by Anne Stuart
“I WAS JUST CHECKING what we’ve got.” Hal stopped right behind the seats, feeling as though the sudden tension was a wall he had to break through. “I was hoping I’d find packaged jerky left over from a previous trip, but no such luck.”
He wondered if his challenge to Kat about her feelings for him had created this environment. It had been a shot in the dark, but perhaps a valid one. Either that, or this tension had been created by his own libido confined in such close quarters with the woman he’d longed to possess for two weeks.
She held up his jacket. Her cheeks were pink from sleep, though she was shivering.
“You found a hat,” she said, noticing the Navy watch cap he also kept in his backpack.
“Another thing I always carry in the plane along with the extra socks.”
He had to get firm about their situation, put things in a practical perspective so that she didn’t panic on him—and so that he could remember that this was a really bad time for romance.
“We’re going to have to share the jacket and the blanket if we’re going to stay warm,” he said, putting his backpack with the water and energy bars in it at the base of her seat. “Are you up for that?” Give her a challenge. That would put her on her mettle.
“If you can stand being that close to the dragon who’s always yelling at you,” she replied. Her voice was even, but her eyes looked wary. It was interesting to speculate over whether it was him or herself she didn’t trust.
“I don’t like the yelling.” He put the jacket on, but didn’t zip it, then he climbed into his seat, putting his legs on her side of the cabin. “But I’ve grown rather fond of the dragon.” He gestured her to him. “Just climb over the box and stretch out on it until you’re lying in my arms.”
“Here comes the dragon lady,” she quipped, doing as he asked.
He opened the jacket and drew her in against him, then closed it as much as possible over her. Next, he pulled the blanket on top of them.
He knew instantly that this was going to be torturous. Unfortunately, he didn’t have an alternative. But she was all soft and fragrant and—for the first time in their acquaintance—amenable and pliant.
“Is my elbow in your ribs?” she asked.
“Can’t feel it through my sweater.”
“My weight’s going to crush you eventually.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Will you tell me if it does?”
“When you land on the floor,” he teased, “you’ll know you got too heavy. Try to sleep a while longer. I’ll wake you later for another half an energy bar and some water.” He reached over his head to turn off the light.
He didn’t expect to be able to sleep—and he was right. On one level, there was something curiously calming about having her lying in his arms, doing as he asked without argument.
But he felt her tension for several moments, a sharp reminder of his own. He withstood it stoically, pretending a distance from the whole situation that he didn’t feel at all. Then there was a sudden inclination of her body weight against him, as though she’d finally relaxed. Her breathing evened out and he guessed she’d fallen asleep again.
He lay awake, wondering what was happening at home. It was hard to believe that dinner was still being served at Umberto’s. Someone would be clearing a table for the next seating, and someone else would be serving dessert and coffee to some diners who were still lingering.
Berto and Roth would be in Berto’s office, making last-minute plans. According to what Hal had overheard at Percanto’s table, he intended to pay his bill then return later, probably to break into the basement through which he could reach the savings and loan next door.
Gordie Hoffman, who often ate with Percanto, was an old safecracker. Hal could only conclude the rest of the plan involved applying Gordie’s small explosives skills to the safe. That involved the not-very-subtle but usually dependable use of plastique.
Then they’d probably leave the way they’d come in. At which point Roth and Hal’s fellow detectives would be waiting for them.
He felt his adrenaline stir at the thought of grabbing Percanto and his men when they climbed back into the restaurant. After the familiar but sometimes backbreaking work of waiting tables in a busy restaurant, Hal thought he deserved that.
But here he was in the dark, frigid night in a downed plane with a beautiful woman sprawled on top of him, apparently perfectly contented. He smiled thinly at the thought that the guys might disagree with him over who had the better part of the deal.
He thought ahead to what would happen to him if he married this woman and had four daughters and a beach house on the north coast. He’d have to give up thoughts of an advanced career in law enforcement. He’d be able to find a job, certainly, but police work in a small coastal community wouldn’t provide him with the kind of experience that fueled advancement in the ranks.
And that would be all right. He preferred the beat cop work right now, anyway. Life in a quiet little town still had undercurrents that made police work interesting. Mayberry existed only in fiction.
He was just beginning to drift off when Kat shifted her weight and hitched a leg up along his. When the confining seats stopped her from moving farther, she lowered it again, her knee sliding down his leg.
One would think that with layers of clothing between them, he wouldn’t feel her breasts against his chest, her arm wrapping cozily around his waist, her knee moving along his thigh, her womanhood right over the part of him that resisted all his efforts to settle down.
God. He was going to have to jump out and roll in the snow.
KAT DREAMED of Adonis again. She was pressed close to him and he was stroking her cheek, whispering her name.
She couldn’t see him in the darkness, so she followed the sound of his voice to his lips. She put hers to his and kissed him for coming back to her, for keeping her dreams of him alive, for promising her their future with the restaurant and the house on the beach and the four little girls.
