Protecting His Cameron Baby, page 7
His eyes widened as if surprised by her assessment.
“Being so far away from your mom while she’s sick can’t be easy.” She laced her fingers with his and squeezed his hand.
Evan nodded, and his eyes reflected a relief that she understood his worry.
What started as typical first-date fare—movie preferences, books read, travels taken and longed for—soon progressed to more granular topics of seminal moments in their histories and deeply held beliefs. He expanded on his grief over his mother’s illness and feelings of helplessness to do anything for her, the position he’d assumed from a young age as the protector in the family and his loneliness growing up. “Mom was great, but I always wanted siblings, a big family...what you have,” he said, confirming her earlier suspicions.
Their meals had been eaten and their dishes long ago cleared away before he glanced out the night-darkened window and heaved a sigh of regret. “I think we’ve monopolized this table as long as we dare. I just hate to end our evening yet. Maybe we can get dessert somewhere?”
She hesitated, hating to burst his bubble twice in one evening, but wanting honesty between them. “I’m not much for refined sugar. If I’m going to indulge in something sweet, it will be my Nanna’s sticky toffee pudding every time. Or ice cream. I do love ice cream.”
“Then ice cream it is.”
“Deal. And then how about a walk beside the river? I can show you where there’s a lighted bike path we can use, if you want.”
“Lead on.”
She did. After a quick stop at her favorite ice cream shop, she directed him to the trailhead at the local park. Their moonlight stroll evoked more fond memories of childhood autumns, leaf forts and Halloween carnivals. Stolen kisses stoked a heat in her core, and the warmth of his hands stroking her fueled a passion she had no interest in denying. He was her destiny after all. Why fight what had become more obvious with every minute of their time together, what her heart and soul were craving so desperately?
“I want to be with you, Evan,” she whispered between long, deep kisses in the shadows of the park.
He met her gaze with one muddled by desire. He was obviously trying to read between the lines.
So she clarified. “To make love to you. To wake up with you. To share all of myself with you.”
He blinked as if weighing his decision then asked, “Your place?”
She tweaked his chin. “Your motel is closer.”
His grin was devilish but warm. “It is.”
Laughing and kissing, they all but broke down his motel room door in their haste to get inside and get naked. Evan tumbled her to his bed, stripping her shirt over her head while her hands fought with his belt. Their first coupling was chaotic and clumsy, and Evan barely got a condom on before she straddled him and sated her longing to be part of him.
I’m home, she thought as he brought her to a staggering climax. The thought repeated as they made love again, more slowly, more tenderly, more thoroughly...several times through the night. She closed her eyes, drifting to sleep in the small hours of the night, content in the assurance that beside Evan Murray was where she belonged.
* * *
Evan woke before dawn the next morning, feeling happier than he had in months. He recognized that truth even before his languid stretch found the warm presence beside him.
Isla. A smile touched his lips as he thought the lyrical name and reflected on their enthusiastic sex from the night before. And their intriguing conversation over dinner. And her effervescent laugh that left his spirits lighter and a bubble of hope swelling inside him.
On the heels of those bright and welcome thoughts, he remembered why he’d pursued Isla to begin with, how he’d staged their fender bender, danced around the truth when answering her questions, hidden his ulterior motive for their date.
And while she was under all these misconceptions and ignorant of his agenda, he’d slept with her. His gut twisted in self-reproach. Seducing her had never been his plan, but she’d so quickly and so completely mesmerized him and turned him inside out, he’d lost himself in her. He’d been so focused on Isla, he’d almost forgotten the big picture.
Damn. Where did he go from here? How did he right the ship? He draped an arm over his eyes, and a quiet groan escaped his throat.
“Evan?” she murmured and snuggled closer, her gentle hand slipping onto his chest to rest over his heart. “You okay?”
He captured her fingers and squeezed. “Never better.”
She kissed his shoulder. “Same.”
He reached for his phone on the bedside stand and woke the screen. Four thirty.
“Four thirty?” she said with a little gasp. “Oh brother. I need to get home. I have animals to feed and relatives who will freak out if I’m not there when they stop by.”
“You family comes by your house at four thirty in the morning?”
“Maybe not that early, but they know I’m usually up before sunrise. The animals get impatient if I’m late with their breakfast, and I’ve found that meditating at first light gives me the peace and energy I need for the day.”
He squelched the impulse to make a teasing comment about her morning ritual. Instead, he quipped, “I find that about a gallon of coffee and avoiding the national news give me the peace and energy I need for the day.”
She chuckled and patted his chest. “Good choice, avoiding the news. We’ll discuss your caffeine addiction some other time. There are worse vices.”
“Vice?” He angled his head to give her a disgruntled look. “Coffee is the nectar of the gods. How could such liquid gold be a vice?”
“Most of my family would agree with you, so I’ll concede the point. I can even brew you a pot, if not a gallon, when we get to my house.” She rose on her elbow to kiss his mouth before rolling away and tossing back the covers.
He caught her arm and tugged her back against him. “Hold up, beautiful.” He cradled the back of her head with a splayed hand and drew her close. “You need a proper good morning before we go.”
