Calling Kupid (Kupid's Cove Book 1) (16 page)

I dropped back onto the bed. “Hey, I didn’t have anything to do with any of them. I might own the property, but I have managers that do all the hiring and firing. My hands aren’t involved in any of that. I trust my managers, and the checks and balances I have in place for employee situations.”

“Relax, Gideon. All I meant was I was surprised by the sheer number of employees you have. I’m focusing on that last acquisition first. That one got ugly. I have a sneaky suspicion it’s where we will find our stalker.”

“I also want to clarify that it only got ugly because the previous owners didn’t want to let go of the place. I was giving them an out of their situation, but they wanted more and more and more. However, I didn’t fire anyone.”

“Since you took control of that resort your manager has let everyone who worked there, before the acquisition, go.”

“What?” I asked, standing up and nearly toppling over the lamp. “Why would he do that?”

“That’s the first question I’m going to ask him when I get him on the phone tomorrow. I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation.”

“I find it hard to believe there is a reasonable explanation for firing every employee.”

“I will have those answers for you by the time you roll in tomorrow,” Graham promised.

I could hear in his voice he was exhausted and I wasn’t making his job any easier.

“Go home, Graham. I’m sure you haven’t had much sleep since I left Snowberry. I’m safe for the night. The rest can wait until tomorrow.”

“I will take a break, but I’m determined to find the guy doing this so you can get back to a normal life.”

I smiled. “Thanks Graham, remind me to give you a raise.”

“Note made, boss.” He chuckled before saying good-bye.

I hung up the phone and it dawned on me I still didn’t hear the water running. I strode to the door and knocked. “Are you okay in there?”

The door opened and she stood before me in a tank top with a towel wrapped around her waist. I held in a moan that wanted to escape at the sight of her nipples yearning to be free of the fabric that encased them.

“I’m sorry, didn’t mean to hog it. I was looking in the mirror contemplating how gutted I looked when I heard you talking on the phone.”

I pushed her backwards into the room, closing the door behind me.

“Don’t apologize. I was worried you were sick.” I knelt and felt around her kneecap. I heard her sharp intake of breath when I hit a spot on the inside with my finger. I looked up at her. “Tender?”

She nodded and I saw the fatigue on her face. She was so sweet and innocent, yet looked like she had been through a war of the ages.

“I have an icepack in the first-aid kit. Shower and when you’re dry and warm I’ll tuck you up in a bed. We can ice it while you eat.”

She reached up and rubbed a hand down my face. “You look as bad as I do.”

I captured her hand against my cheek. “I know I’m old, but I can’t look that bad.”

She chuckled. “Are you sure?”

I turned and addressed myself in the mirror. I definitely looked worse than she did. My hair was flat from my hat with twigs stuck in a few places. My face had multiple scrapes and I had a significant five o’clock shadow.

“Okay, so we both look like we fought the wilderness,” I said.

“And won. I want to claim that we won, anyway.”

I pulled her into my chest. “We won this round, sweetheart. We’re safe and in a few hours, Sebastian will be here to get us. I’m so proud of the way you kept your cool in the midst of everything we faced.”

She wrapped her arms around me even tighter and didn’t let go. “I was scared, but God told me to trust you.”

“What else did He tell you?” I asked softly, stroking her hair.

“He said that the reason you’re older than me is because you needed the extra years to learn how to protect me.”

I squeezed her tightly and inhaled through my nose. “I hope He’s right about that.”

“So far, so good,” she murmured against my chest.

“As much as I love holding you like this it’s time to get warm. You’re like a solid block of ice. I’ll hold you again on that big bed in there tonight, I promise.”

She stepped out of my arms and pointed behind her. She paused and I didn’t say anything, waiting for her to work out whatever she was thinking. “Maybe we should shower together in case the hot water runs out. I don’t want you to get sick. I promise not to look at you anymore than I have to.”

A bit back a smile and took her face in my hands. “That has to be the most honest proposal to shower with a woman I’ve ever had.”

“If you don’t want to, it’s okay,” she whispered looking down.

