The Look-Alike Bride (Crimson Romance) (10 page)

Or on the park bench placed for sightseers, he thought craftily, edging her toward it.

He spared a thought for Butch. The collie followed along with dignity, even though his mistress’s grip on his leash had gone slack. Adam observed that the dog never took his eyes off her and he cautioned himself not to make any moves that would cause Leonie to exhibit distress.

She wobbled suddenly in his hold. He grabbed her upper arms to hold her steady. Butch alerted and studied Adam closely.

“Sorry,” she said, breathless and gasping. “I turned my ankle on a rock.”

He looked down. When he moved her back, she had set her foot on a large pebble and slipped as she shifted her weight to the other foot. The thin sandals she wore were not meant for walking on rocks.

“No problem.” He lifted her off her feet entirely and carried her to the bench.

Butch paced beside her, apparently deciding to hold his temper until he was certain of the necessity.

“I’m not hurt. Put me down, Adam. I can walk.” Leonie delivered her protests in short, exclamatory bursts.

Adam laughed. He felt like the king of the world, especially from this vantage point. Both Butch and Leonie looked at him cautiously.

“I know you can walk, but I like carrying you.” He set her down on the bench and sat down beside her, tucking her against him.

They both sat in silence a moment. Ordinarily, Adam enjoyed the tranquility of the spot, a deep, echoing silence where the only sound was the breeze singing through the pine needles above their heads, or the whine of an engine when the occasional car, none of them bronze-colored, passed by on the highway. This, however, could only be described as a speaking silence.

He could almost feel her uncertainty and the thoughts swirling through her brain. But he didn’t mind the short wait, since he fully intended to kiss her again before she had time to think out excuses.

“Adam—” She refused to look at him, preferring to pretend the view of the setting sun was so awe-inspiring she couldn’t take her gaze from it.

He reached to pull her around to fully face him. “Yes, angel?”

Distracted, she blinked and frowned. “Stop calling me angel. It ought to be perfectly obvious to you by now that I’m no angel.”

He wasn’t about to call her Leonie and give away the fact that he knew she wasn’t Zara. He wanted her to trust him enough to tell him herself. He decided to go with the truth, or a piece of it at least.

“Sorry. It’s just that you don’t seem like a Zara,” he said, smiling. “You’re something a lot sweeter and more tender.”

She flushed. “Well, find something better to call me than angel.” She looked adorably grumpy, and unbearably sexy. “And it’s not a good idea for us to be kissing like that.”

“Like what?” he asked, all innocence.

She fumed visibly. “Like that. Like you just did.”

“Like we just did,” he corrected, now grinning outright. “Sorry, angel. Maybe I’ve gotten old and set in my ways, because I’ve started something I don’t intend to stop.”

She kept him at arm’s length by propping her elbows against her own body, and her hands against him. “Are you talking about kissing me, or about calling me an angel?”

“Both,” he said, and used an inside parry from his agent days to sweep her arms from their propped position. “I don’t intend to stop kissing you, and I still think you’re an angel.”

“Adam, stop this.” She turned her face aside and huffed out a breath, as if to blow a curtain of silver hair out of her face.

Adam took advantage of her parted lips in the fullest way possible. Before she could react, he clamped her against him and turned her face back to his. Then he was inside her mouth, kissing her so deeply, he felt she had become a part of him.

This time, when she gave in, he discovered he was the one who landed inside a whirlwind.

• • •

Leonie wasn’t quite sure how it happened. Nobody had ever kissed her the way Adam was kissing her, as if he couldn’t get enough of the way she tasted. Nobody had ever held her the way Adam did, as if he wanted to imprint his body on hers. It was the desperation that must have gotten to her, she decided later.

Whatever the explanation, what happened next was incredible, at least to Leonie. Suddenly, she ceased to be Leonie Daniel, high school basketball coach and physical education teacher, always in control of her mind and her body. She became somebody else, somebody she was unfamiliar with. She simply blanked her mind to her own actions and lived for the moment.

