Текст книги "Daring Dylan "

Автор книги: Jacie Floyd

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“Like what?” Even this little bit of activity managed to release some of his pent-up frustration. He dug with increased vigor.

Gracie shook her head. “It’s impossible and unethical to make a diagnosis without seeing her. I assume she’s getting pre-natal care from a reputable obstetrician.”

“Yes, but—”

“Wait a minute.” A gloved hand gripped his forearm.

He looked up from his task. “What?”

“That’s some hole.” She dislodged a plant from its plastic tray and held up the one-inch root ball for him to see.

Maybe he had been a tad enthusiastic. “Too big?”

“Not if you’re planning on burying a body in there.” Her eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Just yours.” He pushed her off balance and dumped her into the crater.

She floundered for a second like a turtle on its back then grabbed his shoulders. Instead of pulling herself free, she pulled him in on top of her. Accidentally, of course. He was sure she would never have done such a thing if she had guessed how intimately he would land and how instantly he’d respond to the feel of her beneath him. No sharp or bony edges to her. She was all woman, with soft, round, voluptuous flesh—except for the bullet-hard nipples pressing into his chest.

“Let me up.”

“Not a chance.” He gave her a slow smile, rocking his hips against hers.

While he considered all the things he’d like to do to her, her arms flailed at her sides, and she gasped for breath. He eased his weight off her slightly just for the fun of watching her breasts expand when she filled her lungs with air.

For a second, their eyes met. Hers seemed to soften and invite him closer, to give him unspoken permission to explore the body beneath him. Her neck stretched upward, bringing her mouth within an inch of his.

“Oh, Dylan.” Her voice hitched on a breathy little sigh. Her eyelids fluttered downward, giving him the impression of a woman too shy to ask for what she wanted. Funny. He’d never pictured her as shy before.

“Gracie...”  He bent forward the extra inch. “Are you sure about this?”

“Completely.” Her lips curved into a winsome smile.

Something stiff and cold brushed against his neck. Almost simultaneously, certainly too soon for him to avoid it, she stuffed the garden hose down the back of his shirt and drenched him with chilling water.

He jerked up, releasing her.

Laughing, she jumped out of reach and gripped the hose in one hand. “Oops, sorry!”

“You’ll pay for that!” Two long strides took him to her, but she danced away, wielding the hose like a sword.

She darted behind the garden bench. Grabbing hold of her shoulders, he planted one foot on the bench, intending to step over it. As he lifted his other foot off the ground, MacDuff latched onto his pant leg and growled.

“Easy, boy,” he commanded, but the dog’s spirited defense continued. “Call him off.”

“He’ll quit if you let go of me.”

Dylan removed one hand from her shoulder to pet MacDuff and remind him of their friendship. But the dog snarled, and Dylan resigned himself to losing this round. He squared his shoulders and prepared himself for the blast. “Spray me and get it over with.”

Her face fell. “It’s no fun if you ask for it.”

“Then, let’s call a truce. We’re both wet. Turn off the water, and I’ll let go of you.”

Gracie twisted the nozzle on the hose. “Truce.”

He took his hand from hers, and MacDuff released his hold.

Gracie laid the hose down out of range for both of them. “If you’re finished disrupting my day, I need to get back to work.”

Like it was all his fault. All right, maybe it was. But damn, she brought out something in him that he’d misplaced a long time ago. Innocent child-like fun and a fresh perspective on the people and events around him.

She squatted down to push the displaced dirt back into the hole. He knelt beside her to help. Although the tip of her tongue peeked out between her lips, she remained aloof and wary. He definitely didn’t want that. He wanted to see her smile, see her laugh. See her naked.

Apparently, the water dousing hadn’t cooled his interest. Gracie’s sweet, earthy scent nearly drove him wild. He’d do better to think of something mundane.

