Mismatch (10 page)

His control slipping away from him like a rope through wet hands, Wade rolled Bronwynn to her back and pinned her there with his own weight. Her silky legs ran up and down along his hair-roughened ones. Her hips lifted against his, cushioning his manhood in her nest of flame curls. The tips of her small round breasts burrowed through his chest hair to tease him. Even though they were in the shade of the tree they’d climbed, he felt heat searing his skin, as if the fever of passion would consume him body and soul.

His hand skimmed down her side, over her slender hip to a length of creamy thigh that took his breath away, returning to cup her breast and lift it to his mouth. As he teased her nipple with his teeth, he slid his hand down across her flat belly. His fingers combed through the thicket of curls to the warm, moist secrets that lay beyond. As she murmured his name, her hand closed over his, guiding him, showing him what she liked, arousing him further, until the final frayed threads of control eluded his grasp.

With a deep sound of masculine need rumbling low in his chest, Wade kneed Bronwynn’s thighs apart, lifted her hips to his, and plunged into her, deep and hard. Afraid he might have hurt her, he froze as her nails dug into his back, but the look on her face was exultant. Slowly he withdrew and repeated the process again and again.

Bronwynn let the feelings swamp her—joy, rightness, pleasure beyond anything she’d ever known. The sensations washed over her then spiraled down into a whirlpool that tightened and intensified deep in the most feminine part of her, in the hot, satiny sheath Wade had filled with the most masculine part of him. She pulled him down and wrapped her arms around him as he moved in and out of her, and held on when the waves of ecstasy hit them both.

Long minutes later, Wade raised his head slowly to gaze down at Bronwynn. His thick, tawny hair finally had decided to carry out its threat to be unruly. It tumbled across his forehead, lending a roguish quality to his clean-cut good looks. The combination made Bronwynn’s heart thud.

“You were right,” he whispered, combing a twig out of her brilliant red hair with his fingers. “This is a good place to get smoochy.”

As if to prove his point, a breeze snuck under the tree and cooled the sweat on his back. Not quite capable of speech yet, Bronwynn only smiled lazily. She felt boneless and wonderful. Wade rolled off her, and they stretched out side by side, naked in the grass, recovering from the passion that had overwhelmed them both. They were silent, each unknowingly contemplating the same question. Why?

Why this woman? he asked himself. This woman with the mismatched cat eyes, who could so easily annoy and exasperate him. Why had she been the one to take him someplace no other woman ever had? He’d had his share of women, had thought himself a good lover. He’d pleased and been pleased, but he had never experienced what he’d just shared with Bronwynn. It hadn’t been merely a satisfying physical release. It had been much more. Why?

Why this man? she asked herself. This man who was so unlike her. Why had he been able to make her feel something the man she’d nearly married never had? She was a woman who knew herself very well and was comfortable with herself. But she didn’t have the answer to her question, and she wondered why she felt as if it were a secret.

Wade levered himself up to a sitting position and reached for his shorts. He smiled softly. “It would be too easy to stay here all day.” He stood up and tugged the snug white briefs into place. “We’ve got work to finish, and I’ve got to tackle that report.”

Bronwynn scowled at him, before and after she had tugged her T-shirt over her head. “Crack that whip. An hour’s relaxation on vacation. How could we have been so frivolous?”

Pulling her into his arms, he smacked her bare bottom playfully. “I wouldn’t call what we’ve been doing relaxing. Frankly, you wore me out.”

“Is that a fact?” Bronwynn nibbled at his lower lip between giggles. Darn the man, he’d discovered every ticklish spot she had. “If you’d quit smoking, you’d have enough energy left to spend another hour under this tree.”

“I’ve never heard a better incentive to quit in my life.” He caught her hands as she started to drag his shorts back down. “Behave yourself. We can’t spend the entire afternoon on smoochy pursuits.”

“I don’t see why not.” She pouted a little as she pulled her jeans on, her look gaining Wade’s full attention as he zipped up his fly.

He wagged a finger at her. “Don’t give me that look. I know that look, Bronwynn.”

“What look?” she asked, letting her full lower lip droop just a bit more.

“That look.” Wade set his chin at a stubborn angle and looked as if he were ready to start pacing. “I’m not giving in. I mean it.”

She gave a little sigh and tried batting her eyelashes at him, hoping she didn’t look as if she’d just lost a contact lens. She’d never been much on coy seduction. She took a step toward him. He took a step back.

“You think I’m a pushover,” Wade said, his fingers lingering on his zipper. “I’m not.”

“No,” she said in her most disappointed tone. “I guess you’re not.”

“No, I’m no pushover.” He scowled at her for a minute longer. Her expression made him feel as if he’d cast her out of her home into a cold wet rain. Wade yanked his zipper down with one hand and pulled Bronwynn to him with the other. “Just remember that.”

