Fatal Wild Child (2 page)

Gabrielle realized she was terrified. If she couldn't hold her breath long enough to reach the surface, or swim strongly enough to reach the bank, or find warmth and shelter once she got out of the water, she was going to die. That was the ugly truth. She had maybe fifteen seconds to pull herself together and do this.

She looked around the car. She'd faced several crises in her life. More than most twenty-eight year olds, she guessed. Why did they always happen when she was alone?

That was when the window next to her imploded and icy river water washed over her. She just had time to draw a deep lungful of cold air, then the water pushed her back against the other side of the car. She struggled against it, knowing she had to reach the open window. The water was so cold, she had to fight not to gasp at the chill of it and let go of her breath.

A hand was around her wrist, pulling. She opened her eyes and saw a pair of very blue ones staring at her. He had one hand on the window frame and was drawing her out of the car.

Gabrielle let him, knowing he would help her to the surface, that she didn't have to do this alone after all. She kicked for the surface. The cold was immense and her jeans were weighing her down. When her head popped above the surface of the fast running water, the air actually felt warm. She gasped.

The man with the fierce blue eyes and black hair was right next to her, his hand still on her wrist. "Swim for the bank," he told her, his voice sharp and commanding. "Hurry."

There was no question this time whether she would swim, even though the cold was sapping all her energy. She pushed for the bank and the white mounds of snow there. About three feet from the edge she felt rocks beneath her hands and knees as the water grew shallower.

The man's hands were around her waist, lifting her. Then under her knees. She was scooped up, steaming water. She was already shivering.

"Wh...where?" It was all she could manage to speak. Her teeth were chattering too badly.

"My truck." He was crossing the rocks nimbly despite carrying her and she could feel his body working against her hip and thigh and shoulder. For the first time she realized that what she could see of him was naked. It didn't alarm her. She had seen plenty of naked men in her life and right now, it seemed like a lesser concern. With this man, she was sure there was a reason for it beyond the obvious.

He was putting her on the ground. On her feet. "Can you stand?"

"Yes," she said uncertainly. She kept her hands on his wide, tanned shoulders. Where had he been at this time of year to get such a tan?

She shuddered violently and he leaned her back against the side of the Chevy truck they were standing next to. There deep teal-colored scratches along the sides of it.

He was tugging at her jeans. Undoing them. "We have to get you out of your wet clothes," he said. "You'll freeze, otherwise."

She registered the fact that he was wearing boxers and nothing else. It coupled up with the scratch marks on the side of the truck. "You pushed my car into the river," she said, as he pulled her sweater up over her head and threw it into the back of the truck.

His painted blue eyes locked with hers for a moment and she saw implacable will behind them. Then it was gone, and he was bending to deal with her boots. "Better than trying to take the curve at the bottom of this stretch, believe me."

But she was caught by the broad expanse of his back as he worked at the zipper of her boot. There was an ugly red splash mark, low down where his ribs began, over his kidneys. It looked like a recent wound, still healing.

Her bare foot was placed on raw rock and her other boot worked free. Then her jeans and panties were stripped from her without ceremony or comment. She was given no chance to even be coy about it. She gasped as the sodden garments were dropped into the truck with her sweater, and looked up at him as he reached around her and unfastened her bra.

"You want to die because of false modesty?" he murmured, and pulled the lace cups away and dropped them on top of her other clothes.

Naked, her hair running rivulets down her back, she shivered and held her arms against her chest. "Now what?"

But he was already reaching past her into the truck. He withdrew a tee-shirt, slipped it over her head and pushed her arms into it and held up her hair in one hand. "Don't let your hair drip on it," he said. "Here, hold it for a moment."

She held the sopping bundle of locks he'd gathered up and away from the cotton, while he tugged the hem down over her hips. The tee-shirt had to be his. It was still warm from a recent body. Scent stole into her nostrils, something spicy and masculine.

The hem came to mid-thigh on her.

"Hold out your arm," he said.

She held out her free arm and he slid a heavy winter coat over it.

"Drop your hair over the coat," he told her, "and slide your other arm in the sleeve."

She pushed her arm into the other sleeve and was enveloped in his scent completely. The coat covered her from knees to chin. As he zipped it up, she shivered—perhaps for the last time, she thought. Warmth surrounded her. The coat was still hot from his body.

He picked her up, literally lifting her with his hands under her arms. He plopped her onto the passenger seat of the truck. He picked up her feet and chafed them with his hands, warming and drying them. "Can you feel your feet? Can you feel what I'm doing to them?"

"Yes."

He wriggled her toes with his fingers, one at a time. She could feel all of them. He was testing for frostbite, for numbness. Finally, satisfied, he slid thick socks over her feet. "I'll get the heater going. Keep your feet up against the air flow. Your hands, too." He turned her to face the windscreen.

"What's your name?" she asked.

His eyes widened, as if he were surprised. "Cap—" He grimaced, the expression pulling the corners of his mouth down. "Seth. Seth O'Connor."

"Thank you, Seth O'Connor."

He nodded. "I'm going to take you back to my cabin. It's closer than Jasper by forty minutes and you have to get warm and dry. And you probably don't want to arrive back in Jasper looking the way you do."

He shut the door, rounded the nose of the truck and leaned in to turn on the motor and get the heater running. He picked up jeans, boots and a sweater from the seat beside her and shut the door again, as warmth blasted out from the vents in the console, washing over her in welcome waves.

