by JoAnn Ross
By the time her parents had died, a single George Campbell photograph could have easily supported a family of six for at least a year. Unfortunately, after her grandmother’s death, K.J. had discovered that Helen Campbell had used nearly every cent of his estate to keep her white elephant of a mansion and equally large summer home running. K.J.’s entire inheritance had been roughly thirty thousand dollars, which, while a nice sum of money, still wasn’t enough to allow her to take the financial risk of switching careers.
“I don’t see the problem. Now that you have a filthy rich husband—which, in case I didn’t mention it, I am—you can quit your day job.”
“I keep telling you, you’re not really my husband.” And even if their marriage was real, she wasn’t certain her strong Campbell independent streak would allow her to let Alec financially support her career.
“Look at that next photograph. And try telling me that again,” he suggested.
She sighed as she took in the photograph she remembered all too well. Which wasn’t surprising, since she had a duplicate one hidden away in the drawer of her bedside table. It was a picture of her looking amazingly sexy and undeniably radiant in her scarlet-as-sin wedding dress.
A rebel to the core, Alec hadn’t brought a suit to the writers’ conference, but as she took in the sight of him in jeans and a white shirt, she found him every bit as dashing as she had that night. Which was, of course, a danger.
She also found it more than a little unsettling that he’d not only saved the photograph, as she had, but displayed it openly. The candid photograph had been taken by the minister’s wife seconds before Kate and Alec had kissed for the first time as man and wife. Her face, framed by his large hands as she’d looked up at him, was nothing less than beatific. And although the shot lacked technical merit, it had still managed to capture, in stunning detail, exactly what she’d been feeling at that moment. It was love, pure and simple.
Not so simple, she corrected sadly.
Alec watched her trying not to study the photograph he’d been tormenting himself with for months. The fact that she’d failed was a good sign.
“You were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen,” he murmured huskily, coming up behind her.
“It was the dress,” she said, briefly closing her eyes as she felt his warm breath teasing at her ear. “It was stunning.”
“The dress was attractive.” His hands curved over her shoulders, pulling her back against him as they both studied the photograph. “But it was the bride who was stunning.”
The photograph had captured her at an uncensored moment, and only a blind man wouldn’t have recognized the love shining in her eyes as she’d gazed up at him in that suspended instant before he’d kissed her. So what the hell had happened between that moment and the next morning?
It couldn’t have been their lovemaking, Alec assured himself, as he had for months. There was no way she could have faked her avid, unrestrained response to him. To them together. By the time he’d taken her that last time in the shower, they’d both lost track of how many times she’d come.
“I don’t want to quibble yet again,” she murmured, slipping away from his light but possessive touch and turning away from that wall that held too many emotional memories. “But there seems to be only one hammock.”
Alec bit down in frustration at the way she’d edged away, both physically and emotionally, and concentrated on the flush that colored her cheeks so prettily as she took in the hammock. Obviously, her imagination was as active as he remembered.
“Ah, the lass is observant as well as bonny,” he said with that feigned Scots burr.
Her eyes flew to his dark, laughing ones. “Surely you don’t expect me to sleep with you?”
“I don’t know why not. You are, after all, my bride, Katherine Jeanne Campbell Mackenzie.” He stressed, yet again, the name she’d so willingly taken that night.
“In name only.”
“I may be accused of being a bit daft sometimes, darling. But I certainly couldn’t forget consummating our marriage vows. And I know it wasn’t a dream or a sexual fantasy, because believe me, even my imagination isn’t that vivid.” His grin was as wicked as she’d ever witnessed it.
“That was then. This is now.”
“Don’t worry.” His smile lost its voltage, and shadows turned his formerly gleaming eyes to the gloomy color of thunderclouds hanging over a steely sea. “I’ll bunk with Rafael for the night.” He bit the words off, all warmth and affection gone from his tone. “And since I’ve never been into forcing myself on women, you don’t have to concern yourself about your husband taking his conjugal rights while you’re sleeping. ”
K.J. decided that the least she could do was give credit where credit was due. Particularly if she wanted to coax Alec into coming back to New York with her. This continual sparring couldn’t be helpful to her cause.
“I doubt I’d ever be so exhausted I could sleep through that,” she murmured.
His lips tilted and renewed humor chased away the shadows from his eyes. “Is that a compliment I hear coming from those eminently kissable lips?”
Because she knew she’d never get away with a lie, K.J. opted to tell the truth. Or at least a bit of it. “You were a wonderful lover, Alec. But there’s more to life—and marriage—than sex.”
“That’s true enough, I suppose,” he said vaguely. ”But you can’t deny that it’s not a bad foundation to build on.”
Because it had been too long since he’d tasted her, and to prove to the both of them that she wasn’t any more immune to the electricity arcing between them than he was, Alec ducked his head and once again covered her frowning mouth with his.
8
HER FIRST MURMUR sounded vaguely like a protest, but unwilling to surrender control, Alec refused to retreat. As he lingered over the kiss, gentled it, he was pleased by the way Kate sank so quickly, so willingly into it.
