THAT DECLARATION deserved another kiss. Then she looked around them with a very practical concern. There was barely room to move.
“Can we make love right here?” she asked. “Or is there more room in the back?”
“We can put the blanket on the floor behind the seats,” he replied, then added as practically, “Leave your jacket and your socks on.”
When they were stripped of boots and jeans, Hal took his jacket off and wrapped Kat in it, then drew her with him to the blanket. They lay side by side on it in the tight space behind the seats.
“I wish I could carry you to a bed in a suite at the Ritz Carleton,” he said, holding her closer with a slightly chilly hand to her hip. “This is just a step up from the back seat of a car.”
She didn’t feel that way at all. “It only matters to me that it’s happening,” she said, exploring his back and down the crenellated line of his spine. “And when we tell our children how we fell in love,” she said, “it’ll make a very dramatic story. How the date from hell turned into a heavenly experience.” Then she realized what she’d said and waited for his horrified reaction. She’d made him the center of her dreams. Now he knew just what that meant.
He took it with surprising calm and acceptance. “I’d say we keep the details to ourselves, but I suppose four daughters will want details as they grow up.”
“I’ll be discreet.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
He kissed her with silencing determination, then showed her in delicious detail that though he’d made her life as difficult as possible in the restaurant, he had it within his power to make it sublime right here. With his lips and fingertips, he explored every inch of her exposed to him, then drew up her sweater and planted kisses on her midriff as he reached under her to unfasten her bra. He nipped and kissed her breasts, then worked his way down again.
Feeling as though the temperature had gone up thirty degrees in the cabin of the plane, she took advantage of his distraction to run her hands up under his sweater and his shirt to find and trace the line of his ribs and pectoral muscles.
“Warm enough?” he asked, kissing her throat. “I see gooseflesh.”
“That’s not the cold,” she whispered back, moving her hands around him to stroke his tightly muscled backside. “That’s your touch.”
And then, as though to prove that he had the power to alter the inside of her body as well as the outside, he dipped a fingertip inside her.
Everything within her rioted. Her heartbeat sped up, her blood warmed, her lungs worked double time.
Suddenly desperately needy, she closed her hand over him and felt his immediate response. Moments later, he entered her in one sure stroke that brought a small cry from her.
“Katarina!” he said anxiously, about to withdraw.
But she held him to her, struggling to catch her breath. “No,” she tried to explain. “That wasn’t pain. It was…discovery. Wonderful discovery.”
KAT TIGHTENED around him, drawing him deeper. Though he’d always been a very sexual being, he’d never been particularly sentimental about it. He’d taken great pleasure in sex, done his best to give great pleasure and accepted it as a great restorer of physical and emotional balance.
But being inside Kat made him feel as if he’d climbed an evolutionary step. The man he was when connected to her was better than the man he was alone. And it was too affecting to be a temporary thing. He’d be different forever. Impatience receded. Appreciation of the moment—of everything life offered—grew.
He loved her slowly, lengthily, warming her with his body while ignoring the cold himself.
When he finally collapsed atop her, she tried to wrap his jacket around him, then when that didn’t work, she wanted to pull it off and give it to him. “You’re freezing,” she said, her small hand rubbing his thigh.
He pushed off her, handed her her jeans and pulled on his own. Then they climbed back onto the seats to stretch out as they’d done before, taking the energy bar and the half bottle of water with them.
After they’d eaten, he held her tightly to him, loving that she had her arms and legs wrapped around him, claiming possession.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “To think we’ve been fighting when we could have been making love.”
Through the lingering, mellow afterglow, he thought he should tell her that her father had asked him to keep her away from the restaurant tonight, that though the crash had been accidental, the subterfuge that had put them on his plane had been planned.
But she clung to him with an adoration he couldn’t bring himself to risk losing. And if he and Berto played their cards right, she might never suspect she’d been tricked, might be led to believe that her father had simply stayed late at the restaurant in her absence, heard the sound of someone in the basement and called the police.
Yes. He liked that scenario better.
“I’m going to hate leaving here,” she said lazily, burrowing her nose into his throat.
He squeezed her to him. “So am I. But when we get home we’ll work on getting you that restaurant and house on the beach and those four little girls.”
“I hope we’ve got number one already,” she said, heaving a deep, sleepy sigh.
He felt a pinch of guilt at the possibility that they’d conceived their first child in the middle of a lie—even if it had been told for Kat’s own good.
Then he put it out of his mind, his body and his heart still sated with love and satisfaction. He closed his eyes.
BRIGHT SUN woke him the following morning. He’d drifted in and out of sleep all night, felt Kat squirm and huddle closer when she’d dislodged the blanket. And he’d sat up in alarm when she’d cried out in the darkness.
