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“Is your family’s Crown Peak Ranch in Australia a lot different than the Double Crown Ranch?” she asked.
“Actually, it’s quite similar to the Double Crown,” he answered. “Which isn’t too surprising, I guess, considering that my father Teddy and Ryan are half brothers.”
“Ryan was so excited when he found Teddy.” Willa smiled, remembering her godfather’s delight. “And he was thrilled that you and Matilda and Reed and Brody could spend this time with him.”
“My father was happy about it, too,” Griff said. “He’d always wondered about his family.”
As they talked, the truck emerged from the last of the trees to a small clearing surrounded by more trees. The mountain rose sharply behind the cabin, but the trees and the rock behind them gave the small clearing a cozy, secluded feel.
The cabin itself was made of weathered logs that blended into the rustic setting. There was a porch that ran the length of the front of the cabin, and a pile of firewood was stacked along one side.
“Let’s leave the car here for now, and take a look around,” Griff said.
Willa stepped out of the car, and realized that there was a chill to the air. “I had forgotten we’d be in the mountains,” she said, pulling Griff’s jacket more tightly around herself. Then she looked over at him and realized that he was in his shirtsleeves. He didn’t seem to react. He stood measuring the cabin with his eyes, examining the area around it.
Willa reached into the truck and grabbed her wool coat. It was still a little damp from the night before, but she took off Griff’s jacket and slipped on her own. She missed the battered jacket immediately. It had smelled and felt like Griff.
“Here, Griff,” she said. “It’s too cold to stand there without your jacket.”
He glanced over at her, and she saw concern flash in his eyes. “Why did you put that coat on? It’s still wet.”
“It’s fine.” She thrust his jacket at him, ignoring the feeling of loss. “We’re just going into the house, aren’t we?”
He took his jacket absently and slipped it on, still studying the area. He was silent for so long that Willa moved closer to him.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
He looked over at her as if she’d startled him. “Wrong? No, it looks fine.”
“You’ve been staring at the cabin as if you expected it to turn on you.”
He gave her a smile and took her hand. “I was just running scenarios in my head. Let’s take a look at the back.”
It was only a casual gesture, she told herself as he led her around to the back of the cabin. There was no reason for her heart to race in her chest and for her lungs to feel like they were going to explode. Griff was merely trying to shepherd her along, and taking her hand was the quickest way to do it.
But her hand felt so right in his. She wanted to twine their fingers together, to press her palm against his and feel her heart stutter in response.
She’d better get a grip, she told herself harshly. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself, or embarrass him. So she forced herself to ignore the feel of his hand on hers, and concentrate on the cabin that would be their home for a while.
There was a small shed at the rear of the cabin, and Griff opened the door. Tools and ladders lined the walls, and there was a space large enough to hold their truck. Otherwise, the shed was empty. Griff shut the door, and they kept walking.
The trees that surrounded the cabin seemed to press in from the back. Griff dropped her hand as he moved into the thicket of woods, and she could almost read his mind. The trees were too close to the house. They could provide too much cover for someone intent on surprising them. Willa shoved her hands into her pockets and shivered. The feelings Griff aroused in her made it too easy to forget the real reason they were at this cabin.
“I don’t like this,” he said, and she saw the concern in his eyes. “These trees are far too close to the building. But there’s nothing we can do about it. I’ll rig up an alarm system for these windows at the rear of the cabin. That will help.”
“I guess no one thought of this cabin as a hideout from kidnappers,” Willa said, trying to keep the snap out of her voice. She was grateful they had a refuge like this cabin.
Griff gave her a quick smile. “The trees can’t be helped. But we can fix the problem. Let’s go inside.”
Willa expected to find a very basic, rustic living space. She was surprised at the comfortable, homey atmosphere inside the cabin. Rugged, oversize furniture was grouped around a magnificent stone fireplace that soared up two stories to an exposed-beam ceiling. There were carpets on the hardwood floors, and pictures and Native American rugs on the walls. The kitchen was small but functional. A table and chairs stood between the kitchen and the living area.
