Lord of Lightning (6 page)

No sudden moves, Lise,
she told herself, tilting her head to check out the man lying next to her. He must have shifted toward her at sometime during the night, and the way his hand was fisted around a hunk of red flannel material made it look as though he’d given serious thought to taking the shirt off her.

Maybe he’d been dreaming? She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but that possibility did nothing to reassure her quickening heart. She was struck all over again by the size of him, evidenced by the breadth of his hand, the muscular span of his arm, and everything the arm was connected to. At five feet five, she felt physically slight, almost inconsequential by comparison. If he’d wanted to take the shirt off her, he could have, she realized. Very easily.

She considered his face in repose and decided she saw compassion there, even tenderness. He might be the stuff of Nordic legend. He might even bring to mind the warlords who stormed her daydreams and carried her off, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was the sort who pillaged, plundered, and ripped bodices. Speaking of which ...

His chambray shirt was unbuttoned, and she found it impossible to avoid the fact that his chest was drowning in a rainstorm of golden hair. Her fingers tingled with anticipation, but if she had the latent desire to touch him there, it was swiftly suppressed by the inappropriateness of such an act. She didn’t even want to
imagine
herself running her fingers through a man’s chest hair.

The tangled gold on his head, however ...

She might have liked to tame that wildness a bit, or even to feel the delicious scrape of his beard against her palm.

She kept her tingling fingers to herself. No telling what might happen if he woke up and found her getting familiar with his hair. The very thought gave her chills. Instead she cautiously extricated herself from his grasp and pushed up to a sitting position, wincing at the twinge of protest from her ribs.

By the time her feet had hit the floor, she knew she was going to be all right. She wouldn’t be doing pushups for a while, but she could move remarkably well otherwise. Perhaps she hadn’t actually broken any ribs. Even the cuts on her arms looked much improved, the swelling and inflammation nearly gone.

On that encouraging thought, she glanced at her watch. Seven? In the morning? Odd, she thought, moving toward the window for a look outside. The sun seemed too high for seven. A closer scrutiny told her the brand-new watch had stopped. The second hand wasn’t moving. She tapped the crystal hopefully. She’d only bought the thing yesterday, so there was no possibility that it needed batteries. Perhaps she’d hit it during the fall.

Two watches in two days, she thought, turning to reconsider Stephen Gage. He could get to be expensive.

He chose that moment to make a muffled sound and reach out, gathering the blanket to him as though it were a woman.

Lise felt a wrench of something poignant. The suddenness of the feeling surprised her; its sharpness confused her. Her breathing deepened, and in the rising tumult, she recognized only one emotion, a wrench of longing. She wanted to be the woman he reached out for.

The sun was beating on her back as though to remind her that she had no business standing there aching to be held by a man she barely knew. Or any man for that matter. She had to teach that morning—and she still didn’t know what time it was. She scanned the room, looking for her clothes, and as she spotted her dress draped across a chair, she also noticed an adjoining room. The closed door was warped along the frame, its white enamel paint yellowed and blistered, but it was the padlock hanging just above the knob that drew her attention.

Locked rooms had always intrigued her. Once as a child she had forced the lock on her father’s study and found him berating her mother about having had an extra glass of wine that night at a dinner party. That was when Lise had begun to suspect that men were inclined to be too domineering. And perhaps too much bother all the way around.

She proceeded with caution across the hardwood floor so as not to wake Stephen. It surprised her when the padlock came open with one gentle tug. She opened the door just enough to peek in, and whistled softly at what she saw. The imposing array of equipment defied description. Even if she’d known what any of it was, she wouldn’t have wanted to get within spitting distance of it. Antennae, feedback coils, wires, and cables sprang like tentacles from the bank of monitors and digital readout displays that blinked at her. The Strategic Air Command has nothing on this place, she thought.

She was working up the courage to investigate the room further when a rumbling sound caught her ear. It was coming from outside the cabin, and growing louder by the minute. She left the door the way she’d found it, closed and padlocked, and hurried to the window.

A grimy blue Volkswagen roared up in front of the cabin and stopped, nearly disappearing in the cloud of dust it had raised. Before Lise could see clearly who it was, a pickup pulled up beside it. Oh, Lord, Lise thought, as a redheaded, denim-clad girl flew out of the Volkswagen. It was Julie.

