The Black Sheep and the Princess (24 page)

“Hey.”

She smiled a little at that. Men. Such conversationalists. But it was the look in his eyes, a little stunned, but a lot tender, that kept her from teasing him. She felt much the same way and wondered if he saw that in her eyes. “Hey, yourself.”

“That was…” He let the words trail off, but held her gaze, his own intensifying in ways that had her heart rate kicking up again.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “It was.”

He gathered her closer, settling her between his legs, so she was pressed against the full length of him, chest to chest, hip to hip. The soft places on her easing against all the hard planes of him. It felt remarkably fantastic…and far too perfect. She never wanted to leave…and she had to force herself to relax. She knew what was coming. He'd warned her this was what it was, nothing more. No matter how stunned and replete he looked.

He rested his chin on her head and she took the easy way out, nuzzling his chest, keeping their gazes disconnected a little while longer. She didn't want to risk him seeing anything in her gaze, especially when she hadn't sorted it all out herself just yet.

When the silence spun out, and reality began to creep in, he pressed a kiss to her hair and said, “So…about that lunch.”

Thankful for the easy out, she nudged him in his ribs. “Men. Hungry or horny.”

“At least we're easy to maintain.”

“I don't know about that. I'm quite sure there are going to be parts of me that will be a little more vocal tomorrow when I get up.” She shifted in his arms, felt the slight strain in her calves, and laughed lightly. “Or maybe sooner.”

“I'll make you a deal,” he said, pulling back the curtain and grabbing towels.

She was wrapped in one before she knew quite how she'd ended up on her bath mat, and he tied the other around his waist. “What would that be?” She snagged a smaller towel and began squeezing the water out of her hair. And carefully avoided any and all glances into the clearing glass of the mirror. She felt happily drowsy and satiated at the moment, thankful the mood between them was comfortable and easy. There was no guarantee that would last through the next ten minutes, much less the evening, or longer. She'd like to make the fantasy bubble she was in last as long as possible. Seeing what her hair and face looked like at the moment was almost a sure-fire way to abruptly burst it.

He whipped the towel out of her hands and nudged her around so her back was to him. He began kneading and squeezing the water out of her hair for her. She felt both pampered and sort of stupidly jealous. He was far too comfortable in this role, and she couldn't help but do the insecure woman thing and wonder who else he'd performed that intimate little task for.

Then he leaned down and kissed the spot where her neck curved into her shoulder, and suddenly she didn't give a rat's behind who else might have played the past role of Kate. At the moment, she was. And, for now, that was all that really mattered.

She sighed and leaned back into him, knowing her walls had crumbled so swiftly that there was sure to be a big, ugly reckoning coming her way later. She found she really couldn't make herself care much about that eventuality either. What was done was done. And pretty damn well if you asked her. No point in wasting the good parts.

“You finish putting together the soup and sandwiches,” he said, lifting her hair and kissing her nape, sending a delicious tingling sensation skittering over her skin. “And I'll see what I can do to relax those mystery muscles later.”

If only it were that simple. Playing house in the middle of the woods.

Her shoulders slumped a tiny bit as she tried hard to fight off the inevitable reality check. Would it kill anyone if the good parts lasted just a little bit longer? “Pretty tough to say no to that plan,” she said, only to be turned around, her chin tipped up again as he peered into her eyes. Clearly she wasn't pulling off insouciance as well as she thought she was.

“Lunch, some talk, a little planning and strategizing session. Then a little fun.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “Balance.”

For some unknown reason, it was that last little kiss, so natural and so damn sweet, that undid her. Tears welled in her eyes, horrifying her, but there didn't seem to be any stopping them.

“I don't want to lose my camp.”
And I don't want to lose you.
Which was where the tears had really sprung from. But he didn't have to know that. Could never know that. Not after she'd been the one to all but force him to take their relationship to a place he hadn't wanted it to go. For this very reason.

“So then we make sure you don't.” He handed the towel back to her. “Hey, come on, now. Where's the woman who doesn't take crap and storms showers? Come on, let's get dressed and do something about it.”

She took the towel and watched him as he picked up his duffel bag and rooted through it for fresh jeans and a sweatshirt. She dabbed at her eyes, wondering when she'd become such a blubbering idiot. Well, idiot in general.