“I love you,” she whispered to him, kissing his mouth, then rubbing her lips along his jaw, nibbling there where the line was so firm.
“Katarina,” he said in a heavy voice, taking a handful of her hair and tipping her head back. “It’s me!”
Her eyelids fluttered open and she saw Hal’s face. Another revelation setting over her and became truth. Adonis and Hal—they were one and the same.
“I know,” she said, kissing him again, leaning into him with passion and purpose.
When she pulled back, he was frowning and trying to read her eyes, wondering, she guessed, just how serious she was.
“Kat,” he said, combing her hair out of her face with his fingers. “I just wanted to give you half an energy bar and…”
“I’m filled with energy,” she said, moving her fingertips along his jaw, feeling the prickly surface of stubble, the sturdy bone underneath. “I’m over-flowing with energy.” Then she braced herself against him to reach up and kiss his lips.
He caught her hand and dodged her lips. “Kat, you’re playing with fire here. I’d like nothing better than to…”
“Then just do it,” she interrupted, running her index finger of her free hand along his lips. “You’re the man I want.”
“No, I’m not,” he denied, grasping that hand, too, and tucking it between them. “You hated me only last night. You’re just scared and tired and…”
“I want you, and I think I’m falling in love with you.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I’m just coming to understand it,” she said, her playful mood pushed aside by heartfelt sincerity. “I was attracted to you from the beginning. Only you didn’t seem to even notice me, so I…I think I began to behave in a way you couldn’t miss. You couldn’t ignore your employer, or so I thought. So I found fault with everything…” She talked quickly, afraid she wasn’t going to be able to make him understand.
But he nodded, his expression unreadable. “I know. I resisted everyth
ing you asked me to do for the same reason. I knew it’d bring you back to yell at me again. I think we both need counseling.” Then he smiled and she could see in his eyes that she was winning. “Or,” he said softly, “we need to make love.”
He freed her hands and she threw them around him and kissed him soundly. He pulled her back from him for one serious moment.
“But I have to warn you that whatever decisions you make in this kind of situation might seem right because your reality is altered right now. There’s a good chance you might regret it in the morning.”
She had to ask. “Will you regret it?”
He gave her a look that melted all concern. “Not if I live for all eternity. I’m falling in love with you, too.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THAT DECLARATION deserved another kiss. Then she looked around them with a very practical concern. There was barely room to move.
“Can we make love right here?” she asked. “Or is there more room in the back?”
“We can put the blanket on the floor behind the seats,” he replied, then added as practically, “Leave your jacket and your socks on.”
When they were stripped of boots and jeans, Hal took his jacket off and wrapped Kat in it, then drew her with him to the blanket. They lay side by side on it in the tight space behind the seats.
“I wish I could carry you to a bed in a suite at the Ritz Carleton,” he said, holding her closer with a slightly chilly hand to her hip. “This is just a step up from the back seat of a car.”
She didn’t feel that way at all. “It only matters to me that it’s happening,” she said, exploring his back and down the crenellated line of his spine. “And when we tell our children how we fell in love,” she said, “it’ll make a very dramatic story. How the date from hell turned into a heavenly experience.” Then she realized what she’d said and waited for his horrified reaction. She’d made him the center of her dreams. Now he knew just what that meant.
He took it with surprising calm and acceptance. “I’d say we keep the details to ourselves, but I suppose four daughters will want details as they grow up.”
“I’ll be discreet.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
He kissed her with silencing determination, then showed her in delicious detail that though he’d made her life as difficult as possible in the restaurant, he had it within his power to make it sublime right here. With his lips and fingertips, he explored every inch of her exposed to him, then drew up her sweater and planted kisses on her midriff as he reached under her to unfasten her bra. He nipped and kissed her breasts, then worked his way down again.
Feeling as though the temperature had gone up thirty degrees in the cabin of the plane, she took advantage of his distraction to run her hands up under his sweater and his shirt to find and trace the line of his ribs and pectoral muscles.
“Warm enough?” he asked, kissing her throat. “I see gooseflesh.”
“That’s not the cold,” she whispered back, moving her hands around him to stroke his tightly muscled backside. “That’s your touch.”
And then, as though to prove that he had the power to alter the inside of her body as well as the outside, he dipped a fingertip inside her.
Everything within her rioted. Her heartbeat sped up, her blood warmed, her lungs worked double time.
Suddenly desperately needy, she closed her hand over him and felt his immediate response. Moments later, he entered her in one sure stroke that brought a small cry from her.
“Katarina!” he said anxiously, about to withdraw.
But she held him to her, struggling to catch her breath. “No,” she tried to explain. “That wasn’t pain. It was…discovery. Wonderful discovery.”
KAT TIGHTENED around him, drawing him deeper. Though he’d always been a very sexual being, he’d never been particularly sentimental about it. He’d taken great pleasure in sex, done his best to give great pleasure and accepted it as a great restorer of physical and emotional balance.
