The Bridal Path: Ashley (11 page)

“I say,” Dillon countered, but unexpectedly he relented. “Okay, we’ll play it your way for this morning. Let’s go fishing.”

She wasn’t sure that was a big improvement over being analyzed. “I never catch anything,” she grumbled.

“Sweetheart, this is one of the few cases where the process is almost as important as the results. Stick with me and I’ll teach you how to become laid back and relaxed.”

Since she devoutly wished she could relax and find a little serenity, even though she doubted it would be with a fishing pole in hand, she agreed readily. “I’ll get the poles.”

“And your waders,” he said. “None of this sissy stuff, standing on the shore.”

“Of course not.”

He stood up, moved to her side and leaned down to brush a kiss across her forehead. “First lesson, sweetheart. This is fun. Stop looking as if you’ve been doomed to a lifetime in the coal mines.”

“I’ll cheer up when I catch a bigger fish than you do,” she countered grimly.

Dillon, blast him, chuckled. “Maybe you’d better settle for just catching any fish at all.”

Chapter Eight

T
he fish were biting–Dillon had thrown back half a dozen–but Ashley couldn’t seem to catch one. Dillon watched with amusement as she got more and more frustrated, then annoyed, then grimly determined. At this rate, they’d be standing thigh-deep in the stream until nightfall, he concluded.

“You aren’t relaxing,” he called out.

She turned a ferocious look on him. “Hell, no, I’m not relaxing. These fish are not going to get the better of me again.”

“It’s not important,” he reminded her. “This is a sport.”

“Some sport when a twelve-inch creature can get the better of a human being. We have brains and muscles.”

“Don’t forget the flies. We have superior flies,” he reminded her, barely managing to keep a straight face.

She scowled at him. “I’m delighted you find this so amusing. How many fish have you caught?”

“Enough,” he assured her, figuring diplomacy called for evasiveness. “We won’t starve tonight.”

“Meaning two more than I’ve caught, I suppose. Well, we are not leaving this stream until I’ve got two fish of my own.”

Dillon groaned at the prompt stirring of her pride. “Why didn’t I remember how competitive you are? I would have thrown them all back.”

“All?” she said ominously. “What do you mean by that? Were there more than two?”

Whoops,
Dillon thought. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

“This isn’t about winners and losers,” he tried to point out. Since she clearly wasn’t convinced, he added a few more philosophical points for good measure. “It’s about being a part of nature, being out here in the fresh air, being together. Don’t turn it into something competitive.”

“I am not the least bit competitive,” she declared. “This has nothing to do with you. I have to prove I’m as smart as these damned fish.”

“And you think it’s better to compete with a fish than with me?” he inquired, unable to keep the irony out of his voice.

“Why not? Men do it all the time.” She shot him a look of pure disgust. “Oh, Dillon, for heaven’s sake, go sit on the bank and go to sleep. All this talk is scaring the fish away.”

He could think of only one way to end this, by giving her a new focus for all that rampaging competitiveness. “Make me,” he challenged.

Startled, she turned too quickly and almost slipped. “Excuse me?” she said, when she’d caught her balance.

His blood pumped a little faster, watching that spark of irritation flare in her eyes. Taunting Ashley was far better sport than landing a few fish. She was so darned quick to rise to the bait.

He leveled his gaze straight at her and repeated, “I said if you want me to keep quiet, make me.”

Incredulity spread across her face. Fire sparked in her eyes. “You can’t just be quiet because it’s the proper, respectful thing to do?”

“I am not a proper and respectful man, remember?”

“I thought we’d pretty much destroyed that particular illusion this morning.”

“Not so I’ve noticed,” he said. “I still feel very much like stirring up trouble, especially when it comes to you. There’s just something about you that makes me want to risk all sorts of dangerous things.”

She looked a little nonplussed by that. “And the only way I can keep you quiet would be to…do what?” she asked cautiously.

“That would be up to you,” he said graciously. “Be inventive.”

She gingerly took a step toward him, picking her way carefully over the slippery rocks. There was a worrisome gleam of deadly intent in her eyes. Dillon backed up a step, mostly to keep the game alive. Ashley’s competitive streak did serve its purposes. It promised to keep things between them very interesting.

