Breaking the Rules (9 page)

“Oww! You waylaid me with that thing.”

“Sorry. It was an accident.”

“I didn’t need that shin anyway.”

“I said I was sorry.”

The keys jingled as he pulled them from his pocket and reached for the doorknob. After locating it, Mitch stooped and rubbed one finger over the face of the metal knob. “There doesn’t seem to be a keyhole on this side.”

“Try running the key between the door and the facing. Maybe it’ll pop the lock.”

“Good idea.” The door rattled as he slid the key down to the latch. “It won’t move,” he said after several unsuccessful attempts.

“Let me try.”

“Have at it.” Mitch extended the keys in the direction of her voice. “But I’m telling you it won’t move. I still say we should yell for help. We’ll think of some excuse to tell whoever finds us.”

“What about—”

“Lover boy? You’ll come up with something to tell him, too. You might try the truth for a change. Funny thing, the truth. Helps a person avoid all kinds of turmoil.”

Claire considered stepping on his other foot. Instead she reached for the keys and her hands landed squarely on his chest. His shirt felt crisp beneath her fingers and she wondered if he had some sort of wrinkle phobia. Or a starch fetish. Maybe that was it. “Oops,” she said. “Bad aim. You’d think I’d be getting better at this by now.” When she started to pull her palms away, his hand covered hers.

“You’d think so.” Mitch laughed softly. “We’ve had our share of experience groping in the dark.” He moved the key to her hand and closed her fingers around it. “Here.”

To end the intimate silence settling around them, Claire knelt before the door to try her luck. After a minute she stood, bumping against him. “I can’t do it.”

“Well, then,” Mitch said. “We either start yelling or start talking. Which is it?”

“I don’t like either option.”

“If you’re committed to what’s-his-name, what was last night about? Was I just a fling before you tie the knot?”

“No! I don’t have flings. The way I behaved last night was because of the situation. The blackout. I got a little swept away, that’s all. It didn’t mean anything. As I said, nothing really happened between us.”

“We didn’t have sex. Is that what you’re getting at?”

“Exactly.”

“That may be true, but we made love all night long.”

Claire finally understood why women in the old days swooned. How did he know exactly the right words to charm her speechless? Despite every intention to keep a level head, to hide what she was feeling, she sighed his name.

Mitch slid an arm around her and pulled her close. He moved his hand up her back, then combed his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck.

“You don’t want to get involved, remember?” Claire asked. “Relationships are based on deceit.”

“I remember,” he said, soothing her tensed shoulders with his other hand until the muscles eased.

“Well, I lied to you about my appearance. And I didn’t tell you I’m engaged. I’ve proven your point.”

“And I told you I was a muscle-bound blond. We were playing a game. As for you keeping quiet about Jimmy, I’m still trying to decide what I think about that.”

“If you don’t want to get involved, then why do you even care about James and me?”

“Because he’s a jerk. Didn’t you hear the way he talked about you just now? Haven’t you seen him with the other women on this island? If you haven’t, you’re either blind or suffering from a serious case of denial. Marrying him would be a mistake. The guy doesn’t love you, and you don’t love him.”

“How can you say that? You don’t even know me.”

“I know enough.” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “By the way, I’ve changed my mind about the ideal woman. She’s a redhead instead of a brunette.”

His lips touched the hollow beneath her throat, his kisses warm, teasing. The last remnants of Claire’s resolve melted with the rising heat. “Oh, really? Why?”

“I saw this woman in the restaurant. She has hair like fire and the sexiest freckles I’ve ever seen.”

To her own annoyance, Claire giggled like an adolescent in the throes of puppy love. Mitch’s lazy strokes across her collarbone scattered goose bumps over her skin. She needed to stop this now. To tell him she wasn’t interested, that she wasn’t going to jeopardize her place on the show and James along with it. Case closed. But she found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the messages being delivered from her conscience. She placed her palms against his chest. “How were you so sure it was me at the restaurant? You didn’t get a good look at me last night.”

He traced each feature of her face with his fingertips until he found her mouth. “It was the shape of your mouth, I think. Or your legs; they caught my attention right off.”

When he replaced his fingertips with his lips, she didn’t resist. Mitch pressed his back against the wall, bent his knees, and slid to the floor, easing Claire with him. After a moment, he shifted their positions so that she sat between his legs, her back against his chest, his arms around her. The vacuum cleaner still jabbed into one hip, but he couldn’t have cared less. “You’re all wet,” he said, skimming the fabric at her waist with his fingertips, trailing kisses down the back of her neck.

“I spilled my wine. You made me nervous.”

“I noticed. Are you still determined to marry Jimbo?”

“His name is James,” she answered unsteadily. “I know it’s difficult for you to understand, considering…well, this, but yes, I’m going to do everything in my power to see that we leave this island the same way we arrived: together.”

“Tell me about him.”

Claire sighed. “I’ve known Jimbo…I mean
James,
all my
life.” She tried to keep her mind on the subject and off the sensations Mitch stirred in her. “We each inherited fifty percent of the same business from our parents.”

“So, he’s your partner in the feed and tackle store?”

“Yes…” She felt him lift her hair and run his fingers through it, sweeping every coherent thought from her mind. Then he massaged her neck and she went limp against him.

“Go on. Tell me more.”

“Umm…James is two years older than me. When we were kids he used to tease me, just like a brother. Then in middle school, he offered me pointers on surviving puberty.”

“Like a brother?” Mitch gently nipped her earlobe.

“Hmmm?” Goose bumps scattered up her arms. “Oh…exactly. When I turned fifteen, he was a senior. I think that’s when I fell in love with him. But the next year he left for college and our paths didn’t cross as often for a while. I missed him, but I resented him some, too.”

