Total Package (3 page)

“I do not think of you as just a woman,” Danya said slowly, thoughtfully, with that touch of foreign formality.

He eased down to the log and studied her, his face all angles in the mist and eery moonlight. “Good. Just keep thinking of me as your buddy and we’ll be fine. Men usually think of me that way and I’m used to talking straight with them, no female chatter for me. Do you have a sexual problem? Because if you do, I can’t help you there.”

Was he trying not to smile? “Not that I know of.”

“What’s your sexual history? I’m just asking because I don’t want to be jumped by some guy with stored up—some guy needing relief. I mean, have you done it since your wife—you know?”

“A few times. But I didn’t find what my wife and I had and I needed that to feel complete.”

“No offense, but you understand why I need to be careful.”

“You have my word that I will not touch you—like that. But it is nice to listen to you talk. If you would stay with me, it would fill the hours.”

She eyed him and could find no humor in that hard face. “Are you saying that I talk too much? Because I’m just trying to help you, after all.”

“I am saying that I would be pleased if you would share my home tonight.” Again, his formality caused Sidney to be uneasy. But then, she’d met a few European males and though this guy was born in the U.S., sometimes family traditions carried over; he probably even spoke Russian. She’d noticed that same formality in Mikhail Stepanov, and a slight disdain for the models hovering around him.

“I’m not having sex with you—just getting that straight upfront. Been there, done that, with Mr. Rabbit, and it wasn’t fun. What happened to these other women you’ve had?”

Danya looked out to the black waves. “Correction—a couple of women, each for a brief time. It seems that I am a good matchmaker. Through me, they met someone more suitable than myself.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. So you were dumped. Danya, you can’t think of yourself as a life’s loser just because you were dumped.”

“That is good advice. I’m tired and my cabin is just a little bit farther. Do you want to go on, or back to the resort?”

Sidney yawned and thought of the primping models waiting to give her facials, pluck her eyebrows, share intimate girl-talk and discuss silly fashions. “If I could pull up a piece of your floor for my sleeping bag, I’d be grateful.”

He nodded and stood. Exhausted now, Sidney yawned again and looked down at the big hand extended to help her to her feet.

Bulldog wouldn’t like her accepting help, but since this guy needed lots of touching to get him through the night, what did it matter?

In her lifetime, Sidney had had to make quick decisions and always trusted her judgment. Now it told her that she could trust this man. He needed companionship for the night and she needed rest.

It would all work out, she decided as she walked with him to his cabin.

And then her artistic photographer’s mind added an enticing thought—he was gorgeous and just maybe she could get some really good shots, a portrait in black and white would really emphasize that rugged face.

That long lean body wasn’t that bad, either, she decided, and it would be perfect for some excellent shots, maybe for magazine ads. She might even be a factor in changing his life, in starting him in new successful directions, in giving him a new and beautiful slant on life.

Hey, when opportunity raised its beautiful, profitable head, who was she to deny it?

S

He really should feel guilty—after all, if he hadn’t been enjoying her so much, he would have worked harder to correct her “jumper” image of him. But the need to explore Sidney Blakely more was too irresistible to ignore.

She had absolutely no idea how appealing she was, nor how she had aroused him…he concluded as she mounted the steps to the cabin ahead of him.

His hands ached to cup her bottom, to feel that softness, as the scent of her tightened every muscle in his body. The immediate need to stake his claim on this woman surprised him.

She was not wearing any underclothing.

On the cabin porch, she looked around to see the wind chimes made of spoons, and a delicate fingertip reached to toy with them. A woman who had lived with men, communicated on their no-nonsense level, Sidney liked to keep her options open. “I could sleep right here, listening to the ocean.”

He wanted her in his bed—now.
“It will rain soon. You’ll keep drier inside, and you could sleep in—if you’re not shooting tomorrow.”

“Oh, that sounds so good. I’ve been missing sleep.”

He understood perfectly; Sidney had come to Kamakani’s grave site to discuss her ill-fated love for “Mr. Rabbit.”

Danya thought of making slow, soft love to her, of waking up to her and moving into her, and his body tightened painfully.
After all these years of emptiness, why this special woman? Why tonight?

Inside the cabin, Sidney looked around at the Spartan furnishings—the big solid Stepanov bed and dresser, a plain table and two chairs, a kitchenette. She walked to the tiny bathroom and peeked inside. “Great,” she stated approvingly.

“Sid?” Danya unfurled her sleeping bag and placed it against a corner of the room. He could see her plainly now, the practical short hair cut. Her eyes were dark brown and large, almost like a fawn’s, her lashes sweeping shadows down that pale soft skin. She wore no cosmetics, and he ached to taste that slender throat, to nibble on those small ears.

His body knew it had been years since he’d made love to a woman, awakening now to the twin peaks of her breasts, nudging the heavy sweatshirt.

“Yeah?” She was stretching and yawning and Danya ached to hold that small shapely body tight against him. She rotated her head and bent to touch her toes several times and the cargo pants tightened over her curved backside.

