Courting Carolina

by Chapman, Janet

  * * *

  Not about to add insult to injury, Alec had very nobly refrained from telling Jane to watch for boats on the fiord when she’d headed out again after dumping an armful of neatly sawn driftwood next to the grotto entrance. And he’d merely smiled and nodded when she’d politely asked if she could strip the frame off his backpack, and had handed her a granola bar as she’d left carrying the frame and a short length of rope. He might be a bastard, but he wasn’t an idiot. If the woman wanted to gather enough fuel to build a bonfire that could be seen from space, who was he to stop her?

  Certainly not the king of her, that was for sure.

  Hell, he wasn’t even king of himself at the moment.

  Alec absently blew on the steam wafting up from the cup of soup he’d heated on the stove, and stared at the shrinking beach across the cove as he wondered if it was his throbbing side or the goddamn bus sitting on his chest that was making it hard to breathe. When in hell had his innocuous dream of messing around with a beautiful, not-missing woman for a few days turned into a raging desire to possess her completely?

  Dammit, he didn’t want to care.

  No, that wasn’t true; he couldn’t care.

  Carolina Oceanus was so far out of his league that they might as well be living in different universes. And Jane Smith was definitely beyond his reach, because he’d bet his very life that the sexy, intelligent woman had never once dreamed of being devalued by a child murderer.

  He had no business messing with her at all. And if he had anything resembling a conscience left, as soon as he could make the climb he should drag her up the mountain and dump her at Nova Mare before she suddenly vanished in a thunderstorm when she finally figured out what a bastard he really—

  Alec stilled at the soft, electronic chime coming from the front of the grotto, only to realize that Jane was using a tiny solar panel to recharge her iPad. After glancing toward the point of land, he set down his soup and carefully got to his feet, slowly walked over and unplugged the iPad from the charger, then hobbled back to the sunbathed boulder. But instead of sitting on it again, he carefully lowered himself to the sand and leaned against the rock instead.

  He found the power button and turned on the tablet, grinning when the screen lit up with a picture of a beautiful ocean sunset. He studied the device, having been contemplating getting himself one when he went home this fall. The sleek tablet was definitely lighter than his laptop, and he figured an iPad was his next step on the technology ladder, since TarStone Mountain had wireless Internet in the hotel and lodge, and even up at the summit house.

  He gave another glance toward the fiord, then slid a battered finger across the screen to unlock it and grinned again when a variety of icons appeared. Not the least bit contrite to be snooping through Jane’s virtual world, since being nosy was probably the least of his sins, he lightly tapped the e-book icon—then softly whistled at the sight of her extensive library of books on nuclear fission, quantum physics, sustainable energy, and solar and hydro and wind power.

  Jane Smith was into some heavy reading.

  His eyes widened as he continued scrolling through the virtual bookcase: The Joy of Sex…The Happy Hooker…Kama Sutra…The Idiot’s Guide to Oral Sex…

  Seriously? Somebody had written a book on oral sex?

  And Jane had bought it?

  Alec wiped his sock-wrapped hand over his face. Well, that should teach him to snoop. Except instead of having learned his lesson, he kept right on snooping—only to nearly drop the iPad when he tapped the movie icon.

  Holy hell, the woman had an equally extensive video library of pornography!

  He stared out across the cove, more confounded than shocked. Why would Jane have downloaded a bunch of dirty movies and sex manuals? He understood the energy and physics books, since she obviously was into that kind of stuff, but The Happy Hooker and Debbie Does Dallas? What sort of mind mixed pornography with quantum physics?

  Alec snorted. An intelligent and inquisitive mind did, especially if it belonged to a sheltered princess with dreams of being more than a wife and mother and beautiful asset to some power-hungry husband.

  But The Happy Hooker? Was Jane studying up on how to lose her virginity?

  For the love of Christ, she was learning about sex from a prostitute!

  Kit suddenly came barreling up the beach, spraying Alec in a shower of sand when the wolf slid to a halt, dropped a large piece of driftwood, and looked at him expectantly. Really? The killer whale wanted to play fetch?

