A smile slipped from her heart and found her lips. She breathed deeply of the crisp night air, savoring the aroma of pine and smoke from the lodge. With each breath, she felt a little more of the tension leave her body on the cool breeze. She’d always loved it here, the sights and sounds and textures. The serenity. The remoteness. It was a pretend land, where the profusion of pines created a forest of Christmas trees. The modern world had yet to intrude, the one hotel limiting the number of tourists. Of those who visited the lodge, few were brave enough, resilient enough, to make the trek down the crater to the lake’s edge.
Beth had. With Dylan.
The memory flowed in, the laughter and the freedom, the brilliant
sense of adventure that had seduced her so
completely. A cone of land rose up almost mystically from the center of the water. Wizard Island. During the day, a small boat made hourly trips, allowing tourists an up close look.
Beth and Dylan had spent the night.
She’d always wondered how he’d wrangled that, but figured a combination of cold hard cash and the St. Croix name could secure just about anything.
Lance had proven that in the most hideous way imaginable.
“Can you see Orion?”
The question, his voice, overrode the moment of darkness, washing over her like a warm summer breeze on a cold winter day. She looked from the lake below to the sky above. “Isn’t it a little late for Orion? I thought he was only visible during winter.”
“It is late,”
he acknowledged.
“
But not too late.”
She scavenged the array of stars, looking for the three pinpricks in a row.
“Lay back,”
Dylan said.
“
You can see better that way.”
She did, and he was right. “There’s the belt!”
”
Just a little faded,”
Dylan said, lowering himself beside her. He stretched out on his back with one hand behind his head, not touching her, but still, she felt his warmth.
“Do you think the moon looks sad?” she asked, remembering the legend behind the constellation.
“The moon just is,” Dylan said. “It’s neither happy nor sad.”
“I think she still mourns him.”
Dylan rolled to his side, one hand reaching out to finger the ends of her hair. “She killed him.”
Beth looked at him, and her heart took on a low strum. Her whole body heated, even though a chill blew through the night air. Dylan looked dangerously sexy stretched out on the comforter, one arm crooked with his hand supporting his head, while his free hand lazily played with her hair. His eyes weren’t hard like before, and yet, still they glowed.
”
She didn’t mean to kill him,”
Beth defended, like she
always did. “It was just one of those things. She was doomed from the moment she laid eyes on him.”
“I don’t believe in fate, Bethany. That’s a cop-out. We each create our own destiny.”
The tightness of her
throat became an ache in her chest.
“
Orion distracted Artemis,” she said, referring to the legend from Greek mythology, where Artemis was the goddess of the moon and the hunt.
“
When she was with him, she neglected her responsibilities. The night sky went
completely dark.”
”
When she was with him, she lived for the very first time,”
Dylan countered.
“
Everything would have balanced out if she’d given it a chance.”
“Killing him killed her.” That’s why she placed his body and those of his hunting dogs in the sky. “That’s why the moon looks
so sad and cold.”
An odd glitter moved into Dylan’s eyes.
“
And who said you weren’t a romantic?”
She had. There was no room for romance in her life. No room for passion. Like Artemis, she knew the price, and while she didn’t worry about herself, on the cold day she’d buried her unborn baby and her father, she’d vowed to never again hurt someone she loved.
Dylan watched her speculatively, prompting her to return her attention to the sky. For the first time in longer than she could remember, peace flowed through her. She didn’t want to jeopardize that by looking too long at Dylan. Just being close to him was hard enough. Her body tingled with awareness of his presence, as though some mind-numbing tonic pulsed to every nerve ending.
“Did you come here with him?”
The question zinged in from the darkness and pierced the blanket of serenity. Somehow, it seemed a violation of something sacred to bring up Lance in this place where happy memories dwelled.
“No,” she whispered. “Never.” He hadn’t offered, and she hadn’t asked.
Dylan swore softly. “Jesus, Bethany, what happened?”
”
Not now,”
she whispered, rolling to her side to look at him. “Please. Don’t dirty this place with what happened between me and Lance.”
“I wasn’t talking about Lance.”
The ache in her chest shifted, deepened.
“
Earlier you asked what I wanted,” she said. “Then I said nothing, but that’s not true. I want tonight, Dylan. I want a night without having to think about the nightmare waiting back in Portland. A night without thinking about what the future holds. A night of just being. Can you give me that?”
The hand playing with her hair stilled.
“
Is that all you
want?”
She didn’t dare think beyond the simple request, to the hum deep inside. “Yes.”
“Then close your eyes and let go.”
He made it sound so easy. Just close her eyes and let
go. But Beth knew what happened when she quit looking, knew the fantasies that shimmied close. Knew the vulnerability. Too vividly she remembered the night in the car, when she’d closed her eyes and Dylan had put his mouth to hers.
The memory should have stopped her.
“Behave,” she said, doing as he instructed. Part of her wanted to hold on to her dismay, at herself for being so
weak and betraying her self-respect that night on the
mountain, at him for just being there, but negative feelings seemed a desecration of the pristine beauty. And how could she be angry, upset, when the night she’d considered
the greatest mistake of her life had resulted in the most
precious gift imaginable?
