A Kiss to Seal the Deal (8 page)

How she would react.

But she surprised him. Although her body stiffened against his initially, she didn't pull back as he lowered his mouth gently onto hers. It was soft and salty from her tears, but full, honest and courageous like the woman it belonged to.

Kate's head spun a lurching figure of eight at his closeness. His strong, distinctive cologne seemed to shimmy around her like scent released from the heat of a candle. She held herself suspended, lips gently parted against his first touch, assessing, and then leaned infinitesimally towards him, gently increasing the pressure of their kiss. Heat burst through her and crackled out to lick at the place their lips joined. Her mouth slid across his, tasting, breathing his air, melding perfectly.

He nipped and nibbled, sucking her bottom lip between his, then releasing it to slide across the neglected top lip. His
big hands forked up through the waves of her hair, messing it around her face until it hung, wild and natural, like it sometimes did at the end of a long day on the rock-shelf.

She pulled back to gaze into eyes darkened with green heat. His thumbs learned the delicate line of her cheekbones and rubbed the last of the tears from her damp lashes.

She sucked in a breath to speak, but he slid one thumb down to silence her lips, closing the gap between them and taking her mouth with his again. It blazed against hers, his tongue hot, confident and branding its possession. Her skin burned wherever it rubbed against his which, squeezed as they were in the front of his car, was just about everywhere.

Her breath grew thin and desperate deep in her chest, but freeing herself for air was the last thing on her mind. Grant's hands slid down over her shoulders and found their way to the sides of her ribs and under her arms. Then he pulled her more comfortably against him, sliding himself sideways to give her more room, freeing her to climb that masculine chest and latch on more firmly to his talented lips.

Heavy eyes simmered into hers and Kate suddenly grew shy, uncertain. His large, work-roughed hand stroked up her throat to rest under her chin and encourage her gaze back to his.

‘You will always look like this to me,' he murmured thickly, kissing her brow, her jaw, her lips. Making her lashes fall to her cheeks. ‘Wild. Hot.'

Kate let her head fall back and Grant mouthed his way up her throat. Just as well she was lying half-across him, because there was no way she could have kept standing. Feelings she'd begun to think she'd forfeited for life came surging forth in sharp, exquisite lances deep in her body. Her fists clenched high on his open-necked sweater, giving her strength but letting her fingers spread to tangle in the scattered hair there, against the furnace that was his flesh. The forbidden feeling of the skin
she'd tried not to ogle that first day made her smile and Grant's lips moved instantly to the deep dimple that formed on her left cheek.

His tongue dipped in and out, his smooth teeth sliding against her cheek as he matched her smile. ‘I've wanted to touch those since I first saw you.'

Not that she wasn't unexpectedly thrilled to hear such sentiments but, while she was busy making sense of words, she wasn't drowning in the pleasure sensations of his body moving against hers. His mouth feasting on hers. She speared her fingers up into his short hair and forced his head back so she could glare into his eyes meaningfully. ‘That's lovely, but you want to talk or you want to kiss?'

His answer was practically a growl.

And then it was on—both of them clamouring for the best position, the most access, surging, devouring and consuming each other. Grant reached down to the side of his seat and activated the recliner and both of them mechanically lowered until they stretched almost into the back seat. Kate lay across Grant's chest, along his straining body; his hands had free access, at last, to the rest of her. They slid up and down her length, from shoulder to hip, rib to thigh, learning her contours. Blood rushed, thick and molten, through her arteries keeping her hyper-sensitive cells acute and full of oxygen, and keeping her grey matter thoroughly distracted about what the rest of her was doing.

And with whom.

Then suddenly, with no warning, the vehicle shot forward with a lurch.

Kate managed to suck in a breath and expel a scream at the same time. Grant yanked on the handbrake, crunching into Kate's hip painfully, and then jammed the automatic gearstick into park position. Dimly, between the heaving breaths she
drew in, she realised she'd pushed the automatic vehicle into gear with her hip as she crawled more fully onto Grant's prone body.