He ached to be inside, filling her—

“I thought you might like this.” He reached down to a laundry basket on the floor and pulled out a folded T-shirt, tossing it to her.

Sidney came close to study the framed picture on the dresser, a young Danya and his bride, just after their wedding. “I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching to touch his back and when she looked up at him, her eyes spoke more than words. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yes, very beautiful. A treasure of the heart. I will keep her always there,” he said solemnly, meaning it.

“That’s beautiful, Danya. But you’ve got to live your life. If I go to sleep, you won’t do anything rash, will you?”

He shook his head. “I’m too tired. Emotions, you know. I don’t suppose you could—no…I won’t ask.”

Danya almost felt guilty—but not quite as Sidney’s expressive eyes filled with him. “What, Danya?”

“Could I hold you?”

Instantly she was alert and stepping back warily from him. “Whoa, champ. I’m
not
the girl you want.”

She was exactly the woman he wanted.
“Sorry. I get the need sometimes to hold a woman. Just hold her, and I don’t know why, but women get ideas and the next thing you know—”

She seemed to relax. “Human touch, right?”

Sidney stepped closer with the determined air of one who is sacrificing. “Hold me. Do it, now. You’ve got thirty seconds.”

Danya eased her against him, rested his chin over hers, and inhaled her fragrance and closed his eyes, focusing on the fit, the feel of her in his arms. Inside, where his heart had been cold and hurt, the warmth of pleasure and delight began—

“Time’s over,” Sidney said, pushing away.

He forced himself to release her. “Thanks. I feel better now.”

“Yeah, well.” She cleared her throat and backed away, her expression wary as she bent to collect her things. She turned and hurried into the bathroom.

Danya rubbed his stubble-covered jaw. At three o’clock in the morning, there was nothing he wanted to do more than cuddle Sidney Blakely. With a sigh, Danya turned off the lights, undressed and slid into his lonely bed.

Inside the bathroom, Sidney quickly undressed and slid on her comfortable boxer shorts and Danya’s overlarge T-shirt. She was shaking.

She’d wanted to nail him, to stake him out on that big bed and have him.
Sexual impulses didn’t come to her often—
maybe never. Sex with Ben, her only lover to date, had been too fast and had left her simmering.

The poor guy was thinking about suicide and mourning his wife, and Sidney was thinking about how good he felt up close and that just maybe she might get a good photo layout of him. She was scum to even think about nabbing him and curling up to that nice big hard warm body—She shook her head. There was no way she would take advantage of a sweet man like that, using him for her own satisfaction.

She was just tired and emotional, she decided as she left the bathroom and found the main room dark and cozy. A pillow and a sheet lay on her sleeping bag and it looked like heaven.

Danya’s broad back was turned to her and Sidney spread the sheet over the bag, slid onto it, and folded the rest of the sheet over her. She punched the pillow into shape and with the ease of someone who took what she could get on the spot, quickly dropped into sleep.

Danya listened to her deep easy breathing and turned to look at the slight, curved shadow on the floor. The sheet had slid from her bare leg and her hands were up by her face, almost like a child’s.

He eased from his bed and walked to crouch and study the woman who had no idea how much she fascinated him…. Her lips were generous and soft, slightly parted; her lashes swept shadows down that fine pale skin.

A compassionate woman, she’d endangered herself to rescue someone she thought might leap to his death. Unfamiliar with caresses or letting her body rest against a man’s, she’d still let him hold her; she’d touched him because she thought he needed the warmth of another human.

But on the rebound, Sidney wasn’t in the market for romance, and that was just what Danya had in mind.

It would take all his willpower to treat her as a friend, when he really wanted to make love with her. He scanned the
curved line of her body beneath the sheet, his hand aching to skim that warmth.

Very little kept him from carrying her to his bed, where she belonged; very little kept him from holding her safe and warm, to cherish her.

To move into a relationship with this brusque, but caring woman, would be no easy task. She’d been wounded by a former lover and was wary of men, but Danya intended to be very patient and he intended to have her as his own….

Sidney awoke to the scent of coffee and the sight of Danya, holding a cup and staring off into the morning rain battering the cabin’s window. He wore only his jeans, his back broad and tanned in the dim light. The pose, the blend of shadow and light would have been wonderful for a photograph, that waving hair softening his hard profile, that jaw darkened by stubble. He looked thoughtful, grim and fierce.

“So how’s it going, buddy?” Sidney asked after yawning and stretching. “Feeling better?”

Apparently still deep in thought, he nodded. Sidney rose to her feet, shuffled to the kitchenette to pour herself a cup of coffee. She took a sweet roll from the plastic container, and walked to stand beside him. “Thanks for last night…letting me crash here, I mean.”

“Sure.”

Rain pounded the windows, the dim light outside casting shadows on Danya’s hard face; his mood seemed to match the elements outside. “Are you going to be okay today?”

“Yes. Alexi and I are remodeling, adding a family room onto a house. You can stay here, if you want, Sid. I mean, you can move in with me, if you want, to escape those models. It’s up to you. But there could be gossip. People might think that we were lovers.”

