Strangers in the Night Read online

  “He heard you before I did. His name is Tinkerbell. Tink, for short.”

  “Tinkerbell?” He glanced at her, blue eyes incredulous. “He’s gay?”

  Hope sputtered with laughter. “No, he’s just an eternally optimistic, goofy dog. He thinks the world is here to pet him.”

  “He may be right.” He studied the sodden mass of his clothing, the water puddled on the floor. “How long have I been here?”

  She looked at the clock. Two-thirty. “Three and a half hours.” Too much had happened in such a short length of time, and yet she felt as if only an hour or so had passed instead of almost twice that. “I dragged you in and got you out of your clothes. You must have stepped into the lake, because you were wet from the waist down. I dried you off and wrapped you in a blanket.”

  “Yeah, I remember going into the water. I knew this place was here, but I couldn’t see a damn thing.”

  “I don’t know how you made it this far. Why were you on foot? Did you have an accident? And why were you out in this weather anyway?”

  “I was trying to make it down to Boise. The Blazer slid off the road and broke out the windshield, so I couldn’t stay there. Like I said, I knew this place was here, and I had a compass. I didn’t have much choice except try to get here.”

  “You’re a walking miracle,” she said frankly. “Logically, you should be dead out in the snow.”

  “But I’m not, thanks to you.” He returned to the blanket and stretched out beside her, his gaze somber. He caught a tendril of blond hair, rubbing it between his fingers before smoothing it behind her ear. “I know when you got under the blanket to get me warm, you weren’t expecting me to jump you as soon as I was half conscious. Tell me the truth, Hope: Were you willing?”

  She cleared her throat. “I—I was surprised.” She touched his hand. “I wasn’t unwilling. Couldn’t you tell?”

  He briefly closed his eyes in relief. “I don’t have a real clear memory of anything that happened until I woke up on top of you. Or rather, I remember what I did and what I felt, but I wasn’t sure you felt the same.” He spread his hand on her belly and lightly stroked upward to cover her breast. “I thought maybe I’d lost my head, waking up with such a pretty, brown-eyed little blonde naked next to me.”

  “Strictly speaking, I wasn’t next to you. I was on top of you.” Her face got hot again. Damn those blushes! “It seemed the best way to get you warm.”

  “It worked,” he said, and for the first time a smile curved his mouth.

  Hope almost lost her breath. He was ruggedly attractive rather than handsome, but when he smiled, her heart did a crazy loop. It must be chemistry, she thought dazedly. She had seen many better-looking men; Dylan had been better looking, in a clean-cut, classical way. But what her eyes saw and her body felt were two different things, and she had never experienced such a strong sexual response to any other man. She wanted to make love again, and before she gave in to the need, she forced herself to remember he had been through a harrowing, physically exhausting ordeal.

  “Do you want some coffee?” she asked hurriedly, getting to her feet. She carefully didn’t look at him as she gathered up her pajamas. “Or something to eat? I made a big pot of stew yesterday. Or how about a hot bath? The water heater is wired to the generator, so there’s plenty of hot water.”

  “That sounds good,” he said, also standing. “All of it.” He reached out and caught her arms, turning her so she faced him. Bending his head, he gave her another of those sweet, tender kisses. “I also want to make love to you again, if you’ll let me.”

  Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. Hope looked up at him. Her heart did another crazy loop, and she knew she wasn’t going to call a halt to this now. For as long as the blizzard lasted, she and Price Tanner were together, and she might never have another chance like this.

  “I’d like that too,” she managed to say.

  “Maybe on a bed instead of the floor?” He circled her nipple with his thumb, making it harden and stand erect.

  “Upstairs.” She swallowed. “It’s warm up there, because all the heat rises. I couldn’t get you up the stairs, though, so I put you in front of the fireplace.”

  “I’m not complaining.” He tugged the pajamas from her arms and let them drop to the floor. “On second thought, let’s forget the coffee and the stew. The bath too, unless you planned to be in the tub with me.”

  She hadn’t, but it was a darn good idea. She went into his arms, forgetting everything except the earthy magic their bodies made together.

  4

  Hope woke beside him in the morning and lay watching him sleep, her body more deeply contented than she could remember it ever being before. She didn’t wonder how or why she responded so strongly to a man about whom she knew little more than his name; she simply accepted the joy this chance encounter had brought her. The warmth of his body made the bed a cozy nest she didn’t want to leave, especially since the chill in the room told her the fire in the fireplace had burned out.

  It had been so long since she had been able to enjoy such a simple pleasure as lying beside a sleeping man, listening to the slow, deep rhythm of his breathing. She wanted to cuddle close to him, but was reluctant to wake him. He was sleeping deeply, evidence of his exhaustion. After nearly freezing to death, he hadn’t exactly spent a restful night.

  One muscled arm lay draped over the pillow, and she could see the dark bruises on his wrist. On top of everything else, he had been in a car accident. The wonder wasn’t that he slept now, but that he had been so energetic during the night.

  She surveyed the other details available to her. He had beautiful hair, dark and thick, with streaks of bronze glinting through it as if he spent a lot of time in the sun. His face was turned toward her in his sleep, and she smiled, wanting to trace her finger along the bridge of his nose, which was high and a little crooked, maybe as the result of a fight. His mouth was wide and well-shaped, his lips soft. His jaw was angular, his chin nothing less than stubborn. Good-looking, rugged, attractive; definitely not handsome, as she had noticed before. Just looking at him made her breasts tighten.

  She felt almost dizzy from the force of her attraction to him. She had forgotten how heady infatuation could be, and how powerful. If she had met him under normal circumstances, no doubt she would still have been attracted to him; but without the overwhelming physical intimacy that had been forced between them, she might not even have encouraged him. The necessary contact of their nude bodies, however, had established a link even before he had regained consciousness. She had stroked him, knew the textures of his skin, from the roughness of his beard-stubbled cheeks to the sleekness of his muscular shoulders. Her nipples had been tight from rubbing against his chest, her legs had tangled with his, and though she hadn’t touched him sexually, she had inescapably felt his genitals against her own. She hadn’t let herself think about it, but nevertheless she had been almost unbearably aroused.

  Her sexual attraction wasn’t due to simple deprivation. If she had thought it was, before, now she knew differently, because she was certainly no longer deprived and she still felt the same. Their sexual fit was devastating in its perfection. It was as if he had been born knowing exactly how to touch her, as if his body had been crafted specifically to bring her maximum pleasure.

  She thought it must be the same, at least sexually, for him. As exhausted and drained as he had to have been, still he had turned to her time and again, his hands literally shaking with need as he drew her under him.

  Her breath sighed gently, rapidly between her lips.

  The wind still blew, rattling the windows. She couldn’t see anything beyond the glass but an impenetrable white curtain. While the blizzard raged, the world couldn’t intrude, and he was hers.

  What a difference one day made. Yesterday she had been panicked by the sense of time passing her by, thinking she had lost all opportunity to get out of life what she had always wanted most—a family. Then Price Tanner