A Wedding Story (15 page)

“Huh?” He’d come up behind her, leaning over her shoulder as she tilted the page toward what remained of the sun, so close his breath stirred fine hairs at the side of her neck.

“That new ship, the
Emperor.
When does it sail?”

“Damn.” He went still, like a leopard waiting to pounce. “Twentieth? Twenty-first? Something like that.”

“That gives us…” She turned to face him, only the slim book wedged between them as a barrier. “Jim, I’ve lost track of the days. How long do we have?”

“Enough,” he said flatly. “Barely. If we get moving.” He grasped her wrist and took a step toward the ledge. His ankle had stiffened while he stood, and it almost gave out beneath him. Grimacing, he shifted his weight to his right leg.

“Jim!”

“Forget it,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Don’t be stupid,” she told him. “I know it’s difficult, but give it a good try, all right?”

“Kate, there’s no
time
—”

“There’s no time for you to be hobbling along a narrow ledge, either, and even less for me to fish you out of the ocean when you fall in,” she snapped.
“Sit down.”

He sat down, stretching his injured leg before him. Kate knelt in front of him and lifted his foot to her lap.

Hell,
he thought. I’m in worse shape than I thought, much, much worse.

Because the sight of his foot snuggled up right
there
, in the sweet curve formed between her belly and thighs, the look of the scarred and battered black leather of his favorite boots against the deep midnight blue of her skirt and the white of her shirtwaist with its narrow trace of pretty lace along the placket—just that simple sight damn near had him dizzy with want. He hadn’t been so simply aroused, quick and hard, at something so innocent since he’d been seventeen or so, when the barest hint of anything female would have him salivating.

He was never going to survive the next few months. A man simply could not walk around with the blood perpetually draining from his brain and live.

Her finger crept up his ankle, disappearing under the ragged hem of his trousers, and a moan eased from his throat.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Hurt?” he managed. Barely. “It’s not that bad.”

“Hmm,” she said. “You’re very pale, not to mention sweating. Are you sure you didn’t hurt more than your ankle?”

She was probing his ankle now, gentle fingers gliding over swollen, tender flesh.

“Yeah,” he said, once he collected enough air to form a word. “Just my ankle.”

“Hmm.” She frowned a little, tracing along the edge of his boot. “It’s swelling up terribly.”

“No kidding.”

“Huh?” She took a firm grip on his calf, her hand stronger than he would have guessed, and slid her other hand down toward his heel. “We’re going to have to get this off.” She glanced up at him, face taut with concern and concentration. “It’d be easier, and far less painful, if you’d let me cut the leather off. Do you have a knife?”

“No,” he said flatly.

“I take it you’re not going to let me do this the easy way.”

“Correct.”

“It’s going to hurt,” she warned him.

“You could distract me so that I’d never notice,” he suggested.

“Oh?”

“Sure. Just pop a few of those buttons—say, six or so—and I’m betting I won’t feel a thing.”

She shook her head even as she smiled at him.

“You’re no fun.”

Her smile turned instantly seductive, mysterious and promising. “Oh, yes I am,” she purred, and yanked his boot off before his brain cleared.

“There,” she said brightly. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Pain pulsed through his newly freed ankle.

“This really isn’t my sort of thing,” Kate murmured as she inspected it. “But I don’t
think
it’s broken.”

“It’s not,” he put in.

“Had a medical college out there in the jungle, did they?” Having apparently completed her examination, she sat back, and regrettably took her hands away. Having them wrapped around his ankle wouldn’t be his
first
choice, but hell, at this point he’d take what he could get. “But it’s certainly badly sprained. We’re going to need some support.”

Jim shrugged. “I’ll manage.”

“Hmm.”

It really was too bad, he thought, that she was who she was and he was who he was. The line between harmless appreciation of someone who was, after all, a riotously attractive woman and “appreciating” all too well a woman who’d betrayed his friend was getting thinner and thinner all the time.

“I’ve got an idea. I know, I know, it’s a shock,” she said, the words lighthearted, wry, but Jim thought he detected a bitter edge, “but let’s give it the benefit of the doubt, shall we?”

