Full Throttle & Wrong Bride, Right Groom Read online

  “Let me get the heat and lights back on. Then I’ll tell you what I can.”

  He’d tell her what he could? She frowned, skeptical, and now curious, as well.

  When she didn’t budge, he gave a faint, tired smile. “I promise.”

  Brows furrowed, Abby headed back to the love seat she’d vacated just moments before. Grabbing one of the blankets, she draped it around her shoulders and knelt to stir the glowing embers with the poker while Pete shrugged into his leather jacket. As she watched him head for the front door, it occurred to her that there might be more to his return to the States than the simple desire to do Jordy a favor.

  She had no idea what, although she guessed it was linked to the strange object she’d found while rooting around for an extra pair of socks. Frowning, she extracted a log from the neat stack on the hearth and laid it in the grate before adding kindling to the glowing embers to rebuild a flame.

  Pete returned almost immediately. Bolting the door behind him, he crossed the darkened room in his swift stride.

  “It’s not a blown fuse. The whole resort’s dark. There isn’t light showing anywhere, not even at the main lodge below us.”

  “You’re kidding!” She peered at his shadowed face and groaned. “You’re not kidding.”

  “’Fraid not. A main transformer must have blown. Or maybe the weather took down some power lines.”

  He reached for the phone on the end table. Frowning, he listened for a few seconds, then replaced the receiver.

  “The phones are gone, too. I’m not surprised. It’s really nasty out there. Everything’s coated with ice and slick as spit.”

  “Oh, no! I suppose that means we won’t get our dinner.”

  Tilting his wrist to the firelight, Pete squinted at his watch. “We didn’t get our dinner four hours ago. Guess we were both too exhausted to notice.”

  “I’m not exhausted now,” she mumbled, poking at the fire. “Just hungry.”

  Pete hunkered down beside her and warmed his hands at the growing blaze. “After seeing what it’s like out there, my guess is we’ll be lucky to get breakfast.”

  Until that moment, Abby had been feeling a hollow sort of emptiness. At the thought of missing out on tomorrow’s breakfast, as well as tonight’s onion soufflé, she went from empty to positively starving.

  She rose, gathering the folds of her blanket. They both needed sustenance, and she wanted an explanation. Deciding food came first, she headed for the kitchenette tucked below the loft.

  “This place has to come equipped with a stash of munchies. It’s got everything else. You tend the cook fire, and I’ll go hunt for food.”

  She found a cache in the kitchen, and another in the wet bar. Arms laden with an assortment of packages, bottles and cans, she returned to the sitting room. Welcome heat now radiated from the fire Pete had restored to full strength.

  “How do cashews, Eagle brand sour-cream potato chips, red caviar and cocktail olives sound?”

  “Except for the caviar, pretty darn good.”

  “We’ll leave that for the next stranded guests, then.” She dumped the packages on the coffee table and placed the cans and bottles in a neat row. “You have a choice. Imported wine, imported beer, imported mineral water or Georgia’s own orange cream soda.”

  “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

  Pete added another log to the now blazing fire, then rose and dusted his hands on his thighs. While Abby went back to the kitchen to search for a bottle opener, he shoved one of the facing love seats aside and swung the other around to face the fire, crowding it and the coffee table as close to the heat source as was safe.

  Abby’s steps slowed when she saw the new arrangement. It made more sense, of course, to share the small love seat and catch all the heat they could from the fire. But did she really want to huddle close to a man who had all but attacked her a few moments ago? No, attacked was the wrong word. He’d startled her, certainly. The intensity of his third degree had jolted her, just as his grip on her arm had angered her. Still, she hadn’t felt physically threatened. Not for a moment.

  It came as a slight shock to Abby to realize that she trusted Pete. She’d met him only a few hours ago, yet some deep-seated feminine instinct told her he wouldn’t harm her. Not intentionally, and not physically.