Like the stock market with its erratic ups and downs—a lot like his own uncontrollable urges. He thought of his unproductive investigation, and the idea of his father being attracted to a local girl. Again, the topic hovered too close for comfort. He looked around at the immaculate grounds in search of a neutral topic for conversation.

“I’m surprised you don’t have a gardener.”

“We do, but this week, Toby’s helping with the—”

“Spring Blossom Festival,” Dylan finished for her. “Why is it such a big deal?”

Gracie planted a flower while he moved down a couple of inches and dug an appropriately-sized hole.

“It brings in a lot of money for the town,” she offered, talkative now that he’d started her on a safe, impersonal subject. “We change the featured blossom every year and decorate the town with it. A local artist does a screen print for a commemorative poster and Gran’s church group designs a cross-stitch. We have the ice-cream social, rides for the kids, a sailboat race, a clambake, and a softball game between the local politicians and business-owners.

Dylan had run with the bulls in Pamplona, drove the pace car at Indy, ridden Krewe at Mardi Gras, hoisted the sails on an America’s Cup champion, and danced in the streets during Carnival. He should be yawning over East Langden’s little festival, but like Gracie’s effortless beauty and company, the innocent attractions of the Spring Blossom Festival drew him in.

“Sounds like fun.”

“Maybe you could help.” Dodging a bee that circled around them, she looked at him speculatively.

“Sorry.” Deep down, he was. A little. “I’ll be at the NBA playoffs in New York this weekend, so I won’t be here.”

“You’re leaving? For good?” She fixed her attention on one of her bulky gardening gloves, casting her gaze downward. He wanted to see her eyes, to see if the thought of him leaving made her glad or sad or maddeningly indifferent.

“Not unless I find out a lot more about Clayton and his mother by then.” He remembered his unimpressive investigation. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No, it’s just—Liberty House opens on Friday. We’re all booked up for the Festival, so Gran will need your room.”

He removed his baseball cap to wipe his forehead and muttered a curse. “Well, that’s great. I can’t move into the cabin until it’s fixed up, but I can’t get anyone to work on it until after the Spring Blossom Festival.”

“Ah.” Her expression flashed with understanding. A bee landed on the bloom Gracie reached for, and she shooed it away. “That is a problem.” She worked silently for a moment. “Have you thought about starting on the project yourself?”

“Who, me?” He smiled at the idea of tackling so many unfamiliar projects. “Everything needs cleaned. The roof is rotting away, and part of the floor needs replaced. The windows and doors are broken. The plumbing doesn’t work. Should I go on?”

“I guess not.” As she leaned over to plant the final flower in the row, the end of her necklace dropped out of her shirt.

He picked up the larger of the two objects dangling from the chain. A military dog tag. He held the rectangle between his thumb and forefinger. His throat went dry. “The ex-fiancé?”

She shook her head slightly and pulled the memento from him. “My father’s.”

He moved to the small gold heart still swinging free and touched it with a fingertip. “A lover or a sweetheart?”

Again, the small, almost painful gesture of denial. “My mother’s.”

He hid his relief behind brevity. “Nice.”

“My father gave her the charm when I was born. She added the dog tag after he died. That and some medals were the only things of his the Navy sent to her.”

Dylan understood the value of keepsakes. “And wearing them makes you feel closer to them?”

Her eyes lost that skeptical glint she sometimes turned on him. “In Hartford, yes. I don’t need additional reminders in East Langden.”

He was about to show her the Saint Christopher medal that had been his father’s, but Gracie got to her feet and began loading her tools into the wheelbarrow. Leaning back on his heels, he watched her graceful movements. Sometimes her sensual glide took his breath away, contradicting those endearing moments when awkwardness propelled her toward calamity.

Dylan heard a droning close to his right ear and then a faint touch on his temple. He slapped at the sensation automatically and felt an immediate stab of pain. Brilliant.

His vision clouded, and the world tilted around him.

Chapter Ten

Gracie turned in time to see Dylan slap his palm against his temple. “No!” she shouted, too late to do any good.

