“YOU ARE a warlock,” Cat muttered into the foaming water.
“I am?” Travis asked, startled.
“Mind reading. Definite warlock trait.”
He smiled. “It wasn’t tough. We had already brought up the subject of jail. Then you leaned back into the tub looking like someone who has just been paroled.”
Cat also looked like a woman who thoroughly enjoyed heat, liquid, and her own senses. He couldn’t wait to find out how she reacted to having a man’s mouth all over her. But he didn’t say anything for the same reason that he hadn’t urged her to take off her clothes.
Cat was well named. If he crowded her, she would rake him from heels to head.
“Jail,” she repeated, making the word a sigh. “No wonder you seemed so familiar.”
“Fellow inmates?”
She looked at his off-center smile and felt more heat than the water could account for.
“We think along the same lines,” Cat said, closing her eyes again. “That makes you seem familiar.”
Travis was tempted to get a whole lot more familiar, but he knew he would get clawed if he tried. Besides, watching the taut lines of her face relax was a kind of pleasure. He had a hunch that bordered on certainty that his wary Cat didn’t let many people close to her.
What he didn’t know was why.
“Tell me about your jail,” he said quietly.
“Nothing special,” she said, smothering a yawn with dripping fingers. “I work for myself. That means when I have time, I don’t have money, and when I have money, I don’t have time.”
Travis’s eyes narrowed at the mention of money. He watched her with sudden, predatory intensity.
Cat didn’t notice. She had given herself over to the glorious luxury of heat.
“Is money so important to you?” he drawled, but his lazy tone was belied by the cold intelligence of his eyes.
For a time she didn’t answer. She didn’t want to spoil the sense of well-being that was stealing through her. Yet talking held a real lure. She had no one other than the next-door neighbor to talk with, and Sharon was buried under infant twins and a precocious seven-year-old.
“Cat?”
She sighed. “My twin brother and sister are just finishing their medical schooling. Neither of them is able to work enough to earn more than pocket money.”
“You’re putting them through school?” Travis asked, surprised.
“Yeah. Until January.”
“What about grants and loans?”
“Oh, we’ve got them, too,” she said, yawning. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to put your kid through an advanced degree these days?”
The thought of a child took the last light from Travis’s eyes, leaving only bitterness. “No,” he said softly. “I don’t.”
“Thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Lord, I wouldn’t have believed it.” Lazily Cat swirled water with her fingertips. “Then there’s my dear, gently crazy mother. She had never written a check in her life until Dad died. Then she wrote too many checks, for all the wrong reasons, until all the money was gone.”
Travis looked carefully at Cat’s expression, but saw only a weary affection for and acceptance of whatever her mother was and was not.
“Twins and a mother, huh?” he asked quietly, wondering why it sounded familiar. But then, hard luck stories all tended to sound the same.
“Yeah. Not to mention my home. I can’t really afford the monthly toll on the lease-option until I make the last payment on the twins’ education in January.”
“In over your head?”
If Cat noticed the edge to Travis’s voice, she didn’t react.
“Nope. I’m a good swimmer,” she said, settling even deeper into the luxurious heat of the tub. “I fell in love with my home six years ago. It came on the market six months ago. If I’d waited until January, the house would have sold and I’d be back to yearning over it from afar.”
“So you took out a loan?”
“Are you kidding? I’m in business for myself. Banks hate me.”
“How did you get the money? Rob one of the banks that hated you?”
She smiled and yawned. “Nope. I just increased my workday from twelve to sixteen hours.”
Travis laughed, thinking Cat was joking.
“If seven days a week doesn’t get it done, try working nights, is that it?” he asked.
“Oh, I do that, too.”
“Work nights?”
“Of course.”
“Money is very important to you, isn’t it?”
This time there was no ignoring the edge in Travis’s voice. Cat opened her eyes and saw the mingling of anger and disappointment on his face. At that instant his face was a study in hard angular shadows. His lips were flat, almost invisible beneath his thick mustache. His teeth were a thin line of white. Savage gold lights glinted through his beard.
