Joey thought she would have liked to be very disgruntled if she had been less cold and tired, she would have liked the option of turning and leaving now, even if she hadn’t planned on doing so. But she shrugged it off philosophically. She was a practical woman, a realist. She’d always been and always would be, and even Luke Gévaudan didn’t have the power to change that.
He started off, looking back at her inquiringly when she hesitated. With a last final glance around the place that had seemed so beautiful and peaceful, she zipped up her jacket and followed. She had a feeling it was going to be a long, uncomfortable walk. And the discomfort was not a matter of mere cold and weariness. She wished with quiet desperation that it were that simple.
Luke was painfully, irrevocably aware of her. Every one of his senses had been alive to Joey from the instant he had seen her on the beach and through everything that had followed. The very best of his intentions were being defeated one by one
Even as he heard her grimly struggling to keep up without revealing any hint of weakness, his own heart was pounding with the strain of being so near to her. She seemed to dominate sight and sound and sense of smell, so that he hardly knew where he put his feet or consciously remembered to take the right path. Somehow his feet found their own way without any help from his mind. What there was of his rational mind was fully fixed on her.
Did she knew how she affected him? She must have seen at least some of it, though he had been careful not to let it show on his face, even when his body betrayed him. She had not shown any shock or horror at his nudity. For him it was nothing, for someone brought up as she had been, it surely must have been strange at the very least. But she had kept her composure—and made him lose his.
A breath of her scent came to him teasingly as they walked. Her clothes had clung to her skin, the shirt had been pulled open during her struggle with the brutes from town, and he was well aware that she wore no additional protective layers underneath. The cold sculpted points where her breasts met fabric, what the jacket covered he had no trouble imagining.
Pale, damp hair had been wrung out and twisted into her usual braid, and it was true that she had indeed looked rather like a drowned wood rat—but only because her peculiar vulnerability had forced him to find a defense of words. Even bedraggled and smudged with dirt, she was desirable. He had never expected her to look so lost, so in need of help. It had been easier to regard it all as an exercise when she had seemed so certain of her own invulnerability. Or when she was as determined to use him as he had been to seduce her.
But now she was simply alone and, he knew, frightened, however well she attempted to conceal it from him. Once he would have been gratified by that familiar reaction. Now he cursed it for making things worse than they had been.
Everything had changed with that kiss—that terrifying, exhilarating kiss so unlike any other he’d experienced. He’d followed his resolve not to go back into town, not to see her again, he hadn’t counted on her coming after him.
She half stumbled on a fallen log, and he reached out automatically to steady her. The contact brought both of them to a sudden, startled halt. He dropped his hand instantly. He had felt the heat of her skin through the sleeve of her jacket, she stared at him now with brown eyes wide. Whatever had happened before—she still felt it, too. He knew why she had come after him, but he also knew her motives were not as clear-cut as she wanted to believe.
He wished he could have gained some satisfaction out of it.
Though he told himself he was taking her back to his cabin for her own good, his motives were no clearer than hers. Never had he been forced to face this kind of confusion with any of the other women.