One Summer (19 page)

There was not another person to be seen for miles. They could have been the only two people in the world.

Although the nightmares he’d suffered had mostly subsided once he’d gotten back to work, for the first time in as long as he could remember, Gabe felt both his mind and body begin to relax.

“This is nice,” she said, unknowingly repeating his thoughts as they walked along damp sand strewn with rounded stones, bits of shiny quartz, seashells, and kelp.

“You’re not going to get any argument from me.”

A drizzling moisture—more than mist, not quite rain, and almost invisible to the eye—began to fall. After all the years living with the constant sand and dust in Iraq and Afghanistan that would embed itself into tents, trucks, and every pore in his body, the light rain felt clean, fresh, and cool.

“Want to go back?” He wasn’t all that eager to, but felt obliged to ask.

“Why?”

“It’s raining.”

She laughed and lifted her face to the sky. “You’re in Oregon. This is what natives call liquid sunshine. If you want to see
real
rain, you’ll have to stick around a few months.”

Her laugh affected him like sunshine. Linking their fingers together, he balanced her as she stepped over some slick, seaweed-draped rocks.

“My former fiancé comes from an old, established Chicago family,” she said out of the blue. “Not only does it predate the Great Fire, Ethan can trace his family line all the way back to Stephen Douglas.”

“Of the Lincoln-Douglas debates?”

“That would the be one.”

“Guess they were also loaded?”

“That’s putting it mildly. Their main business is international commodities trading, but they’ve got their fingers into just about any financial pie you can name. Banking, real estate, insurance. The wedding was at the chichi Oakbridge Polo Club. Where the Douglases have been members for all eighty years of its existence.”

“I can’t trace my family tree back eighty years.” He’d never wanted to, either.

“Join the club.” She bent over, picked up a variegated stone, and tossed it into the surf. Gabe suspected she was gathering her thoughts, trying, yet again, to decide how much to share.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t grow up without money,” she continued. “My mother always said you can fall in love with a rich man as well as a poor one, and since you may have noticed that if you Google
high maintenance
, you’d get about a gazillion hits with her photo, their wealth didn’t intimidate me. Nor did the fact that Ethan’s father and uncles sat on boards of so many corporations. Thanks to Mom’s liking the high life, I know how to play country-club games.”

“Even though you don’t like them.”

“Hate them,” she admitted. She looked up at him. He could see the reflection of himself trapped in her rain-forest green eyes. “Be honest. Can you see me fitting in with the polo set?”

“Honestly?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I wanted you to lie.”

“Okay, the truth is, I can see you fitting into whatever life you chose. Or whatever situation you landed in.”

“Well.” She seemed a bit surprised by that. And more than a little pleased. “Thank you.”

“Like I said, it’s the truth. But since you had family money, it couldn’t have been that much of a stretch for you.” Not enough of one to make her former fiancé’s wealth an issue.

“Thanks to some wise investments my grandfather made, I’ve always been comfortable. But unlike my mother, I’ve never been into social cliques, or status, or any of that stuff. I hate the game playing, and while that’s very nice of you to say you can imagine me fitting in anywhere, I’m honestly not very good at it. As Mrs. Douglas was always pointing out.”

“Mrs. Douglas sounds like she was as much of an idiot as her son.”

“Ethan graduated summa cum laude from Princeton. Along with an MBA from Wharton business school and a Harvard law degree. That’s what he does, mostly. Business law for the family firm.”

“Good for Ethan.” But the guy was still obviously an idiot for letting this woman get away.

“So, Mrs. Douglas—and no, I was never invited to call her by her first name, in case you were wondering— insisted I take etiquette training so I’d know which of about a gazillion forks to use for formal occasions. Did you know that the oyster fork is the only fork ever to be placed on the right side of a plate?”

“I didn’t even know there was such a thing as an oyster fork.”

“Neither did I. It does, however, go to the right of the spoons.”

“I’ll keep that in mind in case I ever encounter one at the Crab Shack.”

