Jenny Cussler's Last Stand (22 page)

Kate laughed over and around the toothbrush working its way through her mouth.

“You do look pathetic, girl, I must say.”

“You know, he saw Steve kiss me on the cheek a few minutes ago.” She let the matter hang while she daubed toothpaste on her own brush.

Kate turned with her whitewashed mouth wide open.

“What?”

“Well, I’m going to do Steve a favor, and he kissed me...on the cheek, mind you, and then I looked up, and Clint was standing there. He didn’t say anything. Just walked off.”

“Uh-oh.” Kate rinsed her mouth and patted her face dry. “Well, no wonder. He probably thinks you and Steve are an item. Are you? I didn’t think—”

“No, no. It’s not like that at all.” Jenny bent to rinse her mouth. “It’s about Steve. I’m...” She leaned backward to peek into the shower room. Empty. “I’m matchmaking...I guess.”

Kate paused in the act of brushing her hair. “Matchmaking?”

“Yeah, Steve has his eye on this girl...Lisa? Do you know which one she is?”

“Oh, yeah! Lisa? I thought he was interested in you.” The door opened. “Shows how much I know,” she said before turning to see Celia walk into the bathroom with a towel and shower essentials.

Jenny turned back to the sink and bent over to rinse her face...yet again. If Celia were here, then she wasn’t with Clint. That’s all Jenny needed to know.

“Hi, Celia,” Kate brazened with a wink in Jenny’s direction.

Celia gave her a half smile as she walked into the shower area. Jenny and Kate exchanged shrugs and sly grins before they gathered up their things and walked outside.

Hoping to see Clint somehow still standing there by the railing, Jenny was disappointed to see he had left. She followed Kate back to the cabin, where most of the lights had been dimmed as their cabin mates slept. She quickly threw on her sleeping-in-a-van-in-the-mountains nightwear of sweatshirt and pants.

“Still going down to the van, huh?” Kate whispered over a yawn as she pulled back her covers and slid into bed.

“Yes. I need the fresh air. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Jenny grabbed the van keys and stepped out of the cabin quietly, easing shut the screen door to avoid the squeak. She scanned the campground. Bright flames continued to lighten the community area, and a few diehard night owls could be seen around the campfire. She made her way past the shower room and over to the parking lot near the dining hall. A pale blue light shimmered on the metal of the vehicles, and a glance at the moon revealed it was high in the sky and almost full. Able to see better tonight, she quickly located the van.

She climbed inside the van, kicked off her shoes, and placed them near the door before she unrolled her sleeping bag and the loaner from Clint. Crawling inside her own bag, she pulled Clint’s bag on top of her, bringing it to her nose, perhaps in search of the talc smell she now associated with him. His scent eluded her, though, and she lay there staring at the broken beams of moonlight filtering in through the windows.

Would he come by the van tonight? To check on her as he’d indicated? She had no idea, but she truly wished he would. She could explain about Steve’s kiss. She imagined a scenario where she told Clint that the kiss had been meaningless, a gesture of gratitude...no more. But Clint’s response was to stare at her with a crease between his brows, a slight shake of his head, a shrug of his shoulders.
And why are you telling me this?
he would ask.
What you do in your private life is no concern of mine,
he would say.

Jenny cringed at the imagined scene. That certainly wouldn’t work. What if she told him she longed for his kiss, only his? That she thought about him every single minute. That she was prepared to give up her lonely existence in Boise to run away to the reservation and live with him forever...after knowing him for two days.

She saw him throw up his hands, while his eyes widened—and then narrowed in disbelief...or revulsion. He would take a step back and say, “Whoa there, li’l miss. Are you one of those white women who fantasizes about Indian men all the time? Because I’m not looking for anything permanent here. Just a few laughs. You’ve got me all wrong.”

Jenny squeezed her eyes shut to block out the miserable images. All her years of therapy training were not helping her to behave or think rationally at the moment. Her heart...or her hormones...had taken control of her brain. She forced her mind onto some relaxation techniques—deep breaths, calming visual imagery, a happy place she knew as a child...the swing in her back yard.

