Craving a Hero: St. John Sibling Series, book 3 (13 page)

"I'm good to go," Dane said, shaking his arms. "Just give me a minute to get the circulation flowing again."

Kelly folded her arms across her chest and cocked a knowing pose. "Told you the middle seat was going to be uncomfortable."

He wagged his eyebrows at her. "But I had the best pillow."

Her cheeks grew warm at the reminder of exactly where his head had been nestled when they woke up to Roman's rapping. And had Roman said guest
room
, as in singular?

Granted, they were all grown-ups. But, the idea of sleeping with Dane outside the privacy of the camp…and
sleeping
was definitely a euphemism for making love where Dane was concerned…took her back to all her father's lectures about being a
good girl.
Her throat tightened and panic sweat broke out along her spine.

"Besides," Dane said to Roman, "I promised Kelly I'd have her home for tomorrow's work shift."

Her breathing evened out; and, even as she silently thanked Dane for removing her dilemma, she questioned why she, an adult, should still be so controlled by the dictates of her father. She was an adult, dammit.

"Thanks for the ride and everything," she said, hugging Roman good-bye. "Tell Tess it was great meeting her. I really enjoyed her company."

"I know she enjoyed yours as well," Roman said.

He and Dane slapped each other on the shoulders, then she and Dame headed for the all-wheel rental Dane had traded his sedan rental in for.

"Don't be a stranger," Roman called after them, no doubt meaning Dane. Surely he couldn't mean her, a virtual stranger, a girl his brother had just met a few days ago.

Not girl, she reminded herself as they climbed into the SUV. Woman. Funny, she'd never really thought of herself as a woman before. That's what Dane did for her, made her feel like a woman.

She eyed him as they backed out of the driveway, but, for all she had to say to him, what came out of her mouth was, "Are you sure you're okay to drive? If not, I can."

The dashboard lights detailed his grin and glinted off his eyes as he looked her way. "The only driving problem I'm going to have in the next two hours is that these damn bucket seats are going to keep you way over there while I'm way over here. But as soon as I get you back to camp, there's going to be nothing but skin between us, Bright Eyes."

What he said made her itch in all the right places. Still, she shook her head, and teased, "You're incorrigible."

"I try to be," he chirped, pulling out into the quiet residential street.

She sank back in her seat, figuring she had two hours ahead of her to talk to him about
things.

But the last thing she remembered before they pulled up to the camp was a string of streetlights as they left Pine Mountain.

"You should have woke me," she said, climbing down from the SUV and heading into the camp. "I could have helped keep you awake."

"We made it," he said through a yawn, "so I clearly didn't fall asleep at the wheel."

Lighting a gas lamp, she gasped. "It's nearly three in the morning."

He didn't answer and she turned around to find him face down on the bed. "Dane?"

He didn't stir. She sat on the edge of the bed beside him, thinking how he'd half promised, half threatened to strip her bare once they got back to camp. She studied what profile his squashed-against-the-bed face presented her. Open-mouthed. Shaggy-haired. Half-man, half-boy.

She stroked a blond lock back from his brow. She wanted him and she didn't mean in terms of sex. She wanted this man with his boyish ways to be hers forever. And, given the events of the night maybe, just maybe he could be.

She rose, folded his blazer on the bench at the foot of the bed then added her own clothes to the pile. One by one, she tugged off his shoes and socks. Rolling him onto his back, she undid the buttons on his shirt and the zipper on his pants. Other than a few moans and a snore or two, he didn't stir as she peeled away his clothes. When he was naked, she crawled onto the bed beside him, pulled a quilt over them and lay next to him, nothing between them but skin. Helping a man keep a promise, even an implied one, was what a woman did for her partner, right?

CHAPTER SEVEN

A ringing woke Dane.
An alarm clock?

He blinked into the darkness, Kelly rolling away from him.

"Hell," he muttered. "It's still night."

She was talking, but not to him.

Her satellite phone. That's what woke him. He dropped his head back on the pillow.

"He's been out there all night?" she stated more than asked.

Dane elbowed himself into a half-sit. "Who?"

"Where do you need me?" she asked. Then, "I'll be there in ten."

He was in a full sit now. "What's going on?"

"Lost five-year-old," she said, scrambling into her uniform. "Family was camping. The dad woke up about midnight and realized the boy was gone. Kid's been in the woods at least five hours."

Dane jumped out of bed and pulled on his jeans.

"You don't have to come with me," she said. "Stay and get some sleep."

"The hell I will," he said, pulling on a t-shirt and following her to the door, boots and socks in hand.

She gave him a head to toe glance. "Bring a jacket. This early in the day, it'll be cold and wet."

