DESI'S RESCUE Page 11

  Because Tam caught the hem of his T-shirt, too, and pulled both fleece and shirt off in one smooth motion, leaving his torso clothing free.

  His beautiful, muscular, tawny-skinned torso.

  Bare.

  And instead of taking her clothes off, Desi simply drank in the sight. The powerful rounds of his shoulders, his smooth biceps and broad chest, scattered with only the smallest bits of jet-black hair. His belly wasn't a six-pack of vivid abs, but there was only a thin layer of flesh over the muscles beneath. Around his arms were circles of abstract art, tattoos that emphasized the size.

  She must have made some sound, because he raised his head and gave her a smile.

  "Wow," she said. "You have a beautiful chorso, er … test." She closed her idiotic mouth. "Chest," she finally managed, but even she had to laugh.

  Which broke the ice. Tam wiggled his eyebrows. "I have high hopes for yours."

  "No comparison," Desi said. She bent and skimmed off her yoga pants and put them aside, not as shy about her strong, muscular legs as she was about her upper body. She carefully hung the pants in a tree branch. "We might get fresh snow," she said. "You should hang things high."

  He nodded, turning to put his shirt and sweat jacket on the tree, which showed off his long, powerful looking back. Desi availed herself of the moment to zip out of her coat and dash for the warmth of the pool.

  "No fair," he said, grabbing her arm. "I've got one bad-looking leg. If we're going to be shy, how'm I gonna get in the water without you looking at it all up and down?"

  Desi halted, looking up at him. "Oh, sure. Like this is fair! I'm plump. You're scarred. Here's the difference—the world loves scars, not bellies."

  "Can I tell you something?" He looked down into her eyes, his thumb running over her arm, which was getting cold.

  "If you make it fast."

  "Get in, and I'll tell you in the pool."

  "Deal," Desi said, and waded in, using steps cut into the side of the hill to go deeper into the water. She and Claude had worked on this, too, but somehow, she didn't think of him so much when she came here. She found her favorite perch, on a flat bit of slate sticking out just right and settled in. "It's great!" she cried.

  "Give me a second," he said, and she saw that it was no easy thing for him to get out of his jeans. One leg was much weaker than the other, and he finally kicked out of them and bent over to pick them off the ground, taking a long time to stand back up again.

  He wore boxer shorts, striped in lime and forest green, as cheery as he was, and they fit loosely. Desi realized she was staring again and turned her eyes demurely downward, looking at her legs in the fragrant water, little white sticks far below the surface.

  As if on cue, snow started to fall in fluffy little flakes. Tam climbed the embankment and stood at the edge of the pool. "Do I jump?"

  "You can. It's not that deep."

  "Or?"

  "Just wade in gently. There are some kind of steps on the wall."

  The stiffness did seem to be causing him some difficulty, and Desi was ashamed that vanity could keep her from giving him help. She peeled away from her perch and held up a hand. "Step in, and I'll help you."

  From this angle, she could see the mess that was his left leg. There were ragged scars high on the dark thigh and crisscrossings of tiny white lines over the knee and shin. It didn't move well. "Did you shatter the knee?" she asked as he captured her hand.

  "Among other things," he admitted, and came down into the water beside her. Their legs brushed, their forearms, too, and for one long moment, they were very close.

  Tam's hand came up under her chin. "I'd like to kiss you, Dr. Rousseau." His thumb brushed her lower lip. "But I think we'll stick with our earlier deal."

  "Deal?"

  "Your move."

  "Oh. That." Nervously she gestured toward the edges of the pool. "Let's, um, sit for a while and get warm, shall we? There are rocks set into the wall, if you want one."

  "Kay-oh."

  Desi moved to her underwater perch, lifted her chin in the direction of his leg. "What other things?"

  He found a stone alongside the wall and settled comfortably, water up to his chest. "Shattered knee, shattered ankle, spiral fracture of the femur." He gave her a rueful grin. "No more smoke jumping for me."

  "What happened? Do you mind talking about it?"

