Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) (4 page)

During its antebellum heyday the place had been surrounded by several thousand acres of cotton land. The more distant fields had gradually been allowed to go back to woodland, while closer acreage with road frontage had been sold off to pay mortgages or for ready cash. There was less than eight acres kept clear around the house these days, though to Cammie's mind, that was plenty to mow and trim in the summer.

Keith had hated living in the old Greenley mansion. He had called it drafty and musty-smelling, and complained that something always needed repair. He wanted to sell it and build something contemporary and convenient, with lots of glass and open decks, preferably out on the lake east of town.

Cammie had refused. She had inherited Evergreen when her parents died, and she loved it. She had to admit he was right about repairs; the house seemed to chugalug money. Still, the spacious rooms, the generations-old furniture, and the garden with its huge old plants, which had been put into the ground by Greenley women long dead, were constant joys. She couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

Reid strode with her through the light rain toward the back door. Cammie saw his appraising glance as it moved over the house looming above them. She wondered if he was comparing it to the Fort.

She also noticed, as they neared the steps leading up to the back porch, that his narrowed gaze raked the dimness beyond the house and behind the glow of the security light at the end of the drive. Though she looked also, she could make out nothing in the dark and swirling mists of rain. No doubt his watchfulness was a habit, another of those instincts he had talked about. It was oddly comforting.

Turning as they reached the shelter of the back porch, she spoke with brittle politeness. “I'm afraid I never did thank you for — for coming to my rescue this evening. I want you to know that I do appreciate it.”

“My pleasure,” he said, the words low and deep and as empty as her own.

She smiled, a mechanical movement of the lips. “Well, then, I guess I'll see you around.”

He put out a hand to catch her arm as she turned from him. There was a frown between his eyes. As she stiffened and raised a brow in inquiry, he nodded toward the dark side garden. “Keith is over there. Watching you.”

“You mean he's out there — now?” She flung a quick glance over her shoulder.

Reid nodded. “His Land Rover is a half mile down the road, angled in behind the church; I saw it as we passed. He's about fifty yards to the right, back behind the camellias.”

The idea of Keith skulking out there, spying on her, looking for some way to sneak back into her life, brought the rise of anger and a shadow of apprehension. Her voice tight, she said, “I can't believe this.”

“The sheriff, Deerfield, is a cousin of yours, isn't he? Maybe you should call him.” Reid's voice carried a tentative edge that suggested he was less than satisfied with that solution.

Nor was Cammie satisfied. If she made that call, the news would be all over town by morning. On top of that, Keith might well spread a biased version of the events of the night in his own defense. There was no telling what kind of lurid fiction would come of it all by the time both stories had made the rounds.

She gave a quick shake of her head. “Maybe it won't be necessary. Anyway, I don't know what action the sheriff or anyone else can take, since all Keith has done is threaten me.

Reid's voice as he answered was uncompromising. “You can't let it pass, not if you want to stop him.”

“There must be another way,” she said unhappily.

The look he gave her was steady. “There are only two things. You can fight, or you can give in.”

“I tried using a gun, remember?” she said with acerbity.

“A show of force was a mistake, since you apparently didn't intend to follow through. If you won't call the police, then the only tactic left is subversion.”

“You mean stall? Trick him into thinking I may go back to him until after the divorce is final?”

“I had in mind inviting your cousin to dinner tomorrow and telling him to come in his patrol car,” he answered in frowning concern. “Or something like bringing a pair of Dobermans into the house, maybe renting a room to a tae kwan do instructor.”

“I have a better idea,” she said slowly, as alarming, half-formed impulses swirled in her brain.

“Such as?”

She didn't stop to test the origin of her solution, or its implications. As it settled, becoming a firm idea, she simply set it in motion.

Moving toward Reid, stretching on tiptoe, she slid her arms around his neck. Her gaze wide and appealing, her lips tremulous, she whispered, “Kiss me.”

He was fast on the uptake. His instant of stiff amazement was barely perceptible before he bent his head and closed his arms around her. She pressed her lips to the smooth and firm contours of his mouth and settled against him until the nipples of her breasts nudged into his chest and her lower body molded to his pelvis.

Reid drew a ragged breath. His hold tightened, and abruptly he took the initiative from her.

Her lips parted under the onslaught of his kiss. Pleasure spiraled up from deep inside her, tingling along every inch of contact between them. Her pulse leaped to a frantic tempo. Heat invaded her body in waves. She accepted the bold and warm sweep of his tongue between her parted lips, and returned it with fervent grace.

Lost, she was lost in half-remembered sweetness, in the revival of sensations she had thought were only imagined. They shook her heart so that it expanded, aching in her chest. With a soft sound deep in her throat, she pushed her fingers through the thick silk of his hair at the base of his skull and tightened her arms around his neck.

He smoothed his hand over her back, with its soft flannel covering, gliding lower to the gentle swell of her hip. His light grasp lingered there, learning the texture and resilience of her, drawing her closer until she could feel the heated hardness of his body, sense the tenuous control that allowed him to trespass just so far and no further.

Sanity returned with unwelcome suddenness, rippling through her on a shudder. She couldn't believe what she had done, could never have conceived a few hours before that it was remotely possible. It had to be caused by the peculiar events of the evening and the careless raking up of the past.

That wasn't all. With painful honesty she faced the fact that there was another element involved. Somewhere inside she had a need to find out once and for all whether what had happened so long ago between this man and herself was just a fluke or as startling as she remembered. And, yes, a desire to stroke the panther.

