“There goes the power,” she muttered.
It was his instinct to take charge, especially when a woman was in trouble. He couldn’t help it. It was how he’d been raised-not by his absentee father, but by his mom, who’d expected even small kids to step up when there was a problem. He’d never minded. He liked stepping up. But in this case, the image Violet projected of being scatterbrained and helpless was-he was coming to understand-totally misleading.
She moved around in the dark, apparently gathering up candles-not the pretty decorative candles she had strewn all over the place but the practical, no-drippers she apparently stashed for no-power circumstances like this.
The back door opened off her kitchen, where she lit two and put them on the oak table, then kept going. She put one lit candle into a hurricane lamp, placing it in the bathroom off the kitchen, then carried more into the living room.
The living room, he’d noticed before, seemed to be part of the original farmhouse. In the dark, a guy could kill himself on all the stuff, but basically it was one of those long narrow rooms, with long narrow windows, requiring a long narrow couch. She’d done it all in roses and pinks-in case anyone could conceivably doubt she was female to the bone. Wade past the estrogen, though, and there was a massive old-fashioned brick hearth-big enough to roast a boar or two-where she lit four more candles.
“Better?” she asked.
“Can practically see well enough to read,” he said mildly, although that wasn’t exactly true. No matter how many fat white candles she lit, they didn’t lighten the shadows. Mostly they lit up her. Eyes darker than secrets flashed up to his face, but he didn’t think she really noticed him. She was too frazzled to think. Too frazzled to notice how that damp, stretchy red tank top was cupping her breasts.
“I can’t guarantee we’ll have light or water before morning,” she said unhappily.
“Well, hell. I expected you to shut off that storm and restore the power immediately. What’s wrong with you?”
He’d thought to lighten her up. It didn’t seem to work. “I mean…I’m not sure the toilets will work.”
“Inconvenient for sure, but more for you than me. If I have to step behind a tree before morning, I can probably cope.”
“I’m afraid there’s no phone.”
“Damn. There goes another opportunity to make friends by calling people after midnight.”
“
He didn’t get it. She seemed to be chasing around, lighting more candles for no particular reason that he could fathom. It was the middle of the night. So there was a storm. It was a sturdy house, nothing threatened by a little thunder and lightning.
And accusing him of being nice was a low blow. No self-respecting male liked to think of himself as “nice.” Yeah, he’d offered to sleep outside and made a point of communicating that he was a here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of guy, but that was just so she wouldn’t be afraid of his coming on to her. It wasn’t because he wanted her to think he was
“You want me to drive into town? Is that why you’re upset, because you feel stuck with me under your roof?” he asked. “There’s just no reason to get your liver in an uproar. If I’m a problem for you, I’ll just take off, go find a hotel or motel-”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she said crossly. “You’re not taking off cross-country in the middle of the night in a thunderstorm. I never heard of anything so stupid.”
Well, hell. Somehow he had to find some way to communicate with her a hell of a lot better than they were doing so far. They hadn’t even started to do serious business, yet he seemed to invoke some kind of strange response from her. She was running on froth and emotional fumes. He needed her straight and coherent.
So he snagged her arm when she tried to go flying by-God knew where she was sprinting off to this time, but apparently her goal was to find more candles, even though the living room already looked like a witch’s lair. She went stark still the instant his hand closed on her wrist.
“What are you doing?” she asked. She didn’t shout it. Or whisper. Only…asked.
He felt her pulse gallop. Felt the warmth of her skin. Felt her gaze shoot to his face as if compelled by their sudden closeness. “I’m confused what’s going on here. Are you afraid of storms?”
“No. Heavens. I grew up here. We get blizzards in winter, thunderstorms in summer. Vermonters are sturdy people. Actually, I love the rain.”
Typical for her, she offered a lot of talk but very little information. “So it’s just me, then? I’m doing something to make you nervous?”
“I’m not nervous. I’m always goofy,” she assured him. “Ask anyone.”
He struggled not to laugh. If he’d laughed, of course, she would have diverted him from the problem. Which made him wonder if that was why she came across so scatterbrained-because it was such an effective defense for her. “I don’t want to ask ‘anyone.’ You’re right here, I’m asking you. If you want me out of here, I’ll leave. Just say the word.”
She still hadn’t seemed to breathe, although his hand had immediately dropped from her wrist. “You’re staying. As long as you don’t mind staying with a batty woman.”
“You’re not batty.”
“You don’t know me. I know me. And if I say I’m batty, I should know.”
God. It was like trying to reason with a cotton puff. Only she wasn’t a cotton puff. In all that flickering candlelight her hair was drying, looking like silky silver. The pulse in her throat was beating hard. Her skin, her mouth, defined softness. And her eyes…she was still meeting his eyes. There was nothing goofy there, just the awareness between a man and a woman that carried enough heat to melt the Arctic.
He had no intention of kissing her. Maybe she was just figuring out the chemistry, but he’d known it since he first laid eyes on her. There was no explaining what drew a man and woman together-particularly when the two people were as contrarily opposite as they seemed to be-but Cameron didn’t sweat problems he couldn’t solve. When there was heat, there was heat. You didn’t lie about it. You didn’t pretend. You just faced the truth, whatever it was.
And the truth was, he didn’t care if there was a combustible furnace of chemistry between them, he wasn’t going to kiss her.
Yet suddenly he was.
He wanted to blame it on the moonlight…only there was none. In the dark candlelit room, with the growl of thunder and hiss of rain just outside, there seemed nothing alive but her and him. Nothing he could smell but her soft skin, the flower scents drifting from her hair, her throat. Nothing he could hear but the pounding of his own heart, in anticipation.
He didn’t exactly remember how he reached for her, how his hands happened to curve on the swell of her shoulders, slide down, slide around her back to pull her into him. Yet he knew the exact moment, the exact sensation, when her hands reached up to lock behind his neck.
He could have sworn she’d been sending him keep-off, no-trespassing messages-yet if she didn’t want to be kissed, she sure acted as if she did. Her arms swooped around his neck and she came up on tiptoe.
There was one more brief millisecond when he remembered all the reasons why this was a bad idea, but once she was that close, all rational bets were off. In a blink his mind turned to mush. Electric, excited mush.
He hadn’t kissed anyone in a while. He hadn’t kissed a woman this way in years. Hadn’t wanted to. He thought it was long gone from his life, from his heart-that pull, that wonder, that wildness. He didn’t know why it had to be her, didn’t care.
She tasted like magic. Sweet, soft, alluring. Unforgettable. That pale-blond hair sifted through his fingers. Her head tilted back, accepting his kiss, inviting more than the graze of his mouth. Her lips asked to be taken. He answered.
One tentative kiss melted into another stronger one, another richer one, and then another that lost all track of time and space. His tongue found hers. Her heartbeat was suddenly racing, chasing, against his. Her arms nested tighter around his neck, and his hands molded down her spine, down to her fanny, pulling her closer to him.
Silver rain shivered down. Candles flickered. Shadows whispered of loneliness and old hurts and need. She’d been hurt. She’d been lonely. She needed. And maybe those were secrets she never meant to reveal to a stranger, but she didn’t tell him anything. She just kissed him back, wildly, freely, intimately.
