Scout's Honor (15 page)

With the solid strength of his arm wrapped
around her and the husky whisper of his voice in her ear, she was
ready for a number of things, most of which she was too exhausted
to attempt.

She nodded. He pulled her up and slipped his
hand around her waist as he led her into the house.

Anna barely noticed the wide front porch or
the pine-paneled great room he walked her across. When they got to
the open stairs he lifted her into his arms and carried her up to
the loft. She didn’t bother to tell him it was unnecessary, that
she could make it on her own. Having him hold her felt too
good.

He carried her with surprising ease, his
arms tight cables of muscle behind her back and under her knees,
warm and secure. The soft leather of his jacket smelled nicely of
Mitch and made a comforting pillow for her head. His neck pulsed
with life under her hand. She let her thumb graze the scratchy
surface of his jaw, and he turned his face into her hand, gently
nipping her wandering fingers. With a burst of energy he bounded up
the last few stairs two at a time.

In the loft he turned her in his arms,
letting her body slide down the length of his as he nuzzled the
tender skin behind her ear. His hands trailed down her sides and
cupped her bottom, settling her closer into the contours of his
hips. Streams of languor sparked with fire followed his touch,
every place his body contacted hers. Mitch and the altitude were
even more devastating on the second floor. It was more than she
could handle.

“Mitch . . . stop. I can’t . . .” She choked
out the words between gasps for air.

His mouth halted its tantalizing track up
her neck, coming to rest on her cheek. His breath was a soft
chinook of desire blowing against her ear. “I’m sorry, Anna. I
forgot—no strings.” He gathered her in his arms and placed a tender
kiss on her brow. “Welcome home.”

She was too tired to explain her words. If
she was too pooped out to kiss Mitch Summers, she certainly wasn’t
going to waste her energy by talking.

Still holding on to him, she looked around
the loft, and finally found what she wanted. The big brass bed
covered with a blue patterned quilt beckoned to her. An all-night
poker game, jet lag, and the altitude were ganging up on her mental
faculties and shutting them down one by one.

“I think I’ll just take a nap,” she mumbled,
pushing away from him and stumbling toward the bed. “Wake me for
dinner, please. I’m starved.” Her head snuggled into the pillow and
she stretched the Speedster cramps out of her back, legs, and arms.
The bed was heaven. Heavy lids dropped over her eyes and her inner
lights went out.

* * *

Anna woke to the soft light and crackling
sounds of the fire in the moss-rock fireplace at the foot of the
brass bed. Smells from the kitchen wafted over the loft balcony,
stirring her stomach into action. She carefully eased herself onto
the edge of the bed, checking for dizziness before she stood up.
Her inner gyroscope seemed to have oriented itself. She tested the
floor. It was solid.

Bacon? She took another sniff, and a happy
smile turned up the corners of her mouth. Ummm, bacon. What time
was it? She checked her watch. Eight-thirty. That was Nassau time,
she realized, which would make it . . . She did some quick figuring
in her head and decided it was either five-thirty or six-thirty in
Colorado.

Day or night? was her next question. She
looked out the window. No help there. The light was halfway between
on and off, but she couldn’t tell in which direction. On second
glance she noticed the shadows were sharper, the air purer, with a
hint of sparkle. She shook her head in amazement. Anna Lange was up
at the crack of dawn. She’d seen lots of sunrises ending a late
night, but to meet one head-on was a new experience. It felt great.
She didn’t plan to make a habit of it, but today it was great.

Her suitcases were stacked next to the bed,
and she quickly grabbed her makeup bag and headed for the bathroom
to take a shower. No such luck. There wasn’t a shower.

A claw-footed, sweeping, curved bathtub was
her only option, so she started the water full blast and went back
to get her clothes. She didn’t want to dawdle and miss a prime
opportunity to see the first bloom of day in the mountains. Her
mountains.

What to wear? It was probably cold out
there, and she was on a ranch. Jeans. Everybody wore jeans in
Colorado. She knew she had a pair of jeans in there somewhere, a
hundred dollars’ worth. Rummaging through the case, she finally
found them, one pair of black designer jeans with silver studs down
the seam of the left leg. She pulled out a white cotton quilted
sweat shirt with silver satin inserts and a pair of silver-gray,
squashed-suede boots.

