by P. G. Forte
“Get out of my way,” she demanded quietly.
“Or what?” he said, reacting automatically to the aggression implicit in her tone. “What’re you gonna do about it, huh, sweetheart? You gonna try and knock me on my ass again?”
She blinked and he could see the idea take hold in her mind. Her mouth tightened into what could only be a smile.
Realization flooded through him, leaving him stunned and seething. “Damn. You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?”
There was a small part of him that understood he might be over-reacting somewhat, but he didn’t care. The howling pressure in his head was so loud it would have drowned out any more rational thought—if he’d had one. But why should she be the only one enjoying something here, was what he found himself wondering, instead.
Her smile grew wider and more grim. “I don’t know,” she said, very softly. “But I tell you what. You could always try not moving. That way we can both find out what I’m gonna do about it.”
“Oh, you want me to move?” He felt his own mouth curve into a smile, as well. He no longer knew what he was feeling – red-hot rage, some newly lethal strain of lust, or the childish thrill of responding to a dare – but it was wild, reckless, unstoppable. “All right. I’ll move.”
And he did, too. Forward. Just one step that put her right into his arms. His hands shot out to capture her, crushing her against his chest as his mouth came down on hers. Her small cry of dismay was muffled against his lips. As if on cue, the skies above them opened and even more rain sluiced down upon them as the storm that had been brewing all day at last arrived.
The rain was coming harder now. It drenched their skin and dripped into their open mouths. Their clothes were saturated with it. But Ryan had other, more pressing things to think about.
She wanted him.
After that first, brief, startled instant, when she’d just stood frozen within his embrace, she’d come suddenly alive in his hands. Clutching him as fiercely as he clutched her. Pulling him closer. Fisting her hands in his hair and kissing him back with a passion that easily matched his own. The knowledge sang in his veins.
She wanted him. She wanted him now.
He’d been nearly certain, right from the start, that the tension between them could be turned to this eventually, but he hadn’t dared hope it could happen so quickly. He hadn’t wanted it to happen this quickly, either, he thought, nearly groaning with regret. He couldn’t handle this right now. It was too soon. He wasn’t ready for it. For a long moment he sought vainly for some more graceful way to stem the rising tide before it swept them both away, but nothing came to mind. In the end he had to settle for gripping her upper arms and pushing her away from him, as gently as he could.
“Whoa,” he admonished, laughingly, as she tried to pull him back in again. “Hey, come on, now. Let’s slow down for a minute.”
She stared at him, her eyes dull with surprise. “What?”
“What’s your hurry?” He smiled fleetingly. “Where’s the fire, huh?” She’d lost the cap she’d been wearing. He vaguely remembered having dragged it from her head so that he could thrust his hands into her hair. And as he reached to push the lank, dripping strands from her face he was already missing the taste of her. But there was no help for it. He couldn’t have her tonight.
He was a patient man, however, and they were both adults. He was sure they’d survive the wait. She flinched at the touch of his hand on her cheek, pulling back and glaring at him stonily.
“Where’s the fire?” she repeated, her voice filled with furious astonishment. “Are you for real?”
“Look.” He sighed. “I just think we ought to take things a bit more slowly, that’s all. You know, maybe get to know one another a little better first.”
Not like that had ever been a high priority for him before, but he figured it had to sound pretty good. The women who’d said it to him had always seemed very nice and very sincere in their beliefs, if a little too boring for him to bother with.
“Get to know one another?” Her voice rose several octaves in pitch and the look in her eyes mingled disbelief with sheer contempt. “First? Oh. My. God. You’re out of your fucking mind.”
Another instant, and she was gone. The fog had diminished just enough to let him track her progress as she fled up the embankment. He watched in fascination as she leapt from rock to rock like a creature who’d been bred to it. She’d bragged last night that she could keep her footing better than he, and at the moment, he was inclined to believe her. At least for right now, she probably could. But eventually he’d recover and then he’d show her. He sighed as she cleared the top and disappeared from view. Oh, yeah. There was a lot he’d show her.
