Private Dancer (11 page)

Bev turned her back on him and threw open the lid of her suitcase. Arguing with a man without her clothes on put a woman at an unfair advantage, especially when that man was a practicing degenerate! Why did she have the feeling this was going to be just one of many times she would wish she’d hit him harder with her blackjack?

Under cover of the blanket, she slipped off her pantyhose and found a loose cotton sundress that would have to double as a nightgown if she couldn’t come up with a way to get rid of him. When she turned back, he was pulling off his shirt. She was about to turn away again until she got a look at the scarring that had mutilated his upper torso. It looked as though someone had ripped at his flesh with a garden rake. The jagged marks rode a rough path from his right shoulder to his right hip. It was the closest thing Bev had ever seen to physical savagery, and her immediate impulse was to reach out to him, to comfort him.

She spoke softly, trying not to wince. “Is that painful?”

He shook his head, but she could see the muscles working in his jaw as he forcibly wrenched himself out of the shirt. He didn’t have full movement in his right arm.

“Was it the accident?” she asked.

His eyes flashed over her suspiciously. Bev sensed she was intruding, but somehow the sight of such devastation had made her forget their adversarial relationship. He was hurt and her heart went out to him just as it would have to anyone in his situation.

“My father said you’d been shot,” she explained. “He didn’t go into detail, just said that he was there, and that it was pretty bad....” Bev let the words trail off, waiting for him to say something, to let her know that she was doing the right thing in pursuing it.

“Your father was there,” was all he said. He glanced at his mangled shoulder and then at her for a long moment, as though he were trying to figure out her motives. Finally his hands dropped to his pants. He looked back up at her as he began to unbutton them. “I’m going to take a shower. You sure you want to watch this?”

Bev turned away. Apparently he couldn’t handle sympathy. He seemed the sort of man who couldn’t open himself up to any expression of emotion, and she thought that was a terrible waste. Something told her he might have been a different human being if not for the scars. But even as the words resonated in her mind, she realized she meant wounds that cut even deeper than the ones she’d seen.

She glanced around again as she heard his pants drop to the floor and saw him step into the shower. All she got was a glimpse of long, muscular legs swept with dark hair, but it was enough to confirm what she already knew. He was beautifully built. The machine-gun fire must have caught him from behind, she realized. The wounds she’d seen on his side and chest were caused by exit holes, by the brutal passage of too many bullets to count.

As she heard the shower come on, she forced her thoughts away from the damage to his body and began to think about rearranging the tiny cabin to accommodate two people. That she was capitulating so easily surprised her. She really was a patsy for a bird with a broken wing. Not that that description would ever fit Sam Nichols. He was more a battle-scarred panther, streamlined and treacherous, definitely not to be trusted as a house pet.

She was contemplating having him sleep standing up in the clothes closet when she heard an odd thumping noise.

“If I get stuck in this shower stall,” Sam called out, “call the coast guard.”

A panther with a sense of the ridiculous, she thought. Maybe there was hope. “Absolutely not. I’ll let you turn into a six-foot-four prune.”

“I’m only six three.”

“You poor, puny thing, you.” Smiling, she turned toward the stall and caught a glimpse of him moving inside the frosted plastic door. That she couldn’t quite see any details made the sight so provocative. She couldn’t pry her eyes away!

There was something beautiful about the deep flesh tones of his body against the smoky, soft-focus panel. It was like a dream image, a naked man moving through mists. Just when she thought she could see the line of his thigh, or the right angle of his hipbone, the image blurred and took new shape. Once she saw his shoulders flare out as he turned his back to her, and another time she saw the darkness between his legs.

Now, as she watched, the form moved fluidly in a kind of spiral as though he were turning in the spray. When he stopped, he was facing the door, facing her. He lifted one arm above his head, and Bev could see the inverted triangle of broad shoulders tapering to pelvis. A waterfall of dark hair streamed toward his groin, toward the wild black thatch and imposing male parts that drew the eye like a magnet.

Could he see her? Did he know she was watching him?

