reached for a thermos. He would not be responsible for Celine Lomax, once he got her off his mountain.
“Maybe I was a bit hasty. My temper has a tendency to cause me to get into trouble at times,” Celine muttered as she clung to a branch, dangling just inches above a swollen, angry creek. If the branch broke, she’d be swept away. Above her, a huge black bear was watching her struggles. “Shoo,” she shouted. “I’m all out of gingersnaps.”
She looked up at the man standing on the ground above her. “Oh, hello,” she managed cheerfully and tried for a smile. The branch she was clinging to began to crack, resenting her weight.
Within the hood of his yellow slicker, Tyrell Blaylock’s dark face scowled down at her. Then his hand shot down to claim her wrist, and in a second, he hauled her up and to her feet. The branch cracked and hurled into the foaming, rushing swollen creek.
“I was doing just fine,” Celine said, returning his glare. She was bone-chillingly cold, her muddy jeans plastered against her legs. She struggled against the hand that cupped the back of her head while Tyrell wiped a clean red bandanna over her muddy face. She gasped for air and pushed at him.
He held her more tightly and mopped the cloth over her face one more time. Tyrell Blaylock’s slow devastating grin knocked the air she’d just reclaimed from her terror. “Typical. Now this is where you tell me that you were right and I was wrong, right?”
“Are you always this mouthy?” With one finger, he hooked her glasses from her face; he edged aside his raincoat and began cleaning them with the bottom of his black sweatshirt.
She sniffed. “I’m a Lomax, remember. I speak my mind,” she stated in a very proper tone. She watched him, warily as his grin remained. She plucked her glasses from him and thrust them on. Her quick mind shot for his problems like a dart on its way to the big red X. “So things aren’t that good with your family, either, huh? You can’t go to them and ask for money, can you, hotshot?”
The scowl jerked back. Tyrell’s jaw tightened and she knew that she’d hit a tender wound. She almost felt sorry for him. He looked like a shaggy outcast, scarred and wary of kindness. She almost put her hand on his cheek. But she couldn’t soothe a Blaylock; her grandfather had cursed her kind heart more than once. Cutter had said they were a treacherous lot, all tall and dark and moody, especially the men. They were hunters, Cutter had said, and savages beneath the fancy manners they used with women.
Because she’d betrayed Cutter’s memory, she dug in and attacked. “You had everything you wanted, didn’t you? I’ll bet your family missed you when you tore off into the world with all those scholarships in your fist. I checked your favorite airline’s records...you didn’t visit that much and when you did, you didn’t stay. Jasmine telephone calls were few since you were eighteen. Oh, you came back for your brothers’ weddings, but you didn’t stay. So, there’s big family trouble, and it’s a close family from what I heard at the gas station. So you must have hurt them. It’s an easy deduction. You’re up here. They’re down in the valley.”
“We visit,” he explained tightly, and glanced across the creek to the bear. “Let’s go.”
She crossed her arms. She’d let him off the hook for now. Her family life had been yells and threats and pain and revenge. Close, demonstrative and loving families were not in her experience, despite her love for Cutter and her father. She had believed in her grandfather without that comfort.
Tyrell had his soft spots and one of hers was not to be treated like a delicate piece of fluff. She’d managed her own life since she was old enough to feed herself. “I’m not going anywhere with you and do not pick me up again. I’m not a child. That typical macho stuff won’t work with me and besides that, you look like you’ve had enough of a bad day. You should go back to your nice little cabin. Stay there, why don’t you, while I tidy up my grandfather’s claim.”
“Uh-huh.” He glanced at the tree that had just been torn free by the rushing, churning water. He fished a small thermos bottle from the rain jacket he was wearing and thrust it at her.
Exhausted, determined to take nothing from a Blaylock, Celine hesitated before her hands settled on the warm thermos bottle.
“It’s coffee,” said the man who wasn’t her prince. His voice was raw, as if something was sticking low in his throat and couldn’t decide whether to come out as a growl or a groan. He looked tense and angry. “Warmed over, but hot. Are you going to drink it, or love it?”
She realized she’d been smoothing the shape with one hand, an up and down motion, enjoying the warmth on her frozen fingers. She studied him as she twisted the cup free from the bottle. She poured the hot coffee into the cup and said, “I suppose you’re going to catch a cold and blame it on me.”
The sound coming from Tyrell was definitely a choked growl.
“You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?” she pushed, smirking at her triumph. She sipped the hot coffee. “Ah, there’s nothing like a slug of hot coffee on a rainy day. But don’t think coffee will make points with me. I’m not backing off.”
An hour and a half later, she wished she hadn’t gone to sleep on Tyrell’s hard shoulder. She sniffed delicately, her nose against his throat. Scented of wood smoke and leather and that darkly intense, brooding scent, Tyrell tensed, glaring down at her; he edged slightly away. She pushed herself into the opposite corner. “I’m not happy, Blaylock,” she muttered drowsily, trying to push away the heavy weight of lost sleep. “You can’t just carry me down a mountain, and shove me into your four-wheeler.”
The sleek, roomy, leather-cushioned monster cost more than thirty of her junkyard pickups, bonded by wire and tape, and running on bald tires. “I’ll bet you’re behind on the payments for this rig.”
“Don’t talk.” Tyrell’s big dark hand tightened on the steering wheel, the other shifting the floor gear expertly. The dashboard lights glowed on the taut planes of his face. At that moment, he did look like his conquistador ancestors.
“You can’t handle the truth, can you? That your family land was built on the destruction of the rightful owner? Where are we going?” She studied the tall pine trees on the narrow dirt road, lasered by the vehicle’s lights.
“I am taking you out of my life.” The words were clipped and cold, quivering with frustration.
“You can try, Blaylock,” she said, burrowing into the warm blanket he had briskly tucked around her. She yawned and stretched, and tried valiantly to open her eyes.
The next time she awoke Tyrell was carrying her—back- pack, blanket and all—up the stairs of a lighted porch. Celine studied his profile, that set jaw, the muscle tensing in his cheek. Too bad his black, glossy lashes were so long and straight, shielding his eyes; she wanted to revel in how she’d shaken his safe little world, to see his fear. A tall, dark woman with a friendly face opened the house’s door the same time as Celine tried to squirm out of Tyrell’s arms. He held her tightly against him. Too close and too warm. He looked at her in a narrowed, hot, steamy way and his body seemed to ripple around her.
“See? I told you, you’d catch a cold,” she crowed and shot him her best smirk. His nostrils seemed to flare, his face tightening and darkening. A nasty little tic in his cheek began; the vein in his temple surged.
Celine blinked. Tyrell Blaylock looked nothing like the suit-clad
