Kiss and Tell (4 page)

She looked like a drowned kitten as she lifted her eyes to his and pushed dripping strands of hair off her face. "What?"

"After you." Jake indicated the battered front door.

"Oh, yeah, thanks."

She pushed it open, standing so close he could smell her evening fire on her skin. And a subtle, soft female fragrance he didn't want to notice. With her blond hair, dark with rain, molded against her skull, he could see the tips of her small pink ears through the wet strands. The green of her jacket was black with moisture, her jeans were soaked, and she was shivering.

He prepared for her litany of complaints once they got inside. So far she hadn't bitched once, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to.

"Nice security system you have." She glanced around as she stepped inside. "No lock?"

"Anyone who comes up here and needs to use the cabin would break in. This way I get to keep my front door." If it looked like a cabin and smelled like a cabin...

"Be it ever so crumble, there's no place like home?"

He stepped around her and struck a match, lighting an old-fashioned hurricane lamp on the dusty table behind the couch. Duchess dashed behind the counter separating kitchen from living area, making herself right at home. Her nails clicked on the bare pine floor. Marnie saw her ears swivel as she nosed a cupboard in the kitchen.

"Well, apparently she knows where the food is." Marnie slid the straps of her backpack off her shoulders but hung on to it while debating whether to remove her soaked jacket. The cottage was frigid. She gave a massive shudder as she glanced around.

"This is...nice."

The large single room was almost bare, just the essentials, and none too clean. A large, grimy, maybe-green tweed couch, a few sooty hurricane lamps, an empty fireplace, and a couple of scarred, banged-up tables. Roller shades, no drapes. No carpet. No pictures. A few leaves and pine needles. A lot of spiderwebs, dust, and mud.

In the far corner a swaybacked single bed pushed up against the wood-paneled wall was spread with an old army blanket and a pillow with no slip. Just looking at the place made her itch.

She sneezed, clutching her wet backpack to her chest. "I appreciate your coming to get me," she said politely. He hadn't done it graciously, but he
had
done it. It wasn't the Hilton. But it was shelter.

She wasn't a crier, but a good weep might relieve some of this pressure she felt right now. It had been an emotional month, culminating in a hellish night. She hadn't shed a tear since Grammy had died. The loss had been too great, the sadness too deep. But now she felt the pressure of those gallons of tears like a tightening tourniquet in her chest.

"If you could spare a couple of towels so I can dry off, I'd be happy to borrow the couch and get a couple of hours' sleep. As soon as it stops raining I'll be out of your hair."

He narrowed his eyes. "You should take a hot shower first. I'll find you something dry to put on and then we'll talk."

"A shower? Oh, yes. God, I'd kiss your feet for a hot shower."

His boot heels snapped across the floor toward the bed. The doors of the closet almost ripped off in his massive hand as he yanked them open. "I don't want you kissing anything," he mumbled under his breath. Doors slammed.

He marched back to her side. "Here." He shoved an armful of threadbare, musty-smelling towels into her arms.

Ookay
. "Thanks."

"I'll turn the shower on. Takes a while for the water to heat." He yanked off his own wet jacket, revealing a black T-shirt stretched over an impressive chest, and tossed the coat onto the counter. Pulling open another door at the back of the room, he disappeared inside. The door slammed behind him.

"Nice boyfriend you have there, girl," she told Duchess. Marnie threw the towels and pack on the couch, removed her own waterlogged jacket, and laid it beside his. She heard water running, then a muffled male oath.

Marnie bit back a grin. "What a guy. He's showering first and using up all that nasty cold water. Hey," she rubbed Duchess's ears. "Maybe your prince isn't a frog after all. Whadyaknow?"

Taking off her shoes, she examined her wet, muddy socks, then stripped them off and set everything outside the bathroom door to clean after she'd showered. Barefoot and shivering, she inspected the stone fireplace. Wood? "Check."

Spiders? "Ugh. Check."

Newspaper? "Check."

Matches? "Check."

"Flue open? Check." With a steady blaze in the grate to start warming up the room, her thoughts turned to food. Lots of it.