Her heart began to thud slowly—one hard, heavy beat at a time. Quite obviously, she was not immune to the physical charms of a naked man. And he was a whole lot of man, she admitted as she turned away.

The shower stopped, and she heard the door unlatch.

“Throw me a towel, would you?” he asked.

She had to walk past the shower stall to get him the towel, and it took a massive effort of will to keep her eyes from wandering to the open door. Now that she’d seen him in soft focus, now that her imagination had been cruelly stimulated, she wanted to see everything. All of him in graphic detail! She felt the same horrible fascination she had as a child when she heard frightening noises. She didn’t want to look under the bed, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Here,” she said, thrusting the towel at him as his hand flashed out of the stall. “Did you bring any other clothes?” She wasn’t sure she could deal with the calypso look much longer.

“There’s a duffel bag in the closet behind you. I brought a wide assortment of jeans and T-shirts.”

So he’d been in her room earlier, she realized, wresting the duffel bag out of the narrow closet. How could she have been naive enough to think she could escape him?

He emerged from the shower moments later, and Bev’s first thought was that the towel knotted around his hips was several sizes too small for him. There were beads of water all over the parts of him that she could see, and she was immediately reminded of her problem ... with wetness.

“Wouldn’t you like to towel off and get some clothes on?” she suggested.

He shook his head as she pointed toward the duffel. “I think I’ll drip-dry. It’s hotter than hell in here.”

“That it is,” she agreed, wondering how she was going to get past him and over to the other side of the cabin. She didn’t want to chance even the briefest contact with his dripping body.

He solved the problem by moving into the larger part of the room himself, the only area where there was enough space for two people to cohabit without touching. She followed him and sat on the farthest end of the bed.

Sam was well aware of the extremes she was going to to avoid him. “I suppose we ought to talk about this,” he said.

“About the case?” Her smile was quizzical, as though she had no idea what he meant. “I’ll make another run at Arthur tomorrow. I’ve got some ideas.”

“About this.” He indicated the cabin. “About us, in here. “

“We’ll make do. People have survived in worse circumstances.”

Sam sighed. She was acting as though it was nothing, as though they were Andy Hardy and one of his girlfriends stranded on a raft. The way she was gazing up at him with her luminous gray eyes, he couldn’t decide whether she was incredibly naive or exercising total denial.

She patted the bunk. “We can take turns if you want.”

“Bev, Bev,” he said, shaking his head wearily. “Time for a reality check.”

“Reality check?” Bev didn’t like the sound of that.

He reached her in one stride and Bev expected to be pulled off the bed to her feet. She scooted back as he knelt in front of her and rested his hand on her knee. If only he weren’t such a large man, she thought, feeling a wave of helplessness as his hand dwarfed not only her knee but her leg. If only she were a bigger woman, a stronger woman, a better woman.

The memory of their steamy interlude in the kitchen began to screen through her mind, and she locked her legs together. She couldn’t let that kind of wantonness wash over her again.

“Remember how this worked?” he said, drawing her toward him.

Bev felt her legs give way as he pressed between them, her dress sliding up. She knew instinctively she would be lost if he got that close to her again. She couldn’t let him near her inner thighs. There was something about having him lodged between her legs, his hipbones pressed up against the exquisitely sensitive nerves and muscles, that shut down all her inhibitions.

“Only we never got to this part, did we?” he said, stroking her jawline with his fingers. He tilted her head up and brushed his lips across hers. “We never got to the kiss,” he murmured as though the idea of a kiss with all its tender possibilities surprised him.

Bev was surprised too. In fact, the sheer lightness of his mouth as it moved over hers, the breathy, sexy warmth of him, was so unexpected that she relaxed her guard for a second. And with that tiny capitulation, her body went crazy. Her heart began to race, and she emitted a soft sound, not a sigh, more a surrendering of the breath stored in her lungs.

His hand tightened on her upper arm.

“Don’t make noises like that, Lace,” he said against her mouth, his voice raspy. “Not unless you want me to take your sweet body here and now.” He urged her closer, lifting her up to him as he deepened the kiss. She could feel the wild sexual pull in him, the need to crush her in his arms, to drag up her skirt and drive himself deeply inside her.

