Wild in the Moonlight

Seven

The last thing Cameron intended to do was pull Violet into his arms.

Yeah, he’d dragged her off to the lavender field-and brought the picnic dinner-but that was only because he finally figured out the whole picture. Violet’s herb business was chaotically busy. Unless he found some way to isolate her from the phone and her neighbors and all the other people noise, he figured they’d never get the contract details settled between them. That issue was critical. Even though the nature of her lavender strains were supposed to be harvested late, the huge heat wave was bringing on the crop at the speed of sound. Within days, they needed to start the harvest.

So he’d taken her to the one place where he knew he could talk to her privately, but not to seduce her. Not to even think about touching her. Nothing would have happened-Cameron really believed-if she hadn’t suddenly looked so shaken up.

He couldn’t stand it. Violet was so full of energy. For damn sure, she was a manipulative, confusing woman who seemed to mislead a guy about the truth of things. She was stubborn, independent to an exasperating degree, a woman who did exactly what she wanted on her own timetable. She was a tough cookie-even if for some reason she didn’t want anyone to know it.

And that was exactly why it killed him to see her eyes fill up, suddenly so full of hurt and sadness. He’d had to grab her. He wasn’t thinking of romance, he was just responding instinctively to a need to protect her, comfort her somehow.

Only a split second later, all his honest, sincere, chivalrous intentions went to hell.

The very instant his mouth came down on hers, the damn woman responded. Her lips were warm as sunshine, as soft as silver. Her head tipped back, willingly absorbing the pressure of his mouth and his first kiss…which gave him absolutely no choice but to follow through with a second kiss and then a third. Her eyelashes fluttered down and her slim fingers seemed to hesitate, then slowly climb his shoulders and curve around his neck.

When he felt her warm, supple body slide against his…something happened. Deep inside him, there was a silent whoosh, as if the rest of the world disappeared from sight, sound, touch. She was his reality. She, and all the senses she invoked.

He clutched her tighter. She clutched right back, and suddenly all that long, wild, silky hair was coming loose in his hands. Her bracelets jangled, one of her sandals slipped and tumbled down the slope; yet she never opened her eyes, never made out like there was a damn thing that mattered to her but him-and getting more of those sweet, dangerous, uninhibited kisses.

Maybe he was guilty of initiating that first kiss. Maybe he knew he shouldn’t have, knew she was trouble. But how could he possibly, conceivably have guessed that she’d be this much trouble?

He’d tasted her before. It had been intense, but not like this. Whatever had shaken her seemed to act like some kind of trigger, as if something tight and trapped were suddenly freed from deep inside her. She not only kissed him back but dumped emotional rocket fuel on the flames. She didn’t just yield but sought. She didn’t just touch but invited, demanded, his touch.

Warm, damp skin slid against his. He smelled her hair, her ice-raspberry breath, the lick of scent on her skin. As the night dropped, with the moon showing up like a promise in the far sky, it seemed as if suddenly all those acres of lavender released a whole song of scent. The lavender flowed all around them, filling the air, filling their senses, teasing their sense of taste and smell. The scent was so like her-wild and fresh and elusive. Magical.

“Cam,” she whispered, her voice barely a whisper, an ache of wonder.

He felt the same wonder, tried to steal more in another kiss. His hand drifted down, shimmering over her collarbone and then to her breast, snuggling there. No matter how carefully, how reverently he touched, his body groaned that it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

Her blouse pushed up, pushed off fairly easily.

For a second he thought she wasn’t wearing a bra-but she was, it was just that the fabric was a teensy scrap of lace. A front opener, though, easy enough to unlatch. And then he had his warm callused hand on her immeasurably soft breast, the flesh swelling for him, the nipple perking under his palm-only that wasn’t enough, either. Not even close to enough. She groaned against his mouth, so he bent down and delivered kisses down her throat, down to her breasts, faster kisses now, rougher ones.

Somewhere he still had a functioning conscience-a murky conscience, but one stabbing him with warning instincts. He knew he didn’t understand her. Knew she had some troubling deep waters that she hid from sight. Knew she was a worrisome maze of contradictions.

He’d seen her supposed flaky side…yet he’d also seen how many balls she efficiently, effectively juggled, even on an average business day.

He’d also heard her claim more than once how she didn’t care if the lavender had gotten out of control, yet that was impossibly contradictory, too, because no one accidentally experimented in a greenhouse to the tune of twenty acres of lavender.

And then there was her wildly estrogen-overdosed house, compared to that strange, contrary shock of her austere nun-like bedroom he’d only glimpsed.

