by Sandra Field
“Do we have to fight, Shaine? We were friends once. Good friends.”
“Yes. And then we made love and wrecked a friendship that meant all the world to me.”
“You’d promised all along—way before we made love—that you’d leave the cove with me. But when push came to shove, you wouldn’t do it.”
“I changed my mind,” she retorted. “Or is that just a male prerogative?”
“You didn’t love me enough—that’s what you said.”
“And that’s what I meant.”
Even now, her words had the power to hurt. “You lied to—what’s that noise?”
The alders behind Shaine had started shaking, as though a very large animal was moving through them. Overpowering the gentle splash of waves on the sand, Jake heard the crack of branches, and the thick rustle of dried ferns. Shaine looked back over her shoulder. Into the clearing stepped a magnificent bull moose with a full rack of antlers, his long dewlap dangling below his chin, his Roman nose testing the air. With his front leg, he pawed the ground. Clumps of dirt arched backward, hitting the ground with dull thuds.
This was September. Rutting season. Jake said tersely, “Back up, Shaine. Toward me.”
She did exactly as he’d asked. Under her breath she muttered, “Shouldn’t we be climbing a tree?”
“Birch trees are beautiful, but they wouldn’t hold your weight, let alone mine. Keep moving slowly, no sudden moves, that’s it.”
He, too, was backing away. While a moose, bull or cow, looked like one of creation’s jokes, as though it had been made up of leftover parts from several other animals, Jake also knew that a male in rut was nothing to laugh about. As though proving his point, the moose struck his huge antlers against the trunk of the nearest birch, uttering guttural grunts as he did so. The tree shuddered from the force of the blow.
“We’ll be out of sight in a few moments,” Jake whispered. “Then we’ll run as fast as we can for the fence.”
“Not sure I can run,” she muttered. “My knees are as wobbly as that birch tree.”
The bull took three steps toward them, shaking its rack from side to side. Then, as Jake and Shaine kept backing up, the shower of golden leaves hid it from view. “Okay,” Jake said, “run!”
She took off like a bullet out of a gun, with him hard on her heels. Ears straining, he heard the bull grunt again. Then, to his dismay, he heard hooves strike the ground at a fast trot, thudding along the path behind him. “Faster!” he yelled. “We’ll have to jump the fence, we’ll be safe inside.”
When Shaine reached the painted wooden fence around the changing rooms, Jake lifted her bodily from behind and heaved her over the top. Risking a glance over his shoulder, he saw the moose had speeded to a canter; it was scarcely twenty feet from him. With an agility he hadn’t known he possessed, he leaped for the top of the fence, felt something scrape his back and tumbled over to the other side. His shoulder hit the grass hard, driving the air from his lungs. As the bull butted the fence with bruising strength, the wood groaned like a creature in pain.
From behind the alders, where the swamp lay, came the long-drawn-out bellow of a female moose in heat.
Jake pushed himself partway up, his heart racketing in his chest. Through the narrow slats in the fence he saw the moose raise his head, his softly furred ears angled toward the swamp, breath puffing from his nostrils. As calmly as if he’d never pounded after them along the trail, the animal trotted away, his great hump dark against the yellow leaves and silver branches of the birches. Within moments he was out of sight. Jake leaned back against the fence and began to laugh.
“That wasn’t funny!” Shaine protested. “He could have killed us.”
“The look on your face when you saw him,” Jake gasped, “it was priceless.”
A reluctant smile tugged at her lips. “What about the look on your face when you came over the fence?”
“I could hear the damn thing breathing down my neck—it was no time for dignity.”
She giggled. “Have you ever considered the Olympics? That was a gold medal jump.”
“Hey, what about the 25-meter dash—we’re naturals.”
By now she was laughing as helplessly as he. “Where’s a stopwatch when you need it? We broke a world record and there was no one here to time it.”
“I’m just as glad we didn’t have an audience. I’d never live that one down in the boardroom.”