Without taking her mouth from his, she went up on her toes, dragged her hands through his hair and parted her lips, inviting him to take the kiss deeper. Which he did. His tongue slipped inside the sweet warmth, stroking, exploring, thrilling.
Heaven help her, he was every bit as solid as she remembered, and although he was a good head taller, they fit together as perfectly as they had in all the sexy dreams she’d been suffering through these past months.
Alec’s taste was as dark and as potent as Scotch whisky, possessing the power to make her head spin and her knees weaken. Desire flared from smoldering embers she’d tried to convince herself had cooled.
This is ridiculously foolish, her internal nag warned. You’ll never succeed in getting the man to agree to that divorce if you turn to putty every time he kisses you.
For a fleeting, reckless moment, K.J. wondered if it would be so wrong, so foolish, not to insist on a divorce, as she’d intended. How could she turn her back on such pleasure? she asked herself. How could she walk away from this?
Then he lifted his head and broke the blissful contact of their mouths, causing her soaring mind to come crashing back to earth—and reality—with a bang.
“You broke your promise.” The afternoon rain had begun; K.J. could hear it pounding like machine-gun fire on the tin roof.
“No, I didn’t,” Alec countered. “I promised not to touch you. And I didn’t. My hands were behind my back the entire time.”
Not that he’d had much choice, since it had either been that or give in to impulse and rip those wrinkled clothes from her soft yielding flesh, Alec admitted to himself wryly.
They stood there, toe-to-toe, Alec looking down at her, K.J. looking back up at him. For a suspended moment the world around them seemed to fade away as old memories warred with current circumstances.
Alec was the first to break the silence. “Kate?”
Only a deaf woman would not have heard the desire in his gruff voice. A desire, heaven help her, that was also burning hot and deep inside her.
“What now?” she snapped, when she wanted
to weep.
“I think, in the interest of fair play, you’d better consider this a warning.”
“What kind of warning?”
As she stared up into his fierce eyes, flashes of sensual images—memories of all they’d done together—assaulted her like a shower of stones.
“If you don’t say something right now to stop me, I’m going to go back on my word not to touch you.”
Oh yes, she wanted to cry out. Touch me. Taste me. Take me. Now. Needs tugged at her, seductive and unrelenting.
“I don’t want you to touch me.” Her voice was weak and ragged.
It was a lie. And they both knew it.
But circumstances, heat and exhaustion stepped in to replace the willpower that seemed to have deserted her. K.J. had no sooner gotten the words out of her mouth when she went strangely light-headed. The room began to spin around in circles, and for the first time in her life, she felt as if she was going to faint. She began to sway, as little white dots danced like fireflies around her head.
“Hell, you’d better lie down before you fall down.” Although she was not a petite woman, he scooped her into his arms as if she weighed no more than a handful of feathers.
“That’s ridiculous. I’ve never fainted in my life,” she argued. Her cheek was resting on the hard wall of his chest. His heartbeat was strong and, she feared, a great deal steadier than hers.
“There’s always a first time for everything.” He pulled back the mosquito netting and carefully lowered her to the hammock. “And having that beer when you were bound to be dehydrated undoubtedly didn’t help matters any. I shouldn’t have encouraged you to drink it.”
She opened her eyes and looked straight into his. “That wasn’t your decision to make.”
He shook his head, his faint smile suggesting that he found it amusing she could summon up the energy to argue even now when she was on the verge of passing out.
“Shut up.” He skimmed his fingers up the side of her face, then brushed some damp hair off her forehead. “And although I realize you’re a strongminded, independent female who doesn’t need to be told what to do, I’m going to risk your Campbell wrath by suggesting that you’ll feel a lot better after a nap.”
“I suppose that sounds like a sensible idea,” she admitted. And anyone who knew her would tell you that K.J. Campbell was nothing if not sensible. Well, at least most of the time. Rushing off to the jungle in hopes of a promotion probably wasn’t the most prudent thing she’d ever done in her life. And certainly eloping with Alec had not even come close to sensible.
“Would you like something to eat before I leave you alone?”
From what she’d sampled thus far, jungle cuisine wasn’t exactly five-star. Deciding that she wasn’t on the verge of starving anytime soon, K.J. allowed her achingly heavy eyelids to drift shut.
“No, thank you,” she said politely. The hemp rope hammock was surprisingly comfortable. She curled up in it and snuggled down for the duration. “I’ll be...fine.” Her words slowed along with her breathing. “I just...need...to rest my eyes...for a little bit Then we really do need to talk about... You know.”
“Making love?”
“No. And shame on you for taking advantage...of my temporarily weakened condition.” The faint curve of her lips took the heat out of the accusation.
“Sorry.”
He didn’t sound at all like he meant it, but too tired to argue, K.J. decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “You’re forgiven.”
She was drifting away, feeling as if she were sinking into soft fluffy clouds. At first she thought she might have imagined the butterfly light touch on her temple, then realized it was his lips brushing against her skin. It was then K.J. realized that, although she’d known he was strong and forceful and dangerously charismatic, she hadn’t realized he could also be heartbreakingly gentle.
And it was that surprising tenderness she most needed to guard against.
