The Pleasures of Summer (22 page)

Behind the ‘spa’ was a steep path leading into the woods behind the house. She would find a way through. Somewhere above the valley was a road, and that meant civilization. She didn’t care how furious her father would be; there would be no more bodyguards. Not even if she had to return to Castletownbloodyberehaven.

The path narrowed as she climbed, until it was hardly more than a foot wide. Her breath sounded loud to her ears and she paused to take a swig of water. She probably should have brought more of it.

Up ahead, the path forked in two. One fork led downwards, back into the glen. The other was steep, but at least it was going in the right direction. Summer glanced at her watch. It was more than an hour since she had left the cottage. Had Flynn returned? Would he notice that she was gone, or would he just write her off as another pain in the arse client?

She was glad that she wasn’t around to find out. Around the next bend the ground dropped away, leaving a ledge that was barely inches wide, the edge tumbling into the forest below. Damn. It was turning into a goat track, but she couldn’t go back now.

After a few yards, the path widened again and she was back in the forest. She felt like she had been walking for hours. Surely the glen couldn’t be so big? Had she walked in a circle?

A rumble in the distance caught her attention. A truck. She must be near the road and she just might have a ride home. Taking off at a sprint, she raced through the trees. The rumbling grew louder. ‘Stop,’ she yelled although she knew that he wouldn’t hear her.

Concentrating on the sound, she didn’t see the gnarled root of the tree in her path. Summer pitched forwards, landing with a yelp. Her heart thudded as she scrambled to her knees and rubbed her stinging palms against her thighs. When the sound of the engine faded away, she wanted to cry with frustration.

Her throat was parched. Maybe she could rest for just a few minutes. Summer climbed to her feet and cried out when she tried to put her weight on her left foot. Limping to the nearest tree, she braced her arm against it and lifted her foot. Already, her ankle was beginning to swell. Should she take the boot off or leave it on? She couldn’t remember. All she knew was that it hurt and that she couldn’t walk another step. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the pain. She would rest for a while before she tried to walk again.

Flynn watched her go, her body stiff with indignation and anger. Too bad. He had seen the calculation in her eyes when she dived into the lake. Did she really think that she could manipulate him like that? She desperately needed someone to take her in hand and teach her the consequences of her actions.

Summer O’Sullivan was a confusing mixture of naïve little girl, scheming seductress and submissive-in-training. Her beauty, her wealth and her father had protected her from the world she should be experiencing.

He ached to be the man to teach her. She was so fucking beautiful. Those eyes alone could turn him hard as a rock. The mixture of sweetness and calculation appealed to something deep within him. A sweet little innocent didn’t do it for him. He wanted someone who was his match, and Summer’s eyes said she was every bit as devious as he was. Then there was the rest of the package. That petal-soft skin which just begged for his marks. Her glossy hair, now the right shade for her skin, and just right for holding onto while he kissed her. Or spanked her.

Flynn tore his mind away from Summer’s body. His erection was subsiding and he needed to keep it that way. A man who thought with his cock would always make bad decisions.

Turning her down when she was offering herself to
him had been one of the hardest things he had ever done. In comparison, Ranger training, that marathon of torture and exhaustion, was a piece of cake. But she was the principal, and a bodyguard did not get involved with the principal. Ever.

He would give her five minutes to get back to the cottage and put some clothes on. He couldn’t watch her doing that in his present mood. Then he would explain exactly how this relationship was going to work. It was time Ms O’Sullivan learned that just because Daddy was rich, she was not going to get everything her own way.

Flynn kept his eyes on the lake, watching the herons diving for fish. A lone boat drifted into view. Flynn narrowed his eyes, examining it carefully. It had a small outboard motor, ideal for fishing, but the boat was drifting.

The sound of a child crying drifted across the water. Flynn could make out muffled words in between the sobs. ‘Daddy, wake up. Please Daddy.’

The boat got a little closer and he could see a small red-haired boy tugging at something on the bottom of the boat. The kid couldn’t be more than five or six, and he was sobbing.

Fuck. Summer was on her own. Every instinct in his body that urged him to go after her, warred with his concern for the child. Especially if there was a dead or injured man in the boat with him.

‘Kid, what’s wrong?’ he called. His voice carried in the stillness, and the boy’s head popped up over the side. His face was red from crying, but a gleam of hope lit his eyes.

‘Daddy forgot to take his medicine and now he won’t wake up.’

Damn it. His duty was clear. Muttering a string of foul curses to himself, Flynn stripped off his T-shirt and jeans and dived in. The cold was bracing.

He swam over to the boat and hauled himself into it in a wet rush. The boy backed away from the water he brought with him, but pointed at his father. The unconscious man was in his forties, but had prematurely grey hair cut very short and he wore a designer jacket. He was sprawled awkwardly in a heap, but he was breathing. Flynn hunkered down to check him over.

‘Do you know what medicine your daddy takes?’ he asked the boy, keeping his voice calm.

‘He gets injections.’

Flynn searched through the man’s pockets and found some glucose sweets and a medical alert bracelet on his wrist. Damn it, the man was a diabetic. Flynn called 112 and asked for medical help. Once he was assured it was on the way, he checked the engine. Out of petrol. He cursed. What sort of gobshite went out without enough petrol? He took a quick glance around the boat. There must be a couple of thousand pounds worth of fishing equipment but no spare petrol.

Fuck it, he couldn’t leave them drifting. He grabbed the towrope and slipped back into the water. The swim back to the jetty was a lot harder than the one out, but once he got the boat moving, it was doable.

He had moored the craft by the time the rescue boat came into sight. When it got closer, Flynn cursed. His old school mate, Connor, now Doctor Tait, would recognize
him and have the entire lake community aware that he was back in the Highlands. Flynn grabbed his clothes and melted into the shadows of the old boathouse.