Oh my God…

Heat surged into her cheeks as the full picture they presented finally dawned on her: sprawled out in his Jeep like a pair of sexed-up teenagers, her dress hiked up, shoes kicked off. She reached blindly for the steering wheel, anchored herself to it to haul herself back into the driver's seat and then sat, puffing, as Grant moved his seat back up into the upright position.

Reality ran in rivulets down the car's windows where they'd seriously fogged them up in the hot, sultry minutes that had just passed. Kate cracked her door open and sucked in the cold night air. There were two ways out of this and neither of them offered much in the way of a dignified exit. She could cry foul and leap from the car with indignation or she could be flippant about what had just happened and try to extract herself with as much dignity as possible, as though she did this kind of thing every day.

Or she could just be honest.

‘Holy cow.'

Grant's lifted eyebrows and equally stunned expression told her she'd spoken for them both. He blew out a long, controlled breath. Kate fumbled for the door handle then paused when she found it.

‘Will you walk me to the door?'
Assuming I can walk at all…

His sexy smile made her want to fling his seat back again, but she contained herself.

‘I have to,' he said. ‘It's my door too.'

Kate frowned. ‘Can we… Could you give me a few minutes' head start? Let me maintain the illusion?'

His smile was pure indulgence. ‘Sure. I could use a few minutes in the dark anyway.'

Everything in her wanted to look down, but she hadn't made
it to the top of her field without having
some
self-discipline—even if it seemed to be largely AWOL tonight. She kept her eyes locked on the front door where the little welcome-home light glowed.

‘We never had dinner,' she said simply, running shaking hands through her hair to tame it.

His smile twisted up on one side. ‘We can eat tomorrow.'

She turned her eyes to his, certain they'd be as wide and dazed as she felt. ‘Are you going to want to talk about this?'

His face grew serious. ‘Not tonight. Let
me
maintain the illusion.'

Kate's smile was half-hearted as she pushed open the car door. A wall of frigid air rushed in, dousing the last of the latent flames. Grant climbed out behind her and caught her up near the steps to the house. He followed her up onto the verandah and paused with her under the light. His hand came up to stroke a lock of hair back from her flushed face.

‘Well, goodnight, Kate. I can't say the first part of the evening had much to recommend it, but the last part certainly surpassed all my expectations.'

The blush returned furiously. But he wasn't making fun of her. ‘Me, too.'

‘Can I kiss you goodnight?'

The gentle request touched her deep down inside where no-one went. After everything they'd just done… Still, she nodded.

In slow motion, his hands came up to softly frame her face. He shifted closer; the warmth from his body hadn't diminished at all since getting out of the warm car and she leaned into the heat. His lips, when they finally lowered to hers, were chaste and respectful but trembled with barely repressed passion.

If it had been their first kiss, she might have passed out. But, despite the fact she'd just been crawling across his lap, giving him a manual tonsillectomy, his simple kiss still made every cell in her body sing out.

‘Goodnight,' she whispered as he finally lifted his head. Her tongue slipped out to taste the last moment.

Grant groaned. ‘Go now or I'm coming in with you.'

That got her feet moving. She opened the house door and slipped quietly in. Behind her, Grant moved to the balustrade of the verandah. He was seriously letting her go inside alone. He turned just as she swung the door closed and she captured the look like a photograph in her memory.

Hot. Bothered. Confused.

But mostly hot.

And that bothered her very much.

It took her just minutes to strip out of her dress and into her warm pyjamas. She didn't dare go out into the bathroom to brush her teeth or her tingly body would keep walking and end up in his room—and that was not a good idea. But sliding straight into warm sheets with un-brushed teeth meant that she could fall asleep with the taste of Grant still on her lips. Could enjoy the kiss—and him—just a little longer. That would guarantee they'd both populate her dreams.

Which was pretty much where she should quarantine any further contact between the two of them.

If someone had told her heading into town tonight that she'd wind up wrapped around Grant McMurtrie with her dress hiked high, she'd have laughed— Possibly fantasised about it for a week, but still laughed. They just didn't have that kind of relationship. Even if, for a few precious minutes tonight, they'd offered a cracking impersonation of it.

She let her breath out in a carefully controlled sigh.

