by Ruth Owen
Sobered, she turned away, her prim Boston accent creeping back into her whispered words. “I’m sorry, I simply can’t kiss you. You’ll have to explain to Papa Guinea that—”
He tightened his iron grip to something just short of pain. “It’s not a choice. You can’t trash these people’s customs just because you think you’re better than they are.”
“I don’t! I—”
“Save it,” he hissed. He dropped her wrist and gripped her jaw, turning her face up toward his. “It’s showtime, sweetheart. Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick. I’d rather swim in a shark-infested cove than kiss you.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but she never got the chance. With masterful but passionless skill he tilted her head to the side, and lowered his mouth to cover hers.
And all hell broke loose.
[Received via Local Area InterNet, direct cable link]
P-Text: Dr. Revere getting married? To Donovan? But that doesn’t compute. They hate each other.
E-Text: Looked like it to me, babe. But we must have missed some essential equation. Maybe it has to do with this sex thing humans are always going on about.
P-Text: Oh yeah, that. I’ll increase the weight of the variables in the equation. Anyway, it looks like this Eden Project is going to be a lot tougher to calculate than we thought.
E-Text: [Two parsecs of electronic sigh]. Darn these carbon-based life-forms—they never behave logically. And I thought this assignment was gonna be a piece of toast.
FIVE
Sam knew she was expecting a swift, unremarkable kiss. That was exactly what he intended to give her—until she tried to wriggle out of the slight request like a trout off a fisherman’s line. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t like the well-mannered, well-heeled suits she was probably used to kissing, but he wasn’t garbage either. And he’d bet the entire profits from this assignment that he knew a hell of a lot more about kissing than any of her yuppie boyfriends.
In two weeks she probably wouldn’t even remember his name—others hadn’t. Noel Revere was cut from the same cloth. She’d forget him before the film was developed from her high-resolution, diamond-focus, cost-a-small-fortune camera. But she’s not going to forget this kiss, he pledged silently as he lowered his lips to hers. At least, not easily.
He covered her mouth in a consuming embrace, swallowing her small gasp of protest. Her eyes widened in shock. Good. She balled her hands into fists and tried to push away. Better. He stationed an arm strategically against the small of her back, locking her against him. You can’t wriggle out of this one, little fish.
She glared at him, her icy gaze speeding through surprise, through shock, and ending in burning fury. He grinned against her lips, enjoying the hell out of her anger. He liked her mad, liked the way it took the starch out of her oh-so-proper manner. He deepened his kiss, realizing he was beginning to like a lot of things about her.
She wasn’t what he expected. She tasted like wine—warm, bloodred wine that pounded through every part of his body. Her lips may have been pursed in a prim expression, but that was the only thing proper about them. They were a man’s worst temptation—hot and erotic, and innocent enough to make a man believe she meant it. He thrust deeper, exploring the secrets of her mouth, taking her with the passion that had been burning in his gut since she stepped out wearing the rainbow dress … hell, since she’d stepped off the plane.
His senses blurred, seduced by the fire beneath her ice. She made a small, guttural moan and sank against him, her yielding body melding to his from shoulder to thigh. Her woman’s scent mingled with the smell of incense and passion, intoxicating him, driving him full-throttle toward desire. He forgot about the church, Papa Guinea, the money, the farcical wedding—nothing mattered except the fact that she was warm and real and in his arms. It didn’t matter why he’d started kissing her. He only knew that kissing her filled up an empty place inside him, a place that hadn’t been touched in a long, long time.…
I’ll kill him! she thought, her face burning with embarrassment as his mouth erotically plundered hers. When this wedding was over she was going to make him pay for this—for pulling her against the length of his rock-hard body, for making her aware of his strength, his heat, his musky masculine scent, and for turning her blood to pure fire with every slow, deliberate stroke of his intimate invasion.