She burned and tingled all over, especially where Adam was touching her. When he stroked his hands down her back, she felt prickles of fire racing in his path. The incredible feelings drove her to wind her arms around his neck in a death grip, and to wrest control of the kiss from him.

Leonie detected his momentary surprise then he let her take over. Her lips ground against his, and she explored his mouth with her tongue the way he had explored hers moments before. Her hands couldn’t touch him enough. She used them to examine his chest, his back, and the hard, quivering muscles of his arms and shoulders as he crushed her closer.

Even more fascinating, she heard his breathing accelerate, and felt his heartbeat race. Or was it her own? Leonie didn’t know. A few seconds later, she decided it didn’t matter. Probably, their heartbeats were synchronized and so was their breathing.

She burned all over with great waves of sensation that demanded more than kisses. When he glided one hand over the silk camisole in exploration of her breasts, she moaned softly and wondered how she could get the blouse out of the way without interfering with his incendiary touch.

A moment later, she realized Adam considered the blouse no problem at all. His big, warm hand slid beneath the fabric and pushed her bra up so he could palm her bare breast. Gasping, she kissed him again, seeking to deepen the kiss even more.

Something tugged at her wrist. Dimly, she tugged back, annoyed at the small distraction.

Butch yelped, a short, sharp bark that indicated approaching danger.

Startled, she opened her eyes. The collie stood at her side, facing the left, where a wall of rock screened the tiny, roadside park from the highway. Leonie looked that way and saw a movement, as if someone had peeked around the rocky cliff then withdrew.

Beside her, Adam glared toward the cliff, with his palm still lying against her bare breast.

“What is it?” she asked, conscious that her voice sounded weak and thready.

“Someone is watching us.” He slipped his hand from beneath her blouse, as if it was the sort of thing he did every day, while he continued to study the cliff.

“Who was it?”

She almost moaned a protest when the warmth of his touch withdrew from her starving body. She felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over her. Her mind refused to work, and her body shivered, where seconds before, she’d burned with an unaccustomed heat.

“I don’t know.” He rose in one smooth surge without taking his gaze off the highway. “I’ll be right back.”

Dazed, she watched him stride toward the highway. He intended to walk across the road, where he’d be able to see beyond the cliff, she realized. If anyone was there, Adam would be able to see who it was.

She stared after him. He moved with the same catlike grace Zara developed soon after she went to work for the government. Leonie imagined how he would look without the khakis and green polo shirt he wore. Her mouth went dry.

Butch tugged against his leash, but Leonie wasn’t about to let the dog follow Adam onto the highway. “Quiet, boy. Let the professionals handle this kind of work.”

She had forgotten that Adam had been a professional. As far as she was concerned, he still was. More to the point, he was the man Zara wanted, and he thought she was Zara.

Another bucket of cold water splashed over her spirit at the thought. But she knew she had to keep reminding herself of that. Adam thought she was Zara. She had to let him keep thinking so.

Maybe she could just enjoy the moment and let Zara deal with the results later.

Over the deep silence and sighing of the pines above her head, she heard a car motor rev up in the distance. Tires squealed and the sound of a car engine faded into the distance.

Leonie got hold of her runaway thoughts. She wasn’t the kind of woman who could let herself enjoy the moment, at least not for long. She wanted marriage and the prospect of a lifetime when she gave herself to a man.

Then she remembered her hoped-for vacation fling. The problem with that idea was the fact that a fling, by definition, was short-lived.

This impossible attraction had to stop, and it had to stop now. Today. After today, she was avoiding Adam Silverthorne, she didn’t care how many platters of cookies he brought over.

Adam paused, staring down the highway. Then he turned and came back to her, wearing a cold, deadly expression she had never seen before, not even on the day she came upon him in the woods behind her sister’s cabin.

She sat up straight, fully in command of herself, and wished she hadn’t left her silver jacket in the Jeep. The mood was truly destroyed, and if she had any sense, she wouldn’t try and resurrect it. She just hoped her blush had faded enough to avoid his notice.

“Was that a bronze sedan, by any chance?” she asked, when he reached her side.

