Bound to Happen (4 page)

“Yes, please,” she said, seething.

He stretched a hand out across the ruffles and wiggled his fingers at her in a very irksome way. With no other option, Leslie had to take a firm grip on his hand and hope for the best.

This wasn’t her day. His big hand covered hers almost entirely. It was calloused and strong; its grip warm and secure. In one firm tug, Leslie was vertical and moving forward until she came full force into the man’s broad chest. Winded by the impact and overheated by her anger, Leslie stood stunned and breathless in the man’s arms, her face only inches from his. She felt the need to pull away, but something inexplicable appeared in his eyes and kept her still.

The mocking humor in his expression of moments before was now laced with an undefined challenge, the indifference became almost a plea to take on his dare, and the scorn … the scorn had taken on a smoky cloud of mystery, it had become a puzzle for Leslie to solve, a question to answer.

The moment seemed to stretch out past forever, but in actuality, it was only a split second and was gone before Leslie was ready to release it. The idea that this man was in any way vulnerable appealed to her very much. But that feeling, too, was short lived when, in a flash, the man was full of arrogance and mischief once more.

“Then again, maybe I shouldn’t have made such a hasty decision,” he said as he lowered his head and boldly took Leslie’s lips with his own.

At first Leslie was furious and tried to fight him off. But with her hands holding up the bodice of her dress, all she could do was squirm and try to pull away. When her movements only succeeded in allowing him to reestablish a firmer grip and give her a second kiss, Leslie decided to take a new approach. She stood perfectly still and the second his arms relaxed a little, she kicked him as hard as she could. It took her two attempts to finally hit his shin bone, but her reward was well worth her efforts.

He gasped in pain and immediately released her. When he did, she held her dress up with one hand and used the other to push him away. To Leslie’s astonishment, as he held on to his leg he was also laughing uncontrollably.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me,” she shouted. “And don’t you ever touch me like that again. Do you hear me?”

The man laughed harder at her indignation.

“I mean it! I’m sick of this.” She stamped her foot once. “I’m sorry you’re a nasty, ill-tempered, and extremely rude individual, but you’re not going to take it out on me anymore. The accident wasn’t all my fault. I refuse to take all the blame for it. And if I’m going to be such an imposition to you for the next two weeks—or so—well, I’d just as soon take my chances alone than put up with you.”

By the time Leslie finished her tirade, the man had pulled himself together somewhat and stood watching her. His eyes held a certain humorous admiration, and his lips were still twitching at the corners, but at least he wasn’t rolling on the ground in a convulsive fit of laughter.

“You’re not very funny.”

“No. You’re right. I’m not,” he said, his amused look having faded to a smirk and a twinkle. “If I promise to be a good boy from now on, will you let me zip up your dress?”

Leslie considered his offer with great misgivings. She was sure she shouldn’t trust him, but she definitely wanted her dress zipped so she could have two free hands. Courageously and with all the dignity she could muster, Leslie turned her back to him.

Several endless seconds passed before she felt his presence behind her. All her senses were on red alert, on guard for the slightest untoward action. None came. With a minimum of movement, the man deftly secured her dress, said “There you go,” and walked away.

But even though he’d amended his behavior, Leslie wasn’t satisfied.

“Aren’t you going to apologize?”

“For what?” The man didn’t bother to look away from feeding the fire. He kept throwing twigs and small branches into the flames as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened between them.

“For being so rude and … and for what you did to me,” Leslie said.

“I kissed you,” he said, because she didn’t seem able to identify the activity and he wanted to make his next point. “It wasn’t exactly a rape. I could have used a little more finesse, I guess, but all in all, I’m not sorry I did it. So, I won’t apologize.”

“Honestly. You’re the most insulting man I’ve ever met,” Leslie said, disgusted.

“That’s too bad. Maybe if you’d met a lowlife like myself sooner, you wouldn’t be so snooty now,” he said, turning to her at last.

“Snooty? Snooty? I am not snooty.”

“Defensive, then.”

“I’m only defensive when someone else is attacking. In this case, that’s you.”

