Shattered (19 page)

The white Doric columns rose two stories high. “How many columns are there?” she asked.

“Twenty-seven. I counted the first time I was here,” he admitted.

“So would I.” It was a small thing, but one more item to put in the column of things they had in common.

If she were keeping score.

Which she definitely was not, Kirby reminded herself yet again.

“There are eight chimneys,” he volunteered. “And the double front stairs are supposedly so men and women could go up different ones when they arrived for fancy dress balls. Because if a man caught a glimpse of a woman’s ankle, according to the rules of Southern etiquette at the time, he’d have to marry her.”

It was a good thing they hadn’t lived back then, Kirby thought. Because Shane had seen a lot more of her than her ankle.

“Didn’t Sherman make it down here?” she asked.

“He did indeed. In fact, Swannsea is one of the few antebellum homes outside of Savannah to survive the war.

“The way Sabrina tells it, although the Federal troops burned the gardens during the Civil War, or as they tend to say down here, the War of Northern Aggression, Annabelle Swann killed the plantation’s last remaining chicken with her own two ladylike hands, then roasted it for the officer in command of the mission. She also served up two bottles of port she’d buried in the kitchen garden.

“According to legend and Annabelle’s own diary, the colonel was so taken with Swannsea’s hospitality, he chose to leave the house standing.”

“Hmm,” Kirby murmured. “I wonder if roast chicken and port were the only things the merry widow served up.”

“Put another mark on that mental list you’re making,” Shane said, as he pulled into the circular brick driveway in front of the house. “Because the same thought occurred to me. Zach said rumors continue to this day exactly how far Annabelle had been willing to go to save her family home from those damn Yankees, but it’s cool that she did.”

“Yes. It is.”

Athough Swannsea had undoubtedly been built by slaves and represented a dark time in the country’s history, Kirby thought it would’ve been a great loss if such a magnificent house had been reduced to ashes. She’d never considered herself a fanciful person, but she would not have been the least bit surprised if Rhett Butler had come strolling out of that enormous, hand-carved front door.

Instead, Sabrina Swann Tremayne must have been waiting for them, because the door flew open and a slender blond wearing jeans and a red sweater came running across the porch and the down the stairs.

“If it isn’t my favorite flyboy,” she said, throwing her arms around Shane. “It’s been ages since you made the trip across the harbor to visit.”

“Only about a month,” he countered, as he lifted her off her feet. Without so much as swaying. Boy, did Kirby want to see that leg!

“That’s far too long,” she said.

Once he’d lowered her back to the brick semicircular driveway, she turned toward Kirby, her green eyes both smiling and appraising. “And you must be Dr. Campbell.”

Her outstretched hand was smooth as a baby’s bottom, the nails neatly trimmed and polished, making Kirby all too aware of how long it had been since she’d had a manicure.

Like, ten years? At least.

“It’s Kirby.”

“And I’m Sabrina.”

Her smile was warm and every bit as gracious as Kirby imagined the late Annabelle Swann’s must have been. As charmed as she was by it, she figured the Yankee colonel must have been a goner the moment he’d ridden up that long oak alley.

“You have a stunning house,” Kirby said as they began walking toward the steps.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” Kirby liked that the other woman didn’t pretend to take it for granted. Which she doubted anyone could truly do. “When I was younger and would visit my grandmother on the island, I always expected Rhett Butler to come strolling out the door.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Kirby admitted.

“There’s a family legend that Margaret Mitchell was attending a party here when she impulsively decided to use Swannsea as a model for Tara,” Sabrina confided. “But, as my grandmother Lucie use to point out, there are homeowners all over the South making the same claim, so, who really knows? Besides, there’s another story that Mitchell was appalled by what MGM had come up with, because she’d written the house to be a rough-and-tumble plantation with no architectural planning at all.”

“I read the book,” Kirby said. “In the eighth grade. But I guess the image from the movie was so imprinted on my mind, that’s how I saw it.”

“Me, too,” Sabrina said. “And I’d venture everyone else who ever read it envisioned a house like this.”

