The Honeymoon Assignment

by Cathryn Clare

  “I don’t see how in hell we’re supposed to make this work.” He muttered the words, speaking to himself, it seemed. She could hear the frustration in them.

  They were on the road that skirted Cairo’s small downtown section, heading north toward the highway. Sam had the wipers on as fast as they would go, and in the distance, whenever the blades momentarily cleared a patch of windshield, Kelley could just make out the hazy red glow of a set of taillights.

  “Think that’s Wayland?” Sam asked.

  “I’d say there’s a good chance of it. There don’t seem to be very many other people out tonight.”

  “No big surprise there.” Sam, like Kelley, was wearing a raincoat, but both of them were still soaked by the driving rain they’d run through. “The question is, where is Wayland off to in such a hurry in weather like this?”

  “I don’t know.” Kelley pushed her hands into the pockets of her coat, trying to stave off the chill inside her. “When I ran into him at the health club, he seemed so eager to talk to me. And eager to dispel any impression I’d gotten that he might be worried about who Steve Cormier really was.”

  “Tell me what else he said.”

  Kelley frowned, concentrating as hard as she could. “He said he wanted to get the sailboat under wraps before he got together with me, because the weather’s supposed to turn really nasty overnight. His parents weren’t around to do it because they’d gone up to Houston this afternoon for some big charity art show that Helen contributed to.”

  “Hmm.” Sam drummed both thumbs against the wheel. Kelley recognized the gesture. It meant he was thinking hard. “I wonder if Wayland had gotten some inkling about Steve Cormier’s real identity.”

  “That Cormier wasn’t who he appeared to be?”

  “Right. And it could have seemed suspicious to him that Cormier disappeared at just about the time you and I showed up.”

  “So he had some idea that we might be connected to Cormier somehow.”

  “Or even just that we recognized Cormier, which scared him off.”

  “The big question is—”

  He finished the sentence for her. “Why would Wayland be worried about it in the first place?”

  Kelley nodded, barely noticing the interruption. “Wayland must have something to hide, or he wouldn’t have seemed so worried when he talked to me this morning,” she said.

  Sam briefly raised his hands from the wheel, turning his palms flat to the roof of the cab. “This case beats anything I ever worked on,” he said. “We no sooner get one thing nailed down than something else pops up. I was sure, when I found that gun in Jon Gustaffson’s drawer, that we’d pinned the blame on the Gustaffsons. And now…”

  Kelley knew exactly how he felt. And it wasn’t just clues that were hard to pin down in this assignment.

  Her feelings were on a roller coaster, too, down one moment, up the next.

  Five minutes ago it had seemed impossible that she would be able to keep any kind of partnership together with Sam. And yet here they were playing off each other’s thoughts again, bouncing ideas around in the same old instinctive rhythm.

  Making love with Sam this evening had been more exhilarating and frightening than anything she’d experienced in a long time. It had sent Kelley scrambling for safety, trying to distance herself from emotions and desires she didn’t feel ready to handle again.

  And yet they kept finding their way in. In spite of her efforts to keep her thoughts fixed on the case, she was still half-seduced by the deep growl of Sam’s voice, still all too aware of his big shoulders and lean waist as he turned toward her again.

  “Check the glove compartment, would you, sweetheart?” His brows were lowered into a long, belligerent line. “There’s got to be a cigarette somewhere in this damn truck.”

  There wasn’t. Kelley checked. It didn’t seem to do anything to improve Sam’s temper.

  And neither did the roadblock they hit a few minutes later.

  Sam had been pushing the truck to go as fast as it could on the slick pavement, and they’d been managing to keep pace with the car ahead of them. But Kelley could see more lights in the distance now, flashing blue and white, swallowing up the faint red taillights as Wayland’s car neared the scene.

  “Damn.” Sam pressed the gas pedal a little harder. “Something’s up.”

