The Wedding Promise. Grace Green
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He had to put a stop to it. Without delay.
He was still thinking about the problem half an hour later, when he heard the sound of rushing water ahead. Veering off the track, he cut through the undergrowth, and made his way to the six-foot-high rock east of the fall.
Shedding his shirt and trainers, he ambled round the rock, and dived into the crystal clear waters of the pool.
Sara started as she heard the sound of splashing. Not the steady rush of the waterfall, but a more erratic sound.
She pushed herself up on her elbows and squinted against the sun. She’d come upon the swimming hole by accident days ago, and had spent her afternoons there ever since. Afternoons that had been peaceful and un interrupted. But now... She frowned as she saw that the surface of the swimming hole was rippled.
Someone surged to the surface, and her heart lurched. It was a man. With dark hair.
She sprang to her feet, and slipped behind the huge granite rock at her side. Peeking round warily, pulses racing, she waited.
The swimmer shot to the surface again. And started swimming lethargically around the large pool. He was wearing brief trunks... the same colour as his hide.
Logan Hunter.
Frustration burned like bile in her throat. Was there no getting away from the man? She’d come all this way to avoid him...and here he was, like the proverbial bad penny!
She drew back behind the rock again, and that was when she noticed his shirt and sneakers. He’d tossed them down there, quite unaware that anyone else was around.
Her eyes narrowed. A wicked smile twitched the corners of her mouth. He’d called her a thief, hadn’t he? Well, give a dog a bad name, might as well hang it!
It took her just a moment to gather up her own things and put them in her backpack; then she scooped up his shirt and sneakers.
It’s going to be a long walk home, Mr Hunter!
Laughter bubbled up inside her as she snuck away.
‘Gotcha!’
Sara gasped, and Logan’s shirt and shoes tumbled from her hands.
Logan took enormous delight in having startled the devious Mrs Wynter as he grasped her shoulders. He whirled her round and he couldn’t keep the smugness from his expression as he looked down into her shocked face.
Her cheeks were bright pink. ‘I thought—’
‘You thought I wouldn’t see you.’ What kind of perfume was she wearing? Something tangy, provocative... ‘But I did. And now you’re going to have to pay.’
‘Pay?’ she asked faintly.
‘You didn’t think you could plot to make me hike two miles in my bare feet... and get away with it?’ he mocked.
‘It was a joke.’
‘Ah. A joke.’
‘Well—’ she tilted her nose up at him defiantly ‘—not so much a joke as...retribution.’
‘For...?’
‘For calling me a thief.’
‘I apologised for that.’
‘It still stings.’
She tried to wrench free, but he only held her arms tighter. ‘Not as much as my feet would have stung if I’d had to walk home with no shoes.’ She looked breathless; her chest was rising and falling rapidly, and her glorious turquoise eyes were dilated. On her brow, almost hidden by the sweep of her blonde hair, was a tiny indentation. The kind of mark left by chicken pox. He wanted to kiss it...
‘Well, you won’t have to suffer now,’ she said. ‘So would you mind letting me go? I want—’
She broke off, and he saw her swallow. ‘Yes?’ His voice had become husky. ‘What do you want?’
The pink tingeing her cheeks had darkened to a vibrant scarlet. ‘I want you to stop...looking at me like that.’
He raised his brows. ‘Like what?’
‘As if you’re...wondering how it would feel to...kiss me.’
‘Mind-reader, huh?’
‘No, just...a woman.’ She flicked a quick look at his bare chest, which gleamed wet from the pool. Nervously, she ran the tip of her tongue over her upper lip.
She’d been right; he’d wanted to kiss her. But now, as he watched that moist pink tongue move where he’d wanted his own lips to move, he wanted a whole lot more.
But a kiss would be a good place to start.
He drove his cool, damp hands into her hair and swept it right back from her face. Then he clasped her head with his long fingers, holding her fast.
For a long moment they stared into each other’s eyes, and sexual excitement shimmered between them like the gossamer flutter of a butterfly’s wings.
‘You’re wondering too,’ he said softly, and, sliding a hand from her hair, traced a fingertip over her lip, where her tongue had been. He felt the faint tremble of the moist flesh, and found it incredibly arousing.
Her lashes fluttered closed, as if she. couldn’t bear to look at him, couldn’t bear the electricity crackling back and forth between them.
‘Tell me,’ he whispered, now tracing his fingertip over the fine curve of her jaw. ‘Tell me you’re wondering too.’
A small moan was her only answer. He lowered his head, and water from his hair dropped onto the thin cotton of her shirt, making it cling in places to her breasts. His throat almost closed as lust catapulted him from tenderness to urgency. Male hormones amok. Testosterone on the rampage.
With a ragged groan, he dragged her against his wet body. And kissed her. Desperately.
The taste of her lips was even more lusciously sweet than he’d anticipated, the silky texture something close to heaven. He deepened the kiss, and heard her whimper. He stepped her backwards towards the tree behind her. She sagged weakly against it, and he slid his mouth along her jaw to the sensitive spot below her ear.
‘Still with me?’ he whispered against her scented skin.
She slid her arms around his neck, clung there as if her legs had become too weak to support her. ‘That—’ her voice was blurred, like velvet rubbed the wrong way ‘—is a loaded question—’
‘Daddy!’
The appalled voice came from behind him.
He froze...and felt Sara stiffen. Then she snatched her arms from around his neck and pushed him from her.
Oh, God, he thought despairingly—Andy! Where had she come from, and what was she doing here?
Heartbeats jamming, he turned.
His daughter was ten feet away. She was wearing jeans over a red and white spotted swimsuit, and she had a red towel slung over her shoulder. Her hair stood up in jagged little curls, and her face was whiter than the snowy foam at the foot of the waterfall.
‘Sweetie—’ Logan heard the choking sound in his own voice ‘—what are you doing here? I thought you were going to be busy with your letters—’
‘How could you, Daddy?’ The huge brown eyes were filled to the brim with tears. She didn’t once let her gaze flit to Sara; kept it fixed, agonisedly, on him. ‘Oh, how could you?’
‘Honey—’
‘I followed you. I thought you were lonely. I felt sorry for you, after you’d gone, so I came after you. But all the time you knew I was busy and you were planning to meet—’
‘No, no,