Luke (16 page)

Not money, surely. She couldn't imagine him doing anything so sleazy, for one thing. More than that, he worked hard at farming and had never shown the least interest in wealth above the minimum required for reasonable comfort. He was fit and healthy with none of the classic symptoms of someone with a drug habit that called for regular infusions of easy cash. What on earth was he doing then?

She could absolve him of more tender motives, she thought. He had been attracted to her years ago, but that was all. If it had been more then he would never have invited Mary Ellen into his car that night. He might have a lingering interest for old time's sake, since they'd been friends before they were lovers. That and a strong busybody instinct was most likely what had brought him to her door the day she'd taken that weird call on the air. If there was more to it, she didn't know it.

She had no idea what he wanted, then, but whatever it was, he wasn't getting it. She would not be coerced any more than she would stand for being protected against her will. She was a grown woman of reasonable intelligence, one well able to decide the level of danger she could stand. She didn't need Luke Benedict to run interference for her.

It crossed her mind that she was being cynical and possibly unfair. If so, it was because he had made her that way, or at least had begun the process. Since he didn't see fit to explain his actions, she had to take them as she saw them. Whatever misjudg
ment he might suffer because of it was on his own head.

They finished their meal in silence. As Luke began to pick up their dishes and carry them into the cabin, April rose to help him. The tiny galley hadn't been designed with two people in mind, however. As she put her wineglass in the sink, he stepped behind her to return the butter to the refrigerator. The front of his jeans brushed across her hips. She moved away at once and he muttered an apology. A moment later, she picked up the French bread and turned to put it in the waxed paper wrapper lying on the cabinet. He reached at the same time for the damp cloth that lay beside it and her forehead bumped his shoulder.

He shot out a hand to steady her, then used his grip to turn her toward the rear of the boat. “Let me take care of this, okay? There's a couple of T-shirts and some shorts under the seat over there if you'd like to change. I can't guarantee the fit, but at least they're clean.”

It seemed like a sensible suggestion, especially since she was feeling a little dizzy. It was, of course, the bump between the eyes affecting her, and not the close proximity to a hard male body in closefitting jeans.

The T-shirt she found was one of Luke's, as were the shorts. Both had a slight mustiness in their folds from being stored but smelled mostly of laundry soap. The shirt reached past her hips and she had to tighten the string belt of the shorts, but the outfit promised sleeping comfort and a bit more maneuverability than had her dress.

Her hair was a mass of tangles from blowing in the wind. As she raked her fingers through it, she stood on tiptoe and looked out the tiny window of the small shower cum toilet where she'd changed. She could see into the dinghy that was tied to the stern of the pontoon boat. A long-handled paddle lay in the bottom.

She had once known how to paddle a light boat as well as run an outboard, though it had been some time since she'd tried either. If she could just slip out the back doors and over the side without being caught, she could make a silent exit from their lagoonlike anchorage by paddling, then use the motor only after she was far enough away that Luke wouldn't hear. The best time to try it would be later in the night, however, well after he was asleep.

By the time she emerged with her rolled dress and petticoats under her arm, Luke had finished clearing the galley and was in the process of lowering the inside table to convert the dinette booth into a bed. A quick grin came and went across his lips as his gaze lingered on the way the T-shirt hung around her, draping over the small hills of her breasts, but he made no comment.

“You can sleep here,” he said easily. “I'll take the bench outside with the dive-bombing mosquitoes.”

“That's very noble of you,” she said. It was also very convenient. Too convenient?

“That's me, noble to the core,” he answered. “You don't have to turn in now, if you don't want. There's a collection of books and magazines that
Regina and first one and then another left on board, or I could beat you in a few hands of cards.”

“What, no television?” she mocked, though she seldom turned on the set at Mulberry Point.

“Hard as it may be, you'll have to make do without.”

“Some host you are,” she groused for the sake of form, then added a second later, “I think I'll read awhile.”

“Fine.” He threw a couple of pillows onto the quilt he had spread over the padded surface of the dinette cushions. Then he stooped to pull a farming magazine from a stack in the bench storage. Sitting on the bed, he rested his shoulders against the high back of the dinette's booth.

He meant to use the light that glowed over the converted bed for his reading since it was the only convenient source of illumination in the small cabin. April thought she could hardly object to that. She thumbed through the stored books, noting three or four of her own titles. Selecting a mystery novel she hadn't read, she joined Luke under the single light, but on the opposite end of the bed.

