All Shook Up (20 page)

One arm hooked desperately around her neck, he turned to glare at J.D. through red-rimmed eyes full of baffled anger and betrayal. “You tried to drown me!”

The accusation hit J.D. like a fist in the gut, and the little bit of breath he’d managed to regain stopped up in his throat. In the small corner of his brain still functioning on logic, he understood that Tate had been facing away from him and knew only that one minute
he’d been treading water, and the next J.D. had shoved him under and held him down.

Emotionally, though, the I’ve-been-double-crossed look in the boy’s eyes went straight to his heart, and he stared back mutely without a word to say in his own defense.

“No!” Dru cried with heartfelt passion. She grasped Tate’s chin and tugged it around until he looked at her. “
No
. The canoe flipped over and was just about to hit you in the head! He had to push you out of the way, Tate! He saved your life.” She sidestroked the two of them toward J.D. “Oh, God, John David, thank you for saving my baby’s life!”

Reaching him, she released one of the arms that fiercely hugged Tate to her breast and wrapped it around J.D.’s neck, turning it into a three-way embrace. She pressed frantic kisses of gratitude against his throat, his chin, his jaw. Then she drew back and studied him with worried eyes. “You were hurt,” she said. “I saw the canoe slam down on top of you.” She tried to turn him to see. “Show me where you’re hurt.”

He’d never had anyone mother him in his life, and he shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s nothing,” he said roughly. “I’m fine.” A spot between his shoulder blades ached like a sonovabitch, but there was nothing that could be done about it out here in the middle of the lake. Besides, he was a grown man; he didn’t need to be fussed over.

Even if it did feel kind of nice.

Then Tate’s arm snaked around his neck, too. “I’m sorry, J.D.,” he said in a small, tremulous voice. His
chin wobbled and tears rose in his eyes. “I shouldn’t have said…I didn’t mean”—his voice suddenly cracked—“I just wanna go home!”

J.D. had once been ten years old himself and remembered what it felt like to cry in front of others, so he pressed Tate’s head down onto his shoulder to give him some privacy. “Your mama and I are going to get you home real soon, buddy,” he said into the child’s ear and rubbed his jaw against Tate’s sleek, wet crown. “I promise. And I’m sorry I scared you. I wouldn’t have done that for the world if I could’ve avoided it.”

“’Kay,” the boy said with a sniff.

Then J.D. heard the whine of an outboard motor, and he looked up to see one of the lodge speedboats racing across the lake toward them. The driver throttled back when he was a hundred feet away and the boat gently rode the wake that continued to push it forward, easing to an expert stop alongside them. J.D. recognized the driver as one of the young men who worked in the sport shop and saw with surprise that Sean, the bellhop, was with him.

“Are you guys all right?” Sean demanded, leaning over the side. “We saw the canoe come down on top of you. Is everybody okay?”

J.D. felt Tate’s hand go up to hastily knuckle the tears from his eyes, and to give him an extra minute to compose himself, he gently urged Dru forward. “Why don’t you go first?”

She glanced at Tate, then nodded and raised her hands to Sean for a boost up.

J.D. watched her come out of the water and hook a
leg over the side of the speedboat. He figured he couldn’t be injured all that seriously when he found himself admiring the way her wet suit molded to the lush curve of her bottom as she tumbled over the side into the craft.

Tate wiped his nose on J.D.’s shoulder and J.D. tucked in his chin to look down at him. “You ready, buddy?”

“Yeah.”

He tightened his arms around the boy for a second. “You were one brave kid throughout this whole ordeal and handled yourself like a pro. I’m proud of you.” He lifted Tate up to Sean, who swung him into the boat.

Then he took one last look around. He knew the tip of the canoe was most likely bobbing somewhere just beneath the surface, but there wasn’t so much as a ripple on the water’s surface to show where. For an instant a despairing sort of sickness sat heavily on his gut. Then, with a mental shrug that helped shove the feeling aside, he reached up to grab hold of the speedboat’s side and lever himself up out of the water.

S
ophie and Ben were waiting on their dock when the boat pulled up alongside it, alerted by a call from the boat’s cell phone.

