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“Look, Sam…”
Most stubborn, hardheaded female he’d ever met. “For Pete’s sake, Karen,” he blurted, frustration boiling within him. “If I hadn’t come along, what would you have done? You’d have been stuck here. In the middle of nowhere, riding out a hurricane in that worthless piece of automotive engineering.”
She stiffened and got that “queen to peasant” look on her face. “I would have been fine.”
“Yeah, right.” He nodded again, feeling that old familiar flash of irritation sweep through him. Nobody, but nobody could get to him like Karen Beckett. “First thing I noticed when I pulled up to save your butt was how well you were doing.”
Giving him a glare that would have toasted a lesser man, Karen gathered up her purse and chocolates, then reached for the door handle. “Y’know what? If listening to another one of your lectures is the price of a ride…I’d rather walk.”
She threw the passenger door open and a sheet of rain sliced into the car. Instantly, Sam lunged across her lap, grabbed the armrest and yanked, slamming the car door shut again. “Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You did, too,” she countered, and pushed at him until he was back on his own side of the car. “Just now you said—”
“Okay, look,” Sam said loudly, and held up both hands in mock surrender. “This is nuts.”
She sighed heavily, folded her arms across her front and stared straight ahead.
He studied her profile for a long, silent minute, then said, “There’s no reason for us to fight, Karen. We’re not together anymore.” And just hearing those words spoken aloud was enough to tighten a twinge of regret around his heart.
“True,” she said quietly.
A rush of wind pushed at his car and rattled the windows. Rain clattered onto the hood and roof, sounding like a chorus line of Irish folk dancers. Outside, the world was wild and raw with Mother Nature shaking her fists at the people who sometimes forgot just who was in charge around here.
He shifted his gaze to the watery scene beyond the car and tried to remember what was important here. Not the fact that they’d broken up. Not the fact that his heart still ached for wanting her. But the very real threat charging down on them.
He wasn’t worried so much for himself, but now that he had Karen to look out for, he damn sure was going to see to it that she stayed safe.
Pulling in a deep breath, he swiveled his head to look at her. And in the dim, reflected light from the dashboard, she looked worried. Her teeth gnawed at her bottom lip and her gaze was locked on the raging storm. He knew she was wishing she were anywhere but there. And a part of him didn’t blame her in the slightest. But a bigger part of him was glad she was with him. At least this way, he’d know that she was safe.
“So,” he said, just loud enough to be heard above the storm, “we call a temporary truce?”
She turned her head to look at him and seemed to be considering his offer. Finally though, she nodded. “A truce.” Then she held out her right hand to seal their bargain with a shake.
He took her hand in his and the instant their skin brushed together, he felt a blast of electricity shoot up the length of his arm and dazzle his brain. Sam released her quickly, but it wasn’t in time to keep that shock of desire from rocketing around inside his chest and squeezing his heart.
She must have felt it, too, he told himself as he watched her reach for another chocolate. Her fingers trembled as she peeled off the foil, and he knew that what had been between them was far from dead.
But that hardly mattered, did it? She’d made her feelings clear two months ago when she’d walked away from him without so much as a backward glance.
Clearing his throat, he buried old hurts and said instead, “You keep eating chocolate like you do and you’re gonna lose all your teeth before you’re forty.”
“It’ll be worth it,” she muttered.
“And when they’re all gone, how will you eat chocolate then?”
She glanced at him. “Chocolate malts. Through a straw.”
“Hardhead.”
“Bully.”
Sam grinned and watched a little smile tug at one corner of her mouth. Damned if he hadn’t missed their little…discussions. Almost as much as he’d missed…other things.
“Well,” he said, and fired up the engine, “what do you say we find a place to ride this storm out?”
“Ya-hoo, Tonto.”
“Hey,” he protested. “It’s my car, I get to be the Lone Ranger. You’re Kemosabe.”
When her cell phone rang twenty minutes later, Karen was so happy it was working again, she didn’t bother to wonder who might be calling her at 3:00 a.m.
She might have known.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, and threw a glance at Sam. His chuckle was enough to make her grit her teeth.
“Karen, honey—” Her mother’s voice came through despite the static. “Where are you? Someplace safe, I hope.”
“Of course I’m safe,” she replied. Physically, anyway. Emotionally, she wasn’t so sure. Being this close to Sam Paretti again wasn’t a good idea. The memories of their time together were too fresh. Too strong. Too tantalizing.
“How far inland are you?” her mother asked, splintering Karen’s thoughts and dragging her back to the present.
“Actually, I’m on my way.”
“On your way?” her mother asked. “You should have left town hours ago.”
“Traffic was too bad to leave earlier,” she said, telling both her mother and Sam.
“Martha…” Karen’s father, apparently on the extension, spoke up. “Now that we know she’s all right, why don’t we hang up and let her get where she’s going?”
“Thanks, Dad.” She could always count on her father to keep a sane head.
“None of this would have been happening if you hadn’t moved,” her mother pointed out. “You could be safe and sound here in California….”