“Good idea. Needless to say, I pretty much flunked the part of the test that covered the nuances of formalized behavior people like the Douglases live by.”

“So why did you get engaged to the guy?”

“Believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time asking myself the same question. And it’s complicated to explain, but looking back on it, I think one of the main reasons I accepted Ethan’s proposal was that while he could admittedly be stuffy, I found the rock-solid stability of his family appealing.”

“You wanted to set down roots.” Another reason he should just stay the hell away from her.

“Exactly.”

“Which you’ve managed to do for yourself here in Shelter Bay. So it looks as if you didn’t need your fiancé for that.”

“True.” She paused, as if trying to decide whether to tell him the entire story of how she’d become a runaway bride and ended up here on the edge of the continent, in Shelter Bay, Oregon.

He waited. If there was one thing both the Marines and photography had taught him, it was patience.

Finally, she shook her head. “As I said earlier, it’s too lovely an evening to ruin it by talking about this,” she said. When she shrugged, the blouse slipped off her shoulder, revealing enticingly smooth skin. “I’ve no idea why I brought the subject up again.”

“Maybe because it still bugs you.”

“I told you, I don’t have any feelings for Ethan. What bugs me is making such a mistake.”

“We all make mistakes. At least yours wasn’t fatal.”

“Good point.”

The tide was beginning to come in. Foamy waves lapped closer and closer toward the towering cliff. Out at sea, the setting sun created a gilded path that looked as if you could walk right out over the curve of the earth.

Turning back to avoid running out of room, they dodged around the blackened remains of a beach bonfire.

They were walking side by side in companionable silence when Gabe decided that maybe he wasn’t in such a hurry to move on after all. It wasn’t as if he had a hard deadline. He’d made that clear when he’d agreed to sign on to the project.

“I’ll do it.”

“What?” He’d surprised her again. When she slipped climbing over a wet, mossy driftwood log, he reacted instinctively, catching her as she nearly fell into his arms.

Oh, damn. As his hands bracketed her hips, Gabe told himself that he was only steadying her until she caught her balance again.

“I said I’ll do it. The camp thing.”

Her smile was blinding, like a sunset breaking through the quilted gray sky. “Oh, thank you! I promise you won’t regret it.”

Part of him, the part that had been determined to get out of Dodge before he found himself getting involved with this woman, already did.

“If you plan to print out those photos, you’re going to need printers.”

“I have two at my office. Since I’m having another vet from Depoe Bay fill in for me during the afternoons when I’m at the camp, I could take one of them. And I can probably round up more if I ask around.”

“Don’t bother. I’ve two large-format ones I’ll bring with me.”

“That’s very thoughtful.”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t dumped on the system like the kids you get at your camp. My parents didn’t die until my freshman year of college. But they weren’t the easiest people to live with, so I pretty much ended up raising myself. I probably could’ve ended up going down a wrong and very rocky road if someone hadn’t stuck a camera in my hand when I was fifteen. So I’m not going to turn down a chance to pay it forward.”

“Okay. Despite the fact that you weren’t exactly George Clooney suave when we first met at the wedding, I’m starting to like you, Gabriel St. James.”

“Well, that’s handy. Since I already like you back.” Unable to resist, he skimmed his fingertips down her cheek.

Insane,
the little voice of conscience, of sanity, shouted out from the far reaches of his mind.
It’d be sheer lunacy to get involved with this woman.

True. But as noisy gulls wheeled overhead and the sun sank silently into the water, Gabe ignored it, lowered his head, and touched his mouth to hers. And in that instant knew, in what small part of his brain was still operating, that he was sunk.

She was so incredibly soft. As soft as the mist surrounding them. And he was so frigging, painfully hard.

Even as he knew the smart thing, the logical thing, the
safe
thing, to do would be to pull away, he drew her even closer.

Her breath caught. Then she opened her lips, inviting him to deepen the kiss. Which he did.

Her cool lips warmed. Her body, which had momentarily tensed when he’d captured her mouth, slowly relaxed.

