When Somebody Loves You (25 page)

And she was going to pay for making him care, damn her. For reducing him to the most vulnerable of creatures—a man with a weakness for one woman.

He rose stiffly to his feet, rummaged around in the shattered remains of the boat, and snagged the duffel. Grim-faced, he slung it over his shoulder and headed inland.

It wasn’t long before he spotted the cabin. His head down against the unrelenting downpour, he limped up the rickety steps. Driven by his anger, he shoved open the door and stepped inside.

The cabin was black as a cave, the silence within so wary, he physically felt her fear.

“Joanna?” he called as the wind whipped his raincoat around his legs and slammed the door against the wall.

More silence, then a small, disbelieving whisper. “Adam?”

He heard the rustle of wet clothes in the darkness and her whimper of relief when she fully embraced the truth that it was him.

“Adam.” She materialized out of nowhere and launched herself into his arms. The blow knocked him off balance. He staggered back against the wall as she locked her arms around his neck and burrowed against him.

Wrapping his own arms around her instinctively, protectively, he let go of his need to chew a strip of hide off her slim little backside. Anger, for the moment, had to be content to stalk the outskirts of his emotions. A profound, penetrating relief held it at bay. She was here. She was safe.

Without releasing her, he wrestled the door closed, shutting out the driving rain. “Are you okay?” he asked gruffly as he collapsed against the cabin wall again.

Trembling, she tightened her hold and nodded against his chest.

Drowning in the feel of her, in the reality that he had her wrapped securely in his arms, he closed his eyes and lowered his mouth to her hair. “I ought to beat you within an inch of your life.”

A beating was the last thing he wanted to give her, though. Instead, he skated his hand upward from her waist, checking for injuries. What he discovered was a delicate framework of ribs that rose and fell with each unsteady breath she drew. What he felt was a heart that fluttered wildly beneath the heel of his hand.

His heart did a dance of its own. “Damn you, Joanna,” he growled as he cupped her jaw in his hand and tipped her face to his. Raking the wet tangle of hair back from her face, he searched her eyes in the darkness. They were fire bright and glistening, not with pain but with longing. He cursed her again. Then he lowered his head and took her mouth in a desperate kiss.

He poured into that kiss all the fear, all the passion, and the barely leashed anger that had brought him to this point. Shifting their bodies until it was her back against the wall, he pressed his weight into hers. His mouth demanded. His hands possessed as she moved against him and moaned into his mouth, not only yielding to his urgency but returning it with stunning demands of her own.

He skimmed his hand down her throat and chest, never hesitating before closing over her small but distinctly feminine breast. She was so tiny . . . and so needy as she murmured something unintelligible and arched into his hand. She was liquid fire, combustible heat. Her little furnace of a body burned through her wet clothes as her small, responsive nipple tightened against his palm.

He groaned and deepened the kiss with a savage hunger, losing himself somewhere between reason and rage.

It was her yielding, her total trust and acquiescence that finally set him on the right path. Reason somehow intervened, warning him that in the state he was in, if he didn’t back away now, he’d take her there, against the wall. No matter how much her murmurs told him she wanted him, he couldn’t do that to her.

Breathing hard, he pushed himself away. Anger was his only combatant against the look in her eyes. And his anger, finally, was going to have its say.

Shivering in the absence of Adam’s body heat, Jo huddled into herself and listened to his movements in the darkness.

Glass scraped against metal. A match struck flint, then burst into flame. The acrid odors of sulfur and kerosene blended with the scent of her own anxiety as he touched fire to wick. The lamp on the table in the middle of the room flared to life. Its blue-yellow flame cast the cabin in diffused light . . . and Adam in harsh, flickering shadows.

A moment ago he’d been protective, steely strength pressed against her. He’d been wild, reckless desire. But the tension in his stance now was as naked as the anger on his face. A new brand of chill shivered up her spine as he replaced the chimney on the lamp and turned to her, impaling her with slate-gray eyes as stony as the profile she’d just assessed.

