A breeze blew through the garden, easing the heat from the afternoon sun. But Nicki still felt uncomfortably warm, mostly from unwanted thoughts of a shirtless Luke in worn-out cutoffs. It had been several days since one of his business deals had come to a critical point and he’d buried himself in his makeshift office. At first she’d been relieved. It was, after all, a confirmation that he was a profit-driven workaholic.
Then she had discovered she missed him.
When Luke finally emerged for more than brief meal breaks, Nicki didn’t know whether she ought to pretend she hadn’t noticed or tease him for his absence. But he’d just grinned wickedly and suggested they get wet together.
“Cleaning the pond, of course,” he’d added with a wink.
In actuality, the “pond” was several long, narrow ponds, with small waterfalls descending from one to the next, creating a streamlike effect through the garden. In better times, a pump had recycled water from the lowest pond to the top, but that was years in the past. Now it was a mess.
Normally, cleaning out a green, slimy pond filled with decaying leaves and nameless gunk wasn’t one of the activities Nicki would have wanted to tackle, but Luke had a plan. The plan involved siphoning off the water and then carrying the gunk in buckets out to the compost pile.
“We’ll kill two birds with one stone,” he declared with no small amount of jubilance. They needed a place to dump the gunk, and the gunk would help decompose all those weeds. Pretty soon they’d have a natural compost to use in the vegetable garden.
She didn’t have the heart to tell him they might have made a mistake putting rose brambles and other woody stuff in the compost heap. Not that she was going to be around long enough to need compost, she reminded herself. Yet, it was entertaining watching Luke, a devoted city dweller, talk about such things.
At the moment, he stood frowning at the pump he’d rented from the hardware store, turning it from side to side. His bronzed shoulders seemed impervious to the sun and heat, she thought as she blew a lock of hair from her damp forehead.
“Didn’t it come with directions?” she called.
He gave her a dark look.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot.” Nicki grinned. “Real men don’t read directions.”
“I read them when necessary. It just isn’t necessary for something like this.”
Not yet, she added silently.
The pump was for siphoning the water into the storm drain and out to the street, and several hoses had already been rigged up for the purpose.
Nicki edged deeper into the shade of a tree and watched Luke trying to figure out the machine. He was an intelligent man, but he had a stubborn streak that wouldn’t quit. He’d decided he could figure this new puzzle out without help, and, by golly, that’s what he was going to do.
Oh, well. There were rewards to waiting. Luke was concentrating so hard she could watch him to her heart’s content and he’d never know the difference.
Nicki pulled her knees up to her chest to rest her chin on them. How in the world had she ended up spending time with Luke McCade? She didn’t have any illusions. They had only a few things in common—they didn’t even speak the same language when it came to the essentials of living. He regarded small towns as dead ends. He was rich and driven by ambition, whereas she made a decent living and didn’t care if she ever had a million dollars. Not to mention the fact that she was hardly a match for his dark, potent appeal.
Yet there was a hot, restless ache at the pit of her stomach and a tightening in her breasts as she gazed at him—this was better than her imagination had been while he was absent. The grass was cool against her bare legs. A light breeze sensitized the nerve endings in her skin and sent quivers down her back. She was acutely aware of every sound and movement and touch, and it was all because Luke was driving her crazy.
“Wake up,” she muttered to herself. She couldn’t afford to lose her perspective over a man who’d broken her heart once already.
Their teenage kisses at the hospital had gotten hotter and hotter, and she’d never forgotten the feel of his hard fingers on her skin as he tried to convince her that good girls did go all the way. The night before he went home, he’d nearly succeeded with that argument.
She had wanted to give him everything that night.
Luke had teased and coaxed until she let him kiss her breasts. But instead of a kiss, he’d put his mouth over one of her nipples, sucking hard and teasing her with his tongue. She’d nearly died with shock…and pleasure. She’d never known such sensations were possible.
“Hey, I think it goes this way,” Luke called, dragging Nicki back to the present. Heat crept up her neck. Thank goodness he couldn’t read minds. It would be too humiliating if he knew the way she kept thinking about him.
“I just stick the end of this one into the water, and turn it on. Ta da!” he said with a flourish as he flipped the switch. Bubbles frothed into the air and he jumped backward to avoid being splashed with foul-smelling water.
Nicki laughed.
“Dammit.” Luke kicked the switch off and glared at the offending equipment. “I just got the connections switched,” he growled. “The intake hose is where the outtake should be.”