#

"Dad, just give me a quadrant to search," Kelly said.

"If you'd had your phone with you when you were first called, you'd already be in the field searching."

Dane stepped up to the awning-covered table where Frank sat with maps spread out. "Frank, even if she'd gotten the call when it first came in, we were still on the road a couple hours away."

"She
shouldn't
have left the area."

Dane gaped at Frank. "It was her day off. She wasn't on call."

"This is more than a job. She knows that," Frank said, jabbing a finger at Dane. "I'm retired and I'm here."

As they headed for Kelly's truck with their assignment, Dane couldn't let go of how she'd let her father treat her. "Just because this gig was everything to him doesn't mean it has to consume your life, too."

"He has high standards," she said, climbing into the driver's seat.

"You have high standards, too, Kel," Dane said, taking his seat. "But I don't see you letting any job take over your life."

She pulled away from the command center at the campsite, frowning. "This is more than
just
a job."

"As opposed to acting?" he shot back, his anger getting the best of him.

She frowned at him, a hurt look in her eyes. "I didn't mean to imply other jobs were less important."

He grimaced. "What you do
is
more important than acting. I just meant, even brain surgeons have days off."

"And you're trying your damnedest to be my hero," she said, turning onto a service road into the woods past the campsite.

"You once said heroes are just ordinary people who do extraordinary things," he muttered. "I haven't done anything extraordinary."

She blinked at him with what he could only call confused wonder. "You stood up to my dad for me, Dane. You make me feel…worthy."

"And that's extraordinary to you?" he asked, mystified

She shrugged and focused on the narrow road they traveled.

He likewise turned his gaze to the road. But his thoughts strayed back to the conversation they'd had about Dixie and Sam—strayed to what she'd said about Sam walking into the lion's den on Dixie's behalf—how that made him a hero. Had he just done something heroic for Kelly?

You make me feel worthy.

He glanced over at her, caught the concentration in her profile—all CO focused on finding a lost boy.
She
was the hero.

Yet she needed someone to remind her she was
worthy.

It made him want to be the man who did that every day for her—to be her hero.

#

By noon, the sun was hot and high in the sky. Teams trickled in and out of the command center, restocking their drinking water, grabbing sandwiches, looking for new quadrants to search. Nobody looked happy. Even the tracking dogs from the state police and a local tracker, lay in the shade looking beat down.

Dane leaned against the trunk of a hardwood, chewing at his ham and pickle spread sandwich, watching Kelly as she squatted at the campsite with the lost kid's parents. She was deep in conversation with them, had been for some time. When she rose, she shook the dad's hand and patted the mother's shoulder, then headed for the command tent.

"I think we're searching too far afield," he heard her say to her post commander as he approached the table where her father still sat with the area maps.

"We started closest to the campsite," her father said.

"In the dark," she responded to her father, barely taking her attention from her commander to whom she added, "He'd have been easy to miss in the dark. You know little kids. They'll sack out wherever they are and there're plenty of spruce with their branches touching the ground bordering the campground. Just yesterday, when he and his family played hide and seek, Jimmy and his dad hid from the rest of the kids under a tree like that."

"And kids that age can sleep like the dead," her father provided.

Dane hung back, smiling inwardly at Frank supporting his daughter's theory.

"He could have slept through everyone calling for him," Kelly said.

The commander studied the maps on the table. "We've already searched well beyond the radius a five-year-old theoretically could have traveled on foot." The commander peered through the park toward the lake it bordered. "Bringing the search in closer beats dragging that lake."

"Sir," Kelly said, "given the heat and his state of mind, Jimmy might have gone back to sleep under one of those trees. The pros know to sweep under low slung branches. Some of the volunteers are experienced, too. But we've got a lot of rookies helping us."

"Reminder well taken, Ranger," the commander said, then sent her and Dane to start searching outward from the area where the family was camped, his radioed commands to outlying searchers crackling from the mobile unit mounted on her shoulder.

"He called you
Ranger.
I haven't heard him call anyone else Ranger," Dane said as they headed into the woods fringing the park.

A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. "It's what they used to call us before someone higher on the food chain decided
Conservation Officer
was a more modern title."

"Judging by how your eyes lit up when he called you Ranger and that smile now tugging at your lips, I'm guessing there's something special in him giving you that title."

She straightened from having swept aside some ground-hugging evergreen branches and moved on. "CO is a title the old-timers see as fitting the new-comers, especially those of us college educated rather than
woods trained."
She paused at the next tree and grinned at him. "Ranger is a term they save for an officer they consider the real deal."

He grinned back at her. "A term of respect."

She nodded and turned her attention to the tree. "Lesson over. Get sweeping under these trees. We've got a little kid to find."

