by Caro Carson
The horse, relaxed and trusting Luke, willingly followed him out of the tangled danger into which its young owners had placed it. Patricia drifted along at a little distance, watching Luke as he coaxed the giant horse to take delicate steps over and around the guy lines. Luke needed nothing more than his calm voice and a gentle tap of the reins on a foreleg that needed to be lifted higher before he would let the horse proceed.
Patricia didn’t want to feel the emotions he was stirring in her. Her fireman clearly had the horse sense of a cowboy, for example. It was easy enough to fool herself that her admiration wasn’t really lust for a man who tamed a beast.
It was easy to admit that she felt gratitude, too. He’d stepped in to take care of a potential problem for her, after all. But it was the relief that worried her most, because she clearly felt relief, damn it, that Luke wasn’t the kind of man who chased anything female in a bikini.
It shouldn’t matter so much to her. After this week, she wouldn’t care what he did with girls who wore bikinis or anything else. Patricia needed to stay detached, but he was making it so very difficult.
* * *
In the morning, Patricia woke feeling wonderful.
Luke Waterson was an excellent kisser. He’d come for her after dark, taking her back to the picnic table near the hospital building. He’d made her lay on top of the table with him. She’d felt silly, a grown woman reclining on wood planks, but he’d said he wanted her to look at the stars. They were brilliant in the black sky, undiluted by civilization’s usual glow of street signs and restaurant marquees.
Even in June, the night air had felt a bit cool, and Patricia had stayed warm by keeping herself tucked by his side, her head on his chest, leg along leg. They’d kicked off their shoes and let their bare feet tangle, and they’d talked about stars they could see from horseback and stars they could see from boat decks.
Then, they’d kissed. Long and lazy, knowing the whole night stretched before them. She’d enjoyed the slow build-up. When he hadn’t pushed for more, she’d enjoyed it a while longer, but eventually, she’d been confused. They’d taken things pretty far in the shower facility. Surely, he’d expect things to go further this time.
Men wanted sex. That was a fact of life. They wanted it, they appreciated the woman who gave it to them for a short while, and then they moved on, wanting it again from the next woman. Patricia excelled at keeping sexual relationships civilized, as did her friends. It was the height of bad taste to weep after a lover or to be enraged over a divorce.
Yet last night on the picnic table, Luke had kept things surprisingly PG. Maybe he’d lifted the elastic of her sports bra and let his thumb slide over her full breast. Maybe she’d let her hand slip over the nylon of his track pants, just to get a hint of the size and the shape of him. But mostly, it had been a starry night of kisses and whispers.
Surely, that meant he was enjoying her company, if he was delaying the sex. He was in no rush to be done with her and then move on to another woman. She felt dangerously pleased about that.
He won’t be easy to leave.
She wouldn’t think about that now. Fortunes and husbands and fathers could wait. She would work through this day, and live for another precious night.
* * *
Not touching a man was an aphrodisiac.
There could be no other explanation for it. Patricia was dying as she ate lunch sitting to the left of Luke. Others surrounded them, eating and talking, oblivious to the way Patricia tried not to stare at the man with the blue eyes and lazy grin. A nurse sat down to debate sci-fi movies with Murphy. Some of the Houston fire crew sat there, too, eating quickly and leaving. Quinn stopped in for a bite and stayed awhile.
Patricia found that being polite to an acquaintance so no one would guess he was really a man who’d caressed every inch of her body required concentration. She couldn’t be too aloof, but she also had to be careful she didn’t laugh any louder at Luke’s jokes than Quinn’s. When Murphy asked if anyone else had noticed how many more stars there seemed to be in this part of Texas, she turned her face away from Luke and brushed imaginary crumbs from her lap, not daring to meet his eyes and share a memory.
Lunch could have been horrible hot dogs or heavenly foie gras, so little did Patricia pay attention to her food. Instead, she was exquisitely aware of every move Luke made. She deliberately didn’t watch the muscles in his shoulders move when he turned to toss a bottle of ketchup to Zach’s table. She was aware when he casually placed his left hand on the table, perhaps four inches away from her right, and kept it there. She didn’t move her hand away, either. They talked to other people while they didn’t hold hands.
When his radio sounded its alert tones, though, she forgot not to look into his blue eyes. He didn’t look away, either.
“Guess lunch is over,” Luke said. Don’t worry about me, darlin’.
“I hope your crew gets back before dark this time,” she answered. Because I’m dying to touch you tonight.
And then he was on his feet and out the door, and she was looking at her plate, vaguely surprised to see lunch had been neither hot dogs nor foie gras. She’d apparently chosen mashed potatoes and vanilla pudding, a gourmet combination the elegant Cargill heiress would never have touched before a hurricane had put her plans on hold.
She looked at the silly lunch on her disposable plate and started to smile to herself. She wouldn’t let herself laugh. She had her limits. But then Quinn began whispering his chant about kissing in a tree, and Patricia got a bad case of the giggles.
Laughing must have been an aphrodisiac, too, because when she left the mess tent and saw engine thirty-seven pulling out of its parking space, she forgot to worry. She was too busy imagining a certain fireman touching her tonight.