He couldn’t be sure of anything, not around her, except for the one obvious thing-that he was here for the lavender. And to do that business, they had to be able to trust each other. To seduce her before she could trust him was as foolhardy as betting on a lottery.

He’d never been foolhardy. Independent, yes. Self-centered, oh, yes. But never a fool.

“Cam,” she whispered again, this time pleating his shirt open with her hands, pulling at it, reaching to touch his bare chest with her own.

His head promptly swelled with fool’s thoughts, fool’s needs, filled so full there was nothing else but her, her taste, her profile in the moonlight, her lavender-whispered skin, her winsome, demanding mouth.

He had to go back for more. This pull for her-he had to get a grasp of it. What he felt with her, for the land, for everything here was alien to the Cameron Lachlan he knew himself to be. He’d sworn never to become like his father, never to become attached to a place. He’d sworn never to let any place own him. Ever.

Yet there was something about her that made him feel this horrifying, embarrassing, stupid sense of belonging. She made him feel as if she needed him.

As if he needed her.

As if she wanted him-just him, not any man, not any guy, but only him.

He wanted her, only her-not just a woman to fill a sexual need or the lonely hours of the night, but something else, something more. Cameron kept getting the unnerving, frightening impression that he wanted her the way he’d wanted no other woman. That she alone could fill a hole inside him that he hadn’t even known was there.

The night kept coming, bringing the privacy of darkness, intensifying the scents of verdant earth and lavender. The ache inside him felt part of the night, lonely and dark, hot and urgent. He knew it was crazy, yet the drumbeat of his pulse kept thrumming the same message, that he’d lose something irretrievable if he didn’t love her, didn’t have her, now, right now.

She lay back against the cool sheet he’d brought as a picnic blanket, pulling him down to her, communicating how much she wanted the same thing. Him. Naked. Now. For whatever reasons, right or wrong, sane or crazy, this felt so right. She felt right.

His shirt peeled away as easily as her skirt. She made an exasperated sound, half sat up, peeled off a tangle of noisy jewelry from her wrists and ears, came back to him, damp soft skin intimately molding to his. He had to devour her with more kisses. Against the white sheet, her skin looked so golden dark, her eyes so shining, and all that wild silken hair kept tangling him closer. He thought she was naked, but it seemed she was still wearing see-through panties…panties he didn’t discover until his mouth had trailed an intense, tender path from her breast to the hollow in her navel, down to the sweet roundness of her abdomen and finally lower.

Even in the dark, he could see through those filmy panties. Even in the dark, he could see the urgent rise and fall of her breasts, the pulse drumming in her throat, the heat in her eyes. And when those panties were gone, when there was nothing between them but anticipation, she said suddenly, wildly, “Cam…Cameron, I need to tell you something-”

“Birth control. You’re not protected?”

For a millisecond she didn’t answer, but then she said with absolute sureness, “No. That’s not a problem.”

“Then you’d better give me a very fast, very serious reason to stop, chére, or else I’m going to be very sure you want this as much as I do.”

Again she hesitated for barely a millisecond, but once she answered him, her voice was strong and true. “I don’t want to stop, not tonight, not with you. Take me, Cam. Make everything else go away. Make this night belong just to us.”

Hell. That might just be an impossibly huge expectation to put on a lover…but a guy couldn’t win what he didn’t aspire to. So he tried. He concentrated five hundred percent of himself into every kiss, every caress. He tried tender, then rough. Tried an urgent, ardent rush, then the seductive frustration of slow hands and a lazy tongue.

Moonlight bathed her skin in silver. A nearby owl hooted, their only voyeur. And the scent of lavender kept seeping into his senses, into hers. When he finally swept her beneath him, his flesh seemed on fire, his muscles turgid and tight, drugged-crazy with her, for her.

She wrapped her long, slim legs around him even as he tested her soft center for moistness-as if she hadn’t already told him in a thousand ways she was ready for him. Lips met and clung as he eased inside her, initially trying to be gentle, determined to be gentle. But she hissed his name in a fierce, frantic call, wooing him into her deeper, harder.

He plunged in then, burying his hands in her hair, burying his lips in her lips, burying himself in the heart of her. It was crazy, totally crazy, but he had the sensation of belonging to her, belonging with her, in some emotional way he’d never even known existed before. This was about sex, he told himself. The best sex he’d ever had, but still, about sex.

The lie didn’t last any longer than it took his mind to try it out. This was so not about sex it was shaking his world.

Or she was. She matched him, stroke for stroke, slamming heartbeat for slamming heartbeat, her lithe slick body tightening exactly when his did. She owned him at that moment. Or he owned her. Damned if he knew the difference-damned if he cared. The sky opened up in a shower of stars, or that’s how he felt, as if he were flying over the moon with her, release pouring through him and into her.

