Jed's Sweet Revenge (5 page)

Thena gasped as he tumbled energetically backward and whacked the side of his head on the rim of the kitchen’s yellow Formica countertop. His eyes closed in obvious response to the sharp torture, but he made no sound. He simply slid to the floor in a sitting position, his back against the kitchen cabinets, one denimed knee drawn up. He slowly flattened a hand over the rising lump on his head, and the skin around his mouth lost some of its ruddy color.

“I want to die with my boots on,” he mumbled, his eyes still squinted shut. “Just go ahead and beat me to death. Get an ear of corn. That ought to do the trick.”

“Dear God,” Thena said slowly. How could he joke when he’d nearly brained himself? Somewhere deep inside her, grudging admiration flared along with the fear that he might be seriously hurt. She dropped her last peach and hurried to the kitchen sink, where she soaked a dishcloth in cool water.

“Sit still,” she ordered. Thena knelt beside him and tentatively reached out with the cloth. His eyes opened, their gaze directly on her. He spoke somberly.

“I’d rather be beat to death than smothered, ma’am.”

He had a way about him that was funny and outrageous,
and she was too overcharged to react in a reasonable way. Thena couldn’t contain a little smile at his humor.

“You’re safe for the moment.”

She quit smiling and pressed the cloth to the top of his head. He lowered his hand as Thena squeezed the soggy material. She watched the brown of his hair darken to chocolate as the water soaked it.

“Maybe that will help. Are you bleeding?”

Jed continued to study her as he ran his fingers under his wet hair. He pulled them away and she glanced over. He had absolutely battered hands, covered in scars and calluses, and the little finger on this particular hand was a tiny bit crooked, as if it’d been broken and hadn’t healed right. His hands suited what she knew of his nature, she decided. They intrigued her.

“No blood,” he answered.

“Good.”

“You’re bein’ mighty concerned about my health all of a sudden.”

Thena gave him a warning look. “Don’t bet on it. I just don’t want your carcass to foul my island.”

She began to wipe peach juice off his face, her ministrations a little rough and impatient. Hazel eyes, she thought suddenly. He has beautiful, deepset hazel eyes. And he smelled sweaty and masculine in an erotic way that drew attention from some traitorously female part of her brain.

“How old are you?” he asked abruptly. She nearly dropped her cloth. Thena cocked one dark brow at him.

“Twenty-five. Why?”

“Just askin’.”

She began wiping his face again, but now she felt very uncomfortable. His weathered complexion was red from the rough cloth; her fingertips accidently brushed his skin and the texture of his fine beard stubble transmitted strange signals up her arm.

“How old are you?” she asked just as abruptly.

“Thirty-two. Why?”

She pursed her lips in exasperation. “Just asking. You look older than that. It’s all those cowboy squint lines.” Thena tossed the cloth onto the countertop above him. “There.” She sighed with deep fatigue. “I’m afraid you’ll live.”

“You hate me,” he said evenly. “And I reckon I don’t blame you.”

They shared a long look and both of them blushed. The word “hate” provoked a confusing intensity, Thena thought. Her mouth tightened into a straight line. “Give me any reason why I shouldn’t hate you. I’m going to fight this plan of yours. I’m going to go to the state conservation people and ask them to get some sort of legal order against you.”

“Fair enough. Fight, then. But when you talk to those folks, do me one favor, huh? Don’t say I’m sellin’ the island just to make money. I’m not, ’cause I’ve got more money now than I know what to do with. So don’t make me out to be a hog. I’m sellin’ this place because I don’t intend for it to be some sort of do-goodin’ monument to my old hypocrite grandpa. He was spiteful and mean.”

“You’re spiteful too, cowboy. That’s a sad way to live your life.”

“You want me to feel different, you give me good reason.”

“All right,” she answered tautly. “I’ll give you a tour of the island that will knock your boots off.”

Jed nodded, accepting her challenge. “I have to leave late tomorrow afternoon, but between now and then you show me around and I might keep an open mind.” It wasn’t a lie, he assured himself. He might. “Whatever I decide, I want you to know I sure hate that you’re takin’ this so personal.”

