Take My Breath Away

by Christie Ridgway

  When she thumbed off the phone, Poppy stared into space, her teeth worrying her bottom lip.

  Ryan allowed her three seconds of silence before he couldn’t take it anymore. “Are you all right?”

  She glanced at him, glanced away. “He never wanted anything to do with Mason...or me, once I told him about the pregnancy.” The fingers wrapped around her phone squeezed so tight her knuckles went white. “I don’t know what he’s after now, but I don’t imagine it can be anything good.”

  Shit. This was his fault. His notoriety brushing up against her again. Tarnishing her sweet shine.

  “He’s not going to get to you.” Ryan drew her to the table, sat her down. “Nobody’s going to bother you.”

  She appeared to be in deep thought, her gaze fixed ahead, but unseeing. “Shay said Denny left voice mails for Mackenzie and Brett. The paparazzi have also been by their businesses asking questions.”

  “Shit,” Ryan said. “That’s not good.”

  “So I’ll keep clear of them and my Walker cousins, too,” she mused, “in case the last name triggers unwanted interest.”

  “That’s probably a smart idea,” Linus said, placing her coffee in front of her.

  She gave him a distracted half smile in thanks. “Maybe Mason, Grimm and I can stay with my friend Lynnette—no, she’s allergic to dogs.” Her hands circled the mug. “Audra and Clint would take us in, but I hate to ask when her baby is due any day.”

  Ryan didn’t like the way this was going. “I’m worried about word of where you’re staying getting out even if you steer clear of the Walkers,” he said. “Weren’t you describing just last night the active mountain grapevine?”

  Poppy shrugged, then her eyes went suddenly wide. “You don’t think Denny will come up here, to the mountain, do you?”

  Christ, how would Ryan know? But the idea of her ex getting in her face didn’t sit well with him at all. He shifted in his chair. “I can’t—”

  “Naomi,” Poppy said, snapping her fingers. “She shares a house with her brother, Tim, who is almost as big as you and would intimidate just about anybody. Plus, he loves my baking.”

  “That’s not going to work,” Ryan heard himself say, suddenly certain about this one thing. He couldn’t let her go to some “Tim” who loved her baking when it was Ryan who owed her his protection. When it was Ryan, after all, who had gotten her into this mess in the first place. And with that, the separate-ways plan dissolved as a new one took shape.

  “You’ll stay—we’ll all stay—right where we are until this commotion dies down,” he told Poppy. “Here at the lake house you’re out of reach of any further publicity and your ex.”

  “But Ryan—”

  “It’s best and safest,” he said firmly, disallowing any further objections.

  Her gaze roamed his face, her gray eyes once again those huge pools of ghostly mist. “There’s Mason...”

  “He’ll be safe here, too,” Ryan said, though the promise felt like a knife to his belly. “We’re all going to be okay.” It was the first time in four years that he’d managed to say such a thing...and also wish he could believe it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  POPPY COULDN’T IGNORE the fact that her true love had a crush on someone else. It only made more awkward a situation already uncomfortable. She’d agreed to stay—until she came up with a better solution—under the roof of the man who was supposed to have been her one-and-done. And though Ryan didn’t make a big deal about it, she could tell he wasn’t at ease around her son.

  Which didn’t stop Mason’s growing case of hero-worship.

  Her little boy had stared at the man over breakfast, forking up eggs when he did, biting into toast in tandem. Ryan was halfway through his meal before noticing and then he’d abruptly left the table. Mason had made to follow, but Poppy put her foot down, and then was forced to again, when she caught him loitering outside Ryan’s office while the man worked at his desk. His back had been turned and he’d not acknowledged her or her son, but as she led off the little boy, she’d heard the door snick shut, an unspoken stay away.

  Unfortunately, she realized at noon as she set out sandwich makings on the counter, Mason hadn’t received the same message. He’d disappeared on her again, and she was pretty certain where she’d find him.

