Heather Graham (23 page)

“What am I doing in the middle of this?” she whispered aloud. And then she decided to put Raff on her list of men to hate with vengeance for getting her involved with the whole thing to begin with.

All she had ever wanted to do was be a writer, she thought in a moment of self-pity. She wanted to write about people. She loved to talk to them, to find out what made them tick, the quirks behind the genius, the mind behind the athlete …

She was finding out all about Kent’s mind. It could move in devious and vicious circles when he chose, the tough jock who wasn’t about to be used.

But I love him anyway.

She swallowed, steering herself from fantasy once again. Be realistic, she told herself sternly. She would go back to New York and give Raff a sound piece of her mind—then she would deal with Paul and be through with the lot of them.

If only Kent weren’t out in the other room, or if only she’d made it down the mountain and was halfway back to Denver herself, it would be so easy. Her pride could be maintained then, and she wouldn’t be tempted to hold him, be held by him.

The water was starting to grow cold. Katie opened her eyes—staring toward the bathroom door in horror and disbelief.

There was a snake in the room. Not a little one, like a garden snake. This one was big. A very big snake that looked to be ten feet long at least. It was slithering near the door, its large head reaching upward. Katie didn’t know what kind of snake it was—she didn’t know anything about snakes at all, except that they didn’t belong in bathrooms, especially not a bathroom in the Rockies during the winter.

Its long body twisted. Katie saw its eyes, pitch-black beads in a mottled face. It flicked out its tongue as if it were some ancient sea serpent anticipating its prey—her.

Katie returned the creature’s stare, not daring to blink. She swallowed convulsively, aware that she was barely breathing, that her mouth had gone dry. She was absolutely terrified.

She tore her eyes away from the snake’s to cast a quick glance down the length of its body again. Fear riddled through her with a sickening, weakening twist. It was so long and thick. Was it a poisonous snake?

It started moving, coming toward her with its strange glide, the body coiling, curling, and uncoiling to slide again. Katie blinked, praying that she was imagining the whole thing. There couldn’t be a snake in the bathroom. There couldn’t be, there couldn’t be …

She tried to rack her mind for anything she might have heard. She was in the mountains in the dead of winter—how the hell had a snake this big been able to get into the cabin? Didn’t they hibernate or something?

Did it matter? a voice from her numbed and terrified mind asked.

No.

She opened her mouth. “Kent.” It came out as a dry croak. She swallowed. The snake was lifting its head to the tub now. It was near her left shoulder, and she felt as if she were becoming paralyzed.

Katie worked her jaw furiously again. “Kent!” It wasn’t loud enough yet. She’d always heard that in their dreams many people reached a point of terror and discovered that they couldn’t scream. She had never thought it possible. But now she did. There was no fluid in her mouth, and she could barely find air to breathe.

The black eyes locked with hers. She took a breath. Then another.

And then she screamed, long, loud, and shrill.

The bathroom door burst open. The snake’s head had crept around until it was exactly at her shoulder. Katie wrenched her gaze from the snake’s and leaped from the tub, screaming again as she tripped over the snake’s tail.

“Katie!”

She heard Kent’s voice; she saw the anxiety in his eyes, caused by the terrified screams that had brought him to her.

She threw herself into his arms, dripping all over him but not caring in the least.

His arms wound around her. “Katie?”

“Kent, my God! What is it? Where did it come from? Oh, God, do something!”

He did. He lifted her against him, closed the bathroom door with his foot, and carried her quickly to the bed, where he wrapped a sheet around her shivering form and held her tightly.

Katie pulled away from him, looking into his eyes. “Kent … it’s huge. And it’s still in there … in the bathroom. Oh, my God. How are you going to get it? I’ve never been so scared in my life. I—”

“Shh,” he told her, smoothing back her hair. “It’s all right Katie, it’s okay—”

“No, no, Kent! It isn’t all right! It’s still there … it was looking at me—watching me!”

