Читать книгу Found In Lost Valley - Laurie Paige - Страница 9

Amelia Miller glanced up when the wind rattled the windowpanes of the Victorian house. The old mansion had withstood fiercer storms than this one in its hundred and twenty years. Although, she admitted, this first rain of October was not a gentle one.

She stuck her toes closer to the glowing gas-log fireplace. The temperature was thirty-eight degrees outside, the rooms of the bed-and-breakfast were filled for the weekend and the guests were snug inside, the last one arriving little more than an hour ago.

All was well in her little corner of the world.

Most of her clients were couples who’d come up from Boise for a weekend of hiking. The colors of autumn covered the hills, and the aspens and cottonwoods were especially beautiful this year. She hoped the rain didn’t spoil the outing for the nature lovers.

Glancing at the clock, she saw it was nearly eleven o’clock. She yawned, finished off the herbal tea and closed the novel she’d been reading. The historical romance story was about knights and ladies and honor, which the hero had in abundance, perhaps to the point of obstinacy.

There were worse faults, she mused. For a moment, she remembered being twenty and swept off her feet by a handsome cowboy in town for the rodeo trials. After knowing him all of two weeks, she’d married him and taken off on an exciting adventure.

The excitement had lasted about two months, the marriage nearly two years, mostly due to her own stubbornness in refusing to give up. Her dashing cowboy had a temper and a mean streak. When she’d urged him to go to anger management counseling, he’d hit her. She’d packed and left, finally admitting she’d made a serious mistake.

At thirty-three, she had few illusions about life. Now, happiness was a full house and a roof that didn’t leak. So much for young love and the dreams that went with it.

She smiled at her long-ago idealism, somewhat saddened by the loss, then yawned again. Time for bed. Five-thirty came early—

The br-r-ring of the doorbell startled her. Slipping on fuzzy scuffs, she went silently down the hall into the main room, making sure her robe was securely closed as she did.

Then she peered out through one of the etched glass panels of the door.

The carriage lamps on each side illuminated a lone man standing there, his head tilted down as if he was deep in thought, his hands in the pockets of a trench coat that glistened with rain across the broad shoulders.

“Yes?” she said without opening the door.

“Amelia? It’s Seth Dalton.”

At sixteen, her heart had nearly leaped out of her body each time she’d encountered the oldest of the six Dalton orphans. At present, she was only mildly surprised. One or another of the Dalton clan was often at her place. She unlocked the door and stood aside.

“What a terrible night to be out,” she said when he entered the lobby, after carefully removing the raincoat and shaking off the water droplets on the porch.

He closed the door, dropped a duffel bag at his feet and hung the coat on a hook. “Yeah, terrible,” he agreed, with a smile that was definitely weary.

“Uh, was I expecting you?”

“No. I was heading for the ranch but got out of the city later than I’d planned. With the rain and the Friday night traffic, there was a big wreck. I sat on the freeway for nearly three hours. Since it’s so late, I decided to stop here.”

She made sympathetic noises.

“I hope you have a room. I’m beat,” he continued.

“Well, actually, we’re full this weekend. People come up for the turning of the leaves,” she explained, when he gave her a surprised glance tinged with a bit of annoyance, from those dark eyes so at odds with the usual Dalton sky-blue, to-die-for color.

“What about the single room?”

“It’s taken, too. A lone hiker showed up earlier this evening. About an hour ago,” she added as a frown formed a line between those thick, black masculine eyebrows.

Seth heaved a sigh and nodded. “I guess I’ll go on to the ranch then.”

Nicholas Dalton, who had taken in the orphans when his two younger brothers were killed in a freak avalanche some twenty-two or so years ago, lived on the original Dalton homestead, which was thirty miles from the tiny town of Lost Valley.

On country roads that wound into the Seven Devils Mountains of Idaho, the trip would take an hour in the pouring rain. If the road was washed out somewhere along the way, it might be impassible. Seth would be stranded for the second time that night.

In the rain. In the mountains. In the chilling cold.

Amelia glanced at the furniture in the great room, consisting mostly of tables and chairs, with a Victorian sofa and divan for period ambiance in front of the fireplace, and made a decision. “There’s a sofa bed in my sitting room. You can sleep there if you like.”