“I will,” she said, smiling against his lips.

When they finally made it out from under the tree, the afternoon was half-gone. Wade grumbled good-naturedly as they walked hand in hand around the side of the house to the patio. Spending the day making love with Bronwynn on the cool grass in the shade of a tree hadn’t exactly been torture. He did, however, intend to get to the report Murphy had sent up.

The report Bronwynn’s sheep was eating the final pages of.

Muffin munched contentedly on the proposed defense budget, the chewed-off end of her tether dragging on the ground. She turned and bleated a greeting to Wade and her mistress. Tucker sat on one of the chairs at the table, trying to appear innocent.

Wade glared at the sheep. “How would you like to change her name to Leg of Lamb?”

Bronwynn pressed her fingertips to her lips and tried rather unsuccessfully not to laugh. She picked up the sheep’s rope and looked the animal in the eye. “Muffin, you naughty girl.”

“Scolding is usually more effective if you don’t giggle between each word,” Wade said dryly.

“I’m sorry.” She giggled, then bit it back. “We’re sorry. Really.”

Hands on his hips, Wade glanced away. He should have been furious. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to have the report delivered, now a sheep had eaten it. He tried to hold back the bubble of laughter, but it wasn’t possible. He glanced at Bronwynn and let it go, shaking his head.

“I guess the Defense Department will still be there when I get back.”

SEVEN

W
ADE CAST A
dubious look at the contraption Bronwynn cradled in her arms. “Are you sure this is necessary? Couldn’t you just call a game warden?”

Bronwynn stared purposefully at the weathered old carriage house that was situated some thirty or forty yards behind the main house. Neglect of the grounds had allowed the woods to creep in behind the carriage house, but she intended to remedy the situation as soon as she got around to figuring out how to run a chain saw.

“It’s necessary and it’s personal. Those little bandits ripped a hole in my new screen door and made off with a whole box of glazed doughnuts and a bag of Double Stuff Oreos.”

“Oooh.” Wade narrowed his eyes and planted his hands on his hips. “Them’s fightin’ words.”

Bronwynn made a face and giggled at him. It always tickled her to hear Wade laugh, to see the lines of strain and worry vanish from his face. More than a week had passed since they’d become lovers, and she was more determined than ever to see to it he got the break from work he needed so badly.

She had become a regular magician when it came to making his cigarettes disappear. She was subtle about it, sneaking four or five away here and there, then keeping Wade too distracted to notice. Bronwynn figured he’d cut down by a third at least. She was hoping he would cut down even more on his own once she gave him her little gift—a case of Pierson’s sugarless gum.

Antacid tablets were becoming a rare sight as well. The bonus was that she was learning how to cook while making sure Wade got at least two decent meals a day. And, since she had offered to do his grocery shopping along with her own, his kitchen was stocked with healthy foods, while items such as coffee and frozen Mexican dinners were “accidentally” forgotten.

If he realized he was being cleverly manipulated toward good health, Wade didn’t let on. Of course, he’d been too busy insisting on helping with her projects around the house. Bronwynn was perfectly capable of tackling most of the jobs herself, with the help of a how-to book she’d picked up at Hank’s Hardware, but Wade, in his typical grumbling fashion, always managed to “give in” and help her. By letting him help her, she actually was helping Wade. He couldn’t very well stick his nose in a report on U.S. involvement in Central America if he was up to his elbows in paint stripper.

Now he had begrudgingly volunteered to help her capture her resident marauders—a pair of young raccoons that had holed up in the carriage house.

“We have to get them out of here,” she said. “It’s not just a matter of food. It’s a matter of my Mercedes. I want to clean this shed out and use it as a garage. I like animals, but not enough to give them my car. Besides, they’ll probably be happier in the woods, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” Wade said straight-facedly. “I know I’d be happier having to forage for grubs and raw fish than I would be eating free junk food.”

Bronwynn frowned and hefted the cage into a more comfortable position in her arms. “Anyway, Wizzer will know what to do with them.”

“Make a coat? A pair of caps?” Wade grinned at her expression. He enjoyed teasing her. It had been eons since he’d known a woman he would have even thought of teasing. Bronwynn was a dose of fun he hadn’t realized he’d needed. He had thought everything was the way he wanted it—until he’d found Bronwynn. “Who is this Wizzer guy anyway?”

“I told you, he’s a hermit I met while I was taking a walk in the woods the other day.”

“Oh, yeah.” He wrinkled his nose. “The one who gave you that god-awful insect repellent.”

“The repellent happens to be made of all natural ingredients,” she informed him.

Wade snorted. “So is horse manure.”

With a disgusted look, she heaved the cage into Wade’s arms and started for the door of the carriage house. She shot him a considering glance over her shoulder. “It’ll do you some good to meet Wizzer.”

