Taken by Storm

by Heather MacAllister

  Zoey was already chugging the coffee. As Cam took a sip, he became aware of people staring at them. The place was actually getting crowded with business travelers arriving to catch the first flights of the day.

  He and Zoey must have been arguing pretty loud. Now that they weren’t yelling at each other, he could hear Casper whining. “Hey, buddy, it’s okay.” Cam held up the cup in thanks to the retreating barista and pressed on Zoey’s shoulder until she sat down with him.

  “Oh, that’s just perfect.” She drank deeply and Cam wondered how she didn’t burn her tongue.

  He generally took his coffee black, but the barista was right; the sweet, milky mixture was exactly what they both needed.

  “I’m sorry,” Zoey said when she came up for air. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but what if something happens on the way to Denver? I would feel a lot better knowing you’d made it to Seattle in time to get a whole night’s sleep before your meeting.”

  “I’d feel too guilty about abandoning you to sleep.”

  “Cam. I’m warning you, it’s a mistake to stick with me.”

  “I disagree.”

  She shook her head and drained her coffee. Cam pried off the top of their cups and poured half his coffee into hers.

  “Thanks.”

  As she drank that, Casper barked.

  “Do you want coffee, too?” Cam asked him.

  In response, Casper whined.

  “He probably wants some water.” Tossing her cup into the trash canister, Zoey got up, got water from her backpack and poured a tiny amount into the bowl attached to the kennel.

  Casper sniffed at it and peered at her inquiringly. “It’s not time for food,” Zoey said.

  Casper barked.

  “Fine. Whatever.” Kneeling, she dispensed a few bits into the other bowl.

  “Why are you such a pushover for him and not for me?” Cam asked.

  Zoey leaned her forehead against the crate and sighed. When she didn’t answer, Cam realized that in spite of the coffee, she was falling asleep right there.

  “Come on, Zoey.” He shook her shoulder. “Let’s go to Denver.”

  “Cam,” she protested as he hauled her to her feet.

  “You’ll sleep in the car and when you wake up, you’ll be in another city. Trust me—it’s magical.”

  She gave him a tired smile as he pushed the luggage cart toward the ground transportation exit. “Why are you doing this?”

  She wasn’t following him and had that stubborn tilt to her chin that he’d only recently noticed. Abandoning the cart, he took her in his arms, leaned her back and kissed her. Hard. Long. And thoroughly. An old-fashioned, staking-a-claim movie kiss. Then he set her upright. “That’s why.”

  * * *

  WHEN ZOEY WOKE UP, the car wasn’t moving. A vast expanse of white stretched outside the window, broken up occasionally by chain stores and fast-food places. Not so magical. “Where are we?”

  It took a moment for the silence to register and for Zoey to realize that she was alone in the car. She wiped the condensation from the glass and was briefly disoriented because the car was in the same fast-food chain parking lot where Casper had lost his chew toy yesterday.

  Either she was dreaming, or Cam was a creature of habit. Mental note: creature of habit.

  She couldn’t see him or Casper. Feeling groggy, she opened the car door and was blasted by frigid air.

  Wow. Forcing herself to stand and slam the door shut, she rubbed at her arms and picked her way through gray slushy puddles across the parking lot to the restaurant entrance.

  As she reached for the door, Cam and Casper came around the side. Cam was running, or trying to, and Casper was sticking to his show-dog gait. Zoey smiled as she watched them approach.

  Cam answered her smile and slowed. “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself.” She rubbed her arms, wishing she’d put on her coat. “Where are we?”

  “Nebraska. Kearney, to be exact.”

  “Denver’s not in Nebraska.”

  “Not much else is, either.” Cam gestured to the door. “If you’re hungry or anything, take advantage now. I’m trying to wear out Casper. He’s been restless.”

  Casper barked.

  Zoey reached down to pat his head, but he growled at her. Truly surprised, she jerked her hand away and tried to remember what command she should use, but settled for, “Casper! That’s a major no-no,” said in a very firm voice, or as firm as she could speak while shivering. “We’ll discuss this later,” she informed him and slipped inside the restaurant but not before she caught Cam trying not to laugh.

  Yeah, well, he wasn’t doing a whole lot better, she noticed as she stood in line to order. Sometimes Casper would run, but he’d stop often to sniff at something.

  This was appalling behavior on the dog’s part. Both Phyllis from the kennel and Kate had impressed on Zoey that she was the alpha and she must not lose her status. It seemed the Afghan breed could be real stinkers when they wanted to be. Casper growling at her was totally unacceptable, although Zoey was afraid she’d lost her alpha status as soon as Cam had rubbed his tummy. The thing was, she completely understood because Cam sure had alpha status with her.

  Zoey ate part of her hamburger and watched Cam with the dog. Casper’s attitude was getting worse. Cam tried to get something away from him without success. Zoey didn’t have to be a dog owner to realize that this behavior had to stop. She shoved the rest of her hamburger into the bag and pushed open the door.

  Cam saw her coming. “Sorry.” He held up a gray mass before tossing it toward the Dumpster near where they’d parked. “I think he ate a chicken nugget and part of the box.”

