Hot and Bothered (8 page)

“I don’t know.”

“That was the answer I got last time.”

What other answer did he expect? She wasn’t about to fall all over him just because she was attracted to him.
Very
attracted, she amended ruefully. “Paul, do you want to get involved with someone?”

“I …” He glanced over at her, then away again. “No.”

That hurt. It shouldn’t have, but it did. Judith swallowed against the lump of dull pain settling in her chest. “Then how can you expect me to give any other answer?”

“But you said, I don’t know.”

“Well, I meant it the same as you did.”

She didn’t, she thought, but preferred he not know that. Especially after what he had just said.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll just keep dancing around each other. I agree happily to that.”

If the silence in the truck was awkward before, now it was blistering. Judith huddled in the passenger seat, watching cars going south and not even caring if anyone saw her. She wished she’d never said a word. She must have had a true Collier moment, blurting out her feelings like that. Colliers did it all the time. What a change from last night, when she had slept in his bed. He may not have wanted her, but he’d needed her.

And that was the point, she thought. He’d told her flat out that he wanted her body but didn’t want
her
.

La Misión turned out to be a small town that had a neighborhood grocery store and a couple of ready-made-clothing shops. Paul dropped her off in front of them with barely a word. She was relieved and disappointed. Why she would want him to come in with her, she didn’t know.

Inside the shop, she found that the quality of the merchandise wasn’t very good, but it was durable and cheap, all she could ask. She bought a few more pairs of shorts, a pair of jeans, and several tops; again very different from the designer wear she usually purchased. None of these clothes had anything wild or otherwise imprinted on them, though. She wasn’t in the mood for that today.

Paul was so late in returning, she had begun to wonder whether he’d driven back to the cove without her. He didn’t say a word while he loaded her purchases in the truck cab’s stowage space and helped her into the seat. He got in on his side and slammed the door shut with a loud bang. Judith jumped.

“We have to go to dinner,” he said finally.

“We do?” Her heart flipped over with hope.

“Vincent and Ina insisted. I tried to get us out of it—”

“Who’re Vincent and Ina?”

He glared at her. She had a feeling she was supposed to know via osmosis.

“Vincent is an expatriate American and Ina is his wife. They live here in La Misión. He runs a small pottery kiln, and she makes fans.”

“Like the one in your house?”

“Yes. She did that one for my uncle.”

She glanced down at her T-shirt and shorts. She was hardly dressed for dinner, let alone to meet new people. Yet, Paul was dressed much the same, in cutoff jeans and a faded green cotton shirt. The vague depression that had been hovering over her dispersed. “I’d love to meet them.”

“It’ll be very late when we get back to the cove,” he warned.

“That’s fine.”

Paul grumbled something unintelligible, but put the truck in gear. Judith leaned back in the seat. She was with him a little longer. A side of her liked that very much.

Out of the corner of his eye, Paul noticed the way Judith daintily pushed her soup spoon toward the back of the bowl, a mark of someone very well trained in elegant manners. Okay, so he’d seen the clothes and the car. The
original
clothes. But he’d thought they’d signaled yuppie money. He knew now she was from old money. He’d probably unconsciously known it all along
but hadn’t wanted to admit it because he’d wanted her within his reach.

Maybe it was better that he’d become angry on the drive up from Sunset Cove.
I don’t know
, she’d said. He hated her answer to whether they would keep dancing around each other. Well, he was tired of her dancing around. Hadn’t he told her about himself? Hadn’t he asked her into his bed? Hadn’t he adhered to their don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy? What the hell more did she want from him?

The question had plagued him through the introductions to Vincent and Ina, through the tour of their modest house, and now through dinner on the patio. He found himself confused and jealous, two states of mind he had no desire to be in. He wasn’t sure what he was jealous of, but he was definitely jealous.

“I still do not understand why you are vacationing in an
ejido
,” Ina said to Judith, frowning in confusion. She was in her late forties, her long hair already heavily gray, though her features were clear and still unlined. “That’s a little village of people claiming common land for their own use, not a resort.”

