Primal Obsession (23 page)

TWENTY-NINE

When Sam returned with the water, he found Annie waiting by the sink, a scowl on her face. Was she pondering the chores ahead or worrying about the Hunter?

Her baggy sweatshirt covered all the sweet curves the tight jeans would reveal, so why did he find her so irresistible? Maybe it was her straightforward, gutsy nature, her lively wit. Or the idea that she trusted him.

Maybe it was because for the last two nights, he’d held those delicious curves in his arms. Maybe it was because he felt every soft indent and slope against his body. Maybe it was because he knew the sweetness of her lips.

He sweated through the nights in hardened agony. Fear of the Hunter and awareness of their neighbors beyond the thin nylon wall had meant no sex.

There was that trust again. The woman trusted him to keep her safe. Sam Kincaid who hadn’t even kept himself safe, who’d self-destructed and screwed up his future. Hell. Why would an ambitious woman like Annie want a loser like him? The best thing he could do was to get her away from that damn killer.

And then Sam would slide out of her life.

Sliding on
a smile, he marched past her and parked the full bucket beside the sink. “This is a start. I’ll haul up more water later. Hey, sweetheart, with that broom you look like Cinderella without the cinders.”

“Cinderella I’m not.” She shoved the broom at him. “Think you can swing this while I wash things?”

“A broom I
can
swing. Just don’t hand me a baseball bat.” He accepted the wooden tool.

“Sam, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m sorry about your hand... about—” A stricken look darkened her gray eyes.

“It’s okay. I have to be able to laugh at myself at this point.” He wanted to kiss the worry from her lips, but he dragged his gaze away and concentrated on the floor.

After cleaning up the kitchen and herself, she set a pot of water on the stove while he arranged ticking mattresses on the two lower bunks. “With our sleeping bags on top of these, we’ll sleep like bears in a den.”

“No bears.” Her muffled voice came from a lower cupboard where she was burrowing.

His fine view of her backside and its sensuous wriggle drew him like a trout to blackflies, but curiosity won out. “What are you doing?”

She scooted backwards and pushed to her feet. “I was looking for napkins or paper towels, but look what I found instead.” From behind her, she pulled a very dusty bottle of wine. “Will the owners mind?”

“I’ll replace it if they do.” Sam grinned, slipping the bottle from her grasp. He considered her heightened color and gray eyes, no longer dark with fear, but bright with anticipation. “My favorite vintage. Chateau de Camp. I think it’s a red wine.” A little vino would relax them.

“Fancy that. Just the right vintage to accompany our gourmet dinners.” She plucked two glasses from the drain board. “Oops, what about opening it? I didn’t see a corkscrew with the other utensils.”

“No problem. My multi-tool has one.” He swiped grime from the bottle. 1999. Côtes-du-Rhône. He knew less about wine than about computers. “This could actually be a good bottle of wine. Let’s get cookin’.”

Once the water boiled, he poured two cups into each packet. The aroma of food—familiar but unidentifiable—rose from the mixtures. “The packages say two servings, but that’s not for someone who’s hiked cross-country. Want your own?”

“You bet,” Annie said. “I’m hungry as a—”

“Bear?”

Annie groaned. “—hiker.” She wrinkled her nose. “Smartass. Maybe after a little wine, I can persuade you to set some traps tomorrow. We could be ready for the Hunter.”

“Woman, you’re as persistent as a mosquito.” He shook his head as he wrestled to insert the tiny corkscrew into the wine bottle. “I won’t spoil our evening by the fire with an argument. The Hunter’s in a serious rain delay. We may not have to worry about him at all.”

“What do you mean?” Her gray eyes were cloud soft. Her cheeks, rain-washed clean, shone pink with the fire’s heat.

He’d intended to save his surprise for in the morning, but now seemed to require it. “Behind the cabin stashed under a tarp is a canoe. We can paddle away from here tomorrow morning and leave the damn Hunter landlocked. So, let’s not mention him tonight. Agreed?”

