Lover in the Rough (10 page)

“For a smile like that,
chaton
, I’d take you anywhere on earth.”

His lips were as warm and gentle as sunlight. She sighed his name, letting her hands slide up his arms and neck as his tongue teased the corners of her smile. She savored the silky-rough textures of his hair between her fingers, his male scent and taste filling her senses. She felt the sudden tension of his body as she shared the kiss, her tongue shy and warm against his.

The phone rang. They ignored it.

The intercom buzzed.

“Damn!”
flared Reba. “What is this, a conspiracy? All I want is—” She stopped abruptly. What she wanted was more than an uninterrupted kiss. What she needed was more complex and enduring than a simple easing of the hunger that burned in her whenever Chance looked at her, touched her, held her.

Her hand slammed open the intercom switch. “What is it?” she demanded.

“Your five o’clock appointment has been waiting for fifteen minutes,” said Tim.

“Mrs. McCarey?” asked Reba, thinking quickly.

“Yes.”

“Give me a minute,” she said, switching off. She looked at Chance. “Mrs. McCarey flew in from Tahiti when she found out I had made my two choices from the collection. She’s eighty, one of Jeremy’s oldest friends.”

“Will she be here long?”

“Hours. And she’s not my last appointment.”

Chance swore in a language Reba was glad she couldn’t understand. It didn’t sound nearly so musical when he was angry. “I’ll pick you up here at noon tomorrow. Be ready to go camping.”

Reba mentally rearranged her schedule. “I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’ll be here with golden bells on.”

“Just bells?” he murmured, his voice very deep. “I’d like to see that.”

Suddenly she realized how easily he could have misunderstood when she had agreed to go camping with him. “I’ll go camping, but I’m not promising to . . .” Her voice faded.

“Make love with me?” Chance asked. His eyes searched hers, found confusion and shadows. His expression changed. “You’re as innocent as you seem, aren’t you?” he said softly. “What were you married to, a bloody ice cube?”

She stiffened. There was no pleasure for her in remembering her marriage.

“Just understand,” Chance continued softly, relentlessly, “that I’m not innocent.
I want you
. I’ll do everything I can to make you want me in the same way. But I’ll never force you,
chaton
,” he said, touching her lips with his fingertip. “You’ll need hiking boots and rough clothes. Do you have any?”

“No,” she admitted.

“I’ll take care of it,” he promised, kissing her with a gentle restraint that reassured her.

With reassurance came a shiver of heat and hunger that she associated with being touched by him. He was hard and gentle and very male. Each time he caressed her he taught her about her own body, her own needs, awakening something strong and wild deep inside her, something that reached hungrily toward him.

The buzzer rang. Several times.

“Is Tim always so bloody punctual?” rasped Chance when he finally lifted his mouth from hers. Then, before she could answer, he spun and left the room in three catlike strides. “Noon,” he said without looking back. “Ready or not.”

At noon, Reba sat behind her desk listening to the interminable reminiscences of a man who couldn’t believe that other people were less fascinated by his memories than he was. She looked at her watch frequently, hoping that the man would take a hint. It was like hinting to a boulder that it should get up and do a jig.

Chance walked in precisely at noon. “Ready?” he asked, ignoring the man sitting across from Reba’s desk.

She looked at Chance’s desert shirt and jeans, his hiking boots laced to his knees, the battered western hat losing its battle to control the thick, curling pelt of his hair. She wanted nothing more than to be able to stand up and walk out of the room with him.

“Not quite,” she said, nodding toward the man who was waiting impatiently to finish a mumbling recital of his fiftieth birthday party.

“What time is it?” said Chance to the man.

Reba’s client looked at a thick silver watch encrusted with Arizona turquoise. “Twelve and seventeen seconds.”

“Right,” said Chance. He walked around the desk, lifted Reba out of her chair and said to the startled client, “I told Reba I’d pick her up at noon. I’m a man of my word.”

Chance strode out of the office with Reba laughing in his arms. Tim gave them a startled look, flashed the thumbs-up sign and opened the front door.

“Have a nice trip,” said Tim, bowing like a doorman at a Spanish hotel. Then, to Reba, “I’ll take care of the old boor,” he whispered. “Don’t hurry back.”

