The tape slipped from her hands, and she had to retrieve it from the grass. Her heartbeat sped up. “I have to go into town today. Want me to pick up anything for you? Food to replenish that pack before you move on?"
“Don't bother. I've got some dried soups."
“That's all? You expect to heal this thing on the strength of dried soup? You're pitiful, Cole, definitely no common sense."
Pushing her hands away, he finished the taping job himself. “So I'm a loser. Isn't that what your daddy predicted of me? He'd love to see me finally get that shotgun blast he was thinking about. To protect his lovely daughter."
The derision stilled the breeze.
Struggling up to one knee, he reached for his socks hanging on the nearby weeds. When he writhed in pain, her instincts made her snatch them from his fumbling hands.
She thrust him unceremoniously back onto the grass, and plunged to her knees at his feet, already readying the sock, her stomach knotting. “Damn you, Cole. If I have to dress you to get you away from me for good, I will!"
His sharp whistle stopped her as he sat up. “That's almost like the old Laurel Lee! Even had a cuss word in there."
Breathless, flushed with embarrassment, she didn't dare look him in the eye. She started nudging the sock over the first row of toes. “I'm sorry for raising my voice again."
“Hey, don't think of it. You're right. I come back like some ghost. You have a right to be upset and raise a voice at me."
There he went again, getting all polite after the storm, tossing her emotions all over the place. And she was buying into it! She yearned to push him away, to pay him back for leaving her. Pulling the sock over his ankle, her fingers grazed his steely calf muscles with their springy hair. Oh, he was real, all right. The raw maleness of him sent sparks right up her arms.
His chuckle caught her off guard.
“What's so amusing now?” she charged.
“Remember how we'd dress each other after a good swim in the pond?"
With heat scissoring through her again, she handed him his other sock. “Don't go down memory lane with me."
He shoved the sock right back. “Please? My leg's throbbing. I don't want to wrestle to reach down to my ugly toes."
Against her better judgment, she grabbed the sock, then slipped it on him. “They're not so ugly."
“You always called my big toe Mr. Potato Head."
“Did not,” she said, smiling, despite herself.
“Didn't you stub yours on the new sidewalk outside the hardware store one day? The owner came out and yelled at us—"
“At
you
, for writing dirty words in the dust on his window."
“And your bare foot slipped off the bike pedal."
“At least we escaped."
“Blood all over the sidewalk. You put mud on your toe to stop the bleeding. A doctor in the making."
Her eyes found his and that warm summer's day. Her throat constricted. “The new owner is a guy about our age, in his 30s, Gary Christianson. Keeps his windows clean."
Groping for a safer subject, she sat back in the grass and asked, “Who'd want to harm Mike? He was always so quiet and polite, knew what he wanted out of life, even as a teenager."
“Nothing like me?"
Shrugging, she drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around her knees to set her chin there, following his pained gaze to Spirit Lake, seeing the anger darken him.
After a shudder, she asked, “Who's this man, Cole? The murderer?"
“My brother and I worked for Marco Rojas, an entrepreneur from Venezuela.” He spelled out the name. “He hated it when people didn't know enough about Spanish to know the ‘J’ is pronounced silently like an ‘h.’ ‘Ro-hoss the boss’ became our mantra."
“So you worked for an egomaniac, but a very rich one."
“Always suspicious and jealous of people with the same kind of money."
“Afraid perhaps, that they'd find out he was a fraud?"
He harumphed. “I hadn't thought of it that way, but perhaps."
“Which makes him very dangerous. Like a rabid animal pushed into a corner,” she offered. “Where'd ‘Ro-Hoss’ get his big bucks?"
“We've been lucky, hauling up a lot of pieces that museums and collectors pay big for."
Laurel couldn't deny the thrilling sense of awe threading through her. “You're a modern day explorer. A Cousteau, a Titanic raiser."
“Don't make it sound too romantic. The flip side of that was our racing. Mike lost an eye a few years back. Got hit by another boat when his split apart. I was ahead of them, and didn't see it happen. And now this."
Her insides lurched for him.