It was just sex. They'd both been overwhelmed with emotion tonight after she'd so horribly blabbed about Leo's cancer. And when emotions got bubbling, so did tension, and it had found a natural physical outlet in the front seat of his car. The man was sex on a stick, and he had a dangerous effect on her good judgement even during the day when he wasn't even standing particularly close. Tonight, she'd had no chance.

She touched her still-tingling lips.

Staying put was more than just a good idea—it was vital. Grant was actively trying to hamper her project. Trying to keep Tulloquay intact and sell it to someone who would farm it, as Leo had before he'd got sick. Trying to keep it a working farm. Which wasn't in the seals' best interests.

Kate punched her down-pillow to make it more comfortable and burrowed into it. On the other hand, he'd given her lab space and a room, and had followed her to the pub to make sure she didn't get into any trouble.

She frowned into the darkness.

Those weren't the actions of a man who was entirely indifferent to her.

She heard the click of the front door, exaggerated in the night silence, and realised he'd been as good as his word, giving her a head start so they could both pretend their night had ended more like a traditional date.

And less like a steamy, irrevocable mistake.

T
HIS
had seemed easier when he was nine.

Grant shoved hard at the bracken and thick scrub that barred his way and used his shoulder to bully his way through the tangle of branches. Sure, there'd been over twenty-five years for the coastal scrub to grow thicker, but…

Come on…. He shoved again. Harder.

A branch struck back, whipping high across his cheekbone and making him glad for the thick sunglasses he hadn't removed. Another snared his T-shirt, grabbing hard and tearing a small hole.

Of course, it probably would have helped if he'd had some decent shut-eye last night. Even plant life seemed too complicated this morning, after the revelations of yesterday. After hitting on Kate…

He paused midway through the bracken and asked himself for the third time if this was worth it. But, yeah, he needed to know if his suspicions were correct.

It would change everything.

He pushed onwards. His foot felt the change of land but—just in case he missed the signs—gravity sent him on a slow, gravelly slip for a few feet; those thick bushes gave him something to grab onto. They slowed his slide and let him gently lower himself to a more familiar feature.

The pathway. Unless twenty-five years of erosion had taken a toll, then this little trail would take him right down to the flat
area near the water. Not a Sunday stroll, exactly, but doable. Lucky he'd kept himself in hiking condition instead of boardroom condition or this would have been a whole heap harder.

He might not have bothered.

It took around ten minutes for Grant to pick his way carefully down the ageing trail in the brutal cliff-winds. It levelled out at the base and he looked left and right, saw some familiar landmarks and remembered. Definitely right. For another ten minutes he worked his way carefully across an expanse of large, ancient rocks, with bigger waves occasionally soaking his boots. The same curled spit of land that obscured this spot from view from the sea stopped it getting hammered by the ocean's force.

No wonder the seals loved it here.

No wonder he had, when he was a boy. If ever there was a spot destined for buried treasure and ruined pirate-ships, this was it.

A moment later and he was there. Stepping into the comparative darkness of the cove, overhung by a limestone canopy older than mankind, he lifted his sunglasses and let his eyes adjust before climbing up higher on the rocks and sliding down behind the cover of a large boulder. It was only dim but, after the bright glare of the limestone cliff-face, his pupils were the size of pin-heads. And, after what had happened the last time he'd been here, he wasn't taking any chances. He'd been young enough to be curious and stupid enough to be careless, but swift enough to get away safely when two-hundred kilos of angry, sexed-up bull seal had come lurching towards him, hell bent on seeing off the interloper. Or possibly killing him. Who knew how bull seals thought?

Kate probably did.

Kate…

The woman he'd snuck out on in the early hours of this morning, delaying the inevitable moment when they would talk about what had happened the night before. He'd faked
important work on the far side of the farm—as though she'd buy for one minute that anything that important could be fixed by the anti-farmer—and had taken off like a thief in the night just as the sun had wiggled its golden fingers over the eastern horizon. Because it had been easier than facing her after he'd kissed her last night. Because it had been easier than thinking about how much that kiss had rattled him. Excited him. Centred him.

He couldn't afford to be centred by Kate Dickson. He had a legal partnership that needed all his attention and a full life in the city to lead. Never mind that his partnership tended to take up most of his life or that, increasingly, a night in with a good book was about all he had energy for at the end of a long day.