“I would,” he at once agreed.

His grin flashed in the dim light, his teeth brilliant in contrast to his dark hair and swarthy skin tones. Seth’s mother had been Latino or Native American—Amelia wasn’t sure which—and he’d inherited his dark good looks from her.

An inch under six feet, he was a bit shorter than his male cousins, but his build was the most muscular. In his senior year in high school, he’d played quarterback in football, and, with the strength in those broad shoulders, he’d become known for long, accurate passes that often saved the game for the home team. All the girls had had terrible crushes on him, including Amelia.

“Lead the way,” he suggested, picking up the duffel bag and giving her an expectant glance.

Rebounding to the present, she locked the door and led him along the hall to the back of the house and into her quarters, which consisted of a sitting room looking out on the garden, a bedroom and a bath. She’d converted the butler’s pantry into a walk-in closet, so there was ample privacy for her and space for her personal belongings.

“Would you like to take a warm shower?” she asked. “Or dry your hair? There’s a blow dryer in the bath.”

“That would be great.”

“Through here,” she said, going into her bedroom and pointing out the bathroom door. “Towels are in the basket beside the tub.”

While he disappeared into the other room, she quickly collected sheets, blankets and a pillow, took them to the sitting room and made up the bed for him after unfolding the mattress part of the short sofa.

She wondered if she should offer him her bed, since it was queen-size and the sofa wasn’t. But then, she would have to get to the bathroom and her clothing in the bedroom closet and would probably wake him in the morning, while from her bedroom she could quietly dress and sneak out through the sitting room without disturbing his sleep.

The shower stopped, and the whine of the hair dryer came on a minute later.

Amelia crossed the hall to the kitchen. There, she made a cup of hot cocoa, then prepared one for herself just to be companionable. She warmed muffins in the microwave and returned to the sitting room, tray in hand.

“That smells delicious,” Seth told her.

He stood in the doorway to the bedroom, dressed in gray sweatpants but no shirt. Dark hair formed an enticing pillow on his chest. He placed his shoes and duffel beside the bed. His long, narrow feet were clad in thick socks. Her heart fluttered a bit as it had when she was a girl.

“Banana-nut muffins. I thought you might be hungry after the long trip,” she said.

“I wasn’t, but I am now.”

His voice seemed deeper, somehow darker and more mysterious suddenly. She wondered if she imagined it. She set the tray on the coffee table and took a seat in her favorite chintz-covered rocker near one corner of the brick hearth. Drawing a deep breath, she picked up a mug and invited him to help himself.

He pulled on a sweatshirt, then sat in the chenille easy chair and propped his feet on the bricks close to the fire. Behind them, the sofa bed beckoned the weary to stretch out and relax. The clock on the mantel ticked in its friendly fashion.

Amelia became aware of the lateness of the hour and the intimacy of the setting as a fresh assault of wind and rain hit the windows.

“Not a fit night for man or beast,” Seth said, peering out at the wet landscape lit by carriage lamps and tiny spotlights along the paths and among the foliage.

“True,” she said, sipping her cocoa since she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

His laughter caused her hand to jerk. The hot liquid splashed over the rim of the cup. She quickly licked it away before it could drip on her robe.

“Sorry,” he said softly, amusement still in his eyes.

“That’s okay.” She wondered what he found funny. Since he’d been looking at her, and continued to do so, she self-consciously wiped her mouth and chin. Her fingers trembled ever so slightly.

“Relax,” he murmured. “I know we Dalton boys have questionable reputations, but Uncle Nick doesn’t allow us to pounce on women, especially those who come to our aid and give us refuge during storms.”

For a second of insanity, Amelia wished he would do just that, then was appalled at herself. The Daltons were a prominent family in this part of Idaho. Other than during one long-ago incident, Seth had never displayed any attraction to her—a vagabond child who’d been shipped to Lost Valley to stay with her grandparents each time her parents had quarreled and split up. She’d spent most of her high school years here, but in two-to six-month stretches as the marriage waxed and waned.

The despair and resignation of that child rose in her, reminding her that, other than her grandparents, she’d never been able to depend on anyone in her life….