While he was dealing with his intakes and outtakes, Nicki sighed. Luke probably didn’t remember their young kisses the way she did…or how he’d acted when he returned to school—as if she no longer existed. Even though there was a new captain of the football team, he’d strutted and thrust his chin out, daring people to act as if anything had changed. Once again she’d become the invisible girl, and the tears she’d cried each night were as pointless as the secret kisses he’d given her.
Worst of all, she hadn’t even learned her lesson. She’d gone on to marry another success-driven jock. How bright could she really be, making the same mistake twice? Not that Luke necessarily shared Butch’s hidden insecurities, but he certainly had his private demons.
“There,” Luke said.
He flipped the pump switch again, and a slurping sound could be heard over the motor. Kinks in the “outtake” hose straightened, and when Nicki put her fingers on it she felt a rushing vibration.
“Victory,” Luke declared as he flung himself down beside her and surveyed his kingdom with a satisfied smile. “Are we good or what?”
Nicki refrained from reminding him that she’d wanted to read the directions. Figuring out how the pump worked had taken precisely forty-seven minutes. A fraction of that time would have been needed if he’d just looked at the diagram.
On the other hand, she didn’t want to wipe the pleased expression from Luke’s face. That must be why some women put up with their guys’ massive egos. They saw the boy inside the man, and loved that part of him, along with the rest.
But was this the real Luke? The enthusiastic boy inside the man, with faults and foibles and good things all rolled together? Or was it an illusion, and was he still the stern, unfriendly man who’d first barked at her when she returned his grandfather’s painting?
“Uh…maybe I should water the flowers now,” Nicki said, tired of asking herself unanswerable questions.
The questions didn’t matter, anyway. Luke would return to Chicago as soon as another member of his family arrived to take over caring for Professor McCade. He’d forget all about intakes and outtakes and arguments over art and science and which one was more important. He’d forget that he’d smiled and laughed with her and gotten silly throwing weeds and drinking lemonade.
“I’ll help.” Luke rose and held out his hand, effortlessly pulling her to her feet.
They each took a hose and went to the flower patch. Nicki had just pointed hers into the bed of lilies when a cold spray hit the middle of her back.
“You…” She whirled and squirted his chest.
“Is that the best you can do?”
He squirted her again, so she let him have the full treatment as she darted behind cover. Pretty soon they were dripping from head to toe and had chased each other beyond the reach of their chosen weapons.
Nicki dropped the nozzle and took off running. Luke gave chase, but she ran ahead and was ready when he appeared at the end of the path by the meandering creek. Kneeling and cupping her hands, she sent fountains of water over him.
“Hey, that’s cold.” Luke gave her a devilish smile before tackling her. They went flying into a deep, quiet pool that had formed in a bend of the creek.
They surfaced, still laughing.
“Give up?” Luke demanded.
“Never.” Nicki flicked a few more drops at him, then stretched and floated, looking up at the trees that shaded them. The water was surprisingly cold given the heat of the day, but she loved the feel of it…loved the way the chill tightened her body and the tendrils of warmth that curled from Luke’s skin as he floated nearby.
Loved?
She frowned.
That word was coming to mind far too often lately, and she told herself not to be an idiot. Loving the feel of water on her skin wasn’t the same as falling in love. On the other hand, she had loved Luke once, which put her in dangerous territory. Luke didn’t believe love was worth the trouble it could cause, but trouble came no matter how you tried to avoid it. Didn’t he know that love made the good times better, and the bad more bearable?
After a while, they climbed out and lay on the grassy bank. Nicki yawned sleepily and put a hand behind her head.
“Professor McCade suggested we plant hollyhocks by the gardening shed,” she murmured.
“He also said you should call him John.”
“I know, but that seems so…” She shrugged.
“It seems so what?”
“I don’t know. Disrespectful? He’s the professor in front of the class. I never expected…” She shrugged again.
Luke turned onto his side and studied Nicki’s face. She was telling him something, but he wasn’t sure what it might be. She had never expected what?
Hell, he didn’t know anything. Here he’d been trying to get her into the perfect kissing situation, and she’d been oblivious to his efforts. But she did have a gift for poking holes when his ego got inflated. Still, she wasn’t mean, and he did deserve the jabs. Topping that, she had an unexpectedly wicked sense of humor. He’d never met someone so intrinsically happy, or unconsciously sexy.
It was enough to make a man crazy.
His gaze swept down her body, and suddenly kissing didn’t seem nearly enough. Wet, her T-shirt and bra were transparent, and the tight, pink areolas of her breasts stood hard against the fabric.
He swallowed a groan.
