you don’t deny liking being so gorgeous that women like Sue follow you around just about drooling.”
He gave a one-shoulder shrug. “That’s like my saying that I object to you being charming. It’s not something you can change any more than I can.”
“Hey
!” She elbowed him. “A polite man would have made sure he complimented my appearance. He wouldn’t have gone straight for the personality thing, which every woman knows means he finds her physically repugnant.”
He released her long enough to take her free hand and place it on his groin. “Do I feel to you like I find you repugnant?”
“Oh. Oh my. You’re very . . . mercy.”
He gritted his teeth against the sensation of her hand stroking his erection through the tight confines of his jeans, and got the scooter moving again. “Yes, I am very.”
“Wow. I mean, not wow as in holy hell, but you’re hung like a horse. You don’t feel porn-star huge or anything. You’re just very . . . there.”
He tried to rustle up a glare, but the feeling of her fingers on his fly drove all other thoughts from his head. “Are you impugning my manhood, madam?”
She giggled. “Not in the least. After all, my first word was ‘wow.’ You can take that as a badge of honor.”
“I accept your apology.” He had to take her hand off him before he got pushed beyond bearing. “And I will reciprocate at a later date. You will see that as we are at the library door, the scooter did indeed handle two people just fine.”
“Uh-huh. Is that why there’s smoke coming out of the battery?” She got herself and her assortment of items off his legs, and nodded toward the back of the scooter.
A little puff of pale smoke emerged, accompanied by the smell of burning electrics.
“Balls,” he swore.
“Yes, those are very nice, too, but despite what my no-doubt-dilated pupils and tingly girl parts say—despite that, I do not have any interest in them.”
He blinked a couple of times just as if that would help him think. “Interest in what?”
“Your balls.”
“Why not? They would like to get to know you better. And your tingly woman bits.”
“The term is ‘girl parts,’ or, at worst, ‘lady garden.’ ‘Woman bits’ sounds like female-shaped pieces of bacon that you’d shake onto a salad.”
“Strangely specific, and yet, your whimsy in no way makes you less endearing,” he told her, getting off the scooter. “Shall we plan to introduce my highly attractive balls to your tingly girl parts later?”
“No. And I never said your balls were attractive. On the contrary, it’s been my experience that testicles are seldom attractive. Functional, I assume, but attractive? Not so much.”
“There you are!” Sue hurried up to them, her eyes locked on Gunner. “I heard we were doing some exciting things in the castle. Well!” She stopped next to him, and looked at Lorina, then back to Gunner. “Am I interrupting an important discussion?”
“Not really,” Lorina answered before Gunner could. She hefted her shovels and the dig bag. “I was telling Gunner that I think his balls aren’t pretty. Feel free to feed his ego by telling him they are the best balls in the world.” With that, she turned and stalked through the library French doors.
Sue’s mouth formed an O as she looked at Gunner.
“She’ll be back,” Gunner told her, nodding toward the French doors.
“She will? But—”
Lorina reappeared in the door at that moment, her nostrils flaring in annoyance. “I don’t know how to get to the cellar.”
He smiled and, with a cane in one hand, grabbed the pickax that Lorina had left for him, swinging it over his shoulder and shooing her back into the castle. “Forward, my little pack mule. Take a left at the hall, go past the sign that says ‘Private,’ and through the second door on the right.”
“Do I want to know why you two were discussing your testicles?” Sue asked, trotting after them. “Not that I’m opposed to making a judgment on them . . .”
Gunner tuned out Sue’s prattle and instead gathered together the waiting diggers to follow him down into the oldest part of the castle.
He didn’t stop smiling, though. Oh, it was going to be a very long day working alongside Lorina when she simultaneously aroused him and drove him batty with her refusal to explain herself, but there was nowhere else on the planet he’d rather be.
She might claim it was by mistake, but Lorina had started to open up to him, and that was a very good sign indeed.
Chapter 15
“I can’t believe you gave away our premium dig spot!” I kicked at a broken wooden crate, and stood up from where I’d been leaning against a door along with a shovel and my dig bag. “You know that if Paul finds anything, he’ll grab all the glory.”
Gunner stumped into one of the side passageways with a couple of oil lamps. He held them up triumphantly. “I told you that I thought there were a few of these down here. As for giving away prime cellar real estate, we wouldn’t have been able to dig much before Thompson and Roger had to be told.”
