The Black Sheep and the Princess (21 page)

Only, now that he was standing here…

Kate's kisses slowed, then stopped, as she apparently caught on to his hesitation. “Donovan?”

He stilled. That name. Whispered so intimately. It should have jerked him the rest of the way out of this fantasy he'd foolishly indulged himself in. Instead, it did the exact opposite. Coming from her, only from her, it sounded…just exactly right. Which made no sense, none.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing.”
Everything
.

She unhooked her ankles from his back and, arms still wrapped around his neck, let her feet slip to the floor. “Something slowed you down. What is it?”

“I don't know,” he said, never more honest. “I've wanted you forever. I want you right this second more than I've let myself want anything in a very long time. But—”

She tried to smile, smoothed her fingers along his cheek. “If you're worried I'll expect some kind of—”

“No, no, that's not it. I just—” He shook his head. Idiot! What in the hell was wrong with him? The words came, and he let them, figuring it was the only way to make sense of it. “Maybe I've wanted it too much, for too long. I mean, I never thought we would, never thought I'd see you again, but I don't want this to be some kind of retroactive—” He stopped again, shook his head again. “I don't know. I don't know what this is.” He looked her in the eyes. “But, what I think I do know, what you should know, is that it won't just be a casual roll in the hay. Not for me.”

And right there was the raw, stunning truth of it. Shocking, really, since he'd never come up against that particular problem before. And sure as hell hadn't expected to here, now.

“Maybe it's the past getting tangled up in this, I don't know,” he said. “I just don't know.” He pushed her hair from her face. “And I think I need to. Know, that is. Before we…before I can…or should…” He trailed off, feeling like the biggest fool on the planet. “I'm sorry. I'm making a mess of this. I know this isn't what you want to hear right now, but—”

“Shh. You don't know what I want,” she said gently. “You couldn't, because I don't know either. I'm guilty of a little fantasizing myself. I've wanted you for a long time, too. And yes, I'm surprised my desire for you has only grown with distance and time. I don't know if it's the boy I still want, the memory of that, or the man you've become. To be honest, it's probably a little of both. I'm not sure what that says about me.”

“It says you're just as caught up, as confused, as I am.” Which was a major relief. And also that much more terrifying. And did nothing whatsoever to ease the immediate situation. If anything, it served only to intensify his need further. “We should figure things out before we—”

“Or maybe we should just not think everything to death. We're adults, we're unattached, we want each other. Maybe it can be that simple.”

He drew his thumb across her bottom lip, making her body quake. A soft moan escaped her lips. “You really believe that?”

She closed her eyes and dropped her chin, resting her forehead on his. “No. I don't know. I wish it could be, though.” The silence grew as they stood there, holding on to each other. Finally, she laughed a little, and looked back up at him. “You should have taken me on the dock. Now it's complicated.”

He smiled a little. “It's always been complicated. Nothing was going to change that.”

“You're probably right.” She kept her arms looped around his neck, kept her body meshed to his. And since that was right where he wanted her, he didn't do anything to change that.

“So, let me ask you this.” She toyed with the collar of his jacket. “Are you proposing we just cease and desist? Because I'm thinking the attraction isn't going to stop just because we think it would be too complicated to act on it.”

His mouth twitched. “So, you're saying we have to be slaves to the passion? That we can't rise above it, control ourselves, and behave?”

She nudged her hips against his, making the very rigid length of him jerk hard in response. “Doesn't feel much like you want to behave.”

No. No, he didn't. At the moment, he wanted nothing more than to let loose his inner Neanderthal. But she didn't have to know that. More than she already did, anyway. “I didn't say it was what I wanted, just that maybe it was for the best.”

“Best for who? Whom? Whatever.”

“You. Me. I don't know. You've got a tough situation to sort out here, and I—my life isn't here anymore. And I don't want it to be.”

“And you think dancing around this, and pretending we don't want to drag each other's clothes off is preferable to just giving in to it, enjoying ourselves, then going on with life as it happens? I'm a big girl, Mac. I can handle disappointment. If that's what happens. Who knows, we might go to bed once and find out it's not all that we thought it was cracked up to be.”

So, he was Mac now. He should have been pleased. Why he wanted to hear her call him Donovan, in that breathy little voice, he had no clue, anyway. “Do you really think that will be the case? And if it is, then things will be that much more awkward, trying to help you sort things out here, dancing around each other.”

“Like it wouldn't be a juggling act either way.”

