Loving Wild Read online

“Three weeks,” she said, slapping her yellow pad on the back of her hand, just to do something with the sudden surge of nervous energy. “I don’t know. It depends on the story. And you.” She paused in her rhythmic slapping as a thought came to her. “But I have no intention of being an imposition, Mr. MacCabe, if that’s what you’re worried about—”

  “Dylan.” He shoved another log into the stack tucked under his arm. “And believe me, any lady who looks like you is no imposition.”

  Her smile froze on her face even as the rest of her body hummed like a hive of bees.

  “So,” he continued, as if his words hadn’t turned her into a human tuning fork, “you’re telling me you have no plans for the next three weeks?”

  “My schedule is…fluid,” she said, her ears still buzzing. “I adjust it however I need to.”

  Of course, she had no intention of staying the full three weeks. She couldn’t afford the hotel bills, and she would only suffer sleeping in her van for a few days at a time. She needed to get this story done right, and done soon, and then move on.

  Besides, she never spent more time than she needed in any one place. It always took about four or five days of contact before people stopped answering her questions and started asking some of their own. About her—her life, her past, her dreams. A sure indicator that it was time for her to hit the road in search of the next story. Life was more simple—and less painful—when it didn’t involve intimate relationships.

  Especially with broad-shouldered, warm-eyed men like this one, who kept sizing her up…for something.

  “Well,” she said, clicking her pen and tapping it against the yellow pad, “do you want to start by telling me about some of the problems you’ve been having?”

  “It’s nothing. Yet.” He straightened and hefted the wood toward a wrought-iron brace against the cabin walL “Just the usual annoyances that plague big projects right before they start”

  “I like details. I need details. They’re what bring the story to life.” She looked around the yard, at the splatter of cut wood, then pointedly at the screened back door of the cabin. “If you can spare a few minutes from this, maybe we could settle down somewhere and talk.”

  “Let me finish piling this up first.”

  He patted the ends of the logs to line them up evenly, then returned without another word to gather more. She glanced at the wood, then at the empty brace. Her reporter’s instincts told her there was something fishy here—Dylan was dodging telling her something. But it was quite obvious there was no rushing the man.

  She decided to let it go, for now. She tucked the yellow pad back into her bag. Truth be told, she needed a little time to gather her wits. Maybe it was the pressure she’d put on herself, driving so far and so long in the hopes of snagging this story, but even though she’d gotten a guarantee on an exclusive, she still felt strangely unsettled.

  She wandered around the clearing, concentrating on the soft crinkle of pine needles under her shoes, the warmth of the sun filtering through the trees, the sound of the logs clattering into the brace. These northern summer woods reminded her of the retreat she had stayed at, three years ago. She’d spent hours wandering those well-tended grounds, losing herself among the trees, trying to put herself and her life back together again.

  “This is pretty country,” she said, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “Is the cabin yours?”

  “It belongs to my family,” he said, straightening to eye the surrounding woods. “We spent every summer here.”

  “We?”

  “My parents, two brothers and a sister.” His grin flashed. “Imagine, two adults and four kids in a two-room cabin. Funny, it never seemed crowded.”

  Her gaze drifted toward the cabin as she imagined the blur of children playing hide-and-seek, catching toads, swinging on low limbs, running wild. If she had ever had children, she would have wanted to raise them in a place like this.

  She took a swift, deep breath and cast about for some other focus. She set her sights on a strange-looking canoe, up on struts by the side of the house.

  As she neared the canoe, she smelled turpentine and something else she couldn’t place.

  “Careful,” he said, as she reached out to touch it. “That black stuff is pine tar and it’s hellish to get off your hands.”

  “This must be the canoe you made.”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  She patted the stiff side, avoiding the sticky resin. “Is it really made out of tree bark?”

  “Yellow birch bark.” He straightened with a bunch of wood tucked under his arm. “It’s made as the Native Americans used to make it. What do you know about this trip?”