“Yeah, but Paul will find the treasure after we figured out where it was!”
“Possibly.” He smiled the same self-satisfied smile he’d been giving me ever since I’d blurted out a confession that I wasn’t really a photojournalist. Damn his nonthreatening, sexy self. “But it so happens that I kept a little something up my sleeve just for you.”
“Really?” Unbidden, my gaze dropped to the front of his jeans.
“Well, that, too, but not here where there are so many people about. Later, perhaps, in a more convenient location, like my bedroom.”
I snorted in what I hoped sounded like disinterest, but sadly, it came out more like a horse champing at the bit. “So what is it you’re keeping back from the others?”
He looked like he was going to offer to swap secrets again, but, thankfully, thought better of it. Which I couldn’t help but admire. It would be far too easy for a man who looked like him to use his attractiveness to force me to admit all, and the fact that he didn’t simultaneously warmed my heart and made me want to admit the truth about my failed plan.
“It was a little bit of an untruth, actually. Go left up here.”
I glanced in surprise at him, taking the turn he indicated. In front of me was an extremely old-looking black wooden door. Across the middle of it was a thick piece of wood held into place by a couple of brackets that were twisted with age.
Gunner reached alongside me and tried to shift the wooden bar, but it wouldn’t budge.
“I was afraid of that. It’s stuck.” He set down the lamps, and applied his shoulder to it, jiggling it at the same time. “The wood gets warped and won’t shift.”
“Maybe it’s locked,” I suggested.
“There is no lock on this door, just the bar. Ah, there it goes.” With a rough noise, he got the wooden bar to swing upward. He then spent another four minutes pulling, swearing, and prying open the wooden door, which eventually creaked open.
“It hasn’t been opened in quite a while,” Gunner explained, wiping his hands on his legs and bending down to light one of the lamps.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” I eyed the door. It looked like a strong wind would blow it over, but evidently it was tougher than it looked.
“The door? It’s just swollen over the years, but should be fine now.” He held up a lamp and nodded toward the doorway. There was a whole lot of black within it. “No electricity from here on out, I’m afraid. Let me go first, just in case the stairs are bad.”
“So you can break your other leg?” I blocked the narrow doorway. “You don’t have to be gallant, Gunner. I’ll go first and make sure there’s nothing to trip you up.”
He stopped me before I could go through. “I’m not being gallant, at least not for the reason you think. If something were to happen to you, legally it would be better if it happened to me.”
I glared at him. “Are you implying that if I fell down your stupid stairs, I’d sue you? Or rather, your brother?”
Gunner gave a wry little smile. “Elliott is due back tomorrow, and he’d be hellacio
usly angry if I let you hurt yourself. But no, I was actually referring to insurance reasons. You’re not covered by the liability insurance the film company has taken out for the crew. So if you would kindly allow me to pass, I will go down the stairs first.”
“But—,” I started to protest.
“Sweetness,” Gunner said, pulling me forward and giving me a swift kiss, so swift that I barely had time to enjoy the taste and scent of him before he was pushing past me. “I appreciate your concern, but I’ve been down these stairs before, and you haven’t. I would advise you to stick close, though. This light isn’t going to illuminate much but a few feet around me.”
My lips tingled, and I desperately wanted to kiss him again, but as he entered the black maw of the doorway, I moved the shovel to the same hand as the dig bag and grabbed the back of his shirt, shuffling after him.
The stairs weren’t wood, as I’d assumed. They were stone, very narrow, and quite uneven. “Steady,” Gunner warned, pausing to lift the lamp. About six feet of stairs were illuminated; the rest of the space was swallowed up by blackness. “Speak up if I’m going too fast for you.”
“You’re not going too fast, but I’d like to know where we’re going. I thought the dirt part of the cellar was the bottom level of the castle.”
“It is. Except for the bolt-hole, which is what this is. Or part of it—the outer part was covered over during a renovation a few hundred years ago. But this was originally a tunnel that my father said emerged out by the folly.”
“Folly?” I tried to remember the layout of the castle grounds. “I don’t remember seeing a folly.”
“That’s because it’s not there anymore. It was located in the south pasture.”
The significance of that hit me immediately. “So there used to be a secret passageway connecting the pasture where the first villa is and the castle?”
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