Jacques hunted for the source of the binging sound to hide his frustration. Amy cautiously eased the car’s brutal engine down the road at the speed of a child’s pony. He wanted his knee back so he could show her what the car could do. “There’s no one out here. You can go faster,” he remonstrated. “Enjoy a beautiful machine.”
“You may as well tell me to enjoy a rocket launcher,” she replied, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Next time, I’ll let you ruin your knee on the damned clutch. What possessed you to drive this monster up here?”
“It takes curves like a dream. We’ll drive it up the mountain someday, and you will see. It is like a magic carpet ride.” They could put the top down and let the wind blow her hair and color her cheeks and make her laugh like a girl. And then he would kiss her again until both their heads spun.
His head was still spinning from that last kiss. He wanted to see if they could do that again — if he could persuade her to throw caution to the winds and just let life happen.
“Give me real carpets any day,” she argued. “They’re at least useful.”
“Magic is about beauty and dreams. These things are useful in their own way. One needs to step back from grim reality occasionally to appreciate the wonders of the world.”
“It’s a trifle difficult for the rest of us to live on dreams. Right now, I don’t want to imagine paying for this car for the rest of my life if anything should happen to it.”
“It’s insured,” he said with a careless gesture. “But nothing will happen. Maybe a few dings from the gravel. You fret too much.”
“You fret too little. As Aesop points out, there’s a reason grasshoppers who fiddle away the summer don’t last to see spring, while ants who work to store food survive.”
He kept his arm over her seat back, enjoying the familiarity of brushing her shoulder while leaning over to read the dials. The sun through the windshield formed a warm cocoon around their little nest of leather and chrome. “Aesop was a pessimist. People bring food to my door in return for my fiddling. A woman like you shouldn’t have to worry over such things.”
She tensed so tightly when he stroked her bare arm that he feared she would bite his ear off. He blew teasingly on a strand of warm brown hair curling on her forehead and watched the sunlight dance on her gold hoops. She hit the brake, and he laughed.
“What will you do if you find the pattern cards?” she demanded.
“Do you think to drive the thought of kisses out of my mind?” he teased, caressing her shoulder with his fingertips.
“There will be no more kisses,” she said firmly, keeping her eyes on the road and her hands in a death grip on the wheel. “If I’m helping you to find those cards, I have a right to know what you mean to do with them.”
She meant to force the issue she’d brought up the other day, one he did not want to discuss with a lady he wished to seduce.
“I will produce beautiful fabrics, of course. Or the company will, after I write the program.” He knew this wasn’t what she wanted to know, but he wasn’t prepared for candor. “I am not a thief. I am willing to pay well for what I want, so do not worry so.”
“If all you want is the cards, why don’t you work with the mill committee? With your wealth, we could buy back the whole property and put it into production by Christmas. You could have your cards and designs, and we could have our jobs back.”
Jacques sighed and sat back where he belonged. He truly didn’t want to have this discussion now, but she left him little choice. “The wealth is not my own. I have a company and stockholders who expect a good return on their investment. I have seen your plan. It is a bad investment.”
He waited for her angry argument. Instead, the binging noise became a more insistent clang. Frowning, Jacques checked the instrument panel again, then opened the dash for the manual while she summoned her forces. He had no expectation that even a woman smelling of jasmine would leave the subject alone.
“Investing in people, in your community, is never a bad investment,” she argued. “The returns just aren’t necessarily monetary, not at first. The money comes later, when the economy stabilizes. You have to plan for the future.”
At least she had chosen an intriguing argument, if not one that would sway him. “But this is not my future,” he said regretfully. “We have different purposes.”
“Then why not leave us the mill and simply purchase the cards from us?” she asked, her tone so carefully steady he knew she fought desperation.
Following emotion was not a rational approach to business. A pleasant interlude with a charming woman, yes, but more than that could only end badly. Very badly.
He didn’t want any part of knowing Amy to end badly.
He might possibly be in trouble here.