The pickup’s door panel said Frank’s Gas Station, and six guys piled out of the bed. Lise recognized Buck Thompson, Frank’s head mechanic, in the pack before she stepped back from the window. She’d made the mistake of dating Buck when she’d first moved to Shady Tree. It hadn’t taken her long to discover the nasty sense of humor lurking behind his boyish good looks. Buck Thompson had a mean streak a mile long. Worse, he seemed to have decided Lise was his girl, and despite her polite discouragement, she’d never quite convinced him otherwise.

The gang thundered onto the cabin’s creaky front porch and nearly pounded down the door before Lise could get there.

“Lise!” Julie screamed, “are you in there?”

Lise swung the door open, gaping at them in astonishment. “What are you doing out here?”

“Are you all right?” they demanded in unison.

“Of course—”

Julie bounded forward. “When you didn’t show up this morning, I went over to your place—” She stopped short, staring at the red flannel shirt, her jaw dropping. “Lise, what ... ah, happened to you?”

The men went silent, shifting, watching. Buck Thompson pressed in behind Julie, scrutinizing Lise with a dangerous glint in his icy blue eyes.

“Oh, I—” Lise surveyed her own appearance with rising alarm. She was all but naked under the shirt, totally disheveled and covered with scratches and bruises. She must have looked like one of those female combatants after a marathon weekend of mud wrestling. “I had an argument with a rock,” she said.

“Wait—don’t tell me,” Julie said sardonically. “The rock won, right? Lise, what’s going on? What are you doing out here? Like
that?
We thought you’d been abducted!”

“Yeah, where’s this Gage dude anyway?” Buck Thompson had asked the question. He yanked a duck hunter’s cap off his head and raked a hand angrily through his spiky butch haircut.

“Abducted?” Lise waved them silent, much as she would have her students. “Don’t be silly. I’m fine—”

“This Gage dude is right here,” said a voice from behind Lise. “Who wants to know?”

Silence again. Lise turned to see Stephen standing in the bedroom doorway, his blond hair looking very slept in, his shirt hanging open. If ever a man looked disheveled and sexy, Lise thought ... At least he had his pants on!

She glanced around at the expression on Julie’s face—on
all
their faces. Anger and suspicion had given way to narrow-eyed shock. Lise knew what they were thinking. She’d just told them she hadn’t been abducted, so there was only one thing they could be thinking! Their prissy Miss Anderson had finally flipped out and gone nympho on them. How did she explain? This was one of those believe-what-I-tell-you-not-what-you-see situations. Maybe if she claimed she was Lise Anderson’s evil twin. Like in the soap operas.

The veins were bulging on Buck Thompson’s forehead, and Lise was terrified he was going to challenge Stephen to some kind of duel. However, it was Julie who stepped forward.

“What’s going on here?” she demanded. “Lise, are you being held against your will or something?”

“No, she’s not.” Buttoning his shirt, Stephen moved into the room as though he intended to take over from there. And Lise, to her own surprise, found herself deferring to him.

“She fell last night. She was out cold when I found her, covered with cuts and bruises,” he explained, congenially enough, but with a distinct don’t-mess-with-me tone. As he recounted how he’d brought her back to the cabin and treated her injuries, he also admitted he’d given her some pain medication. “The dosage must have been too strong for her. She fell asleep and didn’t wake up until this morning.”

Julie’s scrutiny of him was fiercely suspicious. She moved into the room, too, staking out her own chunk of territory.

It was a showdown, Lise thought. Julie, sheriff of Shady Tree, versus Stephen the gunslinger.

“Is that how it happened, Lise?” Julie asked, fixing Stephen with a down-the-barrel stare.

“Yes,” Lise said.

“You took the pills of your own volition?”

“Of course.”

“You’re sure?”

“Julie—”

Silence as the sheriff and the gunslinger locked eyes in a staredown.
Who draws first
, Lise wondered.

“Can you drive, Lise?” It was the sheriff asking. Julie stepped up to Lise and took her by the arm as though to escort her out.

The gunslinger made his move. “I’ll drive her.”

“
Stephen
.” Lise wasn’t sure which one she was more exasperated with. They were acting like her fifth graders fighting over who got the biggest piece of chalk. “I can drive myself, thank you both very much.”

