Desert Devil (15 page)

Now Thorne reached over and lightly caressed the tendrils of soft hair on her temple. "Asleep?" he said softly.

"Just dozing," Juli murmured, not wanting him to know she found the pillow of his shoulder too exciting for sleep, even in her present state of weariness.

"We're just coming into Cholla now. Would you like to stop and have dinner somewhere?"

Juli straightened up. She felt grimy and dirty, her clothes anything but fresh after the day's exertions. "I'm afraid they'd toss me out of any respectable place," she admitted. "I could fix something at the trailer, if you wouldn't mind. Perhaps an omelet and salad?"

"Sounds great," he said promptly. "I always wanted a girl who knows how to do something more than read a restaurant menu."

The words echoed rapturously in Juli's ears.
I always wanted a girl
… As if she might be that very girl he'd always wanted!

At the trailer Juli excused herself so she could wash up first and get the meal started while he cleaned up. She stripped off the grimy blouse and turned on the hot water in the bathroom. Nothing happened. She twisted and jiggled the faucet doubtfully, then hopefully tried the other faucet. It was equally useless. What in the world was wrong? She remembered there had been only a weak trickle of water that morning, but at the time she had been in too much of a hurry to worry about it. Now there wasn't so much as a drop of water. Reluctantly, she slipped the blouse on again and went out to tell Thorne.

"I'll go have a look in the pump house," he said promptly. "It's probably just some minor thing."

"Oh, you don't need to do that," Juli protested. "I know you're tired and its dirty out there and—"

"And you probably think I'm a company president who doesn't know one end of a pump from the other," he teased. "Someday I'll have to show you the little ranchhouse out in the desert where we lived when I was a boy and milked the cow and fed the chickens." He was already grabbing the flashlight from the kitchen counter and starting outside.

Juli got the salad greens out of the refrigerator. They were already washed, but her hands felt too grimy to touch them. She went into the bathroom again, but the washcloth was too dry and stiff to have any cleansing effect on her hands. Thorne returned in just a few minutes.

He set the flashlight back on the counter. "I think it's an electrical problem."

Juli chewed her lower lip uncertainly. "Something must have happened to the pump when the electricity blinked off and on last night. Or maybe it was something wrong with the pump that made the electricity go off. I don't know anything about electricity or pumps," she added helplessly.

"The power outage was general," he said briefly.

Somehow his voice sounded a little less warm and friendly than it had all day, and Juli mentally cursed the uncooperative pump. Of all times for it to fail! This made such an awkward, disappointing end to an otherwise perfect day. She couldn't even offer him a cup of coffee without water to prepare it.

"I guess I'll have to offer you a raincheck on the meal," she said unhappily.

He stood there eyeing her, an odd expression on his face. She looked at him uncertainly. Surely he wasn't angry over something that wasn't even her fault, was he? Perhaps he was disappointed, she decided hopefully. She knew she certainly was.

He stood there a moment longer, lean and rugged and somehow remote again. Then he seemed to come to a decision. "We'll go to my place. Estelle can whip up something for us to eat. Bring your bathing suit and a change of clothes and we'll take a dip before we eat." His tone was crisp and authoritative, the voice of a man accustomed to giving commands and having them obeyed.

Juli hesitated. She hated the idea of going to bed without so much as a shower to wash the day's grime away, and the thought of a swim was deliriously inviting. But she didn't want Thorne to feel he was somehow obligated to issue this invitation, especially when he seemed so aloof and remote again. "That isn't necessary," she said uneasily. "Besides, it's a little cool for a swim."

"The pool is heated."

Still Juli hesitated, but she knew she didn't want the day to end on this oddly uncomfortable note. "I'll take my car so you won't have to drive me back later."

"Don't be ridiculous," he said. His voice left no room for argument.