“What?” he’d demanded, unable to see her though he could feel her weight on top of him.
“Hal?” she asked, sounding surprised. She groped in the dark and stuck her finger in his eye.
“Ouch.” He laughed, catching her hand. “What’s the matter?”
The silence was heavy for a moment. “I thought I dreamed you,” she said finally.
He put the palm of her hand to his lips and kissed it. “No, you didn’t. I’m here.” Then he pulled her back into his chest. “Was I a bad dream?”
She held tightly to him. “No. You were very real, but I was sure when I woke up that you wouldn’t be. That’s always the way it is. But…tonight. Wow,” she whispered and drifted off again.
He was real all right. Not straight with her, but real. He could only hope all had gone well with Percanto and that was all behind them. Then a small detail occurred to him.
At some point, he was going to have to explain to her that he was a cop.
Well. He’d worry about that when they got home.
In the light of day, that fact raised its bothersome head again. He forced it aside as he shouldered the backpack and helped Kat out of the plane. The air was frigid though the sun was bright, and he knew the trek to town would be sufficiently strenuous that they’d warm up on the way.
“Stay right behind me,” he told her, “until we get to the trail.”
“You’re sure we can’t bring the linens?”
“They weigh a ton. We’ll send someone for them later.”
“Are there bears up here?” she asked.
“Not sure,” he replied. “I’ve seen cougar.”
“You’re kidding!”
“They live here. We’re the ones trespassing.”
“If we see one, I’m explaining that you’re the one who crashed the plane.”
“I can see the kind of supportive wife you’re going to be.”
He heard her ringing laugh, the sound appropriate to the crisp, clear day.
THE MORNING was glorious and still, tall, snow-shouldered pines lining the road with dense forests behind them. The air was sharp and sweet, filled with the smells of pine and the freshness of winter.
Once Kat and Hal reached the road, they walked side by side, Kat torn between enjoying the moment and worrying about her father’s state of mind because she didn’t come home last night. She couldn’t wait to reach a telephone and call him.
Hal, probably aware of her concern, tried to distract her by asking her what sort of restaurant she wanted her own to be.
“A family place, I think,” she replied, focusing on her dream, “with breakfast and lunch—traditional fare and some trendy stuff for the health-conscious. Then at dinner it’ll turn into an intimate little café with steaks and seafood and…Hal!”
She stopped in her tracks, unable to believe her eyes. Staring back at her from the side of the road was a cougar about the size of a St. Bernard. It had a fawn-colored coat with a white chest and muzzle and black tips on its ears. And eyes that were not at all catlike. They were large and intelligent and focused closely on her.
“Stay absolutely still,” Hal said softly. “And try to make yourself look bigger.”
“What?” she demanded in a whisper.
“She’s just analyzing which one of you is tougher. Move slowly, but raise your jacket over your head.”
“Can’t I just assure her that she is tougher?” Her voice sounded close to hysterical as she did as he asked.
Hal, who’d been slowly sliding his backpack down his arm as he spoke, said gently, “Don’t panic. So far she’s just interested.”
And as he said that, the cougar took several graceful, powerful steps toward her.
It was all Kat could do not to scream and run.
Hal quickly put himself between her and the cougar, and reached a hand inside his backpack, shouting at the animal and taking an aggressive step forward.
The cougar sniffed the air, stiffened suddenly in a gesture Kat was sure meant attack, then ran off into the underbrush and disappeared.
Kat fell forward against Hal’s back and simply stood there as the sound of a motor approaching broke the quiet. Apparently the cougar had heard it before it was audible to them.
Hal turned to wrap her in his arms, her heart thundering in her breast. “I was almost breakfast for a cougar!” she exclaimed with a half laugh.
“I promise I wouldn’t have let her eat you,” he said, handing her their precious half-filled bottle of water.
She took a swig, wishing it was gin. “I hope not. That would have been hard for you to explain to my father.”
A blue, midsized American car with a government emblem on the door pulled up in front of them.
“Oh, Hal!” she said, putting the cap back on the bottle. “Rescue!”
A deputy sheriff climbed out of the car and Kat took a step toward him, excited and relieved at the sight of another human being. Then she noted with plummeting spirits that his gun was drawn.
Hal caught her arm and drew her back to him as the deputy approached, the sight of the gun changing the mood of the morning even more effectively than the presence of the cougar had.