It took the better part of three hours to cage the raccoons. They set the trap, baited with bread and blueberry jam, on top of Uncle Duncan’s old DeSoto, next to a row of shelves Bronwynn had seen the creatures scurrying along. Then they hid in the musty shadows and waited, passing the time necking. At long last, the raccoons gave in to temptation and the cage door closed behind them.

Bronwynn and Wade each grabbed one of the handles on the side of the trap and, with their furry prisoners hissing and growling between them, headed into the woods on an old overgrown trail.

“I had a coonskin cap when I was a kid,” Wade reminisced. He took in the lush green scenery as they walked, breathing in the rich, damp scents. From the corner of his eye he saw a deer duck back into thicker foliage. “It got mange or something. My mom made me throw it out.”

Bronwynn looked down at the raccoons. While one was trying to unfasten the cage door with his spindly little fingers, the other stared up at her with curious, bright black eyes shining behind his mask. His button nose twitched at her as he poked it between the wires of the trap. He sat back on his haunches and let out a shrill whinny. He was adorable. How could anyone think of making a cap out of him, she wondered.

“Bronwynn,” Wade said in a warning tone. “You’re getting that look. Stop it. You can’t keep coons as pets; they’re wild.”

“I know. I was just thinking how glad I am Fess Parker is selling real estate now instead of encouraging people to wear wildlife on their heads.” One coon—Bronwynn had already started thinking of them as Bob and Ray—offered the other a piece of the bread and jam that had been their undoing. Her heart twisted. “Aren’t they sweet?”

“They stink, honey. Use the olfactory system God gave you.”

The look on her face as she stared down at the little animals was almost enough to make him turn around and head back to Foxfire. Next she’d have him building her a little raccoon chalet. Why did he have to be such a soft touch? The Pillsbury Doughboy was tougher than he was. He tried to concentrate on an image of raccoons tearing up the upholstery of her gorgeous red Mercedes. “They belong in the wild, sweetheart.”

“Yeah, that’s what Wizzer said.” She brightened as she caught sight of a grizzled head some distance down the path as strains of an old Beach Boys tune reached her ears. “There he is now.”

Wade stopped in his tracks and stared at the wild-looking old coot, then turned to Bronwynn, incredulous. “You thought I was a serial killer when we met, but you made friends with him? Jeez, Bronwynn. He looks like something out of one of those teenage horror movies.”

Suddenly he was angry with her for having gone walking in the woods alone. Anything could have happened to her. Forgetting about the way she had crowned him with the soda cans the first night, he decided her innate naïveté prevented her from thinking about things such as killer bears and weird old geezers who did people in and made lamp shades out of them. His stomach knotted at the thought of anything happening to Bronwynn. Hadn’t he known all along she needed a keeper?

“Don’t go spastic on me, Wade. Wizzer’s okay.” She waved a greeting. “Hi, Wizzer!”

“Red!” the old man called in a booming voice, two thousand dollars’ worth of capped teeth flashing white in the nest of his salt-and-pepper beard.

“He calls me Red,” Bronwynn said in an aside to Wade. She shot him a warning look. “Don’t get any ideas about that, Grayson.”

Wade was too caught up in staring at Wizzer. Since when did hermits cap their teeth? he asked himself. The older man might have been sixty, he might have been seventy, but he didn’t top six feet, and he was built like a fireplug. A wild cloud of hair swirled around his head and onto his shoulders. It would have been difficult to say where the hair ended and the beard began. A Princeton T-shirt spanned his thick chest and stretched over shoulders that were layered with the kind of muscle that came from swinging an axe. He wore a red plaid kilt and argyle wool knee socks. When they set down the coon cage, he engulfed Bronwynn in an exuberant bear hug.

“Wizzer, this is my friend, Wade Grayson,” Bronwynn said when he let her go and she could breathe again. “Wade, meet Wizzer Bralower.”

Wade’s jaw dropped. “Wizzer—
Alastair
Bralower? The Wizard of Wall Street?”

“Guilty!” Wizzer grinned and laughed as if it were a huge joke. He clasped Wade’s hand in a lumberjack grip. “Good to meet you, Wade. Red tells me you’re a congressman. I don’t keep up on political stuff anymore. Hell, you look like a Beach Boy. You don’t happen to know all the words to ‘Little Deuce Coupe,’ do you?”

“Ah—no.”

Wade was astounded. People had been looking for this man for years, and there he was in the backwoods of Vermont wearing a kilt. Obviously he’d flipped out. Wade shook his head. “You just vanished. There were rumors you’d been kidnapped by the Soviets to mastermind a financial takeover of the Western world.”

Wizzer made a rude sound. “What a pile of toadstools. Typical, though, I suppose.” Offering no explanation for his disappearance, he hunkered down by the cage. “So these are the little bandits?”

