Courting Carolina (5 page)

Jane started trembling worse than his hands were. “Make it all one length,” she rasped, her voice husky with what he was afraid were unshed tears.

Alec dropped his head in defeat. “Okay, here’s the thing: I can’t use these scissors because they’re too small for my fingers. But I have a razor-sharp knife,” he rushed on when he saw her shoulders quiver on a silent sob. “Only I don’t want you to freak out when you see me coming at you with a knife. Or Kitty to go for my throat,” he muttered, eyeing the wolf eyeing him.

Jane stilled again, her backbone going ramrod stiff. “I won’t freak out. I’m not a hysterical female.”

No, but she was an easily offended one, apparently. Alec slid his knife out of its sheath, set his jaw determinedly, and flattened a lock of her long hair between his fingers, slowly running his blade across it. He let the cut hair fall to the floor and eyed his work. That didn’t look so bad. He ran his fingers to the nape of her neck again, slid them down with more of her tresses flattened between them, and made a slice at the same level—only to have her hair spring into a curl that went halfway up to her neck.

Damn. Now what?

He slid his fingers through more hair—making sure to capture some that he’d already cut to judge the length by—and stretched it out and sliced. Okay then, they just might both survive this. “Where did the men kidnap you from?” he asked, his tone conversational as he slowly amassed a pile of long, wavy hair on the floor in front of him. Aw, hell, over half her hair was going to have to come off.

“I was…um, in Boston,” she said after a long hesitation. “Yes, I was in Boston when they broke into my hotel room and snatched me.”

“Then how did you end up in Spellbound Falls?”

He felt her go perfectly still again. “I have no idea.” She shrugged—making the slice he was taking at the time a little higher than the others. “A good deal of the last three days is a blur to me.”

“And Kitty; did they kidnap the wolf, too?”

An even longer hesitation, then, “I escaped and made my way to…to the kennel and got Kitty, then just headed north. Yes, I think that’s what happened.”

Alec stopped slicing. “After you went back to the hotel they’d snatched you from and got your belongings,” he continued for her, seeing how the poor woman couldn’t seem to concoct a lie on the fly. “And you stole a boat in Spellbound Falls and drove up the fiord, and your kidnappers stole another boat and chased you. Is that how you all happened to end up in my neck of the woods?”

“Yes!” she cried, pivoting to grace him with one of those saint-tempting smiles.

Alec nudged her back around to hide his own smile, then curled his fingers around the hair hanging in front of her shoulders and drew it back.

She immediately snatched it out of his grasp. “No, wait. You can’t pull it back and cut it the same length, because it will be longer when it falls forward again,” she explained. She turned on the food locker so that she was sitting sideways in front of him. “You have to cut your way around my head.”

“Okay. But just remember that you’re not a hysterical female when you see the knife coming at you.”

Her chin lifted and she stared straight ahead without saying a word, and Alec immediately felt bad when he saw the handprint on her cheek. Damn, she was resilient. He had no right to be baiting her after what she’d endured. Jane Smith might be telling the mother of all lies, but those bruises certainly were real. He slowly started slicing off her hair again, working all the way around to her other side until, near as he could tell, every hair on her head was the same length—sort of.

He slid his knife into its sheath and leaned back to sit on his heels.

Jane turned on the locker to face him, the lantern light reflecting off the moisture in her questioning eyes. “W-well?” she whispered.

“You…” He cleared his throat. “You’re beautiful, lass.” He touched one of the tendrils cascading down the side of her face. “Strikingly beautiful.”

“Oh, thank you, Alec!” she cried, throwing her arms around him and planting her mouth dead center on his.

Her kiss was so unexpected that Alec reared away in surprise, only to realize too late that away was
not
the direction he wanted to go. So he wrapped his arms around her and simply brought her with him. He landed on the planks hard enough to make the entire lean-to shudder, and Jane landed on him with a startled yelp.

Kitty landed beside him with an ominous growl.