  “Next to nothing,” she admitted. She dug a thumb under the strap of her briefcase. “This particular editor likes to send me off blind, just to see what I can come up with.”

  “Sounds like a hell of a career.” Dylan tucked another log into the pile under his arm. “Bungee jumping, following the Oregon Trail, hang gliding—”

  “I don’t actually do any of those things,” she assured him with a laugh. “I just write about them. There was one guy who tried to get me to bungee jump, but there was no way on earth I was going to leap off a bridge with a rope tied around my feet.”

  “That’s just good common sense.” He paused in his wood gathering. “So you’ve never participated in anything you’ve covered?”

  “No, I’ve done a few things. I did take part in a white-water trip on the Snake River, with a bunch of crazy executives trying to learn ‘teamwork.’”

  “You rafted the Snake River?”

  “Well…not really. I paddled a ways down the river with them, just to get a feel for it. But I opted out of running the real white water.” She straightened her shoulders, determined to shift this interview to him, for a change. “Did you make this canoe all by yourself, Mr. MacCabe?”

  “Yeah—no. I had a lot of help.” He shoved some more wood into the last gap of the wrought-iron brace. “Some of the kids in my American history class helped. Why didn’t you join those executives for the whole trip, Casey?”

  She blinked at him. He had made his way across the yard and now was standing in front of her, his hands on his hips, his abdomen caving in with every exhaled breath. She felt a sudden exquisite consciousness of his state of undress—of the expanse of chest, covered by nothing more than a damp tank top that molded to his upper body, the biker’s shorts hugging his thighs. Sweat had darkened the curls of his hair and plastered them to his neck.

  “I just cover the stories, Mr. MacCabe,” she said, her throat suddenly dry. “I don’t live them myself.”

  That was the only answer she would give him. He didn’t need to know the truth. He didn’t need to know that this was as close to risk as she wanted to get—for now.

  “You look as if you could handle any physical demands.” His gaze swept over her again. “Do you work out?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know.” He waved a hand in the air. “Weights. Aerobics. Step classes.”

  “I run,” she said, as if it were any of his business. She had pounded the pavement from San Francisco to the boardwalks of Atlantic City, from the river walks of the Mississippi to the Mojave Desert. It was the one thing she hadn’t yet given up from her old life. “I try to make a habit of jogging three times a week. Now, if you’ve quizzed me enough on my qualifications, Mr. MacCabe, I’d really like to ask you a few questions.”

  He laughed. It was a kind sound, and a dangerous sound. A deep, sexy rumble from the chest.

  “Socratic method,” he explained. “It’s the way I teach my students. It’s a habit that’s hard to break.”

  She still couldn’t believe he was a high-school teacher. He looked more like he belonged in a wet suit on the beaches of southern California. Or shark fishing off the Great Barrier reefs of Australia.

  “This canoe,” she said, turning toward it so she wouldn’t have to look at him and the whorls of dark ha
ir converging upon the waistband of his shorts, “you’ll be taking it all the way through the wilderness?”

  “Casey,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken a word, “I have a confession to make.”

  She glanced back at him, startled, and found herself riveted by that bright blue stare again. Confession? He didn’t look in the least bit guilty. He looked sweaty and hard-bodied. Intense. A vein throbbed on the inside of his arm. His chest rose and fell with deep, steady regularity.

  “Danny—Daniel Anderson, my partner in this illfated voyage of mine—is in the hospital right now.”

  “What?”

  “He’s all right.” He watched her face intently. “But he broke his arm water-skiing yesterday.”

  “Oh.” She dug her hand into her bag, searching blindly for her yellow pad. Her instincts had never been wrong. Now, it seemed, she was finally getting somewhere with this story—and the sooner the better. “So…is this one of those setbacks you didn’t want to talk about?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned and shrugged in a way that would look boyish in a younger man. “But it’s not a setback anymore.”

