The Rogue Hunter (12 page)

Mortimer shook his head. "No hints."

"Oh, bother," Jo muttered, and then fell silent, her face screwed up with concentration. After a moment, she glanced to Sam. "Help."

Sam hesitated, her gaze slipping to Mortimer as he turned curious eyes her way. It was obvious he was interested in what she might guess. She let her gaze run over him, taking in eyes that spoke of having seen too much, and a mouth that seemed far too used to appearing solemn, and then running swiftly down over his body, which spoke of lean strength. Any one of the men could have been described thusly. While Mortimer was a blond, and Bricker and Decker both brunette, they all had the same time-weary eyes and most of the time wore grim expressions that couldn't completely be abolished by the charming smiles they occasionally flashed, or even the laughter they occasionally, almost grudgingly, gave up.

She considered that and then added the fact that each of them was a take-charge kind of guy. Mortimer had definitely taken charge when she'd burned herself, and again at the table. Since meeting the men, she'd seen hints of that character in each of them. Sam was quite sure these men were used to situations that called for action, and to being the ones who decided what that action should be. They each walked tall, with the confidence of men who could handle themselves as well as others when necessary.

"I'd have said police officers or some type of law enforcement," she said finally, and something like admiration flickered briefly in Mortimer's eyes.

"
Were
you police officers?" Alex asked, and it seemed obvious from her tone of voice that she was sure Sam was right.

"We were not police officers," Decker announced, drawing their attention to the fact that he and Bricker had rejoined them, but Mortimer stared at Sam another moment before turning to glance up at the other man. She noted the way his eyebrows rose in question, and that Decker gave a silent shake of the head, and then the silence died as Bricker commented on how friendly everyone was here and moved to drag the cooler around in front of the log. He retrieved a beer for each of the men, and then settled himself on the sand a few feet in front of Jo, leaving the wide cooler for Decker to use as a seat.

That was when the evening turned somewhat surreal for Sam. What followed was quite a long space of time when Bricker and Decker alternated with Jo and Alex in asking questions. The men were asking Sam questions, drawing her out about her past, her job, and her life. At the same time, her sisters were asking Mortimer the same sorts of questions. It was a rather bizarre situation and made her think of meeting Tom's family for the first time. What made it worse was that while she knew her sisters were grilling Mortimer because they were considering him as a prospective "fling" for her, she had no idea why the men were grilling her. That was just weird as far as she was concerned, and it made her incredibly uncomfortable. She felt like she was at a very long, very stressful job interview. So much so that she was actually relieved when she noticed Jo trying to smother a yawn and suggested they call it a night.

"Should we go let our host know we're leaving?" Mortimer asked as everyone stood and Bricker picked up the cooler.

Sam glanced around until she spotted Jack Anderson feeding more logs to the fire. She took half a dozen steps toward him, but paused when he suddenly glanced up, his eyes meeting hers. Smiling, she pointed toward the dock and then waved.

Getting the message, the older gentleman smiled and nodded back and then put his hand to his ear with thumb and pinky extended, indicating he'd give them a call. Sam nodded and then turned toward the dock.

"That's it?" Mortimer asked with amusement as he fell into step beside her.

"No. We'll have Jack and his wife, Gladys, over for dinner before we head back home. We always do," she explained. "They hold the parties and get stuck with cleanup and then everyone feeds them most of the summer."

"Not a bad deal," Mortimer said wryly.

"No." She laughed. "Especially since everyone is pretty good about taking their empties and garbage away with them."

Alex and the others were already on the speedboat by the time Sam and Mortimer reached their boat. The men were just finishing untying the ropes they'd used to bind the two boats together, and Alex was starting the engine.

"You may have beat us here, but I bet we beat you back," Alex called over the roar of the engine as Mortimer climbed down into the aluminum boat they'd ridden over in and turned to offer Sam his hand.

Tired after the late night the evening before and the long day and evening tonight, Sam just shook her head as she stepped down into the boat. Once on board, she moved to the back bench to prep the motor as the speedboat eased away from their side. By the time Sam had the engine going, the other boat was shooting away across the lake.

