Rules of Engagement (2 page)

“Technically, it’s my cousin’s.”

Her eyes flew to his. “Your cousin’s? Who’s your cousin?”

He eyed her warily. “I’m the one who should be asking the questions.”

Frustration crossed her features. “Just tell me if your cousin is Ella Willis.”

“Ella Willis,” Jake echoed, neither confirming nor denying her statement.

“A close friend,” Katarzyna explained hurriedly. “She offered me the use of her cabin for the next two weeks. Her husband is my lieutenant.”

Jake stared at her. She looked earnest enough, but the people in his world lied for a living. He dismissed the police ID—those could be forged. And Ella knew he was here. She wouldn’t have offered the cabin to someone else without warning him first.

“Listen, you have to believe me. Please.”

There was only one way to settle this. He crossed the room, snatched the cell phone lying on top of the highboy, flipped it open and powered it on. The reception wasn’t great and he had to move to the window before a single bar appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. He punched in ten digits and waited. The third ring was cut short.

“Hello?” a voice mumbled sleepily.

“Ella, it’s Jake.”

He heard sheets rustling and imagined Ella was pushing herself into a sitting position.

“What’s wrong?” his cousin demanded, all traces of sleepiness gone from her voice.

“I’m at the cabin and I have an unexpected guest. She claims you sent her.”

Ella took the telephone away from her ear and murmured something he couldn’t make out. He assumed she was telling her husband to go back to sleep. Then she sighed into the telephone, confirming his worst suspicion. “Is she a tall, good-looking redhead?”

It was his turn to sigh. “Yes.”

“Answers to Katarzyna Delaney?”

Another affirmative.

“Yes, I sent her.”

He muttered an expletive, cast a hard look at the woman handcuffed to his bed—who was unashamedly listening to his conversation—and would’ve stalked from the room had he not been worried about the cellular reception. He settled for turning his back on the bed and the woman bound to it.

“You could’ve warned me.”

“Yes, I could have,” Ella agreed in a disconcertingly reasonable tone, “if you hadn’t shut off your cell phone. Sometimes you take that whole loner thing too far. It’s not healthy. Ted Kaczynski was a loner.”

A low growl rumbled from his chest.

Ella blew out a breath. “You can get mad at me and yell at me all you want, but don’t take your temper out on Katarzyna. She’s been through enough.” When the growl didn’t cease, she added, “She needed to get away for a bit, so I offered her the cabin.”

“While I’m still here,” he pointed out between gritted teeth.

“So?” she drawled, using that careless tone of voice that always set off warning bells in his head. After a beat, she said, “She’s attractive. You’re available.”

He was glad his interfering cousin wasn’t in the same room because he might’ve strangled her. Then her husband would’ve arrested him. It wasn’t worth the hassle.

Still, his voice lowered dangerously, as much to keep his captive from listening in as from temper. “Are you setting me up?”

“Dear God in heaven, no! She’s sworn off relationships with men, so you’re safe. Besides, I don’t think anything permanent would work with you.” She paused. “I was thinking more along the lines of a fling.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jake muttered, running a hand down his face. “You’re pimping me out.”

Ella had the audacity to laugh. “Look, if you’re not interested, you can spend the next two weeks ignoring her. There are two bedrooms in that cabin. Katarzyna planned on cutting herself off from civilization, so she doesn’t need you to entertain her.”

“She obviously didn’t know about me being here.”

“Well, no. I thought she’d turn down my offer if I mentioned anything about you.” There was a trace of concern in her voice. “What happened?”

Jake told her.

“Oh crap,” Ella muttered. “Tell her I’m sorry.”

“What about me?” he exclaimed, a tad incredulous.

“You’re not the one with a possible concussion and handcuffed to a bed, are you?”

He grunted. Ella just had to poke at his guilt. He sighed when his cousin was unable to bite back a yawn. “Go back to sleep. We’ll talk later.”