Time passed. The night crawled around them, deeper. Darker. Somewhere out there, coyotes and elk and owls prowled the world, their howls and bugles and hoots mixing into a soothing rhythm.
“May I?”
The question was soft, uncertain. Opening her eyes, Beth glanced at Dylan, not at all prepared for the way the moon-cast shadows played across his face. “May you what?”
He nodded toward her stomach, where her right hand rested. “I’ve been lying here watching you,”
he said, his voice surprisingly hoarse. “Seeing your hand there, spread wide, so protective. Right or wrong, it’s my child, too.” His eyes met hers.
“
And I’d like to touch my son or daughter.”
No,
Beth thought wildly.
No.
Having Dylan so close she could feel the heat of his body was hard enough. Having his hand on her stomach…
“Okay,” she said. It was a small thing to ask, after all.
Nothing compared to what lay ahead. How could she deny a father the right to touch his child?
Dylan scooted closer, bringing with him more warmth, the subtle aroma of clove and sandalwood overriding pine.
He lifted his
hand slowly, brought it to
rest on top of hers with
equal
finesse.
His palm
was wide and square, his fingers
thick and warm.
Talented, she remembered, and shivered.
”
Thank you,”
he surprised her by rasping, then surprised her even more.
He smiled. Full and sensuous, the
curl of his lips curled something
like inside her. She felt
the tug, the melting, clear down to her toes.
”
You’re welcome,” she whispered, then looked back
toward the star-filled sky.
Quiet settled
between them, peace lapping at her like
the gentle waters of a lazy lake on a warm summer day. Gradually, she
felt herself letting go of the fierce control
she had to retain
around Dylan, and her limbs turned
heavy, leaden.
She should ask him to take her back to the
cabin, she thought in some hazy corner of her mind. But she wasn’t ready. Didn’t want to leave. Didn’t want the night to end.
Just a few minutes longer, she told herself. She’d just close her eyes…
* * *
Dylan watched her sleep. She looked surprisingly peaceful, considering the tension she’d worn like armor for the past week. Just that morning he’d worried over the pale hue to
her skin, the dark circles shadowing her eyes, the
strain coiling her body so tight. Now, however, now she lay on the comforter beneath the stars, as still and serene as the lake below.
He’d give just about anything to know what really dwelled beneath the surface.
Frustration drilled through him, and again, he didn’t have a damn clue what to do. He didn’t know what had possessed him to bring her here, either. Her, of all people.
Here, of all places. Here, where he was destined to see a
smile light her face, rather than the frown he’d seen entirely too much of this past week.
Smiles were dangerous, he knew. From Bethany, they were downright lethal.
Maybe his grandfather and Lance had been right. Maybe he really was out of his mind. The woman sleeping next to him was carrying his child, the result of a night she would give anything to take back. She might be going to prison. For murdering his cousin. Yet here
he
lay like
he
hadn’t a care in the world, idly stroking her abdomen, where their baby grew.
God help him, he wanted to touch her elsewhere.
She sighed in her sleep, shifting closer, and Dylan almost groaned out loud. He wanted to believe he’d brought her here, away from the glare of the world, because of the baby. Because something had gone a little crazy inside him when he’d followed her from the hotel to the department store, then onto the highway north. When he’d realized how easily she could slip across the border to Canada and vanish forever. With his child.
That’s what he wanted to believe, all he could allow himself to believe. Anything else was crazy.
A man of passion and fire couldn’t live in a palace of ice.
But he’d sure as hell tried.
With damning clarity he remembered the first time he saw her, back when she’d been only sixteen. She’d been sitting on a bench at school, by herself, so closed, so tightly sewn up, that Dylan had wondered if anyone could reach her. Doing so became a quest for him, to find a way to touch the untouchable. To bring a smile to those sad lips. To make those fathomless eyes sparkle.
Three long years passed before she let him in.
Lance called him a fool.
But she’d been so damn lost, and for some stupid rea
son, Dylan had wanted to help her find herself, trust herself. Later, as she’d gradually opened to him, he’d realized Bethany would never be free to live and laugh and love, until she realized she wasn’t like her mother. She wasn’t shallow, didn’t use and discard
people at will. She didn’t
hurt others for kicks.
He’d tried to prove that to her.
He’d dedicated himself
to the task with more conviction than he’d ever approached anything.
In the end, he’d failed.
Left alone so much as a child, Bethany had taken her cues on how life should be, how a relationship should be, from television. She wanted to be
June Cleaver.
Dylan didn’t come close to being Ward.
But he’d tried. He’d tried to fit into her make-believe world of how life should be, tried to prove passion and
stability, serenity, could live in harmony. Obstacles, he’d always believed, were made to be overcome. But then
there’d
been the baby, and then the ambush. Then she’d turned her back on him. And then she’d cut out his heart by marrying the St. Croix prince. Lance had been better for her in so many ways, Dylan knew.
More suited. Able
to give her the stability she craved.
Now he realized his cousin had only deepened the wounds left by Dylan. If the son of a bitch wasn’t already dead, Dylan would have killed him.
Bethany sighed in her sleep, snuggled closer. So close her breasts teased his chest. He tensed,
reminding himself
of all the reasons he shouldn’t do what he’d wanted to since the moment he saw her sitting on the chaise lounge, staring vacantly toward the Cascades.