I captured her earlobe with my teeth and held it for a second before letting go. “I want to, like you’ll never know.”

I stripped off my shirt and wet jeans, socks and glasses, leaving my boxers on. I picked up her clothes too and dumped them in the basket, then set all of it outside the door for Mattie. When I came back to the bathroom, she stood nervously by the tub covered in only a towel.

She motioned nervously at herself. “I figure you’ve seen it before so, no big deal, right?”

I set my backpack down on the floor and walked over to her. “It’s still a big deal if that’s how you feel. I know I hurt you deeply last time and I haven’t forgiven myself for that. If you’re more comfortable showering alone, please don’t feel like you have to worry about saving hot water for me. I may need a cold shower anyway if I see all of you again.”

She looked down at the floor then dragged her eyes back up the length of me. “Freddie made me promise I would keep my pants on this weekend. I’ve already failed, so what the hell.”

She reached for the faucet of the shower, but I stopped her.

“What does that mean? I don’t understand why she would say that.”

“She thinks this,” she motioned back and forth between us, “is moving too fast.”

I grabbed her finger that was moving about wildly. “The more important question is how do you feel?”

“He told me you’re my soul mate,” she blurted out.

I dropped her hand. “Who told you that?”

“God,” she answered then turned and cranked over the handle to hot, lifting up on the tab to allow the water to come out of the showerhead above. She dropped her towel and stepped into the shower, leaving the curtain open partially while she waited for me.

“Oh, it feels so good to be warm. Are you coming in?” She sighed the words rather than spoke them, and I felt myself growing harder every second I stood there. This wasn’t going to be easy, but maybe she needed to see the way I reacted to her beautiful body, so the words I said to her would finally fade away.

I shucked my boxers, stepping in behind her. She had her face to the shower spray and her hair was soaked, the tendrils curled around her neck. I poured some shampoo in my hand and began to massage it into her hair. The heat of the water and the smell of the lather made it feel like home. She tipped her head back and closed her eyes, giving me full view of her ample breasts. I wanted to touch them, hold them, and caress them. I wanted to hear her call my name in pleasure, so I knew she was mine.

I turned her, so she faced me, and rinsed the shampoo from her hair. Her eyes were closed as she stood under the spray while I washed my own hair. I traded places with her to wash the suds, dirt and twigs out of my own unruly hair. The bar of soap was calling to me to wash her; to rub it across her soft, alabaster skin and dark chocolate-brown nipples. I wanted nothing more than to slip my hand between her legs and wash her, feel her.

My hand fumbled for the soap as I felt myself grow. I knew I had to end this before I took it further than she wanted it to go. It was like sweet torture that I was with her again, but couldn’t actually be with her.

I pulled her backwards towards me and snugged her up against my abdomen, washing the front of her while kissing her neck.

“You don’t want to look at me,” she whispered, as I lowered the bar of soap towards the hair between her legs.

“That’s where you’re dead wrong. I’m trying not to look at you because I might not be able to keep myself from taking you right here in this shower,” I hissed into her ear, as my hand slid down her belly with the soap.

She turned and stood a foot away from me, so I had to reach for her. Her breasts beckoned me and I noticed a faint pink line that ran right between them. I flattened my hand against it and drew her to me.

I kissed her tenderly, the warm water flowing across us, warming our skin while the heat of the kiss warmed our insides.

My hand ran up and down the scar.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Seeing this scar makes everything you deal with everyday so much more real to me.”

She rested her head on my chest. “It’s also why we can never be together.”

I lifted her chin and looked in her eyes. “But God said you’re my soul mate. He must know something you don’t.”

“There’s so much you don’t know about me, Gideon.”

I pulled her hair back out of her face and stared down into her eyes for a long minute. “I know, but I have time to learn, right?”

The look she gave me was skeptical, at best, before she turned her back to me. I didn’t want to lose the connection we had in this moment, so I took the soap from her hand. I ran it across her chest again and down her abdomen knowing she could feel my hardness against her back. There was no way to hide that when you were this intimate with someone.