  It quickly became clear that most of the flashing lights belonged to a police cruiser parked in front of a trailer truck that had skidded sideways across the road. A police officer in a glistening slicker was directing Wayland’s car— it was Wayland, Kelley could see now—around the truck as Sam and Kelley neared the scene.

  But when Sam tried to follow, the officer barred the way. The truck driver was evidently attempting to get his vehicle back on the road, and now that Wayland had passed by—

  Sam rolled down his window, ignoring the rain that lashed his face when he leaned out. “We’ve got to get through,” he called to the policeman.

  “Sorry, sir. It’ll just be a minute.”

  It was two minutes, according to Kelley’s wristwatch. The second hand seemed to have slowed to a crawl as she watched the time tick away, and she could feel her impatience building to match Sam’s as the truck driver jockeyed cautiously back and forth.’

  By the time he’d finally finished, it was too late.

  There was no sign of Wayland’s taillights on the road ahead of them. Sam kept his foot mercilessly on the accelerator, but they knew when they reached the main road that they were out of luck. The night was black and empty in both directions.

  “No way to tell which way he went,” Sam said gloomily.

  “I know.” Kelley shook her head. “This night is just going from bad to worse.”

  She couldn’t decipher Sam’s inarticulate snort, and he didn’t add anything to it as he turned the truck around and headed back toward the Windspray Community.

  Chapter 12

  There’d been a large puddle at the Windspray entrance when they’d pulled out a half hour earlier.

  Now it was a small lake.

  And there was no way around it.

  “It’s a good thing the Prices have that boat,” Sam muttered. “We may need it yet. Hold your breath, sweetheart—this truck’s not overfond of deep water.”

  Kelley held her breath, but it didn’t help. Sam’s pickup charged vigorously into the axle-high puddle, but halfway through it started to sputter. In spite of everything Sam could do—and every profanity he could come up with in the process—the truck succumbed to a violent attack of coughing and stopped dead.

  “Damn.” Sam’s face looked grim as he zipped up his raincoat. “I’m going to have to get out and push. The longer we sit here, the longer it’ll take to get it going again.”

  He was out of the cab before Kelley could volunteer her help. She looked out her window at the water surrounding the truck and shivered at the thought of how cold it would be. The wind was howling around them, and the rain was making angry pockmarks on the surface of the huge puddle.

  But she couldn’t just sit here while Sam struggled to move the truck all by himself. Cinching her hood down as tightly as she could, Kelley got out of the cab and joined him.

  He was already straining against the rear fender, his face twisted with the effort of it. “Are you out of your mind?” he demanded when Kelley appeared at his side.

  “No, but you may be.” She sloshed through the frigid knee-high water and leaned her right shoulder against the truck. “Don’t waste time yelling at me, Sam. Let’s just do this and get back inside, all right?”

  It wasn’t as simple as that. They were both drenched already, and it was hard to keep their underwater footing long enough to get a steady rocking motion going. By the time they managed it and the truck rolled up over the hump at the edge of the puddle, Kelley felt as though she’d been standing under Niagara Falls.

  The wind seemed to cut right through her soaked clothing as she and Sam ran for their cottage door after p
arking the truck. Her fingers were chilled and clumsy as she fit the key into the lock, and she had to work hard to keep her teeth from chattering.

  Sam seemed to be having the same problem. “There’s been too damn much water in this case so far to suit me,” he muttered as he stripped off his sodden raincoat and dropped it by the door.

  Kelley did the same, pulling her pistol out first and placing it in the nearest drawer. She laughed as she looked down at her dripping-wet jeans and shirt. “Not much point trying to avoid leaving puddles, is there?” she said.

  “No.” Something flared in Sam’s dark blue eyes as he looked at her, something that made Kelley think he was trying to salvage his usual steely glare and having a hard time doing it. “Look, a hot shower is the best answer to this, if we’re going to avoid catching pneumonia. And I’m willing to wait my turn, but I’d just as soon not wait forever, and—”

  Suddenly Kelley knew what was behind the struggle in his eyes. She was feeling the same uneasiness herself, the same awareness that what they were really approaching, out of pure necessity, was a situation where they both needed to get out of all their clothes.