Pressing his lips to hers, he slanted a kiss across her lips and inhaled the sweet scent of her. He moved his kisses to nuzzle her neck below her ear and murmured, “You taste good and you smell heavenly, my dear. What is that tantalizing scent?”
“Why, thank you. It’s my own blend of patchouli, ylang-ylang and chamomile essential oils.”
He raised his head to give her a puzzled look. “Um...what kind of oils?”
“Herbal essential oils. To relax and promote wellness. And it’s nice that they smell good too.”
He reined in the chuckle that he knew she’d take as dismissive, but the picture he was rapidly forming of Isla Cameron was so much his opposite as to be laughable. An essential-oils-using vegetarian who rose before the sun to feed farm animals and meditate. And while her lifestyle and beliefs were, well, different, he didn’t feel out of sync with her. It was as if they were puzzle pieces that, despite their reverse shapes, fit together perfectly. Certainly he’d never enjoyed sex with anyone as much as he had with her last night, and he credited that to the inexplicable pull he felt toward her, the emotional bond, the spiritual—
Whoa! He snorted and shook his head. Good grief, now he was throwing out the same sort of bohemian terminology she used.
“What’s funny?” she asked, her nose wrinkling in a way that made him want to kiss it. So he did...
“Us,” he said, stroking her cheek with his crooked finger. “We’re just so...different. Yet so—” he squeezed her “—good together.”
She hooked her leg around his. “So then, you sense it too?”
“Well, yeah. There is something special going on here.” He twisted his mouth, befuddled by his admission. “I know it’s awfully early to be saying so, but...”
“No. Not really. If the connection is there, why not acknowledge it? I don’t want to play stupid society-dictated relationship games. We get to say what is best for us.”
Games...
He gave her a smile, hoping to mask the biting guilt that sawed inside him. More than playing games, he was deceiving her outright. While he could do his level best to rectify that situation, find a way to appease Gibbs’s demands and protect Isla from the fallout, he was clearly in a sticky position. Tugging her close again, he kissed her hard, then rolled out of bed before she could read his doubts on his face. “All righty then. Let’s go feed some goats and chickens.”
* * *
The world was still dark as he navigated the roads to Isla’s house. For her part, Isla was mostly quiet, appearing reflective as they drove. She sat with her body angled toward him, her attention focused not on the few lights of the sleeping town but on his face. She wore a mysterious smile that brightened every time he glanced at her.
“What?” he asked at last, awkward under the scrutiny.
She gave a small shrug. “Nothing. Just...happy. You have a very handsome profile, Mr. Murray.”
“Uh, thanks.” After another moment, he mustered the nerve to say, “Tell me more about Cameron Glen.” He wondered if she could hear the guilty thumping of his heart. She had an uncanny way of knowing his thoughts and moods, which meant he’d have to do a better job of disguising his motives when with her. But mention of her family’s property brought another broad smile to her face.
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
Anything that will help me find a vulnerability to exploit. He shifted in the driver’s seat uneasily when the horrid thought whispered in his brain. “How long has it been in your family?”
“I don’t know the exact year, but several generations. More than one hundred years.” The pride and reverence in her voice reverberated in his marrow like a dissonant gong.
“Wow,” he said, squeezing the steering wheel harder and fighting the bile that rose in his throat as he contemplated his odious task. “That long?”
“That long. I grew up there and have explored every nook and creek and tree. I can show you where I had my first kiss, where I broke my arm as a kid and where my parents caught me drinking Boone’s Farm with Barry Schuster when I was fifteen.”
He shot her what he hoped was an amused glance. “And what happened when they did?”
“I was grounded, warned against drinking again before I was of legal age, and Barry lost interest in hanging out with me the rest of the summer.”
He gave her a rueful grin. “His loss.”
She pointed to the driveway ahead. “Here’s your turn. It’s hard to see in the dark since Brody flattened the reflector last month.”
“Will you show me the grounds?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound pushy or suspiciously overinterested.
“Sure! And this is a great time of day to see it, with the world just waking up, the birds and critters all stirring and the dew making things sparkle.”
Speaking of sparkle, Isla’s eyes had a special light in them when she spoke of her family. That shine was there now, as if Cameron Glen were another beloved member of her family.
I grew up there and have explored every nook and creek and tree.
Compunction returned to gnarl his guts and cramp his chest. He shoved his misgivings aside and dragged an image of his ill mother to the fore. For Mom. Just remember your “why.”
* * *
A pickup truck was pulling from the Cameron Glen entrance onto the state highway as Evan slowed to make the turn.
“Wow. So we’re not the only people in the state awake after all. Someone you know?” Evan asked.
Isla gave the departing vehicle a cursory glance. The dark pickup wasn’t Brody’s truck, so she shook her head. “Could be one of the guests. They’ve been known to leave at all hours if they have a long drive ahead or are trying to get to a certain mountain lookout for the sunrise.”