  “Your partner is in the hospital. I’d call that a setback. I trust you have someone else to take his place?”

  “I hope so.”

  She blinked at him, pausing in her search for her pad of paper. What did he mean, he hoped so? He’d promised her an exclusive on this trip—he’d better have a substitute, or all her hopes of getting Bessie new C. V. joints went right out the window, along with a lot of other half-baked plans.

  “Call me crazy, Casey, but watching you walk up to me a few minutes ago was like seeing the answer to my prayers.”

  The yellow pad slipped out of her hand and sank into the recesses of her leather bag.

  “I’ve been standing here, cracking wood, trying to think of a way out of this situation.” He shook his head. “Eight months of planning, and good old Danny-boy has to show off to his eldest son by playing acrobat on the ski jump three days before the launch.”

  Casey sank her heel into the soft mulch of the ground as Dylan took a step toward her.

  “And then,” he continued, “with no warning, I turn around to find this strong, confident woman standing there, a woman who has run white water before, and who has nothing planned for the next three weeks.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “I’m offering you a great challenge. I’m giving you the chance to live one of your own stories.” He leaned into her. “Casey Michaels…how would you like to join me on the adventure of a lifetime?”

  2

  CASEY HAD ONCE BEEN sent on assignment to California, to cover a surfboarding competition off the beaches of La Jolla. She’d been enticed into paddling out into the water for what the surfer boys called an. “easy ride.” As she’d attempted to stand on the board, a wave had swept it out beneath her, plunged her into the water, scraped her across the bottom, then spat her out onto the shore. For minutes uncounted she had lain flat on her back, staring up at the blue sky, wondering what the devil had hit her.

  She knew what had hit her this time. It was looming over her, grinning like a Cheshire cat, brawny arms akimbo, focusing all that blue-eyed intensity upon her. She just didn’t know why she was shaking even though she knew she was standing flat-footed on the ground.

  “Let me get this straight,” she said, taking another step back into the crush of the pine needles. “You want me to be your partner.”

  “Yep.”

  “Just like that”

  “You’re perfect,” he insisted, as his gaze swept her from top to toe. “Lighter than I expected for a sternsman, but I can balance out the packs to compensate—”

  “If I refuse to be your partner,” she interrupted, wishing he would stop breathing down on her, “does that mean the trip is canceled?”

  “Well…”

  “It’s over, isn’t it?”

  “Unless someone else with nothing to do for the next three weeks comes walking around my cabin—”

  “Then it seems,” she said, fingering her sunglasses back up the bridge of her nose, “that your trip is off, Mr. MacCabe. A pleasure to speak to you. Good day.”

  She twisted on one sensible heel and headed away from him. She fixed her gaze on the corner post of the cabin. She fixed her mind on the sanctuary of her van just beyond.

  Heavy footsteps crackled in the litter behind her.

  “No way, MacCabe.” She swept out an arm before he came too close. Her jacket fluttered with the wind of her pace. “I came here to write about the trip, not live it. Our business is done.”

  “You haven’t even heard what I have to say.”

  “I’ve heard all I needed to hear.”

  “Will you stop running?”

  “I’m not running.”

  She felt like running. She felt like lurching into a sprint as she rounded the cabin and caught sight of her van. If she’d been wearing better shoes, she just might have.

  Because Dylan MacCabe had just spent the past halfhour giving her hope—and the past few minutes destroying it.

  Nine hours of driving, no assignment, the minivan worse for the trip, and she was left wondering how she would eke out a living with the last of the settlement money before she would have to make some hard, hard decisions about her life.

  She reached out and curled her fingers under the hot metal of the door handle. She pulled on the latch.

  “Hold it, Casey.”

  The door clicked open. Dylan’s shadow fell over her. He slammed his hands on the door, jamming it shut.

