by Unknown
His blue eyes probed her dark ones.
“No,” she whispered, as his head moved down.
“I think yes,” he said as his lips found hers.
Holy hell, he was kissing her. His mouth was slanting possessively across hers, slowly, too slowly, as if he were deliberately trying to drive her crazy. He was assaulting every inch of her mouth desperately, as if he were a thirsty man who’d found a pool of water in the desert. He leaned back against the sofa. She went with him, melting against him, the heat of his touch dissolving her very bones.
There was a moaning sound. It might have been Fortune, or it could have been Hunter. There was no defining the sound, no holding back, no resistance to the raging fire between them. The parlor car seemed suddenly to sing, and their bodies took up the humming motion as though the rail car had started to move on its tracks. Fortune was moving. Hunter was moving beneath her. She could feel his burgeoning hardness throbbing against her bottom. Deeper and deeper the kiss went and the heat built, hands withdrew and forged into new areas until their skin was bare. They sizzled where they were touched.
Hunter twisted around and pressed Fortune against the seat of the couch, moving over her in a motion that stopped abruptly as he yelped and froze in place.
“Ohhhh, damn!”
Fortune blinked, suddenly aware of her surroundings, of Hunter, who was pressing her into the cushions beneath her body.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Damn! Just be still for a minute.” He rested his head against her cheek and took several shallow breaths. “Sorry, wild woman.” His voice was hoarse, not from the depths of passion but from pain.
“I know,” she teased, trying to gather her senses and cover her disappointment. “The spirit’s willing, it’s the body that’s saying no. I think that I probably should thank your body.”
“Somehow,” he said with a gasp, “I don’t think either of us would be honest if we did. And I never did believe in paying lip service to a lie.”
With his arms he forced himself up sufficiently so that he could grasp the back of the couch. From there he was able to stand. Now he was pressing both his hands against his back.
Fortune shivered. Her tank top was around her neck, her exposed breasts aroused and throbbing. But it was Hunter who was in real agony. Quickly, she pulled her shirt down and stood up. Ignoring the obvious evidence of Hunter’s desire, she moved behind him. “Get down flat on the floor, Hunter.”
“Sorry, wild woman, if I get down, I may not get up again, and as much as I’d like to oblige you, I don’t think I can handle it now.”
“Lie on your stomach, cowboy. I’m going to work out those spasms. It’s obvious that you haven’t made any sudden moves lately.”
Because he didn’t argue, she knew how badly he was hurting. He knelt and stretched forward, grimacing as he lay down. “So, I’m out of practice. Does it show?” he quipped.
“Not this morning, but I got a good look last night when you went to sleep in the tub, remember? You gave new meaning to the phrase ‘rise and shine.’ ”
She began to work her hands up and down his spine.
“Ah, yes. Well, there are ways of gaining respect and there are ways. A prune-shrunken body in a tub is not the best reference for a man, wild woman,” he managed to say, biting back a grimace.
“There was nothing shrunken about you a minute ago. As for prunes—hmm—I seem to remember I was eating a prune Danish when we got—uh—when you attempted to ravish me.”
“You mean when you threw yourself at my poor body?”
“I did not throw myself, I was propelled. All I was trying to do was—” run my fingers through your hair, she almost said. Instead she said, “find our place on the map.”
“I think that’s what I’ve been trying to do for a long time, my lady with the magic hands, ‘find my place on the map.’ ” Hunter let out a deep sigh and gave himself over to Fortune’s ministrations. This time he let go completely, swimming in the gentle sensation of her touch, letting go any thought of control or conflict.
There was a harmony between the slow pulsing of the blood in his veins and the easy, quiet sound of her breathing. Tension drained out of his pores in a rush of heat, replaced by a sense of belonging that was strong and complete. Two people, their auras enveloped one with the other.
Fortune Dagosta was healing his body with her touch.