She turned her head to look up at me and I captured her lips. What I intended to be a slow, easy kiss, heated to overdrive almost instantly. My hand sank lower into the space between her legs. She moved against my hand in a rhythm she felt in her head and moaned into my mouth when I replaced the bar of soap with my other hand. I kept rubbing her while I washed myself. She took the bar from me and her lips still on mine, stroked me with her slick soapy hands. She moved to the rhythm I set until we were both whimpering into each other’s mouths, our tongues tangling together.

“We have to stop,” she cried against my mouth. “There’s too much you don’t know.”

I kept the kiss heated and the rhythm steady. “I have a lot of time to learn those things, and I want to learn them. Like how you sound when you give yourself over to the pleasure I’m offering.”

She was quivering under my hands, but her head was shaking no as her eyes went closed. “I’m afraid,” she cried.

I captured her cries with my lips. “What are you afraid of?” I asked, never breaking rhythm. I was barely able to stand upright as she gripped me.

“Not being able to walk away.”

I had to strain to hear her over the water, but I buried my face in her neck when I understood her words. I kissed all the way down her chest and the length of the scar until I pulled one nipple into my mouth to suck it gently. I heard the sharp intake of breath and felt how her hand tightened on me. All it took was a few more flicks of my tongue across her nipple and her arm was around my neck. She gripped my back with one hand as she started to release, still holding me with the other.

Being inside that small space with her as she gave herself over to me was putting me dangerously close to losing my own grip on reality. I listened as my name fell from her lips repeatedly while I tried to hold back.

“Come with me, Gideon,” she begged, her voice off in a place I wanted to be.

Her words were all I needed to hear. I let go of the edge of the cliff and moaned into her mouth as I released.

“I’ve waited so long for you,” I whispered against her cheek as we both tried to slow our breathing. “I’m all done waiting.”

Kate

The room was black and silent, but I wasn’t afraid. He had me wrapped tightly in his arms, cradled against his belly. Earlier, when the water ran cold, he helped me from the shower and dried me head to toe, before he bothered to attend to himself. Dressed in warm, comfy clothes again, we shared a meal of hot beef stew and buttery bread. It tasted like heaven after the amount of walking we had done to get here.

Now I was supposed to sleep. I couldn’t figure out how I was going to do that when all I could think about was the guy chasing us, and the guy laying behind me. I couldn’t explain what came over me in the shower. It’s not like me to let go and trust someone the way I did with him. I couldn’t even say it was a culmination of our earlier encounter, because we had never come together as one before, but we certainly had now.

There was something about watching his face, and the emotions that crossed it as he held me afterwards, that left my heart pounding in my chest.

“You can’t fall asleep if you’re stiff as a board,” he whispered in my ear.

“I was just trying to figure out how to relax when someone is chasing me. I have no idea where I am or if I’ll ever see my friends again.”

“Were you praying?”

I shook my head. “No, just thinking.”

“About?”

“Honestly?” I asked and felt him nod against my back. “You, us.”

“Good or bad?”

“Both.”

We lay silently for several minutes as we contemplated what I meant by that. Maybe he had an answer because I sure didn’t.

“If I had a way to rewind back to that night in Hawaii I would, you know that right?” he asked, holding my hand.

I turned over, slipping one leg through the middle of his and bracing my hand on his chest. “And do what?”

“Be a better man. Treat you the way you deserve to be treated, not like a conquest to forget about in the morning. I never forgot about you. Every morning for the last eleven months your eyes were what I saw in every woman I encountered. Your eyes were what I saw in my dreams, only they were filled with sadness. I think it was God’s way of keeping you in my mind, and my heart, for when we met again.”

“I’m trying to figure out what the bad part about us is, beyond the obvious,” I admitted, rubbing my thumb over the lines near his eye. The lines I wanted to kiss. I couldn’t stop myself and rose up on my elbow, placing a soft kiss across his temple. I lowered myself back down again, intent on lying on the pillow, but his hand captured my chin, holding me there until his lips could take over. The kiss was slow and sensuous, making me forget about everything but being here with him. There was nothing bad about feeling that good with another person.