He bent to retrieve the buckets and her cap, which she’d forgotten in her haste. Then he turned and headed back towards the trail. He was a practical man, after all, and he could see no reason to risk his leg on those rocks again.
Especially not now.
Her reaction to him just now had provided him with one more very good reason to do everything possible to hasten his recovery.
Back to Top
* * * *
Chapter Six
* * * *
Wednesday afternoon found Nick contemplating the ceiling above his desk while he considered the subject of gift giving. It was not a subject he’d given a lot of thought in the past. But in the months since he and Scout had been married it had come to assume an enormous significance – and not just for him, either. His entire family seemed obsessed with the notion.
This new facet of family life had been brought home to him very clearly on Christmas morning, when he had gathered with most of the rest of the clan in his Aunt and Uncle’s living room. The sheer number of presents had been staggering enough in itself, but that was not the worst of it. The extravagance of the gifts and the lavish attention that had been paid to the wrapping of them had also been unprecedented.
It was almost as though his relatives had, by common consensus, chosen to embrace consumerism en masse, in a blatant attempt to impress his new wife. Even Lucy, who certainly should have known better, had apparently succumbed to the temptation.
His cousin’s usual approach to gift-giving tended towards the creative and unexpected. A few years earlier, when there was still a Napster, she had commandeered her niece Stephanie’s computer, which boasted CD burning capabilities. She’d spent untold hours downloading songs and compiling individual collections of favorites for each member of the family.
Those albums had been a big hit with everyone. Nick had certainly appreciated her efforts. He’d copied his onto cassette, so he could listen to it in his car, and then played the damn thing ‘til the tape wore out, and he’d had to make a new one. And then another one. The way he was going, it would ultimately be cheaper to buy a CD player for his car, than to keep making tapes. But nice as that thought might be, it was not a priority at the moment.
This year there had been no such labors of love. Lucy had abandoned creativity in favor of a pile of perfectly wrapped, hastily purchased presents.
Of course, it was just barely possible, as her brother Joey had claimed, that she had simply been too busy helping Scout plan for their wedding, to have had the time for anything else. But Nick was having a hard time buying that. They’d gotten married in September! What the heck had Lucy been doing with her time since then?
Besides meddling in his affairs, that is. It had been partly Lucy’s fault that he and Scout had ended up spending Christmas with his family. Not that he hadn’t already been considering the idea, of course. When his mother had first called from Arizona to issue the invitation, Nick had seen it as the perfect opportunity for his family to get to know Scout a little better and to maybe get used to the idea that she was part of the family now, too. But it had been Lucy’s suggestion that Scout – newly married and already pregnant – didn’t need the additional stress of trying to make Christmas for him and his daughter Kate, that had ultimately decided the mat
ter for him.
Which is how he’d ended up nearly trading blows with Joey and making his and Scout’s first Christmas together so memorable – for all the wrong reasons. No wonder Lucy had opted to stay at home this year, he thought bitterly. Although he suspected that Dan may have had more than a little something to do with that decision.
But where had this sudden obsession with presents come from? He couldn’t recall its ever being emphasized this much before. Certainly he hadn’t been brought up that way. He’d been given to understand, from a very early age, that buying things was not how you demonstrated your affection for the people in your life. You did that by cooking for them, caring for them, protecting them. And by doing everything in your power to safeguard their well-being and their happiness. Which occasionally included trying to figure out when to say something and when to shut the hell up about information that concerned one or the other of them. That, he thought, was still the hardest part for all of them.
Though they’d never discussed it, he was sure that was how Scout felt about the subject, too. She understood what was important in life – the kinds of things that mattered. Hell, she never seemed to care at all about money. She’d been as happy with his present to her – a book of love poems, which he’d bought on Dan’s recommendation – as he was with hers; an exceptionally nice bomber’s jacket, made of exquisitely soft, pre-aged Italian lambskin.