Gabrielle pushed her sock-covered feet up against the floor vents and watched as Seth O'Connor moved to the front of the truck again. He bent, stripping the wet boxers, she assumed, and donning the jeans and boots. She saw the ugly red scar on his back and the well-muscled, tanned shoulders and wondered again about Seth O'Connor. He wore no dog tags, but hadn't he been about to introduce himself as "Captain"?

He climbed into the truck, his long legs covered in denim and his torso covered by a green sweater that seemed to make his eyes even bluer by comparison. "Doing okay?" he asked.

"Better than," she said honestly. "You saved my life."

He shook his head. "You did a fair portion of that yourself. I followed you for about two miles before I found a way to get you off the road. You did a damned good job of staying alive." He put the truck into gear and steered it back onto the highway.

Gabrielle found her heart beating harder again. She had a feeling that Seth O'Connor knew a lot about staying alive and that his quiet "damn good job" was high praise indeed. It warmed her in a way that Hollywood's empty compliments and fulsome endearments never had.

She studied his profile as he drove with a non-flashy style, handling the old truck with a competence that was reassuring. He'd managed to overtake the Mustang on curves that scared most tourists, at a speed that had probably tested this truck to the limits. For a long while, the silence stretched between them, warm and comforting. She let it stay that way, enjoying the warmth. Then, knowing she had to deal with it, she sighed and asked the question.

"You never asked me for my name," she said.

He glanced at her, the blue eyes raking her up and down in one sizzling glance.

"No," he agreed.

"Then you recognized me," she said, feeling a bone-sapping weariness that had nothing to do with the immersion into the icy water, or the harrowing loss of brakes in mountainous terrain.

"You're a household name, Gabrielle Sherborne. You're going to get upset because people recognize you?" His tone was neutral, possible even uninterested.

She swallowed. "Not recognized, no. But boast about the fact that they got to strip me naked. That's something the tabloids would pay a lot to know about, Seth O'Connor."

"Don't read 'em," he said easily. He turned the truck off the highway onto a well-ploughed road, overhung with old trees with gnarled boughs, bare now, and holding up thick layers of snow.

Ahead, there was a clearing with a big, well-founded cabin nestled under the trees at the back of it. The cabin had a wide verandah, window boxes, a big river stone chimney and a solid lean-to that looked like it served as both a garage and wood store. A gangly Irish red setter was bouncing around at the approach of the truck, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth.

"You don't have to read them," she said. "They'll pay you anyway."

"I already have a job and they pay me more than enough to live on." He halted the truck with a sharp jab on the brakes, throwing her forward against the seatbelt. It should have been warning enough, she knew. She opened the door, unlatched the belt and climbed down and discovered her mistake. She stepped into snow and almost immediately felt the cold bite into her socked feet.

Seth rounded the truck. "Goddam, couldn't you wait?"

"You don't have to look so pleased about it," she shot back. "They're your socks."

He scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes and she drew in a breath, shocked beyond words. The recent emergency aside, people didn't touch her. Not without negotiation and permission. It wasn't done. It tended to make security people unhappy, media people far too happy and speculative and rumors rife. She had put a general ban on people touching her even casually years ago. She had learned all the signals and motions that squashed even the most touch-happy people's tendencies to reach out.

She clutched at Seth's back, staring at the Irish setter trotting happily after him, as Seth marched up the steps to the cabin, and wondered if Seth was just one of those people who completely lacked any sensitivity and rode roughshod over other's feelings.

The inside of the cabin was warm and comfortable, surprisingly neat and tidy, and not nearly as rustic as she had been expecting for a cabin on the edges of the national park. She struggled to get down, but he was still moving.

"Hey, I've been using my own feet since I was three," she protested, pummeling her fist into his back.

He dumped her onto a bed and she landed with an 'oomph!' and brushed her hair out of her eyes, after sliding the oversized sleeve of the coat down her arm. She looked around. The bedroom was probably his, she reasoned. There was a door to the right that revealed an en suite.

Seth O'Connor stood at the side of the bed, his arms crossed over the thick chest. A furrow dug between his brows. "Take a shower, get warm," he said, his voice rumbling in his chest. "While you're there, think about who you want to contact first. I have a land line here, so you don't have to use a cell phone. There's towels in the cabinet next to the shower. And I'll find fresh clothes you can put on while you're in there. Something closer to your size."

He turned to go.

"Seth."

He looked over his shoulder, the single blue eye all she could see of his face.

She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I've spent three years trying to off-load some of the crap I landed myself in over the years. This...felt like I was in it all over again. I prejudged you and I was wrong."

"You did, and you were," he said evenly. "Not everyone wants to use you, Gabrielle. Some people are actually human beings."

"I'll only believe that when I see them bleed," she shot back. "Some of the people I deal with don't even have a pulse."

Seth turned to the door, gripped the handle. He didn't look at her when he said softly, "I've bled plenty." He shut it quietly.

Chapter Two

Seth let her make the call she was dreading in complete privacy. Perhaps he sensed the fear building in her. He stepped outside to take care of something in the outbuildings, he said.

She was dressed in a pair of jeans that were only three sizes too large and had to be rolled up at the hems by four inches and belted in at the waist by six. She wore a well-washed and faded tee-shirt and fleece shirt over that, also rolled at the sleeves. She felt like a six year-old in her daddy's clothes, except she had never once dressed up in Cameron Mackenzie Sherborne III's Italian designer handmade suits. He'd have flayed her alive if she had dared.

Gabrielle dialed her father's cabin's direct line, hoping he was in it. She didn't want to use his cell phone number if she didn't have to.

Thankfully, Darlene, his executive associate, picked up. "Darlene, it's Gabrielle. I need to speak to Dad. Is he there? It's urgent. I mean urgent."