There was one bedroom off the living area. A combination of fear and excitement stirred as she looked inside at the one huge bed it held.
“It’s all right,” Griff said behind her. “Ryan told me there’s another bed in the loft.” He nodded to the loft area above the bedroom. “You take the bedroom, and I’ll take the loft.”
Willa was amazed at the disappointment that snaked through her at Griff’s words. As soon as she realized she’d been hoping this would be the only bed in the cabin, she was horrified with herself. Backing out of the room, she said breathlessly, “I’ll get the bags from your truck.”
“Let me help you.”
Griff led the way back out to the truck. It took several trips, but they finally got all the bags of food and supplies into the cabin. Griff drove the truck around the back to put it in the shed, and Willa started to put away the food.
She’d better settle down, she told herself. She and Griff were going to be in this cabin, alone, for God knew how long. If she didn’t want to make a complete fool of herself, she’d better remember that Griff was just doing this as a favor to Ryan Fortune. He’d made that clear enough.
Griff came back into the cabin a few minutes later, and carefully locked the door behind him. Then he went over and examined the window in the main room. Willa watched as his fingers traced the frame lightly, brushing over the wood and lingering over the locks. Before she could stop herself, she was imagining Griff’s hands on her, exploring her as thoroughly as he explored the window.
Making a disgusted noise under her breath, she turned her back and jerked open another cabinet. But putting the food away couldn’t stop her from being aware of Griff in the cabin. She knew instantly when he moved away from the main room and walked into the bedroom.
She refused to allow herself to turn and look at him. Instead, she called out, “What’s the verdict on the security?” She hoped he could hear nothing in her voice aside from friendly concern.
“It’ll do.” His voice was muffled, as if he were still bent over the window. “I have a few things I want to do, but then it should be all right.”
“Did you want something to eat first?”
Griff emerged from the bedroom. “I’ll make us a couple of sandwiches in a while. But first I want to take a look at that head of yours.”
Willa put her hand on the bump over her left temple. “I’d almost forgotten about this.”
“I hadn’t.” His voice was controlled, and she saw a flash of anger turn his eyes dark. “I want to make sure you’re all right.”
“I’m fine, Griff.” She wasn’t sure she wanted Griff to come any closer to her, even if only to check the cut on her head. Her heart was already beating frantically in her ears, and it was hard to draw a breath. “Why don’t you take care of the windows, while I make us sandwiches?”
“That will keep. Your injuries won’t.” He moved toward her.
“I’m fine, Griff. Really.” When she realized she was backing away from him, she stopped and straightened. “I’ll put some alcohol on the cut and that will take care of it.”
“I want to make sure there’s nothing else wrong with you. We don’t know what they did to you inside your building to get you into that rug.”
He wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Willa shrugged. “All right. You might as well get it over with. But you’re not going to find anything wrong.”
Except that her palms were sweating and her heart was thundering in her chest!
Three
“It will only take me a minute,” he said. He glanced behind him. “Let’s sit down over on the couch.”
Willa slipped past Griff in the tiny kitchen and went over to the couch, trying to compose herself. In a few moments, Griff joined her. He was holding a brown bottle and several tubes and packages of bandages.
“You look like you’re ready to take care of a whole army,” she said.
“I wasn’t sure what I would need, so I just got everything I saw in the store.”
Willa turned her head so that Griff could see the cut. “Go ahead, then, and get it over with.”
Griff didn’t move, and finally Willa turned to face him. “What’s wrong?”
“Does your head hurt that much?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Of course not.”
“Then what’s wrong? You’re as stiff as a board.”
She felt her face heating, but she wasn’t about to tell him the truth. She was bracing herself for his touch. She couldn’t tell him that her heart was racing and her skin tingling because he was so close to her. So she shrugged. “I never did like having people poke at me when I was hurt. Go ahead.”
She turned her head away, but she felt him hesitate. Finally he touched her face. His hands were as gentle and light as the touch of a butterfly’s wings, and when his fingers trailed over the side of her head, lingering at the angle of her jaw, she shivered in response.