She could feel the answering need in her own throbbing pulsebeat—the one in her throat, the one deep inside. What kind of strength did it take for a man to hold back when he sensed that a woman wanted him? When that same foolish woman melted under one tender kiss? When she throbbed every time he spread her legs?

“Come here, Lace.” He caught her by the backside and dragged her up against the part of him that throbbed too. The sudden heat, the unyielding hardness, made her whimper.

“God, do I need to get close,” he said harshly.

But, seconds later, when he had her firmly pressed against him and when he had her so aroused she couldn’t say her own name, he drew back. His breath was ragged, his features hardened, ravaged by desire.

“See what I mean?” he said, touching her face. “See what I mean?”

He released her all at once and pushed back, taking a moment to catch his breath.

Bev was staggered by his ability to cut himself off. She was panting as if she’d run a mile uphill, her heart roaring in her ears, and worse, there was a deep, clutching ache in her nether regions that felt as though it would never let up. How had he done it? How had he stopped?

She felt a flash of anger, at him for having that kind of control, but more so at herself for being weak and ineffectual, a slave to her own raging hormones. She wanted to berate herself endlessly, but she couldn’t stay focused. She was too fascinated by what was happening to his towel as he rose to his feet.

The knot that held it on his hips had loosened, and for one breathless second she thought the towel was coming undone. Her heart went wild at the prospect of seeing him that way. Her stomach lurched, and she felt a shuddering wave of disbelief at what was happening to her. She wanted to gawk at an aroused naked man. She must be going crazy!

“The towel!” she said, her voice a squeak.

He caught it before it came loose, and Bev hunched over on the bed—relieved, disappointed, horrified! She squeezed her eyes shut, jerked her dress down, and moaned. She wasn’t going crazy, she was already there. She was a fruitcake!

The bed moved as he sat next to her, and she turned away from him, curling into herself. “Don’t touch me.”

“I was making a point, Lace,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “We’re hot for each other. It isn’t going to be easy, staying in a cracker box like this. We could be on each other constantly, going at it like rabbits. Is that what you want?”

Going at it like rabbits? Good grief, he was crude. “Why do you suddenly care what I want?” she asked, uncurling to look over her shoulder at him. “You didn’t the other day in my kitchen.”

He groaned softly. “Because you’re someone’s daughter now—Harve’s daughter. And because I’m an idiot!”

She met his eyes and they held one powerful message. In spite of his promise to her father, Sam Nichols wanted to strip her naked and throw her back down on the bed. Well, maybe that would be the best thing, she thought, her heart pounding recklessly. Maybe they’d get it out of their systems. “I don’t report to my father,” she said, folding her arms. “Not about my personal life. I’ve been married, divorced. I do what I want.”

His baby-blue eyes went dramatically dark, and his harsh breath brought her back to reality with a start. What was she trying to do? Talk him into attacking her? A quick perusal of the situation, of the tiny cabin and his still-aroused body, persuaded her to go cautiously. Another awareness drove that cautiousness home. She would be incredibly foolish to let herself get causally involved with Sam Nichols. She hadn’t yet had time to analyze the reasons, but she knew that she could get very attached to a man like him. He had all the right stuff—dark good looks that made him physically irresistible, scars that tugged at her emotionally.

She took a deep, steadying breath. “All right,” she said finally. “I guess we need some ground rules. First, clothes. I don’t think we ought to be parading in front of each other half naked, do you?”

“Consider it done.” He rose and crossed the room to his duffel bag, letting the towel fall as he pulled a pair of jeans out of the bag. Bev closed her eyes before she could get a good look at his muscular backside. She was learning.

Once he had the jeans on, he turned back to her and dug a silver dollar out of the front pocket. “Sleeping arrangements,” he said, his eyes glinting mischievously. “Who gets the bunk? Want to toss for it?”

“Heads,” Bev said instantly.

The coin went sailing up in the air, flashing as it arced and dropped back to earth. Sam caught it and slapped it onto the back of his hand. “Tails.”