Reckless Promise (9 page)

She looked up. "Ready for what?"

He waved a mousetrap under her nose.

She shuddered. "Why do you need me?"

"You have to show me where you saw the
mouse," he said. Of course he didn't need her, but he wanted her.
Alone. In her cabin. Now. In spite of the way she infuriated
him.

She gave him a mulish look. "I don't see
why," she began.

"Trust me." He gave her his best smile. "Help
me. Maybe I'm scared of mice and you can protect me."

"Oh, go along with him, dear," Mikey's mom
said. "You don't want mice running around your cabin all
night."

He should do something nice for plump little
Mrs. Hamilton.

Poppy stood. "All right, brave hero. Let's go
make my cabin safe from wildlife." She marched toward the door.

Mac trailed along, enjoying the view. Those
ordinary jeans might as well be red spandex now that he knew what
lay under the denim. Nothing ordinary about that tempting rear
view.

God bless imaginary mice.

Chapter 5

Mac paced beside her, half a step behind,
crowding her a little, not saying anything, but so close that his
heat lapped at her and lit a hundred fires under her skin. All the
feelings she had discovered this afternoon simmered in her
veins.

Something had changed today. Ever since he
had come to her cabin this afternoon, he'd been more—possessive. A
little angry and aggressive, too, as though he had some claim on
her.

Just the thought made her knees go weak and
her heart pound, but she needed to resist. She needed to stay away
from him, or at least put him off, until she'd finished the Tom
thing.

So why was she leading him down the path to
her cabin, fully prepared to walk through the door and be alone
with him in that cozy, all-too-private space?

He dropped back and strode along the path
behind her, traps clinking. She'd swear his gaze burned her
backside. Self consciousness turned her walk stiff as she tried to
keep her hips from swaying.

Maybe she had an over-active imagination.
Maybe he'd just set the traps and leave. Maybe—oh, God, what if he
pretended all that heat? What if he only wanted to keep her away
from Tom? The thought hurt more than it should, and she
concentrated on not letting it show.

She climbed the three steps to her porch and
fumbled her key into the lock, trying to ignore Mac's closeness.
She stepped through the door with him right on her heels. When she
turned to close the door, she glanced at him, surprising an
expression of grim determination on his face. Surely one little,
imaginary mouse didn't warrant that. She took a closer look and saw
desire. Need. O-o-kay.

She'd seen that before. He might be
protecting his sister's marriage, but he really did want her. He
was a hunter, and tonight the mythical mouse wasn't the only
quarry.

The room seemed to shrink to half its size
when he followed her inside and closed the door. She crossed to the
kitchen and flipped on the light. "The mouse came out from under
the sink," she said, making it up as she went along. "When I opened
the cabinet, it ran over my foot into the bedroom." Wrong. She
shouldn't be saying bedroom.

He crouched in front of the sink, opened the
cabinet, and reached for a trap.

She shivered. It looked like a mouse version
of Madame Tussaud's torture chamber. On the bright side, there
wasn't really a mouse. At least she didn't have to worry about
hearing tiny death screams in the night.

"He's probably long gone by now," Mac said.
He smeared peanut butter on the trap and shoved it into the rear
corner of the cabinet. "Watch your fingers if you reach under
there." He backed out from under the sink and stood to wash his
hands. Poppy handed him a towel. He took it and dried his hands,
his enigmatic gray gaze never leaving her face.

She went breathless with anticipation. Her
temper sparked in a pathetic attempt to defuse the feeling. "You
didn't need me for that."

"Sure I did." He edged closer.

The expression in his eyes made her toes curl
inside her new moccasins. She swallowed hard.

"Why don't we quit playing games?" he said.
The melted chocolate murmur poured over her and any words she might
have said died on her tongue. "You want this too, don't you?"

She did. She didn't want to, but she did.

If he'd grabbed at her, she might have run,
but he dropped the second trap and reached for her so slowly that
his hand seemed to float toward her shoulder. The slow approach
held her mesmerized, and when his fingers slid warm and gentle
across the thin cotton knit of her shirt to touch the bare skin of
her neck, her knees went rubbery.