She stopped the morbid thoughts and wondered what had brought such gloom to her spirits. The storm, she decided, observing the torrents of rain against the window. Summoning a smile, she murmured in a teasing tone, “It would never occur to me that you would act less than a gentleman.”

The dark eyebrows rose. “Don’t be too sure of that,” he warned, a thread of humor in his voice, but something more, too—an edginess that had nothing to do with the long trip and fatigue, but everything to do with being a man alone with a woman at a late hour, with a bed tantalizingly close.

His eyes swept over her, pausing at the ridiculous pink fuzzy scuffs that had been a gift from her mother last Christmas. Her mom liked frivolous things and thought Amelia was much too staid.

Thinking of her mother’s cute, flirty ways that so intrigued men and drove her dad crazy with jealousy, Amelia wished she could think of a sassy comeback. Unfortunately, she never could until long after the opportunity had passed.

Her face warmed, and she hoped the blush wasn’t noticeable. With her red hair and fair skin inherited from her grandmother, Amelia found her emotions seemed to lie too close to the surface for her personal comfort.

The wind caused the flames to dance wildly in the grate. She realized she felt the same way inside—sort of wild, as if her spirit wanted to dance, and hot, as if a fire burned in a secret furnace inside her.

“Wasn’t that once a wood fireplace?” he asked. “I cleaned the chimneys here one year when your grandparents were still alive.”

“I—” She had to clear the huskiness from her throat. “I had it converted to gas this summer. It was too much work to take care of the wood and ashes, but I do enjoy a fire on cold evenings like this.”

He nodded in understanding, his eyes half-closed as he gazed at the natural-looking, flaming logs. He had heavy eyelids—bedroom eyes, the girls at school had called them—and the shifting light gave him the dangerous look of a rogue or pirate.

His jawline was strong, his cheeks rather prominent, with interesting shadows beneath them. His lips were evenly matched and his smile entrancing. His hair was curly, which he tried to disguise by keeping it cut short. In school, it had flowed in ripples to his shoulders. She’d wanted to run her fingers through the shining strands.

The telltale heat climbed her neck. Fortunately, he was still gazing into the fire. She found herself staring when he raised the mug to his lips. His throat moved as he swallowed, then he held the mug in both hands, his fingers caressing the smooth porcelain idly, his thoughts faraway as he absently observed the flames.

Her skin tingled all over as if he was stroking her body the way he did the cup. Hunger and longing and a mixture of feelings exploded in her, urgent and reckless. Shocked, she leaped to her feet. “Good night,” she said.

He glanced up, surprised at her abrupt action. But Amelia fled to the bedroom and closed the door. She hesitated about locking it, then realized that was silly. He would hardly come charging in after her.

“Good night,” she heard him call. “Sweet dreams.”

Dreams, she scoffed silently as she climbed into bed a few minutes later. She’d had enough of dreams to last her a lifetime. She was owner of a thriving bed-and-breakfast business, one that she’d built with her own hard work and planning. Who needed dreams?

Everyone, the wind whispered against the dark window, its piping notes somehow sad and more than a little lonely.

Another night flooded her memory, haunting her with the sweet nostalgia of times past, of being sixteen and so very much in love.

Seth turned off the gas to the fake logs in the fireplace and snuggled into bed. The sofa mattress was surprisingly comfortable. He bunched the pillow behind his head, his mind on the woman who slept in the next room.

His libido had acted up while he used her shower. The bathroom was filled with pleasant, feminine scents from shampoo, powder and cologne. Other facets of her personal space also tweaked his imagination, such as the scented candles dotting the wide border of the tub.

The fact that the candles had been used conjured up several intimate scenes. He could picture her relaxing in the tub, that tangled mass of auburn curls pinned up on her head, the candle glow highlighting her fair skin, which looked as delicate as peach petals.

A shudder ran through him and heat erupted deep within. He sucked in air like a man who’d been in danger of smothering. His libido paid no attention to the calming effect this was supposed to produce. The sheet tented as his body responded in blatant hunger.

Good thing his hostess couldn’t see him now. Uncle Nick or no Uncle Nick, Seth would be tempted to forget honor and all that stuff in favor of caveman tactics.