  She retraced her steps to the office. Sure enough, there was Mason. On this occasion, he was sitting on the floor outside the half-open door, bent over a pad of paper she recognized as coming from the kitchen. He was drawing, she saw, with a marker he must have discovered in a drawer.

  With a little sigh, she watched another couple of seconds. At least he was quiet, but she was going to have to talk to him about using things without asking first. Walkers might not be wealthy, but they didn’t take what didn’t belong to them. She rubbed at the small headache fluttering at her temple. Worry about her boy’s moral center was going to have to find a place on a plate already filled with concerns like where she was going to find the cash to fix the cabins, which of her family members she might possibly squeeze in with while doing so and what the heck Denny Howell could possibly want.

  As she took another step forward, a marker came rolling through the gap between the door and jamb. Mason slapped his palm down, stopping its course, and with a little smile curving his mouth, uncapped the new acquisition. Then he continued work on his paper.

  Bemused, Poppy watched another few minutes. In that time, two more pens made their way through the doorway. Without a word, Mason grabbed them up.

  Huh.

  “Mace?” she called softly as she approached.

  “What?” He didn’t look up.

  She was close enough to see what he’d been doing with the markers. In his five-year-old style, there was the lake, the trees, the house. “Have you forgotten to say thank you?”

  “Superspies must know how to keep silent,” he said in a whisper. “And they need an escape route. Hiding places, too. That’s why I’m making this map.”

  “Ah.” His espionage interest was fairly new, sparked by a playdate with a friend whose older brother had engaged the younger boys in an afternoon-long game of make-believe. She crouched to inspect his piece of paper. “It’s a very good map.”

  He shifted one bony shoulder, a son’s careless acknowledgement of his mother’s predictable praise. “I’m making it for Duke.”

  “Who?”

  Mason’s hand lifted, and he pointed to the office with a purple marker. “Duke,” he said, still in a whisper. “I asked if he could use one, and he said yes.”

  Poppy thought back. Given all that had happened yesterday and then Mason’s jet lag, maybe she hadn’t communicated the name of their host. “He’s Mr. Hamilton to you. Ryan Hamilton.”

  “Nuh-uh.” Her son’s silky lashes lifted and he looked at her with his big blue eyes. “He’s Duke.”

  “No—”

  The office door swung all the way open. Poppy glanced up, taking in Ryan’s long, denim-covered legs. He wore a white dress shirt, tails out, sleeves rolled to the elbow. He was shoeless, his feet covered in heavy wool socks the color of oatmeal. Even dressed casually, charisma exuded from him. Star power. And sexual power, because her contact dermatitis seemed to be flaring up again.

  She swallowed, then busied herself gathering up the pens scattered on the floor to avoid all that allure permeating the air. “I’m sorry. I hope he didn’t disturb you—”

  “He said he could use a good map,” Mason said, clearly offended by the apology. His straight blond bangs fell back as he peered upward. “Didn’t you, Duke?”

  Poppy sighed. “It’s Mr.—”

  “The name’s from a movie I made,” Ryan said, interrupting her. “It’s called Gang of Spies. My character was Duke.”

  “We watched it at Curt’s grandma’s house,
” Mason volunteered. “Last week. We saw it three times.”

  Poppy blinked. Curt was her cousin James’s son. “Um...did the grown-ups know you were watching?” Visions of guns, explosions and naked women flashed in her mind.

  “It’s rated PG,” Ryan said. “No blood and gore. Low body count. Lots of cool gadgets and flashy escapes, though.”

  “And maps,” Mason said.

  “Yeah. Maps.” Ryan’s gaze flicked to her son, quickly flicked away.

  Time to get Mason out of their host’s hair. “Let’s go, fella. It’s lunch,” she said to her boy, gathering up the rest of the drawing materials. With the pad against her chest she turned to Ryan. “Would you like me to make you a plate?”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  Mason began tugging at the pens in her hand. “I’m not hungry, either.”

