“We wiped out. Damned trees,” he said disgustedly.
She laughed. “I thought we were flying. Maybe Parker’s right about your being ‘ballaster.’ Don’t blame the trees, you big lug.”
She wasn’t sure what happened then. She was trying to rise, and he was still brushing the snow from her cheeks. His face suddenly blocked the sunlight, and she saw his eyes. What had been clear and bright became hazy and soft. A cold day turned hot. And there was no one there on earth but the two of them.
She never saw the kiss coming. His lips were suddenly there, cool and smooth on hers, in total contrast to the damp warmth of his tongue. He took no time for a tentative exploration, but claimed, now, with a hunger that wouldn’t wait, an urgency as naked and bold as a man’s desire.
The sun shone in her eyes and she had to close them. For hours, her whole body had been geared up for energy; suddenly, every muscle and pore felt sapped of will, languid and lazy. He was a thief. A kiss thief. A man who’d take advantage of a woman when she was down, and she had no excuse for letting her arms slide around his neck. The tumble must have addled her wits, but his breath was so clean and fresh. His need touched something so purely feminine inside her…
“Snookums was hurt pretty bad, right?” Parker’s tone was knowing, as sage as an old-timer’s.
Rafe’s head lifted just inches from hers. He didn’t appear to notice either boy. His eyes swept over her face, her lips. “She had the wind knocked right out of her,” he confirmed. “My best guess is that she needs lots of kisses.”
Both boys were familiar with the therapy. Shortly thereafter, Zoe was drowned in kisses-most of them wet smackers delivered enthusiastically from very small lips. Above the boys’ heads, she could still see Rafe looking at her. She’d had the wind knocked out of her, all right.
Carting sleds and picnic gear back to his Jeep, she would have avoided looking at him altogether if he hadn’t grabbed her arm. “Where’s my lecture about not behaving myself?” he murmured.
She shook her head.
His look was watchful, even wary. “You’re starting to see?” he asked softly. “You
“That the children must be beginning to believe I’m accident-prone,” she said mildly, and turned away from him to climb into the Jeep.
Arguing with him was pointless. He really didn’t seem to understand that the closer he got to the children, the more impossible a relationship was for the two of them. He was a born father. Day by day, she was increasingly aware that she was a less than an adequate mother in instincts and judgment. She was too constantly afraid of doing wrong, too afraid the complex emotional baggage from her past would affect the kids in a negative way. Those feelings weren’t going away but only intensifying as she was thrown together with them day after day. Rafe always did the right thing. She always seemed to do the wrong one.
Loving him couldn’t make any difference. She wouldn’t let it. The children had to come first, and the best thing for them was obviously Rafe. Just Rafe. Not Rafe and flawed Zoe.
She wanted to be home. She so badly wanted to be home. In a couple of weeks, she could be there. She’d be able to hear the gulls and smell the sea. In Washington, she’d feel more rational. She’d built a fine life around her whales and her friends and her apartment, a life that so carefully didn’t include children. Or a man who came with kids.
Rafe would have her believe he needed and wanted her. What he really needed and wanted was a strong woman prepared to climb mountains with him. She wasn’t that woman. Once upon a time, yes; once upon a time, she’d had an ego healthy enough to believe she was really something, and that a little curve life threw her was not going to get her down. It
From snow to sea was a heady transition. The jet, the rented car and, last, the ferry, had brought her home to her island in Puget Sound. Zoe’s pulse pounded exuberantly those last miles. If she couldn’t see them yet, she could imagine the grape-winged gulls soaring overhead in search of their dinner, the jeweled colors of a sunset over the roar and pound of waves, the smell and flavor of a Pacific salt wind.
There’d been some question in her mind whether she’d survive the last two weeks in Montana. The answer was obvious. She had, and she was here. Home, where everything would be fine. She stole a glance at Rafe as he whisked a napping Aaron off her lap to carry him up to her door. In a denim jacket, the salt wind tangling in his hair, Rafe looked elementally male, and the tight-lipped look he shot her was unmistakably irritated.
Anger, she thought fleetingly, was really a marvelous emotion. The next best thing to chicken soup for curing a few difficult aches and pains. When a man was angry, he kept his distance. In the meantime, she had absolutely no doubt he was growing attached to the kids, and she was home.
“Come on, Parker. Can you carry this little box for me?”
“This is where you live?” Parker was busy staring all around him. Her place was an old, huge, white-frame house that had been converted to three apartments. Two chestnuts and a fat cottonwood shaded the lawn, and a totally unorganized garden of lady’s slippers and primroses and morning glories sprawled around the edges of the yard. “But where are your whales, Snookums? I’ve been waiting and waiting.”
“They’re a little too big to keep in the apartment, sweetheart.” Par for the course, she had her arms loaded before she thought to take the key out of her purse.
“Where are the mountains?”
“Sorry, love, I don’t have mountains.”
“No snow either?” Parker asked mournfully.
“No snow either,” she had to confirm. It stung, just for an instant, that the boys could never like her place as much as Rafe’s. But then she reminded herself that that was exactly what she wanted, for all three males to realize that they were happier in Montana. “There’s a park a few blocks away, though, and a movie theater. Seawind isn’t a very big town, but we’re close by the water. You can collect stones and shells and stuff…”
At last she found the key and slid it into the lock. Jay, who lived in the upstairs apartment, had promised to take care of her plants and make sure there was milk in the refrigerator when she returned. She’d done the same for him when he’d vacationed, but still, she suddenly couldn’t remember exactly what shape she’d left the place in, and her eyes jumped up to Rafe’s again.
“It’s nowhere as large as your house,” she warned. “You have to remember that when I left here, I didn’t know I was coming back with three extra people. I can’t imagine where we’re going to fit everyone…”
As they all stepped inside, she rambled on. Paying no attention, Rafe took the heavy box she’d insisted on carrying, and then grabbed the suitcase before she could reach for it. The woman was driving him nuts, which she damn well knew. Radiating confidence, wearing a sassy smile, blithe as a spring breeze, she could probably benefit from a slight shaking. The problem was that he could never stay angry with her for long.
Zoe was a master of stubbornness. Arguing with her was like fighting with the wind: The gusts just kept coming, strong, cool and relentless. He’d argued with her when he’d found her rocking Aaron at four in the morning. He’d argued with her when she’d claimed
She was wearing herself out caring for the twins, but he couldn’t make her see it. She refused to recognize that she was fantastic with them, and she’d done her level best to get out of spending three weeks with them on her turf. Even last night, she’d still been arguing that there was no point in their coming here; the kids obviously belonged with him.
Where the damn woman belonged was with him, where he could protect her and love her and take care of her and love her…and more things like that.
Instead, she figured she had everything all set. He’d be with the monsters all day forming the attachment she was so anxious for him to feel, and she’d be off at her job, busy being emotionally uninvolved. He knew she felt she had to protect herself. He understood about that emotional brick wall she’d built up. He was just at an increasing loss as to how to convince her that he wasn’t going to hurt her. All he wanted to do was love her.