Ashley never took her gaze off him as she slipped and slid, muttering unladylike oaths under her breath as she drew closer and closer, dragging her fishing rod after her, the line still dangling in the water. Dillon noticed it was suddenly bobbing and weaving in her wake, a sure sign that she’d inadvertently snagged her first catch of the day.

“You’ve got a fish,” he called out.

She didn’t even glance over her shoulder. “Very funny,” she said dismissively. “If you think I’m buying that, you’re crazy. You’re just trying to distract me from the dunking I have planned for you.”

Just as the words were out of her mouth, the line jerked with a powerful tug that cost her her balance. Before Dillon could move, she’d tumbled head over heels backward into the icy water. He noted, though, that she still had a death grip on that rod. Clearly, she did not intend to let her one and only catch of the day get away.

He splashed closer and held out his hand. “Let me reel it in for you.”

“Not on your life. This fish is mine, buster.” She scrambled to her feet as she said it, impatiently swiping at locks of soaking wet hair.

Dripping from head to toe, but seemingly oblivious to it, she focused all her intention on getting that fish safely reeled in.

Watching her took his breath away. She was amazing in her total commitment, her absolute dedication to the task. A woman capable of that degree of absorption would be magnificent in bed. He grew hard just imagining it.

The triumphant expression on her face when the huge silvery trout emerged from the stream certainly indicated she thought the fish was worth the drenching she had taken.

“Nice catch,” Dillon observed.

“Bigger than yours?” she demanded at once.

“You never let up, do you?” he said, chuckling. “At first glance, I would have to agree it is bigger than either of my fish.” He regarded her quizzically. “Does that mean we can go back to the cabin and get you out of those wet clothes before you get pneumonia? Or do you plan to stay here until you have two fish?”

Even standing there soaked to the skin, she looked torn. Dillon was fairly certain he could tell exactly what she was thinking. After all, this was only one fish and he had caught two, which would make him better in the eyes of some mythical fish counter, he supposed.

All those years of striving for perfection had cost her dearly, apparently. She never knew when to quit. He began to wonder if Trent had been wise to instill such a competitive, determined streak in her. Would she ever be content with anything less than being the best?

When she remained silent, he prodded. “Ashley?”

“I guess we can go back,” she finally agreed with obvious reluctance.

Dillon set a grueling pace, hoping that would keep her body temperature up, but by the time they reached the cabin, she was shivering uncontrollably. Dillon rushed inside, grabbed a quilt off his bed and brought it into the living room, where she was standing perfectly still, dripping all over the floor.

“Here, wrap this around you.”

She stared at it in a daze. “I’ll get it all wet.”

“Better that than you freezing to death,” he advised as he nudged her toward a chair in front of the fire. Though it was plenty warm in the cabin with the dying embers from last night’s fire, he tossed on another log. “Now sit here while I run a hot bath for you. It won’t take a minute.”

Even with her teeth chattering, she still managed an incredibly seductive expression as she said, “I’d get a whole lot warmer a whole lot faster if you’d just get into the bath with me.”

Temptation made his blood roar. “Ashley, I really don’t think–”

“Don’t think,” she advised at once.

“But–”

“Dare you,” she said, her gaze locked with his.

Dillon sighed. Resisting temptation was one thing. He’d had a lot of practice at that. But a dare? He never, ever turned down a dare. All those revelations about his motives for allowing himself to look like a bad boy hadn’t covered that one point. He truly had thrived on responding to every single outrageous dare ever made to him. When he’d responded to a taunting dare, he’d felt as if he fit in somehow. Living on the edge had become a way of life, only now, with his security firm, he managed to do it within the law.

“That wasn’t smart,” he said, his voice ragged.

“What wasn’t smart?”

“Daring me.”

“Who cares about smart?” she insisted. “I want you, and something tells me that is not going to go away just because it might be the sensible thing to do. We ignored whatever this is between us years ago, and if you ask me, all that did was delay the inevitable.”