She caught her breath on a small gasp, and drew back with care. Her voice a little hoarse, she hurried into explanations.

“I thought — it seemed that if I could make Keith think there's another man in my life now, he might give up and leave me alone.”

“I figured as much.” Reid's response was soft and not quite even.

She had thought he understood, but needed to be positive. She went on quickly. “That it's you makes it even better. You're intimidating, though Keith would deny it with his last breath. He was always jealous of you — and it's worse now that you may be coming into the mill.”

“I see.”

She could feel her courage receding, being replaced by confusion. Before it could slip away entirely, she hurried on. “The — The trick might be even more effective if you would come inside. There will be no obligation, I promise. And it will be just for a little while.”

She realized as she spoke that she was taking a lot for granted. The fact that Reid was no longer married didn't mean he didn't have a woman somewhere.

“For a little while,” he repeated, the words abrupt, almost mechanical.

She swallowed hard as she turned with him toward the back entrance under the shelter of the porch. Her hands shook as she put the key in the door. She grasped it hard, hoping he wouldn't notice.

Inside the house, she flicked the lights on while Reid closed and locked the door behind them. She turned then, and saw him watching her with the same careful, measuring expression she felt on her own face.

Reid exhaled with a short, hard breath. He felt as if he had been handed a bomb and it had detonated in his hands. The concussion had shaken him to the center of his being, had taken his wits and his strength and turned his insides to hot mush. And he was not yet certain he had survived the blast.

His voice less even than he would have liked, he said, “You're full of surprises.”

“I don't mean to be.”

She gave him a swift look, then swung and moved ahead of him through what appeared to be a sitting room located at the end of the long hallway through the house. His gaze rested an instant on the bronze shimmer of her hair hanging down her back, on the sheen of the skin on the calves of her legs, and the slight sway of her hips under his old robe. The knowledge that she was naked under the worn flannel was a white heat in his mind; he knew she was because he had felt it. Dizziness and disbelief caught at him. He gave his head a hard shake before he moved after her.

They entered a big, airy kitchen with white-painted cabinets topped with yellow tile and a long bank of plant-crowded windows that faced toward the back of the house. It was so much larger and brighter and more open than its counterpart at the Fort that he felt exposed, and that was before she switched on the fluorescent strip lighting. The height of the room from the ground made it unlikely that Keith could see in from outside; still, it made him wary.

Over her shoulder Cammie said tentatively, “Since I'm taking up your time, I'd like to offer you something for dinner. Will a steak and salad do?”

“Fine,” he answered through stiff lips.

She was trying to give herself something to do, he thought, and trying to make the situation seem natural. The least he could do was help her out. Walking deeper into the room, he leaned against the end of the one cabinet and put his hands in his pockets.

Cammie moved back and forth, taking steaks from the freezer against one wall and putting them into a microwave to thaw, searching out lettuce and tomato, broccoli and carrots from the refrigerator. He watched, thinking how unreal it was that he was there in her house.

It was funny, in a grim fashion, that it was his background with the mill — and possibly the reputation of his sordid past in covert operations — that made him useful to Cammie all at once. These were the very things he would have expected to repel her. Beyond that, the uppermost emotion he could sort from among those that crowded his chest was gratitude.

It had been a long time since he had been close to a woman, any woman. They were far too fragile and easily hurt. He didn't trust himself with them, hadn't for a long time.

Cammie had responded to him. He had felt the slow, sweet burning where their bodies had touched, had tested the frantic pulse in the tender curve of her neck and tasted the sweet tang of desire on her tongue. It struck him as nothing less than a miracle.

He should leave, he knew that beyond a doubt. To stay was dangerous, for both of them. If he should hurt her, this woman of all women, he might never get over it.

He couldn't go. Not after what had happened out there on the porch. He owed her something for that, for letting him feel for the space of a few quick breaths that he was not the pariah he thought, not just a machine with bestial instincts. He would do, and be, whatever she wanted, if she would allow him to pretend just a little longer that he was a normal man.

He was staring at her, at the way her hair shifted across her shoulders, catching the light in individual red-gold strands; studying the curve of her mouth, the slender turn of her waist as she moved here and there. He knew he was, but couldn't help it. It was that irresistible. Though the effect on him would very likely disgust her if she noticed it.

He needed a distraction, needed it in the worst kind of way.

“What can I do to help?” he asked.

She flung him a quick look, as if she had never heard a man say such a thing. “Nothing. I can do it.”

He moved toward her, picking up one of the carrots that lay beside the sink. His voice even, he said, “Do you have a potato peeler?”

She turned to a drawer and took out the utensil, handing it to him. She watched him as she might a child with a sharp knife while he sliced a long, paper-thin peel from the carrot in his hand. Satisfied, apparently, that he knew what he was doing, she went back to washing lettuce.

“Keith doesn't do kitchen duty?” he asked as he worked.

Her lips twitched in the wry smile he was coming to expect. “Like you, we have a housekeeper who comes in by the day. Keith always considered paying her wages his contribution to household chores.”

“He might have been more willing to pitch in later, when the children came. Most men come to it then.”

“Maybe.”

“Was there a reason you didn't have any? Children, I mean.” It was a question that had been in the back of his mind for some time. He had been expecting off and on for years to hear that she was a mother.

She glanced at him with a frown between her eyes before she tore paper towels from the roll to drain the lettuce. “At first, Keith thought we should wait; he didn't want to be tied down. I decided later on, for different reasons, that he was right.”