“As a matter of fact, it was.” He sat down beside her, studying her face. Instantly, the cold expression left, and his striking, green gaze burned again with the warmth of his sexual interest in her. “Now, where was I?”

Leonie faced the view with determination and refused to meet that mesmerizing stare. She had better remember that he had once worked for the government also, and he thought she was Zara. If he wanted sex, he would have to wait until Zara came home and took her rightful place in his arms. If only the thought of a vacation fling, of a short-lived romance to remember, didn’t tempt her so much.

“You were about to tell me how we’re going to find out who’s following me,” she said. “After that, you’re going to develop a plan that’ll stop him. Or them. Whichever.”

Adam took her hand and stroked his fingers over hers. “Actually, I’d rather kiss you again. That’s a lot more productive than trying to catch up to these idiots.”

“Idiots?” She stiffened. “What makes you think they’re idiots?”

“Peeping around a cliff at a woman who is escorted by a good dog and from a downwind position is idiotic,” Adam explained, with an air of exaggerated patience. “If they had any sense, they’d use a telescope or binoculars and stay upwind.”

“Is that right?” Leonie nurtured her annoyance carefully.

“And they’d have been a lot more careful not to be seen.” He stroked his warm palm across her cheek. “Don’t worry, angel. They’ve probably mistaken us for somebody else.”

Leonie melted, but she couldn’t let him know that. “Next, you’re going to say I’m imagining things again. Right?”

“How can I possibly say that?” Adam wanted to know. “After all, we’ve been stalked by that stupid car all afternoon.”

Adam couldn’t understand it at first. Leonie wouldn’t let him so much as put his arm around her after the aborted kiss, and it wasn’t because he didn’t try. Every time he managed to get close to her, she sprang up in search of the elusive sky blue warbler or put Butch between them.

Well, he’d just see about that. He liked birds and dogs well enough, but there were limits.

After returning her to her cabin without so much as a goodnight kiss to speed him on his way, Adam stood outside her door a moment, thinking the matter over.

She had been hot and full of fire one minute then as cold and sweet as an ice cream cone the next. Adam knew the bronze car had scared her, and she definitely didn’t care for being followed. What bothered her now was something different.

Suddenly, he thought he knew what it was. She thought he was kissing Zara instead of Leonie.

Grinning, Adam marched to his vehicle and climbed in. He’d have to do something to show he preferred the younger sister to the older one.

His grin faded the moment he started the engine. How was he going to achieve that without letting Leonie realize he knew she wasn’t Zara? The situation added such zest to his pursuit, he found himself reluctant to end it before he had to.

Adam sat in his Jeep, alternately staring out the windshield, then at the cabin. Since the peeping Tom incident, Leonie had pulled the curtains shut, so he couldn’t see inside. He imagined her walking around the cabin and checking the window coverings.

He had wanted her to trust him, but now he wondered if he ought to waste any more time waiting for that to happen. He couldn’t think up a single thing to say or do that would convince her, other than to tell her straight out that he knew she wasn’t Zara.

He found that unacceptable. When, he wondered, had it become so important for Leonie to trust him enough to tell him the truth of her own volition?

Since the moment he’d kissed her and she’d turned into a woman of fire and need in his arms, that was when.

So what was he going to do about it?

For once, the unflappable former Agent Adam Silverthorne had no idea.

• • •

The telephone on Zara’s kitchen wall rang.

Leonie debated ignoring the summons. She had no clue what to say to Adam. If she intended to avoid him, now was a good time to start. Yesterday would have been even better. Indecision swirled within her as she studied the caller ID and realized she didn’t recognize the number. It wasn’t even a local number. She reached out her hand then jerked it back, biting her lip.

Adam shouldn’t have this number . . . unless Zara had given it to him. She doubted that because Zara preferred using her cell phone except for calls that needed extra security. That meant the caller ought to be Zara. Leonie didn’t want to talk to Zara either.

Adam had brought her home a little over an hour ago, and already she longed to kiss him again, just to renew those delicious feelings. Leonie shivered. Thinking about the feel of Adam’s hands on her and the hot, probing kisses they had shared was slowly eroding her decision to avoid him.