cars. In the last available slot, he pulled in, parked and turned the engine off again.
Rain hammered at the car and the wind shrieked around them as she waited for him to finish. She didn’t have long.
“Anyway, he only had the one room left,” Sam told her.
“One room,” she repeated.
“Yeah,” he said, and, wincing slightly, added, “and, since this is a small southern town and since I didn’t much like the things Jonas had to say, I, uh…”
“You what?” Karen asked, giving him a wary look.
He shrugged. “Look at the registration slip.”
She tipped the paper up toward the stingy light of the dashboard and read it. Amazed, she read it again. Then, turning her gaze on Sam, she accused, “You registered us as Gunnery Sergeant and Mrs. Paretti?”
Well she didn’t have to sound so damned insulted, Sam thought. He hadn’t intended on registering them as man and wife, but seeing the leer in the motel owner’s eyes had decided him. He wasn’t about to let a guy like Jonas turn his sleazy imagination loose on Karen.
And what did he get for his protective instincts? A woman appalled at even pretending to be his wife.
Perfect.
“Relax, Karen,” he said tightly. “It’s not like I’m asking you to love, honor and obey.”
“I know, but—”
“It’s no big deal, all right?” Sam looked at her. “It’s a simple lie to make things easier.”
“For who?” she asked.
Frustrated now, he asked, “What happened to our truce?”
A long minute passed before she nodded and said, “Okay, you’re right. Truce. After all, how long can a stupid hurricane last, anyway?”
As she gathered her chocolates and her purse, Sam actually thought about that for the first time and realized that he and Karen would probably be together…alone…for the next three days. And nights.
Oh, man.
He had a feeling this hurricane was going to make boot camp look like a Tahiti vacation.
The inside of the place lived up to the promise of the outside.
Karen stood just inside the door and stared at it all in mute fascination. The walls were painted a soft orange and the rust-brown shag carpet set them off beautifully. Two lamps were bolted to tables on opposite sides of the one double bed. A closet with no door boasted three wire hangers on a bent rod, and the bathroom just beyond it looked small and seafoam green.
She plopped down on the edge of the mattress and heard the bedspread crunch beneath her. What did they make those things out of, she wondered, and gave the garishly flowered spread an amazed stare.
“Well,” Sam said, dropping her bags just inside the door. “It’s dry.”
“Mostly,” she said, and pointed to the far corner where a water stain had already begun to pool and spread across the ceiling.
He squinted up at the spot. “I can fix that.”
Naturally, she thought. That was his attitude about everything. If it was broken, Sam could fix it. Like he’d tried to fix what had happened between them. But that was the one thing no one could fix.
“Okay,” he conceded, “House Beautiful it ain’t. But it’ll stand up to the hurricane, and that’s all we should be worrying about.”
She looked up at him, and as her gaze locked on his strong jaw and slightly curved lips, she knew damn well that the hurricane wasn’t all she should be worrying about. Sharing a tiny motel room—and its one bed—with a man who could turn her inside out with a single touch scored pretty high on the worry meter, too.
He looked down at her, and it was as if he could read her mind. She saw the flash of desire spark quickly in his eyes, then disappear behind the wall of hurt she’d put there two months ago.
“This is only temporary, Karen,” he said, his voice gruff with an emotion she didn’t want to identify. “A few days of togetherness and we’ll be back to our separate lives. Just the way you want it.”
“A few days?” she asked. Good Lord.
He snorted a choked-off laugh and shook his head. “There was a time when a few days in my company wouldn’t have made you look like you’d just been sentenced to twenty years’ hard time at Leavenworth.”
The sting of his words slapped at her, and she winced at the direct hit to her heart. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. Didn’t he know that she had been hurt, too? Couldn’t he see how difficult it was for her to push him away when her every instinct told her to snuggle in close to him? To recapture the magic she’d found only in his arms?
“Sam,” she said, and pushed herself off the bed. Tilting her head back, she looked into those pale brown eyes of his and said, “It’s not you. It’s—”
“Yeah, I know,” he interrupted her, and held one hand up to keep her from finishing that sentence. “It’s something you can’t explain. I seem to remember that speech, and if you don’t mind, I’d rather not hear it again.”
She flushed. Karen felt the warm rush of it fill her cheeks. Blast it. “Fine. Sorry.”
He nodded briefly, then said, “I’ll go get the rest of our stuff.”
“You want some help?”
“No, thanks,” he said tightly, already turning for the door. “I can manage.” Glancing back over his shoulder, he added, “Why don’t you call your folks before the power lines go down? Save your batteries.”
She watched him step out into the windswept rain and disappear into the darkness. When she was alone, she walked to the closet, peeled off her jacket and hung it up. But as soon as she set the wire hanger onto the rod, the wooden bar collapsed, hitting the carpet with a thump. She stared at her jacket, crumpled beneath the rod, for a long moment, then sighed and left it there. If this was a sign of things to come, she really didn’t want to think about it.
Figuring things couldn’t get much worse, she resolutely walked to the phone, picked up the receiver and started to dial. Now all she had to do was keep her mother from doing handsprings over some imagined reunion between her and Sam.
Martha Beckett desperately wanted grandchildren and wasn’t above using the age-old weapon of guilt in an attempt to convince her only daughter to provide said babies before she was too old to enjoy them.
Karen half turned on the bed to watch as Sam came back into the room, and at the same time her mother picked up the phone on her end.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mom,” Karen said, swinging her gaze back to something safe. Like the wall. “It’s me.”
“Honey,” her mother crooned,