With one finger, he traced the neckline of
her shirt, dipping under the lacy edging. In her wildest dreams,
she couldn't have imagined the intimacy of that simple touch. Her
breasts throbbed and swelled, aching for his hand to go lower.

His other hand came up to grip her shoulder.
His hands shook. Startled, she looked up into his eyes and saw the
raw need, the barely leashed violence. She should be afraid.
Instead, a matching flame began to burn deep inside her, spreading
until the world held only him.

"Yes," she said over the roaring in her
ears.

His answering smile, wicked as sin, set her
flesh pulsing. "I saw you today."

"Saw—?" Oh, no. "Where—?"

"Up at the stream. Pretty Poppy spread out on
that rock like a virgin sacrifice."

Embarrassment burned through her, sending
heat to color her face. Embarrassment and a strange, hot desire,
part shame but mostly an excitement that surprised her. "I thought
no one could see me. Where were you?"

"Up on the next hill. On a horse."

"Oh, dear. I'm sorry. I was so hot and... I'm
sorry."

"I'm not." Mac's voice had gone dark and
rich. "You were hot. I've never seen anything so hot in my life. Do
you have any idea what you did to me?"

Knowing he'd watched her, had been turned on
by her, sent her brain spinning. "I know what it did to me," she
said, and looked him straight in the eye. "I liked it." His pupils
dilated, sending a rush of heat and power through her. My God, what
was she doing? Suddenly frightened, she looked away.

"Give me your hand," he said. "And look at
me. I'll show you what you did to me. What you do to me." With one
finger he lifted her chin. With his other hand he captured her hand
and held it to his chest. His heart thudded, as fast and unsteady
as her own. His eyes had turned to molten silver and his scorching
gaze pinned her. He moved her hand slowly down over his chest, and
lower across the startling chill of the big belt buckle that she'd
seen earlier, until her hand came to rest on the hard bulge where
his erection strained against the denim of his jeans.

"That's what you did to me." He leaned down
to murmur in her ear, his breath stirring her hair. "And I don't
think it's going to go away unless you help me."

"Me?" she squeaked. Oh, good. How
sophisticated. She cleared her throat. She had to tell him 'No'.
Soon. Now. Her fingers rubbed slowly up and down over that
impressive bulge and she heard herself say, "I think we can work
something out."

"Poppy," he said in that intimate murmur, and
slid his hands up to cover her breasts.

Electricity zinged through her, sharp and
piercing. Her breasts throbbed against his hands. Under her hand he
swelled and jerked in response. She moved her hand, pressing
lightly, to see if it would happen again. When it did, she flushed
with power. She had made that happen.

And imagine, oh just imagine, doing this
without all those clothes in the way. She wanted to feel him in her
hand, wanted to test the velvet smoothness of his skin over that
hot throbbing, wanted to curl her fingers around him and feel him
pulsing in the cage of her hand. Wanted...

His arms went around her, his hands savage on
her back. "You're playing with fire, lady," he said in a hoarse
growl, and covered her mouth with his.

She hadn't imagined his kiss would be gentle.
Hadn't guessed his lips could be so soft against her mouth. She put
her arms around his neck and gave herself up to him. In a
heartbeat, the moment of gentleness changed to dark, demanding
passion. His tongue traced her lower lip and her mouth opened to
him. He accepted the surrender instantly. His mouth took hers,
merciless and insistent, and she rose to meet him.

"Poppy," he said, a guttural sound of
need.

He smoothed his hands over her hair and down
her back to cup her bottom, before sliding them back up and somehow
taking her shirt along. He tossed it aside and bent to kiss the
curve of her breast and she moaned. He fumbled briefly, and the
clasp of her bra gave way. Cool air, and then those hard, knowing
hands covered her breasts again and she cried out wordlessly.

Her blood simmered white hot, scorching
through her veins and setting every nerve ablaze. Her nipples
pressed against his palms, and he slowly rotated his hands, sending
another pulse of fire through her.