Her last thought before falling asleep was that her long-time married coworkers would think she was a fool...not quite stable for a therapist. No one falls in love in two days.

****

Clint stepped quietly up to the side of the van and peered in, feeling foolish and somehow wrong...like a Peeping Tom. But he didn’t want to wake Jenny if she’d already fallen asleep. Through the window, he could barely see her huddled body, buried inside the sleeping bags. A beam of moonlight played on her right cheek as she lay on her side facing the door. Her left hand curled under her face in an endearingly childlike gesture. He took a deep breath and released it. What he wouldn’t give to be lying next to her right now, holding her, kissing the cheek where the moonbeam played.

He fought the urge to tap on the door to wake her, certain it would frighten her. What would he say to her, anyway? “Oh, hi, I was just checking on you?” He was lucky Steve wasn’t in the van with her. He pressed his lips together as he remembered his immediate visceral anger on seeing Steve kiss her. That it had been a kiss on the cheek did little to calm him. Knowing Steve as an ardent fan of the sweat, Clint hadn’t missed that he’d been absent tonight. And some instinct had told Clint that Steve was with Jenny.

What was going on between the two? He remembered the long conversation at the river with Jenny that afternoon, and he wasn’t sure what to think. Had Jenny and Steve already formed a bond, a relationship? How had he missed that? Clint sighed heavily. And all the while, he’d been making silly attempts to interest her, ridiculous comments that probably made her uncomfortable.

He turned to look at her once again. Maybe he should just leave her alone and go back to his room. If she and Steve were falling for each other, he obviously didn’t need to be down here watching over her at night. Steve could do that! With a defiant step, he turned away from the van.

****

A hideously pale vampire with glowing red eyes and piercing incisors bent to tear at her neck. She struggled, but his clawed grasp held her like a vice. His stench was foul, putrid. She screamed and screamed.

“Jenny! Jenny, are you all right?”

Jenny’s eyes flew open. The pounding of her heart echoed in her ears. She pulled her covers over her head and held her breath, hoping her assailant could not hear the loud thumping in her chest.

An insistent tapping on the window terrorized her.

“Jenny, it’s Clint. Are you all right?”

Jenny recognized the voice and peered out over the covers. Clint, his head outlined by the moon, stood outside the van. She swallowed hard and lunged for the door to flick open the lock before burying herself back in her sleeping bag. The remnants of her nightmare made it easy to believe that something might slip in when Clint opened the door, something with fangs.

The door slid open, and a biting breeze blew in. Jenny heard the trees above rustling in the wind.

“Are you all right? What happened? I heard you scream.”

Jenny burrowed farther into her sleeping bag and eyed Clint’s shadowed outline with apprehension.

“Nightmare. Close the door. It’s freezing out there.”

“You’re telling me. I’ve only got one sleeping bag, remember?”

“Well, come in. Hurry.”

Clint hesitated, then climbed in and kicked off his shoes in one fluid movement. He pulled his knees to his chest, locked his arms around them and leaned against the closed door while he surveyed her.

“Well, here we are again, just like last night. Vampires?”

Jenny nodded, her nose and forehead the only things peeping out of the sleeping bag.

“Real vampires.”

“Oh,
real
vampires. I see.”

Thankful to see him, and resentful of the hint of laughter in his voice, she retorted, “Well, he seemed real to me.” She rubbed her cold nose. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you cold?”

“Yes, I’m freezing, as a matter of fact. Why don’t you share some of that sleeping bag with me?”

Jenny welcomed the warm thrill that ran through her stomach at his words, but she supposed he meant the top cover.

“Take some,” she said as she jerked her head toward the top blanket.

“Tempting offer,” Clint said with a cocked eyebrow as he surveyed her. Then his face eased into a grin. “Oh, you mean the blanket. Yes, I think I will, thanks.” He pulled part of the top cover over his legs, easily done in the small space.

“Funny,” Jenny said. What did he want from her? Did he want a flirtation? She didn’t know if she could just play around. She was quite literally enthralled by him, and nothing seemed very funny at the moment.