He laughed silently, mockingly. The devil had nothing on his uncle when it came to fury. Uncle Nick was a stickler for proper behavior around the female sex.

Seth agreed with that sentiment. He would never hurt a woman, not intentionally. But there had been one time when he’d been tempted to take all a girl offered.

Amelia at sixteen had been almost more than his seventeen-year-old will could withstand. He could see her now as clearly as he had that night….

Seth had found her standing in the shadows outside the community center, where the Harvest Moon dance was in progress. Even in the dark, he recognized her at once.

“Amelia? What are you doing out here? You’ll freeze.” Like the hero of a novel, he took off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. The cool night air felt good to him. The dance floor was crowded and all those gyrating bodies caused the temperature to rise.

“Thank you,” she murmured, “but I’m okay. Really.” She returned his jacket.

The fast number ended and a slow love song began. On an impulse, he held out his hands. “Dance?”

She shook her head and moved more into the shadows.

The rejection intrigued rather than repelled him. “Come on. We’d better go inside before one of the chaperons finds us and sends us to the principal for skulking in the bushes.”

The attempt at humor failed.

“No, thanks,” she said. “I think I’ll go home.”

With that, she turned and started across the school parking lot, with only a thin shawl around her shoulders. He tried to recall where she lived. Oh, yes, on the other side of town in a two-story white house with her grandparents.

He’d been on a student council committee with her last year and had delivered some papers to her home. She’d disappeared in March, apparently leaving the area, but had returned a couple of weeks after the start of the new school year. At sixteen, she was nearly a year younger than he was, and a year behind him in school. Like him, she was a member of the Honor Society.

Smart. He liked that in a girl. Last year, as an honor society project, he and Amelia had researched and presented a report on poor scholastic achievement to the school authorities. He’d found her compassionate and thoughtful as well as intelligent. There was also a mystery surrounding her. She appeared and disappeared frequently from the town. When he’d tried to get to know her better, she’d become cool and distant, her manner warning him not to encroach on her privacy. Even so, there was something fragile and beguiling about her, something that had always intrigued him.

He trotted across the pavement and caught up with her. “Your dress is a knockout,” he said. “I heard Jennifer Rinquest say she’d kill for it.”

“It’s my grandmother’s,” Amelia replied in her usual serious manner. “The taffeta is woven with two different colors so that when the light hits it one way, it looks bronze, but from another angle, it’s violet.”

“Neat idea.”

“Yes.”

They were out of the parking lot and on Main Street now. At nearly midnight, there wasn’t a car or person to be seen. The shadows were deep between the streetlights, then deeper when Seth and Amelia turned onto the side street where her grandparents lived.

He wondered at her silence. Most girls tended to chatter, he’d found. He didn’t feel unwelcome around Amelia, but she didn’t try to engage his attention. She had a mysterious aura about her, as if she existed in a time and place that only she could see.

When the light breeze brought her scent to him, his body stirred with a hunger that startled him. Not that that was unusual—Uncle Nick had explained all about hormones and how it was with guys, but different for girls. However, this girl didn’t do anything to cause it…other than just be herself. A thought occurred to him. Perhaps the reason she hadn’t danced was simply that she didn’t know how.

“Uh, would you like me to teach you to dance?”

“No, thanks. I’ve had lessons,” she said in that soft tone that told him nothing. And she turned onto the sidewalk leading to the two-story Victorian.

He stayed with her. “You got a broken leg or something?”

She nimbly climbed the front steps, then turned with a frown. “No.”

He grinned. “Sorry. I just wondered why I didn’t see you on the floor at the dance.”

“No one asked.”

Her blunt honesty left him with nothing to say. When she sat in the old-fashioned swing hanging from hooks in a rafter, he joined her. “You didn’t have a date?”

She hesitated. “My grandmother arranged for a boy down the street to take me. He disappeared as soon as we got inside the gym.” She shrugged. “I didn’t mind. It was interesting to watch for a while. Then I decided it was time to come home.”

She must have stayed almost four hours, he realized. Long enough that her grandparents wouldn’t question why she’d come home early. He propped an arm behind her on the swing. His fingers touched the smooth skin of her shoulder, only partially covered by the cap sleeves of the dress. She was cold. He dropped his arm around her and pulled her close.