  Kelley tried for the lighthearted tone she’d used as a cover-up a moment ago, but she couldn’t quite manage it. “Go ahead,” she told him. “Just let me get some towels first.”

  In the bedroom they kept running into each other.

  Kelley ducked into the big bathroom and came out with an armful of clean white towels, but Sam was blocking her way. They both stepped aside at the same moment, selfconsciously. Kelley managed to put a few steps between her and Sam’s big body, but she realized she’d only done it by backing herself against the bedroom wall in a posture that was far more defensive than she’d intended it to be.

  And one good look at Sam told her exactly what she was trying to defend herself against.

  With his hair plastered to his head like that, and his blue eyes haunted by heartaches he was refusing to put into words, he looked startlingly young, unexpectedly vulnerable.

  His long frame looked anything but young. His plaid shirt, turned nearly black by the rain that had soaked it, draped his broad upper body in a way that outlined every hard muscle, every masculine angle.

  And the way his wet jeans clung to his hips was heating Kelley from the inside out.

  She closed her eyes and felt desire beginning to build at the center of her own body as she remembered how Sam had looked stepping out of the shower earlier tonight.

  The dark hair on his torso had been softened and disheveled by the rough toweling he’d been giving himself. Those dark curls had still thickened low down on his belly, drawing Kelley’s gaze seductively lower.

  The long, hard sweep of his thighs had always driven her half-crazy. At his most maddening, Sam could be an arrogant son of a gun. But his arrogance had another side, and Kelley had seen it tonight in the confident swagger of his step as he’d come into the bedroom. He had a kind of rough-and-ready integrity, and an outlaw appeal that she’d never been able to resist.

  She couldn’t resist it now.

  And she couldn’t be certain, not under the damp folds of his jeans, but she thought she was seeing the same telltale bulge at his loins that meant he couldn’t resist her, either.

  Oh, God, she thought desperately. Just go. Step into the shower and let me get out of here. Don’t tempt me like this again, not twice in one night.

  But he wasn’t moving.

  “You didn’t have to help me with the truck.” His words were slow, his gaze heavy as he looked at her.

  “I wanted to—” She stopped the sentence midway, not sure what she really wanted to say. Are you looking at me that way because you’re undressing me in your imagination exactly the same way I’m undressing you? It was a disturbing thought.

  “It didn’t seem right to let you wrestle with it all by yourself,” she said finally.

  “It seemed right to leave me earlier, though, didn’t it?” He was still holding her gaze, and Kelley could feel the connection between them growing stronger, finding its way into her bloodstream.

  She tried again for a light tone, but it didn’t work. “I— I was scared, Sam.” Her own honesty startled her. “I am scared,” she amended. She lifted both hands in the air, aware of the dampness at her shoulders where her back was pressing against the wall.

  “Can’t you see what we’re doing?” she asked him. “It’s just like it was before. What if—” She paused. “I couldn’t stand it if something like that happened again.”

  He growled, but it was a sound of agreement, not argument. “I know,” he said. “Damn it, do you think I don’t see—”

  He broke their gaze finally and looked toward the curtained window, where the wind was whipping rain against the panes.

  When he looked back, he seemed to have decided that searching for any more words was a waste of time.

  He was only a couple of paces away from her. He moved without warning and reached her before Kelley could even think of sidestepping him. His palm landed hollowly against the wall next to her ear, cutting off her only escape route.

  And suddenly his other hand was cupping her face, so gently that Kelley heard herself moan in response, drawn toward him, as always, by the buried need in his eyes and the hidden tenderness of his spirit.

  She knew he was trying to crowd her, trying to push past all the unresolved questions that stood between them.

