Chapter Two
Dillon couldn’t help wondering if his blood was pumping so fast because he’d subconsciously guessed that the woman in the cabin was Ashley Wilde. The actual thought had struck him at the precise moment that lamp had shattered a window and grazed his head. It was the kind of outrageous act of which she’d always been capable.
That was what had drawn him to her back in high school. She’d been beautiful, so bright it was scary, and yet there had been an impetuous, daring side to her that had matched his own wild streak. In those days about the only thing the rebellious Dillon Ford hadn’t dared was to ask the daughter of Trent Wilde on a date. It was one of his very few regrets.
Moments ago when he had walked through the cabin’s front door and seen her, the past ten years had fallen away. A once familiar burst of pure lust had slammed through him, proving once and for all that surging adolescent hormones hadn’t been the sole cause of his reaction to her years before.
With his body on high alert, he’d had to work very hard to preserve even a facade of the hard-edged anger that had been all too real only seconds before, with that gash in his head bleeding profusely.
What he really wanted to do was stand silently before her and absorb everything about her, from the clean, crisp scent of her perfume to the porcelain sheen of her skin. He wanted to take his time and examine her from head to toe, from the artfully streaked blond hair and the unusual topaz eyes to those endlessly long, denim-encased legs that were the stuff of very steamy dreams. How had he survived all these years without so much as a glimpse of her?
Of course, that wasn’t counting the times he’d stood at a newsstand enthralled by her image on the cover of some glossy fashion magazine. Only the most rigid willpower had prevented him from gathering up all the copies and taking them home with him. Plastering his bedroom walls with her pictures would have seriously interfered with his active love life, a sacrifice he wasn’t willing to make for an elusive dream.
His body tightened just looking at her, though with that famed blond hair swept into a bedraggled ponytail and tangled wildly, her heart-shaped face devoid of makeup and her eyes red-rimmed from crying, she wasn’t exactly at her best.
Time, it seemed, hadn’t dimmed the forbidden attraction he’d felt for her back in the days when he’d been Riverton High’s resident juvenile delinquent and she’d been its perennial homecoming queen.
If anything, the lust clamoring through him was more urgent and demanding than ever. The prospect of being locked away with her for a week or two made his jaded heart skip several beats. He’d come to Trent Wilde’s cabin to get his bearings. Instead, it appeared he was going to be thrown more off-kilter than ever.
As for Ashley, she was clearly as sassy and arrogant as ever. She had the regal demeanor of a queen…or a woman used to being admired. According to the tabloids, which he’d greedily devoured while waiting in grocery checkout lines, tycoons and royalty had been equally infatuated with her. That alone was enough to make Dillon want to claim her. He wanted her all mussed up and submissive in his bed, the way he’d always believed she was meant to be. Just the thought had him swallowing hard.
Not that her fame didn’t have its dark side. Though he doubted she was aware of it, he knew all about the obsessed fan who’d threatened her for a few months the year before. She’d hired a Los Angeles security company for protection. His company. It had taken an act of supreme restraint to keep from claiming the assignment for himself. He’d known he could never be as objective as the case required.
But, oh, how he had longed to see her again. Finding her here was better than any fantasy he could have contrived.
Before he knew what he intended, before he could consider the consequences, he’d taken a step closer. Acting on pure impulse, he reached out and hauled her into his arms.
Surprise worked in his favor. His mouth slanted across hers just the way he’d always envisioned kissing her, softly, gently, but with so much restrained passion he ached with it.
She fit perfectly, snugly against him. Her mouth molded to his with surprising willingness. The spring night might be rainy and bone-deep cold, but the heat that erupted inside him could have burned the whole damn state to the ground.
Years of pent-up hunger went into that kiss. Years of practice on poor substitutes gave it a finesse that had both of them breathing hard in a heartbeat. He was left with a sense of wonder that an act so familiar could seem so fresh, so rare, so damned dangerous.
When he released her at last, there was a dazed expression on her face and pure fire in her eyes. She might have kissed him eagerly, but now her open hand connected with his cheek with a force that snapped his head back.
Dillon grinned approvingly. He’d expected as much from the quick-tempered Ashley he recalled. She never had wanted to admit just how badly she wanted him. That kiss, however, had spoken volumes.
“Still feisty, I see,” he commented.
Fire blazed in her eyes. “And you are every bit as rude and obnoxious and low-class as you always were.”
His smile widened. “Still a bit of a snob, too.”
Color flamed in her cheeks. “I’m surprised you’re not in jail by now,” she countered with feeling.
“You and everyone else in town,” he said dryly. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“I’m not disappointed,” she claimed. “Just surprised. Now would you mind telling me what the hell you’re doing with a key to my father’s cabin?”
He shook his head with exaggerated dismay. “I thought we covered that. You used to be much quicker. Straight A’s, as I recall.”
Hands on hips, she glared at him. “I mean it, Dillon. I want to know how you got that key. You’ve got five seconds or I call the sheriff.”
Though the answer was simple enough, she was having so much fun thinking he was here illegally, he couldn’t help taunting her.