J.D. rose stiffly to his feet and stood back to let Dru and Tate climb out first. Thanking the two young men for their prompt rescue, he stepped up onto the dock and watched as Ben uncleated the line he’d looped around a piling and tossed it to Sean. Then he braced himself for the older man’s condemnation. He didn’t doubt for a moment it would be swift in coming.

Sophia swooped down on Dru and Tate before the boat even had a chance to back out of its mooring. She wrapped her arms around her chicks and hugged them to her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, we’re fine,” Dru said. “J.D.’s hurt, though.”

“He pushed me under the water, Grandma,” Tate said excitedly, and J.D. had to marvel at the kid’s abil
ity to bounce back so quickly. “I thought he was gonna drown me, but he was getting me outta the way of the canoe when it came down. Then POW! It got him instead.”

Dru disengaged herself from Sophie’s embrace. “Uncle Ben, there are towels in my bag over there. Could you get them out?” She crossed over to J.D. “Turn around. I want to see your back.”

“Let it go,” he said brusquely. “It was a minor pop, nothing worth fussing over.” Even if it did throb like a bitch in heat.

It was no more than he deserved, anyhow. He rolled his shoulders guiltily, then had to bite back a groan at the pain.

Dru narrowed her eyes at him. She was chock-full of unspent adrenaline and in no mood for his stubbornness. He’d take care of her and Tate in a red-hot minute, but just let the tables be turned and it was “nothing worth fussing over.”

“You don’t seem to understand, Carver,” she informed him with a levelness she was darn proud of, considering she really wanted to yell
Listen up!
and shake some sense into him. “That wasn’t a request for permission. Turn around!”

To her amazement, he did. He looked less than happy about it and he muttered beneath his breath as if it were just one huge waste of time, but he actually humored her and presented her with his back.

She sucked in a shocked breath. The skin between his shoulder blades was scraped raw in an inverted V, and additional scrapes trailed down his back. The skin around the point of impact was badly swollen, and a
dense purple bruise had begun to bloom from it, spreading across his shoulder blades like the wings of a malignant butterfly.

“Oh,” she said in a tiny voice that not only wavered but was several notes higher than normal. She cleared her throat. “Uncle Ben! Come quick.”

She felt J.D. stiffen in resistance, but she didn’t give a damn. If anyone would know what to do about this, it was her uncle.

Ben looked at J.D.’s back and winced. “Ouch. Looks like it did a number on him, all right.”

“And this would have been Tate’s head if J.D. hadn’t thrown himself between him and the canoe.”

“It was my damn canoe that put him in that position in the first place,” J.D. growled.

Dru ignored that remark for the idiocy she felt it was. “Do something!” she demanded of her uncle.

He’d been gently pressing the skin around the worst of the abrasions, and he nodded. “Let’s go up to the house.” He squeezed J.D.’s shoulder. “I’m sure it hurts like crazy, but I don’t think we’re looking at any serious or permanent damage.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell Dru,” J.D. said and turned to face them. His posture was wary, his expression shuttered. “Look, I’ll just go home and wash it off in the shower.”

“No,” Ben said firmly. “You’ll come up to the house and let me clean and dress it properly.”

“Grandpa was a medic in Vietnam,” Tate informed J.D. proudly. “So you better do what he says.” He darted around to see J.D.’s back for himself. The sight of it froze him in his tracks. “Jeez.” He swallowed
hard, his expression miserable. “Aw, dang, J.D., I’m sorry.”

J.D. turned to look down at him in surprise. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about, bud. None of this was your fault.”

“Uh-huh. You told me to swim out of range, and I didn’t go far enough.”

“
No
,” J.D. insisted. “You were a trouper from beginning to end. If anyone’s to blame here, it’s me. I never should have had you in the canoe until I’d made sure I hadn’t missed something.”

“Oh,
please
,” Sophie said with brisk impatience. She scowled at J.D. “I’ve always regarded you as an intelligent man, so don’t go getting stupid on me now.”

She picked up a towel and wrapped it around Tate’s shoulders, tossed one to Dru, then walked up to J.D. with the last one. She offered it to him along with a stern stare.

Dru was surprised to see him shift beneath that drilling gaze as uneasily as Tate ever had whenever he’d found himself its unlucky recipient. But J.D. obviously hadn’t yet learned to duck and run for cover. Accepting the towel, he slung it around his neck, met her gaze head-on, and stubbornly maintained, “I still shouldn’t have risked their safety like that.”