“Good morning,” Hal said, taking a step forward. “Our small plane crashed yesterday on the high meadow.” He pointed in that direction. “We…”
“Put your hands up where I can see them!” the deputy barked at Hal. He looked very young. He was thin and pale and had an air of uneasiness about him that was contagious. He widened his stance and nervously waved the gun. Then he added for Kat’s benefit, “Both of you!”
“But, we…” Kat began, unable to believe that now that they finally had help, he was holding them at gunpoint.
Kat saw Hal comply and followed his example. Her throat was dry and the panic she’d held at bay since yesterday demanded release. Some rescue.
“We’re on a freight errand from Portland,” Hal told the deputy calmly, “to pick up linens in San Francisco. We had a fuel line problem and went down just before the snow. We decided to wait for sunshine to make our way to Nugget.”
“Nugget isn’t even on the map,” the deputy said. “How do you know where it is if you’re from Portland going to San Francisco? In a plane, yet.”
“I fish near here in the fall,” Hal replied. “What’s the problem? We were just…”
“Drop the backpack,” the deputy ordered.
Hal lowered his arm and eased the pack to the ground.
“That wouldn’t be full of Darla Montrose’s Harry Potter books, now would it?” the deputy asked, pulling the pack toward him and holding the gun on them as he opened it.
Kat looked at Hal in bewilderment. He appeared equally confused.
“’Cause we took a call not half an hour ago that two teens cleaned out her whole shelf of J. K. Rowling, stuffed the books into a pair of backpacks, and ran away. Planning to sell them in Bolen, are you, where they don’t even have a bookstore?”
As he spoke, the deputy pulled out a wallet, a checkbook, a flashlight, and a copy of the current Patrick Larkin novel.
“Rowling didn’t write that one,” Hal pointed out as the deputy perused it suspiciously. “And the young lady might be mistaken for a teenager, but do I look like one?”
The deputy looked up into Hal’s face, and Kat saw the fear in his eyes. He apparently hadn’t been a deputy long enough to acquire the authoritative presence that could intimidate a large opponent.
“Darla was pretty panicked,” he said. “Told the sheriff they held a gun on her. Might have mistaken you for younger.”
“Okay,” Hal conceded, “but if Darla What’s-her-name is in Nugget, and we were running away, wouldn’t we be heading away from town instead of toward it?”
The deputy didn’t seem to be listening. He looked up from the pack with a self-satisfied expression and produced a metal object that caught the sun and gleamed. A gun!
Kat’s mouth fell open. She looked at Hal.
“I have a permit for that,” he told the deputy. “I always carry it when I travel.”
Kat closed her mouth. That sounded logical. She couldn’t imagine why a waiter needed a gun, but she remembered him reaching into his backpack when the cougar approached her. She was sure if the cougar had decided to taste her, she’d have been glad he had it.
The deputy, however, seemed determined to put a criminal spin on it. It apparently confirmed his worst suspicions about who was responsible for the theft of Darla Montrose’s Harry Potter books.
He tucked Hal’s gun in his belt as she’d seen cowboys do in western movies, and gestured Hal toward the pack with his own gun. “You’re just making it all up. Put your stuff back in it and get in the car,” he said.
As Hal complied, the deputy made a call on his radio.
“I’m coming in with the two that stole Darla’s books. Yeah. Well, I got the backpack, but no books. They either stashed them somewhere, or handed them off to an accomplice.”
Kat concluded that she had to be losing it because she wanted desperately to laugh. He made it sound as though plutonium had been stolen.
“Got a gun, too,” the deputy went on. “Claims to have a permit. No, they were on foot. Said their plane crashed on Wilson’s Meadow. Right. I’m on my way in.”
The deputy handcuffed them, ushered them into the back seat behind the protective screen, then climbed into the front and drove off with a screech of tires and a dangerous slip in the snow. But he regained control and drove toward town.
“We could leave this part out of the story we tell the kids,” Kat said, holding up her cuffed hands. “In fact, I’m not dating you anymore. I’ve spent twenty-seven years without crashing in a plane, attracting a cougar and getting arrested.”
“We haven’t been arrested,” Hal said with a smile, taking her cuffed hands in his. “We’re just invited for questioning.”
“At gunpoint.”
“Newbies are always a little overzealous. He probably has dreams of making the big collar.”
“Collar?” she asked.
“Arrest,” he replied. Then when she seemed surprised he knew law-enforcement jargon, he shook his head at her. “Don’t you ever watch NYPD Blue? Law & Order?”
She didn’t, and she had other things on her mind anyway. “Why do you carry a gun?”
“It’s a good idea in the wilderness.”
“We were going from Portland to San Francisco.”
“I’ve had a permit since I was in the Navy. And travel can be unpredictable. Or is that too much of an understatement given the circumstances?”