The man seemed to be thinking her statement over. Leslie knew her argument was valid and drew confidence from it. The man finally nodded twice and said, “Maybe in the beginning, when I was still in shock. But I took care of you when you passed out, and that was nice of me. And since you woke up, I think I’ve been pretty civil.”

“You kissed me,” she said in an accusing tone.

“Oh. Well, that was bound to happen eventually anyway. I just figured that as long as we were in the right position, we might as well get it over with.”

“What?” Leslie’s face was a grimace of shocked disbelief. Was this man not only rude and vulgar, but insane as well, she wondered.

“Let’s face it, I’m reasonably good-looking. You’ve got all the right parts, very nicely put in all the right places. We’re alone in the woods together and most likely will be for some time to come. We were bound to kiss eventually,” he said, in a very matter-of-fact way.

“What?” she repeated, more and more convinced that she was stranded in the mountains with a madman.

“Come on, … What is your name?”

“Leslie.”

“Leslie, what?”

“Rothe. What’s yours?” she asked, not really sure she wanted to know, fairly certain by now that it could be found on the F.B.I.’s ten-most-wanted list.

“Joe Bonner,” he said. “And I think that human nature being what it is, we each would have started wondering what it would be like to kiss the other sooner or later anyway. I just wondered sooner, is all. There’s no need to make a federal case out of a simple little kiss, Leslie.”

“There is if you won’t apologize for it,” Leslie said doggedly.

“I’m not sorry. I admit I might have enjoyed it more if you’d cooperated a little, but it wasn’t so bad as it was.”

Leslie gasped in frustration and anger. There was no dealing with him. He was impossible to talk to, she decided, as she pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and began to walk away from him.

“If you’re going off to visit the bushes, you should stay on the road and out of the underbrush. You’d probably hang yourself in that dress. Go up around the bend if you want,” he said in an annoyingly omniscient way.

Leslie glared at him over her shoulder but took his advice nonetheless. Making her way clumsily through the darkness in her high-heeled shoes, her mind automatically switched to her problem-solving mode. In her usual way, she quickly identified her problems: The man, Joe Bonner, and being stranded in the mountains with him. Objectives: Get rid of this Joe Bonner person and get home safely. Solutions: The answer to the first problem was easy. Shoot Joe Bonner at the first opportunity. The second problem was not as easily solved. And, unfortunately, it looked as if she was going to need Joe Bonner to accomplish it.

On her way back to the fire—and Joe Bonner—a calmer Leslie decided she simply would have to grit her teeth and bear with the impossible man until she was rescued or until she could come up with another answer to her dilemma.

In the meantime, she knew of another problem she could easily solve. Knowing there was little of her to see under the skirt of her gown because of the additional slips she’d worn, she freely gathered up the silk and lace in one hand and began untying the strings of the hooped skirt with the other. With the hoops gone, the dress hung straight to the ground. It was now far too long but much less cumbersome.

Well satisfied, Leslie looked up to find the man—as she preferred to think of him—watching her. Something in the way he was regarding her made her feel agitated and uneasy. He nodded his approval of what she had done and said, “Good idea.”

“Thank you so much,” she said stiffly.

“Definitely snooty,” he said as if it was a final judgment of her character.

Leslie walked over to the man and strangled him with her bare hands—but only in the back of her mind, where she kept her fondest wishes and desires. In reality she gathered her skirts once again, ignoring the man, and settled herself on the tarpaulin where she’d been lying before. With great flair, she arranged the silk and lace over her legs and drew the blanket closer around her bare shoulders.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. Cannibalism flashed through her mind as a possible solution to one of her problems. But she quickly discarded the idea, assuming it would be rather tasteless, both literally and figuratively.

Two pieces of bread landed in her lap. The slices were stuck firmly together, but with the aid of the light from the fire, Leslie could see the adhesive was either an appetizing pate or peanut butter. Considering the sandwich’s origins, she assumed it was peanut butter. However, she wasn’t altogether disappointed or ungrateful. She was very hungry.

“Where did this come from?” she asked between bites, not caring that the food stuck to the roof of her mouth.