“I’m not laughing.” Clint’s expression sobered as he regarded her steadily in the filtered moonlight, and she burrowed even farther into her bag, if that were possible.

“So, were you sleeping in your SUV next door again?”

“I was. I meant to leave you on your own tonight, but I just couldn’t do it. Got halfway back to my cabin and gave in. I checked on you, climbed into my SUV, and have been shivering and dozing for the past few hours. It’s much warmer in the van here, for some reason.”

Jenny eyed him. What did that mean? She cast a glance around the van. Warmer?

I meant to leave you on your own tonight.
His words stung.

“I’m okay down here in the van, you know.” Her voice was muffled by the edge of the sleeping bag.

“You didn’t sound okay a minute ago.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I don’t usually have nightmares, and certainly never about vampires.”

“I used to have nightmares all the time when I was a kid. My parents would let me climb in bed with them. I always felt safe tucked between them.” A wistful note in his voice caught her attention. Well, almost anything about Clint caught her attention.

She jumped on the opening. “Where are your parents? Do they live in town?” She imagined the little boy crawling into his parents’ bed. Was his hair long then? Did his parents wear their hair long? She wondered what they looked like.

“My dad does. He’s retired now. Spends his days golfing. My mom died several years ago...of cancer.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. My mother passed away last year of cancer, too.”

Clint shook his head. “I’m sorry to hear that, Jenny. I know how tough it is.”

Jenny swallowed against the expected ache in her throat at the mention of her mother. She missed her terribly...and could have used her advice right about now.

“And your father?” The gentle note in Clint’s voice made her want to crawl out of the sleeping bag and into his arms.

“He died when I was five. I don’t remember much about him.”

“I see. Your mother never remarried?”

“No. She was pretty independent. The strongest woman I’ve ever known.” A sigh escaped her lips.

“You must be a lot like her,” he said.

Jenny’s eyes flew toward him. Was he mocking her?

“Are you kidding? I’m the wimpiest person I know, completely spineless...courageless.” Even she realized she was being too hard on herself, but she couldn’t help it.

Clint laughed, a deep rumble in his chest. “Is that really a word?”

“I dunno. It sounded good, though.” Jenny’s lips twitched.

“I think you’re a pretty strong woman, Jenny, no matter how, uh, courageless...you think you are. Maybe you just don’t realize it. We’re therapists, you and I. We both know how hard it is to look at ourselves.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever been called a ‘strong’ woman before,” she said. Her left cheek burned against her pillow.

“You seem to know what you want and go after it.” His words seemed to have unspoken meaning, but she didn’t know what he meant.

“I do?”

He nodded.

“Like what, for instance?” A crazy, irrational compulsion overtook her. She knew she couldn’t resist.
You seem to know what you want and go after it.

“Well...like Steve—”

Clint’s words were choked off as Jenny fairly leapt from her sleeping bag, threw herself on his chest, and kissed him passionately. She squeezed her eyes shut and wrapped her arms around his neck in a fierce embrace that would have surprised her...if she’d been able to think straight.

Stunned for one rigid second, Clint pulled her into his arms and onto his lap, meeting the pressure of her mouth on his. His full lips molded to hers as they kissed. Jenny pressed her body against his, begging for more. She wanted nothing more than to tear her clothes off, to feel his skin under hers, the skin she’d fantasized about so many times. She moved against him and heard his breathing quicken. He freed a hand, ran it down her back, and slipped it up inside her sweatshirt. The warm contact on the bare skin of her back made her shudder. She wanted to be with him. Nothing mattered but being with him.

Jenny broke away to pull her sweatshirt off, but Clint grabbed her hand and stilled her.

“We can’t. Not here. This isn’t what I want. Not the inside of some government van. I don’t even have...” His eyes dropped to his lap for an instant as if to explain.

Jenny stared hard at him. Her heart pounded, her breath came in ragged gasps matching his. She knew what he meant. He didn’t have protection. They were in a public space where anyone might come by. She dropped her hand from her sweatshirt and reached up to touch his lips with a featherlight kiss.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” She favored him with a wobbly grin. “Blame it on the vampires.”