  “Unauthorized food? Casper, you know better.”

  Casper stared down his nose at her.

  “We’re putting him in his crate,” she said to Cam. “We can’t let him get away with this behavior.”

  “He’s definitely been different today. He’s already eaten another chew toy and I had to pull over once and give him food because I couldn’t stand the licking sounds. Or the whining.”

  Zoey blinked. “I slept through all that?”

  Cam nodded.

  “Did I snore?”

  He shook his head.

  “Liar.”

  He shook his head again. “Drooled a little.”

  “Eww.” She grimaced as she yanked open the car door and tossed in her food sack before shutting the door again.

  “Kidding,” Cam said.

  “No, you aren’t.”

  He laughed and she wasn’t sure if she’d been right or not. Stomping around to the rear of the SUV so her toes would regain some feeling, she decided she didn’t want to know. “I’m getting the bitter-apple spray. His paws were looking raw, so I put some of the lemon-olive oil balm on them earlier and he must have liked the taste. Hey, don’t let him do that!” Casper was trying to pull Cam back toward the Dumpster. “Tell him to heel.”

  “Casper, heel!” Cam bellowed. Casper resentfully glared at him before turning around and sitting on Cam’s foot.

  Zoey was pretty sure that wasn’t the definition of “heel.”

  She unzipped her suitcase and took out the spray. “It’ll probably take both of us to wrestle him into his crate. You take the front end and I’ll take the back end.”

  She’d hoped Casper would respond to Cam better, but he didn’t. She saw nothing resembling a potential Grand Champion in the bucking, yelping, wiggling animal. At one point, as they tried to get the squirming dog into the crate, Cam asked, “Why are we doing this again?”

  “To demonstrate who’s alpha.”

  “Yeah,” Cam said. “I suspect he’s figured out who’s alpha.”

  That’s what she was afraid of. Zoey used her s
houlder to push a stiff-legged Casper into the crate. “He’s a show dog. He shouldn’t be acting like this.”

  Cam latched the door. “You must not be saying the magic words.”

  Casper peered through the screen at them, an expression of profound betrayal on his long-nosed doggy face.

  “I don’t think ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ would have worked,” Zoey said as she hurried to the car and grabbed her jacket from the backseat.

  A whump sounded as Cam closed the rear door and got in the driver’s side. “A little late for that, isn’t it?”

  Zoey had draped the coat over her like a blanket. She shivered. “I know it’s my turn to drive, but I’m too frozen!”

  “Not a problem. You weren’t supposed to wake up until Denver. Go back to sleep.” He had to raise his voice as he said the last part because Casper was still whining about being in the crate.

  Twenty miles later, Zoey was still awake and Casper was still whining—not as loudly, but much more pitifully.

  Cam hadn’t whined at all, and he was entitled. Any of her J boyfriends would have bailed long ago. What had she found attractive about them? Why had she been drawn to that type and not Cam’s type? Was he so different on the outside?

  Zoey studied him. He was a good-looking guy—better than good-looking, but in a more clean-cut way. Was that it? She subconsciously rejected the clean-cut guys because... She remembered their conversation about Cam being too saintly. She’d been kidding. Sorta. But had she believed the clean-cut types who had it together like her brother-in-law were too good for her?

  Had she deliberately sought out losers who needed her help to avoid giving her all to Skin Garden? No, no, no. She wouldn’t sabotage herself like that, would she? That was just messed up.

  Or was she one of those girls who expected good guys to be boring and bad guys to be exciting? Cam hadn’t been boring, certainly not last night. He hadn’t looked as clean-cut that night in the airport, either. And that night he’d been... A little sound escaped her.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I kinda miss the scruffy beard. I realize it’s not your style, and so many guys wear it now, it’s lost its edge. But it suited you. Just saying. In case you ever...you know.”

  “In case I ever what?”

  She should have stopped after telling him it had suited him. “Change your...style.” Shut up, Zoey.

  “Hmm.” After a silence, he said, “Do you enjoy kissing guys with a couple of days’ growth of beard?”

  “Not really. I end up with these red... Oh.”

  He grinned, and that grin didn’t need a scruffy beard to be appealing.

  All right then. A warmth that had nothing to do with the car’s heater spread through her. Cam had accumulated a whole lot of good-guy points and that grin told Zoey it was only a matter of time before he’d want to cash them in. She wondered when. And how.

  She had a few ideas. Zoey threw off the coat because those ideas made her plenty warm. She may have even broken a sweat. All she could think about was when and how and that if the driving conditions were better, the when might be now and the how would involve her unbuckling her seat belt and his jeans.

  Why not now? Ahead of them, there were no cars. There was nothing but a long expanse of tire-tracked snowy highway cutting through farmland. She turned around to check behind them—no one. Casper had settled down.

  Cam didn’t have to drive as fast as they were going now. He could drop his speed by twenty, thirty miles an hour. A sedate speed. No one would notice any unsedate activity going on inside their car.

