Wild in the Field

waist, as if he’d known she was going to be on shaky ground. The sun tilted in her eyes, so bright and hot she couldn’t see. She still planned to sock him. Eventually. It was just that right then…she was so stunned.

His lips were sun warmed, smooth. He dipped down for a second kiss before she’d recovered from the first. He was tall enough to make her feel surrounded, protected. She heard the yearning coo of a mourning dove. Felt the damp earthy loam beneath her feet, felt the sliver of breeze tickle the hair at her nape. She felt his heart, beating, beating. Felt her own, clutched tighter than a fist.

Slower than a sigh, he lifted his head. His gaze roamed her face, his eyes dark with awareness, electric with what they’d kindled together. She felt his fingertip on her cheek. His voice came out rough and tender-low.

“I knew it was in there. That soft, wonderful heart of yours. I hate to see you hurting so bad, Cam.”

He didn’t lower his hand particularly fast, or turn around and start walking away with any speed. But still she couldn’t come up with an answer before he was already a hundred yards onto his own property. She couldn’t talk at all. She still seemed to be gulping in air and sensation both.

There’d never been anything wrong with her IQ. She realized perfectly well that Pete had been trying to reach out a hand to her ever since she’d come home, but she’d assumed it was a neighborly hand. She’d never expected…kisses. She’d never expected to feel his heart thundering against hers, to see the stark shine of desire in his eyes, to feel his body rousing because of their closeness.

Pete wanted her.

It seemed an astounding revelation.

She stared after him, but memories of Robert suddenly pushed into her mind-her lean, elegant Robert, with his city ways and boyish grin. He’d loved the night lights. So many Friday nights they’d gone clubbing, her in her highest heels and slinkiest black dress, Robert in his city-guy clothes. Robert could dance down the house when he got in the mood; he knew his wines, knew his music, knew all the cool places to go.

Camille couldn’t imagine Pete giving a damn about “a cool place” in a thousand years. He was day-and-night from Robert in every way.

Pete was lean himself, but when a man was built that tall and physical, he just wasn’t…elegant. His shoulders were as broad as a trunk. His skin had an earthy tan; his hair never looked brushed. He roared when he was mad, laughed from the belly when he was happy. Nothing scared Pete. He was elemental, earthy, wild himself.

He made her think of male alpha wolves-of the kind of guy a woman was instinctively very, very careful around. Not for fear he’d hurt her, but for fear of being taken under by a force bigger than her, an emotional force, a sexual force.

Camille shivered suddenly, and then abruptly, scowled. Elemental force? Where on earth was this horse hockey coming from? The damned man had left her with a filthy, vicious dog that no one could love or want, and somehow managed to divert her attention for a couple seconds by kissing her senseless.

Well-the next time she saw him, there’d be no kisses and no nonsense either. She whirled around, only to find Killer-alias Darby-snoozing on his side in the maple’s shade.

If that wasn’t typical! Both males had wreaked total havoc on her day, and now one was sacked out and the other had walked away.

She was simply going to ignore them both, and that was that.

Four

When most women got kissed, Camille thought grimly, their mood perked up. At least if it had been a good kiss. And Pete’s kiss had certainly qualified as a humdinger.

As she trudged toward the lavender fields, carrying a long-armed set of clippers, she could feel every creaky, cranky muscle in her body complaining. For three days, she’d been working nonstop in the lavender. Specifically, that was the same three days since Pete had brought her that dadblamed mangy dog and kissed her.

Working herself into a state of exhaustion hadn’t made her forget Pete-but it was doing a fabulous job of completely wearing her out. It was also giving her something to do to earn her keep. The lavender appeared to be a thankless, ridiculous, hopeless job-but that just suited her mood, anyway. She wasn’t looking for meaningful. She was looking for something so mind-numbing and exhausting she’d be too tired to have nightmares.