He glanced deliberately around the cabin for some sign of that phone she was threatening to use. He knew perfectly well, as she did, that there wasn’t one. Trent had craved the isolation the cabin afforded him. He’d refused to have one installed, which was one reason his daughters almost never came here, he’d claimed. Not a one of them could stay off the phone for more than a minute at a time, he’d said with a father’s typical bemusement.
Apparently he’d been wrong about one daughter, Dillon thought. Which meant a distinct change in his own plans for the next week or two. He, too, had wanted to get away from the demands of the real world for a while. He’d wanted to be cut off completely from a life that had lately become too complicated and far too structured to suit him. He couldn’t seem to dredge up much disappointment at the change in plans.
“And how would you be planning to reach the sheriff?” he inquired.
“Ever heard of cell phones?”
“Of course,” he said readily. “Every self-respecting thief has one.”
“I’m sure you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
Dillon had been reformed for a long time now. He’d been a respected businessman for most of that time. It should have infuriated him to have everything he’d worked so hard to achieve stripped away with one disparaging remark from a woman who didn’t know him at all anymore.
Instead, though, he suddenly felt like the town’s bad boy all over again, and he loved it. The danger and excitement he’d been craving rushed through him. Respectability apparently hadn’t satisfied him as much as he thought it had.
Damn, but it was good to be home. It was even better being locked away in the wilderness with the woman who’d made his blood run hot since the very first day he’d laid eyes on her. This time, he vowed, he was going to discover what it was like to make her his own.
* * *
Then and now, Dillon Ford was the most exasperating, most troublesome man Ashley could ever recall having the misfortune of knowing. He was incapable of giving a straight answer and more inclined to lie than tell the truth.
In hi
gh school, his heated, knowing looks had set off forbidden yearnings deep inside her. Not once, though, had he ever acted on the dangerous promise that was there in his eyes every time his gaze caught hers. The gulf between them had been as wide and deep as any ocean on the planet.
She had dated the football captains and the class presidents, flirted outrageously with baseball heroes and the sons of the town’s wealthiest citizens. Hardly a tongue-tied boy in her high school class hadn’t stumbled over his own feet in her presence. All of them…except Dillon Ford. It had been exasperating. Naturally that made him the one she wanted, the one she found most intriguing.
Older than she was by three years–an eternity at that age–Dillon had never been shy. He had dated the girls whose reputations were in tatters by the time they turned fifteen. He’d flaunted his sexuality in a way that left girls breathless in his presence and parents terrified. Dani, who was in his class, had talked about him in whispers, which had promptly piqued Ashley’s curiosity.
Ashley had always known that if she and Dillon had so much as spoken in the school corridor, tongues would have wagged for a month. But, oh, how she had been tempted to do more than just speak to him! She’d flirted more than once with the idea of messing up her spit-and-polish, good-girl image once and for all. Dillon could have accomplished that with no more than a wink, but he’d never cooperated, quashing her rebellion before it could ever really flower. Apparently, he enjoyed taunting her, but not enough to waste time on a Goody Two-shoes, when far more experienced girls were at his beck and call.
Just once had they crossed the line, and even then it had been at Ashley’s instigation, not Dillon’s. At his senior prom, which she’d attended with the Harvard-bound son of her father’s closest friend, she had found herself standing next to Dillon by the punch bowl. She’d been surprised he’d chosen to come at all, but apparently even the class rebel couldn’t stay away from such a momentous event.
Flying in the face of common sense, she had boldly asked him to dance. She’d been tempted for too long to resist the chance to discover what it felt like to be held in those muscular arms. Amusement glinting in his eyes at her daring, he had led her onto the dance floor.
The oh-so-slow dance had started with a proper distance between them. But, as if drawn by a magnet, Ashley had moved closer and closer until her head was tucked on his shoulder. She had sighed with incomparable contentment.
Even now, she shivered at the memory of feminine awareness she had discovered that night. Flirting had never excited her as Dillon’s dark-eyed gaze had. Stolen kisses were nothing compared to the whisper-light touch of his hand on her back. No boy’s most daring caress had thrilled her the way the brush of Dillon’s thighs against her own had.
It was just because he was forbidden, because he was so bad that no decent girl would date him, she had told herself that night. Now, with his gaze hot on her once again and her body trembling like a schoolgirl’s in response, she wondered if it was more than that. Or was she more than ever trying to rebel against a lifetime of being everyone’s perfect little good girl?
Whatever the case, she had to get him out of the cabin and she had to do it now, before he felled her senses with another one of those unexpected, staggering kisses. Her life was messed up enough without succumbing to a ridiculous urge to jump into the sack with Dillon Ford. She assured herself that she was past a need to rebel, way past.
Wasn’t she?
She skimmed a quick glance over dark hair that had a distinct curl to it, lingered on a scowling but astonishingly tempting mouth, then dared a peek at black eyes so intense they sent a once familiar tremble through her. Maybe she wasn’t as safe from those old urges as she’d thought.
She’d recalled Dillon more than once over the past ten years. In fact, Sara had taunted her about him only a few months ago, stirring old fantasies to life. Sara had encouraged her to seek out someone like Dillon, who would shake up her predictable existence. Little had they known….