Marnie walked around the end of the counter and reached over her dog, who lay with her nose to the crack of what Marnie presumed was the pantry door.

"You have to move, Your Majesty. I can't open the... Thank you." She opened the narrow doors. "Bingo."

Four feet wide and only about eight inches deep, it had ceiling-to-floor shelves and was fully stocked with canned goods – about a hundred cans of chicken noodle soup and what looked like two hundred cans of chili. "Bet he likes chicken noodle and chili, huh?" Marnie said dryly.

The shower turned off.

Her bare toes curled against the dusty pine floor.

He was naked in there.

Oh, my God
. She was alone in a mountain cabin, miles from anywhere, with a naked stranger.

She wasn't sure she was ready for quite this much adventure. "And I don't even know his name," she finished aloud as he stepped into the room wearing dry jeans and a black sweatshirt, his long hair slicked back. Steam surrounded him like the smoke from Dante's furnace. Her heart did a double thump. He'd shaved. He was gorgeous.

Apparently it wasn't necessary for her to be ready.

"Jake Dolan." He glanced down at the cans she held. "Calisthenics or weapons?"

"Breakfast." She hefted the cans. "You seem to be out of bacon and eggs."

"You're turning an interesting shade of blue." He lifted a massive hand. "Here. I'll take care of the food."

Marnie tossed the cans. He caught both in one hand.

"Water's hot. Clothes on the sink."

"Terrific, thanks."

She walked into the bathroom and was about to close the door when she remembered she'd forgotten the towels and turned back – just in time to see her host rummaging through her backpack.

In three strides Marnie was at his side. He gave her a mild look as she snatched the canvas bag out of his hands.

"Excuse me," she said with exaggerated politeness, "but I believe this is mine."

"Ownership wasn't in dispute. Just who the owner
is
."

"You must run in very strange circles," Marnie told him, clutching the bag to her chest like a Victorian maiden. "Once I'm introduced to someone, I usually tend to believe they are who they say they are. What were you looking for? Picture ID?"

"Driver's license or social security card."

"Since I don't have either in here, you'll just have to take my word for it that I am who I say I am."

"I never take anyone's word about anything," he told her flatly, stuffing his hands deep into his pockets.

What a strange guy.
"That must get old in a hurry. You need a better quality of friends."

He had no comment to that one.

"If you shiver any harder, you're going to break in half. Go shower." He jerked his chin toward the open bathroom door.

She stared wide-eyed at his clean-shaven neck a second too long before bolting.

*

Someone had tried to cut Jake Dolan's throat.

And done a lousy job of it.

The bathroom was steamy, hot, and smelled of pine soap. Marnie leaned against the door, eyes closed, the backpack dangling from her limp fingers.

Oh, my God.

The thin white scar on his throat loomed to gigantic proportions in her mind's eye. If the light hadn't caught the shiny sliver of a curved line at the base of his throat just so, she probably wouldn't have seen it. But now she had.

She slid to the floor, sick to her stomach, and buried her face on her knees. Who would do such a thing? Why? How dare they?

The race of indignation and fury she felt on his behalf shocked her. Marnie snorted back a laugh of mockery. If someone had gotten that close to Jake Dolan and Jake was alive to show off the scar, then the other guy was probably stone dead.

"Hey! You alive in there?"

She got to her feet. "I'm taking a while to defrost."

"Turn on the water and lock the door," he told her irritably. It bugged her that she had to be reminded. She snicked the old-fashioned key in the lock. Cranking on the shower, she stripped quickly, then stepped into the narrow, rust-stained metal stall. She groaned as the hot water hit her cold skin. Heaven.

Adrenaline leaked out of her as she leaned her head against the cool wall. The water poured over her head and shoulders, taking away the outer chill but leaving her still with a gaping hole of loss inside. She stayed as she was, eyes tightly closed, as the events of the last few hours replayed in her mind.

Marnie pressed her fist against her mouth. She'd wanted more time in Grammy's cottage. More time to feel close to her grandmother before she was forced to acknowledge that she was gone forever.