She fended off that disturbing comment with an impatient wave of one hand. “So tell me where hardheaded cowboys such as you are born and raised.”

“Wyoming.”

Thena looked at him as if he’d said “the moon.” “Ah, now I see. You couldn’t possibly understand what this island or any other island is all about.”

Jed nodded. “Never saw an ocean or an island, before yesterday. Don’t care to see one again. You ever been West?”

“I visited New Orleans once, when I was a little girl.”

Jed looked at her from under his brows, the look conveying deep worry.

“That’s not West,” he noted dryly. He mimicked her. “You couldn’t possibly understand what I’m all about.”

“New Orleans is west of here. It qualifies.”

He chuckled. Thena tilted her head and absorbed the gentle, warm sound. It invaded her body and loosened all her muscles with disturbing ease. Certain parts of her body enjoyed the experience even more than others.

Jed abruptly stopped chuckling when she leapt up, frowning at him.

“Get on your feet and go back to your campsite,” she demanded. “I have painting to do. I’ll see you at dawn.”

“I’m camped—”

“I know where you’re camped. Cendrillon and I watched you all morning from the forest.”

Startled, he retorted, “See anything interestin’?”

Thena nearly blushed again. She’d seen him strip his shirt off, and the sight of his hairy, muscular chest had been very interesting.

“No. How can you stand to wear those hot jeans?”

Jed stood up slowly. Now he towered over her, his body only inches away from hers. “I can take the heat,” he said in a provocative way.

Thena stepped back from him, her heart pumping too hard, her facial muscles rigid with her determination not to show the confusion she felt. Why was
he staring at her lips? Was he actually contemplating a kiss?

“I have a lot of questions to ask you,” she told him.

“I’ll try to answer ’em, if you’ll answer mine.”

“Tomorrow.” Thena replied. She was suddenly frantic to get him out of her house. He was using what Nate had somberly called “primitive sexual innuendo,” and she was shocked. For years she’d tried to provoke such a display from Nate, until she’d finally admitted that she just wasn’t sexy enough.

She hadn’t attempted to provoke Jed Powers at all, yet he was standing here singeing her with a look that was about as primitive as an innuendo could get. Her breath seemed to have trouble finding its way into her lungs. Very slowly, he leaned towards her.

“Tomorrow,” he echoed. He tipped a finger to his forehead in a gesture of good-bye that was old-fashioned and oddly gallant, then turned on his bootheel and strode out, swinging the screen door shut behind him with a jaunty slap of his hand.

Thena sank weakly into a chair. She wasn’t going to let Jed Powers sell her island. She’d capture him one way or another—if he didn’t capture her first.

Uhmmmm. When had he ever felt this languid? When had waking up been so slow and so full of pleasant dreams? Jed smiled, then rolled over in the sleeping bag so that the cushion of sand was under his back. He took a deep breath and inhaled a sensual feast of sea air mixed with food cooking over a driftwood fire.

Cooking? Fire? Instincts honed by years of light sleeping—mostly listening for his father to stagger drunkenly up to the door of their tiny trailer—brought Jed instantly awake. He stared up at the canvas canopy that protected his eyes from the sunlight, then jerked his head to one side and found the source of his dreams. Thena.

She sat cross-legged a few feet away, tending a skillet over his rekindled campfire. The morning light tinted her pink, and the constant ocean breeze lifted strands of her untamed hair. The ripe swell of her breasts was just visible under her white T-shirt, and short white shorts emphasized the golden tautness of her legs.

Jed felt an ache of physical desire, and greedily took the secret moment to memorize her face feature by feature. She had a delicate nose that could have belonged to a fancy debutante with cool blue blood and white-gloved hands, Jed thought. Her cheekbones were just as haughty, high and well-defined.
She reminded him of all the rodeo queens who’d sought him out when their daddys weren’t looking.