“I was on my way back from getting groceries when we met on the road,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “My truck is full of food.”

“And now it’ll all go to waste.” She shook her head regretfully.

“Hardly. We’ll take as much as we can carry in the morning. And I’ll make another trip down for the nonperishables in a couple of days.”

Leslie nodded. This made sense to her, and she’d always believed in carrying her share of the load. Basically a city person and not overly fond of outdoor sports, she really wasn’t looking forward to the hike through the mountains. But she vowed she’d accomplish it with as much grace as possible. She’d show him snooty.

They were silent through most of the meal. Leslie took a second helping, her host went back for thirds. He’d boiled coffee in a saucepan and asked, or rather told her to hold a filter over two pint-size canning jars while he poured the hot, dark fluid into each.

“I wasn’t planning on a camp out,” he said, needlessly explaining his lack of equipment.

Leslie had to admire his ingenuity. The coffee was strong and hot, warming her from the inside out, which was more than she could say for either the fire or her blanket. While the heat of the fire did a fair job of warding off the cold night air in front of her, the chilling breeze seemed to catch and settle in the blanket that lay around her shoulders and across her back.

After her third rather obvious shiver, Joe got to his feet and came over to her side of the fire.

“Scoot up,” he told her.

“What for?” she asked, confused and suspicious at once.

“I’ll sit behind you and keep the wind off your back.”

“That’s not necessary. I’m perfectly—”

“Perfect. I know,” he broke in on her objection. “But if we’re going to survive this night without the right gear, we’re going to have to keep each other warm. My jacket will hold off the wind. So we’ll sit on the tarp facing the fire with me at your back.”

No longer confused, Leslie focused her attention on her distrust of this man. “If you think I’m going to give you a second chance to manhandle me, you’re crazy,” she said, pulling the blanket closer, glaring up at him stubbornly.

Again, he mocked her with laughter.

“You’re certainly full of yourself, aren’t you? I give you one little kiss and suddenly you’re irresistible to me? Is that what you think?”

“No,” she said. “What I think is that you’re a lunatic or maybe an axe murderer. The nicest thing I’ve thought so far was that you’re just some poor thing who wandered out the front gates of an asylum and can’t quite get the hang of being normal.”

“Hey. You’re all heart, aren’t you? I’ll have to be careful not to let your high opinion of me swell my head,” he said. He didn’t appear to be offended at all, but he certainly was wearing a peculiar expression. At first Leslie thought he was still amused, but for a fleeting second there was almost a look of admiration in his eyes, and then it was gone, replaced by the thoughtful, considering look she was growing very familiar with. “However, flattered as I am, I am none of those things. I am hard to live with sometimes, which is why I spend a lot of time alone up here in my cabin. But you don’t need to be afraid of me. I am both safe and sane, and I won’t hurt you.” He paused briefly. “I won’t even touch you again without your permission. How’s that?”

“That’s how it should have been from the beginning,” Leslie pointed out, still wary.

“True. But be that as it may, I think I can prove to you how harmless I really am and that I’m not such a bad guy after all, if you’ll allow me to.”

Leslie was doubtful, but for some inane reason she wanted to believe him. A lot of it had to do with his being the only other human for miles around, and some of it had to do with Leslie’s basic good nature. But that still left a small part of the reason unaccounted for, a part that made Leslie feel uncomfortable and excited at the same time, a part she didn’t want to examine too closely just yet.

Leslie gave her nonverbal consent for the experiment to begin. This time she was sure of the approval she saw in his eyes, and even though he didn’t actually smile, he did look pleased.

“N
OW I KNOW
you’re nuts,” Leslie told Joe several minutes later. “There’s no way I’m going to crawl in there with you.”

He had placed the tarpaulin lengthwise beside the fire. She’d watched as he stretched his long body out across the far half and covered himself with half the blanket. Panic had overtaken her quickly when he held up the other half of the blanket invitingly and motioned for her to get in beside him.

“Then you’ll freeze to death,” he pointed out casually. “And I won’t get a chance to prove what a perfect gentleman I can be when I set my mind to it.”