When she reached the crest of the hill, the late-afternoon sun was temporarily so blinding bright that it took several seconds before she realized she wasn’t alone. There were bodies in the lavender field. Two of them. Squinting, she realized they were boys. Both were hunkered down in the first row of the overgrown lavender, working with clippers-in fact, working with far better clippers than her own.

In a single blink, she knew who they had to be. Pete’s sons. They were identifiably young teenagers-at an age when boys tripped over their own feet and their arms seemed longer than their whole bodies. But she could see Pete in their height, the strong bones and ruddy skin. Both had his brown hair, too, with that hint of mahogany in the sunlight.

She clomped closer, building up a good head of steam. Obviously Pete had sent them over with the clippers. Her father would have labeled Pete a clishmaclaver-which was one of his Scottish terms for busybody. Doggone it, she hadn’t asked for his help. And she may have turned into a rude, ornery bitch-and was proud of it!-but even a curmudgeon had to have a line. She sure as heck wasn’t going to let two young boys kill themselves working in those hopelessly overgrown twenty acres.

“Boys! Hey!” She yelled, the instant she was within hearing distance. It wouldn’t take her two seconds to send them both packing; she was sure of it.

They both immediately jerked upright. “Hey, Ms. Campbell!” Damn, but they were startlingly alike. Except one had a cowlick-the same one who pushed a step forward, with an agonizing-red blooming on his cheeks as if he normally died from having to speak to strangers. “Hi, Ms. Campbell, I saw the dog in your yard.”

She still intended to throw them both off the property, but obviously that comment forced her to recognize a greater priority-their safety. “Good grief-you guys didn’t try to go close to Killer, did you?”

“No,” the shy one spoke up again. “I meant-I saw what you did with the snow fence. Making a yard for him and all. That was cool. Giving him a way to get some exercise so he didn’t always have to be tied up.”

Camille perched a fist on her hip. She didn’t need praise from some baby-aged kid for hauling five tons of snow fence, all to create a stupid yard for a mangy, worthless, violently aggressive mutt who hated her and everyone else. She needed someone to give her a whack upside the head for being so crazy. But before she could correct the boy’s misconception of her, his brother pushed ahead of him. This one was just as good-looking and gawky, but he didn’t have a cowlick-and no shy blush on his cheeks. “We shoulda said who we were. I’m Simon. That’s Sean. Sean’s the one who found Darby. Dad says he’s always finding trouble.”

“Am not.”

“Are, too.” Simon poked him, then kept talking as if the two of them regularly conducted conversations while socking each other. “See, we heard about Mr. Chapman being taken to a rest home. But it’s like nobody remembered that he had a dog, until Sean did. Mr. Gaff let us in the house. Sean found Darby in the back room, locked in, all dirty, no food, no water. He’d turned wild like. In fact, I thought he was gonna kill Sean. Not that that wouldn’t be a good riddance and all-”

Sean slugged him. Simon slugged back. Camille rubbed two fingers on her temples, wondering when and how she was going to throw them off the property, when so far she couldn’t even get a word in.

And Simon kept right on talking, even as he was being slugged. “Anyway, the pound loaned us this leash they use on wild or sick animals. It’s like any other leash, except that it has this stick thing attached so the dog can lunge, but not so close he can bite you. Anyway, then Sean brought it home-”

Sean finally ventured another comment. “-And Simon’s gonna tell you that Dad was mad at me. Which he was. But it’s like no biggie. Dad always has a cow when I bring home another animal. The point is that Dad figured out right away that you’d be the perfect person to adopt Darby.”

Camille’s jaw dropped. “Your dad said what?”

“He said you’d be the one person who could save Darby. I mean, I could save him, too. But we’ve already got dogs and cats and raccoons and homing pigeons and all, and like, obviously, Darby is too ornery right now to be around other animals. So we couldn’t take him. There was just no way. And that’s when Dad said you were the perfect one. Because you were the only one in White Hills who was even meaner than Darby.”