It was hot and muggy, still an occasional breath of air drifted through the screens of the open windows and doors. Silence hung in the cabin, broken only by the turning of pages or occasional rasp as one of them cleared their throat. After a time, however, a mosquito that had found its way inside whined around their ears. Luke dispatched it. Quiet reigned again.

It wasn't really silent, however. There was a veritable concert of night sounds coming from the sur
rounding swamp. Insects sang in a rising, falling cacophony. Bullfrogs croaked from various compass points like a cast of egotistical and competitive operatic tenors. Somewhere in the distance, a bull alligator roared out his need for a mate.

Once, a higher-pitched squawk sounded. April looked up. Without raising his gaze from his magazine, Luke identified the source with a single, laconic word: “Crane.”

That he'd noticed her startled interest was an indication, she thought, of how closely attuned he was to her movements. The knowledge didn't help her feelings.

It was a short time later that she glanced his way and discovered he was staring at her knees. She frowned at them herself before she said, “What?”

“You should put something on those scrapes. Or I could do it for you.”

“Oh. I found the antibiotic cream in the bathroom while I was changing. But the cut on your face…”

“I took care of it when I showered earlier.”

How self-sufficient they were, she realized, which was good under the circumstances. April nodded and went back to her reading.

Maybe the nap Luke had taken during the afternoon kept him from being sleepy, and maybe it was just that he was a night person and used to late hours. Whichever, it soon became obvious that she wasn't going to outlast him. Her eyes were burning and the pillow she was leaning on had an enticingly comfortable feel to it. She gave up, finally, and closed her book. Smothering a yawn, she said, “I think that's it for me.”

“Sure.” Luke rose from the bed in a single smooth movement. Stepping to the front doorway, he slid open the screen and exited to the dark forward deck. Just before he closed the screen behind him, he said a quiet good-night.

April answered just as softly, even as a line appeared between her brows. She was inside, and he was outside. There was nothing between her and the dinghy except the back screen door. Soon, Luke would be asleep. Somehow, it seemed too easy.

The boat rocked, exaggerating Luke's movements, as he took a rolled sleeping bag and a flat sheet from the bench storage, shook them out, then spread them over the deck bench. Watching him through the screen, April realized she would have to move with care when the time came in order to keep from telegraphing her own movements. That train of thought was abruptly derailed as she saw his hands go to the waistband of his jeans. The sound of a sliding zipper was like a buzz saw. In simple reflex action, she reached and clicked off the light above her head.

He was still visible in silhouette, however, outlined by the lake surface beyond that reflected the light of the stars. She should look away, she thought, as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. Instead, she watched intently as he shucked his jeans, then dragged his T-shirt off over his head.

He paused an instant to turn the shirt right side out. The silvery light of the night outlined the muscled ridges of his back and legs and highlighted the contrast between his natural copper-bronze coloring and the white of his briefs. It glinted in the darkness
of his hair and left interestingly shaped shadows here and there. An odd feeling, half artistic appreciation, half yearning, shifted through her. Luke really was a magnificent man. If only his character were a match for his looks, how easy it would be to…

No, she wouldn't think like that, couldn't for her own peace of mind. There was no profit in it since he had never had that kind of integrity and was unlikely to change at this late date. Turning over with a flounce, April shut her eyes and kept them that way until the front of the boat was absolutely still.

An hour and a half, or perhaps more, passed with excruciating slowness. To keep awake, April went over the last scene in her book, considering possible additions and changes. Exhausting that, she began to plan the next. She had an entire chapter and part of another mapped out before she finally heard a soft sound between heavy breathing and a snore from beyond the front screen. Lifting her head, she waited until it came again.

Asleep, finally. Thank heaven.

She eased upright and slowly swung her feet to the floor. Luke's long body was a shadowy shape under the sheet that protected him from mosquito bites. Her gaze fastened to that white length, she stood up then moved step by slow step toward the back of the boat.

As she reached for the rear screen door, her fingertips brushed the wire mesh with a faint scraping noise. Luke's breathing changed. He shifted from his back to his side, but didn't wake. Though she
stood for endless ages hoping to hear his snores begin again, they didn't come.

She couldn't wait forever. With a silent imprecation, she tried the screen again, rolling it open in minute increments and wincing at every slight grating on its track. When it was back far enough, she glanced toward Luke again. He hadn't moved. She slid around the screen door, leaving it open behind her because it would be too nerve-racking to try to shut it again.