She quelled them with a don’t-mess-with-me stare of her own. And then she turned her attention to the entire room. The men shifted uncomfortably. Miss Anderson was
perrr
turbed.

“I can talk for myself as well,” she informed them all quietly. “And I can even dress myself, believe it or not, which is what I’m going to do now.”

She brushed past Stephen without a word and pulled the door of his bedroom shut behind her. It really did astonish her how ridiculous adults could be at times. The human race was still in its infancy, she reminded herself, unbuttoning the shirt. Not long out of the caves, especially when it came to men and women. A tolerant sigh welled, and then a bemused smile. Actually, it was sort of sweet having half the town come to her rescue. Of course, now the
whole
town would know that she’d been caught in a compromising situation.

She had her good arm out of the shirt and was clumsily trying to get a snagged button free when the door opened. She turned away, clutching red flannel around her as Stephen entered. “Will you get out of here,” she said under her breath. “It was bad enough before. Now you’ve confirmed their worst suspicions. I’ll never be able to convince them we didn’t—”

She couldn’t say it.

He could.

“Make love?” He came up behind her. “It’s not a criminal offense, making love. I don’t think they’d throw us in jail even if we had.”

His nearness raised the hair on the nape of her neck. Static electricity again? Or was this something else? The kind of voltage that male sexual interest generated.

“Let me help you,” he said.

“No thank you.” The snagged button was strangling in a quagmire of threads, and Lise seemed to be pulling the noose tighter with each tweak. “What is this, a trick shirt?” She gave the placket a good yank, prepared to rip the material if necessary. “You’ve got the buttons rigged or something, right?”

She kept her back to him, at war with the stubborn snarls. “Why does everything go wrong when you’re around? Shopping carts, watches! Now this!”

“Lise, you
can’t
dress yourself,” he said softly. “You probably can’t drive yourself either.”

He placed his hand on her exposed shoulder, lightly at first, and then, without warning, his fingers pressed gently into her flesh. It was one of the most electrifying sensations Lise had ever experienced. She could discern each finger individually, its warmth, its length, its slightest movement. The pressure sent excitement tumbling through her.

It confounded her that a mere touch could be so riveting. Her parents hadn’t been demonstrative, and she wasn’t used to being touched, but that alone couldn’t account for her body’s bewildering response. Nerves seemed to be dancing on an electric grid just under her skin. It was almost painful.

“I don’t get this, Lise,” he said, his voice faintly husky. “I undressed you last night. I put this shirt on you, remember? So why not let me help take it off now? And then I’ll drive you home.”

His warm breath touched her neck and tickled the lobe of her ear. A jet of air riffled her hair. What was that ethereal scent, she wondered. He smelled of cedar leaves and something more mysterious. Sandalwood? Breathing in deeply, she tried to place the scent. Whatever it was, it was making her feel pleasantly lightheaded and giddy.

She glanced down at the tangled button and felt herself surrendering to the situation. She would never get it undone by herself, especially with only one hand. Letting him do it made sense on a practical level, but something else was happening as well. She was surrendering to the excitement churning inside her. “All right then,” she said.

She turned, her eyes averted, and let him do what he wanted.

Her imagination went wild as he worked at the button. She envisioned him taking the shirt off her, his hands brushing her skin. She even saw the moment when their eyes met and passion flared. In the vividness of her mind, he was a man gone half-crazy with desire, his hands roaming her body, his lips hot on her throat, burning a path of fire to her breasts. As the fantasy spun out of control she could feel his mouth on her, drawing on her nipples in sweet little pulls. Warm air jerked in her throat. Even the faintest possibility of such a thing happening made her nearly sick with anticipation.

“You’re
not
driving me home,” she whispered, her voice trembling.

His fingers hesitated on the shirt’s placket, but he said nothing. A moment later he had the shirt undone. He stepped back from her, his eyes brushing over her, taking in all the sexual signals her body was sending. The message in his darkening gaze was abundantly clear. He knew an aroused woman when he saw one. He wasn’t going to press that advantage now, here, with a posse outside the door. But he would, his eyes promised. Given the opportunity, he would drive her home in every possible sense of that phrase.