He was terribly unhappy when she slid his foot out of her lap but cheered considerably when her fingers went to work at the top button of her blouse. “I suggested this already, remember? I liked the idea then, too,” he said, then cursed himself when his words stopped her with her top button halfway through its hole.

“I don’t suppose I could trust you to close your eyes and keep them that way?”

“Oh, sure you could,” he said heartily. “Trust away.” To prove it, he slammed his eyelids shut.

By his calculations, he waited a full thirty seconds, a noble feat if ever he’d performed one. He cracked one eye open the barest fraction only to discover she’d turned her back to him.

She slid her shirt off her shoulders.

Lord. Oh, Lord
. The line of her shift ran horizontally a third of the way down her back, cotton so thin it was nearly gauze, edged with a flutter of pretty lace. He could see where her neck flowed into her upper back, the intimate angle of her shoulder blades until they disappeared beneath her shift, and how the fabric bunched and gathered where it tucked into the edge of her buff-colored corset. The straps were just narrow strips of lace, a rainbow curve over her lovely round shoulders.

Her skin glowed in the dimness, a pearly sheen as if it held moonlight within. She bent her head and she folded her shirtwaist carefully and set it aside, exposing the nape of her neck, the fine line of hair that tapered there beneath the sophisticated twist of her hairstyle.

Her hands came around behind her, working quickly at the tight lacing of her corset. He’d have offered to help, but his hands were shaking and his tongue was paralyzed, and she was finished before he could get the words out.

She bent forward, her back curving, spreading the laces. She pulled off the corset and he would have died rather than move, waiting to see what she might do next. He longed to ask what she was planning, but he was afraid a single word might bring her to her senses. As long as there were pieces of clothing coming off her body he wasn’t risking
anything
that might stop it.

But his luck didn’t hold. She’d no more than stripped off her corset than she shrugged back into her blouse. He was still trying to recover from his disappointment when she turned around again. Her shirtwaist was loose, one button still undone at the top, two at the bottom, deep creases in the once-crisp cotton where it had been tucked into the tight waistband of her skirt. Not her usual flawless neatness, but dressed. Definitely, most regrettably, dressed.

She approached him with the corset in her hands, laces dangling nearly to the rock floor of the small cave as she sat down beside him.

“I thought,” she said uncertainly, “that this might be better than merely binding it up with cloth. The stays are quite firm, the cloth sturdy, and it should supply excellent support.”

If anyone at the Explorer’s Club saw him wandering around with a woman’s corset wrapped around his ankle, he’d be laughed out of the place. “Good idea,” he said.

She beamed like a ten-year-old who’d just won the spelling bee.

She scooted over and—
bliss, bliss
—lifted his foot back into her lap. His brain fixed irrevocably on the fact that she had one less garment on. Her breasts moved as she did, unbound, swaying softly, potently sexual.

“There.” She gave the laces a firm tug, finishing off a loopy bow. The corset cradled his ankle snugly, wrapping him in warmth that he imagined was a ghost of her skin’s own heat. “How does it feel?”

“Let’s find out.” He got to his feet and bounced gingerly, testing it out. “Not bad,” he admitted.

Her smile was blinding. As if she’d never received praise in her life, when she must have been showered with compliments.

He took a couple of limping steps. “Thanks for sacrificing your corset. It really does hold much better,” he said, and the smile grew brighter still. He blinked underneath its power. She could have leveled an army, brought down a monarchy, began a religion with that smile.

It was far too much to waste on one battered and cynical man who couldn’t surrender to it. For if he’d felt guilty before, for having kissed—having
wanted
—the doctor’s wife, however unintentionally, he’d feel all the worse now if he allowed himself to get lost in her knowing exactly what she was: no longer the doctor’s wife but still his betrayer.

She leaned toward him and whispered conspiratorially, “It was no sacrifice.”

He cleared his throat. “We’d best get going.” He turned away from her because if he looked at her for one second longer they’d never get out of that cave. Night had fallen fully, with a faint wash of lighter indigo behind the pines on shore the only remnant of the day. Beneath him the ocean glimmered, black rippled glass.

