Made For Each Other (3 page)

With the most cautious of movements
she slid out of bed into an awkward posture that left her sitting
rather than standing on the hardwood floor. Weakly she forced her
thigh muscles, and even they protested the pain, to lever her to
her feet. Gasping with exhaustion from her exertion, she began to
take slow, careful steps toward the living room. Her good shoulder
rested against the door’s frame as she renewed her strength and
surveyed the outer room.

A kitchenette took up the far end of
the living room, and a round dining table carved of Mexican pine
stood in an alcove created by a short bar with wooden stools before
it.

Beneath the living room’s one long
window that gave a magnificent view of the Sierra Blanca Peak there
was a long sofa with a beige-and-rust Indian print. And at one end
of the sofa she noticed a mounded blanket under which Nick had
undoubtedly spent the night, or part of it at least.

She crossed to the caliche fireplace
where a low fire burned and held out her hands to absorb the heat.
But she happened to glance up over the mantel and see the large
stag’s head with its magnificent rack of antlers—a prey, like
herself, that could not escape Nick Raffer’s skillful hunting. She
shivered at the comparison. For she did not doubt that, before
long, Nick would try to make love to her— something he would
undoubtedly enjoy doing in retribution for her disparaging columns
about him. And the worst was that she did not know if she really
had the desire to resist him.

Julie of the Scathing Tongue isolated
in a mountain cabin with Nicholas, the radical left-wing senator.
What sweet irony!

She turned her back on the mounted
trophy and crossed to the window. Outside, snow flurried over the
densely concentrated firs and pines. The relaxing warmth of the
fire and the peaceful panorama of spiraling trees and mulberry-blue
mountains, looking like something on a Christmas card, were
dangerously deceptive. She could only hope that Monday she could
get her car fixed and escape the presence of the man who tantalized
her so.

A freezing rush of air blasted through
the room, and she turned to see Nick standing in the doorway. Snow
glistened on the saddle- brown hair and the bright red nylon of his
him ting jacket. His eyes raked over her in a lazy, insolent
fashion that made her quiver inside with apprehension. “Miss me?”
he asked with a mocking smile.

Her mouth stretched flat. She wanted
to make some caustic retort, but she was hardly in the position to
antagonize him. Instead she pretended indifference. She shrugged
her shoulders, saying casually, “I just woke up.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed, as if he were
reassessing her. He set aside his rifle and tossed the hunting
jacket on a leather-upholstered easy chair. “I’m going to shower,”
he tossed over his shoulder, “then I’ll feed my guest. Are you
hungry enough to eat?” his muffled voice came from the bedroom. But
apparently he did not even wait for a reply, for seconds later the
hissing of the shower could be heard from the bathroom.

She found it impossible to
sit idle, for her thoughts turned constantly to the raskishly
handsome man in the next room, wondering just how safe she was from
him—and herself. With a sigh of disgust, she crossed to the
kitchen, hoping she could occupy herself in there and take her mind
off Nick. She found the coffee canister and began to measure out
the coffee into a battered tin pot.
Oh,
God, tell my muscles to shut-up their whining
.

By the time Nick emerged from the
bedroom, sheathed in clean western jeans and a blue plaid shirt
that hung open outside his pants, the pungent aroma of percolating
coffee and sizzling bacon that she had found in the refrigerator
filled the room. Hampered by the brace, she moved awkwardly as she
cracked the eggs over the bowl’s rim. But, if she had not known how
much Nick disliked her, she would have sworn she saw a look of
admiration in those shuttered eyes before he turned his attention
to the long sleeves he was rolling up, revealing forearms darkened
by fine brown hair.

While she set the round table, Nick
replenished the fire, so that the sweet scent of burning pinon
warmed the room when the two of them sat down to eat her breakfast.
But a few minutes later, as She reached for her coffee cup, Nick
put out his hand, palm up. A small pink pill glistened in the
center.

Her gaze went from the pill to the
brilliant blue eyes in the suntanned face. “I really feel fine,”
she lied, for already her shoulder was beginning to hurt from the
movement she had subjected it to while cooking.