  "No. It was just one of those bloody bad-luck landings. We hit the spot, but a blast of wind caught the fire and it shifted direction as we were headed down. The updraft caught me just right and knocked me bloody sideways and I landed in a tangle of boulders. My buddy, Roger, covered me with a fire blanket and headed out for help, but there was a—" he cleared his throat and touched it, as if the words were sharp rocks "—burnover that knocked him down and he was killed."

  Desi moved instinctively toward him, put her hand on his shoulder. "Tam, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to open a wound."

  He gave her a smile, only slightly forced, and put a hand on her hair. "Don't worry, love, I'm over it." He put his hand back into the water, and Desi eased away a little, letting the current create a cushion of safety between their bodies. "But that phone call I got at your cabin? That was Zara, Roger's widow. She's not over it."

  "And he saved your life at the expense of his own, so you feel obligated to care for her," Desi guessed.

  "Not a big leap, eh?" He shrugged as if he were embarrassed. "Maybe it's kinda stupid, but I feel I owe her."

  "I didn't mean that," she said, and smiled. "It's part of your personality, isn't it?"

  "What, being nice?"

  "Not just that," Desi said. "You're something of a rescuer, I think. You take care of things. People." She inclined her head, smiling at him. "You rescued that baby wolf, you went snowshoeing to try to rescue Fir, and here you are, being kind to me and bringing food and keeping the world at bay for me. That's even what you do for a living."

  "D'you mind?" His pale green eyes showed earnestness.

  "No," Desi said, and realized she meant it. "It feels good. Thank you."

  "No trouble," he said with a wink.

  "Just don't go around thinking this is how I live, Tam. In need of rescue."

  "I believe you." He raised his head and there was a sober expression on his face. "But we need to talk, yeah?"

  "About?"

  He moved toward the edge of the pool and snagged a can of soda for himself and tossed her one. "Let's brainstorm this business with all the threats and problems you've been having. When did it start?"

  Desi popped open the can and took a long swallow of very good cream soda. "Quite a while ago," she said finally. "Before Claude was killed, I was finding dead ravens on the porch. I remember because I thought it was him, harassing me."

  "And it's been ongoing? Or sporadic?"

  Desi had to think about it. "Very sporadic. Maybe three groups of harassment at different times."

  "Do you have a theory about who's doing it? Why?"

  "I don't know. Not as much of a theory as I'd like. I do believe it's all connected. That whoever killed Claude is also the source of the harassment, and I'm pretty sure it has to do with the land."

  "Just for the sake of argument, what if they're not related? The murder and the harassment? What if somebody is trying to drive you off the land, but somebody else wanted Claude dead?"

  "Okay. So?"

  "So let's think about them one at a time. Who'd have a reason to kill Claude?"

  Desi took a breath and blew it out. "That's a pretty long list."

  "Humor me, love. Who's on it? Besides you."

  "Ha ha, very funny." Desi paddled a little, the scents and steam and warmth of the water doing their work to relax her. "Okay, if we start with women, there was me and Christie Lundgren, who was in your pub when the murder happened. I think he was having an affair with someone else before that and dropped her to be with Christie, but I never really figured out who it was."

  "Any suspicions?"

  De
si said it aloud for the first time. "The dentist's wife. Alice Turner. But that's just a guess. He didn't usually go for that kind of woman, you know what I mean? She's so intense. He seemed to like earthier women."

  "I can see that." He narrowed his eyes. "So, I have a conundrum."

  "Which is?"

  "I don't know how much information you want. How much you knew or didn't know before you split."

  Desi hardened her gaze. "I know he was a genuine bastard for about three years before we actually split up, that there were a lot of women. I didn't include them in this discussion because I excluded anyone who seemed to be more than a year before he died. Maybe I shouldn't?"

  "He used to meet a woman at the pub sometimes. Dark-haired, with a European accent of some kind. German, Austrian, something like that."

  "Renate Franz," Desi said. "She's an art dealer from Aspen. He sold her a lot of work."

  Tam met her eyes, seemed to consider. "They had a couple of pretty serious fights. I think she was more than an art dealer."

  "Like what?"

  His smile was gentle. "Like lovers."

