Wild and Wonderful (15 page)

"Don't." Her breath was coming in tiny gasps of tormented pleasure.

His hands were sliding down her shoulders and spine, applying pressure to bring her closer. Her forearms remained stiff in resistance, but her elbows started bending, forcing her hands up the muscled flatness of his stomach to the rock-ribbed wall of his chest.

"Why did you have to come here?" Glenna protested weakly.

"I stayed away as long as I could." Jett dragged his mouth over her lips, his warm breath mingling intimately with hers. "I wanted to give you time to get over the hurt. You don't know how I dreaded telling you and Orin that I was powerless to help. I didn't want to be the one to put that forsaken look in your eyes."

His strong teeth took gentle love bites of her lips, separating them. She was defenseless against this form of attack. Her fingers curled into the material of his shirt, clinging to it to avoid clinging to him.

"When I turned the merger down, I still had hope that I could keep you out of it. I thought if I made it clear that it was strictly business that I could later persuade you to keep on seeing me," he continued while his hands impelled her hips to rest against the powerful columns of his thighs, turning her bones to water. "Then you came to my room late that night."

"Please, I don't want to remember." She tried to elude his mouth, but it followed her.

"I knew that as soon as you realized your attempt to change my mind was hopeless, you would be sickened by what you were doing." His accurate assessment of her reaction drew a gasp from her throat. "And I knew you wouldn't want to face me after that. That's when I decided that if I was going to lose you, I was going to have that evening to remember…until I realized how much you would hate me for it. I couldn't risk that no matter how much I wanted you. I haven't stopped wanting you, Glenna."

She was helplessly confused by his uncanny perception of her behavior. Drawing her head back, she tried to wade through her dazed senses to study him.

"But how could you know that was how I felt?" This was what she didn't understand.

"You can't successfully run a company the size of mine without knowing what motivates people," Jett explained, letting the short distance remain between them while the compelling possession of his gaze roamed over her face. "I had a chance to find out a little bit about you as a person before that night. I wasn't wrong in my conclusion, was I?"

"No," Glenna admitted with aching relief.

It required no encouragement to persuade her to meet him halfway. His demanding kiss exorcised the guilt from her conscience and replaced it with self-respect. With her worth restored, she could meet him on common ground again. There was no longer any need to hide her face from him. Jett wouldn't have permitted it if she had tried, and Glenna didn't try. There was too much wondrous rapture to be found in his kiss.

"I want to keep on seeing you." His voice was muffled against her throat.

"I want to see you, too," she whispered, because she didn't ever want to stop seeing him. The certainty of that knowledge left her a little giddy.

Jett lifted his head and ran a hand over her cheek before tangling his fingers in the thick mane of her hair. "Where are you moving? How far is it from here?"

The trembling roughness of his voice and the implied possession of his touch convinced Glenna that Jett was equally disturbed by her nearness. It gave her a fleeting sensation of power.

"The new house is only a few miles away," she told him.

The velvet blackness of his gaze became shadowed by a raw regret. "Do you know how impossible it is for me to commute back and forth between here and Huntington even with a helicopter at my disposal? My schedule fills a sixteen-hour day. I would barely arrive here before it was time to leave."

"I know." Glenna felt his frustration ripping through her, leaving behind an awareness of how precious each moment was.

"Move to the city," he urged. "At least there we can spend more time together and I won't be wasting so much traveling time to and from. You don't need to worry about work. I have some connections at one of the newspapers. I can arrange for you to be hired as a reporter."

"It isn't that easy," She shook her head in a reluctant protest. "We've signed a year's lease on the house. Besides, dad wants to live in the country. I can't walk off and leave him, not in his condition. Don't ask me to do something like that, Jett."

"I'm not going to be content to see you only a couple of times a month, Glenna," he warned. "It's been too long now."

Glenna agreed wholeheartedly with the last, but she was plagued by a sense of lost time. "Why didn't you come sooner? You should have told me how you felt before now instead of letting me imagine what you were thinking," she protested.

"You wouldn't have believed me. You were too caught up in your own self-guilt to listen," Jett replied wisely.

"It's been such an agonizing two months," she admitted and traced the outline of his cheek with her fingertips. "If it hadn't been for Bruce and dad, I think I would have crawled in a hole and buried myself."

A muscle flexed along his jaw, tightening its line with grimness. His attention shifted to a lock of curling auburn hair, the hardness of regret darkening his eyes. Glenna swayed toward him, needing the reassurance of his kiss that everything was all right now.

The slamming of the front door stopped her while the sound of her father's voice reversed her direction out of Jett's arms. "Fred is backing the pickup truck to the door so we can load these boxes, Bruce. Did you ask Glenna about that helicopter outside?"

As she turned toward the doorway to the foyer, she saw Bruce frozen within its framework. His very stillness indicated that he had been standing there for several seconds, if not several minutes. Glenna could tell by the numbed look of disbelief in his face that he had seen and heard enough to know what had been going on prior to his arrival. The atmosphere in the room became electric when his gaze met Jett's in silent confrontation.

Her father's appearance on the scene kept it from becoming volatile. Glenna was standing freely beside Jett when her father paused in the doorway. The instant he saw Jett a broad smile spread across his face.

"Jett!" He greeted him with obvious delight and came striding across the room, a picture of health. "What brings you here? I saw the helicopter outside, but I didn't get a good look at the insignia."

"You're definitely looking better, Orin," Jett shook hands with him.

"Thank you, Jett. I'm feeling better, too," her father stated with a decisive nod, then turned to invite the third man to participate in the conversation. "Bruce, come here. I want you to meet Jett Coulson. Bruce Hawkins was my engineer and manager at the mine," he explained to Jett.