“Your cut is beginning to heal already,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’m going to clean it, then leave it alone. I think it’ll be fine.”
“Good,” she managed to say. Swallowing hard, she clamped her hands between her thighs and looked out the window. She knew very well what Griff would see in her face if she looked at him. He would see desire.
She was afraid he would find it pathetic.
So she kept her head turned away as he wiped at the cut with a cold, stinging liquid. “It’s alcohol,” he said, and he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry if it hurts, but they dropped you in that muddy water. I want to make sure that cut is disinfected.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she managed to say. Just do this quickly, she pleaded silently.
After a few moments he moved away from her. Willa started to get up, but Griff laid a hand on her arm.
“Just a minute,” he said. “I’m not finished.”
“You took care of the cut,” she said, telling herself to pull away from him. “What else is there?”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t let go of her arm, and she didn’t try to move away. “But I want to ask you a few questions.”
Slowly she sat back down on the couch. “I already told you, I don’t remember what happened.”
He smiled. Almost as if he couldn’t help himself, he reached out and pushed her hair away from the cut on her head. “I know. And I’m not going to push. But I want to make sure they didn’t hurt you anyplace else.”
Heat trailed down her face, following his fingers, and she swallowed again. “All right.”
His hand dropped away from her face, and held hers. “You said you had gotten your mail, and you remember seeing the painters. They said something to you. Did you answer them?”
She closed her eyes and tried to remember, but there was a void. “I don’t remember,” she said, opening her eyes. “But I probably would have, if they spoke to me.”
“You’re too polite to ignore someone talking to you.” He took her other hand and fixed his gaze on her face. “So they said something to you, you answered them, and they probably moved closer while you talked. Do you remember if they hit you?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t remember anything after that.”
Griff frowned. “If they didn’t hit you, they would have to have used something like chloroform to knock you out. Otherwise, they couldn’t have gotten you rolled up in that rug. I didn’t smell anything when I found you. Does your throat hurt?”
“Not at all.”
“Then let’s take a look at your head.”
He moved in front of her, then crouched down between her legs so their faces were only inches apart. “I’m going to look for another lump on your head. Tell me if I hurt you.” His voice was low and throaty, and a stab of desire jolted through her. Her throat swelled, and all she could do was nod her head.
Griff’s brown eyes held hers for a moment, and she thought she saw an answering flare of desire in their depths. Then he abruptly turned his head away. His hands slid into her hair, and she closed her eyes to the wave of feeling that swept over her.
His fingers moved gently over her scalp, probing lightly. Sensations crashed through her, making her breath catch in her chest. Blood roared in her ears, and she longed to lean into him, longed to feel the hard length of his body pressed against hers.
“Do you feel anything?” His voice sounded a little breathless.
Yes, she wanted to tell him. You’re making me feel things I’ve never felt before. But instead she said, “No, I can’t feel a thing.”
“How about over here?” His hands drifted below her right ear, and she closed her eyes and let herself float on the sensations.
Suddenly her eyes flew open. “Ouch. That hurts.” She reached up and found a tiny bump on her head.
Griff rose from between her legs and sat down on the couch next to her. Gently, he pushed the hair away from the spot. “It’s a very small bump, and the skin isn’t broken. They must have hit you just hard enough to make you fall down, then rolled you up in the rug. You were wriggling when they walked out the door of the apartment with you. That’s when I saw one of the kidnappers hit you again.”
His fingers brushed through her hair again, and it almost felt as if he were caressing her. He leaned closer, and she thought she felt his lips brush over the spot on her head. “It’s going to be fine.”
“I didn’t even know it was there until you touched it.” Her breathing was ragged.
Griff drew away, but he didn’t move off the couch. He took her hands and slowly turned her to face him. “Do you hurt anywhere else?”
She ached all over, but that had nothing to do with her attackers. “No, I’m fine.”
“Then I’d say you’re going to survive.”
His melodic voice dropped almost to a whisper, and Willa couldn’t tear her gaze away from his face. His eyes blazed with a heat she’d never seen in them before. He reached out and framed her face with his hands, then leaned toward her.
