Читать книгу Saying Yes To The Dress!: The Wedding Planner's Big Day / Married for Their Miracle Baby / The Cowboy's Convenient Bride - Cara Colter - Страница 14

CHAPTER SIX

DREW LOOKED AT Becky English. Sprawled out, belly down in the sand, she looked like a drowned rat, her hair plastered to her head, her yellow shirt plastered to her lithe body, both her shirt and her white shorts transparent in their wetness. For a drowned rat, and for a girl from Moose Run, Michigan, she had on surprisingly sexy underwear.

She looked like a drowned rat, and she was a small-town girl, but she sure as hell did not kiss like either one of those things. There had been nothing sweet or shy about that kiss!

It had been hungry enough to devour him.

But, Drew told himself sternly, she was exceedingly vulnerable. She was obviously stunned from what had just happened to her out there at the mercy of the ocean. It was possible she had banged her head riding that final wave in. The blow might have removed the filter from her brain that let her know what was, and what wasn’t, appropriate.

But good grief, that kiss. He had to make sure nothing like that ever happened again! How was he going to be able to look at her without recalling the sweet, salty taste of her mouth? Without recalling the sweet welcome? Without recalling the flash of passion, the pull of which was at least as powerful as those waves?

“Becky,” he said sternly, “don’t make me your hero. I’ve been cast in that role before, and I stunk at it.”

Drew had been seventeen when he became a parent to his brother. He had a sense of having grown up too fast and with too heavy a load. He was not interested in getting himself back into a situation where he was responsible for someone else’s happiness and well-being. He didn’t feel the evidence showed he had been that good at it.

“It was just a kiss,” she said again, a bit too dreamily.

It wasn’t just a kiss. If it had been just a kiss he would feel nothing, the same as he always did when he had just a kiss. He wouldn’t be feeling this need to set her straight.

“When were you cast in that role before? How come you stank at it?” she asked softly. He noticed that, impossibly, the flower had survived in her hair. Its bright red petals were drooping sadly, kissing the tender flesh of her temple.

“This is not the time or the place,” he said curtly before, in this weakened moment, in this contrived atmosphere of closeness, he threw himself down beside her, and let her save him, the way he had just saved her.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, cold and clinical. “Any bumps or bruises? Did you hit your head?”

Thankfully, she was distracted, and considered his question with an almost comical furrowing of her brow.

“I don’t think I hit my head, but my leg hurts,” she decided. “I think I scraped it on a rock coming in.”

She rolled onto her back and then struggled to sit up. He peered over her shoulder. There was six inches of scrapes on the inside of her thigh, one of the marks looked quite deep and there was blood clumping in the sand that clung to it.

What was wrong with him? The first thing he should have done was check for injuries.

He stripped off his wet shirt and got down beside her. This was what was wrong with him. He was way too aware of her. The scent of the sea was clinging to her body, a body he was way too familiar with after having dragged her from the ocean and then accepted the invitation of her lips.

Becky was right. There was something exhilarating about snatching life back out of the jaws of death. That’s why he was so aware of her on every level, not thinking with his customary pragmatism.

He brushed the sand away from her wound. He should have known touching the inner thigh of a girl like Becky English was going to be nothing like a man might have expected.

“Ow,” she said, and her fingers dug into his shoulder and then lingered there. “Oh, my,” she breathed. “You did warn me what would happen if you took your shirt off.”

“I was kidding,” he said tersely.

“No, you weren’t. You were warning me off.”

“How’s that working for you, Drew?” he muttered to himself. He cleaned the sand away from her wound as best he could, then wrapped it in his soaked shirt.

She sighed with satisfaction like the geeky girl who had just gotten all the words right at the spelling bee. “Women adore you.”

“Not ones as smart as you,” he said. “Can you stand? We have to find a first aid kit. I think that’s just a superficial scrape, but it’s bleeding quite a lot and we need to get it looked after.”

