Act out lots.
She considered the possibilities while she folded up the blanket he’d lent her. The wind had died down considerably for the moment, and with just the darkness surrounding her—strangely comforting her—it had a way of making a girl want certain things.
Daeg wanted to spend the night with her.
So, okay, that wasn’t precisely what he’d said, nor did he have nefarious designs on her body, but it was a start. Of sorts. He must have settled for setting his stuff just inside the door of her cabin because he turned around almost immediately. Standing there on her porch, Daeg Ross was the antithesis of safe—six-plus feet of hard, sun-bronzed trouble. Still, no man had ever made her feel like this, as if she should kiss first and analyze later.
He left the porch and raised a large sheet of heavy plastic up over his head.
Maybe he was exactly the right soldier to help her out. Maybe she didn’t need to ignore the sensual pull between them. She was still running through her options when Daeg appeared at her door and tapped the window. When she opened the door and got out, he already had the plastic positioned over her.
“Ready?” he asked. “We’re going to make a run for it.”
“Count of three?” she teased and he grinned.
They ran for the door, his arm locked around her shoulders, holding her tight to him.
“Mission complete,” she said lightly when they landed on the porch, and he shot her a look.
“Uh, no,” he bit out. “We’re not home free yet, Dani. But I promise I won’t let anything bad happen to you. You hear me on that one?”
Did she want to let him take charge? Or did she want to do something different? Here was her chance to step outside of her comfortable, everyday life. Spending the night marooned with Daeg was about as far from number crunching in a cubicle as she could get. Ha! She was already halfway there, wasn’t she? She took a deep breath.
Yes.
* * *
INSIDE HER CABIN, Daeg reached for the light switch. To Dani’s visible surprise, the overhead flickered but came on. The power hadn’t gone out. Yet. So he could see all too clearly that Dani’s cabin looked like it had been copied from the pages of a bridal magazine. Not that he read those things, but the fiancée of one of his team members had stuffed her letters with pages she’d clipped out, and they’d passed the sentimental pics back and forth to tease their buddy.
Now his imagination went straight into overdrive. All the scented candles and gauzy white stuff weren’t his thing, but the bed had definite possibilities. He sure liked the idea of holing up there with Dani to wait out this storm. And learning more about why she was camped out in the honeymoon suite with no husband in sight. Unfortunately, his training kicked in, and he remembered a number of important details he needed to take care of, including the fact that this place was unfamiliar territory and he would have to learn it down to the last detail.
He was definitely a man aroused, however, because his attention skidded back to thinking about Dani and getting into that bed. That four-poster had possibilities.
He grinned at her. “Hell of a date, even if I do say so. Do I get a kiss for escorting you to your door?”
8
SHE GAPED AT him and tried to think of something to say that would encourage him to get on with the kissing. Something clever, sexy or even fun. That was something else she wasn’t always good at. Other people had an arsenal of witty comebacks at their fingertips. She had numbers. And Daeg’s hand at the small of her back. A gentle push propelled her to a sofa.
“If it is a date, then it’s the worst one ever.” Stupid, she should be encouraging the date idea.
He laughed. “Think of the stories we could tell our grandkids. About how their Nonna and Pappi rescued each other and then hooked up during the storm of the century.”
Sliding the dead bolt back and forth, he tested the lock on the front door. A good safety precaution, she guessed. When, in fact, biding time locked in a cabin with Daeg Ross was something out of one of her fantasies.
“You don’t tell grandkids that.” She wouldn’t let him see how much his joking comments affected her. How much she liked the thought of him with grandkids. “And, obviously, this isn’t a date.”
“I’d tell mine,” he said.
She hadn’t ever pictured him with grandkids. That would mean kids, and just the thought of Daeg as a father caught her off guard. He didn’t seem like the happy-family sort, but he’d do that like he did everything else. Wholeheartedly. At the moment, though, she was more interested in the act that led to kids.