Seeing Stars (10 page)

Staring at her, his throat painfully dry, his brain must have turned to mush on the spot. Other parts of him were painfully hard, and he was damned if he could remember how a guy got through a whole evening dancing with a woman who had him throbbing so badly he couldn't think.

He wasn't sure he'd ever had it this bad. It wasn't the sex. Sex was easy, but he'd been around long enough to know it was seldom simple. If it were simple, he'd take Lydia up on the offer she'd been radiating since the divorce, and he would have started an affair with Dawna, his accountant, a couple of years back. But whether Lydia knew it or not, she wanted more than sex, and he knew damned well he'd be playing unfair games if he got involved with a single mom like Dawna Fairchild, who needed a man prepared to play permanent house.

The truth was, Blake didn't have room in his life for that sort of commitment. He was still working overtime, taking on more jobs than a man could reasonably handle, to pay his youngest sister's university tuition. He'd stretched himself to the limit with the shipyard, the boys, and his family, but he'd always had the sense to avoid more complications by picking the kind of woman who was strictly temporary.

The trouble was, the older he got, the more he realized that when a woman agreed to
temporary,
she wasn't always telling the truth. Not that he thought Claire was lying, but this thing was starting to feel damned complicated for a no-strings week of flirtation and romance. He wanted her badly enough that he didn't trust his own judgment, and it was one thing to take a boat out in a storm, but another to knowingly set out in hurricane force winds when you didn't trust your own reactions.

Mac had always had the sense not to pilot a vessel drunk, and this wasn't much different. Maybe it had been too long since he had a woman, or maybe it was something about Claire herself, some high-potency charge he hadn't realized went with the eyes and the legs. Whatever the reason, watching her in that dress, feeling his own out-of-proportion reaction, he knew it was time to get some air before he found himself in deeper than he'd bargained for.

Any guy who liked speed as much as Mac did, and wanted to live, knew how to listen to his intuition on the rare occasion when it told him to slow down.

If anyone knew how to cool it with a woman, it was Mac. The dance would offer a perfect opportunity. The guys would be lining up to dance with Claire when she walked in with those legs and that hair. It would be hard enough to get time alone with her if he was looking for it, and easy to simply step back.

He took her to dinner first, the same restaurant as before, an inside table this time because that dress wasn't designed for evening air. Once she sat down across the table from him, he couldn't see her legs, and he found it marginally easier to stop himself from thinking about how the creamy skin of her thighs would feel under his hand, how her throat would let that little moan out—the one he'd heard when he grabbed her earlier today and gave way to the temptation to kiss her the way his hammering pulse demanded.

He talked about the kids—mainly Jake and Tim, because she'd met them, and it was the only topic he could think of that didn't have sexual overtones.

"I didn't get to talk to Jake," she said. Then she sent his pulse hammering when she lifted one hand and pushed the sleek fall of her hair back, hooking it behind one ear.

"You're off the hook on that." He forced his eyes away from her throat, from the way it flexed when she swallowed. He picked up his glass—straight water—and took a long drink. He cleared his throat. "I think I might have cracked the kid, a bit anyway. We took a motorcycle ride."

Her eyes flashed something disturbing. Just a smile, with eyes instead of lips, but it sent his blood pressure into the red zone.

"A motorcycle ride could do it," she said softly, using the voice he remembered from that day back in high school, when he'd held her on the verge of falling, when she'd looked up at him and said words he couldn't hear because of her eyes.

"You liked the motorcycle?"

"I loved it. It had that forbidden excitement. I'm thinking of taking lessons, learning to ride by myself. It would be fantastic in the mountains."

He frowned at the thought of Claire hurtling over treacherous mountain roads on a big bike. "You want to be careful on the curves until you've got a lot of experience."

"I'm good at being careful."

He wasn't sure he liked the idea of her riding. He didn't want to worry about whether she was doing something crazy and not knowing it was crazy, like asking a guy like Mac to have a temporary affair. OK, so he'd been stupid enough to encourage her, to tell her it was a low-risk operation. The fact was, a girl like her, a woman with intense blue eyes and heat boiling just under the surface, wasn't going to be capable of having a casual relationship. She'd get burned without even realizing there was a fire.

She ordered halibut sautéed with asparagus tips. He went for the oyster burger. Then, afterward, when they walked back out to his car, he managed to hold the door open for her without watching her legs as she slid into the car. Then he punched the stereo once he'd started the engine, looking for a distraction.

Nina Simone singing the blues. 

So far, so good. Now, if he could just keep the dance a
public
event and stay out of dark corners, they'd both get through the night safely.

Claire felt the band's music before she heard it, a pulsing vibration in the air surrounding the hall. Someone grabbed Blake's arm as they came through the entrance, and he smiled an apology at her and mouthed, "Be with you in a minute."

She shrugged and went on inside. A big hall filled with last night's strangers, people she supposedly knew but had never really talked to.

The man who appeared at her side looked vaguely familiar, like so many of the people around her. 

"Claire, isn't it?"

"Don," she said, remembering his name and trying to remember whether Blake had said he was a probation officer or a social worker. "How are you?"

"Better than I was a minute ago. Could I talk you into a dance?"