She pressed her hips against him, against his
alarmingly aroused body, the scent of him filling her nose and
mouth. Torture. She had to feel his skin. Now. Her hands shook when
she pulled apart the snaps on his shirt, and she splayed her
fingers across his bare chest. Hard muscle flexed when she ran her
hands up over the exciting roughness of hair and skin. Her fingers
found the hard nubbins of his nipples and circled them. He
groaned.

Her knees wouldn't hold her up any longer,
and there was only Mac and her need to have his naked skin against
hers. Desire raged past need into a place she'd never been before,
crazy to feel his weight pressing her down, to feel him between her
legs, to feel the hard thickness of him pressing into her.

"Bed," he murmured, and turned her toward the
bedroom.

Something scuffled behind the half closed
door, something much bigger than a fictitious mouse. Poppy's heart
leapt.

He froze. "You've got company?" he asked, his
lip curling. Desire had been wiped away with the suddenness of a
lightning bolt, leaving his eyes hard with suspicion.

Poppy shook her head.

He hurled himself through the door, Poppy
hard on his heels. Over his shoulder she saw a pale shape leap for
the window. A man, she saw in the moment that he straddled the
window sill, but she didn't recognize him. Mac lunged toward the
window but he tripped over a wad of fabric on the floor. He held it
up, and his expression turned grim.

A pair of men's briefs.

"Yours?" he asked.

* * *

Poppy stamped up the path to the lodge for
breakfast. She'd used anger to hold fear at bay all night, and by
now she'd worked up a pretty good head of steam. At least being mad
had to be progress, given that she had spent the last two mornings
fighting acute embarrassment.

Mac had called her indiscriminate and
promiscuous, and then left her alone to stew over the naked man who
just might come back looking for his shorts.

Indiscriminate and promiscuous, her left
foot. Two men in thirty-two years didn't seem all that promiscuous
to her, but would Mac listen? Of course not.

He should talk, him with his smooth lines,
the moves that showed tons of practice.

She glared at the green pastures fading into
hills smudged with the purple of lingering night and sugared with
snow. She had to be fair here. She hated being fair, but she
couldn't blame Mac for her starved response to his touch. Even if
he'd planned to seduce her, she had contributed to the heat.

Face it. He'd believed her bimbo act and she
couldn't blame him because she'd set herself up. Her ability as an
actress must increase in direct proportion to her desire to stop
acting.

A dark car with a sheriff's department logo
on the side nosed across the cattle guard like a prowling cat on
the hunt. She flinched, but even her guilty conscience didn't buy
calling the law over a little shouting and a slammed door. That
didn't happen even in Boston, where apartments were crowded
cheek-to-cheek.

And she wasn't going to take back anything
she'd said. She had nothing to apologize for. Mac deserved to be
shouted at last night. He should apologize for his nasty,
suspicious mind.

A tall, broad-shouldered man in a black
deputy's uniform climbed out of the car. He straightened, and she
saw the all-too-familiar predatory look flare in his eyes. At least
he was gentleman enough to rein it in. "Mornin', Ma'am," he said in
a drawl straight out of a movie. "Know where I can find Tom or
Mac?"

"I haven't seen either one this morning.
Someone in the house will know, I'm sure."

He strode up the steps and down the hall
toward the office as though he knew the place well. "Morning, Gage"
she heard Tom say. "Thanks for coming right away."

She stopped on the porch for three deep
breaths so she wouldn't stomp into the dining room like Godzilla
bound for Tokyo. She deliberately relaxed her shoulders, smoothed
out the frown. When she stepped into the hall, the gossip level
almost knocked her over.

"There was a terrible commotion in the cabin
next to mine about one o'clock this morning."

Oops. Were they talking about her? But her
commotion had been well before midnight.

The group turned on the woman who had spoken
with a flurry of questions, so that the room sounded like a press
conference.

"Some woman was yelling and screaming
and—"

Heat swept up Poppy's face. They were talking
about her.

"—and this man jumped out the window and ran
up the hill into the trees, and then someone yelled the most
unrepeatable things."

Mrs. Harbottle broke in. "Our cabin is on the
other side. Ernie went running out on our porch to see what was
happening. He wouldn't let me go outside, but I saw Mac come
charging up from the house like his pants were on fire, and he told
Ernie to go back inside, that he and Tom could handle it."