#

They found Jimmy about half an hour later under the ground-sweeping branches of a spruce barely a quarter mile from the campsite, hungry, thirsty, and wanting his mother. But safe. Family reunited and, with the commander's blessing that Kelly could write up her report after she'd gotten some rest, she and Dane climbed into her truck and headed out.

"Damn, I'm happy we found that kid," Dane said, letting his head fall back against the truck headrest. "But I'm so tired I think I could sleep for a month."

"I'm wired," Kelly said, turning onto the county road leading to camp, her smile as wide as the lane.

He smiled in return. "You done good,
Ranger
Jackson," he said, having learned during his time with her the old term of ranger was given only to those COs who'd earned the respect of the title. "Well deserving of a long nap."

She drove past the camp road.

Dane sat up and twisted in his seat, pointing. "Wasn't that our turnoff?"

She smiled. "I've got a better idea."

"Better than sleeping?" he asked.

"I think so," she said.

He crossed his arms over his chest. "So, where you taking us?"

"There's a pond in the valley below Angel Point."

"You're taking me swimming?" he all but whined.

"I'm hot and sticky. Aren't you?" she asked, following two grassy ruts off the main road.

"More tired," he muttered, took the cap from her head, settled its brim low over his eyes, and hunkered down in his seat.

A moment later the truck rocked to a halt. Dane knuckled the cap back from his eyes and squinted over the dashboard at a pool of water more pond than lake in size. "It looks murky."

"It's not," she said, opening her door and jumping out of the truck. "It's spring fed," she added, shucking her shirt and tossing it on the bench seat of the truck.

"Cold then."

Her boots hit the floor of the truck. "You don't shy away from those cold-water cistern showers at the camp."

Next came her fatigues and she peered across the bench seat at him, mischief in her eyes. "Come cool off with me and I'll give you a far better reason to get all hot and bothered."

"I don't have a bathing suit," he said through a grin, beginning to catch her drift.

"Neither do I," she responded, tossing her chemise at him and taking off for the pond.

"I do believe I could use some cooling off," he said, opening his door and yanking off his tee in one motion.

#

She was sans panties and floating on her back by the time Dane came running bare ass naked toward the lake. She couldn't help but laugh. Muscled hunk that he was, there was just something too funny about how man-parts jiggled and bounced about when they ran.

Dane dove in and came up beside her, shook the water from his hair, and, treading water, asked her what was so funny.

"You," she said, shoving his head back under water.

He came back up spitting, caught her in his arms, and pulled her against him. She swatted him and wriggled against his hold, but not too hard. And when his mouth fit over hers in a long, deep kiss, she slipped her arms around his neck and let her body settle against his.

When their lips parted, he said, "I didn't see anything funny about you naked."

"That's because I don't have any little dangling parts bouncing around when I run to make me look funny."

"There you go calling me little again. Then again, the water is really cold."

"Excuses, excuses," she chirped.

"On the other hand," he said, slipping a hand between them and rolling his palm over one turgid nipple, "there is one or two—" He caught her nipple between his finger and thumb. "—advantages to cold water."

"You're a bad boy, Dane St. John," she said in a breathy voice.

"I can be worse," he said, clamping his hands around her waist and lifting her high enough her nipple lined up with his lips.

She felt the pull of his mouth all the way to the core of her womanhood, and she wrapped her legs around him, opening herself to him even though they weren't lined up well enough for her to accept him. Then again, they were in over their heads…at least she was, and she wasn't thinking only about footing.

She closed her eyes against the reality of their situation—that he would be gone in mere days, choosing instead to lose herself in the moment and the sensations of his teasing lips.

He licked and nipped and suckled her until she begged for more.

Later on shore, where the late afternoon sun warmed the soft, green grass, he entered her, moving inside her until she shuddered with her orgasm. But he pulled out without finishing himself.

"Dane," she cried out, reaching for him, wanting to feel him finish inside her.

"No protection," he murmured, letting the touch of her hand finish him instead.

They lay a long time in silence side-by-side in the soft grass, their fingers entwined. Clouds scudded across the blue sky above. Birds sang and twittered from the woods surrounding the clearing. The scent of clover and wild mint engulfed them. If they could stay like this forever—that's what she was thinking.

But, as ever, with thought came reality. He'd pulled out because they weren't wearing protection.

But protection against what? Disease? That damage had already been done their first night together…if there was any such damage to be done. But, she didn't think that was what he was talking about when he'd brought up the subject of protection. The notion of what else they protected each other against churned through her belly.

Her fingers tightened among his, and she asked the question that hammered at her heart. The one she hadn't been able to get out of her head since Dixie's wedding. "Do you want children, Dane?"