Not knowing what to make of the change in him, she swallowed thickly, then jumped when he grabbed the duffel from the floor and tossed it at her feet.

“I brought dry clothes.” Sounding as caring as a prison guard, he barked his orders. “Get out of those wet ones and put them on.”

Cold, hurt, and confused, she just stood there trying to sort through her own feelings so she could identify and deal with his.

He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her as if she were a child in need of a good lecture—until his gaze dropped to her clingy wet T-shirt. It lingered there with the same heated intimacy as if he’d touched her.

“Adam—”

The look in his eyes stopped her as he forcibly wrenched his attention back to her face. “Out of the clothes.” His gravelly rasp sent her heart skittering. “After that little joyride, I don’t have it left in me to wet-nurse a brat who doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain.”

Weary of the mixed signals he was sending her, she met his eyes with defiance. “You don’t have to wet-nurse anyone. I’ve told you before, I can take care of myself.”

“Why is it, then, that every time I turn around I find you in way over your head? No,” he growled before she could utter a protest. “I don’t want to hear it. None of it.” Rage, harsh and cutting, tempered his tone. “Just get out of those clothes. Now. And don’t worry.” The smile that touched his lips was forced and mocking. “Your virtue’s safe with me. My tastes still run more toward women, not girls.” With a disdainful look, he turned toward the fireplace, dismissing her.

After the way he’d kissed her, she wasn’t about to be dismissed. “And next you’re going to tell me that wasn’t a
woman
you had backed up against the wall a minute ago.”

A slight tightening of his shoulders was the only response he gave her. It wasn’t enough. “Or,” she went on, “do you have another explanation for what just happened between us?”

He turned to face her. Their gazes tangled and held as the flame in the oil lamp sputtered and flared from orange to white when remnants of a wind gust found its way into the cabin through a crack in the warped pine siding.

“Adrenaline,” he stated with a conviction that dared her to dispute it. “Adrenaline is what happened between us. Don’t mistake it for anything else.”

It was one shove too many in a day marred by disaster. She was cold, shaking, and the pain in her hand had shot past annoying and was working toward agony. She was weary, too, of his Ping-Pong reactions. “You’re the one making the mistake, Dursky.” Then, using the most vulgar obscenity she knew, she told him what he could do with his adrenaline.

Her pithy suggestion stopped him cold. He cocked a blond eyebrow. “You’re right about one thing. No little girl I know uses
that
word.”

“For the last time, I am
not
a girl! And you, more than anyone, know it.” Tears of frustration stung her eyes.

“What I know,” he began, emphasizing each word, “is that I’m cold and tired . . . mostly tired of putting up with your sass. And before that stubborn chin of yours lifts any higher, I’d suggest you think twice before you take any more chances, especially with me. I’m really not in the mood, so don’t push it, Red. I’m about that far from turning you over my knee and peppering your backside with the flat of my hand.”

He snatched the duffel, ripped it open, and shook the contents onto the cabin floor. “Now if you aren’t out of those wet clothes and into some dry ones by the time I finish building the fire, so help me, I’ll strip you myself.”

She caught herself short of taunting him to do just that as he shed his wet rain gear and turned back to the fireplace. Instead, she watched him crouch before the hearth and shove kindling from the split wood stacked beside it onto the grate.

Quietly, pridefully, she made her point. “I
am
a woman, Adam. As soon as you accept that and the fact that you want me as one, maybe we’ll both get a little peace of mind.”

“A woman wouldn’t have run off today.” His voice had grown dangerously soft. She thought of cool, smooth silk and sharp-edged steel. “She would have faced the problem and dealt with it. And I’ll have peace of mind, thank you very much, when I get off this godforsaken island, out of your life, and back where I belong.”

His words hurt. She knew they were designed to. She knew something else. She wasn’t the only one running away from problems. He was running scared. Scared of her. Scared of his feelings.

“And where, exactly, do you belong?”

He was silent for a very long time. “Anywhere but here.”

Swallowing back the pain, she asked softly, “Then why
are
you here? Why did you bother to come after me?”