  “You’re an orca,” Alec muttered, picking up the driftwood. “You’re supposed to be terrorizing helpless seals.” He awkwardly tossed the stick toward the water, only to immediately regret the action and cradle his ribs on a hiss of pain.

  “Kitty, I told you Alec is too sore to play,” Jane scolded as the wolf raced past her after the stick. She stopped at the entrance and slid off the pack frame—that probably had forty pounds of driftwood lashed to it—then rushed onto the beach. “Kitty, no!” she cried, catching the wolf by grabbing one end of the stick and bracing her feet to stop him. Using her grip on the stick, and apparently not the least bit worried when Kit gave a protesting growl, Jane got right down in the wolf’s face. “I only showed you that game so you could show your pod—you’re pack mates,” she whispered, darting a glance at Alec to see if he’d caught her mistake, only to straighten with a gasp when she saw him holding her iPad.

  The woman should be blushing to the roots of her wind-tangled hair, Alec decided as he gestured at the boulder near the entrance. “It started beeping and…ah, I’ve thought about buying myself one, so I…” He snorted and held the iPad out to her. “Do they come already loaded with all those books and movies?”

  Her complexion went from pink to dull red as she hugged the tablet to her chest, even as her chin lifted defiantly. “It’s not a crime to be curious, and I’ve always been interested in various energy sources.”

  “Yeah, right; you—” Alec snapped his mouth shut when the last of her sentence sank in. She was embarrassed he’d discovered that she read science books? “I wasn’t referring to your scientific library,” he drawled, “but your collection of pornography.”

  “Oh, that,” she said with a smile of obvious relief. She waved a hand in dismissal and sat down across from him to lean against the grotto wall. “No, the iPad doesn’t come with any books or movies on it. You not only have to buy the pornography, but you have to download the app you wish to use based on which online store you plan to buy from.” She beamed him a saint-tempting smile. “Then you go to that store and simply type in SEX and thousands of books and movies pop up.” She shook her head. “Some of the titles are really quite comical.” She held the tablet toward him. “You’re welcome to peruse my libraries while you’re recuperating if you wish, and that way you can decide if this is the brand of tablet you might want to purchase.”

  Was she serious? Alec gestured for her to keep the tablet and took as deep a breath as the bus sitting on his chest would allow. “Jane,” he quietly began, despite not knowing where he was going with this conversation, “you can’t learn how to make love from reading books about sex or watching a bunch of actors going at…pretending to…Pornography is misleading.” He nodded curtly. “Yeah, it’s nothing but fantasy.”

  She arched a brow. “So the reason it even exists is…”

  Well, she had him there. Alec disguised his urge to grin with a snort. “It exists to keep beautiful women safe from lust-blinded idiots.”

  “And only men experience lust?” she asked, her eyes lighting with challenge. “And women mustn’t be curious about such things?” She canted her head. “Tell me; would you expect a doctor who hadn’t spent years studying the human body to operate on you? Or would you send a soldier into battle without any training?”

  “Sex isn’t a battle,” he growled. “It’s a natural, spontaneous occurrence between two people.”

  Her eyes crinkled with amusement. “So are you saying t
hat if neither person has any experience, they will both still find pleasure?”

  Damn, her smile was contagious, and Alec finally gave his grin free rein. “Well, okay. It helps if one of them knows what they’re doing.”

  That brow lifted again. “Preferably with the man being the experienced one?” She sobered. “Knowledge is power, Alec. And ignorance about sex puts a woman at a disadvantage—and at a man’s mercy.”

  Alec scrubbed his face in his hands, wondering what had possessed him to get into a conversation with her about sex. “Okay, point taken. I suppose if I were running around audition—looking for an ordinary man to marry, I’d at least want to know how to keep things from getting out of control. But,” he rushed on when she started to say something, “pornography has absolutely nothing to do with lovemaking.” He gestured at her iPad. “Those movies are visual exaggerations, Jane, aimed at a male audience. Did you see any displays of affection when you watched them? Or tenderness, or any real emotion? Hell, they don’t even kiss.”

