Mountain Moonlight (7 page)

"Everything has its right name."

She waited for him to go on before finally realizing that was the only answer she was likely to get.

"It was good of you to offer Davis a kitten," she said into the silence, "but I don't know if we'll be able to take it home with us."

"Let's wait and see. I can always ship it." He shifted position on his sleeping bag to peer at the rain through the little view window on the flap. "Isn't letting up any yet." His new position brought them closer together but she hesitated to shift herself, not wanting him to think his nearness disturbed her. Which it did. He seemed to radiate a sensual aura she was extremely susceptible to.

She found the weather a safe subject. "No more lightning and thunder, though. The rain can't last forever" He nodded, then said, "Surprised me when you mentioned my guitar. I'd have sworn you never noticed me that much back then."

Never noticed him! When she'd spent every school day waiting for a glimpse of Bram, hoping and praying he'd say even one word to her. "You were pretty hard to miss," she said dryly.

"Always in trouble, you mean."

"That, too. Even though I never used the stuff, I happened to be pretty good at spotting the druggies but I never figured you for being high on anything. Which was remarkable given the drugs available."

"If you realized that, you must have noticed me a damn sight more than I ever knew."

"Come on, Bram, you were a bigger than life rebel. Everyone in the entire school paid attention to what you did, students and staff alike. Plus you were the star of our winning baseball team."

"I figure that's the only reason those in power put up with me. Us rebels got to have at least one in, you know."

Vala smiled at him. She'd always found Bram sexy but she'd never dreamed he'd turn out to be fun. "I didn't know you'd won that scholarship, though."

"Got it when the university recruited me. I decided to accept it--what did I have to lose?

"So you wound up with a law degree you don't use."

"Not a total loss. I still use a lot of what I learned getting it. And who can predict the future? That degree may come in handy some day."

"At least you had the courage to know what you really wanted."

He gave her a lopsided smile. "Maybe, maybe not. In some areas, though, I think maybe I always knew what I wanted. Trouble was, I didn't know how to get it. Figure that's how the idea of law school came in to begin with."

Vala sighed. "I don't think I ever knew what I really wanted. If I had, I wouldn't have married Neal. But then, of course, I wouldn't have Davis. He's the prize I never expected."

The tent seemed to have gotten smaller, she thought. Which was impossible. Yet Bram's nearness was overwhelming her. She struggled to find words to throw up as a barrier between them.

"Surely at one time you must have thought of marrying," she said.

"Nope. No reason to."

"How about being in love?"

"Who knows what love is?"

"I'm the last person to ask," she said tartly.

"You brought it up. Weren't you ever in love with misguided Neal?"

She shook her head, ashamed to admit it aloud. You ought to love the man you married, shouldn't you?

Time to shift the focus back to him. "You could have had your pick of any girl in high school, so I imagine--"

He cut her off. "You're wrong."

Vala stared at him. "I don't think so. Remember, I was in that school, watching and listening. What I was trying to say, though, is if you've never fallen in love or married, it surely hasn't been for lack of opportunity."

"Rebels don't make good marital partners."

"If by that you mean women don't understand them--"

His tone was so bitter that she began to understand he must be speaking of someone other than himself.

"Been there, done that," he added. "Not again."

It occurred to her that in high school he'd lived alone with his mother. Was he talking about his absent father? Whatever it was, she decided Bram had been hurt as a child. Without thinking, she reached out and placed her hand over his in a gesture of sympathy.

Though she hadn't seen him move, suddenly he seemed a lot closer, making her lick her lips nervously.

"Invitation?" he asked, watching her.

"I--um--" She couldn't find words to tell him no.

And then it was too late.

His mouth brushed against hers in a feather kiss, which shouldn't have been the slightest bit erotic. Or at least that's what she tried to tell herself as she leaned into the kiss, helpless to deny the very real invitation she was now offering.

His arms came around her, pulling her close, his lips urging surrender as he deepened the kiss. No man, certainly not Neal, had ever aroused her so completely by one kiss.

She wanted to melt against him, melt into him, to possess and be possessed. The feeling was completely foreign to her, making her realize there'd been a pitiful lack in her life up until now.

If this was a prelude, she wasn't sure she'd live through the main performance. She was so consumed with longing she could hardly think straight.

Wrapped in his arms, his male scent drugging her senses, the taste of his mouth branding her, she had no desire to try
to
free herself because it felt as though she belonged exactly where she was.

She couldn't tell herself the reason for her eager response was that she hadn't let any man kiss her for a very long time because, the truth was, no man had ever kissed her like this. It was even possible no other man could, only Bram.

"Long overdue," he murmured against her mouth without letting her go.

He was right. More than ten years overdue, if only he knew it.

Chapter 5

Vala, held close in Bram's arms, never want
ing
to leave them, not until she began to realize where she was. Closed in a tent on the side of a mountain during a storm. With her son asleep only a few feet away. Not that they'd done anything really improper, but she'd come close to getting swept away by her feelings.

Bram's words about the rain rushing down the mountain trail in a torrent echoed in her head. She repeated them aloud as she freed herself. "It doesn't do to get swept away."

He let her go without a fuss. Easing back so he was sitting once again on his own sleeping bag, he said, "Why not?"

Flustered, she gestured at Davis, still sleeping peacefully.

Bram grinned at her. "So if we're alone, it's okay?"

"No! What I mean is--" She paused, unsure of what she actually did mean.

"Took me by surprise, too," he admitted.