Still, he’d known damn well that the discrepancy in the cost of those two items had not gone unmentioned in his family circle. Which was no doubt why he had reacted so badly when his mother had chanced to repeat Joey’s ill-considered, but probably facetious suggestion that Nick should be trying to take Scout for every cent she had.
What the hell was wrong with everybody, anyway? So she had some money. Big deal. It wasn’t like she was a millionaire, or anything. Except... he supposed, if he really considered things like assets and net worth, then... oh, shit. Maybe she was at that.
He dug his cigarettes out of the desk drawer, and took a long time lighting up as he thought about that. Jesus. What had he been thinking? That house alone – a large, three story Victorian which she’d inherited from her stepmother the previous summer, along with the rest of her not inconsiderable estate – was easily worth three-quarters that amount. If not more. And then there were her late father’s paintings, any number of signed originals. Plus the income from his estate—
Oh, hell. No wonder the accountant had looked at him so strangely last week, when he’d asked why they weren’t filling jointly.
He felt like an idiot for not having figured any of this out sooner, but she’d never acted like someone with that kind of money. She drove a Mustang, for Christ’s sake! Sure, it was a convertible, with a lot of really nice options. But it wasn’t a Ferrari. Which was something he might buy, if he had that kind of cash. Or a Lamborghini. Or a Lotus—
Or maybe he wouldn’t, either. That kind of car required way too much upkeep, after all. But he’d at least get himself something a little more classy than a Ford. A Beemer maybe, or a Porsche. Something with a little power. Some decent performance. And a goddamned CD player.
A knock sounded on his office door and he shut his eyes in irritation. He could still remember a time when a closed door meant something, but those days seemed gone forever. “Come in.” he growled, as he stubbed out his cigarette.
“Hi, Nick,” Siobhan said as she breezed into the office at her usual brisk pace.
Nick blinked. Well, this was unexpected. “Oh, hey Siobhan. What brings you down here?”
“I just wanted to drop off your tickets for the benefit dinner,” she said, digging an envelope out of her bag.
The tickets. Great. “Gee, uh... that’s terrific. But I’m not sure I have my checkbook with me today.”
She looked surprised. “Oh, no, we’re square. Scout already paid for them. She dropped off a check the other day.”
The other day? As in Monday, perhaps? “Wonderful.” Nick felt his temper spike. She’d already paid for them? Oh, sure. Of course she had. She’d bought them and then she’d told him if he didn’t want to go, they’d stay home.
He was pretty sure she’d meant it, too. She’d have tossed the tickets aside without a second thought. Maybe she didn’t care enough about money. Or, maybe, if he’d held out a little longer, she’d have offered to pay for the tuxedo, as well. That would’ve been lovely. Especially in front of Lucy. There was nothing he liked better than being made to feel like a paid escort for his own wife.
“Oh, and here’s the list for the silent auction.” Siobhan continued, handing him the paper. “She asked to see that, too. I guess you guys want to plan ahead, huh?”
“A silent auction?” Nick scanned the sheet quickly. Nice. There was some good stuff there, too: Private reserve wines, exotic cooking lessons, ski lift tickets, balloon rides, spa weekends, financial advice— “Fantastic.”
“It is, isn’t it? We got some really nice things this year,” Siobhan enthused. “So, you know, you’ll really want to make sure you have your checkbook handy then, huh?”
“Oh, yeah, right.” He tossed the paper down on his desk and reached for his cigarettes again. “That’s just what I’ll want to do. Well, gee, thanks so much for stopping by Siobhan. Really. You’ve made my day. We’ll have to do this again, real soon.”
After she left, startled, and probably offended by his sarcasm, Nick went back to staring at the ceiling again. Well, okay. So, he was married to a millionaire. No big deal. He could handle that. He’d just have to keep reminding himself about the important things. This was still Scout, after all. And it didn’t really matter if she was a pauper or a goddamned Rockefeller. Despite what anyone thought, he hadn’t married her for her money.