  He had work-worn hands. Rough hands. Big hands. Lying flat on the window of her car, on either side of her head. She stood there with her breath coming fast between her lips, staring into the window, into the comfortable clutter of her van, and seeing little else but the reflection of the Viking in the glass as he leaned into her, close enough for her to feel his breath on her hair.

  “You really are a runner, aren’t you?”

  The words shot through her like a bullet She supposed, by the way he said them—with a sort of rueful admiration—that he meant them as a compliment: that she had a strong set of legs and could run like the wind when she had to. But Casey’s therapist had said the very same words to her, a couple of weeks ago, and Jillian had meant much, much more than that.

  Well, she wasn’t a runner anymore, Casey said to herself, just as she had told Jillian. She was a writer who traveled a lot—with reason.

  So she twisted around to face Dylan—to confront, and thus take control of the situation—and realized immediately what a colossal mistake she’d made. Her shoulder brushed his chest as she turned. His face and his body were separated from hers by mere inches of air space.

  And the air was thinning dangerously.

  That strange sensation seized her again. The sensation of being tugged along, of being guided, urged, pushed… closer to him.

  He didn’t move. The world slowed around them. Casey noticed odd things. His bristled jaw. Golden bristles, speckled here and there with brown, short and cropped, as if he’d gone no more than a day without shaving. A streak of dirt slashed across his brow, as if he’d swiped it there with the back of his forearm. A ring of silver gray encircled the pupils of his blue eyes. The ring widened as his pupils constricted and his gaze fell to her lips.

  “Just listen to me,” he said softly, his gaze rising to her eyes again. ”Five minutes, Casey. That’s all I ask.”

  She licked her lips. His gaze followed the movement. She had no intention of joining this man on any trip, anywhere, anytime, anyhow. But she nodded, just to do something, just to make him say something so he wouldn’t keep staring at her like that. She nodded, in the hopes that he would move away so she could breathe again.

  He pushed himself away from her, took a step back into the sunlight. He raked a hand through his hair, then dropped it to his hip. She filled her lungs with air.

  “I just finished chopping enough wood to last until
the next millennium,” he began, “trying to work this all out.” He stepped back farther, until he bumped into the side of his own Jeep. Leaning against it, he crossed his legs at the ankle and scratched his head, wincing as he talked. “I was just about ready to throw in the towel.”

  Casey flattened her hands against the hot door of the van, letting the heat burn her palms.

  “Since yesterday,” he continued, “I’ve been trying to find someone to take Danny’s place. I spent the night sitting at a pay phone in a diner just outside town, feeding it dimes while I called every high-school boy in my history classes, every football player I’ve coached for the past three years, every softball player on my spring team. Nothing came through. Every kid is either working, going to college in mid-August, or his parents forbid him to join me.”

  “You can’t get student athletes to go,” she said, huskily, “but you want me.”

  “Hey, I even tried my tag-football team, but they all have real jobs. And the other teachers in Bridgewater High…well, the ones I’d willingly invite are either on vacation, or have other plans. Casey, you are the only person I know on God’s Green Earth who has three weeks in the summer with nothing else to do. And here you are, at my door.”

  “But there’s where you’re wrong,” she said, hating the strange, fragile timbre of her voice. “I told you I have no other assignment, but I do have plans. I have a sister in Connecticut. I haven’t seen her or her family in almost two years. She’s expecting me to visit.”

  “Push it off until after the trip.”

  “School starts in September. I want to see my nieces.”

  “We’ll be done a week before Labor Day.”

  “You’re rather free about rearranging my social schedule,” she retorted, holding on to the spurt of anger. “But I’ll have another assignment in September.”

  “That sounds vague.”

  “Listen, Mr. MacCabe—”

  “Dylan. This could be worth your while, Casey. You could get three or four articles out of this trip.”

  “That’s spreading the leftovers rather thin.”

  “An article for American Backroads. Another for Canoeing and Kayaking, and an easy third for one of the educators’ trade magazines.”