“We’re on a sandy beach,” Fortune was saying softly. “Remove every thought from your mind. Listen. Feel. The ocean is lapping gently on the shore. The sun is warm on our bodies. We’re alone without a care in the world. Just you and me.”
There was a long silence. “Listen to the water, Hunter, you can hear its voice. You can feel its warm touch, starting with your feet. Like the light of the sun, it moves up your body, warming it. Do you feel it? The light has reached the back of your knees. Your thighs. Your bottom. Your back. It’s loosening, stretching. All the pain is being carried away by the water. The heat of the sun is bringing peace. The pain is gone.”
She leaned back on her heels and waited.
Slowly, Hunter turned over and stared at her.
“What are you, Fortune Dagosta?”
“I’m nobody special, just a person who helps people.”
Hunter was swimming in the emotion of the moment. For all his life he’d pushed people away, refused to allow anyone to get close. He hadn’t needed anybody and didn’t want that to be altered. Now, in the space of two days, everything had changed. He didn’t know how it had happened, and it scared the hell out of him.
Confusion warred with the peace Fortune had wrought with her hands. Yet he wasn’t ready to push away the peace, for the confusion was not born of anger but of something more powerful. Not just desire, but certainly desire was inborn in the feeling. Yet desire met compassion. Fear met … what emotion was he sorting out of this honesty? Love? No, Hunter Kincaid had spent his life avoiding love.
Fortune had given a little part of herself to him. But she gave little pieces of herself to anybody that needed it. If she were his, he’d stop that. If he ever fell in love, he’d want it all. He was selfish that way.
Anybody who shared his life had to close out everybody else. No runaways, no strays, no men with injuries to be nursed. He’d demand an equally selfish woman, a hard woman. And this five-foot dynamo who shopped at Goodwill might shoot sparks of fire at anybody who thwarted her, but she wasn’t hard enough to ride with him. Even if he wanted her to, even if he could visualize that firm body beneath his without closing his eyes. He pushed away that thought. He had to break the spell.
“Apparently, I can’t do much to stop you, wild woman,” he said, and feigned a suggestive smile, “so if you’d like to have your way with me before the maids arrive, I think you’d better hurry. I’ve already checked us out.”
Fortune’s eyes widened.
The moment was spoiled. Their connection dissolved. She wanted to hit him. Every time his tenderness slipped out, he jerked it back with a vengeance and said something to drive her away. Another minute and she’d have forgotten about protection and gathered up the cowboy’s little secret hurts and loved them away.
But he’d spoiled it, turned it into some little quickie on the bedroom floor. She stood up, letting the disappointment she felt sweep over her. He simply stared at her in return, his eyes as wide and open as a summer sky. Then she understood. He wasn’t ready to be had—not like that. He was challenging her, closing her off in the only way he knew how, by reducing what he felt to pure sex.
Well, it wasn’t going to work, not anymore. She’d learned his secret. He was looking for his place, just as she’d been. He just didn’t know that he’d found it. She held out her hand. “Thanks, cowboy, but when I have my way with you, it’ll be when you’re as emotionally involved as I am—and prepared, which I’m not.”
Hunter took her hand and came slowly to his feet. The pain in his back was gone, but his legs were weak and there was an
ache in his middle that wasn’t sexual. The feeling wasn’t painful. On the contrary, it was oddly comforting.
Hunter busied himself refolding the maps. Fortune dressed, rescued her Danish from the back of the couch, and followed Hunter when he started out the door. At the parking area she snapped on her helmet and slid onto the back of the cycle. It was spotted with dried raindrops from a shower during the night, its fine coat soiled and worn, like her, like Hunter.
She touched the machine, feeling the warmth it had already absorbed from the morning sun. It didn’t look quite so menacing. In fact, she was beginning to enjoy riding it.
Hunter started to get on, stopped, and extended his closed hand. “Here, you may need these.” He opened his fist and revealed her lace panties, the ones she’d tucked beneath her shirt. They unfolded, draping over the edges of his big hand like the petals of a flower.