He ended the kiss and lowered his head to the pillow again. “What are the obvious bad parts about us?”

I shrugged. “You’re rich, I’m not. Your parents were stellar members of the community yet mine were so not. You’re older and more secure in your life than I am. You’re virile and healthy. I’m…”

“Perfect,” he whispered, “just the way you are. The reason I’ve fallen for you is because of all those bad parts, don’t you see? What you see as bad, I see as nothing but unique. I’m rich, so what? Money is just money. It means nothing if you don’t have someone to share it with. My parents were kind, generous, loving people, and so were yours, in their own right, because they raised you to be that way. You’re younger chronologically, but mentally you’re my equal. Being able to carry on a conversation with someone who can tease and challenge me isn’t something I’ve ever experienced with a woman. In fact, more often than not, you win those conversations when it comes to intelligence. I’m healthy because He wants me to take care of you. I’m okay with being the one who fixes your heart, once and for all.”

“There’s no such thing as fixing my heart, Gideon. It’s not fixable; it’s barely manageable.”

He kissed me again and stroked my cheek. “Then I’ll help you manage it, but I won’t let you use it as a reason we can’t be together.”

I bit my tongue, determined not to tell him that in the end it will be the reason we can never be together. Some things in life can’t be changed, no matter how much you wish the situation were different. It was time to change the subject before I told him something I shouldn’t.

“Did Graham know anything new?” I asked, taking his hand and entwining my fingers in his.

“Not really. I asked him to go through all the acquisitions over the last year and make a list of anyone fired after we took over.”

“There can’t be that many, right?” I asked, resting my head on his chest.

“Also my belief, until Graham told me about the Hayland Frost Resort.”

“What’s that? Sounds like a resort in Alaska,” I tried to joke, but it fell flat.

“It’s a resort in Northern Minnesota, not too far from the Canadian border. The situation was dire for the owner. Her husband had passed away and she fell behind on her payments to the bank. It went into bankruptcy, so I offered to buy her out. She refused therefore the bank was going to take possession and sell to me. When she figured out she wasn’t going to be able to hold onto the resort she finally agreed to sell it to me. I made a verbal promise that I wouldn’t fire any of her staff. I promised her anyone who continued to do their job adequately would remain.”

“That was nice of you, Gideon, and smart.”

“I had no problem with the employees staying, but Graham told me tonight they were all let go a month ago.”

“What? They couldn’t all be doing a bad job.”

“They weren’t; that’s why I’m confused. I went through the employee files with my new manager when we took over. There were only two employees we let go. Their employment record showed them to be very inconsistent in coming to work or calling in. They were both kids, so it wasn’t that surprising. Everyone else stayed at their position and they all got a raise.”

“And then suddenly they were all let go?”

“That’s what Graham tells me. It had to have happened just recently because I only bought the place at the end of October. As soon as I get back to Chicago, I will be getting to the bottom of it. If I have to drive up there myself and rehire all of them back, I will. First, I have to talk to my manager.”

“Do you think it’s someone at that resort that’s after you? Someone who was thoroughly unhappy that you broke your promise?”

“It’s the best place to start. I told Graham to get the info to Sebastian and hopefully we can end this before it gets any worse. In the meantime, I want you to stop stressing about it. That can’t be good for the condition you’re dealing with right now with your heart.”

“See why I think that’s a ba…” He put his finger against my lips to hush me.

“Right now I see a beautiful woman who needs to get some sleep.”

“I, um, I’ve taken care of the birth control issue, in case, you know…” I stopped and waited for him to finish my sentence for me.

“In case I want to make love to you in this romantic cabin in the woods?”

I rolled back over and fluffed the pillow before laying my head down again. “Forget it. Good night.”

He reached over and flicked the lamp back on, which made me squeeze my eyes shut. He crawled over me and knelt on the floor, rubbing my forehead until my eyes opened.