What was he doing, constantly looking at her like that? Nicki had dropped like an angel into his grandfather’s life. Granddad actually seemed to be getting better, and the difference was Nicki. Luke didn’t have any doubt of it. So, he ought to be a gentleman and stop thinking like a teenage boy with an itch in his pants.
Yeah, right. That was going to happen.
Reaching above Nicki’s head, Luke plucked a blade of grass and tickled her chin. Her eyes flew open. “You starting something else, McCade?”
“I’m a guy, of course I’m starting something.”
“Hmmm.”
She wasn’t saying yes, but it wasn’t no, either.
“You have a very nice mouth,” he whispered.
“It’s just a mouth.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.” He stroked the pink curve of her bottom lip with his thumb, and leaned closer. “My opinion is that you have the most amazing mouth.”
She tasted good, too.
“L-Luke?” Nicki said between feathered kisses. “Shouldn’t we…um…get back to the…um…pump?”
“Naw, it isn’t very powerful. It’ll take over an hour to empty that bottom pond—it’s the biggest one, remember?”
At the moment Nicki felt so good she didn’t even remember her own name. Even when she was married, kissing and touching was never like this. Of course, Butch had only been interested in the result, not the process—gentle foreplay had not been high on his list of priorities.
But Luke…
His hands didn’t seem urgent. They were slow and deliberate. And his kisses went on forever, deep and hot in a seamless joining of their mouths.
With his fingers exploring under her T-shirt, it seemed only natural to do some exploring of her own. His skin was already hot, despite their impromptu swim, and she loved the feel of his muscles bunching hard and tense beneath their smooth surface. She also loved the shudder that shook Luke as she ran the instep of her bare foot down his calf.
His kiss deepened, his tongue moving hungrily into her mouth. He tasted of fresh lemonade and sunshine and something essentially male, and she wanted to spend the entire day figuring out what that something might be. It was like being fifteen again, with all her hopes and dreams in front of her.
Yet a sigh welled up in her chest as she remembered exactly who had broken some of her dreams and taught her that hope wasn’t always enough…the same man kissing her mindless.
“Luke?”
Luke heard the tension in Nicki’s voice and sensed the change in her body at the same moment. “What?” he murmured, kissing his way down her throat.
“I think this is a little too…”
He nuzzled one of her taut nipples with his lips and heard her breath fracture. She wasn’t wholly impervious to him, yet when his hand went instinctively to the button on her shorts, he stopped. He wanted to make love to Nicki, but he wasn’t prepared.
It was almost funny.
Safe sex was always foremost in his mind and he was always prepared like a good Boy Scout. Yet for once in his adult life, he’d forgotten himself. Even now his more primitive instincts urged him to take his chances, but it wouldn’t be fair to her.
Giving her breasts a last loving taste, Luke groaned and rolled onto his back, dragging air into his lungs. Every cell in his body was primed, throbbing, demanding relief, but he shook his head and concentrated on controlling his rushing blood.
This wasn’t good.
Ever since he’d learned the truth about his fiancée, he’d prided himself on never losing control, never letting a woman get to him beyond the point he could manage, and now little Nicki Johansson was turning him into a raving maniac. It was like being a kid again, with rampaging urges and no discipline.
“Um…Luke?”
He didn’t want to discuss their kiss. Before Nicki could turn her head, he climbed to his feet. “Stay here, I’ll be back,” he said, turning around before she could see the effect she’d had on him.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so aroused. Hell, he’d just wanted to see if Nicki was really unaware of him; he’d never expected an atomic blast of heat.
The depth of his reaction was disturbing, yet he still wanted to spend the afternoon lying next to Nicki, listening to the water gurgle in the creek. It didn’t make sense, but it was exactly what he was going to do…and that was tempting fate beyond the point he’d tempted it in years.
First Luke turned off the pump draining the first pond. Every motion was an exercise in will. He then checked on his grandfather.
“Are you all right, Granddad?”
“Mmm.” John McCade was reading something and Luke stepped closer.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“A gardening magazine from Nicki. She said to pick out what to plant in the vegetable garden for the fall.”
Luke winced slightly. It wasn’t certain that Granddad would be living in the house in the fall. Still, he seemed better than before, and Luke knew that Nicki had convinced him to start taking walks with her. If Granddad’s problem was depression, exercise might help.
“Maybe you should see the doctor,” he murmured.
“There’s nothing wrong with me.”
Luke shook his head. Granddad had said that all along, telling the doctor that his children were overreacting and worrying for nothing. Each time he was taken to see Dr. Kroeger, he had risen to the occasion and acted more or less like himself. It had taken a long while before Kroeger decided there were indications of senility and prescribed treatment.