While his eyes rolled back, his knees buckled. She caught him under the arms before he hit the ground and eased him the rest of the way down. Such an extreme and immediate reaction to an insect sting might signal anaphylactic shock. Or the wooziness could simply be caused by the location of the sting to the head.

Pulling off her grubby gloves, she pressed two fingers to his wrist, checking his pulse. Strong and steady. She turned his head to the side. His breathing seemed normal, too.

“Can you open your eyes?” Minimal dilation. No immediate symptoms of shock. After removing his baseball cap, she located a wicked stinger protruding from an angry welt near his eyebrow. “Hang on.” She scraped the stinger away. “Have you ever had a reaction to bee stings or insect bites before?”

“Don’t think so.” His words slurred together, very unlike his usual precise diction.

Medical training dictated a cold compress against the inflamed area. She looked toward the house, a hundred yards away. With no time to waste, she pulled her tank top over her head, dampened it with water from the garden hose, and pressed it against the welt. When she settled herself on the ground with Dylan’s head in her lap, his eyelids fluttered opened.

Confusion swam in his eyes before the first signs of true awareness returned. Then understanding. Then something deep and warm that reminded Gracie that she had nothing on from the waist up but a sheer white bra.

Gracie had learned anatomy and physiology in medical school, and she found breasts about as ordinary as elbows. But members of the male persuasion tended to have a different reaction. That knowledge brought the embarrassed flush to Gracie’s cheeks, not any personal response to Dylan’s admiration. Certainly not.

He tried to sit up. She slipped her arm under his shoulders. His head collapsed back against her chest as his eyes drifted shut once again.

“Feeling better?” Giving in to sheer maternal instinct, she touched her hand to his forehead, checking for fever.

“Just dandy.” He snuggled his head against her.

“We should get you into the house for an antihistamine.” With his need for her medical assistance diminished, her need to put physical distance between them increased. Having his blond head cradled against her chest seemed too personal, too intimate. “Can you stand?”

“Not yet.”

The warmth of his breath caressed her skin. His beard rasping against her skin left her almost panting. She shifted his head to a less intimate position. He shifted higher—onto the soft swells of her breasts. Suspicious, she stared down at him. His eyes were open again, dark and hot, and trained on her flesh so very near his mouth.

Transfixed, she watched as he darted his tongue across the sensitive skin along the scalloped lace edge. A white-hot shaft of desire darted through her when his teeth closed over her nipple. She searched inwardly for outrage at his boldness, but found only confusion. And desire.

He was no more interested in her than he was in watching snails race. Right? And yet the touch of his mouth started a chain reaction of longing that churned inside her like water on a paddlewheel. She threaded her fingers through his hair, desperately wanting to disregard the little voice inside that warned against reacting to this Baxter clone.

He was here to deny her best friend his birthright. His family had caused her hometown economic distress, and his sexual exploits were legendary. She really didn’t want him. She didn’t even like him... much.

Instead of clasping him to her like she wanted to do, she used every ounce of strength she possessed to push him away. “What are you doing?”

She mentally scrambled to remember all the lessons she’d learned about sexual responsibility. She’d never fully appreciated the way the students in her sex education classes rolled their eyes at her “just say no” advice. Suddenly, she understood all too well.

The best sex she’d had in two years with Baxter paled in comparison to the excitement of Dylan’s tongue on her skin. Of his teeth on her nipple. Oh, my! She resisted the urge to fan her face with her hand. Where was that hose when she needed it?

“Sorry.” His grin said otherwise. “My bout with vertigo brought on hallucinations of ice cream cones. Licking was the natural response.”

Dumping him out of her lap, she rose to her feet and brushed off her bottom. “I was afraid you were dying, and you were taking advantage of my good nature.”

“Your nature’s better than good. It’s delicious.”

Gracie lifted MacDuff into the wheelbarrow, determined not to waste another minute of her time on someone who was only giving her a second look because he was stuck out here in the boonies with nary a super-model in sight.