He spread his fingers over her nape and urged her head back to his shoulder. His own heart was beating at a furious rate. He was holding her again; he had never thought he would. Nor had he ever thought he’d spend a night like this, knowing the twist of the most bitter pain only to doubt himself with an agony just as fierce. Where did the truth lie? Sam would never have called him if he didn’t believe every word he said. But Sam hadn’t been with him; Sam hadn’t touched her; Sam couldn’t have known she was a virgin …

I’m in love with her, he thought, feeling the frantic beat of her heart against him, the soft press of her naked breasts, the fevered cling of her fingers. I’m in love with her. And because of it, I’m frightened that I’m a fool—that she can say anything in the world and I’ll believe her … because I want to. The things she had said to him so bitterly, so scathingly, were the truth. She could not have been Paul Crane’s lover. Still, she had been seeing him …

And now, right now, while he held her, it didn’t seem to matter. He was sorry, so very sorry for the things he had said and done in the midst of pain and fury. He didn’t know if he was right or wrong—but he was sorry. Yet he couldn’t change what he had done or said. This moment would be fleeting; she wanted no part of him, and she was holding him now only because of her absolute terror.

“We’ve just got to stay out of there,” she said, her eyes wild, on his. “He’s big. He can’t possibly escape. Oh! But maybe he can! He got in there! How did it get in there? Kent, you can’t go after it—it’s huge!”

Kent wrapped the sheet about her shoulder, regretfully pulling it more tautly over the engaging softness of her breasts as he pulled away, setting her upon the bed on her own.

“Katie, I don’t have to go after it. ‘It’ is Ed.”

She shook her head in vehement misunderstanding, her shocked eyes filled with the certainty that he had either lost his mind or hadn’t understood a thing that had happened.

“What are you talking about? There’s a snake in there. A monster! It’s at least ten feet long, and it has the blackest, most malicious eyes I’ve ever seen—”

“Katie!” He caught her hands and brought them to her lap. He was shivering with his reaction to her, and every time she waved her arms, he was seeing her breasts, full, rounded—and too enticing for a man who had sworn not to touch a woman. She was fresh and sweet and deliciously scented from the bath; her skin was soft and silky, and her slim, beautiful curves were playing cruelly with his mind and body despite the words and fury that had passed between them.

And as soon as he spoke again, she was going to hate him even more, he thought dryly. “Katie, that snake with the malicious eyes is just Ed.”

“Ed?” she repeated, staring at him.

“Ed,” he repeated with a sigh. “He’s a pet. Not mine—Bill’s. I don’t know how he got into the bathroom, probably from a drain near the shed and then through the toilet.”

“The toilet,” Katie repeated blankly.

“They can move from place to place through plumbing systems. Like I said, he might have been out in the shed. It’s insulated and warm even in the winter. He loves the shed, so Bill keeps him there.”

“Ed is a pet—and he loves the shed?” Katie said, still staring at him as if she didn’t believe a word of it.

“He’s harmless, Katie, completely harmless. You probably scared him to death.”

“I scared
him
to death?”

“Katie, he’s an old, old boy. Very old for a boa constrictor. He’s almost twenty, but he still likes to explore a bit.”

“He’s an old boa constrictor—and he likes to explore,” Katie repeated again, her voice still dulled with shock.

Kent would have smiled if conditions between them had been a little better. But they weren’t, he reminded himself painfully. He rose, a little awkwardly, but Katie didn’t notice. “I’ll go get him out of—”

“No!” she cried, then she was standing, too, her fingers on his chest, her eyes wide as they stared into his. “No, I—”

“Katie.” He had to swallow fiercely. The sheet was hanging off her again. He could feel her naked flesh and smell her evocative scents; her breasts teased his chest mercilessly as she looked into his eyes. He desperately longed to cup her breasts in his hands and feel their firm weight, their softness and peaked nipples. He ached to throw off her sheet and press her supple length to his …

“Katie, I’m telling you the truth. Ed won’t hurt you—he barely manages against the rats anymore. He’s friendly.” He caught her hands again, folded them together, and held them away from him. Closing his eyes, Kent fought the power of her blue green eyes and turned quickly, walking to the bathroom.

Suddenly, he heard her laugh behind him.

“A pet. A
pet!
Oh, my God!”

She had obviously realized that she had been scared to death and had hurtled herself into his arms, naked, when there was no need. Kent shrugged. It wasn’t his fault the damned snake had gotten into the bathroom.