“So, I suppose you’re using it in your advertising?”

“No. It’d be much too presumptuous. But”—Sabrina’s eyes lit with bright laughter—“we do just happen to have photographs of it stuck on every bit of promotional material.”

Such photos, Kirby considered, would immediately bring Margaret Mitchell’s blockbuster book to mind, allowing Sabrina Swann to appropriate the Gone With the Wind image without actually claiming it.

“That’s very clever.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s very generous of you to invite me to stay here,” Kirby said.

“It’s absolutely no problem,” Sabrina bestowed a warm smile on Shane as he opened the heavy door, which had closed behind her as she’d come running down the steps. “As you can see, we’ve got lots of room. And you’re just in time to taste test some new recipes my partner, Titania, and I are trying out.”

Shane carried the suitcases into the house. Walking beside him, Kirby drew in a sharp breath.

A chandelier the size of a Volkswagen dripped crystals and sent rainbows dancing across the walls.

White marble flowed underfoot like a glacier, and the doorways to each of the rooms leading off the foyer were festooned with intricate plaster detailing, while a fresco adorned the mile-high ceiling. The dramatic scale and architectural detail would be unimaginable today. Kirby doubted that even Donald Trump or even any of the Rockefellers could have afforded such grand attention to detail.

She’d been in entire apartments not as large as this entryway. Having spent so many years living in close quarters working for WMR, and earlier, when she’d been in the military, Kirby found the scale a bit unnerving and wondered how it would feel to live in a home the size of a hotel. Then remembered what Shane had told her about Sabrina having grown up in hotels.

“Why don’t you take Kirby’s luggage upstairs,” Sabrina suggested. “Let her catch her breath for a bit. Zach says you’ve had a hectic twenty-four hours.”

“It’s certainly been eventful,” Kirby agreed. Wasn’t that an understatement?

“It’s the fifth door to the right on the second floor,” Sabrina instructed Shane.

“Take as much time as you need,” she told Kirby. “Titania and I will be in the kitchen.”

The carpeting on the stairs was faded, the pink roses nearly white. But rather than looking as if it needed to be replaced, Kirby thought it added to the sense of history of the home.

The walls were lined with gilt-framed oil paintings, lit by wall sconces, that she guessed must represent generations of Swanns. All the men appeared dashingly handsome, the women ravishingly beautiful. Kirby could see her hostess in several of their faces.

“Oh, it’s exquisite,” she said as she entered the room Sabrina had suggested. The silk-draped walls were the color of cream above a carved chair rail; the rich, deep hue of strawberry wine below.

The wonder of a bed—so different from the narrow one she and Shane had managed to make love in—with its four graceful rice posters at least eight feet tall, and so high she’d need the wooden steps beside it to climb up onto it, had to be an antique.

The quilted cover was ivory, trimmed with eight inches of exquisitely tatted lace. Lace that was echoed on the edges of the many pillows strewn over the mattress, and repeated at the windows, the latter slanting the sun into gold bars across the polished hardwood floor.

“Too bad we’re not going to have time to try that out,” Shane said, as they both took in that magnificent bed.

“Your ego is larger than that mattress,” she muttered.

“Tell me that wasn’t the first thought that came into your mind.” He put her carry-on down and smoothed his palms over her shoulders, creating heat that slipped beneath her skin. “We both know you want me.”

Annoyed at him, at herself, at both of them that she could be just as susceptible to him as she’d been in Iraq, Kirby shrugged off his touch and moved over to the window, staring out at the fields of tea and, beyond them, the glassy Atlantic Ocean.

Dammit, his accusation was too true.

While every fiber of her being would love to make him crawl naked on his hands and knees over broken glass, she knew if he touched her again, she’d be doomed. She shot him a look over her shoulder. “I take back what I said about your ego being bigger than the bed. It’s actually bigger than this entire house.”

A corner of his mouth turned up in that cocky, Night Stalker grin she remembered all too well. “I remember a time you liked my ego just fine.”