For the briefest second he wished she hadn’t answered his question about birth control, because this insane feeling of longing, belonging, owning was so compelling. He wanted his seed inside her, a child that came from the two of them. But that thought, like every other coherent thought, fled faster than moonbeams. They rode the crest together, then sank, both spent, in each other’s arms.

Later…minutes later, hours later, Cameron opened his eyes. The moon was still up there, still framed in stars. The smells of earthy loam and lavender still pervaded his nostrils; somewhere a raccoon rustled and an owl hooted. He’d smelled the smells before, knew that moon. But he didn’t know her; how it would feel to have her warm, vibrant body in his arms, still half-wrapped around him, her cheek nestled in the arch of his neck, her silky hair tickling his chin.

“Damn,” he said.

She leaned back her head. “Uh-oh. That sounds like a man in the throes of regrets.”

“Try again. I couldn’t regret what just happened between us if my life were at stake.” He bussed the top of her head, which made Charlie pop to attention again. He was too old to have Charlie pop to attention again this fast. It was her. Making him feel things, do things, want things that weren’t normal for him.

He couldn’t be in love with her. Not just because he barely knew the woman, but because his pull for her made no sense. She’d almost cried twice that day. Did he need a weepy woman? Did he need all those cats? For that matter, he’d seen Alps and ocean, so how could he possibly be drawn to some rocky land with red barns and stone fences and winding roads?

Perhaps more directly to the point, if he’d lost his mind, where the hell had it gone?

Was there a chance it could find its way home again?

“Cameron?” She twisted in his arms, not moving far away from him, just pushing back far enough that she could tilt her head and look at him face-to-face. Below, her fingers reached over and gently, playfully, entwined with his. “Tell me about your daughters.”

He glanced down and watched their two hands blend together. Hell. Double hell. Teenagers held hands like this, not fully grown adults who were lying naked in the moonlight. But she didn’t seem willing to sever all closeness yet, and neither was he.

The question about his daughters seemed to come from nowhere, but he was more than willing to answer it. Talk was better than the alternative-which was lying there, drinking in the scent of lavender and moonlight and wanting to make love to her again. So he talked. “Miranda’s fifteen. Kate’s sixteen.” He hesitated. “For a long time it was totally clear cut that they belonged with their mom. It’s not that I didn’t want to be an active dad. I’ve always wanted that, always tried to be. I just traveled so much. Over the years, I always talked to them twice a week. We spend time together every holiday and school break. And I usually hang there at least a month every year to just be around them, part of their routine. Only lately…”

“Lately what?”

“Well, lately, they’re fighting all the time with their mom. Most of it seems to be pretty standard teenage girl, mother stuff. Rules. Roles. But sometimes she’s had it, and then I think…”

“You think what?”

“That if I lived in a more settled way, I could have them with me for a while. Most parents don’t seem to like the teenage years, but for some strange reason, it doesn’t bother me that they’re being difficult and impossible. If anything, I feel like now I could be a better parent to them.” Okay. He’d stripped naked some of his heart to tell her that. And left him hanging besides, so it was her turn now, he figured. “What about your ex?”

Her hand dropped away from his. She lay back, facing the stars. “Well…his name is Ed. Simpson, I always called him. Back in college, I took one look and just knew he was my first and only true love. He was a warm, family kind of guy, good sense of humor. Fun. I quit my last year of school to help him finish faster-he got his social work degree. He was always one to reach out to help someone else.”

“Sounds like a saint,” Cam said, and was briefly tempted to spit and paw the earth-but naturally he was too mature.

“Not exactly,” she said wryly. “He’s married to someone else now. In fact, they had their first child five months after the wedding. And he called me this morning to tell me about their newborn son.”

“I don’t understand why he’d call you.” It wasn’t hard for Cam to deduce that the creep had cheated on her, judging from the age of the first kid.

“Who would? I wouldn’t take him back for a fortune, am over him in every way a woman can get over a man. For some reason he seems to still think I’m his friend. That we’re still good friends.”

“So, are you?”

“No.”

“Then why on earth do you let him keep calling?”

“Because.” She lifted a hand to the moonlight. “Oh, cripes, I don’t know why. In the beginning, I acted friendly out of pride because I never wanted to let on how much he’d hurt me. And then I just didn’t seem to know how to cut him off. I know they’ve really been struggling to afford their growing family.”

“Struggling? I thought your ex was wealthy.”

She frowned. “Why’d you think that?”

“Because…I thought you said or implied you’d gotten a pretty good settlement from the divorce. When you were talking about how you could afford to put up the greenhouses, not have to care if you lost money on the lavender, all that.”