Bingo
, Paul thought, tucking into the hot clear broth of his black bean soup. He couldn’t wait for Judith to answer this one.

She smiled easily. “It’s interesting to see normal people’s lives in another country, don’t you think?”

He acknowledged in disgust that she’d finally found a good pat answer.

“I suppose,” Ina said. “But it can be a very rough life.”

“Oh, I don’t need much.” Judith actually laughed. “Or so I’m finding out. It’s like camping.”

“Not quite,” Vincent said. “You go home after camping. People living in an
ejido
are struggling to make it a home.”

Vincent launched into his pet topic: the corruption in the bureaucracy that sold common land to businessmen who weren’t entitled to buy it, violating the laws for establishing
ejidos:
to sell such land at an affordable price to any poor Mexican family. Vincent was a throwback to the hippie generation sometimes, but Paul agreed with him on this point. The
ejido
concept was not for the already wealthy.

Judith listened politely and asked questions. That was another thing, he thought. She made social conversation easily—with everybody else, that is.
He
was a different story. Then again, he didn’t want social conversation with her.

On the other side of the house yard, Ina’s birds suddenly began squawking, attracting everyone’s attention. The small building that served as a cage contained peacocks, pea hens, pheasants, fancy chickens, and a turkey. They fussed and flapped in a shower of feathers at
nothing Paul could see. Finally the birds calmed down.

Paul turned back to the table at the same moment Judith did. Their gazes met. Paul couldn’t look away. Her face was bathed in candlelight and the waning sunset. Her skin tone was flawless and her lips rosy and extremely kissable. He wanted to do nothing more than that, then took the notion back. He wanted to
start
with a kiss. God, but he wanted her. And she wanted him. He could feel it in her stilled body and see it in her intense gaze.

“I’ll have some harvesting to do after dinner,” Ina said.

The spell snapped. Paul turned quickly to his soup. The salty spiced broth and the bite of the beans tasted like straw in his mouth. He wanted to take Judith out of there and really settle this between them.

“Oh, you mean the birds’ feathers,” Judith said to Ina. Her voice sounded far too calm for Paul’s ears. His would be a croak right now. She continued. “When you first showed me around, I thought you plucked the feathers right out of the poor things. I have to say I was feeling very sorry for them.”

Ina laughed. “Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. I wait until the feathers drop before I take them for my fans.”

“From a practical standpoint, the birds wouldn’t grow back feathers well if they were
plucked,” Vincent said. “This is a natural process that ensures renewal.…”

Judith looked fascinated.

From Paul’s standpoint, the dinner was endless.

The moon had set by the time they reached the cove.

Judith fumbled while inserting her key in the trailer lock. Paul took over, smoothly opening the door. He stepped inside and flipped on the lights. She stayed where she was. “I thought you said it was late.”

“When?” he asked.

“Before dinner.”

“I said we would be getting back late. You said that was fine. Besides, I thought I should make sure everything’s okay here.”

“Thank you,” she said dryly, realizing that more protest wouldn’t get him out.

“Welcome.”

She walked inside. He glanced around her narrow quarters of bunk bed, sink, two-burner stove, three cabinets, built-in table and chairs.

“A mouse has more room,” she commented.

“There used to be a family of six in here.”

She gaped at him. “That’s impossible! There’s no room for me.”

He laughed. “I don’t know how they did it, but they didn’t last long. Neither will you.”

A cooling breeze wafted through the windows, taking the temperature down several degrees. She smiled. “It’s been worse.”

“I bet. Got any coffee?”

He wanted coffee, she thought. She wanted to say no, but she wasn’t sure how without him thinking she was shunning him. She might be wary of any more intimacy with him, but the last thing she wanted to do was make him think she believed he was a horrible person because of that tragic shooting.

“I just have those single-bag things,” she said. “I don’t cook much.”

“Good enough.”

He sat at the table, then looked at her expectantly.

The need to assert herself with this man broke through her drifting-along demeanor. “Paul, what’s going on?”

He frowned. “What do you mean, what’s going on? Do you want me to leave?”

