Passion (In Wilde Country 2)

They came to a crossroads a few miles later. Matteo slowed the car. He looked left, then right. All he could see were dark ribbons of road that looked like the one they were already on.

“Okay,” he said. “Left or right?”

Ariel took a deep breath. “Left.”

“Sounds good to me.”

He made the turn. Drove another mile. Two. He’d almost given up hope when he saw a light ahead of them. The light grew brighter and bigger until it was a sign that said U-SAVE-GAS-AND-GROCERIES.

He pulled up to a pump, filled the tank, then parked outside the small building and went inside. Minutes later, he was back, carrying a bag that emitted smells that made Ariel’s mouth water.

“Food,” she breathed.

Matteo grinned. “And coffee. And…” He dropped a key into her hand.

“What’s this?”

“We got lucky,” he said, as he pulled back onto the road. “I asked the guy who owns the place if there was a motel nearby. Turns out he has some cabins just up the road. He said to look for a mailbox, make a right… And there they are.”

There were four cabins. They were small log structures, none of them occupied. “Don’t get many takers this time of year,” the man at the gas station had said, “but you’re welcome to rent one. Got pretty much everythin’ you’ll need.”

Matteo left Ariel in the car, crunched through the snow, unlocked the door to the first cabin and saw a pleasant room that contained all the things that mattered: a bathroom off to the left, a fireplace complete with kindling and a stack of logs to the right, a wall of kitchen appliances and, directly ahead, a small sofa, a table and chairs, and a bed.

One bed.

It seemed to be his night for one-bedded rooms, but who gave a damn? His feet would hang off the end of the sofa, but he figured he was tired enough to sleep standing up.

The room was cold. He carried Ariel inside, sat her on the sofa, built a fire on the hearth, then went back for their packages. The stuff from the mini-Walmart, from the pharmacy, and the food he’d just bought.

The glow of the flames made the cabin look homey. Matteo was pleased. He could tell that Ariel was, too, by the way she was smiling.

“Okay?”

“Perfect!”

He smiled. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but—”

“It’s perfect! It’s like my grandparents’ vacation house. Well, theirs was bigger, but it was set back in the woods and it was made of logs and—and…” Her voice died away. She stared at Matteo. “I remember it,” she whispered. “A house. In the woods.”

She went absolutely still, her head tilted as if she were listening to something.

He watched her. Had her memory come back? He knew the answer before she spoke again. It was in the sudden way her shoulders slumped.

“For a minute,” she said, “I thought—I thought it was going to be all right. But I don’t remember anything else. A house. The woods. My grandparents. That’s all.

“I bet Stafford would say that’s a lot.”

“It’s nothing. One memory is about as important as—as a drop of water in the sea.”

She was trembling. From disappointment? From the cold? He turned away from her, afraid he’d gather her into his arms and try to kiss away the sorrow he saw in her eyes.

“Come on,” he said briskly. “Let me make sure that fire’s really going, and we’ll have dinner.”

“You’re so patient, Matteo. How can you put up with me?”

He busied himself at the fireplace for another minute. Then he got to his feet and turned toward her, ready to make some light remark to make her feel better, but when he looked at her, something twisted inside him and what he really wanted to tell her was that being patient had nothing to do with it.

These last few hours had been some of the best in his life.

He was happy, and wasn’t that a bitch?

She had amnesia, a broken wrist and something even worse, something she didn’t know she had—a pig of a husband who wanted them dead, and he was happy.

What a sick idiot he was.

“It’s easy,” he said. “What man wouldn’t be patient with a woman who thinks hot dogs with mustard and sauerkraut is the food of the gods?”

She laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh, but he was grateful for it. Like him, she was trying to keep things moving forward.

“Actually, I did even better than hot dogs.” He went to the table, started to open the bag of food. “Just wait until you see this feast.”

“I can hardly wait. But first…” She looked at him, then away. Color rose in her face. “There’s no polite way to say this. I have to pee, and I tried to untie the miserable drawstring of these miserable scrubs while you were outside, but I couldn’t and I won’t be able to do it now, either, and if I don’t pee soon…”

She’d all but run the words together.