She checked her watch to see how many hours it would be before the world went dark and the fun would begin.
Chapter Thirteen
Patricia hid behind a tree, listening to the locker room sounds of men taking showers. The world was wonderfully, gloriously pitch black, and Luke would soon emerge, damp and clean. Then finally, finally, he’d come find her.
Patricia planned to make that the easiest of tasks. He hadn’t come to find her when his truck had returned from its call. She’d monitored the police radio, so she knew engine thirty-seven had been called to yet another car accident. Luke hadn’t been kidding when he said they rarely were called to fires.
This time, a car had rolled over on the main road out of town, triggering a series of smaller accidents with minor injuries her ER could handle. Only one person had been taken straight from the scene to San Antonio by helicopter, and that person had been a car driver, not an emergency responder.
She hadn’t had to worry about Luke’s safety. With nothing to dampen her spirits, she’d waited to catch another glimpse of him before darkness fell. He must not have been able to detour past her office after he’d grabbed a sandwich from the mess tent, although she’d managed to linger by the unzipped door flap. When Karen had stopped in the middle of the main thoroughfare to let Patricia know the permanent hospital’s roof repairs had begun, Patricia had not kept walking as her supervisor talked. She’d stood still and listened, hoping Luke would pass by and send her a covert smile.
He hadn’t. People or duties were keeping him from her. Since he couldn’t get clear to come see her, she was going to come to him. Any moment now. It was late and the showers were closing.
The bark of the tree felt hard and intricate under her palm. Her whole body felt sensitive, every summer breeze making itself felt as it passed over her exposed arms and legs. She was even aware of the strands of hair that had come loose from her chignon to tickle the nape of her neck. With her drawstring sleep shorts, she’d worn an oversize shirt, easy for a man’s hands to push out of the way. She intended to entice him to do just that.
It wouldn’t take much doing. He wanted to touch her as much as she wanted to be touched. What a perfect pair we make.
The w
ooden door opened, light poured out. Luke stepped out, hair damp, towel around his shoulders, and Patricia stepped from behind the tree, ready to dart forward and snag his hand. Then Zach stepped out, and Patricia could have stamped her foot in frustration. In fact, she did.
Zach nodded at something Luke said and walked away. Patricia feared Luke would follow, but he paused to lift the towel from around his neck to give his hair another rub. Patricia seized her moment, stepping lightly over the ground to grab a corner of his towel and give it a tug.
“Shh,” she whispered. “It’s me.”
In the half-light, he half smiled. “It is you.”
She took his hand and pulled him into the darkness. She found the tree where they’d first kissed within a minute. Funny how it had seemed farther away that first night.
She turned and stepped into Luke, body fitting against body effortlessly. Her leg stepped in between his and her back arched as she raised her arms to wrap around his neck. The movement was smooth, as if she’d done it so often, it was part of her muscle memory. She tilted her face up, just so. Luke gave his head a little shake and closed his eyes before his mouth came down on hers.
Lord, he tasted good. He felt good. After a day of discipline and denial, it was like melting, a release of everything strict and straight. He ended the kiss, but he didn’t let go. For a long moment, he just breathed in the dark with her, his mouth an inch away from hers.
Luke didn’t want the kiss to be too sexual yet, perhaps. But he wasn’t letting go of her, either.
She let one hand drift from his neck up to his wet hair. “What was that head shake for? What were you thinking?”
“Nothing,” he murmured. “I’m just a lucky man.”
And then he kissed her again, and this time there was less restraint. Less control. More hunger. More tongue, more heat, more strength in his hold.
This time, when he ended the kiss, they were both panting. His hand had messed up her chignon as he’d cupped the back of her head, keeping her where he wanted her as he kissed her. He’d controlled her during that kiss, deciding what angle, how deep, when to stop. Patricia felt a little thrill of discovery. So this is what it’s really like to belong to a man.
That had been a taste. She wanted more. She wanted to lose herself, to let go and let Luke lead her somewhere she’d never been. She trusted him. She could turn her mind off and focus only on this craving that every touch satisfied and stoked simultaneously.
She felt the tension in his arms as he let go, almost like he was forcing himself to step back. “Not here. I don’t think I should—it’s not the right—not here.”
Patricia was drunk on her taste of desire. If this wasn’t private enough, she could fix that. She took his hand once more and pulled him deeper into the darkness. Silently, she led him out of the trees toward the hospital. She’d found this shortcut earlier. In moments, they stopped beside their picnic table.
He’d found her sleeping here that first day he’d crashed into her tent. He’d talked to her here last night for hours. Tonight...
Patricia didn’t try to hide her smile. She pointed at the sky. “Stars.”
She pointed at the table. “Talk.”
Then, smiling and sure, loving the way his eyes were eating her up, she stepped into him again, thigh between his, arms around his neck. “Let’s fast forward past all that tonight.”
He didn’t smile back. For a moment, her confidence faltered. She’d misread something. Could a kiss like that be one-sided? He didn’t want her. Then he had a fistful of her shirt and his hand cupped under her thigh to lift her body so he could press against her intimately.