“Put a knife in those teeth and you’d be Bluebeard incarnate,” she said.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“About what?”
“Money,” he said flatly.
Cat looked at Travis as though he was as impractical as her mother. “Of course money is important.”
“Not to everyone.”
“The only people money isn’t important to already have it.”
“Maybe. And maybe some people are quite happy without money.”
“They don’t have to pay my bills.”
“And you would be so grateful if some good ol’ boy paid your bills,” he drawled.
The understanding and subtle disdain in Travis’s voice sent a shock of adrenaline through Cat, giving her false energy.
“Don’t worry, Travie-boy. I’m not going to hit you for a loan.”
With a fast twist of her body, she pulled herself out of the tub. The movement was savage, unexpected, like the disappointment slicing into her. She ran through the house, swept up her camera equipment, and opened the door to the beach stairs.
Two big hands shot over her shoulder, slamming the door shut before she could even start to go through it. She looked at the tanned, dripping, powerful forearms holding the door shut.
Travis was so close to her that his breath stirred the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.
“Open it,” Cat said through her teeth.
“You’re shivering. Come back to the tub.”
“It’s warmer outside.”
“Cat, it’s not—”
“Let me out,” she interrupted harshly.
Travis both sensed and saw the outrage vibrating through her. Whatever the state of her bank account, at that moment she wouldn’t have taken a bent coin from him.
“I didn’t mean it as an insult,” he said calmly. “It’s just a fact of life.”
“Not my life. I earn my keep.”
The savagery of Cat’s voice told Travis that he had opened a very painful subject. He hesitated, then let out a long breath, wanting to believe her when she said she hadn’t been looking to him for money.
Needing to believe her.
He hadn’t known until this moment how much of a jail his money had become, and how anonymous he felt within its bars.
“I’m not used to women like you,” Travis said finally.
“I’ll bet you aren’t used to women at all. With your manners, you must have to rent female company by the quarter hour. The door, Travis. Open it.”
Cat expected anything but the wry male laughter that sent an entirely different variety of shiver through her body, not cold at all, but a delicate kind of heat.
“Do you always draw blood with your claws?” he asked, not blaming her, simply curious.
She shifted her weight, wincing as her foot complained. The hot tub had taken away most of the sand, but it had done little else except make her realize how exhausted she was underneath her determination to do what must be done.
“Game’s over, Travis, whatever game you were playing.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Sure you were,” she interrupted in a clipped voice. “You found the cat, you found the cage, and then you started shoving sharp things through the bars just so you could watch the cat scratch and howl. That makes you feel powerful, and the cat . . .” She shrugged. “Hell, who cares how the cat feels? It’s just an animal and you’re a man.”
A charged silence settled over the foyer.
Cat watched Travis’s hands change from flat against the door into fists, solid and heavy. Muscles coiled and slid beneath tanned skin, telling more clearly than words of the emotions seething in the man behind her.
Stiff-spined, she waited for him to let her go.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”
“I know.”
“How?” he asked starkly, looking at his own fists.
“The same way I knew my cameras would be safe with you. In some ways we know each other frighteningly well. It makes the misjudgments all the more . . . painful.”
“Cat in a cage,” he whispered. “I would like to know who left such scars on you.”
“Believe me, you wouldn’t like knowing him at all. He isn’t a likable boy.”
Gradually Travis’s hands relaxed. He let out a long, weary curse.
For the first time Cat noticed the fine scars crisscrossing his fingers. Some of the scars were new, some were so old they had all but faded beneath the sunbrowned skin. She wondered what kind of work he did that left such spidery marks on him.
And then she wondered what kind of female had left invisible, much deeper scars on him.
“Was he really that bad?” Travis asked finally.
“My ex?”
“Is he the boy who put you in a cage and tormented you?”
Cat shrugged. “He probably wasn’t any worse than the female who soured you on half the world’s population.”
“Are you so sure it was a woman?”
“A female,” Cat corrected evenly. “And yes, I’m sure. Most people have to be taught that kind of soul-deep wariness of the opposite sex.”