Tears fought for release in her throat, and her chest ached with the desperate need to cry. She wanted to cry, needed to cry, but her eyes remained stubbornly dry and the pressure in her chest expanded painfully. She wanted to lay her head in Grammy's lap, as she had done so many times in her life. She yearned unbearably to feel her grandmother's gentle hand stroking her hair. The pain was like a physical entity. A black hole of sorrow too deep to traverse alone.

Yet here she was, really on her own for the first time in her life. Marnie lifted her head and rubbed the hollow ache behind her breastbone. Alone and doing a crummy job of it so far.

The water had gone from hot to warm, and she hurriedly washed and shampooed. There was no comfort to be found in the small shower stall.

By the time she got out, she was warm all the way through to her bones. And she remembered she'd again forgotten to bring in the towels. Darn.

She grimaced and looked around. Should she call out to him? Let in cold air? Have him see her naked?

The idea was dangerously appealing.

Marnie looked longingly at the bundle of clothing he'd left for her on the counter next to the rusted sink. Then at the damp navy blue towel hanging over the towel rack beside the metal shower stall.

He couldn't have cooties after showering, could he? If she stood around thinking about it much longer, the hot shower would have been a waste of time. She dried off with his towel. It smelled of fresh air and pine soap and wasn't too damp. She closed her eyes, imagining that the rasp of the Jake-scented towel was his callused hands skimming her damp skin.

Perhaps the shock of having a tree almost kill her had turned her last few brain cells to mush, she thought wryly, opening her eyes and hastily drying off. He was only a man. And a belligerent, nosy one at that.

He'd left black fleece sweatpants and a red fleece top, which was a good thing, as there was nothing to wear in her pack. His top came to her knees, and the pants bagged around her ankles. She stared at herself in the fly-speckled mirror over the sink.

What a fashion statement. Her hair sprang up around her face in curlicue tendrils. Her face was I'm-terrified-my-grandmother's-house-almost-crushed-me-to-death pale, but at least she was warm.

She looked around. What was wrong with this picture?

The bathroom was small, utilitarian, no frills. A toilet, a pedestal sink, and the shower stall. No cabinets, no closets, no drawers. She looked down at the clothes she wore.

While the clothing and his towel had all been here when she'd entered the bathroom, Jake Dolan had
not
taken them in with him.

He'd entered empty-handed.

Where had they come from?

*

She looked like an angel.

Or the devil in disguise.

Jake dragged his gaze away from rosy cheeks and big blue eyes and focused instead on the unopened bottle of hundred-year-old Scotch sitting on the counter. Same difference. Both screwed with his head and tested his willpower.

"Thanks for the clothes."

"No problem."

It wasn't too bad with the breakfast bar between them, though he could still smell her. His soap, surely to God, didn't smell like that on him.

"Chili or soup? I made both."

"Either. You choose what you want. I'll have the other." Her face was dewy from the steam.

"I ate earlier."
Judas, I sounded like a—
Jake couldn't think what the hell he sounded like. Either she had to go or he was going to crack open the Scotch. But right now neither was a viable option. His molars ground together.

"Okay, then I'll eat both. I'm starving." She slid onto a stool on the other side of the counter and pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. She looked good in red. An understatement – she looked dynamite in red. Jake realized he was fondling the Scotch bottle and pulled his hand away.

He poured the hot soup from the pan into a chipped coffee mug, the chili into a measuring cup, stuck a spoon in each, and set both in front of her. "Didn't you eat dinner?"

She looked up at him, the spoon up to her mouth. "Sure. But that was hours ago. Besides, this is breakfast. Mmmm. This smells wonderful. Thanks."

Jake watched her lips part and take in the spoon. She closed her eyes in ecstasy. It was only soup. Soup! The spoon slid out, leaving her lips sheened with grease. The spoon dipped back into the hot soup. Man, he'd be dead of petrifaction if she didn't hurry the hell up and finish eating.

"Tell me again what you're doing here at this time of year."

She glanced up with a frown. "I told you. My Grammy died about a month ago, and I wanted to see her cottage before my brothers smashed it to pieces. I needed a quiet place to think. I thought I could do two things at once." She spooned soup into her mouth, her eyes misty.

"Think about what?"

"My life."