“Why would you resent him?”

“Whenever I messed things up, which was often, Mother and Daddy would mention James. What would he have done if he’d been in my shoes? Why couldn’t I be more like James?”

“So that’s why you want to marry him? Because you think you’ll mess up without him?”

“I told you, I’m marrying him because I love him.”

“Like a brother?”

“Yes…no!” Claire slapped his hand and sat up. The abrupt movement upset a broom propped in the corner. Stiff bristles scratched her face. She shoved them away. “James is not at all like a brother to me. Not anymore.”

“He’s not?”

“No. He’s my partner in every way. He’s patient with me. And reliable. He’s never missed a day of work. And he’s never late. He believes in establishing a routine and sticking with it.”

“How exciting,” Mitch muttered.

“At least, he was all those things and believed all of that until last year when that stupid movie came along.”

“Movie?”

“A horrible low-budget film called
Rodeo Romeos.
They filmed it in Prairie. James snagged a bit part in it as one of the cowboys.” She drew a shaky breath when she felt the warmth of Mitch’s breath against her neck. “His one line was to take place at the rodeo concession stand. He was supposed to say, ‘I’ll have a chili dog’, and the girl taking the order was supposed to eye him with interest.”

“So what happened? She wasn’t that good of an actress?”

“He spoke his line,” Claire said, ignoring Mitch’s sarcasm, “and when the girl looked down at his tight jeans, he ad-libbed, ‘and you can hold the wiener’.”

Mitch made a choked sound.

“The director loved the line. From that point on, James had the acting bug. Which is what I think
Eden
’s all about. It was his idea for us to try out for the show. I was against it, but I let him convince me. He implied I was boring, and then he dangled the money over my head like a carrot. Our business is struggling. We could use it.”

“You want to many a guy who said, ‘You can hold the wiener’?” Mitch asked, as if, after that particular revelation, he hadn’t heard another word she’d said.

“He’s just having some sort of an early midlife crisis. He’ll come to his senses and get back on track. The old James is who I need…who I
want
to share my life with.”

Mitch splayed the fingers of his right hand wide against her stomach, then slid his palm slowly from her waist to her neck, molding her breasts along the way. “When James touches you,” he said, tilting her chin to one side and muttering the words against the corner of her parted lips, “does your pulse jump like it is now?”

Longing bloomed anew, then fluttered through her like wind-tossed petals. Claire tried to fight off her traitorous emotions, but he cupped her chin, holding it gently yet firmly in place. “Mitch…” she whispered.

“Answer me, Claire. Is it hard for you to breathe when you’re with him?”

“I can’t…”

His fingers left her face to fumble for the button at the top of her sundress. Then his other hand was on her inner thigh, stroking gently just above the knee, slowly moving higher. Claire’s head fell back to his shoulder. She couldn’t tell him to stop. She didn’t want to.

He undid the first button and moved toward the second. “Does he make you forget everything else but him?”

The straps of her dress slipped from her shoulders. Mitch’s finger trailed between her breasts toward the third button. Heat singed Claire’s skin, her breath escaped in erratic gasps, her heart pounded. She lifted a hand to help him with his task.

“Does he, Claire?”

“No,” she said under her breath, bumping knuckles with him while struggling to free her remaining buttons.

The closet door flew open. Blinding light spilled over them. Claire jumped. Gasped. Squinted past the broom braced haphazardly across the doorway.

“Oh, my…” an unfamiliar woman’s voice muttered.

“
Claire…
What in the…?”

Her heart dropped. She knew the second voice all too well. Her chin fell to her chest. The straps to her sundress dangled at her elbows, the buttons opened to just above the waist exposing all but the tips of her bare breasts. In her and Mitch’s journey to the floor, her short hemline had hiked to the tops of her thighs, which were wedged between his vee-d legs.

Lifting her head, she blinked the faces above into view. She skipped past the amused eyes of a cleaning lady to focus on James’s shocked ones. “James…please…” she said, pulling her dress together. “I can explain.”

He turned and walked away.

Claire shifted to her knees, crawled out of the closet and stood next to the lady from Housekeeping. Buttoning her dress, she started down the hallway after James but made it only a few steps before Mitch grabbed hold of her arm from behind and stopped her. “Let me go!”

“Hey, slow down.” He turned her to face him. “I don’t understand why you want him, but you obviously do.” His eyes softened. “Don’t worry. He’ll come around now that he thinks you’re interested in someone else.”

“How do you know that?” Claire blinked back tears.

He swept his thumb underneath her eye, wiping away the moisture. “James wants what he doesn’t have. He thought you were a sure thing, so he went after all the other women just to see who he might catch. It’s not that he really wants them, Claire. It’s an ego thing. And now that he thinks you’re fooling around, he’ll be chasing after you.”

“James isn’t that shallow.”

Mitch didn’t need to respond; the lift of his brows conveyed his opinion.

Claire eased from his grasp and stepped back. “I’m sorry I got you into the middle of all this.” Confusion sifted through her as she looked into his eyes. She rubbed the warmth of his couch from her arm. They’d met only last night. The thought of leaving him shouldn’t make her feel so hollow at the center. “If James turns you in to the producers, I’ll vouch for you.”

He shrugged. “It wouldn’t be such a big loss. I’m just spinning my wheels here, anyway.”

“You’ll make it, Mitch. With or without Michael Hawkins.”

“That’s nice of you to say, considering you’ve never seen my work.”

“It doesn’t matter. I know you.” She smiled a watery smile. “Goodbye, Mitch.”

Claire hurried down the hallway, trying to focus her thoughts on finding James. She knew her fiancé, too, He’d be angry. So angry that she didn’t doubt for an instant that he wouldn’t stop at turning Mitch in; he’d turn her in, too.