She read that message loud and clear.
The hospital building loomed over them, offering protection, offering privacy. Luke took it, lifting her off her feet as he leaned her back against the building, looming over her.
She wrapped her legs around his waist. He said, “I’m not going to make love to you up against this wall, out in the open,” and then he kissed her as if he was making love to her.
He kept her secure with one arm around her waist. He pressed the palm of his other hand into the wall by her head, keeping their balance as he rocked his hips into hers. She closed her eyes, loving the way he would move when they didn’t have a paltry few pieces of clothing between them.
Her chignon caught in the stucco, tugging strands free a little painfully, but she didn’t care. She pressed her head back as he kissed his way down her throat, giving him easy access.
She couldn’t have been more willing, more open, more wanting.
Abruptly, Luke stopped. He froze in place, holding her against his waist, head bent into her neck, breathing like he’d just run five miles.
She felt, once more, like she’d made a terrible miscalculation. It was a very cold feeling.
“Patricia, Patricia.” Luke pushed off from the building, holding her tightly to his chest, as she kept her legs wrapped around his waist, but then he found her knee with his free hand. He pressed gently, until she lowered her leg to the ground.
“I can’t make love to you like this.”
“You can’t?”
She disentangled herself the rest of the way and stood on her own two feet. Aching with physical need, shaky with confusion, she held her chin high, long years of practice not failing her, even now. “It seemed like you wanted to.”
“I want to, darlin’. I want to. But this would be a lousy first time.” Luke didn’t let her take another step back, but reached for her and pulled her into his chest. He pressed her cheek against the side of his neck and stayed like that, one hand cradling her head, pushing pins into her scalp, for long moments.
Patricia had no idea what Luke was objecting to. Being out of doors? Standing up? Those details were trivial. It was the desire that had been key.
“My head’s not in the right place,” he said, answering her unspoken questions. “The call we went on today was bad, and I can’t forget it.”
“You stopped because you were thinking about a traffic accident?”
“I stopped because I was using you to forget it, and that’s a lousy reason to make love for the first time.” He stopped squashing her, letting go of her head and holding her more loosely around the waist, so they could face each other.
Patricia felt so raw inside. She’d never had a man turn her down cold before. She’d never had a man with whom her desire had burned so hot.
“Isn’t that what sex is for?” she asked. “To blot everything out for a moment?”
Luke frowned, so very unlike him that it helped Patricia refocus. Her head was clearing from its descent into passion.
Luke cupped her cheek with a warm palm. “I suppose people have sex for a million different reasons. I can only speak for myself, and the way I feel about you. There’s a difference between wanting to make a new memory and trying to blot out an old one. When I have sex with you, I’m not going to want to forget a thing.”
“But not tonight.” Patricia said it calmly, confirming his timeline, feeling like a child being told her mother would come to visit her, but not this week. “I didn’t realize you were bothered by anything. The accident didn’t sound bad over the radio.”
This time he was the one who took her by the hand, tugging her to the picnic table. They sat down on it, side by side.
“Do you know why they call fire engines out to car accidents?” he asked.
“In case the car catches on fire?”
“It’s to free trapped people. Our engine carries the hydraulic Jaws of Life tool to cut through metal.”
“Did you have to operate that today?”
“I’m just a volunteer fireman. I don’t have certification on that yet. Rouhotas and Zach handle that piece of equipment.” After a moment of silence, Luke leaned against Patricia’s side. She put her arm around his back. Drew soft circles on his shoulder blade.
“The driver was a young mother. Unconscious. Helicopter standing by while they worked.�
�
“That sounds awful. If you didn’t operate the power tools, what did you do?”
“We know she was a mother because she had a little daughter in the back seat. She’s this many years old.” Luke held up three fingers, like a child would. “Thank God she was in a child safety seat, because that car was upside down, and she was upside down, too, but safely strapped in that five-point harness. While Rouhotas and Zach cut the car apart, my job was to keep the little girl from looking at her mom. You didn’t like when I blocked your way the other day, but I crawled in the backseat and blocked her view.”
“Oh, Luke.” Patricia turned toward him and tried to hold him in her arms, pulling him to her chest, a little like the way he’d held her on the bench when they’d hidden from the rain.
“Three-year-olds don’t understand why their moms won’t answer them, you know. I kept telling her everything was okay, even the noise of the metal was okay. We don’t carry ear plugs small enough for a kid that tiny, so I had to cover her ears with my hands.”
“Oh, Luke,” she repeated helplessly. Patricia couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. She honestly couldn’t remember. A decade? Twenty years? Had she been eleven years old the last time she’d dashed a cheek against her shirt sleeve like this, aware that boarding school was her new life, aware that she’d never live with her mother again? There’d been no point in crying after that.
“It was a piece of cake to get the little girl out once her mother was removed. She had no injuries at all. When I have a kid, she’s going to be buckled into a seat like that before I put my key in the ignition. Every single damned time.”
He was going to have kids someday. It was a certainty, the way he said it. Those kids would have a daddy who protected them. Patricia didn’t want to identify the emotions that thought stirred up.