Her forbidden fantasy was a joke compared with reality. Violent emotions ripped through her, creating an ache in deep and secret places. His power roared into her like a tidal wave, crashing through her brittle reserve, shattering her barriers in a single pounding heartbeat. She couldn’t breathe. She raised her fists to push him away, but instead found herself twining her arms around his neck. Just another second, then I’ll kill him, she promised as she wove her fingers through the thick hair at the base of his neck, pulling him closer. Her rock-solid Puritan morality dissolved like gritty smoke in the hurricane of his passion, making her feel aching and vulnerable, and wildly, shamelessly alive. It’s the sugar water. It’s got to be the sugar water.
But the reason didn’t matter. She parted her lips, starving for his caress, aching for a deeper, more wicked embrace. She felt as if another woman had stepped into her skin—the secret sinner she’d kept locked deep inside her since her childhood. All her life she’d walked the straight and narrow. She’d lived her life by rigid standards, afraid that one slip would bring out the reckless, devil side of her nature. Well, she’d slipped all right—big time. Now, wrapped in a virtual stranger’s fiery embrace, the woman who’d always done the “right” thing found herself wanting to do the wrong thing. She wanted to be bad—wonderfully, hedonistically, unforgivably bad with Sam Donovan. And she wanted to do it over and over again.…
In slow motion Donovan lifted his head and looked down at her with an intensity that left her weak. He stared at her in a kind of confused wonder, like a small boy who’s just been presented with an incredible toy that he can’t quite figure out how to use. The look cherished her beyond words, and shattered her more completely than his kiss. She stared up at him, every bit as confused as he was. For the first time in her life she felt as if someone was looking at her—at her, not a Revere descendant, not her father’s daughter. For the first time she felt as if she mattered to someone because of who she was, not what she—
“Jolly-mon!”
The booming voice startled them both. Noel looked up, and met the black, laughing eyes of the man who’d stood beside Donovan during the ceremony.
“Jolly-mon,” he cried in battered and broken English. “And Mrs. Jolly-mon. You two big happy. Make big …”
He made a gesture that would have sent her well-bred grandmother into a swoon. Noel was less shocked—though she still colored to the roots of her hair. But embarrassment was only a small part of what she felt. She was flushed from the drink and giddy from the kiss, and warm all over from the way Sam had just looked at her. She glanced back at him, smiling shyly.
She met the cold eyes of a stranger.
“You’re a hell of an actress,” he said grimly as he got to his feet. “Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“But I wasn’t …” Her words dwindled off. Regardless of how it had started, regardless of what he thought, she’d meant that kiss. She believed that with every fiber of her being.
But she was less sure—in fact, she wasn’t sure at all—that it had meant anything to him.
The crowd flowed between them, separating them. Music started up in one end of the church, an unwieldy combination of reggae beat and voodoo chant. Noel found herself surrounded by the women she’d met earlier in the vestry. They hugged and coddled her, kissing her cheek and giving her advice she couldn’t even begin to understand. Noel nodded, gamely trying to keep up the appearance of happiness for a little longer. But it was a poor appearance at best. Regardless of what Donovan thought, she was no actress.
Outwardly she smiled. But inwardly she felt the same way she had all those years when she was grow
ing up under her grandmother’s disapproving eye—like she was being blamed for a crime she hadn’t committed.
The trip home from the old church was, incredibly, even more silent than the trip there had been. Sam sat behind the wheel, his face molded into a frown as dark and somber as the surrounding night. Noel was curled into the far corner of the Jeep’s passenger seat, watching the yellow headlight pick up the rutted road ahead, wrapped in her own intensely private thoughts. She should have felt relieved that one of the strangest days in her ordered life was finally drawing to a close. Instead, she had a profound sense of loss and disappointment.
And an even profounder sense of confusion over Donovan’s kiss.