That was easy. The moment she'd stopped taking care of herself and let herself lean on somebody. Maybe he'd had the right idea all along. Letting themselves want each other, giving in to that want, led to allowing themselves to depend on each other. To needing things that they shouldn't be needing…and wanting things they couldn't have.

She turned abruptly away and scrubbed her face, catching her reflection in the mirror as she did so. She was surprised to see that rather than look splotchy and defenseless, she looked quite…empowered and satisfied. God, she was so confused. With a roll of the eyes, she left the bathroom and escaped to the hopeful haven of her bedroom. She'd wring out her sopping wet clothes later. Right now, she needed a little privacy, a chance to regroup, to figure out what she wanted—no, what she
needed
to do next. She knew what she wanted.

She leaned back against her closed bedroom door and let out a long, satisfied sigh now that Donovan couldn't see her.
Yeah, what you want is a lot more of what you just got in the shower
. She squeezed her eyes shut. It only made the images in her mind stronger. The sensations, how full she'd felt when he'd been thrusting inside of her…made her thighs clench together as her aching muscles twitched right back to life.

She opened her eyes, and her gaze landed directly on her bed. How realistic was it to think they wouldn't end up there? Perhaps only a few short hours from now. She crossed her arms over her chest as her body responded quite happily to that little idea. So much for regrouping.

She jumped when a knock came at the door at her back.

“Your watch Bagel is looking rather pitiful. I'm going to run him outside. Spend a little guy time with him. I think he's jealous.”

Yep. She was a goner. How was she supposed to shore up her defenses, resume her steely-eyed distance from a guy who'd just taken her to heaven and back, then offered to bond with her dog?

“Okay,” she said, knowing she sounded nothing like the no-nonsense woman she really needed to be if she had any hope in hell of surviving the next few weeks with him, and keep her heart intact. She should have never gone into the bathroom, should have never taunted him. She looked again at her bed.

“Stop overthinking this,” came his voice through the closed door. “What's done is done. And pretty damn well if you ask me. We'll handle it, Kate.”

Was he reading her mind now? She turned and rested her forehead on the door for a long moment, then went ahead and opened it. Just in time to see him close the front door behind himself and a very ecstatic Bagel. She didn't know her dog could do a full body wag quite like that.

“I know exactly how you feel,” she murmured, then went back into her room and got dressed.

“T
hat smells heavenly,” Mac said as he and Bagel came back into the cabin, all damp and chilled. “Food smells good, too.”

And Kate looked way too damn good puttering around the kitchen. He'd been in lust before, had even come close to falling a few times in his life, but he'd never once had the urge to play house with anyone. Bedroom, yes. Shower, definitely. A hallway now and again. But, in the end, the need to get back to his own personal space always beckoned far more strongly than the desire to share space under one roof with someone.

Right now his space was a nice little bungalow tucked away in a shady corner of Dalton Downs, Finn's property in Virginia. That was home now, to Finn, Rafe, and himself, as well as Trinity. He loved his space there. It was quiet, redemptive, a perfect place to recharge between adventures. Which was pretty much how he thought of his new career. The occasional bomb explosion notwithstanding.

Kate wasn't even doing anything particularly impressive or adorable at the moment. She was heating up some soup and making coffee. Dressed in faded jeans now, along with a light green T-shirt and an oversized sweater that refused to stay on both shoulders at the same time. Her hair was pulled up, no makeup on her face, her cheeks a little flushed from the steam rising from the soup. Or perhaps a leftover from their time spent in the shower together…

The mere thought of which brought his body leaping to life as though it hadn't just gotten more satisfaction than it had in a very long time. He immediately bent down to use the rag towel he'd grabbed on the way in to towel off Bagel, before she looked up and caught him staring at her all moony-eyed or something. Because that was exactly how he felt.

It was just the shower talking. Or, more specifically, what they'd done in the shower. He'd get over it.

Right
, his little voice said,
just as soon as you have her like, maybe, a hundred or so more times
.

If then.

She bent over then and pulled a baking pan out from inside the stove. “I made some corn bread muffins to go with the soup. I didn't have enough stuff to make decent sandwiches, sorry.” She straightened and caught him staring anyway. She blew an errant strand of hair off her face and smiled at him. “They're box mix, so don't get too excited.”

