behind him, Shea panted, ‘Slow down! We are not—at this precise moment—on our way to a fire.’
He gave a reluctant laugh, waiting until she had come alongside him. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you before, either,’ he said.
She stood stock-still in the middle of the road, her hands on her hips. ‘I can think of any number of fascinating topics of discussion, Simon. The weather. The safety regulations for ground crew. The flight operational directives for water drops, section seven of the provincial government manual. Even, God forbid, Everett. What we don’t have to talk about is you and me. Us. There isn’t any us!’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Simon said flatly.
‘You’d better! Because it’s true.’
‘Close your eyes,’ he said affably, ‘and I’ll prove you wrong.’
Her nostrils flared. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’
‘If there’s no us, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of. I’m not Everett, Shea.’
‘You’re a lot more dangerous than Everett,’ she said tightly.
‘Am I now? But if there’s one thing I’m sure about, it’s that you’re no coward, Shea Mallory. Close your eyes.’
She said obliquely, ‘The phone call that I assume you overheard this evening, there being no such thing as privacy at the base camp, signalled the end of yet another relationship in my life. My job comes first in the summer, and men don’t like that.’
‘To quote a woman I know, I don’t like being one of the crowd. Close your eyes.’
‘I never could resist a dare...’ With a loud sigh she scrunched her eyes shut. Very softly Simon stepped closer. Cupping her face in his hands, he leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth.
He felt the shock run through her body. With exquisite gentleness he moved his lips against hers, warming them, wanting only to give her pleasure. He sensed her yielding, then, as heat spread through his limbs, her first, tentative response.
It slammed through his body. One of his hands moved to the back of her head, burying itself in the luxuriant mass of her hair, still damp from the lake. His kiss deepened, fierce in its demand. And for a few heart-stopping moments Shea met him in that new place, looping her arms around his neck and opening to him with a generosity that made his senses swim.
Through her thin shirt her breasts were pressed against his naked torso. He remembered her nude form rising from the lake, sunlight dancing on her wet skin, and with his tongue sought out the sweetness of her mouth.
She wrenched free of him, and over the clamour of blood in his veins he heard her quickened breathing. ‘Simon, I—we can’t do this!’
He said roughly, ‘Kissing you feels more right than anything I’ve done in the last ten years,’ and knew his words for the simple truth.
‘Please...take me home.’
‘At least admit there’s something between us, Shea!’
‘I’m twenty-nine years old, not nineteen, and I know about sex,’ she said wildly. ‘You’re an attractive man and it’s a beautiful night and we’re alone...what happened is perfectly natural. Plus it’s a very long time since I’ve been to bed with anyone.’
Discovering that he liked that last piece of information quite a lot, Simon said, ‘The same is true for me.’
‘There you are, then,’ she said.
‘It wouldn’t matter if I’d taken a dozen women to bed in the last forty-eight hours,’ he said in exasperation. ‘This isn’t just about sex.’
‘For me it is.’
‘You’ve got to be the most argumentative, stubborn and cantankerous woman I’ve ever come across!’
‘Good. Then you’ll keep away from me from now on—because I’d sure appreciate it if you did.’
Furious with her, yet simultaneously lanced by a pain out of all proportion that she could say such a thing, Simon said levelly, ‘You don’t really mean that.’
She raised her chin defiantly. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘For God’s sake give us half a chance!’
Each word falling like a stone to the ground, she said, ‘I don’t want to. And I’ve already told you there’s no such thing as us. There’s just a separate you and a separate me—do you get it?’
Her voice had risen. ‘You’re dead wrong,’ Simon said harshly. ‘We could make something—’
‘No! Because I don’t want to. Don’t you understand basic English, Simon Greywood?’
‘You’re making a huge mistake.’
‘You’re just not used to a woman saying no.’
As he winced at her accuracy, she added with a satisfaction that lacerated his nerves, ‘See, I was right.’ Spacing her words, she finished, ‘I want you to leave me alone. That’s all. It doesn’t seem like a very difficult concept.’
Simon looked at her in silence. She meant every word she had said, he thought heavily. According to her, she was deprived sexually, she found him physically attractive, and the velvet darkness of the night had done the rest. So she had also been telling the truth earlier, when she had said she didn’t like him. Liking, he had often thought, was at least as important as that elusive emotion called love.
Unable to tolerate her physical closeness, hating the seethe of emotion red-hot in his chest, he rapped, ‘The truck’s parked round the corner—let’s go.’ Without waiting to see if she was following, he set off down the road.
When he climbed in and turned on the ignition she was only moments behind him. He drove back to the base as fast as was safe, pulled up behind Brad’s car, and got out. ‘I’m going to watch the poker game for a while,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’
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