  The word hit Desi's being like a cold shock of water. She stiffened and blinked and tried to think of some way to arrange her face into a normal expression but couldn't remember what a normal expression would feel like. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw snow collecting in the tiny hollow of a dead leaf, and against her back, the current swirled, and she had no idea why it should be so shocking and strange to hear of another lover Claude had known when he'd had so many.

  But there it was. It shocked her. It hurt, too, in all sorts of idiotic ways. What she wanted to do was weep or howl or at least think of something to say so Tam wouldn't keep looking at her like that, with such dark sympathy in his eyes.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  Desi gave a laugh that sounded false, even to her own ears. "Don't be silly. What difference does one more make?"

  "Obviously some."

  "Oh, I'm used to it. They do keep coming out of the woodwork." She waved a hand, looked up toward the floating snow and let it fall on her hot face, cooling her eyes. "Don't worry about it."

  Then Tam was beside her. "Desi, he was an ass, but I was being an arse myself by telling you. Maybe I just wanted your attention."

  She looked at him. His beautiful green eyes were very close, his well-cut mouth only inches away. Against her upper arm, she sensed his chest with the crisp little hairs scattered across it like the garnish of a polished chef who knew he was a creature worth the devouring.

  All at once she was tired of never asking for what she really wanted, and with a single, smooth gesture, she turned toward him, let the water buoy her up toward him and touched his strong jaw.

  He didn't move. "Desi, maybe it's—"

  "Shh." She touched her thumb to his lower lip, watched the short, worn nail make an indentation in the firm flesh. "We don't have to keep talking. We can just let things be, can't we?"

  "You don't have to prove anything, Desdemona," he said, and his voice was rough as he raised his hands to her face. At his touch, a rush swirled over her skin, down her neck to her shoulders, over her breasts, into her lower belly.

  She swayed toward him. "I don't want to prove anything," she said. "I just want to touch you." Her fingers traced the hard muscles of his forearms and she gauged his strength with the expertise of long experience with bone and sinew and tendon— Tam could pick her up and fling her across a room.

  Around them, the water bubbled quietly and snow fell in thick, quarter-sized flakes that didn't immediately melt when they touched his smooth brown skin. One star caught on the hair over his right nipple and she leaned forward to flick it into her mouth. Another fell against his collarbone. Another on a bicep. She licked them away, one by one, taking a moment to gauge that muscle with curious hunger, using the tip of her tongue to trace the vein that ran upward toward his shoulder. Her fingers curled around his elbow.

  Tam let her explore. He sucked in his breath when her lips closed around his nipples, when she traced a spiral over the middle of his chest. His hands tightened in her hair, but he let her go at her own pace.

  And it was oddly, deliciously narcotic for her. His skin tasted warm and spicy and clean, the textures smooth and rough, pointed and sharp and always, always solid. He was as strong and solid as a tree, unmovable. Unshakable.

  She raised her face to look at him, and he bent to kiss her, dragging her body close to his. His mouth, hot and full, captured hers and his thick, strong tongue plunged into her mouth, sucking hers out into a dance of erotic grace, the tip of his tongue sending hot shocks down her throat, into her nipples, and she made a soft sound.

  A lover, yes. This was what she had been needing. His hands on her back, their bodies floating close together, brushing softly.

  Instinctively Desi wrapped her legs around his waist, her body floating lightly against his at first. Beneath her calves were the strong rounds of his muscular buttocks, and she couldn't help putting her ankles against him, to feel it. He made a low, warm noise in his throat, and his hands slid down to her own bottom and with a single, smooth gesture, he pulled her floating body into the thrust of his sturdy and quite fiercely aroused member. There was a lot of it, and he knew just how to move, and Desi grasped his shoulders, let him push his tongue hard into her mouth and push himself between her thighs.

  Desi felt a simple, pleased laugh in her throat, and she lifted her head to look him in the eyes. "Well, well, well," she said, and her voice was throaty. The water lent her grace as she rubbed against that sturdy pliance, which was as big as the rest of him, and—

  His hands gripped her bottom, and then suddenly he froze. "Desi," he said. "Don't move fast, but turn around slowly."