“Anyway, I’m not senile,” Granddad added. “I don’t need that medicine you keep giving me.”
“Then we’ll see the doctor and talk to him about it again. Maybe he’ll give you a new kind, or try something else.”
“I don’t have to see the doctor for that. I’ve been palming the pills,” Granddad said mildly. “I haven’t taken any for almost a week.”
Of course.
Luke wasn’t surprised. He even wanted to laugh.
“We’ll talk about that later,” he said, concealing a wry grin. “Nicki is waiting for me.”
Ignoring the fact that he could go upstairs and raid his wallet for a condom, he walked back to the creek. Nicki had pulled her clothes together, something he was devoutly grateful for, and he dropped to the ground next to her. Now he could relax…as long as he didn’t think about the way she’d tasted, or the way her breasts has responded to the smallest brush of his fingers.
He groaned.
“I turned the pump off,” he said. “We can finish draining the ponds later.”
She gave him a quick sideways glance. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” He lay back and locked both hands under his head to keep them away from temptation, his gaze fixed upward. “I don’t even have my cell phone with me. Do you know how long it’s been since I lazed an afternoon away?”
“A while, I imagine.” Nicki settled down next to him and appeared equally interested in the tree branches arching above them. “You’re so focused on success, you probably never take time to laze around.”
“Mmm,” Luke said noncommittally. He wondered if she expected him to make another move on her. Part of him was all for the idea, the other part was saying hands off. When everything was said and done, she was still the same Nicki who’d believed that “good girls” didn’t go all the way.
Nicki wiggled and pulled a stick out from under her shoulder before settling back again. “The light is pretty the way it comes through the leaves.”
“Yeah.”
They studied the dappled sunlight for a while.
“Tell me why you got so prickly the other day when I said you were the brains, and I was the brawn?” he asked finally. The odd mix of emotions he’d seen in her face still bothered him.
“Did I?”
“You know you did.”
Nicki wrinkled her nose. “Maybe a little. There are two reasons, I guess—my father and my ex-husband. See, my father was very strict about school and me getting ahead quickly, but he also seemed to resent me doing well. I was never sure why.”
“Probably jealous because you were smarter than him.”
“I don’t think I was smarter than my father!” she protested, sounding appalled. “He was a very smart man.”
Luke tried to recall if he’d ever met Mr. Johansson, and finally conjured an image of a tall man with thick blond hair and a cold, dissatisfied face. He’d come to the high school science fair, only to rake Nicki over the coals because of something to do with her project. She’d won the grand prize, but apparently it wasn’t good enough.
Jeez.
The idea of her growing up with that jackass was enough to make Luke sick. Yet his conscience also remembered the way he and his friends had watched him yell at her, snickering because Little Miss Four-Point-O, with her perfect grades and chin in the air, was getting knocked down to size. Nicki, who’d never hurt anyone.
He wanted to apologize for that lost moment, but the words stuck in his throat. How did you apologize for being young and stupid and cruel?
“What…” He cleared his throat. “What was it about your ex-husband?”
She didn’t say anything right away and he glanced at her.
“Nicki?” he prodded.
Her nose wrinkled. “It’s just…well, he had issues with his family. His older brother was the favorite, and they treated Butch like he was defective because he preferred sports to studying. Then his brother died in an accident, and Butch ended up running the family corporation. The weird thing was, he was really good at it, though they couldn’t see that.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
“Butch was intelligent, but college bored him and he dropped out his freshman year…while I had a doctorate at twenty-one. Sometimes he seemed proud of me, and other times he was…I don’t know…angry. So he’d get his digs in, one way or another.”
Luke scowled. “Is that why you left him? Good for you.”
“No. I left because he couldn’t keep his pants zipped.”
It took a minute to put the pieces together, then Luke’s jaw dropped. “You mean he was unfaithful?”
“Yes. And you don’t have to sound so surprised.”
“Hell, yes, I’m surprised.” Luke rolled over and stared at Nicki’s face—embarrassed and haunted at the memories he’d unwittingly forced her to relive. “He was an idiot.”
“That’s nice of you to say, but I know how I look. I wasn’t enough for him.”
“I’m not being nice. For Pete’s sake, Nicki, his cheating wasn’t your fault. You’re smart and kind and incredibly sexy. I damn near had a stroke when I kissed you. If he couldn’t appreciate what he had, he didn’t deserve to keep it.”
