One Night with Her Brooding Bodyguard Read online

  “People might say it’s the wrong reason to stay married, but from the first moment I had held my baby in my arms, I felt what I had longed to feel my entire life. Needed. Complete. I loved him unreasonably when I was there. And he me. His first word was Da, even though I’d been away for the majority of his life.”

  He stopped. He had talked too much. Perhaps more than he ever had. He pulled his wrist out from under her hand, and wearily rubbed his eyes, his whiskers.

  He waited to feel crippled by the weakness he had just revealed, even as he knew it was necessary. He had done it for her own good. To help them both keep a distance from each other as whatever unfolded in this cabin unfolded.

  Sophie was silent.

  After a while she laid her head against his shoulder.

  He felt something he didn’t deserve to feel.

  He felt her tolerance of him as the flawed man who he was. He felt from her something he had failed to give himself. Acceptance.

  And instead of feeling weak and as though he had revealed too much—even if it was for both their sakes—he felt like a man who had carried a huge burden, a man who had not even realized the weight of what he carried until he had finally, finally set it down.

  He slipped his arm over the sweet curve of her bare shoulder. He kissed the silk of her hair where her head leaned against him.

  He knew he should get up, tend the fire, clean and cook the fish. But he felt immobilized, unable to move. He told himself he’d do it in a moment.

  “I forgive you,” she said, her voice husky.

  His failures, unfortunately, were not hers to forgive.

  But then, before he delved too deeply into the topic he had forbidden himself, forgiveness, she clarified.

  “For going back and getting the rod.”

  Feeling as light as he had felt in years, understood in some way he had never expected to be understood, Lancaster closed his eyes. He could feel that one shot of brandy burning in his belly. He let its warmth, and the fire, the sturdy walls of the cabin, Sophie’s warming body, comfort him. He felt as if he was a warrior who had wandered endlessly, and finally, finally, finally found his way home. He slept.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SOPHIE WOKE TO THIN, watery light filtering through the cabin’s two tiny windows. She felt warm and safe and she contemplated the richness of sensation inside her. It was more than contentment. Fulfillment.

  Slowly it occurred to her she was not alone under the blanket. The warmth was emanating from the man beside her. She was buck naked and so was Lancaster.

  Nothing with him would ever go as she imagined.

  And yet, in some strange way, this was better than she imagined. She remembered his rich voice last night, telling her all of it.

  Trusting her with all of him. His most deeply guarded secrets, the sense of guilt and failure he carried with him, more effective than a shield at protecting his wounded heart. Having him sleep so deeply beside her was a testament to what he had let go of.

  She was cuddled into his side as he slept on his back. She tilted her head slightly, so that she could study him.

  His hair, damp when he had climbed under that blanket with her, had dried adorably mussed. His eyelashes were so tangled and thick they cast a shadow on the upper part of that strong cheekbone. His face had roughened with red-gold whiskers overnight, and Sophie had to fight a strange longing to run her hand along their roughness, an intimacy that would belong to lovers, not people bound together by the ravages of the storm. The blanket had fallen away from his chest, and she watched the powerful rise and fall of the life force within him with reverence for what she was seeing.

  Then she saw faint bruises darkening over the nipple of his left breast. She thought of how she had pummeled him with her fists in a fury of anger at him for going back across that raging creek. She was mortified. Really—with the exception of hitting Troy with the guitar—she was not like that!

  Sophie was determined to make up for that lack of control.

  She slipped from the bed, and found her clothes where he had hung them. They were dry but they felt as if they had turned to cardboard. She put them on, nonetheless, aghast at the lack of buttons on her blouse.

  She found his clothes, still in a wet heap, and hung them. She stole his knife and his belt, which on the very last hole, held her blouse shut and her pants up. She stoked the fire, adding kindling and blowing on the coals until the flames licked to life. It reminded her of her childhood growing up in a mountain village.

  She opened the front door in search of the fish they had caught. The basket was still just outside the door, in nature’s refrigerator. The storm was gone, though its remnants remained. The whole world was coated in a thin sheen of ice and it gave it a fairy-tale quality, as if every leaf and every blade of grass and every stone had been gilded in silver.

  She stepped out into that fairy-tale world, took his knife and expertly cleaned the fish. This, too, reminded her of her childhood.

  Back inside there were enough embers to take a cast-iron pan from where it hung on a hook in the rafters and put the fish in it.

  “Ah,” she heard his voice behind her, rough with sleep, say, “have I woken in heaven, then?”

  Exactly how she had felt this morning!

  “Did you clean them?” Naturally, being a man, he was talking about the fish.

  “Of course I cleaned them.”

  “You didn’t have to. I would have done it.”

  She didn’t want him to feel she was his duty, someone to be looked after. She wanted to build on what had happened last night, and that would require this being a relationship of equals.

  Relationship.

  She said none of that to him. “Consider it amends,” she said.

  “For what?” He sat up, stretched mightily. He went to throw off the blanket and hastily rethought it. “Would you pass my trousers?”