She looked back and saw Blake still entangled with the man who'd stopped him at the door.

"All right, but I'll warn you, I've never danced much."

"I thought you were going to turn me down." He had a nice smile, and when they began to dance, she found him an undemanding partner.

"I met one of your clients today at Blake's shipyard."

"Blake? Oh, you mean Mac? I'm hoping you're going to tell me you met Jake there, but it's probably Tim."

"They were both there, painting green preservative onto the hull of a boat."

Don executed an impressive turn that she managed to follow. "That's good news. Jake's got a court appearance coming up soon, and it was beginning to look as if no one would be able to come up with a good reason for giving the kid a break. Guess I should have known Mac would turn the trick."

"Is that what happened with Tim?" 

"You should have seen Tim two years ago. I suppose you saw the tattoos, but that was the least of it." The music stopped and Don asked, "Shall we go another round? We're not doing badly here."

"All right," she agreed. He was, she thought, a nice man. A comfortable man. "Have there been others, besides Tim and Jake?"

"Quite a few. It started, I guess, about seven years ago. Mac and Stenners, up at the high school. They got together and set up a wilderness camp for troubled kids. Mac figured if you could get a kid when he was just edging into trouble, take him out on a boat and make him face nature and high seas, teach him to eat off the sea, he'd find himself."

"And it worked?"

"That—the nature excursions—and the fact that Mac was willing to take some of the kids on at the shipyard, putting his money where his mouth was, so to speak. The kids listen to him. He's tough on them, but they respect him for it. They know he cares about them, and they know they can't con him because he's been there. If it weren't for James Denver, Mac figures he'd probably have ended up as a career criminal—or dead."

"Do you think it's true?" She knew she shouldn't be probing this way, that she had no right to the information Don was giving her. She asked anyway, because she was going to have an affair with Blake McKenzie. A brief affair, but while it lasted, she wanted to know everything she could, because once the week was over she'd never learn any more, never see him again.

Unless she came back.

No, she thought. Coming back wouldn't be wise.

He noticed the moment she began dancing with Don. He saw them meet, saw her step into Don's arms. Blake figured she didn't know he was married, but she sure as hell
should
know that when a woman wearing less than a yard of skintight dress danced with a man three dances running, she was issuing an implied invitation.

Don, damn his hide, should have brought Wendy.

Toby Miller bent closer. "Hastings is so excited about that boat you're building him, he's bragging about having a McKenzie yacht to everyone he sees. He's talking about going cruising up in Canada until the end of September, but the boat's supposed to be on display in the festival, isn't it."

"Don't worry about it. He's taking delivery the fifteenth of August. He just needs a couple of weeks to play with it." 

Mac twisted to see through the crowd. Nothing had changed. Don's hand was still firmly plastered to the skin of Claire's back.

"So he can cruise for three weeks," said Toby, "then deliver it back here. We're talking three days. He can spare the boat for three days in the festival, can't he?"

Where the hell had they gone? If Don was trying anything...

"Mac?"

"Don't worry. I'll talk to Hastings. I'll fix it."

Claire and Don had disappeared.

I want you to sneak me away from the crowd at the dance and kiss me as if you couldn't get enough.

Mac ran a rough hand through his hair and told himself to calm down, to think with his head instead of his glands. She wouldn't go off with Don, a man she'd said she didn't even remember. They'd probably headed for the bar, looking for refreshments. After three, maybe four dances, they must be...

Last night, after three drinks, Claire had asked him if he would spend the week romancing her. 

Where the
hell
were they? If Don put one hand on her... if he so much as—

"Hey, Mac—"

"Later," he muttered, brushing past.

Dancing! Still goddamned dancing. He shouldered his way through a cluster of people without seeing faces and tapped the probation officer's shoulder.

"Henley. You're dancing with my woman."

Don laughed. "Mac, if you don't show a presence you can expect someone to jump your claim."

"I'm here," he growled, and Don's smile faded.

"Sorry, Mac. I didn't realize the lady was private property."

Mac yanked Claire into his arms. 

She jerked back. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" 

"We're dancing," he growled, aware of her stiffness as she stood in his arms, of the way she'd moved in Don's arms, so relaxed.

"Your woman? What was that? Some kind of ritual head-butting?
Your woman?"

"Just a manner of speaking." Had he really said that? What the hell was he doing? "Don Henley is married. He had no business pawing you."

"Pawing?" Blue eyes blazed up into his. "We were dancing, talking. And I am
not
your woman. I don't
belong
to anyone. I'm not an object, nor anyone's possession. I'll dance with whomever I please."

"You'll dance with me."

Her breasts rose and fell in quick rapid breaths, covered with the sultry fabric of that damned dress.

"If you wanted to dance with me, you could have tried
asking.
Then if I wanted to—
if
I wanted to, I'd—"

He silenced her the only way he could think of, his lips on hers, his hand tangled in her hair. Her lips parted under his and he dove deeper into a spinning vortex as her hands clenched on his jacket.

When he jerked his mouth back, free of her lips, someone behind him cheered. He saw Claire swallow, her throat flexing, a nerve jumping in the hollow at the base of her throat.