“Bob and Ray,” Bronwynn said, giving in to her need to name the critters.

While Wizzer and Bronwynn discussed the raccoons, Wade looked around. They had reached a clearing in the woods no bigger than the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. To one side of the path stood an honest-to-goodness log cabin. An old whiskey keg sat at one corner, ready to collect rainwater from the roof. There was a pile of split wood and a wide stump with an axe stuck in it. Some distance from the cabin a black iron kettle hung over a smoldering fire. A neatly hoed garden was fenced off with chicken wire. It was hardly the setting in which one expected to find a stock market tycoon.

“I know just the place for these little fur balls, Red,” Wizzer said, offering the raccoons a piece of beef jerky from the leather pouch that hung at his waist. “There’s a stream not far from here with plenty of fish and plenty of cover on the bank. Raccoon paradise. They’ll love it.”

Wade and Bronwynn trudged along behind with the captive coons as Wizzer led the way through the woods, singing “Surfin’ USA.” When the cage was opened at last, and Bob and Ray scampered off, Bronwynn had to fight back tears. Wade sighed in resignation and reached for her hand. What a funny little witch his Bronwynn was, he thought.

His
Bronwynn. He liked the sound of that, but what would Bronwynn think? She had let go of her idea of swearing off all men. They had established a relationship neither of them had tried to name yet, a relationship neither had been looking for. Would she shy away if she knew he was feeling possessive? It scared
him
a bit. He had never allowed a woman to get close to him. His work had come first, above everything, including his own health, he was realizing slowly.

Every day since he’d become involved with Bronwynn he’d been at war with himself. Part of
him demanded he give his attention to the work
he’d brought along with him. Part of him said the
work could wait until after he’d seen Bronwynn and rescued her from whatever mischief she’d managed to get herself into. Two weeks earlier he had fallen asleep worrying about the federal deficit, now Bronwynn was his first thought in the morning and his last at night.

He was a good congressman, conscientious, dedicated. Was there room in his life for a distraction like Bronwynn Prescott Pierson? He tried to imagine going back to his drab apartment in Alexandria and the life he’d had before Vermont, and felt strangely empty.

He’d been bewitched by a pair of parti-colored eyes, he thought, frowning to himself as he trailed behind. Bronwynn was walking arm in arm with Wizzer, asking him a million questions about the different plants along the trail. Like a curious child, she had to touch and smell them all. Twice Bralower had to save her from sticking her patrician nose into some nasty poison ivy or itch weed. Wade just shook his head and tried to steer his mind toward thoughts of the next superpower summit, but the closest his brain came to thinking about Russia was picturing Bronwynn stretched out naked on a sable throw.

When they got back to Wizzer’s cabin, Bralower
invited them in for tea. The cabin was one spacious room, neat as a pin with blue Priscilla curtains at the windows and drying herbs hanging from the rafters. A stone fireplace dominated one end of the building. One wall was lined with bookshelves that were crammed with books on herbology, natural remedies, theology, and mythology. Sitting on the quilt-covered bed was an enormous blue tabby cat that looked as if it weighed about twenty pounds. Tufts of hair stuck out of his ears. His tail was a plume of long fluffy fur.

“That’s Thoreau,” Wizzer said by way of introduction. “Big sucker, isn’t he? He’s a Maine coon cat.”

Bronwynn went pale, her freckles standing out in sharp relief across her nose as she stared into the cat’s wide gold eyes. “A coon? . . . He wouldn’t—I mean, you wouldn’t let him—”

“Hang loose, Red,” Wizzer said with a chuckle as he poured their tea into stoneware mugs with pictures of Garfield on them. “It’s just a name. He wouldn’t know a coon from a crocodile, but he’s death on mice.”

They all sat down at the scarred pine table.
Bralower studied Wade. Wade stared back with frank speculation in his eyes, wondering whether or not he would get a straight answer if he asked the man what he was doing there.

Finally Wizzer let loose a full-bodied laugh. “All right, College Boy, it’s plain you’re dying to know, so I’ll tell you. I lost everything in the last big stock market crash.” He glanced around his tidy cabin with a smile. “Can’t say that I miss any of it. I wasn’t really happy. I’d gotten too caught up in it—the work, the pressure. I didn’t even realize it until I’d gotten out.”

Bronwynn nodded sagely, her gaze on Wade. “Couldn’t see the forest for the woods.”

“Trees,” Wade corrected automatically.

Wizzer laughed and slapped him on the back hard enough to collapse a lung. “Don’t sweat the petty things, College Boy.”

“But what do you do out here?” Wade asked hoarsely, wondering if there was a big handprint permanently branded into his back.

“I live. I garden. I contemplate mankind and the power of myth.” He opened a drawer that ran the length of the table, pulled out a shiny brass cylinder,