The bathtub was almost full when she
returned, and she shimmied out of her clothes and dunked herself
in. In minutes she was tripping down the stairs. There weren’t any
signs of breakfast in the kitchen, so she checked the oven. Sure
enough, a platter full of bacon and hashbrowns was keeping warm in
there.

She poured a cup of coffee and looked out
the front window. Mitch had company this morning, a teenage boy
with long blond hair brushing the collar of his red down vest. They
were sitting on the wheel wells of the back of a beat-up pickup,
with a golden retriever stretched lazily along the open back
end.

They were both peering into the bed of the
truck, deep in conversation. Their voices didn’t carry into the
house, but she could see the rapt attention the boy was giving
every word Mitch uttered. She couldn’t tell what they were talking
about until Mitch pulled a screwdriver out of his back pocket and
lifted a ski into the air. As he made an adjustment on the binding,
she tallied screwdrivers on her list of things that wore out
Mitch’s pockets.

She sipped her coffee, pausing for a minute
just to feel good. Nassau and its problems were a thousand miles
away. Mitch had said, “Welcome home,” and that was exactly how she
felt this morning, as if she were home—at least for a few days. The
way she traveled, home never lasted more than a few days or weeks
at a time. This place was exceeding her expectations already,
though. She hadn’t expected it to be quite so breathtakingly
beautiful.

To own part of this—yes, she reminded
herself, part of this really belongs
to you—had turned into a
real bargain, instead of the sucker bet St. John had predicted.

She checked her cell phone, and not so
surprisingly, didn’t have any service. What did surprise her was
that she didn’t really care.

She took another sip of coffee.

The
downstairs was a large living area, with the kitchen at one end.
Hardwood floors were covered with a variety of Indian and
traditional wool rugs and a hodgepodge of furniture. From the
kitchen to the cozy family area tucked under the loft, everything
from Early American to Danish was represented. Comfort, love, and
color were the only solid themes running through the interior
decoration. This was a home that had grown over the years. It
hadn’t been carefully thought out by a professional.

Pain stabbed her heart when she thought of
Dumonde walking through these rooms. He didn’t belong here. This
was Mitch’s home, and Anna sent up a silent prayer of thanks that
she’d taken him on instead of listening to her common sense. Up
until now, she hadn’t truly realized how much he’d had to lose. She
banished the fearful thought with a shake of her head and opened
the front door.

Autumn air filled her lungs and touched her
cheeks with color. She closed her eyes, leaning against the jamb
and breathing deeply of the cool morning stillness. When she opened
her eyes again to take a sip of coffee, she caught the stunned
appraisal of the young boy. He was staring at her with the bluest
eyes she’d ever seen, his mouth hanging open and the word
wow
rounding his lips.

Mitch was kneeling in the bed of the pickup
with the skis and didn’t notice he’d lost his audience until the
long-legged teenager stepped over
him and
jumped off the side of the truck.

Grinning cockily, the blond boy strutted up
the walk, his gaze smoldering as it traveled up and down her body.
He stepped to within inches of her and leaned his head against the
jamb, just above her shoulder.

“Hi. I’m Peter,” he said to her breasts, his
voice low and sexy.

Anna stifled an amazed chuckle. He was
coming on to her! Hot and heavy.

“I’m Anna.” She held out her hand, sure he
wouldn’t miss it. It was even with her waist—just below her
breasts.

“So tell me, Anna.” He gazed into her eyes,
and she saw heartbreaker written all over him. Pity the poor girls
in Hot Sulphur Springs, she thought. “What are you doing Friday
night?” He picked up her hand and laid it on his hip, moving in
even closer.

She might have eight years on him, but he
had a good six inches on her, and she felt a moment of very
feminine panic at the predatory look in his eyes. Then she weighed
her options. She could let him down easy, playing along, or let him
down hard with a cup of hot coffee on his overheated vest.

She glanced at Mitch, who was grinning and
shaking his head in the back of the pickup, and was tempted to play
along with the boy wonder. The kid was pretty smooth for a
teenager, and she wondered if Mitch had been teaching him more than
just how to ski. Shyness wasn’t anywhere on Mitch’s list
either.

“There’s a good band in Granby this
weekend,” Peter continued, “or I could get Mitch to loan us his car
and I’ll take you to Denver.”