But being inside Kat made him feel as if he’d climbed an evolutionary step. The man he was when connected to her was better than the man he was alone. And it was too affecting to be a temporary thing. He’d be different forever. Impatience receded. Appreciation of the moment—of everything life offered—grew.
He loved her slowly, lengthily, warming her with his body while ignoring the cold himself.
When he finally collapsed atop her, she tried to wrap his jacket around him, then when that didn’t work, she wanted to pull it off and give it to him. “You’re freezing,” she said, her small hand rubbing his thigh.
He pushed off her, handed her her jeans and pulled on his own. Then they climbed back onto the seats to stretch out as they’d done before, taking the energy bar and the half bottle of water with them.
After they’d eaten, he held her tightly to him, loving that she had her arms and legs wrapped around him, claiming possession.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “To think we’ve been fighting when we could have been making love.”
Through the lingering, mellow afterglow, he thought he should tell her that her father had asked him to keep her away from the restaurant tonight, that though the crash had been accidental, the subterfuge that had put them on his plane had been planned.
But she clung to him with an adoration he couldn’t bring himself to risk losing. And if he and Berto played their cards right, she might never suspect she’d been tricked, might be led to believe that her father had simply stayed late at the restaurant in her absence, heard the sound of someone in the basement and called the police.
Yes. He liked that scenario better.
“I’m going to hate leaving here,” she said lazily, burrowing her nose into his throat.
He squeezed her to him. “So am I. But when we get home we’ll work on getting you that restaurant and house on the beach and those four little girls.”
“I hope we’ve got number one already,” she said, heaving a deep, sleepy sigh.
He felt a pinch of guilt at the possibility that they’d conceived their first child in the middle of a lie—even if it had been told for Kat’s own good.
Then he put it out of his mind, his body and his heart still sated with love and satisfaction. He closed his eyes.
BRIGHT SUN woke him the following morning. He’d drifted in and out of sleep all night, felt Kat squirm and huddle closer when she’d dislodged the blanket. And he’d sat up in alarm when she’d cried out in the darkness.
“What?” he’d demanded, unable to see her though he could feel her weight on top of him.
“Hal?” she asked, sounding surprised. She groped in the dark and stuck her finger in his eye.
“Ouch.” He laughed, catching her hand. “What’s the matter?”
The silence was heavy for a moment. “I thought I dreamed you,” she said finally.
He put the palm of her hand to his lips and kissed it. “No, you didn’t. I’m here.” Then he pulled her back into his chest. “Was I a bad dream?”
She held tightly to him. “No. You were very real, but I was sure when I woke up that you wouldn’t be. That’s always the way it is. But…tonight. Wow,” she whispered and drifted off again.
He was real all right. Not straight with her, but real. He could only hope all had gone well with Percanto and that was all behind them. Then a small detail occurred to him.
At some point, he was going to have to explain to her that he was a cop.
Well. He’d worry about that when they got home.
In the light of day, that fact raised its bothersome head again. He forced it aside as he shouldered the backpack and helped Kat out of the plane. The air was frigid though the sun was bright, and he knew the trek to town would be sufficiently strenuous that they’d warm up on the way.
“Stay right behind me,” he told her, “until we get to the trail.”
“You’re sure we can’t bring the linens?”
�
��They weigh a ton. We’ll send someone for them later.”
“Are there bears up here?” she asked.
“Not sure,” he replied. “I’ve seen cougar.”
“You’re kidding!”
“They live here. We’re the ones trespassing.”
“If we see one, I’m explaining that you’re the one who crashed the plane.”
“I can see the kind of supportive wife you’re going to be.”
He heard her ringing laugh, the sound appropriate to the crisp, clear day.
THE MORNING was glorious and still, tall, snow-shouldered pines lining the road with dense forests behind them. The air was sharp and sweet, filled with the smells of pine and the freshness of winter.
Once Kat and Hal reached the road, they walked side by side, Kat torn between enjoying the moment and worrying about her father’s state of mind because she didn’t come home last night. She couldn’t wait to reach a telephone and call him.
Hal, probably aware of her concern, tried to distract her by asking her what sort of restaurant she wanted her own to be.
“A family place, I think,” she replied, focusing on her dream, “with breakfast and lunch—traditional fare and some trendy stuff for the health-conscious. Then at dinner it’ll turn into an intimate little café with steaks and seafood and…Hal!”
She stopped in her tracks, unable to believe her eyes. Staring back at her from the side of the road was a cougar about the size of a St. Bernard. It had a fawn-colored coat with a white chest and muzzle and black tips on its ears. And eyes that were not at all catlike. They were large and intelligent and focused closely on her.
“Stay absolutely still,” Hal said softly. “And try to make yourself look bigger.”
“What?” she demanded in a whisper.
“She’s just analyzing which one of you is tougher. Move slowly, but raise your jacket over your head.”