“I like the lace,” he said, and planted a quick kiss on her startled lips as he swung his leg over the machine and started the engine. “White seems to be a contradiction to the pointed hair and bare feet, wild woman.”
Fortune didn’t answer. He was wrong, but she didn’t know how to say it.
Hunter drove away from the Choo-Choo and found the freeway. He was sorry he’d said anything about the panties. He’d been sorrier that he’d found them. When he had walked into the bathroom to shower and had discovered them hanging so innocently on the tub, he’d been shocked. Their white lace seemed to be such a contrast to the fiery woman who wore them. He’d have expected red, or black, not bridal white.
It wasn’t until they were on the outskirts of town that he remembered what Fortune had said about being prepared. He made a note to take care of that problem at their next stop. Hunter considered himself laid-back and easygoing. Few things bothered him, but there were some things he didn’t take chances on. For he was past telling himself that he and Fortune weren’t going to make love. He knew they were. It was just a matter of when.
“This is the one bad thing about riding a motorcycle—rain.” Hunter rolled the bike off the apron on the freeway and sat beside Fortune on the slanting concrete abatement beneath the overhead highway.
“How long do you think it’ll last?” she asked, rubbing her arms against the chill.
They were within an hour of the Bear Trap outside Nashville when the heavens opened up. The shower cooled both the air and Fortune’s bare arms as they waited. Great drops of rain were hurtling down, plopping with such force, they bounced off the pavement and fell a second time.
“These spring showers don’t usually last long.”
“What would we do if we had two or three days of rain?”
“We’d either have to drive very slow and get very wet, or we’d lose. Here, put this on.” He stood with surprising ease and walked over to the cycle, where he pulled her blue shirt out of the saddlebags and draped it around her shoulders. “I don’t think I can stand here and look at you.”
She glanced down at her tank top and wished she’d replaced it with the T-shirt. She’d never thought much about what she wore. Her body was simply a part of her, and if looking at it brought somebody pleasure, so be it. But Hunter wasn’t just anybody, and the pleasure took hold and made her aware of herself as she’d never been before.
“We might as well eat while we’re stopped.” Hunter took the small red-and-white cooler, opened it, and set it between them.
She slid her arms into the shirt and nodded.
“Cola, milk, or fruit juice?”
“Is there a sandwich?”
“Ham and cheese or roast beef. Which?”
“I’ll take milk and roast beef.”
Hunter handed her the food and carton of milk. He opened his travel guide and studied the map as he ripped the paper from his sandwich. “Damn!”
“What’s wrong?”
“What day of the week is it?”
“Saturday, why?”
“Minnie Pearl’s hat. How are we going to get it?”
Fortune frowned at him. “I don’t know—we’ll ask her for it, offer to buy it, steal it if we have to. What’s wrong?”
“According to the guide, these other stars have some kind of gift shop or museum where they spend some time—except her. The only way we’re going to get to her is at the Grand Ole Opry.”
“So?”
“The Grand Ole Opry only takes place on Saturday night.”
“So—” Fortune cut herself off. It was Saturday. They’d planned to get the postman bear first, on the chance that he was delivering a message they’d need. “If we go to the Bear Trap first, we might not get back in time to make the Opry. If we go to the Opry first, we could miss an important clue.”
“And if this rain keeps up, we might not get to either one,” Hunter said glumly.
“And we only have one Saturday night.”
“Yeah, that makes everything a bit tight, doesn’t it? If everybody has the same clue. Wonder how many hats Minnie has?”
Fortune swallowed the last of her sandwich, dug around in the cooler for the crackers she’d swiped, and ate them. “Well, I guess that means we’ll just have to get wet,” she said, stowing her paper in the trash bag and brushing off her hands. “I’m ready when you are.”
“I know you’re willing, wild woman, but we’ll wait. I’ve already had one accident, I don’t want to take a chance on having another, not with you along.”