Nick sighed with exasperation. “You
might feel better, but it’s only the effects of the muscle relaxer
I gave you early this morning. If you don’t take this pill, the
aches and bruises will rally to torment you again. In fact, by the
third day, by tomorrow, you’re going to feel as if a steamroller
had flattened you.”

“My agony would delight you, wouldn’t
it?” she charged. But she took the coffee cup and the
innocuous-looking pink pill he passed her.

“You deserve it, you’ll
admit.”

“No, I won’t admit it. The accident
wasn’t my—” But she broke off as Nick lifted one mocking brow.
Obediently she swallowed the pill, almost scalding her tongue on
the coffee. “Ugh!”

Nick smiled. “I hate to deprive you of
my company, but I need to butcher the deer meat hanging outside and
chop some more firewood. It looks like another blizzard is rolling
in.”

“Your leavetaking can’t be soon
enough,” She muttered to herself and began to clear away the
breakfast dishes. She barely got the dishes washed and put away
before the pill began to make her drowsy again. She sought out the
comfortable couch and snuggled in Nick’s blanket. She would only
take a short nap, she told herself.

But when next she awakened the
pine-paneled walls were tinted a warm pink by shafts of dying
sunlight. She had slept through the afternoon! Warily her gaze
reconnoitered the room, halting as it came upon Nick hunkered
before the fire, sharpening his knife.

As though he sensed her intent gaze,
he raised his dark head. His light blue eyes—as clear as New
Mexico’s skies—pinned her where she lay. They took in her tousled
cinnamon-red hair and the heavy-lidded eyes that watched him with
an unaware sleepy sensuality. Slowly, purposefully, he rose and
crossed the room to stand over her. One hand reached out to play
along her full cheekbone, and She trembled inside. “No, don’t,” she
whispered.

He squatted on his haunches, his face
even with hers. “I can’t resist,” he said quietly. For a brief
second his lips hovered over hers, and she shut her eyes against
the approaching kiss.

At twenty-five the small-town girl was
no novice to lovemaking. Though it might have shocked her mother,
she had petted in the back seat of cars once or twice, but the
high-school superjock had gotten no further than fondling her
blouse-covered breasts. Her virginal state was due not so much to
the principles her parents had instilled in her as to her boredom
with sex. If the gorgeous hunk who was the football cocaptain her
senior year could not move her with his wet, tongue-gouging kisses
that almost suffocated her, and if the dates she had in later years
left her feeling as if she had been mauled, her body inruded upon,
she felt no great desire to see what the sexual act itself was
like.

So when Nick merely brushed his warm
lips across hers, so lightly that she was not certain it had
actually happened, a thousand hummingbird wings fluttered in her
stomach in an unidentifiable response. Nick’s laughter was husky.
“So, the leprechaun doesn’t like my kisses ... or is there someone
else?”

Her tangled lashes swept open. “No—I
mean, yes.”

Nick raked a brow in amusement but
returned to the fireplace and resumed sharpening his knife. She
shuddered at her close brush with his passions. She watched the
deft way he drew the blade along the whetstone, and she shuddered
again, but this time at the thought of the savagery that seemed to
lie beneath his polished veneer.

“Why must you kill the helpless deer?”
she demanded, now knowing exactly how the beautiful animal must
feel at being stalked.

Nick’s blue eyes swung on her. “I kill
only for food, Julie. I never waste. There is the balance of
nature. If too many deer live through the next season, they must
either eat every corn crop meant for man’s own survival—or starve,
which is much more painful, and wasteful, than a quick death by a
bullet.”

She wanted to refute his logic, but
she guiltily acknowledged to herself that the love of fishing her
father had taught her would be just as damnable. She changed the
subject. “And polluting our earth with nuclear waste— how do you
defend that?”

Nick’s unrelenting gaze drilled into
her. “If you had taken any time to attend the open meetings of the
Senate Energy Commission before you so ignorantly castigated the
proposed nuclear-water bill in your column, you would have heard
the defense.”