  “Superspies will grow up superstunted if they don’t eat,” she told him.

  Mutiny played across his small features. Poppy braced for his temper. He wasn’t really a handful, not usually, but the end of a fun-filled vacation plus a new environment plus a continued case of jet lag would make anyone irritable. “Mom...” he began, a whine in his voice.

  “I think I’ll get something to eat, after all,” Ryan announced, strolling past the pair of them toward the kitchen. “Strong men need three square.”

  He didn’t look back.

  As a diversion, it worked. “Three square,” Mason echoed, looking up at her.

  “Three square meals,” she explained. “Breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

  Mason set off down the hall, a bit of a swagger in his step. “Strong men need three square,” he murmured, as if trying out the line.

  Hiding her grin, she headed after him. If either of them were disappointed to find Ryan had grabbed up a sandwich and was already gone, they didn’t share it with each other.

  Not that Poppy was let down, she reminded herself. Not at all.

  He was the one-and-done who didn’t warm up to children.

  Her son’s crush or no, both she and Mason needed to stay clear of the man.

  But her son foiled her plan again.

  She groaned aloud when she looked in on her boy’s bedroom three hours later. They’d played a card game, she’d read him books and he’d busied himself with a package of pick-up sticks that she’d tucked away in the bag she’d packed for him before leaving the cabin. When he’d stretched out with Grimm on his bed, she’d felt comfortable heading to her own room for a little downtime.

  But now only Grimm occupied the mattress, his quiet snores ruffling the hem of the pillow cushioning his large head.

  Find Ryan, she figured, and she’d find her enamored small son.

  Poppy felt a little like a superspy herself as she surveyed the mansion. When the second floor yielded neither of the males she expected to find, she explored the first floor next. No one there, either. She smothered the tiny flare of panic in her belly. Mason knew better than to leave the house on his own.

  And he hadn’t. When she discovered a set of steps leading down to a basement area, she hurried along them, a maternal radar homing in on her chick. Up ahead, she heard unfamiliar noises, and she paused at the threshold of a pair of doors that led into an expansive space.

  So this is what they mean by the phrase man cave, she thought.

  The vast space had a little of everything. Pool table, Ping-Pong table, wet bar. A stand of free weights, a treadmill, elliptical and some kind of weight machine with cables. Two rows of theater seats were positioned in front of a screen currently showing an animated film starring penguins. One of the Happy Feet movies, she recalled, having caught pieces of it at Mason’s day care.

  She didn’t know if it was playing for Mason’s benefit or not, and she couldn’t ask her boy, because he was curled up, fast asleep, in a corner of the room. In another, gym mats were spread on the floor to create a space currently occupied by two bare-footed, bare-chested Hamilton brothers. Once her gaze landed on them, she couldn’t look away.

  Okay, landed on him. Ryan.

  His workout pants were strung low on his hips. She had a clear view of his heavy shoulders, the wide plane of his chest, the rippling abs that she’d been up against naked. Wow.

  He was damp with sweat, and he used one of his boxing-gloved hands to push back the hair that was falling over his forehead. He was breathing hard as he faced off with Linus, who was similarly dressed, but who had his bare hands slipped through cushioned, padlike mitts.

  Their deep discussion hitched for a moment when Ryan suddenly looked around. Poppy drew back, loathe to be spotted playing secret agent. After a moment, their conversation continued, and she had to grin.

  They were arguing about krill. And emperor penguins. And whether the small sea creature could actually survive a fall from the mouth of the bird to the snow below its feet.

  “It depends on the quality of the snow,” Linus was saying. “Is it slushy? Icy? Hard-packed or soft serve?”

  “A krill weighs what—two grams at most? It cannot survive a four-foot fall.”

  “You know the weight of krill?” Linus scoffed. “The height of an emperor penguin?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hate that you think you do.”

  “Look it up,” Ryan suggested.