Heat, already sparked, crackled, zigzagging back and forth between them like summer lightning.

He wanted her. Naked. Beneath him. Surrounding him.

The mist had beaded up on that honey-hued shoulder, creating a wild need to bite it. He doubted she’d object, because unless every instinct Gabe possessed had suddenly gone on the blink, which wouldn’t be all that surprising since the intensity appeared to have short-circuited his brain, she wanted him, too.

As IEDs exploded inside him, Gabe knew that with the slightest effort—a stroke of the hand here, a touch of the lips where that pulse was beating beneath her jaw, some hot words whispered into her ear—he could be back at the motor home tangling the sheets with the lovely and luscious Dr. Charity Tiernan.

Just as he knew he shouldn’t do it.

He slowly, reluctantly lifted his head.

She blinked. Slowly. Once. Then again. Desire swirled like a tempest in her eyes.

Hell. Talk about the road to hell being paved with the best intentions… .

He pressed his hand against the small of her back, fitting her even more solidly against his aching erection. “Again.”

“Again,” she agreed in a low, throaty voice that had Gabe understanding why ancient sailors had believed in mermaids. And why they’d allowed themselves to be lured into treacherous, storm-tossed waters.

This time his mouth came down hard. And ruthless.

There was a rushing, like the sea, in his ears. As she rose up on her toes, straining against him, he was hit by a wave of emotion that battered against the rigid self-control he’d begun acquiring early in life to escape repeating his father’s mistakes. To keep his purpose.

Dr. Charity Tiernan was impossibly sweet. Kissing her was like a cool drink of water, or an icy beer after days spent crawling across scorching desert sands.

With heat curling deep in his belly, he slipped his hand beneath her blouse and felt her tremble, which sent a sense of power streaking through him. Although he didn’t know all that much about her, Gabe suspected that the intelligent, confident veterinarian was not a woman to tremble for just any man. Yet she was trembling for him.

Encouraged, and unable to resist, he shaped her breast with his palm and felt the sigh beneath his mouth.

Damn. It would have been easier if she’d resisted. Or even held back, just a little. But instead, she’d thrown herself into the kiss, giving without hesitation.

Although he may have remained resolutely celibate during his travels across America, Gabe had not forgotten how it felt to have his body burn in response to a woman. He was accustomed to a woman’s touch making his blood hot and he knew the ability of a woman’s mouth to fog his mind.

But this was different.

Never had he experienced such hunger from a mere kiss. It battered at him with an intensity that bordered terrifyingly on need.

Which was why, with a very real regret, and ignoring her faint murmured protest, he lifted his head and backed away.

Silence descended.

“Well.” She dropped her hands and took a deep breath that only drew his attention to those silky breasts he was still aching to lick. “That was … interesting.”

“If
interesting
is as high as you’re going to score it, I must have been doing it wrong.”

“No.” Another breath. “Actually, it was quite nice.” She surprised him by smiling at that at the same time she held up her hand. “Sorry. Delete
nice
. But I’m certainly not going to complain.”

“My ego thanks you.”

“I do have one question, which I usually wouldn’t ask at this point, but since it appears we’re going to be spending the next two weeks together …”

Her voice trailed off as she seemed to be thinking of how to phrase the question.

“Shoot.”

“Where exactly do we go from here?”

Talk about getting to the point. Although it would’ve been easier to lie, Gabe told the absolute truth. “I have no idea.” Then, because it was also fact, he said, “I know I want you. A lot.” And wasn’t that an understatement? He was perilously close to begging.

She tilted her head. If she was still even the slightest bit shaken by the kiss that had rocked his world, she didn’t show it. “You don’t sound very happy about that.”

“I’m not. I’ve always prided myself on my self-control.”

Another smile. That touched her eyes and, God help him, had him on the edge of groveling. “Me, too. Which is why I suspect I pretty much know what you’re feeling.”

“I can’t give you what you’re looking for.” He thought, since something was obviously happening between them, he ought to make that clear from the beginning.