Strangers in Paradise (7 page)

She flung the door open and went running out and down the path, right into a pair of strong arms.

“Alexi!”

She screamed in panic at the feel of the strong fingers tight around her shoulders. Everything that touched her had become a snake, and she couldn't see anything, as her face was crunched to his chest.

“Alexi! What is it? Oh, my God, what happened? Is someone in there? Did someone hurt you? Alexi!”

Somehow the fact that it was Rex filtered into her mind.

“Oh, Rex!” She grabbed his shirt, her fingers like talons as they dug in. She moved even closer to him, trembling.

He shook her gently.

“Dammit, Alexi, what the hell happened? Did someone attack you?”

She shook her head, unable to talk.

“Alexi!”

He caught her hands and gently unwound her fingers from their death clutch upon him. He held them between his own, then slipped his hand beneath her chin to raise her eyes to his. She saw the concern in them, the raw anxiety in the hardened twist of his jaw.

“I tried to call you—” she gasped out.

“I know, dammit, I know! I was there! I heard you scream, and I ran here as fast as I could. Alexi, what—”

“Oh, it was horrible, Rex!”

“What, Alexi, for God's sake! What?”

Her eyes were glazed, her lips were trembling, her whole body was shaking. She was deathly pale, terrified.

And she was beautiful. Not even his confusion and fear for her could block that fact. She was scrubbed and damp, and her hair was soaked, but she was beautiful. Her eyes were huge and as green as emeralds with their glazing of moisture. She was pure and glorious beneath the sun. Her scent was soft and dazzling, as soft as the pressure of her body against his. She was a barefoot waif in a white robe, and he was painfully aware that she wore nothing beneath it.

And she called on everything primitive within him. He wanted to go out and do battle for her. He wanted to sweep her into his arms, hold her to his heart and swear that things would be okay. And he wanted, with a throbbing intensity, to take her away with him, away from any horror, and make love to her. To tear away that slim barrier of terry and drown in the soft, feminine scent of her.

“Alexi!”

He shook himself, mentally, physically. There could be some horrible, stark danger at hand, and he was nearly as mesmerized as she, shuddering with the hot pulse that rent a savage path throughout his body.

“Rex! Rex! They—they...”

“They—who?” he shouted.

“Sna—” She had to pause to wet her lips. “Snakes!”

“Snakes?” he queried skeptically, looking at her as if she had lost her mind.

His tone returned some of her sanity to her. “Snakes!” she yelled back. “Slithery, slimy, creeping creatures! Snakes.”

“Where?”

“In the house!”

She was still trembling, but much less. He himself was shaking now, with emotion and with a growing anger. He'd half killed himself to reach her, terrified that a murder was afoot, and she was babbling along about snakes.

The glaze was gone from her eyes. They were still a deep emerald green, but she was angry, too. He set her from himself and strode quickly up the path to the house.

Well, Rex quickly discovered, she hadn't been lying. The house looked like a scene from a macabre murder mystery. Pipe wrench, spade, fire poker. A smile curving his lips, Rex walked up to the first of the victims in the hallway.

It was just a little ringneck, not even a foot long. It was still wobbling pathetically. Rex picked it up carefully and decided the creature still had a chance. He returned to the doorway and tossed the snake into a row of crotons that rimmed the front porch. Alexi, standing further down the path, stared at him incredulously.

“Alexi, it's just a ringneck.”

“It's a snake!”

Rex frowned. “You shouldn't have tried to kill it; you should have just swept it out.”

“It! There's a litter in there!”

He laughed. “Them.”

“Don't you dare make fun of me! They could have been poisonous, and I wouldn't have known one way or the other. You do have poisonous snakes in the state, I take it?”

“Yes, we do have poisonous snakes. And I'm sorry. You're right; you wouldn't know. But these guys are harmless. They're actually good. They eat bugs. They till the soil. You should have just swept them all out.”

“Fine!” she retorted. “They're welcome to be in the soil! But not in the house!” She was still shaking, he noted. “I'm not going back in! There are more, Rex! I have to get an exterminator. Today!”