Alec turned to stone, and Jane sat up straddling him to shove the wolf away as if it were a pesky pup. “Kitty, stop that. Alec was just being gallant, catching me when we fell so I wouldn’t get more bruises.”

The wolf sat down, instantly contrite, and actually hung its head.

Okay then, if that’s what the lady wished to believe then who was he to burst her bubble? Alec rubbed his face with his hands, partly to hide his smile but mostly so Jane wouldn’t see him run his tongue over his lips to savor her taste. But then he snapped his hands to her hips when she squirmed, and jackknifed upright as he lifted her off his groin. He plopped her back on the food locker, immediately stood up, and walked to the rear wall so she wouldn’t seem him tug on his pant leg.

Yup, either dear old Daddy had every reason to be dictatorial or the woman was one hell of an actress. But the scariest thing was he was beginning to suspect that Jane didn’t even realize she was acting. It was as if she’d been playing an airhead for so long—for some arcane reason only she knew—that she’d forgotten she was strong and resilient and…well, not clueless.

Damn, why did he always have to analyze people the same way he used to take apart every toy he’d ever been given to see what made it tick? That little habit may have served him nicely when he’d been serving his country, but it was hell on his love life.

“You’ve had a rather eventful day,” he said, fiddling with
his backpack until his jeans stopped feeling two sizes too small. He finally walked to his sleeping bag and picked it up along with the mat. “You must be tired. I’ll set you up in the back corner so you’ll be out of the breeze. Leave that, I’ll get it,” he added when he saw her hands trembling as she gathered her cut hair off the floor.

She straightened. “But you only have one sleeping bag. Where are you going to sleep? How will you stay warm?”

He shook out the bag and settled it over the dense camping mattress. “I’ll throw on my long johns and a jacket. Don’t worry, lass,” he said when he saw her stricken look. “I’ve camped out in a lot colder weather wearing a lot less. I’m used to roughing it.”

“But when I asked to stay, I didn’t mean to take your bed!” She drew herself up to her full height—which was damn impressive. “I’ll dress in several layers of clothes and sleep…over there,” she said, pointing to the opposite back corner. “I can unpack everything and use my bags as a sleeping mat. And maybe you have an extra blanket?” She was wringing her hands at her waist now, and dropped her gaze to stare at his feet, her cheeks a dull red. “I’m sorry, Alec, I didn’t think this through.”

He was standing in front of her in one stride, and smoothed back several tendrils of hair off her face. “But I did think it through before I agreed to let you stay,” he said with a warm smile. “And I’m not bruised from my nose to my toes. I swear, Jane, that once I’m horizontal I could sleep naked on a rock and not care.”

Her eyes flared slightly, and her cheeks went from dull red to rosy pink.

“However,” he said softly, “a sweet kiss from a beautiful woman would probably keep me warm all night.”

One corner of her mouth lifted ever so slightly, and her eyes took on a bit of a sparkle. “You had all afternoon to figure out how to charm a kiss out of me, and that’s the best you could come up with?”

Oh yeah, Jane Smith was all act. Loving that she stood
almost tall enough to look him in the eyes, Alec gently pulled her into his embrace. “It was either that or simply steal a kiss,” he said quietly.

She palmed his face in her hands, pulled his mouth to hers, and kissed him sweetly as she pressed her body against the length of his. Then she leaned away just enough to smile at him. “That was for saving my life today,” she whispered, just before she kissed him again—this time lingering a bit longer. “And that was for letting me stay.” She canted her head, her eyes glittering like emeralds in the lantern light. “Does my forwardness shock you, Alec?”

“Not as much as it probably should.” He sighed. “But I’m fairly certain you’d learned your effect on men by the time you were two months old, and that you’ve spent every year since perfecting how to use it to your advantage.”

Which she proved by pouting. “You make me sound manipulative.”

“Nay, lass, I’m just stating a fact. And Miss
Smith
?”

“Yes, Mr.
MacKeage
?”

He merely arched a brow.

Jane’s pout turned into a full-blown, saint-tempting smile again. “It would appear that while you were down at the water going through my belongings that I was going through yours, including the wallet you left in your wet jeans. So yes, Mr. MacKeage?”