He helped her to her feet, still way too aware, steeling himself against the silky resilience of her skin. She swayed against him. Her wet curves were pressed into him, and her chin was pressed sharply into his chest as she looked up at him with huge, unblinking eyes.

Had he thought, just an hour ago, her eyes were ordinary brown? They weren’t. They were like melted milk chocolate, deep and rich and inviting.

“You were right.” She giggled. “I’m swooning.”

“Let’s hope it’s not from blood loss. Can you walk?”

“Of course.”

She didn’t move.

He sighed and scooped her up, cradling her to his chest, one arm under her knees, the other across her back. She was lighter than he could have believed, and her softness pressed into him was making him way more vulnerable than the embraces of women he’d known who had far more in the curvy department.

“You’re very masterful,” she said, snuggling into him.

“In this day and age how can that be a good thing?”

“It’s a secret longing.”

He did not want to hear about her secret longings!

“If you don’t believe me, read—”

“Stop it,” he said grimly.

“I owe you my life.”

“I said stop it.”

“You are not the boss over me.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

He carried her back along the path. She was small and light and it took no effort at all. At the castle, he found the kitchen, an enormous room that looked like the kind of well-appointed facility one would expect to find in a five-star hotel.

“Have you got a first aid attendant here?” Drew asked one of the kitchen staff, who went and fetched the chef.

The chef showed him through to an office adjoining the kitchen, and Drew settled Becky in a chair. The chef sent in a young man with a first aid kit. He was slender and golden-skinned with dark, dark hair and almond-shaped eyes that matched.

“I am Tandu,” he said. “I am the medical man.” His accent made it sound as if he had said medicine man.

Relived that he could back off from more physical contact with the delectable Miss Becky, Drew motioned to where she sat.

Tandu set down his first aid kit and crouched down in front of her. He carefully unwrapped Drew’s wet shirt from her leg. He stared at Becky’s injury for a moment, scrambled to his feet, picked up the first aid kit and thrust it at Drew.

“I do not do blood.”

“What kind of first aid attendant doesn’t—?”

But Tandu had already fled.

Drew, even more aware of her now that he had nearly escaped, went and found a pan of warm water, and then cleaned and dressed her wound, steeling himself to be as professional as possible.

* * *

Becky stared down at the dark head of the man kneeling at her feet. He pressed a warm, wet cloth against the tender skin of her inner thigh, and she gasped at the sensation that jolted through her like an electric shock.

He glanced up at her, then looked back to his task quickly. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I will try to make this as painless as possible.”

Despite the fact his touch was incredibly tender—or maybe because of it—it was one of the most deliciously painful experiences of Becky’s life. He carefully cleaned the scrapes, dabbed an ointment on them and then wound clean gauze around her leg.

She could feel a quiver within her building. There was going to be an earthquake if he didn’t finish soon! She longed to reach out and touch his hair, to brush the salt and sand from it. She reached out.

A pan dropped in the kitchen, and she felt reality crashing back in around her. She snatched her hand back, just as Drew glanced up.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure,” she said shakily, but she really wasn’t. What she felt like was a girl who had been very drunk, and who had done all kinds of uninhibited and crazy things, and was now coming to her senses.

She had kissed Drew Jordan shamelessly. She had shared all her secrets with him. She had blabbered that he was masterful, as if she enjoyed such a thing! Now she had nearly touched his hair, as if they were lovers instead of near strangers!

Okay, his hand upon her thigh was obviously creating confusion in the more primal cortexes of her brain, but she had to pull herself together.

“There,” he said, rocking back on his heels and studying the bandage around her thigh, “I think—”

She didn’t let him finish. She shot to her feet, gazed down at her bandaged thigh instead of at him. “Yes, yes, perfect,” she said. She sounded like a German engineer approving a mechanical drawing. Her thigh was tingling unmercifully, and she was pretty sure it was from his touch and not from the injury.