  Emotionally, however, Senior Master Sergeant Pete O’Brian constituted a serious threat to her inner peace. Honesty compelled Abby to admit that she still hadn’t quite recovered from his kiss. Or from the feel of his hands, gentle and sure on her ribs, when he’d searched for possible injuries. Yet every time she came close to liking the blasted man, he said or did something that put up her hackles—like accusing her of rifling his carryall to find a twisted scrap of metal!

  Curiosity about that small, unidentifiable object overcame the doubts she harbored about Pete O’Brian’s impact on her emotions. She wanted to know more about it. More about him.

  She waited until they’d settled on the love seat, one blanket draped across their laps, another over their shoulders. The blazing fire sent the frosty chill in the cottage retreating to the shadows. Pete attacked the junk-food feast with hungry gusto. Abby matched him munch for munch. After they tossed a pile of empty packages aside, she dusted the potato-chip crumbs from her lap and hunched her knees under the blanket.

  “I’m still waiting,” she reminded him.

  He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Resting his orange pop bottle on his stomach, he gave her a long, considering look.

  “It’s not exactly a bedtime story, Abby.”

  The warning raised a ripple of gooseflesh that had nothing to do with the cold. Tucking her arms under the blanket, she shifted a bit to face him.

  “Tell me.”

  His gaze drifted to the fire. Abby sensed that he was sifting. Sorting. Deciding what he “could” tell her. He was quiet for so long, she almost prompted him again.

  Something held her back. The taut cast to his face, maybe, bronzed by the firelight. Or the midnight-blue eyes that saw things she didn’t in the dancing flames.

  “It was a training jump,” he said at last, his voice flat. “A night requal. I didn’t need the canopy time, but I wanted to test our new free-fall rig.”

  Abby waited for him to continue, unconsciously massaging her ever-cold toes under the blanket. The small movement distracted him. He glanced down, then turned to set aside his soft drink. To her surprise, he slipped his arms under the cover and lifted her feet into his lap. His hands took up where hers had left off. Through a double layer of heavy cotton socks, Abby felt his strength. And warmth. And gentleness.

  The story he told her wasn’t gentle, though. It came out slowly. In measured bits. As though the horror were more manageable in small pieces.

  “The others were doing static-line jumps. It was a clear night for a change, but windy. The team went out, one by one. All except Carrington. Our rookie.”

  His hands stilled, then resumed their slow stroking.

  “The kid was nervous, despite his bravado. He checked his static line. Rechecked it. Held it in his left hand as he went out the door.”

  His fingers dug into her arch. Abby held her breath.

  “I was right behind him.”

  Pete stared into the fire, seeing again the black hole of the open hatch. Feeling the cold wind slice into him. Hearing the rattle of the metal hook on the static line as Carrington went out.

  “The kid didn’t let go in time. His arm tangled in the line, hung him up. Then the slipstream caught him. Slammed him against the plane’s belly. Hard. Then he hit again.”

  It was a parachutist’s second-worst nightmare. A hung jumper, tethered by a thin, tensile umbilical to a plane plowing through the night skies at a hundred and thirty knots.

  “He was unconscious, so we couldn’t cut his static line loose. The pilot banked, trying to angle the plane so the jumpmaster could winch him in.”

  He’s hooked! The jumpmaster’s frantic shouts poun
ded in Pete’s head. Dammit, he’s hooked on something! I can’t reel him in!

  They’d worked together, he and the young sergeant. Cursing and wrenching at the static-line retriever, while Carrington slammed into the undercarriage time and again.

  “Then the retriever support gave.”

  Pete’s voice gave no hint of the panic that had sliced through him when the metal support snapped and Carrington’s tether whipped out the open hatch. Pete had followed less than a second later, diving into blackness, searching for the rookie’s chem lights and flashing strobe in a vast, empty hell.

  “I went out after him.”

  He’d caught the spinning, tumbling Carrington seconds before it would have been too late for both of them.