“Shit.”

She hurried to his side. “Oh, dear, you’re hurting, aren’t you? I should have known it wouldn’t work, I—”

“No,” he said, and inclined his head down the sheer front slope of the island. “The boat’s gone.”

“W
hat?” Kate lifted to her tiptoes, peering over Jim’s sturdy shoulder. Gleaming rocks, wet from the rising tide, rose from the dark water. “I thought it was right in that shallow curve.”

“It was,” he said with flat assurance.

“Maybe it just drifted down the shore a bit,” she suggested hopefully. “The knot came loose as it was bobbing around—”

“The knot did not come loose.”

“We were in a hurry. You must not have—” He slanted her a look that simmered with anger and conviction. “All right, you tied it perfectly. I don’t know what I was thinking. So what happened?”

“Our ‘friend’ showed up again.” Tension vibrated in the set of his shoulders, the angry jut of his jaw. She could only hope that he was never that angry with her. If whoever was sabotaging them saw Jim right now, she had no doubt they would abandon the contest in an instant, fifty thousand dollars be damned, in favor of putting as much geography between themselves and Jim as possible.

“We’re not going to find the boat conveniently around the corner, are we?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, well.” She attempted a light, philosophical tone but decided she’d failed miserably. So much for her sudden, inexplicable urge to at least attempt to be a good sport; she was clearly unsuited for it. “I’m cold. And hungry. And not terribly thrilled by the idea of sleeping on rock.”

“Anything else?” he asked dryly.

“Many,” she told him, “but I’ll spare you for now.”

“I’m so grateful.”

“Good. I rather like the idea of you grateful.” Clearly she’d been at this too long, she decided. For all her complaints, she really was not as upset as she should be. She wasn’t certain if she trusted Jim to get them safely off the island—trust Jim, what a bad idea that had to be—or if she was simply becoming inured to setbacks, they’d had so many already. “What next?”

He’d yet to look away from the water, staring at the space between the island and shore as if he could will the distance to close. “A swim.”

Her unconcern vanished abruptly. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You have a better idea?”

Anything
would be a better idea. “Why chance it? There’ll be someone along sooner or later. I doubt we’re the last ones here. There were plenty of books left.”

“Kate.” He turned toward her. “It could take days. We’ve no food, no shelter, no water.”

“How far could they be behind us? And I saw a few puddles in a depression in the rock. We’ll be fine. It’s better than drowning.” Her stomach lurched. “Besides, we’ll freeze.”

“I’ll swim fast,” he said. “Why ‘we’? Thought you couldn’t swim?”

“I…uh…”

He merely shrugged. “Doesn’t matter if you can or can’t. I wasn’t planning on us both going.”

“I thought you were supposed to have a swimming buddy.” It was all too easy to imagine herself helpless and too far away, on shore while he thrashed around in the water. “It’s not safe.”

“Kate, be reasonable. I’m not going to sit around here and hope to be found. I’m a very good swimmer, I’m strong, and I’m careful.”

“You are not
that
careful,” she said.

“Oh? Can you think of one time that I’ve acted recklessly on this entire trip?”

She tried. His seemingly casual attitude toward things that terrified her and his breezy confidence gave every appearance of a casual attitude toward his personal safety. But he triple-checked every line, every knot before he depended upon them; he tamped out every fire until not a spark remained, he cleaned his gun every night, and he never assisted her into a boat without making certain a life ring was within reach.

“That’s just because you have to watch out for me.”

“No,” he said flatly. “It’s not.”

Careful
. It was a word she would never have thought to apply to him. It bothered her that she’d so easily bought into the legend. It made no difference that every article she’d ever read about him portrayed him as a man who embraced risk like a lover. She, of all people, knew that the surface was a very brittle foundation upon which to build a judgment.

But there had been that death in the Arctic on his last expedition. Perhaps he’d learned something from that terrible experience.

“I suppose you’ve had to learn to be,” she said.