His eyes were hard and cold when he faced her. “Dammit, Joanna. Hasn’t it gotten through that stubborn red head of yours that you could have died out here?”

The anguish in his voice told her what he refused to put into words. “And you would have cared,” she said, bravely holding his gaze. She stepped toward him. “You don’t like it, but you would have cared.”

Hands bracing the air between them as if to stave her off, he backed away, away from her, away from the truth of her words, and away, she knew, from his feelings.

“Yes,” he said finally, sounding as if he’d run to hell and back trying to avoid the admission. “I would have cared.”

Then he turned his back on her once more, closing the subject with as much finality as if he’d closed and locked a door.

Five

Adam concentrated on building the fire. He added tinder slowly and methodically until he was convinced he was in control again. And then he heard the rasp of her zipper going down. He laid the next log with a shaking hand. The sound of her wet clothes hitting the floor behind him brought his head up and sent his pulse racing.

For a vivid, heart-lurching second he recalled the way her slim frame had felt wedged between him and the wall. Cold and wet as she’d been, her small body had warmed his blood. And she was right, damn her. It had been a woman’s body that had made his own hard with wanting. A woman’s breast he’d caressed.

That woman was just a foot away, his for the taking. He forced himself to picture her elfin face. A woman who looked that young and innocent had surely never been with a man. Especially not a man like him. Knowing it was futile, he struggled to place her in that niche in his mind reserved for puppies and children. She was neither, though, and with each passing moment, he became far too aware of that.

What she was, he acknowledged with an acceptance knotted with longing, what he’d known from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, was everything missing in his life. And he would be everything wrong in hers.

She’d despise him for it, but the only good thing he could do for her was push her away. If he didn’t, she’d end up hating him more.

He turned abruptly to face her, relieved beyond measure to find her covered from neck to bare feet in his gray sweatshirt and sweatpants. Avoiding her huge, hurting eyes, he found a pair of his socks among the heap of clothes on the floor. He tossed them to her, then stoically set out the thermos of coffee and the food he’d snagged from her kitchen.

“Eat,” he ordered.

Turning up the wick in the lantern, he took stock of the cabin. Though fairly clean, it had seen better days and years of wear. Tattered curtains that might have once been blue stirred slightly as the wind continued to rattle the multipaned windows. Rough-cut knotty pine paneled the interior walls and peaked ceiling of the single room that served as kitchen, bedroom, and living area. A braided rag rug covered the bulk of the worn pine floor. The stone fireplace, thank God, was proving to be functional. Already it was stealing the chill from the room.

He walked to one corner and dragged a protective covering from a stack of bedding. Grimly determined, he tugged the two single mattresses in front of the fire, laid them side by side, and covered them with blankets and the sleeping bag.

Only then did he turn to her and deal with the most immediate problem. She was getting shocky, shaking so hard the coffee was about to slosh over the side of the thermos mug.

He pried the mug from her hand, led her to the bed on the floor, and eased her down. He fed the fire, then in silence stripped out of his own wet clothes and into a pair of sweats. Knowing she needed his body heat to warm her, he crawled into the bed behind her. He pulled her against him, closing his mind to the feel of her.

“Adam . . . I’m s-sorry I g-got you into this m-mess.”

“Shhh. Just . . . shhh,” he whispered, hearing the tears in her voice and the gruffness in his. “Go to sleep. We’ll deal with it in the morning.”

Trusting and trembling, she snuggled against him. In a few minutes, she fell into an exhausted sleep.

Hours passed before Adam even dared to close his eyes. Hours in which he felt her thaw and stir and shiver against his warm body. Hours of sweet agony as he lay behind her hard as stone, trying not to think of the matte velvet feel of the skin beneath his sweatshirt, the small perfect shape of her breasts, the dusky brown tightness of her nipples.

The wind rattled the windows. The woman sighed in her sleep. And Adam Dursky weathered his own private storm.

Morning dawned gray and dismal. The rain had stopped, but the wind, if anything, had worsened. It beat like an angry fist against the little cabin. When Adam parted a curtain to look outside, he could see it had whipped the lake into an even more aggressive frenzy than the night before.