His timing, except for when he’d sent her away, had always been exceptional. It was now, as he paused just long enough to set up the punch line she could see coming like a stinger missile headed straight toward her. “But I sure as hell don’t remember you complaining about size back in the sandbox.”

She refused to acknowledge the double entendre. “That was then. This is now.”

Wasn’t that profound?

“Well,” she turned back around. “Thanks for carrying up my suitcase,” she said on the same brisk tone she’d have used to ask an ER nurse for a hemostat. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“At oh-eight-hundred,” he agreed. “Unless you want to take me up on that offer of breakfast before we go wheels-up at ten.”

“If the smells coming from Sabrina Tremayne’s kitchen are any indication, I’m probably at the place with the best food on the island, so I think I’ll pass. Besides, I don’t usually eat breakfast.”

“Really?” He cocked a devilish brow. “And here I’d always thought you just had better things to do in the morning whenever we had a sleepover.”

“Go. Now.” She put her hands on his shoulders, turned him around, and marched him to the door.

He was nearly gone.

She’d managed to get him into the hall when he turned back and caught the edge of the door just as she was about to close it.

Then just stood there looking down at her.

“What?” she asked.

“I forgot something.”

“What?” she repeated.

“This.” And before she could slam the door, he was inside the room again, his fingers digging into her waist.

His head lowered.

And he took her mouth.

Doomed.

That was what she was, Kirby thought as her hand, which suddenly had taken on a mind of its own, moved to the back of his neck.

Absolutely, positively, unmistakably doomed.

This must be the downside of celibacy. It only made sense that if you kept anything bottled up too long, it would have to, well, pop its top. Explode. Kaboom.

It wasn’t hottie Shane Garrett who had her hormones careening around like steel balls in a pinball machine.

He could be any reasonably sexy, available man.

But, oh, this one is good, she thought as he kicked the door shut behind him.

Really, really good.

Rather than ravish, the way he had the first time he’d kissed her, Shane took his time, brushing his lips against hers with a satiny, enticing touch.

“I’ve missed this.” His breath was warm against her lips; his hands smoothed up and down her back.

He tasted of coffee from the gallons everyone had been drinking at Phoenix Team headquarters, of cinnamon gum, and of . . . well, Shane.

As hard as she’d tried, Kirby had never been able to forget the way he tasted, the way he smelled when he’d show up at her trailer after a mission—of heat and sweat and sex. The man was a walking, talking testosterone cocktail so potent it made her drunk whenever he got within kissing distance.

Which he definitely was now.

“Missed you,” he murmured. “So goddamn much.”

His mouth brushed hers, then retreated, brushed, retreated, threatening to destroy her with his patience.

Doomed.

The word tolled in her mind like one of those huge bronze church bells that had been ringing over Landstuhl when she’d walked out of the medical center, tears streaming down her face.

Kirby had been trying to keep herself from remembering. From wanting. She knew that all she had to do was to simply step away. And he’d stop.

But, Lord help her, his mouth was so amazingly clever. The almost kisses, as his lips drifted over hers in a slowly, lazy seduction, were so tempting, that although she knew it was medically impossible, Kirby felt her body melting.

Degree by enervating degree.

It was if her blood had turned molten, flowing hotly in her veins beneath his touch, which promised remembered carnal delights.

His lips were just as she remembered them, as she’d dreamed of them—smooth, soft, and delicious. They had always been the only soft thing about the man.

The fingers of his other hand brushed the back of her neck before sliding into her hair. Like everything else about Shane Garrett, the light touch proved scintillatingly seductive.

When Kirby would have hurried, Shane slowed the pace even more, as if intent to savor every moment.

She tilted her head, trying to fully capture his roving mouth, but his lips had already moved on, leaving only a lingering sense of pleasure and a steadily rising need as they skimmed up her cheek to her temple. Across her eyes, which fluttered closed at the feathery touch.

Without taking his mouth from her face, he turned her around, effectively trapping her between the door and his fully aroused body. “Tell me you missed it, too.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“But you did.” He nipped the lobe of her ear, creating a jolt of need that shot all the way to her toes, clad in a pair of sensible taupe pumps.