“No. I’ve always been careful.
Somebody
in my family had to be.”

Curiosity burst like fireworks. She’d never before considered what kind of family he might have had, what sort of forces might have formed him. To her, he’d sprung full-blown, walking out of a floral-scented darkness on a soft summer night, a one-dimensional, perfect construct. But he was a real man, one shaped by a thousand influences both small and large, a completely unique conflux.

“Your family?” she prodded, but that was all she was going to get. He shook his head, dismissing the subject as if it wasn’t worth another second.

“I would never set one foot in that water,” he told her, “unless I was absolutely sure I was going to come out the other side.”

She nodded. “You’ll wait until morning, at least.”

“What? Can’t stand to miss a chance to spend the night on cold stone?”

“You wouldn’t want to spoil a lady’s fun, would you? Why, I—”

“No need to convince me,” he said. “I’ll wait for low tide.”

“You’re ever reasonable, aren’t you?”

“That just about sums me up, doesn’t it?”

Kate huddled miserably against the curved stone wall only a few feet from Jim. The cave swallowed up light within yards of the entrance, so that the only reason she could locate Jim was the sound of his even respiration. She couldn’t mark the time other than by the inching of the thin slice of moonlight across the floor at the opening of the cave. The air was thick with moisture, a cold mist that lifted from the ocean and sank through her clothes as if she wore nothing at all.

“You’re cold.” His voice was rich and low. The walls of the cave seemed to hold it in, concentrate it, the only warmth in the whole damn place.

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“You get snippy when you’re tired, do you know that?” She heard him shift—the scrape of his boots against stone, the slight creak of bones that reminded her that he was too old to be trying to sleep on uninsulated surfaces, too. “I can hear your teeth chattering.”

“So sorry I’m keeping you up.”

Waves slapped against rock. Wind whistled past the entrance, calling forth a low moan. Even the cave was complaining, she thought.

Finally he spoke again. “Come here,” he said with all the reluctance of a man prodded into something for honor that he’d never suggest of his own accord.

“Come where?”

“You know where.”

It stung. Even if dozens of men might have begged for the chance to warm her up in the dark, she’d never given any of them the opportunity to ask, much less do it. The one man that had ever slipped under her defenses, the only one she’d ever wanted to, was offering the comfort of his body but only because it was the polite thing to do.

“I’m fine,” she forced out. Her teeth couldn’t chatter as long as she clamped them together.

“I’ve no patience with hypothermia through stupidity or pride or whatever the hell’s your problem,” he said with enough anger under the words to remind her they skirted painful territory. His voice came nearer. “I’d rather knock you out to keep you warm than let you shiver over there alone.”

She had no time to prepare herself. He scooped her up with ease, one quick motion, and yanked her into his lap. His body enveloped hers, her back firm against the plane of his chest, one arm wrapped around her waist, the other angled across her chest, his thighs pressed snugly along the side of her legs.

Heat bloomed. Inside, outside—whether it came from him, or deep within herself, she couldn’t tell. Probably both. She could feel the warmth of his breath across the top of her head each time he exhaled, the thump of his heartbeat against her back. She went rigid, afraid that if she moved, if she
breathed
, she’d do something he’d take the wrong way.

Or the right way.

“Relax,” he murmured.

Laughter burst out of her at the impossibility of his suggestion.

“All right, maybe relaxing’s asking a lot,” he admitted. “But are you warmer?”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her skirts were bunched uncomfortably at her hip, her blouse twisted around her waist.

“Comfortable?”

“Well, no, not exactly.”

“So get comfortable.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible.” She lifted her hips to adjust her skirts and carefully settled back down. Behind her Jim sucked in a hissing breath. “Jim?”

He chuckled ruefully. “Okay, I admit it. Comfortable and relaxed is beyond us.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, starting to get up.