He couldn't help it; he started laughing. She drew herself very, very straight and stared at him coldly. He raised his hands in the air.

“All right, all right. I'll see if I can rescue any of your other victims, then we'll go over to my house. It might be a good idea to get an exterminator.”

Rex went back into the house, shaking his head at each “scene of the crime.” The snakes were still alive—they were tough little creatures. He collected them in the spade and dropped them into the bushes. Alexi was still standing on the path. His brow arched, he waved to her, then went back inside and searched. He couldn't find any more of the ringnecks.

After putting her murder weapons away in the pantry, he paused, noting that her suitcase was on the kitchen table. He probably should take it for her, he thought.

He smiled slowly thinking, Uh-uh. After all, she had probably taken ten years off his life when she had screamed like that over the phone and then dropped the damn thing! He'd had horrible visions of a man's hands around her throat—and it had all been over a few harmless garden snakes!

Uh-uh. She was coming to his house now—because she was scared. With a streak of mischief, Rex determined that this was going to be a come-as-you-are party.

Still smiling, he closed the kitchen door. He had his own key to lock up the front.

He walked down the path, not sure if he wanted to strangle her himself...or take the chance of touching her again. He did neither; he walked past her a few feet, realized that she wasn't following him and turned back impatiently.

“Are you coming?”

She looked from him to the house. It irritated him a bit that she made it seem like a choice between two terrible evils. But then, he'd been irritated since he had met her. He'd thought that she was a sneak thief at first. Then she'd been so indignant. Aloof, remote—and condemning. Then she'd turned on the charm for the poor kid with the pizza, and he'd felt the allure of it sweep over him, a draw like a potent elixir. And then he'd felt such acute terror...

Then such acute desire. Feeling her nearly naked, crawling against him, almost a part of him. He wondered vaguely if she had any idea just what she had done to him. She was so sensual, his reaction was instant. And he didn't like it. Dammit, he was a cynic. He deserved to be. His marriage had taught him a good lesson.

Especially when the female in question was Alexi Jordan. “Alexi,” he began crossly, wishing Gene's great-granddaughter could have been someone else. “You can always just go back in and—”

“No!” Ashen, she ran to catch up with him. Gasping a little, she tugged at her loosening belt. Rex turned forward, a slightly malicious grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. But it was also a wry smile. He wasn't sure whom he was tormenting in his subtle way: her—or himself. He should have been cool; he shouldn't have cared. Life ought to have taught him a few good lessons. But she got to him. She had crawled instantly into his system and more slowly into his soul, and he felt damned already.

“Where is your house?” she asked him.

“Just ahead,” he replied curtly. He realized that she was panting in her effort to keep up with him, but he didn't slow down. “This isn't a big spit of land. Your house... Gene's house,” he said, correcting himself, “is first. Mine is just past the bend.”

Alexi looked around. By daylight, it seemed very wild and primitive to her, barren in its way. Right around the house, plants grew beautifully. There were tall oaks and pines, the colorful crotons and a spray of begonias. Out on the road, though, the terrain became sandy; there was scrub grass and an occasional pine. In the distance, toward the water, sea grapes covered the horizon.

They made a left turn. There was only one other man-made structure on the peninsula. Rex's house. Like hers, it was Victorian. The porch that ran around the upper level was decorated with gingerbread. The house was freshly painted in a muted peach shade and seemed a serene part of the landscape. Also like her house, it seemed to sit up a bit from the low, sandy turf that surrounded it. Right beyond it, she knew, was the Atlantic. She could hear the surf even as they approached it. There was a draw, warm and inviting, to the sound of the waves, she mused. Alexi bit her lip, thinking that she was crazy, that she wanted to be anywhere but here. But then again, there was no way she was going to go back into a house with snakes.

A sudden stab of sharp pain seared into her foot. She swore and stopped. Trying to balance on her right foot to see the left one, she started to keel over.

