Hot and Bothered (5 page)

“Yes.”

Would his kiss sizzle so fast too? she wondered. She had a feeling it would knock her off her feet. She told herself speculation was nine-tenths
imagination and his kiss probably wouldn’t even come close to measuring up.

He put a plate in front of her, then squeezed a lime over it. “Try it.”

She did. The abalone melted in her mouth, with lovely bursts of garlic, cumin, and Mexican lime. “Oh, Lord, but that’s heaven!”

He grinned. “Now you know why I eat it every chance I get.”

“I don’t blame you.” She licked her lips, wanting to taste every bit of it.

Suddenly conscious of Paul’s gaze focused on her mouth, she stopped and stared at him. Only the counter separated them. For a moment neither moved, then he turned away. Judith blinked, then slumped in relief, her heart thumping erratically. He had so mesmerized her for that moment, she had wanted him to kiss her.

It was the last thing she needed.

The spell of easy companionship was snapped as if chopped free with one ax blow. The food on her plate looked unappetizing now. She rose from the stool. “I better be going.”

“Sure.” He wrapped the abalone he’d set aside for her in some foil. “Here.”

She took it from him, careful not to let her fingers touch his.

He turned to a glass patio door and pushed it open. “You can go out this way.”

She nodded and stepped to the door. Pausing with only bare inches separating them, she wondered
how to walk past him without getting any closer. Something made her glance up at his face.

It was a mistake.

Tentatively, almost reluctantly, she tilted her head up even as his shyly bent down. Their lips touched in a butterfly’s kiss … soft … barely brushing … and yet sending shock waves skittering along every nerve ending. The kiss broke and then came back again stronger, more demanding. His arms went around her and she pressed herself against his hard body, marveling at the perfect fit. Their tongues mated, swirling and rubbing together.

Judith’s head was spinning at the sensations he created inside her. She clung to him, the abalone package still in her grip. Through his thin shirt his shoulders were warm, almost hot, and the muscles solid and hard. The scent of sea salt and pure male lingered on his skin, imprinting on her brain. His chest crushed her breasts, and her hips and thighs met his intimately. Her breath was already nonexistent while his was a sensual sound in her ear.

They seemed to break away at the same moment, as if Paul had come to his senses the second she did.

He stared at her, wide-eyed. Horrified by her abandon, she could only gaze back like a fawn caught in headlights.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“What—what to do mean, who am I?” Judith stammered. “I told you already. My name is Judith and I’m on vacation.”

Paul cursed his curiosity, but the look of fear passing over her face had been clear. He couldn’t help his next words. “Here? In an
ejido?
”

“I like the cove and there was a place for rent.” She blazed with righteous anger. “What about you? Why are you, an American,
living
in an
ejido
? You can’t even own the house, you told me so yourself, and you aren’t on vacation! So who are
you
?”

She turned the tables so quickly, he could only gape at her for one telling second. When he realized he must look as surprised and guilty as she did, he clamped his mouth closed, then said, “I told you, I rent this from my uncle.”

She sniffed in disbelief. Paul wanted to shout
at her not to be an idiot. His situation was entirely different from hers. The world had no place for him any longer.
She
, however, was in trouble.

“We’re talking about you, not me,” he said.

“Why can’t we talk about you?” she asked. “What are you trying to hide?”

He glared at her. The last thing he wanted to do was confess all his sins. “I thought you were leaving.”

She must have wanted to escape their conversation as much as he did, for she said, “Yes, of course.”

She stepped out the open door, looked at the foil-wrapped abalone in her hand, and in a flat voice said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He pulled the sliding door shut behind her, cursing himself again for his idiotic reaction to her kiss. He might as well have bodily pushed her away. He had vowed not to pry, yet that was all he had been doing since his first contact with her.

Dogs sending up a flurry of barking had him slamming open the patio door again. He ran down the short slope to the storage yard, belatedly remembering he had originally meant to walk down with her. Sure enough, Judith was standing very still in front of his guard dogs.