With that warning floating through the filmy ether of her mind, K.J. temporarily surrendered the battle and allowed sleep to claim her.
Alec sat across the room watching his wife while she slept. The same way he had the morning after their marriage. Except that day he hadn’t been forced to study her from a distance, because she’d been snuggled in his arms like a soft warm kitten.
The diaphanous netting did not prevent him from seeing the way her breasts rose and fell beneath the thin cotton T-shirt. Alec remembered all too well how they’d fit so perfectly into his hands, how the undersides were as smooth and pale as the snowy white roses he’d actually thought to pick up in the hotel’s Canterbury Florist Shop for her bouquet.
He had no trouble recalling the scent of her silky skin, or its taste. The memory of how her rosy nipple had turned hard as a stone between his gently tugging teeth caused a sexual ache that went all the way to the bone.
He knew that no matter how human beings might wish otherwise, time marched inexorably along, ticking off minutes, hours, days, months, years, eons. But if the gods had suddenly decided to bestow superpowers on him that morning, looking back, Alec decided that if he’d known how things would have ended up, he would have unhesitatingly chosen the ability to freeze time in its tracks.
Before that damn argument. Before they’d both said things they didn’t mean. Before he’d acted like a jerk. And especially before she’d run off, back to her safe, predictable routine at that New York publishing house.
That had admittedly surprised him, especially after she’d shown such excitement about his work. He couldn’t understand how a human being could stand to be locked within four walls all day long. He’d certainly go stark raving mad before six months had passed.
Although others might find his passion for treasure hunting more than a little quixotic, Alec had always considered his second career eminently reasonable, After all, he never took off to the back of beyond on a whim. On the contrary, he’d always prided himself on planning out an expedition down to the most minute detail. Admittedly, unforseen events inevitably blew a lot of those plans out of the water, but he’d never considered himself a man given to impulsive behavior.
Until that evening he’d entered the French rococo gilded banquet room of the Las Vegas Whitfield Palace Hotel, dreading a long-drawn-out meal of stuffed leather chicken and boring speeches, and seen an angel with a Highland lass’s face staring back at him.
For the first time in his life, he hadn’t given any thought to what he was doing. Hadn’t been at all concerned with the consequences of his rash act. The only thing he’d known was that he wanted the woman with the fiery hair and eyes as blue as a loch beneath a rare summer sun.
And not just for one night. As he’d crossed the marble floor between them, he’d realized with not a little amazement that he wanted to claim her—as one of the Mackenzie lairds might have kidnapped a winsome woman from some enemy’s clan—and keep her all for his own.
The long intimate conversation later in the cocktail lounge had only confirmed that feeling. So, even as unplanned as it was, marriage had seemed an eminently logical solution.
She’d certainly not uttered a single word of protest, Alec thought now. Not when he’d shepherded her from Lancelot’s Lounge, or later, when they’d entered that chapel and discovered that they were going to be married by Merlin the Magician and serenaded by three costumed guys playing mandolins and wearing purple tights.
But Kate hadn’t seemed to care in the least. In fact, later, back in his suite, they’d laughed until their sides had ached.
And although the Scots were a pragmatic race, as he’d taken her into his arms and kissed her with a depth of emotion he’d never felt toward any other woman, Alec had known they were fated to be together.
Looking at her now, emotions welled up inside him, stunning him with their intensity. Shaken as he was by the force of the atypical feelings battering away at him, which for a multitude of reasons he wasn’t going to take time to sort out right now, Alec realized
that he’d told Kate the absolute truth when he’d sworn to hold her to their marriage vows.
She was his wife, dammit. And now that he had her back where she belonged, he wasn’t going to let go of her.
The only problem, Alec reminded himself, was that the lady had already been spooked before. He didn’t want her racing off, because this time he’d have to go after her. Like it or not, if he couldn’t find the barge before another mudslide buried it even deeper, he’d have to give up this expedition. Which he was prepared to do, if it came down to a choice between Kate and the treasure.
But Alec was realizing that, although he would have once argued otherwise, he was a greedy man. He wanted Kate and he wanted the treasure. And he was determined to have both.
The thing to do, he decided, was to avoid giving her any more insights into his thoughts.
Although he had no intention of complying with her request for a divorce, it stood to reason that the longer he let her believe he might eventually give in, the longer she’d have to stay here in the jungle. Which would give him time to change her mind. To prove to her that they belonged together.
It wasn’t much of a plan, Alec allowed as he employed all of his willpower not to join his sleeping bride in that hammock that had been too lonely for too long. But it would have to do until he could come up with a better one.
K.J. HAD No IDEA how long she’d slept. For a moment, when she first awakened, she forgot where she was, but then she forced her still-heavy eyelids open and found herself staring straight into Alec’s shuttered gray eyes.
“You’re still here?”
“Seem to be.”
She combed her fingers through the thick wavy tangles, almost grateful when some leaves and moss fell out that she didn’t have a mirror handy. “How long did I sleep?” “About three hours.”
“Three hours?” She was stunned. She’d always possessed the ability to take quick, refreshing catnaps during the day, wherever she was, but to think of being dead to the world for so long... A thought occurred to her.