She gathered up a bathing suit, a change of clothing, and a few items to refresh her makeup. At his house he suggested she go on out to the bathhouse and change while he talked to Estelle about something to eat. She did as he suggested, finding the bathhouse as luxurious as everything else about the Taylor estate. She showered away the day's grime before slipping into her bathing suit, ruefully wondering why she always felt more daring when purchasing some items of clothing than when wearing them later. The burgundy-colored suit was one piece, but cut so high on the hip and so low in the back that an almost-indecent amount of skin was exposed. She cracked the bathhouse door open, then hurried across the concrete patio and slid into the pool before Thorne arrived. The evening air was cool and the contrast of the heated pool was almost like slipping into bathwater. It enveloped her with delicious warmth, gliding like a sensuous caress around her legs and waist and breasts.

The overhead lights were not turned on now. A single tinted light, concealed somewhere on the far side of the pool, illuminated the palm tree from below. Part of the pool curved around one of the huge boulders, making a private little cove on the far end. It could be a tropical island, Juli thought dreamily as she supported herself against the edge of the pool, her legs moving idly in the smooth water. An island paradise for two…

Suddenly she was aware she was not alone and she glanced swiftly behind her to see Thorne standing there in the shadows.

"I didn't hear you! How long have you been standing there?"

"Only a moment." His hands were on his hips, the powerful breadth of his shoulders emphasized by the brevity of the navy trunks stretched across his lean hips. He didn't move, but a flicker of breeze played shadows across the muscles of his chest.

"Aren't you coming in?" Juli asked, somehow uneasy at the way he just stood there motionless, his face shadowed so he could watch her but she could not see his eyes. She had the strange feeling that he was struggling with something within himself. What? Had he not wanted her to come here? Did he feel uncomfortable with her here in the home everyone said he would soon be sharing with Nicole? That thought brought a sudden, painful lurch to Juli's heart. She hadn't thought about Nicole all day. She had been too wrapped up in the wondrous discovery of her own feelings. She doubted that Thorne had thought about Nicole, either. But that had been while they were away from here, and now they were back.

Without warning, Thorne's body arced cleanly into the pool, slicing the water with knifelike precision. He came up on the far side of the pool, ducked under again, and came up beside her, so close she felt the brush of his skin against her body. Now he was grinning, his eyes sparkling with a roguish glitter, his manner completely changed, as if he had undergone some underwater transformation. He ran one hand up the smooth, bare curve of her hip. The intimacy of the gesture both shocked and thrilled her, and his devilish eyes told her he knew it.

"How come you hid yourself in the pool before I got a chance to see you in your bathing suit?" he chided with mock reproach.

"I'm not hiding," she protested, though she knew it wasn't true.

"We don't even have to wear suits, you know, if you'd rather not. Once you try swimming in the nude, you'll never want to wear a suit again."

Juli's lips parted and she stifled a gasp of shock. He laughed, a throaty chuckle, and Juli knew he had said it purposely to shock her. For a moment she thought about recklessly calling his bluff, but the challenge in his eyes made her suddenly afraid it was no bluff. Instead, she dived under the water and swam to the far side of the pool, liking the fresh, clean feel of the water gliding over her skin. But Thorne was too quick for her, and when she came up he was already there, laughing at her. Under the tinted light his skin was copper, his teeth a white flash, and the clinging droplets of water glittered like iridescent jewels on his gleaming skin.

She went underwater again, twisting and turning, laughing delightedly when she managed to elude him. They chased each other back and forth, above and beneath the water, in and out of the secluded cove at the far end of the pool. But Juli's agility was no match for Thorne's speed and power. Just when she thought she had outmaneuvered him, his hand would reach out and capture her ankle or his arm encircle her waist. Once she ducked around and caught him by the leg, but instead of pulling away as she always did, he somersaulted underwater and came up with his arms around her.

"Now who caught whom?" he challenged laughingly.

"I… I'm not sure," Juli gasped. "But I have to rest, or you're going to drown me!"

They were in the secluded cove behind the boulder. Here the light was only a dim, reflected glow, the water and Thorne's eyes both darkly mysterious. Juli slipped away to the side of the pool and supported herself with elbows draped behind her as she tried to catch her breath.