She had a point, Dillon decided as she stood up and let the quilt fall away. She moved slowly toward him.

Even damp and bedraggled, she was irresistible, Dillon thought. When she was close enough, he touched a wet lock of hair that had glued itself to her cheek and gently brushed it away. Even that quick, fleeting contact sent fire shimmering through him. He closed his eyes and mentally battled temptation and his conscience, two contrary forces.

But even as he waged his internal struggle, he felt Ashley’s arms circle his neck, felt her breasts skim his chest. He could feel the tight buds of the nipples, stiffened by cold and arousal to a state that made him long to take each one into the warmth of his mouth.

“Has anyone ever mentioned that you don’t play fair?” he asked, knowing that this time he was beyond resisting what she was offering. All those noble sentiments he’d expressed the night before had fled, consumed by the fire raging inside him.

“All the time,” she said cheerfully. “I am a Wilde, after all.”

It was not exactly the reminder that Dillon needed. Thinking of Trent’s reaction to an affair between his beloved youngest daughter and Dillon gave Dillon serious pause.

Just as he was thinking that he’d rather ache with longing for the rest of his life than betray his old friend by seducing his daughter, Ashley framed his face with her chilled hands and looked him squarely in the eye.

“This is between you and me, Dillon. My father has nothing to do with it.”

So now she was reading his mind, Dillon thought with a sigh. Were there no limits to her ability to twist him inside out?

She touched a finger to his lips, her gaze still fixed on him. “Do you want me? Tell the honest to goodness truth, Dillon. No platitudes or excuses.”

There was something in her voice that haunted him. She sounded almost as if she was uttering a desperate plea. That couldn’t be, of course. Why would Ashley Wilde have any need at all to beg a man to make love to her? Her conquests were legendary.

Yet gazing into those fascinating, compelling topaz eyes, he saw an astonishing and unexpected vulnerability. He knew, then, that the truth was his only option. “I want you,” he admitted. “Always have.”

“Then that’s all that matters.”

She said it with such confidence that he had to believe her, wanted desperately to believe her because a moment he’d dreamed of forever finally seemed to be within reach. The secretive, Mona Lisa smile that bloomed on her face reassured him, but he had to be sure.

“You are absolutely positive you know what you’re doing?” he demanded one last time. “That dip in the stream didn’t freeze your brain cells?”

“My brain cells are perfectly fine, thank you very much. But the rest of me would like to get into a hot bath.”

He shrugged off his doubts and scooped her into his arms. “Then what else can I do but oblige,” he said as he carried her down the hall to the master bath where everything was oversize to accommodate precisely the sort of provocative intimacy they had in mind.

“For once, I am very glad that your father thought of everything,” he observed as he set her on her feet long enough to turn on the water and add a handful of bath salts that promptly mounded into shimmering bubbles.

As the water splashed into the gigantic tub, Dillon turned his attention to Ashley. Fingers shaking, she was fiddling ineptly with the buttons of her blouse. He shoved her hands aside and completed the job himself, forcing himself not to linger in the interests of getting her into that tub and warmed up in a hurry.

“You’ve had lots of practice at that, I see,” she said.

Dillon refused to rise to the bait. “I’ve been unbuttoning my own shirts for years,” he agreed as he continued stripping away sopping wet clothes until she was completely, gloriously nude.

He wanted to take his time examining her from head to toe, drinking in the sight of her, but now was not the time. It took everything in him to do the noble thing and put aside his yearnings.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” she said, seemingly oblivious to her state of total undress and its potent effect on him.

He grinned. “Yes, I do, but this bathroom will be awfully crowded if you want to start bringing in old flames. And don’t forget, if mine come in, so do yours. And I have lots of old tabloid headlines as ammunition.”

She nodded. “Good point.” She batted her eyelashes at him in exaggerated flirtatiousness. “So, it’s just you and me, then?”

“Two has always seemed to be an appropriate number, don’t you think? Adam and Eve. All those creatures on the ark. Romeo and Juliet.”

She glanced around at all the marble, which was in stark contrast to the rest of the cabin’s rough-hewn logs. “Do you think any of them had accommodations this luxurious?”