"Let me." Mortimer was there beside her, taking the starter cord the moment she'd finished prepping the engine.

Distracted by his scent and the way his arm unintentionally brushed across her breast as he pulled the cord, Sam didn't protest. Instead she found herself inhaling his scent as she had in their cottage earlier. He really smelled lovely. She was actually disappointed when the engine roared to life with the first pull and he moved away to take care of the rope at the bow.

Shaking her head, Sam reached out to untie the rope next to her. She then checked to be sure Mortimer was safely back on his bench and holding on before sending them shooting away from the dock.

She didn't make the outboard go all out on the return trip, but the weight of the extra passengers in the runabout slowed the
Goldie
down enough that they still caught up to her long before reaching their own dock. Sam throttled back to keep pace with the other boat, her eyes moving over the beautiful night sky and calm lake surface as they crossed the last little distance to the dock. They didn't have the huge bonfire as a beacon to direct them home, but Sam had grown up on the lake and had no trouble recognizing their own dock in the darkness.

Alex and Jo were talking quietly with the men as Mortimer helped Sam onto the dock. It sounded as if they were giving directions to an all-night coffee shop in the next town over. Mortimer stopped beside them to listen, but Sam was tired and merely murmured a goodnight and headed up to the cottage.

She'd taken several steps before she realized that Mortimer had followed. Sam paused at once and glanced at him uncomfortably.

"I thought it might be best if I walked
you
up," he
said
quietly. "It's dark and the ground is uneven, and your balance…" He let the words trail away, not saying what they both knew, that her balance was undependable at the moment.

Sam nodded and turned back toward the cottage, not protesting when he took her arm to steer her around the half-submerged boulders and tree roots in her path.

"Do you need help finding a candle or something in the cottage?" he offered as they mounted the steps.

Sam was tempted to say yes to invite him inside, and see if he might try to kiss her, or… She caught herself and quickly shook her head. She wasn't ready for that. "No. That's okay. We keep the flashlights on a shelf just inside the door. But thank you," she added, pausing by the door. Turning back, she opened her mouth to say something. What it would have been, she didn't know, because it slipped from her mind the moment she saw the way his eyes were shining in the darkness. It was as if they were soaking up the moonlight and reflecting it back at her.

Like a night predator, Sam thought, and felt a shiver run up her back under her T-shirt. They stared at each other silently, and then Mortimer's face grew larger as he leaned toward her… or perhaps she was leaning toward him, but a burst of laughter from the dock made them both straighten abruptly.

"Well," Mortimer said, and his voice was husky. He paused to clear his throat, then turned away. "Good night."

"Good night," Sam whispered as he moved down the steps and headed toward the path through the trees bordering the two cottages. She watched until his dark shape merged with the shadows under the trees and then released a little sigh, pulled the cottage door open, and slid inside.

Sam had brushed her teeth, washed her face, and followed her flashlight beam to her room. She was changing into the overlarge T-shirt she liked to sleep in when she heard the screen door of the cottage slam. The soft murmur of her sisters' voices followed, and then faded to a silence disturbed only by the soft clicks of two closing doors.

Switching off the flashlight, Sam moved blindly toward the bed, but paused as the growl of an engine reached her through the open window. She glanced toward the neighboring cottage as headlights came to life and moved up the driveway toward the road. It seemed the men weren't ready to call it a night.

Turning away from the dark cottage next door, Sam felt for the bed, slid under the sheets, and tried to go to sleep. Unfortunately, tired as she'd been on the ride back, Sam now tossed and turned in the overwarm double bed, alternately cursing the power outage that meant she couldn't turn on the ceiling fan to cool the room, and wondering what the men were doing.

The first faint fingers of dawn were creeping up in the sky before the men returned. It was only then she was able to drift off to sleep, but it was fitful, disturbed by strange dreams.