“Don’t piss me off, boy,” Sophie began hotly, but Ben deftly inserted himself between her and J.D.

“You’re pushing some real hot buttons here, son,” he said, and herded the younger man toward the trail. “Soph is real big on personal accountability.”

“I’m
trying
to be accountable!”

“And you’re doing a damn fine job of it. But what
you’re not doing is allowing Dru and Tate to be responsible for their own actions.”

Drucilla, following them up the switchback, watched J.D. turn a blank expression on her uncle. His dark brows gathering over his nose, he demanded, “What are you talking about?”

“Hell, son, think about it. Both of them knew before they ever stepped foot in your canoe that it was an old wreck whose seaworthiness was iffy at best.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that,” J.D. agreed. “But they also knew I’m good at fixing things. They trusted me to fix the canoe so it
was
seaworthy.” He stopped and faced Ben. “And I thought I had. I swear to you, Ben, I went over that boat with a fine-tooth comb. I read everything on the subject I could get my hands on, and I could have sworn she was watertight.”

“So something slipped by you.” Ben shrugged and got them moving again. “It happens.”

“Not to me it doesn’t. Not usually.”

Dru held her breath, expecting to hear her uncle lambast J.D. for his arrogance.

Instead, he merely said with gentle sincerity, “I’m real sorry about your boat, son. I know you were crazy about it. But sometimes shit just happens. If it’s any solace, though, it’s a wooden craft, so it’s probably already surfaced. We can retrieve it when you’re feeling better.”

J.D.’s shoulders were stiff with repudiation. “What’s the point? Like you said, it was a wreck and I obviously didn’t know jack about fixing it.”

Ben opened his front door and stood back to let J.D. and then Dru precede him into the house. He directed a
level look at the younger man. “Still. Unless we pull it out, you’ll never know exactly what went wrong.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Then J.D. nodded. “You’re right.”

Ben led them to the kitchen, where he pulled out a chair from the table. “Here, sit down,” he directed J.D. “I’ll go grab my kit.”

J.D. swung the chair around, set his towel down on its seat, and straddled it. He folded his arms across the backrest and stared glumly into space.

Dru came up behind him and curled her hands over the rounded muscles where his shoulders met his arms. Careful to avoid contact with the growing bruises, she gently kneaded them. “I’m real sorry about your canoe, too, J.D.”

He craned around to see her. “Why the hell is everyone being so nice about this? I came
this
close to killing your kid!”

“No, darn it, you did not!” She sank to her heels next to him, her hands gripping his thigh. She gave his leg a fierce shake. “Tate and I weren’t
about
to be left on shore while you had all the fun of taking the canoe out on her maiden voyage. And Uncle Ben is absolutely right—we knew the risks involved. You don’t have to assume responsibility for the world here, John David. Let us be accountable for our own actions.”

J.D. got a wild look in his eyes, but before he could say a word, Ben returned with his first-aid kit. An instant later Tate burst into the house, with Sophie a mere second or two in his wake. For several moments then, confusion reigned and the noise level climbed as
Ben cleaned and bandaged J.D.’s back and the rest of them fussed over him.

It didn’t occur to Dru to find anything odd in that. This was what Lawrences did when a disaster happened to one of them. They rallied around and tried to make things better. And as far as Dru was concerned, J.D. had behaved in a truly heroic fashion.

But she could see that he didn’t view his actions in the same light, and she finally distanced herself a bit to give him a little room to breathe. She watched uneasily as the wild, hunted look in his eyes grew more pronounced and tension made his posture more and more ramrod-still.

She couldn’t tell exactly what ultimately spooked him. Uncle Ben had finished patching him up, Aunt Soph had supplied coffee, and all of them were actually giving him a little more room. Perhaps it was Tate, deep into his hero-worship mode, who pushed him over the edge. Or it might have been the admiring comment Sophie made.

Whatever the reason, J.D. abruptly shoved to his feet. “I’ve got to go,” he said, his eyes feral. “Um, I have to get out of these wet jeans.” His gaze darted left, then right, settling briefly on each of them. “I’m sorry, okay? I just…have to go.”

And with her heart down around her knees, Dru remained mute as he turned and strode from Ben and Sophie’s house.