“A canoe. That’s wonderful, Sam!” One eyebrow raised, she appeared to ponder the trap idea one last time. Then she smiled. “Agreed. No Hunter talk tonight.”

In the increasing warmth, she’d traded her sweatshirt for a silky turquoise tee. Her bra-free nipples taunted him behind the thin, clingy fabric.

To keep from reaching for her, he gripped the wine bottle. Concentrated on pouring the dark red liquid into small tumblers. When the meals had steeped long enough, they sat down at the table.

Peering at the beef stew in her cracked crockery bowl like a scientist at an alien life form, Annie dipped her spoon. She sniffed. “Smells a little like canned beef gravy. I don’t see much meat.” She tasted, wincing, not like a scientist, but like a five-year-old choking down medicine.

“Well?” He tucked into his chicken casserole—microscopic chicken bits, soggy noodles. It was further from home cooking than an out-of-park home run, but he didn’t care.

She rolled the food around in her mouth. “Peas and potato pieces are okay. A little mushy. Rissa—Emma’s mom—likes to try to disguise tofu. This tastes like a dish she tried once. A cross between baby food and something crockpotted for a week. I wouldn’t want a steady diet of it.”

He raised his tumbler of wine. “Here’s to the wine. It makes anything palatable.”

“Almost.” She clicked her juice glass with his. “The wine’s good, anyway.”

Over their meal and the wine, they talked about everything except the Hunter. They speculated about their canoe compatriots and how far they’d paddled that day. He judged that they’d reached the Lower Otter Pond campsite. Then they talked about their careers—past and present.

Sam talked about his first year with the Red Sox as the greatest experience in his life. He had Annie beaming at his praise of the players and coaches who’d brought him along. She chortled at stories of dugout jokes and clubhouse pranks. As he described the accident that had crippled his hand and his career, tears glistened in her eyes. An emotion he couldn’t name unfurled in him when she cradled his stiff fingers and pressed them against the creamy curve of her cheek.

As they moved to the settee in front of the fire, he poured more wine. He had no trouble nudging the conversation to the life Annie’d left in the big city. If her experience in the oil-slicked South was only part of the reason she escaped to Portland, what was the rest?

Her gray eyes glowed with pride and sorrow as she talked about the interviews she’d conducted. “Eddie—that’s the
Who’s Next?
editor in chief—ate up those interviews. Kept sending me back for more.” She sighed.

“Who’d you interview?”

“Most of them were rescue workers and locals whose shrimping or tourist businesses were ruined. People who cared about the wildlife and beaches. Hundreds of other people volunteered just because.” Her expression was wistful as she continued. “Everyone felt so helpless. And angry.”

“But that experience isn't why you left New York,” he said gently.

“What do you mean?” Her gaze veering away, she sipped her wine. “Isn’t that enough?”

He slid an arm around her. When she didn’t object, he relaxed. After a rinse at the sink, she’d left her hair loose to curl on her shoulders, the way he liked it best.

He inhaled her fragrance. More intoxicating than the wine.

Like a runner itching to steal second, he watched her eyes. She was hedging. “You said earlier that the spill was the catalyst. What did you mean? Did
Who’s Next?
fold?”

“The magazine’s doing okay. What is this—Truth or Dare?” She glared at him over her jelly glass.

“A little of both, I guess.”
Dare you to tell the truth.
He grinned at her as he emptied the bottle to top off both glasses. “Was it a man?”

She clamped her mouth shut. Aha. The bits and pieces of the truth she’d dropped over the last several days fit together into a whole. “I’m betting he’s a jock. That’s why you hate us all. But he can’t be too bad. You said he was no damn Yankee.”

Her matching glower morphed into a wry grin. “No Yankee. Ian Mackenzie’s a Redcoat.”

Sam’s jaw dropped. “Ian Mackenzie, the tennis pro?”

“You’ve heard of him?”