  “I yanked the cord on his reserve. It’s smaller than the free-fall chute, faster. He hit the ground before me, hard. Then the wind caught him. I followed his strobe, flew into his canopy. It wasn’t a pretty landing, but I stopped his drag.”

  The soft, indrawn hiss beside him dragged Pete back from a dark, deserted hayfield.

  “Was…was he all right?”

  “He survived, but he’ll never fly again.”

  The doctors weren’t sure he’d ever walk again, either, but the kid was determined to prove them wrong.

  “The accident board examined everything. Our jump procedures. The kid’s training records. They sent the static-line retriever back for stress and fatigue analysis. The findings are confidential….”

  His words trailed off. He shouldn’t be telling her this much. Pete knew it. A military man to his bone, he believed in discipline, in rules and regulations, in making the system work.

  Then his eyes locked with hers. He saw sympathy in their brown depths, and a strength that Beth must have turned to continually. Against his better judgment, Pete felt himself drawn to that same, steady strength.

  “The board determined it was a freak accident, compounded by simple human error. The support shouldn’t have failed, but it did. Carrington should have released his static line sooner, but he didn’t. I should have seen how he gripped the line, but I didn’t.”

  He didn’t realize his fingers had frozen around Abby’s foot until she tried to tug it free. He frowned down at his lap, trying to remember just how the heck her feet had ended up there in the first place. Belatedly he loosened his grip. She surged up onto her knees, dragging the blankets with her.

  “Surely they don’t blame you for the accident!” she exclaimed. “No one could blame you. My God, you brought him down!”

  Pete blinked at the avenging goddess who knelt beside him, her hair a wild halo of disheveled curls, her brown eyes fired with indignation on his behalf. Her passion pushed the black, bleak night back into the small chamber of his mind where it would always reside.

  “No, they don’t blame me,” he replied quietly. “I blame myself.”

  Shocked, she sank back on her heels. “Why?”

  “I should have seen how nervous the kid was. He was still a rookie, and too damn cocky for his own good.” He let out a long, slow breath. “That’s why I pried that scrap of metal off the plane. Why I keep it as a reminder of what can go wrong every time I send my men on a training mission or out on an operation.”

  He slanted her an apologetic glance.

  “I guess that’s why I overreacted a while ago, too. I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  The reply was low, hardly more than a whisper. Pete closed the door in his mind. He wasn’t looking for sympathy, and didn’t want it. Abby wasn’t quite ready to let go of that night, though.

  “Is that what brought you back to the States?” she asked. “The accident?”

  Nodding, he reached for her foot. “I bunged up my knee and am off jump status for a while. I’m scheduled to meet a medical evaluation board in San Antonio next week.”

  She gave a tiny sigh of pleasure when he began to knead her toes once more. “So what does a medical evaluation board do?”

  “Poke and probe and run more tests.”

  Abby suspected there was more to this medical board than his deliberately offhand reply indicated. Surely there were doctors in England who could poke and probe and run tests. The fact that Pete had been sent back to the States held a significance she didn’t understand. But before she could ask, he dragged her foot out from under the blanket and lifted it to eye level.

  “Good Lord, woman, you’re the first person I’ve ever met with Popsicles attached to her ankles.”

  “Now you know why I wanted those socks!”

  “What do you do, put your shoes in the freezer at night to slow the circulation in your feet?”

  “I’ve always been, er, cold-toed.”

  “Here, scoot over this way and put your feet to the fire.”

  Somehow, Abby ended up more in his lap than out of it. Some way, his arm slipped from the back of the love seat to the circle of her waist. Strangely uninclined to rectify the situation, she wiggled a bit to make herself more comfortable.

  It occurred to her that they fit together perfectly. He was taller than she, and far more solid. Yet hip matched hip, and thigh nestled against thigh. Her shoulder tucked under his at just the right angle. His formed the perfect support for her head. She felt the fine hair at her temple stir with each slow, steady breath he took.

  She wouldn’t mind at all if the electricity stayed off awhile. A good while.