For the life of him, Alec couldn’t remember what he wanted to tell her. Not when she looked him directly in the eyes like that, her own eyes shining with amusement. So he simply kissed her. But where Kitty didn’t seem to mind if his lady was the one doing the kissing, the wolf apparently didn’t like it when men kissed
her
, and gave a warning growl low in his throat. Only this time instead of scolding her pet, Alec felt Jane’s lips smile against his.

Nope, there wasn’t one clueless bone in the woman’s body.

Which was why, not half an hour later, Alec lay on the plank floor on the opposite side of the shelter with Kitty
stationed between them curled up against Jane’s side, hating to ask about something that had been bugging him all day but really needing to know. “Were you raped, Jane?”

“Of course not.”

He lifted his head. “Why ‘of course not’? You make it sound as if the thought never even crossed those bastards’ minds.”

“It probably didn’t, likely because they were too greedy.”

“Excuse me?”

He heard her sigh. “They didn’t want to devalue me because they wanted to get as much money from my father as they could.”

“Excuse me,” he repeated in a growl, sitting up to glare into the corner. “What in hell do you mean
devalue
you? Are you saying they were afraid your father would have paid less for…soiled goods?”

She also sat up. “In my world, an unmarried woman’s value is in her chastity.”

“Are you serious?”

He saw her chin lift. “Producing heirs is very serious business.
Wars
have been started over a man discovering that he just married…soiled goods.”

“Where in hell are you from?”

She lay back with another sigh, and he saw her give a negligent wave. “The whole world is my home.” He sensed her smiling, or maybe heard it in her voice when she said, “But at the moment I am content to be tucked safely in this beautiful corner of it with you.” She gave a loud yawn behind her politely raised hand. “Good night, Alec.”

He flopped back against his duffel bag with a muttered “good night,” confounded but not really all that shocked. He knew there were entire cultures still clinging to the antiquated notion that women were commodities, the most blatant offenders often being wealthy business tycoons who built their dynasties on power marriages. For the love of God, was Jane’s father one of those men? No wonder she was reluctant to go home, if dear old Daddy saw her only as an asset instead of a grown woman with a mind of her own.
Hell, now there was a man he wouldn’t mind burying under— Wait; did that mean Jane was a virgin?

Seriously? The woman was thirty. And in this day and age, thirty-year-old virgins were as rare as…well, as
real
princesses.

Damn. Jane’s sexy little lace panties had just turned into a chastity belt, and the next few days had just turned into his worst nightmare. And here he thought the storm gods didn’t have a sense of humor, when what could possibly be funnier than gifting a horny red-blooded male with a beautiful virgin.

But it was just as he was finally drifting off to sleep that Alec remembered the lone condom in Jane’s jewelry pouch, and he snapped open his eyes when that warning alarm went off in his gut again. Was Jane planning to trump dear old dictatorial Daddy by
devaluing
his most lucrative asset before he could marry it off?

Well, Christ Almighty; if his worst nightmare of having a beautiful woman all to himself and not being able to do anything about it had just come true, he was damned well making sure the kiss-bestowing princess suffered right along with him.

Chapter Three

The salacious dream-turned-nightmare began at dawn the next morning when Alec cracked open his eyes just enough to see Jane crawling out of her sleeping bag wearing only his T-shirt—she apparently hadn’t had room to pack pajamas—looking so damned sexy, he just barely bit back a groan. She held a finger to her lips—that he now knew tasted as sweet as they looked—signaling the wolf to be quiet as she tiptoed to her larger satchel. Alec watched her take out a pair of fire-engine red panties and slowly slip them up those really long legs, then wiggle into a pair of jeans that looked painted on by the time she finished fastening them. She sat down on the food locker and pulled on socks, then glanced over to make sure he was still asleep and quietly put on her boots. She grabbed a matching bra and heavy sweater out of the satchel, and he actually stopped breathing when she started to lift the hem of the T-shirt but stopped in mid-lift with another glance in his direction.