But her mouth and eyes, Lord, they took away any hint of snobbery and turned her into an earth mother, a pirate’s woman, warm as hot cider and twice as sweet. Her nature was quicksilver expressions and animated movements, and she made him feel even quieter than he was. But it felt good to be her opposite; it felt right.

Jed became aware of the texture of his lips, wind-hardened and tight from too few smiles, and he wondered how her gentle, full mouth would feel against them. She made him think of roses, of their softness and sweet smell. Thena began to sing some silly old movie song very softly, and Jed succumbed to pure reverence. He watched the tiny movements of her dark lashes, now half-lowered to protect her eyes from the brightening dawn light. The woman had magic in those eyes, and he needed magic in his empty life. He lay there without moving, transfixed by the simple beauty of her silhouetted against the dusky pink sky and white sand.

Then she saw him watching her. Her song stopped and her lips remained parted, curved in an oval of embarrassment.

“Good morning,” she said finally. “I hope you like fried whiting and wheat biscuits.”

Thena’s strained nerves produced a flood of odd and vaguely pleasant reactions in her body as he lay perfectly still without answering and kept his disconcerting gaze trained on her. Do cowboys dislike fish? she wondered. Or is he angry about yesterday?

She forced herself to remain immobile under the quiet, dreamy gaze he gave her. She’d never watched a man wake up before, and now she wondered if other men besides Jed Powers had such dark, sexy eyes in the morning. How could a man with a rumpled face and disheveled hair be so attractive?

“Thena, is this breakfast a bribe?” His voice was rumpled too. It teased her with mellow good humor and dispelled her fears.

“Yes.” Smiling, she nodded vigorously and looked back at the pan of floured whiting filets sizzling in oil. “I went through your food supply. Crackers and Spam are no diet for a day of island exploring.”

“Might nosy, aren’t you, gal?”

Gal. What a strange, likable word, she thought. “Your backpack was open. And I still consider this my island. I’ll do what I want.”

They traded challenging looks. Abruptly, still teasing, he smiled at her. Abruptly, she smiled back. Fingers of golden light poured over the treetops, and Jed shivered with emotion as the whole world seemed to light with Thena’s smile and the morning sun.

“Great gosh a’mighty,” he said softly.

“What’s wrong?” She cocked her head to one side and looked bewildered.

Jed fumbled to hide his emotions. “It’s … is it always so durned bright here in the mornin’?”

She laughed, to his delight. “Isn’t it bright in Wyoming?”

“Not like this. Here it’s like everything’s sharper and clearer than I’ve ever seen it before.”

“That’s not just from the sunlight.” She smiled mysteriously. “That’s from inside you.” She reached over and pointed to his heart, then quickly brought her hand back to her lap. “Sancia has a way of making your heart open up to everything around you.”

Jed chuckled. Now she was talking nonsense. “Why, I thought I was just havin’ a spell of indigestion.”

She held a spatula in her other hand, and after a moment she shook it at him. “You’ll see,” she warned tartly.

Thena turned back to her cooking and tried to ignore the rapt attention his eyes still lavished on her. “Last night I looked up articles about Wyoming
in my
National Geographics
. No wonder you feel out of place here. What part of Wyoming are you from?”

“Little town called Hard Chance Creek. Up in the mountains.”

Thena nodded, recalling photographs of craggy peaks and swirling blizzards. “You’ll just have to give yourself time to adjust.” She offered a kind smile, as if he were a heathen she would convert for his own good.

“So you think I just need to be brainwashed?”

“No. You need your consciousness raised.”

“It rises by itself, thank you, ma’am.” Chuckling, Jed unzipped his sleeping bag and slid from under the canopy so he could sit up. Thena was aware of her pulse hesitating as she got a close-up view of a prime male body covered by nothing but snug jeans. Why, he’s beautiful, she thought.

His chest had a thick covering of curly hair, and the hair remained thick as it flowed across a stomach terraced with small muscles. Nothing was soft about him but that dark brown hair, and she imagined how silky it would feel to her fingers if she touched it.