With every nerve in her body vibrating like the strings of a plucked harp, when he nuzzled her neck, Kirby tilted her head, giving his lips access to her throat.

When the tip of his tongue touched the little hollow where her blood was thrumming, her pulse leaped.

“It was your choice,” she reminded him.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” His hand, as it moved lower, lifting her butt to press her even closer against him, was both gentle and confident. His body was hard and fully aroused. “But I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion I made a mistake.”

“Stop the presses.” Despite all he’d been through, despite the surgeries and all those months in the hospital, he was every bit as powerfully built as ever.

At six feet even, he might not be as large as his brother-in-arms Quinn McKade. Nor did he possess Zach Tremayne’s lean runner’s body. Every bit as strong as the other men, his male sinew and powerful, muscled ridges had been molded into a more compact form.

Once, as she’d lain with him, arms and legs entwined, basking in the golden afterglow of lovemaking, her lips skimming over his damp chest, Kirby had found him perfect, even as it crossed her mind that he’d been designed to fit into the close confines of a cockpit.

“The hotshot pilot just admitted he’s not infallible.”

“I know.” His other hand moved from her shoulder to her thigh, leaving a trail of sparks as it brushed against the side of her breast. “It’s a helluva shocker to me, too. But it’s true.”

With a deft touch she hadn’t even realized was happening, his other hand flicked open the first button of her blouse. Then another. A third. “I was an idiot.”

“You won’t get any argument from me there.”

Her underwear wasn’t the boring cotton she’d worn in Iraq, rather some type of wickable material that made wearing a bra in the jungle actually bearable. But it still was a long way from the seductive black lace and silk she suddenly wished she was wearing.

Not that he appeared to mind as he skimmed a caress over the flushed crest of her breasts. “A dickhead.”

She tilted her head back and looked up at him. “That absolutely works for me.”

“But here’s what I’ve been thinking. . . .”

He nudged the material aside, his caressing fingertips causing her foolish heart to flutter like a wild bird.

“Maybe this is our chance to make up for lost time.”

His mention of lost time had her mind flashing to Rachel and Michael Gannon. What a waste, she considered. If all this didn’t work out, if finally, now that they were both free of commitments, fate cheated them of the opportunity of the life they deserved together . . .

No. Kirby gave a swift, mental shake of her head. She would not allow herself to even contemplate this mission failing. Phoenix Team, including the man whose arms were so naturally, perfectly around her, would rescue Rachel. Then the doctor and the former priest would live happily ever after.

Meanwhile, as far as she and Shane were concerned, letting things get even this far had been risky.

But reminding herself that she’d always been a risk taker and desperate for more, Kirby rose on the balls of her feet, cupped her hands at the back of his neck, and finally dragged his mouth fully down to hers.

Jesus. He’d wanted to tease her, to let her start thinking about how it had been between them. Make her start wanting him again.

He remembered Dallas O’Halloran, while they’d been waiting around for the brass to get their collective asses in gear in Gardez, alleging that the best way to get a woman interested was to take things slowly, always leaving her wanting more and more until the anticipation became too much and she was literally begging you to do her.

Of course, the first flaw in that reasoning was that the Air Force Combat Controller had probably never had to worry about getting a woman interested, because from what Shane had seen, although there hadn’t been all that many available females in Afghanistan, the few Americans and Europeans that had been downrange were always throwing themselves at him.

The second flaw was that backing off, just when things started heating up, required a helluva lot of self-control.

Something that had always been in short supply whenever Shane got around Kirby Campbell.

Okay, Shane thought as her tongue tangled sinuously, seductively with his.

Just. One. Kiss.

One rock-the-lady’s-world kiss, then he’d leave. Because, he reminded his aching testicles, there was no way he was going to have sex with Kirby in his buddy’s house, with Zach’s wife downstairs. That would be just too freaking weird.

He pulled her against him, so tight he could feel her nipples pressing against his chest. His hand slid lower, gathering up her ugly navy skirt, lifting it high on her thighs so he could cup the damp crotch of her panties.

