Paradise County (16 page)

“The phone line’s down,” he said, holding his free hand beneath the spray, apparently to check the temperature. “After we get you and your sister squared away, I’ll go up and take a look around the house. If Whistledown’s really burning, at this point a few more minutes won’t make much difference one way or the other. And if there’s somebody in the house, I’m perfectly capable of handling it on my own.”

She didn’t doubt it.

“You don’t have a cell phone?” she asked as he withdrew his hand from the water, closed the shower door, and then reached behind him to push the bathroom door shut as well. Steam billowed up from the base of the shower, clouding the glass walls. Alex watched almost longingly.

“The reception’s spotty out here. No point.” He glanced down at her. His black hair glistened wet and sleek as a seal’s hide, throwing the hard planes and angles of his face into prominence. His forehead was high, his nose straight and not overlarge, his mouth firm and unsmiling, his jaw square. His skin was very tan, and his cheeks and chin were dark with
stubble. His eyes looked almost the color of water in the uncertain light. Mud streaked one cheek and the side of his nose. He was far bigger than she, both taller and broader, and his body was hard and warm against hers. To her astonishment she felt a tiny tingling awareness of him as a man awaken deep inside her, and her eyes widened fractionally on his face.

“Something wrong?” he asked, frowning down at her.

“No,” she managed.

“Okay, let’s get you warmed up.” If Welch was also experiencing a sexual awakening, he gave no sign of it. He reached down, scooping her up into his arms again as if she had no say in the matter at all, which she supposed that at this point she didn’t. Then, with him still fully dressed and her rather less so in her saturated nightgown and mud-caked loafers, he stepped into the shower with her. Hot water cascaded over both of them, blessedly welcome. Pools of brown water swirled down the drain as mud was sluiced from their bodies. Still shivering, Alex tightened her arms around his neck, turned her face up to the spray, and shut her eyes, trying at the same time to shut out the sudden unexpected attraction she felt for him.

It had to be a purely physiological response to being in such close proximity to an attractive male, she told herself. The good news was, it meant that her senses, frozen by the shock of her father’s death, were beginning to thaw. The bad news was, they were being indiscriminate about when and with whom they did it. If it had only happened earlier, if she had not kept Paul out of her bed for the last few horrible weeks, maybe he wouldn’t have turned to Tara Gould… .

Stop that, she ordered herself fiercely. She refused to think of Paul ever again. He was as lost to her as her father, and, in retrospect, far, far less beloved.

“Warmer?” Welch spoke almost in her ear. She refused to open her eyes. Being held in strong masculine arms against a strong masculine chest made it hard enough to forget that sensual tingle; seeing a strong masculine face so close to her own would make it just that much harder.

“Mm-hmm.”

Her limbs prickled as they warmed up, particularly her poor frozen
legs, which felt like they were being stabbed with dozens of tiny needles. Curling her toes in silent protest, she wriggled uncomfortably. Apparently mistaking her movement for a request to be put down, he lowered the arm beneath her knees, allowing her to slide down his body until her feet hit the floor. The friction of her body against his was unexpectedly erotic. Her eyes popped open, and her lips parted in surprise. His face was far too close for her peace of mind, she discovered. His head was bent over hers, once again protecting her from the full force of the deluge. His eyes as they met hers appeared darker than they had before, and Alex realized that his pupils had enlarged until they almost swallowed up the light irises. The mud was gradually disappearing from his cheek and nose as water sluiced down his face. If she had cared to do so, she could have counted every individual whisker in his unshaven chin.

“You’ve got mud on your face,” he said, cupping her chin in his hand as he rubbed at her cheek with his thumb. It was a surprisingly intimate gesture. Too intimate, she thought, for her peace of mind, and pulled her chin free.

“So do you.” Her voice was husky. She glanced away from him in pure self-defense. She did not like the reaction her body was having to him, and she certainly did not want him to know about it.

“The difference is, I’m used to mud.”

“What makes you think I’m not?” She looked at him again, unable to help herself. His gaze moved over her face, and one corner of his mouth twisted up wryly.

“Call it a hunch,” he said, gripping her waist again and turning her so that the hot water streamed down her spine.

Defending herself against her body’s natural responses was difficult under the circumstances, Alex discovered. She did not think she could stand up without his support, and under the circumstances his support required lots of physical contact. She could feel the firm grip of his hands on her waist. They were big and strong, possessive almost. Her hands remained linked behind his neck. Her arms were draped over the hard muscle and solid bone of his shoulders. Her body was plastered to his. Her breasts, naked except for the almost nonexistent veil of wet silk,
pressed tightly against the soaked flannel covering his chest. Although she was warm now, her nipples remained hard and puckered, sensitized by their close contact with his body. The realization that she was getting well and truly turned on by him unnerved her. It had been so many weeks since she had felt anything, much less anything sexual, that she was alarmed by the renaissance of her own senses, especially since it was happening courtesy of this particular man.

Wasn’t this the same rude, impossible man who had been so difficult to deal with just a few hours earlier? How could he possibly be affecting her so?

“Hang on,” he said, and let go of her waist to reach for the soap in the dish built into the white-tiled wall. Picking up the green-speckled bar, he worked it into a lather. The smell was spicy, pungent, a stronger version of the faint scent she had noticed about him earlier—Irish Spring? she wondered.

“Close your eyes,” he directed, interrupting her thoughts. When she obeyed, he ran his soapy hands over her face, his fingertips lightly brushing over her cheekbones, down the bridge of her nose and around her mouth to her chin. They were faintly callused, and his palms were large and square, the hands of a man accustomed to working with them for a living. The smell of the soap was stronger than ever. The sound of the shower reminded her of the driving rain outside. Only this onslaught of water was hot and welcome—like his touch. She found herself breathless suddenly as she imagined his hands in other places, busy at other things.

