Caitlin couldn’t hold back her surprise. “But Jonas said—”
“Whatever story he told you was a lie. I came to see him. Well, I saw him, and I left.” A smile angled across his mouth. “And now I’m back for our date.”
“We don’t have a date.”
“Of course we do. I asked you to have dinner with me tonight.”
“And I turned you down.”
“Are you afraid of me, McCord?”
Caitlin looked at Tyler. He was smiling again, but there was something in his eyes that made her heartbeat quicken. Yes, she thought, yes, I am afraid of you. Of what you made me feel, when you touched me. Of what I might feel again…
“Cait?”
No one ever called her that. The name sounded strange—but it sounded right, as if it were something special between them, a shining new link that bore his imprint.
Her heart stuttered again. Stop it, she told herself. Stop being such a fool.
“No,” she said coolly, “of course not.”
“Have dinner with me, then.”
“I already said I wouldn’t, Kincaid. What’s the sense of making this into some childish game, where you dare me, and I double-dare you…”
She fell silent as he closed the distance between them.
“Take the dare,” he said softly. He looked at her mouth, and she could feel her lips part as if he’d run his finger over them.
“Kincaid…”
“My name is Tyler.” He reached out, threaded his hand into her hair. The rubber band came loose and he pulled it free. Her hair felt just as he’d remembered, like fluid silk against his skin. “Say my name, Cait.”
“Tyler.” Her tongue felt thick. “Tyler, please. You have to leave.”
He clasped her face in his hand, bent his head and kissed her. His mouth was hot and hungry and she moaned softly before she twisted her face away.
“Caitlin.” He brought her face to his, tilted it so their eyes met. “I want you,” he said roughly. “In my arms. In my bed.”
“Don’t,” she said breathlessly. “Please. Don’t say things like that.”
“I thought of you all week, of how it would feel to taste your skin, to be inside you.”
His words were raw, and so were the images they conjured. She saw herself lying in his arms, saw him kneeling between her thighs, felt him touching her.
Caitlin began to tremble. Push him away, she told herself. Hit him. Kick him. Do all those clever things you were telling yourself you should have done when he kissed you that last time…
He kissed her. It was a kiss she knew a man might give a woman as she lay beneath him. He slipped his tongue between her lips, moved it against hers, drew her close so she could feel the heat and the hardness of his aroused flesh.
A moan broke from her throat. The room seemed to spin; they were at its center, caught in a whirling kaleidoscope of colors.
“Cait,” he whispered, and cupped her breast.
She felt her heart beating against his palm.
“Cait,” he said again, and this time she looked up into Tyler’s face. What she saw there was exciting. Incredibly exciting. His green eyes were so dark they were almost black, and filled with the promise of the pleasure he would bring her if she went to bed with him…
If she went to bed with him? With this stranger, who’d come onto Espada and into her life as if he were one of the conquistadors who’d invaded this land in centuries past, claiming both it and her for his own?
Caitlin wrenched free of Tyler’s embrace.
“I’m sure that macho performance holds appeal for some women, Kincaid.” Her blood was still pounding in her temples but her voice was icy. She lifted her chin and fixed him with the kind of look that would make even old Abel take notice. “But I am not ‘some women.’ I don’t like to be mauled, or told what to do, and if you came here tonight thinking I was going to fall at your feet in a swoon, you’re in for a disappointment.”
He looked back at her in silence, his expression unchanging except for a tiny muscle that knotted and unknotted in his cheek.
“Hell,” he said, with a little smile, “I think I’d have been more disappointed if you had.”
Was he giving up that easily? Not that she was sorry. Of course, she wasn’t sorry. Caitlin smiled politely and stepped back.
“In that case, Kincaid—”
“In that case, McCord,” he said, and before she could shriek or scream or even protest, he scooped her off the floor, tossed her over his shoulder and headed into the night.
CHAPTER SIX
CAITLIN got her voice back, but by then it was too late. Tyler had already carried her down the steps, to his car.
“Kincaid,” she shouted, “are you nuts?”
“Probably.”
He sounded amused, damn him. Amused, while she dangled over his shoulder, facedown, like a sack of laundry.
“Put me down,” she demanded, pounding her fists against his back. “Damn you, Kincaid, put—me—down!”
“Your wish is my command,” Tyler said, and dumped her into the leather seat of something big and expensive-looking. A Land Rover? A Navigator? As if it mattered, she thought, blowing the hair out of her eyes. As if it really, honestly, for-a-minute made a difference if you were kidnapped by a man who drove an ultrapricey Sports Utility Vehicle when he hadn’t even had wheels a few days ago.
She made a lunge for the door. Tyler, already behind the wheel, pulled her back and buckled her seat belt, dodging her flailing hands, then giving a nod of satisfaction when he had her trapped and trussed like a chicken ready for the roasting pan.
“Okay,” he said, and turned the key. The engine roared to life. He put it in gear, let out the clutch and the SUV sped down the gravel road that led away from the house.
“I am not a fan of macho behavior,” she said coldly.
“How about barbecue?” Tyler’s hands flexed on the wheel. “You a fan of that?”
Caitlin blinked and looked at him. “A fan of…?”
“Barbecue. Ribs so sweet, they melt in your mouth. Sweet potato pie. Pulled pork.” He heaved an exaggerated sigh of pleasure. “Fantastic. But if you’d rather have Pacific Rim—”
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“Pacific…?”
“Rim. Hasn’t it reached Texas? It’s food with an Asian feel. Not Chinese, not Japanese—”
“I know what Pacific Rim cuisine is, Kincaid.” Maybe he really was nuts. Maybe it made sense to treat him with care.
“In that case, which do you prefer?”
He smiled politely, as if he hadn’t just kidnapped her from her own home, hadn’t just kissed her until she’d thought her bones would melt.
“You have to tell me, Cait. So I can phone ahead and make the arrangements.”
“The arrangements,” she repeated foolishly. Maybe he wasn’t crazy. Maybe she was.
“Uh-huh. I didn’t know which you’d prefer, Barbecue or Pacific—”
“—Rim.”
“Right. So I have them both on standby.”
Caitlin imagined every barbecue joint in the state of Georgia, every restaurant on the Asian continent, waiting eagerly for Tyler’s phone call. She bit back a hysterical laugh.
“You’re wasting your time, Kincaid.”
“Caitlin,” he said, as if she were six instead of twenty-six, “let’s not make this into a full-blown war. I’m hungry. You must be, too. Carmen said you hadn’t eaten since noon.”
“Carmen,” she said icily, “talks too much.”
“Just pick one, okay? Pacific Rim, or—”
“I know how this works, Kincaid. You give me choices, narrow ones, but choices just the same. And I’m supposed to see that as an act of kindness, and that’s supposed to make me form an emotional bond to my captor.”
He laughed. Really laughed, and all at once the outrageous silliness of the whole thing hit her and she wanted to laugh, too.