“
Detenganse!
” he snapped, ordering the animals off.

After one last defiant bark, the dogs stopped,
holding as he ordered them to do. They weren’t the brightest of animals, but they were better trained than most in the village. He sent them off and they went, growling, unsatisfied with the intruder.

She slumped in relief. “I thought I was about to be shredded.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I did mean to come down with you.…”

His voice trailed off as he regretted the reminder of their confrontation. He cleared his throat, to get out what threatened to stick in it. “I asked something I shouldn’t have. Why you’re here is none of my business. I promise I won’t probe again.”

She smiled. “I won’t either.”

He nodded.

The silence grew awkward. She shrugged finally, halfheartedly holding up the package. “Well, I better go and put this away.”

“Oh, yes, sure.” He opened the wire gate.

“Thanks again for everything.” She slipped past him.

He watched her go down the hill toward the village. Her T-shirt hugged her derriere like white gauze, giving him a terrific view as she walked. He wondered how long it had taken her to cultivate that elegant, unhurried sway she had. Even after their confrontation, she wasn’t rushing away from him. Maybe that was a good sign.

“Maybe I’ve lost the last marble I ever had,” he muttered, turning back to the house.

This place, a refuge that asked nothing of him emotionally, now seemed small and squalid with its rusting fencing and drunken rows of worn-out appliances. He wondered what she’d thought of it. He wondered why he should even care.

The dogs started barking again, this time just to bark. Paul ignored them. He went into the empty house, and even the wonderful scent of fried abalone couldn’t lift his spirits. He found himself wishing he could see his daughter, a need he’d walled off out of necessity a long time ago. He wouldn’t bring more pain to a child. He loved her too much for that. He was a monster. She’d been only six years old when that epithet, and many others, had been flung at him. She must not remember them, for otherwise why would she ask him to her Communion?

It must be Judith’s fault, he thought, making him wish for a more structured life again. She was upsetting, this woman who wore expressive T-shirts with more pleasure than expensive silks.

Very upsetting.

Gingerly, Judith stepped into the corrugated tin shed and pulled the door that didn’t quite close behind her. She tied the rope handle as tightly as she could, but that half-inch door gap that came thigh-high refused to shrink.

She supposed it was just as well. The only light in the shower was a tiny window high on the wall, illuminating little more than an old bird’s nest in the ceiling rafter. At least she could see by the gap if the shower had any floor visitors.

She set her clothes, both those she stripped off and those she would eventually wear, on the small bench, then got a stream of water started from the showerhead. The water pressure was nonexistent and the temperature was never more or less than tepid. Right now she could use a cold shower with a pounding spray. Her libido desperately needed a cooling off and drumming back into normal shape after that encounter with Paul the other evening. It occurred to her that she could have thrown herself into the ocean, but it was too late. She was here now with her thoughts of Paul.

He’d kissed her senseless, a condition she couldn’t remember happening before. Most kisses she’d experienced had been dutiful or sweet or nice. His had been explosive. He’d thrown her emotional equilibrium into a tizzy, then he had seen right through her to her true self, scaring her badly—so badly in fact that she’d actually stood up to him.

It had felt good, she admitted, still surprised by her actions. If only she could be like that all the time. But Paul did things to her, made her feel like she’d never felt before.

But no, she thought, that wasn’t exactly true. It was almost like the way she’d felt when she’d been a diver with Olympic team aspirations. A swimming teacher had encouraged her to pursue diving, and she had loved every minute of it. She had loved the walk along the board or platform; standing poised, completely motionless, at the edge, seeing the dive in her mind, aware of only the spot in the water below where she would enter it. Then the leap into the air, the moment of flying, then her body taut and powerful as she twisted and turned, till she kicked her legs out and plunged into the water in a perfectly straight line. Yes, Paul made her feel something like that exhilaration, though what she felt with him was even better, for rather than flying through the air alone, someone else—Paul—was with her.