  Zoey squirmed in her seat.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Oooh, I’m a little...stiff.” She massaged her neck and rolled her shoulders. “Too long in one position.” She shifted until she faced him. “The scenery never changes, does it? This must be a boring drive for you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It could be more than okay.” She paused and lowered her voice. “A lot more than okay.”

  “Are you talking about car games?” he asked carefully.

  “Yes.” Zoey bunched her coat over the console between the seats. “Grown-up car games.”

  Cam glanced at the coat and then up at her. Their eyes held for a beat before he jerked his attention back to the road. “Does this game have any rules?”

  “You have to keep your hands on the wheel.”

  Cam stilled. Zoey reached across the console and ran her fingers lightly over his thigh.

  His knuckles went white. “Zoey.”

  And that’s all he said. She couldn’t tell from the way he said her name whether he meant, “Go for it” or “Are you crazy?” or “I’m stunned speechless by my good fortune” or “I’m not that kind of guy.” Except she was pretty sure all guys were “that kind of guy.”

  Maybe he hadn’t thought she was “that kind of girl.” But, again, what guy wouldn’t like “that kind of girl”?

  “Cam?”

  Without taking his eyes from the road, he lifted her palm to his face and kissed it.

  Good answer.

  Zoey trailed her fingers down his chest to his waistband and kept going. He flinched and the car jumped.

  “I’m going to slow down,” he said and eased up on the accelerator. “But you don’t have to.”

  Smiling, Zoey tap danced her fingers over the bulge in his jeans. As she unsnapped the waistband, she said, “I spy with my little eye...something not so little.”

  With an unintelligible sound, Cam shifted to give her easier access. Zoey worked the zipper down and reached inside. At her touch, Cam’s breath hissed between his teeth. Zoey felt pure feminine satisfaction as she stroked the length of him and listened to his breathing come faster.

  She unbuckled her seat belt. “I’m now officially a lawbreaker,” she murmured as it recoiled.

  Scooting to the edge of the bucket seat, she reached across with her other arm to peel away layers of jeans, tucked-in shirt and undershorts while maintaining a steady, rhythmic stroking.

  Not so easy. He was hard and smooth and so far away. Zoey was already uncomfortable from leaning forward with her arms extended, not that she should notice. But she did. Unbuckling her seat belt hadn’t helped. She hadn’t realized the logistics would present such a problem. The gear shift was right in the middle and the generous distance between the two bucket seats wasn’t making things any easier. She felt herself slipping on the leather and gripped him harder. Damn SUV. “It’s so big!”

  “Thank you,” he said in a hoarse voice.

  “Well, I meant the car...” Shut up, Zoey. “But you’re pretty impressive yourself.” Shut up, Zoey. She leaned forward, squeezed past the gear shift, which was wedged against her ribs, and lowered her head. Her mouth landed on his thigh, regrettably short of her goal. She inched forward, but kept slipping back because of the leather seats.

  “Ah—”

  In horror, Zoey realized she’d been gripping him to anchor herself. She jerked her hands away. “I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s...okay,” he said, sounding not okay.

  She wiggled and braced herself. “I just can’t...seem...to get there.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Cam muttered.

  With renewed determination, Zoey heaved herself onto the console between the seats. And hit her head on the car roof. “Ow.”

  “Zoey...”

  “I got this.” She stuffed her coat against the door so she wouldn’t slide back as far.

  “I’m not sure I want you to have it,” Cam said.

  And, to be blunt, there wasn’t that much to have anymore. “I can’t believe this.” Mortified, Zoey sat up in her seat. “I’m so sorry.” What a mistake. Could there be a more awkward, humiliating disaster of a seduction?
>
  Cam drew a deep breath. And then another. “It was a great idea. It was a fantastic idea...but the time had not yet come.”

  A beat went by. “I do not believe you just said that.”

  “I’ve been hanging around my cousin too much.”

  “Is this where I ask you how it’s hanging?”

  Cam made a garbled sound. It might have been laughter. It might have been a sob. It might have been both. “Rain check?”

  “Absolutely. I’d say anytime, anyplace, but...” She trailed off as a fresh wave of embarrassment washed over her.

  Once again, she’d tried to take advantage of an opportunity and in spite of her best intentions, it had turned out to be just another mistake. When would she learn that when she got an idea, she should do exactly the opposite?

  “Let’s go for another time in another place,” Cam said, adjusting his jeans.

  Zoey leaned her head against the seat and closed her eyes. “I am so embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be. You know why?”

  She shook her head.

  “Because you just gave me the world’s best rain check.”

  9

  ZOEY SMILED WEAKLY. He’d probably never cash that rain check in. “Why am I a failure at everything?”

  “Am I going to have to give you the Babe Ruth speech?”

  Zoey opened her eyes. “What’s that?”

  “Babe Ruth is famous for hitting seven hundred and fourteen home runs,” Cam informed her. “It was a record for more than fifty years. Do you know how many times he struck out?”

  She shook her head.

  “One thousand three hundred and thirty. And that was also a record at the time. But only motivational speakers remember that statistic.”

  “I’ve got the strikeouts. I just don’t have any home runs,” Zoey mumbled.

  “But what I admire about you is that you keep stepping up to the plate.”