“Waiting for the Big One with the rest of us,” her father interrupted.
“Mom, I’m perfectly safe—”
“Now,” Sam added his two cents.
“Who was that?” her mother asked.
Karen closed her eyes and prayed for patience. “Uh…” She tossed a glare at Sam, who didn’t seem the least bit affected. “I’m with a friend,” she finally said.
He laughed at the strained tone of her voice as she stumbled over the word friend.
Fine, they weren’t friends, she thought. But they weren’t lovers anymore, either. So what did that make them…friendly enemies?
“Which friend?” her mother asked.
“Martha…”
“Say hello for me,” Sam said, in a tone loud enough to carry.
She sighed, giving into the inevitable. “It’s Sam. He says hello.”
“Sam? You didn’t tell me you were seeing him again.”
“I’m not seeing him—”
Sam laughed again and she wanted to scream.
“Karen, what is going on—”
“I hate to interrupt,” Karen said, not really minding at all, since it was the only sure way to get her mother’s attention. “But I really should help Sam watch the road.”
“You do that, honey,” her dad said, adding, “you and Sam take care now.”
“That’s right,” her mom said briskly. “Now, I’ve lived through my share of those hurricanes—which is one of the reasons I left the East Coast—so I know what it’s like. You get inland and call me when you can. The phone lines will probably go down and—”
“Martha…” Stuart Beckett’s voice became a bit sterner.
“I know, I know. Okay, honey, now don’t you stop until you’re safe.”
“I won’t. I promise.” Karen smiled into the phone. Despite the fact that her parents, like any other set of parents, could drive her insane at a moment’s notice, she did love them dearly. Missing them was the only hard part about living so far away. “I’ll call as soon as I can.”
After another round of “Be carefuls,” she hung up and tucked her cell phone back into her purse. Listening to the whine of the tires on the slick highway and the rumble of raindrops hammering the car, Karen turned her head to stare at Sam.
“Why would you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make sure my parents knew that you were in the car with me?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t know I was supposed to be hiding.”
“You’re not,” she grumbled. “It’s just that now they’ll want to know what’s going on and—”
“And you don’t want to tell them any more than you wanted to tell me, is that it?”
She stiffened slightly at the sting in his tone. “Sam, I told you I had reasons for breaking up with you.”
“Yeah, so you said. Unfortunately, you didn’t feel the need to tell me what they were.”
“Does it matter?”
“Hell, yes, it matters!” he nearly shouted, then caught himself and lowered his voice again. “You know something, I really don’t want to do this again.”
“You think I do?”
He shook his head. “I guess not.”
The tension in the car was nearly palpable. Karen’s stomach twisted and her heart ached. Once things had been so good between them. Now…
“So,” Sam said, abruptly changing the subject a few moments later, “how’re your folks?”
Okay, she thought, she could do courteous. She could do polite. After all, they were stuck together for who knew how long; there was no point in being snotty. No point in causing each other more pain than they already had.
“They’re fine,” she said, studying him. In the glow of the dashboard lights, his profile looked hard, as if it were chiseled out of stone. But she remembered all too well how easily his rigid expression could slide into a smile. Suddenly nervous, she reached for another chocolate, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth.
“Your mom still buggin’ you to move back to California?”
Karen smiled. “She’s getting better. It’s only every other phone call now.”
He nodded, and keeping his gaze locked on the rainswept road in front of him, he said, “I thought maybe after we broke up, you might just do it. Move, I mean.”
Oh, those first few days after she’d ended it between them, she’d wanted nothing more than to find a place to hide. But she’d refused to run away again. She’d done that once, running from California to South Carolina, and in the process, she’d run smack into the very thing she’d been running from.
So hiding wasn’t the answer. Her only choice left was to stand her ground and try to forget what she and Sam had had so briefly. Fat chance.
“So how come you didn’t go back home?” he asked.
“Because,” she said, taking a deep breath, “this is home now. I like living in the South. I like small-town life. Besides, I don’t believe in going backward.”
“Me, neither,” he said, shooting her a quick glance.
“Good,” she said, guessing that he meant he had no interest in reviving what they’d once shared. “I mean, we’re stuck together for a while, but this really changes nothing.”
“Agreed.”
“Then we understand each other.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel, and she watched him take a deep breath as if purposely calming himself. “Yeah,” he said finally, “we do. And you can relax. I’m not interested in lining up to have my heart ripped out again.”
Karen sucked in air as if she’d been slapped.
He shot her another look, then swerved the car around a fallen tree branch. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not,” he said quietly. “You did what you had to do. I can appreciate that, even if I don’t understand it.”
Guilt swirled in the pit of her stomach. She knew she’d hurt him. But she’d had to break up with him before he’d become important enough to her that the loss of him would have killed her.
God, that sounded stupid, even to her. Which is why she’d never given him a reason for the breakup. She was sure he’d have fought her. Argued her out of her decision, and then one day, they both might have regretted it.