“You’ll catch a chill,” he scolded, sounding very much like his protective uncle.

“I never get sick.”

This was said with such world-weary resignation, he was intrigued all over again. What was it with her?

She looped her arms across her middle as if holding inside all that she was so he wouldn’t see. He touched her cheek, lingered to stroke the softness there, then tilted her face up to his. Then he kissed her.

The kiss was amazing, shocking, alarming, dazzling, as if stars were falling around them….

The very air went from October cool to July hot in an instant. The warmth of the stars, he thought hazily.

She didn’t caress him or even uncross her arms, but her lips…Lord, but those lips were pure liquid fire under his, hesitant at first, then moving, returning the pressure, opening to allow their tongues to meet. It was a kiss unlike any he’d ever experienced, and he’d kissed a lot since becoming cocaptain of the football team last year.

When he lifted his head and gazed down into her face, his heart thudded even harder. In the moonlight, her skin was the pure white of the marble veins he found running through the granite in the mountains. There was something so remote and unexpected about her….

He kissed her again, then groaned and pulled her closer so that they were half lying in the swing, her softness on top, pressing into him. For the first time, he knew, really knew, why kisses weren’t enough.

Her breasts were firm against his chest, her lips like cool fire dancing under his. Shifting, he pushed a cushion behind his back and lifted her so that he could slide one leg between hers. Half turning, he captured her body between his and the swing, the movement setting up a brief, wild gyration that broke the kiss.

They clung to each other and, as their eyes met, smiled. For a second, he couldn’t breathe, then they were kissing again…and touching in ways he’d never let happen with other girls.

When the need became unbearable, he pulled back enough to ask, “Where can we go?”

“There’s a carriage house,” she murmured, pressing kisses onto his chest.

He didn’t know when or how his shirt became unfastened. The cold air rushing across him brought back a measure of sanity. He held her face between his trembling hands and looked into her eyes.

Hot golden arcs of passionate intensity were visible in those moon-dark depths, along with a sweet vulnerability that reached to his soul. He realized how dangerously, desperately close to the edge they were.

“I have plans,” he said, summoning the only defense he could think of. “College. And law school. It’ll be years.”

Her expression changed in the blink of an eye, the raw honesty of passion was gone. Sense and caution returned. He felt the loss like the sharp pain of a paper cut.

She sat up and, with quick, precise movements, fitted the bodice of the old-fashioned dress into place, covering the delectable flesh he’d kissed and explored so thoroughly.

“I know,” she said in a flat tone that gave nothing away. “It doesn’t matter. Thanks for seeing me home.”

With that she was gone. He heard the click as the door locked behind her, observed her outline through the etched glass panes as she turned away. That was the last he saw of her until spring. At that time, she returned to school and finished the year, a straight-A student who looked at him with cool blue eyes that didn’t invite friendship or confidences anymore.

After graduation he left town on a construction job, then entered the university that fall. He rarely was back for more than a week at a time after that.

Rolling now to one side, then the other, his body tense with the haunting hunger from tonight and the dance long ago, Seth knew he was in for a restless night. Memories and the knowledge that Amelia was only steps away would see to that.

From that intriguing here-today-gone-tomorrow girl, she’d grown into a lovely woman, her gaze still cool, her hair a halo of curls surrounding a heart-shaped face just the way it had that enchanted evening so long ago.

For the oddest moment, he was filled with regret that they hadn’t shared everything the night of the Harvest Moon ball, when their passion had been innocent and honest and so very sweet in a way he couldn’t describe. But it was better that they hadn’t. Both of them had had a long way to go before they could think seriously of involvement.

So. He’d become an attorney as planned. She’d married, divorced, then returned to Lost Valley and started a very successful bed-and-breakfast inn after her grandparents had passed away within months of each other seven years ago. He’d handled the settling of the estate.

Amelia had changed quite a bit in the intervening years, becoming friendly and outgoing. She’d even played her guitar and sung in a community musical that summer. The appealing vulnerability of youth had disappeared, replaced by the confidence of a woman who knew exactly who she was and where she was going.

Seth wondered what other changes life had made in her, and fell asleep still wondering….