He unclenched his jaw and forced it to relax. “I can buy the mill and the patterns for the cost of the machinery, then sell the machinery and walk away with the patterns for nothing,” he said, brutally bringing out in the open what had gone unsaid.
“Then I will simply have to win the bid,” she retaliated with such firmness that he had to glance at her to be certain she hadn’t transformed into a woman he did not know.
He admired the stubborn tilt of her round chin, and he chucked it lightly to get her to smile again. “May the best man win,” he agreed. Competition, he understood.
The clang became a whining alarm, and she clenched the wheel tighter, slowing to a crawl to make the turn onto the gravel mill drive. A narrow metal bridge traversed the rocky river ahead. “I won’t let you win,” she yelled over the noise of the alarm.
As she turned the steering wheel, smoke seeped from the electronic panel, a wheel locked, and before Jacques could form any reply or take any action, the Porsche slid into a spin on the gravel, hit a soft spot on the side of the road, and flipped down the embankment.
* * *
“Amy, Amy! Are you all right?”
Black panic wiped out everything except for the sight of the fragile, lovely woman slumped over the steering wheel. For years, Jacques had had full-blown nightmares of another woman, a child, and a car smashed against trees down a mountain hillside. His wife. His child. His world…all taken from him in the space of a breath. That time, the image had been only in his head, since he’d arrived much too late to see the actual scene.
The reality was far worse than a nightmare.
Mind screaming with sheer terror, he fought the air bag, beating it back so he could reach the woman not answering his cries.
Thanks to Amy’s cautious driving, the car had flipped only once, landing on its no-doubt flattened tires, but every battered bone in Jacques’s body ached from the crushing seat belt. He could see only Amy’s cinnamon brown hair falling over her face as her bag deflated. He could not tell if she breathed. Panic crushed the breath from his own lungs.
Frantically, he wrestled the air bag aside and unfastened her seat belt without a glance out the windshield at the destruction of the gorgeous machine. He simply prayed he had not failed to save another woman from harm. “Amy!” he repeated.
Her hand raised shakily to push the hair back from her face, and he almost choked on relief that she lived and moved. Still leaning against the air bag as if it were a pillow, she opened her green eyes and glared at him. “I told you so” were the first words out of her mouth.
After a sharp intake of air, relief simply exploded from his chest, and Jacques laughed. He couldn’t help it. He grabbed his sore ribs and roared until tears streaked down his cheeks.
“It’s not funny!” She sat up straight, or as straight as she could since the car was at a forty-five degree angle with the rocky riverbed. The knuckles of her fingers gripping the wheel were white.
“No, I think I am hysterical,” he blurted out between chuckles. “My heart stopped when you did not speak, and then your first words are not of relief or fear but recrimination.” His ribs really did hurt when he laughed, but he couldn’t hold it in. He hadn’t laughed so hard in years. Eons of pain and fear ripped loose and exploded — he’d faced his worst nightmare and survived.
“It’s not funny.” She propped her arms straight against the wheel as if that would hold the car in place. She didn’t sound anxious or in pain, just dazed. “I’ve killed a monster machine. Jo always told me I could.”
In his relief, that seemed even funnier. Jacques tried to muffle his mirth, but chuckles kept bubbling up. “One cannot kill machines, and you haven’t killed us, so all is well,” he tried to say reassuringly, but another snigger escaped, earning him a glare.
“We’re dangling over a riverbed in a hunk of broken metal. We could have been killed.”
“We’re alive,” he crowed. “We’re alive, and I very much want to kiss you. So let me help you climb out of here, and we will forget to call for assistance for a while.”
He eased open his door until it lodged against a tree trunk. Using his cane, he wiggled free and studied their situation. He breathed deeply of the mountain air and admired the scenery, letting the adrenaline rush settle down. The river was no more than a babbling brook over a bed of boulders. They were in no danger of drowning.