He sheathed his knife with a sigh.
“Look, Julie, you and I would find something to argue about if it
was only the weather.” He stood and stretched, as if preparing for
bed, and She could not help but notice his magnificent
physique.

When he crossed to her, she struggled
to stand. She was still seething at his rebuke, and her caution had
temporarily ebbed. “Here, you can have your couch,” she said
haughtily.

Nick’s lips parted in a devilish
smile. “The bed in there is also mine.”

She looked up into that rugged
countenance. “All right,” she said, “I’ll take the
couch.”

Nick shrugged. “Have it your way. But
that blanket won’t keep you nearly warm enough.” His close scrutiny
took in the rumpled raspberry-colored sweater and the jeans that
hugged her butt. “Did you want to change into anything more
comfortable for bedtime?” he asked with mock concern.

She almost made the error of agreeing
until she realized he would have to help her. Her right hand came
to the V neck of her sweater as if defending herself from his
consuming gaze. She dropped her head, unable to meet his eyes. “No,
I—my clothes are all in my car.”

“I could lend you one of my clean
shirts,” he suggested, moving close to her so that she could feel
his breath rustling the wisps of hair about her temples. Yet his
thumbs remained hooked in the belt loops of his jeans, and she
realized that once again he was taunting her.

“No—what I have on will be fine.” Why
did she have to tremble so at his nearness? She could only reason
that her helplessness created by her injury aroused as much fear as
her apprehension at being confined with a man who not only disliked
her but who could, no doubt, make her surrender all control over
her emotions with a mere kiss. A man with Nick’s animal magnetism
she had not been prepared to encounter.

Nick reached for her now, and She
almost fell back on the couch in her effort to avoid his
tantalizing touch, but his hands caught her about the waist.
“Regardless of how much you might detest me, Julie, you’re going to
have to let me disrobe you.”

“No!” She said. She tried to twist out
of his embrace, but the rigid position of the halter that bound her
permitted only the barest movement above her waist.

As easily as he would lift a deer’s
carcass, one of Nick’s hands lowered to catch her behind the knees
so that she was cradled in his arms. Once in the darkened bedroom
he set her down. “Stand still,” he commanded, “or this will be much
more painful than it’s going to be as it is.”

“Nick,” she begged.
“Please—”

Nick grimaced. “I told you I’m not
interested in unwilling females.”

His voice dropped to a soft,
persuasive tone, as if he were gentling a horse, and She could
easily understand how he held sway over the senate floor with his
power of oration. “Your brace has to be tightened daily—it gives
with your body movements. And without tight support your collarbone
won’t heal properly.” At her doubtful look, he said, “It’s true—I
broke my collarbone skiing three winters back. And I know it’s a
nuisance to be so helpless—to feel so helpless—when you’re all
right otherwise.”

The thought of Nicholas Rafter having
a separate life outside that cabin, outside the capitol building,
intrigued her, and she said, “And who tightened your brace for
you—one of your overnight guests?”

Nick’s brows quirked. “Do I detect
jealousy?”

“No!” She stamped a foot, and pain
shot through her at the sudden movement.

“Glad to see you angry,” Nick said.
“It’ll get your mind off what I’m about to do to you.” Reaching for
her waist, he grasped the hem of her sweater and with the greatest
of caution he eased her right arm out. “Now bend over—there, that’s
it,” he said, his hand warm on her rib cage as he extracted her
head from the sweater’s neckband.

She blushed at the exposure of the
swell of her breasts above the simple white bra. Why hadn’t she
worn her one sexy, lacy bra? She tried unsuccessfully to hide
herself with her free hand, but Nick only laughed. “Your bra shows
less than any bikini top.”

Nevertheless his eyes raked over her
clea¬age before he drew the sleeve down over her left arm. He
circled around behind her, and her eyes closed at the deceptively
gentle touch of his hands on her back. As though he sensed her
fear, he whispered at her ear, “Relax, I’m not going to ravish
you.”