“I wasn’t being sarcastic. Is that what you thought?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what to think anymore, Gideon. Let’s just get some sleep. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be back on my game.”

“Your game? Like your ‘I’m going to take everything Gideon says and put a bad spin on it so I don’t fall in love with him’ game?”

I rose up and stuck my finger in his chest. “I don’t do that. For your information, I’m not going to fall in love with you.”

He removed my finger from his shirt and held it in his hand. “Really? Because when I was holding you in that shower and you were calling my name it sounded a lot like a woman falling in love.”

I snorted and rolled to my back, folding my arms over my chest. “And how would you know? You told me all the women you’ve slept with weren’t in love with you. Besides, I wasn’t the only one calling someone’s name. I heard my name falling from your lips, too.”

“Yes, it was, because I love you.”

I sat bolt upright. “What?”

There was a knock on the door. “Is everything all right in there?”

I dropped my head into my hand and he chuckled before calling back. “Everything is fine. We’re just having a difference in opinion.”

I heard Marcus laugh as he walked away from the door. Before he got to the stairs he yelled, “There’s a sleeping bag under the bed in case you get in hot water, Gideon.”

There was silence between us for what seemed like forever. He pushed himself up, disappeared into the kitchen and started rattling around. I glared at him long enough to see what he was doing, but dropped my eyes again when he walked back to me, two glasses and a bottle of amber liquid in his hand.

He poured a shot in each glass and handed me one. “Maybe we both need this.”

He slugged his back and I looked into the bottom of mine before setting it on the table.

“Liquid courage isn’t going to make what you just said go away.”

He picked up my glass and slugged it back, then shut the light off. He climbed over me, lying on his back far away from me.

“I know it won’t, but it might deaden the pain in my chest when I think about your reaction to what I just said.”

I lay on my back staring at the ceiling.

Why did he say that, Lord?

I told you Katie, he’s your soul mate.

Soul mates don’t fall in love in two days.

He’s been falling in love with you for months.

No, he’s been falling in love with the person he knew for an hour. He doesn’t know who I am and I don’t know who he is. How can we fall in love with each other without really knowing each other?

You know the most important parts about each other. He’ll do anything to protect you and you’ll do anything to make him feel better. You want to comfort him right now, don’t you?

I blew out an audible breath.
Yeah, I do want to comfort him. I want to say those same three words, but no matter how much I love him we can’t be together.

Because?

Because we come from different towns, different places, and different worlds. I live in Snowberry and he lives in Chicago. How do we make that work?

I waited, but there were no more answers coming tonight. He was leaving me to figure this out on my own. I could hear Gideon breathing next to me. I sat up and hugged my knees.

“How do you know what you’re feeling is love and not lust?” I asked, the darkness of the room giving me more courage than any I might find in a bottle.

“If it was lust I wouldn’t give a second thought to having sex with you and leaving in the morning.”

“Like you did all the other women.”

“Like I did all the other women, before you. I haven’t been with a woman since I met you. That’s because I connected with you that night without even having sex, and I wasn’t okay with you leaving in the morning. You consumed my very being.”

“And now that you know my real name and where I live, you know you love me? I haven’t even told you about my family.”

“I know that no matter where you live and no matter who or what your family was, I love you. I can’t take back the words I said, nor do I want to. You might as well know that I’m not going to give up on you. When life gets back to normal and we aren’t being thrown together by life-threatening circumstances, I’m still going to love you.”

“Why is it since you walked back into my life that I don’t want to be out of your arms? Why do I have this need in the pit of my stomach to be with you all the time? Why did I let myself go with you in the shower the way I did?”

I felt his hand run from my lower back up to my neck where he rubbed at the base of it. “I can’t answer those questions for you, but I can hold you in my arms. Maybe that will help you answer the rest of the questions you’re feeling in your heart. I can tell you that I don’t like not having you in my arms. I’ve had a need in the pit of my stomach for eleven months just to be with you again, and I let myself go with you in the shower because I love you. We still haven’t come together as one, but I feel as close to you as if we had. You gave me the greatest gift during that shower.”