Reba expected to be put down once they left the Objet d’Art behind. Chance never paused when he reached the sidewalk. People stared at them for a moment, then smiled and looked around for the cameras and production crew. For every odd thing that happened on Rodeo Drive, the immediate explanation was that someone was shooting on location.

“You can put me down now,” said Reba, laughter still rippling in her voice.

Chance kept walking.

Impulsively she took off his hat and ruffled his hair. “Did you see the look on Mr. J. T. Lavington-Smythe’s face? Wonderful! God, I’ve wanted to do something like that for years. He always takes up twice the time allotted to him. Every time I have to listen to him, I wonder if boredom isn’t one of the tortures of the damned.”

“Remind me to ask the devil the next time I’m in Venezuela.”

“Does he live there?”

“When he’s not mining diamonds in Brazil.”

Reba watched Chance’s profile for a moment, enjoying its uncompromisingly masculine lines. “There’s only one thing wrong with being carried this way.”

“Afraid of heights?” he suggested, smiling.

“No,” she said, touching his mouth lightly with her fingertips. “I can’t thank you properly for rescuing me.”

She was shifted in his arms so suddenly that she didn’t have time to do more than gasp. His lips covered hers in a hard kiss that showed how much of himself he had held in restraint beneath his smile. After the first instant of surprise, she returned his kiss with the hunger that hadn’t slept since he had awakened it in the silence and shadows of Death Valley.

“We’re stopping traffic,” Chance murmured as he nipped delicately at her ear, enjoying the shiver of her response.

“They’re just waiting for the director to yell ‘Cut!’ and demand a retake,” she said a bit breathlessly.

“I’d hate to disappoint them,” he said, taking her lips again, exploring her mouth with slow movements of his tongue. After a time he lifted his head and smiled into her flushed face. “I never knew being an actor was so much fun.”

Shaking her head, she looked at him with a mixture of humor and seriousness. “What am I going to do with you? You’re definitely not . . . not . . .”

“Housebroken?” he suggested with a rakish smile.

Reba shook her head again, laughing softly.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her, setting off for a nearby parking lot, “you won’t notice it as much when we’re camping.”

Chance set Reba down next to a Toyota Land Cruiser. The dusty blue vehicle had a winch on the front, spare gas and water cans bolted to the back and camping gear behind the front seat. A tough, flexible net held the cargo firmly in place.

“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather take my car?” asked Reba, looking doubtfully at the Toyota’s spartan interior and unforgiving suspension. “It would be more comfortable.”

“On the freeway, yes,” said Chance, unlocking the door for her. “On the mine road your car would be a disaster. Rocks, ruts, washouts and slides.”

“How do you know?” she said, exasperated by his casual dismissal of her car.

Chance froze for a split instant, then smoothly continued handing Reba into the car. “Logic. Abandoned mine, abandoned road. If you like, though, you can follow me down in your BMW. I’ll be able to pull you out of any trouble you can drive that low-slung car into.”

“No thanks,” Reba said, shuddering as she thought of the damage that could be done to her car by rocks tearing through the undercarriage. “I’ll take your word for it. You’re the rough-country expert.”

Chance took her chin in his hand, holding her still for a moment. “Remember that. If I tell you to do something, don’t argue. Just do it. There isn’t always time to explain.”

His eyes were pale green, intent, measuring her reaction to his words. He waited without impatience, knowing that she was not accustomed to taking orders.

“You know something that I don’t,” she said finally.

Chance’s eyes narrowed until they were almost closed. The fingers on her chin tightened painfully, then relaxed. “What do you mean?” he asked in a flat voice.

“There’s something that you aren’t telling me. You’re so sure that the mine or something about it is dangerous.”

Chance was very still for a long moment. “Abandoned mines are always dangerous.”

Reba said nothing, waiting for him to continue, waiting as he had waited. He shut her door, walked around the Toyota, and climbed into the driver’s seat.

“I never go into things blind,” Chance said after a moment. “I’ve been to the China Queen. The road is bloody awful but I expected that. What I didn’t expect was to find groups of men moving through the back country. A few hours spent in the local bars listening to gossip told me why. A lot of marijuana is either grown or shipped through the back country. The men doing it aren’t happy to be seen.