  When she realized the dangerous path her thoughts were taking, Abby tried to cut them off. She and Pete would only be together for a few more hours, she reminded herself sternly. Just until the sun came up and warmed the icy roads. Then she’d go back to an apartment filled with floor plans and sketches for her new shop, and he’d go back to the military that was his life.

  Their chosen lifestyles couldn’t be more different, Abby mused. Hers centered around the need for an anchor, for stability, for the roots she craved. His involved constant movement, and the danger he’d touched on so briefly tonight.

  For these few hours, though, their separate paths had merged, a tiny voice argued. For these few hours, they were together.

  The small, insistent voice came from someplace deep inside Abby. Someplace she hadn’t explored in a long time. Not since Derek. No, not even during Derek. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this slow, insidious pleasure the first time he’d taken her in his arms.

  Not that Pete had taken her in his arms, exactly. He was just…sharing her warmth. As she was sharing his.

  Sure. Of course. Uh-huh. Even Beth hadn’t resorted to that lame excuse during her rather tumultuous postadolescent years. Sighing at the confused, half-formed jumble of needs Pete stirred in her, Abby snuggled against his side.

  His voice rumbled against her ear. “Toes warm enough now?”

  Smiling, she angled her head back. “I’m warm all over.”

  She hadn’t intended any sort of double entendre, but of course the hidden meaning jumped out at her the moment the words were out. Embarrassment eddied through Abby, and a glint appeared in Pete’s indigo eyes. For the life of her, she couldn’t tell whether it was amusement, interest or regret.

  “Me too,” he admitted. “All over.”

  Abby’s pulse tripped, skipped, then took off at triple speed. She might not have meant to convey a sensual message. Pete certainly did. She saw it in the way his gaze moved over her face and snagged on her mouth. Heard it in the husky note in his voice.

  Abby held her breath, sure that he would follow up on that interesting remark. All he had to do was bend his head. Just an inch or two. When he didn’t, disappointment prickled the surface of her skin.

  “Abby?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “About that kiss at the airport…”

  “Yes?”

  “I told you I wasn’t sorry.”

  “Yes.”

  “If I kiss you again, I’m afraid I might be. Very sorry. Because a kiss won’t be enough this time.”

  He was right. The mo
uth hovering just inches from her own set off alarms all over her body. One kiss wouldn’t be enough, she acknowledged. For either of them. Taking it any further would be crazy, though. And stupid. Not something that sober, sensible Abby should even contemplate, let alone indulge in.

  A lifetime of caution, of shielding herself and Beth from the unintentional hurt too often caused by the strangers who passed through their lives, pulled Abby back from the brink.

  “Then we’d better forgo the kiss and just enjoy the fire.” She infused her reply with a deliberately light note. “We don’t want you to regret what we both know would be a mistake.”

  His breath came out in a long, slow release. Then he nodded and settled himself more comfortably against the sofa. A slight adjustment brought Abby against his warmth.

  “Too late,” he murmured against her hair. “I already do.”

  Chapter 5

  Abby woke to a world of piercing white light. It filled the cottage with dazzling brightness, and made the cold seem even sharper and more cutting.

  She curled in a tight ball under the mounded blue covers, testing the air with the tip of her nose. Obviously, the electricity hadn’t been restored during the night. Nor had the phone service. The receiver was off the hook on the end table, she saw, but no shrill beep sounded to advise her of that fact.

  “Great,” she muttered, tucking her nose back under the covers. So much for the Pines’ exalted reputation. No heat. No phone service. Probably no hot water. No hot breakfast. No hot anything, except the fire blazing cheerfully in the grate.

  And the memory of a night spent in Pete’s arms.

  That alone was enough to suffuse Abby’s entire being with a wash of delicious warmth. She closed her eyes, recalling each shift of their bodies as they’d drifted into sleep. The times Pete had gotten up to feed the fire, then returned to gather her against him. His rather sonorous breathing a couple of times during the night. Her deplorable tendency to drape herself around him like plastic wrap in her sleep.