“Oh. Well, I did get a good lump of money from the divorce-but not because Simpson gave me anything for free. We had a house together. He wanted to stay in the house to raise his kids, and I didn’t need or want to stay there, so he owed me my share. Actually, I’d earned more than him back then. But the point was-”

It wasn’t that hard to finish her sentence that time. “You wanted to spend any money you got from the marriage. It felt like ugly money somehow. As if it could sabotage your luck if you used it in a relationship with someone else.”

“Yeah. And I know that thinking was superstitious.”

“It is. But I remember feeling that way after my divorce, too. Then it wasn’t about money. I gave her all the money I could, wanted her to have it. She had the girls. But the ‘stuff’-furniture, paintings, the things we’d split up that were part of the marriage-at the time, it didn’t matter how valuable they were or how much I liked them or even needed them. I wanted all ties severed.”

“So you understand. Why’d you get divorced, Cam?”

“I told you. Because I couldn’t settle in one place. I was too restless. Not responsible enough. Not mature enough to make any kind of husband, either,” he said honestly. “And you?”

Her bare big toe had sneaked over and found his bare big toe. Now they were playing footsie, he realized. Both of them, like kids who couldn’t stop touching each other. No matter what they were sure of and what they weren’t.

There had to be something narcotic in the Vermont air. Something dangerous.

Maybe it was even in her big toe.

“Me, what?” She seemed to be referring to some question he’d asked, as if she’d lost track of the conversation.

Hell, so had he. “Why’d you get divorced? Because he cheated? Because you fell out of love? What?”

She didn’t answer for a long time, and then finally she made a sound-like a wry little chuckle, only not so much humor in it. “We have a problem, Lachlan.”

“What’s that?”

“The problem is that I want to answer your question. I have this horrible feeling that you could turn out to be someone I could seriously trust. How weird is that?”

“Weird? You’re not used to trusting people?”

She propped up on an elbow then. Moonlight draped the round of her shoulder, the edge of one plump, firm breast, the sweet soft curve of her hip and high. “Don’t waste your time sounding surprised, Cam. You’re no more used to trusting people than I am. You’re a loner. Just like me.”

He didn’t know what to say, except that she didn’t strike him as a natural loner in any conceivable way. She was an earth mother, a giving lover, a warm, nurturing woman right down to her toes. He said honestly, “I can well understand your needing time to get over a hurtful relationship, but in the long run it’s impossible to imagine you living alone. Or not wanting to be in a marriage.”

“I won’t be climbing into another serious relationship,” she said firmly.

He didn’t believe her. But he said, “That’s a relief, because I don’t want to hurt you. And for darn sure, I won’t lie to you. You know my work here’s only temporary, that I’ll be leaving soon. That’s the way it has to be.”

Again she smiled, at a moment when no other woman would have smiled at him. “And I’ll be staying here. Because that’s the way it has to be-for me. So we’re both safe, right?”

“Safe?”

“Safe,” she repeated. “You don’t want to shake up my world. I don’t want to shake up yours.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“We do need to watch it, though,” she said carefully. “I’m totally for casual sex. Especially with a man who’s only going to be here for a short time, and who positively doesn’t want anything serious from me. But we’ll both get cranky if we start to seriously trust each other, so let’s try not to, okay?”

She got up then. He didn’t instantly understand that the conversation-and their lovemaking-was all done. In principle, they should have left an hour earlier at least. The night temperatures were dropping fast now, and the mosquitoes had come out to feast-still, he was shaking his head as he quickly gathered their gear together.

The woman he seemed to be falling for, very hard, very fast, very irresponsibly, was walking toward his car completely naked in the moonlight. She didn’t seem to find anything odd about that. She didn’t seem to find anything odd about wanting to sleep with a man who wouldn’t stick around for her, either.

But it bugged him.

It was never a good idea, to wake up the next morning without both people having agreed on what they needed from such an encounter. Only Violet’s version of clearing the air had sure muddied his. Maybe most men would be happy to hear she was up for a short, passionate affair.

Maybe, even as early as last week, he’d have been ecstatic to hear a woman talk that way.

Only hearing Vi talk about casual sex and not wanting to trust him made him feel as edgy as if he’d sat on a porcupine. She deserved more than that. She should be demanding more from a man than that.

And damn it. He wanted to be more than that to her. Realizing how hard his heart was suddenly pounding, Cameron took a long, low, calming breath.

It had to be the moonlight. He just wasn’t a man to think, or spell, a word as petrifying as commitment. Tomorrow-daylight-he’d get a grip on this whole thing. He just knew he would.