“I have to get to work,” she said in a strangled voice.

He stood up. “You aren’t going to work. You’re going to rest for the afternoon.”

“But I can’t. I—”

“I’m telling you, you need to rest.”

She thought, again, of telling him he was masterful. Good grief, she could feel the blush rising up her cheeks. She had probably created a monster.

In him and in herself.

“Go to bed,” he said. Drew’s voice was as caressing as his hand had been, and just as seductive. “Just for what is left of the afternoon. You’ll be glad you did.”

You did not discuss bed with a man like this! And especially not after he had just performed intimate rituals on your thigh! Particularly not after you had noticed his voice was seduction itself, all deep and warm and caressing.

You did not discuss bed with a man like this once you had come to your senses. She opened her mouth to tell him she would decide for herself what needed to be done. It would not involve the word bed. But before she could speak, he did.

“I’ll go scout a spot for the wedding. Joe will be here in a while. By the time you wake up, we’ll have it all taken care of.”

All her resolve to take back the reins of her own life dissolved, instantly, like sugar into hot tea.

It felt as if she was going to start crying. When was the last time anything had been taken care of for her? After her father had left, her poor shattered mother had absconded on parenting. It felt as if Becky had been the one who looked after everything. Jerry had seemed to like her devoting herself to organizing his life. Even her career took advantage of the fact that Becky English was the one who looked after things, who tried valiantly to fix all and to achieve perfection. She took it all on...until the weight of it nearly crushed her.

Where had that thought come from? She loved her job. Putting together joyous and memorable occasions for others had soothed the pain of her father’s abandonment, and had, thankfully, been enough to fill her world ever since the defection of Jerry from her personal landscape.

Or had been enough until less than twenty-four hours ago, when Drew Jordan had showed up in her life and showed her there was still such a thing as a hero.

She turned and fled before she did something really foolish. Like kissing him again.

Becky found that as much as she would have liked to rebel against his advice, she had no choice but to take it. Clear of the kitchen, her limbs felt like jelly, heavy and nearly shaking with exhaustion and delayed reaction to all the unexpected adventures of the day. It took every bit of remaining energy she had to climb the stone staircase that led to the wing of the castle with her room in it.

She went into its cool sanctuary and peeled off her wet clothes. It felt like too much effort to even find something else to put on. She left the clothes in a heap and crept under the cool sheets of the welcoming bed. Within seconds she was fast asleep.

She dreamed that someone was knocking on her door, and when she went to answer it, Drew Jordan was on the other side of it, a smile of pure welcome on his face. He reached for her, he pulled her close, his mouth dropped over hers...

Becky started awake. She was not sure what time it was, though the light suggested early evening, which meant she had frittered away a whole precious afternoon sleeping.

She wanted to leap from bed, but her body would not let her. She felt, again, like the girl who had had too much to drink. She tested each of her limbs. It was official. Her whole body hurt. Her head hurt. Her mouth and throat felt raw and dry. But mostly, she felt deeply ashamed. She had lost control, and she hated that.

Her door squeaked open.

“How you doing?”

She shot up in bed, pulled the sheet more tightly around herself. “What are you doing here?”

“I knocked. When there was no answer, I thought I’d better check on you. You slept a long time.”

Drew Jordan looked just as he had in the dream—gorgeous. Though in real life there was no expression of tender welcome on his face. It did not look like he was thinking about sweeping her into his big strong arms.

In fact, he slipped into the room, but rested himself against the far wall—as far away from her as possible—those big, strong arms folded firmly across his chest. He was wearing a snowy-white T-shirt that showed off the sun-bronzed color of his arms, and khaki shorts that showed off the long, hard muscle of equally sun-bronzed legs.

“A long time?” She found her cell phone on the bedside table. “It’s only five. That’s not so bad.”

“Um, maybe you should have a look at the date on there.”

She frowned down at her phone. Her mouth fell open. “What? I slept an entire day? But I couldn’t have! That’s impossible.”