Oh, wow. She was incredibly hot.

And really, really wet.

As the earth shifted beneath his feet, alarm sirens began blaring, like when the Duke had called General Quarters in In Harm’s Way.

Shane ignored them.

Instead of backing away now while he still could, he captured both her wrists in his right hand and pinned them against the door above her head, then pushed between her legs and crushed his mouth against hers again.

He pushed his tongue past her teeth, deeper than he’d ever kissed anyone, even her, and stole her breath. He pressed against her, the metal button of his 501s gouging into his groin, which was one of the problems with going commando, grinding his hips in a slow, insistent rhythm.

At the same time, his stroking hand delved beneath the elastic of her panties, through the silky curls, to that place that was as hot and wet as her mouth.

As she gasped and arched against his touch, power and an urgent need to sink deep inside that moist heat slammed through him.

“Oh, God,” she moaned against his mouth. “Please.”

Captain Kirby Campell had never been a woman to beg for anything. Except for that day in Landstuhl. When he’d screwed everything up by trying to be noble, to do the right thing.

Which had, despite his best intentions, turned out to be the absolutely wrong thing.

So, although he figured his balls would be blue for a week, even as he felt the familiar shudder of a climax rip through her, even as he wanted to take her hard and fast and deep, he forced himself to back away.

Now. While he still could.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said as he retrieved his hand.

She blinked. He watched her struggle to bring her eyes back into focus. She was obviously staggered by what had just occurred.

Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger, cupcake.

“Didn’t you?” she asked on a ragged, still shaky tone.

Glancing down, she seemed surprised that her skirt was still bunched up around her waist.

Which, as a vision of those smooth, tanned legs wrapped around him flashed into his mind, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Or wouldn’t be, if they were alone in the house.

Unfortunately, they weren’t.

He shrugged, pretending a nonchalance he was a long way from feeling. “I don’t like to start things I can’t finish.”

He thought her lips quirked just a bit at that. “Well, that certainly wasn’t a problem for one of us.”

Having prepared himself for temper, or Jesus, Mary, and Joseph help him, tears, Shane hadn’t been expecting humor.

She directed a look at his groin, where his erection was still pressing against the front of his jeans. “I see all the important parts are in working order.”

“Seem to be.” At least with you. “I figure it’s muscle memory.”

The term usually referred to the reason troops drilled for hours, days, and months on end. So in the heat of battle, their bodies would remember what their scattered minds might forget. Shane figured it fit the definition in this case.

She surprised him again by laughing at that. Then disappointed him by shoving the skirt back down.

“I’d given up men,” she said conversationally as she buttoned her blouse.

The ivory bra had been one of those sports deals you could see women wearing just about anywhere these days—in the gym, even jogging in the park. But for some reason he’d found it sexier than a Victoria’s Secret commercial.

“Oh, have you?” Deciding that the best way to stay out of any more trouble was to follow her lead and keep things light, he said, “I’m guessing that’s not your way of breaking the news that you’ve become a lesbian.”

“No.” His temperature spiked for an instant when she unbuttoned the skirt. But only to tuck the blouse back in. “I’m saying that I decided to embrace my celibate side.”

“Yeah,” he said, feeling a major twinge of regret as she refastened the button. “I could tell from the way you had your tongue down my throat that you’ve given up on sex.”

“You’re the one who started it.”

“Wrong. You’re the one who started it by being so damn sexy any guy with two working balls—hell, even one—would want to jump your bones.”

She folded her arms across the front of the rumpled white blouse.

“You’ve always had such a way with words,” she said dryly.

Shane shrugged. “You want a guy who talks pretty, go find yourself some long-haired, pale-faced, dickless poet who believes in embracing his feminine side. Me, I’d rather forego the poetry and concentrate on making sure my woman is sexually satisfied.”

Which he sure hadn’t done with that lawyer the other night. As horny as he still was, and as hard as it was going to be to walk away from Kirby right now, he was super relieved to discover that the problem really had been mental and not physical.