The rustle of the bedcovers told him Jo was awake. Sensing that her gaze was focused on him, he turned to face her. How many days, he wondered, could he make it without touching her?

She sat up, tousled and mussed, her hair a wild curling mane about her face. She looked a little battered, a little bruised, and entirely too vulnerable. Entirely too sexy.

His stomach muscles clenched. Her stomach growled. Embarrassed, she covered it with her hand, then flinched in pain.

“Sounds like you could do with some breakfast,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

He snorted. “And I’m the tooth fairy.”

She looked away, plucking nervously at the downy sleeping bag.

“When were you planning on telling me about your hand?”

Her gaze, full of denial, snapped to his. The warning in his eyes must have made her think better of it. In the end, she shrugged. “I wasn’t.”

Watching her, he made a decision.

“About last night . . .” He paused as he sensed her preparing for another lecture. “I didn’t know if I was going to live to see today. And until I found you here, I wasn’t sure you were either. I’m sorry for the rough handling. I was way out of line. Like I said . . . chalk it up to a renegade surge of adrenaline. You scared the hell out of me.”

She blinked hard and looked away.

“But I didn’t have to be such a bastard about it.”

Hunkering down before her, he tentatively brushed her cheek with his knuckles. Heat shimmered along his fingers as he connected with her petal-soft skin. He dropped his hand quickly. “We’re not out of this yet. There’s no sign of a letup in the wind, so we may be stuck here for a while.” More gently, he added, “If we’re going to make it through this without doing each other in, we’ll have to call a truce of sorts.”

She drew the sleeping bag closer to her breast. “I didn’t know we were at war.”

A muscle in his jaw flexed. He stood and looked down at her. “No war. Just a major skirmish or two.”

That finally earned him a smile. A small one. That a tomboy floundering inside his sweats could trigger such protective instincts in him no longer surprised him. That that same tomboy could have him itching to crawl back under the covers and teach her the fine points of seduction almost cost him his voice.

“Now, will you give me your hand?”

Without hesitation, she extended it. A peace offering.

With much hesitation, he took it. War fleetingly seemed the better option. Concern overshadowed hesitancy, however, when he realized the extent of the damage.

He swore softly. “Dammit, Jo, it’s broken.”

“I’ve suspected as much,” she said through clenched teeth.

Gentle as he tried to be, he sensed it took all of her will not to flinch as he prodded her palm. She’d broken the bone just below her thumb. He gave her a sharp look. “Why didn’t you say something about the pain?”

“What’s to say? It hurt. Wailing about it wasn’t going to make it better.”

She was as stubborn as the aspen that bent but refused to break to the force of the wind. She dug in her heels the same way it put down roots and somehow gained a toehold in the rock. He’d always thought of himself as rock hard, at least where giving in to emotion was concerned. Leave it to her to teach him different. “See if you can move your thumb.”

She sucked in a harsh breath. It was the only sign that she’d tried.

“That’s good. Easy. Don’t push it.” He sat back on his heels, ran his hand across his mouth, and broke into a cold sweat considering what he was about to do to her. There was no point in waiting. “Now would be a great time to lay some of your colorful vocabulary on me. I’ve got to set this and it’s going to hurt like hell.” Then he jerked her thumb hard, setting the break before either of them had any more time to think about it.

She made a surprised and anguished sound, then turned deathly pale. Tucking her head tight to her chest, she let out her breath on a slow, tortured moan.

“It’s okay. It’s okay now,” he crooned, agonizing over her pain. “It’s over. Hold on while I splint it. It’ll give you a little protection and ease some of the ache. You still with me, Red?”

She nodded jerkily.

“That’s my girl.” He squeezed her shoulder, quickly made a splint by wrapping a wood chip in gauze from the first-aid kit, and carefully bound her hand.

“You’re very good at that.”

So glad to hear her voice close to normal, he commented without thinking. “A lot of my buddies got hit in the Gulf War. Where we were, medics were in short supply. You learned fast under fire how to treat any number of—” He stopped midsentence, catching himself. His gaze met hers over their joined hands. “Let’s just say I got good at a lot of things.”