The miles flew past. Sam kept his gaze on the road and his mind on the problem at hand. Finding shelter. If he’d been by himself, he’d have pulled off and parked by now. All he really needed was a place to pitch his tent and ride out the storm.
But with Karen along, things were different. He needed to find a motel. Something sturdy enough to stand up to the growing winds. The trees on either side of the road bent nearly in half, stretching out their twisting limbs as if trying to grab the car hurtling past them.
He had passed exit after exit, knowing they were still too close to the coast and determined to get far enough inland that Karen would be in no danger. But judging by the strength of the wind, he was running out of time.
And then he saw it. A squat cinder block motel at the side of the highway. A dozen or so cars sat nestled in its parking lot, but the broken green neon sign out front still blinked VA C NCY.
“The Dew Drop Inn?” Karen asked as he took the off-ramp and headed for the place.
He grinned. “Sounds cozy, doesn’t it?”
“Cozy?” she repeated, staring through the rain-swept windshield. “It looks like it’s a hundred years old.”
“Good. Just what we need.”
“Huh?”
He parked in front of the office and turned off the engine. Facing her, he shrugged and said, “If it’s that old, it’s survived a lot of hurricanes. It should make it through this one.”
Sure, Karen thought, but the question was, would she?
Three
She watched him through the windshield. Waves of rainwater made his image blurry, as if this was all a dream and she was really safe at home in her own bed, with her mind tormenting her with visions of Sam.
But, as the motel owner stepped up behind the counter, scratching his dirty-tank-top-covered hairy chest, the dream notion was shattered. An older man, he had a well-rounded stomach that looked as though he hadn’t missed many meals, and his gray hair stood out in spiky tufts all around his head. He grinned at Sam and turned the registration pad toward him.
“Oh, this place is obviously the Ritz,” Karen muttered as their host picked at his teeth with a thumbnail. Her gaze briefly strayed from the dimly lit office to the motel itself. It looked like something out of a fifties horror movie. Dingy block walls, stained with years of traffic exhaust and neglect. A solitary tree stood in the center of the parking lot and was now bent almost completely in half as the wind pushed and shoved at it, trying to rip it right out of the small patch of earth it claimed. Here and there a lamp gleamed from behind threadbare draperies, and the cars that huddled side by side looked forlorn and abandoned.
“Okay,” she told herself firmly, turning back to keep her eye on Sam, “now you’re getting weird. There’s nothing wrong with this place that a nice little A-bomb wouldn’t cure.”
In the office, Sam shook the other man’s hand and the two of them shared a jovial laugh. “Hmm. A meeting of the minds,” she said wryly.
A moment later, Sam was sprinting through the wind and rain toward the car. He opened the door, jumped inside and shook himself like a big dog coming out of a lake.
“Whew!” he said as Karen wiped droplets of water off her face. “Man, this storm’s really something.”
“So I noticed,” she said, and took the registration paper from him when he handed it to her. “Where are our rooms?”
He sniffed, scooped one hand across his militarily short black hair and turned to look at her. “Well, that’s the thing,” he said.
“What?” she asked warily as the broken vacancy sign blinked off and the motel owner disappeared into his own room.
“Jonas says it’s been a busy night.”
“Jonas?” Good heavens, had he really had time to bond with the man?
“Yeah. Jonas.” Sam looked at her and shook his head before reaching for the key and turning it. The engine leaped to life, and he dropped it into gear and steered the SUV down past the line of parked 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, “I’m so glad you called back. You’re out of the storm, I take it? Safe?”
“Yeah,” she said. Safe from the hurricane, anyway.
“Good. Now, I want to hear all about you and Sam. You didn’t tell me you were back together!”
“We’re not, Mom,” Karen said, knowing it was useless but giving it the old college try, anyway.
“I was just telling your dad the other day that I just knew you two would work things out eventually!”
Karen groaned, and lifted one hand to rub the sudden throb that had leaped up dead center of her forehead.
“Now, the way I see it,” Sam said, stalking around the tiny room like a caged tiger, “we’ll each have our own areas.”
“We will?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at her, sitting on the bed with her back up against the headboard and her long legs crossed at the ankle. Even in the dim light of the pitifully low-wattage bulbs in the bedside lamps, Karen’s blond hair shone like sunlight. Her blue eyes watched him, and one corner of her mouth lifted in a half smile that teased him with memories of other times. Happier times.
Instantly, he remembered lazy Sunday mornings in her bed. Waking up with her cuddled up beside him. The soft hush of her breath on his chest, the lemony scent of her hair, the tantalizing magic of her touch.
“Sam?” she said, loudly enough to tell him it wasn’t the first time she’d called his name.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” He shoved one hand across the top of his head and reminded himself that those days were over. Karen had called a halt to what they’d had, and if he had an ounce of sense, he’d remember that and forget all the rest.
Or at least try to.
“Anyway,” he said firmly, “I figure you can have the bed. I’ll take the floor.”