Midnight Sun (Sinclair Sisters) (7 page)

She couldn’t remember ever feeling such an unwanted attraction to a man.

Sally Beecham slid into the leather seat of Call’s black Jeep. The vehicle wasn’t flashy, but it was obvious he had spared no expense when he bought it. Equipped with a powerful, thick-cabled winch on the front, super-wide, ten-ply tires, a roll bar, and a black vinyl top, there wasn’t a four-wheel drive in Dawson that could compare. Her teenage son, Jimmy, and all his high-school friends were hoping she and Call would get together just so Jimmy could try it out, see what it could do.

Sally was hoping she and Call would get together, too, because she was crazy about him. Besides, everybody knew he was rich.

“You ready?” Call asked. She’d had to trade shifts with Betty Tisdale to get Saturday night off, and work a late shift for Betty next week, but if things turned out the way she planned, it would be worth it.

“Just let me get my coat.” Sally went into the bedroom of her small, wood-frame house on Queen Street and grabbed her coat out of the closet, stopped in front of the mirror long enough to fluff out her curly black hair and make sure she didn’t have lipstick on her teeth, then headed back down the hall.

Call was looking good tonight, freshly shaved, his dark brown hair still damp from the shower. God, he was handsome, and those eyes … One look and she practically came. In the summer once, she had seen him with his shirt off. He had a beautiful body, suntanned and lean, his chest wide and muscular, his back hard and sculpted. He had big hands and she knew what that meant.

Maybe tonight she’d find out if it was true.

Sally smiled as he led her out to the Jeep, and Call smiled back, but he seemed a little distracted.

He was that way all evening, she discovered, first through dinner in the Bonanza Room at the Eldorado Hotel, then on the drive back to her house. She wished she could scoot over next to him, but the seat belt wouldn’t stretch that far and she didn’t think he’d like it if she took it off, considering a car crash had killed his wife and kid.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she finally asked. “You been kinda quiet all evening.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“What about?”

He flicked her a glance from behind the wheel. “Taking you to bed.”

Her breath snagged and her body began to heat up. Little twinges started throbbing between her legs. She reached across and rested her hand on his thigh, gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’ve been thinking about it, too, Call.”

He turned the corner, pulled the Jeep up in front of her house, and turned off the ignition. He caught her hand and eased it off his leg as he turned toward her on the seat.

“I’ve been thinking … as much as I’d like to sleep with you … I don’t … I’m afraid I’m just not ready.”

The heat she’d been feeling deflated like a punctured hot air balloon. “We could go nice and slow. Take it real easy. You know what they say—it’s just like riding a bicycle. Once you learn, you never forget.”

He looked at her with those piercing blue eyes, leaned across the seat, and very lightly kissed her. She loved the way his lips felt, sort of hard-soft, the bottom one full and sexy. She kissed him back and thought for sure he’d weaken.

Instead, he pulled away.

“I’ll give you a call in a couple of days.”

“Sure.” She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice. “No problem.” She popped open the door and started to get out, but Call was there before her feet touched the ground.

“I’m sorry, Sally, I really am.”

“Don’t be.” Pride straightened her shoulders. “You’re not the only man in Dawson, Call, you know what I mean?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

She said good night to him at the door and slipped back into the house. It was quiet inside, the rooms still smelling of the cabbage she’d cooked for supper. Jimmy was out with his friends and wouldn’t be home till late.

It was early yet. It pissed her off that Call had turned her on, then left without doing anything about it. She glanced at the phone on the wall next to the stove in the kitchen.

Maybe Farley was home. He wasn’t much to look at, not like Call, but he was always up for a good time. She thought of his eagerness in bed and grinned at the pun. Maybe she’d give him a jingle.

Sally reached for the phone.

As the Jeep rolled through the darkness, Call slammed his hand down on the wheel. Sonofabitch! What the hell was the matter with him? He had promised himself tonight he would satisfy the sexual desire that had finally begun to stir to life inside him again. Instead, he had apologized to Sally and headed back home.

He could tell himself it was Susan, that he felt like he was being unfaithful, even after all these years, but it wouldn’t be the truth. Sex had never been that important in their marriage. At least not to Susan. Call had always had a high sex drive, but Susan had never placed much value on intimacy, aside from having kids. They’d had other things in common, other dreams and goals that had drawn them together. Since he was the kind of guy who didn’t believe in cheating on his wife, he had sublimated part of his drive with work.

Not that that was any excuse for the sixteen-hour days he had put in.

Since the accident, depression and guilt had kept him celibate, but in the past few months he had finally begun to overcome those feelings and start moving ahead with his life.