Her face changed. “Jake, he tore your shirt. Oh Jake, there’s blood!”
“Don’t fuss,” Jake said, his mouth still split in a big grin, “it’s only a graze. We’re lucky we didn’t get our behinds full of splinters.”
But Shaine was on her knees beside him, the concern in her face making his heart turn over in his chest. “You’d better see a doctor—have you had a tetanus shot lately? It needs washing and a good dollop of antiseptic.”
Yesterday, when he’d turned up in her shop, she’d acted as though a small wound would be the very least she’d wish on him. But now her fingers were cool on his flesh, making ripples of sensation spread the width of his shoulders and down his torso. He shifted, took her in his arms, and kissed her.
Because she was off balance on the ground, she clung to him, a move that brought her breasts in their thin T-shirt against his rib cage. He’d never forgotten her breasts, either, he thought dimly, so firm and delectable, so sweetly pointed. Teasing her lips apart, he drove into her with his tongue, heard her moan deep in her throat, and pushed her back into the grass. She tasted of salt and herbal soap.
To his utter amazement he realized she was gripping him fiercely by the shoulders, her mouth open and hungry, her tongue twined with his. Desire surged through his veins. He lowered his hips to hers, his arousal instant and imperative; and felt her move beneath him with an ardor that made the blood sing through his limbs. He rolled over, pulling her with him, wrapping his thighs around her long bare legs. His hands roamed her body, finding the rippled rib cage, the sweet curve of one hip, then searching out the rise of her breast, its tip hard as a pebble.
She gasped his name, digging her fingers into his scalp to draw his head lower. His tongue laved the line of her throat, then found the pulse thrumming in the little hollow at its base. Had he needed any proof that she was as desperate for him as he for her, he had it there. But did he need proof, when she was kissing his forehead, his cheekbones, his lips like a woman who’d never kissed a man before?
Length to length and heat to heat. This was why he’d come back.
Jake tugged at her brief T-shirt, slid one hand below it, and pulled her bra down so he could caress her nipple with his fingers. Shuddering in his arms, Shaine lifted her hips to press them into his, rubbing against him in a way calculated to drive him insane. “Shaine,” he muttered, his whole body suffused with an agony of longing. “Oh God, Shaine, I’ve never forgotten anything about you.”
“Neither have—” Shaine stopped abruptly, in midsentence; her own words sounded like those of a stranger. A woman she didn’t know. With all her strength she pushed Jake away and sat up. “What am I doing?” she cried. Her hands shaking, she tried to thrust her shirt back into the waistband of her shorts.
Jake also sat up, taking her by the shoulders. “You were doing what you wanted to do,” he said forcefully. “Don’t you remember what it was like on the island? We fell on each other, it was as though we were made for each other—you can’t have forgotten that.”
She twisted away from him and scrambled to her feet. As Jake got up, too, she said furiously, “I don’t know who I’m angrier with, you or me. Me, I guess. All you had to do was look at me and I fell flat on my back. Kissing you like I was eighteen again. Moaning and writhing like someone demented. I’d have made love with you on the grass in a public park!”
Jake held his tongue. He’d always had a healthy respect for Shaine’s temper, learning a long time ago that trying to stem it was a lost cause. Without a pause for breath she seethed, “I’m no better
than that cow moose, caterwauling in the swamp. Come and get me, I’m yours. Dammit, Jake Reilly, why did you have to come back? I was doing just fine without you. So what if I’ve been living like a nun for years, there’s nothing wrong with celibacy because men are jerks—and in that particular category you take the gold medal. No contest. Anyway, you said you were leaving last night. More of your lies are exactly what I don’t need and why don’t you say something?”
“I was waiting until you shut up,” Jake said, trying very hard to keep his gaze on her face rather than her heaving breasts.
Her eyes narrowed. “The last thing I need is you back in my life. I don’t want to go to bed with anyone and you top the list.”
Reprehensibly, Jake discovered he was enjoying himself. “That’s not the message I was getting. And do you know what, Shaine? I haven’t laughed like that in years.”