“At least the other way, there will be no regrets. No one gets—”

“Hurt? No regrets? Speak for yourself. I might have a few. Like not taking advantage of what might be my only opportunity to—”

“Have sex with your teenage crush?”

She didn't flinch. “Maybe. I'm human after all.” She grabbed his belt loops and tugged him full up against her hips, moving on him when he surged against her. “But this is no teenage crush now. I'm very adult, as is the desire I have for you, who happens to have grown up into a very desirable, very adult man. Give us some credit for being able to take what we want, get what we need, and figure the rest out later.”

He took her hands from his belt and held on to them. “Maybe you can. And maybe I could. I have. In the past. With other women. But…not with you, Kate.” He stepped back, his body resisting the action with every beat of his heart, but he did it nonetheless. “Not with you.”

Her eyes widened. “I can't believe you're really going to stick your head in the sand.”

“At the moment, I'm going to stick some other part of me in a very cold shower.”

She lifted her hands in disbelief, then let them drop to her sides. “You're really serious.”

“I really am. I'm sorry.” And he was. Sorrier than he'd ever been. But what he felt at the moment was relief, not fear that he'd just made a big mistake. Which told him it was the right thing to do. He stepped farther back, before he changed his mind.

“So…now what? We pretend that there's no screaming sexual tension between us and just go about our business?”

He smiled briefly. She was direct. He liked that about her. “We try. At least until we know more about what's really at stake here.”

And he wasn't talking about the case. The idea that he was worried he was getting emotionally involved should have been the douse of cold reality her raging hormones needed.

Not so much, as it turned out.

“I already know all I need to know.” She turned away and paced across the small room, then stopped abruptly, her back still to him. Even in the dim lighting, he watched as her shoulders slumped a little, and finally felt the twinge of the regret he'd hoped not to feel.

“I believe there is a cold shower with your name on it,” she said at length, quietly, but with no overt recrimination in her voice either. Weary resignation was more like it.

He took a step toward her, then checked himself and walked to the door instead. He paused, looked back at her. Her face was still averted. “It's not for lack of want. But because we'll want too much. Or I will, anyway. And while you'd probably never disappoint me, I can guarantee I'd disappoint you.”

K
ate woke to the sound of rain pattering on her roof…and somebody drilling. Groggy, she sat up and pushed her hair out of her face. Bagel raised his head and looked hopefully at her. “Not yet, buddy. Give me a minute.”

What was that racket? Who the hell was drilling at—she squinted at her bedside clock—seven o'clock in the morning?

Then the fog cleared and she remembered. She flopped back onto her pillow and stared unseeing at the ceiling. In her mind's eye, she pictured him, walking toward her on the dock. Pulling her into his arms. Then later, catching her on the path, both of them laughing as he pinned her against the lodge wall. The feel of him, strong, hard, sure, moving between her legs. All but dragging each other into her bedroom…

She squeezed her eyes shut. She really didn't need to start what was sure to be a challenging day reliving that particular rejection.

Bagel whined.

“Yeah, yeah.” She slid her legs off the bed and dragged herself upright. “I know how you feel.” She wasn't mad at Donovan, not really. He hadn't been playing games. He'd been sincerely confused, trying to do what he thought was right. Odd that he thought he'd disappoint her in some way, when he seemed to have a stronger sense of himself and their unusual dynamic than she did. Maybe that was part of his problem, too.

She reached down and scratched Bagel behind the ears, sending him into a sigh of wriggling ecstasy. “See? I can make you happy.” She heaved one last self-indulgent sigh and got up. He was probably right anyway. It probably was better, or at least smarter, for them to leave well enough alone. She talked a good game about them being consenting adults who could do what they wanted, when they wanted, but he might have had a teensy point there, about risking wanting more. Wanting too much.

What was important was getting her camp up and running. Her camp. And she wanted that more than anything. Better not to dilute one want with another. Especially one as potent as Donovan MacLeod.

He would do his job here and go back to Virginia, or on to his next Good Samaritan mission, and she would launch her camp and fulfill her dreams. They both would, it seemed. Just not with each other. She let out a short laugh. See? He was right. She was already thinking about a future apart, which meant that somewhere in her subconscious, she'd at least contemplated the idea of a future together. Which was completely impossible. Youth Camp Director meets Secret Mission Man. Yeah, like that was ever going to work.

She recalled what he'd said about this place, of his past never being any part of his future. So that was two strikes, in case anyone was counting.