“Then,” continued Chance, “there are the illegal aliens up from Mexico. They’re working the fields and avocado groves, when there’s work. When there isn’t, they go into the rough country and camp because they don’t have much money and they’re afraid to be seen by anyone. They’re young and bored. They spend a lot of time drinking, and when they fight they use knives. Some of the local residents have taken to carrying guns whenever they go out to their groves.” Chance gave Reba a long look. “You really didn’t know any of this, did you?”

Wordlessly, she shook her head.

“A lot of the world is like that,” he said. “If it doesn’t happen in a city, it just doesn’t happen so far as most people are concerned. Well, we’re going out of the city, Reba. If you still want to.”

“Is it dangerous? I mean, really dangerous?”

Chance smiled slightly. “No, just unpredictable enough to be interesting. I wouldn’t take you into a situation I thought was really dangerous. It won’t be as safe and civilized as taking a walk down Rodeo Drive, though.”

“Ha! I’ll match you drug dealer for drug dealer, Mr. Walker.”

He laughed. “City wise and country foolish, is that it?”

“Definitely. I gave up believing in the tooth fairy long ago,” she added, smiling and quite serious. “I trust your judgment, Chance. If you think it’s safe, I’ll go.”

“There’s no such thing as one hundred percent safe, not even locked in your own home.”

“Are you saying that you don’t want me to go?” she asked.

“No. I’m saying that the chance of having a smash-up on these madhouse freeways is always there, but you drive on them anyway.”

Reba frowned. “Of course. You do everything you can to reduce the risks, then you just keep going. There’s not much else you can do. Besides, the odds of something going wrong just aren’t that high.”

“It’s the same way in rough country. You need experience to assess the odds, though.”

“That’s where you come in.”

“Right.”

“And?”

“I’d rather camp in rough country than drive on a freeway at rush hour,” said Chance wryly.

“Then let’s go camping.”

The two-lane highway wound beyond Fallbrook’s elegant country club homes and remodeled turn-of-the-century cottages. Golf courses and horse corrals gave way to steep granite hills covered with thick chaparral. Wild grass heavy with seeds swayed in the April wind. In a few more weeks the land would be a tawny brown, cured by the hot southern California sun. Then would come a time of stillness and heat reflecting off granite hillsides, a time when only chaparral survived, whispering its brittle secrets into the searing afternoons.

But this day was sweet and warm, the green-and-granite springtime that was unique to the Pala country. Avocado trees grew on either side of the road, groves cut into the rocky hillsides with terraces so narrow and steep it seemed impossible that anything but weeds could grow there. Yet avocado trees loved the stony adversity of the land. In harvest season, the weight of the deep green fruit bent branches to the ground.

Chance’s eyes ceaselessly measured the land, noting small movements and changing shadows. He pointed them out to Reba: the hawks poised hungrily on a fencepost or riding the wind; the ground squirrels darting across open ground, then freezing to conceal themselves from predators that depended on movement to reveal their prey; vultures high up, floating on transparent winds, waiting for time and circumstance to furnish a meal; and a doe with two fawns, watching quietly from the cover of chaparral at the side of the road.

Reba’s pleasure in the trip diminished considerably as soon as Chance turned off the highway onto the dirt road that went to the mine. The hills were steeper and higher here, blending imperceptibly into true mountains. The road itself was little more than parallel goat tracks winding and doubling back, struggling over granite ridges and then plunging into canyons thick with boulders and brush. Washouts, rocks, holes, and landslides were the rule rather than the exception. If it hadn’t been for occasional glimpses of ruts twisting over the land ahead of them, Reba would have sworn that there was no way for a vehicle to get through.

And even with the ruts as proof, she had her doubts.

Chance drove the appalling nonroad with the same ease and confidence she had displayed on the crowded freeway. After a time, Reba unclenched her hands and relaxed, trusting his skill as he had trusted hers. She found she enjoyed watching him, his concentration and quick reflexes, the strength of muscles moving smoothly beneath his tanned skin as he held the laboring Toyota on the rough track.

“There’s a tricky patch around the bend,” said Chance without looking up from the road. “Want to walk it?”