The aluminum dinghy bobbed quietly at the end of its line. The water around it appeared black and murky, as if it were semicongealed sludge. She stepped to the railing and climbed over it rather than risk opening the gate. Then she skimmed down the rear swimmer's ladder. On the bottom rung, she caught the dinghy's line and towed the light craft toward her. Carefully, then, one foot at the time, she let herself down into the lighter boat. It was a balancing act in the dark to transfer her full weight from one craft to the other without making the pontoon boat rock, but she managed it with a quick, controlled movement. Jerking loose the slipknot that held it fast, she pushed off and sank quickly onto the front seat.

She was clear. She was free. Exultation coursed through her veins. There was no time to savor it, however. Keeping low, she shifted to the center seat and felt around on the floor for the paddle she'd noticed earlier. She got a firm grip on it, then leaned over the side to dip it in the water.

Abruptly, the water surface broke and something wet and monstrous surged up from its glassy black
lower reaches. It reached up in an arc of splattering, glittering droplets to catch the boat paddle. It pulled, and April plummeted forward. She gave a gasping cry as she hit the water.

Her shoulder crashed into something slick yet warm and firm. Hard bands closed around her, squeezing tight. She gulped air, trying to scream. Then she was dragged down into the thick, dark depths of the lake.

L
ong legs twined around hers. She was pressed against a hard form in full body contact. A familiar form, long remembered, recently felt.

Luke. It was Luke.

Rage exploded in April's brain. She brought her hands up, shoving, kicking out by sheer instinct. The man who held her twisted in a strong defensive movement. Then he thrust upward with her still clamped in his arms. They surfaced in a violent rush and splattering spray of water. She pushed free enough to catch the side of the dinghy. Clinging for a instant, she dragged air into her lungs and wiped wet, plastering strands of hair from her eyes. Then she faced him.

He looked like a water god, wet, slick, naked from the waist up and with a small water lily pad draped over one ear and a larger one lying on his shoulder. Powerful, omnipotent, intriguing in his perfect meshing with his watery element, he had no right to be so at ease or to grin at her with such a flash of white teeth.

“What in hell do you think you're doing?” she demanded. “You almost drowned me!”

“Not even close,” he said in mocking correction
as he treaded water beside her, “though it did cross my mind. It was such a dumb thing to do, you know, trying to steal off in the middle of the night.”

“I…don't know what you're talking about.”

“No, I'm sure,” he said, unperturbed. “It did occur to me that maybe you were taking a bath. The least I could do, in that case, was bring you the soap.”

“That's the most ridicu—Where is it then?” She didn't believe him for a minute. Since he'd introduced that element of farce, however, she might as well follow his lead.

“Over there.” He nodded a few feet to his right even as he reached to pick the water lily pad from his shoulder and hold it up by its slimy stem. “You wash my back and I'll wash yours.”

He was telling the truth. A blob of white in the dimness, the bar of soap floated on a buoyant dish of some kind. For a single instant, she hovered, confused. Was he really being helpful, or only giving her an out, a way to save face by glossing over the fact that she'd been caught trying to escape him? Was he hoping she'd take it so he needn't deal with her tantrum over his tactics? Or was he offering a playful romp in the water that might lead to other things? With Luke, it might be any of these. Or something else entirely.

“Who,” she asked astringently, “is going to wash the alligators and water moccasins that decide to join us?”

“You forgot the loggerhead turtles and lunker catfish. But I'll hold them and you can do the hon
ors—if any self-respecting critter is within a mile after the racket we've made.”

It might be true that the area wildlife was as nervous as she was, but somehow that didn't help. On the other hand, a quick wash to remove the fishy smell of the lake water could be a wise move. Which meant that he was extremely thoughtful, very practical, or so certain he had the upper hand that he could enjoy a private joke at her expense.

Reaching for the soap, she said through set teeth, “You can wash your own back.”

His chuckle, rich and deep with acknowledgment, echoed across the water. It startled a heron from its roost on a dead tree so it sprang into flight. It flapped with wind-sweeping beats of its wings, rising above the line of trees until it was a black and graceful shape against the moon that was just climbing above them.

The sight touched something raw inside April that caused her throat to tighten. Pausing with the soap in her hand, she said in sudden stark determination, “You can't keep me here.”

“Oh, I think I can,” Luke answered as he sobered a fraction. “And I will. You can fight it, if that's what you want. Or you can relax and enjoy it. The choice is yours.”

“Some choice.” She didn't bother to hide her weariness.

“Better than dying,” he returned.