“Tell me to stop, Blue.” His voice was a low, smoky growl that thrummed deep inside her. “Tell me to get lost.”
Slowly she shook her head. “I don’t want you to stop,” she whispered.
His eyes darkened and his hands slid down her neck, his thumbs tracing a line on her throat in a slow caress that made her tighten with need. Then he grasped her shoulders with shaking hands. The air between them trembled.
His kiss wasn’t tender or tentative. He crushed her mouth beneath his, drinking her in like a man who’d been dying of thirst. He claimed her mouth with an untamed desperation that stirred an answering wildness in her.
Wrapping her arms around him, she pulled him closer. With a groan deep in his throat, Griff slid his hands around her face, holding her while his mouth roamed over her cheeks, her eyes, her neck.
Finally he returned to her mouth, where his lips gentled. He nibbled, he tasted, he nipped, until dark waves of heat swept over her, leaving her needy. She opened her mouth to moan his name, and he swept inside to taste her more intimately.
His hands slid down her back, caressing her spine, smoothing over every muscle along the way. Desire coiled inside her, until she throbbed in rhythm with every touch of his hands, every movement of his lips.
She tried to move closer to him. She needed to feel the hard planes of his body against hers, needed to feel his weight and heat pressing into her. His hands tightened on her for a moment, then he pressed her down onto the couch.
His leg curled around hers, and he leaned over her. His eyes were nearly black with passion, and the planes of his face were hard. “For God’s sake, Willa. Tell me to stop.”
She looked up at him, knowing her eyes were dazed, knowing that he could see the desire and passion in her face. “I don’t want you to stop, Griff. Kiss me again.”
He closed his eyes as a shudder passed through him, then he bent and took her mouth again. He smoothed her hair away from her face, and his hand trailed down her neck. He stroked the skin of her throat at the opening of her blouse, then pressed his mouth to the spot.
“You’re so soft,” he whispered. “So smooth. Are you this soft everywhere?”
He hesitated for a moment, then he slowly pulled her blouse out of the waistband of her slacks. He kissed her again as he slid his hand onto her abdomen.
Her skin jumped and heated at his touch, and she shifted against him. His leg slid between hers, and she pressed herself closer to him. She clung to him, lost in the sensations crashing over her. She still couldn’t believe that Griff apparently wanted her as much as she wanted him.
“Griff,” she said fiercely, turning so that her body fitted more closely against his.
He wove his hands into her hair, pulling her closer. His mouth took hers in a storm of heat and desire, and she answered him back, kiss for kiss, touch for touch.
But when he shifted his hand he pressed against her cut, and she couldn’t stop herself from crying out. He stilled immediately, then began easing himself away from her.
“I’m sorry, Willa,” he said.
“Don’t be.” Her voice was fierce. “You didn’t mean to touch my bruise.”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry I touched you in the first place, sorry it got out of hand.”
Slowly she drew away from him, feeling a ball of hurt swelling in her throat. “You’ll notice I wasn’t objecting too much.”
“You should have been. My God, Willa, I gave Ryan my word that I would take care of you. I promised him that I would protect you. I’m sure that what we were just doing wasn’t what he had in mind.”
She couldn’t believe how much his words stung. “Does Ryan decide who you get involved with?” She tried to make her voice cool to hide her pain. “He doesn’t run my life. What does he have to do with what goes on between us?”
“I don’t answer to any man, including Ryan Fortune.” He scowled at her and stood. “But I honor my word. And when I said I would protect you, I meant just that.”
“I don’t notice any kidnappers pounding at the door. So what are you worried about?”
Griff sighed and ran his hand through his short brown hair. “If I’m thinking about you, about how much I want to kiss you, I’m not thinking about how to protect you. My mind can’t be in two places at once. And when I was kissing you, that’s definitely all I was thinking about.”
She angled her chin at him, unwilling to concede the point. “You said no one followed us. No one knows where we are. So what are you worried about?”
