WHY HAD HE said that? Lancaster asked himself. The last thing Sophie ever needed to know was that he might have indulged the terrible weakness of imagining them together in any way, never mind that way.
Now she knew. They had both pictured this moment.
Of taking their clothes off.
And not at a hot springs, either.
For each other.
Thankfully, he had no time to indulge in weaknesses. He wasn’t romancing her. He was taking charge in a situation that was probably far more dangerous than she realized. He estimated they were both on the verge of textbook cases of hypothermia.
There was no use second-guessing his choice to leave the vehicle. He had underestimated the time it would take to get here, because by himself he could have gone faster, eating up the ground with his long stride.
Sophie had already used up most of her resources getting out of the canyon, and her terror at his crossing back over the creek against her instructions had sucked up way too much of her energy.
Which made it even more imperative that she see there was room for only one leader in a situation like the one they were in, and it wasn’t going to be her.
Mentally he ticked off his priorities, none having anything to do with her sudden modesty, modesty that had been nowhere in sight the other night at the hot spring.
Because, he told himself sternly, both of them had known there was an escape hatch that night, room to walk away. That was a luxury they did not have this time around.
He needed to get that fire going, get them both warm and dry and get something hot into them.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Sophie as she dropped the blanket at her feet. She managed to undo the laces on her boots and kick them off, but she was fumbling terribly. Her hands were so cold and shaky she couldn’t get the buttons of the shirt undone. She was going to go into full-blown hypothermia before she managed to get her clothes off.
He took a deep breath, strode over to her, grabbed both sides of the front of her blouse in his hands and tore it open, buttons flying.
“I love it when you’re masterful,” she said through chattering teeth.
At least she hadn’t said that this wasn’t quite as she’d pictured it. He couldn’t help but smile—inwardly, not outwardly—at her brave attempt to inject a bit of humor into her situation.
He quickly crouched in front of her, dispensed with the button on the front of her slacks the same way, and yanked the pants down. His hands brushed the flesh of her thigh and it was like a block of frozen ice.
Moving quickly, he rose again, reached behind her and dispensed with the soaked bra with one flick of his index finger. She glared at him and scrambled to cross her arms over herself.
“It seems as if you might have done that once or twice before,” she said.
“Well, watch this, then, lass.” He hooked his thumbs on either side of her soaked panties and yanked them down.
“Yes, you definitely have experience at separating a woman from her underthings. You might need a bit of work in the finesse department. On the panty part, anyway.”
“Hard to get it right with my eyes closed.”
“Your eyes were closed?” she asked.
Mostly.
“Thank you for saving my dignity.” While she stepped clumsily out of them, he scooped the blanket that was at her feet and wrapped it around her tight, as if she was a sausage.
“See how painless that was?” he told her. “Hardly time to sneak a peek.”
He wasn’t sure if she looked relieved, or offended!
It was one of those rough wool blankets, the weave coarse, and he was sure it would feel scratchy and unpleasant against her skin, the delicacy of which he was newly aware of.
“You aren’t going to like this,” he warned her. Starting at her legs, he worked his way up, rubbing the blanket, hard, against her. She whimpered. “That hurts. It’s not like when you did my feet.”
“No,” he agreed, “it’s not like that at all. I’m sorry, lass. It can’t be helped.”
“What a letdown,” she said. “Despite your efficiency at getting clothes off, you suck at foreplay.”
It was something a man less disciplined than himself might take as a challenge. Ignoring her whimpering and his own wayward thoughts, he methodically rubbed the circulation back into her.
Satisfied that her shaking was subsiding, he pulled an old overstuffed sofa as close to the fire as he dared and set her down on it. Then he went and searched the cupboards, coming up with an ancient bottle of brandy. Her arms were pinned inside the blanket.
“Open your mouth.”
“After the horrible attempt at foreplay, you’re going to get me drunk?” she asked, but she opened her mouth.
He poured a shot of brandy down her throat and then took one himself.
“I am starting to believe I might live,” she decided.
“No one dies on my watch.” As soon as it was out of his mouth, he realized the enormity of that lie. He quickly gathered her clothes and began to pin them on a line that ran beside the chimney.
Sophie was watching him closely.
“I think it’s your turn to dispense with your clothes, Connal Lancaster.”
He turned and looked at her. She was right. He was cold to the core, and he could not be of any assistance to her if he got sick. He knew a man’s strength was a puny thing against the ravages of being cold and wet. As a soldier, he had been taught there was hardly a worse enemy than that.
Still, he felt the surrender of it, as he reached for his buttons. He did not turn away from her.
“Somehow,” he said, trying to tease her, and not quite pulling it off, “I never pictured this particular moment going quite like this.”
He shucked off his clothes, felt instantly warmer without their wetness clinging to him. She averted her eyes when he freed himself of the wet boxers. He left the clothes in a pile as she managed to squirm free from a corner of the blanket, and she held it open to him. He hesitated for only a moment before climbing under there with her, pulling the coarse blanket tight around them again.
“Are you completely unclothed?” she asked him, her voice a squeak.
“As the day I was born.”
She contemplated that.
“Hmm,” she finally said, “this isn’t quite as I imagined, either. It’s about as romantic as cuddling up with a frozen ham.”