Dylan pushed himself to his feet and swayed. Gracie sped to his side and held his arm until he regained his balance. He tried to link arms with her for the return to the house, but she wouldn’t have it.

Pulling his hand away from his temple, he held her tank top wadded up like a baseball in his palm. “Can I keep this?”

“No.” She grabbed it from him and slipped it over her head, then wished she hadn’t. If that wasn’t a leer on his face, then she had seriously misinterpreted the expression. “What?”

“I’ve never been envious of a shirt before.”

Outwardly, she gave him frowning disapproval. Inwardly, she gave herself a stern lecture. She didn’t want to have sexual feelings for him. She would not succumb to his juvenile comments. She would ignore his adolescent fixation with her breasts if it killed her. She disdained this unwanted, pointless, futile, temporary attraction she felt for him.

She would never be more than a passing diversion for him, a wholesome Cabbage Patch Doll thrown in as a novelty to the row after row of Debutante Barbies in his life. And she deserved a whole lot more than a lover with the attention span of a gnat. She’d been burned before by a man who believed she was a convenience, and she’d do well to remember it.

“There’s some ointment in the downstairs bathroom to put on that sting.” Celebrating a moral victory over temptation, she marched away. She had never realized how unfulfilling a moral victory could be.

“Sure. Thanks for your help.”

She felt his eyes follow her as she walked away. An unfamiliar instinct prompted her to put some sway in her gait. Realizing what she was doing, she stopped immediately.

He called out to her, but she kept going. She didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. He repeated her name, and she weakened, damn it.

He waited for her to stop and look at him before he waggled his eyebrows. “I’ll supply the whipped cream any time you say.”

“Not even in your dreams,” she called back.

His laughter trailed her up to the house. And she’d have felt a lot better if she hadn’t been intrigued by the offer.

Returning to the carriage house, Gracie did her best to put Dylan’s playfulness into perspective. He was gorgeous, she’d give him that. And light years more experienced than she, but so what? She was busy. Her life was full. What more could she want? If a supersonic sex life hovered near the top of her wish list, it was certainly secondary to having a satisfying relationship. She really didn’t want one without the other. Did she? Certainly not.

As she climbed her stairs, she admitted that Clay was right. Dylan was way out of her league. She didn’t even have a league.

As an undergraduate, her one and only lover had been Ted Bellamy, a sweet, sensitive, social activist. He’d taken her virginity one night in a burst of passion after an Exxon protest. When the surge of idealistic euphoria faded, he focused more of his energy on collecting T-shirts and saving the spotted darter fish than in satisfying Gracie.

During med school, she had met Baxter, the opposite of Ted in every way. Handsome, wealthy, and very physical, he dedicated his time to helping people. If he was more self-centered about their physical relationship than she would have liked, at least he was enthusiastic about having one. Later, she found out he wasn’t particular about where he expended that enthusiasm.

She hadn’t enjoyed sex with either one of them that much, and worse, Baxter had claimed that his wandering eye was due to her lack of appeal, response, and stimulation.

While Gracie showered and dressed, she reconsidered Baxter’s accusations for the umpteenth time. Maybe she just hadn’t met the right man. Of course, if no one less than Dylan Bradford would do, her physical standards were too high and her ethical standards were too low. Like Goldilocks in her quest for porridge, Gracie would never again settle for anyone who wasn’t just right.

Lost in thought, she crossed the yard to the main house. She wanted to see her grandmother before going to visit Granddad again. She would only admit to a slight—very slight, almost minuscule—hope to see Dylan. And that was only to check on his well-being.

Stepping through the back door, she found him seated at the kitchen table with Gran. With their heads together, they paged through a family photo album.

“Here’s Gracie on her first day of school,” her grandmother was saying. “Didn’t she look adorable with her hair in braids? That book bag’s almost as big as she is.”

“Adorable.” Dylan looked up and winked at her. The swelling around his right eye would normally have stirred her sympathy, but the smile he gave her was so close to a smirk it sent Gracie flying across the room.