“I’m worried about what I can’t predict. I’m worried about where the next threat is coming from. I had no idea that you were going to be kidnapped when I showed up at your apartment. It just happened. And I have no way of knowing what’s going to happen next.”
She looked out the window at the trees surrounding the cabin and the mountain rising behind it, then looked back at Griff. His face was closed off and remote. “What kind of man are you, Griff, that you worry about things like that?” she asked softly.
“I’m the kind of man you don’t need in your life,” he said harshly. “I’m the kind of man your mother should have warned you about.”
“My mother left us when I was a baby,” she said coolly. “So her opinion wouldn’t count. And my father taught me to pay attention to my instincts. But apparently my instincts were wrong.”
“Damn right your instincts were wrong.” He scowled again. “I’m going out to get some firewood. It’s going to get cold in here.”
Griff slammed out the door, and Willa sank back onto the couch. In spite of Griff’s words, he couldn’t deny what she’d seen in his face. Or felt in his touch. He had wanted her, as much as she’d wanted him.
She closed her eyes to savor the knowledge, to wrap herself in the warmth of Griff’s desire for a moment longer. These last few months, when she’d been dreaming of Griff, imagining his kiss, he’d been thinking about her, too. He hadn’t merely been overcome by unexpected passion. She might not be very worldly, but she could tell when a man wanted her.
And Griff had wanted her.
Logs thumped against the side of the house, jerking her back to reality. The sound reminded her that they were in this cabin because someone wanted to kidnap her, or worse. Someone hated her enough to want to harm her.
Griff was right, she told herself. She should be worrying about what had brought them here, not about Griff and how he felt about her. Or how she felt about him.
Griff wouldn’t fit into her life. He would never want to settle down in a university town like College Station. She couldn’t imagine him as the husband of a college professor, going to faculty dinners and cocktail parties. She couldn’t imagine him as a husband, period. Griff was too wild, too untamed to fit into an easy, comfortable life-style like the one she was building.
A small voice in the back of her brain pointed out that being a college professor, having a stable and secure life, was her father’s dream for her. It hadn’t always been her dream. But she banished the voice from her mind. Being a college professor was the life she’d chosen, and she was damn good at it. And she would go on being good at it, as soon as they figured out who wanted to kidnap her.
In the meantime, she’d stay as far away from Griff as possible. It wasn’t going to be easy to avoid him in this tiny cabin, but she’d do her best. There would be no repeats of the kiss they had shared.
Griff was right. They both had other things to worry about.
She stifled her heart’s protest and stood. If Griff was getting firewood, she could make lunch.
Griff raised the ax again and brought it crashing down on the log. It split into several satisfying pieces, and he bent down to stack them in the growing pile next to him.
The wood piled next to the house had needed to be split before it could be used, and Griff was happy to do the job. He figured if he raised the ax and brought it down enough times, if he pushed his body to the breaking point, he’d get rid of the desire that still pulsed inside him.
He still couldn’t believe he’d kissed Willa—and that he would have done a hell of a lot more than kiss her if he hadn’t accidentally touched the bruise on the side of her head.
Thank God she’d flinched. It had brought him to his senses, and not a moment too soon. He’d been so consumed with his need for her that in another few minutes he’d have had her naked underneath him on the couch.
He cringed when he thought about it. He was here to protect Willa, to make sure that nothing happened to her. And the first time they were alone together, he had forgotten everything he’d been trained to remember.
Some protector he was.
He swung the ax again and split apart another log. At the rate he was going, he thought sourly, he’d have the whole forest split and stacked before his desire for Willa disappeared.
Why couldn’t Willa have been a woman from his world, one who knew the rules and how the game was played? Why couldn’t she have been the kind of woman who could indulge in a casual affair and then walk away with no regrets?
Willa wasn’t that kind of woman. She was a lady—a college professor, for God’s sake. He was the last man she should get involved with. He was too cynical, too wild, too much a loner for a woman like Willa. She needed someone who could give her what she deserved: a home, the picket fence around it, and everything that went inside.