“Cowboy, if you were alone, would you go?”
“Probably, but I’m not alone.” He leaned back on the slanting concrete and put his hands behind his head, as if he were going to take a nap.
“Hunter Kincaid, you get up. I insist that we leave now! I refuse to lose this scavenger hunt.”
“Why don’t you get the camera and take my picture. Get the rain in the background. If we lose by a few hours, I want to show the officials that it was because of an act of God.”
“Do you think they’d accept that?”
“Nope, but it will give you something to do while we’re waiting.”
“I don’t want to take pictures. I don’t want to sit and wait. I want—”
“I want—I want—Come here, Fortune.”
Hunter’s eyes were closed. He wasn’t watching. He wasn’t arguing or paying any attention to her tirade.
“Sit down and talk to me. Tell me about your father.”
“My father?” she asked suspiciously. “Why should I do that?”
“Why do you hate him so?”
“I don’t. Or I didn’t. He wasn’t worth that much energy. I hated what he did to my mother.”
“What did he do?”
“He worked her to death. At least that’s what I thought. But I was a little girl, and a child’s picture of things is sometimes distorted. She died when I was six, remember. After that he sent me to live with his mother.”
“And your father? Where’d he live?”
“I don’t know. He wandered in and out, until my grandmother died. Then he came back to claim what she’d saved.”
“How old were you then?”
“I was sixteen.”
Hunter opened his eyes and held out his hand. “I left home when I was sixteen too.”
Fortune allowed him to pull her down beside him. “Not for the same reason, I’ll bet.”
For Hunter, Fortune’s voice said it all.
“Did he—do something to you?”
“No—no, but he would have, sooner or later.” Her answer was strained, and this time it was Hunter who shared Fortune’s pain.
“You’re right. I didn’t leave for the same reason,” he said, pulling her into the curve of his arm, gathering her to him, comforting her. “But there are other ways to be hurt. There’s greed, fear, and there’s the secret, terrible kind of love that damages people in the name of doing good.”
“Does this have anything to do with a little boy smelling his dad’s cigar smoke on the back porch, cowboy?”
“Yes, the memory and the man. Someti
mes I have a hard time remembering what my father looked like. He stole that from me.”
Hunter wasn’t talking about his father anymore, but the man who’d adopted him.
“Why did your mother marry him, Hunter?”
“She thought that it was best for me, to give me a home and a father. At least that’s what I always believed.”
“And now are you having second thoughts?”
“I don’t know. The man’s a mystery. He never gives up. He just keeps on trying to make me a part of his world.”
“Could it be that he cares about you, cowboy?”
“I can’t imagine why. I don’t understand why my mother is his champion. His children too. Julie and Penny seem to really respect the man. And my brother, Robert, does also, when he isn’t going through the normal sixteen-year-old rebellion.”
“The same kind of rebellion you went through?”
Fortune liked the feel of being close to Hunter. She liked the manly smell of him, mixed with the heat of the earth and the cool breeze that accompanied the spring rain. There were cars whizzing past not fifteen feet away, and yet they seemed hidden as the two of them lay back against the concrete.
“Maybe, but I ran away from home. Robert’s still there. I guess I have to be honest and admit that says something about Robert.”
“Or maybe about Hale?” Fortune asked softly.
“I don’t know. I’ve spent some time thinking about that recently. I don’t understand. After all these years a normal man would have given up. Hale still thinks I’m going to take my place in Kincaid Industries.”
“You call him by his first name?”
“In my kinder moods.”
“Yet something tells me that you’re not entirely convinced he’s the demon you believe.”
“It’s just that he keeps on trying to play the game. The man came to the hospital when I was hurt. He didn’t tell me, but the nurses said he didn’t leave until I came out of surgery and he was sure I’d be all right.”
“Doesn’t that tell you something?”
Hunter’s fingertips were digging into Fortune’s arm. She didn’t have to be told that he was revealing more than he’d meant to.
