Suddenly, he loomed over her, his fingers tripping the safety lock on the belt. With blazing eyes, he tossed the black strap out of the way and his voice rose above the din of the rain. “I don't ever want to see you wearing one of these damn things again! Ever! Do you hear me?”
He was like a crazy man and she didn't know why. Totally bewildered by his behavior, she stared at him.
“Have you gone mad? I've been driving through winding roads in the pouring rain. Roads, I might add, that I've never traveled before in my life, and you tell me I shouldn't be wearing my seat belt! Adam, Iâ”
Before she could say another word, he jerked her into his arms. With his face buried in the crook of her neck, he groaned, “Oh, God, Maureen., forgive me for yelling at you. I was so damned frightened. I knew you should've been here hours ago and I could only imagineâI've been out of my mind with worry.” Tremors shook his arms and she could feel his heart pounding wildly against her cheek. Maureen closed her eyes, stunned by the depth of his fear for her safety.
“I'm sorry, Adam. I didn't mean to worry you, but I've been in a storm ever since the pilot crossed over into Texas. I tried your cellular phone several times, but I couldn't even get a ring. My only choice was to keep driving.”
He eased her head back from his chest and his hand trembled as he reached up and smoothed her tangled hair off her forehead. “I knowâI know. It doesn't matter anymore. You're here and you're safe.”
With a needy groan low in his throat, his hands slipped to her face. Maureen's heart lurched into a wild gallop as he smothered her cheeks and forehead, nose and chin with kisses. By the time he turned his attention to her lips, she was clinging to him, frantic for the intimate taste of his mouth.
His kiss was desperate and all-consuming. Maureen was gasping for breath and shaking like a leaf when he finally dragged his lips from hers and buried his face in the long curtain of her hair.
“Promise me, Maureen, promise me you'll never
drive in weather like this again. I don't care if I am waiting for you! And promise me you'll never put on another seat belt!”
She reared her head back far enough to study his face. Anguish filled his green eyes and something far more tender. Something she didn't yet want to believe.
“Adam, you're not making sense. You make this big issue of wanting me to be safe and thenâ”
“If you can't promise me, I'll get a damn hatchet and hack them out of every vehicle you climb into!”
His harsh warning filled her with fury. “You're not going to do...”
Her words lodged in her throat as the memory of the day she first met Adam suddenly flashed through her mind. He'd refused to wear his seat belt and she'd argued with him about trying to act like a bullheaded tough guy. As a result, he'd been flung from the Jeep. He could have been killed. But thankfully he'd come away from the accident with only a broken ankle.
“Adam,” she began again, “you wouldn't wear your seat belt
down in
South America. Why?”
His eyes drifted to the rain pelting against the windshield. “I hate the things.”
“Why?” she persisted.
He looked back at her and she inwardly cringed at the dark, desolate shadows in his eyes. “Because they're death traps!”
Maureen knew he wasn't simply repeating the standard argument against seat belts. Something had happened to make him feel this deeply, and she had to find out what it was.
Slowly, she reached up and cradled her palm against his jaw. “Tell me,” she urged quietly.
“No.”
“You made me tell you about Elizabeth. I didn't want to, but I did.” And she had, she realized, because she loved him. Because something inside of her had needed to share the pain with him.
For long moments, Adam's eyes delved into hers and then he let out a long, weary breath. “Someone I knew died in a car accident.”
Maureen gently shook her head. “I've been acquainted with several people who lost their lives in car accidents. Their deaths only made me more aware of the need for buckling up.”
Agony twisted his features. “But this was...different. This was my fiancée.”
Maureen didn't know if her shocked gasp was on the inside or out. “Your fiancée?” she echoed. “You were going to be married?”
His face clouded over as he nodded. “Susan was my high school sweetheart. By the time we reached college, we were planning on getting married. I was going to get my degree in engineering and go into the gas and oil business. She was studying to be an elementary teacher. She loved kids and wanted us to have several.”
He paused as his features hardened with bitter regret. Maureen waited for him to go on.
“We had everything plannedâour whole lives to look forward to. But it never happened. She was driving home late one evening through the mountains. A highway she'd driven hundreds of times before, but it had been raining and the asphalt was slick. The car skidded on a curve and slid over the edge. If she hadn't been strapped inside, she might have had a
chance. As it was...well, now you can see how I feel.”
Yes, Maureen could now see a lot of things she hadn't understood before. “You must have felt like the whole world had been knocked out from under you.”
“For a long time, I didn't care about anything,” he admitted. “And then once I saw I had no choice but to go on living, I decided the best thing I could do was never again set myself up for that kind of loss.”
Maureen's heart ached as she imagined the grief and pain he must have endured. And ached, too, because he'd gone all these years without getting over his fiancée's death.
“So you decided to close off your heart to all women.”
Looking away from her, he scrubbed both hands over his face. “It was easier just to have girlfriends.”
“And let everyone believe you'd simply turned into a playboy.”
“I guess I did turn into one,” he murmured, then turned his head and caught her gaze with his. “Until I met you.”
She groaned with torment and quickly twisted away from the raw hunger on his face.
“Adam, you've carried the memory of this woman around with you all this time. It's...hard for me to believe you can let her go now. Because of me.”