  She looked down at her lap, her cheeks darkening. “No, I saw no affection.” She lifted uncertain eyes to his. “But if those movies are designed for male entertainment, couldn’t a woman watch them to learn what men like?”

  “Men like women to be themselves.”

  She looked down at the iPad again, although not quickly enough for him to miss the wistful look in her eyes. “But everyone appeared to be having such a good time,” she murmured, more to herself than to him, he suspected. She stood up, took a deep breath, and gave him an overly bright smile. “Thank you for explaining it to me, Alec, as I did wonder at some of the things I saw in those movies.” He also didn’t miss the sparkle that returned to her eyes as she turned away. “Particularly some of the positions. Now, I believe I’ll build a fire and cook the fish that Ki—um, that I found trapped in a tidal pool.”

  She set the tablet down on the boulder next to him, then went over and pulled several long thin saplings from the firewood lashed to the pack frame, as well as the already gutted fish dangling from it. She walked over and handed him both the saplings and the fish—that appeared to have teeth marks in their sides—and yup, that was definitely a sparkle outshining her smile. “If you don’t know how to whittle a spit to roast the fish on, I believe there’s a book on my iPad that explains how to do it.”

  For the love of— She’d studied up on camping, too?

  Well of course she had, because Jane Smith had wanted to be prepared when she got into trouble and came running to the biggest schmuck on the planet. “Thanks, but I think I can manage,” he drawled, taking his knife when she handed it to him.

  Hell, had he ever been in control of this dream?

  The scoundrel; Alec had snooped through her iPad and then had the audacity to be scandalized that she’d downloaded movies and books about sex. Yet she’d bet her emerald necklace that he hadn’t been living like a monk for the last twenty years, or that she was the only one going around auditioning lovers.

  Jane got down on her hands and knees next to the campfire she’d constructed, deliberately facing her backside toward the ogling scoundrel, and blew on the smoking grass to coax it into flames—stifling a smile when she heard him muttering something under his breath about a goddamn bus.

  Yes. Well. Alec MacKeage didn’t have a monopoly on lust—as he would discover tonight when they went to bed. Because after finding some way to trick him out of his underwear, she intended to crawl in the sleeping bag with him—fully clothed, of course—and finally see for herself what all that moaning and groaning and carrying on in those movies was all about.

  Oh, her condom might be staying in her jewelry bag, but as the very happy Madam Xaviera Hollander had vividly expressed in her candid book, there were quite a few ways to curl a man’s toes.

  Chapter Ten

  Alec woke up to day five of his apparently on-again dream and smiled at the water’s reflection dancing on the grotto ceiling as he rubbed Jane’s sex-tangled hair between his battered fingers. Control, he decided, was a relative matter depending on which side of it a person was on. And handing control over to a sexy, intelligent, very determined princess could prove quite interesting—especially if she also happened to be quite passionate.

  Lord, he couldn’t remember ever being so captivated by a woman. He could live to be a hundred and two and never grow tired of messing around with Jane, and if he died tomorrow, Alec suspected even the posies he’d be pushing up would be smiling.

  For someone rebelling against a dictatorial father, Jane sure wasn’t above making a few demands of her own. She’d all but ordered him out of his clothes last night, using some lame excuse about needing to put salve on his shin and check the swelling on his ribs, only to accidentally spill an entire pot of water on his thermal bottoms and shirt so he couldn’t put them back on. Then she’d added a couple of logs to the campfire and crawled—fully clothed—into as much of his sleeping bag as she could, considering he was already occupying most of it.

  She hadn’t even waited sixty seconds before she’d pounced.

  And being the lust-blinded idiot he was, Alec had not only let her, but had helped.

  Yes, Jane was a very passionate woman, and what she lacked in experience she made up for in enthusiasm. She was also a quick study, surprisingly bold, and really quite inventive. He’d been so overwhelmed by her determination to give him pleasure that he’d come dangerously close to forgetting who he really was and she really was, and nearly taken things past the point of no return.