If only she had a clue how easily she excited him, she'd bolt herself in her bedroom and never come back out.

He finished up rubbing the dog dry, maybe spending a bit too long on the task, much to Bagel's delight. “It smells great. I appreciate it.”

She ladled out the soup and popped the muffins into a basket and moved everything to the small kitchen table. The coffeepot was already there, sitting on a hot plate, with two mugs and a sugar bowl next to it.

“Cream?” she asked.

“Straight,” he said, pulling out a chair. So, it was both comfortable between them and incredibly awkward. And he wasn't sure exactly why, except maybe now that they'd had a few minutes apart, time to think, cool off, sort things through a little, they weren't sure where things stood between them, or where they wanted them to stand. At least he wasn't, anyway. They both dug into the food, neither speaking for several centuries-long moments. “It looks like the rain is finally letting up, but it's still too wet to do any more installation today. I'm going to get a head start in the morning on finishing the system install. Then I figure we'll head into Ralston again and have a sit-down with Gilby about the vandalism, see what we can ferret out of him.”

Kate sipped from her spoon, swallowed. “Exactly what is this system you're installing? I mean, I understand the whole command center, monitoring thing, but what exactly does it do?”

“Your property is too difficult a landscape to secure the boundary of in terms of a quick fix; the terrain and topography are too vast and varied, especially on the far side of the lake, which has been an entry point.”

“So I can't keep them off my property?”

“Unless you electric fence it or patrol it, if they want to get in, they'll get in. A determined soul could find a way. But I can get coverage on the cabins, main buildings, your cabin, the service and barn areas, and the docks. Your main assets, essentially.”

“So to keep tabs on it, I watch the monitor? How can I do that and run the camp? I can't afford to hire security personnel yet, but—”

“Right now, you're not running the camp, and it's now that you need to do this. If you want to have a camp.”

She lowered her spoon. “Do you think the jerks who are spray painting stuff are actually dangerous?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I know it seems a rather innocuous form of intimidation, and I'm inclined to agree with that, except—”

“Except what?”

“Except we're still not sure who is behind it. And that determines what they're capable of.”

Kate sighed. “Well, anyone who knows me would know that this wouldn't deter me from staying here.”

“Does Shelby really know you?”

“I don't know that he'd go this route, but then maybe I don't know him, either.”

Mac paused, thought about that. “You said you hashed out this contract agreement over months, so I'd assume he would have a pretty clear indication of how badly you want this place.”

Kate nodded. “Yes, I believe he does. So…are you saying now that it follows that he wouldn't take this kind of tack to get me to walk away from our agreement? That he'd know better?”

“Could be.”

She gave him a quelling look.

“What?” he asked, lifting his hands. “I've learned not to assume, to keep all paths open.”

“What happened to all that gut instinct talk?”

He grinned, he couldn't help it. “Well, my instincts told me not to get too tangled up with you, and you can see where that landed me.” He watched the color steal into her cheeks, but she didn't look away. “So, you're saying you only listen to them when they suit your purposes?”

“Or until someone ambushes me in the shower.”

“I didn't ambush—”

Now it was his turn to give her the quelling look. The blush that flushed her skin was even more becoming this time around.

“Okay, so maybe I did. Just a little. But it wasn't my plan for us to end up…the way we ended up.”

“But…”

She didn't bother pretending. Her grin was as bold as his was. “Okay, but I'm glad we did.” She folded her arms on the table in front of her. “So, now what do we do?”

His eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Regarding which event?”

She laughed.

And his heart teetered dangerously inside his chest. At least that was what he attributed that sudden wobbly sensation to. “You're going to get us both in trouble, you know that.”

“I thought I already had. You're the protect-and-defender, you're supposed to keep us on the straight and narrow, focused on the mission at hand.” She lifted her shoulders and batted her eyelashes at him. “I'm just the helpless female in this scenario, remember?”

He snorted. “There is nothing remotely helpless about you.”

“Thank you,” she said. Then, in a more serious tone added, “Most of the time, I'm pretty fearless about going after what I want.”

“I'll vouch for that,” he said dryly, hoping to bring back that cocky smile.

Her lips curved ever-so-slightly. “But I'll admit that while I wasn't exactly ready to run up the white flag or call in reinforcements, the situation here was starting to rattle me a little.” She held his gaze steadily. “I should have been more thankful for your timely intervention.”