That was certainly true, but she was by no means sure it was that simple. She stared at him a moment longer, then lowered her lashes and began to rub the soap over her arms.

Lather floated around the pontoon boat in all directions, mingling with the lily pads and mats of water hyacinths, by the time they finished bathing and climbed back on board again. The clothes April had on were sopping wet, and Luke handed her another T-shirt and pair of shorts through the door of the bathroom before she stripped. Since she had no more underwear, she was forced to do without. Her nakedness under the loose-fitting clothes made her feel both vulnerable and wicked. Finding a comb in the medicine cabinet above the small corner lavatory, she carried both it and her wet things with her as she stepped into the cabin again.

Luke had changed into shorts also and raked his wet hair into windrows with his fingers. He rose from the edge of her bed and took the wet clothes from her. As he walked out onto the front deck to hang them over the railing beside his own, he said over his shoulder, “Much more of this and we'll both have to go naked.”

“Which would bother you no end, I know,” she replied as she begin to drag the comb through her hair.

“It might.”

She glanced at him, but he had his back to her as he draped her bra over the railing with casual competence, as if he did such things every day. Maybe he did, but the sight annoyed her all the same. “Don't tell me none of the legions of females you know have played Adam and Eve with you like this.”

“Adam and Eve?” he queried as he came back inside and closed the screen. “I don't think their
idea of fun runs to fantasies, or their imaginations. Unlike some people's.”

“I didn't say I liked fantasies.” She kept her head down so the fall of her hair could conceal the warm color she could feel in her face.

“No, but it's almost a given, isn't it?”

“Nothing is a given,” she returned. “You don't understand me and never will, so don't try to guess how I think or especially how I feel.”

“Oh, I'd never presume that far,” he said in a mocking drawl. “Your secrets are safe.”

She should have been reassured, but wasn't. As she met his eyes, something bright and intent rose in their black depths that sent alarm zinging along her nerves. She caught a hank of wet hair and plied the comb on the ends as if the tangles that snarled it were personal enemies.

“Here, give me that,” he said gruffly as he leaned to pluck the comb from her hand. Seating himself on the bed again, he scooted back, then caught her wrist and tugged her toward the space between his spread thighs. She resisted an instant, but was really too tired and strung out to fight him. In any case, she told herself as she turned her back and fitted herself into the opening provided, she needed to save her strength for more important battles.

He gathered her hair with gentle hands and arranged it across her shoulders. Working with care from the ends up, he untangled the snarls and knots until the comb glided along the long strands without hindrance.

Having her hair brushed or combed had always been soporific for April. One of her most certain
memories of her mother involved the two of them at bedtime, as her mother brushed her hair and told her how pretty and shiny it was before braiding it for the night. Under the steady movement of Luke's hands, she could feel the tension draining from her body. The temptation to lean back against him grew so great that she had to stiffen her spine and brace a hand on his knee to keep upright.

The muscle of his thigh flexed under her palm. His hands stilled for a moment. Then he drew her hair into a long skein and draped it forward over her shoulder. As it spilled across her right breast, she turned her head slightly in inquiry. At the same moment, he circled her waist with his arm to draw her closer against him, then he brushed the back of her neck with his warm lips.

“Luke—” Her voice caught as a small shiver ran down her back.

“Shhh,” he said, feathering the rash of goose bumps on her skin with his warm breath.

“What are you doing?”

“Experimenting,” he said, and kissed the bumps of her spine in a slow, questing descent.

“Why? You said…”

“I told you I lied,” he interrupted. “Or rather, I've changed my mind. I've decided I want to know all about you, every single secret. Especially the fantasies.”

“I don't have any,” she said, trying to ignore the insidious tightening of her nipples, the small voice in her head that said give up, give in, and enjoy.

“Then we'll make some up,” he answered.

She had known being alone with Luke would be
dangerous. That was why she'd fought so hard against succumbing to his sweet reason and laughing blandishments. Even more dangerous was her reaction to him. Was it pure chemical attraction, the half-legendary bliss of young love remembered over the years, or could it be the meeting of soul mates, no matter how ill-matched? She didn't know, but something about him stirred her as no other man ever had or would. It had been that way years ago and was true still.

Moistening her lips, she asked, “That's what this is all about? Bringing me here?”

His hesitation was so slight she almost missed it. “It could be. Probably is, after all.”

“You still want to seduce me.”

“I want whatever you can give me,” he murmured against her ear. “Where we go from there may depend on what I can give you.”