“Neither have I and so what?”
He gave her a lazy grin. “You’re pretty damn cute when you lose your temper.”
“Save your compliments for someone who cares.”
“You’re also the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few.”
“I bet you have. And I bet they fall all over you. Just like me.”
“No,” he said. “Not like you. You’re unique. You always were.”
“Everyone’s unique,” she retorted. “Or have you been too busy making money to figure that out yet?”
“Then you’re more unique than the rest,” he drawled. “And there’s nothing wrong with making money.”
“Providing you don’t sell your soul in the process.”
His jaw tightened. “Are you accusing me of that?”
“What do you think?”
Suddenly, it was no longer a game. “That you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I beg to differ.” She lifted her chin, the light glinting in the green depths of her eyes, and with fierce intensity said, “Go back where you belong. Today. Now. And leave me alone. I’ve built a good life here and I value it…I don’t want you or anyone else wrecking it because every now and then my hormones get out of hand.”
“How many years of celibacy are we talking?” he asked with very real curiosity. The answer mattered to him. It shouldn’t, but it did.
“That’s my business.”
“So all men are jerks?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Then you couldn’t have done a very good job bringing up your brothers.”
“They’re the exceptions that prove the rule.” She bit her lip, her temper dying. “Don’t amuse yourself at my expense, that’s what I’m saying. You never used to be cruel, Jake…don’t start now. Not with me.”
The vulnerable curve of her mouth smote him to the heart. She was right to chastise him, Jake thought. He had no idea how she’d spent the last thirteen years, and no right to ask. The reason being that he’d turned his back on the cove and on her and hadn’t once allowed himself to look back. His choice. To which there were consequences.
It had taken a beautiful red-haired woman standing in the early morning sunlight to make him feel the loss of those years. The hollow they’d left in his heart and his soul.
She said flatly, glancing at her watch, “I’ve got to go, I’m opening the shop this morning. Take care of yourself, won’t you? You did the right thing to leave here—the cove was never big enough for you.”
Then she turned on her heel, walked steadily toward the gate, opened it in a squeal of hinges, closed it behind her and started to jog away from him.
Like a man who’d been hit on the head—or chased by a bull moose—Jake stood still. His limbs felt heavy, too heavy to move. His heart, he thought, felt heavier still.
Why had he never gotten in touch with Shaine even once in the thirteen years since he’d last left the cove?
Hurt, he thought. The pain of realizing that the young woman to whom he’d given his heart had spurned him; that she didn’t love him enough to trust in a future with him. Humiliation, because he’d been afraid he hadn’t measured up sexually. Pride, following fast on the heels of humiliation. Pride or sheer cussedness. The label didn’t matter. And then, of course, work. He’d submerged himself in his own ambitions, in his drive to separate himself from the place where he’d grown up and to make his mark on the world. A world of major players, where every move counted, and every decision was watched.
He’d succeeded. Through a combination of mathematical smarts, persistence and fourteen-hour days, he’d smashed through the barriers that should have kept a man from Cranberry Cove out of the big leagues. He’d made it.
But, Jake wondered, at what cost? One thing was obvious. He’d lost any pretensions to the long-ago friendship he’d shared with Shaine as she grew from adolescence into young womanhood. So what was left? Lust?
Even the thoughts of her hands on him, her tongue laced with his, were enough to stir his body to life again. He swore under his breath. She’d been infuriated by her body’s betrayal. And why wouldn’t it betray her if she’d been living like a nun?
Shaine, according to her, had been celibate for years. So had her reaction at the first sight of him been a fear of abandoning that celibacy?
Jake had a very clear understanding that women found him attractive; it had been proven often enough. But he wasn’t vain enough to think that one look at him had driven Shaine mad with passion and then caused her to faint dead away. No, that theory wouldn’t wash.