What could she say? That she had had a lovely time with his friends, but yes? Somehow that course was repugnant, yet she sensed he had a purpose beyond late-night coffee.

“No,” she said finally, not wanting a true confrontation. “It’s just that you seem to have something in mind.”

He grinned. “Don’t tempt me.”

“I won’t.”

“Too late.”

The words reached deep down inside her.

He chuckled. “Judith, you’re fun to tease. I can’t help myself.”

“Not tonight anyway,” she muttered, filling the teakettle. She flicked on the automatic pilot light until she heard the tic-tic-tic. The flame came up and she set the kettle on the burner before backing the flame down.

“Who says you can’t cook?” he commented. “You got the burner on.”

“I couldn’t at first. Pedro came in and put something in.”

Paul was out of his chair in an instant, pushing her to one side. “Let me see.”

He fiddled with the stove’s knobs, then opened the flap that allowed him to view the inner workings. Judith stood next to him, feeling more inadequate than usual.

He straightened finally. “Looks okay. With Pedro you never know.”

“Thank you.”

He gazed down at her, his eyes lambent. He was close, so close, that she could easily reach out and run her fingers along his shirtfront. The loosely woven green cotton suited him so well.

As if disembodied, her hand come up to rest on his chest. The heat of his skin almost burned her through the material.

“I thought we weren’t going to do this,” he said in a hoarse voice.

She closed her eyes, her fingers digging into the shirt. “I thought so too.”

His lips took hers in a heady kiss. She didn’t have to open her eyes to see what she was doing. She already knew. None of this was like her. None of it. She had become a different person since leaving home. She was beginning to want never to go back.

His tongue didn’t need to coax hers into participation. She met his fully, mating and swirling together. Paul gathered her to him, his hands strong on her back. His palms traveled down her spine until they cupped her derriere. His fingers kneaded the sensitive flesh. She moaned in the back of her throat and pressed her hips intimately to his. He shuddered and the kiss turned wild and demanding. She loved it. She loved the way he responded as if he were out of control for her. The sensations sent all kinds of heat shooting along her veins, turning her to jelly in his hands.

He kissed her cheeks, her neck, her throat, then buried his lips in the soft flesh just under her ear. “I thought we weren’t going to do this either.”

“We weren’t.”

“Just checking.” He kissed her again, sending her spinning into the atmosphere.

A sudden sharp whistle pierced the charged quiet. Judith leaped back, yelping in surprise. More calmly, Paul turned off the teakettle.

“I guess our coffee’s ready,” he said.

“I guess so.” She could barely hear her own voice. She fumbled around with mugs and coffee. Paul poured with steady hands that annoyed her as much as they had just thrilled her. Why wasn’t he a mess of raging hormones like she was? She forced her pounding heart to return to normal. Or tried to. It still insisted on fluttering erratically, but at least she was no longer in danger of fainting.

She had to keep a grip on herself. Her living there was very temporary, and she should keep that in mind. If she didn’t, she’d get involved with a man who would turn her whole world upside down and leave her defenseless for the pain afterward.

They sat across the narrow table from each other. Judith could easily lean forward and begin the kiss again. She forced the temptation away and tried innocuous conversation. “I like your friends. They’re charming.”

“They’re good people.” Paul took a sip of his coffee.

“How is it?” she asked, anxious.

“Good, actually, though it looks like tea in this bag.”

“For a cooking idiot like me, it’s a blessing.”

“You sound like you don’t cook anything ever. Don’t you get tired of restaurants?”

She wondered how to answer that and decided the truth would do well enough. “I live at home with my parents.”

Paul raised his eyebrows. “How old are you?”

She flushed. “Twenty-eight.”

“And you don’t cook?”

“I
barely
cook. Not beyond popping something in a microwave.” She clenched her teeth, hating how babyish she sounded. After his problems, she was ashamed even to admit her family’s lifestyle. It would be like throwing it in his face. Lamely, she added, “I … well, my mother had a cook so I never had to learn how. I went to a cooking school once. They threw me out. Now I’m finding out I really don’t have a talent for it.”