“It wasn't necessary to go to these lengths.” Was she grasping at straws by assigning that reason to him? She didn't know, couldn't think coherently for the brush of his hand across her breast, the way he slowly enclosed the soft globe in the trap of his fingers. The firmness of his body against her was an insistent argument for surrender. It had been so long since she had felt a man's arms around her. So long.

“Wasn't it?” he asked softly, his warm breath feathering her skin.

She didn't answer, couldn't find the words. She could fight him, but her own needs and impulses were more formidable foes. Besides, he had appealed to her imagination. Against its well-exercised
power she had no real defense, and wasn't sure she wanted any.

She tilted her head back, letting it rest against his shoulder. He cupped her chin, lifting her face so she met his wide-open gaze. They held the contact for a stark instant then she lowered her lashes in automatic shielding. Her attention clung to the chiseled shape of his mouth until his face blotted out her vision, then she closed her eyes.

His mouth was warm and sweet, flavored faintly with wine. She allowed him entrance with grace and hunger and, once he accepted the entree, was neither stingy nor too aggressive. They had eons of time and something in his manner, touch and taste assured her he meant to use it. He was no longer a wildly eager teenager. He'd learned balance, control and the value of anticipation.

Still their hearts beat higher with each caress, every slowly bared inch of skin and daring exploration. Rampant and aloof by turns, they tested the limits of faith, of trust and of endurance. Their sweat-gilded bodies gleamed in the light, shivered in the moist heat as they hovered so near perfect convulsion that they frowned in their pleasure.

He was her pirate king, daring in his demands and with an edge of roughness. Or maybe her water god, Neptune rising in splendor from the deep to claim her, mind and body. At the same time, he was still Luke, her young lover, young stud, wild and dramatic and misunderstood, with tenderness under his sullen bravado and pain behind his existential despair.

Nothing mattered, nothing was allowed to im
pinge on the delicate unfolding of the senses. Nothing marred their superheightened awareness of life and death and all the fine acts of creation that lay between. Connected, tenderly violent yet inviolate, they held each other, held past and future and the glory that unified it all. Until its magic bloomed in their hearts and minds with the silent splendor that illuminated, for a single instant, the answer to life's most elusive riddle.

Afterward, they lay sprawled in naked semiconsciousness and a lingering embrace while their breathing slowed. They slept with the light breeze off the lake cooling their flesh and that brief fever of the heart. But sometime in the night they roused enough to separate, to pull up a sheet to cover themselves, protect themselves.

 

“Where the hell is April?”

The question, with its undertone of steel, came at Luke before he could get the dinghy tied up at Chemin-a-Haut. It was Roan who asked it from where he stood on the dock with his feet spread and his hand resting suspiciously near the butt of his pistol. Luke didn't blame his cousin for his anger or his concern; he could remember feeling both when he'd discovered that Kane had made off with Regina. He just hadn't expected to have to account for his actions before he got his story straight in his head.

In laconic tones, he answered finally, “Somewhere safe.”

“Such as?”

“You don't need to know.”

“Wrong.”

“I don't think so,” Luke told him patiently. “That's the whole point—nobody needs to know.”

There was no relenting in Roan's face. “Does she want to be there?”

“What makes you think anything else?”

“Eyewitnesses who saw you hauling her away from the scene of the explosion.” His cousin's eyes were as bright and hard as the badge on his shirt pocket.

“Let's say she's getting used to the idea.” At least Luke hoped she was, after the night before. Fighting with her all day and making love to her all night didn't seem like a very workable program.

“You'd better hope she's delirious about it when I see her. If she isn't, if you've finally gone too far, your ass is mine.”

“Look,” Luke began, his eyes narrowing as he felt the stir of possessive anger.

“Don't blow up at me, bucko, because I'm not in the mood,” Roan overrode him. “I've got weir-dos shooting off guns, boats exploding, and an unhappy mayor breathing down my neck because his big yearly festival fell all to pieces and both his number one river pirate and his celebrity guest failed to show. I've got newspaper people wanting to know about our local crime wave and April's ex-husband breathing down my neck because she's nowhere to be found and no one, not even her agent, knows where she went. I've got—or did have—my stupid cousin missing, too, and had to worry that he'd got himself shot or blown up or drowned. Or that he'd done something really stupid like kidnap
ping April, a federal offense that just may bring swarms of uptight idiots in button-downs crawling all over me. You're lucky you're still standing, cuz. Give me any trouble and you won't be.”