Her eyes were full of questions. To her credit, she didn’t ask one.

He tied off the gauze and inspected his work. “How does that feel?”

“Good. It feels good.”

“It feels like hell, but give it a little time and the pain will ease.” He checked the wrap. “Not too tight?”

She shook her head.

“I saw some aspirin in here somewhere,” he said, rummaging around in the first-aid kit until he found it. “Why don’t you take a couple to help knock the edge off?”

“No thanks. I’m fine.”

“You’re so fine, you’re shaking like a small leaf in a big wind. Come on, tough guy. Doc Dursky says take ’em anyway. They’ll reduce the swelling. Might even help the bruises you’re bound to have from the beating you took on the water.”

She reluctantly held out her left hand. “Thank you. I’m not used to having someone fuss over me.”

And he wasn’t used to fussing over anyone. He didn’t want to get used to it either. It felt too good. Rising, he poured a cup of cold coffee for her, then watched as she tossed down the aspirin.

“How old are you anyway?” he asked out of the blue. Immediately, he regretted it. He could see in her eyes that she was remembering another time when he’d asked her that same question. He hadn’t expected an answer then, and she hadn’t expected his kiss.

“I’m old enough,” she answered with a tight smile, “that it’ll be a cold day in hell before I’ll ever forgive you for calling me ‘little girl’ or ‘kid.’ I was twenty-six in August.”

She looked pleased that she’d shocked him. And he was pleased that her spirit was returning.

“Your twenty-six years stacked up against my forty-one still makes you a kid in my book. And that stunt you pulled yesterday reeked of a spoiled-adolescent trick.”

Blinking hard, she stared at her coffee. “It’s the only home I’ve ever known, Adam. It hurts knowing that I’m going to lose it again.”

He tried to ignore the devastation in her voice and the tightness in his chest. “Maybe it just wasn’t in the cards.”

Drawing a deep breath, she gathered herself. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Knowing he had to get away from her before he did something stupid, like drag her into his arms and love away her hurt, he shrugged into his rain gear and jerked open the door. “I’m going to check on your kayak and the boat, see if there are enough pieces left to put together something that will float.”

“Adam?”

Her soft voice stopped him. He didn’t turn around until she repeated his name, and when he did, a knot the size of Alaska seemed to have lodged in his throat.

“Thank you.”

He grunted something that he hoped passed for “Forget it” and headed out the door.

It was like a disease, Jo thought as he slammed the door behind him, this feeling that crept over her. It consumed her heart, her soul, and in the midst of a very real threat to her life, it consumed her thoughts. Its name was Adam. And it appeared to be incurable.

She rose slowly from her bed on the floor, more aware than ever of the beating she’d taken in the storm. Walking stiffly to the window, she watched Adam hunch his shoulders against the wind and make his way slowly through the woods to the shore.

He was a solid, unbendable object as he faced the wind alone. He’d made it clear last night with hard words and this morning with soft ones that there was no future for them together. Alone and hurting, she saw that now, and she saw the wisdom of his decision. He was here on borrowed time. She’d always known that, but had lost sight of the truth somewhere along the way.

Still a little shaky, she pressed her forehead against the cool windowpane. Steve’s news had been a grim reminder of the fickleness of fate. Fate had brought Adam to her. It would also take him away . . . just as it had taken away everything that had ever been important to her. Her mother, her father, Shady Point.

Well, her problems weren’t his and she wasn’t going to solve them by moping. She turned away from the window, determined to make it easier on both of them. Adam was right. As long as the wind held, they were stuck here. Even if his boat was repairable or her kayak was seaworthy, it would be foolish to venture out on the lake when it was this rough. And it was a sure bet no one else would be out on it either. Besides, it might be days before anyone would miss them. When they did, and
if
they put it together that they were stranded somewhere on the lake, there were miles of shoreline and dozens of islands to search. That Adam had found her was a remarkable twist of fate.