Bruce walked stiff-legged across the room like a challenger about to do battle. "I've heard a great deal about you, Mr. Coulson." He measured him with a firm handshake.

"Orin has mentioned to me what an asset you were to him," Jett returned as he sized the sandy-haired man up with a sweeping look. Neither made a reference to Glenna. Yet, when the introduction was over, Bruce assumed a protective position at her side.

In the interim her father ran a quick eye over Glenna. Astutely he noted the glowing flush in her cheeks and the kiss-swollen softness of her lips despite the slightly uncomfortable atmosphere that prevailed.

"What brings you here, Jett?" her father questioned with a smile of benign interest. "Is this a social call or business?"

"A little of both," Jett admitted, sending a glance at Glenna to indicate the social side of his visit. "I stopped by to let you know we've negotiated a contract to manage your mine."

"My ex-mine," her father corrected without bitterness. "Congratulations. I'm glad to hear it's going to be in competent hands. When will you be reopening it?"

"Soon. Naturally we'll have to make the necessary changes to pass the safety inspection before we can go into production. But first I want to find myself a good man to put in charge." Jett took a cigarette from his pack and lighted it, studying her father over the flame. "You immediately came to mind. Would you be interested?"

"Oh, no, you don't!" her father laughed. "I just got that elephant off my back."

"I would like you to seriously consider it," Jett persisted. "The responsibilities would be considerably fewer this time around. You have all the qualifications and experience I'm looking for, plus a knowledge of this particular mine's characteristics."

"I'm flattered that you should offer me the position, but I'm not interested," her father refused as Glenna had guessed he would. "But if that's what you're looking for, Bruce fits the description. He may be a little shy on the experience side, but I'd recommend him. I happen to know he's looking for a position that would keep him in this same general area. Isn't that right, Bruce?"

Before he answered Bruce slid a look at Glenna. The glance confirmed she was the reason he didn't want to move away. It was a message no one in the group missed, including Jett. Glenna felt the penetrating study of his gaze. At this point she couldn't reassure Jett that her relationship with Bruce was still very platonic, on her part.

"That's true, sir," Bruce replied to her father's question.

"Would you be interested in the job?" Jett inquired in that brisk yet smooth business tone Glenna knew so well.

"I might be." Bruce didn't reject it. "It would depend on the terms of employment."

"Come by the mine office tomorrow morning at ten and ask for Dan Stockard. I'll tell him to expect you," Jett stated.

"I'll be there," Bruce nodded, committing himself to no more than a job interview.

A knock at the front door interrupted the conversation. "I'll answer it," her father volunteered. "It's probably Fred checking to see if we're ready to load the boxes."

But it was the copter pilot instead. "Sorry, Mr. Coulson," he apologized for his intrusion. "But we're already going to be ten minutes late for your next meeting. I thought I should remind you."

Impatience rippled through Jett's expression before he moved toward the foyer. "I'm ready to leave." He paused to let his gaze encompass the three of them. "Goodbye." But he looked directly at Glenna when he said, "I'll see you."

"Take care," she murmured and was warmed by the silent promise of his words and the brief flash of his smile.

As Jett left by the front door his departure carried her to the doorway opening to the foyer. Glenna was only half-aware that Bruce followed her until her side vision noticed him standing by her elbow. Self-consciously she turned her head to meet his look.

"It was more than just a mild flirtation that weekend, wasn't it?" His question didn't expect an answer, and the faint rise of color in her cheeks was the only one he needed. He moved past Glenna to the door where Jett had just exited the house. "I'll see if Fred is ready to load this stuff," he mumbled.

When the door closed behind him, her father raised an eyebrow and sent her a wry smile. "It sounds like Bruce walked in on a private moment."

"You could say that," Glenna agreed and listened to the sound of the helicopter taking off.

"In that case would it be fair to assume that you and Jett have straightened out your problems?" The knowing glint in his eyes twinkled at her.

"I think we have," she admitted, then eyed him suspiciously. "But why did you make that remark to Jett about Bruce?"

"You mean about Bruce wanting to find a job in the area? It's true," he shrugged.

"Yes, but you implied it was because he wanted to be near me. You know very well that Bruce and I are just friends," she reminded him. "But you deliberately planted a different idea in Jett's mind."

"I can't help the conclusion he reached," her father asserted his innocence with a beaming smile. "Besides, it won't hurt Jett to wonder whether he might have a little competition."

"Dad," she sighed and shook her head.

A voice echoed through the empty rooms of the house. "Can I come out of the kitchen now?" Hannah called with terse impatience.

"Hannah. I forgot her," Glenna realized with a laughing gasp. The statement immediately demanded an explanation, which Glenna made. Her father found it all very amusing, but the housekeeper's sense of humor didn't match his when she arrived on the scene.

BY THE END OF THE WEEK Glenna still hadn't completely settled into their new house. Except for the day they had actually moved she had worked the rest of the week, which left the bulk of the unpacking to be done in the evenings.

After the Friday evening meal she was in the kitchen unpacking the boxes containing the good china and crystal that had been among their family's possessions for generations. They had been among the few things they had not sold.

Glenna was on her knees unwrapping the tissue from the dinner plates when someone knocked at the back screen door. A lingering sunset silhouetted the figure outside, but she recognized him at a glance.

"Come in, Bruce," she called without getting up.

"I saw Orin out at the workshop. He's like a kid with a new toy," he remarked as he entered the kitchen.

"He spends nearly all his time out there," she agreed.