The angle of the hillside and the uneven terrain made his ability to clamber about doubtful, but perseverance was his middle name. Deciding the front of the Porsche was firmly wedged between a massive boulder and a pine tree, he limped uphill around a shiny fender lying on the ground to help Amy from the driver’s side.
She was shaking so badly when she stepped out, that his laughter dissipated.
“I am so sorry,” he murmured, wrapping her soft curves in his arms. “I should not have laughed, but it is better than crying, is it not?”
She bunched his shirt front in her fists and wept into his shoulder. This was not how he had wanted to persuade this woman into his arms.
But he had spent the past week watching from the distance she held him at, and he could not ignore her plump breasts now that they were crushed against his chest. Her jasmine scent filled his head, the tears wetting his shirt unmanned him, and the brush of her hair against his jaw electrified every nerve ending in his body. She spun him faster than the Porsche, so that he didn’t know whether to lust or cherish.
A part of him that he’d long buried pressed reassuring kisses into her hair, letting her weep, blessing the stars that she trusted him enough to cry on his shoulder. It had been a long, long time since he had held a woman just to comfort her. He knew the sexual urges aroused by her closeness were inappropriate, but he could not command his body to disregard her welcoming softness. So he stroked her back, trailed his kisses from her hair to her ear, doing his utmost to remind her how thrilling it was that they were alive.
She was hiccupping by the time his mouth found her lips. Jacques thought she meant to protest, but he firmly shut out her words with his kiss. The shock of attraction was instantaneous, and after the first gasp of surprise, she accepted his invitation with the delightful passion he’d experienced earlier. With her mouth melded to his, she shuddered and pressed into him with a desire for life and living that equaled the one welling in him.
“Amy,” he murmured when they came up for air. To stop kissing her would be akin to tossing away a delicious ice cream. He couldn’t do it. He tasted the corners of her mouth, swept his tongue along her bottom lip, and claimed her mouth when she parted hers in welcome.
He’d meant to go slow, not frighten her, but he couldn’t seem to stop. He’d enjoyed many women, but none had opened this rapidly filling well of desire for life and love that he had denied himself these past years.
The powerful surge of need frightened him far more than the crashing car. He could not need again.
Gasping, Jacques caught her upper arms and set her back from him just enough to save his senses, but not enough to let her go. Amy looked wonderfully tousled, aroused, and fascinated as she studied him the same way he studied her. Here was the sex kitten he’d sensed. Her lips were moist and swollen from his kisses, and he’d scraped her fair cheek with his beard. But her eyes — her eyes would be the end of him. They held such trust and wonder — and fear.
“I did not mean to take advantage,” he said, totally uncertain for the first time. He wanted her, yes. But need? He was not prepared for that. “But there is this current, this electricity….” He gestured helplessly. “You’re a magnet.”
The sun returned to her eyes, and she giggled infectiously. At his puzzled look, she laughed louder.
“Jo says my magnetic personality destroys electronics,” she explained between giggles. “You must be a robot.”
He had to smile at that, if only because her smile was so catching. “Hmmm…robotic. It’s true, I have been accused of that. And now you have messed with my wiring, and I am at a loss for what to do next.”
“Climb out of here and call for help would be my suggestion.” Eminently sensible now that he’d indicated a need for help, she lost her vulnerable look and studied the path of destruction created by the crashing sports car. “I recommend sliding up on your rear. You’ll destroy your knee trying to climb.”
He adored the way she metamorphosed from vulnerable sex kitten to sensible lioness when called upon. She had learned strength for her children, and she used it for everyone, even a grasshopper like him. And the entire town, he realized with regret.
“I am not sliding about like a cripple,” he protested, releasing her to reach for the cell phone in his inside jacket pocket. “You must have bumped your head hard to think I would do such a thing.” Hitting Luigi’s programmed number with his thumb, he brushed her hair from her forehead with his free hand, checking for bruises.
By all rights, she ought to be forcing a wan smile and sitting down to wait for rescue. Instead, she shook off his caress, grabbed a tree trunk, and began hauling herself up the hillside, no doubt running from the vibrations still electrifying them.