She wondered if he meant her admittedly ardent response or that he'd been in danger of getting swept away, too. "I don't usually--" she began, then hesitated. Kiss strange men? Bram wasn't exactly a stranger. "I mean, I shouldn't have let it happen," she finished lamely.

"You had a choice?"

Bram was teasing her, but at the same time trying to force the issue. If he'd read her body language right, she'd no more been in control once they got into that zinger of a kiss than he'd been. He was damned if he was going to let her negate what had happened.

"There's always a choice," she snapped.

"What you mean is you finally remembered Davis was asleep in the tent with us."

Vala flushed.

Aha. Struck home. He pushed on. "We can't ignore what's between us. Tell me you haven't felt the pull ever since we met again in that Apache Junction cafe."

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I've never forgotten the last time I saw you, years before. How could you have been so cruel?"

He stared at her, completely baffled. "Cruel? Me?
What the devil are you talking about? You think it wasn't cruel for you to stand there that night looking down your nose at me as though I'd just crawled out from under a rock?" She gave him an incredulous look.

"I did no such thing! I knew why you were there and I was trying not to cry, that's what really happened."

"Knew why I was there?" His words echoed his confusion.

"You should have been ashamed of yourself!"

"Why? What did I do? Nothing, that's what."

"It was mean. I thought you'd never noticed how I watched you in school, how I hung around on the fringes of your crowd. But you must have. Otherwise you wouldn't have come to my house that night. One of your buddies must have told you my parents weren't home."

"Hell, they bowled in a couple's league every Thursday night. It didn't take a Mensa member to turn that up. I didn't have a clue you even knew who I was. But I sure as hell was interested in you. Took me a long time to make a move."

"I wouldn't have cared if it had been your move." Her voice rose. "Instead what did you do?"

He scowled. "Since you seem to have some secret information I don't possess--what did I do?"

"You made a bet!" Her voice broke on the last word and she turned her face from him.

Bram blinked, taken aback. "What in hell are you talking about? What bet?"

"Don't deny it, I overheard two of your buddies talking about how they'd bet you couldn't get so much as a kiss out of the Ice Maiden. Then the same night you show up at my house after never so much as saying one word ever to me at school."

"I vaguely remember the bet," Bram said after a moment or two. "But what makes you think anyone ever called you the Ice Maiden?"

Vala turned toward him again, frowning. "What are you saying?"

"Honey, you tried so hard to blend into the walls that you didn't even have a nickname, good or bad, at school. The Ice Maiden was Lori Salter. I may have showed up at your house hoping for a kiss, but it was my own idea. The truth is, you fascinated me, but I figured you'd never go out with me. So I didn't talk to you at school for fear of having everyone watch you turn me down."

"But--but--" she sputtered.

"You were so far off with that bet business you weren't even on the planet."

"Are you telling me the truth about Lori Salter?"

"Want to ask me if I won the bet?"

"No! Now that I think about it, Lori was sort of stand- offish. I suppose..." She let the words trail off.

"Tell you anyway. I kissed her, all right. Winning the bet was a lot more fun than the kiss."

She slanted him a quelling glance.

"I didn't even come close to kissing you that night," he said. "Didn't so much as get one kind word, as I recall."

"I wanted you to kiss me!" she cried. "But not on a bet. I spent the whole time you were there trying not to burst into tears."

He shook his head. "I didn't have a clue. Between us, we blew it. I guess the only remedy is to try to make up for lost time."

"I think we already have," she said.

"Wrong. We've hardly begun." He gave her a long, speculative look. "If you hadn't been hung up on that bet and I had kissed you that night, I wonder what it would have been like?"

"We can hardly go back and find out."

He persisted. "Would you have responded?"

"What do you think?"

He ran his forefinger along the curve of her lower lip. "I think we'd still have been locked together in that kiss when your parents got home and there'd have been hell to pay."

She bit his finger.

"How come you're biting him, Mom?" Davis asked sleepily. "Because I've been teasing her," Bram said before Vala could speak.

"Oh." Davis sat up. "Hey, I don't hear the rain hitting the tent any more. Is the storm over?"

Bram's gaze caught Vala's. "Is it?" he asked.

She eased over to the flap window and looked out.

"All over," she said, glancing at Bram. "The sun's out."

Though there were hours of daylight left, Bram opted to stay where they were, give the horses a good rubdown and let the tent have a chance to dry in the sun's warmth.

Vala watched as he let Davis build their small campfire, which sputtered and smoked because of the wet. "Be careful," she called to her son, earning an exasperated look from him. It was kind of Bram to let Davis do things but she sometimes felt he didn't realize the boy was only nine.

During the storm, too much had happened both in words and deeds for her to put her thoughts and feelings in any coherent order.

The thunder and lightning were past, the rain gone, but not her inner turmoil. Seeing Bram and Davis huddle over the old map, she marveled at what that ancient scrap of deerskin had led her into. An ambush? At the moment, it almost felt like that.

She wasn't ready for any of this, wasn't ready to discover she was wrong about their last meeting, nor prepared to take up not where they'd left off then. It was completely unknown territory, as dangerous in its way as the Superstitions.

Neal had taught her men couldn't be trusted. She may have known Bram before, but that didn't count. He, too, was a man. After the divorce she'd decided it was safer not to get involved with any other man, which had been easy up until now. The problem was, Bram couldn't be put in the just any other man category, he was someone she found much too attractive and she was trapped in his company for the next few days. Luckily Davis was with them. But would he be buffer enough?