“Gran!” She reached over the table to slap the picture book closed. “I’m sure Dylan didn’t ask to see my childhood pictures.”

“Of course he didn’t,” Gran agreed. “I told him about the picture we have of you with his father. He did ask to see that.”

“Then let’s turn right to it.” Gracie flipped pages until she arrived at the photo under discussion. “There.”

Her seven-year-old face wore a gap-toothed smile for the camera. Her gray cat, Cuddles, was clutched protectively in her arms. The handsome senator, in a long-sleeved dress shirt with his tie at half-mast, reinforced her hold.

Dylan studied the photo and nodded. “That’s just how I remember him. What’s the story behind this picture?”

“It was a Saturday morning, and Gracie usually came along to help in the bakery,” Gran began.

Gracie smiled at the memories. “I’m sure I was more trouble than help.”

“You were a joy.” Her grandmother beamed.

Dylan looked over at the older woman, eyebrows raised. “That’s your bakery in town?”

“It used to be. We sold it about ten years ago.”

“I remember going there with my dad.”

Gran nodded. “He often stopped by when he was in the area.”

“I think I had the best brownie I’ve ever eaten while I waited for him there one time.”

“Why, thank you.” Gran ducked her head. “I’ll try to make up a batch for you soon.”

“Getting back to the picture,” Gracie nudged. “At the time, I didn’t know your father was anybody special, of course. I just wanted someone to help me get my cat out of a tree, and he was the tallest one around. He took off his coat, lifted me off the ground, and held me up so I could reach Cuddles. When Gran saw who I had dragged into assisting me, she insisted on taking this picture.”

“I planned to have it put in the local paper,” Gran continued, “as a human interest story, you know. But then, after what happened, I didn’t.”

Dylan looked up, puzzled. “What happened?”

“That was the day he died,” Gran said gently.

He tapped the photograph with his index finger as if pinpointing the day and time. “This was taken on the day he died? October seventeenth?”

“Yes, dear.” Gran patted him on the arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that part of the story might upset you.”

“I’m not upset.” He studied the face in the picture. “Could I get a copy of this picture? Since it’s the last one taken of him, I think my sister would like to see it, too.”

“I have a scanner in my office,” Gran said. “But Gracie may have to remind me how to use it.”

Dylan continued to stare at the snapshot for a few more seconds. Gracie began to feel like an interloper. Before she could think of a tactful way to end the intrusion, the timer on the stove broke the silence.

“What are you baking, Gran?” She picked up potholders and opened the oven door.

“Coconut pies.” Gran seemed as relieved as Gracie by the distraction. “Clay says your grandfather might get to come home tomorrow, and I wanted to take a little treat to the nurses who’ve been taking care of him.”

“He’s coming home? That’s great.” Gracie set the pies on the cooling rack, sneaking a concerned glance at Dylan.

He’d left one finger in place to mark his father’s picture, but idly turned the pages. Abruptly, he sat forward. “Who’s that?”

Peering over his shoulder, Gracie said, “That’s me with Clayton, not long after he moved in with David.”

“And this?” Dylan pointed to another picture taken outside the bakery. “Is that your mother with Clayton?”

Gracie glanced at the photograph of a woman in a tie-dyed T-shirt. “No, that’s Clay’s mother, about a month before she disappeared.”

He closed the book with a snap and stood. “Excuse me, please.”

“Wait a minute.” Gracie tugged on his elbow. “How’s your head?”

“Not as good as it was.” He touched the swollen area gingerly. “I seem to be getting a headache.”

“Do you want something for it?”

“No, thank you.” His curt response dismissed her concern as he disappeared up the stairs.

“What was that about?” Gran asked. “I hope he wasn’t disturbed about the picture.”

“I don’t think he was,” Gracie assured her. “I’m on my way to see Granddad and then to meet Clay for a movie. What are your plans for the evening?”