The thought of Berthoud Pass with Peter at
the wheel of the Speedster was enough to cause a real tremor of
alarm. She decided to let him down easy, “I already have a date
this Friday, thank you.”

She could tell Peter was gearing up to ask
her for Saturday night, when she heard another set of feet creak
across the wooden porch.

“Back off, hot dog. The lady’s with me . . .
every weekend.” Mitch laughed, tousling the boy’s hair. “She’s out
of your league anyway.”

He removed Anna’s hand from Peter’s hip and
tucked it around his own waist. His eyes met hers. “You’re probably
out of my league, too, but I’ve got more stamina than old Peter,
here, and probably a few more tricks up my sleeve.”

Anna didn’t doubt it for a minute.

Outmaneuvered, Peter just grinned. “Do I
smell bacon?”

“About two pounds of it,” Mitch said,
stepping aside and shooing the boy in front of them into the
cabin.

Breakfast talk
revolved around an incomprehensible melange of ski jargon that left
Anna eating silently. Torque index, flex pattern, and torsional
stiffness didn’t even sound like skiing to her.

Mitch had introduced the golden retriever as
Cam, which was short for something. No one remembered whether that
something was Cameron or Camelot; it had been forgotten over the
years. Either way, he made a great foot warmer as long as she kept
slipping him pieces of bacon from her plate.

“I bet you ski one-eighty-fives, maybe even
one-nineties,” Peter said to her while he helped himself to a third
scoop of hashbrowns smothered in sour cream. “Stick with me, Anna
, and I can have you on
two-hundreds by Christmas.”

The statement was delivered like a
combination compliment—come-on, but for the life of her Anna
couldn’t decipher the mystery of his words.

“I don’t ski,” she admitted with a confused
frown.

Peter looked at her for a minute, almost
sadly, then turned to Mitch. “What are you going to do with her all
winter if she doesn’t ski?”

“I’ll think of something,” Mitch drawled,
fighting a grin.

His suggestive tone started an avalanche of
images coursing through her mind, all of which added to the fantasy
she’d been conjuring up since his first kiss. She redirected her
attention to Peter and slipped Cam another tidbit of bacon.

“I’m only staying for a few days, a couple
of weeks at the most. I’m sure I won’t be here when the ski season
opens.”

Mitch’s
smile
disappeared, and he
scraped his chair away from the
table. “I’ve got to make a phone call. Then I’ll take you out to
your property.”

The coolness of his voice wasn’t lost to
her. She’d spoken the truth, though. She didn’t know what else to
do. No matter what was happening between her and Mitch, no matter
how beautiful the mountains were, she knew in her heart his
lifestyle couldn’t be hers.

The phone was in the kitchen, and she picked
up enough of Mitch’s words to realize he was talking to Mandy’s
husband, Dave, about Carlton. The intrusion of Nassau’s problems
here in the
Colorado high country was an
unwelcome reminder of the precarious position she’d gotten herself
into. Despite Mitch’s shouldering of all blame, Anna knew
differently. Not only was it natural for her to take full
responsibility for her actions, it was vital to her sense of
control to do so. She had known even better than he what they were
getting into, or so she’d thought at the time.

After breakfast, a much less interested
Peter hopped into his truck and drove off. Apparently, not being
able to ski was an insurmountable stumbling block in their
relationship. Anna chuckled at the triviality of his reason for
losing interest, but at his age it was understandable. Common goals
and dreams were important in any relationship, even if sharing a
liking for certain sports wasn’t. And that brought her full circle
back to Mitch.

She sipped her coffee while he did the
dishes. He had declined her offer of help with a wry grin and a
shake of his head. For a moment she had been tempted to dig in
anyway, just to prove she could
tackle a pile of dirty dishes – and win.

Still, domestic duties weren’t what she did
best. In her world, people hired maids to take care of the
necessary but mundane tasks of keeping house. Her silent acceptance
of his refusal was a subtle reminder of the differences in their
lives, a difference she felt compelled to emphasize. Something
special was happening between her and the lanky man standing at the
kitchen counter with his sleeves rolled up and his arms elbow-deep
in suds, but it couldn’t be enough to overcome their differences.
Her common sense wouldn’t let it be enough, but then, common sense
wasn’t proving to be her strong suit when dealing with Mitch
Summers.