  Forget the damn bus; Jane Smith had somehow managed to get past all the barriers he’d erected and smashed headlong into his heart. And although that would ultimately be a problem for him, Alec didn’t see any reason it had to be a problem today. Until Sam established a new identity for Jane, they could simply finish laying out the wilderness trail together, all while continuing to explore their seemingly well-matched passions. Hell, he was even willing to disappear with her when the time came, just to make sure she got safely settled in her new life, seeing how the Celt was really good at that particular game.

  Alec kissed the top of Jane’s head when she stirred, and smiled again when he felt her stiffen, willing to bet his hunting rifle that she was blushing to the roots of her sex-tangled hair. “Good morning,” he said, his voice thick with some emotion he wasn’t quite willing to identify. He gave her hair a tug, partly to get her to look at him, but mostly to see her blush. Except that when she tilted her head back, the only pink in sight was where her cheek had been nestled against his naked chest, and she gave him a pleased-with-herself smile that crinkled the corners of her sleepy bedroom eyes.

  Damn, he was in trouble—because if he remembered correctly, confident, passionate women really turned him on.

  “Good morning,” she whispered, her voice also thick with…yup, that was definitely passion, evidenced by her hand sliding down his stomach.

  Alec captured it before she could reach anything important, even as he felt heat creeping into his cheeks. He brought her palm to his lips and kissed it. “Have mercy, lass,” he said on a derisive snort. “If I get any more weak in the knees, I’ll never make the hike back to camp today.”

  She gave him a really impressive pout. “Poor baby. Did all that moaning and groaning and carrying on last night wear you out?” She kissed his chest—her lips lingering a bit long, he couldn’t help but notice—then snuggled back against him with a sigh. “Can’t we just stay here in the grotto forever?”

  “We’d eventually run out of food, I’m afraid.”

  “Kitty could hunt for us.” She lifted her head to smile at him. “I’m certain I downloaded a book of recipes for venison and rabbit and partridge.”

  “Ah, lass, but ye tempt me,” Alec said, giving her a squeeze. He touched his lips to her hair. “But last I knew, hiding from a problem never made it go away.” He tilted her head back and smoothed his thumb over her wrinkled brow. “Your week of getting your strength back and deciding what to do
is almost up. So, have ye decided to let me help you deal with your father?”

  She rolled away and sat up to stare out at the cove. “Nobody can deal with my father,” she said softly.

  “I can. All ye need do is ask, Jane, and I’ll be your champion.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him, her obvious surprise at the word champion turning to a sad smile as she gazed out at the water again. “I can’t ask, Alec, because I find myself caring about you too much.” He saw her release a shuddering breath. “And I will return home and be a dutiful daughter before I’ll let anything happen to you.”

  Not caring for the direction this conversation was going, considering the night of passion they’d just shared, he reached out and pulled her into a fierce embrace. “With or without your permission,” he growled, tugging on her hair so she could see he was serious, “and as long as there’s breath in me, your father will not bully you into a marriage ye don’t want.”

  The sudden sparkle that came into her eyes completely ruined her threatening glower. “There you go again, sounding like the king of me,” she drawled, her fingers lazily running through his chest hair. “Really, Alec, you need to have a word with your royal mailman about misplacing my—”

  He kissed her; partly to shut her up but mostly because her sassiness turned him on. The little minx didn’t even try to protest, her answering kiss immediate and hot and making every damn one of his blood cells rush straight to his groin at the memory of their passion-filled night. And when her hand slid down his stomach again, this time he didn’t stop her.

  Jane had fallen into step behind Alec to judge for herself how well he was feeling, only to decide within the first ten minutes that the stubborn man was struggling despite having left his heavy pack at the grotto and cutting himself a walking stick to help with the rougher parts of the climb up to the trail. But because the satellite phone was at the lean-to, he was determined to reach camp before the helicopter left Nova Mare with the next two bridges, wanting to call Duncan and postpone the delivery for a few days.