“You'd have done something about it, taken action, whether I'd shown up or not.”

“Probably,” she agreed. “But I don't think I'd have put it all together as quickly. And that might prove to be the difference in my keeping this place.” She was such a paradox. Here she was, admitting she needed him, that she was grateful for his help, the same woman who'd just about undone him in the shower…and yet there was still a wariness about her that had him wondering what it was going to take to win her over completely.

Which was insanity. Because winning her over was not the objective here. Solving her problem was the only goal that needed achieving, and when that was accomplished, he'd go home. And she'd stay here. So there was no point in winning anything. He'd tried to tell her that last night. He'd been trying to tell himself that since the moment he'd stepped onto her porch that first night.

And yet, he couldn't manage to find any regret for what had just happened between them. Sure, it wasn't going to end well. Shit happened in life, and some of it was no fun. But being with her was giving him something he'd never had or felt before. Sometimes when shit happened, it was good.

And sometimes, the good was so good, it was worth the bad that was sure to follow.

Mac finished his bowl and wiped his mouth with a napkin before crumpling it up and tossing it on the table. “So, here's the plan, then.”

Kate pushed aside her half-consumed soup. “We have a plan?”

“The start of one. I'll finish up installation tomorrow, so we can start to keep tabs on our uninvited guest or guests. I know several points of entry now, so I'll keep an eye on those, specifically. When we get something—”

“When?”

He merely nodded. She smiled.
“When
we get something, we'll take it to Gilby, push him into taking action. We'll see what additional insight that might give us into the town mentality where you and your camp are concerned.”

“But—”

He raised his hand. “Hold on. The other thing we have to do is narrow down the list of possibles.”

“Possibles?”

“Possibly Shelby is involved, possibly Timberline is involved, possibly certain citizens of Ralston are involved. Other than Finn's report on Timberline's interest in the area, we can't prove anything about anyone through normal channels.”

“So what do we do? Where do we start?”

“I start with trying to nab a vandal, and you start by tracking down your stepbrother.”

“And say what? ‘By the way, you don't happen to be in discussions with a resort developer to sell my camp out from under me, do you? And would you perhaps be responsible for turning an entire town against me? Oh, and about that vandalizing…' Whatever his involvement, if any, I doubt he's just going to come out and tell me, or he'd have confronted me directly about it already.”

“So you question him about pulling a no-show, which he should be expecting anyway, and dig from there. He doesn't have to know what you are digging for. Steer the conversation however you have to, but you'll have the upper hand at least in this initial conversation, because he doesn't know you suspect what might be going on here.”

“And he doesn't know about you.”

Mac nodded. “As far as we know, anyway. And, if he is involved, that news will make it to him sooner rather than later.”

“I'm not sure what I'll get from this, but regardless, we need to talk about the appointment and what he wants to do about rescheduling the contract signing.”

“Bingo. That right there is a perfect example of what I mean by digging. Any reticence on his part to reschedule? You attack. You have a perfectly legitimate reason to do so without raising undue speculation that you're on to him in any way.”

“Assuming there's anything to be on to in the first place.”

“I still don't believe in coincidences.”

She shot him a considering look. “No? What do you call finding that article about me, then?”

“Serendipity,” he said instantly, then grinned. “Or karma.”

“Karma, the bitch? Or karma—?”

“Just karma,” he said, enjoying that combination of wary amusement he saw on her face. He liked that she fought her attraction to him, or at least questioned it. It meant she was taking this seriously. He didn't examine why that part was so important to him. “The rest will sort itself out,” he went on. “Always does.”

She looked as if she were going to say something to that, but instead, chose to stay focused on the matter at hand. “Of course, this whole plan hinges on the idea that I'm actually going to be able to track Shelby down.”

“If you can't, then that's information to be considered, too. If he just doesn't show, and doesn't call to explain why, and then can't be found, that's telling. That isn't typical behavior, and the workday is half over already today and no contact has been made, no apology delivered.”

Kate nodded. “True.”

“And if you do track him down, any information you can glean from him, even if it's just gauging his mood, his tone, whether you think he's lying to you—or not—with anything he says regarding his sudden change of plans, any of those things can help steer us toward the right path.”