He watched in silence, invisible to anyone who wasn’t looking directly at him, and smiled as the rescue team praised the boy for his quick thinking in tying up the boat and ringing for help. ‘But there was a man,’ the boy protested. ‘He looked a bit like Wolverine and had muscles like Superman.’

Connor checked over the father and within a few minutes the man was sitting up, groaning and swearing he was never going fishing again. When Flynn was satisfied everything was under control, he pulled his clothes back on, not caring that he was still wet, and headed back to the croft.

It was empty. Damn it. Summer had done a runner. The bed, made up to look vaguely like a human body, was proof. Did she really think he would fall for that trick again? She didn’t have much of an opinion of him. But at least it was proof that she had run away, not been snatched. The perimeter alerts had gone haywire with all the rescue personnel, so he couldn’t tell which way she had gone.

It was getting late and the light was fading. Outside, the Jeep was still there. Good. He was glad Summer didn’t know how to hotwire one. He examined the ground and grinned when he saw tracks heading up the mountain.

Good girl, Summer, lay a false trail before you head for the road
. He felt a blaze of pride in her. She wasn’t the airhead she pretended to be.

Now he had to track her down and find her before she got into trouble. That woman was a magnet for trouble. Summer would hitch a lift with Jack the Ripper and not
expect trouble. He debated taking the Jeep. It would be faster, but on foot, he would see signs he would miss from a vehicle. He set off at a fast jog.

Three miles later, he stopped, frustrated. There was no sign of her. She had managed to leave no tracks and there was no sign of any cars stopping to give a hitcher a lift.

Incredulously, he realized that she must have actually headed up the mountain. On her own. In poor light.

This time, he hit the return at a hard run. By god, he was going to whale on her when he caught her. Was she a complete idiot? He didn’t care that she wasn’t from the Highlands; she ought to have more sense.

He stopped at the Jeep long enough to retrieve a pair of night vision goggles to combat the dark. The Scottish countryside was transformed into an eerie green, but he could see where he was going. He set off up the mountain, determined to catch up with Ms O’Sullivan and teach her a lesson she wouldn’t forget.

It was hard dark by the time Flynn caught up with Summer. Mind you, he thought, hard dark in Scotland in summer was a decent twilight in most of the world. He could probably have managed perfectly well without his NV goggles, but when he saw the route Summer had picked, he decided to keep them on.

What had possessed her to take this path? There’s no way she could possibly have thought it was in general use. When he came to the place where the side had fallen away, leaving it unpleasantly narrow, he muttered a string of profanities under his breath. Was she trying to break her fool neck? What had she been thinking?

If a rookie under his command had done this, he’d be out so fast he’d bounce.

She hadn’t been thinking at all, he decided. Summer O’Sullivan had been propelled by a mixture of hurt pride and recklessness. She needed a keeper. No, not a keeper. She needed an owner. Preferably one with a strong collar and a whip. For a moment, the memory of Summer kneeling at his feet in the club tormented him. God, she’d looked so at home there, as if she belonged to him.

He shook his head and pushed on up the track. She wasn’t his, would never be his, and her escapade in the club was one more example of how she wanted everything her own way.

Flynn half hoped she’d be running when he caught up with her. He’d like to chase her and bring her down in a tackle. It would satisfy something atavistic in him that usually stayed beneath the surface.

When he entered a small clearing and saw her sitting propped against an old oak tree, it was almost an anti-climax. She hadn’t run far after all. She was staring up at the sky, still as a rock.

‘Summer,’ he said. Wherever she was inside her head, it wasn’t in the clearing. She shrieked and jerked before scrambling back, trying to get around the tree. She was wearing only one shoe.

‘It’s okay.’ Flynn yanked off his NV goggles and spoke. He was so accustomed to their weight he often forgot how odd they looked to someone who wasn’t used to them. ‘It’s me. It’s okay.’

She stilled, her breathing still racing. ‘Flynn?’ Her voice was rusty, as if she had been crying.

He nodded. ‘None other. Always turning up like a bad penny.’

The joke fell flat.

She stiffened. ‘You complete and utter bastard.’

‘What did I do?’ He had eased in beside her, planning to examine her bare foot, but at this he paused.

She stared at him in astonishment. ‘This is all your fault. You deliberately humiliated me, then you left me here alone for hours, and when you finally turn up, you look like something out of a horror movie. And you thought I’d be pleased to see you?’

He ignored her outrage to reach for her foot. ‘I’m here now and I’ll take you home.’

She yanked her foot out of his grasp. ‘You don’t get to reject me, then grope me. Go away. I’m staying here.’

Despite her objections, he felt her ankle. It was slightly swollen and tender to the touch. Not broken, but she wouldn’t enjoy walking on it for a few days.

‘I said, take your hands off me,’ she snapped and tried to kick him with her other foot, the one still wearing a boot.

‘Stop that.’ He grabbed her ankle and held her securely. She tried to kick and wiggle free, but he wasn’t letting go. No doubt about it, she had hurt it and wouldn’t be walking home tonight.

He swung her up into his arms. ‘Right, we’re going home now.’ He headed back towards the croft.

She struggled like a landed trout. ‘Put me down. You have no right to put your hands on me.’

He was tempted to leave her on the side of the mountain for the rest of the night, just to see how she liked it,
but there was something about her reaction that stopped him. There was more going on here than bad temper.

She tried to wrestle her way out of his arms. ‘Stop it, or I’ll drop you over the edge of the cliff.’ It wasn’t a cliff, but the path was narrow and there was a sharp drop off one side where the ground was swallowed up by the dark.

Summer went still and clung desperately to his neck. Her breathing was faster than normal. She didn’t even speak for the rest of the journey.