He wandered back to his car, another uncomfortable insight nudging his consciousness. He could be a stiff-necked SOB when he wanted to be, a trait that had stood him in good stead during those times when he’d thought he couldn’t possibly force his way into the corridors of power. Had there been, behind his ferocious ambitions, an element of I’ll show her what I can do…as if Shaine cared how much money he made.
Although, he thought wryly, he’d be willing to bet she’d love his silver Ferrari.
She’d made a life without him and didn’t want him upsetting it. That was the basic message.
Was he going to respect it? Drive away from the motel in the opposite direction to Cranberry Cove, that part of his life from now on a closed book?
Not once, in the thirteen years since he’d seen her, had he desired a woman as he desired Shaine. That much he’d learned in the last two days. He’d had affairs, of course he had. Enjoyed them while they lasted, ended them with no regrets and no nagging sense that he should commit himself, or—heaven forbid—get married.
Shaine was different. She always had been.
Did he want to marry Shaine? Surely not!
But maybe he needed her, he thought slowly. Her temper, her laughter and her passion…
Like a man surfacing from a dream, Jake looked around. The birch leaves were still a shimmer of sunshine yellow, but Shaine was nowhere in sight. He drove back to the motel, showered and put a rough bandage on the scrape on his back. Then he had a late breakfast of bacon, eggs and hash browns, no doubt bad for him but very tasty. As he drained his third cup of bracingly hot coffee, he realized he’d come to a decision. Once again, he was going back to the cove. He had no idea what he was going to do when he got there. But he couldn’t just turn tail and run for home.
He’d run away all those years ago. Once was enough.
CHAPTER THREE
TWO hours later, Jake was parking his car outside the rink in Cranberry Cove. His campaign—a word that seemed to suit his state of mind—might as well start here as anywhere. Maybe revisiting the site of so many of his adolescent triumphs would help him plan a course of action. Short of walking into The Fin Whale Craft Shop and buying the stained-glass panel, he was distressingly short of anything else that could be called a plan.
It was Saturday. There was bound to be a practice session going on, if not a game.
The arena smelled of cold, trapped air, sweaty hockey gear and damp wooden floors, and took him back in time as though he was sixteen again, a gang
ly teenager who’d yet to fill out to fit his height. Two teams were doing drills, the coaches barking orders, their whistles shrilling; and that, too, filled him with nostalgia. Sticks slapped the ice. The steel blades of the players’ skates whined and rasped as they carved into the surface of the rink.
Peewee league, thought Jake. Ages eleven to twelve. With keen interest he watched the players, amused by their blunders, impressed by their expertise. Then his eyes sharpened. Surely that tall kid who’d just whipped the puck from his opponent in one smooth stroke was the same one he’d seen playing basketball at the school? The identical lightning-swift reactions, the unmistakable grace and pleasure in what he was doing. So he could skate, that kid. Skate extraordinarily well.
Tucked at one end of the bleachers, Jake followed all the well-known moves. When he got back to Manhattan, he was going to find an amateur league and start playing again, he vowed to himself. Even now, he could feel the old ache to tie on a pair of skates and join the fast-moving figures on the ice.
The boy was good. But he, Jake, could show him a trick or two.
He hadn’t yet had a good look at the boy’s face, because all the players were wearing plastic helmets and protective masks. Then the whistles blew once again, and the skaters trooped off the ice. On the bench they hauled on regulation sweaters, one team’s dark blue, the other’s white and black. Five players from each team took their positions on the ice, the heavily padded goalies doing stretches in front of the nets. Jake shifted along the bleachers so he was nearer to the center line. The boy he was interested in was playing offense, waiting for the face-off.
He played like a pro, weaving in and out of the other players, passing the puck to his teammates with demonic accuracy and firing shots on goal with a flare Jake could only admire. One thing stood out. He loved the game. Loved it as Jake had loved it.
Swamped with memories, Jake heard the whistle blow for a change-over of players. The boy skated away from Jake, and for the first time Jake took a moment to read the white letters on the back of his sweater. O’Sullivan, they said.