“Tilt your face up.”

She did, and he turned with her so that the water poured over her face and upper body, rinsing away the soap. Then he moved again so that his back took the brunt of the spray, and returned the soap to the dish. Blinking away the droplets that still ran down her face, she opened her eyes and watched as he washed his own face now, scrubbing both soapy hands over it, then tilted his head back so that the suds were rinsed away. Fascinated, she stared at the strong brown column of his throat, at the hard line of his jaw, at the firm, well-shaped mouth and the black crescents of his lashes that lay against tanned, unshaven cheeks.

There was nothing to stop her from pressing her mouth to his throat, unbuttoning his shirt and running her hands over his chest, delving inside his jeans… . Stop! she told herself frantically, horrified at the direction of her thoughts. Of course, she had no intention of doing any of those things, or indeed anything sexual with him at all, but the desire was there, as powerful as any she had ever felt.

Why now? Why him? The questions swirled through her mind even as she registered various sensations with an almost guilty pleasure. Her nipples tingled as the hard wall of his chest rubbed against them. She could feel the flexing of his muscles every time he moved. Her body with its covering of wet silk slithered against the wet flannel of his shirt and the hard denim of his jeans; unable to help herself, she gave in to the urge to get closer to him yet and pressed her pelvis discreetly against his muscled thigh. The sensation produced by her nearly naked body pushing against his clothed one was indescribable. Heat shot through her body. Her pulse quickened. Her loins clenched. The intense physicality of her reaction stunned her. He was reacting, too. Against her stomach she could feel the surging bulge in the front of his jeans, growing unmistakably hard. His head snapped upright, and their eyes met and held. His were narrowed and faintly wary, as though his reaction was as much of a surprise to him as hers was to her.

Thirteen

H
is eyes remained locked with hers as his hands closed over her hipbones. He shifted positions slightly, his jeans-clad thigh pushing deliberately now against the juncture of hers. He was looking down at her, unsmiling, his gaze sliding from her eyes to her mouth. Her lips parted in response to the smoldering quality of that look. Her insides quivered and quaked.

Then his eyes flickered, his mouth compressed, and he used his tightened grip on her hipbones to edge her away from him, putting a few millimeters of space between their lower bodies.

“You’ve got mud in your hair, too,” he said, his voice devoid of inflection. As Alex registered that he didn’t mean to follow through on the supercharged atmosphere that had sprung up between them, he maneuvered her so that the full force of the water pounded down directly on top of her head, presumably to remove the mud of which he spoke. The water hit the cut in her crown; her head seemed to explode with pain, and she yelped in agonized surprise. Immediately all thoughts of a sexual nature were forgotten as she jerked her head out of harm’s way.

“What?” He was frowning down at her.

“My head. There’s a cut.” The burning pain was enough to get her
mind off his body, for which she was thankful. She had been so cold, and so wet, and so shaken up, that she had almost forgotten about the original injury to her head. Now it was reminding her of its existence with a vengeance.

“How’d you cut your head?” He turned with her so that his back was to the spray again and her head was completely shielded from the water by his upper body.

“I told you, there was someone in my bedroom when I woke up. I chased whoever it was into the hall, and—and I think they hit me over the head with something. It knocked me out for a few minutes. When I came to, they were gone and my head was bleeding.”

“And you’re just now getting around to mentioning it?” He sounded exasperated. “Show me.”

Alex obediently tilted her head forward, careful to keep the injury out of the stream of water, and swept her dripping hair out of the way with one hand so that he could see the approximate location of the wound. The whole crown of her head throbbed and burned. Until now, she guessed, the site must have been pretty much numb from the cold.

“See?”

He let out a near-silent whistle. “No wonder you’re having trouble standing up.”

His fingers gently probed the area, and she winced.

“You’ve got a nasty cut, right on top of a lump the size of a golf ball.” He withdrew his hand. Dropping her hair back into place, Alex looked up to meet his gaze. “Are you telling me that someone attacked you inside the house?” There was the faintest hint of skepticism in his tone.

Alex bristled. “What I’m telling you is, there was somebody in my bedroom. Whoever it was, was standing at the foot of my bed when I woke up. I distinctly heard them breathing, in and out, really loud, like this.” She demonstrated. “I chased the breathing out into the hall, and—and I stumbled, and got hit over the head. I think whoever it was hit me, but I can’t be sure. I might have hit my head on something. It was dark; the lights were out. I couldn’t see anything.”

He said nothing more for a moment, frowning slightly as he seemed
to mull over her words. Tired of looking up at him, Alex gave in to weakness and closed her eyes, resting her cheek on his chest. The hot water had warmed her nicely, but in exchange she now had to endure stabbing, burning pain. She didn’t know which was worse, hurting or feeling frozen. She did know that the explosion of pain in her head had taken the edge off her nascent sexual interest in Welch. It had not, however, undermined her growing feeling that she could rely on him. Given the events of earlier in the day—she had fired the man, after all, and he hadn’t reacted too kindly to it—she was a little surprised to discover that she was perfectly willing to let him deal with the present situation as he saw fit. At least, she would be if she were convinced that he appreciated the facts of what she was telling him.

She opened her eyes. “Believe me, I didn’t just imagine the whole thing.” Her voice was tart.

“You didn’t imagine getting hit over the head, that’s for sure.” He sounded thoughtful.

Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t imagine the rest of it, either.”