“No.” His arms tightened around her, bringing her more firmly against him. The inside of one forearm pressed against one breast, sparking a delicious throb. Oh, it had been so long since she had felt like this, balanced on the keen edge of want and anticipation, her body so alive she imagined she could feel the pulse of blood through her arteries, the swell of air in her lungs. “We should be practical. There’s no reason for you not to stay, except…” He paused. “No etiquette my mother ever taught me covers this particular situation, does it? I’m not sure whether I should apologize if I…react, or apologize if I don’t?”

Heat flooded her face. That he could say something so outrageous so calmly…it seemed a challenge, to see whether she would respond in kind, as the woman of the world he clearly expected her to be. “Heavens, luv, you should know that much about me by now. Apologize if you don’t.” But now that he’d planted the thought, she couldn’t help but think about…
that
, and
that
was all too obvious, the solid length of him hard against her hip.

So what now? Did she pretend not to notice? Pull away in shock? Or turn into him, sink into him, fill her hands with him?

She was not a girl. Not an innocent. Not unaware of the pleasures that could be found in the flesh. And she’d never thought that she would feel this driving surge of need, a pierce-point of vivid emotion in a life that had been very bland for a very long time.

“Then I won’t apologize,” he said.

It seemed terribly blatant to speak of it so baldly. Like the conversation of people who’d been lovers so long, there were no longer any
musn’ts
between them, nothing that remained unvoiced. The intimacy of it struck her as strongly as that of their position.

He did not move away. He still held her close. But there was no welcome in it, his touch as impersonal as it could be in such a situation.

Well, if he could be honest, so could she.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” she asked. “Oh, you probably like how I look just fine, but you don’t like
me.
”

Silence slid through the cave while he weighed convention, politeness, and truth. “No.”

Kate had expected nothing else. And yet her breath gushed out of her in a disappointed rush. “Ah. Well, I asked, didn’t I?”

“If it helps, it’s not easy.” One hand rested against her side, and his thumb was stroking her there, back and forth, as if he’d no idea he was doing so.

She’d not had on so few undergarments since she was twelve. She knew she should be worried about it—her waist was not nearly as narrow without her corset. But oh, that bare touch felt so good.

“You’re not as…well, you are fair company when you choose to be.”

“Thank you ever so much.” Her eyes stung and she blinked hard. Oh, what did it matter? she asked herself. She could not allow it to matter.

Silence stretched. She counted the pounding of the waves, tried to sink into the mindless rhythm of them.

“You’re still cold,” he said. “Shivering.”

“I’m not cold.”

“Oh.” He paused. “Kate, why did you marry him?”

Five waves slapped against the rock before she spoke. “You know why I married him.”

“Tell me anyway.” Kate was light in Jim’s arms, warm and soft, with drifts of scent lifting up from her hair, blending sweetly with the smell of the ocean. Jim found himself balanced on a sword-thin edge, too painful to enjoy, too arousing to relinquish.

The young woman in the garden—the doctor’s wife—had been hard enough to resist. This woman he could hardly recognize. She was not the submissive, simply ornamental girl the doctor had called his wife, the one who’d meekly followed her husband’s commands and seemed to have nothing more to offer than a pretty face.

Her sharp wit honed his own. Her strong will intrigued him, a self-possession he never would have suspected. She carried a mature sensuality that seethed in every motion, every breath, so that he could not be within ten feet of her without thinking about…not attraction, not emotion, but sexuality in its rawest and basest form. She vibrated against him now, and he could not forget that she was a woman who had embraced the pleasures of the flesh. Who now accepted the presence of his erection against her with an equanimity that promised a complete lack of inhibition.

And yet, it was her own free sexuality that he hated. He could not rid himself of the corrosive truth of it.
The doctor’s wife. The doctor’s faithless wife.

She sighed. “I married him for his money. There. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“I want to hear…” What did he want? Explanations, excuses? Something that would make him want her less, or something that would allow him to want her cleanly?

“What difference does it make now?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe none. Maybe a lot.” And maybe they could just stay right there, in that cave, a thousand miles away from the world, and none of it would matter except the way she felt in his arms.

“We were…my father was wealthy. I thought. We all thought. He probably was, once. But by the time he died, it was gone. Far enough gone that there was no way to even know how much there had been, or where it went.”