Found In Lost Valley. Laurie Paige
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“I didn’t mind. It was interesting to watch for a while. Then I decided it was time to come home.”
She must have stayed almost four hours, he realized. Long enough that her grandparents wouldn’t question why she’d come home early. He propped an arm behind her on the swing. His fingers touched the smooth skin of her shoulder, only partially covered by the cap sleeves of the dress. She was cold. He dropped his arm around her and pulled her close.
“You’ll catch a chill,” he scolded, sounding very much like his protective uncle.
“I never get sick.”
This was said with such world-weary resignation, he was intrigued all over again. What was it with her?
She looped her arms across her middle as if holding inside all that she was so he wouldn’t see. He touched her cheek, lingered to stroke the softness there, then tilted her face up to his. Then he kissed her.
The kiss was amazing, shocking, alarming, dazzling, as if stars were falling around them….
The very air went from October cool to July hot in an instant. The warmth of the stars, he thought hazily.
She didn’t caress him or even uncross her arms, but her lips…Lord, but those lips were pure liquid fire under his, hesitant at first, then moving, returning the pressure, opening to allow their tongues to meet. It was a kiss unlike any he’d ever experienced, and he’d kissed a lot since becoming cocaptain of the football team last year.
When he lifted his head and gazed down into her face, his heart thudded even harder. In the moonlight, her skin was the pure white of the marble veins he found running through the granite in the mountains. There was something so remote and unexpected about her….
He kissed her again, then groaned and pulled her closer so that they were half lying in the swing, her softness on top, pressing into him. For the first time, he knew, really knew, why kisses weren’t enough.
Her breasts were firm against his chest, her lips like cool fire dancing under his. Shifting, he pushed a cushion behind his back and lifted her so that he could slide one leg between hers. Half turning, he captured her body between his and the swing, the movement setting up a brief, wild gyration that broke the kiss.
They clung to each other and, as their eyes met, smiled. For a second, he couldn’t breathe, then they were kissing again…and touching in ways he’d never let happen with other girls.
When the need became unbearable, he pulled back enough to ask, “Where can we go?”
“There’s a carriage house,” she murmured, pressing kisses onto his chest.
He didn’t know when or how his shirt became unfastened. The cold air rushing across him brought back a measure of sanity. He held her face between his trembling hands and looked into her eyes.
Hot golden arcs of passionate intensity were visible in those moon-dark depths, along with a sweet vulnerability that reached to his soul. He realized how dangerously, desperately close to the edge they were.
“I have plans,” he said, summoning the only defense he could think of. “College. And law school. It’ll be years.”
Her expression changed in the blink of an eye, the raw honesty of passion was gone. Sense and caution returned. He felt the loss like the sharp pain of a paper cut.
She sat up and, with quick, precise movements, fitted the bodice of the old-fashioned dress into place, covering the delectable flesh he’d kissed and explored so thoroughly.
“I know,” she said in a flat tone that gave nothing away. “It doesn’t matter. Thanks for seeing me home.”
With that she was gone. He heard the click as the door locked behind her, observed her outline through the etched glass panes as she turned away. That was the last he saw of her until spring. At that time, she returned to school and finished the year, a straight-A student who looked at him with cool blue eyes that didn’t invite friendship or confidences anymore.
After graduation he left town on a construction job, then entered the university that fall. He rarely was back for more than a week at a time after that.
Rolling now to one side, then the other, his body tense with the haunting hunger from tonight and the dance long ago, Seth knew he was in for a restless night. Memories and the knowledge that Amelia was only steps away would see to that.
From that intriguing here-today-gone-tomorrow girl, she’d grown into a lovely woman, her gaze still cool, her hair a halo of curls surrounding a heart-shaped face just the way it had that enchanted evening so long ago.
For the oddest moment, he was filled with regret that they hadn’t shared everything the night of the Harvest Moon ball, when their passion had been innocent and honest and so very sweet in a way he couldn’t describe. But it was better that they hadn’t. Both of them had had a long way to go before they could think seriously of involvement.
So. He’d become an attorney as planned. She’d married, divorced, then returned to Lost Valley and started a very successful bed-and-breakfast inn after her grandparents had passed away within months of each other seven years ago. He’d handled the settling of the estate.
Amelia had changed quite a bit in the intervening years, becoming friendly and outgoing. She’d even played her guitar and sung in a community musical that summer. The appealing vulnerability of youth had disappeared, replaced by the confidence of a woman who knew exactly who she was and where she was going.
Seth wondered what other changes life had made in her, and fell asleep still wondering….
Chapter Two
Amelia opened the door as quietly as possible. It was six o’clock, her usual time to start the workday.
The sitting room was silent and dim in the predawn hour. Treading carefully, she made sure her loafers didn’t make a sound on the carpet as she crept by the sofa bed.
Seth lay with one bare arm across his face, the other to the side. The sheet and blanket were pushed halfway down his chest, which was also bare. His long-sleeved shirt lay over the back of the sofa. One leg was outside the covers, the sweatpants apparently providing enough warmth for him.
When he stirred restlessly and kicked the blanket aside, she noticed the definitive ridge on his lower body, clearly outlined by the gray sweats.
A thrill of…shock? surprise? excitement? raced through her entire body with the speed of light. She stood there staring as if she’d never seen a man’s aroused body in her life.
Certainly not this man’s, some cynical part of her observed, although once they’d kissed and caressed each other with the greatest intimacy she’d ever known. But that was long ago. She’d avoided him after that, just as he had her, his manner pleasant but remote the few times they’d met.
Pulling her gaze from his sleeping form, she hastily stepped forward before her thoughts went even further off track, as her dreams had done last night. Her foot landed on something unexpected, an object that flipped to the side, causing her ankle to turn with a sharp pain.
She flailed her arms, but it was too late; Amelia landed with a muffled grunt right on top of her guest.
With a muttered curse, he sprang instantly awake and into action. Before she could say a word, she was caught in bands of steel, tossed onto her back and held captive against the mattress by hands on her wrists and a long, powerful, masculine body pinning her in place.
She stared at him as if he were indeed a predator about to rip her to shreds. “I’m really sorry,” she said in a strangled voice. “I tripped.”
His chest moved against her as he inhaled deeply. The ridge she’d noticed was now pressed into her abdomen. It took only a split second for the fact to register; and her eyes flew to his.
He observed her with a harsh, unblinking stare, then slowly relaxed—though not in the lower extremities—and finally