J.D. slammed into his cabin, then simply stood in the middle of the living room, his chest heaving as he struggled to draw a decent breath.

He rammed all ten fingers through his hair and scraped it back from his forehead, elbows jutting forward as he stared blindly at the wall across the room. Christ. What were they
doing
to him?

He’d learned a long time ago neither to expect nor to want what he couldn’t have. A Lawrence had taught him that, and it was a lesson he’d taken to heart.

Now here was a whole new batch of Lawrences, tripping all over themselves to treat him as if he were some freaking prince—and he could see they weren’t mocking him, even though they must know damn well the sort of background that had spawned him.

Damn them. They were making him think he could
have
some of those things. Making him want what he’d been denied his entire life—and want it bad.

Fuck
.

Well, he wasn’t about to fall for that chump’s game—not this time. It hurt too much when it all fell apart, which—sooner or later—it inevitably did; that was simply the nature of the beast. So the Lawrences could just forget about getting him to lower his guard. He wasn’t going to expose a soft underbelly so they could stick it full of knives. He hadn’t survived this long by being stupid.

“J.D.?”

He jerked around. Dru stood on the other side of the screen door, staring back at him. If she’d worn any makeup today, it was no longer evident. She still had on her damp bathing suit and her hair hadn’t yet fully dried. The portion that had was flyaway, sticking up here, clumping there, and straggled over one eye.

And, damn her, he’d never seen a prettier, more welcome sight in his life. It scared the hell out of him.

“Go away, Drucilla.”

“No.” The screen door creaked as she opened it and stepped inside. “You’ve had a lousy day and are clearly upset, and I’m not leaving you like this.”

Anger coursed through him and he embraced it with his whole being. Was it asking so damn much to have one lousy afternoon to pull himself together? He stalked over to her and bent to thrust his face aggressively close. “Go home, dammit!”

She touched a soft hand to his jaw. “No.”

All his emotions pushed to the surface. Ignoring the discomfort in his back at the sudden move, he crowded her up against the arched support that divided the living room from the dining area and penned her in by slapping his hands flat on the wall on either side of her head. He lowered his face until they stood nose to nose. “What is it with you?” he demanded, furious with her for the way she kept pushing—and with himself for giving a damn. “You think just because I bounced you around my bed for one lousy night it gives you the right to come barging in where you’re not wanted?”

She stared up at him, all soft determination and gas-flame blue eyes. “Yes.”

Alarmed, he stiff-armed himself away. “Go home. I don’t have a goddam thing to offer you.”

“Oh, boy,” she breathed. “That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard. You have
so
much to offer.”

“I’ve got
this
.” He lowered his head once again to kiss her roughly, and it was all probing tongue and
hard dominance. Then he jerked back and glared down into her flushed face, his heart pounding, pounding, pounding against the wall of his chest. “I’ve got the Natural Wonder and a few moves guaranteed to make you scream,” he said harshly and ground his pelvis against her to demonstrate. “And that’s
all
I’ve got.”

“Then I guess that’s what I’ll take.”

Blood roared in his ears. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said, Drucilla? I’ve got nothing for you that hasn’t been offered to a dozen other women before you.”

She winced slightly but met his gaze steadily. “You’re not going to drive me away, John David.”

“Damn you,” he said hoarsely, and slammed his mouth down on hers. If she wouldn’t listen to reason, he’d just have to demonstrate once and for all that he wasn’t the man she thought he was.

He kissed her with a hot, rough lack of control that was long on frustrated passion and short on finesse.

But rather than be repulsed, she went up in flames. Her hands fisted in his hair to hold him to her, and she kissed him back every bit as roughly as he kissed her. The last of J.D.’s control hit the skids.

He couldn’t keep his mouth or his hands off her then, and between one moment and the next, without a clue to how he’d accomplished it, he had the top of her suit scrunched up beneath her armpits and the bottom stripped off and discarded. Without once removing his mouth from hers, J.D. reached between them to fumble with the button and zipper of his cutoff jeans. Once they were undone, the garment needed only the smallest push before its damp weight and gravity dragged it down around his ankles. He hadn’t bothered with
underwear and he sucked in a sharp breath when he felt Dru’s hands slide around his hips to grip the bare flesh of his buttocks. He lifted her against the wall and sheathed himself inside of her with one strong, smooth thrust.