  Linus mumbled something she didn’t hear, then he clapped his mitts together. “Ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  She peeked around the corner to see Linus lift the pads. “Left jab, left jab, left jab,” he said.

  Then Ryan did it, cocking back his arm and punching one of the pads.

  “Left jab, right cross, back roundhouse,” Linus directed.

  Ryan followed the instructions again, each arm movement crisp and deliberate, followed by a kick to the pad extended by Linus’s thigh.

  It went on like that, Linus verbally directing Ryan’s choreography with different kinds of punches and kicks. Then the younger Hamilton said “Faster,” and they repeated the chained sequence, this time speeded up. When he said “Faster,” again, Poppy didn’t blink as Ryan accelerated the pace, executing the moves with a precision and athletic prowess that were...

  That made her...

  Stirred up.

  Oh, God. She was so stirred up by that chiseled body, those shifting muscles, the gorgeous face set with concentration. When he danced back, the series completed, she realized that she was nearly as breathless as Ryan.

  Poppy pressed her thighs together and held her elbows close to her body, trying to keep all the heated wildness churning inside her contained. But it wanted free and the heat bloomed on her skin, bursting out in hot patches on her belly, at the sleek flesh at the side of her breasts, on the thin skin of her throat. The hair at her temples went damp and so did the place between her legs.

  Oh, God. Her sexual urges were clamoring again, completely ignoring that they were supposed to be one-and-done. She stood there, afraid to move, afraid if she twitched a finger that next she’d run across the man cave and leap into the man’s arms. Swamped by desire, she forced her feet to root to the floor as she watched him strip off the gloves, then turn and walk toward a stack of large fluffy towels. He grabbed one, threw it over his shoulder. Then he hesitated, grabbed another and jogged toward Mason. There, he stood over the boy, the muscled expanse of his wide shoulders and bare chest even more rawly beautiful in comparison to the small sleeping child in his Tigger T-shirt and jeans.

  Before she could figure out what Ryan meant to do, he’d carefully draped her napping son with the terry cloth.

  Poppy’s heart moved in her chest, and it completely flipped, revealing a soft underside she thought had toughened up long ago. Oh, no. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the truth. It’s only his body that’s doing this to you, she tried telling hers
elf. You’re only thinking about sex.

  But her mind replayed the image of his large hand as it drew up the corner of the towel so that Mason wouldn’t catch a chill. Just that simple action, and she was forced to admit that she, like her son, had developed a full-blown crush on the rich guy across the room.

  Awkward.

  * * *

  FROM YOU SEND ME, a screenplay by Linus Hamilton:

  EXT. STREET—DAY

  In summer, a shop-lined street in an upscale mountain resort town. On a bench outside an ice-cream parlor, LINUS and CHARLIE work on cones. LINUS keeps stealing glances at CHARLIE, taking in her mouth, then her tanned shoulder. His gaze lands on her free hand, resting on the bench between them. LINUS’s own twitches, as if it wants to grab hers up. Shifting on the bench, LINUS transfers his cone so that the yearning hand is now occupied.

  A tanned young man, maybe twenty-two, dressed in ragged cargo shorts, a T-shirt that reads Arrow Marine Supply and dilapidated boat shoes is walking nearby when a lemon-colored Volkswagen Beetle pulls to the curb alongside him. Bubblegum-pink suitcases are strapped to the roof. The young man’s stride halts as a college-age beauty bursts from the driver’s side. In short shorts with a sorority name across the butt and a tank top, she launches herself toward the guy.

  COLLEGE GIRL

  Tom!

  He catches her by the shoulders, holds her off, though she’s still on tiptoe, straining toward him.

  TOM

  What are you doing here?

  COLLEGE GIRL

  I had to say goodbye.

  TOM

  (not unkindly)

  We said our goodbyes last night, Jules.

  The girl drops to her heels, heartbreak all over her face.

  COLLEGE GIRL

  But Tom...