She studied the shadows beneath his eyes, the look of a man who had been through hell, who had been on some in
visible edge, fighting the tethers that bound him. “I’ve bunked with men before.”

Danya inhaled suddenly, then released his breath slowly. He looked at her and his eyes were the color of blue ice. “This is different. I don’t want you to have problems.”

She’d heard that the Stepanov males were very gallant, but manners and female-male role playing weren’t for her; they just cluttered up life and took time she didn’t have. “The only problem I am going to have is that darned windup dance and social thingie at the end of this shoot. Marvelous Calendars insists on it. All the bigwigs are going to come down and I’ve got orders to look like a woman—put on a dress and makeup and everything. I’m supposed to bring a date.”

“That is rough.”

“Real rough. You’d think if I do a good job—and I do—that would be all that was required, but oh, no. I have to mix with the brass and schmooze with the models and be one of the girls. I am going to have to dance with the execs—in dress shoes, not boots.”

“Torture,” he agreed softly.

“You know it. If the weather clears, we’ve got about two, three days fast shooting and then I’m doomed.” Sidney yawned and stretched and settled into enjoy her momentary reprieve from the models. She ate the sweet roll and sipped her coffee, then she licked her fingers. Danya had been studying her intensely and his body was tense next to hers; his breathing seemed to be controlled, rather than natural. She’d been remiss not to offer him a bite; she was used to sharing whatever was at hand. “Want some?” she asked, holding up her sweet roll to him.

His hand wrapped around her wrist as he bent to take a bite, but his eyes never left hers. They were vividly blue and shadowed with heavy lashes. He straightened, still studying her, his thumb caressing her inner wrist. “About Ben. You loved him?”

Sidney was uncomfortable with that slow caress, but if the guy needed contact, she could give him that. “I still do, the rat. I’m going back to bed, if it’s okay with you.”

“My bed,” he said quietly, watching her. “I’ll be gone. You might as well use it. You’ve got sugar on your fingers—shame to waste it.”

Sidney watched, riveted as Danya’s dark head bent and his warm mouth closed over each fingertip, sucking it.

The quivery sensations shot up her arm and down her body to lodge low in her belly; her mouth dried and her throat tightened as she stared at him. When Danya’s head lifted, he smiled at her and her heart did some flip-flop thing. “No finger licking,” she said unevenly.

“But it would be a shame to waste, would it not?” His voice was deep and intimate, his phrasing formal.

“I guess it’s okay this time.”

Danya had kept her hand, holding it as they turned to watch the dim morning, rain slashing the windows.

Sidney held very still. She was very aware of him, of how large his body was to hers, of his body heat, of his hand, rough against hers. “So, chum. Are you going to be okay today? I mean, if I go to sleep, will you be okay?”

“Of course. I have work to do. Work is good. You are welcome here.”

“Thanks. Maybe I will sleep in. A good morning for that.”

He seemed to tense, and those blue eyes flashed down at her. “Yes,” Danya said unevenly, “A very good morning for staying in bed.”

Danya tried to focus on the cabinets his brother and he were installing into the family room addition, but his mind was on Sidney—lying in his bed.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, the day was clearing, and he’d already had several calls on his cell phone from his obviously amused family—Sidney had seemed concerned for him and was hunting him. She’d been to the Stepanov Furniture factory, talked with Fadey and Viktor, Danya’s father, who had found her to be fresh and delightful. She’d taken pictures of Fadey and Viktor in a spirited folk dance, and she’d
joined them in it. Danya’s father said he had hugged her—a traditional big bear hug, kissing both sides of her cheeks, and “she felt like a sweet little bird in his arms, before she squirmed away.”

According to Mikhail’s report, she’d worked in her suite at the Amoteh Resort, requesting a sandwich from room service. Alexi’s cell phone had rung several times, and from his brother’s expression, Danya knew that the entire family was watching the “Sidney situation.” She had been careful to ask that someone was with him and to pinpoint his quitting time. She’d murmured something obscure, “He’s a lonely kind of guy. I really don’t think he should be left alone.”

Mikhail and Jarek, Danya’s cousins, were sitting on sawhorses now, using the excuse of a coffee break to come to the remodeling project. Apparently their wives were seeking information about the woman Danya had brought back to his cabin, and needed their husbands to scout for information. Danya didn’t want the whole Stepanov clan to descend upon Sidney, frightening her away. “She is…unusual…sweet…and completely unaware that she is so—feminine and fascinating. She considers us to be buddies. I prefer to keep it that way.”

“Of course,” Mikhail agreed firmly. “I’ve met her. She’s fast moving, thorough, and completely professional. She doesn’t want a man opening a door for her, but she will open them for a man—quite unusual woman, eats on the run and seems in perpetual motion. The models like her, but she doesn’t want any ‘hugging, sloppy stuff,’ as she says. She strikes me as a person who is more of an observer of life, rather than one who actually lives with day-to-day relationships.”

“Not a clue that you want her, hmm?” Jarek asked.

“She’s just been hurt by man who married someone else. I met her up on Strawberry Hill last night and she needed a place to stay away from the resort. I intend to give her time to adjust to a comfortable relationship.”