Before Maureen could guess his intentions, she was back in his arms, and his cheek was pressed to hers as he whispered huskily, “That's because what I feel for you is stronger than anything I suffered over Susan.
It's strong enough to make me see I have to have you in my life. I don't have any choice in the matter.”
Maureen desperately wanted to believe him. If she thought he truly loved her, maybe she could find the courage to try to have the family she'd always wanted. But right now, she could only see that he'd been a terribly wounded man and she wasn't at all sure she was woman enough to heal him.
She pulled away from him and scooted back behind the steering wheel. “The rain is letting up. We can't stay here all night on the side of the highway.”
He stared at her with complete dismay. “That's all you have to say?”
She made herself reach for the key in the ignition. “What would you have me say?” she asked miserably.
His fingers closed tightly around her upper arm. Hardly able to breathe, she raised her eyes and looked at him in the darkness of the cab. Tension danced between them like the bolts of electricity lighting up the distant sky.
“That you love me and need me. That nothing matters but us. That you'll make love to me here and now!”
The ferocity of his voice stunned her as much as what he was saying. Her hand fell from the ignition at the same time as his name broke from her lips like a sob. He reached for her and dragged her across to his side of the seat where she went willingly into his arms.
His hands dived into her tangled hair and cradled the back of her head as he spoke against her lips. “You do want me. Tell me!”
“Yes.”
That one word was all he needed to propel him into action. His lips crushed down on hers while his hands slid beneath the hem of her blouse and pressed against the warm flesh of her back.
To have him touching her, kissing her, was the only thing that eased the fire in her body, the ache in her heart. She'd wanted him for so long and had fought with herself just as long not to give in to the desire he fueled in her. But now she'd grown so weary, so raw and ragged from fighting that all she wanted was to forget and lose herself in his hard body.
In the back of her mind, she realized they were listing sideways, and moments later she felt her back against the seat. Adam lifted his head and watched her face as he undid the buttons of her blouse, then his head dipped and his tongue marked a moist path over the exposed flesh of her breasts.
Gripped by white-hot desire, she was helpless to stop their reckless plunge. She hadn't kissed him nearly enough, smelled the erotic male scent of his skin or felt his hard body enough to satisfy the hunger inside her. She wasn't sure she would ever get enough of him.
And then, just as his hand found the throbbing juncture between her thighs, his head jerked up. Maureen's eyes flew open to see the gleam of headlights sweeping through the dark interior of the cab.
Muttering several curse words, Adam pulled her blouse back together over her naked breasts.
“Has someone stopped?” she asked in a voice still husky with desire.
“No,” he growled as he moved away from her. “But we have.”
She fumbled with her clothing as she straightened
in the seat and her head began to swirl with the realization of just how close they'd come to making love. And this time, Adam had put an end to it!
Her heated face flaming, she jerked open the door and climbed down to the ground. Rain was still falling but at a much lighter rate. It soaked her hair and her cotton shirt as she fumbled with the last of the buttons and drew in several deep breaths of fresh air.
“Maureen, what in hell are you doing?”
She glanced over her shoulder to see that he'd joined her outside. “Trying get away from you,” she answered in a desperate voice.
“Why?”
She whirled around to face him. “Because I can't trust myself with you anymore! I almost made love to you here on the side of the highway! You make me crazy! Crazy!”
Seeing it was going to take more than a few words to calm her, he took her by the shoulder. “Come on. We've got to get out of this rain and leave this place.”
“Where? We're out in the middle of nowhere!”
“There's a company trailer at the rig site. It's a few miles east of here. We can stay there tonight. It's closer than driving back to town.”
“No! I'm not staying anywhere with you tonight.”
His fingers bit deeper into her flesh. “You won't even know I'm there.”
Maureen wanted to curse at him, at herself and the whole wretched situation. But she didn't. In spite of everything that had just happened, she was here on a job as a paid geologist. She had to remember that. Gritting her teeth, she nodded. “All right. Let's go.”
Fifteen minutes later, Maureen followed Adam's
truck onto the rig site. The tall derrick was brightly lit and she could see a roughneck dressed in a slicker working the catwalk in the pouring rain.
Nothing stopped a drilling rig, she thought wryly, not lightning or downpours, wind, hail, sleet or snow. Once the drill pipe bit into the earth, it was a frantic race to find gas or oil as quickly as possible. The bosses pushed their men to the limit, and the company men, such as Adam, pushed the bosses to drive them even harder. Yet she knew he asked them to do no more than what he would do himself. He was a fair man on the job. It was the deeper personal part of him that she couldn't yet trust.
They parked their vehicles beside a small trailer set up in an out-of-the-way spot away from the derrick. The sound of the rain coupled with the loud hum of the nearby generators kept the two of them from saying anything until they stepped inside.
“The bathroom is right beyond the kitchen,” Adam said as he turned to her. “And the bedrooms are on either end. Take your pick. As for tomorrow, I told the old man you'd meet with him by eight. Is that okay with you?”
Maureen had been through so much in the past few hours she'd almost forgotten why she'd come here to Oklahoma in the first place. It certainly hadn't been to fall into Adam's arms. But since that had already happened, she couldn't take it back. She now had to decide what to do about him and her and the rest of her life.
“You aren't coming with me?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I left him none too happy yesterday. I don't think it would be a good idea to show my face to him again in the morning.”