“Then that talk before about possibly having been attracted to me for a long time—”
“Just talk.”
“Ah. Just talk. Well, then this is just a kiss.”
His mouth found hers. He was deliberate, giving her a chance to decide how she was going to react. He felt her take a step back, but she couldn’t go too far with the woodstove right there. She stumbled slightly, grabbed him by the hips, steadying herself. Nick wasn’t distracted. He relished the taste of her, the feel of her. She was strong and soft in all the right places.
“Is this what you mean by romantic entanglement?” he asked, amused, even as he kissed her again, forcing himself to resist doing more—carrying her off to bed, for instance.
She tightened her grip on him, and he wondered if she was doing the same—resisting, holding back.
Finally he released her and stood back.
She took a shallow breath. “I guess you had to get that out of your system. Maybe we both did. It’s good. The romantic entanglement stuff is behind us. Now we can be…” She considered a moment. “Friends and colleagues.”
“Ah. That’s what I was thinking. Couldn’t you tell? Is that what you want, Rose, for us to be friends and colleagues?”
“It’s what has to be.”
“Not what I asked.”
“I wanted that kiss,” she whispered.
“Which kiss? The chaste one you gave me or the one I gave you?”
“Chaste?” She laughed, her eyes sparking. “That’s not a word I expected from Nick Martini, submariner, smoke jumper and multimillionaire, ass-kicking businessman.”
“What word would you use?”
“Careful. Repressed.” She pushed both hands through her tangled hair. “I’m not good with emotion.”
“You wanted more than a kiss,” he said, then added, “You do now. So do I.”
Color rose in her cheeks.
He decided he’d made his point. “It’s not a good idea for you to stay here, Rose.”
She nodded. “I know. I’ll get my things. If you can grab Ranger’s food and dishes, I’ll pack.”
Nick was already on the way to the kitchen.
She took her Jeep. Nick understood. She wasn’t going to be stranded. She was independent, and she was afraid. Having her own transportation gave her confidence. He was unsettled himself as he walked into the lodge under the starlit sky, the unfamiliar landscape spread out around him. He could do snow and cold and all that, but Black Falls was a small New England town and new turf. He knew the players only from stories from Sean and trips west by various friends and family members.
He’d met Rose several times but hadn’t considered sleeping with her until fate had thrown them together in June.
At least in the lodge there was no question of sharing a bed or even a room.
Maybe that was why she’d agreed to spend another night there.
As soon as he arrived at the lodge, Nick went up to his room and checked the phone messages, but there was nothing new on Portia Martinez or the missing actor.
He met Rose in the dining room. She wasn’t wearing a badly hand-knitted sweater tonight. Instead she wore a black knit dress with her hair up. She even wore makeup, her eyes smoky, her lips glossy and very pink.
She could fit in anywhere—on a mountaintop, a wilderness rescue or at a Beverly Hills party.
“We’re expecting snow tonight,” she said as she sat across from him. “Just a few inches.”
“Great,” Nick replied with a wry smile.
She ordered handmade wild mushroom ravioli and a salad. He ordered the same. The discovery in the guesthouse and the murder in California weren’t far from his mind, nor, he thought, hers, but both had experience compartmentalizing such things and pretending otherwise.
Seventeen
G rit stood by Sean Cameron’s glistening pool and remembered his first days of SEAL training, with the Pacific Ocean glistening before him. He hadn’t considered he might fail. He’d entered the weeks of difficult training not with cockiness but with absolute certainty. He’d known he’d be a SEAL.
That was over a decade ago. He’d had two whole legs back then, and he’d only imagined what combat was like.
Hell, he’d only imagined what life outside the Florida Panhandle was like.
Now he’d experienced both combat and life outside of his hometown and the Taylor world of tupelo honey. He wondered if he was certain about anything anymore.
He settled for appreciating the sunshine and his pleasant surroundings.
He was back to thinking of Beth Harper as a sister again. She and Hannah were doing laps in the azure water, their way, he suspected, of combating their fears and frustrations.
Beth came up for air and hugged the side of the pool. She was in a tank suit two tones darker than her eyes. Grit figured Thorne was an idiot for getting into a snit and leaving her in California. “What did you and Trooper Thorne do while he was out here?” Grit asked. “You had a couple days together, right?”
She glowered at him. “Scott’s not your firebug.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“We hung out. He was preoccupied. We argued. He went home.”
“Your firefighter brother?”
She tilted her turquoise eyes up to him. “Don’t even go there.”
“Just curious. He was here for a few days, too. Also went home.”
“As planned,” Beth said. “We all hitched a ride out here on Sean’s plane. Zack and Scott flew back commercial coach. That’s it. No drama, no mystery.”
“Your brother attracts the women, right? The Neal sisters have been to Black Falls. Maybe one or more of them has a crush on Firefighter Zack.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Not that it’s true.”
“I get on your nerves, don’t I, Beth?”
She sighed. “Isn’t that your objective?”
He truly had no idea what she was talking about. “My objective?”
She scowled and kicked out her legs behind her, splashing water before going still again. “I didn’t mean ‘objective’ in the military sense.”
Grit still didn’t have a clue and abandoned trying to figure out what she meant.
Beth plunged backward into the water and swam a few yards to the end of the pool. She jumped out, grabbed a big towel off a lounge chair and wrapped it around her. “You should go for a swim.”
“It’s not that warm out,” Grit said.
“The pool’s heated, and like you care given the places you’ve had to swim.”
Pure conjecture on her part. “You’ve got goose bumps. You’re missing Trooper Thorne, aren’t you?”
“He’s not missing me,” she muttered, dropping onto the lounge chair.
Grit eyed her from his position at the pool’s edge. Somehow she’d managed to sound objective, not whiny. “Things are happening again, Beth,” he said.
She spread her towel over her legs and didn’t respond. Hannah continued swimming laps on the other side of the pool. Her brother Devin had stopped by after work at Cameron & Martini and had gone for a run, determined to stick to his training program. Grit recognized the kid’s enthusiasm and drive. Devin Shay was committed to becoming a smoke jumper.
He hadn’t had that drive in Black Falls. He’d been haunted by the death of Drew Cameron, who had taken the orphaned teenager under his wing, and by his own brush with Lowell Whittaker’s killers.
Grit was still figuring out the people of Black Falls, Vermont. The ones who’d stayed, the ones who’d left. He was sure Sean and Hannah would end up back there, at least on a part-time basis. Grit had no illusions he could live again in his hometown. His family would welcome him back, but he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.