Jacques’s knee ached just watching her. It was obvious she was no stranger to mountain climbing. She found foot grips with grace and agility, braced herself on rocks and trees so as not to slide backward, and had reached the roadbed by the time he had finished talking to Luigi.
He liked watching the sway of her rounded buttocks and the way her firm calves curved enticingly with her climb. He wanted to slide his hand up the legs of her loose shorts and discover what dainty feminine garment she wore beneath the practical outerwear.
He was distracting himself with lust rather than think about the woman he was learning to know. He couldn’t do that much longer. Amy was not a shallow beauty looking for fame and fortune, but a real woman with a life of her own that he must take into consideration.
She sat down on a rock at the side of the road and gazed down on him like a princess at a toad. “I dare you to slide up before Luigi arrives.”
“I will make you pay for that when I get up there.” After watching the effort it had taken for her to climb out of the small ravine, Jacques knew he’d be risking surgery to try it upright. But he’d never turned down a dare, and she knew it.
He didn’t have time for surgery. Cursing the ignominy of crawling while the woman he wanted watched, he clenched his teeth and lowered himself to the ground torn up by the crashing car. He’d have to ease up backward, using his cane as brace to reduce the strain on his bad knee.
“You realize I can never look you in the eyes again,” he declared, inching upward, feeling his way with his hands. “I am an Olympic champion, and you have reduced me to a crawl.”
“I won’t look,” she promised cheerfully. “Although I must say, I don’t think many men have the biceps to do what you’re doing now.”
He couldn’t help grinning. “You warm my heart. I am again master of all I survey.”
“If that means you’re again an arrogant cockroach,” she said blithely, “I daresay that’s innate and nothing I can take away. Watch the blackberry cane on your right.”
“You are not supposed to be looking!” he chided, finding the thorny branch and working around it.
“I’m not. I’ve gone cross-eyed with pain, and I’ll probably black out at any moment. You will have to hurry to rescue me before I fall.”
She was poking fun at his need to take care of her, but he had to laugh at her accuracy. “You are wicked and much too perceptive. I like this side of you. You must say what you think more often.”
“No one listens when I do. You’re a captive audience. Besides, you have enough dignity for both of us. It doesn’t hurt to dust it off occasionally.”
“Dignity? Is that another way of saying arrogance?” Without warning, he reached behind him and grabbed her ankle. His hand easily wrapped around her slender bones so he could pull himself up the remainder of the way and pull her down to him at the same time.
She slid off her rock and into his arms as if she belonged there. And she did. This amazingly strong woman belonged in his arms, in his bed, and in his dreams. Another crashing car could have shattered him. Instead, this accident had opened another dimension of possibilities.
Covering Amy with his greater size, pressing her into the soft grass along the roadside, Jacques straddled her hips and claimed the prize of her mouth again. He could feel her curves along the length of him, arching against his chest and groin as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Desire, thick and warm, flooded through him. She drew on his tongue to show she felt the same, and he almost lost his senses enough to take her there, with the mosquitoes and poison ivy. All the blood rushed from his brain downward, and he ground desperately against her until she groaned with equal desire.
Perhaps he could not have all he wanted, but he wouldn’t let this opportunity pass unrewarded. He slid his hands beneath her shirt, popping her buttons as he did so. He filled his palms to overflowing with the bounteous breasts she hid behind her tailored clothes. He unhooked her brassiere and teased her aroused nipples until she moaned for him and the zipper of his trousers cut into his swelling need to take her.
At the noise of a heavy vehicle roaring around the bend and throwing up gravel on the road, Jacques leaned over and gently suckled at sweet buds to ease both their needs, just a little. Then, with regret, he rehooked her garments and rolled onto his back.
He needed to slide back into the river to douse his throbbing erection. He hadn’t been this uncontrolled since….
Since Gabrielle.
That dashed an icy bucket of water over his raging libido.