He continued, “Mike began running a Miami marina for Rojas while I continued racing the hydroboats. Mike managed all the books. He knew everything."
“Too much?"
“Enough to make Mike come up here and hide something about Rojas's operations."
Shivering, she glanced over her shoulder at the old place. The idea of someone lurking about inside the clapboard hulk without her knowledge spooked her. Then a new thought struck: what if she'd razed the place already, destroying Cole's precious evidence? She shuddered to think how that would have left things for Cole.
“When was your brother here?"
“Almost two weeks ago now. When he returned, he and Rojas didn't see eye to eye on anything anymore. That's when..."
When Cole's tanned face turned ashen, she hurried to him, feeling his forehead, her heart pounding. “You should be lying down and resting. I just put you through a lot with that scalpel."
Cole swiped up her hands, clutching them for dear life in his fists, stilling her breathing again.
His gaze scorched her. “Forget about my health. Listen to me,” he hissed, shaking her captured wrists to punctuate his words. “He's dead because of me. I was so damn angry that Mike wasn't telling me what was going on. He even warned me, said he thought Rojas was involved in something no good, that he was going to prove it.
“We argued, right there on the dock before a race. I insisted on knowing right there what he'd found out. Mike told me to shut up. I'd never seen him like that. We always shared everything. But not this for some reason."
“Maybe he didn't have all the evidence he thought he needed,” she offered.
“But I kept badgering him. Made a scene.” His chest heaved up and down, his breathing so fiercely charged it felt as if he'd suck her in. “And to shut me up he took off in the speedboat I was about to warm up. He never did things like that. Nothing careless in his whole life. He was a good man. A good father, too."
When he unhanded her, Laurel reeled from the raw love for his brother rimming his eyes. She couldn't move. “I'm sorry."
“The man I worked for had rigged the boat. I'm sure of it. It blew up out in the water. My brother, gone, just like that."
His hands had turned to ice, and she rubbed them instinctively to warm them. “I'm sorry."
Stumbling up, he limped away, but stopped only a few feet from her because of the pain. She heard the pain on his sigh, saw it in the way his shoulders rose with several deep breaths.
Scanning Spirit Lake toward the western horizon, he muttered, “Don't feel sorry for a man who should have saved his brother and who wishes another man dead. Don't allow yourself to—"
“Become involved. I know.” But looking at his broad shoulders, sagging now, Laurel hurt for him.
When he weaved on the bad leg, she quickly slid beside him, acting as his crutch, not minding that she fit perfectly under his arm and alongside his firm body. Not minding that he needed her. Even for only the moment. “It could have been an accident. The authorities, they could—"
“The authorities!” He almost knocked them down. “Mike couldn't trust them and he wasn't ready to trust me yet with whatever it is he found. There's something about this whole mess that calls for a lot more than simple solutions."
A quick glance showed blood seeping through his thick bandage. She needed to calm him down. “Where's your son?"
“Tyler's with Mike's wife, or widow now. Karen. And his cousin Tim. They're in hiding. I made sure they moved the same day Mike was killed."
Quaking, she began gathering up her supplies from the grass, remembering how his lack of good judgment got them in trouble years ago.
“You should be with your son. Not here."
Cole turned her around roughly to face his piercing hawk-like eyes. “I didn't have a choice, Laurel. Mike chose this old place, not me. I can only pray for a little time before Rojas finds someone who will tell him about this property, because he'll come here if he has to."
“And then what? A final shootout? Listen to yourself. Don't you care about anybody? You'll put me in danger, everyone in Dresden and who lives around Spirit Lake? What about your son? The authorities should be the ones taking care of your boss, not you. Go home to your son where you belong!"
With the first-aid kit, she turned to go, but he grabbed her, tossing the kit aside and whirling her back into his arms. “Don't leave like this."
Her heartbeat skittered into a higher gear. “Leaving's your habit, not mine. You can verify that habit with your son I bet."
“Laurel, why are you so bitter? What the hell happened after I left?"
“You left me with an ... aftertaste,” she said, her stomach churning with the dread of him pressing her for too much. “You left my whole family with a bad taste."