She glanced back at her bed. If he were sprawled there right now, sheets draped over a body she'd felt pressed against her so intimately last night, and yet nowhere near as intimately as she wanted…yeah. She might find herself wanting a bit too much.

She slapped her thigh and scuffed into the bathroom. “Come on, Bagel. Let's brush my teeth and get your leash.”

Trudging through the main room minutes later, feeling only slightly less subhuman, she did her best to ignore the remains of dinner that still littered the dining room table as she turned on the coffeemaker and grabbed Bagel's leash off the back of the chair by the door. She did manage to notice that Donovan had wasted little time before leaving last night. Finn's report was right where he'd left it. All neatly stacked and waiting for her on the kitchen counter. Great.

She dragged on her rain gear and mud boots. He was certainly making it clear it was all business now. “I get it, already,” she muttered. She snapped on Bagel's leash. Not that there was any real reason out here for him not to run freely, but he liked to chase things, and he had zero sense of direction. She'd cut him loose, and within fifteen minutes she'd hear his mournful howl from somewhere on the property. Which inevitably led to her plunging into the woods to untangle him from something. She'd realized early on he was probably meant to be a city dog, so she treated him like one. Especially on wet, rainy, muddy mornings.

She stepped out onto the porch, and the drilling sounds got exponentially louder. They were coming from somewhere beyond the main lodge building. It was only drizzling now, so she flipped her hood up and purposely set off in the opposite direction with Bagel, refraining from giving in to the childish urge to stomp through the mud puddles. Still, she didn't exactly avoid them either. Her emotions were pretty muddied at the moment. Might as well have the boots to match.

She continued on down the outer boundary route, not even glancing in the direction of the lodge. She wasn't quite ready to deal with Donovan just yet. She needed to shake the cobwebs loose first. Getting rid of that image of him sprawled naked in her sheets was probably a good idea, too. The path looped in and out of the trees, meandering its way along the base of a ridge, eventually giving out on the opposite side of the lake. There were no cabins over here, only another dock and a service shed where canoes and paddles were stored in the off season.

It wasn't until she passed the shed that the Day-Glo color caught her eye. She turned back and read the message sprayed there, all loopy with drips running from every letter. RICH BITCH, GO HOME!

Same color, same amateur paint job. Same message.

She tucked her arms around herself, pulling Bagel in closer in the process. She should be used to them by now. Irritating, but mostly because of the expense involved in removing them. Now? Now it gave her the creeps. And suddenly made her feel way too far away from her cabin.

She shrugged off the feeling and forced her arms down to her sides. It was simply everything that had been going on for the past forty-eight hours making her so jumpy. She hadn't been over on this side of the lake yet, so she had no idea how long it had been here. For all she knew, this could have been the first message sprayed. Though why put it on the far side of the lake, on the back side of the shed, where no one could really see it from any vantage point, save the close one she had right there, she had no idea. It made no sense. All the others had been painted where anyone entering the property or traversing any main path could easily see from a distance.

Then, as she stared at the message, she realized something. The running paint drips hadn't dried that way; they were still actively running down the side of the shed.

She froze, and her throat closed over. She instinctively tugged a resistant Bagel to her side. But rather than run—or call for help, not that Donovan would hear her over the sound of power tools—she stepped closer and touched the paint. Sure enough, her fingertip came back Day-Glo orange. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and she had to forcibly keep from spinning around and looking for somebody watching her. It just felt as if there were eyes drilling holes in the back of her head. It was her imagination. Besides, maybe the spray was water based and the rain was making it run.

She shivered, and not entirely from the chilling rain. Somehow she doubted that was the case. Spray paint was meant to stay where it was put. She looked down at the ground, looking for any other clues, although what those would be, she wasn't clear on. Footprints maybe. As it was, with the rain, the mud, her two feet and Bagel's four, they'd already obliterated any footprints that might have been right there. She scanned the immediate area, but saw only mud puddles and fallen pine needles.

Then the sound of drilling stopped. And the sudden quiet, disturbed only by the soft sound of rain pattering on the tall trees overhead and plopping against the otherwise calm surface of the lake, sounded altogether too eerie and somehow sinister. Like those horror movies where the kids all went camping…and the lunatic always stalked them in weather just like this.

Surely no one had just been by the shed, or she'd have heard or seen something. Wouldn't she? The drilling sounds had echoed through the trees, bouncing around and distorting the usual forest noises, but certainly not enough to mask something like that.