Her body grew warmer in a way that had nothing to do with the water. Her hands, for some odd reason, slowed the course of the wet washcloth along her belly. She took a deep breath at the feel of the rough terry against her sensitive skin. It was almost as if Paul were touching her, his hands guiding the cloth across the most intimate parts of her body.…

A shadow passed across the gap.

Judith squeaked in fright as she realized a male leg had shifted its stance just outside the shower door. “Who’s there?”

“Me,” the object of her drifting sensuality replied.

“Paul!” She grabbed her towel and wrapped it around her, heedless of the soap still on her body and the water still trickling from the showerhead. “What are you doing?”

“Standing guard.”

His words took the wind right out of her shock. “What?”

“Standing guard,” he repeated. “Every time a woman takes a shower, all the males under thirty hang around the shower stall. I’m surprised they’re not standing on each other’s shoulders to look in the windows. Usually the women bring someone to stop them. I thought I better play bodyguard for you, since you’re alone.”

He was no Kevin Costner, she mused. He was better. Yet the idea of being a peep show chilled her. Rather like, she thought ruefully, the end of her diving aspirations. A cousin had teased her into diving off the Acapulco cliffs. One look at the churning water and rocks, so different from a safe, still pool, and she had chickened out, jumping instead. Her ambitions had jumped along with her. Was she in for another plunge like that with Paul?

She forced that useless speculation away and said, “There’s a gap at the bottom of the door that won’t quite close all the way.”

“That explains why everyone seems to have a great interest in the earth,” he said. “I’ve wondered about that upon occasion. Some ingenious lech probably bent the metal. I’ll look at it after
you’re done. Go ahead and take your time. I promise I won’t peek.”

Taking a shower with Paul Murphy just outside was like having a lion sharing your campfire. She was positive the peep show would be easier to get through.

Judith swallowed back her anxiety and forced her shaking hands to set the towel back down on the bench. She still had soap on half her body, after all. The stream turned into a trickle, making it harder to hurry through the shower. She cursed under her breath before finally managing to get the last of the soap off her skin and hair. She dried in record time and yanked on her clothes. Giving herself a last inspection, she made a face at the cheap shorts and top she was wearing. If they looked bad, the rest of her, with her naked face and uncombed, dripping hair, must look like hell on wheels.

Maybe that wouldn’t be such an awful thing, she decided. If Paul was repulsed, her currently heightened senses should deflate to proper levels. She hoped. Shoving her feet into her flipflops, she emerged from the dark shed.

Paul glanced at her and grinned. “I never would have expected you to wear that one.”

She looked down at her chest, then flushed pink at the legend.
IT’S NOT PMS, IT’S YOU
.

“I guess it is a bit tacky.”

“Well into rude. That must have been some
shopping you did at the Calimax. I just hope you didn’t wear that shirt for my benefit.”

“Oh, no. No.” She smiled. “I guess I was just in an outrageous mood that day.”

More than that, she thought. She had been expressing her complete freedom to do whatever she pleased for once in her life. At home she always had to think about what kind of image her clothes would create. Her lack of enthusiasm for the family business greatly disappointed her parents, and she consciously tried to please them in other ways. She lived at home and at least looked the part of a Collier. Those concessions mollified her parents and decreased the pressure on her to join the family business. One bucked the Collier system only so far.

Here, though, she wasn’t a Collier. She was just Judith and could experiment. She could become someone different for a time.

“I can’t wait to see what else you got,” Paul said.

That sounded very suggestive. She didn’t want him to sound suggestive. She took a deep breath. “Thanks for playing guard dog.”

He practically purred the words, “My pleasure.”

A jolt of warmth went through her body, and she wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his arms. She wished he had peeked at her in the shower. The thought was delicious.

Judith realized how far out of control she was.
She straightened, trying to give herself some backbone.

“I saw you in the surf again with the kids this afternoon,” he said.

Grateful for the subject change, she said, “I have fun with them. They’re so free.”