“What we need is some practicality. You think this place is some kind of Shangri-La. I don’t.”
Her chin lifted. “Just tell me what’s wrong with it.”
It’s full of ghosts, he wanted to say, and it drives me crazy to think of you with somebody else.
“Well?” Eve folded her arms. “Tell me one thing that’s wrong with my cabin.”
Zach looked at her. “I don’t have to. Final decisions are mine.”
“And creative ones are mine.”
“Subject to my approval,” he said coolly.
He could see the rapid rise and fall of her breasts, the splashes of color across her cheeks. She was angry and defiant, and it only made her more beautiful.
Zach felt his throat constrict. He didn’t want to quarrel with her. He wanted to take her in his arms, kiss her until she trembled, exorcise the ghosts that haunted this cabin—that haunted him—by making love to her. Wildly. Tenderly. Passionately—until she clung to him and sighed his name.
“Okay, Zach.” Her chin lifted even farther. “Do your thing. Be pigheaded and dictatorial, but I’m telling you, you’re making a mistake.”
Pigheaded? Hell. That was him, all right. He was making a mistake, and it was time to do something about it, to reach out and take her in his arms.
“Eve,” he said, and took a step forward.
But she was already swinging away from him. “If you knew anything about movies,” she said, yanking the door open, “you’d realize that Hollywood Wedding is a woman’s film. I was up here with three women, Zach, three perfectly normal, average American women. And every last one of us thought this was just about the most romantic place we’d ever seen.”
He stood there, his jaw dropping, as she marched toward the car.
Three women? She’d been here with three women?
“Three women?” He said the words stupidly as he went after her, caught her and spun her toward him.
“So what?”
“Well—well…”
Well, what, Landon? What can you say that won’t make you sound like an ass?
He cleared his throat. “Well, what you just said makes sense. About this being a woman’s film, I mean. And if—if the women you were with all gave this cabin points for being perfect, who am I to knock it?”
He held his breath while she glared at him. God, but he felt dumb, not just for the way he’d been behaving but for what he was doing now, lying like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
But he couldn’t let her know the truth, that thinking of her belonging to any man but him was more than he could stand, that something was happening to him, something he wasn’t ready for.
“Well, then,” she said, and very slowly a smile edged across her lips. “There’s hope for you yet, Mr. Landon.”
Zach smiled back at her. “Yeah. I think maybe there is.”
“Amy, Beth, Susie and I all loved it here.”
“The Little Women’s vote of approval,” he said, and laughed because otherwise he was going to say to hell with it and sweep her into his arms.
Her smile became a grin. “Exactly. I mean, we didn’t know what to expect. Amy’s brother had rented the place for the weekend. He was going to bnng his girlfriend here and propose, but she came down with the flu or something. So he told Amy she could have the place, and she invited the rest of us. We all waited tables together at…”
She went on talking, telling him about their weekend, how they’d driven up here not knowing what to expect and how much fun they’d had doing kid stuff, hiking the woods and toasting marshmallows and singing around the fire at night.
And Zach nodded and smiled when she smiled, and he knew that whatever happened all the rest of his life, he would always remember this moment, when he’d first realized that he was—that he was…
“Eve?” he whispered, and she stopped in the middle of a sentence and looked at him. He saw the bloom of color sweep into her cheeks, heard the sharp intake of her breath, and then she was in his arms.
Thunder rumbled across the clearing, a sound that seemed no louder or deeper than the thud of his heart. Lightning lit the sky, but it barely registered against his closed eyelids.
And then the sky tore apart.
Eve shrieked as a silver curtain of rain spilled from the sky. She pulled back in Zach’s arms, her hair already soaked, her clothing drenched.
They looked at each other and began to laugh.
Zach scooped her into his arms.
“I think it’s raining,” he shouted, above the roar of the storm.
She looped her arms around his neck. “We should have brought a bar of soap,” she shouted back.
He trotted across the clearing and into the cabin, shouldering the door closed behind him.
“My God, woman,” he said, “you look like you’ve been into that hot tub with all your clothes on!”
Eve laughed. “So do you.”
Zach’s smile faded, becoming something sexy and dangerous.
“It seems to me,” he said softly, “that we’re going to have to get out of these wet clothes.”
Eve’s heart skipped a beat. “Zach,” she whispered, “Zach, listen…”
He bent his head and kissed her. It was a long, gentle kiss, and as it went on, as it changed and became hot with need and electric with desire, Eve knew it was time to admit the truth.
Somewhere between that dusty hillside where Zach had almost run over Horace the Wonder Horse and this isolated cabin, somewhere during all the quarrels and anger, she had fallen hopelessly, desperately in love.
Her lips parted, opened to his. Her hands clung to his broad shoulders.
“Zach,” she whispered against his mouth, and the single word said everything he needed to hear.
He lowered her to her feet, cupped her face in his hands. His fingers swept into her hair and fisted in its rich, silken strands. He tipped her head back and kissed her again, his teeth nipping at her soft bottom lip, his tongue slipping against hers like hot silk.
“I’ve dreamed about this,” he whispered. “About holding you in my arms and kissing you.”
Eve pulled his head down to hers. “Kiss me, then,” she said fiercely. “Kiss me, and never stop.”
His fingers dropped to the buttons that ran the length of her cotton shirt, and he undid them slowly. She was wearing a silky bra beneath the shirt, something pink and lacy that had a front clasp. His fingers trembled as he opened it, and his heart turned over.
She was so beautiful.
“Beautiful,” he whispered. “My Eve.”
His hands dropped to her belt. Her eyes flew open as he undid it, then her zipper.
“Eve,” he said, and there was a tremor in his voice.
“Yes,” she whispered, hearing the question, knowing she could give only one answer. “Yes,” she sighed as the rest of her clothing fell away from her, and she stood, for the first time in her life, naked to a man’s gaze.
Zach looked at her and wondered how any woman could be so lovely. Her breasts were round as apples, ivory colored and tipped with nipples as pink as furled rosebuds. She had a waist he could almost span with his hands, a sweetly curved belly that tapered into golden curls, softly rounded hips and long, long legs.
“My beautiful Eve,” he whispered.
He looked into her face. It was flushed with color, and her eyes were wide and filled with expectancy.
“I—I want to see you, too,” she said.
He smiled. “Undress me, then.”
The color in her face darkened. She hesitated, and then she stepped closer and lay her hands against his chest. Her palms felt like fire, burning through his wet shirt.
“Lift your arms,” she whispered.
Slowly, she eased the shirt over his head, catching her breath when she saw the hard musculature in his arms and shoulders, the soft, dark curls that laced across his chest.
Her gaze dropped lower, to his ridged abdomen, to his navel, to the belt l
ooped through his jeans.
Blood pounded in her temples as she reached out and undid the belt. Her hands were shaking; she managed to undo the button at the top of his fly but when she reached for the zipper tab, she faltered.
Zach caught her hand in his. “I’ll do it,” he said huskily, afraid of what might happen to him if he felt even the softest touch of her hand.
She nodded and stepped back, waiting.
And then he was naked, too, that powerful, masculine body exposed in all its terrifying beauty.
Suddenly, Eve felt uncertain.
“Zach?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, “oh, yes, my love…”
He gathered her to him and kissed her deeply, and as he did, he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed.
She fell back against the soft pillows, her eyes locked on his face as he bent to her. Her lashes fluttered to her cheeks as he kissed her mouth, her throat, and then his lips were on her breast.
Eve moaned, buried her fingers in his hair and sighed his name.