  She let him do it.

  It was impossible, when she was looking into his eyes like this, feeling the heat of his body pressing into hers through their damp clothes, to resist the longing that surged between them like the swell of a high tide.

  She’d been fighting this for so long. She’d been fighting it when she’d left him after they’d made love earlier. But suddenly she just didn’t have the strength to fight anymore.

  She lifted her arms to circle his neck and felt him let go of the breath he was holding. He’d just given in, too, she thought. The realization was like a warm wave, pooling irresistibly at the pulsing juncture of her thighs.

  When he kissed her, the last of her doubts dissolved.

  His kiss was a slow exploration, a question, not a demand. Kelley could feel him trembling against her, as though for all his strength he was still overawed by the power that drew the two of them together.

  His breath drew in quickly when she opened her mouth under his and met the sensuous swirl of his tongue with a silent caress of her own. She felt his fingers pushing through her damp hair, pressing into her flesh, warming her, cradling her.

  Is this safe? The question skittered through her mind, prompted by the threatening howl of the wind and the uneasiness of the situation around them.

  Was it safe to let their guard down, to let themselves be swept back into passion when there might still be danger outside in the night?

  The answer was perfectly clear.

  It wasn’t safe.

  And there wasn’t a thing Kelley could do about it.

  Her body’s responses were too ravenous, her imagination too fired by the sweetness of their lovemaking only hours before. If an armed commando squadron were to burst through the cottage door, she thought hazily, it might only barely be enough to draw her away from the pleasure she felt as Sam kissed her more deeply.

  He was easing himself against her so she could feel every inch of his body from the broad strength of his chest to the hard ridge pressed so erotically across the bones of her hips.

  “I’m afraid these clothes might stick to us if we don’t get out of them soon.” The lightness she’d tried for earlier came more easily now as she pushed Sam’s wet hair back from his forehead and tilted his face so he was looking at her again.

  The barest beginnings of a smile appeared in his dark blue eyes. “Might have stuck already,” he said. “Let me see.”

  That gravelly drawl went straight to the core of her, as it always had. She’d been half in love with Sam Cotter the very first time she’d ever heard
him speak.

  He didn’t linger over her shirt buttons this time. Seizing both sides of her sopping-wet collar, he tore the garment open, scattering small pearl buttons all around them.

  Kelley gasped. And laughed. And gasped again when she felt Sam’s tongue, warm and slick and explicit, gliding over her neck, her collarbone, her breasts.

  He dispatched her bra with even less ceremony than he’d used on her shirt. By then Kelley felt as though she was floating under his touch, aching at the smooth, sweet sensation of his tongue over her skin. He was erasing all the cold of the storm outside, all the doubts she’d lived with for so long, sweeping them away in one long caress after another.

  This was heaven. It was better than heaven. It was—

  “Sam…”

  She cried his name as he gathered her against him, and fought past his gentle grip until she reached his own shirt buttons. Her fingers stumbled over them—she didn’t know if she was still cold or simply too aroused to be dexterous—and he ended up undoing the shirt himself, baring his lean, magnificent chest and reaching for the waistband of his jeans with a motion that Kelley found overpoweringly seductive.

  Naked together at last, they were both shivering from the aftereffects of the dousing they’d gotten. Sam lifted the covers and they fell into bed together, burrowing back into each other’s arms in a combined quest for heat and pleasure.

  Kelley had imagined doing exactly this, every time she’d wakened in this bed by herself.

  She’d wrestled with her own need to feel Sam’s rangy body surrounding her this way, to have his hands touching and arousing her in a way that no other man had ever done.

  She’d dreamed—how many times had she had this dream?—of the inexpressible freedom she and Sam had always found when they’d made love. There was no barrier between fantasy and reality when they were together. Sam’s loving had always found and answered her most secret desires.

  Those same tantalizing horizons were opening in front of her now. And she rushed toward them, eager, light-headed.