The truth was, his wife was gone and he was a single man again. He was ready for some hot, uninvolved sex—he just didn’t want it with Sally Beecham. He wanted it with Charity Sinclair and that posed a definite problem.

Call raked a hand through his hair. Charity wasn’t a bar-maid who had offered him a no-strings relationship. She wasn’t some divorcee who hopped from man to man, looking for a good time. If there was ever a poster girl for the all-American, clean-cut girl-next-door, Charity Sinclair was it.

Of course, he could be wrong.

The thought started his blood pumping. He hadn’t felt a single moment of lust for Sally, but he was hard just thinking maybe Charity might be up for a little casual sex. Even the low-cut blouse Sally had been wearing, showing off a set of plump, milk-white breasts, hadn’t done it for him.

Not like this morning when he’d stared at Charity’s luscious mouth, measured the tantalizing breasts beneath her mud-spattered shirt, and wanted to drag her down on the ground. He’d wanted to rip off her clothes, wanted to bury himself inside her.

“Jesus.” Call turned off Hunker Road and started the slow, bumpy drive up Dead Horse Creek. Coming back to the real world was proving more of a problem than he’d imagined. After four years of going without, he figured just about any warm, willing woman would do. Maybe he was worried that after all this time he wouldn’t be any good, but he didn’t think so. Like Sally said, having sex wasn’t something a man forgot how to do.

Hell, if Sally wasn’t the one, there were other women in Dawson. What about the little redhead waiting tables at Klondike Kate’s? Toby had offered to introduce him, said she was a real party girl and she wanted to meet him, that she would be moving away in July and just wanted to have a little fun in the meantime.

Whatever he did, the last thing he wanted was any sort of emotional entanglement—with the redhead or anyone else. Making love to a woman who lived in the house right next to his was asking for serious trouble.

Trouble.
It was Charity Sinclair’s middle name.

Call still felt restless Sunday morning. Sitting down at his computer, he punched up his e-mail. Half a dozen messages were waiting, including one from his brother. Zach lived in Los Angeles, but planned to come north for a few weeks this summer. Call replied that his brother couldn’t get there fast enough to suit him. Not the reply Zach would have received even a couple of months ago.

It was a good sign, Call thought, that he was so eager to see his sibling. It meant he really was coming back to life.

Next, he printed a lengthy attachment from the game company, Inner Dimensions, that had come in Friday morning. It showed some of the advertising being planned for their newest software game, King Cobra, expected to be the hottest ticket of the season.

There was also an e-mail from Peter Held. The kid was really excited about the progress he was making on a process that would dramatically increase the capacity for hard-disk storage. If the idea actually worked, it would revolutionize the industry. It was a notion Call had been working on four years ago. He had let the project slide after Susan died. Nothing seemed important back then.

Then his partner in the venture, Frank McGuire, had passed away of a heart attack one month later, and Call had canned the idea completely. Until six months ago, he hadn’t given it another thought. But resurrecting himself seemed to resurrect some of his old endeavors.

He e-mailed Peter, gave him an atta-boy for the extra hours he’d been putting in, dealt with the rest of his e-mail, which was nothing compared to the stacks he had received in the old days, and turned off the computer.

“Breakfast is ready, Call. Pancakes and eggs.” Toby stood in the doorway, his shirttail out, red hair mussed, eyes red and groggy. It looked like the kid had had a far more productive Saturday night than Call had.

“Thanks, I’ll be right there.” He started toward the kitchen but couldn’t resist stopping in front of the window. His binoculars sat on the antique claw foot table right where he’d left them. He was beginning to feel like a real Peeping Tom, but that didn’t keep him from picking up the glasses for a quick scan of the cabin next door.

He wondered what Charity would say if she knew that was how he’d been keeping track of her, and couldn’t help thinking how sexy she would look with her temper shooting sparks and her pretty green eyes flashing. She was already dressed and out in the back, he saw, chopping some split logs into kindling.

He almost smiled. If he got lucky, maybe she would provide him with a little more entertainment.

He watched her working a moment more, surprised to discover she was doing a pretty good job, started to set the glasses back down, but something moved at the edge of the lens and he focused the binoculars in that direction.

The muscles at the back of his neck went tight. The big, slow-moving brown object outlined in the circle of the lens really was a bear this time.

Call grabbed his .45-70 rifle off the gun rack on the wall and hit the door running.

Charity lifted the small hand axe and brought it down on the piece of split wood she was chopping into kindling. Doing a pretty fair job of it, she thought. It was easier to light a fire with smaller pieces, she’d discovered, and this being Sunday, her last day off before the workweek began, she was looking forward to building a roaring blaze.