A Technicolor image intruded into his mind: Kate curled up at the opposite end of his enormous modular sofa, her lip between her teeth, lost in something on her laptop while he read the latest bestseller. If he stretched out an imaginary foot he could just about touch hers…

He shook the image loose.

Kate was farming stock. It didn't matter where she lived or what she did; farming was either in your blood or it wasn't. And in his case it wasn't, even though technically it was. That was more than enough reason not to get involved. Plus, he wasn't good relationship material, as so many women had found out over the years. He'd been wedded to his work for a decade.

Not that she was exactly picking out engagement rings. She'd thrown herself into that kiss with as much gusto as he had, but she knew full well how different they were and how they stood at polar ends on the issue of Tulloquay and the seals. At least, she thought she did.

She had no idea what these seals
actually
meant to him. What sanctuary they'd offered him as a child. That they were important to more than one person for more than one reason.

But not necessarily as important as keeping his farm intact.
It was yet another of those moments in life when you realise you can't have everything. That you have to choose priorities.

He was choosing the farm. She was choosing the seals. And she was fighting hard for them.

The state Conservation Commission was already interested in her colony. If he knew her at all well, Kate would be banking on them ratifying conservation protection on the strength of her partially completed research alone. But, on her own admission, her request would carry more weight if she could sweeten the pot with a site of extra significance—a breeding site, for instance.

A secret breeding site, for instance.

A site pretty much like this one.

Grant peered around the large boulder to see who was home. Two bull seals and a number of smaller females lounged around, barely noticing his presence. Both bulls sported bloody, superficial wounds but their relaxed posture told him neither animal had been serious about killing the other. Only one of them lay near the females—the victor. The one who had won mating privileges. The other, stretched out on its back, its small flippers waving in the gentle cliff-base breeze, looked like it was just all too hard.

He sighed.

No question about it—this was Kate's breeding site. What she needed to put all the pieces of her puzzle neatly together and change the way the town, the government—the world—thought about fur seals. What she needed to guarantee a conservation zoning on his land.

His eyes fell shut. What she needed, he couldn't give her.

In so many ways.

The lab was one thing, something he could do to help her that wouldn't really make much of a difference in the long term. Something he could give her to help take some of the weight off her shoulders.

But handing her the ammunition to make sure no serious
investor would ever want Tulloquay? Not an option. He may be the lousiest farmer ever to grace the south-west, but the last useful thing he could do for his father would be to find someone who would love the farm as much as Leo had. And to do that he had to have something worth selling.

And, as the incident at the pub last night had made entirely evident, there weren't too many folk in Castleridge who thought the words ‘seal' and ‘worth' had any relation to each other.

Except maybe his father. He'd been so convinced that his dad had filled his lungs with carbon monoxide rather than face losing, to greenies, the farm he'd spent his life building up. But it turned out his lungs had been filled with something much more sinister all along—the same disease he'd lost his wife to when Grant had been little, although a different organ. No way strapping Leo McMurtrie was going to let himself grow as weak, frail and airless as his beloved wife had.

Opting out must have seemed the most humane option.

And, for a seventy-year-old man living alone three hours from his only family, maybe it had been.

Grant let his lids flutter closed and finally allowed the blocked out memories to gurgle to the surface: those idyllic early years before Leo had grown disappointed with him, before Grant had discovered the father he worshipped had clay feet. Back when he still had a mother, the first happy years of his life. Just a man and wife blissfully in love and the young son they'd tried so hard for growing into the man he would one day be.

At least the man they'd wished he'd be.

Go on then, go! You've added no real value to this farm, so it might as well run without you.

That awful last day when Grant had packed his bags and prepared to leave for good shoved its way into his memory: the mottled red of his father's anger. The hurt in his eyes.

If I'd known what sort of a kid you'd turn into, I wouldn't
have encouraged your mother to try so hard to have you. Maybe she'd still be with me today.

Old anger sliced sharply below Grant's ribs.