He wanted to laugh. Or at least grin. Of all the problems she’d faced in the past hours, everything from breaking a bone to losing her memory to fleeing into the night with a man she didn’t know, the only time he’d seen her flummoxed was when she had to tell him she needed to pee.

Well, no.

What she was really telling him was that she needed his help to get her pants off.

Shit. Just what he didn’t need. An excuse to undress her.

“Matteo?”

He blinked. She was looking at him, her cheeks still pink.

He cleared his throat, went briskly toward her, clasped her elbow, which seemed the least personal way to touch her, and led her to the bathroom.

“When I was ten,” he said, talking fast, his hands already at her waist, “well, when my brother and I were ten, he broke his arm.”

Goddammit. The stupid drawstring had a knot in it.

“You were the same age?”

He nodded. He suspected she didn’t really care what he said or what she said, just as long as they didn’t say anything about what he was doing.

“Twins. Luca and me. Anyway, stùpitu that he was, he went up a tree after a kite that had lodged in a couple of branches, and he fell and broke his arm.”

Why wouldn’t the fucking knot open? Who had tied it? Houdini?

“He had a cast from his shoulder to his wrist. Much bigger than yours.”

“I bet he was proud of it.”

Matteo looked up. She was smiling. It was a lovely smile, and he smiled in return. Yes, but smiling wasn’t on the agenda. Getting this damn knot open was.

“Everyone in the village signed it,” he said, turning his attention back to the drawstring. “He was completely obnoxious about it and when it was finally time to have it removed, he took it home with us from the doctor’s office.”

There. He’d finally managed to get some play in the knot.

“He kept it?”

“In the closet, until it began to smell so bad I threatened to lock him out of our room if he didn’t…” The knot gave. The drawstring opened. Matteo breathed a sigh of relief, but the feeling didn’t last. The pants slid down her hips…

Revealing what was under them.

White cotton panties. Demure white cotton panties.

How could such a simple sight fill him with lust?

He grabbed hold of the pants.

&

nbsp; A bad move.

What he grabbed hold of were her hips.

He felt his heartbeat skitter. Her head came up. Her eyes met his. Something flashed in their depths. Then she took a breath, grasped the bunched fabric just below her belly button and stepped back.

“Thank you.” Her voice was rusty.

“You’re welcome.” So was his.

She licked her lips. Please don’t do that, he thought.

“I’ll, ah, I’ll just be a minute…”

He nodded. Imagine what would happen if he said, Yeah, I’ll just be a minute, too, because that was probably all it would take him to lift her onto the edge of the sink, unzip his fly and plunge deep, deep inside her.

“Right,” he said, with brisk assurance. “Sure. Let me know when you’re done.”

“I’m sure I’ll be able to manage. It was the knot…”

“The knot,” he said. “Of course.”

He swung away from the door, she shut it, and he went straight to the front of the cabin, yanked the door open and stepped out into the bitterly cold night. He took half a dozen deep breaths, blew them out, watched the misty exhalations rise into the darkness.

What in hell was he thinking?

She needed help. He needed to figure out how to provide that help. Giving his hormones free reign was not the way to do it.

For the first time since his university days, when he’d given up his one-year stint as a cigarette smoker, he wished to God he had one.

Forget that.

What he had was better than a cigarette. He had logic and reason and self-control. Self-control, he told himself, and he dragged one last breath of cold air into his lungs before heading back inside.

Ariel was out of the bathroom. She’d set the table. Mismatched plates. Mismatched flatware. The food he’d bought was piled on a big, chipped platter in the center of the table.

“Dinner,” she said, so brightly that it made him wonder what she’d been thinking. Could it have been anything like the stuff going through his head? You really are an idiot, he told himself, and he plastered a smile on his face.

“Very nice. I’ll just, ah, I’ll go wash up.”

“Fine,” she said, smiling back.