  “They’re still wet. I just hung them now.”

  He considered this, got up with the blanket around him, wrapped it around his waist and then draped it over his shoulder and tied a knot. “You are looking at the original kilt, lass.”

  She was indeed! She could barely drag her eyes away from the sight he made.

  “It would help if I had my belt,” he said, noticing it holding her ensemble together. “Otherwise I’m going to spend the whole day trying to keep this up.”

  “You should have thought of that when you were sending my buttons all over the place last night.”

  “Ah.” His eyes went to her blouse and then skittered away. “What are you making amends for?”

  “Look at your chest.”

  He glanced down, traced his fingers over the small bruises and looked back at her. “These little things? They don’t hurt. It’s my coloring that makes the slightest touch look as if I’ve been hit with a plank.”

  “Nonetheless,” Sophie said, “I’m sorry for hitting you. It was a horrible thing to do. I’ve never done anything like that before.”

  “Except for a Fender over your ex’s head.”

  She didn’t know whether she was aggravated or flattered that he remembered every little thing she’d ever said to him.

  He went over to the bench that acted as the entire kitchen, and rummaged around, turning back to her holding an old-fashioned perk coffeepot and a sack of coffee in one hand, and his makeshift kilt in the other. He held his finds up triumphantly.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said, again, feeling he was not getting her point.

  He filled the pot, awkwardly one-handed, with water from a pump over a deep old enamel bowl that acted as a sink.

  He came and crouched beside her at the fire. The most delicious man-in-the-morning scent mingled with the coffee grounds, tickled her nostrils.

  “Let it go,” he said easily. “It’s a reaction to stress, lass,
not a black mark on your character. It’s not as if you could hurt me.”

  Her gaze went to the bruises.

  “When we train men,” he told her, “we deliberately test them with stress to see how they’ll react.”

  “Did I fail the test?”

  “I wasn’t testing you,” he said, sliding her a look. “At least not deliberately.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Anger is not a bad reaction to stress. It needs to be channeled correctly, but I’d say, given the circumstances, you are holding up exceedingly well.”

  Sophie felt ridiculously pleased with his praise.

  They sat on the warmed stone floor in front of the fire, and even though there were dishes and utensils, he suggested they might want to wait until they had been cleaned to use them as there were signs of mice in the cabin.

  Instead, they ate the fish straight out of the pan, picking at it with their hands. Lancaster was as relaxed as she had ever seen him, as if some finely held tension had been let go last night when he had shared his secrets with her.

  She was not quite as relaxed. In fact, Sophie wondered if she had ever seen anything as exquisitely sensual as Lancaster licking his fingers.

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever tasted anything quite so delicious,” she told him.

  Or seen a man eat in a way that shook me to my core.

  “Wait until you try the coffee.” He carefully picked the perking pot out of the fire, plucked two enamel mugs from hooks that hung over the hearth and filled them.

  It was true. She usually took both cream and sugar in her coffee, but she just sipped it the way it was. The coffee was incredible. Her eyes met his over the rim of the mug.

  “Something about this kind of experience,” he said, his tone soft and contemplative, “makes life feel so intense.”

  “Maybe the near-death thing?”

  “We were never near death,” he told her, as if she had insulted him.

  “Maybe not, but still, something in me seems to be shouting, I survived. There is a sense of being alive and wanting to celebrate being alive this morning that is exquisite.”

  Probably, a little voice informed her, it had nothing to do with the survival experience and everything to do with waking up beside him.

  Naked, the little voice insisted on reminding her, as if she needed reminding!

  He looked at her. His eyes drifted to her lips, which she thought might be slightly glossed with fish oil, as were his. He looked quickly away, took a gulp of his coffee before setting the mug on the stones beside the fire.

  “How about if you celebrate being alive by getting the kitchen in order, taking an inventory of what we have? I’ll go in search of a cell phone signal.”

  “Aye, aye, mon captain.”

  “Major,” he told her. He got up so abruptly his kilt slipped. He grabbed it around his waist, and glared at her as if she had made it fall off!

  “Whatever,” she said to him. “Your dress is falling off.”

  “Dress?” he sputtered.

  And then, he let go of whatever he was fighting, and their shared laughter was as glorious as the morning sun, filtered through the crystals of ice that hung everywhere, and pouring through the windows like liquid silver.

  Suddenly, he seemed eager to get away from her, though, and he headed outside.

  Sophie heated water, and found soap and filled the sink. She cleaned the counters first, and then washed every dish she could, stacking them to dry on every surface space. When she was finished, she looked at the jumble of the kitchen shelving system and organized it, making note of how much food there was.

  She checked his clothes, and found them nearly dry. But dirty. She hesitated. Was she being nice or did she like seeing him in a kilt? She filled a bucket with soapy water and washed his clothes, rinsed them and rehung them by the fire.