Rex caught her arm, steadying her. “What did you do?” he asked.

“I don't know...” she began, but then she saw the trail of blood streaming from her sole.

“Must have been a broken shell,” he said, in a voice that seemed just a bit apologetic. As if he had just realized that he had been moving as if in a marathon race while she had been barefoot, Alexi thought.

“It's all right,” she murmured. “I can manage.”

“Don't be absurd,” he said impatiently. “You get too much sand in it and you'll have a real infection.”

Before she could protest, he swept her into his arms. Out of a will to survive the rest of his breakneck-speed walk, she slipped her arms around his neck, flushing. “Really, I...”

“Oh, for Pete's sake.”

Alexi fell silent. Maybe she would have been better off with the snakes after all. The sun was beating down on them both, but she wasn't at all convinced it was the sun that was warming her. He was hot, like molten steel. His chest was hard and fascinating; the feel of his arms about her was electric. She could feel his breathing, as well as each little ripple and nuance of his muscles, hard and trim, but living and mobile, too. She swallowed, because the temptation to touch was great. It was pure instinct, and she fought it. In fact, she hated instinct. He was probably annoyed that she might be thinking that being in his arms was more than it was....

And she couldn't quite fight that damned instinct, that feeling that he was everything wonderful and good about the male of the species, that the sun was warm, the surf inviting. That she wanted to touch all that taut muscle and flesh and that it might well be the most natural thing in the world to lie with him in the sand.

So much for being perfect! So much for being cool and aloof and completely in control! She thought of when she had been in the shower, where she'd dreamed of her next meeting with him. And here she was—cool, remote and dignified. Hah! She looked like hell again. Barefoot, with not a shred of makeup, her hair soaking wet, and dressed in nothing but a robe. And it wasn't just the miserable indignity of how she looked. She'd been hysterical at first, and she wasn't doing much better now. No wonder he wanted her out; she was nothing but trouble to him. Of course, he had been there when she'd needed him. And sometimes, when he looked at her, he was so very masculine and sexual that she was certain she must appeal to him in some sense. He was rude, but he could also be kind.

He had been very frank in saying that he wanted the house, that he wanted her out—but he had still helped her. Of course, he had tried to scare her last night, too. All that ridiculous bit about ghosts.

She paled in his arms, feeling ill. He'd brushed the spider off her and killed it. And she had almost told him how frightened she was of snakes. She had almost said the word. He had pressed her.

He had known. Known that she didn't like the bugs, but that she could bear them. He was intuitive; he was quick. He wanted her out...

She gasped suddenly, released her hold about his neck and slammed a tight fist against his chest.

“Hey—” Startled and furious, he stared down at her.

“You bastard!”

“What?”

“You did it! You knew I was terrified of snakes! You put them in there. Here I thought that you were being decent. You did it! You put me down, you—”

She didn't go any further, because he did put her down. In fact, he almost dropped her, then stood above her with a dark scowl knit into his features, his hands locked aggressively on his hips.

“I did no such damn thing!”

“You knew—”

“I didn't know anything, Ms. Jordan. And trust me, lady, I don't have the time to go digging up a pack of harmless little ringnecks just to get to you. You don't need help to blow it—I'm sure you'll manage on your own.”

“Oh! You stupid—” She had tried to rise, but the weight on her foot was an agonizing pain. She broke off, gasping against the pain, teetering dangerously. He stretched an arm out; she tried to push him away, but as she started to fall she grabbed at him desperately.

Rex, unprepared, lost his balance, too. They crashed down into the sand together.

In a most compromising position. He was nearly stretched on top of her. And her robe...

Was nearly pushed to her waist.

And they were both aware of the position. Very painfully aware. Alexi couldn't think of a word to say; she couldn't move. She could only stare, stunned and miserable, into the hard, dark eyes above her. It seemed like an eternity in which she felt her naked body pressed to him, an eternity in which she felt all his muscles contract and harden.

An eternity...while she wished that she could be swallowed up by the sand.