  Sensually dazed, Desi wasn't sure what he was talking about and it took her a moment to reenter the world and look over her shoulder.

  And there, panting on the edge of the pond, was Fir.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  « ^ »

  "Fir!" she said quietly. "Hey, honey!"

  The wolf quietly woofed and turned toward the hill, jerking her head for Desi to follow. "I'm sorry," she said to Tam with a grin, touching his shoulder. "She's not going to sit around patiently and wait."

  "Will you come back?" he said.

  "Come with me. We'll go back to my cabin later."

  He took her hand, carried her lips to his mouth. "Will we?" he said. "Or will you run away?"

  She kissed his throat. She reached down into the water and caressed his arousal. "No way I'll be going anywhere. Don't put your tools away, all right?"

  His teeth flashed. "Maybe for a minute or two, yeah? But you can open the box anytime. Or maybe—" his fingers found the heat between her legs "—that would be your box." He wiggled his eyebrows.

  "Ooh, that's—" she made a soft noise of pleasure and surprise "—vulgar here," and gasped a little at his touch.

  "It's vulgar in my world, too," he said in a husky voice, his fingers moving steadily. "Nothing wrong with a little vulgarity, eh?"

  Desi puffed at his touch and sucked in a steadying breath. "Fir needs me." She eased away, kissing his nose. "Soon, soon, soon."

  His eyes said he didn't believe her, but there wasn't much he could do. Releasing her, he took the towel she'd put on the embankment for him and waded out of the water. Desi followed, shivering.

  Fir stood at the edge of the trees, tail down, eyes alert as she waited. Desi struggled to get her clothes on damp skin and finally just gave up. She tucked her feet into her boots and wrapped the towel around her waist and stuck her arms into her coat. "Lead the way, sweetie!" she said. "I'll meet you up the hill," Desi said over her shoulder. "Do you remember how to get there?"

  He nodded. She could tell he was disappointed, and when he emerged from the water, the boxers sticking to all the parts of him she'd felt against her, she felt a ripple down her spine. Longing. Fear. Desire.

  But the wolf was insisten
t. She trotted down the hill and took Desi's hand gently in her mouth, tugging at her. Desi laughed. "I'm coming, I'm coming!"

  They dashed through the trees, the small she-wolf running adeptly through the snow, disregarding the path Desi tried to find. Snow got inside her boots and her legs were cold and she hoped she wouldn't run into anyone in her weird attire, but it was all worth it when Fir crashed through the trees and let go of a howl. In the distance her adopted pup gave a yip, and Fir agitatedly nudged Desi toward the gate.

  When they were through, she took the pup out of the inside kennel where they'd been keeping him warm, and Fir nudged him happily all over, then—as she'd been waiting to do—regurgitated the food she'd killed for him.

  Desi stepped back, heart in her throat. That was why Fir had gone—she'd been hunting! The pup mewled in gratitude, and Desi felt tears in her eyes.

  Behind her, Tam came in. "My heart's breaking."

  "Thank you," she said, turning to look up at him. Dampness curled his hair even more, and his black lashes were spiky, framing the pale green irises, a color that should have made his eyes seem cool and instead was always imbued with great warmth and honor and integrity. Had she ever met a man with integrity before?

  "For what?" he asked.

  Desi shook her head. "Let's go have supper, shall we?"

  "I like that idea." He took her hand in his. "I'm ready."

  Fastening the door to the kennel so that Fir and the pup were safe again, she headed outside. But as they stepped on the porch, she heard the sound of a truck approaching, and she frowned. When it came around the bend, she swore under her breath. "I have to go get my jeans on properly," she said. "Handle this. I don't know who it is, but at least you have your jeans on."

  "You're wearing a bathing suit," he said.

  Desi gave him a look. "Exactly."

  She dashed back into the cabin and struggled into the jeans, fighting with damp fabric over her wet rear end, and finally got them zipped. Outside, she heard car doors slamming and voices. Several voices, low, their tone a cadence she associated with Indian men. Throwing her coat on properly, she rushed out.