She shifted uncomfortably against the Jeep’s worn leather cushions and tried with everything in her to forget Donovan’s kiss. No luck. The memory lingered not just in her mind but in every part of her body, making her feel tight and achy in outrageously intimate places. She stole a glance at the man beside her, hoping reality would dilute the memories. Worse luck. Moonlight and shadows blurred the harsh lines of his profile, making him appear less cynical and strangely, heartbreakingly alone. And loneliness was something she understood all too well.
Come on, Noel. You ought to be ready to throttle the guy. He’s an opportunist. He took advantage of you in a public situation. He had no right to kiss you like that.
And you had no reason to kiss him back.
The call of a hidden bird threaded silver through the night air, but she barely heard it. Instead, she huddled as close to the open side of the cab as she could without risking a fall. A seat belt would have been nice. A clear conscience would have been better. She had loved Hayward. She had even thought she would marry him at one time. And yet she’d returned Donovan’s kiss with a hellfire passion she’d never experienced with her ex-boyfriend, not even when they’d made love.…
She had to regain her composure. She gripped the roll bar and looked out into the darkness, casting through her mind for something safe and innocuous to say. “Um, how soon can we start out for the mountains, Mr. Donovan?”
“Mister Donovan?”
“That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Sure, but—” He glanced at her, the moonlight glittering in his eyes like demon fire. “Come on, Noel. We are married. Besides, that kiss put us on a first-name basis.”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention the marriage—or the kiss—again,” she stated, her voice as rigid as her posture.
He shrugged and turned back to the road. “You’re paying the bills. We’ll load up the Jeep with your equipment at first light.”
“Good.” Dammit, the guy even shrugs sexy.
He bent over to shift to a lower gear. Noel had a glimpse of the corded muscles of his broad back shifting effortlessly beneath his soft cotton shirt, and felt the air vanish from her lungs. Careful, Noel. At this rate you won’t keep your distance two days, much less ten.
“We’ll start early,” he continued without taking his gaze from the road. “I figure we’ll make base camp in the mountains by late afternoon.”
“Fine.” I shouldn’t be thinking about him this way. I hardly know him. He’s a stranger. Okay, a stranger I kissed …
Donovan glanced her way, lifting his eyebrow in a cynical challenge. “Are you planning to talk in one-word sentences from now on, sweetheart?”
Noel met the challenge in his eyes with one of her own. “Maybe.”
He turned back to the road, but not before she caught the ghost of a genuine smile on his lips. She swallowed, feeling another section of her newly constructed defenses crumble to dust. It wasn’t fair—a scoundrel like Donovan shouldn’t have had a smile that promised forever. Or a kiss …
“Why did you come to St. Michelle?” she asked suddenly, surprised at how much she wanted to know the answer.
Donovan grinned again, but this time there was no warmth in his smile. “Because I had nowhere else to go. Now it’s my turn.”
“Turn?”
“To ask a question.”
Noel stiffened. She was an intensely private person, a holdover from her youth when she’d been reprimanded for her “unseemly curiosity.” Divulging personal secrets was major surgery for her, but her sense of fair play stopped her from declining. She did owe him a question. One. “Okay, what do you want to know?”
Where do I start? Donovan wondered. Just being near the lady set off an avalanche of questions in his mind. Why did she keep a “body by Hefner” hidden underneath yards of old-lady blouses and shapeless skirts? Why did she keep a sweet smile and generous nature hidden beneath a sour-apple frown? And why had she given him a kiss that was the closest thing to paradise this side of heaven?
He wasn’t a romantic kind of guy—life had laid to rest that part of his nature a long time ago. But when he’d kissed her his mind had flooded with sappy, stupid, Beaver Cleaver images of white picket fences, Little League practices, minivans, and microwaves. Ridiculous, considering his background. They had less in common than champagne and raw whiskey—and he’d learned from experience the two didn’t mix. Women like her looked at a guy’s bank balance before they gave him the time of day. He didn’t even have a checking account.