“I’m no romantic, Sophie. I’ve disappointed others.”
“Your wife and your baby didn’t die on your watch,” she told him softly, some intuition leading her directly to the heart of his every disappointment in himself. “It was a fire. You had no more control over that than over this storm. You told me you weren’t even on the island when it happened.”
He suddenly felt utterly exhausted. He could feel faint warmth creeping, with excruciating slowness, back into both their bodies. He could not fight, anymore, the need to tell her exactly how it had been, the need to dispel her illusions.
Maybe it was crucial in these circumstances. They were bound to bond to one another in this kind of survival mode, in this kind of forced proximity. He assumed they would be here days, not hours.
So, it suddenly felt imperative that Sophie know exactly who he was and how greatly he had failed the only time it had ever mattered.
“The regret,” he said slowly, going somewhere he had gone only—but endlessly—in his own mind, “wasn’t just that I failed to be there when I was most needed, it was that I was a failure as a husband. And a father.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said stubbornly.
Her faith in him was troubling and undeserved.
“I didn’t come from one of those big, happy families,” he said. “My father was a career soldier, as I am. The Havenhurst forces are allied with other armies, and we share personnel, missions and assignments.
“My father was seconded for a mission to a place nothing in Havenhurst had prepared him for. He came back from his deployment minus an arm and a changed man. He refused to accept a disability pension, calling it charity.
“He was harsh, given to drink and episodes of violence. It was worse after my mother died. I was twelve. The only respite I had was my grandfather, who would take me fishing.” He cast her a look. “I guess that’s why his rod means so much to me. The only good legacy from my childhood. Anyway, I followed the lead of my three older brothers and left home as soon as the army would take me.”
“I didn’t know you had brothers.”
So much she didn’t know. So much he had succeeded at keeping from her. “They all serve overseas. We’re not close. Survivors who bailed off that sinking ship as soon as we were able.
“My family became my brothers in arms in the guard. I loved my new life like a puppy who’d been kicked too often finally finding a good place to be. It wasn’t just that I was fed and a life that had been utter chaos took on a soothing routine, it was that I started to hear words I’d never heard. Well done. Brilliant. Good job.”
He realized her hand was resting on the top of his wrist. When had she put it there? Why did he feel as if he was drawing strength from her, when in fact, the whole point of this story was to set up a barrier between them?
He wished he could shake off her touch, the comfort of her hand resting lightly atop his wrist, but his strength seemed to be waning.
“I don’t tell you this out of disloyalty to my father,” he said, “but to let you know there is nothing in my background that prepared me to be a family man.
“Not that that kept me from longing for what I had never had. When Ceyrah came along, she just seemed to love me so completely. I’d never had that before. But what started off as a blessing soon felt like a curse. She didn’t like me out of her sight. She was bitter about my work obligations. She chaffed at every assignment I was sent on. She wanted me to love being with her, and love doing things with her, but I’m ashamed to say I was bored by every single thing she found interesting.
“I was a selfish bastard. I didn’t know what to do with all that need. I was rising in the corps, and had been offered an opportunity to go to a military college off island. I wanted to focus on my career. She was opposed to me leaving, and there were no married quarters at the college. At twenty-one, I wanted a divorce, something that is almost unheard of on these islands. Her answer to that was to get pregnant. And I went off island anyway, leaving her to cope with the baby mostly on her own.
“People might say it’s the wrong reason to stay married, but from the first moment I had held my baby in my arms, I felt what I had longed to feel my entire life. Needed. Complete. I loved him unreasonably when I was there. And he me. His first word was Da, even though I’d been away for the majority of his life.”
He stopped. He had talked too much. Perhaps more than he ever had. He pulled his wrist out from under her hand, and wearily rubbed his eyes, his whiskers.
He waited to feel crippled by the weakness he had just revealed, even as he knew it was necessary. He had done it for her own good. To help them both keep a distance from each other as whatever unfolded in this cabin unfolded.
Sophie was silent.
After a while she laid her head against his shoulder.
He felt something he didn’t deserve to feel.
He felt her tolerance of him as the flawed man who he was. He felt from her something he had failed to give himself. Acceptance.
And instead of feeling weak and as though he had revealed too much—even if it was for both their sakes—he felt like a man who had carried a huge burden, a man who had not even realized the weight of what he carried until he had finally, finally set it down.
He slipped his arm over the sweet curve of her bare shoulder. He kissed the silk of her hair where her head leaned against him.
He knew he should get up, tend the fire, clean and cook the fish. But he felt immobilized, unable to move. He told himself he’d do it in a moment.
“I forgive you,” she said, her voice husky.
His failures, unfortunately, were not hers to forgive.
But then, before he delved too deeply into the topic he had forbidden himself, forgiveness, she clarified.
“For going back and getting the rod.”
Feeling as light as he had felt in years, understood in some way he had never expected to be understood, Lancaster closed his eyes. He could feel that one shot of brandy burning in his belly. He let its warmth, and the fire, the sturdy walls of the cabin, Sophie’s warming body, comfort him. He felt as if he was a warrior who had wandered endlessly, and finally, finally, finally found his way home. He slept.