He caught a fistful of her long hair whipping in the breeze, gentling it back against her face until his knuckles grazed her cheekbone, sending thunderbolts through her. “Listen to me,” he said in a tone gone guttural. “I tried to square things by sending money to your father to pay for what I did to his car."
“I didn't know that.” The fragrant spring air brought the scent of his heated skin along with her next breath, threatening to buckle her legs.
“Your father kept returning the envelopes to me unopened."
“Sounds like him. I'm sorry."
“Did you go to college?” Letting her hair fall from his fist, he combed it back into place with his fingers.
She shivered. He didn't seem to notice. “I started out studying plants. They didn't talk back or cause trouble."
At his chuckle, she flicked her gaze up to meet his. The dark eyes softened, inviting her in.
“And the animals?” he asked.
“I switched to environmental studies, and in the field labs I discovered I had a gift for working with animals. They responded to me."
“As I always have,” he muttered, rubbing a thumb along her jawline, leaving sparks in his wake. “The way we made love then, it was real."
She sucked in her breath and tried to jerk away, but he held her tight, bringing her back into his shadow. The cardinals and robins chirped from the nearby woodland, almost serenading them.
His dark eyes narrowed. “Every night riding the rails, freezing my ass off trying to sleep in a cold metal boxcar, I kept thinking about coming here, dreading it, but at the same time remembering how warm it felt lying next to you under the sun, and how hot our skin got, and how we knew how to cool ourselves in the pond, and how much we didn't have a worry in the world."
Melting under his gaze, she remembered too, but she'd changed. Strength of maturity buoyed her now. “Why, Cole? Why are you telling me these things?"
The cardinals and robins stopped their cacophony, as if they should listen to the hawk, too.
“Because there's an emptiness in my gut. It settled in that day Mike died and hasn't left. And I don't know where it's leading me, except that I know there's been an emptiness involving you and me, and yes, our choices were mixed up and we were young, too young, and hell, but it's a mess, and you're right about it being a mess."
The heat of him mingled with her own charged breathing, filling her lungs with the earthy tang about him, spilling the essence of him into her veins as if he were suddenly her lifeblood. His arms—stronger than anything she'd remembered—drew her even more tightly against him, until her breasts tingled against the vibrations of his heartbeat.
“Emptiness,” she said, her mouth dry and helpless against the truth, “waits and waits for something to fill it."
“Something, or someone? I need a friend, Laurel Lee."
“Only a friend?” Her heartbeat went ragged at the yearning softening his already-velvet eyes.
“Please,” he murmured, his breath feathering across her cheekbones, sending the same soft tickle through her middle. “I'm scared as hell."
His head descended, his firm lips parting in their hunger.
* * * *
HIS KISS SWEPT her into the clouds, where she rode with the birds, and smelled sweet clover wafting up from the meadow below. Her body grew ticklishly light, her nipples hardening where they brushed against his heaving chest as he carried her higher.
Then he landed with her. A crash landing.
Snapping open her eyes, she found him five steps away already, limping toward the nylon heap that looked like it might become a tent.
Stomping over, kicking aside the tall grass, she demanded, “Don't you dare tell me you didn't feel anything—"
“Damnit, I'm sorry,” he snapped, without looking up. “I shouldn't have done that.” He gathered tent stakes and crouched down, giving her his back again.
“Sorry doesn't cut it anymore.” She snatched up a tent stake he was laboring to reach and thrust it at him. “And why are you building this tent? You can sleep in that old mansion over there."
“Too much dust and crud. Not good for my lungs."
“Swell. Clean lungs will be appreciated by the killer once he gets here."
Disgusted at herself for railing at him again, she turned to soak up every soothing, rippling inch of Spirit Lake. When he surprised her by ushering up beside her, cradling her elbow in his rough palm, the unbidden heat hummed along her skin again.
“What're you doing?” he asked.
“Finding my control before I head back."
Their breathing grew shallower while they watched the undulating water, and listened to the occasional duck quaking before taking flight. After a moment, he tugged on her hair. “Not sure I can get used to this sedate you."
“It's best you don't get used to it."