“Were you?”
“Of course.”
“When?”
Cat didn’t answer, but the stiffness slowly left her spine. Her shoulders sagged. She didn’t have the strength to fight Travis and her memories, too.
With a bitter word she stopped trying to pull open the door and simply leaned her forehead against it, letting her camera bag rest on the floor. For the first time she noticed that she was standing in a spreading pool of pink-tinged water.
Travis saw it, too. He didn’t ask if he could pick her up again. He simply did.
The strap of the camera bag slipped from Cat’s fingers. Automatically she made a grab for it, but it was already beyond her reach.
“My camera gear,” she said.
“It will keep.”
“But—”
“Relax,” he interrupted, talking over her. “All I’m going to do is bandage your foot. If you want to leave afterward, I won’t get in your way.”
Cat told herself that she was probably a fool, but she believed Travis at a level of her mind too deep to deny. Despite their mutual wariness, something in him called to her. She had never felt that with a man before. Any man. Even her ex.
Especially her ex.
It made Cat wonder if there was more to the man-woman dynamic than she had managed to discover in twenty-nine years.
This time Travis set her down in a bathroom done in shades of lavender, lemon, and pale fuchsia. His brown, powerful back looked so out of place amid the pastel splendors that she couldn’t help smiling.
But when he touched her foot, the smile became a gasp.
“Hurt?” he asked mildly.
Cat gritted her teeth against an unladylike answer.
“It will get worse,” he assured her. “The sand has to be scrubbed out.” He looked up at her. “Do you want me to do it or would you be more comfortable doing it yourself?”
At first Cat didn’t answer. She simply pulled her right foot into her lap to inspect it. There was more than one cut. None was deep enough to require stitches. All the cuts began on her sole and then wrapped around to the outside of her foot, a place that was almost impossible for her to reach.
And Travis was right. There was sand in every cut. Even if she soaked the foot thoroughly, some sand would remain. It was the nature of sand and barnacle cuts to stick together.
Making a disgusted sound, Cat thrust her foot back into his hands.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Haven’t we had this conversation before, the one where I should be thanking you instead of vice versa?”
“That’s okay. We’ll just keep on doing it until we get it right.” He looked up and smiled slowly at her. “I guarantee it.”
Cat knew better than to touch that line. He was no more talking about repeating conversations than she was thinking about it.
Still smiling, Travis put warm water and disinfectant in a basin, set her foot in it, and left the bathroom. He returned almost immediately, carrying a thick, dark blue bathrobe in his hands. Without a word he wrapped it around her. Then he settled cross-legged on the floor and picked up her cut foot.
She wasn’t surprised that he was both gentle and quick as he worked over her foot. Any man who moved with his innate coordination was bound to be good with his hands.
With a minimum of pain and no wasted time, Travis cleaned Cat’s cuts, put on salve, and wrapped her foot with gauze. When he was done, he held her bandaged foot in one hand and kneaded her calf almost absently with the other. His eyes were focused on something only he could see.
She was focused on him. His hands were warm on her cool skin, his fingers strong and sure as he soothed away the cramps that had come as she tensed her muscles against pain. As she looked at him, she forgot her stinging foot. His tawny hair was alive with every possible shade of brown and gold. Light moved through his short beard and highlighted the subtle difference in the texture of his skin against hers. His fingers curved tenderly around the arch of her foot.
Cat longed to photograph him, the fluid lines and blunt strength, the sleek light and masculine shadow. He was as compelling to her as the great black ship had been.
“What are you thinking?” Travis asked quietly
“I want to photograph you.”
His eyes widened, revealing brilliant tourmaline depths. He laughed softly, shaking his head. “Will you always surprise me?”
“Depends on what your preconceptions are, doesn’t it?”
His smile faded. “I hereby abandon all my preconceptions about the opposite sex. And you, Cat, will you abandon yours?”
“I don’t have any where men are concerned. Only boys. I’ve never known a man.”
Except you, she thought. Are you what you seem, Travis? A man, not a boy?