All he needed was a few more weeks, and he’d show them. He watched the smoke as it spiraled off the tip of his cigarette, and he smiled. Come Valentine’s Day, anybody who still didn’t understand just how much he valued this woman he was finally married to, would get all the cold, hard proof they needed.
Not that that was why he was doing it, of course. He had a much better reason than that. Better, and infinitely more personal. He just really liked to make her smile.
* * * *
Well, that was interesting, Siobhan thought as she headed back out of the station. Not that Nick’s bad temper was a total surprise – she’d known the man since childhood, after all – but he didn’t usually get that way for no reason.
“Siobhan? Hey, hold on a minute. Wait up!” She froze as she heard Ryan’s voice behind her, and then felt her own temper start a slow burn. What the hell was he doing here? Wasn’t he supposed to be off on sick leave, or something? She pivoted slowly to face him, immediately noting that both his limp and the lines on his face were more pronounced than they’d been the previous day. The idiot ought to have been in bed. “Were you looking for me?” he asked, and Siobhan felt her eyebrows head for her hairline. He was joking, wasn’t he?
“No,” she answered tersely, intending to leave it at that. She didn’t owe him any explanations, after all. But some perverse little part of her decided to give him one, anyway. “I was just dropping off some tickets to Nick.”
“Tickets!” He stared in surprise. “When’d you get a ticket? And for what—”
“Not traffic tickets,” she interrupted, still explaining, and still really annoyed about that. Why couldn’t she just shut up? “This is another kind of ticket. For a charity dinner? I happen to be on the organizing committee, and he and Scout are going so—”
“Oh. Right. That must be the dinner you and Gail were talking about yesterday, huh? And Nick’s going to something like that?”
“Yeah. I know. Big surprise to me, too. But now, I’ve some more tickets to drop off, so...”
“Hold on a sec. I want to talk to you.” he said.
But I don’t want to talk to you, she thought, staring at him, stonily. Something in her face or her manner must have finally gotten through to him. He
frowned doubtfully.
“Listen, do you want to get a cup of coffee?”
“I don’t drink coffee.” she said, watching as he shifted restlessly.
“Tea then? Or... I don’t know, something?”
Tea. Oh, yeah. Great idea. Maybe she could take him to her sister’s shop. She’d really enjoy that. Maybe Marsha could read what happened in their auras and get a big ol’ laugh over how much of a fool she’d been making of herself lately, too. “Look, Ryan—”
“You’re angry,” he said it with the air of someone who had just made a surprising discovery.
“Ooh. Good call. You just figure that out, did you?”
“Is this about yesterday?” he asked, cautiously.
“Wow. That’s amazing. Have you ever considered going on a game show? Or, you know, maybe starting your own psychic hotline? Because really, I—”
“I think maybe we should talk about this,” he suggested.
But he wasn’t the only one who could play dumb. “About your new career in television, d’you mean?” she asked ingenuously, as she headed down the stairs. “Gee, I’d love to, But sorry, I really don’t have the time right now.”
“Wait!” he rapped the word out and everything inside her stilled at the unmistakable note of command in his tone.
“Is that an order, officer?” she inquired quietly furious, as she turned her head to glare at him.
“What?” He looked alarmed, and a little distracted as he descended the stairs to stand beside her again. “No. No, of course it’s not. I just… look, I don’t know what to say here, except, I’m sorry.”
Sorry, huh? She thought about that. Sorry for what, exactly? For yelling just now? For being such a jerk? For kissing her yesterday? Or perhaps for the way he’d blown her off afterwards? Or maybe... maybe he meant he was sorry for the way she’d kissed him back – practically climbing on top of him and turning what he’d apparently meant to be merely a casual kiss into a virtual feeding frenzy.