He followed, a strong hand on either side of her imprisoning her within the cage of his arms. "If I drown you, it will only be with kisses," he said huskily. His lips showered her wet throat and shoulder with feathery kisses and then moved boldly to the hollow between her breasts.

Juli caught her breath in a gasp, unable to deny the urgent messages the touch of his lips sent racing through every nerve in her body, messages she found shocking and yet almost irresistibly powerful and demanding. She sucked in her breath and plunged straight down to escape his imprisoning arms, but she was too tired and winded to stay under for more than a few moments. When she came up and grabbed the side of the pool, he swam over beside her again.

"Why did you do that?" he asked reproachfully.

She started to make some flippant reply, but the words caught in her throat. The teasing gleam was gone from his eyes now, replaced by something dark and inscrutable. "I… I don't know," she said, almost in a whisper.

"Don't you like having me touch you?"

"Yes… no… oh, I don't know! It does something to me…"

"Something you don't like?"

"I don't know," she whispered, but that wasn't true. She liked his touch, liked the feel of his skin and lips and the ripple of his muscles and the brush of his crisp hair, exulted in them even as some more sensible part of her mind sent frantic warning signals.

As they talked some slight motion of the water drifted their bodies closer together, the movement almost imperceptible but somehow inexorable. Like the moth to the flame, she thought tremulously.

Suddenly his legs reached around hers, catching and holding her by the ankles, molding the underwater halves of their bodies together. She could feel the hard male power of his body, and she knew the times she had ducked and escaped him before were only because he let her go, that there was no escaping him now. The water eddied around them, undulating their bodies in motion together. Thorne didn't speak. He just watched her eyes and she was afraid of what they revealed to his experienced gaze.

"What are you thinking?" he demanded softly. Above water there was an almost decent distance between them, but beneath the water he still held her in that inescapable grip.

What was she thinking? Her heart pounded in reply because it wasn't what she was thinking that really seemed important right now; it was what she was feeling in every nerve and muscle of her body. She was feeling dormant, barely acknowledged desires throb to life, desires that were a part of the awakening love she felt for Thorne. And yet there was an uneasy awareness within her that in him those pulsating desires might be quite separate and distinct from love.

"I… I was thinking that you seemed so… changeable today," she faltered.

"Changeable?" he repeated. He raised an eyebrow, a cool, almost impersonal gesture that seemed at odds with the way their bodies melded intimately together beneath the water.

"I don't know…" Juli's voice trailed off helplessly.

How could she explain it? All day he had seemed so warmly companionable, lightly teasing, but in an affectionate sort of way. She had felt so at ease with him. His kisses at the mountains had been passionate and demanding, but they were also spontaneous and natural, without guise or calculation. Now his expert caresses seemed deliberately calculated to arouse and challenge her. And in between had been that brief but uncomfortable period of remote withdrawal she sensed in him. Why had he invited her here tonight? Did he have something more than a dip and dinner in mind? She knew he did, and she found the thought both frightening and disturbingly alluring.

"There seem to be a lot of things you 'don't know' tonight," he mocked lightly.

"When do you expect your mother and Nicole to arrive?" she asked, abruptly trying to change the subject.

His eyes narrowed. "In a few days," he answered noncommittally. A forefinger played lightly with the strap of her bathing suit, would have slid it off her shoulder if she had not shrugged it back in place. "Do you really want to talk about my mother and former sister-in-law right now?" he asked, his hand still lightly threatening the stability of the strap.

"Are you afraid to talk about Nicole?" Now it was Juli's turn to challenge.

"Of course not. It's just that there are subjects that are so much more interesting to discuss." His hand moved up to caress her temple, and his voice was a caress, too. "The way your eyes sparkle. The way your skin feels like satin against my fingertips. The. perfume of your hair and the taste of your lips…"

His fingers traced the outline of her lips and then his mouth touched hers lightly, like a connoisseur sampling a fine wine. Then the teasing touch deepened to a kiss that sent Juli's senses reeling dizzily, and she would have slipped beneath the water if it were not for the powerful grip of his legs and the arm supporting her. Dimly, from somewhere far off, she heard a voice.