Carla Neggers - Tempting Fate

Mattie slid under the crazy quilt with him, her body slim and small. “Stop thinking, darling,” she said, snuggling beside him. He felt like a pack of toothpicks. “Let’s just lie here a while and listen to the rain.”

Zeke fingered the Cedar Springs Woolen Mill label on one of Dani’s old blankets. “This was made when the mill first opened, I’d say.” He was sitting up, the muscles of his bare chest taut, his skin looking almost golden in the evening gloom. “That’s well before Joe worked there, or even my mother.”

Dani detected a note of nostalgia in his controlled voice. Lying alongside him, she asked, “Did you ever work there?”

He let go of the blanket. “No.”

A summer Adirondack thunderstorm was crashing around them. They’d left the windows open, the curtains billowing in the strong, suddenly cool breeze. Lightning flashed and cracked, followed almost immediately by an enormous clap of thunder that seemed to shake the entire cottage. The storm had to be directly overhead. Dani couldn’t think of a better time to make love. And she and Zeke had already, explosively. But that didn’t stop her from wanting to again. Her life, she decided, had become very complicated.

Outside there was a hissing sound that grew louder and louder, and then the hard, driving rain came, pounding and drenching the cottage. The wind was still blowing hard into the bedroom, bringing with it sprays of rain. Zeke jumped lightly off the bed and banged the window shut.

Watching him, Dani was struck again by how unbelievably sexy Zeke was. He looked so hard and capable, and she’d given up hope her attraction to him would ever wane. If he walked out of her life now and turned up again in another fifty years, it would still be there, one of those givens in life. Dani Pembroke would always want to make love to Zeke Cutler.

He caught her staring and smiled. “Like the view?”

“I didn’t realize white knights could be so sexy.”

He laughed. “And I didn’t realize hotheaded heiress entrepreneurs who like to climb rocks could be so sexy.”

“Ex-heiress,” she corrected.

“Once an heiress, always an heiress. It’s a matter of attitude, not money.”

She didn’t argue the point. Instead she enjoyed the idea of being sexy-of his thinking and saying she was sexy. To have him respond to her that way-even if just for now-felt good.

“Are there any other windows that need to be shut?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Good,” he said and came back to bed with her.

The rain crashed against the window, and there was another flash of lightning, then the rumbling roar of more thunder. The storm was moving fast.

Zeke slipped his arms around her, hooking one leg into hers. He was slippery and wet from the rain that had blown onto him, his skin cool to the touch of her fingertips, her lips. They kissed for a long time, slowly, tongues exploring. They paid no attention to the storm. The lights flickered. He cupped her bottom with his hands, then, in the same slow rhythm as their kiss, moved them up her sides, and she wondered what she felt like, tasted like, to him. Was she as new and exciting and different to him as he was to her? Was he as amazed and absorbed by what they were becoming to each other? She didn’t want the answers. Not now.

She pulled away from their kiss and lay back on the bed, and he moved his hands over her breasts, watching her as, with one finger, he traced a circle, so slowly, so erotically, around each nipple, not touching it. Then his tongue touched where his finger hadn’t. He dragged his hand down her abdomen, to her inner thighs, between her legs. Suddenly she was as out of control as the weather, until she couldn’t stand it anymore and pulled him against her, felt the strength of him, and the state of his arousal.

“I’m not holding back,” she whispered. “I want you to know that.”

He smiled. “I know.”

“Are you as afraid as I am?”

“Yes.”

His answer reassured her, although she didn’t know exactly why. She supposed it was because he shouldn’t have all the answers any more than she should, because she wanted him to feel the mystery and uncertainty she was feeling. Falling in love shouldn’t be simple and predictable. But was that what was happening to them? Dani felt a shiver of panic. Was she falling in love with this man?

But the storm was howling, and finally he was inside her once more, whispering words against sounds of the rain and the wind.

“I can’t hear you,” she said.

He brought his mouth close to hers. “It doesn’t matter.”

And it didn’t, she realized. For now, their bodies were doing all the communicating that, at the moment, needed to be done.

Later, when the skies were quiet and the rain had died to a gentle drizzle and Dani knew she wouldn’t sleep, she crept out of bed, wonderfully stiff. She raised the window, feeling the cool air on her overheated skin. She could hear water dripping into puddles in her garden. Chickadees played in her marble birdbath. She watched them for a few minutes, knowing her life would never be as it had been. Everything had changed, and not just because of the gold key and her mother. Because of Zeke, too, and the capacity for love she’d discovered in herself. She cared about him. What was more, she wanted him to care about her.

When she turned around, her bed was empty. She might have imagined their lovemaking, made up a white knight to carry her off into the sunset.

“Zeke?”

There was no answer. She wasn’t sure she’d expected one.

Pulling on her robe, she went back downstairs. No Zeke whipping up something in the kitchen. No note stuck to the refrigerator. How far could he have gotten without clothes? She took her stairs two steps at a time and checked the bedroom. He’d sneaked out with his clothes. With her right there in the room with him. Had she been catatonic?

“The bastard,” she muttered with a small laugh.

She should have waited until after they’d made love to tell him about Nick’s being blackmailed.

But she suspected his departure was his way of telling her exactly what she’d been thinking as she’d stared down at her rain-drenched garden-that what they had together was a wonderful dream. It just might not be real.

In the morning Dani made herself get dressed and walk over to her office at the main house. Ira came in to show her his bruised neck. “And you know what kind of sympathy I get around here? None. People say they wish they’d done it. Some friends I have. Rejoicing that I’m almost choked to death by some psychopath.”

“Ira, you’re exaggerating.”

“My own friends telling me that’s the way I’ll die, with someone’s hands around my throat.”

Dani tried not to laugh because, of course, she didn’t believe a word. “Not if I’m around with my trusty rock.”

“Or Zeke with his gun. I think our friend spotted the guy lurking in the woods, and that’s why he ran off.”

“Women never get credit for anything,” Dani said, propping her feet up on her art deco-style coffee table.

Ira scoffed. “Your problem is you want credit for everything. Comes from being the only child of an only child. You don’t even have cousins. The rest of us learned what it’s like to be shoved out of a tree house by a brother or sister, but not Dani Pembroke. She expects people to behave. Why would some goon want to spy on her in the woods?”

She wiggled her toes, feeling remarkably refreshed given her current state of confusion and sporadic sleep. “Don’t inflict your stereotypes on me, Ira. Do you want the day off?”

“No, you’d never manage to run this place and skulk about in the woods for desperadoes. Dani-” He sighed and ran a hand through his corkscrew curls, calming down. “Thanks for letting me vent. I’m worried, that’s all. About you, if you want the truth. I know it annoys you to have anyone worry about you, but there it is.”