The first time she had seen him the summer she had turned thirteen, she had sworn she had fallen in love with the man her sister called her best friend, Rafer Callahan. The man Cami had known instinctively that her sister was sleeping with.
Cami had loved his name. She had loved his fierce blue eyes, the laughter in them, the way he walked with such cocky confidence, and the way he had smiled at her.
For months she had haunted her sister’s apartment, even though he had moved out. Cami had watched for him, searched for him. He had never been far from her mind on any given day.
She had promised herself she wouldn’t do this again. Irritation and frustration were rising inside her now. She had sworn she wouldn’t allow herself to ever come this close to losing her soul as she had the last time she and Rafer had been together. Yet here she was doing just that. She was losing the control it took to keep him at arm’s length and to control the emotions that swirled inside her like a violent storm.
Turning, Cami moved back into the warmth of the kitchen, watching as Rafe cleaned up the dishes from the simple dinner of pork roast, red potatoes, gravy, and rolls she had prepared from the supplies he had on hand.
He’d watched her cook as though no one had ever cooked for him. Silently, his sapphire gaze had tracked every move she made, hunger gleaming in his eyes.
“Coffee?” He looked at her expectantly, one black brow arching quizzically.
He was too damned good-looking for her peace of mind. Six feet, three inches, broad, muscular—if there was an ounce of fat on his flesh, then she hadn’t found it yet.
His thick, silky black hair fell around his face, giving the savage features a sexy, sensuous cast that immediately drew female eyes. It always looked a bit mussed, as though a woman had just run her fingers through it and enjoyed the soft, cool feel of it.
Dressed in jeans, sneakers and a flannel shirt, the long sleeves rolled to his elbows, he looked like a lazy tiger prowling his lair. Biding his time before he took his mate.
She almost didn’t control the jerk of shock that hit her at the thought. She wasn’t a mate; she wasn’t a lover. This was where she invariably managed to get herself in trouble when it came to Rafer.
Rafe, she reminded herself. She was going to have to begin calling him Rafe, or she would draw more attention to herself than she wanted. Everyone called him Rafe. No one ever called him Rafer except her. And she just couldn’t seem to break the habit.
“Daydreaming or fantasizing, Cambria?” That silky drawl, so wicked in its sensuality, had her gaze jerking from his chest to his face.
“Excuse me?” She blinked back at him, wondering if he could see into those fantasies and daydreams.
He gave a light chuckle as he moved to the coffeepot. “Have a seat; I’ll make the coffee.”
She stepped warily to the table, only just barely controlling her flush of embarrassment at what had taken place on that table the night before.
His head between her thighs, his tongue dancing wickedly over and inside her pu**y. His hands on her br**sts, her ni**les. Her own hands there—
She clasped her hands in her lap tightly and pressed her thighs together with a firm admonishment that she was not going to get wet. She would not get wet. She wasn’t wearing panties and she simply couldn’t afford to have her juices gathering and easing—
Her teeth clenched in anger at herself.
There it was. The slow, easy glide of her juices from her vagina. At this rate, her jeans were going to be wet and she didn’t have anything else to wear.
“You slept deep last night.” He spoke quietly as he set the coffee in front of her. “I think we could have had a bomb going off outside the bedroom and it wouldn’t have shaken you.”
His smile was a slight quirk.
How long had it been since he had smiled?
Had he gotten over Jaymi’s death? Did he even think of the death of his lover in his arms as anything other than the event that had nearly destroyed his life?
“I need to make a few phone calls,” she said. Rather than asking the questions raging through her, she went for something more mundane, something simple. She needed to get in touch with her aunt and uncle and let them know she was safe. No doubt Aunt Ella was beside herself, pacing the floors by now.
“Phones are down; cell-phone reception is lousy at best,” he told her. “There’s a chance you’ll get a text out if you stand on the balcony outside the bedroom.”
Her aunt and uncle were no doubt worried to death.
“There was about a forty-minute lag time on mine to Crowe,” he told her. “He’s in the cabin.” He nodded toward the mountains rising behind the house.
Crowe Callahan’s cabin was so far up that mountain that when the cousins had disappeared after the judge released them twelve years before, it had taken days for the sheriff to find them again when he’d been forced to return their belongings.
She nodded. If she was lucky, her aunt and uncle would at least know she was safe and warm until the storm was over. She’d simply stated she was with a friend. Would they suspect who that friend was, she wondered? Perhaps not at first, but her aunt’s intuition could be amazingly precise.
Sliding the cup of coffee across the table minutes later, Rafe took the opposite chair and lounged back in it lazily.
“So what’s your story?” he asked.
Her cup halfway to her lips, Cami looked up at him slowly, knowing exactly what he was talking about simply from the hint of underlying anger in his voice.
What would her excuse be for being at the Triple R Ranch during a blizzard with Rafer Callahan? And in his eyes she could see a demand for a reason why she would need an excuse.
“The truth usually works.” She sighed. “The car slid into a snowdrift and I had to stay here.”
“And where did you sleep?” The hard curve of his lips didn’t even resemble a smile. “I need to know what to say when the good folks of Sweetrock decide to decimate me again because I slept with one of their favorite daughters.”
“Like I tell the kids at school, don’t borrow trouble and you won’t have as many problems,” she told him. “If they ask, do what you’ve always done before and shoot them that arrogant look before turning and walking away. Change the way you act and you give them more to talk about.”
And what the hell was she going to say? The question was bound to come up. Any woman seen in the company of a Callahan eventually faced the third degree. Then, there was always the series of lectures, and enough harassment that they’d walk away from the Callahan simply out of frustration.