Even as a sixteen-year-old he'd recognised the pain in his father's words, but they'd burrowed down and festered in his subconscious nonetheless. Maybe there were drugs his mother could have taken if she hadn't been pregnant, or therapies. Maybe being pregnant
had
drained her of the life-force she needed to fight off the disease that eventually took her life. He'd wondered about that often enough, growing up.

But to hear it so baldly from his father's angry lips…And then the final cut.

I would trade you for her in a heartbeat.

He forced his eyes open and stared down at the seals. Well, he had his wish now. Somewhere up in heaven Leo McMurtrie and the love of his life walked the land hand-in-hand once again. Hard to know whether a lifetime alone might have mellowed his father; if not, he had a whole after-life to find out whether he was capable of it.

Grant turned away from the peaceful seals to face the steep climb back up the long, narrow track. The treacherous, torturous climb in gale-force winds suited his mood perfectly. Somehow he'd made such a mess of all of this, despite his best efforts. Kissing Kate was just one more in a series of questionable decisions.

But as he turned to cross the shore towards the pathway back up the cliff, something small caught his eye. One of the females had a bloodied patch between her shoulder blades—not surprising, if childhood memories of graphic seal-mating served him well—but a few feet from her he could see something out of place, about the size of a pack of cards. Black. Durable. Expensive.

Kate's time-depth recorder. Her assistants carefully clipped the fur below the TDR to remove it; clearly, bull seals weren't so courteous when they only had one thing on their minds. If
the recorder had been sandwiched between a seal and two-hundred kilos of male, it might not even work. But he had to try and retrieve it. Those things were twenty grand each, she'd said, and Kate was responsible for them.

If she couldn't even afford a caravan to make their work easier, Grant was certain she couldn't afford to replace a twenty-thousand dollar electrical device.

Damn

The bull seals grunted, grumbled and rolled over in the gentle breeze. They were settling in for a decent post-coital nap. He had two options: wait it out and hope the males went for a restorative swim later, or make the treacherous climb back to his Jeep and then return later today, when there'd be no guarantees the group would have shifted at all. Or that more bulls wouldn't have appeared.

Or that the TDR wouldn't have been knocked off the rock shelf into the inky depths.

He glanced at his watch, knowing he'd miss Kate, who would be up and gone within the hour, but conscious of the value of the little device lying out in the open on the rocks. To her.

He backed out of the cover and climbed higher for protection and for a clear view of what the seals were doing. Then he crouched down to wait.

 

Stinking coward.

Never mind that she'd gone to bed without brushing her teeth rather than face him so soon; the fact she woken to an empty house and no decent morning-after conversation after she'd lain awake so long thinking up her part of it…

Not that it was the morning after much. A kiss, that was all. OK—a killer kiss. A kiss that definitely would have led to more if her butt hadn't intervened and sent the car lurching. Which would have made Grant's no-show act this morning doubly despicable, because intimacy only prevented by accidental gear
engagement still counted as intimacy by proxy. The intent had been there.

And they both knew it.

‘Coward,' she mumbled again as she hauled on a pair of tight leggings to go under her baggy field-shorts, warding off the cooling weather. Never mind that she hadn't really perfected her blasé response before falling into a sweaty, turmoil-filled sleep—she deserved a chance to deliver it. Never mind that Grant being absent was about as effective a cool-off as she was ever going to get. Never mind that cooling off was what she wanted…

There was a principle at stake.

Decent men didn't kiss someone living under their roof and then leave them hanging. Who did that? Complicated men. Complicated, conflicted men. And who was the poster child for complicated and conflicted? Grant McMurtrie.

Today of all days.

Not only was she still heart sore from discovering the truth about Leo's suicide, and confused from the kiss she'd shared with his son, she was also thirty years old today.

Her toast popped in the kitchen. OK, she'd dallied as long as she could, hoping he'd return from wherever. She was now officially pathetic—thirty and pathetic. She wolfed down her toast, cleaned the kitchen quickly and threw her gear into the back of her ute. She had a full day ahead of her, after losing all of yesterday to the lab set-up. Her seals needed her attention.

The uncomplicated, unconflicted, comfortably predictable Atlas colony.

Who were all in attendance for once, she realised, emerging down on the rocks at Dave's Cove fifteen minutes later. Except for Stella, of course, but that was normal these days.