Unfortunately, that didn’t stop him from wanting her like he wanted his next breath.…
“So who’s the guy?” he asked harshly.
His question ripped through the silent night like a bullet, startling her. “What guy?”
“The one you talked about in the church. You didn’t seem to like him much. What’s the matter, sweetheart? Man problems?”
“No, not that.” Her face revealed a wince of unexpected pain. “The ‘guy’ was my father. He deserted me and my mother when I was seven.”
Lord. “I’m sorry, Noel. If I’d known I wouldn’t … look, I’m sorry I asked.”
“It’s all right.” She looked down and began to finger the iridescent material of her dress. “I got over it a long time ago.”
Like hell. She was twisting that material so tight, he was surprised it didn’t cry out in pain. But even if she’d been still as a dead calm sea he’d have known she was hurting. Scars like that never healed, not completely. You lived with them, but you never got over them. “My old man took off, too.”
“He did?”
Sam nodded. “After he left, my mom wasn’t too crazy about having me around, so she farmed me out with relatives. But I got lucky, because I ended up with Uncle Gus.”
Noel stopped worrying the dress material. She settled back in the passenger seat, watching him intently. “Tell me about him.”
Donovan shrugged. “Not much to tell. He was my mother’s uncle. We lived on a boat that went from port to port along the Gulf. He was registered as a shrimper, but we never caught much shrimp. He ran craps games on the deck, and moved on when things got too hot. He was a con man to the core, and could talk a man out of his last buck and leave him smiling—but he never chose a mark who didn’t deserve it. He drank hard, swore worse, and was the nightmare of every cop along the coast.”
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
“I’d have walked through hell for him,” Sam acknowledged. “Not that it did much good. The social workers took me away from him and stuck me in a foster home. It broke the old man’s heart. He didn’t last out the year.”
“Oh Sam, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well. It happened a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” she stated with quiet conviction. “Love is the most important thing you can give a child—the only thing that really matters. It was wrong to take you away from someone who loved you, very wrong.”
He glanced at her, surprised by both her strength and her common sense. On the rare occasions when he shared his past with women like her, they usually gave him some innocuous cliché about everything being for the best. But Noel didn’t do that. She faced the old injustice head-on, without diluting it with platitudes. “You’re right,” he agreed. “Lov
e is the only thing that matters … to a kid.”
Silence wrapped around them again, but this time it wasn’t stiff or strained. The troubles in their pasts forged a bond between them, a momentary cease-fire in a long-standing war. Donovan breathed in the sweet night air, feeling a peace inside him he hadn’t known in years. It felt good to talk about Gus—to talk to her. Suddenly he thought about all the places he could show her in the mountains—the hidden pools, the bright, rare flowers, the secret caves, the frightening, beautiful lava pits. They were his treasure, these personal and private places—his only earthly fortune. He’d never showed them to anyone. But he wanted to show them to her—
“I don’t know why I told you about my father,” she confessed, her voice revealing the same lightheartedness that he felt. “I haven’t even told that to Hayward.”
He stiffened like a wolf catching an enemy scent. “Hayward?”
“Yes,” she said sleepily, snuggling like a contented kitten into the leather passenger seat.
Hayward. Christ. Only rich guys had dumb names like that. Very rich guys. “Let me guess. His ancestors fought in the Civil War.”
“And the Revolution. His people came over on the Mayflower.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve traveled steerage myself, and it’s nothing to brag about.”
Noel’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you so angry?”
Good question. And one he wasn’t about to answer. “Careful, sweetheart. Remember the rules. You ask a question, I ask a question. Fair’s fair.”
“Okay, I’m asking my question. Why are you so angry?”
Women, he decided darkly, were God’s worst idea. They couldn’t take a hint, even when you handed it to them on a silver platter. “You want to know why I’m so angry? Because I’m a healthy, red-blooded male animal and you’ve got the best pair of legs I’ve seen in longer than I can remember.”