Travis was as baffling as he was compelling to her. She had just met him, she had always known him, she didn’t know what to do with him, and she didn’t want him to go away.
Cat waited while he studied her in turn, visibly weighing her words against his previous experiences, deciding whether to take her the same way the sailing ship had taken the night—openly, with nothing held back.
“May I call you Cat?”
“Haven’t you always?” she asked lightly.
He rubbed his beard along her bare calf. She was smooth, resilient, smelling of salt and a faint perfume that was essentially woman. He would have brushed his lips over her, tasted her, but he had seen the flashes of wariness and confusion in her eyes. He understood them.
They were very like his own feelings.
“Yes, I think I’ve always called you Cat,” Travis said, gently releasing her foot. “That will make our dinner plans a lot easier.”
“What plans?”
“I’m taking you out to dinner.”
“Thanks,” she said, bending over to look at the neat bandage, “but I don’t think my foot is up to a night on the town.”
“Then I’ll bring some dinner in. What do you want?”
“How does salad, rolls, and swordfish sound?”
Travis made a growling sound of enthusiasm, but it was the bare nape of Cat’s neck that he was looking at.
“Which Laguna restaurant does take-out fish?” he asked.
“Chez Cat,” Cat said dryly, straightening up. “But I insist that customers eat with the chef.”
He smiled and wished he could nibble on her nape a little. Sort of an appetizer.
“How about if I cook?” he asked.
“You haven’t been here long enough to know your way around your cousin’s kitchen.”
Travis couldn’t argue that. Linda had enough bells and whistles in her kitchen for a fire station. After one look at the stainless steel, matte black, and fuchsia appliances, he had started exploring the local restaurants.
“You sure you want to cook?” he asked, standing up and setting Cat on her feet. “I know some really good places to eat.”
“I won’t poison you,” she said, heading for the front door, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She stopped long enough to pick up her camera gear. He was behind her. Right behind her. If she turned around, she would be in his arms. She forced herself not to turn around. Instead, she reached for the door handle.
A large, male hand beat her to it. Unlike some big men, there was nothing slow about Travis. She hadn’t turned around, but she was still halfway to being in his arms.
“Who has the best local swordfish?” he asked.
“The seafood market at Dana Point marina. Kind of pricey, but—”
Cat’s breath broke. For an instant it had felt as though her bare nape was being caressed by a silky brush.
Travis’s mustache. She was certain of it.
“Good is always pricey,” he said. “Always worth it, too. Want to come and help me pick it out and watch me while I cook?”
When Cat looked over her shoulder, she found herself staring into a pair of sultry blue-green eyes. She didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what Travis was thinking about.
She was thinking about it, too.
I must be nuts, she told herself wildly.
Herself shot back, If this is nuts, I’ll take it.
“I like to cook,” Cat said.
She turned back to look at the door. She didn’t trust herself to look at Travis any longer without doing something really stupid, like finding out if he tasted as appealing as he looked.
The thought of being the sexual aggressor startled Cat. Her ex had made it brutally clear that men wanted that role. Aggressive women left men cold.
“Sure?” Travis asked.
She wondered if he was talking about her thoughts or about leaving or about cooking dinner, but she knew better than to ask. She cleared her throat of the huskiness that had gathered after the silky caress of his mustache against her neck.
“Very sure,” Cat said briskly. “I’ve got some things to do before dinner. Why don’t you and the swordfish show up at my door in about two hours?”
“One hour.”
The certainty that Travis was as reluctant to see her leave as she was to go made Cat feel almost light-headed with a combination of pleasure and relief. Whatever was happening, she wasn’t alone.
“Ninety minutes,” she said.
“You drive a hard bargain. Eighty minutes it is.”
“But I said—” Cat began.
The door handle clicked beneath Travis’s left hand. The front door nudged against her breasts. The fingertips of his right hand traced the line of her throat and collarbone. With a reluctance that had Cat holding her breath, he stopped short of touching the curves that showed so clearly beneath her wet halter.
“Run while you can, Cat. With every breath you take, this pirate is becoming less willing to let you go.”