But the truth was her memory and her wildest fantasies hadn’t done him justice. He was more gorgeous, more thoroughly masculine, more down-and-dirty real than the sexiest male models she’d worked with through the years.
Before she could figure out a reasonably polite way to send him out into the rain, he retrieved his gun, tucked it into the waistband of his jeans and gestured toward the visible kitchen area. Clearly he intended to make himself thoroughly at home.
“Any coffee made?”
The mundane question snapped her back to reality. She nodded.
“It should still be hot,” she said as she crossed the room, grateful for the chance to put some distance between them.
She injected a briskly polite note into her voice. “If you’d like to change out of those wet clothes before you leave, I’ll pour you a cup for the road. And there are plenty of first-aid supplies in the bathroom, if you want to bandage that cut.”
He grinned in a thoroughly male, tolerant way that suggested he found her less than subtle approach amusing.
“There’s enough heat in here to dry my clothes in no time,” he said. “As for the cut, you could always kiss it and make it better.”
She scowled at his teasing. “Not too long ago you were claiming you were likely to bleed to death from that wound,” she reminded him.
“A ploy,” he admitted unrepentantly.
“For sympathy? I doubt it.”
“No, to get inside. Worked, too,” he said.
He made the claim with so much arrogance, it was all Ashley could do to keep from dumping the cup of hot coffee into his lap. Instead, she handed it to him gingerly, careful to avoid so much as grazing his knuckles. His amused expression proved he knew exactly how thoroughly he’d disconcerted her with that kiss.
“This should wake you up so you’ll be alert for the drive back to town,” she said pointedly. “You should be back in plenty of time to get a room at the hotel and still catch a good night’s sleep.”
The comment drew a grin, but no retort.
She sat on the edge of the chair across from him and watched as he sipped the coffee, practically counting the minutes until he would be out of the cabin and a good, safe distance away from her life.
“I came up here to fish and I’m not going anywhere, you know,” he said after a while.
The direct challenge had her gritting her teeth. “Yes,” she said just as emphatically, “you are. Besides, as I can attest firsthand, the fish aren’t biting. It’ll be a waste of your time.”
“It’s the process, not the results that count,” he said lazily. “I’ll be happy enough just to wade into the stream and toss my line in.”
“Oh, sure. I’ve always thought of you as the laid-back type,” she commented sarcastically.
He got up, strolled into the kitchen and poured himself another cup of coffee, probably just to irritate her with his deliberate nonchalance.
It worked, too. She really, really wanted to slug him for the second time in less than an hour. It was an urge she had never, ever experienced before, much less acted on.
“Did your father know you were coming up here?” he asked when he returned to the living room.
“No,” she admitted. Sighing, she prepared for another round of sparring.
“And he obviously loaned me the cabin,” he pointed out with annoying logic, waving that damnable key under her nose again. “How do you think he’d feel about you tossing me out?”
“He sure as hell wouldn’t want us both here at the same time,” Ashley said, though she wasn’t nearly as sure of that as she wanted to be. Her father was pretty desperate to marry her off to just about anyone.
“Tsk, tsk, where are your manners?” Dillon retorted, clearly unoffended by her derogatory tone. “You shouldn’t be judging a guest in your home.”
“You are not my guest,” she repeated emphatically.
“Exactly. I’m your father’s guest, which means you should be treating me with kindness and respect,” he sa
id triumphantly. “Isn’t that the way you were brought up?”
Ashley practically groaned aloud. Of course, that was the way she’d been brought up, and Dillon knew it. He’d presented her with the heart of her dilemma–good manners versus a panicky desire to be rid of him.
Their battle over who had claim to the cabin seemed destined to go on forever. Ashley’s head throbbed like the dickens, but she wasn’t about to yield the point by going off to bed with the issue unresolved.
She rallied half a dozen more arguments, but Dillon clearly wasn’t budging. Short of dragging him bodily out the door, which she doubted she could have managed anyway, she was fresh out of alternatives. Sometime after midnight, she grudgingly threw in the towel.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, just sleep here tonight,” she finally muttered, as if conceding him a great favor. “I’m too exhausted to keep arguing about it. You’ll find towels in the closet in the bathroom and a guest room at the end of the hall. Don’t expect me to make the bed for you. I’m sure you can manage on your own.”
“Where beds are concerned, I’m an expert,” he said.
“I’m sure,” she acknowledged as images flooded her mind and color flooded her cheeks.
“And I know where things are in the cabin. You don’t need to worry about me.”
Surprised by his claim to be familiar with the cabin, Ashley stared hard at him. “How? Have you broken in before?”
He waved the key under her nose…again. “It’s not breaking and entering when you have the owner’s permission,” he repeated with exaggerated patience. “It’s not the first time I’ve been here, sweetheart. I’m probably more familiar with this place than you are. When was the last time you stole away here for a little solitude?”
He had her there. “Never, but that’s beside the point,” she said airily. “How do you know so much about the cabin?”
“I’ve come here to fish with your father a time or two. Came back last year on my own, when I needed a break.”
“A break from what?”
“This and that,” he said unhelpfully.
The Bridal Path: Ashley Page 2