She started to throw back the covers, then remembered she had slipped in between the sheets naked. She yanked them up around her chin.

“It was probably the best thing you could do. Your body knows what it needs.”

She looked up at him. Her body, treacherous thing, did indeed know what it needed! And all of it involved him.

“If you would excuse me,” she said, “I really need—”

Now her brain, treacherous thing, silently screamed you.

“Are you okay?”

No! It simply was not okay to be this aware of him, to yearn for his touch and his taste.

“I’m fine. Did your brother come?” she asked, desperate to distract him from her discomfort, and from the possibility of him discerning what was causing it.

“Nope. I can’t seem to reach him on my phone, either.”

“Oh, Drew,” she said softly.

Her tone seemed to annoy him. “You don’t really look fine,” he decided.

“Okay, I’m not fine. I don’t have time to sleep away a whole day. Despite all that rest, I feel as if I’ve been through the spin cycle of a giant washing machine. I hurt everywhere, worse than the worst hangover ever.”

“You’ve had a hangover?” He said this with insulting incredulousness.

“Of course I have. Living in Moose Run isn’t like taking vows to become a nun, you know.”

“You would be wasted as a nun,” he said, and his gaze went to her lips before he looked sharply away.

“Let’s talk about that,” she said.

“About you being wasted as a nun?” he asked, looking back at her, surprised.

“About the fact you think you would know such a thing about me. I don’t normally act like that. I would never, under ordinary circumstances, kiss a person the way I kissed you. Naturally, I’m mortified.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“There was no need to throw myself at you, no matter how grateful and discombobulated I was.”

His lips twitched.

“It’s not funny,” she told him sternly. “It’s embarrassing.”

“It’s not your wanton and very un-nun-like behavior I was smiling about.”

“Wanton?” she squeaked.

“It was the fact you used discombobulated in a sentence. I can’t say as I’ve ever heard that before.”

“Wanton?” she squeaked again.

“Sorry. Wanton is probably overstating it.”

“Probably?”

“We don’t all have your gift for picking exactly the right word,” he said. He lifted a shoulder. “People do weird things when they are in shock. Let’s move past it, okay?”

Actually, she would have preferred to find out exactly what he meant by wanton—it had been a little kiss really, it didn’t even merit the humiliation she was feeling about it—but she didn’t want to look like she was unwilling to move past it.

“Okay,” she said grudgingly. “Though just for the record, I want you to know I don’t like masterful men. At all.”

“No secret longing?”

He was teasing her! There was a residue of weakness in her, because she liked it, but it would be a mistake to let him know her weaknesses.

“As you have pointed out,” Becky said coolly, “I was in shock. I said and did things that were completely alien to my nature. Now, let’s move past it.”

Something smoky happened to his eyes. His gaze stopped on her lips. She had the feeling he would dearly like to prove to her that some things were not as alien to her nature as she wanted them both to believe.

But he fended off the temptation, with apparent ease, pushing himself away from the wall and heading back for the door. “You have one less thing to worry about. I think I have the pavilion figured out.”

“Really?” She would have leaped up and gave him a hug, except she was naked underneath the sheet, he already thought she was wanton enough, and she was not exposing anything to him, least of all not her longing to let other people look after things for a change. And to feel his embrace once more, his hard, hot muscles against her naked flesh.

“You do?” she squeaked, trying to find a place to put her gaze, anywhere but his hard, hot muscles.

“I thought about what you said, about creating an illusion. I started thinking about driving some posts, and suspending fabric from them. Something like a canopy bed.”

She squinted at him. That urge to hold him, to feel him, to touch him, was there again, stronger. It was because he was looking after things, taking on a part of the burden without being asked. It was because he had listened to her.

Becky English, lying there in her bed, naked, with her sheet pulled up around her chin, studied her ceiling, so awfully aware that a woman could fall for a guy like him before she even knew what had happened to her.