Except, just how much noise was an interloper with a spray can and mud boots going to make?

Keeping Bagel close to her heels, she started moving along the path that bordered the lake edge, which was the most direct route back to camp and the relative safety of her cabin. Who was she kidding? It was the most direct route back to Donovan.

Now she actively scanned the campground across the lake, trying to locate him. Another month and the leaf canopy would be too heavy, the underbrush, too, and her view that far up the hill would be mostly blocked. Only the roof of the main lodge in the center and her own cabin farther up the ridge would be noticeable.

But it was early enough in the season that from back on the far dock, she'd have been able to look across the lake and more than likely see what Donovan was doing. Or at least hear exactly where he was doing it. She'd had a vague idea that maybe if she watched him from afar for a bit, she could steel herself against the effect he so effortlessly had on her. “Right,” she muttered.

Yep. A little time spent standing in a chilly drizzle would surely have numbed the heated attraction right out of her. Instead, she was all but running toward him. She looked down at her fingertips, but the paint had dripped back off. It had to be the rain making the paint run.

Didn't it?

Then another thought occurred to her. If she could see Donovan through the sparse tree cover, so could anyone else. Had someone been watching him install his equipment? Had that same someone watched as she set out around that side of the lake and decided to leave her a message to find when she got there?

There was no will strong enough to shut down the little spurt of pure fear the very idea shot through her. Bagel hustled his stubby legs to keep up with her quickening gait.

The sudden sound of hammering made her heart skip a few beats. She paused just long enough to focus on the sound and follow it…adjusting her view upward as the ringing echo continued. And upward farther. Dear Lord, he was halfway up a forty-foot pine tree. Hanging on by…his wits, from the looks of it. She skimmed her gaze downward and noticed there was no ladder leaning up against the trunk, then shifted her gaze immediately back to him.
Is he crazy
?

She checked that question. Of course he was. All three of them had been daredevils, to a degree anyway, growing up. Rafe and Donovan had taken great pleasure in besting the rich boys at whatever ridiculous testosterone-measuring event they came up with. That was, when Donovan and Rafe weren't trying to best each other. Usually with Finn right there, devising the competitions. Finn being the most fearless of the three, they usually involved risking at least several limbs, if not life itself.

She'd watched them shimmy trees like young forest creatures. Rafe being the fastest, with Donovan a close second. But that was shimmying for the sake of seeing who could get the highest…then they slid back down. Clinging tenuously twenty feet above the ground while hammering stuff? That was idiocy. He was gripping the trunk with two legs and one arm, while he hammered something with his free hand. No one clinging to a tree that high up in the air should have a free hand.

Her pace increased as she drew close. It was harder to see him that high up now, too many trees in her line of vision. There continued to be alternating hammering and silence. Hammering. And silence. Every time she heard the hammer again, she realized she'd been holding her breath…and speeding up until she was all but dragging Bagel through the mud puddles. Of course, given that the dog's belly had the clearance of a vacuum cleaner, he wasn't going to arrive home clean no matter how slowly they walked.

She finally passed the dock they'd been on last night and started up the trail directly to the main lodge. She was less than twenty yards away when a grunt, followed by a string of curse words, rippled through the damp air, followed by the thud of a falling hammer.

Better than the thud of a falling man, she thought, arriving at the base of the tree as Donovan began gingerly scaling down its trunk. He pushed off about twelve feet up and landed in a wincing crouch, before slowly straightening.

“What in the hell do you think you're doing up there?” Kate demanded. “You could have killed yourself.”

“Good morning to you, too.” He lifted his hand and closely inspected his finger. “Just mangled it a little.” He shot her a tight grin. “I'll live.”

“Not if I catch you hanging off of pine trees again, you won't.”

He looked down at Bagel. “She cares about me.”

Bagel wagged his stub and went immediately to Donovan's side, sitting dutifully next to his foot and leaning his mud-encrusted tubby body up against his hero's equally mud-encrusted jeans. He wriggled in ecstasy when Donovan leaned down and scrubbed him behind the ears. “Now, that's a proper greeting.”

“Men,” she stated, glaring at both of them.

“And what would you do without us?”

She wisely chose to ignore the question. “What were you doing up there?” She framed her eyes and squinted up into the trees, but the falling rain made the angle impossible to maintain without getting water in her eyes. All she could make out was that some kind of metal bracket had been attached to the trunk.

“Installation.”

She looked back at him. “Of?”