  Then she explored the cabin, and found sheets and made up the only bed. When she found extra blankets in bins under the bed, she realized one of them could sleep on the couch and one take the bed. But only if he knew there were extra blankets. Feeling exquisitely deceitful, as she heard him come in the door, she shoved the bins back under the bed.

  She got up and, dusting off her knees, turned to look at him. He stood there like a chieftain, perfectly comfortable in his home-styled kilt. She saw he had found a rope, somewhere, and his rough garb was now cinched in place around his waist.

  “There’s enough food to last a month,” she told him, “but only if you like canned haggis.”

  It occurred to her she was nesting. It occurred to her she loved the idea of a month here, with Connal, and one blanket, canned haggis notwithstanding.

  No mention of those extra blankets. Or the fact his clothes had been nearly dry enough to put on, but now they weren’t. Talk about playing with fire!

  “We won’t be a month,” he said. “I had to walk quite a distance and find a knoll to get a signal on. Help is on the way. A blessing for you, because I can live on tinned haggis. I suspect you cannot.”

  “How long?” she said, feeling something sinking in her. Hours? Minutes? Days? She was very aware of what she was wanting.

  “Hopefully, the guard will be here in two days.”

  And so once again, they hoped for different things. She wanted to play house, he wanted to get back to his duties.

  Still, two days. Two whole days in total isolation with Connal Lancaster. She wanted to pursue the matter, like a tourist who had purchased a trip. What did two days mean, exactly? Two days and three nights? Forty-eight hours from this moment? But he had moved on.

  “The palace can withstand almost anything, but it didn’t have to. It, and the village, just caught the edges of the storm, but this part of the island was hit hard. The guard is in emergency mode, helping restore services and bridges as quickly as possible. It’s part of what we train to do. These ice storms blow in off the Atlantic every year or two.”

  She could tell, even as she would treat those two days like an incredible gift, it chaffed him that he was not out there doing his part, the job he had been trained to do.

  But she was not giving one second of this time to regret. She was staying in the moment. She was not, either, spoiling any of it with thoughts, like what did the future hold?

  How did he feel about her?

  How did she feel about him?

  These few days were heaven-sent. An opportunity to do exactly what she had wished to do.

  Get to know each other better, in the best possible way. Not on a date, those horrible awkward things where no one knew what to say, and way too much time was spent inwardly debating: To end with a kiss? Not to end with a kiss?

  Which brought her to his lips again. And despite her vow to stay in the moment, Sophie found herself wondering how this day would end.

  “I’m going to go outside and deal with firewood.”

  She began to suspect he was going to spend as much time trying to separate them as she was trying to bring them together.

  “Hang on a sec, buddy. You can help me dry dishes first.”

  “’Tis women’s work,” he said.

  “That’s utterly ridiculous.”

  “It is?”

  “You help me and then I’ll come out and help you with the firewood.”

  “As if you would be any help with firewood.”

  “You need some educating, Major.”

  “Do I now?” He tilted his head at her, regarding this idea of teamwork—with her, anyway—as somewhat novel.

  Then he shrugged, and she moved back into the kitchen, handed him one of the old flour sack tea towels she had found.

  He took up that task of drying dishes and putting them away. How could he make such a routine domestic chore seem, well, sexy? And the sexiness didn’t stop there, because, when they were done w
ith the dishes, he rolled up his tea towel until it looked like a rope. There was mischief dancing in the green of his eyes.

  “What are you—?”

  “Just showing you it’s a dangerous thing to let a man loose in the kitchen.”

  He snapped it at her behind. It missed, cracking in the air.

  “Oh!” She ran, but the cabin was small, and the couch became an obstacle that slowed her. He landed one and shouted with pure devilment at her exaggerated yelp of pain.

  He cracked his towel at her again, and she shrieked with laughter and indignation, then turned to face him and began to roll her own towel into a lethal twist. She snapped it and it cracked in the air between them.

  “Hey!” he said. He turned with pretended fear, his hands over his behind like a little kid afraid of a spanking, and ran. Unlike her, in his world there were no obstacles. He jumped over furniture and shoved things out of his way.

  They chased each other around that little cabin until the rafters rang with their laughter, until they were breathless, until they were both covered in little red welts from where they had landed their shots.

  He finally dropped his towel and raised both hands to her. “I surrender.”

  And she realized he had surrendered. She had seen Lancaster in many situations, and in many moods, but she had never seen him playful before. It felt like she had uncovered treasure.

  He, on the other hand, seemed annoyed with himself. “It looks like the place has been ransacked,” he said, dourly, going around and picking up overturned furniture, and setting it right.

  “Enough fun and games,” he said. “The real work begins. I can manage.”

  But she had a feeling he wanted to manage on his own, that he saw what had just occurred between them as a loss of his proverbial control.

  “I’m coming.”

  Did he roll his eyes, before he stood back from the door and held it open for her? Outside, it was as if music played as ice melted and dripped from every surface. There was a stack of unsplit cordwood beside the cabin. Some of the rounds were two feet across.