She whacked off another chunk and raised the axe, but a sound off to her right drew her attention. She turned just in time to see the bushes rustle, then part as if they weren’t there, and a huge brown bear saunter out from between two pine trees. For a moment, she blinked, unable to believe her eyes. Horrified, she watched the animal walking toward her in a slow, ambling gait that sent shivers down her spine, its furry head ranging from side to side.

This is no weasel,
she thought with a shot of fear, her fingers tightening around the grip of the little hand axe whose sharp blade was her only weapon. She held the axe up for a moment, thought about how ridiculously useless it would be against a creature that size, took a deep breath, and prepared to run.

“Whatever you do, for God’s sake don’t run.”

Call’s voice washed over her, stopping her headlong flight before it started.

“Stay exactly where you are and keep your attention on the bear.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw him on the path connecting their two properties, a rifle gripped in his hands. The bear saw him, too, and the animal stopped, his big, fuzzy head going up. Call shouldered the rifle and fired into the air above the creature’s head. Another shot ricocheted through the air, then a third.

The bear growled once, spun on its heavy back legs, and raced off up the hill, flinging dirt as it disappeared into the forest.

Charity stood there shaking, watching Call stalk toward her, his face as dark as the thundercloud that had just passed in front of the sun.

“For chrissake, are you nuts? You never run from a bear or any other big game animal!”

She swallowed, too scared to give him one of her usual witty retorts. “I think I’m either going to faint or throw up. I’m not sure which.”

“Shit.” Propping the gun in a notch on the side of a tree stump, he eased her down on the stump beside it. “Put your head between your legs.”

She just sat there, pale-faced and shaking, so Call did it for her, his big hand locking around the nape of her neck, easing her head down more gently than she would have imagined.

“Christ, what is it with you? You’re a frigging magnet for disaster.”

She lifted her head too quickly and a wave of dizziness washed over her. Call shoved her head back down.

“What … it … is,” she answered from between her legs, “is I live here, in case you’ve forgotten.” She slowly lifted her head, beginning to feel a little less shaky. “The bears and everyone else”—she drilled him with an including-you look—“are going to have to get used to it.”

He stared at her with those fierce blue eyes, then began to survey the area around the cabin. “If that’s the case, then you’d better not leave garbage out to attract them. Surely Maude told you that.”

She frowned. “I didn’t leave out any garbage. I might be new up here, but I don’t have a death wish.”

“Then what’s that sitting over there?” He tipped his head toward a black plastic sack next to a pine tree, not far from the back door of the cabin. “Looks like garbage to me.”

Charity got up from the stump and walked over on still-shaky legs to examine it, opening the bag that was only loosely tied shut. “It’s breakfast and lunch scraps from Friday, but I thought Buck burned them along with some of the trash he’s been cleaning out of the sheds. I guess he forgot.”

Call gazed up the hill toward the property north of the Lily Rose, but Buck’s cabin was a good way farther along the road, well out of sight from where they were. “Yeah, that must be it.”

“Will he be back?”

“Buck or the bear?”

Her lips quirked. “The bear.”

“Not today. Hopefully, never.”

“Was it a grizzly?”

“Black bear.”

“It must have been a grizzly. It wasn’t black—it was brown.”

He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe her. “Black bears come in lots of different colors. Grizzlies are a whole different species. You have to learn which is which and you have to react to each of them differently.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean you have to be aggressive with black bears. With grizzlies, the best thing to do is lie down, pull yourself into a protective ball, and play dead. The bear might maul you a little, but at least you won’t get killed … not usually, at any rate.”

She sagged back against the trunk of the pine tree, her face pale again. “That’s comforting.”

Call sighed in exasperation. “Dammit, Charity, don’t you know anything about living out here?”

“Obviously not as much as I should.”

“I can’t imagine what a woman like you is doing up here by herself in the first place. You did come on your own? No husband, no boyfriend, right?”

She straightened, beginning to get annoyed. “I don’t need a husband to do something I’ve always wanted to do. Maybe I should have learned more about the animals around here and less about the history of the area, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have come.”

“This is hard country. Bad things happen up here. Unless you’ve been wearing blinders, by now you’re beginning to see that. Why don’t you accept my offer, sell this place, and go home where you belong?”