She wanted to believe him, Luke could see it in her eyes. But everyone, including his teenaged self, had stomped on her feminine ego so many times, she probably couldn’t listen to anyone anymore.
“All right,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone. Do you think I’m okay looking?”
She nodded a little.
“Then we’re agreed I’m not an ogre.” Luke took a breath. “Well, I was engaged a few years ago. My fiancée was gorgeous, sophisticated…a former Miss Illinois. I was crazy about her, then I found out she’d been sleeping with other guys, even after we began planning the wedding. Do you think it was because I wasn’t man enough for her?”
“No.”
The instant denial made him feel better. He hadn’t enjoyed revealing the truth. Still, somehow he didn’t mind Nicki knowing. It seemed…safe, though safe wasn’t an adjective he normally attached to a woman. But then, everything about Nicki was different.
“The same applies to you,” he said firmly. “I just don’t understand why you still believe in love. How can you trust an emotion that betrayed you like that?”
“Love isn’t to blame. My marriage broke up because I chose the wrong man, that’s all.”
The quiet certainty in Nicki’s voice sent a queer sensation down his neck.
I chose the wrong man.
“Do you really think it’s that simple?” he asked harshly. “That we both chose wrong?”
“Maybe.” She hesitated. “To be honest, you were never attracted to paragons of virtue, in high school, at least. And even if we don’t mean to, we often repeat our mistakes.”
Luke rolled onto his back again and shook his head. Nothing was that simple. He couldn’t trust love—it was too fickle, too easily lost. But it wasn’t just because of what happened with Sandra. His high school girlfriend had vanished the minute he was no longer the town hero—within days she was going steady with the new captain of the football team. Come to think of it, she’d never even returned Luke’s class ring or bothered telling him it was over.
Even when love was true and real it demanded more than he was willing to give. Look at his own parents. They loved each other, but his mother had been miserable when his father was away working. Three days out of four she’d had to deal with everything by herself, only coming alive when Dad had walked through the door.
And there was Granddad, lost in a fog of grief, unable to smile or function. Even if Granddad were suffering from senility, it seemed certain that losing Grams had been a critical catalyst.
“We have different opinions,” he said flatly. “Love isn’t worth the price. I beat up a buddy of mine, just because he was a good enough friend to tell me the truth about Sandra. And you’ve seen what my grandfather is going through. I don’t want to be like that, having everything out of my control…my entire happiness depending on another person.”
“So you’ve given up on love, as well as hopes and dreams?”
Luke shot a look at Nicki. “Yes. I learned what dreams can cost after the accident. You lose everything. As for hope, do you have any idea what it was like lying in that hospital bed, day after day, praying the doctor would decide he was wrong? Hoping that he’d walk in the door and say my injuries weren’t that bad after all, that I’d be able to play pro ball? But he never said it, and the entire town hated me because I’d blown their precious chance to win the state title.”
Nicki swallowed. She didn’t know what Luke had gone through, but she knew about lost hopes and dreams, and she also knew about going on and finding something else to put faith in—maybe even something better. She wouldn’t stop believing that, not ever.
“The town didn’t hate you.”
“They sure didn’t love me.”
She wanted to protest again, but it was true that folks had been upset when he hurt himself. And he’d obviously never come to terms with the accident that ended his football days.
He’d never come to terms with himself.
Nicki shivered, not wanting to understand Luke, yet starting to see the complicated man beneath the arrogance. A man with passions that ran so strong and deep he didn’t trust himself. A man who wanted to control his heart because he didn’t understand it or himself. That’s what his refusal to believe in love boiled down to; the rest of his arguments were just a smoke screen for a basic truth he didn’t want to confront.
“You hated me, too,” Luke murmured, stroking her forehead with a yellow dandelion.
“I didn’t care about football.”
He grinned his fallen-angel grin. “Nope. You had all your own reasons to hate me.” But the laughter in his eyes vanished. “Ah, Nicki. I treated you badly when we were in school, along with the rest of my friends.”
“I survived.”
He trailed the soft dandelion blossom over her cheeks and lips. “You shouldn’t have needed to ‘survive’ your childhood, and I was part of the reason it was so tough for you. You’ll never know how sorry I am about that.”
“Apology accepted.” Nicki put a hand on Luke’s chest and traced the narrow wedge of dark hair that disappeared into his worn cutoffs. Something inside was daring her to be bold. “So, do you know what we should do?” she whispered.
A smoldering heat replaced the regret in his dark eyes. “No, what?”
She smiled and splayed her fingers across his pectoral muscles. “Kiss and make up.”