Ella mumbled something through another yawn then hung up. Jake snapped the cell phone closed and turned around to face his captive, his fists propped on his hips, frustration and annoyance coursing through him.

Katarzyna was slumped back on the thin mattress. She looked exhausted and overcome, especially with her hands still cuffed to the headboard. Despite himself, Jake felt a trace of pity for her. She had been manipulated by Ella as much as he.

Ah, hell.

Jake sighed and retrieved the tiny key to the handcuffs from the front pocket of his jeans. The mattress dipped under his weight as he sat down on the bed beside her limp form. Katarzyna’s eyes flew open and she jerked as far back from him as the handcuffs allowed. Jake lifted his hands, palms facing outward. He held up the key between his thumb and forefinger. “I was only going to remove the cuffs.”

Katarzyna’s head fell onto her arm. “I’m sorry, but the look on your face…” Her voice trailed off and her right shoulder hitched up in an uneasy shrug.

Jake slowly rose to his feet, checking a half-smile that threatened. He didn’t think she was in the mood to appreciate the fantasy that was teasing the edge of his consciousness. “However, if you want to stay like that…”

She shook her head. “No, no. Please. So I assume Ella cleared everything up?”

He nodded as he sat back down and reached for the handcuffs once more. “They’re yours, by the way.”

“What?”

“The cuffs. I took them off you.”

She flushed. “Oh.”

“I’m Jake Duquesne, Ella’s cousin. She says to tell you she’s sorry.” He removed the restraints and winced when he saw the angry red bands encircling her wrists. “I’ll get you something for that,” he said and got up to go to the bathroom.

He returned moments later with a washcloth he’d run under water and wrung out. Having undone the ropes securing her feet, she sat cross-legged on the bed—warm auburn hair the color of autumn leaves falling past her shoulders and curtaining her face—flexing her fingers and gingerly massaging each of her wrists in turn. “Here.” He reached out and caught her right hand. “Let me.”

She didn’t protest but sat docilely as he wrapped the damp washcloth around her wrists. Katarzyna closed her eyes and sighed.

“Better?”

Her lashes lifted. “Much. What time is it?”

“Just after three in the morning,” he replied after a glance at the stainless steel watch encircling his wrist. “You’ve been out for almost an hour.” He nodded at her jaw, shifting uneasily. “You have a bruise on your jaw. I, uh, had to hit you.”

Katarzyna cautiously felt her jaw. She winced. “I remember.”

“It’ll fade in a couple days,” he assured her, feeling guilt nip at him annoyingly. In his defense, he’d hit her to stop her from forcing him to hurt her even more. “And you banged your head on the porch as well, but I couldn’t find any lumps or swelling on your head.”

“It’s a small enough punishment, considering.”

Jake grunted and carefully peeled back the washcloth. The marks were not as angry as they had been earlier, but her skin still looked very tender. “Does it hurt?”

Katarzyna examined her wrists. “A little, but I’ll live. Just hand me that, please.”

He handed her the washcloth. “How about your hand? I was pretty rough on it.”

She glanced down at the cuts and bruises. “It’s okay,” she reassured him after a moment. “I’ve taken worse hits.”

He nodded.

“So,” he drawled, “Ella says you’re staying for two weeks, but you don’t have any luggage and I don’t see a car outside.”

Her cheeks reddened. Then she paid an inordinate amount of attention to the injuries that hadn’t concerned her just moments ago. Jake folded his arms across his chest and patiently waited.

Finally she looked up and met his steady gaze. “I, uh, drove here straight from Somerset, but I wasn’t paying attention to the gas gauge and ran out of gas about a mile away and my cell phone battery died. I decided to leave the car and hoof it the rest of the way. I figured I’d get some sleep then see if I could recharge the phone and call for someone to swing by with fuel.”

“Then you got here, noticed that the cabin was occupied and decided to pull out your gun and go in alone.”