Sam was walking along the lakeshore in front of the cottage, hand in hand with Tom as he'd looked when they first started dating. But he was saying all the things he said when he broke up with her. She was too needy, too demanding, expected too much from him. He started to tug his hand away and she tightened her hold, but his skin was as slippery as a greased pig and she couldn't hold on.

As he tugged his hand free, her other hand was suddenly taken in a warm, strong grip. Turning in confusion, she found herself peering up at Mortimer. Suddenly Tom was gone and Mortimer too was releasing her hand, but only to clasp her face in his hands and tip it up so that he could meet her gaze.

"You are the one," he said solemnly.

"The one?" she whispered, not understanding.

Mortimer nodded; the silver in his eyes almost seemed to glow as he lowered his face until their lips met. Sam held her breath, almost afraid to move. He was the first man to kiss her since Tom. Only the second man to kiss her in her life, and despite knowing it was a dream, she felt uncertain and ill-equipped for the task as his lips moved gently over hers.

Tom had never been big on kissing. He'd give her pecks, brushing his lips over hers in an almost disinterested fashion as his hands reached for other parts, and then his lips would drift away to find what he apparently considered more interesting territory. She'd always regretted that he never seemed to kiss her properly, like they did in the romance novels she read as a secret pleasure. Between the covers of those books she'd read about open mouths, wrestling tongues, and exploding passion, and had always yearned to experience that. In this dream she did.

Mortimer's mouth moved over hers once, twice, and then a third time, the pressure growing with each pass until she felt his tongue slip out to nudge her lips apart.

She opened at once under the bidding and his tongue invaded, filling her with his taste.

Sam's eyes immediately blinked open, and then drifted closed as a soft "oh" of realization sounded in her throat. This then was what she'd missed out on all those years, she thought dazedly as his tongue rasped over her own and a surge of excitement rose up through her. This was… It was…

"Oh," she breathed into his mouth again, and allowed her hands to creep up around the dream Mortimer's back as he tilted her head slightly and kissed her more thoroughly than she'd ever thought possible. Where Tom's kisses had always been tepid at best, this was hot, this was wet, this was sex with your clothes on… and she never wanted it to end. Until it did and his mouth trailed across her cheek to her neck, where it followed the line of her throat down toward her collarbone, finding all sorts of delicious spots along the way. Her skin felt as if it were trying to leap from her bones where he touched it, as if eager to throw itself into his mouth.

It was overwhelmingly exciting, and Sam soon found herself catching the fingers of one hand in his hair in an effort to drag his mouth back to hers, in the hopes of soothing some of the excitement screaming through her. He answered the call, raising his head to find her lips once more, but if she'd thought the first kiss was the passion storm she'd read about, it was nothing compared to this one. Now he seemed to be trying to devour her, his mouth almost rough and his tongue filling her in a way that made her breasts ache and heat pool between her suddenly shaky legs.

Moaning into the caress, Sam clutched at him and gave him back some of that passion, uncertainly and even clumsily at first, but then with growing confidence and need. Wrapped up in the sensations he was bringing to bear with just a kiss, she didn't notice he was lowering her to the ground until she felt cool sand against the backs of her bare legs and through the thin cloth of her T-shirt. The cool lick of the breeze on her upper thighs and then her stomach was her first notification that he was pushing her T-shirt upward, but she didn't protest. Had her hands not been busy trying to pull him tighter, she might have helped him with the chore. Fortunately her dream lover didn't need the help. He managed to lift her enough to raise the T-shirt up to pool above her breasts without ever disrupting their kiss, and then the hand that wasn't under her back, supporting her, covered one sensitive breast.

Sam groaned into his mouth and immediately arched to press the small mound into his caressing hand and then groaned again as he squeezed it almost painfully. In the next moment, his mouth broke away from hers again. This time she didn't stop his downward journey as his mouth trailed kisses along her neck. He paused briefly at her collarbone to offer it special attention, making her shudder in his arms, and then his hand shifted down to splay itself over her flat stomach and his mouth dropped down to replace it. Sam went a little crazy as he latched on to one very excited nipple and drew it between his lips so that he could flick at it with his tongue.