“I follow more than baseball. The only news I recall Mackenzie making concerned nasty disputes with line judges and opponents. Worse than McEnroe ever was.” A prime jerk, grabbing headlines any way he could, doing his sport no good.

“That’s Ian, the British bad boy of tennis. Egotist supreme.” She pursed her lips. “The weaker his backhand, the stronger his spin on shot calls. His only recourse for staying in the spotlight.”

“You were... involved with him?” Any mellowness from the wine vanished.

“Practically engaged, to my regret. We met after a tournament when I interviewed another player. Ian gave me the rush. We went together for over a year. He can be very charming when he wants to be. Or when he wants something. We were talking marriage when I realized he was just using me.”

“Using you?” This slime was lower than the dirt under home plate. “How? Publicity?”

“He wanted me to do a story on him. A series, in fact. Cover every tournament and public appearance. That’s what opened my eyes.”

“How does that tie in with New Orleans?”

“Emma’s the only person I’ve ever told. It hurt too much to talk about. Odd, now it feels more like hurt pride than heartbreak.”

His heart thumped hard. Annie trusted him enough to tell him her painful secret. More trust to heap guilt on him, but not enough that he’d stop her. Besides, it would distract them from wondering where the Hunter might be. “Time does heal. Look at me. No, bad example.”

She rolled her eyes, but continued. “Ian nagged me to do an interview for
Who’s Next?
and I kept making excuses. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Eddie flat-out wasn’t interested.”

“Let me guess.
Who’s Next?
wants rising stars, not sputtering ones. It’s not
Who’s Finished?
”

“You got it. At the time, Ian’s career was only in a dip. Since then, self-absorption took his focus off the game and put him in a downward spiral.” Head angled, she met his gaze. “No injury, no loss of ability. He has only himself to blame.”

Another loser who self-destructed. With the injury as his excuse, Sam’s self-absorption had prevented any focus but inward. “Am I supposed to glean a lesson from that?”

“You’re not a loser unless you choose to be.”

This wasn’t going the way he’d hoped. “Go on with your story,” he growled.

“I should’ve seen through him when he pestered me to leave the magazine and freelance. But I didn’t see him for the selfish egotist he is until the oil spill sent me south.”

“My God, what did he do?”

“Monumental indifference to the suffering and destruction describes it. He headed for a tournament in the Midwest, the Kansas City Open. I planned to join him when the matches started, but, well...”

“I know. You stayed to help with the rescue efforts and to cover the story.” He squeezed her shoulder and leaned closer to nuzzle her hair. He wanted to kiss the freckles on her nose, ease away the hurt caused by the dipstick who didn’t appreciate her. Instead, he draped his other arm across his lap to conceal his arousal. “Mackenzie didn’t like it?”

“An understatement. He swore on the phone like he does at line judges. Interesting how a British accent can cloak a temper tantrum in elegant outrage. He called four times a day. If I wasn’t home, he blasted my machine. Ordered me to get my derrière out of that
filthy sludge
.”

If Sam could get his mitts on the bum now, he’d make
filthy sludge
out of him, grind him under his boots. He still held his empty glass in the hand resting across his lap. When he noticed the white knuckles, he forced his fingers to relax. Last thing he needed was damage to his other hand. “Bet a packet of Oreos he wasn’t worried about your safety.”

“He wanted me in K.C. so I could cover his come-back and hawk the story to
Sports Illustrated
or
Tennis
magazine.” Her laugh had a bitter edge to it. “His vaunted come-back never happened. Out of respect for the disaster, the U.S. Tennis Association canceled the tournament.”

“That must have pissed him off. What happened next?”

“He phoned that night. The rains had headed to K.C. All planes were grounded, and poor, poor Ian was stuck in nowhere. He blamed the U.S.T.A., the President, and FEMA for ruining his big chance. He blamed me for not being there to comfort him.”

“I hope you hung up on the son of a bitch.”

Her lips curved, but a tear leaked from one eye. “Not until I heard another woman’s voice calling him back to bed.”

“Cheating son of a bitch.”