“I thought you were a squatter,” she muttered crossly. “How was I supposed to know you’re Ella’s cousin? I didn’t know who was in here.” Something darkened her eyes then she blinked it away. “And you tackled me before I could question you!”

“When people try to sneak up on me with a firearm, I’m not going to wait around quietly for them to finish their job.”

Katarzyna hmphed.

“When you’re ready, we’ll go and get your car.”

“Thanks,” she mumbled. Then she expelled a long breath. “And I’ll get out of your hair tomorrow.”

Jake scowled. She sounded dejected and that pricked at what passed for his conscience these days. Damn it, he wasn’t an ogre. “You can stay.”

“I heard you talking with Ella.”

“This cabin has two bedrooms. You can take the other one.”

“Look,” she began a little heatedly, “I’m not up to dealing with people right now, especially not of the male variety, so I’d rather leave you to your solitude and find my own. I’m sure someone in town has an empty cabin they can rent to me.”

“Look,” he mimicked in a snarky tone, “this cabin’s big enough for two people. If you ignore me and I ignore you, we’ll be fine. You’re not going to find a vacancy in this area, so unless you plan on driving back to Somerset, you’re stuck here with me.”

“Then I’ll drive back to Somerset and make other arrangements.”

He almost rolled his eyes. Instead, Jake brought his face to hers until they were nose to nose. “You. Will. Stay. Here.” He drew back an inch. “Don’t be stubborn.”

She scowled at him and, sarcasm dripping from every word, drawled, “Gee, aren’t you touching me in all my nice places.”

Jake froze, the idea of touching her in all her nice places making his body harden and his blood heat and thicken. He balled his hands into fists to keep from unceremoniously shoving her back on the bed and undoing her clothes. Just enough so he could lick the full breasts gathered in the bra outlined against the thin cotton, taunting him. Then slip his hand inside her jeans and find her
really
nice place.

Katarzyna’s breath was locked somewhere inside her chest as she stared at the man who had knocked her out and tied her up. By the warm light cast by the lamp sitting on the nightstand, he looked intimidating. Tanned, olive-toned skin stretched tautly over the bones of his harsh face, his gray eyes stormy and darkened to pewter. The nostrils of his long, Roman nose flared and the heavy shadow of his beard darkened his lean cheeks. The prickling of her skin and the insidious warmth and tightening in her tummy and regions even lower had nothing to do with her earlier hurt and everything to do with Jake Duquesne staring at her as if he wanted to devour her.

And she wanted to let him.

Hell. Let him? She wanted to
order
him to do to her everything his hot eyes promised. She wanted his mouth on hers, on her breasts, on her navel and even lower. She wanted to feel the scrape of his stubble on her inner thighs.

Katarzyna could feel her breasts swelling as her nipples budded, the sensitized tips making her very aware of the layer of fabric on top of them. Wetness trickled into her panties and it took every once of control she had not to squeeze her thighs together.

Maybe Ella had done her a favor. Katarzyna was twenty-eight, had been engaged three times, had been jilted the same number of times—the last time being just two days ago—and, to her maddening frustration, was still a virgin. A twenty-eight-year-old virgin was practically unheard of in this day and age where mainstream women’s magazines annually publish pictures of all the different positions found in the
Kama Sutra
.

Jake Duquesne, however, looked like the absolute most perfect man to take care of her unfortunate—and embarrassing—state.

He just needed a little nudge to break that control he was so intensely exerting.

Damn it. How was she supposed to seduce him? Her experience in that area was almost nil. In recent memory, the few times she’d tried to seduce a man she’d failed humiliatingly. Of course, she hadn’t known at the time her target preferred men. If the way he was staring at her was any indication, Jake Duquesne definitely preferred women. Or maybe it was just breasts, because his eyes had dropped to her chest and stayed there. She could take off her shirt. Perhaps the sight of her bare breasts would be the catalyst.