He opened the bathroom door. Ed was curled around the rim of the tub. “Come on, old boy. The lady isn’t fond of you at all.”

Ed gave Kent his enigmatic snake’s stare. Kent picked the snake up with accustomed ease and curled the reptile over his shoulders. When he stepped back out into the bedroom, Katie scrambled onto the bed.

“He really won’t hurt you.”

“He’s so damn big,” she murmured.

“Actually, he’s small for his type,” Kent said. He left the room with the snake about his shoulders, closing the door behind him.

Katie stared at the door, wondering if she wanted to laugh, scream, rage—or cry herself silly.

K
ATIE COULD HAVE—AND
probably should have—stayed in the bedroom. But she was hungry, wired, and, no matter how ridiculous it seemed, still frightened. Good old Ed might be a pet to Bill, but to Katie he was a snake. Who the hell ever heard of an old mountaineer keeping a boa constrictor? Kent had taken the snake away, but it had spooked Katie. She shook out her clothes strenuously before putting them on, although it was obvious, even to her, that a ten-foot snake could not be hiding in her lingerie.

She paced the room for a long, long time after she had dressed, aware that she should just stay in it. She alternated between righteous anger, total humiliation, and anxiety. Too much had happened in the past few hours, and it was impossible to stay in one place for very long.

At length she left the room, ostensibly to go to the kitchen and get something to eat. A pleasant aroma came to her, the smell of something good cooking.

Kent was at the kitchen table reading an outdated sports magazine. He glanced up as she walked in, regarded her with a enigmatic gaze, then returned his attention to the magazine. Katie opened the refrigerator door.

“The stew’s ready any time you like,” Kent said without looking at her. Katie paused. He stretched, yawned, glanced at his watch, then stood. “If you don’t mind, Miss Hudson, I’ll take my bath while you’ve vacated the bedroom. Then I can be out of your way for the evening.”

“Aren’t you eating?” she asked brusquely.

“I already have.” He started out of the kitchen, then paused. “I’ve put Ed out in the shed and covered the drain. He won’t bother you again.”

Katie watched him walk away, her eyes trailing over his back, his long-stepped, easy gait, the slight sway of his powerful shoulders. “Jock!” she muttered beneath her breath. Her lips twisted into a sad smile. She silently added, you are no longer a part of my life—but then, you never really were … You weren’t meant to be.

She sighed and fixed herself a plate of the stew, irritated with herself for being so annoyed that, among other things, Kent was perfectly capable of cooking and cleaning up after himself. The stew was even good. Very good. She tasted it standing by the stove, then decided that, with the way things had been going, she deserved to have a stiff drink with dinner, something to wear down some of the ragged edges of her nerves.

She sat down to eat her stew, finished it quickly, washed her dish—she didn’t intend to leave a mess anywhere—then took her drink to pace around the living room as she had been doing in the bedroom.

Outside, beyond the warm glow of the fire and the coziness of the cabin, the night seemed as black as pitch. Katie held back the drapes and stared out, frowning. It was snowing again, hard. Massive wet flakes hurtled through the dark sky.

She would have killed herself on the highway, she thought with a shiver, if she had even managed to reach the highway. It was, admittedly, a good thing that she hadn’t tried going down the mountain. She was accustomed to snow, since New Hampshire had offered plenty of that, but not on a mountain.

“There’s another storm?”

Katie started, cracked her head on the pane, and turned around to see that Kent had bathed and was standing beyond the sofa in a sweatshirt and jeans.

“It’s snowing,” Katie replied stiffly. His appearance should have been her exit cue. It seemed apparent that she was being offered continued residence of the master bedroom, and that he was planning to sleep in one of the guest rooms.

Yes, it was her exit line. She should walk down the hallway with quiet pride and dignity—speak with him only when she was spoken to in the morning, since she would never have to see him again once they reached Denver.

She remained by the window, her drink in one hand, the other hand clutching the drape.

“Did you eat?” he asked.

“Yes.” She hesitated, then added a very stiff “Thank you.” Distance, she reminded herself. She couldn’t run out into the night like a child again—nor was the snake around so that she could forget she was wounded and furious and fly into his arms. “It was very good,” she heard herself say, and her voice sounded very remote. “What was it?”