Home where you belong.
They were fighting words to Charity, right along with
be a good little girl.
Her lips tightened. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? For me to sell out and go home. Then you could have your precious privacy back. You wouldn’t have to worry about someone making noise when they worked next door. You wouldn’t have to worry about saving some greenhorn from a bear. You wouldn’t have to think about—”

She gasped as he took a threatening step toward her, his eyes snapping as he backed her up against the trunk of the tree. “Yeah, I wouldn’t have to worry about what mischief you might get into next. And whenever I saw you, I wouldn’t have to think about what it might be like to kiss that sassy mouth of yours. I wouldn’t have to drive myself crazy wondering what it would feel like to reach under that silly panda sweatshirt and cup your breasts, to put my mouth there and find out how they taste.”

She made a little sound in her throat the instant before his mouth crushed down over hers. Hard lips, fierce and hot as a brand, molded with hers, then began to soften. He started to taste her, to sample instead of demand. Lean, tanned hands framed her face, tilted her head back so he could deepen the kiss and she felt the rough shadow of beard along his jaw. Her mouth parted on a moan and his tongue slid inside. It felt slick and hot as it tangled with hers, and ragged need tore through her.

Oh, dear God! Heat overwhelmed her and she started to tremble. Her hands came up to his shoulders, clung for a moment, then slid up around his neck. She heard Call groan.

He pressed himself more solidly against her, forcing her into the bark of the tree. She could feel his arousal, a big, hard ridge straining beneath the fly of his jeans. His hands found her bottom and he lifted her a little, fit his heavy erection into the soft vee between her legs.

An ache started there. She inhaled his scent, like piney woods and smoke, and he tasted all male. He kissed the way a woman dreamed a man should kiss, drinking her in, making her legs turn to butter. As if he would rather have the taste of her mouth than his next breath of air.

She tilted her head back and he kissed the side of her neck, trailed hot, wet kisses to the base of her throat, then took her mouth again. Their tongues fenced, mated in perfect rhythm. Their mouths seemed designed to fit exactly together. The kiss went on and on, till her brain felt mushy and she could barely think.

Tell him to stop,
a voice inside her said, but all she could think was that Jeremy had never kissed her like this. He had never made her feel like this—not once in the two years they had been together.
No one
had ever made her feel like this.

And she didn’t want the moment to end.

Her brain seemed to shut down just then, leaving her body in control. Desire curled like mist through her veins. She fumbled with the buttons on the front of his denim shirt, tore one of them off in her haste to touch him. She jerked the fabric apart and slid her hands inside, pressed her trembling palms against his bare chest.

Thick bands of muscle tightened. Crisp brown chest hair curled around the tips of her fingers, and ridges of muscle rippled down his flat stomach. Call made a sound in his throat and a shudder ran the length of his body.

His mouth still clung to hers. He jerked up her sweatshirt, cupped her breasts over her white lace bra, and started to work the catch beneath the tiny bow at the front.

“Hey, Call! You over here? Call! Is everything all right?”

She whimpered as he whipped his mouth away and softly cursed. With an unsteady hand, he jerked down her sweatshirt and stepped protectively in front of her, leaving her shielded behind his body and the trunk of the tree.

“Everything’s fine, Toby.” His voice sounded raspy. She wondered if his friend would notice.

“I thought I heard shots,” Toby said, “but I was cooking so I didn’t pay all that much attention. Then I went into the living room and found the front door open. When I saw your rifle gone from the rack, I was afraid something bad might have happened.”

“Our neighbor, Ms. Sinclair, came nose to nose with her first black bear.” Call looked her way, gave her a quick once-over, saw that she didn’t look too disheveled, and tugged her out from behind the tree. “Charity Sinclair, meet Toby Jenkins. Toby’s chief-cook-and-bottle-washer over at my place, and all-around handyman. At least he is till he leaves for college in the fall. Toby, this is Ms. Sinclair, our new neighbor.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am. I heard Mose sold the place. I’ve been meaning to come over and say hello.”

“Forget the ma’am,” Charity told him. “It makes me feel too old. Charity is enough.”

He nodded, smiled. He was young, maybe nineteen or twenty, with thick, dark red hair and a few scattered freckles, sort of a young John Kennedy, an attractive boy with what appeared to be a pleasant disposition. She wondered if he could tell by looking at her what had been going on when he arrived. Then she noticed Call’s shirt was open and missing a button and felt her face heating up again.

Call cleared his throat. “I’ll be home in a couple of minutes, Toby.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll have your breakfast waiting.” With a wave good-bye, he set off down the path the way he had come.

When Charity turned, she saw Call watching her, his face dark, his expression closed up as it usually was. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Oh, God. He was obviously sorry it had and it made her even more embarrassed. “Neither did I. I don’t make a habit of … of … I don’t exactly know what happened.” She studied her feet, then stared off toward the creek. “It must have been the fear, you know? They say when your life is threatened you revert to your most basic instincts.”