As Evan pulled up the main drive, nearing her house, Isla pointed through the windshield ahead of them. “The drive makes a loop. Just follow your nose, and you’ll come back out here. Or.” She gave him a telling look as she paused. “Better yet, park in my yard, and we’ll walk.”
“Sounds like a winner,” he said and pulled onto her gravel driveway.
Isla stepped out of the sedan and took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet fragrance of the fallen leaves and earthy loam, both scents heightened by the morning dew. But a different smell laced the air as well. An acrid smoke. Guests often built fires in the provided firepits in the evening, but those fires should have been extinguished and the accompanying smoke dissipated by morning. An uneasiness rippled down her spine. “Do you smell that?”
Evan raised his nose and took a deep breath. “What am I supposed to smell? I’m getting farm animals, leaves and cut grass. And some pine?”
She headed toward the road and examined the sky with a knit in her brow. While the sort of fog that had given the Smoky Mountains their name hung over the fishing ponds and rolled through the trees, another more ominous haze tinted the air. “Something’s burning,” she muttered, even as she started jogging up the road.
“Isla?” Evan fell in step behind her.
“Smoke,” she called back to him, picking up her pace. The dark scent grew stronger as she reached the far end of the property. Soon the ominous scent was joined by a nerve-shattering cry and the piercing beep of a smoke alarm.
Isla’s pulse lurched when she rounded the bend in the road and discovered the source of the commotion. The White Pine cabin was on fire, their rental guests standing on the front lawn in their nightclothes. The mother of the family was in tears, her young son shrieking in fear.
Isla raced to the mother. “Is everyone out?”
She shook her head, her eyes wild with terror. “Our daughter is trapped in the back room. My husband is inside, trying to get her out.”
Isla glanced at the cabin where black clouds of smoke billowed out of every window.
Before she could quell her shock enough to respond, Evan darted past her toward the back of the cabin.
Ice sluiced through her. “Evan!”
“Call 9-1-1!” he shouted without breaking stride.
Isla glanced to the woman, who understood the question before it was asked.
“I haven’t. My phone’s inside. My only thought was my children—”
Isla reached reflexively for her purse, her phone, only to realize she must have dropped her purse without thinking as she rushed in terror toward the fire. Rather than try to search in the thin, predawn light, she ran to the cabin next door and banged on the front window.
Those guests must have already heard the commotion, smelled the smoke because the door was jerked open quickly. Without hesitating, Isla pushed past the older man and grabbed up the cabin’s landline.
After dialing the emergency number and sputtering out the address and situation, she shoved the phone toward the man. “Stay on the phone with the operator! Please. I have to go back and help!” To the older man’s wife, who watched with worried eyes from the bedroom door, she called, “If you have a cell phone, use it to call the office after-hours number. My sister will answer. Tell her what’s happening!”
* * *
His heart in his throat, Evan bolted toward the back of the cabin, stumbling in the dark over roots and empty wine bottles in the yard. Through a broken cabin window, he could see flames dancing in the living room, could smell the acrid chemical scent of items in the house burning. He moved farther toward the back, where a newer-looking wing had been built. Could this be the bedroom where the girl was trapped? The window here was black, nothing in the room visible. Judging this window to be his best chance to get inside and find the child, he groped in the pale morning light for a rock or branch or... Bingo!
He snatched up the child-sized baseball bat lying discarded in the grass and hurried back to the window. Standing off to the side of the window—he’d seen enough movies to know about possible back-draft danger—he smashed the glass with the bat. The pane shattered, and heat and smoke billowed out. But not flames. Thank God! Yanking off his jacket and holding his breath, he wrapped the coat around his arm and knocked the rest of the jagged glass from the frame. After stepping away from the clouds of smoke for a deep breath, he removed his T-shirt, tied it around his head so it covered his mouth and nose. Wetting the cloth would have been better, but he went with what he had. Time was critical for the trapped girl.
Hoisting himself onto the windowsill, he wiggled through the opening he’d made in the glass and fumbled to his feet. Remembering the get-low-and-go rule, he dropped to his hands and knees. The smoke and heat were horrible, but he forged on. Feeling his way in the blinding smoke, he found a dresser, an open suitcase and finally a bed. The little girl was still in the bed, the covers over her head.
“Hey, sweetie...” he rasped, wishing he’d bothered to ask the girl’s name before heading off on his rescue mission. He coughed and shook the child’s shoulder. “Can you hear me? We have—” cough “—to get out!”
He lifted the girl’s floppy arm and knew if she was going to survive, he’d have to carry her out. The popping and roar of the fire filled his ears. Or was that his own adrenaline-fueled pulse? Already his throat and lungs were burning. The heat was intense. He rose high enough on his knees to hook his arms around the child. He managed to get her draped over his back as he hobble-crawled back toward the window. Stinging sweat dripped in his eyes. His chest heaved with effort and the yearning for a deep, clean breath. When he reached the spot where he thought the window was, he bumped into a wall. A chair. Damn! He was turned around, disoriented. Thick black smoke made it impossible to see. Where was the window? If he didn’t get out soon, both he and the little girl would asphyxiate.
Chapter 7
